sanerontheinside:

morgynleri:

sanerontheinside
commented on sanerontheinside’s post “morgynleri replied to your post “1, 2, 10!” Ooh, Highlander! What…”

I’m just poking at an episode at slightly-less-than random and keeping to it if it sticks. tho, both Mac and Methos are currently inspiring a lot of _how the heck are you still alive_ questions

sanerontheinside
commented on sanerontheinside’s post “morgynleri replied to your post “1, 2, 10!” Ooh, Highlander! What…”

@morgynleri​ re: your tags—yyyyyeah I can see that my ‘attention span of a flea’ problem while watching shows is probably a good thing for my reception of Mac’s character

[most of my characters are based more on fanon than canon, probably, for the same reason o.o never considered that before]

Methos is alive because he has no fucks to give about most of the rules of the Game, avoids fighting other Immortals if at all possible, and prefers to shoot them, bury them, drop them down dry wells, or other means of incapacitating them until he can get far enough away that catching up is going to take months/years/centuries/millennia.

MacLeod is alive because he’s the main character of the show, and is lucky he hasn’t lost his head to someone who has fewer fucks to give about rules or to a woman because he’s a twit who thinks that fighting women is Wrong.

MacLeod also is one of those people who buys into the lie of purity culture that people who have done a Bad Thing in their past are always Bad People, and… well, Methos doesn’t try very hard to make him think otherwise*, but Methos is a Tired Old Man who has no fucks to give about this kid who thinks that their morals are absolute and anyone who has a different set is Wrong and Bad. And also does not have the spoons to keep hiding when creepy stalker exboyfriend comes around trying to gaslight him into becoming a bringer of the apocalypse again.

(There is something sad about him having to kill cuddly murder bear younger brother/student person in that fiasco, but in order to be rid of creepy stalker exboyfriend and serial killer cannibal that is probably crazypants because of him and said creepy stalker exboyfriend, so too must cuddly murder bear die.)

*”I didn’t just kill a hundred. I didn’t just kill a thousand. I killed ten thousand. I was Death on a horse. And I liked it. Is that what you want to hear?” – Methos, because fuck this “well, are you an evil person because you did these things that Cassandra mentioned?” bullshit.

(And as for Cassandra, I have mixed opinions about her, because yes, she is perfectly justified in being angry at Methos, even all these millennia later, and yes, it is well within her rights to never forgive him what he did to her, but also, getting someone else involved in her intent to murder Methos 3000 years later when there is evidence he’s changed since is not a good thing. I will not, however, argue that she was wrong in any way to do whatever it took to get rid of Kronos, because creepy stalker exboyfriend really really needed to die in order to stop him from continuing to attempt to destroy the world.)

Counter-argument: if Mac truly believed that past mistakes make someone irredeemable, he wouldn’t have followed Methos to Bordeaux, though, would he? And Kronos would expect Methos to kill anyone he’d become ‘attached’ to; that entire speech was [very nearly] an effective way to get Mac to cut ties.

Creepy stalker ex, in any case, was an abusive &$@*%, and if Cassandra blamed Methos primarily when Kronos was dangled in front of her, it’s mostly because she knew she didn’t have a chance against Kronos. Not singularly, because Methos was certainly the face of that time for her, but it’s no small thing. She would have killed all of them, gladly, if she could.

But this is my take on more or less the Horsemen episodes all on their own, with few other episodes to speak to Mac’s character. All I can say of him at the moment is that show-MacLeod is a bit too young for 400.

Or else I’m too cynical for barely a quarter of a century. That’s also entirely possible.

A good counter-argument. (Especially since I haven’t rewatched Highlander in a long while mostly because so many other things, and also have not ripped the DVDs to digital.)

(I also perhaps haven’t rewatched because I need to go through and rip the episodes with Methos first, because fuck it, it’s Methos, and I adore him, flaws and literal skeletons in his closet and penchant for being a bit of an asshole and all. I perhaps identify with him a bit lot.)

Also, I may have stronger opinions on the Horsemen episodes because they were, in fact, my introduction to Highlander, and also involved a lot of certain relatives I do not talk to any more casting aspersions on my ability to tell fiction from reality at the tender age of 12 or 13 or so. I was very cranky and decided that no, I don’t care what you think about it, this is mine, and you can pry it from my cold dead hands, yes, even the bad guys.