#but also I think there’s always gonna be a piece of me that thinks allo ppl are insane

[thebluekid-underyourbed]

My friend sent me this, yeah I'm not broken y'all are just weird

i didn't have "i'm broken" teenage asexual angst i had "i'm literally being the only reasonable one about this concept and the rest of you are behaving like fucking freaks" perception issues

[michictaa]

🗝️ – IT'S ALWAYS X AND Y, BUT WHY NOT U AND I?

"I'm serious about the word "I love you". If ever you don't think so, love me, because it's only u and i in this world.”

pairing : Wirth Madl x Reader

tags : childhood friends, fluff, more fluff, kissing (idk what else), academic trauma (LMAOOOOO), Wirth having a soft spot for you🫶

wc : 1,084

author’s note; I love him so much so much, I’m just gonna leave this here. I love him (art by @/rrokii42, their art is insanely crunchy!!)

“Checkmate, I win again.” Wirth snickered as you were left speechless, it was the third game of the night, lasting for 30 minutes per chess session. You were left bewildered. “And I wasn’t even taking it seriously, I was already giving clues. Are you really this bad or is it naturally because I’m better than you?,” He boasts once again. “I’m not that bad! It’s just that you have way more experience! Plus are we always just gonna play chess, the night’s still young.” you told him about it. Tilting his head, Wirth asked what exactly were you implying “Well, what do you even want to do?” “I don’t know, you decide.”

You and Wirth have been good friends for a while, simply because of your families having an amazing relationship. He knew all about you. You knew about him. He was always there for you during the times you were down or just couldn’t take it anymore, and so were you for him. People were honestly wondering why you two weren’t dating yet, and you did not know how to answer that question. You liked him so much, it was killing you. But you play it off pretty well, because he didn’t recognize it yet. He seemed so oblivious to you— wrong. He likes you so much. He visits you everyday at your dorm just to play chess with you because he likes your presence and he’ll never forget how your defeated face looks . He thinks it’s cute. He’ll also pretend not to get a math lesson just so you teach him for a few minutes straight because he likes hearing your voice, pulling you with that “I still don’t get it” card so you teach him all about it again so he hears your voice more. He also likes it when you comfort him, a lot. So much that he’ll keep his tears out of sight and once he’s with you— he starts crying. Because it was what he was used to growing up with you.

So it was safe to say that you both are oblivious to each other— not knowing what you two truly felt together. Wirth ultimately loves you, and so do you. But… You always sought ways for him to “like you back”. From anonymous letters, to sending him corny math jokes, bringing him lunch, showing your forbidden collection. It was already clear. A few days ago, Wirth read one of the jokes written on a piece of paper saying, “It’s always x and y, why not u and i?” Wirth was about to burst out laughing from what he just read till you ran at him like a mad gremlin, “Gimme that!” you snatched the paper from him as he burst out laughing while reading it once again. “Why so mad? I mean it was pretty funny after all, corny most of it.” Wirth chuckles at you, a blushing mess right now. You did try, but he made a laughing stock out of it— so you thought. He thinks to himself, why should he keep his feelings from you when the message is clear— you like him; too.

So, Wirth decides to visit you— a Friday night of all nights. Doing your usual, playing chess and eating sweets. Yet this night was different from all the others, you offered to do something else; new, Wirth thinks to himself. Nevertheless, he agreed. You were getting predictable anyways. He would do anything just to find another game to play with you rather than chess.

“Alright, let’s play something else.” Wirth concludes. “What else is there to play rather than chess? It’s literally the only thing we know how to play…” You sighed, he responded to you with a mundane tone. “Let’s just talk, maybe you know… Let it all go?” you chuckled at his words. “Maybe, it’s better than chess…” you smiled at him, Wirth sighed as he lay down on your bed. “Hey! I didn’t allow you to sleep on my bed!” you protested. “Your bed feels more comfortable. I can feel it…” “I don’t take excuses for granted, Wirth. Now get outta my bed ....”

“You already know that my dad’s mean, Wirth— why’d you gotta remind me?” you sighed as he responded, slightly chuckling, “Well, it just came to my mind, nothing special really.” He slowly moved closer to you, as his face was literally inches away from yours, he mumbled “You’re nothing like him. You’re nothing like anyone— at all. When dad used to play favorites on me and my brother, who did you like better?” “You, obviously. He kinda acts like a robot though..” you said jokingly. “But, Wirth. Just saying, no offense to him though.” Wirth bit his tongue, then suddenly laughed. “See, I knew you liked me better. Honestly, I hoped you did.” He chuckles, “This is getting insanely boring now. I want to do something.” He gestures himself closer to you. “Do you want to kiss?” He asked without hesitation. “What the heck? Are you out of your mind..?” You raised your eyebrow. “It’s to ease boredom! I swear I’m not gonna say anything after.” he responded. “Well, if it can ease boredom…”

You don’t know how you landed in this situation. Wirth was kissing you, you were seated on his lap with your arms over his shoulders. His lips brushed against yours as you two were trying to catch your breaths as you were entangled in your heated kiss. His lips felt like soft silk against yours as you felt a soft tickle on your nose. He pulled away after a while, then chuckled. “You truly love me, don’t you? Because I love you, so much.” You responded with a simple smile, more than enough for him. “I love you too, Wirth Madl.” You gleamed with joy.

"I'm serious about the word "I love you". If ever you don't think so, love me, because it's only u and i in this world.”

[semiotomatics]

cant sleep as uʒ, gonna wordvomit if you dont mind

its really fucking scary to notice yourself changing. like, even if its good changes. idk maybe its just me and my hyper-rigid sense of self but like. i need to be able to feel like i understand myself, and when that understanding starts to slip it. uhh. it freaks me out a lil.

honestly that was one of the scariest parts of finally going on medication for my mental issues. like, do i want to be happy and have energy and not be scared and vaguely suicidal all the time? yes, of course i do. but theres a part of me thats also like. but thats all ive ever known. thats who i am. when you take it away whats gonna fill the empty space?

and like. i kinda feel like im starting to find out. i mean, im still not cured by any stretch of the imagination, but i have noticed improvements, as well as just. changes (neutral). or maybe its changes (terrifying). changes in how i feel, how i think, what i want.

like. for example. ive considered myself ace since the day i first heard the word as a teen, and tho my romantic orientation has always been kinda ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, ive been considering myself aro for all intents and purposes for years. and i love being aroace. its genuinely a vital aspect of my identity. it feels right. but yeah. lately there have been changes.

and that was exactly what i was worried would happen! cause "you're not aro/ace, youre just depressed" is such a common aro/acephobic argument, one that i myself have been told and have argued against, even though i realized it was technically a possibility.

and i know theres nothing wrong with it if that does end up being the case here. i know it doesnt invalidate my aroaceness up till now, i know it doesnt invalidate anyone else's aro/aceness, i know its okay. but still. im scared of the change.

so yeah, thats a bit of what ive been grappling with for the past few weeks. as things stand now, i still consider myself aroace, i just. want a different kind of relationship rn than ive ever wanted before. whether it would be considered romantic or queerplatonic or what i dont know.

i also have no idea at all how to go about actually, like, getting that kind of relationship. all of a sudden all the allo media ive consumed makes so much more sense to me. this shits hard!! by comparison being aroace is a goddamn piece of cake (pun absolutely intended).

anyway. yeah. i always seem to have these thoughts at night when i cant sleep, and i just. needed to get them out. if youve read this far, you have my sincere admiration 💚 im gonna go collapse into a ball and try to figure out what the fuck i want in life lol

[aro-comics]

Aro Joy

Aro Joy, 1/1 - it’s almost AUTUMN!!!! 🍁🎃🧣 ✨ (and I’m very excited lol, early fall is one of my favourite times of year 😂). Ok but back on topic - I’ve actually had a vision for this specific comic for ... a while 😭 Like, half a year ago. It’s been a journey, accepting my arospec identity (and from what I’ve heard talking to y’all, it’s been like this for many of you too), and though I’ve been open about the bumpier parts of the experience, I wanted to also talk about the positives, all the joys of being aro, too 💚💚🐸

As a general disclaimer: The sentiments here aren’t meant to speak for all aros - because some aros want to be in romantic relationships (or be otherwise partnered), and of course this is equally valid and should be respected! And on the same note, allos can be happy with being, or just want to be single, because again - this isn’t something defined by orientation.

But I think for a lot of us, our arospec orientation can be tied to how feel about our lives in relation to partnership ... which is that, we're okay (or happy) being single! For the longest time, I held it against myself that I wasn’t in a relationship, but not because I wanted to be in one - I just thought it was a milestone that would make other people think of me as a 'real' adult 😭😭 Realizing I was aro gave me the opportunity to reassess how I viewed myself, and my relationships with other people. I was able to actually let go of that idea of having a “””missing piece”””, and appreciate everyone and everything I have in my life. I sound kinda cheesy saying this, but for the first time, I think I have everything I've ever wanted, relationships wise? I'm at peace, and I really appreciate it.

__

School's gonna start soon for me and for some of y'all, so I hope that goes well for everyone! Please take care, and as always I'd love to hear what you think! What are your favourite things about being aro? 🐸

[Image Descriptions:

Slide 1: “I find it fascinating, the way alloromantics value romance.” Celia stands outside in front on a vibrant fall day. She seems to be on a walk on a trail.

Behind her, the leaves are a bright orange, and she is wearing a white wrapped top, jeans, and an orange ribbon choker.

Slide 2: “When I bring up the fact -”

A flashback to an earlier time, where Celia is talking to another girl (who is alloro). Celia says “You know, life without Romance is not inherently bad, or unfulfilling -” 

The other girls says, “yeah, but it’s DIFFERENT.”

Slide 3: [Pure text] There’s this really deep, engrained idea, even amongst people who are accepting and understanding of the idea that being aromantic is valid, that romance brings a new level of joy to life. A kind of special fulfillment they would be lost without.

Slide 4: “And I’ve got to say …” Celia speaks to the viewer.

Slide 5: “That sounds really hard, yikes” She shrugs nonchalantly.  

Slide 6: Celia speaks from the bottom of the panel, and a big speech bubble says, “People seem to have such a hard time with dating? Pining? Trying to court people? (I actually do not know much about romance, despite my love of the genre) It just seems like so much work, just to feel fulfilled.”

Extra doodles of character struggle with online dating, pining with writing love letters, and dollar bills with a rose exemplify the various struggles mentioned.

Slide 7: Shot switches back to Celia in the forest. She’s now holding a maple leaf in her hand, staring down at it contemplatively as she speaks. “I’m … actually feeling pretty good about my life.”

Slide 8: She holds the leaf up to the light now. “I don’t really feel like there’s something missing without a partner. Although, maybe one day -” In the bottom half of the panel, the perspective switches to her POV centered on her hand with the illuminated leaf, “I’d also be happy with a QPR.”

Slide 9: It’s one of the things that makes me grateful that I’m aro.

The shot has switched to be from behind Celia, staring out at the landscape of mountains, the fall foliage, and the river below. Celia has let go of the leaf and it drifts away in the wind]

[holyhellpod]

Holy Hell: 3. Metanarrativity: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship? aka the analysis no one asked for.

In this ep, we delve into authorship, narrative, fandom and narrative meaning. And somehow, as always, bring it back to Cas and Misha Collins.

(Note: the reason I didn’t talk about Billie’s authorship and library is because I completely forgot it existed until I watched season 13 “Advanced Thanatology” again, while waiting for this episode to upload. I’ll find a way to work her into later episodes tho!)

I had to upload it as a new podcast to Spotify so if you could just re-subscribe that would be great! Or listen to it at these other links.

Please listen to the bit at the beginning about monetisation and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to message me here.

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

Warnings: discussions of incest, date rape, rpf, war, 9/11, the bush administration, abuse, mental health, addiction, homelessness. Most of these are just one off comments, they’re not full discussions.

Meta-Textuality: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship?

In the third episode of Season 6, “The Third Man,” Balthazar says to Cas, “you tore up the whole script and burned the pages.” That is the fundamental idea the writers of the first five seasons were trying to sell us: whatever grand plan the biblical God had cooking up is worth nothing in face of the love these men have—for each other and the world. Sam, Bobby, Cas and Dean will go to any lengths to protect one another and keep people safe. What’s real? What’s worth saving? People are real. Families are worth saving. 

This show plugs free will as the most important thing a person, angel, demon or otherwise can have. The fact of the matter is that Dean was always going to fight against the status quo, Sam was always going to go his own way, and Bobby was always going to do his best for his boys. The only uncertainty in the entire narrative is Cas. He was never meant to rebel. He was never meant to fall from Heaven. He was supposed to fall in line, be a good soldier, and help bring on the apocalypse, but Cas was the first agent of free will in the show’s timeline. Sam followed Lucifer, Dean followed Michael, and John gave himself up for the sins of his children, at once both a God and Jesus figure. But Cas wasn’t modelled off anyone else. He is original. There are definitely some parallels to Ruby, but I would argue those are largely unintentional. Cas broke the mold. 

That’s to say nothing of the impact he’s had on the fanbase, and the show itself, which would not have reached 15 seasons and be able to end the way they wanted it to without Cas and Misha Collins. His back must be breaking from carrying the entire show. 

But what the holy hell are we doing here today? Not just talking about Cas. We’re talking about metanarrativity: as I define it, and for purposes of this episode, the story within a story, and the act of storytelling. We’re going to go through a select few episodes which I think exemplify the best of what this show has to offer in terms of framing the narrative. We’ll talk about characters like Chuck and Becky and the baby dykes in season 10. And most importantly we’ll talk about the audience’s role, our role, in the reciprocal relationship of storytelling. After all, a tv show is nothing without the viewer.

I was in fact introduced to the concept of metanarrativity by Supernatural, so the fact that I’m revisiting it six years after I finished my degree to talk about the show is one of life’s little jokes.

 I’m brushing off my degree and bringing out the big guns (aka literary theorists) to examine this concept. This will be yet another piece of analysis that would’ve gone well in my English Lit degree, but I’ll try not to make it dry as dog shit. 

First off, I’m going to argue that the relationship between the creators of Supernatural and the fans has always been a dialogue, albeit with a power imbalance. Throughout the series, even before explicitly metanarrative episodes like season 10 “Fan Fiction” and season 4 “the monster at the end of this book,” the creators have always engaged in conversations with the fans through the show. This includes but is not limited to fan conventions, where the creators have actual, live conversations with the fans. Misha Collins admitted at a con that he’d read fanfiction of Cas while he was filming season 4, but it’s pretty clear even from the first season that the creators, at the very least Eric Kripke, were engaging with fans. The show aired around the same time as Twitter and Tumblr were created, both of which opened up new passageways for fans to interact with each other, and for Twitter and Facebook especially, new passageways for fans to interact with creators and celebrities.

But being the creators, they have ultimate control over what is written, filmed and aired, while we can only speculate and make our own transformative interpretations. But at least since s4, they have engaged in meta narrative construction that at once speaks to fans as well as expands the universe in fun and creative ways. My favourite episodes are the ones where we see the Winchesters through the lens of other characters, such as the season 3 episode “Jus In Bello,” in which Sam and Dean are arrested by Victor Henriksen, and the season 7 episode “Slash Fiction” in which Dean and Sam’s dopplegangers rob banks and kill a bunch of people, loathe as I am to admit that season 7 had an effect on any part of me except my upchuck reflex. My second favourite episodes are the meta episodes, and for this episode of Holy Hell, we’ll be discussing a few: The French Mistake, he Monster at the end of this book, the real ghostbusters, Fan Fiction, Metafiction, and Don’t Call Me Shurley. I’ll also discuss Becky more broadly, because, like, of course I’ll be discussing Becky, she died for our sins. 

Let’s take it back. The Monster At The End Of This Book — written by Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner and directed by Mike Rohl. Inarguably one of the better episodes in the first five seasons. Not only is Cas in it, looking so beautiful, but Sam gets something to do, thank god, and it introduces the character of Chuck, who becomes a source of comic relief over the next two seasons. The episode starts with Chuck Shurley, pen named Carver Edlund after my besties, having a vision while passed out drunk. He dreams of Sam and Dean larping as Feds and finding a series of books based on their lives that Chuck has written. They eventually track Chuck down, interrogate him, and realise that he’s a prophet of the lord, tasked with writing the Winchester Gospels. The B plot is Sam plotting to kill Lilith while Dean fails to get them out of the town to escape her. The C plot is Dean and Cas having a moment that strengthens their friendship and leads further into Cas’s eventual disobedience for Dean. Like the movie Disobedience. Exactly like the movie Disobedience. Cas definitely spits in Dean’s mouth, it’s kinda gross to be honest. Maybe I’m just not allo enough to appreciate art. 

When Eric Kripke was showrunner of the first five seasons of Supernatural,  he conceptualised the character of Chuck. Kripke as the author-god introduced the character of the author-prophet who would later become in Jeremy Carver’s showrun seasons the biblical God. Judith May Fathallah writes in “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural” that Kripke writes himself both into and out of the text, ending his era with Chuck winking at the camera, saying, “nothing really ends,” and disappearing. Kripke stayed on as producer, continuing to write episodes through Sera Gamble’s era, and was even inserted in text in the season 6 episode “The French Mistake”. So nothing really does end, not Kripke’s grip on the show he created, not even the show itself, which fans have jokingly referred to as continuing into its 16th season. Except we’re not joking. It will die when all of us are dead, when there is no one left to remember it. According to W R Fisher, humans are homo narrans, natural storytellers. The Supernatural fandom is telling a fidelitous narrative, one which matches our own beliefs, values and experiences instead of that of canon. Instead of, at Fathallah says, “the Greek tradition, that we should struggle to do the right thing simply because it is right, though we will suffer and be punished anyway,” the fans have created an ending for the characters that satisfies each and every one of our desires, because we each create our own endings. It’s better because we get to share them with each other, in the tradition of campfire stories, each telling our own version and building upon the others. If that’s not the epitome of mythmaking then I don’t know. It’s just great. Dean and Cas are married, Eileen and Sam are married, Jack is sometimes a baby who Claire and Kaia are forced to babysit, Jody and Donna are gonna get hitched soon. It’s season 17, time for many weddings, and Kevin Tran is alive. Kripke, you have no control over this anymore, you crusty hag. 

Chuck is introduced as someone with power, but not influence over the story, only how the story is told through the medium of the novels. It’s basically a very badly written, non authorised biography, and Charlie reading literally every book and referencing things she should have no knowledge of is so damn creepy and funny. At first Chuck is surprised by his characters coming to life, despite having written it already, and when shown the intimidating array of weapons in Baby’s trunk he gets real scared. Which is the appropriate response for a skinny 5-foot-8 white guy in a bathrobe who writes terrible fantasy novels for a living. 

As far as I can remember, this is the first explicitly metanarrative episode in the series, or at least the first one with in world consequences. It builds upon the lore of Christianity, angels, and God, while teasing what’s to come. Chuck and Sam have a conversation about how the rest of the season is going to play out, and Sam comes away with the impression that he’ll go down with the ship. They touch on Sam’s addiction to demon blood, which Chuck admits he didn’t write into the books, because in the world of supernatural, addiction should be demonised ha ha at every opportunity, except for Dean’s alcoholism which is cool and manly and should never be analysed as an unhealthy trauma coping mechanism. 

Chuck is mostly impotent in the story of Sam and Dean, but his very presence presents an element of good luck that turns quickly into a force of antagonism in the series four finale, “Lucifer Rising”, when the archangel Raphael who defeats Lilith in this episode also kills Cas in the finale. It’s Cas’s quick thinking and Dean’s quick doing that resolve the episode and save them from Lilith, once again proving that free will is the greatest force in the universe. Cas is already tearing up pages and burning scripts. The fandom does the same, acting as gods of their own making in taking canon and transforming it into fan art. The fans aren’t impotent like Chuck, but neither do we have sway over the story in the way that Cas and Dean do. Sam isn’t interested in changing the story in the same way—he wants to kill Lilith and save the world, but in doing so continues the story in the way it was always supposed to go, the way the angels and the demons and even God wanted him to. 

Neither of them are author-gods in the way that God is. We find out later that Chuck is in fact the real biblical god, and he engineers everything. The one thing he doesn’t engineer, however, is Castiel, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Real Ghostbusters

Season 5’s “The real ghostbusters,” written by Nancy Weiner and Erik Kripke, and directed by James L Conway, situates the Winchesters at a fan convention for the Supernatural books. While there, they are confronted by a slew of fans cosplaying as Sam, Dean, Bobby, the scarecrow, Azazel, and more. They happen to stumble upon a case, in the midst of the game where the fans pretend to be on a case, and with the help of two fans cosplaying as Sam and Dean, they put to rest a group of homicidal ghost children and save the day. Chuck as the special guest of the con has a hero moment that spurs Becky on to return his affections. And at the end, we learn that the Colt, which they’ve been hunting down to kill the devil, was given to a demon named Crowley. It’s a fun episode, but ultimately skippable. This episode isn’t so much metanarrative as it is metatextual—metatextual meaning more than one layer of text but not necessarily about the storytelling in those texts—but let’s take a look at it anyway.

The metanarrative element of a show about a series of books about the brothers the show is based on is dope and expands upon what we saw in “the monster at the end of this book”. But the episode tells a tale about about the show itself, and the fandom that surrounds it. 

Where “The Monster At The End Of This Book” and the season 5 premiere “Sympathy For The Devil” poked at the coiled snake of fans and the concept of fandom, “the real ghostbusters” drags them into the harsh light of an enclosure and antagonises them in front of an audience. The metanarrative element revolves around not only the books themselves, but the stories concocted within the episode: namely Barnes and Demian the cosplayers and the story of the ghosts. The Winchester brothers’s history that we’ve seen throughout the first five seasons of the show is bared in a tongue in cheek way: while we cried with them when Sam and Dean fought with John, now the story is thrown out in such a way as to mock both the story and the fans’ relationship to it. Let me tell you, there is a lot to be made fun of on this show, but the fans’ relationship to the story of Sam, Dean and everyone they encounter along the way isn’t part of it. I don’t mean to be like, wow you can’t make fun of us ever because we’re special little snowflakes and we take everything so seriously, because you are welcome to make fun of us, but when the creators do it, I can’t help but notice a hint of malice. And I think that’s understandable in a way. Like The relationship between creator and fan is both layered and symbiotic. While Kripke and co no doubt owe the show’s popularity to the fans, especially as the fandom has grown and evolved over time, we’re not exactly free of sin. And don’t get me wrong, no fandom is. But the bad apples always seem to outweigh the good ones, and bad experiences can stick with us long past their due.

However, portraying us as losers with no lives who get too obsessed with this show — well, you know, actually, maybe they’re right. I am a loser with no life and I am too obsessed with this show. So maybe they have a point. But they’re so harsh about it. From wincestie Becky who they paint as a desperate shrew to these cosplayers who threaten Dean’s very perception of himself, we’re not painted in a very good light. 

Dean says to Demian and Barnes, “It must be nice to get out of your mom’s basement.” He’s judging them for deriving pleasure from dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a night. He doesn’t seem to get the irony that he does that for a living. As the seasons wore on, the creators made sure to include episodes where Dean’s inner geek could run rampant, often in the form of dressing up like a cowboy, such as season six “Frontierland” and season 13 “Tombstone”. I had to take a break from writing this to laugh for five minutes because Dean is so funny. He’s a car gay but he only likes one car. He doesn’t follow sports. His echolalia causes him to blurt out lines from his favourite movies. He’s a posse magnet. And he loves cosplay. But he will continually degrade and insult anyone who expresses interest in role play, fandom, or interests in general. Maybe that’s why Sam is such a boring person, because Dean as his mother didn’t allow him to have any interests outside of hunting. And when Sam does express interests, Dean insults him too. What a dick. He’s my soulmate, but I am not going to stop listening to hair metal for him. That’s where I draw the line. 

 Where “the monster at the end of this book” is concerned with narrative and authorship, “the real ghostbusters” is concerned with fandom and fan reactions to the show. It’s not really the best example to talk about in an episode about metanarrativity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It veers from talk of narrative by focusing on the people in the periphery of the narrative—the fans and the author. In season 9 “Metafiction,” Metatron asks the question, who gives the story meaning? The text would have you believe it’s the characters. The angels think it’s God. The fandom think it’s us. The creators think it’s them. Perhaps we will never come to a consensus or even a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps that’s the point.

The ultimate takeaway from this episode is that ordinary people, the people Sam and Dean save, the people they save the world for, the people they die for again and again, are what give their story meaning. Chuck defeats a ghost and saves the people in the conference room from being murdered. Demian and Barnes, don’t ask me which is which, burn the bodies of the ghost children and lay their spirits to rest. The text says that ordinary, every day people can rise to the challenge of becoming extraordinary. It’s not a bad note to end on, by any means. And then we find out that Demian and Barnes are a couple, which of course Dean is surprised at, because he lacks object permanence. 

This is no doubt influenced by how a good portion of the transformative fandom are queer, and also a nod to the wincesties and RPF writers like Becky who continue to bottom feed off the wrong message of this show. But then, the creators encourage that sort of thing, so who are the real clowns here? Everyone. Everyone involved with this show in any way is a clown, except for the crew, who were able to feed their families for more than a decade. 

Okay side note… over the past year or so I’ve been in process of realising that even in fandom queers are in the minority. I know the statistic is that 10% of the world population is queer, but that doesn’t seem right to me? Maybe because 4/5 closest friends are queer and I hang around queers online, but I also think I lack object permanence when it comes to straight people. Like I just do not interact with straight people on a regular basis outside of my best friend and parents and school. So when I hear that someone in fandom is straight I’m like, what the fuck… can you keep that to yourself please? Like if I saw Misha Collins coming out as straight I would be like, I didn’t ask and you didn’t have to tell. Okay I’m mostly joking, but I do forget straight people exist. Mostly I don’t think about whether people are gay or trans or cis or straight unless they’ve explicitly said it and then yes it does colour my perception of them, because of course it would. If they’re part of the queer community, they’re my people. And if they’re straight and cis, then they could very well pose a threat to me and my wellbeing. But I never ask people because it’s not my business to ask. If they feel comfortable enough to tell me, that’s awesome.  I think Dean feels the same way. Towards the later seasons at least, he has a good reaction when it’s revealed that someone is queer, even if it is mostly played off as a joke. It’s just that he doesn’t have a frame of reference in his own life to having a gay relationship, either his or someone he’s close to. He says to Cesar and Jesse in season 11 “The Critters” that they fight like brothers, because that’s the only way he knows how to conceptualise it. He doesn’t have a way to categorise his and Cas’s relationship, which is in many ways, long before season 15 “Despair,” harking back even to the parallels between Ruby and Cas in season 3 and 4, a romantic one, aside from that Cas is like a brother to him. Because he’s never had anyone in his life care for him the way Cas does that wasn’t Sam and Bobby, and he doesn’t recognise the romantic element of their relationship until literally Cas says it to him in the third last episode, he just—doesn’t know what his and Cas’s relationship is. He just really doesn’t know. And he grew up with a father who despised him for taking the mom and wife role in their family, the role that John placed him in, for being subservient to John’s wishes where Sam was more rebellious, so of course he wouldn’t understand either his own desires or those of anyone around him who isn’t explicitly shoving their tits in his face. He moulded his entire personality around what he thought John wanted of him, and John says to him explicitly in season 14 “Lebanon”, “I thought you’d have a family,” meaning, like him, wife and two rugrats. And then, dear god, Dean says, thinking of Sam, Cas, Jack, Claire, and Mary, “I have a family.” God that hurts so much. But since for most of his life he hasn’t been himself, he’s been the man he thought his father wanted him to be, he’s never been able to examine his own desires, wants and goals. So even though he’s really good at reading people, he is not good at reading other people’s desires unless they have nefarious intentions. Because he doesn’t recognise what he feels is attraction to men, he doesn’t recognise that in anyone else. 

Okay that’s completely off topic, wow. Getting back to metanarrativity in “The Real Ghostbusters,” I’ll just cap it off by saying that the books in this episode are more a frame for the events than the events themselves. However, there are some good outtakes where Chuck answers some questions, and I’m not sure how much of that is scripted and how much is Rob Benedict just going for it, but it lends another element to the idea of Kripke as author-god. The idea of a fan convention is really cool, because at this point Supernatural conventions had been running for about 4 years, since 2006. It’s definitely a tribute to the fans, but also to their own self importance. So it’s a mixed bag, considering there were plenty of elements in there that show the good side of fandom and fans, but ultimately the Winchesters want nothing to do with it, consider it weird, and threaten Chuck when he says he’ll start releasing books again, which as far as they know is his only source of income. But it’s a fun episode and Dean is a grouchy bitch, so who the holy hell cares?

Season 10 episode “fanfiction” written by my close personal friend Robbie Thompson and directed by Phil Sgriccia is one of the funniest episodes this show has ever done. Not only is it full of metatextual and metanarrative jokes, the entire premise revolves around fanservice, but in like a fun and interesting way, not fanservice like killing the band Kansas so that Dean can listen to “Carry On My Wayward Son” in heaven twice. Twice. One version after another. Like I would watch this musical seven times in theatre, I would buy the soundtrack, I would listen to it on repeat and make all my friends listen to it when they attend my online Jitsi birthday party. This musical is my Hamilton. Top ten episodes of this show for sure. The only way it could be better is if Cas was there. And he deserved to be there. He deserved to watch little dyke Castiel make out with her girlfriend with her cute little wings, after which he and Dean share uncomfortable eye contact. Dean himself is forever coming to terms with the fact that gay people exist, but Cas should get every opportunity he can to hear that it’s super cool and great and awesome to be queer. But really he should be in every episode, all of them, all 300 plus episodes including the ones before angels were introduced. I’m going to commission the guy who edits Paddington into every movie to superimpose Cas standing on the highway into every episode at least once.

“Fan Fiction” starts with a tv script and the words “Supernatural pilot created by Eric Kripke”. This Immediately sets up the idea that it’s toying with narrative. Blah blah blah, some people go missing, they stumble into a scene from their worst nightmares: the school is putting on a musical production of a show inspired by the Supernatural books. It’s a comedy of errors. When people continue to go missing, Sam and Dean have to convince the girls that something supernatural is happening, while retaining their dignity and respect. They reveal that they are the real Sam and Dean, and Dean gives the director Marie a summary of their lives over the last five seasons, but they aren’t taken seriously. Because, like, of course they aren’t. Even when the girls realise that something supernatural is happening, they don’t actually believe that the musical they’ve made and the series of books they’re basing it on are real. Despite how Sam and Dean Winchester were literal fugitives for many years at many different times, and this was on the news, and they were wanted by the FBI, despite how they pretend to be FBI, and no one mentions it??? Did any of the staffwriters do the required reading or just do what I used to do for my 40 plus page readings of Baudrillard and just skim the first sentence of every paragraph? Neat hack for you: paragraphs are set up in a logical order of Topic, Example, Elaboration, Linking sentence. Do you have to read 60 pages of some crusty French dude waxing poetic about how his best friend Pierre wants to shag his wife and making that your problem? Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Boom, done. Just cut your work in half. 

The musical highlights a lot of the important moments of the show so far. The brothers have, as Charlie Bradbury says, their “broment,” and as Marie says, their “boy melodrama scene,” while she insinuates that there is a sexual element to their relationship. This show never passed up an opportunity to mention incest. It’s like: mentioning incest 5000 km, not being disgusting 1 km, what a hard decision. Actually, they do have to walk on their knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. But there are other moments—such as Mary burning on the ceiling, a classic, Castiel waiting for Dean at the side of the highway, and Azazel poisoning Sam. With the help of the high schoolers, Sam and Dean overcome Calliope, the muse and bad guy of the episode, and save the day. What began as their lives reinterpreted and told back to them turns into a story they have some agency over.

In this episode, as opposed to “The Monster At The End Of This Book,” The storytelling has transferred from an alcoholic in a bathrobe into the hands of an overbearing and overachieving teenage girl, and honestly why not. Transformative fiction is by and large run by women, and queer women, so Marie and her stage manager slash Jody Mills’s understudy Maeve are just following in the footsteps of legends. This kind of really succinctly summarises the difference between curative fandom and transformative fandom, the former of which is populated mostly by men, and the latter mostly by women. As defined by LordByronic in 2015, Curative fandom is more like enjoying the text, collecting the merchandise, organising the knowledge �� basically Reddit in terms of fandom curation. Transformative fandom is transforming the source text in some way — making fanart, fanfic, mvs, or a musical — basically Tumblr in general, and Archive of our own specifically. Like what do non fandom people even do on Tumblr? It is a complete mystery to me. Whereas Chuck literally writes himself into the narrative he receives through visions, Marie and co have agency and control over the narrative by writing it themselves. 

Chuck does appear in the episode towards the end, his first appearance after five seasons. The theory that he killed those lesbian theatre girls makes me wanna curl up and die, so I don’t subscribe to it. Chuck watched the musical and he liked it and he gave unwarranted notes and then he left, the end.

The Supernatural creative team is explicitly acknowledging the fandom’s efforts by making this episode. They’re writing us in again, with more obsessive fans, but with lethbians this time, which makes it infinitely better. And instead of showing us as potential date rapists, we’re just cool chicks who like to make art. And that’s fucken awesome. 

I just have to note that the characters literally say the word Destiel after Dean sees the actors playing Dean and Cas making out. He storms off and tells Sam to shut the fuck up when Sam makes fun of him, because Dean’s sexuality is NOT threatened he just needs to assert his dominance as a straight hetero man who has NEVER looked at another man’s lips and licked his own. He just… forgets that gay people exist until someone reminds him. BUT THEN, after a rousing speech that is stolen from Rent or Wicked or something, he echoes Marie’s words back, saying “put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” What does Dean know about subbing, I wonder. Okay I’m suddenly reminded that he did literally go to a kink bar and get hit on by a leather daddy. Oh Dean, the experiences you have as a broad-shouldered, pixie-faced man with cowboy legs. You were born for this role.

Metatron is my favourite villain. As one tumblr user pointed out, he is an evil English literature major, which is just a normal English literature major. The season nine episode “Meta Fiction” written by my main man robbie thompson and directed by thomas j wright, happens within a curious season. Castiel, once again, becomes the leader of a portion of the heavenly host to take down Metatron, and Dean is affected by the Mark Of Cain. Sam was recently possessed by Gadreel, who killed Kevin in Sam’s body and then decided to run off with Metatron. Metatron himself is recruiting angels to join him, in the hopes that he can become the new God. It’s the first introduction of Hannah, who encourages Cas to recruit angels himself to take on Metatron. Also, we get to see Gabriel again, who is always a delight. 

This episode is a lot of fun. Metatron poses questions like, who tells a story and who is the most important person in the telling? Is it the writer? The audience? He starts off staring over his typewriter to address the camera, like a pompous dickhead. No longer content with consuming stories, he’s started to write his own. And they are hubristic ones about becoming God, a better god than Chuck ever was, but to do it he needs to kill a bunch of people and blame it on Cas. So really, he’s actually exactly like Chuck who blamed everything on Lucifer. 

But I think the most apt analogy we can use for this in terms of who is the creator is to think of Metatron as a fanfiction writer. He consumes the media—the Winchester Gospels—and starts to write his own version of events—leading an army to become God and kill Cas. Nevermind that no one has been able to kill Cas in a way that matters or a way that sticks. Which is canon, and what Metatron is trying to do is—well not fanon because it actually does impact the Winchesters’ storyline. It would be like if one of the writers of Supernatural began writing Supernatural fanfiction before they got a job on the show. Which as my generation and the generations coming after me get more comfortable with fanfiction and fandom, is going to be the case for a lot of shows. I think it’s already the case for Riverdale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the woman who wrote the bi Dean essay go to work on Riverdale? Or something? I dunno, I have the post saved in my tumblr likes but that is quagmire of epic proportions that I will easily get lost in if I try to find it. 

Okay let me flex my literary degree. As Englund and Leach say in “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity,” “The influential “literary turn,” in which the problems of ethnography were seen as largely textual and their solutions as lying in experimental writing seems to have lost its impetus.” This can be taken to mean, in the context of Supernatural, that while Metatron’s writings seek to forge a new path in history, forgoing fate for a new kind of divine intervention, the problem with Metatron is that he’s too caught up in the textual, too caught up in the writing, to be effectual. And this as we see throughout seasons 9, 10 and 11, has no lasting effect. Cas gets his grace back, Dean survives, and Metatron becomes a powerless human. In this case, the impetus is his grace, which he loses when Cas cuts it out of him, a mirror to Metatron cutting out Cas’s grace. 

However, I realise that the concept of ethnography in Supernatural is a flawed one, ethnography being the observation of another culture: a lot of the angels observe humanity and seem to fit in. However, Cas has to slowly acclimatise to the Winchesters as they tame him, but he never quite fit in—missing cues, not understanding jokes or Dean’s personal space, the scene where he says, “We have a guinea pig? Where?” Show him the guinea pig Sam!!! He wants to see it!!! At most he passes as a human with autism. Cas doesn’t really observe humanity—he observes nature, as seen in season 7 “reading is fundamental” and “survival of the fittest”. Even the human acts he talks about in season 6 “the man who would be king” are from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He certainly doesn’t observe popular culture, which puts him at odds with Dean, who is made up of 90 per cent pop culture references and 10 per cent flannel. Metatron doesn’t seek to blend in with humanity so much as control it, which actually is the most apt example of ethnography for white people in the last—you know, forever. But of course the writers didn’t seek to make this analogy. It is purely by chance, and maybe I’m the only person insane enough to realise it. But probably not. There are a lot of cookies much smarter than me in the Supernatural fandom and they’ve like me have grown up and gone to university and gotten real jobs in the real world and real haircuts. I’m probably the only person to apply Englund and Leach to it though.

And yes, as I read this paper I did need to have one tab open on Google, with the word “define” in the search bar. 

Metatron has a few lines in this that I really like. He says: 

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

“You’re going to have to follow my script.”

“I’m an entity of my word.”

It’s really obvious, but they’re pushing the idea that Metatron has become an agent of authorship instead of just a consumer of media. He even throws a Supernatural book into his fire — a symbolic act of burning the script and flipping the writer off, much like Cas did to God and the angels in season 5. He’s not a Kripke figure so much as maybe a Gamble, Carver or Dabb figure, in that he usurps Chuck and becomes the author-god. This would be extremely postmodern of him if he didn’t just do exactly what Chuck was doing, except worse somehow. In fact, it’s postmodern of Cas to reject heaven’s narrative and fall for Dean. As one tumblr user points out, Cas really said “What’s fate compared to Dean Winchester?”

Okay this transcript is almost 8000 words already, and I still have two more episodes to review, and more things to say, so I’ll leave you with this. Metatron says to Cas, “Out of all of God’s wind up toys, you’re the only one with any spunk.” Why Cas has captured his attention comes down more than anything to a process of elimination. Most angels fucking suck. They follow the rules of whoever puts themselves in charge, and they either love Cas or hate him, or just plainly wanna fuck him, and there have been few angels who stood out. Balthazar was awesome, even though I hated him the first time I watched season 6. He UNSUNK the Titanic. Legend status. And Gabriel was of course the OG who loves to fuck shit up. But they’re gone at this stage in the narrative, and Cas survives. Cas always survives. He does have spunk. And everyone wants to fuck him.  

Season 11 episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” the last episode written by the Christ like figure of Robbie Thompson — are we sensing a theme here? — and directed by my divine enemy Robert Singer, starts with Metatron dumpster diving for food. I’m not even going to bother commenting on this because like… it’s supernatural and it treats complex issues like homelessness and poverty with zero nuance. Like the Winchesters live in poverty but it’s fun and cool because they always scrape by but Metatron lives in poverty and it’s funny. Cas was homeless and it was hard but he needed to do it to atone for his sins, and Metatron is homeless and it’s funny because he brought it on himself by being a murderous dick. Fucking hell. Robbie, come on. The plot focuses on God, also known as Chuck Shurley, making himself known to Metatron and asking for Metatron’s opinion on his memoir. Meanwhile, the Winchesters battle another bout of infectious serial killer fog sent by Amara. At the end of the episode, Chuck heals everyone affected by the fog and reveals himself to Sam and Dean. 

Chuck says that he didn’t foresee Metatron trying to become god, but the idea of Season 15 is that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all their lives. When Metatron tries, he fails miserably, is locked up in prison, tortured by Dean, then rendered useless as a human and thrown into the world without a safety net. His authorship is reduced to nothing, and he is reduced to dumpster diving for food. He does actually attempt to live his life as someone who records tragedies as they happen and sells the footage to news stations, which is honestly hilarious and amazing and completely unsurprising because Metatron is, at the heart of it, an English Literature major. In true bastard style, he insults Chuck’s work and complains about the bar, but slips into his old role of editor when Chuck asks him to. 

The theory I’m consulting for this uses the term metanarrative in a different way than I am. They consider it an overarching narrative, a grand narrative like religion. Chuck’s biography is in a sense most loyal to Middleton and Walsh’s view of metanarrative: “the universal story of the world from arche to telos, a grand narrative encompassing world history from beginning to end.” Except instead of world history, it’s God’s history, and since God is construed in Supernatural as just some guy with some powers who is as fallible as the next some guy with some powers, his story has biases and agendas.  Okay so in the analysis I’m getting Middleton and Walsh’s quotes from, James K A Smith’s “A little story about metanarratives,” Smith dunks on them pretty bad, but for Supernatural purposes their words ring true. Think of them as the BuckLeming of Lyotard’s postmodern metanarrative analysis: a stopped clock right twice a day. Is anyone except me understanding the sequence of words I’m saying right now. Do I just have the most specific case of brain worms ever found in human history. I’m currently wearing my oversized Keith Haring shirt and dipping pretzels into peanut butter because it’s 3.18 in the morning and the homosexuals got to me. The total claims a comprehensive metanarrative of world history make do indeed, as Middleton and Walsh claim, lead to violence, stay with me here, because Chuck’s legacy is violence, and so is Metatron’s, and in trying to reject the metanarrative, Sam and Dean enact violence. Mostly Dean, because in season 15 he sacrifices his own son twice to defeat Chuck. But that means literally fighting violence with violence. Violence is, after all, all they know. Violence is the lens through which they interact with the world. If the writers wanted to do literally anything else, they could have continued Dean’s natural character progression into someone who eschews the violence that stems from intergeneration trauma — yes I will continue to use the phrase intergenerational trauma whenever I refer to Dean — and becomes a loving father and husband. Sam could eschew violence and start a monster rehabilitation centre with Eileen.

This episode of Holy Hell is me frantically grabbing at straws to make sense of a narrative that actively hates me and wants to kick me to death. But the violence Sam and Dean enact is not at a metanarrative level, because they are not author-gods of their own narrative. In season 15 “Atomic Monsters,” Becky points out that the ending of the Supernatural book series is bad because the brothers die, and then, in a shocking twist of fate, Dean does die, and the narrative is bad. The writers set themselves a goal post to kick through and instead just slammed their heat into the bars. They set up the dartboard and were like, let’s aim the darts at ourselves. Wouldn’t that be fun. Season 15’s writing is so grossly incompetent that I believe every single conspiracy theory that’s come out of the finale since November, because it’s so much more compelling than whatever the fuck happened on the road so far. Carry on? Why yes, I think I will carry on, carry on like a pork chop, screaming at the bars of my enclosure until I crack my voice open like an egg and spill out all my rage and frustration. The world will never know peace again. It’s now 3.29 and I’ve written over 9000 words of this transcript. And I’m not done.

Middleton and Walsh claim that metanarratives are merely social constructions masquerading as universal truths. Which is, exactly, Supernatural. The creators have constructed this elaborate web of narrative that they want to sell us as the be all and end all. They won’t let the actors discuss how they really feel about the finale. They won’t let Misha Collins talk about Destiel. They want us to believe it was good, actually, that Dean, a recovering alcoholic with a 30 year old infant son and a husband who loves him, deserved to die by getting NAILED, while Sam, who spent the last four seasons, the entirety of Andrew Dabb’s run as showrunner, excelling at creating a hunter network and romancing both the queen of hell and his deaf hunter girlfriend, should have lived a normie life with a normie faceless wife. Am I done? Not even close. I started this episode and I’m going to finish it.

When we find out that Chuck is God in the episode of season 11, it turns everything we knew about Chuck on its head. We find out in Season 15 that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all along, that everything that happened to them is his doing. The one thing he couldn’t control was Cas’s choice to rebel. If we take him at his word, Cas is the only true force of free will in the entire universe, and more specifically, the love that Cas had for Dean which caused him to rebel and fall from heaven. — This theory has holes of course. Why would Lucifer torture Lilith into becoming the first demon if he didn’t have free will? Did Chuck make him do that? And why? So that Chuck could be the hero and Lucifer the bad guy, like Lucifer claimed all along? That’s to say nothing of Adam and Eve, both characters the show introduced in different ways, one as an antagonist and the other as the narrative foil to Dean and Cas’s romance. Thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I’m just not gunna. 

So Chuck was doing the writing all along. And as Becky claims in “Atomic Monsters,” it’s bad writing. The writers explicitly said, the ending Chuck wrote is bad because there’s no Cas and everyone dies, and then they wrote an ending where there is no Cas and everyone dies. So talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Talk about giant craters in the earth you could see from 800 kilometres away but you still fell into. Meanwhile fan writers have the opportunity to write a million different endings, all of which satisfy at least one person. The fandom is a hydra, prolific and unstoppable, and we’ll keep rewriting the ending a million more times.

And all this is not even talking about the fact that Chuck is a man, Metatron is a man, Sam and Dean and Cas are men, and the writers and directors of the show are, by an overwhelming majority, men. Most of them are white, straight, cis men. Feminist scholarship has done a lot to unpack the damage done by paternalistic approaches to theory, sociology, ethnography, all the -ys, but I propose we go a step further with these men. Kill them. Metanarratively, of course. Amara, the Darkness, God’s sister, had a chance to write her own story without Chuck, after killing everything in the universe, and I think she had the right idea. Knock it all down to build it from the ground up. Billie also had the opportunity to write a narrative, but her folly was, of course, putting any kind of faith in the Winchesters who are also grossly incompetent and often fail up. She is, as all author-gods on this show are, undone by Castiel. The only one with any spunk, the only one who exists outside of his own narrative confines, the only one the author-gods don’t have any control over. The one who died for love, and in dying, gave life. 

The French Mistake

Let’s change the channel. Let’s calm ourselves and cleanse our libras. Let’s commune with nature and chug some sage bongs. 

“The French Mistake” is a song from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles. In the iconic second last scene of the film, as the cowboys fight amongst themselves, the camera pans back to reveal a studio lot and a door through which a chorus of gay dancersingers perform “the French Mistake”. The lyrics go, “Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push. You’ll be surprised you’re doing the French Mistake.” 

I’m not sure what went through the heads of the Supernatural creators when they came up with the season 6 episode, “The French Mistake,” written by the love of my life Ben Edlund and directed by some guy Charles Beeson. Just reading the Wikipedia summary is so batshit incomprehensible. In short: Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean on the tv show Supernatural. I don’t think this had ever been done in television history before. The first seven seasons of this show are certifiable. Like this was ten years ago. Think about the things that have happened in the last 10 slutty, slutty years. We have lived through atrocities and upheaval and the entire world stopping to mourn, but also we had twitter throughout that entire time, which makes it infinitely worse.

In this universe, Sam and Dean wear makeup, Cas is played by attractive crying man Misha Collins, and Genevieve Padalecki nee Cortese makes an appearance. Magic doesn’t exist, Serge has good ideas, and the two leads have to act in order to get through the day. Sorry man I do not know how to pronounce your name.

Sidenote: I don’t know if me being attracted aesthetically to Misha Collins is because he’s attractive, because this show has gaslighted me into thinking he’s attractive, or because Castiel’s iconic entrance in 2008 hit my developing mind like a torpedo full of spaghetti and blew my fucking brains all over the place. It’s one of life’s little mysteries and God’s little gifts.

Let’s talk about therapy. More specifically, “Agency and purpose in narrative therapy: questioning the postmodern rejection of metanarrative” by Cameron Lee. In this paper, Lee outlines four key ideas as proposed by Freedman and Combs:

Realities are socially constructed

Realities are constituted through language

Realities are organised and maintained through narrative

And there are no essential truths.

Let’s break this down in the case of this episode. Realities are socially constructed: the reality of Sam and Dean arose from the Bush era. Do I even need to elaborate? From what I understand with my limited Australian perception, and being a child at the time, 9/11 really was a prominent shifting point in the last twenty years. As Americans describe it, sometimes jokingly, it was the last time they were really truly innocent. That means to me that until they saw the repercussions of their government’s actions in funding turf wars throughout the middle east for a good chunk of the 20th Century, they allowed themselves to be hindered by their own ignorance. The threat of terrorism ran rampant throughout the States, spurred on by right wing nationalists and gun-toting NRA supporters, so it’s really no surprise that the show Supernatural started with the premise of killing everything in sight and driving around with only your closest kin and a trunk full of guns. Kripke constructed that reality from the social-political climate of the time, and it has wrought untold horrors on the minds of lesbians who lived through the noughties, in that we are now attracted to Misha Collins.

Number two: Realities are constituted through language. Before a show can become a show, it needs to be a script. It’s written down, typed up, and given to actors who say the lines out loud. In this respect, they are using the language of speech and words to convey meaning. But tv shows are not all about words, and they’re barely about scripts. From what I understand of being raised by television, they are about action, visuals, imagery, and behaviours. All of the work that goes into them—the scripts, the lighting, the audio, the sound mixing, the cameras, the extras, the ADs, the gaffing, the props, the stunts, everything—is about conveying a story through the medium of images. In that way, images are the language. The reality of the show Supernatural, inside the show Supernatural, is constituted through words: the script, the journalists talking to Sam, the makeup artist taking off Dean’s makeup, the conversations between the creators, the tweets Misha sends. But also through imagery: the fish tank in Jensen’s trailer, the model poses on the front cover of the magazine, the opulence of Jared’s house, Misha’s iconic sweater. Words and images are the language that constitutes both of these realities. Okay for real, I feel like I’ve only seen this episode max three times, including when I watched it for research for this episode, but I remember so much about it. 

Number three: realities are organised and maintained through narrative. In this universe of the French Mistake, their lives are structured around two narratives: the internal narrative of the show within the show, in which they are two actors on a tv set; and the episode narrative in which they need to keep the key safe and return to their own universe. This is made difficult by the revelation that magic doesn’t work in this universe, however, they find a way. Before they can get back, though, an avenging angel by the name of Virgil guns down author-god Eric Kripke and tries to kill the Winchesters. However, they are saved by Balthazar and the freeze frame and brought back into their own world, the world of Supernatural the show, not Supernatural the show within the show within the nesting doll. And then that reality is done with, never to be revisited or even mentioned, but with an impact that has lasted longer than the second Bush administration.

And number four: there are no essential truths. This one is a bit tricky because I can’t find what Lee means by essential truths, so I’m just going to interpret that. To me, essential truths means what lies beneath the narratives we tell ourselves. Supernatural was a show that ran for 15 years. Supernatural had actors. Supernatural was showrun by four different writers. In the show within a show, there is nothing, because that ceases to exist for longer than the forty two minute episode “The French Mistake”. And since Supernatural no longer exists except in our computers, it is nothing too. It is only the narratives we tell ourselves to sleep better at night, to wake up in the morning with a smile, to get through the day, to connect with other people, to understand ourselves better. It’s not even the narrative that the showrunners told, because they have no agency over it as soon as it shows up on our screens. The essential truth of the show is lost in the translation from creating to consuming. Who gives the story meaning? The people watching it and the people creating it. We all do. 

Lee says that humans are predisposed to construct narratives in order to make sense of the world. We see this in cultures from all over the world: from cave paintings to vases, from The Dreaming to Beowulf, humans have always constructed stories. The way you think about yourself is a story that you’ve constructed. The way you interact with your loved ones and the furries you rightfully cyberbully on Twitter is influenced by the narratives you tell yourself about them. And these narratives are intricate, expansive, personalised, and can colour our perceptions completely, so that we turn into a different person when we interact with one person as opposed to another. 

Whatever happened in season 6, most of which I want to forget, doesn’t interest me in the way I’m telling myself the writers intended. For me, the entirety of season 6 was based around the premise of Cas being in love with Dean, and the complete impotence of this love. He turns up when Dean calls, he agonises as he watches Dean rake leaves and live his apple pie life with Lisa, and Dean is the person he feels most horribly about betraying. He says, verbatim, to Sam, “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” And Balthazar says, “You’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you.” He says this in season 6, and we couldn’t do a fucken thing about it. 

The song “The French Mistake” shines a light on the hidden scene of gay men performing a gay narrative, in the midst of a scene about the manliest profession you can have: professional horse wrangler, poncho wearer, and rodeo meister, the cowboy. If this isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the lovestory between Dean and Cas, which Ben Edlund has been championing from day fucking one of Misha Collins walking onto that set with his sex hair and chapped lips, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re even doing here. What in the hell else could it possibly mean. The layers to this. The intricacy. The agendas. The subtextual AND blatant queerness. The micro aggressions Crowley aimed at Car in “The Man Who Would Be King,” another Bedlund special. Bed Edlund is a fucking genius. Bed Edlund is cool girl. Ben Edlund is the missing link. Bed Edlund IS wikileaks. Ben Edlund is a cool breeze on a humid summer day. Ben Edlund is the stop loading button on a browser tab. Ben Edlund is the perfect cross between Spotify and Apple Music, in which you can search for good playlists, but without having to be on Spotify. He can take my keys and fuck my wife. You best believe I’m doing an entire episode of Holy Hell on Bedlund’s top five. He is the reason I want to get into staffwriting on a tv show. I saw season 4 episode “On the head of a pin” when my brain was still torpedoed spaghetti mush from the premiere, and it nestled its way deep into my exposed bones, so that when I finally recovered from that, I was a changed person. My god, this transcript is 11,000 words, and I haven’t even finished the Becky section. Which is a good transition.

Oh, Becky. She is an incarnation of how the writers, or at least Kripke, view the fans. Watching season 5 “Sympathy for the Devil” live in 2009 was a whole fucking trip that I as a baby gay was not prepared for. Figuring out my sexuality was a journey that started with the Supernatural fandom and is in some aspects still raging against the dying of the light today. Add to that, this conception of the audience was this, like, personification of the librarian cellist from Juno, but also completely without boundaries, common sense, or shame. It made me wonder about my position in the narrative as a consumer consuming. Is that how Kripke saw me, specifically? Was I like Becky? Did my forays into DeanCasNatural on El Jay dot com make me a fucking loser whose only claim to fame is writing some nasty fanfiction that I’ve since deleted all traces of? Don’t get me wrong, me and my unhinged Casgirl friends loved Becky. I can’t remember if I ever wrote any fanfiction with her in it because I was mostly writing smut, which is extremely Becky coded of me, but I read some and my friends and I would always chat about her when she came up. She was great entertainment value before season 7. But in the eyes of the powers that be, Becky, like the fans themselves, are expendable. First they turned her into a desperate bride wannabe who drugs Sam so that he’ll be with her, then Chuck waves his hand and she disappears. We’re seeing now with regards to Destiel, Cas, and Misha Collins this erasure of them from the narrative. Becky says in season 15 “Atomic Monsters” that the ending Chuck writes is bad because, for one, there’s no Cas, and that’s exactly what’s happening to the text post-finale. It literally makes me insane akin to the throes of mania to think about the layers of this. They literally said, “No Cas = bad” and now Misha isn’t even allowed to talk in his Cassona voice—at least at the time I wrote that—to the detriment of the fans who care about him. It’s the same shit over and over. They introduce something we like, they realise they have no control over how much we like it, and then they pretend they never introduced it in the first place. Season 7, my god. The only reason Gamble brought back Cas was because the ratings were tanking the show. I didn’t even bother watching most of it live, and would just hear from my friends whether Cas was in the episodes or not. And then Sera, dear Sera, had the gall to say it was a Homer’s Odyssey narrative. I’m rusty on Homer aka I’ve never read it but apparently Odysseus goes away, ends up with a wife on an island somewhere, and then comes back to Terabithia like it never happened. How convenient. But since Sera Gamble loves to bury her gays, we can all guess why Cas was written out of the show: Cas being gay is a threat to the toxic heteronormativity spouted by both the show and the characters themselves. In season 15, after Becky gets her life together, has kids, gets married, and starts a business, she is outgrowing the narrative and Chuck kills her. The fans got Destiel Wedding trending on Twitter, and now the creators are acting like he doesn’t exist. New liver, same eagles.

I have to add an adendum: as of this morning, Sunday 11th, don’t ask me what time that is in Americaland, Misha Collins did an online con/Q&A thing and answered a bunch of questions about Cas and Dean, which goes to show that he cannot be silenced. So the narrative wants to be told. It’s continuing well into it’s 16th or 17th season. It’s going to keep happening and they have no recourse to stop it. So fuck you, Supernatural.

I did write the start of a speech about representation but, who the holy hell cares. I also read some disappointing Masters theses that I hope didn’t take them longer to research and write than this episode of a podcast I’m making for funsies took me, considering it’s the same number of pages. Then again I have the last four months and another 8 years of fandom fuelling my obsession, and when I don’t sleep I write, hence the 4,000 words I knocked out in the last 12 hours. 

Some final words. Lyotard defines postmodernism, the age we live in, as an incredulity towards metanarratives. Modernism was obsessed with order and meaning, but postmodernism seeks to disrupt that. Modernists lived within the frame of the narrative of their society, but postmodernists seek to destroy the frame and live within our own self-written contexts. Okay I love postmodernist theory so this has been a real treat for me. Yoghurt, Sam? Postmodernist theory? Could I BE more gay? 

Middleton and Walsh in their analysis of postmodernism claim that biblical faith is grounded in metanarrative, and explore how this intersects with an era that rejects metanarrative. This is one of the fundamental ideas Supernatural is getting at throughout definitely the last season, but other seasons as well. The narratives of Good vs Evil, Michael vs Lucifer, Dean vs Sam, were encoded into the overarching story of the show from season 1, and since then Sam and Dean have sought to break free of them. Sam broke free of John’s narrative, which was the hunting life, and revenge, and this moralistic machismo that they wrapped themselves up in. If they’re killing the evil, then they’re not the evil. That’s the story they told, and the impetus of the show that Sam was sucked back into. But this thread unravelled in later seasons when Dean became friends with Benny and the idea that all supernatural creatures are inherently evil unravelled as well. While they never completely broke free of John’s hold over them, welcoming Jack into their lives meant confronting a bias that had been ingrained in them since Dean was 4 years old and Sam 6 months. In the face of the question, “are all monsters monstrous?” the narrative loosens its control. Even by questioning it, it throws into doubt the overarching narrative of John’s plan, which is usurped at the end of season 2 when they kill Azazel by Dean’s demon deal and a new narrative unfolds. John as author-god is usurped by the actual God in season 4, who has his own narrative that controls the lives of Sam, Dean and Cas. 

Okay like for real, I do actually think the metanarrativity in Supernatural is something that should be studied by someone other than me, unless you wanna pay me for it and then shit yeah. It is extremely cool to introduce a biographical narrative about the fictional narrative it’s in. It’s cool that the characters are constantly calling this narrative into focus by fighting against it, struggling to break free from their textual confines to live a life outside of the external forces that control them. And the thing is? The really real, honest thing? They have. Sam, Dean and Cas have broken free of the narrative that Kripke, Carver, Gamble and Dabb wrote for them. The very fact that the textual confession of love that Cas has for Dean ushered in a resurgence of fans, fandom and activity that has kept the show trending for five months after it ended, is just phenomenal. People have pointed out that fans stopped caring about Game of Thrones as soon as it ended. Despite the hold they had over tv watchers everywhere, their cultural currency has been spent. The opposite is true for Supernatural. Despite how the finale of the show angered and confused people, it gains more momentum every day. More fanworks, more videos, more fics, more art, more ire, more merch is being generated by the fans still. The Supernatural subreddit, which was averaging a few posts a week by season 15, has been incensed by the finale. And yours truly happily traipsed back into the fandom snake pit after 8 years with a smile on my face and a skip in my step ready to pump that dopamine straight into my veins babeeeeeeyyyyy. It’s been WILD. I recently reconnected with one of my mutuals from 2010 and it’s like nothing’s changed. We’re both still unhinged and we both still simp for Supernatural. Even before season 15, I was obsessed with the podcast Ride Or Die, which I started listening to in late 2019, and Supernatural was always in the back of my mind. You just don’t get over your first fandom. Actually, Danny Phantom was my first fandom, and I remember being 12 talking on Danny Phantom forums to people much too old to be the target audience of the show. So I guess that hasn’t left me either. And the fondest memories I have of Supernatural is how the characters have usurped their creators to become mythic, long past the point they were supposed to die a quiet death. The myth weaving that the Supernatural fandom is doing right now is the legacy that will endure. 

References

I got all of these for free from Google Scholar! 

Judith May Fathallah, “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural.” 

James K A Smith, “A Little Story About Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion and Postmodernism Revisited.” 2001.

Cameron Lee, “Agency and Purpose in Narrative Therapy: Questioning the Postmodern Rejection of Metanarrative.” 2004.

Harri Englund and James Leach, “Ethnography and the Meta Narratives of Modernity.” 2000.

https://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/mel-brooks-explains-french-mistake-blazing-saddles-blu-ray/

[your--isgayrights]

F, M, S :?

Hiiii stella i really liked your new fic just so you know okay hello :))

Gonna put my answers to these under the cut because they’re really long ^_^; thank you for sending me an ask for this but also dont feel obligated to read my long winded answers aslkfjfdsf

F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Hmmmm this question is kind of hard because even though I really see myself as someone who likes writing dialogue more than prose, lately most talking I write is like heavily interlaced with like these character actions that are supposed to be indicative of tone, you know? Also I have a lot of dialogue I like that isn’t technically attached to anything yet... uh...

Okay, I like these lines from A Dream in Which Yoo Jonghyuk Plays Mario Kart:

"Kim Dokja." Yoo Jonghyuk says.

"... You're gonna tell me to shut up, right?" Kim Dokja tries to guess from the vast experience he has of this man. "To not worry so much about useless things? To just be here in the moment..."

He trails off on the word moment. His eyes are suddenly far away, clouded with the memory of a destroyed Seoul skyline.

The hand on his shoulder tightens. Just enough to bring him back.

"Eh?" Kim Dokja's eyes refocus, blinking up at a Yoo Jonghyuk who is looking at him in the eye instead of over his shoulder. "Well?" He asks a man whose broad back is now far too sore in the mornings to carry the weight of the world. "Am I right?"

Yoo Jonghyuk does not answer any of the questions that Kim Dokja has posed with a 'yes,' a 'no,' or even a 'shut up.'

He does, however, give his husband a peck on the lips that lasts for just a moment shorter than a dream and conveys the exact same message.

When he pulls away from this kiss, he meets his husband's eyes once more and says five magical words.

"Watch me win Rainbow Road."

Um the thing I’m most proud of here is that I made Yoo Jonghyuk being a gamer anything approaching “romantic.” The “Watch me win Rainbow Road” line is basically the main thing holding this ficlet together as an actual piece of writing akdjfslfjsf. But like I said, a lot of the emotion in the words comes from the deviance from expectation set up around the dialogue rather than the dialogue itself, so I’m not sure if it counts? Fun anyway!

M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?

Hmmm most of my premises I’ve been trying to adapt somehow into my current WIP, like I had this soosang idea that I thought about adapting as some sort of epilogue? It was like about HSY and YSA being childhood friends and the way that HSY wrote passages in her stories differently based on the way she viewed their relationship. But then like... hmm.

I guess Actual premises would include stuff like “AU where Kim Dokja is there when Yoo Jonghyuk regresses,” which I’m always daydreaming about just a little bit because 1. I kind of want to write YJH perspective on KDJ in the early rounds because I think its hilarious how he probably thinks very highly of him actually and thats SO diffferent from how KDJ views how things are happening, and then 2. VERY funny to have KDJ make the choices he makes confidently in timelines where he doesn’t realize YJH knows about him, or like 3. how KDJ would adapt to YJH knowing about him and whether he has back up plans for that.

My only hang up on that premise is that I’m not going to write it because A. It would take WAY too long for me to flesh out that premise in a way that I was happy with because I’m terrible like that and even slice of life relationship stories have to have like 40k long chapters for me to be happy with development. And then B. It’s definitely a premise that’s been used before, and even though I’m usually cool with doing bland premises with my own spin on them, I think that a lot of people already have like... set opinions on what they think this type of au would look like and mine differs a bit and I don’t want to argue with people on the internet, haha.

Anyway since I’m never going to write it, I can tell you that I think that the climax of my AU would probably be all of the KDJs of every timeline some how reviving YJH at the same time across their parallel timelines. It would show the perspectives of KDJs who were briefly mentioned in YJH’s building angst train, even ones where he was an enemy and in fact killed YJH himself, and other ones where he was a deeply trusted comrade, and we would think that the KDJs are doing some part of the scenario until they all do the same thing at once and it’s revealed what the item they were trying to obtain did. It exchanges his own life for that of YJH’s.

YJH in whatever regression he’s in has this moment of being completely saved, where all of these lifetimes where he died peacefully of old age by his companion’s sides come rushing into him, but even though he realizes Kim Dokja is the one responsible, he has no memory of him making it to the end. So he resolves to spend that last lifetime vowing not to die and to save Kim Dokja no matter what when previously he had given into the regressor depression of only trying to save himself.

Also not about fanfic but uh here’s some songs that I daydream orv amvs to sometimes: A Death - An Unkindness, I’m Gonna Win - Rob Cantor, Achilles Come Down - Gang of Youths, Squaring up - Sir Chloe.

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?

Ahhh you know I think I’ve said this before that I really like slow burn and long complicated relationships like childhood friends to enemies to friends and or lovers you know, but I’ve been thinking about it recently and realize that I actually do use a lot of fandom-ey tropes! Like it was pointed out to me that my big WIP is very much based on an AU used in other fandoms, and I realize that I really like writing troupes used in fandom in a way that puts my own twist on it,  you know?

Like this is a bit embarassing, but I think the first fics I ever wrote were definitely from me seeing a specific kind of AU being overused in the fandom and wanting to write that AU from what I viewed as like... THE. RIGHT. WAY. to do it asdlkfjsfasfasf. Like the main emotion that actually gets me writing something down is spite alskfjf. Like sorry allos but I don’t understand why they would have kissed there so heres a 50k+ fic where they gaze longingly at each other for a much much longer time okay thanks.

[elytrafemme]

c!quackity in the cage me outside is actually Not my phone lock or home screen, although it should be - NONO my lock screen is a gif from final waltz and my home screen is c!ranboo art 😭 SO LIKE... HM OK. it's kinda unlikely that somebody will recognize it and if they do it's a Girl What Were YOU Doing At The Devil's Sacrament type scenario but still. You Never Know.

the only good part of me listening to my allo friend talk about her crush (i do not understand you people, genuinely. love is love though <3) is that i know she genuinely dislikes dsmp but her crush's laptop literally is entirely dsmp stickers. like there's dream team fanart and icons of like 15 other ccs. I Know Things Nobody Else Does.

thanks for the advice btw this ^ is literally gonna be me at the party

your lock screen is a GIF??? but fr i respect it my lock screen is a horror ranboo art and my home screen is art of the pebble brain ep album cover <3 and YEAH i think the worst possible outcome would be someone just IMMEDIATELY RECOGNIZING IT

(i love her to death and she also likes dsmp now so it worked out but back in like freshman year the way i met one of my close friends is because she saw my lockscreen which was an edit of a character from a piece of media at the time and she asked me if it was [character's name] and then i sat with her at lunch JHFDHJDF... so maybe its not THAT bad always ?? )

KJDFSHAHJKSDFHJKSADFHKJ STOP THATS SO FUNNY- im obsessed with that like. when will ur friend uncover this information. thats so funny oh my GOD

yeah thats u at the party fr.. we struggling

[allsassnoclass]

i personally also take from other fics/books i've read to write romance because i've also never been in love or in any kind of romantic relationship so. yeah i guess i should just think of writing about sex the same way (though it feels different cause i don't think i'm aro, just haven't experienced this yet. at least that's what i'm hoping)

that's so interesting that you write your characters ace by default? i love that. and i can see it now that you say that. i wish i was the same tbh but i'm the kind of person who unfortunately feels pressured (internally, also subconsciously) to write allo people. and i don't even realize i'm doing it most of the time but it's often when i reread things that i'm like ah yeah i didn't actually want/need this here even if that was just in passing. (i guess that's the part of me that wants to relate to non-ace people. which is stupid but i've had many a crisis over it and is definitely a thing lol)

and sjgvdfh no yeah puzzle pieces michael is so very obviously ace. it's kinda funny that you didn't realize but it also makes total sense i think :') when something is your reality it's easy to forget it's not everyone's.

but i believe in you i'm sure you're gonna ace this fic! (pun totally intended i'm so sorry ksbgd) though i get how frustrating it is. anyway i would offer my help but i would uh. probably be of no help jksbdf but def here to listen to the frustration over it if you need! -taylor🖤

oh i definitely take from other books/fic as well when it comes to the romance department lol. the last time i kissed someone was a full five years ago so any personal experience i have is a little stale so seeing how everyone else writes romance and relationships helps. if you want to be a good writer you should be an active reader, right? but yeah i feel like the way i write romance gets kind of repetitive because I don't really know what else to say about it or what else to compare it to, but at least with fic people don't mind as much because fic in general tends to be really tropey and a little repetitive

I mean I definitely have also written allosexual people (tie me down jalex, vampire mashton, target malum are the ones that immediately come to mind) but because i don't typically write things were sex is overly relevant my characters typically never think of it, even in places where other writers might stick an innuendo or a dirty joke or describe things differently. it's just never something i think to do, thus the majority of my characters could very well be ace! and because the world always needs more ace characters i'm saying now that they are!

aslkdjfs thank you for the pun it would've been a huge missed opportunity if you hadn't said it. and thank you for the offer i will keep it in mind :)

[allisondraste]

Asexuality and Romance

And Solavellan 

Hi, hello, it’s Allison again and this week on “Things I would Very Much Like to See Less Of,” I will be addressing the notion that asexual relationships are less meaningful and/or important, than sexual relationships.  I recently took to twitter with my thoughts on how relationships do not require sex to be considered a romance, citing Solavellan as a specific example.  I was pleased with the supportive responses I received; however, there was a pattern of responses that did bother me just a little.

“It is impossible to imagine Solavellan as asexual because it is too [intimate/ passionate/ deep//romantic/ etcetera} to be asexual.”

Or

“Solas is too flirty and suggestive to be asexual or exist within an asexual relationship”

These comments were well-meaning, and in completely good faith, however, they are ultimately acephobic, as they suggest that people who identify as asexual or who exist somewhere on the asexual spectrum cannot have intimate, passionate, deep, romantic relationships with others, or that they must be prudish saints to be considered ace.  This is not only hurtful.  It’s just wrong. For several reasons! I’m gonna just slip those reasons behind a read more to be mindful of others’ feeds. 

1.) “It is impossible to imagine Solavellan as asexual because it is too [whatever] to be asexual.”

Alarming as it is for some folks, particularly in highly sexualized places such as fandom: Sex is not required for romance.  It simply isn’t.  It is, of course, a related feature that some people enjoy (an enjoyable side benefit, if you will *snerk*).  Relationships without sex can be just as deep and meaningful, just as passionate, just as closely bonded, and just as important as those in which sex is involved.  I understand that it is difficult for allosexual people to comprehend this notion since many conflate sex and romance as one and the same.  I do not refute that sex is a beautiful expression of love, but it is not the only way to do so. To address this point, I would like to refer to a popular theory about love developed by Psychologist Robert Sternberg.  This theory is called the Triarchic Theory of Love, and it explains how intimacy, passion, and commitment interact within an interpersonal relationship to then define that relationship.

Intimacy is a feeling of closeness or bondedness (notably not sexual).  Intimacy is established through sharing experiences and personal knowledge.  It is about trust and connectedness.  Intimacy can be shared between family, friends, and lovers and it manifests across physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental, domains.

Passion is often called attraction or chemistry.  Passion is most in line with what most would consider “sex” and “sexuality,” however, attraction can also take the form of physical, romantic, spiritual, emotional, and any other ways one person may be attracted to another.  

Commitment is a choice, or decision of one person to love another person.

According to Sternberg, relationships experience fluidity of each of these three components depending on the type of relationship between individuals as well as across time and situations.  He developed a triangle to illustrate how these components interact (below).  

While all of the different facets are incredibly interesting, and would be a great topic for discussion in another post, I am particularly interested in two types of “love” here to help me prove my point: Romantic and Consummate.

Romantic love, as I previously discussed, is one that is often misconstrued and thought to be unattainable to those who do not have sex.  Yet, according to Sternberg’s theory, the fundamental components of romance are passion (which may or may not be sexual) and intimacy (which is distinctly not sexual).  Therefore depending upon the members of a relationship, and how they experience attraction and closeness, romantic love does not inherently require sex .

Consummate love is considered the highest form of love, as it is the combination of all three components.  Essentially, it is an enduring romantic relationship.  Adding the commitment piece changes nothing about the lack of need for sex to establish the relationship as romantic.  I enjoy the word “consummate” because the most well known definition is a verb, meaning to solidify a marriage by having sex.  However, in this case it simply means “supreme” or “highest order.” Sex is optional.

I think that anyone who is incapable imagining just how Solavellan might be romantic through the progression of deep intimate conversation and understanding, intellectual and emotional attraction, trust, and closeness must not have a very strong imagination.

2.) “Solas is too flirty and suggestive to be asexual or exist within an asexual relationship”

I suppose the hill I will die on will be the one where I just shout from atop it with my megaphone that people who identify as asexual, ace spectrum, demi, and greysexual are not, by default, prudish.  I know… shocking.  If I had a penny for every time someone made a virginal ace joke I would be wealthy.  Asexual, by definition, simply means that one does not experience sexual attraction.  To be on the ace spectrum means that one does not experience sexual attraction in a common fashion.  While some people on the ace spectrum are sex averse or sex repulsed, this is not true for everyone.  Some ace folks are simply indifferent to sex.  Others still are even positive about sex, but do not experience a desire for it like allosexual people do.

Some ace folks love to consume media about the sexual relationships of others, yet want no part of it themselves.  Many ace folks love dirty jokes and vulgar humor.  In fact, sometimes, you may not even be able to tell that we are, in fact asexual by the way that we interact with others.  The fact that Solas has some suggestive humor, enjoys the power, intrigue, and sex permeating the events at Halamshiral, and the fact that he so passionately kisses his love are no indication that he is allo by default. Even if there was a sex scene, that still does not mean that he is not on the ace spectrum.  (Although I’m really glad that there was not a sex scene because it is very nice for those who are sex averse to not have to see it).  

Sometimes, asexual people end up in love with allosexual people.  Those who aren’t averse, may choose to have sex with their partners because they care about them and know that it is important to them. Allosexual partners of an ace spec person may learn other ways of developing intimacy with their loved one because, you know, they love them.  It’s all very intricate and very specific to each individual relationship and not something that can be swept over with a broad brush.

Perhaps you headcanon Solas as allosexual, and that is totally within your right to do so.  However, to say that he “can’t” be ace spectrum is… a limited perspective.  In my own personal headcanon, I imagine him to be demi, and so he would experience sexual attraction, but only to someone he felt a deep emotional connection with.  I know others still who think he is completely ace, and all of these headcanons are completely possible for Solas (and a lot of other characters actually), considering the heterogeneity of the asexual spectrum.

TL;DR

- Love and romance comprise many complicated facets that are developed in different ways, at different times depending on the people and context.

- Sex is not required for romance to exist, though some romance does involve sex.

- Broad generalizations about the sexuality of a character based upon very limited information are never a good idea.   

- It is narrow-minded to believe that a relationship cannot have as much weight without sex.

- It is incorrect to equate asexuality with prudishness, chastity, etc.

- It is totally okay for everyone to  conceptualize Solavellan as they wish, whether it be asexual or otherwise.

- It is NOT okay to tell ace people that the relationship is not capable of being viewed as asexual or that Solas could not possibly be viewed as asexual.  (Surprise, this shred of possible representation is very important to some people)

- This does not just apply to Solavellan.  If you have any questions, comments, concerns, and/or would like any tips about writing asexual relationships/ characters, please feel free to hmu.  My asks are always open and anons are always available. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, you all have been great. 

[fortunatelyhauntedblackcherry]

Moonshine - A Beetlejuice Fanfiction 05

Warning: Swearing, mention of mental illness, Beetlejuice being smut and creepy... As always.

Ari was sitting on the side of her bed, head in her palms, breathing heavily.

- Either you are telling the truth or I'm going crazy. Or I'm tripping. Even though I don't do drugs. - Beetlejuice rolled his eyes. He was standing before her, with his hands crossed across his chest. His hair was in a light green shade with some light pink streaks in it.

- As I said previously, down in the living room you idiots, on purpose, bought a haunted house. - Ari looked up and nodded sarcastically. He was right, after all. - Seriously, what did you think, that you'll get unicorns?!

- Ghosts! - shouted Ari in a muffled voice. She didn't want her sisters to hear that she was talking to herself... But the hissing and scratching of Minerva before the door surely made a helping white-noise.

- Well I'm the leveled-up version of those suckers. - said Beetlejuice proudly and sat down next to Ari. - You might say I'm the ghost with the most! - the girl chuckled.

- Okay, if you really are the improved version of a ghost... - she shrugged - ...prove it!

- EEEEEH! - out of a sudden Beetlejuice imitated the sound of a siren which made Ari jump a bit. - Can't do that.

- Why?

- I can't interact with the human world. Only ghosts can do that. I can posess electronics and appear as smoke in mirrors, max. - Ari stood up and went to her full-size mirror.

- SHOW MEEEE! - she said in an excited voice. Even though she would really loved to talk to a demon, she thought this action would prove the fact that it's just her consciousness playing games with her and that she had to see a psychiatrist again, but a slightly human-shaped, green-ish white-ish smoke-shape appeared behind her and her lights started twitching.

- Helloouuu... - whispered Beetlejuice into her ear in a funny voice which didn't make her jump at all... No, it actually made her giggle. Beetlejuice raised his eyebrows. That was a first. Someone actually liked his jokes and funny voices. Weird.

- Ohmygodsthisissocool! - Ari was talking very fast and in a very high-pitched voice. She acted like a little girl, excited for her Christmas present. That made Beetlejuice smile. Nobody was that happy for him... Like... Ever. Ari turned around to where the voice came from the last time. - Gee I can't believe I am actually talking to a spectre. What are you doing normally? Just float around the house? Also, most of the time why do you sound like you just swallowed a cheese grater? - she stopped for a moment and continued in a more serious voice. - Also why do I hear you exactly? That bugs me a bit... to be honest.

- First: yeah, mostly I just follow you guys everywhere I can, floating around you. Watching. - he lowered his voice, his lips could almost touch Ari's ear. - I know. Very creepy. - Ari shivered like something just ran across her back. She hated being followed. She had bad experiences with that in the past. She noted to herself that she had to tell this demon not to do that oh so silently. - Second: you can't ask why does somebody sound like that, Karen! - he said sarcastically then went back to normal voice. - Also I'm dead, rotting, lower your expectations to that. Third: I have no idea but it's gonna be so much fun! - now he sounded like a child. He started to run around Ari in circles and clap little claps while he was talking. - It surely is interesting, but eh, who cares, the important thing is that now we can talk properly! And you can answer! And you can sing the songs I request! And react to my lewd comments! And we could have sleepovers and shit since now I can come in! - he changed into a more seductive tone and leaned closer to Ari. - Obviously R rated sleepovers cause I am a very sexual handsome being who you could totally not resist. - the girl blushed a little which made Beetlejuice even more horny than usual. But since he knew he couldn't do anything with her at the moment, he changed back to normal voice. - By the way I like what you did with the room, seeing it for the first time and I am shooketh how many stuff here is relating to the whole being dead thing. Babes, you have a problem. A cherishable, cute problem, but still a problem. - Ari laughed. Very loudly.

No surprise Beetlejuice liked her room. Although she followed her own path, she really liked the whole (kind of mainstream by now) witchy-gothic aesthetic and since horror was her sweet spot since she was a child, she had to decorate her bedroom in a certain way. Starting from the chandelier, which was basically a huge glowing pumpkin with wrought-iron tendrils all over it, the color of the ceiling changed from light orange to a pretty pumpkin colour, then continuing on the walls it slowly turned into a dark coppery reddish-orange. The hardwood floor was fully covered in soft grey carpet with little bats on it. There was a fake bat-skeleton, a fake raven-skeleton and little felted dolls in the form of the three witches from Hocus Pocus hanging from the chandelier. To the right of her door (which, by the way, was painted dark grey and had a "Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc" plaque on it), there was a big, wall-to-wall cabinet painted black with a full-size mirror on the right, and a dressing table in the middle embedded in it. Her makeup brushes and eyeshadows were already scattered around it 'cause she was messy. To the left of her door there was a shelf in the shape of the triple moon, with horror-movie figurines, crystals, Funko Pops and random skulls on it. Around it, family photos. Next to that, in the corner, there was a black, coffin-shaped shoe cabinet with pumpkin-coloured insides and leds in it, and with a sign that said "Dracula" on top of it. On the opposite wall, below the window there was Ari's sewing-corner with 2 sewing machines on the table. On the wall, opposing the wall-to-wall cabinet there was a ram skull, engraved with Edgar Allan Poe's s silhouette, with huge black horns curling backwards. Under it, on the wrought-iron bed there was a blanket with the bride of Frankenstein painted on it, and many pillows. On the two sides of the bed, there were little "nightstands" which were basically cages. One worked as a cat-prison for Minerva, padded with a soft mattress, with a night-lamp grabbed by a zombie hand on top of it. The other held Ari's favourite books, and had a little altar on it for her "weird witchcraftsy shit", as Rei said many times before. In front of the bed there was a black chest, filled with random pieces of fabric and patterns for clothes, the top of it covered in soft black and white striped velvet. Next to that, there were 2 Paris dolls, one on each side.

- Thanks, I am the breathing, living version of Halloween. - she sat down before her dressing table, looking directly into the mirror so she could see the shape of the demon again. - And... Yeah, please stop the creeping around. At least when you come into a room where I'm at, just whistle or something so I could know that you're there. - she turned around, facing the middle of the room and blinked sweetly. - Please? - Beetlejuice sighed with resignation. He couldn't say no to those pretty, living eyes.

- If your pets even let me near you, then okay. Your stupid cat always hisses at me and won't let me come into your room... I mean I could float above her but I'm legitimately afraid for my afterlife around her, it's weird, I don't get it either. And your actually scary dog... I'm not even sure that's a dog, that looks like a wolf, so yeah, that mongrel almost ripped my arm off last week! You have to convience them that I'm not trying to hurt you! -  begged Beetlejuice. - I could only come up with you now cause I was faster than those suckers. - Ari stood up and went to the door where Minerva was still scratching the door into pieces.

- You know in many ancient cultures, dogs and cats were considered as guardians of the underworld or bodyguards for their owners against demons. For example in the Aztec religion, dogs were associated with Xolotl, the god of death. Or in Egypt cats were used as protectors against evil spirits.

- Thanks for the history lesson, miss-know-it-all. - said Beetlejuice sarcastically with a snort. Ari rolled her eyes.

- So I suppose they can see you, right?

- Yeah... I thought I'd use them to get you guys' attention but... - he stretched his arms out in Ari's direction. - ...I have you!

Ari smiled. She was still not sure he was not malevolent like those spirits from The Conjuring, but he didn't feel like someone with a super evil plan going down.

- You know maybe they just love me and want to protect me. - she sat back on her chair. - You know, Sirius is a tamascan, a guarddog, a wolf-type. He looks like he could rip you in half but actually he's a sweetheart. Yeah, his teeth are sharp as needles but he only uses them to chew up his toys. - Ari shrugged. - He doesn't even know how enormous he is. He looks very fierce and heisty but mostly he just sits on people's laps. - Beetlejuice floated right next to the girl again. He was so close Ari could feel that icy coldness on her skin again.

- You should sit on MY lap. - he said in an arousing voice. Ari looked the way the voice came from.

- Shut up. - she said in a sharp voice. BJ rolled his eyes and went a bit further. - Minerva would totally kill you though. She should be a very social breed, but she basically hates everybody and wants to kill everything that moves. So yeah, beware of the claws. They hurt more than you can imagine. - Ari held up one of her hands with a huge scratchmark on it. Beetlejuice chuckled.

- I don't feel pain.

- Oh you'd feel that, trust me!

Ari looked at her clock. It was almost 2 in the afternoon.

- Oh shit, man, I gotta go to work. First day, I can't be late. - she went to her bed and started to pack her sheet music rapidly into a red bag. Beetlejuice walked up to her and with hope in his eyes and fully green hair, he asked:

- Before you go... Can't you... Say my name 3 times? - Ari looked at his way with a raised eyebrow.

- Why do you want me to do that?

- Cause that would lift me out of this weird alternate state and I could roam earth while being seen! Now I can't leave this house but once being summoned, I could! And I haven't been out since literal decades! - he sounded so desperate. - Please don't make me beg... I will... I just... Okay you know what, I'm begging. - he threw himself on his knees and tried to grab Ari's trousers, but his hands went right through them. - I'm just so sick and tired of being invisible! - Ari made a weird little sound of shock.

- I don't even know your name, and you seriously think I would let you roam free? I just met ya...

- PLEASE! JUST DO IT!!! I WOULD DO ANYTHING, SCARE ANYONE, JUST PLEASE SAY IT! I SWEAR I'LL LEAVE SOON AFTER!!! - he was nearly crying, his hair started to turn into fully purple. Ari was thinking about her options. She could either let a wild entity roam free, or have someone murder her father or one of her exes and then just leave. That sounded good.

- That's a flattering offer so... Kay, what's your name then?

Beetlejuice stuttered.

- I... - he sighed. - I can't say it. - he said with total hopelessness in his voice and tears in his eyes. He sounded so miserable. Ari squatted down to him. She didn't even know, but she was looking straight into Beetlejuice's eyes. Her warm smile made him feel a bit better, but he was still miserable.

- Then how could I help you, Bug? - he stayed silent. That nickname actually sounded cute. - Yeah, I heard you munching on them. So let's stick with that name until I find out why do I hear you and what is your actual name, shall we? - she would've just pat his head if she could see him. He sounded so alone. She knew exactly how that felt.

- Kay. - said BJ in a repressed voice as he viped his tears and nose in his jacket. Ari wrinkled her nose at his direction, snapped up her bag and headed for the door. Beetlejuice got up quickly and floated before her, if nothing would've happened. - Wait, what am I supposed to do while you're gone? - Ari shrugged her shoulders.

- I don't know, haunt my sisters' electronics? Find out if they can interact with you too? - there was no answer so she just waved goodbye. - I'll be back at 11-ish. - and with that, she went to work.

But Beetlejuice was still there. He rubbed his hands maniacally and talked to himself in a very evil, raspy way.

- Oh I would love to do that. Of course, I might have to get a little... Mean... I might have to get a little... Nasty... But if you want me to act like a demon... Then I'll be a demon 😈

[ask-asexual-crystal-gems]

“because it’s hot”

See previous: beating the heat is better done other ways. This is not a reason. Pale and light loose clothing that blocks the sun heating up your skin directly is the best physics-approved way of staying cool.

“swimsuits”

See also: one pieces are more functional swimsuits.

Yes some people use swimsuits to tan, I guess, but even that circles back to what they consider for themselves to be more physically appealing (sexually appealing) and add in that they’re basically harming themselves to do so.

I really don’t understand why Pride can’t follow the Anthrocon example and maintain some spaces for more hardcore stuff and general space for general things. Address both.

“You can be asexual and not have hangups about bodies”

No shit, non-repulsed asexuals exist? I had no idea!!

Whether you’re the repulsed kind of ace or not does not determine your aceness. You are correct. Doesn’t really support your point.

Repulsed aces are just as valid as any other kind of ace.

I compare it often to texture and sensory issues, because they have a lot in common. They are both dismissed because they’re not “normal.” Because they should just “get over it.”

(seeing someone with a lot of skin can induce a kind of physical sensation in yourself, a feeling of exposure like you’re experiencing it on behalf of them. Even seeing people hug can remind you of negative experiences when touch-repulsion wasn’t respected. Being close to someone with no clothes, especially in a crowd, can make you feel cornered, hunched. For some people, this is very much not just a slightly irritating mental preference, but pretty much a physical, basal thing.)

In my case, kissing is very much a texture issue whether or not I’m the one doing it. Likewise, just seeing a bad-texture food can make some autistic people queasy.

It’s hard to get the majority of people who don’t experience strong repulsion to understand the sensations involved. Just like it’s hard to get average people to understand how certain neurodivergences make life difficult.

Usually this just results in that type of asexuals staying away from Pride.

Which, plenty of people are perfectly fine with. (Especially the ace-exclusionists). I don’t feel particularly compelled to be there. But, I think of all the otherwise extroverted repulsed aces, who do consider themselves queer, who feel left out.

And ofc I’m usually charitable and give the benefit of the doubt, that some allo people probably experience things like this as well. They just don’t have the perspective to express it because they think it’s normal.

As I recall, conservatives in particular tend to score higher in one of the Big Five inherent personality traits: disgust. This is disgust about anything, not just sexuality.

Always remember, some people experience the world in a fundamentally different way than you do.

So when someone says the word “uncomfortable” to me, which is the exact same language many aces use, unless I know them well, I try to stay mindful that it could be they fall into this camp.

trying to make tortured comparisons about it bearing totally superficial resemblance to other kinds of minority issues doesn’t really hold much water.

Terming it “hangups” is like lowkey prude shaming, so just gonna ignore that entirely. Perfectly cis het allo people don’t like seeing perfectly cis het allo people do certain things either:

Let’s take a hypothetical scenario. You and 7 other friends are hanging out. One pair starts Frenching and dry humping on the couch. Others express discomfort. Do you (a) take it somewhere else or stop or (b) declare that discomfort is their problem?

In certain contexts, this behavior is considered fine. Wild house parties. In others, like a dinner party, it isn’t.

Now, which is Pride more like? Friends getting together for a hangout, or a public holiday? Or a large party where children wouldn’t be allowed? Idk, you debate that among yourselves. Either way, considerateness of other peoples’ feelings is a basic part of living in a society and not, you know, being a hermit (or a rabid individualist bent on beating your chest against all forms of collectivism)

You totally discarded the more serious political angle (“if we already had housing rights secured”) so dunno if you just got lost on the way to addressing all my points or what.

I’m reading The Deviants War: The Homosexual vs The United States of America and the entire point of gay pride as a concept comes from police raids on bars, clubs, public restrooms, etc where gays were humiliated and outed in the newspapers (sometimes with their addresses!) and had careers ruined and lives upended by being associated with perversion and vice squads and all that and they responded by going “no I’m proud” and took that pride to the streets in defiance of the huge mechanism of shame that existed to oppress the gay community into obscurity and so the fact that people are now trying to apply conservative dogma to pride parades to make them “safe for children” or in other words “safe for people with oppressive conservative values” is simply insane

[stregacorvina]

Bidibi Bodibi Bu! - Part 1

Bentornati! Eccoci di nuovo con l’inizio di un “nuovo” progetto (scroll down for English text)

Questa volta vi mostrerò come ho realizzato il cosplay della Fata Madrina di Cenerentola, la Fata Smemorina, per una signora simpaticissima che l’ha indossato in occasione del Lucca Comics & Games appena passato.

- Step 1: Studio del personaggio

Il personaggio non ha sicuramente bisogno di presentazioni, credo che un pò tutti conoscano la storia di Cenerentola e della sua fata Madrina alquanto pasticciona. Ammetto che Cenerentola non è sicuramente uno dei miei film Disney preferiti ma realizzare questo costume è stato un vero e proprio ritorno all’infanzia!

Per prima cosa, d’accordo con la cliente, abbiamo valutato quale tipo di tessuto sarebbe stato meglio utilizzare dovendolo portare ad una fiera all’aperto come il Lucca Comics. Alla fine abbiamo optato per un cotone ad armatura a nido d’ape di medio peso per la mantellina e la gonna e un cotone spigato azzurro (nella foto sembra bianco) per la maglia, mentre le maniche sono state foderate con un semplice cotone leggero rosa. Per il fiocco invece ho usato un raso elasticizzato fuxia che avevo appena acquistato per un altro cosplay realizzato in contemporanea (che vi mostrerò prossimamente)

Studiando il modello ho deciso di realizzare l’abito in due parti: mantellina con cappuccio e maniche foderate chiusa con il fiocco sul collo e un abito dalla vita molto alta realizzato con i due cotoni azzurri. Dopo aver realizzato il cartamodello su misura per la cliente sono passata alla fase del

- Step 2: taglio

Per prima cosa ho tagliato il corpetto azzurro dal cotone spigato che si componeva di quattro parti: davanti, dietro e le due maniche a tre quarti (ho fatto scegliere alla cliente come le preferisse visto che non si vedono mai)

Ho realizzato un corpetto con un’ampia pence davanti per via del seno abbondante che ho trasformato in arricciatura nel punto vita per lasciare al modello le linee fluide che caratterizzano la fata e ho lasciato aperti circa 15 cm sulla schiena per poter indossare l’abito senza inserire una cerniera.

Poi sono passata alla mantellina, realizzata in un pezzo unico per il corpo, le due maniche molto svasate foderate con il cotone rosa e il caratteristico cappuccio a punta.

Nella parte rimanente in basso ho tagliato una striscia di tessuto che sarebbe diventata la gonna dell’abito.

Ed ecco tutte le parti tagliate pronte per essere assemblate!

Non sembra ma ha un bel po di pezzi! Ora posso passare allo

- Step 3: Assemblaggio

Ho iniziato spillando insieme tutti i vari pezzi per passarli poi comodamente sotto la macchina e verificare già se mi fossi dimenticata qualcosa, sono partita dal corpetto azzurro e ho chiusto prima i fianchi poi i bordi per la scollatura. 

In questo periodo purtroppo la mia tagliacuci mi stava dando qualche problema di taglio e infatti le rifiniture interne non sono venute precisissime come volevo la prima volta e quindi non ho fatto nessuna foto interna (poi l’ ho portata a riparare e appena me l’hanno riconsegnata le ho rifatte tutte perche sono pignolissima)

Dopo aver finito il corpetto sono passata alla mantellina e per prima cosa ho fatto il fiocco (visto che avevo già tagliato anche l’altro cosplay per cui avevo preso il tessuto)

Ed ecco la prima bozza della mantellina assemblata (devo dire che mi ha dato l’idea di fare una piccola linea di mantelle ispirate alle principesse Disney, ma prima di svilupparla devo organizzare le altre mille idee che ho in mente di fare ahaha)

Per il momento il cappuccio era pronto ma doveva ancora essere cucito allo scollo, perciò sono passata a realizzare le maniche da doppiare con il cotone rosa.

Dopo averle realizzate singolarmente le ho attaccate alla mantellina un paio alla volta

Dopo aver accoppiato il paio celeste con le fodere rosa ho cucito a mano la parte alta della manica sulla mantellina per lasciare le cuciture all’interno.

Nel prossimo post vi mostrerò il proseguimento della mantellina e dell’abito! A presto

Chiara (StregaCorvina)

Welcome back! Here we are with another project! This time let’s talk about a cosplay made some times ago: the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella! The client is a very nice and funny woman and it was a pleasure working with her, I made this dress for this Lucca Comics & Games.

- Step 1: Studying the character

The character is well-known to anyone, I think she is the most funny part of Cinderella movie (yes, I am not a huge Cinderella fan ahaha)

First of all I discussed with the client the kind of fabrics she wanted for the dress, as Lucca Comics is an outside convention so the dress need to be suitable for the November air.

We decided for some eavy cotton, light blue for the dress in two shades for the cape and the skirt and for the top, and pink light cotton for the lining of the sleeves. I used a fucsia satin for the ribbon as I was using the same fabric for another dress those days.

I decided to make the costume composed by: a dress with an empire waist (light blue top and blue skirt) and the cape with pointed hood closed by the ribbon. After drawing the pattern according to my client’s measures I started the

- Step 2: Cutting out the fabrics

I started with the bodice cotton first and I cut the four parts: front, back and sleeves, also the borders for the necklines. I asked the client to choose the lenght of the sleeves as she likes because they are alway hidden in the movie.

The pattern has a big dart on the front as the client has a big breast but on fabric I trasformed the dart in gathering on the wast line because I liked the bodice without cuts on the front. I also made a 15 cms opening on the back to wear the dress because I didin’t like the zipper on this kind of style.

Then I made the cape, making only one-piece pattern for the front and the back, the bell-shaped sleeves and the pointed hood. I used the last part of the fabric to cut the skirt.

Here we are with all the parts ready to be assembled! It’s an easy pattern but with a lot of pieces!

- Step 3: Assembling

I started pinning together all the pieces to go straight on the sewing machine. I started with the bodice but in this first part I skipped all the interior sewings as my serger machine wasn’t cutting very well (after the checking with the store I made them and closed the dress before the due date obviously)

After the bodice I made the ribbon for the cape, as in those days I was working on another cosplahy with the same fabric (I’ll show it to you later on)

The cape was taking shape! I just had to sew the hood and the sleeves. This cape give me the idea to start making a Disney princess inspired-cape line but I also have thousand of ideas in mind that I want to make....

Now it was time for the sleeves, I made first the light blue ones and attached them to the cape, then the pink cotton ones to make the lining. I sewn by hand the top part of the sleeves to leave all the seams inside.

This is all for today, in the next post I’ll show you the last parts of the construction.

See ya!

Chiara (StregaCorvina)

[nighttimefjaeril]

Jaaaaae! I wanted to send an ask for the ship thing! But Houmei and Jyoan got taken hahaha sooo...pick your second favourite ship! ♡ [[Also I hope you're having a great day today!]]

Hello darling, first of all, sorry for taking it so long >

So, since you gave me the option of choosing the ship it took me a while to decide: that’s because, besides the obvious nr.1 (aka Houmei/Jyoan), I love my other favorite ships pretty equally: Koumyou/Ukoku, Houmei/Toudai and Ukoku/Kami-sama (yes, lots of Koumyou/Houmei and Ukoku in there unsurprisingly :’D)

I’m not gonna tackle the last one as I know it’s a no-no couple for you my friend ;) As for the others… I was gonna do Koumyou/Ukoku at first, ‘cause I did the previous one with Houmei already and wanted to use his “mature” form this time: but then, after talking to @amadriel and @kimagattinanera about it, I’ve decided to go with Koumyou/Goudai instead, as it’s a less popular ship that needs more love :3 This way I can still use Koumyou over Houmei, and well, Momo-chan is still Momo-chan, despite some more years on his back and less hair on the top of his head ;) xD

Who said “I love you” first

Oooh again, this isn’t so immediate to reply, because I don’t think that they would say these types of things to each other often; they’re definitely the kind of couple that lets actions speak louder than words. Also, Goudai would definitely react all flustered upon hearing such passionate declarations :‘3 Koumyou knows this well, so he tries to tone it down a bit. But still, it was definitely Koumyou the one who said it first, because hadn’t he been the one to be honest with his feelings first I’m not sure that they would’ve ended up together in the end :’) Momo is incredibly shy when it comes to these things and it’s hard for him to express his feelings, so he needs someone like Koumyou to take the first big step and allo him to open his heart to him.

Who would have the other’s picture as their phone background

Goudai would have a nice picture of him and Koumyou, taken on a vacation, where the two are standing together in front of a marvelous view with a drink in their hand, all smiling and happy; it took him forever to decide which one to use because half of these had Koumyou making silly faces, the other half had Goudai  closing his eyes or looking too serious and grim (he’s not good at putting on a fake smile for pictures): finally they were able to take one where they were acting natural and comfortable, probably aided by a few drinks ;) As for Koumyou, he used to have an old picture of him and Momo during training days as his backround, Genkai probably took it; but after a while he replaced it with a picture of baby Kouryuu of course ;) He takes tons so he keeps changing it every month pretty much hehe~

Who leaves notes written in fog on the bathroom mirror

Ah, this is pretty much mirrors the one I previously wrote: it’s always Koumyou who writes and draws random stuff on the bathroom mirror (he doesn’t draw butts and dicks anymore though… maybe :’) ). Goudai sees it, finds it cute for a second before getting mad at him, but instead of cleaning it himself he has Koumyou do it, hoping this way that he will learn his lesson… someday. ; D

Who buys the other cheesy gifts

Similarly to the Houmei/Jyoan one, Koumyou still cherishes the habit of finding the tackiest, most useless trashy knick-knacks as a joke-gift for his partner :’D Of course, a second serious gift would follow, but Koumyou just can’t say no to bad taste for laughs :’D Goudai would just shake his head and scold Koumyou for the money he has wasted on such a piece of tat, but he would still keep all of his gifts somewhere hidden, where the eye can’t see… :3

Who initiated the first kiss

Again, there could be so many different ways that this could have happened…as much as I love fantasizing about Toudai, his shirt open and pecs in sight, holding the beautiful damsel Houmei in his strong, muscular arms, kissing him passionately in the moonlight (lol), I’m pretty sure that Koumyou had to take the first step and initiate the kiss, otherwise if it was up to Momo-chan they would have waited for the rest of their lives :’) That or he would’ve teased and torment him so much to the point where he left him no other choice but to kiss him… poor Momo ;) But yeah, Koumyou had to be the driving force for their romance, in a way or another.

Who kisses the other awake in the morning

Goudai as an attempt to waking up Koumyou: first he starts by hook, kissing him gently and whispering sweet words to his ear, then by crook by shaking him and yelling at him :’D In the end, when he’s finally awoken, they may indulge in a more or less extended cuddle session, depending on how much time they have left before getting their day started (and that only depends on how long it takes for Koumyou to wake up ;) )

Who starts tickle fights

Erm… I don’t think that Koumyou would ever dare attempting that :’) Let’s face it, if he tried to tickle Goudai he would end up severely crushed(perhaps he did try once back in the training days and from that day forward has never made anymore attempts :p ) so he knows that he would be better off not poking the bear :’D However, I could picture Goudai tickling him Koumyou as a means to take revenge on him for some wrongdoing (he tries not to show it, but he’s extremely ticklish), or again, as an attempt to wake him up on time in the morning :‘3

Who asks who if they can join the other in the shower

Hmmm… probably Koumyou, which depending on the subtext the invite may either entail either sexytimes in the shower or just an extended relaxing bath time for Goudai, who’s always in a hurry and never takes his time to enjoy the finer things in life, at least according to Koumyou: he doesn’t it like the “pampering sessions” all that much as we all know that Goudai is a spartan man, but if he gets to focus on Koumyou instead of himself - helping him washing his long hair, washing his back etc., it’s something that he would definitely take pleasure in doing (especially if ends up leading to sexytimes heheh~)

Who surprises the other in the middle of the day at work with lunch

I can imagine both knowing their way around their kitchen; Goudai is probably the best cook of the two, but Koumyou is the one that gets more adventurous with his food and always tries out different dishes and combinations of flavors, so I could picture him surprising Goudai in the middle of training his students with some interesting-looking dish (by interesting I mean weird and/or gross) that surprisingly ends up being delicious.

Who was nervous and shy on the first date

That would be Momo, that goes without saying :‘3 He’s just not very comfortable with the idea of dating, or better: he’s not comfortable with all the unavoidable clichés that dates usually entail: the small talk, the flirting, the desperate attempts at making a good impression and all that jazz… for this reason, Houmei tried to make things appear a bit more informal for him, but as soon as Toudai realized that what they were having was not a normal night-out with a friend but an actual date, he literally went “oh crap!” and got tense all of the sudden xD Good thing that Houmei managed to save the situation with a skilled recovery, and everything went smooth after that… but needless to say, things between them have never been the same from that day forward :‘3

Who kills/takes out the spiders

This one also mirror my previous ship post: it’s Koumyou who forces Goudai to take care of bugs and spiders by acting over-the-top terrified on purpose because he’s a lazy piece of shit that pushes the dirty work onto others:’D He definitely has a talent for that, and of course Goudai knows it’s all an act, but puts up with it anyways ‘cause he’s top notch husband material :3

Who loudly proclaims their love when they’re drunk

Hmmm well I can’t really imagine Goudai ever getting drunk; sure, he enjoys his alcohol, but always in moderation. Koumyou, on the other hand can hold his alcohol pretty well, perhaps even better than his partner, but would end up going overboard from time to time :‘3 And it’s during those times that he would get… more affectionate than usual, a bit more flirtatious and even a bit frisky perhaps x°D Because of that he would proclaim his love and lust for Goudai loudly and proudly, embarassing poor Momo into oblivion and probably not really setting up the mood for later unfortunately… x°D But as drunk!Koumyou would probably end up falling asleep anyways as soon as he reaches the mattress, I guess it really doesn’t matter in the end, does it? :3

So yeah, that’s all folks! I think in the end I made the right choice ;) I’ve had so much fun coming up with these, usually my other fave takes the spotlight so this was a great chance for me to express my love for this amazing pairing! And thank you so much my dearest Nimo for offering me the chance to tackle it, hope you’re gonna enjoy reading my Koumyou/Goudai headcanons, and sorry if some replies are a bit similar to the previous ship post I made, but after all it’s still Koumyou/Houmei we’re talking about so… ;)

[luisaaronopez]

Our story begins in the real world. In a small town where big criminals strike fear into small homeless people, there lived a man and his daughter. They lived a poor life but the father is always there to protect his child. The girls mother died from a dreadful illness and she needed a mother figure. So the man married again. He had a second wife and had a second child with her. The two girls played together and grew close. But the family was poor, they felt like they're gonna catch the drradful illness next. Suddenly a man in a skull mask appears and offers the girls father a job as a fighter and he'll get a hefty fee for his success. The father accepted. Over the years, the girls father fought to earn the money to keep his family healthy. Then he grew old, he started to have heart problems. The leader of the skulled masked people decided to put the man out of his misery and told him his final challenge is in the cave. One of his servants couldn't bear to watch an old man die in such a cave. So the servant fired the old man so he can go home to his family alive. Now the family grows poor again. Now in her late teens, the mans first daughter decided to take his place to fight. The eldest daughter fought her way to keep her family alive, but after a week passed she vanished. The family are starting to worry about her and they grew poor once again. The girls mother had one option. She told her husband that she found a job that requires two people but sadly they have to work all day. The father hesitated but he had no choice. While the parents are at work they had their youngest daughter being looked after by her grandpa. Then the next day, the girls grandpa died in his sleep. The youngest daughter found a note near his bed. "Dear Mi, I wish to be cremated. I don't want you and your parents to spend too much for a funeral. Its for the best. Love your grandpa Yu" Mi started to cry and she said to her grandpas body in bed. "I love you too grandpa." They finally cremated Yu's body, Mi was holding the box with his ashes. Then Mi gently placed them onto the grass. The next day, Mi woke up, she looked at her phone to see what time she has, she whispered "*Yawn* I'm still early. Well, gotta get some breakfast change into cute clothes and I'll be on my way." She made pancakes for brrakfast, then she quickly changed into a collared shirt and white shorts, she also put on her sandals. She looked in the mirror, she said to herself. "Yup, I'm ready to go!" She ran out the door, but stopped "Oh wait, I forgot to double lock the door." She opened the door and locked it on the top lock and she used the key to lock the bottom. Mi smiled "Okay, now I'm off." Mi ran as fast as she can but she has to remember that she's wearing sandals. Mi looked at the map to her phone and she is at the red dot of where she's supposed to go. She looked around but she is standing near a beach, she was confused "No, this can't be it. I thought Medieval Island was here. I woke up at five in the morning for nothing!" Then she saw something shiny it caught her eye. She walked closer to it, picked it up and said "Wow, I never seen a rock smooth and shiny like this." Then the rock started glowing more, Mi was startled that she dropped, but it started to float in midair. Then the rock went nuts, it shot a beam at Mi. When the bolt touched Mi, she got teleported somewhere else. Mi was sent to another dimension. Mi felt flat on her face and grunted in pain "Owie!" As Mi got up, she heard a voice shout "Allo!" Mi looked around, it called to her again "Allo young lady!" Mi looked forward and she saw a bearded man sitting at a desk in the middle of darkness. The man just kept on smiling. The man said to Mi "Don't worry miss, I won't bite." Mi walked over to the desk and told the man "Excuse me sir, can you tell me where I am and where can I find Medieval Island?" The man chuckled "You mean Magical Island and we're beneath it." Mi looked all around again. The man felt sorry for her and said "I am General Mitch. But you can call me General Mitch. You must be here to register yes?" Mi told Mitch what happened to her sister "I am here because of my older sister. Her name is Aki." General Mitch gasped "She's your sister? Aww, now that you mention it, she told me so much about you and your struggling family. I hope things will get better for you and your family." Mi smiled "Thanks General Mitch." Mitch corrected her "Actually you can call me Mitch." Then Mitch grabbed a pen for her to sign but he told Mi "Hold on for a sec." He got out a blank piece of paper and scribbled on it to see if the pen still had ink, but nothing came out. Mitch opened his drawers and did the same thing over and over until he finally got a pen with ink. Mitch's hair is messed up and his cap fell from his head after the madness. Mitch calmed down and told Mi "Okay, you need to sign here, here, here, here, here, especially here, and don't forget here and don't sign there. All right you're all set." Mitch grabbed all the papers and made them all disappear. Mi was astonished and said "Wow! Are you a magician?" Mitch chuckled "I don't know, I'm just a general. You can now explore Magical Island." A door opened behind Mitch. Mi was hesitant to go ahead, but Mitch reassured her "Don't worry, you'll be fine. Oh and speaking of which, you need to blend in." Mi looks down at her clothes and says "What's wrong with the way I'm dressed." Mitch answered her "Nothing, you need to look more...MAGICAL. Here catch this." Mitch tossed Mi the same smooth shiny rock from earlier and Mi recognized it. Ad she touched it, she began to transform into a more formal outfit. Mi looked at herself and gasped for joy "OMG! Thank you Mitch." Mitch smiled at her but then suddenly frowned as the door closed. Mi saw this and wanted to ask what was wrong. The door closed on her, Mi just stood there thinking. "Why did he look so sad all of a sudden?"

[no-psi-nan]

Okay I love when the community engages with posts so I'm gonna share some of the reactions (and my reactions to their reactions lol).

I love this thought about whether Asou was trying to sneak in as much queerness and I def wish we could just ask him about it lol. There IS a lot of fun representation in the show so it would be great to be able to thank him for it too!

Ok this comment almost killed me fucking dead LOL. Yeah, you're right, I don't think that sort of thing would be romantic material for almost anyone. XD XD Whatever is going on there, Saiki needs to go to jail over it a little bit at least lol.

I think that's a good point about Saiki setting up Satou with Hii. Personally, I read it as almost a high romantic sacrifice where he let Satou be with the girl who makes him happy, which also allows the girl to live a normal and happy life (very Cyrano de Bergerac) but I can totes see how other people would read it other ways. I've probably just read too much French literature XD XD (some of the stuff I've read... haunts me)

But Saiki's obsession with Satou could be more like a celebrity crush, where you wouldn't reasonably expect them to interact with you but if they ever did... 👀! I think that's my preferred interpretation personally. It still doesn't seem platonic though XD

Ok this is great feedback from the aroace community, thank you! Now obvs I hope you haven't been mean to anyone over this, but I think this is a super valid discomfort to have.

However, I do want to point out that the aromantic and asexual spectrum is broad enough that there can be many different experiences, and they may not all align with yours.

Someone who identified as grayromantic pointed out that they always thought they were aroace until they met One Particular Person, and suddenly got hit with the romance bug for them only. To a reader who's only being shown the romantic part, it would SEEM allo because they're missing the context of all the other hundreds and hundreds of people who inspired no interest at all.

Also many aroaces, by definition, haven't experienced romantic attraction, so when writing it they depend on tropes primarily developed by allos, which may not read as "authentic". And the other way around, there may certainly be allos trying to write grey/demi attraction and just not doing it quite right because they haven't been there.

It wouldn't be right to bash on the creator in any of these cases, but it is certainly natural and fine to not want to engage with that particular piece and just hit the back button or scroll away. And if you've got a little time + energy, create content that DOES align with your lived experience, which could help fellow aroaces identify themselves and help allos be better allies.

Okay, you know what? I personally agree that canon points towards Saiki being some flavor of aro and some flavor of ace.

But we cannot say that Saiki is canonically aroace when Satou is literally right there.

I can't claim to know what's going on in Saiki's head there, but he's clearly got some sort of crush on Satou.

And let's be real... Considering that Saiki watches Satou literally use the bathroom and is super happy about it, that crush is definitely NOT platonic lol.

He basically tries to lay himself out on a silver platter in front of the whole dang school to try to become besties with Satou. And we know that Saiki seems to think that romance is a level beyond besties due to how he reacts during the Chiyo confession chapter (which points to him being demiromantic imo).

I know it hurts to not have representation and it's super valid to headcanon characters any way you like. But I see a lot of bashing on people who ship Saiki because he's "canonically aroace" when it's simply not true.

Let's save that energy for creating the explicitly aroace content you want to see and for supporting creators who purposefully create aroace characters and narratives.

[allisondraste]

hi there! i noticed in a post a while back, you mentioned you were asexual. i think i might also be ace, but i’m not sure. my biggest fear right now is relationships. i’m worried about people not understanding me and not wanting to date me bc of it or it complicating relationships. i’m also worried that i might not be ace and just demi and then it’ll feel like i’ve lied to my partner or something. i know this probably seems stupid, but i’m pretty young and was hoping you might have some advice?

Hey there, anon!  This is in no way stupid at all, and I’m so glad you reached out because I have absolutely been in your shoes.  It wasn’t even that long ago.  I’ve been ace for as long as I can remember, but I did not even learn it was an identity thing until my early 20s.  I was always really scared of dating because in my mind, there are expectations that tend to come along with dating.  I was afraid that my partners would find out I was ace and then dump me.  I also spent a brief period of time identifying as demisexual because it was easier to “justify” to my partners (which demisexuality is categorized as part of the ace spectrum, so if you’re demi, you can still say you’re ace.)   It’s all really hard to figure out, and I was fortunate to meet some really cool ace people on the internet that helped me work through it.  So, now I’m gonna share the stuff that helped me the most with you, and with anyone else who may need to see it. 

1. Asexuality is a spectrum, which means there are a lot of different ways people who identify as ace experience sexuality and the lack thereof.  You don’t have to meet some special criteria to identify as ace.  If you feel like you’re ace, then you probably are. 

2. It’s normal to question it though.  We live in a society that places a lot of emphasis on sex and on sexuality, and so a lot of ace people go through the process of wondering if there is something hormonally or medically wrong with them, wondering if it’s because they’ve not had a lot of experience, wondering if they’re just “broken”

3. You’re not broken, and there is nothing wrong with you that needs to be fixed.  Don’t let anyone - friends, partners, family, doctors, anyone - make you think that you are.  If you’re ace, anything they would do to “fix it” is not going to work anyway. 

4. You are deserving of a happy, healthy, romantic relationship if you desire one, and anyone who tells you otherwise is mean and full of crap. 

5. Dating IS scary, and it may be that it’s easier to date other ace spec folks and that’s okay. Lots of ace people date allo people too, and have happy, healthy romantic relationships.  There are so many other ways of creating intimacy, so the important piece is having clear communication, establishing trust, and respecting boundaries (which is really no different than any other relationship!). 

6. With that being said, it’s important to have clear boundaries, and to never let someone guilt, coerce, or manipulate you into believing those boundaries are “bad.” Anyone who cares about you will not pressure you into anything that makes you feel uncomfortable.  

7. Not everyone who is ace is sex-repulsed (and even sex-repulsed ace people don’t feel that way all the time).  Some ace people are indifferent. Others *like* sex.  Oh, and it can fluxuate over time!

8. It’s okay to not know for sure.  It’s okay to think you’re ace now, and later decide that demi suits you better, or to decide that you’re not ace spec at all.  It’s okay to explore this aspect of yourself, experiment and learn.  You don’t have to know right away. 

9. YOU BELONG IN THE LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY.  Asexual people have always been in LGBTQ+ safe spaces and exclusionary rhetoric is a new thing made up by gatekeepers who have entirely too much time on their hands. 

I really hope this helps.  If you or anyone else wants to chat about it, my DMs and inbox are always open, and anon is always on.