#IF YOU IGNORE THE WHOLE TRAGEDY HAPPENING IN THE BACKGROUND THIS IS INSANE. AND I MEAN INSANE

[awakenatmidnights]

caitvi sex scene was so good i had to stop the episode to jump off the bed, fall on my knees, laugh hysterically like a maniac and scream into the void for twenty minutes and not a second less than that

[myhumanweakness]

I don’t want to be a huge asshole, but...

There are a lot of people trying to find a modicum of positivity in the finale. It’s not about this Destiel-Bibro war that’s happened over the years, it’s not about Cas, it’s not about any of the superficial drama. This finale was the weirdest mixture of OOC and in character writing I have ever seen. 

Things that are in character: 

The brothers put each other first. They are each other’s safe place and stability. Up until the very end. Sam respected Dean’s wishes, stayed with him in his last moments, and let him go gracefully. Sam even went on and had a full life so Dean’s sacrifices weren’t in vain. 

For Dean, Heaven wasn’t perfect without Sam there. And he had this huge sense of relief and happiness when Sam arrived. 

Jack deconstructed the walls of Heaven so that it was a vast place where everyone could be together. They weren’t living out their “best memories” anymore. They were creating new memories eternally with each other. And Bobby recognizing that Jack is like Dean’s son by saying, “That boy of yours...” 

Cas helped build the Heaven that he always dreamed of. Cas always had such a high standard for Heaven, and it always fell short. He helped Jack build a home that was warm and comforting and beautiful and open and loving and true. Everything Cas stood for. 

Bobby, the man Dean adopted as his father, was there to share a beer with him (just like Dean shared with his dad in his childhood). And Bobby was happy and confirmed that Dean is in a Heaven he deserves. 

Sam mourning Dean’s death for the rest of his life, but also living his life to honor Dean. Classic Sam. 

Dean using his last moments to tell Sam how much he loves him and how proud he is. Sam deserved to hear that because we all know Sam looked at Dean as a parental figure. 

Things that are OOC:

Sam not marrying Eileen. The show created this HUGE story arc around Sam and Eileen and their real love and connection. And then they shoot this finale and couldn’t even get an actress that looked like Eileen to stand it the blurry background. Like, I don’t care what you say, it’s NOT open to interpretation. Sam did not end up with Eileen. All of you people who are Sam stans, who say you want your character to be happy and live a full life should be livid. Sam ending up with Eileen wouldn’t have canceled out the fact that Dean was/is his number one person. Dean gave his blessing for Eileen, and he loved her and welcomed her into their lives because he knew Sam loved her and had a genuine connection with her. Having them together would not have ruined the ending in any way. Sam still could have ended up with Dean on that bridge. 

That woman with the blonde/light brown hair is NOT Eileen. They couldn’t even get an actress with dark brown hair to keep hope alive that they ended up together. Absolutely awful. 

Dean just accepting Cas’ death and not even talking about it, other than to say, “Yeah I think about em’ too.” I don’t care if you don’t believe in Destiel or that the love was reciprocated. Dean EXCLUSIVELY said multiple times that Cas is a member of their family and a brother to the boys. He said the words, “YOU”RE MY BEST FRIEND.” I’m not saying Dean should have scarified himself to go pull Cas out of the Empty (because we had 40 minutes to wrap up 15 years). But the fact that Dean was like: I’m gonna eat some pie and just not acknowledge any feelings or thoughts and act like nothing ever happened is SO OOC. If your best friend died tragically, you’d have something to say about it or act like you had something to say about it. And that’s not to say I wanted Dean to be miserable and hurting. I’m happy he got a dog and found some normalcy. But they lost SO many people, and he’s just walking around cool as a cucumber? When every other season/episode where they lost someone important to Dean he was a mess. And I’m not just talking about Cas- we all obviously know how Dean behaved when Cas died/was missing/Lucifer was controlling him. But even when Jo and Ellen died. Even when Mary died. Even when Bobby died. Even when John died. Even when Crowley died. Even when Jack died, Dean was shown hurting. Suddenly everything is cool and normal there’s no pain or anything? The fuck? A brief moment of acknowledgement. That’s all it needed.

I will never forgive the writers for ending Dean’s story that way. A rusty nail impaling him (probably in his pulmonary arteries/aorta based on the angle) on some random hunt after he finally exhaled the episode before and said, “We’re finally free.” He sacrificed his ENTIRE childhood and life for his brother and the world and so many other people, and he didn't even get to enjoy being a human on the Earth and living a life for more than a week. What! Dean was always a character filled with tragedy, and yeah, maybe he did have to die. You can make that argument. But like that?! AND. AND! Sam held a funeral for Dean and DIDN’T INVITE ANYONE! What!!! No one was there to toast to Dean and share their memories and give him the send-off he deserved. Sam just burned his body alone. Never. That would have NEVER happened. Sam loved Dean SO much and looked up to him and thought the world of him. Dean was his big brother who was fearless and strong and the best hunter on this Earth (and probably every other planet), and he didn’t celebrate his life in the end? 

Cas not showing up in Heaven is absolutely insane. INSANE. It doesn’t matter what you think of their relationship, the show has proven that Cas is important to Dean (even if you think Cas is way at the bottom of the list, he’s on it!). Dean’s ideal retirement/endgame was him, Sam, and Cas on a beach, drinking cocktails, with hula girls. That was the future Dean wanted for him and his family. And you’re telling me that Cas helped Jack build the best version of Heaven possible, and the minute Dean Winchester arrived Cas wasn’t there to greet him. Even just to say “Hello, Dean.” Even call Dean’s phone and say, “Welcome home.” Cas would have been the one greeting Dean in Heaven, with Bobby. Requited or not, it’s canon that Cas is in love with Dean. You don’t just ignore the opportunity to see the person you’re in love with. And... and! Even if Cas didn’t greet Dean in Heaven immediately, he would have appeared in the Impala during the drive. He would have met the brothers on the bridge to welcome them both home. Cas loved Sam too. He would have been there. The three boys together again. Team Free Will!  

I love Cas, and I know a lot of Cas stans feel buried and betrayed and hurt over the show doing a “is he there or isn’t he?” thing. And that is completely valid. I can’t even express to you how sorry I am that so many of us in the fandom are hurting. But I know this show. And this show has always made it clear that it was/is always about two brothers. Fine. But Dean Winchester, the most caring and loving human in the entire universe, deserved better. I am so sick to my stomach that Dean’s whole life was him convinced that there was only one way for his story to end and it was him dying tragically. For years he never let himself even entertain the thought of living a life because he 1) didn’t think he deserved that or was worth it 2) it just wasn’t in the cards. We watched Dean grow so much, SO MUCH, that we finally saw him talking about the future and having hope for the future. And yeah, maybe he wouldn’t get the future he talked about with the retirement on the beach, but he would have lived long enough to experience life outside of just “playing whack-a-mole” and being God’s favorite story and puppet. Dean didn’t even get to enjoy his freedom and humanity. They took a character that they purposefully pushed through so many stages of character development to attain hope and faith and self-worth and promise, and killed him. 

What the fuck!

[catgrassplantdad]

There are few fictional relationships that make me feel more unhinged than Mickey & Terry. And I’m sure it’s been dissected to death, but I think about their confrontation at the beginning of 10x11 a lot and it makes me feel extremely. So here I am to talk about why. CW: abuse and homophobia below the cut (I mean, it’s Terry).

I don’t think I need to give a history lesson here, but the abuse and violence Mickey endured by Terry’s hand unfortunately shaped a lot of Mickey’s life. Mickey didn’t take forever to be comfortable and open with Ian because he wanted to, he didn’t marry a woman because he wanted to, he didn’t live a lie for so long because he wanted to. This all happened because he actually, literally feared for his life. Additionally, there was the complicated fact of him starving and striving for his abuser’s approval. He wanted more than just bodily safety; he wanted to be in good standing with Terry. This is despite enduring what he described as torture. Terry “tortured [him] every day for years,” and yet he still desired a relationship with him. This happens sometimes in abusive relationships, it’s definitely not unusual that he felt that way. But it’s still hard to watch, knowing about their background and knowing that Mickey was aware of what Terry was capable of.

Mickey knowing what Terry was capable of is precisely why their interaction at the beginning of 10x11 made me go “yooooo” out loud at my TV at the end of the scene. I had to pause it, my eyes were bugging out of my head, I had to let it sink in, etc. etc. It really struck me hard. Mickey heard Terry shouting slurs at him from outside on the damn sidewalk where anyone could hear, and he put on an unamused look and stepped outside and walked right up to him. Terry pulled out a gun, and Mickey did not even flinch and instead pulled out one of his own. He listened to his father berate and then threaten him, and instead of backing down he proceeded to do the opposite of what he had done his whole life and deliberately said shit that would piss Terry off. And on top of it, he then went back into the house and started planning his big gay wedding with specific details designed to make Terry mad. He wanted to rub his happiness, his gay love, in that prick’s face. And he begins this endeavor with that line “I definitely love one.”

There’s an important detail in that exchange (“You must really love cock.” “I definitely love one.”) that is what ultimately elevates this scene from merely insanity-inducing to "Jessie will never be normal about this ever in their entire life," and that’s Mickey’s wording. It’s such a good comeback and it hits so hard, but it’s important that it also hits Terry hard. And it does, because he used language that Terry understood. I think if he had phrased it differently by saying something like “I just love Ian” or “I’m just in love” or something similar, it wouldn’t have landed the same with Terry. Terry had taken Mickey’s gayness and reduced it to something so base and vulgar because he hates gay people and doesn’t care to know shit about the gay experience. And instead of throwing his gay love in Terry’s face by using language that’s less horrendously offensive, Mickey fucking embraces it. Mickey takes Terry’s words and twists them to suit himself and throws them back at him. Mickey’s gay and he loves cock, and he definitely loves his partner’s cock. You know, his partner? Who he’s in love with? And gonna marry? Because the gay experience isn’t just about sex? Mickey’s not getting married because he wants to get fucked, he’s getting married because he’s in love. Terry doesn’t give a shit about all that and Mickey knows this, so his comeback utilizes language that Terry can wrap his head around, but he still manages to convey the fact that he’s in fucking love with one person. It’s affirmation and ownership and it is so badass. Terry was actively trying to be cruel and Mickey threw back at him in one of the most elegant comebacks I have ever seen. And yeah, we know Mickey is capable of being vulgar as hell, so it’s not like saying something like this is particularly out of character for him anyway. It just worked so damn well in accomplishing the goal of getting Terry to shut the fuck up while conveying to Terry and the audience that he’s in love and willing to engage in risky behavior to defend it.

I mean, he was doing all this with a gun in his face. Terry wanted him to feel fear, he wanted him to feel threatened because he genuinely thought that Mickey deserved to experience violence, and he wanted him to feel ashamed. But Mickey decided years ago that he was done feeling fucking ashamed, and he was so accustomed to Terry’s violent behavior. So whether he stood up to him with a gun in his face because he was desensitized to Terry’s violence or because he just decided to be brave and ignore whatever fear he may have been feeling in that moment, either reason speaks volumes. If he did it because he was desensitized to Terry’s violence then that really speaks to the tragedy of his upbringing. If he did it because he just decided to be brave in that moment then that speaks to just how much he was willing to risk for his principles. Either way, he could’ve ended up dead. We know this because Terry does end up trying to shoot him in the end. And yes, Mickey had his gun aimed at Terry, but I don’t know if I think he’d actually shoot him and I think his actions towards Terry in season 11 may speak to that. But Terry would shoot. And he does shoot later on. Again, he knew what Terry is capable of. And he stood up to him anyway and it was amazing to watch. Mickey used to be so afraid of Terry that he feared for his life while vying for approval. He used to live in a way that was the very antithesis of what he actually wanted for himself, just for his piece of shit father. And in this scene he shows us just how far removed he is from that fearful kid now, openly in love with his partner and standing up to his father in a way that will expressly make him angry about his gayness specifically, the thing that he was so tortured over in his youth. Tortured because he was hiding out of fear and the internal conflict that he experienced because of that, and then physically and emotionally tortured by his father once he’s found out. That abuse may have shaped his past, but he was ready to move the fuck on and not let it define his future. So this scene is just unreal. A neat little package of character and relationship/dynamic development in a little 70-second scene that packs an enormous punch.

[cassyapper]

OKAY IVE ACTUALLY PLAYED TWO SESSIONS SINCE MY LAST POST SO IM GONNA COMBINE THEM HERE SORRY FOR THE LENGTH BUT,,IVE COME SO FAR I DONT WANNA STOP NOW

this is gonna be very messy cause i WILL be jumping back and forth as things come back to mind so uhh pls enjoy this absolute ramble <3

anyway. i continued playing omori and boy do i have some Thoughts

so first session; i went through the pyre(something i forgot the full name sob) forest/sprout mole village/sweetheart’s castle in one go and let me TELL YOU. DOING THAT WAS FUCKING INSANE I WENT NUTS holy shit.

so anyway.

pyre forest!!!! the lil race against the big spider coming after u for disturbing the smaller spiders mechanic was very fun i had a lot of fun figuring out the best routes to take. i know normally mechanics like that lead to ppl getting frustrated cause u have to keep retrying but i had a lot of fun!!!! sum annoyance but good natured type, th kind that just makes u try harder u know? i just enjoyed it JKFN;FN; candles in the foggy forest....now That is an aesthetic

the rare bear scared the fuckin shit out of me i remember it didn’t attack me straight away so i was like “aw (:” but then when i press x on him it takes me to a BATTLE SCREEN AND SUDDEN THAT MF IS TERRIFYING I WAS LIKE WHWHWHWHWKJDNJ. very funny i honestly wished i recorded my reaction

also omori is afraid of drowning...................................i am breathing heavily. i think whatever happened to mari is related to at least one of the things omori is scared of. so either heights, spiders, or drowning it seems. spiders doesnt seem super likely as a contributor to her death, and while falling from a height is more realistic, such a senseless way of dying doesnt seem to rlly fit ? with the vibe i get from the kiddos in the real world. which makes me think maybe drowning/otherwise suffocating is how she died...but we’ll see. also due to the forgotten library part, we know omori explicitly feared spiders/drowning before mari died so it’s also probable im jus talking out my ass here but still,,,,thoughts

also this motherfucker?

literally fucking terrifying. IT’S BODY IS MADE OF SUCC’D SPROUT MOLES...i still have no idea what exactly it was doing to them but jesus h christ!!!! evil and fucked up. do not feel bad for curbstomping it

sprout mole village!!!! very cute, im v excited to send that one dude his brother’s care package. i like how, when theyre not lost, sprout moles can be real endearing lil guys,,,theyre not my fav lil enemies but (:

also for some reason omori is the first game ive played where i really care about getting achievements ? so i literally did the back and forth on my save file just to get all the season sprout mole achievements JKDJFJ;. i ended up sticking w spring tho before moving on for real cause spring is my fav season irl (:

also i felt SO BAD for cutting down that one sprout mole’s chistmas tree he was just trying to celebrate but i wanted to see that present and coincidentally becoming a christmas ruiner was an achievement so all’s fair in love and war i suppose

ALSO. th fuckin plant monster thing under the scientist sprout mole’s room. major little shop of horror vibes from the design, absolutely adored it!!!!! originally i did  just cut the wire holding the piano over it, ending it in one go, but i was very curious abt it so i reloaded a save file to actually fight it and

i know it only spread that gas to make the kiddos happy cause being happy reduces attack i think ? it decreases attack/defense but seeing the kiddos smile so much was nice (:

however

omori...sunny....son boy.........u good ?

and now. sweetheart

the way the sprout moles completely adore and depend on sweetheart gives me such awful evil vibes and combined with such a luxurious background was fucking incredible

sweetheart herself, speaking of. bitch (sorta affectionately, certainly not derogatory)

i talked to every sprout mole in the audience before taking my seat and i literally dont know why. even when i picked up the pattern of where the unique dialogue could be found (usually the sprout moles farthest right) i still talked to all of them......just in case ? i have no idea. i dont know why i did that. i feel it’s important that i note it tho

LMAO SO WHEN SPROUT MOLE MIKE DID THE MINUTE OF SILENCE FOR YE OLD SPROUT MOLE

I LITERALLY FELT SO FUCKING BAD LMAO I WAS LIKE OH MY GOD NO!!!!!! I DID THAT!!! I KILLED HIM!!! OH MY GOD!!! I WONDER HOW AWKWARD OMORI KEL HERO AND AUBREY FELT IN THE AUDIENCE HOLY SHIT THEY HAD FRONT ROW SEATS TO SPROUT MOLE MIKE’S MOURNING!!! MY GOD FJKFN;;

also sprout mole mike describing 3′7″ inches as ”towering” was the FUNNIEST shit i have ever seen. also i have to wonder, since sweetheart made up the whole show of sweetheart’s quest for hearts in the first place, if she was seriously down to marry a sprout mole if one suited her fancy. jus v funny to me honestly. SPEAKING of sweetheart’s dating patterns I NOTICED THOSE FEM SKELETONS IN THE DUNGEON!!!!! BI SWEETHEART!!!! SHE’S JUST AS DOWN FOR GIRLS AS SHE IS BOYS

i know TECHNICALLY not everyone is in the dungeon for failing to be a good enough suitor but STILL...COME ON. THIS WAS BEFORE WE KNEW THAT. SWEETHEART BI I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL

anyway

when the lights when out and lightning struck the third contestant, i knew Immediately something was gonna go down. and when the mustache sprout mole was like “oh yes!! u!! in the striped pjs!! u absolute beast ur perfect!!!” i KNEW hero had just been selected as the replacement i was goign completely fucking nuts i was like OH MY GODNFNG; HIS HEART IS ALREADY TAKEN BY MARI!!!!!!! STOP

i ended up taking so many screenshots during this part cause i was going feral so here take a glance just cause i love, uh, hero

OUR HERO IN SHINING ARMOR DJLBH;KFJB

also GOD FUCKING DAMMIT IM SHORTER THAN HERO

hero shaking on the stage when he was introduced...oh my HEART....IM SO FOND FOR THIS BOY WTF!!!!! DKJDN;N

this is not really NEWS to me since it’s implied hero is tall but like come ON..... sorry just every time i find out a character is explicitly taller than me i need to huff about it, moving on,

HERO FUCKS

sorry i just have so many screenshorts during this aprt cause i was going fucking crazy but

literally terrifying! sweetheart bathes in that shit!! christ!

is blood good for ur skin? i imagine, so long as like...gore isnt in it and it’s solely blood it cant be BAD necessarily......but good ? regardless very fucked up. besides the fact that well, uh, BLOOD, blood is also sticky as hell. ur telling me sweetheart willinglhy bathed in that shit? disgusting. at least thin it out

anyway I HAD SO MUCH FUN DOING THE PUZZLES AT SWEETHEART’S CASTLE....FROM THE DUNGEONS TO THE KITCHENS TO THE BALLROOM TO THE LIBRARY TO THE GARDENS JUST EVERYTHING!!!! IT WAS SO FUN I ENJOYED FIGURING IT OUT SO MUCH IT WAS LITERALLY DELIGHTFUL...I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH THE GAMEPLAY IS SO FUCKING EPIC I LITERALLY HAVE SO MUJCH FUN.......OH MY GOD I JUST. INCREIDBLE!!!! FUCK

also the lil sir maximus bit.........i honestly felt really awful over having to kill them ): i think i even tried running once but it wouldnt let me...it hurt man ): they were just a family....

um but anyway,

i think it was rlly sweet how aubrey protested to the wedding cause she was worried abt sweetheart,,,like i cant rlly explain it idk how to put it into words,,like sweetheart is clearly not mentally well and having an episode, and aubrey being the only one to say “hey what ur doing is self-destructive and isolating” just mmmh. she cares a lot,,,and *i* care aubrey

also sweetheart’s battle theme fucking SLAPPED...SO GODDAMN HARD IM STILL QUAKING OVER IT....FUCKING BANGER YO!!!!!! INCREDIBLE

ah but alas

BASIL........I NOTICED THAT IT WAS HIS GHOST/SHADOW DURING THE EXIT FROM OTHERWORLD AS WELL BUT JUST FUCK

im so worried about basil ):

and it being so obvious that none of the others can see...........them asking omori if he’s okay.....oh my god. i go nuts

and then...the forgotten library part

i literally cried, again, oh my fucking god

these kids loved each other so much they ADORED the time they spent with each other and im QUAKING to know WHAT HAPPENED TO MARI......HOW DID THE FALLOUT GO. I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW

i know there are multiple endings to this game and on god i am not QUITTING until i get the happiest ending there is for these kids im literally a goddamn fuckign mess oh my god

MARI SHWOING UP IN THE LIBRARY AT ONE POINT AND LEADING OMORI...........IM LTIERALLY GOIGN INSANE OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD HE LOVED HIS SISTER SO MUCH HE’S SO CLEARLY LOST WITHOUT HER I CANT FUCKING DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW I NEED TO KNOW

GOD

okay sorry i just. ive said ti before but the grief in this game is so real and palpable and it aches, it aches so bad. also the white egret orchids in the library...i see u

but regardless.... session two real world electric boogaloo

LOVE that kel is like “so i need to run errands but u wanna come with me right? of course u do!” like fuck i rlly do. kel is just so delightful i would literally do anything to spend time with him

ALSO i noticed u can just refuse to open the door both times kel’s knocked now and it makes me wonder....if u could choose to ignore kel ? and then venture out urself or just ? i wonder what would even happen if u chose to not open the door. im CERTAINLY not doing it myself at the very least not this playthrough but i am curious...i bet that’s how u get a bad ending, by not talking w kel

but anyway....

aubrey and her gang not saying anything in the pizza parlor........i jus think abt that is all

ALSO!! pet rocks!!!!!!!!! LOVE this lil thing it’s so cute. jus rock paper scissors it babey

speaking of lil bits, love all the mini quests in the real world...it’s just rlly fun and builds up this cute lil town........it also makes me think that whatever happened to mari cant have been anything except an accident, bc no one comments on what a tragedy it was to omori. like if it was murder, there’s no way such a horrific situation wouldnt engulf the town for a bit and sweep over it for weeks at least, but that just doesnt seem to have happened. this is def me reading too into it tho;; point is neighbors nice (: also i got the seashell necklace and i go apeshit

ALSO......THE FUCKING...........CHURCH. I VISITED WITH KEL ON A COMPLETE WHIM CAUSE I WAS CURIOUS IF THE PASTOR WOULD TALK MORE ABT AUBREY BUT NO. INSTEAD HE TALKS ABT THE WEIRD VIBE FORM THE GRAVEYARD HE’S GETTING!!! AND THE DUDE WHO CHILLS IN THE GRAVEYARD SAYS SHIT ABT THE SPIRITS GETTING READY FOR SOMEONE TO JOIN THEM!!!! BITCH WAHT THE FUCK

THERE’S NOF UCKING WAY THIS ISNT ABOUT BASIL. THERE IS NO!!! WAY!!!! I SWEAR ON GOD IF BASIL DIES I WILL LOSE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ESP CAUSE THERE IS LITERALLY NO OTHER WAY HE COULD DIE EXCEPT SUICIDE THAT’S WHAT IT HAS BEEN IMPLYING OVER AND OVER I GO NUTS I GO APESHIT NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK

OKAY SORRY I JUST. HHHHHHHHHHH

baby has acquired baby

kel’s family is rlly cute,,,,v heartwarming. i trust them

i do worry abt like...the stark difference between recognizing kel’s accomplishments and hero’s...i just idk. i just keep thinking abt that bit in kel’s story abt hero’s depression when his parents focused on hero and ignored him, and i just. kel’s family is good People but i worry if kel has a good support system...i jus........): i am watching

ahh THE BASIL MISSING PART MADE MY HEART LITERALLY FUCKING DROP..I WAS SO FUCKING PANICKED I WAS LIKE OH MY GOD THIS IS IT BASIL IS DEAD

THANKFULLY HE WASNT BUT HOLY GOD HOW THAT WHOLE SITUATION PANNED OUT MADE ME GO NUTS!!!!!!! BASIL...AUBREY...HER GANG.......FUCK OH M YOGD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

THANK G O D I SNOOPED AROUND KEL’S HOUSE BEFORE LEAVING I WOULD HAVE H A T E D TO FIGHT THEM ALL AT ONCE IM GLAD I WAS ABLE TO JUST PEPPER SPRAY THEM JESUS CHRIST

oh my god kim like asking for aubrey all concerned before deciding to trust her and leaving.....kim i diagnose u with lesbain

the whole fucking. basil almost drowning scene. i seriously feel like ive changed like as a person over it. i am thinking . i am thinking. i am only evee thinking about mari and how omori just loved her so much and how the thought of her gave him strength. th pic of her ghost holding omori’s hand in the water made me cry

MMMM BUT. HERO!!!

I DIE I DIE I DIE HE’S SO PRETTY FUCK ALSO HIM PICKING UP BASIL WOOOOOOOO THIS IS WHAT IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THAT’S WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT YEAHHHHHHHH

god i feel so bad about leaving aubrey tho. shes so clearly not okay and she so clearly did not mean to push basil in and oh my GOD I JUST...PLEASE....PLEASE CAN WE JUST TLAK TO HER I NEED TO TLAK TO HER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I NEED TO FUCK

the ghosts of omori and aubrey on the swings made me cry out like i had been physically assaulted

AHH BUT THEN TAKING BASIL HOME AND WHILE HE’S IN HIS BED HE JUST SAYS “oh sunny...there’s not way out of this...is there?” I LITERALLY GO BUCKWILD APESHIT INSANE STUPDI!!!!!! BASIL YOURE PUTTING UP A LOT OF ALARMING FLAGS HERE!!! PLEASE DO NOT FUCKING DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!

FUCK. CHRIST. HELL. SHIT. THIS GAME IS DRIVING ME FUCKING CRAZY

GOD

oh my god but the day ending with hero and kel sleeping over at omori’s house...im kdnd im jkdim im not uhm okay THEY BUILT A BLANKET FORT PLEASE..I LOVE THEM

goddd hero going into the piano room....playing sum........and then asking omori abt the song he and mari used to play on violin...and then THE TITLE SCREEN MUSIC STARTS PLAYING....HI. HI HELLO HI YOU CANT FUCKIGN DO THAT HI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCK YOUFBJFGJNGN;EJNE; IM GOIGN NUTS

also the name omori comes from the piano.............interesting...i wonder why sunny likes being called omori in the dreamscape...

god but omori not having a srs hallucination cause he’s w his friends and he feels safe...im gonna sob

However. i did glance into the bathroom mirror. AND INSTEAD OF THE EYE MF IT’S A DISTORTED AS HELL GHOST MARI???IM SO FUCKIGN SCARED. IM SO SCARED. WHAT THE FUCK. WHAT THE FUCK? CREEPY AS HELL!!!

ohh my god this GAME

so finally i ended up in whitespace again. do NOT like that omori is completely alone in the world!!! what the FUCK!!!!!!!! I AM SO SCARED AT ALL TIMES. im literally about to go play sum more tho after dinner so i will see what happens. god i jsut......this game is so fucking good it has me by the balls dude. SO glad i decided to play it bruh

anyway thanks for reading all of this if u did, it’s an absolute monster ik and ur a real one

[everydisneymovie]

Review #66: Miracle of the White Stallions

Post #71

12/8/2020

Next up is 1963′s Miracle of the White Stallions

Just a warning, this movie fucking sucks.

Enjoyment : [2]

This movie is one of the worst experiences I have had so far. It is 2 hours of some of the most boring shit you will ever see. You know that phrase ‘Polishing the silverware on the Titanic’? A phrase meant to mock people who prioritize the wrong things during an emergency? Imagine two whole hours of a dude polishing silverware while the Titanic sinks in the background. My god this movie is dull. Every single character without a doubt is a despicable piece of flaming garbage who don’t deserve our attention. There is almost nothing to enjoy about this movie and about 75% of it could be cut without any loss to the main plot. I mean that, the main conflict is resolved about 40 minutes into this 2 hour movie. There is so little conflict that they actually switch to an entirely new cast of characters who have almost nothing to do with the main plot for the final half hour. I hate this movie with every fiber of my being.

Quality : [3]

I will give the movie this, the actors are trying their hardest and the locations are very pretty. The writing is absolutely atrocious. Every line of dialogue sounds like a rich brat whining about ‘daddy only let me have TWO gold plated dune buggies this christmas!’ and I hate it. The pacing is also pathetic. Like I mentioned, the movie gives up trying to have a plot and throws in a pointless fight scene with brand new characters we care even less about in the final half hour.

Hold up : [2]

This movie has a single easily identifiable flaw. It is pathetically spineless at the core of it’s being. This movie takes place during WW2, and somehow decides to go with the moral ‘There were good and bad guys on both sides’ While also totally ignoring the holocaust happening literally just off screen. There is even a line where one character says “Oh yeah my husband got taken to a concentration camp” “Aw jeez that sucks” and then they move on like it is no big deal. This movie is about a bunch of rich assholes using money and supplies that could have been used to help refugees to instead transport their expensive horses to safety. Excuse me if this is a controversial opinion but, JEWISH LIVES WILL ALWAYS BE MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR FUCKING FANCY HORSES. This movie is utterly pathetic, since it thinks anyone will care about the safety of some vanity project for the 1% over actual victims of war and genocide.

Risk : [1]

This is without a doubt the least risky movie Disney has ever made. The stakes are literally “we might not have our super expensive dressage horses after the war! We can’t have that! Rich people like watching horses prance around! This must be our top priority right now!” Which I have to say bud, are stakes I do not care about. What is worse is how much it humanizes the Nazis in this movie. The main characters are for all intents and purposes Nazis. They aren’t actually Nazis, but they hang out with Nazis, obey the orders of Nazis, and get permission from Nazis. We keep getting these extended monologues about how war is the real enemy and Nazis are just caught in the middle. How dare you Disney, how dare you act like Nazis were some misunderstood tragedy. We even get an extended scene where all the Nazi characters we met throughout the movie get happy endings where they conveniently leave out ANY JEWISH VOICES. This movie is pathetic because it refuses to take a side... on the holocaust. Why the hell did they think this would be ok?

Extra Credit : [0]

This movie deserve no extra credit. I cannot think of a single moment I enjoyed or thought had creative effort put into.

Final thoughts:

This is the second worst movie I have seen so far. The simple fact is that there is no way to get even slightly invested in the plot unless you are a complete psychopath. Horse dressage is a pointless leisure activity for the ultra rich, and as hard as this movie tries to convince me it’s part of some great ‘cultural heritage’ I just can’t give a damn. If there was a fire in an art museum, I would be sad at the loss of such important cultural artifacts, but I wouldn’t try to save the paintings before I tried to save the people still inside. Human life will ALWAYS matter to me more than some stupid fucking horses. The characters come across as fucking insane, since they value these horses above everything else. At one point they threaten a mob of starving refugees with guns because ‘these horses bring hope to people!” (bring hope to who? the fucking rich elite?) At one point a train conductor is like “No dude we can’t put your horses on this train we have civilians to evacuate” and they like, passionately argue about how important these horses are to the country... AND THEY GET LET ON THE TRAIN! Innocent people probably straight up died because of their selfishness!  I cannot express how awful this movie is to watch. The only reason it isn’t ranked lower than A Light In the Forest is because that movie just seemed to ooze hatred towards minorities, while this movie just seems indifferent to the suffering of others. Call me crazy but I don’t care about Nazi horses even a little.

Total Score: 8/50

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[retvenkos]

i just read your tags are you anti-snape?

(so i just saw that my tags were cut off halfway through my rant, so if you want me to finish that, just send in an ask and i will write out my whole thoughts)

okay, so anti-snape is a strong word, with a lot of different connotations to it, and while i wouldn’t brand myself as anti-snape because of all of the strong feelings attached, i would say that i don’t think that snape deserves all of the recognition that he deserves.

why?

what i firstly want to say is that snape is emotional abuser. my case in point here is neville, who had parents that were literally tortured to insanity, proving that his worst fear is snape - his teacher. how many times was snape unusually cruel to neville and harry? how many times did he humiliate hermione - an already bullied, muggle-born student (and possible poc)? snape is established to be cruel, and when you look at his actions, it is clear he is emotionally abusive to his students.

why did i start with this? because i relate with neville - i know what it is like to have your worst fear be an abuser that you face every day. so, therefore, i am biased against snape, and a lot of my dislike for him comes from the fact that no matter how you dice it, this man was in a position of power, abusing those students that looked up to him. 

he especially hated harry, who was an abused kid himself (and there is some kind of narrative in there, an abused kid growing up to hate and alienate an abused kid. i’m not going to get into that. but just think about that for a second and tell me you don’t want to at least dislike snape.). 

and perhaps you want to argue that snape couldn’t know that harry was abused over at privet drive. fair, okay. not everything about a kid can be seen on their face, right? but, one could argue that if snape took the time to look at harry and see him as a kid for a second, he could see hints of it. i have family members who are teachers, and they say that they can never be 100% sure, but they can at least have a good idea of who is abused at home, just based off of the way they interact with other people - especially adults. OR, if you don’t like that idea, you can think of it like this: the teachers at hogwarts are probably close to each other, right? mcgonagall knew (at least to some degree) what the dursleys were like - furthermore, she is close with harry and perceptive. she would have known that harry was abused, and if you don’t think that she wouldn’t have at least mentioned it to snape, i would disagree and say you don’t know mcgonagall. also! dumbledore! there is literally so many opportunities for snape to figure out that harry was abused at home. he just didn’t care.

so, snape is an emotionally abusive man in a position of power, picking on literal children as an outlet for his misplaced anger. this is the set-up for snape, and had he never had an in-depth redemption arc, we would literally all dislike snape.

and i feel like, then, the only reason that we have this snape/anti-snape discourse is dependent on whether or not you think his redemption arc is reason enough to excuse his actions.

and so here we talk about his childhood. which is definitely important and gives good insight, but should not be the only reason as to why he is seen as a good character. childhoods are formative and important, but they are not all encompassing. let’s not forget that snape is a grown man when the story starts. he is 31 years old when we are introduced to his character.

snape had a terrible childhood. he was neglected. he was abused (or so it was implied). he was friendless. he was lonely. he was poorly socialized. he was in a hogwarts house that seemed against him, almost, so he had to work to carve his place out and prove his worth. he wanted to stay at hogwarts all year, if he could.

(sound familiar? harry? neville? you two are here?)

but, school is not always great. at school, there are bullies that are terrible to him - it goes beyond teasing sometimes, snape getting hexed and jinxed and publically humiliated. he has one friend - lily, but sometimes he wonders if she really understands or if she really cares. no one has ever cared for him before, so why should she? he falls in love with her, but she does not reciprocate his feelings. instead, she falls for his tormentor - the person who has made his one safe place terrible, the person who treats him like he’s nothing.

now that is a compelling background. when he falls in with the wrong crowd, we can see why. he is desperate for some kind of belonging, some kind of importance. 

(is that... draco?)

he gets more violent as time goes on. those spells he created? levicorpus? sectumsempra? he’s going down a dark path and he wants to cause pain. he becomes a death eater, and while we don’t get a lot of detail what happens here, he rises in the ranks, which means he had to have done terrible things. at this point, he is clearly a bad person. and maybe he feels remorse during this time, but it’s clearly not enough to push his conscience out of where it is. he is still on voldemort's side.

what changes him? the power of love, of course. because even in this terrible time, he still loves lily - right? but is it love? or is it more like obsession? jk would tell us it’s love, but i would disagree. 

at the beginning, yes. snape loved lily. but after so much has transpired? things changed. snape is no longer as pure as he once was. he changed. any maybe he didn’t notice it, sure. but wasn’t he different, after everything?

if he loved lily, he would have cared about (even minorly) the things she cared for. yes, he could still hate james with a burning passion, yes he could let that ruin his and lily’s relationship,,, but could he become the very thing she feared and abhorred? could he become a death eater, literally killing people she loved? people just like her? could he have gone to her house, stepped over her dead husband, ignored her crying child to mourn her dead body?

this feels more like obsession. if you love someone, you care about them - their wellbeing, their peace of mind. love means you need to have an awareness for who your loved one loves, and you can accept them for the fact that they love someone else. snape shows he doesn’t. he only cares for her.

here we are, now, at this point is snape's story, and the natural progression in his redemption arc is for him to actively try to amend his terrible actions.

and... he does? kind of?

he becomes a double agent which is perfect. he vows to protect harry, which he does, physically... but he has a clear disregard for protecting harry emotionally, which one could argue is most important in harry’s story.

to defeat voldemort, harry has to come to terms with the idea that love is his strongest weapon against the dark lord, right? so snape being horrible to harry is not only bad because emotional abuse is real, but it’s also part of why harry is so angry and bitter in the sixth book, the exact opposite of what he needs to be if he wants to defeat voldemort.

also, snape preaches “control your emotions” but snape... is emotionally unstable and takes out all of his anger on children half his age? idk. that just bothers me.

so i feel like snape kind of half-asses his way through his redemption arc. he has chosen a different side, yes, but he doesn’t make a lot of intrinsic changes. he’s still angry. he’s still bitter. he’s still emotionally manipulative and abusive. 

so really, the question is: is a redemption arc dependent on a change of heart? or is a change of action good enough?

if you haven’t already picked up on how i feel about this issue, i don’t think a change of action is enough.

redemption is the act of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil (thanks, google). it’s absolution for your crimes. i feel like redemption is an intrinsic transformation, and jk preaches that love can do such an act. i’ve already covered that i don’t think snape loved lily, at the point of his big character changing moment. he was obsessed. it was more a change of action, than of heart.

BUT, that doesn’t mean that i don’t think he couldn’t have been redeemed. toward the close of his story, i kind of saw him as going through another arc as a character - i saw him start to care for harry more as harry rather than the child of the woman i’m obsessed with. i think, here,  he’s starting to show that love that jk insists he has. 

i think that if he had more time, he could have had a more full, more satisfying redemption arc. and that’s the tragedy of his character, right? we could always sort of trust him, but we could never fully trust him until the end. he was never really quite redeemed, it was cut short.

so, basically, i grapple with the fact that jk is adamant that snape is the good guy, he’s the redeemable character, when... he’s kind of only halfway there. AND, this is coupled with the fact that i believe draco was halfway there to a complete redemption arc, and jk is equally as adamant against draco getting a redemption arc.

jk has said that she thinks that the people who want draco to be redeemed are just girls obsessed with the bad boy having a heart of gold (which is fair, to some extent), but... isn’t she the exact same with snape? isn’t she equally obsessed that her readers know snape as being the emotionally scarred, bad boy with a heart of gold? food for thought.

also, where i draw a clear distinction between the crimes of draco and the crimes of snape is that draco is a teenager alongside the teenagers he bullies and emotionally abuses (draco, too, is an abuser! if you want an analysis on him, hmu.) draco is a 15 year old abusing other 15 year olds. this is terrible, and it can’t be excused. i agree. BUT, snape is a 31 year old man abusing 11 year olds. he is also their teacher. there is a clear power imbalance coupled with the fact that snape is an adult, who is supposed to be wiser and smarter.

so... long post, forgive me. i could go off about the crimes of jk rowling's depiction of slytherins forever and never be fully satisfied. i’m sure that in a weeks time i will have more i want to add onto this post. but for now, these are my thoughts on snape’s redemption arc, and my answer to whether or not i am anti-snape.

i am sure that after reading this, there are some of you who will think that i am anti-snape. that’s fine. you can have your own opinion, but if you are going to say that, know why.

no opinion is good if you can’t explain why.

[gilbirda]

Transcendence

The switching Stans plan was supposed to work, but they failed. And now, Mabel has to face the consequences.

[Read on AO3][Read on FF.net]

She never thought nothing of it. Really, what could go wrong? They managed to stop the Weirmageddon in time with the help of everyone in Gravity Falls, betting everything they have to save their beloved town. But when the bright light subsided, the Pines family knew something went wrong. Horribly wrong. Because Dipper was missing and Mabel couldn’t move at all.

Scared, she started to call for her brother, her brown eyes focusing in things randomly, searching for a sign that he was with her.

“Mabel!”, she faintly heard her uncle Ford scream and her vision tunneled in his face. “Mabel, can you hear me?” She couldn’t nod but focused in his eyes trying to talk through them. “Good, you are here with us.” Then she heard another voice nearby but couldn’t make the words. “Yes, she is fine. No, not responding. We must go back with the others.”

Mabel felt her body be carried in someone’s arms, but she couldn’t see who it was. Everything happened so slowly and yet so fast and bright… Someone please turn off that light! It was hurting her eyes. She could heard voices muffled in the distance, worried voices, but none of them was her brother’s.

Where was Dipper?

--------------------------

She woke in a strange bed that wasn’t hers. At least the room was dark enough and her eyes adjusted perfectly fine to it. She yawned and stretched, feeling the blissful pop in her back and joints. Somehow Mabel felt like a new person, fully rested and prepared for a new day with…

Dipper.

He wasn’t beside her or anywhere in the room, sleeping.

The panic came back, thoughts and memories of their attempt to kill Bill Cipher whirling in her mind, and the same awful feeling in the pit of her stomach when she thought that oh my god where’s Dipper.

She ran downstairs realising by the pictures on the walls that this was Soos’ house, feeling the tears starting to form in the corner of her eyes as the real fact of the destruction of Gravity Falls settled in her mind. The Shack, her sweaters, the memories… gone. They would have to rebuild everything from scratch and Dipper wasn't here.

“Oh, she's awake”, said Abuelita while putting more coffee in a jar on the battered table. Her uncles, Wendy and Soos where sitting there silently sipping their drink and seemingly lost in their thoughts until Ford came back to reality and ran to her.

“Mabel, dear, how are you? Do you feel dizzy? Unwell? Possessed?”, he took out his small light and blinded the girl with it. The panicked voice told her that something was really wrong, and not just her brother's disappearance.

“Leave the kid alone, brother. She looks fine enough for me”, Stan murmured sounding very tired and old. Mabel remembered the swap her uncles made to trick Bill, but Stan seemed to be ok and knowing who they were. At her evident confused face, he answered her questions. “We failed, kid. Bill saw through our plan in the last moment and escaped, but was disintegrated in the process… or that's what brains here thinks happened.” Ford nodded.

“Bill lost his physical form and couldn't go back the moment he entered Stanley's mind. When cornered, realised what we plotted and part of his energy got out.” Ford sighed visibly uncomfortable.

“Dipper….”, the girl whispered as a question. Everyone in the room looked away from her tear-stained face.

“We… we don't know, Mabes”, Stan said softly, a comforting hand in her shoulder.

--------------------------

She didn't eat or sleep for days, refusing to move away from the bed and only accepting the water that Wendy or Abuelita brought her every few hours. Mabel seemed to have lost her will to live, the sparkle in her eyes gone like her brother and more than one thought that Mabel wasn't going to last much.

Word had spread about the tragedy and many considered a funeral for the little Pines boy, but Mabel insisted that he wasn't dead. Dipper couldn't be dead. She swore she could feel him somewhere with the twins ESP (Ford cocked an eyebrow at this), but after three days nobody believed her. Even Mabel started to entertain the thought of Dipper's death when her family left her alone.

Until one restless night, she opened her eyes and saw the world in grey scale.

“...el…”, she heard. Mabel looked everywhere trying to find the source of the voice. “...bel” the voice repeated. It was a boy's voice, but it was so distorted that could be anyone's.

“Mabel!”

“AAAAH!”

The girl fell on her butt and looked up to see… Dipper. Tears pooled on her eyes, happy to see him at last and ignoring the fact that he was translucid. She ran to his arms, crying, mumbling about how lonely she has been and how happy she was to see that he was ok and was coming back.

“Mabel…”, his tone carried multiple voices in one, like whispers floating on the wind. Mabel liked none of that.

“Dipper?”, she asked feeling more confused when he didn’t hug back. “Are you ok?”

The boy watched her with a strange glint in his eyes and a sad expression, as if this was a painful experience for him. He took her hands in his and smiled briefly before getting serious again and spoke:

“Mabel, I’m sorry. I’m afraid…”, he looked elsewhere as his voice cracked in a weird way, “I’m afraid we’ll never see each other again.”

She felt that her whole world fell apart in that moment. Mabel didn’t want to believe him, but if Dipper said so then it must be true. She trusted her brother, but still she had to ask.

“Why…?”

“Mabes, I’m dead. Can’t you see it?” He got back a few steps and stood in the middle of the grey room. His feet didn’t touch the ground and now the girl could see that his body wasn’t really opaque. Oh no. “I died that day, when we killed Bill. Yes, he is dead”, he added when his sister opened her mouth to ask, “and he is gone for. But… Some of his energy escaped from Stan’s mind and got to us in time to survive, like a symbiote, and still lives within us. Within you.” He made a face at the correction.

“And you? Why am I alive?”, tears were running down her cheeks uncontrollably. Her brother was really dead. Dipper wouldn’t come back.

“The energy in me wasn’t enough to protect me from the explosion, but yours was greater. I guess you were the superior twin after all”, the smile in his lips was everything but happy. “Mabes, I…”

He was interrupted by a loud noise from somewhere in the background and the place started to melt. Walls dissolving like a candle burning to its end, the grey-and-white room was slowly warning her that her dream was coming to an end. No, no, no. She didn’t want to wake up!

“Dipper!”, she exclaimed running to her brother, but when she jumped to his arms, instead of getting her very needed hug, Mabel found herself on the trembling floor and with a sore shoulder.

“It’s my time, then”, the boy looked at his hands beginning to disappear and smiled again to his sister. “I love you, Mabel.”

“No!”

“I hope you remember me, as a part of myself will live inside of you forever.” His feet were now gone and his signature pine tree hat was dissolving like sand on the wind.

“No, Dipper. NO!”

“Be happy”, he closed his eyes.

And just like that, all that was left of her brother exploded in tiny little particles floating in mid-air over the carpet she was sitting on. Before she could see what they were clearly, it floated to her chest and passed through her clothes directly to her skin, and a weird warmth condensed in her heart. She could feel it get bigger and bigger, making it difficult to breathe, arching her back.

She opened the eyes she didn’t know were closed and found herself floating in the colored room, the real room, and she was shining brighter than the Sun. On the door, she spotted her uncles and Wendy watching her with their mouth so open that they could swallow a few flies, a hand at the level of the eyes to protect them from the light.

Then, something inside of her snapped and she fell unceremoniously to the floor with a loud thud.

“Mabel!”, she heard Ford before she could see him. Someone took one of her hands and a gloved hand checked her pulse. “Are you ok?”

“Dipper…”, she managed to say.

“Did you see him? Where?” Stanley looked confused.

“He… He is gone, Grunkle”, her voice broke and Mabel felt tears start to fall again. “Dipper is dead.”

--------------------------

The following days were similar to the ones before, but now Mabel refused to go back to her bed. She spent her days sitting on a chair in the living room, watching everyone move around without saying another word. She slept sometimes, but it was scarce. Alas, she never looked really tired.

Ford started to suspect that something had happened that day she woke up being a Star. Something big, and something connected to Bill Cipher. When his grand-niece showed unconscious control over things -stuff floating in mid-air or catching fire without reason, and the like-, Ford felt like crying.

Not only had they lost their precious Dipper, but Mabel was becoming something else. Something dangerous. Demonic.

When he first approached the girl about this, she just held his stare and said nothing, creeping everyone in the room, listening to Ford’s explanation of how this could have happened. He thought that Bill’s energy had a consciousness of its own and attached itself to the twins, trying to survive, transforming their bodies into a more appropriate vessel. The changes may be slow, but they would definitely see it sometime soon. He didn’t say anything about Dipper’s death or strange “fusion” with his sister, but she understood nonetheless.

Mabel just nodded and let herself fall into the catatonic state again when her uncle finished. No more tears or screams. The girl seemed to accept what was happening to her without fight in her body, and the people in the room were afraid that it was too late for her mind. That she was going insane, and that was a word they would not like to associate to their beloved Mabel. It was just too much like him.

As more days passed, the new mayor declared the “Never Mind All That” Act, and started the rebuilding of their town as if a end-of-the-world catastrophe never happened. When the Shack was recovered from the ashes of the battle, the Pines moved to their new home with a broken Mabel lost in her mind, trying not to cry when she walked up the stairs to their… her room with her distant eyes and pale skin.

She didn’t came out for days.

--------------------------

But the dreams came back. Almost everyday, even when she thought she was awake, Mabel saw the evil figure she didn’t want to see ever again in her life. He laughed at her demise, he taunted her, mocked her, made fun of her loss. “Where’s Pine Tree?”, he usually asked, and if he had a mouth she was sure he’d be smiling like crazy.

At first the girl screamed at him, cried, punched him; anything to vent her rage and sorrow. Dipper was dead and she was becoming a… demon, all because a stupid triangle wanted to take over the world. She wanted to die, then. If Dipper wasn’t coming back to her she didn’t want to go on anymore.

She asked the demon. “Just finish me already”, she whispered one lonely night a week later in her black-and-white room at the renewed Shack. “Kill me so I can be at peace with my brother.”

“I can’t do that, Shooting Star”, he said twirling his signature cane in one finger. “And I guess you know it as well as I do.”

She somehow knew he was right, somewhere deep inside told her she just couldn’t

It was one evening when she jumped from the roof and Wendy found her broken body on a bush, crying and bleeding like hell, but definitely alive and awake, that she accepted this new feature of her new reality: She wasn’t going to die anytime soon. Maybe never. An eternity of this was all that was left for her.

Would she age? She didn’t know, but the thought of watching everyone she loved die before her eyes was frightening, even more that the growing powers inside her.

She the cursed everything, wishing for it to disappear. If she couldn’t die, she didn’t want a world where she had loved so much and had been so happy. But the cruel destiny, and a cruel demon triangle, wouldn’t even grant her wish.

“Woah there, girl. You might want to rethink that wish”, he said in one dream but Mabel could hear the underlying mocking tone. “You what they say, it might become true.”

And next morning nothing happened. With all her powers, all the time of the world, and she couldn’t have her one and only wish granted.

--------------------------

As months passed, she had to sit and watch her grunkles worry about her condition, as Ford used to say when they talked about it, when Mabel seemed to sleep less and less to the point that at night she didn’t have anything to do but go to the dreamscape out of boredom. She didn’t need to eat as well, and just sat there watching them eat with her empty eyes, creeping them until she decided to wait for them to eat anywhere else on the house. Stan felt guilty when he was relieved by her decision instead of worried.

And her parents? They lied to them, saying that the twins wanted so hard to stay in Gravity Falls, that they had a home tutor for them. Ford searched his old professor documents and send them by fax (changing his name, since Mabel’s parents didn’t know about Ford and explaining it would mean explaining about Weirdmaggedon) until it was settled that “the twins” could stay. Stan cried for the first time in many years when the call ended. He had failed to everyone, he was supposed to protect the children from harm this summer and he failed.

The summer ended and Mabel got the hang of her new powers, Bill’s powers. She almost could hear his voice on her ear teaching her how to do it. Levitation, flying and making stuff float at will was as easy as breathing now, and small sparks of blue fire appeared on her fingertips when she got angry for whatever reason. The Pines household had accepted the new condition and no longer horrified them, so when she confessed she was being visited by the triangle demon on her “dreams” Ford didn’t even flinch. He has begun to accept that Mabel wasn’t going to turn back to normal. Not when he could almost hear the cursed voice of the bane of his existence on her words. Her eyes no longer full of wonder, but a void so deep and black with a little twist of madness.

--------------------------

The first time that Mabel realised that she couldn’t feel anything was on her own funeral. Watching her parents cry before the empty tombs of her brother and hers she couldn’t bring any grief or sadness to surface, not even one little tear came to her call and her deep brown eyes observed with curiosity as her mother broke down on her father’s arms, the loud sobs filling the enormous cemetery they were burying the little coffins made for the lost twins that died in an “accident” back in Gravity Falls. Just a little fire in the forest near the house and her parents believed that neither body could be found on the ashes.

She knew it was necessary to fake their death up to some point, but time passed so fast now that when Ford asked her to make the fire on the anniversary of Weirdmaggedon it seemed like a blink of the eye for her. Being a creature of pure energy was starting to weigh down on her and it was now that she took notice of her aging grunkles with even more wrinkles that last summer, while she remained the same.

“Oh”, she had said then before turning back to the backyard to fake her own death.

--------------------------

When Soos got married, three years later, everyone had already moved on from the loss of the little Pine twins and her name was written somewhere in a slab on the main road. The ceremony was small, just a few friends and family of the hispanic friend and his beautiful wife, Melody. She was expecting, no surprise, and the man-child never seemed so happy on his life. He promised on his wedding that he would be the father he never got and wished for his baby to be happier than he ever was in his life.

Mabel made a silent promise to make that true when she watched from the sidelines, invisible to the eyes of the townsfolk attending the ceremony; and, for a second, she heard the demon’s voice in her ears, laughing. “It’s that a deal I hear?”, he said. Mabel didn’t flinch. He had been haunting her in her “dreams”, telling her that making deals was now in her nature, that she eventually would fill in his eternal job, that she would trick people into making horrible deals out of desperation. She was disgusted by it, remembering just how he had tricked her brother and her into Weirdmaggedon and resulting in the loss of everything she loved and was.

She was never going into making deals.

--------------------------

A few months after the 10th anniversary of the official death of the twins, another Pines left them for good. Stanley Pines never was one for a healthy life and cholesterol took him away peacefully one night. He didn’t suffer, even died with a smile, maybe a good dream he was having. The town mourned for a week the former Mr Mystery, as Soos took his job and has been managing the Shack for a few years now, visiting the shop and giving their condolences to the friends and family that remained. Mabel floated around listening to the soft whispers, again feeling completely left out without the ability to relate to their feelings. She had never felt so alienated in her life, so different and weird. She looked exactly the same as she did when her life changed forever, the same skirt, the same sweater, the same headband. Her now black eyes was the only thing out of place, that’s true, but no one looked at them now so it didn’t matter anymore.

“Mabel, come here”, she heard Ford’s voice and then she realised that the house was once more empty and it was snowing on the outside. Was it winter again? But it seemed yesterday that her grunkle died and it was in October! Nevertheless, she approached her grunkle and looked at him waiting for what he wanted to say.

The man sighed. She wasn’t his niece anymore and it was more than obvious now. She was in this realm barely every few weeks for a day or two and she didn’t seem to realise that her body was translucent most of the time she became visible for them to speak. She wasn’t the demon he feared she’d become, but she wasn’t Mabel; it was something else in between, a being made of energy from another world in a little girl’s shape with some memories of its vessel’s past life. It didn’t fight for dominion, as the child’s mind and body surrendered to it so many years ago before his own eyes, and fused successfully with her. He wondered if she recognized him at all, if she felt as sad as he was for everything that happened to her and Dipper, if she did care at all for the people she used to love and cherish. He asked himself not few times if there was any humanity left in her body or if she was lost and dead as the town believed her to be.

Nevertheless, he explained that didn’t have much left, that his old body was giving up on him, and that she was going to be on her own. Eventually, she was going to leave Gravity Falls and spend eternity alone… and forgotten. He launched himself in a speech so many times practised alone in the rusty lab downstairs, not looking really at the void eyes of Mabel in front of him, not caring anymore if she was listening or not. When he finished, he took the cane he hated so much and went to his room to sleep.

He died next spring the same way as his twin, with a gentle smile on his lips, dreaming of the future he was robbed with his family united and adventures with his brother in the Stan’o War II.

--------------------------

It was raining that night, but for Mabel it wasn’t even a breeze on her skin. She didn’t feel anything, no pain, no sorrow, not even the cold as it was winter again. A year has passed and when she went to see her grunkle she discovered that he died already. Soos told her so with an uncomfortable smile on his face and a nervous glance to his chubby little son, now six years old, and she got the message that a demon like her wasn’t welcome anymore to the house that once was her home. Mabel smiled in understanding and left to never be seen again, leaving him with a weird pain in his chest wondering if the guilt he was feeling should really be there. He had a family now, responsibilities, and as awesome as having his own ghost haunting the Shack was, he knew she was in the end of the day a demon, and his son’s well being came first.

--------------------------

Kevin, as she later learned was the little boy’s name, was now a young man and Mabel watched him every now and them, taking care of the man’s health and security as she promised so many years ago. Soos’s family was expanding as now two beautiful girls were running around the Shack, sleeping in what once was her room, little twins with identical big smiles and brown eyes full of curiosity. She swore to protect them, the same as their big brother, so they would never suffer the pain of losing their other half like she did in the past.

Soos was getting a few grey hairs on his head, same as Melody, and from time to time Wendy came to the Shack to see how everything was going around, talk about the Pines and have a moment to remember that fateful summer. They were the only ones who did.

Mabel appreciated that. If they didn’t talk about it she knew she’d had forgotten her name long ago as no one called her anymore. She spent almost always in the dreamscape, practising with her powers and focusing in the balance of the demon inside of her. Bill was always there calling her Shooting Star, mocking her, asking for her brother, taking her to the limit. Her only company was the hated demon that took away her life, and she had told him so, but stopped trying to kill him since he seemed to be made of smoke in her dreams.

Little by little, he had said, all that made her Mabel would disappear. “It’s only a matter of time, Shooting Star, that you accept me as your only companion.”

--------------------------

She knew what he meant when she watched her last friend die before her own eyes. Wendy was the one who lasted more than everyone else, reaching more than a hundred years. This time it was cancer what took her friend away and Mabel could do nothing to stop it, her body didn’t respond and could not say the words to make a “deal” to make her stay alive a few more years. At least the woman was loved and had great life, a beautiful family by her side, and lots of children to remind her the wonders of adventure.

Mabel, on the other hand, was now truly alone.

She came back to the dreamscape feeling a bit of despair, a now strange feeling on her empty body, and tears finally came to her eyes. She cried and cried for her lost friend, her brother, her family, her childhood. All of that, brutally taken from her by that disgusting demon laughing at her from his spot a few steps behind.

She turned around and screamed at his face everything she felt, how she hated him and everything he had done to her. She launched herself to him and for the first time, the triangle was solid enough for her to do some real damage to his mocking eye. God, how she hated it when he did that.

Mabel cursed him and screamed so loud until her throat hurt and the tears stopped falling. Her punches didn’t seem to do much damage and his “smile” was still in place when her little arms didn’t move again for another hit.

“Tired already, Shooting Star?”

“Shut up.” Even her own voice seemed strange to her. “I hate you so much.”

“Awwww”, he said with another laugh.

“You destroyed my life”. She closed her eyes feeling more tears coming. Feelings she couldn’t comprehend came back full force and Mabel was being crushed by years of unattended emotions.

“You did”, he answered in a more serious tone, “that day when you tried to kill Bill Cipher. Or have you forgotten already?”

“Shut the fuck up!”, the girl growled and a pulse of energy emerged from her body, launching the triangle a few metres back. “You did it! You killed my brother! You made me this… monster I am now!”. The girl jumped again to the fallen form of her enemy and pinned him under her body.

“Oh dear, don’t be like that”, he smiled with his eye and Mabel felt sick to her stomach. “We are so going to enjoy an eternity together~”.

“I refuse to be stuck with you, Bill Cipher!”, and as if she had said the funniest joke in the multiverse, the demon started to laugh his existence out. The girl-demon was slightly taken aback, but still weary if this was some kind of trick.

“You amuse me, Shooting Star”, the triangle managed to say, “Do you really not recognize yourself?”, and the weirdest thing happened.

Where there wasn’t a mouth, now was a smirk. The triangle was gone with a blink and in his place was the pale body of a girl with a severe need of sunlight, her eyes a black pool of nothingness and her body barely covered by an outfit she did recognize too well, but it was so battered and torn by years of use that the colors had disappeared completely, leaving them almost in greyscale.

She was looking at herself in a mirror. Her hands cut with the raw edges of the glass and blood started to run all over her reflection, making it even more horrible.

The other Mabel laughed at her face, her voice a mix of his voice and her own.

“Surprise!”, she said. “This whole time you were talking to yourself! Isn’t it funny? C’mon Shooting Star, you are the only one not having any fun.”

She jumped back and watched in horror as the reflection got up and jumped out of the mirror, before watching her with a curious smile. She couldn’t believe it. She was really crazy now. Bill was never there, only herself alone in the void of her existence, and it would be so until the end of times. If she ever considered the small possibility of company, even that of her nemesis’, she wasn’t having any of that now. She was truly and completely alone .

Alone…

Mabel smiled and laughed softly. Her walking reflection caught her thoughts and smiled too.

… for all eternity…

It was now a full scale laugh fest, neither of them knowing exactly what was so funny, but laughing until their voices merged as one. Mabel barely thought that how could she even consider that Bill was there, it was obvious now to her the impossibility of it. After all, it seemed her destiny was to be alone.

Alone and forgotten.

She laughed the last bit of happiness there was inside of her body and opened the eyes she didn’t know were closed. Unsurprisingly, her reflection wasn’t there.

The girl-demon looked down to her clothes and thought they needed a change. Something more… fitting. Black pants and a white buttoned shirt appeared instead of the old Mabel-y outfit, along with a black coat lined in gold star motives. Yeah, now we were talking.

She willed a cane in her right hand and smirked when it appeared out of thin air. It was a cool symbol of her predicament and how she came to be. Bill was going to be around her existence forever and the least she could do was pay little tribute to him. But still there was something missing…

With a flick of her wrist, a top hat was in her left hand and she put it in its rightful place. Now, it was just perfect.

--------------------------

The little girl didn’t know why she was doing this. The book she found was nearly illegible and kinda spooky, but it promised the power to protect herself and the ones she cared for. The only thing she needed was some candles and time to make the proper ritual.

The latin words sounded weird out loud, but it was written beside the instructions of the circle she drew with chalk, so they must be the right words. She was sure she said them right when the world shifted and became black and white, all colors fading and time slowing until the little fly on her window seemed frozen in place.

Blue fire emerged from the pentagram on the floor of her bedroom and a figure with a cane materialized on the center of the circle surrounded by the flames as if they didn’t burn at all despite the intense heat.

“Well well…”, the figure said taking off the top hat and twisting the cane on the right hand. “It’s nice to be back!”

The girl was taken aback when the demon was a girl no older than her. Maybe a bit taller, but the same round face, the same big eyes, the same short legs.

“Are you… Are you the demon? Cipher?”, the girl asked trying to keep her voice even. The other girl smiled at the name.

“You could say that~”, she answered putting the hat back over her black headband.

“I need your help”, the child managed to say after a few seconds of hesitation. If this was the demon on the book then she could help her. “I will pay you with everything I have, I’ll give you my soul… but don’t let him take my brother!”. That seemed to spark curiosity on the yellow-ish eyes of the strange demon before her.

“I’m listening.”

“My father.. he is trying to kill me to get to my little brother. His mother died and I am the only one left who could protect him.”

The demon looked at her with those deep eyes that told many stories, many things passing through them so fast she couldn’t figure out what the other was thinking behind the serious mask of indifference.

“I see”, was all she said. Hope bloomed on the girl’s heart and a need for this to be get over with soon rose. Her brother was in danger and the demon was looking at her room like it was some kind of museum!

“Are you going to help me?”, the need was obvious on her voice and the demon looked back to her with a wicked smile on her lips.

“It’d come with a price, you know.”

“Anything!”, the child shrieked. That amused the demon even more.

“All right then, we’ll work the details later. Tonight, you’ll sleep like a baby and tomorrow all will be gone. It’s a deal?”, the girl-demon extended her gloved hand surrounded in blue flames and the other girl didn’t even hesitate. The decision was made. Her brother was worth it.

“It’s a deal.”

And with another creepy maniacal laugh the demon was gone, color was back and time resumed its course as if she was never there.

Next morning, her house was filled with police sirens and medics. Her father had been stabbed overnight in a robbery gone wrong. An aunt she had never heard of came home in tears, willing to adopt them.

It was many many years later when she found out her price: She couldn’t find, no matter how hard she looked, one sole photograph of her with her brother.

[pluto-art]

- Failed Experiment -

The longer you stare at this, the creepier it is....

That wasn’t the intention. Was going for something cute, but it turned into a rather alien interpretation of the character -- even had the eyes yellow at one point. But perhaps that’s fitting. No one would be right in the head after that much laboratory trauma and testing.

Remember when I said there was a fangirl rant coming? Well, it’s here, folks:

I love this character. Like... a lot. How very predictable that the scratchy curmudgeon with a stubbornly supple center would end up pulling relentlessly at my heartstrings. To be fair, Pinky is still firmly planted as top favorite, as his kind nature and loving demeanor is simply too precious to ignore, but let’s not put the Brain in the background. I kinda poo-pooed him at first, but over time, once the seams ripped and the plush showed through, that little heart won me over. Really, though, how can you not get teary-eyed over the Christmas episode, or find a smile crawling onto your face when watching Megalomaniacs Anonymous, or feel at least a little bad for him in his relentless rigidity in Broadway Malady? And, of course, you’d be throwing the bedrock out the window if we didn’t touch on the foundation of his personality, fears, and desires -- Leggo My Ego and Snowball being two examples of how tragic his backstory is. While the manner in which he sometimes carelessly treats others should not be excused, it’s hard not to feel sympathetic towards a character whose goal in life is to make the world a better place... albeit in his own warped way.

To me, Brain is so helplessly recidivous -- trapped in a cage of his own making... and also very much not of his own making. These were the cards he was dealt and he’s making the best of them, yet the insanity of it all has never actually breached through to his head, despite him being terribly intelligent. He’s too logical and analytical for his own good, and any emotional element that is there is so buried that when it does surface... it erupts. I like various theories and opinions I’ve heard from others in that he literally does not know what to do with intense feelings when it all becomes too much for him, and so he acts very illogically at times when faced with intense hatred, fear, or love. There’s a reason as to why it’s stressed that Pinky is the yin to his yang -- he needs balance. Without Pinky, there is no balance.

I don’t think he would be able to survive for long in any frame of right mind were Pinky to die. Provided a movie of these two were ever made, I’d love for this concept to be explored, as macabre as it is. Developing a character in a film or book is often about pushing them to their limits. How terribly ironic it would be for such a tragedy to happen at Brain’s own hand, and how very appropriate. His tenacity and persistence would be his downfall. Granted, were they to explore this type of story, I’d want there to be a happy ending, but at least have a moment where Brain believes he’s done the unthinkable -- put him in a position that would force him to take a step back and see the whole picture for what it is. Honestly, props to the writers and entire crew for making me care about an odd couple this much. Their dynamic really works in such a way that I can’t imagine one without the other, so much so to the point where I can’t even see Brain functioning without his other half, so to speak.

This is the kind of character that I feel incredibly bad for. He’ll probably never be able to say how much he truly cares about his best friend, or how much it hurts for him to see the world go to heck while he tries, and continually fails, to do something about it. He’s the kind of personality that I want to pick up and hug, to tell that everything is going to be all right, and that he’s already won the world over... just not in the way he thinks. Brain is a character I so dearly want to comfort, because as much as he tries to hide it, there’s a sweet soul buried beneath all that bitterness.

Thank God for Pinky.

[secret-diary-of-an-fa]

Explaining ‘Joker’s Negative Critical Reception

SPOILER WARNINGS FOR ‘JOKER’ AND ‘THE PERFECTION’ (LIKE, ALL THE SPOILERS)

TRIGGER WARNING: I BASICALLY THINK THE JOKER WAS RIGHT

In my recent review of Joker, I alluded to an enclave of (predominantly middle class) film critics who absolutely hated the film, not because of its actual quality, but because it drew attention to widespread social inequalities in which they themselves are complicit. To be honest, I was going to leave it there and not provide any commentary on these film critics, since, y’know, they failed miserably: people went to see Joker in their droves and it made roughly enough money to fund two moon-landings and a year-long block party. However, I did some googling and it turns out that the phenomenon of insane critic-hate for this flick is much more widespread than I initially thought, and so it behooves me to give the reasons for this hate a little more thought.

Now, obviously, I’m dismissing the idea that this is simple, honest criticism that just happens to differ from me out of hand. I try not to do that too often, because I think its far too easy to start seeing conspiracies where there aren’t any. However, if you’ve been to see Joker then you already know that it’s a self-evident and transcendent work of artistic accomplishment the likes of which almost never actually show up in cinemas. A handful of bad reviews I could understand, since all taste is ultimately subjective- but a million thinkpieces about whether the film even has a right to exist looks suspicious to me.

In order to start dissecting Joker’s own private backlash, I’d like to draw a comparison to another film (which I also mentioned in my initial review): The Perfection. You see, Joker references a lot of classic films, from King of Comedy to Taxi Driver to The Network, but the film that it most reminds me of is The Perfection (which, incidentally, is the only other film I’ve ever called ‘transcendent’ without the faintest trace of irony). Both films are revenge films about people suffering from an invisibilised forms of pain. The protagonists in The Perfection survived rape but couldn’t have their suffering recognised because it was an accepted part of the sexist world to which they belonged. They eventually killed their rapist and his minions. Fleck (the Joker’s real name) suffers from mental illness and crippling poverty, but finds no sympathy. Instead, he’s alternately abused and ignored by the people in his life and those he turns to for help. His mental illness is even exploited by TV personalities who he’s never met for a cheap laugh. In the end, he takes revenge and in so doing, starts a violent uprising.

The big difference between The Perfection and Joker is that the former attracted praise from the majority of critics and ambivalence (rather than abject hate) from those who weren’t on board, while the latter was hit with a tidal wave of abuse. Both films are of comparable quality and both are thematically similar. so why is one widely accepted and the other denounced.

Well, one of the major differences between the victim-protagonists. The Perfection’s victims are lucid, relatively financially stable women from two different ethnic groups. The Joker, in contrast, is a mentally ill white man from an impoverished background. The sad fact is that some types of victim are trendy and others aren’t. Dirt poor, mentally ill honkies just aren’t as on-trend as well-spoken middle class women who have had something horrible happen to them. I don’t intend to be dismissive of the type of suffering portrayed in The Perfection (nobody deserves to go through what that film’s heroins did, yet sadly, in real life, many people do). Nor do I want to put Joker on a pedestal for giving a crap about a less socially-acceptable type of victim. My point is merely that there’s a double-standard at work in the review press. Most film critics have social circles that are ethnically and gender-diverse (which is a good thing, obvs) and can therefore empathise to some extent with people from different backgrounds. They get a nice warm glow from supporting people they know in real life. However, by the same token, I doubt most of them have ever met a working class person who wasn’t serving them coffee, or dealt with someone whose illness prevents them participating in mainstream society. To the average film critic, the working classes and the mentally ill are just ‘those dirty looking people from the other side of town’, whether they’d admit to thinking that way or not.

However, I feel like the learned inability to empathise with poor people doesn’t fully explain the hatred for Joker, though it undoubtedly facilitates it. One of the interesting factors about the hate the film’s received is that it seems to emanate equally from both ends of the political spectrum. On the one hand you’ve got yer neocon fuckwipes wringing their hands about the bad influence the film could have on children (they fail to mention how these children are going to sneak into see an R-rated film en masse) On the other hand, you’ve got virtue-signalling SJW motherfucks bemoaning the fact that the film dares to portray violence committed by a white dude in a sympathetic light (I’m not entirely sure how sympathising with the justified anger of a downtrodden, abused version of the Joker is supposed to equate to endorsing spree killings perpetrated by racists and misogynists in real life for completely different reasons in real life. Then again, the aforementioned virtue-signalling SJW motherfucks don’t seem to know either, so I suppose we’re just supposed to ignore the discrepancy).

It’s rare for a film to attract such ire from both conservatives and liberals, but it is telling. You see, as a die-hard commie (or, at least, a fairly stubborn socialist), I look at conservatives and modern liberals from an outside perspective, and they seem to me to have more in common than they’d like to admit. Both fundamentally believe that the society they live in is good and worth preserving- they just can’t agree in what form. This is particularly the case in America, where most of the film’s audience and critics are pooled. The idea that there’s nothing particularly great about American civilisation- that maybe, just maybe, there’s not much there worth salvaging- is equally anathema to the most hardened bigot and the most free-wheeling hippy libertine. The idea of American exceptionalism is so ingrained that anything that the thought of it failing beyond repair is horrifying to practically everyone.

This, I suspect, is the real reason for the hatred that Joker has attracted. The version of Gotham portrayed in the film is beyond redemption and, ultimately, you’re meant to feel happy (or at least relieved) when its smug, self-assured elites are shot dead; when its infrastructure burns; when The Joker- that cackling pop culture nightmare- is finally unleashed.

As it builds, Joker toys with the idea of tragedy. It walks a tightrope, making you question whether the Joker’s actions are really justified, but in the end it comes down on his side. It just waits until the last possible moment to suckerpunch you with that fact. The Clown Prince of Crime himself articulates the way the film has kept its sympathies in check until the right time when he says that “killing those three young men was funny, and I’m tired of pretending it that it wasn’t” (I’m misquoting, but only slightly,  for the sake of expediency). This line is the pivot for the whole movie- the point at which the movie openly admits that its villain-protagonist isn’t just a sympathetic character study, but someone who might have a coherent point. His first murders were of the “awful” elites of his society and yes- in the grand scheme of things- their deaths were pretty necessary. And funny.

Had Joker just shown us its protagonist’s descent into villainy without hinting that he might actually be right, I suspect the films would be praised as a morally complex work of genius. But it dares to suggest that America might as well burn, so film critics- who occupy that relatively wealthy and stable rung of society where society itself starts to seem like a good idea- can’t really cope with it.

Is my interpretation correct? Who knows, the film is carefully ambiguous- maybe I’m not meant to be quite as on-board as I am with Joker’s brand of civilisation-collapsing nihilism. But the fact that it even has that element; that possible interpreation probably does explain why critics hated it.

Either that or they’re just tasteless fucking idiots. Oh fuck. It’s that second one isn’t it? I just wasted two hours of my life writing this didn’t I? Well bollocks. Off you fuck.

[i-just-like-commenting]

Season 7 fixes (part 2/?)

@turtle-paced​ just finished recapping season 7, which reminded me that I needed to post the next of these.

Last time I left off noting I would need more time to come up with a solution for the pointlessness of Sam and Jorah's "arcs," so here's what I've worked out:

Issue 1: The knowledge Sam uncovers at Oldtown is pretty redundant

Answer: Redistribute that knowledge to more sensible places.

Rather than Sam re-learning that Dragonstone has a lot of dragonglass (which was previously established), have Davos remind Jon of this as he's considering whether he should work with Daenerys. Their need for the island she occupies will be an extra incentive to acceding to her demand to meet face-to-face.

As for the reveal about Jon's parentage...look, I hate what they did with the complicated Rhaegar/Lyanna relationship of the book. So instead of having Sam discover that Jon was legitimate the whole time (in spite of how little sense it makes for Rhaegar to annul his marriage/bastardize his two children) and then travel all the way to Winterfell to compare notes with Bran (more teleporation!) let's leave all of this reveal with Bran.

When Bran gets to Winterfell, instead of him being a robot, he can be more emotionally dull, trying to hide the pain that being near-omniscient is causing him. And some of that pain comes from carrying the knowledge of Jon"s real parentage. There can be some hints - when Sansa gets word that Daenerys wants to marry Jon, she can say something about how this is the first time the Targaryens and Starks have had a marriage alliance, and Bran can go "Not the first..." all mysterious. And at the very end of the story, when they get word that Jon is coming back to Winterfell, you can have a scene more like this:

Arya: Aren't you excited to see Jon again?

Bran Yes, but...if I do, I'll have to tell him the truth.

Sansa: What do you mean?

Bran: That he’s not our brother.

(the two sisters change confused looks)

Sansa: Well, of course, he’s our half brother--

Bran: No, I mean he’s not our brother at all. (begin flashbacks) When Rhaegar Targaryen realized his wife could no longer bear children (shot of Rhaegar and Elia looking sad together), he took our aunt Lyanna as his second wife according to the traditions of the dragon lords (shot of their Valyrian wedding, with a beaming Lyanna). She loved him, but before they could explain what had happened, Aerys murdered our grandfather (reuse a scene of mad Aerys laughing, superimposed with flames), Rhaegar went to his defense, and everything ended in tragedy. (shots of Rhaegar being stuck and falling to the ground, Elia cowering with her children as Gregor walks into the room, and ending on Lyanna in the tower) Jon won't want to hear this, but he must. He has to know the sacrifice our father - his uncle - made to keep him safe (reuse image of Ned taking the baby)...and the truth of the blood that flows in his veins. (Final shot of Jon with Dany...with dragons prominently in the background)

My idea here is to (1) bring things closer to the book, (2) not ignore the consequences of Rhaegar's decisions, (3) keep the focus on Jon and his relationship to his family and (4) make his Targaryen connection be all about the dragons not who gets the throne (because who cares when White Walkers, isn't that the entire point of this series???).

This is already getting too long, so for my ideas about an actual Oldtown plot, see below the jump.

Issue 2: What is even the point of going to Oldtown when these reveals could be better placed elsewhere?

Answer: Let's plunder the books again to give Sam something to do! or, the Dragon Poisoning Plot

Okay, major book spoilers here, but -- in the books, the maesters were quite likely responsible for killing off the Targaryen dragons in the first place, after seeing the devastation they caused in the Dance of the Dragons. Why not keep that?

Sam goes to Oldtown and takes up the drudgery of apprenticeship, as in the show. It would be nice if casting gave us a few characters to be fellow rookies for Sam to have chats with and complain about cleaning out chamber pots. At some point, as Sam is frustrated getting the maesters to believe his stories about the white walkers, one of his friends says he should go chat with Maester Marwyn, who Jim Broadbent can play nicely. He seems like an eccentric kook, but he believes Sam, and explains to him that the maesters are being deliberately obstinate because they distrust magic due to how dangerous it is, and that they helped hasten the end of dragons a hundred years ago. Eventually, as Dany’s plot progresses, Sam and Marwyn learn that they are planning to send someone to poison Dany's dragons this time around again. The plot resolves itself with Marwyn, Sam, and Sam's friends staging a coup by exposing the plot and saving Dany’s dragons, whereupon she forces a leadership transition at the Citadel and Marwyn begins training maesters in magic to use against the white walkers.

Speaking of Marwyn and magic, though...

Issue 3: Jorah’s grayscale is healed like magic and he learns nothing and does not change.

Answer: Have his grayscale be healed by actual magic and let him learn something from Sam

In the books, grayscale is a magically-caused illness arising from water magic. Since the show has cut all of that (to its detriment; I would love to have seen their special effects for what Euron is going to do to Oldtown), but it did associate grayscale with Valyria. So we can have grayscale be part of the Doom, a curse that spread from the ruins. This can be Marwyn's hypothesis that he's bent on proving, and he’s recruited an imprisoned Jorah Mormont into his experiments. When Sam first meets him, he'll be covered in sigils and surrounded by candles and looking very uncomfortable.

But eventually the cure will work, proving that Marwyn isn't a kook, and giving Jorah the cure he was searching for. In the meantime, though, he'll talk with Sam about why he's doing this, his relationship with Dany, how he was exiled by Ned, etc. And Sam can point out how sad it is that he’s mooning over a woman who isn't interested in him, that's exactly what he used to do and isn't it embarrassing? Also Sam can talk up Ned Stark, and how he knows his son, and what a good man Jon is. All the while we can see this having an effect on Jorah as, stuck until he gets his cure, he has nothing better to do than consider his situation.

Thus when the Dragon Poisoning Plot goes forward, Jorah will be the one sent to warn Dany. When he gets there, she will have already married...and he'll find out that it’s to Jon Snow, the man Sam so admires. Jorah will ask Dany if she's happy, or if this is just a political marriage, and she'll say that it started out for politics, but...yes, she's falling in love with him. And we'll see a moment where Jorah accepts this, realizes he can let go and just be her ally. We have a moment of him talking with Jon, telling him about Sam, confessing his crime and receiving a stay of punishment.

Of course this means Jorah isn't on his way north of the Wall for a wight hunt. the wight hunt is one of those ideas that isn’t completely insane - Jon does have a wight on ice in the books, after all, and the idea that they should capture one to study/show to others works. Without the Horn of Joruman, an undead dragon is also a dramatic way of bringing down the Wall. But the team who goes on the mission needs to make sense, and I keep coming back to Brienne, Pod, Tormund, Beric, and Thoros.

More to come...

[spaceorphan18]

Finding Kurt Hummel: The Quarterback

Masterpost

5x03: The Quarterback

So. I’ve been going through a lot lately, which is why this series has stalled a little.  And it’s funny, because I received a few messages stating that it’d be okay to skip this one for now.  It is a very delicate subject.  And, you know, I couldn’t - for two reasons really.  The first being that I’ve been actually looking forward to doing this, especially since all the personal drama.  This is an episode about grief, and how people deal differently with it, and is so, so good in that respect.  

The second is - something that I think was very smart on the writers part, was that this is a thing that impacts the rest of the show.  I can’t /not/ talk about this episode anymore than I can’t not talk about Never Been Kissed or Original Song.  This episode, and this story, is not just about the tragedy that happened in real life, but is also about a tragedy that happened in a fictional world, too - and that tragedy does have consequences that play out throughout the rest of the series.  

So, this episode is a tribute and in memoriam for Cory.  But I am not going to discuss Cory here, I don’t feel it my place, and other people have said better things elsewhere. But I am sorry for the loss - not just because Cory seemed like a good guy - but because the cast and crew of this show so clearly loved him.  It’s very much felt within the episode.  This is the only time in the show that I think reality and fantasy are truly blurred. 

I kind of want to put a disclaimer on this one -- a reminder that I’m only able to interpret things through my own prism of experiences and understanding.  How I see Kurt as he functions within the narrative is based on how I perceive the story being told.  But those thoughts might differ from others.  And that’s okay, because we all come to the table with different thoughts. And there’s no one right interpretation.  This is just mine. 

Seasons of Love

Seasons of Love seems an incredibly fitting choice as an opening number - and a pretty strong way to open what is a difficult conversation to have with the viewer.  The song, to me, is about not thinking about time as a measurement of someone’s life, but how they lived their life, the memories you made, the people you held dearly in your world, that’s what really matters.  And this entire episode, again smartly, focuses in on the important memories of Finn (and Cory) - and says - this is how a person should be remembered, by their life, not their death. 

I can’t say too much about Kurt here - I think this particular performance is less about the characters, and more about setting the stage, and giving a connected performance to the audience.  I will say, though I don’t believe its intentional, I think this performance is a representation of the funeral - everyone dressed in black, everyone mourning, everyone coming together.  I think it’s that representation that when a tragedy happens, you reach out to your family. 

As a side note - even I cried through this number the first time I heard it. 

Going Home

Kurt: Three weeks to the day since his funeral and it’s the first time I’ve had the courage to even look at the suit I wore to it.  And now back to Lima for a special memorial Mr. Schue’s planning.  We’re all going back.  Everyone who can.  Being together is hard.  It makes it more real.  But I also need my friends right now.  People keep asking me, “how are you feeling?  What are you feeling?”.  I have no answers.  Honestly, what can you say about a 19-year-old who dies?  Everyone wants to talk about how he died, too, but who cares?  One moment in his whole life.  I care more about how he lived.  And anyone who has a problem with that should remember that he was my brother.  [...] This isn’t real.  I’m not going home for this.  He’s going to be there.  I’m going to spend my entire life missing him. 

We open the story with Kurt’s monologue.  And one thing I’d really like to point out is that at this point, Kurt becomes the male lead of the show.  Will hasn’t been for a long time.  And Finn is no longer there.  And it’s an interesting road to see how this became the case, that Kurt’s risen from the strange gay kid doing funny things in the background to carrying the show.  I mean, yeah, the show’s still an ensemble at heart.  But for all that early season 3 stuff that says Kurt’s not capable of being a leading man - I say, look at season 5, and there it is.  

So this opening monologue is something.  It makes a lot of sense that open with Kurt, not only was Finn his brother, and essentially Rachel’s family, but he ends up being the one connecting the narrative together.  And I think it’s really fascinating.  Kurt, as we’ve known in the past, goes inward to grieve, and this alone time is the one time we really see how he’s processing all of it.  Because throughout the rest of the story, he’s going to be a pillar for everyone else to lean on.  

Kurt mentions he hasn’t looked at the suit he wore to the funeral since the day it happened.  In true Kurt fashion, he’s been compartmentalizing what had happened, and pushing it away so to continue on with life.  What has he done in those three weeks back in NYC? I’m not sure - but probably throwing a lot of himself into his studies and work.  But more interestingly is his thoughts that going home is essential - that he needs his friends and his family to help him through this.  This Kurt has grown through all his other tragedies.  He’s not cutting himself off, like he did after his breakup with Blaine, like when his dad had a heart attack, like (I assume) when his mom died.  He’s reaching out - knowing it’s going to be incredibly difficult, but they’re better if they go through it together. 

The ‘how are you feeling’ line gets me on a personal level.  Because when things like this happen - you don’t always know what to feel, how to feel.  Sometimes things change so suddenly that it can be very, very hard to process - like it isn’t real.  And people ask you, how are you feeling, and how can you respond? Because you don’t have an answer to the question.  And they’re being kind, and you are grateful they care, but sometimes, you avoid people just so you don’t have to answer that question.  I get ya, kiddo.  I do. 

The ‘everyone wants to talk about how he died’ line is incredibly meta about how Cory died.  And it’s essentially the show, through Kurt, saying - we’re not going to talk about that.  We’re going to celebrate his life instead - again echoing the opening statement of Seasons of Love, but also, smartly, side-stepping the narrative issue of how Finn died by saying - you know, it really doesn’t matter.  What matters is that it did - and this is how we deal with it, and this is how we remember the person he was.  

One of the amazing things about this scene is Chris’s acting.  The facial expressions match the monologue incredibly well.  When Kurt gets defensive, and defends Finn as his brother, Chris’s face shifts to anger.  Damn, some good acting there.  Too bad Glee was labeled a comedy.  Too bad Glee didn’t put this much effort into all of its episodes.  Ah well.  Anyway....  

Then there’s the ‘I’m going to miss him for the rest of my life’ - which guts me every time.  Because he will - and we will - and everyone will.  

A lot of Kurt’s grief is inward - but I think that’s okay? I mean - no, you shouldn’t bottle your emotions up - and I think Kurt’s in a relatively healthy place about all of this - especially since he does reach out to others not just in this episode, but continuing on, but I think one of the most powerful aspects of this episode is that there are different ways to grieve.  And Kurt’s is inward processing.  

As he collects himself, he shifts - and becomes a role that he’s more accustomed to than you might think - and that’s caregiver.  I mean - he had to take care of his dad for a long time, and he’s spent a good deal of season 4 and 5 taking care of Rachel.  He does take care of those he loves.  It’s funny because Kurt’s always so labeled unkind, or cold, or uncaring.  But Kurt’s capacity for loving and caring is actually quite large -- but it’s only with those he deems worthy enough to receive it.  

But I also don’t think it’s wrong that he takes on this role in this instance.  I believe, for Kurt, him being strong for others helps him, too.  Sometimes being the strong one, the one people rely on, helps you keep it together, too.  And I think here -- Kurt being the pillar everyone leans on is just fine by him.  

It’s interesting, too, to see how much he softens when dealing with Rachel.  He knows how she is -- he knows how delicate she can be.  Sure they push and pull each other and that’s fine.  But this is beyond that, and he knows how to handle such a fragile thing.  

I’ll Stand By You

I’m....gonna ignore Will in this episode - cause I don’t have a lot of nice things to say.  Long story short, the week is to remember Finn.  And Mercedes goes first by singing I’ll Stand by You.  And Kurt genuinely smiles at the memory, because way back in Ballad - Kurt played piano as Finn sang it.  It’s a good memory - one where Kurt and Finn started to bond.  

(Mostly) Everyone else in the choir room begins to sing with Mercedes - but Kurt sits their silently.  That’s the internal processing and grieving again.  He’s kind of soaking up Mercedes’s song.  I’ll stand by you - yup, they’ll all stand up by each other whenever they need each other.  And they all need each other right now.  But also, Kurt’s kind of going through an inward journey, too. 

Tree of Life

It’s funny - it kind of makes sense that Sue and Kurt would have a scene at this point.  She tends to be around for a lot of his emotionally significant things.  But this scene really isn’t about Kurt.  It’s about Sue, who spends a lot of this episode dishing out the morals of the story, and how she’s explaining why Puck decided to steal a tree - or more so, that people do strange things when they’re in grief.  Which is true.  

I find it interesting how calm Kurt is -- letting Sue’s insane comments role right off his back as he just sits there and takes it all in.  I mean, she makes a throw away comment about him having ass-less pants.  Oh Sue, and her fourth-wall breaking self.  But more so - Kurt’s not only used to Sue’s brand of insanity - he knows how to handle her pretty well (comparatively to how Santana will later on in the episode).  He only gets upset when he hears that someone has stolen the tree.  

Also - we learn that Kurt was the one who funded the twenty dollar tree in the first place.  I kind of wonder if this was a group idea because Kurt isn’t an overly sentimental person.  I can see someone like Mercedes or Blaine talking about a memorial and Kurt handing over the twenty - like here, make it happen.  

Anyway - the other big takeaway is Sue’s line about how people will want to hold on to whatever’s left in whatever way they can.  It’s not only about Puck stealing a tree, but an explanation as to why Will will later take the jacket.  

Family Time

I think this is one of the hardest and best scenes of the episode.  It’s always hardest for the families involved.  And this gives us a peak at what’s going on back home.  I think all the little details in Finn’s room are interesting.  It’s definitely made up to honor Finn, and if you pause at various times, there are a lot of little things to check out. 

So - the point of this scene is that it’s time for them to clean out Finn’s room.  And while both Burt and Kurt assure Carole that there’s no time table on it - Carole wants to get it one - because she fears if she doesn’t, it won’t.  And it’s an interesting throwback to the fact that Carole kept everything the same after her first husband died - to the point where it started holding her back in life. I’m kind of amazed at her strength because she is the one who (understandably) is taking this the hardest - and yet she knows what has to be done.  

We then get the call back to Preggers, and the Single Ladies out on the football field - which is a nice little memory.   And then we get a call back to Theatricality with the whole ‘faggy’ lamp.  I like that Finn kept it - as a gesture of acceptance to Kurt.  

If I have to be honest, I side-eye a little at Burt’s revisionist remembrance of the events in Theatricality.  Finn wasn’t a perfect person (and that’s okay!!) - but I do believe that Burt’s rant was a lesson in tolerance was for himself just as it was for Finn.  And - I think this goes along with the idea that when someone dies - you do tend to remember and/or latch on to just the good (or bad) parts about them.  

But then Burt goes on to talk about how he should have hugged Finn more, and he’s regretful that he didn’t do more - and that’s another aspect of grief - wishing that you could do things over again.  Oh Burt... You did a good job even if you didn’t think so. 

Kurt’s pretty quiet throughout the first part of this scene.  But seeing his dad, a man who’s pretty stoic in the face of a lot of things loose it, causes Kurt to break down a little bit.  But then there’s the jacket - and Kurt says that he’d like to keep it.  I’m guessing Kurt won’t keep many mementos of Finn’s but this one does hold a deeper personal significance to him.  

Kurt says that Finn was like Superman in that jacket.  And I mean - Blaine’s the first person Kurt finds real, romantic love with.  But Finn was the first boy who didn’t treat him badly, who stood up for him, who became his friend, and later his brother.  And it’s a bond that’s very deep and important to Kurt. (Wish we could have seen it a little more on screen, but ah well) I also like the visual of Kurt being able to wrap himself up in the jacket, as if keeping it close to him, and only him.  And he takes a moment to smell it - an interesting callback to the couple of times he’s said he remembers how his mom smelled - and that stays with him. 

And Kurt breaks down, the only real time he breaks down in the episode - and it’s no surprise that it’s in private, with only his family there.   It’s funny - because Kurt does cry a lot in the series, but I don’t think he’s openly emotional like this very often -- usually only in safe places.  Huh.  

Anyway - Carole.  It’s Carole’s turn next, and I think this is one of the best performances of the show - as she talks about being a parent who lost a child.  It’s another time it’s sad that Glee was labeled ‘comedy’ cause Romy Rosemont’s performance is amazing here.  I’m so glad Carole has Burt and Kurt in her life to help her through this.  I’m glad they all have each other - as they close in and hold each other.  This is what families do. 

Dumpster

Kurt’s standing outside - looking at the dumpster he was once thrown into, and probably thinking about how Finn was a step above the usual bullies that used to throw him in.  Puck comes a long and is, well, as insensitive as usual.  But there’s something so interesting about this dynamic.  I think this is the first time Kurt and Puck have shared a real scene together since ...  season 1? And god, how much Kurt has grown.  He’s no longer scared of Puck - calls his act exhausting.  Puck hasn’t been any kind of threat to him in a long, long time - and I feel like the contrast is striking.  Puck, however, really hasn’t changed too much. 

I do feel for Puck in this scene though.  He doesn’t have anything of Finn’s, and weirdly, this scene reminds me of something Blaine said about Kurt back in Dynamic Duets: ‘We were a dynamic duo here.  [He] was my anchor, and now that he’s gone I just feel like I’m floating.’  I kind of feel like that’s where Puck’s at (and Beiste will help him through this a bit.  Kurt’s got a lot of care of people - but Puck is not one of them.  

But I get Puck’s want -- need -- of the jacket.  As Sue said earlier, people sometimes need something to hold on to.  And Puck really doesn’t have anything.  I’d be the type of person who’d find something to give him. Kurt’s not that type of person. 

Puck, of course, tries out his old tactics - offering to buy it, then insulting Kurt and his masculinity as an aggressive tactic against Kurt having the jacket.  Of course, older Kurt doesn’t really give a shit - and sees through to the scared little boy that Puck is.  I do kind of love the moment where Kurt sizes him up and dares Puck to take him on.  

Oh, Kurt, you’ve grown up so much. 

If I Die Young

It’s Santana’s turn to sing - and she sings a song about making the best of time while you have it.  Kurt’s pretty stoic during the whole thing.  The only thing I can really make out is that he’s understanding her words, even if he’s not showing them on his face. 

Idk - I just thought this shot was interesting, after Santana’s break down.  Kurt goes in on himself a little - but I also feel like I can see him thinking that he should probably go say something to her. 

Kurt going to Santana is another scene that kind of puts into focus, for me, how much Kurt has grown up.  Santana used to be this Cheerio, this higher person on the food chain that was above him.  But here on the stage - they’re very much equals.  And Kurt’s advice to her is -- rather mature.  And he gives her a chance to be real person, and feel real things.  It’s a shame that these two didn’t get to do some meatier drama with each other.  

Kurt: If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Finn’s death, it’s that shame is a wasted emotion.  I’m sure Finn had secrets,too, but who cares now?  Do you really think one day on your deathbed you’re gonna think ‘oh good, no one knew I was kind’. 

I’m not sure if I have more to add to the quote - just that he’s right, life’s too short not to be who you really are.  

So, Kurt and Santana spend a moment, where Santana admits the kind things Finn had done for her.  And for Santana - expressing real emotion is probably harder for her than it is for Kurt.  She wants to be alone to break down.  And Kurt, wisely, doesn’t push it.  He understands her here.  And you know, now that I think of it, her willingness to be emotionally open, and the fact that he and Santana have had the chance to grow as a real type of family, is why he gives up the jacket to her.  She needs something to hold on to, just like he did, but she needs it more right now - and so he passes it on. 

No Surrender

And now it’s Puck’s turn to sing about living life while you have it -- or more so not regretting the choices you made in life. Everyone’s really starting to break down -- but Kurt doesn’t.  He’s very much on edge, but he’s holding it together pretty well.  

I guess now’s a good time to note that Kurt doesn’t sing in this episode.  And while that’s to the dismay of a lot of people, it makes sense as a narrative choice? Kurt is so closed off about his grief that singing in public would seem too invasive.  Kurt always puts himself out there when singing in front of a group, but this is a little too deep and a little too personal to sing about.  Now -- granted, later on, in another episode maybe, would have been a nice time for a solo, more than I’m Still Here -- but ah well.  All the things we could have had and didn’t.  But still - it makes a lot of sense to me here.  

So - after the song, we find out that the jacket’s gone missing.  I once again feel a little bad for Puck - as he’s actually telling the truth here, but more so that Will straight up lies about it and yells at Puck, too.  But anyway -- 

I think Kurt’s actions are interesting here -- he does have a little compassion for Puck, as he says he’ll allow Puck a day with the jacket -- cause, again, he understands the need.  

Make You Feel My Love

So. Rachel arrives for the last act.  And it’s interesting to me that -- Kurt had all of his break down moments early in the episode, and has been more together over the course of this episode while everyone else kind of loses it more.  But I think that’s purposeful, as well as in character.  But also, I think it leads up to this moment, where he can be a somewhat literal pillar of strength for Rachel.  

There’s something very brotherly-sisterly vibe about this moment.  And I know I whine all the time about Kurt always having to be Rachel’s emotional crutch - but this is the one time where I think it’s absolutely relevant and meaningful and appropriate.  And I really love this little moment where he can her rock. I think it works for everything these two have gone through. 

So then we get Make You Feel My Love - which is -- incredibly powerful.  I think it’s my favorite Rachel solo in the entire show, and one of Lea Michele’s best performances.  It’s so heartbreaking-ly real. 

So.  Okay.  Blaine.  Blaine doesn’t have any lines in this episode.  I mean, the newbies and even the senior class don’t really get any lines.  But Blaine says nothing.  What does that mean? I’m not sure - I’ll have to grab a Blaine stan to talk about that.  But this is the first (and only) time Kurt and Blaine connect in the episode.  And it’s interesting that they start out the episode sitting very far apart from each other, and each choir room scene they have, they sit one seat closer.  It’s gotta be intentional - it feels too staged not to be. 

So - I take it as Kurt needing to go through this grieving process on his own for a little while.  He needed some space to process, but he slowly finds his way back to Blaine, and when he does, he holds on tight.  And - they get one quick shared look, but I find it so interesting.  Because Blaine - through his breaking down - is kind of saying to him, that he’ll be there for whatever Kurt needs.  But Kurt’s almost reflective - like thinking about how /this/ how holding Blaine and being with him and next to him, is the most important thing.  He starts the moment staring at their hands, and, possibly, the ring on his finger - and he finally breaks down in the choir room.  Because he has an anchor and is in a safe place to allow himself to really do that.  

I also think, that for both of them, there’s a reflection of their own mortality here, too.  I don’t think either one of them wants to know, really, what Rachel’s going through - and it’s a moment of gratefulness that they still have each other.  And this song, while it’s a Finchel song, has emotional resonance to them as well. 

I kind of want to talk about touch, again, in this moment.  Mercedes, actually, has his other hand, and I think it’s important.  Kurt doesn’t touch many people in this episode -- His dad, Carole, Rachel, Blaine, and Mercedes.  He places the jacket on Santana’s shoulders, but it’s guarded.  But still -- these people are his family, and the ones who mean the most to him, so I don’t think it’s at all an accident that Kurt’s not the one going in for the group hugs - that his touch is reserved for the people he’s allowed in.  

///

So, that’s all the Kurt in the episode.  Santana’s story wraps up (and while this scene was earlier - I love the one with her and Sue -- where Sue says that sometimes there isn’t a reason for things -- sometimes things just happen).  There’s Puck and Beiste - and Puck deciding to be a better person.  Kinda wish this had been the end of Puck’s story - I think it wraps up nicely here, tbh.  And then Will and Rachel’s poignant scene at the end.  Oh and Will admitting he took the jacket (ug)  

But I just want to say this - they lay out what the end of the series was going to be with that last Rachel/Will scene.  And while - obvs - I wouldn’t ever have wanted the tragedy to happen, I can’t say I liked their picture of the ending of the series, and that I do enjoy what we did get.   The show goes in a direction I enjoy after this, opposed to down a path I don’t think I would have liked.  That doesn’t mean I’m glad Finn and/or Cory is dead.   I always feel like people are often persecuted for saying that.  But I’m going to be honest about my opinion.  And that is how I feel.

Anyway - like I said in the beginning - I’m glad that this wasn’t a one-note story, that like in real life, these tragedies effect people’s lives - and we’ll get to see that play out over the next two seasons.  And I’ll end by saying - I’m sorry that this happened, and I wished hadn’t, but I do think they handled it well - and this episode is one of the best episodes of the entire series.  

[awed-frog]

The frustrating thing for me, when people use Dean's issues to point out WHY he handles emotional situations badly is that the sympathy isn't with the people that suffers because of it (like Cas). It's with Dean. An explanation for Dean's behaviour shouldn't become a justification. If Dean loves Cas but treats Cas badly, why should we root for this relationship? Him almost killing Cas is about CAS' suffering, not his. But his reaction is not about what Cas deserves, but about his wants. IMO etc.

I’ve been trying to come up with something clever about this ask for a few days, but I got nothing, so I’m just going to tell you what’s going through my mind in the clearest possible way.

1) The viewers will often have a favourite and defend them to the death, and if you find it frustrating, there’s not much you can do other than unfollow people or blacklist some tags. I understand where you come from - I also get annoyed when people justify everything’s a character’s ever done, even the most twisted and problematic things, just because they like him or her. To be honest, I think I stopped caring when I saw a discussion about how Tate Langdon was the perfect boyfriend - some part of my soul just shrivelled and died and I decided that yep, some people are batshit insane and most people get unreasonable around stuff they love, and what can you do about it? 

2) If you’re talking about the writers/creators of a show, on the other hand, I think it’s important to remember where is our POV and what kind of story those people are telling. Like, Supernatural is not House of Cards: whatever he does, Dean will be written as sympathetic, and since we see this world (mostly) from his POV, everything is reflected back on him. I know some people get angry about this - characters getting killed to make the Winchesters feel bad, or simply to advance the plot - but that’s how you tell a story (everybody does the same thing, and if you don’t see it, it means they’re doing their job right). Your main characters are the ones who matter, and the ones whose emotions we care about. So, even when it comes to someone as important to the story as Cas is, Dean will get most of the plot, and this is just how things work.

The next point might upset some people, so I’ll place it under a cut. Stay safe.

3) On placing sympathy on the abuser, rather than the victim - I think there are several reasons for this. One is that, traditionally, our stories in the West are about the conquerors and the victors, not those who have been defeated (when Euripides wrote a tragedy about the Trojan noblewomen being sold off as slaves after the war, people were not happy, and that play is still controversial today). At the same time, we all realize, because we’re not psychopaths, that violence is not nice, and that’s how you end up with this compromise narrative best summarized by Frankie Boyle.

Another aspect of this is that many victims are women (or people ‘outside’ a community, such as queer people or POC), and many abusers are men, and, again, traditionally we give less weight and importance to the feelings and wellbeing of women than we do to those of men. Combine that with the fact many storytellers (I use the term loosely) are men, and you get where we are today: a story about a woman being beaten by her husband is ‘boring’ and not something the audience will want to watch, but the story of a tortured man who can’t help but beat his wife because demons is ‘interesting’ and worth everyone’s attention.

Finally, I think there’s a combination of these two factors in play as well - we mostly want to see stories about people acting, not reacting; about people being brave and fighting and winning, because we generally identify with the main character and we want some sort of happy ending for them. And the problem is - a victim of violence who overcomes this violence - that can still be perceived as a bleak story, right, because abusers are often a solid part of the community (husbands and fathers in family dramas, soldiers and commanders in war movies), which means that this kind of stories are, in their very nature, unsettling and revolutionary, because what they’re telling you is that the community was wrong in trusting those people. It’s no wonder, really, that Francesco Rosi’s Uomini contro was threatened, sued, and had great trouble to find distribution in Italian cinemas: despite being a movie about a century old war, it sided - very clearly - with the soldiers who’d been brutalized by their own commanders, and while the situation was well-known and mostly accurate from a historical point of view, the backlash was still enormous. And this is the same reaction you get, not only towards fictional stories, but about real ones too. All those murder-suicides - ‘normal’ men killing their wives and children before shooting themselves - both the media and the public’s reaction is inevitably incredulity and a refusal to dig deeper. We want to believe our societies are healthy and we want to believe that men (unlike women, those fickle and untrustworthy creatures) are mostly right about everything, and this is what we get as a result. We’re so good at ignoring violence it sometimes comes back to haunt us (is it just me or all the latest US shooters had priors of domestic violence?). So, you see - a man coming to terms with his own anger and becoming a better person, that’s an inspiring story we’re all okay with; but a woman standing up to her husband, that’s a bit different. There’s a seed of revolt there, a sort of If she did it, why can’t I? that we really don’t want people to see.

(In case it’s not clear, I’m violently against all of this. I’m sick of this kind of stories, and I do think that we need some waking up and some revolution in our communities.)

4) You say an explanation shouldn’t mean a justification, and I totally agree, but I also think it’s hard to do this right, both IRL and in fiction, because the more you know about someone, the more you empathize with them, which means any villain can become redeemable with the right background story - just ask Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. As for Dean and Cas, I don’t think Dean ever justified his own behaviour; in fact, he even atoned for it, in his own Dean way, when he allowed a crazed Cas to beat him up and insisted in keeping the bruises. It wasn’t perfect, but, then again, neither is Dean.

5) Why should we root for this relationship if Dean treats Cas badly - does Dean really treat Cas badly? I don’t think so. Dean is a MESS, all capitals. He tries his best, and I really feel for him, but the truth is, he doesn’t know how to do this. As far as we know, he didn’t have any friends or significant relationships growing up, and by the beginning of the series, the only person he seems to connect to in any healthy way is Bobby. Honestly - it takes years for Dean, who grew up as a soldier and a conman and a loner and never had a right to his own childhood and a life that wasn’t taking care of his brother and helping out his father, to get better at this. And, sure, the relationship with Cas is no different - at the beginning, Dean is confrontational, a sarcastic little shit, occasionally cons Cas into having his way - but the magic of what happens between them is that pretty soon, all of Dean’s traditional walls and posturing take a step back. What’s really special here is that Dean is honest with Cas in a way he isn’t with anyone else, and despite the fact he loves Cas so fiercely, he mostly tries to respect his decisions, and is never harsh with him if not in very extreme circumstances. Personally, the one moment between them I truly hated was Dean’s Nobody cares that you’re broken, because, OUCH - looking back, I can see that this was Dean channelling John, but still - it was an incredibly dickish thing to say (and it must have haunted Dean in Purgatory, especially since, as far as he knew, Cas had died - because of him). As for the rest of it - I doubt we’ll ever have fluffy lines between them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not incredibly soft with each other. I don’t know if you were referring specifically to S12E19, but Dean pushing Cas against a wall in anger - that’s not abuse. He knows he can’t hurt Cas (physically) unless he really tries, so that scene was about Dean needing to put his hands on Cas, to feel him, to make sure he was there and he was okay; and also a harmless way to let his frustration out, to say what he doesn’t know how to put into words (that he cares, that is, and that he doesn’t need Cas to bring him back any win, the dumbass, because that’s not what actually matters). And maybe that reaction doesn’t seem soft to you, but this is Dean Winchester, right, the killer even demons are afraid of and the guy who basically doesn’t trust anyone - Cas just spent weeks MIA, never bothered to call, didn’t tell them he had a line on Kelly, stole the Colt form Dean knowing full well how much that weapon meant to him, collaborated with Heaven without telling him one word about it - and, on the whole, Dean’s not even angry. He’s worried, and he’s frustrated (with Cas; with himself), but he understands why Cas did what he did, and that makes all the difference. 

“Dude, if anybody else - I mean anybody - pulled that kind of crap, I would stab them in their neck on principle. Why should I give him a free pass?”

“Because it’s Cas.”

You know - I always felt that for Dean, who’s always been coded as the ‘female’ character both with Sam and with Cas, the Mark of Cain was the ultimate undoing precisely because it took from him all those ‘feminine’ traits which are such a profound part of who he is. The fact that it all culminated in him beating the hell out of Cas, in a reversal of their traditional ‘fights’ (I’m inverted commaing this because most of those happened under some sort of mind control, so they weren’t really fights), was, in a way, a complete assertion of his new role of Alpha Male - while Cas had stepped back into a more traditional ‘feminine’ role the whole season. In this sense, I understand that the narrative focused way more heavily on Dean, because he was the one acting out of character and doing ‘weird’ things - but ideally, yes, I would have wanted to know what that beating meant for Cas, what he was thinking as he healed himself, and everything else. So, yeah - it’s a mess, and it’s not a traditional love story, perhaps, but I still think they’re right for each other and they do make each other happy, so personally, I’m rooting for them. There are tons of abusive relationships on TV that are passed off as normal, even romantic, but this isn’t one of them.

[fandomscombine]

The Power of Love

I got this idea of a draco x (ravenclaw) reader back on the 9th and now its the 23rd so yea it took me 2 weeks to finally get the nerve to write it down and post it.Being March 23rd, Ravenclaw Pride Day iIve made the reader ravenclaw though it wouldn’t really matter now but in later parts.

This is my 1st ever fanfic so please be nice and i would really appreciate it if you guys tell me what you think of it! Running the story in my head I realised that it would be pretty long so I’ve decided to cut it into parts (no sure how many yet but I’m thinking around 2-3)

Before I forget,I’d like to thank the people^ who encouraged me to write this even though I was doubtful back in my previous post.

BG of the Story:Starts in the end of HBP in the astronomy tower when Dumbledore and Harry just got back from retrieving the locket,and will continue on to DH later

Words:1,326

Themes:Hurt,Comfort and Tragedy

***EDIT:November 8 2017,I edited and reformat this fic for easier reading!

and I’ve finally gotten off my lazy ass to start writing again! I’m open to see how you guys thought of this fic.***

MASTERLIST

You don’t what has gotten into Draco this year, ever since you guys came back for sixth year. He’s become distant. You’re wondering what had happen between now and the last time you were both here in the astronomy tower. What had happened to all the promises and the moments you shared with him here past curfew. Everything was fine during the summer; you’d send letters to him every other day and him the same. But back at platform 9 3/4 he didn’t even seem to notice you, heck he didn’t seem to acknowledge that you existed! Yet even a whole school year later you find yourself walking up to the astronomy tower thinking about what used to be, pretending nothing has changed.

You were pulled out of your thought when you felt a hand grabbed you by the arm and pulled you onto the second landing. ‘Draco? Is that you?’ you asked, thinking that Draco has finally come to his senses and would talk to you. But it wasn’t. ‘Harry what the hell? You scared the shit out of me!’

‘y/n what are you doing here?’ Harry asked.

You were about to answer when you heard hurried footsteps on the stairs.

‘y/n whatever happens do not make a sound or move an inch. ‘Dumbledore’s orders.’ He said and pointed up. Indeed Dumbledore was there but what’s was it about given such orders? You were about to ask when ---Silencio! Petrificus Totalus ----‘Sorry y/n I don’t want you to do something rash.’

Rash? Rash? Did the boy who did things without rationality told YOU YOU a Ravenclaw not to be rash? He maybe one of your best friends but seriously? Did he just--you couldn’t even complete the thought.

With your head still looking up you saw him, Draco, your Draco. Gosh what is he doing here? His platinum blond and pale skin seems to be whiter and paler than normal. What is happening to him? Why is he keeping secrets? Between your thoughts you heard him say ‘You don’t understand, I’ve got to do this or he’ll kill me!’

 What? Your mind goes to overdrive, flooded with more questions than before. What is he doing? Who’s going to kill him? Oh no oh no please don’t let it be---Stuck in your thoughts, everything faded into the background and the only thing that brought you back to reality were the words ‘Avada Kedavra’.With your body stuck in your current position your vision scope was limited but that wasn’t going to stop a Ravenclaw. You scan the tower just in time to see a stiff Dumbledore fall backwards off the rail.

Harry must have seen it too as he casted you free of the enchantments. Harry ran past you but you quickly caught his arm ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘To follow the death eaters of course!’ he said with anger.

‘Are you insane Harry? Listen to the footsteps there must be at least 4 of them or maybe more! We’ll never stand a chance and they’re probably escaping by now, besides I think it’s more important to get to our headmaster who just fell off the tower from the killing curse!’ And with that you ushered him out to the grounds.

You two were first at the scene. It didn’t seem real, not to you anyway. Dumbledore was one of the most powerful wizard he can’t just die when they battle hasn’t even begun. Yet here he is on the ground looking as peaceful as being asleep. You wrap Harry in your arms, the boy is crying. He had now lost 2 father figures in his life so what if he is the chosen one, a child shouldn’t suffer like this. You don’t know how long you’ve been comforting Harry and whispering words to him. You both only separated when McGonagall gave a speech and asked the crowd of students you hadn’t noticed had gathered before to have wands raised in honor of the late headmaster. Slowly students turned to go. It was all too much to take for you so you too decide to go, leaving Harry with Ginny, Ron and Hermione.

You were on the way up to your dorm when you saw a familiar looking blond boy walk 3 times pass a wall and into the room of requirements. You decided to time to face your fear and follow through.

The room has taken shape of a .... well there was nothing except a silhouette in front of a fireplace. ‘Draco?’ you said cautiously.

‘Draco?’ no answer.

You reached him with a few more steps and you realized that he’s crying. You pull him into a hug, gosh you missed him but now is not the time to focus on your needs but rather on his, so you tried again.

‘Draco darling, what’s wrong?’ still no answer

‘Draco, I won’t judge you but I don’t like seeing you like this. I want you to tell me what’s bothering you, it’s okay if you won’t tell me now but I want you to know that you don’t have to live with this burden alone, that I’m willing to share that weight of yours cause I love you, I love you even though you ignored me and put me through hell this past year. But even that didn’t make my love waver because I love you so so much. You know that right?’

‘y/n I’m so sorry I truly am and you ought to know the truth to why I was so distant.’ he said as he broke your embrace. ‘But promise me one thing y/n that whatever I tell you, you won’t run away until I say all that I have to say. You can after I’m done and I won’t stop you. I just need you to understand alright?’

‘I promise. Ravenclaws often listen to both sides of the story before making a decision’ You say, trying to lighten the mood.

‘Alright...’ he continues and pulls up his left sleeve showing his dark mark. You tried to muffle your gasp but failed. ‘I got the mark a few days before school started.’ he said. ‘y/n... believe me when I say I didn’t want to get it but I had no choice--I--he--’ More tears rolling off Draco’s face. You cupped his cheek with your hands, rubbing away the tears.‘--he was going to kill me, my family, everyone I love. Gosh y/n YOU he threaten to kill You if I didn’t obliged to his orders---and-- and I couldn’t lose you y/n Never.’

‘oh Draco....’

‘And today in the astronomy tower I was supposed to kill Dumbledore but I couldn’t...I just can’t kill anyone y/n...’ Draco chocked on his tears.

‘I know Draco, I was there.’ you said quietly.

‘But what-- how?’

‘I was there with Harry in the second landing and we saw it happen.’

‘y/n you got to understand please..’

 ‘yes I do understand and no one should have had that burden put upon them’

A few moments passed when Draco said ‘They all left. you know that y/n?  Snape, Bellatrix and Greyback. My task isn’t done y/n they left me so that I could be a spy for---to spy on Dumbledore’s Army. y/n listen to me I have no choice than to follow in order to keep all the people I love alive so y/n just do us both a favor and forget about me’

‘Draco no.’

‘y/n it‘s the only way to keep you safe. There’s no other way, no matter how many times you wrap your head around it.’

‘Draco, there’s always another way and it would make no difference to tell me to use my head over my heart cause whoever said that the mind and heart are two different things had got it wrong because both my mind and my heart would do anything and everything to protect you.’

^ @potterhead23 @lucyrocksyoursocks @mp938368​ @remvsjohn​@dwacomaowfoy @ashrodiguez @ghostducky @hey-popcorn @junodarling @smilecausemiles @tiny-strawberry- @stars-shaped-clouds @pride-glee-andthetardis @capandbuck @oitnbaddict4l

So what do you guys think?

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/us/politics/trump-mass-shootings.html#click=https://t.co/0rraYzMJ1o

Trump is a sociopathic psychopath who is endangering the lives of the American citizens and encouraging his followers to do harm to people who look different from them. That's the definition of racism and white supremacy.

At a Florida rally in May, the president asked the crowd for ideas to block migrants from crossing the border.

“How do you stop these people?” he asked.

“Shoot them!” one man shouted.

The crowd laughed and Mr. Trump smiled. “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” he said. “Only in the Panhandle.”

El Paso Shooting Suspect’s Manifesto Echoes Trump’s Language

By Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear | Published Aug. 4, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 5, 2019 |

At campaign rallies before last year’s midterm elections, President Trump repeatedly warned that America was under attack by immigrants heading for the border. “You look at what is marching up, that is an invasion!” he declared at one rally. “That is an invasion!”

Nine months later, a 21-year-old white man is accused of opening fire in a Walmart in El Paso, killing 20 peopleand injuring dozens more after writing a manifesto railing against immigration and announcing that “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

The suspect wrote that his views “predate Trump,” as if anticipating the political debate that would follow the blood bath. But if Mr. Trump did not originally inspire the gunman, he has brought into the mainstream polarizing ideas and people once consigned to the fringes of American society.

While other leaders have expressed concern about border security and the costs of illegal immigration, Mr. Trump has filled his public speeches and Twitter feed with sometimes false, fear-stoking language even as he welcomed to the White House a corps of hard-liners, demonizers and conspiracy theorists shunned by past presidents of both parties. Because of this, Mr. Trump is ill equipped to provide the kind of unifying, healing force that other presidents projected in times of national tragedy.

In televised remarks on Sunday afternoon before boarding Air Force One to return to Washington from his New Jersey home, Mr. Trump praised the performance of law enforcement officers and offered condolences to the victims and their families in El Paso as well as in Dayton, Ohio, where an unrelated mass shooting occurredearly Sunday morning.

“Hate has no place in our country, and we’re going to take care of it,” the president said, declining to elaborate but promising to speak more on Monday morning. He made no mention of white supremacy or the El Paso manifesto, but instead focused on what he called “a mental illness problem.”

On Monday morning, he used Twitter to call for Republicans and Democratsto work together to strengthen background checks for prospective gun buyers and pass new immigration laws

Democratic presidential candidates  wasted little time on Sunday pointing the finger at Mr. Trump, arguing that he had encouraged extremism with what they called hateful language. Mr. Trump’s advisers and allies rejected that, arguing that the president’s political foes were exploiting a tragedy to further their political ambitions.

“I’m saying that President Trump has a lot to do with what happened in El Paso yesterday,” Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic presidential candidate who represented El Paso in Congress, said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. Mr. O’Rourke said Mr. Trump “sows the kind of fear, the kind of reaction that we saw in El Paso yesterday.”

Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said it was outrageous to hold Mr. Trump responsible for the acts of a madman or suggest the president sympathized with white supremacists.

“I don’t think it’s at all fair to sit here and say that he doesn’t think that white nationalism is bad for the nation,” he said on “This Week” on ABC. “These are sick people. You cannot be a white supremacist and be normal in the head. These are sick people. You know it, I know it, the president knows it. And this type of thing has to stop. And we have to figure out a way to fix the problem, not figure out a way to lay blame.”

Linking political speech, however heated, to the specific acts of ruthless mass killers is a fraught exercise, but experts on political communication said national leaders could shape an environment with their words and deeds, and bore a special responsibility to avoid inflaming individuals or groups, however unintentionally.

“The people who carry out these attacks are already violent and hateful people,” said Nathan P. Kalmoe, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University who has studied hate speech. “But top political leaders and partisan media figures encourage extremism when they endorse white supremacist ideas and play with violent language. Having the most powerful person on Earth echo their hateful views may even give extremists a sense of impunity.”

This has come up repeatedly during Mr. Trump’s presidency, whether it be the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Va., or the bomber who sent explosives to Mr. Trump’s political adversaries and prominent news media figures or the gunman who stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue after ranting online about “invaders” to the United States.

David Livingstone Smith, a philosophy professor at the University of New England and the author of a book on dehumanization of whole categories of people, said Mr. Trump had emboldened Americans whose views were seen as unacceptable in everyday society not long ago.

“This has always been part of American life,” he said. “But Trump has given people permission to say what they think. And that’s crack cocaine. That’s powerful. When someone allows you to be authentic, that’s a very, very potent thing. People have come out of the shadows.”

Grant Stinchfield, a former host of NRATV, the defunct online media arm of the National Rifle Association, said his “heart aches” for the victims of El Paso, but he accused the news media and Democrats of unfairly blaming Mr. Trump for a crime committed by a “disgusting, deranged human being.”

“Evil has existed since the beginning of time,” Mr. Stinchfield said. “To blame the president or any other conservative on the actions of a deranged lunatic is insane and flat-out disgusting. The problem with liberals today is they do not want to take responsibility for anything. They will blame everyone but the shooter.”

Kris Kobach, the former secretary of state in Kansas and an immigration hard-liner who is close to Mr. Trump, said Democrats were being outrageous. “They are trying to exploit this horrific tragedy to attack the president and push an open-borders agenda and push gun control,” he said. “It’s not only incorrect, it’s improper to do this at a time when people are still grieving.”

Dark, anti-immigrant language has flavored American politics for generations. Politicians in the 1880s and 1920s rose to power by seizing on fears of Italians, Japanese, Chinese and other immigrants, stoking fears about the loss of the “American identity.”

In more recent years, those who trafficked in racist conspiracies and warned that immigrants were a threat to the safety and economic well-being of native-born Americans were largely ignored by the bipartisan establishment even as they gave voice to the views of many Americans who felt disenfranchised.

But Mr. Trump embraced racist conspiracies for years: He was among the leading voices who pushed the “birtherism” lie claiming that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. And since his campaign for the presidency, Mr. Trump has taken those views to the center of American politics. He denounces immigrant gang members as “animals” and complains that unauthorized migrants “pour into and infest” the United States. Illegal immigration is a “monstrosity,” he says, while demanding that even American-born congresswomen of color “go back” to their home countries.

He uses the word “aliens” to refer to immigrants long after it was deemed dehumanizing even by other Republicans. And his language about immigration is suffused in anger: In El Paso earlier this year, he demanded that Democrats help him “deport criminal aliens and keep the coyotes and traffickers and drug dealers the hell out of our country.”

His preferred recourse to illegal immigration often seems to rely on force. He sent the military to the border last year before the election and at one point even said he would order troops to open fire on migrants who throw stones, disconcerting military leaders who objected to what they considered a disproportionate response.

At a Florida rally in May, the president asked the crowd for ideas to block migrants from crossing the border.

“How do you stop these people?” he asked.

“Shoot them!” one man shouted.

The crowd laughed and Mr. Trump smiled. “That’s only in the Panhandle you can get away with that stuff,” he said. “Only in the Panhandle.”

Along the way, Mr. Trump has empowered groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has been designated a hate group by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center. He has become a reliable megaphone for anti-immigrant screeds carried by Breitbart News and Lou Dobbs on the Fox Business Network.

And he has seeded his administration with activists, lawyers and a cadre of former Capitol Hill staff members on the far end of the anti-immigration spectrum, all of whom had toiled for years in obscurity, viewed by Democrats and Republicans alike as too radical.

Stephen Miller, who promoted anti-immigration views as a congressional aide, is now the chief architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda. Julie Kirchner, the former executive director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, is a top official at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, which manages legal immigration.

Jon Feere, a former legal analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates significantly less immigration, is a top adviser at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And Stephen K. Bannon, the former chairman of Breitbart News, ran Mr. Trump’s campaign and served in the White House as the president’s chief strategist.

While the police in Ohio said they were still looking into the motive of the Dayton gunman, the El Paso killings were quickly linked to politics. In the 2,300-word manifesto tied by the police to Patrick Crusius, the suspect in the El Paso shooting, he said he was “simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

Mr. Trump said much the same four years ago, at an event hosted by the Texas Patriots at a Houston-area school. “Everything’s coming across the border,” Mr. Trump said. “The illegals, the cars, the whole thing — it’s like a big mess, blah. It’s like vomit.”

Mr. Crusius described legal and illegal immigrants as “invaders” who are flooding into the United States, a term Mr. Trump has frequently employed to argue for a border wall.

In July 2015, Mr. Trump tweeted at critics: “WHAT U REALLY SHOULD B ANGRY ABT IS THE INVASION OF MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS TKING OVER AMERICA! NOT DonaldTrump.” After using the term regularly during last fall’s campaign, he has begun using it for next year’s campaign as well. In one Facebook ad in February, for instance, his campaign wrote, “It’s CRITICAL that we STOP THE INVASION.”

In March, Mr. Trump defended the use of the term before an audience of conservative activists. “They don’t like it when I say it — but we are being invaded,” he said of his critics. “We’re being invaded by drugs, by people, by criminals. And we have to stop it.”

White House aides argue that there is a vast difference between favoring tough policies at the border and condoning violence, but they resigned themselves to a fresh round of criticism of the president from the moment they heard about the El Paso shooting and the manifesto.

Several of Mr. Trump’s advisers said they were happy that his public messages since the shooting had been restrained and presidential, but they conceded that he needed to do more to unify the country.

Still, few advisers believed he would be easily moved to perform as past presidents have during national crises, with a grand speech or even a news conference with the F.B.I. director, to whom the president would have to partly cede the stage.

For their part, other Republicans made a point over the weekend of denouncing white nationalism, going where Mr. Trump himself would not.

“There have now been multiple attacks from self-declared white terrorists here in the U.S. in the last several months,” George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner and son of former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, said in a statement. “This is a real and present threat that we must all denounce and defeat.”

[awed-frog]

Hi! I've just read your meta masterlist written for someone who wanted to convince their friends that deancas is real. First of all - thank you, what a treat to have it all in one place. The best Matrix red pill of them all. Second of all - "the entire S8, which was basically a demented Jane Eyre AU" - could you elaborate on that? I'm mighty interested.

Hi! Thanks for that - uhm - it’s missing a lot of stuff, though. I’m sure there are better masterposts out there, and I actually looked for them, but all I could find was fanfiction stuff.

As for the Jane Eyre thing - I should say I’m a fan of the Brontë sisters, so it wasn’t supposed to be an insult or anything, but it’s hard to deny that those kind of novels (particularly Wuthering Heights) are over the top and überdramatic and there’s almost an unhealthy focus on love and falling in love and what happens if you lose that and how your life can never be complete without that one person who means everything, and if that person is your foaming-at-the-mouth insane half-brother, so be it. And the thing is, Supernatural seasons often hinge around powerful and borderline soap-operish themes (the whole ‘almost orphans desperately looking for their father while killing things’ was very Dickens, in a way - if Dickens had been high on opium and cocaine and stuff, that is), but S8 really went above and beyond. I mean, even without the big love story for the fucking ages supporting the entire narrative arc, it was full of OMG and oh no! moments - 

Sam is all alone in the world and may have found love but oh no! his brother’s back from the dead and super pissed and oh no! the woman he probably loves is actually not a widow and OMG what next?

Hunter Dean found himself a new best friend but oh no! he’s a vampire drawn to human blood but OMG he’s promised to abstain forever and fight his own instincts every day for eternity but oh no! what happens if he can’t?

There is a way to banish all demons from the Earth but oh no! it’s a magic spell that requires a human sacrifice and oh no! Sam actually wants to do that and is it guilt or depression or martyrdom or OMG is he simply that heroic??!?

- so much Gothic extravaganza, the list could go on and on. But, as I said, at the heart of it all are Dean and Cas, and what’s going on with them is so sappy and romantic even Charlotte Brontê would have edited some stuff out.

Like, I don’t even know where to start. 

At the beginning of the season, Dean is precipitated in a world of darkness and monsters. He fights his way out for an entire year, and during that time he prays to Cas every night - Dean, who normally doesn’t pray at all. We know he’s tortured and desperate, because part of him believes Cas is dead (because Cas always comes when Dean calls, right?) and all of him knows it’s his own fault, because he forced Cas to fight even if Cas wasn’t in his right mind and Jesus, ALL the regrets and ALL the guilt. Then he finally finds Cas, who first refuses his manly and chaste affection and then pushes Dean to safety and chooses to die in that hellhole. This is so incredibly traumatic that Dean erases that entire memory as he makes his way into the real world (and, remember, we’re talking about Dean ‘I remember what was done to me in Hell’ Winchester here - I guess losing Cas was more painful than that?), which is just as lonely and brutal and hostile as the one he left behind (cue all the drama about Sam and Benny and Crowley killing everyone he can get his hands on). As he fights on, Dean starts to see Cas’ ghost everywhere, which is, like, standard behaviour for a Romantic hero or heroine but also legit what happens to you when your brain suffers such a heavy loss it can’t cope (if you’re not reading this alone at night, I recommend you check out this article about Japanese cab drivers picking up ghost passengers after the tsunami, and this BBC radio program explaining why it happens). This is obviously distressing for Dean, but then, as he’s fast approaching his breaking point, Cas actually shows up in person - he cannot explain how he found Dean, since Dean still has the anti-angel tattoo on his ribs, but wait - we know Cas can sense longing, right? so that’s why and if that isn’t the most tragic, romantic thing you’ve ever heard, get out. But there’s worse to come. Before that, though, we’re treated to a brief comedic interlude featuring the sappiest love trope ever - ‘all grown up’ - as Cas retires to the bathroom (and why) to clean up and reappears all handsome and clean-shaven, causing Dean an erection and much embarrassment.

(I still can’t believe that is a thing that actually happened, by the way.) 

Next, of course, there’s the whole ‘Cas has been trained and programmed to kill Dean against his will and beats him up in a darkened crypt and nothing can happen now everyone is doomed doomed doomed but wait I NEED YOU and BAM, suddenly the mind control is gone and even someone with the whole of Heaven’s power behind her can’t come between Cas and Dean and Cas will never hurt Dean and what the fuck is even happening?’ episode, which, again, how was that an actual thing? Sometimes I think we were all high during that season and we had a collective hallucination or something. And next there is all the ‘You didn’t trust me? You didn’t trust me, I almost died to get you out, I would have died, I did not leave you’ drama as Dean finally remembers what happened (he doesn’t, by the way: Cas heals his brain, and those memories come back), and meanwhile in the background there’s more over the top and dramatic stuff going down - Sam being weird and volunteering to die and Benny also volunteering to die and Dean can’t save anyone and can’t do anything and now BAM, turns out Cas is also dying, or leaving forever, anyway, and there was so much unsaid stuff between them I remember fainting and melting into my couch during various episodes and thank God for smelling salts. And after all this torture and torment and ALL the love and ALL the pain, the very last episode was the worst of the worst - Dean must basically say goodbye to the only people he cares about and would do anything to spare, because both of them are dying, and it’s a sort of Sophie’s choice too because Cas is gone and Dean doesn’t have time to focus on that because SAMMY and at the end we’re left with him half supporting his brother’s weight as they look up at a sky full of falling angels (and is Cas one of them or did they kill him already and aaaaargh).

So, look - I’m even leaving out stuff, and it’s still almost unbearably sugary and tragic - it’s not like they haven’t had other weird moments between them, but this season alone is more romantic than, say, the entirety of Jane the Virgin, who’s supposed to be about romance, or even Grey’s fucking Anatomy, where, sure, you get those random episodes where a train explodes and people are stuck all over the city and you can’t save all of them and surprise! you’re probably dying yourself BUT you also get some time to breathe in between and episodes where almost no one’s fighting and people are having sex and how come they never sleep, seriously? And what I just can’t believe is that we’re the only ones to have both sides here - Dean still doesn’t know about the thousand Deans Cas was forced to kill, or about those convoluted reasons Metatron had for cutting out Cas’ Grace, specifically, and Cas doesn’t understand how close Dean came to tell him those three stupid words which would have solved and changed everything, and he doesn’t get why Dean was hurt by his choice to remain in Purgatory, and how much, and he must ignore or disregard, by now, those random spikes in Dean’s arousals, because he assumes that’s what humans do or whatever and he probably never realized he should have hugged Dean back that time on the river bank, and what it meant to Dean that he didn’t. See? Tragedy and misunderstanding and Dean being an actual Gothic heroine and Cas being all Rochester-y about things (early Rochester, I mean, the one who was determined to be a martyr and could not believe someone as smart as Jane would ever find his old ass interesting in any way).

I know we always say it, but that’s honestly how I feel all the time - I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking here, because you cannot write a story like this, you cannot insert all these tropes and bend and twist and narrative so stuff will only work with the foundation of a Great Love, and not see it. You physically cannot, especially if you’re a trained screenwriter and this is literally your job. So they do see it, and what? I don’t mind the UST and the pain and the slow-burn (much), but I still wish they would make it clear that this is indeed where they’re going, because they can’t keep writing this shit and pretending they aren’t. It’s - if someone had written S8 as a Destiel - canon divergent after S7 fic on AO3, I’m not sure I would have read it. So gay that it’s almost OOC, I would have thought, and there’s not even the comfort of some smut - it’s all angst, all the way, and come on - even this show is not that gay.

Except it is, isn’t it?

Lucky us.