#I haven’t watched the series in a while and forgot the context

[01rag23]

I need to talk about this guy or I WILL explode. he looks so fucking cute and dapper!! he tucked and combed his beard, and has a nice ass suit. look at how he’s smiling too!!! he clearly enjoys dressing up. even if he forgot that he was simon, he never forgot the joy of wearing suits. this guys so fucking cool

[aardvaark]

Ok so I watched leverage (because of you) (also hi I am the anon who sent you all the panic messages about the finale) and now I am rewatching and in no particular order dumping leverage thoughts on you

Oh my god in The Order 23 job I didn't even realize Eliot was pretending to ignore Hardison telling him what star trek movies he would reference, and then showed he was actually listening and paying attention

One of my favorite scenes has to be in The Studio Job when Parker is dancing through stealing everything hunting for tickets Hardison asked for. I just love seeing them be hyper-competent

Canine Eliot comparison's save me

I forgot how much I loved the entire end of s3. And by the end I mean the entire season.

omg?? im so glad my silly leverageposting managed to help get other people interested in this show!! and im glad you enjoyed it, i think its permanently changed my brain chemistry lmao. re each dot point:

i can’t decide if it’s funnier if eliot was lying about not having a tv/not having seen any star trek, or if hardison just talks about it so much that eliot has learnt star trek series titles via osmosis lol. i haven’t seen star trek but im sure someone who has would have good hcs about what might lead eliot to have watched it, and what parts he would like. i think he probably does at least own a tv bc some of his whole I’m A Tough Guy act is definitely put on.

yessss i love that scene!! parker being extremely impressive my beloved <3. any of the team showing off their skills, tbh. on the episode commentary, people often refer to it as "competence porn" lol, just watching the characters being ridiculously awesome at what they do. don’t even need dialogue or cuts to what the others are doing or stuff happening in the background, it’s great just watching parker stealing or eliot fighting someone (especially eliot & quinn) for a while.

also werewolf!eliot hcs and fic by @werewolfsmile is so great with this.

the middle seasons (2, 3, 4) are probs my favourite era… nate’s apartment era. season 1 is its own narrative and i love that, it’s probably my favourite individual season, and season 5 plays around with format & concepts which is cool, plus it’s getting ready for the end. but the *era* of s2-4? the development of the characters between s2-4?? incredible!! on rewatch, s3 is so interesting for eliot even in the early episodes, cause with the context of his past with moreau…. there’s an impending meeting with moreau and it’s inevitable and eliot knows that. and having that context on rewatch really makes you notice his expressions and think about what he’s emotionally/cognitively going through.

thank you very much for the thought dumping, i always love getting to think & talk about this show!!

P.S. i remember i once used that same picture that you’ve got as your pfp for like an email account or something in high school!! labracadabrador, always makes me laugh lol

[waitmyturtles]

Moonlight Chicken first episode impressions.

1) I reblogged these already, but I want to point to the fantastic analyses by @respectthepetty (here) and @isaksbestpillow (here), offering tremendous background context out of the gate. Due to @respectthepetty‘s past analyses of Big Dragon, I was also able to pick up on a lot of the Chinese-Thai themes that Moonlight Chicken is pulling from. (I LOVE the theme of the show starting during the Mid-Autumn Festival and the continued gazing at the moon throughout the episode. Gah. Cuts me deep.)

2) Give me a GOOD, SLOW BURN to start a series -- HELL yes. Wen’s PACE of going through life. Moment by moment, gaze by gaze, sigh by sigh, ache by ache. His silent moments, thinking moments. He’s in pain, and his whole being radiates it, and we’ll take our time finding out what it is. Love this. (Jesus -- MIX. Come awn. Could he BE any better of an actor? A master of a slow burn.)

3) Seeing Jim’s house, the open market, the streets -- I’ve never been to Thailand, but there was something about these scenes that reminded me of strolling the streets in Malaysia and it was making my heart ache. The birds chirping while the guys were eating their bowls of jok in the morning. Reminded me of having soup noodles with my family in an open-air restaurant, during a bright, sunny, humid morning. I miss SE Asia.

4) Desperately love the juxtaposition of Jim’s traditional house with Wen’s modern furniture. Wen is going back in time, somehow, with Jim -- Wen is drawn to it. I will love seeing what uncovers in this.

5) I literally internally squealed KHAAAAAOOOOOOO when I first saw him. Those boots!

6) NAIL AND BAIL

7) I need that red Hungry? apron with the chicken in the pocket.

I LOVED this first episode. For whoever reads this place regularly, y’all know that I’m finishing Bad Buddy this week as well, so it’s just a Aof household at the moment (and tbh, I am really not knowledgeable about the famous directors in Thai dramas, like Aof or Jojo, I’m very much in a learning stage here -- but I clearly like his work). Watching Moonlight Chicken while I wrap up Bad Buddy -- it’s a scene here in my brain, a real scene. I’m a lucky gal to be watching both shows simultaneously. 

Maybe this is an Aof thing -- or maybe it’s just the magic of the actors that I’m watching -- but his shows extract an aching feeling of love and attraction between his main characters that I can’t describe in words. I felt it two nights ago when I watched episode 11 of Bad Buddy, when Pat is gazing at Pran as Pran sings at the beach bar. Those wordless looks. Magnificent acting and filming. I see it’s gonna be a thang here in Moonlight Chicken; I’m here for it.

The Khao Man Gai Appreciation Rating is at 🐔🐔🐔: top-notch chicken rice content. Ooooh baby, Uncle serves different kinds of chickennnn over his rice, the boiled chicken and fried chicken, yessssssss! 

I forgot to mention in my khao man gai gospel post that KMG/Hainan chicken rice is often served with a side of coagulated pig’s blood [CORRECTION EDIT BELOW], which is depicted at Jim’s diner. I actually have NOT had this on the regular -- my biggest familiarity with Hainan chicken rice is from Malaysia, where vendors are very often catering to a halal population. That’s not to say that you can’t find blood tofu in Malaysia, I just haven’t gone searching for it while eating nasi ayam over there. However, I’ve been automatically served the blood tofu in Queens, NY, where there’s a huge Thai population, so it just depends on where you go to eat it. 

[CORRECTION! The second episode reveals that Jim orders chicken blood from Gaipa’s chicken stall -- so it’s chicken blood that’s served with the KMG, not pig’s blood. My bad -- and this shows the extent of my knowledge here, as I never knew that chicken’s blood could be served as blood tofu, I thought it was only ever pork or beef blood tofu!]

[kwamiwayzz]

lol so I was looking through me and my friend’s dms as a #throwback or something and thought about how even got myself into liking co09 in the first place

Funny story, I came across a post on Twitter talking about how the (implied) gay couples in hoyoverse games were all bait (that’s a discussion for another day). And while I wasn’t a fan of how the post was diminishing how China tries to get past censorship through heavy themes, symbolism, intertwining characters, etc. they also used the post to bring the “Hella Yuri” library on Steam Curator. While it’s nice to prop up more games that have yuri/GL in them, I was disappointed in the plethora of VNs that took up most of the curator. There weren’t enough “traditional” games in that list for me to consider, and the only one that was worth looking into was Signalis (which I still haven’t played yet).

Then for some reason, I got really interested in trying out VNs due to a super lazy period where I couldn’t play any game that involved walking. It might’ve also been due to gaining some interest in trying out the old well-known VNs like Fate/Stay Night. VNs are an interesting medium for me to engage with because most of the time you’re really just playing a “pick-your-own-adventure” without actively moving the character. I ended up going back to the Hella Yuri library to see which yuri VNs I could try out again.

There were a few that I liked. I think there was one that I thought had some nice voice acting and art called “Without a Voice” which was published by Studio Elan. But there was still some itch that couldn’t be scratched, and I ended up considering dedicating time to play through long VNs like Higurashi, Stein;s Gate, and the Fate series.

I kept asking my friend in the screenshot above what yuri meets my “requirements”. To be honest, I think I was just looking for something like JWQS but in VN form (but one can dream lmao). I’m horrendously picky when it comes to things I end up really liking, but then I decided one day, “Okay, let’s try that one edgy game with the okay-ish anime art to see what the fuss is about.”

I found out two voice actors from Genshin were in it, and that was enough for me to try it. I watched one out of context video for Class of ‘09 and I thought…wow the voice acting is really good here.

I’m gonna be really honest, but I actually don’t even know how I got to heavily shipping Jeckole??? Because the out of context videos did nothing for me aside from find the characters and interactions funny 😭. I think the “Jecka and Nicole being a chaotic duo for 8 minutes” on YouTube sort of made me lean into it more but I was still kinda neutral to it.

Actually, wait.

I think I do remember lol. It was these:

Then I just went down the rabbit hole, and then I just straight up forgot about the rest of the Hella Yuri library on Steam Curator…

I’m way too picky when it comes to things I like and my brain just picks the most random things sometimes. I will say, I do think getting that ending (above) as my first playthrough made me see Class of ‘09 below the surface level, and it also made me really warm up to and start to enjoy (be obsessed) with Jecka and Nicole as a pairing. I’ve already written like x number of brainrot posts on why I like them, so I’ll skip over that part (just dig through my other #jeckole posts lol). Shitty creator aside, I think that ending really reminded me so much of things from that time period that I didn’t realize I was blocking out and it was sort of interesting, comforting(?) that I didn’t just “throw out” the version of me from when I was teenager.

I liked the humor, I liked the dialogue, but I think what’s keeping me invested in a VN like this, is Nicole (specifically from the Suicide Ending). Jecka comes at a close second when taking parts of her home life into account. Basically, some Twitter post meant to be propping up “actual yuri” when talking about Hoyoverse gay couples ended up doing the opposite of what it’s supposed to do lmaooo 😂

[applepi00]

Hiiiiii Eve, thanks for the tag!!

My favourite books haven’t really changed much since high school I don’t think?

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath has to hands down be one of my favourite books and despite its pop culture reputation as a depressing book, I find it to be a really hopeful book about depression and feelings of alienation and loneliness.

No Longer Human by Dazai Osamu is another great book with a reputation for being depressing and okay it is but as someone that’s always felt I’ve been playing the part of being a person while not being one it is and was an intensely relatable book to me and my life experience. And on a secondary level, since it had been my favourite book since I was 12, it was eventually my gateway into Bungou Stray Dogs when I was sixteen or so, and that’s a love affair that’s still got its hooks in me.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll hands down one of my favourite children’s novels, and one I heavily pull inspiration from always. It’s nonsensical except that it really isn’t, with the context of its era and its authors background as a mathematician it really doesn’t make a lot more sense on the society values and expectations surrounding children in the mid 1800s! And that’s something I love with my zanier characters too, like Marlene follows that line of thought from the book in that they have very odd ideas and expectations of the world but they all make sense with her internal logic.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones I love this book. I saw the film first and loved that and it’s still a comfort watch when I’m ill but I adore the book and how batshit insane both Sophie and Howl really are in it, book Sophie is one of my favourite characters of all time and book Howl is so fun to read. At some point I’ll finish reading the series but for whatever reason I just can’t get through Castle in the Sky as easily as I got through Howl’s, maybe it’s the lack of Sophie?

Oh shoot I forgot tags. @feralrookie @chubsthehamster @macavitykitsune and anyone else that wants to do it! And no pressure either way!

What are your favorite books and why?

I’ve been seeing weird discourse going around about anti-intellectualism, and people are always always talking shit on booktok. I’m tired of it.

No judgments whatsoever—doesn’t matter what age group it was written for or how awful the author might be—I want to know your favorites, I want to know why you love them, and I want this to reach as many people as possible, so please don’t hesitate to tag others!

I’ll start! In no particular order:

A Series of Unfortunate Events - the series that got me into reading in the first place. Also the series that holds the first book that ever gave me a visceral reaction while reading it.

To Kill a Mockingbird - has one of my favorite literary figures of all time (Atticus Finch), some of my favorite quotes, and really just kind of changed how I viewed the world and the privileges I have in it.

Dune - changed the way I look at world building entirely. I’ve only read the first book and only because it was assigned summer reading, but I’m so glad I did. I’ve never looked at fiction the same way.

The Priory of the Orange Tree - I actually can’t pick just one or two reasons. It’s really a fantastic book all around. The world building, the history, the characters, the settings, plus how it all comes together in the end. I’ll never not recommend it to people.

Your turn!

@lady-lauren @kweenkatsuki-fics @entirelysein-e @aceofbooks @monst @theoxenfree

[almondmilks-posts]

Schlatt- executed pt2

*I am so proud of part 1

pls go show some love

Maybe a SERIES?? Maybe pt3??? Maybe some more angst?? Maybe some cute fluff with glatt?? Maybe idk if you would like to see more uwu

This took so long omg... I'm sorry

Context: in part 1 you became ghost!y/n much like Ghostbur  you forgot most of your memories including your death...

Life after death was weird. You had very vague memories of each member of the sever but other than that you completely forgot about your past life including how you died. You never expected that you would become a sentiant ghost on the server after death you also never expected Wilbur to become one either so here we are. You took a great liking to Ghostbur as he did to you, you both hanging out became a regular occurrence on the SMP you mainly liked hanging around quackity he had these homely vibes to him that made you want to be around him but you were not quite sure why although he had been seeing you less and less and when you did meet he seemed on edge always looking behind him, shaking his head off to the distance when you turn around, nothing.

You didn't know why Ghostbusr was obsessed with the colour blue, always handing out lapis lazuli to saddened goes by with a "here have some blue" but he always did. You guys can't mine down in the caves something about bedrock pressure?  but he always had stacks of blue on him at all times.

You- hey bur where do you get the blue from?

Ghostbur- oh uhhh umm I just have it sometimes I get it from Phill

You- oh cool. I want something I'm not sure I've decided on what...

Ghostbur- hmmmmm y/n how about

You- I know red mushrooms because they look so cool like lil toadstools.

Ghostbur- yes that's such a good idea

You- I need to ask Phil to see if he has any spare mushrooms adiós bur I'll see you later.

You began to float your way over the the snowy tundra that Phil resides in. You passed many different landmarks on your way only knowing by the names you and ghostbur had given them. Home home also known as the community House although in ruins after it was exploded by puffy. You did try to stop her however your attempts were unsuccessful. 

You- omg I'm so sorry I wasn't looking where I was going here look I have some seeds take this as a sorry

You were in your thoughts so much that you had phased into a body. As a ghost you are able to phase through people However you phased into the body meaning whoever you walked into was not alive. You reached your arms into your pockets to see what you have as a sorry before the mushrooms which you still haven't been managed to find any. Thecno needing them for potions ofc knowing the butcher army was coming for him he planicked stealing so many resources including some of blue from Wilbur accidentally. You found three seeds in your pockets your had picked up from when you were hanging around Callahan (he's my fav on the SMP omg) and punz this one time just giving while punz went on a nether mission for ghast tears. You extended your arm out to the person, lifting your head up to look the person in the eyes.

Glatt- y/n?

He had Horns. Deep black horns protruding out the side of his head. His skin a pale grey ash colour, contrasting his flaming red eyeballs which looked down upon you due to the height difference. His suit a very dark grey almost black but not quite,  You looked at him than back at the seeds. He seemed like he didn't take any interest in taking the seeds from you as a sorry, you furrowed your eye brows at his sort of question? You really didn't remember your past life, thecno told you that most ghosts don't when they die the ones that do are 'poor damned souls of wrong doers' comforting you that you did some good when you were living.

You- uhh sorry I don't know a y/n?? Im ghosty/n! Well it would make sense that I'm y/n well was y/n hahahaha I don't remember much from my past life unfortunately

Glatt- you don't- you don't remember how you died do you?

You- uhhh no? Should I? I ask quackity you know quackity right? Small guy, blue beanie anyway he wouldn't tell me how I died he said it was a too long to explain anyway I gotta go bye uhhhh...

Glatt- oh it's glatt

You- well nice to meet you glatt if you see Phill tell him I need some red mushrooms

And with that you floated off on your mission to find some red mushrooms. Glatt stood there face slashed red. He felt embarrassed? Sick to his stomach? He wasn't quite sure what he felt, quackity had told him of your ghost life when he was pestering quackity this one time however he was scared. He was once a ruthless tryrant president drinking all day and all night because he couldn't handle the power and disappointment of his peers knowing he was struggling being president so he turned to alcohol. He was so plastered when he stabbed you he didn't even know what he did until quackity and Niki Walked out on him with some fruitful words.

Schlatt thought back to when quackity had confronted him, carrying your enchanted diamond boots Phil brought on your wedding day and never took them off since. Quackity looked so hopeless his eyes filled with tears, trembling hands as he screamed at schlatt so hard his vocal cords never recovered even after all this time and everything he's been through. Despite this he carried on trying to ruin quackity's life. Even after death the fucker never lost his need for power and bullying quackity is all he knew how. The issue was he could not find the small mexican, he floated all through what manburg was, he floated past the church, the target, the community house but no sign of quackity. He was searching through the community house for anything he could steal just because 'he was glatt he could do what he wants'; as a ghost he really didn't change. A fit of giggles rung through his ears, he hadn't heard that noise in years. Glatt knew that it was you of course you were married for several years before the incident. He caught himself smiling as he once did to see your face (which could easily fit between his larger hands.) He floated across towards where the noise would come from. To see you, a blue sheep with a wonkey eye and Wilbur? He felt anxious, his ghost heart started beating faster, if he wasn't dead he would be having another heart attack right now that would actually kill him. He wasn't sure of it was because you look so happy contracting the last time him saw your glum face as the XP dropped or knowing Wilbur might still be bitter about the election or what happened as a result of it.

You toyed with the blue sheep known as friend. Friend was the first thing ghostbur saw when he woke up as a ghost so there was a major bond between the two,.you would argue it was a closer bond than what tied you with Wilbur but nothing could compare to that. You both had years and years of history some even before Tommy was born but you both just didn't know that. (maybe pt3 y/n becomes human??) Friend was very entertaining for a blue sheep fried could make you and ghostbur cry with laughter but just standing there. ( Ok this is my HC so it's not cannon but I think it should be) The blue sheep had a lazy eye, so for long enough if the sheep did nothing the eyes would travel opposite directions as per usual you and ghostbur were dying over this. You bent down to pick at a blade if grass to feed to friend when a glum feeling came over you. Were you being watched? You wanted to cry, so you turned your head to Look at the assailant to see glatt standing there just looking at you or through you it was unclear.

You-oh hey uhhh glatt? Ah yes I'm right would you like to come hang out with friend, ghostbur and I would love it if you joined us and I'm sure friend doesn't mind you do you? No you don't because you are a cute sheep boopboop

Glatt- I'm not so sure

You- oh come on don't be such a killer it would be fun friend is very well friendly haha come on.

You grasped his cold wrist with your much warmer hands. The size difference between the two contrasted immensely. You blushed, a warm feeling coming over you almost as if you had known him for years. Which y/n did but you didn't know that.  Schlatt frowned at you calling him a killer, did you know? Did Wilbur tell you? A lot happened to manburg after you had died, stuff you missed that you could and would have stopped. You dragged schlatt closer to where friend was excited Wilbur could meet your 'new' friend glatt.

You- hahah bur meet glatt

Ghostbur- oh uh hey glatt nice to meet you, your a friend of n/n's huh?

Glatt- uhh yea something like that

Ghostbur- oh crap! I have to meet with Callahan (he's my fave member) I'm helping him build a forest, well you guys have fun with friend. And glatt? Its nice to see you again.

And with that he floated away from the pair riend looked at schlatt than back at you, than back at schlatt. Its pink tounge slipping out of its mouth. Glatt looked down at you sitting cross legged on the grass petting friend. He thought you looked beautiful with the sun on your ghostlike form, he felt shame wash over him he really ruined you.

You- sit next to me glatt, the sun isn't that bright down here

Glatt- no I don't want to get my suit dirty!

You sighed, why was he so cold? Was it that he didn't like you, was it the fact that he didn't like friend no that's not true everyone loves friend. You frowned over thinking lots of things glatt noticed your frown after he yelled at you; he felt worse that he yelled. Many nights after your death did he think about you and his actions. He numbed the feeling penultimately resulting in further alcoholism and finally his death. He kept your diamond boots in his desk draw so they could be next to him at all times he even picked up some of your XP but that stuff didn't matter to him. Nothing mattered to him. Expect you. He never was good at expressing his feelings to you, and you never pushed him to do that.

Glatt- do you seriously not remember your past life?

You- hmmmm not much

Glatt- what do you know tell me?

You- well, I don't really remember memories it's more feelings and smells towards something? Like Niki I feel very calm and peaceful around her she smells like bread, Wilbur it's like he feels like a brother to me and he smells like gunpowder almost, ummmm who else? Oh Tecno smells like potatoes I'll tell you about that some other time

Glatt- what about me? What do I smell like ( Father Fragrance??)

You- ummmmm it's a weird metallic smell? At first I was like iron smell but I'm not so sure. I was super anxious when I first saw you almost hmmm anger? Fear? But I also wanted to give you a hug it's weird what about me... Your a ghost I'm sure it's the same for you it is for wilbur... What do I smell like glatt?

Glatt- uhh well, it's metallic aswell

You-oh heyy look it's ranboo, Ran heyy look down here? Ranboo? Oh no he's enderwalking again ok well this conversation isn't over glatt

You followed the half enderman who appears to be on his enderwalking state. You don't say much to him as you know he won't hear or respond to you. You follow him past twitch prime, past the portal near to the prison? Confused you stood behind him a little, why was he going to the prison? To see Sam you hope...

But no. He didn't.

[bijoharvelle]

during the covid hiatus of spn i wrote a series of soft summer prompts. it proved positive and reaffirming so i decided i’d do the same for winter! i’ll be doing these prompts, roughly daily. this is an expansion on the post-canon universe that i started writing for the soft summer series, so you’ll understand more with that context, but won’t be too lost otherwise. enjoy! this one, with the prompt “early morning walks when all you hear is the crunch of snow” goes out to @aurastiel because i know they were very hype when i announced that i would be doing a winter series c:

It’s usually quiet at this hour, in their sleepy little central Jersey town, but with the snowfall from last night, there’s another layer of quiet to it. Like the snow that sprawled over the gentle hills and streets has hushed everything. Especially since, on a Sunday, the plows haven’t come through to the town square yet. It’s just thick white, as far as the eye can see.

Dean’s holding Colt’s leash this morning and she stopped to sniff at a frozen over branch, so Cas is a little ways ahead of him. The pompom on his soft purple cap is bobbing as he tips his head back, eyes up at the haze of winter morning sky. He has his hands tucked into the pockets of his fleece and Dean will bet it’s because he forgot his gloves, even though Dean reminded him as they were getting ready to leave the house.

Colt barks once, her breath solidifying, as a warning that Cas is getting too far away from her. 

“My apologies,” Cas says as he stops and turns to them. Dean is struck by the sight of him: grinning, patch of red over his nose, scruffy beard, a mess of bedhead poking out from under the hat. He looks healthy and happy and freezing and Dean loves him so much it settles over his soul like a calm snowbank.

They catch up and Cas leans into Dean’s space, tucks an arm through one of his. But in the next minute, one of Cas’s hands is dipping into Dean’s coat pocket. “I told you to bring gloves,” Dean nags.

“Yes, you’re very smart,” Cas replies, unbothered. 

They walk in silence a little longer and their boots crunch through the fresh layer of snow and ice. Colt ducks her nose into the snow in front of her and scoops it up, sending flakes spraying out and they both laugh as she tries to bite it in mid-air.  

“Look.” Dean points out the streetlights that line the plaza. There are delicate wreaths just below the lamps and a wind of fairy lights along the pole. They weren’t there Thursday night, when he had come to pick Cas up from the library. “It’s coming on Christmas, I guess.”

Cas smiles and removes his hand from Dean’s pocket, slips it into his free hand instead. Dean just sighs and laces their fingers together, tucks both of their hands back into his pocket. “Gonna get frostbite.”

“Thank you for protecting me from frostbite,” Cas says with a sweetness that’s probably only half-mocking, and then he leans in to press a kiss to Dean’s cheek. His nose, when it brushes along Dean’s temple, is freezing and Dean shudders but just presses in closer.

When they pass by the animal shelter, Colt starts her usual chorus of barks and howls, sure that every dog in her former home wants to be friends. Cas reaches forward to pat along her back, muttering something calming in Enochian. She quiets, but her tail still vibrates with excitement.

There’s a gentle, brief breeze and all Dean can smell is the fresh, brittle scent of cold.

“Are you gonna work on that scarf more today?” Dean asks. He gave Cas shit when he first picked up knitting (Patience was ecstatic, sending him patterns and tips and showing him the best way to hold the needles) but he reaps the spoils in the form of warm, if slightly lumpy, hats and scarves and, soon enough, mittens and sweaters.

Plus, he’s found that he kind of likes holding the length of yarn for Cas. He keeps the wound up bundle in his lap and undoes a length around his hands, like in cartoons, and just sits next to Cas on the couch. Cas knits and he watches telenovelas or whatever is on TCM and Colt curls up beside them and it’s...nice. It’s calm and safe and easy and nice. Dean doesn’t have to do anything, can’t really with the yarn around his hands, so he just sits still and relaxes.

“I was going to, yes,” Cas replies.

“Awesome,” Dean says and they leave it at that as they crunch along further through the unbroken snow.

He’ll help Cas with the knitting. Before that, maybe he’ll get some work done on the toy chest he’s building for Jo’s Christmas present (one of them, at least). Lunch is gonna be up in the air but he’s thinking stew for dinner, something warm and rich and hearty. Maybe he’ll goad Cas into making that weird red, herbal tea for them while he’s knitting. Mostly, he’s thinking about that, about being sprawled on the couch, Colt’s head in his lap and Cas focused and working next to him, some John Ford playing in brilliant yellows and oranges on the screen in the quiet evening. 

Mostly, he’s thinking about this, now, six in the morning with Cas pressed alongside him, sharing body heat, and their dog trotting ahead of them through the quiet morning. They’re only a mile and a half from their house, their home, and the day stretches ahead of them as easy and gentle as the fresh snow.

-

tags under the cut, as always pls let me know if you wanna be removed or added!

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[bestworstcase]

tired of ‘it doesn’t make sense for cass to trust zhan tiri’ takes 

cass is a cautious person with a good instinct for danger which yes means that for most of the show she is indeed the ignored voice of reason saying ‘hey this OBVIOUSLY SKETCHY situation is sketch’ YES

but

in the latter half of 2 she is mutilated by her friend, blamed for it, made to apologize for her own injury, denied any space to feel hurt or upset or angry about this, and literally told ‘you should know we never listen to you!’ when she gets mad about yet another instance of her saying ‘this seems sus’ only for them to literally walk out on her mid-sentence without even acknowledging that she’s speaking. 

cass tries again and again to communicate her feelings and every single time she’s brushed off or scolded or belittled by her friends. her friends have so little respect for her that by the time they hit the hoyt the aren’t even pretending anymore. this hurts her, terribly

then - ok listen. take off the ‘zhan tiri is a horrible evil monster’ goggles put aside your entrenched preconceived biases against this character for a minute. 

what is the first thing zhan tiri does when cassandra meets her?

cassandra hears a voice calling her name. following it leads her here, to a disembodied (disemwalled?) door in some sort of enchanted forest. this is one of those obviously sketchy situations that instantly puts cassandra on her guard: she draws her sword while getting her bearings. 

[sidebar: those light-and-dark green swirls on the forest floor look an awful lot like the clouds in the lost realm, don’t they?]

then: 

ZHAN TIRI: There you are, Cassandra!

[Cassandra looks around, sees Blue, and lowers her sword slightly in confusion. Blue approaches her.]

ZHAN TIRI: I’d nearly given up on you.

CASSANDRA: [shaken] Who- who are you?

ZHAN TIRI: A friend. Or, at least—I’d like to be.

cass at this point is baffled but still on her guard - she holds her sword in a low guard and she’s physically leaning away from the unsettling ghost child. 

more important here is zhan tiri’s opening gambit. ‘a friend, or at least i’d like to be.’ she’s dodging the question of what her name is, yes. but also the second part of that statement implies a correction of the first, an acknowledgement that they are not friends and becoming friends is contingent on whether cassandra accepts her overtures of friendship; there is, in saying ‘at least i’d like to be,’ an implication of acknowledgement of and respect for cassandra’s personal boundaries. this is not something cassandra has ever experienced before. contrast it with rapunzel’s aggressive, domineering pursuit of cassandra’s friendship in beginnings.

continuing: 

ZHAN TIRI: Come.

[She leads Cassandra away from the door, deeper into the enchanted forest. Though hesitant, Cassandra sheathes her sword and follows.]

CASSANDRA: Wherever you’re taking me had better have a blonde princess.

note how the blank confusion on cassandra’s face hardens into a glare the instant zhan tiri says something that could be construed as a command. cassandra has two years worth of experience in the minefield that is friendship with someone in a position of authority and power over her so of course she bristles at this. i think it is also not coincidental that she refers to rapunzel in response.

but there is also a second dynamic at work here. for two years cassandra’s whole life has been locked into orbit around the blinding sun of rapunzel, and even before then by nature of her existence in the palace as a young girl only a little older than the lost princess she would have spent her childhood in the shadow of a child who wasn’t even present. zhan tiri is the first person cassandra has ever met who is flat out indifferent to rapunzel’s existence. even in vardaros, where cass was better liked by the populace than rapunzel, the people still focused on rapunzel - they disliked her, and they cared enough to make sure she knew it. 

but zhan tiri does not give a single fuck about rapunzel. she ignores cassandra’s attempt to make rapunzel relevant to this conversation. she called out for cassandra. she has been waiting for cassandra. she has something she wants to show cassandra. she wants to be cassandra’s friend. rapunzel just...doesn’t matter to her, but cassandra does. and that is disarming, both in the figurative and literal sense. so cass puts her sword away and goes to see whatever it is that this strange child wants to share with her. 

[They reach the forest’s edge and enter the memory. Cassandra is startled, struck by the familiarity of this new setting.]

CASSANDRA: This place... feels familiar?

[Blue takes her by the hand and leads her into the cottage. She remains silent, allowing Cassandra to take it all in, until Baby Cass enters with her music box.]

ZHAN TIRI: Do you recognize that child?

[Her prompting makes it click for Cass that she’s watching herself as a child.]

again, set aside your knowledge that zhan tiri is an evil villain and your instinctive distrust of everything she says and just... take a look at this screenshot. what does it look like if you take what zhan tiri says in this sequence at face value? 

this is a horrible memory. zhan tiri knows precisely what it entails, because she is the one who dredged it out of cassandra’s mind and set it up for her to experience again. cassandra, however, has only just recognized her younger self and has no idea what’s coming. it’s going to hurt her so badly when she remembers everything—but this is an experience she needs to confront in order to heal from the damage it did to her. so much of her suffering can be traced back to this defining, forgotten moment of her childhood.

we the audience know that zhan tiri doesn’t care, doesn’t have any real interest in genuinely helping cassandra, isn’t revealing this memory to her out of the goodness of her heart - but all cassandra knows is that this is a strange ghost who expressed a desire to be friends and has brought her here to, apparently, show her a childhood memory she forgot. so erase your audience knowledge from your brain for a second and look at zhan tiri’s expression here.

she looks weary. sad, even. she looks like someone who truly values cassandra’s wellbeing, who knows that reliving this memory is going to hurt, who’s showing it to cassandra anyway because she thinks cassandra deserves to know and she understands that this is the root cause of cassandra’s pain and that in order to grow and heal it must be seen, it must be acknowledged, it must be examined.

and that is the impression of zhan tiri’s character that cassandra walks away from this experience with. someone who saw her, and saw her pain, and saw the deep festering forgotten wound of this memory buried under layers of repression and denial, and gently unpeeled those layers and brought that wound to light, because she knew cass couldn’t heal from it if she didn’t know it was there.

moving on: 

[Baby Cass approaches Gothel with the music box, only to be coldly brushed off.]

CASSANDRA: ...That’s my...

ZHAN TIRI: Mother, yes. It is.

[Skipping transcription of the remainder of the flashback; what matters is that Blue exists the scene at this point. She isn’t just standing quietly in the corner; she is fully gone, leaving Cassandra by herself to experience the rest of the memory.]

again - obviously zhan tiri knows what happens in this memory, but that isn’t the point. by staying just long enough to help cassandra put this memory into context and then leaving, she gives cassandra complete privacy to process what she is seeing and feel whatever emotional reactions she has to it and express those feelings openly, without any of the reservations she might have about having a breakdown in front of a ghost she met a few minutes ago.

again, contrast this to the way rapunzel treats cass. in under raps, when cassandra tells rapunzel that she’s dealing with ‘some stuff’ and asks rapunzel to wait until she’s ready to share, rapunzel’s response is to stalk her. in RATGT, cass tells rapunzel that she feels disrespected and unwanted and rapunzel brushes her off. in RDO, when cass is mad because rapunzel’s reckless choices resulted in cassandra’s hand being mutilated, rapunzel is furious and backs cassandra into a corner in an attempt to force her to share her feelings and then get over it so things can go back to normal.

how soothing, then, must zhan tiri’s quiet departure must be for cass? how comforting, how much of a relief must it be to have this new person recognize by herself that cassandra needs a moment alone and give that to her without cass even needing to ask?  

there is, i think, a direct line of causation between zhan tiri exiting this scene and cassandra crying for the first time in the entire series afterwards while zhan tiri comforts her. cass doesn’t cry, right? even when she thinks rapunzel is going to be trapped as a bird forever, she stops herself from crying. she doesn’t cry when her hand is burnt in the great tree, not even from physical pain. she doesn’t cry in RDO. 

but zhan tiri is the only person in the whole series who shows consideration for cassandra’s emotional boundaries, so when cassandra is upset after reliving this memory, she freely allows herself to cry, and she lets zhan tiri comfort her. 

because it’s safe. so much blame is heaped upon cass for not being more open with rapunzel, but the thing is - a) cassandra is a lot more open with rapunzel than most of the fandom gives her credit for, and b) rapunzel is not a safe person for cassandra to be emotionally open with because she tramples boundaries, doesn’t listen, routinely chooses to hear only what she wants to hear, and never acknowledges or apologizes for any of the hurt this causes cass. 

which segues us into this:

ZHAN TIRI: I’m sorry that happened to you, Cassandra. Sometimes the most painful truths are the most difficult to remember. You’ve always felt outshined by Rapunzel, haven’t you? And you always will, unless...

in this statement, zhan tiri: 

1 - expresses sympathy for the trauma cass suffered

2 - empathizes with the pain she feels right now

3 - connects the dots between her past trauma and present angst

4 - verbalizes her fear that this pattern will never change

and

5 - offers to help.

zhan tiri is, once again, the only character in the whole series who does these things. in s1, rapunzel does occasionally try to be emotionally supportive of cassandra - under raps and big brothers of corona are the big examples here - but the way she goes about it tends to do more harm than good. in UR she runs roughshod over cassandra’s clearly stated boundaries and continually escalates to the point of actual literal stalking; in BBoC she utterly disregards cassandra’s statements vis a vis how rapunzel can help in favor of doing a bunch of other things that rapunzel thinks cass should want, and in the process she actively interferes with cassandra’s rest and makes her recovery experience worse.

in contrast, zhan tiri gets it. she is absolutely correct in her perception of the situation: cassandra has been trapped in this pattern of inferiority to rapunzel her whole life. her mother abandoned her for rapunzel, and everyone in her life now is willing to sacrifice cassandra’s needs, her feelings, her physical health on the altar of Rapunzel’s Destiny, and that will never change if she continues on as she has been. and... if cass tried to simply leave, by herself, do you really, truly, honestly think rapunzel would let her go?

she feels trapped because she is trapped, and she’s desperate for a way out, and zhan tiri sees that, understands that, and most important of all, shows her a way out.

so like

when she walked through that door in the house of yesterday’s tomorrow cassandra was a heap of emotional pain and unfulfilled emotional needs—for respect, for compassion, for basic consideration of her boundaries, for someone to see how much she’s hurting, for space to feel things without being asked to sacrifice more of herself for somebody else, for someone to care about her and what she needs and thinks and feels and wants, for an escape from the toxic inescapable dumpster fire of her life—and in the space of maybe a couple hours zhan tiri answered every. single. one. 

cassandra entered this situation expecting trouble, and instead she got someone treating her with dignity and compassion for the first time ever sO OF COURSE CASSANDRA TRUSTS HER!!

it beggars belief that the show expects me to believe she never bothered to ask what her new friend’s name was between this point and OAH, and yes, if cass were in a healthier place or surrounded by less toxic people then i’m sure she’d be more inclined to be suspicious of the weird little ghost child who reached into her head and pulled out a suppressed memory. but nevertheless it does, in fact, make sense for cass to conclude after this experience that blue is trustworthy and really does care about her and is a better friend to her than rapunzel. 

tts was allergic to acknowledging the legitimacy of cassandra’s grievances in any way after s2 and refused to allow zhan tiri even a modicum of depth as a character so the vast majority of their relationship exists off-screen, which is, yes, deeply frustrating and does a huge disservice to both characters and to the overarching plot of the season. but “why would cass trust her?” is a question the series answers, on screen, in spades. 

[twoidiotwriters1]

Written In The Stars XCIV (Harry Potter xF!Oc)

A/N: This has nothing to do with the story I just want to say I believe in Bi!Fred Weasley supremacy -Danny

Words: 2,621 

Series’ Masterlist

Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

Listen to: This kiss -By Faith Hill

Chapter Twenty-Nine: Unwanted Attention.

Their little trip to the kitchens ended up in a bad note when they found Winky drunk in butterbeer and Hermione broke, yelling to all the house-elves about their rights. 

Least to say they were unpleased. They kicked them out, Ron was so angry at Hermione for ruining his chances at getting more free food that they didn't stop bickering for the rest of the day.

Normally, Mel and Harry would've complained and roll their eyes, but considering this as a huge opportunity to finally spend time alone, they left the angry pair in the common room and went to the Owlery, where they sent a package filled with wonderful food to Sirius.

They stayed there for a while, leaning on the windowsill and talking. Closer to each other as the night started to fall.

"I wish things were a little bit different," Mel said wistfully. "I would take you on pretty dates, not caring about useless rumours..."

"I don't want dates, I only care about being with you," Harry shrugged, playing with her fingers. "Everything else doesn't really matter... unless it does to you?"

"Not really...  I'd love to have a quieter time in school, but that's impossible when you're here," She teased. "You bring nothing but trouble, Potter."

"You like it, though," He smirked. "At least a bit, if you've stuck around for so long, I doubt it annoys you that much..."

"What d'you want me to say?" She scrunched up her nose, knowing the question would only make him even keener to tease.

"I'd love to hear that you like me," He replied boldly. "Don't you like me?"

She caught his hand playfully and stroked the back of it, humming to herself.

"Do you?" She finally questioned.

"I like myself plenty," Mel slapped his arm playfully and he laughed. "I fancy you a lot."

"You know," She looked away. "I really like this weather."

She fixed her eyes on Hagrid digging outside his cabin, perhaps planting something.

"I like you," Harry beamed, his hand closing around hers. "I also like to say that I like you, feels good to admit it."

"Been dreaming about this for a while, have you?" Mel smiled, still not looking at him. She was trying to keep her composure, even though the air felt charged and it was getting harder to breathe.

"You haven't?"

Madame Maxime got out of her carriage and walked to Hagrid, seemingly trying to start a conversation.

"Not at all," She said absently. Harry stiffened beside her and she giggled.

"You're funny..." He pouted. Unexpectedly, he reached for her waist with his free arm and pulled her closer. "Really, you crack me up."

Hagrid responded to whatever the woman was saying but he didn't talk much. In the end, the woman walked back to her carriage looking defeated.

"I think Madame Maxime regrets what she did to Hagrid," She said. Harry, who'd been half-looking at the scene as well as shamelessly flirting with her, nodded with very little interest.

"Guess she realized how stupid it's to worry about what others think..."

"Isn't that kind of the same to what we're doing?" Mel frowned.

"What d'you mean?"

"We're hiding from all of our loved ones. We care about what others think."

Harry came out of his daze then, blinking in confusion.

"This is different. We're not hiding because we're afraid, we do it 'cause we know Skeeter would bring it out of context."

"Okay then, why do we hide it from Ron and Hermione?"

"Well," Harry looked away. "I don't know..."

"We know they'd be happy for us..."

"Yeah."

"Then why do we hide it?"

"We don't want to ruin it," Harry shrugged. "You know what I mean, I won't try to explain it."

She smiled at how easy it was to talk to Harry now that they knew about their feelings.

"You know, sometimes you can be clever..."

He scoffed, shaking his head in amusement.

"Look at you, all cute and frustrated," She cupped his face with her free hand and squeezed his cheek lovingly.

"Quiet, Mellow."

However, before she could decide whether or not to be quiet, Harry leaned further and kissed her.

Mel wasn't expecting to see any reaction from her classmates when the article about Hermione and Harry's relationship spread around school. Few people believed it, but the most they would do was stare, wondering how come Harry was so comfortable around her despise his 'heartbreak'.

She knew –because Erick told her– that most people were confused, they'd thought that Harry and Mel were the ones dating. Now that those rumours had been killed by the article and none of the people involved were interested in clearing things out, the interest has worn out, most students moved on; Harry and Mel were being less watched, which gave opportunities to sneak away from prying eyes more often. However, they completely forgot that it wasn't only the Hogwarts students receiving these articles and reading them in their spare time. On Monday morning, they got a very unpleasant surprise.

Hermione mentioned a subscription to the Daily Prophet and was waiting to get it when an owl came down to their table.

"How many subscriptions did you take out?" said Harry when four other owls landed next to the one.

"What on earth—?" Hermione took one of the envelopes. Mel took another and examined it. "Oh really!" Her friend scoffed.

"What's up?" said Ron.

"It's — oh how ridiculous —"

She handed the letter to Harry, it was a bunch of letters from a newspaper cut out and rearranged messily:

'You are a WickEd giRL. HarRy PotTER desErves BeTteR. GO back wherE you cAMe from mUGgle.'

"They're all like it! 'Harry Potter can do much better than the likes of you...' 'You deserve to be boiled in frog spawn...' Ouch!" A liquid with a strong smell came out of the last letter she'd opened and poured over the girl's hands.

"Undiluted bubotuber pus!" Ron winced.

"Ow!" Hermione teared up, trying to clean up her own hands.

"Don't spread it!" Mel stopped her, she took Hermione's arm and helped her up.

"You'd better get up to the hospital wing," said Harry, looking at her in concern. "We'll tell Professor Sprout where you've gone..."

Mel made an attempt to follow her but Hermione mumbled 'Get rid of the rest', before hurrying out of the Great Hall.

"I warned her! I warned her not to annoy Rita Skeeter! Look at this one..." Ron picked one up and read in horror.  "'I read in Witch Weekly about how you are playing Harry Potter false and that boy has had enough hardship and I will be sending you a curse by next post as soon as I can find a big enough envelope.' Blimey, she'd better watch out for herself."

"Who do they think they are?" Mel asked in anger. "Feeling entitled to attack a fourteen-year-old without knowing the whole story!"  

When they were heading to Care of Magical Creatures, Pansy talked from a few feet away:

"Potter, have you split up with your girlfriend? Why was she so upset at breakfast?"

"She found out your brain's beyond repair and that just broke her," Mel spat, pulling her friends forward.

They studied nifflers for Hagrid's class, made a funny little competition out of it, which Ron surprisingly won. However, for some reason that didn't please him. Hermione got back at the end of the class with her hands completely bandaged and informed Hagrid about her misfortune.

"Aaah, don' worry," Hagrid replied softly. "I got some o' those letters an' all, after Rita Skeeter wrote abou' me mum. 'Yeh're a monster an' yeh should be put down.' 'Yer mother killed innocent people an' if you had any decency you'd jump in a lake.'.. Yeah, they're jus' nutters, Hermione. Don' open 'em if yeh get any more. Chuck 'em straigh' in the fire."

Ron was unusually quiet, frowning at the prize he'd won in Hagrid's class (a chocolate bar from Honeydukes).

"What's the matter? Wrong flavour?" Harry asked gently.

"No... Why didn't you tell me about the gold?"

"What gold?"

"The gold I gave you at the Quidditch World Cup. The leprechaun gold I gave you for my Omnioculars. In the Top Box. Why didn't you tell me it disappeared?"

Harry and Mel shared a look before they finally remembered what was he talking about.

"Oh! I dunno... I never noticed it had gone. I was more worried about my wand, wasn't I?"

"Must be nice," Ron said quietly. "To have so much money you don't notice if a pocketful of Galleons goes missing."

"Listen, I had other stuff on my mind that night," Harry replied sternly. "We all did, remember?"

"I didn't know leprechaun gold vanishes," He said with embarrassment. "I thought I was paying you back. You shouldn't've given me that Chudley Cannon hat for Christmas."

"Forget it, all right?" Harry insisted.

Ron stared intently at the food of his plate and mumbled, "I hate being poor. It's rubbish. I don't blame Fred and George for trying to make some extra money. Wish I could. Wish I had a niffler."

"You're not poor," Mel patted his hand lovingly. "Not in the ways that matter– look at Malfoy, he has all that money and he's always in a terrible mood. He's got terrible friends as well."

"Yeah, but it wouldn't hurt if I could buy new things for once, would it?" He pouted.

"Well, we know what to get you next Christmas," Hermione tried to lighten the mood. "Come on, Ron, it could be worse. At least your fingers aren't full of pus? I hate that Skeeter woman! I'll get her back for this if it's the last thing I do!"

With the arrival of Hermione's hate mail also came a new wave of interest for Harry's love life, which meant they had to go back to the stage of walking on their tiptoes to avoid any unwanted attention, and it was driving them mad.

Hermione grew obsessed with finding out how Skeeter was getting all the information, Harry suggested that maybe she'd put microphones around the school but Hermione quickly brushed it away, reminding them about how that sort of Muggle technology was of no use around school.

The teachers were handing them more and more work as the end of the year started to inch closer. Mel and Dumbledore finally moved on from wandless spells to tracing hidden magic and she was doing splendidly well, mostly because she wanted to get everything done so they could start with her animagus studies.

The last days of May, Harry and Mel were in the library discussing Percy's letter while searching for some books for her lessons. Ron didn't want to join them and Hermione was busy with her research, so they found themselves in the bliss of another moment for the two of them only.

"Percy's in denial, he's too fond of his new position," Mel commented as she reached for a book in a higher shelf. "He's a pain, too young to be given all that power..."

"I thought you admired Percy," Harry replied.

"I appreciated his dedication while he was in school but I this is getting out of hand, something tells me he's not apt for the job."

"I reckon he strongly disagrees," Harry took the books as Mel handed the lot to him.

"Well, we're as close to figuring that out as we are to finish our assignments. I can't wait to be back home next month!" She tried to take the books from Harry's hands, but he refused to let go. "Just imagine– Glasses, knock it off! I'm capable of carrying my books!– As I was saying... picture us with all the time in the world to do whatever we want..."

"We could go to the movies!" Harry offered. "I have no muggle money, but maybe Emily could take us to Gringotts so I can exchange a few galleons..."

"I like the sound of that, we're old enough to do so," She happily walked up to the table on the corner.

"Been dreaming about it, have you?" Harry teased. She left the books on the table and stopped.

"What I've been dreaming of," Mel said carefully, "is for the tournament to end. I feel like I'll only be able to rest once it's over."

"I haven't been terrible in it, have I?" He tilted his head.

"You know I don't mean that," She lifted a hand and pushed some strands of hair away from his eyes. He sighed shortly, leaning into her hand instinctively.

"Just one more task," Harry said quietly. "Then it'll be over."

She nodded in silence, that wasn't the only thing she was thinking. Mel was hoping for the moment when they would finally be together in peace, without articles and journalists nagging around... Mel moved her hand from his cheek to the back of his neck and, catching him off guard, kissed him.

This one, though still innocent and short, conveyed all the emotions she was feeling. A loud thud startled them and caused her to bump noses with Harry. She heard him grunt as she held onto her own nose, tearing up a bit.

"My apologies!" A voice came from behind. "Did I take you by surprise? Well, I dare say you're not the only ones..."

"Not you," Mel groaned. "Why, of all the people that could've found us it ended up being you..."

"It's a gift," Erick smiled with no hints of shame, sitting down at the table they were planning to take. "It gives me the opportunity to eavesdrop a bit, and Merlin, it's always worth it."

"You can't tell anyone!" She hissed, finally letting go of her nose. "Not even Hermione!"

His eyes widened in wild interest. "Why, is this the first time that happens?" He looked at Harry. "Well, it certainly didn't look like it. Most of us think you're almost married. What is it?"

Mel felt so stupid, caught red-handed after all their efforts...

"You know what Skeeter would do with the information, now more than ever," She grumbled.

"That doesn't sound fun, does it?" Erick inquired, she'd never seen him so ecstatic.

"Just keep your mouth shut, will you?" Harry spat, his voice came out muffled since he was covering his mouth. Mel was about to scold him when Erick let out a hearthy laugh.

"Never been one to gossip– I'm happy for you though, it's been exasperating, flirting with Mel without her noticing to get a response from you. I had to hold back from getting involved so often!"

"That was you holding back?" Mel scoffed. "Can't imagine what unrestrained would look like... What are you doing here?"

"This is a library," He replied with a grin. "Believe it or not, I study without you."

"Okay then, study."

"I'm about to, this is my table."

"I don't see your name on it–"

"We can share it–"

"Not after what you just saw, I won't tolerate your teasing," Mel blushed furiously, picking up her books. "We'll go back to the tower, Harry, c'mon..."

"Be my guest," Erick half-bowed from his seat.

"You're enjoying this too much," She glared at him.

"Haven't even reached the I-told-you-so phase, you've seen nothing," He retorted. "Take your girlfriend before she sets the library on fire, Potter."

Harry rolled his eyes at the pair. He wasn't going to admit it, especially not in front of Flint, but he'd felt a pleasant boost of energy at the word girlfriend.

"Come on, Mel..." He nodded at the boy. "I hope to never meet you like this again, Flint. Bye."

"Have a good night, lovebirds."

Next Chapter —>

Taglist.

@dee123ksha​ @vampiregirl1797 @siriuslysirius1107 @stardusthigh @mikariell95 @vernon-dursley @thesuitelifeofafangirl @tomshollandz @kylosleftbuttcheek @reverse-hxlland @bloodorangemoonlight @omiwashere​ @t-rexs-world

[innermoonlight-bhe]

Me, again, on Destiel. Please read.

I’ve been having problems all this month. And while I was self-exploring the reasons of my uneasiness, I tracked it back to 15x18. When I first watched the episode I had lots of unresolved feelings. I felt happy and at the same time really distressed. After waiting for two week for the end of Supernatural I thought those feelings would disappear but they just kept on getting stronger. I began feeling stressed and, this last two weeks, feelings just empty. I had no desire to do anythings, like I was lost. Yesterday I realized why and got me sad and mad at the same time. I don’t want to take a lot of time writing this but there are too many emotions and rational thoughts that don’t let me sleep at night. 

This is why I want to divide this text into two parts:The first one being the queerbating debate on internet. This includes the normalization of heterosexual relationships, audiences, plots and writing, marketing and advertising, and other things that have to do with t.v. industry. In specific, the rare case of CW and its treatment of the whole Supernatural family. In the second part I would like to focus on my personal experience, which I’m sure is same to most people who were left all alone in this Destiel world of disappointment. This last one you can decide to ignore or share with me. The one that i’m most interested is that you read the first part, even though it can seem a little out of context, since I’ll be referring to another tv shows of the CW.

 FIRST PART THEN OF THE DESTIEL OPINION:When I was left so sad after the queerbaiting I began watching a famous soup opera aka telenovela, called Yo soy Betty, la fea. It’s famous worldwide and I felt it like a comfort home after all the Destiel drama. It made me happy because the story plot is only one: the heterosexual couple that falls in love. Of course I’m reducing this too much, but the point is that yesterday, after I finished watching it, I realized that even though the main couple had problems at the end the audience knew they would’ve ended together. It did happen, in the anti-last episode, same as in supernatural and the Cas confession. The two further episodes centered on the happy conclusion on the story. There are clear points to establish:

Point 1:  Supernatural was born as a serious mainly centered on two heterosexual man traveling all along a country hunting monsters while looking for a father. Meanwhile a classic telenovela centers on a love couple who fight against everythings to be together; in this case it’s establish since the beginning and no one will except anything else. 

Point 2: Meanwhile telenovela’s audiences are destined to be woman, wanting to follow the classic love story; Supernatural was being male focused actually did excepted woman but also men watchers. Supernatural had a largest specter of viewers.

Point 3: Telenovelas are not willing to change the story for the audiences desires. They work with practical and classic formulas that rarely will fail. There’s no necessity to receive a feedback to complete. Supernatural and tv series, on the other hand, actually need the feedback from the viewers because on it depends their permanency on the screen. 

Supernatural needed to keep their viewers high so the show could continue. I’m gonna leave the classic telenovela out for a moment. It’s important settling this differences to approximate myself to the basic point of my madness: how unethical is the queerbaiting.The public opinion changes, and The CW having clear this is very know to keep in touch with fans wishes and needs. In the case of Jane the Virgin, a barely combination of the telenovela classic plot but in a tv series way, had a big “change” with one of their main characters: Petra. Her connection with the main character, Jane, was noted and wanted by many of the viewers. But the show’s creator knew that main plot (point 1)was a girl who accidentally gets pregnant and eventually falls in love with the love of her life, Rafael. So the show writers wouldn’t just change this main plot in order to make a couple happen, so instead they gave the public what they wanted by making Petra bisexual and introducing a perfect girl for her, also called Jane, to deliver the wish of fans. This relationship worked purely and on its on. The reactions with Petra bisexuality were low, and they took care of it as if it was something normal and not anything that needed satanizing. No one could be expected to freak, not even Petra’s twins. Even though the first seasons Petra only had male relationships. This is a good thing that The CW did, but they didn’t do this out of the goodness of their heart: they did it for views and for the audience (point 2). Jane the virgin was also planned to have female audiences and to treat serious social issues respecting sexuality and love. This is why it didn’t came as a surprise. 

Then why did Destiel couldn’t happen? Because the CV is homophobic? Probably there’s some of this in it, but the reality it’s they weren’t giving up on the part of the audience that is actually homophobic, or that at least won’t feel comfortable watching a heterosexual character discover himself as bi. The thing of the audiences is important because the “ambiguity” in which Cas’ confession was treated worked perfectly for them: it gave exactly the sufficient enough to keep us happy, meaning while keeping the perfect amount of “friendship”. So anyone can take whatever they want for the story. By this part I understand why they wanted to deal with this confession in an ambiguous way: to please everybody. But why did they wanted to please everybody? It wasn’t out of kindness of their heart, it was for views.The whole queerbaiting debate has being on the tables for a long time but we also ignore the unethical implications on it. It has been used by many contemporary media, to hint at something that the producers are not expecting to happen any time. And even though, they keep on teasing us. This is highly unethical because the reason behind them is the accumulation of money. Supernatural survived because of Destiel. I resisted myself to say this because I had respect for the series until I stopped watching around season 10. The story and plots were doom, repetitive and boring at times. We keep watching for the emotions caused by the supernatural family. Not only Destiel but Sam and all of the characters. The original plot explained in the point 1 was lost and blurred, we were far away from that premise and that was why the finale episode feel just bad. 

The show had chances to grow without losing the origina plot but also confronting change and accept that sometimes, things must pass and you have to move. Destiel was an important support of the show, the views and year after year renovation of the series. Pointing at the queerbaiting has lost its meaning if we forgot why they do it, why they keep on doing this even though it makes us feel bad. This affects the shows work in perspective because it changes the plot and natural progression of the story. For the queerbaiting, they have scenes that are forgotten next episodes like they never happened. I’m a literature student and the first thing they say to us is that a scene, even a word, should be taken so seriously that it actually work on the long road of the story. In Destiel we have beautiful, all heart breaking scenes of Cas and Dean being romantic, closed, just in love. The Dean’s confession were he admitted to the priest he wanted to experience new things, the Castiel’s love confession, and others are an example of how this scenes have a space in the show but are still isolated from the original story. They don’t play a part in the bigger image. That’s why we don’t see Dean talk to Sam about Cas, this is why they are so many Destiel plots left unsolved. I have a small memory of an old lady assuring Dean that he’s in love, even though we haven’t seen in a long time a female in Dean’s life (Dean, who the first four seasons flirted with e v e r y woman he met.  Because producers and writers can let this scenes happen as long as it doesn’t change the main characters. Even, they are willing to let us think that Cas could be bi but Dean isn’t, by not having him say anything after Cas says I love you. And to be honest, we didn’t except much. 

We knew that we were clowning and it’s not like we excepted a love making scene from those two. We raised our expectations after 15x18 and not after. A lot of us were waiting on the finale to bring joy even though we never actually imagined it would go canon. 15x18 lifted expectations very few had and that lots, myself for instance, returned to watch after hearing Destiel was semi-canon. It brought back feelings, I got to rewatch supernatural to enter the atmosphere once again... So it was perfect for the CW. On one hand, the biggest queerbaiting on history gave them back for 15x19 and 15x20 all the fandom they had lost for the previous queerbaiting and tiredness of waiting. And also, they keep the antis and the homophobe watching. It was perfectly staged and nothing else was expecting. Something similar happen with Jane the virgin. With the death of Michael (I rather shipped more Jane with Michael) a lot of fans stopped watching. This was planned since the beginning and they actually gave us a fake death and then the real one. I actually stopped watching one season of Jane the virgin after his death because I was devastated, even though since the beginning everything pointed at Jane ending up with Rafael. Her connection with Michael was lovely and pure love. But after killing him off they wrote the relationship of Jafael so perfectly, not rushed or anything: it developed in a way that her relationship with Michael was intact but finished by death. It was a hard punch but at the end we ended up to accept her relationship with Rafael because of the clear progression between the characters. But, at the end of the series, at the last season they decided it was good idea to bring Michael back from the death and have her chose Rafael, after all of the progress It took for her to forget Michael. The changed her and all of the perspective of love changed for the show. It made thing that soul mates don’t exist, that all the love Jane felt for Michael disappear after having a whole season of her suffering for her lost, after she wrote her first book for him. It would’ve been so much better for the story if Michael stayed death. 

So the things is it’s not only queerbaiting on homosexual couples, but the whole idea that they need to have a huge audiences watching their last seasons. I returned to watch Jane the virgin excepting for Michael. This awful thing they do. Just for views and gain of capital bothers me and its what makes me angry. In the case of Supernatural it’s also a topic of homophobia and the fear that the homophobia of a few will ruin the views of series finales. An as I considere the unethical implications is why I would love to have them apologize to us. It’s like a person promising the stars and stopping you to move on, while they know nothing will happen. They use us as numbers to gain money and attention. The decision that I and a lot of people took to unfollow all of The CW accounts is no radical. It’s a little if we take into account all of the money they made from the unethical queerbaiting. It causes me a lot of anger and actually feel like a I need an apology because I felt used and dirty. This is the fault of the industry and the CW has a fame of doing so.

 PART 2: 

This will be little in comparison. Now I want to get to the sad sentimental part. I felt all empty because four years ago that I stopped watching I also stopped talking to the love of my life. Hearing about Destiel had me going back to moments. I even desired to talk to him again to tell him that I wasn’t all wrong. Destiel wasn’t platonic or an illusion. it has clearly staged to makes us think it could happen. It’s not the story of an angel who falls for a human, that gives everything up for him, that loves him. After his confession is the story of unrequited love. Dean never says it back and it’s a feeling that a lot of people have suffered. To love someone and not having them saying them back, of the relationship that never ends but at the end it’s one of the most important. This one I talked about I never dated, I never kissed, but he’s the man i’ve loved the most in my life. Having Castiel saying I love you and never receiving anything back, giving his life and no one saving him, it’s just heartbreaking for all of us who have constantly giving everything without expecting anything in return. At the same time it’s the story of a a couple that never happens but that should have. The same reflexion as always: if it were heterosexual it would’ve happen long time ago. But it also happens in real life, that if time alined, if things were in other way relationships would’ve happen with people in our lives.I had a lot of more feelings for Destiel, but that would be for another time. Right now I just realized why made me, personally, feed angry and sad. I realized I was a Cas to someone else. I realized I was used by a network. The queerbaiting actually has psychology repercussion on us, and it’s something they fail to understand. Accepting that I was affected by a tv show took me a hard time. I didn’t know how to explain to others why this had me absence for week, I thought I was ridiculous and week. I felt bad but know I realized I’m not wrong. It’s not my fault but it’s years of messing with out feelings on purpose. Some day i’ll write an essay on this. I have to much to say but I end it with this:

The media manipulates our emotions and doesn’t take any responsibility whatsoever. 

Don’t trust the media.

(Sorry for the bad english, I’m mexican. But at least Destiel is canon in my language). 

[themadauthorshatter]

Toppat!Charles Part 12

I just realized that this series is literally 12 parts long.

Anyway, quick recap, Charles is recovering, but it's going to be a fairly slow process. He's going to have to try and speed it up because the plan to take out the Toppat Clan hinges on his guidance, or rather memory, of the orbital station. He's surrounded by people he can trust, but that does not stop his mind from turning against him.

For better context, be sure to check out the rest of the story via the links provided:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Part 11

I will be going into more detail of what happened to Charles in Part 5, so if you're sensitive to torure, I wouldn't read this. Reader discretion is advised with this one.

Triple Threat wakes up and gets ready for the day; Charles brought some clothes with him to change into and they're used to getting ready for missions together. Charles changes with his back turned to Henry and Ellie and they see how thin he's gotten while on the orbital station, seeing he barely has any muscle and most of his ribs are showing.

They stare a little too long and Charles tenses up as he's about to put on his shirt.

"You don't have to watch me. How could I have gone to the armory?"

"Charles?" Ellie asks as she taps his shoulder.

Charles quickly turns to her with a gasp and snaps out of his mini stupor.

"You okay?"

"Y-Yeah. I..." Charles gulps and nods. "I'm fine."

They finish getting ready and head out to get some breakfast in a break room.

Like the day before, a lot of soldiers can't help but stare at Charles, who's doing a great job of standing up straight and looking as 'government' as possible, even though there are a few people that whisper about how he shouldn't be back in the government and that the general should've just shot him, while others say that the general can deal with him after they take care of the Toppat Clan.

Regardless, the trio get their breakfast and eat, though Charles is seriously restraining himself from eating like a pig because he has some training to catch up on and just doesn't want to end up throwing up all the food in case he has too much.

Henry notices this and signs, 'You can go back and get more, if you want.'

"I'll... see how I feel after I finish this," Charles replies with a nod to his plate of a bagel, a muffin, some bacon, fruit, and toast- he's very glad to eat normal person food after the more extravagant, posh meals on the orbital station.

Doesn't stop him from hearing a certain someone murmur into his ear, even with the headset on.

"You're really eating food for a rat? You ate better on the orbital station, and you know it." Charles freezes and starts trembling. "Don't expect any sort of warm welcome, when you come crawling back, kid."

A hand claps onto his shoulder and Charles whips around, having the absolute day lights scared out of him.

It's just a soldier that isn't fully in the loop on the young pilot's condition; if Charles is 26 or 27, this soldier is around 35 years old.

It makes him back up a little, but paints a clear picture as to what Charles went through in his captivity.

"Oh, sorry, kid. Shouldn't have snuck up on you like that."

Charles's trembling doesn't really stop, but he does nod at him. "I-It's fine. What'd... What'd you want?"

"Just sayin' it's... really brave of you three, heading to take out the Toppats, I mean. It's about time we arrested the bastards for good."

Charles nods again and turns back to his beeakfast as Ellie replies for him, "Thanks. We kinda have a bone to pick with them, too."

The soldier nods and turns to walk away before noticing something behind Charles's freshly cut hair and headset and inspecting it, which him panic a little bit.

"W-wait! Don't!"

"Good glory, kid. What'd they do to you?"

There is a gash on the side of Charles's face very close to his hairline, going for his temple/eye to his jaw, in a mostly straight line that doesn't curve that much.

Charles covers it with his hand and turns back to his food. "I... It was a... I didn't really-"

The soldier gently places his hand on Charles's shoulder and assures him, "Hey, it's fine. They're not gonna hurt you. They're too scared to leave their little nest."

Charles nods and gives a small smile, silently thanking him.

The soldier pats his shoulder and leaves, letting Triple Threat finish their breakfast.

Time Jump to the shooting range, Henry showing and further improving his aim, something that lets Charles know that Henry plans to make good on his promise in Part 10; Charles is just watching because he and others don't trust him.

Henry and Ellie are both practicing, but Charles is watching Henry before Rupert walks in and escorts him to meet with Galeforce, a conversation he is not excited to have.

He joins him anyway, despite wanting Henry and Ellie with him, and meets up with General Galeforce, who dismisses Rupert so he and Charles can talk.

"So... You wanted to... see me?"

Galeforce is silent as he carefully approaches Charles and hugs him, shaking as he holds what is the closest thing to a son that he has.

It takes Charles absolutely by surprise as his "toppat" instincts tell him to fight and attack, so he freezes again.

"You're alright, son. You're home. I've got you."

Knowing it's the general and not Right talking, Charles returns the embrace, allowing himself to relax and calm down.

They continue to hug for a good few minutes before pulling away, Galeforce holding Charles's face to get a better look at him than before, when he informed that he, Henry, and Ellie would be tasked with taking out the Toppat orbital station.

Up close, and even the good nights' sleep he's been getting, compared to what was in the orbital station, Charles still has some bags under his eyes, courtesy of his nightmares, and his eyes aren't as badly bloodshot, though he does still have some pink where it should be white. He's thin from days of not being provided food and every now and again he coughs in his mouth, hiding it as best as he can because the general is already really worried.

"Charlie, what'd they do to you?"

Charles averts his eyes and bites his tongue.

"I know it's not going to be easy, but we're really going to need your help."

Charles backs away and walks over to the window, thinking to himself that, no, remembering the layout of the orbital station won't be easy, it will be absolutely terrible.

"You're the only one that's been on the station and knows it inside and out. Just give us an easy way go get to the core, and you'll never have to think about it again."

Charles takes a deep breath and nods before turning to Galeforce. "Okay, but promise me... Promise me Henry and Ellie will come with. I won't do it without them."

Galeforce smiles and puts a hand on his shoulder, on his upper arm. "You think I'd send anyone else?"

The two hug again, though it's shorter and when they stop, Galeforce ruffles Charles's hair and ensures him that he's going to help Charles get back into shape.

Charles gives him a chuckle and leaves to find that Ellie and Henry have been waiting in the hallway for him, Ellie standing up while Henry sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"Either, uh... either of you know when we head out?"

Ellie smiles. "As soon as we're ready for you."

Henry also grins, signing, 'We've been talking and really think you're going to like the craft we're using.'

They head to an aircraft carrier base and see their rise, a government destroyer, but coated in a material that makes it appear invisible. The tech is pretty state of the art, and Ellie and Henry can be traced by their earpieces via that same location thing on your phone.

Charles feels his new toy with a shaking hand, aaking, "How? We... We don't..."

Thought I forgot Terrence Suave? THINK AGAIN!!!

The former toppat leader struts on in with a smirk on his face and a peice of paper in his hand. "You're right. These government back washes don't have the mesns for this." He shows off that piece of paper, which is actually a return letter from Bill Bullet, who provided this invisible material. "Thankfully, someone else does."

"The orbital station's going to be really close to us tonight, so we'd better get this right on the first try," Galeforce says.

Charles nods as he takes out that drawing of the orbital station Henry did and begins to make a map for him and Ellie.

"There are vents just about everywhere on the side, but this one's closest to the core." It's a vent on the side of the station, on the bottom half of the station. "This will give you a direct path to the core."

"And this bad boy's what you two need to throw in," Rupert remarks very slyly as he shows them a bomb that's about the size of a grenade, but with a more sophisticated trigger; think a gernade with a pipe bomb detonator and you have our Chekhov's gun. "Throw this in the core and get back to the destroyer before Charles detonates it. You don't want to be anywhere near this when it and the core go off."

Henry's turn to tense up, remembering how Charles died in Valiant Hero, and makes a note to make sure history does not repeat itself.

He shakes out of it when Charles asks, "So what are we waiting for? Let's go."

The reason they haven't left yet is because they need to get to a higher point, one of the form on a hill about two days away from the base.

They saddle up, get some snacks and drinks and weapoms for the road, and head out to the hill, Triple Threat heading out in one of those spacey vans and the destroyer they're using behind them.

Before leaving, though, Terrence stops Henry.

"Make sure you pay Bullet a visit after this. And tell Reg I said, 'hi.'"

Henry nods and looks back at the two vehicles used for the mission before turning back to Terrence.

'Thank you.'

Terrence gives him a light punch on the shoulder. "If anyone's gonna screw you over, better damn well be me."

Henry nods and moves to take his seat in the van.

"Hey, Henry?"

He looks back at Terrence, who takes a breath.

"Good luck."

Henry nods as he smiles and takes his seat in the van.

Charles fidgets with his headset and shakes while Ellie rubs his back.

All three are tense during the long drive, knowing the consequences, if they screw this up, but the plan is extremely simple and they've done a lot more dangerous missions.

That doesn't stop Charles from imagining what Right will do to him, if he's caught.

He hides a cough and watches the landscape out the window of the back doors.

The first day goes by without many problems, though it's into the second night where they have problems.

Triple Threat is huddled together, sleeping for their mission, though Charles is a little fitful, dreaming he's trapped in his cell as the station explodes.

They eventually wake up and start hyping themselves for the mission.

"D'you guys think there'll be a cash reward for arresting the Toppat Clan?" Ellie ponders.

Henry lights up and gives a sort of chopping motion on his palm; 'Let's split it!'

"50-49-1," Ellie snickers. "I'll take 50, Charles gets 49, and you get whatever's left."

Henry's jaw drops as Charles and Ellie laugh.

"No, let's split it 70-25-5," Charles offers.

'Am I getting the 5?'

"No. Ellie is."

The boys do a more hand shake-esque highfive, as in they reach in like a handshake rather than winding back for the highfive, and laugh as Ellie shakes her head at them both.

"Remind me to drive and leave you both on our next mission."

"Don't leave me!" Charles semi-joking shouts as they hit a speed bump, which leads to him and Ellie falling down and Henry laughing his ass off.

They arrive shortly after and board the air craft, Charles is pretty familiar with it because the ins and outs of air crafts are essential a first language for him.

"Remember, just get to the core and get out. We'll be waiting for you back at the base. Good luck."

They give their farewells and launch into space. Ellie does get a little nervous, but she and Henry are entranced by the view of Earth from space.

Although he'll die before going through it all again, Charles has to admit that the view is quite nice.

Admiring will have to wait, because they're nearing the orbital station.

Charles gulps as he gets as close as he can, even though their craft is invisible, he doesn't want to risk anything.

Henry and Ellie suit up and, much like Valiant Hero, are sent on the side of the station by a ball of trash.

Unlike Valiant Hero, when Henry goes for the knife, Ellie catches it and cuts them a way inside and safe to breathe inside the orbital station.

Just want to note here that Henry has the bomb on his person, ready to slap it on the core and GTFO.

"Alright, the core's going to be pretty close to you guys. Just go straight and make a left in the fork."

"Got it."

Ellie and Henry get to crawling, and being lead by Charles.

They pass by the vault, but mission first, and spending time with Charles is more satisfying.

They come to another fork in the vent, but Charles doesn't respond.

"Charles? Which way do we go?"

When there's no response, Ellie tries again. "Charles, are you there?"

Henry tries Morse code to talk to him, but still nothing.

The situation does not get better when the vents get hotter and the two have to split up, Henry going left and Ellie going right.

Ellie continues her way, shuffling on her elbows and knees as to not burn herself before a vent below her is thrown open and she plummets to the floor, four or five Toppats above and surrounding her, including Reginald Copperbottom, who greets her quite warmly.

With Charles, our pilot friend is trying not to panic as he watches Henry and Ellie go further apart.

He can't tell them anything because he can't really hear them and vice versa.

Time for some technical BS that I'm making up because the station has tractor beamed Charles and the destroyer he's in and the connection between him, Ellie, and Henry has been hacked into and severed, so only he can hear who's talking to him.

It's his nightmare come true and he freezes in a cold sweat as he hears a very certain someone talk to him:

"What're you doing back 'ere, kid? Miss me that bad?"

AND THAT IS PART 12!!!!!

Things are not going well for Triple Threat, are they?

Charles is back where he started in the series, Ellie is captured, and now Henry is without a guide as he navigates the hot ass vent system.

I hope you guys enjoyed this part and Thanks for reading!!!!!!

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Comic buff with a thought, I notice the P5MM art and composition is more striking and closer to p5's art and style than the other manga, which is fine, but kinda... flat. (I find myself thinking there's something missing when I read it, then I look back at P5MM and I notice how there's more clever paneling, imagery, and stylistic choices akin to the games in it (like that one goro panel ya had a rant about) and I realize what's missing) That could be why P5MM is brought up more, just a guess. I dunno how you feel about all that though, I'm curious.

Under the cut cause it gets long cause of pictures:

I am very big on art style and visual presentation. I do actually judge a book by it's cover (manga, game, movie, show, yadda). If I find something pleasing to my eye I'll read it.....even if the contents are trash. Domestic Girlfriend is one, horrible manga (didn't finish, was holding out for Momo, aka best girl, and getting closure for her....then I bounced). Didn't watch the anime (didn't need to I was way ahead in the manga I think), but I know that opening is wasted on it. ldskfjaf Don't invest your time into it, it's not worth it, you would probably learn better morals from P5.......probably. But yeah I found the art style pleasing enough to try it out (I's not amazing by any means, but I like looking at it....or did.....that writing man....dat was bad ;w;).... *waves hands vaguely in air* yeah.

Fun fact, it's why I got into Persona. I happened across an ad for P4 on the PS2 in the Gameinformer magazine, it showed a screenshot from an animated cutscene plus one of the fully body art for the chars and I was like "Yes this is my jam!" (which only doubled down when I read what it was about, and it was a murder mystery and the article also talked up "the mystery of the glasses" which fakldjsalkfs yeah). So yeah it really clicked for me.

Tbh it's why I'm probably going to get back into freaking Bleach, and it's why I got into it and Naruto over One Piece (I don't think I'll ever read ON I'm sorry). Tite Kubo has sexy art what can I say? Can't trust a thing that man writes now but eh. It's also the reason I read a lot of Shojo (and now Yuri) manga, cause their art style is usually what I find very appealing (even if I've read the same gd shojo love story just by a different name for the 1000th time, give me the flowers and sparkly eyes! they are my life blood!)

And I've mentioned I really like Saito's art style. I've (attempted) to color some of his pieces on top of animate some manga frames (most of which I haven't actually published......I...I should....get around to finishing those up....haha...aha....haaaa). I really like his art, it's pleasant. But even with good art, I can still see past it and see what BS it's peddling and it can hamper my enjoyment of it. If I don't look at the context of the scene or the words on the page, I can be down with it. But when I'm reading.......I get annoyed. I balk at anything with Goro. I guffaw whenever Makoto's on screen (cause Saito nails her from P5, she acts useful but really she's useless but the narrative views her as useful it ironically makes her useless......it's the weirdest thing I've ever witnessed >.>). Like Saito really.....gets P5 it seems, down to it's flaws even (tho he can actually make the good parts of P5 shine, or at least parts that P5 failed to execute....execute in a way). But he also makes the flaws.....shine that much harder for me.

Now the Reg manga? it's nothing special art style wise, in fact it starts off VERY wonky, and while still wonky, has gotten a lot....better/cuter (esp Ryu). Not like shojo cute just.......I wanna squish their wittle faces cute (at times when it's not serious).

Like when it comes to Reg Manga these are the two pieces that have appeared in it that I feel kinda hit the P5 mark in terms of style:

(look at Mona, coming into this world like the pustule that he is 8U)

Which isn't much, but it's something. At least Reg's AOA is better looking than the anime. 8U

But I dunno, as the chapters go on, the Mangaka allows for more cuter expressions, and I just like their neat:

(btw I colored that page)

I dunno, it's not as overtly cutsey as Saito:

But they are still charming in a more simple way (without out having them go full chibi), it subtle but it gives it flavor. "Silly why are most, if not all those pics of Ryu and Anne?" I dunno guys maybe you should ask them how their backs are doing, cause they're the ones who are carrying the Reg manga when it comes to this! 8U

Tho I do think the first ch or two of Reg does a better job capturing P5's feel than the rest of the chapters, I think the mangaka is just.....bogged down by exposition and the game's BS that a lot of text on their pages so it almost reads like a novel:

ALots of text, not the most dynamic of framing with the panels. It's kinda eh. I haven't really read the manga past the 2nd dungeon tbh (I mean......as the residential #1 Makoto hater, I think that's fair.....that I'd start to zone out during my least fav dungeon....and then continue zoning out during my 2nd least fav dungeon askfdjaflk)

But during the first two dungeon arcs, I liked how.....bad the PT were at thieving, I liked how green they were. It was obviously a learning process. I also like some of the fight choreo (Saito did the best hand to hand one in the series in P4U's Yu vs Sho....which I actually animated....spoiler.....no I have no released that...my dumbass wants to tempt fate and see if I can redo it in color even tho it took me 4 days non stop to get that animated in just black and white.....but I am a fool so alas 8U). I mean it's not mind blowing, but it was simple and decently thought out, which is more than I feel like we usually get (esp with the anime shows....or at least P4/5's).

But I think what draws me in is....it's lack of P5 style. P5 style has them being still oh so cool despite being new at everything. It's tired me out. P5's how identity is style. It's....style over substance (gonna rile some feathers with that....Cvit(?) vid title). But P5 is overtly stylish, to the point it......weighs on me. Drags me down. Tires me out. I don't think they're cool, I'm bored with it. Ironically, Reg manga lacks that, which......def would make someone (and me usually) give it much of a passing glance. It's very basic I guess. But.....consider me, being in P5 hell, surrounded by all it's nausea inducing stylishness, sees a small break in the hellish hurricane to see.......normalcy. It kinda makes me connect better with the kids (kinda, it's still P5).

They feel like normal kids, trying to do their thing (sometimes trying to look/act cool and failing), and.....it's just the absolute antitheses to P5's brand......and I think that's why I like it. KLFJDSAFLKJA;

Anyway, who knows, maybe when I catch up on Reg in english and re-read MM with the official translation I might change my mind about a few things, or at least how I rank them. But for post length sake, and my sanity sake, I think I should keep the anime and mangas out of the "Which entry do you hate least" post......because I should just make another post where I go into both mangas as well as compare and contrast the anime! :D I'm just delaying some insanity for later haha....

Wait.........I just remember Day Breakers exists......and I liked it....still do....don't have much issue with it. Well shit, that is probably the one entry I hate the least. fklsdjfalkjdfkla;jsL;FJljsfdlskafaj *sobs* nO NO, I committed, and that's just a sad loophole. fdklsajflakfj *sobs* I still need to the game thing, cause let's be honest, the games are where it counts.

So right now my ranking for manga/anime is:

Daybreakers>Reg manga> MM>>>>>>>>>>TV Show Anime and it's OVAs (may the burn in the hell fire from which they spawned)

Oh, one last thing, forgot to put it in but I dunno where to put it now. I like how the manga tones down the pervyness some:

I mean Ryu is a fellow monkey. u_u .......but it's for the best I don't have to see his ape expression. ;w; (iirc the pyramid scene was a lot shorter/faster, but that's by the grace of reading and books rather than animation I suppose).

[kimtranssexler]

Tagged by @bisexualucard and @biolabblasphemy but I forgot to finish it the first time

Rules: tag 9 people you wanna get to know better

Fave color: burgundy!! And yellow and green! I really love every color though, it just depends on the context. I do prefer “fuller” colors, I don’t care too much for super light pastels.

Currently reading: I haven’t read an actual book in a while, I’m theoretically reading my “History of the English Language” textbook now thought.

Last movie: The Lost Boys. I watched it on the plane a while back and now I really want a mullet again 😔 it’s tempting

Last series: Death Note lol I’ve never seen it before it’s so funny. Just finished part 1 and I honestly don’t wanna continue after that but I got government kin assigned Near once so I’m gonna watch it for him.

Sweet, spicy, or savory: Savory and spicy. Sweet is good too but it can get a bit much.

Craving: idk chips or something I haven’t eaten anything except ice cream in like six days bc we don’t have any food here and I don’t wanna go to the store. I would kill for some ramen actually.

Tea or coffee: I drink a shitton of tea, but I love coffee as well. There are periods of time where I’ll drink 3-6 cups of tea a day. I don’t drink much coffee but the past few days I’ve had at least two cups daily and I don’t think that’s very good for me lol. I’m actually drinking coffee right now.

Currently working on: making friends. I’m on vacation and there’s a real language barrier but I’ve been hanging out with a few kids I knew from childhood. I don’t say much tho lol. I need to learn how to socialize!!! Also I’ve been tryin to draw casually a lot more. I should also read that textbook but....eh.

Tag 9 people:

I’ll only be tagging a few, feel free to ignore if u don’t wanna do it or it’s not your thing!

@mushtunes @calicotabbies @princesslink25

@neuroandrogyny @snakeeatery @disaster-artist

[ffamranxii]

Bro. My shipper heart is bleeding. These are my current fandoms (Persona, Sailor Moon, Fruits Basket, and Haikyuu!!) and I have some FEELINGS (under the cut).

1. I don’t ship Ryuuji/Protag/Goro. I very specifically headcanon Joker as two different people, with slightly different personalities. Joker-as-Ren I ship with Ryuuji, Joker-as-Akira I ship with Goro.

2. Makoto/Hifumi is a chance interaction that takes place when Joker and Makoto go to Jinbocho. I decided that very second that I ship them so hard, since Makoto abandoned Joker to go shop with Hifumi.

3. I do have specific headcanons for the other thieves, but none are romantic. Ann and Ryuuji have an epic bromance; Yusuke is asexual but best friends with Futaba and Joker; Futaba and Sumire are best friends and neither of them need a relationship while they are healing from their respective traumas; I hardcore ship Haru/happiness but have yet to find a specific person to ship her with. Same with Mishima - I love my boy but haven’t found the right person for him. Also honorable mention to Iwai/Takemi. 

4. Yu/Yosuke was my first P4 ship. Never looked back. I also shipped Yukiko/Chie way before I shipped Ann/Shiho, despite playing P5 first.

5. My take on Naoto is conflicted (I understand their story from both the Japanese and Western point of view and can’t decide which I like better). I very specifically ship Kanji/boy!Naoto.

6. Teddie/Marie was a crackship I came up with during Golden and decided I really liked for some reason. I was thinking of what to write for a fic and Yosuke mentioning “oh hey my brother [Teddie]’s getting married” “oh yeah? to who?” “that weathergirl, Mariko Kusumi” just popped into my head. I’m on board now. 

7. I really like Rise but I can’t for the life of my find a person to ship her with. I do not like Rise/Yu. 

8. Honorable mention to the ball bois Kou/Daisuke.

9. I don’t know why I ship Minato/Yukari. I just really like them together and surprisingly I can hardly find any fics or art of them. I also ship the Minato/Aigis bromance and I love Elizabeth-loves-Minato.

10. You can pry ShinjiHam from my cold dead fingers. VIVA LA SHINJIHAM!

11. These two are similar to Minato/Yukari in that I don’t know why I ship them, I just do. There’s also not much art/fic of them. :(

12. Ngl, Junpei’s inability to leave Chidori alone because he can’t fathom a girl just sitting on a bench drawing really rubs me the wrong way. However, they develop an actual relationship (in as much as a secondary character can in Persona) and by the time she sacrificed herself for him I was hooked. I think Chidori really didn’t give a fuck about Junpei until she was in the hospital and saw how much he cared about a person he didn’t really even know. 

13. I’m not totally sold on the other SEES peeps. I LOVE Fuuka but I can’t find anyone I truly love her WITH. Ken is a child among near adults so I don’t really have anything for him, and Koro-chan’s a doggo. I love Rio and Saori, but not together, and also Mamoru... 

14. Maya/Katsuya are just stupid cute. I take no criticism.

15. TATSUJUN FO LYFE. DON’T EVEN @ ME.

16. Eikichi and Miyabi are honestly super sweet, I can’t even.

17. Maki and Naoya are the only two people from P1 I really connected with in any meaningful way, so of course I ship them together. I also loved Yukino in P1 (but not P2, really), and Yuka, but have no one to ship them with. Yuka married rich so maybe she married Kei! XD

18. Sailor Moon is the ONLY series where I ship people differently based on adaption. I ship Usagi/Mamoru in both, of course (and I think Mamoru was done better in the live action than the anime and especially the manga); but in the live action I hardcore ship Rei/Minako (who seemed to be the replacement Haruka/Michiru, since they weren’t in the live action), and really, really enjoyed the developing relationship with Ami/Nephrite during the Dark Mercury arc as well as the surprisingly stable and sweet Makoto/Motoki relationship.

19. However in the anime/manga I tend to ship what I’m “supposed to” (within reason, lol). Chibiusa was the first person I ever shipped with two different people. I like the idea of her and Hotaru in young love, and Mistress 9 and Wicked Lady getting together, and I love the idea of older princess chibiusa with her first love Helios.

20. Ah, the Kakeru love triangle. Kakeru just RADIATES bisexual energy - he hits on literally all the Sohma men and he LOVES Yuki. I actually did not like Yuki with anyone but Kakeru until the 2019 anime came out and I saw a lot of discourse about how well Yuki/Machi went together. I’m also a sucker for Kakeru’s girlfriend Komaki and I hope they put her in the anime. The idea of chaotic bisexual Kakeru actually having been in a longterm relationship all through high school and marrying her is just super sweet.

21. I will never let go of Hatori/Kana. They should’ve had it all.

22. Kagura/Kunimitsu and Momiji/Kimi are two crackships I found as fanart (I’ve reblogged them at some point), that every so often I stumble upon a fic or art for. I originally didn’t like them, but ended up ADORING them. Kunimitsu is exactly the calm yet gently mischievous presence Kagura needs and Kimi and Momiji would create SO MUCH CHAOS.

23. I do not like Uo/Kureno within the context of the show. I understand that Uo is probably the first non-related girl Kureno’s interacted with since his essential imprisonment and he is probably suffering from “new is always better” syndrome when he meets her. Kureno hardcore needs a few years on his own, away from the Sohmas, to figure out who he is, and what he likes to do, and live as a normal person; and Uo is NOT the person to help him do that. She’s got enough on her plate with the death of her mentor/mother figure and rehabbing her father. Uo is in a good place right now and Kureno is not, and she shouldn’t need to “save” him. I DO like Uo/Kureno as an “after the series” pairing, where Uo’s in her twenties and out of college (if she went) and got a career, and Kureno’s finally gotten his shit together, and they meet again by chance and they’re both in a good place. That’s adorable. Uo/Kureno while Uo’s in school isn’t.

24. I actually think Kagehina was the first ship I shipped in Haikyuu!! I remember watching the first episode and going “...are.... are they gonna make out?” Then Noya and his dramatic “ASAHI!!!!!” and “I’M NEVER GOING TO PLAY UNLESS ASAHI PLAYS TOO!!!” swooped in and I forgot about them. Asanoya is just so precious and pure. Daisuga smacked me in the face like, “Oh. OH. This is... this is fucking GREAT.” I think it was because I saw someone say “Daisuga are basically volleyball mom and dad” and I was hooked. I DO, however, enjoy a Kuroo/Daichi bang it out rivalry though. Tsukki and Tadashi was a no brainer; Tadashi yelling at Tsukki at the camp was just *chef’s kiss*

25. Yachi is the cutest little lesbian, and she’s even gayer in the manga. I actually can’t decide who I like more, Kiyoko/Yachi or Kiyoko/Tanaka. 

26. Iwaoi and Kuroken came to me during my first forays into AO3 for fics. I can’t imagine shipping them with anyone else. They’re just... MADE for each other. 

[aceandart]

Hey! I read your recent post and it read differently to a lot of posts under the destiel tag as of now. Personally, I’ve seen the first 5 seasons (watched it about 5 yrs ago), but haven’t been caught up to date on any of the recent stuff other than the Destiel apocalypse that’s happening right now. Could you explain the following?

“...mostly being this show is a misogynistic racist homophobic consent issue-ridden pile of bad writing “.

I was contemplating returning to the show and tuning in for the missing seasons, but what you said about it has now placed me on the fence. Could you elaborate and advise?

Thank you so much! I appreciate seeing an honest post that doesn’t sugar-coat or overlook bad writing/negative characteristics of a show!! :)

[re this]

Hi!

Well, I feel like the finale probably took care of any fence-sitting you were doing (and sorry I couldn't reply sooner), but actually my answer wasn't going to change even if the finale was okay (good, imo, was always a stretch): No, I personally would not recommend watching this show. and while my answer is mostly because of the things I am going to list to answer the rest of this question, I was also going to say - you dropped the show in s5 and that was five years ago? Whatever caused you to drop it in the first place, it probably got a lot worse. (It literally doesn't even matter what your major grievance was, they have since doubled, tripled down in terms of how bad it was.) Trying to marathon through ten seasons (20-23 episodes long each) is hard; trying to marathon through all of that to get something without a satisfactory ending is a lot of emotional labor for no payout. It's not just that this is a bad show (though it really, really is, on every level); it's that you have already tried it, you tried arguably the better seasons of it, and you still didn't want to stick to it. By the nature of how tumblr works, it can make anything look so much better than it is, just because in general the people you see hyping it up *like* the product, have decided to devote their fandom time to it, are highlighting the choicest parts of it. spn was always about the potential around the edges, the story fans made of it; the actual product was always secondary to the could have, should have beens, and this gets truer the later into the show you get. I'm not saying there weren't some great episodes, some great scenes, and even some great mini-arcs, but it was a drop in the bucket to everything else. and I'm positing this answer on the idea that you are asking because you want to watch the show, and not because you want to use the show as a supplemental for your fandom experience, but if it is the latter, I'll just say I'm currently heavily involved in reading fanfic for a fandom I've never actually watched a whole episode for, and while I'm probably missing some context I'm still highly enjoying it. fandom, honestly, so often becomes so much more than the bones we build it on. and if you want a little more, catch some "greatest hits" videos or catch up on just some of the “must-see” episodes and save yourself from having to watch all the moments in-between, because there are a lot more of them than the good parts. very few shows improve as they age out, and before the nov 5th resurgence if you weren't already following spn blogs, likely the main spn meme you were coming across was the annual 'salt and burn this dead horse' that went out after each season renewal. the tl;dr answer is really, it's not worth it. (to be honest, at the end of the day, despite the sheer amount of time, energy, and words I've put into this fandom over the years, and I put in a lot, I didn't actually like the majority of the show. so, you know, grain of salt on my opinion. then again, you left it seasons before I did.) That said, buckle up, cause now I'm gonna tell you why:

Literally, The Shitty Writing

I feel like the finale speaks for this point by itself, but before I get into all the "problematic" bad writing spn does, I want to talk about the fact that the writers are also just fundamentally bad at the craft of writing.

continuity errors. they’d change their lore/creature ability to fit their plot. (the reapers esp got the end of that bad stick.)  the characters will often forget (monster-slaying) solutions that worked before (holy wood, yarrow, christo, creative approaches like exorcisms on recording, spells to remove angels from their vessels, bullet with a devil’s trap, etc).  the writers forgot their own timeline more than once. the random retcons they'd do. sometimes it would also lead to plot holes.

which, speaking of, they had plenty of

there's also things that don't count as plot holes but are very large missed opportunities (ex: Dean spends a year in Purgatory and no one recognizes him? he doesn't bring up his daughter?)

I don't even know what this one would fall under, but if a character wasn't right in front of them, they would forget that character's existence. not just Adam (though that was a big one), but there were so many secondary characters that even in places it would make sense to mention them, much less bring them around, they didn't. or because they would not expand their main character list, characters who should have been around a lot more than they were (*cough* Cas, but that's an easy one, I'm also talking about characters like Kevin) would have these huge gaps between episodes that didn't make sense

they don't really have character development. this isn't to say the brothers don't change, they do, but at the same time the characters face the exact same (internal) arguments over and over again, never resolving or growing from them; they just have more examples when they think about them and it gets worse and more unhealthy because of the new weight added to it. the problem with their brothers only format, and the problem with their biphobia but more on that later, is that Dean wasn't actually allowed to grow out of his John Winchester's son role, to let himself be comfortable (and dare to be happy) with himself because that meant changing the story into something they didn't like and/or didn't know how to do. at the same time, allowing Sam to grow meant breaking the Brothers Only format, because as the show stated multiple times, Sam's happy ending did not involve hunting.

and with that, they sometimes flattened the characters so badly they became caricatures more than anything else.  hell there's a whole season where Dean goes evil, and people had a hard time realizing it, which was not because it was a subtle slow descent but because shitty pacing, uneven (and contradictory) episodes, previous actions that weren't written as being evil but were the the exact same thing as when he was evil that were supposed to be "signs", and how they chose to represent that evil meant it was really hard to figure out that was what they were doing and not just writing Dean as more of an asshole than they previously were.  (he's not evil, he's just a prick.) and I don't mean I had trouble telling, I mean fandom as a whole had major arguments about it, much less the general viewing public.

the series finale put a definite end to the idea they would follow through on even one of their main series themes (family don't end in blood, free will vs destiny, always keep fighting, etc), but this was something they would build up to addressing and then just anti-climatically let fizzle out in multiple seasons. character and relationship themes (not just destiel but the brothers co/counter-dependency, the importance of found family, Dean's growth from Daddy's Blunt Little Instrument and Sam's acceptance that he deserves better/agency in his own life, etc) would be built and broken down in an effort to drag the question out into another season. it wasn't two steps forward, one step back, it was a reboot.

their filler vs arc episode ratios: there's nothing wrong with the Monster of the Week format as a stylistic choice, but this show

a) would kill its own plot momentum to focus on MotW episodes. [part of this is the general spn problem they created of constantly trying to one-up their season's Big Bad, which I understand but also means one episode they are going against The Most Powerful Being in Existence (for the Fifth Time) and then rather than focus on that world-ending threat, they hunt vampires for like six episodes straight. they had a very bad balance where rather than continuously weave the larger arc into the season, or at least build characters and relationships, they'd jam it all around the season premiere, finale, and mid-season finale/premiere episodes, and then all the rest was just, bullshit cases where nothing got resolved or had a lesson stick around for the next episode, making them very skippable. also more on this under the homophobia section]

b) the filler episodes contradicted themselves and the main plot all the time.

c) sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent a-plot. also: sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent b-plot. 

I cringed my way through more than one episode of dialogue

the recycled plots

more on this in the next sections, but either they didn't notice, actively didn't care, or purposefully chose to overtly and subtly imply or state a bunch of really fucked up things, and then never address them at all

speaking of never addressing anything, I realize this is a fandom vs canon battle in general, but so many things get swept under the rug as they move on to the next issue (ex: Dean put an angel in Sam's body to "heal him", violating his consent and exasperating his issue with telling what reality is - a huge issue from previous season - and once the Mark of Cain story really took over the subject gets dropped.) 

death is so cheap on this show. and I don't just mean that the revolving doorway of resurrections means it's hard to get worked up about a death because (as long as the character was a white man and especially the brothers) there was a high chance they'd be back, and I don't just mean that their Murder Is the First, Last, and Best Solution to Any Issue, Ever means the faceless and not so faceless hoards of villains, monsters, and humans who get caught up in it are just hand waved as one of those things (they have ways of saving vessels and the later into the show the less likely they are to even try), but that there was no point in investing in (esp non-white, male) secondary characters because chances were they'd be dead pretty fast.  I'm honestly shocked characters like Jody (who actually at one point was in the middle of being killed off on-screen and then we didn't see her for eight episodes, so we assumed she was dead) made it until the end.

(speaking of dead characters though, what was with the habit of bringing them back constantly? just don't kill them in the first place! create new ones and let those ones stick around instead!)

when they can't use death as their solution, the other answer the writers fall back on is Deus Ex Machina

buckleming were a writing duo who had their own bingo cards that included things like shitty pacing, OOC-ness, flat one-liners, etc, and the question wasn't if you'd get bingo, it was a question of how often you got it during their episodes. at some point throughout the show, it became hard to tell what was a buckleming episode and what was just another episode in the season.  aka the writing quality went WAY DOWN as a whole

you know the tv trope Idiot Ball? or Idiot Plot?  spn should have it's own page for both. 

they constantly break viewer's trust, which is the basic tenet of what not to do when it comes to telling a story. (again, not just destiel, though the queerbaiting is a major part of it because it happened all the time to avoid actually answering that question.) when a writer violates their character's or story's core identity for a 'twist', it needs to have been carefully built so that it's a surprise to the viewer, not a betrayal. (you may not have seen it coming, but when you look back you can see the groundwork.) these writers, every time, chose the "shocking" choice regardless of how much they need to break canon or character to do so. their twists are either obvious, and/or they don't make sense with the rest of their story/lore of the show, and the viewer is left feeling stupid for believing they have more respect for the audience/characters than they do.

I realize this is pretty subjective, but huge swaths of it are just boring. fandom made the experience of watching it interesting, not the show itself.

and yet, for all of that, the quality of writing (while painful to have to sit through) was not the worst thing about it.

(note for the following: I stopped watching after s11, but I'm sure some if not all of these are still relevant until the very end)

Misogyny and Consent Issues: Is There a Limit? Signs Point to No

there is honestly so much under this topic I don't even know where to start. i'm going to focus on patterns rather than specific incidences, because otherwise I'll be writing this for a week, but just know I can easily provide examples of all of these because this is literally what I spent years writing meta on.

female characters were more likely to die quicker/earlier (esp vs other other male characters with similar reoccurring roles/characterizations), stay dead, and die often at the hands of their loved ones and/or in Stranger Danger situations. they died for man!pain. they died for fodder. they died as a sacrifice. they were turned into love interests (whether that was their original role or not) and then killed. they were put in mortal danger and then not given resolution for several episodes (Schrödinger's death.) they died in ways we've seen male characters survive. their deaths - the violence enacted on them - was constantly, consistently sexualized, and the camera lingered.

when it came to villains the show would go out of its way to kill the female one first, or act like she's the more pressing issue so that the male character could hang around longer (and honestly by male character I often mean specifically Crowley and the season's female villain. not only that but they'd often break canon to kill off a female character, and break canon to save Crowley/a male character)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring female characters vs male characters who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, female characters were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared male character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development

they have more than once used the story line of underage girl seducing a grown man. (it was a whole season arc even.) this is esp galling when you find out about crew member Jim Michaels, who sexually harassed and assaulted (minor) fans

(btw, not the only crew/cast member to do so! and still be invited to cons!)

Dean Winchester (who is narratively treated as the moral judgement for the show) has blamed more than one rape victim for their assault/trauma. they often get abused (or outright killed) for stopping their abuser. 

Dean is ok with flirting with/leering at barely legal teenage girls. already sketchy when he's 26, really gross when he's in his mid/late thirties 

speaking of Dean. based on past personal experience I'm going to say up front people do not like me saying this, but that doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong or even based on interpretations: Dean has more than one relationship that if it isn't rape, falls under extreme dubious consent.

there's actually a lot of rape (or "extreme dubious consent") and assault/molestation, both shown and mentioned: Cas and April, the cases were men take away free will and then have sex with the women (Ben Edlund was one of the better writers of series and even he did this a couple of times), Crowley orgy (and demon sex in general), random women in some episodes, Sam and meta!Gen, Becky and Sam, Sam and Lucifer, Dean and Alastair, several monsters (like the siren) and their victims, male characters secretly watching female characters undress/be naked, and so on. Dean was often attacked sexually by men, Sam by women. most of this is never addressed, never treated like what it is, and/or is made into a joke

and there's even more rape jokes beyond that, sub-sections: prison, vessels/demons, angel possession, sex work, childhood abuse, monster of the week, sexuality, etc.  huge chunks if not whole episodes were devoted to making what amounted to a rape joke. 

often ignored non-sexual consent (esp Dean’s actions, including a lot of mind-wiping and violations of body autonomy)

everything about Sam and body autonomy - he is frequently violated (multiple characters have possessed him; he is fed demon blood); how he feels unclean, how he feels disconnected from his own body, how he often is forced to act outside of his control and then blamed for those decisions

actually, Cas goes through that a lot too; he is trained, brainwashed, and forced to do things without his consent, and goes through major depressive episodes because of it

this show has a pattern of girls who are kidnapped, (sexually abused), raised in isolation, and expected to develop some perfect moral compass of acceptable behavior and were then killed off when they didn't. meanwhile, male characters get fourth, fifth chances.

female characters (and I'm talking about ones with speaking roles, who play an actual part in the plot, who are sometimes in multiple episodes) are more likely to be unnamed or given no last name

are you a Mother on spn (as in, that's your role)? you're either fridged for man!pain or abusive or both

it rarely could pass the bechdel test (including in s9 don't believe those fandom lies), and that's including episodes that focused on female characters. if the test included that the characters have to be named, that (small) number probably gets cut in half. if that test included both women are alive at the end...  

female monsters prove they deserve to live by killing off their family to prove they're the "good kind"  (this is not necessary for male monster characters)

female characters are not allowed to get vengeance

they took the Virgin vs Whore dynamic (and that that's all women are), and devoted a whole episode to it, but in general it underlines of ton of interactions, esp with regards to Dean and women.  {I actually never got around to writing it, but women tended to fall into four main classifications on this show, though overlap definitely allowed: Victim [sub-categories: Fodder, (Dean) Mirror, Mother], Love Interest, Sex Object, and Villain/Obstacle. very few female characters were either allowed to outgrow their category or didn't start in one.} 

we see the male characters assault female characters but it's okay because [insert supernatural reason here], ignoring that whatever explanations for why it's being allowed, we are still visually being shown this violence against women, and often from our "heroes"  (the women are then tossed away from the narrative after the violence and again, their aftermath gets regulated to off-screen who cares)

female characters were only allowed to be "so badass"; female hunters often fought female monsters or they lost/got regulated to the sidelines in battles. this gets even more contrasted as a male character/hunter will often do a nod about how "badass" she is, even as she is very easily beaten.

 the whorepobia of this show

had a tendency to strip female characters down to their underwear/make them nude before torturing them, and then adding sexualized torture on top of that

outside of actor injuries affecting this (like one of them broke his arm so he had a sling for a few episodes), female characters are often more likely to visually carry the bruises/violence of violent incidences much longer than male characters

gratuitous filming shots of breasts, asses

the use of the words: bitch, skank, whore, slut; the play on words they do so they can say "pussy"  

taking female myths/figures and reducing them to a cheap, sexist storyline (Amazons, Artemis, Lilith, Eve, witches - who are only allowed to live/be "good" if they're men, and are otherwise in league with demons/are evil and lose)

they often kept a character but switched out her actress; helps with the disposable feeling

how they treat women's ages (ex: Jody is not allowed to be a love interest to Sam because she's older than him/calling Dean 'kiddo'. ex: Rowena is played by a woman fifteen years younger than Crowley's actor. ex: Amara being one of the oldest things in existence but still having to age her way up.)

their treatment of teenage girls, ranging from how they sexualized them to expecting them to save themselves to treating them like they are grown adults and not children to the way they kept killing the ones who posted selfies to the fact the pr more than once used the tag "teenage girls - the scariest thing ever" for Claire's episodes 

actions and lasting legacies by female characters often got erased or passed on to male characters instead

it's a time honored tradition to treat certain monsters as metaphors for things. specifically for spn, they often use werewolves and vampires for sexual assault. (not the first to do so, not the last to do so.) however, that part of it gets textually glossed over, or treated as a joke, more often than not

and for all the patterns I talk about above, there's plenty of other one-off examples of misogyny/sexism or consent issues/rape culture this show did. like that time a grown man sniffed the bra of a dead teenage girl. not for any reason, just because it was there and that's what dudes do, apparently.

Racism: All the Flavors(+ Bonus Sexism)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring white characters vs characters of color who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, characters of color were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared white character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development. 

usually Black men but in general men of color: 

a) got humiliated (often using feminization or infantilization) before their death  

b) had a more violent death; had a death that visually echoed racism (lynching, shot in the back, etc)

c) often used (racialized) rhetoric that in the real world is used against them

d) often filmed in ways to highlight their physicality, to portray them animalistically, to dehumanize them

e) even when victims, will add context to make them partially responsible for their death

characters of color were the villains or antagonists, very rarely "good guys"

this was a very white show, and while I'm speaking about speaking roles, reoccurring characters, and characters who get their own arcs, I'm also talking about background characters

using lore from groups they should not have and/or turned creatures into racist caricatures

having white actors play characters they shouldn't have

heavily depended on stereotypes for their characters of color

the treatment (esp narrative empathy level) of white angels vs angels of color.  again, screen time and character development differences between the two

a summary of (East) Asian woman on this show: fetishized porn/sexualized, “tiger mom”, Yoko Ono/The Girlfriend, monster. they were often silent or had no dialogue. microaggressions (usually spoken by Dean) were leveled at them.

antisemitism (styne issue, erasure of the Judah Initiative, Lilith, the golem)

like the sexism, just had random racist lines or visuals throughout the show (and sometimes those came in the absence of who should be there); some groups literally did not have enough characters to make a pattern, which is why this section looks a lot shorter than it really is

like for ex, I'm trying to stick with patterns but seriously, they put a Black woman in a dog collar and said her white boyfriend was her master/that she belonged to him

the ignorance of how white privilege worked to make them palatable

the replacement and/or elevation of a white character over a character of color (Lisa over Cassie, Bobby over Missouri, Charlie over Kevin in terms of how they were treated under Found Family, etc) 

how they treated non-Christian Gods: easily killed, evil, weak. they often repackaged them into a Christian framework and made them lesser than.

Bi/Homophobia, Queerbaiting, and Using Fans

they butchered Charlie.  they killed her, they killed her in a way that involved leaving behind plot, characters, and logic to do so, they killed her and used the violence of it for "shock," they butchered her and stuck her in a bathtub.  the guy who wrote Charlie in every other episode (Robbie Thompson, one of the better writers of the show) didn't write her last episode (assumption: because he wouldn't) and then he arguably left the show over her death. at one of the cons (comic-con?) the cast literally turned their backs when a fan questioned Carver (the showrunner) about what he did because they wanted no part of it. there was a mass exodus of fandom after they killed her (and another portion actually hung around because they got destiel queerbaited to stick out the rest of the season, and then they left.) she was un-apologetically queer, she was found family, she was widely popular, and they killed her for no reason at all. they didn't just Bury The Gay (their only reoccurring one), they salted and burnt the ground

they spent over a decade queerbaiting Destiel. they built queerbaiting destiel into the structure of the show: season opening/first couple of episodes whetted the appetite, which they then backed away from (usually removing Cas from Dean's physical area) and around this time they'd usually have some kind of heterosexual love interest, then mid-season they'd have some room to be together and share feelings, Cas would again disappear but this time they'd have some bi!Dean thrown in to keep you going, a few episodes before the end they'd have a major connection moment (I need you, I love you), and then the season would end with something to keep destiel fans occupied with during summer. it was never a trajectory, it was a cycle; just enough for plausible deniability but more than enough for fans to believe in. they had whole seasons where the b-plot were mirrors for destiel. they tried to sell DVDs by promising destiel cut scenes. they'd remove Cas from huge chunks of episodes just because they didn't want destiel interacting in the same physical space. they filmed them (I'm talking camera angles, physical positioning, etc) romantically.  (and sometimes, someone on crew/the network would accidentally reveal how not-fucking-happening destiel would be, and then backtrack when they realized fandom’s uproar.) 

a) Dean was only allowed to care so much for Cas, the narrative would only give him so much room to mourn/miss him. (Sam too.) it's beyond my general complaint that the writers/bros lose all interest in a character if they are not right in front of them (if they even cared when they were), but specifically they will spend episodes talking about how Cas is family, how much they care, and then because Dean and Cas cannot share the screen they come up with asinine reasons to remove Cas, which means Dean/the bros do not help him on his issues, and he is cast adrift until they need him, a push/pull of show vs tell with contradictory answers but made a lot of Cas/Destiel fans argue Cas deserved better.  

b) they also devoted seasons to the (subtextual) love triangle of Dean/Cas/Crowley. (I wish I was fucking kidding)

c) "you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men": the way they use violence to supplement affection (which is actually a larger pattern with Dean and his loved ones in general, but specifically the show is willing to show - multiple times - Dean and Cas being violent (often with an arguably sexualized filming to it) in conjunction with or as replacement for expressing their care.)  other side of this: hugging/physical affection outside of the shoulder/hand thing is reserved for escaping or coming back from death, if then (and it took seasons and a few deaths to even get that.) 

d) "buddy"  

that time Dean was allowed to be textually attracted to his mother and a literal dog (who was visually made to be very clearly a girl dog), but his attraction to men always stays subtextual and/or treated as a joke

they spent the whole show queerbaiting bi!Dean. aside comments, checking out other guys, getting flustered by men he finds attractive, metaphors, mirror characters, the heterosexual overcompensation [which is different from but comes from a similar place of the macho compensation to counteract how he gets sexualized/feminized], everything with Cas and how they play that relationship romantically and with sexual attraction, the character development that led to his relaxation of his macho compensation coinciding with increasing subtextual readings of his bisexuality (and domesticity), the inspiration for his name/character is bi, his relationship to Charlie and the pattern of fictive kinship, etc etc.  

why are angels straight???? why do they have gender???? (why are they interested in sex???)  minus the queerbaiting of destiel, they spent a lot of seasons pushing Cas into a heterosexual box. other angels were often pushed into heterosexual boxes too. (or left in subtext and then killed.) closest we got to playing with gender was Raphael and maybe Hannah, and at least with Raphael it was not without its issues. (also: both dead.)

random transphobic lines

homosexuality was often treated like a joke/punchline. queer characters/scenes were often treated like a joke/punchline.

outside of Charlie, queer characters were small, two-bit roles, extremely rare, and often killed

how they treated and showcased fandom space and esp queer fans in-show (much less how they treated them in real life), comes from a deeply sexist and homophobic place 

The Show Was 328 Episodes Long And the thing is, these are the four big categories, but it's not like this is it. The show flip-flops on calling John an abusive parent/that the bros are childhood abuse survivors. The show doesn't even really call out when Dean is being abusive to Sam, and the way they always, always go back to the Brothers Only format means they are often ignoring or straight-up forgetting the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. The show ignores how their trauma builds (and all the things that happen because of it), disconnecting the current issues with the ones that came before. The way they flip flop on monster morality and never address what the winchester bros do to people who happen to be monsters but aren't evil (or definitely aren't as evil as they are).  How violence is always the answer. How the "saving people'' part of hunting got dropped the later the show goes on, and red shirt vessels/hosts die in droves. Depending on how you view it, the way they treat alcoholism and addiction. The ableism. The line between the narrative's opinion on acceptable violence and not is inconsistent and dependent on how much they like the character doing the violence vs who the violence is being done to. Etc.

(The above lists are definitely missing stuff. I haven't done anything in this fandom in like four years, I've forgotten a lot.) I'm not saying people didn't enjoy this show. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy (parts of) this show. I'm saying whether you are basing it on things like writing craft or things like 'social justice issues', this show is bad. It is of poor quality. I really don't know how to explain the hold it has on people, how a show can be charismatic, how fandom was able to squeeze so much out of so little, but that's probably what's got you attracted into the idea of watching it again. If you're thinking of watching it because you want a coherent, well done story, look elsewhere. The finale was the literal last straw, not the only one. 

[autumnblogs]

Day 2: Symphony Impossible to Play

Picking up from yesterday, we just met Rose.

https://homestuck.com/story/220

Right out of the gate, here’s something interesting - another one where a character interacts directly with her medium! I wonder whose eyes she feels on her. Are Rose’s Seer powers allowing her to detect us watching her? Later on, it turns out that Kanaya was watching her all along during her intro. Maybe that’s who she senses? I think it’s possibly both of those, and a third option - Rose is a paranoid girl who doesn’t feel very secure in her own home, or comfortable in her own skin.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/223

John does a lot of roleplaying, and this is one of the earliest spots in the comic where he does this. Specifically, John performs a lot of his favorite scenes from different movies, and no surprise to anyone, almost all of the times he does, he’s performing either the role of a lover, or of a father. Malo, who I respect a lot, talks a little about John’s appreciation for signifiers here, along with some of their chums. I was going to say something about other points where John’s inner voice comments on the necessity of signifiers to make a thing itself (OR ELSE IT’S A PRETTY PISS POOR EXCUSE FOR THE THING) yesterday, but I didn’t have the thoughts fully formed at the time. Luckily, Malo will call attention to it for me.

This is another one of those weird things about the way that reality works, and it might all retroactively work that way because John expects it to work that way. Homestuck is full to bursting with symbols - everything in Homestuck is extremely abstracted as part of the art style, and also as part of the storytelling, often rendered down to some basic elements that make it recognizable. An example of something Homestuck uses as a symbol would be like, Mustaches - a symbol associated with Grandpa. Swords, symbols associated with Striders. The symbol doesn’t have to have any kind of literal logical association with the thing it represents, but we associate the two things with each other because of cultural context.

https://homestuck.com/story/225

I always liked Rose’s house best out of the group. There’s something deeply romantic to me about the premise of a wooded retreat far away from civilization. I’m pretty sure the Lalonde residence is based on Falling Water but I could be mistaken. As long as I’m thinking about Symbols, by the way, Cats are a Lalonde Symbol. Their presence in the story always evokes Lalondes even when they’re not in the room (which is not very often, as it turns out!) and by association, witches. Both of the Lalondes are witches in the sense of being powerful women who attain to that power by consorting with dubious and transgressive sources.

Rose is up front and melodramatic about her not so great relationship with her Mom, and it’s pretty much literally always on her mind. (Rose’s Mom is an alcoholic, and I should be clear that her relationship has lots of reasons to be not great, but Mom Lalonde deliberately being spiteful to Rose is not one of the reasons). I like to think there are a lot of these misunderstandings between parents and children and if that we were just a little more open with each other, we’d find that we didn’t have as much to be afraid of in each other as we think. But I might never know. Another one of my favorite series that has the inability of Parents and Children to communicate with each other as a central theme is Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion and if you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend you go do so.

https://homestuck.com/story/231

The presentation of the Guardians is so unsettling that in my first readthrough, I thought they must be some kind of monsters artificially imposed into these characters’ obviously artificial lives to create difficulty for them. Clearly, I thought the story was going in a completely different direction than it actually ended up going.

https://homestuck.com/story/236

Rose does not always think her cunning plans all the way through, something she has in common with her biological father.

https://homestuck.com/story/271

I probably could have mentioned this funny little guy earlier than I did, but Wayward Vagabond is in the story now. I’m not totally clear on whether the Carapacians have any greater meaning, but they sure are charming, and like just about everything that isn’t specifically John and his friends, they exist on a layer of the story that is just a little further away from just the text, and a little closer to the audience - they can enter narrative prompts, much like you or I would have if we were involved in Homestuck’s earliest pages. As a rule in Homestuck, the more influence you personally have over the narratives which change the material conditions of the characters’ lives, the more sinister and ambiguous you become. Luckily, WV turns out to be a pretty benign guy, but if you’re the sort of person to be reading this, you are no doubt aware of the fact that most of Homestuck’s narrators don’t turn out to be nearly so friendly. The Carapacians introduce us to the idea that characters in the story are allowed to be audience members and narrators too. So I guess, really, that’s the greater meaning of the Carapacians.

https://homestuck.com/story/272

Always enjoy Rose’s long, outlandish metaphors. Any chance to read more of them is a good chance to. (Although the main one on this page is a holdover from some of the cringy stuff in MSPA’s early days - some of it slightly racist, some of it slightly homophobic.)

https://homestuck.com/story/287

Andrew’s insistence on having characters like Dave rap at us, the audience, actually reminds me a lot of JRR Tolkien’s tendency to pepper his stuff with songs that he wrote for his in universe stuff. And while both are legitimately talented at their craft, as one of my friends put it, “I’m not a rapper... so stop rappin’ at me!”

https://homestuck.com/story/293

Jade is another character whose first post I forgot to mention, but here she is having a bit more to say than before! I think I remember my initial impression of Jade being pretty favorable, and then gradually declining until she got a bit more exposition. Perky people bother me.

https://homestuck.com/story/307

Another one of Andrew’s cool prose poems. I don’t mind these as much as the rapping, clearly. Rain and Strings are another pair of symbols pretty strongly associated with Rose, although I hardly need to tell you that. This obviously alludes to Rose’s mythological quest. I think it also foreshadows a lot of her worst decisions. Rose overthinks and overthinks and overthinks, and then by the time she should have acted, it’s too late, and she overreacts instead, usually in catastrophic ways.

https://homestuck.com/story/312

Dave’s room isn’t nearly as messy as Rose’s, but his bed isn’t made, same as every other Derse Dreamer. This is also probably the first place that we get hints of Dave’s fascination with death (he collects dead things). He’s specifically fascinated with his own death, and fantasizing about self-sacrifice, something that he ends up doing twice over the course of the comic, is one of the ways that Dave experiences masculinity. Thanks for that, Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/320

Dave almost immediately fails to uphold his irony schtick within just seconds of our getting to know him. For all that he pretends to the same extreme aloofness as his brother, I don’t think there’s an insincere bone in Dave’s body. Then again, maybe he’s just getting distracted by food, of which there is a significant dearth in his household. Thanks for that, Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/326

I will never get back the time I spent reading Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. Was it worth it?

Yeah probably.

https://homestuck.com/story/332

I think this is the very first time I’ve noticed that Dave has a nifty gaming computer with the transparent glass pane and the interior lights and everything. Like, this readthrough, this panel. I’m sure I mentioned somewhere that I get more out of this webcomic every time I read it.

https://homestuck.com/story/333

Dave and Rose are another character relationship I just enjoy tremendously. Their verbal sparring is one of the highlights of the webcomic.

https://homestuck.com/story/344

Bro’s puppet fascination tells us pretty early on that this is a hands-off, manipulative kind of guy. While Bro isn’t in a metanarrative layer the way that the Carapacians are, positioning him as a puppetmaster, controlling things from behind the scenes, still gives him the same kind of sinister ambiguity as one of the comic’s actual narrators.

https://homestuck.com/story/357

Far from being the kind of chill cooldude who kills with a straight face and doesn’t look at explosions, Dave kills a random bird and immediately feels remorseful about it. Poor kid.

https://homestuck.com/story/360

There is almost nothing worse than having someone perform interest in something you enjoy to try and influence you. Unfortunately, that is not what is taking place here. Rose is quick to assume malicious intent as she does a bit earlier when she tucks her journals under her bed because she feels like she’s being watched.

https://homestuck.com/story/369

Mom, sadly, giving your daughter oodles of presents and showering everything she does in ostentatious displays of affection is sadly not a substitute for earnest communication with her and your emotional presence. These two need to learn each other’s love languages. (Note to self. Not everybody enjoys lavish presents as much as I do.)

Roxy is a giver. That’s something that shows up time and again, especially when we meet her in person much later.

https://homestuck.com/story/377

Mom Lalonde performs femininity.

https://homestuck.com/story/382

Jade sees right through Dave.

In other notes, I think most of these kids would be way happier if their Guardians were more emotionally available, and less badass.

I’m going to come back to that and write more on it at some point instead of just alluding to it repeatedly. Maybe after Dave Strifes with his bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/389

Is Mom’s compulsive gift-giving because that’s her love language? Is she performing capitalism by giving her daughter extremely expensive gifts as a show of affection? Is it both things? (Roxy is never exposed to Capitalism except by the awesome powers of Dirk’s cached wikipedia archives, and her gift-giving tends to be significantly less ostentatious than Mom’s.)

https://homestuck.com/story/404

John roleplays some more.

https://homestuck.com/story/414

Here’s where I’ll say one of the things that I think is like a big deal, because I guess now’s as good a time as any. A lot of the roleplaying that John does, and the one-upsmanship that he and Dave do with each other, and Dave and Bro do with each other, and Mom’s ironic housewife routine, and the burial of Jasper in a mausoleum are rituals. Like symbols, they’re cultural touchstones that are ultimately empty when they no longer point to the thing that they signify. Funerals are grieving rituals. When a funeral doesn’t functionally serve the purpose of helping with grief, it becomes an empty signifier. Maybe this is how Mom grieved for Jaspers - I’ll have to check and see what Roxy thinks about it when I get that far, because I forgot.

We do a lot of stupid things in a monkey see monkey do fashion because we’ve just always done them that way, even when they were built for a completely different society, and no longer serve the same function that they used to serve. Big ostentatious funerals are like that, I think. Ideally, they’d give big families an opportunity to come together in mutual support, celebrate the joy brought to them by the deceased, demonstrate compassion to the grieving, and so on and so forth. I’m not prescriptively saying “don’t have a funeral” here, my point is just that funerals are one of those cultural narratives that I mentioned in the first post.

This funeral does not serve the function of helping Rose to grieve. It’s just kind of fucked up.

https://homestuck.com/story/415

Oh hey, Rose has more fish language attached to her - she earlier makes reference to her knitting-needle tech by saying that she thinks she could probably filet a fish with them. Here, she talks about having bigger fish to fry. Rose is associated with Water through her planet, the Land of Light and Rain, and with fish through Cetus. She’s also attached to other deep sea creatures in the form of the horrorterrors.

https://homestuck.com/story/420

I’m going to pause for now and post this since I’ve read through another roughly 200 pages of Homestuck this evening on the fortuitous page of 420. It probably helps that I started earlier than I did yesterday. Nanna’s about to give some exposition, and I already wrote my big brain take for the day so for now;

Cam signing off, alive and not alone.