#And IMO he's the easiest to throw people and start with because he has that extrovert energy about him even if he's the ordinary boy

[alchemistdetective]

The Idol

[bigskydreaming]

Tbh, that last reblog about “woman compulsively overshares but somehow people still don’t know anything about her” actually sums up Dick Grayson very well IMO.

Because its one of the easiest and most subtle ways for people to keep secrets:

Convince people you HAVE no secrets or the capacity to keep them.

I can readily see Dick as someone who habitually almost overwhelms people with random information about himself, his day, his past, in such a way that they almost start to tune him out when he launches into some random anecdote......while most people aren’t likely to think too much about the fact that still the only information actually being shared is information Dick is WILLING to share.

And when you freely volunteer information that you can’t see as possible to use against you or have no reason to protect or not give up, but as much to use it as a smokescreen as because of any real reason to share it....you retain full control of what information you do and DON’T share, and its kinda a preemptive defense. If Dick’s always freely volunteering information about himself or his life without anyone even having to ask.....most people aren’t likely to ever realize that its equally true that they’re never really even getting the CHANCE to ask SPECIFIC questions in search of specific answers.

Even someone actively looking to use Dick as an information source or think he has some info they want to get out of him, like, upon seeing how freely and casually he talks about himself....is likely to be more inclined to sit back and wait, erring on the side of doing nothing to reveal any particular interest they might have in learning any specific information from Dick....instead banking on the fact that with this guy running his mouth as freely as he does, all they really have to do is wait and he’ll lead them close to what they’re trying to learn and they can just hone in from there all without ever revealing their hand.

Meanwhile, Dick’s just leading them on a merry conversational chase that isn’t likely to ever get anywhere NEAR any kind of actual sensitive information, because just because he gives off the IMPRESSION that there’s no subject he won’t talk about or keep hidden, he never at any point is actually oblivious to what he’s divulging and is really just keeping up a steady patter of seemingly innocuous conversation that’s actually intended as a never-ending maze of conversational red herrings. Keeping people eternally on the hook and thinking they’re about to hear some juicy intel but always skipping juuuuust shy of giving anyone anything Dick doesn’t actually want them to know.

Its the feint within a feint idea. Even the most secretive people have varying DEGREES of secrets. Even the most guarded individuals have layers of things they consider to be greater vulnerabilities than other lesser ones.

Someone like Dick, I imagine, might be likely to view even varying levels of conversation as something like a chess match. Where the goal isn’t necessarily to keep someone from ever learning ANYTHING about him, but rather just to keep them from realizing they’re only ever earning exactly what he wants them to know and not a thing more. 

The goal isn’t to ‘win,’ but rather to just ensure that one’s conversational opponent never actually realizes they’ve ‘lost’.....even if sometimes the best way to do that, from Dick’s POV, is to offer up a sacrificial pawn, let them have an ACTUAL secret of his, or learn of an ACTUAL vulnerability he’d rather not disclose....but that BY disclosing or giving up.....he’s able to steer them away from his greater secrets or vulnerabilities. As instead they leave the conversation thinking they’ve ferreted out what it is they were there to learn or get out of him, while in reality he only put up just enough of a ‘fight’ or ‘chase’ to sell them on the idea that they accomplished something he didn’t want them to, or they pulled one over on HIM, learned something he didn’t want them to....and in doing so, allows them to ‘walk away’ with a sense of accomplishment, their goal already succeeded at, all without realizing that there was a much greater treasure trove of secrets or vulnerabilities that still lay ahead....with its greatest protection being that people think they’ve already found all there is to find and thus turn back before ever looking deeper just in case there might be more.

Essentially....its just another version of the Brucie act. Keeping people from investigating the deepest parts of a person by leading them to believe they just have very little depth to begin with.

But while Bruce’s version of this tactic is to shroud himself with the illusion of being a very shallow body of water, with so little depth you can see all the way to the bottom just from the surface, and thus turn away because you’re convinced there’s literally nothing TO see there, because if so you’d already have been able to see it with a glance.....the ultimate bluff....

Dick’s version of this tactic is to hide his secrets in a maze that people never realize is a maze, because he presents himself as more than willing, even eager, to act as a tour guide and show them around the place himself, take them right to whatever it is they want to know.....but all while steering them down a self-chosen path that keeps clear of all the more intricate and better-defended parts of the maze.

And so ensures the people ‘exploring it’ never actually get a clear view of how much bigger and more complex it is than they’re even being ALLOWED to notice.....the ultimate misdirection.

I think it fits both their overall personalities and even is reflected in their combat styles too.

Bruce is of course a master of misdirection himself, but his approach tends to be more brazen. He bulldozes through expectations and hides his true motivations or thoughts or feelings beneath the cover of the massive, distracting debris he throws up wildly in his wake, everyone too busy gawking at the DISPLAY he’s given them to witness and speculate and gossip about, to realize that it was all just a carefully constructed diversion meant to keep people too occupied to notice the real work going on just down the street.

Whereas Dick learned both from Bruce teaching him how to hide his secrets and keep things like his identity well guarded, and from watching Bruce put his teachings into action himself at gala after gala and even when interacting with his peers in the Justice League at times....

But just as with his combat style and Robin and Nightwing personas, Dick also flavored his own approach to misdirection by pulling from his origins and utilizing a more performative technique that isn’t as much aimed at crafting an immersive ILLUSION for his true thoughts or motivations to hide behind, but rather is aimed at crafting a more interactive SHOW, complete with audience participation, to put on as a cover for his true thoughts and motivations....where just like a performer calls on spectators to participate and thus help demonstrate how ‘real’ the performance actually is.....the true obfuscation lies in how the performer never actually loses control of the narrative he’s constructed in such a way as to build towards an inevitable ‘big finish’ even while allowing and ASKING for total strangers to play a part along the way.

Its an interesting dichotomy to me, how Dick and Bruce can be so similar even in their guardedness, but still distinct when you hone in on things like the nuts and bolts of how they go ABOUT guarding their most secret selves.

[noethicalconsumptionunderdisney]

Hogwarts Sorting Profile: Alex Russo

Alex Russo is the quintessential Disney Channel Anti-Heroine of my generation, and a fascinating character to look into, so who better to start this series?  Here I’ll be using the SortingHatChats system so I can really dive deep into how characters think and act.

I’m gonna start with Alex’s Secondary for this one, because it’s the easiest to argue for, it’s something she wears on her sleeve very proudly, and something a lot of viewers pick up on pretty easily.  Alex Russo is a Slytherin Secondary par excellence.  

It’s not so much the fact that she’s good at talking circles around people, manipulating them, and “winging it” in general, it’s the fact that she revels in it.  She’s in her element when she does it, and you can tell she’s a natural at it.  For a few brief examples, she tricks the dragon-seller into taking the wrong case in “Curb Your Dragon,” she talks her dad into letting her learn to fly the magic carpet, and she convinces Justin to let her be an understudy in the school play by twisting him taking their dad’s advice into “Dad’s making all your decisions for you,” and that’s just in the first few seasons.

But Alex doesn’t see herself as duplicitous or immoral for this.  When Brad, another Slytherin Secondary, might get to go to the World Summit instead of him, Justin calls Brad a kiss-up and a schmoozer, but Alex sees it a little differently:

“He’s not a kiss-up, he’s just good at getting what he wants.  That’s one of the things we have in common.”

For her, it’s about knowing what you want and knowing how to get it, nothing more and nothing less.  Saying whatever you have to say is just what you do.

Another, big way this manifests is a preference for improvisation over preparation, specifically when it comes to magic.  Knowing the right spells certainly helps, but Alex doesn’t see the value in reading or studying, often preferring to throw herself into a situation and use whatever spell she can think of to get out of it.  When she thinks Uncle Kelbo is offering to be her teacher, she jumps at the opportunity, and when her dad is upset, they have the following exchange:

“Dad’s great with Justin and Max, but I don’t think I’m reaching my full potential with him.”

“Well!  I don’t wanna stand in the way of your full potential.  Maybe Kelbo should teach you!  Maybe you’ll actually show up on time for his lessons!”

“I will, Dad, because you know what I was thinking, is that I learn more by doing than I do by learning!”

Of course, Kelbo doesn’t want to do it, and Jerry is a better wizard than him, but I don’t think Alex was wrong for wanting to try a new approach.  After all, in The Finale, she takes all the points in the round dedicated to solutions to situations she’s had to get out of, and she’s the one who ultimately thinks of a way to defeat the griffin when they are thrown into a bad situation to save Harper and Zeke earlier in the episode (more on that later).  “Not thinking” works for her— that is, thinking on her feet rather than thinking ahead.  Alex isn’t about to waste her time untangling a complex knot, when cutting it will achieve the same result.

So anyone whose single-house sorting for her is Slytherin, I understand.  She’s definitely adaptable enough, and certainly cunning enough, to qualify for it. 

However.

Alex Russo is NOT a Slytherin Primary, and I will fight you on this.

Sure, she is definitely self-serving a lot of the time, and has loyalty to her loved ones in spades as well.  In many lower-stakes situations, you can see her taking the “easy way out” instead of doing the responsible thing, and she certainly has little use for rules a lot of the time.  But in high-stakes situations, she sacrifices her own well-being with very little thought to what consequences she’ll have to face later… or even when she knows she’ll be punished.  Hell, sometimes her schemes go so terribly wrong that after finally setting them right, she’s relieved when she gets a scolding, grateful that the balance has been restored… and that the world is just again.

(Now, I personally don’t believe the Wizards of Waverly Place world is a particularly just one, but Alex trusts the world she lives in more than I do, so I’ll save my own thoughts and feelings about that for another post.)

Not only is she not a Slytherin Primary, she has a fundamental issue with people doing “good” because they’re expecting a reward for it.  Good is something you do for its own sake, not because there’s a ribbon waiting for you on the other side.  The speech she gives the Happy Helpers in “Alex Does Good” says it all, really:

“You guys think you’re helping the community, but you’re hardly doing anything.  And you do it for selfish reasons.  Now, I know I can be a little selfish too because I don’t help a lot of people.  But I know when I do.  I do more than this, and I don’t expect anything in return.  I don’t even do it to make myself feel better.  I do it to make the other person feel better.”

So where does this selfless streak come from?  For Maggie in that episode, or her friends, her family, or love interest, you could still argue there’s a Slytherin loyalty at play.  But many instances of her saving the world contradict this.  In “Wizards Unleashed/Alex Saves Mason,” she tells Justin, within earshot of the country wizards, that there’s nothing she won’t sacrifice for Mason… but it’s a ruse.  She doesn’t sacrifice her family’s portal; instead, she finds a way to bring Mason back without sacrificing anything, her cunning Slytherin Secondary coming in handy once again.

We see another, even clearer example of the same phenomenon in “The Good, The Bad, And The Alex.”  I have a lot of issues with this episode, as I’ve expressed previously and will probably express in the future, but it does, IMO, firmly establish Alex Russo as an Idealist at heart, cutting off a close friend when she “realizes she’s evil” in a way that is literally ice-cold. (And no, I do not apologize for that pun.  Lbr, if y’all are watching Disney Channel, you’ve heard worse.)

Which leads us away from the question of what Alex isn’t, and back to what she is.  I would argue that while self-preservation and self-interest are not necessarily the core of her morality system, her morality is based from her inner self: her thoughts, feelings, and moral impulses.  Deep down, often buried intentionally under a “devil-may-care” persona, Alex is a Gryffindor Primary who believes that when the world needs her to, she has an obligation to do the right thing no matter what the cost.

“Alex Tells The World” is the perfect example of this.  She’s led to believe that the government has captured countless wizards, and she is told to lie low and do nothing by her family.  But this bothers her too much, and unable to leave the fate of the wizard world to chance, she defies the rules and the people around her and exposes magic, believing it’s the only way to save everyone.  

Her Gryffindor Primary is far from unblemished or naïve— she often doubts herself, internalizes the criticism from those around her, or believes that other people are better examples than herself of “The Right Kind Of Person To Be” (namely, Justin).  Why not consider her Burned then?  

The thing with Burned Primaries is they tend to act differently, change their behavior based on those doubts.   Alex doesn’t.  So while she may be a little charred, possibly teetering on the edge of burning at times, she never quite does it, because she still goes with her gut when the chips are down, even if she’s a bit more hesitant than some of her counterparts.  

And while Justin may often try to convince Alex to follow the rules, there’s also been plenty of instances where Alex is the one trying to convince Justin to do what’s right — the Rosie arc, The Movie when he forgets her, The Finale when their friends are in danger — and all self-doubt and comparisons aside, she’s still not afraid to disagree with him when she knows in her heart what’s right and she wants him to do it.  He may be someone she looks up to, looks to for guidance oftentimes, but he’s not the basis of her morality— that still comes down to her.

One last thing I want to touch on: Alex has a saving-people thing.

Now, a lot of the time the thing Alex is saving people from is something she caused in the first place. But I’m not getting into that because we’d be here all day.  Thing is, though, even when it’s not something she was responsible for, she still feels a moral obligation to set things right.  

When Jenny Majorheely begs her to help undo a curse TJ caused in “Art Teacher,” Alex isn’t even supposed to let her know magic exists, and yet she still dumps “undo” dust onto her just in case her story is true (which, of course, it is, leaving her without an art teacher and causing the conflict for the rest of the episode).

When Alex has done everything she can in “Wizards vs. Angels” to save her brother and stop Gorog’s plan, Rosie convinces her to come back by saying, “There’s still good in you.”  Alex reluctantly agrees that there is, and can’t ignore it, coming in guns blazing with a pair of rental wings and a hard landing, and even battling her brother, all to get the world’s Moral Compass back where it should be.

Nothing shows this better than The Finale, though.  While Alex is warned that she could risk her spot in the Wizard Competition, all she can think about is getting Harper and Zeke back safe.  Justin and Max are more reluctant to risk their powers, but Alex’s certainty sways them.  Not only that, she distracts the griffin by taunting it to attack her, before cuing her family to tie it up together and defeat it.  Later, when the competition is back on, Alex helps Justin out of a tree root instead of running through the finish line and tells him, “I don’t wanna win this way,” once again choosing heroism over self-interest.  Far from expecting anything for it, she tries to stop Justin from telling everyone what happened.  I don’t believe it’s because she doesn’t care about the Wizard Competition, though.  It’s because other things matter more to her (and possibly, on a subconscious level, she’s internalized the idea that he “deserves it more,” but this is getting pretty long, so I’ll save that for another post).

And while “Alex vs. Alex,” aka the Epilogue, is another example of her fixing her own mistakes, she fixes that mistake by wishing away her wizard powers, cancelling out the existence of her evil self.  Although she comes to the crystals later fully expecting her powers to be reinstated, in the moment, she’s only thinking of stopping evil.  In the words of Steve Rogers, she “makes the sacrifice play” when there’s no metaphorical wire to cut, or when that wire-cutting requires great personal sacrifice in order to happen.

Conclusion:

Alex Russo is a Gryffindor Primary and a Slytherin Secondary.

Her Slytherin Secondary, “the end will no doubt justify the means” method of resourcefulness, quick wit, improvisation, and yes, deception and manipulation, is what she thrives on, relies on, and what gets her out of (and into) most situations. 

Her Gryffindor Primary is her moral core and what drives her towards her more selfless and heroic endeavors, and what reins in her more selfish tendencies, even if choosing what feels right over what others tell her gets her in trouble sometimes.

In an earlier (I think now deleted) post on sortinghatchats’ tumblr, they talked about the “volume” of Primaries vs. Secondaries having an impact on characters as well.  I think this absolutely applies to Alex.

Her Slytherin Secondary is extremely loud, and comes across in pretty much everything she does.  Her Gryffindor Primary is a small, quiet ember burning inside her at all times, covered up by ten layers of irony, sarcasm, and selfishness, occasionally flaring up into a full-on inferno when there’s been great injustice or when people are in danger and need help, and then quieting down back to that little flame again, to be covered up and put back in her (metaphorical) pocket until she needs it again.  One side may be easier to spot than the other, but both are equally important to understanding who she is.  She may be unapologetic about her own self-interests, but when the chips are down, those interests come second to her sense of right and wrong and she’ll drop everything — her powers, her life, and sometimes even a friend — in service of the Greater Good.

(Justin, on the other hand…)

[moderndaygaang]

tagged by @praetorqueenreyna woohooooooo

To see the fics I’m talking about, here’s my ao3 ! (I’m including a WIP or two in this that i am THIS CLOSE to being done with and plan on posting before the year is out and I don’t have much else 🤷‍♀️)

Which Of Your Fics...

Did you think would get a bigger reaction/audience than it got: HONESTLY I was expecting “Hit And Run” to get more hits. It got way more genuine love in the comments than I ever expected from the people who did read it (including so many writers I admire *swoon*) so who cares, truly! I just forget how few people actually ship zutaraang.

Is your funniest: i actually think my korrasami WIP is very funny but that’s because i think Korra has a good sense of humor and her banter with Bolin is like the first half of the fic lmao. Out of my published stuff I would say “Better Left Unsaid” is more consistently funny throughout, but i did actually laugh out loud writing “Hit And Run” because of the ending!

Is your darkest/angstiest: none of my published/complete work because it’s not quite my style, but I have a Rangshi WIP that will be posted soon that is quite angsty and depressing feat. What if Rangi and Kyoshi didn’t get together and Rangi fucked with Kyoshi’s emotions because of her internalized homophobia ???? why am i writing it? Good question.

Is your absolute favorite: i love all my children equally i refuse to answer this (i actually just can’t decide)

Is your least favorite: mmm probably my most recent one “watch it spin”, which is actually not ATLA but a SPOP fic focused on Catra and Perfuma becoming friends (a big hc of mine) and getting high together (based off some funny fan art). I only say it’s my least fave because it’s not my best work, but it is very niche and self-indulgent and I’m glad it’s in the universe for my own sake!

Was the easiest to write: “Better Left Unsaid”! That one only took a couple of hours. Started as just a warm up for something else and then I was like ‘oh this is cute’ :)

Was the hardest to write: “Wanna Follow Your Voice...”! It was the first fic I had written in YEARS, first for ATLA, and I had never done anything with chapters before. I spent a lot of time on it! Just figuring out the pacing and the events I wanted to include and trying to maintain a consistent tone over time was not easy.

Has your favorite line/exchange/paragraph (share it): gosh this is so hard!!!! I have favorites from all of them. I really was proud of how in “Wanna Follow Your Voice” zuko connects flashes from his dreams to his actual interactions with Aang (too much to share here). But have this bit from “Hit And Run” because it’s peak romcom imo —

Before even Aang can react, heat bursts from Zuko’s finger tips, lighting the poor, unassuming bartender’s beard on fire.

“Shit,” Zuko mutters, and jumps up. The bartender is screaming now, haplessly batting at his own chest to try and stop the flames from spreading.

Katara reacts in time with Zuko, pulling him towards the door while the other customers around him clamor to help the bartender, Rin and Aang included.

Zuko takes the opportunity to grab Aang’s wrist, dragging him away from the scene.

Luckily, no one realized where the flame came from, so their timely exit goes unnoticed. By the time Rin stops and looks for ‘Lee’, they’re already out the door and scaling the building next door to get out of sight.

When they reach the rooftop, they all collapse on their backs and catch their breath. Aang pulls off his bandana and wipes it across his brow.

“Well that’s one way to claim your territory,” Aang grinned. The three of them burst out laughing simultaneously.

When their laughter settles, Katara shoves Aang’s shoulder.

“Hey, you’re a little too good at charming the pants off of our enemies. Tone it down a notch next time.”

“I can’t help that the people love me.” He throws his hands up in resignation, drawing out another laugh from Zuko and Katara.

“I have to say Zuko,” Aang starts as he sits up, leaning back on his hands. “You must really love me if you’re willing to set someone on fire out of jealousy.”

Zuko covers his face with his hands, and an embarrassed groan pushes past his lips before he can stop it. “I didn’t mean to set anyone on fire!” he exclaims.

Have you reread the most: “hit and run” but only because people left the most kind and detailed comments about stuff that I genuinely forgot I put in there so I would go back to refresh my own memory LOL

Would you recommend to someone reading your work for the first time: “Better Left Unsaid”, most likely. It’s short and simple, lighthearted, not too shippy, but still captures my writing style well I think.

Are you most proud of: mmmm “Hit And Run” because I really like the way it turned out. It required the most ‘world building’ (so to speak) which is really not something I feel confident doing, but I think I did well with it! Plus it has an OC who I actually loved creating and would totally write about again.

So fun. Gunna tag @kuchee @jaystrifes and @flerkenkiddingme to do this ♥️🥰

[isthatbloodonhisshirt]

New Year’s Wrap Up!

Thank you @corancoranthemagicalman​ for tagging me in this! I honestly don’t ever think about these things ahaha |D So this is kinda cool tbh. Thank you :3 

Does my current WIP technically count in this case? I’ll pretend it does, I mean, I WROTE it in 2019, just didn’t post it until December 30th |D lol So technically, it counts, it’s only a WIP on Ao3, not on my computer :P 

Fics that you wrote in 2019

Up Down Lock Unlock (Sterek, 42k, G)

Through the Window (Sterek, 6.8k, G)

Business Skype (Sterek, 6k, G)

It Was a Wednesday (Sterek, 80k, M)

Be Still My Heart (You’re Beating Too Loud and my Neighbour’s a Bitch) (Sterek, 34k, T+)

What Fresh Twilight Bullshit is This? (Sterek, 196k, E)

Everyone Needs a Little Mischief in their Life (Sterek, 18k, T+)

There’s no Escape for the Potato Man (Sterek, 54k, T+)

SuperWing, Stucky and SlaDick, Oh My! (Sterek, 34.8k, T+)

Quack (Stiles Stop Calling It That) (Sterek, 16k, T+)

Because Family is More than Just Blood (Sterek, 5K, G)

I mean, again, TECHNICALLY Actions Speak Louder Than Words also counts because I wrote it in 2019 and am just posting most of it in 2020... So... (Sterek, 384k, E)

We are going to assume all questions are answered with the inclusion of Actions.

Total Fics: I wrote 12 fics this year. Enough to be considered one a month, except definitely not one a month since Twilight took me two months and Actions took me a fucking ETERNITY, like, I think I started in July? Maybe August, but still, took me FOREVER!  

Total Words: 877,632. Less than last year :( I broke a million words last year. Maybe I can break 2 Million in 2020! (LOL Yeah no...) 

Ship/Character Breakdowns: LOL Sterek. That’s... that’s it... 

Best/Worst Title:  Best Title (IMO): What Fresh Twilight Bullshit is This? (Idk man, I laugh every time I think about it, so I like it) Runner up Best Title: It Was a Wednesday Worst Title: Up Down Lock Unlock. (I legit had no idea what to call that fic, so, you know |D)

Best/Worst First Line:  Best First Line: From “Everyone Needs a Little Mischief in Their Life” 

To be fair, he hadn’t exactly meant to throw him into a tree.

Worst First Line: From “Quack (Stiles Stop Calling It That)”

“Stiles.” A loud grunt escaped said individual at the harsh smack to his posterior. “Up. Get up.”

General Questions

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

I feel like kind of less than I thought. I had plans for two others but then Actions took over and I know myself well enough to know if I didn’t finish it first, I never would. So I’m gonna take a short break to catch up on like, life >.> And then start back up again starting with a long overdue birthday present. Hopefully I can write more in 2020 \o/

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

HAHAHA Uh, I only wrote Sterek and I knew I would only write Sterek so I guess I knew all along? Man, I write too much Sterek... 

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Probably It Was a Wednesday. I mean, it was super SAD, and I was AWFUL to poor Stiles, but idk, I don’t write Derek’s POV very much, and I kind of liked having Derek be the one to save someone else for once. And I liked that he was the only one who could truly understand what Stiles had gone through compared to everyone else. It was also nice being able to write a fic where it showcases the pack can’t survive without Stiles because once he disappeared, the pack fell apart, and my honest opinion is that that is 100% what would happen. Without Stiles, the pack can’t function and begins to fracture, so it was fun writing them coming back together around him when he returned. 

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

From 2019, What Fresh Twilight Bullshit is This? To be fair, it’s like, 116k words longer than my next longest fic of 2019 so I feel like that’s an unfair comparison lol.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

I say It Was a Wednesday -slams hands on desk- But I’m biased because it’s my fav from 2019 >.> But it’s number 5 kudos-wise for 2019! I think it’s the angst. The first four are all more fluffy (Except Twilight, but it has an equal amount of fluff and angst). I guess my real self is coming out. SURPRISE! I am an Angst Queen >.>

Story that could have been better?

Be Still My Heart (My Neighbour’s a Bitch and You’re Beating Too Loud). Honestly, not super happy with that fic, but I wrote it for personal reasons. To copy/paste so as not to repeat myself: 

(As of October 2019) So basically, Stiles is currently me. I have had a neighbour complaining about me for literally 31 months (which, for people bad at math like me, is OVER two years) and they are literally ruining my life. I have massive anxiety every time I do anything, INCLUDING SLEEP, and I basically cannot live my life in any capacity. The building manager is really nice to me, but the property manager is pretty much useless and the complaints continue to come during times where I am literally passed out in bed. In light of that, I wrote this fic because by God, I needed some fucking happy in my life over a situation I have no control over. Is Derek in the wrong? I mean, yeah, I never say he's not. Did Stiles suffer? Of course he did. But you know what? He got a happy ending, because turns out his anxiety was due to a poor decision on Derek's part, and he felt terrible about it. I don't get a happy ending, I get constant anxiety and apologetic texts from the building manager because it's his job to tell me he knows I'm sleeping but lady is still complaining. So given I wrote this to make myself feel better, and I decided to share it with you, do me a favour and instead of making me feel worse by telling me how horrible I am and how shitty Derek is, just hit the red X in the corner instead and you can avoid having to look at this fic again. People write things for various reasons, it'd be real great if there was a bit more understanding and a bit less attacks in the world. You don't know why someone wrote something or what's going on with the person on the other end of the computer screen. So just click the X if you hated this fic and thought Derek was a dick to Stiles. I know he was, but Stiles at least gets to live his life anxiety-free because the building manager was in love with him. I get to go cry in the shower every night.

Sexiest story?

What Fresh Twilight Bullshit Is This? It’s the only one with smut, I’m pretty sure, so it’s really the only one that counts |D

Saddest story?

It Was a Wednesday, hands down. I was really mean to Stiles in it.

Most fun?

Oh man, uhhhh... Oh maaaaaaaaan.... I thought it would be between two of them, but it’s between FOUR... Business Skype, There’s No Escape For the Potato Man, Quack (Stiles Stop Calling It That) and SuperWing, Stucky and SlaDick, Oh My! 

Hmmmmmmmmmm..... hmhmhmhmhmhmhm....

UGH! This is hard. Okay, I’ma go with Potato Man. I got the idea randomly and it was ridiculous but still fun, so I’m gonna stick to that. It was my first instinct, going with it. 

Story with the single sweetest moment?

Actions Speak Louder Than Words, but I can’t quote the part because it hasn’t been posted yet |D 

So runner up is It Was a Wednesday:

“Need is a very specific thing. Your dad needs you, because he doesn’t know how to function without you. He needs you to be there to watch what he eats, and he needs you to stay close to him so he knows he hasn’t lost everyone he cares about. He needs you like a dying man needs one more breath. He’s desperate for it.

“Scott needs you, too. He needs you to keep him out of trouble. He needs you to challenge him, to keep him in line, to keep the Pack together. He needs you to be the voice of reason, to make the plans, to know when to fight and when to turn tail and run. Scott needs you like an Alpha needs a second, because he doesn’t know how to do this without you. He doesn’t know how to exist without you in his orbit, because you’ve never not been in his orbit before.

“But me? I don’t need you. At all. Because I survived before you, and I survived after you. I can manage without you in my life, but the difference is I won’t. Because I want you. I want you to be in my life. I want you in my space, arguing with me, annoying me, being infuriatingly right all the time. I want you to be a part of my future, whether it’s as a coworker at the garage, as a Packmate to this broken Pack that I don’t even know can be salvaged, as a friend, as a brother, I don’t care. All I know is that want and need are two different things, and just because I don’t need you doesn’t mean I don’t want you.”

Hardest story to write?

Actions Speak Louder Than Words, hands down. I love dialogue. Like, loooooooooooove dialogue, which is why writing fics with tons of texting make me supremely happy. And I decided, hey, what if I wrote a fic where one of the two main characters is cursed and can’t speak? What if I did that? And then what if I made it ALMOST 400k? WHAT IF I VERY SMARTLY DID THAT LIKE A VERY SMART PERSON? 

I’m lucky I’m still sane, tbh. 

Easiest/most fun story to write?

Okay, Business Skype can go here then. Because it was definitely the easiest, and also really fun :) 

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

I mean, kind of It Was a Wednesday, I guess. Like I said above, it made me think about how the pack can’t function without Stiles, personally. So I’d say probably that one for that reason. 

Most overdue story?

Actions Speak Louder Than Words. That thing was an asshole to me :( 

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I don’t think so? Unless writing really excessively long fics this year counts? Because I did two of those... And clearly, I learned nothing from that suffering.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

To not take five months to write one fic... That’d be good |D Kinda wanna do another challenge, but don’t know what. I’ll think on it. If anyone has any challenge ideas, let me know :) 

[elfyourmother]

@shadow-hikari

I used to work for a big bank doing customer service for their credit cards so most of this was Bootstraps(tm) combined with my insider knowledge and also doing my homework

All the bad shit on my file was from upwards of a decade ago so I basically was starting from scratch. Nothing bad on my report but nothing good either. Nothing at all period. I knew I wanted to start over with a secured credit card and after doing a lot of research I applied for the Discover IT chrome secured card with a $300 deposit, which was my limit. I made small purchase every month and put my Netflix bill and Sephora Play! subscription box on it and paid in full (PIF) either manually or thru autopay. After they reported to the credit bureaus and I got a FICO score of 650 or so, I kept it nice and easy. Small purchases, PIF. Kept my utilization (how much I spent vs total limit) very low. Score kept creeping up. After a few months when I hit low 700s I applied for a regular non-secured card (Capital One QuicksilverOne) and got it, albeit with a tiny limit. But I used the same principles as with the Discover. Kept utilization low, put a small recurring bill on it (this time, Hulu), PIF every month.

The nice thing about Discover is that as long as you keep paying on time and show responsible use of the card, they graduate you to the unsecured version of the IT Chrome after about 9-12 months. I “graduated” at 9 months and they bumped me up to $1500 limit and returned my security deposit. 1 1/2 years later I have a wallet full of rewards cards with significantly higher limits including a couple of semi-premium travel cards, Chase is throwing mortgage preapprovals at me when I’m not even in the market for property, and my credit union is practically begging me to get an auto loan from them. That humble $300 Discover secured card has grown into the best rewards card Discover offers (I was able to upgrade the regular chrome to the regular IT) and is responsible for all of this, all with my hard work and discipline.

A lot of ppl are afraid especially if they’ve gotten in trouble in the past with them but it’s honestly the “quickest” way to start. I like secured cards for this especially because they have such tiny limits that you have to try really fuckin hard to fuck up. It’s like a training wheels card to help you (re)build a sense of discipline. I have color coded calendars and spreadsheets for my CCs.

Stay away from predatory subprime lenders like CreditOne. They charge insane fees and prey on desperate ppl. Discover is fucking amazing and imo has the best secured card on the market (it’s the only one I’ve ever seen with any kind of rewards program) as well as amazing non-outsourced customer service but IT Chrome is not the easiest secured card to qualify for. If you can’t get that then Capital One has one. Best yet if your bro can qualify for a credit union membership (and it’s easier than you may think), they tend to have secured ones available also.

A word about CreditKarma, NerdWallet, etc. I use them but I caution people. First of all any time something is”free”, that means you’re the one for sale. In this case, these sites make money off referral links for the credit card application links they throw at you (their “approval odds” are similarly tainted bc of this). Secondly the “FICO” score they give you a something credit card hobbyists call a Fake-O score; it’s something called VantageScore 3.0 which virtually no lenders use to determine eligibility for credit. FICO 8 is what lenders use. VS are generally inflated by comparison BUT if you take them with a grain of salt they can give you a decent ballpark estimate of whether or not your score is on the right track. That’s how I use those apps.

I will say though that depending on where you live there may be non-profits or gov’t agencies that do free financial counseling if he wants help specific to his situation. In NYC the Dept of Consumer Affairs runs Finanical Empowerment Centers in conjunction with local non-profits to offer free one on one counseling.

Biggest advice: be patient. It won’t happen overnight. Plant the seeds and watch them grow.

[ryder616]

Rewatching Seeds

Melinda “our mission isn’t finding your parents” May goes on a mission to find out about the parents😁.

She's actually been on this mission since The Hub, when she agreed to help Coulson treading those “dangerous waters” - yeah, you guys have NO idea – and despite her open displeasure in The Bridge, here she delivers. It’s a rare opportunity to see May the investigator in action: the Lumley angle is entirely her idea and she manages to track him down after he’d been in hiding for a couple of decades. Not too shabby. As for Lumley, he’s as dramatic as they come. Wherever she goes, death follows? Sheesh!

While Philinda are having their working vacation in Mexico City, showing off their l337 stakeout skills in the totally inconspicuous BRIGHT RED VINTAGE CAR, their younger teammates are left to their own devices and boy it’s like that episode of every family sit-com ever: the “parents” are away, the “kids” are on their own and the responsible “older sibling” is left in charge. There's even a party, with alcohol! Kudos to the sci-tech cadets for the coolest boiler room in history, btw.

At this point, back in the day, I had finally started warming up to Ward, the one character I hadn't loved straight away in the pilot. He played along when they teased him, had come around on the science twins and had defended and trusted Skye in the previous episode. The guy was okay. And with so many quirky characters, including the leader, the team needed a straight-shooter. Right?

Yeah. Mistakes were made. *cough*

Speaking of mistakes, Donnie Gill makes here the one that ruins his life. A good kid, says Fitz, and it’s plain how he sees himself in the young cadet, who’s off the charts smart but has a hard time relating to people because of it. And instead of finally meeting a kindred spirit at the Academy, like Fitz did with Jemma, he's befriended by Seth, someone who is very confused about what he wants in his life. I mean, I have no idea how much S.H.I.E.L.D. pays its scientists but odds are, if he wanted to be rich, he chose the wrong career path.

The Clairvoyant told me to say hello. I can just imagine Garrett laughing himself silly that he conned Quinn, of all people. He really didn’t seem the type. But considering what happened here and what’s coming next, I don’t even have a tiny violin to play for him. Douchebag.

Stuff that crossed my mind:

Those portable Ice Age devices might have come in handy against the shrikes. Simmons designed the crystalline nucleation process and Fitz invented the delivery mechanism. For the record.

Aww, they’re all having breakfast together.

Academy of communications [...] the biggest and focused on data analysis. -- It's the easiest to get into. -- That's where you'd be, Skye. -- Thanks. Fitz throwing shade at Skye.

I hacked my way in. It feels like I cheated. Sweetie, that’s not cheating, that’s being brilliant. In season 3 Lincoln will yell at her “I haven’t hacked my way through life”, as if she had it easy somehow. Given how she feels about it here, that will be a particularly low and/or clueless blow by Sparky.

If you don't know the history of S.H.I.E.L.D. by now, there's no excuse. Unless you fell asleep in Professor Vaughn's class, that's a perfectly acceptable excuse. A “professor Vaughn” was mentioned in 1x02 and it wasn’t favourable there either but in 3x21 “Professor Vaughn’s Third Year Compiler Theory” will save Fitz from becoming a “Primitive”. Quite the memorable teacher then, if it’s the same person.

Skye looks young enough to blend in. Actually, Skye should have been young enough to blend in, because everything about her would work even better, imo, if she’d been a few years younger. I blame Chloe, who apparently told them she was 26 at the auditions (she was 26 last year🤣).

And Fitz looks younger than us. -- Time will come when you won't make fun of me for that.You'll be jealous.You'll be jealous, wrinkly old hags🤣 🤣 🤣

That is a wonderful idea. -- Ward has them from time to time. And now he’s throwing shade at Ward! The little bear is on a roll today😂

So, say you're gonna do what this guy did, leave S.H.I.E.L.D., go off the grid. What's your move? Coulson and May will converse about retirement locations in much more dramatic circumstances in season 2. May will settle on the Australian outback for the both of them.

Coulson would choose Lima to disappear in because of its growing food scene, according to May. Add that he recommended Portland to Randolph for its good food scene and went at least once to a strawberry festival in Nowhere, Pennsylvania and I think there can be no doubts: Coulson is a foodie and it is canon.

I’m tired of secrets. We need to root out all the secrets. Coulson, the company man who trusted the system, is officially gone. Or, well, on a sabbatical really, given that in a few months he will be in charge of nuS.H.I.E.L.D. keeping a whole new host of secrets.

She set up a nearly invisible protocol. The foster system was ordered to move the child around every few months. This never made any sense to me. Wouldn’t the foster system still keep track of the kid? How being in one family or twenty significantly improves her anonimity? Mostly, it’s just increasing the odds of raising a serial killer.

Is she ok? -- She’s safe. Safe being a somewhat relative term, given she’s training to become a field agent and has an alarming propensity for charging into danger. But, sure. She’ll only almost die less than a dozen times in six years. Safe as houses (built on top of an active volcano that erupts every month).

It’s just an idea. Says Fitz, after solving in 30 seconds a problem the other genius in the room had been struggling with for weeks on end.

Why is a guy from Operations hanging out in the Boiler Room? Because there’s an ongoing investigation on the portable Ice Age in which you’re both a witness and a suspect. Please don’t play coy with the Hydra spy.

Sometimes it’s not a bad seed, just a bad influence. Heh 😏

Skye is such a lost, neglected puppy. Coulson ignored her for 3 minutes and she was already starving for affection.

Ian Quinn's not the only one who manipulates people, Skye. We do it all the time, actually teach it at the Academy. It's our trade. Are you talking generics or are you fessing up, Phil?

When we started this, I warned you that you might not like what you learn. -- And I told you that it can't be worse than what I have imagined. -- It is. You still have NO idea guys.

They’re moving him to the Sandbox. Where they’ll brainwashed him into compliance to people with a tentacles fetish. Yup, this really backfired.

The world is full of evil and lies and pain and death, and you can't hide from it, you can only face it. The question is, when you do, how do you respond? Who do you become? Oh, look who the camera pans over at “evil and lies”? Coincidence? I think not. Also, the foreshadowing is blinding. Who do you become facing evil, lies, pain and death?🤯

[lovecanbesostrange]

What in the world is happening to Grey's :( I can't believe Alex actually left like that

Yep, that happened. :(

But this whole thing shows that overall people don’t understand how tv shows are produced. There is some information we’re missing, but the thing is, that Justin Chambers just left. If it’s because of (mental) health problems like some suspect or if there was a denied request for producer status or just burn out… we don’t know. And I totally understand why an actor would want to leave after over 15 years.

Still, whenever an actor wanted out, the writers at least saw it coming. Sandra Oh’s departure was perfect. Clearly communicated and all. Dempsey’s exit likewise. When Capshaw and Drew were suddenly let go, the writers could at least give them something. (As stupid and hemfisted as it may have been, especially with April. Don’t mind her ending up with Matthew, he is a better fit for her anyway, but it was too sudden.)

Well, and here we are. Personally I like to think that it started as some time-off. Chambers asked for a time-out and got it, with this one line that Alex had to look after his mom. And that everybody thought he’d be back. He could skip 4-6 eps with no real questions asked. But then he didn’t come back. Not a single extra scene could be filmed. And the romantic storyline with Jo could not be followed up. They just got finally officially married, everything was perfect for them. So, now what?

This is kinda the whole Meredith/Derek situation all over again. And ever since january when news broke, the only logical explanation to me seemed to kill Alex. To do the Derek thing again. (Except Chambers was clearly more liked than Dempsey, so they did want to leave the door open.) Let’s be real. A lot of people are now saying “should’ve killed him off”. But there would’ve been a huge outcry anyway, because it’s also the laziest/easiest thing to do. Big plus: Alex’ character would be frozen in time. Jo would habe to mourn him (double widow), with nobody’s fault.

I don’t see any explanation that could satisfy me, why on earth Alex would leave Jo. They are too good together. Perfect. In a way most Grey’s couples actually aren’t (Bailey/Warren are the only truly good one left now imo). And again, for the record, I hate everything about Alex being with Izzie again. They were not a good couple (like most). Her cancer brought them together and they were build on crisis mode, but there was no deeper friendship as a foundation. Alex wasn’t the guy he is now and Izzie never got over Denny. Fear held them together.

BUT for the little time they had, for the impossible task to go from happy-spontaneous-marriage to leaving, to give me something I could angrily say “okay” to - Alex leaving because he has biological children he didn’t know about? Yes. I don’t think that contradicts his character development. Of course if Chambers had been there and this had been any kind of plan, the build up would have been different. (With him around and everybody accepting that he would leave a lot of things would have been different.) There would have been face to face moments. I even could imagine a tearful Alex telling Jo all this when he found out, being torn, because CHILDREN! HIS CHILDREN!! And Jo being as tearful telling him to go. But those scenes were never an option.

I have read a few upset fans coming up with other non-death ways to write him out. But those either ignore that there were no more scenes to shoot or are at least as terrible as what we got. (No, fandom really should not write any shows.)

I think what I hate most is that the letter to Jo felt... less. Less emotional than the one for Meredith. I think it was really good getting four letters. Three for the other three people who had been there for his whole journey and of course one for his fucking wife, who had stood by him for over six years (I think, Grey’s sometimes forget to count the 9 months that Meredith took of, but S15 was shorter than a pregnancy and nobody knows how to count time. Some people keep forgetting that S1-3 were all one year. Alex and Izzie knew each other for less than three years.........)

Jo said it best. “I am angry. And I’m hurt.” Buuuuuuuuuuuu~t it is so obvious that this was scrambled together and the actual ideas thrown out the window. There is nothing that the writers could do, that would have saved this mess. But this way at least Alex gets a chance to be happy. Which is nice. I guess. A bit. (So from now on, I will be very anxious everytime Jo is near any dude. Keep the romance away from her. And omg I pray to Grilled Cheesus that Krista isn’t thinking about pairing her up with anybody from Station 19... it’s all so forced... I’d rather see Amelia finally getting her threesome.........)

Personally for the me the insult to injury is Bailey’s storyline with foster kid Joey. Which is everything I wanted for Alex and Jo. (Somebody needs to stop Krista Vernoff from throwing in more pregnancies and babies.)

[asianjeremyheere]

happy one month anniversary to the bmc obcr!!! to celebrate, im gonna put my track-by-track commentary under the cut and split into two parts (act 2 here) because god it got so long and i am. very sorry. read at ur own risk. and it really is just rambling commentary because i had a gdoc out and the whole soundtrack playing, alternating obcr and ocr tracks SO! tada! act 1!

JEREMY'S THEME

Okay the orchestrations are great on both BUT I do prefer how much more sudden the end is on the ocr? Obcr Jeremy's theme kind of has that echoey quality at the end and I'm pretty sure it's just a recording thing but. Recording-wise I do kind of prefer the ocr. That said, I don't listen to Jeremy's theme THAT much.

MORE THAN SURVIVE

90% of this is going to be me preferring the obcr and this is no exception BUT I do like the ocr tempo a little more? It's faster and feels like it captures the whole day-at-school rush a little better, which works in most of the song except during the "Christiiiiine" portions because those are absolutely KILLER when they're a little slower. They sound more romantic, in a way?? Like it goes from Jeremy seeing her, a girl whom he likes and wants to point out to Michawl, to Jeremy seeing her and being totally enraptured/distracted by her, hence the slower/more drawn out Christiiiiine's working in its favor. Also would have like Michael's verse to be faster? I've always imagined him to be, like. A fast talker. I don't really care about how much George changed his voice for it, I just wish it was faster. But overall, I like it better on the obcr because Will R is waaay more emotive and I'm in love with his falsetto and his runs.

I LOVE PLAY REHEARSAL

I know I said I was terrible at recognizing tempo but ILPR feels so fast on the ocr??? Anyway I like the obcr version better and Stephanie is adorable in both but MORE so in the obcr. Her inflections have so much more character and she paints a much clearer picture of Christine as a whole just in that one song. ALSO the added dialogue!!!! Love that. It's also got a less consistent tempo (I think????) which works for a song like this and a character like Christine

MORE THAN SURVIVE REPRISE

This isnt on the ocr but it was in the original show and I got it stuck in my head all the fucking time so I'm just glad it got recorded!! I don't have a Two River audio on hand rn but I like the bway version better anyway because Will R is, again, more emotive and I think it works better with this specific iteration of Jeremy anyways? Like. His whole character is sadder so this song fits a little better.

THE SQUIP SONG

Ngl I can't really tell the difference between the two but Gerard's voice has only had time to improve (I hope? He seems to do a lot of stuff when he's not doing a show and I wonder if he's like. Taking care of his voice. I hope so?) and I love the new glitchy stuff at the end. But like rip the "picture this" verse :( I think I just. Like them both pretty equally??

TWO PLAYER GAME

Obcr babey!!! I like the way a bunch of the instruments cut out and it's just the 8-bit stuff right at the start? That's fun as fuck. Also Will R's "ah! gah!" noises are 💜💙💜❤💖💙🧡💙. The orchestrations in the obcr are also just. God tier. And the tech-y fade out sound at the end is one of my favorite things. Also George's voice is the same pitch but he sounds younger in the obcr and that's not good or bad because he still sounds convincing enough to be a high school either way.

THE SQUIP ENTERS

Okay I like the obcr for this better too just because there's more in it. It isn't just Jeremy screaming for a minute and a half, they also added the dialogue which makes it better. I don't actually really like this song as much on the ocr just because I did. Not enjoy listening to a song that was basically just screaming? It's too loud and I was always worried about people hearing it through my headphones skdjks. The obcr version isn't much better screaming-wise but I can't just straight up skip it anymore because there's stuff at the end. Plus they have a bigger budget for effects and the transition from the startup-Squip voice to Jason Tam's voice where they're doubled up? God. I love him.

BE MORE CHILL, PT. 1

Obcr wins this just for the 'outdated' riff alone. Also, Jeremy sounds more intimidated/impressionable?? WPC Jeremy doesn't sound scared of the Squip/sounds borderline rebellious right off the bat, which is weird considering EWM is allegedly the 'more evil one' 🤔🤔🤔🤔. Plus I think the obcr has more harmonies and Will R's comedic timing during the Squip Tango is spot-on. AND KATLYN!! Yeah. Love her. She's so much more intense in the obcr and it works for Chloe??? She just sounds more passive in the ocr. That said, Jason should have sung more because his voice…… pwetty

DO YOU WANNA RIDE

The obcr ending has my heart…. the pinkberry riff….. the giggle and "au revoir"........ I am in love with Brooke Lohst. I don't really mind that it's slower either? But I can't hear the trombone shot notes as well on the obcr and that makes me sad :( Charlie Rosen ur orchestrations are gold but dont drown out the trombone that was my favorite part of ocr dywr!!!!!

BE MORE CHILL, PT. 2

Jason Tam's Squip voice is good you guys are just mean and don't understand nuance!!!!!!! I love the obcr version of this because a) Jason!!!!!! b) Will!!!!!!!! and c) Tiffany's high note at the end!!!!!!!!! Also the gong!!!!!

For real though? Will R. is much more expressive in the repeat-after-me section and Jason Tam's cooler, more laid-back tone works. I'm more inclined to trust that he can actually help me because he sounds more guiding than demanding and I, personally, don't respond well to people exercising their authority over me! I do much better when things are phrased like "I'm going to help you! Here are some suggestions. Do them. Look, it's working!" vs "Do what I say, it's the only way you'll succeed" and to have the Squip start out sounding more like the former before getting more outwardly controlling works better and makes more sense imo!

MORE THAN SURVIVE REPRISE/SYNC UP

Okay I can't really compare these two because they're totally different songs at this point but I love Sync Up and I can compare that end portion because it's the same! 'Head to play rehearsal' > 'drama practice' because it's not a huge difference but he's parroting Christine's terminology and it shows that he's listening to her, which Mr. Will Roland himself said was a huge part of Jeremy's journey! (Learning to listen.) Also, Will R just sounds more eager and excited to actually be included? Will C just sounds like he's relieved that he's not being shoved around. Will R!Jeremy sounds more excited in general, even at the beginning before he gets shocked. And then his “ghughgh” noise. Mood, Will. The Squip at this part is kind of. Hmm. I don’t really like it in the recorder version ngl but I know Jason talked about like. Struggling a little more to get into the Squip mindset during the recording process because the costumes are so integral to his characterization and he didn’t have said costumes for the obcr recording so I’ll give him a pass. It doesn’t faze me as much in audios so??? Jason Tam u get a pass.

A GUY THAT I'D KINDA BE INTO

The obcr recorders make me ❤💗💖💕💖💕💙💘🧡💘🧡❤💕❤💕💙💜💖❤!!!! Also I prefer the new ending where she goes "Who kneeeeeeeeeew?" and how surprised/thrilled Will R!Jeremy sounds when he says "Is she talking about me?" but like…. Jason Tam, I will defend your Squip voice to my dying day but why did you have to say "pheromones" like that. Okay also I'm listening to each song's versions back-to-back and the tempo changes keep throwing me off. But I do appreciate the lack of clapping in the ocr.

THE SQUIP LURKS/THE SQUIP STALKS

Obcr wins because its an instrumental and I love the bway instrumental. Also, it's longer and spookier. Thank you, Charlie Rosen. You deserved a Tony nom for this shit.

UPGRADE

I'm gonna say right off the bat that I love obcr Upgrade so much because of the additional depth given to Brooke and Jake, and I love the new ending because like woah chills. That's all. It's not a disclaimer or anything, I just love it. Also, Stephanie's "oh wow"? Cute as fuck!!! Britton's voice??? God tier!!!!!! Brooke's french at the start and the way Lauren's voice breaks on "I just want someone to see me first"??? God!!!!!!!! Tiffany coming in by herself before everyone else joins in during that layered section??? I am deceased. I love trying to pick out every individual person's voice in that section. Usually Gerard, Lauren, and Will are easiest for me to pinpoint? Idk. Ocr Upgrade still fucking slaps though. Steph's "oh wow" is a little more underwhelming but I'm like. In love with the tempo right before the "Christiiiine"s? Also uhhh wish they'd included Jeremy and Michael's conversation somewhere in the obcr.

LOSER GEEK WHATEVER

I love LGW and I'll stand by this forever. I'm gonna compare this to the end of ocr Upgrade because that's technically where it goes and I think it does a better job of showing Jeremy's motivations and his worries about taking the Squip! Also it makes sense story-wise that he would take time to slow it down and think/process considering he just…. asked the Squip for time to process….. but like the original ending is still a bop and it's super good for like. Hyping urself up. I just think LGW does better for Jeremy's character and it's a good song!!! It sums up a lot of what I feel/the ways I relate to Jeremy, too, so it's. Emotional hearing it in audios skdjsj but not as much with the recording anymore!!

[calzonekestis]

My Endgame thoughts in 3,160 words and 17,025 characters. Under a cut. Spoilers, obviously.

Really. Truly. The whole thing.

Well. I texted a friend as soon as I got out, and I told him “that was a very good movie peppered with lots of shit that I didn’t care for at all.”

I don’t know what I think about it. If it was good or bad. If I like it or not.

If you read spoilers but didn’t see it, and we’re mad, I get that. I was mad too. I wrote most of this last night, and I’ve had to go back and amend it.

Also, please check your Tony vs Steve bs at the door. I like them both to varying degrees. That said I take issue with Steve’s choices and characterization at the end. We’ll get to that.

The Tony fans at least can say their boy saved the universe. They’re going to be mad still, but at least he went out in the best way possible if he had to die. Which he didn’t, but... we’ll get to that too.

The people who will be mad the most? Cap fans. Sharon Carter fans. Black Widow fans. Thor fans. Iron Man fans, probably, won’t be mad so much as sad. Actually, no, mad, because they probably wanted a happy ending for him.

So yeah. Is it “bad” if it makes so many people mad? Or are they just choices they didn’t like? For me, there was a lot of that. There was also a bit of characterization I didn’t like.

I’ll say this though, because the Steve thing that has everyone mad? I’m mad too, but per their time travel rules?

Steve didn’t erase Peggy’s family. They still exist in our timeline. Steve created a new timeline for himself to go live in. We don’t know if he stopped HYDRA and saved Bucky in that one, but I mean, we can assume.

So everyone complaining that he let all that shit happen? No he didn’t. This is an alternate reality he’s living in now.

If we go by what they established about changing the past not affecting the present.

But then we have Joe Biden Steve at the end, so... unless that’s a Joe Biden Steve who went from his timeline back to ours once he grew old. Not a Steve that existed and lived in the past of our current timeline. Then it actually works without contradicting their own time travel rules.

IMO... they ignored/ruined his character arc... but due to their aforementioned time travel rules, Steve going to the past wouldn’t affect that the present that he’s leaving.

So he COULD stop HYDRA, find Bucky, prevent Howard’s death, warn Hank and Janet about the missile.

That would all be an alternate timeline though, and our Bucky would still be the Winter Soldier.

So yeah, they contradict themselves... and completely fuck over Sharon Carter in the process. You know Steve didn’t tell Sam who his wife was, because he didn’t want him to tell Sharon that after kissing her he went back to marry her Aunt thus creating an alternate timeline to live in.

That’s the present being affected by him going back in time. Your time travel rules suck, Marvel.

So the children and family Peggy had? They still exist in our timeline, but not the timeline Steve created. The reality Steve created.

Okay so they don’t explain it, so this is just me trying to make sense of it myself. They say changing the past doesn’t change the present you left from, so unless Bruce was wrong and they’re contradicting their own rules Old Steve can’t have been actually out there all this time.

So I guess even though he didn’t show up in the gear and with the time machine when we see him, he did earlier, and just went to wait by the lake with the shield to be all dramatic? He probably waited to return until his Peggy died, and then he returned at some random point maybe like a day before they planned to send him back. He knew they would be there, so he just waited in his old man clothes.

That’s all I can think of.

So retroactively?

They had Steve kiss his wife’s alternate reality niece. I like Sharon Carter in the comics, I like what little they did with her on film.

They did her so dirty in the MCU, in the comics Peggy is almost a footnote and just part of his backstory. Sharon is Steve’s true love. Whether you ship them or not, they made Peggy out to be a bigger deal than she is in the source material.

I’m not here for pitting women against each other, but... God, the only woman the MCU has done dirtier is Betty Ross. Who should have been there with her dad at the funeral. Acknowledge her existence, Marvel. Yes they’re estranged, but maybe say having her die made Ross stop being such a dickhead and realize what really mattered.

Calling Peggy the love of his life is bullshit. Yeah, he had a date. Had. He never made it, due to being frozen. I don’t agree that they loved each other, tbh. I saw someone say they each had an idealistic, at times unhealthy attachment... but not love. Frankly? That’s not wrong. They liked each other. It never developed into love. Not in the timeline/reality we followed for the past ten years.

If this was their plan all along, then why did they introduce Sharon as a potential love interest?

Peggy is his past, Sharon is his future. The Lana Lang and the Lois Lane, respectively.

They didn’t plan this. It’s clear by how sloppy it is. It’s just so haphazard and insulting to all the characters involved, and yet Evans seems to be on board with it which disappoints but doesn’t surprise me.

Sharon didn’t have much screentime in the MCU, but every moment she had was important to the plot. She was one of the only agents that questioned Pierce’s orders. She held Rumlow at gunpoint even though the odds were against her. She let Steve know where Bucky was. She gave he and Sam back their gear. A lot of her scenes in Civil War got cut, and she got screwed by making it an Avengers movie instead of a proper Cap film.

She also got screwed by fandom. People acted like known like fucking toddlers, all because she was getting in the way of popular ships. Emily Van Camp was terribly harassed online, people calling her Steve’s beard or that it was icky and gross. Evans even said it was icky, which wasn’t that supportive of him... and then...

I liked Peggy in The First Avenger, but Hayley Atwell’s lowkey/high key narcissism is known within fandom circles, how she turned on Emily Van Camp and Sharon as a whole and threw shade at cons and on twitter and such. That left a bad taste in my mouth where I no longer care for the character at this point.

And they complete ignore/regress Cap’s arc of moving on. The fact he’s not the same man who went into the ice which is something even Whedon realized and addressed when he had him snap himself out of his Scarlet Witch!Vision.

The line from TWS they sampled for the trailer about the world changing and none of them can go back?

That was a lie. What’s ridiculous is that is the same exact directors, same exact screenwriters?

“Some people move on, but not us?” Well in that regard he had, so fuck that.

Speaking of regression, Thor’s?

I’m of two minds. He had depression and PTSD, but in my opinion, that’s end result wasn’t what Thor’s end result would be. He probably felt like he failed his people, but Jesus Christ, turning him into the Big Lebowski... fat jokes...

He becomes king, half his people are slaughtered and then and then he just... abandons the rest? To drink and watch his friends play video games? That’s sad. I think Thor would have felt like he failed and be hurting, but still try to do his best for the people who were left and still needed him? Instead of letting Valkyrie do it and the at the end to officially giving her the burden of ruling and fucking off into space?

And then at the end, he *officially* throws the burden of ruling in Valkyrie’s hands. Not that she isn’t capable, but it isn’t and shouldn’t be her responsibility.

“He’s being who he is, not who he’s supposed to be.”

That would be nice if it didn’t invalidate his arc. He didn’t want to be king at the end of Thor: The Dark World either, but at the end of Ragnarok he accepted it and was at peace with it.

Also, he didn’t need the hammer. Ragnarok made that clear. I’m glad Steve took it back with the stones, and I know it was more Thor needing to know if he was still worthy after becoming Big Lebowski... but it wasn’t needed. They just wanted Cap to wield it, and for them to have something else blunt to hit Thanos with.

This is the easiest money Natalie Portman made in her life. I feel bad for my friend who is a big Jane fan, as it’s literally maybe 15 seconds.

Nice to see Pierce, Sitwell, and Rumlow/Crossbones back, even if it’s only for a flashback and they’re all still dead in our reality. Or it would be, if it didn’t make the latter two out to be dumb. I mean, Rumlow isn’t a genius but he’s not just a dumb meathead. He wouldn’t just hand over the tesseract, he’d bring Cap to his superiors to ask “yeah hey what the fuck?”

Also, having Cap say Hail HYDRA is just... gross.

...Alternate timeline/reality Loki has the tesseract. I guess he’s the one the Disney+ series is going to follow. He’s wiped of all his development, though.

Vision is still dead. I guess maybe Shuri will rebuild him? Or it will take place between Civil War and Infinity War

So Guardians 3 is going to be about finding the alternate timeline Gamora who is now stuck in this one, huh? And I guess Thor is now a Guardian, or he’ll leave them between movies?

The alternate Nebula, I’m torn on. I think they could have gotten through to her, and she would be willing to team up with him. and would be willing to team up with them to kill Thanos. She never told him where the Soul Stone was. I mean, that’s why she aligned herself with Ronan. To kill Thanos. She hates Thanos.

Her wanting to make him proud and earn his favor despite what he did to her is heartbreaking on one hand, but the loyalty, when it’s been shown she’ll be disloyal and desert him if someone promises to kill him... idk. Btw.

Nebula should have gotten to kill Thanos. I don’t care that Iron Man started and is their poster boy. I’m sorry Tony fans. She deserved it more than he did.

Something else I’m curious about... was Peter Parker’s entire class killed? Not just Ned, the whole class. MJ, Flash, etc.? Because his entire supporting cast doesn’t seem to have aged at all in the Far From Home previews.

Also you’re telling me that in those five years, May never confronted Tony? Or if she did, we never saw it? Boo.

Oh, another dumb thing. Banner. Hulk. Professor Hulk. We don’t see how Banner made peace with the Hulk and became Professor Hulk, that all happens offscreen which is so cheap. He’s also just annoying throughout the whole film, and treated as comic relief? Also, the uncanny valley was deep this time around.

I’d honestly rather Cap had died as well, rather than the ending he got. Rather, if old man Steve didn’t show up, and there was just a cliffhanger of him being lost in time? Which has precedent in the comics? That would have been great. Instead of the bad characterization.

I’m indifferent to Tony’s death, honestly. He could have retired and raised his daughter. He could have died. I guess it’s cheaper to just kill him off and not worry about paying Downey for cameos they wouldn’t be able to resist.

Okay, the other death. Nat’s. I don’t care for it, but it worked. When I say it worked, I mean her motivations and the fact she at least had some autonomy. It was still fridging. It’s gross. It sucks.. but at least it wasn’t exactly like Gamora’s where she was a victim. I mean, she is a victim. A victim of gross writing, but... I like the character, you’re killing the only female OG Avenger for angst and drama... I would have preferred it was Renner, but her reasons worked even if I didn’t like it. I do think it would have been even just as heartbreaking/tragic though, it Clint had to give up his life for the hope of getting his family back. A devil’s bargain, they’ll be alive, but you won’t be and won’t see them again.

I question the hell is the point of a Black Widow movie now. Why should we care? Don’t get me wrong I like Nat. I have nothing against self contained, one-off adventures... but... it will be a prequel that doesn’t develop the character at all or see her grow and it’ll be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. It may be enjoyable, but do we need to see it? It’s the Solo situation.

Do we need to see how the character became the character? What purpose does telling her backstory now serve, aside from just making people sad? Do we see how she started so we can appreciate how far she came, though? I can already appreciate that. You don’t need to twist the knife by making her origin her swan song. They can’t bring back our Nat, but who knows. Maybe the next villain will be Kang, and we aren’t done with time travel. Maybe we can have an alternate timeline Nat come into our universe like we did with Gamora.

A timeline where Clint was the one to die. I can deal with that, if they give ScarJo the money. I guess.

SCOTT LANG SAVED THE UNIVERSE. Well, actually. Also, a rat. A rat is responsible for saving the universe. I mean I laughed, but we couldn’t see Scott get himself out? He’s still my boy.

He’s probably my favorite character in the film. Seeing him and Hope reunite in the end battle was nice and made me happy, the way they didn’t miss a beat and got to working together. Him trying to keep it together when he talked about losing her. The end scene with them and Cassie. The fact she called Cap “Cap” and they shared a glance. Sucks for Scott to have missed five years of his daughter’s life, through.

Also, it kinda sucks that along with the people brought back, they couldn’t bring them the likes of Frigga and Quicksilver. Yes, they died, but you can still revive them in the present. You don’t have to make it so they never died. Maybe Quicksilver will Maybe in the WandaVision show, especially now that they won’t have to worry about a competing Fox version. Introduce her ability to warp reality. He was rumored to have been on set, and so I was expecting to see him in a flashback at least. Alas.

SPEAKING OF REVIVING DEAD CHARACTERS THOUGH. Why couldn’t like, Carol, use the gauntlet to revive Tony before they sent the stones back? She could take it. He didn’t need to stay dead, except for the fact... you know... Downey is expensive.

Something I find hilarious?

The kid from Iron Man 3 is at the funeral.

That kid knew nothing about the film whatsoever, except for the biggest spoiler? Cause if they invite HIM back to be at a funeral scene... whose funeral would it be, that he would attend, aside from Tony’s?

Oh, and SamCap. People, calm down.

I like Sam, Sam is worthy of the shield, Bucky’s not quite in a place where he’s ready for it anyway. In the comics Bucky becomes Cap, and then Sam becomes Cap after him. They can reverse the order. Bucky can still become Cap after him. Sebastian still has four movies left in his nine movie deal.

I’m curious about the Disney+ show now though. If it will be retitled, if they announced a fake title ala Serpent Society for Civil War. Although. I have a fear.

I don’t trust Marvel and I can see them killing Sam by the end of the Falcon & Winter Soldier series.

And then Bucky will take up the shield. Mackie’s 40. Idk how much longer he’ll want to be doing this, and he’s said in interviews he had no interest in bringing Cap and would like to see Sebastian take a crack at it, that he likes Falcon being Falcon.

Maybe age isn’t a factor. Bettany’s in his 40’s. Cheadle’s in his fifties. Paul Rudd is an ageless immortal who claims to be fifty. None of those are physically demanding roles though, not to the scale of Cap. The closest would be Chadwick Boseman, who is a year older at 41.

Age aside, I can see them doing it. That’s kinda the shit Marvel would do.

“Yay! We’re so progressive! We’re making Sam Captain America to placate his fans before we kill him! We won’t do that *just* yet in Endgame, we’ll wait to kill the black guy until he’s done helping out this other white guy figure out his place in the world!”

Now I’m gonna be anxious about that for the next year or two.

But so I think the shows are for characters on the shelf movie wise. Idk if when the show is over, we’ll see Mackie as Captain America in Avengers 5. It would be cool, but idk.

I don’t know if they’re even thinking of Avengers 5 at this point, or plotting out things like Guardians and Black Panther and Captain Marvel. And Eternals. And all their new Fox characters.

I guess the new Avengers line up will be Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Wasp, SamCap, and Spider-Man? Maybe Doctor Strange?

Wanda retires to TV. As does Clint maybe, to train Kate Bishop and/or his daughter. Rhodey and Banner are just around.

Also. Banner and Thunderbolt Ross, at the end. Ross and the Hulk. Both in the same scene. Neither acknowledging each other or having any interaction whatsoever. Odd.

I keep hearing rumors about a Thunderbolts movie tho, from someone who was accurate with all of their Endgame leaks. I wonder if they want Ross to be the Fury of that which is why they’ve kept him around.

Bucky recently led the Thunderbolts but also Zemo is so ingrained in their history and I don’t see them working together at all.

I guess you could bring in Bernthal’s Punisher by that point if you want. Elektra. They won’t do it but they could.

Ghost would be a good fit, tho I don’t wanna see her be forced to kill people again. I can see them forcing her to work of a sentence. If she’s still alive, cause God if she was snapped and went 5 years without the Quantum energy... but yeah.

Bring back The Leader as a villain finally. Crap, I’m plotting a fanfiction.

https://twitter.com/rogerwardell/status/1070465411387404289?s=21

Idk. I just. Am disappointed but not surprised tbh.

Everyone knows I don’t like MCU Clint, but the callback interaction between he and T’Challa with the latter remembering his name was nice I guess. The final battle as a whole was nice I guess.

OH. And the exchange between Dr. Strange and Wong about if he brought everyone, and if he anted more? Probably not the intent, but to me it just seemed like a big “shut up” to everyone wanting the Netflix and Agents of SHIELD characters to cross over.

Also, a final critique?

The whole fake scripts, not giving actors a script thing. I hate it. I know like Mark Ruffalo and Tom Holland are notorious for letting spoilers slip, but I legit believe that a reason why A LOT of the actors got fake scripts was not to prevent spoilers but to prevent any of them going full Ed Norton and throwing a fit about the quality of said script.

Not letting the actors know the context of the scene they are performing is not only disrespectful but it’s broken and what can you expect but performances where they’re legitimately incapable of giving it their all?

That’s all I got for now. I guess.

I know it’s a joke, “I loved everything except for the stuff I didn’t” but seriously? I enjoyed everything except for the stuff I hated. Does that stuff ruin the movie? Do I not like it because I’m petty, or because it’s bad? You can not like something, it doesn’t mean it’s bad... but I think certain choices... were bad. Were very bad.

Was it shit sandwiched with awesome, or awesome sandwiched with shit? Do they balance each other out? Your mileage may vary. I haven’t decided yet.

EDITED: I replied to this in another post, a point by @chujo-hime, but I’ll copy/paste it on here since more people are likely to see this than our conversation.

“There’s no point in doing BuckyCap now that they’ve fridged Natasha”

I can’t fault you for feeling that way, and I don’t entirely disagree. have a theory on how Natasha could return despite them saying it couldn’t be undone.

Do what they did with Gamora. Take a version from an alternate universe/timeline. Maybe one where everything is the same, except that Clint died instead of her.

Whether or not they do this? Doubtful. Unless with the money they’re saving by letting another actor go (ahem) they give it to ScarJo to lure her back.

I mean, they have Kang back now. Next to Ultron, he’s one of The Avengers’ biggest villains. He’s also a time traveler, so there are ways… idk.

I’ve still not fully processed it. Whether Marvel is smart enough or cares to take advantage of their out, they have it. If nothing else, fans can exploit it in Fix-It fics.

ANOTHER EDIT:

Oh, what was the point of Ronin? I don’t mean sad Clint, I mean Ronin, aside from selling more action figures? He wasn’t even Ronin, they made him into The Punisher Lite. Ronin wasn’t Ronin, but I mean Clint hasn’t been Clint imo so...

[lost-kinn]

unexpected-profundity replied to your post “@meme-nto-mori i tried to write a markoth essay in response to ur ask...”

Well I'm especially interested in your take on moths (and the only-moth-to-pick-up-a-weapon thing in light of Thistlewind, who has a spear and seems to have heard of Markoth)

the tldr of this is:

1. the moths were likely a pacifistic race and markoth is a really weird outlier.

2. markoth isn’t just an outlier, but extremely offense-oriented, which is hilarious considering he’s the only enemy in the game with a shield

3. markoth miiiiiiiiiiight have been looking for either the radiance or the void or both, but we don’t know.

4. if markoth is a violent/aggressive moth, the radiance is even moreso, and is specifically violent in a way that has a lot of parallels with markoth and even the seer.

explanations under the cut:

here’s some dialogue from thistlewind to start us off:

I've long ceased travelling the caverns of Hallownest [...] You find it strange to see a moth wielding a weapon? We are a passive species, though I am not the only one amongst us to take up arms. Another braved the edges of this world, hoping to uncover a truth long forgotten. I wonder what became of him?

if i’m going to guess, thistlewind carried a spear because they were a traveller and technically, to defend yourself, you would indeed still need a weapon. thistlewind does say that it’s "strange” for a moth to have a weapon, so i’m assuming they did trend more towards whatever brand of magic the seer uses, but apparently changing times call for changing measures.

thistlewind still maintains that they’re a passive species, which is why i’m betting that it was a “for self-defense only” kind of thing. as it stands, the moths’ most distinctive weapon is actually the dreamshield, which is a defensive tool as well.

meanwhile, markoth’s hunter’s journal entry (pre-defeat) says:

Lingering dream of a fallen warrior. Only member of his forgotten tribe to take up a weapon.

if i was going to bridge this disparity between the hunter’s journal and thistlewind’s account, i’d say something along the lines of: since this is an account given by the hunter, self-defense doesnt count as “taking up a weapon”; you’d have to be a proper aggressive warrior/hunter to qualify. but who really knows!

as it stands, though, i’d say that markoth is still pretty solidly a huge outlier from his tribe, particularly because markoth’s dialogue implies that he’s killed everyone who’s ever fought him, so i guess this hooligan goes around picking fights, and/or people pick fights with him and markoth’s method of “self-defense” is straight-up offense, and/or markoth’s method of resolving fights people pick with him is “they can’t pick fights with me if they’re dead.”

here’s his dialogue--

You have come a long way, just to die here at the edge of the world.

No, do not speak. I have heard thousands and thousands of empty words from those like you. Your pride, your desires, your desperation... you will take these things with you once I strike you down.

Raise your weapon then, and die like those who came before you.

--which i should mention is like, HUGELY cocky loooool, he just assumes he’s going to kill you like all the other people he’s already killed and he’s frankly tired of hearing the last words of people who he’s just going to defeat anyway.

also worth noting about markoth being a weirdly offense-oriented moth is that a) markoth’s attack pattern is basically just “throw ten BILLION nails at the player” (referred to in the wiki as nail barrage), and b) when he does the shield spin, he’s using a defensive tool (the shield) as an offensive attack, so he’s not even using the damn dreamshield like you’re supposed to.

the other interesting part of thistlewind’s dialogue is:

Another braved the edges of this world, hoping to uncover a truth long forgotten. I wonder what became of him?

considering the 99.99999% chance that they’re talking about markoth, if i was going to guess why markoth is such a weirdo among his people, it’d probably have something to do the “truth long forgotten” that led him to resort to such aggression and subscription to violence as a valid method....... or at least, that would be my guess. he did kind of go into a very lawless part of town in pursuit of this “truth,” so i can only suppose that the resort to violence came afterwards, rather than before the journey to find “forgotten truth.”

for me, right now, the jury’s out whether or not he was looking for the radiance (more likely) or the void (less likely, more interesting considering his dialogue talking about how he was hidden in kingdom’s edge and only “the darkness” found him in the end). as it stands, it could very well be both: the “forgotten truth” he was looking for was actually the ancient feud between the radiance and the void, which puts a really fun spin on the way he’s finally put to rest--him, a moth, being finally exorcised through combat by a vessel made of void.

and all that said about markoth’s attack pattern being really aggressive and offense-heavy? i’d like to state for the record that the radiance basically does the exact same technique.

fires a TON of nails at the player? yeah. floats around the screen firing projectiles with no emphasis on bodily combat? yeah. heavily RNG-based? yeah. location moves around the screen entirely without regard for where the player is? yeah. 

side note, about the fact that the radiance and markoth float around the screen? the seer does that too when she saves you from the dreamers.

a lot of people complain about markoth and the radiance both being “luck-based,” but imo the similarities run even deeper. even the fact that they use so many nail projectiles and no CQC/actual swordfighting (a la thk or hornet) raises my eyebrows. the fact that most people cite using abyssal shriek on both of them (since the radiance is always above you and markoth is easiest to kill if you can bypass his shields) could just be an entertaining coincidence... or not. 

the radiance is basically a super-scaled up, super-elaborate version of markoth, who is himself an extremely aggressive moth. if the moths are a pacifistic race, neither of those guys are subscribing, and the fact that both of them have resorted to projectiles while teleporting/floating around the stage means that they seem to have turned towards violence in almost the exact same way, while maintaining the “float around the stage” move that the seer uses. 

so if i was going to guess from the very very very tenuous connection to the seer also using a similar move, they might have co-opted the pacifistic techniques from the moths for non-pacifistic purposes... but that’s speculation.

[istheresomebodywhocanimagine]

hi i saw this on @fruityfreddie​‘s blog (bless bri’s heart) and wanted to do it so i could take a mental break from writing this joe smut (it is.... overwhelming rn) so here u go

A - age: 19 (my fake id says 21 tho lmao)

B - birthplace: buttfuck egypt, iowa (yee yee boys)

C - current time: 8:15ish pm

D - drink you last had: topsy’s cherry limeade 

E - easiest person to talk to: my bff since 7th grade and our friend from D.C. they’re literally my ppl i love them so much even if we are wildly different ppl

F - favorite song: rocky mountain way by joe walsh/the eagles depending on who you are (six blade knife by dire straits is a v close second)

G - grossest memory: i was on winter break in cancun just this past december with my cousins and some friends and in the middle of the night my cousin literally started throwing up in the resort room’s bathroom and while she was throwing up all of the tequila she shit herself through her WHITE pajama shorts. iconic moment truly but disgusting the picture of it still haunts me. side note: at the resort i very drunk-ly karaoked we are the champions and made friends with a girl who karaoked dont stop me now so the power of queen is truly almighty

H - horror yes or horror no: as long as it has a good plot yet. horror for the sake of horror like all that jigsaw shit is STOOPID imo

I - in love: nope just livin life for me

J - jealous of people: only jealous of anita dobson and that is that

K - is there no k???? alrighty then i’m adding “kryptonite” (your biggest weakness): champagne, curly hair (ugh i’d give it all up for mark ruffalo), and cats

L - love at first sight or should i walk by again: i’m actually pretty sure i’m allergic to falling in love because i’ve been told i’m a detached person unless i rlly know someone so like.... your feet might fall off before i actually fall in love w u

M - middle name: renee

N - number of siblings: two (a younger brother and an older sister)

O - one wish: i rlly wanna be able to secure my ideal position in the field i’m currently studying (Social Media Management) so for me that would be like... managing the social media of an actor, musician, or someone in the fine arts side of things. hehe

P - person you last called: my brother bc we passed each other on the road and he had his new gf with him and i wanted to meet her

Q - question you’re always asked: are you adopted? bc the rest of my family has brown hair, and 3/4 of the rest of my family has brown eyes, dark skin, and curly hair. now tell me how tf this fits in with any of that:

R - reading anything right now?: Four Days In November by Vincent Bugliosi (its about the kennedy assassination and its RLLY good i bought it when i visited dallas by myself last summer)

S - song you last sang: Sedona by Houndmouth hehe

T - time you woke up: 8:30 am bc college has literally made it so my body is up at 8:30 every day no matter how late i went to bed

U - underwear color: purple hehe they’re not cute i’m about to start my period so i’m preparing for the worst 

V - vacation destination: if we’re talkin where am i going on vacation next, no effing clue. i’m pretty much working all summer but I’m going to see The Struts in July and Queen + Adam in august so thats kinda a vacay??? but if its my ideal vaca destination then Southern Germany for sure

W - when was the last time you really laughed: this morning bc i took a video of me sneezing and then started crying bc it was so funny i wish yall could see it im fucking hilarious

X - x-rays: im genuinely lucky that i’ve never had to have xrays besides my FUCKED UP TEETH but i had braces way back in elementary so its been a big ol minute 

Y - your favorite food: honestly? creamy teriyaki cajun sauce on a penne pasta and if i feel like eating meat (a usually rare occasion) a lil chicken in there. slaps so fucking hard yall (meat makes my shtummy hurt)

Z - zodiac sign: Cancer (dont roast me i match with brian may we are one)

also i tag any of yall that wanna do it ugh the original rules are to tag 10 ppl and i dont even know 10 ppl on here im intimidated by everyone

[atopearth]

Final Fantasy X HD Remaster Part 8 - Someday the Dream will End

(Thought it’d be a great title since the above is my favourite soundtrack and this is my last post on FFX! XD)

Yay! I got Lulu’s Venus sigil! I was hesitant to start the dodging lightning thing since you have to dodge 200 in a row, but omg, after going on YouTube and knowing that there’s a ditch where you can easily gather the rhythm to do it 200 times, it only surprisingly took me like an hour and a half after getting distracted a few times and failing lmao. Gotta say though, much easier than the stupid Chocobo race for Tidus!🙄 Next thing you know, I try the butterfly catching game for the Saturn sigil and start to contemplate whether I really want to be a perfectionist lmao. I totally forgot that I hate the butterfly game the most, like THE MOST. It’s literally frustrating me more than the Chocobo and lightning combined, I don’t know why everyone on the internet says it’s the easiest of the mini games😣😣 Okay, fine, after another half an hour with trial and error, I finally got the Saturn sigil too, not that bad I guess….

Finally got all the celestial weapons too yeee~ I’ve never gotten everything before so I’m pretty happy right now hahaha! So Yu Yevon is the one that’s been constantly causing this all for a thousand years, hiding within Sin using him as an armour, and then when people defeat Sin with the powers Yunalesca tells them about, he merges with the Final Aeon to continue this cycle of life and death. I guess when everything works out, it’ll be good, but once they defeat Sin, the Fayth will stop dreaming and Tidus will disappear… It’s kinda funny how you used to be all concerned about Yuna dying and now near the end of the game, you instead have to be concerned over Tidus disappearing instead. Why can’t they just be happy together sigh..

Well! I legit spent a day farming sphere levels for Rikku and Tidus to finish off the sphere grid getting all the strength and agility nodes but omggg, can I just say that having triple AP instead of double AP is like the biggest difference ever? LOL. And omg overdrive -> AP is like the best thing ever. So easy to level lol. Funniest thing was when Don Tonberry did 83k damage on my Tidus though hahahaah, did I really kill that many monsters with him🤣 But yeah, it’s cool that I’m progressing with my sphere grid but I’m kinda sad that I’m one hit KOing everything lol. I mean, this is the first time I’ve ever gotten so far in FFX so I feel like I’m killing my experience haha! But I really want to fight nemesis and penance and all the dark aeons so oh well. Btw, it’s because I OHKO Seymour in Sin and didn’t get to see him do anything with his cool music hahaha. At least Yuna finally sent him to the farplane lol. Anyway, back to farming monsters, just need to finish Sin and Omega Ruins and I’m doneeee!

GG though, Omega Ruins took sooo long (I guess Sin did too) but dang was it annoying lol. So anyway, after much leveling with Don Tonberry again, and getting all the strength, defence, magic, magic defence, agility, luck and fortune spheres, I am legit done with the whole sphere grid! I’m honestly not dedicated enough to do 255 everything, so since 255 luck = 255 accuracy and evasion, I am not going to bother lolll. Agility maxes out at 170 as well so yayyy, don’t need to farm moreeee. I’ve legit been spending my week doing all this lmao, watching TVB and farming, that’s been my life hahaha. It’s kinda crazy seeing myself finish all this though. It was super time consuming but it’s nice to see my characters deal 99,999 damage haha. Coolest thing was defeating all the creations by the Monster Arena guy and then beating up Nemesis! Yesssss! It could have been easier if I set my overdrive mode to Comrade (charges overdrive when allies are hit) since he dealt so much damage lol, but silly me left it on Warrior (charges overdrive every time I attack), so yeaaaah, that took longer than I wanted hahaha. Btw, Nemesis is ugly but yay! I’ve completed another goal of mine! Oh yeah, I also beat Omega Weapon, of which, he was so underwhelming, especially with the random monsters you have to fight along the way, FFVIII was so much more annoying and challenging imo with the Ultima Weapon and other guys. I guess we’ll see how I feel once I defeat all the Dark Aeons and fight Penance hahaha.

The Dark Aeons were relatively easy! Especially if you have ribbon/stoneproof, not being petrified and shattered is like the most important thing imo lol. Dark Bahamut kept killing me and pissing me off because he kept petrifying my guys and killing them lol, I had to put stoneproof on my armour to survive, worked out well since I needed it for the Magus Sisters too haha. And yes, I was lazy to fight them altogether so I separated them and fought the sisters one by one to save myself from the agony lol. And what do you know? Dark Yojimbo was actually the one to bring the most trouble! It’s not even because he was hard, it was because I had to fight him 5 times to defeat him and initially, I didn’t know and just defeated him four times and was like wth, why isn’t Penance appearing?! So then, I googled and realised that I had kept missing the true third battle in the green room, so yeah, that frustrated the hell out of me because I legit defeated him 10+ times because I went to the wrong place, didn’t understand etc, yeaaah I was raging lol. I really wanted to finish the game and defeat Penance in the same day with the Dark Aeons so yeah, I was annoyed that I was not on schedule lolol. Oh well, more time to prepare for Penance I guess.

So…. I tried Penance and I died hahahah. Gotta revise my armour lolol. I think ribbon, auto-potion (with only x-potion), auto-haste and auto-protect might be the best combo. I’ll try that and see. Or not lolll! My biggest problem with Penance was not surviving his immolation attack that does a lot of HP damage and sucks all your MP too. Well, anyway, after much googling etc, I revised my armour again, luckily I had 6 million to spend bribing monsters for stuff lmao. I used auto-potion, auto-haste, auto-protect and defence +20%. This accompanied with Rikku’s Ultra NullAll mix (lasts the whole battle as long as you don’t die!) gave me enough defence to survive the whole battle (yay!). After that, it was really rinse and repeat of destroying the arms and then hitting the main body whenever I could. It probably legit took 20-30 minutes. Crazy for sure. Not sure whether it’s really worth it since I didn’t feel very accomplished LOL, I just felt like a robot constantly using quick hit (throwing a three stars so it doesn’t cost MP), dispelling after every immolation attack and thankfully, I had auto-potion because it would have killed me if I had to heal myself every turn. So yeah, after that, it was really just a waiting game where I just kept doing the same thing for 30 minutes, yeah it was pretty boring. I liked the optional bosses from previous games more.

And now I can finally fight Sin! Honestly, seeing Tidus finally open up to Jecht a bit more and be a bit more honest, I felt happy for Jecht. He’s always loved Tidus. Too bad it wasn’t meant to be for them to ever be able to hang out together like buddies. Since I maxed out my stats, last boss was so easy, I barely did anything. Kinda feel like I should have let him do something so I could see it lol, but I was too fast hahaha. Pretty devastating to see Yuna summoning every single summon for Yu Yevon to take over and then we kill it to stop Yu Yevon from having anything to take over anymore. It was heartbreaking to see all the Fayth go like that. But at least, as they said, they can now stop dreaming… Auron always has to be cool doesn’t he lolll, even when Yuna sends him to the Farplane. It hurt when he told Yuna that it was okay to send him. I really liked Auron. It was also saddening when Tidus was like, this is his last battle with them because he’s going to disappear, I guess at least he told them. Slack to Yuna when she wanted to hug him but he was disappearing. Especially when at the end, she kept whistling, waiting for him to come back.

Never even know the Eternal Calm video or whatever existed. Kinda feels weird though because it’s set two years later where all Yuna has been doing is being something like a counsellor to people until a sphere of someone who looks like Tidus (Shuyin~) is found by Kimahri, given to Rikku and then shown to Yuna and then she decides to go look for other spheres like it and soon becomes a sphere hunter. Considering that FFX-2 is set two years later which I assume is not long after this, her personality sure changed quite a bit after getting some freedom haha. I guess it’s true that Yuna has never truly lived for herself until now so it is nice that she can do that now, but how did she learn to use a gun so fast? Lol.

Overall, I enjoyed FFX, but honestly, it’s not one of my favourites haha. It’s one of the first I played as an adult probably but yeah, if I had to really choose, I prefer the previous much more. But I do like FFX because of how much more, simple it is? It’s simple, straightforward and emotional. Rikku and Yuna will always be my favourites. Wakka being silly is also a highlight. Cool Auron will always be the dream guy though hahaha. Happy that I can finally say I’ve finished it completely! Now on to getting 100% completion for FFX-2! I got like 98 or 99 on my first playthrough with the help of a guide every now and then but now I’m gonna use a guide for the whole thing and hope I get the 100% this time around hahaha, wish me luck~

[scootexdaumo1981-blog]

Their synthetics are hit or miss unless they found in a mostly animal hair brush set.I still purchase my Hakuhodo and other high end brushes but I also like other more affordable brushes to throw in the mix that won wear down quickly like these.Also, quick tip: use brush guards on your brushes after you use/wash them.This is where I purchased my brushes: 2 points submitted 6 days agoI live in NYC, and that is something I see fairly regularly (not every day, but it's not unusual). I don't think much of anything of it. People are free to wear whatever they want, and it doesn't really matter to me if someone is trans and just didn't bother with the wig and makeup today, or if they identify as male but felt like wearing a dress. 1 point submitted 1 day ago1) History says otherwise. Emperor Constantine changed the face of the Roman Empire (and the world) simply by declaring Christianity the new state religion. Was it resisted? Yes (See Emperor Justinian), but the change held up. And regaining the weight isn really a result of a slowed down metabolism (though BMR does drop a bit with weight loss obviously). People regain the weight because they don fix their habits and develop a healthy relationship with 강릉출장샵 food. They just go on an extreme exercise/hyper restrictive diet regimen until they lose the weight, and then it back to the same habits that made them fat to begin with. Ein weiteres zentrales Merkmal ist der alles beherrschende Minderwertigkeitskomplex. Deswegen projiziert der Berliner auf jeden der in irgendeiner Weise besser ist als er, massive Hassgefhle. Besonders die ihm in allen Belangen haushoch berlegenen Sddeutschen sind ihm ein Dorn im Auge. Lupe taught me it ok to be smart. Cudi taught me it ok to not be ok. Bino taught me it ok to be everything I wanna be.. The child will run away when I ask to change her, even if her nappy is so full it leaking. But if I say to her "Will we go look at your stinky poop?" she climbing up on the changing table in a flash. She has to thoroughly visually inspect the nappy contents before I allowed to bin it.. The easiest way to explain the perspective may be to flip it around. Let say you are gay and you run a printing company, and a customer asks you to print 강릉출장샵 a bunch of flyers titled "Gays spread disease" that he will then distribute in the neighborhood and will have the name of your printing company on the back. Would you like the ability to refuse him and therefore avoid endorsing that garbage? Conservatives want to give you that choice. I dont buy scoop necks anymore. There no real reason besides pretty much every other neckline looks better on me imo. I think it might be that I always feel like I dressing young when I wear them because I wore them a lot in middle/ early high school so I feel like I dressing childishly when I wear them. Sorry if this seemed like a weird jab at immigration, really did not mean it that way. What if it not true? What if someone made it up? Are you sure of your source? This is just unfair for the bride. What could start as badmouthing could easily escalate but you know Karen more than any of us here. They said they send an e mail for the remaining key soon as they get it in stock. One and a half week later I spotted threads on Reddit going around complaining that anyone who bought the same bundle from them and din get MGSPP, was told by the support that neither do they still have any keys in stock, nor do they plan to buy any for the foreseeable future. When I pinged the support, they echoed the same thing.

[bluebipples]

Mora/Bean is Canon

(but I’m not sure about Endgame)

A very (very) long, unnecessary post. I’d like to start this off by saying bisexuality is consistently erased in the tumblr community, but this isn’t about if bean is bi or a lesbian because it literally does not matter 

*ahem* Also, spoilers if you haven’t watched season 3 because, i don’t know, you probably have a life

anyway, there’s lots of speculation on whether or not Bean’s romance with Mora was a dream or not, and I’m here to give you the (probably) definitive answer (and throw a wild guess at the next season).

To begin with, Disenchantment is no stranger to foreshadowing. In fact, rewatching the show a few times you notice that the writers practically laid everything out in front of us the entire time. It’s actually admirable from a writer’s perspective, imo, but I’m not here to cream my pants over the writers. An example of their consistent foreshadowing would begin in the very first episode, when a blimp is seen in the far background of one of the scenes over some mountains. This would later be explained by the introduction of Steamland, which became a pinnacle location to the plot in seasons 2 and 3. There are plenty more examples, but I’d rather save it for the ones I’ve found in season 3. (And, one could argue, Bean asking a hot mermaid to nibble her earlobes was foreshadowing her later romance with one, but, hey, who am i to over-speculate)

Now, for the juicy stuff, as well as some artistic appreciation. Was anyone else absolutely in love with the ocean scenery? Like, somebody popped the fuck off in the background department bc hot damn. Don’t worry, I promise, this is extremely relevant. 

(excuse the thing in the top left) This is the sky a few hours after they’d left Steamland, meaning it’s early morning / sunrise. Holy shit, I nearly cried when I saw this scene. This is goddamn beautiful. The clouds? The blending? The bright coloration? Who the fuck did this??? How do I give them money??

Sorry for the lack of a consistent timeline, but I didn’t get a good shot of the sky in the same day afternoon shot, so, here’s the afternoon sky before Bean and Elfo crash.

And this delightful pink son of a bitch is the sunset, into which our ladies rode with my heart soaring. At this point, I had to pause to search ‘disenchantment’ on tumblr to see if it was gay and sure enough the top image was mora and bean kissing. i love this hellhole.

Now, why the hell are skies relevant, my friends? Well (I’m starting to realize this is another fucking dumb sky post like that one that’s 10 years long but this is worse because I’m losing my mental sanity to prove half an episode in a 3 season cartoon actually happened)

This would be when the ‘dream’ starts, which is after Bean hits her head, and presumably, late afternoon. Swimming with your mermaid girlfriend underwater all the way to Mermaid Island probably takes some time, so they get there by, say, sunset maybe?

yes, i use subtitles, i do not have a good attention span. So, yeah, maybe sunset-ish, or like, really late afternoon. 

and, of course, our wildest sapphic fantasies come true. again, excuse the subtitles. 

Here’s the juicy juicy shit that real good-good. Please stay with me.

The lyrics to Mora’s song:

They say that you’re a drowner

And we’re parted by the sea

But I can keep you floating

If you just hold on to me

I’ll keep you safe, I’m on your team

And when it feels like just a dream

Believe it’s true

Because I do

And someday if there’s a war

On some not-so-distant shore

And lines are drawn

I’m never gone

This star’s your guide

And I am always on your side

Well, well, well, how the dots have connected and my gay brain is spiraling. Not only am I swooning, but I’m also itching with theories. Lots of ‘em. I’m about to give MatPat a run for his money. 

First, I wanna get out there that if you tell me Bean’s subconscious could have written that song, you are incorrect. Bean is a lot of things, but... creative isn’t exactly one of them. There’s an entire episode dedicated to how bad she as at writing creatively (unless it’s about her familial issues): season 2, episode 8: In Her Own Write.

So, ‘when it feels like just a dream / believe it’s true’ sounds a whole lot like we’re being told something. Or, Bean is, but she’s not great at picking up hints. Another fact we are shown again and again and again. 

‘Someday if there’s a war / On some not-so-distant shore’ I mean, this shouldn’t be so hard to point out. Kinda seems like Dreamland is in a bit of a tizzy right now, huh? I mean, what with the Elves learning that the Trøgs are direct descendants of their forgotten ancestors that adapted to living underground overtime and- oh- wait- did that not get revealed yet?

Well, let me do you a think by referencing Skyrim because that’s the easiest example I can think of. There are these ugly bitches that ruin my entire day every time I encounter them called the Falmer that dwell underground that were once Snow Elves, but had adapted to living underground after, you guessed it, the arrival of... goddamn nords/humans (a few centuries after, but still). Large eyes with poor vision, bigger ears to make up for that lack of vision, and a more grey skin pallor from, y’know, living underground. I won’t give you a lecture on evolution, because this is already super duper long. Kinda wild that Disenchanted would take a commonly used Fantasy trope like creatures colonized by humans adapting to life underground, it’s almost like the whole show is to poke fun of overdone fantasy tropes.

And, of course, it’s revealed that the Lost Kingdom of the Elves is underneath Dreamland, directly where the Trøgs dwell. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots. Elves have hidden themselves in this world - remember, Elfo was the first elf since Leavo to leave Elfwood in years. So let me spin you a yarn about a well-known tale called Colonization. I’m sure we all know where this is going. Clearly, not all of the elves stayed underneath Dreamland. Judging by how many Trøgs there are in relation to how many elves, I assume less than or around half of the elf population managed to evacuate Dreamland while those who remained took to living in the shadows. We’ve seen the conditions of their underworld, and, well, one can assume they went a bit nutty along the way. I’m sure the mushroom spores didn’t help.

Then, there’s the prophecy. Bean, Elfo and Luci are the saviors of the Trøgs.

‘Lines are drawn’ - after Bean is crowned Queen Bean (lol) she and Elfo drift apart. He obviously feels abandoned by her, and even if he did sacrifice himself for Dreamland, I’m certain he won’t be killed. I’m on that wonderful conspiracy train that the Ogre Queen is his mother, but that’s another story for another day though it’s somewhat related. Needless to say, if the Elves declare war on Dreamland, lines will certainly be drawn. And, I recall my statement above: Bean, Elfo and Luci are the saviors of the Trøgs. I’d count it as ‘saving’ them if they reunite with their cousins, the Elves, and take back the kingdom that once belonged to them; wouldn’t you?

‘I’m never gone / This star’s your guide / And I am always on your side’ This is a callback to a few things in this episode. Mora tells Bean that the heart of the Big Flipper leads to Mermaid Island, as Bean recalls when she is given the necklace Mora made for her. So, that’s another double nudge-nudge wink-wink from the writers (a joke they also made consistently this season, making me feel aggressively mocked. so i have powerpoints on this show, now, and nothing to do with them.) 

Anyway, if the Elves and Trøgs do succeed in taking over Dreamland, Mora has explicitly stated that Bean has an ally in her - and, of course, the mermaids. So, looking too deeply into a song written by a fictional mermaid for her equally fictional girlfriend aside, let’s move on to more obvious evidence.

Bean then wakes up on the beach to Elfo saying nobody wanted to help them, , yadda yadda, it was clearly a dream, right?

(yes, I wanted to get the caption that made me cry. now you have to be sad, too.) except, wait a second, that’s a goddamn morning sky. And, beyond that, the very next episode which continues off from Bean and Elfo walking back to Dreamland, it’s also morning and leads right into the rest of the same day. well, shit me a brick. chronologically, it makes sense for this to have not been a dream.

and, naturally, the nail in the coffin. There it is, the necklace, right there in front of our fat faces. I’m sure you’re wondering how Bean can sleep through swimming underwater for presumably hours, but, hey, tHAT’S JUST A TH-

In conclusion, the Disenchantment writers make it a point to give us not-so-subtle hints (mostly in the background) towards future plots. This seemingly innocuous, what, ten minutes of a sapphic fantasy come true could be an incredibly important plot point. It’s not the first time they’ve used a small storyline to pull the strings together for a far bigger one - they literally do it every season, multiple times. My evidence towards Mora and Bean having a real romance stems from the design of the sky backgrounds that clearly show the passage of time throughout the episode (and show), as well as the fact that Mora’s necklace washes up on shore not long after Bean wakes up. Along with this presented evidence, I believe the Elves are going to try and overthrow Dreamland (just like, basically, every other kingdom or secret society in this show) and Bean will have to figure out for herself if Mora really is waiting for her on Mermaid Island. As for what else Season 4 has in store, I have lots of other theories but for the 4 people who read this, I shall not disclose.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk, and I am so very sorry.

Also, here’s a bonus pic of the ocean scenery.

(luci voice) who did that?

[tinkdw]

Why do you think cas should become/choose to be human? Wouldn't it make more sense if he stayed an angel but accepted the fact that he is different from the other angels but that doesn't mean he doesn't belong any less? Idk I just feel like his angelic side is such a huge part of him that he won't necessarily give it us but just accept that he's a little different and that's ok? (Sry if this comes off as rude I rly love ur blog and just wanted to see ur take on this)

It’s not rude at all :) This is a touchy subject right now though so I’ve put this under a cut because I understand this is a personal issue for some whereas I am coming at it as a meta POV. I’m not personally invested per se as I don’t identify with the character, I just enjoy the story immensely as a whole and he is key to it, I love Cas’ character but I don’t project myself into him. I understand for some this is deeply personal so please take what I say here as a narrative reasoning and not a personal attack on anyone.

Basically for me it boils down to the underlying theme in these stories of self discovery and acceptance that it’s about who you are not what you are:

Which is a hugely important part of a story based around Free Will and choices.

I personally do not see any part of canon that tells us that Cas’ grace / Angelic side has anything to do with his personality or who he is, it only is relevant to what he is, or was, anyway, at the start of the story because he pretty swiftly tells us that he has doubts, that he loves humanity and falls, within just one season ending up human for the first time. Grace is not a true part of his personality, his desires, wants, needs. For me it’s not who he is and who he wants to be and therefore who he will be in the end after his journey.

For me it is narratively written as his endgame and mirrors thousands of stories like it where a person comes from one emotional/physical place and ends in another far better place that they discover and eventually choose thanks to the journey that is our story (this of course mirrors Sam and Dean’s story too). For me it’s what the story has told us so far, particularly since season 9, it’s the writing choices they’ve made that stand out to me. It’s the recognisable tropes and visual narrative too that reinforce this well established and recognisable storyline. 

For Dean it’s about accepting the repressed part of himself, what’s below the facade (eg. bisexuality, liking Disney movies and being a bit of a nerd etc), for Sam it’s about his repressed desire to have a partner, to lead others, to work with the supernatural rather than always against it (e.g. magic/powers) and let go of his guilt about Lucifer, for Cas it’s about discovering humanity and realising that he desires it, realising that he deserves to have what he desires and doesn’t have to be just a tool, a cog in the machine, that he matters too.

It makes sense to me that Cas would have something big like this just as Dean and Sam do as his endgame and I believe the narrative sends us down this path and reinforces it consistently over the seasons.

Breaking it down and looking at it from what we are told, the choices that the writers have made regarding his character and how he fits the overall story, making a list with columns of ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the easiest way to explain it:

- In the camp of “wants to be an Angel because we’ve had exposition that he enjoys it and it’s who he is” I have zero ticks.

- In the camp of “says he wants to be an Angel because of duty to being useful for the mission or because he’s depressed and lost and feeling so much pain and it’s what he has known for millennia, being an Angel dulls his emotions so it’s the easiest option, expositionally later telling Sam that doing this was to dull his pain” I have ticks. 

- In the camp of “wants to be Human because yes he felt pain and suffering for sure, but also expositionally told Hannah later - his own personal expositional character in s10 for his personal desires and character - that it was worth it because he also felt joy, love etc, after also telling Sam that he now misses being human through the PB&J, he misses taste but not indigestion etc. all these moments telling us that basically he misses the good stuff, not the bad stuff of course which he is well aware of, but the good outweighs the bad and he knows this because he’s experienced the bad too, it’s an educated decision” I have multiple ticks (expanded below).

- In the culminating camp of “now knows he wants to be Human but represses this due to duty and not feeling he really deserves to have what he wants while there is a job to do because that is how his personality has been established for a decade - the mission and being useful always comes first before his own desires and he has to learn that his desires are important and valid and that he matters for who he is not just what he is as a useful tool” I have ALL the ticks. (and how this mirrors Dean too for whom he has always also been a mirror).

Regarding your question I think the question I ask in return is:

Why is his angelic side such a huge part of him? For me it really isn’t and that is what I believe has been narratively portrayed in the show so far through the above expositions, all leading to the same end.His grace is not what makes him Cas.

For me that’s saying that what he is defines him, when that is not the case imo, whats important is who he is and the story we have been shown over the last decade for Cas is in my opinion about him learning this, experiencing new things that establish for the audience and for himself who he is and what he desires after millennia of not thinking about this and being the duty bound dullard he is teased as being by Lucifer, his dark mirror, it’s a journey to self discovery and self acceptance (as is Sam and Dean’s).

It’s our CHOICES that define who we are. 

I wrote this, saved it in my drafts and then saw @k-vichan‘s post here that covers this what/who we are topic in a similar way so I’ll also link to that.

Eg.

This is a pretty standard concept in stories for millennia (mythologies and religious texts rest on this too, Jesus wasn’t truly a carpenter, Moana wasn’t truly an island-bound princess, Hermione wasn’t truly a muggle and Harry wasn’t truly a Dursley even though they were blood) and it’s particularly noticeable over the last 20 or so years in film, it’s to do with social structures, slavery, history etc. Hence we have so many stories about self - discovery and self - a acceptance and SPN absolutely is one of these, it’s one of the core messages of the show. For me Sam, Dean and Cas all have this journey and for sure it’s not all about Cas throwing off the shackles of his family in a negative way, in the same way that Sam doesn’t have to reject running away fully and Dean doesn’t have to reject John outright, these stories are all about reconciliation of different parts of ones-self but the discovered part is always the strongest and the one that really ends up defining who they truly are while the first part is accepted as the beginning, the basis from which they started, remembered usually with fondness, not always negatively and for sure incorporated into them, not fully thrown off, but I can see this in the sense that he will be human but with a good relationship with Heaven, not actually remaining an Angel, e.g. as JK Rowling said Harry / Dursleys did end up on civil terms even though Harry was emancipated from them.

This is a pretty standard sci-fi concept and even a standard narrative for loads of stories and irl - just because you are born a certain way doesn’t make you who you are. It’s a standard story structure and it is really important, especially when there is a DECADE of build up that the person is NOT that?

And the whole last season was about WHO YOU ARE?

Imagine a story where:

- Chris is from one tribe, he’s brought up by other tribe members in a ‘family environment’. He fits ok, gets on with the jobs and rises to become quite important in the tribe community through his capabilities. The tribe elders repeatedly have to beat him down though because he is very clever, he is capable and he makes choices where they say he should just do as he is told as this is the way of that tribe, everyone has a place, some are more equal than others and that’s that.

- one day there is a crying baby, they are told not to touch babies as it is not their place but he picks it up to comfort it anyway, the baby stops crying and he is touched by this interaction. the elders come and snatch the baby away and whip him for it, berating him back into his place and forcing him back to work.

- after a while he meets a young man, part of the community of a different tribe, one where free will is part of the kit, called David. David is the utter embodiment of this tribe, he has free will, he’s strong and clever, empathetic and argumentative. David likes Chris despite himself and Chris likes David despite himself, David can see that Chris is different, clever, capable of making his own choices. He convinces Chris to rebel against the tribe elders and their plan which was to kill half of the other tribe in order to claim the land, claiming that in the end they could all live in peace, but Chris and David think it is abhorrent that they would kill half the people to do so.

- after this the first tribe is disbanded, Chris experiences life outside of his tribe. He becomes pretty good at life outside of it and smiles a lot more, he even starts flirting with David, who he always tried to just protect and follow the leadership of before but now he feels they are on equal footing he allows himself to see how this could play out.

- however a terrible thing happens, Chris’ original tribe elders regroup and try to get their tribe back under control, they come by and notice this bond, they are savage, torture Chris and threaten to cut off his genitals, he realises that he has one way to save David and David’s family - he could lay down his life and become a part of the tribe again, to protect David and his family. He of course decides to let himself become part of the tribe and goes back to work, being told what to do, following duty etc.

- But now its worse because he had a taste of freedom. David can see, but he’s not sure what to do, what does Chris really want? Does he want to be part of his original tribe? They are technically his family after all? But he seemed to not really be a member of this tribe all along, he rebelled and now believes in free will, plus David had hoped that he could be with Chris, even if it wasn’t ever said, it was implied they could be and given that Chris never seemed to really want to be a part of the other tribe it seemed like the best option for him anyway, even if they weren’t together that he would be a part of David’s own tribe at least and have free will and be happier. But David isn’t sure and doesn’t want the guilt of perhaps Chris wanting to be in his tribe only for him if his true place was with his original tribe. Chris never told him really what he wanted, even though David asked, he deflected the question because he wanted to protect him and felt duty bound to always do the right thing. So it’s all a giant mess and only Chris can truly say what he wants and make his choice.

Right?!!

So really - IS Angelichood / grace a part of what makes Cas CAS? Is it a part of his personality, his choices, WHO HE IS or is it just his biology / upbringing / his past before he could truly discover who he is during the telling of our story?

He uses his powers to get jobs done SURE. This for me shows that his powers are useful, it doesn’t mean he loves them. I don’t feel he has any kind of pride in them. He tells us his true form is the size of the chrysler building and that he doesn’t sweat, he shows Dean and Crowley his wings to show what he is and what power he has - for me that is not showing WHO he is, his personality, just what he is capable of thanks to his biological/Angelic form, plus these are all framed under DUTY, mostly of threatening (which is absolutely isn’t, he’s a lover not a fighter yet he fights only because he has to), he doesn’t do this kind of display for fun to show Sam and Dean in the bunker or whatever in their down time, this is all for the JOB. He says in s9 he misses his wings because they’re useful to him and because life on the road…smells. This is him saying he’d rather be able to be with the boys and do this research by flitting around, be with Dean who he is currently smiling down the phone to… that’s whats being exposed imo, not actually missing his wings because they’re a part of him, just their usefulness.

Then the most obvious of all the expositions imo:

CASTIEL: When I was human, you know, I had to eat constantly. It was kind of annoying.

SAM: Yeah, a lot of human things are pretty annoying.

CASTIEL: But…I enjoyed the taste of food – particularly peanut butter with grape jelly, not jam. Jam I found unsettling (…) Sigh…I miss you PB&J.

- This for me is the one line exposition of his WHOLE human experience. It was annoying (not all good) BUT HE STILL ENJOYED IT OVERALL. HE MISSES IT.

When do we see his personality? His likes? His dislikes? When does he smile? It’s not when he’s talking about being an Angel. It’s all to do with human things.

When he says he just wants to be an Angel again in 9x23 its because he is desperate, he is suffering, he thinks Dean is dead. Up until this point its been consistently shown that he didn’t WANT to be an Angel (he didn’t reply to Dean, then in s10 its even more consistent, with Daniel as exposition too and all the grace/Crowley/Metatron stuff). He just wants to be an Angel to dull the pain and because it’s easy, it’s what he knows, but it’s not what he TRULY wants. He then exposes through his convention with Hannah that sure there are bad points to humanity but the good points FAR OUTWEIGH THEM. He is wistful. He misses it.

He took his grace again through DUTY, because he felt he needed it to get the job done to save Dean (“the mission is everything”) and this is a personality trait of Cas’, the one that stops him from looking for and getting what he desires. 

Season 10 is like a queer, depressed person who goes back to their abusive family after their partner seems to have died and everyone is screaming noooooooo don’t do it! then we see the family taking them out hunting queer people, kidnapping them to take them to a “queer conversion camp” while they are hating it and trying to defend them but begrudgingly going along with it cos what choice do they have and they’re so down beaten by life…(that’s the Daniel episode) then the partner turns up on their doorstep like hey surprise I’m not dead! 

And how does this story end happily? With him leaving with the partner, setting up a lovely home together, becoming the teacher or whatever that they always wanted to be but couldn’t while they were with their family, adopting a kid and maybe even helping other people come to terms with themselves, still keeping contact with the GOOD members of their old family who were supportive even though they don’t necessarily see them very often, there is a nice link there still with the GOOD people…

So yeah, for me it’s not about shucking off Heaven/his grace in a negative way and saying fuck you! It’s just about accepting that he doesn’t want this for himself, that he’s discovered WHO he truly is after spending millennia only thinking about WHAT he is and what duty he can do. 

He is no longer a repressed duty bound dullard, he has discovered what he wants.

Everyone and their mother since s9 keeps asking Cas what and who he is, some even telling him that he’s NOT an Angel. Mary semi-assuming he’s a hunter. WHY is this a consistent narrative?

It’s a totally normal way of writing a story and exposing what the character’s endgame is.

Like when someone says to a character “you don’t think you deserved to be saved”, or “well, you’re a bit butch, maybe they think you’re overcompensating” or “he was your boyfriend first” or “the Angel in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you” or “he’s your human weakness” or “you draped yourself in the flag of heaven but it was all about saving Dean Winchester”, and you just… look away uncomfortably (and usually swallow, Dean in particular usually does both).

source: @charlie-minion

That’s it. That’s the exposition. This is telling the audience YES what they are saying is true but the character doesn’t want to talk about it, cant acknowledge it for *reasons*. It happens in so many movies because we can’t see inside the character’s mind, it’s a visual narrative and it’s such a standard way of doing it… it’s just another trope to add to the long list in SPN.

Personally throughout the show it’s been a consistent narrative but massively more obvious since season 9, which fits with so many other stories as I say, that his is a voyage to discovering who he truly is, he then discovers it and has to take it away from himself and it makes him a depressed mess. 

It also totally fits with Destiel as a standard romantic narrative, that Dean helps him to discover who he really is and helps him get to his personal, individual endgame without being HIMSELF that endgame… it just all fits too well together to not be on purpose you know?

This is all my OPINION based on canon, it’s my interpretation, which is what you asked for and what this platform is for. IF they turn around and he doesn’t end up human I will be incredibly surprised but I won’t throw my toys out of the pram or be upset, they just need to address why it’s been written this way and either go for it or not and change the way it’s addressed in the end to explain why. Just like Destiel - why write the story one way to then not take it there is where I usually come from with these interpretations. It wouldn’t make sense as to why they would change their mind (and I personally don’t think they will at this point where Dabb era is just reinforcing all these points), because in my opinion this is what they have been writing so far so it makes no sense not to, but hey if I’m wrong in my interpretation I’m wrong!

If I’m wrong about them so far writing Destiel and human!cas into the script I’ll just be surprised but they are also fully capable of flipping it or not following through for other reasons, because the story isn’t over yet and it’s not a finite story like a movie or a book, it’s ongoing because of the nature of a tv show…so many things could happen that flip it so who knows but it would need to be written as making sense and until I see that starting to happen I’ll stick to this interpretation, especially given as I say, in my opinion Dabb era is reinforcing it, not flipping it.