#( the only thing i really miss about tumblr is the possibility of yelling about my muses into the void )

[inkdemonapologist]

nobody asked but since I've seen a lil chatter on the DCTL Graphic Novel on tumblr too, here's the thread I posted on twitter, speaking as someone who's done a little freelance work as a comic artist, under the jump:

Main thought about the DCTL graphic novel preview is: yeah, I've made designs like that when I was being paid by the page and expected to just throw in extra design work for free and I have a deadline and no time to scour the source material or really put my heart into the design No shade to the artist; every complaint I have about the pages we've seen is that this looks like someone who was just working (quickly) from a script. The artist is likely not a Big Fan, so they only know the info and descriptions they're given. And the artist's portfolio shows they're capable of the kind of designs and dynamics this comic needed. its possible they phoned it in for no reason, but feels more likely to be "not enough time/not paid enough/not given enough info to give it that level of care." Which, don't get me wrong; an important level of craftsmanship and care is missing and im not gonna blame the artist but i AM gonna be a hater abt it lmao It's not just about designs; the convo with Joey is another good example. It's a literal illustration of the things Joey said and did in that scene, but it's missing the point -- that scene is our introduction to the way Joey throws Buddy off-balance. That energy is missing. And that's the sort of thing that needs the script to convey this purpose well to the artist, that needs the artist to have time & freedom to invest in portraying it, that needs time & investment & knowledge to ask for adjustments at early stages and get the page right one more note: begging batim fans 2 think abt the plot of DCTL and realise why "maybe we will not make the creepy guy who dies at the end a black man in this" is perhaps a reasonable choice. like im a fan of poc norman headcanons too but pls recognise this would be a tough call!! anyway, genuinely cannot wait to see how off sammy is gonna be in this lmao. will he be a mid non-design like norman or will he be conventionally handsome or will he get graphic novel dave miller vibes b/c hes an antagonist? will we get the fabled black hair sammy??? i cant wait

TL;DR I strongly suspect this was an issue of not enough time/not enough money. That design looks nothing like the description of Norman, right? Like, there's hundreds of different AU designs of all shapes, colours and sizes that you could create that would still look like Norman Polk, but somehow they managed to make a character that isnt ANY of them, lmao??? So... how could that happen, unless nobody gave the artist a description of Norman? Or if they did, how did that design make it past anyone else, unless there wasn't time for revisions or a system worked out for revisions, unless whoever was managing the comic project thought it was fine if the designs didn't fit with the descriptions in the book? If everyone is doing their job, then the artist is given the information they need without having to go do unpaid YA novel research before they can start drawing. That's why you have a writer adapting it!!

("they should hire fans, a fan would've done a better job" OK BUT THATS B/C FANS ARE MORE LIKELY TO ALLOW THEMSELVES TO BE EXPLOITED AND DO EXTRA UNPAID WORK B/C THEY CARE!! THATS NOT A SOLUTION!!!! THATS A JOEY DREW STRAT!!!!!!!)

Anyway I could yell about this for 15 years so I'm going to shush for now BUT I JUST FEEL VERY STRONGLY ABOUT IT LMAO.

[booksooks]

𝑳𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆 𝑯𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝑳𝒂𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒆𝒓: 𝑫𝒂𝒚 1

Author's Note:

Hi friends, it's been a long long time since I've written anything on tumblr but! I'm a lot less burnt out now, and I miss writing. So here we are, three years and a new blog (you may have known me as lirinstaalem) later, writing for Shigaraki. He lives on in my heart. 💙 As a forewarning, in this AU, there are no Quirks, Shigaraki is just that - Shigaraki Tomura, a junior in college. I'm going to be honest, this series is going to be entirely based off me and my personal experience at college, written one day at a time. Please enjoy. Manga pannel from @shigarakisankles, and divider by @plum98

Contents: College!AU, all characters depicted are STRICTLY 18+, no use of "Y/N"/any other variants, and possibly wildly ooc characters. I apologize for this.

Word Count: 2027

Summary: Entering your second year at college, only a few months after being broken up with, you weren't expecting anything special. Especially not in the romance department. But then a quiet, but friendly-enough boy on your floor catches your attention faster than you would like to admit. And oh, boy, are you in deep.

Moving into your sophomore college dorm wasn’t nearly as exciting as it was during your freshman year. Freshman year had been all giggles and excitedly greeting your roommate, excitedly setting up your half of the room, coordinating aesthetics to look cutesy and academic. Both of your parents had taken off work to help you move furniture around and get settled in, and everyone had been teary-eyed when they left you and your roommate alone. Everyone on your floor had been friendly, ish, and were about as giggly and excited as you were, and the floor meeting had been welcoming and informational.

Second year… not as much. Only your dad had taken off work, and it was really only to help you move furniture and get everything out of your car into the room, and you suspected that it was only because you had stupidly slammed your thumb in the door of your car a few days ago and it was now swollen and splinted. Not broken, thank goodness, but still painful as all get out.

He left with a hug, and a quick goodbye, and left you to pretty much fend for yourself. You rubbed at your eyes and quickly started unpacking, starting with any documents you needed for the year. Things were actually going pretty well, considering you were alone. Your roommate hadn’t arrived yet, so you had the ability to pick which side of the room you wanted and where you wanted everything. There was a small commotion outside in the hall, but it wasn’t any of your business, so you were content to stay inside, introvert that you were. That was until -

“FUCK!”

You jumped as the expletive rang through the hall, yelled by a raspy, masculine voice. You knew the dorm buildings were coed, but you had no idea if the floors were coed or not, but it sounded like it if there were boys running amok on your level, shouting. You sighed in resignation - last year the boys had only been above you and were annoying as hell. Living a whole year with them on the same floor?

…What was worse than hell? You didn’t know. You stuck your head out of your door and saw two men, presumably the culprits. One was lying on his back on the hard linoleum floor, the other wheezing with his hands on his knees. The man on the floor was making a vaguely-scowly expression at the laughing man, his pale blue hair spread out around his head like a halo.

“Oh my fuckin’ God, Shiggy, you’re an idiot!” Laughing Man exclaimed, inhaling deeply before laughing just as hard again. Piercings pulled at his open mouth as he cackled, fluffy black hair bouncing almost imperceptibly with each breath. He looked like every scene girl's wet dream, dripped out in all black, shining piercings and inky tattoos, his electric blue eyes the only contrast.

The man on the floor, “Shiggy”, grumbled something that sounded a lot like, “Shut up,” as he curled in on himself and hopped to his feet, looking more than a little embarrassed. He was wearing all black, matching Laughing Man in a more casual way, in a set of soft black sweatpants and a matching hoodie. He radiated vibes of “I haven’t spoken to a love interest before, let alone touched one.” Before you could stop yourself, you called out.

“You okay?”

Both men turned their attention to you, only just now noticing your presence. “Shiggy” huffed and looked away, embarrassed, and Laughing Man smiled at you. It wasn’t the most comforting smile you’d ever seen. “He’s fine,” Laughing Man said. “He’s just an idiot who slipped and fell. Name’s Dabi, and this is Shigaraki.”

You stepped out of your room a little more, leaning over to poke your head out becoming uncomfortable. “Nice to meet you,” you called back, introducing yourself. They both nodded at you, moving out of the way temporarily as someone with several bags and carts and suitcases scuttled past.

“We’re in room 301, if you ever want some company,” Dabi says, once the person is out of sight, hooking his thumb over his shoulder towards what you assumed was their room. You nodded and smiled at the two of them, and another sentence tumbled out of your mouth before you could stop and think about what you were saying, again.

“I might just take you up on that.”

Dabi chuckled, and nudged Shigaraki, who was finally looking in your direction, scratching at the back of his neck.

“Cool,” was all he said, and you didn’t even know if you heard him properly he had said it so quietly. You smiled at them and then ducked back into your room, shaking off the distraction and how… quite honestly pathetic Shigaraki had appeared. You understood that people were quiet or introverted, hell you were too, but he had only said one word to you, barely. He was entirely unable to meet your gaze, and if you were closer you could have maybe discerned if he had been blushing or not.

Good thing your type was pathetic men who’d never even talked to a girl, let alone kissed one.

Several hours later, your roommate had arrived and you had helped her unpack, neglecting your own side of the room. Being a junior, Hanami’s mother had left her to settle in on her own, and you were itching to just help. So you had rearranged furniture, hung fairy lights, and subsequently realized you had forgotten a good amount of your decorations at home, much to your dismay. You did your best to shake it off; you were going back home over the weekend anyway.

Hanami was a good roommate already, you had decided the moment she walked through the door. About the same height as you, she had short, wavy brown hair and an easygoing smile. She was also incredibly generous, offering to buy you food and even letting you use some of her decor in the short time you didn’t have yours. You both went out for lunch and to gather snacks for the next few weeks, spending a good amount of money at the local supermarket. Going shopping while hungry was never a good idea, but you knew your future selves would be grateful.

It only wasn’t until when you were finally unpacking, that you realized something with only a slight tinge of abject horror. “Fuck,” you mumbled, moving from one box to another, searching a little desperately. “Where are they…?”

“What are you looking for?” Hanami asked from her bed, putting the finishing touches on her faux-vine decorated wall.

“I forgot. Hangers.” You say, sighing in resignation. “Fuck me.”

Hanami pouted and hummed sympathetically from her spot. “Aw, I’m sorry. I would offer you some of mine but I’m using them all.”

You shake your head and accept the fact that none of your sweaters or pants were going to be hung up until the next Monday. “It’s fine, I’m the one who forgot them.”

You spend the next few minutes trying to shove your jeans into a small drawer, one too small for the amount of pants you had brought with you and had intended to hang. After several unsuccessful attempts, you text your parents, asking if they knew where your hangers were; you had bought a set specifically for college. Your mom responded almost instantly, reminding you that they had gone into the guest room for your grandmother, only to be forgotten when September rolled around. It wouldn’t have been a problem, you were going home on Friday anyway, but you were a stickler for your clothes not getting wrinkled. You sat on your relatively uncomfortable chair, when an idea popped into your head. You didn’t know how well-supplied boys would be, but it was better than sitting there and wallowing, right?

“I’ll be right back,” you tell Hanami, pulling on your sneakers and heading out the door. You hear a faint “okay!” from behind you as you scamper down the hall, looking for room 301.

When you do eventually stumble on it, (seriously, how was a dorm this convoluted? It was supposed to just house people for God’s sake) you hesitate. Was asking people you just met for hangers too forward? You rolled your shoulders to get rid of any nerves and knocked on the door without too many second thoughts, swallowing nervously.

Several seconds of rapid shuffling and someone, Dabi it sounded like, shouted, “Just a sec!”

You stood there and waited for a few more seconds before the door was almost violently ripped open, barely, and to your surprise Shigaraki was standing there. He took up most of the miniscule opening, blocking your view further into the room.

“Oh, hi,” you said quietly.

Shigaraki opened his mouth, as if to say something, but all that came out was a squeaky, “What?”

He started scratching at his neck, like he had been in the hallway earlier.

“I uh,” you hesitated, ashamed all of a sudden. “I was wondering if you had any spare hangers? I forgot literally all of mine at home, and I don’t really have any other friends in the building… I swear I’ll give them back to you next week.”

Shigaraki stared at you blankly, almost as if he hadn’t heard you, and you shifted your weight from foot to foot awkwardly. You heard a cough from inside the room, and that seemed to snap Shigaraki out of whatever daze he was in.

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbled, stepping away, leaving the door open just a smidge. You peered into the room, noticing how dark it was inside.

A heavy duty gaming pc tower took up a good majority of the university-issued desk, and the remaining space was already covered in… junk. Monster cans, mostly, but a few empty bowls of microwave ramen were scattered around. How on God’s green earth had he gotten the time to accumulate that much trash?

You didn’t have any more time to think about it, however, as Shigaraki popped back up, a handful of hangers clutched in his long, thin fingers. “Here,” he muttered, shoving them in your direction.

“Thanks,” you said, smiling gratefully at him. “Did you get an early move in clearance?”

Why the fuck did you ask that? What was wrong with you, holy shit. He was going to slam the door in your face and never want to talk to you again.

“Yeah,” Shigaraki said after only a moment’s hesitation. “How did you know?”

“I uh.” Now it’s your turn to hesitate. “I saw your gaming tower. That must have taken a while to set up.”

It was a shitty excuse of a lie, you knew that. But even if Shigaraki knew that, which he most certainly had to, he didn’t comment.

Instead, he nodded, but he didn’t open the door further or invite you in. You both stood there awkwardly for a moment, and then you nodded and smiled sheepishly at him. “Well, I’ll be off. Thanks again for the hangers, I’ll give them back to you after I go home and get my own.”

Shigaraki nodded back at you, and closed the door as you took a step back, waiting a second longer just in case. The door didn’t open again, and you didn’t know why you wanted it to. Instead, you heard a long suffering sigh, a cackle, and the sound of something heavy hitting springs.

You waited for another few seconds, and then turned around to try and find your way back to your room. It took less time than you had expected, and Hanami was now sitting on her bed, scrolling on her phone. She looked up brightly when you entered.

“Oh hey, you found hangers!”

You smiled and waved said hangers triumphantly. “Yeah, I made a few friends earlier so they lent me some.”

“Oh, that’s lucky!” Hanami seemed to radiate positivity, and it spread to you quickly. You soon forgot about the odd but somehow endearing interaction with the boy down the hall, his seemingly permanently pink cheeks filed away to think about for later.

End Notes: I really hope everyone who reads this can enjoy, I just want to write something feel goody and relaxing. Please feel free to ask me questions about this AU, or to even criticize my characterization of either Dabi or Shigaraki. I want this to be as accurate as it can be. Thank you for reading! 💙

Next Chapter

AO3 Link

ABSOLUTELY NO ONE HAS MY PERMISSION TO REPOST MY WORK TO ANY SITE.

[eroticwound]

I love your thoughts on The Bear. Particularly the Berzatto siblings. I was wondering if you could talk about Mikey. And possibly his relationship with Richie. Outside of the internet when I talk to peers about the show people are quick to demonize or dislike Mikey. They cite his behavior with Lee and his taking part in ganging up on Carmy with Donna as reasons why. Also, how Richie was so desperate to get away from the beef.

I would love to hear your opinion about how this could be someone’s impression of Mikey. And how you would describe Mikey to someone who maybe isn’t seeing the whole picture? Or just how you would describe Mikey as a person in general.

And do you think his relationship with Richie was very one sided? Do you think it was always Mikey in the lead? I’ve read some fic that truly makes Mikey terrible to Richie.

Hi anon. Thanks for this incredibly thought out ask. Cannot emphasize enough how much I enjoy getting questions like this :)

Michael Berzatto is a complicated guy and he’s a guy we don’t get a lot of screen time with. That’s by design. He’s the character haunting this narrative. Mikey is the Laura Palmer of The Bear (I have that disease where I see everything through the prism of Twin Peaks), and as such we get to know him mostly through people’s grief. Through their imperfect memories. We’re left missing him just as much as any other character. And while I would love a feature length movie showing Mikey’s last days a la Fire Walk with Me, I very much doubt we will get that. So we’re left to figure out this complicated character with scraps.

For these reasons, I do get why people don't understand Mikey. As you mention, they are literally not given anything close to a whole picture. In fact the screen time we have most with him is during Fishes, when he is quite literally at his worst. If people only saw scenes where Carmen was yelling at people in the kitchen or where Richie was being sexist to Syd, I'm sure they'd have a poor opinion of them as well (in fact, being in this fandom after the first season, I can confirm that most of tumblr disliked Richie).

The healthiest we see Michael is in the Ceres flashback in season 1. He’s exactly how everyone describes him: loud, brash, funny. Both Carmy and Richie are just having the best time, completely immersed in the story he's telling. Even Nat’s having a great time, though both brothers stop her from adding raisins, which is Donna’s recipe for the dish they're making (side note, I find it so interesting that Nat is the one trying to follow their mom’s recipe. She's still trying to please Donna, to garner favor, whereas the boys, who Donna relies on in the kitchen and emotionally, feel fine deviating from Donna’s recipe). Even beyond the Ceres flashback, we do get flashes of what makes Mikey great in Fishes: the opening is him checking in on Natalie, he's really sweet and engaging with Carmen in the pantry, and even though Carmy doesn't take Mikey and Richie trying to set him up with Claire well, it's still proof that Mikey cares.

The thing is Mikey is mentally ill, like Donna and like Carmen. He’s dealing with some sort of chemical imbalance (depression or bipolar) on top of the severe parentification he got from Donna. I talk about it at length in my unfinished series delving into the partentification of the Berzatto siblings. As I point out in those posts, Mikey is actually the sibling getting the worst of the parentification, which is a form of abuse where there is a role-reversal between parent and child. Nat can't morph herself easily to accommodate Donna's dysfunction (she un-normalizes it), so she gets Donna's ire instead. Carmen was also parentified, especially when Mikey was out of the house growing up (they have such an age gap), but Mikey was the oldest. He has high EQ and can morph himself to accommodate Donna's dysfunction. It has in fact shaped him into the person he is. Which is someone who is trying to avoid all of the bad: bad outbursts from Donna, bad feelings from his siblings, bad reactions from outsiders to their family dynamic. He's also trying very hard to avoid the bad emotions he's feeling. Michael is looking to avoid all of this through any means necessary, which includes using alcohol and drugs. As I mention in that parentification meta series, using substances is quite literally the only way he's managing his distress.

I want to talk about each point you mention people citing as to why they don't like Michael. But first, I want to preface it by pointing out that Michael has been forced to move back in with Donna. His failed business ventures and poor mental health have forced him back into this scenario that is NOT GOOD FOR HIM. That scene where Cousin Michelle says to Carm that it's not good for him to be in this environment? Well, it's not good for any of the Berzatto siblings. And throughout the episode, you can tell how exhausted Mikey is by it. By having to fulfill his role as Donna's pseudo-partner.

So let's start with Michael and Donna ganging up on Carmen in the kitchen. When Donna and Mikey do this they are functioning as a parental unit. This is the perfect example of Mikey's parentification at work, of Michael acting as Donna's partner. It's what he's been trained to do to maintain the delicate ecosystem of that house. Donna's emotional state is given top priority. Everyone else's emotions fall to the wayside in light of what she's feeling, otherwise you get fallout like her crashing her car into the house. Mikey talks to Nat about this at the start of the episode:

What do you think she's at right now? A 4? A 5? She's not at a 6.

The siblings literally have a rating system for Donna's moods. They're all trying to avoid escalation above all else. Michael in particular. So in that scene with Carm in the kitchen, Mikey is trying to keep things from escalating. This is something Carmen knows too—hell, it's the first thing Carmen asks Mikey to do in Fishes:

Hey Mikey can you come inside and be you for a little bit, I don't know how to deal with these people.

Carmy needs Michael to come fill his role of buffer between guests and their family. Carmy, notably, gets Donna duty—a role I'm sure Mikey filled before Carmen came along. I say this based on Donna calling Carmen "Michael" when he's trying to coax her to the dinner table at the end of the episode. She's implying talking to her like this is what Michael does. When the people you know irl cite this moment, unfortunately this is the rebuttal: this is Mikey's role. Donna needs his emotional support. Otherwise she'd be more abusive towards Nat and Carm. Michael is doing it for the greater good.

As for Lee, that's another great example of soooo much being implied. Lee, along with Cicero, were best friends with their father, and it is heavily implied that Lee and Donna had a fling or two after their dad fucks off (whether Mr. Berzatto is dead or a deadbeat, who’s to say?). When Lee is helping Donna clean shit off the floor, Mikey grabs a beer from the fridge and asks if they are "doing this again." Basically, Lee and Donna have been romantic before. This means Lee would have been around erratically growing up. And it's clear Michael and Lee have a historic antagonism because of this. Lee's first interaction with Michael in the episode has him threatening to "lay [Michael] out." This screams to me that Lee stepped into the man of the house role, and that Mikey and him had altercations that got physically violent. That's why Mikey says at the dinner table, "I can throw forks cuz this is my father's house." That feels very much like something a kid would say to a man who is trying to replace a missing father. And it's especially heated, because it is Michael who has had to consistently step into the man of the house role for Donna and for his siblings! Michael couldn't leave like Lee when Donna and him broke up. Living with Donna and keeping his siblings ok is daily life for Michael.

So all through the episode, Lee is poking a bear (Mikey Bear to be exact). Lee calls him out about telling the same old stories, embarrasses him in front of everyone by revealing he's borrowed money from Cicero and had to move back in with Donna. Lee has been explicitly disrespecting him. And maybe if Mikey was in a better place, he would have been able to roll with it, but as I mentioned before, Mikey is not in a good place. He's depressed, he's been drinking and taking something (pain pills?) to manage the stress he's under. Him throwing forks is not a lucid reaction. Frankly, if people don't also blame Lee for that outburst, then they really weren't paying attention during the episode.

Finally, onto the Richie portion of your question. Richie’s family is something I would *love* to get more canon info about. All we know is that he's not Italian but Polish, his home life wasn’t great, his dad sucked, and Donna allowed him over so often that he’s practically her fourth child.

Richie and Michael grew up together. They're best friends, practically family. It's why Richie is "cousin." Michael's relationship with Richie is his closest relationship. Everyone says Mikey was their best friend, but Mikey's actual best friend was Richie. Period. And there's some complicated jealousy between Carmen and Richie because of what each is to Michael: Carmy's jealous of Richie and Michael's genuine closeness, and Richie is jealous that Mikey has special regard for Carmen as his actual brother. You see this jealousy in the very first episode of the show during that first walk-in fight: Richie was there for Mikey, buried Mikey and took care of Donna, and yet Mikey left the restaurant to Carmen. Left the money in cans for Carmen, so he could fulfill their dream restaurant together. There's honestly some great fic out there that goes into this jealousy. I'll come back to link it if I can find it.

Bottom line is that Richie was the closest person in Mikey's life. They have the same humor, the same life experiences. They had each other's backs. So when you ask if Richie and Michael's relationship was one-sided, I'm going to answer with a resounding no. They're literally besties. It's just by Fishes, Michael has deteriorated. His depression and drug abuse and failures have shrunk his life. Just compare where they're both at: Michael's moved back in with his mom, is single, and is telling the same old stories from their youth. Richie, on the other hand, might have anxiety (the xanax from Dogs <3), but he's in a stable and loving relationship and has a child on the way. That's why Richie asks Cicero for a job—not to get away from Mikey, but to make more money for his expanding family. And yes, he wants to amount to something more than working at a sandwich shop, but hell, so does Mikey. Neither of them want that for the rest of their lives. It's why Michael tried other business ventures. They fail, so he's stuck at The Beef. But it's a weight around his neck bringing him down. He says as much to Carmen when they're in the pantry:

Yeah but the place is no good, Carmy. It's a fucking nightmare. Like trust me I'm doing you a favor.

He even tries to set it on fire for the insurance money! Only Carmen sees the potential.

As for whether it was always Mikey taking the lead, I do think there's some merit to that. Mikey is talked about as more charming than Richie. You see it in Ceres when the edit compares Mikey telling the Bill Murray story to Richie telling the Bill Murray story to his date. Mikey is loud and funny and can "dial a room." Richie can too, but I think Mikey has more finesse. Still, they rely on each other. They back each other up. Michael would hook people with the stories, and Richie would embellish and inject at the right points or reel Mikey in when needed. They supported each other and worked together. I think any fic you might be reading that's demonizing Michael isn't accurate to his character and is actually falling into a pretty common fic trope: if the focus is Character A, then a fic author will cast Character B as the villain in order to serve whatever they're writing, twisting and embellishing the traits of Character B until they’re barely recognizable. Could Mikey be dismissive and hard to contain? Sure, but I don't think that means he didn't love Richie, or was undemonstrative with his affections. Even when Michael was out of it on drugs, they still had a very close relationship—Richie says so. In fact, everything Richie says about Michael supports this. I see zero support in canon for their relationship being one-sided. I'll say it again, they loved each other.

So this is how I would describe Mikey: loud, funny, obnoxious. He could dial a room. He cared deeply for his family, friends, and employees. He suffered parentification and has some sort of chemical imbalance. In fact, because he was charming and loud and funny, people could ignore his deterioration. Even Richie says, "he was Mikey Bear! I thought he'd come out of it," because he was able to come out of it up to that point. But after decades of not treating the problem, the only solution Michael could see was killing himself. He's a complicated character. He's a tragic character. He's the Laura Palmer of The Bear.

[rockinlibrarian]

Post-Umbrella Academy S4 Reaction Part Five, appropriately: On Love Triangles (spoilers under cut)

Man, that makes me feel compelled to add a Reaction Part to my projected six Reaction Parts, and then reorder them so Viktor's is seventh. Anyway.

So in this series of posts so far, we've had the Good, the Bad, and now we have the Incredibly Controversial. (We also had the Fandom and the Fix-it, but those didn't fit as nicely into that sentence).

I have a pretty nicely curated Tumblr dashboard. I only follow people I like, who have sensible things to say, and I try to avoid diving into tags and For Yous (which a remarkable amount of the time make no sense— when I do look at that feed, I see topics people I follow love that I have NEVER INTERACTED with. I tolerate these topics for the people I follow, why would I want to see more of those from strangers?).

Yet I have seen no middle ground on this next topic. Half my TUA mutuals are over the moon, half are positively livid.

And here am I in the middle feeling ACK.

I'm allowed to be in the middle, right?

Let’s dive into my opinions on (is this really a spoiler anymore here on Tumblr?) Five/Lila/Diego under the cut.

Yeah, it’s not my ship, and I would never have made the choice. I make no secret about my non-canon OTP, and Lila/Diego was the only CANON ship I ever found interesting enough to root for. I found Five and Lila’s best-frenemies relationship utterly delightful and I’ll miss getting to accept it as that and not the early stages of enemies-to-lovers. But from an in-story standpoint it does make perfect sense, even if it’s not a direction many viewers wanted it to go in.

Linking back to the Venn diagram I reblogged at the start of the Season 4 Discourse: “I liked it,” “It made in-universe sense,” “it made narrative sense.” Although, just to be annoying, the topic refuses to be sorted into even those categories nicely. Certainly most of us seem to disagree on which— if any of them— even apply.

Let’s take it one topic at a time. Viktor got a whole post to himself, so I need to give some attention to the other half of my favorite characters/OTP/most-commonly-POV’d babies, Five. You see, the most common complaint I hear about this plot development is that it’s totally out of character for Five. Five would never hurt Diego that way! Five is aroace! Five spent his life trying to get home to his siblings, he’d never give up and decide to stay in the subway! Since when would Five put romantic love over familial love?

I disagree. Maybe I’m wrong— many of the people I’ve seen making this claim have consistently written takes on Five that I very strongly adore. How could we disagree on whether or not the dude is in character here? But let me plead my case.

It’s true that Five is different this season, and not in a fun way. His feral-ness is one of the most delightful things about him in general, and it just…wasn’t there. But I think that’s a question for the “I liked it” portion of the Venn diagram (feral Five is so much more fun to watch than sad and tired Five) and possibly for the “narrative sense” portion (do you really want to abandon the the most popular qualities of a character just for the sake of realistic character progression?). It DOES make in-universe sense, because Five is depressed in season 4.

Think about where he is at the start of the season— and for the whole show before that. He spent his whole long, traumatic life obsessed with getting back to, with saving, these people, and all they have done in return is ignore him, yell at him, and blame him for things that weren’t his fault. Viktor my love not even you are an innocent here— sure you spent 17 years mourning him, but then when you finally get him back, you brush off or outright deny everything he ever confides in you, and then you abandon HIM for six years, and he was in the body of a minor at the time, he really could have used you by his side there! (My shipper heart insists his betrayal was the worst of all of them, and even platonically it very well could be).

These people he dedicated his life to turned out to not just be idiots (in his estimation), but they’ve gone and pushed each other— and him— away for six years. His whole life purpose had been to save them, and for what? For them to take it for granted, to squander their second (third, fourth…) chances at life complaining how life sucks and it’s probably Five’s fault? What did he do all this FOR, in the end? And what should he be doing with his life NOW? He’s lost his goals, his meaning. IT’S DEPRESSING DANGIT but it makes sense!

And then he ends up stranded in time. Again. But this time he’s with somebody else— an actual real-life friend instead of a figment of his imagination. He fell in love with Delores because they were partners alone in time— why wouldn’t it happen with a flesh-and-blood person, who can actually act in loving ways toward him? Okay, it’s his sister-in-law, but they’ve been lost for six years with no guarantee of ever getting back, she and Diego had already been on the rocks (I’ll get into her side of the thing farther down), and what does Five care about conventions like How to and not to act with one’s brother’s wife, anyway? He’s feral, remember? He’s not going to stop and say, “No, we can’t do this, it’ll hurt Diego’s feelings,” in this situation! They’re lost in time and all they have is each other!

And let’s examine the whole concept of Five in a romantic relationship to begin with. Obviously I’m not against the concept, because I ship him. It’s ridiculous on my part, because when I started reading TUA fanfic I honestly said, “Wow, it’s refreshing to have a character so impossible to ship as Five is— how many interesting GEN fics can this guy spawn?” and before I knew it I was shipping him with his adoptive brother. BUT. I have also fully embraced the popular headcanon that he’s ace (note: show-Five is not comics-Five in many ways, and this is one of them). Aspec, at least. (NOT aro: I don’t know how anyone can see the way he’s always talked about/treated Delores and not understand that he is absolutely a total romantic). Even in my shipping fics, he’s aspec— “Viktor-sexual,” I have called it even. He falls for his best friend, and his best friend only. And— if I can shamelessly quote one of my own fics here—

“Look, I was married to half a mannequin for thirty-some years, I may have a slightly different understanding of marriage than the average person….Yes, I said what I said. Delores is complicated, okay? There are facts, and there are truths. Facts are I created her out of the rubble of a department store and my own desperation. I know this, I do! But the truth is she loved me. She kept me alive, she lifted me when I would have given up, she fixed my mistakes but forgave me for them, she made me laugh and even laughed back at me. That's what marriage is to me. A partner through the twists and turns of life! It has nothing to do with desire and passion and sex.”

And that’s exactly what happened with Lila! They had become partners through the infinite twists and turns of a seemingly-impossible-to-escape life! I keep seeing “since when does Five think with his dick?” comments, but he WASN’T! It took nearly seven years of close proximity, you-and-me-against-the-multiverse partnership, and shared traumas to happen, and significantly, she made the first move. It absolutely holds up to my own personal headcanons of how Five interacts with romantic love.

And I feel like Five doesn’t really segregate different kinds of love. Romantic or familial, it’s all LOVE, right? We actually had this conversation in the comments of the above fic, “New World Symphony,” just days before S4 dropped: there’s a scene where Five completely confuses the others by explaining that he doesn’t think finding himself married to Viktor is weird because “you’re my brothers— that’s family; he’s my husband— that’s family too,” and JBD— who, I must point out, is not a Fiktor shipper— commented, “Aww, for Five, family is another word for people he loves.” And I thought that was a brilliant way to sum it up (funnily enough, I responded by referring to Five calling Lila “family” at the beginning of S3!). So when he finds the answer to getting home— is it really so hard to believe he doesn’t want to go back? Lila is family just as much as the others are, and LILA ACTUALLY SHOWS HIM LOVE, which is more than any of his adoptive sibs did for him for those first six years back. He was DEPRESSED in the real world, and now he’s HAPPY! Things change! Of course he dedicated his life to getting back home BEFORE, but like the first episode says, it was the Unbearable Tragedy of Getting What You Want! Now he knows better!

From an “In-show sense” standpoint. Maybe not from a “Narrative Sense” standpoint.

Let’s now try to discuss the state of Dilila, but more briefly. (This post is already 1800 words long). It made me sad to see what a mess their relationship had become in the past six years, and I thought it was kind of mean of the storyline to threaten to break them up, but after awhile, as we saw more of it, I had hope for them! I just rediscovered the “Into the Woods” soundtrack recently and suddenly they were reminding me of the Baker And His Wife— they needed to go Into the Woods--symbolically and literally—to be separated from each other, to learn new things about themselves, to yes even have an affair on her part— to appreciate what they had together, to rekindle their True Love. They needed to reevaluate themselves, each other, and their lives, and a separation would only help them to do so. (Now, when we talk about the in-characterness of it all, I DO question whether Lila was completely in character this season— but I mean, that’s part of it, IS she being herself? What does she NEED to be herself? She has to figure that out!)

And here’s where we get to the “Narrative Sense” problem, because that never had the chance to RESOLVE. Going back to what I said yesterday about the problem with The End— EVERYBODY HAD UNRESOLVED ISSUES, and SOME of them were too FRESH to be resolved! Who makes that narrative choice?!

I think narratively, it would work best if Lila and Diego reunited, appreciating each other all the more, and Five would let it happen because he’s primed to believe that being happy is too much to ask for, which is very sad but it works.

Except Lila never does make a choice, and Diego and Five die mad at each other.

Stupid ending.

But to be honest, maybe the writers didn’t want to make the choice because they couldn’t decide either. Narratively we’re rooting for Dilila, but from an in-show character standpoint, Lila and Five really are better for each other than Lila and Diego are. They’re on the same level. They understand each other in ways no one else can, being Commission Agents/murderers and having both been manipulated and betrayed by the Handler. They are matches for each other.

You know, I’m kind of annoyed by this fact. Five IS actually the better choice for Lila. I really want her to be happy with Diego but the facts are facts, she’d be happier with Five.

DANGIT I don’t even KNOW how to ultimately deal with them in the Summerland fix-it! I WANT Lila and Diego to reunite and also want Five to settle into a happy queerplatonic partnership with Viktor (I will DO MY BEST not to ship them in this fic, for the sake of everyone else who might want to read it, but that may be the extent of my best), but now I’m like is that really fair to Lila? UGH, RELATIONSHIPS!

I may settle for everybody taking a break from everybody while they work out their individual issues. (I did start writing a Diego and Kerry scene to immediately follow up the Five and Viktor scene I posted the other day, in which Kerry uses the Power of Autism to compel Diego to be introspective. Who knew.

“My brother stole my wife.” “Did she get free again?” “What?” “You said he stole her. Where did he put her?” “No, I meant he— they had an affair, he didn’t kidnap her.” “You said he stole her, but it sounds like she went with him because she wanted to, so that’s not stealing.” “It’s— why do you care?” “Because you’re not being accurate! He didn’t steal her if it was her choice to go!” “That—.” That made him very uncomfortable, was what that did. “Okay. My wife left me for my brother. That make sense to you?” She peered wide-eyed at him and started to open her mouth, so he added, “and yes she came back. Physically. But physically’s not the point.”

--snippet edited 12:46 ET 8/18/24 just because I actually wrote that final line and it gives the snippet more of a finished feeling so I had to add it. Anyway, so Diego ends up focusing on his issues with Always Being Second-Best at Summerland. If he learns to deal with his own insecurities, he could possibly even truly earn Lila’s love back! But first he has to deal with HIMSELF!)

Long story short, I did not hate this development, and the thing I liked least about it is tied to the thing I liked least about the whole season: if they'd only had time to resolve their issues before getting annihilated from existence, it wouldn't have been terrible! If THAT had been, then I'd be all for it!

I mean, mostly so. I'm still going to be a shameless Fiktor shipper, of course.

[karliahs]

okay just for fun i'm going to compile the garbled knowledge i have about what happens in bnha going forward (so everything after season 5 episode 8/middle of the joint training arc).

this is a few years of passively picking stuff up through tumblr, ao3 and a friend who reads the manga and would periodically upon request tell me how my kids were doing

so...bnha spoilers below the cut, including fairly recent manga spoilers. except they are incomplete, garbled and possibly entirely wrong

upcoming arcs: endeavour internship arc, plf arc, ??? other ones probably, final war arc

bakugou, midoriya & todoroki intern at endeavour's agency. endeavour redemption arc continues to be a thing that is happening

midoriya develops the past OFA users quirks - blackwhip first, then float, and then the others are i think...danger sense, smokescreen, some kind of...healing thing? i have definitely seen them all referenced in fic but i mostly just remember float and blackwhip

touya reveal!! dance with your son in hell!! we stan. i have no idea what the outcome of this is other than that i believe natsuo never gets on board with endeavour redemption but fuyumi does. i think maybe shouto as well...

at some point things about hawks?? and the hero commission's...stuff?? with hawks?? gets revealed publically and contributes to growing unrest about heroes' roles in society. and the touya stuff i think also gets revealed and contributes to this

oh kurogiri obviously. that's season 5 i'm pretty sure. kurogiri is a noumu made from oboro shirakumo, aizawa & mic's (& midnight's?) UA friend who they thought died under some rubble during agency placements. it was actually aizawa they were after but they got oboro instead. aizawa & mic go to confront him and try to get through to him and it initially does not work

while i'm on aizawa knowledge: he gets shot with a quirk destroying bullet in the leg and fucking cuts his own leg off to try and stop it from working. and on what is maybe a separate occasion he loses an eye, i think to shigaraki. idk if eri rewinds one of both of these injuries??

eri does successfully rewind mirio's quirk back. and at some point midoriya loses his goddamn arms?? but eri fixes that. so often when i asked my friend for updates it would end up being about how many limbs my faves currently had

midnight dies. idk how or why. twice i think also dies. again, no context.

aoyama is revealed as the UA traitor. he was born quirkless and was given his quirk by AFO. it was an overall sympathetic he had v few good choices kind of situation i think

at some point everything kind of collapses. i think this is to do with public reaction to hero stuff?? but the whole city seems kind of wrecked and a bunch of people are sheltering on UA's campus i think...and then midoriya for reasons i do not really understand runs off on his own for an iconic yellow scarf of sadness era of going rogue. and 1-a has to track him down and yell a lot about how they love him and he needs to cut it out. this includes a bakugou apology i believe

i think the midoriya run away coincides with OFA reveal?? he writes them letters i think...then he comes back and there's a lot of discussion about baths

climactic midoriya shigaraki fight...we find out shigaraki used to be quirkless. i think AFO gave him the quirk used to kill his family or something equally fucked up. midoriya...throws all his quirks out? to like? achieve something? so he (temporarily) is quirkless...

bakugou dies but they fix it. i think with...shigaraki...somehow. oh and at some point during all this i think kurogiri does do some helpful for the heroes teleporting?? so they maybe did get through to him in the end?

timejump and SHINSOU IS IN 2-A. this is the only thing that matters actually!! my boy!! he did it!!!!! he took aoyama's spot bc aoyama didn't feel like he could come back even tho he'd pretty much been forgiven. so we just missed canonising the iconic 'shinsou hitoshi is in class 1-a' tag bc it's 2-a and fully did not canonise the 'shinsou hitoshi replaces mineta minoru' tag

skjdhfh i'm sure i'm forgetting a bunch that i do actually know and just can't think of rn so i will maybe reblog this if i remember more

[naffeclipse]

Hi Naff!! My friend and I are huge fans of Cryptid Sightings, we both run to each other and yell about each new update, and she has a few questions regarding your fic! I'm sending them in for her since she doesn't have Tumblr but we're both very curious about these things! Hope you have a lovely day!!

×

Hello Naff! I hope that you’re having a great day today. I love reading your works and just had some questions regarding Cryptid Sightings. (Most of them regard the boys’ relationship with the kids, but I hope that you don’t mind.)

• How would they help a child that’s scared of them? (With the vessel on because maybe they’re scared of clowns, have accidentally seen them in their true form, or when they’re possessing a toy and are suspicious of the toy “coming to life”?)

• Or if they’re in danger, but can’t touch them because maybe they’ve been baptized or are wearing something holy? (Ex: a cross necklace or hijab)

• How would they react to a child who wasn’t so scared of cryptids? (I remember when I was little there was this boy I knew who would info-dump about different types of monsters to me in a book he had! Specifically, he really liked the monsters that hid in your closet and the Hunchback.) Or what if the child saw them in their true form, but wasn’t scared at all?

• How would they deal with IPad kids/kids addicted to their phone? Or with kids who are a bit bratty/bully others?

• How would they comfort a kid who doesn’t speak English or can’t talk? (Ex: maybe they speak Spanish or use ASL in order to communicate) Do any know any other languages or have picked up a few words/phrases over the years before Y/N?

• Do pregnant mothers fall under the sacred rules? (Considering how they’re bearing a child)

• What if a child was infected by a cryptid? (Like they got bit by a vampire or something) Would they still be safe under the sacred rules?

• What if they come across a rule breaker who’s repenting for their sins or are being purified?

• We know that they love watching Casper with their heart, but how would they react to other forms of children media featuring monsters? (Such as Gravity Falls, Missing Link, or perhaps Monster High)

• Have the boys been in different countries or have witnessed certain historical events? (Considering how they’ve been wandering around before Y/N)

Thank you in advance if you answer these questions! I also hope to make some possible fanart or an edit for your fic <3

Heya!! Oh my gosh, my heart is melting, ahhh, thank you so much! ♥ My day was great! I hope you guys have a lovely day as well! I don't mind questions at all!

The boys would speak very softly to the child, and depending on what would comfort the specific child, hold their hand with their vessel's hand or keep their distance but gently reassure them that they mean no harm and are here to protect them. They would also say that they're not like other monsters, they're a monster that scares those who aren't nice to the kid. They are here for the little one, to keep the kid safe at night, and that nothing bad will happen while they are here watching over the child.

In these cases, Moon would be able to touch the child and protect them, but that would only occur at night. During the day, Sun couldn't be near the child, but he would turn his attention to the threat and take it out first before the danger could ever reach the kid.

(That kid sounds awesome lol) They would be pleasantly surprised if a kid wasn't scared of cryptids/them. Kids come in all kinds of kinds, so to find one that's intrigued by monsters and spooks in the night is fun for them, and though they wouldn't necessarily hang around such a child in their true form, they would like to pat the kid's head before drawing the arm back into their vessel.

Sun is a lot nicer about getting children active and away from devices, and he makes it fun like it's the child's idea instead of Sun's nudging! Moon on the other hand will be a bit more sneaky and hide the devices away, especially if it's cutting into their bedtime, and to make up for it, he'll tell the kid bedtime stories. As for a not-so-sweet kid, they'd be firm but gentle with rebukes, though they would get to the root of the problem and tear it out—addressing the true issue of why the child was acting out in such a way.

(I've never thought of this before!) Sun/Moon knows enough different languages to comfort a kid, but it's not fancy or eloquent, just the basics, but, that's usually enough to help them settle a child down. However, with ASL, they would have to learn that and they would love for a kid to teach them! They're not against learning new things, especially if it allows them to bond better with a child.

Yes, pregnant mothers fall under sacred rules! Sun/Moon can sense the baby's heartbeat so a pregnant mother would be protected by Sun/Moon if she were in danger.

It's a very rare instance to meet a cryptid who was turned as a child, but, in the instance of a vampire, they would have no heartbeat, nothing for Sun/Moon to sense and become aware of the little one. It's a very horrifying event for Sun/Moon to confront, but the kid isn't technically alive anymore, and the sacred rules don't apply to the dead. This would be up to Sun/Moon's discretion.

Sun/Moon doesn't care for repentance or purifying, for a rulebreaker is marked and nothing can wash that away. It's very cruel and unforgiving, but there is no way to mend the sacred rules once a human has broken them.

Oh, they would be delighted by other cartoon monster media! Especially if little kids enjoy it.

Yes, and yes.

Ah, I hope these answer your questions! I look forward to it ♥

[policemanofprincesspark]

I recently started reading more about psychology, and one point about parasocial relationships stood out: fans and stans often assume the object of their obsession is just as obsessed with them. You mentioning 1D getting involved with the bandana project reminded me of that. Because what if they didn’t know the deeper meaning? What if fans just gave them bracelets and they just wore them without thinking? So many other blogs i follow assume hl not only browses trending twitter tags, but follows tumblr and their blogs specifically. They’re special to us, but we’re a faceless mass to them. The more i read, the more i worry we’re seeing things where there aren’t.

The thing for me is that Louis said once on video that he "sees more than people think", he alludes to being on twitter fairly often, and he even said that he's joined fans' private DMs (I believe he said he does it under a burner account?). Harry also said something about fans being very smart about figuring things out, and he also referred to the "hiddies", which implies he does go online and see what fans are saying.

Imo, they had to be aware of certain fan projects when those projects gained a certain level of popularity, because fans would likely bring signs referring to it or talk about it to them, or at least the members of 1D would likely notice a sudden influx of people in the crowd wearing colored bandanas and wonder what's going on. I think it's very possible that they'd know about these projects, but... I do agree that them merely wearing one of the colored bandanas doesn't necessarily prove that they know of the project. You're right. It could just mean that a fan gave it to them. That's why you would probably want to sift through hours and hours of concert footage to see if you can find a moment where they might reference the project in some way. There is probably a ton of stuff we've just completely missed. But there's no way to tell if such a moment even exists unless you go through the work just to maybe find it.

Listen, I don't think the bandana project theory is the best theory. I wouldn't put it in my top 20 'Larry proofs' if I made a list of them. But I wanted to use that as an example because it was a good example of asking yourself the question: "Is Harry/Louis doing this thing a coincidence or not?". Really, it was just a quick example to explain what you would theoretically have to do for each piece of 'Larry proof' if you were to attempt to prove once and for all what the likelihood of Larry being real is.

Actually, I want to do something. Let me try to categorize, off the top of my head, the 'Larry proofs' we use. We have:

• Body Language Analysis

• Quotes/Things Harry and Louis/others around them say, and analyses on whether these quotes could allude to a relationship

• Strange coincidences [such as Louis potentially having the same laptop and wallpaper as the one in one of the pictures uploaded to the RBB&SBB official twitter account, or, again, Harry purchasing and wearing that dark blue bandana during the height of the Bandana Project and then continuing to wear it to this day (obviously it's a question of which coincidences are the strangest/least likely to be mere coincidences, and I think the first example with the laptop is less likely to be a coincidence than the bandana example, but that's all I can say)]

• Moments where they might have been 'caught' (such as the iconic "Titanic" moment or the grainy video in Wellington where Louis might have yelled "boyfriend" and then snuggled with Harry and kissed him, etc.)

And of course we have good ol' pattern recognition and gut instinct. All of this is all we have to go off of since we don't know Harry or Louis personally nor do we have access to their private lives.

[samcybercat]

Supernatural Characters That I Liked :D

On 2nd April 2023, we finished watching all 15 seasons of Supernatural. My history with this show is that I didn't really know it was a thing while it was popular and then by the time I joined Tumblr it was "that series people on Tumblr like that I don't think would be for me". Up until late 2021, the only things from Supernatural that I'd seen were the Destiel Confession (TM), a short scene of Dean telling Sam & Jack that Castiel was dead and the montage of Sam dying from the final episode. Beyond that, I genuinely knew nothing about the show But in 2021 (I think?) my housemates and I had finished BBC Merlin and were looking for a new long series to try, which ended up being Supernatural. Our set-up was that Gemba had seen up to Season 12 (and thus had to endure us asking many questions about it), but Amber and I had never seen any of it Now, no one needs me to review Supernatural. Enough other people who know more about it than I do have done that. But it's been a long ride and I wanted to do something to celebrate it. So instead of picking apart the good and the bad, I thought I'd simply make a list of the characters I like. This is not an all-inclusive list, as in over 15 seasons there are bound to be a few fun one-off characters who I'll forget. But I tried to include as many characters as possible Starting off with my beloved - everyone's favourite Supernatural character whose name begins with the letter C...

...Crowley! (Don't worry, Castiel is also on the list lol)

I cannot understate how much Crowley kept me going with this show. We'd just come off the back of the Trickster dying and I was bummed about that, but then Crowley came along with all his yelling and his bisexual villainy and I was won over immediately. Everything about Mark Sheppard's performance was a delight and all his interactions with the rest of the main cast were so fun. When Crowley ended up on the path from enemy to frenemy to begrudging ally, it never felt like character-derailment at all. Though having said that, I also fully understand and respect Sheppard's choice to leave because he was disappointed with how Crowley was being written - as much as it was a big miss for me to see Crowley go. Crowley is my blorbo for this show He is also incredibly shippable with Sam

Next up is Sam, Mr. Skrunkly Himself and the greatest shipping bicycle I could ask for Now, some of you who I have talked to about Supernatural might remember me saying that I didn't like Sam, which certainly was true in the earlier seasons. I just feel like in the beginning, Sam's stick-in-the-mud attitude needed a bit longer to bake until he became the absolutely endearing, doe-eyed giant that he would become later on. I also think that Sam becoming a better character ended up lining up quite well with Dean becoming... less of a characters that I could enjoy, so that worked out nicely. I'm sorry that I was a non-believer to start with, Sammy, but I'm 100% a Sam Girl now lol

You're on tumblr, you know who this is I now definitely understand why this website was so obsessed with Castiel. What could've easily been a throw-away character was turned into a series main-stay and I'm sure that a large part of that was due to the clear love that Misha Collins had for the character and poured into his performance. Every time Castiel was around it was always great and, like a lot of people, my biggest problem with Castiel was that they didn't use him enough. They (probably accidentally) wrote one of the best autistic characters I've seen in a while and also, his Dadstiel scenes with Claire and Jack are one of the few times I've really enjoyed seeing a character take on the role of a parent Castiel is also incredibly shippable with Sam (sorry Destiel shippers, I'm Sastiel through and through)

Queen of my heart, Rowena! The treatment of female characters in Supernatural is another topic with not a great reputation, but you've got to believe me when I say that Rowena is a brilliant character, one of the best and most-fun female villains. When she was introduced as Crowley's mum, I knew we were in for a great ride and, sure enough, every episode she was in was charming. Ruth Connell really ran with the concept of "vengeful Scottish witch". My fears for Rowena had been that she would be killed off shortly after Crowley's departure, but I was delighted to see that she continued to be a main-stay for most of the show, ending with her destined death scene with Sam, before being triumphantly crowned Queen of Hell Rowena is also incredibly shippable with Sam, though I've also gotta give a shout-out to my short-lived OTP of Rowena x Gabriel

Speaking of Gabriel, the Trickster was definitely what kept me watching at the start of the series. In the beginning, Supernatural was a bit dry for my taste and he injected that shot of fun into it that it needed to keep me interested. His episodes were few and far between, but just knowing there might be a Trickster episode on the horizon always kept me going until Crowley came along to take the mantle from him. I was glad to see Gabriel return later on, even if I feel like they didn't really use him or play to his strengths quite as much as they did in the early episodes The Trickster is also incredibly shippable with Sam

The best baby boy, Jack! On paper, the concept of Lucifer's son joining the team felt like a desperate attempt by the writers to show a new, younger audience that they were still hip and relevant, but that ended up not being the case. From the moment Jack appeared, he was wonderful, bringing the same energy as Castiel, but with that child-like optimism attached that would lead to him ultimately saving the day and making a better world for everyone. Seeing the trio raising a son was also brilliant and actually the perfect kind of fanfic-fodder the show needed. My biggest regret for Jack is that he came along after most people stopped caring about the show, so he didn't receive the appreciation I think he deserved

I actually feel bad that it's taken me so long to get to Bobby, as he's one of my big faves, but in my defence he wasn't in the later seasons very much. Bobby went from being "Guy who tells the brothers where the monster of the week is" to the actual perfect father-figure they deserved. There was a reason why when Dean gets to heaven it was Bobby waiting for him and not John, and it wasn't just because getting Neegan back was probably expensive. Bobby is another underrated autistic icon imo and excellent boyfriend-material for Crowley. Even though I was sad when his time on the show was cut short, he was one of the few characters who I felt was given the right amount of fanfare for his send-off

Ketch! I love Ketch! He's our fave in this house. After the very dull Darkness season, I had my hopes low and was rolling my eyes when the British Men of Letters were introduced, but then they ended up being so cringe that it cycled back around to being funny again. We would cheer every time Ketch appeared

Yes, I like Bela and think she was fun in her appearances, you're all just mean about her :(

This version of Meg specifically was wonderful and top-tier shippable with Castiel. It's no wonder that she was the one they called back to play The Empty all those years later. Meg's flirty banter was the perfect foil for Castiel's serious cluelessness and I would always look forward to scenes with both of them

I'm gonna be real with you: most of the season-long villains were very hit or miss for me, but Zachariah was one villain who I thought was excellent. It's a shame he was so early on, so I don't remember too much about his specifically, but I do remember enjoying him and how powerful he made the angels feel

Pamela or, as she was known in our house for a long time, The Woman Who Was Fine About Everything. When Pamela first appears she's like "Two brother? Awesome, let's have a threesome!" ...Then she gets her eyes blasted out. When we next see her, Pamela is totally cool with being blind and is even using it to help her work. ...Then she gets killed off. But when we next see her in the afterlife, wouldn't you know it, she's totally cool with being dead. Even when she later appears as a figment of Dean's imagination, she's fine with that, too. So here's to you, Pamela. Wherever you are, I know you're totally cool with it!

Kevin Tran and his mum. These two characters are the absolute example of deserving much better from the writing, especially Kevin. At least his mum got some cool scenes when she tried to rescue him, but poor Kevin was basically the Wincester's hostage who then died to give Dean more man pain. Which is a shame, because Kevin was great and I really wish we'd been given more fun scenes with him

Hannah (Agent Stone version) ...Look, it's Lee Majdoub, the guy who plays Agent Stone in the Sonic Movies! Turns out he had a brief role in Supernatural as one of Hannah's vessels. I wish he'd stuck around, but as a big Sonic fan I'm glad he moved onto other things :')

Claire Novak - I never expected the kid from Castiel's vessel's old life to come back as a full character later on, but Claire filled the role of the vengeful daughter who grew to respect Castiel so well and I definitely wish we'd seen more of both Claire and her short-lived relationship with Kaia. I also had the exact same Grumpy Cat plushie that Castiel gave to Claire, so I was very endeared by that

Both the original Death and Billie who came after him were excellent! Both very different and strong personalities who filled every scene they were in - when these two appeared, you really knew Dean had to sit up and pay attention, because shit was about to get real

Another one of my top faves, Eileen! Imagine my surprise when Supernatural of all series introduces one of the very few portrayals of a deaf character I've seen and she ends up becoming a recurring character and love interest to one of the main characters. Eileen was annoyingly killed off-screen, but then they made up for it by having Sam go to such lengths to bring her back. She had an adorable relationship with Sam. ...Then they killed her off again and left us to only assume that she must've been returned to life by Jack, but never actually showed that. Oh well, I will choose to believe that the blurry woman they showed with Sam in his montage in the last episode was Eileen and they got the happy ending they deserved

Rufus went from having a somewhat subdued first appearance to being Bobby's partner in crime and that was when he really shined. Another character who was killed off far too early, wasting his potential, but I enjoyed the few Bobby & Rufus episodes that we did get

Garth was just a nice guy and I wanted good things for him. After his short, but successful, role as The New Bobby, I'm glad that Garth was able to retire and live with his werewolf family without becoming yet another victim of characters dying by association with the Winchesters

Becky went from being a very fun nod-to-the-fandom character to having that... one very uncomfortable episode with Sam... to disappearing for a long time and finally coming back to be shown living her best life with her family and thriving. Screw Chuck for killing her off, but I choose to believe that she came back

Crowley having a son who was brought to modern day from ye olde Scotland and then let loose into a park somewhere will never not be funny to me. I liked Gavin for the few episodes he was in

...And I'm bored of looking for screenshots now, so I'll cap this off by also giving a shout-out to fan-fave, Charlie, who they once again killed off before they should've done but at least had some good episodes, Balthazar, who was the idea friend for Castiel and gave me big Dionysus Hades Game vibes, Metatron, who really grew on my from his initial introduction as villain to reluctant frenemy, and to Chuck, who was a character who really annoyed me for most of the series, but then once they started playing him as a straight up villain it felt like he was the perfect way to sing the series out. Amara also got a lot better in later seasons from her unfortunate first appearance and it was a shame about her hand-wave ending I have mixed feelings about Dean. Goodnight

[yellowgnomeboots]

I've seen a LOT of posts on tumblr about poor treatment of customer service workers, and although I can imagine that this does happen in NZ, of course, I've only ever witnessed one person harassing a staff member in a shop in my life, whereas people yelling at McDonald's workers and so on seems to be something you see everyday in the USA.

My own customer service experience was kind of atypical - IT support in the library at a University rather than a shop - but I only had 2 problem customers in 4 years working 20 hours a week.

So anyway! I just read an article that seems to imply that the "American*" type of harrassment of customer service workers has only just arrived in NZ in the last few years - workers have reported a significant increase in abuse, death threats, etc, over the last few years that they were not experiencing before.

This is attributed to the stress of Covid and economic factors, but based on the fact that this kind of stuff is so common in some other countries, is that really the case? I mean, maybe there's a lot of stressed Americans as well, in fact there surely are, but I don't know if that's the whole of it.

In NZ we've also had an increase in death and violence threats sent to politicians, protests have become more hate-based (rather than protests advocating for positive change), more extreme violence against minorities (e.g. shooting them rather than harassing them), and I feel that our mainstream political right party has become more "Republican" - focusing more on stopping people from doing things and once again being hate-based (rather than looking to fix problems but in a way I disagree with e.g. X is a problem for many people we should privatise it).

It seems, disappointingly and sadly, that NZ society is changing for the worse. Despite many valid problems, we did have a certain level of respect for others that we don't have now, and violence was not something that was so readily on hand for your average person.

Its possible that this change did come about more swiftly as a result of Covid, but I think the psychologists and so on giving interviews about how people are feeling more stressed now and this is leading to bad behaviour are missing some enormous background societal changes that have been gathering force over the last... decade maybe? Although I'm not sure what those changes are and it seems rather impossible to accurately determine.

Anyways... not much we can do about it I guess other than personally try not to fall prey to these nasty impulses, but it does make me rather sad and is another source of a feeling of hopelessness and a desire to go live in the middle of nowhere.

*focusing on Americans because that's the context of most of the tumblr posts we're probably all familiar with but other countries may relate

Tumblr disclaimer: this post is not saying problems never existed in NZ before now, it is saying that things have gotten worse, in magnitude and frequency, overall; individual experiences will vary.

[thelordofgifs]

Right so if I tell you all about my silm wips, then I'm obligated to actually write them at some stage! so here's a non-exhaustive (because I keep coming up with ideas) list to guilt me into doing some writing:

First of all is the tentatively titled the fairest stars, the unhinged bullet point thing I'm partway through posting on tumblr. currently the main project because it's possessed me.

Half-finished documents include:

all the world lay then in wonder, a tiny little thing about the first rising of the Moon. hasn't been worked on for a while because Curufin was being a bitch.

the untitled thing whose doc name is Himring, in which Maedhros yells at C&C re: Nargothrond Incident. hasn't been worked on for a while because Curufin was being a bitch. hmm. my vision for this thing is a several-thousand word one-shot filled with complicated brotherly relationships and the ominous sound of the approaching Nirnaeth.

The Unburied, an actual multi-chapter because my ambition knows no bounds. canon-compliant longfic covering the time from the ship-burning at Losgar to the rising of the Sun, povs Fingon and Maglor. currently two chapters in, but I'm determined not to publish until it's fully drafted.

Then there's the Sticky Note, a list of ideas I spend far too long daydreaming about but haven't actually started writing yet. except now I'm telling you about them so I have to!

boats against the current is an AU where Maedhros doesn't swear the Oath. I have the plot of the first part of this, and the overarching theme, fairly figured out, but whenever I try to write the first sentence ("What are you doing?", ftr) it goes wrong. very fond of it though.

The Returned is the sequel to The Unburied, which probably means it will never get written. a fairly standard post-Thangorodrim longfic. I love daydreaming this one.

no morning glory mostly exists in my head because I love the title (it's from a Taylor Swift song). A Russingon WW1 AU. only problem is, I know nothing about WW1 :)

some sort of thing about Maedhros and Maglor post-Dagor Bragollach. unsure if I'll ever write this, I just have a very clear image in my head of one scene which means it can't be taken off the list.

Little Pity, an AU where the Eagle arrives after Fingon has killed Maedhros on Thangorodrim. yeah idk what to do with that really. it's on the Sticky Note, though.

something about why Elros makes his Choice, various influences on him as he grows up. an excuse for some kidnap fam history lessons.

an untitled longfic about Celebrimbor in Nargothrond. mainly because Tyelpe and Finduilas deserve to be besties. also fun exploration of Tyelpe's relationship with his father. and Huan will be there. absolutely NOT to be even TOUCHED before The Unburied is finished.

as small as a world, the story of Elwing and Earendil growing up in a refugee camp at the end of the world. the Sea is basically a third main character here. my vision for this, which I am almost certainly not competent enough to execute, features plenty of Idril, complicated politics on Balar, childhood trauma, and Sirion as this multicultural hub that's the last hope of Elvendom in Beleriand and it's so tragic that it even exists but its resilience brings tears to your eyes. also you should taste salt the entire time you're reading. can't even be DAYDREAMED about until The Unburied is finished.

a very very tragic oneshot about Celebrimbor meeting Maglor for the last time in Eregion. haven't done anything about this bc I'm not sure it's even canonically possible. it makes me tear up sometimes though.

Ashes is a missing moment from between the only two written chapters of The Unburied. Maedhros, post-Losgar. I adore him so unsure how long my self-control will last before I snap and write this.

[naiima-the-sheep]

So I know I normally just reboot stuff, but I wanted to know what you peeps here on tumblr might think. So for context, I am in a few roleplay servers, and in one of them, I have a character who is a pirate in the 1630s. She’s ~37 years old, and lost her son when he was still very young.

So in this interaction, she met a merchant in the Caribbeans, and they got to talking. Later in the evening, they decided to go somewhere to eat and there was a slight altercation. Margaret (my character) threatened Jack (the merchant) and said that if he broke his word about telling her what she knew about her missing son, she wouldn’t hesitate to break a lot more of his. He got understandably defensive, and the following is Margaret’s response to what he had said.

What I wanna know is if I was able to (somewhat) convincingly depict a grief, that has festered and plagued her for 15-16 years, having led to countless sleepless nights and nightmares about her son. I don’t know if this post will reach many people or not, but I just wanted to at least put it out there.

Below is the post I sent to my rp partner, do you guys think I did a good job?

Margaret was angry at first, angry that he would say something like that after he had PROMISED to tell her about her son. She wanted to scream at him, shout at him, she wanted to cut him off and just yell what her tired heart had been feeling for nearly two decades. It took but a very short moment for her to realize she might just have jeopardized the only shot she had at finding her son. What exactly Jack said she didn’t hear, but his tone was more than enough to convey the message.

There as a near instant look of regret on the once stoic woman’s face. Regret of what she said, how she acted, how she had probably just pissed off the one person who could lead her to her son, and all because she was so desperate for answers. There was no way she was ever going to see him now. Nice going Margaret, you really know how to make a fool of yourself! That regret soon turned to sorrow, this wasn’t just regular sadness however. The look on her face spoke volumes even though not a single word lest her lips, she didn’t even meet his eyes. Her expression (though not very discernible to an outside observer) showed great pain, as if she had spent countless centuries mourning. It was as if all life had left her eyes, they were glazed over and looked like painted glass, the dull gray color that once portrayed the sky of her home, now seemed to wither, and if you were to look into them, you’d be swallowed by a grief so strong, and deep, even the brightest sun could never hope to light up even a small portion of the vast cold, dead darkness that filled Margaret’s empty heart. All of that looked to be simmering just below the surface, threatening to break through at the slightest touch of a gentle breeze. Jack had no need to say he could’ve already have broken her if he wished, for it seemed she would collapse at any moment, the only thing giving her hope and keeping her going was the faint illusion of some day, maybe, just possibly seeing her son again. Margaret was not but a shell of who she used to be, and she’d give anything in the world to just have her son again.

It wasn’t until he spoke again did she look at him, only then did some semblance of life seem to return to her. She was about to speak up when Jack handed her a pistol. The sadness and sorrow that plagued her mere moments before were now replaced with a look of bewilderment. The supposed “family heirloom” as he called it was remarkably similar to a pistol she had seen before. As she looked over it, it became more and more clear. She HAD seen it before, she had seen the barrel most of all, but still. This was the pistol of the now dead Captain Edwards. His name was even engraved in the wood. Margaret looked up at him, unsure as to why he would do this. “…Why?” Is all she could think of to say, she obviously wanted to know more, but was failing to come up with something better than just a simple three letter word.

[lazaruspiss]

20 questions for writers

tagged by @roipecheur mwah mwah !!

1. how many works do you have on AO3? - 34

2. what's your total AO3 word count? - 65,516

3. what fandoms do you write for? - its pure DC brainrot babes. maybe that'll change one day, but i have a hard time balancing multiple interests

4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos? - A Kind Place To Rest, What’s in a gift?, Indulgence, Always a Kitten, Red Wings

5. do you respond to comments? - i try!!! but know that even if i don't reply i give each and every comment a lil smooch

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? - most of my stuff is pretty fucked up, but Black fish, blue fish, old fish, new fish. and The Leagues That Go Bump In The Night are probably up there? both because they involve Dick experiencing violent assaults with the promise of more to come and because he doesn't compartmentalize/justify/repress it much at all. so he's just forced to experience The Horrors. Damian's chapter in A curse in disguise. is the thing that actually makes me wanna yell though. I wrote that?? I only have myself to blame for making me feel things??? what the fuck man.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? - tough question. hm. I was able to pull up like, 6 candidates, but I'm not really sure how to measure "happy ending". Endings that were the most... more happy by the end than when they started...? i guess? There are a few that end on a "and the ship sailed happily ever after" type note. New Beginnings is a bit more enthusiastically happy, because Dick and Kori are just so damn excited to have babies

8. do you get hate on fics? - most of the hate i've gotten has been tumblr anons, lol

9. do you write smut? If so, what kind? - the freaky kind >:) (22/34 of my fics are explicit)

10. do you write crossovers? - nah. thought about it, have wanted to, but it takes a bit more planning than a regular fic

11. have you ever had a fic stolen? - nah

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? - no, but i would welcome it so long as it linked back and all that

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? - WAIT YES I HAVE. in middle school i think? during a sleepover a friend and i sat together on a couch and sent emails back and forth, taking turns adding onto a smut fic about british gaming youtubers that i dont think they even knew? also our incredibly innocent/prudish christian friend might have also been there lmao. that fic stayed in our emails im pretty sure.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? - ough...h hg..... jay and cole from ninjago. w other series i tend to be more "pick a fav and explore all possible parings involving them", but i only ever picture jay and cole with each other. for me that means something

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will? - oh uh. gotta bust out file explorer hold on. I did plan on making an entire series of fics connected to Little Princess, but I doubt I'll get to that, especially bc im not that proud of that fic anymore. there are a couple more fairly detailed and large projects sitting in my scrapped folder. and i mean, i keep a scrapped folder bc that way i dont have the pressure of finishing it but i still have the option if i want to.

16. What are your writing strengths? - uhm. uh.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? - forget to write the words. i also have a bit of dyslexia and miss stuff no matter how much i proof read

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? - depends? if it's a full conversation then i think i'd opt for <dialogue> or something like that, but if it's for random background chatter or mixed language dialogue then maybe just use the actual words. kind of have to, in the second case. spanglish type talk is fun actually, like sometimes i just talk like that to try and figure out what spanish i remember

19. First fandom you wrote for? - probably minecraft youtubers? the first i posted online was my hero academia tho. dont ask me about MHA btw i literally only care about kaminari and stopped keeping up like 4 years ago

20. Favourite fic you've written? - uh. hm. Aha! only my third fic but it ticks all my boxes and i love it dearly: Lulu Belle And The Cat-Chaser

[mylifeonprivate]

07.05.22

I’m going to start journaling again. I did it on an app on my phone the other day but Tumblr is just easier for the handoff capability between my phone and my laptop. I’ll copy here the brief summary of the events that have transpired over the six months after Andrew and I broke up. 

“Where did that leave me? I was absolutely devastated. I gave my virginity to this guy, shared so much of myself, introduced him to my family as the guy I’d marry, and now I’m all alone. I never felt more alone. I felt a certain kind of “alone” during the relationship but this post-break up state of being alone made being alive the most exhausting thing I could think of.

I started using the dating apps. It was nerve-wracking but weirdly entertaining. It got me out of the house for sure. At first I was hesitant and shy, and mainly just talked to guys, but I started going on dates in June. I really wanted another boyfriend so I was trying to be meticulous about my choices. By the end of the month, I was already kind of fatigued with the dating game. Having the same conversations over and over took the fun out of it. 

I went on a date with Joseph during the first week of July but I was so in my head about it that I didn’t give it the credit it deserved. He really was the only one I felt like I could speak honestly about the dating lifestyle with. Probably part of me thought that merely having that conversation made him not into me. Either way, my dad got his cancer diagnosis the week after that. 

Joseph and I fell out of contact and I went on other dates. I almost slept with a guy named Andrew. He made me watch two horrible horror movies before trying to get me to spend the night. I regret going on that date but I’m so glad I didn’t sleep with him. 

Joseph snapped me again after a little while and I asked if we could go on another date. We had said we would hang out on Sunday but he forgot, and offered to hang out with me that following Thursday. It was the best date I’d ever gone on. We talked so long at dinner that we almost missed the movie. I enjoyed the movie so much, and made a move in the theater. We made out in his truck afterwards and I asked if he’d let me stay over. We went to his place and had sex, after which he told me he wasn’t really looking for a girlfriend. That was a blow. I’ll never forget that feeling. I’d just given myself to a guy again and this time was instantly punished for it. At that point, I said fuck it and slept with the next three guys that I vibed with. Joseph and I were hanging out and having sex, but I never forgot that he’d said he didn’t want a girlfriend. So I continued seeing the other guys too. I looped in my friends at work. They all had their opinions and comments. I was just living it up, I told them, having my hot girl summer.

At the beginning of September, Joseph blindsided me by asking me to be his girlfriend. Of course, I said yes. He was clearly the favorite and everyone at work knew that too. It was too good an opportunity to pass up, despite how wildly unready I was. I was in no state of mind to be a girlfriend. So painfully unprepared, I slept with two more guys in that next week. Why did I sleep with them, when I knew Joseph was the one I wanted? There’s a million possible reasons. I didn’t trust Joseph with my feelings, and I wanted to hurt him before he hurt me. I was running on pure impulse. I didn’t want to cancel the plans I already had with the others in case something went wrong with my relationship Joseph. There’s no good answer. I cheated on him. TWICE. He found out that I’d seen someone else about two weeks later after we had sex on the day I got my IUD placed. I’d never had anyone yelling at me like he did that night. He called me a whore and made me feel disgusting for seeing other people while I was seeing him. And after going through my phone, he found out I went on a date after us becoming official. He pushed me out of the way, left my place after I chased him out, but we stayed together after that.

Every now and then he’d get angry about that. He found out about how I’d woken up naked on the couch after hanging out with a friend from high school. Then finally in December, before we were going to the Trail of Lights, he found out about the second date I went on. He really lost it then. He hit me for the first time.

We were already planning on taking a trip to Boston to spend Christmas with his family. He was so distraught over the idea of breaking up before this trip that instead he decided to relapse to cope with his emotions. So he was actively relapsing and physically abusing me when we went on this trip.” 

He admitted one of those nights when he was really drunk that he’d slept with a few transgender women. I wanted to thank him for being vulnerable so I admitted that I slept with a guy in that first week we were dating and I went on two other dates.

It was supposed to be a really special time but it was completely overshadowed by the fact that I’d been hiding so many details and lying and gaslighting him over and over again. He’d be very vulnerable and honest with me about it and I’d still lie because I couldn’t afford to feel the way I felt before him and after Andrew. But the fact is, I never processed that breakup and all I was doing was hurting him and myself by letting that shit just sit and rot within me. I would tell him I knew this fact, but still kept lying. This was coupled by the fact that he was verbally, emotionally, and physically abusing me and I was traumatized, which made me want to come clean even less than I already did.

He went out with his friends in March and got drunk and high and ended up in a strip club. He had told me his battery was dying even though I knew it was a lie. He messaged me from his friends instagram telling me to come get him from the strip club. I’ve never been to a fucking strip club. We went in and he paid for me to get a dance and then for us to get a dance as a couple. He said he’d slept with two strippers and I got really uncomfortable and we left. That night he kept doing coke and went through my phone and found out about the other guy I slept with during the first week of our relationship. More abuse came from that.

He went to detox following that episode and decided that he really wanted to be with me and that we could work on this.

A week later at the beginning of April, shit blew up again after we went to the movies, but he got appendicitis and I had to take care of him.

A week after THAT, he started drinking again. His birthday was ruined because we were fighting. I came home after he’d kicked me out and really broke it down that I knew I needed to put in more work. He seemed to have a change of heart after that conversation and really tried to focus on getting better. We even got a dog.

A month later, he relapsed while on work trips and had a horrible episode at the beginning of May related to some texts I had deleted from my coworker. He started drinking that Sunday morning and continued into the evening. He told me to take the dog out and snuck out of the house to go get cocaine. I tracked his location going back and forth between strip clubs. I called him and he said he was dealing and wouldn’t be back until late. He came home at 11 and told me he loved me. He had blood on his shirt and told me he’d had a gun at his head twice that night. 

A day or two after that, he said it’d probably be best for him to go back to rehab. I told him I would fully support that. His mom helped us out and I dropped him off that Wednesday. We wouldn’t be able to talk or text so we started writing letters. Since he decided to go in, he was really positive and has been that way even through the last month that he’s been home. 

[beastreign]

hiatus!

hey guys when i first left this blog it was with the intention of going on a semi-hiatus n poking in every now and then but alas that was a lie.  it’s rly just the queue running now bcuz my queues are always full of aesthetic shit and i can’t be bothered to delete it.

i’m balls deep in discord rp and honestly it’s very relaxing compared to how exhausted i got on here.  i’m also starting a new job soon(tm) so i doubt i’ll be coming back in the near future.  i didn’t log onto here nor did i edit my blog’s description  /  rules out of pure laziness but yeah this blog is on full hiatus.  i might come back one day(tm) but u kno, no promises.

i’m only really finally making this post bcuz i’m still logged onto this account on my phone, and nearly  daily  i get notifications about new followers and i feel bad about that, so i just want ppl to know that they shouldn’t really get their hopes up to catch me on here or for me to follow back.

you can always reach me on discord:  (g)nat#4764 or, i have recently set up a  personal blog and twitter  that aren’t very active  ( yet ), but it’s still a better way than to try and reach me here.  it’s also better to check in with me on there first before trying to add me on discord bcuz sometimes i change my discord name, so maybe at some point this post won’t be up-to-date anymore.  personal:  @echorruption  /  twitter:  @echorruption.  maybe one day i’ll start posting my art on those again, too.

[comicaurora]

I didn't realize levels of context and such was something I wanted to think/talk on until I read today's page so I decided I might tap you about it if it's alright. Basically, I didn't realize how much I missed everyone Not Being Under Active Pressure until this page. It felt as though something's been made right with the world seeing Erin 0 concealment or hesitation taking notes about Dainix, and what really struck me and got my wheels turning was how this perfectly normal behavior hits so different off the heels of all the weight and pressure and such that Erin and everyone else has been under than it otherwise would hit. Obviously the framing of the page has something to do with the effect I described, but this page feels unique in its requiring context to feel the full scope of the impact.

However, that thought then bounced off a thing that happened where a contextless scene hit me like a truck and demanded I write it despite me having nothing else to apply it to, and I still read it back and need no context to prove to myself that it is a very solid and effective scene in spite of it being like. Five lines and two stage directions. This sort of thing happens with me on occasion where I have isolated moments, single loaded scenes that seem as though they come from context, and yet the context not only doesn't exist but doesn't really need to exist, yet the way it's structured, you think there would surely be grander story context around the scene.

(Sorry I seem to keep giving you walls of contextualizing [ha] before actually getting to the question part) What I wanted to ask you was: What are your thoughts on the relationship between story context and individual scenes/moments in a narrative? The sort of ins and outs of a scene as itself and a scene as part of a story, and a story as a whole and a story as a chain of scenes that give one another context.

This is a fun question, because the need for context to make moments hit was initially something that really frustrated me.

Like many people, my storycrafting started with a big pile of out of context Yo That Would Be So Cool moments - sweet one-liners, fight scenes, big flashy powerups. And I liked the Big Moments from the shows I watched, and wanted to know what made them hit so hard so I could replicate that emotional punch. Was it the kickin' theme music? The determined monologue? The speed lines? The yelling??

And I came to the frustrating conclusion that it was all the slow, often boring setup that had come before the big moment.

The sudden reveal of a superpowered evil side means nothing if we don't know what that character is supposed to act like. A character drawing motivation from a dead loved one tells us nothing if we don't ourselves know and love the person they lost. A jaded, powerful warrior will seem generic if we don't know the fun-loving child they spent two whole seasons being. A character backed into a desperate corner will reveal untapped wells of heroism we can't appreciate if we don't realize how rare this is for them. Powerful moments are in some way carried by what happens in them, but in a much larger way are carried by the contrast between them and the story that preceded them. Stripped of context, all the moments I loved - all the TVTropes "Crowning Moments of Awesome" - were either mindlessly flashy or oddly underwhelming.

In order to make the moment hit, even if the moment was so much more fun and interesting than anything else, the writer had to write all the buildup and pace it out enough that it stuck with the audience, and the audience had to experience that buildup. It just wasn't possible to write a story that was one amazing thing after another without the amazing things losing more and more impact.

We're all on tumblr here, so I'm sure we've all experienced That One Person We Follow getting into some new media property we don't know about. They post mini-essays about why That One Bit With Character A And Character B Was So Powerful, gifsets of two people standing in a dark room captioned with "they were in love here 😍" and extremely well-made fanart of people you don't recognize in vaguely saint-like poses, sometimes captioned with something you think cannot possibly be relevant. This is fine, because you're not the target audience for that fan content. That's for people who already know what the fanart is about - it's essentially referential art that doesn't stand on its own to an outside audience.

But I want people to watch and enjoy the things I watch and enjoy so I have people to talk about those things with. And that means I have spent long hours trying to figure out how to explain to a skeptical audience why a story I liked was so good, and what made the awesome moments work. This is a huge part of the impetus behind Trope Talks, and why the in-depth examples I use always have context as a preamble. Without the context, the moment doesn't work.

If you think a gutpunch is just the moment the fist connects, you're disregarding the windup that actually makes it hit.

[aoitrinity]

Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it. 

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in. 

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length. 

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages. 

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money. 

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments. 

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve. 

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project