A few things.

So, before anything, here's another reminder that I'm not really gone, and I've just been unable to post the past few days. There's two main reasons for that:

1- Things have been crazy here because of the Olympics. I'm not exactly at the center of things, but its ripple effects across the country have been maddening. In short, very busy in real life.

2- I'm again a bit down about the lukewarm response to our last post, the third part of New Year's Expectations. Whatever you think of that story, it represents a difficult coordination effort from three different authors, two of which don't post regularly any more, while I've been quite busy with my long story, Premature Maturation. Yet, the blog remained silent as a tomb, and you know how I get about that.

So, as soon as I have the time, I'll post a few things, like more Special Vitamins. Today, I checked my blog-related e-mail for the first time in a while, and I found a new update on Elisabeth's... thing, which I post under the title A Testimony. So that will come too as soon as I have time to check it.

On a different but very exciting (at least to me) note, there's been significant updates on that upcoming Age Progression on Gotham which I reported a while ago. Most of these happened in the last couple of days.

First, they posted a first look at the adult form of the progressed girl, Ivy, as played by Maggie Geha:

I don't know about you, but I'm personally glad that the first major live action AP in years has the character looking like that. Makes the changes much more powerful when they're that radical.

Indeed, her looks have caused a stir on a few websites I've seen, though most people seem to find the idea of the progression itself very strange, and even horrible.

Anyway, there's also confirmation that we'll see some kind of transformation scene, and that she won't simply come back changed this season after an off screen change. Indeed, the child actress who played her thus far has posted a few pics of herself at set. We know she's not just visiting, because she's in costume:

Probably one of the main doubts I had was that this could end up not being a real AP, but rather a time shift for the character, something like she really lived all those years in another dimension, which wouldn't really count as a transformation for me.

But I found this article, which confirms this really will play like a true to genre AP story:

Geha says the transformation happens "after an encounter with a monster from Indian Hill. She wakes up still feeling like a 14 year old but she is now in a 19 year old body."

“Gotham” executive producer John Stephens explains that the transformation of Poison Ivy into a different version of herself is keeping with the basic plan of the series. Every character goes through some type of major change even the insecure Bruce Wayne who will one day be the fist-flying Batman.

“So with Ivy, when we began, Clare Foley did a wonderful job of her as a 15 year old girl,” Stephens says. “Canonically, Ivy is a character who makes use of her seductive powers to get what she wants in the world. So transforming Ivy early in the season allowed us to play to a lot of this canonical abilities that Ivy has while, at the same time, playing the fun of somebody in a body that is not theirs and trying to grow it very quickly. So it becomes a coming of age story told sort of super fast.”

Executive producer Ken Woodruff adds, “So we took Ivy from a 15 year old sort of odd socially odd girl to someone who is a little bit darker, maybe more willing to do things and to harm people that she wouldn’t have had before the transformation. So that was a big part of it.”

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/entertainment/ent-columns-blogs/fresno-beehive/article94519487.html#storylink=cpy

That sounds wonderful, and I never thought we'd get something like that on TV before. The only part that could possibly detract from the fun (though I totally expected that) is the reference to "waking up", which probably points towards her discovering the changes after being unconscious, which I think points towards no process being shown.

But at least, it confirms a discovery scene will take place. Indeed, I think we got a split-second glimpse at it during a promo that aired recently:

In the quick shot, we see Ivy looking at her reflection and flipping her hair. That's either the first time she sees herself as an adult, or her vanity compels her to check herself out frequently, and thus mirror scenes will happen regularly. Hope that's the case, since I hope the actual transformation happens while she's wearing her kid clothes.