#and by 'minor fire imagery' I mean there is a line that goes

[indigo-flightly-falls]

I would kill for an edit of the boat boys set to partners in crime by set it off.

It actually a really good theme song for them. Got the unhingedness, some minor fire imagery, the devotion to each other, etc.

[caius-hhhhhh]

following up on this fanfic emoji ask game: I know this is not the general convention but i tend to like responding to an ask game all at once rather than waiting for prompts. so I’ve just answered every single one of the questions below the cut. Again, if you wanna play or use the game for your own purposes, please do! you don’t have to repeat my strategy, although you’re free to do so too.

i was about to say “this is a bunch of autofellating nonsense” but that’s the point. who cares. i wrote a lot about disability. if your mental illness also significantly impacts your ability to write, this might be triggering.

I’m still a baby ao3 user (@ is spitemonger) with only one published fic (it’s Zutara. It’s not that I’m not proud of it but I wrote it on a deadline and thus spent a lot of the creative process going “i don’t want to i don’t want to”). but a) I have generally been writing since I was a teenager, and b) I want to write more and publish more.

So I’ll be mostly referring to unpublished wips, with a primary focus on a long-form one-sided radiostatic fic covering Vox’s fall to Stayed Gone, and a minor focus on two shelved Magnus Chase (PJO spin-off) fics, one for Fierrochase and one for Blitzstone. [if you haven’t read Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgaard get the fuck on it, there’s a genderfluid character]

😅 What's a story or scene you've created that you're a smidge embarrassed exists?

my entire trunk novel? If I’m embarrassed by a scene I delete it during edits. So the only thing I’m even minorly embarrassed by is the fandom-specific plot I wrote by the seat of my pants (Magnus goes to Camp Half-Blood) — I’ll get more into that in a later question

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

love that this emoji doesn’t fucking register on my computer. I’ve never thought about this before! It’s hard for my own writing to get me emotional, I tend to look at it so clinically and dispassionately I kind of get caught off-guard when people say an emotional moment hit them. I do get very easily fucked by other people’s writing about transness. No prizes for guessing why, characters exploring their own gender and other people telling them they see them as their proper gender always get me feeling some type of way. calam4r1’s comic about Alastor’s “what have you done to me” makes my heart EXPLODE

🤡 What's a line, scene, or exchange you've written that made you laugh?

I am exceedingly proud of this Cave Johnson-ass line: “All projects, collaborations, products, and endorsements featuring or even vaguely mentioning that crimson ass’s likeness are to be liquidated. And burned. In fact, trap and seal the gases from the fire, freeze them back into liquid, and then burn them again.”

😈 Has there been a point in a story where you did something just to be playfully mean to your readers?

Oh fuck yes. It is a major twist that I’d be stupid to spoil, but! There is a red herring at the start of my current fic that you don’t get resolution for until three-quarters of the way through. It involves Vox’s real name.

✍ Do you have a beta reader?

My close associate SpaceWall is a fan-fucking-tasting editor who understands my need for my writing to be completely eviscerated. She has the balls to tell me when I’ve got a shite idea, and I could not ask for a better editor. Go fucking read her fics and tell her she’s excellent. On the subject, I really like editing and am fully open to reading your work. I’ve a slightly longer post about it here but please reach out to me if you’d like me to look at anything you have.

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

Disability. It’s well and truly quite hard to find a story that doesn’t deal with disability — hell, it’s hard to find a human that doesn’t have a relationship with disability — but it’s something canon so frequently either tacitly ignores or doesn’t pick up on. If I’m going to do anything in a fic, it’s explicate the characters’ canon disabilities or headcanon new ones. This is my favourite part of Cold Bodies btw, and basically the only part I wrote without explicit prompting. It’s in the last subsection if you don’t want to read the 8k words of prep

🎢 Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

idk man I’m really bad at pacing so even if the content is whack I go about it too slowly to really shock anyone

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

fuck off.

💋 First kiss fics. Love em or hate em?

Love the implication that I don’t fall asleep every night fantasising about a thousand different first kiss scenarios.

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

I’m very picky when it comes to listening to music while I write. I can’t think about words if the song I’m listening to also has words, nor if it has a really tangible melody that I want to follow along with. So I need really slow, atmospheric music without a real tune. Undertale genocide themes are actually fucking excellent for this, I’d highly recommend them. I’ve created a massive fuck-off OSRS playlist (on itunes, not spotify, so I can’t share it, sorry) basically comprised of the entire Portal 2 soundtrack (special fucking shoutout to The Friendly Faith Plate, which is SO VOX CODED YOU DON’T HAVE ANY IDEAAAA) and Sim Gretina’s electro swing (Enemy Like Me is my favourite), plus Kira’s Piece of Art and Dua Saleh’s mOth. The first because it’s giving Vox’s obsession with Alastor, and the second because, duh.

🛠What tools/programs/apps do you use to write?

I’m a google docs hoe. I know I shouldn’t be, but fuck man, I know how it works. It feels natural when my writing is on there. I’ve tried Scrivener and it made me angry. What the fuck ever And “tools”, that’s really funny — I’m the type of grad student that does all my citations manually because switching to Zotero is weird and scary. I know how to do it manually! Why would I ever accept help for something I know how to do?? (< ocpd symptom)

⛔ Do you have a fic you started, but scrapped?

The world doesn’t fucking need any more Nico di Angelo fics. It really doesn’t. There’s plenty. He’s a skinny white boy, he’s got the entire internet in the palm of his hand. You wanna compete with Robin? Really? You wanna do that to yourself? I don’t even have catholic guilt, I’ve got nothing to add

🙋‍♀️ Do any irl people know you write fanfic?

SpaceWall and I are irl friends, but we hold each other’s secrets in equal regard. The secret is that she is a good writer and I’m a poet I wouldn’t actually mind if people I knew irl found and read my fics. It’s just writing. I don’t find anything to object in it, and in fact I’d like it if I could talk about Hazbin with other people irl. I would hate it if people I know irl found my tumblr, but that’s principally because I’m significantly more open about my ocpd here. I’m not a person on the internet, I’m just words and a drawing. You haven’t seen the kinds of fucked up shit I do in front of my peers that would suddenly Make A Lot Of Sense if they knew I had a FUCKING personality disorder.

🍦 What's the sweetest fic you've created so far?

The Blitzstone origin wip, which is mostly “ostracised gay dwarf learns ASL because he saved this dying elf’s life”. come to think of it the first chapter of that fic is technically perfect and there’s very little stopping me from putting it the fuck on ao3 and abandoning it for three years before coming back. huh. i might… just do that.

🍷 Do you drink and write?

Always. It turns the judgemental part of my brain off and I have a much easier time making things and getting ideas down. Such a shame I don’t smoke too! I’ve tried writing whilst high and it was not writing. It was in fact lying back and rereading 666

🍆 Do you write the spicy stuffs? If so, what's your most popular nsfw fic?

“the spicy stuffs” porn is the word you’re looking for. You can say it. It’s four letters. The internet police won’t get you. See look, porn porn sex penis tits ass fucking Writing erotica was a really instrumental part of unlearning the self-destructive writing habits that made me suicidal scrap my original work. My initial intention was that because it’s erotica, it’s not for other people: it’s for me. And having that barrier of “this is not for other people to see” was liberating and necessary — I turned it off eventually, because erotica is not something to be so ashamed of that no eyes but yours can look upon it — but I needed to force myself to write something that I couldn’t imagine being scrutinised and therefore needed to be Purposeful and Say Something.

🌞 Do you have a preferred time of day to write?

11pm–2am is when I get my best work done. Unfortunately, I write the most frequently between 1–3pm because I have the energy and motivation to, but those are Self Doubt Hours and I have a hard time getting into the swing of things I actually have the best writing luck when I get up early but that’s not gonna fucking happen

💖 What made you start writing?

In general, pathology, but I’ve kind of made that clear already. What made me want to write a Hazbin fic was seeing how exceptionally creative this fandom is and how much fun people seemed to be having sharing their ideas. I feel like in the circles I’m running in, there’s not a lot of pressure to make Good Art, and it’s… not really a big deal if your work gets a lot of attention or not. Everyone seems to be getting the same tone of feedback, all cheer and encouragement, and the vibe to me seems really casual and fun. I’m not thinking to myself “how will I compete with these other authors”, but “I wonder if the user I idolise will see and like my work”. And the answer is often yes. It’s not just that people are creating and playing so freely, it’s that it feels like a lot of us are here to support one another, and that’s been really reassuring. Because I feel like people will like anything I put out

❌ What's a trope you will never write?

I was about to say “anything related to pregnancy, thinking about my uterus makes me nauseous” but I uh. Wrote about a miscarriage. So I guess writing about a wanted pregnancy is the real limit

💲 Would you ever open commissions?

This is a super interesting question I haven’t seen spoken about very widely: it is considered extremely normal to commission fanart, but whenever the subject comes up, people seem incredibly reticent to ever commission fanfiction. I’m not fully sure why — in principle, it seems like there should be no real distinction in paying for fanart versus paying for fanfic. They’re both derivative work, they’re both made by enthusiastic artists who deserve to be compensated for their thousands of hours of expertise. I’m not certain what causes the disconnect. I have seriously toyed with the idea of doing podfics for money. I am in fact a professionally trained actor, and I own a USB microphone; which puts me ahead of like 50% of all of AO3’s userbase. Not sure if I’d fully commit to the idea because it’s still rather contentious. Were I to read my entire fic out loud I would put it behind a patreon though. It is in fact a very labour-intensive process, and again, I do have professional training.

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

Hoo boy.

this is my fic folder. For most fics I write, I have a draft document and a research document: I’ve colour-coded the related documents: so dark green and dark green are the draft and research, pink and pink are both parts of the same project, etc. Let’s compare the word count in each of these draft documents and research documents, shall we? The dark green draft is 8k; its research document is 16k. The pink document is Cold Bodies. Including the html coding and my author’s notes, it’s edging on 13k. Its research document is 8k. It’s the only fic I’ve completed. The light purple draft is 21.5k. Its research is 96k! The light green draft rather conspicuously titled “botw script” is in fact a script, not prose, so it’s only about 4k. Its research, which is in fact titled “I don’t like botw’s story”, is 25k. The dark purple draft is a rather tragic 6k. Its two research documents are a combined 104k!!! One of the documents is called, rather tellingly, “I think I like research more than I like writing.”

My research process involves a not insignificant amount of textual analysis. For Cold Bodies, it looked something like this:

I haven’t done a lot of that kind of work for Hazbin because most info is fanon or only vaguely canon-adjacent, but I have compiled a list of headcanons many of you have put out into the world.

that’s gabrielsbubblegumbitch’s post and soot-and-salt’s And Not From Head To Toe. The other significant form of research I do is scour books I think are interesting or relevant so I can take plot or thematic inspiration from them. Previously, I’ve combed through Creating A Champion (and cannot recommend the experience. it’s kind of racist 😬) and made a fic a loose parody of Emma so I could fall back on its plot when I needed inspiration. For this Vox fic I’m rereading David Sedaris’ When You Are Engulfed in Flames, Eden Robinson’s Traplines (the last short story has a Monkey Beach spoiler, read that first), Catcher in the Rye, The Chocolate War, and, for some reason, Cary Elwes’ As You Wish.

🏆 What's your most popular fic?

Only got one. Shoutout to grownupchangeling for fucking SPRINTING into my inbox to ask for the answer to this question, really admire their(?) tenacity and dedication to squatting in my notifs like a spider in the corner

🎃 Do you write fics for certain holidays? Which is your favorite holiday inspired fic?

Never really crossed my mind. I do like a good beach fic, and anything set in winter makes me happy, but I’m not a massive holiday story enjoyer.

🎯 Have any of your readers accurately guessed major plot points? Care to share which?

I spoke about this a bit in response to soot, but if your readers are able to accurately guess a plot point or twist it means you have done it successfully. It means you have given your readers the tools to reach the same conclusion you did: and those tools are foreshadowing, atmosphere, subtext, and tension. Those are how a twist or beat feel that they belong in the narrative, because they gel with everything that has come before it. It in fact should be the author’s goal for readers to be able to guess the twist! It’s not that it should be blindingly obvious, but more that a seed should exist somewhere that smart readers (which are all readers!) should be able to see it and notice when it takes root.

🎨 How do you feel about fan art of your stories?

Who doesn’t like fan art? Who’s the fucking Anne Rice of AO3 that’s going to be like “you may read my fic but do Not make art inspired by mine” literally who does that

📈 How many fics do you have?

Guess.

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

I outline wherever possible. How detailed the outline is depends on the scene rather than the fic: “Vox goes house hunting” is in fact a very very long scene and a scene that amounts to two pages might well be described beat-by-beat in the outline. Pants-writing gets me incredibly stressed out because I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know where I’m going, I have no direction in mind, and because of that panic impulse I cannot be open to serendipity. It’s also really hard for me to do complete rewrites, so as soon as I have something down on the page and it’s made it past the first, worst, round of excruciating edits it tends to remain as-is in the final draft. So I often need at least a vague idea of what’s going to happen before I can start my work. I don’t do drafts, inasmuch as I’ve used that word pretty consistently throughout this post. I think. I think, think, think, research, ruminate, think, tentatively write less than 100 words, think think think consider scrapping the whole thing and then I detonate like a firework and the vast majority of the ink that first splatters on the page in that initial explosion stays until I know it’s done. I write like a shotgun: with a very intensive buildup and lots of preparation with a very short but very powerful discharge. I’ve told this to people and received the kind of expression you typically only get were you to remove your shoes and begin licking the sole of your foot. So please do not compare your own writing process with mine. Okay? This is not normal. I don’t know how often I’ve mentioned this but I have a disorder. No one but me does this. You should not expect yourself to.

👀 Tell me about an up and coming wip please!

No <3

🤗 What advice would you give to new fanfic writers that are just getting started?

I am literally the last person you should ask. Never pour water on a grease fire? Your face mask should completely cover your mouth and nose? Always make sure the base is larger than the widest point?

💞 Who's your comfort character?

I don’t actually find that there’s a single character who brings me comfort to write about. I write about someone if I have something to say about them. I do have a comfort trope, which is sleeping together.

🧠 Pick a character, and I'll tell you my favorite headcanon for them.

I think that Valentino used to be a porn actor before he became a director. During a shoot, he would wear an earpiece so his director could feed him lines, given that he couldn’t read the scripts.

🤩 Who is your favorite character to write?

Alastor! I also talk breezily and with an emphasis on slightly elevated language, so I find his dialogue to be incredibly natural to spit out. Plus, who doesn’t love dated exclamations and turns of phrase like “By Jove!” and “take a powder”?

😬 Which of your fics would you be most horrified for friends, family, or coworkers to stumble upon?

I well and truly don’t care. I don’t publish anything I’m ashamed of. I only publish things that I think showcase my skills, and that I think are worthwhile pieces of art. And if I had a friend who thought fanfiction or erotica was something to shame or scorn, well, they would not be my friend.

🎉 What leads you to consider a fic a success?

Finishing it.

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

Romantic partners becoming the main character’s therapists… I mean, that’s one of the great things about writing villain protagonists. They don’t fucking have to go to therapy.

📚 Would you ever want to turn writing into a career?

Buckle up, cunt. I had a novel I was working on as a teenager. It was about toxic masculinity and MLM sexual assault. I said to myself, this will be a piece of art that defines a generation. It will say something that our (western) society desperately needs to hear, and one day a young gay kid just like myself will be tilting their head at a 90° angle to see the titles of the books lining the shelves of their local bookstore, see my novel, pick it up, and discover that it spoke to them: in the same way that I felt seen and heard by the books I loved. So as I wrote and worked on it, I often looked at my own writing with the harsh and uncaring eyes I knew it would be faced with when I inevitably contacted an editor. I wanted to make it flawless, bulletproof, do everything in my power to make this work perfect before an editor could see it, so that way I could wholeheartedly say that it was ready for other eyes. So nothing was perfect. Every part of it wasn’t good enough, fix it, FIX IT, I know you can do better so stop acting like THIS is the best you can accomplish. Come on, pick yourself up and do it right this time. And I tortured myself with that. To this day I cannot look at my draft without thinking of all the mistakes I made, what needed to be improved, what still needs to be improved, and after I’ve grown more and gotten diagnosed and met with people who have been published — met publishers — I know that I can’t trust myself enough to let this become a career. Do you know how hard writing this post has been? Did you know it’s taken me two days? Did you know how long I leave my posts in the drafts for, rereading, rereading, rereading, making sure there’s no chance this can be fucked up in any way, that it is totally within my control? I cannot become a professional writer. It’s my disability.

so, you know. rock make stick hit hard on head, cock make dick real hard in bed

⌛ How long does it take you to write a fic, or a chapter?

A lustrum.

🤯 What's a genre you struggle with as a writer (ex. romance, action, etc.)?

B-plots! I kind of get regular plotting, in that I know how to build and resolve tension, but I am so bad at finding other things for the characters to DO in order to take a break from the main plot. I already worked so hard to make a main plot, you want me to do another one??? To say what? I did everything I wanted to, I tied it all in a neat bow, if the readers want a break from the main tension why can’t they just tab out

💔 Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart?

I love trans Vox, but in order for him to be in character he has to hate being trans. I’m really used to writing about trans joy, for my own health and for everyone else’s, so writing a character that wishes they weren’t trans is really sad.

💥 How do you feel about criticism?

I actually love criticism. Your work can only get better through education, and one of the easiest ways to get education is by having another person read your work and tell you something about it you didn’t know. I need other perspectives because my own perception of my writing is exhaustive and exhausting: I feel like I’ve done everything I can to improve my work and I am so tired of looking at it that I need a fresh pair of eyes to show me something I’d not found. Getting better is always something to strive for; and even in mean comments it is entirely possible to find the thread of a lesson. More often than not it’s a threat of a lesson, but personally, I take what I can get. Criticism is something I find easy to receive because I can turn it into something productive, either “okay, this is something I need to improve upon, let’s do that” or “this is so clearly in bad faith it is costing me nothing to ignore it”. It’s something I can easily take control of. It’s positive comments that feel like apple-bobbing in a tub full of syringes.

🤭 Do you have a favorite tag to use when posting your works?

#Psychological Horror immediately followed by #Eventual Smut. One of my favourite tag jokes I’ve written is #falling in love, #unrequited love, #friends to enemies, #on-again off-again relationship, #don’t date your coworkers holy shit don’t do it. And you really can’t go wrong with Cold Bodies’

🥰 How do you feel about reader interaction? Are you open to receiving questions about your fics?

I suppose I’m kind of asking for it at this point.

I’ve left this one for last so it will have the best dramatic impact. Thank you, heartily, for sorting through that much shit!! I hope this is a worthwhile reward for your efforts.

🤲 Would you please share a snippet of a wip?

The shadows lengthen. The room is small, bereft of light; the darkness has plenty of recesses to establish itself within. His chest distends and recedes with a languid, heavy pulse: good. He will not wake. He dares not take a step. He contorts with the gloaming, letting it carry his weight like waves on the wine-dark sea. Ink creeping along the fractal contours of incautious skin, on paper pulp. The blanket is drawn too far up his shoulder, but his hands have wisely ventured away from its grasp. He has nestled them close to his face: the right palm faces the ceiling. His overgrown claws, weightless, curl around the soundless air. The cuffs of his shirt have drawn back to reveal the skin on his left wrist.  He casts a faint but adequate illumination. Regrettably — he discovers — he has not flesh but casing. Whether it be titanium or catalin, it protects the veins underneath. What seams it must possess, he cannot access at present. He cannot smell his blood. Only the hot hiss of his breath, of bertholite and alkaloids. Experience has had the good grace to train him to anticipate the worst-case scenario. Thus, he suspects his knife would dent upon contact with his skin. This would likely require blunt force, something messy and more out of his weight class. Which is unideal: his own strength is formidable, naturally, but imprecise. And somewhat unsubtle. He sees the power buzzing underneath his grip. A live wire ready to snatch at the first hint of energy, snapping, sparking, antsy and unfulfilled. He likely isn’t trained enough to feel it himself, but again, the danger is too tangible to risk tripping over it. Were he more experienced, older, had experimented enough to test his limits, it would be a safer estimate; but as he is now, untapped and spring-loaded — fisticuffs would result in a significantly less assured victory. It is not a lack of confidence. It is simply a risky bet he does not want to get caught foolishly trusting himself with. That is smarts, not sheepishness. He does not hiss aloud. Nor does he retreat: he takes stock. The room offers little relevant information. His possessions are scarce, no letter drafts upon the writing desk, no bandages or weapons. His wallet is useless. He’s laid out nicotine patches and topical creams upon his toilet table: an invasome, it seems, may be a possibility. Unfortunately, he would have to synthesize it himself. He despises inconclusiveness. He returns his gaze to the picture box, his screen dim and vacuous.  Loathed as he is to admit, this may be a somewhat longer project than he had initially envisioned. More’s the pity — what a spectacular send-off he would have been able to provide! Keep your chin up, now, old boy. This was hardly a trip for biscuits. It was, however, strike two.

[thronehunger]

#THRONEHUNGER- A LOW ACTIVITY MULTI MUSE FEATURING CHARACTERS FROM A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, PREDOMINANTLY HEADCANON BASED, WITH MINOR INFLUENCES FROM HBO'S ADAPTATIONS. TRIGGER HEAVY BY NATURE. (SIDEBLOG TO @/EVERYROUTE) TWENTY1+ ONLY. BY BRI, 27, SHE/HER.

GENERAL RULES -.

001. i do not claim the rights to any media found on this blog. i am not apart of creating any of the characters nor their canon material. what i do take pride in, however, are my portrayals therefore i'm making it known that i do not tolerate stealing of any kind. while i don't think i'll have an issue with this — i have in the past so i like to get it out of the way. if you do steal from me, i'll approach you privately to discuss.

002. i do not follow everyone back. i've been on tumblr for many years now and have learned how best to curate a space for myself that i am happy to be in. this can be said for all of my blogs but especially here in the asoiaf fandom. i'm mostly just here to write with my friends and create cool story lines with other people. i typically will not be following first but please do not let that discourage you from following me. for the most part, i tend to follow people back within twenty four hours if i can see us writing together. otherwise i do make sure to softblock unless rules state you'd prefer to be hardblocked.

003. if you support or condone racism, homophobia, transphobia, white-washing, suicide baiting, bullying or bigotry of any kind i will immediately block you. this also goes for zionists. we have nothing in common and i do not want that energy in my space. this is your one and only warning.

004. in terms of callout culture: i do not partake in it just for the sake of it. i typically do not reblog or engage with callout posts, but if someone is actively harmful to the community as a whole then of course that's different. i'm not interested in watching anyone to try to chase somebody out of a community simply because they don't like them. i am an adult with a mind of her own who can make decisions for herself. just because i don't interact doesn't mean i don't see it nor does it mean i'm supporting or not supporting it. 005. lastly, the contents of the asoiaf and the respective hbo shows are heavy. i do not pretend they aren't nor will i be shying away from this in any of my portrayals. while i refuse to write incestuous ships and interact with those who choose to do so — heavy imagery of violence, potential gore, murder, war and grief are among the many things you will see featured on this blog. i ask that you follow at your own discretion. this blog is not meant to be your sounding board for controversial opinions and i'm not interested in catering to the dislikes of others. all i wish to do is write fictional characters whom i love.

[one-boring-person]

Just Relax.

John Rambo (Rambo III) x reader

Warnings: severe injury, blood imagery, heavily implied sexual content, MINOR SPOILERS

Concept: Set after the first time Rambo infiltrates the Russian base in Rambo 3. He is injured and the reader helps him clean up. (Followed by...Yeah...)

A/N: No comments on where this came from. It wasn't supposed to end this way, but it did 😅🤷‍♀️

Masterlist

I watch in curiosity as my companion sends our guides on their way, the veteran barely able to stand from pain and exhaustion, his shoulders heaving. He cocks his head as he watches them go, Mousa making sure the kid's head stays front-facing as they ride off, leaving John and I alone together in the cave. Naturally, the veteran has noticed that I'm not with them, the look on his face as he turns back to face me showing his disapproval of this. His lidded eyes meet mine, just hidden by the low cast of the small fire we have going, his skin glistening in the flickering light. Slowly, the muscular man steps over to me, giving me another side-glance as he sits by a rock, wincing from the movement.

"You should go with them." He grunts, gruff voice husky from the pain.

"What, and leave you here on your own? Hell no." I retort, rolling my eyes as I step away from the wall I was leaning against, going over to him.

"Suit yourself." Is all he says, before maneuvering himself into position, taking hold of his soaked shirt and tearing it off of his corded body to reveal a bloody wound, his skin stained dark crimson.

Standing over him, I watch his movements carefully, a grim expression on my face as he starts pressing at one end of the wound, harsh grunts and groans of pain escaping him. After a moment, I shake my head and sit beside him, batting his hands away.

"What're you doing? John questions, breathing heavily.

"Just relax." I tell him, looking him in the eye, hoping he'll trust me enough to help.

Keeping his expression still, he almost indiscernibly nods, shifting to sit so that I can reach his side easier, meaning our proximity is now much greater. At this closeness, I can feel my face heating up, my heart skipping a beat even as I force myself to stay professional, knowing my idle thoughts will cause me some trouble if I'm not careful, though his familiar smell is making it very difficult to concentrate. 

Shaking my head again, I gently place my hands on his heated skin, probing ever so carefully around the puncture wound, feeling the hard shaft of something left inside. John's breath hitches sharply, his body tensing under my palms as I slowly start to push at the end of the splinter of wood. A strangled growl of agony tears itself from between his gritted teeth, the man adjusting slightly to give me better access again, leaning back so his side is exposed to me, whilst keeping one hand on the rock before him, the other hesitantly coming to grip my shoulder. His large hand easily encompasses my shoulder, fingers digging into my skin as I keep going with my work, trying to ignore the horrible feeling welling up in my gut from his sounds of pain. 

Thankfully, the piece of wood finally starts to emerge from the gushing fountain of blood, the slick substance making it difficult for me to get a grip on the extrusion, leaving my hands coated in crimson fluid. Gently, I remove the wood, holding my hand over the wound now to staunch the new flow of blood. 

"Cauterize it." John grits out, voice gravelly and low, teeth ground together as his body remains tense.

"Cauterize it? With what?" I ask him, looking around for a suitable tool, whilst also reaching for his shirt to use as a bandage.

Weakly, the veteran reaches out and hands me a bullet, understanding setting in. Leaning back, I take the bullet and reach for the knife at my belt, swiftly using it to remove the tip and expose the cartridge inside. Grimly, I move to bend over him again, allowing him to rest his torso partially against mine, though I know I will have to move in a minute.

"Are you sure about this, John? It's gonna hurt like a bitch." I ask him, wanting to be totally sure.

"I'm sure." He nods, fists already clenching, one hand moving to my thigh to help prop himself up. Any other day, and the rush of heat from his touch would've had me reeling for minutes, but now, I stay focused, knowing he's only doing it to stay upright.

Sighing, I tip the contents of the bullet into the wound, making sure it all goes in properly, the black gunpowder sticking to the blood. Having done this, I toss aside the empty shell and reach for a burning stick from the fire, gritting my own teeth as I get ready to do what I have to. John tenses in preparation, his breathing coming hard and fast, as before, muscles trembling in anticipation. Carefully, I lower the blazing end of the stick to the open wound, watching as it catches.

Instantly, a cylinder of flames shoots through the puncture wound, sealing the flesh off in the most painful way I think is possible. The action draws a half-scream of pain from the veteran, who reaches round and grabs my wrist tightly, his grip on both my arm and my thigh bruising as he tenses up, writhing into me as he searches for something to hold. Finding me as his nearest source, he moves his arms again and wraps them around my waist, pulling my body to him as he buries his head into my lap, growling and wheezing in agony, grasp tight and unrelenting, his knuckles white as he leaves marks on my skin, his fingers pressed into my muscles. Wincing, I try to ignore the butterflies in my stomach, opting instead to soothingly rub at his back, feeling over the rippling lines of muscle and small scars as he tries to regain his composure, back contorted slightly.

For a few moments, we stay like this, John seeking refuge from the agony in my lap, my fingers tracing idle patterns onto his skin as I mutter calming things to him. He eventually pulls away, loosening his grip, though he does keep his hands where they are, his dark eyes meeting mine. Swallowing, I stare at him, biting my lip to keep myself from acting on my urges as he rights himself, his height meaning he has to look down at me slightly. In this light, I can see every plane of his face highlighted in the flickering orange glow, each scar stark against his otherwise smooth skin.

I never notice he's gotten closer to me until he finally speaks, at which point I can feel his breath on my face and lips.

"Thanks, (Y/n)." He mumbles, his grip on my hips tightening again.

Shuddering in hope, I swallow again and go to reply.

"No prob-" I am instantly cut off by the feeling of his lips on mine, my body stiffening at the unexpected action. 

I quickly relax, kissing back with force as he smooths his lips against mine, pressing himself closer to me as his hands pull me into his lined body, his hair falling around our faces to shield us from the outside. A moan of satisfaction escapes me as he kisses me, my heartbeat racing, longing and need pouring out into the kiss, heat spreading along my skin as he presses closer. His hands are everywhere now, roaming over my curves, feeling over my every imperfection, using his grip on me to keep us together as he pushes me onto the ground, hips pressing into mine as he urges my mouth open. A growl escapes him as I willingly open up, his tongue hungrily exploring around my mouth, twisting with mine as he swallows my every noise. Pleasure and ecstasy flood me, each of his movements firing up my need for him, my hands moving to pull his face down to mine, his own starting to push up my shirt as he goes to drag his fingers over my heated skin. Moaning now, I break apart from him for air, keeping him close enough that our lips are mere centimetres apart, breaths fanning out over each other's faces even as his hands continue to explore.

We regard each other closely, both dishevelled and filthy, his injury not quite forgotten as he hovers over me, hands moving to cup my ass and pull me closer to him again. Leaning back down, he languidly mouths at the skin below my ear, pressing his tongue against the sensitive area before biting gently down, drawing a moan from me, his actions surprising but not unwelcome as he leaves wet kisses in his wake, sucking a mark there. Nipping my earlobe, the veteran pulls back ever so slightly to whisper directly into my ear.

"Fancy helping me some more?" He groans, grinding his hips into mine, a sharp gasp escaping me at the tone in his voice. His usually gruff accent has thickened considerably, goosebumps breaking out over my skin at his implications, heat rushing downwards.

"Yes, please!" I whine back, arching up into him as he licks a stripe up my throat, nibbling his way to my lips again, our mouths colliding messily as his hand starts travelling South.

[honeyfizzly]

Just some speculation and minor theorizing on what the Ascension gems descriptions can tell us about the archons we haven't met so far

Warning for leaks and potential spoilers

Credits to the genshin impact wiki and honey impact for most of this info

The first one up is the shivada jade narrated by the tsarista- she seems to be actively talking to someone (perhaps an harbinger or an cryo vision user). She seems to be encouraging this person to allow to turn their pain into determination (or maybe courage or anger).

Also in the Chinese version of the name for the gemstone it directly translates into "greif narrationing jade".

I'm honestly inclined to believe that she is talking to an harbinger from the fact that she says "then, burn away the old world for me". The "burning away the old world" line to me could be in reference to her rebellion on celestia.

Also there's alot of fire imagery despite the fact that this gem is for the cryo element and the tsarista is the cryo archon.

Next up is the varunada lazurite which is narrated by the hydro archon.

A quick note about the "people here bear no sins in the eyes of gods" line is actually "people here bear no sins against the gods" in the Chinese version. In the Chinese version of the line she is implying that her people are innocent and haven't done anything wrong against celestia, while the English translation it implies that her people are perceived to be innocent by the gods.

From the words she uses it implies that she believes herself to be "pure" and even says that others can judge her as well.

I find it interesting that she says "only law and the tribunal can judge someone" which implies that she, the justice archon, chooses to allow her people to be the judges instead (at least thats how I interpret that line).

The Chinese name of the gemstone translates into cleansing/purity.

Next up is agnidus agate gemstone narrated by the pyro archon (aka Murata).

Theres alot of references towards wishes and dreams (which makes me think of Vanessa, who was a natlan girl, fighting for her dream of being free).

Theres not much to talk about since her narration is much shorter than the others but I find the blanked out name very interesting. "Achieved [blank]'s truth he has", she's talking about a boy and that boy's truth.

Maybe the blanked out name she is talking about was the previous pyro archon's? Overall very mysterious but even in the Deinslief narration for Natlan, the pyro archon is portrayed as this mysterious goddess ("she says this because she has her reasons" line that Deinslief said).

Next up is the vajrada amethyst narrated by Baal.

I've mentioned this one briefly in my Baal theory but I'll be going a bit more in depth for this one.

She, unlike all the archons, isn't talking about herself or to someone else- but instead she talking about something.

She says "this body" instead of "I" or "myself" and goes out of her way to refer to the body as "it" instead of any other pronouns.

Baal talks about how "it *once* promised its people a dream: the never-changing 'eternity' "

She uses alot of past tensed language in her speech about the body and there is quotations around the word eternity. Its an odd choice that makes me believe that the word eternity could very much be relating to something other than its actual meaning.

Also she says "it *should* hold absolute control over this world", implying that the body dosent have the control over the world as of when she said this.

Finally is our unreleased Nagadus emerald gemstone narrated by the dendro archon (who is also our youngest archon, being only 500 years old).

This one seems simple to interpet as the dendro archon is talking about how plants are unable to express themselves and therefore they need someone to speak for and protect them.

Theres no actual reference to wisdom or knowledge in this description and feels more akin to what the previous dendro archon (who was the god of the woods) would say.

Perhaps the current dendro archon admired the previous dendro archon, and wants to continue his ideal of protecting and speaking for the plants.

I've skipped the anemo and geo Ascension stones since we already know who they are and what they're like.

I might try dissecting the stuff Deinslief says about the archons next

[warrioreowynofrohan]

The Leithian Reread - Canto XI (The Departure for Angband)

This chapter contains - at the reunion of Beren and Lúthien - my favourite passage in the Leithian, and one of my favourites that Tolkien has ever written, and I think part of my reason for delaying is that I wasn’t sure how to do it justice. But that’s a little farther on.

The chapter opens with a brief account of the Siege of Angband and the Dagor Bragollach. It’s a very strong section of the poem, to the point where it’s hard to know which specific portions to quote; the rhyme and cadence and imagery is all excellent, and is enhanced by a kind of triptych structure from beauty to fire to ruin:

Once wide and smooth a plain was spread,

where King Fingolfin proudly led

his silver armies on the green,

his horses white, his lances keen;

his helmets tall of steel were hewn,

his shields were shining as the moon.

...

Rivers of fire at dead of night

in winter lying cold and white

upon the plain burst forth, and high

the red was mirrored in the sky.

...

Dor-na-Fauglith, Land of Thirst,

they after named it, waste accurst,

the raven-haunted roofless grave

of many fair and many brave.

The description of the dark forest of Taur-nu-Fuin is also wonderfully evocative: sombre pines with pinions vast, / black-plumed and drear, as many a mast / of sable-shrouded shops of death / slow wafted on a ghostly breath.

One of the great recurring themes in Tolkien is the way that all evil, whatever its initial motive and impetus, falls in the end to ruin for ruin’s sake, to the destruction and defilement of all things as a end rather than a means. The image of the Anfauglith is repeated with the desolation before Mordor (gasping pools choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about...great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained) and the ruin that Saruman makes of Isengard (trees hewn down and replaced with pillars of metal and stone, joined by heavy chains; meadows paved over; underground furnaces with vents emitting steams, like a graveyard of the unquiet dead), and even Lotho and Saruman’s harm to the Shire (from knocking down Sandyman’s mill to make a bigger one that wasn’t needed, to the mill under Saruman not grinding grain at all but only making smoke and stench and fouling the water).

It’s not as if there is a fundamental benefit to Sauron in making the ruin in front of the Black Gate, or to Saruman in his attempts to destroy the Shire; both start out at one point with the aim of “fixing” the world and putting it in order, and this degenerates into control and rule for its own sake, and then into purposeless malice against not only people but the land itself, with misery and destruction as the only aim. We see small echoes of it elsewhere, as at Losgar.

This theme provides a strong contrast to Beren’s song before his departure across the Anfauglith, which is centred on celebration of nature and creation for its own sake, in and of itself, without any thought of control or ownership. The song fits with Beren’s demonstrated love of nature in earlier chapters, where during his lone guerilla war against Sauron he eats only plants, and is friend and allues with the animals of Dorthonion and with nature-spirits (minor Maiar?) as well: and many spirits, that in stone / in mountains old and wastes alone / do dwell and wander, were his friends. (It also has some echoes in Sam’s song in the Tower of Cirith Ungol.)

The song is given here in longer form than in The Silmarillion:

Farewell now here, ye leaves of trees,

your music in the morning-breeze!

Farewell now blade and bloom and grass

that see the changing seasons pass;

ye waters murmuring over stone,

and meres that silent stand alone!

The song also evokes a lot of the themes that came up in my discussion of CS Lewis’ The Four Loves, particularly the part on eros. Beren has virtually no expectation of coming back alive; he expect to die at best, or be captured and tortured at worst. But making the attempt is, to him, better than willfully choosing a life separated from Lúthien, and better than risking her coming to harm because of him. (The latter, as she will soon point out, is no longer something he has any choice about!) Both of them prefer the very high probability of torment or death over being parted from each other.

Additionally, Beten’s song is one of the purest expressions within Tolkien’s works of the element of admiration in love: delight in the beloved in their own right, above and beyond anything that has happened or will happen or any connection to you personally:

Though all to ruin fell the world / and were dissolved and backward hurled / unmade into the old abyss / yet were its making good, for this / the dawn, the dusk, the earth, the sea / that Lúthien for a time should be!

This feels, also, like it is getting at something deep within the mood of Tolkien’s works, where so much is destroyed or fades or is lost: the existence of beauty and goodness continues to be good, to be meaningful, even when the good and beautiful things have themselves passed away. They were, and that is better than if they had never been.

And here we come to my favourite part of the entire Leithian:

“Ah, Beren, Beren!” came a sound,

“almost too late have I thee found!

O proud and fearless hand and heart,

not yet farewell, not yet we part!

Not thus do those of elven race

forsake the love that they embrace.

A love is mine, as great a power

as thine to shake the gate and tower

of death with challenge weak and frail

that yet endures, and will not fail

nor yield, unvanquished were it hurled

beneath the foundations of the world.

Beloved fool! escape to seek

from such pursuit; in might so weak

to trust not, thinking it well to save

from love thy loved, who welcomes grave

and torment sooner than in guard

of kind intent to languish, barred,

wingless and helpless him to aid

for whose support her love was made!”

Thus back to him came Lúthien:

they met beyond the ways of Men;

upon the brink of terror stood

between the desert and the wood.

This returns to the previously-stated theme around eros: for Lúthien, being captured and tirmented in Angband is a better fate than willingly parting from him, or allowing him to leave her behind for her protection. And this, I think, is why Beren and Lúthien succeed in gaining the Silmaril: be ause their goal is not the Silmaril, their goal is each other.

But there’s more to it than that. I love the passage for Lúthien’s assertion that it is not Beren’s chouce whether she can risk danger and death for his sake. He does not have either the power or the right to protect her from her love of him. (I do think it’s something of a wonder that he still decides to go ahead with the Quest after this rather the the alternative of “let’s elope and be nature-hobos together”, but a lifetime of looking over your shoulders for the forces of Angband and the Fëanorians [yes, I think C&C would’ve gone after them out of spite even without the Quest, given their behaviour in the previous chapter] and Doriathrim sent to kidnap Lúthien back home is daunting in its own way; at least this way, if they succeed it will be over.)

This also goes for friendship (philia): in The Lord of the Rings hobbits express the same sentiment in more commonplace terms, in Merry’s, “You cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo,” and Sam’s “I’m coming too, or neither of us isn’t going. I’ll knock holes in all the boats first.” Or, even more so, in another line of Sam’s during the Breaking of the Fellowship:

“All alone and without me to help you? I couldn’t have a borne it, it’d have been the death of me.”

“It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam,” said Frodo, “and I could not have borne that.”

“Not as certain as being left behind,” said Sam.

Returning to the Leithian: Beren is still reluctant to have Lúthien accompany him into danger. And has a line here whose sentiment always seems to show up in my thoughts about Maedhros and Fingon (“Thrice now mine oath I curse,” he said, “that under shadow thee hath led!”)

Huan, returning with disguises for Beren and Lúthien, uses his second of three lifetime chances of speech to back up Lúthien’s point, and to advise them to disguise themselves as Draugluin and Thuringwethil. This includes one of the more amusing lines in the Leithian, with Huan’s Lo! good was Felagund’s device, but may be bettered. Hi, Finrod, you’re being patronized by a dog. :D He thinks you get, maybe, a B+ on the tactics planning. (Beren gets an F, quite bluntly: Hopeless the quest, but not yet mad, unless thou, Beren, run thus clad in mortal raiment, mortal hue, witless and redeless, death to woo.)

Lúthien uses magic to disguise them effectively, and to prevent the terrible disguises from affecting their minds; it’s difficult, skillful, and lengthy work: With elvish magic Lúthien wrought / lest raiment foul with evil fraught / to a dreadful madness drive their hearts / and there she wrought with elvish arts / a strong defence, a binding power / singing until the mdnight hour.

It is a few days’ journey across the Anfauglith to the gates of Angband and, again, reminiscent of Frodo and Sam’s journey through Mordor; briefer, but also worse in some respects, as they have neither food nor water.

[a-sleepy-reader]

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov: an Analysis and Review

Foreword

Trigger warning for themes of paedophilia, sexual assault, stillbirth, manipulation, violence, and tragedy as well as gruesome descriptions of death. If you want a review free of spoilers, please scroll to the section labelled ‘Conclusion/Review without spoilers.’

Introduction

Calling Lolita a controversial novel is a safe bet. Some readers revolt at its topic, others still protest it as the inspirational romance of the century. Both give Lolita a bad name. I will say it once very clearly; plot-wise, Lolita is a book about a paedophile who grooms, manipulates, isolates, and rapes a twelve year old girl. It is disturbing subject material to say the least, subject material that has to be given more thought than its protagonist’s ramblings of adoration for the book’s namesake. 

For instance, despite its fluctuating reputation, Lolita has found itself to be a playful and humorous novel to many, a “...comedy of horrors” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. So what is Lolita, exactly? A comedy? A thriller? Both? It is time to examine this twisted novel and see just how tangled its thorns are.

Plot synopsis

Humbert Humbert is a typical man by most standards: a handsome, French writer and professor with a soft spot for road trips… and little girls. 

Humbert categorises the sexes into the male, the female, and the nymphet, the latter of which describes peculiar young girls Humbert feels an intangible attraction to. It is with such a nymphet that Humbert self-describingly falls in love with; rambunctious twelve-year-old Dolores(whom he dons ‘Lolita). He cannot keep his mind off of her; ‘light of my life, fire of my loins.’ In however poetic a prose he may choose to describe it, Humbert feels a physical bond to young Dolores like to no one else since his dead childhood sweetheart. Humbert goes so far to pursue the girl that he marries her mother, whom he plots to drown in the blue depths of a lake to have Dolores all to himself. However, what Humbert describes as a work of fate led to the day Dolores’ mother’s brain lay strewn about the road, smeared by an incoming car. She didn’t need to be subject to Humbert’s schemes to die.

From there on, Humbert has legal custody over the twelve-year-old fire of his loins. Raping Dolores becomes a routine. Though she does initially say yes, she is a minor incapable of consent in the imbalance of a grown man with everything to lose if she is to either escape or stop the affair; she will lose her only family if she reports him, and risks breaking his heart if she cuts off the affair altogether-unfortunates only know what people do when they have nothing to lose. Orphaned and trapped, Lolita agrees to Humbert’s ‘love.’ As he described it, ‘she had nowhere else to go.’ 

Two years pass before Dolores falls ill during their second road trip and is taken out of the hospital by an uncle aware of Humbert’s affairs. By way of escaping with this newfound relative, Dolores is finally free from Humbert’s possessive grasp. Depressed by his separation from the girl, Humbert lives a miserable life for several years before receiving a letter from Dolores herself saying she is married and pregnant. Though Humbert suspects the man behind both titles is her own uncle, Dolores refutes this by saying that, though she was in love with him, they did not settle because she refused to be in his pornographic film.

Enraged with the uncle, Humbert arrives at Dolores’ uncle’s house and murders him before being arrested. It is here that we learn Lolita is Humbert’s autobiography of the events surrounding his ‘love’ for the book’s namesake. Though he wishes for the girl-turned-woman to live for a great many years, the victim, escapee, and survivor dies in 1952 during childbirth. Her offspring is a stillborn.

Analysis

It’s a curious thing, really. That so many interpret Lolita as a romance, I mean. Of course, it often presents itself in its writing as a summery romance to read on the beach. A handsome man meets a female. An attraction is felt. Male and female confess an attraction for one another which leads them on a series of road trips following the female’s mother’s incidental death. The language is no exception to this tone-just read the first paragraph: 

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

It’s made up of beautiful, flowery sentences, language suggestive of the pure romance of a man ‘in love.’ With a twelve year old girl he rapes. Yes, Lolita is one of those novels that wears many outfits, its outermost lining being that of a tragic love story of one traumatised man and his ungrateful lover. This perspective is especially interesting when taking into account Lolita’s exquisite writing; could the flowery language have prompted so many to interpret this book as a romance? Could Lolita be representative of how so many wield words to distract or deceive those trying their best to disapprove of them? Either way, few deny that Humbert is lying, to himself or to the reader, of exactly how the events of his fascination with Dolores occurred. Digging further into the book, Lolita becomes  an unreliable narrator’s documentation of the rape and manipulation directed toward a naive minor trying to cope with her mother’s death. Further still, it is a comedic satire of a paedophile’s attempts  to justify his crimes... and failing miserably. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I wasn’t even her first lover.” Deeper still and it’s one man’s search for his childhood sweetheart(dearest and deadest) he never finished loving, so he seeks, endlessly, to shower her lookalikes with unwanted ‘love.’ Without end. Without fulfilment. 

Lolita is a story of infinite stories.

Review

What first struck me about Lolita was its beautiful writing; its eloquent prose, imagery, and metaphors hopelessly hooked me from the first paragraph. Nabokov never ceases to use amazing similes, description, and personification to amplify the reader’s experience of the goings-on of Humbert and the girl. This is especially striking in contrast to its tragic subject material; Humbert will rape, and he will manipulate, and he will scheme a murder, and he will hurt so many innocent lives, but he will do so with seemingly effortless grace in the scribbles on a paper. 

Despite this, I did not find Lolita to be a difficult read regarding comprehension of the text. True, many a word I did not understand, but, despite this, I could always tell what was being communicated; the language is certainly not as dated as Hemingway nor Shakespeare. It may even be a calming read for those with a strong stomach, and will certainly teach a thing or two to those wishing to learn more about poetic writing styles done well. 

Some may find the book to be lacking in terms of plot and overall excitement, but I feel this is a subjective view rather than a relatively factual one; Lolita is not an action book. Nor is it a drama. Humbert sometimes spends pages describing the exact locations of a road trip, or exactly how he earned money in the 50’s, and so forth. Some may find this mundane; I will admit that I was, at times, bored by it myself. However, what Nabokov sacrifices in brevity he makes up for with a profound understanding of Humbert’s emotions, environment, and thoughts. 

One slight criticism I do, however, have, is that I found all of the characters in Lolita were fairly bland for me. True, Humbert is unique in his attempt to beautify the macabre, but beyond the initial shock factor of his morale and the revelation that he is seeking the love of a girlfriend from his childhood, Humbert can be mostly summarised as ‘quiet, manipulative, scheming, and possessive of Dolores.’ I was not invested in him as a character, probably due to a lack of good qualities within him; it is true that by one perspective, his story can be interpreted as tragic for him, though through the more common lens of Lolita being a 336-page manipulation of the severity of the atrocities of an evil man, Humbert loses all good qualities beyond his capabilities as a writer.

The same goes for Dolores herself, as I found her to be fairly two-dimensional; she is very sensory and seeks goods of food and adventure and she has a rambunctious heart unconcerned with how others’ feel nor how others perceive her. She is what many would call a ‘wild child,’ and though she becomes more withdrawn later in the book due to the numerous abuses she endured, I did not see much depth to her beyond face value. 

That being said, I certainly do not think the characters are bad, just that they are underwhelming in comparison to the rest of the story. 

I recommend Lolita to those enthralled by character-driven stories of nuanced emotions and traumas, a sort of story of the broken attempting to break the whole. If you are not put off by very thorough descriptions nor by a purposefully thin plot, I have the impression Lolita will revolt, horrify, hypnotise, and seduce its readers into its soft, macabre pages. 

I give Lolita a rating of 90%.

Conclusion/Review without spoilers

Lolita is a vile, endlessly layered story of trauma and the endless search for lost love, horrific abuses, of humorous wit and smirking irony, and of one man’s endless destiny of deceit. I suppose Humbert’s own initials best summarise the smile and wink this book will deliver as you holler at Humbert, weep for Dolores, or perhaps even vice versa. They do say Russians are witty, and Nabokov does not fail this reputation even when we analyse how Humbert Humbert’s initials sound in the author’s native language: 

Ha-ha.

[calmlftv]

demon!ash au - a synopsis

w/n: a BIG thank you to @califl0wer for originally inspiring this AU, to @spicycal for letting me bounce ideas off of her, and to @irwinkitten​ for giving me live reactions 🥺but here is it, the synopsis! i’m posting this before anything else simply because i’ll be using a lot of different terms, and since i’m a sl*t for details, i like being able to use those terms consistently and i don’t want any readers getting confused by them/their importance. i’ll be putting this before anything i write in the warnings as well, but this series is going to be graphic; i love writing really intense shit like this, so i will be writing some details that may make certain readers uncomfortable. as this is a synopsis, i will keep things very general, but the beginning is already written and starts off pretty intense! 

this is a demon!ashton irwin x fem!fallen angel!reader au!

overall series rating: 18+, for intense situations, possibly future smut, strong language, graphic imagery

taglist: @spicycal @castaway-cashton​ @irwinkitten​ @n-ctarinenga​ @thesubtweeter​ @ashisonthefloor​ @ashtonsos​

The World - A General Definition of Terms & Setting

* Time setting: Summer/Fall of 2020; minus COVID-19 ever happening.

* Mortals live on the Surface. It is called this because it’s the only plane of existence where every single creature can exist; from the fae to the demons to the cryptids, they all exist on this single temporal plane together. 

* Demons are from the Underworld. This is located very close to the center of the Earth, and is covered in the various colors of fire: red, orange, blue, and white (on occasion). 

* Angels & the Fallen are from the Heavens. This is about as close to the biblical description of heaven: golden streets, singing angels, and all. It has been added that angels do get halos and wings, bc I’m a cliche hoe. 

* The Fallen are a community of rogue Angels that reside on the Surface. They made the decision to fall out of the Heavens and crash land on Earth, and their wings are maimed and shredded during their fall so they can’t fly back up, usually they are “operated” on and shortened to small nubs. You are a member of the Fallen, having decided the Angel lifestyle was too cookie cutter for you. 

* The Inbetween is the land of punishment for Angels. No one knows what it’s like, but it’s an Angel’s worst nightmare; when an Angel returns from the Inbetween, they tend to not talk about it and fall in line.

* Every demon has a mark, which indicates how they die. Wherever the mark is located is where the death injury occurred. The way they died is the only mortal memory that demons have. 

The Underworld - A Guide to Royalty & Demons

* An individual who is sentenced to the Underworld must endure a form of torture for eternity. The torture depends on their mortal lives and the sins they committed. 

* Souls can become a demon after fulfilling a majority of their torture. No one knows what “majority” means, so a soul may never become a demon or become one after 10 years. There’s different variations of demons, but for the purposes of this universe, I’ll be mostly focusing on “normal” demons, with honorable mentions of other types throughout.

* Demons only get one appearance; they do not physically age. Their hair and nails will grow like a human’s, and they can trim or cut that as they wish.

* There is one King of the Underworld; he has his High Court, which also serves as his Inner Circle. They are the people he trusts the most, and they rule the Underworld together, with the King having ultimate power. Ashton is King in this universe, and the other 5sos boys are his High Court/Inner Circle. 

* The King and his High Court are the most powerful demons in existence. They’re the only ones who have certain powers, and the King is the only one able to sense when magical/heavenly/demonic creatures are nearby. They all hold the ability to communicate telepathically, and that’s how they communicate while in crowded spaces/surrounded by open ears.

The Heavens - A Guide to Angels & Fallen

* Angels are the very same angelic beings as described in the bible, but much less terrifying; one face, one set of wings, halos that glow beautifully, the whole nine yards. Their lives are very structured, and they live by a set schedule. Deviating from that schedule earns Angels a punishment.

* Angels can travel between the Heavens and the Surface with ease. Usually they only come down for emergency reasons, but Angels are aware of what goes on on the Surface.

* Fallen are able to hide their nubby wings easily; most of them opt to disguise them as scars, but they cannot completely remove their wings; it’s their punishment for leaving their Angel lifestyle, to live with the pain. Usually Fallen are not in pain when their wings are disguised. Removing the wings entirely can and will result in death, and no one knows what happens when a Fallen dies. 

* Fallen are able to change their appearance in minor ways on the Surface. Maybe a cuter nose, a different hair color, or putting tattoos on their skin. Major changes (like a sex change, body shape) will take a bit of help from other Fallen, who can lend some of their power for that. They do not physically age.

* All Fallen dispose of their halos usually. They’re not needed anymore, although some opt to keep them as a decoration for their homes. 

* You live in a community of Fallen that have bought out an apartment complex. You do not have to pay rent, but you get a job anyway so you can afford to live among mortals a bit easier. 

w/n 2.0: hopefully this helps paint the image of this world in your head! if y’all have any questions, ideas, hate mail, pls send it to my inbox! “in the beginning” is coming soon! have a lovely Sunday 😊❤️

[dribbonart]

Steven Universe Rewatch: Chille Tid

I expected to not like this episode, since I don’t care for dream sequences. I had forgotten that this is the best written episode of the series so far. The jokes are rapid fire and hit every time. 

It was so good, I had to go back and see who wrote it.

Lamar Abrams has done a lot of great work, but it comes as no surprise that this is Lauren Zuke’s first episode. Almost every time I see something in Steven Universe that’s truly excellent, it’s Lauren’s.

I don’t understand the drama that grew around Lauren, and I don’t care. All I need to know is some stupid jerks decided to harass one of the best creative people out there until they decided to leave social media entirely. There’s no excuse for that, no matter what they do on a show.*

On to the episode.

More shipping fodder for Pearlmethyst. 

The plan of “let’s just go out on the ocean and look down” seems pretty terrible.

Nice line. I like that throughout this conversation Amethyst is apparently murdering Steven.

This is very cute. I can’t include all the good jokes in this episode or this post is going to be a mile long.

These faces are over the top, but I think it works. Garnet’s delivery is perfect as always.

This entire sleepover scene is just great. Pearl’s awkwardness is so adorable.

I don’t think there can be a “good” dream sequence in a story, it’s always a waste of time. The best you can get out of a dream is some nice imagery. This episode nails it with the imagery, but it’s also not exclusively a dream. It’s a means of communication, so it’s doing some real work.

Pearl still hasn’t gotten over Rose. I wonder what the pizza is about?

This angle is really unusual. I don’t think we’ve seen the room this way before. It makes me feel like Pearl would bang her head on the rafters.

As I’ve said before, the entire Lapis/Jasper situation doesn’t make sense in a literal reading. Lapis could singlehandedly beat up Jasper with her absurdly overpowered water abilities. The Crystal Gems could beat up Jasper if Lapis just ran off somewhere. We’re supposed to see Lapis as a jailer of an existential threat to humanity and the Earth, but Jasper is just a very formidable fighter. The most dangerous thing she could do is go back to Homeworld and tell them that Rose is still alive.

With this sort of thing, you have to just accept their reading of the situation. Otherwise, the characters seem to be completely deranged. 

The visualization of Jasper and Lapis being trapped together is very cool. Only one of them can be above the water by pulling the other one under. It’s great visual storytelling. If they tried to explain how the magic works, it would be nonsense. This way we can intuitively understand it.

I still like this design.

Garnet even goes to sleep like a boss.

If you remember Chille Tid as an episode about just advancing the plot, give it another shot. It does the narrative work, but it’s also one of the most consistently funny episodes of the series, and the characterization is spot on. I haven’t been ranking or grading these episodes, because that’s pointless, but I’d put this alongside Sworn to the Sword, or any other excellent episode.

*Obviously there are limits. If someone does something criminal or sexualizing minors, for example, it makes sense to cancel them. Even then, I don’t think harassing them personally serves a purpose.

[everydisneymovie]

Review #27: Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier

Post #30

6/25/2020

Next up is 1955′s Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier

Enjoyment : [4]

With the exception of a few key scenes, this movie is rather boring. Some of the imagery in the movie is charming, and a few battles scenes had a significant level of tension. Those were probably the best parts of the movie, however it was hard to get invested because of one key issue. The lead actor playing Davy Crockett played him very mellow and calm. This was probably done to make Davy Crockett seem cool and in control even in stressful situations, but the result is a very boring performance. He looks and sounds uninvested in the events happening around him, so it’s hard to get invested in his character. A lot of this seems to stem from the Davy Crockett mythology and how a ‘real man’ remains unaffected by the hardships of life. A lot of scenes dragged because of this misconception, I would really prefer a little fire behind my protagonists. I mean he barely reacts when his wife dies (off camera after having like two lines.)

Quality : [4]

This is a passable movie. Some battle scenes are well choreographed and every so often there is an interesting shot. However this movie is very dull and colorless, mostly focusing on dry mountainsides and grey swamps. For a movie about the ‘Beauty of the American Frontier’ it doesn’t do a great job showcasing said beauty. A higher color contrast and some more establishing shots could have really sold the setting. A major structure issue with this movie is the fact that it was originally aired as a three episode miniseries recut to be released as a movie. This means it feels like three short stories with little connective tissue. Also the middle section where he goes into politics feels boring when compared to the other action packed segments.

Hold up : [2]

This movie is tinged with the racism and sexism of the time they were portraying, but it also contains a very toxic element that really drags the movie into questionable territory. It’s bad enough that the characters mock and murder Native Americans, but when Davy Crockett ‘gives them his word’ that they won’t lose their land it feels like malicious historical revisionism. Looking up the historical Davy Crockett, it seems he genuinely did try to fight for Native rights but the movie frames his actions as facts, and not the tragedy they turned out to be. This movie is just not interested in the struggles of Native Americans, it is interested in a comfy version of White American Mythology. The fact that Davy is sympathetic to the suffering of Natives is kinda muddled when he also shoots the ‘bad ones’ without much hesitation and we never really get to see their perspective beyond one character who isn’t given nearly enough screen time or depth.

Risk : [3]

Like I said in the previous category, this movie feels way too cozy to be trusted. The way this movie clings to safe depictions of the American ideal reminds me of Disney reaching for their security blanket. You can tell what Disney is comfortable writing when you look at a movie like this. The Americana this movie is drenched is noticeably false even for the time when it was made. On a more pointed note, despite the grim and violent tone of this movie, it just sorta... cuts away right before Davy Crockett dies and just abruptly starts playing the end credits. I think this is because the film makers either were forced to remove the scene were the protagonist dies, or they genuinely didn’t want to kill him off so they could make sequels. (spoilers they made a sequel to this movie.)

Extra Credit : [2]

This movie gets credit for portraying the White American generals as misguided fools and it at least TRIED to frame violence as a bad thing. Plus some of the music is catchy.

Final thoughts:

Wow this is a movie for cowards. Historically Davy Crockett fought against the trail of tears and was vocally outspoken against Andrew Jackson, and the version they portray in this movie comes off as kinda psychopathic if I had to be honest. He talks big about how violence isn’t the answer and he valiantly protects downtrodden minorities, but then also kills said minorities because it’s “the American way.” He literally just like... decides to go die at the Alamo just because he wants to be patriotic. This is one of those movies were you can feel Walts regressive joy behind and I think that drags down all the good aspects this movie tries to hold onto.

Total Score: 15/50

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the list

[witchsheartbooks]

How about Claire x Mansion squad HCs in which they realize that their child inherited the Witch's Heart?

This will be a platonic x Reader. With the Reader being the child.

Claire:

She’d be moderately concerned especially after everything she went through. It was one of her fears after all. When she had dealt with it herself.

She sits them down one day, not yet sure if she should involve her partner in the discussion.

“My ray of sunshine. I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to have this talk with you but it looks like I don’t have much of a choice.” She then ruffles your hair, giving you a soft look paired with a smile that could only be described as sad.

You tilt your head quizzically, it wasn’t often that your mother was anything other than happy so it was reason for concern.

Claire reaches from behind her and produces a book. “Do you remember these books? The ones I used to read you?”

You nod, “Yes but I like the one you tell me that isn’t in a book! The one about you and Dad!”

You of course were referring to the story of her and Noel. It captivated you, always hearing of just how far he had gone for your mother.

Claire then sets the book down, solumnly. “Ah yes. That one’s you’re favorite isn’t it?”

There was a tangible pause paired with a sigh. “There are things I had trouble sharing with you. You were so young at the time so now I feel I can tell you the whole story.”

She lifts her finger, tilting it to the side and offering to smile. “It’s kinda scary though. Your opinions of my friends might change. Are you ready?”

Your brows furrow as you give a determined nod, hugging a pillow to your chest as you prepare yourself to listen.

Hours passed and you look at your mother wide eyed as she finishes with. “And now…it seems you have the Witch’s heart too.”

You toss the pillow and scramble to your mom, holding her tight. “But everything’s ok now, right? All of you are still friends and-”

She then combed your hair, shushing you gently. “Of course it is! Your father and I are going to protect you ok?”

Her voice then grew more serious as her brows furrowed. “But you can’t tell anyone ok? Even your best friends.”

You give a firm nod, squeezing her again as you simply shake in place.

Ashe:

He noticeably freezes, coming across the research confirming his worst fears.

You his own child seem to have possessed the Witch’s Heart.

No no, that can’t be right. Y/N can’t have the heart. Not like Claire. His breath caught in his throat, remembering the loss of Lilia and his two parents. Imagery entering his head upon then seeing you in the position Claire had been in.

He pushed the papers aside and stood. “No.”

Ashe was determined not to lose you. You were the only family he had and after finally having one of his own he refused to lose his family yet again.

He doesn’t speak to you about it, in fact he avoids the conversation entirely.

Your dad’s behavior tends to shift and he becomes more strict on you than you could ever have imagined.

Had you done something wrong? Where had this come from?

But you had never seen your father so scared outside of when he wakes up from those dreams he has.

The two of you spoke of almost everything so why wouldn’t he tell you…?

Unfortunately for him. Ashe would make his worst mistake this way.

Wilardo:

Taking you under his wing had curved his loneliness.

Being sterile and all, he couldn’t have children normally.

But finding you one day, it reminded him of his tie with gramps.

There was a bitter sweetness there but with how old he was now he masked it rather well.

Your father was perceptive at best, though as intimidating as he could be to others, he was always soft with you.

Though one day you noticed him growing unreasonably tense.

Setting your hand on his shoulder you try to gently get his attention.

He quirks a brow at you, keeping silent.

“Dad…? What’s wrong?” He seemed to look at you differently from before.

More distance in his gaze, more contemplative. Perhaps he was having a bad day? You couldn’t tell.

He simply shook his head. “Let’s stop for today yea? I’ll make us food. You can wander while you wait but stay close.”

He then brushes past you setting up a fire in order to prepare food. Occasionally glancing at you as you wandered the space obliviously.

With a inaudible exhale he merely watched you idly. Why am I always pulled into these hard choices…? Just like with Claire all those years ago.

He hummed while putting together the food, I have options… I could protect them like I tried with Claire but- Hm… the other option is we could both die…

Something else he remembered like a dream, an outcome with Claire where he had done the same.

He eyed you with this soft heart broken gaze, his chest fuckin hurt that’s for sure.

Was this selfish? Possibly. Or perhaps it was mercy.

While you wandered carelessly, the brooding immortal had called you back over for the meal. Handing you the bowl first and watching as you hungrily dug into the food.

You felt your muscles go limp, dropping the empty bowl as he caught you with a sigh.

Your consciousness fades and the last thing you manage to catch is, your fathers voice. “It will be over soon, Rose bud…”

Sirius:

The two of you were sitting, having afternoon tea as he was working on a few amulets in silence.

You knew how particular your father was so you did your best to keep quiet as he worked.

It was one of the few ways you could spend time with him after all so you felt it was worth it for just abit of your silence.

You doodled on this paper in front of you and he idly quirked a brow to watch.

The lines began to form a large gem in the shape of what would be the Witch’s Heart.

It was something you kept seeing in a dream, because of this your dream journal was filled to the brim with drawings of it among the disturbing imagery that usually came with this captivating gem.

Sirius sets down his cup, folding his hands as he only watched. The memories of his two best friends, his partner and that irritating Ashe Bradley idly passed through, invoking a sigh from the other.

“Y/N.” He prodded gently, enough to draw your attention away from the page.

“Hm?” Your head tilted, brows furrowing at his concerned expression. Your father as intelligent as he is happened to be a worrier at the best of times.

“I’m quite curious of your drawing, may I see it?” His red eyes conveyed only worry, his shoulders happened to be visibly tense as well.

You nod, hopping up and circling the work table to sit next to him and place it in his hands.

He only stared at the page, brows furrowed as he placed a hand on your back and rubbed. “Y/N. Do you know what this is?”

Your own brows furrowed and you gently shook your head. “I keep having dreams about it. Plus I see all these scary bloody images but-”

He gently shushes you, patting your head. “I know someone who had this gem once, you know.”

He pauses before correcting himself, “Well..two actually.”

He sets down the paper, rising from his spot and motioning for you to follow.

You perk up, tailing along with him, grasping his hand and kind of ducking under his longer cloak of which you had always seen him wearing.

Of course, you weren’t aware this was new and something he had adopted after the events of the cursed Witch’s mansion.

He mused a chuckle, patting your head again as he lead you into the side room, producing a small blue diary and slipping a picture into your palms.

You perked up, recognizing everyone in the folder immediately. “This is you, Claire and Lady Dorothy!!”

He simply nods, standing next to you and looking at the picture himself. “Yes. Though the two Elford women I looked up to, had that very gem in their chests..”

He gently taps the chest of those two in the picture.

You look up at him tilting your head in minor confusion. “Why is it in their chests, Papa?”

He only sighed, “The gemstone you were drawing is referred to as the Witch’s Heart. “

He suppresses a dry laugh as he continued, “ You know if only I wasn’t so stubborn in the beginning of it all I could have understood it all better, sooner. “

He eyes you softly. “This stone brings ruin to anyone who tries to use it. Though it tends to be in the possession of admirable people. Those who are selfish in their ambitions tend to use these people in order to get what they want, even if it means discarding them.”

He pets your hair, sighing again. “It’s how I lost Lady Dorothy in the first place. Though Noel and I, were sure not to lose Claire in the same way.”

Sirius then paces until he’s standing in front of you, your large eyes focused on him. So much trust held in that young gaze of yours. He now understood the position Lady Dorothy was in when she had him. “Love. You must listen to me very carefully.”

He taps his cheek as he continues, only focused on you, his child. “You must keep this information to yourself. Only speak of it with me.”

You blink tilting your head, “But what about Wilardo-”

He gently shushes you.”Let me handle it, Alright?”

After a moment you smile, giving him a squeeze, feeling him relax as you do.

Should my suspicions be correct my little tea leaf. I won’t let this all happen again.. He mused as he simply pat your head, returning the hug.

Noel:

Stress, this is a fantastic word to describe what your father goes through upon learning this information from Claire.

He had thought it was all over, that things had been wrapped up since their time in the mansion but to hear of this now only gave him whiplash as his chest only seized. Bringing his wife into his arms, remembering it all again.

Of course Claire was familiar with this reaction. He’d often wake up this way and go into a panic attack for a good while until she was able to quell him.

Claire hums idly, combing his hair and urging him to look at her.

“It’s ok Noel,” She continues softly. “Focus on me. We can protect them. We can do anything together, remember?”

The tension in his shoulders hadn’t subsided but damn if he didn’t cling to her. Losing her so many times had been one thing but losing the fruit of their love would ruin him beyond what you could begin to imagine.

He loved her so much, he loved you. Something he believed he could never have but also at first wasn’t sure that he even wanted.

Though after laying eyes on you in Claire’s arms for the very first time, he couldn’t begin to imagine a world without you or her in it.

For a while, Noel believed the only family he could ever have would be Sirius and Claire. Though now after the fact he was surrounded by more friends of which he could have originally imagined and his beautiful wife and child.

Claire brings him to the window, so they could both look at you as you play outside. Sitting in that small flower patch in front of the cottage.

His shoulders slack upon seeing you safe. That’s all he’s focused on, your safety, your happiness.

He want’s you to live, just as much as he wants her to live.

And he’ll be damned if anything happened to either of you.

~Mod Sirius

[nemetonisevilpassiton]

Where we’re going we won’t need Eyes to see - a teen wolf meta

With Teen Wolf meta we have this tendency to name check Event Horizon (1997) and run off without explaining it - especially in regards to the episode “Ghosted” where they were in Canaan which uses a lot of the same techniques and tropes. But before I explain how Teen Wolf got there we have to explain Event Horizon.

A friend of mine once called Event Horizon the greatest horror movie almost made, and that sums it up nicely.

Following the success of Mortal Kombat [1995 starring Linden Ashby] the studio gave give the director Paul WS Anderson [the Resident Evil guy] a budget of 60 million dollars, the large soundstage at Pinewood and Carte Blanche to deliver an R rated horror. The film he delivered was 121 minutes long and X-rated. It was externally editted down to 91 minutes or 96 minutes depending on region and legend has it that most of the narrative exposition went out of the airlock. As gory as it is - and it IS - it was much much worse and it’s entirely possible that this studio inflicted hatchet job is the reason Event Horizon has the cult following that it does.

Anderson did not waste a dollar of the money he was given, everyone in the film is a noted character actor and most of the dialogue makes them feel real [with the exception of one distinct line which is just hilariously bad]. The ship was a set [there is minimal cg and it’s bad as you’d expect for 1997 but it’s things like a floating water bottle] based on actual gothic architecture specifically notre dame. The crew of the Lewis and Clark [the rescue ship] is seven people because they were meant to represent the seven sins - maybe in the longer version they did. The “stranger” in their midst is Doctor Weir, who following the suicide of his wife whilst he built the Event Horizon, became obsessed with the ship is the one who wants to bring it “home”. The shot of the rotating space station where Weir is based was a miniature. As most of the effects were practical, as opposed to CG, they stand up to modern scrutiny.

The film was a critical and commercial bust, but over the years since it’s release it’s been insanely influential on the field of Sci Fi being responsible for IPs such as Warhammer 40k, Deadspace and even the Alien franchise [which Anderson dipped his toe in with Alien vs Predator] and is considered one of the greatest Lovecraftian horrors ever made.

Event Horizon is not a great movie, it’s…. I’m one of the people who adore it, as scary movies go it never fails to make my skin crawl but let’s get into the plot.

The Event Horizon was an attempt at FTL travel, instead of going really fast it punched a hole through the universe creating a worm hole that would allow the ship to exit somewhere else with a device called “the gravity drive”. On its test flight it vanished. Seven years later it reappears where it should have with no crew and only a mild distress signal. Weir (Sam Neill), the original creator takes the crew of the Lewis and Clark, a rescue ship captained by Miller (Lawrence Fishburne), to bring it back.

On finding the ship the youngest member of the crew, Mr Justin (Jack Noseworthy), goes into the drive room in full EVA and is dragged into the black liquid at its heart. He is rescued by Cooper (Richard Jones), but when they confront Weir he denies it’s possible despite that they could not have known what to describe. Justin is comatose. They find a recording of screams which has a latin phrase which DJ (Jason Isaacs) translates as save me. The med tech Peters (Kathleen Quinlan) starts to see visions of her son covered in sores. Weir starts to see his dead wife as she was when he found her but with empty eye sockets. The ship starts to pull at their sanity damaging the Lewis and Clark, Smith (Sean Pertwee) refuses to leave the Lewis and Clark and in the middle of that Justin gets up and puts himself in the airlock, setting it to open.

All of the characters are shown to have a dark history but because of the editting we often don’t know what that is. We know Peters has left her terminally ill son because of her visions. Miller tells us about a crew member he had to leave to die in a burning ship. Weir has his guilt over his wife, but the rest was cut.

They find the ruins of the old crew with a tape showing them dismembering themselves and each other and it turns out the translation wasn’t save me but save yourself from hell. Fans have actually translated it more accurately as save yourself from the fire.

Miller comes to the conclusion the best thing to do is go home and blow the ship from orbit but Weir refuses to go. He takes one of the explosives from the nave hallway and blows up the Lewis and Clark and Smith, this sends Cooper into space [where he has the worst line in cinema, seriously https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUozFOlxVnM] and Miller and Starck [Joely Richardson] confront Weir on the bridge where he has ripped out his own eyes. DJ is found disembowelled over the medicine table. Distracted by Cooper’s return Weir fires a rivet gun at the ship’s window causing the decompression to suck him into space. Miller tries to use the explosives along the nave corridor to separate the ship from the gravity drive which he considers the source of his evil but he is separated from his crew by a burning man who turns into Weir. They fight, the corridor explodes and Miller is sucked into the black hole.

There is a gotcha ending where Starck sees one of their rescuers as Weir but wakes up screaming before the very ominous door closing.

So what happens? what is the one sentence synopsis?

See that’s where Event Horizon sort of wins. On its surface the ship went to hell and became alive and is now luring people in and trying to drag them into Hell. Except even within the movie that explanation doesn’t make sense. The characters talk about the lack of good air, that they are running out of air and it turns them on each other to an extent so did anoxia cause the hallucinations combined with the very gothic imagery to create a mass hysteria? Is it a pseudo Catholic vision of Hell where the characters unable to deal with their own guilt at ultimately tortured? Maybe? Was it all of the above? I don’t know. Other people have amazing explanations of what happened and here’s the reason why Event Horizon freaks some people out and others are meh, it’s not that easy.

It has holes and contradictions and huge chunks obviously missing. It has a narrow focus and it never lies to the audience, it misleads them by assumption but it’s consistent. Weir is the hook character we expect to be the hero, he is the outsider amidst the crew of the Lewis and Clark, he is the one with the answers and the refusal to see alternative answers. He has the most fleshed out back story but he turns into the human manifestation of whatever is going on with the ship yet he is the one who becomes the face of the villain. The ghost apparitions are genuinely disturbing. The quality of the acting could carry a much weaker script. The effects are excellent and the gore is astounding, and best shown briefly [although production stills are available if it was too quick for you]. The Lovecraftian questions are presented and NOT answered. They are isolated in a place where they are in constant danger and the hallucinations mean even their thoughts are unsafe.

Did the ship go to hell? Or was it an explanation Weir made up when he broke? Or is this a purgatorial nightmare where Weir is sent out to fetch more victims for the ship? Is he repeating this ad infinitum with this crew or is it a new crew every time? Is the she Weir speaks of the ship or the manifestation of his wife, Clare?

The film doesn’t answer any of these questions. They are all valid ways to see the movie. And based on Anderson’s filmography the reason that these all DO work is because the film was butchered like one of the ship’s crew.

Recently they found a copy of the uncut film in a salt mine in Transylvania so maybe we’ll see it.

But people who take it on surface value that the ship went to hell and is now evil wooo, generally just dismiss it as poor. It is clearly a mishmash of things Anderson thought was cool instead of deep, sets are so Alien inspired that the xenomorph could pop out of any of the lockers and no one would be surprised. The ship’s set is so gothic Dracula could be drinking tea in the med bay and it would make perfect sense. Yet it somehow, probably despite itself, works.

So back to Teen Wolf.

Event Horizon clearly had its shadows over the production and it’s in the ambiguity more than the cinematography [which owes its debts to Silent Hill]. What Event Horizon managed by accident [Anderson couldn’t have pulled it off deliberately] Teen Wolf tries.

Every character in Teen Wolf, no matter how minor, has a backstory but it is not one we are necessarily given. They have their own stories which intersect with the story we are being told. If we look at the chimera, for example, we saw Tracy’s complicated relationship with her father, we saw Lucas and his boyfriend, Corey, and Corey before we knew he was a chimera told us about Lucas. Caitlyn’s girlfriend Emily was taken by the Darach but she was nervous about her first time having sex so Caitlyn tried to make it special for her. This makes the characterisation rich and this one of the complaints about the show. We learn as much about someone who gets murdered five minutes later as we do about the show’s mains. Beacon Hills feels real because the people in it feel real.

Teen Wolf offers a surface answer which does not hold up to scrutiny - at all -ever and which is often ridiculous. @Sublimeglass refers to this as the show vs tell, Teen Wolf tells us one story and shows us quite another. Solutions to problems are often best guesses with the information that they have and are often contradicted seasons later as characters learn more.

The main character is presumed to be the hero but by the end is very clearly the agent of whatever it is that is going on that wants conflict - however defining that very clear presence in Teen Wolf is like getting rid of glitter, you know it’s there but you’re never going to get it out of the carpet.There is clearly an evil presence, and it is clearly in the water, specifically the lake beside Lydia’s lake house [which Lorraine set up a mountain ash barrier to protect her from] but the character’s don’t know it’s there. I am not saying that Scott is evil or villainous in this - that’s a very different meta - but instead that he is continuing the war that existed before him. He is recruiting a character like him to carry on the story. He is repeating the cycle like Weir sacrificing another crew to the ship.

One of the arguments with EH is that the ship is freeing them from “the fire” which is light and energy, which is complicated, basically that our universe with its physical reactions is Hell, and that by removing the flesh [I did mention Hellraiser was a huge influence, right, and the video game Doom 3] you could be “free”, and there is a similar idea in Teen Wolf where characters try to escape the detriments of flesh - Gerard looking for a cure for his cancer, the dread doctors extending their life, the attempts to build a better beast for their own immortality, the leonmensch trying to capture the Wild Hunt.

Yet if you reduce Event Horizon to “the ship went to hell and is now evil” the two do not match but both are phantasmagorical.

Phantasmagoria is where one or more reality might not be real but is instead a dream/hallucination that is indistinguishable from reality, and thus brings the “reality” in question.

In Event Horizon this is several dream sequences, Weir and Starck both have nightmares whilst in stasis. This means when Clare starts appearing to Weir and the child appears to Peters we are primed to know they are not real and this knowledge means we’re primed for a scare even when the subject is not scary, such as Peter’s visions of her sick son.

In Teen Wolf we have several sequences that are not “real”: Scott’s visions of the school bus attack; Stiles’ visions of the bandaged figure; Scott’s dreams of killing Liam with the mute. Then we have sequences where reality is much more loosely defined in Motel California - where the characters hallucinate - and Ghosted which is the most obvious point for the Event Horizon characters.

We also have flashbacks which are subject to the “Rashomon effect” where several variations of the same narrative are shown and the whole is unreliable [the Fox and the Wolf, Blitzkreig and Visionary] What we are shown in Teen Wolf is only slightly more reliable than what we are told, and the telling is from Scott’s point of view - although it is unclear if it is only the last episode, the last season half or the whole show which is narrated. Personally I think it’s the whole. Either way Scott is an unreliable narrator. We cannot trust the narrative as it is presented even if it didn’t openly contradict itself.

The Lovecraftian parallels have to be mentioned even if when it comes to writing Teen Wolf meta I find him popping up like a particularly obnoxious infestation. Combined with that is the heavy influence of Hellraiser [3 metas later I am quite confident that Hellraiser was involved] and the whole is unsettling if not disturbing or scary.

The visual language of Event Horizon is medieval gothic, with columns, long empty corridors, flourishes and twists and the ship itself is a cross based on Notre Dame. In Teen Wolf colours have meaning, characters have symbolic associations [although unlike the intent for Event Horizon they do not represent anything as overt as the seven sins. They reveal the characters but not general themes.] Each of the first five seasons has a symbol which is represented by Godai, Fire, Water, Earth, Air, Void [if six has one I haven’t cracked it yet but it is probably the ethereal or the other] and the cinematography is certainly as deliberate.

I can’t just end this meta because it’s one of those as soon as you see the movie you can see the parallels because they’re pretty much laid out on a plate but the two are so different that unless you sit down and think about it you’d never consider it.

I can’t say that Beacon Hills is a phantasmagorical town that exists outside space and is poisoned by its proximity to Hell - but I can’t say it’s not either because of the ambiguity and contradiction. I can’t say Weir is a victim driven mad by his own guilt or the ship possessed him because of the same contradictions.

Event Horizon managed what it did despite itself. Teen Wolf might have done the same.

[radramblog]

Album Discussion- Viva La Vida- Coldplay

Oh shit, is Rad gunning for the throat of what was once one of the biggest bands in the world again, no actually, I really like this album, why would I talk about albums I hate. I’m not sure I have the comedic acumen to manage that yet, but I guess we’ll find out when I inevitably try.

Viva La Vida is Coldplay’s 4th studio album and one I have a lot of personal nostalgia for. It’s permanently associated with a particular time in my life, where I got the album added to an MP3 player I had and listened to it constantly over and over, and somehow didn’t get sick of it. It’s also the last album from the era in which they were actually good (haven’t listened to Everyday Life yet though), though it’s kinda a major departure from the sound and tone of the previous 3.

It’s also the first one where they really start getting up their own ass. Like, that font? And the French Revolution imagery? I guess there’s something to be said for such but relatively clean band having artwork featuring someone’s entire tiddy out on their album, but I suppose it’s considered a tasteful nude given the context of the original painting. Anyway.

The album opens with Life in Technicolor, spelled without the u despite them being British because fuck me, I guess. This instrumental really quickly establishes that this is going to be a different one- Coldplay’s previous work is extremely solid if vaguely generic alt-rock instrumentation, and here comes this song with a…. (looks it up)…santoor? Which sounds completely different to anything else they’ve put out. It’s also, again, an instrumental, which is pretty unique for the band considering how heavy a focus Chris Martin’s vocals tend to get. What we end up with is this short and sweet little introductory piece that I don’t have much else to say about other than I really like it. What I can briefly comment on is Life in Technicolor II, the version released as a single and on the EP immediately following this album. It’s like, twice as long, as full on vocals, and as a result overstays its welcome by quite a bit. It’s not like the vocals are bad, but they really do feel tacked on.

Cemeteries of London is next up, a ghost story of a track with heavy Christian themes and folk influences. There’s this echoey guitar in the backdrop of this that gives it an eerie edge, even with the relatively chill acoustic lead. I think putting so much clapping in such a minor-key track is a bold play, and it seems to have paid off for them. This song feels almost bleak, even desperate at times, like the vocals’ peak describing an encounter with God that doesn’t quite work out. There’s an unspoken tragedy here. It’s another of the album’s better tracks.

Lost! (exclamation point is part of the title) is a bit more uptempo, but not really any more upbeat. I don’t know what instrument is making that beat, but it sounds neato, and they just have a church organ running through this whole thing, because why not, sounds aight. It’s kinda U2-ey, which isn’t really a compliment coming from me. I would be very interested in another artist’s take on this track- and I don’t mean Lost+, that’s awful and doesn’t fucking count.

42 is the next track, and I don’t think that’s a Hitchhiker’s Guide reference. It’s again, extremely moody, or at least, the first part is. The composition of this is actually really interesting, it’s basically three separate songs mashed into one. The first part is the moody piano bit, the middle a banging instrumental bit, and the last bit this really fun collision of both types of instrumentation. Ultimately, 42 is an experiment that was probably for the best, since I’m entirely confident any part of this being the full song would get old real quick. But the split means none of them overstay their welcome.

Speaking of overstaying welcomes, Lovers in Japan is almost 7 minutes, and as a result was the track I always skipped as a kid. This is because the album version contains a second song in it, “Reign of Love”, which isn’t its own track for reasons that are completely alien to me. Much like Lost!, Lovers in Japan feels extremely U2, soaring guitars and choruses, but I just did not vibe with that as a kid and it’s hard to come back to now as a result. Reign of Love, on the other hand, basically just feels like 3 entire minutes of piano-based outro, and is really not worth sitting through Lovers in Japan to experience.

Yes is the title of the next song and it opens with violins in a rock song fuck yes! It’s also one with two songs in it, this time with “Chinese Sleep Chant” (uhhhhh) attached at the end for a total track length of 7:06. This doesn’t bother me as much as weith Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love, because I actually like both halves of this one. Yes feels like VLV-era Coldplay’s take on something grungier, with Chris Martin going lower than I think he does on any other song in their discography. This simple vocal switch makes the song seriously stand out from their other works, a more traditional rock instrumental standing out from the rest of the album in its relative simplicity. There’s still a lot going on, but it feels tighter and more restrained. I do think Yes might be my favourite track on the album. Chinese Sleep Chant is…an ethereal wall of sound, with heavily affected vocals to the point where they feel more like part of the instrumental than anything. It’s otherworldly, and hardly the best example of a song like this, but it’s more than satisfactory.

The next song is the title track, Viva la Vida, and I’m not really sure what there is to say about this that hasn’t already been said. It’s just such an incredible piece of music, orchestral and sweeping, emotional and moving. Aside from being tied to some awkward memories (I used it to audition for a musical in middle school, something I haven’t managed to forget try as I might), I don’t really have any complaints about it. Actually, that’s a lie, I have one. It’s fucking criminal that it’s largely associated with the CaptainSparklez Fallen Kingdom Minecraft song, which I never liked (compared to Revenge/TNT at least), to the point where every time VLV comes up in a SiIvagunner rip people are referencing that instead of the original. It’s just kinda shite, basically.

Violet Hill, then. This rocks hard enough that it was in Guitar Hero III, standing proud alongside Through The Fire and Flames and The Number of the Beast in rock history. It’s pretty low-key for that lineup, of course, but it’s the heaviest thing on this album sonically, and probably lyrically, too- took me until googling it to find out it was an anti-war song, though some of the lyrics are more understandable (and decipherable) than others. The close of the song is soft and kinda heartbreaking, but the rest of it just goes. It used to be my favourite on the album. Not so much, I like Yes more now, sorry.

The penultimate track is Strawberry Swing, another one I didn’t connect to as a kid. It’s got a bouncy, “tribal” beat, some really panned out double bass (?) for the bassline, and sounds almost sugary sweet. This song is so unbelievably relaxing, which is a really odd thing for a Coldplay song to be, but it works pretty well. I’m genuinely finding it hard to write listening to that, I just kinda keep getting lost in it. I swear it’s not just my ADHD, this song just chills you out. That’s probably a good sign, right?

The final song is Death and All His Friends, is another bloody double song- except I’m not sure it was on the version I had as a kid? I might be remembering wrong, but I’m pretty sure I’d not heard The Escapist before going back to this as an adult. Regardless, Death and All His Friends spends a long time in this low piano mood, serene and reassuring, it’s about a minute of that. It then spends like, another minute building up into what I’d call the song proper, an instrumental bit that eventually breaks out into this just desperate cry against what I can only assume is life, or death, one or the other. The lyrics are relatively brief before the song folds in on itself and ends, taking what I thought was the album with it. I do particularly like the line “I don’t want a cycle of recycled revenge”, that’s just fun to hear. And then we get to The Escapist and-wait this is just the start of Life in Technicolor again. But Chris has some vocals on some of it. I guess it bookends the album, but this is kinda pointless. And if you’re listening to the Album+EP version, it runs right into Life in Technicolor II, which gets a little repetitive.

In essence, Viva la Vida is an artier, more variable take on Coldplay, with a somewhat up its own ass aesthetic that at least backs it up with interesting music much of which is absolutely worth the time. It is also the last gasp of Good Coldplay, with every release afterwards (again, I haven’t heard the latest album, it’s apparently decent) being not especially great- while most agree that the poppier direction of Mylo Xyloto alienated most of their fanbase, and it sure did me, I actually don’t like Prospekt’s March either. But that’s a story for another time.

[elizabethrobertajones]

13x01 Watching Notes

The common pronunciation around these parts for “Nougat” is "Nugget" FYI

There's a secondary mission here to find out WHY DID DABB TWEET "BUTT SHAKE"?

Expectations: I'd say a good 95% new plot action nonsense to 5% mourning and we've seen all of it in fragments because they're spoiling the good stuff to lure us in; we're doing well as a season if Asmodeus isn't horrifically hammy and looks like he'll be able to carry all the Buckleming episodes they'll surely shove him in, and Jack is either not a pillock or is clearly *supposed* to be a pillock and the writing reassures us of that, although I did start to warm up to him in those tiny glimpses of promo stuff so we might be good there.

Aside from that I'm so superbly chill about this season (not worried about Cas, assuming Mary needs to get back as well, I'm just going on trust that Michael is well cast based on the actor's fanbase after scrolling his twitter the other day and the fact he seems cool in the promo stuff in a way that does not make me nervous unlike the other 2 new characters, and like no preconceptions about what I need this season to be) that I've actually achieved what scientists may have thought was unpossible... I made it through an entire hiatus embedded in the heart of a wanky fandom and I don't really have strong opinions or needs for about what's to come :P

FUCK ME UP, DABB.

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OH THE TITLE CARD IS GOING TO BE GOOD THIS YEAR

I say after just seeing "the road so far" because that looks classic. I can't remember which other season it most looks like because I'm way too hype but it looks good.

Gah I have the Worst Song Comprehension in the entire world WHAT IS THIS? There's just a montage of TFW hugs of various types going on and

"I never opened myself this way" and Dean in 12x22 opening up Mary and then the FREAKING GRENADE LAUNCHER MOMENT okay so the recap definitely is telling us the meta theme of season 12 in case we missed is so we're all on the same footing for season 13. This family loves each other a lot and we're busting down walls.

I watched the rest of the "road so far" then said out loud, "No. NO." as it wound up nursery first, because "no" are they not even going to show - OH SHIT IT'S THE SAME VIDEO AS THE ONE IN THE SUMMER. NO. We're ending this thing on dead Cas and Dean.

If this is how they mean to play it, I think I wanna take back that "fuck me up Dabb" from the previous point.

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OH NO  I got tagged in a post like this last week about the bit in 8x19 where Sam goes into Hell and there's the woman there in one of the cages who is like "we've been waiting so long! You finally came!" and like... did I think she meant she was mistaking Sam for Lucifer, and I always think YES that is a GREAT reading for that scene and fuuuuuuck me I should have reblogged that post and gone looking for links to some of the other cool posts about that because that's like one of the small redeeming things about 8x19 to me, because that is just such a good creepy amazing Sam thing and also I am still so freakin bitter that Lucifer was Nick in the cage because he should have looked like Sam and 11x09 and 11x10 should have been Sam v Lucifer!Sam moments because where the FUCK did Nick come from...

Anyway you can probably guess exactly how far I've got into this episode aka 1 entire one word line but it's already completely fucked me up.

If you all don't remember my season 12 experience, yes I am the biggest Destiel shipper on the planet but I actually get super hype for good Sam plot stuff and I dug every moment of the season 12 Sam stuff about his powers and everything and this is a confrontation that *I* personally think was built up and due because of the evolving way it's going - they confronted his past, the parts he had no control over happening to him in season 12, and I surmised that season 13 ought to be about the parts that WERE in his control, and Sam coming to terms with some other old mytharc stuff that happened to him, the way he managed to fuck up the world on a cosmic scale that Jack will have to come to relate to and he can use to guide Jack...

So yeah, this is not the first time this has happened to Sam, but this is definitely the much much better, more potent way it's happened and I am DELIGHTED and we're 1 word into the season :D

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*Dean stares at Cas* *stares at Cas* *stares at Cas* Yep I need to go shoot something.

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YEAH GIANT FLOATING EYEBALL TITLE CARD I KNEW IT.

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Sauron is the big bad, but where is the one ring.

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More seriously fuck yeah that gives complete continuity between my watching notes from 12x23 to this one because I am pretty sure I stopped them (aside from final whimpering notes to wrap up) thinking about Sam and Jack with yellow eyes and how this all looped back to the start. And how that was the key visual imagery, the way that Jack had yellow eyes and Sam's whole legacy of that stuff - things I've been screaming about since 12x12 and how it all came back into the story. I mean the scream I made in 12x12 when Ramiel flashed his eyes is a noise I've sort of low-key been making right until this point and I'm just so delighted about this imagery being given such a central place because it's not JUST Jack's eyes, even though he obviously has the most terrifying yellow fire floating around in his eyeballs, the colour is a motif that takes us right back to the beginning in terms of the story...

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HECK YEAH MARY -

wait

this isn't a recap going to a Mary scene

LOL SUBTLE DABB

This nursery, as we were saying after season 12 ended, is just *soaked* in the vibes of the original nursery from the show... I kinda think the bad energy in that place would probably have given Dean that nightmare ANYWAY but it's symbolically super relatable to everything that's going on, especially as he's got to deal with re-losing Mary, and Sam's dealing with the massive heap of themes about trauma from the Pilot onwards...

I'm sort of vibing with 6x01 re-doing the burning on the ceiling thing to re-start from the start (8x01 also re-started from the start but borrowed different imagery and also addressed Sam's arc through the Trials stuff hence the 8x19 thing and also him talking about how pure he was in 8x21) - obviously we have been saying this all seems like a season 1 re-do in a weird way, especially taking the Winchesters back to basics (but in an awful way), and I think for Sam, just meeting Jack under those circumstances we ended the season on were enough to loop him back to the start, because baby in nursery and yellow eyes blah blah, but for Dean his trauma in the Pilot was Mary specifically (and 1x01 separated out him and Sam that his trauma was Mary, Sam's was Jess - which 8x01 borrowed for Kevin and his girlfriend, because Kevin was always a Sam mirror and had glowing golden god power eyes when he was activated in 7x21)...

So yeah Dean just got a top up of Mary trauma because the fucking WEATHER around here is pilot mirrors.

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I would assume also probably maybe that was a semi-magical nightmare but I would not fucking put it past them to just show us Dean having a bunch of nightmares and like 7x05 maybe where he woke up from a dead Cas dream, we get stuff like that to show his absolutely wrecked mental state so I'll hold out hope it was kind of just Dean's imagination tormenting him, because we've only seen his nightmares extremely rarely in the absolute worst situations.

Just as a "the show is about more than sam and dean" stance, fuck the shipping, it needs to be so obvious on screen that Dean is suffering from losing Mary AND Cas in a way where it's obvious the dynamic can not just be Sam and Dean any more.

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OH NO SEAGULLS

(Uh, I mean, they are by a big lake, but yeah they are a bad bad omen. I think there was meta about them circa 10x14, to give an idea of how bad hearing seagulls is.)

-

Wow Sam and Dean are having a lot of bad sleeps now.

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"Wait, was that -" "Lucifer's son." look, Sam knows how Jack started his life. That he has the concept of "father". That it's about all he's said and all he's motivated by right now apparently. Sam sounds pretty freaked out and putting a LOT of weight on that concept - not "Kelly's son" or "the nephilim" - the fact Jack was born, and asked about Lucifer, and then walked buck naked out of the room and now we ain't got jack on Jack, like... This is a Lucifer related PROBLEM.

I just say, because I am pretty sure Sam's gonna be defending the kid in a couple of minutes so I need to lay out all the thoughts on what Sam knows and his headspace I possibly can as I go.

-

Oh nooo Cas's truck.

And I tell you what, I wrote a meta after 12x23 about how it was impossible to work out where Cas's truck was parked in the entire final conflict, and there was no fucking WAY the Impala and the truck were within shot of each other. Well guess fucking what. They are easily contained within frame now. I know you could just say minor continuity error but that's not why I'm yelling :P 

I'm yelling because I was writing about how the placement of their vehicles shows their closeness to each other or other metaphorical things (such as the no personal space parking job from 9x10 where Dean then pulled away and left the pimpmobile behind) and aside from the super dusty car, I am pretty sure I am saying that Cas's truck has appeared in visible shot because now it's not getting in the way of the action they can use it to symbolically show that Dean and Cas's vehicles are basically flanking the shot - but also they're so far apart and the house, representing Jack, and Kelly, and how Cas died, is between them.

-

(This meta business is like riding a bike :D)

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Nakey Jack getting the same walk shot as Amara did.

Amara got it because creepy feet.

He's getting it because penis.

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Hey there's the pirate place Dean's going to punch.

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Holy shit I have never laughed so hard at the show in my entire life. I had a coughing fit that's scared the neighbour's dog.

(wait, good laugh - 10x15 still owes me a drink)

Salty Butt Combo sounds good anyway.

(this must be why Dabb said "butt shake", the fucker. The absolute fucker. I am going to kill him.)

-

I'm laughing on a meta level too (I mean, hysterically, out loud, but also meta) because especially in season 8 burgers were connected to humanity and Dean's return from Purgatory, and Dean has a history on the show of eating cheesebutts all the time for various reasons... I mean... This is liiiitterally turning Dean's favourite, metaphorically significant, food into butts.

I mean... do I just... run with it? I mean like... is this the new meta thing? We now have to associate Dean digging into a burger with eating ass? I mean what are you doing Dabb?

I actually have a headache now because I laughed too hard and too loud.

-

Please please tell me Jack comes into this place, accidentally kills these dudes, and leaves a trail of destruction that when their supervisor gets to the store to deal with it, the police are like... trying to deal with the bodies but also cracking up a little and finally she looks up and it's like... HIGH SEAS BUTT COMBO

I mean that's going to make it into the newspapers

-

Oh wait, the inventor of the Buttshake is the guy from the police station that was talking to Jack so he's going to at least make it out of this scene.

-

See, that picture of Jack with pants on was in the PR photos and I was like "naaah" and defended that Jack did not have pants on and people didn't believe - no one understood. I knew this was gonna happen and because I don't lay down too much spec and what good would "Jack wanders around buck naked for like the entire first quarter of the episode" have done anyway so I was just making fun of him for being fully grown and naked in the hope that the fact he was naked was a major character trait because it was one of like 2 we knew about him... Yeah I'm feeling vindicated on a crack spec I can't really prove, especially as I was joking that Sam shames him into manifesting pants but I mean... I knew. Guys, I knew.

This has gone from horror to stoner movie classic in about 2 minutes flat.

-

I fucking love this show.

-

ALL THE CREATIVE WAYS THEY HIDE JACK'S NAKEDNESS THOUGH.

I am gonna make a gifset if I can stop cry-laughing for long enough

-

"Hi baby! .... *How naked*?"

Yep.

-

I mean I think it's adorable that Jack wandered down to the nearest place with more people to make enquiries but this is also wigging me out a bit because I thought that the smart thing to do would be to give him like all the functioning knowledge for this world (I do remember a post going around Tumblr that babies learn like 6x Les Mis amounts of words in the womb) BUT start him from scratch but that it would be super hard to pull off, and essentially they've decided to do exactly what I thought was going to be the most intelligent handling of the situation but not exactly the easiest, and he seems to really have been born with a single motivation and the most basic understanding of the world that his little baby cosmic supercomputer brain is going to have to piece together the entire world from context cues and natural intellect to deal with the rest...

I'm all for it as long as they handle his progression well. And don't use him as the ... butt ... of the joke.

-

I assume we all know the butt thing was because Jack is naked and it was joking about the fact he's wandering about butt out but they can't show it so they're just like butt butt butt on the menu board instead.

-

Promo scene! Oh no! We're not thinking about it. Not over it from last night. Dean is piiiissed.

-

Sam saying he had it under control is interesting now we have seen the actual scene in question. Sam did not really have it under control. He was babbling uncertainly like, no I'm not your father and also btw that freaks me out because he HAS possessed me before and being mistaken for him is SUUUPER uncomfortable and he's the reason for like 100% of my trauma past and present, and you're freaking me out... And yeah, between scenes he's decided they can't hunt Jack, that even if he seems to be laser focused on finding his father there has to be hope for him. This context is important: That Sam knows Jack's motivation and what it MEANS on a deeply horribly personal level and is defending him anyway. (I mean that "anyway" in the context of what Sam might think or feel rather than from my perspective where I can see it all from space and obviously Jack is not just any of this and anyway he'll be hunting with them sooner or later and there's presumably hope for Jack in this world...) But yeah, Sam knows how it is, searching for your father, for one thing. Which, interestingly, costuming aside, I don't think there's been MAJOR John and Lucifer parallels (hilarious that Lucifer changed his clothes just in time) in the same way that like, God and John were paralleled at a major narrative level. But now Jack wants to find his dad, which is the season 1 motivation for Sam and Dean, and that makes Lucifer and John narratively paralleled.

I don't think Sam is necessarily defending that Jack came out the womb with a one track mind to find Lucifer (maybe he wants to kill him, we haven't asked the guy his opinion yet) but that of course he thinks Jack can be reasoned with, saved from himself, and Sam relates heavily to being given powers beyond your control, and that there's hope for Jack to have a normal-ish life etc. None of which can be accomplished by just killing him outright.

-

Dean's just mad because Cas is dead and none of this would have happened if not for Jack

There's literally NOTHING TO META over on the Destiel side of things

-

I am feeling the void that they just left Cas there while rushing out to deal with Jack but I guess he's such an urgent problem Cas can wait and the house is remote enough that the milkman isn't likely to come round and see Cas lying dead in the back garden.

-

"Before he hurts anyone else" - he barely hurt you guys, it's more like he banged you up a bit and it was obviously a terrifying display of power and you don't want him to do *even that* again but - I mean - Dean, honey.

-

those words are going to be my approach to him for a while I think :P

-

That sheriff car really pushing the Twin Peaks vibe just because of the mountains on it... Was comparing it last season... Watched Twin Peaks for the first time shortly before the finale and caught Dabb just outright stealing an entire line from one of its episodes.

-

Either the police station is super close or Jack has been unintentionally terrorising the guys in the pirate restaurant for like an hour while just staring at the sign. He's thinking really hard about ordering the salty butt combo.

-

So we're really pushing how creepy Jack is. I mean, duh, it's the first episode and the first like 5 minutes of his screen time so he'll smile scarily for us.

They definitely cast him well for looking like Kelly but also having a really evil looking smirk.

-

Oh no. Cas.

They said Dean put the sheet over him and he's indoors so I guess that scene just happened in between things although right now we have no context for that so unless the angels say they didn't move Cas inside and put a sheet over him we don't have anything but actor confirmation this was a thing that happened, which is, of course, meaningless currency but makes for good headcanons... 

I mean I paused it on his dead face and went "waaaah" so I need to watch the rest of the scene but this is where I'm at going into it anywho.

-

Nope, one angel had to ask which means they are investigating the house which meeeeans that this was how Dean left Cas and it's implied by the subtext that this is what happened in one of those "the subtext isn't an ineffable cloud of possible happenstance, they just didn't show it on screen so this fills in the blank for us" ways and I am not okaaaaaaaaay

Also we have them as our straw man angels - one saying he deserved better (LOL I HOPE ALL THE CAS STANS ARE HAPPY THAT'S BEEN SAID IN THE STORY) and one who is saying he didn't. Representing that Heaven is conflicted about Cas's actions and that some still revered him and some still loathed him.

-

Also the one who hated Cas called Kelly a "Brood Mare" so he's a dick and I hope he gets stabbed pretty soon because we know there's angel stabbings in this episode, and I just was not paying any attention whatsoever to them in the spoilers.

-

So the clothes Jack ended up in were spares from the police station. The kid who worked at the pirate place has come along with them because fuck responsibility (he is so the bad influence cool guy and I hope Jack kinda gets a little puppy love crush on him although he's calling Jack weird still...)

That statement that no one is weird but normal in their own way was really nice though. Positive influences around Jack! Yeah!

-

Hahaha they literally said "Lost and Found" for where the clothes came from. Subtle. Jack's lost and found - he's a spare thing left behind, to be collected by the original owner or taken by someone who needs them more.

I used that phrase for a fic title back in season 12 about Mary about how she had been lost and found - died and came back - but also how she felt lost in the world now and then was found again when someone who related to her situation bonded with her and - okay it just turned into Charlie taking Mary back to her place and them making out but the point is that's the emotional tone I was using the title for. I assume it also applies to Jack's emotional state, but he hasn't been "found" yet and I'm assuming Sam will do that for him, but I don't think they'll go back to their place to play video games, drink a few beers and learn the ways of luuurve.

(I know some people were (crack?) shipping them but even though Jack's an adult now and technically only like... well, the actor would be within the window to have a thing with Sam and for it not to be weird age wise, but the whole framing of it... Jack acting like a grown up baby... yeah. We'll see how it goes but the dynamic wider fandom has built for them has been with Jack as a child. The way I see it is more the intern dynamic if he joins up with TFW, but the way they relate to him will have to be as a child by necessity at least until he's demonstrated emotional and intellectual maturity to them, and even then I think the impression will linger for a while...)

that was a weird side note... these notes are a disaster. Look it's been MONTHS and I didn't do rewatch notes for season 10 over hiatus like I meant so I am out of practice at this.

-

I also took a short break to chat with Mittens to confirm I wasn't going crazy, that WAS the same song as the other video they released in the hiatus, and yep we got the Nothing Else Matters destiel music video as the season opener. No I haven't processed it yet :D

-

Oh gosh Jack remembers his mom (HI KELLY, RIP) and he says she's in Heaven (can't recall his surname), and that memory was basically the footage from the USB stick, so he's internalised that somewhere without watching it. It's 2 influences, good and bad - a pure perfect dead mom (booo tropes the show was supposed to have ditched dramatically via Mary) and a literal satan father who "should have been there" but wasn't - ironically removed from the narrative by the reformed pure dead mom from last season, Mary. These are the two biological influences on him, anyway. The 2 sides of his nature he may struggle with and the way the conflict may be framed for him.

Buuut and here's a thing that might be contentious. So he knew Lucifer was supposed to be there when he was born and that he has to find him? He seems to have had that low level awareness of the world around him even in the womb, or at least was born with messages or some sort of communication from Lucifer lingering in his subconscious. Lucifer seemed linked to him while he was in the womb and I suppose this confirms it may have run both ways. Bleh.

The Jack As A Blank Slate characterisation is good because it excuses his actions from season 12 as done without knowing intent as he's still figuring it all out now, but these lines do implicate him in the actions, by giving him a sense of at least semi-awareness, of having a missive from before he was even born, knowing that he was supposed to find his father.

I think that also goes with Kelly leaving him the USB stick with the message on it - he has a missive from both his parents. Kelly's of course being so positive and hopeful for him, and Lucifer just kinda... being threatening to his goodness by wanting to be anywhere near him.

-

OH GOSH and he remembers burning Dagon. He did have an awareness of what was going on towards the end of the pregnancy!

"I remember the universe screamed" well that would be opening the AU I guess

-

yeah the thumbprinting thing isn't going to do much good :P Blank slate imagery again - he's not on the system, he's new!

-

Oh boy the stoner movie kid is going to have a wild ride explaining this.

Jack's getting better at full sentences though.

-

*blink blink*

-

And that was the Invention of Sarcasm.

Or he was telling the guy how stupid he was like... I have a superior intellect. I know this is a chair and this is a floor and this is the planet earth. Thank you, moronic human who keeps asking me the most obvious questions ever, it's really helping me collect my thoughts and begin to understand my environment. Are all humans as stupid as you?

-

Uhoh, the "I'm hungry" did not bode well with Amara. But is this going to be a fake out? He didn't seem about to attack the guy for his soul, so is he just going to have a whole ton of junk food when we get back and the guy is like yeah I knew he had the munchies so I raided my stash of M&Ms I keep here and it's all good.

I really can't tell how much of Jack's story is Ominous Nephilim Shit and how much is Stoner Bro Movie Lols

-

Here's the context about the curly butt fries line and destroying the world. People took it literally and it always seemed like this would be the context that Dean was putting fake words in Jack's mouth because he does it ALL the time. Like the line about getting bored of croquet so you know what's really fun? MURDER. I love it when he does this. I need to make him do it more when I write him.

-

Anyway Sam understands Jack, he can guess his location. Dean is doubtful and *specifically* mentions torching Chicago I think because of the 5x21 reference to his pizza date with Death. I think that is actually a good comparison because cosmic being but one who was a good ally in his own massive cosmic way. It's a nice omen. Dean is being wrong/right with his sarcasm. It's complicated :P

The fact he is letting Sam go in there also means he doesn't think that Jack is in there probably because the shack is still standing. Sam is going to go find clues! But while they're sitting in the car and Dean's sending Sam into a shack alone I can't help but remember 2x21 which was of course where Sam got snatched in a fast food shack and Dean asked for pie and it aaaaall began. I also wonder why Dean punches the sign and that makes me think that something might happen to Sam somehow although I can't guess how.

-

I have never related to anyone more than Drunk Fries Girl except I've done it in reverse, just missing the deadline on hashbrowns in McD's and stomping out of the store instead of just ordering fries :P

-

Sam deals with the awkwardness of asking for a tall naked guy with a level of composure Dean wouldn't manage in a million fucking years.

That's the entire meta.

-

You were right, Sam!

-

Sam's asking after Jack as the FBI and it's a way to not have him act as his father on the phone. But the thought occurred to me and I wonder if it passed Sam's mind or if he's judged Jack's age that they're not terribly far apart - less than 10 years.

I don't think they're really playing into this comparison right now anyway - like it was just for the opening scene, or the sheriff would have asked, "are you his father" and put Sam into the awkward position and THEN have him say that he's an agent.

-

This is literally the best exchange in the entire show because Sam is having to pretend to be FBI while talking about Jack, with Fries Girl and Over Enthusiastic Pirate Guy watching, and his eyes just went to the cheesebutt menu and he saw it and he did not laugh on the phone. 

I think Sam is strong and brave and of pure heart and fuck the "trials" or whatever the fuck shows the measure of a man, he just passed through the fucking abyss and came out the other side because he didn't laugh at Cheesebutt.

And, look, I laughed at the cheesebutt thing and the way it reflects hiiiilariously on Dean and the burgers thing. We all laughed at it. But Sam just blinked off in short succession a gay accusation and the urge to laugh at cheesebutt like it didn't even fucking affect him and I am just

I

Dabb

what

-

At the end of 12x23 my only conclusion was "i have been mindfucked"

and I thought

maybe season 13 will be you know... normal

Dabb it has been 15 minutes and I am so fucked up about everything :P

-

And now we cut to Dean with his messed up knuckles. Did he just go punch something off-screen?

(You know, the pirate sign that he punched in the promo for a totally random out of nowhere example of punchable things in the vicinity)

I hope he's not coping so badly that we're getting it in angsty flashbacks because that blood was not there before. And angsty flashbacks basically mean Destiel is canon.

OH NO FRIES GIRL IS HERE.

The drunk are an open and friendly people... Is she going to get Dean to open up? She's literally infodumping her life story on him because she's been up all night and her feet hurt and no one will give her fries, and I think she's about to fucking put the moral of the season in Dean's head somehow I don't know yet because I have literally paused because I was contemplating removing the dash between me bitching at Dabb for the wonderful fucked up episode and this commentary on it :P

Yep she told him that she punched Becky's stupid Elsa poster (what is Dabb's deal with Elsa from Frozen? Does he have a small daughter we don't know about that inflicted Let It Go on him in a loop? :P) and lit all her stuff on fire and started rambling about just burning the world down in her rage.

And then called Dean sensitive to Sam and this is amazing because her drunk wisdom sees right through his shit. I love fries girl.

-

I LOVE Fries Girl, she wrote "bitch" on the car :D :D :D

was THIS why Baby is all dusty? People are writing rude words all over everything this episode. I mean it's like a theme. A theme of desecration and burning the world down around you and who gives a flying fuck about consequences - you can change all the menu items to Butt because your mom's the sheriff and banging the guy who owns the restaurant or whatever, and if your roommate is a bitch, burn down all her things.

I mean then she writes it on the car which is sort of ominous about all their stuff being burned up.

I mean Dean did have that dream about Mary

He's lost Cas, that's his world burning down around him.

-

It's... Look, it's weird they have put off whatever Dean did in the intervening time Sam was eyeing up the cheesebutt menu to show later because we know we see it later because there's a hanging "what happened to your knuckles" question and we saw the clip in the promo. It's a storytelling decision to delay this, and we just see Dean dealing with it by drinking, splashing some alcohol on the cuts, and that's that for now.

What a fucking mess. Dean. Honey.

I suppose to keep the action flowing we deal with Jack but Dean's emotional story is running alongside it and it's being put off, held back... but it's not being held back forever. It's going to be opened up to us. But for NOW we just see kinda what Sam and outsiders see - the same thing I was meta-ing about the promo scene, about how they kept us outside the car for that conversation, about how we're not being allowed into Dean's grief and not being able to name Cas is another thing, another delay, another inability to confront it, just... we're outside, we're watching Dean struggle from afar. From Drunk Fries Girl POV.

-

This episode is fucking magnificent.

-

Maybe Jack is eating Clark, which is the name apparently of the kid.

-

Or are they laughing?? I think I heard laughter?

-

LAUGHTER and the munchies fake out.

I love you Dabb.

This literally says EVERYTHING about Jack and I now trust him completely.

-

Jack's first part of the story has gone from ominous to what a fucking cutie. He might not actually be a stoner but he's adorably sort of mascot-y to this guy and it's just hilarious that he can be like fuck the system I want candy, let's misuse my powers to get more candy because I love nougat. I mean I was wrong that the world would be saved in 13x23 because of trousers because that was a joke but I am legit thinking that this Human Things redux arc for Jack is going to save us all because fucking nougat. And that's a serious spec you can hold me accountable for at the end of the season.

The fact they're sitting on the floor giggling together is just sweet. Jack is learning about friendship so I doubt he would hurt Clark intentionally now, so if Clark does get hurt by Jack it's going to be a tragedy. Maybe something to show Jack how dangerous his powers are and make him want to be more careful and respectful to human life. I think Clark maaay be in the firing line as an adorable toy that gets mangled because Jack doesn't know how rough he's playing >.>

-

Also Jack you should probably not eat so much candy, because you'll get sick.

-

OH NO JACK. Is angel radio messing with your head?

-

OH NO he hurt the sheriff!

-

OH NO this is how he does the lights blowing walk? IT's AWFUL. PROTECT MY CANDY LOVING GIANT MAN BABY.

-

SAM TASED HIM

NO

-

I am so upset. I apparently am extremely protective of my Nougat and angel radio hurts him and they're yelling about him and want to kill him and he's sensitive too :<

(whatever wizardry Dabb wove with the stoner movie subplot worked.)

-

Sam and Dean are not hailed as heroes for stopping Nougat, they're arrested to and given the first ever proper search to confiscate all their guns and knives by a cop who knows what the fuck she is doing. Now Dean has to answer for themselves, using his real name and actual job. He's not got a fuck to give.

-

She asks him if he's a superhero and some part of Dean just crumbles away inside and he says no. In 9x07 especially there was a strong theme of Dean being a superhero and Thinman also had superhero comparisons to them and it was part of the shine of the job wearing off - one of the more subtly horrible Dean moments in season 9 is that superhero action figure melting on the hob yelling "I clobber evil!" into a horrifying mangled sound. I think I just saw his face convey the exact same symbolic awfulness just in his eyes. Fuck you Jensen.

Note to self: gif that if somehow or other someone else hasn't yet.

I mean it's all shattered because the illusion is gone, Dean has nothing left to live for, he's just a guy doing a job. There's no meaning, no personal glory, no one to do it FOR. He's just the tool that gets it done because it has to be done, because what fucking benefit does he get from any of it if the job is also just watching everyone he loves die. That doesn't make him feel like a superhero that makes him feel like total bleak nihilism where you might as well just be upfront and dead inside and tell the truth because what's even the point of lying.

This episode has a lot of nihilism but some of it is fun buttburger style and some is killing me inside :P

-

Also Dean had to confirm angels are real, and the look on his face when he does THAT is ALSO AWFUL. Because everything is awful.

All that baggage where confirming angels are real he knows what people think. He knows what HE thought. He knows how what he thought was different from what other people thought about angels (see: the entire conflict between him and Sam in 2x13) and what angels eventually became to him. That one angel WAS watching over him. That there was one who broke the pattern and was ... Cas.

Help.

-

I tell you what I thought while I was getting dinner... This is the first time I've felt like we're in a show run by the guy who helped create Plucky's.

This is the tone. This is the exact right mouthfeel for Dabb era. This is what it SHOULD be.

-

FINALLY the Sam and Jack confrontation we deserve!

Sam is getting through and chatting! Jack is talking about why he was scared which is nice and symbolic about sharing and caring feelings for better communication and understanding!

Sam's still scared of being in the same room as Jack, flinching when he moves, much like when he's around Lucifer. He's legit scared of a thing and Sam is the biggest badass hunter in the world (like, no offence Dean, you have an impressive and showy history but in terms of brute strength and raw badass mofo power it's Sam :P He's Sam Fucking Winchester and you have a much more personal, over-dramatic flair to the big kills and such)

Jack moves forward intently because he doesn't know that this much eagerness is a trait stamped out of adults, and sits cross-legged, childish, but still imposing. He's learned cross-legged is a fun way to sit and I'm really liking the choices here to make him both naive and powerful.

-

He's fucking sitting with the Mr Burns hands i knew it i knew this was going to be a trait of his, I called it from like 2 promo pics. God damn I'm good at reading body language from just a few stills :P He's exactly what I was expecting but in full 3D animation.

It's just... a cute weird trait. He doesn't know what to do with his hands so he just rests them where they are and lets them hang, because he doesn't have any tics or mannerisms. He's mannerismless. He's so new he hasn't got the faintest trace of social anxiety. This is a raw, undamaged soul.

I am going to weep when Nougat gets hurt in the bits that make him so sweet.

-

See now he's apologising for hurting people.  He sounds so confused when he says "I'm sorry" like he's sounding out the concept but the great thing is he's learning 1000 miles an hour. Anna told Cas he doesn't know what it is to be sorry and Cas still struggled with it in season 7 in the "playing sorry" game and only in 9x11 expressed that he truly understood empathy and human emotion now. Jack tries on an emotion for size, discovers it, and now seems to be fairly earnest about it.

-

Sam: *blink blink*

Sam was RIGHT. <3

-

Hahahah he says Kelly is a part of him. Another point for me! That was one of my specs for how he got to learn English and concepts so fast - that the reason it's fatal to birth him is because he's going to not just absorb the basic baby stuff like nutrients and stuff but he's going to suck her dry of facts and concepts and that's what destroys her. It's like what Amara did but far more complex.

Damn, I'm sorry you had to die for this Kelly, this is a pretty terrible idea in some ways. I better not overthink it.

He just said that his powers are him but not him - he sees them as something other from himself. The whole deal that he needed to be born powers and all, that taking the grace was taking a part of him - yeah. The Cas argument about his grace too, that it can be removed from him and he'll still be Cas, the grace is just power... If Jack sees it as a separate part of himself, a "Not Me" part of himself... That's a huge thing.

-

Oh my fucking GOD He thinks Cas is his FATHER OH NO OH NO OH NO OOOH NOOO.

(Also thanks a LOT people reading along with me for not telling me. Look, the analysis about Sam thinking it was Lucifer and Dabb's BIG Nougat Fake Out build up were all like... how it was meant to be read :P I guess that's why they backed off the father thing for Sam immediately after using it in the one place it would hurt the most.)

I mean Cas did basically act as the co-parent with Kelly and I am pretty sure our Nougat has some lines crossed here and OH MY GOSH DABB YOU MAGNIFICENT FUCKER

See when I said they were making Jack look SUPER FUCKING CREEPY when he was naked at the drive in obviously that was a fake out because I knew he was gonna be hunting with them later but oh my fucking fuck de fuck I want to go back and watch Jack's bits all over again where he's wandering around naked (as Cas is wont to do) asking for his father because FUCK.

He's born as Cas and Kelly die and now he's wandering around asking for Cas and that whole opening, that whole build up where he seems sinister... He remembered Cas all along... Oh gosh I said some things about him back there... I should go back to that scene immediately.

...

I nearly cracked a fucking joke that Jack doesn't have a last name just like Cas and it turns out that scene was a joke about Jack not having a last name because Cas is his father and HE doesn't have a fucking last name.

I hate everything.

"I'm trying to find him. I have to find him" YEAH SO JACK IS ON THE "WHERE IS CAS" TEAM AND THERE'S ANGELS SAYING CAS DESERVED BETTER, I THINK DABB HAS BEEN READING THE BLOGS AGAIN. 

Jack picked Cas to be there to be his parent and guide when Cas said that thing about being his guardian to show him the righteous path and Jack heard it from the womb and was like YES I CHOOSE YOU PIKACHU and that was that, Cas was his father now. Found family in the extreme. Who is the best family, the good family? I'll have that one please.

Oh gosh and now it's sadder that the sheriff was asking for a phone number or address because Cas HAS those. He has a HOME.

...

Anyway back to the Sam and Jack scene, which I already watched through but I want to watch AGAIN DAMMIT.

Gosh this is magnificent though because it puts Cas so squarely in the middle of everything - even though he's dead he's Jack's focus and he's Jack's moral centre and everything that is good about Cas is what Jack wants to beeeeeee and oh my gosh is he going to choose the Winchesters to be his new guardians because they were Cas's family? HELP ME.

-

I'm still kinda not over Jack completely becoming Kelly in the womb and being born by sucking her goodness out from the inside.

What a godawful parenting metaphor/commentary on the mother's sacrifice.

-

Oh and the door to the other world thing as the lead in to talking about his father? I was so sure it was going to be about Lucifer and then -

oh god I am in pain.

Because he diverts from talking about the portal to talking about needing to find his father to protect him and I was like A: well you need the portal for that and B: nooo, Nougat, you don't need that fucker in your life! and then -

oh.

Ow.

-

Anyway Sam's face while talking about Cas is just... ARGH. And Jack's so earnest and happy about Cas protecting him and how he had to grow up

-

And then poor Nougat's face when Sam tells him Cas is dead and he's SO ANGRY. And THAT, my dear Nougat, is how you get to the lovely position of being furiously vengeful against your birth father in order to avenge your chosen father and I am delighted.

Cas is Jack's Bobby.

-

OH NO Clark has gone out to smoke with headphones. He's so gonna get angel murdered if Jack's not gonna kill him (because he is a soft squishy nougat person) and then Jack's going to be even more hurt.

STOP HURTING JACK.

-

FRIES GIRL IS AN ANGEL.

-

THAT'S NOT A GOOD THING.

-

SAM, TELL DEAN ABOUT THE CAS'S SON THING.

HE SAID LUCIFER'S SON, THAT'S NOT HELPFUL.

I suppose Sam doesn't want to convey that to Dean because he knows how Dean is with concepts he hates because he's currently flippantly talking about killing "Damien" out back rather than engage with the subject matter, but tbh I think bringing up Cas would be such a knock to the feels that Sam might be able to get in the line that "this kid seems to have a Cas-guided morality" while Dean is still emotionally picking himself up.

-

AHAHAHA Dean said "that won't do jack against her" - he's still using "jack" as a phrase

-

Dean's Becky... what a surprise :P Maybe Fries Angel writing "Bitch" on the car wasn't subtle enough.

The angels find Dean an annoying roommate whose drama they're always having to deal with.

Mittens just reminded me I wept about 9x07 to her and the poor melting action figure and how the angels want to burn Dean down. I am not okaaaay.

-

OOOH we're getting angel radio now because Jack's our in!

I don't think their eyes normally light up to communicate with it but new season new rules and this must be a mechanic we're dealing with more than just this one example.

Poor Clark - Jack briefly had a friend, learned to sit cross legged and eat nougat from him, and now his friend who made him laugh is dead. It's a HARD LIFE being a Winchester.

-

Also the main Winchesters are getting smashed up

Wait Dean just got back up with STYLE. Nice fight

-

Hey Clark is still alive-ish... Maybe Jack can heal him.

-

OH NO BANISHING HURTS NOUGAT TOO.

That was some great quick thinking by Sam.

Guess walls affect it or Fries Angel was too far away.

-

Fries Angel needed to stick around to deliver some Destiel exposition that she knows Dean's first thought to "Jack can do anything" was not "I will use him to reopen that portal and get mom back" but "I will get him to resurrect my dead angel" and just immediately goes from that to crushing Dean about Cas's death

"Castiel, he's dead. All the way dead. Because of you."

That is.. the worst line

-

"Or what, Other One?" Jeeeze the angels really do have more of a beef with Dean about the whole Winchesters thing for some reason. That really means in a couple of lines of exposition that every time heaven has mocked Cas about The Winchesters they really have meant Dean... Just, you know.. remember who wrote the eeny meeny miney mo scene for a sec, back when he had to be subtle about Dean calling Cas but that just being a random happenstance to what the angels were talking about, essentially :P

-

Oh no she stabbed Nougat!

I assume he doesn't die because... you know.. spoilers.

-

He's got his own Cas-like pull the blade out moment, but... Wow.

-

HOLY SHIT SOMEONE SAID THE LINE "I'M FINE" ON THIS SHOW AND MEANT IT

IT IS A NEW ERA

NOUGAT IS THE HERALD OF BETTER TIMES

-

Poor guy is stunned and confused and a little hurt though.

-

Oh no Clark is fine but going to hospital. I mean I assume this means doctors will help him. His mom is telling him he'll be brave and so on.

-

Poor Nougat is so sad about how horrible this world is. Cas isn't here to protect him and Sam and Dean just did a moderately adequate job at fending off the angels while getting the shit kicked out of them because angels are scary and powerful again.

-

Sam tries to bring up the keeping Jack thing again and Dean's like yeah we can keep him but he's evil so I guess that means you clean up the mess a la taking a puppy home? 

Dean's still convinced Jack is evil and brainwashed Kelly and Cas - it's kinda more terrifying that he BECAME Kelly and absorbed her, and I do think he chose Cas to be his father and none of it was malicious, and they gave him the love and promise of protection he needs to be good and all and it's a billion times more nuanced than Dean thinks... He's being protective of Cas, depressed about their life and their chances... I think he's going to be pretty wrong about Nougat because from 12x19 it was obvious he had chosen Cas BECAUSE Cas was good and would protect him. Even when he didn't think he could do it himself. So I think Jack, uh... motivated Cas... because he wanted him... Like, I still think Jack did shit to Cas because he did creepy shit to Kelly which we're apparently going to move on from because he is an adorable squishy guy who I want to follow with a blanket and a stick to beat off people who will wear him down. But yeah, 12x19 is super weird and I don't *like* the method Jack acquired his mom and dad, even if I do think that he's not evil and the end result seems extremely positive if he popped out the womb determined to find Cas, and has a Cas-centric morality. Loving Cas is obviously the good and best thing you can do on this show and it's vindicating in spades he's a nice guy because he loves Cas and considers him a father for the protection he offered.

(Still think if he was pure good to start with he'd have SAID "hey I plan to be born a full grown adult, you don't need these diapers" but that WAS what caused him to open the rift so maybe his attempt to warn Cas went astray... :P)

But yeah I still find Jack "choosing" Cas to be his father and to create that bond out of nothing, almost instantaneously, to be a little suspect in the happenstance of it, even if as I've been saying all along I have been completely open to him turning out to be, well... Nougat.

-

But Dean doesn't care, he wants to kill Jack. "At least the only people he can hurt there are you and me" WOW DEAN.

WWWWOOOOOOW.

-

OH NO OH NO OOOOH NOOOOOOOOO O OoOOOOooooOOOooo o Sam is saying "are you sure about this Dean? It's Cas" - I assume in reference to burning him rather than burying him and Dean's gonna be like, Fries Angel said he was dead as dead. 

I don't wanna see it.

"You don't think I've tried that" OH NO

Here's the flashback! Told you it was coming! (You have all seen this episode no one is mad enough to wait 18 hours just to watch for the first time with my notes) But yeah as I was saying, sidelining Dean's emo stuff to focus on the action, to set it aside, to put us away from it, to keep it back for when it would hit most. To do some god damn STORYTELLING around here. Some fucking ardfgjhlsksdfhjklslhfdjqp storytelling. That when all the action is done, when Dean has been ground down into a fucking paste by this day, the day of having to come to terms with the loss of Cas, when we know he went off to have some private punching things time and Sam was being the least gay to possibly gay in the comic stoner movie side of the story, Dean was having a moment SO POWERFUL that it could ONLY be conveyed to us by not showing it happening until we were deeply, truly, in the context of Dean mourning Cas and where we could focus on that with nothing left to distract us that this is the Worst.

-

.... I have been sitting here not pressing play for over 10 minutes

-

OH NO

I have paused it immediately

because they used the camera angle from Baby

the Roadhouse one

and the one from the fight where Cas was on the phone

-

so uh

Add hysterical weeping to the things this show makes me do because I was one stoic snarky hahaha isn't this ridiculous Jack planned to adult all along so the diapers thing was a massive prank kinda person and then bam Dean went out back to pray and I was scream-crying and then he said Cas was his everything and I am never going to be chill again

-

Okay, Chuck… or god, or whatever. I need your help. See, you– you left us. You LEFT us. You went off. You said… You said the earth would be fine because it had me… and Sam, but it’s NOT, and we’re NOT.

We’ve lost everything. And now you’re gonna bring him back. Okay? You’re gonna bring back Cas, you’re gonna bring back Mom, you’re gonna bring ‘em all back. All of ‘em. Even Crowley.

’Cause after everything that you’ve done, you OWE us, you son of a bitch. So you get your ass down here and you make this right, right here and right now.

Please. Please help us.

-

Thanks Mittens.

So.

Uh.

-

First name basis with the guy upstairs: this is a personal appeal in case he ever actually cared. (Spoiler alert: I don't think Dean is going to come out of this with a better opinion of God)

*I* need your help. Not we, *I*. This is on Dean's behalf for Cas.

He brings up the line which we went into Dabb era on and I ripped to shreds critically at the time that Chuck ever put that burden onto Dean because he has some broad ass shoulders but they are not big enough for the world and his whole problem is he's always been carrying it in the first place so Chuck didn't do SHIT to make him feel better AND NOW DEAN IS CRITIQUING THE CARETAKERS OF THE EARTH IDEA. THAT IT SHOULD NOT BE HIS BURDEN. MAYBE NOT BECAUSE HE CAN'T DO IT BUT BECAUSE HE SHOULD NOT BE EXPECTED TO DO IT. He was singled out as the firewall between light and dark but he doesn't feel like a superhero. He doesn't clobber evil. He's being STRIPPED DOWN AS A PERSON. WHO EVEN IS HE. WILL DEAN QUIT HUNTING? JESUS CHRIST, I SAID THAT LINE IN 11x23 WAS AWFUL FOR DEAN BUT I DIDN'T THINK DABB WAS GONNA GO *THERE*

And he says the world isn't fine - and they're not. Their emotional state reflects the world. The centre of the universe thing, in the storytelling, makes the world reflect Dean. His misery or happiness is on a cosmic scale. This tangledupness of him in the middle of it all is killing him because the world will be in danger and that can't all land on him. He can't be the Atlas of this world. But he is. OH how he is. But this isn't a world with superheroes. Just HUMAN GUYS DOING THEIR JOB.

And then the transition. The terms and conditions. The "you have given me a fucked up burden so pls unfuck it and here's how" swinging around from "everything" to "him". The implicitness of it all. The... The fact everyone knows it's about Cas. It's not about Mom. It's not about Crowley. He can say their names. He couldn't say that Cas was dead. Fries Angel immediately identified it. Cas is the answer to all the questions, where all roads lead. And they've come back to the house where he died, FOR Cas, and Sam asks about praying and Dean has already asked and got no answer, already been told Cas is permadead, and THIS is where we deliver the bombshell. Everything flows into "him".

Cas is Dean's everything.

And yeah he wants Mary back and fuck it fuck you God fuck everything just fucking include Crowley to because why the fuck not, you owe me. All that pointless stupid death and loss, it's enough to make me feel bad that Crowley is gone.

And oh the wank over the summer he would ask for Crowley back too (and I smacked the desk and hooted with laughter, with tears still in my eyes, reeling from the "everything" line because I called the way Dean would ask for him back. I knew it!), it just... Even Mary doesn't compare because she's tacked on in the repetition, the clarification that everything is him is Cas. And it's totally fine for Dean to ask for these others he's lost back, for them to be in the same sentence as Cas, because yes he lost them and it hurts and it's awful, but there is a very special awful reserved for Cas. The kind of awful where Sam has to pause and ask Dean if he's sure, if he doesn't want to find a way to bring him back. And we ALL know we're not supposed to bring people back because there's consequences. We're all adults in the room, they both have done it, seen and FELT the consequences for having it done TO them. But Sam knows. He just knows what happens when it's someone like Cas. And maybe we don't have any more bullshit, we just ask politely and carefully if this is going to be a "bring them back at any cost" situation, and how can I help?

And then at the end of the prayer Dean cracks out the exact look and angle of expression for his Plea To God face that he has used... once. In 5x14. When utterly at the end of his rope. This is what losing Cas has brought him to - the lowest point, the one back in season 5 that was a danger to the guardianship of the world lumped on Dean's shoulders, because it was where he was when he nearly said yes to Michael, the despair cycle he couldn't deny any more at the time... Yeah, this has kind of seen and waved at season 7 on the way to hurtling all the way back to the Worst Dean Has Ever Felt To Date.

-

Nice.

-

And Dean has given up all faith in God ever helping them or caring about them.

-

OH NO

NOUGAT

Sam has taken him to see his dead mom. :(

Time to grapple with the concept of loss.

*beeps her big toe*

Oh Nougat I truly feel bad for you now. Look at his big soft face. He consumed her to gain his life and powers and his intelligence and his GOODNESS and oh no that means he's gonna feel baaad about it.

-

But Dean is downstairs with Cas, alone. Can this episode get any fucking worse.

-

THOSE SERIES OF ACTIONS QUALIFY AS WORSE I AM WEEPING AGAIN.

Oh god Dean.

You should have told him.

You should have fucking told him.

-

Oh Nougat you... sweetie. He has no clue what to say. :(

Sam tells him to say thank you, because he devoured Kelly, and to say sorry.

-

Oh Sam, he's crying for Cas as well.

-

OH NO Dean's so defeated about Mary it's just... UGH.

I assume these are the first things he says today where he gets immediately proven wrong - I assume the last scene will be a hop across the universe lines.

"They're all gone"

This is simultaneously the best Sam stuff in 1000 miles of canon and the worst Dean episode ever and I am in agony.

-

Yep that billisecond of footage was completely right. Sam is sad, Jack, who we didn't see, is struggling sweetly with the concept of death and what it means and how to act and feel right now, and Dean... has checked the fuck out.

-

RUN, MARY

-

I LOVE HER.

-

FUCK YOU LUCIFER BTW

-

Ugh her face is like mine when he says he needs her. The shot looks like the fucking Titanic poster. I'm assuming they do not get very far before Michael gets involved, though.

I'm gonna go back to ugly-crying about the rest of this.

-

This is Dabb's best solo episode hands down. I laughed, I cried, I struggled with the complex philosophy of being human and if you should consume your mother from the inside out in order to be born as a full-grown man.

I think I'm keeping Nougat.

[seansaboutacity]

#1 collaboration - Ash

(A photo of Ash Layo)

You’re probably wondering, reading this, what’s going on.

As the first post of this kind, let me explain.

So as part of the About A City (AAC) project, I’m going to collaborate with my close friends and fellow creatives to explore the AAC’s themes. It’ll be a great way to shine a light on different perspectives, and explore poetry’s potential to illuminate things previously left unsaid or invisible.

In this first post, I have the great honour of collaborating with Ashley Layo Masing (or just Ash for short). I met Ash in my second year this year and even though we’ve known each other for a short while I feel like I’ve really got to know him through our shared background being both queer and Asian, and also our shared interests in the creative arts and social science.

The way this post is going to work (as with future posts) is that I present the two poems each written by one of us. We then lead onto comments about the poems, and then to more general discussion about the project’s themes and why poetry and the arts is so important in today’s society.

So without further ado, here goes our poems (Ash’s first):

A rainy day in London Town

It’s a rainy day in London Town, and my lover is in the choir room singing the harmony line to my  serenade. He holds a note for  as long as he held his breath when  a storm once forced his head under the pressure of the river Thames - I’m reminded of the spectres of my trauma walking past Russel square: a man who held the traditions of  manhood as high as his fear passes his duty when he abuses the way I hold my lover’s hand.

The echoes in the choir room switches from his sweet serenade to a quiet sob, and his throat becomes haunted by the legacy of some broken body. I meditate in his sadness while I recite an incantation from an unwritten journal. It’s a rainy day in London Town and it houses a refugee of tradition - I’m hiding  underneath her paper umbrella.

Comments

I first read this and thought it was really moving. What inspired you to write this piece?

As I started brainstorming ideas for this poem I started thinking about that vine with that annoying guy singing about rain in London and the TV show Glee, and boom, the first two lines were born. Then as I started writing it, I thought about my melancholic relationship to London and the hardships I faced being in what I thought was the city of my dreams. I was reminded of the horrendous act of homophobic violence that occured on a bus not too long ago as well as the instances of homophobia I personally faced and pretended to be okay with. And so this poem is a kind of ode to that part of my life, I acknowledge it but I don’t give it any power.

You use a lot of imagery about London, like Russell Square and the Thames. How important do you think that is in telling the story?

I think it’s interesting to explore human geography in poetry because it allows us to really imagine a sense of space in writing, allowing us to really breakdown (in our minds of course) the boundaries of time and space and be with the author’s experience.

I’m interested in the juxtaposition of love with violence, usually associated as its opposite. What effect did you want with that?

Sadly, that’s oftentimes the reality of love, it’s never smooth sailing. Romance isn’t what you see in movies, it’s hard work and it’s filled with adversity, especially so if you’re a sexual minority. It’s sad but it’s the truth about being in a non-heteronormative relationship, and we’re not going to be able to start any reparative work if we cannot acknowledge that.

The poem is narrated in first person and talks about (presumedly) his lover. But there’s also a sense that he’s lonely as he ‘meditates’ and ‘hides’. What do you mean by this?

I guess i’m trying to create an image of space and distance that comes with relationships. You’re not conjoined to another person when you love them, you still retain a part of yourself. It’s important to recognise the agency and personhood that still exists between people who are committed to one another

two boys, clinging

city in his eyes pavement in his stride he talks and burns with a little fire

something about feminist theory - I can't remember just his anger brimming like coal as we walk to the station at Oval

it sticks out in my head - I don't know why how the lazy London breeze rustled leaves on the street or it was seeing the Shard on the top deck of the bus jutting out like a sore thumb

it felt a bit like London - nothing really belongs people come and go like Heathrow

but as the sun goes down and he looks at me with false hope that I won't have to - I realise I don't want to go home

so frozen in time we remain to memory to past to dust two boys, clinging

Comments

So first of all, what was the main inspiration for this piece?

The piece was based off a real life personal experience I had walking with a friend in London. He’s an exchange student from Melbourne, and so I really wanted to take his perspective in the story of the poem because I wanted to see London through maybe an outsider’s eyes (being Australian/foreign). I also think the memory itself was poignant for me because I created a close friendship with him really quickly and feels a bit cut off now that he’s returned to Melbourne to study after his exchange.

You use a lot of interesting imagery, with the most significant being references to London - how key is London as a backdrop to the themes of your poem?

I could say that London is very significant as a backdrop to the themes of my poem - but that wouldn’t be completely honest, and that wouldn’t completely capture how I use geography or setting in a poem.

Personally, I don’t notice setting until something ‘dislocates’ me from it. Not to say a ‘real’ or ‘objective’ version of a setting could ever exist, but it’s interesting how our emotions help to construct the meaning of places for us through our memories, associations and who we shared them with.

So more specifically about London, I don’t think London exists, except in the imagination of people who live and study in London - in their hopes, dreams and aspirations for the future.

My experience in London has felt almost like absorption - I’ve grown up, been educated and studied in London all my life from childhood now into adulthood. But equally, my identity as a Londoner has sometimes been challenged - people can’t quite place my accent, and I definitely don’t have the same cultural tastes as people who grew up with me.

So that’s shaped how I use London in these poems in two ways: firstly, I’ve tried to understand London as a character in itself, helping to formulate desires that we didn’t know we had, like for place or belonging. But I also use London as something transitional, in process, that exists temporarily in people’s imagination but always bends towards the future, of something beyond.

And simply put, maybe it’s easier to think that all the weird, jumbled-up, tangled mess of experiences I’ve had happened in the same bubble of London. That’s one way of making sense where I’ve come from in life.

“he talks and burns with a little fire / something about feminist theory - I can't remember”

These are interesting lines that really stood out, how does this develop the subject of the poem?

I think I use philosophical or intellectual discussion to indicate tension. To me, philosophy and psychology are the same because they both ask questions about the meaning and existence of things. I prompt the reader to think about moments when they thought deeply about something - but took so much pleasure in it with someone else, that the idea took on a new life with an immanent, transcendental quality to it.

I think about moments where I’ve had deep conversations with people I really care about. Everything seems to melt away at that point, and it doesn’t matter what that other person says, you just want them to know that you’re there for them and you understand them - intrinsically, not for how clever they sound. It means that you don’t need to constantly appeal for someone’s approval or flattery, but to feel safe being who you are.

General discussion

Sean asking questions for Ash:

One theme I explore in my poems is solitude, which for me is part of the existential condition of human nature. What are your thoughts on solitude and aloneness? Is it something we need to be afraid of? Or learn to accept and overcome?

Like Agustus Waters in ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ I fear oblivion, and as much as I hated him and that book, he had a point that resonated with me. Western, capital ‘L’ Liberal, society emphasises this need to be this individual who will be this great person that will leave a lasting impact on the greater scheme of things, and that has really affected the way we relate to one another and the trajectory of our lives. Sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. I’ve spent so much time thinking about my individual success and the lasting impact I can make on our culture that I forget about the little things - caring about things beyond just us. Loneliness, for me, is a symptom of this perceived existential failure we might have when we think we’ve done nothing great in life and will eventually fade away into oblivion. But once we focus on the things we love and the people who love us, we can find alternative routes to overcoming loneliness.

Following on from the previous question, is the importance of friends. What conflict do you think arises from the need to be alone but the need to stay socially connected? How can that be managed?

A friend of mine once told me that everything in life is transient. Sometimes people come and go and we need to accept that. But if you care enough about a person, no matter how distant you’ve become, emotional and physically, reuniting with them will feel like no time has passed whatsoever. Sometimes it’s a matter of putting in the hard work to maintain the relationship. Other times, it’s just there.

My poems also talk a lot about desire as its core theme, related with themes of sexuality, erotic desire and love. What do you think of the importance of desire? How do you personally connect with the theme?

I think desire and passion can be sexy. Not just intimate desire, but desire in general. It shows that you care about something, and oftentimes that something is beyond your own needs. And to put someone else or something else before you, so much so that you would do anything to pursue its happiness is a trait that we should all be embracing, especially given the state of our politics.

I approach poems as a practice of remembering/forgetting - we choose to remember the memories we want to and express them openly. How do you personally use poetry? 

I use it as a form of ‘emotional essay writing’, as a way to express my ideas when prose is not enough. There’s something powerful and evocative about writing in metaphor, it can really help someone understand your point of view and perspective of the world. I guess you can say that poetry carries ethnographic value.

I’m worried in today’s society we don’t express ourselves fully and openly as we ought to, and it correlates with a wider depreciation of the arts and creative writing in general. What do you think about this?

I think that due to the need to generate capital and profit, we’re becoming estranged from the things that make us human. Today, art and culture is only valuable to the extent that it can be fetishished (in the Marxist sense of course). Creating and indulging in lowbrow culture could be a potential form of praxis. But that could also fall into the trap of class-based appropriation; I mean we’re already seeing rich ppl spend ridiculous amounts of money to appear working class because it looks cool. If you wanted to look cool you would redistribute your wealth, just saying. Anyways, art and culture should be appreciated for what it is and not what it can be valued. I guess revolution might be the only way to ensure that my dude.

Ash asking questions for Sean

Starting with a basic question, what impact are you hoping to achieve with your poetry?

I want my poetry to make a connection. It could be a connection with the personal meaning in the poem. It could be a social connection, to make people think, talk and act differently.

I think it’s exciting because it’s the first time I’ve really done something like this. I think I just want to throw a pebble into the water - and watch where the ripples go.

I use my poetry as a form of ‘emotional essay writing’ so to speak; as social scientists I believe we can stand to benefit from poetry as a sort of window into our culture, do you think poetry has a stake in changing the way we discuss the pressing issues we face today?

That’s a challenging question.

Because what even is social science? I mean, is Social Anthropology really a social science? I think it is - but it’s the most humanities of the social sciences. We’re really special as a subject because we draw from literary theory and cultural theory to ask deep questions about what it means to be human from alternative perspectives. 

As a result, I’m interested in the literary theory of Anthropology - of societies as texts, a la Clifford Geertz. I think the whole point of Anthropology is to understand that things can be different - and only then can you start using those differences to challenge the current status quo.

So then poetry can make a social difference. Poetry starts off for me as something very intimate and personal - I can’t lie when I write poetry, I feel like each poem is a bit of my soul, has a bit of my truth in it.

But each poem then walks along this Mobius strip of change, where meaning shifts into something different. I make sure to encourage this change myself, to make meanings outwards-bound and move towards the social exterior of the individual - I think Rilke said once that when you write constantly about sex in your poems, that’s when poetry goes to die. Because you lose what’s at stake in poetry - how often language captures a certain alterity from what’s material or tangible.

I’m going to keep pushing in my poetry for that idea of alterity, and difference, and immanence. All of those things characterise the social world for me - how the meanings we interpret from it are contingent on a sub-text which has been pre-scripted for us, but doesn’t need to completely determine how we play with them if we embrace a playful, crafty attitude.

I’m fond of the Mobius strip idea in general. If you like something, just do it. You’ll find a way to justify yourself in a narrative later. If you really want to change society all along, you’ll find a way for poetry to do that.

[maiathebee]

Comprehensive Bibliography Of BTS

This is just a list of material referenced, alluded to or related to BTS’s concepts, music, photobooks, albums and music videos.  This is not a fan theory, or an attempt at one! Anyways here’s the precursor to my scholarly paper, lolllll (I’m not joking though).  I’ll update it as we goooooo....

Also, I know almost nothing about the School trilogy, but it’s my understanding that there’s not a lot of outside source material.  I could be wrong though.  Does it reference mangas and stuff??? send me a msg if you know.

(just a reminder that while BTS is remarkably involved in the creative direction of the group, the formation of a kpop groups’ era/concept is made by a large team of people, and therefore the members probably haven’t even considered or explored upwards of half the material on this list).

(asterisks mean that these works are not directly referenced by BTS in their interviews, lyrics or imagery, etc, but which are still tangentially related)

BTS book club list is as follows:

Shim Cheong - a Korean Panseori tale (Dark and Wild)

Demian by Hermann Hesse (Wings)

Seven Sermons to the Dead by Carl Jung (Wings)*

The Collected Works of CG Jung by Carl Jung (Wings)*

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by F. Nietzsche (Wings)

Beyond Good and Evil by F. Nietzsche (Wings)*

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K Le Guin  (YNWA) 

The Moral Philosopher and The Moral Life by William James  (YNWA)*

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (YNWA)*

Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob (YNWA)

Then here’s the film club list:

She and Her Cat (dir. Makoto Shinkai)(short film) (HYYH pt.2)(this is according to Bang PD)

Lost River (dir. Ryan Goslin) (Young Forever)

Big Fish (dir. Tim Burton) (reason here)  (YNWA)

The Helpers/No Vacancy (dir. Chris Stokes) (YNWA)* (tbh this seems fairly coincidental to me, which is why it gets an asterisk.

Snowpiercer (dir. Bong Joon Ho) (YNWA)

BTS music playlist:

Wild For The Night by A$AP rocky (Dark & Wild)

Friday Night Lights by J.Cole (Dark & Wild)

2001 by Dr. Dre (Dark & Wild)

花樣的年華 - Zhou Xuan (HYYH pt.1/pt.2)*

Nevermind - Nirvana (HYYH pt.2)

Wasted Youth (HYYH pt.2)

Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd (Young Forever)

Passacaglia in D minor (BuxWV 161) - Buxtehude (Wings)

You’ll Never Walk Alone - Louis Armstrong (YNWA)* (100% this isn’t a purposeful reference, but it’s a good song, y’all should listen to it)

BTS’s art history class bibliography:

Julius Caesar on Gold by Basquiat (Young Forever)

Tricycle by Basquiat and Warhol (Young Forever)*

Orange Sports Figure by Basquiat (Young Forever)

The Fall of the Rebel Angels - Bruegel the Elder (Wings)

The Landscape with the Fall of Icarus - Bruegel the Elder (Wings)

The Lament for Icarus - Draper (Wings)

La Pieta by Michelangelo (Wings)

Personnes by Christian Boltanski (YNWA)*

Further Analysis (and more fan-theory type stuff) in chronological order,  under this read more~~

I’m not sure there’s meant to be a single “correct” reading of the group’s narrative or story. Even in Wings, which drew its story fully from Demian, the ultimate narrative of the BST M/V is more vague.  While there might be a complete and overarching narrative that Bighit is trying to create with Bangtan’s concepts/mvs, I think it’s more likely that there are a lot of narrative threads running through the story, and some are maintained longterm, some are relevant only to as specific chapter, while others are merely aesthetic/cosmetic.  I have a feeling that even longterm narrative ideas are sometimes allowed to fade away for the benefit of moving the story forward at the pace they want. 

Dark and Wild

Shim Cheong is just a throwaway simile on hip hop lover.  I’m pretty sure it’s a reference to the idea that seeing Shim Cheong again allowed her blind father to gain the ability to see.

References like the one to Wild for the Night on hiphop lover (they also tweeted about the song back in 2013) don’t really do much except show that they genuinely like/listen to American rap and also it explains at least 66% of the dumb mistakes Rap Monster has made, probably, my poor problematic child.  Hip Hop lover references a ton of artists, but I just included the ones that are mentioned by more than just name.

The Most Beautiful Moment In Life (pt.1/pt.2)

Zhou Xuan is the first media reference point for HYYH (花樣年華)(It’s what the Chinese title for In the Mood For Love is based on). The lyrics refer to forgotten dreams.

Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood For Love (花樣年華) is not listed, as RM mentioned in the interview that this was not associated with their album. 

Notes of a Desolate Man by Tianwen Shu is excerpted in a Taiwanese literary anthology by the name of  花樣年華, and I though think it relates thematically, it’s merely my own personal association~ There’s no indication that BTS or Bighit even knows it exists.  Tianwen Shu is greatly influenced by Lu Xun, who wrote the anti-confucian societal norms novel, A Madman’s Diary. 

Nirvana t-shirts are a go to for BTS’s stylists, probably MOSTLY because they fit their preferred grunge image, but the word “Nirvana” fits well into the ideas of tragedy/death, utopia/dystopia and idealism that BTS plays with, while Nirvana the band is obviously a good reference point for realistic portrayals of youth culture and music which speaks to young people, particularly the crazy popular Nevermind (ahem Yoongi’s intro song) with Smells Like Teen Spirit and Come As You Are.  (further fan theory here)

It’s crazy to me that Bang PD found inspiration in a five minute anime about a cat, but read the wiki summary and you’ll believe him:  “When it's over She cries and becomes depressed. Chobi does not understand what the conversation was about or what happened but concludes that it was not her fault. He stands by her and comforts her. Time goes on and it becomes winter. She continues going to work and moves on with her life. In the end Chobi and She are happy with their life together and say in unison, 'This world, I think we like it.’”

Fire (Young Forever)

Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” thematically deals with youth/nostalgia (Shine On You Crazy Diamond: "Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun").  It includes critiques of the music industry and the cliches that the group had to deal with.  The narrative of Wish You Were Here is very much in line with Bangtan’s overall group narrative.

Lost River (a phrase you can see on a wall in the Fire M/V) is a film about a poor community, and specifically a mother and her two sons, going through crisis.  The film includes a scene of a party in an abandoned high school and ends with both a house and a car on fire. The film has an open ending which leaves room for an improved future, but the film is primarily about the limited possibilities and opportunities

As far as I can tell, the “Basquiat” paintings in the fire M/V are just imitations rather than references to specific paintings.  They’re probably being used just as an aesthetic choice - Basquiat’s art was a synthesis of street art, outsider art, social commentary and post-expressionism.  However, his life is also relevant narratively: he died young at 27 and he first gained fame as a graffiti artist.

I’m not putting it above because the film is super inappropriate, but the phrase “enter the void” is used in the Run M/V, and could refer to the Gaspar Noe film of the same name.  The title of that film is, in fact, a reference to The Tibetan Book of the Dead.  However, the term “void” (and the images of the void in the M/V) could just be a reference to five elements in Japanese Buddhism (including fire), particularly the Book of Five Rings.  But this is me getting uber fan theory, lol.

Another graffitied phrase in the Run M/V is “wasted youth.”  This could be one of three things; a reference to the hardcore punk band, Wasted Youth, an allusion to Fast Times at Ridgemont High which also includes a scene featuring “wasted youth” graffitied on a wall, or the phrase isn’t an allusion, but merely a description of the M/V concept.

Wings

The relationship to Demian needs its own post, so I won’t even go into it itself, but the tangential references it spawned are as follows:

The paintings in the Wings video are all in reference to Demian but are also all biblical/mythological in nature, based on the book of revelations, Ovid’s The Art of Love,  and the crucifixion.  The religious references, however, are dulled down -- Jesus is not fully sculpted, leaving him to be a vaguely carved form and allowing the image to stand more as an allegory for the relationship between mother and “son” in Demian.  (some further fan analysis of the art here)(and more specifically on the use of icarus).

The Passacaglia is also a piece which is referred to in Demian in the part of the book where the narrator begins to find spiritual fulfillment through music and art, something BTS talks about a lot.

Demian draws lot from Carl Jung, particularly his ideas about symbolism, archetypes and psychoanalysis.  The book specifically alludes to Jung’s Seven Sermons, and the idea that Abraxas is the ultimate being, uniting both god and the devil.  Thematically, through Demian, this deals with themes of forming ones’ own moral code, and ideas of will and strength of character, with good and evil being both at odds but also simultaneously part of everything. This theory/concept in largely influenced by Nietzsche, most especially his Beyond Good and Evil.  Together these are all philosophies which pull away from the ideas of societal norms or strict social structures and place a premium on personal/creative expression.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra (quoted in the Wings photobook and BST M/V) also furthers this idea that good and evil are “a wheel.”  It posits that Truth (not morality) is the highest virtue and that idealists flee from reality (SEE: Icarus).  The novel also introduces the idea of the overman, which is a gross idea and super problematic, but I can it being applied thematically to BTS as the idea of a ‘fully realized self.’  Zarathustra is a figure Nietzsche borrowed from Zoroastrianism.  (this writer has more ideas on some connections to Nietzsche).

You Never Walk Alone

“Omelas” and the theme of walking obviously references the Le Guin story, which is inspired by the William James essay, which in turn borrows ideas from Dostoyevsky.

Namjoon’s reference Snowpiercer plays into the video’s visual narrative (an inescapable cycle, the train, the cyclical nature of seasons, laundry is a cycle [2mjjk theory speaks to all these, lol]) as the story is about a train which circles the globe, in a world stuck in perpetual winter. Unlike the more environmentally-focused graphic novel, Snowpiercer the (korean-directed) film is intensely focused on class inequality, a theme which runs through BTS’s albums (see particularly Baepsae, but it’s a concern relevant to their School series, since most pressures put on students are related to social class) and which is of incredible concern to Korean people, and therefore is a common concern of a lot of Korean art.  Bong Joon Ho’s other film works are all very heavy on social commentary  (the host deals with the american military and politics/activism, sea fog also talks about social inequality... etc...), so referencing one of his films is a pretty clear statement that you are making a critical commentary on something.  Like the Le Guin short story The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, the film is about a dystopia in which the upper class/middle class/general public is reliant on the continual suffering of another (in this class the lower class or last train) to survive.  Trains provide a very easy metaphor for class given their class divisions into separate carriages.  This was also applied in another Korean blockbuster from the last year, Train to Busan (dir Yeon Sang-ho), which included some pretty transparent commentary on the negative effect that an apathetic, self-serving, lazy (male) middle-aged, middle-class could have on the survival of families and younger generations.

Most fan theories agree that the clothes in the M/V are a reference to the sewol ferry disaster.  Here is the fan explanation for how that connects to Boltanski’s Personnes.