#another episode of vagueblogging

[spaceoperetta]

Ok my doctor who vagueblogging is over sorry for doing it so soon after the episode but I’m done with my microdosing about being upset about doctor who.

The thing about it is! Normally when I read about shows I’ve dropped! I don’t particularly care! I’m over it! I loved doctor who sooooo much and eventually ragequit during capaldi’s first season bc I couldn’t stand any more moffat, (shame bc capaldi is a cool dude) had zero desire to come back for chibnall because his episodes were all either meh to bad, my entire interaction with thirteen was “good for her, I guess? Not watching sorry about the timeless child or whatever” and my reaction to RTD coming back, when I fucking hated journey’s end, and it’s david tennant again was ‘oh no’. Which, like, good for david tennant I know he loves the show but why in god’s name is he back

I’m heated about 14 trying to fix the Donna ending - I hated it so much the first time that any attempt to uwu fix it ALSO makes me mad, and I’m heated about what just happened. Hell, I’m heated about Donna’s daughter’s name being yet another shill for rose tyler (yes I know the context.) and, of course, what just happened! Aaaaaaaa.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

writing tip

Time for more vagueblogging about that dude who wanted to hire me.

Listen.  If you are working in a universe where some Major Societal Change occurred, please consider how long it takes for a society to change completely.  

Basically?  George Lucas was wrong.  I’m sure that’s hard to hear but it’s true.  The Jedi do not go from Space Cops to a dimly remembered myth of a religion in twenty years, no matter how good your propaganda is, because of a thing called living memory.  Here are your approximate time frames you’re going to be working with if you’re dealing with this kind of setting:

Here And Now, the time where your novel is set

Living Memory, the things that are remembered by the people who are still alive, probably everything from the present back through most of a century, although that one’s a moving target based on lifespan and circumstances like war or famine

Mythic History, the things that are talked about in the tone of “once upon a time”

You are also dealing with:

Before The Event

After The Event

You can use propaganda to make people “forget” things in terms of being unwilling to speak about them, but no propaganda program is perfect and societies have a lot of momentum behind them.  Living Memory is still crucially important to take into account, and things that are present in Living Memory shouldn’t be relegated to Mythic History because it feels discordant as hell.  This means that, if everything Before The Event, whatever that major change was, is Mythic History, everyone who was alive at the time of The Event should be dead now.

Ex: Vader isn’t a fucking sorcerer, y’all, he’s using the Force and there’s literally no justifiable reason for anyone even nominally well-acquainted with galactic events to think otherwise.  There were a lot of Jedi and they were commanders in a big ass war about two decades ago, nothing in Star Wars bothers me more than this.  There was a while there where you couldn’t swing a space cat without hitting someone who was within two degrees of separation from a Jedi, it’s ridiculous to think that everyone wrote them off as myth that fast.

(Listen, I know the real world is in a rush to forget important things like the Holocaust, but A: societies have momentum and a lot of ours is antisemetic in nature, among other things, B: that kind of denial is bullshit and we all know it’s bullshit, C: the Axis lost WWII so that’s not the kind of societal overhaul we’re talking about here, and D: sometimes reality really is stranger than fiction, we’re trying to write a believable novel not a history textbook.  No one would believe you if you wrote a novel where over 16 million men shared an identical Y chromosome passed down from a conqueror eight centuries ago, nor if your main character conquered an island by making it a peninsula, but here we are.)

Anyway, here’s the point: if you want to completely rewrite a society to the extent that the way things were Before The Event is completely foreign to the civilization at large, you are not going to have a main character who was twenty years old when the civilization changed over.  You’re just not.  You need hundreds of years of consistent and competent erasure to instill that kind of total disbelief that, for example, no one ever believed the world was flat.  Or that the Jedi existed.  We are not talking about one lifetime.  We are talking about at least everyone who was alive during The Event being dead and, ideally, another generation having kicked it, too--say 25 years to a generation, so, like, minimum 125 years.  You have to remove Living Memory from the equation if you want to talk about things Before The Event as Mythic History.  The more time has passed After The Event, the more justifiable forgetting the way things were Before The Event becomes.  

If you simply can’t have that kind of time frame, for whatever reason, then you need to go full V for Vendetta and the authority figures need to be ready and willing to kill anyone who even hints at the way things were Before The Event.  Not just anyone who stands up against them, anyone who even indicates that they have not followed orders and completely forgotten how things used to be.  Living Memory must be eradicated artificially in this situation, both through propaganda and through literally killing the memory--and I’ll point out that it’s ultimately unsuccessful, because Living Memory is pretty pernicious.

But, uh, all that being said...

Hot take?

If you’re trying to, oh, say, establish a society where women have completely subjugated men to second-class citizen status, you’re gonna need more than twenty years.

[lonelier-version-of-you]

Right. This is going to be a long post (I’ll bold what’s important, bold + italics what’s really important, and bold + headline the really, really important stuff), so if you find that annoying then I’m sorry in advance.

I’m also not going to state what fandom this happened in, although some of you might be able to tell. I don’t want further vagueblogging and harassment. Not towards me, and not towards the others involved. Hence why I don’t name names, to prevent anyone from harassing the people I mention, and why I try to be respectful when talking about them.

If you’re going to reblog this with commentary or whatever, please don’t. If you’re mad at me, just block me, it’ll be easier on the both of us. If you’re going to spread this post around, please refrain from reblogging it - link it to anyone if the subject comes up. I probably sound paranoid here, and that would be because I am. I have major issues with paranoia and that’s basically why I’m making this post.

But anyway, seeing as I wouldn’t be surprised if some people are gonna try to ruin my and my blog’s reputation now, I’d like to attempt some damage control and make some things very clear:

First, I am a teenager and a former grooming victim, and as such I would appreciate not being accused of “trying to defend gross relationships.” Thank you. 

I don’t expect people to know this beforehand, and that’s why I’m saying it now. Express whatever concerns you want, just please, please don’t try to imply I’m a pedo apologist. I’m not saying anyone has done this (they’ve done the “trying to defend gross relationships” thing though), necessarily, or that they’ve done it intentionally, just that some might try to, and I’d greatly prefer if they didn’t.

What happened was this:

Someone said (or actually a lot of people have been saying it, but I’ve kept my mouth shut in the past) that a character from a certain show shouldn’t be with another character due to their age difference.

Now, both characters are adults, fully capable of consenting. Read that. Read it again. It’s important.

The younger character is about 24-25, or possibly even a bit older. (The actress who plays her is 29, for what it’s worth, but I’ll be fair here and assume the character is younger than the actress, as she’s supposed to be a paramedic who’s just started her job/finished her training within the past year and as such would likely be younger unless she started her training late for whatever reason.)

The older character is about 34-35. (The wiki for the show says he was born in 1983-1984, and I don’t have an hour to check the episode they put as a source so I’ll assume they’re right. So he’d have turned either 34 or 35 last year.)

I can certainly see how this age difference might weird some fans out or make them uncomfortable. Fuck, it weirds me out, and also I don’t imagine such a relationship would last very long IRL, as while they are both adults, they are very much in different stages of life. I do not ship these characters. I find the older one extremely annoying anyway.

The younger character is heavily coded as autistic within the show, and has been essentially confirmed as such by the actress in interviews. She is also often referred to by the fandom as “precious,” “cute,” and similar labels that they rarely seem to use for allistic characters.

(“Essentially confirmed” meaning, here, that the actress was asked about this character being autistic and said “yeah, I thought of that too, it’s something I take into account when playing her”).

I, an autistic person, expressed my concerns about this autistic character being seen as a child by the fandom for this show, and how that could potentially influence people’s opinions on the relationship, and make them see the age gap as larger than it is.

What I got was this:

Someone, calling themself an “actual autistic person” (because I’m apparently not an actual autistic person because I disagree with them... No True Scotsman fallacy, anyone?) telling me (except they didn’t tell me, they vagueblogged me, and yes I’m aware that I’m vagueblogging them back) that, and I quote, “no one is treating [character] as a “small uwu child” because she’s autistic (no one’s treating her like that anyway but u kno lets just ignore that hey?)”

Even. Though. People. Are. Literally. Treating. Her. Like. That. Look at all the posts calling her “precious” and “adorable”, using all sorts of cutesy heart emojis, and generally just referring to her in a patronizing manner. Admittedly people do that for their faves regardless of neurotype, and I don’t really get it but whatever. But the thing is - yes, she is a sweet person or whatever, but none of the other characters on the show really get talked about in the same way. Definitely not as often.

One marginalised person thinking something isn’t an issue DOES NOT mean it isn’t an issue. I mean, this is how you get “transrationals” endorsing extreme transphobia despite being trans themselves. This is how you get gay Tories. Not that I’m saying the situations are comparable, just using some more extreme examples to prove my point.

Back to this specific person. They then go on to say “the age difference is fucking weird [...insert a bunch of attempts to calculate the characters’ ages here...] y’all cant deny that its weird and its kinda gross that you are??“

I never denied that the age difference was weird (or I did, sort of, but in the context I meant - and I think it was fairly obvious - I was saying “people are trying to make out like it’s pedophilia or something, please stop doing that”).

I also said very explicitly that I didn’t like the pairing, but this person seems to have ignored that in their reply.

Implying that I’m “gross” for having concerns about an autistic character being seen as a child is an obvious attempt to demonise me.

TL;DR: I defended an admittedly probably not very healthy ship, but one between two consenting, fully-grown adults.

I was trying to use the fandom’s reaction to this potential relationship as an example of how they tend to talk about one of the characters, who is autistic, in a way that I feel is somewhat ableist, and explain why I was concerned about that.

I was admittedly probably harsher than I should have been, and I regret that. I regret the whole post, and I regret trying to defend the ship, as the age difference is indeed unhealthy. But I have been demonised and painted as “gross” for that post, and I feel that’s unfair.

[elizabethrobertajones]

What are some of your favorite episode titles from the show?

Hiii :D

Just skimming through the list…

What Is And What Should Never Be, just because it’s so dang poignant of the entire concept and the pain Dean goes through in the episode��� 

Lazarus Rising, because of the story in the title, and obviously you see the title card before you ever know it was angels, and so when you have it without the context it’s so painful, wondering if Dean really has a clean miraculous resurrection… and then by the end it seems so… except you KNOW the angels’ terms and conditions for it are coming down the road.

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Dean Winchester - titles in first person kill me and this one is so painful. Most of the episode deals with all the ghosts, but the philosophy as Dean debates with Sam and Bobby through the episode are the core discussions which tell us everything about Dean’s faith and what the angels are to him, and his problem with God which is such a wonderful part of his characterisation as he takes it into his own hands to fix what God won’t.

On The Head Of A Pin… Honestly this one just because Terry Pratchett got to me first and it makes me laugh to imagine Cas and Anna and Uriel prancing around together :P

In the satirical novel Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, the angel Aziraphale is said to be the only angel who could dance on the head of a pin, as he learned the gavotte in the 19th century. Also, in Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett, Granny Weatherwax says the answer is 16 if it’s an ordinary house pin.How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? - Wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F

The combination of Two And A Half Men, The Third Man, The Man Who Would Be King and The Man Who Knew Too Much in season six. It’s a total disaster of a season (I’m watching it right now, up to 6x11 right now :D) but there’s structural things that even if they’re later hacks to make it look like the story always matched up, helped sell it to me, a casual viewer, on my first watch through, and I loved that collection and the story contained behind it, using the joke title of the first to add Cas in as the “third man” in the next one, and then the parallel of Cas and Sam in the titles as they go through their struggles in the end of the season, both wrestling internally with themselves, metaphorically and literally. 

Live Free Or Twihard - okay, I’m a sucker for some of the joke titles, and I was on the internet as a teenage girl at the time Twilight was massively popular, and therefore had to maintain vicious intellectual snobbery about it… I moved past it, but I still absolutely crack up about the Kristen and Robert characters in the cold open of that episode. 

Appointment in Samarra - I already knew the story before I saw the episode, so I took one look at the title and had a huge nerdgasm about it, and as Death and Dean and Tessa interactions are all some of my favourite things in the show, I’ve always loved this to bits, and the way Death was always going to give Sam back his soul and was just testing Dean to show him a lesson, and the way he begins to take an unintentionally fatherly role to Dean because he’s so freakin desperate for a father figure and radiates it, every older dude in the universe ends up filling the role one way or another :P 

How To Win Friends and Influence Monsters… Look, I’d half expect that to be a real book on Dick Roman’s shelves as he goes around giving business lunch speeches to all the monsters and leviathan. It’s quintessential season 7 nonsense and I love this storyline and no one can stop me… it appeals to my mistrust of CEOs and the sense that capitalism wants to dumb us all down and consume us, and it appeals to my basic political compass as like the trash entertainment for people like me :P 

Plucky Pennywhistle’s Magical Menagerie: you just KNOW something horrible is behind that title, and my instinctive reaction to it, as someone who had to skip town whenever my uni home town had “clown week”… well, it’s my favourite episode and I am Sam. 

We Need To Talk About Kevin, and A Little Slice of Kevin… LEAVE MY GUY ALONE

Do You Believe In Miracles? NOT ANY MORE

Red Meat: Isn’t it just viscerally horrible in a way that somehow even in this show manages to promise that it’s more viscerally horrible than the normal viscerally horrible fare, that the show isn’t exactly stingy with handing out? Within like 10 seconds you realise that Sam is that slab of red meat and it gets worse from there :P

Don’t Call Me Shurley… literally fuck off Robbie Thompson. Anyway my parents made me watch Airplane like a hundred times as a kid so that one was a wonderful thing to see and obviously has all the promise of what it actually is - Metatron bullying Chuck into dropping the whiny hiding writer act and busting out some of the old testament God he still has buried in his personality, so there’s some deep meta about personalities and names in there, all hidden in a terrible pun re-punned as the title >.> 

Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets - it feels like a complete poem I could just hold in my hands in that form and not need to do anything else with. Most of Yockey’s titles do but I’m picking on this one as it’s especially haunting :D

Stuck In The Middle (With You): See also: the “fuck off” about “little slice of Kevin”

Lost And Found oh god, my smol nougat child being dressed from the lost and found. Cas being lost. Jack being found. New lil family together and losing the old family. HOLD ME. I can’t write more or I’ll cry :P

Wayward Sisters - not going to lie, I sobbed the first time I saw that title appear on the screen, just for seeing those words emblazoned on the show permanently. We can debate the wayward daughters thing and how good of a title it actually is, but it’s where we collectively ended up and it’s more about what it means than what it says. 

Various And Sundry Villains - watching Yockey vagueblog Buckleming through artful writing choices right down to the title was a petty delight of mine this season so I’m giving it its own paragraph. Like, look at all these people. It’s not even all the villains, Asmodeus popped to the shops and missed all the fun. What the fuck is going on this season. 

Let The Good Times Roll. This season was built on dramatic irony, and this episode was shaped perfectly around its own title and it was magnificent in terms of teasing us with this promise of the “good times” and then snatching them away. And, of course, in literary analysis terms, this season HAD to end on the “ironic” note which is the one between happy ending and tragedy, the one where there’s a clear and excellent victory or three and at the beginning of the episode a fascinating exploration of what good times and happy ending might be and assembling a new family and wider community around them, but still, the worst happens as a result, and that was Dean finally giving in to his so-called destiny and saying Yes to some version of Michael, but in order to complete the whole killing the devil nonsense he’s been tasked with forever. So of course, the dumb freeze frame ends on Michael having his good times roll. 

[mtunit05953234-archive]

🔥

Send me a “ 🔥 “ for an unpopular opinion.

Emotional Manipulation, Vagueblogging, Guilt Tripping, and being a general asshole

Yes, hello. Here today, we’re having another episode of ‘am I being a dick or is it the children who are wrong?’ Just kidding, you’re probably being a dick. 

No one likes being made to feel guilty about anything at all so when it happens to be about something that’s on your blog? That’s even worse. It’s like someone’s in the corner whispering to themselves ‘how dare you have fun on something I can’t control’ like an Exorcist version of Dobby the house elf. It’s not anyone’s fault that someone feels bad on their own blog but you know what you can do to make things a little better? Control your content consumption.

Vagueblogging is just as bad and it’s something I’ll unfollow for in a heartbeat. This is an odd little phenomenon that I learned about while on Tumblr and noticed that it’s pretty much all over social media. You know what though? There’s no reason to vagueblog about other people who are online. If you have a problem with them, go to them and talk it out. You may find that it’s a much smaller problem than it’s turned out to be. 

It’s not a good thing to get in the regular habit of or even to start at all. Vagueblogging, and this counts for confession blogs too, can cause a lot of anxiety in people. It may not be pertaining to a certain person at all but if they do manage to see it, it could cause a panic attack in them thinking that they’ve done something wrong when they haven’t. Things like that can blow up and cause bigger issues. Why do this to someone? It’s not right. It’s not okay. It’s not cute either. 

This leads directly into guilt tripping and oh boy have I seen some of that. 

Guilt tripping someone is bullshit. Flat out, plain and simple. It can come in the form of: 

Well, I saw you were replying to other people, why haven’t you done that for me yet? You replied to X character four times and I have yet to see a single reply at all!

It’s not always that cut and dry. If you feel like someone is trying to goad you into replying faster than you’re comfortable with, that’s manipulation. However, I do not count reminding someone about a thread after it’s been over a week. What I’m talking about is constantly being up your ass about replies to the point that they’re trying to jeopardize your replies. 

The thing is: We’re all fucking anxious wrecks and we need to take two minutes to get over ourselves and communicate. 

Roleplaying is a hobby, not an invitation to treat others like shit. Mental illness is an explanation, not an excuse. I’m not gonna play into this ‘I have anxiety so I literally can’t talk to people’ bullshit because I see you sitting right there doing replies and communicating with others. Look man. I have anxiety too. Bad. I have to take a pretty powerful medication for it because of how awful it can get and yet here I am, working on dealing with my anxiety, and recovering from it. But you know what else? 

I’m not going to use my anxiety as a crutch to treat others like shit. 

Sure, it can be an explanation as to why I’ve avoided talking to them but you know, that’s only hurting myself because I convince myself that people hate me when it’s not true. I’m here to write. I’m here to make friends and interact with other people. I’m here to enjoy the way people write even if I’m not actively writing with them myself because you know what? There’s literally nothing better than seeing that people on my dash are enjoying themselves with their roleplay partners.

It’s beautiful to me.

Just the fact that we can all find a way to connect with one another by nerding out over our favorite characters is gorgeous. Don’t ever tell me that it’s not. 

I’m gonna throw in another thing here that seems to be pretty unpopular in the RPC in general: DUPLICATES.

Following several Prompto blogs myself, I can totally understand the anxiety and self esteem issues this can cause. However, I also want to point out that it doesn’t have to be something negative. 

My point being: No one can recreate the character that you write, because you add your own flavor to your character that cannot be replicated by someone else.

That’s it. 

That’s the entire point. 

Your interpretation of a character matters. I don’t care if you’re super popular and been here forever or just starting out and getting your toes wet. Your character matters. No one can take away what you can do with that character and no one can tell you what you can and cannot do with them. Explore your character. Enjoy your character. 

Everyone has a beautiful rendition of their characters. I’ve seen so many wonderful interpretations of Prompto since I’ve been here that it’s honestly amazing because each one has their own unique flavor. Being a part of a Discord server for Prompto RPers has opened my eyes on just how different they can all be. It’s still the same character, yes, but do you know how fucking cool it is to see how each one responds to the same thing differently? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. 

But please. Please. Don’t make someone else feel bad for playing the same character as you are. Unless your character is an OC, you do not own them. You have absolutely no right to tell someone how to roleplay their character whether you write them or not. For me, that’s another instant unfollow. I don’t care if you’ve been writing the character for eight fucking years, you cannot control what someone else does with the character. But you can control what you do. 

I’m pretty sure we’re all grown ass adults around here. I’m twenty-seven [27]. High school graduation was nine years ago for me. Let me let you in on a little secret: I’ve had more drama in the RPC over petty bullshit than I ever did in high school over anything in my entire life. That includes someone threatening to beat my ass over something they heard me say and taking it out of context. 

We’re all here for a hobby. Stop turning it into a fucking job. We aren’t getting a Ko-Fi for roleplaying. 

[iamanartichoke]

@incredifishface ^^ I feel like there was some kind of miscommunication here? because what I said was never directed toward anyone who is engaging - at one extreme end of the spectrum or the other - with the material. It wasn't about the material at all. But you are right, it wasn't addressed at both sides equally. It was directed 90% at the positive fans and maybe 10% at the negative fans, as an acknowledgement that people have hurt feelings on both sides.

The reason it was more heavily directed at the positive fans because, based on my experience, they're the ones who are going out of their way to write "callout" posts (as indicated in the op), to vagueblog about negative takes, to go on at length about how people who think Loki is ooc either have a shitty understanding of characterization, of Loki, or of both, and to mock. Among other things. Like, I consistently see it - but, that doesn't mean that people who are on the negative side are completely and totally blameless, either. I know of at least one mutual who was getting anon hate for feeling positive/optimistic about the show as well. So I think it should be acknowledged that actual people are being hurt in various ways over fiction.

I never meant to imply there's a right or wrong way to engage in fandom, but I do think that if your fandom participation includes making a habit of doing the aforementioned, bullying-type things, then yeah, maybe you do need to step back and re-evaluate on what you're getting out of this. You may need to step back and ask yourself - are you here because you're a fan who wants to engage (positively OR negatively) with the material, or are you here because you want to bully people bc being mean makes you feel superior? I believe that for some people in this fandom, it's the latter -and if that's the case, then yeah, maybe consider chilling out and not going out of your way to hurt real people over differences in opinion over fictional material. It's not that deep = fiction and fandom shouldn't be worth bullying people over, whether the bullying is active (anon hate, etc) or passive (callout posts, vagueblogs, etc).

Obviously no one has to agree with me about whether it's "that deep" or not, but I just - I really need to make it clear that I was never commenting on how people are interacting with the material itself. I don't believe there's some arbitrary line that says, you can only take your feelings this far, and you can only care this much, and once you cross that line, you're feeling too much, you're doing it wrong, you need to get a life and it's only a show. I mean. Yesterday I drove myself into a literal, real life panic attack based on how complicated my feelings were regarding this week's episode (and posted about it). I'm the last person who would ever say someone else was taking their emotional attachment to the material too seriously.

So ... there we are. I apologize for the misunderstanding here, and that my words were hurtful, but my words were never meant to undermine anyone's engagement with the material, positive or negative. I just think that, as a fandom, our spaces would be a lot healthier and way less wanky if we took a step back more often and looked at how we're treating one another as real people and tried to remember that a fictional show really isn't worth treating someone else badly.

Hey, here's a thought: how about let's not write callout posts condemning an entire section of the fandom for expressing themselves and their opinions???

These types of posts only encourage those who are enjoying the show (and enjoy talking about how much they enjoy it) to hop on the thread and comment, one after the other, about how wrong the dissenters are and how terrible their interpretations of Loki are. Like. It sews discord and disproportionately, passively bullies people who are just expressing their own opinions on tagged posts among themselves.

Like, I'm sorry that you have such an issue with people being critical of things you like? but maybe keep that shit to yourself instead of creating a space for one poster after another to just put down those who are vocal about not liking what they're seeing here.

[words-writ-in-starlight]

thank you so much omg Name of the Wind is SO FRUSTRATING, I tried reading it and just did NOT like the protagonist or the writing style or ANYTHING, and people KEEP RECOMMENDING IT TO ME

mhmhmhMHMHM you have come to the RIGHT PLACE

Okay, so first, a disclaimer: I read Name of the Wind four and a bit years ago and, despite my usually excellent memory for plots and characters, retained exactly jack and shit of the whole thing except for the arguments I wrote in my head about my frustration.  But like...I’ve been holding onto those for a long time, so just.  Sit tight and listen to me complain for a minute, I deserve this.

First and foremost, it’s pitched as this revolutionary take on...something, and if my life and the lives of everyone I love depended on it, I couldn’t tell you what it’s supposed to revolutionize.  It’s not even a particularly well-executed piece on Magic Has A Price, which is what I usually hear about (what with the very academic, scientific take on magic), the fucking early Dresden Files are better at that.  (Shit y’all, remember Toby Daye, the series I haven’t shut up about?  Magic Has A Price masterpiece right there.)  I mean, goddamn, @Patrick Rothfuss, I’m really sorry, but you’re never going to do Magic Is A Science better than Fullmetal Alchemist, which basically invented equivalent exchange, so just put that one to bed.  For actual revolutionary takes on various genres, I’d suggest Imperial Radch (scifi), The Wrath and the Dawn (fairy tale retelling), Stormdancer (steampunk/fantasy), Sunshine (paranormal urban), and Kencyrath Chronicles (epic fantasy).

Second, the main character is not likable.  There.  I said it.  I found Kvothe absolutely fucking insufferable in every way.  His “modern” self telling the story was, like, a little more tolerable, but for the majority of the novel he’s an arrogant twit too convinced of his own cleverness to drag his head out of his ass for long enough to actually get anything done.  It’s possible to do a very self-confident, clever character in a way that their arrogance is actually charming--King Arthur: Legend of the Sword comes to mind.  Shit, son, so does Roy Mustang, and half the other characters in FMA.  In books, I’d rec maybe Captive Prince (Laurent).  It’s important, if you’re doing that, to make sure that the character can actually put their money where their mouth is and do the thing they’re bragging about, or else make it a Learning Experience that sticks with them.  Kvothe ain’t that.  Kvothe is just completely baselessly sure that he’s going to be the best from the very beginning, despite evidence to the contrary, and I found it intolerably annoying.

Third, the universe is interesting, the magic is kind of a neat concept for all that it’s (from what I can tell) an Eragon bootleg, which is, of course, the child of LOTR and Star Wars almost exactly. But the writing style was like a fucking textbook.  I mean.  Goddamn.  Not exactly sweeping me away into the infinite Imagisphere with that.  And I’m not--my standards for evocative prose are not that high, the Animorphs books were written for thirteen-year-olds, but fuck me NotW was not remotely achieving it.  If you’re going to frontload that kind of technical jargon, you need to make it the point of the book, like The Martian, which is very up front about being a science ramble that enjoys what it’s doing, or else find a good balance like Sabriel, which is heavy on the technical angle of Abhorsen magic and glyphs and shit without sacrificing the characters.

Fourth, I dimly recall a girl who’s there for like a hot minute as a love interest?  I don’t think I remember any others?  So, you know...points off for that one.  It’s the 21st century.  Women, POC, the homosexual agenda, they should all be in there.  Thanks.

Fifth, the whole urban setup gets a lot of time and attention, but it’s just not...well done?  It’s just not.  It does not give a cohesive sense of place, nor an emotional connection to the people in that place.  Please, for the love of God, Jesus, and any other deities you want to throw in there, read the first book in the Kencyrath series, it is called God Stalk and it’s very good at this.  I’d also say Toby Daye, but that’s about a real place (San Francisco) rather than a fantasy setting, like NotW and God Stalk.

Sixth, and this is a writerly complaint, not an opinion, but: right, so, in the “modern” day when Kvothe is telling the story, some grand disaster is underway, right?  Am I making that up?  See, I’d never know if I was making it up, because it does not get a single goddamn mention in the main bulk of the novel.  That is a clear and evident sign that you need to critically reevaluate what part of the timeline is the main novel.  I’m not saying that your novel necessarily needs to be the worst day/month/week of your character’s life, but if you could have included the entire text of the novel in a page or two of emotionally laden dialogue or memories, you probably should have.  And don’t come at me with “Oh, Name of the Wind is the first in a series, things get underway later in the series” because if your FIRST BOOK does not grab me, I’m absolutely not giving you ANOTHER BOOK to get it done.  You want to set up some kind of heartwrenching Things Were Different Once arrangement?  Make me care about your characters and then drop bits of backstory as we go, or include a prologue, or get over your fear of flashbacks and use them judiciously. Crucially, give them a relationship to The Way Things Were and then use that relationship to make your reader upset for them.  Again, Toby Daye is a great example.  So is the Imperial Radch series by Anne Leckie.

Which brings me to seventh, which is that I am APPALLED that over the course of that entire goddamn book, there was not one single interpersonal relationship I ever came to give a damn about.  I think there was the girl, I think Kvothe might have had one (1) friend, I think there was a teacher?  And there was the kid Bast in the “modern” day, who I retained more of than literally anyone/anything else because he was the only person I gave a flying fuck about.  Again, I, the writer, am horrified about this, far more so than I, the reader.  The main thing that original content creators should take away from fanfic culture is that your readers will almost universally care more about the relationships between characters than anything else.  You are going to need a pretty balls-out crazy good universe and plot to smooth over a general lack of engaging relationships, and NotW just isn’t that good.  So, like, let that be a lesson.  I’m not recommending anything for this because this should be obvious.

EIGHTH, what...was the plot of the first book?  No, seriously, I was asking this when I finished it, too.  The only plot points I recall now are Kvothe deciding that he wanted to do The Magic, Kvothe conning his way into The School For The Magic (in, if I recall correctly, kind of a FMA ripoff?), something about a library for The Magic, a bunch of technical stuff about The Magic and Kvothe being an arrogant twit, and Kvothe getting whipped.  From what I remember, the entire book basically seemed to lead up to Kvothe getting whipped and ended shortly thereafter.  And, uh...how should I put this.  That’s.  Not a plot.  Again, that’s maybe a couple paragraphs of conversation between Kvothe and someone he cares about regarding the scars on his back, not an entire fucking novel.  Again, this should be obvious, I’m not recommending anything.

Anyway, TL;DR, NotW is ultimately a forgettable fantasy novel without anything in particular to distinguish it from a myriad of other unremarkably flawed fantasy novels, and I wouldn’t have any opinions on it whatsoever if people didn’t keep pitching it to me as the Second Coming of Tolkien, leGuin, McCaffrey, and fuck knows who else.  

A collection of the content I recommended here and why I recced them, plus some others:

Imperial Radch, Ann Leckie (unique scifi, excellent example of emotionally resonant flashbacks)

The Wrath and The Dawn, Renee Ahdieh (unique fairy tale retelling)

Stormdancer, Jay Kristoff (unique steampunk fantasy)

Sunshine, Robin McKinley (unique paranormal urban fantasy)

Kencyrath Chronicles, PC Hodgell (unique epic fantasy, well-executed fantasy cities and colleges)

Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa (magic with a price, scientific magic, charmingly arrogant characters) (manga or Brotherhood anime)

October Daye, Seanan McGuire (magic with a price, emotionally resonant memories/prologue, well-executed urban locale)

Captive Prince, CS Pacat (charmingly arrogant/engagingly arrogant characters, well-executed political scheming)

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, dir. Guy Ritchie (charmingly arrogant characters, concise worldbuilding)

The Martian, Andy Weir (technical frontloading without being unreadable)

Sabriel, Garth Nix (technical magic and worldbuilding without losing character engagement)

Source and Shield Series, Moira J. Moore (unique urban non-Earth fantasy, charmingly arrogant characters, emotionally resonant conversations about the past)

Temeraire Series, Naomi Novik (technical worldbuilding without being unreadable, having a fucking plot in each book even if your overall plot is extremely big-picture and doesn’t show up until later)

The Wicked + The Divine, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (unique folklore retelling/urban fantasy, charmingly arrogant characters, having some fucking diversity)

[elizabethrobertajones]

I don't condone sending you shitty messages, but I understand why Cas fans are fed up. Season after season they promise us more screen time for Cas, more attention for his story, and then it always ends the same way: with nothing. Even the Jack thing, which seemed to be mostly about him last year, ended with the three Winchesters as 'loving parents' and Cas sidelined as the failure who couldn't protect or understand Jack at all. There was zero meaningful interaction between them, which wtf. Ugh.

The thing that gets me here is there’s a weird presupposition that anyone who doesn’t care about this sort of thing isn’t a “cas fan”, like, that someone who is deeply invested in the entire story and has strong emotional reactions to ALL the characters so doesn’t pick favourites or particular arcs to hone in on, is somehow less attached to whatever character. As a Cas fan but also fan of everything else, I’ve really enjoyed his season and felt like we got a lot. Nothing to me would be a season where Cas literally had nothing - no screen time, no mentions. Season 1 or something, you know? Even season 7 has a bunch of stuff for Cas even though he’s in like 4 episodes for all intents and purposes. 

Like, idk, at this point I just feel like I’m too tired (in a health way not a wanky way) to really address what’s up with people who only care about specific parts of the story and how to ever describe the show as I care about it in a way that doesn’t presuppose you care about all the characters and storyarcs already and therefore things come off as much better balanced and you can make meaningful comments about what is and isn’t in the show. If you say Cas had “nothing” with Jack, it’s not the same as explaining in a nuanced way how you feel that despite multiple scenes together and their supposed pre-birth magical connection, Cas always felt like more of an abstract guide for Jack and in the end his influence was shown repeatedly to have less sway on Jack than his care for Sam and Dean in several scenes such as the end of 13x21 or the Gas n Go scene in 13x23, and though they had a few conversations and a nice moment in 13x06, ultimately they didn’t bond enough for you to be convinced by their relationship and still feel Cas and Jack have a very idealised and vague relationship in comparison to the one Sam and Dean built with him, and hope that next season they get to spend more time together - *takes a deep breath* - because that way you will feel more comfortable enjoying their relationship… Etc etc etc.

That’s nuanced, taking into account the span of their interactions in the season, not reducing it down to all or nothing and feeling like Cas was shafted in favour of the Winchesters, accounting for storylines and how much time the characters typically spend on screen, reasoning that within the absolutely normal framework of the show as you enjoy it this was about what you could have expected and you’ve now got a baseline normal for them to exceed next season if they were to make you truly happy, and… Idk. Like. I enjoy the show on such a wide scope that personal character grudges which become spiteful or jealous of other characters against a fave make no sense to me. I’m happy to let a storyline or arc resolve and for a character to float through a season as emotional support to someone else’s main arc, I’m happy to understand the pressure Wayward put on the storytelling re: Cas in the midseason. I’m always happy to see the good writers vagueblogging Buckleming’s writing, and make emotional allowances for Buckleming episodes to impress me with bare minimum decency instead of the sort of literally Shakespearean drama Yockey might deliver or whatever… 

Anyways, people can be bitter in their own spaces but as you say, people shouldn’t send me bitter wank just because they’re miserable that I enjoy the show more than them because I’m literally just tending my garden and I’m happy for people to come hang out here and enjoy the flowers and sunshine and compost heap all in their proper places, and it’s not my fault neighbours have bad ugly gardens, and it’s my right to prune or otherwise deal with weeds that in this metaphor I guess are seeds they throw over the fence trying to make my garden more ugly. 

(And weeds can be beautiful too… I like the trashy stuff and would let wildflowers grow in the lawn…) 

I mean idk i can see WHY “Cas fans” in the “i only like cas” sense are upset, largely because I have non-stop wank from them pouring into my inbox so they’ve explained in meticulous detail their problems with the show. But I am never going to agree the show sidelines, eliminates or removes Cas in the sense that he has “nothing” because he has had SO MUCH this season and coming up with arbitrary standards he has to pass to be well treated which are way above a rational minimum standard of decency based on normal expectations of how the show is written, means that people who only care about Cas and follow this standard are NEVER going to be happy. And as a result NEVER enjoy the actually really good, powerful Cas storylines the show has been writing. At this point it’s becoming like, self-deprivation from the thing they love, when it’s right in front of them, they’d rather sit with folded arms and refuse to open up and let the choo choo in, as Cas says, waiting for a banquet the show is unequipped and unprepared to deliver, while treating a normal 3 course filling and balanced meal as if it is a single bowl of watery gruel, and basing all complaints as if gruel is all that is served, and the only prospect for the future is gruel, and meanwhile I’m sitting here having another helping of delicious food like, what the heck. It’s not a fan fic banquet but it’s great and I can’t wait for the next course. 

[elizabethrobertajones]

13x17 watching notes

*vague muffled noises*

Expectations: got to come down from an all-time great episode but it's Davy so I'm not worried about a huge drop off, and I'm legitimately intrigued, of all things, to meet Asmodeus written by someone other than Buckleming. Davy in season 12 briefly fooled me with 12x15 that the Crowley and Lucifer subplot might be worth watching, alas to no greater end as no one else wrote it for the rest of the year really. But in any case, he gets the honour of writing Gabriel so much better him to sell me on it than Buckleming :P I am therefore far more prepared to have Gabriel back on these terms and conditions...

-

The MoL recap skipped showing Cas with popcorn and I'm automatically deducting an entire out of ten score. This episode may end up being perfect in every other respect but would only get 9/10

-

They also didn't show Cas booping Ketch to sleep for no reason other than it being funny. 8/10

-

NOW: "1925"

-

This is super illuminati. Aka what Dean was worried about in 8x13 when they were first snooping around the Bunker... to this point, they never discovered anything worse than racist old men, or the weird British chapter. No signs of SERIOUS cult activity among the Americans, rather than it being a supernatural book club with a heroic purpose.

Leave that poor flapper alone.

-

Er are they literally doing the same spell? Terrified flappers make the WORST interdimensional travellers.

-

Honestly, though, the illuminati MoL aquarian star is super cool in a really spooky way

-

TENTACLE

-

Retroactively makes me wonder about 6x21 and if HP Lovecraft's friends were MoL and up to some nonsense. Obviously that was purgatory not an AU but it's all curiosity and who knows anything about all this stuff :P they all probably just want to see monsters, you know. The show's presentation of Lovecraft definitely made home look like the profile of a MoL they use later when these are a thing.

-

DEAN, LEAVE YOUR BROTHER ALONE. If he's sleeping on the table he's overworked and doesn't need this nonsense :P

Sam... go to bed.

Since their mom is still in an AU I'm taking over

-

Considering Dean has coffee he probably came in here with coffee, saw Sam like that, and went to get post it notes. If Sam was alert he'd be questioning that Dean's coffee was already on the table when Dean is pretending to just come into the room.

-

Oh no re: 6x21 - Dean called it Kryptonite.

-

How are there always more rooms in the Bunker? ... I have like 9 messages from Trisscar I haven't been looking at but suddenly I can guess :P

It appears to be opposite 7d, meaning this may be 7c, and a boring archive room rather than room 7b, which is the smaller archive room with a DUNGEON behind it

-

Dean is great in the research montage

Also that implies Sam had the post it notes the entire day, which given the half life of post it note glue is stretching credibility :P

-

Uh... They need to be more careful about just assuming random glowing rocks people dig up in the holy land are definitely the thing they are looking for.

I mean the cold open seems to imply it genuinely IS, but that's no excuse for being like glowing rock + glowing rock = success

-

Jinkies!

-

*sexy driving montage*

-

Okay this place is both spooky AND unlocked. Maybe because Jensen doesn't have another flip over a fence in him, but it's also pretty ominous about the useage of this place.

I love how in the modern age you just put the coordinates of your creepy destination into your phone and follow it and then get out at the first abandoned building dead on the spot and be like welp google told us to go get murdered by cultists here so

-

"Ask questions get answers" Are you not going to ask about the EYE?

That's a disturbing lack of concern for something essentially thematically "alter the sigil alter the spell" - the MoL vs the weird cultist chapter which clearly has a difference from the one they're used to because of the different symbol. Whatever level the MoL Sam and Dean know about, knew in turn about these guys, whether they disowned or quietly let them get on with it or what... this is not meant to mean the same as just casually finding another home base...

-

Just dropping in for a cup of tea and a seal of solomon

-

Uhoh the books all over the floor don't bode well

-

"Looks familiar, huh?"

*Sam finally spots an eyeball aquarian star* "Except for that"

you don't say

-

"Great. More books."

"You love books."

Honestly Dean kinda does and half of this goofing off from earlier was performative... He DOES find some types of research super boring but that doesn't mean he doesn't read for fun and also retain information well from books and hit the books when necessary.

Sam's just much more driven right now, meaning that Dean's being played off in contrast as mostly normal. Aka not wildly driven to do the reading himself, which in turn isn't just a usual character trait but shows how desperately Sam's at it.

-

uhoh those photos look like kidnappable flapper research

-

Sandy Porter :D

I hope that's supposed to say "age: 23" but I can't unread it as "eyes: 23" and the handwriting is weird.

-

SOLOMON 1917

I think we have found the thing... now the question is did this weird cult appear BECAUSE of the seal or was it they were already weird and they ended up bagging it for their experiments?

Their letter header already has the aquarian eye...

-

Sam/Jared casually breaking everything on the shelf

why did they leave that take in

-

Oh I guess he had to make noises to make Sandy start yelling for help

(I assume it's her or something that LOOKS like her)

-

I love Dean's photographic memory. And when we get flashes of him remembering stuff on screen like this

Sam's like What the Fuck

-

Aha it's Ketchmodeus time

Arthmodeus?

-

I love how Sam n Dean are wearing grey and they plop Dean's bi plaid over Sandy's grey flapper dress.

(She's called Sandy with blonde hair and Mary's middle name is Sandra)

-

Query: where WAS Dean keeping the plaid, or did he go up first, get a rope and a shirt and then we skipped all the stuff where they get a lil person who can't just hop up and reach the manhole cover again out of the hole in the ground :P

-

She's also skipped ahead in time from being a flapper and is now a millenial, possibly possessed by an Elder God hence the long life etc :P But she and Mary share the backstory in a way of being transported out of their right time

-

Is Ketch reading one of Crowley's old books from when he was raising Amara? Pfft. It's not uncle hoppity but it is obviously for a child, and is a way of demeaning him... He's reading it probably out of both boredom and spite... :P

-

... But the demons are apparently too fussed about cat videos to pay attention to him...

wha t is this episode

-

I have to admit at some undisclosed point I went to yoga, fell asleep on the floor in a rec hall and have since eaten my weight in chocolate avacado cake and coffee, so I am fairly addled :P

-

Oh, yep, Asmodeus is beefing himself up with angel juice, who EVER would have guessed it

it also reads like an addiction, and as this was introduced in season 9 around the time of Crowley's demon blood addiction and Dean with the Mark and Cas eating grace, it's almost surprising the needle was only ever implied to be for extraction.

But now we have Lucifer eating grace, and Asmodeus injecting it - the question is if he's addicted to it or not.

I'd assume as well if this was planned from the start, his colonel sanders look might also have been, social commentary aside, because the wanted a demon dressed all in white and looking clean and shiny like an angel

-

*demon minion comes blundering in a minute late* "I tried to stop him!"

This is absolutely 100%, no, 1000% vagueblogging Buckleming and how idiotic the Hell plot is and I am living for it

-

Poor squeaky Gabriel

-

They take Sandy to the most retro diner they can find... Inside, we meet patrons and staff with names immediately, before the Winchesters enter... The apparent owner, Joanne, amused by "Buck and Amy", one of her staff and a teenage boy, then says she'd hit it with Buck if Amy won't, which is SUPER creepy... Her cook apparently doesn't speak English or speak at all, so she feels free to say horrible things in front of him

Buck looks vaguely Jack-like just because he's a teenage boy with floppy hair

-

They really are easing her in slow with the modern age, this diner is decrepit, but just this many electric lights is enough for now >.>

Plus, they arrived in a car from the 60s

-

And she's messing with an ancient jukebox

-

This is adorable

-

i mean there's some high level creepiness in the diner, which I assume is Still Too Local and they ought to have crossed state lines...

I wonder at this point if their immediate vicinity to Asmodeus's lair is relevant. They'd know from Cas now that he's still using it. I mean, do you detour in your road trip to an ancient MoL bunker because you know the demon currently running Hell is camped out just down the road?

-

They're getting Sandy the meatloaf... Pretty sure that was what Mary said she got from the Piggly Wiggly in 12x02

-

Oh great, people who tattoo the aquarian eye on their arms. "Marco"'s name is in quotation marks.

HE CAN SPEAK

-

"Wait, these men of letters were the ones who... chained you down there?" Sam, you KNOW the MoL aren't perfect... are you really going to struggle with this? :P She was in THEIR secret Bunker chained up in the secret bunker's secret basement, surrounded by corrupted Aquarian stars. It's like 99% likely this was an inside job, especially as it's the longest pay off for a character defamation fraud ever otherwise :P

-

More tentacles!

-

Okay, look, you guys need Mary back and on your side because I swear to god if she goes into the bathroom and gets kidnapped because you're an all dude team then I'm going to scream.

you NEED women to support women because sometimes we really do go to the bathroom in a pack to avoid being kidnapped by cultists who want to feed us to tentacle monsters from another dimension

-

Oh no, they're all just being poisoned so they can be ritually murdered later

-

Aw "pet angel" again. Gabriel is overhearing this intel, so he knows the Winchesters are alive, doing shit, and Cas is still alive and doing shit with them... All good basic intel you should probably not let the one angel who cared about them in season TWO know. I mean, Azazel and Gabriel are the ONLY players who cared about them back when the status quo of the world was still in balance - from season 3 onwards everyone wanted a piece of Sam, and Dean's soul was rapidly heading towards breaking the first seal so everyone now had a stake in them. But Gabriel? He's a total hipster about bothering the Winchesters when they were wee little babby hunters to see if they were up to the task... and found they were.

Now he's back in canon I'm going to be evaluating him as carefully as I can with such a retconned and fandom beloved and fanon-bedecked character, and I think in our advantage for having him back, he's in a state we've never seen him before... genuinely in trouble :P

-

And Gabriel peers curiously through the bars as Asmodeus starts explaining their plans

-

"It's time we talk about us" please stop trying to make Ketchmodeus happen

-

A shot of them from a million miles away, a million miles between them, sliced off by a pillar. Ketch standing in the light. Asmodeus in the dark with yellow candles around him.

I am pretty sure this room is 10000x more candle-y than before.

When I was doing my rewatch of the early seasons a few summers ago I was so amused by the bajillion candles, a trend which died out with the colour format of the show changing, and any time a character shows up who needs a billion candles (e.g. Abaddon in 9x02) I get disproportionately excited that they *understand* the show :P

In this case, Asmodeus really needs all the links back to the start he can get, because he's a new, weak demon, one specifically called out in 13x12 of being the weakest of Lucifer's creations, and here shown juicing up on poor Gabriel, all a meta commentary on him being a rubbish character inserted as the last of the retconned princes of hell, his literal strength as a character weak and flimsy when it comes to caring about him, because after all the show has been through, retroactively adding ancient powers is a serious problem about "where were they before?" and so many of them need to have been lost, disinterested, locked away, buried and hidden and forgotten. In Asmodeus's case, possibly just looked over and neglected, and he's been having a pissy sulk about not being invited to the apocalypse for the last 10 years, since we know nothing about where he was before, but he's at least seemed to have his liberty and he waited out every single major player more powerful than him, and is appearing as a desescalation of a threat as a big bad so ridiculous the show is mocking him for being comically weedy, petty and out of touch or useless, or plain stupid. Even *Buckleming* seem aware he's an idiot at times.

-

And now Perez is writing this fucker and I actually have to character profile him >.>

-

Anyway Ketch is talking about their relationship, Asmodeus is trying to escalate his control over Ketch to "owning" him and pushing his luck really - Ketch being humiliated with the kid's book is a power play but Asmodeus really sucks at power plays and plans and all round... doing things...

-

I love watching Ketch get beaten up even if it is Asmodeus

Ah well

-

Was Asmodeus almost scary?

-

I mean, I suppose if we were supposed to care about Ketch a bit

After season 12 it's more like... Can we just have everyone beat him up once?

-

Dean is also stuck on the MoL being tweed wearing and harmless

And Sam avoiding carbohydrates... like... at least he ordered a couple of plates of food but he is a Big Guy, he needs to eat more than this!!

In some ways it reflects their endgame, e.g. Dean is still self-destructing and you could imagine either sticking a middle finger to any higher purpose supposed to affect him, or else bitter that he is never allowed off the ride... away from that, just the belief that it's winning to be killed by food rather than a monster. And he's been killed on the job enough to know the difference.

Sam, keeping himself sharp, suppoesdly (even if he is falling asleep on the table) and keepnig healthy long term, which may or may not be to some eventual endgame, that he plans on winning

-

I swear if anything skeezy happens to Buck...

-

Oh good, he's just noticed the cultists first while the professional hunters are busy eating... Maybe we all just get locked in here or something

-

Aaaand Sam's asleep on the table again. This is why you carb load

-

I guess no one's sticking post it notes on him this time

ALSO if it's that fast acting and the service is so slow here, you have a problem :P

-

The cultists' robes are similar colour to the wait staff uniform

-

I love the new fight coordinator

-

Cmon Sam, you only had one bite

-

Whoops he's being kidnapped

where is Sandy???

-

Nice one, eldritch flapper! :D :D

-

She has the "i just killed someone" look so I figure that whatever the monster did to her, she's not totally lost to it

-

Are they just keeping Sam as a hostage exchange? They're still just surrounding the diner...

-

At least Dean knows how to make a weapon out of anything

-

oh dear sweet cinnamon roll "we have to call the police!"

... Yep, one of the cultists is part of the local police. At which point me, having written a novel with red-robed cultists running around a town sacrificing girls and secretly being local authority figures is like... welp...

-

Aw, Dean, don't go charging after Sam. He already was like no don't go to the creepy bunker alone.

At least weigh your options and get a lay of the land first :/

-

I mean I would assume they want Sandy in exchange which means not happening, but...

-

Yep, they want the monster/god

Sandy is not very much of either :(

-

"our family was men of letters" "so was ours..." "kinda"

Okay so they want a clean start with this God, from another dimension, which is exactly what Michael wants, and it's currently in the Mary mirror.

Oh boy

-

"oh boy" indeed, it ate everyone and they bound it again, but it's still inside Sandy... Glowy purple eyes which is pretty ominous. She's also a Rowena mirror in a sense, including the monster, and there would be an interesting meta after this probably, when it's all said and done, to compare the scale of bound, hungry women

in this case, they accidentally made a devouring mother goddess which is more like... Amara... But it wants a mate

-

Aaaand the MoL banned all the members who were involved in this nonsense. See, you guys literally have the box of members who were banned... Bit of digging on the history of this chapter house and it would be like, dude, a dozen of these guys were banned for SUMMONING AN ELDRITCH MONSTROSITY

-

Ow, wow, Asmodeus has 4 vials of archangel grace knocking around... he seems to really have an issue here if he needs that much, constantly

menas stealing Gabriel from him will dry him out quickly, but also motivate him to get him back, unlike how he's just like pfft whatever about losing Cas and Lucifer

-

He and Ketch are getting deep and philosophical... First of all, I am a little concerned that Asmodeus is OOC for not having the depth of thought of a teaspoon, and very little will get me interested in their inner lives in any case because I refuse to let Ketch be made sympathetic on the grounds that he's a dick and I'm allowed to draw a line.

Anyway they're having a conversation about a MoL code which means these stories sort of metaphorically overlap and that's weird and I'm not certain how to handle thematic balance with them because we're actually exploring what it means to be a legacy here, and all the different toxic threads that each family is upholding etc

Fortunately Asmodeus keeps calling Ketch "boy" so the squicky Ketchmodeus I fear is just enough to keep me on edge through this scene :P

(to be clear, I don't fear it in the show so much as fearing that fandom will Kylux latch onto it and everyone will be shipping the shit out of it to an intolerable level, despite the aforementioned emotional ranges of teaspoons for these boring racist-coded white dudes)

But there's some blah about redeeming Ketch which is making me very nervous they're going to try

The was Asmodeus talks about Ketch belonging to him makes me wonder that whatever deal they struck to get into this partnership, there's some magical connection, more than just this emotional weakness that Asmodeus is talking about exploiting. Mostly because one is nuanced and one will be appropriate for Buckleming to play with, should they choose to acknowledge another writer's continuity.

(And I think half the reason Dabb's banished them to a separate plot is that they disrespect others' attempts to write the story that in leiu of collaboration, he's stuck them over here to do their own thing where they can't mess anything up...)

-

oh no don't send Buck out there with a kitchen knife

What is Dean doing? Amy and Joanne can't be in control of this situation??

-

That sounds very un-feminist of me but they did just send Buck out with a tiny weeny knife, like, not even a steak knife

-

Awhooops, the more the other MoL cultists talk, the more they sound like they're just managing a mistake their grandfather made, and Sam and Dean blundered into it as the bad guys, inadvertently "rescuing" Sandy (WHO I STILL LIKE) in their own quest for personal gain. Aka selfish actions beget consequences

-

Oh, that's a lot of dead cultists.

Oh, Sandy no don't eat Buck

RIP Buck

-

Dean is still distracted trying to do whatever to save Sam, and while stockpiling weaponry has missed both Sandy slipping away AND Joanne and Amy sending Buck out to get eaten

-

AAAH LEAVE DEAN ALONE

-

Also it's so unsettling having a monster wandering around in one of his most iconic shirts... I'll have to worry about that later but yikes. The imagery is unsettling to say the least. It's a really memorable one.

-

DRAMATIC EYE CONTACT between Ketch and Gabriel

Trying not to think about how that looked weirdly like the Claire Kaia intro eye contact

To be fair they've looked at each other a bunch and whatever Ketch thinks of Gabriel, they've had time to form their opinions of each other

He presents his undamaged side of his face to Gabriel while realising he has to free him

-

This is a hilarious rescue. Ketch isn't good at being a convincing good guy and Gabriel is freaked the heck out

-

Understandably, I wouldn't go with Ketch

-

Although idk maybe Gabriel is too traumatised to notice that Ketch was having a personal revelation of sorts

-

I am so disappointed that "if I had half your power" line didn't lead to Ketch being like "... but Asmodeus does" and grabbing the spare vials from the box he was keeping it all in. Maybe he took it with him

should have been a seduce the bad guy to steal the vials while he sleeps thing

-

... oh shit, they got me

-

Okay, the archangel blade works on other things... it's clearly potent

-

Sam nearly got frying panned by creepy Joanne

-

Meanwhile also in much older women going for young lads (proportionately), Dean has been picked as ideal mate material, in a season where he's already been whammied with a love spell, and just last episode Cas got married.

How comes all this imagery keeps hittnig them?

I ask the void

when today the void is represented by Eldritch Flapper Sandy from the void.

-

Okay, I don't know how to spell her eldritch name, but "star of madness ravager of galaxies mother of faceless hordes" is hecka cool

I'm sad that Sandy is dead but this eldritch thingy is still sorta badass

-

Mittens just told me this is set the same place as the open of 6x21, the same place HP Lovecraft is from, so that confirms my musings at the top of this :D I am delighted

-

She just misses her love from another universe.

"It's like a hallmark movie... with tentacles!"

that is not a deal breaker for Dean, I think

Anyway. Dean being confronted with this sweet love story. Now he will be the host to an epic, galaxy-crushing romance! Awww!!

-

She's gonna lay eggs in him though

-

i hope that's a dealbreaker

-

Also the whole... possession threat... when we've had spoilers jensen's playing something else

I assume not this guy

-

WHERE DID THE MOL GET THIS ANGEL GRACE BTW?

I feel like this has to be Gabriel again unless Raphael or Michael fucked up at some point and we're gonna find out later, just from the fact only one of them wasn't bound for most of human history or in Heaven, but actually slumming it on earth

-

We know literally nothing of Gabriel's history except that he dated Kali so there's that

-

Okay the tentacles are a deal breaker, Dean's grossed out

-

UHOH SPACE TENTACLES

-

Bye bye eldritch flapper... you were fun

-

(RIP Sandy)

Guess they will go back to ravaging stars together in the darkness

-

ALSO I really hope there's a way to STEER THIS FUCKING SPELL

-

elizabethrobertajones Huh. Tentacles are the dealbreaker for Dean who knew after 13 years there's something weird and kinky he isn't at least curious about :P

elizabethrobertajones Oh wait never mind "not that there's anything wrong with that" he is a consentacles guy

mittensmorgul BAHAHAHAHA

mittensmorgul He's not gonna kink shame

-

Also Dean is wondering if there's a way to steer the spell as well

-

Okay so they actually know how to work it - you can only go to AUs you already have a part of, and a time limit which will be for drama when they finally open this thing...

-

Do they have to bring this back to them afterwards? I hope so :P

-

Dean coming down the stairs joking about nearly being an interdimensional booty call after collecting one of the spell ingredients directly mirrors Cas coming down the stairs yelling about how he had to get married to get one of the OTHER ingredients.

-

I LOVE their Ketch reaction

-

Okay so Gabriel has said nothing all episode, and I assume Ketch is about to produce him, so the question is... how does Gabriel introduce himself? What's the play? These are the questions I am most curious about because this episode has been defining a lot of characterisation for the previously woefully undercharacterised Asmodeus, fleshing out WTF is Ketch's deal right now, and now Davy has the abilityto set the course (hopefully) for Gabriel.

We have 5 minutes to go

-

Oh hey he's still bloody and has his mouth sewn

he's just... hauling Gabriel into a chair

Like you do get how this looks suspicious, mate

-

And Sam and Dean are like uuuuh he's dead so wtf

Which is my reaction too so get to the backstory snap snap

-

Gabriel's eyes are so panicky I'm worried he's gonna be half-mad

-

Oh dear, "we need his grace" and Gabriel is like FUCK THAT SHIT YOU'RE NOT EVEN SAVING ME AND IF I'M ACTUAL ME AND NOT AN AU VERSION I FUCKING DIED FOR YOU ASSCLOWNS WHAT THE FUCK. UNSEW MY MOUTH AND LET ME HAVE A BATH

well "HMMM!!! HMM!!!!!!!!! !!!!!"

But I can read subtext

-

Ketch is just giving them EVERYTHING

they don't even know what that blade IS

-

Hey, gabriel, just smash your forehead on the grace vial and eat the grace

it's not dignified but who cares :P

-

Ketch came to the "only safe place he knew" aka a MoL bunker, which, after all, is very very safe. He has to bargain with Sam and Dean, knowing their spell, because "i saved this random archangel I found" isn't probably convincing enough on its own???

-

LOL "Dibs on the top bunk?"

"no"

"Deal"

Dean... sweetie... you do remember all your subtext with Ketch last year? You know you can't just agree to him taking the top bunk like that?

You're even negotiating either side of the war table again

ALSO WHY IS EVERYONE GETTING KETCH SHIPPING STUFF TODAY? UNSUBSCRIBE

-

And Dean will let pretty much ANYTHING happen to get Mary and Jack back

-

the question is, Cas must be at the farmer's market or something all episode because he wasn't there when they were researching and he wasn't there to stop Ketch coming in, so... where is he?

Anyway Dean is speaking on his behalf re: getting Jack back

Sam seems to want to do this on their own and Dean is making compromises again to get what they need

-

So, uh, Gabriel?

-

Aw, the Sastiel shippers will be happy, Sam was the one who ended up freeing his mouth, which is probably symbolic regardless, re: giving the Trickster back his main weapon

-

Omg Dean is ready to go before Gabriel says a word. Dean. Chill. Cas isn't even HERE.

And that makes me feel like whatever Gabriel has to say to break his long silence is even more important that Dean interrupted it (it's gonna not be, now, isn't it?)

-

"Shouldn't we wait?"

"Why?"

CAS YOU FUCKHEAD

"We have everything we need, everything else is just burning daylight"

Dean is again trying to leave Sam behind to manage things, and go in and do it alone. Dude, you literally nearly had eggs laid in you by an interdimensional flapper, you need to think about this.

-

LOL Ketch wants to go with them because it's safer than staying here being hunted by Asmodeus

I mean fair enough, and he's scarily competent

-

But it's making it look to Sam like Dean would rather have Ketch around than Sam???

-

Also WHERE IS CAS?

-

"I don't care if he dies. I'm sort of rooting for it."

-

Crack episode next where because Dean has interdimensionally travelled before, he ends back up in French Mistake Verse where he's Jensen and Ketch is DHJ (again? see also: 13x07 notes) and they have to get back before they can do the dramatic stuff

-

Anyway Dean is doing the sacrificial play, Sam watches his cholesterol so he has to stay on earth

-

I can't believe they're just opening a portal in the library and for 24 hours there's just a glowy back and forth hole there

-

But of course, as long as Dean finds Jack, the time limit doesn't matter

-

I can't believe Ketch is his BFF for the rest of the season

-

I can't believe Gabriel didn't SAY anything

What is he going to SAY next? I WANT TO KNOW

I am unbelievably frustrated, because now it passes it on to Buckleming again, and for all I know Davy thinks the whole Gabriel thing is silly, or is nervous of writing the iconic character so he just shoves it all off on them to break canon as they please and he gets something suitably dramatic and tension building and intentionally frustrating out of it but at the end of the day he doesn't have to directly ENGAGE with the Gabriel is back story, and it's all gonna be Bucklemninged next week

Aurgh.

-

Auuuurgh.

[elizabethrobertajones]

I've been thinking about this a lot and it's been bugging me. Do you think Dean loves Cas despite his angel-ness or he loves Cas's angel-ness simply because it's a part of Cas? Because I believe Dean when he says he hates angels. But then there's Cas, and I feel like he loves Cas warts and all. I need answers!

Hahaha, he definitely makes a Cas exception when talking about hating angels. Off the top of my head I can think of 2 instances where he wasn’t just making passing comments about them being dicks (where we just have to apply a Cas exemption unless Cas HAS been acting like a dick from Dean’s perspective, in which case he probably is vagueblogging :P), which were really interesting to me - in 9x08 when Cas is conveniently still human he tells Jody they’re dicks while “Zeke” is in the room:

JODY Wh– angels? You’re joking.DEAN Don’t get your pants on fire. They suck.

and in 7x21 the whole awful thing where he tries to explain to Kevin why angels want to abduct him to the “desert” and ends up lamenting about his personal life:

DEANOh, I don’t know, man. What can I say? You’ve been chosen. And it sucks. Believe me. There’s no use asking “why me?” ‘Cause the angels – they don’t care. I think maybe they just don’t have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it just… breaks them apart.

I’m not really paralleling these moments or anything, I just think it’s funny one of them Cas is 100% exempt from being an angel currently (and this is the episode which seems to follow on directly from 9x06 based on the recap conversation Sam and Dean have like they didn’t have 9x07 in between and only now are reflecting on what happened in 9x06 :P) and so in this one instance Dean can say whatever he likes about angels, he’s not covering Cas in blanket statements.

And of course in 7x21 Dean is miserable about what’s happened to Cas, and so frustrated he can’t get through to Cas and Cas can’t speak plainly to him so they’re at this awful emotional impasse and he can just see how BROKEN Cas is at that point. And he knows why - that’s the betraying moment that he understands exactly what Cas has been through and what it would have done to him and he’s making it clear he knows why this has broken him apart. Because he *cares*.

But yeah. Dean n Cas. Cas n Dean. It’s a weird one because I think Dean initially was both terrified and attracted to Cas entirely BECAUSE he was an angel and he was terrifying and all up in Dean’s face, and way hotter than an angel had a right to be, and so on. We all know the story :P But obviously Cas rebels and then Dean bonds with him a lot over human things - absent fathers, and last nights on earth. (This is literally their theme all through the season from 5x01 to 5x22 if you pay attention and it kills me because of the nonsense context 5x03 puts it all in :P)

But then in season 6 when Cas is acting distant and angry at Dean again, he describes him like this:

DEANWhat happened to you, Cas? You used to be human, or at least like one.

It really struck Dean how human Cas became in season 5 - not just losing his powers, but emotionally, how Cas clearly cared about things and related to him. Dean saw the humanity in Cas and he clearly started to like that MORE. Even though he tells him not to change in 5x04, it’s just about avoiding the bad future and he prefers Cas as he is - on an arc which is mellowing him out, to Dean’s eyes, without making him into end!Cas. Cas saving him and being a dork over the phone, so doing things very unlike season 4 Cas who was far more rigid and less likely to help. He definitely sees Cas getting his powers back as a way of losing Cas in 5x22 and over season 6 he feels that he’s lost what he had with Cas before - the profound bond and all - because Cas isn’t honest and caring like he was. It’s the loss of a friend as much as anything and Dean describes it as losing the human part of him. And season 6 is very much the time he would think of Cas as a dick. 

And in season 8 it’s Cas responding to Naomi’s orders that makes Dean most angry and confused about Cas’s behaviour, because he’s still not able to care about things in the way Dean knows he can… He doesn’t know that Naomi is metaphorically “cutting out Cas’s human weakness” by making Cas kill Dean over and over and over to make him aloof and ready to kill Dean instead of do as he asks. Breaking through to the side of Cas that used to be what Dean loved and has been buried under this forced angelic duty is the victory of 8x17, and the loss is that Cas takes the tablet and a new angelic duty, and leaves again. 

I mean Dean obviously cares for all of Cas but I think from season 8 they are very very very much structuring Cas’s sense of duty and angelness as something he owes to heaven, and in the way of him bonding with Dean, and of being where he wants to be. In season 9 he gets to be human but he can’t be around Dean, and Dean knows in 9x06 he wasted his shot and has to leave Cas with Nora and to do human things without him. Cas then takes on another angelic duty until Hannah makes Cas pick between Heaven and Dean, and Cas picks Dean because Dean is more important, but before he knows it, Dean is a demon, and Hannah ropes him back into more duty, which is where they have some very interesting dialogue over several episodes of exploration of being an angel and that duty. Cas and Hannah’s perception of earth and angels, and what worth there is in on staying on earth, and understanding human things and so on. It’s so hard for me to be concise about this one because I was brand new in fandom when that all happened so I was reading 10000 bits of meta on it and it was all The Most Important Thing That Ever Happened :P But it all happened AWAY from Dean and I remember writing the post at the end of the season about how Dean basically could have assumed Cas and Hannah dated all season and Cas was off doing angel business without him for ages because Cas used the lie in 10x18 that Hannah had helped him get his grace back, when he hadn’t seen her since 10x07 and then in 10x17 got put on Heaven’s shitlist for jailbreaking Bobby to jailbreak Metatron. I mean in hindsight I don’t think, based on Dean’s info, he had a CLUE what Cas had been through, except via what he sees of Cas interacting with Claire, and in 10x09 when they first get there he’s *baffled*. It takes until 10x20 for him to have a good conversation with Cas about wtf is going on here, and then they go to the hot topical together so it all worked out (for 2 episodes :P) … Aaah, season 10. 

Anyways, it’s been less of a thing since then and I think after 11x03 Dean has to know Cas has been exiled from Heaven and how bad it really is because there was no reason for Cas to lie about being tortured by angels and all. And once Dean knows that, I think Cas is a bit easier for him to understand again (honesty!) and at the very least they don’t have this between them? And when he talks about heaven and angels being bad he just excludes Cas because to him Cas isn’t even part of this conversation, when he knows the angels hate Cas. I’m pretty sure he’s expressed a lot of concern about Cas seeing angels, like 12x10 and 13x07, because he knows they hate Cas. I can’t remember how much else contact Dean has had with it all but he can take Ishim as a good example of how Heaven feels, probably :P

And in the meantime Cas HAS softened up a lot and he’s of course behaving very differently from how he used to back in season 4, 6 or 8 (or 10 as Dean thought) and in the bits in season 10, 11, 12 and 13 where they’ve been around each other it’s pretty obvious they are much softer with each other… Although Dean’s had a special soft expression for Cas for years, of course :P So I think Dean is getting back to where he was in season 5 where Cas was “human or like one” and he is seeing the Cas he truly loves rather than the scary hot smitey angel, and it’s less of an issue, the more Heaven rejects and attacks Cas around Dean and he knows about it? I mean he’s pretty much seen Cas get attacked by every angel he ever knows Cas hung out with, so he has a pretty clear picture of how it goes now :P I think he can reserve a small part of him that finds Cas getting all smitey kind of hot, but only in the safe contexts where he’s doing it FOR them and not because weird ulterior motives from Heaven which are MAKING him do it :D

[elizabethrobertajones]

As a Cas-girl, I am so tired of all the Cas-related alarmism. Anyone who's worried about his place in the show needs a refresher course on what things were like late S6 early S7. We are so far from that atmosphere right now it's not even funny, no matter how many parallels there may be to that period in the story itself. Like, come on guys, give Dabb the credit he deserves here. So thank you for your reasonable words on the subject.

Thanks, although I wish you didn’t have to say that in the first place >.>

I guess people get jumpy online and ideas spread like wildfire. One of the anons mentioned the comments section although they didn’t say where, “comments section” to me immediately conjures the worst of humanity. :P I assume in fandom contexts that’s where people voice their wildest thoughts and fears unfiltered… Though I know some people in tumblr fandom were pretty worked up about Cas because of all the anons we got after he died, and all the fears that he would be AU Cas or all sorts of things about not getting Cas back. I think people are just tuned to dread and expect the worst…

But yeah it feels like Dabb is trying for positive development so hard. I mean case in point we’d never get a grief counsellor episode if there wasn’t the thought that maybe it’s time to start working through their feelings towards a better end. And of course being a horror show soaked in tragedy a good way to get them really addressing and confronting their feelings is to kill off those closest to them because being a horror show they can come up with ways to bring back Cas or make it only look like Mary is lost. Things which make drama or physically hurt or incapacitate the characters don’t actually convey the writers’ feelings about them. 

And I mean you can tell in season 6/7 the overall feeling was not pro-Cas just from the way it was written, and that the writers who did like Cas had to do what they could to send him off and memorialise him, whereas now we’ve been working on a Cas-rehabilitation from narrative neglect in season 10 (where he was only having a single off-season after 8 and 9 focused a lot on him and gave him powerful arcs) because he got more personal arcs and the “mention Cas in every episode” initiative began a shaky start. Season 12 was better than season 11, and ended up mirroring season 8′s structure for Cas/Destiel in some ways, which is considered one of the big Destiel seasons, and then in season 13 the writing has been absolutely lavishing Cas with attention and care. 

I mean I can’t really tell people how to react but I feel like I’m fairly chill about the actual show, and all my histrionics are entirely me being OTT for comedy purposes… which, tbh, with the wide tumblr audience it’s kind of worrying that I think people don’t actually get when I’m being ridiculous for attention because who are you without some sort of nonsense people associate you with, and I’ve chosen the concept of Nonsense Itself… :P 

I’ve had some enormous misunderstandings about things I’ve said about Cas from sensitive Cas fans who don’t understand that nothing I say is real and I’m basically emotionally blogging from a large claw-footed bubble bath with a glass of champagne in one hand and maybe some macaroons or something in the other… Obviously there are a whole bunch of candles around me… Anyway it’s weird getting vagueblogged at, recognising your post from the description, but seeing someone misinterpret your raucous joy as essentially betraying a massive Cas-hating conspiracy about how we’re squawking with delight about him being written out and killed off for good just to make Destiel canon - again, I don’t think this person actually TRUSTED the show to bring Cas back even though 99.99999999999% of hiatus we KNEW he was going to be back and fine and his normal self eventually. So my post probably looked like a tasteless vulture to them instead of utter glee knowing from the moment Cas exploded into white grace out of his eyes and mouth that we were getting this incredible development for him and Destiel in season 13.

So, idk. Every side of the fandom has its own weird hangups and feeling of injustice from the show. I try and save mine for being weary about them killing off characters like Charlie, Eileen, Kevin, Billie(!) etc and less about getting very protective of a favourite character. TFW each mean an ENORMOUS amount to me on a deep personal level, but as a meta blog I try to be as rational as I can while still harpy-screeching for comic effect about them, and actually pay attention to the writing. I can see a decided quality increase in recent years, especially in paying attention to that fans want good emotional arcs, less contrived or pointlessly dragged out bro drama and better communication, more Cas or at least Cas in a central role to prove he’s well and truly an indelible part of the story… Billie back… :P (KEVIN BACK!?! WHAAAAT). In NO way is the show perfect but I can give points for effort, and for utterly pandering to me when it comes to the TFW emotional arcs :P

And I have stopped watching the show out of boredom in early season 9 and been salvaged only by a strong start to season 11 where I had the show on very bitter thin ice after season 10. So I know what it’s like to not care or to feel the show is awful garbage, but because I knew I was hooked I gave it a CHANCE to get better, and it proved itself to me, and has been on an upward path ever since. I think that shaped my expectations and feelings about the show to make me this chill, that I went right through all those horrible feelings from the end of season 10, but decided to give it another go. But some people can’t extend that hand when they’re clinging to their favourite character or dynamic or whatever, and feeling the show is ruining the one thing they love. Sometimes bitterness and complaining is a way to process having to stop watching the show. Sometimes people cling on and become vengeful ghosts powered by fear or anger :P 

I think the Cas side of fandom has a lot of these in particular who are loud and feeling justifiably hurt, who lost all love for the other characters through various things they did to Cas, and now only care about Cas at all, which is a bad place to be in when you don’t want to humour the narrative or to give the show a chance to explain itself. And the people who aren’t angry are perpetually scared something like season 6/7 will happen again and no matter what people say they just don’t trust anything, so they cling on waiting for the horrible news. I don’t think reassuring messages to anons really help all that much but I still take the time to do it in case it helps anyone who is maybe not as lost as the anon but still upset enough it catches their thoughts at the right time :/