#*opening my trenchcoat* yeah you looking for some of those good tropes?

[giantmushyfriend]

One thing about me is that I collect special obsessions like they are antiques. Quite literally, you could catch me in an alleyway wearing a trenchcoat like a cartoon villain, except when I open it up the pockets are full of drugs they're full of the oddest assortment of shit. Do you want TV? I have Good Omens out the fucking wazoo, Supernatural if you're feeling a little burry your gays trope, and pirated Dickinson because your girl does not have the money or the will to get an Apple TV subscription. Books? Hell yeah, I work in a bookstore, babes. I have gut-wrenching classical mythology retellings, soft homosexual romances, dragons, lesbians galore, and the occasional Wilde and Austin. Music? I have all Hozier and Hozier adjacent artists that you could even picture. Historical events/archeology? Pockets are stuffed to the BRIM. I've got em' all, however, I am always looking for more. I am a HORDER. I am like a feral little crow that just goes around snagging different pieces of media that I find shiny and neat, and then stuffing them into my metaphorical trenchcoat until I simply collapse in on myself in my inevitable death. That being said, I decided, hey, lets try out Fleabag. I've heard nothing but good things alongside those who were permanently emotionally scarred by it- but even they have said nothing but amazing things. So, I log onto my student Amazon Prime Video, ready to spend my Tuesday binge-watching some British folk be British. Press play and BOOM, flashback. I'm a little taken back, I don't know these people. And yet I'm given this run down of past events, and I'm a little confused. Who are these people? I don't know! But I decide to live, laugh, love and just accept that this is a stylistic choice that I'm oddly okay with. So anyway, I binge that show like it is crack, and decide it is definitely going into the ol' trenchcoat. By the end I am crying so violently that I need to go sit in a church and contemplate what in the fresh fuck I just witnessed because I am in PAIN with that "it'll pass" fuckery that this man just laid on me. Anyway, I go to exit out to the main page for the show and low and behold my eyes are drawn to this little white button that tells me tHAT I'VE BEEN WATCHING SEASON TWO THIS ENTIRE TIME. It wasn't a style choice- I'm just illiterate. So now I'm contemplating watching season one, but I can't handle that pain. I feel like I just underwent a glitch in the matrix.

What do I do?

Do I go back to the church? Because low-key it was a vibe when I was going through it, definitely should have went there after Good Omens, but the last time I went in there and just sat I got this weird look from this one lady and I don't think I can handle that again.

[civilization-illstayrighthere]

you: do i want to read 38k of an unfinished modern college fallout au on a saturday when i could be doing anything but

me, slapping this on your dash:

i’ve updated my incredibly self-indulgent charon/m!lw fallout college au teen romcom organized crime mystery thriller, if ur looking for something ~fun~ to read please check it out

[sam-winchesters-lost-shoe]

Day 13: Destiel

(Guys I’m super excited to post this because I loved how it turned out, but also, I realized this morning that yesterday’s post never uploaded. Like it’s....gone, so I’ll try to re-write and upload that one tomorrow...(but also it’s a bela fic and I didn’t really like it anyways so if nobody wants it i’ll just forget about. Okay, enjoy the fic, lol, bye!)

Ship: Destiel

Trope: Stranded (+huddling for warmth bonus)

Mood: Angst/Fluff

Words: 1.2K

"Dammit!" Dean growled and slammed the hood of the impala closed. Cas almost jumped from his spot in the passenger side seat, looking out at Dean through the window.

"What's wrong?" 

"What's wrong? Cas, we're in the middle of the freaking arctic tundra or something, with the nearest motel being almost an hour drive away, and the car battery is dead!"

Cas listened for a moment silently, choosing not to comment on the fact that they were in New York and nowhere near the arctic. 

"Maybe we should walk to the motel and pick up the car in the morning."

"Cas." Dean sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "It's an hour drive in the car. That'll take hours even if we were running."

Cas frowned while Dean ran his fingers along his jaw in concentration. He eventually sighed and climbed into the front seat before running his hands up and down his arms in an effort to create some body heat. Every breath sent a visible puff of air out in front of him, the cold freezing the moisture of his breath almost immediately. 

"Dean, are you cold?" Cas asked, even though he was already aware of the answer. It was below freezing outside, and the wind was whipping so harshly that he was almost concerned the open door would get blown off it's hinges. 

Dean just scowled and shook his head, but he did close the door, which Cas was grateful for. 

"Maybe we should call Sam." Cas suggested after a moment.

"I already tried. He said he'd rent a car and meet us, but it's at least an 8 hour drive to get here. He's not gonna be here until morning." 

The two men sat in silence for a moment and listened to the wind against the sides of the car. Cas glanced warily over at Dean who was blowing warm air into his hands and rubbing them together. He felt another frown tug at his lips and let out a breathy sigh.

"I'm sorry, Dean." 

"For what?" Dean replied gruffly and raised an eyebrow at Cas. "None of this is your fault." 

"I don't have my grace. If I did, I could get you out of here and somewhere warmer, but I.....I can't." 

Cas looked down at his lap before looking back when Dean cleared his throat.

"Once again, not your fault, dude. I just...…." Dean stopped when his teeth started chattering and rubbed his hands together again quickly. "I'm getting a blanket from the trunk." 

He disappeared for a few minutes before opening the door with a few bundles of fabric in his arms. He was grumbling something under his breath. Cas was surprised to see flecks of white in Dean's hair, eyebrows furrowing together. 

"Is that-"

"Yeah, it's snow. It's freaking snowing." Dean huffed and ran his fingers through his hair to get rid of the flakes. "I hate winter. Everything is so damn cold." 

Cas nodded, although he really didn't understand the cold all that much. It was then that he noticed the blueish tin that had started to develop on Dean's lips and the way that his shoulders continued to shake even when he had the blankets wrapped around him. 

"Cas, stop staring, I'm not a zoo exhibit." Dean mumbled a moment later, closing his eyes and letting his head lean back against the car seat. 

"Dean, you're going to catch hypothermia if we don't do something." 

Now that Cas had finally voiced his concern, he kept his eyes locked on Dean with a stern expression. He was not going to allow Dean to sit there and freeze to death waiting for Sam because he was too stubborn to ask for help. 

"Cas, I'm f-fine." 

Neither of them had to point out that the chattering of his teeth had gotten so bad that he was stuttering. Cas in response simply leaned forward to shrug off his trench-coat while Dean watched him warily.

"Cas, what're you-"

"Hush." Cas ordered and finished taking off his trenchcoat. He then slid closer to Dean before draping it over the other man's shoulder's despite his protests.

"Cas, I told you, I'm fine." Dean tried once again, only for Cas to give him another once-over before shaking his head.

"You're not. You don't have a warm enough jacket and those blankets are too flimsy, so for once will you please just shut up and let me help you." 

Dean finally shut up. 

Cas slid under the blankets before making sure that the trench-coat was snug against Dean's chin. He made sure to get as close as Dean would allow before explaining.

"My vessel doesn't feel the cold, but still produces body heat. I can also use my wings to try and trap in more heat, if you'll allow me." 

Dean felt another shiver run down his spine, unable to tell if it was because of the cold of that Cas was so close to him. Either way, the heat radiating off of the other man was enough to make Dean stay quiet and give a nod. 

Cas smiled slightly in response before straightening up in his seat. Even though Dean couldn't see the angel's wings, he could certainly feel them. There was an encompassing feeling of warmth that wrapped around his shoulders and seemed to trap in any body heat that was possible seeping through the blankets. Even though there was no actual contact, it was like he was receiving the warmest hug he'd ever gotten. 

"Oh." Dean mumbled in surprise, unsure of exactly what he had been expecting, but.....it wasn't that. "Thanks....Cas." 

Cas nodded simply in response with a small smile. He was still so close that Dean could feel his heart racing a bit, but he also didn't want Cas to move away at all. He was actually starting to feel the heat slowly thawing his muscles, and it was surprisingly comforting. 

"You're welcome, Dean." The angel replied simply, glancing at the clock of Dean's watch before continuing. "Sam will be here in seven hours. Why don't you get some rest, and I'll keep watch?" 

"Um....yeah...yeah, sounds good." Dean mumbled before clearing his throat. He had no idea how he was supposed to fall asleep with Cas literally a few inches away from him, but he figured getting some sleep was better than sitting in the awkward silence any longer. 

Dean let his head rest on Cas's shoulder in an effort to soak up any more warmth that he could, and Cas smiled happily at the motion even though Dean couldn't see. 

"Goodnight, Dean." 

"'Night, Cas." 

It didn't take long for Dean to drift off, practically lulled to sleep by the comfort of Cas next to him. Cas was overjoyed knowing that he was able to help, and he actually didn't mind sitting in silence. 

Even though the only noise was the sound of Dean's soft breathing against his neck, Cas sat the entire time and watched the snowflakes. 

There really was no better way to see his first snowfall than this. 

[trulycertain]

Deus Ex & the Spirit of Noir

Or “it’s not just the venetian blinds and the scotch and the trenchcoat.”

(Look, I might well be rusty. If someone has issues with my history or my summations of these genres, I’d love for them to tell me. Note: I kind of poked at this and adapted it from a conversation with @casie-mod.)

All right, so I’ve been thinking... Deus Ex and cyberpunk in general, for good and for ill, are so utterly influenced by noir tropes. And oddly, despite not being a direct grandson, I think Deus Ex gets the spirit of noir and some of what it was trying to say better than a lot of self-professed neo-noirs.  A lot of people get stuck on the specific aesthetics or tropes without understanding why they're there. DX falls into that trap sometimes, but it also manages some nice subversions and recontextualises them in some really cool ways. 

*puts on nerd fedora and trenchcoat*

Noir heroes tend to be everymen, cogs in machines. Though I think it's significant that a lot of later noir was written and filmed in the Forties, so many later heroes ended up being tangentially affected by the war in some way. Scarred - mentally or physically - men who kept the world at bay through sarcasm and wanted to trust people but couldn't afford to, with a weakness for women they perceived as damsels in distress. With flappy trenchcoats. And usually a liking for scotch. So on. May sound familiar. 

People often think "jazz score" without understanding that writers were telling stories about disenfranchised heroes who were working-class and viewed as shady and who had often left behind more respectable lives, so they had a social mobility other people didn't and were good at moving around unnoticed - which also meant they often interfaced with black neighbourhoods and black servants. That social flexibility is part of why many noir protags were connected with "respectability" which they then had to turn away from - that's why so many are/were cops, or were in the army, so on. It's a bridge between the “respectable” readers and writers, giving them a relateable starting point, and the worlds of the greyer protags. It makes the protag more understandable. 

For Deus Ex, the idea of transition from a respected position/part of the system to an underclass starts with Jensen moving from police to a morally greyer position in the form of private security work (which would be very much an equivalent of the modern PI, hence its use in cyberpunk), and then that transition is completed/intensified by the augmentations. Is that at times awkwardly handled? Hell yes. They can’t seem to decide whether augs are class, race, disability or none of the above, and whether they should be telling a story like that is an interesting, significant question. But thematically, that arc is pretty consistent with a lot of noir, particularly later, more hard-bitten noir. 

A big thing in noir was class commentary and the way rich, clueless clients are contrasted with the weary PIs. PIs move between the oppressors and the oppressed because everyone equally views PIs as trouble and hates them. (The class + hatred stuff is something DX utterly gets right, actually. There is a big reason they went for a cynical “working-class hero” type in the game.) People hated private dicks and still do. Quite often with good reason. Look at the rl history of the Pinkertons, for example. So you may view the protag as cool, but in-universe they shouldn't be, and they shouldn't straight-up be presented as cool unless it's with nuance and downsides. This is kind of where Deus Ex diverges sharply, because most traditional noir protags don’t have superpowers or wear shades indoors, but at least they balance it with his fallibility and the way his augs close doors for him as well as open them. That “downside of all the cool tech” stuff is part of why I love cyberpunk in general.

A lot of people see the snark as this easy part of noir, as much as lyricism. It's cool, I like it, I enjoy snark. They miss that it comes from pain and oppression, and the societal context for what makes someone "hardboiled."

Like cyberpunk, noir has always been class commentary. It's always been about hatred and societal ills and the little evils people do to each other.

Also, a noir protag does not have to be a PI. Several instances of the genre had protags that weren't, but that stereotype came about because the crime comics and stuff with PI heroes tended to sell well (Sam Spade, Dick Tracy) and then be made into films. Those images are the ones that lasted most, but they're not the only thing. "Gravelly private investigator in a trenchcoat" is not required for noir, even if I like it. (I do. A lot.) 

And the trench and gear? In the case of noir, it was often cheap, and often worn-down (*glares at jensen*), and utterly ordinary. It's working gear, not something fancy. It marked them out as separate and a bit rough.

Megan actually both subverts and plays into the femme fatale trope in ways I adore - it's like Eidos almost set out to make that trope make more psychological sense and be less misogynistic. A lot of writers use femme fatale tropes as an excuse to be misogynistic without realising that several noir writers were female, even if they were working under male pseuds, and used this as a subversion of the damsel in distress trope, because this was often the best they could get at the time. And that happened less than the Chandlers of this world, but it did happen as well as male writers doing the "she had legs that went on for miles" thing. Subverting it would be exactly the modern equivalent and the right thing to do. Noir is all about subversion. It walked the line between being a very popular, sellable genre and one the government hated.

(Noir also doesn't have to be a murder mystery. But that's a whole other thing. And it's not just novels, serials, films or comics, it encompasses a whole... thing. It's not just venetian blinds and red lipstick. Those were just an easy shorthand.)  

Here’s my theory: Like cyberpunk, and like a lot of later comics in the 70s and such, noir came about as a symptom of people no longer trusting their government and being terrified of what they saw as extremism and moral absolutes. Noir's heyday was the 20s to the 40s/early 50s, the Jazz Age and the fall of the Weimar Republic + the rise of fascism. And then with later 40s noir... America, pre-Greatest Generation mindset, saw this weirdness and then eventually saw its people dying. Add that to the Depression, Capone scandals and Prohibition basically growing gangsters from the ground-up, and you end up with people still scarred from economic hardship and systemic corruption, knowing that the cops didn't go into certain neighbourhoods, and trying to balance the fact that their mindset didn't entirely match the boom times of the 40s due to war imports happening around them. Noir was a healthy way of dealing with despair and a sort of... systemic "ugh." Cyberpunk and superhero comics kept this root. This idea that when the government and the police wouldn't help, sometimes someone else would, and this idea of trauma making you into a kind of, at the very least, anti-hero.

So this concept of a dark mood and score coming from the background societal oppression, of the exploited coming back as a hero because trauma has given them certain skills and a very particular perspective, of the hero being spat at everywhere they go and having the opportunity to be part of a corrupt system, whether or not they take it... and flappy trenchcoats... in a video game, the modern equivalent of the written-off comics and pulp novels at the time?

Yeah. I like it.

Cyberpunk always plays with some of the hallmarks of noir, but whether intentionally or not, the Deus Ex prequels got the spirit of the thing. It got that noir comes from corruption, and how easily real life can seem like a dystopia. Rather than skate over the oppression to get to the procedural mystery and cool metal arms the way a lot of cyberpunk does, it put that oppression front and centre. And then it chucked some cool wing motifs and an awesome soundtrack and Renaissance motifs in there, too. Of course I was in.

(Also, yes, the devs were waaay into Blade Runner. Most cyberpunk creators are. But somehow, whether by accident or not - I suspect by accident - they managed to tell a slightly more trad-noir story than BR did.)