#[ i'm taking an easier test this time just to make sure it's not the fundamentals that's tripping me up and like 90% of this

[corderis]

taking some study time today to put together my new flash cards and half of this I can remember just bc it's in the japanese version of kingdom hearts

[m1lfsh4ke]

Heyyyy, would you be able to do a student reader (student is 18) x Marilyn fic where student is cockwarming with Marilyn. Basically Marilyn is busy marking papers in her office but reader wants to be with her so Marilyn makes her sit on her lap whilst Marilyn is inside her??? I know this is a lot to ask so feel free to not write if it makes you uncomfortable 😭😭

Full of you | (18+)

warnings : cockwarming + riding + teacher/student + dirty talk + smut

hi anon :D ! I want to be entirely honest with you, this is my first time actually writing something that dealt with cockwarming, so my knowledge is poorly limited. I've read a few fics here and there to understand the fundamentals but I'm not sure if it does me any justice😭.

"Staying up late again?" your body lazily dragged itself to Ms. Thornhill's private office, her big hazel eyes darting towards the door as you closed it behind you with a click to the lock.

"Sweetheart.." she breathed out, "shouldn't you be asleep by now?"

"The bed felt empty without you, made it hard to get some rest." you pouted, pulling Marilyn's chair out enough to make some space just to squeeze yourself in and sit on top of her. "mph.. much better.." you softly whimpered, burying your face in the croak of her neck taking in her bittersweet scent, as one of her hands held you at your lower back, and the other resuming to marking papers.

As her hand rubbed the small of your back, she started to become aware of the clothing you were wearing. The fabric glided up beneath her fingertips when her hand hiked up your spine, making her feel a slight touch of your bare skin when she lowered it back down.

"You wore your nightdress when coming down?" Her voice interrupted you, making you pull away from the warmth of her neck to look up at her.

"I'm sorry, yes?" you giggled, not knowing what the issue was when its 11pm--way past the students time to be roaming the campus. "Is there a problem?" You fucking knew how possessive Ms. Thornhill was when it came to her star student being perceived by others, but you found it painfully attractive to be put in place by her.

"What if someone saw you in this." The dress was white, silk making it easier to draw out the shape of your breasts and your hardened nipples.

You got closer to her ear, planting a kiss just below her earlobe, feeling her body shiver. The hem of your nightdress was above your thighs, making your movements easier as you ground your clothed pussy down on Marilyn, making the two of you whimper. "They're not the one fucking it off of me" you breathed out with a smile, still continuing to grind down on Ms. Thornhill's already evident bulge.

She dropped her pen, whimpering at the friction as her hips stuttered up to feel more of you. "Poor baby.. here, let me get that for you." Your hand snaked its way to the waistband of her pants with your fingertips lightly playing with the hem. "Continue grading your papers, I'll take care of you" You kissed the side of her lips, finally dipping your hand past the waistband of her pants as she gasped, feeling your fingertips graze her dick.

"Fuck- keep playing with me, feels so good-" Her hips started to buck to your touch which you found adorable.

Tugging her pants along with her boxers down, you licked a stride of your hand and started to pump her dick, making her eyes roll to the back of her head. "feels good doesn't it? little slut loves to fuck herself on my hand, yeah?" She tried her best to make her handwriting look neat and not wobbly, but that came to no avail as you started to line your dripping pussy atop of her.

Sinking down to her length, she let out a guttural moan as you hushed her with a kiss, tugging on her bottom lip.

"Sh-fuckk!- So big, Mari.." you whimpered, fully taking in her whole while you sat there for a moment. You could feel her dick throb inside of you as she tried her best inputting test scores.

"C-can I fuck you, please?" Her big doe eyes looked up at you as you looked in awe, caressing her face and brushing her hair away from her eyes.

"My polite baby, of course" Placing a kiss on her forehead, you grabbed her by her wrist and settled them on your hips as you sort of lifted yourself up from her lap, making her moan at how wet you felt.

She tightened her grasp on your hips as she started to fuck up to you, whimpering at how easy it is for her dick to slide in and out of you.

"That's it- ri-right there, yes!-" You slammed your hips down, taking her full length again, making the poor woman cry out a moan.

"My sweet angel, is this too much for you? Mommy fucking this dick good?" You panted out, continuing to relentlessly ride her as a strap from your dress began to fall down to your shoulders, exposing your cleavage as your boobs bounced every time you rode her.

"Fuck- Let me cum please- Wanna make sure you walk back to the room with my cum leaking down your thighs-" You moaned at her words, bouncing on top of her even faster as you leaned back against her desk

"Mari, sh-shit!-" A loud wanton moan escaped past your lips as she fucked you deep, painting your walls white. Her legs shook when you continued to slowly bounce on her, helping her ride out her high.

[p5x-theories]

I dunno if it's because it is built on the foundation of Persona 5 and its in-universe rules and me not being too familiar with many gacha plots, but I've been finding it so much easier to follow what is going on in P5X compared to most other big gachas' stories.

Like in comparison I was watching a stream of somebody trying out that new miHoYo game Zenless Zone Zero, and despite my best efforts to pay attention I had such a tough time trying to understand what was going on that it was becoming too mentality taxing for me to continue further × ×

I personally found it relied too much on terminologies and less on what those exact things do that it made any attempts to be emotionally invested in its narrative difficult.

Do you think I'm too biased in what stories I prefer and I'm not being patient enough in its supposed long burn or is this like a fundamental problem that a lot of these types of games suffer with? ; ;

Hmm, that's a fair question, and I'll admit I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer it, since I don't play any other gacha games, heh!

That said, I think you're probably right that having a familiarity with P5 itself is helping you understand P5X's plot, whether you would have struggled to follow the plot without the prior P5 understanding or not. As much as P5X is meant to be for newcomers to the series too, it does often feel like it's built enough on P5 that you'd enjoy it more if you actually know P5 already, at least to me.

Without much knowledge of other gacha games, I can see how they might be overwhelming gameplay-wise, and cause you to lose the plot because of that, at the very least. I can't speak to their individual writing quality because I don't know them, but gacha games sort of have a lot going on, to my understanding! P5X, even, has a ton of different things and game modes and game mechanics to worry about (to the point that I made several posts about it, hah). I think what's helped there- besides familiarity with P5- is the fact that these game mechanics aren't really directly tied into the story, and usually aren't introduced at the same time as the story is progressing (or given to you in pieces, if they are). So maybe that's part of the difference? Admittedly, I also had a much easier time understanding how everything in P5X worked when I started playing it myself, rather than having to watch streamers play the beta tests I couldn't get into.

At least as for "not being patient enough in its supposed long burn", though, I think I have one piece of advice that I consider applicable even outside of gacha games: a "long burn" plot should still have a hook that draws you in, if it's good. Something that catches your attention and makes you want to learn more, even if you're missing some of the details and not understanding all the plot yet. If it feels like a chore to sit through the story up to the point where it'll start to make sense- especially if it gets mentally taxing to try to do so!- I think it's completely understandable that you don't want to keep trying. Because if the game (or whatever it is) can't even give you something to care about and hold onto, why should you sit around for however long it takes to get to the point?

Obviously there may be some exceptions, but that's kind of my personal metric to figuring out if I want to keep going with something. Is there a character, or an aspect of the worldbuilding, or something like that, that I want to learn more about and I'm willing to stick around for? Or does it just sort of feel like floating in the middle of the ocean with no life preserver, waiting for a ship to sail by? And there's nothing wrong with leaving if it's not clicking with you, even if other people really like it. Sometimes something just won't work for you, and that's okay! Worst case scenario, you can always come back to it later if you feel like giving it another shot.

[intercal]

the anatomy of my TODO.md

this is for the language I've been working on and actually making progress with. right now, I've got just a small handful of tests for ints and floats and strings doing basic stuff, just like all of the operators. but really besides basic types and operators and a couple of print statements, there's not that much. (for those who are curious, here are the types: Obj, Ty, Str, Int, Float, Bool, Nil, BuiltinFunction, UserFunction, Method.) this is all in about 4500 lines of code including comments and blanks.

we have "if" statements and functions, so we are technically turing-complete, but we don't even have "while" loops. obviously some things have higher priority than others. bit twiddling operators are pretty low on the priority list, and "while" loops are pretty high up. I have four categories of "TODO" on my list:

things that need to get done ASAP to even be considered a "programming language". this includes stuff like while loops, picking a name, collections (lists, maps, tuples etc), imports, exceptions, custom types (e.g. classes), and other things. basic stuff that you hypothetically use in nearly every single program you would write.

"things that need to get done". much lower priority, and really I shouldn't be working on any of these until the previous list is completed. these include things like robust slicing (for strings, lists, etc), iterators, for loops (blocked on iterators), string interpolation, bit twiddling operators, variadic arguments, and others. other things that are fundamental to any programming language, but are either a little more complex or easier to work around not having for a while.

"wishlist". this is broken up into "near future" and "far future", but it covers stuff I haven't put a lot of thought into but have thought "this would be neat to have". they are features that are not guaranteed to make it into the language. the "near future" list is pretty short, containing just method/function decorators (like python), context management (like python's "with" statement), runtime type checking syntax, pattern matching, and a "bytes" collection type. the "far future" list is just two items: good tooling, like a formatter, static type checker, docs generator, etc; and compile-time function execution (CTFE).

"incubator". this is the longest section and each item will need a lot of thought put into them since they could fundamentally change the language, or because I don't know if they're good ideas or not. these items include object literals, atomic values (like erlang/elixir/OTP languages), a pipe operator, asyncio, and a structured macro system for the language.

okay I lied. there's a fifth section, called "standard library" for stuff that I want in the standard library. I really like python's (can you tell I'm drawing a lot of inspiration from python) philosophy of "batteries included" and want to have a big standard library. hopefully I don't come to regret that decision. for the standard library, I have these packages written down so far for what I want: json, regex, random, time, ast (abstract syntax tree bindings), "system functions" (maybe like python's os module? not sure what I meant by this), paths, file i/o, ffi?, PNG images, sockets, basic HTTP client, basic HTTP server, CLI option parsing (python's is REALLY good), logging (supposedly python's is REALLY bad)

so there you go. that's what my todo list looks like. it's kind of interesting which language features would take at least a week of iteration to get integrated how I like (like imports or custom types), versus features that I could knock out in an evening (like 'while' loops). idk, this is the furthest I've gotten with any language I've started. I'm looking forward to getting through the first two sections of my todo list, so I can stop looking at "which features NEED to be implemented" versus "which features do we WANT to implement".

[gomzdrawfr]

Hi Gomz! Been so inspired by your art, I'm considering picking up digital drawing again haha. What device and app do you use? What would you recommend if I wanna restart drawing? Would be great if you can answer with doodles :D thanks!

Hello Cumi! Thank you very much for this ask, to think I can inspire other people with my doodles means a lot to me <;3 ((def not cryin rn))

In this ask response, I'll include some links that you can check out for the appropriate stuff! I hope you can understand some things by the end of it :D

Disclaimer: im no professional, so most of this is just based on my experience!!

Okie dokie first off:

What device and app do I use?

I draw using a drawing pad, the Deco Mini7 on my laptop, and I use Krita to draw :3

Krita is free to use! You can download it here, or if you can afford it, clip studio paint is definitely a popular choice out there, some people use adobe too!

I will say it may seem complicated at first BUT it is relatively easy to learn once you get the hang of it, there have a full tutorial on their website with videos included if you wanna know more! digital art apps usually works the same way, once you get the fundamentals you can draw on any app tbh

Or if you do want to start using Krita, then you can send me another ask in the future and I'll share you my tips and tricks (which are honestly pretty scuff HAHA))

Other recommendation if you want to draw on phone/tablet/ipad!

2. I know you didnt ask this, but I wanted to share my experience starting out with digital painting/using the drawing pad for the first time

the thing about digital painting is that there's a lot of features here and they serve to make the process easier, but it can be quite overwhelming when you start off! examples are layers

drawing pad also means getting used to not looking at the pad and the screen at the same time + getting used to the pen, I had a hard time with it but the more I use it, the more i got used to it :D

funnily enough, I actually gotten this drawing pad bcuz I started using lecture notes online through pdf and such xD

3. What would you recommend if I want to restart drawing?

Not really sure what you mean about restarting, but Im assuming like finding a new artstyle or trying out different art medium is it? (like from traditional pencil doodle to stylus pen) but if you mean literally restarting then uhhhh XD I guess you gotto start drawing then haha?

I think my motto when it comes to drawing is that no matter what it is, just do it

"its gonna look bad" its okay bcuz at least I drew it, yk? xD the thing with art is the more you draw, the more you're familiar with it, the less intimidating it will become(tho it can still be scary, but hey! baby steps right?)

perhaps what I would recommend is testing out all kinds of artstyle, ask yourself:

what am I going to draw? ex: I wanna do self potraits! I wanna do silly doodles of my favourite characters!

what style do I wanna do? ex: Chibi, non-chibi, landscapes

Sometimes, you won't know those answers to those questions until later on, which is exciting dont you think? one day I said "im gonna draw Ghost in full gears" then the next I decided "actually nah screw that im gonna make Ghost cute" -w-

didchu know my first few digital doodles were done on OneNote? haha yes! and on my lecture notes nonetheless pfttt (this was around october 2022)

When in doubt, always ALWAYS start small and simple. Draw a circle, draw a blob, anything! Make it manageable :D

You can, of course, challenge yourself and go big! the most important key is you're drawing for yourself :3 and you should do something you're happy with!

well, sometimes there are moments where you wont like what you draw or artblock, when it comes to those time Id recommend taking a break xD

Finding your artstyle is an ever growing journey, I would suggest looking through websites like Artstation or Pinterest and collecting artstyle that you like! then learn from it, replicate it, trace it(AS LONG AS YOU DONT CLAIM IT AS YOUR OWN AND YOU DO IT FOR PRACTICE PURPOSES!!!) and study it :3

like heck I just found a new artstyle yesterday literally HAHA so you know, enjoy the fun!

4. Other helpful links and video for starting out digital painting:

Marc Brunet, has a ton of tutorials that are useful! my fav one being this one about face drawing and cell shading

Bluebiscuits, very cute artstyle and the videos are always soothing and calming to watch! they did this video about finding your artstyle which I highly recommend! their face drawing tutorial is also really good :3

I also watch tppo occasionally, his video focuses more on how he study other people's artstyle and then implementing it on his own! If you like art studies you can give it a go, like this one!

practice, practice and practice! things like art takes a while to master and get happy with :) like i said, keep trying and dont forget, all of this is for fun!

have a good day! feel free to ask me anytime if you want if you want some clarification <3

[dancerfelix]

Thoughts on the 'scientific theory ' things in general, as a physicist:

1. It is important to be skeptical of science as a thing to be aimed for. Science is not objective, it is generally a pretty specific set of methodologies viewed as correct within 'western' thought (not that others don't follow some objective practices of learning about the world, or even use western science, but that the canonized Science delegitimizes non western practices). Sometimes it feels like social sciences and humanities fields try to emulate science not because these methods are actually useful, but because stem is taken more seriously. I think this tends to be quite bad. It feels like an admission that actually things that cannot be directly quantified within Science are less important, which I think is pretty awful actually. Philosophy and art are still lovely and important even if they cannot be 'objective'.

2. Ignoring the flaws with science- it's really hard to fulfil the requirements for useful experimentation when it comes to people, and especially on the massive scale of Society™. We can't really run 10 Cuban revolutions with controlled variables and independent variables to figure out if we could have had the same revolution with black or indigenous or female or black+ female Castro equivalent or something. We can't know if him being a more explicit communist at the time of the revolution would have changed anything. We can't even definitely prove that the revolution wouldn't have been more successful if he had been a vocal capitalist instead. We can sometimes run trial runs of policy, ie Finland's UBI experiment. But we really cannot meaningfully test or experiment within the context of broader social theory.

3. Obviously we can make evidenced claims and extrapolations with the 'data' available to us. I'm not going to deny that, going back to Cuba, Cuba is better off than most other Caribbean nations, and we could make a solid case for communism contributing to that. But there's a lot of guessing involved in ways that are a bit incompatible with Science™. Part of why I think social sciences are softer sciences is because they do rely on a lot more personal interpretation and parsing through situations with a lot of entirely uncontrollable variables to try to eke out a coherent argument. The data is limited (can't exactly redo the cuban revolution at will to see if x changes y), the information on the data is limited (biased sources, can't repeat things to make sure x is better documented, much harder to have things translated, lost languages, different perspectives highlighted). These are actually challenges that physics gives very few solutions to, and I would go truly insane trying to learn anything about the world in those conditions. Social sciences have a lot of tools to deal with this (still bad at not projecting global northern bullshit onto global south but still), and while there are 'hard science' things I don't know (couldn't tell you what chemists are up to lol), the fundamental structures for processing and obtaining data remain pretty consistent across stem but not so in say, anthropology, or economic studies. Maybe theoretical math and theoretical physics are a little closer, they spend more time guessing, but even then, it's a lot easier for them to isolate things.

4. I do think you can do meaningful analysis of social systems and make theories from that. Materialism is useful even if it's not "science". If you are taking information about observable reality, discussing it in a grounded way, you can spit out analysis and projections that are useful. I don't think so called soft sciences / theory / whatever term you use for 'trying to understand Society™" is just wand waving magic or just people spouting bullshit (that'd be psychology). I also think a lot of so called science, especially when it comes to stuff with people, suffers the experimentation issue to some extent + medicine especially is built on shoddy foundations.

5. Some of this is just going to depend on how one defines science. I define science vaguely with the "experimentation and analysis" definition. This is why I struggle to say a field that mostly cannot experiment is probably not "science". But if we want to change how we define science, or move towards towards something that better includes 'non academic' knowledges, or even abolish the current scientific systems and replace them with something free of the historical baggage of Science™ with more broadly inclusive understandings of knowledge acquisition, that would be cool.

Political theory is actually not comparable to math or physics

It is, actually - the unscientific approach to human society and history taken by bourgeois academia is necessitated by any real extension of scientific analysis to the field of human society revealing fairly plainly the basis of bourgeois society on the exploitation of the proletariat; the further notion that human society and history are simply inexplicable by science, driven instead by great men and driving ideas, is the ideological justification within liberal enlightenment philosophy for this unscientific approach. What makes human society above the purview of science - the Soul?

[shinidamachu]

Hi! I love following your meta and detailed analyses and I swear you had one somewhere about the actual chapters/instances that had InuKik in the manga as compared to the anime but I can't find it :( Did I imagine it? (Why I'm asking is I'm writing one of my fics IWFA and I had someone ask me why I write InuKik the way I do and I was about to say cuz in the manga they give off the impression of being distant like that. Then I second guessed myself and wanted to reread the parts... anyway I blab.

Hi! Thank you so much! This means a lot because I do love writing meta. Unfortunatelly, I don't think I made the post you're looking for.

I'm still in the process of reading the manga and even though I use a panel here and there to make my points across, I refrain from going into deep, side by side comparisons because I feel like smarter people than me have already done it to exhaustion. And with a level of coherence I can only dream to achieve.

One of these people is definitely @inukag so maybe you'll have more luck asking her? If Cynthia didn't wrote it, she's still your best shot at figuring out who did.

And for whatever is worth, I think your interpretation of manga Inukik is actually pretty spot on. In fact, I'd go even further and say that anime Inukik was almost just as distant. The difference is that at least Sunrise tried to give them some substance, which in my opinion didn't work at all, since it butchered their characterization (Inuyasha's especially) by omitting very important scenes and adding meaningless fillers that in my opinion only made more obvious how superficial their relationship really was.

To me, love is something you build and trust is the foundation in which you're building on. To trust — and consequently to truly love — takes time. On top of that, a strong relationship requires efffort, honesty and fully acceptance from both parts, none of which I believe Takahashi or Sunrise showed us.

Boat dates under the sunset and passionate kisses are just bells and whistles. Yes, it looks great on screen, but it doesn't necessarily equal to real love. Infatuation, sure. But love? It's easy to make you characters go on boat dates under the sunset. It's easy to make them kiss passionately. It's even easier for the writers, for the audience and for characters themselves to confuse it for love.

What's hard is to actually take the time to create, develop, test and expand a romantic connection. To show how deep it runs instead of just telling. To make it unfold and progress and grow stronger before our eyes. To make it dynamic rather than stagnant. Inuyasha and Kikyo didn't have that at all, be it in the manga, be it in the anime.

Their relationship was based on mutual loneliness, on seeing each other through rose colered glasses and of the fundamentally wrong idealization of the life they thought they'd have together.

That being said, here's my unsolicited advice: if you're anything like me, I can totally understand why you'd feel the need to try and defend your point of view, especially if the person asked you to explain it in good faith.

However, even if your interpretation of the Inukik relationship was way off — which, again, I don't believe it is — remember that you don't owe anyone an explanation for your writing choices, but you do owe it to yourself to write what feels right. It's your story to tell and you can tell it any way you see fit.

I know our takes on this matter aren't particularly popular within the fandom, but they are just as valid. I lost count of how many Inukag fanfics I've read where Inukik was written to be a much bigger thing than I personally believe it originally was, but even though I disagree with that interpretation, I'm also not entitled to an explanation other than... that's the author's vision. And that's okay.

The important thing was that people had fun and were proud of what they wrote. As they should, because it takes courage to post your stories online. And if I'm bothered by an specific story to the point of not being able to enjoy it, that's my problem and I should probably search for something closer to my own interests to read.

Anyway... I can't wait to read If We Fall Anyway. It has been on my to read list for a while now and I'm sure I'll love it.

[askcarlislecullen]

Have you ever watched fictional medical tv shows such as Greys Anatomy or House md? If so, was it frustrating or too distracting? I'm not really someone who's an expert at anything, the closest I've come is watching something in English that has some bad Spanish or vice versa, and that can be a little distracting.

I am amused by this question being toward the top of my inbox when I’ve finally been able to return to it, because it so happens that this very week marks a particularly important anniversary for our family which bears on my response to this question.  Sixteen years ago last Tuesday, I found myself on a last-minute commercial flight with my sons from SeaTac to Phoenix Sky Harbor wherein I promptly found myself in a whirlwind which involved grand theft auto, a staged accident involving two dozen vehicles, arson, the very near-death of the object of my son’s attention (and I put myself in my old shoes here—I had not yet come to grips with her being his mate at the time), and then multiple days of a hospital stay in which I worried for Bella’s health, Edward’s mental state, our family’s safety, and of course, by extension, all the people who had been harmed by the rush. I was carrying a lot, and it did not get much easier when we arrived home to Washington as I spent the next week finding the right anonymous cover stories and hacking hospital computers and insurance databases to make sure we had provided restitution to all who deserved it.  I might say I was rather “keyed-up” that week; Emmett and Edward would likely use stronger language to describe my mental state. At any rate, a week and a bit on, I was still jumping out of my skin. And so Esme shoved me into a chair on a Sunday night just after Edward had disappeared to the Swan’s again. She informed me there was a new medical drama premiering that night and it was supposed to be good, and that I badly needed to watch something silly wherein I could yell at all the inaccuracies, and she would watch it with me. So we turned it on, and indeed found it was among the most silly, insipid, unrealistic, melodramatic romantic soap operas either of us had ever seen.  It was exactly what I needed.  Sixteen years, four houses, two continents, the marriage of my son, the birth of my granddaughter, a yearlong world tour with my wife, over a dozen medical positions in five countries later and I have never been more than a handful of days behind a new episode. On early days when I wanted to holler about the progression of Edward and Bella’s relationship, I complained to Esme about Derek and Meredith’s instead. I started telling Edward when I needed him to be “my Christina” instead of my son, and he always rolled his eyes but shifted his listening. Over the years I have received terrible gag gifts from my wife and children for Christmas including a pair of boxer briefs which say “McDreamy” and a coffee mug which says “Dance it out.” I have been thoroughly mocked up and down for it, and I fundamentally don’t care.  House I can take or leave; it’s one of the more medically accurate shows and Rosalie and I enjoy watching it together and competing to diagnose faster while also occasionally screaming “THAT VIOLATES EVERY ETHICS BOARD” and “YOU CAN’T FIGURE THAT OUT FROM THAT TEST.”  E.R. made me angry for its entire run and Amal Clooney’s husband drives me crazy as a leading man. And I mostly don’t care for all the spinoffs and Rhimes’ other shows.  But Grey’s marked the beginning of an era in the Cullen household, and there’s a part of me that hopes that all its vapid soap-opera melodrama never, ever ends.   

[mbti-notes]

What do you think is the best way to deal with the fear of things getting even more conservative and harsh? I'm so scared about the future, living in a dystopian society and having all my rights taken as a non binary queer person. Infj.

I suppose you’re referring to US politics? Please be more specific because the majority of my readership isn’t from the US. You’re asking a loaded question that basically requires me to agree with the premise that everything will be doomed. I can’t agree with that, since I purposely don’t approach politics in a reactive way.

When you’re drowning in fear, you’re not thinking straight. One of the reasons political discourse has reached the lows that it has in the US is because of incessant screaming and hyperbole. The political mediascape is a for-profit machine that is designed to work people up, manipulate their emotions, and keep them living in fear of “enemies”. This creates the mindset of being in a constant fight for survival against various abstractions of “evil”, and it’s much easier to separate you from your money when you’re so threatened that you’re willing to pay to feel safe/validated. The more that people get sucked into this war mentality, the less capable they are of making wise political decisions, since every important problem gets made into an oversimplified “wedge” issue to test your loyalty to your team. 

The world is a lot more complex than red vs blue. To make a living, I have to follow news from around the world very closely. Yes, people get heated about politics, but observe the political reporting from other countries and you will see a difference in the tone and quality. In some countries, there are, gasp!, more than two viable political parties, and thus, more ideas and approaches to choose from. The US has commodified political fear and outrage like no one else by purposely pitting people against each other like rival sports teams, in a state of perpetual conflict, and, most importantly, always distracted from the underlying power structures that are making their lives worse.

To be clear, I’m not a conservative, though I’ve been surrounded and preached to by conservatives my whole life - I engage with them continuously. I am certainly angered by people being stripped of their rights and opportunities. I am certainly depressed when I see people abused and oppressed. I am certainly frustrated when my life suffers from the decisions of politicians I did not vote for. However, I staunchly defend freedom and diversity of beliefs and values. I often have to remind people that many countries and cultures around the world are conservative, and they are not abject hellscapes. Do not equate conservatism with dystopia, barbarism, fundamentalism, extremism, terrorism, xenophobia, or lord of the flies - it doesn’t matter who is doing it, hyperbole and stereotypes are dehumanizing, which enables the violence of war mentality. Conservatism, at its best, is actually needed by society to function well. Progressivism, at its best, is actually needed by society to function well. Intelligent political discourse begins with each of us getting our facts and concepts correct, otherwise, there’s no hope of cooler heads prevailing. It’s important to correctly identify the cause of a problem by labeling it properly.

Every system has flaws and every system will eventually fall apart when those flaws are left to fester and worsen. The US is supposed to be a democracy, right? A democracy is only ever as smart as the people participating in it. Can you say, with a straight face, that Americans have a deep understanding of their political system and work hard to be well-informed of all the political, economic, social, and international issues that the country grapples with? Can you say that the majority of people even understand the political terminology they use? 

The US is admired around the world for its individualism. Individuals succeed and fail by their own hand. Individuals are free to pursue their own happiness and well-being. “The Land of Opportunity”, right? Americans have exported this idea, drawing immigrants from all around the world. However, individualism, taken to an extreme, exacts a very steep price. The bonds which hold individuals together to form a well-functioning society gradually weaken over time. This is a huge problem if you hope to make good collective decisions, which is what elected officials are tasked to do.

The language and currency of politics is power. With power, you get to write the rules. Without power, you are subject to someone else’s rules. It’s really that simple and crass. The purpose of there being many different voices in a discussion is to make sure that no 1 agenda/group gets to dominate the discussion and become too extreme. Opportunists, corporations, and media companies figured this out a long time ago, so they do what they can to shut down nuanced debate and discussion. They all have a deep vested interest in hyping up the individualist ethos of American culture, not because they actually care about “culture” in any noble sense, but because they know that individuals have very limited power. One person alone cannot disrupt the status quo, and keeping everyone psychologically isolated means that those with power can keep enriching themselves without disruption.

Currently, almost every major aspect of American society is designed to stop you from realizing and using your power. Media keeps you locked in fear, feeling victimized, demonizing each other. Big corporate interests keep you hyperfocused on your own emotional vulnerabilities, telling you to earn and consume your way to a false sense of power, as they quietly dismantle workplace and social supports that would preserve your actual power. The prevailing social mandate to be ever productive and “successful” keeps you running like a hamster on a wheel, with little energy to spare for anything else. You are expected, at adulthood, to become a self-made person, never having to rely on anyone for anything, thereby eroding your ties to your roots and kin. If you fail, you are shamed and dubbed a loser, and expected to redouble your efforts to chase higher social status. And some people simply choose to drop out completely, thus relinquishing any social power they had.

In US society, those in power abuse the archetype of the “individual” and the virtue of “independence” to siphon more and more power. Individualism, in its most immature form, is really just self-centeredness. Everyone is only out for themselves and grabbing what they can before someone else does. People fight each other for scraps. And the ultimate goal of life is to have more than the people around you, such that you have the power and privilege to shield yourself from the other hungry dogs. There is no bigger picture to aspire to beyond one’s own survival and daily pleasures. If this is the underlying ethos of your society, are you surprised that the political system reflects it? A lot of people around the world look at the US and mostly see a bunch of immature adolescents. 

Transcending social forces isn’t easy. Power is always unevenly distributed, so it is always ripe for abuse, and fighting against abuses of power requires sustained effort. Therefore, it’s important to understand the many ways that power is used to oppress. I’ve spent a lot of time studying historical movements, political philosophy, and power dynamics, so my view of politics is always the long view. I believe that political progress is constant work. I don’t believe in end goals or being free to rest on your laurels. I believe history teaches us that, whatever your political allegiances, the complacent eventually become the victims. I believe that social change is relatively easy to understand by observing the way that power changes hands in society. 

Politics boils down to an endless series of change-and-backlash sequences. Whenever one group takes a significant political step, someone somewhere will lose out on some power and privilege, and they’re not going to take it lying down. Fear and anger drive the changes, and fear and anger drive the backlashes. Rinse and repeat. When the tide turns against you, it only means that it’s your turn to step up again. Fear and anger are not reasons to give up, rather, they are the wake up call that spurs the next round of changes. From conflict comes motivation.

Political power is gained through organization. The fastest way to accumulate power, especially in a democracy, is to stand together and pool your resources. But what is the motivation for organizing? Usually anger. Civil rights are never won by waiting around for the privileged to relinquish their power. No, people get together to claim their rights, DEMAND change, and MAKE the changes that they want to see, refusing to surrender to oppression. They loudly infiltrate social spaces, influence officials, run for office as representatives, and accumulate the political power to rewrite the rules. This is true whatever your political stripe. This is what conservatives have excelled at for the past thirty years in the US. 

However, as soon as you change the status quo, there will always be people that want to reverse it. It is difficult for younger people to grasp, but politics has no end, it is merely an ongoing struggle for power, as power changes hands from the complacent to the aggrieved, and then back again. For example, LGBTQ people view a right-dominated supreme court as a danger to their existence, for good reason, and that should motivate them to fight back even harder to reclaim their right to equality. Conservatives view a right-dominated supreme court as progress, and having achieved that success, they will become complacent, which provides the opening for progressives to regroup and rise again. 

The only escape from this cycle comes in the form of death or transcendence. To transcend means to see the bigger picture of what can be achieved, so that you are able to set aside the petty and work for something greater. Human beings have had their transcendent moments here and there throughout history, so they are certainly capable of it. Progress on civil rights has indeed been made over many decades, but there is always more work to do, as long as there are people that don’t view it as “progress”. For example, the fact that, after decades of tireless activism, the majority of Americans now support same-sex marriage, is something you should be building upon, rather than only focusing on the setbacks.

If you think that I’m singling out the US, I’m not. Oppression happens everywhere. It is a part of human nature to be egotistical, complacent, and short-sighted. But that’s not the only part of humans. For a democracy to work at its best, we have to appeal to the better parts of our human nature, i.e., the parts of us that: understand and care about how we affect each other, appreciate hard-won freedoms and never take them for granted, and envision a better future and plan well for it. The best changes come from passion and inspiration - not fear and anger. If you, as an individual, are not capable of bringing out and offering up your own better nature by transcending the worst parts of yourself, you can’t really expect the sociopolitical system to be capable of it, either. If you, as an individual, always lose sight of the bigger picture that you’re aiming for, then how will you help others see the importance of your cause?

Gandhi said: “We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

IMO, the job of a good citizen involves: 1) caring about the broader impact that your vote has and educating yourself properly so that you make wise voting decisions, 2) exercising your power by actively participating in organizations that advocate for the changes that you want, and 3) having enough self-awareness to avoid being emotionally manipulated into making destructive political judgments. Humans aren’t perfect, but they don’t have to be to create a well-functioning society. Humans make better decisions when the social atmosphere encourages them to open up the mind and heart. We all have a part to play in creating an encouraging social atmosphere for people to deliberate more carefully on their political beliefs.

Are you an unwitting pawn of the media, rewarding the players that only care about getting your eyeballs for ad revenue? Are you only caring about political issues because you read something that incited your outrage? Are you resigned to cynicism, indifference, gloom, or paranoia? Are you all about “owning the enemy”? Are you only concerned about your own prospects in life? Are you waiting helplessly for someone to hand you what you deserve?

OR: Are you joining organizations that create positive change? Are you listening to the experiences of the people around you and understanding how their reality informs their politics? Are you doing the hard work of inspiring the people around you to be their better selves? Do you hope that everyone in your country has a chance to live their best life? Do you stand up to support people in need and work to eliminate injustice? Will you learn the best way to (re)claim what is owed to you from those that deny or oppress you?

You are only one person, so your power is limited. What are you doing to amplify your voice and extend the reach of your power? Are you dying or transcending? A democracy is only ever as strong as the people participating in it.

[avellanas-nutty-empire]

I see you, and I hear your point. It's a very valid point, but there are other elements I would like to expand upon for this subject of summer break.

Summer break I believe was originally a time for kids to help their farming families with the heavy harvesting period. Such a thing is no longer needed, and thus summer break could be done away with.

Assuming nothing about the schooling system changed, doing away with summer break would be an awful tragedy. Students would gain nothing from it, and I think it would assist in breaking them down quicker.

I have heard horror stories of schools and teachers issuing out homework and assignments to be completed over summer break, so even if it stayed, your summer break would not be 100% safe from the system.

I personally like the idea of breaking up summer vacation and spreading out the off days thruought the rest of the year, that way we keep the amount of no school days and just have slightly longer vacations regularly thruought the whole year. I personally think it would be quite juvinaring for both schools and jobs to have such extended regular breaks thruought the year.

Free daycare and school lunch is a big issue for families in the US, and wanting to get rid of summer break because of such is not a bad thing initofitself.

Students DO forget a lot of shit they 'learned' over summer break! It's because schools teach to the test and prioritize short term memorization for better 'measured' learning and progress, BUT ITS ALL A FUCKING ILLUSION!!!

As much as I love my previously explained idea of breaking summer break up and expanding it across the whole year, I would NEVER want it done BEFORE several key things are fucking changed in the education system.

The system is, after all, built to prepare students for factory line type working - which largely no longer fuckign exists, but yet schools haven't changed, who would've seen that comming!

This is why I think that attacking the idea of eliminating summer break as a whole is, super unhelpful. There are way too many other things at fault for the fucken up school system we have now!

School as a whole has barely changed fundamentally AT ALL since it's origin of all kids of the town being taught by one teacher all at once, with no grade or age separation (except for the really little ones who can't read and such yet) it's literally not changing anything fundamental about it even thought the WORLD ITS SUPPOSED TO BE PREPARING STUDENTS FOR DOESNT FUCKING EXIST ANYMORE AS A RESULT!!!

School is too focused on measuring progress and intelligence. It's fucked, and I have a word or two to say about how fucking math is taught on top of all this!!!but back to the matter at hand,

Capitalism directly benefits from this fucked up school system. Training people to obey commands instead of think for themselves, not teaching them how to defend themself against those who would take advantage of what they don't know (banks will contact a dead person's family to try and trick them into taking over the debt bc the family won't know that if they pay a CENT of the debt, then they legally have to pay ALL of the debt, instead of just letting it be the banks fucking problem there isnt a system for what to do with a dead person's debt - which in my opinion, there doesn't need to be. Let the debt die with the person! Or how work places may trick you into answering interview questions that it's actually illegal to ask you so they can discriminate, or say that it's illegal to discuss wage with other workers (it's not illegal! They just don't want you doing it!)

And I'm sure there's a bunch of other fucking things!!! Because capitalism rewards those who take advantage of others to get to the top! It enforces such behaviour, and once at the top, you can make rules that further enable you to take EASIER AND BETTER ADVANTAGE of others!

But let me tell you a little secret. Since the capitalist USA is around 200 years old already, and given the mathematical history of other governments, the people up top and taking advantage are due for a very rude awakening very soon.

THE JENGA TOWER IS ABOUT TO COLLASPE INTO A PIT OF FIRE AND I CANNOT WAIT TO WATCH!!!!!

It'll be like ripping off a bandaid- very painful at first, but afterwords you will know peace like you've never knowledge peace before. Just keep remembering how that bandaid chaifed and hurt from being kept on too long. I promise it's time, and I promise things have to get worse before they get better

BUT WHEN THINGS DO GET BETTER I PROMISE WE CAN MAKE IT EPIC!!!!!

So anyways, eat the rich and fuck capitalism 😘✌️

My parents and my former boss say that when they were kids, summer vacation started with Memorial Day (late May) and lasted until Labor Day (early September). When I was in school, classes got out in early June and we had to go back to school in mid August. Now my older sister is a teacher and her kids go to the school she works at, and classes get out in mid-June and restart in early August. Summer is getting shorter and shorter with each generation. By the time my niece and nephew grow up, their kids will have to go to school the whole year round, like it's a fucking job. What better way to prepare kids for the soulcrushing experience of a 9-to-5 than to force them into a 7-to-3 every week until they turn 18...

[aftongiulien]

oh, dear, i do wrirte too. however, i don't believe i'm that good at it.

normally it takes me quite the time to finish -or even start- a draft. although, what i usually do is this: write in bulletpoints what the whole idea is, write them all again but making it a bit larger and more descriptive and, normally, the rest is just proofreading it -sometimes i ask friends to do it, since it'd be easier for them to catch the mistakes-.

other good ideas are writing in a comfortable ambient. for example: i put on some music, prepare a meal/beverage to help me with the energy, go to the park or read something in search of inspiration, etc.

also mentionable, and fundamental, write whenever you feel like it. don't push yourself to do it, such behaviour could only end with burnouts, which aren't actually good.

hope that can help you. if you need anything, like help with the drafts, you can always tell me so and i'll try to do so. (<3)

i'm also starting school soon (😭).

—🍒

HIIIII dear,😁💓💓💓💓 thank you so much for the help, i'll surely try this once i'll be back home from hospital 💓💓💓

If you ever Need help you can always come to me💞💞

Sorry i didn't answear Yesterday i was Just with stuff at the hospital the medics kept doing stuff with me ,like Blood test ecc ecc.

i was a bit scared😨

[dollarpuppet]

Moving part #3: web server

I decided to create an online video game. I didnt pick a game engine yet but I have a good idea of how the client side will work (Bootstrap + React).

The client-side stuff runs in the browser, of course, but it doesn't get there magically. The static assets (CSS, JavaScript, images, etc) have to be hosted on a web server somewhere. And to make the user experience as great as possible, that web server should probably be hiding behind a Content Delivery Network although it's not mandatory for the time being.

My video game will likely be a single-page web application, which means that the content of the page will be generated dynamically in the browser via JavaScript (like Gmail or YouTube) rather than be mostly generated on a server somewhere (like IMDB or Amazon.com).

This means that I can safely postpone decisions regarding the API (the interaction between the web page and the backend, like a central database or something similar); all I need to decide at this point is where to host the static assets, which doesn't shackle me to any given provider for the API part.

Choosing a domain name

Having a cool domain name is always great, but it's not as important as it used to be. A lot of people nowadays go directly to a search engine page rather than type a domain name for the first time; after that the URL is in the browser cache and possibly bookmarked, so it matters even less.

It doesn't mean that the domain name is not important. For instance, I can never remember the domain name for the webcomic Cyanide & Happiness, and I have to do a web search every time rather than start typing the address in the address bar; a small annoyance, of course, but an annoyance nonetheless, and with no apparent reason.

For my video game, I already picked a name: the dollar puppet (for reasons that will become more clear later). Registering a domain name is easy and there are many providers, but this is one element for which I always pick AWS. Prices are low, privacy is included, there's a lot of TLD available, and I can choose to either host the DNS records on AWS Route 53 or point the DNS somewhere else.

Since I don't know yet if I'll use AWS a lot for this video game, I'll keep the zone that gets created by default on Route 53 when registering a domain name. I can delete it later, in the meantime it will cost me $0.50 / month, and while I find it expensive for what I get out of it, I can live with it.

Why do I find $0.50 / month expensive? Because I have, at the moment, about 45 registered domains (for no good reasons); that's about $500 in domain registration fees per year (unavoidable) and the Route 53 hosting would cost me another $250 / year while I can get that hosting for free with my $2/month Zoho email subscription.

(BTW - I love Zoho for email, it's a breeze to get a really really good setup for multiple domains)

As a Linode customer I can also get free DNS hosting there and the UI is really easy to use.

Back to the fundamental question

To cloud or not to cloud? There's no really bad decision possible here, because even if I pick a terrible provider for the web server, the stuff will be cached on a CDN so it will not impact end users that much.

The scenarios that make sense:

run nginx on a Linode VM, and use Cloudflare if I want a CDN

store the assets in AWS S3 (which can be configured to run as a web server) and use AWS CloudFront for the CDN

use Linode object storage (similar to S3) and again use Cloudflare for the CDN

Instead of AWS I could use Azure (they're as reliable and secure as AWS), and instead of Linode I could use DigitalOcean, but I'm used to AWS and Linode and I don't care enough to consider other providers at the moment.

The plot thickens: SSL certificates

In this day and age it makes no sense to use plain HTTP (or plain WebSocket, for that matter) so it's clear I'll have to deal with SSL certificates (more accurately: TLS certificates, but who cares).

There are two easy ways to get SSL certificates for free: letsencrypt, AWS certificates. On AWS, the certificates are only available for specific services (ex: CloudFront); when used for VMs, they cannot be assigned to a single instance, only to a load-balancer (which cannot be turned off to save money).

Pricing

Whether I'm using AWS or Linode, I'm looking at most at $5/month price tag for this part, so it doesn't matter much to me.

Deployment on Linode

Provisioning a web server on Linode is not a lot of work:

Provision a VM

Add my SSH keys

Configure the firewall

Install nginx

Install certbot (to allocate and renew SSL certificates)

Upload my code

In terms of Linux distro, I'm a huge fan of Fedora on the desktop, but for a server it's not ideal given that the release schedule is fast-paced and I don't have time to deal with updates. If I was to do this right, I would probably pick Arch Linux since it's a rolling release and is the easiest distro for server hardening, but it's too much work so this time I'd probably go with CentOS 8, which comes with the added benefit of working smoothly with podman for rootless containers.

Ubuntu would work fine too, but if I'm going to expose a server to the evil people of the interwebs, I don't see SELinux as optional so it's an extra step; I also don't see why I have to manually enable firewalld, or why I have to suffer through the traumatic experience of using nano when running visudo, or why I have to use adduser because the default options for useradd suck, so this time I'll pass on Ubuntu.

Deployment on AWS

Running a static website on AWS is very easy:

Create S3 buckets in 2 or 3 regions (the name is not really important) and configure them to allow static hosting (it's just a checkbox and a policy on the bucket). In theory it works with a single region but might as well get the belt & suspenders setup since the cost is more or less the same; also the multi-region setup allows for cool A/B testing and other fun deployment scenarios later.

Provision a SSL certificate matching the domain name

Create a CloudFront distribution and configure it to use the S3 buckets as origin servers

That's it. High availability and all that, in just a few clicks, although for some reason it does take a while for the CloudFront distribution to be online (sometimes 30 minutes).

Another cool thing with this setup is that I can put my static assets in CodeCommit (the dirt cheap AWS git service) and use CodeBuild to update the S3 buckets whenever the code changes. There are some shenanigans involved because of the multi-region setup but nothing difficult.

Some people prefer Github to CodeCommit because of additional features, and this can work too, but I'm not a git maniac and I don't want to deal with oauth to connect github to AWS so I'll pass on Github. And to be honest, if I was unable to use CodeCommit for some reason, I'd probably deploy a Gitea server somewhere rather than use Github which I find too opinionated.

Operations on Linode

Running my own web server is not a lot of work. Once nginx is configured, the only thing I would have to do would be a bit of monitoring and dealing with the occasional reboot when the Linode engineers have to update the hypervisor (they send notifications ahead of time and also once it's done). As long as I configure nginx (or the podman container) for autostart I don't have to do anything other than make sure it's still working after the reboot.

If I go with the object storage solution, it's even easier since there's no VM to deal with.

Operations on AWS

When using S3 and CloudFront, there's nothing else to do on AWS, except keeping an eye on certificate renewals and the occasional change in how the platform works (which doesn't happen a lot and comes with heads up long before it happens).

And the winner is...

All things considered, for the website hosting I'm going to use AWS S3 and CloudFront. If at some point Linode offers a CDN service I will probably revisit this, but for now I don't want to deal with origin servers hosted somewhere and the CDN hosted somewhere else.

[mittensmorgul]

I know there have been times in the series where people were in love with the idea of Cas giving up his grace for Dean or dying for him or making some other big sacrifice. And I just really really hate that idea? It reminds me too much of the unhealthy brodependency cycle. I don't want to see Cas become human like that, forced to under duress or making his ultimate life goal be about "bleeding for the Winchesters." We're getting past that. So I'm glad S10 didn't do the grace cure for example.

Hi there… I feel like I should make at least one disclaimer here before I even start to reply to this…

Disclaimer #1: I am not now, nor have I ever been in love with the idea of Cas giving up his grace FOR Dean, or dying FOR Dean. You used the words “forced” and “under duress.” You even referenced his line from 7.22 about “bleeding for the Winchesters.” Out of context that does sound really bad, and I’ll get to why below, but I really don’t get any of these objections to Cas giving up his grace, because they seem to ignore Cas’s own free will to make that choice for himself, you know? More on that in a second. First,

Disclaimer #2: Hi, I’m MittenWraith and you may remember me from such fanfic offerings as Revenge of the Subtext, which was essentially a rewrite of the end of s10 (that spared Charlie first off) and gave Cas the agency to CHOOSE to give up his grace, not because he was forced to, but because doing so (at the time in canon at the end of s10) also gave him everything he wanted– to be able to stay with Dean and NOT have to watch him murder the world, to finally free himself from the politics and feelings of duty to Heaven (which he’s since essentially declared his loyalty first to the Winchesters over and above Heaven… telling Kelvin to his face that he’s not doing any of this for any sort of redemption in Heaven, he doesn’t even care about that anymore, and referring to the Winchesters as his “family” and the other angels as his “men”). Cas has dissociated HIMSELF from Heaven of his own free will. To his way of thinking, using that grace to save Dean from an eternity of torment was merely a side benefit, you know?

I think we’re approaching this from two fundamentally different basic assumptions about Castiel. I’m not certain if there’s anything I can say that will help you see it from another angle here… but folks keep asking, so I’ll keep trying…

I started writing a thesis (I’m calling it that because it’s gonna be long, and structured like a doctoral dissertation. Hell, I might even write an abstract… it’s gonna be involved) on Castiel’s entire character arc as represented through his struggle for agency and free will against the blind obedience to Heaven that has been forcibly reprogrammed into angels who deviate from their orders. This is the lens through which all of Cas’s development has occurred. As for my thesis, it’s currently stalled out because writing deadlines for pinefest demand I work on that first, and I’ve only covered Cas’s first eight episodes out of 100 and already the paper is more than 1k, so clearly it’s gonna take an astounding amount of time that I just don’t have right now for me to actually research and write…

Point is, even in those first eight episodes (4.01, 4.02, 4.03, 4.07, 4.09, 4.10, 4.15, 4.16), this is already his main conflict as a character. Duty and obedience to heaven versus thinking for himself and doing what he personally feels is right. We see him push back against his orders in 4.18 giving Dean information that will help him “defy prophecy” for the first time, and then we see him attempt to make a complete break with Heaven in 4.20 only to be captured and dragged back for “angel boot camp.” When he returns to his vessel, he’s entirely back to Full Obedience Mode as a function of his grace having been tinkered with in Heaven. Anna lampshades just how horrible what was being done to him there really was, just as Dean lampshaded just how unhappy Anna was when she was given no other choice but to take her own grace back on in 4.10. Her free will, her choice to be human was taken away from her and she did “what she had to do.”

Worst. Phrase. On the show. Ever.

In 8.23 Cas may have had his grace taken from him against his will, but he tried to make the best of it. He struggled with his sudden humanity, but by 9.06 he’d made his peace with it.

CASTIEL: No, Dean. (He puts the box on the counter and turns to face DEAN.) I’m not. I failed at being an angel. Everything I ever attempted came out wrong. But here … at least I have a shot at getting things right. I guess you can’t see it, but … there’s a real dignity in what I do – human dignity.

His entire conversation with Ephraim underscores just how he feels now, and truly introduces this question for the first time:

EPHRAIM: Shh-shh-shhh. It’ll be over soon. I’ll take the pain away.CASTIEL: I want to live.EPHRAIM: But as what, Castiel? As an angel? or a man?

(hey lookie there’s my tag for this entire concept…) but then there’s this:

EPHRAIM: You say you want to live. But you can’t see what I see. By choosing a human life, you’ve already given up. You … chose … death.

Because to Ephraim, who it’s been established has NO understanding of human pain, of human emotions at all, ANY pain is something worth killing over. Even a teenage girl being “sorta bummed” about her boyfriend breaking up with her. To him, ANY human emotions were a pain not worth suffering.

Meanwhile Cas had been doing everything in his power to SAVE HIMSELF, attempting to draw a banishing sigil in blood, cutting his hand on the rose thorns, until Dean managed to toss the angel blade to him and he could kill Ephraim before Ephraim killed him. Cas’s will to live was greater than his desire to only live as an angel. Even if he hadn’t fully chosen humanity for himself back then, he had passed step one of the test and chosen life.

This concept is underscored again when Cas describes to Sam why Dean would cling so hard to being a demon in 10.03:

SAM: What the hell are we doing to him, Cas? I mean, even after I gave him all that blood, he still said he didn’t want to be cured, that he didn’t want to be human.CASTIEL: Well… I see his point. You know, only humans can feel real joy, but … also such profound pain. This is easier.

Cas understands, because he’s experienced the same thing… he KNOWS the real joy and profound pain of being human now, and he also knows what it’s like to not be able to feel those things– not because he knows what it’s like to be a demon, but because he believes it’s similar enough to what it feels like being an angel. Now if that’s not horrifying, and if it doesn’t say bucketloads about Cas’s own personal regret about his own “I did what I had to do” moment in 9.09, in stealing Theo’s grace in what amounted to a sacrifice of his OWN humanity in order to save Dean… Tell me if ANY of this sounds like Cas is happy with this non-choice:

CASTIEL (on the phone) : Dean, I don’t have a lot of time, so listen. The leader of the opposition is an angel named Malachi.DEAN: How do you know that?CASTIEL: He had me. I, uh, I was tortured. But I got away.DEAN: How?CASTIEL: I… I did what I had to. I became what they’ve become. A barbarian.DEAN: What are you – Cas, where are you?CASTIEL: It’s better I stay away. They’re gonna want me even more now. But I’m gonna be all right. I… I got my Grace back. Well, not mine per se, but it’ll do.DEAN: Wait, you’re – you’re back? You got your mojo?CASTIEL: I’m not sure. But I am an angel.DEAN: And you’re okay with that?CASTIEL: If we’re going to war, I need to be ready.DEAN: (pause) Cas.CASTIEL: Dean. There’s more.DEAN: What?CASTIEL: Didn’t you say Sam was healed by an angel named Ezekiel?DEAN: Uh… Yeah, why?CASTIEL: Ezekiel is dead.DEAN: What?CASTIEL: He died when the angels fell.DEAN’s face has a very concentrated “oh this is bad” expression.

A VERY CONCENTRATED “OH THIS IS BAD” EXPRESSION

Under torture by Theo, Cas had asked for a quick death, until he heard that Ezekiel had died in the fall, and realized that Dean had trusted Ezekiel to help heal Sam… THIS INFORMATION WAS WORTH DOING “WHAT HE HAD TO DO” just to be sure that Sam and Dean were safe from this unknown angel that HE had personally vouched for… that we’ve just learned is actually Gadreel…

IT’S ALL A HUGE MESS.

To me, Cas’s decision to take on another angel’s grace was just as much of a non-choice as Metatron stealing his original grace had been. And to Cas, WHAT he is doesn’t necessarily matter as much as the fact that HE CHOSE IT FOR HIMSELF.

Every single time he’s done what he had to do, every time his agency’s been taken from him, the vehicle that made it possible was his grace.

He’s been asked over and over again for years if he’s really an angel (and been told to his face by numerous other angels that he ISN’T an angel anymore), he’s been called a tool and told he was only marginally useful… and yet he’s been called Family and welcomed unconditionally by the Winchesters. Mostly because they’re not FORCING him to be anything in particular, you know?

As to your “Always happy to bleed for the Winchesters” from 7.21, I’ve written a lot about Cas’s mental state in late s7 here, which goes a long way to give a fuller context to that line. Out of context, it sounds very different to seeing how it fits with the entire picture of Cas’s late s7 guilt. In a lot of ways, running away from his responsibility (think “I don’t fight I watch the bees” and constantly referring to himself and his actions in the third person, with “An angel brought the Leviathan back into this world, and – and they begged him. They begged him not to do it.”). It took redeeming himself in some small measure by helping to send the Leviathan back to Purgatory in 7.23 for him to even BEGIN to integrate himself again… And then begins his depression/atonement arc that includes his ongoing battle with his own agency via his choice to remain in Purgatory, his complete loss of agency to Naomi, and then Metatron… this has ALWAYS been what has driven and defined Castiel’s narrative, and every bit of character development he’s ever experienced.

And it’s ALWAYS been tied to his identity as an angel and the very existence of his grace. And even HE has said that he doesn’t identify as an angel anymore or feel allied to Heaven, but like Demon Dean clinging to whatever it was that made him a demon because it was easier not to feel that pain, like Soulless Sam desperate to do anything to prevent himself from being reunited with his soul, Cas is still holding on to his grace in a similar way (narratively speaking).

(thing is, once Dean was cured of the Mark and once Sam was reunited with their soul, they were GRATEFUL not to have been left in that unfeeling state, you know? they’ll take the pain, because it beats “being a stepford bitch in paradise.”)

Cas believes he needs his grace to be “useful,” despite already beginning to understand how the Winchesters see him as family. I don’t believe that Cas will be given a “no choice” scenario in which he’ll feel compelled to sacrifice his grace in an emergency situation, as some sort of “throwing himself on a grenade” because he had no other choice. The entire POINT is that it would be his freely-made CHOICE.

No matter WHAT he chooses. I’m not saying he absolutely must give up his grace. I’m saying that every sign and every conflict that’s driven his narrative development over the last 9 seasons has been leading him along this path where eventually he WILL have that choice. And when that time comes, I believe that what he eventually will choose for himself (because he wants it) is to live out a human life with the Winchesters.

I am REALLY looking forward to 13.04, because I think we’re going to gain a LOT of insight into Cas’s current emotional/mental state. And HOW he comes back from his current state of not-aliveness is going to be key to understanding what’s in store for him over the next season. So until then, I’m going to stand by this analysis.

[ashen-vulture]

Disabilities need to be not only more visible but wider represented and accepted.

I've had the "am I disabled enough" argument at least three times in the last two months, especially since I am starting a new job. Medically, legally I am and yet all the advice I got was to just quietly handle it on my own and not talk to work about it until it was needed.

I am near-sighted. Not the Velma grasping around on the ground going "oh no I can't see without my glasses" but imagine living inside a slightly out of focus camera lens that keeps you from clearly seeing details more than 5ft away. Sure I occasionally lose household items but the REAL problem is that I can't drive without them. I can't read road signs and you do not want me on the road without DEPTH PERCEPTION. Losing my glasses is basically losing the keys to my car. I would consider keeping a spare set of driving glasses in the car but:

1. The quality of glasses have dropped SO FAR that I can't just reuse my old glasses because even though I'm more gentle on them than I ever was in Highschool I break or scratch them beyond use with an almost Manufactured (un)Reliability.

And 2. The price has gone up and I simply do not have a spare $$$ just drop on glasses just to keep in my car. Yet. I will have to someday.

I have chronic back neck and shoulder pain from an injury 16 years ago. It does not go away, it is just sometimes more manageable. I need time every day to exercise or it gets worse.

I have migraines, and woohoo they're HEREDITARY because apparently both grandmother's on both sides of the family, my mom, several aunts, and at least one great grandma all got horrible migraines. I have no clue why this seems to pass among the women of the family but pass it did right on down to me. It was so bad that when I was 17 the doctor gave me an emergency prescription where one of the side effects could be falling into a coma.

I have ADHD. Oh boy the ADHD I have. I can't turn it off, it doesn't go away, and it is a miserable, shitty part of my life that I will get yelled at for things I can't help. I have medicine to make focusing and beginning tasks easier which I take 5x a week but it doesn't magically make the ADHD go away. I got used to working with it, and regularly succumbed to the teachers urging me to "just TRY HARDER!" Yeah I could have gotten accomodations in school but the accomodations granted were fucking useless to me. They were things like allowing you an extra 30 minutes to take a test, which would do fuck all for an ADHD kid with brain zoomies who normally finished tests with 10 minutes to spare and check my answers. What they DIDN'T allow for was late homework. Extensions on essays. Shit that would have actually fucking helped (like putting burn cream on a broken wrist). They would BARELY accommodate you if someone in your family Literally Died. So I just Tried Harder. I ruined my neck and my concept of work-life balance and had a series of increasingly bad academic meltdowns all the while still being told I was lazy, or heaven fucking forbid, that I was to focused on having fun. Someone sees I have 1 hobby that I put a lot of energy into because it's very rewarding and they're like "okay but are you even really trying to succeed?" Because outside of this head I all looks soooo effortless. I am ADHD, no amount of coping mechanisms, medicines, and Trying Harder is going to make a fundamental fact about myself just vanish.

My ADHD comorbids are Anxiety and Depression. I have panic attacks. I have PTSD from age 10. All of which were untreated until 2 years ago. They're here to stay but can be managed with coping skills, therapy, and most importantly patience from people around me.

Just like glasses don't make the nearsightedness go away.

Just like exercise and painkillers don't make the chronic pain go away.

One day I will wake up with a migraine, and that will be the whole day, and all I can do is ride it out and hope that people around me are understanding.

I started typing my thoughts out for this post 3 hours ago and have no clue how to conclude it except to say that if you take account of everything, almost everyone has a disability, and even if you don't one day you will, so find that compassion and understanding now before you need it yourself. And grant yourself that compassion, this shit is hard and we're all trying our best.

I am once again asking you to identify as disabled if you have even the slightest cause to. Fuck, if you’re COLORBLIND you should identify as disabled. Chronic conditions like hypertension. Mental illnesses. Disorder-level social anxiety. Migraines. If you have a mental or physical health condition that lasts more than 6 months and prevents you from doing anything that is considered a “normal” thing people can do, you are disabled.

The second part of this is I am once again asking you to understand and acknowledge that every disability is different and there is no one disabled experience. Identify as part of the group but don’t assume you understand and speak for everyone else in it.

[realtalk-tj]

How should I use Tipler for practicing for AP Physics the best? If I'm confused on a problem, should I look it up, take notes, and then work on it later? What if I don't have that much time?

Response from Trelawney:

Definitely look over the example problems!! I have noticed that the tests/quizzes from past years are very similar to them, so I would definitely make sure that you understand all of them. Regarding the actual practice questions, I would recommend skimming the questions and doing the ones that reflect topics you want more practice on, just because there are so many of them.

Response from Flitwick:

I think Tipler is good for background before the physics teachers cover the material in much more depth in class since otherwise, you’ll probably have an unclear idea as to what’s going on. I personally don’t like all the problems in Tipler - some are pretty good, there are redundancies and also problems that are just not very instructive for the amount of work that they make you do, and some others are just poorly written. I think you’ll get the most out of it by using it to train your intuition - once you figure out what processes and steps you need to take to obtain the answer, and write out the key observations you need to finish the problem, the rest is usually just a matter of plugging and chugging numbers. If you’re short on time, whittling down the time you spend on problems to just the  Feel free to pick and choose what you do and how much you look at the problems - and especially look for questions that are more symbolic in nature because those will look more like the problems that you’ll see on tests (unlike the xtas, so I’ve heard). I definitely used Tipler pretty sparingly for problems and just did webassigns when that was still a thing (but those were pretty much the same as Tipler problems, but with numbers changed) but I think Halliday, Resnick, and Walker’s Fundamentals of Physics gives a slightly better selection of problems if you’re looking for more (and imo, better) practice. You can probably find pdfs for this online if you really want.

Good luck in AP! It doesn’t get much easier but I hope you continue to push through!  

[themegalosaurus]

Ok so here's a random question for you - I'm rewatching season 9, and I get to the end of "The Purge". Now I'm a Dean!girl and I love him, but I'm still so mad at him about the whole fallout from Gadreel. I don't feel like he ever really understood where Sam was coming from. Why do you think he just never got it? I know you're a Sam!girl and I love your meta/analysis so I was just wondering if you had any thoughts :-)

Oh gosh, this issue has in the past proven to be a bit of a minefield so let me try and pick my way across it with some caution. I’ll put it under a cut so those members of fandom who get war flashbacks at the very mention of S9 can scroll on by, haha. 

I definitely agree with you that during the fallout from Gadreel, Dean doesn’t ever really admit the grounds for Sam’s anger and unhappiness. He (sort of) addresses the fact that Kevin dies, and that Sam feels responsible - at least, he addresses it insofar as he tells Sam that Sam wasn’t responsible and shouldn’t feel guilty and ‘that’s on me’, although of course to stop feeling guilty about something is much easier said than done (and as Sam reveals at the end of the season, Dean labelling himself as the guilty party for Kevin’s death doesn’t help Sam with his intrusive dreams about murdering his friend). But apart from that he more-or-less frames the issue as Sam being angry with Dean BECAUSE DEAN SAVED HIS LIFE and beyond that perhaps that Dean lied to Sam IN ORDER TO SAVE HIS LIFE. In fact, of course, the reason that Sam is deeply upset by the Gadreel scenario is quite other than that. Sam has a history of having his reality manipulated by external forces which take hostile control of his body: the demon blood Azazel put in his mouth and the psychic powers it facilitated; his position as Lucifer’s vessel and the related knowledge that demons were possessing key figures in his life, throughout his life, as per 5x22; sort-of the soullessness of S6 and the fact that Sam’s body was making decisions and taking actions that Sam would not have carried out himself; certainly the hallucinatory mess of S7. As such it is not surprising that he should be extremely hurt by what happened in S9, where Dean (‘stone number one’, supposedly) not only allowed a foreign being INTO SAM’S BODY but also colluded with that being in deceiving Sam over several months, such that Sam was driven to question his own physical and mental health (he’s losing time, he feels exhausted and sort of emotionally thin, he despairs that he’ll be this way for ever, ‘maybe this is just me’ [9x08]). That he should find out the truth of this is bad enough but that he should do so through an extraordinarily traumatic series of events that includes his body being used for repeated acts of bloody murder, his skull being penetrated with huge great needles so that Crowley can access the angel inside him, and a double possession in which Crowley enters his body to help him expel Gadreel, is just… it’s so horrible. It’s horrific. 

So the fact that Dean can look at all of that and come out the other end with ‘Sam is unreasonably angry that I didn’t let him die, which was actually the Right Thing To Do because Sam is important to me and I wouldn’t be without him’ is… interesting and I think you’re right to question it. That’s particularly the case given that on one level Dean clearly DOES know what it is that has upset Sam, because it’s the reason he was reluctant to agree to Gadreel’s plan in the first place. In the hospital room he says quite clearly that Sam would never consent to being possessed and that he’d ‘rather die’. And then during the period where Gadreel is possessing Sam and Sam doesn’t know about it, again, Dean’s shown as being conscious on several occasions that there’s something very sinister in having an occupying power inside your own body. But at the same time, at that point he’s already committed himself to Gadreel’s plan, and I suppose to have let the angel into Sam’s body and then for it not to have been worthwhile anyway might feel a little like the worst of both worlds. Either way, it’s definitely clear that Dean does understand the issue with the idea of possession (leaving aside of course all the context from earlier in the show, all the stuff in S5 about not wanting to be Michael’s vessel, just look at his face in 9x02 when Abaddon is threatening to possess him). 

So when, in the Purge, Sam tells Dean that he wouldn’t 'save’ Dean under the circumstances of 9x01 (and god, there’s a whole other meta to be written on ‘saved’, especially (tho not exclusively) in relation to Sam’n’Dean, and all the messy uncomfortable meanings that the word takes on), anyway when Sam says ‘same circumstances, I wouldn’t’ and Dean takes that as meaning that Sam wouldn’t save Dean’s life at all under any conditions, I think it’s difficult to argue that that’s a genuine mistake on Dean’s part. At least part of Dean’s brain knows what that means. But I think the reason he responds the way he does is a lot to do with Dean’s fears and insecurities and about the unhealthy patterns that have developed in their relationship as a result of the fundamental tension between what Dean wants – Sam, beside him, enjoying the hunting lifestyle – and what Sam wants, which does often seem to be something else (and crucially, I think, DEAN thinks deep in his heart of hearts that Sam wants something else). Specifically, it’s clear that Dean is afraid a lot of the time that Sam will leave him. Like, that’s quite evident from S1 onwards (‘There’s got to be something you would want for yourself –‘ ‘Yeah, I don’t want you to leave the second this thing’s over, Sam’ [1x16]) and it carries on being true throughout the show. He says so, even, right then in 9x13 when Sam asks what the point is, 'what’s the upside of me being alive?’ (!!!! ugh my heart breaks): 'You and me, fighting the good fight, together.’ He says the same thing in 11x11, when Sam is apologising for the umpteen billionth time over the fact that he briefly settled down with Amelia: 'All that matters now, all that’s ever mattered, is that we’re together.’ So I think if we see that as a primary motivating factor then it helps to make a lot of sense about why Dean sort of wilfully fails to recognise Sam’s feelings about the Gadreel incident in season 9 and thereafter. 

Basically as I see it, Dean feels (at whatever level of consciousness) like if he admits that he really, seriously fucked up in inviting Gadreel into Sam’s body on Sam’s behalf - if he even partly concedes what an awful, fundamental violation it was - then surely Sam will go ahead and leave him. Right? He deserves to be left for it (which… we could discuss, I guess, but I think it’s not unreasonable for Dean to think that). If Sam feels righteously angry at Dean, if he sees Dean for the piece of crap that Dean so often declares himself to be, then what’s keeping him with Dean? Nothing. 

On the other hand - as Dean has just had opportunity to observe in S8 - something that is very GOOD at keeping Sam attached to Dean is guilt. If Sam feels guilty then he can be easily persuaded into changing his behaviour in ways that pay off well for Dean’s vision of Sam-n-Dean on the road together. He gets Sam back into hunting at the start of the season by guilting him about abandoning Kevin (‘He was our responsibility. And you couldn’t answer the damn phone.’), and when Sam makes the decision to choose Dean over Amelia in 8x10 it’s couched in terms of obligation: ‘She does make me happy, and she could be waiting for me if I went back… But… with everything staring down at us, with all that’s left to be done… I don’t know.’ It’s not hard to see therefore why Dean should think that the main way to keep Sam engaged in hunting is by creating something about or for which he can feel responsible. Obviously the crisis in ‘Sacrifice’ – which ironically is what precipitated the whole Gadreel mess in the first place - shows the dangers of pushing this strategy too far (Sam feels so guilty that he’s actually willing to die) but I can see why Dean would fall back onto it as a tried-and-tested method of keeping Sam at his side. That is not to say that I think this is a totally cold, conscious decision, but I think part of Dean’s mind understands this and that you can see this madeevident in the way that he reacts to Sam’s anger about Gadreel. As per 8x23 , Sam is enormously worried by the suggestion that he is not a good enough brother to Dean – that he doesn’t love Dean enough. It’s not true, of course. If he didn’t love Dean as much as he did then the suggestion wouldn’t really hurt; if he didn’t love Dean then we wouldn’t get that moment in 5x16 where Dean drops the amulet in the trash and Sam’s heart sort of gently chunks in two before our very eyes. But (I guess since Stanford?? at least since Stanford) it’s easy for Dean to point at something and go ‘you don’t love me as much as I love you, BECAUSE,’ and to have Sam drop whatever argument they might be having and bend over backwards to make up for it (for Stanford, for Ruby, for leaving Dean with Lisa while he was “running around with no soul”). And that guilt’s a good way to keep Sam in the kind of apologetic, frantic frame of mind that (Dean thinks, for his own messed up reasons but perhaps not without some element of truth) is his best bet for keeping Sam at his side. 

So what is Dean’s reaction to the events of 9x10? A) He tells Sam not to feel guilty about Kevin because that’s Dean’s fault, Dean is ‘poison’; b) he leaves Sam to deal with the trauma alone (or, with Castiel’s support, but then alone after that when Cas leaves to re-engage in his heavenly business); and c) he goes off with Crowley on a job which culminates in him taking on the Mark of Cain whilst deliberately turning down Cain’s offer to explain what precisely he’s getting himself into. The effect of which is a) to evade responsibility for what happened (this goes alongside the ‘it’s not something you’re doing, it’s what you are’ of 4x21 I think – if Dean ‘is poison’ then the bad things he does are somehow outside his agency, he can’t help them because that is just How He Is); b) to avoid having to confront the reality of how Sam is now feeling (this is about self-preservation mostly I think, and about Dean’s sort of inner need to feel like he’s more or less a righteous person – it’s a lot easier to feel like what he did was justified if he’s not been confronted, as Cas was, with the unpleasant hard reality of a newly suicidal Sam); and c) – this is a biggie – to push the onus of responsibility back onto Sam by making himself (Dean) a problem to be dealt with again. That is, by taking on the Mark of Cain (something that Dean repeatedly throughout S10 in particular will frame as a burden that he is nobly struggling to bear), Dean puts himself in a position where HE NEEDS SAM’S SUPPORT and Sam has shown again and again that he’s unable to resist that demand. 

Again, I am not saying that Dean like sat down fully calm and plotted this all out as the best strategy to ‘get away’ with what he did to Sam with Gadreel. I don’t think it’s as conscious or deliberate as that. But equally I don’t think that the fact he has (HEEEEUUUUGE) abandonment issues and that it panics him to think of Sam leaving him is sufficient excuse for him to behave in a way that leaves Sam feeling guilty for being as upset as he is about what happens in S9. He was fully justified to be very very angry. Dean might have massive issues but Sam is a separate person and he doesn’t owe Dean support to the extent of sacrificing his own autonomy to keep Dean happy. That’s particularly the case given that Dean had so recently been directly confronted with the result of the assault that his behaviour had enacted on Sam’s self-esteem (yes, I’m talking about 8x23 again). So. Yeah. I certainly don’t agree with (for example) the meta that crossed my dash a few days ago that described Sam’s behaviour to Dean in S9, post-Gadreel, as ‘downright abusive’. Absolutely not. 

Anyway. I think you can see a lot of the dynamic that I’m talking about in operation in episode 10x18, ‘Book of the Damned’. Here for example is the moment where Dean’s telling Sam and Charlie that they need to burn the book: 

SAM: Look, just let us translate the book, okay? If there’s a cure, we’ll do it and deal with the consequences later. I can’t lose you.

DEAN: Really?

SAM: Yeah, really.

DEAN: You change your mind on that, cause that’s not what you said last time.

SAM: Oh, come on, man. You know I didn’t mean that.

DEAN: This is my cross to bear, Sam! Mine! And that book is not the answer! Now we got to destroy it before it falls into the wrong hands, and that includes me! I’m gonna go for a drive.

Here we get ‘Dean with the Mark-as-a-burden’ (‘This is my cross to bear, Sam!’) (conveniently ignoring the fact that four episodes earlier Cain’s suggested that it may also be Sam’s cross to bear, when Dean eventually MURDERS him, haha) and also ‘Dean guilting Sam about being a bad brother in order to win an argument’ (‘Really?’). Sam switches straight into defensiveness and Dean’s able to move the conversation the way that he wants it (and like… come on. By this point Dean should be pretty clear on the fact that Sam wouldn’t just let him die. Sam’s saved his life more than a handful of times between 9x13 and 10x18). 

And then later that same episode, we also get to see the effect that this has had on Sam’s perception of the Gadreel incident. He’s talking to Charlie about that line of Dean’s, ‘that’s not what you said last time’, and they get onto Gadreel – but couched in terms that made me like… choke on my own tongue with outrage, aahahahaha 

SAM: So, awhile back, we had a chance to, um…close the gates of Hell. And in order to do that, I would’ve had to die. And, I was okay with that, and I am okay with that, but Dean was not. And so, he uh…

CHARLIE: He saved you.

SAM: Yeah, he saved me.

CHARLIE: And let me guess, in doing so, he did something you didn’t want, and that pissed you off. And you said something that hurt him?

SAM: Yeah, that sounds about right.

CHARLIE: Brothers.

Like… hooooooooboy. There’s that ambiguous ‘saved’ again but what I’m really interested in is the way that Sam ‘saying something that hurt Dean’ – which in this context specifically is, ‘Same circumstances, I wouldn’t’ has somehow become equivalent to ‘he did something you didn’t want’ -  that is, let another being possess your body, wipe your memories, commit murder with your very hands and then lie to you about it for several months. What do we learn from this? I guess, that Dean’s strategy of downplaying his own bad behaviour by making it an issue of LOVE, and who loves each other more (’brothers!’), has been pretty fricking successful. So I suppose I think that’s why he never ‘got it’ about Gadreel: he chose not to, and Sam (who does love his brother, and whose brief moment of assertiveness was built on a foundation of seriously shaky self-esteem) fell back into the pattern that they typically operate in, and here they are. 

One last time. I am not saying that Dean rationalised this all out in his head and behaved on that basis. It’s more like… he’s learned through doing that this is an effective strategy to deal with Sam, or to keep things ticking over more or less the way he wants, and he’s scared enough about what his life would be like if Sam did leave him to resort to this tried-and-tested behaviour even though he’s smart enough and EMOTIONALLY smart enough that if he actually acknowledged what’s going on here then I think he would be able to realise how very fucked up it is.

So. Apologies for the enormous length of this answer, and for its slowness in arriving, but I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I wanted to have it written out in full.