#『 .. solo work. 』

[ykaaarr]

[btsjk-biased]

Happy Birthday, Jimin! ♡ (1995.10.13)

[nat-20s]

I fucking LOVE that Donna is not immune to being a little starry-eyed over The Doctor in the way that many of us get a little starry-eyed over our best friends but she IS immune to being that way in front of them lmao. Double love that this appears to also be Catherine Tate and David Tennant's dynamic

[carebeardean]

Charles has always left Edwin little notes slipped between the pages of his favorite books, in his science equipment, places he knows Edwin loves. Just silly things—post its that say “hi Edwin :)”. doodles of Edwin with his nose stuck in a book. reminders to stock up on wolfsbane. but.

Then, post canon, Edwin tentatively starts dating people. And it’s ridiculous, because Edwin’s right there, all the time, but Charles..misses him a bit. And his heads a mess, and he can’t sort out what the hell he’s feeling most of the time, and whenever he tries to say any of it out loud it comes out rubbish.

So. He writes down some of the shit he can’t say right, and because he’s a coward, hides them so he doesn’t have to see Edwin’s face when he reads them.

then Edwin starts writing back.

Neat lilac blue little envelopes appear in Charles coat pockets. In his bag. Once, in his shoe? Some nights, Edwin will clear his throat and mention something from a letter, offhand, like they’re just picking up conversation, and Charles can pretend they are. That they always have talked about the basement, the belt, the nameless fear that chokes him every time Edwin walks out the door with someone else on his arm.

Sometimes he can’t. The words get stuck in his throat. Edwin’s not mad, he’s maddeningly, stubbornly kind about it, which is worse.

Some nights they trade. A secret for a secret. Charles learns about the novels Edwin used to hide under his mattress, about all the lonely years before Charles got there. About Simon.

Meanwhile, Edwin is losing his mind, because Charles has accidentally stumbled onto what was a fucking courting ritual in his time. Love letters were something engaged couples treasured for years, kept and reread over and over. (Edwin does. keep them in a special box, will take one out and trace the words, tuck it in his breast pocket for courage).

Edwin would rather have to reattach a limb again than lose Charles trust, all the dark and beautiful things he shares with Edwin only. He knows—knows Charles doesn’t mean to make him fall more in love with him.

[cherrytraveller]

i need more 03 solo crossovers, think of the shenanigans, people–

Twitter || Ko-fi || Instagram

[guadalajarawontdonow]

i'd panic too if one guy who should get brown contacts and one girl with big ass brown eyes were both staring at me

[atlantis-area]

MINHO - View (Waterbomb Seoul, 240706) ~ Neomu aremdaun view [cr.]

[nevesceramics]

It's You

2021

cone 1 stoneware, underglaze, glaze

[numbuh424]

The unstoppable, mighty hurricane and the immovable, cold, hard truth.

[io-lu-art]

*sighs* hello.

here, have some hurt/comfort reylo.

you're welcome.

[iszapizza]

small skysolo doodle

[hellenhighwater]

The hellsite is eating my posts again. We'll see what gets through.

Edit: this one made it! You've asked for a house tour, I hope this isn't boring. There's some rooms that I don't include because I'm working on stuff and don't want to show the mess. This is still not that tidy but it's... tolerable mess. The audio is just Clair de Lune, no narration. I can answer questions if you have them; I'm always happy to talk about my million hobbies and the house is...definitely one of them.

I could also do a photo post for anyone who doesn't want to watch the whole thing.

[shanastoryteller]

i'm going to move on from supernatural posting, i swear to god, but first i'm going to talk about ep 9x07 bad boys

the episode itself is fine and good (i mean it's another example of dean having a support network while sam can't have anyone and dean keeping secrets while when sam does it it's the worst betrayal ever but that's not what this is about and sometimes i think about what this show did two earnest, loving traumatized characters by turning them into the most tragic versions of themselves and - ok, this really isn't what this post is about)

but fandom interpretation of this episode actually drives me up a wall because it does a disservice to literally every character

one, john did not leave them without enough money for food. dean gambled it and lost it. there's nothing in canon to say that john was taking longer than expected, that they were running out of money, none of that. dean gambled food money and lost it and then tried to steal to make up for it. he was 16 when this happened and it was a bad decision but i don't think he should be at all vilified for this. he made a dumb mistake and then tried to fix it with another dumb mistake. john was right to be mad and sam was also right to tell him that he shouldn't beat himself up about it. just like with shtriga - yeah, dean was climbing the walls stuck in that hotel room. but you know who else was stuck in that hotel room? sam. and he didn't get a break to go play at the arcade. again, i'm not blaming dean here, he shouldn't have been stuck taking care of his brother that young and he was a kid and john leaving his his children behind while hunting a child eater, whether he was using them for bait or not, is crazy. but dean stealing food wasn't about john's neglect and all the sacrifices dean had to make for sam. it was about him trying to fix his fuck up

two, and this is the one that really gets me, dean didn't go back with john because he had to take care of sam

listen. listen to me. i am speaking from experience when i say this

parentified siblings are still, first and foremost, siblings. especially with only 4 years between them. the show shameless i think did an absolutely excellent job with this and is why i love the first few seasons of it so much. fiona is without a doubt parentified, she is raising those kids, but she's also clearly their sister not their mother

i know later seasons dean and fandom like to make it seem like dean literally raised sam and john was just a background figure but like. that's not realistic, and frankly doesn't even make sense

the reason dean leaves sonny and goes with john isn't because he feels like he has to keep him sam safe. it's isn't because he feels like he has to raise him. it's because he loves him

you are reducing dean to the most pathetic woe is me archetype with this interpretation and ridding him of all his rich loyalty and care and love to saddle him instead with comparatively flat duty. dean is more than sam's caretaker. he's his brother

there's also no reason for dean to feel this way. he just massively fucked up in taking care of sam - that's why he's with sonny in the first place. john has alternate people to take care of sam when he can't do it himself, as he has just proven, and while i don't think we should turn a couple teenage mistakes into making dean incapable, dean absolutely would - and did! he carries every fuck up regarding sam with him! so right now he's really, really low when it comes to his own estimation to take care of sam and leaving sonny because of that doesn't make any sense

but he looks at his brother and is reminded how much he missed him and loves him and realizes staying means he loses his brother. the good and the bad. so he goes, because he loves sam more than anything else

this is also why sam leaving for stanford cuts him so deep. that's why this moment is a parallel to that rather than being unrelated. stanford isn't about sam leaving dean even though he has a duty to care of him, because he doesn't. dean's 22 and at this point is always hunting with their father so there's no reason for sam to believe his presence is necessary for either john or dean's safety

no, dean's mad because he chose his love for his brother over a normal life and sam didn't

(sam didn't want to choose at all but this isn't about him)

anyway. dean fucks up sometimes and john sucks but not quite in the ways fandom thinks and dean loves his brother past reason or sense

[mokadevs]

guy who has done some terrible things

[brettanomycroft]

Sam fumbled Gwen’s Bonzo reveal… but he’d been primed to do so

I suspect that there's going to be a LOT of conversation around Sam after this episode, and since this episode was so good that I couldn't think of a meme or shitpost, I decided I'd throw my hat into the ring and do some character analysis instead. CW: Spoilers for The Magnus Protocol episode 18, "Solo Work" under the cut.

Episode 18 finally gave us the Sam and Gwen interaction I (and I think a lot of others) have been so desperate to finally see, and boy oh boy do I have Thoughts… none of which are new per se, but Sam’s reaction to Gwen dropping the Bonzo Bomb seems to have reinforced  the way I’ve been reading (and projecting in fanfiction oops) Sam, his personality, and his motivations.

Out of everyone new we’ve been introduced to so far, Sam has by far gotten the most explicit development and conversation around his personality. Even before episode 1, folks who participated in the ARG got a preview of our favorite baby shrimp’s personality through access to the child database spreadsheet that was, presumably, used to document the results of the experiments run on children participating in The Magnus Institute’s “gifted and talented program.” From this spreadsheet, we can gather that Baby Sam is logical, empathetic, works towards the benefit of others (prosocial), and fair… but also a rule follower and highly willing to follow the lead of an authority figure, even if it is in conflict with his personal views. The picture this information paints is an interesting one, but when taken in a vacuum leaves us with an impression of Sam as someone who is kind but lacking in backbone.

This idea of Sam as “kind but lacking in backbone” is further reinforced in canon, as Alice of multiple occasions rags on him for being “noodly” and “ickle fawn” and a “baby shrimp,” all seeming to highlight that Sam has the sort of helplessness about him typically ascribed to sopping wet kittens and baby birds. And I think that if we view Sam’s outburst when Gwen brings up Bonzo through this lens alone, it’s going to seem WAY out of character for him and a downright cruel response.

Now while I do believe that Sam is empathetic and fair and, sometimes, a little helpless, I’ve been inclined to believe from early on that much of Sam’s affable self-deprecation is a way to cover or soften what can be, at times, a tendency to be hard-headed, temperamental, a little manipulative, and petty (and I’m totally not just saying that as a people-pleaser-and-gifted-kid-in-recovery who has been projecting hard on Sam since Day 1). And it’s this second batch of personality traits, the ones that make Sam so real and interesting to me, that I think set up the disaster of a conversation between Sam and Gwen.

We have definitely seen hints of Sam’s hard-headedness and manipulative leanings in previous episodes: it comes out most often around Alice, showing his stubbornness in the form of refusing to give up his lines of questioning and curiosity about what is happening in the cases and at the OIAR; and revealing his willingness to manipulate a situation the form of subtly redirecting Alice’s focus away from prying into his crush on Celia and during the mocha incident (I have, of course, already explored Sam’s manipulative tendencies in my totally comprehensive shitpost).

And we’ve even been shown at times before episode 18 where Sam can be petty, his buzzed insistence that Alice try and keep things “professional” at work after his date with Celia being at the top of the list. The case headers filed for “Putting Down Roots” and “Pet Project” also suggest to me Sam’s ability to be stubborn and petty: in both instances, Alice and Gwen suggest a different classification than the one that Sam ultimately files. In the case of Gwen in “Pet Project,” she’s dismissive of him when he tries to ask if she’s all right.

While there’s no way to know for sure, I interpret this interaction as part of the reason why Sam ultimately disregarded Gwen’s suggestion for how to file the case—she shut him down and shut him out, and the petty part of his heart couldn’t resist ignoring her recommendation out of spite. This scene also begins to lay the foundations for Sam and Gwen’s interactions in episode 18 and, I suspect, the rest of the season.

So with all of this in mind, let’s look at episode 18. When Gwen emerges from Lena’s office, Alice has just finished shutting Sam down, again. Throughout most of this season, Sam has been desperate for some validation that the cases they are listening to are real, that whatever happened to him at The Magnus Institute was real, and that him pursuing this line of questioning and wanting to find answers isn’t a waste of his time. Alice has, of course, been not-so-gently nudging him away from this line of thinking for most of the season, while Gwen has been icing him out about it up until this point. Just about the only one who has given his questioning any air has been Celia who is, conveniently, not there. Even after Alice has her very own supernatural experience that is reaffirmed in the case Sam receives, she strongly pushes back on his idea that they should investigate and pursue this further. He understands why she doesn’t want to learn more, but it’s clear that he’s still frustrated at the end of the conversation.

Enter Gwen. Here, for the first time, it seems like she’s opening up about what is going on at the OIAR, and Sam is immediately hooked, even dropping his softer and sympathetic side when Alice tries to redirect with one of her classic barbs.

After being shut down time and time again, Sam is so eager for confirmation that there is more to all of this than meets the eye. And then Gwen says the B-word, and Sam loses it.

Sam is laughing here, but honestly? I think he’s angry, and his reaction is one of complete disbelief that Gwen would set him up like this just to, in his mind, take the piss out of him. He thinks that, at best, Gwen is having a breakdown and he’s once again being shut out or, at worst, Gwen is making a joke at his expense. Now, he’s used to being the butt of a joke thanks to being friends with Alice, but despite that we’ve never heard him call her an asshole the way he does Gwen. Temperamental and petty, turning around his hurt and anger over being stonewalled again and again to lash out at Gwen with his joke.

And honestly, can you blame him? (I can’t.)

Of course this wasn’t the ideal reaction. I have been waiting for Sam and Gwen to have a serious heart-to-heart about what’s going on forever, and Sam pretty much blew that chance without even realizing it. And I would be surprised if we get an apology out of him anytime soon, not only because this interaction is likely to push Gwen away from wanting to even be around Sam, but also because he’s not going to believe that Gwen wasn’t making fun of him or that Gwen isn’t having a delusional breakdown until he sees Mr. Bonzo with his own two eyes.

I also think this conversation would have gone very differently had Celia been there instead of Alice. Sam’s slew of psychological testing suggests he’s willing to follow the leader, and in this case he doesn’t seem immune to Alice’s general dismissiveness of Gwen. He may have even been primed to lash out at Gwen in this moment because Alice is constantly ragging on her; chameleon-like, he’ll take on the shade of the strongest personality when he’s on uncertain or dangerous footing. It’s almost a guarantee that Celia would have taken Gwen seriously, not only because she’s likely from or connected to the TMA-verse of horrors, but also because it was Celia who received the first Mr. Bonzo case. And had Celia been there to temper the disbelief, Sam would have absolutely been ready to hear Gwen out in full. I honestly cannot wait for Celia to be back in office; she’s going to walk in to these new, rancid office vibes like Troy from Community walking into the whole room on fire while casually carrying the pizza.

So, what do I think this means for the rest of the season? Well, the title of this episode seems telling: Solo Work. Gwen and Sam’s respective desires for their experiences to be validated and their goals to be taken seriously paired with the seeming dismissiveness of those around them are going to push them along their separate paths, dangerously alone. And I suspect that it is only going to be Celia or, more likely, an encounter with Bonzo, that is going to put them back on the same path—if it happens at all. Good luck, babes!

[yeonjune]

Yeonjun about the strain he felt while preparing for his debut solo project ✙ "GGUM" MAKING FILM