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mosh-4 · 5 years ago

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when you were sleeping

harry styles imagine

when you were sleeping - your family has a crisis when he’s away.

warning: angst. suicide

you and Harry were currently braving a long distance relationship. it was difficult, but you both managed. you loved him, but you were also a very independent person. you didn’t need to be constantly surrounded by him to know that he loved you. you were on your last year of college, and he was in Tokyo writing music. you both had goals and were striving for them together.

from where you lived, Tokyo was 14 hours ahead. that meant you could only talk to Harry from 6 pm to 2 am your time, which would be 8 am to 4 pm his time. you only could talk to him within those 8 hours since you both had to sleep at some point and he also had to write music. it got to be frustrating, but you made it work.

you received your daily call from Harry when you were laying in bed. it was midnight where you were, 2 pm where he was. you decided to come home to visit your family since your university was having a 4 day weekend. you had thursday and friday off going into the weekend. it was nice. you got to see your dogs and eat home cooked meals.

“i think ‘m gonna have a late night tonight,” Harry muttered through the phone.

“oh yeah,” you said brushing a hand through your almost dry hair.

“yeah,” he said. “some of the guys want to go out tonight.”

you laugh. “sounds fun.” you roll onto your stomach. “when can i expect you to be awake?”

he laughed. Harry was big on getting up early. most days he got up at 8 am, sometimes 9 am if he was pushing it, but on mornings after nights he stayed out late, he tended to get up from 10 am to 11 am, if it was really late, he even slept until noon.

“i don’t want to stay out past 3 so hopefully no later than 10.”

you laugh. “okay, you goof. text me when you go to sleep so i know you’re still alive.”

“will do. how did your test go?” he asked changing the subject.

“it was good…” you continued to tell him about how well you did, and you began to talk about the production you were currently working on at school.

on thursday at 1:43 pm, you received a text.

harry: night night lovie

you laughed to yourself in the kitchen as you made yourself a cup of tea. your boyfriend was a goof. it was 3:43 am his time. you knew he wouldn’t be awake until at least noon his time. it wasn’t so horrible for him to sleep in. he got a lot of writing done this week. you remember him telling you about one of the songs he was working on and how it was almost complete.

you finished making yourself a cup of tea and took a seat on the couch with your two dogs putting on a movie you found on tv.

it was 5:36 pm. you had just gotten home from visiting with some of your friends from high school who were home on an early fall break. you were soaking wet from the rain. you were still home alone. your parents were at your brother’s teacher night at school, and your brother was at his football practice. you let the dogs out and gave them their dinner.

you decided to call your cousin, Lauren, to check in on her. she was the same age as your brother, and you three were extremely close along with your other cousin Collin, who was three years older than you.

when she answered the phone, your whole world came crashing down.

“hey,” you chirped into the phone before you could hear her cry.

in a shaky voice, she said, “(y/n).” she let out a few quick sobs before she finally spoke again. “Collin killed himself.”

you stood frozen in the doorway of your kitchen. “what?”

“Collin killed himself, i found him in his closet, and i screamed for my mom, and then i fell down the stairs and i scared the dogs, and Collin’s dead.”

your voice was caught in your throat. you knew Collin was suffering from depression, and it hadn’t been good for a while. you didn’t know it was this bad. you finally spoke. “oh baby,” you said gently. she cried harder. “do you want me to come there? do you need me to come to you?”

“no,” she said. “my mom has to call 911. i have to call my brothers. i have to go, (y/n), i have to go.”

with that, she hung up the phone quickly. you stood in your kitchen. numb. you felt incredibly numb. you had to do something. he couldn’t be dead. he wasn’t. this wasn’t real. everything’s fine. you’re crying now. when did you start crying? you had to call your mom. you had to tell them. oh god. your brother. he and Collin were best friends. they were so close despite their difference in age. how were you going to tell him.

you rung your mom’s phone. no answer. you rung your dad’s phone. no answer. they were probably meeting with a teacher. you would have to wait.

you heard the garage door open. the dogs went crazy as your brother came into the kitchen with his football bag and backpack in arms.

“hey,” he called to you while petting the dogs.

you cleared your throat. “Tom,” you took a breath to keep yourself from crying. he looked up at you as he put his bags on the floor by the kitchen table. “Tom, Collin killed himself.”

“what?” your brother peered up at you confused.

“Collin killed himself.” you said with tears in your eyes.

he sat himself in a chair at the kitchen table with his head hanging. you wrapped your arms around him and cried with him.

“can i use your phone to call mom and dad?”

he nodded and placed his phone on the table.

it was 6:27 pm. you were driving to your cousin’s house after you called her to tell her your parents were on their way there. she told you to come too.

when you arrived at their house, a police car was placed outside in front. you saw your oldest cousin’s husband standing outside handing his baby to his parents to take for the night. he caught you and Tom before you could go into the house. he pulled you both into a hug.

“just warning you, it’s not easy in there. you can’t see him. he’s still upstairs. they have the room taped off.”

he led you both inside to where everyone was gathered. the house was dark. your family was sitting in a dark room crying. you pulled your aunt into a hug as you both cried in each other’s arms. she let go of you and pointed a shaky finger to Lauren, who was curled up on a couch crying.

“she needs you. go to your buddy.”

you and Tom collapsed onto the couch with her and sandwiched her into a hug. all three of you sobbed into each other’s arms.

later that night, you cried with your family and listened to your aunt and cousins talk about how bad his depression was. you stood with your cousins when they brought him downstairs on a stretcher. you watched as your aunt and dad said their goodbyes to him. after his dad left, your dad was the closest thing he had to a father, and Collin was the only one who could make your dad laugh like a little kid. your mom held you as your cried. you watched as they placed him into the ambulance and took him away.

10:14 pm. 1 missed call from Harry Styles.

1 message:

harry: hi lovie, i survived the night

you left him on read.

the next morning, your eyes were swollen and raw. you woke up a little after 9:30. you saw another message from Harry at 11:26 pm.

harry: goodnight love. i’ll call you again tomorrow.

you left him on read again. you don’t mean to be a bitch. you’re still processing.

Harry noticed you left him on read again. you normally would respond fairly quickly, and you never went to bed before midnight. he found your lack of response odd. it was 11:45 pm his time. he decided to catch at least a few hours of sleep and to call you at 6 am, which would be 4 pm your time.

he woke up at 6:12 am. he rubbed his sleepy eyes before grabbing a drink. he cleared his throat, and he picked up his phone.

it was 4:23 pm. you were sitting on the floor of your grandparents living room. your cousins were surrounding you as the adults sat in the kitchen. you were playing with your oldest cousin’s 1 and a half year old daughter. she was the only thing that kept your spirits up.

your phone began to ring. Harry’s contact picture appeared on your screen. you watched your phone as it rang. your eyes began to cloud with tears.

“answer it,” Lauren said as she caught her niece in her arms, who was running back and forth between her and her sister tackling everyone in hugs. she was so young yet she understood that we were sad and needed comfort.

you nodded to her. clearing your throat and sliding to answer the phone, you walk outside to sit on the front porch.

“hey lovie.”

“hi haz,” you let out in a raspy voice. it had been a while since you had actually spoken.

Harry could tell you had been crying. your raspy voice was a telling sign.

“hey, what’s wrong? are you okay?” Harry’s eyebrows were furrowed together as he heard her shaky breath through the phone.

“Harry, my cousin killed himself last night.” you blink back tears as you drop your head into your hand.

“oh love,” he said gently. “i can’t imagine how you feel right now.” he didn’t know what to say. who was it? which one?, he thought to himself.

“it’s okay, haz. i’m sorry i ignored you. i just didn’t know what to say-”

“no, no. it’s okay. i understand. you don’t need to apologize.” he took a breath to calm his voice. what he would give to be there right now for her. to hold her as she cried. he felt horrible that he wasn’t there. “do you want me to come home?”

“no. that’s okay.” you said. he felt like she had punched him in the gut. she doesn’t want me there, he thought. “i know you’re busy and working right now. you don’t need to come home for this. i’ll be okay.”

you lied. you wanted him there. you wanted him to hold you and to rub your back as you cried. but, you know his work is important. so you lied. you told him you were gonna be fine. you were most definitely not fine. you had a hole in your heart. someone so loved and brilliantly smart and witty who could make the whole room smile was gone, and you were not okay with that.

“you’re important too,” harry started. he wasn’t going to let her push him away. “i know you like to be an independent person, and you don’t like to depend on people, but you can depend on me. i want to be there for you. it hurts me that i can’t be there for your right now. i love you so much, and i wish i could take the pain away for you. can i be there for you? can i come home to you?”

you burst into tears. you had tried so hard to hold them in. “yeah. okay,” you let out in a shaky voice. you couldn’t see anymore. your eyes were blurred by the tears. “come home to me.”

“okay. i’m coming home to you. ‘m gonna book a flight, and ‘ll text you when i find out when i land.”

“mkay,” you said your voice thick from the tears.

Harry landed at 8 am on saturday morning. you picked him up at the airport, and silently waited at the baggage claim for his luggage holding his hand. you had been quiet since he arrived. you were scared that you would burst into tears if you said anything.

you broke down when you got to your car. he held you in the parking lot of the airport as you sobbed into his chest. he took your keys and drove you home.

later saturday afternoon, you, your family, and Harry were at your aunt’s house. you were sitting with your mom, aunt, Lauren, and her older sister. you were putting together a photo board and were looking through pictures of Collin. you reminisced with Lauren about funny moments with him on your numerous family vacations.

your dad and brother were running around town to each department store to find green ties for each of the men in your family. Collin’s favorite basketball team was the Boston Celtics. his signature look was khaki shorts with a Celtics jersey or some sort of Celtics apparel. he wore mostly green. the men were wearing green ties as a tribute to him.

Harry was in the kitchen unboxing pizzas he ordered for everyone. he couldn’t really do much so he made himself useful by getting everyone food. you were extremely grateful for him.

the funeral was monday. you had to get up early to drive to the service. you were sitting at the vanity table in your room doing your makeup while Harry stood in front of your mirror putting on his cuff-links. he was wearing a simple black suit. his tie was hanging untied around his neck. you put the finishing touch on your hair and makeup and moved onto putting on your earrings.

your dad knocked on your bedroom door just as Harry was about to tie his tie. you both looked up at your dad.

“i-uh,” he started to say looking from you to Harry. “i have an extra green tie.” he looked down to the tie in his hands before reaching it out to Harry. “would you wear this today?”

Harry gently took the tie from your dad’s hands. your eyes welled with tears. Harry looked up from the tie and into your dad’s eyes, which were red from crying.

“i would be honored.” Harry spoke removing his tie to replace it with the green one. he tied it swiftly in the mirror before turning back to your father.

your dad nodded in approval, not saying much. it warmed your heart just as it broke it. that had meant a lot to your dad. he had allowed Harry to take part in this extremely difficult day, not as just a boyfriend of his daughter, but as a member of your family.

his voice broke you out of your thoughts. “we are leaving in 10.”

the funeral was a blur. Tom and your cousins were the pallbearers. Harry stood by your side the whole time. his arm around you or his hand holding yours. it was a difficult day. your makeup was trashed. your eyes were red and raw. Harry got you some food at the luncheon afterwards. he made you eat a few bites every now and then.

when you got home, you just wanted to crawl in bed and sleep. he helped you take your dress and jewelry off. you put on your comfy clothes while he grabbed you a makeup remover wipe, and he helped you take your makeup off. he let you climb in bed with the shade over your window drawn down darkening your room. he got out of his suit and changed into his comfy clothes before crawling into bed next to you.

you cried in his arms, and you were so grateful for him being there.

hope you enjoyed. i know this was a bit darker. it was inspired by my cousin who passed in october. - mosh

#harrystyles #harry styles imagine #harry styles #harry styles x reader #harry styles x y/n #harry styles imagines #harry styles angst

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inthisroomofsilence · 4 years ago

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Another round of Pauley Perrette’s bullshit

All tweets from July 21st 2020!

So, Pauley read an article about the abuse by a show runner on a different CBS show. Pauley mentions that she knew of this guy’s abuse for a long time but did nothing even though some of her closest friends works on that show. Pauley remained silent about it UNTIL someone else fought the guy. And then she has the gall to expect rewards for knowing of this show runner’s behavior and doing nothing.

She remained silent over actual abuse but screams and shouts over alleged abuse in form of physical and psychological abuse.

2018: in secret DMs to fans she called Harmon a psychopath, bully & narcisst

2019: she openly accuses Harmon of physical assaults, punching & shoving her around, bodychecking her

2020: Add to that she also now claims Harmon is a misogynist, homophobe and racist

So far, she could NOT prove her allegations. Not a single one. So, the question is what more could she accuse Harmon off next year? There’s a pattern. With every year she adds more accusations towards him.

Despite: Knowing that Harmon is friends with people of color and gay couples in real life. Despite having shown support towards a former make-up artist from NCIS when she was fighting breast cancer. He collected donations, doubled it and brought it to her in person. Someone else made that public, not Harmon.

Let’s move on: She is seeking symphathy by bringing her dead mother into this. Her mother died when Pauley was a child, not an adult trying to make a career in Hollywood.

Also, she claimed that she hadn’t paid attention to the abuse happening since day one. So, she really isn’t the humanitarian she wants the world to believe she is when she willingly and happily ignores bullying and so on as long she gets lots of money and publicity.

And another thing: This is the woman who cheered her now ex-boyfriend Thomas Arklie on when he called a straight man a “faggot”. So much for supporting the LGBTQ campaign.

Now, several fans with accounts on Twitter, Tumblr and even Instagram have made it public that a great bunch of crew members has reached out to them with proof of Pauley’s wrong doings and bad behavior on set. She was caught on camera verbally and from what I understand, also physically attacking members of the crew and cast. Does that sound like the cast and crew are supporting her? Secretly or not? Personally, I haven’t seen videos or photos but I’ve been chatting with one member of the crew who’s very happy to be rid of the “entitled, selfish liar”. It speaks volumes about how people that spend working with her for over 10 years view her behavior. I have heard stories of how she refused to work with certain guest stars, how she threw tantrums when she didn’t get her wishes. I could go on. I don’t need to see any videos. I’ve seen enough of her lies, accusations and the damage those caused to the individuals she has targeted in the past.

Let’s not forget: Harmon and Cote de Pablo were both being trashed by her in public. The private DMs about her thoughts of Cote had been released. Part of me hopes that someone soon will leak the other DMs she wrote to fans talking badly of Sasha Alexander, Lauren Holly, Jennifer Esposito, Maria Bello, Emily Wickersham and Diona Reasonover. Or the ones of her rather digusting thoughts of David McCallum, Michael Weatherly, Sean Murray, Brian Dietzen, Rocky Carroll, Duane Henry and Wilmer Valderrama and even Donald Bellisario.

You see, she has trashed all of them, in private or in public. Pauley Perrette thinks everyone should believe her. Everyone questioning her, seriously very contradicting, accusations is called a “troll” or “hater”.

But why should we believe her words and not doubt them? Because she is white? Because she is a woman? Because she is a white woman? That’s right. We are not to demand any sort of proof for her allegations, past, present and future. She won’t stop now. Or at some point. For as long as she has those brainless and mindless fans believing every single one of her sob or hero stories, she won’t stop. More is to come.

And the absolute nerve of her to state that she had to use her own money to pay for lawyers is astonishing. It really is. All over the world people fear losing their jobs because of the pandemic, people are struggling to survive in every aspect of their daily lives: monetary and healthwise. For someone with millions of $$$ in her account, she comes across as a whiny and uncaring bitch.

And it doesn’t matter if her entitlement and need to make everything about herself take away the spotlight and attention from REAL abuse and tragedies as long as it brings her the attention she craves.

Last but not least, she is once again throwing shade at the entire cast and crew of NCIS whilst claiming she wants to protect them. Weird, isn’t it? And then she has to drag people into this that weren’t around, that only know one side of the story. Attention seeking behavior right in front of our eyes.

And never ever forget that she was/is close friends with Les Moonves and has Harvey Weinstein’s fixers on her payroll. Remember that she had no problem to throw Eliza Dushku under the bus because Pauley, at least for the public pretends to, like the guy.

And in a different recent tweet of hers she claimed herself to have been a model since the age of 2... well, didn’t she always say that she never intended to become famous? That she kind of accidently stumbled into acting? Which one is it? Like, she hates all food and that humans need it to live and in the next week food is yummy and she only hates some foods, not all.

So, I will say it loudy: I stand with every single man she has accused in the past. I stand with every single woman she has accused in the past. I stand with the cast and crew of NCIS who had to deal with her bad behavior for 15 years because she had the ear of Moonves.

#Pauley Perrette #NCIS #NCIS Cast #Mark Harmon #Cote de Pablo

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lovelylogans · 4 years ago

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Opinion on lorelai gilmore? And also on lauren Graham?

i actually don’t know a ton about lauren graham outside of gilmore girls! i know she’s doing “zoey’s extraordinary playlist” now and i think she was in parenthood before that? so, ya know! seems like she’s doing good!

lorelai gilmore, on the other hand, i have A LOT more opinions about lorelai. the basis is this: i think she’s a very unique, well-crafted, and enjoyable character to watch; she obviously has her flaws and her bad moments that make me want to reach through the screen to yell at her, but on the whole i find her as the main character compelling!

so after i say all THAT i’m gonna get into her flaws lol

lorelai is this very unique blend of a character who was forced to grow up too fast and yet still immature; i think some of that can be found through her clothes and interests, esp in season 1 (the b-52s shirt, for instance, and all of her music shirts that go back to musicians of her teen years, her fuzzy cat clock that purrs as an alarm, the various eccentric decor items that you wouldn’t typically find in An Adult™ house) and so i do think that affects her parenting of rory; while the “best friend” effort to your kid can be a good one (my mom, for example, was fairly similar in that we are friends) she also didn’t pull out the mom card very much outside of insisting that rory go to chilton in the pilot.

for example, i think that lorelai really should have pulled mom card at rory for her Thing with dean at the end of season four outside of sending rory to emily to go to europe (which, now i think on it, could be early foreshadowing for the yacht situation) like. i get it. you want to be there as a supportive ear for your kid. however. she knowingly slept with a married man. that is something you sit her down and talk to her about, which you can do supportively—ask her if she wants someone else to talk to in form of therapy, for example. help her walk through if she really wants to do this, help her figure out how to break up with him.

(i do think rory had a point in pointing out that she had slept with christopher when he was engaged to someone else, and lorelai goes “oh, i set a bad example for you ONE TIME???” ma’am. yes. literally yes. that was a huge event in your lives—you and rory were fully expecting for christopher to be back in your lives only for him to double back on it? that hurt her. that clearly had an effect on her.)

on a similar note, though, i find it interesting that she pulled mom card on jess, insisting he was a bad kid and all trouble when he is, one, the nephew of a very close friend of hers, two, clearly going through some shit, and three, literally just drew a chalk outline in front of doose’s? and yet she keeps telling rory to stay away from him? i think that the writers really could have shown some parallels through jess and lorelai that they just didn’t invest enough time into; showcasing lorelai’s distrust, for example, because jess reminds her of herself and christopher through a parallel would have gone a long way in explaining that.

another thing lorelai should have pulled mom card for: the yacht situation. to me it is wildly out of character that lorelai refuses to speak to rory once she decides to take a break from yale. lorelai did not graduate from high school. she has prioritized rory’s education for rory’s entire life. rory has been an enthusiastic straight-a student, excepting the period of time where she was adjusting to chilton’s standards. it really should have tipped off to lorelai that something is wrong with my daughter. she’s repeating her mom’s mistake, in some ways; emily refused to hear of lorelai stepping outside of her plans for lorelai’s life, and in a lot of ways lorelai does the same thing. which is ironic, considering so much of her parenting is her wanting to do the opposite of what emily did.

another flaw of hers that people talk about is her being self-centered, which on one level i get (sookie being so firmly relegated to Sidekick for example) but on another, it’s a sitcom. she’s the main character. things revolve around her. i think that there definitely are times where lorelai is selfish and not quite as great a friend/girlfriend as she could have been, though—sleeping with christopher at her parents’ house instead of comforting her child, during “christopher returns,” and also in that same episode ditching luke and their painting plans?—so i agree with that critique on some level.

i think lorelai gets (a bit unfairly) ragged on a lot for her relationship with emily, and people saying that lorelai was overreacting to how the friday night dinners were in exchange for chilton; however, financial abuse is a very real thing, and verbal and emotional abuse are also very real. it’s clear that their relationship is unhealthy—i think lorelai is valid in her upset with emily a lot of the time. however, i do think that lorelai is also unfair to emily a lot. so. that relationship is so nuanced and interesting, tho, so

so, like, overall, lorelai definitely has flaws—i haven’t even gotten into her as a romantic partner—but again, i do really like her character. she’s vivacious and funny and independent and unafraid to speak her mind. flaws make a character interesting—they also provide more to talk about, so. ergo why i’ve talked about her flaws, lol

#not ts #gilmore girls #Anonymous #ask

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archivingspn · 4 years ago

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Variety “‘Supernatural’ at 200: The Road So Far, An Oral History”

(...) Eric Kripke (Creator): For me, the core notion behind “Supernatural” was to make a series about urban legends. I think they’re this incredibly rich mythology about the United States, and no one had really tapped into that, so when I started as a writer, one of the first ideas I ever pitched was an urban legend show.

A couple years later I tried to pitch, basically, a “Scooby Doo” rip off of a bunch of kids travelling in a van dealing with these urban legends. It was an idea that I never let go of and kept throwing there every couple years. Finally I had a deal with Warner Bros. and that incarnation was a reporter. Frankly, it was a rip off of “Nightstalker,” but I really fleshed it out and it had mythology.

I took it to Susan Rovner and Len Goldstein at the studio and they said, “We love the idea of doing a horror show,” which no one was really doing on TV at that time, “but we’re not into the reporter, that feels really tired. So no thanks and let’s get another angle.”

So in this moment, when they were basically passing on my idea, as you often do in these kinds of rooms, you start tap dancing. And I said, “forget the reporter, we should do this show as ‘Route 66,’ two cool guys in a classic car cruising the country, chasing down these urban legends,” and literally right on the spot I said “and they’re brothers,” because it popped in my head. “And they’re dealing with their family stuff and they’re fighting evil.” You just start making it up as you go. They were like, “Brothers, wow, that’s a relationship we haven’t seen on TV before.” And from there, “Supernatural” was born… out of a piece of improvisation.

Peter Roth (President, Warner Bros. Television): Eric [had] been with us since about 2002. Sometime in 2004, he came to us with this idea… this extraordinary road show about these two brothers, in which they would be living all of the great urban and rural myths that [we’re all] exposed to as kids. It was a very commercial idea, emotionally driven, which was what I was most concerned about: who are the characters? Why do I relate to them? Why are they worth my while to watch? And once we cast Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, along with Eric’s great idea, along with the script, along with David Nutter, our director on the pilot, the combination of those factors is what made me so excited and I frankly knew, from the moment I saw this pilot, that it was a winner. There wasn’t a person who I work with who didn’t feel the same way. It was a real strong story of young adult siblings that resonated perfectly with The WB audience.

Kripke: When we were casting, you see a lot of people. We hadn’t found our Sam and Dean. David Nutter suggested Jensen because we knew him from “Smallville.” We met with him to play Sam, and we fell in love with [him]. And then Jared came in, and he was a really great Sam too. Looking back, we were such idiots to not see it… We had two great Sams and no Dean and you think it would be obvious to put one into the other role, but it was not obvious. So we [went] to Peter Roth and we said, “We’re not sure what to do,” and Peter was like, “why don’t you make Jensen Dean?” We all looked at each other like, “we’re idiots, of course.” It’s so difficult to find one actor who is charismatic enough to be a breakout character and to support a show. So to find two of them, where there’s only two leads… I didn’t realize what a miracle it was at the time. It’s a miracle. (...) Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester): It was just immediate chemistry. There was an ease to it. There was a familiarity to it. Once we got into it with each other, it just fell in place and it came… not easy, but definitely a little easier than my experiences in the past. I think the importance of that bond and that relationship was verbalized by Kripke when he sat us down and said, “this begins and ends with you,” and not only how we relate to each other on screen, but also off screen. There was an importance stamped into [that bond] very early on. (...) Padalecki: (...) It was definitely a huge learning process, not only for myself, learning the character of Sam Winchester, but I think we didn’t have a grasp on what we were doing. The original tag line was monster of the week, like “X-files” meets “The Twilight Zone.” And we had these very famous urban legends about Bloody Mary or the Hookman, but ultimately you’re going to run out of those.

Singer: Eric talked about the five-season plan… I don’t know if he secretly had that in mind and was just not sharing it, but initially Eric wanted campfire stories. And the mythology really started to evolve in the first year. We didn’t exactly know where we wanted to go, and I don’t even think Eric knew exactly where he wanted to go

Kripke: If I’ve said in the past that I had this five year plan from the beginning, I was lying. I always knew what that particular season was going to be; “by midseason I want to be here, by the end of the season I want to be there.” And then I always had a rough sketch what the season after that would be. I will say I knew that the show was going to come down to evil Sam versus good Dean and the fate of the world was going to hang in the balance — that was baked into the pilot. I wanted to build it to something that felt conclusive because I didn’t want these mysteries and mythologies to stretch on forever.

Sera Gamble (writer, executive producer): We were realizing the thing that we most enjoyed when we were watching cuts of the show was the chemistry between the brothers, and that the mythology we were constructing for the season was really a family story about two young men and their father, and this family legacy that they’re trying to deal with. That was the heart of the show, and if we paid attention to how each monster story resonated with the relationship between the brothers, then the show was always really interesting.

Padalecki: It was right around the episode “Faith” where the writers realized this show isn’t just about what kind of monsters we can kill but what the brothers can go through together. And I think luckily we stuck with that theme on through the end [of season one], where we reintroduced our father into the storyline. And we get some sense of what the father is willing to do for the sons and what the sons are willing to do for each other. And so it became this story about sacrifice and loyalty and family and friendship [within] this medium of the supernatural and ghosts and ghouls.

Gamble: It’s not like we sat down to write “Faith” and we said, “we’re going to write the game changer.” We just wanted to find a really human, emotional way into a story about faith healing. We had these different elements of the reapers that we wanted to bring into the show and the phenomena of faith healers in the history of America, and it ended up being a story that was really personal and kind of philosophical… From that point forward, everyone was hungry to do more stories that had an aspect of the personal and the metaphysical. (...) Singer: Eric’s phrase was “smoke them if you got them,” where we would just try to tell the best stories we could and be as provocative as we could. We felt that this had a long-term mythology, so ending with kind of a very dramatic cliffhanger just seemed the right thing for us and that all seemed to work out for us. (...) Padalecki: Season two is the season where we realize dying doesn’t mean you’re dead, beginning with Dean who died — so to speak — in the first episode, and culminating with Sam who died in the last episode. Unlike season one where we were figuring out what this show was about, who these characters were, season two we hit the ground running.

Ackles: The interesting thing that Kripke did with the first several seasons is he flipped character motivations from season to season. With the first season you had Dean as the motivating factor: he was really pushed by his father, dragging Sam along against his will. Then as Dad dies, the whole thing is flipped upside down. Now Dean is like, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” Dad was his motivating factor in life and [after] he lost him, it was a devastating blow and Dean just wanted to hang it up. And Sam was the one who was like, “no, we’re going to go find answers to this. I have to figure out how I play into this,” and Dean went along with him because he couldn’t let his little brother go it alone. (...) Gamble: It was really fun to kill Sam. You don’t very often get to kill the lead character. One of the really fun things about “Supernatural” is that you get to kill whoever you want, and it’s part of the evil genius of Eric Kripke. From pretty early on, he understood the power of doing the unexpected thing to the character the audience thinks is safe. He fought hard, and he was always someone who, in the room, would push us to not get precious with a character, to not try to save someone because we think they’re amazing. If we love them, we’ll bring them back in some other form. Because we had a plan to bring Sam back, we got to write the super-emotional scene with his brother that we knew that Jensen would knock out of the park, and both of them knocked it out of the park. (...) Singer: I think Bela didn’t quite turn out as good of a story driver as we might have wanted, although we loved Lauren — we thought she was terrific in the part. But we started pinning ourselves a little bit in the corner [with her as] Dean’s nemesis, like, “how often can she best Dean without assassinating our lead character?” If she would’ve been on three times a year, I think that character could’ve really served a purpose going forward. Ruby served a better purpose and that pushed the mythology into a different area. But we were a little flummoxed because you say, “what do we do? We can’t have two women just sitting in the back of the car with these guys.”

Gamble: I think Ruby in the long term was a more successful character than Bela, but we all really enjoyed creating Bela in the room, especially Ben Edlund, who wrote some really cool stuff for her. Not every peg will fit in every hole in the show. You don’t get Castiel one hundred percent of the time. If you follow any show for long enough, you’ll notice some places where they corrected the course, and we learned a lot from writing those two characters. I really like a lot of the stuff that we did with Ruby. It’s really cool to have a character that’s played by more than one actor, and it’s such an interesting characterization of a demon. (...) Kripke: I think the truncated season actually ended up helping the mythology. We were a little aimless as we had just lost the Yellow-Eyed Demon, the great big bad, and we hadn’t introduced a new big bad yet. Because we had less episodes, we had to focus quickly on what was really important: Dean’s deal with the demons and the fact that he had a ticking clock and that he was going to get dragged down to hell. (...) Kripke: If you had asked me in season one, were there going to be angels in Supernatural, I would have said “absolutely not, you’re fired.” Up to that point I always felt like I didn’t want any supernatural good guys in the show. If there was any force of good, it was going to be Sam and Dean, and they were going to be overwhelmed and outgunned. And as we were kicking towards the end of season three and we were doing lots of demon stories, I was worried that we were overplaying the demon stuff. But the idea that angels could be dicks and that they didn’t have to be this warm fuzzy helpful force, they could actually be a really interesting antagonist, once I kind of realized that, I said, “I’ve never seen that depiction of angels on television before.” It wasn’t just these two boys versus all these demons; it became Sam and Dean trapped in the middle of this massive war where you had two sides battling, and humanity, represented by the boys, were caught in the middle, so how do they play both sides against the other? It balanced the mythology in a way that I think made it much more satisfying. (...) Kripke: I’m the first to acknowledge that the idea really came from graphic novels. It came from “Preacher”; it came from “Hellblazer,” which has now become “Constantine,” which is why Castiel wears a trench coat. There’s a reason why Castiel looks exactly like Constantine — it’s because I ripped off Constantine. But I had no idea it was going to be a show at the time! It was funny, as I went into the writers’ room at the start of season four, having thought about it I said, “okay guys, this season we’re doing angels.” And they were like, “What? You asshole!” Because there were so many angel stories that were pitched earlier and I would literally shame them out of the room whenever anyone pitched an angel story, and now I’m presenting it as an entire mythology. But it worked out.

Padalecki: I think season four was really the turning point for the show, and really set the new parameters for what the show is still about to this day, most notably with the introduction of Castiel.

Ackles: This was when “Lost” was on the air, “Heroes” was on the air, these giant mega hits. I remember Eric taking issue with “Lost” because they kept asking questions and never really giving answers. He was against that method of storytelling and said, “no, I’m going to ask the question and I’m going to answer it. And maybe the audience doesn’t like the answer, but I’m most certainly not going to string them along just until I come up with some sort of a solution.” That’s one of the reasons why, from season to season, the bar just kept getting raised and the supernatural world kept getting bigger, almost to the point where it was incomprehensible to the Winchesters. I think we really saw that when the introduction of angels came into play, and then it became something far greater than things that go bump in the night… It was a leap of faith. I wouldn’t have had the confidence to do something like that, but I think it panned out. And now we have one of the most loved characters of the series still with us today.

Collins: I was supposed to be on for three episodes, and they said, “Oh, you might do five episodes,” so they added a couple more, and then they added three more after that… Then they signed me up as a series regular and they kept me on for two years, and then they said they were going to kill me and that we would never see me again in season 7. And then they changed their minds again… I was joining the show the beginning of Season 4. I kind of assumed that that was the tail end of the show. I think everybody really thought that the show was going to be over at the end of Season 5 at that point, which was Kripke’s original vision, so it’s very strange to still be here. We are obviously counting ourselves lucky that the show has run so long. (...) Kripke: The movie “Stranger than Fiction” had just come out. And so it started with a really innocent single episode pitch: what happens if Sam and Dean realize that they’re characters in a book; that they find a book that is detailing their entire lives? And then it would give us an opportunity to really poke fun at what we’re doing in “Supernatural,” and that was really fun for me. [Then] somebody said, “well what if he’s a prophet of the lord?” We jumped all over that idea and it really tied into this mythology. It was our first serious meta episode.

And once we introduced him, I thought it was so funny and smart, and you just want to start doing more of it. That’s how I think a lot of the insanity in “Supernatural” emerged. Because we couldn’t repeat ourselves with Chuck: if you’re going to see him again, it better be at a fan convention. Every single time, Bob would say to me, “this is the one where we’ve gone too far.” And then after one of them I responded, “don’t you see? We can never go too far, there is no too far.” (...) Kripke: The thing I remember most about that season was how exhausted I was going through it… I knew I wanted some sort of apocalyptic ending where evil Sam had to fight a good Dean. One of the things that was really hard about that season is, it’s one thing in season four when you’re promising the apocalypse: Is it going to happen, can the boys stop it? It’s a whole different matter when you’re saying in season five, “okay, the apocalypse is happening,” because you still are on a budget. There’s an incredible amount of off-camera, “oh no, there’s been an earthquake!” stuff on the news. It’s really difficult to mount something of that scope. (...) Ackles: To look at the five seasons, to step back and look at that all as one story… it was a massively grand finale and it was like Game Seven of the World Series, and I just don’t know how you can go on from that. I think Eric thought the same thing. He was like, “I’m throwing out my last pitch and I’m taking off into the sunset,” and that’s what he did, but it had become such a hit that the studio and the network were like, “no, guys, you have to keep going.” (...) Gamble: We thought season five would be the last season. But pretty early into [it], Eric came to me and said “signs are pointing toward a season six,” and he was ready to move on and asked me to step in. And he came to me really early because there was a tremendous amount of learning and training and coming behind the curtain to see what he and Bob were doing that had to happen.

There was part of me that was just, lovingly, super pissed at Eric. I was like, “do we have to do this after the apocalypse? We literally burned the story all the way to the apocalypse. We have to start over and find a whole new classification of villains, so what the hell are we going to do?” But we had several months to ponder that. We had a great writers’ room, and everybody put their heads together, and Eric, to his great credit, stayed with the show, and was very active in constructing season six, and was incredibly helpful to me, personally. He was instrumental in figuring out what we were going to do next. It was like a reboot.

Kripke: I read every script. And then once Sera was comfortable in the gig and the studio and network were comfortable, I backed off. And from then I would define my role as a parent who sends their kid off to college. I’m extremely proud. I’m there if they need me… And it was never me running the show alone. It was always me and Bob Singer, and Bob has always been there. So there’s been true continuity. People say “Supernatural” has had different showrunners and it hasn’t. It’s actually always had the same showrunner, he has just had different partners over the last decade. (...) Gamble: The good thing about “Supernatural” is some things always remain the same. It’s always a story of two brothers, always a story about that family. It is always a story about the people who fight the things that go bump in the night, and there is always a structure that has an overarching mythology that gets solved piece by piece over the course of a season. That engine is pretty solid. I think one of the first conversations was just, “so we did heaven and we did hell, and oh, there’s a purgatory.” It started from that simple examination: “What is the mythology that we’ve been mining, and what else is in there that we haven’t talked about yet?”

You’re on a show for years and years, and you watch the actors grow up. Sam did not look like little Sammy was just out of college anymore. He was a grown-ass man; Jensen was a grown-ass man. They were adults, and they were men who had been through a lot, so the stories have to evolve, become more mature. They have to be about the problems that people would have in their adult lives, and that’s really how we were approaching these things. We were looking for problems that were not repeats of the problems they were having when they were 17 or 22. (...) Kripke: Once we were able to pull off “The French Mistake,” and Sam and Dean were actually able to go and become Jared and Jensen making an episode of “Supernatural,” I think Bob saw that there’s no such thing as too far. If you can pull that off and not destroy your show, you can truly do anything.

The season also saw Castiel drifting further away from the Winchesters, as he was unwittingly manipulated by Crowley in his quest to try and prevent a war among the leaderless angels. By the end of the year, after absorbing thousands of monster souls from purgatory, Castiel became corrupted by his newfound power.

Collins: I loved it. If for no other reason than Cas became God at the end of season six, which has always been a fantasy of mine, personally. There’s a very elite cadre of actors that ever get to [do that]. I think it was a great way to make the character a big bad. I was sorry to see myself killed off shortly thereafter in the beginning of season seven, but glad to see myself resurrected a couple episodes later. (...) Singer: We came up with this Leviathan idea: How do a group of monsters who want to take over society go about doing that? And the logical answer for us was, they insert themselves into the fabric of society in powerful ways — that’s what happens with the pharmaceutical companies, it’s what happens with government. It just seemed like an easy place to go and really be able to say something on a week-to-week basis. [We were] changing up what we were to try to make it interesting, and we feel if it’s interesting to us, we hope that it��s interesting for other people… Doing a season that was kind of political with these different monsters that we hadn’t seen before, I thought was pretty bold, and by and large a good season.

Gamble: The price of success is that you have to really be hard on yourself to keep the stakes high in a show like that. How do you keep the stakes high after you’ve faced the demon that kills your mother, angels, the apocalypse? The way that we found our way into that is by keeping it really personal. If it’s about Bobby, it will mean something to the audience, because Bobby means so much to the boys. (...) Ackles:(...) That was a huge blow to both the Winchesters because this was a surrogate father figure who had become their anchor, had become their home, and now they once again lost that pivotal character in their story. And so, once again the rug gets whipped out from underneath them and all they’re left with is each other and they’ve got to keep on going. I think that was a really important season because of not just losing Bobby, but look what it did to the story and the direction that it then sent the boys off in.

Padalecki: I thought season 7 was going to be the last season of “Supernatural,” while we were filming it. We’d gone so big with the Leviathans and it was yet another departure from our normal canon. There were times I thought we strayed a little bit; our big bad of the season was Dick Roman [James Patrick Stewart] and there were times I thought there were one too many dick jokes, every now and then I felt like we were straying off-course, but the fans stuck with us and I think that season we introduced Kevin Tran [Osric Chau] who stayed with us for a while, so we said goodbye to a few characters, we met a few new characters. (...) Jeremy Carver (writer, executive producer): When I came in, it was a pretty open canvas. A lot of things had wrapped up. The biggest issue was that Dean had been popped down to Purgatory, and what do you do with that? But because there wasn’t an ongoing mythology we had to worry about, we could really let our minds roam and I came up with that main idea of [Dean] becoming best friends with a vampire and then saying, “What if Sam, for once in his life did something that ran contrary to what the world at large — and when I say the world at large, I mean the fans at large as well — thought he should do?” For me, that was a really thrilling tack to take, just because it felt like fresh snow. From a story standpoint, it felt like Sera left lots of opportunity.

And then [there] was this idea of, these guys have been together for so long, at a certain point… they need to – I hate to say “mature” because that sounds like they weren’t mature in the past, but… mature in the sense of really exploring what it is to be their own person. And that’s what was really behind Sam not looking for Dean at the beginning of season eight. It wasn’t so much me taking over as it was like, “let’s put these characters in situations that make sense but feel risky for them as characters.” One thing I really wanted to do was to put a different kind of spotlight on these guys. (...) Ackles: One of my most favorite storylines was Dean in Purgatory. If there was one storyline that I wish would’ve dragged out much longer, it would’ve been that one. I would’ve liked to have seen more of what Dean was up against in Purgatory and how he lived and how he existed in that realm and among those things down there and how he was able to survive. And he befriended Benny [Ty Olsson], who I thought was a great character… I was sad to see [him] go when he did.

We’ve lost so many good characters on the show, but that’s one of the reasons why the show is compelling to people, because we do take risks…if there’s a fan favorite character that now could easily be an integral part of the story, we bring them in and then we kill them and it’s shocking. If we can continue not just to entertain people, but to shock them and to make them feel the spectrum of emotion, from joy to loss, then I think we’re doing our job as storytellers. And I think season eight was a good representation of that.

Padalecki: Ultimately, “Supernatural” is really a show about two brothers and their relationship and their struggles and their loyalties and their sacrifices, and so I knew in my heart of hearts that even though season eight started out with Sam having gone off to try and live another normal life with the character of Amelia (Liane Balaban), I figured it was a way to remind both the audience and the cast and crew what the show was about. I thought season seven might’ve gone a little off the reservation, but in a strange way, by steering even further off the reservation and having the brothers not even be involved with each other [at the start of season eight], it really reaffirmed for everybody what the bread and butter of the show is, which, in my opinion is the relationship between the two brothers, so it was a nice rekindling and repartnership of Sam and Dean. (...) Padalecki: My favorite part of season eight was the introduction of the Men of Letters. I was so excited to play this smart character, and I really got a chance to delve into that in season eight. I remember with the introduction of the Men of Letters – like I said, in season seven I thought we were maybe coming to an end, and then I read the episode with the Men of Letters and Henry Winchester played by the wonderful Gil McKinney, and I thought, “holy crap, we can go for another eight years.” And it was nice to have a home again. We had burned Bobby Singer’s home down a season prior, and that was our only standing set on “Supernatural,” and so to have the Men of Letters bunker to refuel and research and gather our bearings as characters and actors was a really welcome addition to the show, and I feel like the Men of Letters storyline has really worked wonders for and breathed new life into the show these past couple seasons. (...) Carver: The notion of Sam being possessed by an angel was originally Bob Singer’s idea. He threw it out there between seasons and said, “what if to save Sam’s life you had to put an angel in him?” It came from the same cloth of, “what if Dean had to rely on a vampire to escape from Purgatory and they became bonded over that?” You have to make do with the friends that are in front of you. Then we started to just flush out the character of Gadreel, who was originally Ezekiel, and that was one of my favorite characters we’ve done over the last couple of years, just because he felt very fleshed out and very empathetic. And Tahmoh was just wonderful because he has this bearing that is manly and unfamiliar all at once. He really dug into that role. If I remember correctly, Jared actually performed as Tahmoh before Tahmoh had even said a word of dialogue. So there was a leap of faith there on the part of Jared, who did a really spectacular job of portraying two characters, and he really embraced it. I was very happy with the way the whole Ezekiel/Gadreel story worked out, and how it all reflected back on the boys and their relationships. (...) Castiel finally became human in season nine — a trajectory that seemed to be a long time coming, after the angel’s powers began to dwindle in season eight.

Collins: That was something that I, as an actor, was looking forward to from the beginning — I kept on hoping that they were going to let Castiel become human for a while, and they finally did, and it was great. I think he had three or four episodes as a human; I wish we’d had a little longer in that realm, because I feel like there was a lot of good material to mine there, but the experience that he had being human made him much more empathetic towards humans, and I think that experience definitely left a lasting impression on him. He, I think, understands some of the subtleties of human interaction a little bit better. He is a little bit more savvy and definitely a lot more empathetic. But being more empathetic also makes him question himself more, have more doubts. He definitely is less cocksure as he moves through life, and he sees the gray areas and both sides of the story a little bit more than he used to.

Dean, meanwhile, became the unwitting recipient of the Mark of Cain, a brand that enables the wearer to wield the First Blade, a powerful weapon – but also saps away their humanity. Dean struggled to control his darker impulses as a result of the Mark, and after dying at the end of the season, found himself resurrected by the power of the Mark and reanimated as a demon, neatly paralleling Sam’s own descent into darkness in earlier seasons.

Carver: In this case, it was [writer and co-executive producer] Robbie Thompson coming up with the idea of Cain [Timothy Omundson]. And I remember him pitching this idea of the Mark of Cain. At the time he pitched it, I remember thinking, “I don’t know exactly where this is going to fit into the overall mythology, but it’s a wonderful thing to plant,” which we do all the time. One of the dirty little secrets of the show is that after we come up with something and it works out really well, we say, “hey, it’s almost like we planned it that way.” Sometimes things are just happy accidents. You try and draw out that roadmap, and then the writers are coming up with all these incredible, creative things. Cain just felt like such a no brainer, to the point where you’re wondering, “why haven’t we had this character in our world before?” We had referenced him before but hadn’t seen him.

But when [Robbie] talked about the Mark of Cain and putting it on Dean, it was something to plant like, “we’re definitely doing this and we’re going to figure out how to make this work as the season goes on,” which is exactly what happened. I’d like to say from the very beginning that we knew [Dean] was going to be a demon, but we didn’t. We had all these ideas of where Dean would go, but sometimes it’s peanut butter and chocolate and it takes a few episodes actually to realize the tools you have right in front of you.

Ackles: If you look back at the majority of series, it really hinges on Sam’s character. That’s the way it was originally intended, that’s the way it serves the story best, but every now and again the spotlight got flipped and turned on Dean, and I think we’re seeing this again with Mark of Cain. That was part of the setup for just very dark and troubled Dean.

Season nine was one of the more difficult seasons that I personally had to deal with, and it was because of not just the weight of the storyline, but because it was so Dean-centric. I was on set pretty much the whole time while everybody else was enjoying their vacation. It was just a lot of weight and a lot of darkness in my world last year, but we got through it and I think it made for some good story and I think it made for a good setup of where we’re going this year… I really enjoyed the twist at the end of last season when we think we lost Dean yet again and lo and behold, an unlikely character comes in and brings him back to life. So I have to give it to Carver on that one, when I read it I was shaking my head with very happy approval, because I knew that was now another massive situation that Sam and Dean are going to have to deal with. And how they [were] going to get out of it, I was anxious to see.

After Dean returned from death as a demon at the end of season nine, Crowley took his newly minted BFF to “howl at the moon,” but their bromance was shortlived – Sam saved his brother and restored Dean’s humanity in the third episode of season ten. So where do the brothers go from here?

Padalecki: Sam, with the help of Castiel, has saved Dean from being a demon and has made good on his promise at the end of season nine where he said he wasn’t gonna let him go, he wasn’t gonna let him die. But Dean is still cursed or possibly forever changed by this Mark of Cain. Sam and Dean don’t really know the repercussions of that just yet; they can’t find Cain; Castiel can’t find any answers; and Crowley’s not helping. We know that the Mark is changing him somehow, Dean doesn’t want it and Sam doesn’t want him to have it, so now they have to go as far as only the Winchesters will go to figure out how to get this Mark of Cain off of Dean before he turns into something that could cause more damage than Sam or Dean have ever seen.

Carver: Dean’s not a demon, but he still has this problem; he’s still got the Mark of Cain. And in the broadest strokes possible, it’s a very, very personal year where our overarching mythology for the season is building in a very methodical, very personal manner. I think a lot of relationships…I’ll even go as far to say a lot of bromances that have sprung up on the show, are going to be tested in ways that I think are going to be very uncomfortable. Each of our characters is going to have to stare into the abyss at some point and say, “who am I?” It’s going to be pretty personal, pretty intense, and pretty surprising as we move down the road.

Thankfully, the 200th episode (airing Nov. 11), is a light-hearted departure: it’s a musical, featuring a score composed by Christopher Lennertz and Jay Gruska, with lyrics by Robbie Thompson, who wrote the episode.

Carver: It’s our love letter to the fans. Many aspects of the fandom are going to see themselves represented in many different ways and in the most loving way possible. It’s an episode that takes a long, loving look at the show, warts and all. And we’re the first to admit our mistakes or our inconsistencies, and I think long-time fans will have a lot of fun seeing where we acknowledge this one big, happy, messy family that we’re all part of.

[source]

#2014-Nov #2014:November11Variety #*SMT #*destiel #*romance #*codependency #c/m saved the show #*CCTOF #Jeremy Carver #Eric Kripke #Sera Gamble #Robert Singer #Peter Roth #Jensen Ackles #Jared Padalecki #Misha Collins #author: Laura Prudom #Variety

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d0ntw0rrybehappy · 3 years ago

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i’m going insane lol

so i feel like the next step in working hard is to not even perceive the work i’m doing as tiring. (rereading this it’s making me lol.) it seems weird that i find a part time job at a restaurant this exhausting? and like i can’t pretend that i’m not tired, but i have to somehow take better care of myself and set the conditions to not be tired from it.

i’ve been thinking about baudrillard/barthes a lot still -- pleasantly surprised that their theories are interesting to apply to any- and everything. for example, they both go into how every statement can also be read as its opposite or negation. so, to quote baudrillard, saying “i am not afraid of communism” also implies that communism is something you should be afraid of.

i’ve been using this as a kind of paranoid way to gain insight into why people tell me that i am “strong” because i don’t really know what that means. (other things i am told i am often: sweet, intense). it’s like what they’re saying is, there’s some kind of context, a milieu of weak people i’m being compared to. or like they want to reassure me that i am strong, because i actually come across as how i feel: like a particularly lost, unstable, emotional, sensitive, and lonely person.

i can’t with restaurant work anymore. it. SUCKS. i want to fucking get out, i am like a rat scrabbling at the walls of a glass aquarium. all novelty has worn off, all misguided overtures of honest work or “people skills.” and i’m still stuck here, still holding my breath in the deep end until i can find the eject button. i am tired, my body aches. my body aches!!

i want to just grind my way out (here we are with barthes again -- well if you truly wanted to do that you’d just shut the fuck up and do it instead of writing about it), but here i am, eating another round of chocolate (i don’t smoke, i don’t have sex, i truly just eat), constantly fucking hungry. then like a bull mowing into a red flag i realize i have been grinding...in a completely useless direction. it is like my passion for learning about things gets scattered every which way and i just can’t start, every path is equally exciting and awful and the injunction to “choose” is not “clicking” in my “head.” it’s like my mind cracked open at some point in my teenage years (when i started smoking weed, when my child universe was decisively fractured by a friend) and now the crack is snowing fireworks and glitter and i shift in and out of unreality.

reality is almost too painful to bear. nobody’s happy: you can find contentment by accepting your current lot, but “happiness" is really just contrast or relief from pain. it comes in and out. most people are too lazy or small-minded or too busy complaining to feel content, or their lives are just too twiggy, got too long in the wrong direction or are just too fucking hard. i guess i still am happy, and still love life, in a sort of ferocious and bloody and hungry way.

love is bleak, though. i barely even know how to define it anymore. (culture defines a love which we yearn for; we experience “love” insofar as our real love fleetingly resembles this model, only to come up short -- baudrillard). re: love, to use my mom’s favorite school-of-hard-knocks memory device for the laws of thermodynamics -- a subject she took? -- you can’t win, you can’t break even, you can’t get outta the game (and death and taxes). you are going to get royally FUCKED by love just like everybody else, and you are STILL gonna play, you beautiful mortal fool. like the tarot cards lauren dealt me, putting away the three cards she’d used to describe my near future and then flipping through the entire deck, picture side up, without realizing that i was quietly watching it describe my whole entire life -- clinging at the edge of my seat to see some eventual combination that spelled good, strong, lasting love and seeing only struggle, happiness, struggle, pain, struggle, and finally ending, at my death, in a small statue made of gold.

see also, other realities i hate to swallow: nearly all interpersonal problems are insurmountable and better left undealt with, and work basically sucks unless you are very lucky and very smart.

work. let’s go back to that. i used to think my work would be respected off its merit; now i see the merit in literally fucking my way up. i wonder if i should even be an artist at all. artists are kinda like showponies or whores; they’re not actually important. the more honest and wonderful they are, the less important they probably are, like schoolteachers. they have an impact on an individual level. but on a societal level, you have no control as an artist. you just get played by bigger fish. better to find a way to have your hands on the gears; that way you have a shot at making a higher-order change to society. but alas, the (capitalist) system is totally out of everyone’s hands and will keep running as usual no matter what you do, still savage in equal amounts, i think. doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. but at this point i’d give a toe or finger to work for someplace like youtube. at least it’s reached critical mass where i could do something cool and make a difference with emerging media.

that or i pander to whatever blathering brain-melting slop, drivel, they’re putting on tv for kids and adults. or manage to convince a smaller nonprofit that i am “good at talking to people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds,” whatever the hell that fucking means. or maybe, ugh god, i’ll work for an ad agency? or do digital strategy? and um, i could say some shit about how capitalism is darwinism and money is a form of social control that works so well because it’s out of the hands of any individual person, and i should probably just stick with art and believe in it, and maybe like, apply for grants. but i want a job, a full-time job. i want stability and enough money that i don't feel guilty buying new underwear and i don't want to hustle to keep the tap running month-to-month and i want to spend the majority of my time doing something i find fulfilling. and soon enough i'll get that, and all my dreams will come true: i’m going to get married and become a fat mom taking my kids to piano practice and saying “the meeting went on forever today,” and i’ll have a husband who never cleans the house enough, and then we’ll get divorced and he’ll find someone 20 years younger and i’ll live out the rest of my years semi-happily alone and i don’t know how i will ever have time to make art again. or if i do i just hope it’s not hobby-like, second-rate.

i wish i could have (feel) the bare-faced honesty and love of sha’carri richardson hugging her grandmother after she worked her ass off for a race. instead everything is this weird simulation where i never feel like i love anybody enough or like i’m working hard enough. i can’t speak honestly except when i am writing about myself (strong, sweet, intense, narcissistic) or things i have noticed, as directed to my own imaginary friend. when i try to communicate irl (or, worst of all, “be real”) it’s all so overthought, overwrought, self-conscious. the only person who knows my real private self is the girl winking at me on my black lives matter poster. i hope she doesn’t mind being here in my room. ducky, the stuffed animal brandon gave me, was also supportive but i put him away because it seemed bad to tell future guys that my stuffed animal is “the child of divorce.” and now /you guys/ know me a little bit, because i took the time to pretend you were all my imaginary friend, my dearest pen pal who laughs at all my jokes and gets all my references, and stopped pretending i was anything besides what’s written here.

and i think, like, a lot of people now live in this weird simulation? and are so confused about romantic and familial love to the point where everyone is getting off on family members fucking each other and can’t decide if it’s normal to think kids are hot? but i guess that was always some weird fucked-up demon side of human existence? another thing i’m supposed to accept. (also sorry trigger warning.) and another thing i took for granted as a child, that most people, if not everyone, is weird/gross/evil, but now that my mind is cracked this shocks me all over again and i seek some sort of explanation. it’s like i can’t find a real hunk of closeness anywhere. i’m close to my own family, but in my other relationships we’re either too distant or too close and i’m desperately searching for just some normal friends. and to be able to give a speech where i tell someone i really love them and for it to ring true. but i try to be grateful that i live in driving distance to the beach and there’s air conditioning and once i stop being a stupid baby there’s probably more friends and work and stuff out there for me. and then i’ll have some new problem.

#i would put this as read more but it doesnt work on my blog SORRYYY

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readersguidetotheuniverse · 4 years ago

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TOP 10 PRIDE EDITION

June is LGBT pride month internationally, a very needed celebration to remind everyone that LGBTIQ+ people exist, their feelings are identity are valids and they deserve the same rights and recognition as anyone else. Today is the day chosen in many countries to celebrate the Pride and, also, today marks the 50th anniversary of the very first Pride parade in New York City, after the Stonewall riots in 1969. A very special day in an already very special month. So we thought, what better way to honor this beautiful celebration than to share some of the best LGBT young adult novels of recent years?

I don’t consider myself LGBT, but I do love reading LGBT stories. I personally believe it’s important to read stories of/by people from different backgrounds and going through different struggles than our own. It’s important to educate ourselves, especially considering how f*cked up the world is and how slowly we advance in terms of human rights. Reading these stories may help you understand the way other people see the world and how the world sees them. And we could do with a little more empathy and kindness these days, to be honest.

So far, I have mostly read stories with gay/bisexual male characters, so I will focus on that for this post, but I will continue educating myself reading stories with trans characters, lesbian characters, non-binary characters, etc…

Here’s my TOP 10 gay YA novels:

#10: Autoboyography, by Christina Lauren

Christina Lauren are great just in general so a book of theirs is always a great choice. About this one, I just loved it. Very well written, one of those books you just want to keep reading and when you get to the end you wish you would’ve gone a bit slower so it wouldn’t be over so soon. I love that the main character is bisexual, cause these books mostly include gay men but very rarely bisexual men and they deserve representation too!

#9: Captive Prince, by C.S. Pacat

This series is not for everyone, let me warn you now. It does touch some very delicate, controversial issues (rape, slavery, abuse…) but I promise you, it is way better than it sounds and I’m sure it’s better than you imagine. It’s dark and intense and passionate but tender at times, especially around the third book. You’ll have to wait for romance but it’ll be worth your while. If you give it a chance, keeping an open mind, it may surprise you.

#8: Two Boys Kissing, by David Levithan

Today it’s very easy to find amazing LGBT YA books but a few years back it was way harder, simply because there was no market or opportunities for them. This one I consider a classic among these great new LGBT novels for teens or young adults. A good story that really gives visibility and history of LGBT people the importance that they deserve. I also recommend checking out other David Levithan books, he’s got many great novels!

#7: Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, by Becky Albertalli

You probably heard about this one already, considering how well its movie did: Love, Simon. So well that they’ve done a TV show inspired by it, too! This is absolutely one of the must reads on coming out and finding your place in the world. Simon and Blue are cute as can be and the rest of the characters are also great, some even got their own book! You’ll love all of them and will root for Simon and Blue from minute 1. The movie is also really good and funny!

#6: Heartstopper, by Alice Oseman

This comic series (or graphic novels, however you wanna call it) is the cutest I’ve ever seen, I swear to god. It will warm your heart and will have you smiling through the whole thing and you’ll just wish for more. The characters are so relatable, their story is just adorable and the drawings are so lovely. Even if you are not into graphic novels, this one is almost a must. There are three volumes out, volumes 3 and 4 are expected for 2021 and 2022, and I’m already desperate for them.

#5: Red, White & Royal Blue, by Casey McQuiston

This is the most recent one of the bunch. A really good, fresh, modern story that defies classic values and the status quo and just makes you happy. This book has been so well received, has won many awards, and I’m so happy about it, because it’s rare to see LGBT books being recognized as romance novels and not in their own separated category. And it’s time to recognize that romance is romance no matter who you are and appreciate good stories. She’s got a new book coming next year and I just can’t wait to have it.

#4: They Both Die at the End, by Adam Silvera

This is not your typical LGBT story. Well, I don’t think this is typical in any sense, and that’s the appeal of it. In case the title is not enough for you, I can assure you this story is very original and well written. This is not a love story per se, this is a story about life, and love’s a part of it. The characters are so cute and realistic. You’ll wish page after page that the title got it wrong. If you like it, I also recommend checking out other Adam Silvera books like History Is All You Left Me and More Happy Than Not. They’re unconventional and great, too!

#3: Carry On, by Rainbow Rowell

This is basically Harry Potter if Harry Potter was gay. Kind of bordering gay Harry Potter fanfiction. And it’s magnificent. The magic and fantasy of the Harry Potter world with the inclusion that modern world craves and lovable characters you won’t get enough of. A bit of enemies to lovers as well, which I just love. If you like fantasy, this is definitely for you. I promise you, you’ll love it. It has a sequel I’m dying to read and there are more on the way!

#2: HIM, by Elle Kennedy and Sarina Bowen

This is possibly the most mature book on this list and one of my absolute favorite books ever. For starters, I love their writing style. Also they give us both characters’ point of view so we get a full picture of the story, which is great. We can see two young adults figuring themselves out, what they feel, who they are, in a sports world where LGBT people are not usually welcome. And it’s just fantastic. The sequels are also really good.

#1: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

This, right here, is one of the best books I have ever read. Period. Nothing I can say will suffice. The story is so human, the characters are so real and go through so much and you feel every little bit of it. So relatable, adorable, painful sometimes, but mostly just pure emotion. The only thing I missed in this book is more pages, I just want more and more. I just couldn’t stop reading so it was over too soon! But no worries, there’s a sequel in the making!

Happy Pride! Whoever you are and whoever you love, happy reading!

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Jake Reviewcaps Stuff: Amphibia: Truck Stop Polly/A Caravan Named Desire

A day two days late but no dollars short, we reach the middle of the Plantar family vacation. Polly super runs away from home after feeling negelcted and gets a neat trucker hat while Hop Pop is forced to choose between his love of theater and aiding and abetting, Sprig tries to fit in with the cool kids and Anne tries to just finish her damn Koala puzzle already. The show must go on under the cut

Okay first why this was late... I had a LOTTT of cleaning to do for a vistor coming to the house, so while I did get the episode watched I didn’t have time to write about it till today.. ironically hours before my sister from another mister is having her wedding, a small one in her backyard with all the food pre-packaged, but still it’s obviously a lot .. and yes this has been going through my head.

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Point is life’s been busy, this isn’t the first thing to get delayed, but I do want to try to get these out on saturday at least. Second.. these eps faced an uphill battle.. see like the Lost Harp of Mirvana during my ducktales coverage earlier this year, this is what seems like an average ep from the summaries given out by disney.. right before a stream of far more important and intresting ones. For this one it’s two fairly standard eps.. right before another fairly standard one.. that then leads into finding out both what Sasha’s doing and presumibly, why she’s still on the bad guy side like the intro suggests or if the intro is just lying. We won’t know till next week. And to make matters worse after that we have Kermit the frog’s episode.. as in kermit doing voice work not whoever his voice actor is now just doing a diffrent voice. And i’m so glad disney is continuing this beautifully insane idea that started when Fozzy voiced a character on Big City Greens. See this is good quality use of your muppets. Hopefully muppets now will keep this up later this week. Anyways paired with Kermit is the long awaited gravity falls homage “Wax Museum” with Alex Hirsch himself doing both stan stand in, a stan-in if you will, teh curator and frog soos. Which is the greatest name in Disney history since Sharkbomb. Oh and THEN, we finally get to newtopia and finally meet marcie.. and if that weren’t enough, the newt king is voiced by keith motherfucking david, disney royalty as voice of Goliath in Gargoyles (Which I really need to get off my ass and watch already, I have no excuse for taking this long. At least with Darkwing Duck the absolutley baffling airing order that isn’t disney plus’ fault for once but they scould still fix is a mild one.. if not enough of one) and Dr. Facilier in “The Princess and the Frog”, in which he sang one of the best villian songs in the disney canon. Never fails to kill me. He also should’ve been sexist man alive by now but fuck if I know why he hasn’t been.. even at 64 he’s still in the running and I will not back away from that sentence. That man can get it and his wife is a very lucky woman. SO yeah, Sasha, Kermit, Frog Soos, and then a one two punch of Marcy and keith fucking david, followed by i’m assuming a good helping of world building in newtopia and i’m not assuming thanks to the episode summaries including guest voices even MORE Keith David. So yeah like Mervana proceding Fenton and Boyd and then Daisy! an episode i’d been waiting for since last year’s comiccon, and was not disapointed by, this episode is before a giant pile of stuff i’ve been waiting for plus a thing I had no idea was coming with Keith David. And this show isn’t alone: next week’s owl house is another king episode about him making a big style wish that goes wacky.. right before we get Willow and Amity’s backstory, then the episode where hopefully the gays will win. This isn’t a new thing and will doubtfully occur again but like with Mirvana I gave these eps a fair shake. How did they shake out with the added pressure? let’s find out.

Truck Stop Polly

We start in the Wagon, or Fwagon as the family calls it but i’m not because no. Just no. Plus there isn’t a catchy song for caulking your Fwagon sung by the talented, and recently engaged congradulations Joey and Lauren now that was the kind of news I needed this week, Joey Richter.

But no Bessie isn’t being caulked down for glue, Sprig and Anne are driving the wagon, Hop Pop is asleep, as he probably hasn’t slept and Polly.. isn’t doing so good. She’s clearly missing home seeing Miss Croaker.. onlyt o find a rock.. and then because this is Amphibia some kind of nightmare that reminds me of a baby xenomorph. Anyways the reason Polly ain’t doing so good is well she’s like.. 5, on a scary trail with no one to comfort her, and none of the old comforts of home to help her forget her very likely death before she’s even big enough to rip a man’s heart out with her bear hands. I mean that’s been in her 7th birthday plans for like, forever. She TRIES to replicate old things, first trying for story time.. which fails because while Hop Pop tries, he can’t stay awake because he apparently, as the episode will prove out, hasin’t heard of caffine, while trying to get her older siblings to read to her just gets them and her in trouble when she gets bessie ran into something and Polly’s attempt at bath time afterword just floods everyone out. Thankfully while the episode does go with the “Character tries things multiple times and is destined to fail” thing, something i’ve seen a lottt in animation and as i’ve made clear in my handful of loud hosue reviews i’m not a big fan of it... but it works well here. It takes up only a portion of the episode and is used well. Nuff said. But it’s with the aftermath where things really start to shine and we really get why this episode works: Polly messed up bad yes.. but she’s also , again 5. Her family just sorta forgot that 5 year olds need a lot of attention because this is one who probably has ripped a man’s heart out... the bear hands thing is more just because it’s cooler that way. But Polly isn’t really thinking about anyone else but herself and this episode reveals a problem polly has: She puts up such a tough front she has trouble opening up.. which makes sense. Polly wants to be taken seriously, as seen with the inn episode last season, and likely feels acting her age will just get them to stop doing that.. but as we saw there while she’s utterly capable in a crisis.. she’s still a small child, it’s still scary and she needs what all little kids need as much as she needs a freshly ripped out heart with breakfast. But what really makes the scene is, as Polly hides, Hop Pop loudly and crushingly for the poor tadpole, outright wonders if they should’ve just left her with Ms. Croaker. And yeah this is a .. hard thing to hear. That her only parental figure regrets bringing her and feels he woudl’ve been better leaving her away from her family for what’s at the very least a month and will defintely be longer.. and not just because of future episode synopisis. And if they succeed with anne.. one of them wouldn’t be coming back. She’d miss telling her big sister good bye and that’s a LOT to take away from her and probably explains,besides Polly being badass, why they still took her: She may never see Anne again. And if Anne can’t get home, she wouldn’t of b een there for her. Polly tears up and it’s a ROUGH scene. But what really makes this scene already amazing work.. is the immdite followup. Sprig and Anne are both shocked by this and Anne , in typical “the character only heard the bad part” fashion, and as Della has proven even full grown adults aren’t immune to this so don’t feel too bad polly, asks if he really meant that. And he didn’t. It’s what makes the scene work so hopping good: it’s realistic. We’ve all had moments where a parent, a friend, or even ourselves has just said something, something hurtful, or yelled or screamed or what have you at osmeone without meaning it.. and sometimes you can’t take that back. But we’ve all been pushed to the limit, stressed or tired or upset and just.. snapped and said something terrible. And it’s this realness that really makes it worse. Hop Pop explains he’s just exausted.. which makes sense. He has trouble deligating, being utterly terrified of Anne and Sprig taking up watch duty, and has probably been driving without sleep for a week at the LEAST given the trip’s been said to have gone on longer than planned. So he’s not in any good shape, and Anne and Sprig do consider she had her reasons. Anne does give Hop Pop coffee for the first time, which perks him right up. Polly however is still hurting and decides to use 5 year old logic and leave a fake, a convient purple ball she find sthat she dresses up with a sleep mask and her bow, and figures once they find out she’s not there, they’ll feel bad and come back. it’s a short sighted plan but we’ve all probably thought of something like this at her age. I once ran away from home carrying among things i’ve forgotten by cyclops helpmet from the x-men.. must’ve been from the 80′s as by the 90′s he let his hair out. Wish I still had that thing or at least a cyclops visor. Love that guy. This naturally backfires as while Sprig and Anne try talking to polly, Sprig thinks she’s alseep and warns anne never to wake her.. never... how.. how many stabbings did she give you before that sunk in man? Are you okay sprig? Polly naturally freaks the fuck out upon thinking her family abandoned her, but vows to start a new life.. with flapjacks and more story times. She dosen’t know anybody.. cue swampy joe from last season. A welcome return, horay! Anyways Swampy naturally not leaving a child to die because this is amphibia and not an average night in Monkey D Luffy’s childhood, and also gets her a sweet trucker hat off screen. I assume she put it on exactly like this. Polly gripes about the situation.. but in a refreshing and suprising, to both me and polly, change of pace we don’t get them agreeing or her getting a new life: The Truckers point out the main issue: She’s homesick, and she’s trying desperatley to seek comfort in old rituals without adapting to the fact that some simply don’t work as well in their new situation or taking the fact her family is busy and this is stressful for them too into account. It’s also a nice moral for thes quarantine times; sometimes you can’t get normal back easily, and have to adapt and you have to consider others feelings as hard as it might be. They also peg her being so hardned on the outsdie she dosen’t let things in and again while this is new.. it does track. We’ve rarely seen polly upset, or vunerable or any of that.. so this simply makes it a character trait.. that part of why she rarely acts like the 5 year old she is is she’s scared of letting people in and loosing what ground she’s gained with Hop Pop. As for why their so wise it’s because when your alone driving for miles on the open road you have nothing but self improvment.. and in a great bit the lone female trucker among them got her PhD, and celebrates with her friend with a high tounge. Of course bigger problems arrive. Turns out taking some random object you found without checking for a zany scheme isn’t wise as a man comes in wondering where his roc’s egg went.. roc’s bein ga type of bird.. a giant bird. That kills the first frog it sees upon hatching, like imprinting only more horrifying.. so like the twilight version of imprinting then. And yes i’m aware i’m bashing twilight still, and while I largely don’t care, having an 18 year old man romantically imprint on a baby, rapid aging or no, is fucking creepy and not a good ending for the character. And yes that actually happened. Polly gets Soggy Joe, now speedy joe complete with hat and yes you need to call him that Polly finds out, to give her a lift back home. Meanwhile back home, Anne decides to read to polly anyway. I mean she just watched her sorta girlfriend sacrifice herself and then get carted off by the scary asshole who wanted to presumibly put her grandpa’s head on a spike outside his tower as a warning. Polly stabbing her a few times dosen’t really stack up. But she discovers she’s not there and gives out a code purple.. which ges the rest of the family right on time. Polly and Joe catch up with them and find the roc emerging out of the caravan and everyone fighting. Thankfully polly static clings on Joe’s fringe seats, which Joe grumbles about, and builds up the static before having him fast ball special her into the bird, which beats it. Polly takes credit for about five seconds.. before Hop Pop uses her full name as he’s pissed.. not about the giant death bird, a giant bird trying to murder you seconds after birth is just an average tuesday on this hell planet.. though i’d still trade it for our hell planet if they could get streaming down. No like any good parent he’s upset she ran away.. and devistated when Polly tears up and reveals she heard his whole thing earlier, with Hop Pop gently apologizing and explaning he took just how grown up she is for granted, with the Anne and Sprig naturally agreeing and the four hug. I do wish Polly apologized.. but it still works anyway as she’s still 5, she does feel bad about it, and she did just save their lives. The episode would’ve been slightly better with it but works fine. Soggy Joe offers to tow them, because he’s a class act, and Hop Pop decides to have storytime with everyone.. Anne points out she’s 13 but eh why not. Also I did like getting conformation how old she is as before it was just conjecture by me that she was 13 or 14. For the record as you can tell I peg polly as five, Sprig as 9 or 10, and Hop Pop as me shrugging. Also Polly’s normal story is a gritty noir story about a man trying to murder his wife’s killer.. which is funny enough and explains a lot about polly enough.. until we get a POP UP BOOK POP UP OF A HAND HOLDING A KNIFE. Just.. (Chef’s kiss) my god. Of course Anne loves it.

Final Thoughts for this Episode: A really good one, that has a lot of intresting dynamics and remembered Polly’s age without overwriting her character.. it still felt in character and was a nice reminder she’s still a young child, just one that can Volt Tackle large birds and who likes noir revenge quests as her bed time story. It added some more depth to Polly and it was something she really needed, giving her a vunerable side again and expanding on that. The first third does drag a bit.. but once the episode gets going it gets really fucking excellent.. while “child feels neglected and runs away” isn’t a new story, it works here both due to it’s realism, giant muder bird, or birderer if you will, non-withstanding, and due to being rooted in the Plantar’s characters. It’s damn good and like Mirvana was a nice suprise of an episode.

A Caravan Named Desire Suprisie a wedding is exausting and not only did I have to abandon finishing this review to get ready for it, but was too tired to actually finish this when I got home. Aw well. Let’s keep it going.

We open as our heroes are about to enter the thirsty swamp, another desert region, but this time more deserty. Anne scoffs at needing hydration.. before a cut to her utterly dehydrated and pouring the canteen on herself.. which she pulled up including sprig who gives out a whee. As adorable as it is chuckle worthy. Hop Pop is worried because as his faviorite plays says the area is full of terrible monsters and bandits.. and the kids groan because he’s clealry talked about this play a lot. As it turned out Hop Pop always wanted to be an actor, but gave it up.. and this is where I feel the episode missed some good character stuff: We never find out a lot about Hop Pop at that age: why he wanted to buck tradiition when why by present day he’s nothing but tradition, or why he gave up after one failed audition.. it’s not a bad episode, but I feel we missed out on an opprutnity to learn more about Hop Pop’s past, an area the show really hasn’t dug into apart from “He and sylvia were into each other once and he has a rvial and now he’s dating Sylvia for real this time so yay”. And speaking of which it is weird he hasn’t brought her up.. I mean he dosen’t have to miss his girlfriend every 5 minutes, that’d get fucking annoying , and the silver age fantastic four comics where Johnny storm would constantly pine for a girl he met for all of 5 minutes, carried over to the 90′s cartoon but toned down, are proof that’d be annoying. But it’s still just.. weird it hasn’t come up once so far.. we have a full season for it too, but it just feels like the show abrubtly left most of it’s supporting cast behind without asking how any of htem felt about Anne and the plantars leaving after spending a full season having them go from mildly tolerated to beloved by the town, especially Anne. Anyways before Hop Pop can bring up his one time as Tony in the wartwood production of west side story, they have worm sign and soon a sandworm is chasing them because of course Amphibia has sand worms. Their thankfully saved by a mysterious woman and her caravan, Renee Frodgers, the writer of the play Hop Pop won’t shut up about and no one else cares about.. kind of like me with.. everything. Pretty much everything. But with auditions going on Hop Pop gladly follows Renee back into her office, while a nearbye actor kid offers to take the Plantar kids to the kids car. Sprig and Polly are entirely on board, but Anne’s answer?

Turns out when Anne was widdle, somewhere from 4 to 6, she was in a school play about dental hyginee as a tooth tripped.. and everything caught fire. “4 out of 5 detinsts say I was traumatized.”, a great line. So Anne’s noping out of this one and decides to instead work on her Kola’s of Passion jigsaw puzzle.. which if that’s for an animatied ripoff of titanic but with Kolas I will give all my money to see that.. well no I need that but I do have an unopened can of pringles on my desk and a penguins of madagascar dvd I got for free at a garage sale. Will that work? Please? So we have our two main plots and running gag: Sprig trying to fit in with the kids, hop pop living out his dreams and anne trying to finish a puzzle. And since the plots really don’t intersect till the last moment apart from one scene with Anne, i’ll be covering both seperatley. Sprig’s plot is very simple: He wants the theater kids to like him, the lead actor treats him like crap, Polly gets accepted but is just sorta there htis episode outside of one great gag that we’ll get to in a moment, and eventually sprig just gets fed up and tells the guy off. It’s not all that enjoyable as I relate a bit too much to desperatley wanting to be liked in high school by people who were utter dicks.. and breifly in college online, so it brings back too many bad memories but hte punchline of sprig jumping back into frame in cosutme the minute he gets acceptance for telling the pissant off is priceless. Now with that out of the way, back a few minutes ago Hop Pop tries auditioning but tries to hard and fails, and dosen’t get the part, in part because he has no experince but later storms back in and tells Renee off.. and that honest passion gets him the lead. And .. turns out Hop Pop is a master actor getting love from the masses and living out his dream. Again it’s where I wish we got more drive, more of his past. I don’t know why other than “I want to act” why Hop Pop wants this so bad or why it means so much. I know what he wants, paul, but not WHY he wants it. I do get time constraints.. but if that was the case.. why keep the sprig subplot? He could just be an extra or stage crew or making a puzzle with anne or some other shenanigan that required less screentime. I do REALLY like spirg, this season if nothing else has made me realize how good the character is, I just feel for this episode the other minutes could’ve gone better to set up Hop Pop’s love of acting and past better and give us more of how Hopidah went from a wannabe actor ready to leave tradition behind to someone who clings to it like something clingy. This episode isn’t bad but there’s more it could’ve done. Anyways the good times, and the tour and if your curious the wagon is being stored somewhere on the caravan since they can’t safetly travel alone, end when Hop Pop walks in on Renee planning a heist. Now granted instead of the obvious of “oh their just theives’ the troop are legit actors, directors etc... the heists are because, much like on earth, no one supports the arts and they need money to keep going and keep putting on shows, hence Renee and her two goons rob the towns they visit during the more powerful moments of Hop Pop’s performance. And this is something like. While “Character wants to do something and ends up getting recruited by shady people for a scheme to do it” isn’t at all new, here it’s intresting because instead of being bad at it or the scheme being related to the heist or the normal twists.. Hop Pop is legit good, we even see a bit of his performance later and loved, instead of just being so bad it’s useful, and the theives aren’t just after money but keeping their art alive. So Hop Pop is conflicted and turns to Anne.. and ruins her puzzle because of course he does, but while Anne tells him the obvious: Stealing is bad even to support our badly unfunded arts, otherwise modern artists would be pulling daring heists all the time.. seriously that should be a show, Hop Pop decides he’s such a godo actor he can convince himself nothing’s going on. Sprig comes in for his subplot and annoys anne further and also dosen’t listen to her and Polly.. just tells Anne she loves her with Anne screaming it back. It’s a great punchline to the scene and also really sweet. Aww. So Hop Pop tries to get used to aiding and abetting but realizes during his big scene he just.. can’t turn his concsen off, outs renee then gets into a chase with her, with renee making hte mistake of detaching the front car to escape.. only to end up Worm food. She’ll make good spice at least.. I guess? I don’t know how Dune works. She’s arrested, and Hop Pop and family book it after the kids accidently spill he knew about the crime ahead of time and did nothing. The end.

#amphibia #a caravan named desire #truck stop polly #anne boonchuy #hopidiah plantar #sprig plantar #polly plantar #soggy joe #disney channel #reviews #reviewcaps #team starkid #the trail to oregon #frogs

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ponett · 5 years ago

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Welp... it’s over. After nine years, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is over. I just got done watching the series finale with Anthony and, just like I knew I would, when the credits rolled, I cried my eyes out

I should probably say something, huh. I’ve been sharing thoughts like this mostly on Twitter lately, but I started using Tumblr to blog about MLP, so I don’t think it would be right to post this anywhere else

I have a complicated relationship with MLP:FiM. It’s a show that got really hit or miss after the second season, and it has a fandom so toxic and so full of edgy libertarians that it scared me off from formally participating in fandoms for the rest of my life. But it’s also probably my favorite TV show of all time. There are other shows that are much better written, that have more to say, that are more consistent, even including several other cartoons from the same decade. But I think I’d be lying to myself if I said it wasn’t my favorite show

No other piece of media has had as massive of an impact on my life as My Little Pony

I grew closer to some of my closest high school friends because of our shared enthusiasm for the show. I started PonyPokey with Jake and Derek and made a bunch of bad videos and got invited to be on a wildly disorganized BronyCon panel with Jenny Nicholson in 2012. (We went on stage immediately after Lauren Faust’s panel. I barely said a word due to stage fright.)

After years of being too afraid to share my art online, I started putting more effort into learning digital art so that I could draw ponies. It started out rough, but with the drive to improve, I quickly got better. I started Fluttershy Replies. For the first time, I had an audience. I had people who cared about my work and supported me. Even as times have changed, many of you have been following me since way back then

Around the time I came out as bi in 2012, I got really into MLP shipping. Writing sappy comics and drawing sappy art became an outlet for my years of pent up feelings, and helped me sort out a lot of stuff. My Little Pony also completely changed the views on femininity that had been beaten into my skull since childhood. Suddenly, it wasn’t this strange, alien thing to be afraid of. MLP, at its heart, is a show about how there’s no wrong way to be a girl. That’s an incredibly powerful message. Rarity wasn’t a vapid snob. Fluttershy wasn’t a background character who got made into the butt of the joke. Pinkie wasn’t a ditz. These were characters written to be empathized with. And writing about my own feelings from the perspective of Fluttershy felt... right. It took me a few years to fully process those feelings, but eventually, I realized the truth. I was a trans woman. And a cartoon about horses was the first step on my path to realizing this

In 2013, one of the roughest years of my life, I decided to download RPG Maker on a whim to give myself a distraction. Naturally, my first instinct was to make a game where Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash kiss. What was initially supposed to be a short, Fantastic Game-esque playground of silly little jokes spiraled out of control and became Super Lesbian Horse RPG, a game that I poured my heart and soul into over the course of a year. And then, a couple years later, my desire to preserve the ideas from my copyright-infringing fangame also spiraled out of control, as all my creative projects do, and became SLHRPG’s successor: Super Lesbian Animal RPG. SLARPG isn’t really a reskinned MLP fangame anymore--it’s more like a new game inspired in part by my old project. The story has been drastically rewritten, the characters changed, the levels and gameplay redesigned. Most of the cast of the new game wasn’t in the original project in any form. There’s much, much, much, much, much more new content than old left in the game. And the original game had already strayed so far from the canon anyway. But I’m also not sure it would exist without MLP

I made a bunch of friends online, including close friends I still have to this day. I met the people like Bee and Thomas who I’m still working with on SLARPG. Most importantly, because we both blogged about MLP and had some mutual friends, I met Anthony, the love of my life. We’ve been together for five years now and supported each other through good times and bad. This is the lamest, corniest, stupidest thing I will ever say in my life, but he’s the Rainbow Dash to my Fluttershy

...

So what about the finale itself? (spoilers, obviously)

I have... mixed feelings on the finale. There were some things that really annoyed me in there. But also, like I said, I cried, so I think it’s safe to say they did good overall

I think the thing that stuck in my craw the most was Discord. Which I guess shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve been saying for years now how I hate Discord, how he spits in the face of everything the show stands for. He’s an obnoxious elderly manchild who constantly causes problems on purpose and torments his so-called friends the second they stop paying attention to him. But they have to put up with him and give him infinite second chances, because he’s a god and Celestia said they had to reform him

The overarching plot of the final season is that Queen Chrysalis, King Sombra, Tirek, and Cozy Glow (a Darla Dimple-esque filly villain from season 8) had teamed up with Grogar, a “new” villain taken from G1. While this goes on in the background, Twilight is making her preparations to become Celestia’s successor, as we’d known would be her destiny since the day she got wings six years ago. The villain team-up stuff was genuinely fun, and a highlight of the season for me. But then, in the three-part finale, it’s revealed that Grogar was actually Discord in disguise, and that he’d been intentionally trying to orchestrate a big attack on Twilight’s coronation so that she and her friends could save the day and get a big confidence boost going into her reign as princess. This is like... one of the most bafflingly stupid plot twist of all time. It’s literally the end of the show, and Discord has learned nothing. He’s “nice” now, but he’s still intentionally causing huge problems and putting everyone’s lives in danger to solve his problems. He freed four different villains they’d already defeated just so Twilight could beat them again, and in the process they literally blew up the goddamn castle in Canterlot and nearly killed everyone. And yet... they still forgive him, because they have to

I did, however, think that the last two-part adventure episode was fun overall. It tied a nice bow on much of the series, bringing back a bunch of old friends (including cameos from the movie cast!) to band together and save the day. Of course, in the end, they beat the bad guys with a big rainbow laser and sealed them in a statue. You know, even though a previous season finale was all about how solving their problems with a friendship laser and sealing the villains away never worked. Also, Cozy Glow might be evil, but she’s still literally a child? And now her petrified body is on display in the center of Canterlot? What the fuck????

I’m complaining a lot, but again. It was fun overall. It was nice to have one last big adventure, and to have the mane six reflect on how they’d grown since Twilight moved to Ponyville

...

And then we got the actual final episode. And boy did this one hit me HARD

I’m so glad that they ended on a quieter episode about the main cast’s friendships, because that’s what the show is actually about. The two-part adventures to save Equestria every season are fun, but that’s not the real show. We all came back every week for Twilight and her friends

There are things I can complain about here, too. Spike being a buff adult dragon with the voice of a child is fucked up. I’m still not used to seeing Twilight be Celestia’s size. But more than anything, I was always worried that we’d get a Harry Potter ending, where all the characters are paired off into arbitrary marriages so they can all have kids. Thankfully, this didn’t really happen. The only one who had a kid was Pinkie, who apparently got married to Cheese Sandwich (Weird Al’s character) at some point. Like, they literally shared two episodes together, with no hint of romance? But then they got married and had a kid off-screen??? What the fuck???? A lot of people also think that Fluttershy ended up with Discord, and I know I’m massively biased against that ship, but... I mean, they teased the FlutterCord shippers, but there wasn’t really any actual textual evidence that they were any closer than they had been previously. Y’all weirdos who ship Fluttershy with an obnoxious elderly man can interpret that as being “canon” if you want, I guess, but it’s not

The other relationship that shocked everyone in the finale was Applejack and Rainbow Dash, who... appear to be a couple? It’s definitely hinted at. I have... very, very mixed feelings about this. I mean, okay, obivously I’m the big FlutterDash fangirl. But I think AppleDash is cute, too! The problem is that, like... they’ve barely interacted in years? Like, they had a lot of episodes together in the first two seasons, but then the writers barely ever had them interact past that point. I can’t even remember when the last time we got an actual episode focusing on them was. And no, the one where Rainbow takes Granny Smith to pony Vegas doesn’t count

Like... yeah, it’s cute. It’s a nice gesture. Lyra and Bon Bon getting married in the background was also cute. But we can do so, so much better in 2019. We have so many explicitly canon lesbian couples in cartoons. Couples that actually kissed, or got married, or showed feelings for each other. Rainbow and AJ barely even fucking talked to each other in the final few seasons. I dunno, it just feels very hollow to me. Even the Equestria Girls crew admitting they were pushing RariJack felt more substantial to me, because at least they were given on-screen chemistry and lots of canon interaction

But in the end, complaints aside, the finale was about Twilight moving back to Canterlot, and worrying that her friendships would fade because of it. Honestly, I think this is what the finale of the show always would’ve been. It was the perfect story to end on. And boy, it hit really close to home

And then the last song happens, reflecting on how things have changed, but how they’re all still friends. And we see all the other friends they made along the way. And the camera zooms out, and the book from the opening of the very first episode closes, bringing the entire nine-year saga full circle

And then I started sobbing really hard in Anthony’s arms

...

I dunno. I just got done nitpicking a lot, but I still think that the last episode was a good and very emotional ending for the show

I’m going to miss this show dearly. I know it will be back in a new form, and that the leaks indicate that it’ll still star slightly different versions of the Mane Six. I’m also used to shows like this getting rebooted. Hasbro cartoons are honestly lucky to last past three seasons. FiM, on the other hand, got over 200 episodes, a theatrical film, a few specials, some shorts, a bunch of comics (which I still need to read), and a spinoff human AU series that was also really great. There’s no shortage of content, and I’m sure I’ll be returning to the series for years to come. I’m also glad that the show managed to go out on a high note

But still. It was a constant presence in my life for nearly nine years. Even as the quality got really hit or miss, even as they took the premise in strange directions, even as the crew of the show grew more and more dominated by men, it was still a show I could rely on to always be there, 26 episodes a year. I’ll miss it. I hope what comes next is just as good, if not even better. I also hope it’s gayer

I was going to end my ask blog, Fluttershy Replies, around the time the show ended. I’m not sure if I’ll do that just yet. I don’t know. I think that might be a bit much for me to process emotionally. Too many doors closing in my life in quick succession. But I do want to do more with it. These characters will be special to me for the rest of my life

I mean shit, I haven’t even drawn StarTrix yet. I’ve still got a lot of work to do with these horses, folks

#bobby thinks about horses

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