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kathyprior4200 · 10 months ago

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Hazbin Hotel Season One Episode List (reordered/remastered by HelluvaScribe)

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 1: “Overture” (Focus: Charlie)

Charlie meets with Sera, Emily, Adam, and Lute at the Heaven Embassy to discuss her issue of Sinners being killed by the Exorcists who are both male and female in this version. Adam swears less and is more of a tragic villain than a sexist swearing jerk. Sera explains that Sinners are killed to balance out Hell’s overpopulation and worries that too many demons will rise against Heaven due to Roo’s influence. She realizes that Sinners and Hellborn who die become food for Roo, but not knowing how to stop the chaotic eldritch goddess from taking over all the worlds (who is watching Sera, Lilith, and Alastor also), she allows Adam to continue his killings to at least stop the overpopulation and satisfy her master Roo. But to Charlie, it appears that the angels want to instill fear and control them like Lucifer told her in her childhood. Sera explains that she doesn’t like seeing Charlie’s people killed but at the same time, it can be considered a freedom from their immortal suffering in Hell. Charlie then proposes to create a rehabilitation hotel to redeem Sinners, to get them to do behaviors opposite to their sins in life, this method would then weaken Roo and increase Heaven’s safety. Adam and Lute still hate all demons and Lucifer because of how they were raised, but with the persuasion of Emily, Sera is willing to give Charlie a chance. Sera gives Charlie six months to redeem a Sinner before the next Extermination. With more people going to Hell in the modern world, Roo becomes stronger, thus the Exorcists try to eliminate more demons who they suspect may be under her control (Sinner and Hellborn alike). The Hazbin Pilot continues after the meeting, Alastor, Husk, and Niffty enter and the hotel commercial is made. Song: “Chasing Rainbows”

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 2: “Radio Killed The Video Star” (Focus: Sir Pentious and Vox)

Sir Pentious arrives at the hotel threatening to destroy it, but is defeated by Alastor. He is taken in by Charlie and she tries to do the clapping game, trust falls, and the no drugs roleplay, but Angel Dust and everyone thinks it’s stupid. Vox and Alastor get into a heated rap battle. After Vox loses the battle, Vox plans to use Sir Pentious as a spy to humiliate Charlie and the hotel on TV and it works. Charlie nearly gives up her hotel project, but Angel Dust catches Sir Pentious as a spy. Sir Pentious apologizes to Charlie and she forgives him, but he and everyone else don’t trust each other. Song: “Stayed Gone”

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 3: “The Brain” (Focus: Baxter)

Baxter enters the hotel, creates his lab and plans to take over Hell, and sings about his backstory. He and Sir Pentious get into an argument over who’s the best inventor. Baxter later searches for cactus juice to use against his enemies, leading him to a desert. Charlie and friends go after him and after being tied up by outlaws, Baxter rescues them. Baxter unleashes a giant sea monster once they return to the hotel. Song: “Hell Domination”

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 4: “World’s Fair” (Focus: Baxter, Sir Pentious)

Sir Pentious and Baxter argue over who is the better inventor. Charlie tries to curb Angel Dust and the client’s desires to use weapons. Only for a weapon’s expo to tempt them. Alastor’s shadows cause mischief, making Baxter and Sir Pentuous more angry at each other. They both sign up and during the sign up, Vox mocks Sir Pentious and tricks him into revealing the location of Angel Dust’s pet pig Fat Nuggets. Using the pig to bring Angel Dust and the hotel staff against each other, he sends Velvet to the hotel to steal the pig. The expo goes underway with contestants from all the Rings in a singing and weapon display acts including Helluva Boss inventors, judged by Carmilla Carmine the top weapon’s dealer. Sir Pentious is tempted by Vox to experiment his ray gun on the pig to win the contest and Vox’s approval but Sir Pentious nobly trips and works with Baxter to save Fat Nuggets and return him to Angel Dust. The crew return to the hotel on Baxter’s sea monster. Song: “Sir Pentious vs Baxter”

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 5: “Hell’s Hyena” (Focus: Crymini, Husk, Angel Dust, Katie Killjoy/Tom Trench, Velvet)

(Crymini and Cherri Bomb cause trouble/vandalize the hotel – Husk takes her in, she talks with him at the bar several times. Crymini causes trouble as she sets fire to things and does graffiti on the walls and plays loud punk rock and metal at night…earning a bad review from Katie Killjoy, Tom Trench and Velvette as they do a surprise inspection on the hotel to try and ruin Charlie’s rep once again. Thankfully, Crymini scares them off and rips their papers.)

(Crymini, Angel, Charlie, Vaggie and Husk go to a carnival and Crymini is upset at Husk telling her what to do)

(Crymini runs off and shops with Loona and Octavia at Stylish Occult, becoming fast friends. Sadly, Loona and Octavia do not take her offer to check out the hotel yet.)

(Crymini later gets attacked by a rival hellhound gang, her hellhound group fights them off, but she gets terribly wounded. Her gang, all grown up, says “you’re on your own, we let you couch surf, but now we have better things to do than babysit.” This creates a flashback to Crymini being neglected/abused by her mortal parents, neglect at foster homes, her 90s hazing death, and almost being homeless like Loona but finding work in the porn model industry. Narrowly escaping the Hellhound gang (and an evil Valentino) she begs to stay at the hotel. Husk takes her in, and she lets out her feelings to Husk at the bar…they apologize and have their father-daughter moment, teaching her card tricks and sharing drinks. She, Husk, Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb get along, but she is more tense with Vaggie and Villa).

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 6: “Masquerade” (Focus: Angel Dust, Husk, Valentino)

Charlie decides it’s time to put her ‘Princess’ status to use with Angel’s boss. Song: “Poison” In Part 2, Angel endures a rough day of work on the porn set. His abusive director feeds his drug habits and brings him down. After he returns home and suffers yet another rejection from Husk, he leaves and nearly gets himself into serious trouble, only saved by Husk intervening. The two have a more real conversation and a more solid friendship blossoms.” Songs: “Poison” and “Loser Baby” (no singing Angel in Loser Baby)

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 7: “Angel In The Dust” (Focus: Angel Dust, Aracknis, Henroin, Valentino)

“Things get ugly when Angel Dust encounters his homophobic mafia boss father and his cynical brother Arackniss. It gets worse when a rival gang tries to attack the hotel with angelic weapons. Angel Dust has to confront his family and his past, making a decision to continue his redemption journey.”

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 8: “I Wanna Be Loved By You” (Focus: Mimzy, Alastor, Charlie)

Mimzy, a rundown jazz club owner in debt, seeks refuge at the hotel. Her presence attracts loanshark collectors, who not only want their money back, but her blood. The Hazbin gang are forced to protect her from the collectors, despite her being a bit of a diva. Vox sends loan sharks after Mimzy.” Song: (1920s jazz Alastor Mimzy duet: “I Remember Now”)

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 9: “The Helsa Hotel” (Focus: Charlie, Vaggie, Helsa, Sevaithan)

“Charlie runs into her old boyfriend and her princess rival at a dinner party/Baphomet Ball hosted by the Von Eldritch family. Part 2: When Helsa creates a rival hotel for the rich to outshine the Hazbin Hotel, Charlie must plan on bringing it down.”

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 10: “Deadly Grace”

“In this 2 part Episode, we learn of the origins of the Sinner Carmilla Carmine and Vaggie as a Sinner turned Exorcist turned demon. We see her ex-Exorcist life.”

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 11: “Unholy Romance”

“Charlie is distraught after learning that Vaggie is an Exorcist. Vox uses the information to brainwash the demons of Hell against Charlie and her friends. Charlie must find a way to forgive and reconcile with Vaggie.” Song: ?

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 12: “Cherri Bomb’s Away!”

Angel Dust’s reunion with Cherri Bomb gives him an opportunity to show how far he’s come.

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 13: “Welcome to Heaven”

“Charlie goes to Heaven to try and prove that her clients are improving. Not having fully fixed their relationship, Vaggie becomes jealous when Charlie forms a bond with Emily. Since there was no proof of redemption, Sera allows Adam to continue the exterminations.”

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 14: “Hello Rosie!”

Charlie and Alastor recruit demons to protect the hotel. Rosie reminds Charlie that her hotel is about redemption and she and Vaggie finally come back together.

Hazbin Hotel (Helluva Scribe Remix) Season 1 Episode 15: “The Show Must Go On”

Charlie and her team fight the Exorcists. Vaggie earns her wings after defeating Lute, Charlie fights Adam until Vaggie delivers the finishing blow. Lucifer arrives and helps the gang rebuild the hotel. Lute demands Lilith to go down and defeat the Hazbins. The Vees plan their next brainwashing/technology scheme while the Eldritch family is up to no good. Sir Pentious becomes an angel and Adam becomes a demon.

#hazbinhotel

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charlie-minion · 4 years ago

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Could the same SPN finale make a little more sense with some additions/changes?

I’ve had the idea for this post stuck in my head for days now, but with every new conspiracy theory and every new eventuality in the fandom, it became difficult to cool down enough to write something less ship-related and more narrative-focused.

What Supernatural and non-SPN fans have to understand is that a lot of us have expressed disappointment and frustration after 15x20, not because of Destiel (that’s just one part of the whole problem), but because the finale doesn’t make sense. Everything was leading up to something beautifully crafted until the end of 15x19. Beyond that, it’s hard to understand what happened. The story rendered all the character growth irrelevant, invalidated the themes of free will and “family don’t end in blood”, regressed to the original brother codependency they spent 15 years trying to overcome, made a queer non-binary character in a male vessel and a deaf female character basically disposable, and kept the show’s reputation of queerbaiting and misogyny until its very last breath.

That’s not going out with a bang! At least not a positive one. We all were ready to mourn Supernatural, but we wanted to feel proud of its legacy, and somehow TPTB managed to tarnish that legacy in less than 45 minutes. What a way to ruin the other more than 13,600 minutes of story!

It doesn’t matter who is to blame (The CW, Robert Singer, Andrew Dabb). It doesn’t matter why it happened (homophobia, censorship, marketing for Walker, bad writing). What matters is that at the end of the day, the finale that aired is what we got and that’s going to hurt for a long time. It hurts even more when we realize that the same finale could have easily made more sense, even without being perfect.

That’s what I want to do in this post. I want to show you how things would have been less jarring (for the fandom), while still keeping the goal to please the general audience.

Before I begin rewriting 15x20, I have to mention that I talked to my conservative boomer sister about the finale. She hasn’t watched the second half of season 15 yet (she’s waiting for Netflix to have it), but she’s been watching the show for a long time (she introduced me to it 8 years ago). She’s the perfect example of a viewer from the general audience. Loves the show but doesn’t give a second thought to it and definitely isn’t paying attention to character development or themes. Doesn’t engage with fandom, actors, or any of the show’s social media. Pure GA! When I told her the series finale had aired, she asked me about it and I refused to give her spoilers. Because of that, she told me the ending SHE wanted. She said she would be happy with either of two possibilities: the boys retiring and finally living a normal life OR they going to heaven and finding peace at last. She saw Sam and Dean as a unit, which means: both retiring or both going to heaven. AND she saw Cas as part of that, too. She wasn’t so sure about Jack. And for her, we could use the “Eileen who?” and it wouldn’t be a joke. She didn’t remember her.

NOW IT’S TIME TO WRITE A NEW VERSION OF 15X20 (KEEPING 15X18 AND 15X19 EXACTLY THE SAME AS THEY AIRED). This will be a very long post:

The opening remains almost the same. No “Carry on my wayward son” to induce feels. Too soon and too predictable! (Reasoning: Everyone was expecting it to play right there, so it would bring more tears at the end)

In the opening, after the scene where Jack says “People won’t need to pray to me or sacrifice to me”, we also see the scene from 15x19 where he says “I won’t be hands on”. Then we see the rest of the opening as it was. (Reasoning: People needed to be reminded that Jack would NOT intervene and that’s why later on, he would NOT save Dean).

We get the same montage, but when Sam takes a break from his morning run, we see him reading a message on his phone. A simple: “Hey Sam, what’s new?” from Eileen. Sam smiles fondly and begins to type a response we don’t get to see. The next scene continues the same, Sam making breakfast. (Reasoning: A text was a very simple way to show that Eileen was alive and still in communication with Sam).

The montage slowly ends as Sam enters the library (not after he sits down). He seems to be talking on the phone but we only hear an “I’ll tell him. Bye”. As he walks towards the table, he tells Dean: “Charlie says hi. Mentioned something about Stevie’s perfect scrambled eggs we have to try.” Dean’s answer is “Awesome!” (Reasoning: Just ONE line was needed to unbury Charlie and her girlfriend. ONE LINE).

Sam sits down, opens his laptop and everything continues the same. The title card shows for the last time.

YOU SEE? In the first 4 minutes they could have acknowledged that THREE WOMEN were alive and safe: Eileen, Charlie and Stevie. It wasn’t hard! Don’t blame bad writing on Covid! Now let’s continue.

Sam and Dean arrive at the Pie Fest just the same. Dean goes to get some “damn pie” and Sam takes out his phone. He dials and when someone picks up, he says “Hey, Jody, how are ya?” We don’t hear the rest of the conversation. The scene moves to Dean coming with his 6 portions of pie. Dean sits down and Sam tells him, “Talked to Jody. The other hunters haven’t had much work lately.” “That’s good, isn’t it?”, Dean says. All we get from Sam is “Yeah.” So, Dean looks at him and asks “what’s wrong?” like it happened in the episode. (Reasoning: Again, a couple of lines to make sure the people that were killed in 15x18 are safe and remembered by the boys in 15x20. Why is this important? Because they’re family!)

The conversation about Sam’s sad face happens the same. Sam is the one that mentions Cas and Jack. (Reasoning: Because this episode was so Sam-centered, it’s obvious he was the protagonist in the finale. If we see him communicating with Eileen, Charlie, and Jody, then it’s NORMAL, even expected of him to be the one to bring up Cas and Jack). Without these additions, it’s harder for people to understand that most of the finale was NOT from Dean’s POV but from Sam’s.

Dean’s “if we don’t keep living, then all that sacrifice is gonna be for nothing” stays the same. (Reasoning: I believe it’s necessary that the show sticks to the importance of “letting go” and “what is dead should stay dead” for the first time ever because the message is “even when you lose someone you love, you can still find some form of happiness and keep living, for you and for them, because that’s what they would have wanted”. Bringing someone back means “I can’t live without you”, and that’s just more codependency. It’s how the demon deals began in the Winchester family –Mary being the first one to do it. This would explain why Dean didn’t ask Jack to bring Cas back, as he asked Chuck. He understood Jack was NOT going to interfere anymore and accepted it. Besides, when Cas saved Dean from hell, Dean thought he didn’t deserve to be saved. This time that Cas saved him, Dean finally feels worthy enough to accept that YES, HE DESERVED TO BE SAVED ALL ALONG, just as much as he deserved to be loved by that angel of the Lord. In this scene, Dean also says that the pain is not gonna go away, which means that from HIS PERPECTIVE, it still hurts that Cas is not there. The problem is that the finale is not showing his POV but Sam’s.

Sam pies Dean on the face just the same. (Reasoning: That part was just to avoid ending the scene on a sad note).

Everything related to the case happens exactly the same. (Reasoning: At this point, people don’t really care about the MoTW, they care about Sam and Dean).

NOTE 1: The case is important to show that even when the Winchesters are finally free of Chuck’s influence, they CHOOSE to keep hunting. It isn’t something they do out of revenge or because it is their destiny anymore. Maybe they were forced into the life at first, but they’ve learned to find joy in saving people. Being hunters is who they are. However, the fact that a job application was shown on Dean’s desk is also important because it means he was willing to explore what else was there for him besides hunting. Maybe he could find a balance? Maybe he was thinking it was time to quit? We will never know! The thing is that Sam only finds out about it when he goes into Dean’s room after his brother is dead, so maybe that’s when it hits him that Dean wanted to explore his options, and Sam starts to think it’s time for him to do the same.

NOTE 2: I believe the masks the vampires are wearing is something we can blame on covid. If they had their faces covered, it was easier to use people from the SPN crew for some scenes, instead of using more actors unnecessarily.

NOTE 3: When Sam and Dean arrive at the barn, we get 3 visuals to remember Cas in the same scene (those are for the fandom, not for the general audience): a) the barn, obviously; b) the bag that resembles Cas’ trenchcoat so much that many people thought that’s what it was; and c) two feathers hanging on Dean’s right when he opens the trunk.

The scene with the throwing star happens the same. (Reasoning: The episode is still told from Sam’s point of view, so it makes sense that he fondly sees his brother as a man child).

Jenny the vampire? Uhhh… I mean, it’s not the best piece of writing I’ve ever seen, but it’s not the worst, so okay. That stays the same. (Reasoning: There is none, but she’s not what really ruined the finale, so whatever!)

Dean still dies impaled on a rebar. (Reasoning: OK. HERE ME OUT!!! I hate as much as everyone else that Dean is killed. I think it’s lazy writing, but that’s what we got and I can’t change that in this re-write, so if killing Dean is what we have to work around, then, memes aside, death by rebar is better and here’s why. There’s no one to blame for Dean’s death: no Chuck (the boys were willingly hunting even after Chuck was defeated), no vampires (they were all killed and were no real threat, so it was impossible for Sam to begin a quest for revenge against all vampires. What was Sam going to blame? A rebar? Can you kill it? Hunt it? NO. It was an ordinary death, a stupid accident. Just like any person can die at any moment by slipping on a banana peel. Is it a good death? No, but it’s good to know he doesn’t die trying to save Sam or Cas, because Dean Winchester is NOT willing to give up his life in exchange for anyone else’s anymore.

Sam takes out his phone and says he’ll call for help, but his phone is more visible to the audience. He dials and it’s almost to his ear when Dean stops him and Sam hesitantly hangs up. (Reasoning: People have complained that Sam didn’t call an ambulance, but actually he tried to. It’s just that people missed that part, maybe?)

After Sam puts his phone back in his pocket and says “OK” to Dean, he adds, “I’ll pray to Jack”. Dean’s immediate answer is: “No hands on, remember?” “But Dean��, Sam says, and Dean interrupts him with “OK listen to me” and tells Sam what to do with the kids they rescued. (Reasoning: Jack is God now and how come Sam didn’t remember? The viewers remembered, so it was necessary to include a line that ruled the option out and that showed Dean didn’t want Jack to intervene. The rest was fine).

The lines “You knew it was always gonna end like this for me. It was supposed to end like this, right?” disappear completely from Dean’s monologue. (Reasoning: This is the most problematic part of Dean’s dying speech. He fought God and earned free will, he is no longer controlled by fate or destiny. Accepting that he is supposed to die on a hunt regresses his character development and denies his desire to keep living. This was a total mistake and should be removed).

Instead, if going to heaven is the ending TPTB wanted to give Dean, at least he should say something more empowering. Sam tells him that both of them are going to take the kids somewhere safe. Dean answers and the scene follows like this: “No. Sammy, we made our choice, didn’t we?”, he smiles with difficulty. “We were free to write our own story and we did. We decided to keep saving people, hunting things. Because it’s what we love despite the risks.” (Reasoning: If Dean’s going to die it doesn’t have to feel like it was always meant to be that way. He should die knowing that he exerted his free will until his last breath).

The rest of the dialogue between Sam and Dean happens almost the same. Except that instead of Dean saying “‘cause when it all came down to it, it was always you and me. It’s always been you and me”, he says “’cause when it all came down to it, we’ve always had each other’s backs. Always.” And instead of Sam saying “Don’t leave me”, he says “I still can try to save you.” (Reasoning: It sounds way less codependent without diminishing the importance of their love and support for each other).

Besides, let’s change Dean’s “I’m not leaving you” for “You don’t have to be alone. You’ve still got family.” The rest stays the same word by word. (Reasoning: Dean reminds Sam that “family don’t end in blood” and there are still lots of people out there who love Sam and will be with him).

“I love you so much, my baby brother” stays exactly the same. (Reasoning: Dean always had trouble to express the big L word. I always believed and said many times that before Dean could say “I love you” to Cas or any other character, he had to say it to Sam. So, this is important as part of Dean speaking his truth).

The last part when Dean insists Sam tell him that it’s okay stays the same. (Reasoning: It’s the final moment when the codependency cycle breaks. No more running in circles).

The forehead touch between them stays the same. (Reasoning: I think I would do something similar if my sister were dying. I know there are w*ncest shippers out there, but it shouldn’t matter because the moment feels appropriate for that kind of goodbye).

See? There are changes but not too many. That’s why I’ve been saying that it was easier to get it right, yet they still managed to screw it up.

The second montage stays the same. (Reasoning: Life goes on, but of course Sam has to mourn).

The call about a case in Austin remains the same. (Reasoning: It’s the only part of the episode where someone from the found family is mentioned, so I think that Donna’s name is perfect in that moment. However, without the other additions I’ve made in this re-write, that off-hand mention feels too little. Its purpose was to tell the viewers that if Donna was alive, so were the others, but the way the episode was executed gave us an isolated Sam, incapable of having friends and a family without Dean).

After 30 minutes of Sam’s POV, let’s finally see the last bit of Dean’s POV that we’ll ever get.

Dean arrives in Heaven and Bobby receives him. All their conversation stays almost the same, except that after mentioning Rufus and before saying “and your mom and dad…”, Bobby adds an “Ellen and Jo let me borrow their place”. (Reasoning: If you’re gonna put the man outside the Harvelle’s place, at least mention them for Jack’s sake!).

Besides, after Bobby tells Dean that Sam will be along and that time in heaven is different, Dean gives a small smile and says, “Well, there’s no rush. I want him to have a long, happy life.” Bobby answers with: “I would expect nothing less from you, boy” and tells him he got everything he could ever want, etc., just like it happened in the episode, and finishes by asking “What are you gonna do now, Dean?” (Reasoning: It’s important we know for sure that Dean is NOT codependent anymore and that he doesn’t expect to have a miserable afterlife just because his brother is not there yet).

Instead of saying “I think I’ll go for a drive” Dean says, “I think I know what I want” and walks towards baby. Bobby still tells him to have fun. (Reasoning: “Know what I want” is ambiguous enough to help us introduce the last piece of the puzzle, the one thing Dean’s wanted for many seasons and has never been able to express).

The biggest change is coming:

Dean gets on the Impala and has a moment of silence while he contemplates the wheel. He begins to pray: “Hey, Cas, you got your ears on? I hear you’ve been busy working on this updated Heaven with Jack. You were right about him, Cas. You had faith in him and he saved us all. You could always see the best in everyone, even when they couldn’t see it themselves. Even when I couldn’t see it myself. There’s so much I want to tell you. Maybe you can visit sometime. I hope prayer’s still a thing up here.” (Reasoning: Dean’s side of the confession was unaddressed and that was terrible writing. If there was no way to get him to speak his truth textually, at least take him as close to it as possible).

We listen to a flutter of wings and a “Hello, Dean” from the back seat. We don’t see Cas, but the camera shows us Dean’s cocky smile and he says “Took you long enough.” He turns around slowly. End of scene. (Reasoning: The flutter of wings confirms that angels have their wings back and ties that loose end. The final “hello, Dean” was highly anticipated and it made sense. If Misha couldn’t be there to film, for whatever reason, or if the problem was the kind of conversation Dean and Cas would have, then don’t show it, but leave the door open. Let us know that the two characters were reunited and will talk, but whatever Dean has to say is so private that it’s not for us to hear, only for Cas.

We finally hear “Carry on my wayward son” and get a montage that begins with Sam playing with his kid. Then we see Dean driving, super happy, and Sam living his life to the fullest. We still get Sam’s Blurry Wife, BUT… we see pictures of Eileen in the living room (not just of John, Mary, Sam, and Dean). We also see photos of Jody, Donna, Charlie, and AU!Bobby. (Reasoning: FAMILY DON’T END IN BLOOD).

The scene where Sam is wearing the party wig and looks miserable inside the Impala is cut and nobody talks about it ever again because it never existed. We get a scene of Sam teaching his son how to fix the car instead. (Reasoning: First of all, don’t give Sam a life where years later he’s still in pain. Second of all, the fucking wig was a crime).

Sam’s dying scene stays the same. The only thing is that his son signs a couple of phrases to him before actually speaking. (Reasoning: More confirmation that Dean Jr. is Eileen’s son).

We hear the final “Evanescence-like Carry on my wayward son”. Again we see the photos and there’s family other than the Winchesters there. (Reasoning: Obvious at this point).

The rest is exactly the same. The show began with two brothers and it’s okay if the last scene is with the two brothers reunited in Heaven. At this point, the other parts of the story are acceptable enough for us to feel happy that they get to see each other again after years of a happy (after)life.

Now look me in the eye and tell me this was too hard to execute. I still think that bad writing is a thing we can’t deny here, adding to the possible meddling of the Network. Maybe Dabb wanted us to hate the finale because he couldn’t get away with what he truly wanted. If that was his intention, then kudos to him. He and The CW really gave us a finale that only 30% of the fandom liked.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this and it helps to give you some peace of mind. In my heart, this was the finale we got. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t drop the ball either.

#supernatural #15x20 #spn 15x20 #spn finale #rewrite #dean winchester #dean deserved better #cas deserved better #destiel #the characters deserved better #we deserved better #it was easier to get it right #yet they screwed up big time #alternate ending

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dwellordream · 4 years ago

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“This brings us to the most fundamental fact of rural life in the pre-modern world: the grain is harvested once a year, but the family eats every day. Of course that means the grain must be stored and only slowly consumed over the entire year (with some left over to be used as seed-grain in the following planting). That creates the first cycle in agricultural life: after the harvest, food is generally plentiful and prices for it are low (we’ll deal with the impact this has on trade and markets a little later). As the year goes on, food becomes scarcer and the prices for it rise as each family ‘eats down’ their stockpile.

That has more than just economic impacts because the family unit becomes more vulnerable as that food stockpile dwindles. Malnutrition brings on a host of other threats: elevated risk of death from injury or disease most notably. Repeated malnutrition also has devastating long-term effects on young children (a point we’ll come back to). Consequently, we see seasonal mortality patterns in agricultural communities which tend to follow harvest cycles; when the harvest is poor, the family starts to run low on food before the next harvest, which leads to rationing the remaining food, which leads to malnutrition. That malnutrition is not evenly distributed though: the working age adults need to be strong enough to bring in the next harvest when it comes (or to be doing additional non-farming labor to supplement the family), so the short rations are going to go to the children and the elderly.

Which in turn means that ‘lean’ years are marked by increased mortality especially among the children and the elderly, the former of which is how the rural population ‘regulates’ to its food production in the absence of modern birth control (but, as an aside: this doesn’t lead to pure Malthusian dynamics – a lot more influences the food production ceiling than just available land. You can have low-equilibrium or high-equilibrium systems, especially when looking at the availability of certain sorts of farming capital or access to trade at distance. I cannot stress this enough: Malthus was wrong; yes, interestingly, usefully wrong – but still wrong. The big plagues sometimes pointed to as evidence of Malthusian crises have as much if not more to do with rising trade interconnectedness than declining nutritional standards). This creates yearly cycles of plenty and vulnerability; we’ll talk about the strategies these fellows employ to avoid that problem in just a moment.

Next to that little cycle, we also have a ‘big’ cycle of generations. The ratio of labor-to-food-requirements varies as generations are born, age and die; it isn’t constant. The family is at its peak labor effectiveness at the point when the youngest generation is physically mature but hasn’t yet begun having children (the exact age-range there is going to vary by nuptial patterns, see below) and at its most vulnerable when the youngest generation is immature. By way of example, let’s imagine a family (I’m going to use Roman names because they make gender very clear, but this is a completely made-up family): we have Gaius (M, 45), his wife, Cornelia (39, F), his mother Tullia (64, F) and their children Gaius (21, M), Secundus (19, M), Julia1 (16, F) and Julia2 (14, F). That family has three male laborers, three female laborers (Tullia being in her twilight years, we don’t count), all effectively adults in that sense, against 7 mouths to feed.

But let’s fast-forward fifteen years. Gaius is now 60 and slowing down, Cornelia is 54; Tullia, we may assume has passed. But Gaius now 36 is married to Clodia (20, F; welcome to Roman marriage patterns), with two children Gaius (3, M) and Julia3 (1, F); Julia1 and Julia2 are married and now in different households and Secundus, recognizing that the family’s financial situation is never going to allow him to marry and set up a household has left for the Big City. So we now have the labor of two women and a man-and-a-half (since Gaius the Elder is quite old) against six mouths and the situation is likely to get worse in the following years as Gaius-the-Younger and Clodia have more children and Gaius-the-Elder gets older. The point of all of this is to note that just as risk and vulnerability peak and subside on a yearly basis in cycles, they also do this on a generational basis in cycles.

...Most modern folks think in terms of profit maximization; we take for granted that we will still be alive tomorrow and instead ask how we can maximize how much money we have then (this is, admittedly, a lot less true for the least fortunate among us). We thus tend to favor efficient systems, even if they are vulnerable. From this perspective, ancient farmers – as we’ll see – look very silly, but this is a trap, albeit one that even some very august ancient scholars have fallen into. These are not irrational, unthinking people; they are poor, not stupid – those are not the same things.

But because these households wobble on the edge of disaster continually, that changes the calculus. These small subsistence farmers generally seek to minimize risk, rather than maximize profits. After all, improving yields by 5% doesn’t mean much if everyone starves to death in the third year because of a tail-risk that wasn’t mitigated. Moreover, for most of these farmers, working harder and farming more generally doesn’t offer a route out of the small farming class – these societies typically lack that kind of mobility (and also generally lack the massive wealth-creation potential of industrial power which powers that kind of mobility). Consequently, there is little gain to taking risks and much to lose. So as we’ll see, these farmers generally sacrifice efficiency for greater margins of safety, every time.

Modern farms are built for efficiency – they typically focus on a single major crop (whatever brings the best returns for the land and market situation) because focusing on a single crop lets you maximize the value of equipment and minimize other costs. They rely on other businesses to provide everything else. Such farms tend to be geographically concentrated – all the fields together – to minimize transit time.

Subsistence farmers generally do not do this. Remember, the goal is not to maximize profit, but to avoid family destruction through starvation. If you only farm one crop (the ‘best’ one) and you get too little rain or too much, or the temperature is wrong – that crop fails and the family starves. But if you farm several different crops, that mitigates the risk of any particular crop failing due to climate conditions, or blight (for the Romans, the standard combination seems to have been a mix of wheat, barley and beans, often with grapes or olives besides; there might also be a small garden space. Orchards might double as grazing-space for a small herd of animals, like pigs). By switching up crops like this and farming a bit of everything, the family is less profitable (and less engaged with markets, more on that in a bit), but much safer because the climate conditions that cause one crop to fail may not impact the others.

...Likewise – as that example implies – our small farmers want to spread out their plots. And indeed, when you look at land-use maps of villages of subsistence farmers, what you often find is that each household farms many small plots which are geographically distributed (this is somewhat less true of the Romans, by the by). Farming, especially in the Mediterranean (but more generally as well) is very much a matter of micro-climates, especially when it comes to rainfall and moisture conditions (something that is less true on the vast flat of the American Great Plains, by the by). It is frequently the case that this side of the hill is dry while that side of the hill gets plenty of rain in a year and so on. Consequently, spreading plots out so that each family has say, a little bit of the valley, a little bit of the flat ground, a little bit of the hilly area, and so on shields each family from catastrophe is one of those micro-climates should completely fail (say, the valley floods, or the rain doesn’t fall and the hills are too dry for anything to grow).

...While some high-risk disasters are likely to strike an entire village at once (like a large raid or a general drought), most of the disasters that might befall one farming family (an essential worker being conscripted, harvest failure, robbery and so on) would just strike that one household. So farmers tended to build these reciprocal relationships with each other: I help you when things are bad for you, so you help me when things are bad for me. But those relationships don’t stop merely when there is a disaster, because – for the relationship to work – both parties need to spend the good times signalling their commitment to the relationship, so that they can trust that the social safety net will be there when they need it.

So what do our farmers do during a good harvest to prepare for a bad one? They banquet their neighbors, contribute to village festivals, marry off their sons and daughters with the best dowry they can manage, and try to pay back any favors they called in from friends recently. I stress these not merely because they are survival strategies (though they are) but because these sorts of activities end up (along with market days and the seasonal cycles) defining a great deal of life in these villages. But these events also built that social capital which can be ‘cashed out’ in an emergency. And they are a good survival strategy. Grain rots and money can be stolen, but your neighbor is far likelier to still be your neighbor in a year, especially because these relationships are (if maintained) almost always heritable and apply to entire households rather than individuals, making them able to endure deaths and the cycles of generations.”

- Bret Devereaux, “Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers!”

#farming #history #bret devereaux #writing #ancient #medieval

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tes-trash-blog · 5 years ago

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🌙 hmm... an age old question but opinion on the whole Imperials Vs Stormcloaks fiasco Skyrim tried to feed us?

*cracks neck*

Goodbye follower count, I’m going in!

I’m going to preface this with a confession: In my first ever playthrough of Skyrim (2014), I did side with the Imperials. On my second, I sided with the Stormcloaks. Since then, I have done three more playthroughs on the Stormcloak side, and three more on the Imperial side. In four more still my Dragonborn was neutral, slaying Alduin without ever taking a side. In my playthroughs, especially the ones after 2016, I’ve developed my own opinions about the Imperials and Stormcloaks alike.

In order to better articulate my opinion, we must first briefly examine four factors: the American landscape in which Skyrim was conceived, Skyrim itself and its portrayal of the Imperials and Stormcloaks (and the Thalmor), and Umberto Eco, the usage of terms like “fascism” and especially “Nazism” in American popular culture, and how this all relates to the Imperial/Stormcloak fiasco.

So let’s get started.

Part 1: Thanks, Obama.

In 2008, Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States. It was a landslide victory against Republican runner John McCain, a conserative who frequently brought up his service in the Vietnam War (and his time as a prisoner of war) during his campaign, as well as his years of service in political office. In a move to make his (very white, very male) campaign seem more inclusive in the face of the frontrunners of the Democratic campaign (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), he appointed Sarah Palin as his VP. She was the only conservative woman who agreed to be his running mate, as all three conservative women in the Senate already said no, and the Republicans couldn’t find a black conservative.

(I’m not making this up.)

Anyway, come 2008, the conservatives lose their goddamn minds because Bush’s reign of actual terror was over, a Black man is now President and Whiteness is in peril. This was before the term “triggered” became a popular sneer in the conservative dictionary, but “snowflake” was used a lot. Come 2009, the Tea Party emerges. And now we get to the crux of my, uh, observation.

For the young, uninitiated, or non-Americans who are thinking “What the fuck is wrong with America”, the Tea Party Movement was/is a rash of hardline rightwingers who, still licking their wounds from a sound beating by the Democrats in the 2008 election, sought to rebrand themselves. With some bootstrap lifting and millions of dollars in funding from media tycoons such as the Koch brothers, the Tea Party made its official debut in 2010 after the signing of the Affordable Healthcare Act. Their message was simple: It’s time to take America back from the lazy, the entitled, and the “uppity”. What was really just a rehash of a song and dance that’s been turning its ugly white head since at least 1964 gained something of a stranglehold on America, in spite of its relatively small size of active members. It hit all the notes: a populist movement rooted in the perceived threats to their faith, their culture, and their social and economic capital.

They also believed shit like this:

For instance, Tea Partiers are more likely than other conservatives to agree with statements such as “If blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites,” and are more likely to disagree with statements like “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.” (Williamson, 34)

Like I said. Since 1964.

What made the Tea Party different from the other conservative temper tantrums was one thing: Internet access. All of a sudden, these angry white men had an outlet for voicing their rages, and an open recruiting forum for other malcontents and disaffected youths. I’m not implying the Tea Party had anything to do with Gamergate, nor that Gamergate had anything to do with the rise of the alt-right or whatever these tennybopper neo-Nazis are calling themselves now, but I am saying those circles at least touch in a Venn diagram.

“But tes-trash-blog! What do the machinations of American politics have to do with Elves?” you may ask. Well dear reader, this leads me to..

Part 2: Hey, you! You’re finally awake!

Skyrim was an overnight hit. On release, The Elder Scrolls 5 generated 450 million dollars on its opening weekend alone. This game sold for around 20 million copies, not including Special Edition, VR, or Switch, and continues to see an average of around 10,000 players a week 9 years later (Steamcharts).

And 20 million people see one thing first: A strong, noble Nord in captivity, telling you that you’re on your way to be executed by the Imperials, who are in bed with a scary, sneering bunch of High Elves dressed in black. 20 million people already were told who was the clear bad guy in this game, and it wasn’t the strong, noble Nord in captivity. I’ll be going into this more into Part 3, but suffice to say, the Imperials were already coded as Bad Guy by association. The Imperials decided to execute you, the player. They shot a man in the back because he ran from his own execution. He stole a horse, which was a crime punishable by death in those days. The game doesn’t tell you that part, and is content to say that Lokir was killed because he was in the same cart as the Stormcloaks.

Speaking of Imperials, the Third Empire is written as obtuse, corrupt, uncaring, and cruel. The Septim Dynasty is wrought with scandal and intrigue, plagued by conflict, and powerless to do anything about the Oblivion Crisis that almost ended the world. They flat out abandoned Morrowind and Summerset to better protect their own, offered no help during the Void Nights that destabilized the Khajiit, and worst of all, signed a treaty outlawing Talos worship. That is the crux on which the Stormcloak/Imperial conflict lies. These damned outsiders telling these humble Nords what to do and what not to do. They’re corrupt, lazy, and know nothing of the hardships these people endure, and now the nanny state Empire is telling them they don’t have the freedom to worship what they want? How dare they!

Going further, in the seat of Imperial power in Skyrim is none other than Jarl Elisif, a young widow who relies heavily on the advice of her (overwhelmingly male) thanes, stewards, and generals. She’s weak, thinks mostly of her dead husband, and is written as someone who overreacts to scenarios; the “legion of troops” to Wolfskull Cave over a farmer reporting strange noises, banning the Burning of King Olaf in the wake of her husband’s murder via Shout come to mind. Compare and contrast that to the seat of Stormcloak power, Windhelm. Ulfric spends his time pouring over the map of troop movements and discussing strategy when he’s not delivering his big damn “Why I Fight” speech. Elisif is weak, Ulfric is strong. The Jarl of Solitude is even told to tone it down during the armistice negotiations in Season Unending. She’s chastised by her own general. The first thing you see in Solitude is a man being executed for opening a gate. The first thing you see in Windhelm is two Nords harassing a Dark Elf woman and accusing her of being an Imperial spy.

Both are portrayed as horrific, but only one has bystanders decrying the acts of the offender. Only one has a relative in the crowd proclaim, “That’s my brother [they’re executing]!” The best you get with Suvaris is her confronting you about whether or not you “hate her kind”. Even a mouth breathing racist would be disinclined to say “yes” when confronted with the question of whether or not they’re racist, but that’s how the writers of Skyrim think racism works.

I acknowledge that this was an attempt at bothsidesism, but the handling was.. clumsy.

Part 3: Ur-Fascism, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Bash The Stormcloaks

And now we move on to Umberto Eco, fiction writer, essayist, and writer of the famous essay Ur-Fascism. In short, Eco summarizes 14 separate properties of a fascist movement; it’s important to stress that this should not be treated as a checklist if a piece of media is fascist, or if a person is actually a Nazi, or to say “X is Bad Because Checklist”. It’s frankly impossible to even organize these points into a coherent system, as fascism is an ideology that is, by its nature, incoherent.

With that in mind, let’s run down the points:

1. “The Cult of Tradition”, characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

2. “The Rejection of Modernism”, which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

3. “The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake”, which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

4. “Disagreement Is Treason” – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

5. “Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

6. “Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class”, fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

7. “Obsession with a Plot” and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite’s ‘fear’ of the 1930s Jewish populace’s businesses and well-doings, or any anti-Semitic conspiracy ever).

8. Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as “at the same time too strong and too weak.” On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

9. “Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy” because “Life is Permanent Warfare” – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to NOT build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

10. “Contempt for the Weak”, which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

11. “Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero”, which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, “[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.”

12. “Machismo”, which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold “both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

13. “Selective Populism” – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of “no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People.”

14. “Newspeak” – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

I did copy and paste the list from Wikipedia, but you can read the full essay here. It’s 9 pages long. You can do it, I have faith in you.

You may notice that you can’t really shorthand these concepts, or at least not in an aesthetically pleasing way. However, you can point to the most infamous of fascist regimes and take their aesthetic instead. You see it in Star Wars with the Empire (hmm) and the First Order, in Star Trek with the Mirrorverse and the Cardassian Dominion (hmm), and in the.. Oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue..

Oh, yeah. The Thalmor. They dress in dark colors, are a foreign power trying to exert their influence on the downtrodden Nord, enact purges, and scream about Elven superiority. The Thalmor express every surface level perception of a Nazi in American popular culture. TVTropes has already pretty well covered this ground in their Video Games section of A Nazi By Any Other Name, so I won’t go too much into here seeing as I’m already at the 2000 word mark. Suffice to say, it’s hard to think Bethesda wasn’t trying to make the player associate the 4th Era Altmer with the 1930’s German.

And in doing so, they accidentally created a group that is.. Well, you’ve read the essay or at least the 14 points. Try and tell me how many of them don’t apply to Nordic culture. What grabs me the most are points 9, 11, and 13: life is a perpetual struggle in which you must emerge victorious, a culture of Heroes impatient to die in a glorious fashion, and the Common Will that is enacted and reinforced by one strongman leader. You see these elements in play in Nord culture, in Stormcloak ideology especially. I, for one, hear what Galmar really means when he says “We will make Skyrim beautiful again”. I hear the echoes in George W Bush’s speeches and McCain’s campaign when Ulfric talks of duty and service, of “fighting because Skyrim needs heroes, and there’s no one else but us.”

It’s less of a dog whistle and more of a foghorn if you ask me. And to go back to part 2, this is a message that 20 million played. Not all of them are Stormcloak stans, but that compelling message was still present. Americans love being a strongman hero in their media; we eat that shit up. The setup was enough: you’re a lone hero about to be executed by milquetoast Imperials and Nazi-coded Thalmor. The story was enough: a strong man rebels against a system gone awry, one that seeks to destroy his way of life.

It was enough to compel a “fashwave” artist to take on the monkier Stormcloak(Hann). It was enough that Skyrim was lauded as a “real” game instead of say, Depression Quest, and to justify ruining a game developer’s life over it.

It was enough that when Skyrim came out in 2011, the game did not do so well in Germany because of these elements, because the game was written for you to be sympathetic towards these very white, very blond and Ayran-coded Nords. I can’t speak for the popularity of the game now in Germany, but when I lived there, there were a few raised eyebrows among my age group about the message of the game.

I think about that a lot, especially when the tesblr discourse heats up about the Stormcloaks. I see how visibly upset people get when someone throws shade at Ulfric. The talk of “it’s just a video game” and “lul get triggered” starts to look less like passive dismissal and shoddy trolling and more a kind of funhouse mirror to how they really think.

I can’t lie, it reminds me so much of 2009, of these angry people screaming racial slurs on the Internet because there’s a Black president or posting sexist screeds because Michelle Obama wanted kids to have access to healthy meals. It reminds me of the kid in my sophomore class who said he was going to “take out” Obama on his inauguration day. He was 15 years old then. He’s a father now.

Hell, it reminds me of right now, of Republican Senators demanding civility and tone policing as they kowtow to an actual fascist. The Stormcloak in the Reach camp “had to do something” about the Empire telling him and his what to do, and the neighbor I used to dogsit for had to do something too. I don’t watch his dogs anymore. When I told him I wouldn’t, he tried to make himself the victim and say I was getting political about dog sitting. It’s just two dogs. It’s just a video game. All political messages are just imaginary, snowflake.

But it’s really not, is it now?

TL;DR and Sources

TL;DR: The imperials are portrayed as weak and effectual, as the bootlicker to the Thalmor, and the writers were so busy trying to make one side look bad and weak they inadvertently made actual fascists.

Even though this is pretty long, this really only scratches the surface of the.. Well, everything. In all honesty this is just a very condensed version of my opinion. Big shockeroo, there.

Do keep in mind that this isn’t a condemnation of Skyrim. Lord knows I love that game, or I wouldn’t have this blog. This also isn’t a damning of people who play the game and side with the Stormcloaks, or think Ulfric is hot, or don’t like the Thalmor or what have you. You do you, fam. You do you. This is my observation and opinion on one aspect of the game, just with some tasty sources to better paint a picture of where I personally formed my opinion.

This also isn’t to say that I’m trying to draw a 1:1 comparison between The Elder Scrolls and reality, or that Ulfric is obviously a McCain/Trump/Hitler expy, but Skyrim is, like all things, a product of the minds that created it. Skyrim didn’t happen in an apolitical vacuum, and apolitical stories about war simply do not exist. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply reinforcing the status quo, and it is our responsibility as people who consume this media to question it, and that status quo they so dearly wish to hang on to.

Also, Elisif hot.

Sources:

Eco, Umberto. “Ur-Fascism”. The New York Review of Books. 1995. https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf>

Williamson, Venssa, Skocpol, Theda and Coggin, John. “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism”. Perspectives on Politics, Volume 9. March 2011. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/williamson/files/tea_party_pop_0.pdf>

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Steamcharts.com https://steamcharts.com/app/72850>

Schreier, Jason. “Bethesda Ships 7M Skyrim, Earns About $450M”. Wired. November 16, 2011. https://www.wired.com/2011/11/skyrim-sales/>

Hann, Michael. “‘Fashwave” - synth music co-opted by the far right”. The Guardian. December 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/dec/14/fashwave-synth-music-co-opted-by-the-far-right>

#holy shit this got long #lore overanalysis #the trash talks

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samwellwinchesterthebrave · 4 years ago

Text

Because I can't let this go.

I've said before that the finale felt like the perfect ending for season 1 Sam and Dean and Cas not existing. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes and the more right it feels to me.

I'm also starting to think it was completely intentional.

There were so many callbacks to season 1 in that finale. From Jenny (who I didn't even remember until the flashback) to the clothes Sam and Dean were wearing in the final scene. It could have been a love letter to their beginnings. It could have been a "look where we started, look how far we've come" type of callback.

It wasn't.

Instead, to me, it felt like a deliberate attempt to -recreate- season 1. It was an attempt to roll back the entire story to that point, when Dean was 26 and Sam was 21. To when Sam was a boy trying to escape a life he didn't want and Dean was an older boy trying to live up to the ideals of an abusive, broken father.

To get meta about it, which it's Supernatural so why not?, the first season was about the only season where the show was under control. It was new, still trying to establish itself and find its legs and audience. The actors were still settling into their characters, filling in the silhouettes they'd been given.

Sam was still the angry, rebellious son who couldn't take being told what to do anymore when he desperately didn't want the life he was told to live.

Dean was still the one-dimensional party boy, never looking past the next burger, the next fight, the next woman. The dutiful son who did what he was told no matter how much it hurt.

The show was supposed to appeal to the white, cis, straight male population. I kind of wonder if the showrunners and network hoped to pull viewers from the X-Files because the shows are somewhat similar. And, iirc, the X-Files ended around 2005? But it was supposed to represent a kind of red-blooded American male dream of the open road, classic car and music, burgers and fries, and willing women whenever you wanted. It was supposed to be the little guys' big damn hero moment.

But then it grew. Thanks in a lot of ways to Jensen Ackles and the depth he gave Dean. Also thanks to Misha Collins, later on, and how he portrayed Castiel.

And so, the show grew a life of its own, beyond what the creators had intended. Like Sam, it rebelled against the box it had been pigeonholed into. It decided, thanks to the wonderful actors and writers and fans who decidedly weren't the original demographic, that this wasn't all it was. New characters were introduced, changing the feel of it from the Sam and Dean show to a whole world. It changed and developed a soul of its own.

"Family don't end in blood"

"Always keep fighting"

These became the touchstones of the show, of what it had become. Against all odds and attempts to wrench it back, the show expanded. Side characters were loved, given prominence, given importance. An angel who was supposed to die after a 3 episode arc became a lead. Another angel who was meant to become a love interest died. (Essentially, they swapped places)

Which brings me back around to the finale. In 15.18, Castiel confessed his love to Dean. It had been there all along in subtext, in action, in expressions and body language. But now it was spoken aloud (no longer the love that dare not speak its name) and irrefutable. He did it to speak his truth, to acknowledge who he was, and to save the man he loved. He was also killed for it, a classic example of the Bury Your Gays trope. While his death was meaningful and accomplished a goal, it still followed the trope.

And because it happened so fast, Dean has no time to respond. Death, literally, is beating down the door to get to them. He has been taught all his life to repress his emotions, to swallow down anything that wasn't anger. This is also his best friend saying goodbye, to dying once again. And Dean had believed he wasn't worthy of love, that angels couldn't love in the same way humans did.

So we're left with resounding silence on Dean's end, a love confession heard but not responded to. We don't hear Dean's side but we see him fall apart after Cas is taken by the Empty.

Then 15.19 wraps up the season. We get Lucifer tricking Dean with Cas's voice over a phone call. Always before, when the devil is trying to gain entrance somewhere, we see him using the person's significant other. The subtext here screams. We see Dean bolting up the stairs to open the door, likely words burning on his lips, only to find Lucifer.

Dean never mentions the confession to Sam. But we do see him mourning. He also never says anything in return to the confession. There's a resounding silence on Dean's side as he tries to process losing Cas again. But he does use what Cas has told him, the words that changed how Dean views himself, to beat Chuck.

Then, in the finale, Sam brings up Cas and Dean doesn't take this opportunity to tell Sam either. He says that they need to live or Cas's sacrifice was in vain. Which, fair, but it still feels like not something Dean would say. No asking Jack if there's any way to get Cas out of the Empty, no research to see if there's a way? Nothing?

The writing has moved past the confession, burying it hurriedly and hoping to never refer to it again. It takes a hard turn back to season 1 with a monster of the week hunt. We see the brothers on their own, no found family or support around them. They have Miracle and it's adorable. But Sam barely notices the dog in the beginning, which always seemed off to me. Sam canonically loves dogs and he has nothing to do with the one Dean finally adopts?

They pull out John's journal again, looking for information and guidance from their father and his hunts once again. They fight vampires, Dean fumbling in the fight in a way we've never seen him do. Then he's killed by a piece of rebar in his back on a vanilla monster hunt and Sam goes on to live the apple pie, white picket fence life.

This would have been a good ending for who they started as. Dean dying on a hunt he'd dedicated his life to, saving innocents and standing for those who couldn't stand for themselves. Sam escaped a life he never wanted and lived the calm, normal life he'd always longed for with a family of his own. And later, they reunite in Heaven.

Just the brothers. No family, no extended family, no friends. Ignoring what the show has been saying, the core of its soul, for the past 10 years, at the least.

It felt like a last ditch attempt to drag the show back into the red-blooded straight American male wet dream no matter what. No matter who was dropped along the way and what themes and messages were ignored. Even Eileen was dropped, the woman Sam had been in love with throughout the entire last season.

It was a disconnect from the season. To me, it felt like it was trying to reclaim a personality that had long ago changed and grown. It was a regression and not just a fond callback

#supernatural #supernatural finale #meta #sam metas

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backupblogforjg · 5 years ago

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The racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism and cruel tropes in Voltron

So, it’s the anniversary of the ending of Voltron. And I’m getting really, really tired of people saying that only shippers hated the ending. There were many issues with Voltron, and they were neither limited to shipping nor to S8.

So, I’ve decided to compile a list.

It gets LONG. Turns out there was a hell of a lot of racist, sexist, ableist and cruel tropes in VLD.

In fact, I had originally planned on writing a list of both the terrible tropes and the plot holes. But there just wasn’t enough room for both. The post is huge as it is, and with the plot holes, it would have been twice as long, so I had to focus on only one thing.

Salt, obviously. So, so, so much salt. I could turn a lake into a sea here. You’ve been warned.

RACISM:

1) The Alteans are genocide survivors. Out of all the Alteans, only the black Altean was used for a Reverse Racism story where she resents a teammate for belonging to the race that exterminated hers. The white Alteans are totally cool with him, and with his race in general, and only hate the bad people. But the black one had to be taught that hating people because of their race is wrong.

2) VLD Allura is also the only version of Allura who is black. In every other Voltron media (several different cartoons and comics), Allura is blond with blue eyes. All the white versions of the character get a happy ending, while only the black version ends up dying to save the world.

While "hero sacrifices their life to save the world" is not a bad trope in and of itself, it becomes bad when it kills off one of the extremely few black female characters in leading roles. You kill off a white male hero, there are 463278462387 more. You kill off the black female hero, you are kinda screwed. Making it worse, Allura had been portrayed as suffering from depression throughout the latest seasons, so that her death comes across less as heroic sacrifice and more as suicide.

3) The brown Cuban kid who dreamed of being a pilot, and never once in 78 episodes ever expressed anything but sheer love for an exciting life, in the final two minutes of the final episode ends up realizing that the place for him is a farm.

4) As told in interviews, Lotor was meant to be a bad example of mixed-race person, to contrast him with Keith as good example of mixed race person. Do I even have to point out how messed up this is?

5) Even before they became Space Nazis, back when they were still on the side of the angels, the Galra invaded and conquered planets. This is portrayed as totally cool when they happily name the prince after a "hero" who invaded and conquered a lot of worlds, and the peaceful Alteans think the guy is just as heroic as one of their greatest scientists. Apparently there is such a thing as ethically killing people to steal their land.

6) They whitewashed Keith, a character who is poc in every other iteration of Voltron.

I’m sure a lot of people are going to get angry here, claiming that I hate Keith. Let me assure you, I don’t. I love Keith, and I hate what was done to him. I hate that they took a traditionally poc character and went to frankly ridiculous lengths to erase that part of his character. Keith should be Asian, and it would be incredibly easy to make him so in VLD (seriously, all they’d have to do is update the freaking bios, an intern could do it right now in 5 minutes). But they refuse to do it.

A lot of people don’t realise that the surname “Kogane” in VLD is fanon.

I’m serious. Check his official bios page. Keith is not actually called Keith Kogane in VLD. Fans started calling him that in fanfiction, and it stuck, but it’s not canon.

In every other Voltron media, Keith is an Asian guy. But in VLD, they:

- went out of their way to always avoid giving him an Asian surname

- gave him a Texan father

- refused to confirm his race, even when every other character had a specific race. Again, check his official bios. All the other characters got a race, Keith gets “human.” It got so ridiculous it would be funny if it weren’t sad. It pretty much went like this:

Fans: Keith is half alien, but about his human half, what is his ethnicity? EPs: oh, we couldn't possibly say, because the story takes place in the future, and in the future, everybody is mixed up! So, Keith is HUMAN, we can't give him a specific race because there are no specific races in the future! Fans: ok. And what are the races of the other characters? EPs: Pidge is Italian, Lance is Cuban, Hunk is half-black half- Samoan, Shiro is Japanese. Fans: but Keith...? EPs: HUMAN! There is no such thing as race in the future!

Some people at least hoped that Keith's Texan father had Asian ancestry because he kinda looked like Shiro, who is Japanese. But the EPs confirmed that the resemblance was just a coincidence, they never meant for the dad to look Japanese.

At this point pretty much the only evidence that Keith is Asian is that he is voiced by an Asian person. But then, Josh Keaton is not Japanese, is he?

7) After whitewashing Keith, they claimed he is the best leader of Voltron, better than his poc predecessor, because he has Galra blood.

So, instead of bringing up any sort of legit reason to justify why Keith should be in charge (like his empathy or pilot skills), they go with "the half-white guy is also half space-nazi and that's why he should give the orders instead of the poc guy."

If you think I’m bashing Keith here, please ask yourself why you are getting angry at the person pointing out the whitewashing instead of getting angry at the whitewashing. Especially when, again, making VLD Keith canonically poc could be done anytime with zero cost and zero effort, and DW just doesn’t want to.

- Hunk, the half-black half-Samoan guy, was going to be killed and replaced as Paladin by a blue alien. The EPs were pissed when DW forbade them to, and complained in the interview about it.

SEXISM:

Every single woman who is ever put in charge ends up going insane, making terrible decisions that endanger her planet, or losing all of her authority.

Allura starts out as co-leader of Voltron and leader of the Coalition. Ends up as a foot soldier who takes orders from the new leader and his right-hand man, and is treated as a cadet by the Earth military.

HOMOPHOBIA:

1) Dreamworks, Netflix and the EPs very, very, very heavily promoted S7 as GLBT-friendly. The EPs gave whole interviews about the past relationship between Shiro and new character Adam, retweeted a ton of posts celebrating Shiro’s homosexuality, and enthusiastically sent tweets like "you are going to see more of Adam in S7! :D" from their personal accounts after they showed the episode that introduced him.

In S7:

- Shiro's homosexuality is so ambiguous that even the Brazilian voice actor didn't realize that he was supposed to be gay. Just by watching the show, without knowing the World Of God, you can’t tell he and the other guy were engaged.

- Adam gets about 30 seconds of screentime after that one episode they had already shown. Then he dies screaming in pain and terror in a fire.

A lot of people claimed that it was okay to kill Adam because Shiro was supposed to be our rep, not Adam, who was a brand new character we knew little about. And, out of context, that would be true. Adam was pretty much a NPC, why would his death matter?

But the problem here is the context:

- Shiro is closeted in S7, you need to read interviews to know he is gay. So, if only Shiro is meant to be the rep, they couldn’t even do that right.

- They very heavily marketed both Shiro and Adam as gay rep, and specifically talked at length about Adam in several interviews.

In THAT context, REGARDLESS of what you ship, killing off Adam revealed a complete willingness to manipulate the audience to the point of outright lying. Even if you hated Adam, even if Adashi is your NOTP, the clear evidence that the creators had absolutely no problem making empty promises was NOT a good sign.

2) The moment Shiro is revealed to be gay in interviews, he is practically quarantined from the Team.

3) Shiro is also given a Totally Not AIDS deadly disease.

Making it even worse, Shiro never actually gets cured in canon. We are told he is cured in interviews, but the show itself drops the topic entirely. Depending on where you lean in the Word Of God VS Death Of The Author debate, Shiro may be doomed to die.

4) A female villain is revealed to be a lesbian. 30 seconds later she gleefully tortures a little girl. Then she, too, dies in a fire.

(Fan outrage about pulling two Bury Your Gays in the Season that had been very heavily promoted as GLBT-friendly caused DW to retcon her death and bring her back in S8, but she was originally meant to die in the explosion)

5) Shiro ends up marrying a random character who doesn’t even get a name in the show.

ABLEISM:

1) Shiro's PTSD magically disappears offscreen. In interviews, the EPs claimed that he "got over it" between S6 and S7 because "he is a professional." Wow! Who knew being a professional magically cures mental illnesses!

2) Shiro is an amputee. The EPs admitted that they never put any thought into his status as disabled rep, they just wanted a character with a cool-looking arm. It literally didn't occur to them that making him lose his arm (TWICE! First up to the biceps, then up to the shoulder) meant anything. Also worth noting that Shiro’s new arm makes him look like the guy who tormented him.

3) Shiro is systematically robbed of his agency.

- He is the only Paladin who never gets to use his bayard.

- He loses his bond with Black for no given canon reason (and the reason they give in interviews makes no sense, they basically say that transferring his soul out of the Black Lion makes her stop loving him. But she still lets Zarkon fly her!).

I know that Keith is traditionally Black’s pilot in Voltron media (although that shouldn’t matter, because VLD made a lot of huge changes to the traditional status quo). But if they wanted Black Paladin Keith that badly, they could have given some non-insulting reason for it. For example, say “because Shiro has spent so much time within Black, their bond is now so strong that he will get absorbed again if he flies her again.” Or co-pilots in Black (if Pidge can co-pilot with Matt, why can’t Shiro co-pilot with Keith?).

- He is defeated not only by Sendak, but also by a bunch of random Alteans. He basically can’t win a fight anymore unless it’s played for laughs.

- His new robot Atlas is bigger than Voltron, but also much weaker, and can only buy a few minutes for Voltron to come save the day.

- Every single enemy he ever defeated comes back to be finished off by somebody else (even the friggin' Gladiator from S1 comes back in S8). In the epilogue, he retires in his twenties.

4) Narti, the disabled General, is fridged shortly after her introduction. For a while at least it seemed like her death had affected the remaining three Generals, but then it turns out that the "For Narti" line was a trick and they never actually planned on avenging her.

CRUEL TROPES:

1) They intentionally baited the fans by pushing the plot thread that Lotor would be redeemed. They named the episode where he defects "A New Defender," they kept saying in interviews that they come from Avatar and they are very familiar with Zuko *hint hint*, they showed his family as incredibly abusive and Lotor himself as desperate, they showed that Lotor was a victim of severe racism (he is mixed race, and as stated above, the Galra are Space Nazis and are pretty obsessed with blood purity).

Then, after revealing him to be a villain, they gave an interview where they practically dislocated their shoulders by patting themselves on the back as they gleefully bragged that "we made them think we would give them a Zuko, but we gave them an Azula!"

(Nevermind the fact that Azula herself was a 14-year-old child, not a monster, and that Aaron Ehasz himself confirmed that he always wanted her to be redeemed).

When fans who are survivors of child abuse told them that the bait-and-switch was really hurtful, they laughed it off, and claimed that Lotor was just beyond redemption. Then they proceeded to redeem Lotor's abusive parents, who were objectively much worse.

2) Shiro’s clone, who sincerely believed he was Shiro and always meant well, was dehumanised, demonised and discarded like his life meant nothing. His short existence was full of pain from literally the moment he first opened his eyes, as Haggar kept torturing him with migraines to manipulate him. In the end, she brutally violates him body and mind, and brainwashes him to force him to turn on the family he was so desperate to find in The Journey. He dies in incredibly questionable circumstances, without ever getting to learn that his family survived Haggar’s plans. He is victim-blamed for the things she forced him to do against his will with mind-control, and is never mourned because the only family he ever had writes him off as a “thing” and “evil.”

In fact, the horrific treatment of Kuron foreshadowed S8. The Medium article “It never stops at one - Why Voltron: Legendary Defender's tragic ending wasn't a surprise and why more DreamWorks' series will follow suit” explains how.

The tl;dr version is that, when a story posits that the circumstances of your birth determine the value of your life, so that good intentions and hard work mean nothing, and long-established bonds can be discarded with zero thought and care, and your very humanity can be revoked over something you have absolutely no control over, and the whole sociopathic disaster is celebrated as a happy ending... it really, really can’t end well. Not just for you, but for the entire cast.

#voltron critical #vld shiro #vld keith #vld lance #vld allura #vld lotor #voltron #voltron salt #takashi shirogane

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inevitably-johnlocked · 5 years ago

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Heya Steph! I was wondering, you have so many fic rec lists and read so many, do you have on or a few johnlock fics you could always reread? Like, they are that good you can read them over and over...

Hi Lovely!!

AHHHHHH ACTUALLY, I’ve made a list for this before, but you know what? IT NEEDS A PART TWO because I actually pulled a lot of fics off of it to keep it shorter, so WHEE THANK YOU for giving me a reason to share even more of the fics I ALWAYS go back and never tire of!!

Top 30 Read-Again Fics (March 2019)

Top 20 Fave 40K+ w. Fics (April 2017)

Ten Fave Short Johnlock Fics (Easy Reads April 2018)

25 Fave Johnlock One Shots (April 2018)

Top 10 Fave Fics (September 2018)

Another Top 10 Fave Fics (June 2019)

Two To Tango (The Cold Hands, Warm Heart Remix) by igrockspock (T, 1,207 w., 1 Ch. || Domestics, John Whump, Worried Sherlock) – When John is wounded while pursuing a suspect, Sherlock refuses to leave his side.

Take My Hand, Knot Your Fingers Through Mine by patster223 (K+, 2,003 w., 1 Ch. || H/C & Friendship, Whump) - "I know this is an inconvenience for you, but I would really rather you were awake right now, John." John is unconscious, and Sherlock decides to talk to him anyway. Sherlock/John pre-slash.

Let Go by thisisforyou (G, 2,743 w., 1 Ch. || Friends to Lovers, First Kiss, Fluff, Anxious / Worried Sherlock) – In the end, separating John's things from Sherlock's in the chaos of their sitting room is like pulling a limpet from a wet rock. Especially when the rock is clinging on for dear life, because Sherlock doesn't want to let go. Short, fluffy h/c Johnlock oneshot.

And as the seasons change, I love you more by Teatrolley (NR, 3,219 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff and Angst, Est. Rel., Marriage / Proposal) – A year in the lives of John and Sherlock, essentially.

Measuring Damage With the Fujita Scale by teahigh (T, 3,548 w., 1 Ch. || First Kiss / Time, Vacation / Holidays, Friends to Lovers, Bed-Sharing, Pining Sherlock, Sherlock POV, Angsty Fluff, Scars, Awkward Talks) – John goes back into town, into the storm, and Sherlock realises he forgot to say, “I just want to be alone with you.”

Last Christmas by Mazarin221b (T, 3,911 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Pining Sherlock, First Kiss) – That Earth-shaking revelation, then, leads to a problem, and one that Sherlock realizes should be solved quickly, before John’s dates turn into girlfriends or boyfriends, because sometimes girlfriends or boyfriends can turn into wives or husbands while your back is turned. Every time John hums happily at the mirror as he shaves, splashes on a little gift cologne Mrs. Hudson bought him for Christmas, Sherlock is drawn back to that night by the fire, and the way John’s touch had made the world stand still.

Because Blah Blah Blah Happy by cwb (E, 4,578 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Cuddles, Kissing, First Kiss, Requited Love, Pining Sherlock) – John is entirely done with the milk situation and gives Sherlock a list of shit he's pissed about. Sherlock sets out to make John happy. John is happy. Sherlock makes his own list. They are both very, very happy.

In Which "John" Becomes a Synonym for "Help" by asignoftwo (T, 7,391 w., 1 Ch. || Injured John, Worried Sherlock, Fluff) – After the fall Sherlock returns to Baker Street and is reunited with John. When John is injured on a case Sherlock is faced with the reality that he could lose John again, and it tears him apart.

I'm Pretty Sure This Changes Shit by cwb (E, 7,672 w., 1 Ch. || Fluff, Cudding, Doctor/Patient, Accidents, Pining Sherlock, Blow Jobs, Oral / Anal, BAMF John, Minor Injuries, Dev. Rel.) – Sherlock finds increasingly ridiculous ways to get John to patch him up after hurting himself.

I can’t pretend by Salambo06 (E, 7,692 w., 1 Ch. || Fake Relationship, Victor Trevor, Jealous John, Miscommunications, Bed Sharing, Love Confessions, First Kiss/Time, Anal, BJs) – They had arrived more than a hour ago, and the moment they had walked inside the hotel reception, John had understood why Sherlock hadn’t wanted to come. Two men, posh suits and expensive watches on their wrists, had come to greet them with sharp remarks and badly hidden mockery, and John had seen red. Sherlock hadn’t said anything, mostly ignoring the two men entirely, and without thinking twice about it, John had slid an arm around Sherlock’s waist and introduced himself as his husband.

Sibling Rivalry Or Fighting Over John Watson By Jessa7 (T, 8,085 w., 1 Ch. || Romance / Humour) – Mycroft is just as much of a genius as Sherlock is. He keeps randomly kidnapping John for chats, and the locations get better. Cue Sherlock’s younger sibling complex rearing up and jealousy ensues.

High Tide by stardust_made (T, 8,540 w., 1 Ch. || Jealousy, Angst, First Kiss) – A little favour Sherlock stupidly agrees to do for Mycroft leads to John meeting a handsome, affluent man, who is going out of his way to woo him. Sherlock struggles with the situation and with his own reactions to it. Part 1 of The High Tide Series

The Newlywed Game: Johnlock Edition by patternofdefiance (E, 9,020 w., 7 Ch. || Fake Rel., Friends to Lovers, Humour, Romance, Smut) – What it says on the tin: John and Sherlock pretend to be married in order to be contestants in a Newlywed Game. Of course it's for a case. Of course it doesn't stay that way. Part 8 of I Blame Tumblr

The Devil You Know by PipMer (T, 9,300 w., 1 Ch. || Friends to Lovers, Romance, Holmes Brothers, Jealous Sherlock) – The Holmes brothers are behaving oddly. John is dazed and confused. In other words, it's business as usual at 221B Baker Street. Except when it’s not.

Drive by lifeonmars (M, 9,537 w., 1 Ch. || Virginity, Awkward First Times, Minor Injuries) – John and Sherlock are stranded by the roadside, and John is injured. They need to spend the night in the back of a humvee. Sherlock is confused. John is understanding.

Their Great Reward by BeautifulFiction (T, 10,095 w., 1 Ch. || UST, First Kiss, Fluff) – Boxing day, in John's opinions, is the worst day of the year. Christmas is over, the tree is wilting and stripped of gifts, and there's a week of dead-time until the clean slate of the new year. However the combination of a blizzard, a power-cut and Sherlock might just make it a day to remember.

I Used to Live Alone Before I Knew You by etothepii (T, 11,052 w., 1 Ch. || Winglock || Angels / Demons, Supernatural Elements, Occult) – Where Mycroft is an angel, Sherlock is a demon, and John is still John.

The River Variations by withoutawish (T, 11,619 w., 1 Ch. || Soulmates, Emotional Hurt / Comfort, Three Garridebs, Romance, Light Case Fic, Near Death Experience, Angst and Fluff, Dark Humour) – John Watson never knew that he wanted a ‘no toast in the mornings’ normal until he realized what an honor it is to be destroyed by Sherlock Holmes.

Pleasure to Burn by scullyseviltwin (E, 17,863 w., 1 Ch. || Firefighter AU, Firefighter John / Arson Investigator Sherlock, Slow Burn, Pining, Case Fic-ish) – “If you’d kindly stop knocking about in there and destroying all of my evidence, it would be most appreciated!” John groaned and for a moment rested his head against the side of the truck. Of course he was the only captain left on the scene, which meant he would have to be the one to deal with the arson investigator.

Checkmate to a Castled King by LaSuen (T, 18,290 w., 1 Ch. || Friendship, Hurt / Comfort, Sick Sherlock, Rev. Reich.) - John dies. Or at least everyone thinks he does.

Vena Cava by SilentAuror (E, 27,452 w., 1 Ch. || HLV Fix-It, Romance, H/C, Angst, Infidelity) – Sherlock has been shot in the chest; John has been shot in the heart. Though everything is broken, they do their best to heal the wounds that Mary left on them both.

Our Enthusiasms Which Cannot Always Be Explained by withoutawish (M, 32,961 w., 1 Ch. || Christmas, Fluff and Angst, H/C, Post-TRF, Case Fic, Mild Gore, Sherlock Whump) – The list that is tacked haphazardly on the refrigerator of 221B reads, ‘Kidney(s), and/or a full cadaver (preferably male, late 30s, under six feet tall), bag of fresh toes, sixteen cow’s eyes (corneas retained), dual exhaust hand –held flame thrower, an unopened first edition copy of Joseph Conrad’s 'Heart of Darkness', and no less than ten abhorrently gruesome murders in the upcoming month.” The one neatly hanging next to it simply reads, “Sex.” One of these lists is not John Watson’s. If John Watson were to put what he really wanted in list form, to live in a land somewhere beyond ‘almosts' now that Sherlock Holmes has indeed returned to him, he would never be able to look his flatmate in the eye ever again.

That Partitioning of the Things of Youth by wearitcounts (E, 35,353 w., 7 Ch. || Humour and Angst, Post-TRF, Fake Relationship, UST / RST, Friends to Lovers, Jealous John) – Victor Trevor is in town, and nobody's happy.

The Boy Who Drank Stars by kinklock (E, 36,157 w., 4 Ch. || Howl’s Moving Castle AU || Witches and Wizards, Slow Burn, Magic, Jealous John, Happy Ending, Bed Sharing) – “I’m looking for a castle,” John informed the scarecrow. “A moving one.”Except that, as it turned out, it was not a moving one at all.

A Week is Just Seven Days Isn't It? by scifigrl47 (T, 39,906 w., 4 Ch. || Humour, Friendship/Bromance, Stroppy/Bored Sherlock, Undercover/Army John, Texting, Pining-ish Sherlock, John Whump) – When John heads overseas for a week, Sherlock's forced to fend for himself. It goes about as well as anyone could have anticipated. Which is to say, very, very poorly. Don't worry, things'll be fine in just seven days.

There's Someone On Your Shoulder by halloa_what_is_this (NR, 41,215 w., 6 Ch. || Pining Sherlock, Introspection, Daydreams, Sherlock Loves John So Much it Hurts) – Sherlock trips and falls head over heels in love, makes a lot of lists and stares, stares, stares.

The Norwood Love Builders by flawedamythyst (T, 47,798 w., 9 Ch. || Fake Relationship, Slow Burn, Post TRF Angst) – Sherlock and John go undercover to solve the murder of Joanna Oldacre, but things are complicated by the many feelings John has been repressing in the wake of Sherlock's faked death and return.

The Green Blade by verityburns (T, 72,929 w., 15 Ch. || Casefic, Bromance) – As a serial killer hits the headlines, the police are out of their depth and the next victim is out of time. With faith in Sherlock Holmes at an all time low, this is a case which will push loyalties to the limit...

Breakable by MissDavis (E, 117,627 w., 34 Ch. || Established, Fluff/Angst, Depression, Paralysis, Happy-ish Ending) –After John is seriously injured, Sherlock struggles to figure out how to help him, keep himself sane, and maybe, just maybe, get their life back to the way it's supposed to be. Part 1 of Breakable Not Broken

A Further Sea by i_ship_an_armada & ShinySherlock (E, 125,492 w., 23 Ch. || Historical Pirates AU || Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Doctor John / Pirate Captain Sherlock, Sailing, UST / RST, Masturbation, Action / Adventure, Mild Angst & Peril, Romance, Shaving, Molly/Janine, Bottomlock, Hand / Blow Jobs, Past Drug Use, Slow Burn, Mild Violence, Facial Shaving, Happy Ending) – Here be a tale of adventure for both body and soul, but beware if ye be not of stout heart, for this be piratelock, ya savvy? Luckless ship's surgeon John Watson takes a chance, and finds himself eye to eye with The Ghost, the scourge of the seven seas and a definite thorn in the side of the blaggard, James Moriarty. But when John finds there's more to this most cunning pirate than be meetin' the eye, he has to choose... is it a pirate's life for him?

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #my fic recs #fave fics #e-rated fics #astudyinconsultingdetective #long post

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bartramcat · 5 years ago

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GSR AS MODERN MEDIEVAL ROMANCE: Valentine's Day Ramblings

I guess Valentine’s Day Weekend is as good a time as any to talk about Romance. Not just Romance in the Love Story context, but Romance as in larger than life Medieval Romance. As I was watching the GSR Love Story unfold, I began to see parallels to Medieval Romance. That is not to say I think someone at CSI set out to make it a modern day Medieval Romance--I don’t--and because it took place in the 21st century, there are certainly several departures from the archetypes...still, I think it interesting. Perhaps you will too.

Right off the bat I should point out that Medieval Romance typically tends to have an adulterous liaison at its center. Adultery was the most dangerous form of love in the medieval world--you could be killed for it; it was also a mortal sin. So engaging in adultery risked your mortal life and immortal soul. Apparently, Medieval audiences found fornication boring; it was frowned upon but not fraught with the danger adultery was.

How does that relate to GSR? While GSR has nothing whatsoever to do with adultery, their relationship contains a more modern taboo: a supervisor sleeping with his much younger subordinate. What is curious about it is that they intentionally decide to keep it on the QT, as if they are in fact committing some kind of mortal sin. On one hand, yes, they are violating workplace rules, but they are rules specific to that workplace. Still, they both operate as if the discovery of their love affair would be tantamount to being caught as adulterers. The punishment, as it turns out, is that they aren’t allowed to be on the same shift together, which is more severe than it seems on the face of it.

Whether at the start of their affair, which I date to the final third of season 5 (everyone has their time frame), the punishment would have been as mild as it was after Sara almost lost her life, I don’t know. For most of Season 5, Ecklie was actively looking for cause against Grissom, and sleeping with Sara certainly would have been seen as cause. In that regard, while their affair would certainly not have risked their lives, there was a very real possibility that it risked their livelihoods. (In Butterflied, Grissom sees giving into his feelings for Sara as putting everything he has worked for at risk. It is as if he believes that a relationship with her could lead ultimately to his being dismissed in disgrace.)

To backtrack, probably the best known medieval love affairs are Lancelot and Guinevere and Tristan and Iseult. The generic setup, which both of those fit into to some extent, is that of the king and his knight. The knight falls in love with the woman who comes to the kingdom to be queen. But the knight is torn between love and duty and loyalty.

So in our modern version, Vegas is the kingdom. In the world of GSR, there is no king, but there is the job. Before we even get to Grissom and his romantic Hamlet routine, we are actually shown that it is Sara who initially takes the biggest risk. She is the one who gives up everything she has known to come help Grissom out. And all he has to do is ask her to stay, and she does. She starts over for a chance at love with him.

Starting over is a hallmark of their Romance.

In Tristan and Iseult, Tristan goes to Ireland to bring Iseult to Cornwall to marry his uncle. On the voyage, they fall in love, with or without the help of a love potion (metaphor or reality?) and consummate their relationship. By the time they reach Cornwall, they are hopelessly in love with one another. But in Cornwall, the rules change.

I suppose it can be debated until the cows come home whether or not Grissom and Sara had sex before she came to Vegas. Personally, I was surprised to read that Mendelsohn had decided they had, as I never thought there was anything either in the text or in the acting to indicate they had. Sex aside, it's absolutely clear they had something significant happen between them in SF. They fell in love. Sara confirms that in Snakes and Grissom in A La Cart.

But in Vegas the rules change. He is her supervisor, and the rules of their job dictate that they can't also be lovers. When I watch them interact in the first 4-5 years of the series, another Medieval work springs to mind: the 2nd circle of Dante's hell (coincidentally reserved for adulterers): like Paulo and Francesca, they whirl around in this endless dance, unable to consummate their desire. In Medieval Romance, it is the woman who is married to another man; in GSR, it is Grissom who is married to his job.

Once the medieval lovers and our more modern ones decide to give into their feelings, the behavior is pretty similar as they endeavor to preserve the secrecy of their love affair. In both settings, the affairs continue for a fairly substantial period of time undiscovered, although there are close calls. In the medieval world, it is usually a third party, usually one with ambition, who works to expose the lovers, while the husband/king turns a blind eye to the seemingly obvious.

On the face of it, it seems patently absurd that no one at CSI ever discerned that Grissom and Sara were lovers. Until we remember how these folks perceived Grissom. They all were aware that she was special to him on some level, but it's also pretty clear that none of them ever considered the possibility that he would ever become involved in a long term, committed relationship. More than likely, they thought Grissom was incapable of Romantic Love, which, apparently, he was until he met Sara. (In Family Affair, Greg and Nick laugh at the idea Grissom is Sara's husband; it still doesn't compute that he is married.)

That brings us to Natalie Davis. She knows nothing about these people personally. All she knows is that Grissom's investigation pushed Ernie Dell to suicide in an effort to protect her. My guess is she started stalking him, and she stumbled upon the infamous caress of Sara's arm at the crime scene. From that moment on, her focus became Sara. (Many sketches of Sara in her apartment; the only one of Grissom was when he was stroking her arm.) Why kill Grissom when she could make him feel her pain? I suspect she stalked both of them and knew far more about their relationship than we were given privy to. She certainly knew enough about their routine to know Sara ate at the veggie place a couple of times a week before going into the lab.

In Medieval Romance, after the affair is made public, it is the male who flees the kingdom, into the wilderness, in fear for his life. In some versions, he sneaks back into the kingdom to rescue her from death. In others, she remains, having been forgiven by her husband, until such time as she can no longer live without her lover. Having discovered where he is, she escapes the kingdom to join him in the wilderness, wherein they live a contented and pastoral life. For a time.

Okay. The parallel gets a little fuzzy here. The upshot of Sara's kidnapping is twofold. The first is that the love affair is exposed. It is pretty clear at the end of Dead Doll that Grissom no longer gives a damn who knows about their relationship. By A La Cart, they are both completely open about it, or at least as open as they are capable. The second is the shift change, isolating Sara from her work family and limiting the time she now has with Grissom. Even if we assume they are living together, and I think most of us do, they are working different shifts, so even their "at home" time together would be affected. More and more the job overwhelms her. In an act of self-preservation, Sara flees the kingdom, er, Vegas. While she comes back in his hour of need after Warrick's death, he again remains committed to his life and work in Vegas, where she feels she cannot live, and she leaves him again, eventually resigning herself to the fact they are over.

Now I could be completely off base here, but I always assumed that after she left in season 8 that he thought if he gave her enough space and time that eventually she would come back. In both You Kill Me and Grissom's Divine Comedy, it is indicated pretty strongly that they are in contact. When she comes back in season 9, she moves back in with him as if their relationship is a continuum, even with the physical separation. While he obviously pines for her during this period, it is not without hope, and he is able to function.

What he cannot abide is after she leaves in season 9. He begins to have trouble focusing, and we learn he has no idea where she is. She is taking a voyage of self Discovery and reconciliation, coming to accept she will now have to live her life without him. It's clear in her video that she still loves him, but they are at an impasse, so it's time for them both to move on with their lives. She sets him free. "You don't have to worry about me anymore." Interesting choice of words.

Grissom is now in Purgatory. He doesn't want to live without her, but he can't bring himself to change. On some level, he's come full circle, back to the Grissom who was afraid to "risk" his job by giving into his love for her. But there is a difference. In seasons 1-5, a relationship with Sara was a concept, sort of an idealized possibility, not a reality he had experienced. In many ways, to go Medieval again, she is his Beatrice, his Laura, whom he is content to love from afar. If we take him at his word, he had never been in love before nor been loved in return. It's one thing to eschew something you've never had, quite another to lose the one thing that has ever given your life meaning.

One of the major problems in the GSR relationship is that they love each other almost too much: to the point neither can ever quite believe they are loved as much in return. He believes in Butterflied that he has missed his chance. He turned her down. How could she possibly still be interested? She told him by the time he figured it out it could be too late. He figured it out but assumed it was too late. After Warrick's death, she assumed he really wanted her to leave him, to set him free, because she was unable at that point to resume their relationship on his terms. In her wildest dreams, I do not think she ever expected her setting him free would be the impetus for him to realize he couldn't live without her.

So in season 9 we find Grissom more at sea metaphorically than Sara who really is at sea on her way to the wilderness. Ironically, they are both on a voyage of self-discovery. Both are learning to let go: she of her need for him and he of his need for the safety and security of the lab. What is abundantly clear is that they still love one another. We are never told how he discovers where she is, but it is pretty clear he has found her and made his decision to go to her by the end of Young Man with a Horn. He tells Catherine it's time to up the ante, and he is speaking to her assertion that he has a work family. He wants a real family; in many ways over the years it was made clear he wanted to marry Sara, long before the actual proposal. They are each other's family. She is the only woman he has ever loved; he is the only home she has ever known. Not surprising that the first scene of the next episode has him announcing his departure.

Back to our Romance. The woman could have lived a very safe and secure life as Queen of the kingdom once her lover left. But she is incomplete without him, so she throws all of that away once she discovers where he is and steals away in the night to go to him. She would rather live in the wilderness with him than in the empty security of the kingdom. Again there are variations upon variations in these tales, mainly because a lot of them came out of oral traditions over centuries. The lovers live for a time in bliss, poor but content to be together.

CSI doesn't give us a whole lot about GSR after he runs to her in the rainforest. I think we can assume he went to her fully intending to marry her. We can probably also assume they got married fairly quickly and honeymooned in Costa Rica and possibly spent some more time there as she fulfilled her volunteer gig. I always wondered what they thought they were going to live on; like our Medieval lovers, they are in the wilderness with no discernible source of income. (Okay. It's highly possible Grissom got a substantial vacation time payout when he left.) I never thought they went from Costa Rica directly to Paris. That makes no sense. They had obligations in the States, including Grissom taking his bride to meet his mother. Which could have been interesting. (How many times did mother Grissom bring up grandchildren?) We learn he still has the condo, and then there is Hank. Like most things GSR, we are given no indication when he was asked to lecture at the Sorbonne. While they were in Costa Rica? When they came back to the States? In my "headcanon," they come back to Vegas, tie up loose ends and go on a road trip, destination New York, destination Paris, possibly spending the spring and most of the summer touring the ballparks of America. And other places. But that's just me.

As far as I'm concerned, One to Go should have been endgame for them. No matter what, they should have been together from that point on. There are some things that make no sense to me, even before the dreaded divorce. As I don't see them going directly from Costa Rica to Paris, it also makes little sense that he went straight from Paris to Peru. At some point they bought a house, and I don't think she did that on her own. What makes more sense to me is that he came back to Vegas shortly after the conclusion of season 10, which also would have coincided with the end of the spring semester in Paris. More than likely, that's when they bought the house, having realized at that point that they weren't getting their grant. Perhaps she told him she was comfortable remaining at the lab full time, and they decided to resettle in Vegas. We aren't sure what he was planning to do, but my guess is that he may have been looking for a position at a University or scientific institution within a 100 mile radius. Then the Peru offer came in. Or, rather, that's what the show came up with to explain why we didn't see him.

It's interesting that in season 10 that she is the one going to him in Paris, although it's highly probable he came home over break, but in season 11 forward he is the one who apparently comes to Vegas. It is possible that the archaeological site was remote and heavily secured to the point where her visiting him there might have been difficult. Again not explained.

So the last we saw our Medieval Romancers they were living in pastoral bliss in the wilderness. But they are adulterers, so in the terms of Medieval morality that happiness can't last. Again depending on the tale and the version, they are separated, either by a storm or by the king's men discovering their hideaway. After the melee, he ends up looking for her but becomes resigned to the fact she must be dead. She somehow ends up back in the kingdom, either returning for want of someplace else to go or she is taken back by the king's men to face her punishment. Upon seeing her again, the king forgives her, and she is resigned to living out her days with him. She is also convinced her lover must be dead.

While this sequence is a little out of sequence, I always thought it ironic that it was Sara who returned to Vegas. I also thought it a bit odd that they rehired her, given the way she left. In my work experience, walk out on a job, and you aren't coming back. I suppose it's possible she dropped by HR and requested an emergency leave of some kind, but we don't know, or if the lab felt some culpability, given that it was PTSD that contributed. Again never explained.

For whatever reason, TPTB aka TIIC decided the strain of writing (what writing?) a long distance marriage was too hard on them, so we got the inconceivable divorce. I consider it anomalous on 2 levels. For one, I don't believe it, not at that point in their relationship. For another, it is as if they are being punished for no apparent reason other than writer ineptitude. Unlike our Medieval lovers, they have never done anything wrong. (They've made mistakes, but that's not the same thing.) Curiously, I think one of the reasons I am so drawn to them as a couple is they are not morally ambiguous, yet both are also incredibly complex and multi-faceted. Normally, in fiction, characters with that much substance have a touch of evil. Not these two, and I think that makes them more fascinating as individuals and is a large part of why the people who are so taken with them are so taken with them. They deserve each other; they really do.

The divorce is an unfortunate occurrence within the GSR world that actually bolsters--sad to say-- the Medieval Romance parallel. Especially since Grissom decides to take to the seas, wandering the world, disconnected from the kingdom of Vegas and the woman he loves, leaving Sara to live her life alone there. It is almost as if he wants her to think he is dead. (Can we further extrapolate that his indulging in high risk behavior may very well indicate that he is being intentionally reckless?)

I like the Finale of CSI as a stand alone Romantic Comedy, and one of these days I'll finish something I was writing about that. The problem with it is that I never believed Grissom would divorce Sara in the first place. OTOH I do think his behavior after the divorce was probably accurate, cutting himself off from everything about their life together. Somewhere in his thinking, he probably truly believed if he set her free that she would find someone to be the kind of husband he thought she deserved, but he certainly never wanted to see it.

Medieval Romance does not have a happy ending. Eventually you get punished for your sins. To totally pastiche it, the woman discovers her lover to be alive living in some remote corner of the kingdom and does everything in her power to get to him. Either before or while she is sailing there, he is mortally wounded. She arrives just as he dies, and she either dies of a broken heart or kills herself. All wrapped up neatly: their love is eternal but they are punished for their adultery.

CSI came up with a contrivance to get Grissom back to Vegas. At that point GSR ceases to be Romance and becomes Romantic Comedy, 1940s RomCom. It takes the full two hours, but he and Sara end up realizing they belong together. One of the things I like about their sailing off into the sunset is that it is open-ended. At no point does the show say they're off to carry on his eco-terrorist activities. In a metaphoric kind of way, I always saw Vegas as something that always seemed to come between them, either in the first 5 years of the series, when she had to leave, when he refused to leave, when she came back and was left there alone. So I really have no problem with their going off into the great unknown together. Taking one more risk. It's kinda what they do. I see it as their Romance coming full circle on two levels: on one hand, she gave up her life as she knew it to come to Vegas because of him, so she leaves for the same reason. On the other, her leaving to go with him is the parallel to his leaving to go to her. That isn't to say I think they live on his boat, cut off from their life in Vegas, but rather they are scientists who will find a way to do science together.

My concept is far more detailed and makes sense of my vision of who they are and what would make them happy. But then the nice thing about that ending is that everyone can imagine what they want to imagine. And no one is wrong.

Hope it stays that way.

#csi #csiedit #grissom x sara #gsr #gil grissom #sara sidle #csi: las vegas #grissom and sara #medieval romance #mytext #valentines

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yiangchen · 5 years ago

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ok but literally what the fuck was s5? i have spent so much time trying to defend clarke and bellamy from people who hate one and prop up the other, but honestly, they were BOTH fucking IDIOTS in s5. they both had ooc moments. like,,,, i can kinda appreciate what the writers were trying to do a lot of the time, but it was not executed well. like AT ALL.

yes, mothers are irrational sometimes about their kids’ safety, but what they are not (normally) is dumb, and i’m sorry, but clarke was dumb as fuck for like half of the season and her motivations were ALL over the place. bellamy is her best friend. she radioed him every day for over six years and ONLY him. she would NEVER just leave him to die like that. NEVER. no matter what he has done, she has always forgiven him. no matter what. that’s what made bellarke bellarke. her unwavering faith in him (and his in her). and yet, he does one (1) thing she disagrees with and she doesn’t even try and hear him out??? she thinks running is the best solution?? that she and madi won’t get hunted down and killed eventually??? that maybe she should not at least consider for one second that maybe staying and fighting while she has people to protect her and madi by their sides would be a smart move??? the answer to all of these is a fucking no. she doesn’t think, and that’s the problem. clarke is the HEAD. idc that she’s supposed to be the “heart” now. people don’t just change like that. it doesn’t matter than it’s been six years, you can’t just change THAT much. okay, i’m not gonna say it’s impossible, but if they wanted us to believe that clarke had changed, why did we not get to SEE that development? she’s supposed to be the heart as a parallel to how bellamy was the heart and how he handled his relationship with octavia back in s1, but we didn’t get to see HOW SHE GOT THERE. we got half an episode. that’s it. and it’s NOT enough!!! it’s fucking not. if you’re gonna have clarke griffin radio bellamy blake every single day for six years, never losing her faith in him for even a day--not even after over a year had passed since he was supposed to have been home already--then you’re gonna have to show me more of the trauma she endured. you’re gonna have to show me more of her relationship to madi--the one that has become more important than any other relationship. because how else do you explain her acting irrationally and leaving bellamy to die like that? it makes ZERO sense. we did not see enough of her development for that. you cannot have four seasons of clarke growing to care about bellamy in the most beautiful development i have ever seen and then just erase it all in one (1) episode, not to mention the fact that clarke REFUSES to destroy the chip!!! so,, this was something she left her best friend in the entire world for and yet she can’t destroy it because it contains the memories of her dead lover who she only spent less than a few weeks with in canon--a week in s2 and a week in s3? are you kidding??? that is not how you pay tribute to a dead character. you don’t fuck over the LIVING female lead and have her motivations make no sense at all to pay tribute to a DEAD guest character. and then they had the audacity to have clarke shock madi?????? everything she did was supposed to be for madi--to protect her--and now the writers had the audacity to have her abuse her??? are you fucking kidding me??? and please show me the parallel scene of bellamy physically harming octavia. because you know, clarke’s supposed to be him now, i guess. oh, wait?? it doesn’t exist!!! BELLAMY never physically harmed octavia so CLARKE also never should have physically harmed madi. i just...bellamy and madi are supposed to be the two most important people in her life and yet she slaps one of them and leaves him to die and then wrestles the other one to the ground and shocks her????? and she never even apologized for slapping bellamy or shocking madi?!?! add that to the fact that clarke hardly showed ANY emotion at all during the entire time she thought bellamy was dead to the point where we didn’t even know that she thought he was dead until she found out he wasn’t!!!!! we’ve already seen how clarke handles thinking she could be the reason that bellamy blake is dead and that was in s2 and she was literally a fucking control freak about his safety 24/7, and you’re telling me that same woman hardly felt anything at all until she found out he was still alive!?!? IDK WHO THAT WOMAN WAS THAT DID THOSE THINGS BUT IT WAS NOT CLARKE GRIFFIN !!!!

and bellamy??? trying to use a child because he thought it was the best way to save everyone? i’m sorry but in what fucking world--i repeat, in WHAT FUCKING WORLD--would bellamy blake, mother father of all children who have ever existed, think that the best way to save everyone would be to use a child as a pawn in a power struggle??? i don’t care that madi agreed. OF COURSE she agreed. she was told clarke would die if she didn’t ascend!! and this is the same child that joined a cult in order to save her mother. so like???? of course she was gonna agree to ascend?? and then i get that bellamy is mad that clarke left him (and slapped him--i was mad too!!), but you’re telling me that bellamy never even felt bad at all or even apologized for how things went down? madi told him clarke would never forgive him for this and he knew that and you could tell he hated that it had come to that, but then later at the end of the season and into s6, he never apologizes for that??? for breaking her trust?? bellamy blake NOT apologizing for causing a loved one harm?? again, IN WHAT FUCKING WORLD?!? and then there’s the fact that he was willing to take the rover and run to save raven, e.cho, murphy and emori but the second clarke suggests that plan because she doesn’t want madi to ascend, suddenly bellamy is all nope nope nope, we can’t do that! like....WHAT. literally what. the. fuck. it makes no sense!! and i swear to god, half the time, it felt like bellamy was just going through the motions with everything. it just didn’t seem like him. it didn’t matter that he was still doing things for clarke, like in 5x03. it didn’t matter because there was still something OFF. even the stuff with octavia i don’t think was handled well at all and i hate octavia!!!! me, a known octavia hater, a known advocate for wanting bellamy to tell his sister off, wasn’t happy with him doing just that???? and it’s because it didn’t feel like it was bellamy doing it!!!! i wanted to see the bellamy i knew and loved in s4. i wanted to see THAT bellamy telling her off. not this emotionally-repressed shell of a character that used to be him. which brings me to another thing: it’s not that who bellamy was after those six years was not realistic. it’s that we didn’t get to see him develop during those six years. there were ZERO flashbacks. Z E R O. for the male lead there were zero flashbacks to explain the man he became and we were just supposed to accept that he’s the kinda guy who jokes about his sister’s almost death now??? the kinda guy who would ever cross the line into dating territory with the girl that is quite literally the root cause of his trauma??? that he would trust her--the girl who got his girlfriend killed--just because “it’s been six years!!!” and “people change???” and you know, we just have to accept ALL of that. no explanation but bellamy running around polis in 5x06 with the sole purpose of being a mouth piece for the writers???? IDK WHO THAT MAN WAS BUT IT WAS NOT BELLAMY BLAKE !!!

jfc, s5 was seriously the WORST season of this show. HANDS DOWN. literally what the fuck was that??? bellamy and clarke, i’m so sorry, you didn’t deserve that complete and utter bullshit. both of them were ooc as fuck and they didn’t make sense half the time. i felt connected to clarke in s5a, but then 5x09 came around and she just fucking lost me!! and bellamy didn’t seem like himself the ENTIRE season. it wasn’t until s6 for me that he finally came back from the war. speaking of s6, oh my fucking god. the bellarke of it all was amazing. i loved josephine as a villain. but that was pretty much it!!! everything else was terrible. i hate that clarke was treated like complete and utter shit by the biggest hypocrites and then was forced to forgive them instantly by the writers. why is clarke not allowed to be mad?!?!?! i certainly still am!! and on another note, why did leaving bellamy in s5 have to be her biggest regret??? why couldn’t it have been leaving him in s2?? we went all the way back to s1 with things she regrets and yet we couldn’t go back to her leaving him at the end of s2???

honestly, i don’t understand why so much of this had to happen. you could literally remove s5 from the timeline of the show and just change a few things and it wouldn’t change anything!!! s5 was basically jroth acting like octavia had never mistreated bellamy before and needed to give him a reason to finally cut her out his life for a little bit. it was jroth acting like clarke had never regretted leaving bellamy before and needed her to leave him so that she could feel like shit about it and give her “friends” a reason to hate her. it was jroth acting like we couldn’t have had bellamy risk everyone for clarke and clarke only in the season directly after he’s forced to leave her to die. it was jroth acting like we couldn’t have had clarke and bellamy talk about her radioing him the season directly after the episode we found she radioed him for 2,199 days. it was jroth acting like s1-4, for the most part, just didn’t exist. it felt like we were watching the pilot of a new tv show. because clearly we weren’t supposed to care about anything that had happened in s1-4! certainly not the relationships that we had grown to love! and here’s the best part!!! we were supposed to forget all about s1-4 in s5, but ONLY in s5. and then we were supposed to remember it all again in s6 so that it made sense when clarke was the only one who had to be called out for nearly every wrong thing she ever did in those seasons. only...it still doesn’t make sense!!! because contrary to what raven reyes believes, other characters on this show have done horrible things, said they were sorry, and then done them again!!!!!!!! it’s like the main fucking theme of the show if you haven’t noticed, jason!!!

okay, i’m done. and wow, it feels good to finally let that out, especially the part about s5 bellamy and clarke both being morons lmfao. because they were!! they are my favorite characters and the only reason i still watch, but even i have to admit they were not themselves.

#bellamy blake #clarke griffin #madi #anti raven reyes #bellarke #i love soulmates #the 100

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artpoint420 · 5 years ago

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Melvin and the Silent Diagnosis for a Brilliantly Broken Psyche

Hypothetical Diagnosis Insecurity masked with narcissistic tendencies characterized with compulsive obsessions driven by blatant autism, and no that is not an immature insult I test extremely highly for Asperger's myself Here's the Evidence: (I will state before hand that Melvin-borg is a completely separate character in my mind, and thus will not be included in this particular theory. Melvin decided not to turn out like him, so they are canonically separate characters) He is obviously and frequently inspired by George and Harold, but his deeply embedded fear of rejection makes him dangerously bitter, and it doesn't help that everytime he breaks out of this protective shell, he is rejected or betrayed once again. It’s important to note that while he may be high-functioning (aka: Aspergers) he is still Autistic. That’s because Asperger’s is not a form of autism- it is autism. Period. And any kind of autism or mental attypicality left untreated can develop in to many, many other severe mental disorders, or, in general, make life a metric heck ton harder and complicated than it already is. I also need to confess that I test highly positively for autism myself as well as being an INTP female (Myers-Briggs Personality Test). Not to brag, but all that combined with my naturally creative nature makes me rare af, but it also means I can't communicate or handle stress #liketheothergirls, so that has lead me to being/feeling bullied and ostracized. I also have anxiety and depression issue which run in my family, and mild insomnia, and may or may not be relapsing into an eating disorder. Paired with psychical problems like acid reflux and severe neck tension, health, whether psychical or mental is of uttermost importance to me. It suffices to say, autism is not easy to deal with and if not taken care for properly a person, especially if not made at least aware of what autism truly is, it can truly ruin their life. Combined with the neglectful nature of his parents (at least in the books) I and many others in this fandom truly believe Melvin is at least autistically coded. Not only does this fit the archetype of his character but it also fits the theme of the books to a TEE. At its core, CU, of all things, is a children's book series, about living your best life despite not being “normal.” Even characters like the teachers or Mr Krupp who strive for “normality” are shown to actually have deeply repressed creativity, or, in some cases, deep trauma from their own childhoods. It suffices to say that I resonate deeply with Melvin. Say what you want about him or me, I was able to relate to him the second he spoke his first line in the second book. Sorry to turn this into a long vent, but I feel it is best to use myself to support this theory as well as harder evidence, even if it is mostly a means of self-therapy. To start, we both are obsessed with school even to a detrimental degree. Ever since head-start (Pre-K but a million times better), these "book-smarts" were the first thing I ever truly excelled at. When the other kids bullied (or as I now know as teasing) me, I would lose myself in a stack of homework or a book 2-3 grades past my grade level (this is before I drew or wrote as a main hobby). Similarly, Melvin is rarely seen without a book or gadget, just like me. We both over analyze things and hide our feelings. We both have intense crushes on others but are terrified to dare express them, or do but to nothing but awkwardness. We were both science kids, and fascinated by words and/or numbers alone (I still am just in a more artistic way). We both struggle to communicate and relate to others. We both have a unusual sense of humor and are highly observant of surroundings all the while missing what’s in front of our noses. We both have interests that quickly spiral into obsessions and dropping the obsession only when sick of it. We both practice similar forms of stimming. We both not only thrive but crave control and structure with the world around us, even to the point of being "control freaks" and creating odd habits, routines, and rituals regardless of whether they are necessary or make sense. We both have an intense fear of intimacy and rejection to the point of practicing self-isolation and in some cases self harm or other unhealthy coping methods (seen with Melvin over eating sweets or over working himself. For me it’s disordered eating or self flagellation, something I have all but completely dropped but still) We also both tend to see ourselves as inferior to others and attempt to mask those feelings with a superiority complex (I feel bad for my siblings but I didn’t know what I was doing, and no it was not abusive just sibling rivalry and I’m the oldest anyway, and we are country kids and understand “rough-housing” =/= using each other as a punching bag, but accidents happen I'm sorry) We both seem to become easily overstimulated and have explosive mental and emotional breakdowns when things just . . . become too much However the harsh divide between male and female and fictional and nonfictional means we both present certain traits differently. Whereas he presents a more linear line of thinking my mind is overwhelmingly sporadic. Also, I have over sensitivities to touch and light (and sometimes certain noises, but not anything not normal? Wfk.) But maybe he does have oversensitivity but I can't think of an example off the top of my head. Enough about me however. I know Melvin and autism has been done to death. Hell, I just did it to death. My actual theory is more on the inner mechanisms of his mind and predicting how he will develop should the series allow for full character development. Also, similar to my Krupp theory, I will be listing his crimes out and give him a proper sentence for his age and maturity level (which will be light as I am sympathetic to his plight). This is already getting too long, so Imma try to finally get to the point. Characters with autism are honestly a mixed bag, sometimes there as standardized as my mystery Daddy Sherlock Holmes and other times they are as subtle as Pearl or Peridot from Steven Universe (has Rebbaca Sugar confirmed this? sorry). Honestly, it does distress me that autism is almost always used to have an evil genius character or some weird side character for brownie/ diversity points. (this makes me a bit hypocritical I guess, considering my own stories. I guess tropes are tropes for a reason) And while Dav Pilky May not be subtle with his scholastic politics or humor his one spectacular tool in his writing books has always been, when it comes to his characters, showing instead of telling. This is something I latched on to even as a kid, and I was already thinking up theories on the characters before I even knew character theories were a thing. Like what happened to Harold's Dad (hint, hint). Why was Harold's sister rarely used? Does Mr Krupp actually like their comics (a now accepted theory, but not just min? And many many others I'm probably never gonna write. It took until how long in the books to reveal George and Harold have ADHD? Before that they were simply described as being as smart as Melvin but just in different ways. Personally I feel that autism is inverted ADHD. This is an opinion I’ve recently formed so if I’m wrong bloody attack me in the comments. Anyway, Melvin presenting autism makes him the perfect foil to George and Harolds’ more sporadic antics. The only true difference between autistic folks and ADHD folks is that those with autism tend to crave a structured environment full of rules, and set goals to achieve, while such an environment is HELL to children with ADHD (aka:George and Harold). (Even though if with adults they can trust, children with ADHD thrive in structured environments if they are surrounded by adults or authority figures they can trust.) I know some will tell me ADHD is on the spectrum, but I just learned this like actually the other day and don’t fully understand it. My prediction is that Melvin will eventually and naturally mellow out if just because staying so high strung all the time is a huge waste of mental energy. I know good as hell I had to. Also, he mellowed our in the books and went from a screeching revenge exacting lil narcissistic white boi prick to a person who simply wants to pursue his interests and even helping George and Harold (selfishly, but help nonetheless). He even went from enjoying the fame and attention of hero-ing to realizing it did not fufill him. Indeed quite the opposite. His true passion lay in solving world problems through science, and I don't think the ending for him in the books could have been any more perfect considering his character. In the Netflix show, similar to how I think Krupp's personalities are merging, I believe that Melvin will eventually become more like his Broski alter ego (which I calmly demand more of). Overall, given that this show needs to go back to the status quo more often than not, I don't think his core character will ever change, and it doesn't need to. Multiple times throughout the series he's been shown to crave friendship from George and Harold, despite audibly hating him . Textbook Tsundere, I know. He will form a friendly rivalry with George and Harold, I have almost no doubt about that, taking the season 1 finale, season 2 finale, season 3 first episode, and halloween special into consideration. (Yeah, if someone will send me clips I will give them my eternal gratefulness) To conclude, because by god this is long, Melvin is, SHOCKER, just a little kid. A little kid who likes muffins and dolls and has big hopes and dreams. A little kid whose love for science and unrecognized creativity is channeled into making inventions that are even more impressive than those of Professor P (sorry P). But he is a little kid with his own needs and stuggles which at this point remain unmet. His parents are canonically neglectful, I cannot repeat that enough times. The effects of neglect are a hell-hole of its own regardless of growing up with undiagnosed autism. But that's just a theory- Alright, that was a banger, I guess next up is Melvin-borg since writing this has given me some interesting ideas for him. Let’s see how long this hyperfocus train will go!

#captain underpants #melvinsneedly #melvin #georgeandharold #george #harold #mrkrupp #davpilky #theory #cutheory #thetheorizer #thetheory #filmtheory #booktheory #tvtheory

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venus-says · 5 years ago

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Yes! Pretty Cure 5 Episodes 01-24

The biggest irony of it all is that this isn't the 5th precure season.

New month, new season! And march will be another busy month as I'll have to cover two seasons instead of one. I hope I don't get crazy with it, especially considering that both my brother and my birthdays are in this month, I hope I don't get behind schedule again...

But oh well, that's not what you came here for, you came here for precure so let's talk about that.

Yes and GoGo are seasons that I have a weird history with. Much like Splash Star I never got to finish neither seasons, but I got to work on both of them back in the day when I was part of the Brazilian Subs group who takes care of everything precure related, I don't remember exactly what episodes I was involved with but I did quite a few of them, including the Yes finale, funny enough. Because of my contact with the Yes! seasons weren't of a mere spectator I used to hold these seasons in high regard, they were never part of my top 4 but they were very close, I used to say I like them a lot even though I never properly watched them. But now, after properly sitting through the entire thing... I'm more on the fence about what my feelings are.

Much like its predecessor, Yes was a season for a lot of firsts in the franchise which means they were a bit inventive with the ideas for the show, and while some of those ideas work very well, others not so much. Aside from the team of five and all the implications that come with it, the biggest difference from Yes to the past series is that this is the most episodic and more character-focused series up until now. The plot is almost nonexistent but in exchange, we got a lot of focus on these characters and the stories the show wants to tell about each one of them that intertwines with the show's main theme of hope and finding your own path in life. And that's not a problem, au contraire, this is one of its biggest strengths because the main cast is very solid and even the more overlooked of them is able to shine on its own.

The problems of the show start with more of a production level? I'm not a specialist in the matter, and I don't know much about this stuff so don't rake what I say here as fact, but I feel like since Splash Star underperformed they didn't have that big of a budget for this season and you can see that by how every single episode has some sort of fluke in the drawings or the animation. Which is a shame because this show has a great character design and the backgrounds are more often than not very beautiful. Another huge problem, at least to me, is in the action because Yes! didn't just introduce to us a team dynamic rather than a duo, they also introduced to the series a thing that haunts us until today, the stock footage finishers spam. Yes, the animation for the attacks isn't nearly as long as the ones we get today but I think it's very rare that we get a fight where not at least three attacks are used, like if the action portion wasn't already very short. Speaking of it, I don't understand why Dream is the one that finishes the monsters almost every time when it was shown that all other cures (probably only not counting Mint) can also break the masks and defeat them.

But this is more or less minor stuff, I can get behind it. My biggest problem with Yes! is the romance. They tried with Nagisa and Fujipi, it didn't work. They tried with Saki and Mai's brother, it didn't work. They should've learned with that, but instead, they decided to make it again and different from the past two cases they decide that they would sell the romances hard. Like, the first scene of this show was they already trying to sail Nozomi x Coco, and they shove this couple down your throat in a very ugly way. To begin with, it's an adult man with a high school girl and that's gross. "Oh, but he's a fairy" I DON'T CARE, in his human form he's a male adult, he's a school teacher which means everyone sees him as an adult, this shit is freaking gross. And they try to pull it twice because just Nozomi and Coco wasn't enough and they decided to make Nuts and Komachi a thing too. Thanks, I hate it.

Remember that I said the show doesn't look very beautiful all that often? Well, in episode 24 there's a scene with Nozomi and Coco and they're hugging and that shit was drawn with so much care and flare it didn't even look like the same anime. And you know what infuriates me the most? Is that right after it there's a scene that is the great moment of the episode where the whole group reunites and free themselves from Nightmare's control and that scene doesn't get anywhere near the same amount of care that the Nozomi x Coco scene got. They have transformations, attacks (I'm looking at you Aqua Stream), and the whole show looking subpar, but when it comes down to this couple they make it seem like a CLAMP manga, the only thing missing was the arabesques in the screen. I said it once, I'll say it again. THANKS, I HATE IT.

But moving on.

Going into the characters, Nozomi is weirdly enough the one who has let the less of an impression on me, but I would say a big part of it is because of all her thing with Coco. Because she has interesting going for her, like her indecisiveness about her own future, but this ends up being left behind because they wanna either focus on her thing with Coco or show just how clumsy and air-headed she is. It's a weird approach to the lead of the show, there are times that it seems like Nozomi and Dream are two different persons because when Nozomi is Nozomi they focus so much in showing how much of a crack-head she is, but when she's Dream she is very serious and mature, it's not a very good balance.

I like Rin quite a lot, she's the first one to take over the position of being the sporty one that before was exclusive to the pinks, and she has a great personality. She's just as much of a crackhead as Nozomi but she also is very grounded so she displays a full rainbow of emotion by being very funny, but also very snarky, without losing the ability to be angry and serious. She's a lot of fun.

Urara is probably my favorite, I love how the youngest of the cast is the most complex character of the group. Between dividing her life as an actress/singer with school and having to live this life with one of her parents being dead, she's probably the member who had gone through the most stuff in life, and while there are times we see that her past gets to her she does her best to never lose her smile and to always be cheerful and caring to everyone around her. She's a precious kid and I love her to death. That episode where we get to know about her mom is so strong, it's definitely my favorite of this first half.

Komachi is the only other member of the cast that already had a dream when we met her and this is great because we see her go through different situations that the other members of the cast wouldn't be able to. She's very sweet, but it's a shame the show doesn't give her a lot to do. Like in these 24 episodes only two were focused on her, one of them was her introduction as Cure Mint and the other was to try to sell Komachi x Nuts as a secondary ship for the show. She deserves so much more, I hope the second half will give her more focus.

Last member of the team is Karen and she's my second favorite. She's the stoic rich girl with a lot of responsibilities that would later become the rule of thumb for most blue cures. but she holds a lot of personality. I like how she's stubborn but it's not in the level that is annoying, it's on a level where it serves as a perfect contrast for her serious side. I also like her story about how lonely she was and how she used to hide and bottle up those emotions since when she was a kid but she started to open up more when the girls got into her life.

As a group they work very well, they all have amazing chemistry and a great dynamic, I love how they're all very different and have very few similarities between them yet they work magnificently together. I love how they were all introduced since episode 1 and all had small parts in each episode before they all became cures, it felt very natural the way they were getting close together. Another thing that I like, that I also praised this weeks' Healin' Good episode for, is that they don't click immediately, Rin and Nozomi were friends before, just like Karen and Komachi, but when they are the four together with an Urara cherry it's completely different from how they were before and they had to work that out. I would've like if this had been explored more than just Rin and Karen's small rivalry and the plot of episodes 23 and 24, but they're still great regardless.

The fairies though... they're probably the worst of this entire show. To begin with, they're not consistent between their fairy and their human forms, because they wanna sell Coco and Nuts as hot guys they make the human forms be completely different their cheerful selves as fairies, especially Coco. They're not interesting, they don't do much, I don't know why they're there. Coco is creepy, he's way too handy with Nozomi it makes me uncomfortable as hell. Nuts is a jerk, the dude is not pleasant and the fact they're trying to pair him with Komachi makes me want to hit my head against a wall. Milk is the last addition to the cast and holy jesus she's annoying as hell, much like Nuts she's a jerk as well and the show wants to make us sympathize with her by saying "she's like that just because she has gone through a lot" and that just makes me hate her even more. Also, their collectibles this season are the Pinkys and they're another thing I don't know why it's there, I also hate how there are 55 of these things, that's way too much.

The villains are a mixed bag. I like Nightmare and how it actually works as a company, I love their whole thing with the mask, I think it's a very menacing and intimidating look, it's perfect. I also like how the generals kinda work on a rotation system rather than what was the norm of the previous seasons where one general would come, do their thing, get defeated, and only then a new one would come. The problem is that they don't have that much of a personality? Like, Bumbee and Kawarino of course have a lot of character and they leave a clear impression on you, but the recurring generals not so much. I know they're a mantis, a spider and a frog, but other than that I don't remember much. But I guess that's not that big of a deal since this is more focused on developing the girls rather than the fight against Nightmare.

One last thing before I wrap-up. I love their cures' designs and I also love their transformation device, I wonder why we never got a watch or bracelet as a transformation device again. The transformations are short, just like the attacks, and it frustrates me that they have good concepts for how each one is "choreographed" but the actual drawings for them lack a lot of care in the details. Like I mentioned up there, the animations and the drawings aren't the best and you would think that at least the stock footage they would get it right, but they go off-model quite a lot of times, this gets very evident in Aqua's roll call, their group pose, and Aqua Stream's sequence. Maybe it's foolish of me to complain about this since I'm watching the DVD version and these things are probably corrected in the blu-ray, but again these reviews are about my experience so these were details that tickled me off so I have to mention them.

Well, that does it for now. This ended up being way longer than I expected, thank you so much if you read all of this. Please let me know your thoughts on the first half of Yes! in the comments, I'm enjoying the ride despite all the bad things I said and I'm excited to properly finish this season in the next week. See you all around~ o/

#Yes! Pretty Cure 5 #Yes! Precure 5 #precure

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too-many-kpop-hubands · 5 years ago

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30 Day Fandom Challenge

I'm going with a musical fandom this time, one of my favorites and I still watch reruns from time to time.

As always tagging @domsberto

Day 8- Glee

1 & 2) Favorite Character & Most Relatable Character: Sam Evans [Close Call Honorable Mentions: Kurt Hummel, Blaine Anderson, Santana Lopez, Sebastian Smythe, Jesse St James....yes I have alot of favorites]

Reason: You guys should know first of all that this was a really freaking hard decision but I had always planned to put Sam as my most relatable character. The more I went back through my rewatch of Glee not to long ago the more I realized that the Southern Dork had my heart more than I realized. Sam can be a bit of a himbo most of the time but he has a heart of gold that got trampled on time and time again. He was willing to do whatever he could to be there for his friends and sometimes came up with insane conspiracy theories that were sometimes true, like when he theorized that the Warblers were juicing and it turned out he was right. He was a talented guy, able to sing and play guitar, and always managed to brighten up anyone's day no matter how shitty it was with one of his jokes and impressions. Sam got the short end of the stick in terms of an endgame ship, everyone he had ever been in a relationship with either cheated on him or left him. He literally stood right next to two of his ex girlfriends when they married *each other* and was still happy for them. Despite his family losing everything when the market crashed, he was grateful for what little he did have even if it meant he had to wear clothes given to him by friends or cheap items. He proved that he would literally do anything to help his family, like when he found a job as a male stripper to make extra cash to help his family afford certain luxuries they wouldn't be able to without extra help. He would also do anything for his friends, like when he helped Blaine gather all the rival glee clubs together to help him propose to Kurt. He could also be self conscious at times. He would often brag about his body but when no one was looking he found flaws that he didn't like about himself. Sam was an easy going, sweet, funny, closet romantic and I stan the hell out of him.

3) Most Underrated Character: Elliott Gilbert

Reason: The beautiful Adam Lambert only graced us with his presence on the show as Elliott for a very short time but it was enough to make an impact on me. He was very talented and a good friend to our Gleeks living in New York at the time. He sometimes acted as the voice of reason, being an unbiased middle man when Rachel and Santana were fighting. He refused to pick sides when his friends were fighting but gave them someone to talk to and vent to. He was a fun person to be around and have a way about him that made anyone at ease once they got to know him. When Blaine moved to New York, he felt threatened by Elliott and his friendship with Kurt but Elliott reassured both Blaine and Kurt that he believed in their relationship and wasn't out to come between them. He was a chill dude who was just an all around great person to be around and I missed him when he was written off the show so that Adam could go back to his music career. I loved Elliott so much.

4) Most Overrated Character: Rachel Berry

Reason: First of all Lea Michele has an amazing voice but her character Rachel is overrated because she *knows* she has an amazing voice and tends to rub it in everyone's face every chance she gets. She is always on about how she's going to be a star and how she's so much better than everyone but let's look at the facts. There are better, or equally as talented, characters on the show and when Rachel had the chance at her dream role on Broadway, she left it too soon to do a TV show that flopped after only one episode causing her to run back home with her tail between her legs to revamp the Glee Club. Sure she made it in the end after she decided to go to college (and married Jesse....yes!) But she became more humble after she lost everything and got knocked off of her high horse. I still thought she was an overrated character.

5) Least Favorite Character: Tina Cohen-Chang

Reason: Tina Cohen-Agitator as Kitty once dubbed her was one of the most annoying characters on the show. She was self absorbed, even more so at time than Rachel, and constantly whined because she wasn't the center of attention. She hurt people without any remorse, like when she dumped Artie for Mike Chang or when she dropped Sam as a prom date when he didn't get nominated as prom king. She also had her weird tendencies, like rubbing vaporub on Blaine's chest when he was asleep and trying to propose to Mike when they weren't even together. She complained about *everything* and it just grated on my nerves. I really couldn't stand her. Sorry not sorry.

6) Favorite Canon Ship: Quick- Quinn Fabray & Noah Puckerman [Honorable Mentions: Brittana (Brittany & Santana), Klaine (Kurt & Blaine), and St Berry (Rachel & Jesse)]

Reason: Before I start this, I know Mark Salling did some shitty things before his suicide and that is not ok but this reflects on his *character* Noah Puckerman, not Mark personally.

From the moment Quinn found out she was pregnant with Puck's baby and we the fans first see them alone together onscreen the chemistry insane. They loved each other but they never *really* dated despite having a daughter together and making out a few times. It wasn't until later, after Quinn went on the Yale and Puck joined the Air Force that they finally officially got together but even throughout the seasons you could see their love for one another. They were a beautiful couple who had a beautiful daughter (who they have up for adoption to give her a better life since they were only 16 when they had her), and probably more later after the show ended.

7) Favorite Non-Canon Pairing: Blam- Blaine Anderson & Sam Evans

Reason: They were best friends and there are alot of great romances that grow from friendship. While in the show Blaine had feelings for Sam that Sam didn't return because he was straight, in the eyes of the fans they were in love. They had undeniable chemistry and were cute together. They looked out for each other and would do anything for the other. I stan Blam so much. And honestly when Blaine sang "Against all Odds" to Sam, I adored that moment because Sam saw him and even though he didn't return the feelings, though I still say Sam was in denial because later he was way too focused on the fact that Blaine wanted to do him.

8) Least Favorite Pairing: Rachel Berry & Sam Evans

Reason: I thought Rachel and Sam was such a random pairing. Yeah they had their cute moments but the chemistry felt forced between the two of them, especially since Sam was still in love with Mercedes and Rachel hadn't been with anyone since Finn died. Honestly when they eventually broke up, and Rachel ended up with Jesse (yasss), I wasn't that upset by it. I was just upset my man Sam ended up being the only one left unpaired by the end of the show, minus Mercedes.

9) Favorite Part/Moment: The Double Rainbow Wedding

Reason: I stan both Brittana and Klaine so much. When Santana proposed to Brittany in the final season I was like yassss Queen because I adore them so much, though I was still kind of salty like Kurt was that Klaine called off their engagement. The day of the wedding, or days leading up to the wedding, however saw my other pairing getting back together and the reunion of Klaine was epic as always. Fast Forward to the day of the Brittana wedding and Brittany, with the approval of Santana and Sue, made Klaine an offer they couldn't refuse. They surprised everyone when they made their way to the alter walking Brittany and Santana and actually staying so that they could get married to. It was a beautiful ceremony that left me with one of my favorite quotes that I plan to get tattooed on my wrist "I'm a work in progress". It was moving, shocking and beautiful and I love this moment so much.

10) Least Favorite Part/Moment: The Quarterback - Finn's Death

Reason: First of all, Rest in Peace Cory! You left an impact and will always be missed.

Because of the unexpected death of Cory Monteith, the writers had to kill Finn Hudson off on the show as well which lead to one of the saddest and most emotional episodes of Glee ever. It is my least favorite because I can't watch it without sobbing like a baby because you can tell the emotions of everyone in the episode are genuine. It was a sad time for us Glee fans.

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gintamajustaway · 5 years ago

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I love reading your asks so if it's okay I want to see what you think of different anime: sword/art online, bor/uto, haik/yuu, kimetsu no ya/iba, No /6, yaoi anime, hun/ter x hun/ter, mag/nus bride, and yo/i just to start. Thank you in advance!

Oh goodness! Alright, yes, okay this is different than my usual asks and I’m all for it! That’s so cool you like reading my answers this much! I’ll do my best not to disappoint (*•̀ᴗ•́*)و ̑̑

1. Sword Art Online – I couldn’t get by the first few episodes. The character designs were… very generic and all the females looked like sisters. The plot was also really, really weak and lackluster for me. I don’t like stuff that has a lot of romance in it and the romance was so forced in this one that it was cringey right from the beginning.

2. Boruto – Never. You couldn’t pay me to associate myself with this spinoff or the thing it spawned from.

3. Haikyuu!! – I’m not into it that much. I watched the first season, read some of it, and enjoyed some of the characters, but it was just so repetitious I fell out of it. I’m a hard person to sell when it comes to sports anime because I used to play a lot of sports and was even sent to different countries to play football for awhile. To see volleyball as a sport instead of a recreation or hobby is a stretch for me as I never found it challenging to be good at and I always got bored playing it. A bunch of friends and I play it at the beach sometimes and that’s fun, but it’s mainly fun because we’re goofing around and making up our own rules to keep it interesting. I may go back to this anime sometime, but it’s unlikely. And don’t get me wrong, I did like some of the characters, but I can only watch so many eps of them stretching out a match before I get totally burnt out and unfortunately, a lot of sports anime are like this so it’s not uncommon for me to lose interest.

4. KnY – I haven’t started watching this one yet, but I plan to! It looks interesting!

5. No. 6 – I enjoyed it when I watched it, but the ending was really off. It didn’t feel like there was much of a climax and really, the climax itself felt like it was incomplete in some way. Then Nezumi just… left and here we are however many years later with no resolution. I really enjoyed the foundation they setup with this one, but it just felt like they didn’t do enough with it to get the most out of it, if that makes sense?

6. I don’t like any yaoi anime LOLOL They’re all very noncon-esque and that is soooooo not my thing. I really dislike yaoi tropes and all the anime have that “I’m the seme and you’re my uke and though you’re telling me you don’t want this I’m just going to fuck you until you like my cock” vibe and I’m not about that at all. I also don’t like male/male shows where one of them ends up dying at the end. Miss me on all that shit, thank you. ((I don’t know if Given is considered yaoi, which is shouldn’t be because it’s so light, but that one is cute from what I remember.))

7. Hunter x Hunter – Shower and lather me in this for the rest of my life, I’d be fine with that. I enjoyed this anime so, so much. I haven’t read the manga and I definitely should since I love the anime so much. I was having fun with it and all the characters all throughout, but when it hit the Chimera Ant arc, that’s the point the anime went from “wow I really enjoy this” to “holy shit this is fucking incredible.” Like I said above, sports anime tend to annoy me because they drag out simple shit for too long ((like a volleyball going over a net taking half an episode, for example)) and the same sort of technique was used in the Chimera Ant arc, but it was incredible. You got a minute by minute, even a second by second, display of what was going on, but the difference here is that there was so fucking much going on that they had to show it that slowly or you’d miss something. Because you had so many characters doing so many different things simultaneously and the plot hhhhhhhhh the goddamn plot was so good! I remember just devouring those episodes because I couldn’t get enough, I couldn’t stop watching, I had to know what was going to happen! As is probably known by now, I’m not a huge fan of romance, but I’d be shocked if there was someone out there that genuinely didn’t like what was built between Meruem and Komugi considering how well done and devastating it was.

The Chairman Election arc was my least favorite and it was a really odd arc ((to me)) to follow something as emotional and powerful as the Chimera Ant arc. I found it somewhat boring, especially after such an intense arc, and this leads me into the one issue I have with Hunter x Hunter. I loved the anime so much, but Alluka was a mistake from my perspective. I was fine with her when she first appeared and I want to give the author time to show us where he’s going to go with her, but she’s a character that shouldn’t exist in any media. She can do anything, she has no limitations. It doesn’t matter what problem she has or what they’re up against, Alluka has the ability to make anything happen. I’m glad Gon was saved, but the manner in which he was saved was disappointing to me. Right now, the creator will always have an “ace in the hole” in his back pocket because Alluka will be able to fix or alter anything or any situation he puts the characters into, which is just… not good. OTHER THAN THAT THOUGH I love this anime. The fact that Illumi and Hisoka are a canon couple is so fitting and puts an awesome new spin onto the Hunter Exam arc. I, of course, have a soft spot for Killua. Biscuit is an amazing character, I adore her and I love Palm too. I could go on and on about the characters I enjoy oh my god I’ve barely scratched the surface and this space has gotten filled enough I think. So, I’ll conclude this segment by saying that I’m ready and willing to talk about Hunter x Hunter anytime, anywhere!

8. Magnus Bride – Fantasy element, awesome! Character designs, beautiful! Het romance, eh I guess? 16 year old bride, fuck this shit I’m out! ((I gave the first episode a try, but was not good and then I found out the bride is 16 and no amount of gorgeous animation could get me to keep going.))

9. Yuri!!! On Ice – I really enjoyed this! Like I said about three times now, sports anime are difficult to sell to me, but this was as focused on a whole slew of characters as much as it was on the ice skating routines. You got multiple routines per episode during competitions so it kept you engaged and it had a strong cast of characters that were all very likable. The story was really cute and the adorable twist that Viktor was the one after Yuri all along was well done. The pictures from the party were adorable. The message the anime sent was wholesome as well and the way it ended was heartwarming. I know there’s a movie coming out for it soon and I’m looking forward to it!

#anon #Aero speaks

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mca-attack21 · 6 years ago

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Wolf Moon Part 1

A/N: Part 1 of the Stiles Sis Fic series based on Season 1 Episode 1. I am writing the entire series out of order (because some episodes are just easier than others). In general, it follows the outline of the show with an added plotline for the reader. And as always, I appreciate your comments and feedback. Check out the rest, and my other imagines here.

“Y/n, get ready we have to go,” Stiles demanded as he burst into your bedroom.

“Go where Stiles? It’s late and we have school tomorrow...as in the first day of sophomore year,” you replied rolling your eyes.

“We are going to Scott’s house,” he answered throwing your shoes and jacket at you.

“Stiles, we were at Scott’s earlier,” you groaned.

“Yes but earlier, there wasn’t a call on the police scanner that said two joggers found a body in the woods, was there?” he remarked pulling out his phone to call Scott.

“Are you serious?”

“Dead serious.”

You rushed to put on your jacket and follow him out to Roscoe. This was going to be an interesting night, and you were all for it.

Scott still hadn’t answered his phone, so Stiles came up with a plan to gain his attention. Knowing that the plan was devised by your brother, it was overly complicated. So you decided to sit back and watch. Stiles refused to just knock on the door, he couldn’t ring the doorbell like a normal person. No, he decided to climb up to Scott’s room. You saw Scott come out on his porch with a bat and then Stiles fell down. Scott almost clobbered him with the bat. They both shrieked like little girls.

Scott finally yelled, “Stiles what the hell are you doing?”

This is when you decided to make your entrance. “You weren’t answering your phone,” you mocked your brother.

Stiles shot you a dirty look for that comment, but soon remembered his purpose, “Dude, you won’t believe this. My dad left 20 minutes ago. Dispatch called, they are bringing in every Beacon Hills officer and even the State Police” he recalled.

“For what?” Scott asked.

“Two joggers found a body in the woods” Stiles replied.

“A dead body?” Scott asked in disbelief.

“No, a body of water, yes Scott, a dead body” Stiles answered sarcastically.

“So like murder?” Scott questioned.

“They don’t know yet, just that is was a girl in her twenties.” Stiles clarified.

“So if they have the body, what are they looking for?” Scott reasoned.

“That’s the best part, they only found half…we’re going!” Stiles declared.

You laughed at his eagerness and then waited for Scott to get ready. The three of you headed to the woods. When suddenly it dawned on you. “Hey Stiles, do we know which half of the body we are looking for?” you asked.

“Oh, I didn’t even think of that.”

“Yeah, and what if the murderer is still out there and we run into them?” Scott questioned.

“I didn’t think of that either. We can take my bat.”

“Yeah, cause that’ll save us,” you say rolling your eyes, “Another well thought out plan by Stiles Stilinski.”

It wasn’t long before Stiles pulled into the preserve. “Are we really doing this?” Scott asked as the three of you exited the jeep.

“Come on man, you are the one who always complaining that nothing ever happens in this town,” Stiles answered.

“I just wanted to get a good night's sleep before tryouts and school tomorrow” Scott explained double-checking that he had his inhaler.

“Right! Because sitting on the bench takes sooo much effort,” Stiles quipped.

“Stiles! stop being such an ass, he plays more than you do,” you shot back.

“It’s fine, I’ll bet you that not only do I play more than you this year, but I will make first line,” Scott challenged.

“That’s a good one Scott. I mean I guess everyone should have dreams even if they are pathetically unrealistic,” Stiles answered.

“Okay, change of topic,” you announced having heard enough of the ‘alpha male’ fight for one night, “Stiles where are we going?” you asked as he started to lead you up a hill. You decided to go last, so Scott wouldn’t be left behind when he needed to use his inhaler.

“Just a little further, we are almost there,” Stiles urged.

“Stiles, how the hell do you know where we are going? The police don’t even know where they are going,” Scott demanded.

“I have a feeling,” Stiles remarked.

“I have a feeling” you mocked under your breath, which earned a laugh from Scott.

Stiles suddenly took off at a sprint yelling for you and Scott to follow him. But Scott was in the process of using his inhaler and you had the only other flashlight. When the two of you went to follow Stiles you saw that he had been caught by your dad. You hid in a ditch and listened in. “Where are your usual partners in crime?” your dad interrogated.

“What? You mean Scott and Y/n? They didn’t come. They were too worried about school tomorrow” Stiles answered, “It’s just me in the woods, alone…”

Your dad flashed the light around to confirm that you and Scott weren’t there. And then he left, walking Stiles back to the Jeep. You and Scott sat there a minute and then started to head to the main road. The only problem was that it was now much darker than it had been when you arrived and everything was starting to blend together.

“Do you think we should split up?” Scott asked.

“I don’t know, I mean we don’t know what is out there and we only have one flashlight,” you answered taking a mental note to pound Stiles later for leaving the two of you out here in the dark.

“Okay here is the deal, we can’t be that far from the road. So you walk sixty paces that way and I’ll walk sixty paces this way,” Scott said gesturing. “Then we turn around and come back. We will meet here by this,” he continued, sticking a stick into the ground.

You reluctantly agreed and started walking. After about twenty paces you regret your decision. It was scary before, but at least you weren’t alone. Alone. That was a weird concept. For as long as you could remember Stiles or Scott had been by your side. But now it was just you. And the ½ of a dead body. And the animals. And potentially the murderer. ‘That’s it, this is how I’m going to die’ you thought. Suddenly you heard noises. You secretly hoped it was your dad and his deputies. You were entirely willing to get grounded if it meant that you would get out of this nightmare any sooner. But instead it was a herd of deer that came racing towards you. You screamed trying to run away from them. But one of them collided into you knocking you down. You had no choice but to lay there and wait, hoping not to get trampled.

Scott faintly heard your scream and started towards your direction. He tripped and face planted into the cold ground. When he looked up, he was met with the face of the dead girl. He shot backward and rolled down the ravine, losing his inhaler. As he tried to find it and regain his composure, he heard a low growl. Before he could react something had bit his side. He sprinted away trying to escape whatever it was that attacked him. Without realizing it, he had sprinted into the road and was nearly hit by a car. He pulled his maroon hoodie up to look at the bite, it was already bleeding. Scott then started to walk back towards town. He was lost in his thoughts wondering what the hell just happened when his phone rang. It was a call from you. He answered without hesitation. “Y/n, are you okay? I’m on the road. Where are you?” he asked concern filling his voice.

“Scott I’m fine, I just made it out to the road too. I called Stiles, he is on his way. Just stay put okay?” you answered.

“Okay I’ll see you in a bit” he answered. Scott wanted to tell you what had just happened. He was scared and he knew you would know the right thing to say, but he couldn’t. Not tonight, he could tell by the shakiness in your voice that you had already been through enough.

It wasn’t long before he was greeted by the familiar sight of that baby blue jeep. He had never been so relieved to see Roscoe. You were already in the backseat fast asleep. The car ride back was dead silent. It wasn’t that Scott was mad at Stiles, he was just scared. And his side hurt. And he had school tomorrow. And….before he knew it he was home. He went upstairs and pulled his sweatshirt up again. It looked disgusting. He debated whether or not to tell his mom. After all, it could be infected or whatever did it could’ve been carrying a disease. But at the end of the day, he didn’t want to explain how it happened. It couldn’t really be that bad, right? So he flooded it in peroxide and bandaged it up before attempting to go to sleep.

Stiles carried you up to your room and laid you carefully in your bed. He felt so bad for leaving you and Scott out there. But at least you were home now, safe and sound. He took your shoes off and tucked you under your blankets. He went to his room and changed into his pajamas, head racing. There had been a dead body in Beacon Hills. Everything was about to change.

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