#I will say the cast of characters I have complex thoughts about are limited cause I keep going back to specific comfort characters

[zip-toonz]

Anyone wanna talk to me about Pokemon characters?

[avelera]

Ugh, popped on Twitter to geek out about the Wheel of Time S2 and immediately find a bunch of WoT dudebro fans complaining that a 15 book series of 800+ pages each isn’t getting the exact word for word adaption that exists inside their heads when they read the books. And let me remind you all, these books were my life, my first fandom, and basically my personality pretty much from when I first read them in 1999 until Robert Jordan died (alas, I read to the end but Brandon Sanderson never quite captured the magic of RJ’s writing for me again, even if I think he did the best job anyone possibly could.)

So let me just say from a place of deep respect and obsession with these books that any hate for the show based on it not being a page for page adaptation is patently insane. Much of Wheel of Time relies on the strengths of prose which are untranslatable to a visual medium. Stuff like how magic (or the One Power) feels to cast makes up a huge proportion of the book. You can externally portray a feeling, sure, but there are still limits.

They forget that Book 1 was written to be standalone and has a ton of inconsistencies with later books that need to be shored up. That means logistical changes which cause necessary alterations almost all of which have actually been massive improvements in my mind. For all my love of Wheel of Time, its pacing is atrocious and I think even RJ would agree that if he could go back with the whole story in mind and edit it to be more streamlined, he absolutely would have. The show HAS to do that or we’d still be in the goddamn Two Rivers with the book pacing.

Centering the first season on the White Tower and Moiraine’s POV makes sense. The book relied on Moiraine being a Gandalf figure that gave information away at the pace of reader reveals, in tiny drips meant to tantalize a slow-paced book’s reader. That would be immensely frustrating for a tv show viewer of a story set in a sprawling fantasy world that needs tons of explanation and world building up front to have any idea what’s going on. Focusing on Moiraine, who has the answers, instead of sticking to the ignorance of the kids isn’t just a good choice it’s very nearly the only choice you can make. The White Tower is one of the most complex and interesting parts of that world. Centering it and introducing it earlier was an incredibly wise choice.

Other smaller choices make sense too if people thought about it for two seconds. Aging up the kids makes sense. They’re teens in the books and it would be incredibly awkward on screen. But once you age them up, it makes sense that at least ONE of them has been married before. Perrin makes SENSE to have been married if he left Two Rivers later. He’s a responsible guy with a good trade and a level head on his shoulders. He’s sweet and caring and mature. Of course he got married, he’s from a small farming community in a medieval-esque world with shorter life expectancies. Furthermore, I love Perrin to death but his obsessive fear of hurting Faile later is frankly ungrounded in anything that isn’t benign misogyny on some level. It doesn’t update and translate well on its own. Giving him Laila, giving him the manner of Laila’s death grounds his later attitudes towards Faile so well I literally gasped when I put it all together.

Other changes like in S2 having Min and Mat meet the way they do in Tar Valon was genius. It matters more that Mat and Min have rapport than that they meet in the same circumstances as the book (and Mat wouldn’t even remember that meeting anyway lol). The rapport set up and the way it showed Mat’s genius and con artistry was brilliant. Showing these characters LIKE each other was incredibly engaging and endearing which is so important because the adaptation has to be enjoyable to non book readers too, especially since the 15, 800+ page books of meandering pacing are pretty much impenetrable to new readers. Book readers simply can’t make up the majority of the audience, there’s not enough of them to sustain a show with any kind of budget which WOT requires. Thus, it needs to be an enjoyable show in its own right, not just a meandering exact adaptation ffs.

I can literally point to any show change and say it was either logical, practical, thematic, or simply genius. Wheel of Time desperately needs an edit to be accessible to modern audiences. What an adaptation prioritizes is always a risk that’s going to be run for a fan of the original material but so far I’ve been wildly impressed by every choice made in how logical or thoughtful and most of all loving it was to the actual important emotions and themes of the book. Any complainers are seriously missing the point of what an adaptation even is.

[peterpumpkinhead]

about yibo's recent controversy

it's bad!!!!!

I'm a black fan of his and needless to say, I'm devastated lol

Yes, I fully understood the context of the scene. Yes, I also understand there were many black people on set (and I will not hold them responsible or use them as tokens to justify what cannot be justified). Yes, I get that actors have contractual obligations and have limited say in what makes it in the film, in spite of what people might think.

That being said, there's a reason why blackface is 99% of time and abhorrent practice in the arts. I leave 1% out because, in certain instances, like in the show Mad Men, it appears for the sake of historical accuracy and it is MEANT to cause revolt and disgust in the audience.

The fact is - as much as the plot of the film is based in real life, blackface, as an aesthetic instrument, reinforces many negative stereotypes, it perpetuates itself in the collective imagination and is more so a tool of dehumanization and naturalization of the relegation of black bodies to the category of costumes, props, tools.

I don't even need to get into the paternalistic approach of foreign law enforcement, coming from powerful countries of the global north, working in developing countries and portraying themselves solely as heroes - which is the storyline of a film that has no main black characters and relegates the black cast to either victims, criminals or extras in the background.

The entire cast, crew and production company should be held responsible for this enormous error, so I won't single one person out.

Being critical and demanding a response is not the same as being a hater. I'm nobody's hater, or anti and I believe in measured, strategic responses to a situation like this. But being angry is a very, very valid feeling right now.

I myself work on television and ~believe it or not, am a socialist. You don't need to explain away the inner workings of the entertainment industry or the complexities of cultural impact and ongoing symbols of oppression. I'm *quite* aware.

But, as a good old socialist, I must ask the question: what do we do? My thought process is: I fear that the Chinese audiences will not give two damns about this, which does not mean we shouldn't mobilize ourselves to demand change, an apology and consequences.

Being someone's fan is not the same as joining a cult and my admiration for the actor involved is not larger than my responsibility to social justice and to my people.

So I suggest we contact and comment on posts made by international brands endorsed by the talents in this film - like Dior, Chanel, Lacoste, Pantene, etc. We need to ask them if they're ready the back actors who have agreed to this outdated, highly insulting practice.

This film will not be getting my support and I will not defend actions that need no defense. I'm nobody's attorney, I'm a working class artist and I know better than to infantilize a grown man, as much as I've a history of admiring him.

[anthuan0]

I finished Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne finally, and I wanna talk about my thoughts on the game. Imma keep it brief cause this is a very long game, and I probably will never get done if I don't limit myself.

Gameplay

Where to begin, where to begin. I think my favorite thing about it was the Press Turn system. It rocks. Everyone knows it rocks. It adds so much to every battle. And when it goes just right, and you get a bunch of press turns on an enemy. Chefs kiss, mama mi 🤌. Of course, when the opposite happens and you get mauled by a bunch of demons, it feels horrible, but I don't know it just added more tension.

But the battle system would be nothing without the demons. And I can say that I love how the demons were handled in this game. In SMT 1 the first game in the series I ever played, I felt like you were too constricted on what demons you could use due to the alignment system. I loved all the freedom you could have when it came to recruiting and fusion in this game. But I gotta say my biggest issue with the game was with one of the aspects of fusion. I HATED how I couldn't choose what skills to pass down. I spent so much time just re-rolling and re-rolling... and re-rolling, for the skills I wanted. I heard they changed this in the remake, though, so I'll have to check it out since that really was my biggest issue with the game.

Character and Story

Now, this is where the bulk of my enjoyment came from. I loved how the bleakness of the world was juxtaposed with the little pockets of civilization you would find. Seeing demons and souls just go about their daily live was always super fun. The dialog in this game is truly top-notch. To me, the most notable aspect of this games identity.

When it comes to the overall story I can't I remember specific details too well mostly cause I played this game over a broad period of time, but what I can say is that it felt epic, it felt important. The game really makes you feel like you're just a small part of something bigger as you fall deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole.

On to the main cast of rapscallions,the conception cabal as I decided to call them just now. Hikawa, Isamu, Chiaki, Yuko, and Futomimi. Overall, I loved the cast. I've seen people take issue with how the characters were handled throughout the story. They're mostly off doing their own thing, going through their own revelations. A lot of people feel like this hurts their characterization due to us not seeing their growth step by step. Yes, I would've loved to learn more about these characters more intimately. But the fact that their journeys didn't revolve around you added to the feeling that you're just another another player in this game to conceive a new world. In the end, I ended up finding their motivations to still be believable and compelling.

My favorite characters were definitely Isamu, Yuko, and Futomimi. Isamu, because I have a bad tendency to isolate myself and his plan to create a world without the need for human interaction really impacted me.

Yuko was probably the most complex character to me. She seemed like such a kind person, and you could tell that she truly cared about her students. However, she was still willing to end the world in the hope of creating something better. And sort of, used said students to guarantee that a new world would be made in case she couldn't.

Finally, Futomimi and the Manikins. I loved the Manikins, man. They were tragic, but also some of the funniest characters in the game. I loved how genuine Futomimi's kindness towards his people felt. And it broke my heart when he was killed.

There's much more I want to say about characters like Chiaki,Hijiri, and Hikawa,but this post is getting too long.

Ending

The ending I went with was The True Demon Ending. For one, because I already did so much of the amala labyrinth, I wanted to get something out of it. And 2 because I love it thematically. I like the idea of putting an end to this endless cycle of death and rebirth in order to build a world that we're free to build up continuously without the threat of it being destroyed later on. I also love Lucifer's role in it. He's a more complex figure than just being an avatar of chaos, and I appreciate that.

Will probably do Isamu's Ending the next time I play it.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Music: Bangers all throughout. I love just how many songs there are. Usually, RPGs reuse a lot of songs.

Favorite demon designs:

And favorite boss design are all the gods

Annnnnd, I feel like I've put most of my thoughts on this game down. Overall, it's a great game. 9/10 one of my favorite RPGs I've played.

It wasn't even that brutal. It can be frustrating, but the game is very generous with save points, and the like. So give it a try, don't be put off.

[ehlnofay]

If you’ve read it and you’re interested, here are a few notes for the curious, elaborating on various points of this story (which I am posting here because APPARENTLY you’re not allowed to put a thousand words in the end notes):

the first note I made about this idea, ages and ages ago, is a little scribble in my nonsense notebook under a headline reading "COHESIVE-ISH STORY IDEAS". (The same page also has the seed of one of my other pieces, Comfort.) It says: "Arabella's stint at the College - can't slow down. Ancano? Check the timeline. Character study - why it couldn't work"

I was glad to be able to flesh out Arabella’s spellburn a little in this piece, since it’s a character detail she’s had since before I started posting any of my writing at all. I headcanon spellburn as a very common thing that has afflicted just about anyone who has ever tried to do magic, usually in a very minor sense – attempting a spell that outpaces one’s expertise and ability, or cutting corners and not casting a spell correctly, can often result in injury that’s about as serious as spilling hot water on your hands while pouring tea due to overexposure to raw magicka. The severity of the burn depends on how catastrophic the mistake was, and can take very different forms depending on the type of magic and the circumstances. Arabella’s burn is the result of casting a pretty basic flames spell drastically incorrectly, with the primary goal of turning as much magicka to fire as quickly as possible and no regard for anything else (no particular attention made to the finesse, presentation, or safety of the spell), so that the change from raw magicka to magefire happens at the exact place and moment it passes from inside her body to outside of it, and then continuing to do that regularly for years. The consistent overexposure had an exponential effect; at this point re-irritating the burns hurts much less (up to a certain point) but it only does more damage, and because all the injury is caused by magical energy, magical healing not only doesn’t take but has an actively harmful effect. This is a common effect of spellburn to an extent – with one-off cases, restorative spellcraft must be done carefully, but can still ultimately resolve the problem. In severe cases, or when spellburn is not yet healed, it can be inflamed by exposure to magic; there have been mages who overextended themselves so drastically that they could never cast again, though generally even the worst spellburn is treatable with time, care, and consciousness of one’s limits in the future. (count how many times I said “spellburn” in that monster paragraph. only, don’t – I did, and it was only six, which was much less than it felt like.)

I did actually think through Brelyna’s spell a bit, too – and then none of it made it in because there’s no way she would tell Arabella about it. It’s a complex conjuration/alteration combination spell that was meant to give the target the qualities and abilities of conjured creature archetypes. But it’s a bit past Brelyna’s skill level, so half the detail cut out when she tried to cast it and it simplified down to just making the target more like said archetype in physicality. which went over poorly

I also figured I’d write out a quick summary of Arabella’s Normal Backstory which she is Normal About for any who are curious; I put as much context as I could into the story where it felt natural, but given that the crux of the narrative here is Arabella deciding that after a very long time of being full-on in survival mode she’s just going to chill out now and being genuinely shocked that the trauma she never once tried to work through or even acknowledge is still affecting her, there was no way that I could finagle her narrative voice into explaining things in clear detail. She prunes off every thought that gets too scary before it has a chance to flower; she doesn’t think about any of this if she can avoid it (which she damn well does her best to). In short: Arabella’s family, for as much as her life as she could remember, was part of what was essentially a grassroots underground political collective that opposed Dominion occupation and government. She never really cared about this much until she was about twenty, when the local government caught wind of this and set fire to three buildings that functioned as meeting spots (one of which was her parents’ house, the others the home and business of family friends). Arabella ran into a justiciar warrior, the world’s worst fire spell made its first iconic appearance, and she left Falinesti. The next few years were spent roaming around Valenwood stealing shit and causing petty problems for the Dominion wherever possible; this all went pretty well until the third time she was arrested, which she got out of just like the first two but was a significantly worse experience, and now she had another murder charge on her head (this one they actually knew she committed) and a government that knew what she was capable of, so she left again. Spent some time in Cyrodiil mostly being highly traumatised from her time in Valenwood and hating Cyrodiil for not being Valenwood (god I could talk about this for ever), and then eventually decided that enough was enough and if she wasn’t going home then she may as well go do something, and isn’t it convenient that she promised her home something she could do? Then – well. We know how that goes.

(There’s not a great deal of time between the end of this story and the beginning of the Thieves’ Guild questline, which is incidentally where Arabella does end up staying long term despite her best efforts to fuck it up as drastically as she does the College. This piece sets up the headspace she’s in at that stage… pretty grim. I can’t wait to dig into it more.)

A Study in Self-Immolation

In which an eager young student learns the arts of spellcraft and staying (and almost all of that is a lie.)

posted another longer-than-usual story! this is a project that has been on the backburner for a good long while; I'm glad to finally finish it up. this piece explores my character arabella's foray into academia and the reasons why it goes the way it does. should you feel so inclined, please check it out - I would be absolutely bloody delighted :)

[destieldailynews]

Misha Collins Cameo Videos (Top Trending)

March 17, 2021

On Tuesday March 16, supernatural star Misha Collins released his first batch of cameo videos. In combination, these videos caused supernatural to trend once again across platforms. The most popular of the cameo videos are transcribed here with links (we will release another post summarizing the rest of the videos, which are mostly personal greetings.)

Still Beautiful & What Cas is Doing Now 

“Hey heller friends. Bridget wanted me to say hi, and to say [Cas voice] Still beautiful, still Dean Winchester. [regular voice] Shit! My Cas voice is rusty. I don’t know what I, how, Hogwarts house Cas is in. I know that I am a...flugmort. I don’t even know the names of the hogwarts houses, guys, this is not working for me. What do i think Cas is up to now? I think Cas is up there, with his sleeves rolled up, having a massive...ping pong championship in Heaven. There’s ping pong everywhere, that’s all people do now. It’s like, um, It’s like Forrest Gump when he was recuperating. Any words of wisdom to my fans? Stay happy, do your best”

link to video on twitter

Talking about Cas Coming Out (from CTE)

The prompt was: Could you please record yourself as Cas and talk about what his coming out meant to him? 

“I’m not going to speak as Castiel because [chuckle] Warner Brothers has specifically forbidden it. But I will tell you this. As the actor who plays Castiel I can say that the scene in 15x18 when castiel expressed his love for Dean was very important to me, and it felt like a really meaningful, deeply important conclusion to my character’s arc on the show, and I’ve heard a lot of people saying that it meant a lot to them, and that means the world to me. Umm, that's a conversation that i would love to have more of, but, uh thank you [wink] bye!’

link to video on twitter

Ideal Destiel Kiss?

“Hey Jess, I...I was not able to read your story because I just, I just don’t have time right now. I am trying to help a friend who has a very sick kid and it’s kind of taken over my day. But I, I will tell you this.  When I got your request to describe the ideal Destiel kiss, that’s not something I have put enough thought into. But I will tell you this: I am deeply gratified and grateful that Castiel got to have his parting words on the show. That, for me, was so so meaningful and I was so grateful that Cas got to have that ending. I hope you’re well. Sending love, bye!”

link to video on Cameo 

Destiel Reunion Hug

The prompt was: Since we were unable to see Cas rescued from the Empty & in heaven in the finale after his romantic confession to Dean & subsequent death, what would you have liked to have seen for Dean & Cas’ reunion if given the opportunity to decide yourself? 

“I’ll answer this question for you about Dean and Cas and a reunion. I would love to just see the most authentic, loving hug. I could imagine them just, like, grabbing each other and hugging.”

link to video on tumblr 

Cas’s Retirement In Heaven 

“Hey Caryn! I love that you are looking out for Cas’s posthumous well-being in Heaven. Is it posthumous...I guess he’s resurrected, and now he’s rebuilding heaven. I would say this about Cas and what he’s doing in Heaven: I think cas, sadly, will never retired, but I think that also for Cas, doing good work is what he would want to do in his retirement anyway, and I’m sure that he’s doing good work now. I think he’ll never stop. Bye...I hope the same is true of you!”

link to video on Cameo 

Theoretical SPN Revival 

“Hey Alex. I would love to one day get the band back together for a SPN revival of some sort, whether it’s a movie, or a limited run series, or just some little odd casts. Wouldn't it be fun to get together Sam, Dean, Cas, and Alex for a, I mean Jack, for a little, little chit-chat, vocal, audio, podcast? And it would be lovely, one day, to see, to have Dean discuss the impact of Cas’s comments, cause it was never really done. I’m sending you love. Bye!”

link to video on twitter

More Ping Pong

“[Cas voice] Hello Dean. [regular voice] No, no, no. Hello, Kyalin, how are you? I don’t know, I don’t know if you’ve thought about this at all, but I think Cas and Dean are probably playing a lot of ping pong in heaven right now. As you know, they’re ping pong fanatics. I hope that you’re having fun. I hope you’re having fun with your mom, who takes such good care of you. You’re a lucky one [wink] bye!” 

link to video on twitter

Thoughts on how Cas Helped People

“Hey Rich, thanks for your messages. Really gratifying to hear and of course I’m so sorry to hear that you went through such a rough stretch but I’m glad you’re alive, I’m glad these fictional characters helped you, and I...I’m just going to say i'm really happy that Cas got to go out sending a message that authentically loving who you want to love is something that can potentially save the world. That’s a nice message, maybe something to carry with us.”

Personal Congratulations and Poem Reading 

“Hey Fitz. I am wishing you a happy top surgery. What a monumental moment for you, that’s huge. Take care of yourself, rest up, be gentle in your recovery. And now I’m going to read you a paragraph, because I have been instructed to. This is from your friend Brook. [Cas voice] We are the last of all things. Come to me in darkness and daylight and aching. Come to me mourning: proselytizing. [regular voice] I can’t talk like Cas anymore [laugh] oh my goodness. Come to me, Sisyphus, we’ll roll this boulder back down the hill together. If we go fast enough it feels like falling or flying. I really don’t know what just happened to me [laugh] it’s rusty.” 

[italicized sections are quotes from the poem] 

link to video on tumblr

link to original poem and author's tumblr 

Request From MCR-Natural 

 “Hey MRC Natural Discord. I don’t...know what that is. The question is: what member of Team free Will would most likely get a stigmata and what would Castiel’s role be in such said scenario, and the answer is obviously Sam and the rationale is that, oh no, Castiel’s involvement is that he secretly used his angel blade to cause the stigmata, while Sam was sleeping. He numbed him with his magical powers and then secretly gave him a stigmata to help exacerbate his savior complex. Thanks, bye.”

[troquantary]

Edward Cullen: That Boy Ain’t Right

So I was doing a reread of @therealvinelle 's collection of Twilight metas, as one does, and in "Edward, Denial, and a Human Girlfriend" she mentions that she doesn't believe Edward is sane. I thought, "ha, yeah, he's definitely not," and also, "but wait, what does that mean exactly, please say more about that." But since she's already inundated with asks, I've decided to use my own head-muscle and explore this idea. (TL;DR: I start out more or less organized, synthesize some points Vinelle has made across several posts (and have hopefully linked to them all where relevant but please tell me if not), touch a little on narcissism, then take a hard left into the negative effects of being a telepath.)

Just a couple things to note at the outset, though. Theses have been written already (probably) about Edward as an abuser. Edward being insane doesn't negate that at all; he's definitely an asshole and just...a disaster of a human being. (I find it more funny than anything, but YMMV.) I'm also going to try to avoid talking specifically about mental illness and how it relates (or doesn't relate) to abusive behavior -- that's territory I'm not really equipped to discuss, like at all. My starting point is "Edward has a deeply warped perception of reality," not "Edward has X disorder."

So: deeply warped perception of reality. The evidence? Goes behind a cut, because my one character trait is Verbose.

Vinelle provides a great example of it in the post linked above, which I'll just quote because she does words good: "[Edward] keeps acting like his romance with Bella is a romantic tragedy, and all the cast of Twilight are actors on a stage making it as sublime as possible." Edward's the one to pursue Bella, but he does so with the full belief, from the very beginning, that it will never last; Bella will "outgrow" him, go on her human way, and he can spend the rest of eternity brooding magnificently over his too-short romantic bliss. [Insert premature ejaculation joke.] Turning her is never an option, even though Alice, Noted Psychic, says that romancing Bella will either end with her dead (exsanguinated) or dead (vampire).

This framing, where he's a dark anti-hero in love with -- but never tainting! -- the pure maiden and eventually leaving her in a grand, tragic sacrifice to preserve her soul? It's fucking bonkers. Bella isn't a person to him in this scenario. As Vinelle points out, Bella's never really a person to him at all; he falls in love with his own mental construct, cherry-picking from what he observes of her behavior and her responses to his 20 (thousand) Questions to convince himself that she is the ideal woman.

Bella's not the only one who gets the projection/cardboard-cutout treatment. Edward sees everything and everyone through a highly particular, personalized lens. He filters his entire reality, which we all do to an extent, but the thing with Edward is that he starts with his conclusions and then only pays attention to the evidence that supports those conclusions. Often that evidence consists of what he admits in New Moon are only "surface" thoughts -- but recognizing that limitation doesn't keep him from taking those thoughts as representative of what people are. Edward then becomes absolutely convinced by his own "reasoning" and won't be swayed from what he has decided is Objectively True. It's obvious with Bella; it's also painfully obvious with Rosalie. (Vinelle explains this and brings up Edward's raging Madonna/Whore complex in the same post, so refer to that again -- she's right.)

He also catastrophizes. Everything. Bella's just vibing in her room, rereading Wuthering Heights for the 87th time? She's gonna be hit by a meteor, better sneak into her room while she sleeps. Bella's going to the beach with the filthy mundanes their human classmates? She's gonna fall in the ocean. Jasper's cannibal pals are stopping by for a visit, but know not to hunt in the area? DISASTER, DEFCON 1, ALSO FUCK YOU JASPER FOR EVEN EXISTING IN MY AND BELLA'S SPHERE YOU UNSPEAKABLE BURDEN. Edward must believe that Bella is vulnerable and in near-constant peril, to support the reality he has created in which he is the villain turned protector and maybe?? hero??? (!!!) for his beloved. So when the actual, James-shaped danger arrives, he goes berserk, snarling and flipping his shit and generally not helping the situation. His fantasy demands that Bella remain human, so instead of doing the very thing Alice, Noted Psychic, assures him will neutralize the threat (and not just a threat to Bella, either, but to Bella's family and any other human James might decide to include in the "game"), he vetoes it immediately, no discussion. Bella Must Not Turn, and he sticks to those guns despite James nearly reducing her to ground beef, despite leaving Bella catatonic with depression (but human! success!) in New Moon, despite Aro's order and his family's vote and, let's not forget, Bella's clearly and repeatedly stated desire to be a vampire. It's going to happen. But he doesn't accept it until Renesmee busts out of Bella like the Kool-Aid man and the poor girl's heart finally, unequivocally stops.

Sane people don't behave this way. I don't want to slap labels on Edward, but I can't help but note that he comes across as highly narcissistic. He's the only real person in his universe, the lone player among us NPCs. That probably has a lot to do with him being frozen in the mindset and maturity of a seventeen-year-old boy, but I think it's also just...him, on some fundamental level. His failure to connect with others and recognize them as full, independent beings with their own wants and priorities isn't like Bella's failure -- she's badly depressed. Edward is...something else, and I get the sense that his sanity has been steadily deteriorating over time. And a cursory google of narcissistic traits turns up some familiar-looking stuff. He's self-loathing, yes, but also grandiose; he hates himself for the monster he is (and hates most vampires besides Esme and Carlisle for their monstrosity, too) but still feels superior to humans, to the extent that he felt entitled to human blood and resented Carlisle for depriving him of his "proper" diet. He eventually returns to Carlisle, but he's far from content -- the beginning of Midnight Sun finds him in a state of ennui, bored and dismissive of (if not outright disgusted by) everyone around him, that has apparently persisted for years and years. He doesn't play the piano, he doesn't compose, he doesn't enjoy anything...at least until Bella comes along and then he becomes obsessed to a disturbing degree with her and his new, romantic tragedy spin on reality.

[Next-day edit: I’m not sure where else to fit this in, but the way Edward casually contemplates violence against people who have, at best, mildly annoyed him is...chilling. I have a hard time writing off his strategizing how to murder the entire Biology class as a result of bloodlust -- it’s so calculated, nothing like the blackout state of thirst Emmett describes when he encountered his own “singer,” and that is probably the default for when a vampire is extremely thirsty. But even ignoring the Biology class incident, Edward still does things like consider, with disturbing frequency, how he might grievously injure or kill Mike Newton, all because...Edward considers him his romantic rival (despite Bella barely giving the kid the time of day). He thinks about slapping Mike through a wall, which might be an amusing slapstick image, except as a vampire Edward’s actually capable of turning this boy’s skeleton to a fine powder. So it’s, y’know, kind of sick when you think about it.

But even worse than that, when Bella tells Edward about how she flirted with Jacob to get at that sweet, sweet vampire lore, Edward chuckles and then, after dropping Bella home, flippantly observes that now that the treaty’s broken, why not genocide? I’m not even kidding, it’s right there in Midnight Sun; he seriously thinks about the fact that he’d be technically justified now in wiping out the entire tribe because a teenager tried to impress a girl with a spooky story. That is fucked. Remember, Edward was there with Carlisle when the treaty was first established. He knows how remarkable it is that they even came to a truce in the first place, that it was only ever possible because Carlisle is...well, Carlisle, and that it marks a pretty significant moment in supernatural history. He doesn’t care; he doesn’t respect it, or he’d never think something like “Ha ha, if I went and killed them all, I wouldn’t even be wrong. I mean, I won’t do it, but I’m just saying, I wouldn’t be wrong.”

Again: not the thought process or behavior of a sane person. (Or a person that respects life in general -- sorry Carlisle, big L.)]

Finally, whether he's a narcissist or not, I think the fact that Edward has constant, unavoidable access to everyone's thoughts is a powerful contributing factor to his instability. He can tune out the mental noise to an extent, but he can't stop it -- so he comes to rely on it like another sense. This causes issues with disconnect and lack of empathy, of course, but there's another facet to this shit diamond: he's basically experiencing a ceaseless flow of intrusive thoughts. His narration in Midnight Sun suggests that he "hears" the words people think, can "see" what they visualize in their mind's eye, and can sense the emotional "tone" and intensity of their thoughts. Therefore, perceiving Jasper's thirst through his thoughts makes Edward more aware of his own, "doubling" the discomfort. This would be a lot to deal with even from just his immediate coven members, but Edward gets all of this pouring into his head like a firehose on a day-to-day basis because the Cullens live right alongside humans. I know Meyerpires have galaxy brains or whatever, but that's a ton to process.

Besides the compounding effect on his own thirst when he "feels" the thirst of others, Meyer never suggests that Edward has difficulty separating his own thoughts from other people's; even when he was newly turned, he recognized Carlisle's "voice" in his head as Carlisle's. That would create a whole different host of issues around identity, but it looks like Edward's escaped that particular torment. However, I can easily imagine that what he does experience is just shy of unbearable nonetheless, with an eroding effect on his sanity over decades. He can't sleep to escape it; he's on a dishwater diet and probably (like the rest of his family) experiencing a perpetual, low-grade physical discomfort due to his thirst never being fully satisfied; and he's around far more people than is the norm for vampires -- even discounting all the humans, his own coven is unusually large -- meaning more noise.

Honestly, it would be weirder if he were all there, considering.

And even though I feel like I lost a sense of structure around where I started ranting about telepathy, I've written like 1.5k words about Edward fucking Cullen and I think that's enough for one post.

[goldenraeofsun]

A/b/o + celebrities and/or coffee shop 👀

Thanks so much for the prompt, Julesy, and I'm so sorry for the long wait! Part II should be up in the next few days, but hopefully this beginning 7k will satisfy for the time being 😘

Castiel is elbow-deep in suds when Jo plunks a medium to-go cup on the edge of the sink. “Thank you?” he says, bemused.

“It’s not for you, doofus,” Jo says, rolling her eyes. “There’s a customer out back,” she jerks her head towards the service exit that leads to the alley where they dump their trash and Ruby takes her furtive smoke breaks. “I need you to take this to him.”

“Out back?” Castiel repeats dubiously, craning his neck to catch sight of their on-site baker, Benny, who is busy kneading focaccia dough for tomorrow’s sandwiches. Benny, full of southern politeness, doesn’t give any indication he’s eavesdropping.

Jo gives Castiel a short nod, her alpha scent flaring with irritation. “I’d take it out there myself, but he always talks my ear off, and Kevin still can’t draw a latte art that doesn’t look like a dick, so…”

Castiel frowns but nods, and Jo’s expression eases once she doesn't hear a challenge to her request. Still, he has to ask, “But why doesn’t he order at the counter like a normal customer?”

Jo takes a step back towards the door. “You’ll see. Just… don’t make a big deal of it.”

“A big deal of what?” Castiel calls to her, but she’s already disappeared out to the front of the cafe.

Castiel sighs and wipes his hands on a dish towel. He picks up the drink, sniffing curiously.

He nearly gags at the strong aroma of brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and apples all on top of espresso and milk. They definitely don’t serve that on the menu. Admittedly, Castiel hasn’t memorized the list of hot drinks they serve at Hunter’s Cafe, but this is an assault on anyone with a nose. He’s been their busboy and dishwasher for six months since his second year as a graduate student began, and Jo has only let him mind the counter three times, all as far from peak time as she could get.

But a job is a job. Holding the drink, he shoulders open the back door.

“Hey - oh, you’re not Jo,” a familiar voice says.

Castiel stops dead in his tracks because, despite the sunglasses, the baseball hat, and hunched shoulders, Dean Winchester is unmistakable.

Away from the limelight, Dean apparently favors soft-looking flannels over worn tee shirts and jeans. In one hand, he holds a half depleted sheaf of french fries. Stunned, Castiel doesn't immediately hand over the reason for his appearance.

“Whatever, is that mine?” Dean demands, zeroing in on Castiel’s cup.

Still beyond speech, Castiel dumbly hands the affront to coffee over.

After a muttered thanks, Dean takes a long drink. “Christ, this tastes even better than normal.”

Castiel inhales a surreptitious breath. It’s not every day one gets to catch the scent of Hollywood’s omega darling.

Not that anyone would know Dean's secondary gender just by looking at him. Dean stands a few inches taller than the average male omega - he has nearly an inch of height on Castiel, and Castiel is the dictionary definition of standard alpha physique.

While Castiel might not be Dean’s most knowledgeable fan, he hasn’t been living under a rock for the past five years. It was all over the papers when Dean was cast in his first alpha role. Dean wasn’t the first omega actor to do so, but he was certainly the most prominent. Castiel’s sister, Anna, an actual fan, spent a memorable dinner ranting about how all the prejudiced reporters on the press tour. Apparently they only asked Dean about the diet and exercise routine that transform into a “real” alpha, while, in the next round, his alpha castmates fielded questions about their characters’ moral code and complex development.

But, in the alley behind Hunter’s Café, Castiel’s nose is completely overwhelmed by the fryers of the fast food restaurant next door, the set of dumpsters directly to his right, and the almost offensively apple coffee Dean is currently drinking like his life depends on it. Dean could smell like old gym socks for all Castiel can tell.

“Where’s Jo?” Dean asks once he resurfaces. He jams a few fries in his mouth. Before he's finished chewing, he sucks down some more latte in an unholy taste combination.

“Busy,” Castiel replies. “We have a new hire, and so far Kevin can only draw genitalia on lattes instead of flowers.”

Dean guffaws, nearly inhaling his drink. Swearing unrepentantly, he takes his sunglasses off and rubs at his temple with his free hand. “Christ, I’m too hungover to laugh like that.” He squints over at Castiek before sliding the sunglasses back on his face.

Castiel stares. “If you’re hungover, why are you here at -” he checks his watch “-seven in the morning?”

Dean slurps at his fruity latte before he answers. “Got a meeting at nine. This,” he says, brandishing his mostly empty cup, “and a large fries are the cure.” His hands occupied, Dean ducks his head to fish a single fry out and holds it like a cigarette between his lips.

“That sounds disgusting,” Castiel says, aghast.

Dean inches the rest of the fry into his mouth. “Don't knock it ‘til you try it,” he says with a wink.

Cas blushes.

“Hey,” Dean says, a new thought coming to him, “What’s your name?”

Taken aback by the question, he answers, “Castiel.”

Dean mouths his name once, his brow furrowing at the new syllables. With a small shrug of capitulation he says, “Well, Cas, thanks for the drink.” He toasts him one before tipping the cup all the way back, draining it.

“You’re welcome, Dean.”

Dean grins. “I couldn't tell if you recognized me or not.”

“I did,” Castiel says, clearly unnecessarily.

Amused, Dean throws him a long, considering look. “You’ve got one hell of a poker face.” He unceremoniously shovels the rest of the fries in his mouth and balls up the wrapper. He tosses it with practiced ease into the waiting dumpster.

“Thank you?” Cas says, nonplussed.

“Thank you,” Dean says, pushing his sunglasses up his nose. “You’re the one who saved my hide.” He sidles forward and shoves a bill into Castiel’s slack hand. Without another word, he takes off out of the alley and onto the street.

Once he’s out of sight, Castiel unclenches his hand. Dean tipped him ten dollars.

* * *

“How is this even more pungent than last time?” Castiel demands, nose wrinkling as he sets a now clean muffin tin back on the shelf. It’s been a week since he met Dean Winchester, and hadn’t gotten so much as a whiff of apple pie since then.

He is alone with Jo in the kitchen, since Benny’s early morning shift ends at eleven.

“I added a caramel drizzle,” Jo says, her scent rising with her self-satisfaction.

Castiel stares at her in horror. “Why on earth would you do that?”

“’Cause I’m trying to see what his limit is, and so far - nothing,” Jo says, shrugging. “Get to it. He’s real grouchy if you make him wait too long.”

“And why aren’t you taking it to him?” Castiel says, eyebrows rising. “Kevin’s moved onto multiple hearts now. Admittedly, his first one looked like a labia, but he’s gotten much better.”

“But Ruby didn’t show up, so we’re short staffed,” Jo says shortly. Outside, Kevin yells something indistinguishable though the kitchen door, and Jo winces.

Castiel takes the latte.

Just like last time, Dean is waiting, wearing a different flannel but the same jeans with the hole above the left knee. He abandoned the sunglasses, since the clouds overhead cast the whole alley in shade. They’re hanging from the vee of his shirt collar, pulling the fabric down a tempting extra inch.

Unfortunately, the fast food restaurant next door must have just taken out the trash last night, since the alley reeks of stale bread and rotting fish patties.

Castiel lets the door slam behind him, unable to hold back his corresponding smile as Dean lights up as he sees him.

“Thank god,” Dean says as he reaches for the latte. “I was starting to think Jo was gonna stiff me.”

“We’re short staffed at the moment,” Castiel says apologetically, “so you got me again.”

Dean eyes him over the lid of his cup. “Not a downside from where I’m standin’,” he drawls.

Castiel has no idea how to respond to that, so he doesn’t. Dean can’t mean it like Castiel thinks he does. He’s an actor, feeding people lines is the dictionary definition of his job. Instead Castiel asks, “No french fries this time?” because he’s not nearly ready to leave yet.

“Already ate ’em, while I was waiting,” Dean says dismissively.

Castiel shoves his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry.”

“No harm, no foul,” Dean says with a little grin. “I got my caffeine fix eventually, and that’s what I really care about.”

“You look remarkably more put together than last time,” Castiel says as he leans against the doorway, watching Dean sip at his drink.

“Didn’t drink as much,” Dean says with a grin. He tips back his cup and takes a long pull. “Fries can only get you halfway there. Christ, that’s the stuff.”

Castiel can’t help but make a face. The latte smells horrendous; it can’t taste that much better.

“What?” Dean asks, eyes narrowing.

Castiel probably shouldn’t tell Dean what is exactly on his mind. Castiel has found very few people appreciate his default brand of honesty - Hunter’s Café customers, especially. But Dean isn’t technically his customer - he’s Jo’s - and Castiel has reached the point in his life where he doesn’t need to hang onto people who don’t like him and vice versa. Dean isn’t even providing extra publicity for the establishment, since he’s getting serviced in the alley behind the kitchen.

Technically, Castiel needs a celebrity acquaintance as much as he needs a free bag of cat food (he doesn’t have a cat).

But he does like having one.

A celebrity acquaintance, that is. Cats are inherently suspicious.

Reluctantly, Castiel says, “I can’t imagine that latte tastes very good.”

To his surprise, instead of demanding Jo bring him his coffee from now on, Dean laughs. “Not a fan of apple pie?”

“Not in my coffee.”

Dean takes an obnoxiously loud slurp. “I think it’s delicious.”

“I think your taste buds must be severely incapacitated.”

Dean waggles the near empty cup in front of Castiel’s face in what must be an enticing manner to someone with no sense of smell or taste. “Wanna try?”

Castiel valiantly holds back his recoil. “No, thank you.”

But Dean’s genial expression doesn’t waver. “‘M feeling pretty much human again, so it’s up for grabs.”

“I’d sooner lick the dumpster,” Castiel blurts before he can filter himself.

Dean whistles, rocking back on his heels. “Harsh.”

Castiel sighs. Honesty was a mistake. He mutters, embarrassed, “I’m just not a very big fan of sweets.”

“No?”

“I’ve been living with my cousin while in graduate school at Columbia,” he explains, his tone apologetic for his earlier comment, “and he has a horrendous sweet tooth. I don’t think he’s ever seen a carrot that wasn’t in a cake first.”

A wide grin splits Dean’s face. He laughs.

What Castiel wouldn’t give to scent Dean’s joy for himself. “He would probably love that latte,” Castiel continues wryly.

“Probably,” Dean agrees. He taps his fingers against the sides of the cup as he asks, “So you’re in school? For what?”

“Do you really want to know?” Castiel asks seriously. He’s had too many conversations with strangers and casual friends who have asked the exact same question and regretted asking it almost immediately.

Dean ducks his head. “I don’t know any graduate students, and I,” he breaks off, his cheeks going pink, “I never went to college, so I have no idea what it means.” He sucks on the dregs of his latte, gaze dropping to the vicinity of Castiel’s knees.

“Oh,” Castiel says, feeling lighter. “In that case, I’m studying ethnomusicology.”

Dean’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “Are you fucking with me? That doesn’t sound real.”

“It’s a legitimate area of study,” Castiel assures him. “I research music as it pertains to culture and diverse elements of social life. Ethnomusicology focuses not only on the music itself, but music as a social process, as a medium for humans to relate to each other. In short, it examines how music functions in a particular society.”

To Castiel’s surprise, Dean doesn’t get the glazed-over look most people do when he explains his field of study. “So what kind of music are you talking about?”

Now it’s Castiel’s turn to flush. His colleagues, while they respect his academic reputation, have nearly all looked down on his chosen object of study. “One of the main tenets of ethnomusicology is a global perspective on music-”

“What, like Tibetan throat-singing?” Dean interrupts. At Castiels’ stare, he explains quickly, “Sammy had a phase.”

Castiel chuckles. “Yes, I do know a professor at Cornell who is studying just that. But my focus is much closer to home. I study,” he inhales a small breath, “tribute bands.”

Dean’s mouth twitches. “What.”

“Tribute bands offer a fascinating definition of the nature of performance, the difference between authenticity and identity,” Castiel says, already on the defensive. He can already hear his voice trying to fall into his usual academic patterns, and tries to rein himself in, “and historical consciousness in popular music. Here -” He pulls out his phone.

Dean listens in complete silence to Yellow Dubmarine’s cover of I Want You.

“Anyway,” Castiel coughs, embarrassed he made Dean sit through all that, “I also teach Rock and Roll from the 1950s to 1980s. There is a great deal of crossover with my specialty since most tribute bands recreate acts from the 60s to the 80s.”

“Dude,” Dean says in a rush, “if you think that makes you less interesting, you’ve got another thing coming.”

Castiel blinks.

“What bands are we talkin’ about?” he asks eagerly. “More Beatles? The Stones? The Who?”

Castiel nods. “I’m hoping to go to a Lez Zeppelin concert next month.”

“Led Zeppelin?”

“Lez,” Castiel says, emphasizing the ‘z’, “an all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band.”

Dean frowns. “They have a gimmick?”

Castiel shakes his head. “They’re completely sincere, I assure you.” He smiles wryly. “I interviewed Misstallica for a paper I’m writing on diverse, for lack of a better word, musicians in the tribute world, and they felt right at home with the long hair and tight pants. I’ve never met people who more adore the songs they perform.”

“Huh,” Dean says, rubbing his chin.

“Except maybe Air-O-Smith,” Castiel adds, “an American all-omega tribute band of Aerosmith.”

Dean’s eyes widen to the size of dinner plates.

“My favorite all-omega tribute band, though, is Omega You Eight One Two,” Castiel muses, “a Van Halen cover band.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Dean says faintly.

“Their lead guitarist, as you can imagine, is phenomenal.”

Dean shakes his head, his expression going slack. “Wait, seriously? That’s a thing? All omega acts?”

“Of course,” Castiel says. “That’s one of the most compelling aspects of tribute bands, when they flip the traditional male-alpha dynamic of the original, and how they translate that into their own act while keeping the whole performance authentic to the creators. It’s a fascinating process to watch and study.”

“I bet,” Dean says fervently. “Hey, d’you think-”

The back door opens before Dean can finish his sentence.

Jo pokes her head out, looking askance at the pair of them. “Are you still out here?” She glares at Dean. “Stop complaining about your diet, and let Castiel come back to work.”

Castiel’s mouth purses. “You’re on a diet?”

“Not on cheat day,” Dean tells him, lifting his empty cup. He turns to Jo. “And I wasn’t complaining at all. Cas was actually telling me about tribute bands.”

“Really?” Jo asks, her nose wrinkling.

Dean tosses his trash in the dumpsters. “They sound awesome.”

“I like them,” Castiel says lamely, off-footed now the conversation is clearly wrapping up.

Jo rolls her eyes, alpha irritation practically radiating off her. “Good for you.”

“Alright, well, I’ll let you deal with Joanna Beth on your own,” Dean says as he pulls out his wallet and hands Castiel a folded bill. He gives a mocking salute as he takes a step back, “Good luck, dude.”

“Thank you?”

“Come on, fanboy,” Jo growls once Dean’s disappeared from view, “back to work.”

* * *

“Can’t you take it?” Castiel asks, his tone verging on pleading, as Jo follows him back into the kitchen. It’s too early in the morning for another meeting, closer to first time Castiel met Dean at seven am compared to their last meeting at a little before eleven.

This past weekend, Castiel went down a spiral of Dean Winchester content. He read up on all of Dean’s recent projects, scanned headlines about rumors of his next film - some action thriller that Castiel presumes is the reason for Dean’s diet, and watched interview after interview. Dean on Stephen Colbert. Dean on Good Morning America. Dean on some very confusing show where they forced him to eat spicy chicken wings, which just seemed like an exercise in pepper-based sadism.

Castiel didn’t really understand the Saturday Night Live skit where Dean played one half of a demon-hunting brother duo, but the live studio audience laughed uproariously at multiple points.

Jo all but slams Dean’s latte on the ledge above the sink. “You know the health inspector is here. I can’t let Ruby near the guy, and you know how Kevin gets around figures of authority.”

Castiel sets down his tub of dirty dishes. “He nearly peed himself when he had to tell you he dropped a tray of scones over the floor last week,” he says flatly.

“Exactly,” Jo says. “Benny is busy,” she says, tipping her head to where Benny is adding more flour to a huge bowl.

“Cheers, darlin’.”

She turns back to Castiel. “So, you’re it today, champ.”

“Great,” Castiel grumbles.

“What?” Jo asks, her hands on her hips. “You seemed to get along with Dean. I actually didn’t know you could talk that much before I sent you back there.”

Castiel carefully transfers the dirty plates to the sink. “Getting along with him isn’t the problem,” he says darkly.

“Getting along with him too well is the issue?” Jo asks, her eyebrows rising.

Castiel scowls at her observation. Her emotional intuition is what makes her an excellent café manager, so he can hardly fault her for that. He doesn’t respond to her question.

“Take it to him,” Jo says, her tone softening. “He likes you.”

Castiel raises his head to stare at her. “How do you know that?”

Jo pulls her phone from her back pocket and waves it in his face. “We talk,” she says. “How do you think he orders every time? He’s not getting those lattes for free, not after I spent so much time getting them exactly right.”

Castiel can’t hold back his grimace. The latte still smells awful, like a vat of boiled candied apples.

“Look,” Jo says, lowering her voice, “Dean’s famous, sure, but he’s actually a very private person. He runs his mouth to anyone who’ll listen, but he never really says anything important. So he doesn’t really connect with a lot of people. If he says he likes you, I’m gonna say that’s a good thing - if you tell him I said this, I’ll kick your ass - and make you his designated errand boy.”

Castiel bites his lip. “But I don’t -”

“Dude, don’t make me pull the boss card,” Jo says, just the barest hint of threat in her words.

“Fine.” Castiel snatches the latte off the counter. “But I want a raise.”

“You can get a free sandwich.”

Castiel glares daggers as he shoulders open the back door.

But the alley is empty.

Castiel breathes through his mouth as he steps out. The overflowing dumpsters carry the odor of moldering cheese and more rancid fish, and the fryers next door are still going strong. He doesn’t find Dean lurking behind the trash for some strange reason, and he’s about to head back in and dump Dean’s latte down the sink when a shout makes him turn around.

“Hey, Cas!” Dean calls, jogging in from the brightly lit street.

“Hello, Dean.” He hands over the latte.

“Thanks - sorry.” Dean rubs the back of his neck with his other hand. “Some fans caught me sneaking in here, and wanted a selfie.”

“Oh,” Castiel says for lack of anything better to say.

Dean tips back his cup, his expression falling into pure bliss. “Christ, that’s so much better when I’m not hungover.”

Castiel stares. “You’re drinking that with all your capacities intact?”

“Ain’t no better way to enjoy pie,” Dean says, grinning widely.

Castiel rolls his eyes. “That’s not pie.”

“It’s as close as I’m gonna get at eight in the morning on a Thursday,” Dean says with a shrug.

Silence falls between them, and Castiel can’t help glancing over Dean’s shoulder, tentatively scanning for the people who caught his attention earlier. Plenty more would have approached Dean if he didn’t have Jo’s latte waiting for him; Castiel would bet his job on it.

Dean is a celebrity.

Castiel is a grad student who can’t even afford to support a guinea pig on his stipend and café salary.

After a long beat, Dean asks, a touch hesitantly, “So, what’ve you been up to?”

Stalking you on the internet.

“Nothing,” Castiel lies. At the slight fall in Dean’s expression, he adds, “I cleaned my kitchen over the weekend.”

Dean chuckles. “You’re a weird dude, you know that?”

Hurt, Castiel takes a step back. Jo probably needs him for… something.

“Not in a bad way!” Dean says quickly. “Shit,” he swears under his breath, “please don’t stop giving me coffee.”

Castiel hesitates. “Why is it weird that I cleaned my kitchen?” He frowns. “I suppose you employ someone to do that for you.”

Dean seesaws his free hand back and forth as he sips at his latte. “Not always,” he lowers his voice, “I actually like cleaning - it helps me relax and shit. There’s nothing like blasting some tunes and scrubbing out that stain on the counter that’s been annoying you forever.”

Castiel lowers his voice too. “Is this a secret?”

Dean grimaces. “Not really. But, you know, it’s one of those omega things.”

Castiel doesn’t know. Well, he knows it is a stereotypical omega trait to like housework, but he has no idea why Dean would whisper it in a back alley like he’s confessing to defrauding an elderly relative. “And that is bad because…?”

Dean takes a long pull from his cup. “I don’t want to hammer the omega thing home too hard, alright?”

“But you are an omega,” Castiel says, feeling a little stupid for saying it out loud.

“Yeah,” Dean sighs, “but if I lean into it, I’ll stop getting alpha roles.”

“You only want to play alphas?” Castiel asks curiously.

Dean’s mouth twists. “They’re the better parts. Omegas are always the damsels in distress or get killed off first for the plot.”

“I’m sure not all films are like that,” Castiel says. God knows, Anna made him sit through enough films with an omega protagonist that did not fit the typical romantic comedy restrictions.

“Most.”

“The last movie I saw,” Castiel says, hesitant because Dean must know more about this than him, “my sister recommended it, it had an omega lead who led a team of paranormal investigators. A sort of horror-comedy.”

Dean’s face loses some of its hostility. Almost intrigued, he asks gruffly, “D’you know who wrote it?”

“Not off the top of my head.” Castiel pulls out his phone to look it up. He reads aloud, “Ghostfacers, directed by Ed Zeddmore, written by Harry Spangler. Starred Maggie Zeddmore and Alan Corbett.” He pauses, trying to remember the details. “I think they both were omegas. I’m sure there are more films like Ghostfacers out there for you to make.”

Dean sips at his latte. “A few. None with big enough names attached to really get on my radar.”

“Well, if you signed on, wouldn’t there be a big name attached?”

“Yeah,” Dean says in a tone that clearly conveys he’s thought of this possibility before. He runs a hand through his hair. “It’s just - what if I take one of these roles, and it gets all this attention just ’cause I’m in it, and it flops?”

Castiel tilts his head. “That would hardly be your fault. Most failed films are hardly the work of one person. Usually, it’s a combination of a bad story, bad production, and bad acting.” He levels Dean an appraising look. “Right off the bat, you control two of those elements - pick a good script and act as well as you always have.”

Dean blinks. “You’ve seen my stuff?”

Castiel’s brow furrows. “I thought I already said I knew who you were?”

“Yeah, but,” Dean says, his voice petering off with embarrassment, “that didn’t mean you liked my movies.”

“The majority of America liked your last movie, Dean,” Castiel says dryly. “Either that, or you have a very hardworking and wealthy mother who poured a hundred million dollars into ticket sales.”

“I mean, Mom’s a fan, but not that big of a fan,” Dean says, chuckling. “I’m pretty sure she’d rather get a twenty-minute call from yours truly than sit through a two-hour flick with my name on the poster.”

Castiel hands over his phone. “Here,” he says, tilting it so Dean can see the summary of Ghostfacers.

Dean brightens as he reads through it. “The Alpha dies first?”

“He thought he could deal with the ghost on his own.”

“Typical alpha macho,” Dean snorts. His head snaps up as he gives the phone back. “No offense.”

“No offense taken,” Castiel says easily. “With my lifestyle, posturing is a waste of time. I’ve long ago resigned myself to not being the primary breadwinner in any future household.”

“Really?”

Castiel throws him a look. “I’m in academia, Dean. Tenure is hardly a guarantee. Even so, there isn’t a wealth of money out there for ethnomusicology grants.”

Dean tips his head in acknowledgement. “It’s awful big of you.”

“Just logical,” Castiel says evenly. “It shrinks my dating pool considerably, but I’d rather do what I love than compromise that much for any potential partner.”

Dean inhales a deep breath, his eyes unfathomable. “I get that.”

“If it means I can’t afford to mate a house-omega, I’ll just have to keep cleaning my kitchen myself,” Castiel finishes with a shrug.

Dean grins. “I mean, if you spot me a six pack and don’t tell my trainer about it, I’ll clean your kitchen.”

Castiel turns bright red. He can’t bring himself to respond to that offer, so he changes the subject.

* * *

Castiel doesn’t even bother pretending to protest as Jo barges into the kitchen, the telltale scent of sugary apples wafting around her like a palpable shield. Castiel already set himself for heartbreak where Dean Winchester is concerned. He might as well take advantage of every interaction he has left.

He went to sleep late last night, watching one of Dean’s earlier movies. He was slimmer and younger, but he still shone with his signature charisma and talent. For the first time since Castiel started the morning shift at Hunter’s Café, he snoozed his alarm.

Hurrying through his morning routine, Castiel couldn’t help resenting Dean just a little. If only Dean hadn’t chosen a profession where his literal job is to be whatever his audience wants him to be.

As Castiel pushes open the door, Dean is waiting outside. Dark sunglasses shield his green eyes, and a violet bruise blooms over his left eyebrow. As the door slams shut behind Castiel, Dean winces. His left hand holds a half-empty paper container of french fries.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says. “You don’t look good.”

“Tell me about it,” Dean says darkly. “Gimme.”

Castiel pauses. “Did your hangover eliminate your manners?”

Dean flushes bright red. “No,” he mutters. “Sorry, Cas. I just feel like shit.”

“You look like shit,” Castiel says frankly as he hands it over.

“Thanks,” Deans says, his voice sour as old lemons. “I told Charlie tequila shots before Monopoly was a bad idea, but did anyone listen to me?” He gestures to his face. “Next thing I know, Jo’s throwing Charlie’s bag of DnD dice at my head.”

“You got that playing Monopoly? Wait, Jo did this to you?” he demands, gesturing to the cafe behind him. “Jo Harvelle?”

Dean just glares over the rim of his coffee cup. “Yeah, Katniss got me good.”

“God, why?”

One corner of Dean’s mouth lifts in a distinctly smug smirk. “’Cause she was going bankrupt, and she had to sell her last property to me.”

“So this was because of Monopoly,” Castiel says dubiously. In his experience, a board game has never led to actual violence.

Dean shrugs. “Game nights get intense. Why do you think I’m always bangin’ down your door the morning after?”

Castiel can’t believe it. “You’ve been getting this drunk at a game night? Every time?”

“So what?” Dean shoves four french fries in his mouth. “Whaddya think I was doin’?”

“Partying?” he suggests.

Dean snorts. “Maybe six years ago when I was doing B-level flicks and trying to meet as many people as I could. Now I have a back-to-back shooting schedule and hangovers if I don’t pace myself.”

Castiel watches Dean polish off his fries at a truly impressive and horrifying speed. He can’t help asking, “Why was Jo at your game night?”

“’Cause she’s a menace who knows how to pick locks?” Dean heaves a weighty sigh. “I’ve known Jo since we were kids. She and her mom - who started Hunter’s Café - were my neighbors.”

“I had no idea.”

Dean gestures to the alley with a wry hand. “Jo likes to keep it under wraps.”

“I see why Jo keeps making those drinks for you,” Castiel says, nodding at the half-finished latte in Dean’s hand.

“You didn’t make it?” Dean says, and does he sound almost disappointed?

Castiel shakes his head. “Jo is keeping the recipe close to the chest.”

“Probably worried everyone’ll want one if they get the taste.” Dean tips the cup back.

Castiel can’t help his noise of disgust. At Dean’s sharp look, he says aloud, “She’s probably worried everyone will never come back if they try it.”

Dean’s laugh cuts off with a wince. He raises a hand to his head. “Christ, last night was a mistake.”

Castiel surreptitiously scents the air for a better gauge of how discomfited Dean really is, but, as always, all he gets is trash and fryer oil. “How are you doing? Apart from the injury, headache, and general hangover-related malaise.”

“Oh, apart from that?” Dean echoes mockingly, but his words lack any heat. He crams a few fries into his mouth. “I asked my agent to send me a few more scripts with omega roles,” he mutters.

Castiel smiles. “That’s great.”

Dean hums his agreement. “Hopefully, she’ll pick out a decent one, and I can get something set up for after Two for the Show wraps.”

“Is Two for the Show the reason for your diet?”

Dean huffs. “Yeah. I have a bunch of shirtless scenes, so that means three months with the diet coach from hell.”

Castiel makes a noise of sympathy. After a moment, he asks, “Is it worth it?”

Dean chews a fry, scowling between bites. “Not really,” he says in a low voice. “Sammy’s the farmers market maniac in the family.” Wistfully, he continues, “Give me a good cheeseburger deluxe every day for the rest of my life with a side of pie, and I’ll die a happy man.”

“I didn’t think apple pie came as a side.”

“Not for you, maybe,” Dean says with an obnoxiously loud slurp of his latte.

Castiel doesn’t bother holding back his smile.

Dean sighs, rubbing his temple with the heel of his hand. “It’s just like, I don’t look like a traditional omega, so I figured I might as well try for the alpha roles.” He swallows. “’S a win-win situation. I look the part and the characters are better - what’s the downside?”

Castiel cocks his head. “Other than your restricted diet and inadvisable levels of drinking?”

A humorless smile pulls at Dean's mouth. “Not pullin’ the punches this morning, huh?”

Castiel colors, his face heating with shame. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep well.” An inadequate excuse, but it’s not like he can tell Dean the real reason for his more uncharitable thoughts.

Castiel has never been one to lean into his alpha instincts. Possessiveness, aggression, arrogance - Castiel has had his (mostly regrettable) moments, but they hardly define his character. But over these past few weeks, he’s had to repeatedly tell himself that he can’t solve Dean’s problems. Dean is a wildly successful adult with millions of fans, while Castiel can’t even handle Hunter Cafe's front counter during the morning rush.

Dean would hardly welcome a nobody little alpha telling him to just… do what he wants and damn the consequences because he deserves to be happy with his life and his work.

Dean plucks out the rest of his fries and balls the wrapper against his hip. He lobs it in the dumpster. “No, I get it. I’m complaining about things that most people would kill to have.” He glances towards the mouth of the alley, his mouth set in a thin line.

But before Dean can leave, Castiel says quickly, “That’s not the way I see it. Your specific frustrations aren’t universal, but hardly anyone’s are. Society is inherently unfair, and it’s understandable to be angry about it.”

God knows Castiel railed enough about the unfairness of Dean Winchester to Gabriel enough over the past few weeks.

Even now, hungover and bruised, Dean is beautiful.

Castiel steels himself. “And, for what it’s worth, I don’t think not looking like a typical omega is a bad thing.”

Dean turns to him in surprise, and Castiel would give up that free sandwich Jo offered him to be able to scent what exactly Dean is feeling. But, after a second that stretches into an eternity, all Dean gives him is a quiet, “Thanks, Cas.”

Castiel nods, chastised by Dean’s reaction. “I should get back to work,” he says awkwardly.

Dean mutters something that might be a swear underneath his breath. Raising his voice, he says, his tone apologetic, “’Course. Sorry for keeping you.”

Castiel shakes his head. “It’s alright. I,” he pauses, “always enjoy talking to you.”

Dean’s mouth lifts into a small smile, and it’s like the sun rising through the early morning fog. “You too, man.”

* * *

After his next shift, Castiel asks Jo to show him how to make Dean’s apple pie latte.

Castiel’s first attempt is a disaster. He burns the espresso and adds too much nutmeg. Jo makes him try it anyway, as a non-monetary payment for her time. As Castiel gags, a smirking Jo dumps the bitter, weirdly savory mess down the sink.

“Passable,” Jo declares at Castiel’s second try. “You need more of the apple concentrate, though.”

“It’ll be too strong,” Castiel protests even as he shakes more powder in and gives it a stir. He hands it back to Jo for evaluation.

“You could barely taste it!” Jo says. She raises it to her lips. “Mm, that’s the stuff.”

“It is?” Castiel asks hopefully.

Jo nods and pushes the cup towards him. “That’s what it’s supposed to taste like.”

Castiel frowns as the overly sweet apples hit his tongue. He can barely taste the coffee underneath all the other layers.

“Trust me,” Jo says, flipping her hair behind her shoulder as she sets Castiel up for a third cup. “Your scent’s getting in the way, but it tastes exactly like an apple pie.”

“My scent?” Castiel echoes, baffled.

Jo throws him a look as she pushes a clean coffee cup into his hands. “Yeah, you already smell, I dunno, crisp but sweet? A little like apples. Makes you think the latte dials it up to eleven when it’s more like a nine for everyone else.”

Castiel hadn’t thought to put those pieces together, but it makes an astonishing amount of sense.

He brings his last apple pie latte home to Gabriel, and his cousin makes him write down, step by step, how to make it. In between actual licks into the cup to get the dregs, Gabriel swears to visit him at Hunter’s Café more often.

When Jo next ducks her head into the kitchen to tell Castiel that Dean will swing by in fifteen minutes, Castiel gets to work. He awkwardly sidles behind the front counter and maneuvers around Ruby and Kevin, nearly knocking Kevin’s elbow as Kevin attempts some elaborate leaf pattern.

Castiel draws a rudimentary apple on top of Dean’s latte, and if it looks more like a misshapen mango, nobody will see it but Dean.

For the first time, Castiel heads out to wait for Dean at the mouth of the alley.

Dean doesn’t keep him in suspense for long. He makes his way down the street, shoulders hunched, and head bowed. Gaze fixed on the dirty sidewalk, Dean doesn’t make eye contact with anyone as he turns the corner.

Dean isn’t even wearing sunglasses or a hat to hide his face, but everyone walks straight past him.

It’s the most riveting performance Castiel has ever seen.

A few steps away, Dean catches sight of him, and it’s like some magic switch is flipped on, and he is Dean Winchester again.

Smiling brightly, he jogs the rest of the distance and follows Castiel as he slinks further back into the alley. Dean wrinkles his nose as they get closer to the dumpsters and the smell of an entire rancid fast food menu hits him. “Hey, Cas,” he says as he takes his latte. “Thanks.”

“Of course,” Castiel says, tipping his head.

Dean stares down oddly at the demented pear and takes a sip. Face going slack with a bliss Castiel doesn’t even need to smell, Dean groans.

Castiel freezes and sends up a silent prayer of thanks for the apron covering his lower half over his pants. “It’s good?” he tries futilely because Dean is clearly beyond speech.

Dean just gives him a thumbs up as he lowers the cup. He licks his lips, chasing the taste, and Castiel has seen pornography less graphic.

“I might have to tip Jo this time too,” Dean says, staring at the latte in his hand in wonder.

Castiel coughs. “I - I made this one, actually.”

Dean chokes on his next mouthful. “Are you serious?”

Castiel nods because if he opens his mouth he’s not sure what exactly will come out. Probably something highly embarrassing.

“This is the best one I’ve ever had,” Dean swears.

Castiel’s whole body heats with the force of his blush. “Thank you. I asked Jo how to make it, since it seems like I’ve taken over your delivery duties.”

Dean grins. “You’re a lot more fun than Jo,” he says lightly, “so I’m not complainin’.”

Castiel didn’t think he could get any redder, but here he is.

After an awkward beat, Dean says, “I think I found my next movie.”

“Really?”

Dean shrugs, but his eyes glimmer with anticipation. “It’s a World War II biopic about an omega who sneaks into the army, disguises himself as an alpha, and rescues a unit trapped behind enemy lines.” He taps his fingers against the side of his half-empty cup. “A little on the nose, but the script is good.”

“It sounds very promising,” Castiel agrees.

“Their biggest problem was the budget - historical pics aren’t cheap. But they think if I sign on early, they can leverage my name with the studio.” He smiles shyly. “Get the movie done right.”

“That’s fantastic,” Castiel says, a delightful warmth filling his chest - still a pale reflection of Dean’s excitement.

“Thanks to you.”

Castiel’s eyes widen in surprise. “Me?”

Dean throws him a funny look. “Yeah, you. You told me to get my head outta my ass and movies I actually like doing-”

“Not in so many words-” Castiel interjects, alarmed.

“’Cause the whole point of doing these stupid macho alpha flicks was so I could get the clout and money to do the stuff I actually liked,” Dean continues. “And I kept thinking, can’t do it yet, not there yet, until some rando tells me, fuck yeah you can.”

“I definitely didn’t say that-”

“It was implied,” Dean says blithely, waving off his protests. “So I figured, if this dude who doesn’t know me from Adam-”

“I’ve seen several of your films.”

“- tells me to go for it - it being something I’d thought of doing for years - is there any real reason why I shouldn’t?”

Castiel just stares at him, stunned.

Dean beams. “I’ve got a meeting with the director next week.”

“That’s wonderful,” Castiel says sincerely.

“Anyway, yeah, it’s partially thanks to you,” Dean says, tipping his latte in Castiel’s direction. “I also want to talk about romantic B-plot since I think it’s stupid.” He shakes his head, scoffing. “True mates, bullshit.”

“You think true mates are bullshit?”

As far as Castiel saw online, Dean’s never spoken on the record about true mates or any mates at all. Entertainment news sources reported rumors about him and a one-named alpha singer, Amara, early in his career, which he denounced thoroughly. A few months later, someone published revealing photos of him and an older alpha actor, Fergus Crowley. When asked about it, Dean refused to give details.

Dean makes a face. After a pause, he says, “My parents said they were true mates, but it wasn’t… pretty. No Hollywood romance between them.”

“I’m sorry.”

“’S fine,” Dean says in a tone that clearly says it isn’t. “Whenever Dad took off for a few days, I’d get to watch as many movies as I wanted, and - well, the rest is history.”

“I don’t know anyone who’s found their true mate,” Castiel says. His parents had a cold, distant marriage. A few times over the years, he wasn’t sure his mother even liked his father’s scent. Anna happily mated another omega last year, and Gabriel avoids all romantic entanglements like the black plague.

Castiel’s dating history can best be described as dismal. During his last visit to his pediatrician, his doctor called him a “late bloomer” which Castiel eventually realized just meant socially awkward. In the decade since, Castiel’s slept with a grand total of three people. And, to his supreme regret, none of them managed to bring his rusty people skills up to par.

But, in college, Castiel found music and his calling. And all his faults didn’t matter nearly as much.

In the crowd of a concert, people are so far outside the ordinary conditions of life, and so conscious of the fact, that they free themselves from individual concerns and devote themselves wholly to the collective. All their fury, their joy, their hunger for what they can’t have, is sublimated into the music.

Castiel has never felt more connected to humanity than in the middle of a crowd.

Truthfully, none of his past relationships ever measured up. None of his past partners ever managed to get Castiel out of his own head - not like the music.

Castiel shakes his head ruefully. “I wouldn’t know what to do with a true mate even if I had one.”

“Have a lot of super sappy sex with the lights on?” Dean offers, laughing.

Castiel frowns. “I wasn’t aware that kind of intercourse was restricted to true mates. I’ve done that in the past since I've always shared an emotional connection with the people I've slept with.”

“Oh,” Dean says, reddening. “Were you mated? Jo didn’t say.”

Inordinately pleased that Dean had asked Jo about him, Castiel shakes his head. “No, I’ve never been mated.”

Dean drains his latte. Swallowing, he says, “Me neither.” He throws the cup in the open dumpster and turns back to Castiel. “I haven’t dated in a while, actually,” he says in a low voice. “Couldn’t risk being seen with an alpha and remind everyone of what I’m not.”

Castiel narrows his eyes. “Surely people can’t be that close-minded.”

“’Course they can. Most are,” Dean says, his voice full of assurance.

Castiel’s mouth twists. “That sounds like a negativity bias to me.”

“Huh?”

“Negative information sticks with us longer and more strongly than any positive counterpart,” Castiel says with a shrug. “It’s something I always keep in mind when reading my course reviews after the semester is over.”

“So," Dean says, eyes dancing, "you can take the nerd out of the classroom, but you can’t take the classroom out of the nerd, huh?”

Castiel smiles wryly. “Trust me, I’ve tried.”

Dean laughs. “Look,” he starts, his expression turning a fraction more serious. “I might be fucking up a good thing here, but do you want to go to a Lez Zeppelin show next week?”

Castiel’s mouth falls open as Dean reaches out and pulls out his phone to show him a ticket confirmation email.

“It’s no big if you don’t want to,” Dean says awkwardly into the silence.

“I - I do,” Castiel says, stumbling over the words. “You do?”

“Uh,” Dean throws him a bemused look, “Yeah? I bought the tickets, dude.”

“I’m just surprised,” Castiel says honestly.

Dean stares at him. “This is seriously comin’ out of nowhere for you?”

“A little,” Castiel says defensively.

“Seriously?”

Castiel shrugs helplessly. “You’re … you. You’re famous. Why would you ask me?”

“Because I like you?” Dean says, nonplussed. “You’re nice in a way a lot of the alphas I know aren’t, and,” he breaks off, reddening, “you said you didn’t mind that I didn’t fit in with other omegas, looks-wise-”

“I don’t,” Castiel interrupts. “I think you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”

Dean gapes. “Did you seriously -” he breaks off, apparently unable to voice the rest of his thought. His face turns an impressive shade of crimson.

Castiel shoves his hands in his pockets. “Should I not have said that?” he asks, brow furrowing. This can’t be the first time Dean has been complimented on his looks. As Castiel understands, good looks are one of the main precursors to acceptance in Hollywood.

“No - I mean, maybe - never mind,” Dean fumbles, more out of sorts than Castiel has ever seen him. “It’s that nobody just out and says that, even to me.”

“I just did.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Dean says, but he’s smiling. “You should look in the mirror sometime, though.” He winks, and Castiel’s brain nearly fritzes out. “So that’s a yes?”

Castiel nods, an all-encompassing warmth filling his chest and exploding out to the tips of his fingers and toes. “I’d love to.”

“It’s a date.”

Read Part II here!

[addictedtostorytelling]

Okay, I finished The West Wing!

Physically I’m going about my life but emotionally I’m staring at a wall thinking about what I want out of television as a medium.

If you had to put your finger on the “secret sauce” that makes tww so good, what would you say it is? (other than being Generally Excellent lol) What makes a show where the stakes are so high feel so, for lack of a better word, cozy?

hi, @clintbeifong!

congratulations on completing the show!

welcome to the “so i've finished tww and now everything else is just details” club—free membership for the rest of your life.

in response to your question, i think that a lot of what makes tww so, so good is just the quality of the production all around: 

tptb assembled one of the most prodigiously talented and hard-working ensemble casts of all time, all of whom had chemistry with each other in scads; 

they were from the beginning possessed of a clear vision of what the show was about and adhered to their central thesis all the way through (“never doubt that a small group of thoughtful and committed people can change the world”); 

everyone involved in the production from the showrunners to the directors to the writers to the actors to the crew wholeheartedly “bought in” to the project and its ethos and applied the same kind of dedication to their work as did the characters whose stories they were telling;

they tackled big topics—hope! freedom! loyalty! love! liberty! honesty! legacy!—both regularly and fearlessly and never shied away from depicting heartfelt emotion, even at times when other productions might have done so for fear of being maudlin; 

they created a story world the was as immersive as was required of their subject matter, with beautiful set designs and detailed prop-work, avoiding anything that could cause the audience to cease to suspend their disbelief or to become conscious of the limitations of the television medium;

they remained highly aware of the mythological underpinnings of what they were doing throughout;  

etc.

but to me, even more than all of these other elements, the main thing that makes tww excellent is the writing.

even great actors can’t make bad writing sing. even shows with central theses are shit if the theses are poorly executed. no amount of technical wizardry or spectacle can ever make up for shoddy narrative work.

in the end, it always has to come down to the writing.

to the storytelling.

and the thing about the writing on tww is that while it did a lot of complex, nuanced, frankly impressive things and did them extraordinarily well, the foundations of its greatness lay, very simply, in how good it was at the fundamentals. 

if you'll allow me a metaphor, learning to write well is like learning to juggle: you start off just cycling one ball between your hands, then two, then three, practicing the motions so that you make the height on your throws consistent, so that your eyes learn how to track the arc of each ball, so that you develop muscle memory on how and when to move your hands, so that you memorize the feel of the action (up, over, under, up, over, under, etc., etc.).

these initial efforts are not at all flashy and don't impress anyone watching you, but getting these fundamentals down is key.

eventually, you can add more balls.

maybe switch out the balls for clubs or other objects.

if you get really good, work up to chainsaws.

start balancing on a tightrope and playing the kazoo while you're at it.

make it a death-defying, mind-blowing, highly-complicated, highly-staked act.

but the thing is, you can only get to that point if the fundamentals are sound.

you have to have the basics down pat. you have to always keep that same steady juggling rhythm in play, following the cycle, no matter what else you may be doing simultaneously; no matter how complicated everything else gets.

of course, different writing teachers will stress different fundamentals, and especially because different types of writing have different kinds of fundamentals, depending on their aims.

but in fiction, regardless of genre, it always comes back to two things: character and conflict.

who is this person, and why can’t they have what they want?

in our juggling metaphor, that’s the cyclical motion, the fundamental act of moving the balls between your two hands: you let the audience know who someone is, what they want, and why they want it, and then you prevent them from getting what they want and show how they respond.

everything else—learning how to pace the story, mastering economy of information, developing your writerly voice, writing compelling and incisive dialogue, teasing out major themes, etc.—is the additional stuff, the steps beyond that first novice level, where you’re adding more balls and choreography, and, certainly, it’s crucial to the act, as well.

just also totally predicated on the fact of the juggling.

on that basic motion.

the tricks of writing itself—knowing how to throw in a plot twist or employ a nonlinear narrative technique, effectively using foreshadowing and callbacks, establishing complex metaphors, etc.—are chainsaws and tightropes, and they’re great if you can incorporate them seamlessly (and safely!) in a way that enhances the act.

they’ll make the audience ooh and aah.

but just the juggling itself, that’s still all based in character and conflict, conflict and character, over and over and over again, up, over, under, ad infinitum.

that’s the fundamental stuff of it.                 

it’s like vladimir nabokov says: “the writer's job is to get the main character up a tree, and then once they are up there, throw rocks at them.”

that’s the thing that if you learn how to do it both consistently and well, it will make everything else in the story eventually fall into place.

so back to your question:

the writers on tww were master jugglers.

they were amazing at dialogue. crafted tight, well-paced, stimulating narrative arcs, sometimes over the course of several seasons. could allude and overlay and imbue with the best of them.

but their greatest credit was that they were good character writers.

and characterization is the foundation of great storytelling.

it’s what make a story—even if it takes place in a milieu that is completely unfamiliar to the audience otherwise—feel like home.

that work of getting the characters “in” starts immediately on tww and continues throughout the entire rest of the show.

just look at the tww pilot episode, where each character’s introductory scene establishes them as part of the administration and shows something of what they want/what motivates them. we’re then immediately introduced to problems: josh’s gaffe with the christian commentators, sam sleeping with laurie, the president’s bicycle accident, the pr fiasco of it all. we’re given “ins” with everyone, creating a momentum right from the get-go.

of course, tww is unique in terms of its stakes—these people’s actions truly can change the world, for good and ill—and the fact that everything is so “big time” does certainly help to create a sense of urgency.

there’s also something to be said for how precisely the characters themselves are drawn and how three-dimensional they feel even just to start out with; that’s a place where you can see the experience and intelligence of the writers shining through.

it goes without saying that on a show where two of the main characters are themselves supposed to be generationally talented writers, the writers writing them have to be on their fucking games.

but at the end of the day, for me, it always comes back to the basic up, over, under of it all.

i never imagined that i would get so invested in a show about the nuts and bolts of the upper echelons of the american political system, but i did get invested in it because there was this group of characters that i cared about deeply, and what they wanted mattered to me, and i was desperate to see if they could overcome their problems and how they did so if they did (and even what happened when they failed).

the beautiful acting performances that brought the writing to life were important to my enjoyment of tww, as well, as were the themes of the show itself, the production values, the mythos, etc. i loved the fact that it could take on topical/current issues and make them timeless, almost epic. i loved the smaller technical aspects of the writing, too (e.g., the razor-sharp dialogue, the patient arc-building, the genius character beats, etc.). that stuff all served to improve upon an already stellar baseline.

but really it was just that they did the most basic things well.

that’s what makes it compelling.

that’s what makes it cozy.

at least to me, anyway.

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time. 

[sternbilder]

User Concert Q&A Excerpts, Part 1

(Part 2 here)

Not sure if folks out there are aware, but there was a "User Concert" last September where the director and cast of Buried Stars answered various questions about the development of the game, characters, etc.

There was originally supposed to be a live Q&A section at the end, but they ended up canceling it due to the pandemic and asked fans to submit their questions online instead. The ones that they answered are all compiled here.

I haven't seen an English translation out there so I thought I'd take a crack at it myself! I only picked out questions that I personally thought were interesting (because the whole thing is like 37 pages long and there maybe 4.5 of you out there who are going to see this anyway L O L) but if anyone has any questions/requests (like if there are any mentions about X or Y) I'd be happy to answer them!

This got long as hell, so I'm splitting this into 2 parts and putting it under a cut, but here's part 1, which are questions related to the main game as well as any post-game speculations.

Obviously, #spoiler warning for Buried Stars below.

Q. 무대 붕괴 사건을 겪지 않았다면, 진범은 살인자가 되지 않았을 거라고 생각하시나요?

If the stage collapse incident had never happened, do you think the true culprit would have still committed murder?

A. 아니었겠지만, 어쩌면 살인자가 되는 경우도 있었겠습니다. 대상은 자신이겠지만… Probably not, but it's possible that they could still have become a murderer. Though I suppose the victim would be themself…

Q. 신승연 PD가 이규혁에게 "그 제안"을 한 이유는 무엇일까요?

Why did PD Shin Seungyeon make “that proposition” to Gyu-hyuk?

A. 이규혁이 진상을 알고 있는지 떠봄과 동시에 자신이 통제하려는 시도였을 것입니다. 이규혁의 거절 이후 신승연의 마음에는 의심이 자라나기 시작했습니다. 협박장 역시 이규혁의 짓으로 생각 했고, 끝내 사고 현장의 그 발언이 나오게 되었습니다. She was trying to feel out whether Gyu-hyuk knew the truth, and at the same time, attempt to control him. After Gyu-hyuk’s refusal, doubt began to grow in Seungyeon’s heart. She mistook the blackmail letter as Gyu-hyuk’s doing, and in the end she ended up saying what she did at the accident site.

Q. 베리드 스타즈를 플레이하며 스토리에 인간의 선과 악, 이면 등의 철학적인 고찰을 담았다고 느꼈습니다. 이에 디렉터님이 생각하시는 "인간"은 어떤 존재인지 궁금합니다.

While playing Buried Stars, I felt that the story contained reflections on things like the virtues and evils of humanity, duality, and other philosophical topics. I'm curious as to the director's thoughts on what the nature of "humanity" is.

A. 베리드 스타즈의 등장인물들을 빌드하며 한 생각으로 국한한다면, "가면을 쓰고 자신을 감추지 만 동시에 가면 아래를 내보이길 바라는 존재"인 것 같습니다. If I had to limit it to what I had in mind when creating the characters of Buried Stars, I think that a human being is "something that wears a mask in order to hide itself, yet at the same time wishes to reveal what's underneath."

Q. C 루트에서 "그것"은 이규혁의 모습으로 현신했습니다. 한도윤이 바라던 것이었다는 이유였지 요. 그렇다면 민주영, 이규혁, 오인하, 장세일, 서혜성, 신승연의 경우 "그것"은 무엇으로 나타났을 까요?

In the C route, "That" appeared in the form of Gyu-hyuk. The reason being that that was what Do-yoon wished for. If that's the case, what form would "That" have taken in the case of Juyoung, Gyu-hyuk, Inha, Seil, and Hyesung?

A. 한도윤이 이규혁을 본 것은 "자신이 배신자가 아님을 증명해줄 사람"을 간절히 바랐기 때문입 니다. 잔해에 파묻혔을 때 생각했던 것처럼요. 그 외에 TOP 5 이규혁에게는 한도윤이, 오인하에게 는 민주영이, 민주영에게는 비러브드 멤버들이, 서혜성에게는 어머니가, 장세일에게는 신승연이, 신승연에게는 자기 자신이 보였을 것입니다. The reason that Do-yoon saw Gyu-hyuk was that he desperately longed for "a person who is proof that he is not a traitor," just as he was thinking when he was buried under the rubble. Gyu-hyuk would have seen Do-yoon, Inha would have seen Juyoung, Juyoung would have seen the BELOVED members, Hyesung would have seen his mother, Seil would have seen Seungyeon, and Seungyeon would have seen herself.

Q. C 루트가 이규혁 시점이었다면 한도윤의 전화 내용은 어떤 것이었을까요?

If C route had been from Gyu-hyuk's POV, what would a phone call with Do-yoon have been about?

A. 한도윤 자신을 “절대 믿지 말았어야 했다”고 했을 것입니다. 동시에 "믿지 말아야 했다고 이야 기하는 자신"을 끝까지 믿어달라고 빌기도 했을 것 같네요. Do-yoon would have said, "you never should have trusted me." But at the same time, I think he would have also begged him to please "trust in him until the end, even though he himself told him he shouldn't have."

Q. 서혜성과 이규혁이 둘 다 살아남는 엔딩이 없는데 혹시 계획했다가 빠진 거라면 이유를 알고 싶습니다.

There's no ending where Hyesung and Gyu-hyuk both live, but if there was one planned and it was cut, I'm curious as to why.

A. 이규혁과 서혜성이 둘 다 생존하는 엔딩은 최초부터 계획에 없었습니다. 둘은 서로 양립할 수 없는 존재이며, 이규혁이 본격적으로 탈피하는 계기가 서혜성이기 때문입니다. 다만… 그게 아냐 에서는 모두 생존합니다. 죄송합니다… …. From the start, we hadn't planned on any endings where Gyu-hyuk and Hyesung both survive. This is because the two cannot coexist; Hyesung is a catalyst for Gyu-hyuk to truly shed his skin, so to speak. If only that weren't the case, then everyone would have survived. I apologize…

Q. 모 인터뷰에서 한도윤에게는 "커뮤니케이션"과 "햄릿"이라는 키워드가 있다고 본 기억이 있는 데, 혹시 다른 인물들에게도 그런 키워드가 있는지 알고 싶습니다.

In a certain interview, I recall seeing that "communication" and "Hamlet" being listed as keywords for Do-yoon, and I'm wondering if the other characters have similar keywords as well.

A. 계열은 다르지만 레귤러 조연은 진상에 맞추어 내면을 대변하는 정서가 하나씩 설정되어 있었 습니다. 이규혁은 "자기혐오", 민주영은 "분노", 오인하는 "공포", 서혜성은 "수치심", 장세일은 "열등감"입니다. Each of the supporting cast has a specific emotion that represents their inner selves according to their own realities. Gyu-hyuk's is "self-hatred," Juyoung's is "wrath," Inha's is "fear," Hyesung's is "shame," and Seil's is "inferiority complex."

Q. 오인하는 민주영을 "빛이 나는 사람"이라고 생각하는데, 그렇게 생각한 첫 순간이나 이유는 무엇이었을까요?

Inha called Juyoung “someone who shines brightly”; what was the moment or reason that made her think this?

A. 먼저, 오인하는 옛 비러브드 팬-그중에서도 민주영의 팬-이었을 것입니다. 키워드 대화에서 민 주영을 오래전부터 알았던 티가 나지요. 오디션에서 만나 대놓고 티를 내진 않았겠지만, 항상 주 목했을 것입니다. 또한 "변화"를 위해 쇼의 지시에 복종했던 오인하와 달리, 민주영은 아니라고 생각한 일에 반대를 표명하며 대립했을 것입니다. 이런 점들이 오인하에게 더 깊은 인상을 남기 지 않았을까요? First, Inha was a former fan of BELOVED—and of Juyoung especially. In the keyword discussions, there are some hints that she’s known about Juyoung for a long time. When they met during the audition, she didn’t show it, but she always paid special attention to Juyoung. In addition, unlike Inha who always obeyed the show’s orders in order to “transform,” Juyoung would have objected to things that she didn’t like and opposed/confronted them. Wouldn’t this have caused her to leave an even deeper impression on Inha?

Q. 신승연이 서혜성을 조금이라도 사랑했긴 했나요? 단순히 가지고 논 건 아닐지 궁금합니다.

Did Seungyeon love Hyesung even a little bit? Or was she truly just toying with him?

A. 기본적으로 "가지고 놀았다"고 생각합니다. 가끔 인상적인 면을 발견하기도 했겠지만, 일단 시작부터 잘못됐습니다. 학폭 건이 불거졌을 때 신승연은 해명조차 듣지 않고 결별을 선언했고, 이 에 서혜성도 해명을 포기했을 것입니다. 신승연은 오디션 쇼에 안타깝게 매달린 서혜성의 영혼을 한 번 더 부숴버린 사람이겠습니다. Fundamentally, I think she was “just toying” with him. She may have discovered some aspects of him that impressed her, but it was a bad relationship from the start. When the school violence scandal was exposed, Seungyeon broke up with him immediately without even hearing his explanation, and Hyesung gave up trying to explain from his side as well. I suppose for Hyesung, who was hopelessly clinging to the audition show, Seungyeon was someone who crushed his spirit twice.

Q. 서혜성의 부친은 이혼했거나 죽은 건가요? 학폭 사건 이전의 서혜성은 어떤 아이였을까요?

Are Hyesung’s parents divorced or deceased? What was he like as a kid before the school violence incident?

A. 서혜성은 외동이며, 아버지는 일찍 돌아가셨습니다. 장세일의 뒷조사에서 보신 대로 어머니는 시장에서 건어물 가게를 하고 있습니다. 혜성이는 쭉 시장 상인들 틈에서 자랐을 것입니다. 퇴학 전에는 말썽꾸러기지만 인사성 바른 아이였겠지요, 학폭 사건 후에는 시장에 발길을 끊었으리라 생각합니다. Hyesung was an only child, and his father passed away at an early age. As seen in Seil’s investigations, his mother was a dried fish vendor at a fish market. Hyesung would have grown up with the vendors at the market. Before his expulsion, he was seen as a mischievous but polite and friendly boy, but after the incident he stopped going to the market altogether.

Q. 서혜성의 말투만 유독 나이 들어 보이는데 이유가 있습니까?

Hyesung’s particular speech style makes him sound older, is there a reason for this?

A. 서혜성은 시장 상인들 틈에서 자라 갓 스물치고 고색창연한 구석이 많은데요. 아마 시장 어른 들은 어린 서혜성을 예뻐했을 것이고, 우정과 놀이를 중시하는 성정도 여기서 비롯되었을 것입니 다. 어릴 때는 말하는 게 웃긴다며 인기도 있었겠지만... 고등학교에 진학해 송건욱을 만나며 많은 게 바뀌고 말았습니다. Hyesung grew up amongst the market vendors, so though he’s only twenty he has a lot of aspects to him that are old-fashioned. The elders at the market likely doted on him as a child, and this was probably where his emphasis on friendship and playful nature came from as well. When he was younger, his funny style of speech probably made him quite popular...But after entering high school and meeting Song Kun-Wook, everything changed.

Q. 구조 직전 분장실에서 신호 불량으로 PlugHole의 메시지가 끊기는데, 원래 이어질 내용은 무 엇이었나요?

Just before the rescue, PlugHole’s messages are interrupted due to a failed signal, but what would have been the next message?

A. "사실 나는" 뒤의 ��용은 "진실보다도 네가 무사히 나오기만을 바라.” 였을 것 같습니다. After “Actually, I...” I think the next message would have been “want you to get out of there safely, even more so than I want the truth”.

Q. 신승연이 장세일이나 오인하에게 건넸다는 위로들은 진심으로 한 말이었을까요?

Do you think Seungyeon’s words of comfort to Seil and Inha were in earnest?

A. 신승연은 장세일에게도, 오인하에도 진심을 말했다고 생각합니다. 다만, 순간의 진심일 뿐이라 얼마 뒤에는 기억도 하지 못했을 것입니다. I think her words to both Seil and Inha were in earnest, yes. However, it was only in the moment, so she probably didn’t even remember them after a little while.

Q. 신승연은 마지막에 제 명을 재촉한 느낌인데요. 왜 위기의 순간에 그런 말을 했을까요?

It feels to me as though Seungyeon really dug her own grave in her final moments. Why would she say something like that in a moment of danger?

A. (범인도 마찬가지로) 패닉 상태였던 것과 더불어, TOP 5는 자신을 거역할 수 없다는 생각이 기 본으로 있었기 때문입니다. 신승연은 "금수저" 이규혁의 실체를 알고 있었기에 먼저 찌르고 들어 가면 자신을 구할 수밖에 없을 거라고 보았겠지요. 어쨌든 저는 당시에 둘 다 패닉 상태였을 거 라 생각합니다. 정상적인 판단이 가능했다면 말에도, 행동에도 분명 수위 조절이 있었겠지요 (Just like the culprit), she was panicking, and she also fundamentally believed that the TOP 5 were incapable of disobeying her. Since Seungyeon knew the truth about “Silver Spoon” Gyu-hyuk, she thought that if she came in with the offensive Gyu-hyuk would have no choice but to rescue her. In any case, I believe that at that moment both of them were in a state of panic. If they were in a situation where they retained their normal sense of judgment, then of course both their words and their actions would definitely have had more restraint.

Q. 오인하의 관계도 이벤트를 보면 부친을 신고했을 때 "웃고 있었다"는 본인의 대사와 달리 겁 에 질린 이미지가 등장합니다. 이 차이를 넣은 의도는 무엇인가요?

In the rapport conversation with Inha, she claims that when she reported her father she “was laughing,” but the image that’s displayed contradicts this by depicting her as fearful. What was your intention with this disparity?

A. 제 이야기를 할 때 솔직해지지 못하는 사람의 심리와 더불어, 담담한 듯이 이야기하는 오인하 가 그때 얼마나 두려워하며 한 발을 내디뎠는지를 부각하기 위한 설정이었습니다. I was trying to depict the psyche of someone who can’t be honest when talking about themselves. Despite how calm she acted when telling the story, I wanted to emphasize how terrified Inha must have been when taking this first step.

Q. 오인하와 서혜성은 언제부터 사이가 나빴나요? 나중에 사이가 나빠진 거라면 초반에는 서혜성 이 오인하를 누나라고 부른 적도 있을까요?

When did Inha and Hyesung stop getting along? If it wasn’t right away, was there a time when Hyesung called Inha “noona”?

A. 서혜성이 오인하를 누나라고 부른 적은 없었을 것 같습니다. 또한 둘은 서혜성이 민주영에게 공손하게 (?) 굴지 않은 사건에서 본격적으로 티격태격을 시작했을 거라 생각합니다. I don’t think there was any point when Hyesung called Inha “noona.” In addition, I think that the incident where Hyesung refused to be polite (?) to Juyoung was when they really started quarreling.

Q. 무대 붕괴 사건이 일어나지 않은 상태에서 이규혁이 신승연 PD의 비밀을 알았다면 어떤 선택 을 했을지 궁금합니다.

What would have happened if Gyu-hyuk had discovered Seungyeon PD’s secret in a situation other than the stage collapse incident?

A. 적어도 죽이진 않았을 것입니다. At the very least, he wouldn’t have killed her.

Q. 이규혁이 어렸을 때 친모에게 학대를 당했나요? 태어나지 말았어야 할 자신 탓에 수모와 고통 을 당했다는 표현을 보니, 혹시 어렸을 때 직접 들은 말을 옮긴 것인지 궁금해졌습니다.

Was Gyu-hyuk abused by his birth mother as a child? Considering his saying that he never should have been born and that he was the cause of her humiliation and suffering made me wonder if maybe that’s something that he heard her say when he was young.

A. 육체적 학대는 없었습니다. 친모는 이규혁에게서 계속 이병희를 떠올리고 그 그림자를 좇았을 것입니다. 이규혁은 제 존재로 친모가 이병희에게서 벗어나지 못했다고 생각해왔습니다. He was never physically abused. For his mother, Gyu-hyuk was a constant reminder of Lee Byung Hee, and she spent her life chasing after that shadow. Gyu-hyuk came to believe that it’s because of his existence that his mother could never be free from Lee Byung Hee.

Q. 이규혁이 넉넉하지 않은 가정환경에도 실용음악과를 선택한 이유가 궁금합니다!

I’m curious as to why Gyu-hyuk chose to major in applied music even though he didn’t grow up in a well-do-to household.

A. 친모가 그것을 강하게 바랐기 때문입니다. That’s because those were the wishes of his birth mother.

Q. 이규혁이 가족과의 관계를 "서로 기댄다", "의지한다"는 어휘로만 설명하는 것은 의도인가요? 관계도 이벤트에서의 과거 설명과 특정 후일담에서 "힘들면 기대라, 서로 의지하며 살아가자"고 한 부분이 유사하게 느껴집니다. 이런 스크립트 어휘에 세세하게 신경 쓰신 건지 궁금합니다.

Was it intentional that Gyu-hyuk only describes his relationships with his family using words like “depending/leaning on one another”? His story about his past in his rapport events and in particular his epilogue where he said “If you’re having a hard time, lean on me. Let’s live life depending on one another” feel very similar to me. I’m curious if using these particular words in the script was a deliberate detail.

A. 맞습니다. 이규혁은 "비슷한 처지가 서로 의지하는 형태"의 관계만을 쌓아왔기 때문입니다. That’s right. This is because to Gyu-hyuk, relationships where “people in similar circumstances depend on each other” are all he’s ever known.

Q. 장세일이 베스타 탈락부터 스탭 일을 할 때까지 부모님과 어떤 관계였을지 궁금합니다.

What was Seil’s relationship with his parents like after being eliminated from Bstars and before he started working as a staff member?

A. 장세일은 군인 가족으로, 오디션 이후 특히 아버지에게 수치스러운 자식이 되었을 것입니다. Seil comes from a military family, so after the audition his father especially saw him as a shameful son.

Q. C 루트에서 ???가 "돌이키기에는 늦었다"고 하는데, 이 "늦은 ��이밍"이 무엇에 대한 것이었는 지 생각하신 바가 있었나요?

In C route, ??? says that “it’s already too late to turn back”, but do you have any thoughts on what they mean by “too late”?

A. 한도윤의 마음 안에서는 "배신", 즉 “마스커레이드가 이미 끝났음을 인정한 순간”을 되돌릴 수 없다는 의미였을 것입니다. It means that in Do-yoon’s mind, it’s impossible to undo the “betrayal,” i.e., “the moment he acknowledged that Masquerade is already done for.”

Q. 한도윤은 유독 1달 넘게 병원 신세를 지는데요. 어쩌다 혼자만 그렇게 다친 걸까요?

Do-yoon is the only one who stayed in the hospital for over a month. Why was he the only one who was hurt?

A. 한도윤은 시작 시점부터 잔해에 파묻히는 큰일을 당했습니다. 정상적인 몸 상태는 아니었을 거 라 생각합니다. 구조되고 나서야 자신이 얼마나 다쳤는지 알았을 것 같습니다. At the very start of the game, Do-yoon suffered an accident where he was buried under the debris. His physical condition wasn’t exactly normal because of this. It was only after his rescue that he realized how badly he was hurt.

Q. 트루 엔딩 이후 한도윤은 마스커레이드에 다시 복귀했을 거라고 생각하시나요?

After the true ending, do you think that Do-yoon would ever return to Masquerade?

A. 개인적 의견이라면, 돌아가지 않는 길을 택하지 않았을까 합니다. 신승연의 말처럼 "이미 마스 커레이드는 끝났다"는 사실을 본인도 스스로 인정했기 때문일 겁니다. My personal opinion is that he would probably choose not to go back. The reason is that, as Seungyeon told him, “Masquerade is already done for,” and he himself already internalized that truth.

Q. 트루 엔딩 후 한도윤은 밴드 멤버들과 영원히 척을 질지, 몇몇과는 연을 이어갈지 궁금합니다.

After the true ending, will Do-yoon continue to be on bad terms with the other band members forever, or will he continue to have relations with some of them?

A. 꽤 시간을 가진 뒤에 결국 모두와 연락하게 되지 않았을까 생각합니다. I think that after quite some time has passed, he would reach out to all of them eventually.

Q. 트루 엔딩 이후 오인하와 민주영은 이규혁에게 찾아갔을까요?

After the true ending, do you think Inha and Juyoung would have gone to see Gyu-hyuk?

A. 민주영은 퇴원하고 재참가를 위해 다시 상경한 무렵부터 이규혁을 방문했을 거라고 생각합니 다. 오인하에게는 조금 긴 시간이 필요했을 것 같네요. I think that Juyoung would have paid him a visit around the time that she left the hospital and came back to Seoul for her re-entry in the next season. As for Inha, I think it would take her quite some time.

Q. 서혜성이 안타깝습니다. 정들어버릴 때쯤 가서 더 그래요. 살려내도 결국 바뀌는 게 없는데 이 친구가 행복한 엔딩이 있을까요?

I feel bad for Hyesung. Especially because he was killed right as I warmed up to him. Even if we save him, things don’t ever change for him, so is there such thing as a happy ending for him?

A. 서혜성은 베스타 쇼에서 만난 기회를 통해 성급히 자신의 길을 찾으려 했지만, 그가 택한 방법 을 통해 행복을 찾을 방법은 없었던 것 같습니다. 생존 루트에서는 이런저런 시도 끝에 남의 비 밀을 폭로하는 것으로는 반등할 수 없음을 알게 되고, 반대로 제 두려움을 드러내고 가해자 송건 욱과 맞부딪히는 게 진짜 반등의 시작임을 깨닫지 않았을까 합니다. 진짜 싸워야 하는 대상은 거 기 있으니까요. 나중에는 생존한 장세일하고도 만나보지 않았을까요? 퇴원한 한도윤까지 세 사람 이 만나는 일이 분명히 있었을 것 같습니다. Hyesung recklessly tried to find his own path through the opportunity that Bstars afforded him, but my thought is that there was no way to find happiness through the method he chose. I think that in the route where he survives, he comes to realize after various attempts that exposing others’ secrets won’t help him rebound, and on the contrary, that facing his fears and confronting his assailant Song Kun-Wook is the real start of his comeback—because that’s where his true fight awaits. Later, I wonder if he also would have met with fellow survivor Seil? I definitely think the two of them plus Do-yoon would meet again at some point.

Q. 후일담 (3)의 오인하는 언젠가 꿈을 이룰까요? 그 무대에 오르는 한도윤이 있을지 궁금해집니 다.

Will the Inha from epilogue (3) ever reach her dreams? I wonder if Do-yoon will be one of the people to perform on one of her stages.

A. 오인하는 끈기 있게 노력해 꿈을 이루었을 것입니다. 크루 멤버들로 시작해 언젠가는 민주영과 한도윤의 무대도 만들어냈기를 바랍니다. Through patience and hard work, Inha will achieve her dream. She starts with her crew members, and my hope is that eventually she gets to work with Juyoung and Do-yoon as well.

Q. 이규혁은 항상 누군가와 유대감을 느끼려는 것 같고, 강하게 의지하며 살아가기를 바라는 것 같은데요. 트루 엔딩 시점으로 출소하게 된다면 또 누군가와 강하게 의지하며 살아갈까요?

Gyu-hyuk seems like he’s constantly looking for someone to feel a connection with, and wishes to live life leaning heavily on them. If he’s ever released in the true ending timeline, will he once again live his life depending on someone?

A. 트루 기준으로 출소하게 된다면 이젠 누군가를 의지하거나 도피처로 삼지 않고 홀로서기를 할 수 있게 되었길 바랍니다. My hope is that if he is released post-true ending, he becomes the kind of person who doesn’t need to rely on or turn to others for refuge, and can instead begin standing on his own.

Q. 트루 엔딩 이후 한도윤은 음악 자체를 포기하나요?

After the true ending, does Do-yoon give up on music altogether?

A. 혼란에서 벗어나 자신이 행복해지는 길을 찾았으리라 믿고 있습니다. 거기엔 아무래도 음악이 있었을 것 같네요. I believe that Do-yoon is able to free himself from the chaos and find a path that leads him to happiness. I feel that whatever that path is, music must be a part of it somehow.

Q. 트루 엔딩 후 오인하와 민주영은 계속 연락을 하며 지냈을까요?

After the true end, do Inha and Juyoung keep in touch?

A. 자주 연락했을 것입니다. 인하가 "만들어주겠다"던 무대의 약속은 민주영에게도 마찬가지일 테 니까요. They would keep in touch fairly often. The promise Inha made to "make [Do-yoon] a stage" would naturally also have extended to Juyoung.

Q. 하수창과 한도윤은 트루 이후로 좀 친해질까요?

Will Suchang and Do-yoon become friends after the true ending?

A. 전 친해졌을 거라고 생각하지만 어느 쪽이든 도윤이가 좀 행복해졌으면 좋겠네요. 제가 도윤이 에게 선빵을 날렸다고요? 그건 그렇지요… I think that they will, but regardless, I do wish Do-yoon can be a little happier somehow. Are you saying that I’m the one who sucker-punched him? Well, that’s true, but…

[aotopmha]

The extra pages for chapter 139 seem to be pretty much finally out!

And they're a bunch panels relying on visual storytelling which need to be put in context by the reader/you need to maybe think about it for 10 seconds instead of 2, something I've learned the internet does not like in storytelling. (Or in general, considering how much misinformation is out there.)

I think Kunihiko Ikuhara's works were my first exposure to this element of the internet in full force; they're some of the lowest-rated stories in some of the typical websites where anime is discussed and they're all mostly very reliant on metaphor and visual storytelling.

I've seen 12 episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena and a little bit of Yurikuma Arashi and I think you really need to completely engage with those stories to get what is going on. Almost all of the dialog in those stories seems to matter and to need as much of the context as possible to understand.

And to me a story which asks you to engage and put things together for yourself is what I look for in art and I think is art.

The reason why I have yet to go back to those stories is because they are so very dense and you really just need to be in a certain mindset to watch them.

AoT Chapter 122 and now these new pages are 100% visual storytelling.

AoT Chapter 122 in particular is still one of my favourite manga chapters ever because of how it portrayed a character's perspective with very limited dialog.

The thing with AoT is that I think these moments of visual storytelling are like a less dense and complex version of Ikuhara's storytelling, but they have the same elements.

A lot of context-dependent information in relatively few panels is in 122 and 139, that's why I think people get the sense the story is excusing Eren, for example.

Most of those complaints I've felt are very bad faith, but if I believe in the good and intelligence of humanity for once, maybe it really is that awkward prose that confuses and offends people, not the desire to be morally superior over a comic.

In that sense I think people read the words "thank you" Armin says to Eren and nothing else around it or just find the phrasing to be strange.

They don't go to reread the previous chapter or arc just in case they might've missed something.

Months/years-long breaks between material also assist in not really considering anything else but that one chapter in that one month.

And it just so happens art is also a very individual emotional experience, so "monkey brain" just fully kicks in, too.

To me if you think about it, what the story is saying is pretty obvious the moment Eren became the antagonist. This shift happened in Marley, 40 chapters or so ago.

But this is just what *my* mind leads me to and makes connections with based on the information I have absorbed from the story.

And it's not just that, too. I make connections to what the story was trying to do with Reiner, Kenny, Bert, Erwin or Annie because they were also serial killers/murderers the story took effort in humanising.

The importance of individual perspective and what these characters individually think and how they view themselves seems to be one of the most important aspects of the story.

Because ultimately one of the most important thematic threads of the story seems to be understanding different perspectives.

So why is Eren any different than all of the other mass murderers in the cast?

Because all of the big murderers in the cast get empathy and moments where characters try to understand them, no?

To actually address the pages, here's the general points and my thoughts:

-The whole deal with Mikasa and OG Ymir is that I think Mikasa tries to again, find the good in OG Ymir's suffering.

Her having her children lead to the lives of many people, including hers to be born and Mikasa thanks her for that.

This is a parallel to Eren, whose actions at least gave his friends their lives back. This also ties into Armin's point in chapter 137 about living life for those good moments and Mikasa's promise in chapter 138 to remember Eren for all of the good he did for her.

-Mikasa having a family with probably Jean (which is probably implied with the small scene on the boat) is such a minor thing that I just find hard to care about it at all. The focus on Mikasa really wasn't with it the point to emphasize how she now has kids.

And Mikasa and Historia are still the only characters we see get kids. There really actually isn't anything with anyone else (the spoiler about Armin and Annie doesn't seem to be real at all).

-People visiting the tree is a much more limited panel than the initial leaked images lead on. It's not a tourist attraction, it's something I think the families of Eren's friends ended up visiting. So this also gives it a much more "selfish" vibe.

-Armin's talk with Eren and the scene on the boat with Pieck now gets some pretty nice additional context (makes sense considering Isayama considered it one of the bits to be clumsy himself) because of the panels of Paradis at war in the future.

Those panels don't necessarily say Paradis was completely destroyed by war (we see the black-haired kid), but the alternatives also make the same point: Eren's methods didn't really bring peace.

It sort of gives the promise Armin made to Eren and his words on the boat a more sadder tinge.

Armin tried so hard to make something good out of the mess Eren left everyone. He tried hard for diplomacy to triumph, but war still happened because that's how humanity works.

There's also the layer of violence begetting violence and extremism also hurting your own people. The Jaegerist movement Eren ended up creating probably caused this war on Paradis. I think that's the implied thing with Historia's speech.

The final layer to Eren's actions is the giant Titan tree that literally grew out of his grave: what he did just lead to more cycles and the whole mess might just start again.

But we don't really actually see that happen. It's only a possibility.

Will the kid go in there to get the power and save his people from misery or will he consider the past?

We don't know. It all depends on what he knows of the past and this tree, how his parents presented the past to him, how the world shaped his perspective and yes, also his nature, too.

But the point is, Eren's actions had some good, but mostly bad consequences.

Puts Annie's and Pieck's comments in a stronger perspective, too.

I still maintain this ending is good. Not my favourite material from AoT, but good.

And I'll repeat what I said before that repeating the story's point in more concrete ways gives satisfaction in its own right.

[x0401x]

Given Movie: Gazette Toushin Interview

“The way that Asanuma-san clads himself in the air of a genius is amazing.” An interview about the “Given” movie with Nakazawa Masatomo, Eguchi Takuya and Asanuma Shintarou.

“Given the Movie”, which is based on “Given” (currently being serialized in Shinshokan’s Chéri+), an original work by Kizu Natsuki that became Noitamina’s first anime adaptation of a BL comic, was finally released on August 22nd! We are delivering an interview with the main cast: Nakazawa Masatomo (voice of Nakayama Haruki), Eguchi Takuya (voice of Kaji Akihikoi), and Asanuma Shintarou (voice of Murata Ugetsu).

The TV series was mainly about the painful and light romance between two high schoolers, Mafuyu and Ritsuka, but “Given the Movie” mainly portrays the bitter and heated love of the adult group, which consists of Haruki, Akihiko and Ugetsu.

“Is Akihiko going to be dawdling this much (laughs)?”

――Please tell us your impressions when you heard that the movie would be mainly about this trio.

Nakazawa: I was both surprised and nervous when I was told about the movie. Many things happened for the first time in my life as a voice actor through “Given”. But regarding the way I performed the role of Haruki until now ever since the TV series, I think I was able to do it without feeling much pressure. Asanuma-san and Eguchi-kun were also there, and since we performed these three people in the TV series as well, I was able to do the recordings without feeling nervous. I think they are just that reliable.

Eguchi: I was simply happy that “they’re gonna be adapt it up to that point”. I was looking forward to see the high schoolers’ youthful romance and the circumstances of the love between the adults, who were having their own developments a little disconnected from them.

Asanuma: I did not have much participation in the TV series’ episodes, so when it became a movie, things I had never read until now, such as the narration of the trailer, “Are going to be read by Ugetsu!” was what I thought, and I felt that there were going to be scenes made with that much power in it, so I got nervous all over again (laughs).

——I believe each of the three changed in the latter episodes of the TV series after listening to Mafuyu’s song. How did you take this change when performing them in the movie?

Nakazawa: Haruki plays the role of a caretaker for the band, and he felt truly lighthearted about Mafuyu starting to do music, like, “It’s great that a youngster has interest in music; let’s do our best”. But as he caught a glimpse of Mafuyu’s talent and his own circumstances, just when he was shuddering in fear that this might turn into something extremely terrifying, Akihiko threw even more wood into the fire, making him go, “No, no; what do we do!? This is gonna become a mess!” yet I think there was a side of him that took this situation and supported their first live until its success, because he was able to work it out somehow.

Having been influenced by this song of Mafuyu’s, the feelings that he had been repressing and pretending not to see until then – something like his true desires – welled up within him, so he started to feel lonely, panicked at Mafuyu’s sudden growth, created a complex and gradually began to seem himself as pathetic... This is something that changed in him during the movie adaptation, with Mafuyu’s song as the trigger. Not different from the TV series, there is a side of him that gets swayed, but I think this has turned out as a movie where the amplitude of that becomes way too big, so it was portrayed as the central part of the romance between Haruki, Akihiko and Ugetsu.

Eguchi: Akihiko puts on an air of perfection in the TV series, giving off this feeling that he knows how to swim with the tide, but all of this breaks down in the movie, and in a way, he spits out something like an as-is, inept and realistic version of himself, so I thought it would be great if he were broken down properly and was wishing for it. In that sense, I believe it is exactly because we had the song from the TV series that, when Mafuyu faced his possibilities and growth, Akihiko asked himself, “Then, what about me?” and that it became the moment where he confronted the things he had never tried to see and never decided until then.

Asanuma: Ugetsu is a genius violinist, which is exactly why he became unable to look much at anything except for music, and amidst this, he feels some sort of sympathy towards the other genius, Mafuyu. Even though they are both the same in that they are progidies, I feel that Mafuyu is the type of boy who speaks quite directly about the things he yearns for. Mafuyu’s straight-forwardness is his charm, while Ugetsu’s charm is that you cannot get ahold of him, as well as the way that people will say, “He’s an eccentric, huh”. I want people to see how they will get involved with each other in the movie adaptation.

——The atmosphere of the story has transformed dramatically from the TV series, where the high schoolers’ group was the main focus, to the movie adaptation, where the main focus is the adult group.

Nakazawa: But in my evaluation from when I was reading it, I did think things would turn out like that. Mafuyu’s song is sure to influence someone in some way, and there is a course of events of its own in that, so I guess the only development that I thought to be surprising was the part that made me ask myself, “Is Akihiko going to be dawdling this much?” (laughs). But I think I still like him even then and that he’s truly irritating but can’t be left alone like this, so perhaps there was nothing entirely surprising.

Asanuma: I believe everyone obviously understands that there are many forms of romantic love, but high schoolers have this pure and cute part of them where they have not lost anything, are straight-forward exactly because they still do not have much life experience, and do not think about the future. But they come to know about many things as they turn into adults; for example, they find out there are things not just limited to romance that cannot be helped even with effort – in other words, they hit a wall. I feel that Akihiko ended up discovering something like a sense of inferiority and a complex exactly because he met Ugetsu, so ge could not look at Ugetsu straight. I think people’s love lives and ways of growing up change through the things they experience while living, so I thought the upright way that this story is written was very honest. There is this way of saying, “I ended up becoming an adult”, and I feel the story portrays precisely that. Which is why I think this is a story that can happen anywhere.

Eguchi: Since the taste of the romance changed, something like an aesthetic of many sorts – such as how their minds move and how they get involved with each other – slips in and out of view, and on top of that, there are moments where you think, “Humans are annoying” or, “We are so complicated”, but taking everything into account, I thought the depictions that make you go, “Humans are good” appeared often.

——It is humane, isn’t it? Instinctive, so to say.

Eguchi: I felt this was part of being human too, and that it was great.

——Did you receive any instructions from the director as the axis of the story changed?

Nakazawa: The three of us did not, but we attempted receiving the instructions for Mafuyu, which said, “We will be releasing it as a movie this time, so I want your lines to have a bit more contour than usual. Your airy personality won’t change, but there’s the change that you became confident in properly talking about your feelings after the TV series, so you can be a little conscious of that and put some contour in your lines”, and it made me think, “Aah, I see”. I think the change in Mafuyu is also part of it, but there was also a change in this work as a movie.

“The way that Asanuma-san clads himself in ‘the air of a genius’ is amazing.” — Eguchi Takuya

——Taking after the title “Given”, what were the moments where you felt each other’s talent?

Asanuma: If anything, Nakazawa-kun is broad-minded. His character is too, so I truly believe he is Haruki. I’m sure some people approach him thinking, “I wanna try and cause him trouble” (laughs). Rather than cause trouble, they want to be spoiled by him; he gives off an incredible feeling that “if it’s this person, he’d probably embrace me warmly”.

Nakazawa: Ahaha! Thank you very much.

Asanuma: This was my first time taking part in a BL series, but when I heard that Eguchi-kun was going to play the other party, I was tremendously relieved. He is said to be a “mental bodyguard”, so I thought, “Aah, it’s gonna be okay”.

——But Asanuma-san, what about your talent?

Eguchi: Asanuma-san already gives off the impression that he is a lump of talent himself and has many faces. Because of that, as expected, the way he puts on the air of a genius when playing the character named Ugetsu was awesome. That’s the kind of interpretation we get when he tackles the role. I find myself thinking, “If I were the one playing them...” about many characters, but the way he makes off with them is incredible. He has something that makes you go, “Everyone, it really has to be this person”, so I thought the way that Asanuma-san clads himself in the air of a genius is amazing.

——We are looking forward to watching it, including Asanuma-san’s genius feel! Thank you very much!

[greengrungeemo]

After completing Higurashi When They Cry Hou - Ch.5 Meakashi... I find it puts everything into perspective. I may need to publish multiple posts just to get it all on paper. This will be my in-depth analysis on it all. Spoiler warning, though, I’ll be as delicate as possible.

I can definitely say that this chapter was composed with the most raw of emotions, and succinctly denotes the decline of human mentality.

From the beginning of the story, I already caught the fidgety nature of Shion - the moment she escapes from the school, she has an underlying anxiety shielded by her flirty and playful character. What I found most fascinating was her notebook entries, notably pg. 5, pg. 19, pg. 26, pg. 150, and pg. 165, illustrated below. She records her thought-process and developing emotion as it goes. It’s all captured there. The curiosity of the warm, fuzzy feelings that are occurring. The discovery of being in-love. Pinpointing what captures her heart about him. The impending loss and coping with it. The lack of coping and driver of action. The inevitable despondence and despair. After all information is collected, and once the well is dry of clues, then ignites the blame game. With blame comes condemnation and spite... and with growing spite comes aggression and violence. With aggression and violence comes ensuing mortality, and with murder comes far more mental noise and sanity loss.

It’s like a full circle of true bliss and happiness devolving into agony and insanity. Happier than you ever were before... then it’s all taken from you, stripped away, and buried into questions that cannot be answered no matter how much effort you put. It’s no wonder Satoshi’s loss added such powerful strain on Shion Sonozaki... To deal with those raw emotions? Once logic and problem-solving measures yields no results, that’s when a clear picture becomes exponentially blurred, only intensifying the more you fall deeper into it. I caught myself mentally telling her, “Slow down, Shion. You’ll have your answers soon enough. Some things cannot directly be changed in the world. Some circumstances cannot have intervention.”

Based on how she describes Satoshi is contrast to Keiichi, it’s evident what her type of man is. Once she found him, it’s only him now. No other man can compare. Satoshi is gentle, naïve, airheaded in many facets of life (including but not limited to, ordinary activities like shopping or sports), softhearted, higher empathy than most, and unfortunately suffers a lot mentally due to abuse at home, among other things. This fits all of what Shion loves, and due to her protective and obsessive nature, him suffering furthers her love and dominance over him and his affairs.

That said, there’s also a dominate vs. dominant complex going on. While she feels prowess in aiding and advising Satoshi on typical no-brainer tasks, he still has a dominating feature which conversely is his gentle pets. It freezes her on the spot and she’s instantly incapsulated by his touch. It’s so sweet. A beautiful dynamic unlike any other I ever witnessed.

As the feelings of love flourishes, so too do the feelings of growing spite and hatred towards all who oppose or negatively affects Satoshi. Shion begins to despise Satoko for her role in relying on Satoshi for emotional and protective support.

This is what drove a mental decline for Shion, as her obsessive and recurring thoughts happened, she reinforced them with compulsive repetition. Repeating these thoughts with emotions of fear and sadness associated with them is a recipe for disaster... a turning point for her wellbeing. Despite this increasing mental noise, Shion I would say, has a strong feminine emotional intelligence. She is opportunistic overall with feminine cues, just like how she boasted to Mion, “That just means you can’t slack off for even a moment, Sis, because you’ve got a rival. Tears can attract men, but they don’t anchor them. You should always be smiling, but cry when it really counts!” 

I think we can all relate on this one. We all wish to appeal to the one we love, and the ones who love hard... tend to do the more drastic measures to be in their light, like changing themselves or picking up the hobbies they enjoy, etc. It is psychologically known that opposites do not attract, so employing these changes generally work in your favor - but at what cost? This leads into my next point...

Identity. As her mental state declines, her internal identity crisis intensifies. She had it buried within her the whole time. Her entire life since birth, she may feel as though her twin cast a shadow over her. Sure, she brushed it off with pride and flair to differentiate, but at the end of the day, they are identical twins. One was cast aside, and one was titled the next Sonozaki heir. It is perspicuous what this emphasizes... One is better, or at the very least, more fitting than the other. A lost sense of self, a castaway, sent off to a faraway prison or “school” whilst the other shines brightly... It’s evident what damage this caused Shion internally. While I cannot fully grasp what she feels, since I don’t have a twin, I can only begin to imagine the immense mental weight this put on her and her identity. Her loss of identity and low self-esteem internally connects directly to her own reliance on Satoshi. She NEEDS him in order to clear away that mental noise, to give her that boosted sense of self, and to love passionately for a fuller life.

This was the creation of his presence. Her brain protectively created a Satoshi presence to fill the gaps, to finally garner that peace of mind she deserves. It is all in vain, unfortunately, as nothing can compare to the power of his touch, or the sight of his naivety or shy disgruntled nature.

After having an alter ego for years and years, I know the pain and hardship. Though, while I may not know exactly how Shion felt, I do fully connect with plenty of it. I too, would be just as reactionary and passionately murderous if the love of my life disappeared without answers. There were just so many stages where she could have caught herself? I know how hard it must be to lose the one-and-only, and I know how it feels impossible to feel sane, and I also know how that alter-ego, that demon, that presence, can ensnare you without ever feeling like it would let go... but, after getting help... I promise that it does. I sought out professional help for my own mental noise and alter ego and identity crisis, and the medication and therapy helped me more than I can ever ask for...

I only wonder if this could have been prevented had she sought medical help from Dr. Irie. In conclusion, a fantastic in-depth chapter. I loved every bit of it!

[artofaboythatoncewas]

Analysis of Ween’s ‘Ocean Man’

Ocean Man is a song that Ween has described as something that formed together like magic falling into place. But like all magic, there are hidden mechanisms behind it that necessitate going being the scientific method. For a long time, this song has remained pleasurable but incomprehensible, yet I plan to decode it. The first life of “Ocean man, take me by the hand, lead me to the land that you understand”, while also being a reference to Echoes by Pink Floyd, is also an invitation to be taken to a world of wonder and whimsy. The world being referred to is what I call the ‘village under the sea.’ It was a term coined by Jacques Cousteau to describe his endeavors to build underwater habitats for humanity to experimentally live in, but it also applies as a general ontology of the ocean in respect to humanity’s place as a lifeform on Earth. It asks of us to view the sea in the ways that Indigenous Polynesians have, in that there is no separation of place by terrain: The sea is just as much habitable land as any continent or island.

In asking us to understand the land, we’re also being asked to understand the sea for ultimately there is no difference between land and sea other than that which comes from trying to objectify the oceans. “The voyage to the corner of the globe is a real trip” is contradictory because there are no corners to the ocean: It’s an entity with no boundaries except constructed ones. The trip you’ll go on is one that’ll take you into a worldview where you’ll be able to understand that you cannot objectify something as mighty and powerful as the ocean. Given the psychedelic context of this album, you will indeed ‘trip.’

“The crust of a tan man imbibed by the sand, soaking up the first of the land.” This is an indirect description of humanity, especially a man in the Western world in 1997. The human is imbibed by the sand, meaning the hot, dry sand is absorbing him, leading to him having crusty skin like someone who has tanned for too long. He’s soaking up the thirst of the land because man has become so familiarized with the essentialism of dry land that he forgets that life has managed to live successfully outside of it. It all reverts back to the desire to deconstruct these destructive Western terrain classifications that stopped us from appreciating the impossibly complex ecological harmony of the life that exists just below the surface of the ocean. The surface of the ocean has historically acted, to Westerners, as just inhospitable land that needed to be crossed. Cousteau radically challenged this view by using popular science as a medium to explore and document the ancient world that was right beneath us, introducing the technology of scuba to better aid the cause of inciting civilian interest in the oceans and thus a sentimental value to their preservation beyond the unforeseen economic ones. 

“Can you see through the wonder of amazement at the overman?” This references the concept by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche of the Übermensch originally described in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which simply defined is a man who rises above the dogmatic moralism of conventional Christianity to create his own values that, out of resistance, refuses to impose it upon others. In the context of this song, it can have two meanings: One, the ‘ocean man’ as a figure is fascinated by seeing this external overman figure and is being questioned as to whether not he can overcome their own illusionment for what they really are, positioning the ‘ocean man’ as a symbol of native marine life and the overman as the Western man who has historically not cared for or acknowledged them. The transcendence of Christian morality could, in this case, be an acceptance of a worldview that objectifies the ocean and marginalizes ocean life and leads to the indirect destruction of Cousteau’s ‘village under the sea.’

Two, the ‘ocean man’ is also the overman, and that seeing through the wonder of amazement is recognizing that, as a human being, the ocean man sees the overman as a picture of what he can become if he sheds his Western ontology of the ocean and embraces it as a sacred element to his existence. Literally, this is transcending centuries of what Christian moralism has made of the oceans as mere barriers in the path of evangelization: To become the overman, the ocean man must embrace a journey to transcend this dogmatism and find a new morality constructed on his terms and his relationship with the ocean.

“The crust is elusive when it casts forth to the childlike man.” We’ve established before that the crust refers to the residue of life adjusting to living entirely on land, and it becoming elusive means it's hard to find. Reference to the ‘childlike man’ could be referring to a man who has shed these imposed ideas of how they should interact with the world, and thus become once again like a child with unbridled curiosity and earnestness about the world. The child doesn’t objectify the sea and obtains an ontology akin to Indigenous Polynesians, albeit in a much more microcosmic environment.

The childlike man is equivalent to a Western scientist, like Cousteau, who takes up a sudden and profound interest in the ocean and specifically the village that lies at the bottom of it. The crust is no longer there because the childlike man isn’t limiting his idea of home to just dry land, thereby minimizing the crust. It’s not a stretch to believe that, in some way, the character of SpongeBob functions as a cultural icon functions in this way: He’s extremely curious and earnest about the world in a way that differentiated him from most protagonists of ‘90s cartoons loaded with postmodern cynicism. SpongeBob is also the highly relatable protagonist in which we’re exposed to the world of Bikini Bottom, another representation of the village under the sea.

“The sequence of a life form braised in the sand, soaking up the thirst of the land” Braising is a method of cooking which involves lightly frying something and then slowly stewing it in a closed container. The light frying is the intermediate period of moving away from that Western, landlocked crust and preparing to enter into the village under the sea. While the slow stewing is, like a sponge, absorbing the ecological order of everything around you. The goal of this is to reorganize your idea of ecosophy (philosophy of ecological order) away from what Western ways of life have traditionally concerned themselves with.

The thirst of the land you’re soaking up takes on a double meaning here, in that you’re now soaking up the subconscious desire man has to understand the world it has moved away from. It desires to understand the ocean as a simultaneously new and old frontier: One more mysterious than even our own star systems. The thirst of the land is now being quenched by the childlike man who sheds the crust of Western natural ontologies and pursues intimacy with that it has evolved out of so many eons ago.

The last part of the song I want to touch on is every verse beginning with directly addressing this figure known as the ‘ocean man.’ I’ve heard some analyses before say that he’s a mythological hydrophile who symbolizes liberty at sea away from the laws and restrictions imposed upon land, but I think it's more specific than that. The 'ocean man' just refers to anyone who teaches you to rethink the oceans, whether that be Ween with the entire album, Jacques Cousteau and his series of pop science documentaries, or Stephen Hillenburg and his titanic cartoon series. All of these make the effort to try and change how Western society has historically thought of the ocean through some form of inquiry

 In Ween’s case, I think it was some psychic force that influenced them on that night in Jersey Shore to write an album that pushed culture not only sonically but also subliminally like in the ways I’ve expressed in this analysis. All of it was made to make you understand that there's a village under the sea as much as there are villages above the land, and it’s ironic how recognizing this is considered ‘alien’ when this worldview is far more ancient than what we’re used to.

With this understanding, it makes a lot of sense why this song was chosen to be the ending of the SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, as the show was a culmination of influences that stretched from Cousteau to Ween on Hillenburg’s life. And what does SpongeBob attempt to do at the end of the day but teach us to become overmen to the ontologies imposed upon us? To children, SpongeBob is a character who first fills his heart with love and then tries to be himself as a departure from media that previously told children to be themselves blindly. What if your self is corrupted? What if it’s crusted from being so used to something as great and magnificent as the ocean being objectified and desanctified? When you take the ocean man’s hand (Stephen Hillenburg’s), you become SpongeBob, and your heart fills with a familiar sense of earnestness that he felt when he studied marine biology.

[im-the-punk-who]

Can I ask your opinion on Woodes Rogers?

Oh boy. Oh boy, howdy. I mean you can.

So, uhhhh the first time I was really thinking about Woodes Rogers as a character besides just being a little bitch boy was after I read Sage Street’s meta where he talks about the ways in which Rogers mirrors James in the early seasons/pre-series. And that’s pretty much how I see him. 

(On a side note, while I don’t agree with everything he has to say, I highly highly recommend Sage’s meta because it brings up some really interesting parallels and scenic cues, and particularly the meta on the S3 finale just....makes me scream a lot. Some of the painting stuff can get a bit reachy because as someone who works in theatre and has friends in film, some of the parallels is likely more ‘the set designers thought this would be cool’ than a directorial choice but like, it’s still awesome to see.)

But back to Rogers. So, personally, I think he’s a little bitch boy, but that has more to do with the fact that the show sets him up as the upholder of civilization and oppression, in direct opposition to Flint - who seeks freedom and an end to persecution based on society’s morals and whom I personally vibe much more with. Character wise I actually think Rogers is pretty interesting in that, like all the Black Sails villains, he is a complex character. He is sometimes humorous, sometimes charming, and sometimes straight up unwilling to listen to anyone’s voice but his own - hello, Eleanor! (And, yeah, I’m aware that’s how a lot of people describe Flint. It’s purposeful.) While I don’t like him, I appreciate that about him.

He has a backstory that makes it clear what his motivations are and how he reacts when faced with adversity - he hates chaos and wants order and is willing to compromise his own civility if he thinks it will bring an end to those things. In my personal opinion the reason he wants so badly to bring Nassau back in line could be that he thinks it will help him get over the loss of his brother - who died in a random act of chaos and cowardly violence. (And whose name was Thomas....) Like Flint, he is fighting in the memory of someone he idolized. 

The show underlines the similarity between them when Rogers says “All I have done here is finish what you began. I am now what you were then. And without you there would be no me.” 

Here, he is setting himself up as the continuation of James McGraw. Which is super hella rad, since we know that Flint views himself as at least partially a wholly separate persona from James McGraw. And that we’re led to believe that ‘James’ died or was buried when Thomas was taken. While I don’t think Rogers knows the full story I think it’s likely he has a pretty good picture. I’ll direct you to this post where I bring up the fact it’s likely he and Peter were working together on the pardons(and also because I assume Eleanor told him about James being McGraw as she found out during the Charlestown plotline).

Also:

“Everyone is a monster to someone. Since you are so convinced that I am yours, I will be it.”

“If you insist on making me your villain, I will play the part.”

Rogers!! Stop!! Get your own lines!!

I know a lot of people like to compare him to Thomas, and while I think we were meant to see the parallels(hi, they’re both put in green!), I disagree he is meant to mirror what Thomas would have been. In fact, if anything, he is Thomas’ foil, even as he mirrors James. 

Flint even points out this difference: 

“No one is being hanged. No one’s even being tried. Just as you wanted. Just as Thomas Hamilton wanted. So what is it that you’re fighting for that I’m not already offering?”

“Thomas Hamilton fought to introduce the pardons to make a point. To seek to change England.”

Aside from the classic “I want my Thomas back you sonofabitch.” vibe of Flint’s full answer, this is the difference between Rogers and Thomas. While it would ultimately have the same effect as Rogers’ actions - to bring Nassau back to heel - I think it’s important to recognize the intentionality of both characters as it illustrates not just who Rogers is, but also Thomas.

The reason Thomas wanted to offer the pardons was to make a point that pirates are still men deserving of forgiveness. To “offer forgiveness to any man who would seek it.” He is not coming from a point of control, but of freedom. To offer to these men a way forward.

Rogers is offering the pardons as a way to bring Nassau and the pirates back into civilization but we never actually hear him offer a suggestion of what they’re to do afterwards. And indeed, with how he runs Nassau when he has it, it seems he’s much more concerned with keeping control than in offering any meaningful change to the people he governs. 

Rogers is, in essence, exactly what James was talking about all those years ago when he said “Put a man on an island, give him power over other men and it won’t be long before he realizes the limits of that power is nowhere to be seen. And no man given that kind of influence will remain honest for very long.”

This is underlined in so many ways, from his scene with Berringer about ‘dark men’ to where he wants to accept the pearls he knows are from the Spanish gold, to when he straight up threatens Madi with the death of someone close to her in order to try and force her into surrender.

So, I think he’s a really cool character in that he underlines things about so many of the other characters.

However, Rogers is also a little bitch boy and I hate him because he’s is both a little confused and does not have the spirit. :) 

He is everything Thomas and James were fighting against instilling in Nassau - the very thing Thomas realized isn’t the way a good leader should act. Rogers falls very much under that Hobbesian view of The Social Contract - that a monarch or person in power has absolute sovereignty without needing to give value to individuals needs or wants(literally every interaction he has with Max, hi!), whereas Thomas falls much more in line with John Locke, who says that in supporting the needs of the individual, we support the state by default.

(And I can and will go on another whole tangent about this view of Locke vs Hobbes and how it’s a theme throughout the whole show, I can, I will, please don’t let me.)

Rogers is a fantastic villain for S3 and S4 because he illustrates all the ways that civilization puts down revolution and keeps people in line - right up to how his actions ultimately cause Silver to betray the cause and sell out his own friends for a personal safety that is only marginally implied - and still leaves those on the outskirts oppressed! 

Wow! Black Sails! Stop!!

And even though he as a character was eventually defeated, Rogers’ motives and ideas were actually instilled by the very rebel leaders who fought against him! It’s his treaty Rackham and Silver get the maroons to sign! It’s his version of civilization that is imposed on Nassau and the Maroon island even as he himself is ‘defeated’. 

And isn’t that a kicker? 

That Rackham in particular thinks he’s victorious because they’ve defeated the bad guy, but then he goes ahead and uses his plans, proving that it wasn’t the revolution or freedom or Charles’ idea of living free he was supporting at all but his own personal narrative of victory! What a sellout! What a direct parallel to how even progressive-seeming leaders will almost always sell out the ideals of their constituents for their own benefit! Boy, howdy!!

And I know fandom likes to throw him under the bus as all that is wrong with civilization - call him a little bitch boy and cheer his defeat. I know that he and Alfred Hamilton(and Peter, to an extent) get to be the villains in the narrative so our ‘heroes’ Silver and Rackham and even Flint can be put in opposition to them but like - that’s not the point. That’s not the point, that’s not the point, that’s not the point!

The point is that these men were tools of the empire - tools that were incredibly effective! They succeeded! Rogers succeeded in bringing civilization to Nassau. And in doing so he forced the pirates to choose between their own loyalties - he divided the camps until victory seemed hopeless and that is exactly how history generally works in terms of continued oppression. 

Hell, that’s exactly how current political events are happening right now. It’s a tried and true method of oppressive governments to pin things on one particular person (Woodes, or, y’know, Trump?) and say ‘if you defeat this person, your revolution has been successful’ while silently just going ahead with the plans of those people’s ideals anyway. It’s not the people who are the villains. It’s the ideals they perpetuate. 

All this is to say that I don’t feel particular malice towards Rogers other than that I feel towards all the characters who ultimately uphold oppression because I think Rogers is another great commentary by Black Sails on how we get so distracted fighting for what feels good that we can ultimately end up becoming exactly what we thought we were fighting against. 

(”A man casts his vote for the same reason he does anything in this life. Because it feels good.”)

And finally, he’s definitely a little bitch boy for how he treats my girls Eleanor and Madi (and Max) and I would absolutely cross the street to punch him for that alone. :)

[ja-khajay]

Here’s a weird one(maybe):

🔥 For the anime artstyle. I’m curious about your thoughts on it

now obviously i will make generalizations in this but here we go. while i have a sort of fondness for “old” anime (say, 50s to 90s) there’s a lot of it i dislike. i don’t actually mind the character designs of 00s stuff either, even a lucky star where the little ladies have eyes half their face and funny hair styles, even if it’s definitly not my go-to style of art i feel like there’s a charm to it, probably nostalgia from my past years as a middle school proto-weeb witnessing anime in the middle of the death of early web. 

but i have a huge distaste for “modern” styles. for me the biggest shift arrived with digital media - simply put, cel animation had a lot of limitations that forced you to stay a bit humble in your art style. colors are kept to flats and maybe one or two other colors for shading and highlights due to how they all had to be hand painted. palettes themselves were limited too. backgrounds were allowed to be more funky but you still had to have a guy paint them. i think Akira is one of the fanciest movies I know was cel-animated, the palette they used is massive and the animation is very detailed but it doesn’t look gaudy. And if you go the opposite way and look at one of the ugliest animes i know in terms of animation, twinkle nora rock me, the stills still look.....okay?

cause now with computer animation you get to enter the world of post processing which i hate soooo much. you get that sort of simple art style with unecessary light effects everywhere. you can slap that on your mediocre animation to make it look better and while it works wonders to make anime fancier i happen to be a hater that thinks it’s fuck ugly. the base animation and designs is what i like in a series not the damn light effects lol which leads me to my second pointttttttt you probably saw it coming

THE DESIGNS oh my god i do not consider myself a genuins character designer but if there’s one pet peeve i have it’s characters who do not look diverse and anime is so good at this. i hate that the Anime Style (tm) is big eyes small noses because to me the nose is like the most important facial feature to make your guys look different from each other. i don’t even have face blindness but if you hairswapped most of the cast of evangelion i would not be able to tell them apart. there’s also a specific school of character design i shall call the final fantasy genshin impact goth magic universe where all the characters wear completly impossible outfits of a very specific aesthetic and i always wonder how it’s allowed. were you never thought to make your designs simple for animation? how many people genuinly enjoy this sort of aesthetic? would you dress like this irl? are you letting underpaid bitches draw 12 fps of this for the flex or out of malice?

luckily for me a lot of series i have seen gathering clout from artsy minds in the recent few years all subscribe to a similar art style of colorful lines flat colors and very simplistic desigsn + complex animation (like mp100 eizouken and everything the guy who worked on devilman crybaby directed) so i hope anime trends follow like they do in the west where artists make cool stuff and everyone starts to copy them. please. but also it might just be a niche thing idk im so picky i do not watch 99% of anime that comes out and everything i watch right now is over ten years old

TLDR : i dont like it. used to be good. will probably get better.