#because i really do think that john will end up making the most human decision to sacrifice himself

[ceaselessims]

idk if john getting his own body is how his story will end.

the line in part 43 where he says to arthur "i choose to be a part of you because together we are whole, and I think you know that too" really gives me a We Will Be Together To The Very End vibe (at least in john's part)

[blade-that-was-broken]

I have a HC that brozone had like stage parents like the kind of parents that only had kids so that they’re kids could do the child star thing and they could live vicariously through their kids success. and also so those kids could make a ton of money that the parents could live off of. Like the parents of the kids on toddlers in tiaras.

We know that JD took on the role of raising his younger brothers and that he saw himself as their main caretaker, but this is contrasted by the fact that his brothers don’t seem to see him as a parental figure and at least in the third movie seem to get annoyed and angry when JD tries to act like an authority figure in there lives. I interpret this as JD raised these kids but the parents were still around they were generally just uninvolved in their kids lives beyond the surface level bare minimum and shirked most of their responsibilities onto JD. In a JD did all the work but the parents took all the credit kind of way that led to JD simultaneously raising Bruce, Floyd and Clay without being a legitimate authority figure to them.

I also think that JD would not get baby branch involved in the band that young if he had a choice in that decision, both as someone who grew up in fame as a child star and knows how stressful and toxic that environment is and as a perfectionist who is very concerned with the bands performances going flawlessly. toddlers are messy and make mistakes and generally I don’t think JD would trust a toddler to perform to his standards and listen to him as a band leader during the performance. JD was stressed about the idea of baby branch being nervous and messing up the performance in the flashback I don’t think he would let him do it at all if it was his choice.

However I think that if brozone had toxic stage parents who decided to make baby branch join the band simply because he’s cute and marketable and would make them money then left all the actual logistics behind that move to JD to figure out that would fit with teenager JDs controlling, protective, and perfectionist character traits. Because people who feel like they truly have control over their lives and actually have the authority to make decisions in their life usually don’t micromanage everything and everyone they delegate. JDs controlling behavior fits more with a teenager who is desperately trying to cling to what little control he has in his life, which is the logistics of managing the band.

Essay over sorry for rambling

No worries! I love a good ramble.

It's not a bad headcanon either. It would make sense.

I don't think I have a specific headcanon for canon Brozone and their parents, probably because I have shifted to aus but it would make sense. Especially with all the dark turns we see when it comes to children stars/actors/singers and their parents.

Kids... don't often see their older siblings as authority figures, even when they are. They don't always recognize that. Don't get me wrong, sometimes they do but often times they don't really. So I can absolutely see John taking on that role and the others never really seeing it, even when they get older. Absolutely I could see that. Their parents doing what they could to keep appearances but all the real stuff landed on him. It is a tough spot to be in when your siblings don't see you as an authority figure that you are trying to be/need to be.

I could see that too. Even though troll aging/maturing seems wildly unpredictable, strange and weird in comparison to human toddlers, I could see, if this concept was the case, John not wanting him to be involved. Not only because of their parents exploiting them but also the perfectionism thing. It's not that he doesn't love Branch, but well, who trusts a toddler for this type of thing?

If there was toxic stage parents (which I think if they had stage parents they would have to be toxic, there is no way that family ended up the way they did without that if this was the case) I think you would be onto something with Branch being involved. We all know that Rosiepuff said Branch's voice was like an angel's so if she thought that, chances were their parents did too.

JD's whole thing when he left was his frustration and that his brothers were a lot of responsibility and considering he can't be that old, I can understand that. Coupling with the fact that he's probably not seen much as an authority figure in this case, as well as the pressure and strain he was under with that set of types of parents... yikes. Talk about a recipe for disaster.

Losing control for someone who struggles with perfectionism and even just being overwhelmed with reasonability is a nightmare. If this was the case, my only surprise is that there wasn't a blowup sooner. Which in that case, the reason it probably went on for so long is because John is protective. He always has been (I will die on this hill cause there is no way after 20 years of radio silence JD picks himself up and hightails it to try and save his brother that he isn't wildly protective)

[108garys]

MoM: Darkness, antagonists analysis

so random thoughts about our three human antagonists and why I was recently thinking that there did need to be specifically three of them. As we know the people that made MG are far removed from the circumstances that our characters find themselves in, the chemical itself has no will and the human antagonists are also victims in this scenario so why not look at them the way we look at our playable characters?

(long ass ramble below)

As we know the things our characters see are influenced by their fears and anxieties and are generally representative of their deeper psychology, while we don't see these things for the fishermen we do see their before and after. 2/3 weren't that bad and were obviously roped into the original crime and the third is the least bad of the anthology's antagonists. My thoughts are of the individual reactions to the darkness, to lose their sense, to concede to it or be consumed by or overcome it.

...Hopefully this will make a level of sense.

Starting with Danny, in the early part of the game he is shown as a voice of reason, consistently advising Olsen towards less drastic action and being all around level headed, even when things get worse he attempts to look out for the player characters on multiple occasions but the situation repeatedly presses against his very reasonable actions until in the end he can no longer trust his own judgement and is seen attacking the soldiers who could have rescued him. In the darkness he loses his discernment, in a way his arc is the inverse of a character like John which is usually pegged as the "learning to lead" arc where as Danny goes from a level-headed advisor to a reactive survivor. This is why I think he always survives but never dies, he shows a possible fate of our characters if they lose their rationality.

Olsen is an interesting case because he's in the exact mid point of horrifying in real life but really just a guy compared to the other villains, his early game motivation is literally just trying to make ends meet, obviously his decision to do that by taking tourists hostage is both reprehensible and recklessly shortsighted in terms of it actually working out for him and worse is that he drags everyone else into his scheme. His motivation seems more like pure greed towards the end and his paranoia grows but I think it's interesting to note that everything he does is motivated by survival at all costs. A thing I've never seen brought up(probably because it's far more complex than most of us are equipped for) is how Olsen and Fliss share a lot of the same views and life circumstance, both talking about doing what they must to get by, even outside the bounds of the law, both holding disdain for Americans and generally foreign influences and are superstitious, with Fliss she carries these pressures alone but learns to both rely on and be relied on throughout the game, the burden of survival is then shared but Olsen despite having more people than her to begin with views it as his burden and is crushed under it(sometimes quite literally), taking those he cares for with him, the player is on more than one occasion challenged with prioritising another characters wellbeing over there own or not and survival depends on teamwork which is something that Olsen fails at as he concedes to darkness and dies alone in his pursuit of survival at all costs. Across all playthroughs.

Finally junior is unique as our one meaningfully determinant NPC, especially because you have to go out of your way to save him. In the early game it is easy to see that he is just misguided or more so misled by his brother, the player can build a rapport with him over the game, he's never shown as level headed as Danny but he more easily sympathises with the player and in turn becoming sympathetic himself. During the later part of the game he is lost in the darkness having lost the guiding force of his brother and the balancing influence of Danny so when you get to him at that critical point you are trying to guide him out of the darkness, failing which he and potentially another are consumed in that darkness, if you save him you are literally helping him to see the world around him more clearly and in turn he guides the player to Olsen, in this way his arc is a coming of age arc where he learns to make decisions for himself and grows to be proactive in his ability to help others, much like a character like Mark or conversely if you do not save him he never gains a sense of self or sees the world clearly, comparative to Andrew's worst ending. Ultimately if he survives he under goes a sort of redemption/self-actualization arc and I think that you don't really 'win' MoM without his survival.

So yeah that ended up being longer than expected but tl;dr I think the fates of Danny/Olsen/Junior matter more than it originally appears and their respective arcs and characteristics are more deep than they get credit for

@kassiekole22 @delurkr @ctrvpani @tinynightmarewoman

@eframschweigersskincells @aydeenchan @conra @qusok what do y'all think of my semi stream of consciousness analysis? 😂

[jennilah]

For the saw ask!! 5, 11, 14 <3

5) A character you wish could have lived

there are many characters I wish I could watch an AU where they lived, but am generally not torn up that they had to die to move the plot forward because I thought the final story was compelling. but there is one character I really did not like seeing die for many reasons, and that was Jill :(

11) Thoughts on Saw VII

Saw 3D they cant make me hate you. i dont often dislike movies at all, actually. in most films, even widely hated ones, i like trying to find the positive. i can usually list at least one aspect i enjoyed & Saw 3D was no different.

I know theres some argument about how in-character some people were, but i dont like getting into that sort of thing. I dont want to dig into writers and script n shit that much, that reminds me too much of how I used to fandom. ugh, barf. thats taking things way too seriously for my taste now. Going into it, I had no idea about any of that, I was just thinking about how things progressed from the last film, right?

so whatever characters do, thats canon now. i just gotta deal w it and adapt my characterization accordingly whether i like it or not

so I explain things like Hoffman and Lawrence's behavior as simply losing what little humanity they had left. Listen. Like, the guys have been though an absolute hell of an experience in different ways, and spent a significant amount of time drinking John's kool-aid. He had a way with words and was a master manipulator.

Hoffman just spent the last four movies slowly spiraling further down and down into the hole he was digging himself in, i had no problem with him going full terminator in the end. He was off the deep end and his penchant for revenge reared its ugly head once again, and he couldn't be stopped. he was blinded by his own bad decisions and nobody could stop him- he killed them all. He was drunk with power and behaved at times like a cornered animal that snapped.

his slasher rampage made me fall in love with him, after all. it opened my eyes to him being more than just "boring cop jigsaw" (though my tune was starting to change by Saw VI)

Lawrence was recruited during likely another vulnerable position in his life, recovering from the trauma of the trap, likely also dealing with a divorce and more. Him returning to be an apprentice was fanfiction, but what can I say? I dont hate fanfiction movies. I like what apprentice!Lawrence has brought to the table in the grand scheme.

i also enjoy some of the campier sillier moments. Horsepower trap, my beloved

i dont love all of it. but idk. im forgiving w "bad films". very few are completely without any intriguing moments

14) Favorite trap

oh god this is so unbelievably hard to answer

the Horsepower trap has an absurdity to it that makes me laugh a lot. The Glass Coffin had my favorite characters & ship fodder.

I also really like the Nerve Gas House & Fatal Five but maybe more as like, a vibe and plotline? I guess those are "games" more than individual traps right?

maybe the Glass Coffin. i did make this, after all

[bittersweetresilience]

sunny's favorite fanfiction

By no means a complete list of what I've read and loved, but these are some of the fics I have found the most memorable, captivating, and influential to me. Mostly oneshots. Mostly dark. Mind the Sunny.

clear blood

Prince_Enby (OMORI, 2,674 words)

Hero took a little too long.

I am pretty sure this fic rewired all of my neurons. I wrote a sequel to it. I wrote multiple sequels to it, though only one published. I think about it all the time. I have absorbed it into my body and my writing. The slow build, the foregone conclusion, the denial, the interspersing of memory, even the summary and author's note Altered™ me. This is my all time favorite fic, and from my all time favorite video game.

在路上

Sweetie_tianyang (Honkai: Star Rail, 221,914 words)

艾利欧的剧本已然走到终点，在死亡如期而至前，刃想最后做一件事情。 (Elio's script has come to a close, but before the arrival of the death he anticipates, Blade wants to do one last thing.)

This is the fic ever. This is the longfic ever. This is the Renjing fic ever. This is the everything to me ever. Every day I think of my favorite Renjing headcanons and plot bunnies and wishes and I realize they sprung from this fic. Holy fucking shit. If I wasn't writing so much I would dedicate all of my time to translating this masterpiece into English. The summary does not do it justice but basically Renjing go on a road trip and slowly fall in love while learning how to live and to be together without hurting each other and to be happy. It's complete at 200,000 words and I normally enjoy shorter fics but I would have read 1,000,000 words of this. I still will. Sweetie_tianyang, please.

Each That We Lose Takes Part of Us

aceofbasedesires (The Untamed, 12,652 words)

“Wake up,” he says to his body, alarm making him itch. There’s no response. He says it louder, and then yells it, trying to drift forward. He can’t move. He’s curled over his own body, staring down at it, without being able to do anything. From inside Burial Mounds, Wei Ying’s mind reaches out to those he’s left behind.

Exquisite sadness indeed. I wrote a sequel to this one as well. I love fics that haunt me. I love fics that make me feel like a ghost. I love unhappy endings. I love this part of the show. I love hurt people hurting people. I love inevitability. I love tragedy.

tarnishing

ruthwrites (Mob Psycho 100, 21,147 words)

Reigen realizes that he never gave the man his name. He knew it, anyway— as well as the slogan for Reigen’s whole business. There must be some sort of reason for it. Maybe they’ve met before. As Reigen walks, he becomes more and more certain— he’s seen the man before.

There is nothing I appreciate more than a well done piece of horror. So insidious, so creeping, so everywhere. Lingering. A work of art and a model for manipulative relationships and gaslighting. The final scene with the rope has a full body grip on me.

The Decline

EzraBlake (John Dies at the End, 5,284 words)

I'd never heard him make a sound like that. It was almost inhuman coming from John – John, who once drank an entire bottle of tabasco sauce and then got it all over the bathroom because he was laughing hysterically while he vomited. John, who fucked up an alternate dimension by aiming an uncontrollably shitting dog like a rocket launcher. John whimpered.

This fic is so intensely, faultlessly in the spirit of the books, which I adore, that it makes me want to blow up my house with grenades.

Cold Water

messageredacted (Homestuck, 6,551 words)

You’re barely finished with your ascension to god tier when they drag you off your quest bed.

Iconic fic forever. I have reread this fic and its remix an unknown number of times over the years. Made for me.

This Time I'm Coming Down

telm_393 (The Good Place, 3,585 words)

Jason makes a lot of decisions he might regret.

I had a really hard time deciding between this and Some Things You Can't Touch. True to the characters in a way that makes me want to bite things and scream.

runner ups

What Real Human Beings Do

nemali (Miraculous Ladybug, 1,029 words)

There are ghosts living inside of you.

I need to consume this fic until it is part of me. I love power & control dearly, but this has replaced it as my favorite Miraculous fic.

Terrycloth Mother

rowdymouse (Mother 2: EarthBound, 4,325 words)

Tony's faced with a hard task: providing Jeff all the love he never got and desperately needs.

This actually spoke to my core. It has a very particular feeling shared by The Arowana. Second person perspective never misses.

like the sheep

zehecatl (Night in the Woods, 1,564 words)

Sometimes, reality mixes in with memories, and so there's Angus, right across the median.

I am pretty sure it's still sad, but it's a tender sort of sad, like Angus loves him so much it's a sad thing osmosed into my entire personality. Dreams. Gore. Bleeding.

special mentions

The Homestuck Epilogues

Andrew Hussie, Cephied_Variable, ctset (Homestuck, 190,398 words)

Ten years after their adventure began, the heroes are enjoying a well-earned retirement on Earth C. But John still has one last choice to make.

Can I count this? I'm counting this. This inspired my love for metafiction and shaped me as a person. Narratives, futility, meaning, characters getting worse. I've never seen a more creative usage of visual elements in fanfiction. I devour experimental media.

[elffees]

(Sorry for not putting this under a ReadMore but entire chunks of the post vanish when I do so. Sorry again!)

Revisiting Little Hope and I find the plot twist MUCH easier to swallow when I choose to interpret the characters as actual ghosts haunting Anthony and not hallucinations.

Interpreting them as hallucinations sours them for me as it removes all agency from them. All of their personality traits are simply the biased view Anthony has of them. Any character arcs they experience are just Anthony imagining his family becomes better people or worse than they ever were.

But interpreting these characters as legit ghosts that are haunting this town and especially Andrew/Anthony makes it much more digestible and interesting (for me personally). The characters keep their agency. The “redemption” arcs they can experience are them finally growing as people capable of moving on. Or, if they refuse to change or even become worse, their inability to improve makes them re-experience their brutal deaths and traumas in a never ending loop.

And Anthony, as their last surviving relative, returning back to the town is the catalyst for their change because, with him back as the only one able, willing, to see them, his affection helps them fulfill these arcs.

Dealing with ghosts and the spiritual world is not meant for humans though, so the only way Anthony’s very-human-and-alive brain can process the supernatural events happening around him (his relatives returning as ghosts, them being chased by personifications of their flaws, etc.), his mind disconnects them as family and instead interprets them as merely acquaintances. And with his occupation as a bus driver, it makes sense his first go-to would be to view them as students with John as their professor.

The finale is him, for sure deciding whether to forgive Megan or blame her, but it is also ghost!Megan begging for guidance from her brother, the only one that was ever kind to her. Asking for clarification whether everything was truly her fault, was it simply a matter of circumstance, or was her misfortunate the fault of her abuser—the priest. It is both the last surviving brother and the hated sister trying to come to terms with what happened to them.

And Anthony’s decision to either shoot himself, go with the cop, or walk off into the sunset is basically the same as most people interpret it. Will he continue to blame himself and, in an attempt to both reunite with his family and punish himself, commit suicide? Will he ambiguously meditate on everything that happened and go off with the police, unsure of his role in his family’s massacre, and leave his fate in the hands of other people? Or will he accept all that’s happened, that it really was just a tragic accident, and finally move forward with his life?

Interpreting LH as a story about actual ghosts instead of people that straight up don’t exist makes the twist much more appealing to me. That this is not just Anthony’s personal hell but all of his family’s, and they each must come to terms with what happened and who they truly are in order to move on. Even if my interpretation is completely wrong and nonsense, it helps me appreciate the story more so I think I will keep it anyways lol

[mariacallous]

The Supreme Court’s decision to reverse nearly fifty years of precedent and send the abortion issue back to the states sent shock waves throughout the country. During the summer months the implications of that decision were widely held to be helping the Democrats in what had been shaping up to be a dismal midterm election year. In some states voter registration of women surged. But by Labor Day the conventional wisdom had swung back. No, insisted most pundits, abortion wouldn’t drive many votes, but inflation would.

How wrong they were.

The first indication came early on election night in CNN’s exit polls. To the obvious surprise of the on-air talent, abortion came in a close second to inflation: 31% said inflation was their top issue but 27% said abortion was. Despite late pre-election polls showing abortion sinking to third or fourth place or disappearing, there are several reasons why the issue never really went away.

First, there are a lot of women in America, they are evenly distributed across the country, and they consistently vote more often than men—as the following table from our colleague Bill Frey here at Brookings illustrates.

This year was no different. According to CNN exit polls, women constituted 52% of the vote and men 48%. That is an enormous difference. Let’s assume that turnout in 2022 ends up being about the same as the record 2018 turnout—roughly 116 million votes. The women’s share of that vote? 60,320,000. Exit polls also show that 53% of women voted Democratic. That’s 31,969,600 votes—a big number. Hillary Clinton, who clearly shares our frustration with those who discounted the women’s vote, tweeted out the following clearly sarcastic comment: “It turns out women enjoy having human rights, and we vote.”

Apart from the sheer magnitude of the women’s vote is the issue of intensity. Unlike men, women spend a great deal of their lives thinking about reproduction. They have no choice. Even in the 21st century, pregnancy is still a dangerous business, and women’s health care is no place for government bureaucrats. No wonder that women think abortion is a lot more important than men do. As the election season entered its final stretch, and many Republican candidates got a crash course in obstetrics, some pulled back and/or softened their previous hard lines on abortion.

The importance of the issue was seen most clearly in the Senate debate in Pennsylvania. Although the Democrat, John Fetterman gave a halting performance because he was still recovering from a serious stroke, his opponent, Republican Mehmet Oz, managed to make what had to be one of the most damaging comments on abortion ever: “I want women, doctors, and local political leaders…” to make these decisions.

The sheer absurdity of that comment went a long way towards distracting voters from the issue of Fetterman’s health and reminded many that government shouldn’t be making those decisions.

Finally, abortion is fundamentally different from inflation. Inflation is unpopular with both parties—there is no pro-inflation and anti-inflation party. In fact, if we’ve learned anything about politics in our polarized time it’s that voters see almost all issues through their partisan lens. Democrats worried about inflation could think that Joe Biden was dealing with it and Republicans that Joe Biden caused it. But abortion is different. One party is clearly in favor of keeping it legal in most or all circumstances and the other is not.

If you put together the sheer size of the women’s vote, the intensity of the issue and the fact that, unlike inflation or the economy, the two parties have stark differences on the issue, you get a powerful driver of the vote. There were five states with abortion referenda on the ballot and in every single one—including the deep red state of Kentucky—the pro-choice position won. In Michigan, where the abortion referendum won by 13.4 percent, it is not far-fetched to assume that it helped the Democrats keep several congressional seats. And in Pennsylvania, where abortion topped inflation by 9 points, Democrats picked up the only Senate seat so far.

The following table shows the percentage of voters in each of the crucial states and how they rated inflation and abortion. In most cases abortion was a close second; in Michigan and Pennsylvania it was far ahead of inflation.

Central to the story of the 2022 midterms, then, is an issue central to women’s lives, powerful enough to snatch victory from the Republicans, and durable enough to send a message about the future.

[eruscreaminginthedistance]

Book recs based on stuff I read in 2023

Nonfiction

Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer (2003) - it's outdated by about 20 years which leads to one hell of a jumpscare at the end, but I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested at all in Mormonism, high control groups, FLDS, and the history of abuse against women and girls in the LDS; it covers everything you need to know about the ways the LDS church has cultivated a paedophile/domestic abuse culture and it's fucking haunting and it's the most upset a book has ever made me

Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufman (2017) - a really fun read; it's a collection of case studies of the real life Africans living or working in England during the Renaissance, with each chapter focusing on a different individual and what we know about them from parish records, legal documents etc. It's also a great primer on England's relationship with the slave trade and African nations from the 16th to 17th centuries. Also I listened to this on audiobook and the lady's voice is super soothing

Problematic gay rep

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (1956) - yeah okay turns out Baldwin is the GOAT of queer lit for a reason. I don't even like 20th century stuff but Baldwin can WRITE man I was sucked in! And David is the BLUEPRINT of problematic gay rep! I loved watching his awful decisions I hope he suffers eternally! It's a short and easy read and a classic for a reason do give it a chance

Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite/William Martin (1996) - I'm not sure if I'm deadnaming Martin here because I bought the book earlier this year and it was still being attributed to Poppy Z Brite so I guess it's being treated like an author pseudonym now? I think? Anyway, don't read this book unless you're a disgusting freak like me who enjoys torture porn. This book comes with every content warning under the sun and I had an AMAZING couple of afternoons reading this book. American Psycho, Jeffrey Dahmer and NBC Hannibal had a baby and Martin delivered it; it's a raw, twisted and angry scream into the void about AIDS, homeless queer youth, homophobia and cultural stigma, wrapped up in a bow made of intestines. I went into this book hoping to see people get tortured and came out of it quite melancholic with a lot to think about, and I accidentally got attached to the victim oops!

The Charioteer by Mary Renault (1953) - I was gonna make a non-problematic section just for this book but then I remembered all the rampant femmephobia xD and Ralph and Laurie would 100% be bootlicking gays against pride. This book personally isn't for me - it's a lot of love triangle nonsense - but I think the tumblr demographic is particularly primed for gay World War II love triangle stories, and it's a softer, happier love story than my other recs. Would recommend if you can get past the main characters being pick mes.

Manga

No Longer Human by Junji Ito (2019) - this is a story about being a bad person and ruining everyone's lives especially your own lol; I loved the original prose version, but Ito's spin of the story makes everything so much worse and if I hadn't literally read a book about irl paedophilia the month before I think this book would have put me in the angriest and most violent place I've been all year. Love gorgeous art? Love mental illness? Love despicable spineless main characters? Get on this

Other fiction

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (1980) - it took me a month to read this entire book. It's so self-indulgent and long winded and contrived and the big twist is laughable and I wouldn't have it any other way! It's just some old guy playing in his sand box with his little monk action figures and it's charming af. Plus the concept of a monastic murder mystery involving several orders of monks will never not be fun, and I'm biased towards the book cos my guess at the very start as to whodunnit was right >:) would recommend if you like Sherlock Holmes and long long diatribes about medieval Catholic geopolitics

Garth Marenghi's Terrortome by Garth Marenghi (2022) - this one's just a bit of a laff. The horror comedy ramblings of a man going stir crazy during COVID lockdowns. You don't need to have seen Garth Marenghi's Darkplace to understand the book but it is recommended if you can access it. Content warning for explicit man x typewriter

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962) - it's a modern day (relatively) witch story! Jackson was writing about and for all the weird autistic little girls out there with this one. It's a gothic murder mystery about two co-dependent sisters who are outcasts in their village. It was a great introduction to Jackson's work

[nevvaraven]

10 books to know me 📚

 Thanks @otrtbs for the tag !

Ten books to know me or know what I like to read about, Nat did quotes with hers so I’m going to do quotes as well! 

Atonement by Ian McEwan - I still remember the way I flung this book across my room when I got to that part, if you’ve read it you know, still not over it and I get emotional every time I think about Robbie :( 

“As the distance opened up between them, they understood how far they had run ahead of themselves in their letters. This moment had been imagined and desired for too long, and could not measure up. He had been out of the world, and lacked the confidence to step back and reach for the larger thought. I love you, and you saved my life.”

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen - The blueprint, will never not be in this list. I was raised on this stuff.

“Your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.” “And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is wilfully to misunderstand them.”

The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton - I am aware this is a children’s book but it’s the one my mum read to me every night before bed and the copy currently sitting on my shelf is the one she had when she was a child as well so it’s the most precious thing I own and they are still some of my favourite stories :)

“The faraway tree is always there. We never, never know what land is going to be at the top.”

The Fault in our Stars by John Green - I don’t want any slander okay, I don’t care to hear it ok in this house we respect our roots, this book made me cry and a part of my horrendous pre teen years was scrolling through tumblr and seeing all of those god awful picsart posts of the quotes and I loved every minute of it, it was a right of passage

“What a slut time is. She screws everybody.”

The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth - I bought this book because it’s opening passage actually had me giggling out loud like a loser in a bookstore and the origins of random words will never not be cool, the opening passage is just so long I cant put it all in here but I highly recommend it to everyone. 

“Occasionally people make the mistake of asking me where a word comes from. They never make this mistake twice. I am naturally a stern and silent fellow; even forbidding. But there's something about etymology and where words come from that overcomes my inbuilt taciturnity.”

The Fallen Star series by Jessica Sorensen - I bullied my high school librarian to buy these for the school library because I couldn’t afford them at 14 and after 2 months of badgering he caved and got them and I immediately took them and read them all in the span of two days. It’s about a girl whose mum got hit by a falling star when she was pregnant with her and it ended up giving her purple eyes and magic powers? I don’t care how silly it is at 21 I still love it.

“Of course, my nightmares were just the tip of the iceberg in the madness that had overtaken my life. When I was awake, I had much bigger problems to deal with than monsters attacking me. Real problems. Ones I couldn’t blink away.”

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott - Raise your hand if you’re surprised to see this. Anyone? Anyone at all? Yeah me neither. 

“Just because my dreams are different to yours does not mean that they’re unimportant.”

Divergent by Veronica Roth - I know it’s goofy but I really don’t care, this was my life! I was so convinced I was a dauntless girl lmao I have enough self awareness to know now I am either a Candor or Abnegation girl. 

“Becoming fearless isn’t the point. That’s impossible. It’s learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.”

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - Was it the insightful examination of the constant battle of good and evil that inherently exists with all humans and the struggle we face daily on deciding which to act upon that drew me into this book or was the idea that I could blame all my bad decisions on ‘night time me’? We’ll never know.

“If I am the chief of sinners, I am the chief of sufferers”

The Devil Tree by Jerzy Kosiński - I’m currently reading this and so far its very rich boy problems and existential crisis but it’s beautifully written so I both am apathetic towards the man I’m reading through but also desperate to know each of his thoughts. Weird. 

“My past is the only firmament worth knowing, and I am it’s sole star. It is as haunting and mysterious as the sky overhead, and as impossible to discard.”

No pressure tagging - @waririses @signofthereads @im-still-tryin-to-find-it @euphorial-docx @siriuslyfuxkoff @condoneii and anyone else who wants to do it! xxx

[29pageshomestuckeveryday]

Homestuck, page 2,567

Kanaya: Reply to memo.

Author commentary:

"IT TURNS OUT YOU CAN'T ALTER THE OUTCOME OF DECISIONS MADE BY MORONS, NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU YELL AT THEM.” Not to get overly political down here in the laugh gutter. This just sounds like the tagline for the result of the 2016 U.S. election.

When Current Karkat actually starts arguing with Current Karkat, not only did he not notice he was doing it, I think it's safe to say that even we didn't notice he was doing it. A lot of arguments he has with other versions of himself are hard to differentiate, because it's always gray text, and it's always yelling. It blurs together. Much later, he "solves" this problem by switching to red for a bit, during one of his more pathetic conversational loops of self-hate. A little further down he starts wondering what they did wrong in the session. Which, as I was saying earlier, is not really anything, and he kind of almost has that epiphany here. But then loses that epiphany once he discovers the humans, decides to hate them with a refreshed sense of rage, and starts blaming all the wrong things again for their failure, including himself. It's almost like he gains clarity in his rage gaps. When one fog of rage subsides, he starts seeing things clearly, but that all goes away the moment he enters a new fog of rage. Regardless, we're getting close to the end of Hivebent now, and you can kind of start sensing this wildly fractured, manic narrative start to gather itself and point itself back in the direction of where we left off. The new hate-hobby Karkat discovers, of course, we know to be the humans.

This is also the first time in Hivebent when we spend any real time tuning into a part that takes place on the meteor they end up stranded on after whatever catastrophe causes them to flee there. For all the zipping up and down the timeline we do, we never actually go that far until now. Again, it's about starting to gather up and organize all these loose threads and direct them back into something we recognize as connecting to the main narrative line. Even when certain stories or arcs are really chaotic and wildly out of order, I think most of us have good intuitions when it comes to picking up on when a story is making moves in preparation for the approach to its own endgame material. This memo starts feeling like that turning point. You've also got Kanaya weighing in, playing the role of a sort of wise, sympathetic ear to a down-and-out protagonist. You know That Moment in the movie. We all do. We're all experts. Homestuck knows you're a media expert and uses that assumption to its "advantage" all the time. The only time it backfires is when it turns out you're nowhere near the expert I thought you were. You know those moments when you see me shaking my head in grave disappointment? That's why I'm doing that, FYI.

Karkat suggests Aradia isn't a great Maid of Time. I dunno about that. She time traveled to make a thousand doomed robotic copies of herself to help defeat a crazy-strong Black King. Seems pretty good to me. He's probably remarking more on her mental stability than her competence. Of course what's really going on here, story-wise, is that he's foreshadowing her violent freakout in the End-of-Hivebent animation coming up soon.

Karkat mentions here an "invisible riddler." This is an idea that comes up from time to time throughout the story. Recall the "unseen riddler" in the narration during John's early animation, when he's listening to the wind in his neighborhood. It conjures the idea of a hidden Loki-like figure somewhere, whose pranks have nihilistic designs, an intangible force of mischief that robs its targets of a meaningful or dignified existence. In John's case, the nihilistic rumination about this figure seems to focus on the shapeless and uncertain direction of his life. Karkat's remark here focuses on the futility and self-fulfillment of one's own foolishness, passively allowed to play itself out by this prankster figure, who he links to "Father Time" as well. There is no one true god of Paradox Space, but to whatever extent there is, it's probably this riddler figure, which is why it's left in doubt as to whether he even exists at all. He's never discussed without also referencing his invisibility, or dubious reality. A much less cagey explanation is, it's probably best interpreted as the forces of mischief and authorial cruelty or callousness toward the subjects within this fiction, which are laced into the entire narrative and relate closely to the quality of "authorial scorn" that was mentioned earlier in some of the Vriska meta. When galvanized through more extreme figures like Caliborn, these forces become less passively nihilistic and prankstery, and more actively hostile and destructive.

That Kanaya has trouble imagining how Karkat could have a strong handle on the subject of romance without access to an online manual (like her access to Rose's walkthrough) says something about the way she thinks, and views skill or expertise. Here she says romance and psychology aren't her strong suits, and a couple pages ago she was expressing doubts about her role as a Space player. Some characters struggle with self-loathing issues (she's talking to one of them now), but she seems especially troubled by self-doubt issues. Maybe this is why these two resonate as friends so well. One is there to reassure him he is not loathsome, the other to reassure her she is not incompetent. We've been over Kanaya's role as a mother figure to a bunch of people, and it helps for a good mother figure to have a good son figure as a counterpoint, a son who's there to remind her, "No, you're not bad at this. Stop it with that talk."

Karkat's dissertation on magic is a pretty good summary of the ongoing tension between the realness/fakeness attribute of magic throughout the story. We get pretty flippant about magic in Homestuck, don't we? It's just a word you can use to describe certain forces, in the same way that you can use the word "luck" to evaluate certain outcomes, if you're fixated on that concept. This isn't really mind-blowing wisdom here. I'd describe it more as premise-level information, upon which the story elaborates in certain ways. Magic and luck are more like states of mind. If there is any deeper truth to sift from these semantics, it's an idea that the story keeps returning to, which is that the power of belief is the key to everything. Believing in things reduces their fakeness attribute. It's the force that shapes your reality, used to snatch personal meaning from the jaws of a cynical and nihilistic environment. Could this be why Hope is framed as the most fundamentally powerful aspect? Even the other aspects themselves are ideas like this (recall: luck=light), whose power is subject to the ebb and flow of one's belief in them. And belief itself isn't necessarily just a trick of willpower. It can be an expression of one's willingness to embrace an idea, or pursue a deeper understanding of it.

Obviously Karkat is reacting to the moment Kanaya saws off Tavros's legs, while Equius watches creepily. We saw one frame of that earlier. Yes, it's a funny beat in the conversation that calls back to that moment, but it also establishes an important hour of missing time for Karkat while he's passed out. This gap where he's asleep on the floor comes up again later in Act 5. The second part of Act 5 does a lot of what Hivebent does. Where Hivebent skips around, chaotically fitting together the greater puzzle of the troll session until we finally reach the end, A5A2 skips around a lot, fitting together the puzzle of their stay on the meteor and sorting through the mystery of exactly what happens and when. So there starts to be an accounting of many little moments like this, to use as points of reference for when certain things are happening. "Aradiabot explodes" is another such benchmark for the reader to use to track surrounding events. Interestingly (maybe), Karkat uses this idea too, by setting "Jade's dreambot explodes" as a similar benchmark to help Jade get her bearings through a nonlinear swamp of communications.

[deansmom]

It’s been years, but I still stand by this parallel, and even more so since I originally wanted it to be Sam’s little speech from 9.13. And looking back on it now without the fear of getting bombarded by Sam stans and getting death threats: the reason I connected these scenes is because Anya and Sam are similarly… I can’t think of a different word than narcissistic, but that isn’t quite the right word because that has more negative connotations, and at their core neither of them are Bad or completely devoid of empathy for others. Their default is just to assume that everything revolves around them.

Anya is very “I’m the most important person in my life” which honestly is so valid, and Sam grew up being told he was smarter than Dean, the implied message from John his whole life was that Sam was more important than Dean, and he has a lot of historical evidence to show that actually yeah, a lot of the time he genuinely was the main character - it was actually about him. But in these scenes, they’re completely projecting their own bullshit onto the person in their life who’s always been seen as a protector until they were humanized (s6 Buffy, in the context of 9.13 Dean betraying Sam with gadreel, in the context of this scene Dean coming back from purgatory).

Dean and Buffy are two sides of the same coin - they were given this legacy that they didn’t want, and given it at such a young age, and because they’re both such naturally empathetic people they’ve really internalized the Chosen One narrative.

Dean’s number one job since he was 4 years old has been to protect Sam, keep Sam safe, keep his brother alive - that was his purpose. In his head, his life had no worth outside of that. So in season 8, he sees that the trials are probably going to kill whoever does them so he’s like “great, yeah, obviously that’s me, because that’s my job. I’m supposed to keep you alive, that will kill you, so I’ll do the trials.” In season 9 when he makes the deal with gadreel (important context to remember: Sam spent all of s8 telling Dean he wants to live and make it to the other side of the trials), he’s faced with what he perceives as a failure on his end (because he’s supposed to keep Sam alive) AND he’s under the impression that Sam wants to live.

Buffy is, it’s important to remember, like 24 in season 7 and dealing with an immense amount of trauma and anger and isolation, especially with regards to her friends. She loves them, she cares about them and wants what is best for them, but she still resents them for bringing her back from the dead - which is so valid - and is struggling with a lot of guilt from those feelings. So she spends s6 & the first half of s7 grappling with the fact that her friends would do something she never thought they’d do (a crack in her trust with them), being upset that they did it, feeling like she’s in the wrong for being upset about it, and hurt because she becomes so isolated from them. So is she kinda cold in s7? Yes. Honestly, she was way nicer than I would’ve been and none of them had the emotional wherewithal or maturity to consider what she was dealing with.

But her isolating herself and shouldering all the responsibility for their safety has very little to do with them. She doesn’t think she’s better than them, she’s just like “yeah, I’m the chosen one, I’m the one with super powers, obviously I’m fighting this fight and not you guys, if you die that’ll be my fault wdym” and all of them take that very personally for reasons I will never understand lmao. To Buffy it’s: the sky is blue, grass is green, I’m the chosen one and it’s my destiny to die in battle, it’s my responsibility to protect the innocent and you guys are innocents.

Are Buffy or Dean blameless in these situations? No. They’re very flawed, traumatized people who lack the communication skills and emotional maturity to articulate any of this (not that it would’ve been received well) and unintentionally cause harm by making these decisions. But in these moments, they’re both confronted with the fact that the most important people in their lives fundamentally don’t understand who they are as people. And it’s in part because they’re both surrounded by equally traumatized people who don’t have the same level of empathy and deeply ingrained lack of value for their own life outside of serving others.

Anya is an ex demon who cares about her friends and learns to care about people in general, but ultimately she’s always her number one priority. I can give the scooby gang a little bit more grace in season 7 because they’re also young, immature and dealing with a lot of conflicting emotions and feelings and trauma that’s never unpacked or dealt with - but my heart still absolutely shatters every time I watch this scene, because it’s such a slap in the face to Buffy. She thought that they understood her at least, and then she finds out that this is what they think of her and it’s so upsetting and hurtful because she’s only ever tried to do what was best for them.

Sam was raised by an emotionally abusive parent, and a brother who never witnessed healthy emotions like… ever, and was repeatedly told by both of them that he was the most important. His default for so much of the show is very much giving “they tell me everything is not about me - but what if it is?? 👀 they said they didn’t do this to hurt me, but what if they did??” and like I said, yes, he has some canonical evidence to validate those thoughts, but the fact that he took Dean essentially telling him point blank that he wants to do the trials so his death will mean something and oh yeah, he wants to die, and turned it into “it’s because you don’t trust me” is absolutely fucking wild lmao.

And this scene just makes me so sad, because you can see the realization on Dean’s face that Sam has no idea what he’s feeling. He told him he was suicidal, and Sam’s like “actually, I think you just don’t trust me” and you can see this image Dean had of Sam in his head shatter. Because he thought if nothing else, Sam understood why Dean does any of this - and clearly, he doesn’t. And Christ, in 9.13 when Sam says that he wouldn’t do the same thing for Dean (which is a lie), it destroys Dean because it validated that feeling of his life being worthless outside of keeping Sam alive.

anyways, what I’m trying to get at is the parallel of these scenes is supposed to be Buffy and Dean realizing that they’re genuinely alone in this. It’s the realization that the people they thought knew them, don’t understand them at all.

buffy/dean parallels

“Don’t…be afraid to lead them. Whether you wanted it or not, their lives are yours. It’s only gonna get harder. Protect them, but lead them.” btvs, 7.19 “Look, we get too far down the road with this, we can’t go back… and it’ll be too late for me to jump in.” spn, 8.15

[humbleboar]

lord help me i'm back on my bullshit

disclaimer: all graphs should be taken w a grain of salt bc this was kind of a slipshod project. season one especially, since i didn't have my system quite down yet. it's possible some dialogue tags got in. it's possible some actions got in. it's possible other people's dialogue got in. it's possible i accidentally omitted instances of name calling. some episodes (looking at you, 21-23, 32) had so much going on that i wanted to cry. this was just a silly thing to answer the question: just how much does john say arthur's name? (the answer: john should maybe calm down a little)

so i got curious alright. i was writing and was like damn i think we are saying arthur's name waaaaaay too much here. turns out, nope, even if u think ur john is saying it too much, u can probably pepper in a few more and still be safe!

collected a bit of data on arthur and yellow's dynamic bc i wanted to see how it would compare to season 1 arthur/john. deeply funny to me that arthur (generally) says john's name more than he says yellow's and john isn't even there. yellow, despite his hostility towards arthur, follows in john's metaphorical footsteps of having no chill.

some notable peaks in john's use of "arthur": episode 4, where arthur makes an ill-informed decision, becomes shackled by the chains of social niceties, and gets stabbed for it. episode 26, where arthur goes off the rails. and episode 28, where arthur gets stabbed again and john spends the rest of it being a mother hen.

notable peaks in arthur's use of "john": episode 8, where he gets so incredibly pissed with john. episode 12, where he does quite a bit of pleading and appealing to john's humanity (aka his chosen name). episodes 23 and 24, where he tells yellow about their time in the pit, and his joy when getting john back. episode 28, where he gives john some epithets john really fucking hates.

this actually ended up being more interesting than i anticipated! i didn't realize that arthur uses john's name, like, a normal amount. maybe a bit more than people generally say each other's names in casual conversation, but it seemed most often he'd use john's name when he was concerned/trying to get his attention. it makes sense, since arthur has to (occasionally) consider the fact that other people around him are not (typically) aware john exists. the uptick in season 3 makes me laugh because. yeah. he misses him.

it's also interesting to note that john's use of arthur's name seems to be declining (seems to, because season 3 had some extenuating circumstances (read: he was not there for the first third, despite a few guest appearances), and season 4 is still in early stages, with an ep where he was excluded from the fun (for those that are curious, scratch/the whole dream sequence says "arthur" ~70x)). it's kind of a fun character quirk that he says arthur's name so much like dude who else do u think ur talking to!! but, also, supposedly saying someone's name a lot is flirtinggggggg--but i also feel like i've heard it's a way to get ppl to like you more and establish trust? idk.

anyway thx for clicking my readmore i doubt anyone but me finds this interesting lol

[bluejayblueskies]

this may be an unpopular opinion, and i may end up eating my words in the weeks/months to come, but i don't think that arthur is following a corruption arc or losing his humanity. that's not to say that arthur is doing well or making good decisions, but i think there is an important distinction to be made between arthur slowly breaking down and making more morally dubious decisions and arthur losing his humanity, which to me is a very specific word that has a very specific meaning and that holds considerable weight in this podcast. here's why:

arthur’s rationale for killing larson that he presents to john is flimsy and, as we know, obscures his real motivation: larson's sacrifice of his daughter. arthur right now is driven by emotion, not logic, which is something that most of us can probably agree on but that i argue is a mark of humanity rather than indicative of its absence. feeling such emotions as the desire for revenge, fury, guilt, or even murderous intent does not make somebody less human. to be honest, i think the real mark of inhumanity would be either a lack of feeling altogether or a sort of amusement--ie, if arthur were chasing after larson for fun, solely because of the hunt or the thrill of the kill, or if he saw himself as so far above larson that killing larson means nothing. (i think that arthur is in fact projecting himself and his guilt onto larson, so while he calls larson monstrous etc., he doesn’t see himself as a degree above larson, like a god would to a human, though that’s straying away from metatextual analysis a bit and into headcanon territory).

arthur is messy right now, yes, and all over the place emotionally. he strikes me as unstable, on the verge of a breakdown, and not thinking clearly. he's a man who's been through more than anyone should have to go through, who's had to make impossible decisions for the sake of survival. there is, in my opinion, a great deal of trauma sitting on his shoulders, and really the main thing that surprises me right now about his actions is that it took this long for him to reach his breaking point. he has a strong, never-give-up attitude that has helped him survive and keep going, but he's had to face now the fact that a) in order to survive he has had to make otherwise immoral decisions, such as killing and eating faust and b) that sometimes, no matter what you do, you still lose the things you care about (ep. 20, coda, and the period with yellow). i keep coming back to this quote from yellow in ep. 23:

You imprisoned me, you took me from my rightful place as king, and stuck me inside this prison. You are a murderer, Arthur, you are a monster. You are no better than Wallace, no better than the foulness you murdered in that pit! I am not your friend; I am not John. And I never will be. I am nothing like you. And he is dead.

...

This is your fault, all of this. I hope you know that.

and thinking about how hearing this must have affected arthur. even though yellow is not quite john, he’s also not not john, and arthur knows this (exemplified by arthur slipping and calling john ‘yellow’ in ep. 24). arthur cares about john, even when they’re fighting or hurting one another, and i think hearing all of this right after finding out that larson sacrificed his daughter really dealt a blow to his mental state. all of arthur’s drive right now hinges on his emotions--his anger at larson and, i would argue, his feelings regarding the murder of faust and what that means for him. arthur may think that he is losing his humanity, but he’s not; he’s just going down a bad path, one lined with hurt and trauma and guilt and desperation, and eventually, that path will reach the bottom and arthur can begin to rebuild from there.

TL:DR - i disagree with the interpretation that arthur is losing his humanity or following a corruption arc because to me his actions as of late seem rooted in emotions, trauma, and increasing mental instability inching towards an inevitable breakdown. humanity is, to me, a specific word with a specific meaning that is important to this podcast, and i think it’s best to look at what we mean when we say that arthur is losing his humanity and consider whether or not he’s actually becoming less human, or rather reacting to things in a way that is in fact very human indeed.

[qqueenofhades]

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.

[queeoretician]

Thank you for saying this! I feel like the reading OP puts forward (a fairly common reading of John) misses a lot about the story, in a way that I find hard to make sense of.

It's absolutely true that the situation John was put in was a fucked up one. It's absolutely true that power has a corrupting influence on people. And there are definitely some wild bad-faith takes on his actions out there (cow wall discourse, I'm looking at you). But saying that it would require an unrealistically virtuous person to make better decisions in his place just seems flatly incorrect to me.

Let me state my position explicitly here: I do not believe that most human beings, put in John's situation, would choose to kill literally all life in the solar system to pursue vengeance against the trillionaires. His choice to destroy the world for vengeance was a choice, and one that other people in the narrative were begging him not to make.

There's a really haunting parallel between the NtN apocalypse scene (p. 310):

N— was all, It’s not going to work. This is going to end with the ships launching and G— getting shot, and you’re going to kill millions of people for nothing. We followed you to save the world. I said, We’re doing that. This is how we save the world. Believe me. C— said, John, your problem is that you care less about being a saviour than you do about meting out punishment. I said, C—, I was just your best man! C— said, You still are. That doesn’t change the fact that you can be quite the most appallingly vindictive person I have ever met.

and the HtN funeral scene (p. 94):

“[…] I never saw her cry except once,” she added in a pointless rush. “The day after. When we put together the research. When she became a Lyctor. I said, There was no alternative. She said…” [...] She cleared her throat: “She said, We had the choice to stop.”

In both cases, the text deliberately draws our attention to the fact that what happened was the result of choices these people made, and that they could reasonably have chosen otherwise. And our story is about the millennia-long consequences of those choices.

I also think that the John-was-doing-his-best reading fails to engage with the role that patriarchy plays in the story.

Given the pervasive misogyny displayed towards Mercymorn in HtN, I really don't think it's fair to give John credit for M—'s insistence on reproductive justice in the cryo project.

More significantly (and unpleasantly), a major thread through HtN and NtN is of John (metaphorically) grooming/sexually abusing Harrow and Alecto. Better meta-writers than me have discussed this at length (familyabolisher here; sophelstein here and here; CW rape & incest on all those links), but for our purposes it's sufficient to say that John calling Alecto "Annabel Lee" is a reference to Lolita, and one that tazmuir (herself a child sexual abuse survivor) has also made in her pre-TLT writing.

This paints the idea of John loving the earth/Alecto in a much darker light, and reinforces the parallels between John's post-Resurrection colonial project and real-world colonialism's imposition of patriarchal social structures (mentioned around the 10 minute mark of this Philosophy Tube video). It's not that it's easy to villainise John because he's a man - him being a man is intrinsically tied up in the harm that he does to our (overwhelmingly female) cast.

Aside: I don't have any good theories about why tazmuir chose for her sexual-abuser villain to be Māori, and I'm a little uncomfortable with this choice as it stands, but that doesn't make his actions within the story any more excusable.

So to sum up: John made extremely harmful choices even when people around him asked him to choose differently, and he is intertextually positioned as the perpetrator of patriarchal violence. Based on this, I don't find OP's reading (that anyone else in John's situation would have done just as much harm) to be credible.

(As rotationalsymmetry said above, I don't want this to be taken as an attack on or moral judgment of people who subscribe to John-sympathetic readings of the series. For me, a big part of the horror of NtN was the realisation that this character who had been built up as sympathetic was lying about a bunch of stuff all along. But I do think that these readings are substantively incorrect, and that they do a disservice to tazmuir's phenomenal writing, particularly around narrator unreliability.)

I think what bothers me most about how John is talked about in the fandom is the implication that a different (implied: better) person would've done things differently and somehow more right than he did.

When the text goes to lengths to explore how suddenly coming into an incredible amount of power in a fatally constrained situation cannot lead to a good outcome.

If you're putting John in dialogue with the concept of the "magical girl", which Muir has said he is (a little tongue in cheek, but)--these are young, often profoundly unready people, who often get taken advantage of by the people who give them their powers. And like, yes, John is not a teenager, but I think that's part of the point, is that at no point is a person really prepared to become as powerful as he did--even before he merged with Alecto. Even when he was fully in control of his powers, even when they were given with honest intent and trust, even when he used them with the best of intentions and tried to do the right thing, there was no way for him to be prepared, especially given the situation he was in.

And it's funny to talk about how bad John must be in bed, but also, this isn't a scenario where John is some self-deluding Elon Musk-like villain or loser. He is genuinely trying to do the right thing, in terms of rescuing the Earth's population, rescuing the Earth Herself, and doing it ethically (see: M--'s insistence that they perfect the cryo containers until they could transport pregnant women).

I really do think this is something people are blocking out, because it is one of the uncomfortable parts of Muir's message with the series. But ESPECIALLY because the people "critiquing" him as an embodiment of patriarchy and empire are failing to see that part of Muir's critique is of human vulnerability to power: That is, that power corrupts.

And this even has echoes with Gideon & Harrow's story! Harrow begins the series in a deeply unequal dynamic with Gideon! And she does horrible things, not just because she is traumatized, but because she is traumatized and has the power to act her desires out on Gideon. She might have the motive (trauma), but that's not enough without the means (power).

And, yeah, I do have a semi-salty angle on this because people are frequently loath to think critically not just about axes of oppression but individual relationships of power when it applies to them and to people they like. ESPECIALLY when there is a very vocal segment of the fandom that is enthusiastically pro-harassment. It's very convenient to villainize John and actively dis-identify with him, because otherwise, you'd have to face the question of whether you'd do any better in his place. But the thing is, the mission of revenge he embarks on is a lot closer to many peoples' hearts than they'd like to consider.

That's the whole point.

[mishasminions]

The Last Time I’ll Write a Long Post About Supernatural (15x18-15x20)

15 YEARS OF WATCHING THIS SHOW. 11 YEARS OF RUNNING A BLOG ABOUT IT. IT’S BEEN QUITE A RIDE.

[15x20 Speculation + evidence at the bottom]

First off, I just wanna come clean and say, after all these years, I still think they should’ve ended at Season 5.

If you’re going to come at me with “Then why’d you stick around to watch it if you didn’t like it?”, your question is immature, and the answer is simple: I just want to know what happens next (I also love the main characters and their actors too). You can watch a show and still think it’s shit.

Call me a clown, but despite all the disappointment and trust issues that this show has given me, I would still look forward to the day where it might just turn itself around and bring back the quality it once had, or realize the potential of each story it was trying to tell, or at the very least, do justice by my favorite ship.

Never happened.

They’ve had a few good episodes here and there. I can’t imagine the SPN Universe without The Man Who Would Be King, The French Mistake, and Scoobynatural. Seasons 6-10 were enjoyable at times. I blocked out most of 7 & 11-15. 

If you’ve been following this blog since its heydays in 2010-2014, you’d know I’d try my best to defend Destiel and this show’s decisions regarding it no matter what.

Because you know what, as a CONCEPT, this show is good. If you take a look at all the worlds its storylines have birthed in fanfiction/fanworks, you’d see how much Supernatural has wasted its own story arcs. The writing got shittier as each season progressed, and they’ve obviously given up in production as well because the quality in the execution has noticeably gone down too, but if you take a step back and take a look at the bigger picture, you’ll see that this show still tries to make sense of itself.

[If you’re still following this post, please bear with me, I know this is long, but I just want you to understand how jaded and pessimistic I am with regards to this show, so maybe you can buy into whatever hopeful thing I’m about to say later on.]

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT DESTIEL

Never in my wildest dreams did I think that they would give us Castiel’s “I love you” speech. To the point where, if I weren’t so desperate for it, I would argue that it was completely out of character for him to word vomit the way he did (but I’m not gonna diss on that right now because I’ll take what I can get).

I’ve valued every meaningful and obscure exchange that Dean and Cas have had in the earlier seasons, and I was willing to accept their relationship as just that--undefined, without any clear boundaries as to what they really are. And I think that was beautiful on its own.

But now, they’ve chosen to define it.

After they’ve driven every possible wedge between Dean and Castiel in seasons 11-15, to try to explain away their feelings as something they offer to a collective.

Dean can’t mourn and pray for JUST Cas, he has to mourn and pray for EVERYBODY--even Crowley, even some chick he just met, because god forbid he cries about just the guy who has given up everything for him--that would be “too homo”.

They’ve even set Cas on a path to abrupt fatherhood just so he can care about something other than Dean. Make it seem as if Dean wasn’t his purpose through and through.

And after all these years of this stupid show trying to deny it, they choose to acknowledge it at the worst possible circumstance, at a time where they’ve been so far apart, that it seems so foreign for them to suddenly come together.

But here we are. And they’ve chosen to tell us.

Chosen to tell us that everything that Castiel has done leading up to his death, he has done it because he was IN LOVE WITH DEAN WINCHESTER.

Chosen to tell us that the ONE THING THAT WOULD MAKE CAS HAPPY IS DEAN WINCHESTER.

Chosen to tell us that BEING WITH DEAN WINCHESTER is something that CAS WANTS BUT KNOWS HE CAN’T HAVE.

And they’ve also chosen to tell us nothing about how Dean feels.

Sure, finding out your angel made a deal, the stipulations of said deal, his newfound happiness philosophy, his long-winded monologue of why he loves you and why you’re worthy of his love, and to top it all off he tells you that being in love with you is enough to make him happy while he subtly hints that he’s always wanted to be WITH you romantically, was a lot to process in the 5 minutes after you’ve just had an existential crisis.

It’s whatever, right? Let’s culminate 11 years worth of tension and feelings in 5 minutes. Let’s waste the entire episode with cringey expository dialogue, and irrelevant sequences. The whole season was a waste anyway.

You know what Supernatural? FUCK YOU FOR THAT. They deserved better. WE deserve better.

And I would love nothing more than to hurl every possible insult your way,

But for the last time, I’m going to HOPE that you’re finally going to try to make it better for the fans that stuck by you all these years.

No more baiting new viewers, no more placating casual viewers, no more excuses. 15 years. Bring it home for the people who have actually been around.

SO HERE’S HOW I THINK 15x20 IS GONNA GO

There’s two ways this series is gonna end. Horribly or Spectacularly.

First let’s all take into consideration what Andrew Dabb says about it:

So, let’s start with

ENDING HORRIBLY

In this scenario, Misha is telling the truth about his last day of filming being 15x18. His “camping trip” during the last few days of filming 15x20, was actually a camping trip. He doesn’t go to Vancouver to shoot.

Jensen wasn’t “being careful” during the zoom interviews that it was just him and Jared quarantining for the shoot, it really was just him and Jared (althought most of these were done pre 15x19) Supernatural isn’t smart enough to do misleading PR, and they’re once again oblivious to the potential of their own story.

Misha hasn’t posted a “Goodbye Castiel” tweet because he’s probably saving it for last episode or he forgot because it was overshadowed by the Destiel trend that night.

So what we get is:

Sam and Dean are on the road again, up against the monster of the week. Only their world no longer has actual Supernatural beings anymore, so the monsters they’re fighting are humans.

Humans end up killing the Winchesters (despite having gone up against literally every powerful being imaginable INCLUDING God himself). Dean and Sam end up in heaven and relive their greatest hits.

Meanwhile, Castiel rots in The Empty because he died after realizing that he was happy and gay. Jack doesn’t bother rescuing him—his surrogate dad, the guy who made this specific deal to spare him—even though it was so easy for him get Cas in and out of The Empty when he had a fraction of the power that he has now.

Dean never speaks of Castiel’s confession because despite all the hints of a profound bond in the earlier seasons, and the fact that Dean has never cared for anyone (who isn’t his actual brother) as immensely as he does Cas, Supernatural just can’t have its main macho character be “suddenly bisexual” because that would hurt the male ego or some shit.

His heaven would probably be living happily ever after with his family. “Family” meaning Mary and John Winchester--two of the shittiest parents ever (but they’re not going to include them in this episode like they were supposed to because of Covid) and Sam.

Sam also gets a dog. As usual.

I wouldn’t put it past Supernatural to do this. After everything they’ve pulled, this would be right up their alley. I actually expect this ending.

Anyway, onto the next possible ending

ENDING SPECTACULARLY

In this scenario, Supernatural tries to stick the landing, and Jensen’s whole “It didn’t sit well with me at first, but then I took a step back after talking to Kripke, and realized that I had to view it from an audience perspective, I am now really excited about it” (DC Con 2019) anecdote about his thoughts on the final episodes, were actually about Dean potentially ending up with Cas. (Which would totally make sense because Jensen at first didn’t see Dean as anything but hetero, but as of late, he has been throwing in Destiel jokes of his own, so he seems to have warmed up to the idea)

Backed with Misha’s tidbit (DLConline 2020) that he and Jensen had conversations about Destiel, and that they wouldn’t have gone through with it if Jensen wasn’t onboard with it, but Jensen didn’t push back at all. (Why would they need to check with Jensen if it was just Cas going all in?)

Robert Berens (writer of 15x18) also wrote the script at the beginning of Season 15, but made Misha privy to the concept a year prior (Season 14), so they went into this season knowing about Destiel going canon.

This one’s a reach, but this scenario also supposes that Misha was lying about his whereabouts during the filming of the final episode, and him saying that 15x18 was his last episode is part of the diversion to avoid taking away from the weight of Castiel’s death.

And that Supernatural is actually self-aware of its own material (similar to how they have wrapped things up in the past—lots of expository dialogue, poor execution, but fulfills the story arc)

Since Season 15 is basically a Meta Season (Chuck/God as a writer, pretentiously calling out how he created the worlds, its characters, and basically invalidating the past 14 seasons), and 15x19 is supposedly the finale for Season 15, written by two of the worst Supernatural writers, Brad Buckner and Eugenie Ross-Leming (Bob Singer’s wife), then we can assume that 15x19 is where the shitty writers kill themselves--as Chuck, of course.

So we get a badly written episode that produces a bad ending, or as Becky put it, “All action, and no Cas”

So we get the bad writers season ending at 15x19.

And 15x20 is where Sam and Dean write their own stories, and where the cast had a hand in pitching ideas for it.

Dabb has mentioned that 15x20 (Act Two) is a SERIES finale, where they try to resolve the characters’ journeys.

Because as everyone has acknowledged, Supernatural isn’t about the story, it’s about the characters.

So here’s what we can get out of it:

With no more Supernatural beings left to fight, Sam and Dean are in a stalemate. They’ve resigned themselves to fighting to the bitter end, but the “end” has passed, and they’re still standing.

So they try to figure out who they are now, and what they want out of the life they still have.

Sam still wants a normal apple pie life. Before Dean dragged him out of college to go hunting with him, he had a whole life planned out for him. Become a lawyer, settle down with a nice girl, and get a dog. He gave all that up because they had work to do, but now the work is finished, he can finally go back to wanting that for himself again.

Dean finally realizes his self-worth after Cas saves him again. His prayer to Cas in purgatory may have helped him come to terms with his anger, but the whole “you’ve done everything you did for love” speech finally put him in his place, and he learns not to hate himself anymore.

But of course, he cannot fully reconcile with himself if he doesn’t get Cas back, and tell him how he feels.

Because Dean actually wants something for himself this time. Something he knows he can finally have if he can just salvage it.

So maybe this time around, with the help of Jack (off-screen), Dean saves Cas. Grips him tight and raises him from perdition.

They bypass The Empty deal by turning Cas human, and he lives the rest of his days with Dean.

Dean and Cas know they deserve to be saved, and they know that they deserve to be happy.

(Wishful thinking, maybe they kiss a little)

Anyway...

I’m just saying, there’s NO WAY that they’d have Cas go through that whole rushed speech, if they weren’t going to do anything about it later on.

But again, after 10 years of disappointment, I wouldn’t put it past Supernatural to pat themselves on the back and say, “Okay, we sort of gave them what they wanted. We’re good now”

If that’s the case, Supernatural, I’m sorry I wasted my time on you.

Here’s to hoping 🤡