#Sarah Character Study

[astronot7]

A Study of Sarah Morgan

[talentforlying]

priest: i don't, ah, quite know what to say to you. if you are in such terrible danger, why are you taking it all so calmly? constantine: hmh! i dunno, father. i had a bloke beaten to a pulp earlier this evening. that sound calm to you? priest: you did what...? constantine: i must've been off me bleedin' rocker. i've never done anything like it before in me life, y'know?

constantine: but there's header gets his guts blown out, and george is stickin' his head in the noose, and helen gets ... jesus, then friggin' sarah bites me head off — ! everything's coming to bits in me hands and it's so easy to just see red and now, shit, they could've killed the tosser for all i know! and now i'm just like the bastards i've hated all me life! kill him! fire him! close them down! piss all over him! screw you, i can do whatever i want! i so much as blink and you're dead, pal! i'm in charge!! ...

constantine: 'scuse me, father. i'm always like this when i don't get me own way. — hellblazer #81, "rake at the gates of hell pt. 4"

babygirl you are just....so, sooooo offputting. (and grieving, and guilty, and terrified, but yeah: offputting.)

anyway, it's issues like this one that remind me why i kind of hesitate over some of the retcons in the recent spurrier runs, like the one with him now having opened dream's pouch of sand and stolen some before they even met. because like, it's easy enough to look at john constantine now — with 70 years of worst possible choices and unresolved trauma crystallizing underneath his skin to cover up all the soft, hopeful bits where he's used to getting hit — and assign him arbiter of ill intentions, magus of wasted potential, saint of shit choices, but man . . . he was new to this, once. he was still new to this 80 issues in.

80 issues in, and he's not used to losing friends yet; he even has time enough between catastrophes to grieve each individual one. still has enough left to live for at this stage to necessitate running and hiding, instead of bodily throwing himself at the problem like he learns to later, or sitting apathetically by to do nothing except smoke and watch the world fall apart when he finally gives up. fuck, he still apologizes.

and you're telling me this guy, this soppy wet cat motherfucker hiding from the devil in a church basement, so guilty over not knowing what happened to the guy that he paid people (paid chas, so chas could pay people) to attack that the bottle he's holding in this scene isn't even his second or third........this guy's past, more innocent self lied right to the face of DREAM OF THE ENDLESS and got away with it?

hm. i just don't know about all that.

[eliashirsch]

All I wanted was to write fluff and humor...

The angst got to me...

[girl4music]

Healthy codependency.

That’s a really good way of putting it.

I often talk about how codependency depicted in this show is bad or negative surrounding the characters of Willow, Riley and even Xander. But codependency in itself is not bad or negative. There is heathy versions just as there are unhealthy versions. And yes, despite how much I can’t stand the way the Scoobies treat Buffy sometimes, she’s definitely better off with them in her life than without them. And vice versa of course.

The main problem I have with Season 7 is really how they don’t consider this even half as much as they used to even though it’s the season where they need to work as a team the most. I mean the ‘father figure’ starts to act like your average Council Watcher again and a lot is taken away from Buffy and Giles’ dynamic because of it. The intelligent nerdy girl and best friend is suffering with her own self-control issues and therefore can’t be as useful as she probably wants to be to the Slayer. Plus their relationship is in shambles following the events of Season 6 and doesn’t get properly reconciled. It’s sort of just skimmed over as a “necessary” requirement to the final plot. And as for Xander… well… perpetual victim mode is just something that never really seems to change for him and as for how that informs his relationship with Buffy… well, let’s just say he deserved to say what he did in ‘Empty Places’ as much as I hate that episode.

I don’t know. They’re all just sort of ‘Scooby Gang but less’ in this final season. They’re so distant and empty. It’s not enjoyable to watch. It’s frustrating because everything just feels forced rather than natural. The organically built significant character interaction just isn’t there between really any of the main characters and because they bring in a load of other characters (the potentials) that may be the focus of the season but don’t really get proper development either, it all plays out like one big chaotic mess. But not like the way it does with Season 6 - which the point is for it to play out like one big chaotic mess for the sake of the main character’s representation and development (both negative and positive). In other words: it feels unintentional and therefore unnecessary. Like the writers didn’t know what they wanted to do but because it was the season to end off the entire show, just did what they thought might be entertaining and compelling but, to me, ended up being anything but.

Yeah, Buffy is one of the greatest superheroines ever. But only when they they knew what they were doing. And I’m not convinced they always did. Still, it’s a hell of a lot better than what we get today with female superheroines - which as you’ve pointed out - may as well be cardboard cut outs given the lack of emotional vulnerability they display on screen.

You’ve got to hand it to Gellar - she definitely knew how to portray a very relatable and human superheroine. And you can see how she was stronger for it, not weaker. That is indeed the problem with depiction of “feminism” on TV today. Which is why I just turn it off. It is not inspiring or motivating to watch. It’s fucking insulting. Well-written characters have layers… depth… nuance. They fluctuate because real people fluctuate. They’re flawed because real people are flawed. Females characters in particular get shafted of all of this characterisation because it’s “feminism” written by people who don’t know or understand how important keeping the balance is.

Sure most of it is because of how she’s written. But Gellar understood the assignment. I just wish they ended the show the way they began it. As a family. You have the parallel shots of Buffy, Willow and Xander walking off side by side together and Giles staying behind and making a witty comment about how “the Earth is doomed” with this rag-tag lot in ‘The Harvest’ and ‘Chosen’ which is meant to be as a tribute to how far they’ve come but that they’re still the same as they always were and it just doesn’t land in the same way because of how much they’re NOT “together” in it. Other people might think that that’s a satisfying conclusion to a wonderful character-driven saga but I don’t feel it because it’s contrived. I like the idea. I like the message. I just don’t like the execution of it all.

[mdemn]

i am going to start a multi-chapter project and post it to ao3 so you all know i have started it and that means i can’t abandon it ok . this means you are more than welcomed (encouraged even) to publicly shame me if i don’t post in it often enough. going to post the first part soon!!

[oceanghoulart]

Some color studies from the last of us cause I love him so much I love them all so much

[almayuu1]

Oc Sarah’s room

[ac1nums-moved]

what if sarah had a podcast about supernatural and is just like shane when she visit hanted house or follow hunters around sarah vc: we better stock up on some knowledge here, otherwise, we're going to get murdered by ghosts.

[benbraeden]

tag drop ft. people.

[metalheadkells]

so. any of yall watch succession 🙃

[writingmylifesstory]

Crescent City

[firelise]

A lot of white people recommend reading books by non-white/marginalized authors exclusively as a way of "building empathy" for other cultures as if empathy is like a vitamin deficiency or a fad diet and I just want yall to know you can just read books because they are good and you enjoy them.

I, a caribbean-american person, read books from other cultures all the time and never once does "building empathy" or checking a marginalized group off a list cross my mind. Be normal. Enjoy stories because they are good.

[angstandhappiness]

INTERESTING

what the fuck was wrong with people that Labyrinth was originally a flop. How could they take any aspect of it so for granted. How could they fucking do that to Jim Henson. Newspapers were calling it boring and even ugly. I want to go back in time and beat their asses.

[girl4music]

I love that you used her speech in 'Restless' for this character study video. I know a lot of people don't really understand what she's saying in that scene. But the way I interpret it is that it is an identification and declaration of her humanity (or her queerness, if you want to involve the gay allegory. I don't but I know some Buffyverse meta writers/analysts that do).

"I walk, I talk, I shop, I sneeze." = I may possess animal instinct like any other animal does but I am not a barbarian.

"I'm going to be a fireman when the floods roll back." = I am a hero when it is most needed and when I am under pressure.

"There's trees in the desert since you moved out" = everything moves, has it's place in time and nothing is permanent.

"And I don't sleep on a bed of bones" = not everything I do amounts to destruction and decay because this is not all I am.

In other words: she's answering Sineya's question in an affirmation of her own personhood. Something Sineya doesn't and never had.

She's saying "I am not a killer. I am a human being that has to do what they have to do when they have to do it and though I may not have fully accepted my calling yet, I at least acknowledge that it is part of me without letting it define my entire nature and identity like you did. "

It's an incredibly powerful and insightful speech when you can decode the visual and experiential symbolism of it. The profound poetry. She is not alone in a desert of her own making like Sineya is. See the whole point is that the SLAYER has no choice. Slaying is chosen for them. But Buffy creates the choice. And Sineya is jealous of that. It's quite horrific actually because it is abject racism. But then that's just the honesty of it really. Of course it would be racist to depict an African tribal woman as nothing but a mute murderer in a time and place where powerful sharmanic men made the FIRST SLAYER out of a literal demon and a white American woman has her psyche intact enough to socialise with other people - can even be like other people. None of this insight hits you until you have seen the ENTIRE BUFFYVERSE. All of it informs 'Restless" and showcases just how, probably unintentionally, significant and exceptional of an episode of TV art/entertainment it actually is and why I get so disappointed when YouTube reactors have such a negative reaction to it. I mean I get it, I get that they don't quite understand it. I mean you really can't on a first watch, I'll admit. But it still bruises the ego a little bit. I'm only human after all. Just like Buffy. 😆

[ycungmagick]

Side Muse: Sarah Richards!

[icurushasfallen]

The Audience

𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼

The room grew bright again as the projector turned off, the movie theater became loud again as people shuffled out. The audience. Wade looked blankly at a corner of the room, the wall where all the people who watched him perform had left.

Then the fading feeling set in. A small draw that had his brain tugging at something bigger than himself. It was so infinite and yet so nothing at the same time.

They were gone now. The audience. The only thing left was the Wade alone in his ‘kitchen’. For him, it was twelve at night. For others, the real people-their time was vast and different. They were in the real world. He was not.

He stared outside the window. The screen. The infinite darkness that was the empty theater. An empty living room most likely now that he was being streamed. A bedroom, a hallway; somewhere propped up on a phone or tablet or computer.

Distantly, he was aware that he still being watched by an audience, somewhere he was streaming and being enjoyed on some screen. But him in his present body wasn’t.

He wasn’t being watched, maybe written in a fanfiction. But things seemed too bleak to be teenage smut.

Wade wasn’t really looking out the window. He was looking out at them. The audience. As infinite as they were. Looking back at them with unfocused eyes through every lens. The ones watching, reading, drawing. All of them.

Was his body his own? Or an infinite vessel to be enjoyed. Was his comic self a separate entity or was he one conscious spread across media. Like a saltshaker spilling its contents, each gain of salt holding a different version of itself, but still the same at its core.

The audience wad entertained. Marvel had its money. And now the story was closed. To be remade and revived and revised. To be replaced, undated until he was used again.

“God. What am I doing?” He thought to himself. What was he doing? Was he acting by his own will. Or was he acting out his script that had been edited many times before.

The movie was done. He created and ended the conflict. The plot was moved and everything that needed to happen did. How dreadfully boring.

His ‘life’ was a never ending movie. A twisting turning ever-bending spectacle. The characters were everyone he knew. They all played their roles. Wether their actions were written or were their free will he couldn’t decide. They were cogs, spun by forces bigger than them. Something which he couldn’t understand.

“What’s wrong Wade?” Logan had somehow managed to sneak up on him. Who knows how long he was there?

“Nothing. Just thinking. I’m tired after everything.” He mumbled. The audience wasn’t here, there was no need to be cheerful.

Logan was gonna say something, but Wade immediately whipped around and smiled.

“Let’s go to bed, Peanut!” He quipped, easier to pretend to his over dramatic self than what he truly was. If Logan noticed he didn’t show it.

The movie was over. He ran the race, he said his lines. They’ll put his image on shirts and merch and giant signs a thousand feet tall.

The chatter stoped.

The crowd departed.

The music stoped.

A presence he’d known ever since his creation.

It was over and he could rest.

“This is the end of the post, readers. Time to go reader something better.” He muttered, staring at you.

𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼𓁼

@atimesfeeler (a small ficlet based of your idea) @ramblingautisticman @icarusredwings @twilightkitkat

Do you guys think that after the Deadpool movies end, and the curtain closes, and the camera is no longer on him- do you think Wade talks as much?

Do you think that maybe it feels like walking off a full stage to find yourself in your dressing room alone, staring at the mirror?

We always see him talking but he knows about us watching. He is acutely aware he has an audience. Do you think he knows when the audience is gone and the big unseeing eyeball shifts away to find entertainment elsewhere?

I’m not saying he’s normal when our backs or turned, or he’s not himself, but maybe the performance turns off. Maybe it sorta takes Logan by surprise when Wade is quiet for the first time since he met him by his own violation, thinking about being perceived always, or existing in countless different versions of shows, comics, universes.

What do you think he does when he knows he’s not being watched? Maybe he does nothing different, but imagine it would be hard to ignore.

He hit the camera in the D&W and grabbed the mic. He always knows where the fourth wall is. When there is no fanfic or movie or comic or show, do you think he sees the fourth wall anyway? Or is it kinda like seeing something in your peripheral?

I’m probably gonna write a fic about this all one day.