#but even if we go as low as a 5 year age if bobby's still alive as a full ass human | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

vessel-full-of-stories · 1 year ago

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I’ve done a couple of character breakdowns in the past – to varying degrees – covering Buck, Eddie, Maddie, Chris, and Abby. I also went into detail about their personal love languages and how they have influenced their relationships / evolved over time.

Now it’s Bobby’s turn.

This will not be like my regular breakdown in the sense that I have so much to say that I cannot bring myself to put it all into one post. (Even this one got super long, I'm so sorry.) Instead, I will be breaking it up over several posts because it’s not just Bobby I want to talk about. It’s his relationship with Buck and the supposed “father-son” relationship the show has attempted to establish. (And my frustration with it.) To do this properly, it takes evidence. And evidence takes time to dissect. So I’ll post it in shorter (ha), easier to digest chunks. Hopefully, it’s all legible.

So let’s start from the beginning.

It’s the first season. The introduction. Individual wants, personal struggles, and character dynamics are established (minus Eddie because he’s still in Texas) to get us, the audience, to come back and continue to watch their growth and development.

At the start of the series, Season 1 Episode 1, Robert Wade Nash has been Captain at the 118 for roughly 18 months (a year and a half). 5 years previous, a fire he blames himself for killed 148 people, including his wife and two children, Marcy, Bobby Jr, and Brook. We are told Brook would have been 13 years old in Season 2, so she was 6 or 7 when she died, Bobby Jr around the same age range (both preteens).

In the time between the fire and joining the 118, Bobby was not a Captain. He was a broken, guilt-ridden alcoholic – attempting to drink himself to death – on forced leave after the Deputy Chief covered for him (saving him from 148 counts of manslaughter). It’s likely he took pity on Bobby. He knows how hard the job is, admits to knowing a number of firefighters that are alcoholics. He could want to keep it low because he doesn’t want it to look bad on the department. He could also sympathize because this all started when, another 5 years previous to the fire (roughly 11 ½ years before Episode 1), Bobby broke his back on the job. And that’s what started everything.

That was his first introduction to highly addictive painkillers, which he often took with alcohol to heighten their effect. It was something that put strain on his marriage, his life, his duties as a father and a firefighter. His children were toddlers when it all started, which might add to his fatherly projections onto others and his struggles with the idea of fatherhood. It’s not just about how he lost his children, but how he treated them while they were alive.

He went to rehab for years but just 10 months before the fire (after 4-5 years of struggling), he fell again. He hurt his back again, and was prescribed pain killers again. This time, when he ran out of pills, he would look for anything and “everything” to replace it, an assortment of drugs being added on top of everything he struggled with before.

His wife, Marcy, knew (and his son, but not to the same extent. He could just see something was wrong.) but didn’t know how bad it truly was. She tried to love him through it. To remind him of how he was missing family moments every time he disappeared. She’d beg him to stay when he would insist on going on his “walks.” He never got to earn his wife’s forgiveness when she finally confronted him about it. The last words he heard from his kids were them begging him for help. His last words to his wife was him begging her not to go. He had to lie to her that the kids were safe, just so she could die peacefully, and when she assured him she never lost faith that he would save them, he finally broke, understanding just how thoroughly he had destroyed everything.

One night at a bar, while reviewing the incident report of the fire, he’s finally close enough to death that he imagines he’s back with his family. He cooks a wonderful meal for them, listens to his kids play, kisses his wife, and they all gather for dinner. Everything he used to skip. Before the alcohol can take him, he’s revived and all he has is hatred and resentment in his eyes for the paramedics and the Deputy Chief who cover for him, once again.

When he goes through rehab this time, things are different. His perspective has changed, and Step 8 takes on a new meaning. Instead of just making a list of the people he’s harmed to make amends with them, he buys a pocket book with exactly 148 slots to fill.

Now, Bobby is a deeply religious man. He prays, goes to confessions, and knows the consequences of suicide within his religion. However, he feels this is the only way to clear his ledger. He thinks he can make this deal with God, and earn this one wish. At just 6 months sober, he begs the Deputy Chief to take him off desk duty. He wants to be out in the field and start filling in the slots as soon as he can. He is determined and energized, with his sole focus being his eventual death so he can finally see his family again. It’s what he wants more than anything.

The Deputy Chief hesitates, straightforward about absolutely no one in the area trusting him to have their backs. So, Bobby suggests a transfer. Anywhere, just let him work so he can “balance the books,” and “attone” for the 148 lives he took “in his own way.” He agrees. 6 months later, Bobby finds himself in California, leading the 118. It’s a hell of a culture shock and it definitely takes him a minute to adjust, but he does. And he likes it. But, there lies the problem.

In the joy of his first calls at the 118, he punishes himself by lying to his old sponsor, going to the bar, and having a drink, breaking his 1 year sobriety. Confiding in a local priest, Bobby argues that he doesn’t deserve good days anymore, that he doesn’t get to forget and just go on living. It’s the priest who tells him that if he wants to help people, he needs to take his 1 year chip and earn it back.

He keeps working and restarts his sobriety. He goes to church often, talking with his priest who knows everything about Bobby’s situation and doesn’t judge, just listens and even jokes with him. He tells him about Freddie (the future season 2 bomber) calling him a liar. The priest tells him he is a hypocritical liar who lies a lot, according to Bobby’s own admission. And they laugh. Then, he asks about how honest he is with his team. While Bobby feels like his baggage would cause them to lose faith in him, the priest tells him he doesn’t have to tell them everything about his past for him to show them who he is.

So, he shows them the man he dreamed of being to his family. By cooking. He is friendly and present and a good leader, and when he’s finally honed his “rusty” cooking skills enough, he establishes the station’s tradition of family dinner. The station becomes a bright place with real unity and familial bonds, even if Bobby still keeps to himself as he fills in his book. By Bobby’s one year sobriety, Buck joins the station and 6 months after that, the show begins.

Because of everything that happened in his past, Season 1 sets up with Bobby having lost:

1) his personal connection with God/ his religion,

2) his will to live beyond repaying his debt, and

3) his desire to make deep, emotional connections with other people

These are what he is set to overcome in 10 episodes (crazy, I know) but they are not one and done. That is not how life works. Struggles/insecurities/relapses can come back and we will go into how they do in later seasons, but for now, let’s focus on Season 1.

Because he is progressing in so many ways throughout the season, it’s kind of hard to break down one thing without seeing how the other two are also influencing it. So, let’s take this episode by episode. (Again, so sorry.)

1x01:

The show starts right off the back with Bobby trying to talk a woman off a ledge. It’s a powerful reflection of Bobby’s current mindset because not only is he still like her, he is willing to admit to his own suicidal ideations if it means she will not jump. Something he will not even admit to his team at the time. He’s so determined to get this woman down, he doesn’t hesitate to empathize and relate to this deeply personal emotion they share.

She unfortunately falls, and he is not able to add her as #40 to the number of lives he’s saved. He goes to his weekly confession to talk about her and everything else, only to find a younger priest there, the elder having retired. This means everything he confided in the elder, he will have to reconfess to the youth.

It’s a subtle detail but I think it’s important to point out that we don’t really see Bobby talk to God, he talks to the priests. We hear him talk about praying, but we don’t actually see it till later. I think that adds to the disconnect with how he has lost that personal connection with his deity.

We get our introduction to Buck (after Bobby mentions drugs or a sex addiction as coping mechanisms for people in their field). Bobby has to confront him about misusing the fire trucks, claiming to “like” him, though it doesn’t seem sincere. Buck apparently used to call him “Pops.” They even went to a Springsteene concert together, something pushed by Buck because Bobby has no desire to develop relationships with his team outside of work.

If you remember the flashback of Buck’s first day at the 118 with Bobby teasing him and him thinking he finally knew where he belonged, I have to wonder what happened in the 6 months between then and this first episode. Yes, Buck is naive and a bit of a hothead. Yes, Buck is inexperienced, but his whole heart is in this job.

We see in a later episode that he has no real connection with his roommates. He is a probie and, the way Hen and Chim talk about him, they’re not exactly friends. Then, with Bobby probably rejecting his attempts to establish a mentor/father-figure relationship (seeing as Buck’s real father f**king sucks), he is clearly lonely! He has no family with Maddie being trapped by Doug and his parents being absolute dicks. He has no friends inside or outside the firehouse. Everyone on the team thinks he’s an idiot or will get them killed. I can easily see how Buck fell into a string of sex with women just to get some positive attention.

Bobby tells Chim he thinks Buck just needs direction but does he tell Buck that? Nope. He told Buck that this is not a family and that he just used 1 of his 3 strikes before he’s out. It is painfully obvious how little Bobby actually interacted with his children if he thought that was going to work on a grown man with the mental capacity of a needy teenager. He needs guidance! Not an ultimatum!

To be fair, he does try to guide him a bit after that. He can see how Buck shows genuine care for the newborn they save, and he teaches him the rule of not going past the glass doors. Of letting their patients go. But, then Buck takes advantage of the 3 strike rule and Bobby goes into a full rant that is only half about Buck (I’ll get into his projection when I cover season 3) and fires him with an “I’m sorry, kid. You’re done.” The first time we hear Bobby call anyone “kid” on the show and it very much reflects how Bobby sees him. A kid.

It’s Hen (the real MVP) that shows him any spec of kindness. After listening to him admit things were his fault and that he lacks discipline, it’s her who gets him his second chance. By chance. He just so happened to be the only one from the station available. But she still thought of him.

After a shootout that involved saving both Athena and a child’s life, plus owning up to being a punk, Bobby ends the conversation on “Go get dressed,” and Buck is officially unfired. Happy Pilot Episode.

1x02:

The rollercoaster episode. Buck was an immature ass for exactly one episode, and then this happened. It starts off great with Buck and Bobby clearly at a new level of understanding. Buck is pumped with, “Daredevil hero stuff is what I signed up for,” and Bobby saying, “Good.” He can see that it is part of what drives Buck, so he uses it. Then, Buck doesn’t save the man. He falls, and Buck loses his first victim.

Bobby is trying not to get too involved, determined to keep that emotional barrier between him and the team. He says nothing as Chim tries to get Buck to brush it off with a “one night stand” metaphor. Athena joins them for lunch and Bobby indirectly delegates her to try, which she does with the symbolism of their uniforms. Buck even looks directly at Bobby after he asks if anyone else still sees the person when they close their eyes, and he says nothing. Then, the bell rings and Bobby notices how Buck doesn’t jump up like everyone else. “Coming, kid?” It’s different from the first time he called Buck “kid.” I’m not saying it means anything because Bobby does call other people “kid” in later seasons, but I think it could also signal the blurring lines between mentor and father figure in his head.

Buck is fine all shift until they answer a call of a window washer dangling from his line. Bobby can see Buck is nervous when faced with another fall-risk victim, and allows him to go to the roof instead. This is what gets Bobby to finally step in himself.

He approaches Buck in the locker room, which is our first example of Bobby displaying his major love language (did you think I forgot?) Quality Time.

Hear me out. These love languages aren’t perfect boxes that fit every action a person performs, but I think I can argue this one fairly well, and I’m gonna jump around a bit.

When Bobby was with his wife and kids, a show of the lack of love he was providing to them was how absent he was. When he was around, he would sit on the toilet, half-asleep as they brushed their teeth, just to be in the same room as them before tucking them in for bed. When he hallucinated being with them, he was cooking for them or sitting at the table, always talking with them. Now, that’s important because I initially thought of cooking as an act of service.

However, it wasn’t about the food. It was about being present, somewhere they can see and talk to him until they could all sit down around a table and enjoy a meal together. That carried into how he treats the 118, even if he says they are not a family. It was obviously a lie (that he takes back in 1x03 haha).

It's not just about the cooking and meals, either. Bobby could be in his office when he does his paperwork, but we often see him doing it in the loft, right where everyone can see him. It’s about being present.

When he is suspended in Season 2, he doesn’t turn any of his team away even as he’s busy trying to plan his wedding. He proposes to Athena early into their relationship with the idea that no one knows how much time they have left. A major fight he’s had with Athena is the idea of their retirement and spending time together. When his team is struggling, he will often go and just talk to them, let them rant and be vulnerable around him. He shows up when they are hurt and checks in with them to make sure they’re ok.

It's about being there for them, more than anything. Being present. Spending his Quality Time with them.

So, back to Buck. After the call, Bobby approaches him and listens. Buck tells him about quitting his pursuit for the Navy Seals because he didn’t want to turn off his emotions to get a job done. He wants his feelings because he genuinely loves helping people.

That confession might have been what put that first cracks in the wall Bobby built between him and the team. Finally, he's vulnerable. With Buck.

He tells him in vivid, undeniable detail exactly who his first victim lost was: her age, everything she was wearing, how her toenails were painted, the scene of the accident, and her last words. Showing just how much it stuck with him, like Buck is struggling with now. He tells him he’s glad he can’t turn off his emotions, “I don’t want you to. It’s not gonna make you a better firefighter.” And tells him anyone who says they are not affected after losing someone is a liar.

He must see the stubborn mindset Buck is set in, so he offers him a card for the department’s therapist that just so happened to be in his pocket. He knew it would come to this. “You don’t have to talk to me,” it is an offer, an open door, “but you do have to talk to someone.” Don’t let this stop you from being you. And he leaves.

With yet another man teetering on a ledge, this time on purpose, Bobby doesn’t let Buck back out of doing what he’s good at. “Buck, you’ve got this.” And he does. After the save, Buck’s confidence is back and he thanks Bobby for pushing him. Bobby praises him for bouncing back and saving a man’s life. “You did good, kid.” That’s twice in one episode. Thrice in the first two episodes of the series. They were clearly setting things up for them to share a father-son relationship.

1x03:

When I said cooking is about being around everyone and being in the conversation? Yeah, that includes the ones he wasn’t a part of. Bobby can’t help but comment when Chim and Hen are discussing his failed proposal to Tatianna.

There’s already some tension there with Chim feeling like Bobby passes over him to do “the fun stuff.” He mentions The Maneuver last episode (Chim offered after Buck initially declined, but Bobby made Buck do to gain his confidence back) or scaling down the cliffside at the beginning of this one. In this context, he's framing it as him wanting these grand rescues so he doesn't have to make up stories to impress his girlfriend, even though it's obviously more.

Bobby claims that Tatianna is manipulating him by only being interested in the illusion, and Chim is believing it. He talks about the lack of honesty their relationship was built on. Chim turns around to call Bobby out for keeping secrets, too. To say how judgy he is, even when he shuts down every time anyone else tries to ask about him. How none of them know anything about his personal life after 18 months.

After storming out from their fight, Chimney gets into an accident. I think it’s sweet that Captain Serrano of the 122 recognized him and called Bobby personally, not letting anyone else touch him. He knew they’d want to be the ones to care for such a severe injury on one of their own. That they’d do everything they could to save him.

Bobby knew his allergies and stayed right by his side the entire time, talking to him. He even tried to convince him not to see himself, but relented when Chim asked. He calls Chim the smartest guy on his team, the one he would be consulting with in this situation. Showing how much he does value him.

They’re stopped from following for not being “family,” and Bobby tries to ration it as them stopping at the door like always. When he learns that Chim survived surgery, Bobby is determined to make things right. He confronts Tatianna. Tells her how the department is a “brotherhood” and calls Chimney his friend, that it’s not about love, it’s about “decency.” Tatianna makes good points about the flaws in his perspective. Although it’s rough, she’s not wrong for refusing to go sit by his bed and hold his hand. To pretend.

Bobby tries one last time, and his stubbornness is revealed to be for his own personal reasons. He confesses that all he can do for Chim is pray and get people he will fight for to be by his side. When she refuses, and Hen fails to get ahold of his parents, he sits there with his team. Talking to him and joking, even if they only have two minutes before they’re kicked out. He tosses away exactly what he told Buck two episodes ago, holds Chim’s hand, and says “His family’s right here.” Yet another major crack in the wall between him and the people around him.

1x04:

AKA The heartbreak trifecta/ Bobby breaks. This episode hits all three of Bobby’s buttons. Bobby is on #46 of his list, and Buck is determined to figure out what it means. Hen warns him against prying, as she already tried just 3 months into knowing him, but Buck doesn’t listen. (Hen even mentions Bobby “popping”/punching him for snooping. Buck clearly doesn’t believe that, even after he retreated from Bobby’s charge in their rooftop confrontation in 1x01.) Not only does Buck tell Bobby he’s already seen what’s inside the book, knowing it’s a list of people he saved, but he also counted the spaces! And asks Bobby directly why there are exactly 148! (Jesus. Buck. My love.)

Bobby had absolutely no right to assault Buck by throwing and pinning him against the wall, and I will stand by that. Yes, it was an invasion of privacy but Bobby isn’t exactly subtle with his book. He was sitting in the loft, in the corner, staring at it/reading it silently. That doesn’t exactly scream that it’s something so secretive that it’s never to be seen by another mortal’s eyes. Truly, it was still an absolute invasion of privacy, but that level of backlash was uncalled for. To physically grab him by the collar (when he clearly doesn’t know why the book is such a big deal, obviously, because Bobby won’t tell anyone) and swing him around to pin him against the wall and growl at him. I just… It really wouldn’t bother me as much if we at least saw/ heard some allusion to an apology sometime afterwards. But whatever. Because that whole thing gets interrupted by a plane crash.

This is a disaster more than most of them have ever witnessed before – especially Buck – and Bobby is quick, yet not unkind in the way he tells him to keep moving past the bodies on the shore. There's too many other people that need them.

On the plane, Bobby refuses to abandon a trapped mother who just convinced her son to leave her behind. I don't want to say it's a parallel, but Buck is the one who carries the boy away, leaving their parents behind.

He essentially makes a suicide pact with her, promising not to leave, and it’s Buck who comes to the rescue. His pseudo-son, who knows he’s “a terrible listener” after disobeying orders to leave him. Who is scared as hell. He comes up with a plan to save them both, begging Bobby to trust him before he's pushed away by the rising waters. He’s screaming Bobby’s name the whole time they’re under. He clearly cares for him so much, even after their fight.

Bobby isn’t focused on that, though. The plan works and the two of them are safe. However, the mother and child's reunion consumes him, triggering his love for his own wife and son, their love for each other, and how he failed them. It’s all there when Hen comments that the save must “make you feel pretty good,” and he just says, “Yeah.” No.

He breaks his 546 (545 1/2) day sobriety, dreaming of talking to his kids as he cooks. It’s all he wants, to be back with them. He’s too hungover to wake up for work, so Hen and Buck go to check his apartment. Buck is ready to break down the door, he’s so worried, and he’s surprised Hen has an emergency key. (Obviously, no one has trusted him with one before. And he had no one to trust one with. Yet.)

After they find him passed out on the bed, drag him into the tub, and wake him up with a shower, he fails to convince either of them that he's fine. Refuses to absorb Hen's sage advice. And Buck, being Buck, approaches it in the most Buck way possible.

See, Buck grew up with Maddie, someone who loves him dearly and someone he could always go to. Buck went all around the country and to Peru, learning every kind of job out there. He’s still a probie, fresh out of the academy. Basically, Buck has been in a constant state of learning for years because he's constantly jumping around and trying new things. He seeks new information out, meaning he's asking others or the Internet for help. To teach him. And here is his mentor – who even Chim described as “someone who thinks he’s right all the time” – struggling to just ask.

He's setting out four plates for an empty apartment. Saying he’s fine. Trying to make jokes out of their attempt to get through to him. Of course! Buck! Is just like! “Maybe ask for help once in a while?” Because OF COURSE it’s that simple. No, it really, truly is. And still it is so, so difficult at the same time. But Bobby does it. He says, “Help.” Another crack in that wall and a big one. He breaks down crying, letting them hug him and tell him it’s alright as he apologizes. All he needs to do is ask, and they'll be there.

1x05:

The final crack in the wall, and it’s not what you might think. It’s not another moment of soul-crushing sadness on his chest that finally drives Bobby to really be himself around his team. To open up and show just how much baggage he’s carrying around. IT’S BUCK AND HEN. (Sorry, Chim, you're still in recovery. But you did help.) More accurately, it’s Hen's headstrong compassion that challenges Bobby's behavior and the bright, loveable joy Buck brings just by being him. It’s love and warmth that finally gets to him. Because he loves them back.

The episode starts heavy. Hell, the whole episode is heavy. It starts with the top floor of a building collapsing during a wedding celebration. It turns out the extra floor wasn’t built following proper guidelines in order to cut corners and save money, damning it to eventually collapse. This triggers Bobby as the building he and his family lived in was also “a deathtrap,” a number of things (like the materials of the building and a disconnected sprinkler system) partially to blame for the level of tragedy that occurred that night.

After suffering a relapse just a day ago, his emotions overwhelm him and he lashes out at the landlord. Hen has to pull him off of the man and when he turns his rage to her, he tells her to “Back off.” She tries to remind him he asked for help, but he shoves off her arm and storms away.

Things are frosty between them after that. They would have moved past it, I know, but seeing as Hen didn't pry about the book, I don't know if they would have talked about it again. They might have just moved on. Go back to how things were before. But then, they get a call to a carwash.

A poor man got caught by one of the large brushes, hoses wrapping around him as he spins uncontrollably. And it's all caught on camera, much to Buck's delight. He cracks up laughing, drawing the attention of Hen and Bobby. And when they see the video, Buck’s cackling overpowers their professionalism and they burst into laughter, too.

That bit of humanity was enough to melt the ice between Bobby and Hen. It's just like his first day again, where he's having fun with his team. Where he has a good day. Hen even says she's never seen him laugh like that. It’s because he wouldn't let himself.

Now, he did. He has people around him who care about him, and he can admit to caring about them back. He tells Hen that she, Chim, and Buck have become that important to him, after trying so hard to shut everyone out. To never be hurt that deeply again.

"Let us in, Bobby." And he agrees. He introduces himself to all of them over a meal. (Obviously.) Finally, he wants something more than just his old family.

1x06:

Valentine's Day. I think a deeply underrated Bobby and Buck moment is not the two of them casually debating the holiday as a scam vs a valid occasion to celebrate the one you love, but how Bobby brings up his wife himself. He talks about loving Valentine's day since he was 8. How after he met his wife, it was wonderful to share the day with someone. It’s already so personal and (unlike last time Buck pried) when Buck asks if Bobby misses his wife on the holiday, he says, “I miss her every day, Buck. Miss her every day.”

He’s grown mentally and emotionally since opening up to his team. Chim returns to work and Bobby calls him “the heart of the firehouse,” claiming it “hasn’t been the same” without him. They’ve become closer since their fight and Bobby isn’t afraid to show that he cares. And it’s not just him.

Buck is getting ready for his date and Bobby is literally tying his freaking tie. Let me remind you that Buck is not really a dating guy. He traveled all over, not exactly looking for long term relationships. His isolation sent him into an episode of sex addiction, sure, but he still loved that he didn’t need to contact the women afterwards. I can’t say what he might have been like in middle or high school, but we can probably assume this is his first real, adult date. And Bobby is tying his tie. If that is not the most father-coded sh**, I don’t know what is. And it doesn’t stop there!

Buck tells him how he's afraid of messing things up. They discuss sex vs intimacy, and Bobby gives him the advice to try getting to know her first, without sex. He wishes him luck “keeping it in your pants” and Buck LAUGHS. It’s cute. They’re bonding. You can tell how happy it makes Buck in the split second before it cuts to the next scene.

When the date turns sideways (well, Buck does, because he loses consciousness) and Buck gets hospitalized because of bread, Bobby shows up to the hospital. We know from season 3 that Bobby is Buck’s emergency contact, but it clearly started sooner, likely because there was simply no one else that would need to be informed that he’d be missing work.

Buck is unconscious when he arrives, Abby sitting at his side, and although Bobby offers to take over watching him, they decide to keep each other company. They talk and it's nice. Eventually, Bobby invites her to get coffee as they leave the room together.

(Now, this was probably to comfort her, but I’m gonna give my personal crack theory for a second and say I really think the writers were gonna potentially set Bobby and Abby up before the actress decided to leave the show. Their ages matched. The whole camera work of his first sight/introduction of her walking into the fire station for Chimney’s party. Him leaving Buck in the hospital bed to take her to coffee. It even makes sense that they spent more time developing Buck and Bobby's relationship than anyone else's so that it would make a bigger conflict when the love triangle began... Idk. Again, crack theory. I’m not saying they would have been endgame. But just that first look. Weird vibes. Anyways.)

1x07:

The father-son duo have a blast together. I feel like later seasons don’t break the team apart as much as they did in season 1. We get all kinds of match ups with just two or three characters teaming up together on calls and we get to see them interact with each other in new ways. It’s fun.

It’s the full moon and everyone’s going nuts. Bobby listens as Buck incorrectly quotes the correlation of the moon, gravity, and crazy people as “science," then calls him out affectionately.

When multiple pregnant women doing yoga happen to go into labor at the same time, Buck delivers his first baby. Bobby guides his through it, maintaining that mentor role, and is calm and assuring, smiling, telling him “good job.”

It’s a team effort and they work well together. With the ridiculousness of it all, Buck asks if he still thinks the full moon thing is a myth, to which Bobby says, “Yes, and I still think you’re an idiot.” There is banter there where it used to only be correction or borderline tolerance.

Then, we find out just how uncomfortable Bobby is with worms (in this case tapeworms) as one crawls out of a man, and Buck gets to tease him for it. We get Bobby curious as to Buck’s knowledge of them, and he talks about bartending in South America. It’s a hilariously slow removal process that Bobby cringes at till the very end. So wholesome.

1x08:

It's Chimney’s turn to push Bobby forward. Where Hen and Buck helped him reconnect with people, Chim helps him see the value in life, especially his own. (And we get Bobby calling Buck “kid” #3 at the beginning of the episode. Back to Chim.)

Now, Hen and Chim are closer in age to Bobby than Buck, and they were at the 118 before Bobby, so it makes his relationship to them less fatherly and more of a deep friendship. One that was truly established with Chim this episode.

Chimney is giving back after his life saving surgery by holding a blood drive (to “balance himself out with the universe,” just like Bobby is), and everyone at the station has donated except for one. Their captain. While there is the fun joke of learning Bobby has an intense phobia of needles, it leads to him getting a call from the doctor about his blood results. Without any additional information, everyone assumes it’s not good news.

He confides in his priest, telling him he’s only on #62 in his book. How he fears he won’t get to balance everything before he dies, and, therefore, his soul won’t be at peace. He won’t get his wish.

Chim, feeling guilty for making him give the donation in the first place, goes with him to the doctor and learns about Bobby’s “golden arm.” A rare blood type that could save any of the 4 thousand babies born with Rhesus disease every year. While Chim sees it as ironic, Bobby sees it as God punishing him.

Chimney teases him about the whole thing, bringing up medals of honor and saving kids. But Bobby breaks, screaming “They’re the wrong kids! I want my kids.” Listening to Bobby, he finds out about his deal with God and exactly how he wants things to end. It's devastating.

It’s also probably the only time Chim has managed to keep a secret. He's so focused on helping him, there's no time to fester on the knowledge. He calls Bobby to the hospital without elaborating just to make sure he’d show up. Then, he shows him exactly what his donations can do.

Seeing it makes his actions real. Proves that he is helping real people, with real lives, and real problems that only he can fix. He doesn’t dismiss the fact that Bobby wants to see his kids, telling him he truly believes he will see them again. Just not yet. “They’re your kids, too.”

From Chim's point of view, Bobby's golden arm is not a punishment. It's God is teasing him by making him have to deal with needles every 8 weeks for the rest of his life. This not only disrupts Bobby's plans to take his own life, but challenges his perspective of God’s plan for him and how he is viewed.

“Considering who I work with, [God] must figure I can take a joke.” He hugs Chim and the two of them watch the parents enjoy their healthy newborn in front of them. Definitely a top tier Chim episode.

1x09:

Not a ton happens Bobby-wise. We have a wonderful allusion to Bobby knowing Buck’s personal life by knowing he had a date on his morning off. Some more Quality Time as he listens to Buck’s thoughts about Abby’s situation and his personal bias against it. Then, he offers some heartfelt truths about relationships and baggage, and how someone’s personal life is not a trap to be pulled out of but a space for someone to step inside to keep them company. (Kinda like what the team did for him.)

Then, Buck gets hit in the face with a window-bowlingball-boobytrap and Bobby calls up to ask if he’s ok. That’s it.

1x10:

The finale. With his suicidal ideation crushed by his new role as a baby savior, his connection with God readjusting itself, and his team showing him he can have deep, meaningful connections with people, Bobby makes himself a profile on a dating site.

The way Chim and Hen immediately zero in on his suspicious behavior and just dive into his laptop is hilarious, a complete 180 from when his book was snooped in. He’s comfortable around them and lets them and Buck scroll through the page.

Hen tells him how great she thinks it is and he confesses to not thinking dating websites are for him, that he's uncomfortable with something so unfamiliar and feels like a probie. The whole thing was only recommended by his sponsor (Wendell).

Buck and Chim tease him mercilessly and he defends most of it, one again calling Buck an idiot when he says “ember” instead of “amber” which, again, is more affectionate than anything else.

I will say that I hate the writing choice that even after hearing how much Buck gushes about Abby, and the team admitting he’s in the healthiest relationship out of all of them, NO ONE believes him after this random woman ASSAULTS him for allegedly ghosting her. They don’t even stop her as she walks away. They are best friends with a fu**ing cop for god’s sake, no one’s gonna say anything? Ugh.

Once again, it is a familial call that triggers Bobby and this one nearly sends him into a panic attack. The man was in a motorcycle accident on his way home to show off his new bike to his son. Bobby dials and holds the phone so the man can use his final moments to talk to him as if nothing were wrong and tell him he loves him.

Athena sees him struggling and offers to help anyway she can. Which Bobby accepts, asking her to go somewhere with him. Church. He talks about how he uses the church to confess and keep himself out of trouble, to pray, forgive, and forget. They talk about how the job has influenced their personal lives, and how exhausting it can all be, yet “still so damn fun.” Finally, he asks her to pray with him, strengthening the connection between them as well as their connection with their deity. It’s nice that they can relate on so many lifestyle choices.

Chim once again shows their friendship level by mentioning “game night” (as in watching a sports game) so casually that it can be inferred as an established/common get together. But Bobby says he has a date.

Chim immediately takes interest and stays a little longer just to tease him and help him with his outfit. (Their mannerisms are distinctly different from how he and Buck interacted. Showing a different, yet equally important relationship.) It ends with Bobby stating “once you get out of your own way, you start to see everything and everyone in a different light,” and throwing away his book.

He’s ready to move on with his life, with his team, and now with Athena, too.

....

DONE!

I just want you to know I will not be doing episode by episode breakdowns like this for the rest of the seasons. I only did it because the whole first season really establishes Bobby’s character (and it’s only 10 episodes long).

Now, I can kinda skim over the seasons and talk in reference, especially because I already went through his whole background. I can focus on the big parts that really shift and challenge him, his relationships, and the show.

If you made it all the way to the end, I hope you liked it. More will come eventually. I am not fast, but it will happen. Thanks for reading.

#911 fox #911 on fox #911 abc #bobby nash breakdown #bobby nash #evan buck buckley #henrietta wilson #chimney han #athena grant #911 season 1 #i had to do half of this post over again because it didnt save my changes the first time #i hope whoever reads it at least finds it interesting. i know its a lot oh my god. the other ones will not be like this #i tried #i also only have 10 image slots so some of the episodes dont have any screenshots. sorry.

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watermelonlipstick · 4 years ago

Text

Dreams, Chapter 4

If you haven’t read this series before, you might want to start on Chapter 1, or check out the Dreams Masterlist! Here’s the series description:

When Dean dies for good leaving Sam and his girlfriend (the reader) behind, they must figure out how to carry on without him. Alone, reeling, and unsure what to do next, trying to honor Dean’s memory and follow their hearts gets even more complicated when their nightmares become dreams that feel a little too real.

If you have been reading this series....things are going to start happening....

Title: Dreams, Chapter 4

Pairing: (past) Dean Winchester x Reader, (eventual) Sam Winchester x Reader

Word Count: 3773

Summary: For Sam and the reader, a winter night working together leads to an uncomfortable confrontation and a confusing dream.

Warnings: angst, fluff?, alcohol, swearing, slow burn, I think that’s it!

The tree was still up a few days later when you were throwing together sandwiches. It was a gloomy afternoon, stealing from the already meager offering of sunlight you got each day, but at least you could see the Christmas lights as you worked in the little kitchen and listened to Me Talk Pretty One Day. Brushing crumbs off your hands, you ducked your head into the bedroom to tell Sam lunch was ready.

He was sitting on the bed with his legs crossed under him, looking surprisingly young with his long limbs folded. He glanced over at you briefly with a noncommittal nod before turning his gaze back to the wall. You walked into the room when you understood; following his eyes to the photos where you’d taped them up. Toeing off each of your boots, you climbed onto the mattress with him and gently put your arm around his broad shoulders. “He would’ve loved this,” Sam murmured, and it was almost too low for you to hear.

“Which part?” you asked, trying to match his tone.

“This cabin, the bar, Christmas.”

“I think you’re right.”

You looked over at the pictures, a tight row intentionally placed a little too low so you could see them as you fell asleep. Sam tilted his head to rest on yours.

“We had a lot of fun though, didn’t we?”

You considered the memories and the heat coming off of him under your cold fingers. “Yeah, we did.” After a beat you opened your mouth again. “Getting that tree was fun.”

Sam pulled back and you looked up at him. A sad smirk was tugging at the corner of his mouth. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”

You curved your head back into him. “Dean would’ve liked that too.” He was silent for a moment.

“There’s no way he would’ve worked at the bar and not made every night a party.”

He was right. Even just passing through, bars like the one you worked at were Dean’s favorite—no frills, honest people, décor not so nice it couldn’t tolerate some spills in the name of a good time. In the right mood Dean would’ve been everyone’s best friend in an hour, taking shots with the owners and playing pool with anyone who had a spare minute.

You sat upright and tucked your hair behind your ears. “Okay, then tonight’ll be a party.”

Sam looked at you in surprise. “Uh, what?”

“You heard me. Tonight, we’re doing tequila shots and dancing on tables and talking to people longer than to take their orders.”

“It’s a Monday.”

“Wouldn’t have stopped Dean. Now come eat this sandwich I slaved over, you’re a lightweight on an empty stomach.”

Sam’s smile was tired, but he obediently untangled his legs and got off the bed to head to the kitchen. You padded after him, letting a deep breath out through your nose. Dean would be so pissed if he saw you weren’t being strong for Sammy, just a little tougher, come on. By the time Sam sat down at the tiny breakfast bar to eat, you’d screwed your face back together.

In some ways, it was better that you’d had this sudden change of heart on a Monday, when there weren’t so many customers to watch you crumble if it came to that. You had a propensity for being a sad drunk even in the best circumstances, and this first time truly drinking around people since losing Dean was about the worst circumstance as you could imagine.

A few shots in Sam’s cheeks were flushed and you could feel the heat in yours as you sucked hard on a lime wedge. He was pretending to know about some football controversy with the over-shoulder towel that was ever present when he worked, his legs crossed and accentuating the long, relaxed line of his body. It was an especially cold night and condensation clouded the windows of the bar where hot air met the freezing glass. You watched as a woman about your age—you were pretty sure her name was Megan but had only served her a handful of times—traced lazy shapes in it before replacing the moisture with a hot breath and starting over. It was almost hypnotic and you didn’t know how long it was until you snapped back to reality when Sam’s warm hands wrapped over your shoulders.

“You okay?” he asked, low and private, straight into your ear.

“Uh, yeah, sorry. Just tired,” you lied.

Sam gently and half-consciously kneaded the muscles in your shoulders. Before you realized what you were doing, muscle memory bobbed your head to the side, kissed his rough knuckles, and pressed your cheek to his hand. You both froze.

“Aw, so cute,” Steve sang out from across the bar top.

You took your chance to step forward out of Sam’s grip. “Yeah, yeah. Refill?” Steve nodded, and you snatched another Miller High Life out of a mini fridge under the bar and popped the cap with a fluid practiced motion. About a week ago you’d realized that the twist-bottle callus you had just below the first joint of your index finger had come back, a recurrent souvenir that had lasted years after you’d quit bartending last time. You were thankful for it as much as the distraction from your bizarre reflexive step over the unspoken boundary between you and Sam. It wasn’t that the contact was unprecedented, obviously, you could only catch even chunks of sleep tightly wound around Sam and kept your fingers wrapped around his forearm as he drove, but Dean was the last person whose skin your lips had touched. Until now, you corrected yourself. It was a very specific kind of closeness in a relationship already stretching the limits of what appropriate intimacy could possibly be.

You jammed a cold metal scoop into the ice machine to break up chunks and buy some time. The same grief-hungry part of your brain that searched Sam for facial tics and habits that Dean had couldn’t stop repeating how much those hands felt the same, dry and warm and firm under your lips, under your cheek, and you wanted to clutch at them, a phantom of Dean’s that first stitched you up in Bobby’s kitchen all those years ago when life was easy and bloody, so nervous to touch you his hands shook and the scar still remained to this day. You crashed through those thoughts with a solid thump of This Is Sam Not Dean Sam Your Friend Sam The Only Thing You Have In This World, and how cruel it was to triple distill him down to only the parts that were reminiscent of someone else. Sam, who chopped wood to keep you warm, who restocked beer in the little life you’d created here. Sam, who in his own unfathomable sadness let you latch onto him as a steady point in a storm and kept you afloat just as you had him.

“Hello?” Joe repeated, a touch of concern peeking through his annoyance.

“Yeah, sorry! What’s up?” you asked, hearing the shrillness of your voice as you tried to overcompensate.

“I’m trying to buy you a drink, hon. 5 shots, dealer’s choice.”

“You, me, Jake, Steve and who?” you asked, racking up 5 sturdy shot glasses.

“Your Paul Bunyan over there, unless you’re trying to take his too. I’ve never seen you guys really drink before, gotta jump on my chance,” he winked.

“Oh, okay. Uh, Sam—” you called out across the bar. He was wiping up a spill you knew didn’t exist from the way he focused too hard on the bar top, trying to look busy. He looked up at his name and walked over with his hands jammed in his pockets. His unease was palpable, and your heart sank as you let go of any possibility that he wouldn’t have registered the fleeting kiss and the shift was only in your head. “—Joe’s trying to get you drunk.”

“Careful, Joe, you think you can carry me home?” Sam joked, and you thought you would be the only one who’d be able to detect the tightness in his throat underneath it. He rubbed a lime wedge on the web of his thumb and poured salt over it before handing you the shaker. You almost dropped it when your fingertips grazed his.

“To the only people dumb enough to move up here in the winter,” Steve proclaimed, touching his glass to the counter before shooting it. You all followed suit, politely chuckling at the teasing. When you took the lime wedge out of your mouth, Sam had his palm open in front of you. You dropped the rind in his hand and let him take the stack of glasses to the sink.

It didn’t get as crazy as Dean likely would’ve gotten which was probably good for the bar’s bottom line and your drive back to the cabin, but Sam did end up somewhat accidentally hustling Jake for $100 over a game of pool and singing along to Shania Twain when you put it on. You were careful not to touch him or stare too long the rest of the evening, and by the time you were flipping chairs up for the night you had almost convinced yourself that nothing was different save for a little softness around the edges of the ever-present bolus of sadness in your stomach.

Sam had two cases of Miller Lite from the basement in his grip, the veins on his forearms popping out as he set them on the ground in front of the beer cooler and crouched to replace the ones that had been drunk that night. You double checked that the cash drawer of the register was even and hopped up to sit on a spare spot of counter.

“That’s the last one?”

“Yeah, I already did the Coors and Bud.”

“Are you good to drive or do you want me to?” You wiggled your toes in your shoes, feeling the ache of standing for hours in the balls of your feet.

“No, I’m good to drive,” Sam said, shaking hair out of his face. He looked up at you, hazel eyes hard to read with fatigue or fear or pity or some murky combination thereof. You drew tight spirals over orders you’d taken that night, feeling the pen press impressions into the small notepad. The absence of words spread out to close the distance between you, feeling cloying and claustrophobic even as the Nate Bargatze standup you’d cued up piped out through the bar’s speakers.

“Hey, I—”

“Are you—” Sam started at the same time. You held out a palm to signal for him to continue, not truly wanting to speak yourself. “Uh, sorry. I just…I—I’m not Dean. I can’t be Dean.”

The words and deflation in his shoulders made you wish you’d been set ablaze. Stunned, you felt your mouth open and close around words that weren’t materializing, just collecting in your throat and hardening there, the backup starting to choke you.

“I, uh—I know,” you finally managed to squeak past the lump.

And part of you wondered if he was right in thinking you were using him as a stand-in. As atypical as the whole situation was, you couldn’t imagine that it was normal to sleep in the same bed and spend virtually every minute together. You began to feel sick at the thought that Sam would be out living up to his potential somewhere if it weren’t for you, back to law school or righting the wrongs of the world rather than in a Northwoods dive bar restocking domestic beers at 2:30 on a Tuesday morning. The selflessness of it seemed unfathomable and yet so entirely something Sam would do. Suddenly it felt like the walls were collapsing around you.

The moment stretched out and Sam stood up, leaning on the counter across the bar from you. His jaw was set hard and he tilted his head the way he did when he was trying to stop himself from teetering over the edge of tears. “Sam, I—I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

He cleared his throat but looked down at the nonstick mats on the floor. “No, ah, you don’t need to apologize. I just need you to know I can’t be him for you.”

You didn’t dare look up in case you met Sam’s eyes as you nodded, so eviscerated and humiliated you were having a hard time taking a deep breath. After a long minute you heard the clink of bottles as Sam finished restocking, grabbed your coat to mumble something about warming up the car, and went to the small parking lot. You managed to make it into the Impala before your vision started swimming and the potential enormity of the situation crashed against you; was this the end of your carved out hideaway, full of grief and memories and comfort and little moments of affection and joy you had just barely started to accept? All for some stupid thought that Dean would be happier if you were out getting wasted, an idea that reduced him to a drifter barfly instead of the complex man who’d been more loyal and loved more deeply than anyone you’d ever met. The tears dried up quickly as self-disgust rolled over you and started ringing in your ears. You didn’t hear Sam coming and jolted when he opened the door, recoiling against the passenger side to give him as much space as possible. He glanced over at you with eyes so pitying that you couldn’t bear to look at them, staring out the window at the abject darkness the rest of the drive home.

Sam didn’t turn on the stereo.

Back in the cabin, you quickly shucked off your coat and snatched what you needed out of the bedroom before barricading yourself in for a shower. You didn’t bother taking your makeup off first, allowing the sting of mascara to get washed away in the water. It was too hot and you didn’t care; you only came out when you realized you were going to leave Sam in a cold shower in the last week in December.

You brushed your teeth in the mirror and took a few deep breaths before sliding out, heading past the open bedroom door straight to the kitchen in order to gulp down a panicked glass of water. Mercifully, you heard the bathroom door lock when Sam entered it quietly. You took the opportunity to grab your pillow out of the bedroom, tossing it on the couch and pulling the throw off the sofa’s back to cover yourself. Your eyes were closed tight and ramming up against your racing mind when Sam came out.

“You don’t have to sleep on the couch,” he said softly from behind you.

You opened your eyes but didn’t move your head to seek him out. “It’s okay.”

Sam appeared in front of you, legs bending severely to perch on the short coffee table. His bare chest still glistened a little from the shower and you knew the green flannel pants he was wearing were soft and thick to the touch. Earnest hazel eyes meeting yours, Sam braced his elbows on his knees.

“Sam, I’m really sorry. It was a weird reflex and it was unfair for me to—��

“No, I, it—it wasn’t that. It’s just like, sometimes when you look at me, you look like you’re seeing a ghost. I’m just—I need to know you’re not staying here because I’m the closest you can get.”

If your heart hadn’t been shattered and re-shattered over the last almost- two-years and today, the fear and resignation in his eyes would’ve sent you to pieces. You pushed up to sitting in order to give Sam the respect he deserved.

“I can’t—I won’t lie and say you don’t remind me of him, but you’re my best friend—been my best friend since I first met you guys—and I am so, so, sorry I made you feel…I could never try to replace him, Sam.” You were barely making sense, having a hard time stringing together how you felt. “The only place I want to be is with you. You’re all I’ve got.”

It felt desperate and needy but it was true and Sam deserved the truth. You didn’t shy away from him, stayed there holding his gaze until he seemed content having searched your eyes for anything hiding from the light. After a moment he nodded tightly against lips pressed in a firm line. “Okay.”

Sam stood up, the broad planes of him catching the glitter of the Christmas tree lights. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and tentative. “Can you, uh, can you come back?”

It took a moment to process before you nodded, standing up and snagging your pillow before following Sam into the bedroom. You climbed into your side of the mattress, close to the wall and your tiny precious gallery, and Sam folded around you, his warm skin seeping through your t-shirt onto your back. You felt tense and comfortable all at once, safe and uneasy. The two of you sat there for a long time, the relatively light weight of Sam’s arm over you betraying that he wasn’t asleep either. When drowsiness finally began to tug your eyelids closed, he pressed his lips to a spot on your shoulder exposed from the looseness of its sleeve. The last thing you remembered was his arm going heavy like an anchor across yours.

The sun is hot and delicious on your cheeks, baking the cotton of your jeans and t-shirt into you and turning the roof tiles under you into a frying pan. Wispy clouds move with no urgency across the sky above you and you can’t think of anything better than this, glancing down to worn laces on Dean’s boots undone to give his feet some air as his t-shirt clings half-humid to him. You know his freckles are going to be darker by dinner and it makes you smile to think about it but you’ll never tell him—it makes him shy to be reminded of the spray of pigment that makes him feel alternatively feminine or juvenile but never stunning the way you think it should. You press up to your elbows, barely registering the sting of heat and grit of the roof underneath you and kiss the spot on Dean’s arm where his shoulder slopes into his bicep. He smiles down at you, a lazy half-open smirk perfectly framed by the blue sky behind him like a painting.

“You’re so weird,” he chuckles. “Who kisses someone’s arm?”

“Then come down here,” you toss back, exaggerated pout ready for him. He ducks down to you, the warmth of his lips on yours like a cookie fresh out of the oven, like sliding down the hallway on new fuzzy socks, like the summer’s first plunge into water.

Sam’s head peeks out from under the gutter. “Bobby’s putting brats on the grill, do you want any?”

“Hell yeah, extra onions,” Dean yells down, grinning smugly when you make a face.

“Me too!” you call out, watching Sam squint up at the roof.

“No onions though, right?”

“You’re the best, Sam.”

Sam beams up at you, dimples almost high enough to reach the squint-crinkled skin around his eyes. He nods and ducks back out of sight.

“Come on, I’m thirsty,” Dean says, standing up. He reaches a hand down to you and takes a half step back to brace himself, stepping on the lace of his other boot. He stumbles and it’s a quick shuffle and you realize he’s too close to the edge his next step is into thin air like Wil E. Coyote and you’re grabbing at that same thin air and you can see his face change when he realizes and some part of your subconscious that’s even deeper than this can feel it’s happening again and the sound is so final, such a wet crack but you scrabble to the edge anyway because you have to see and Dean’s lying there.

He’s clutching his left leg bent against his chest like a stretch. “Son of a bitch, what the fuck!” he mutter-yells, and you hear the thump of Sam and Bobby running through the old house and skittering to a stop in front of him as you carefully shimmy down the porch post with your hands tearing on the gutter’s rusty edge, jumping down when you feel the railing beneath you.

“Dean! Are you okay?” Sam yells over Bobby who’s cursing out the goddamn idjit told you not to climb up there it’s like having a bunch of teenagers in this goddamned house and Dean winces and nods angrily.

You’re lifting up the hem of his jeans and gingerly taking off his boot and Dean hisses when you peel off his sock, but nothing is poking through the skin and that’s better than you expected. “Can you stand up?”

He nods again and you can practically taste him biting back the string of expletives when you and Sam each take an arm and lift him to standing. You snake a hand into his pocket and grab the keys to the Impala, leaning behind Dean to say to his brother, “I’ll take him to the ER.”

Dean doesn’t argue and it’s yet more evidence that it’s pretty bad, but you feel fine, elated almost, that he’s still warm under your palm and against your side, that he still smells like fresh laundry and domestic beer and a little bit of salt and engine grease. Sam’s long arm opens the door when you get there and slides Dean in and you promise to text when you know how bad it is as you round the car and get to the driver’s side. You turn the key in the ignition and throw your arm around Dean’s seat to reverse out of the driveway. Dean’s looking at you as you throw the car back into drive, staring almost, and his face is soft even around the broken ankle.

“I’m always going to love you,” he says, smooth and sure of himself. You tug your eyes away from the road with half a question on your face but Dean doesn’t explain why he’s saying this now. “I’ll be okay and I’m always going to love you, no matter what.”

It doesn’t make any sense and you open your mouth to tease this unexpected sappiness, remind him the ankle is just one more in a long string of injuries he’ll owe you for, and then Dean’s gone, the car’s gone, and the heat is coming from Sam’s chest in front of you.

Continue to Dreams, Chapter 5

Thanks again for reading! If you liked it, check out my Masterlist or send me a request!

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wormstacheangel · 4 years ago

Text

Almost: Ch. 3

Hello! It’s a happy ending story so don’t worry but I wanted to write more about Dean’s relationships with others. Read it on AO3 link (maybe leave a nice comment?)

Ch. 1 link | Ch. 2 link |

Summary: Dean comes back from the long drive with Cas in need of some comfort. Sam is there to finally get him to talk out his feelings and admit to things he has been pushing down. Then he has to go face Cas the next day.

Word Count: 2920 More Under the Cut

“So, what?”

Dean was sitting on the floor behind the register of Charlie’s café. His head rested against her legs as she took orders, feeling too damn embarrassed to go home to face Sam or go to work and face Bobby. Charlie was the only other person who he was close to but she came into his life after Cas already left it.

“You’re just gonna hide here?” Charlie said before her customer service voice took over. “Hello! How can I help you?”

She took an order while Dean continued to munch on the brownie she has given him earlier. It wasn’t warm anymore but it was still damn good. He was glad he had a best friend who would let him eat his feelings and provided the food.

When she addressed him again she crouched down to smile sadly at him. He hated it. “Dean, I didn’t even know you liked anyone.”

“I didn’t fucken know I liked anyone either.” He groaned in annoyance as he threw his head back but it hurt as it hit some glass mugs. “Ow! Damn it, Charlie!”

“Don’t take your anger out on me!”

“I’m-I’m not! I’m just mad in general! At Cas being back. At me not over my damn high school crush. At dumb fucken Mick .” Dean let his head fall into his hands. “I’m 26, dude. I shouldn’t be dealing with this shit anymore.”

“What does age have to-?”

“I shouldn’t be having boy problems!” He pulls his head out of his hands to explain to her before he groaned again. Mumbling, “I’m too damn old for this shit.”

“Maybe if you focused more on the pretty girls like me then you wouldn’t be in this mess.” She jokingly nudged him as she sat on the floor beside him. Pulling him down so she can awkwardly hold him. “I think you just gotta be the mature one, Dean. He’s probably not staying for long anyway so how about you just go to the funeral like we planned and then we can forget that little Castiel walked back into our lives. Does that sound like a plan?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“That’s the spirit!” She dropped a kiss on top of his head. “Now, are you going to stay and hug my legs until closing?”

“Thinking about it.”

Charlie laughed but shoved him off when he dropped his full weight into her.

Dean did end up going home. He needed a hot shower and hoped to whatever god was listening that Sammy won’t come looking for him today because he knew Bobby would have called him. He knew Sam would be worried - Bobby would be too but won’t admit to it and Dean respected him for it - and he would come barging in with his emergency house key he made without permission. Then he would want Dean to talk.

Sam always wants Dean to talk.

A few months of not talking after suddenly losing his Mom and his best friend moving away and suddenly, ‘you’re someone who needs to be watched, Dean.’

Dean wouldn’t be damn surprised if there were hidden cameras in his apartment. At least he’s given whoever is watching a damn show every once in a while.

Luckily he took a hot shower in peace. His apartment was filled with music as he walked around his room to clean the already tidy space. His mind floating around to think of nothing in particular. Making himself not think of what happened. Not think of Cas. Not think of the damn kiss. Not think of his baby blue’s that still hold so much power over him. Not think of his dumb smile or horrible singing voice.

“Fuck!” Dean grabbed one of his pillows and buried his face into it. “Fuck you! Fuck you!”

“Dude,” Dean jumped as he heard the familiar voice behind him. Sam walked into his bedroom with beers in hand as well as a greasy brown paper bag. “Is that any way to talk to someone who brought you supplies?”

Dean dropped his pillow on his bed and passed Sam, bumping their shoulders together. “Fuck you. Stop letting yourself in.”

Sam let out a low chuckle but followed him to the small kitchen. “You weren’t going to let me in.”

“Cause you’re nosy, asshat. That’s why.”

They dropped into the kitchen chairs while Sam passed him his food, grinning like an idiot and annoying Dean to no end. Dean liked eating in silence but his brother wouldn’t stop looking at him and smiling. Like he’s hiding something or knows the damn secrets to the universe.

Dean was almost done with his second beer and half his fries when he kicks Sam’s chair. “Just fucking spit it out, Sammy!”

Sam sat up in his chair and leaned in closer to Dean as if he was about to share a secret. As if anybody else was in his apartment to hear them. “Guess who’s back in town?”

“Cas.” Dean quickly answers as he leans back in his chair, his feet resting up on one of the extra chairs, and takes a sip of his beer.

“How’d you-?” Sam blinks at him in shock before shaking his head. “Well, I bet you don’t know that he’s engaged to this guy named-”

“Mick.” Dean rolled his eyes as that name escaped his lips again. “Fucking asshole.”

Sam leans back on his chair, his face dropping into a scowl. “How do you fucking know that?”

Dean shrugs as he takes another fry and dips it in ketchup before chewing on it. Ignoring his brother’s waiting stare. “I just know things.”

“Fuck you.” Sam pushes Dean’s chair back in annoyance. Dean would want to do the same thing but Sam’s chair was now too far away for his legs to reach. “Who told you, dude?”

“Who told you ?” Dean asked back while he scoots back to the table.

“Gabriel. He came looking for Cas at the garage so he told Bobby and me. We also met the dude.”

“Dude? You mean Mick?”

“Yeah. He was pretty chill. He has an accent.”

“Accent?”

“British.”

“Fuck!” How was he even to compete with some fancy British dude? He’s seen the Great British Bake Off. Those people are nice. Cas deserved a nice person. “I don’t wanna see Cas being all gaga for this dude tomorrow.”

“Dude, his Dad is dead. Pretty sure his mind would be somewhere else.” Sam tells him. Watching him with those damn wide eyes that scanned him. Looking for any damn indication that there could be something wrong. “What’s up with you? Are you...wait.”

“Shut up, Sam.” Dean could read it in his brother’s face. That damn aha moment lit up his whole face.

“Are you still hung up on Cas?” Sam’s grin broke across his face and Dean stood up to walk to his front door.

“Thanks for dropping by, Sammy. Now leave!” He opened the door and motioned Sam to walk through it.

“Hell no!” Sam rested his feet on the empty chair. His arms crossing over his chest as he got comfortable. “My big brother’s high school crush just walked back into town with a ring on his finger and you want me to just - what? Ignore it? Hell no.”

“Sam.” Dean’s voice went lower as a warning but Sam didn’t budge.

“Dude, just talk to me!” Sam tells him, opening his arms up as if showing Dean that he is ready to listen. “You used to talk to me about Cas all the time! Hell, you used to talk to me about the guys and girls you’ve been with every other day!”

“That was before.” Dean slammed the door shut knowing Sam wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He dragged his hand down his face as he walked to the couch, not hungry enough to finish eating.

“Before what?”

“Before shit got complicated.” Dean fell into the old couch and didn’t look at his brother. Instead looked down at the beer in his hand, his thumb scraping the label off with elbows on his knees as he leaned forward in his seat. “Before Lisa left me cause I wasn’t ready for a commitment. And then Benny left because I was going too fast. Shit. I haven’t been able to get a damn thing right for a while.”

“And what? You thought Cas would be the answer?”

Dean shrugged. “I don’t know. I just saw him and I felt...better. Lighter.” A smile crept on his face. “He was still wearing that ugly coat Bobby gave him a long time ago.” He chuckled before he cleared his throat. Catching himself falling again.

“You still love him?”

“Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t feel the same way.” Dean tells him, a short cold chuckle like breath escaped his mouth as he shook his head. “He doesn’t feel the same way anymore, Sammy.”

“Dean.” It was a quiet sad tone and Dean was gonna tell him to shut it but then he found out why Sam was using that tone on him. Dean was crying.

“Maybe now that Cas moved on. Maybe you can too.” Sam walked over to sit beside him on the couch. Not touching Dean but just being close enough to comfort him. “You can stop waiting for him now.”

That was it, wasn’t it? Dean has been waiting for Cas all these damn years and he didn’t even know it.

“Fuck. I’m so stupid, Sam.” Dean shook his head as he put his beer down on the floor before he covered his face in his hands. “He kissed me too.”

“He kissed you?!” Sam sounded shocked but Dean didn’t look at him.

“Yeah. He did. Told me he missed me too.” Dean hits his head in frustration. “I’m so fucking stupid!”

“You’re not, Dean!” Then Sam’s arms were around him. Pulling him into a sideways hug that Dean was going to push away from but instead he let his little brother hold him. He’ll hate himself for breaking down in front of Sam tomorrow. Right now he needed the comfort. “It’s okay. You can move on now. You know now so you can just move on. Let your heart heal.”

Heal. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds nice. He thinks to himself as he took a calming breath like Sam always tells him to do.

But if he couldn’t move on 5 years ago, when the kiss was terrible, how was he suppose to move on now? With the taste of Cas and the feel of him in his arms was still burned into his mind? Still fresh. Still new.

Craving it every second he can’t have it.

“I love him, Sammy.” Dean took a shaky breath. “I still love him.” And it’s killing me knowing he doesn’t.

The next morning Dean was standing outside the funeral home with Charlie fussing over his and Sam’s hair. Dean kept loosening his tie while they waited for Bobby to finish the phone call with a customer, letting them know they would be closed for a friend's funeral. Friend is really putting it nicely.

Chuck was a creepy squirrely little guy with anger issues. He was sweet sometimes - like every other psycho - but his controlling nature was always a scary sight. But he helped Bobby keep the shop and helped them pay for the funeral cost of their Mom so he was an honorary friend at least.

Why was Chuck so generous to help them? Fuck if any of them know but they weren’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. That’s for sure.

“Stop fidgeting, boy!” Bobby slapped Sam’s hand away from him loosening his tie and pulled him down to fix it again.

“Ow! Uncle Bobby, that’s too tight!”

“Stop whining. We’re already late as it is.” He said patting Sam’s shoulders when he was done. Sam made a face of distaste as he rolled his eyes. Lucky for him Bobby didn’t catch him. “Dean come here. Let me fix your damn-”

“No! No. I got it.” Dean smiled reassuringly at him as he quickly tried to fix it but he wasn’t quick enough as Bobby pulled him down to fix it again. Dean groaned as he did tighten it but it was loosened just enough so he wouldn’t struggle to breathe. “Thanks, Uncle Bobby.”

Bobby looked at all three of them with a proud grin. “Now behave yourselves. This family hates us enough.”

“What an encouraging speech.” Dean commented while Charlie grimaced at all of them.

“Just stay in the background and the sooner we can leave without causing a scene the better. Got it?” The three of them nodded half-heartedly. “Good! Let’s go. Keep close.”

They started walking behind Bobby and into the funeral home. Dean kept his eyes down not wanting to look at anyone in the surprisingly crowded place. Well, not surprising. The Novak family was huge. The family of seven was big enough but then add all the damn cousins these guys had and it was a full house. Some people were even standing outside so they could talk.

It took Dean a solid 15 minutes to even find a parking spot - he ended up parking a block away - because the small parking lot quickly filled up.

So with this crowded place, he was hoping he wouldn’t have to bump into Cas. At least not bump into him so soon but of course, he’ll be the one welcoming people in.

“Fuck.” Dean hissed under his breath as his eyes met Cas’s.

Cas stiffened at the sight of him - which always made someone feel welcomed - before he forced a smile. But Dean can still read that face like a damn open book. His jaw is clenched just enough for people not to notice the stiffness while his hands fidgeted into his suit pants pocket. Yeah, well, Dean was uncomfortable too. Cas ain’t special.

Dean’s eyes traveled down Cas’s body and - bless him father cause he wants to sin - Cas looked great in a damn black floral suit. It was well fitted. Probably tailored since that is the type of family the Novak’s were and lucky for Dean it hugged him in all the right places. Dean’s eyes drifted to down only to notice there was a hand wrapped around his lower back.

Dean’s breath caught in his throat.

“Hey, Cas.” Sam stepped in front of him first and wrapped Cas into one of his big bear hugs. “Nice seeing you again but I’m sorry for your loss.”

Cas barely had his chin on Sam’s shoulder as he patted Sam’s back awkwardly. “Thank you, Sam.” Cas pulled back to smile at him. “I hope we can catch up before I leave. I would like to hear more about your studies on witchcraft.”

“How’d you-?” Sam asked but Cas motioned at the guy standing next to him. The guy that just had his arms around Cas’s waist. As if claiming him.

“Michael told me you two talked yesterday.” And then Cas turned to look at Dean. “Mick I know you meet Sam and Bobby but this is Sam’s older brother. Dean.”

Fuck you, Cas.

“Oh, Dean! I heard a lot about you from my Cas here.” He nudged Cas, who awkwardly laughed before he held his hand out for Dean to shake. “Nice to finally meet you.”

Fuck this fucker and his dumb accent. Dean narrows his eyes at him, trying to read him. As if he would see any red flags or alarms over his head. But he looked like someone he would root for on the British Bake Off and he hated him for that.

Charlie nudged him to shake the outstretched hand but Dean wouldn’t budge. He instead shrugged at him. “Um, germs, man. But nice to meet one of Cas’s friends.”

Charlie pinched his arm at that comment while Cas rolled his eyes, his shoulders dropping with a tired sigh before he glared at Dean. Mick only laughed as he took his hand back but then he wrapped it around Cas’s waist again and Dean regretted not preoccupying that fucking hand.

“Fiance actually.” Mick grinned up at Cas who strained a smile. “Hmm, I figured Sam would have told you.”

Dean mocked a smile. “Oh, he did! Shit must have slipped my mind.”

“Dean.” Cas almost growled at him.

Dean chewed on his bottom lip for a second before swallowing hard. He turned his hard smile on Cas. “I know. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry, Cas, we’ll keep an eye on him.” Sam tells him as he starts to shove Dean ahead where Bobby already disappeared to find a chair in some sad corner probably.

“Um, sorry for your loss.” Charlie gave Cas a quick hug. “Oh, I’m Charlie by the way. New best friend but it’s nice to meet you! I mean...wished it was under better circumstances but what can you do?”

She started to nervously laugh and Sam tugged at her arm to drag her along as well.

“Bye!” Charlie waved at them awkwardly, Dean saw Cas wave back with a grin and raised an eyebrow, before she sighed. “Wow, that was awkward.”

“Oh, you think so?” Dean sarcastically says while Sam’s too big arm wraps around his shoulders, probably to hold him in place. “This place better have an open bar.”

“It’s a funeral, Dean. Not a damn party.”

“Meh.” Dean shrugged before they found Bobby in the back row sneaking a sip of a flask. “Give it here, old man!”

#Destiel #Deancas #Supernatural #SPN #A More Profound OTP #My Writing #WormstacheWrites #destiel fanfic #destiel fic #mutual pinning #angst #destiel au #hey is this considered slow burn?#only a few chapters left I promise

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blissfulalchemist · 3 years ago

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multiples of 5 + get a room xx

Hello Stella this was a lot but! here we are!

5. What do they like the most about each other?

Both can very much appreciate their shamelessness for public flirting and PDA. We won’t also state the other obvious thing both like about the other. On a sappy level though Hayat most likes Mason’s ability to find the darkest corner of any room no matter how bright it is. Truly that is a fucking skill and just HOW!? can you make that happen sir???? What Mason likes the most about Hayat is the way he’s ready with something to lighten most deadly situations that can make you want to smile or laugh if it was any other setting other than impending doom. Seriously sir, you are literally bleeding out and you’re trying to make a joke about getting laid right here and now???

10. How do they resolve their arguments?

Both are terrible in that they will kind of just ignore it or just put it to the side and then never come back to it until they have too, which means it built up a bit more than just something that could have been a smaller argument. Typically though most resolutions happen at night and on roofs or balconies and the like. Life’s a lot calmer during that time of day and its also easier on Mason’s senses which in the heat of the moment are harder to control and that extra stimulation isn’t helpful in quelling any kind of anger or feelings of upset. This is usually when Hayat will take the initiative to leave if Mason hasn’t done it by that point. In the end one of them will come to the other and get it resolved not too long after. Both are man enough to admit when they were in the wrong.

Rarely (surprisingly) there is little make up sex. Most of the bigger arguments are in relation to things that are emotionally deep and intimate, which both have to relearn or find out and you can’t just do that with sex.

15. Who pays for the food the most, when they go out?

Hayat. Not that Mason doesn’t have the means or is opposed to it, Hayat just beats him to the punch and is paying before it can even process in Mason’s head that he should pay for food every now and then (even id he himself doesn’t eat very much).

20. Do they give each other nicknames?

Mason calls Hayat by two different nicknames. The first one being the nickname Hiya as this is something approved by Hayat himself, though he still rolls his eyes over Hiya picking that kind of nickname as its some version of a pun technically. Mason also calls him “Handsome” which made Hayat a bit uncomfortable for a while there. This was even said before they even slept together and god Hayat thought he was going to die or hit him eventually as well....Bobby also called him “Handsome”. Given a little time it started to change and Hayat warmed up to the name and by Book 3 happens that old association really leaves him when hearing Mason say it.

Hayat will shorten Mason’s name to Mase now and then, but this is also a sort of pun name as he can threaten people with the phrase “I’m gonna Mase you” which basically means “I’m gonna send my anger inclined boyfriend at you”. This threat is very rare and only is said when the timing is right. (Yes my son needs help). Hayat also refers to Mason as “Eshgham” which translates to “My Love” or “Delbar-am” that translates to “One who stole my heart” when they’re being a little sappy and also “Kharâbetam” which translates to “I’m ruined for you” typically when its more private behind closed doors as it’s a bit more intense than the other two.

25. How do they comfort each other when one of them is scared?

Hayat’s a bit better at it than Mason in comforting but there’s a check in between the two of them. Sometimes its silent and both can tell where the other stands in their fear. Other times it is asked aloud and also paired with a touch of some kind. Even when these two are asking it jokingly there is always a hint of looking out for the other and just making sure that there’s truth to what is said. Honestly just being near one another is enough to comfort when they’re scared.

30. Do they attend any clubs or formal parties together?

Neither are really suited to formal parties to be honest. They will if they must or if its something that is involved with family and such, but neither are really the formal type.

35. How do they spend time if the other is gone?

Both have a life outside of the other and so many times they will partake in that side. Hiya has a good amount of friends that he likes to spend time with and Mason also has Unit Bravo along with work so he can focus on that.

40. Thoughts on kids?

Hayat likes kids and never plans on ever having them unless it feels right or just happens. Mason’s personality doesn’t lend itself to being kid friendly but is mostly indifferent.

45. How are birthdays spent?

Hey Mason! You’ve never had a birthday party! Well guess what! You’re getting a birthday party! It won’t be very big or elaborate but it’ll be a small celebration with cake, balloons, games, music, and the party hats. All planned by Hiya and encouraged by Felix.

Hayat typically ends up having a small party as Tina likes to have fun and then his family like to celebrate so they have a mini party. However! Hayat was born on Leap Year and you can bet that there is an even bigger party that is themed with the appropriate age so at his 2020 celebration he will be 7! such a big year :’).

Once all the day party stuff is over though there’s a good amount of private celebrating happening. The gift that is consistent between them involves a weekend away.

50. Who makes the best flower crown?

Hayat. He doesn’t make them often and really ends up needing help but when he gets something he’ll give them to members of the team. Mason isn’t a fan to say the least but for Hiya he’ll reduce the scowl.

55. Are they a super sappy couple?

Sappy as in kissy faces and nicknames and just like adorable-ness? No…..well the kissy faces sure but if it goes on long enough you may want to avert your gaze. Look they are very forward with each other and they don’t show any signs of being uncomfortable with it. In private you get the more sappy moments but even then there’s this casualness with them that leads to it seeming only as a physical relationship. Really it’s more Hayat that can be the sappy one.

60. Who will punch someone out if they are rude to their partner?

Mason primarily (Sir I cannot wait for you to meet the Ex). Hayat doesn’t like to let himself turn to violence so it would take a lot of anger to do so.

65. Who loves kids more?

This would go to Hayat more. He acts somewhat like a kid himself and he can keep them fairly entertained and help them feel reassured if they’re scared. Hayat comes from a fairly big family and there were always kids around so he enjoys their company.

70. Who is the hopeless romantic?

I have to give this one to Hayat as he can be a bit more of an outward hopeless romantic. I do believe that Mason is the secretive hopeless romantic that isn’t fully aware that he is.

75. Who are their favourite musical artist(s)?

Mason doesn’t listen to much music as its hard to find things that are easy to handle with the heightened senses.

Hayat likes more of the pop punk music. Bands like Fall Out Boy, All Time Low, Reliant K, AWOLNATION, Walk the Moon, The Killers, etc. To compensate for the harshness of some of the songs Hayat has made a specific playlist of acoustic covers and softer songs to play when Mason is near and not really up for enduring his normal playlists.

80. What do they love about each other the most?

Hayat loves the genuineness of Mason. Like admittedly there’s some secrets and like holding back but that more stems from needing trust in order to talk about that kind of stuff. With Mason its really a “What you see is what you get” kind of person and more importantly with this is that Mason’s actions match with what he’s saying. That is just so important for Hiya now as it gives him the most comfort in pursuing something with him.

For Mason its this ability for Hayat to be invading but also keep his distance. Hayat will press and stick close to Mason with emotional stuff but he’s not pushy about it and will let Mason take the time needed to figure stuff out. Hayat doesn’t also just brush Mason off with his needs or attitude. Mason wants to be close to someone but wants a sort of setting where you’re alone together (like you and your partner are in the same room but doing different things with the occasional shout out) and Hayat lets that happen.

85. Who accidental sets something on fire?

I’d say both as one day that lighter’s gonna get Mason in trouble but it would be more Hayat. Sometimes he likes to just fiddle around with tech stuff and the wrong wires get crossed and soon there’s a mini fire happening. What can you do?

90. Who is the one that would bring the puppy home?

Both, but Mason would pick the kitten/cat up and bring them home to Hayat more than a puppy. Just seems a bit more like a cat person.

#I'll admit I thought this was gonna take me longer but I DID IT!#These two just make me laugh cringe and soft #x: get a room #no banner cause i hate the old one and too lazy and hungry to make a new one

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holyhellpod · 4 years ago

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Heyoooo, it’s another episode of Holy Hell! This one is dedicated to the manchild himself, Dean Winchester.

Apple | Google | Spotify | Instagram | Patreon

Transcript below!

CW: discussions of child abuse, child death, suicide, alcoholism, family trauma, mental health

[Music]

Dean Winchester is, in a word, my soulmate. I started kinning him when the show aired in Australia on Fox8 and I have not been the same since. From his devil-may-care attitude to his undying love for his family that pierces the veil of death to save the day, he really is the most. I have to say at the beginning that this episode of Holy Hell will not include discussions of Dean’s sexuality and gender. I’m saving that for its own episode, so stay tuned my pals.

What we know of Dean as he develops over the course of the first episode is: he’s been hunting, and hunting alone, he’s 26 years old, he drives a sweet ‘67 Impala, he wears an old leather jacket, he listens to 1980s metal, and he has an arsenal of weapons and supernatural fighting talismans in his trunk. He’s also a smartarse, one of his most endearing qualities. He gets defensive about their mother and her death, and he defends their father over and over. He’s a loyal son and brother. The impetus to bring Sam back into the hunting life, after Sam decided for good that he was going to leave, is to bring his fambily back together.

The quality that defines Dean Winchester is how much he loves he loves his fambily. In the first episode, he is so worried about his father that he recruits Sam to help look for him, even though Sam and Dean haven’t spoken in two years, and Sam ran away to college rather than continue to live with their father. He spends most of the first season defending their father, but when John comes back and starts arguing with Sam, Dean protects his brother from John. It’s one of the most significant examples of character growth Dean undergoes throughout the entire series, and it’s where his loyalty shifts from John to Sam.

In the episode of season 2, “Croatoan,” Dean decides not to shoot Sam when Sam contracts the Croatoan virus which turns people rabid and makes them kill. In the next episode, “Hunted”, Dean reveals that John told him to kill Sam if Dean couldn’t save him. But Dean doesn’t. He says that John begged Dean not to tell Sam, but it’s not John’s words that keep Dean silent. It’s his love for Sam and Sam’s wellbeing. And this brotherly love slash codependency is used by characters throughout the entire series, from the demons in season 1 to the literal character of God in season 15, to manipulate Dean and Sam. As many characters have pointed out, including Dean and Sam themselves, they are each other’s weak points.

At the end of season two, when Sam dies from a stab wound in his spine, Dean trades his own life for Sam’s. He makes a deal with a crossroads demon—his soul for Sam’s life—and subsequently dies and goes to hell at the end of season 3. Dean literally dies a gruesome death and spends forty years being tortured in hell because he couldn’t live without Sam. At the end of Season 8, Sam is dying from the effects of the trials, which he undergoes in order to close the gates of hell, and Dean convinces him to stop because, again, he can’t live without Sam. Sidenote: this is where I stopped being interested in their brotherly dynamic to the point of losing interest in the show. It became clear to me that the showrunners were more concerned with rehashing the same tired storylines between Sam and Dean than focus on characters who could expand the world and make the show better. In fact, they killed a lot of the interesting side characters in order to keep the show solely focused on the brothers. The exception to this is Castiel, and the reason they kept Cas around is because when he died in season 7 the ratings tanked. If that wasn’t a clear enough sign that the showrunners needed to open up the show to more than just Sam and Dean’s caustic dynamic in which they die and kill for and then betray and lie to each other over and over, then I just don’t know what the fans could have done to convince them. Nothing, apparently, because they ended the show with just Sam and Dean.

Dean’s relationship with John is fraught with insecurity and codependency. Dean has so little sense of self that what he does consider to be his carefully curated list of likes and dislikes were inherited directly from John: his car, his leather jacket, his hunting abilities, and his music taste. He also throws himself into hunts without any regard for his own safety, because he doesn’t believe that he is worth saving, or that his life is worth living. His personality is crafted from both John’s reliance on him as a son, hunter and partner in crime, and the woman he assumes Mary to be. Dean’s sense of self-worth relies on how many people he can save. This is why, in season 2 episode “What is and what should never be,” Dean’s dream reality is one in which he’s a low life loser who disappoints his family—because without John pushing him to be a hunter, Dean doesn’t save people, and because he doesn’t save people, he isn’t worth anything. Bear in mind that this is the best reality Dean’s mind could conjure for him: one in which his father is dead, and he himself is not worth saving.

In one of the most famous exchanges, he asks Cas why an angel would rescue him from hell, and Cas replies, “What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved.” Twenty-nine years of bluster, insouciance, and a give-em-hell attitude crumbles in two sentences, wrought by a being Dean refuses to believe exists because, again, he doesn’t think that he deserves to be saved by them. He says, “[Why me? I don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties, let alone by God].” He thinks of himself so lowly that he accepted a one-year deal in exchange for Sam being alive. Dean cares so much about his family he lets it kill him.

But it’s not just Sam, Mary and John. Dean’s family grows to encompass a number of side characters: most notably Bobby their surrogate father, Charlie Bradbury the hacker, Claire Novak, Jack Kline, and Lisa and Ben Braeden. Even Mary makes another appearance in seasons 12 to 14. Unfortunately, because the show is the way it is, Dean puts Sam above all of these side characters, and then these characters are written out of the show. I should specify that Cas is not a side character; in most seasons, Misha Collins is billed as a main cast member, with his name appearing after Jensen Ackles in the credits. But he still dies in the third-last episode in order to have the show stay about the brothers. Even Jack, inarguably Cas and Dean’s son, is written out of the show in the second-last episode after dying multiple times. I say inarguably because I am not gonna argue with anyone about this. Claire and Jack are Dean and Cas’s kids. Dean and Cas are great parents who chaperone Jack’s prom and buy Claire her first hunting bow. They’re all one big happy, queer, neurodivergent family.

Dean loves the people in his life with reckless abandon. The times he’s excused Cas’s behaviour after Cas has done something ridiculous or foolish are too many to count. He grieves Cas’s multiple deaths, often succumbing to his alcoholism and entropy whenever Cas leaves him for more than a day. In a truly beautiful scene, Dean wraps Cas’s corpse in a curtain and watches, utterly and completely devastated, as his body burns. By this point, they have done so much for each other that it’s impossible to even envision the show without Cas, and indeed imagine Dean without his love for Cas. And we don’t have to for very long, as he always comes back a few episodes later. Even knowing this, the episodes where Dean mourns Cas are so heartbreaking and haunting that I cried for days after watching them.

Dean is great with kids, and every time he’s not is completely the fault of whoever is writing him in any given episode. We see him bonding with Lisa’s son Ben in season 3 and 6, Jesse in the season 5 episode “I Believe The Children Are Our Future,” and Lucas in the season one episode “Dead in the water”. With every child he meets, Dean gets on their level, empathising with them in a way most adults can’t. Like Claire and Jack, Dean has a complicated relationship with his father, who dies in the beginning of season 2 after bargaining his soul for Dean’s life to the demon that took their mother. Just like anyone else’s life, right? Must be Tuesday. This means Dean can relate to most children with traumatic backgrounds involving their parents, as a victim of parental abuse and having his mother die at age 4. I can’t find any sources to back this up, but a theory that rolled around in fandom was that Dean became mute after Mary died, which is what happens to Lucas after his father drowns. He says in “Dead In the Water” that he loves kids, and it’s true. As one tumblr user put it, Dean wanted to be baby trapped.

Dean carries the deaths and pain of his loved ones with him like Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. When Claire is bitten by a werewolf, the characters administer blood of the sire wolf that bit her in order to cure her of her lycanthropy. Dean has to leave the room while she’s in pain, because he can’t bear to watch her die. The same goes for when Jack dies. Thankfully, Claire lives and Jack comes back a few episodes later.

When thinking about Dean being a father, I’m reminded of that scene from Scrubs when Dr Cox says he’s worried about being a father because his own dad was an abusive alcoholic. The difference between Dr Cox and Dean is that Dean doesn’t have his reservations about raising kids. He fits into Lisa and Ben’s life easily, at least for the first year, and we see a montage which includes him teaching Ben how to fix cars. When Claire lets her guard down enough to hug Dean, he hugs back just as hard. When he finally deals with the trauma of Cas dying in season 13, he accepts Jack into his life, and even grieves Jack when he dies. Dean escapes the intergenerational trauma that plagues his family by being a fantastic dad to the random kids who happen into his life by chance. He was born to be a father, and the fact that this show took that away from him and us as the audience makes me want to kick the showrunners into the sun.

Until season 6, Dean’s family only included men. The concept of the nuclear family—two sons, a husband and a wife—was ripped apart in the prologue of the first episode when Mary dies. Dean doesn’t know family for the first 5 seasons of the show outside Sam, John, Cas and Bobby. I do consider Ellen and Jo to be important to the story, but they’re only in a handful of episodes and die in season 5 for a reason that is plainly ridiculous. Did the Winchesters have to lose every single person in their lives to the fight? Clearly Kripke thought they were going to be cancelled after the fifth season, because it shows. And honestly? Maybe they should have. Let’s retroactively cancel the whole show. It can’t hold power over us anymore, because it’s dead and we cremated it.

But when Dean moves in with Lisa and Ben, he discovers a new type of family he didn’t have before, and new family dynamics. Instead of the 28-year-old son that Sam is to him, he takes the opportunity to teach Ben about cars and spend time with him and Lisa without the need to hunt. He gets a job, he makes some friends, and he lives the safe, apple pie life he begrudged Sam for in the pilot episode. It’s only when Sam reappears in his life that Dean’s codependency strikes again and he realises that he can’t live half in the normal world with Lisa and Ben and half in the hunting world with Sam. Sam says this himself in the first episode of Season 6, “Exile On Main Street”. Despite the ways Dean tried to settle down throughout the rest of the 9 seasons, the showrunners ultimately decided a man who was healing from trauma and alcoholism, who had adopted two kids as his own, and was learning how to bake cakes for his son’s birthday, deserved to die at the ripe age of 40, a week or so after he’d learned that his best friend was in love with him. You gotta laugh. Instead of getting the ending both Dean and we deserved—which was Dean settling down, opening a bar, and living the next forty years in relative gay peace while he got fat and watched Cheers reruns—well, we got something else. And I will always be bitter about that.

While it’s clear from the first season that he has reckless and suicidal tendencies, he doesn’t stop fighting to the bitter end. Even when faced with his own impending death in the season 2 premiere, “In my time of dying,” he fights to stay alive for Sam and John, while working the mystery that is overcoming his own death. Devastated as he is by Sam diving into hell at the end of season 5 and seemingly gone for good, Dean still gets up everyday and makes a life for himself in Lisa’s home. While season 6 was overall a bummer of a season, just god-awful in every aspect, saved from my complete vitriol only by “The French Mistake,” it did show us how great a dad Dean can be, and readied us for what was to come—being Claire and Jack’s dad. The lengths he goes to for his family are immense and all-consuming. As Cas says in “Despair”, Dean is a being of love. He loves everyone else, even when he can’t find it in him to love himself. He really thinks that he’s just a killer, not a father or a husband.

I’ve never subscribed to the idea that we have to love ourselves before we can love anyone else, or before anyone else can love us. Sorry Rupaul, you old bitch. We are all deserving of love, because love sustains us and helps us grow. And when we don’t know how to, it’s through loving others that we can learn to love ourselves. If Dean knew what a great father and friend and husband and brother he is, if he could see himself the way others, in the show and out of it, see him, I think he’d burst. You don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties? Well tough shit, Dean Winchester, because I’m gonna devote an entire podcast to you.

I talked about Dean’s carefully curated list of likes and dislikes before but I’ll go into more detail now. Things he likes: guns; rock and roll; nice cars; women; fighting; scamming people at pool; back alley blowjobs, probably; pie; driving across the country; Ozzy concerts; cowboy movies; being in control of every little thing in his life. His dislikes are: flying on planes; hair metal; angels and demons; anyone who harms his brother, his best friend or his kids; boredom; and being jerked around.

Okay I literally cannot talk about the cowboy movies without mentioning that he makes Cas watch them with him, in his Deancave, and the implications of that make my head roll off my body and into the dirt. Like they literally have gay little movie nights and watch their gay little cowboy movies together and Dean says all the gay little lines. I said I wasn’t going to talk about his sexuality, but mentioning cowboy movies leads to Cas wearing a cowboy hat and saying “I’m your Huckleberry.” This makes me insane. Excuse me, I must have my daily scream.

Okay, I’ve collected myself. Have I? Let’s just move on. In the Winchester tradition of inherited family trauma, Dean gets all of John’s interests, and Sam gets all of John’s mistakes. Dean’s personality throughout the show is basically quippy remarks, pop culture references, laughing with food in his mouth, and grouchiness. In case you haven’t realised, he is amazing to me. Every time he fires a rifle or pistol? Couldn’t be better. Eating a burger made of out donuts? Fucking incredible. Even when faced with beings with untold power, he doesn’t lose his cool. One of my favourite exchanges is when Zachariah comes to Chuck’s house in the first episode of season 5, “Sympathy For The Devil,” and starts soliloquising at him, Dean tells him to “cram it with walnuts, ugly.” Cram it with walnuts, ugly. It’s been ten years and that still makes me laugh. Top ten Dean lines for sure. Like all of my main characters throughout the years of writing original fiction are just “Dean Winchester but girl,” and I’m a good writer, but I can never come close to the level of hilarity that he achieves. And every single writer on the show seems to get that. The only times I can think of where Dean’s characterisation has irked me on a writing level are in season 6—basically the entire thing—and the way he treats Jack in the later seasons, specifically late season 15. But it’s really rare for me to watch an episode and not enjoy Dean. Even throughout the Mark Of Cain era, which I loved, when things were very serious, he had such style and panache and held himself so confidently that I was like, wait maybe he made some points? Maybe he should kill everyone?

Dean is a hunter and a killer, but that’s not all he is. He’s very skilled in hand to hand combat, weaponry, and tactical manoeuvres. Even when something doesn’t go exactly to plan, he’s usually able to improvise something to end up with a win. Because he is the main character, his choices and reactions, while sometimes extremely problematic, are never questioned, and that’s to his detriment. In the last episode of season 14, “Moriah,” Dean is unable to kill Jack, but in early season 15, he treats Jack’s betrayal as Cas’s fault, because he can’t take it out on Jack. Cas leaves, but it’s framed as a good thing because Cas is Jack’s father, and has to take responsibility for what Jack has done. In this instance, I don’t blame Cas at all. Okay I rarely blame Cas for anything, including the things he’s done wrong, because no he didn’t and you can’t prove it. But he especially didn’t do anything wrong when Jack killed Mary, and he didn’t do anything wrong by killing Belphagor. But by the middle of the season, in the episode “The Trap,” Dean admits his wrongdoing in taking his anger out on Cas, one of the only people who loves him without conditions. You’d think this would be a defining moment of character progression, but then Dean chooses to act exactly the same way by throwing Jack under the bus. Like, throwing him harder, under a bigger bus. So what was the point.

Anyway, those are choices the writers made, and not Dean.

Going back to what I was saying about being neurodivergent, Dean has adhd. I know this because I have adhd, and I’m Dean-coded. He’s wildly creative, impulsive, has a touch of OCD, and he has a hard time making long-lasting friends, although this is mostly due to how all his friends die. His best friend is an autistic angel and the only reason they’re still friends is because they’re obsessed with each other, in like a really unhealthy way. One of the funny things about his and Cas’s relationship is that every time you see them in the same shot, Cas is standing perfectly still and Dean is constantly moving. They are almost complete opposites, aside from their queerness and neurodivergence. But then, I haven’t met a single queer person in my entire life who isn’t neurodivergent or disabled in some way. That doesn’t mean we can’t live perfectly functional and normal lives, it just means we’re better than everyone else.

Dean also exhibits black and white thinking—to him all felons are redeemable and all monsters should be killed. Felons are redeemable because he himself is a felon, and monsters should be killed because they all do monstrous things. When faced with the possibility of angels being real, he refuses to believe it for the first two episodes, because, as he says, “he’s never seen one.” Eventually he learns how to see in shades of grey and not kill every monster he meets, but this is because of his time in purgatory with Benny, his Cajun vampire boyfriend.

Another sign of Dean’s ADHD is physical sensitivity. In the season one episode “Bugs,” he comments on the shower’s water pressure. Like it’s a big deal to him, when he’s only ever used 1-star motel room showers. In the later seasons, he’s also seen to wear a fluffy robe and soft pajamas with hotdogs on them and socks that say “Send Noods” but noods spelt like noodles. And so he should! Dean deserves comfort! He’s a special boy.

ADHDers often have problems with executive function—remembering appointments, cleaning up after ourselves, showering, eating, even going to the toilet when we need to pee. The hunting life excludes Dean from the normal functions of usual life, such as dentist appointments, dropping the kids off at school, meal prepping for the week, or turning up to a job on time. These were only factors in Dean’s life during the gap between seasons 5 and 6 when he lived with Lisa and Ben, and it’s not shown how his executive dysfunction impacted his suburban, settled life, but Lisa does mention that Dean drinks a lot. It’s another thing he inherited from John, much as I did my alcoholism from my father, and my adhd too. But Sam doesn’t drink to excess more than a handful of times over the entire 15 seasons, whereas Dean subsists on alcohol to get through the day. At one point in season 11, I’m pretty sure, don’t fact check me, he is shown to be drinking a beer at about 10 in the morning, because, as he says to Sam, “You drank all the coffee. What do you want me to do? Drink water?” Dean your liver must be quaking.

Excess is a common problem for people with ADHD. We have problems with limiting ourselves—because our dopamine machine broke, anything that gives us a little bit of high—such as sugar, sex, alcohol, stimulants, any kind of food that is bad for us but tastes real good—we usually have it in excess because we can’t help ourselves. In the season 4 episode “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester,” Dean eats the entirety of the candy in the Impala. The only reasons I don’t eat everything in my fridge every day is because, one, I don’t have the money, and two, it’s all ingredients I have to prepare and not ready-made food. Whereas Dean has only known fast food for the first 10 or so seasons until he starts cooking and baking and settling into domesticity. Like anyone who gets UberEats every day instead of cooking for themselves knows how expensive that is. He also engages in meaningless sex, although people have pointed that Sam actually gets more on screen action than Dean. But I know a lot of amab people who engage in casual sex with randos because it satisfies a base need. Dean could be classified as hypersexual in some regards, but I know what hypersexuality feels like and it’s like this overwhelming miasma where you can’t think about anything except how horny you are, and I don’t think Dean has that normally. Maybe when he was a demon in season 10, but generally I think he can control himself.

His settled life in the men of letters Bunker is a far cry from his flashbacks in season 8 to Purgatory. From what we know of purgatory, the land of gods and monsters, it was a year-long monster hunt, but without any of the boring paperwork. Dean got to fight and kill as many vampires, ghouls, leviathan, etc as came his way, which is why it’s absolutely ridiculous that he died by rebar in a vampire fight. He spent an entire year spilling blood and chopping off heads, day and night, and he dies by metal bar to the spine? And he’s not even coughing up blood? Andrew Dabb, I’m coming for you. Of course purgatory is the perfect place for Dean because it’s constant adrenaline, constant excitement, constant stimulation, which is what every day life lacks. Even Dean’s every day life is like, 20% monster killing and the rest is leg work. They go weeks or months between cases, and sometimes don’t find the monster at all. So I’m not surprised he gets bored easily and drinks. Would if I could too, my pal.

Which leads me onto Dwelling. Dean dwells on the horrors of his life in a way I do and my carefree older brothers don’t. In the season 4 episode “Heaven and Hell,” he reveals to Sam that he remembers his entire forty years in hell, and there are flashes of his memory littered throughout the season in creepy, split-second increments. He dwells on the people who die, doing his thousand-yard stare into the funeral pyre of everyone they cremate. In the most egregious display of dwelling, he rewrites history TWICE to deal with his grief — in season 8 he makes himself believe that it was his fault Cas didn’t come back from purgatory with him, and again in season 13 he invents the story of Jack controlling Cas to deal with his grief over Cas’s death. His PTSD twists the truth until it becomes another way to torture himself, because if someone gets hurt it’s on him; everyone who loves him is just one more person to disappoint.

On a lighter note, Hyperfixations, equivalent to Autism special interests, are a common trait of ADHD. Some of Dean’s hyperfixations include: hunting in general; cowboys and cowboy movies; the musical Rent; the movie Braveheart; larping. He loves dressing up and acting, and what is putting on a monkey suit and lying about being a Fed if not larping? Oh god the meta of that coupled with the season 4 episode “The Monster At The End Of This Book” is making my head hurt. And actually, the next episode of Holy Hell is on the subject of meta-textuality so stick around if that’s something you enjoy.

One of the amazing things about ADHD is creativity. Since we’re easily bored and easily amused, we’re constantly pushing the boundaries of our curiosity. In season three episode “Bloodlust,” Dean decapitates a vampire with a miter saw, something that even veteran vampire hunter Gordon Walker comments is a thing of beauty. Dean creates a Ma’lak box in season 14 episode “Damaged Goods” as a way to contain Michael if he ever inhabits Dean’s body again. Dean is always making up words like “were-pire” and “Jefferson Starships,” and he has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of pop culture, which he references in almost every line of dialogue. Like tv and movies raised me, but even I don’t understand a lot of his references. It’s almost like he’s a character in a tv show being written by dozens of people. But that’s not right. He’s a real person and my friend. My friend Dean Winchester, who shouts me burgers and passes out on my couch.

Also, I’m bragging now but as of the day of writing this I got my ADHD diagnosis and it feels so good to have a doctor, a psychiatrist in fact, confirm my belief. After about three or four years of figuring out I have adhd and then trying to make everyone else believe me when I say I do, it feels like a huge weight off. Dean deserved to feel that. He deserves to put a name to his differences and be in charge of his life instead of letting his anger, confusion and impulses control him. If anyone is worried that you might have something and don’t know whether to pursue a diagnosis, my two cents are that it has only improved my life. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder in 2014 and it allowed me to go on medication, which snapped me out of the worst period of anxiety I have ever gone through and also a psychotic episode that featured talking walls and a swarm of Christmas beetles. Trust me, we all need help sometimes, and some people like me need more help than others, but you can take control of the forces in your life that hold you back. As my mother used to say to me when I was a child, the world is your oyster. It really fucking does get better, and since I started on the right anti-depressants for me my life has improved so goddamn much. The world is fucked right now, and it’s impossible to even function on most levels. We all need therapy. I myself have a gp, a psychiatrist, and a psychologist and they keep me relatively sane. I would not be alive if I didn’t have years and years of ongoing therapy and good drugs. Plus I journal everyday and practice gratitude. I’m still crazy but the craziness is contained and doesn’t hurt me anymore.

Despite never going to therapy, Dean grows from being a loner with one friend (his own brother) to someone with a wealth of connections and family. He picks up new people to love like he’s velcro, and when he goes in he goes all in. He would die for the people he loves. He’s constantly putting himself in danger to protect his loved ones. In the Season 6 episode “Let It Bleed,” Dean captures and tortures demons in an effort to find out where Crowley took Lisa and Ben. He then has Cas wipe their memories so that they don’t remember him and can live their lives without him, at his own great distress. In season 5, he goes to Stull Cemetery to impinge on the fight between Lucifer and Michael, just to be there for Sam. As Dean says, he’s “not going to let him die alone.”

That being said, I do have to talk about Dean’s very few, but ultimately life-ruining, flaws. His emotional dysregulation makes his moods unpredictable at best. By virtue of his black and white thinking, he forces the people he loves to choose sides between him and other characters, such as Sam and Ruby, Cas and Crowley, Mary and the british men of letters, and Cas and Jack, and when they don’t choose him, he passively aggressively, and sometimes just aggressively, tortures them until something else usurps their betrayal. His anger issues are par to none, and often get him in a lot of trouble. But since he is the main character, he never really faces consequences for this, and neither does he mature. Even in the final season episode “The Trap,” while Dean admits how angry he is and how wrong he was for taking it out on Cas when Jack died, mere episodes later in “Unity” he turns Jack into a nuclear reactor to take out God, and Jack dies again. His characterisation in the last few seasons, especially in regards to Jack, is all over the place. I would have to start a murderboard to explain how Dean feels about Jack and how he reacts to what Jack does in every episode. Like, pictures and red string and everything. And even then I would not be able to comprehend exactly what the writers did and what they thought they were doing.

But unlike me, Dean always believes the best in people until proven otherwise, and he does always come around to the people who atone for their sins. Even when Sam refuses to get his soul back in season 6, Dean keeps trying until Sam is put right. Between seasons 7 and 8, He spends a year in Purgatory looking for Cas despite how Cas sent Sam insane, ingested billions of monster souls, and became God. When the people he loves choose him, he chooses them back.

But even when they betray him, lie to him, deceive him, and hurt the other people in his life, he can’t stop loving them. He never stops loving Sam or Cas or Jack or Mary or John or Bobby. He loves with everything he has. He is, as Cas says, a being of love.

Oof. That was a lot of words and I feel like I only just scratched the surface. Like realistically I just talked about fambily and ADHD. There is just so much to Dean Winchester that maybe I’ll make another episode sometime. But I am definitely making an episode purely about Dean’s gender presentation and sexuality in the future. You can find the show at holyhellpod on Tumblr where I post transcripts for the episodes and Instagram where I post memes.

I don’t see myself doing an episode about Sam any time soon, Not because I don’t like Sam, but because I can’t stand Jared Padalecki. He’s done some things that I can’t support, and I’m really bad at separating the art from the artist. Especially when it’s something like Supernatural, which is not art. Supernatural is an experiment. It’s not Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry. Like Jared Padalecki didn’t invent rock and roll, you know what I’m saying? However, if you really want me to do an episode about Sam, you can pay me 101 Australian dollars and 50 Australian cents at patreon.com/holyhellpod. I’ll talk to you next time.

Links

http://www.scififantasynetwork.com/dean-winchester-has-adhd/

#supernatural #spn #supernatural podcast #dean winchester #holyhellpod #transcripts

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betterdaysareatoenailaway · 4 years ago

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RANDOM REVIEW #2: ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (1999)

“This game has got to be about more than winning. You’re part of something.” Any Given Sunday (1999), directed by Oliver Stone and featuring Jamie Foxx, Dennis Quaid, Cameron Diaz, Al Pacino, LL Cool J, James Woods, and Matthew Modine, is my favourite sports movie of all time. Of all time.

I’m not betraying my favourite sport by saying this. The Mighty Ducks is a kid’s movie. It’s okay, but it’s not a timeless classic. I don’t like the Slap Shot series, Sudden Death is fun but silly, and the Goon movies were a missed opportunity. The only truly good scene in Goon is the diner scene where Liev Schreiber tells Seann William Scott: “Don’t go trying to be a hockey player. You’ll get your heart ripped out.”

Such is the sad circumstance of the hockey enforcer. They all want to play, not just fight. Here’s a link to a video in which the most feared fighter in the history of the NHL, Bob Probert, explains that he wanted to be “an offensive threat...like Bobby Orr,” not a fighter: https://youtu.be/4sbxejbMH4g?t=118 Heartbreaking. But not unusual.

Donald Brashear, Marty McSorley, Tie Domi, Stu “The Grim Reaper” Grimson, Frazer McLaren: they all had hockey skills. But they were told they had to fight to remain on the roster, so they fought. As Schreiber says in the film: “You know they just want you to bleed, right?” If the players don’t bleed, they don’t get to stay on the team. So they fight, and they pay dearly for it later. Many former fighters have CTE or other head injuries that make day-to-day life difficult. The makers of Goon should have taken that scene and run with it. I was so disappointed they didn’t, especially given what happened right around the time the film came out, with the tragic suicides of Wade Belak, Derek Boogaard, and Rick Rypien, all enforcers, all dead in a single summer. So Hollywood hasn’t even made a good hockey movie, let alone a great one. Baseball has a shitload of good films, probably because the slower pace of play makes it easier to film. Moneyball has a terrific home run scene, Rookie of the Year does too. Angels in the Outfield was a big favourite of mine when I was a kid, plus all the Major League films, and Bull Durham.

Football has two good movies: The Program (1993) and Rudy (1993).

And football has one masterpiece. The one I am writing about today.

A young Oliver Stone trying not to die in Vietnam. ^ Now, I know Stone is laughed at these days, given his nutty conspiracy theories and shitty behaviour and the marked decline in the quality of his films (although 2012’s Savages was underrated). I know Stone is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but do you want a football movie to be subtle? Baseball, sure. It’s a game of fine distinctions, but football? Football is war. And war is about steamrolling the enemy, distinctions be damned, which is why Any Given Sunday is such an amazing sports film. I love the way it shows the dark side of football. In fact, the film is so dark that the NFL withdrew their support and cooperation, forcing Stone to create a fictitious league and team to portray what he wanted to portray.

This is not to say the movie is fresh or original. Quite the opposite. Any Given Sunday has every single sports film cliché you can think of. But precisely because it tries to stuff every single cliché into its runtime, the finished product is not a cliched mess so much as a rich tapestry, a dense cinema verite depiction of the dizzying highs and depressing lows of a professional sports team as it wins, loses, parties, and staggers its way through a difficult season. Cliché #1: The aging quarterback playing his final year, trying to win one last championship. (Dennis Quaid)

Sample dialog: Dennis Quaid (lying in a hospital bed severely injured): Don’t give up on me coach. Al Pacino: You’re like a son to me. I’ll never give up on you. ^ I know this sounds awful. But it’s actually fuckin’ great. Cliché #2: The arrogant upstart new player who likes hip hop and won’t respect the old regime. (Jamie Foxx)

Cliché #3: The walking wounded veteran who could die if he gets hit one more time. Coincidentally, he needs just one more tackle to make his million-dollar bonus for the season. (Lawrence Taylor)

Cliché #4: The female executive in a man’s world who must assert herself aggressively in order to win the grudging respect of her knuckle-dragging male colleagues (Cameron Diaz). Diaz is fantastic in the role, though she should have had more screen time, given that the main conflict in the film is very much about the new generation, as represented by her and Jamie Foxx, trying to replace the old generation, represented by Al Pacino, Dennis Quaid, Jim Brown, and Lawrence Taylor. Some people think Diaz’s character is too calculating, but here’s the thing: she’s right. Too many sports GMs shell out millions for the player an individual used to be, not the player he presently is. “I am not resigning a 39-year old QB, no matter how good he was,” she tells Pacino’s coach character, and you know what? She’s right. The Leafs’ David Clarkson signing is proof positive of the perils of signing a player based on past performance, not current capability. Diaz’s character is the living embodiment of the question: do you want to win, or do you want to be loyal? Cuz sometimes you can’t do both.

Cliché #5: The team doctor who won’t sacrifice his ethics for the good of the team (Matthew Modine).

Cliché #6: The team doctor who will sacrifice his ethics for the good of the team (James Woods)

Cliché #7: The grizzled, thrice-divorced coach who has sacrificed everything for his football team, to the detriment of his social and familial life, who must give a stirring speech at some point in the film (Al Pacino…who goes out there and gives the all-time greatest sports movie “we must win this game” speech)

Cliché #8: The assistant or associate coach who takes a parental interest in his players, playing the good cop to the head coach’s bad cop (former NFL star Jim Brown).

Best quote: “Who wants to be thinking about blitzes and crossblocks when you’re holding your grandkids in your arms? That’s why I wanna coach high school. Kids don’t know nothing. They just wanna play.”

Cliché #9: The player who can’t stop doing drugs (L.L. Cool J).

Okay, so the first thing that needs to be talked about is Al Pacino’s legendary locker room speech. Now, it’s the coach’s job to rile up and inspire the players. But eloquence alone won’t do it. If you use certain big words, you lose them (remember Brian Burke being endlessly mocked by the Toronto media for using the word “truculent?”). The coach must deliver the message in a language the players understand, while still making victory sound lofty and aspirational. This is not an easy thing to accomplish. One of my favourite inspirational lines was spoken by “Iron” Mike Keenan to the New York Rangers before Game 7 against the Vancouver Canucks in 1994. “Win tonight, and we’ll walk together forever.” Oooh that’s gorgeous. But Pacino’s speech is right up there with it.

“You know, when you get old in life…things get taken from you. That’s parta life. But you only learn that when you start losin’ stuff. You find out…life’s this game of inches. So’s football. In either game – life or football – the margin for error is so small. I mean…one half a step too late or too early and you don’t quite make it…one half second too slow, too fast, you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They’re in every break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we add up all those inches that’s gonna make the fuckin difference between winnin’ and losin’! Between livin’ and dyin’!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_iKg7nutNY Somehow, against all odds, Any Given Sunday succeeds. It is the Cinderella run of sports movies. You root for the film as you watch it. The dressing room scenes are incredible…the Black players listen to the newest hip hop while a trio of lunkhead white dudes headbang and scream “Hetfield is God.” There is a shower scene where a linebacker, tired of being teased about the size of his penis, tosses his pet alligator into the showers where it terrorizes his tormentors. There is a scene where a halfback has horrible diarrhea, but he’s hooked up to an IV so the doctor (Matthew Modine) has to follow him into the toilet cubicle, crinkling his nose as the player evacuates his bowels. There is a scene where someone loses an eye (the only scene in the film where Stone’s over-the-top approach misses the mark). There are scenes that discuss concussions (which is why the NFL refused to cooperate for the film), where Lawrence Taylor has to sign a waiver absolving the team of responsibility if he is hurt or paralyzed or killed. I wonder how purists and old school football fans reacted to the news that Oliver Stone was making a football film. If they even knew who he was (not totally unlikely…Stone made a string of jingoistic war movies in the 1980s) they probably thought the heavy hands of Oliver would ruin the film, take the poetry out of every play. But the actual football is filmed perfectly. The camera gets nice and low for the tackles. It flies the arcs of perfect spiral passes. It shows the chaos of a defensive line barreling down the field. When Al Pacino asked quarterback Dan Marino (fresh off his own Hollywood experience acting in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective) what it was like to be an NFL QB, Marino said: “Imagine standing on a highway with traffic roaring at you while trying to read Hamlet.” A great explanation. Shoulda made the movie. So the football itself is fabulously done. Much better than what Cameron Crowe did in the few football scenes in Jerry Maguire. The Program had some great football, as did Rudy, but neither come close to the heights of Any Given Sunday. In one of the film’s best scenes, Jamie Foxx insists that his white coaches have routinely placed him in situations where he was doomed to fail or prone to injury, and we believe him because white coaches have been doing that to Black players for decades. Quarterback Doug Williams, who led his Washington Redskins team to a Superbowl victory in 1987, was frequently referred to by even liberal media outlets as a “Black quarterback,” instead of just “quarterback,” as if his skin colour necessitated a qualification. Even now, in 2021, the majority of quarterbacks are white, although the gap is gradually closing. The 2020 season saw the highest number of starting Black quarterbacks, with 10 out of a possible 32. Quarterback is the most cerebral position on the field, and for a long time there was a racist belief that Black men couldn’t do the job. Foxx’s character is a composite of many of the different Black quarterbacks who came of age in the 1990s, fighting for playing time against white QBs beloved by their fan base, fawned over in hagiographic Sports Illustrated profiles, and protected by the good ol’ boys club of team executives and coaching staff. Foxx’s character isn’t demoted because he can’t play the game. He wins several crucial games for his team en route to the playoffs. He’s demoted because he listens to hip hop in the dressing room, because he recorded a rap song and shot a video for it, and because he’s cocky. Yes, the scene where he asks out Cameron Diaz is sexist, as if her power only comes from her sexuality, not her intelligence and business acumen, but it’s meant to show how overly confident Foxx is, not that he’s a sexist prick. Any Given Sunday isn’t a single issue film. It’s basically an omni-protest piece. It gleefully shows football’s dark side, and there is no director better than Oliver Stone for muck-raking. He’s in full-on investigative journalist mode in Any Given Sunday, showing how and why players play through serious brain injuries. How because they are given opiates, often leading to debilitating addictions (this happens in all contact sports...Colorado Avalanche player Marek Svatos overdosed on heroin a few years after retiring from injuries). As to why, Stone gives two reasons. One, team doctors are paid by the team, not the players, therefore their decisions will benefit the team, not the players. And two, the players themselves are encouraged to underreport injuries and play through them because stats are incentivized. James Woods unethical doctor argues with Modine’s idealistic one because an MRI the latter called for a player to have costs the team $20k. But the player in question, Lawrence Taylor, plays anyway because his contract is stat incentivized and if he makes on more tackle he gets a million dollars. Incentivizing stats leads to players playing hurt. And although I loathe this term, a lazy go-to for film critics, Stone really does give an unflinching account of how this shit happens and why. When Williams is inevitably hurt and lying prone on the field, he woozily warns the paramedics who are placing him on a stretcher to “be careful…I’m worth a million dollars.” It’s tragic, yet you’re happy for him. The film really makes you care about these guys. Thanks to the smartly written script, the viewer knows that Williams has four kids, and you’re pleased he made his bonus because, in all likelihood, after he retires, his injuries will prevent him from any kind of gainful employment (naturally, they give the TV analyst jobs to retired white players, unless Williams can somehow land the coveted token Black guy gig). Stone is not above fan service, a populist at heart, and he stuffs the film with former and then-current NFL players, a miraculous stunt given the fact that the NFL revoked their cooperation. Personally, I think this was a good thing because it meant Stone didn’t have to compromise (the league wanted editorial say on all issues pertaining to the league…meaning they would have cut the best storyline, which is the playing hurt one). It also meant that they had to rename the team and the league. While I’m sure this took away from the realism for some fans, I’m cool with it. It also allowed the moviemakers to name the team the Sharks, a perfect name for this roving band of predatory capitalist sports executives. In another example of fan service, the call-girl Pacino’s quintessential lonely workaholic character rents a girlfriend experience from is none other than Elizabeth Berkley of Showgirls, who had been unfairly blacklisted after the titular Verhoven/Esterhaz venture, a movie my wife showed me one day while I was dopesick, which I became so transfixed and mesmerized by that I forgot I was. As mentioned above, the only misstep in the film is one of the offshoots of the Playing Hurt arc, where a player loses an eye on the field. Not because he gets poked, but because he gets hit so hard his eye simply falls out. A medic runs onto the field and puts the white globe on ice. Stone cast a player with a glass eye in order to achieve this effect. No CGI! Still, the scene is unconvincing, a tad too over-the-top. But this is Oliver Stone. At least Any Given Sunday’s sole over-the-top moment is a throwaway scene lasting all of thirty seconds. It easily could have been a secondary plot-line in which government officials try to sneak a Cuban football prodigy out of Castro’s communist stronghold but the player is brutally murdered the morning the officials arrive at his apartment to escort him to the private plane. Or else the team GM is revealed to be a massive international cocaine dealer. Or the tight end is one half of a serial killer couple. The film follows its own advice, focusing more on the players growth, particularly Beamon’s (Foxx). The anonymity of the title, Any Given Sunday, elevates the game, not the players. Thank God, the movie doesn’t force Beamon to assimilate into Pacino’s mold. He buys into the team-first philosophy without renouncing his idiosyncratic POV or his fierce individuality. This is a triumph. One of my biggest problems with sports is the flattening effect it can have on creative individuals. Players take media training in order to sound as alike as possible during media interviews, a long row of stoic giants spouting cliches. It’s boring. Which is why media latch onto a loudmouth, even while they scold him for it. All sports are dying for an intelligent mouthpiece who can explain his motivations in a succinct, sound-bite-friendly, manner. Sports are entertainment. As much as I love Sidney Crosby, in my heart I have to go with Alexander Ovechkin because Ovechkin is far more thrilling, both on and off the ice. Unlike almost every other NHL star before him, all of whom were forced to kneel and kiss Don Cherry’s Rock Em Sock Em ring, Ovechkin defiantly told the media he simply did not care about Cherry or Cherry’s disgusting parental reaction to one of Ovie’s more creative goal celebrations (called a “celly” in the biz). On the play in question, Ovechkin scored the goal, then dropped his stick and mimed warming his hands over it, as if his stick were on fire. As cheesy as the celebration appeared to the naked eye, it’s both a funny and accurate notion. Ovechkin was the hottest scorer in the league for many years and his stick was on fire, metaphorically speaking. The only celly I can think of that matches up in terms of creativity and entertainment value came from Teemu Selanne in 1993, who scored a beauty of a goal, threw one of his gloves straight up into the air, then pumped his stick like a shotgun while “shooting” his glove. Of course, Cherry took exception to it. Cherry’s favourite goal celebration features Bobby Orr putting his head down and refraining from raising his hands over his head. Cherry’s idea of an appropriate goal celly is no celly at all. This from a man who claims “we’ve got to sell our game.” But when an arrogant player shows up and he’s not white, he’s in for a shitload of bad press. Foxx’s Beamon illustrates this beautifully when he yells at Pacino after Pacino cuts him for an older QB who has lost four games this season. “Don’t play that racism card with me,” Pacino warns. “Okay…okay…” Foxx nods, “Maybe it’s not racism. Maybe it’s ‘placism’…as in…a brother got to know his place.”

youtube

Here is the original theatrical trailer, featuring Garbage’s classic “Push It.”

youtube

Above Lawrence Taylor begs Matthew Modine for Cortazone. There’s also a great scene where Pacino is trying to figure out where he has gone wrong and Diaz just looks at him. “You got old,” she says simply. No enterprise is more cruel to an aging human being than sports. And this movie makes football a big giant corporate machine that chews players up and spits them out, injured and drug addicted, after four or five years. Those who play for a decade are lucky. This is still how the NFL works. And the NHL is increasingly becoming a young man’s game. Experience matters less and less.

When I started watching hockey in the 90s, players regularly competed into their late 30s. Not so anymore. Players peak at 23-24 now, and are often out of the league by age 35. Thornton and Chelois are exceptions, not the rule. After more than two hours, Any Given Sunday finally lurches across the finish line, bravely refusing to give its viewers a traditional happy ending, in the great tradition of underdog sports films like Rocky and Rudy. The bombshell dropped by Pacino’s character at the end feels less surprising than inevitable, but by now the movie has explored so much of professional sports' seedy underbelly that you're glad it's over. The film is great but exhausting. Stone seems to be advancing the notion that the sport itself is pure, but the people in it are corrupt. If money weren’t involved, the game would be played for its own sake.

I agree with this. People playing pond hockey are engaging in wholesome fun, not necessarily practicing to make a professional league. Commerce corrupts the purity of the game, and the extent to which it corrupts is directly proportional to how badly the individual in question needs the commerce. Of course, the sport is highly racialized, with people in positions of authority white, and those being told what to do with their bodies Black.

Any Given Sunday is an important film, but it never sacrifices entertainment for the sake of moralizing. That it pulls off such a strong moralistic stance is a testament to the actors, who are all incredible, and the material, which is among the strongest of Stone’s career.

He never really made a great movie after this one. So check it out sometime.

#betterdaysareatoenailaway #anygivensunday #al pacino #jamie foxx #dennis quaid #james woods #matthew modine #jim brown #lawrence taylor #cameron diaz #ll cool j

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flutistbyday-1 · 4 years ago

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Bury a Friend Chapter One:

Reposting my “Supernatural” AU! This story features the reader— YN— and her friend, Amanda, as they deal with the life of being a hunter. YN is in love with Dean, but we all know how Dean is. I played around with cannon when it comes to plot and ages, please don’t hate me! Lmao.

Set in season 3/4/5 so far, so consider this your spoiler warning!

Pairing— Dean x Reader (eventually)

Characters— OFC Amanda, reader, Dean, Sam, Ellen, Jo, Bobby, etc.

Word count— 2219

I will only accept 50 tags for this!

*****************************

Dean Winchester.

What. A. Man.

No, a God.

Y/N had known Dean and Sam for years. 10, almost 11 years, to be exact.

Y/N met them when she was just 15; just a teenage girl, who hadn’t even finished going through puberty yet.

When Y/N met Dean and Sam, the girl was gangly, angled, and uncoordinated. The amount of times Y/N tripped over her own feet or ran into a screen door, was too many to count. Y/N was not a graceful teenager. She had tried activities like gymnastics to help, but she broke her arm and never went back.

She was a graceful adult, though.

Between puberty, her father’s training regime, and some miracle, Y/N had stopped tripping over her own feet and started to become a true hunter.

Her father trained her mentally and physically. Y/N could handle any weapon that dropped in her hands, She could single-handedly shove stakes through hearts, and she always made sure to have the upper hand. She was smart, too. She knew her limits and never bit off more than she could chew.

She used her small stature to her advantage: she could hide most anywhere and she could wiggle out most monster’s grips.

She was adept, daft, and cunning. She also knew to keep a low profile— nobody had been able to pin her down.

She was deadly.

Y/N had met Sam and Dean through a family friend who knew John Winchester. They were all hunters; a life that Y/N had desperately tried to escape. Her Dad would drop Y/N off with Sam when he and John would go on a hunt. Dean was resentful that he had another “kid” to look after, but Sam was grateful to have another person to talk to. Sam and Y/N were close up until the day he graduated from high school. Sam left after a huge fight with his father and never looked back.

Y/N had mourned the loss of her friendship with Sam, but Dean never gave Y/N a second glance. Which wasn’t surprising— Dean was almost 10 years her senior, nine years and 364 days… Not that Y/N has counted or anything. She was just a kid to him.

Dean and John left seven years ago and Y/N hasn't heard from a Winchester since.

When Y/N started hunting, She began to track Sam and Dean. She followed their trail through newspapers. Once they had reunited with Ellen, Y/N got a phone call every time they showed.

She had long tried to forget about her feelings for Dean, but she kept an eye on the brothers to make sure their paths didn’t cross.

Until the universe decided to pull the Winchester’s back into her life.

Y/N was at the Roadhouse, nursing a whiskey, neat, when she heard a voice She thought she would never hear again.

“Y/N?” The voice boomed from across the bar.

Y/N turned to the source of the noise. A goofy smile coming across her face when she realized who was speaking to her

“Well, I’ll be!” She said to the giant man before her.

Sam had aged, but well. Under all that bulk of muscle, the kid that she knew was still there. She could see it in the kindness of his eyes. Even though the life of a hunter was cruel, he was still good.

Y/N stood to hug Sam, but he swept her up in his arms and spun around. Y/N laughed loudly but clung to him. She inhaled his cologne and all those good memories she had of spending time with the Winchester’s came back in waves of nostalgia.

“It’s good to see you, Y/N,” he said as he put her back on her feet.

“You too, Sam!” Y/N said, joyfully as she sat down. “Care to join me?”

Sammy nodded before turning to Dean.

“Dean, you remember Y/N?”

Dean glared at her. “Yeah, Cameron’s kid,” he grunted. “Dumped her with me. Gave me another mouth to feed.”

Y/N tsked her tongue at Sam before turning toward him. “Is he always such an ass?”

This earned a laugh from Sam. “Yeah,” he guffawed. “Yeah, he is.”

“Whatever,” Dean huffed. “Can I get a beer, Jo?”

They waited until Dean had skulked off to the corner of the bar before resuming conversation.

When Y/N was 15, their age gap made the world of a difference. But now that she was 25? 10 years didn’t seem all that bad. And Dean looked good for 35. Really good. Even though he was still an ass.

“So, what brings you here?” She asked Sam, turning toward him with a bright smile.

Sam shrugged. “It’s been awhile since we’ve had a case. Dean was getting restless, so I suggested we come here. It’s the closest thing we have to a home.”

“You don’t go to Bobby’s anymore?” It was an innocent question, but she could tell it set Sam on edge.

Sam’s eyes darkened for a second.

“Consider the question withdrawn,” Y/N half joked.

She knew Bobby had a heart attack and she also knew that neither Sam nor Dean had bothered to pick up a phone and call Bobby in almost a year— that’s why she was in town. She had hoped that the boys had long moved on from their relationship with Bobby.

Y/N had called Ellen for her weekly check in when Ellen had told her Bobby had a heart attack. Y/N rushed to Sioux Falls immediately.

Jo had gushed every detail about Sam and Dean to Y/N when Y/N and Amanda came to the Roadhouse three nights ago.

“How do you know about Bobby?” He asked, leaning closer to her.

It was Y/N’s turn to shrug. “You and Dean are famous in this world,” she said nonchalantly as she downed the whiskey in one swig. “Word gets around. My dad knew him, too,” I offered. “Said he was a drunk.”

The truth was, Y/N knew Bobby through her father as well. Her father and Bobby had been close for about twenty years before a hunt went very, very wrong.

Her father had almost gotten Bobby killed, and instead of owning up to it, Cameron pinned the blame on Bobby.

That fight created a rift between Cameron and Bobby that nobody could fix.

Y/N had reached out to Bobby only twice in the past seven years— once to see if he’d help her. He said he had no interest in helping Cameron’s blood, and once more just to tell him that Cameron had passed away. Even though they weren’t in contact, she still cared for Bobby. She always drove by his house when she was in town, just to make sure he was alive.

Y/N knew that if Sam and Dean found out that Bobby had been hurt, and almost killed, by her father, they would most likely turn on her. Bobby was the only family they had left, and Bobby hated Y/N.

That made Sam laugh. “That’s what they all say. But those who know him—”

“Know he’s mostly sober?”

Y/N and Sam laughed. She didn’t realize how much she had missed the younger Winchester brother. His presence was a breath of fresh air.

Jo poured another round.

“So what are you doing here?” He asked.

Y/N looked at him, debating if she should tell him the truth. “Ellen’s like a second mom to me,” she said after a moment. “She likes to think she’s checking up on me, but really, I’m checking up on her.” It wasn’t completely untrue. Ellen did like it when Y/N popped in, but only ‘cause she was a hunter and she was worried sick about Y/N.

Y/N could see the wheels turning in Sam’s mind and hoped he wouldn’t press it. Eventually, he nodded, accepting her words.

They fell into an awkward silence. They both knew that you couldn’t trust other hunters as far as you could throw. They both knew that Y/N had just lied to him for a reason.

“Y/N,” Sammy started.

She looked at him. Her heart broke when she saw the sadness in his eyes.

“I’m sorry for how I left things.”

Y/N waved her hand dismissively. “That was years ago, Sam. C’est la vie.”

Y/N moved to get out of her seat, but Sam’s hand was on hers in a second. She couldn’t help but look up at him.

“I mean it, Y/N. I was so desperate to get out that I didn’t care who got caught in the crossfire. I messed up.”

Y/N could see the sincerity on his face. “Okay,” She whispered. She cleared her throat. “But I really should get going. The rowdy crowd is about to show up.” Y/N gave Sam a shit-eating grin and slapped money down on the bar.

When Y/N turned, she couldn’t help but notice Dean. Well, who Dean was chatting up, anyhow.

He was leaning against the bar, talking up her best friend, Amanda. Y/N Looked back at Sam and winked. “Watch this.”

She walked over to Dean. He either didn’t sense her presence or didn’t care. Y/N looked at Amanda, and Amanda noticed her best friend instantly.

Y/N slightly raised her eyebrows, asking Amanda a silent question. Do you want me to stop this? When one friend was being hit on by men they didn’t like, the other would come over and would ask, “Honey, are you ready to go?” Before sharing a kiss with the other to get the man to go away. Most of the time, it worked. Sometimes, the guy was a creep and wanted to “join them”. Those guys usually got a punch to the nose.

Amanda gave a slight nod, inscrutable to anyone who didn’t know the pair .

Y/N stepped in between Dean and Amanda, making herself known.

“Dean,” Y/N crooned in a voice saved for men she thought were one step above Neanderthals, “I see you’ve met Amanda.” Y/N smiled brightly, but her eyes showed a silent threat.

“Yes, I have, Sweetheart,” Dean said, with confidence dripping from him. He winked at Y/N before turning to Amanda.

It took everything Y/N and Amanda had not to laugh.

“I hate to break it to you, Dean, but you’re barking up the wrong tree,” Y/N said in a tone that indicated that he should leave.

Dean stood up straighter. He looked down at Y/N, literally and figuratively. “Is that so, sweetheart?” His voice challenged Y/N this time.

Y/N gave a small laugh. “Yes, it is Dean. You should leave before you get humiliated.”

“Ha,” he said, his signature cocky smile on his face again.

Y/N shrugged her shoulders. “I warned you.” She wrapped her arms around Amanda’s neck and kissed her friend deeply.

Dean’s jaw dropped and Sam started laughing in the background.

Y/N pulled away from Amanda and looked at Dean. He shrunk back from the pair and sank onto a stool. He was leaning on the bar again, shell shocked from what just happened. Y/N knew he was a little turned on, too. It was in his eyes.

Y/N raised her eyebrows suggestively while leaning into Dean.

He was disarmed by the powermove and lust, so it was easy for Y/N to reach into his pocket and snag his wallet.

“I told you, Dean. Wrong tree,” She whispered seductively. Once the wallet was securely on her person, Y/N discreetly pulled out her knife.

Her lips were millimeters away from Dean’s and she could tell he wanted to kiss her.

Y/N licked her lips as one final distraction before slamming the knife into the bar top, pinning his jacket sleeve securely to the wood.

He reacted like Y/N knew he would— He tried to bounce out of his seat, but was stuck to the bar top.

By the time he had successfully removed the knife, Y/N was already halfway out the door, Amanda in tow.

“Keep the knife, sweetheart,” Y/N called as she dragged Amanda out of the door and into the night.

Sam walked up to dean. “Dude—“

“Don’t say anything,” Dean threatened as he pulled his jacket back on. He patted down his sides. “Son of a bitch!” Dean exclaimed as he patted down his front and back pockets. “She just took my wallet!”

This made Sam, Jo, and Ellen laugh.

“Shut up,” Dean hissed.

Ellen leaned across the bar. “She may have been just “Cameron’s kid”, Dean, but she’s not a baby anymore. Her daddy died five years ago, and she was hunting on her own till she found Amanda two years ago.”

Dean looked at Ellen, then at Sam. He had definitely underestimated Y/N.

Ellen could see the lust in Dean's Eyes so she clicked her tongue dismissively in response. “Don’t go messing with her, Dean Winchester. She’s had enough heartache for a lifetime.”

Dean stared at the door, hoping to see Y/N again, and not just because she had his wallet.

********

@kingliam2019

@princessleac1

@kimmiedoo5

#spn dean winchester #spn dean #spn sam #sam winchester #sam winchester supernatural #spn fic #supernatural oc #spn fanfiction #spn reader insert #dean x reader #supernatural fanfiction

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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The Loud House Reviews: Schooled!

Season 5, and regular coverage begin! The loud house finally moves into a new year chronologically: Lincoln and Co move up to Middle School but find themselves seperated when LIncoln accidently signs up for the wrong class and ends up with a mean teacher and frienemy chandler, and then ends up commuting to a Canadian school instead. The Canada part is more believable than a middle school not having multiple teachers for multiple subjects frankly but more ranting on that later. Meanwhile in order to get Lori moves on to college only to find every dorm is a comedic set piece, and Lynn Sr and Rita try to get Lily ready for pre school by potty training her. Finally in all this chaos Leni ends up attending pre school. Again still more believable than the single class thing. Ramblings about well guess, how amazing it is the show has lasted this long in this day and age, my thoughts on Lynn Jr being kind a obnoxious. 50% chad and my lessened hatred for rusty. Which again I assure you is more believable than the single class nonsense. Back to School, under the cut.

Welcome readers new and old to regular coverage of The Loud House! Couple of reasons for that. The first is, like amphibia, so I don’t fall behind as I tend to procastinate and let episodes of shows pile up, and i’m tired of it. The second is that I feel we need more Loud House content on this site that’s not loudcest, people shipping sam and lincoln soley to try and get back at the show for having a gay couple, and some weird stuff I can’t quite unwrap because i’m old. And keep in mind I understand 50% chad just fine.. look at him.

So yeah I have a feeling young or old, i’m not the only one scared to go int here and hopefully I can give ya’ll something fun to look forward to or worth sifting through it.

Now i’ve covered the show before.. 4 times in fact, having covered Brave the last dance as a one off way back and having covered ALL THREE SALUNA episodes during pride month. So check those out if you want my previous thoughts on the show as a whole, my faviorite character and her special lady, and me ranting about rusty/.. and we’ll get to him. But i’ve got a lot to talk about, some of it not directly about the episode so pitter pat er let’s get at eer. The first thing I want to talk about is.. how big an occasion the show is. It’s not only at 5 seasons but it recently got renewed for a 6th and still has a movie on the way.. as I hope so does rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles.. please don’t let that movie have been canceled, that show went from okay to leaving me wanting more of my mad dogs... but yeah getting back on track they’ve offically reached...

And that’s.. incredibly rare ESPECIALLY for nick. I mean yes spongebob will never die, and the fairly oddparents died way after it should’ve, but for the most part nick is a giant tire fire of dickheads when it comes to running a network. They have an absolutley ghastly habit of canceling a show as soon as possible, and if they already commissioned season 2 shuttling it to sister network nicktoons to die a quite death. They expect every show to become an overnight sucess, or else and it’s a freaking disgusting practice. And it’s still going: I mean just to bookend it, around the same time loud house started, we got the utter classic Harvey Beaks. The show had a sizeable audiences and what kids I showed it to loved it but because it wasn’t doing spongebob numbers Nick shuttled it to nicktoons then yelled at it’s creator for daring to be upset they you know.. moved his show to their designated graveyard without telling him and ended the show without giving them notice to change the ending. The final episode still WORKS as a final episode, but it wasn’t INTENDED to end on a bittersweet note and I blanme that on nick. The bookend part comes from the fact that about a month before this Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turltes ended it’s run.. on Nicktoons, with no fanfare and like Harvey fans likely only knowing thanks to scheduling, had it’s final season cut in half so they had to rush the pacing of the final few episodes to wrap up as much as they could, AND the cancelation reason was the always reliably stupid “low toy sales” excuse. The odds of a show surviving on nick, nevermind thriving are very slim and even outside the nightmare factory that is my once beloved childhood network, most animated shows last around 3 seasons. Disney channel usually cuts htem off around 4, and cartoon network around 3 if their that nice, with utter classic OK KO being one of the latest victims of the cancelation bug, and steven unvierse only got a 6th season after essentially being canceled and having to rush the ending, only THEN getting to go back and fill in the cracks with Future and the Movie. And unlike fellow network loved show that’s gone on for a while, Teen Titans Go, the Loud House is still a pretty good show. It has it’s bumps, we’ll talk about some of them here and i’ve talked about em before, especially the “”With the casagrandes mini” which could’ve easily hurt said show but thankfully didn’t. It’s grown, going from being about the one boy among ten girls to being about all 11 kids, AND their parents and making earnest attempts to make once hated characters like Lori and Lola fully fleshed out.. it’s been more 50 50 with lynn, but more on that later. My point is the show’s tried to evolve, to grow out of having a simple status quo and actually let things change and it’s refreshing when a lot of comedy shows refuse to. The show CAN be hit ore miss in quality, but hte misses have become less cruel and the hits have become that much more impactful.

Not only that but the show surivived the seeming impossible of it’s creator being revealed to be a sexual harassing creepy asshole who hopefully gets his dick sanded off for all eternity when he invetibly ends up in hell or whatevers next. Screw him but good on Nick for firing him swiftly, one of the few times in the last few years i could really say that about them and not be sarcastic, and good on the crew for carrying on easily without him.

My point is.. it’s nice to not be attending another show’s funeral. After rise and then venture bros, it’s NICE to have a show surivive and carry on and decide NOT to rest at this stage and stay in it’s comfort zone but shake things up a bit. It’s nice in this stinkhole of a year to have something to celebrate, and yes i’m aware a back to school specail is ill timed, for obvious reasons, but it was likely in production long before covid and I can’t fault the writers for wanting to give kids an escape, nor for doing the quarntine special earlier to help them talk through it. So congrats loud house you earned it. Now that’s out of the way, the not resting thing.. the thing that has me covering the show, and had me exxcited for this episode.. is that they decided to shake things up a lot by moving all the kids up an age and moving Lori up to college. And what makes this work.. is this wasn’t something they just sprung on the audience. it would’ve worked with that after 4 years of the same age and general stuff.. but season 3 started setting it up with Lincoln and Clyde’s middle school visit and Lori’s college interview, both things i’ll likely cover ventually, while Season 4, after the mini series, had most Lori episodes focus on getting her ready for it: From her senior year, to Leni realizing she’d be gone and being panicky over it, to her working to get a car, which she rides off in this episode. The show dedicated one of it’s few arcs, and probably the only non-romantic one outside of Ronnie Anne and Bobby moving to their spinoff, to this.

They were all in on this and there was no turning back, and shaking up the status quo like this is a risk as some viewers fear change and run from it like cowards> Me.. I loved it. I loved the idea of taking Lincoln to a new school, giving him and his friends new stuff to do and new challenges to face, having Lori move away, have Luna learn to drive, have Lisa enter kindergarten, Lily say more etc. And there’s even things I didn’t think of that two upcoming episode synposis suprised me with: birthday episodes, though it’d be best to spread them out but i’m hoping strife of the party isn’t the only one, and the power vacum: Can Leni take over for Lori.. should she? Should Luna or Luaan try instead. Do they even want to? it’s all good questions. It’s a simple but small change that helps change up the show for the better, opens up new avenues while not salting the earth for the old as demonstrated by half of the upcoming episdoes for the next two weeks being ones that could’ve been done at any point in the show.

So yeah my hype was at maxium, helped by the fact I love one hour specials of shows: “Change Your Mind” “Reign Storm”, all three ducktales have done so far with “Let’s Get Dangeorus” likely adding to that list.. it’s usually a great time for shows to go all out, show waht they got and tell deeper stories. So the big question all this has been leading up to: what did loud house, 5 seasons in,k with a clean slate and tone sof potetial do with their premiere? Well let’s take a look shall we? This episode is divided into 4 plots, one of which is really a plot inside a plot but still technically 4, all centered around school starting: Lincoln and Co have their first day of middle school, Lori is moving to college after all that setup, and Lily is finally old enough for daycare. And Lynn Sr is having a slow motion breakdown at first, he gets out of it quickly, because understandably he’s feeling mealcholy about not only having all his kids in school but having his first leave him. Sure he still has a full hosue but it’s still rough having one of the few constants in your life , a chaotic life at that go. So each one focuses on one of them. THe fourht if your curious has Leni accidently end up in Lily’s pre school and is comedy gold. More on that in a minute. This is actually one of the episodes problems as only Lincoln’s plot and Lori’s plot feel like they naturally dovetail, while Lily’s plot feels like an eleven minute episode that was bootstrapped to this one either to get her into daycare faster or to pad it out to an hour along with parts of the Lincoln plot. It’s till not a BAD episode, but it dosen’t feel quite as cohesive as it should, or as big in scope being an hour long, with most of the loud kids outside the four with plots not getting more than a cameo, though Lisa gets to be the best part of LIly’s plot, and Lynn.. we’ll get to her. It’s not great. I do GET why they did this, as trying to focus on ALL of them at once is nigh impossible and it let the stories breathe better, but it still feels weird that none of them have a reaction to lori being gone and frankly I think the stronger story would be to have had lily potty train LAST season, and then focus this on Lori leaving, the family adjusting, and have Lincoln’s middle school woes be the b plot. Now granted we have a full season to rumninate on her absence, and how it effects the others, so it’s not the hugest lost, but i feels like a waste of the extra time to just pile three episodes into one when a half hour could’ve done the same and saved you two half hours for later. It’s not terrible, but it could’ve been better. Now i’m done moping about the special as a whole for a second let’s break down each plot one at a time.

The A-Plot: Lincoln Took off to Canada the Other Dayyyyyyyyy The plot is very simple and the adds and summary sadly telegraphed it.. which didn’t help because it’s very clear from the episode Lincoln getting sent to canada is a wacky twist and not supposed to be in the adds. I mean I can’t blame them it’s in half the episode, but it still would’ve been funnier if they kept it as a suprise. And yes if you didn’t know about this episode LIncoln gets sent to canada which is somehow not too weird for the show. So Lincoln and Co are starting high school. And now’s as good a review as any to TALK about Lincoln’s supporting cast. I did a bit during my review of Brave the Last Dance but feel it’s a good time to talk about them again update opinons and what not. I do feel like they sometimes blend into each other a bit much and shine best when one of them is given the spotlight to play off the others instead of all playing a supporitng role. It’s why I like “Pasture Bedtime” and “brave the last dance” so much: They let the characters breathe while still giving one some extra focus. As for each indivdiually.

Clyde as I said there i’ve come around on: Early on how tolerable he was was a coin flip: he could be an adorable, somewhat awkard, sheltered kid but one eager to help his friend with his various schemes, as he is now only with a love of baking which is even better. But he could ALSO be a creepy little bugger who either had a freaking anime nose bleed and fainted when Lori was around, or tried to break her and Bobby up, Bobby who is not only the nicest character on BOTH shows in general but was extra nice to Clyde despite all this. Granted I think my boy was too dense to realize Clyde was being a one man asshole parade, but still. It dosen’t help that with Savino’s later ousting for doing the same shit but as a grown ass man. Thankfully he has done a complete recovery and the Lori bit was thankfully dropped and with Bobby gone, he couldn’t hurt my baby boy anymore, so they moved on to other parts of him. Plus I love his dad’s not just for the obvious being gay dads but for being good characters in their own right.

Stella is easily my favorite of the group, i’ve gone on about her before and Haley Tju does a wonderful job with her, and she feels a bit more three dimensional than the rest of the non-clyde members of the group. Not fully, but still a bit more than the one trait they get and hopefully like our next one up and clyde, she actually gets to start showing up outside of lincoln’s friend squad team episodes.

Liam is easily my second faviorite. I”m aware he’s not the most complex boy: He’s a farmer, and he knows how to tame animals.. that’s about what he’s used for.. but he’s a sweet enoguh kid he makes it work. And frankly said trait works for him because shockingly, out of all of lincoln’s non clyde friends he’s shown up the MOST in stories not involving Lincoln, and even in one of those lately not involving hte rest of his friends. No really, he popped up in racing hearts in season 3, and Senior Moment and Snoops On Last season. It’s not a TON of episodes overall but compared to the rest of them it’s very noticable and I love it. More please.

Moving on to the ones i’ve bitched about... Zach. Yeah.. my thoughts can best be summed up as this.

I mean.. Lincoln’s friends, even the more cheerful ones are capable of feeling defeat and pesimsim, if you want one to downtalk people you have rusty, and “has a tatoo , likes antqiues and belives in cryptids” aren’t really great quirks. If they did more with them or used them OUTSIDE of his episodes sure, but otherwise .. why is he here other than not wanting to explain his absence? Sure he plays off rusty.. but Stella could easily do his role as that and even then they don’t use him for that enough to really justify being him around. Either have a point with him or quitely write him out.. Star Vs, for all it’s flaws, leanred this as far back as season 2 with alphonso and ferguson, AND when people qutestioned where they are actually brought them back to properly write them off and gave them closure in the episode they gave the rest of the echo creek cast the same. Just pick one. And if you want him to knock rusty down a peg fine, just do so. And now Rusty.. my old nemisis.... and things have changed. Do I still LIKE Rusty? nope. Just.. nope. I don’t. He’s still a skeezy little idiot.. but I realized that unlike LIam he at least has a purpose in the group: He’s the Micheal Kelso. Granted UNLIKE kelso, they don’t go the extra mile and have his friends poke fun at him, but this isn’t that kind of friendship, and with Lynn now around more and Chandler now likely going to be the same, there’s more opprotunites for someone outside the group to rightfully insult the little moron. And if their not going to.. I realized I could. I realized I ENJOY insulting him, taking the piss out of his unjusitfied ego, and just having fun making fun fo the little goober. And more than that.. I realized he DOES have redeeming qualities. He’s a genuinely good friend, he loves his friends dearly and has no trouble showing affection despite his misplaced swagger. I may mock the kid, and I will again.. but he’s not a bad person and will likely grow out of being a dipweasel, just not on screen. I realized having a deep abiding hatred of him just wasn’t good for me when simply mocking him constantly does the trick. There are other, more important things to get pissed about. Rusty isn’t that important. But he is good joke fodder and unlike the show with Zach I refuse to pass up an opportunity.

But yeah now that’s out of the way, the basic setup here infuraties me. It’s for mildly stupid reasons, but ones i’m going to go to bat for: Lincoln dosen’t get into the same class as his friends. As in their still treating this like elementary school and having everyone in the same class for every subject. That.. that’s not how middle school works. that’s not how any of this works. They don’t lump groups of the same kids into one tract of classes, even electives like cooking or forced ones like PE, which thanks to my autisim I was allowed to attend a diffrent kind of PE that wasn’t an utter fucking nightmare. And you may say “Well Jake your a near 30 blobby shell of a man and things change” which is accurate but they haven’t changed that much. Girl Meets World was only 6 years ago. And while they DID have Cory as the only real teacher they USED, he was still shown to be their history teacher and it was lampshaded sometimes how he wasn’t their only class. And yes I know a lot can change in 6 years, the hellscape we’re in proves that, but just simply ASKING my middle schooler nephew if this is still how that works.. and yup it is. Now it could be diffrent by region, but for the most part the conseus seems to be on diffrent teachers for diffrent subjects. And again as Girl Meets World shows, it’s not THAT complicated. Just have one teacher you use for everything or have a home room. Why do this, why. Just why exactly. Why. You barely used actually in school classes for plots anyway and mostly did stuff around the edges like crushes or lunch or dodge ball. Speaking of which where is Girl Jordan. Where IS she? Anyways, my point is this, especailly as a ned’s declassified school surivvial guide on this very network,f fan really annoys me and takes me out of things.. And the thing is they COULD’VE still done this plot just had the gang all adjust, not just lincoln, to not being in the same class togehter. Have them have to do various classes WITHOUT having each other to rely on. You could even have chandler and mr. bohlmer show up. But the way they do this just..d osen’t really make sense and just feels lazy. And if there were good jokes i’d be fine with his but their aren’t. IT’s just a mean teacher and Lincoln being picked on by a moron for the first half while his friends struggle to function without him. It’s just sad and not in the well written, well thought out way. Then we get to “This needs to be an hour” portion of the plot as again the above could’ve EASILY worked for the full hour but because they instead went with this, they had to think of something else... and went with something bonkers that at the very least is entertaining: Lincoln, after convincing his teacher for a transfer, which I did like as he uses his head: He sees his teacher wants something diffrent for lunch and paper airplaners her a cupon for his dad’s restraunt then talks himself into an off campus lunch to talk her into a new class.. and winds up transfered to canada as she well meaningly did so he can’t get out of. And while I thought this was just wacky exageration having him commute.. turns out .. nope. While I don’t know if any school would actually have a student commute to Canada rather than jsut stay there turns out Royal Woods is in michigan and Michigan is across a lake from Ontario.. so yeah.. they did their geography research but not their middle school one. Weird ain’t it? Anywho, I ended up liking this portion... and not just because it has canada gooses, which means i can use this.

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And if you have a problem with Letterkenny you got a problem with me and I suggest you let that one marinate. But yeah we get an ENTIRE number playing into canadian stereotypes and it’s clear this show is rather than using them for a cheap laugh just exagerating things for fun and a slight nudge to canadians, who I clearly love. It feels less like “oh ha ha canada” and more like if the great white north was stretched over 15 minutes but still worked.

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It’s just good fun. And they also again have an entire musical number full of canadian sterotypes and expressing love of this great country which I hope to visit some day.. and possibly live if this country countinues to get worse. It just feels nice and more creative than the first half. It’s still not FANTASTIC, but it works somehow and Ic an’t explain why. Eventually LIncoln tries to get kicked out, fails then plans to blow the hockey game for everyone and calls on his friends to help, sending them all to canada wh ere they get lost in the wilderness. There is a funny bit where Stella’s gps literally freezes over and zach acidently smashes it as well as Rusty’s “Moustache” one pathetic hair because why should his moustache be anything else freezes off. and given even with me being less vitrolic his suffering is my catnip I enjoyed it. We also get a cute sequence of them runing the ice and rusty failing at anything because of course he does, while Liam both tames a moose and slathers them in grease to swim across because of COURSE he does. Of course he does. IT’s just a refreshing jolt of energy after the first half. But we do get a really damn good scene after htey fail.. besides the fact Rusty’s head is frozen, which would be funny even if it wasnt’ happenign to rusty, that just makes it go from chuckle worthy to giant uncomfortable laugh worthy, where Lincoln gives up: They’ll still be firends and he’ll still come visit but it’s best he just adapt to his new life instead of try and fight so hard against it and he’s starting to enjoy canada. It’s a well acted and sad scene that ends with a huge hug from clyde and another bit we’ll get to in a second. But because having LIncoln in canada would be hard to maintain for a few seasons, and because as degrassi shows me the odds of him getting nearly beaten to death, caught in school shooting, stabbed in a parking lot or ending up in a kevin smith film which back then was a treat but now is a coin flip, are very high. Seriously he dosen’t want to end up in moose jaws, he instead gets banned from canada for three years for refusing maple syurp... which is also fucking hilarious just for it’s sheer rediculousness. Who dosen’t love canadian maple syrup? So the ballance is restored, Liam has moose now, and Lincoln actually gets the trailer heat turned down because he asked.. this plot was not very good as I made clear and drags the specail down and it’s in part because there were other joke and character opprotunites iwth ACTUAL middle school and instead it just comes off as another episode of “Smack lincoln around because tha’ts funny right” and wastes good opprotunity. It’s not all terrible, the canada jokes worked becuase they felt like they were in good fun and more a loving jab at canada instead of just using stereotypes for sterotypes sake, and given the loud sisters started as basic character achtypes it fits the shows tone. So canada part good the rest a huge disapointment. Also before we move onto Lori: Lynn.. was utterly terrible this episode. The girl one, obviously. Lynn Sr is usually a delight. Yeahhh while I don’t hate her like some do, I do find her to be REALLY hit and miss: she’s either an enjoyable additon to the episode, an intresting lead.. or an obnoxious nightmare who makes everyone around her suffer and is used for gross out gags.. which if nothing else it’s good their using a girl for it but it dosen’t make it actually funny? And here she’s Hall Monitor and a giant terror to everyone INCLUDING THE PRINCIPAL and it feels like a waste.. other episodes have had her be lincoln’s mentor when it comes to his shift to middle school and when the time comes where that would be utterly useful... she’s instead just a jackass because they coudln’t think of something better to do with her and it’s another disapointment. The B-Plot: Lori Loud and the Infinite Comic Set Pieces This plot was better but likely would’ve worked better in a shorter episode to me if i’m being honest, but it’s grown on me the more i’ve thought about it.. plus it has Bobby!

I haven’t really had a chance to mention it since most Loud Houses i’ve covered are after his exit and he only really shows up in lori episodes and I haven’t covered the Casagrandes yet.. but I love this idiot. He’s sweet, charming, kind, a good boyfriend, a good big brother, and a caring individual. Sure he’s dumb as a box of hammers, but he’s a good kid and post season 1 he and lori have good chemstiry. And he was easily one of hte biggest draws to the spinoff for me which has fleshed him out nicely with his work at the Mercado, showing he is good at something. He’s just a great character and i’m glad to see him back on the mothership, even if he doesn’t do much and at most just keeps coming back to help Lori move at a moment’s notice. But it feels less like her being selfish and more like him being selfless: Sure she’s asking a lot.. but he probably gets that moving away from home and into a strage place is hard for his lady and just wants to help her be happy and settle in. Because he’s the best.

As for why Lori keeps moving part of it is the fact that the dorms at fair way are insane comic set pieces and I am here for it. She starts out at the silent dorm, which just.. no. No on that no. Then moves to the driving range dorm which is exactly what it sounds like and is a hilarious hurricane of balls. “Sigh” Archer if you would.

And the sand trap dorm, which just has a giant bunch of sand in the closets for some reeason.. presumibly to keep darth vader away. And yes I get it’s supposed to mimic a sandtrap but theni t should be all around like the other dorms. It’s goofy, it’s dumb.. and I can’t help but laugh at it and the fact that Fairway apparently is so intense about golf they train students via having them live on certain hazards like this was an anime... and I would totally watch a spinoff about lori that was her undergoing anime golf battles. And I hate golf. Plus put bobby in there.. he can be on two shows. Make it a diffrent world but with dragon ball z golf battles. But eventually Lori comes crying home after breaking down, like any college student living away i’m told.. and that’s where the dovetail I mention comes into play. Lori overhears lincoln’s pep talk and decides to go back and face the exesntial nightmare that is her dorm life, giving her brother a sincre hug and thanking him for uknowingly helping her. It’s a really sweet moment. It’s why her plot works for me.. it has the emotinal weight that feels lacking from the main plot. It’s a bit repetitive, but frankly that’s the show’s bread and butter at this point and i’ts more a case of which repettition works better sometimes. That one moment saves the plot form being unwatchable and Lori moves into the water hazard floor of the dorms, and is finally ready. And while at first I thought the exagerated dorms lowered the punch of things.. it really dosen’t. From what i’ve heard Dorm life isn’t easy, and being away from home is even harder. My mentally anxious self would’ve broken down within days. Their just taking it up twenty notches because loud house. The real issue is lori being homesick, which I do feel could’ve been handled better, but for what hit is it’s okay. Not as good as it couldv’e been but still better than the a-plot. But it’s a nice bit of character stuff: it shows usually in control Lori out of her element and trying to adapt and hopefully we’ll see more of her this season in that context. And more of bobby, may he reign forever. Okay one more.

The C and D plots: Leni and Lily Go to Preschool This one won’t take long, thank god. Lily goes to preschool, the loud parents, after some empty nest.. enjoy having the house to themselves for the first time in years. They actually have TIME with no kids and just the two of them to goof off and, presumibly off screen, boink like rabbits.. granted that’s how they clearly usually do it given they have 11 kids but still. But Lily gets sent home for popping herself, and they have to teach her to go it’s eh aside from a few bits. As I said Lisa is the best part of this as Lynn Sr and Rita yank her out of school, with Lisa responding to Cheryls worries abotu her missing school with a dry “I think i’ll be fine without finger painting”. The resolution, or at least the start of it, is genuinelly clever. Turns out Lily KNOWS how to use the potty, she just dosen’t want to go to school yet, and the Loud Parents.. actually take this well, confronting her with it but gently, understanding she may not want to leave the nest and letting her stay.

Meanwhile Leni ends up in preschool in the shuffle of not having Lori around to guide her one brain cell. Which is honestly hilarious and her outfit for the episode is fucking dope.. I honestly wish she’d wear her hair in a ponytail more often and the jacket is nice. I wish this was her new outfit.. like they could make it green so she’s not stepping on Lola wearing pink, but it’s a nice change of pace. But yeah it’s hilarious, especially since neither she nor the actual professionals notice and it has a nice bit of subtext on tumblr noted: She may be regressing, or simply enjoying little girl school because she misses her big sister and it’s easier than navigating a scary world without her best frined. To dig into it a bit myself we’ve seen in previous episodes that Lori is her rock, who she goes to when she has a problem in her solo episodes, who she relies on. Sure they fight over a closet but they depend on each other. We saw how worried Leni was about loosing her last season, and now she’s lost her and dosen’t know what to do without her. It’ll be intresting to see more of. Or it’s because while she’s a capable young woman she’s also as dumb as a box of hammers like her future brother in law> you make the call. Eventually Leni gets sent back, and bemoans missing all the fun of preschool.. which gets Lily to go as she gets a trampoline, and the nest is finally empty.. also Leni goes back for a few more bounces. Yeah I love this kid. She’s sweet, kind, and hilariously moranic and voiced by LIliana Mumy who along with Carols is easliy part of my stable of voice actors. So yeah the family’s moving on, etc etc, and this review is finally over. Final Thoughts: This episode was okay. It reaks of wasted potetial, but it’s a fine enough one hour, it jsut couldv’e been MORE with such a long run time and the lily and leni bits would’ve fit better in a seperate episode. It’s not TERRIBLE but it’s just an okay start to the season and a waste of good stories and good laughs in places. Still the show’s had worse, it’s just okay overall. Not TERRIBLE but it could’ve been FANTASTIC. Next week Leni deals with the lori power vaccum and Lincoln and Clyde snoop on the neighbors. Until then you can find other loud house reviews on my blog, hit me up iwth an ask for suggetsions or a dm to comission an episode you want to see me cover and until then, GO TEAM VENTURE. Play us out servo

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eamonwhalen · 4 years ago

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Rap I Liked 2020

An attempt at an omnivorous list of rap songs from the year 2020 that undoubtedly missed many good songs.

In a Spotify Playlist

In an Apple Music Playlist

If you’d like to read what I wrote this year click here.

1. Quelle Chris and Chris Keys featuring Earl Sweatshirt, Denmark Vesey, Merill Garbus and Big Sen - Mirage

2. Mozzy featuring Blxst - I Ain’t Perfect

3. Jay Electronica featuring Jay-Z - A.P.I.D.T.A

Sleep well Lately, I haven't been sleepin' well I even hit the beach to soak my feet and skip some seashells Sleep well The lump inside my throat sometimes it towers like the Eiffel Sometimes I wonder do the trees get sad when they see leaves fell Sleep well The last time that I kissed you, you felt cold but you looked peaceful I read our message thread when I get low and need a refill Sleep well

4. Shabazz Palaces - Fast Learner

5. G-Herbo featuring Juice WRLD, Chance The Rapper and Lil Uzi Vert - PTSD

“People judge people from my city, or people who go through what we go through. It’s just the way you’re brought up and different situations that you experience that change your life and make you who you are. There’s a lot of people who would come to my city and not make it. There’s certain survival skills that you learn in Chicago from just naturally adapting to your environment. People judge us and outcast us from what they see on the outside but they really don’t know what’s going on on the inside. We’re making rational decisions because what we go through forces us to make those decisions. Just the older I get, the more serious I look at it. When I was younger I had my family taking care of me, and I was just living life like a kid. But by 14-15, there’s a lot of kids in my city who are living the lives of adults at that age. Other places people don’t live like that. When I was 16 I started to see people die around me. In my city theres so little to depend on, so people take other options to survive and make a way for themselves. At a young age you start learning this,” - G-Herbo, from an interview I did with him a few years ago.

6. 21 Savage and Metro Boomin’ featuring Young Thug - Rich N***a Shit

the sounds of luxury

7. Sada Baby - Slide

8. Megan Thee Stallion - Circles

https://youtu.be/TwZl9WCHjnc

9. Polo G - Martin & Gina

10. Gunna - Skybox

11. Pop Smoke - Yea Yea

Rest in Peace Pop Smoke

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/pop-smoke-dior-protest-music/

12. Bfb Da Packman featuring Sada Baby - Free Joe Exotic

13. NBA Youngboy - The Story of OJ (Top Version)

14. Bris - Me Important

Rest In Peace Tricky Dance Moves

15. Playboi Carti - @ MEH

16. Navy Blue featuring Ka - In Good Hands

“Even friends in a frenzy became ravenous

Brothers named universal, wise, supreme became savages

It's said the common thread with our enemies

Is we was all men in need with no amenities

Couldn't sit in peace, we each hit the streets for remedies

Through the hatred accumulate a hundred arms we was centipedes

The stress of empty pantries kept us antsy

No lie, essentials essentially in a shanty

Could give scripture but that big picture is what you can't see

Every grain I spelt is what helped enhance me

Went from gun waving to saving lives

I give sight to the blind just for the 85

That's what I was in the line of scrimmage

Lost some folks of course, that growth redefined percentage

Doomed in the womb, surprised I ain't see a hanger

Start questioning affection when all you see is anger,

But now I’m in good hands, surrounded by good women, good babies, good mans,”

-Ka

17. Lil Uzi Vert - Chrome Heart Tags

18. SahBabii - Double Dick

19. Rezcoast Grizz - Water

20. Future featuring Drake, Da Baby and Lil Baby - Life Is Good Remix

21. Drakeo The Ruler featuring Icewear Vezzo and ALLBLACK - We Know The Truth

The Ruler’s home. Read Jeff Weiss on Drakeo’s trial and release, and the book Rap On Trial for an underreported and understudied phenomenon.

22. Future and Lil Uzi Vert - That’s It

23. Shordie Shordie - Save A Little

coolest new voice in Rap

24. Busta Rhymes featuring Kendrick Lamar - Look Over Your Shoulder

25. Cam & China - Know What I’m Saying

https://youtu.be/H1JSWy9lxuk

26. Ovrkast featuring Navy Blue - Face

27. J Hus featuring icee tgm - Helicopter

Shaitan in police uniform Feds in a helicopter I seen pigs fly but I never seen a unicorn Tryna find cover on somebody's front lawn I see an undercover and he had his gun drawn Didn't like me 'cause I'll never conform Man want beef, but they'll never come forth Like CB, all I need is one corn You see me alone but I got a strong force No man can ever put my life on pause They enslaved my ancestor, no remorse I bring knowledge to Europe, just like the Moors The knowledge, they need it, they cravin' for more Left the yard before the jakes kicked in the door Have you seen a lengman drop his stick on the floor? Say you wanna bang, you don't look like you're sure

28. Demahjiae featuring Mejiwahn, Michael Sneed and Pink Siifu - Wild & Fireflies

29. Lil Baby featuring 42 Dugg - We Paid

No choice but to respect someone who is not only still rockin’ with the Detroit Lions in 2020 but says so much on the biggest song of his career thus far.

30. Ka - Patron Saints

31. Benny The Butcher - Famous

32. Key! - Spend One Night

33. Smino featuring JID and Kenny Beats - Baguetti

34. Open Mike Eagle - Death Parade

35. OMB Peezy - Sleep At Night

36. Mick Jenkins - “Carefree”

read me on Mick Jenkins circa 2016.

37. Chris Brown and Young Thug featuring Lil Duke and Gunna - Big Slimes

38. Freddie Gibbs and Alchemist - God Is Perfect

39. Chester Watson - Life Wrote Itself

40. Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats - DIET

read me on Denzel Curry circa 2015

41. Young Dolph - Hold Up Hold Up Hold Up

Still probably the coolest thing any rapper has done in years.

42. Dua Saleh - Hellbound

43. Rod Wave - Fuck The World

44. Young Nudy - Deeper Than Rap

45. Bobby Raps - Believe The Lie

Alex Howard, more like Alex Garland!

46. Saba - So and So

47. 2 Chainz featuring TyDollaSign - Can’t Go For That

https://youtu.be/ccenFp_3kq8

48. Blu and Exile - The Feeling

49. astralblak - Out In The Woods

50. Key Glock - Word On the Streets

51. Black Thought featuring Portugal. The Man & The Last Artful, Dodgr - Nature of the Beast

I feel like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, less Denzel Washington When people are watching me If the right amount of likes and follows can make me less hollow I'd somehow be more complete But people tend to be more toxic so we see more gossip And there's tension on the streets

52. Flo Milli - Not Friendly

53. Shootergang Kony - Still Kony 2

54. Homeboy Sandman - Trauma

55. Kevin Gates - Weeks

56. Pink Siifu and Fly Anakin - Open Up Shop

57. P Will aka Prince Williams - Survival

58. Cupcakke - Discounts

59. Nas - Ultra Black

60. Spillage Village - End Of Daze

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/04/magazine/societal-collapse.html

What I listened to most besides songs by artists on this list:

Jazmine Sullivan’s live performances of Lost One and Pick Up Your Feelings

Other stuff that doesn’t really belong on a Rap list:

Liv.e, Brent Faiyaz, Helado Negro, Slauson Malone, Chronixx, Contour, King Krule, Kehlani, Moses Sumney, Thundercat, Soccer Mommy.

Best books I read that were published in 2020: The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins and I Got A Monster by Brandon Soderberg and Baynard Woods

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hotel-japanifornia · 5 years ago

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HJ’s Headcanon Masterpost

Hi guys, it’s me. I decided to create a comprehensive masterpost of all the headcanons that I’ve posted so far in chronological order. I just thought it’d be a good way of organizing things. So, here we are!:

Phoenix got his attorney badge presenting habits from Mia who in turn got it from Diego who got it from Grossberg and so forth.

Miles Edgeworth learned anti stalking techniques (where you learn a person’s routine to avoid them) after AAI2 in order to counter Oldbag’s stalking. This is why Oldbag hasn’t appeared since Turnabout Ablaze.

Maya Fey enjoys making bad puns, a lot.

While most of the main cast is on either Team Ladder and Team Stepladder, Simon is an outlier as he is on neither side of the debate. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t enjoy trolling members of one side by arguing the opposite however (i.e. telling a member of Team Ladder that it is actually a stepladder and vice versa).

After Patricia Roland was arrested for the murder of Horace Knightley and subsequently convicted, the animal therapy program she ran was still kept around. Thus, when Simon Blackquill was convicted for the murder of Metis Cykes, he was assigned a young Taka. In a sense, Taka was initially his assigned animal, but later became his closest companion over the 7 years that would follow. When he got out of prison, Blackquill managed to retain custody of Taka through the prison warden who wanted to make amends for his false conviction.

Mia Fey once saw someone riding a motorcycle and thought they looked cool. So, once she got the chance, she learned how to ride one and got one of her own. Once she passed on, Maya ended up having the motorcycle under her ownership (somehow). She never learned how to ride it, unlike her sister, but she still takes great care of it. This headcanon comes from a piece of concept art of young Mia by the way.

Maggey and Gumshoe started dating shortly after I-1. They took a few years to get married due to Gumshoe’s low salary and Maggey’s constantly changing jobs, but they were really happy together.

Bobby Fulbright was one of the police officers who worked under Detective Gumshoe. Gumshoe was endeared to the younger man’s enthusiasm and passion for justice and the two eventually became close friends. Fulbright was even the first person to congratulate Gumshoe when he made the news of his engagement to Maggey public. When Gumshoe heard that Bobby was killed and had been impersonated by an international spy, he was absolutely devastated.

When Maya said that she was getting used to having her own place in the city in 1-2, she really did mean she had her own apartment. She wanted to be closer to Mia, so Mia helped her find a relatively cheap place that was reasonably close to her. She stayed in it for the trilogy but sold it when she had to go back to Kurain to train to become the Master.

Desiree was the one who proposed to Ron.

At some unknown point after 3-5 but before the events of AJ, Maya legally adopted Pearl. She also offered Pearl the ability to be the heir to the Master of the Kurain Channeling Technique if something was to happen to her, but Pearl politely declined, saying that she was happier being a regular spirit medium.

After 3-5, Maya and Edgeworth started meeting up frequently to watch the Steel Samurai together. They formed a bond during that time and had talks about the show, the extended universe, and eventually their own personal lives. They sometimes brought Pearl, Nick, and even Trucy along to watch but it was mostly just the two of them. Sometime after SOJ, they roped Simon into watching the Steel Samurai with them and found out that the Steel Samurai was a huge obsession of his before he went to jail.

Trucy considers Maya to be a mother-like figure and often refers to her as “Mommy”. Maya was embarrassed by the nickname when she first met Trucy, but over time, grew to become comfortable with the young magician calling her that despite her and Phoenix not being together. This is because Maya learned from Phoenix that Trucy had lost her mother at an early age and she didn’t want Trucy to grow up without a mother figure like she did. As such, Maya talked to Trucy about the more feminine matters that Phoenix wouldn’t be so willing to talk about and dotes on her the same way she dotes on Pearl.

Like Maya, Mia had a large appetite. Although she tried to tone it down during her lawyer days, she could easily eat as much as her little sister if not more so.

Despite growing up in a mountain village and living a rather sheltered life, Maya is surprisingly good at flirting with people.

(shipping hc, skip if you don’t ship) Maya only started developing feelings for Phoenix around Reunion, and Turnabout. She really appreciated his will to stand by her during 1-2 even when other people had abandoned her, but until the murder in Kurain, she had only seen him as a friend.It was during the case in Kurain that she saw how loyal Phoenix was to her. Even when she truly believed she killed someone to the point that she begged Phoenix to just leave her behind to face the guilty verdict, Phoenix still stayed loyal to her and refused to back down from proving her innocence. Because of that, Maya gained some newfound respect for the young lawyer and started to have certain feelings for him.

#long post #headcanons #masterpost #you don't need to reblog this #i just wanted to make it for my own personal benefit

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andyetbyheavenithinkmyloveasrare · 5 years ago

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Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett: The CBS Television Specials

Medley of the 60’s

Julie. When Carol and I did you last show together, we had a chance to sing all of our favourite songs. Well, practically all, everything except from “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nelly” and she wouldn’t let me do it either.

Carol. Now I told you, I would love to do that song, I really would, but remember what we promised. We said that this was supposed to be a classy show, And Nelly just isn’t right for a place like this.

Julie. Well you’re right Carol, classy it is. So ladies and gentlemen, ce soir, nous allons commencer où nous sommes finis. A Carnegie Hall, nous avons présenté un mélange de chansons de l’année 1900. Maintenant, nous aimerions continuer avec les dix ans passés.

Carol. For those of you who don’t understand Spanish, what she’s trying to say is that when we did Carnegie Hall, we did a whole bunch of songs from the years 1900 on. And now we want to catch up on the wonderful songs that were written in the last ten years, right Julie ?

Julie. Oui, peut-on commencer ?

Carol. Oui. Voulez-vous hit it Pete ?

Both. We're Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band We hope you will enjoy the show We’re Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Sit back and let the evening go [Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Beatles]

Carol. What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you stand up and walk out on me? Julie. Probably. Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song

And I’ll try not to sing out of key [With a Little Help from my Friends, Joe Cocker]

Simultaneously

Carol. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Julie. No, I get by with a little help from my friends Mm, get high with a little help from my friends Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends [With a Little Help from my Friends, Beatles]

Both. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts.

Simultaneously.

Carol. And the beat goes on

And the beat goes on

Julie. I dig rock and roll music

And I’d love to get a chance to play

I think I’s about the happiest sound goin’ down today

Both. The message may not move me

Or mean a great deal to me

But hey ! it fells so groovy to say [I dig rock and roll music, Peter, Paul and Mary]

Carol. Everybody is talking at me,

I don’t hear a word they’re saying

Only the echoes of my mind

People stop and stare at me

I can’t see their faces,

Only the shadows of their eyes [Everybody’s talking, Harry Nilsson]

Julie. It’s knowing that my door is always open

And my path is free to walk

That makes you tend to leave your sleeping bag

Rolled up and stashed behind my couch [Gentle on my mind, Glen Campbell]

Carol. And the Wichita lineman, He’s still on the line [Wichita Lineman, Glen Campbell]

Julie.. And it's knowing I'm not shackled by forgotten words and bonds And the ink stains that have dried up on some line

Carol. And he wakes up in the morning [ ? ] Julie. That keeps you in the back roads by the rivers of my memory That keeps you ever gentle on my mind. [Gentle on my mind, Glen Campbell]

Carol. And if that's not lovin' me Both. Then all I've got to say God didn't make little green apples And it don't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime

And when my self is feelin' low I think about her face aglow and ease my mind [Little Green Apples, OC Smith]

Carol. And honey, I love you and I'm bein' good [Honey, Dean Martin]

Julie. We’ve looked at love from both sides now [Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell]

Carol. And I'd love to be with you if only I could. [Honey, Dean Martin]

Julie. If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die, I'd spend the end with you. Both. And when the world was through, Then one by one the stars would all go out, Then you and I would simply fly away [If, Bread]

Both. You and I, for we can fly,

Up, up and away,

My beautiful, my beautiful balloon [Up, up and away, The 5th dimension]

Carol. Do you know the way to San José ? [Do you know the way to San José ? Dionne Warwick]

Carol. I'm leavin' on a jet plane

Simultaneously.

Carol.

Don't know when I'll be back again [Don't know when I'll be back again, John Denver]

Julie. I’ve been away so long, and I can’t go wrong in my way [I’ve been away so long, George Baker]

Carol. By the time I get to Phoenix he'll be [By the time I get to Phoenix, Glen Campbell]

Julie. Downtown Both. Waiting for you tonight, Downtown

Simultaneously.

Carol. Waiting for you tonight

Julie. Where all the lights are bright,

Both. Downtown, Everything’s waiting for [Downtown, Petula Clark]

Slow down, you move too fast You got to make the morning last

Just kicking down the cobblestones Looking for fun and feeling […] [The 59th Street bridge, Simon and Garfunkel]

Both. Sunny,

Carol. Yesterday my life was filled with rain. [Sunny, Bobby Hebb]

Julie. Raindrops keep falling on my head

Simultaneously.

Carol. Sunny, you smiled at me and really eased the pain. [Sunny, Bobby Hebb]

Julie. But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turning red

Crying's not for me 'Cause [Raindrops falling on my head, B.J.Thomas]

Both. You made me so very happy,

I'm so glad you came into my life. [You made me so very happy, Alton Ellis]

Carol. Tall and tan and young and handsome The boy from Ipanema goes awalking And when he passes, each girl she passes Goes "a-a-a-h" [The girl from Ipanema, Antonio Carlos Jobim]

Julie. You see this girl, this girl’s in love you [This Girl’s In Love You, Dionne Warwick]

Carol. Hey there, Georgie girl [Georgie Girl, The Seekers]

Julie. Hello dolly, well hello Dolly ! [Hello Dolly, Barbara Streisand & Louis Armstrong]

Carol. Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame street ? [Sesame Street Theme Song]

Julie. Sesame Street.

Wherever you going I’m going your way

Both. Two drifters, off to see the world There's such a lot of world to see We're after the same rainbow's end [Moon River, Audrey Hepburn]

Look at all the lonely people [Eleanor Rigby, Beatles]

Carol. People, People who need people [People, Barbara Streisand]

Both. Oh, Look at all the lonely people.

Where do they all belong? [Eleanor Rigby, Beatles]

What the world needs now is love, sweet love That’s the only thing that there's just too little of What the world needs now is love, sweet love, No not just for some but for everyone. Yes for everyone. [What the world needs now is love, Dionne Warwick]

Come together, right now [Come Together, Beatles]

Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea Take a good look at yourself, and you can look at others diff'rently Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee [Put your hand in the hand, Donny Hathaway]

Julie. Let it be, let it be. Let it be, let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

Both. Let it be, let it be. Let it be, let it be. There will be an answer, let it be. [Let it be, Beatles]

Simultaneously.

Carol. And when I’m gone. And when I’m gone. [And When I Die, Blood Sweat and Tears]

Julie. We shall overcome

We shall overcome We shall overcome, someday [We shall overcome, Pete Seeger]

Carol. There’s be sunshine and a world to carry on

Julie. To carry on. [And When I Die, Blood Sweat and Tears]

Carol. This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius Julie. Age of Aquarius Both. Aquarius Aquarius Aquarius Aquarius [Aquarius, The 5th Dimension]

Carol. The only one who could ever reach me Was the son of a preacher man Julie. The only one who could ever teach me Was the son of a preacher man [The Son A Preacher Man, Dusty Springfield]

Carol. Oh he was ?

Julie. He was ?

Carol. That rat !

Julie. Bastard !

Carol. What kind of fool am I

Who never fell in love [What kind of fool am I, Anthony Newley]

Julie. What do you get when you fall in love? A guy with a pin to burst your bubble [I’ll never fall in love again, Dionne Warwick]

Carol. What’s it all about Alfie [Alfie, Burt Bacharach]

Julie. What now my love

Now that you left me

How can I live through another day [What now, My Love, Shirley Bassey]

Carol. Well, I think I'm goin' out of my head

Yes, I think I'm goin' out of my head

Over you, [Going out of my head, Little Anthony & the Imperials]

Julie. Born free, and life is worth living

But only worth living

When you're born free [Born free, Brian May]

Carol. Doobe doobe doo, bedoo bedoo be

Both. Doobedoo bedoo bedoo bedoo bedoo be doobedoo bedoo bedoo be.

Julie. How long does it last Can love be measured by the hours in a day I have no answers now but this much I can say I know I'll need him 'till the stars all burn away And he'll be there [Where do I begin, Andy Williams]

Carol. Let it please be him, oh God dear God but it's not him, And then I die [It must be him, Vikki Carr]

Julie. Keep it dear...

Carol. Again I die [cries]

Julie. Now now, Carol pull yourself together. It’s just a song. I mean remember :

Just a Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down The medicine go down, medicine go down Just a spoonful of sugar

Carol. Oh shut up !

Julie. Helps the medicine go down [Spoonful of Sugar, Julie Andrews]

Both. What goes up must come down Spinnin' wheel got to go 'round Talkin' 'bout your troubles it's a cryin' sin Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel spin

Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel turn

Catch a painted pony on the spinning wheel ride [Spinning wheel, Blood Sweat Tears]

Carol. Is that all there is, is that all there is Both. If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing

Let's break out the booze and have a ball If that's all. [Is that all there is, Peggy Lee]

We’re all sergeant pepper lonely hearts club band [Sergeant Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band, Beatles]

#carol burnett #julie andrews #60's Medley #Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett: The CBS Television Specials #Medley of the 60’s #I'm new on the Andrews Fandom !#Hi !

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yeet-me-into-oblivion-please · 6 years ago

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Well, Supernatural is actually ending and I don't know what I'll do

[ Brevity is not a strong suit of mine since I've included personal details but there's stuff I feel everyone in the SPN family needs to read]

You might be expecting another post about how Supernatural saved someone's life and how devastated they will be when it ends because they've watched it for so long as well as how the actors have impacted their lives. This is probably one of those but please hear me out.

Supernatural premiered in 2005 and I was in preparatory class (aged 5 years and was before I began 1st grade). I heard of it because my aunt would watch it time to time so I'd also tried to get some peeks myself but I wasn't allowed to because it was "too scary".

Then our local cable began to show seasons 1-5 and that was when everyone in class started watching and quoting it. This was in 6th grade and I was frustrated because I knew about it before most of them yet they acted like it was a new show. I had a fair idea about the story but once I began watching it, I fell in love with it and loved it like a part of my soul.

Yes, Jensen Ackles was my first crush but I still thought (and do think) that both he and Jared are super hot. So I was sucked into this vortex, this Neverland which I never thought I would end.

I joined Tumblr for this show in 2013 because I saw the jokes about there being a Supernatural gif everywhere and wanted to be a part of the fandom/community. This was also the year I actually became interested what other fans felt though I never used this site properly until 2016 I would read the IMDb discussion boards because I hated scurrying through Destiel-infested posts.

(Fun fact:I wasn't using any social media of my own but on my mother's Facebook I liked a Supernatural fan page asking people's opinions on Destiel. This is was around the time season 8 was just finishing or had already finished so I read the comments--- people talked about Dean and Castiel being gay and didn't approve of it as there was this one girl who was conservative and didn't believe in homosexuality while others went on how Dean was always a ladies man which I agreed with. Not that I commented but I thought there was something I missed and I thought Castiel used Dean as a vessel, thus Destiel.)

But I digress. I was in deep by the time season 9 premiered and majority of the people I knew stopped watching the show except for this girl who bullied me throughout preschool who put up this update that Dean had become a demon. I doubt she watches the show now but it was hard seeing her put pictures of "I heart Dean Winchester" and pictures of Jensen when my mom asked me why I don't do the same.

Supernatural, I feel, has become that embarrassing thing you are into in middle school but suddenly drop when you're older, looking back and thinking, "Yeesh, I can't believe I used to watch this show."

I'll be a grown woman at 30 or 40 and probably eventually in my 70s and 80s but I will still look back fondly, the good, the bad and the ugly because I have like many teenagers have undergone many changes (friends, family, emotions, hobbies etc) but Supernatural has always been this constant in my life.

Because let me tell you, I'm seeing these posts saying stuff like how people are glad that it's finally over with its "bullshit" and that's it's dying. That is extremely disrespectful and insensitive to those people who literally live for it, who have invested time and money into it: gif makers, artists, meta writers (I may not agree with you guys but even you count). They don't know what to do once the show ends because it has helped them in ways others will never ever be able to fathom.

I saw the video put up by the guys. I saw and I could tell that Jared, Jensen and Misha had probably cried their guts out before the announcement because their eyes were red and puffy. Jared was controlling himself by talking less as Jensen was clearly on the verge as well but yes they said that they should save the angst for next year.

I love the guys; I love Jared being a goofball and Jensen being equally goofy as well and I'll say this too, I used to enjoy some of Misha's crass jokes (not the highlight ) as well which was why I looked forward to the gag reel every summer (because of J2) because it was cathartic after a traumatic season finale. I love the witty banter and the pranks the cast would do and I will miss it tremendously.

I have some issues with my aunt but everything would be okay when we would fawn over the guys and bingewatch the entire season the summer after it finished airing. We'd quote quotes back and forth and even spiritually killed ourselves watching short clips of "Sammy, close your eyes", "I'm proud of us" etc. Hell, she even promised me that when we go visit my uncle in the States we'd attend a con together.

If, and whenever we do go, it'll be different because the show won't be on air anymore and I know for a fact that I won't feel the anticipation of an episode.

So don't say disrespectful and callous things like "fucking finally". You can dislike the cast/plotline/show but don't ridicule and mock those who invested in the show,some of you are most probably speculating and have barely seen it.

I'm not some dumb, blind fan. I can see some stupid mistakes and don't always eat up what the writers show. For example, everyone must have figured that I dislike Destiel because it's based on groundless assumptions. I thought the Bloodlines was a crap idea that had nothing to do with the main plot and knew it was destined to fail.

As for Wayward Daughters/Sisters or whatever the fuck it was supposed to be called, I was not looking forward to it at all because it was one of those "forced diversity" shows, y'know gender bent stuff.

I felt that they were bastardising everything that Supernatural has and will (always) stand for because some people had a hair up their backsides. Yeah, I loathed Claire and that Kaia mourning thing was bullshit. Thank goodness I was sick that day and couldn't keep my eyes open for that episode.

If we were told that there would be a Men of Letters(with Henry Winchester) or even a Bobby-Rufus spinoff I would be okay with that but for now since the show will finish next year let's the wounds heal first, shall we?

I hope that Jared and Jensen get some offers once the show is done and I will pay good money to see movies, TV shows of them etc but for now I will keep quiet since I hope we get an ending we (and the boys) deserve.

Yes, the writer situation scares me and I think they should call Eric Kripke for a last hurrah. I mean, it is his baby and he should get to have a say in the series finale as well as J2.

Will one of the brothers die and the other will live (I'm worried we'll get a reverse Swan Song)? Will they both die leaving Cas behind and Jack as some sort legacy who trains future hunters? That would be a possibility since the sheriff in 14.16 asked the Winchesters why they don't tell people about monsters. What happens to Baby?

I seriously doubt the ending will be happy(maybe not 100%) but the best thing would be if they go driving with Baby into the sunset...

Dean at the steering wheel with Sam riding shotgun, where they should be ---- where they will always be, home. Dean plays his "mullet rock" as Sam would playfully mock his brother's musical choices. No chick flick moments. Just the Winchesters.

The boys need to lay their weary heads to rest, so they can cry no more. Because they are the legendary Winchesters, the hunters who saved the world countless times unbeknownst to many. I don't think their work will ever be done but there will be peace when they are done and how they will reach that point we'll never know till 2020.

Everyone will hear "Carry on wayward son" for the last time ever in Supernatural over a painful montage of "Dad's gone on a hunting trip and he hasn't been home in a few days" and "Saving people, hunting things, the family business". Now who in this fandom wouldn't be wracked with pain?

This is the show we all joked about that made a deal with the devil to never go off air but I did expect this a long time ago. Only thing was that I didn't know how I'd treat the news. I was that person who would go, "pfft, of course Supernatural would get renewed". Then again, this was the show that an ending was imminent and the whole season 4 debacle about Misha and the angel storyline saving the show blah blah blah.

So next year, everyone will flock to see the finale and epic conclusion to the Winchester saga whether they stopped at season 5,6,7 or 10,12. Diss it all you want for the shit show it may have become but wherever you left off, you may still want to know what happens to Sam and Dean Winchester in the end.

Once Supernatural ends, I'll turn 20 next summer and I would like to think of it being poetic that I end my adolescence with a show I have loved when I brave the cold, ruthless world of adulthood. I'm a picky person and can't say what's my favorite xyz is but you know what I'll say about my favorite TV show.

We will have completed 327 episodes which is the highest for a scifi TV show so I do hope the boys get some sort of recognition. It was us crazy bitches and jerks that gave the show the mileage and it was us that gave Jared and Jensen faith that they could carry on so for the remainder of season 14 and for 15,support these guys. Support these annoyingly sexy and ridiculously hilarious dudes for this show. I'm sure Jared and Jensen love the show like it's their kid practically but I wish everyone would just shut up, tinhatters, bronlies, stans, destihellers because we are all fans of the one show so let's ease the time we have left.

But seriously imagine Sam and Dean on a desert highway, the orange and yellow rays of the setting sun make Baby shine in all her splendor which makes Dean swell with pride. He starts the engine with a low rumble and they're off. They might to California to feel the sand beneath their feet or to Disneyland. They're living the "apple pie life" and this is their personal heaven : with each other.

I wouldn't mind this playing in the background if the ending is the inevitable and unspeakable you know what :

It's wishful thinking, since I wish they'd actually play some Zeppelin instead of song titles being used as episode titles but I wish they could use some Queen or Guns n Roses and stuff before 1979 because everything sucked ass afterwards according to Dean.

I want the classic rock resurgence in the show as well but I know they'll end up using the cash elsewhere. I wouldn't mind a body swap episode but if wishes were horses, right?

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andrewuttaro · 5 years ago

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New Look Sabres: GM 5 - FLA - Weird Win

The Florida Panthers thought they would be the Carolina Hurricanes by this point: the hot, young club meteorically rising to the top of their division. The Hurricanes seemed like they were a goaltender away for half a decade and patched that up enough last year to make the Eastern Conference Final. They’ve added a lot from coaching to forwards and they’ve only built the beast bigger this season. Florida similarly has pulled all the stops to turn their corner. With two playoff appearances since 2000 that organization has been long hungering for something compelling on the banks of the Everglades. When it comes to Panthers v Sabres there’s little to no history to speak of. None of the Buffalo News’ top 50 Sabres games of all time involve the Florida Panthers. Most Sabres fans of my generation associate them with the Eichel Draft occurring in their arena, the Mark Pysyk trade and… well that’s about it. Neither of those moments are games. To my parents’ generation I suppose the Panthers represent a fun Sabres away game side trip while visiting their retired parents in South Florida. I solicited Sabres twitter for Greatest Game Against the Panthers for Buffalo. Understandably you guys had just as much trouble as me finding anything notable about the 100 matchups these two teams have had over the years. Somehow I ended up getting four games notable enough for them to memorable to some people. Don’t worry, there are three other games against Florida this season. The other three games will get in here as well. The Greatest Game Against for today’s matchup however was submitted by @t31mcgraw. It’s the January 19th, 2001 matchup that saw aging Dominik Hasek defeat young gun Roberto Luongo in a matchup for the ages. It was 0-0 until the last ten seconds of regulation when Sabres forward Denis Hamel blocked a shot and returned it to the Panthers zone to win it. That’s a throwback right there. Now let’s talk about tonight’s game.

This game could have been as contentious as the Habs game Wednesday night. If it was then both teams had a weird way of showing it. This one was a weird one from the start as the first 30 minutes of this game was more or less two drunk men just throwing haymakers at each other in the words of @d4rkbuffalo. Confession: I missed those first thirty minutes due to a work event. I turned this game on confused. 0-0 halfway through the game? Beyond 5 on 5 expected goals most every advanced stats category was dead even through that first period. The Sabres were getting outshot but looking back on this game you really don’t notice it until the overtime period, but we’ll get there. I’m tempted to say the gangbusters powerplay Buffalo has had through the first four games finally hit a wall and that’s why it was so dull but there was only one powerplay opportunity in the first. All five of the other powerplays between both teams were inconsequential. The powerplay didn’t click but it was symptomatic of these two teams just whacking each other will limp pool noodles. Breaking through in this game would take someone or some players making mistakes. And so this one became a game of mistakes. You know who cleans up a game of mistakes? The goalies. Linus Ullmark versus Sergei Bobrovsky is not a matchup you’re expecting to be a spectacular duel, at least not from the Ullmark side. I’m the biggest Linus Ullmark fan not married to him in North America. Even I will say I don’t expect him to win a pure goalie duel against Sergei Bobrovsky but once again: this was a weird game all the way around.

A Sabres powerplay had just ended when Kyle Okposo and Johan Larsson came streaming into the Panthers’ zone in the last minute of the second period. This line has transcended being just a cliché checking line. These three veterans, all dudes we were begging to see shipped out over the summer have had a great start to the season. They’ve played a stout game defensively, frustrating their matchups and even getting the puck entrenched in the offensive zone against better competition. Call it the roaring twenties line or call it the LOG, its making hay out of dirt whatever you call it. Kyle Okposo covered by two defenders gets the puck over to Johan Larsson who shoots over the outstretched Bobrovsky and gets the Sabres out to a 1-0 lead. He falls over Bob like Bobby Orr. Okay. Sure! That’s a lead. I’ll take it no matter which guy wearing a bison on their jersey does it. That goal-less dynamo line finally gets rewarded! Moreover Marco Scandella saved a puck from the goal line in heroic fashion. It was certainly a weird one. Through that second intermission your thinking: okay, scoring effects alone have to even the score in this game, the most weirdly even-uneven game we’ve seen in a while. Then two minutes into the third period the LOG gets right back to work as Zemgus Girgensons skates in, drops it to Kyle Okposo, who drops it to Marco Scandella… yikes not him… *eyes widen* …did he just… score!? Yes, believe it or not, Marco Scandella just tapped it in past Bob like he was an Allstar or something. Did someone drug me at my work party? What is this? This can’t be Sabres hockey, even the new version doesn’t feature Scandella dingers. What’s going on? They reminded us who we were watching, don’t worry.

The Florida Panthers got a new coach over the offseason in addition to the Sergei Bobrovsky. The one and only Joel Quenneville. Three-time Cup winner with the dynastic Chicago Blackhawks. I don’t need to tell you who he is. Evidently the rough start for the Cats got him upset. He was bag-skating dudes in practice this week. Do you think the likes of Mike Hoffman and Aaron Ekblad are taking well to that? You think Eichel is tired of losing? Imagine being Ekblad and not even living in a place that knows you exist! They were not going to lay down and die after a couple scrubs scored on them. This Ullmark fan is going to be honest here: Linus was a little far out of the crease when Evgeni Dadonov came in and snuck it around him. They call him daddy in Miami. He sparked the Panthers comeback and comeback they did. The Cats got up and began shelling for the equalizer. And this is when the first and foremost flaw in Ralph Krueger’s coaching becomes clear. He moved Jimmy Vesey up to Victor Olofsson’s spot next to Jack Eichel and gee, I don’t know. I want Greasy Vesey to get going I just don’t know how to trigger him. Maybe when you’re clinging to a one goal lead late in the third against a divisional opponent isn’t the time. Just a thought. Krueger is still figuring out who to trust in these tight situations and hopefully he soon figures out the Scandella-Ristolainen pairing probably ain’t it. Hell, what do I know after this game? At this rate Scandella scores a hatty against Dallas on Monday, what a weird world! Anyway, after the shelling reached it’s fever pitch in the dying minutes of the regulation Mike Hoffman sunk a tight 4-hole shot and it was even with less than 15 seconds left! Yeah, that was a hair-puller. But it got worse.

I was certain, almost beyond convincing that they were going to lose the game in overtime. It doesn’t take a savant to tell you possession is everything in 3 on 3 overtime. It’s golden goal and its over so the dude who has the puck is making his team multiple times more likely to win the game just by having the puck! The Sabres had maybe a minute of possession the whole five-minute overtime. It’s a low-grade miracle the Panthers didn’t take two points in OT. They didn’t and so we went to the first shootout of the season. This is where the goalies matter most. Linus Ullmark was 2-2 in shootouts coming into this but well over .800 in shots taken on him in those shootouts. He’s a good goalie and the shootout is damn good evidence. No Panther got a puck past him and Jack Eichel and Casey Mittelstadt both had their fancy finishes. The Buffalo Sabres took away the two points and the 3-2 win from this one and successfully completed a two-game overpowering of two big Atlantic Division wildcard opponents. I’ll say this: letting each of these games go past regulation, giving both of Montreal and Florida a point in the standings is not ideal. There is a lot more hockey left, 77 games in this regular season in fact, so let’s see where it goes. I think it’s a safe bet that come next month we’re not talking about the Quenneville Panthers getting bag-skated in practice. They’ll turn it on and so will the Canadiens. The question remains: will the Sabres be a good team in November, December, January, February, March and yes, April? Or do we have another team here that will burn bright early and fade? I don’t know but I really hope we have fun, meaningful hockey in the spring. We’ll have to see, it’s not even winter yet, eh.

You might be reading this on Saturday. If you are tonight is the night! If you’re not… well tomorrow is the day! Tomorrow is the Third Annual Buffalo Pod-a-Thon downtown at Buffalo Riverworks! Doors open at 5:30 and most of the proceeds go to BB&G Charities. That’s $25 at the door and you get dinner with that, so I think it’s a good deal. Once you’re in you get me and about two dozen other Western New York Sports personalities to enjoy. I’ll be the one wearing a Rochester Americans Linus Ullmark jersey. I’m awfully proud I get to wear it the day after a performance like that! I know it will be fun and even if you’re not my biggest fan you’ll find something there you’re into. There’s even going to be a game show I hear! I hope you’ll come on down and come back here Monday night after the Dallas Stars come to town to take on the… wait for it… the 4-0-1 Buffalo Sabres! They haven’t started this well since the Ryan Miller era! Like, comment and share this blog with a friend. Hopefully I see you tomorrow!

Thanks for Reading.

P.S. I want to join the pile-on Alex Nylander. He got a few games on the Toews and Kane line in Chicago and now he’s scratched. That sounds like the guy I remember! I still cannot believe we got Henri Jokiharju for that guy!

#buffalo sabres #hockey #blog #nhl

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closetofanxiety · 6 years ago

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50 Wrestling Questions: Why Not

Remember this? It’s been a while. Let’s do this again. Let’s twist again like we did last summer. Or the summer of 2017 in this case.

1. What got you into wrestling?

People ask me this all the time, and I don’t really have a good answer. I’ve liked it on and off since I was very young, and who knows why you like the stuff you like when you’re a little kid?

2. What is your favorite wrestling promotion?

Of all time: ECW, even though I would probably think of it very differently if it were happening today. Currently: Beyond Wrestling.

3. Favorite male wrestler of all time?

Gorgeous George, but if we’re talking about people who were alive when I was alive, Dusty Rhodes. I want to say Bruiser Brody, but in my heart I would know I was just saying that to look cool.

4. Favorite female wrestler of all time?

Gail Kim. For the longest time, she was the only woman in a major global wrestling company who got over based on her wrestling ability. She was doing stuff in TNA that was years ahead of its time, and could adapt her style to get great matches with a variety of opponents with very different backgrounds. And she can still go, as she showed in the match against Tessa Blanchard the other night. I know it would be cooler to say Bull Nakano or Chigusa Nagayo or something, but I don’t know enough of their stuff to make that claim credible. I am who I am, a person who goes to the mall to buy shoes.

5. Favorite current male wrestler?

Nick Gage

6. Favorite current female wrestler?

Momo Watanabe

7. Favorite theme song?

Joey Janela’s music captures his vibe perfectly, and sounds great being blasted out of PA speakers inside a small bar or VFW hall. Of all time, probably, I don’t know, Honky Tonk Man? In an ironic way that slowly becomes sincere?

8. Least favorite theme song?

Ricochet’s WWE theme music is pretty dreadful.

9. Favorite gimmick?

Currently: Orange Cassidy. All time: Road Warriors maybe? They were almost 100 percent gimmick, and they were the biggest tag team in the world at a great time for tag team wrestling.

10. Least favorite gimmick?

All the racist and gay-hating gimmicks that have been used throughout the years are more or less equally horrible. If we’re talking about a terrible gimmick that was non-malignant, I’d say it was taking giant indestructible ass-kicker Mike Awesome and making him “That 70s Guy.”

11. Best entrance (either their usual entrance or a special one, like a Wrestlemania entrance)?

Gorgeous George had the best entrance of all time, and it’s been copied ever since (Ric Flair’s entrance is basically Gorgeous George’s, scored with a different piece of classical music). The Sandman also had a great entrance. He was kind of all-entrance, now that I think of it. I also love those old shows in Japan where Brody would come out to “Immigrant Song” running through the crowd, swinging a fucking chain over his head like a lunatic. An entrance that makes you fear for your life: mission accomplished.

12. Best Undertaker Wrestlemania match?

I am not the right person to ask for Undertaker superlatives, but the Lesnar match had a legitimately shocking conclusion that I still appreciate

13. Most overrated?

I’m tempted to incur the wrath of the online by making a contrarian hot take selection like Ken Omega, but in reality it’s probably the Undertaker.

14. Most underrated?

There are a million choices from before the 1980s, the Before Time of contemporary pro wrestling. Edouard Carpentier, say; he was having matches in 1970 that would not look out of place in 2019. Since the 1980s, I’d say Jerry Lynn is a very strong contender for most underrated. The popular choice would be Sid or Lex Luger, but I think they’re pretty much rated exactly as they should be.

15. Have you ever been to an event? If so, which one?

I certainly have been to many pro wrestling events. I go to one or two a month. Like a lot of things, wrestling is pretty much always fun in person. It helps that the Northeast has a ton of good companies within easy driving distance. My favorite show of all time might be Americanrana 2016.

16. Who has the best merch?

We’re in a weird period where people on Instagram are making better shirt designs (in insanely limited editions) than the vast majority of wrestlers or wrestling companies. I will say that Kris Wolf has yet to make an ugly or boring piece of merchandise, which is a huge complication in this day and age.

17. Do you own any merch?

Nope! Wait, I mean, “yes, entirely too much.” Shirts, 8 x 10s, DVDs, magazines, random pieces like fancy enamel badges and a stack of Okada bucks. The one thing I’ve never gotten into is action figures, and that’s probably good for the ol’ bank balance.

18. Best nickname?

"The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes is an all-time classic.

19. Worst nickname?

"The Game” is a dumb nickname. “The Cerebral Assassin” is also a dumb nickname. Are assassins supposed to be stupid? I bet they’re typically very smart, although of low moral character. “Triple H” is his only good nickname, and even that sounds like the nickname of a guy who owns a car dealership out by the highway.

20. Best mic skills?

Nobody was ever better than Bobby Heenan, who had incredible range and versatility. He could do comedy and he could do menace. He could do calm and he could do spitting rage. He had an uncanny sense of timing and was quicker on his feet than almost anyone. No one really comes close at matching his astonishing depth, but Dusty Rhodes was an all-time great promo. He really made you care about wrestling matches, which is not an easy thing to do.

21. Most annoying?

I mean, it has to be Vince McMahon.

22. Most attractive male?

Is Tanahashi too obvious a choice? Best hair in wrestling. It’s incredible and luxurious, like an untamed mountain stream. Andrade “Cien” Almas or whatever they’ve shortened his name to (”And”) is a handsome man. Killer Kross: very handsome. We live in a golden age of attractive wrestlers. Just look back at the gassed-up Zubaz mastodons of the 1980s, or the territories-era guys who all looked like they were 48 years old and had pot bellies. You almost have to try to find unattractive wrestlers. Nick Gage, for instance. But I’m sure even he has his swooning admirers.

23. Most attractive female?

Again, what a time for attractive wrestlers. It may be shallow, but wrestling is a business that’s at least partially cosmetic. Attractive people sell tickets. I would, and have, bought a ticket to see Hana Kimura.

24. Favorite faction?

Of all time? Probably the Barry Windham-era Four Horsemen. More recently, Team Pazuzu.

25. Worst faction?

BULLET CLUB. No, it’s not the Bullet Club, as exhausted as they’ve become. It’s probably the nWo after early 1998 or so, when they had like 60 members and dragged down every storyline.

26. Best ring gear?

Su Yung and Pentagon Jr.

27. Who do you think would be the nicest in real life?

I bet Jerry Lynn is a good guy to know. People in wrestling universally praise Little Guido, which is very rare. The Young Bucks seem like they might be decent dudes. Willow Nightingale told a story on a podcast about Nick Gage excitedly playing with Solo Darling’s dog backstage, so you never know.

28. Who would be the rudest in real life?

On the indie level, it’s probably someone who doesn’t work very much. Above the indie level, I bet some of those British guys are secretly horrible, like Jimmy Havoc.

29. Favorite heel?

Currently it’s a tie between MJF and Alisha Edwards, two of the only people who can regularly get indie crowds to boo them. Of all time, heel Flair was hard to beat.

30. Most hardcore?

It’s definitely either a guy in Japan or a guy in Mexico, and he’s definitely been burned by explosive charges multiple times. Onita? It’s probably Onita. Or Jun Kasai? I think Onita has probably been exploded more times than Jun Kasai.

31. A wrestler you could beat?

At wrestling? Not a single one of them. Nicholas, the small boy who won the WWE tag team championship with Braun Strowman, would wipe the floor with me. Even the most callow bodybuilder-turned-wrestler would not break a sweat beating me senseless. But writing talking points for senior administration officials in preparation for legislative testimony? Now you’re on my turf. Not so tough now, huh, Nicholas?

32. Best story line?

Freebirds vs. Von Erichs or Stone Cold vs. Vince. My heart says the former, my head says the latter.

33. Biggest missed opportunity for a story line?

The WWE blowing the invasion angle after purchasing WCW is the obvious one. More recently, they blew it by not turning Reigns heel.

34. Worst story line?

Ha, so many of them. Impossible to choose just one. At least most of the dumb embarrassing Russo ones in WCW and TNA were basically harmless, like the time Samoa Joe got kidnapped by ninjas. The Chuck and Billy wedding thing was far worse. A low point even by Vince’s impressively cretinous standards.

35. Which wrestler should turn heel?

I’d like to see a Jordynne Grace heel run in Impact. Heel Finn Balor would also be good.

36. Which wrestler should turn face?

Samoa Joe has a good fiery babyface, “I’m tired of doing your dirty work, McMahon!” run in him.

37. Who would be the worst to room with?

Can you imagine sharing a living space with Enzo Amore? Or the thicket of twee Disney merchandise you’d have to negotiate every day if you lived with Johnny Gargano?

38. Who would be the best to room with?

I bet Eddie Edwards would be a surprisingly thoughtful roommate, like he’d always do the dishes “because I love doing them!,” that kind of thing. I have nothing to base this suspicion on, he just seems like my old roommate, Shane, who was like that.

39. Who would be your best friend if you were a wrestler?

I’d like to say Jushin Thunder Liger, and posit that we would go on exciting adventures, but the answer is probably something like “Comp Time” Terry Dandridge, who wrestles monthly for 2Xtreme All-Pro Wrestling Alliance out of Euphoria, Kansas and has a 9 to 5 as a hardware store manager.

40. What would your job be in a wrestling promotion?

I’d normally make a self-effacing joke here, but I do social media training at my real job, and so many wrestlers are badly in need of help in this area.

41. Favorite wrestling podcast/Youtube channel?

I like AIW’s “The Card is Going to Change” podcast a lot, and there’s one by the owners of RevPro that’s pretty good. It’s hard to find a well-produced wrestling podcast that talks about independent wrestling. My favorite wrestling YouTube channel is OSW Review.

42. Favorite finisher?

BURNING HAMMER

43. Least favorite finisher?

The Bayley-to-belly suplex. HOW IS THIS A FINISHING MOVE

44. Favorite match?

Kerry Von Erich vs. Jerry Lawler at Superclash III. It was a bloody, weird, engrossing spectacle, and it was the symbolic end of the territories era.

45. Favorite PPV?

Royal Rumble is the last PPV my casual fan friends reliably want to see, and with good reason: it’s engrossing.

46. Guilty pleasure wrestler?

Big Banter Baron Corbin, but I feel no guilt here. He rules.

47. Favorite submission?

THE KATA HA JIME, otherwise known as the Tazmission.

48. Most entertaining to watch?

All time? Randy Savage. Currently? Io Shirai.

49. Best spot?

Anyone spitting mist into the unsuspecting eyes of their foes

50. Who do you most respect?

I respect you, booker man.

#50 questions #lists

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thephantomofthe-internet · 6 years ago

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Homeward Bound: Chapter 14

Steve Harrington x Henderson!Reader, Billy Hargrove x Henderson!Reader

Chapter Summary: It was all a little harmless, late night summer fun, right?

Word Count: 3,329

Warnings: Swearing, Blood mention, death mention, this part’s pretty dark and violent so maybe avoid it if that worries you sorry

Permanent Tag: @hotstuffhargrove @denimjacketkisses @hargrovesgoldilocks @lilmissperfectlyimperfect @hipsmcgee @casaharrington @thechickvic @alex--awesome--22

Series Tag: @moonstruckhargrove @baebee35 @kurt-nightcrawler @supernatural-pants @thoughstofaredhead @bby-becca @fear-the-reaper115 @estheflowergirl @onemorekissisallittakes

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” you asked the trio: Max, Lucas, and Marcy, all looking at you like deer caught in headlights. You had to work very hard to look as serious as possible. In actuality you couldn’t give two shits if they were sneaking out nor where they were going, but seeing their little, scared faces was well worth the effort.

“Why are you wandering around our streets? Aren’t you supposed to be out with your friends?” Lucas countered, obviously trying to be the brave hero of the group, but failing spectacularly.

“Got coated in a milkshake, left early. Not exactly my finest hour.” You replied with a chuckle, brushing sticky hair out of your face.

“We’re breaking into the public pool. You wanna come?” Max announced breezily, tossing her backpack over her shoulder with a confidence not found in her co-conspirators.

Marcy gasped, smacking Max hard and earning a death glare from her. “Shut up…” she said through gritted teeth, as though that was going to come off as subtle.

“Nah, Y/N’s cool, it’s no biggie.” Lucas replied, grabbed Max’s other arm to keep her from attacking the girl, flashing you a Crest white smile.

“She could rat on us.” Marcy snapped at him, her sharp angled black hair swiping over her eye, forcing her to angrily brush it away.

“Nah, I’m chill.” You said with a shrug “And yeah, sure I’ll come, sounds fun.”

“You’re not invited.” Marcy crossed her arms tightly over her chest, rolling her eyes.

“Yeah she is, she’s chill.” Max snapped at her, pushing ahead to head onto the sidewalk, watching the upper windows for flickering lights from TV sets.

“This is a couple’s thing.” Marcy retorted harshly, looking you over with a sneer. She obviously thought lowly of you and it seemed to be manifesting now in your lack of a man on your trip. She was sounding more like your mother than you liked and it made you want to turn and leave.

“No it’s not.” Lucas replied, bewildered. He turned to you and said “Will’s coming alone.” And that alone encouraged you to stay.

“And since when are you and Dustin an item?” you asked, cocking your head to the side, looking at her pityingly; you might not have to fight like a teen girl anymore, but you could still throw down with the best of them. Marcy groaned loudly, throwing her hands up in the air. You couldn’t tell if she was embarrassed of being called out or simply annoyed with your lack of defeat.

“We’re gonna go get Will, you go get Dustin and we’ll meet you there, yeah?” Lucas said, pulling his bike from the wall and pushing it over to the sidewalk, hopping on and letting Max get on the seat.

“I’ll meet you there.” Marcy grumbled, hopping on her own bike and rushing off before you could even bother to ask where she was rushing off to. You rolled your eyes, rushing off down the street, cutting through back roads to get to your own house just a second faster, even though it risked you getting chased by a dog or getting cuts on your ankles from thorny rose bushes.

You unlocked your door slowly and tiptoed upstairs. You made a beeline for Dustin’s room and, using your old Morse code knock against the wood before pulling open the door.

“What? What’d you want?” Dustin snapped, dropping his drawstring bag to the floor as though it would be more subtle than just holding it. You noted the already open window.

“Relax, I already know where you’re going. I’m not ratting on you, I’m going with you.” You replied, shutting the door slowly, keeping your voice low.

“How’d you find out?”

“I ran into Max, Lucas, and Marcy sneaking out of the Mayfield house.” You told him, watching the colour drain from his face.

“Marcy’s coming?” he asked slowly, looking to his bag slowly.

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t think Max was going to invite her.”

“Oh. Well, she is, I guess. Anyway, I’ll meet you at the side gate, okay?” You grabbed the door handle, turning it slowly and creeping out back into the hall and into your own room.

Why you’d brought a swimsuit, you had no idea. Maybe it was a leftover from your last trip, maybe you’d had a premonition about what would happen while you were in town, maybe you just thought about the pool in town and threw it in just in case, either way you had an old black one piece in your bag which you pulled on easily and pulled the diner shirt on top, followed by the shorts you were wearing earlier that day. You raked your hair up again, cringing at the crunchy knots that had formed in the wake of the mess. You threw a towel out the window and planned to follow it when your door swung open.

“Y/N! I didn’t hear you come in!” your mother chimed worriedly.

“Yeah, sorry, I kind of snuck in, didn’t want to bother you.”

“I thought you’d be out longer…” she hummed.

“Yeah well, Marvin spilled a shake on me and I can only sit around sticky for so long.” You said with a shrug, pointing to your abandoned skirt.

She cooed at the stain, picking up the material and scratching at it with her fingernail “I’ll get this out, you heading out again?” she asked, folding the skirt in her hands.

“Yeah…just wanted to change before I head back.” You lied through your teeth.

“Alright, just don’t be out too long, don’t wanna miss the main event.” She warned “And DON’T be too loud when you come home, I don’t want to be woken up.”

“I got it, I’ll see you tomorrow.” You said softly, waving as she headed out of the room. You quickly stuck your head out the window and looked for a sign of Dustin. He waved your towel over his head before climbing onto his bike and riding off. You huffed and ran out of your room, bounding down the steps and slipping on your shoes before running out the door.

You only lived a few streets away from the Hawkins community pool, you could easily run it. And so you did, bolting down the sidewalk, hearing the slap of rubber soles against pavement and the glow of streetlights casting yellow circles on the road, lighting your way. You felt like a child again, rushing far past your parents despite their yelling for you to slow down. You found yourself laughing to yourself, turning down towards the park and taking a sharp turn to the grass and up a small hill to the fence.

You found the teens waiting for you, leaning casually against the fence and talking amongst themselves as though Marcy wasn’t trying to pick the lock to the open the gate, a second bobby pin held tightly between your teeth.

“You guys know the fence isn’t like topped in barbed wire, right? We could just hop it.” you said between huffing breaths, hunching slightly as you caught your breath.

“Did you run here? Where’s your bike?” Max asked, looking you over judgementally.

“My bike? My bike is probably being ridden by some kid in Malcolm; I sold it when I moved. I have a license-I don’t need a bike.” You replied, standing up straighter and wiping the sweat from your forehead.

“How are you gonna get away from the police when they get called?” Lucas asked.

“Why would I need to run from the police?” you countered.

“Because we’re breaking and entering. And every year we do this, the police get called.” Dustin said, dropping his bike against the fence.

“And we’ve never been caught, so you better not get ruin that streak.” Max pointed a finger at you, trying to look as stern as her slight baby face would allow.

“Wouldn’t she love getting caught by Officer Harrington? Probably wants him to frisk her…” Marcy muttered, roughly pulling the bobby pin from the pad lock.

“Hey!” Dustin snapped before you could “That’s my sister. Be nice or go home.” Marcy looked up, gobsmacked, gaping like a fish. But Dustin didn’t back down, watching her carefully, firm in his convictions. Marcy scoffed, rolling her eyes, but she dropped the sneer she’d been sending you every so often.

“If anyone’s gonna get us caught, it’s me.” A tiny voice added, trying to diffuse tension in the group.

Will Byers was still tiny and frail, still wearing a bowl cut, still dressed in hand-me-downs, and still happy as ever to be a part of a group. He was taller than last you saw him, but he was only an inch or two taller than Dustin, which wasn’t saying much as Dustin would always be sort of short. He was still stick thin, although now he looked as though he ran, maybe even track, either way his legs looked strong and powerful. He finally looked like the kid who fought monsters before adulthood, who’d nearly died twice and saved lives all the while-he looked powerful, but there was weariness in his eyes, the light had been dimmed with age. He looked to be the oldest of the group despite them all being the same age; he just had a maturity that comes with forced growing. It made you sad to look at him-you were sure that his whole childhood had been ruined by all of this. But he was smiling, that was the uplifting thing-he kept smiling throughout his lives pain.

“You will not!” you replied, chuckling to yourself as you pulled him into a slightly unwanted hug, filled with emotions you hadn’t had moments ago.

“I missed you too…” Will muttered, rubbing your back awkwardly. He wasn’t put off by the sentiment, you noted, just simply that he was embarrassed by it happening in front of his friends and a practical stranger. Still, he didn’t push you away; he accepted your love with as much in his own heart for you. The bond you all had shared didn’t fade with time away from them all; you swore you’d given bits of your heart to everyone who’d lived through the mess of Hawkins that you’d never have a full heart to give to anyone else. That didn’t matter though, not when you had all these little families waiting for you.

You let go first, huffing out a sigh and nodding slightly “Alright, let’s do this before we get caught.” You announced to the group.

“Lock’s not coming undone. It’s no good.” Marcy countered, getting up and shrugging comically “You should just head home, Y/N, it’s a crap shoot.”

You rolled your eyes “If you think a shitty lock is gonna stop us, then you’re nuts.” You hooked your foot into the fence and gripped onto it, pulling yourself up, climbing carefully until you got to the top, hooking your leg over the other side and looking down at the kids staring up at you. “You act like we haven’t done this before, guys, come on!” you cried, jumping off the top and landing gracelessly on the tile below, hopping to your feet and pulling off your top and shorts, hopping into the open water and relishing in the luke warm water left open since the pool’s closure for the day. Soon enough you were surrounded by laughing kids, splashing each other and bobbing under the water.

“Wait!” you said as Max tried to dunk your head underwater, using her buoyancy to gain leverage against you “Where’s Mike?”

“Visiting with El!” Will called, chasing after Lucas. It was as though no time passed. You found yourself smiling at the whole scene, pushing away from Max and catching Dustin by the ankle before he swam over to Lucas, leaving Marcy pouting in the corner, not even in the pool.

“Personal question.” You whispered, cupping a hand over his ear.

Dustin groaned “What?”

“Are you and Marcy a thing or not? Cause she tried to tell me that you were.” You asked softly, eyes darting briefly to her steely gaze, toes grazing the water.

Dustin shook his head “Not as far as I know.” He said. He didn’t look happy about the new information either; instead he was frowning, a crease forming in between his eyebrows. “It’s complicated, I’ll explain later.” He said, swimming off before you could demand an answer.

You nodded to yourself, choosing to take a break from the dog pile forming in the corner and not wanting to breech the wall of sneer Marcy was building. You held yourself up on the ledge, staring out into the forest.

As much as you were trying, this place would never be a happy place for you. It was full of too many terrible memories to fully enjoy. Heather had worked here, she was head lifeguard when you returned, her dream job. She’d written you letters every summer you were away from Hawkins about her job, all of them a who’s-who of people who flirted with her-the little kids who made her laugh in their attempts and all the adults who made her want to crawl out of her skin-and how she couldn’t get the smell of chlorine out of her hair and how, at the end of every summer, her hair would be green from the constant chlorine in it. She’d always have her save of the summer, the highlight of the last year’s being performing mouth to mouth on hunky senior Bryce Lee, which she bemoaned was the closest thing to kissing she’d gotten up to.

You were the highlight of her last summer.

The thought permeated your thoughts. You were the highlight. And you’d barely seen her. She declared it in the last letter she wrote you before you moved back, stating that even her new boyfriend, Keith, couldn’t beat you coming back. You were flattered, excited to see her, but then Hawkins took over your brain and you fell away, despite her pleas to come visit her. You just couldn’t find the time, you were so tied up. It all felt so stupid-you should’ve visited her. You should’ve let her in. You shouldn’t have gotten in yourself in the first place. You should’ve spent your summer by the pool instead of hunting monsters.

Maybe if you did, it all wouldn’t have happened the way it did.

You let go of the edge, sinking into the water with nose held, squeezing your eyes shut. The memory came anyway.

Heather never took the closing shift, but she did when you asked. You told her that you’d hang out while she closed up. And she agreed. In reality, you were watching the perimeter of the woods entering the park, waiting for the sign El had predicted you’d see. To prove that all of this was manifesting physically too.

“So, anyway, Keith’s been begging me to dress up like this character from Dragon Slayer, Princess Daphne, apparently he’s into her. And I don’t know, you know? Like is that weird?” Heather was rambling as the skimmed the pooling, waving a polite goodbye to her co-worker, leaving the pool area with a confused expression.

“Hm? Oh, um well it’s only weird if you think it’s weird, Heath, if you’re into it or up for it, then do it.” you said; you weren’t really paying attention, you’d heard about this before. “But know that my dweeby brother is into her, too.” You added with a smirk, looking over to catch her grimace before looking back out into the woods. As expected, Hopper was waiting at the forest edge, leaning on the door of the paddy wagon. You nodded to him, which he returned easily.

“Ew! Ugh, Y/N why would you tell me that? SO nasty!” Heather exclaimed, almost dropping her skewer in the pool.

“What? It’s true! Him and all his little buddies used to be, well not so much Will, but he had a hard couple of years so I get it. But him and Mike and Lucas all adored her. Now it’s just Dustin cause they both have little girlfriends.” You said.

Heather sighed “You remember when everyone in middle school wanted to be in relationships so bad? And we played matchmaker for a fee? How many relationships did we set up in seventh grade alone? Like fifteen?”

“Probably, the only one that stuck was Carol and Tommy, not my best move. They’re the only ones I really remember, other than when I tried to set up Steve Harrington with myself and it all fell apart.”

“Oh yeah!” Heather giggled “He wanted his money back and you’d already spent it on the tickets to see The Outsiders at the Hawk. So I had to set him up with Annie Howards to get him off your ass! Oh my god that was a nightmare, I was worried about it for weeks!”She shrieked, but you weren’t listening. Something caught your eye at the corner of the scene and you were trying to signal to Hopper to look out for it, but he wasn’t listening-he was all dazed out, his mind under someone else’s control.

Quickly, you paced to the other side of the pool, gripping onto the fence and trying to force yourself to be able to see further away from yourself, wishing binoculars weren’t so suspicious in this scenario.

“So, anyway, are you coming with me and my mom to see Cher? You said you would but then you’ve been so busy since you got back-” she never got through that last sentence; it was cut off by a guttural scream. You turned around fast, but not fast enough-it was already too late.

You’d never seen one up close; you’d never seen what they did to people. They really did earn their names; they attacked just like wild dogs and looked like demons. It was on top of Heather, ripping at her flesh, tearing her limb from limb. You ran for your crowbar, pulling it out of your bag and smack the thing as hard as you could.

But it was too late. It didn’t matter.

Heather was gone.

The thing had gone after her face, ripping off her skin and then her head. Blood pouring from the open wound on her neck. It was eating her head. She was gone. She was gone.

You couldn’t remember what happened after that, the memory of Heather’s lifeless body took it over.

It filled your mind even now.

You forced your head above the water, gasping desperately for air, your lungs screaming to feel something again. You forced yourself to the edge of the pool, holding yourself up and squeezing your eyes shut, counting every breath you pushed out and took in.

Ripping and tearing and screaming…

But Heather’s scream echoed through your mind. You couldn’t block it out. You had to get out.

Blood and cries and oh my fucking god…

“Police!” you heard a voice behind you called, and you vaguely felt someone pulling you out of the pool and pushing you to move forward. But you were frozen in place, unable to move, trapped in your mind.

The white lights blinded you at first, but then they were street lights and the sky was warm and sunburnt. You found yourself running to the fence, but something was coming towards you, fast. You let out a scream that rip through your throat. You tried to scramble up the fence, but your wet feet slipped. You hit the concrete and tile with a thud.

And Heather on the ground lifeless and gone and oh my…

It was over you before you could try to cover yourself, to protect your vital organs. Across the tile, Heather’s body lay lifeless and bloody.

“No!” you cried, but it wasn’t your voice, it was Heather’s final cry. And then, everything went black.

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