#﹗ : mail

[briarmae]

The USPS is the best job I've ever had.

The US Postal Service

I am going to ask you all to do a small but important thing. When you go to the post office to mail a package or buy stamps or shipping supplies, get a receipt.

At the bottom of the receipt is a link and a QR code to fill out a short survey about your "customer satisfaction" with the post office. You are going to fill out that (it takes less than two minutes) and you are going to give them a glowing review each time!

Why? Because they are looking for reasons to make budget cuts despite the USPS being in the constitution and a valuable public service. So we are going to make it unequivocal that we like the postal service.

Because we do!

They send medicine cheaply, they take ballots for voting (which Republicans hate). They are the only shipping service in many rural areas. AND they are basically all that is keeping UPS, FedEx etc's prices down. Privatization means everything will be more expensive.

The post office is ours. It's our right. And the workers there are also being treated like shit right now. So support them in this very simple, easy way. And do this every single time you go there. Please. (And please reblog this. Let's overwhelmingly flood the system with positive feedback.)

[apt502-if]

It’s so funny seeing you add more unhinged choices for mc and even more so with rain encouraging some that unhinged behaviour

Like what do you mean his okay with mc stalking him so that they can be close again 😭💀

I like to believe Rainn has a deep-rooted but locked away unhinged side to them. They were joking but a part of them liked the thought.

[scoobydoodean]

What’s your opinion on dean saying “there is nothing past or present that i would put in front of you” in 8.23 because I often see people use it to not only downplay dean’s other relationships but also claim dean would choose sam over anything as if it’s an obsessive thing, when I feel like the series has time and time again, shown us that dean cares about doing the right thing while trying to keep his brother alive at the same time, I don’t get why it’s always an either/or with them. Because I guarantee if dean had to choose to kill either sam or any innocent person, he would either kill himself or find another way

Bronlies don't believe in love—just obsession and possessiveness. To them this is all a zero sum game and they're always jealous of anyone Dean pays attention to because they don't even get that Dean is theee endless wellspring of love to which everyone is drawn and around which the world orbits and that love is not a limited resource.

People get a lot of ideas in their heads about Dean choosing Sam over the greater good of the world, but then when you start trying to think of examples, you realize that Dean chose the safety of humanity more broadly over Sam plenty of times, and that Sam has killed innocent people (or gotten them killed pretty directly) to protect Dean many times. See: This post and this post for some examples. And also this post. And my whole #sam and human sacrifice tag.

I think it's kind of a weird flex to try and gloat over a scene where Sam threatens to kill himself over Dean having friends, resulting in a situation where Dean has to say whatever Sam wants to hear if he doesn't want his brother to kill himself. A scene that has a two-season long fall out that includes Dean getting The Brother Murderer Curse that symbolizes his many many resentments toward Sam. But regardless, I think there's a conversation about love and trust in that scene, and about Dean's very tenuous love for Sam as a friend but enduring love for Sam as a son and brother. The whole scene is heavily muddled with Dean's parentification, which makes it even less of a zero-sum game as far as Dean's other relationships.

Related posts on Dean's parentification (or see my whole #parentification tag):

This post with examples of Sam wanting Dean to be a brother and a parent in turns, and how the narrative perpetuates Dean's parentification

This post about season 8 Sam, including how Sam's behavior toward Dean reflects the parentification dynamic

This one about how parentification gives the illusion of authority and power without actual authority and power and this one

A part of Dean isn't forced to perceive Cas or Benny as his children, and that's a good thing. It makes his friendships with them less complicated, confusing, and muddled. Sam and Dean's relationship doesn't have that sort of clarity. There are times when Sam wants Dean to treat him as a respected and trusted friend, brother, and hunting partner, and there are times he wants Dean to be proud of him in a way he thinks John never was, and that's an experience that's confusing and distressing and unfair, but no less a reality born from their childhood experiences.

In the 8.23 scene, Sam talks about having let Dean down, and Dean trusting other people (read: Cas and Benny) to have his back more than he trusts Sam. It's a muddying of Sam's desire for Dean to trust him as an equal, friend, brother, and hunting partner with his desire for Dean to be proud of him like a dad, and results in a confused and jealous outburst about Dean having friends. At that particular point in time, Dean does trust Cas and Benny more than Sam. That's just the damn reality of things, and Dean isn't wrong for it. Sam isn't entitled to Dean's trust in 8.23. He just isn't. The lack of trust is brought about by the consequences of Sam's own repeated actions toward Dean. When Dean says that there's nothing past or present that he'd put in front of Sam, he isn't talking about trust. He's talking about the messed up pseudo momdad role he plays in Sam's life due to parentification in a scene where Sam most definitely casts himself as a child whose momdad is disappointed in him, who is about to kill himself over it. So Dean does what a parent would, and tells Sam that he'll always put his needs first—that a lack of trust isn't a lack of love. Dean even includes an example: Dean trusted Benny more (see: Southern Comfort), but when Sam was in danger, Dean begged Benny to risk his neck and return to Purgatory to help Sam get out. You put your kid first because that's your job and it's an ingrained need.

Dean has a long list of problems with Sam. He's had his own parentification used as a battering ram by Sam on tons of occasions. He's been lied to, condescended to, scapegoated, looked down upon, accused of everything in the book by Sam at one time or another. He's been abandoned, he's been betrayed, he's been strangled to near unconsciousness, he's had Sam put a gun to his head and pull the trigger multiple times in a row while telling Dean how useless and stupid he is. He's had his worst traumas thrown in his face and mocked. And all of those things put a strain on Dean's feelings toward Sam as a friend and as a hunting partner and make him doubt that Sam gives a damn about him, but the mix of brotherly (nature) and parental (nurture/neglect) love Dean feels for Sam is actually pretty unshakeable. So Dean leans into that in 8.23, at a time where his relationship with Sam is increasingly strained and they both know it, and Sam is breaking down about it.

It isn't about who Dean loves more. It's about different types of love, brotherly love mixed up with parental feelings Dean has toward Sam and that Sam has toward him, versus friendships built on battle-tested trust that Sam (in a very misguided way) sees as a threat because they represent relationships Dean chose instead of relationships that were thrust upon him and that are wrought with parentification in a tragic childhood. Your love for your kid isn't in competition with your love for your friends or a spouse it's a different kind of love and one does not diminish the other. At the same time, experience shows that Dean is actually willing to let Sam make the sacrifice play when needed—the biggest example being Swan Song. The Trials just weren't that sort of life or death situation. Not completing them meant maintaining the status quo, not an apocalypse.

[mangioneupdates]

MAIL CATALOG: 4/21–5/4

[paarksunghoon]

we need trendwave sunghoon and boss sunghoon to coexist simultaneously

TRUST!!!!! I will be incorporating it somehow because I haven’t stopped thinking about him in a fitted t shirt since I saw those photos. like I’m just a girl

[thistlesprig]

marjorine influencer gf and cartman twitch streamer bf oh i cannot even imagine the twitter comments. cartman would have to fight for his life everyday

this made me laugh irl

[brokeartizt]

froot stamps 🍎🍓

ko-fi etsy shop now open!

[dracononite]

strawpage drawings finally work!! these are so cute. look at Billie's big wet eyes 🖤

hewwo???

sent through my straw.page!

[maachine]

WHEN DID YOU SAY 'I RAPE AGAINST THE MACHINE'

[forgottenkirbyfacts]

can you tell us how marxolor is definitely canon and that I'm not delusional?

listen man i have psychosis n youre making me look lucid n grounded in reality in comparison to you rn

[apt502-if]

can't wait to be lovey dovey and eyes fluttering all over Andi, hope Rainn enjoy the torture with extra salty tears 🤭🤭🤭🤭

The friend hangouts are going to be super awkward aren't they?

[scoobydoodean]

Hello<3

I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how fandom misconstrues Dean's relationship with alcohol?

There is so much emphasis on making him out to be a violent mean drunk, but I mostly remember that he drinks and like passes out when he's grieving or stressed (iirc) (s6 PTSD, Soulless sam, when Cas dies, etc.)? It's weird to me because Dean isn't the only character to go through this. Bobby relies on drinking too. He's exactly as gruff as Dean can be. He also had an abusive father. Yet I don't usually see people judging Bobby for that (if they exist, I haven't seen them at least thank God).

I get frustrated when people say things like the MoC was a direct metaphor for alcoholism just because it made Dean sooo violent and angry, etc. And, it's like an unrealistic understanding of alcoholism irl and also of Dean himself and his actual actions and context. I just get weirdly defensive of him over it lol.

If you've already hashed this out I'm sry! At the end of the day, it's all just interpretation ig, but I wanted to know your take on it cause ik you'd look at dean with a good faith lens.

<3

One could say I have had thoughts on how fandom misconstrues Dean's relationship with alcohol. One could even say I have spawned extremely funny multi-day fandom-wide disk horses on this subject simply by giving my opinion on my own blog when an anon asked me to.

I'm tracking Dean's relationship with alcohol (and other substances bc I was too lazy to make two separate tags) through #dean and drugs during my rewatch if you care to peruse, but I think you and I are of a similar mind on this.

Prior to season 4, Dean has a very average relationship with alcohol. In season 4, Dean starts using alcohol as a coping tool to help him fall asleep because he's having nightmares about hell. By season 6, alcohol is also a coping tool for depression and stress. He drinks to deal with nightmares, he drinks to cope with hell trauma, he drinks after soulless Sam watches his sexual assault with a smile, he drinks after Cas swallows all the souls and Death blames Dean for everything, he drinks throughout season 7 to cope with Cas's death and Bobby's death. I'm up to 8.01 and have yet to see a single occasion where Dean drinking and Dean being violent co-occurred. What I do see is Dean drinking when he is sad, alone, or scared.

I'll continue tracking—I'll eventually get back into the MoC arc where Dean is drinking heavily again, and obviously Dean + drinking + anger + violence are all going to happen at the same time in MoC seasons. However, correlation does not equal causation, and while someone can choose to believe that Dean's drinking causes him to be angry, I think the literal answer in season 9/10 is that Dean's been cursed by the father of murder, and on a more metaphorical level, the Mark of Cain quite overtly represents Dean's resentment toward Sam which Carver spends his entire run laying out in great detail. This is why the whole Carver run culminates in Amara (a Dean parallel) being unleashed to take revenge on her brother, and why the MoC is a brother murderer curse to begin with. Alcohol is set dressing. It shows us—just as it did in the past—that Dean feels sad, alone, and scared (in this case, of what the MoC could lead him to do—which also isn't dissimilar from the original reason Dean started drinking—after hell to cope with the trauma of not just being tortured but torturing others—the fear that he'd been made into a monster).

Looking at the matter holistically, I don't personally see Dean as an angry drunk. I see him as a sad drunk. If anything, I think he hopes that alcohol will drown his anger and violent urges in the MoC arc, or at least slow him down, while also being the traditional tool he uses during boughts of depression (which he is very much experiencing during the MoC arc to the point of suicide). I also think outside the outlier of season 9/10, the narrative supports sad drunk Dean far better than angry drunk Dean.

[queermasculine]

why do you like watching guy on guy porn if you're a lesbian? not to sound rude !

because i like to have guy on guy sex with other women sometimes

[grickle14]

Bright spot.

[frame-narrative]