#SHARED NARRATIVE

[profgandalf]

Washington and Lincoln: The Reaffirming of a President's Day Narrative

Happy Washington’s Birthday! (Or as many of us remember it “President’s Day!) In point of fact, Washington’s birthday is Feb. 22, 1732. Plus because of an interesting historical shift when the British Empire adopted the Gregorian Calander over the Julian, Washington’s own birthday—date and year— changed during his lifetime. (Here’s an interesting video put out by the Washington Museum in Mount Vernon VA about that: https://www.mountvernon.org/.../the-truth-about.../).

Meanwhile, Facebook failed to remind me that Feb. 12 was Lincoln’s Birthday which is celebrated in my home state of New York as a state holiday. So throughout my childhood in Long Island, my school calendar included both Lincon’s and Washing’s birthdays. In February all the classrooms were decorated with red hearts and at the front hung above the blackboard the portraits of Washington and Lincoln facing one another and looking down on us. Garrison Kieller remembers thinking that Washington’s prim face meant he’d never give a guy any hint on tests while Lincoln looked more benevolent and might pass on the answer: “It’s eight, Lincoln seemed to say.”

I confess that for years I mistakenly thought that the two birthday celebrations were combined to make room for Martin Luther King’s Holiday in Jan (as if the Federal Calander could only fit in so many holidays), but only Washington’s birthday is a Federal holiday. In fact, that is its official handle, Washington’s Birthday but for most of us it is just “President’s Day.”

I do not like this shift. I think it robs us of an important shared narrative. I miss the joint the celebrations in February of both the founder and the savior of our nation. These two men were extraordinary. They weren’t gods, but humans and yet each struggled through and passed onto our country great things.

When King George III was told that after taking the highest position in America, Washington would voluntarily step down and return to his farm, the former antagonistic monarch said “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.” Before him no conqueror had ever voluntarily given up power. Meanwhile Lincoln delt with the grimmest days of the Republic. Having inherited the blatant injustice of slavery which led to secession as soon as he was elected, he fiercely followed the principle laid out by Pres. Andrew Jackson (another human president) that the union was indissolvable. Preserving that union led to the great nation we are blessed to be a part of today.

These points need to be remembered and celebrated. Over and over again, in the Old Testament, monuments and special days were set to help the people remember. Humans tend to forget and a ubiquitous vague day does nothing to help jog our minds. We don't need a day to sell more cars and sheets, we need days to celebrate the great things two of our greatest past leaders did for us.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

not "i ship these characters" or "i want them to bond platonically" but a secret 3rd thing (I want them to be forced to interact by the Narrative bc they would HATE that)

[mischievous-thunder]

From merely existing in two separate universes all the while trying their hardest every single day to mend the broken pieces of themselves

to finding someone who's willing to sacrifice himself to make sure the other person gets all the love and happiness of the world, to finding someone to go home to, to finally having the family of their dreams materialised, Wade and Logan's paths merged into one. It's but a new beginning.

Nothing really clicked prior to them meeting each other because their soulmates didn't even exist in their respective universes. Everything starts falling into place when their fate brings them together. They are each other's anchor beings.

[lotus-pear]

till's straight asf i would've made out with ivan first

[stinkrat-aleks]

cherik wedding (the first one)

[wasabi-gumdrop]

(slips this under ur door) pls read dunmesh

[dirtytransmasc]

if they don't give Helaena one scene that doesn't strip her of her agency or just treat her like fodder, I'm gonna scream. if they don't give Helaena one scene with her dragon, I'm gonna scream. if they don't give Helaena one, better yet, multiple, scenes with Aegon, her brother, her husband, the father of her children, I'm gonna scream.

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

ADHD & self-limiting beliefs

Future ADHD

[spacedlexi]

when your girlfriend isnt actually dead but she might as well be

[raisedbythetv89]

The writers I think mostly completely by accident with the assistance of James charming his way into becoming a main character created the perfect storm to ensure people who love spike would reach absolute peak levels of being completely obsessively deranged about him forever

Season 2:

He’s a punk rock villain with killer cheekbones, enchanting eyes, and an absolutely DEVILISH smile - who’s an incredibly dedicated and dangerous fighter who specifically seeks out challenging fights he’s not guaranteed to win (brave and reckless - normally traits seen in heroes) hates everyone except his mentally ill physically sick wife (the statistics of men who leave their wives when they get sick in the US is horrifying like nurses literally have to warn married women who get sick it happens so often) who he’s hopelessly devoted to and unbelievably soft with and always listens to her while also exuding a psychotic amount of sex appeal and is just F U N he loves being a vampire and he loves fighting and it makes it so much fun for the audience. While still showing how much he respects and admires his enemy for her skill, strength, resourcefulness, and intelligence - NEVER underestimating her just because she’s a tiny blonde girl - and instead of destroying the world for love he SAVES the world for love - a villain doing good to get the love of his life back who essentially dumped him for her ex????????? D E V O T E D and shockingly extremely trustworthy??? And has amazing chemistry with our heroine and is there for a pivotal moment in her life and is the only one there for her when she has no one else????? *enemies to lovers girlies ENTER THE CHAT*

Season 3:

He shows he fucking MEANS IT when he says Dru is the love of his life when he shows up in Sunnydale because he blames Angel not Buffy or Drusilla but the man actually responsible for all their problems and he is the most pathetic mess we’ve ever SEEN!!!! He’s crying and drunk all the time and he’s so sad he goes to Buffy’s mom TO TALK 💀😭 our pathetic sensitive little self admitted lover boy who KNOWS he’s love’s bitch and he won’t be pretending he’s anything otherwise who shows how clearly he sees and understands other people and the depths of his emotional intelligence so much so Buffy herself admits she can’t fool Spike she can fool her friends BUT NOT SPIKE OR HERSELF EXCUSE ME MA’AM WHAT???????

AND Spike doesn’t just uselessly MOPE forever he gets some perspective and is like I know what I’m gonna do to her back and I’m gonna go do that now! 😁👍🏻 showing he never stays down for long and is always gonna get back up to keep fighting for his love while BOTH he and Buffy still honor the truce even though he’s broken it by coming back??? While Buffy’s all “I violently dislike you” YEAH OK GIRL WHATEVER YOU SAY *enemies to lovers girlies chomping at the bit intensifies*

Season 4:

CLEARLY heartbroken about Drusilla (DEVOTED!!!) but it’s turned into anger and resentment directed at Harmony who how bizarre looks nothing like Drusilla but A LOT like Buffy…… hmmmmmmmmmmmmm HOW INTERESTING *enemies to lovers girlies are vibrating with anticipation that turns into a full blown combustion when something blue happens*

Spike doesn’t pretend to love Harmony in order to get what he wants from her (shown in direct contrast to Parker) he’s ironically very honest despite being a villain - he’s showing he’s STILL loyal to Drusilla in ONLY loving her even after she’s dumped him... again!

We see Spike treat Buffy the EXACT same way he treated Drusilla during something blue reaffirming THIS IS HOW THIS MAN LOVES WHEN HE LOVES YOU. He’s extremely affectionate, helpful, protective, caring - D E V O T E D - and is truly just the most certified lover boy we’ve ever fucking seen

Season 5:

SURPRISE HE’S SECRETLY A LOVESICK MAMA’S BOY POET AT HEART UNDERNEATH THE BAD BOY PERSONA AND A PROTECTIVE BIG BROTHER AND NOW BUFFY AND HER FAMILY’S MOST LOYAL DEFENDER AND IS WILLING TO DIE NOT JUST FOR BUFFY BUT FOR ALL THE SUMMERS WOMEN AND HE KNOWS AND SEES BUFFY SO DEEPLY AND INTIMATELY AND CAN HOLD SPACE FOR HER PAIN LIKE NO ON ELSE CAN AND SHOWS THE DEVOTION THAT ONCE BELONGED TO DRUSILLA NOW BELONGS TO BUFFY AND IT IS GOING NOWHERE EVEN WHEN SHE DIES AND WE'VE SEEN IN HIM CRY BEFORE BUT NEVER HAVE WE SEEN HIM BREAK DOWN LIKE HE DOES AT THE SIGHT OF BUFFY'S BODY!!!!!!!!!!!

*all of us screaming, crying, throwing up, climbing the walls and generally just losing our minds*

Season 6:

No soul, his love is so great for Buffy as is his loyalty and devotion to her, he now helps all of his dead love’s friends fight evil and is raising her sister and dreams of saving her every night for 148 nights 🤚🏻😭 don’t even fucking talk to me I can’t take it

Forgive the absolute 180 in tone change here:

Dick game is FIRE - his touch is the only thing that makes Buffy feel alive AND SHE WAS IN HEAVEN BRO SHE KNOWS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE IN HEAVEN AND SPIKE IS THE ONLY THING KEEPING HER GOING like damn girl yes YOU FUCK THAT HOUSE DOWN!!! Also he is now just naked 50% of the time just to drive us all even FURTHER out of our minds and somehow has just gotten even hotter as the seasons have gone on like this is what’s been hiding under the leather jacket all this time! Enjoy!

And THE MOST unintended consequence of jw’s vindictive writing:

SPITE

He clearly didn’t want us to love Spike and tried to manipulate us into hating him in such a blatant and clumsy ooc attempt all that did was weed out the weakest amongst the Spuffy/Spike fans until all that remained were us:

The most devoted and stubborn fans who REFUSED to have the thing they loved ruined or taken away from us and were smart enough to see through his bullshit manipulation attempt in the first place.

Genuinely they created the equivalent of supersoilder strength level fans with this absolutely lethal combination of events 💀

AND THEN as if all that wasn't enough he goes and gets his soul on purpose for Buffy so he can be the man she deserves and she can love him without hating herself for loving him despite the immense pain it will cause him which is the most selfless thing we have ever seen anyone do for Buffy only to be topped when he sacrifices himself to destroy the hellmouth, save the world and free her from Sunnydale!!! Plus ya know once he gets the soul even though he did it for her he never tries to use that as leverage to get anything from her like he truly expects nothing from her at all but still wants to help her and James delivers the most devastating performances we've ever fucking seen, finally tells her friends off which has needed to happen for 5 seasons, the "you're the one speech" him being a dad to all the potentials with Buffy giving us supernatural parent core who made it through their rough patch with their first kid in season 6 with Dawn and now are just the beautiful team with their found family and Buffy finally has someone who can truly carry her burdens with her and just all the tenderness and devotion they both deserve after so many years of pain and fighting. Basically giving the audience the message that even if you have a metric ton of pain and trauma there are people out there who see you and understand you and there is a chance for you to heal both together and separately to build your own version of a more normal and stable life. It's a message of such hope and I personally know several people, including myself who watched what Spike and Buffy have and it inspired us to look at the relationships we were in and realize we deserved SO MUCH MORE than what we were getting and in my case it turned out I was being emotionally abused and manipulated that entire time!! Much like Buffy was by both Riley and Angel. So it isn't an exaggeration to say Spuffy saved my life in a lot of ways both in being there for me at such a dark time and helping me draw a map of how to get out. Not to mention loving them in fandom spaces has helped me connect with so many people just like me who share very similar experiences and have helped me feel so much less alone and has helped me heal in so many ways 🖤

Spuffies get "hOw cAn yOu liKe sPiKe aFtEr wHaT hE dId" all the fucking time and truly the better question is how can you NOT like Spike???? HAVE YOU BEEN PAYING ATTENTION AT ALL??? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT GOOD RELATIONSHIPS NEED TO WORK?? BECAUSE AT THEIR CORE SPUFFY HAS THEM ALL!

It's jw writing so NOTHING will escape his toxic bullshit but Spike - because he was hated by jw for so long - so much of the time when he tried to make Spike less popular he just kept making him better and more complex and more and more targeted to the female gaze which is exactly why he snapped and made the choices he literally forced everyone else to go along with despite their protests with that scene to make it the most traumatizing scene in all of Buffy history not just for the audience but for the actors as well because yes it is incredibly horrific and upsetting to watch (which is why I skip it on rewatches) but I still am able to see if for what it is which is a narcissist lashing out at people he hates because he hasn't been able to control them and too bad for him I refuse to be manipulated by his bullshit so it failed completely and made so many of us that much more stubbornly protective of Spike and his and Buffy's relationship not just from other fans but from the creator himself 🙃🖕🏻like he basically just trauma bonded us to Spike and Buffy which has led to the creation of one of the most devoted, loyal, intelligent fanbases who is absolutely unhinged (affectionate) with their love of this character and his relationship which is why we are all still creating and writing about this character 25 year later and show absolutely zero signs of slowing down or stopping 💀

[verstappen100]

also F1 TV having this graphic for the pre-sprint show ‼️

[incesthemes]

there is interesting johndean subtext and insinuations across kripke era, usually through an antagonist insinuating parent-child sexual violence in order to exert dominance over dean. this type of mockery exploits that ambiguous relationship between john and dean and reminds dean that he never had a normal relationship with his father, and that makes him gross and wrong. it doesn't actually matter in the end whether john was sexually abusive to dean. the core of their relationship was damning enough: dean was made to take the place of john's wife—to comfort john and raise sam—while simultaneously being his son. the codependent nature of their relationship implies the incest that underscores their dynamic. again, this is regardless of what literally occurred between dean and john because there is enough doubt toward the nature of their relationship that multiple antagonists can use it against them.

sonwife, brotherhusband—dean is stuck in a liminal space between family and lover and is unable to put his feet firmly on just one side and instead has to accept both together or abandon both together. he doesn't get to have a relationship with his family without it being simultaneously incestuous. he plays the role of wife to john and mother to sam as mary's replacement; he therefore becomes more than a son and transcends the boundaries of the familial into the incestuous. it's baked into the dynamic and he can't hope to escape the liminality in which he's stuck without abandoning his entire family altogether.

this ambiguous relationship is further acted out with sam, where people perceive them as lovers rather than brothers; where their mutual devotion trumps, neglects, and disallows any other close relationship outside each other; where their physical closeness is viewed through an unusually sexual lens despite no literal sex acts between them taking place on screen. once again dean is stuck in a liminal space, paralleling the ambiguous and uncertain relationship he had with john.

in the end, sex (and sexual violence) is just a symbol of this codependency and uncertainly incestuous dynamic. sex acts in kripke era end up being symbolic: misinterpretations of sam and dean's relationship; accusations of sexual violence; literal, on-screen sexual moments between the brothers and someone else. it's a literary device that highlights the incestuous themes of the show. dean hand-picks women for sam to fuck because it allows dean to be symbolically part of sam's sex life. henricksen accuses john of raping dean because it is a symbol of the unhealthy, codependent relationship dean had with his father. the samulet stays on during sex because sam is symbolically integral to dean's sexual gratification (seen too in the way both dean and cassie in 1.13 appear to kiss the amulet at least once in the dark room). sex is used to signify more than what's literally on the screen, and the connections between the literal sex acts and the blurred lines of dean's familial relationships allow for a reading of incest between both john and dean and sam and dean.

it never mattered whether johndean or samdean had a sexual relationship in the canon because that was never the point. the point is the liminality that permeates the narrative. sam, dean, and john all stand upon a threshold between acceptable and taboo. the point of it all is the doubt and anxiety, the are-they-aren't-they that is never answered. the absence of incest within the text invites the understanding that the incest was, in fact, always there.

[crazy-ache]

I’m never going to buy the “Elain is a spoiled rotten child” interpretation that I see floating around fandom. To me, Elain is a chronic people pleaser.

She desires to please everyone around her at the expense of herself. It is why she so desperately wants to be seen. She is deeply unhappy. Symbolically, Elain is described as a trembling fawn because she is frozen like a deer in headlights in the face of what she wants vs performing what other’s expect of her.

She does this because she is suffering from self worth issues and does not believe her needs or wants are important—and that she doesn’t possess value beyond her complacency and her superficial beauty.

In fact, I believe her book is going to be about becoming selfish. I HOPE it’s about finally becoming MORE SELFISH, which she has never afforded herself to be. I hope she’s selfish and leaves the cage of limitations that has been created for her in the Night Court. I hope she’s selfish and chooses love and a mating bond because she wants it. I hope she’s selfish enough to finally put herself first in order to become the strong and brave female character she was always destined to be.

[bisexualdinahlance]

Something to address early in fandom I think: are y'all going to be weird if the show ends and the resolution does actually end up being a poly-v with Avery at the center? Like I really hope (and think it's very possible!) that we are heading towards a closed triad but if it ends up with Max and Tristan being metamours or even qpp, I would still be deliriously happy having a main polyamorous ship on a network television show. Because the way some of y'all have been talking in the tags you guys don't seem to even consider it a valid relationship dynamic despite it being a real thing people do.

[sparring-spirals]

Bell’s Hells: *successfully defeat a big robot*

All of us, unaware, fools: *applauding* Incredible! Bravo! How exciting! Nothing can top this!

Episode 50, abruptly and without warning:

(source)

[estebunny]

esteban ocon talking about fernando alonso achieving 400 races in f1

via fia press conference transcript