#and this is the one place in the plot where the fact that jenny doesn't exist anymore for narrative convenience is so.....

[mandoriana]

The case of the mad king

sorry for my english

I don't know what I'm doing, but I recently watched "Dead Boy Detectives" and now I'm unable to stop thinking about them, so I decided to create a brief eight-chapter plot for a fanfic that i most won't write, but would love to share with everyone.

I'll start with the structure of how it will all work. Firstly, the story would take place after the first season and each season would have a special focus on one character at a time, for example:

First season - Crystal

Second season - Niko Sasaki

Third season - Thomas/King Cat and Edwin

Fourth season - Charles and Edwin

Fifth season - Crystal and Niko

Anyway, each of these sequences that I thought about writing would have a focus on a different character and the development of each of them as well, for the Crystal/Charles fans I'm sorry, but they won't be a couple for long, the Same goes for the Cat King/Edwin shipp, the main couple will be Charles/Edwin, but it will be a slow burn.

London, England

The story would begin just a month after the events of the series. Crystal continues to live with her parents in their chic apartment, but plans to move into Jenny's apartment as soon as the woman opens her new butcher's shop in London. It's another normal day when Crystal intends to go on an adventure with the boys in a new investigation, everyone is focused on working and trying not to suffer from the loss of Niko, Crystal and Edwin are the most affected in this situation and Crystal continues to learn to be someone better. Just as Crystal is finishing packing her backpack to spend another night up investigating, her parents come home looking genuinely angry with her. They bring a newspaper in hand and show her the news on the cover, which alerted the people of the city about a suspicious girl breaking into houses (It wasn't an invasion if the ghost who lived there gave her permission to enter), Crystal tries to explain that she was just helping a lady who needed her help (hiding the fact that the lady is already dead), but her parents don't believe her and decide to put an end to her "mischief", taking Crystal against will to Reddam House Berkshire school. She leaves Jenny a voicemail, but her parents confiscate her cell phone before she can send a message to the office computer (Edwin doesn't use the laptop, but Charles does).

Office

Unable to communicate with Crystal, the boys are not informed about her going to school and begin investigating her disappearance. Charles begins his search at Crystal's parents' apartment, there he finds her phone but doesn't see his friend anywhere. Her suitcases and bags are also in the apartment and Crystal doesn't seem to have left, just disappeared suddenly (Her parents forbade her to take anything other than her school uniform and some clothes chosen by them, the rest of her belongings would be handed over in the schoolroom, when classes started)

Edwin investigates the disappearance of his friend in Jenny's apartment who lives an hour away from the boys' office, he questions Jenny, and she explains about the end of the vacation and Crystal's parents took her to a school where he would spend his days until the end of the year.

The boys gather in the office to gather information and begin a search plan, but Charles let the office laptop run out of juice and without Crystal they don't know how to recharge it. Out of options and wanting to help, Jenny lets the boys use her laptop, on the condition that Charles doesn't touch the device (no one knows what Charles did to make Jenny so suspicious, but Jenny doesn't comment and neither does Charles.)

During the search for schools where Crystal could be, the Night Nurse appears with a new case, something for them to deal with as quickly as possible and not bother her until everything is over. Left with no choice, they stop their search for Crystal and prepare for a new investigation.

The new case

The case seems simple, three boys died on a nightclub, but since the police closed the place there still seems to be supernatural activity in the nightclub. The living continues to complain to the authorities about the loud noise that continues even when the party should have ended, but the police have already gone to the scene and even though they are able to hear music playing, when they enter the club there is nothing inside. Edwin and Charles go to the nightclub and soon discover that the place is not just inhabited by ghosts, but by many supernatural beings. Edwin tries to investigate by asking questions to a vampire, a skinwalker and a witch, but everyone seems too drunk to understand what he is saying. When Edwin is about to tell Charles what he discovered, he is surrounded by the other ghost boys, who end up getting involved with him rudely. Charles is not around after he got distracted by some girls dancing, he tries to find Edwin, but ends up going to stairs and meeting a giant man who calls himself “King of the Mad”.

Edwin manages to escape the other ghosts with the help of a black cat who takes him to the bar where Edwin meets the Cat King and his sister the Cat Queen of London. Upon seeing the teenager uncomfortable, Thomas takes him to a less chaotic place (a place similar to the one where he takes Edwin to talk in the first season). Thomas changes into his cat form and allows Edwin to stroke his fur until he can calm down. When he manages to recover from the overload of emotions, Edwin takes advantage of company to question whether the Cat King knew what was happening and Thomas explains that Dionísio had been throwing parties since 1960 when the first disco appeared, as a way of getting more and more worshipers, but things got out of control in the last few days, as two humans managed to enter the party and die there. Thomas explains that Dionysus would get supernatural creatures drunk and strengthened by their worship, then he would free them and go to other places to get more worshipers. As Dionisio needed constant adoration, he only ended his parties when the last guest left, but thanks to the ghost boys he had already been having the same party for two whole weeks and couldn't leave until they left.

While Edwin is with Thomas, Charles and the King of the Mad talk about what was happening at the party and Charles discovers the same thing as Edwin and promises to help with the situation as soon as he finds his partner, in exchange the King of the Mad would pay for the detectives' services, giving something of value to each of the boys.

Reddam House Berkshire

Crystal gets a room of her own at the boarding school, at first everything seems fine with the place, but things go wrong as soon as she introduces herself to her new class and notices four girls looking at her threateningly. When Crystal sits down next to one of them, a shiver runs down her spine, and she feels the same strange feeling she had when she first met Esther.

To be continue...

Okay, so… that was it, this is just one of eight chapters, they're just ideas, but I think it would be interesting to write a fanfic about it, I'll keep posting more and maybe I'll decide to write it, in case someone likes this idea.

(+BONUS+

Charles was banned from using Jenny's laptop after unintentionally accessing 18+ websites, he was just playing some online games when advertisements appeared offering "a fun night", Charles innocently believed it was another type of fun, when he clicked ended up coming to a website full of naked women AND men. Jenny arrived at the wrong time and saw the terrified teenager staring at his computer screen.

She has a long, awkward conversation with Charles afterward, but neither of them brings it up after it's over.)

Parte 2, Part 3

[xx-j4nu5-c4t5-xx]

cringe headcanon dump but I've never really heard anyone mention this before

According to the memories and stuff, Glarn Curious had Chloe and Lola Singles before he had Jenny and the rest of the gang. However, the sisters are 28 and 20 days from being elders when first loaded, which places them closer to Lazlo's age (he also has 28 days left).

So... what if he wasn't abducted before the main four were born?

Nothing would get a whole family involved in lifelong alien obsessions like watching your dad get plucked off the face of the earth in elementary school. And the fact that they don't know Chloe and Lola implies that everything was kept secret.

Imagine being a normal ass kid and then your dad gets abducted by a massive alien ship and disappears for nine months and won't explain what happened after. It only feeds that insatiable knowledge sim brain hunger even more. What the hell happened? What did they do to him? He won't tell you, and you've got to find out.

There's even more plot hints that add to this madness. Out of all of the siblings, Lazlo doesn't seem to give that much of a shit about aliens. He's not really shown to be as obsessive about the whole thing as his brothers and sister; he just does his own stuff. If the twins are around his age, he was either not born yet or not old enough to remember any of this going down.

And the fact that Glarn died just before Pascal got abducted??? Like he had spent years trying to get answers from him and Glarn took this weird double life secret mpreg family shit to his grave???? He must've just given up and decided to do it himself. Desperate times calling for desperate measures and all that.

(For even more stupid headcanon points, I'd imagine that this was a MASSIVE point of contention between Pascal and Nervous. Imagine being stuck in this human experimentation hell for years, and this guy, who's stuck with you through all of it, just drops that he put himself in the same situation you're in. That he put himself out there *hoping* to get snatched up and experimented on, for the same reason that you've been locked in a grimey, cold castle basement for the last ten years: the pursuit of science. The need for answers. Realizing that the hands that tenderly patch your wounds may be driven by the same force as the ones that caused them in the first place. Jesus Christ.)

Anyway I've thought way too hard about this family and its dynamics, it's like midnight where I am and I've got classes at 8am tomorrow. Someone save me.

[weclassybouquetfun]

I have a passing knowledge of Jaime Reyes' Blue Beetle from the character's appearance on SMALLVILLE, BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD and these panels.

Milagro, you are so real for this.

And this is where my true knowledge about Blue Beetle comes from - Ted Kord's Blue Beetle and his friendship with Booster Gold.

Blue & Gold Forever.

So with only knowing the bare minimum about Jaime I was able to watch BLUE BEETLE with no expectations. It's an incredibly vibrant, fun and heartfelt film. I'm concerned at its low box-office showing, but films with bigger leads and bigger budgets have also failed at the box office, or at the very least, didn't recoup it's budget and marketing. There has never been anything that was a guaranteed box office success. I would rather it tried to get eyes in theaters than get lost on HBO Max where it was originally slated for release. Here's hoping National Cinema Day on Aug 27th (where theaters are selling tickets for $4 for all formats) will bring more people to the tent.

Too true.

My thoughts on BLUE BEETLE

Nothing but SPOILERS.

THE GOOD

Xolo Maridueña (COBRA KAI) is a great Jaime. If you have seen Maridueña across these five seasons of COBRA KAI, it's not surprising. He has shown consistently that he can play humour, dutifulness, vulnerable and excel at action.

Big up to COBRA KAI's annual blow-out fight sequence.

Oddly enough, at the end of the film I didn't think we got to know Jaime beyond a cursory level, but I'm sure if they did a deep dive on him I would complain about that too as my issue with origin story films is that so much real estate is given to building up the history of the character, that the plot and action seems relegated to the final act. But I guess BLUE BEETLE gave us all we need to know about Jaime.

Good egg, duty bound, gets hard from hugs (and kudos to this film for actually having a character who gets horny. Comic book films are nearly always a sexless thing, but my guy Jaime pulling his shirt down to cover his crotch after Jenny's (Bruna Marquezine) tale of woe was refreshing.)

-Really liked Jenny Kord. She wasn't the typical damsel in distress. She's formidable in her own right. She and Jaime doesn't feel rushed or shoehorned in. I especially loved the fact that they didn't just make her the love interest,

Though she and Xolo are great together,

but also gave her - in the Reyes - a new family. If she and Jaime were to go pear-shaped we can just know that Jenny still has a place within the Reyes clan.

-We have not one, but two new members to the Legion of Great DCEU Family Members. Joining the mom and dad of SHAZAM, AQUAMAN's dad, THE FLASH's mom is BLUE BEETLE's Alberto Reyes (Damián Alcázar) and Nana Reyes (the Oscar nominated Adriana Barraza).

Still waters run deep and Nana proved that. She's not just up in her room sewing and watching reruns of "María la del Barrio". She is sitting back waiting to showcase her experiene while fighting in the revolution.

And Alberto Reyes! He was this film's King T'Chaka. Always with a wise word, strong, caring. I hate that he had to die and I think it's a worn out trope that a hero has to suffer loss in order to come into their greatness, but it worked. Long Live Alberto Reyes!

Just enough George Lopez to not be annoying. He's funny, but only in small doses IMO so he was just good enough and used well enough that it wasn't eye-rolling. I really loved that he wasn't just there for the obvious comic relief, instead Uncle Rudy is a brain.

The opening along had me hyped. It set the tone and it lent to idea of the scarab being from space, but the inclusion of a classic Blue Beetle comic sketch just ::chef's kiss:

-Director Ángel Manuel Soto listed which stories he pulled from for this film,

but I see a lot of BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD episode "Fall of the Blue Beetle" in the bits where they go to Ted Kord's home/lab.

-The way they took OMAC/Kevin Kho backstory and merged it with Carapex's. In the comics OMAC was a Cambodian child of war, in this film Ignacio/Carapex was left an orphan and trained by the School of the Americas (rebranded Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) whose training manuals advocated tortuing and blackmailing civilians. Using Kord Industries as not just a amorphous shady big tech corp, BLUE BEETLE's writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer and Soto tied Kord Industries to the realties of what big corporations are doing globally.

This ties into another thing I loved about the film - it had a strong cultural identity. From Nana using Vivaporú (Vicks Vapor Rub) as smelling salts to rouse Jamie, to El Chapulín Colorado(!!!).

The idea of gentrification that affects people across colour lines and specifically targets people of lower income.

The full integration of Jaime and Khaji-Da being exemplified by Khaji-Da (voiced by singer/actor Becky G) speaking Spanish.

THE BAD

-Is there someone with less screen prescence than Susan Sarandon? I don't know how she was ever a thing. I guess they needed a "name" but there several other actors like Anjelica Huston or Sigourney Weaver who would have done something more with that role. Carla Gugino. Anyone else!

-The establishing CGI of Kord Entrerprises was basura. There was a tangible change in F/X as if mid way through post-production they found out WB-Discovery was moving it to theatrical release and they effects crew got a cash infusion.

-While I came around on the character towards the end, I wasn't a fan of Milagro. Glad they aged her up but she fell into the trope of annoying movie sibling and it grated.

THE REST

-Harvey Guillen's character died in the film (good!) and he appears to be dead again on HARLEY QUINN (not good. There is no way Nightwing's death sticks).

-Soto and James Gunn says that Jaime has a future in the DCU. While an interview snippet is making the rounds where Soto says he would like Jason Sudeikis (TED LASSO) to play Ted Kord, I don't really believe that is true as the source is from an online site I'm not familiar with and people lie for clicks.

Yes, Buster. All. The. Time.

-While comics! Jaime lives in El Paso, Texas, film! Jaime lives in Palmera City - on El Paso St. - which was created for the film (and appeared in the comics months ahead in a tie-in). Soto found inspiration in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. But I wonder what Palmera City's real-world city will be when James Gunn finishes the DC Map that he say is being redone. Maybe because over the years Metropolis has been Chicago/Delaware/New York.

Metropolis is not in Delaware, GTFOH.

[mysmorgasbordoffantabulosa]

Not Taekook related, but I was thinking a lot about the whole Min Heejin and HYBE drama, particularly the stories about the shaman and BTS, the leaking of private/personal information about idols (possibly Garam, Youngseo and others), also the allegedly trying to snare V. All this makes me wonder if MHJ had a hand in V's scandal with Jennie. It would be good to get your thoughts on it all.

This is all so seriously messed up. I think there is faults on both side but also some valid points too.

Whilst I will answer your main question about taennie and possibly the whole JK fake apartment video, I feel I need explore the situation as a whole. So I will structure it like this:

Thoughts on the key points/accusations on boths sides about the whole dispute

Was Heejin involved in rumours about BTS members

What I think will happen

Final thoughts

Ok...

Thoughts on the key points/accusations on boths sides about the whole dispute

I do think Heejin has some valid points about the visual concepts being used by other HYBE artists, although technically, MHJ doesn't own any of the IP she created with ADOR. I know a little about IP and Copyright there are 4 types...

Creator / 1st Owner - where the creator is also the owner of the product, for example: The author and first owner of copyright in a sound recording is the record producer. The author and first owner of the copyright in a broadcast is the broadcaster. The author and first owner of the copyright in a published edition is the publisher.

Works created for an employer - (this will apply to MHJ) Where a literary, dramatic, musical or artistic work, or a film, is made by an employee in the course of his employment, his employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work (subject to any agreement to the contrary).

Commissioned works - This is like when HYBE commissions a producer/writer to create something, the rights belong to the company/person who creates the work (say Andrew Watt) not the commisioner (HYBE)

Joint Author/Co-Written - Joint ownership might arise, for example, if a person was commissioned to create a website together with one of the company’s employees. It is likely that both the person being commissioned and the company would be joint first owners of copyright in the website. For co-written songs the songwriters share ownership.

So unless MHJ had a special contract that gave her special rights over something, she has no control over what she creates as it BELONGS to HYBE, that includes NewJeans, the concepts and other IP.

It's clear HYBE has the evidence to show there is something underhand going on, and has probably had evidence for weeks. They probably discovered the plot because of the copying on files by that VP at ADOR. Also why would anyone make plan to takeover a company for the hell of it... it doesn't make sense.

Is it unfair that MHJ has a clause stopping her from working in the industry for a period of time if she leaves HYBE/ADOR... NO, these are common place in businesses, plus she negogiated and signed her contract... unless she didn't do the proper due diliegence.

The MHJ press conference was a masterful display of media play/manipulation. She deliberately wore clothes that made her look dishevelled, also the cap adequately hide the fact that she never actually shed a tear once in the whole 2 hours and her make up helped with this impression, by making her cheeks look wet from tears.

HYBE in a cult...

But obviously not true and MHJ and co are clearly dropping fake stories to tarnish everyone.

I certainly believe (after that news conference where she slandered nearly every HYBE group) that this woman leaked private and confidential information about trainees and idols.

Her and Bang PD were not close... so which CEO hired her in 2019, I'll give you one guess and his name is in this sentence... so he must have spent time with her and cultivated a working relationship at BIGHIT Entertainment prior to HYBE forming... MHJ was VERY selective in of which chats to share with the press... I expect Dispatch to expose more her conversations with BPD, which will paint things in a different light.

MHJ lied in her press conference... she took, with HYBE's blessing, Source Music trainees, staff and other resources to form NewJeans and ADOR... with HYBE's money.

HYBE CEO is dirt bag who likes vaginas... simply because he oversaw video game that was quite rude. It's not like he designed it himself, he simply oversaw the project, plus unfortunately that's a big thing in the Video Game world... it can be very msygonistic.

Was Heejin involved in rumours about BTS members

So was MHJ involved... on the surface one might think so.

I do think she might have had a hand in the Garam scandal and the leaking of Youngseo, members of two groups she saw (in her own words) as threat to NEWJEANS and her vision.

However, I don't think she had anything to do with Taennie or JK's fake video, it's clear (at least for Taennie), that YG was heavily involved and possibly HYBE too.

Now to the recent stuff that's currently be "leak" and stuff that might come out in the next few weeks... I think her involvement might be more logical.

What I think will happen

I think within the next month HYBE via a shareholders meeting with ousts the ADOR board and replace it with their own board and subsequently remove MHJ from her pssost.

ADOR's new CEO will be another woman from within the company

From what I understand, MHJ might have a problematic history with young people... I'm sure if she does it will come out.

There will be a trial of some kind and MHJ and co will be found guilty in someway

I think HYBE in general will take more control (at least at board level) of every sub-label over the next year, to strengthen its position but also but to improve coordination between labels to stop classes that have occured in the past.

NewJeans won't be leaving ADOR/HYBE, mostly because HYBE owns the brand of NJs and their concepts, but also it's be intimated that NJs would have to pay hefty reparations for said IP and to be released from their contract. I suspect post MHJ HYBE will sweeten the NJ's current deal with additional stuff.

Final thoughts

It's a mess, but within a few weeks/months it'll all be partly resolved to a certain extent.

I suspect this week HYBE through outlets like Dispatch will leak even more of the incriminating shit it has on MHJ and her co-conspiritors.

HYBE will remove the current board of directors at ADOR and then remove MHJ and he co-conspiritors.

I suspect we'll also get some expose about her time at SM that isn't pretty and adds more fuel to the fire and may show she has a track record of causing trouble.

I also suspect that when MHJ tries to sell her shares she'll end up having to sell them back to HYBE because I they will make it difficult for her to sell it to anyone else.

I predict NewJeans will have new comeback post MHJ that's even more successful than before.

[cornflowershade]

Bless you for putting The Shipper content on my dash in 2023. Such a lovely show! I take it you enjoyed it?

OMG I DID. Like, where to start. First of all, I appreciate any show that doesn't take itself too seriously or seem afraid how it'll come off, and this is one of them. It is WACKY (and funny) and strange, and I enjoyed every minute of that. But there's drama as well, which I'm a sucker for too, and we will get to that.

Of course, I also lovedddd the cast. First was freaking amazing in this role, the way you can see him switch roles and covey Pan, like??? In fact, everyone did an amazing job. The acting was so good. Also loved Jennie as the angel of death, haha. And Ohm as Khet was so cute. Soda was adorable. And yeahhhh, Way ended up bringing emotions.

Going into the series, it was this great fun adventure body swap situation —always a good time— but obviously there was a million twists, and one of my favorite things about this show was how unpredictable the path always was. Being a show about life (and death), I think that unpredictability kinda suits it.

I like the idea of how it start with Pan, who has an idealized like, wattpad fanfic reading of the world around her—or at least of Kim and Way. Then we place her in Kim's life—via a total fanfic scenario (side note I love how everything feels so fanfic, even down to the wild shipping vibes between literally everyone at various points. the chemistry just chemistry-ing 24/7) and from there everything only gets more complex as she discovers that no, she doesn't know everything about this boy. We discover more about Kim through her, and over time through the other characters as well, and by the time we realize Kim is gone (following an ongoing mystery of Uh Oh Where Is He??) we finally have a fuller picture of him. A picture painted through the choices he made, the lives he impacted, and what he meant to people, etc. And Pan has a better understanding of both Kim and herself. As well as having to face some moral quandaries on how to handle situations linked to this extremely wacky circumstance.

She learns not to judge so quickly (like she did at the start with WayKim or at the point where discovers Kim's secrets. She continues learning this all the way to when she realizes how Khet feels.). I also liked that by the time she realizes WayKim was real, it's something that is able to hit her with gravity? By then it means something more than "ooooooh look at them, look at my ship." Because she feels the implications. Because she knows them better. Because she knows the weight of what it means after living Kim's life and after discovering that he's gone. After we learn that he's dead, it actually makes things make a lot more sense. 1) that he didn't wake up and 2) why the show gives such an investigation into his life [beyond the obvious reason, which is Pan trying to get her bearings and fumble through]—it's almost retrospective.

Speaking of the weight of things (yes this has turned into a full blown show review/meta haha) I again enjoyed how the series becomes something weightier as it goes on. Not to say there wasn't weight at the beginning, but the tone got more grounded as it progressed. Like I said before, it's a show about life and death, and the impact of both. I'd say it's also about loss and learning from experiences (even the angel of death ends up learning a lesson—double check those names!!—and being impacted by a relationship, by someone's life, as she develops a fondness toward Pan.)

Those themes start all the way back at the beginning, with Pan's body being in a coma. With her friends and stepdad worrying if she'll come back to them, and Pan being unable to tell them she's okay (ugh the drama yes). We see the impact that her absence has (and yet she doesn't truly realize until later that her absence is just as important as Kim's. That her presence is just as important his his.) That loss theme is kind of continued through the plot with Way and his girlfriend, actually. And then there's everything with Khet and Kim (yeah that made me cry), and Kim and Way (also made me cry). As The Shipper progresses, we see more deeply into every relationship and motive until we're finally able to understand the character's hearts. And by the time we do, that's why everything hurts so darn bad. It comes together so well.

The balance of lighthearted and heavy was actually really enjoyable to me, though I see from skimming through the tag that not everyone agrees here lol. But personally I liked the plot and the ending and think they worked pretty harmoniously. The series is definitely sad but I wouldn't call it a "sad show?" A reflective one for sure (not saying it's the deepest show on the planet but still) and kinda cathartic. I think it's interesting that, despite all the fantasy and off-the-wall elements, this show had a huge sense of realness to me?? While yeah, still being that fantasy story with wacky elements and lovable characters, which adds such a vibe and really makes the show xD

(Sidenote I laughed at the last line, 'so this is what it's like having a yaoi girlfriend' lmao. sorry khet. i'm not always keen on like, humor last lines—they sometimes feel out of place after sad things— but this one fit well and lifted the mood and seemed full circle. they brought it back to comedy without it being clunky. that whole last scene with her and khet was nice. now I just need to understand the after credit voiceover bc youtube didn't subtitle it AGH)

Honestly, no notes. Idk how common this take is, but: this was probably one of my favorite Thai dramas so far???

Anyway, looking forward to putting more of this show on your dash in the future xD

[bakerstreetbabble]

Granada TV Series Review: "The Sign of Four"

Finally, here it is! My review of the 1987 Granada TV adaptation of The Sign of Four...enjoy!

First of all, one could give this installment in the series a two-word review: mostly faithful. That is, the adaptation follows very closely all the main plot points of its source material, with a few little tweaks here and there. I shall mention some of the most obvious changes as I go along. It may be best to begin with the title: Arthur Conan Doyle's novella was originally published in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine as The Sign of the Four (1890), but many subsequent editions omitted the second definite article and were released as The Sign of Four. Granada chose to go with the latter. In the novella, of course, Jonathan Small's calling card reads, "the sign of the four." 

As I said, the adaptation is nothing if not faithful to its source. This can be a bit problematic, as it means the last twenty minutes or so of the film are told in flashback by Jonathan Small, which strikes me as a bit anticlimactic for the flow of the story. However, if one were to place the past events told in flashback at the beginning of the film, one would be faced with a Sherlock Holmes story in which the detective doesn't show up until well into the story. Either way, it's a difficult problem for the writers. Overall, I think they did a very good job, despite some of the inherent problem of somewhat slow pacing.

Jeremy Brett is in excellent form throughout the film, despite the fact that he was beginning to struggle with his bipolar disorder around this same time. Perhaps this explains the unusual decision towards the beginning of the film, in which Holmes displays some rather unusual behavior as Mary Morstan tells her story. He complains of the messiness of the flat at 221B and begins to brush lint from his suit as she talks. His reaction ends up coming off as boorish and eccentric. Holmes in the book shows no such odd behavior. Still, Brett is mostly excellent in the adaptation, and Edward Hardwicke had clearly become quite comfortable in the role by this time, so the chemistry between Holmes and Watson works quite well.

I'm afraid Jenny Seagrove's portrayal of Mary Morstan struck me as a bit bland and uninteresting. I was at a loss to understand exactly why Watson seemed so charmed by her (apart from the fact that it's a fairly major subplot point in the book). She's adequate in the role, but I found her quite unimpressive. In contrast, I thought Ronald Lacey (better known as the creepy Toht in Raiders of the Lost Ark) was delightful as Thaddeus and Bartholomew Sholto. He's eccentric, funny, and just a bit unsettling at times. Really, an almost perfect portrayal of the unusual character. Emrys James as Inspector Athelney Jones was also quite entertaining, serving as a pompous, comical foil to Holmes's far more intelligent investigation. Brett and James do a fabulous job in the scene in which Jones is presenting his theory of the murder of Bartholomew Sholto, with Holmes wryly responding, "On which the dead man very considerately got up and locked the door on the inside." (A marvelous line, straight from the original novella.)

As often happens in some of the Granada adaptations, the director makes several unusual visual choices, displaying a fondness for shots that show Holmes in mirrors or shots that are obscured by objects in the foreground. A few of those choices work fairly well, though. A couple that I thought were interesting: shortly after Holmes climbs down from the roof of Pondicherry Lodge, there's a brief segment of dialogue in which the camera focuses on the characters' shadows on the brick wall; a particularly effective shot is when Holmes is reading about "the aborigines of the Andaman Islands," and the camera slowly zooms in on him as he smokes, surrounded by stacks of books. Less successful were several shots during the river chase scene, where the view of the steamboats was obscured by various objects in the foreground. Very odd.

Of course, what would a Sherlock Holmes adaptation be without at least one scene where Holmes remains in disguise just to mess with Watson? Jeremy Brett always seemed to take a special delight in such scenes, as displayed in this film, when he shows up at 221B dressed as an old mariner and completely fools both Watson and Inspector Jones. It does require a bit of suspension of disbelief to accept that neither man would see through such an obvious disguise. Still, it's quite entertaining.

One unpleasant detail that I can't help finding cringe-inducing is, of course, the portrayal of Tonga. There's really no way to get around the inherent racism of Doyle's portrayal of other races, which was not at all unusual for the late 19th century English culture. But it is particularly uncomfortable in this day and age to see the obvious blackface makeup applied to actor Kiran Shah, who would later do quite notable work in The Lord of the Rings and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And the prosthetic teeth are just badly done. It also doesn't help that, right towards the end of the film, we're given a really tacky shot of Tonga sinking into the Thames as gold coins splash around him (another Jonathan Small flashback, telling how he disposed of the Agra treasure).

A good decision made by the writers was the decision to move the revelation of the empty treasure box to occur after Jonathan Small's story has been told. I've always been confused by Doyle's decision to have that moment (as well as Watson's profession of love to Mary) happen before Small is allowed to recount his entire story. I still find myself wondering, however, how no one who lugged that treasure chest all the way across town (to Mary's employer's house in the book, and to 221B in the film) could tell that it was empty! I imagine many viewers have been disappointed that Watson's declaration of love and his subsequent proposal to Mary have been omitted. I can only guess that the writers for the Granada series were not interested in having Mary become a recurring character, and that they preferred to keep Watson and Holmes a couple of bachelors. Thus, we are only given a few longing looks from Watson as Mary goes her merry way. (See what I did there?)

I mustn't forget one of the most enjoyable moments in the film: the appearance of the famous Baker Street Irregulars. Although these little ragamuffins don't appear all that often in the canon, they certainly have earned the affection of Sherlock Holmes fans that probably ranks right up there with Sherlockians' fascination with Irene Adler (another fairly minor character who has achieved great fame). The scene where the Irregulars arrive at 221B, much to Mrs. Hudson's consternation, is done perfectly, and Jeremy Brett seems to be having a lot of fun at this point.

I have to say, overall, I enjoyed this particular adaptation of The Sign of Four. I found it engaging, despite just a bit of slow pacing here and there. Faithful to its source material, the film is a credit to its production team and cast. Brett and Hardwicke were quite comfortable in their roles, and the level of production value was still quite high at this point in the Granada series. As their first attempt at more long-form storytelling, it seems to have been a success, one that was not repeated with their adaptation of the most popular Holmes tale, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Ah, but that's a story for another time...

[mybrainproblems]

i am so very sorry but i am mildly unhinged about the finale bc i am an absolute sicko who has watched it nine times. no, i'm not kidding. (sadly not live tho. rip.)

the short and Normal tl;dr is that i took a stopwatch to 15x20 and it...

is the standard 42min (41m48s) of any spn ep

has a lot of really long stretches in the back half where you can't drop in an ad break unless you want the chef kiss black comedy of dean dangling off a rusty nail and cut to personal injury lawyer commercial

i would not be shocked if the CW saw how the episode was cutting together (which i do think was happening late, but was bc the pacing sucked) and realized that they either needed to put another ad break in earlier or have the later ad breaks be a lot longer.* given the absolutely baffling pacing in the back half of the episode, i'm guessing it was less jarring to add another break to an earlier point in the episode vs killing the flow even worse with longer breaks at the end.

* i may be thinking of radio but i want to say there's some sort of rule around the proportional length of tv ad breaks?

for the less hinged essay inclusive of timing marks and some more spec... please, by all means, continue below the cut.

so about a year ago, i was going nuts from how many times i'd seen the rumor that 15x20 had been cut down and was (depending on who you asked) 3-6 minutes short from a normal episode. what an insane thing! how wild! how did they get away with it?!

i never really saw anyone agree on just how short it was cut so.... i opened up the stopwatch app on my phone. and lo and behold, it's the same 42min runtime (specifically, 41m48s) as any other spn ep! the crazy thing about a rumor is that the easier it is to fact check, the less likely it is to be fact checked. if it's repeated enough, it becomes its own truth.

also i checked the timing on both dvd and netflix! just to make sure!

i had an inkling that maybe the claims that it was short were coming from how the ads broke down the ep, so i started trying to backwards engineer where they might have gone just based on plot beats, scene changes and camera cuts. i would love to watch a version with the ad breaks still in it. do tv show reactor folks leave in ads?

these are pure guesses but the ad breaks i'm most confident about the placement of are:

(03:59) immediately after the title card

(14:46) as they enter the barn

(26:03) before sam wakes up in the bunker

potential ones i'm less certain of:

(05:57) right before the home vampvasion

(12:47) before they arrive at the barn OR

(16:41) after jenny reveal but before the fight starts

(34:01) before the first montage (super weird placement but the only place late in the ep i could imagine putting an ad)

the thing is that they are having to schedule ad breaks around the following chunks that really cannot be broken up:

(17:12-24:29) dean's impalement until his eventual demise - 7m17s

(34:02-41:48) driving montage until end of episode - 7m46s

there's the possibility that there were no ads from dean waking up in heaven (30:24) until the end (41:48) which is a truly wild length of TV time to have no commercials and why i think there had to be one before the driving montage, no matter how odd that placement is. there's also the possibility that the credits/4th wall break had a split screen with an ad break, but i doubt it for a finale.

totally separate but given covid, i can't imagine they would have gotten too much extra footage given the restrictions they were under. so there wouldn't have been a lot to "plug the holes" of cutting other footage. what we do know was cut from 15x20 is stuff that (imho) would have been less weird to pad out time than 7min of dean driving aimlessly interspersed with (very intentionally shot) sam moments.

alex, why the hell does any of that matter?

it doesn't! and yet it feels so crucial... fascinating!

ok so like. thinking about the fact that there was an extra commercial break in the finale

In 2021 I used to work for [major US cable company] on a team that manually scheduled all of the ads that aired on their network every single day. While the exact shit that airs gets put in there the day before by a team of approx 10 human beings (insane), the tv show schedule & the breaks themselves are SET IN STONE. It takes a really specific, heavy-hitting request from a network and a LOT of people & moving parts to make an extra commercial break happen. That shit is built into the system way in advance!!!!!

I wish I had thought to ask my coworkers if they remembered anything happening then. Things were ofc moving around a lot because of the election coverage, BUT that was in the news networks, not on the fucking CW. Do we think that request was made last minute??? how long did they plan to have that extra break in there?????? were they cutting that episode up until the last minute after the networks saw the reaction to 15x18??????? we will probably never know but it is gonna bug me forever

[marigoldbaker]

no see now i’m thinking about that AGAIN because that scene in gingerbread felt SO bizarre. like, jenny’s horrific and traumatizing death took up half a season, and we get another “haha giles doesn’t like computers” moment as though she never even existed? i think it’s particularly significant that he calls them a “fad” and it’s supposed to be a little comedy beat when by calling them a fad he’s underwriting the life’s work of someone he loved. it’s one of many moments that obviously feeds into jenny being neatly erased by the narrative after a certain point -- seen most glaringly in this scene, where we’re reintroduced to Giles Hates Computers and expected to believe that his feelings towards computers have never wavered when they were so transparently linked to his feelings towards jenny (the fact that he hates computers, and that all of his conflict towards jenny is OVER computers, and that then he subsequently falls in love with jenny after learning that she’s actually just as dedicated to information, knowledge, and the supernatural as he is....it’s legitimately right there).

but the fact that there’s this retroactive attempt to pretend that she was never there is particularly baffling when looking at the fact that they never seem to actually replace her with anything. we are supposed to just genuinely not care enough about her to remember her in moments where giles is squaring up with a computer. and i really don’t think that it’s in character for giles TO still harbor this antipathy for computers after jenny’s death, particularly when considering the fact that it would be just this supremely awful metaphorical statement given the information that we have.

giles and jenny’s relationship starts with them beefing over computers, but if examined more closely, it could be argued that their fight is really about giles saying that he thinks jenny is shallow and not actually as important or worldly as he is. his realization that jenny is actually a woman of substance comes when she presents a facet of herself that reveals she uses computers in a way that is not something he would ever have thought of, and that actually incorporates a part of his life that is really important to him. so to then have a scene in season three where giles is saying “computers are stupid and worthless” when the entirety of his connection with jenny was about him questioning these beliefs and learning to love things outside of his comfort zone -- obviously it could be argued that this is a larger metaphor for jenny being unimportant, but the time the show spent on depicting giles’s grief & how fundamentally broken he was by jenny’s death makes this just nonsensical and totally out of character.

i can definitely see a situation where giles avoids computers, but never a situation where he actually shit-talks them, and i think that this is the only place where i’m not willing to allow the show its “jenny isn’t important but she is but she isn’t” paradox. this is fundamentally incompatible with everything that the story has told us about giles and jenny’s relationship, even if we’re going with the We Don’t Talk About Jenny principle. and even IF i am reading way too deep into the i robot argument, i cannot imagine a situation where giles himself would be comfortable with labeling computers as a unilaterally useless fad when jenny’s death came about because she was using one to translate the ritual to resoul angel. he would essentially be shit-talking jenny at that point, and obviously that’s just not something he would ever do. it doesn’t mesh.

[ladykittenlena]

New update on next gen au

I took the idea for the new Next Generation concept from @cursed-saphire-hart (by the way, hello to you, Desi), reworked it a bit and added the character of my friend @lifani-artz (and hello to you, Beth), and this is what happened:

now I will list all my background girls in order, who and whose wife:

Catherine/Evelyn - Edd's wife

Molly - Matt's wife

Susan - Tom's wife

And

Annya (my favourite girl) - Tord's wife

And now about the concept that I took from @cursed-saphire-hart . She had such a concert where Annya did not die, and Tord simply turns her into a bioweapon that can be kept as a pet. I initially liked this concept and a month ago I asked Desi if I could take it. She only answered today, because she had a full mailbox, and I understand this, but I have been very patiently waiting for this moment. I changed some points and added my ending. Well, I'm ready to talk about it.

So let's start with the fact that in my AU the actions take place according to tradition in tbatf (and where without it, I really love this comic and I'm waiting for a new chapter, but for now the authors are on a break and I will (even when a new chapter of tbatf comes out) entertain you with my au and write some fanfiction for Tumblr on it). Beth is also here - the oc of my friend @lifani-artz, she will become a nanny for Toby in the future, and then a kindergarten teacher in the Red Army.

Now about the plot.

The Red Army needed soldiers, and Annya is one of those soldiers. She recognizes the Army Leader as Tord, a boy she met in her cadet class. They communicate like a boss with a subordinate, but then Tord temporarily imbues Annya with feelings, but they are not strong. At the same time, Annya meets Beth, who, according to the idea of ​​@lifani-artz , was brought along with Vlahd, and they become friends. When the Gala comes, Annya wants to go where Beth and Molly help her (she works for the Leader as a designer, and took part in the development of uniforms for the Red Army.) You will see Annya's dress below, as well as the idea where I got it from (Desi, I'm sorry I didn't say that earlier!)

But... Annya doesn't get to the Gala, because Tord has already chosen Juniper and Anya for the ball (now I'll show you how they look)

Annya is very upset because she has known Tord for a very long time, but not only because of this. Juniper and Anya often bullied her at school, which caused Annya's anorexia, because of which she began to go to training, and then to the army. Then Annya was a weak girl with a broken psyche (and her parents had nothing to do with it, unlike Annya's parents in the canon @cursed-saphire-hart , they were nice people and loved Annya, but they were killed before her eyes because of what Annya has a weak psyche), and after the death of her parents, she was given up for adoption to the Edd`s family, and he tried very hard to help her in everything, eventually becoming for her the figure of an older brother, which Annya never had. Annya often drove herself to study, reacted sharply to insults, and Edd often had to stand up for her and coax her to sleep when Annya sat up too long in the evening doing her homework. Also, Annya often forgot lunch at home, and at school she went hungry, but did not show it, but one day Molly shared her lunch with her, and so a friendship was born between them (Annya's friendship with Jenny began later, if anything Molly introduced them later ). When Annya joined the army, she met Tord, and he was interested in her, because then Annya was weak, but then he began to fall in love with her, seeing how she tries and from a weak, unremarkable girl turns into a beautiful, even sexy girl.

Then Annya met Catherine and Susan, and the whole four girls, which also included Annya and Molly, were in the collection. Together they hung out, even visited Annya's homeland in Russia together. But I started talking about something, let's continue what happened later:

For the whole evening, Annya did not take off her dress, for which she received a reprimand from Brianna, and still hoped that Tord would pay attention to her, he did, but he also reprimanded, and then Juniper and Anya decided to deal with the girl. The leader left them to deal with Annya, and they literally beat her up, so that Paul and Patryk found her covered in blood, and they had to carry her to the hospital wing. Then, a month later, Annya began to be harshly persecuted, to which she harshly answered the offenders with her fists. It even got to the point that Annya was LITERALLY dragged away by Brianna from one girl. What about Annya? She bit the sergeant on the hand and tried to break free, but Brianna was stronger than Annya and tried to calm her down. Then she was taken to talk about her behavior with the Red Leader, he listened to everything and put the sergeant out the door, saying that he would deal with Annya. They talked and parted ways. A little later, he began to call her often and talk on various topics. They even had sex once. And it was very often.

But this does not mean that Tord did not remain devoted to his interests and other girls. Therefore, when Annya fell ill, he amused himself with other girls.

The friends (Molly, Jenny and Beth) who took care of Annya during her illness realized that she was pregnant and bought her a pregnancy test. It turned out to be positive, and Annya ran to tell Tord, but found him with another girl, and started talking about this and her pregnancy. Upon learning that Annya was pregnant from him, he became furious, because he did not plan to make a family with someone, but Annya wanted to have a family and for this she could leave the army, because of devotion to the child, which pissed off Tord even more, but he did not began to give orders to detain Annya. Annya herself, thanks to Edd, was able to find a place where people do not wear masks, and began to live there. Beth visited her and they spent time together.

Annya also helped Edd with his problems, because she believed that he was in her debt, after his family adopted her as the youngest child. Tord did not know about this, he was worried that she was hiding and she was lonely. So he sent Maktesløse for her, and when they brought her in, Annya, being in her ninth month, sat in a protective position until Tord hugged her and said that he loved her very much. They moved to the sofa and began to talk as before. Tord asked her about the child, and Annya told him a lot of things. Finally, she admitted that she would like to name the baby Toby. Tord supported this idea, the more he was glad that he would have an heir and a son, his son. Tord later went to work, and Annya crossed paths with Beth. She was present when Annya gave birth, and she held Beth's hand, and squeezed it in pain. Annya's labor was difficult, lasted 3 hours, and almost killed her, but be that as it may, she had a good, healthy baby, who was named Tobyas. Tord was informed about this, and he congratulated Annya on the birth of a boy and hugged her. But ... then when Annya was resting from childbirth, Tord was informed that Annya helped Edd. And here is the first difference between concept "monster Annya" version from @cursed-saphire-hart and my version:

Her Tord felt betrayed, and when Annya returned a year after Tobi was born, Tord felt paranoid and decided to turn her into a monster to keep her.

My Tord, based on Tord from tbatf and since he's a psycho, he can make a bioweapon out of anyone he wants, and here he was more jealous of Annya for Edd, but he was angry when he found out about her help to Edd because Tord hate him. So he decided to punish her and take Toby away from her once and for all. While she slept, Tord injected a serum into her neck and transferred her to a cell for a typical bioweapon, where he began to observe Annya's transformation into a monster. Annya woke up with pain in her stomach, and at first she was surprised that she was in a cage, but she lifted her shirt from the hospital and saw a large wound that was forming into a new mouth very quickly. This frightened her and she tried to get out of the cage, but Tord, who was watching her, told her not to try to get out. Annya, in hysterics, tried to persuade Tord to let her out, but he just smiled. Soon, Annya began to scream from the pain that the transformation caused her. It was veeeery painful. It seemed to her that her skin was melting right before her eyes, and her bones were stretched as she transforms . And Tord only smiled, he felt sadistic pleasure from turning Annya into a monster. Brianna saw him for this, and when she saw what was happening to Annya, she wanted to give her an antidote, but Tord forced her to watch Annya's transformation into a monster until the end. I'll show you what Annya looks like in the monster form for me and @cursed-saphire-hart but in reblog for that post.

After Annya finally turned into a monster, Tord told Brianna not to try to help her, otherwise she would be next. Brianna, speechless from shock for a while, was shocked by what she saw and very upset by Annya's fate. She told Molly about it, and she told Jenny and Beth. The latter was appointed to the position of a nanny for Toby, and she, moving away from shock and pain for her friend, did the work. Annya herself was often visited by Tord to mock her and make her hurt as much as possible. Tord took advantage of the fact that Annya was weak even as a monster (but then it turned out that this was not entirely true), and he liked to beat her half to death. But those were just the little things. Annya felt really broken when Tord told her that she would remain a monster until the end of her worthless days, and that during all this time she would never see her son. Annya was very hurt by this, and she began to cry.

Fast forward a few days, to the moment of Edd's failed suicide. Tom and Matt dragged him to Tord, and then they find out that Tord has a son. Tord confirms this, and speaks of him with contempt and disgust. Later, Tord shows them a new bioweapon, which Edd recognizes as his half-sister, Annya, and asks what happened to her at Tord's. He tells about everything that happened and accuses Edd of depriving him of Annya. Annya listens attentively all this time.

An argument ensues, which turns into a fight, and Annya, after waiting for the right moment, scratches Tord. She then repeats the operation, and hits him so that Tord falls. In a rage, Tord calls his guard in the person of Maktesløse and Annya is euthanized. Edd and Tord continued to fight and Edd surrenders. He tells Tord that he did not expect this from him, that he simply disfigured Annya, and if Tord has a conscience, then she will not give him rest, and leaves with Tom and Matt.

In the reblog, I will also show my children too, they have gone through a lot of changes.

Now about one more difference between the "Monster Annya" concept from @cursed-saphire-hart and my version:

In Desi's version, Tobi was very isolated, more so than in her main canon, and had no potential friends. In my au, I decided not to deprive my Tobyas of such a luxury as "friends", so it turns out that together they will reveal the secret of Tord and it will be very interesting.

In general, Tord in this AU once tried to isolate Toby, but did not do this, taking pity on him (and by the way, after the events of the quarrel with Edd, Tord's design will undergo changes, I will show it in the reblog.)

And now about what happened next.

A few months later, they upgraded the uniform (it was December, Tom and Susan had Theo), and Tord still decided to give Annya some his mercy (taking into account the fact that it was Christmas), and he decided to take Toby to her (who, in theory, will soon will be a year old). Toby looked at Annya questioningly at first, but when she came closer to him, Toby began to cry. Tord tried to calm the baby, but he only began to cry louder. Frustrated, Annya already wanted to leave, but Toby, for unknown reasons, did not want her to leave, and shouted something incomprehensible and held out his hand. Annya approached him inquiringly, and touched Toby's hand with her nose. Toby laughed enthusiastically, and began to ruffle Annya's fur, that even Tord was touched by this (this will be one of the rare moments when Tord was a good father.) Later, Toby lay on Annya's paws and slept, and she purred a cradle for him. Since then, Annya had a guaranteed mercy when Tord came to her with Toby. But this is only one of the favors that were presented to Annya. Beth came to Annya and brought her all sorts of goodies that Annya loved when she was a human. It helped Annya feel better. And when Beth came not only with a bag of sweets, but also with Toby, Annya felt very happy.

When Toby was two years old (by the way, after Theo, Max was born to Matt and Molly some time later, and he was already a year old), he said his first word. It was "mama". Soon he began to walk around the base looking for his mother, and came to Annya. And shouting "Mama!" hugged her. Annya was shocked by this, but was glad that Toby called her Mama. And Tord ... He was ... Not very happy about this ... And he ordered everyone not to talk about Toby's mother, but to say only that she had died, and to keep silent about the details (Tord also did, and this is the first formation of Tord as terrible father).

Other families had fun too. The eyes of Edd's son, Ethan (who was born in the 4 chapter of tbatf, and is the oldest of the children) suddenly turned bright green. After examination, it turned out that Ethan has a lot of radiation, even more than his father.

Max, Matt's son, has only one eye turned red, with a modified pupil, but this was justified by the fact that Maxell was born a half-vampire.

If you think that after Tord began to bring Toby to Annya, he changed his attitude towards her, then you are deeply mistaken! He continued to beat her. Once he did this in front of four-year-old Toby, who weepingly told his father to stop, but later regretted it. Tord hit Toby in the face so that he fell, and then the child had to listen to a lecture that soldiers don't cry, and then he took Toby to bioweapon tests, where they had to find out how they would behave towards Annya. Toby was horrified when he saw Annya, who was brought into a cage with a particularly dangerous monster, and he had to watch through pain as this monster literally almost killed Annya. Since his father was there, Toby tried not to cry as he saw Mama being literally torn to pieces. Having received severe injuries, Annya was taken out and began to provide first aid. Toby helped with this. Beth later learned about this from Toby, who came to her for moral support.

So that Toby knew what his mother looked like, Tord asked to make her portrait and then hung it on the wall. In the picture where I showed where I got the idea for Annya's dress, she looked the same, only her hair was loose. Since Toby and Tord spend time together in the evening, Toby often looks at this picture. He likes the way Annya looks and wants to ask Tord about her. But Tord does not want to do this, and often this brings Toby to tears, which in turn infuriates Tord, which leads to frequent beatings, so Toby has a lot of bruises on his body. Therefore, Toby began to hide his feelings, and shows them only to Beth or Annya.

Toby became very close to Annya, especially when you consider the fact that Toby calls her "Mama", and how gentle she was with him and how much she loved him. Not knowing the fact that Annya is his mother, Toby often tells her about himself and how his days go, because no one (except Beth) can understand him and his pain, both physical and moral. And Annya always listens to Toby's stories, and mentally sympathizes with him. It hurts her a lot when Toby starts telling her about how his father beat him.

At such moments, Annya wants to stop Tord's attacks on Toby, but she understands that she is just a bioweapon, which if she breaks out of the cage and raises her paw on the Red Leader, he will omit the moments that Annya was once a human and can kill her if he wants. Therefore, Annya can only cry over it. Toby cannot understand this, and often tries to calm her down. When he cries out after being beaten, he often hugs Annya and tells her:

- thank you for listening to me ... You are the only one who understands me and my pain ... You always listen to me, you are always gentle with me, you are like a mom to me, which I never had ...

Toby said a lot to Annya. When Tord mocked her, he called her an ugly monster that no one needs, and Toby heard it. Later he came to her and consoled her. Toby admitted that he never saw any bad qualities in Annya, he saw only good qualities in her, such as love, tenderness, the ability to listen and understand, and even if someone calls her terrible, for him she is still his "Mama", and he will always love her like his mother, whom he missed.

And then Annya, who after the transformation, thinking that after she turned into a monster, lost her beauty and dignity that she had when she was a human, she realized that despite the fact that Tord, the father of her child spoke all sorts of bad words about her , Toby was different. In some places, Toby looked like his father, but he had the features of his mother. And Annya saw it and was proud of him. What can not be said about Tord, who, for any offense, could beat Toby to a pulp. Why did he do this? And because my Tobyas, like Tobi @cursed-saphire-hart , looks like his mother, but it pisses the hell out of my Tord. In addition, Tord is still tormented by his conscience for what he did to Annya, but he does not want to admit it. It's easier for him to put the blame on Toby, who did nothing at all, than to plead guilty.

Toby often told Annya about his mother (well, at least what Beth told him), and she listened with interest, because she was still his mother. Sometimes when he ends stories, Toby would cry because he missed her so much. Naturally, she often tried to say:

- Toby, my baby boy, it's me, I'm your mom, please don't cry... I'm here...

But... She didn't say that. Why? Well, firstly, Annya can't talk, she lost this ability when she turned into a monster, in addition, Annya's mouth is now in a different place. It's either under the bust or on the stomach, depending on which art we look at, in the reblog I'll throw off the redrawn art from @cursed-saphire-hart , because this way she is drawn better than on my works. But now for the big question we're here for: Do Tobyas's friends know about this?

As I said, in my version, I did not isolate Toby from the outside world, and he can afford such a luxury as "friends", and all because Tord is not on this topic at all and he does not fumble for it (especially after a failed attempt to isolate Toby)

Well, they do know. But if Theo doesn't care, Maxell is often tense, because his family lives next to the Larksons, and hears all the quarrels and beatings. So Max's frequent phrase is: "God, how do you live in this horror ???"

Ethan is more interesting. His father, Edd, works as a psychologist for the Red Army, and he often visits Annya and they talk. Well, how they talk, I’m telling you, Annya can't talk, but she can do it on a mental level, since she has had a mental connection with Edd for a long time (also goes on the list of Tord’s dislike for Edd), but this is not about this, but how Ethan found out about Annya. Briefly speaking. Ethan is a creative boy, he loves to draw but also dabble in chemistry (at first he did it with home chemistry) Ethan also loves experiments (various) and even watches educational programs and films (but the most informative was surprisingly "Reanimator" of 85, if my memory serves me right, then this film came out exactly then, and why informative, but because later Ethan will reanimate his cat, as it was in "Reanimator"), Ethan also visited the laboratory of the red army, and that's what happened. Once Ethan, in search of interesting experiments, climbed to look for all this in the main computer of the laboratory of the red army, where the most interesting experiments are hidden in every sense. And then he came across a video where Annya, Toby's mother, turns into a monster.

Fun fact from me: I asked @cursed-saphire-hart if Annya's transformation into a monster was painful, and she replied that it was veeeery painful. Her skin seemed to melt and her bones stretched as she transformed. Even when I examined her art, I noticed that Annya has ram's horns on her head, hooves, some growths on her head and elbows, claws, a tail (small, but in my art I made it more authentic, I'll show you later), and mouth, somewhere under the chest, but not on the face. I use all these characteristics (almost all), only I made Annya more fluffy and soft (another interesting fact, but Annya often falls asleep next to her, especially since she often confuses her with a pillow in her sleep, since Annya has a very soft fur. Toby also sometimes slept with Annya (especially when he was a baby), sometimes after his stories about how he was beaten)

It was a retreat from the horror of what was to come.

In short, Ethan watched this video to the end, and after that he began to have nightmares, such that poor Ethan began to take drugs, namely white powder (this is coke, if anything). He wants to tell Toby about what he saw, but is afraid that this will break Toby completely, but due to the fact that Ethan remains silent, he harms himself. For example, Ethan decided that he would be the new Reanimator, and decided to repeat the scene from the same Reanimator movie (at this point Ethan was high). So that you understand what I mean if you have not watched (like me) this film.

There was a black cat named Rufus. In short, for unknown reasons, this cat died, and its owner (with whom the main character lived) found this cat in the refrigerator, for conservation, he didn’t start to figure it out. The main character sort of revived Rufus, but he became an aggressive zombie cat, the main character had to fight him off, then the owner of that cat joined in. As a result, poor Rufus had his spine broken. And what about Ethan? And the fact is that he had ... ATTENTION !!! The same black cat, with the same name (he named it under inspiration from the movie), but Ethan was very fond of Rufus (like Edd Ringo, only Rufus was more repulsed like his owner)

And when Rufus died (also for unknown reasons, but he did not die of old age, he was still young, but the reasons are not discussed), Ethan remembered that very scene from the Reanimator, and imagined himself as a new generation reanimator, and decided to do the same as in the film (he also had a special serum, only it was made on the basis of Ethan's blood, which contains a lot of reagents for resurrecting from the dead), even called Tobyas to celebrate it later. And what is the result? Toby comes to Ethan's basement (which he used as a lab because his parents don't allow a kitchen) and sees Ethan fighting off his cat, who he later breaks (only unintentionally) in the spine, that Ethan then had to straighten the cat, and reanimate it again. As a result, Ethan has his own zombie cat, who is as bad as he is. Edd was shocked by this, he then had to undergo a course of psychotherapy.

And now we come to the main events of the ay. Toby decided to introduce his friends to Mama to show that not all bioweapons can be evil. And let me remind you that Annya was like a mother to Toby (she is the same), and Toby knows that Annya was always very gentle towards him and loved him like her own child (in fact, it is, and Toby was all this time her child, he just didn't know about it.) Everything was going well, but suddenly Ethan burst into tears. When asked by Tobyas what happened, he replied:

"Toby, that monster you call 'Mama' is actually her... She's... She's your real mom!"

At this point, Toby will become mentally broken. For the first time he felt very broken because of Mama. Previously, he did not notice the similarities between Mama and Annya, his mother, but now he noticed that Annya's hair in some places sticks out in all directions, like his mother's hair stuck out, the same shape of the eyes, the same sadness in the eyes, and the same gentleness that exuded both from the portrait of Annya and from herself. Toby never thought that he would feel this way because of Mama, but the realization that Toby's father, Tord, against the will of Annya, his mother, turned her into a monster, and made her suffer throughout the whole time, torturing, beating and exposing her to skirmishes with dangerous monsters that are many times stronger than her, and after that she was barely breathing, bleeding, but Tobyas was always at her side at this time, helping her in many ways. Toby couldn't forgive his father for that. For the sake of Mama, he was ready for anything, even for death. Toby nearly got into a fight with Beth, who confessed that this was the case, and she didn't want to hurt Toby with this information. But Toby has already gone to his father to make a scandal. He shouted at Tord in tears:

- Why do my friends HAVE to be happy with their mothers, and I SHOULD be unhappy and almost without a mother?! WHY ME?!

Children and Beth will come running to the cry, and they will see Tord yelling at Toby for tears. But Toby will be furious enough to think. As well as Tord, who will begin to choke Toby with a robot arm, which is stronger than his usual arm. He will shout at Toby that he is a mistake of nature, like his mother, that if Toby had not been born, then Annya would have been a human, and Tord would not have turned her into a monster, but Toby was born, and now he is paying for this deprivation of mother. Then Tord will beat Toby hard, but he said something like:

- I don't want to be the next Red Leader anymore, I want to be happy with my Mama...

Tord will be even angrier and he will order Maktesløse to hand over Tobyas for experiments. Toby will scream and cry, try to escape from the hands of the soldiers with masks, but Tord will close the door so as not to hear his cry. Beth will look at Tord in tears, but he will tell her to mind her own business, and she will leave in tears.

Toby was injected with an experimental serum, and became a half-monster, but he has the ability to return to human form. And now about the difference between Tom and Annya:

When turning into a monster, Tom loses the ability to think as well as speak, and behaves like a wild animal, but with all this, he can return to human form. Annya, unlike Tom, still has her own consciousness (and she is still aware that Toby is her baby boy, whom she loved, but the realization that Toby grows up in a terrible environment, and that Tord treats him terribly hurts her) and Annya can't talk, and if she wanted to say something, then she only let out a quiet growl, which Toby always found cute, but unlike Tom, she cannot return to human form, and in fact she needs a special serum , which Tord forbade giving to Annya, and if someone tries to do this, they will either be shot or sent to experiments like Annya and Toby.

After that, Toby decided that enough was enough. He pulled on the hood of a hoodie, took a children's raincoat, and went to Annya. Annya, seeing him, immediately went up to Toby, and he took off his hood, and Annya saw that Toby had grown almost the same horns as hers, and a bruise on his neck. Toby began to tell her about what had been done to him. Annya listened to this and cried, realizing how her boy was suffering. Toby confessed that he didn't want to be the Red Leader's heir and was about to leave. He hugged Annya and said to her:

- Forgive me, Mama, if I had not been born, then you would be happy being a human, forgive me ... I love you so much .... I love you very much, Mama ... Goodbye ...

Annya looked after him and wept bitterly, realizing that she had lost her baby boy, and thought:

- Toby, my poor baby boy, what did you do with him, Tord? ..

A month passes. Everyone is looking for Toby: friends, Beth, red army soldiers, even Tord. But he began to hold the opinion that Toby became so because of the influence of Annya, and decided to get rid of her. He decided to expose Annya again to a new encounter with a very dangerous monster.

Annya understood what Tord wanted to do, and began to defend herself and behave aggressively towards Tord. But Tord won, and dragged her into the cell to a strong monster. Everyone gathered there: Beth, Ethan, Maxell and Theo, as well as other people who knew Annya. The monster with whom there was a meeting turned out to be very cruel, and literally tore Annya apart. After that, Annya, with terrible body injuries, lay bleeding in her cage. Tord forbade giving her first aid, in the hope that Annya would die in agony.

Maxell fell seriously ill after that, so much so that he had a severe fever, and Molly could not bring her down, and Ethan completely went crazy, and he had to be sent to a mental hospital for treatment (poor Edd's nerves at that moment)

At one point, Toby lost consciousness, and woke up in the medical unit, and then after resting, he went to visit Annya to console her, thinking that she had been lonely during this time. Seeing blood flowing from the door, Toby ran in and screamed in horror when he saw that Annya was very injured and weakened, and apparently was about to die. Toby cried in horror and asked Mama not to leave him, that she was the only one for whom he lives, he screamed and cried, hugging Annya by the muzzle and stroking her. Annya did not open her eyes that Toby had a tantrum, and he began to turn into a monster. Already Beth ran to Toby's cry that she had to run and literally persuade Tord to provide Annya with first aid and she succeeded. Toby had to be dragged literally away from Annya, but he shouted:

- Not! I want my Mama! She needs me! Mama! Mommy! Open your eyes!

Toby became so ill that he began to cough up black blood, and then lost consciousness. It turned out that the experimental serum that Toby had been injected with had been destroying him all that month. That's when Tord realizes how much Toby is dear to him, and that he treated him badly. He also understands that he was a terrible father, and he also treated Annya badly, torturing her.

There are two endings here. One is bad and not canonical, and the second is canonical and happy.

Bad:

Annya does not have time to save and she dies. Toby finds out about this, and finally turns into a monster and loses his mind. After that, Tord finally becomes an inveterate drunkard and also dies. And Toby dies of his madness. Ethan remained in the mental hospital. Maxell found out about this and plunged into depression. But Theo doesn't care. Beth never recovered from this. Luckily it's not canon. Here is the canon:

Good:

Toby recovered from the serum and made amends with Tord. Tord became a good father, and returned Annya to human form.

One day, Toby and Beth were walking around the base, and Toby saw the silhouette of a woman. Beth immediately recognized Annya in her, and hugged her. Annya told her that she was returned, but then Toby asked:

- And who are you? You look a lot like my Mama...

Annya came closer to him and said:

- Oh, Toby, you are already such a big boy, but you were such a baby ... It's me, your mother, Annya.

Toby won't believe it at first, but then he looks closer and realizes it's his Mama. The same protruding hair, the same shape of the eyes and body, the same smell of roses (yes, Annya smells of roses, and not only), and the same gentleness emanating from both one picture and herself (as in the form of a monster, as well as in human form). His eyes will sparkle and he will throw himself into her arms with a cry:

- Mama! I can't believe! You are alive! And you... You're human! You are human! I already thought that I would never see you as a person, but no, it came true! And I already thought that this was all a legend, but no! Beth didn't lie! You are truly beautiful! Mommy, I can't even put into words how happy I am! I barely lived! I missed you!

Annya will smile and hug him, saying with tears:

- Toby, my sweetie, you would know how much I missed you! For all the time while I was a monster, I so wanted to hug and comfort you, to say that I was there ... My poor little boy, how you have suffered during all this time! According to your stories, your dad beat you and even handed you over for experiments. My poor baby boy, don't cry, I'm here now and I won't let Papa hurt you anymore!

Both will cry and hug, and then Beth will lead them to Tord.

Tord will be at this time sitting at the papers when Beth comes and says to get ready. Tord will understand nothing, but when he sees Toby with Anya, he will understand everything.

(By the way, an interesting fact: at that moment there was nothing on Annya from the word AT ALL! When she turned into a monster, her maternity shirt (which she did not take off) was torn when her bones were stretched, like skin that seemed to melt before her eyes (I’ll say right away but Compared to her legs, Annya's arms were almost the same length as the legs themselves, even a little more), so I think it would be quite expected if she had no clothes on and would be naked for some time.) Tord immediately began to hug her, but Annya quickly stopped it and then she kicked Tord's ass so that he knew how to behave.

And Tord needs to wait until Annya can forgive him before they get married. What Toby will be happy about, and then he will have to have a little sister.

I wrote this back at the beginning of October 1, when only @cursed-saphire-hart answered me, but since my article is long, I wrote it for several days and then through a translator, then I constantly say words, since I am Ukrainian, and in general I speak in another language, but I'm glad I finished writing this long story!

And now I'm going to collect arts for an additional reblog to this post.

Tobyas, Ethan, Maxell, Theo, Molly, Catherine/Evelyn, design Susan and my version of Annya by @ladykittenlena and @lifani-artz

Beth by @lifani-artz

Concept "Monster Annya" by @cursed-saphire-hart

[radioactive-earthshine]

Ok I have. A fix it fic plot in my head. And I'm ALREADY WORKING ON SOMETHING ELSE, and I don't have the energy to write all of it (it's also like. Extended. So I might just run out of steam halfway) But I can tell you my synopsis. So, Lobo does some time travel bc he has time travel abilities on his bike, like, canonically. But oopsie!, something went screwy with the capabilities, and he got shot right next to Slobo in the statue. However, Lobo is much larger than Slobo, so the statue breaks open. Lobo is like "damn that's crazy, anyway have fun dying I'm going home" but then he finds that the bike is broken. Slobo says "hey if you can find something that can fix me, I'll fix your bike." so they have a deal now. Slobo fixes it and Lobo brings him back to the past, and Slobo starts getting worse, fast. Lobo needs to find a safe house, and the closest one is Crush's apartment. This leads to a very clear scene where they break into Crush's apartment and Lobo gets his nose broken by a flying travel mug. They reach an agreement and Lobo leaves to find some shit he needs to help stop Slobo's cell death. This leads him to Larfleezle's hoard, where he finds what he needs, and as he leaves he accidentally breaks Bruno out. They start to fight, but then Larfleezle is like "bitch don't steal from me I'll kill you" so they have to team up to survive. They make it back to earth together after some Space Bonding™ and finally start Slobo on the treatment. Lobo decides to stay to make sure he's ok and Bruno doesn't have anywhere else to go so he stays too. A few weeks later, right as Slobo is managing to be closer to healthy, Larfleezle is back. They fight as a family, they win, sappy hallmark family finale.

So. There was that. What do you think?

This is a wild ride from start to finish and I can see it blocked out in comic format easily. I will admit that I did not get a chance to read much of the N52 Lobo run and my main exposure is when he showed up in other comics so it's hard for me to really give a solid opinion on how to work him into the Lobo family but I'd be down for this. I feel like Crush would be very suspicious about Lobo's 'helping' Slobo, despite the fact that Lobo did give him his word he would help him and he NEVER goes back on his word she knows he can monkey-paw the shit out of it. I feel like she would reach out to the OG YJ and say "Hey your old teammate is in my apartment puking blood, Lobo is trying to fix him but you know how he is."

It leads into them of course reaching out to him and Slobo getting PISSED about it because he reads it as pity and Anita needs to put him in his place. They bond together, share memories, and offer to try to get him help from somewhere else but Slobo refuses and Lobo comes back etc. etc. etc.

There's so many ways he could come back, whether as a nuclear Lobofam 'bonding' moment or as something wild and crazy like Jenni Ognats stumbling across him and freeing him and him becoming a member of LOSH.

[tempobaekh]

Rating Penthouse: War In Life characters

I asked my followers on Instagram to give me Penthouse characters to rate and my thoughts about them so I thought to post it here as well. Now this is my personal opinion about how I feel about the characters and how much I will rate them

⚠️⚠️THIS CONTAINS A FEW SPOILERS⚠️⚠️

My Instagram: Tempobaek

Logan Lee

10/10

Lemme just say I love him SO MUCH

LOGAN LEE BEST BOY

I absolutely loved his character and the fact that he was one of the few people who wants justice and is honest made me love him even more

Him playing Go Hu Dong was amazing as well and I didn't recognize him at all at first like he played it so well with the accent, costume and wig and everything

His accent and language switch in between English and the Busan accent Korean was so fucking sexy🥵

✨Mr. Joo✨

My man was also smart with his revenge

He was also serving amazing LOOKS every episode in the two seasons and I loved every single one of them

And I'm going to be honest here, after watching the preview for S2 ep13 his laugh was creepy in one of the clips and after reading a few theories I lowkey thought that he would be the next villian

I regret suspecting him now

But instead of that they gave us a bigger plot twist and blew up our man with a bomb😩

He literally went ✨LiGhT iT Up LiKe DyNaMiTe✨ (I'm so sorry)

I would've rather have him be a villian than die in the bomb

I MISS HIM ALREADY AND LOVE HIM SO MUCH😭

DID I MENTION THAT I LOVE HIM

Joo Seok Kyung

7/10

Another one that annoyed me angered me so much🙄

Like she was ruthless and had no mercy when it came to bullying and putting people down that she thought were a rival or putting people down in general

She didn't change even when Rona died

She also went as far as to like cheat her way to win the Cheong Ah Art High School trophy and blackmailed Cheon Seojin to win the trophy

But there were times where she would show emotions and those would be often her break down and weak moments

And those moments would really show how she is broken inside and puts up a careless and brave image, she is someone who needs healing even though healing takes time

I also saw someone saying like 'oh Seok Kyung hates her mom so much'

Yeah she hated her mom but she didn't hate her to death like she didn't wish death upon her

Seok Kyung was heart broken when she heard Suryeon's death and that showed that she still loved her mom even though Suryeon didn't give birth to them

I was heart broken when I saw that she cut her hair because here was no one there to tie it for her bc Suryeon loved Seok Kyungs long hair and that's why she didn't cut it but after he mothers death no one was there to tie her hair for her

I started seeing her in a different light after a while bc again it showed that he character was very broken emotionally and needed healing

I'm interested about seeing more of her character development after the last ep where she defended Rona

Also my girl is so hot, another one that was serving amazing looks

Joo Seok Hoon

8/10

He was lowkey annoying at first ngl

Like my man was just🧍🏻‍♂️

It annoyed me so much how he defended his sister so much, fell for her tricks, covered up for her and did anything she said EVEN though its wrong

But after some time I understood that he cared for and that she was the only family left to him

I mean Seok Hoon hate Joo Dan Tae so he doesn't counts and Suryeon was dead at the moment

I will still not forgive him for bullying Seol A even though he regrets it

It also annoyed me how he didn't stood up for Rona at all in the first season even though he liked her

By he got so much better in S2, he was even part in the revenge plan

He is literally the human CCTV camera in Hera Palace like he knows more than even the viewers know

The way he was protective of Rona when he found out she was alive was so aDORABLE

And my man was amazing in the last episodes

I love him

Cheon Seo Jin

4/10

THIS WOMAN MAKES MY BLOOD FUCKING BOIL

Like I sometimes just was to 🤜🏻👩🏻

But sometimes I wanna hug her😩

Idk I feel like she became a horrible person bc of greed and that he father and mother placed too high expectations for her

Instead of praising her for her accomplishments her parents wanted her to do more

Maybe that's why she was desperate for love and affection and found that in Joo Dan Tae even though he pretended to like her

But that definitely does not dismiss her horrible actions

But also the harsh past made her the could hearted person, like she left her father to die

She felt more care towards her daughter after she almost lost her because Eunbyeol tried to commit suicide

She was in alot of pain and you could see it in her cries and when she was on the phone with the person

Soyeon's acting was amazing in that scene

She started to care more about her ex husband and daughter when she saw how much Eunbyeol was suffering and she realized that she genuinely liked Ha Yoon Chul hwen she saw how horrible Joo Dan Tae was

I did feel bad for her sometimes but after seeing that she didn't change I really didn't feel any sympathy for her

She needs therapy

Girlie was shocked when the doctor said she is losing her voice like bestie you are screaming every episode

She was also serving amazing looks every episode

Ha Yoon Chul

5/10

The first male character I simped for

Like I am not going to deny it but he is hot🥵

But the first few episodes he was an absolute asshole and greedy

But I never expected him to be Yoonhee's ex boyfriend

I did like him a tiny bit when he saved Yoon Hee from Kyu Jin

His entrance in S2 with the helicopter was damn hot

And I WAS SO SHOCKED WHEN HE SAID MEET MY WIFE OH YOON HE

LIKE YAY MY SHIP IS SAILING

I spoke too soon

His character development and fighting skills were hot as well

He was ADORABLE with Rona and Yoonhee

I seriously thought that Rona was his daughter

BUT THAN AT THE CHEONG AH FESTIVLE OOF SIR I WANTED TO PUNCH HIM

I WAS SO MAD WHEN HE SABOTAGED RONA'S PERFORMANCE

I began hating him after that💀

Like he went 📈📉 with his character development

AND THEN HE CLEANED EUNBYEOL'S MEMORY FROM THAT NIGHT LIKE SIR SKSHSKSHKS SHE DID HAT TO YOUR DAUGHTER

I actually asked my dad what he thought about what Yoon Chul did and this was his reponse:

"If you look at it from a parents perspective they would want to do anything if they saw their child in pain like he did but I would've also scolded her and had a conversation with her about why she did it instead of wiping her memory from that night like he did. "

So that's that

I LOVED IT WHEN YOON HEE CAME WITH THAT BLOW AND TOLD HIM RONA WAS HER DAUGHTER

Jonghoon's acting was chef's kiss in that scene

I was going to rate him a 4 but I gave him that 5 when I saw how he was at court, he admitted to his wrong doings but also still had feelings for Yoon Hee

I wanna see his reaction in s3 to Rona now bc now that he got to know that is his daughter I wonder how he will be

Lee Kyu Jin

1/10

AN ASSHOLE

USELESS

WHY IS HE HERE

Like I have nothing to say about him rather than I hate him and that he useless just like his wife and son

HE IS LITERALLY NOTHING WITHOUT HIS MOM

I'm only giving him that one bc he was funny in the episodes

THATS THE ONLY REASON HE IS THERE JUST FOR COMEDY PURPOSES

Go Sang Ah

0.5/10

ANNOYING 2.0

USELESS 2.0

ALL SHE DOES IS SPEND HER HUSBAND AND MOTHER IN LAW'S MONEY

LIKE SHE AIN'T EVEN WORKS

UNLIKE KANG MARI

The only thing she does is gossip

And spills the tea☕

SHE IS LITERALLY NOTHING WITHPUT HER HUSBAND AND HIS FAMILY

Giving her a 0.5 bc she is kinda funny eh

Lee Minhyuk

0/10

ANNOYING 3.0

USELESS 3.0

ASSHOLE 2.0

Idk if it runs in the family but again he is useless

And a dumbass

He also nothing without his parents

Why is he there tho like you ain't even funny

All he can do is cause trouble

And bullied Jenny

His dumbass slipped and broke his own arm and blamed it on Rona smh🤦🏻‍♀️

Sometimes I just wanna 🤜🏻👦🏻

Also my dude was trying to sound all intimidating by saying

"Oh Jenny's father is a scary man, yOuR dEaD BaE rOnA"

Like dude worry about yourself bitch you are dead first for bullying Jenny

But like I hate the character but LOVE THE ACTOR HE IS SO HOT OMFG

Joo Dan Tae

0/10

ANOTHER ONE THAT PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH AND MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL

SOMETIMES I DONT WANNA 🤜🏻 I WANNA 🔪

LIKE I HATE HIM WITH A FUCKING PASSION

I DONT CARE ABOUT HIS PAST OR ANYTHING HE IS A GREASY, GREEDY, PSYCHO, OBSESSIVE MANIPULATIVE, POSSESSIVE PSYCHO

Like I legit thought he was nice in he first ep and then I saw him kiss Seojin and-

Me: 🤨😧😃🤮 MY EMOTIONS WENT LIKE THAT

LIKE HE IS SO FUCKING POSSESSIVE OVER SURYEON, AEGYO AND SEOJIN LIKE ITS DISGUSTING

I WAS GETTING YANDERE BEHAVIOUR FROM THAT OLD MAN

PURE TRASH

Bae Rona

9/10

I LOVE HER NOW

RONA BEST GIRL

She was also annoying at first and was very ungrateful

But over time she got better, still a tiny bit annoying sometimes but better

When she came back from the US I WAS LIKE GIRL NO YOU FINNA RUIN THE PLAN

I do feel bad for her bc she went through alot with bullying, her mom going to jail not only once but twice, her getting to know that Yoonchul who she started liking sabotaged her performance, and also literally almost dying

My girl has been through a lot

AND WHEN SHE RUNNED TOWARDS THE STAIRS OUTSIDE WHEN EUNBYEOL WAS CHASING HER I WAS LIKE GIRL RUN TO THE HALL YOU RUNNIN OUTSIDE

I am excited to see her reaction to getting to know that Yoon Chul is her dad

Part 2 is also posted!

[humaninpogresss77]

Stargirl: A pleasant surprise.

So I finished the season finale and I have a lot of thoughts about it, so here I would try to mention all of them.

1. Again, this show has gave me so much serotonin. Is a pleasant surprise to watch how good it is. The choreography, the chemistry of the characters, the CGI, the plot. I'm happy to watch each episode.

2. I wasn't completely sell with Eclipso at the beginning. How wrong I was. It did great.

3. Sometimes, the fact that you can predict something in the plot doesn't mean that when it happens is bad. I knew since the shadowlands episode that we were gonna have a corrupt Courtney and love was gonna be the part that was gonna pull her out. I love that scene anyway. Good plots are important, even if they are predictable.

4. One of the few things I was hoping is to keep the Crocks, the shade and Cindy. And that's exactly what we got, so I win.

5. I imagine a full green lantern should be a nightmare for the CGI budget; but I want more of Jennie. And I want her Jade costume. I know her we are more Alan Scott green lantern than lantern corps lantern but we can mix it up a little.

6. I was thinking, is not that what we got is bad, is that I want something a little different? I mean the JSA reunion. It felt that it needed to push that scene because there was so much other stuff going on, but after what the members suffer this season, I was hoping a moment more emotional. HOWEVER, the same reason of what they suffered this season, is why that reunion worked. Eclipso broke them, as a group, and individuals, so a happy reunion wasn't completely real. I just hope they don't brush the baggage for next season. I mean, what happened with Yolanda and the group is something to discuss. Also, Rick was in jail, for a long time, alone, and no one went to visit my boy.

7. Loving the dynamic between Cindy and the JSA. I hope that stay like that for a while. For funny moments.

8. Can Yolanda go live with the nice woman from the place they worked together? Also, where is Rick gonna live. Who is gonna be his legal guardian.

9. To be honest, I was worried about starman coming back. The CW and the arrowverse is known to take from the female lead to give to the white man. But that scene was very good, it worked in a way that shown him supporting Courtney and elevating her. So that's ok, so far. I hope stay that way.

10. Can I say that I love how they include Barbara in all of this? The family dynamic dealing with the superhero stuff is one of my favorite parts. I wonder if this new bad guy is gonna get interest in Barbara as well. It would be to keep the tradition for each season.

11. I really can't tell a single thing from Cameron yet. Poor boy has been so in the sides since this show started. I don't feel I can elaborate a single feeling towards this guy, because they haven't give me anything from him. Let's see what would happen next season now that he knows.

12. Can I say I freaking love Jackeem? he is amazing and I want him more.

13. I'm a little confused on how they are gonna made that suit, but I'm loving the over support of Beth's parents. That's how you are around your 100% amazing super hero daughter.

14. And speaking of Beth; I was a little worried they were gonna go with the "never met your heroes" thing some other shows use. But I love how supportive and proud Chuck is for Beth. That was a nice touch.

15. I'm still out of any ship. I can't stop seeing them as just small kids that should be doing homework and not get involve in any of this. That doesn't mean I don't see the ships interactions, chemistry and stuff; or for any chance, that I'm going to be against or pro any ship. I just don't ship here. If any of you do, please continue.

[bustyasianbeautiespod]

Episode 9 Transcript: Let Mary Kill Children 2K22

[intro guitar music]

G: Hello, my name is Grey.

C: And my name is 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, in case you didn't know yet, we are both Asian.

G: Still both Asian!

-

G: So for today's episode, we will be discussing Season 1, Episode 9: “Home,” written by Eric Kripke and directed by Ken Girotti.

C: I was so mad when I saw that this was direct- sorry, that this was written by Eric Kripke. 'Cause I was like, “Wow, that was a really good episode, I wonder who wrote it. Oh, the worst man alive! Hi.”

G: I mean, it makes sense because it's plot-heavy, so of course it’s going to be written by Mr. Eric Kripke himself. But oh my God, like I watched this episode, and I remember back in episode two in this podcast when we said that we're not fans of the show... [laughing]

C: Right.

G: I may be changing my mind.

C: [laughing] No, didn't I message you "Oh my god, I think I love Supernatural!" after watching this episode?

G: Literally, I was like, "Okay, maybe this show is actually good."

C: Right, like maybe there's good writing and themes in Supernatural? Crazy.

G: Like, this episode made me remember why I wanted to do this podcast and why I wanted to rewatch the show in the first place, and why I stuck around the very first time I watched it. Like, it's such a good episode! Anyway. [laughing]

G: So what- what did you know prior to watching about this episode.

C: Okay, so I knew that this is the episode that we get to meet Missouri, my beloved. She was even cooler than I thought she would be. Um, I knew about the scene with Mary's ghost where she tells Sam that she's sorry and sort of burns up. And I knew that the case was a haunting at their old house, but I think I thought that the antagonist of the week would be Mary's ghost. So I thought that the only ghost there the whole time was Mary's until Missouri said that there were two. Like before, I was cheering going, "Oh my God, I can't believe Mary Winchester herself tried to freeze a toddler to death by lowering him into the fridge with juice!" But then it wasn't even her. What a fucking- what- so sad, so sad. Let Mary do murders of children 2K22.

G: So that's all you knew? You didn't know about the ending?

C: No, I did not know that the worst man alive was gonna show up at the end. [G laughs] It was a jump scare, it was horrific, it made me scream and cry.

G: Oh, that would be interesting to talk about, because it is like, quite shocking. I remember watching this like last year, when I'd forgotten it already, and I was like, "Oh my god! John is here!" Anyway...

-

C: First there's "The Road So Far", and it's one of the better edited ones of season 1 because it doesn't have all the weird flashy text on screen.

G: It doesn't have Dean saying, "Previously on Supernatural." [laughs]

C: Yeah, thank god. Right, and in fact it's just sort of a bunch of Mary-relevant clips from the last few episodes, and it ends with Dean shoving Sam against the bridge in episode 1 and saying, "Don't talk about her like that," so I thought the editing on that one was decent and a good lead-up to what was going to happen.

G: Okay, so we open in Lawrence, Kansas, Sam and Dean's hometown, to a woman crying over her wedding photos. We presume here that she either separated from her husband, or her husband died. Her kid goes up to her and says, "Mom, there's something in my closet." So the mom checks- her name's Jenny, by the way- Jenny checks and says, "There's nothing here, honey!"

C: Which is such a lie because Dean and Sam and Cas are all in the closet right now, but- [G laughs]

G: The mom tucks in the kid, who says she doesn't like the house, but the mom promises that they'll be happy here, and they'll be fine. She kisses the kid goodnight, and she turns to leave, and the kid asks Jenny to barricade the closet door with a chair, and she does. So the woman, Jenny, goes back to unpacking, and she hears scuffling in the basement. So she goes down to the basement. And- [sighs] okay. Uh, so you live in the US, right?

C: Mm-hm.

G: Are houses really this big? Like, because I was thinking about this in terms of like, John was a blue-collar worker, right?

C: Yes.

G: He was a mechanic, and the house is so big, and, as far as I know, Mary didn't have a job.

C: Right.

G: And I was just thinking, like, "How can they afford a house this big?" Unless it was renovated to be bigger.

C: I was also wondering that. Yeah, 'cause it is possible that the house used to be smaller, and then it- after part of it burned down, they rebuilt it larger. Houses in the US are indeed this big. I think another thing is that real estate in Kansas, I would assume, is a lot cheaper.

G: Mm-hm, that makes sense.

C: Because, yeah it's Kansas, and the cost of living is a lot lower and also, I think because there's less population density, square footage doesn't cost as much, unit-wise, but yeah, it still seems odd that John would be able to afford a house this big. And it also seems odd that Jenny would be able to afford this house, given that she says later that she's unemployed and can't afford a lawyer.

G: I was gonna say "this was before the housing crisis." I have no idea what the housing crisis was like. But-

C: Oh, true, this was before the housing crisis! I don't know what house prices were before the housing crisis, but maybe everyone just lived in mansions for no money at all, who knows. Not me!

-

G: We go back to the kid who isn't sleeping, and the chair starts moving away from the closet. Jenny, who is still in the basement, find some pictures of John and Mary and the Winchester kids. Back in the daughter's room, we find that the closet is burning. What did you think of the effect?

C: It wasn't very good, CGI-wise.

G: The thing is like, when the figure later on is burning, it looks good.

C: Yeah.

G: But when the closet is burning, it looks goofy as shit.

C: Yeah, it just looks like they put a fire in front of a greenscreen and then made the greenscreen the closet.

G: Yeah, well, what can you do? It's 2005, and their budget was $20,000. [laughing]

C: I swear to god that's a lie. That is a lie, because they had to at least pay the crew more than $20,000 for a season's worth of work.

G: [laughing] Again, it was before the housing crisis.

C: [laughing] Housing crisis... You're right, you're right. The crew each got a penny a day, and that was enough for rent and health insurance and everything.

G: So the daughter screams, and we get the flash screen. And now this I'm sure of, because I re-checked. This is the first intro screen where it happens after the teaser portion. Did you notice that?

C: Oh, so all the other times, it happened after "The Road So Far"?

G: Yes, exactly. I- this is one of those things that I assume you just won't notice because, again, you don't- you've never watched the show enough times to connect the dots that that's the- that's what they usually do. But like, I know this, every time, after "The Road So Far," I was- I was always very confused and very, like, "When will it change? When will it change?" And now it changes, and I'm like, "I was right all along."

-

C: Now we're at another Sam nightmare, and he's dreaming of Jenny screaming in her bedroom. He wakes up, and they're in a motel, and Sam's drawing a picture of a tree. And he looks really cute in this scene, like he really does. He looks really cute in this scene. [laughs] Anyway! [both laugh]

G: He does. Like, I must admit, he looks like- I've told you this- but he looks like an elf.

C: Right. He's the twink Pinocchio. [G laughs] Yeah. This episode is Sam twink Pinocchio moments for realsies.

C: Right, so Dean's looking for some cases, but Sam's very stuck on drawing the tree, and then- and then Dean, while trying to get Sam's attention, says, "Any of these things blowin' up your skirt, pal?" Which I think means that I get to pull out my spreadsheet again.

G: I- I thought about this long and hard, because I- I...

C: Did you- ugh, fine. Okay, hit me with it.

G: No, I just... Does it count? [laughs]

C: I think literally joking up-skirts is already bad.

G: I guess because the delivery was more serious, I was, I was able to, like, excuse it a bit more. Like he- it wasn't like [imitates skeevy laughing]. It wasn't smarmy, you know? But yeah, I get what you mean, so you can add a point.

C: Thank you. Yeah, Dean misogyny moment number 15.

G: Oh my god. [laughs]

C: Sam realizes that the tree from his dream is near their old childhood home, because he saw it in the background of their- the photo that we've seen before of them as a family. And I was like, "It's a fucking tree, Sam. Trees all look the same, and the one you drew doesn't even look like the tree in the photo-" [G laughs] But whatever. It's the same tree, somehow.

C: Sam says, "Dean, I know where we have to go next. Back home." Which made me so sad that the last thing that they had to call "home" was the house that burned down when Sam was six months old.

G: This entire sequence, like, everything that comes after this, up until the scene and I was so... [laughs]

C: Yeah.

G: I can't describe- I can't explain the state that I'm in.

C: The state of your heart.

G: Yes.

C: Sam and Dean are your best friends.

G: Literally, they're my best friends, and this scene hurts me, and- but also, it's so melodramatic that it's so enjoyable still, you know?

C: Right. I was like, "Look at those meow-meows meow." [both laugh]

C: Dean is clearly affected but goes, "Okay, random, where'd that come from?" Which starts the whole thing of Dean during this episode where he's trying to be cool as a cucumber and just cracking everywhere, all the time. Sam says that he thinks that the people who live in their old house might be in danger and tells Dean to just trust him on this. Dean says, "Come on, man, that's weak. You gotta give me a little more than that." And my immediate thought on that is, "Well, you should have given Cas a little more than that when you asked him to be on your side and not do Purgatory during 'The Man Who Would Be King'" [G laughs] because, again, the only person I care about in the entire world is Cas. But.

Dean keeps pushing, and Sam eventually tells him that he has these nightmares that sometimes come true. And Dean's very stunned about this, and after Sam tells him about dreaming about Jess's death, Dean tries to brush it off.

Okay, so this is like, the secret that Sam was keeping during [in unison] "Bloody Mary."

G: Yeah.

C: Right, well, how do you- what do you think he was feeling during this scene? Because I know that he was sort of backed into telling Dean here, but do you think he feels relieved that he's finally getting to let go of this secret?

G: I don't think he was feeling anything with regards to the secret, because I think more than anything, he was feeling- like, and we can see it throughout the episode, like the hype of the fact that they might find out who killed Mary and Jess. Because throughout this episode, that was really Sam's focus, like every turn he makes, he's like, "It could be the thing that killed Mom and Jess!" So I feel like what he was feeling in this moment was more with relation to that than, like, "Oh, my secret is revealed."

C: Yeah, that makes sense. Sam's very practical. He was like, "Well, the thing that I want is to find what killed Jess and to end the revenge plot that has been taking up all of our lives, and the way to do that is to say these words." That make sense.

So yeah, as you mentioned, Sam is very excited about this case. He says, "This might even be the thing that killed Mom and Jessica!" And Dean's still being very overwhelmed, and he says, "Slow down. First, you tell me you've got The Shining, and then you tell me that I've gotta go back home, especially when-" Melodramatic pause.

G: And then Sam- [laughing]

C: - says, like, "What?" And Dean says, "When I swore to myself that I would never go back there?" [laughing] It's so melodramatic. It zooms in on his face so much and his teary little eyes.

G: [laughing] And then, yeah, it's fully zoomed in on his face. And then he does, like, a little turn, and he turns around, so he turned his back to the camera. And then Sam was like, "We have to check this out," and then he turns back around to face Sam and the camera and he's like, [in unison[ "I know we do." And it's so dramatic! And like, at this point in the episode, I was like, "I am having so much fun. I am- I enjoy this episode so much, and we're literally like, 10 minutes in."

C: Probably less than 10 minutes in, yeah. Great . I love when the men show emotions and cry.

Also, I think it's interesting to think about this conversation in the context of- "Bugs" just happened, so they've already had a lot of arguments that shake up their brother relationship and show a lot of resentment that comes out of the way that they were raised, because Mary died so early, so yeah, going from that to this is spicy.

-

G: So they arrived in Laurence, and then in the car, Sam says, "You going to be all right, man?" and Dean, in all honesty, replies, "Let me get back to you on that." I like that line. That he didn't just say like, "Yeah, I'm good!" He's being as honest as a person like Dean can possibly be at this moment.

So they head out to the house, and Dean starts introducing themselves as from the FBI, but Sam stops him and says the truth, which is that they are the Winchesters, and this is their old house. The woman believes them and cites the photos she found as the reason why she belives them, so she lets them in. And they meet Ritchie and Sari, the two kids. So Sari is the daughter, the older daughter, and Ritchie is the younger son.

So, in this scene, Ritchie is like, asking for juice, and we pointedly look at the fridge, which has a little lock on the side. [C laughs] Which is foreshadowing for later, but also, it's such a weird detail, but I guess it's essential to the plot that there's the lock.

C: Right.

G: But also, it's not that essential, because, like if you close the fridge, you couldn't open it from the inside.

C: Yeah, it's kind of hard for a toddler to push it open, right?

G: Yeah.

C: I guess it's just to make it seem scarier that he's trapped inside.

G: Anyway, they start talking, and Sam and Dean ask about the house. Jenny says, "Well, it's getting old. The wiring's faulty, there are rats in the basement," and then Sam and Dean's suspicion light bulbs are like, lighting up at this point. And then Sari, the daughter, asks Jenny to ask Sam and Dean if, quote unquote "it," was here when they were here. And Jenny tries to comfort her, saying that she had a nightmare, etc, etc, to which the kid replies, "I wasn't dreaming. It came into my bedroom, and it was on fire."

C: Dun-dun-dun!

Do you remember the first time that you watched this, did you think that- because I already knew that it was Mary's ghost, but did you think that they were going to find the thing that killed their mom? Like, what was your thoughts about the whole mystery the first time you watched this?

G: I watched this when I was 13, and I was- I- like you know when you're 13, and you're like- you watch things, and you're literally just like, not using your brain? [laughing]

C: Yeah. That's fair. You were like, "It was on fire, cool. I like fire!"

G: I probably wasn't- "Yeah, cool, yeah." I probably wasn't literally thinking anything. I literally was probably consuming it because I wasn't like, using my brain and shit.

C: Right, so now Sam and Dean are outside. The whole time when they were inside the house, their faces were so clenched. They were trying so hard to smile and not cry. They both looked so angry, and that tension is brought outside. Sam's basically yelling when he's like, "You hear that? There was a figure on fire in there! Like, these were all signs of malevolent spirit!" Dean says, "Well, I'm just freaked out that your weirdo visions are coming true." Which, I mean, he's deflecting. He's freaked out and he's going back to what is, I guess, normal for him, which is ribbing his brother.

Sam is like, "Who the fuck cares about that, do you think we're going to find the thing that killed Mom and Jessica? Like, has it been here the whole time? Has it come back? What's going on? We have to get these people out, etc." And they go to the gas station to brainstorm.

G: Yeah. The transition is, Sam says, "Oh, well what are we supposed to do?" And then it transitions to the gas station, where Dean says, [surfer bro voice] "You just gotta chill, man." [laughs] He doesn't say it like, but- [C laughs] It was a funny transition. This entire episode was like, so... I don't know. I liked it so much. It's well-written, it's well-directed, and it's like, you know, the moments like that that like, makes it-

C: And it's Sam-centric, the most important thing.

G: I don't think it was Sam-centric. I'm going to- I'm going to rally the troops for Dean on this one.

C: I saw this is like, fully Sam-centric. Like, [laughing] when the Mary ghost says, "Dean," and then walks right past him?

G: [laughing] Yeah, yeah. I thought that was so funny, too!

C: I was like, "I know who this episode is about."

G: Uh, well, I think, like, the moments with Dean calling John... Well, that- just that moment, actually, and Dean being uncomfortable the whole time. I wouldn't say this episode is Sam-centric, I would say this episode was Sam-heavy. But there's still Dean in it, and Dean's emotions at some point are still front and center. So I'd say, like, you get a lot of Dean stuff out of it too.

So we cut to the gas station, right? And you know, Dean says, "You've gotta just chill, man." They discuss what they would do if it was any other case. So, investigate the house, talk to anyone who was around, except now they know what happened to the house. Sam asks Dean how much he actually remembers, and we get the- I think this is iconic, right? Like, it's-

C: Yeah.

G: It's giffed a lot. Like the- "I remember the fire, the heat, when I carried you out the front door." And Sam asks, "You did?" And Dean goes, "You never knew that?" and Sam goes, "No, I never did."

C: Yeah.

G: Which, okay.

C: It's very touching, but also, as a sibling- as an older sibling, if I'd done that, I would- there would not be a day that went by where I wouldn't bring that up to win an argument. [G laughs]

G: Yeah, literally rub that in. Like, I guess Dean is a bit more reserved and secretive...

C: Yeah, like, "Oh, you don't want to eat my-" What does Dean make? hamburger macaroni? "Well, I literally carried you out of a fire when you were six months old, and you would be dead if it weren't for me, so eat your spaghetti-Os."

G: Anyway, so they talk about what John saw, right? Which we already know. It's Mary in the ceiling with whatever killed her long gone. So, Sam asks if John had any theories, and Dean says, "If he did, he never told us." They figure out that to know what's happening now, they have to figure out what happened then to know if it's the same thing. There's a beat of silence, and then Sam asks, "Does this feel like just another job to you?" And then Dean deflects, and he says, "Be right back, I need to go to the bathroom." And then he leaves.

C: Yeah, but first, he makes anguished little acting faces.

G: [laughs] And then he goes out back and contacts John. He leaves a voicemail. Should I just say what the voicemail is?

C: Yeah.

G: Okay, so he says that, "I know I left you messages before. I don't even know if you'll get them. But I'm with Sam, and we're in Lawrence, and there's something in our old house. And I don't know if it's the thing that killed Mom or not, but I don't know what to do, so whatever you're doing, if you could get here, please, I need your help, Dad."

C: "A Single Man Tear" starts playing in the background.

G: [laughs] This- this- this scene, he wasn't like, outright crying, but he was holding back tears.

C: Yeah. He was very choked up.

G: And it got to me!

C: Yeah, he's just a kid who needs his dad. Yeah, no, it got to me a little as well.

G: Oh my god.

C: Yeah. He's just a kid! And he needs his dad, and his dad's not coming.

-

C: So now we're back at Jenny's place, and she's got a plumber over to look at the backed-up sink. So the plumber's working on the pipes, and there's this toy monkey with cymbals that starts laughing and clashing the cymbals together and looking extremely creepy. The plumber tries to turn on the garbage disposal, but it doesn't seem to be working, so he sticks his hand down way far, and [laughing] I know immediately what horror thing is going to happen at the end of this scene.

G: Yeah, it's very classic horror.

C: Right, yeah. He thinks there's some clinking happening in there, but he can't get anything. He puts it back in, and the garbage disposal starts back up. He's screaming, his hand is being chewed up, the monkey is laughing and clapping, we see the like, bits of his blood and flesh flying into his face and coming out of the bottom of the sink... It's so fun.

And, I thought it was Mary this whole time! [G laughs] Like at the beginning, I thought everything was Mary. And I was so excited about how Mary was chewing up some guy's fucking arm and being such a girlboss, and then it wasn't even her! Fucking hate this.

G: Well, next we go to a car auto- [laughs] um, fixing-up place. That's what I wrote in my notes, I cannot be expected to know what-

C: They call it a garage.

G: Okay. [laughs] So they go to the garage, and they're talking to one of John's coworkers, and they said- and he said, like, "John was your typical marine, you know. Didn't want to lose fights, etc, etc."

C: About the marines thing, do we ever... When do we learn that he fought in Vietnam, or are we just sort of supposed to know from timezone? Or, sorry, not timezone- time period.

G: I actually don't know if that's like, canonically something that they say explicitly. That he fought in the Vietnam War.

C: I know that there are like, props that show his medals from the Vietnam War where they say it, like the word "Vietnam" on them, but I don't know if it's ever actually stated out loud.

G: Yeah, me too. I also don't know.

C: I just have so many thoughts about John being a Vietnam War vet, but I don't know when to bring it up, because I don't know if they ever clarify that that's what it is.

C: So, okay. Well, the title of this podcast is Busty Asian Beauties, which, you know, is the result of a very gross Asian fetish thing. Whenever I think about that, I think about how John fought in the Vietnam War, and how so much of the Asian fetish in Western countries is a result of things like the Korean and Vietnam Wars where, sort of, these soldiers went to these countries, killed innocent people, and their only interactions with local women were either through rape or sex work. So, like, they came back to the US with this idea of Asian women as like, these, you know, like, exotic, sexy, subservient things, and those character traits are sort of what make up the Asian fetish these days? Like, that is sort of a big pillar of it. So when I think about Dean and Busty Asian Beauties, I think about, like- I wonder what John said about Asian women when Dean was young. I wonder what magazines John had under his bed when Dean was young. And this isn't to excuse Dean in any way. It's more just about the ways that various racisms can pass down through generations, and like, I don't know, I just know that John was shitty to Vietnamese women overseas. I just know it, I know it in my heart.

G: [laughs] He mentions the ex-marine thing, and then he talks about how John "sure did love Mary and doted on those kids," but after the fire he kind of just lost it and started reading weird books and saw a palm reader in town. And Dean asked if he knows the name of the palm reader in town, to which the guys says, "Well, no, I don't."

So we then go to Sam reading out palm readers from the- I assume Yellow Pages? I've never seen one, I've never touched one, but I know what it is. And I'm assuming this is it.

C: Yeah. It's a phone book or something.

G: Yeah. And he lists out the palm readers that he saw. And then there's the end he says, "The El Divino, the mysterious Mister Fortinski," and then, Sam, [laughing] oh my God, Sam does the sturgeon face.

C: Yeah. I love Sam's sturgeon face. It's the best Sam face.

G: It was very short and very quick, but I saw it, and I was like, "Yes! He does it!" And this may or may not be the first time? I think it's the first time because it's the first time I've noticed it, but it will come back.

C: I feel like I've seen it quite a lot in earlier episodes, but maybe my definition of sturgeon face is just laxer than yours.

G: Yeah. This one is like, very sturgeon-y.

And he goes on, and he says "Missouri Moseley," and then Dean recognizes the name as the name in the first sentence of the journal that John carries around. He reads the passage, and it says, "I went to Missouri, and I learned the truth." Which Dean always thought was the state, but now could be a person.

-

C: Now we're in Missouri's house, and he's talking to a client, and she's telling him like, "Hey, it's okay, your wife isn't cheating on you, she loves you!" And then as soon as the guy goes, she goes, "Poor bastard. His woman is cold-banging the gardener." [laughing] Which is such an entrance for a character. Like, iconic.

G: Yeah.

C: Absolute queen. God, so good.

Dean is like, "Why didn't you tell him that?" And Missouri says that "People don't come here for the truth, they come here for good news." And then she starts talking to them. She knows their names already, and she recognizes them. She says, "Aw, you boys grew up handsome." And then she tells Dean, "And you were one goofy-looking kid, too." [G laughs] Sam starts looking absolutely delighted, and Dean looks upset.

G: And Dean, like- every time Missouri does a, like- makes a comment about Dean, they really make a point to show Dean's face, and it's always funny. Like, you know what I said in "Phantom Traveler" where like-

C: Right.

G: - the comedy bits feel like it's Jensen Ackles playing Dean instead of Dean being himself?

C: Right.

G: Like this is what I'm talking about when I say it feels like Dean being himself. Like, it just looks like what- how Dean would react naturally, you know?

C: Yeah.

G: Like, it doesn't feel like it's being over-acted. Anyway, it's so fun, it's so funny.

C: Yeah, agh. Missouri, my beloved! Okay, and then she sees Sam, and she like, takes his hand, and says very gently, "Oh, honey, I'm sorry about your girlfriend. And your father, he's missing?{ Which is, aww. Yeah, Sam's face, her face, it's all- it's all a lot. And Missouri reveals that she knows that because that's what Sam was thinking at the time, and she is able to read minds in some way. Dean asks where John is, and Missouri says she can't tell them. Dean is like, "You're supposed to be a psychic," but Missouri explains that her powers are only reading thoughts and sensing energies and sensing energies in a room. And they sit down, and Missouri tells Dean, "If you put your foot on my coffee table, I'mma whack you with a spoon!" Icon, queen, never been done before, [G laughs] best character on Supernatural, etc. Dean says, "I didn't do anything," and Missouri says, "But you were thinking about it." Agh, god, she's so good. She's so good.

G: Yeah.

C: Miss Missouri, are you single? [laughs] Anyway.

G: Sam is so amused by this, which just adds to the amusement.

C: Yeah, Sam's delighted. Like, Missouri just reminded him about Jess, and he probably felt very sad, but that all went away as soon as Missouri threatened to whack Dean with a spoon.

So they asked about her history with John, and she says that, basically, she told him about the supernatural after the fire. She went to the house and tried to sense what had been there, and she didn't know what it was, but she could tell that it was evil.

Sam says that he's sure that something's back in the house, but Missouri says, "Well, that doesn't make sense, 'cause I've been keeping an eye on the house, and there's been nothing weird happening there. Why is it acting up now?" And Sam says, "I don't know, but this is all happening after Jess died, after our dad went missing. I feel like something is starting." And Dean says, "Well that's a comforting thought."

G: So, we go to the house where Jenny's calling someone who is telling her that she will be held liable for the plumber's hand. She's like, "I don't have- I don't have a lawyer, I can't afford a lawyer, why should I be held liable," and then scratching starts happening again. So she hangs up, and tells little Ritchie that she's going to be away for a while, and then leaves.

So Ritchie is inside a playpen, right, and he's playing inside when the sides of the playpen falls down. And so he can walk freely now. And then the fridge door opens, and Ritchie sees the juice, so he's like, "Oh, juice!" and then he goes inside and goes to the fridge, and then the fridge locks itself.

C: God, I wish this was Mary! I wish it was Mary! Like, it would be so cool! 'Cause she's- she's been dead for 20 years, like that's enough for a ghost to start becoming evil or whatever. Like, I know that Bobby's a ghost for like a week in season 7 and he's already losing it. Mary should've become the evilest, like the evilest bossbitch ghost in the entire world, and she should have been like, trying to kill this poor woman's family out of some twisted sense of both jealousy over the fact that she gets to be the one parent left who gets to raise her two kids as a single mother like Mary would have wanted to if John had died instead, and as a way of rallying against the fucking, like, housewife life that she was trying to build for herself but she could never fit into... But no! She's just in a white dress, and smiling serenely, [G laughs] and she's not even trying to murder children! Ugh! Okay!

G: Let Mary murder children 2K05!

C: Let Mary murder children!

-

G: So Jenny comes back and finds Ritchie missing, so she looks for him, and she starts freaking out, and then, when she has partly given up [laughs]-

C: Very quickly.

G: After thirty seconds of searching, she sees milk spilling out of the fridge at the bottom of the fridge. And so she opens the fridge door and sees Ritchie. So she picks him up and comforts him, and at the same time, the doorbell rings.

C: So she opens the door, and it's Sam, Dean, and Missouri, my best friend Missouri. So they try to get in by saying that "we'd like to show our friend around the house, too," but Jenny's like, "This is not a good time. Please go away, my son was just in a refrigerator." Dean tries to push, but, I guess, is a little rude about it, and Missouri smacks him! So true. And she tells Dean, "Can't you see that the poor girl's upset? Give her a break." And then she tells Jenny, "Forgive this boy. He means well, he's just not the sharpest tool in the shed, but hear me out." And then Missouri says, like, "I think you know what I'm talking about, that there's something in this house that wants to hurt your family. And we're people who can help. Who can stop this thing. But you're gonna have to trust us just a little."

And I liked this exchange so much because I feel like so far, we've sort of seen the only way of "saving people, hunting things" being- being a hunter, and you don't have a home, and you drive around, and you look at cases, and you sort of swoop in. You're not- you don't really feel very much personally about it, you don't- You do try to be compassionate towards the victims, but sort of in a way that's also trying to get information. And like, this is happening after "Bugs" when, you know, Linda dies in the shower while they're making jokes. Um, so just thinking about how Missouri has these powers, and she's able to save people from things, but like, she has a house, she has roots here, and she tells people the truth when she knows they really want it, and she's been going around keeping an eye on this house. Like, she has a home, and she's looking out for her neighborhood.

G: Her community.

C: Yeah, her community from her home. That was so nice to me. I was like, "You guys don't have to do this! You guys can just settle down somewhere, and then like, chat with ghosts sometimes nearby."

G: Did you know that, according to- I'm not sure about the accuracy; again, I don't really care much about behind the scenes, but according to what I've read, sometime before-.

C: Yeah, Missouri was supposed to be come back!

G: Missouri was supposed to be the Bobby.

C: Yeah, she was supposed to be Bobby. I'm so upset.

G: Okay, do you like Bobby?

C: I don't really know Bobby very well.

G: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you don't know yet if you like him.

C: My best friend likes Bobby, so, like, I'm assuming he has to be okay.

G: [laughs] Well, Bobby... have I told you about my theory about like, you know what the girl-ism of someone is based on whether they like Bobby or not?

C: Right, yes. Deanfans like Bobby because Dean is Bobby's favorite kid.

G: Yeah. And then Samfans don't like Bobby because Sam is his least favorite Winchester, his least favorite kid. And Cas fans don't really care about Bobby that much, because the relationship between Bobby and Cas is not really that developed.

C: You are being so mean to the Cobby shippers right now. [G laughs] Bobby was literally the first man that Cas ever touched, and you're telling me that wasn't important? [G still laughing] To the actual Cobby fans out there, I do- I do support you, and I think your ship is fun.

Cobby's literally dilf4dilf, and you're being so rude.

G: I just- Bobby's fine. Like, personally, maybe this rewatch will change it, but I don't care much about Bobby. And like, I just feel like it would have been interesting if- not even Missouri is the new Bobby or something, but like, they work in tandem. If Missouri was just around a little bit more, and they also had Bobby, it would have been interesting, because Missouri obviously connects better with Sam because of the whole psychic jujuju, and like, Bobby connects better with Dean, so like they could have their parent figure that they connect with more if Missouri was around. And like, Missouri in this episode was not really a parent figure, like I wouldn't put her in that role, because I feel like for you to have that role, you need to be around a little bit more. If she was, you know, meant to be that person, if she was meant to be developed as that character, it would have been interesting. But, alas.

C: But alas. No, didn't they- didn't she not show up again until season 13 when they brought her on just to kill her off?

G: When they fucking killed her off? Oh my god.

C: That's such fucking bullshit.

G: That episode pissed me off so much, it pissed me off so much. And like, the way they introduced her there was like, "Oh, Missouri, like, long time no see, but we have been in contact!" And then, she does the thing that she did with Sam which was like, "I'm sorry for your loss" but with Dean because Cas is dead, and it's like a Destiel moment. And then she dies! [laughing] Like- oh, my-

C: Oh, god.

G: [groaning] But, whatever. Again.

C: That's fuck- that's just- that's just such bullshit. It's such bullshit.

G: Yeah, that's for three years from now. [both laugh] Or two and a half, I'm not really sure.

C: I don't know what our schedule is anymore.

-

C: Now they're exploring the house, and Missouri says that this room should be the center of the dark energy- and this is Sari's room. And Missouri says, "Because this used to be your nursery. This is where all of it happened." And Sam looks up at the ceiling, but it's all white and it's been painted over so, yeah, no Mary blood stuck up there. Dean pulls out his EMF and Missouri calls him an amateur. And then she says, "Yeah, this isn't the thing that took your mom; the energy is different, but I can sense that there's more than one spirit in this place."

And that's the moment in which all of my dreams and hopes were crushed forever and ever and ever, and I wept and threw my computer across the room, etc. [G laughs] 'cause Mary didn't get to try to murder children.

So, yeah, Missouri explains that because something so evil came to their house, "It left wounds in this place, and sometimes, wounds get infected." Which I thought was such a nice line? Like, yeah.

G: Yeah.

C: I have nothing else to say about it, it's just so true.

G: I remember it as Missouri saying "sometimes wounds fester," which like, so when she said the line, I was like, "Say the word! Say the sentence 'wounds fester' or whatever," and then she said "Wounds get infected," and I was like, "Aww." [laughs] She didn't say-

C: Festers is a Megstiel word.

G: Yeah, uh, well- [laughs]

C: So... [laughing] Oh, god, did I just alienate like, our last listener? [G laughs] Cut that out!

Okay, but anyway, festers is a Megstiel word because it's how Cas and Meg describe Meg's wrist when Cas is wrapping it in "Goodbye Stranger," which, by the way, is a Megstiel episode. What else happened in that episode, even? [G laughs] I have no clue!

G: We often joke that, like, we are like the opposites of each other, and that we are representation for like, opposing sides. And it is- it is so true in the Megstiel department, so if you are a Megstiel anti... well, I don't support you if you're a Megstiel anti because I thought they were like, very cool-

C: Hot.

G: - and in love, and a little bit-

C: Hot.

G: Yeah, they were hot. And also in love. But, like, I also am ambivalent about Megstiel, so like, you have someone on your side, at least. [laughs]

C: Right, Missouri explains that this place is a magnet for paranormal energy, and one of those spirits is a poltergeist who just wants to kill Jenny and her babies.

What is the poltergeist lore in Supernatural? I feel I don't know much about them. Are they also a spirit of a dead person?

G: I'm not sure if they're a spirit of a dead person, but they're a spirit that is more malevolent than just a ghost.

C: Maybe they're just ghosts of like, really bitchy people. I look forward to becoming a poltergeist later.

Oh, well Missouri says she can't make out the second spirit, and Dean's like, "Okay, well, how do we stop this?"

G: So we go to Dean making some cloth- hex bags? I don't know if they're still called hex bags if they're doing good. I still think they are.

C: I think they're still called hex bags.

G: Yeah. And he asks what they are, and Missouri says the ingredients, and, I guess this is our first introduction to witchcraft-esque work in Supernatural, which is pretty cool. To me, I was like, "Why is not- Why is Sam not the one doing it? He's the one who's gonna become a witch!"

C: Yeah. Witch!Sam endgame!

G: So Missouri says that they need to put the bags inside the north, south, east, and west corners of the walls of the house on every floor, which should kill the spirits and purify the place. At this point- so they're talking, right? And Dean like, takes some of the root and tastes it? [laughs]

C: Yeah, he licks it.

G: He licks it, and then he make a face, and I was like, "Dean, what are you doing?" But it was a funny scene.

Anyway, Missouri says that "We need to act fast, because the moment the spirit knows what's up, they'll attack."

C: I liked the hex bags a lot, I thought it was another way to differentiate between psychics and witchcraft and hunting. Like, there are no guns involved. We're just gonna put some herbs in a bag and put them in the house. It was nice, and like, when she said the different directions of the house, I was like, [laughs] "Ooh, fengshui!"

-

C: Now they're back at the house, and Jenny says that she's not sure if she's comfortable leaving them here alone, but Missouri says, like, "Just go and take your kids to the movie or something. It'll be over by the time you get back." And, [laughing] I think at this point, I wrote down in my notes, "Have we considered Missouri x Jenny"?

G: I was gonna say I'm sure there's fic out there, but like...

C: But there's probably not.

G: There's probably not. Maybe you could pioneer this genre. [laughs]

C: Yeah, all right, everyone- get- Our, like, thousands and of thousands of fans: get on it. [both laughing] Send us a link.

Everyone's going inside and they're putting holes in the wall through hammers and putting the hex bags into the holes. In Sam's room, a plug on a lamp unplugs itself and starts going at him, and eventually strangles and chokes him. Downstairs, Dean is in the kitchen. He is also putting in hex bags, and a knife comes out of a drawer and throws itself at him, but he ducks. Missouri is in the basement, and there's this table thing that barrels towards her and pins her against the wall.

Meanwhile... Okay, so Sam's getting choked out by this- by this power cord, right, and then he's lying down on the ground, he's trying to get the hex bag in, but he eventually just sort of falls unconscious. And I- it's so sad because his hands are around his neck, right, because he's trying to get the cord off, and I was waiting for my first "Sam's getting crucified, third time this week" moment. [G laughs] But he wasn't getting crucified! It's so sad. When does Sam get crucified?

G: He gets crucified in season 12 for sure, and like, in season five.

C: Does he get crucified when he dies in AHBL?

G: In AHBL? What-

C: Uh, "All Hell Breaks Loose."

G: [laughs] "AHBL." That's fun. Uh, "All Hell Breaks Loose"... I don't think so. I think he gets crucified when he is like, strapped down to a table.

C: Oh, yeah, in season 4, in the- in Bobby's panic room. Yeah, okay, I'm looking forward to that.

G: Was it season 4? Or, yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: Well, yeah, it's demon blood! [laughs]

G: No, I was thinking season 5 for some reason. But yeah, you're right, in season 4.

C: Well, I think he also has to detox from demon blood after "My Bloody Valentine," right? And also probably- or- does he? I don't remember.

Ugh. Anyway, I don't know anything about the show, guys, haha! I just follow a lot of Sam fans.

-

C: We get this moment where Dean runs upstairs to where Sam is choking out, and he puts the hex bag inside after trying to save Sam. And there's this big blinding white light that looks like the world's worst CGI that rushes out of the house. And then Dean unstrangles Sam, and hugs him.

G: We got our first brother hug!

C: Yeah, it's a nice moment.

G: It lasts literally like, two seconds, but it's still a brother hug.

C: Right. Screen goes black immediately because it's like, "Men don't have feelings. Bye!"

G: I- I'm an AMV maker, right?

C: Yeah.

G: So I have like, gone to the Wiki to look for lists of hugs, or whatever, and this is-

C: Oh, yeah, I fucking love the "Hugs" Superwiki page.

G: Yeah, and then, at one point, like, they count this hug as like, "maybe doesn't count" because Sam just got strangled.

C: Sam doesn't hug back because he's passed out?

G: [laughs] Sam- yeah. Which, every time I go to that page, I read that line and I'm like- I have a giggle because it's so funny.

Okay, so now they're looking at the mess, right, that they've made. And Sam is like, "Are you sure this is over?" To which Missouri says, "Yes, why? Why are you asking?" And Sam goes like, "Nevermind, yeah." And then Jenny and the kids come in and look at the mess, to which Sam says, "Don't worry, we'll pay for all this," and Dean's face goes, "What??"

C: With what money?

G: [laughs] Yeah. And Missouri says, "Dean is gonna clean all this up," and Dean's face goes, "What??" [C laughs] And at this point, I was like- I was like, don't be so mean to Dean.

Like, okay. Being mean to Dean is-

C: -And I was cheering and clapping.

G: - fine and good- No, shh-shh-shh. Being mean to him is fine, right? Like, I enjoy it, I've seen it, I enjoy it. But like, ordering him around? That's when I'm like, "Okay, that kind of crosses the line" because, like, we know, you know, he already does that enough for his dad, the whole taking orders and shit. So when Missouri was like, "Oh, Dean's gonna clean that up. Go on, boy. Clean it up!" I was like- I got up in arms, and I was like, "No! Don't boss him around!" [laughs]

C: I do recall that this was sort of a moment when, as you mentioned, sometimes funny things feel like they're in-character and in-show, and sometimes they feel like acting moments or writing moments. I did view the scene as sort of like a, "Oh, like, they're digging their heels in too hard on the 'it's funny that Missouri is mean to Dean' thing." Like it did feel maybe a bit out of character from the character that we've gotten so far. But I also thought it was funny, so I forgave them immediately.

G: I- I put a sad face on my notes, because it made me like go, [sad sound] "No, don't be so mean to him! Don't boss him around!" But anyway.

C: I'm writing two smiley faces into my notes right now. [G laughs]

Right, also, after that, Missouri says, "And don't cuss at me!" Which makes me believe that Missouri just saved Dean from getting a 16th misogyny note because he was probably gonna mutter "son of a bitch." He wasn't gonna- I don't think he was gonna call her a bitch. I think he was just gonna say "son of a bitch" as a general being upset sound.

G: Yeah.

C: But I would have argued very hard for a misogyny point even if I didn't believe myself.

G: [laughs] No, that's what I was about to ask, like-

C: Yeah.

G: Is "son of a bitch" considered a misogyny tally?

C: I- yeah, I don't really think so. I mean, I think... the phrase itself I dislike, because it makes it so clear that "bitch" is gendered, and that when you insult a man, you're really just insulting his mom, so I don't like the phrase, but Dean's not responsible for the phrase "son of a bitch." So, no, I probably wouldn't call it a misogyny moment, but I would have argued very hard for it.

G: I would have defended him.

C: A little bit later, Missouri and Sam and Dean are leaving the house. After they leave the house, Dean is helping Missouri down the stairs the way you do with your grandma [laughs], and I did- I did write down that that was very sweet. Even after Missouri, like, forced him to clean up the house, Dean's still, like, being a good little Boy Scout.

G: Every single time I watch this episode, I'm like, "Oh, this is just how I hold my grandma!" Like, every single time.

C: Aww.

G: I always forget, and then I remember when they watch the episode. So that's fun.

C: It's really cute.

-

C: Now Jenny's in bed alone, reading. She goes to sleep, and then the bed starts shaking violently, and she starts screaming. And see at this point, I for sure thought that they got the poltergeist out. So I was like, "Oh, yay, it's Mary!" [G laughs] I was like- I was so excited, I was like, "Go on, Mary. Fuck it up! So true!" I was like, "Mary's so cool, she's giving Jenny the Magic Fingers motel bed experience. Have we considered Mary x Jenny?" [G laughs] Etc, etc. And it wasn't. It literally wasn't even her.

G: And it's not like the poltergeist was doing anything bad. Like, she's- the poltergeist is just shaking the bed.

C: Right, like that's not trapping a kid inside a fridge or chewing some guy's arm off.

So now we're outside and Sam and Dean are in the Impala watching the house, and Sam says that they're staying here because he still has a bad feeling and he wants to make sure that everything's okay. And, I mean, obviously it's because he saw his vision and his vision never happened in front of him, so he's like, "Something is still up," and also, I guess he can sense the bad vibes. Sam looks up at Jenny's window, and it's the scene from his dream! She is screaming and pounding at the window or whatever. And Dean says, "You grab the kids. I'll get Jenny." And I was like, "Oh, Dean is Dean-coding Sam and John-coding himself in this situation." [G laughs]

Dean's running to Jenny's bedroom, and the door's locked, she can't get out. Okay, so Dean rushes up to Jenny's bedroom and she can't open the door, so he tells her to stand back, and kicks it down. They rush downstairs, and Jenny's worried about her kids. Dean says, "It's okay, Sam's got them, let's go."

OK, and now we're at Sam. He goes to Sari's bedroom where, you know, there's the big burning in the closet. Uh, oh, also, he is carrying Ritchie in his arms, and I- yeah, I think the Supernatural men should just hold babies all the time.

G: Like, he's holding two kids at the same time. He looks so strong.

C: Yeah. Ugh, yeah. I guess that's why we see those terrible dehydrated abs later in the season. [both laugh] He's been doing bicep curls with children as the weights.

He tells Sari, "Don't look, don't look at the closet," which I thought was quite nice. Like, yeah, he's trying to- trying to comfort her. Trying to make sure she's not too traumatized by this experience. And he runs down the stairs, but then there's this sound, like something's coming for him. And iconic, iconic moment.

G: Yeah.

C: Where he puts them down, and he tells Sari, "Alright, Sari, take your brother outside as fast as you can, and don't look back." So good!

G: I forgot then that, like, this is part of the episode, that they do this callback. But like, when it happened, I got so excited. Because, like, Sam doesn't know.

C: Yeah.

G: Sam doesn't know that that's what John told Dean, so like, it's, I mean- it's not by accident, it's a fucking TV show, but like [laughs] in the universe, it's like, an accident, and I just find that so endearing. I was having the time of my life watching that scene.

C: I also thought- but I think part of me was sort of upset at Sam about it? Because earlier, when he's in Sari's room he sort of freezes when he sees the fire. And I feel like what was going through his mind was "That's what killed my mom, that's what killed my girlfriend. This is my time to have my revenge moment." And then he was like, "Wait, no, I'm saving the kids. Let's get out." So then when he pulled that, I was like, "Oh, no, is Sam gonna do a whole John moment where he, like, puts this on this little kid because he needs to go back and have his revenge about Jess?" But then it turned out that he was just trying to get them out before some ghost grabbed him, so I was like, "Oh, thank god, I knew my best boy would never do this to me! We're good." [laughs]

Yeah, so some power grabs Sam, and like, yeah, he slides on his face back through the house.

G: So, the door closes, and Dean's like "oh shit" and gets a gun and tries to bust in. And inside, we see Sam getting tossed around, and Dean is hammering the door with an ax. So, axing the door, I guess. [both laugh] And then, Sam gets cornered. He like, gets forced to- forced against the wall, and then a fiery figure starts walking towards him. But Sam doesn't look scared. [distressed sound]

C: [distressed sound]

G: This scene- [laughs] Dean gets in, and then points a gun at the figure, and Sam says calmly- he says, "Don't shoot. I know who it is. I can see her now."

C: [distressed sound] So good!

G: And the thing transforms, and it's Mary! It's fucking Mary!

So Mary is there, and she goes and says, "Dean" to Dean.

C: Well first Dean says, "Mom?" And he's fucking, like, crying, and he's like teary-eyed and standing there.

G: Yeah, oh my god. And then she goes to Sam and she says, "Sam. I'm sorry."

C: And on the "I'm sorry"- like, she's been smiling serenely this whole time, right? She's the chillest ghost known to man, killing no children ever. But then, when she says "I'm sorry," it's the first time an emotion crosses her face. Like she looks genuinely guilty and concerned and grieved.

G: She doesn't respond when Sam says, "For what?" She just turns around and faces the ceiling. And then she says to- what we assume is the poltergeist- she says, "You get out of my house. And let go of my son."

C: Her one son. [laughing] The only one she cares about. I just love how she walks right past Dean. She says his name, and then she just walks away. She literally could've talked to Sam from that position, but she very pointedly left Dean. Dean's having abandonment issues about this for like 20 years afterwards, I swear to god. [G laughs]

G: When she says, "Get out of my house," I was, I was like, cheering.

C: Yeah, this is like, her house.

G: I was like, "Yes! Get out of her house!"

C: Go Mary!

G: It's her fucking house.

And so, the poltergeist burns up, and Mary, the figure, also burns up. And Sam gets let go by the force that's holding him up. And we pan to Dean who says, "Mom?" like, softly. And I was like, "No!" [laughs] This is so sad, and so entertaining, and so fun, and so amusing, but also so sad.

C: I just love how many disorders this is giving Dean.

G: [laughs] And then it's over. The haunting is over.

C: Do you think Mary was apologizing for dying or for the demon blood?

G: Do you know about the fact that she made a deal?

C: Yeah, so I guess those things were sort of the same thing.

G: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-

C: So now we're at the epilogue. So, Jenny's given the trunk of photos to Dean and Dean's looking through them and thanking her. And then we pan over to Sam sitting by Missouri, and Missouri says like, "Yeah, there are no spirits in there anymore. For sure, this time." Sam says, "Not even my mom?" [distressed sound] He's just a little boy! He's just a little boy! And Missouri says no. And then she explains that Mary's spirit and the poltergeist's energy cancelled each other out, [laughs] in the most hand-wavy explanation I've ever heard.

G: [laughs] Yeah.

C: Like, I don't care that much because this isn't a monster of the week episode, this is a character-building episode, so like, whatever, sure, Mary's ghosts and the poltergeist's energy cancelled each other out. Whatever. Go for it. Slay. But it made no sense to me.

Yeah, Missouri says that "Your mom destroyed herself going after the thing," and Sam says, "Why would she do something like that?" And Missouri says, "Well, to protect her boys, of course." Which was sweet, but also at this point, I was like, "We've had a lot of sweet moments this episode." Sam asking 'why would she do something like that?' I was like, "Well, duh, because-" She said, 'get out of my house, and let go of my son,' like, she stated her intentions there. It just felt too much like the writers felt like the watcher needed that kind of exposition, and I didn't need that kind of exposition. But, you know, it was sweet so, I'll take it.

Right, and then we get Missouri echoing exactly what Mary said, when she says, "Sam, I'm sorry" and Sam says, "For what?" And Missouri says, like, so, "You could sense that this was here, even when I couldn't." And Sam's like, "What's happening to me?" Oh, god, you're gonna suffer so much in the show. Sam, I'm so sorry.

And Missouri's like, "I know I should have all the answers, but I don't know." And then they get ready to head out. Missouri says, "Don't you boys be strangers," and Dean says "We won't." I wrote down- because I know about "Route 666"- "Season 1 is the season of Dean breaking promises at the end of episodes." But I guess they do show up again in season 13, and then she dies, so I guess they weren't strangers. But maybe they should have stayed strangers, honestly.

Yeah, so Missouri says, "See you around," and they head out.

-

G: So Missouri comes back to her office. And then she says, "That boy, he has such wonderful abilities. Why he couldn't sense his own father, I have no idea." And then we pan to see the couch in her office, and it's John. [laughs]

C: And he's been there the whole fucking time?

G: It's fucking John. He has been here this whole time.

C: Ugh, I'm so mad at him. I'm so mad at him. He heard Dean's voicemail, and he was like, "Nah."

G: I think it was actually like, he heard Dean's voicemail, and he was like, "Okay, I'm gonna go to Laurence."

C: Huh, okay, maybe so.

G: And then like, just didn't show himself.

G: And then he asked Missouri if it was really Mary's spirit, and Missouri says, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure," and John emoes for a bit. He's like- he, like, twiddles his ring. And then Missouri says, "John Winchester, I could just slap you. Why don't you just talk to your children?"

G: He says, "I want to."

C: Ugh. "You have no idea how much I want to see them. But I can't. Not yet. Not until I know... the truth."

G: [disgusted sound]

C: What a bitch! What a dumbass! I hate this guy.

G: Even just a simple, like, "don't worry about me," you know?

C: Right! They're like, terrified!

G: They think he's dead!

C: Right. It's so bad. And, like, I know there's the argument that he was trying to protect them by leaving them out of his search for Azazel, but he's not protecting them when he's sending them off on hunts where they get almost killed every episode. And they would have died this episode if, like, Mary's ghost hadn't saved them. Like, Mary, who is dead, has been a better parent to them this whole show so far then John. Ugh.

Also, I mean, I know- at least from what I've read from the Samfans on my dash- that John's sort of suspected that Sam has not-human abilities for a while now, but do you think him overhearing Missouri saying that was the first time he- it was confirmed to him that Sam had psychic powers?

G: Maybe so. God. [distressed sound] I feel- like, everything is just flooding back to me. Like, Dean- John whispering to Dean, that like, he should kill Sam-

C: Yeah, "Kill this guy. Fucking murder your brother, right now. Do it."

G: Agh. This is our first time seeing John after the first part of the first episode, so it's been a while.

C: Yeah. That's why they had all those family photos in this episode. Because they knew that casual viewers would not remember what he looked like. [laughs]

G: [laughs] Yeah. That's true!

C: So they were like, "By the way, Jeffrey Dean Morgan is John," so when you see him at the end of this episode, you'll be like, "Damn, that's him" instead of "Who the fuck is this guy?"

-

G: So what did you think about this episode?

C: For the first time, I thought Supernatural might be a good show.

G: Yeah, me too. Like, it revived- I think you know this, but this week, I've been really into Supernatural for some reason.

C: Yeah.

G: But even more so than usual. And I was, I was watching like, episodes from outside our podcast schedule.

C: Yeah, I saw you liveblogging "Dog Dean Afternoon."

G: [laughing] Which is a good episode. It was a fine episode. Okay, it's not good, but like, it was alright.

C: Well, so that we represent everything, I haven't watched "Dog Dean Afternoon," but if you hate it, I promise you that I also hate it. So don't quit our podcast right now.

G: [laughing] "Dog Dean Afternoon" is actually fine is the hill that I will die on.

C: Did he not want to fuck a poodle?

G: It was a throwaway joke!

C: Alright!

G: The entire episode- the rest of the episode was pretty fucking good.

C: Ugh, fine, alright, sure. I mean, I saw a clip where he tries to shoot a pigeon with a gun. That was funny.

G: Yeah, it is funny. Go Dean! I support your agenda.

Anyway, what I'm saying is, I'm really into Supernatural right now, and I was afraid that going back to our podcast-scheduled episodes, like, going back to this episode, I would be disappointed, or I would feel like "Oh, it's not that good, I'm bored," etc. etc. because that's kind of been the mood for a lot of this past few episodes.

C: [laughing] Yeah, 'cause we watched "Hook Man" and "Bugs"!

G: [laughs] Yeah. Last week was rough. It was bad.

C: So bad.

-

C: So I think my best line was Missouri's line about how when something that evil enters into a house, it leaves a wound, and sometimes wounds get infected. Because, like, what is Supernatural if not about family trauma and those wounds getting infected. Like, and I like the image of a house being a wound that's infected.

G: I also agree with you, I also think that's the best line. Usually, I try to differentiate our best lines, but like, I literally wrote down, "this is the best line." [C laughs] So I have- I have to commit. I have to be true to myself.

Yeah, it's so good. Like, the concept of a house being, you know, some, like- prior to that, she says "Something really evil came into this house, and it left wounds." Like, the concept of like, you know, something really bad can happen and it's just gonna leave wounds that will get infested.

C: Right.

G: And then it's your job to make sure that they don't get infected is like, a really, really good metaphor for trauma, and just, bad experiences.

C:I also like that the solution to this house being a wound is to like, fill the walls up with herbs. It sort of is like giving the house medicine, which is fun.

G: Yeah, but it didn't work, though.

C: See, I feel like it- I think it did work, but that the poltergeist came back because Mary- I- Sort of the way that I was understanding it was- Like, that bright flash of light, obviously that did something. I think that the poltergeist was expelled. But I think that Mary stayed there, and that the poltergeist was sort of feeding off of her energy and came back, and by choosing to let go and go to Heaven, Mary was killing herself so that she could kill the poltergeist.

G: Mm. Well, like you said, the explanation was kind of hand-wavy, so.

C: Yeah but I feel like that's how I interpreted it. It makes me so sad if it didn't work. I think Missouri's things should work because Missouri is cool.

G: Anyway, what's your worst line?

C: I don't recall... Oh, oh, never mind. When Dean says, "Is any of this blowing up your skirt."

G: I just I would say that my worst line is like, "I want to, but I can't. Not yet. Not until I know the truth." Because, like-

C: Oh yeah. Fuck that guy.

G: I just thought it was so annoying. Fuck that guy.

C: Fuck that guy.

G: Last episode- was it last episode, when I was like, "John's relationship with his children are complicated."

C: Oh, yeah, you were like, "I might even sound a bit like a John apologist on this podcast," and now he's here, and we're like, "No. Fuck this guy."

G: Yeah. I saw his face, and then I remembered why I fucking hate this guy, so [both laughing]- Yeah, that's- that's over. John apologist- say my John apologism is over.

C: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

G: So... oh my god. IMDB. I forgot to look it up.

C: Oh.

G: So, what is your IMDB?

C: I mean, I thought this episode was so good. But, so- I feel like- I don't know, I think the pilot's been the highest so far, so whenever an episode's really good, I just guess the pilot score. 8.7.

G: So 8.7 is your guess.

C: Yeah.

G: I would say this is better than the pilot.

C: I agree, but I also felt "Bloody Mary" was better than the pilot, and the IMDBers didn't agree with me.

G: I would say this is an 8.8. Okay, let's look it up! Eight point s- ah, no- Oh, no, I got spoiled! I got spoiled!

C: Oh, for the next one?

G: I got spoiled by something else, yeah.

C: Ohh. Okay. Scrub it out of your mind.

G: Oh my god!

C: What? What? It's a 9?

G: Crystal, it's an 8.9! It's an 8.9!

C: Oh! [clapping] Yes! So good!

G: Slay.

C: It deserves it. It deserves it. "Home," my fucking beloved.

G: Yeah 8.9 is pretty good, and it fully deserves it. And I should have shot up higher. If I was like in charge of like, if I would have just gone with, like, what I think the score should be, I would've gone with a 9.

C: Yeah, me too.

G: Because I think it is genuinely that good.

C: Yeah, but I figured that the people wouldn't always agree with me, but I guess they did. Yay!

G: Yay! Okay, so, do you have any more remarks? Anything more to say.

C: Hm. I don't know if this is like, important enough to go into the podcast but, I kind of disliked that Sam was more powerful than Missouri. Like Missouri's been being a psychic all her life, and then Sam swoops in and has weird vibes and can tell that the other spirit is still there? Even when Missouri can't?

G: I like the differentiation of their powers. Because Missouri can feel, you know, can read thoughts and energies in a room. And Sam can see the future. Like, those are different things. And I like that they're saying, like, "Sam is not a psychic. That's not his power." So I thought that was cool.

C: I mean, okay, like I very much want Missouri to come back, and I wish she had come back, but I feel like I- I wouldn't necessarily want her as a mentor figure for Sam because it feels too much like... Like in, like... You know how, like, Dr. Strange is like, some white guy goes to Tibet, and then he learns magic from a Tibetan guy, and then he's better than him, and he's a superhero, or whatever? Like it would feel like that to me if Missouri was Sam's mentor, and he was suddenly just like, way better and more powerful than her. So like, I want her back, but I don't know in what kind of capacity I want her back.

G: I actually didn't think about it as like- because earlier, I was saying that like, I want Missouri to have had existed in the show, for, you know, a longer duration than she did. But I didn't actually connect the dots that that would mean she'd be mentoring Sam. Because, again, like, I see their powers is completely different.

C: Right.

G: Like, it's just a different thing.

C: Right. So they're just connecting in terms of the not being human.

G: Well, she's human. Like, not being-

C: Yeah, she's human, but I know a lot hunters- hunters don't- some hunters don't view psychics as human, right?

G: Maybe so, but, yeah.

-

G: That's it for this episode of Busty Asian Beauties! Next time, we will be talking about Season 1, Episode 10: "Asylum." Leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts.

C: Follow us on social media! We are on twitter at twitter.com/BeautiesPodcast and on Tumblr at bustyasianbeautiespod.tumblr.com. Our official tag is #babpod, which is one word and spilled B-A-B-P-O-D.

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

C: Bye!

[guitar music]

[aestheticallyholland]

NEVER NOT | THE START . . .

❃ PAIRING tom holland x fem!reader

❃ DISCLAIMER i do not own the artists (and the reader) that are going to portray the characters, but i do own some of the their names. the plot of the story is inspired to the book and movie 'to all the boys i've loved before' but with changes. the gifs and photos used in this series are edited by me but i get credits to the originals. also, this series is first posted in wattpad by me. PLEASE DO NOT REPOST IT SOMEWHERE ELSE !

❃ WORD COUNT 2.2k words

WANNA BE ON THE TAGLIST? feel free to comment on this post if you wanna be added to this series' taglist to get notified for updates !

NEVER NOT MASTERPOST | LEI'S LIBRARY

"Life doesn't have to be so planned. Just roll with it and let it happen." — Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

[ late october of 2015 . . . ]

HIGH SCHOOL was not the life that Y/N imagined it to be.

She always thought high school would be the best years of her life rather than studying for upcoming exams and instead of going to parties with a bunch of people she would go along with.

But that was the opposite of what she thought.

High school was more demanding than it was when she was in middle school. When it comes to school, projects are piling up making her mind going crazy. When it comes to relationships with people, they wouldn't get along with her.

Especially when her long-time enemy came into the picture.

"You really had the guts to walk past by my locker, Y/L/N." Camille started and crossed her arms as she saw Y/N walking in the hallway. Y/N would just roll her eyes and shrug off what she said.

"It's not just me who walks near your locker, Camille. I hope you put that in mind." Y/N said and gave her a fake smile.

Camille clenched her hands and she wanted to pull Y/N's hair but was stopped when her boyfriend hugged her from behind. Camille's face suddenly softened and gave a smile to him.

"What are you up to, babe?" He asked and let go of Camille and stood beside her.

"I was just telling Y/N how her boots go with her outfit today, babe," Camille said and looked at Y/N who just chuckled at what she said.

"And I think she has the best outfit of the day than you, Camille." Erika showed up and said that to her cousin while chewing on her gum and grinned.

Camille became furious again until her boyfriend placed an arm around her shoulders before anything happens and he spoke.

"We should go before it starts to bell." He said and gave a smile to her and Camille nodded in agreement and gave Y/N and Erika one last glare before walking away. Tom looked back at Y/N for a while and turned back to walk away. Y/N swore she saw this but shrugged it off.

Y/N looked at Erika who was still chewing on her gum and smiled. "You always show up when Camille would talk to me. Such a best friend." Y/N said and that made Erika chuckle. "I can't believe you would say things like that to your cousin."

"She isn't the best cousin, you know. Besides, she fights you so might as well fight her back." Erika said.

Erika was always the one who would stand by Y/N ever since Camille started fighting her. But before Erika, Camille and Y/N were actually best friends until a spin-the-bottle game would ruin it.

Y/N knew how Camille had a crush on the one and only Tom Holland, who is now her current boyfriend. She invited her friends and including Y/N and Tom and they played the game, spin the bottle.

Camille would always wish that it would land on Tom so that she would get a kiss from him and it so happened that when it was Y/N's turn, it landed on him. They had no choice since it was the rule of the game and when Y/N's and Tom's lips touched, Camille became so angry and that was the start of them being enemies.

After that incident, Camille fought Y/N and Erika saw this and eventually rescued Y/N from her evil cousin. From that day on, Y/N and Erika became best friends until now. Y/N didn't even know how and why Camille and Tom got together.

"Do you want to watch movies tonight? I've got Marvel ones." Y/N heard Erika spoke while they were walking.

"I think I should just stay at home tonight. My dad is cooking for us tonight." Y/N said and she saw Erika pouted. "Come on, we had a movie marathon last night and you slept, Erika." Y/N continued and that made Erika chuckle.

"Forget about the movie. Just look at who's in front of us." Erika elbowed her and Y/N looked in the direction where she was looking and stopped walking. You felt everything was in stop motion.

Aiden.

He sat there with a guitar pressed to his chest and his veins popping from his neck as he was singing. He was your current crush and at the same time one of your friends in school. In fact, he was also your neighbor. Every time you would be around him, butterflies inside your stomach would flatter and your heart would beat fast.

Y/N felt herself blush and she wanted to get away from him. She grabbed Erika's hand and quickly ran the opposite way.

"Hey!" Erika squealed as she pulled her and ran.

They didn't know that Aiden noticed Y/N's actions and just chuckled and smiled. He continued to pluck his fingers on the strings and sang again.

Y/N stopped running when she reached the hallway where there were fewer people around and tried to catch her breath.

"You act so weirdly when Aiden is around. You're giving him signs, girl." Erika said, who tried to catch her breath.

It was true. Ever since Y/N and Aiden became friends, she had started to have feelings for him and you never knew why. Maybe it was the way he sings? Maybe it was the way he is when he's with her? It just came to her.

"Just go tell him, Y/N," Erika said and that made Y/N jolt her head up.

"No way. I don't want our friendship to get ruined because of this feeling I have for him. Plus, it's just a crush. Nothing else." Y/N said.

Erika shook her head. "Whatever you say, Y/N." That was all she can say.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

The rest of the day was pretty much the same. Going to different kinds of classrooms for each subject every hour. Y/N had no one to talk to since Erika would be indifferent to classes too. There was also one class where she had to be classmates with Camille. She would glare at her every time she looked back and she wouldn't mind it.

Y/N walked in the hallway with people scattered all over the place. She walked towards her locker and hoping that Camille appears and have another talk again.

A vibrate came from her phone and she got her phone from the pocket and saw a message from Erika:

Y/N rolled her eyes after she read the message and turned off her phone and placed it back in her pocket. She was about to walk away when someone stood in front of her and leaned on her locker. She looked up to see who it is and suddenly her heart started beating fast.

"Aiden." She mumbled and he just smiled at her.

"I'll take you home, Y/N." He said.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

"So you're telling me, that you saw Erika with Harrison Osterfield. Harrison as in Tom Holland's best friend?" You asked Aiden as you were walking on the sidewalk.

"Yep, definitely him," Aiden answered and you were still in shock.

"That girl really has some explaining to do." You said and Aiden can only laugh at you.

Then silence came in but you still walked together.

"It's been a month since we last talked. How was your summer, by the way?" Aiden suddenly spoke up and that made you jump a little.

"It's alright. I had to be stuck with dad in a road trip camp while Aria was away. But at least we had s' mores there." You said.

"Well, Aria just came back actually—" Aiden said, but realized what he said and stopped talking. You looked at him in confusion when you heard what he said.

"Aria is here?" You asked then suddenly someone familiar called you from afar.

"Y/N!" You looked at the side and saw your sister running towards you. A big smile appeared on your lips and you ran towards her.

"Aria!"

You gave each other a hug then both of you fell to the ground but you were still laughing.

"It's been a month!" Aria said while clinging on to Y/N.

"I know!" Y/N answered.

"Okay, you kids. Don't do that outside. Go in now." They heard their dad's voice from the door and walked down towards them.

Y/N and her sister stood up and dusted off the grass from her clothes.

When Y/N looked back, she saw her sister hugging Aiden and she also saw the action that would make her heart drop. It was her sister and Aiden kissing.

They let go of each other and saw Y/N just standing there in front of them.

"I'm sorry I didn't say anything sooner, Y/N," Aria said. Y/N never told her sister about her feelings for Aiden or any crush she has.

Y/N could still feel the pain that she was feeling right now but she didn't want to show her sister.

"I-I don't mind." She let out a small smile and asked. "Since when?"

Aria and Aiden looked at each other then looked at Y/N again.

"Since I was out. We were calling and talking with each other throughout the summer." Aria said and Aiden could only nod in agreement.

You were too late. A voice in Y/N's head said but that didn't stop you from giving both of them hugs to let her sister see that she was okay with it.

"I'm happy for you, guys."

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

"Your sister came and then did what with Aiden?!"

Y/N held the phone away from her ear when Erika shouted through the call. She placed it back to her ear and sighed.

"They are together, Erika. There's nothing I could do about it." Y/N answered.

"Well, you did have the chance to tell him. They kept this a secret for like a month and you never knew about it." Erika said.

"Still hurts but I'll be fine. I'll just have to get used to seeing them together as a couple." Y/N's voice broke and felt a small tear in her eyes.

Erika wanted to go to Y/N's house and give her a hug. She didn't want her best friend to be heartbroken. "You'll find someone better, babe." That was all she can say to Y/N.

"Thank, I guess," Y/N said. She knew she should just stop crying and accept the fact that they could never be together. She stopped her tears and asked Erika something out of her curiosity.

"How was the date with Osterfield, Erika?"

Y/N heard a thing dropped from the call before Erika could answer.

"How did you know it was him?" Erika asked nervously.

"Aiden told me. Apparently, he saw you guys together going out of the campus. You can't hide this from me, Erika." Y/N chuckled after she said this and did a fake gasp. "Are you two also secretly dating each other and didn't tell me?"

"What? No! Of course not. He just asked me out today and we went to dinner together. There was really nothing between us. I didn't wanna say no. Plus, it was burgers and fries!" Erika defended herself and that just made Y/N laugh.

"Alright, alright, babe. I won't bother you with your love life." Y/N said.

"Y/N? Pasta is ready!" Y/N heard her dad say from downstairs.

"I have to go now, Erika," Y/N said.

"Don't cry anymore, okay? It's not worth it." Erika said and Y/N smiled.

"I know." She said and ended the phone. Y/N placed her phone down and gave a heavy sigh.

This was just another long day.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Another day, another school day. Y/N achieved to not cry so much after dinner last night. Now, she was just walking in the same hallway.

As she was walking with her things pressed to her chest, she suddenly bumped into a person and her things dropped to the ground and herself as well.

"Hey!" Y/N shouted and looked up to see who she bumped to. Her eyes widen to see who it was.

It was the one and only, Tom Holland.

"You really should watch where you're going, Y/L/N." Y/N heard him say and his face was stern.

"You should watch where you're going, Holland," Y/N said and got all the things that fell to the ground. Y/N could hear murmuring from the people but she didn't mind them.

Y/N gave a glare to Tom and walked away from him. She had a feeling that he was going through something right now but that didn't stop her from being mad at him.

Can this day get any better?

❃ TAGLIST @allthisfortommy @kait4073 @lovebittenbyevans @l0ve-0f-my-life @spiitfiires

[emotionless-jennie]

╭─────────────────────────╮

Emotionless Jennie

╰─────────────────────────╯

About Jennie

Her full name is Jennie Ruby Jane Kim

She's 24 years old

Was born on January 16, 1996

Approximately 5'4 feet tall

Was donated to science at age 12

Was raised by maids

An only child

Never had the chance to talk to her parents for more than 30 minutes in her whole life

Never got to see her parents ever since she was donated to science

Back story:

Jennie Kim was born to two well known Psychologists Mr. And Mrs. Kim. Her parents were well known due to their expertise of handling emotions of their clients. Despite their excellent ability to properly treat and handle their patients, the two psychologists were unable to be physically and emotionally present for their only daughter; causing Jennie to be distant from her parents.

Her parents were barely paying attention to her while she was still in their care; too busy treating patients and doing extensive research regarding the relevance of human emotions to the improvement of an individual.

Her parents were about to reach the end of their successful research about how relevant emotions are to the development of an individual and all they needed were clear and tangible results. They were willing to sacrifice anything just for the sake of their life long research and so they did the unthinkable.

They donated Jennie to science.

Jennie was completely stripped off of her emotions, to prove that emotions are relevant so a person could make better choices for their own self development. And the results indeed matched their research.

Following the success of their first research made, the psychologists conducted another research to see how lack of certain emotions affect the prosperity of a place.

Their research was slightly based off a book titled "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin where the narrator describes a utopian city of Omelas, whose prosperity depends on the perpetual misery of a single child.

With the research based on the book, their main goal was to prove that when negative emotions are lessened and transfered to a single source (Jennie), then it is possible to achieve the highest peak of improvement and development.

Which is what led to the events surrounding Jennie in present times.

What She's Like

The choices she makes is usually not the best due to her unfamiliarity with emotions

Usually bases her choices on scientific facts to make up for her lack of understanding of human emotions

She does her best to empathize and understand the emotions people feel

She often is alone as people find her inability to process emotions "concerning"

She's actually quite polite and interesting because she has a wide variety of knowledge

Only talks to people who try to understand her because she doesn't want to waste time on people who aren't willing to be patient with her

Has no experience with dating whatsoever so if you want to try with her, please be patient

Once a new emotion is registered her choices are made hastily due to excitement or lack of understanding of the new emotion

Plots

Researcher x Jennie

As one of the researchers involved with Jennie's case, you are one of those she gets to spend time with the most. And with the time spent and your growing curiosity, interest, and maybe even feelings, you start to spend even more time with Jennie outside your work. It is your choice to have feelings develop for her and discontinue your research, or continue as if there are no feelings involved.

Emotion Donor x Jennie

From the moment Jennie started registering and feeling emotions, all she ever received was all the negative emotions and she never really improved. She felt horrible and thought of her future, an intense longing of actually feeling positive washing over her. She felt as if she was a beggar, begging not for money, but for the ability to feel happiness, excitement, and maybe even love. She thought that that day was never going to arrive. Until one day, you donated happiness. And from that moment she's searched all the records, determined to find the person who gave her the taste of what happiness truly felt like.

Custom Plot x Jennie

Create your own plot. Jennie is comfortable with any plot and trope ranging from yandere, mafia, fantasy, etc. Just make sure that Jennie sticks to her own trope.

Rules, things to know + (de)activation

Jennie has no idea how a relationship works so you gotta teach her

When doing nsfw, Jennie is inexperienced but she is a switch (Hard Dom) and (Obedient Sub) When she is taught correctly

Her safeword is Willow

Jennie is uncomfortable with piss and feet play

Nsfw is only allowed if you are 18+

Admin is 19 and is a legal adult and would not like to go to court because of a tumblr role play so please be honest

To activate: Send a DM with your name/ nickname, age, plot, if youd like nsfw or not, kinks, hard no's, triggers, and a safeword (if nsfw)

To Deactivate just message [Deactivate] and admin will confirm before deleting the conversation.

OG's: @/yanlee @/yanderelee @blackwidowjennie

Tags: @pantheonnnn (non edgy tiny boi) @undeadbots (smoothie man) @jh-de-lune @silverypurple-rosedlions @17-bot @seventeen-chatbot @xo-sunflower @kaanghana @mycatshumans @badboyhyunjae @maidchanhee @supernatural-superm @vampiremomo @clyde-yukhei @mono-rowoon @mono-minji @camboyrenjunnie @subbyjwoo @yeonjunxx @mafia-bots @soonyoungii @yourdaddychan @midari-jieun @yooabot @yvespunk @hernameisangel-oc @prince-juyeonn @minji-oc @horrorgames-cb @obey-ateez @mafia-chae @vitoria-oc @heathenxbots @umbrellaacademy-cb @urboys @storybook-nct @shin-haneul @yanderetzuyuu @skz-cb @cbcondo @prettycure-cb @boys-cb @hellbound-cb @thewolfpack-cb @tricksterhongjoong @transcendence-bot (DM for +/-)

[wendynerdwrites]

Meta Repost: A Study in Adaptation and "Empowerment"

Book!Sansa:

Often spouts off random historical and literary trivia, referencing various Westeros myths, historical events, and figures such as Queen Naerys, Aemon the Dragonknight, the twin knights Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk, Baelor the Blessed and his trials walking through the snake pit, the lineage of House Tyrell and how it traces back to Garth Greenhand, the Arryn family tree, Florian and Jonquil, and Jenny of the Oldstones and Prince Duncan. Has an encyclopedic knowledge of every house and sigil in Westeros. Can also read and write better than her much older brothers, play two instruments, and eventually gets to the point where she can sniff out little plots of Littlefinger's.

Show!Sansa:

Thinks "shift" is the rude word for dung. Doesn't appear to have any actual interests or skills beyond sewing (sometimes), eating lemoncakes, and fawning over boys.

Book!Sansa:

Can identify Barristan Selmy and Renly Baratheon on sight, even when she's never met them before.

Show!Sansa:

Doesn't even recognize the man whose life she saved, and doesn't pick up on the fact that Tyrion and Shae know each other despite their obvious signals.

Book!Sansa:

Carefully inspects a secret message she gets for signs of a trap, carries a knife with her to a clandestine meeting and threatens the person there just in case it is. Spends months plotting a potential escape, even trying a different route independent of her former plans when her co-conspirator is evasive and slow to act. Also refuses to speak to any of her maids, who she knows to be spies immediately. By Joffrey's wedding, though she doesn't know about the poison, she does know she's meant to escape and already has things packed. She immediately realizes who was behind the poison and how it was transmitted through her hairnet, which she knew would play a part in her escape without being aware of the poison plot. Does not trust her "rescuer" at all, refusing the food he offers her and confronting him on his lies, constantly trying to work out what he's up to.

Show!Sansa:

Just sort of sits around and cries a lot without any sort of active involvement in insuring her escape. Trusts Littlefinger even though there's no reason to because he says he's her friend. Just sort of randomly gets accosted by Dontos months later in a garden and accepts his random and suspicious gift without any hesitation or questions asked. Later happily walks into the home of the family that killed hers for "revenge" without any knowledge of what the actual plan is, what the situation is, or means to protect herself or take action in case things go wrong. Is eager to bond with Tyrion at first because he promised he would never hurt her (a promise Joffrey made her before almost verbatim), even kneeling to him at once with little prompting. Also blindly trusts this random maid for no reason. And is totally okay with believing Ramsay has "already fallen for her" with no question as to how she's supposed to handle things if he hasn't. Also trusts the broken down Theon (whom she has already verbally abused) with an errand integral to her escape from Winterfell. And just blindly offers up her secret identity (while being wanted for regicide) to a bunch of strangers after having been betrayed repeatedly.

Book!Sansa:

Sees Lancel Lannister, a young man who taunted her and took active part in her abuse, bleeding on the floor from a terrible wound, and makes sure he sees a maester, just in time to save his life.

Show!Sansa:

Looks at the physically and psychologically tortured and mutilated Theon Greyjoy, who can barely walk or speak properly anymore, and tells him that she doesn't care what Ramsay does to him and later tells him that she'd do everything Ramsay did to him if she could.

Book!Sansa:

Fights off Lysa Arryn when she tries to kill her by grabbing her by the hair and pulling herself from her mad aunt's grip.

Show!Sansa:

Just cries and fidgets helplessly as she is abused even more and is utterly helpless until Petyr comes to save her.

Book!Sansa:

Risks herself to save Dontos, talks Joffrey out of running down a beggar woman and instead convinces him to throw her a coin because she knows it would be better if he appeared gentler. Listens to Cersei preach about how fear is the only way to rule and, even after all the terror she's experienced and all the awful people she's seen rise to power through violence and fear, reflects internally that love is definitely, surely the better path to loyalty and devotion and vows that if/when she is queen, she will make the people love her.

Show!Sansa:

Is so oblivious that she doesn't understand what poverty is and has to have it explained to her. Upon learning that Theon didn't kill her brothers and instead killed two farm boys, doesn't seem to give a shit that two other innocent children were still fucking murdered.

Book!Sansa:

Is often threatened and taunted by Sandor Clegane The Hound and always responds with kindness, courtesy, and sympathy. When he responds to a compliment upon their first private interaction by taunting her, telling her a violent story, and belittling her, she is sweet and kind. She stays this way even after he threatens her life. Then she includes him in her prayers. When he breaks into her room, forces her onto a bed, holds a knife to her throat, and demands a "song", she responds with a kind and soothing hymn that calms him, reminds him that there is goodness in the world, and gets him to back off. Eventually this helps inspire him to change his life entirely and pursue a path of peace and public service.

Show!Sansa:

Just acts generally freaked out by the Hound, even though his threats are FAR less explicit and only ever accompanied by well-meaning advice. Is not sexually assaulted by him the night of the Blackwater, just sort of talks to him and rejects his offer to help her escape. There is no sign that she thinks of him again.

Book!Sansa:

Is offered a marriage to Willas Tyrell, heir to Highgarden. While she is attracted to Loras and has a sort of schoolgirl crush, she notes that he doesn't care for her too much. Upon being told Loras is off the table, accepts this without a second thought and turns her thoughts to the scholarly, disabled, older Willas, whom she has never met. She eagerly awaits and fantasizes about him because it is her path out of King's Landing and her new friend Margaery assures her that he is kind and intelligent. Knows him to be disabled, and actively thinks about how she won't care if he's fat or unattractive like his father. She still sees him as her rescuer, a man she is eager to marry despite his disability, and decides she'll make him love her and give him sons. Upon having the marriage to Tyrion sprung on her (after she's in the damn dress, when she is dragged to the sept and told she's going to get married and raped whether she likes it or not), she looks at his disfigurements and acknowledges that he is not so bad as the rest, and notes that he was kind to her once, even while actively insisting she just doesn't want to marry a Lannister (any Lannister, regardless of appearance). Still manages to hold back her tears for fucking HOURS and hold her resolve through numerous threats, sexual assaults, and humiliations that happen throughout the day. Refuses to kneel at first because she's just so fucking sick of being expected to just take the cavalcade of abuse, but eventually does kneel and kiss her husband because she feels bad about people laughing at him. Feels active pity for him (even after he molests her, even after she finds out her mother and brother were killed by one of his family's plots, even though she doesn't trust him), despite her constant fear of him raping her and her ongoing trauma, all while withholding her secrets and still pursuing escape.

Show!Sansa:

Is totally into marrying Loras, constantly waxing on about how hot he is even after she's alerted to the Tyrion marriage weeks ahead of time. Seems far more interested in his pretty hair and nice ass than his personality or getting the fuck out of King's Landing (something that only occurs to her when Margaery brings it up weeks later. It never occurs to Sansa because she's too busy staring longingly at Loras's pretty hair to consider this). Mulls on about the contrast in her suitors' physical appearance, despite Loras's repeat displays of a complete lack of interest (which she never seems to recognize). Upon learning of the new marriage arrangement, spends hours crying as she gazes at Loras. Kneels immediately at the wedding when prompted, then later totally starts confiding in and bonding with Tyrion (even after learning of the Red Wedding, she tells him the real reason she goes to the Godswood for no fucking reason).

Book!Sansa:

Notices hostilities from Loras at once. Upon learning the Tyrells want her for political purposes, just accepts this and decides to make the most of it. Highgarden is still a lovely place, she'd be safe, and she can make Willas love her even if he only cares about her claim right now.

Show!Sansa:

Never notices how uninterested Loras is and talks about how she "feels like she is in a dream" even as Loras is looking around with an "EWWWW! GIRLS!!!" face.

Book!Sansa:

Cares for the sickly, disabled Robin Arryn all while firmly instilling some (grievously needed) boundaries upon him, managing at thirteen to be twenty times the mother thirty-something Lysa Arryn was. Even manages to get the epileptic, panic-attack prone kid across a narrow mountain path a mile into the air beset by winds as she talks him down from an attack. Is the only one who can control him, and is adored by everyone in the Vale for it.

Show!Sansa:

Never takes responsibility for anyone, never really charms anyone, is totally content to just leave her cousin with some people she doesn't trust to set off to wherever the man in her life wants her to go (even without knowing where that is).

Book!Sansa:

Manages to get some of Littlefinger's plans out of him, and learns of his means of accomplishing his goals. Keeps all of these things in mind constantly and notes subtle facial ticks and movements he makes when he is wearing his "Littlefinger" mask and playing people.

Show!Sansa:

Just sort of takes his word for it when he says she should marry Ramsay for "vengeance" without asking for specifications as to how. Later is willing to accept the plan B of just "making Ramsay hers" even though he's a fucking Bolton and that doesn't really clear up how this is supposed to lead to vengeance. She takes Littlefinger's word for it that Ramsay has fallen for her. Is totally okay with being left in the den of her enemies without any means of protection.

Book!Sansa:

Charms and manipulates people she needs with subtle hints of snark. Uses this to not only occasionally talk Joffrey out of violence, but later starts seducing Harry the Heir, acknowledging that she needs him to like her even if she doesn't like him.

Show!Sansa:

Openly antagonizes Ramsay when she even bothers to interact with him, showing no sign of trying to "make him hers" or confirm that he's fallen for her. Continues to taunt her rapist and abuser even after he's revealed how dangerous and temperamental he is.

Book!Sansa:

Knows immediately that Marillion is a creep, that Lyn Corbray is a fucking scumbag, that Harry the heir is a douche.

Show!Sansa:

Can't even realize how much of a psycho Ramsay is even after he parades his torture victim around, doesn't realize Loras isn't into her, doesn't realize that maybe the mutilated, brainwashed, obsessively obedient and cowed Theon might not be the best person to trust with her one means of escape from his master.

Book!Sansa:

Actively forces herself to think as her alternate identity "Alayne", purposely picks clothes that will disguise her better, thinks up little details to add to her character, and tries to be careful around people who might recognize her, like Bronze Yohn Royce.

Show!Sansa:

Can't even think to cover her distinctive red hair when walking out in the open. Later just decides a dye job is enough to hide herself even after she's dispensed with the false identity. Travels out in the open and greets people as Sansa Stark even though SHE IS STILL WANTED FOR FUCKING REGICIDE.

Book!Sansa:

Doesn't really trust anyone. The last person she trusts is a man whose life she saves (who turns out to just be acting on Littlefinger's orders). After that, no one, though she still tries to reach out and make friends.

Show!Sansa:

Randomly trusts this random old lady with a dumb plan, walks into the dark Bolton kennels at Myranda's bidding, then lets her bathe her, reveals her secret identity to strangers in the Vale, trusts Theon with the candle plot. But either dismisses or insults almost everyone she encounters.

Book!Sansa:

Intends to go into the North with an army and proclaim her rights to Winterfell.

Show!Sansa:

Let's Littlefinger lead her all the way to Moat Caillin without a word about where they're heading. When she finds out they're heading to the Bolton-controlled Winterfell, agrees to go with only a small group of guards (despite the price on her head and the war torn area), and is later way too cool with letting Littlefinger ditch her for King's Landing without even leaving the guards. Is ready to just rely on Stannis winning and just handing over Wardenship of the North, even though none of these things are assured.

Book!Sansa:

Doesn't voice all of her thoughts to anyone, particularly regarding her loyalties. Twice she tries to warn Margaery away from marrying him. The first time when there is a cover of singing and tons of pressure. A second time without prompting or pressure, purely out of the goodness of her heart, and only when she is riding out in the middle of the Kingswood with Margaery, where she is far more assured of privacy. Takes a similar route with Dontos, only meeting him in the godswood.

Show!Sansa:

Will openly talk about hating Joffrey to a maid hired by the Lannisters right smack dab in the middle of the Red Keep.

Book!Sansa:

Carries a dinner knife with her to a clandestine meeting just in case it is a trap, even threatening to stab a potential attacker. Makes frequent trips at night to meet with her ally, using religious fervor and prayer as an alibi to the point where she spends hours upon hours during the day praying in the sept to reinforce this show of piety. It fools everyone, including her usually perceptive husband who expresses an interest in getting to know her. Even after she's escaped and she's accused of regicide, people talk about how pious she was.

Show!Sansa:

Grabs a corkscrew and instead of using it as a weapon (or grabbing a knife from her food tray) against her rapist (who likely sleeps next to her after he's done raping her), uses it to.... pick a lock? And then just walks out in broad daylight in front of her rapist's men, expecting not to be caught. This works until it doesn't.

Book!Sansa:

As of the latest installment, is making close friends, has figured out a way to draw all the power players in the Vale to the same location, is charming Harry the Heir and all the Vale lords, eating lemon cakes, dancing, eavesdropping on Littlefinger's conversations, and caring for a sick kid.

Show!Sansa:

As of the latest installment, is (kind of?) rescued by a man when he kills her husband's mistress, grabs her, and they jump off a wall. This is after weeks of being locked in a room where she is raped and beaten nightly and spending some time in a tower.

Book!Sansa:

All this happens ages 11-13

Show!Sansa:

All this happens ages 13-15.

Game of Thrones defenders and creators:

The Sansa of the show is smarter, stronger, more likable, and more active. She's actually started to play the game. We wanted to make her more empowered. This seasons especially was all about her taking action and putting the skills she's learned to good use, no longer being a bystander who sits around and weeps but actually being a player. This Sansa is no weak little girl!

Me:

Yeah, I can totally see how people think this is a progressive show that makes the "weak, passive, stupid, mean-spirited, shallow" Sansa of the books a more likable, resourceful, intelligent, empowered, and stronger character. Look how much better she plays the game! Look how likable they've made her! Look at that black dress! Yes, this show DEFINITELY improved upon the source material and gave us a far more feminist and empowering storyline. The show gives us a Sansa who can FINALLY play the game! This is the Sansa who knows what she's doing, who is a REAL player, who isn't some weak, shallow, stupid damsel in distress. I'm so glad they went in this direction, it's so much more empowering! Yay! A Sansa who is finally learning and taking on a cool and active story!