#and like I know I've seen the general visual concept around but I now I can't find specific examples and its itching in the back of my head

[paintedcrows]

He may be a God, but I am a Scientist

[maleyanderecafe]

Good day! I was wondering if your review on Restart Heart has changed after the new demo came out recently? If you haven't played it yet, I suggest trying it out and letting us know what you think of it.

After trying my hand at the updated demo, I can safely say that my personal opinion has changed quite a bit since the very first version. The MC seems a touch more like an insufferable prick now with how rude they are towards some characters, how "Mary Sue" they act in given situations, and how they overreact to certain events occurring around them. Their inner thoughts and rational thinking are nothing like mine as well, but that's more of a personal thing. While I'm aware it's currently still a demo and these events aren't considered "canon" by the dev, it isn't exactly doing a good job at persuading me to try out the finished version of the game once it comes out.

I do like that there are more than one "main" yandere now, however unfortunately none of the other characters aside from Ezra and Sammy really appeal to me. Each character seems very "stereotypical" and play into a very specific trope, but it's been like that since the first release so I'm not too bothered by it. I guess I was hoping for more developed and interesting characters in the update and got let down with the lack of improvement from the first version.

I'm also unsure how I feel about how overly "woke" the demo is trying to be? The overuse of Arabic phrases by Bess seems somewhat out of place and repetitive, so many characters are overtly trans or use their ethnicity as a base for their personality (especially seen on tumblr), the NSFW scenes [in the first version] feel like I was being babysat with the constant "consent check ins" and boundary implementations, and characters like Steph talk about their job [a pornstar] as though it's something to glorify or romanticize. The game's job is to make these characters appealing enough for us to pursue but I can't get over how forced/unnecessary their backstories and personalities feel. I'm transmasc myself but I'm put off by these constant reminders being shoved in my face at every turn, especially on the official tumblr page. I like that these sorts of things are being represented in a positive way (much less in a visual novel where it's so rare), but I don't like how constant and overplayed they are.

I will say that the writing has definitely improved in the new demo and it doesn't feel as overtly casual with the grammar and punctuation anymore (almost as if the narrator was texting me rather than talking to me). The characters have established connections with the MC now which I like, though I understand that this may not be everyone's cup of tea. The new CGs are nice too, however I won't comment on the updated art style since I personally prefer the scratchy anime style of games like TKATB, Mushroom Oasis, and even 14DWY [the first version]. I've always liked the music used and the GUI looks good, so I didn't mind not seeing much of an update for them in the new demo.

Overall, I have mixed feelings but I'm hopeful and optimistic that the finished version will be much better if the updated demo is anything to go by. I also hope there won't be a price tag on the finished product because as good as it is now, there is still so much that needs to be improved on to justify even a $5 label. These are my personal thoughts, though I'd love to hear yours as well.

It took me a while to replay the new demo and then find the older demos since it's no longer on the itchio page (There is still a link for the third day, but I had to watch epsylion's video on the fourth day, which excludes some routes). I admit that while I am generally aware of what is going on with various vns and their updates, I haven't had time to really go through and play most of them, so if there is a game that I have gone over before but it has updated, feel free to send me an ask.

Restart Heart seems to have an interesting conception, with the game going up to it's fourth day, before eventually being pulled back into a shorter demo that encapsulates the first day, likely to revamp and improve on the game as a whole. As such, I'm not sure if I've missed anything specifically as I'm not on the patreon . As a quick recap, the general plot of the first demo was that the MC, Sugar basically went on a huge party rager after finding out their ex fiance cheated on them and got their younger sister pregnant. As a result, the four days that we do spend with Sugar and the other characters are generally Sugar attempting to get back on their feet with the help of Ezra and the other characters, Bess, Blaire, Sammy, Chris and Steph along with sleeping with some of them if you so choose to. The new demo is a bit similar but only covers Sugar before finding out about the cheating, with them having a smaller interaction with the rest of the crew at the chocolate place they work at (namely that they almost got crushed by a bunch of staplers).

I think compared to the four day version of Restart Heart, I actually prefer this new demo's Sugar to the old one, though that's likely going to change once they find out about the cheating that's going on. While I understand that Sugar is going through a generally horrible situation of someone cheating on them, I also find their behavior kind of hard to deal with and not that much fun to play with. This is just my general gripe with a lot of yandere vns, not just Restart Heart in particular, where the MC tends to be very cynical and dislikes doing... well anything, which to me is a touch tedious and kind of annoying at times. I also feel like from the four day version, they feel a lot more bitter and angry (again due to the break up) but also coddled very heavily as well. Understandably it is nice to have someone who is able to care about you and try to make things feel better when everything feels like it's falling apart, but to me it still feels very infantalizing in some aspects, with every character seemingly trying to nurse Sugar back to feeling better. It's likely more of a me thing since I've always been the type of person to drag myself back up by my feet, rather than attempt to rely too much on other people. In the new demo, Sugar has yet to experience this (at least from what I can tell) so is generally more stable and less prickly. I don't think it's particularly Mary Sue like in the new demo, considering that I feel like if my friend almost got crushed by a bunch of staplers, we'd all run over there too and make sure that they're okay, though I can see where you're coming from since most of the characters are revolving around Sugar in that sort of way. It's hard to say what kind of characters the Restart Heart gang will be considering that it is still a demo, but considering it did have four days already out, I can see what you mean. We don't get to see too much into their lives (outside of Blaire, I think which probably has the most characterization out of Chris and of course Ezra). It would be nice for them to do other things as well like go out on dates or just hang out more one on one (like going to hang out at the library with Sammy, for instance) to get to know them a bit more.

Interesting take on it. I did notice that Bess uses a lot of Arabic phrases, kind of like someone who is trying to learn the language and is attempting to use it in their every day life so that they can remember it. I don't think that specifically was the intention, but it did come off like that for me. I'm not really sure what you mean by "overtly trans or use their ethnicity as a base for their personality", do you mean as more of like that's their main personality trait? A very minor confusion I have with the game is the use of pronouns that are attached onto the characters. That in itself isn't really a problem but it does seem a touch redundant because there is a character bio for all of the characters that already has the pronouns on it. Not anything huge, but it is a strange decision to make. The checkins for nsfw content is generally a thing that happens in a lot of r18 yandere vns, but I do get that it does feel very babysitting like, especially if it's something that happens after the initial agreement.

I do agree that the writing has improved a lot more, with the characters written in a more lifelike manner and feels more like they have known Sugar for a while. I also agree that it's nice that they have more stronger connections to Sugar this time around. I think the music is good, though I do wish that they would change it up more since the same soundtrack repeated does make it a bit tiring (though this is likely just a demo thing). Lilith did a good job of coding everything as expected, especially with the pronoun, name, partner, nickname choices in the very beginning. There is a lot of variation for people who want to be called a specific way during the NSFW parts (though admittedly I don't really like most of them since well, I prefer submissive yanderes). They are doing a lot of projects right now, so it is hard to say when the full version will come out and what the quality will be right now. Hopefully it will come out well though, and there will be more yandere content that I can shift through.

[thelampisaflashlight]

Headcanons about the ghouls, because I feel like crud and stayed home from work. Let's go.

-Aeon can't cook, he burns pretty much everything he tries to make except for eggs. He can make eggs, but that's only because Dew stood by and watched him do it.

He gets too fidgety/wants to move around instead of paying attention to what's going on in the pan, and that usually results in burnt or underdone food.

In contrast to Aeon, Dew can cook... he just doesn't like to.

It takes too much time in his opinion, but he will happily wait for someone else to make him something to eat.

-Rain eats bugs, and he's not even remotely ashamed of that fact, though perhaps he should stop trying to get others to join him for "a dip and dine" at the lake if he's unwilling to provide other options...

-Cumulus is a dinosaur enthusiast, which I've said before, but on top of that, she loves to explore and learn about things in general.

She's the fun fact queen and absolutely kills at trivia night.

-Mountain is very particular about how he keeps his garden, to the extent that no one helps him with it anymore, because he gets huffy/annoyed when someone does something "the wrong way".

The only gardener he hasn't scared away has, in the past, chased him around the grounds with a metal rake, thrown a boot at him, and kicked him in the face.

It's probably the healthiest dynamic the abbey has seen between him and one of the staff members.

-For reasons unknown, Dew has a strained relationship with Delta, to the extent that he will run if confronted by him.

Everyone is pretty sure the majority of the awkwardness is on Dew's part, though no one has been able to get a straight answer from him about it.

-Copia knew basically nothing about ghouls when he started, but now he has a whole notebook full of fairly accurate information about their physical traits, social dynamics, and various bits of trivia regarding them as a species/individually.

He knows more about them than even some of the other members of the church.

-The ghouls have a whiteboard in their den that is used for a variety of things, but usually for impromptu meetings and visualizing concepts that are hard to articulate.

Copia also has a whiteboard upstairs in his office that he uses for similar purposes, usually to the chagrin of the poor sibling of sin he dragged in there to act as his "rubber duck" for songs or design work.

-Sunny has abandonment issues, and often struggles with articulating her needs, preferring to do things herself for fear that others won't do them for her, even when they offer to do so or have done so in the past.

She feels like she is easy to forget, and tends to be very down on herself internally despite appearing outwardly bright and happy.

Although she knows it's not healthy/is the result of her own internalized issues, she has a hard time being friendly with Aeon and Aurora, but because Aurora is the one who "replaced" her -despite Sunny asking to take time away from the band- she has a bit more misplaced anger towards her.

Because of this, Sunny has been attending counseling to unpack why she feels the way she does.

And lastly;

-While the ghouls act/appear human for the most part, when they gets startled, they instantly devolve into creature mode. Lots of skittering and scampering away and sliding on tile because their claws can't get traction.

[eemamminy-art]

So I had this idea pop into my head I wanna share (because I'm not likely to do anything with it). The farmer buying/making Sam those chore/habit bracelets. Ones that are easy to put on and off, aren't super clunky (cause he works and they could knock stuff over if it's the hanging charm types), and are visually distinct from one another, different colors/combinations for different tasks. Honestly probably the beaded/Kandi bracelet style.

Came to my mind cause I had two bits of dialogue when talking to him pretty close together where he mentions wearing a rubber band on his wrist to help him remember to call his grandma, and another where he writes something down on his arm so he doesn't forget.

And yeah writing on yourself is pretty common, but the rubber band thing specifically made me think of those chore bracelets I've seen some ADHD people talk about using a few years back.

It's just one of those things that to me seems like an important gesture in a relationship? It's something seemingly small and unnecessary but means the farmer has paid attention to something that happened in passing and given a gift based off it with nothing pushing them to do so? Especially nice if it's treated as a 'just because ' gift that isn't for any specific holiday or event or anything but it's obvious they were handmade and probably took some time to do,cause of the amount of them but also because none of the materials are sold in pelican town so they'd have had to go out of their way to get them in order to make Sam this gift?

I'm a small moments kind of romantic though, so maybe others won't think it's an interesting concept?

Ohhhh yes that would be so sweet!!!! 🥺 I didn't know those were even a thing, but I feel like that would be so helpful! I did see that line he had about the rubber band, I definitely get the sense Sam has ADHD and struggles a lot with it!

I haven't romanced him personally but I've read some of his married dialog on the wiki, and he has a lot of lines of like.. feeling so overwhelmed by all the things he wants to do that he ends up doing nothing at all? I could see maybe in addition to the bracelets to give him reminders, maybe they could have a big white board in the farmhouse? And they just put like specific chores on designated days so he can check them off as he does them, and space for him or the farmer to add in extra things too :3 It'd give him a little more structure, and maybe be something they could do together! Imagining them leaving silly doodles on the board for each other to find while the other is out of the house, stuff like that :3

I'm totally with you on appreciating small gestures and finding those to be really romantic, it's something that's really sweet to me too! :3

I get the sense also that because of how Jodi raised him, Sam feels kind of lost without her since she insisted on doing so much for him and didn't really teach him independence. So I like the idea of him gradually learning those things with the farmer, and finding a more structured life together :3 Maybe they even teach Sam how to weave the bracelets too? So he can have another little hobby for when his mind is overactive and he doesn't know what to do with himself! I could see him getting really into it, and maybe starting to give them to his friends and family around town-- and of course, returning the favor to make some for the farmer too! More as something decorative than something to serve as a reminder, but still!

I love this headcanon so much 😄 Totally makes me want to start giving Sam little handwoven bracelets when I draw him now!! And I think in general I'd like to look into the bracelets you mentioned, since I struggle at times with executive dysfunction and time management too! Thanks for sharing this!!

[viperwhispered]

Aunt Nerine: inspiration and design thoughts

You can find more information on aunt Nerine in her intro post

Character inspiration

Figuring out aunt Nerine was a very different process to Emi, since this time I actually was pulling inspiration from Disney (and other) sources. Like, you could pretty much say she's twisted from the general concept of a fairy godmother.

Putting together her main influences, the collection would look something like this:

Which would be:

The Fairy Godmother from Cinderella

The three good fairies from Sleeping Beauty

Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty

Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2

Cadsuane Melaidhrin from The Wheel of Time (can't believe she snuck in smh)

and finally, Cupid

(so, is now a terrible time to admit that I've seen neither Cinderella nor Sleeping Beauty? oop)

So, looking at aunt Nerine, I'm sure you all can spot the visual similarities.

(as always, this particular art belongs to moonyasnow)

A vaguely historical dress (I'll get back to this later) like the fairies from the Disney movies, hair similar to Cadsuane's, wings similar to Cupid (& Shrek's Fairy Godmother to a lesser extend), a wand, but the end is a heart like Cupid's arrow sometimes is portrayed as. She also kinda shares the sparkliness with Shrek's Fairy Godmother.

Personality-wise – she thinks she is being helpful, but she is wilful and doing what she herself wishes to do or thinks is the best course (Cadsuane anyone?). She's also... not above being petty or getting back at you if she's slighted, and also has magical power in spades. These are all traits that certainly tie to at least one of her influences.

Plus just the obvious fairy godmother -like character she has in general, even if somewhat twisted in true twst style.

More detailed design notes

Not gonna lie, I had a lot of fun putting together aunt Nerine's outfit and looks. I wanted to pull from something historical, even if I wasn't necessarily going to stick to the historical styles too closely. Still, finally putting to use all those hours watching historical costuming youtubers, lol.

A fair few pics and stuff in here, so putting this below the cut for length.

Her hair actually started off with me thinking of like an Edwardian school teacher. So very voluminous, with a nice proper bun on top. It was only later that I realized that I was kinda going for Cadsuane's hair, too, especially once I realized that I wanted to add some extra bling.

So, this was the vibe I was going for when thinking about the hair:

Y'all can find more pics from this set here

The wings, as I said, were pulling mostly from Cupid imagery. And while it doesn't show in her design, there's just something very funny to me in the wings being something she just wears for the looks, instead of them being an actual part of her.

Gotta have some whimsy when you've been around as long as she has, you know? (No wonder she and Lilia get along, can't remember anymore if it was dio or moony who first suggested this point but you were so right.)

For the pink collar / chest piece I was thinking of a some sort of an partlet + Medici collar combo. A partlet is basically a neck/chest covering and its own garment, so I'm thinking in aunt Nerine's case it wouldn't be a part of the dress, but something that she can swap out. The same swappability goes for the collar and for the sleeves, to keep with the vaguely 16th century fashion vibes she's got going on.

This pic is what I mostly referenced for the idea, though with a lower collar that'd still give room for Nerine's earrings & hair.

The dress itself is definitely pulling from Elizabethan vibes. This is the particular image I used for inspiration, as it shows the shapes well. A conical bodice with a curved upper edge, narrowing out to the waist with a point that emphasizes the illusion of a narrow waist – especially when combined with the full, layered skirts.

I did decide to forego the shoulder rolls and Elizabethan ruffles, tho.

As for the spider web pattern on her skirts...

Since Nerine has a bit of a sona in her too (to let out my impulses to meddle with charas getting together, lol), I wanted to give her a name somewhat reminiscent of what I go by here. I originally thought of Nerrie (a name I've used elsewhere), but in the end figured maybe we could do with a bit more separation between the creator and the creation, lol.

So, I looked for flower names starting with ner – and found Nerine, aka spider lily. And with the name the spider webs became pretty much an obvious motif to include – both because she kinda tangles people in her webs, and because she's not just all sunshine and roses and love love joy joy.

And if you wanna find out what Moony had to work with (other than the reference pics & my rambles), here's the sketch I sent their way:

It really is wonderful what people can do when they actually know what they're doing, huh?

Tagging @diodellet (ty for enabling me to ramble!) @moonyasnow @scint1llat3 @bibi-cha

If anyone would like to be added to / removed from aunt Nerine's tag list, just let me know!

[archivalofsins]

the ages ask makes me question if time flows in milgram as it does in our world ?? like i kinda assumed milgram was a "slice-of-life-anime" scenario where time, and therefore the characters ages, are frozen / in some weird state of moving yet not moving at the same. and they like experience time passing just in some strange limbo way

I like to believe that time in Milgram does flow the same as it does in our world.

I feel like a lot of what occurs in Milgram can be considered the characters actual jail sentences. Something they weren't really given within regular society. That could be the reason that they were brought into Milgram to begin with and why the audience was told to vote as though they were deciding whether to let these individuals back into society or not.

I think this because of Futa's birthday in particular and his prisoner information taking his recent birthday into consideration during incarceration. As well as the emphasis on time passing throughout the timelines. Mainly the fixation on birthdays and ages in general. Yamanaka also has a habit of playing with the concept of time and age in his other works.

Then slapping the audience with the fact that time was passing normally later and the loss of the time the characters face. Even if they aren't changing or the environment seems stagnant things are still moving forward normally. I feel like it would be nice to subvert that habit of showing characters in stagnant or stasis like un-aging design to update the prisoners designs trial three to showcase their in real time ages.

As though to allude to what trial three with be about-

"“UNDER” My cord’s being pulled but nothing’s ever enough. Contractual desires, oh what to do, FUTURE!"

24/09/02 (Yuno’s Birthday)

Shidou: Thank you for your assistance with Shiina-kun’s treatment. It’s been a big help having you here. Both for her and for me. It’s good to know that even if something happens to me, you’ll still be around. Yuno: No way. I can’t do anything on my own. All I’m doing is helping with whatever you’re doing. It’s just like playing pretend as a nurse. Shidou: No, you’ve got a good sense for things like this. You’re quick to notice things, calm, and fearless. If you haven’t decided what you want to be in the future, maybe you should consider becoming a doctor yourself. Yuno: You think so? ……haha, stop it. I don’t want to be thinking about the future right now. And for someone like me to have other people’s lives in my hands…… that’s no laughing matter.

"I don’t want to be thinking about the future right now."/ "FUTURE!"

I feel like having the characters real time ages reflected in their designs now would be a way of cementing the impact of Milgram as a whole. Though they may remain stagnant throughout the entire series. Especially since some are at the age where physical changes wouldn't be as overt anymore.

Though an trial three design with growth spurt for Amane would be very interesting to really cement the passage of time visually. They kind of did everything they possibly could to make it difficult to figure out whether time was passing or not. As well as lightly played into the everyone may be dead angle at times as well.

Yet, cementing deaths happening in Milgram now emphasizes what Shidou said at the start,

Shidou First Voice Drama Molech 2:03s

"Well, let's see. I mean, without a doubt, it's clearly a strange place. It's architectural and the written script it uses are things I've never seen before either. If you were to say I was having a dream or a vision, then that would make more sense to me."

Hm.

"But all things considered, I'm still very much conscious. My pulse rate is within its normal range. I can't find any symptoms to suggest that I'm hallucinating either. So, I don't exactly find that idea to be very convincing."

Oh?

"Other than that... If this is the afterlife then this place must be hell. But, if I set that idea aside, then... This is just real life. I, myself, am in normal condition; it's where I am which is unusual. I may not know the reason behind this place or how it works, but even if I tried to escape from the reality of it, nothing would really change, right?"

Shidou from the very start said his condition was normal. He himself was fine. His heart was beating normally, he couldn't find any symptoms to suggest he was hallucinating. He was in a regular living state his environment was just weird.

Even though Shidou commits malpractice on others he's never committed it on himself. So, this is probably the truest thing he's ever said in regards to any health issues. That hew as fine and by proxy everyone else here was too when they got here.

Then he at no point complained once about people not aging, hair no longer growing, injuries not being able to heal. Them being in any sort of paused state. Nope he was fine and everything was normal then he died. You think several people living together for years wouldn't go hey isn't it weird none of us have changed physically at all including the young child on the cusp of puberty?

No, yeah no okay let's just all ignore that then.

The only implication is the girls possibly having period issues due to the stressful environment that is never followed up on after this. Which if it was a consistent thing you'd think they'd mention again.

20/07/13

Mahiru: Right…… so you too, Mu-chan…… ……hmm, I guess it’s because of the environment here. Sometimes your mental state has an impact.

Mu: ……you’re the same, then? ……that it’s gone……

Mahiru: ……it’ll be fine, it’ll be fine. This sort of thing happens all the time~ Right, Mu-chan, do you want to eat something sweet? Jackalope-chan left a bunch of stuff out for us.

Mu: Yeah, I’ll eat them…… But…… I’d rather have mille crepe……

Mahiru even aptly explains if it is periods that this does happen all the time due to stress and environment and it's nothing to freak out over. But again we don't know if it was that because this is never followed up on again. It's alluded to once then like never again. By any of the girls here.

And there are other methods to stop someone from having their period. They could have just put birth control in their arm and got that affect then when it's taken out it will come back. So that proves absolutely nothing other than they probably did a medically invasive procedure before locking them up here which they already did a psychologically invasive one.

So, this is Milgram I say again. But they wouldn't need to do that if they simply didn't care about them having those which they wouldn't. Again like Mahiru says this sort of thing can happen all the time and is impacted by stress and environment. When Mu was brought into here she was stressed and afraid of her environment.

That's why I was never really under the impression they'd just had not been aging. Also why I feel like it would be more fun if they were. I know that them being in stasis or not aging in real time is a pretty popular idea. I just think the alternatives can be fun as well and haven't seen much proof of it.

Other than Shidou saying that and Yuno asking if she's dead. Which to be fair they both feel like they're in hell so I don't think those two were the most unbiased parties when it came to displaying this concern. Shidou hoped he wasn't in hell and Yuno felt she was in hell. Those are not reliable narrators.

With the emphasis on the future throughout Milgram I feel like it'd be a missed opportunity to not get a glimpse into the prisoners futures before we decide whether we should let them out or not. Even if it's just through their designs.

[respectthepetty]

Hi RTP! 👋 big fan.

I'm watching We Best Love: Fighting Mr. 2nd (and I think I like it more than the first season???)

Anyway, I've seen your color post about them, but in S2 specifically I've been noticing reflections, mirrors and glass barriers are a thing a lot? I'd love to hear your thoughts, if you're willing.

Peace and love! 🖤💙

Anon, you like the second season of We Best Love more than the first season?!

You like this

over this?!

I won't fight you because both hold a special place in my heart and on my Top Taiwanese BLs list since Taiwan finally delivered me a color-coded BL TWICE (which I missed the first time around until @gillianthecat asked me about it! - Look at Zhou Shu Yi give Gao Shi De his heart while they wear their respective colors! )

So I'm thrilled to answer this ask, but know I won't be mentioning the second or third pair. That's too much! I gotta focus on the main couple.

I also will be writing about how the show used space in general to reinforce the narrative. I'm unsure if you have finished watching the second season, so let me warn you that there will be spoilers ahead.

SPOILERS!

We started the second season with a flashback to how it all went sideways for the boys after the first season ended, and the aftermath gives us the first reflection of Zhou Shu Yi who is heartbroken and dismayed.

After this, Zhou Shu Yi is closed off emotionally AND physically. He lives in a concrete house!

And even though the entire workspace is an open concept with glass offices,

The main office they argue in has the shades down on all the windows, so people can't see inside. Even when Zhou Shu Yi is riding in the car with his friends, the windows have curtains to block out the world.

While Gao Shi De's house has plenty of sunlight streaming in from the windows, and he tends to talk outside, out in the open.

We only see Zhou Shu Yi's emotions in reflections because mirrors show us the truth (mirror, mirror, on the wall and blah blah blah).

So even though Zhou Shu Yi claims he is over Gao Shi De and continues to hide his emotions behind shaded windows, concrete walls, and barriers, the mirrors and the colors don't lie. Since you read the colors post, you know that no matter what Zhou Shu Yi does, he is always surrounded by Gao Shi De's blue, just like he was when they were in high school, but now he is staring at a shattered image of them.

However, both guys pick up a trait from the other. After their sexually charged back-and-forth in the shaded office, Gao Shi De's reflection in the BLACK table shows he is quickly breaking down due to Zhou Shu Yi's animosity.

And Zhou Shu Yi decides to step outside and speak openly about his lingering feelings for Gao Shi De while wearing a BLUE stripe across his shirt.

But both their issues finally come to the surface when Zhou Shu Yi learns about the lines Gao Shi De and his father crossed without his consent. We visually see those barriers being crossed as well.

This forces Zhou Shu Yi in a box, alone and isolated.

And the two who are responsible for their own predicaments are forced outside to clear the air to get rid of the barrier between them.

Because everything is out in the open now, Zhou Shu Yi's world starts to brighten up, and we see him near the windows since his feelings are no longer being repressed.

Even when he gets sick, he ends up in Gao Shi De's blue car that has windows without the black-out curtains.

Zhou Shu Yi might still be upset at Gao Shi De, but he is willing to forgive him, so they are now in the glass box together since their feelings are completely out in the open.

We get a call back to the bed scene from season one, but this time, Zhou Shu Yi 's eyes are open and the light is shining through because there are no more secrets.

And this honesty transfers to the office. We now see the boys in the glass office together, without all the shades down.

We also see Gao Shi De trusting Zhou Shu Yi marked by him standing in front of the open blinds, while Yu Zhen Zuan, standing behind the closed blinds, does not trust Zhou Shu Yi.

The guys are stronger together now that everything is out in the open, and they revisit the bridge from the first season where they laid everything bare and confessed to each other.

Because even though they have to be secretive to find the person who is responsible for the company leak (which is why they have to go back into the shaded office)

They remain in their own open glass box of honesty.

The only remaining barrier is the one between Gao Shi De and Zhou Shu Yi's father, who still wants to keep secrets from Zhou Shu Yi.

Gao Shi De speaks with him in front of the window acting as the divide, but since it is a window with no curtains and the blinds are open, we already know that Zhou Shu Yi's father can no longer allow his secrets to be the barrier between him and his son's boyfriend.

With everything finally settled, the boys enjoy their glass box of honesty over dinner with the light shining on them.

And the series ends with their friends getting engaged, and them coming back to to where it all began - in the openness of the blue water, which is the biggest reflection of their love.

Thanks for this ask, Anon. I'm making a separate post of two more color items I noticed while collecting a few images for this post. Our Blue Boy, Gao Shi De, had a blue cell phone and blue chopsticks when talking with and eating with his Black Brooder boyfriend, but I never noticed that, so once again, thanks, and I hope I answered your question!

[hot-on-my-watch]

Silly Notes on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness  by a Marvel Novice

Well the visuals are just bloody amazing aren't they.

Rachel McAdams also looking great in bright red lipstick.

People are acting like it's normal for space monsters to just randomly appear on the streets of New York - presumably in the MCU it is?

Ok the jumping off the balcony thing was VERY cool.

Does Wanda look like a young Maggie Gyllenhall?

Don't tell me that IS Maggie Gyllenhall with surgery?!?!

Of course. Elizabeth Olsen. I knew that. I established when watching Avengers Endgame. And also remembered that Elizabeth is neither Mary-Kate nor Ashley Olsen. Excellent pop-culture knowledge, self.

The Scarlet Witch reminds me of evil Willow Rosenberg. But perhaps Scarlet Witch was first and comic book nerd Whedon ripped it off a bit rather than the other way around. Bet he did.

I should really watch Wandavision.

Will I watch it before the rest of this film, even?

No, I don't think so.

I'll see if there's another Wanda film though in case I've missed anything since Endgame. 

* confusion when Wanda suggests bringing America "here" because I don't know where "here" is and have forgotten that America is the name of the girl.*

Oh she knew too much, that's why Strange looked confused as well.

Is the Scarlet Witch using her mask to have a cheekbone off with Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange? Because frankly that's not going to go well for her.

Maybe she was wearing that mask in Endgame too and I forgot? No. Or was she? Hmm.

Cumberbatch has got his usual comic book style hair as Strange here but his eyebrows don't entirely match I feel like so someone needed to do something with them.

Oh no on second thought they appeared to be the same colour as his hair and beard generally. But I wonder if something more could have done with gel or an eyebrow pencil though even though he would have looked a bit mental I suppose.

The beard is very sharp-lined in some scenes but seems less so in others.

That was a really harsh way to treat that food seller actually! All he was trying to do is not get robbed!

Stephen Strange was always a bit of a bitch though.

I really like the special effects, especially when they go through all the different universes. 

There's no real need for Doctor Strange to be wearing the superhero outfit at this point but he's committed to the bit. I approve.

I still don't know what the differences are between MCU New York and real New York apart from the obvious it does look nicer.

Maybe I should have watched all of this films in order.

Book of Ashanti? Hahahaha ASHANTI! What song even was that?

Ok book of Vishanti, that's better.

100% knew that was a trap. I have seen pieces of media before. Knew it.

Don't remember Mordo being this hot. Umm.

Cumberbatch's straight sideswept fringe seems to be on the opposite side to Sherlock's curly one, which is a mirror of my own.

I enjoy the alternative versions of the super heroes.

IS THAT PROFESSOR X?

Omg it IS! Long time no see old friend!

Oh god they're dropping like flies.

Of course he's not better than 383 Stephen. Come on! Why would he be?

My attention span REALLY cannot cope with action scenes right now. Sorry Marvel.

This would have been amazing to see at the cinema though.

Has he become injured DIRECTLY ON THE CHEEKBONE?!

Omg America has as well. To a lesser extent.

I mean I suppose that would happen, but still.

Is that a blue patch on the cloak or are we seeing his clothes through it. I want to be seeing his clothes through it for some reason.

Still spectacular visuals of course.

Have YOU not seen films before, Stephen Strange? Stop trusting people that are obviously going to turn against you!

I'm sorry I still can't get over the hand gestures.

Ok I enjoy the "third eye" concept but it looks kinda silly.

I'm still not sure I fully get the thing about being held back by your own fear AND arrogance. I may survey people on this.

He's not actually going to kill her is he?

Oh I see what's going to happen here.

"No one will ever be tempted by the darkhold again." OF COURSE NOT THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN.

Nice that the villain turned back in the end though. Like Dark Willow. She learned her lesson.

Could they be together though? Or is it another House and Cuddy situation?

Yay the watch is fixed! And by his own hand, not by magic! Did we learn something about this in the first film? Is it to do with what he's willing to do with magic and not? What he can still do with his hands?

Is he going to see Christine? Is he moving on now?

Nooo a third eye! No they look so weird! Even on Benedict Cumberbatch!

Who's this woman with the purple? It's a look! Oh ok apparently 3-eyed Dr Strange is basically fine. Ok.

So... does this nullify the previous cliffhanger? What now?

Excellent film though, did enjoy it.

[variousqueerthings]

Okay, well, what would you prefer then? The Dustmen?

Sleep No More! this season's dedicated spooky episode. I feel like I ought to have vibed more with this one than I did and I dunno why it didn't work with me that well. maybe I powered through s9 too quickly (EDIT: I have now analysed why it didn't work so well for me, ey!)

also: is this the first out trans actor we've had on this show? definitely some things to say about that

sexism rank objectification (female character is ogled/harassed/turned into a sex joke by the doctor and/or a lead we’re supposed to root for and/or the camera): 10/10

sexism rank plot-point (lead female character is only there to serve plot, not to have her emotional interiority explored, or given agency to her emotional interiority): 4/10

interesting complex or pointlessly complex (does the complexity serve the narrative or does it just serve to be confusing as a stand-in for smart, this includes visually): 6/10

furthers character and/or lore and/or plot development (broader question that ties into the previous ones, at least two of these, ideally three should be fulfilled): 3/10

companion matters (the companion doesn’t always have to be there, but if the companion is there, can they function without the doctor– and overall per season how often is the companion the focus or POV of the story): 3/10

the doctor is more than just “godlike” (examines the doctor’s flaws and limitations, doesn’t solve a plot by having it revolve entirely around the doctor’s existence): 9/10

doesn’t look down on previous doctor who (by erasing or mocking its importance, by redoing and “bettering” previous beloved plotpoints or characters, etc.): 6/10

isn’t trying to insert hamfisted sexiness (m*ffat famously talked a lot about how dw should be sexier multiple times, he sucks at writing it): 10/10

internal world has consistency (characters have backgrounds, feel rooted in a place with other people, generally feel like they have Lives): 6/10

Politics (how conservative is the story): 4/10

FULL RATING: 61/100 (if I can count….)

ok ok let's get into it!

OBJECTIFICATION: see, cured!

PLOT-POINT: I mean, it's a standalone episode that doesn't do much beyond the episode itself, so it doesn't really need to give Clara much development. still, I think in a season in which Clara doesn't have many emotional beats, considering what's coming up in the very next episode... I'd have liked something perhaps

COMPLEXITY: it's complexity lies in its structure and I am nooot convinced by it. there's nothing wrong as such with found footage, but it feels gimmicky very fast, and I think there should have been more done with the fact that the dust was "watching" them

the fact that it's basically the beats of a low-budget horror should have meant I vibed with it more, but I think because in the end a lot of it is just running from place to place while going "whaat is even happening here" makes it feel a bit thin

also the ending is probably an "either you like it or you don't" type ending, so I have nothing against it as such. I think the single-episode characters were thinner than a lot of the other ones we've seen throughout the years, which is kind of a shame, because there is some interesting Stuff to dig into with the wider world they inhabit (which we'll get to) but these are all -- with the exception of Nagata I think -- relatively threadbare. this might also be a feeling arising from the other episodes being two-parters, so we got more time with the "under the lake" gang idk. but maybe actually that's why I'm judging it a bit harsher -- this is a concept I've seen before a few times, done better

CHARACTERS/LORE/PLOT: nothing much here either, although there is a delightful little exchange between Clara and the Doctor right at the beginning that goes like this --

CLARA: Looks like a Japanese restaurant. Oh! Have you brought me to a space restaurant? DOCTOR: People never do that, you know? CLARA: Do what? DOCTOR: They never put the word space in front of something just because everything's all sort of hi-tech and future-y. It's never space restaurant or space champagne or space, you know, hat. It's just restaurant, champagne or hat. Even if this was a restaurant. CLARA: What about spacesuit? DOCTOR: Pedant.

I just think that gives me more on them as characters than often exists in their episodes together, which often feel like they go so fast and are so specific to Plot things, that I've often struggled to engage with their dynamic as ostensibly good friends. this was actually something I highlighted in "the girl who died" which was the way everything with them was constantly framed around danger and high stakes and how that takes me out of understanding what draws Clara to travelling, and this is a little counterpoint to that

COMPANIONS MATTER: ehhhh not really from my memory. she's there.

“GODLIKE” DOCTOR: the Doctor just fully runs around like a headless chicken in this one. no that's not fair, he solves most of the puzzle. crucially not the really important piece at the end though, but I'd assume that happened offscreen, as the implications of that ending have never been brought up again on this show to my knowledge

PREVIOUS DOCTOR WHO: couple of tiny references. actually it's more of a big send-up to league of gentlemen, considering Gatiss wrote it and Shearsmith plays the main bad guy

“SEXINESS”: again, cured!

INTERNAL WORLD: I think if this had had more world-building and less attempts at being a PG horror movie it might have been more horrifying actually, because the implications are already horrifying enough. but yeah, this, because of the characters, is quite a thinly built world, made all the more noticeable because the ideas within it are kind of compelling as heck and I do want to know more!

POLITICS: there's a couple of things in this, the first and more intentional of which is it brings up some good horrific capitalist world-building, and I wiiish whatever the story was was actually more about that. I mean, actually there's a really good TV concept on its own in it, that this episode didn't have the time or focus or ability to tell, because it's Doctor Who, we're not spending a season dwelling on the implications of functionally removing sleep from people, but ooooh I'd be interested in a story that did!

the other thing is that this has the somewhat dubious honour of featuring the first ever out trans actor in a lead role, played by Bethany Black, and... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I mean. I mean. she's a vat-grown grunt referred to with "it" pronouns (and not, I get the sense, because of personal choice, if personal choice came into this in the first place), who "cannot speak properly" because these "grunts" are frequently not... bred well enough? there's a loooot of episodes on Doctor Who that are about personhood and respecting that, and this... is not one of those episodes. 474 is never a focus of the Doctor in this episode, and in fact relatively early on both (she?) and this cis guy who frequently insults her the most (whom she is in love with???) are separated from the others. she then sacrifices herself for this guy, but it doesn't really matter because he's killed anyway shortly afterwards

it's just kinda messy and badly thought-out, but Bethany Black is great, and we know it's going to get better at some point. I want to make a point though as well that Bethany is fat and was in her 30s during this episode I think, and her character is presented in a relatively genderless way and smeared with camouflage paint or oil or smthin (and again, referred to with "it" pronouns), so I don't think a lot of people casually watching would have noticed that this character was a woman (if indeed, the episode understood that), in the sense that obviously trans people should get to play everyone and not "just" have to be prettified in order to be allowed onscreen, but it's a shame we couldn't see a fat trans woman being respected as a woman in this story, or youknow... get to assert her personhood, considering this is Doctor Who, and I hope that the wonderful onscreen transness we're getting will not be equated with thinness and youth exclusively in the future

but like, they could fully bring Bethany Black back as another character and I don't think people would recognise her as having been on the show before, so... do it cowards. you did it with fuckn Capaldi and Gillan and Cribbins and and and...

FULL RATING: 61/100 (if I can count….)

so I did actually check what the feedback to this episode was, and apparently at the time it was the lowest rated episode apart from Love & Monsters, which if anyone has been on this blog for a bit, you know I'm so into that episode. and I think that's worthy of a little comparison, because the thing about Love & Monsters is that while it is a bit gimmicky in format and to the left of a traditional episode, it does all of this in service to something. it's about specific people who exist in the sphere of the Doctor's influence, and that in turn explores a tertiary character (Jackie) who herself occupies a difficult space in this universe. it is, fundamentally, a very very human, softly tragic tale that builds up ideas that we'll return to many times over the course of the show

this episode does not have that. it's characters aren't very fleshed out, its world-building is shallow, and its purpose as the episode before a Very Important Episode seems to be to just. be there. and I think that's its fundamental weakness. if this were in another season, and given some tightening here and there to give it some kind of focus (my preference would be on giving some emotional insights on the Doctor and whoever the Companion is and/or making this very much about the single-episode characters For A Purpose, with the Doctor and Companion taking a backseat) I would have liked it better

as it is I don't dislike it, it's just oddly situated and relatively forgettable to me. Bethany Black should come back though

[theuntitledblog]

Tenet (2020) - REVIEW

It's hard to know where to even begin with Tenet! I would start by saying that no other film Christopher Nolan has made has come close to being as much of a challenge for me as this . It's not like the general concept of inversion is that difficult to understand, but the way it's realized and utilized on screen just boggles the senses and I find myself unable fully process it. I saw Tenet again a couple of days ago and this was probably the first time where most of it started to slot together for me but even then the visual complexity is still hard to grasp the bigger and more ambitious the film gets. This is Christopher Nolan operating in a similar way as he did with Inception by constructing a complex film around a sci-fi concept and trusting that the audience can keep up. Tenet is a film I admired and generally liked upon release, it's a film I continue to revisit but unlike with Inception, Tenet is perhaps too challenging for some of the wrong reasons.

Despite being 2 and a half hours long, Tenet requires your full attention as well as your ability to keep up with the story as it moves constantly between so many locations, characters, ideas and even points in time. There's nothing wrong of course with trying to challenge your audience with complex ideas, but it is a problem when it requires multiple viewings to understand the basics and Tenet asks a lot of its audience. Nolan has been previously criticised regarding the quality of the sound in his movies and while I haven't generally agreed with this, here I think it's somewhat justified. On my first viewing there were lines of dialogue I couldn't pick up on which was compounded further by just how loud Ludwig Göransson's score is at times. I would point out that at no time was I unable to follow the main story or the stakes involved and if you can keep up then Tenet can be a rewarding experience. But there's no denying that Tenet is too convoluted for its own good and isn't as satisfying an experience than Inception was. But among its saving graces, the biggest for me is that I find it to be among the most intriguing films Nolan has made and my desire to fully understand it is because I admire so much of what it's attempting to be.

If you've ever wondered what a Christopher Nolan directed James Bond movie might look like, then Tenet is probably your best guess. Dealing with espionage, secret organisations, diverse and scenic locations plus heavy hitting, large scale set pieces and you'll see that the Bond vibes are there. Adding to the set up is a suave lead in John David Washington, a sinister Bond-esque villain in Kenneth Branagh and Robert Pattinson's mysterious side kick Neil who always seems to know more than he should and you have an interesting mix. The characters themselves are mostly service to the plot and aside from Elizabeth Debicki's Kat and Branagh's Sator, little is offered in terms of deeper understanding of their motives or back stories. But there's also no denying that Nolan is on fine form once again with huge, practical set pieces that look glorious on screen and can't help but keep your interest.

The inversion sequences are unlike anything I've seen and visually I find it impressive yet tough to process especially during the more complex sequences. What starts off with just bullets later progresses to cars, corridor fights, interrogation sequences and even a full scale battle. Even now I can't honestly say that I fully grasp what I'm seeing on screen nor how concepts such as Temporal Pincer movements affect the larger set pieces such as during the heist in Tallinn. Whether this is really an issue with myself or the film is definitely up for discussion but I think there's no denying that that Tenet, for me at least is difficult to fully understand. Nolan has said that you're not meant to understand everything about Tenet and while I think there's something to be said about ambiguity in films, I ultimately feel that Tenet is too complex to be as satisfying an experience as I hoped it would be ... at least not yet. Tenet is a film that is too interesting to ignore and will be a film I keep coming back to again and again.

VERDICT

Tenet represents one of the most challenging cinematic experiences I've ever had and it will likely prove too much for a lot of people. But this is a film that offers greater rewards the more you stick with it and while it isn't the best film Christopher Nolan has made, it is one of the most intriguing.

4/5

[donnerpartyofone]

More notes on beauty:

1) I started feeling ugly from a very early age, really as far back as I can remember. There is something deeply revealing about being told you're pretty only by blood relatives, friends of the family who are trying to flatter your parents, and platonic friends who are not sexually attracted to your demographic; all those people are trying to make you feel better in some way, even though they might be accidentally pointing out a problem you didn't necessarily think you had.* But anyway, my parents never interfered with my sense of ugliness--even though I was extremely vocal about how worried and sad it made me. On one single occasion when I was probably around 12 and bemoaning how gross I felt, my father stoically offered up that beauty standards are just reflections of reproductive instincts, that the qualities men find attractive in women are markers of high quality breeding stock essentially. I now know that this is only true to a limited degree, and even at the time it wasn't hard to see that the average sex symbol wasn't necessarily "fertile-looking". Besides which, this knowledge wouldn't exempt me from continued rejection and alienation! It was just another way of viewing my natural reject-ness. But still, this shut me up somehow. It was like Oh OK, so even if I'm like exiled from society, at least there's a scientific reason. It's not "unfair", it's just rational.

2) My best friend is ugly. This is her own assessment based on her own experience of just being in society, dealing with strangers, trying to find a partner, etc. I don't know that she ENJOYS being ugly, but I don't think she's offended by the diagnosis; it just is what it is on some level, and it makes her incredibly enlightened about the complexities of embodied existence, but ANYWAY. I was talking one day with another friend about the general concept of looks, and when I mentioned this fact about my closest friend, my interlocutor got very prickly. She said something like "ugliness is a really important concept to me, I've seen pictures of your friend online and she's not it." To be clear this person was being more defensive of ugliness than of the stranger I was describing--but it put me in this corner where I had to go, "OK fine, her skin is like this, her hair is like this," etc, until it was like I had her whole physical person disarticulated on an operating table. Finally the person I was talking to conceded that she understood me, but it was an unpleasant experience and I wished I hadn't taken the bait. This person just had a fetishized version of what it means to be "ugly"; she meant, for instance, character actors with uniquely extreme appearances that amount to their own special aesthetic. She didn't want to include just general people who are routinely ignored and rejected in any circumstance where the key thing is visual attractiveness. And there I was, so desperate to defend my friend's inalienable right to be ugly (which is just one small feature of hers within an absolute treasure trove of amazingly great human qualities), that I carved her up into parts for this other person--I made myself think about my friend in a way that I absolutely never would do naturally, all because of my obsessive resistance of judging people by aesthetics, even the "ugliness" aesthetic. It left me feeling pretty awful.

*Actually I wonder if people, let's just say women who are very attractive are very often TOLD that they are attractive out loud by people other than sexual partners (and suitors who can't control themselves). I feel like people are so threatened by attractive women, in various ways, that they don't necessarily come right out and acknowledge this attractiveness in words. I think maybe people are more likely to express "you're extremely hot/beautiful" through behavior and action, than to be so vulnerable as to say the obvious to a beautiful woman. In fact I theorize that you might know if you face more challenges re: appearance from the fact that people TELL you you're attractive more often than they act like it. But this is all speculation about other people's lives, I really wouldn't know!

[exhausted-capybara]

So, I keep seeing a lot of posts about AI and how capitalism and a bunch of tech companies are doing massive ethics violations, and I do agree that we should be talking about these things!

But I've also seen people go a bit too far and just kinda not get why those things are bad. The problem isn't AI as a concept, it's how they were implemented and how they're being used.

For example, did you know that phone calls are AI powered? Yes, really. It's not even a new development, they've been using AI / ML models since at least the '70s. VoIP calls like Discord, Google Meet and Zoom use more or less the same technology, so this applies to them as well.

Realistically the only reason they've never been marketed as AI powered is because they come from a time where AI wasn't a giant household buzzword (and in some cases, it was after the first major AI crash, so AI was actively a dirty no-no word if you wanted to get funds). AI really just means "inputs a big ball of data, outputs a crude, but smaller, approximation" - it just so happens that for a bunch of problems, we've found very good small approximations. Which means that please, for the love of all that's unholy, DO NOT harass someone using something that has AI or Machine Learning or terms like that attached, without considering whether that technology in question is actually harmful.

Linear interpolations (any interpolations really, linears are just the most common and banal of them) are technically AI, and yet they're a staple of pretty much every 3D rendering engine. Sometimes they're a cheap hack that makes whatever extremely easier and cheaper to make without compromising on visual accuracy, sometimes they're just *The Right Thing To Do*, and sometimes they're just saving an animator / modeler / etc. that's probably already overworked anyways from doing extra busy work. And yet there have been sightings of people harassing animators because they mentioned using some kind of interpolation during the animating / rigging / modeling process, someone mentioned (correctly in a pedantic sort of way) that it was AI to them before, and they just saw "thing that is AI" and "art" in the same general space and went full "fuck AI mode" on the overworked artist.

The problems with AI we're seeing right now are ethical, but there is ethical usage of AIs (and in fact there is a non negligible amount of accessibility devices that are AI powered), and sometimes that includes industries where there have been the biggest violations so far (generative images, generative sound and generative text). If you don't know enough about the kind of AI / ML model that was used, how it was used in the workflow, how it was trained, etc. Please look into that before going around throwing accusations and making call out posts, because there's a fuckton of things that are technically AI in stuff you use everyday and there are people in the Internet ready to start drama just because it's Tuesday or because the partner of a cousin of a friend of a classmate of their roommate's gym buddy said so.

[sapphire-weapon]

Idk if this is of any interest to you, but I remember way back you mentioned RE 7& 8 were hard to play because of the first person thing. I despise that style too. 7 and Skyrim took me forever to fully adjust to and I just generally dislike not seeing my character lmao. Anyway, RE8 does actually have an official third person playing mode now, and plays the same way as the other games. I just thought I'd mention it in case you were unaware and wanted another try or whatever, but I assume you likely know already.

Also, I'm adding on a headcanon that I've had since playing. Nobody else has said it, so I'm sure I'd hear a lot of disagreement. Many point out that Leon and Ethan would've been great friends or had shipping potential, despite them never meeting. I've always seen it slightly differently though, I think Ethan actually shows what Leon could've been if he wasn't traumatised (well, before Ethan got his own hefty dose obviously lmao). I really like E and do think the characters would mix really well, but it felt to me like they might've taken some early, bare bones Leon concepts and built a different character off of it. I don't know, that's just what went through my head before.

Also, is it really true that the Winters story is completely done!? I'm seeing that passed around a lot, but it's completely nonsensical. Rose is not a finished character and the DLC made it very clear that she has a huge role to play in the future of RE. I'd be so disappointed if that whole story was dropped, especially because she's so likeable...

So, real quick -

Yes, I do know that RE8 has a third person mode. I still haven't really had the desire to play it, though, because from what I've seen, it's a bit clunky. The game was not designed with third person in mind, which makes certain sections of gameplay artificially harder and/or lose their thematic impact.

The Winters' family story is done, but that doesn't mean that Rose will never be used again. Like, when the Raccoon City arc was done, that didn't mean that all of the legacy cast went away. They just moved onto the next story arc. Rose can still move onto the next story arc; it's just that the story arc won't be about her family.

As for the middle part of your ask...

I disagree that Ethan is a look at Leon's character if the Raccoon City outbreak didn't happen.

And I say that because -- and this is a theory that I've held close to my chest for years and have never really spoken about -- I think that Sebastian Castellanos (the protagonist of The Evil Within) was, in part, Shinji Mikami's creative exploration of where Leon's character could have gone if he'd stayed a cop -- which is why TEW plays so similarly and is structured so similarly to RE4 in the first place.

Sebastian started his career as an idealistic overachiever who was so good at and so dedicated to his job that he became the youngest officer ever in the KCPD to be promoted to Detective. But, in the end, he broke, too, and went off the deep end into a horrible spiraling meltdown that culminated in him turning into a paranoid conspiracy theorist with a drinking problem who nearly lost his job -- several times -- for insubordination, violent outbursts, and illegal investigations into the corruption within the KCPD. The only thing that saved him was his incredible reputation and spotless record from when he was younger.

If you're interested at all, I have a compilation of Sebastian's in-game journal detailing the rise and fall of his career here. There's also a visual representation of the good times -> the breakdown -> the result that the DLCs put into the game that you can watch here.

Basically, I think that Leon's character was always bound for tragedy, one way or the other, because I don't think that Leon ever had it in him to have a healthy response to grief and hardship in his life to begin with. All roads lead to the same place.

Ethan survived (well, "survived" LMAO) several different traumatic events and arguably came out stronger. I don't think Leon ever would have or could have done the same.

[bustyasianbeautiespod]

Episode 117 Transcript: Brystal CABPod

[intro guitar music]

G: Hello, it's Grey.

C: Hello, it's Crystal.

G: And this is Busty Asian Beauties, a Supernatural commentary podcast where I, someone who has seen this show several times...

C: And I, someone who only knows the show through social media, discuss every single episode of Supernatural from start to finish. Also, we are both Asian.

G: Both Asian! For today's episode, we will be discussing Season 6, Episode 13 with the corny, corny, corny title: "Unforgiven," [both laugh] written by Andrew Dabb and Daniel Loflin. Boo! [C: Boo.] or I don't know, it's fine. Directed by David Barrett-

C: Who is only a director on "Unforgiven" and has never done anything else.

G: Well, I'm sure he has done other things in his life, but yeah, on Supernatural.

C: That's true. Woke up, breathed. Let's find this individual. [typing] "David Barrett, IMDb." Oh, whole Wikipedia page for this individual.

G: That's pretty fun.

C: I don't really know. I don't recognize anything on here, though. Also, it might be a different David Barrett.

G: You know, sometimes, people just have a Wikipedia [C: That they made?], and it's not for anything, yeah. You don't have to be too impressed. He directed one episode of Supernatural in the Wikipedia, so this is him. I'm just sorry for saying that you shouldn't be impressed with this guy. [C laughs] He seems an accomplished director and other things, so good for him.

C: Yeah, yeah. He did three episodes of Once Upon a Time, which I know matters to the femslash community.

G: Love it. Love it. Watched that TV show around the same time I watched House M.D., I think, for the first time. [C: Mm.] And I knew immediately that they were lesbians. Like, yeah.

C: Good for them.

G: Well, anyway! [laughs] What do we think about this episode? [laughs] Let's just skip to the end.

C: So okay, I think the concept of it is pretty good.

G: Yeah. Parts of it are like- [laughs]

C: An old case that Sam did some fucked up shit as soulless Sam, and he learns over the course of the episode that there's no way to truly, cleanly make things right the way he wants to. Good concept. Actual execution, I guess this guy who was a spider [laughs] spent a whole year finding out who Sam slept with and what his phone number was?

G: Yeah. [both laughing] Hell yeah.

C: And so yeah. And also, the flashbacks are corny as fuck.

G: The flashbacks were so long, and corny and tired and played out. I feel they could have gone the more "For real, we're seeing it from Sam's perspective now" kind of flashback, you know? But we don't. We just fully get in on those. It's just a completely separate part of the episode, so. And it's black and white. [C: Yeah.] [laughs] I mean, it's better than if they did the coloring of Season 8 with Amelia, [C laughing] but still. I was like, "What are we doing here? What is this?" I mean, it's generally fine. But I think there's a reason, I think, why basically nobody talks about this episode. And it's essential to Sam's plot, and we do get the iconic visual of Sam in Hell in this episode, it seems like. But yeah, some episodes are just not bell ringers. Okay, well, what did know about it, though, before?

C: Nothing. I just put down that I assume it's about soulless Sam having been responsible for a death in an evil way, and then him having to make up for it in a case. So I got that right. But yeah, none of the details of this episode are things that I've heard about.

G: Really?

C: Yeah.

G: I don't know what you would have heard about if it wasn't- I also think I like quite a bit that it feels very- I was gonna say "very modern" to refer to modern-day Supernatural, [C laughs] and by modern-day, I mean late seasons. But that's not modern-day. That's five years ago! [C: Right.] Crazy. [laughs] That's crazy! Wait! [laughs] What's going on?

C: You good?

G: Well, anyway. Yeah, I mean, I started watching Supernatural when it was airing Season 10, and that was in 2015!

C: Ten years ago.

G: That's wild.

C: Yeah.

G: Well, anyway, we start the episode literally in- The "Then" sequences this season, I don't know. They leave much to be desired, I feel like. [C laughs] I just feel like. [C: Mm.] Last episode, we had that disappointing AMV that's literally whatever, [C laughs] and now, it's just whatever, also. It's just them saying, "We're gonna bring that damn soul back," etc. We are in a flashback sequence that we know to be a flashback sequence because it's black and white. Is it currently black and white?

C: No. No, it's not.

G: It's normal.

C: It says "one year ago" is how we know.

G: Okay. And Sam and Samuel- [both laugh] I have been thinking about what I said to you the other day, which is that we are so quick to judge Samuel. If you did get resurrected from the dead, and you have a grandchild named "Chris," you would kill him. [laughs]

C: I don't know if I would kill Chris.

G: You wouldn't kill Crys with a Y?

C: Noo. [laughs] No, no, I don't think so. I would kill my clone. I don't think I would kill some other guy.

G: Yeah, I mean, seeing how Sam acted with Samuel when they were hunting together, it does make me think, why didn't Samuel kill him? [both laugh] [C: No.] Kinda maybe he should have.

C: Yeah, no, it just seemed Sam was being, "And now we should use people as bait, and then now we should kill them without even checking with the hospital, but this is how we do it in the 2000s," and Samuel was like, "I guess!" [laughs]

G: Yeah. So maybe me saying that you would kill Crys is just me projecting on what Samuel should have done. Yeah, anyway, Sam and Samuel are running out of a fucking building, and for some reason, Sam has a giant wound on his arm. Do we figure out why he has this giant wound later?

C: Uhh... I think it's from when the Arachne jumped him?

G: He didn't have it when he shot that guy. He didn't have! [C: Hm, yeah.] Like, he raised his arm to shoot that guy with the arm that's bloody.

C: Fair point. Yeah, I don't know.

G: So now I have no idea where this fucking arm wound came from. But anyway, they go out, they're driving away. There's a cop car comes up, and there's a cop asking, "What's going on?" because they can't get Sheriff Dobbs on the phone. And so Samuel steps out, and then Sam steps out, and the cop is, "Oh my god! You have so much blood on you!" And he was like, "I'm gonna arrest you guys." But then Sam just well and truly knocks him the fuck out. Truly just beats the crap out of him. [C: Yeah.] And then he's conscious. And Samuel's like, "Maybe we shouldn't have done that!"

C: I thought he was straight up dead.

G: Well, as we find out, [C: He's not.] he is not straight up dead. He is gay up alive! [C laughs] So good for him.

C: Good for him. Gay down alive?

G: It's gay down alive. I'm so sorry.

C: It's okay. Yeah, he punches him the amount of times it takes to kill somebody in Supernatural through punches. [both laugh]

G: No, we need to keep a count of how many times you need to be hit on the head to be unconscious and then die.

C: Yeah, well, yeah, not this amount, I suppose.

G: Yeah, this is just unconscious territory.

C: Yeah. And Samuel's just like, "That was a little bit unchill of you, buddy!" [both laughing] and then they just go off.

G: [laughing] No, literally.

C: I mean, okay, what have we seen of Samuel's-

G: Morals?

C: His morals or his hunting style or whatever, right? Because we're saying, "Oh, he should have known. He should have held Sam to a higher standard," etc. Do we know that he wasn't also a shithead?

G: Well, we know that he partnered with Bobby in a way that really jeopardized the safety of his crew.

C: With Bobby?

G: Not Bobby. [both laugh] "With Bobby." I'm sorry for badmouthing Bobby.

C: I'm like, when was this old man yaoi? Yeah. Okay, yeah. But in terms of endangering other people who weren't hunters, have we seen it?

G: No, I think with Samuel, we pretty much only exclusively see him with getting to the alphas and stuff, so we don't know.

C: Yeah. And when he's going after Yellow Eyes in one of the time travel episode [G: Yeah.], wasn't one of Mary's friends killed in that kerfuffle? How did that happen?

G: I don't think she was killed. I think they went to her house to check on her. [C: Okay.] And then she was killed, yeah. [both laugh]

C: And then she was killed.

G: She was killed by a possessed Samuel, if I remember correctly. He didn't have time to react to that because he died immediately, if you remember.

C: Uh-huh, yeah. [G laughs] Wait wait wait, did he die immediately after that, or was that the one where Yellow Eyes decided he had his eye on Mary but he didn't kill her?

G: Yeah. And then they kissed, and then he died.

C: No, no, no, I'm saying there are two different flashback episodes. [G: Oh, yeah. That's true.] Both of them involve Azazel. I feel like the Mary's friend dying was in the first one, not the second one? Or the second one, not the first? No.

G: I think it's the second one.

C: No, but you're right. In the first one, she already does the deal 'cause that's only Dean who sees it. So yeah, no.

G: Oh, yeah. In the second one, the parents are dead. [C: Yes.] Hell yeah.

C: Hell yeah. Well, this has been Grey and Crystal trying to remember what happened in Supernatural. [G laughs] Well, I have no insights on Samuel's hunting style from that.

G: I mean, we have said this before, but there's literally no character to Samuel. His only character, is that he loves Mary. [C laughs] The only insight we get from him this episode was literally a third character going, "Wow! He loved her." [both laugh] about Mary, and it's so stupid! It's crazy.

-

C: Sam and Dean are in a motel room. Sam's watching a news story about Mel Gibson's domestic violence case, and Dean says, "I think it's just because he was possessed by a demon!" [G laughs] Don't do that.

G: No, yeah, that is- It's kind of a wild thing to do, the way Supernatural would go, "Yeah, this guy was possessed by a demon. Yeah, the demons did 9/11." [both laugh]

C: There's no need to be topical in this particular way, Supernatural. [G: Yeah.] And they got nothing from Bobby about Eve, which is the only time during this episode that they pay tribute to the big old plot thing that happened last week. [G: Literally.] And then Sam gets a mysterious text message that's just a set of coordinates, and he doesn't know who it's from.

G: The last time they got this shit was from John!

C: Was "Something Wicked." And they are trying to draw parallels, I think. And then they give up.

G: Yes, very heavily. Let's get into it later.

C: Those are coordinates to Bristol, Rhode Island, which is where the initial opening scene happened. Three women have disappeared.

G: Are places in the US just same named from places in the UK because they were a colony?

C: A lot of them, yeah, I think.

G: Okay, got it. I was like, "It's in Bristol? They're flying?" [both laugh] So true. But there's a Briston in Rhode Island.

C: It's in Brystal CABPod.

G: What? What's the joke there?

C: It's like "Crystal BABPod" but you switch the letters. It's not funny. Who cares? [both laugh]

G: No, wait! Can you explain why this would be funny if it was? [C laughing] I'm sorry. Was that a really offensive thing to say?

C: [laughing] It wasn't, but it's incredibly funny.

G: Well, how would it be funny if-

C: It's just that "Bristol" sounds like "Crystal," so-

G: Oh, okay!

C: So, yeah, instead of Crystal BABPod, it's Brystal CABPod.

G: No, but Crystal only sounds that if you say it in a specific way.

C: Crystal and Bristol sound pretty similar!

G: No, but Bristol has an O, and Crystal has an A and it's OH/UH. That's different.

C: Bristol, Crystal. It's the same sound! [G laughs] It's an "uhl."

G: Well, you know, love is love, [C laughs] so we can move on from this.

C: And people are people.

So yeah, so Sam assumes that this is another hunter who he may have met while he was soulless dropping him a case so they should go, despite Dean's protestations. Because, yeah, Dean goes, "We're just gonna drop everything?" And Sam says, "Dude. Two minutes ago, you weren't doing anything." [both laugh] King shit. Yeah, and Sam's saying that they have to go, because even if this is mysterious or a trap or whatever, they shouldn't ignore three missing girls. And they go under the agreement that if things start getting weird, they leave. While they're driving in there's a welcome sign, and Sam at this point starts getting his silly black and white flashbacks of the last time he was here. But he does not tell Dean about it so that they don't have to leave.

G: There are two sets of flashbacks, basically. There's the ones like this that are sprinkled across the episode, and then the longer ones that are basically the entire scene that happened in the past. And I do wonder, when Sam is having a longass flashback, is he having the whole thing? [laughs]

C: I think so. That's why- [G: Okay.] Because one of the times he got it when Brenna went up- She was like, "I'm gonna go get the file now."

G: Yeah, and he's looking at the couch.

C: Yeah. And then he has the whole flashback, and then she's gone. When he comes to, she's back from going upstairs to getting the files.

G: Yeah, but the the really, really long one, when they were actually hunting the monster already. What's that about?

C: Oh, okay, probably not. Dean would have said something.

G: Yeah, he's just staring in the void. To be fair, it was a two minute flashback [C: Mm.] so, you know. We have this really weird remark that Dean does where he's looking through- They're at a caf- I was gonna say, "They're at a cafe," but I think Dean Winchester will erupt from my screen and kill me if I said that. But they're at a-

C: Yeah, cafes are gay. That's why the words rhyme.

G: Yeah, they're at a diner.

G: They barely- We cannot get into the difference [C laughs] between how you and I pronounce things in this episode.

C: Say "cafe," and say "gay."

G: Cafe. Gay. Oh my god!

C: It does!

G: It does! It sounds more rhyming when I say it, though, when you do.

C: [laughs] Okay, slay.

G: And he makes this weird remark, where he's holding the missing poster signs, and he's like, "Wow, look at this lady. She's got that wild side look in her eyes!" [laughs] which is so weird, especially given the fact that the reveal this episode is that Sam fucked all these women.

C: Sam Winchester's killer dick strikes again.

G: How many dicks has Sam killed? [C laughs] No, how many women has Sam's dick killed? We have-

C: Okay, Jess. [G: Yes.] Madison. [G: Hell yeah.] Sarah, eventually.

G: Is eventually gonna get there, yeah.

C: Ruby. [G: Hell yeah.] Okay, Cara's fine, at least, so that's something. She escaped. And then all three of these women. Anyone else?

G: Damn. Not looking good for Sam.

C: Also, Dean's like, "Wow. This monster has a type. It's brunettes." But it turns out that it is simply Sam who has a type that's brunettes. [laughing] Do you think it's because Jess made him so sad that he can't fuck blondes anymore?

G: [laughing] Did Sam ever fuck a blonde again? An important question. And I think we can say no.

C: I don't think so. Yeah, he doesn't. That's why he only had sex with Ruby 2.0! [both laugh]

G: No, literally! He was like, "You're a demon? That's completely fine. You're blonde? Ew! Ew!" That's what he said.

C: Yeah. Dean's fucked blonde- Jamie, in "Monster Movie." So we know that he has no such qualms.

G: Yeah. Eventually, Dean goes out to take a dump or something, and this couple walks in, and the lady knows Sam Winchester. And she is very enthusiastic to see him. She's like, "Oh my god! You're back! And you remember my husband, right?" Which is like, [both laugh] we realize that the reason she's saying that is to be like, "Don't flirt with me too openly. That's what to do." I love this. I think Sam should exclusively have sex with married women. [both laugh] And that's important.

C: But what about Eileen? I guess she can get married first.

G: Yeah, she can- Yeah, she can get divorced. I think Sam should only have sex with divorced women. [C: Mm.] The woman is saying, "Oh, you're back because the disappearances are starting again. Anyway, where's your partner? The big bald guy?" [both laugh] And yeah, by the way, while this is all happening, Dean went to the bathroom, right? And he saw- he was looking at this array of pictures that is people who have finished a certain meal or something. [C: Yeah.] And in one- He's looking, he's looking, he's looking. And then he pauses at a picture, and he makes a face, and we don't see the picture, [both laughing] and I-

C: I was like, "I can't believe Sam ate all of those burgers!"

G: [laughing] I fully thought when he was gonna show the picture-

C: [laughing] It'd be Sam in the pirate hat. Love it.

G: [laughing] - Sam in the pirate hat. I'm so sad that it wasn't that. So sad. Devastated! Anyway, the woman is still making conversation, and she eventually goes, "Well, if you need anything." And then she puts her hand on Sam's shoulder. And Dean has come in at this point and is waving them away. But she puts her hand on Sam's shoulder, and Sam does a turn, and he remembers that he was fucking this woman in a bathroom! [C laughs] Hell yeah! [C: Hell yeah.] And it is incredibly funny to me-

C: It's detailed. It's animalistic and detailed.

G: No, the person who left that review that was like, "Oh, yeah? This is your wife's favorite-" [C laughing] I will never forget that. Remember that? Someone left a review-

C: Yes, in "Heart." I remember.

G: Someone left- For those who may not remember, somebody left a review in the episode of "Heart" that was like, "Oh my god! This is my wife's favorite episode!" And then a couple of reviews later, somebody left a review saying, "Oh, yeah, no wonder this is your wife's favorite episode." And then with quotation marks somewhere. Anyway, every time Sam has a sex scene, that's all I think about. [C: So true.] And also, I do find it a little bit- Obviously, there are many things happening here that may contribute to Sam being distressed, such as that he's realizing that he was in this case before, he's realizing that there's stuff that he doesn't remember, and it's a very vivid sex scene that's happening in his brain. [both laugh] Many things happening. But it does also kind of come off that he's just shocked that he had sex, [laughs] so I was-

C: And with a married woman, too! [G: Anyway.] Dean says that this woman is giving Sam "cougar eyes." Is she that old? How old does he think she is?

G: No, she's literally maybe 28. [C laughs] [C: Literally, though.] And Sam is- how old is Sam now? Isn't he literally fucking 27? [C: I think so.] Or 28? He's literally 28.

C: I don't think he's 28.

G: He is! He's 22-

C: No, no, because Dean was 29 in Season 4, so Dean is 31, Sam's 27.

G: No, he was 26, dude!

C: In Season 1.

G: Okay, yeah, you're right, sorry. [laughs]

C: I'm talking about Season 4. He was 29 in Season 4, right? Is that right? Because of the song?

G: Yeah, because he dreamed about you for 29 years before he saw you. Why am I saying "you" like you? Well, when he saw Cas.

C: Yeah. You know what? Cas is also a brunette. Another Sastiel win!

-

C: So they're camped out in some abandoned house, trying to work out this case. I do like when they're camped out in an abandoned house because they're like, "This city's too small to have a motel." They're trying to figure out what's going on. And Sam thinks that what happened is just that it's the same monster as last year, but he and Samuel failed to stop it. And he's like, "And that means it's all my fault, and I have to fix it!" What if Samuel just had bad vibes?

G: [laughs] No, literally.

C: Yeah. And Dean says, "Okay, but why the genderbend, huh?" Which I'm surprised I haven't seen as a reaction image, you know? It seems like a screenshot.

G: Okay. In what situation would you react with, "But why the genderbend?"

C: I mean, people love the werewolf transgenderism screenshot. I just feel it would live there.

G: So true, maybe. You know, it is always so shocking 'cause people actually do use gifsets, and sometimes, those gifs would be from Supernatural, like, in the wild. [C: Yeah.] And it's always shocking. And this won't be on Tumblr-

C: You weren't on Tumblr in 2013.

G: No, but in the world at large. [laughs]

C: Okay. On Twitter?

G: Or the internet at large. Yeah, or, somebody will message you something, and they'll send you a gif, which I'm like, I am not a fan of sending gifs in conversation. [C: Yeah.] But when other people do it, and they send a Supernatural gif, and I'm, "Wow. You know I'm a Supernatural fan?" and they literally don't. It came up for no reason.

C: I like the one where Sam's on the phone, and then he passes out and falls on the sidewalk. [G laughs]

G: No, yeah. Is this the one where it's in every AMV. The one that you say is in every AMV where Sam's supposed to be having fun, but the AMV maker doesn't care? [laughs]

C: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. Dean says, "Let's call Bobby and Rufus to have them deal with it."

G: I just want to point out that at some point, he says, "Five guys went missing last year," and I think that's so important.

C: Oh. Like the burger?

G: Like the burger, yeah. Love the burger Five Guys. [C: I want a burger.] I had it once in Hong Kong, and I have not forgotten about it. It's good!

C: I really want a burger.

G: Yeah, of course. Why would you not want a burger?

C: No, you're right. I'll get a burger. [laughs] Because- Yeah, Dean's saying that they should call Bobby and Rufus to deal with it because hunters don't come to the same town twice because they usually leave messes behind.

G: Yeah. And he says, "Dad says you never use the same crapper twice." And Sam's like, "Everybody uses the same crap or twice." And Dean says, "Not us. You know what I mean!" which I thought was hilarious.

C: Yeah. And Sam says, "This creature is still walking around 'cause of me, right? I mean, I let it go." What if Samuel just had bad vibes?! [G laughs] And then he says, "Dad also said, 'You finish what you start,'" and that's the "Something Wicked" parallels again. And he says-

G: Yeah, I do love that they bring up John a lot for this one. I enjoyed it.

C: Yeah, I do enjoy it as well. It's where Sam got this mindset of having to make up for things.

G: And it's also where he got the mindset to use people as bait! [both laugh]

C: Soo true! And he's like, "Okay, Dean, I get that you're afraid that I'll get all my memories of Hell back and then [G: I'll fall over and die.] it'll fuck me up. I still have to do this because everyone who dies, that's on meee!" And he says, "I have to stop it, and you'd do the same thing." "Something Wicked" reference again. And Dean's like, "Okay, fine. I get it. Sure."

-

C: He goes over to interview Nicole's roommate. Nicole is the woman he said had "crazy sex eyes" or whatever earlier. Her roommate's blonde, which I guess means that she's safe. Dean is looking through the room, and he sees a business card from Agent Rourke, which was Sam's alias during the original case, and he learned that Sam came by a lot to speak to Nicole, and their conversations were "loud" and "athletic." [laughs]

G: Yeah. And we get a close-up shot of Dean's face, and I thought they were gonna play it for laughs. No, he's also really stern. And I was like, "Are we just upset that Sam was having sex? [laughs] What's going on?"

C: Well, I think it's just him realizing that this is a trap set for Sam thing.

G: But he hasn't realized it yet.

C: I think he can start to suspect it.

G: Yeah, I think it's also realizing the involvement that Sam has in this town. Sam wasn't just someone who passed by and whatever. He was involved in it.

C: Meanwhile, Sam's going to the sheriff's station to do some research, and he runs into that guy he beat up who isn't dead. And he immediately arrests Sam and is accusing him of being the one who killed those five people before, and killed the three people now. And he also keeps asking Sam, "Where's Sheriff Dobbs?" which he also asked in the flashback. So Sam's just stuck in this jail cell now, but then he gets approached by this woman Brenna, who's also a pretty brunette, like every other woman in this thing, and that's not super relevant because they didn't sleep together, but Roy does have a line later that makes it seem like Sam was trying to. She is the widow of Sheriff Dobbs, or- I guess he's still alive. So she's just the wife of Sheriff Dobbs. She's asking him what happened to her husband and also that he shouldn't lie to her because she knows that he's a hunter. And Sam starts getting a little flashback of him and Samuel actually telling Sheriff Dobbs and Brenna about what they do and asking for their help. Brenna's whole thing is that she just wants to know what happened. "Please tell me what happened." And Sam says, "I cannot, due to the amnesia." And he convinces her that the amnesia is real, and that he can help her. She just has the keys to the cell and lets him out-

G: No, why is that?

C: - and tells him to tie her up with the rope to stage a breakout.

G: There's this part where they're talking to the husband, right? And he was like, "Oh, blah blah blah, blah blah blah." And Sam goes, "Wait! Why is your wife here?" And then he goes, "Because she's my wife! And she does work for the office." And I was confused by that. [C: No?] What's that about? She's just there. She's a civilian worker.

C: Yeah, no, I'm confused. Was it just meant to be exposition?

G: Are there civilian workers in-

C: Yeah, there's receptionists, like Nancy in Season 3.

G: Yeah, okay. So she was a receptionist there?

C: Well, we don't know that. I don't know exactly what her job was.

G: I feel like those are relevant things, you know what I mean? for what he was trying to say. Again, I don't think your wife should be involved in your work. [both laugh]

C: Yeah. But yeah. And then we have a brief scene of Debbie, who's the woman who ran into Sam at the restaurant, and she and her husband seem unhappy in their marriage. She goes to the basement to get more wine, and a hand comes out of nowhere and grabs her.

G: She was getting boxed wine, which I love. Good for her.

C: So Sam's back to that abandoned house where they're camping out. He hears footsteps, and he jumps out and pulls a gun on the person who comes in, but it's only Dean. Dean comes in and is like, "I told you so! We're fugitives again. Great." And then they hear on the police radio another missing person, Debbie, I assume. Dean tells Sam to not go anywhere, and he'll check it out at Debbie's house. Dean has finished interviewing Don, her husband, and then leaves a message with Sam, saying that "The link between all the missing women is that they all banged the same dude. [both] You." [G: Love it.] And all of this is a trap for Sam. So did Debbie tell Don about it- or no, probably not. He was just like, "They seemed really close" or whatever.

G: What do you mean did Debbie tell Don?

C: That she slept with Sam. 'Cause how did Dean figure it out?

G: I mean, probably the same way that-

C: But the roommate knew.

G: Yeah, because she heard. Well, I suppose, I don't know.

C: He already suspected from the cougar eyes or whatever, so I don't really see what-

G: Yeah, that's true. Maybe Sam told Dean! [laughs] He like, "I think I fucked that woman."

C: No, he deliberately has not been telling Dean that he's been having the flashback.

G: Oh, that's true. But maybe he was like, "I have vibes that-"

C: or I guess they didn't know who the missing person was, right? So he went over, he saw a picture of Don's wife, and he was like, "Oh, that's the woman that probably Sam fucked." So, yeah, that's probably it. Yeah.

G: He was like, "She's blonde, and she's from here."

C: Brunette, but yes. [G laughs]

G: She's literally brunette, and she's from here.

-

G: We go to Brenna's house. This is the woman who let Sam go earlier. And Sam's like, "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not supposed to be here. But I need to know stuff." And the woman is like, "Actually, what happened to Debbie Harris? Because she's just gone. I let you out, and now she's gone. What am I supposed to think?" Do you think she also knows that Sam slept with her?

C: I don't know.

G: It seems that they all know.

C: Who's "they all"?

G: Everyone in this community is like, "Oh, yeah, that's the guy who fucked through all the women in this town a year ago" or something.

C: Wait, why do they all know?

G: No, why do they all know?

C: What makes you think that they all know?

G: Because the implication here that "Oh, you knew her," quote-unquote "knew" her. What's that about?

C: She doesn't say that he knew her.

G: No, yeah. But I feel it's implied. Or maybe it's only implied because I already know that.

C: Yeah, I think it's really just- [G: Somebody's missing.] "After the last year, we suspected that you were involved in the missing people. And now, while you were in jail, nobody went missing, and then, after you were out, somebody went missing. Are you killing people again?"

G: Yeah, Sam's puppy dog eyes do double time this episode. [C: Uh-huh.] He basically managed to convince this woman to let him out earlier because of it. And now, he's just like, "Do you think I did something to her?" And then, you know, does the very big eyes. And she's like, "I don't know!" And Sam just says, "Look, you know, what I need your help with is that the case files. They're not in the precinct, so perhaps you took it. I need it from you." And she- Honestly, I'm impressed by this woman. [both laugh] I'm impressed that she's just like, "Okay! Whatever." [C: No, yeah, she's not-] She's not just "Okay." But her reactions seem so benevolent towards Sam Winchester [C: Yes.] at every situation. She believes that he had amnesia. He didn't even need to fucking get out of that cell. Here, she lets him take the case files. And later, Sam is like, "Oh, I need the case files to go." [C laughs] And she's like, "Okay, take it out!"

C: No, yeah. What is- I just don't- I don't believe that anybody would be this helpful to Sam Winchester, especially because the last time she met him, he was a dick!

G: Yeah. And I do wonder, what are they trying to do? Because there must be a reason why they chose a character so benevolent to be here. Is it-

C: They just needed plot things.

G: No, because I was thinking, if she was angry, would that make us then feel more empathetic towards Sam? And they're trying to make us less empathetic towards Sam?

C: I don't think they're trying to make us less empathetic towards Sam. I think if she was angry- I don't know. I think we're just supposed to- It's supposed to be sort of a big reveal, the bait thing. [G: Ah.] And you just shouldn't be thinking of Sam as somebody who did anything that bad yet, so that means everyone has to be niceys to him.

G: Mm, perhaps. He was also- Every flashback we have with her, he was an asshole. [C: Right.] I just don't think she would give him this benefit of the doubt. [C: I agree.]

She is getting the files. Sam gets a whole entire flashback of all of them sitting on a couch. And I found this scene so odd because it's something they never do. They're never just-

C: They usually do not tell people.

G: No, first, they don't tell people. And second, they don't sit on the couch, drinking, talking about their life.

C: I mean, might be the Samuel effect.

G: That's true. Anyway, they're sitting on the couch. Samuel's literally- he's chilling. He's lounging, even. And I suppose they told these people, "Sam is my grandson." But he's young! [laughs]

C: Yeah, I don't know. He probably just said he has a great moisturizing routine.

G: No, that's true.

C: Also, wasn't JDM only 12 years older than Jensen Ackles or something when he was playing John?

G: Why did he look so old? [C laughs] I'm so sorry to that man.

C: Let me check the actual ages. Yeah, no, I got them right. 12 years.

G: Yeah. Well, happy 12 years or something. I suppose, for example, you had your child when you were in your twenties. [C: Okay.] And then your child had their child when they were in their twenties. And Sam is in his twenties. It makes sense, probably.

C: Well, okay, how old is the actor for Samuel Campbell?

G: At this time?

C: Or just how many years older is he than Jared Padalecki? Okay, he was born in 1952...

G: Wow, he's old.

C: Jared Padalecki...

G: 1984.

C: 1982.

G: Okay. Good thing I got it wrong. Imagine if I got it right. [laughs]

C: 30 years older. 30 years older, you could have- I don't know. I guess people have kids when they're 15. You could do it twice, I guess. [laughs]

G: No. [laughs] I mean he talks about being a hunter while being married.

C: People have been hunters at age 15.

G: That's maybe true, but he doesn't look only 30 years older, to be fair to him. No, he does. He look 60 or something. [C: Yeah.] Do you think they gave the back story of "Oh, the reason why I look so young-"

C: No, I don't think they gave the pulled down from Heaven backstory.

G: They should have! Do you think it will give you more or less comfort in life to know that there is a Heaven and Hell situation?

C: Less!

G: Yeah, no, I think it'd make me so miserable.

C: I don't want that shit.

G: I think if I die, I want it over. [C: Yeah.] Gone. Sleep forever. That's what I want.

C: Also, yeah, okay, if it was both Heaven and Hell, I think my main stressor would be, "How do I avoid going to the bad place? I don't want to be tortured for eternity, and I don't want my friends to do it either." If I knew that there was only a Heaven and no Hell, it would also stress me out. I want it done.

G: Literally. Would you kill yourself or not?

C: What?

G: No, [laughs] if you only knew there was Heaven. Only Heaven.

C: I don't think it's that fun up there, and most of the people I like are here.

G: Oh, okay, so it's that kind of "It's stressing me out. I want it done." Supernatural has a fucked up Heaven, number one.

C: Right.

G: They're talking about family and how Samuel’s like, "Love is love" or whatever. I forgot what he was saying. He was definitely not saying "love is love." [C laughs] So the couple that they're talking to is asking, "What's that like? Because you're traveling a lot. Isn't that difficult?" It's kind of wild to me that people would hear that Sam and Dean or other hunters are hunters, and that's what they do, and this is the implications of their job, and the first thing they ask is like, "But what about being on the road?"

C: I don't think it's the first thing. [G: Many people-] They've been talking for a while.

G: That's true. Maybe they're like, "Whoa, tell me about your story as if you're Hercules!" And then, after a while, they're like, "What's this about? What's all this, then?" I mean, what would you ask Sam and Dean if they told you, "Hey, I'm a hunter."

C: What's a hunter? Like, of animals?

G: Yeah. And then they say, "No. Of monstahs!"

C: Like, "Is this a white supremacist thing? What do you mean?"

G: That's- [laughs] Yeah, that is probably- I think I'll just go, "Mmkay." [both laugh] Okay. Well, you're not special, so.

C: Yeah, I think if they were like, "No, real creatures," I would just be like, "Okay, conspiracy theorists. Have a good day."

G: Yeah. I think, actually, I would engage them in conversations, and then I'll come home being like, "Oh, ma! There's people killing vampires that I saw." She'll be, "Okay."

C: No, I mean, yeah. I mean, I talked to someone yesterday who genuinely believes that her friend's restaurant is haunted, and she's gonna go over and burn sage to get it out, so I would just assume that they were that, I suppose.

G: No, yeah. And I mean, I am also that person. I do also burn- not sage. I don't even know what sage is. But I burn incense when-

C: Sage is an indigenous American tradition that a lot of white people have-

G: Sage? In the first episode of Succession that you did watch and then didn't like, there was- Roman brought in a guy to air out the building. Do you remember? No, you don't.

C: No.

G: Yeah, and it's supposed to be a fun little prank joke, whatever, for Kendall. So I think people- [laughs] white people specifically, because Roman Roy is white, surprise to everyone-

C: No way.

G: - that's what they may be doing. So they're like, "It's traveling. What's that about?" And Samuel goes, "No, you know what? It is difficult. And it puts a strain on your family. But family is so importies!" And when Deanna- How does he pronounce it? Deanna? [C: Deanna?] "Well, when Deanna got pregnant, I was like, 'Oh, no!' but we made it work, and she was a blessing."

C: RIP to no abortion. Ruined Mary's life, ruined Deanna's life, etc.

G: Yeah, she's dead.

C: And Samuel's walking around. The husband Roy was like, "I'm gonna go get some more drinks." But Samuel's like, "No, let me do it." So he gets out of his incredibly comfy, cozy seat and goes to get more beer. And so they ask Sam, "How about you? What's your situation? It's so wonderful that-" What did they ask?

C: "At least you two have each other"?

G: "It's so wonderful that you two have each other." And Sam's like, "No, he was not there when I was a kid. This is just a business relationship." [C laughs] And then Brenna goes, "Okay, well, do you have any other family?" [C laughing] And Sam just goes, "Family just slows you down."

C: He's so funny.

G: Hilarious.

C: Answer the question, dude.

G: Yeah. That's the end of our flashback sequence. You know what I did find hilarious about this question is, it reminds me of that thing people do when they ask you about something, and you say something that they find sad or whatever, and then they go, "Oh, but-" [laughs] And then they propose something good about your life that you may be happy about. [C: Yeah.] And I thought this is a hilarious way to respond to that. So kudos to soulless Sam. I think it's so fucking funny.

Sam keeps on having a flashback? This flashback is so long. But now, he's in a different place, and they're talking about who they think it is. It's Arachne. Isn't Arachne an actual-

C: Myth?

G: Yeah, but I think it's one being, right?

C: Yeah, no, it's one being.

G: It's not a set of monsters.

C: But they say that she's an Arachne. Yeah, I think Supernatural is just taking liberties. Or I mean, maybe the Arachne of the myth is the alpha Arachne in the Supernatural lore.

G: Yeah, perhaps. Anyway, they're saying something that they keep on saying with other monsters, too, which is that nobody has seen her outside of this specific location, and now she's here. And also, for 2,000 years. Samuel says that they don't know anything about Arachne, just a bunch of guesses in a blurry picture on the side of a Greek vase, which I did find- What did they mean, a blurry picture on the side of a Greek vase? What are you talking about?

C: No, yeah, they made it blurry in the painting? I don't think they did. It could be an old vase that's no longer around, and they only have a low-res photo of it.

G: Anyway, the waitress goes up to a guy who is sitting in front of them because he is the pirate who ate all the burgers or something. And Sam turns around as they snap a shot for the wall, and that's how his face got into the polaroid. So basically, they're like, "Okay, so we don't know how to kill this thing. Let's just find out." And also, Sam says, "Well, what we do know is all the victims have been men in their thirties, and they've all gone missing within a two-mile radius." And Samuel's like, "Okay, so we should just go out there and figure it out?" But Sam's like, "No, we're not the proper demographic for this! And so we should find someone who's a demographic for it!"

C: He points out a park where he thinks that she's hiding.

G: Anyway, we go back to real life or present day. That was also real life. Well, it was fictional life, but Sam is like, "Oh my god!" And he's like- Every single end of this fucking flashbacks, he's always a little bit teary-eyed. But anyway, at this point, Sam has been looking at the files. He got stuck on a evidence that-

C: Was it a piece of spider web?

G: Yes spider web. And so he tells Brenna, "Hey, I need to take out these evidence," and she shockingly goes, "Yes." But what Brenna says is "I have accepted that he's dead. I just want to know what happened." And Sam goes, "I'm sure he died a hero," which did make later, [C laughs] when he tells the guy, "You're a hero," it did make me go, "Oh my god!" Well, anyway, Sam heads out, and as he heads out, there's a fucking spider web on the side of the house, and he's looking at it. Then, he gets a voicemail from Dean and Dean saying, "They all fucked you. That's what's in common with the victims." But Sam just goes up to the spider web. And then suddenly, somebody taps him or something. And he turns around, weapons out-

C: We also get a POV shot from an Arachne [G: Oh, yeah! And it's like-] where Sam's in a bunch of pieces- Like an eight eyes sort of situation.

G: Yeah, it's pretty cool. I thought it was pretty cool. Anyway, Dean is like, "Okay. We need to get out of here. Let's go." And then they go back to their abandoned house they're staying at that is super fun. And Sam says that it's an Arachne, and that he remembered, and Dean starts going like, "What? Remembered? What else did you remember?" And Sam says, "No, don't worry. It's not Hell." And Dean's like, "Okay, well, not yet, anyway." Dean says they have to go, but Sam says, "Noo, we can't!" because he thinks it's fine, and also that he should be responsible. And Dean says, "We're not the only hunters in the planet. We can call Bobby. We can call Rufus." Love it. [C: Yeah.] Every time they mention Rufus, l love it. and he specifically says that Bobby and Rufus can wrap it up. So true.

C: Yeah, no. They should hunt together. I assume the next time we see Rufus, he's dying, yes? He dies in Season 6. That's probably why they're mentioning him so much.

G: Yeah, or they give him one episode and then they kill him. That's so sad! I just realized that, too.

C: Yeah. [G: Yeah.] Aw. Well, we'll miss you.

G: And Sam says it's difficult because he knows what or who did it, he just can't remember. And Dean says, "We can't have you trying to remember because it's fucking Russian roulette up there." And Sam says, "Well, if it's gonna happen, then it's gonna happen." [both laugh] He says, "It will, or it won't," and that's so importies. He says that he's starting to think he may actually have done some terrible stuff in this town, and he has to set it right because he has a fucking soul now!

C: He says specifically that his soul "won't let him just walk away," [G: Love it!] which I think is fun because it's similar phrasing to in "Clap Your Hands If You Believe" when Dean says, "You wouldn't have been able to fuck Patchouli in the dark because your soul wouldn't have let you."

G: Dean's like, "Okay, let's fucking go!" And then they do.

-

C: Yeah. So they start doing a red yarn evidence wall. [G laughs] [both] Love it.

G: And this is why they should always be in an abandoned house because you can fucking vandalize the shit out of it. [C: That's true.] I mean, I suppose you can also vandalize the shit out of a motel room.

C: Yeah, but it's not as nice. [G: Yeah.] So Sam starts having flashbacks where he calls Roy and tells him to meet them in Lonely Pines Park in an hour because they're setting him up as bait because Sam's too young and Samuel's too old [G: Old.] for what the Arachne's looking for.

G: Samuel is protesting, but not that much.

C: Yeah. He says, "I think we should have looped Roy in," and Sam's like, "Well, he'll be a bad actor if we loop him in." And Samuel says one more, "What if something goes wrong?" which, they don't even know how to kill this thing yet. They absolutely should not be making this plan. And Sam's just like, "Roy will be fine!" And then Samuel, his last protestation is just, "It's just not the way I'm used to doing things." And Sam just says, "Got it. Welcome to the future!" I guess he- Because, okay, he talks a lot about how Samuel doesn't understand technology. I feel he could have used this whole "You don't understand the times" thing on him a lot while they were partnered.

G: I think that is a way in which we can cut Samuel some slack. If this was especially early on in their hunting partnership, he may not have met all of his other relatives yet and stuff, so Sam may be his only tether to the modern day.

C: Well, they said a year ago, and Dean was back for six months, so this would have been six months into Sam being back.

G: Yeah, but you know how when people say "a year ago," it can mean a year and 11 months ago.

C: That's true. Yeah, I guess we could cut Samuel some slack. So now they're camped out in the park, one million miles away from where Roy's standing. They're really not in a bush right behind him. They're far. I have no idea how they thought this was gonna work.

G: Well, it wasn't supposed to.

C: Roy gets attacked and taken immediately, quickly, and Samuel's like, "We gotta go get him!" And Sam's like, "No! It's too late! And also, don't worry. I have the GPS on in his phone." And Samuel's like, "Oh my god! I can't believe you did this! This was your plan all along?" And Sam goes, "Um, no? [both] This is just my backup plan! Think about it!"

G: "This is my Plan B!"

C: "Yeah!" And Samuel says, "Wow, you're really cold, and I don't like it. But let's just keep doing your thing." So they go to Arachne's lair, and there's a lot of men there, all in spider webs. Samuel cuts through the webbing to have one of the men's faces exposed, and he seems dead, but then he gasps awake. So everyone in there is still alive. And Roy starts calling out for help, and Sam, you know, cuts some of the webbing off, but only so he can ask Roy where the Arachne is. And there's a brief fight where she jumps Sam, and then he cuts her head off, and she's dead now. And Samuel's like, "Okay, great. Let's get all these men to a hospital." And Sam just goes, "I don't think he can be helped! I just don't think so, you know? With spiders, [G: A brown recluse.] sometimes, a spider bites you, and you die. So I think that in this case with a supernatural monster that we know absolutely nothing about, that probably the poison's already too far progressed, and everyone here will just die!"

G: I know spiders, too, and some spiders literally don't have any venom, so like, what's that about?

C: Yeah. Yeah. What is that about? But yeah, it's just such a- I feel it stretches belief. [G: Yeah.] I think if Sam was like, "I read the lore and it said this," I'd be like, "Okay, that's fine. I think that this is a level of cold that soulless Sam could be."

G: The point is not that he's evil. [C: Yeah.] It's that he's calculated in a way that is severe, and those are different things. [C: Yes.] Again, if it's made clear that these people are not gonna survive for real, him shooting them dogs on the floor is severe, but it's not a complete evil, you know what I mean? And they do try to play this out that by the way Sam's insisting, but it just- Sam is not like, "It's inconvenient." You know what I mean. The way they point it out is that Sam doesn't want to take them to the hospital because it's inconvenient or it won't do anything, but he doesn't know that for a fact. And despite this, the way that Samuel agrees, or at the very least doesn't disagree, is also like, what are we doing here?

C: So Sam's saying, we have to put everyone here [G: On fire.] out of their misery. So yeah. And he tells Roy- Roy's begging Sam not to do it. But Sam says, "Killing this thing saved a lot of lives. We couldn't have done it without you. You're a hero." and then he shoots him, and he does it with everybody else. [G: No, yeah.] And then he tells Samuel that they should now burn this shack down. The end.

G: Yeah, it is shocking, which is what it's supposed to do. I wish they did it a little bit more better to make it clear that Sam isn't repenting because he was evil, or- You know what I mean. He's repenting because there are ways he could have interfaced with it in a completely different way. [C: Right.] Yeah, for example, the bait thing. Yeah, I believe that soulless Sam would do that because he did it with Dean. But with Dean, he knew for a fact that Dean is gonna have a cure. With this one, it just betrays an active carelessness that is- I don't know, maleficent in nature. It's s over the line in a way that defeats the purpose. You know what I mean? Sam's guilt, I don't think it should just be, "And you were evil, and that's why." [C: Right.] It should be showing that doing bad things isn't just about having those bad intentions and then acting on it. You can do bad things just completely neutral emotionally. I don't know. Stuff like that. And I feel that is what soulless Sam was leaning more towards. What you said earlier, the comparison that they make with sleeping with Patchouli, right? That's not a bad thing, but it just betrays a lack of care that is hurtful to someone who expects you to care, and that is more the vibe of Sam's actions. I don't know. Maybe I'm just romanticizing- [laughs]

C: The hunter life?

G: No, soulless Sam. But yeah, I just- Yeah. Didn't like this one.

C: Yeah, this feels very off. Yeah, I don't know if it's just a writing mistake where they were like, "That's probably enough for the viewer to think that they're definitely gonna die of the poison," or if it's a making him out to be more callous than we think that he should be.

G: I think it serves the same purpose as why the wife is so forgiving or so trusting of Sam. It doesn't necessarily align with what is the reality of the characterization or the situation, but it's to accentuate the points that they are trying to make.

C: Perhaps. And what are those points?

G: That like, "Noo! Sam feels so bad!" That's the point.

C: Very true. Yeah.

C: I guess, oh, we should probably mention by this point that Roy is Black.

G: Yeah, and I think he's the only Black character in the episode.

C: Yeah, yeah, all of these women are pale as ghosts. [G: Yeah.] And Supernatural has had a history of having Sam kill Black men as a way of showing that he's going off the rails, [G: Yeah.] like with Jake and Gordon in past seasons, and I don't know what the casting deal here was with Roy. I think it'd be insane if they specifically were looking for a Black man to play this character, [both laugh] but I think that the optics are still the same, and it comes off as quite racist, especially with the, as you, Grey, put it, the shooting them like dogs on the ground part of it.

G: Yeah, and especially because- I mean, okay, they kill Roy again.

C: No, literally! [both laugh] They do it twice! They're like, "Shot in the head isn't enough. Let's also decapitate him." Like, no! Don't do that!

G: Yeah, so, you know.

C: Yeah, yeah. They were like, "Gordon got decapitated. Jake got shot. Let's do both of them on this guy who's literally fine and chill." [G: Yeah.]

-

C: We're back to Brenna, and she's alone, and Roy comes in, but he's without his glasses. He had glasses before, right?

G: No idea. Probably.

C: Okay. He had glasses in my mind.

G: Well, he has no glasses, whether-

C: [laughs] And that's the only thing that's different about him! He looks like the Arachne-

G: Yeah. He also has blue eyes.

C: Yeah, he has blue eyes. This also happened to my friend Louis de Pointe du Lac, very sad.

G: That's true, yeah. And he has a bullet hole in- Not a bullet. It's a healed-over wound on his forehead, and he looks like he has- he looks like a fire victim. Also, I wasn't actually sure if that was the fire because when they show Arachne-

C: She has something going on with her skin. It's just harder to tell in the black and white.

G: Yeah, so I wasn't sure. But I think this one is combo Arachne situation, but also because he was burned down with that device.

C: Indeed. So he comes in, and he tells her, "I love you." And then-

G: I want to point out, they make a point of saying that the people just want to bury the bodies or whatever this episode as well, which they also said, last episode, which you have said last episode they were trying to parallel some stuff with.

C: I don't remember anything. What are you talking about? What even was the last episode?

G: Last episode, there was a plane crash and the virgins, right? They couldn't find the bodies, and they were saying, "We don't have anything to bury, even."

C: Oh, well, that's not related- Oh, I thought- Okay, I thought they were trying because it was her sister talking about it. [G: Oh.] I thought they were making a "Swan Song" Sam and Dean parallel.

G: I was actually wondering what the no body situation was all about. I suppose Dean also didn't have a body to bury.

C: Yeah, but, you know, Sam was buried. We saw him fall into a big hole!

G: [laughs] So true. And also, we forgot to specifically mention it. They use this guy as bait, which is also a "Something Wicked" reference. I love that idea, that to show that Sam is evil, let's have him use this guy as bait, something Dean Winchester did.

C: It's not explicitly stated in "Something Wicked" that John used them as bait. That was sort of a theory that we had. I don't even know if the writers would say that it was intended.

G: I think it was pretty- I mean, okay, I don't think it was explicit because we only also realized it when we were recording.

C: Yeah, and we haven't seen people post about it like it's real.

G: Except that one poster that I got mad at because they got the ages wrong. I think I am so in deep with Supernatural-

C: Now?

G: No no no, back then, I would be like, "I'm so mad at people who has wrong opinions!" And then, after a while, I was like, "Oh, I've chilled out! I chilled out." I think I'm starting to realize that I only chilled out because I have stopped being on Tumblr all the time. [C: Yeah.] Every time I go on Tumblr and I see a post that I disagree with, I'm like, "How dare you?" So, you know, it's still there.

C: It's still there.

G: It's still pretty much there.

-

C: Meanwhile, back with Sam and Dean, Sam is calling Brenna to tell her about what happened, I guess.

G: How will he, even? How will he, even?

C: Was he really planning to tell her the whole truth? Or was he just gonna be, "The Arachne took him. [G: Got to him.] And then, when we got to the lair, he was dead or something." [G: Yeah.] I don't know, because he tells Dean to relax when Dean's like, "What are you gonna say?" Sam calls, but then, apparently, Brenna told him to swing by, just casually, but it seems that she's in some kind of trouble. What I thought was gonna happen was that she and Roy were teaming up to kill Sam now because she's pissed at him. I thought that that would be fun. But no, she's not.

G: I hate that she's just standing there the entire time.

C: Yeah, she's like, "No, Roy! Don't kill him!" Whatever. Your zombie husband just came back and said that this guy killed him. I don't know. I feel you are probably in a place where you would be on the zombie husband's side!

They sneak over to her house, and the light is on in the shed. So they go in, and Brenna's curled up in a corner, and she asks Sam, "What you did to Roy. Is it true?" And then Roy, he whacks Dean and then does, you know, the Sam chokehold wall thing and tells him to answer the question. So Sam and Dean are now all spiderwebbed up. Sam tells Roy, "You win. Let Brenna go. This has nothing to do with her." I wasn't aware that she was in any physical danger. Because all we saw earlier was that he showed up and told her that he loved her. That seemed like a normal, nice thing to do. I don't understand what what she needs to be let go from.

G: Yeah, she's literally normal.

C: No, she's not harmed. I can't tell what she's actually afraid of or dislikes about the situation.

G: I don't think she's afraid. I don't think she's afraid of him.

C: She called Sam to come over. Why did she do that?

G: No, I think it's to trap Sam!

C: But is it? Because- but okay. But Sam's acting like Roy has Brenna in his clutches.

G: No, but I think he's just stupid for that.

C: But there's nothing that happens that shows us that Sam's wrong. What happens is Brenna going, "Roy, don't do it!" when he's trying to kill Sam and Dean, which sort of is on Sam's side regarding what's happening here.

G: Yeah, but she's not tied up in any situation, she's not- there's nothing to suggest that she's scared.

C: So why did Sam say it?

G: Because he has an assumption that everyone is out to kill everyone if they're monsters.

C: Does he?

G: Yeah.

C: But okay. But also, Roy responds, right? He says, "It does have something to do with her," which is also him confirming Sam's narrative. He doesn't say, "What? We're literally chilling."

C: No, I think he's confirming that it has something to do with her, but it doesn't mean that he has her captive.

C: I guess. But they they just never really settle what's happening here, I suppose.

G: I mean, I also just find it so- I hate it so much that the entrance to his anger towards Sam is like, "Oh, yeah, you're gonna fuck my wife!"

C: No, yeah. [laughs] He says, "You come back around, start hanging out with my wife, and you think this has nothing to do with her? But then you thought I was out of the way, right?" Like, yeah, no. How is this- [laughs] I think he should just mostly be mad that Sam killed him [G laughs] and used him as bait-

G: And then set his body on fire! That's the part that I was stuck on. I was like, "Who-" And also, I kind of feel like they were into-

C: It's like, "Actually, I'm mad because you wanna fuck my wife"? I don't- They weren't into each other!

G: And also, there's this just general idea of cuckoldry in this episode. [C: Right.] [laughs] Yeah. And nobody even has horns to show for it. [C: For real.] So I don't know. Earlier in the episode, the lady that Sam had sex with in the sink, her husband is shown to be brooding a little bit.

C: Yeah, he's upset about it.

G: Yeah, so I don't know. They had something going on with it. Sam is a cucker. Is that a word?

C: [laughing] Yeah, I think so.

G: It's always so fascinating to me that the word "cuck" is so old. [C: No, yeah, it is.] It's so old. It's such an old fucking word. It's the same way I'm like, [laughs] "They've had tennis for such a long time!"  That's how I feel about it, too. [C: True.] Shout out to Challengers or something.

C: Yeah. And then he says that the Arachne wasn't there to feed, she was here to breed. She was turning all of those men into other Arachnes. So by the time Roy was killed, he wasn't human anymore, so the bullet and the fire didn't do anything. So yeah, he said that he was hiding out for months, almost starved, but, you know, what kept him going was how he was gonna get revenge on Sam. So I guess during the hiding out, he figured out everybody Sam fucked and his phone number, [laughs] [G: Yeah.] but it took a whole year and all of that, I guess, because he was starving and adjusting. It's just- as a plot thing, it just doesn't work very well for me.

G: The thing is, I'm not even sure they were conscious that they were doing a hunter parallel, and that's what sucks about this because it's very obviously a hunter parallel, but they don't engage with it in any way that would suggest that they give a fuck that this is the case. So yeah, I don't know.

C: That he was hunting Sam?

G: Yeah!

C: Yeah, yeah. He was hitting up the library of women Sam Winchester fucked.

G: Yeah. "And now he's gonna fuck my wife!" [both laughing]

C: What is this?

G: [laughing] I just don't like this episode.

C: What is this? Yeah. And Roy says that he turned all of the women that Sam had sex with, and he's wondering if he should kill Sam or turn him. But this whole time, Dean has sort of been reaching for a glass shard and getting himself out of the webs.

G: This guy has an eight-eye vision. He didn't see Dean try to get that fucking thing.

C: I guess not. I guess he was focused on Sam or something. But yeah, he attacks Roy, and then Brenna frees Sam from the webs because Roy is maybe gonna kill Dean or something. So she lets Sam go, and then Sam chops off Roy's head, and he's dead. I hate it.

G: I don't understand Brenna as a character.

C: Yeah. What is her deal?

G: And I don't think we are supposed to, because she's not treated like a person. She is a plot device, that's it.

C: She is helpful, and she is there, and the whole time-

G: And she's there to be nice to Sam but mad at him.

C: Yeah, but barely. Just a little bit.

G: Yeah. And so Sam can ask for forgiveness, but she's not even- I think that's the whole thing that they were going for. There's this person who has all the goodness in her heart, is willing to give Sam all the benefit of the doubt, and she still won't forgive him, so it's really Sam's fault. That's the issue that they're going. That's the angle that they're going for. Because I think if they presented someone who was shouting at Sam, "You killed my husband!" then Sam can flagellate with that fucking guilt. But here, he can't because she's not engaging with him. [C: Yeah.] And I think that's what they're going for. I just hate that they have to do this to a character to do it.

C: Yeah, and a woman. If it was a man, I'd be like, "[both] It's fine." [G: Yeah.] This whole episode, she said over and over again, "All I want to do is find out what happened. I've made peace with the fact that he's dead," etc. And they just don't give her a moment to process any of the him coming back. She just goes, "Oh, no, he's trying to kill people now. I don't like it. Sam, get him!" What?

G: She walks back to her house- Oh, she doesn't. Maybe she rides with them. That's why Sam's there. But Sam's tailing her [laughs], and he's saying, "Look, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Brenna." And I'm just thinking, "What do you think is gonna happen, Sam?" [C laughs]

C: "Uh, it's okay."

G: Genuinely, what did he think was gonna happen? And I think what I hate about this is something undeniable about Sam's character, which is that he wants to be forgiven. And that is a recurring situation for Sam. That's his deal. He wants to- He is guilty all the time, and he wants to be forgiven for things. This is a situation where that's just not gonna happen. It's just not gonna happen. And so it becomes incredibly self-serving [C: Yeah.] to even seek an apology, or to even give an apology because then, you're placing the onus of forgiveness on the other person. And it's like, 1. It's not gonna happen. 2. If you really care about what she feels, just fucking leave her alone. [C: Yeah.] So yeah, it's frustrating, but it is something Sam Winchester will do.

C: Yeah, that's Sam.

G: Yeah. Anyway, she just doesn't give a fuck. Doesn't even turn around to acknowledge him and just goes into her house. Anyway, we go back to the abandoned house. They're packing up. And Sam says, "Yeah, you're right. We shouldn't have come back here." And Dean basically says, "You have to understand that everything that happened last year is not you." And Sam says, "No, it was. It was me." And Dean's like, "Okay, well, I give up. Do you want anything?" [laughs] And Sam's like, "Whatever, Dean. Shut the fuck up. I'm fine." And Dean says, "You know what? Everything's gonna be okay." And Sam says, "I don't know, Dean. If I did this here, who knows what else I've-" but then, he collapses on the ground. And he is shaking. What's it called? What's it called? He's convulsing, yeah. And Dean goes up to him and we see that Sam's eyes are open, but he seems, you know, out of it. And then we go into Sam's eye, and we see that what he is seeing is that he is burning in Hell. [C: Yup!] End of episode.

C: End of eppysode.

-

G: Yeah. Well, what do we really think about this episode? It was fine when it's fine, and it's not when it's not. And more of the time, it's not fine than it was fine.

C: Yeah, not so good. Not so good, I think. [laughs]

G: Yeah. Best Line/Worst Line.

C: I think worst line was the whole, "You're gonna come back and fuck my wife thing."

G: Yeah, [laughs] I hated it. Who- I hate it. I think I also- you know what? The opposite of that is my favorite. When Debbie, the woman that Sam had sex with, goes, "What? The boxed stuff doesn't get better with age, Don!" [C laughing] I love that line. So true. [laughs]

C: [laughing] Yeah, so true!

G: I love a horrible wine. I love it. The super sweet ones that are like, "What are we doing here?" I love them. [C: Yeah.] So that's that's my hot take.

C: Yeah, I think I like the exchange at the end where Dean says that "None of it was you," and Sam says, "Let's be crystal-" Wow! Me reference! [G: Whoo!] "Let's be crystal clear, okay? It was me." [G: Yeah.] I liked seeing Sam put his foot down in that way.

G: Yeah, it's so fun that both our names are just words. Love it.

C: Love it.

G: I would say, what is-

C: You already gave your best line.

G: No, my worst line!

C: Oh. You don't agree with mine? [G: Oh, yeah.] You think I'm stupid? [both laugh]

G: I think you're stupid?

C: There's probably other bad ones.

G: There's other bad ones. Let's see.

C: Yeah, we should diversify.

G: Well, I think the whole "Sam has amnesia" thing is hilarious, but every time they were like, "Oh, so you're saying you have amnesia?" I just hated it. [C: Huh.] [laughs] I have the most pointless Best Line/Worst Line this episode. [both laughing] Well, sometimes, your best line and your worst line are completely irrelevant to anything. [C: Sometimes.] Okay, spread those sheets. Let us see BABPod stats.

C: "Unforgiven" is such an unserious episode. I just feel everything else is a reference to something right. And this one, they were we really have to drive home the emotional [G: The point, yeah.] whatever. Let's just call it "Unforgiven."

G: Okay, misogyny. I do think there is some misogyny in the way they portray the women of this episode. I would say... a 1?

C: What would you say? I feel like a 1 is a passing remark. I feel like it's a 2.

G: Okay, it's a 2. Okay, go on. There is racism.

C: Racism, I'd say it's inherent. Maybe not in the planning of it, but in how it's presented.

G: Yeah, I'd say a 3. [C: Yeah.] Homophobia?

C: Homophobia, I don't remember anything of that caliber occurring.

G: Yeah. It's so iconic, the homophobia stats this season. So just for reference, we gave a 3 for Episode 1, which is when they were like, "Wow! You're gay for having a wife." [C laughs] And then a couple 1s here and there, and then we gave a 4 to "Clap Your Hands If You Believe," the worst episode of all time, [both laugh] which we also gave a 4 on ableism for.

C: Yeah. Big win.

G: It's an odd episode, so you guess first. Oh my god, I'm actually tense about our IMDb because there's a chance I may not win.

C: There is a chance. Okay, I don't think people like this [G: Definitely not.] because I've never heard anybody talk about it a single time. Season 6 has been the season of 7s. I think that it is a- Okay, our last 7 was "All Dogs Go to Heaven."

G: What even was "All Dogs Go to Heaven"? Oh, the guy who became a dog.

C: Lucky, yeah. How does this compare to the guy who became a dog?

G: It's honestly pretty similar. [laughs]

C: Okay, I'm going to give it a 7.7. I think it's a guy who became a dog.

G: It has the same emotional core, [both laugh] which is an incredibly funny thing to say. But in my mind's eye.

C: What was the emotional core? Oh, no, it literally ends with him being like- He goes to a woman's house and him being like, "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!" and her shutting the door on him. No, it's actually literally that. [G laughs]

G: Yeah, see? I was right. I would give this a 7 point-

C: And he killed her husband, too! [G laughs] Yeah, no, this is literally "All Dogs Go to Heaven." It's a 7.7.

G: Yeah, this is a double feature for- I would give this a 7.8. Ooh! It's a 7.9.

C: What? Oh, fuck! Well, good job. [G: This is good because-] C: We both did quite well, though, at least.

G: Yeah, this is good because it does provide tension to our end of episodes. [laughs]

This one says, "This is worse editing than Battlefield Earth," which is, I'm assuming, a movie that has bad editing. "This episode is filled with flashbacks, and each flashback is done in the worst possible way. [both laughing] They do sideways camera angles and cheap, quick editing as well as black-white contrast. Not only is it physically difficult to watch, but the writing is also hilariously bad. A citizen unlocks a prison cell because they somehow had the key for no reason-"

C: She works there!

G: "- and she says, 'Tie me up so it looks like a breakout. Why would an unlocked cell-" [both laughing]

C: [laughing] "- look like a breakout? People don't break out of prison by unlocking the cell!" No, you're so right! "I can't believe this episode was even allowed to be aired. It's so badly done in every way."

G: I love this! I love this! These are the kind of reviews that we need in our life! Oh, that's wonderful! And it was left behind in 2019! [C laughs]

C: Yeah. The top review mentions that liked seeing the contrast between soulless Sam and soulled Sam so close together within the episode, and I agree with that. [G laughing] You're still stuck on "People don't break out of prison by unlocking the door?" [G laughs] [G: Yeah.] It's really good.

G: [laughing] I just think "Why would an unlocked cell look like a breakout?" [both laughing] is so funny!

C: I mean- Okay. I think it's like, he threatened her- or she unlocked the door to come in, and then he- I don't know.

G: [laughing] No, but she's already tied up! How did she get there? I don't know. I don't know. Well, "The episode is okay. I love the run in with the law thing they had in the beginning seasons, but it gets old." You're gonna hate Season 7.

C: Oh, because of the Leviathans?

G: Yeah. This one compares it to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Sam being who he is.

C: Okay. I haven't read it, so.

G: Yeah, I know about the horrible BBC modernized version of it that was directed by the same person who made-

C: Steven Moffat?

G: Yeah, because it was in the video about how Sherlock is horrible.

C: So true. Most important video in the world.

G: Yeah. [laughs] I do think it's an incredibly funny video. I watched it last year, and I think I told you immediately after watching it that I watched it because it was important.

C: Yeah, I've only seen it once, but it remains a very fond part of my memory.

G: Okay, I think that’s it for this episode of Busty Asian Beauties. Next week, we will be discussing Season 6, Episode 14. Can you take a fucking guess what this episode title is?

C: I'm so scared. What? Is this the Titanic one?

G: No.

C: It's not "The French Mistake," is it?

G: Oh my god! We're nearing "The French Mistake"!

C: I can't believe that happened in this season. Like, be fucking for real.

G: When is "The French Mistake"? When is "The French Mistake"?

C: Oh, don't tell me! I want it to be a surprise!

G: Well, next week's episode is "Mannequin 3: The Reckoning." [both laugh]

C: No!

G: Leave us a rating or a review wherever you get your podcasts.

C: Follow us on social media! We are on Tumblr at bustyasianbeautiespod.tumblr.com. And- uh, what else?

G: Check out our merch.

C: Thanks to everybody- Oh, yeah yeah. And our tag is #BABPod, B-A-B-POD. [G: Hell yeah.] Thanks to everyone who's donated to our Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/bustyasianbeautiespod, and check out our merch at babpod.redbubble.com.

G: You can email us any feedback, comments, or inquiries at bustyasianbeautiespod@gmail.com. See you guys next time! [both] Bye!

[guitar music]

[gaykarstaagforever]

On Highlander

I finally saw the first Highlander movie. I don't know why I had never seen it before. I saw II (ew) and The Source (double-ew), and a lot of the first TV show (mostly yay).

I'm not going to do a full review, because we are nerds and we all know it's a good movie. But I'll say this about it - for a movie from a first-time feature director, from a screenplay written by a guy who was still in film school, starring an effectively-blind man who barely spoke English at the time, it is way better than it has any right to be. It is rough and uneven and the dialogue is bad and the fight scenes are always two men frantically cracking aluminum baseball bats against each-other until one's hands hurt and he drops his. But all that said, it is a good fantasy movie, especially for 1986.

I think generally it has a reputation that is a little overrated, and people who stan this movie apparently fill in a lot of plot holes in their heads to make it work and aren't aware they are doing that. But it is still fun and pretty good in general as an old skool action movie about lightning vampires having sword fights for no good reason.

...The ending sucks, though, and is directly responsible for everything that is bad about Highlander II. I know this because I've watched it

"WHAT ABOUT THE RENEGADE CUT?!"

and about half of "The Renegade Cut," before the self-indulgent, completely senseless "Watch a director make a point to people who do not care at all!" shit got unbearable.

Adding slight less bad mid-90s visual effects and removing all the Zeist crap does exactly nothing to fix a plot that is 100% in service to no one having any goddamn idea what to do with this franchise after Conner wins The Prize. The Prize only exists as an undefined Macguffin that keeps these desperate people motivated, on the off-chance it frees them from this obvious curse. Whatever you officially make it, that is automatically stupid and lame and not worth it. That's the nature of the whole concept, and the bad ending of the first movie proves it.

Which is why, according to Wikipedia, the original screenplay NEVER DEALT WITH THAT. It apparently ended with Conner killing the Kurgan and then immediately "feeling" the presence of yet another Immortal they didn't know about. The Game goes on. There will NEVER be only one. It's a metaphor for the "curse" that is life, you keep going on the basis that you exist to achieve something, but you will probably never find out what that is before you die, all your plans and actions rendered fruitless. And that's really good.

But that isn't a happy ending, so...you can have kids now? And sort of read minds? Maybe? Of everyone? Which means...things?

Maybe you can build a giant shield around the Earth? I don't know. They're from Space. Whatever.

See the problem?

Also the Wikipedia article says Clancy Brown (and the original screenplay) saw the Kurgan as more of a stoic, world-weary villain, more one of circumstance than psychopathy. Clancy wanted to wear a suit and a bowler hat. That also sounds really good. Obviously him being nuts is one of the best parts of the first movie, just like Michael Ironside being nuts is one of the only good parts of the second. But is it dramatically compelling? The most profound part of the first one is when Conner finds out what the Kurgan did to Heather. The movie does that tactfully and earns the payoff. That was something that could also 100% work in a version where the Kurgan is just another Immortal who is dealing with his curse by taking a darker path than Conner does (hence why Conner is the protagonist).

But it is what it is. The first one is good, II is technically a well-made movie but is a fascinating disaster in any cut, and I didn't see 3 because I'm not paying $4 to rent what I hear is another not-good Highlander movie.

...Also, Ramirez probably would have lived a lot longer if he'd actually used that katana like a katana and not like a broadsword. But I guess no one in 1985 was going to tell Sean Connery to take two weeks of kendo lessons.

And a last word on the stupid Renegade Cut. How the hell did changing it from "alien planet" to "anachronistic Bronze Age, with time-wizards" solve a single problem with this childish nonsense? They still have amnesia for no given reason, they still go by the names we know neither one of them used until just before they met, Katana still shouldn't be drunkenly making sarcastic references to 20th Century things he wouldn't know anything about, even if it's fun (and it is; Michael Ironside is a Canadian treasure). It is all still such impossible anti-sense that not even the most adventurous writer of professional wrestling storylines could glue the pieces together into something that makes these railing kills emotionally impactful. There are a thousand possible fantasy stories that Highlander II could have used to try and explain why the hell people who are immune to bullets shoot lightning when you cut their heads off, and they picked "-B *fart noise*". You can't redeem that with editing.

And again, no one should have tried to explain it in the first place. That's not the point. Explaining any of this should never, ever be the point.

Because when it is, THIS happens:

[bonny-kookoo]

Jungkook:Sugar & Spice (Intro)

In which Jungkook really wants people to love you just as much as he does - or maybe not.

Tags/Warnings: Raccoon Hybrid!Reader x Idol!Jungkook, established relationship, opposites attract because I love that concept, are you tired of my hybrid stories yet because I'm not, fluff, romance, smut, jealous koo, slice of life, mild ddlg themes

Chapter length: short

Other content: Spoiled, Calm

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"I forgot.." you mumble quietly, a little ashamed about your entire situation as you've just had to explain to your boyfriend that yes, you've just gotten your period, and yes- you've probably now stained his nice expensive little sofa in his studio.

"It's fine, see?" He mumbles before casually wiping the leather with a tissue before throwing it into the trashcan nearby. "Didn't even stain at all. Do you wanna go change?" He asks casually, looking at you - before he clicks his tongue, the clear waters in your eyes a telltale sign of your typically emotional reaction to things like these. "Come here, crybaby, everything's fine!" He laughs a little, letting you cling onto him as you hide in embarrassment.

"I don't feel good." You whine into his chest, and he chuckles.

"I know baby." He says, as he pats your head. "You wanna go wash up?"

"But I don't have anything to change.." you complain, now getting even more frustrated.

"Bullshit. I've got your pyjama pants here somewhere-" He says, parting from you to search for the clothing item before he crawls.. underneath his desk?

"What're you doing, Kookie?" You giggle a little, watching him pull out a simple black canvas bag that he opens the zipper of.

"Excuse me? You think after what- 4 years I wouldn't be prepared for shit like this?" He proudly claims, before holding up one of your period-slash-heat pull ups- something you've been horrified of telling him about the first two years of your relationship with him, too fearful of how he might react to it. But you've learned soon enough that while Jungkook does sometimes get a little mean in his fun with others around him, he's not a bad guy at all. He's just a bit clumsy at times.

"Why do you have them here?" You whine, grabbing after the pair he's got in his hand.

"Why not?" He shrugs. "Your heats can start random as shit, and your periods are even worse. Better safe than sorry." He simply answers, closing the bag and shoving it back underneath the desk. "Now go change, I'll prepare the couch so you can nap." He jokes, smacking your thigh as you get up to follow his word.

Pulling out a blanket, he puts everything he knows you'll appreciate where he thinks it'll be good, before he checks his phone.

Only recently, he's gone public. While fans knew you existed, they didn't know much about you, nor that you and Jungkook weren't just platonic but a genuine relationship. And while he'd been prepared for what surely was to come, he'd been surprised by the welcoming reaction of the fans, many already expecting it and others defending that he's a person who deserves a private life.

And so, he's been more open with you, company even allowing you to now be seen in behind the scenes footage, and even publishing professional photos from backstage of you. People became pretty much just as charmed as he himself had been years ago- happily accepting you as a part of it all now, and he couldn't have been luckier.

But at the same time, he starts feeling just a little upset at the comments some fans keep repeating.

"She's so cute, I wish I had a hybrid like her!"

"Honestly though, if hybrids were allowed to be idols, she'd definitely be the visual of the generation!"

"She kind of seems almost too nice for Jungkookie~!"

"You think she ever feels lonely at home? I mean, he's at work all the time.."

"Jungkookie?" You ask, and he snaps his head up from his phone, boiling emotions quickly forgotten at the sight of you holding your fluffy striped tail in your hands. "Can you take a nap with me?" You wonder quietly, and he internally swells with pride.

"Of course, baby bear." He chuckles before joining you on the couch, holding you close and tightly just how he knows you like it. Does he leave you alone too much? Do you feel lonely sometimes? He's interested in the answer, but scared of it just as much- so he won't ask the questions. He'll just hold you, love you, and care for you.

Because the love you have is special, and nothing will break you both apart. Not time, not work, and for sure, not his career.

Hopefully.

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