#but it doesnt matter anyway since this isnt real and both of them are alive and ok : ) a happy ending for everyone

[tenpent]

(blood/suicide)

my insanity continues

(original image)

[sipping-ambrosia-wine]

okay i did a LOT more running around and i LOVE the stable quests and how they give us a little glimpse into zelda's life post-botw. like yeah she WAS working on a botanical garden (with MAGDA no less). she WOULD help make a new sheep feed she WOULD take an interest in a rare new type of animal. i love all of these she's a princess and that means taking care of her people, rebuilding and also doing so specifically by supporting and contributing to scientific development.

also HELL YEAH FROGGY ARMOR

AND kaneli is alive he just retired to teach thank goodness.

the stable trotters are really cute ^_^ their names being puns too, and i appreciate their dedication to the fairies.

(but also miss maam i thibk i preferred when yall were asking for lumps sums i only have so many rupees)

finally went to find impa and ngl i'm kinda surprised that purah didnt share her age rune with her... or robbie for that matter. im glad though, it may have been useful for her but i think neither wouldve taken the offer, if for wildly different reasons.

SELMIE QUEEN OF THE DUNES

more geoglyphs- the second i found was the demon king in north hebra (the third was the dagger which is actually back-to-back chronologically but in the other direction lmao but i didnt hit that until later).

the golden horse quest... that one gave me pause. most of these are resolved by weird rumors but this one is ominous and doesnt really leave us with a real answer.

but anyway i registered the horse its name is Tacky :P

!!! okay yona is gorgeous. i love character designs that break the mold and her little headpiece is so pretty. i wonder what her powers are? tulin and revali were pretty similar but there are other ways to do water powers than healing... but i do want some kind of healing ability from SOMEONE... that she's from another domain kicks off SO MANY other questions... there are other zora domains??? like in other countries??? or is it a freshwater vs oceanic evolutionary schism (that would explain why one of mipha's champion trials is just swimming fast)? do the zora have active political ties outside hyrule? does muzu have heritage from yona's domain as well since theyre both stingray zora?

...wait shes sidon's fiance?? LMAO

hmm she IS a healer... i hope we get more from her than Replacement MiphaTM she deserves better.

i love the healing cave i always figured it would be a missed opportunity to not make the mountains surrounding the domain like, hollow in places and have a whole second city layer there. they couldve added a diving function but i guess totk is already pretty heavy on the new game functions.

speaking of i think i might be warming up to the fuse function a bit. its still meh though- i actually LOVED weapons durability but its way more tedious now that i have to make them. but the gemstone magic function is cool.

king dorephan was injured by the muck-like which... yeah i think retirement is the best option for you there. relatively its the size of a rotisserie chicken to you. it cant even REACH your gills. but it looks like SIDON is the zora game representative which is massively disappointing. i didnt even use his ability i had an opal rod i stole from a bokoblin.

good on yona for getting sidon off his ass but like... why is she here... his thing is he's holding back because he's scared that taking action will make him lose someone he cares about. yeah thats a decent continuation from what we know of him from botw. what happened to his sister was horrible and she was avenged eventually but this is a whole new threat. but if he needs someone he cares about in danger... he already has that.

his people are sick his father is dying of it. make it so he's scared to leave his father in case he dies while sidon is away. yona isnt really necessary and i hate it. she deserves better we went from teba to tulin i thought we were getting more new adventuring buddies. if teba is too busy as chief then sidon should focus on purifying the water and being a prince while link and yona kick ass.

sorry to sidon fans but he continues to be largely useless pretty much throughout the whole temple- including the boss fight.

i LOVE the muckrock- it was a super fun boss and i love the sharky bit but after colgera... muckrock has more personality but it feels like a silly early game boss from other games and it kind of tips a bias toward the zora as the easy starter town. colgera had me in awe but the pattern to it was dead easy- but that might be on me for fighting it first so the combat meter hadnt amped up yet.

hmm i hope they dont give us the imprisoning war rundown every time. i kind of. dont really care. we dont get to know the sages of old like we did the champions and we arent supposed to. we dont see their faces or learn their names all we know is that they made the modern hyrule alliance of rito-zora-goron-gerudo-hylian. and rauru. oh and that theyre ancestors to the new champions which. eh.

it makes sense with the royalty and even to some degree ~people with strong magical abilities~ but i dont like it for the rito. i never digged teba being a blood relation of revali- i figured rito village is more communally-minded, inheritance of a legacy being tied less to blood and more willingness and ability to take it on. that was what teba was all about. he admired revali and appreciated his legacy but he didnt care about chosen heroes or goddess quests he was doing what needed to be done. all of the other calamity champions were related to or ancestors of the new ones so that makes sense- but also given teba's own efforts toward revali's gale and the wind sage's similar appearance to him why wasnt he able to?

(the answer is that the line of inheritance actually came throught saki and teba is the chief and she's their current historian and spiritual leader)

lmao two in one coronation and wedding has the end result of really feeling like neither i guess. i could treat you better girl. leave the prince, you dont need him.

i think if they made yona the new zora representative then she would risk sliding even further into being Spunky Mipha but i dunno at least that way she would be doing so in a way that gives her the spotlight thats she deserves as a new profile character. it would even give sidon a legit reason to hesitate to take action if it were about her actually doing stuff rather than her... leaving the house. its just a huge missed opportunity. also if im being petty looking at our current gender ratio... its just riju. one woman allowed :/

this feels a bit more negative so i'll leave off with after the zora i ran to lurelin and!!! the besties DDD: !!! i stealthed the monster raid- its really an interesting new combat mode but very stressful for me but i did it! and then immediately gave bolson twelve palm trunks when he wanted normal trees. and then we rebuilt lurelin together overnight ^_^

it was so good to see kiana and her family again- she was the first npc to personally teach me a real recipe so im pretty fond of her and it was nice to see that lurelin wasnt left behind in the realm of hylian development

Totk thoughts so far

this atmosphere is NUTS and the murals....

this tutorial is too damn long. ppl said the same about the botw tutorial and frankly that was bullshit but. the sky island is four times the size of the great plateau AND you cant track a full circle around it. rauru is cool though he seems too... normal for a ghost.

FOETUS ZELDA?!?!?

oh wow its so nice to see hyrule rebuilding. the emergency hideout is also very fun.

wait noooooo whats happening to rito village not the besties

20s!purah is too pretty, but links little alarm at the guardian arms gave me some kind of feelings.

oh cute purah and robbie have an unhinged little science protege

first course of action i heard your botw horses carry over so im heading to the stable by the great plateau.

[taoistyuri]

sending you this so you can ramble abt your blorbos so! seiga for the ask thing ~ aesop

THANKYUUU :DD ough

favorite thing about them

seiga my beloved.i love you... i dont know why.. i like when girlies are kind of evil and have little morals and are unliked by everyone else and .. . I LIEK HERRRRRRRR OK (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)(´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)(´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)(´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

least favorite thing about them

normie answer:omg guys, she violates human rights with dead bodies, omg! scandelous!!! TRUE ANSWER: I WANT HER TO HAVE anything anything a MERCH i will take even the generic anime style type idk idk ouuuou uuuu seiga fumo doesnt exist i want it to be real

favorite line

ええ、腐ってて可愛いでしょ？ yeah, shes rotten and cute, isnt she... (talking about yoshika) awwwwww the oober doober

brOTP

i do like to see her hanging out with the taoists, she certainly isnt that close to them (though much moreso to miko) but i think it could be a funny type relation. guy who hangs around your house and you dont want her around but shes chill. you think about how evil she is while enjoying her lovely dinner she made for everyone.

OTP

i dont ship her with anyone really ,NO BITCHES!!! unless... me!???????!!!!! seiga just doesnt get anyone. but i dont think she really cares about romantic relationships. honestly for the best because she would probably have a moochy relationship considering she likes to hang around other people to get something out of them in return... she problematic aromantic lesbian representation (so true)

nOTP

i dont like seiga x yoshika... well simply, i dont... so yeah no matter what it seems like i say or draw of them, i really dont ship them together XD and dont think of it that way at all. i dont have strong feels about the subject i just dont like it..

random headcanon

i think that during the time yoshika was alive seiga and her never even met, but i think yoshika had heard of her in passing and that inspired her to be fascinated by hermits. which makes things ironic in the end, doesnt it!!

regarding jiangshi, this method was one of the first spells that she learned after ascending to hermitdom and was one of the highest points that led to her being cast as a 'wicked hermit.' yoshika is the only one she has kept around for a very long time because she is her favorite, so she is the only one who gets all of seiga's love and anti-decomposition spells. she loves her very much :3 also, since yoshika says that "we" in relations to her guarding the mauseleum, there are definitely more around. jiangshi do not last very long due to decomposition, so they eventually "die" again and are taken out of seiga's control.

i headcanon seiga as being chubby literally because of a dream. i know that sounds funny but heres a fact about me, im kind of a dream obsessed person sometimes, i really like having dreams and thinking about what my brain is doing. but anyways, i had the dream before seiga and yoshika were even really characters on my love radar, i just simply knew them. i dont know what happened in the dream but they were both there, and i think it took place in my house??

seiga with a pokemon: im not sure about more than this, but one thing for sure im really specific about is her having a luxray!! they can see through walls! so as the wall-passing hermit, it would totally make her life easier with a pet who can see whats going on before action XDc sadly though i dont know others she can have.. WAIT yeah ok i dont know the new pokemon very well but houndstone can also be hers. uoppy

also, seiga fursona is cat, its pretty normie and obvious, well if she didnt wanna be called a cat well ZUN shouldve never called her nyanyan... niang niang nyanyan seiga meowwwwwww meeeeowwwwwww OUAAAAH.

unpopular opinion

shes my best friend

song i associate with them

well desire drive and her theme, old yuanxian and um... yeah yeah... necromantic yeah..... (sadly succumbing to fate)

favorite picture of them

can you can you look at seiga in WaHH for me please

^ sittoing

THANK YOU. AND REMEMBER. SEIGA FOREVER

[la5t-res0rt]

Wanted to ask about beetlelyds, sorry, I thought it was technically cannon? Like in the old comics after the show ended she grew up and married him. Sorry I’m an old school fan and have no idea why this whole thing is such a big deal. Wasn’t the actor like 20 too? I’m sorry if I sound very dumb. I’m not used to this new tumblr.

youre fine you are one hundred percent allowed to especially when you do it civilly as you have done here

first of all the biggest issue faced in the whole what is and is not canon debate is the fact that there are three (four if you count the limited comics run) publicized iterations of my media

i will go over each very briefly just kidding this is going to a long answer so i will spare the dashboard with a readmore

there is the movie which im sure you dont need me to explain the plot since youre an old school fan but basically the climax is that yes beetlejuice does go for the marriage angle in exchange for stopping the exorcism of adam and barbara and his motive for this is so that he can cause as much chaos as he wants on the mortal coil but his plan is thwarted when barbara rides a sandworm into the house which promptly eats beetlejuice sending him to bureaucratic death limbo

the end of the movie features the deetz and the maitlands happily living together with lydia havign a new appreciation for her situation and beetlejuice gets his head made real small which is very funny haha 

so no in the movie they are not canon editors note the actress who played lydia winona ryder was a teenager while filming the movie she turned 17 the year it released 

the next is the cartoon which i will admit has the most grounds for being considered canon but in the end the show is about a middle schooler and her best friend who is a ghost which in itself is a pretty iffy gray area sort of thing but for a childrens cartoon to work a friendship is better than the obvious enemy status they held in the movie

anyway in the cartoon they are potrayed to be very close friends with lydia being the person beetlejuice cares about the most and honestly if you were to watch it with no prior knowledge of the media and if you ignored their massive and obvious age difference than yeah you probably would read it as a romantic relationship 

however lydia is a middle schooler and that is simply immoral

there have been writers for the cartoon who have been credited to say that a relationship is what they were trying to invoke but for obvious reasons they couldnt exactly move forward with that angle with them establishing that lydia is a child in middle school and a fully grown adult man dating a child who is in middle school is immoral and also illegal in the united states and in canada 

this isnt a good argument for whether or not something is canon and i will tell you why with one simple name and that is luke weber

if you dont know who luke weber is he was a storyboard artist on the cartoon steven universe he is known for making a lot of self ship artwork of him and the character pearl

he worked on the show isnt his material canon no of course it isnt it wasnt put in the actual publication and also if memory serves he was eventually asked to leave the project after he drew art of the shows creator giving him permission to date pearl and calling them her otp and a lot of fans hated this because the most generally accepted interpretation of pearls character is that she is sapphic so a lot of people took issue however that again is just a widely perceived headcanon it is never stated what her actual sexuality is no one in that show is because it isnt a show about that its about wait im getting off topic sorry

what im saying is what can truly be considered canon is what you see on the screen and with the cartoon they are definitely the most friendly with each other and that is why so many people in the beetlebabe shipping community take so much stock in the cartoon because it is the easiest to read the relationship between the mas romantic although that is not what the show actually provides in black and white terms

interpretation does not equal canon and in this case no matter what anyone says the fact remains that in the cartoon itself they are friends good friends yes but friends all the same

it is definitely not a show about a grown man grooming an adult and if it were you definitely shouldn’t be stanning it the extreme because grooming a minor is wrong and it is apparently a problem in the fandom

anyway if the cartoon and the movie are both products of their time and there was more leniency on content bear in mind this was the same era as notorious animation powerhouse and known predator john k who was a showrunner on ren and stimpy and he maintained a relationship with a teenager which was an open secret that nobody really took issue with because in that time being a woman in the animation industry was tricky business and your career could be ended easily if you rejected advances luckily time has moved forward and the animation industry although still full of problems of a similar nature at least people are getting called out and punished for it

you can look more into that yourself its really upsetting though

as for comics i havent been able to find good scans of them and im not willing to purchase them but in my search i never found anything about the two of them ever being married in the cartoon again because she is a child i did find a cover where he appears to be getting married and hes asking lydia to get him out of it but im not sure where the comic actually goes all i know is she is standing off to the side shrugging and looking like she doesnt really care

anyway that brings us to the musical which is set in the modern day 

in the original libretto lydia is described as thirteen but since they got an actress who was older in the updated librettos she is listed as 15 and the story is pretty similar to the movie the young girl befriends ghosts and they try to scare her family out etc etc

the major difference between the film and the musical are that lydia and beetlejuice are more like friends like in the cartoon 

she summons him to help scare after the maitlands attempt doesnt really work so he shows up and they have fun terrorizing people together however she drops him for the opportunity to perhaps get her mom back but when no one will help she goes back to beetlejuice who tricks her into almost exorcising barbara

she agrees to marry him in order to stop the exorcism and he only wants to get married so he can be alive again and cause problems on the mortal coil like in the movie in the musical he states several times its a green card thing whihc obviously doesnt make it okay but still

anyway lydia tricks him and runs off into the underworld before the wedding can happen blah blah blah she goes back blah blah and she agrees to go through with the wedding to save her friends and family with a plan to make him go away for good

theres a very tongue and cheek song called creepy old guy which points out how wrong the whole thing is but everyone is going along with it in a very comedic matter and it includes the line 

i cant believe some cultures think this kind of things alright

basically saying yeah this is very very wrong anyway they do get married and beeltjeuice is alive for like 6 seconds before lydia stabs him to death with bad art and he dies thus nullifying the marriage because death do you part etc

so in the musical no at the end of the show they are not canon because he is dead their marriage is nullified and they go their separate ways

anyway sorry about that i just need to make it very clear that these three properties are all very distinct from each other and basically all three are indeed canon since they are publicized material and arguing the validity of which one is pointless editors note all actresses who played with the exception of dana steingold were minors for the majority of their runs as lydia with sophia ann caruso the originator of the role turning 18 during the run and dana being in her late twenties presley ryan however was a minor the whole time and still is one

tldr no they aren’t canon but to the credit of some people in this fandom their interpretation isnt too far of a stretch thanks to the era and some of the writers wishing to imply a relationship between an adult and a child

i also need to address how this is all a big deal and i suggest you take a peak through my discourse tag and check out @leedia‘s blog to see some of the more harmful things done by beetlebabe shippers

the beetlejuice fandom is home to many minors after the musical came out since musical fandom is vast and the ages of its members varies and normalizing pedophilia is harmful to them not to mention the people who have been effected by sexual harassment at the hands of adults

both sides have victims of csa but one side continues to perpetuate the cycle by showing time and time again that this behavior is normal and easily romanticized in the name of coping and literally anyone who has ever been to a good and credible therapist could tell you that posting cp even if it is simulated cp isnt a really good way to cope and you can get mad at me for saying that its totally fine but and im going to remove my character veil here for just a second as a csa survivor myself i think its harmful to not only myself but many others ok the veil is back down

tldr again there is a lot of bullying and harassment going on with both sides having their own issues but there is one side whos issues run a bit deeper in my humble opinion 

thank you for your question it allowed me to talk a lot you are welcome to discuss further with me in dms if you wish i honestly recommend giving the musical a listen because it is very fun and despite what some people say its very clever and if you get a chance to see a boot of it its visually stunning

one last note that i couldnt really fit in here but a large portion of the beetlebabes shipping community ignore the musical because it openly condemns the idea of beeltejuice and lydia having a relationship and a lot of the antis take issue with much of the writing and characterizations of the cartoon just a note that i think is important since were talking about canon

[thesaunatest]

MY HUGE THEORY ON EL’S PLOTLINE IN S4

before you guys even start, YES I know that 99.9% of what I say is going to be wrong but this is literally just for fun.

its march 1986, middle of the school year and el HATES school

when we left her she was barely literate and had just started getting accostomed to speaking full sentences, NOWHERE NEAR a 9th grade level, so shes struggling in her classes to say the least

on top of that, she barely knows how to socialize with other people, so shes evidently getting picked on

with joyce and jonathan both working to keep the family afloat, will and el get left alone alot

but outside of the party, they socially have nothing in common

in fact, will is adapting to the new town a whole lot better than el. he fit right in with all the creative kids he met in class, but el didnt mesh with that crowd

anyway, our girl is sturggling

the only time she really has fun is when she visits hawkins, or when someone from the party visits them

which leads us to spring break

mike obviously comes to visit, and el doesnt want them to waste a single second so she begs mike and will to come explore the town with her

at this point joyce is already in her detective mode, hatching a rescue plan for hopper so she doesnt notice theyre gone

and jonathan is battling the heartbreak of nancy ghosting him when she was supposed to come visit

so the trio goes off on an adventure without anyone noticing.......... or so they think

because brenner is back, and he knows el is with the byers, but he cant go and snatch her because he doesnt have the resources all the way in california

in fact, he doesnt have the resources at all. his numbers experiment is seen as a catastrophic failure that lead to the deaths of hundreds of lab employees

the only way for him to redeem himself in the community, and gain his funding back is to present his peers with proof that the project can work, so he needs to get one of his numbers back

el is the only one he can track down, but he doesnt think he can do it himself. if she saw him, she could just kill him with her powers, he assumes because he doesnt know she lost them

so who does he employ to get el back to hawkins? lonnie byers

its almost too easy. it doesnt take much to bribe lonnie, and hey, its not like its his kid. so lonnie accepts the bribe, and goes all the way out to california to find el

he shows up at the byers house..... only to find it completely deserted. so he waits

and the trio finds him there after their day out (why are you here? what do you want? where are mom and jonathan?)

and lonnie, being as crafty as he is, comes up with a good excuse on the fly (hes craftier than i am because i genuinely have no idea what he would say)

anyway, he gets them in his car and on their way back to hawkins

jonathan shows up after theyve already left, and is too stoned tired to think anything of the empty house

and joyce is already halfway to russia

will knows his father. he knows that his father doesnt give a shit about him, the family, or anything about hawkins. he knows that his father wouldnt get involved in anything unless he had something to gain. so hes wraking his brain

maybe.... lonnie pulls over to take a suspicious phone call? maybe will figures out an inconsistency in his story? either way, the gang is onto lonnie and figures that they gotta get away from him and get back to joyce and jonathan

they tuck and roll out of the car. idk. all that matters is that they get out of there

as theyre rolling out of the car, el bonks her head a little and has a quick flashback to her time in the lab

since her intuition is always spot on, she takes this as a cue the breener is back and lonnie is working for him

she tells the boys it isnt safe to go back to california or hawkins, so they come up w an alternative plan, somewhere neither brenner nor lonnie would think to look for them

and while theyre on the road, they stop at a diner to eat (dont ask me where they got the money) and we get will leaving an emotional voicemail home, probably sobbing to jonathan about how much he means to will, which gives el an idea

because who has the resources to help her, as well as a desire for vengeance on brenner? kali

el uses her superb hitchiking skills to get them to chicago

maybe she just has some hints of her powers left, but it isnt too hard for el to find kali

she explains everything thats happened, and lets kali know that if she want revenge, the opportunity is hers

unfortunately, lonnie was hot on their trail, and called for reinforcements

theyre ambushed by the few employees brenner has working for him. initially, everyone is hiding, assisted by kali’s powers

but el knows they arent leaving empty handed, and would rather get taken away then have kali’s freedom taken from her

so el reveals herself, followed by mike because he wont leave her, followed by will because he wont leave mike

all three get taken away, back to hawkins lab, but now kali is even more motivated to bring down the lab once and for all

so kali and her gang get to hawkins, almost simultaniously with jonathan, who has been looking for his family in a frenzy since the morning he woke up to find eveyone gone, without even a note or a phone call, as well as argyle, who came along for the ride

the video store is being used as home base this season, so thats the first place they go, where they find steve, shortstaffed and not knowing whats going on because the whole team ditched him

they catch him up to speed on how EVERYONES GONE and steve catches them up to speed on how EVERYONE IS GETTING MURDERED

meanwhile, brenner has three predicaments

1) no matter what he does to el, what kind of torture he inflicts, she isnt using her powers because she doesnt have them. she tells him this several times. he refuses to believe it

2) lonnie byers is demanding his payment, which he didnt recieve because the deal was that he bring el to them, and he couldnt even do that

3) he has to find a way to dispose of mike and will, who he had no intention of bringing into the lab but theyre here and they know everything

and this is the moment where mike screws up by letting them know that people know theyre in the lab and people know about all the experiments and any second now, someones gonna come banging that door down to save us. nancy, jonathan, steve, robin max, lucas, dustin, kali-

and the second mike says her name he knows he screwed up

brenner decides in that moment that all he can do is round up everyone involved and get rid of them. conveniently, the string of murders occurring will serve as a good cover for what happened to them

and this is the part where joyce, murray, and hopper get back to hawkins

this is also the part where nancy and robin and the gang get back to hawkins

so nancy and robin immediately go to the video store armed with all the new information they learned from victor creel

..... and are met with jonathan, argyle, kali, and steve in pandemonium

they close the store for the day, and get ready to storm the lab

they realize that they need something from the school, so they head there to pick it up

and soon after arriving, theyre met with the all to familiar hawkins lab vans

they make a hasty escape, taking out some of the goons but they need to find a way to get the rest off their trail

they head for the woods, hoping to hide out in the cabin

meanwhile, the russia crew has taken the mostly demolished cabin as their haven to recover from whatever injuries they sustained

theyre all running through the woods, but they realize the people from the lab are closing in on them

and then nancy and jonathan pass a very familiar tree

they use whatever weapon they have on them to break through the bark, and head into the upside down

the lab people keep going into the woods, eventually finding hopper’s cabin

epic showdown between the russia crew and the lab people, joyce, murray and hopper win, they realize the lab is back, immediately head there realizing theyre gonna have to rescue someone

nancy and robin use the info they learned from victor creel to keep the gang alive in the upside down, max, argyle and eddie are freaking out because omg we’re in another dimention, we get some big reveal about the truth about the upside down and the gang makes their way out and head to the lab

and while this is all happening,we get some super emotional monologue between brenner and el (ala-the last 10 minutes of the truman show) and brenner realizes that el isnt going to be the naieve superweapn she used to be, and decides the best thing he can do with el is give her the standard punishment, time in the closet

and being in the closet triggers all sorts of flashbacks and emotions (mbb’s opportunity to show off her acting chops for an emmy)

joyce and hopper bust into the lab like they did in season 1, but this time they dont get caught

they decide to split up to cover more ground, and hopper finds el in the closet

and around the same time joyce finds mike and will and gets them out of there

here comes the REAL emotional performance

hopper sees her, we get a teary eyed “el!” “dad!”, and then hopper gets pulled away from el by lab workers

exactly the same way terry did

we’re watching this happen from el’s perspective, with a heart-wrenching “noooooooooo” from el, accompanied by cuts to every time el has had to be separated from someone she cares about (terry, the s1 ending, billy dying, her leaving kali in s2, saying goodbye to everyone on moving day, her being separated from mike and will when they got to the lab) accompanied by some terribly sad 80s song, then back to the present moment, she reaches her hand out and boom, the guards go flying. her powers are back

except she doesnt have control of them the way she did before, and now shes bringing the whole building down

her and hopper race to the the first floor, and meet joyce and the boys, they get out of the building at the very last second, and the whole thing collapses.

eventually they find the other group, the whole team is now together, they go and take down the big bad from the upside down, joyce almost KILLS lonnie

nancy and robin drop a huge bombshell that has to do with hawkins/the upside down, specifically pertaining to el, which they pieced together after talking to victor creel

we get a massive cliffhanger, season 5 starts like 10 minutes after the ending of season 4

[mollydollyjournals]

Its Thursday 1st July and I hit post limit so all I can do is update this post

I just want to drink til i pass out

9:46pm - oh when did i post this? Doesnt matter i guess. It really annoys me that the daily post limit applies to all blogs you have. I have 2 and i follow a lot of NSF- stuff so i have so much in my queue for my other blog, and i tend to post more immediately for that so i dont end up with a massive backlog, but thaats when i hit the limit. Whatever it is. I basically just wish i could set the queue to post more often when i have more there. Just post every 15mins or whatever and it'd go through quicker without me having to do it myself

Idk it doesnt matter i guess. Im still just venting all my bullshit here that i cant put anywhere else. But now is when i need it. I want interaction and company but i dont want to bother anyone and I dont know what to do with it. I dont have it in me to try to be a person right now. Tumblr is for messy. At least thats how i do.

But once you hit post limit it apparently doesnt even let you delete stuff to post anything else. I havent been here in years really so i totally forgot. Plus it could have been different anyway. Idk. Guess i will just drink until i disintegrate or something

10:20pm - it just makes me feel worse. I know theres a reason for post limit and its not the end of the world. Just it doesnt reset til 5am and I'll be asleep by then which means for the rest of today i cant actually say anything, and that kinda fucks with my derealisation/depersonalisation/whatever it is. I need acknowledgement to feel real. I need people to remind me that i exist. Even just a little. Its stupid and insecure but i do. Everything is worse since covid and being stuck in a house with someone who barely acknowledges my existence. I feel like a ghost. I feel netter at least a little temporarily if someone just sees and acknowledges me. And currently i can't do anything about that. Nobody is going to go to my page(s) and see whats up, its not that kind of thing. Even if it was they still wouldnt. I put on my other social media fucking ages ago that i was really struggling, then i disappeared, and it took days for it to get noticed at all. Then only 3 people acknowledged it. People have their own lives and there are algorithms etc so i cant be angry at them, but the end result is i still feel really alone.

I often feel like i want to just talk to people. Only a select few. Its not that i necessarily need to talk about "deep" stuff, but i need to know that i could if i needed to. Or if we just both happened to be in that mood at the same time. Like how i dont wanna talk about something totally innocent and generic with someone who turns out to be racist or whatever.

I dont know. Maybe i do need to talk some shit through right now. Doesnt matter either way. Ill most likely just be back to this post later to say more about how i dont really feel like being alive.

10:39pm - I hate that im like this. I dont know if its reasonable or not. I used to be someone who wantes so much space. I still dont feel like i want to always be around people. I must have some individuality somewhere. But i cant find it. Since the pandemic hit especially, it just highlighted everything ive been missing and trying to supplement. I need things to change. But i dont have a hope of doing so while i feel like this. Im so lost. Ive spent my life trying to be confident in myself and ive run my reserves dry. I so rarely get any help topping up. I fucking hate the whole Strong Black Woman trope. Im tired. Ive carried my family since I was 13 and romantic partners have expected me to carry them too. I need to be held and comforted. I need support. If nothing else i need to just be acknowledged. I dont feel like a person. Im invisible and inaudible so much of the time and apparently that only changes when someone wants to see or hear me. When do i get to be a person in my own right? When does someone actually see or hear me for who i am and care about my existence regardless of what it does for them

10:54pm - its the worst of my mental health, tbh, that i dont feel like its worth trying anything if its not going to be acknowledged and welcomed by anyone else. Existing included. I feel my worst and most suicidal when i cant have anyone remember that i exist. Because maybe i dont. Maybe people dont miss me or think of me unless theyre reminded for some specific reason. And i say these things because i want to be proved wrong but why would anyone.

I want to cut. I hate this stupid post limit. I could have at least distracted myself by reblogging stuff for a bit. Im still spiralling. I need a distraction and there isnt one and there wont be one and if i even get through tonight itll just be another reminder that in the end im alone

11:24pm - something feels particularly cruel about not being able to post here, even if i delete stuff. Its just an app sure but its the closest thing i have to therapy. I came back here specifically because i was struggling posting on my regular social media and having people not pay any attention. I thought id make a fresh anonymous account where i could vent and my shitty brain couldnt take it personally if nobody acknowledged it. Now i just have all that shit going round my head and nowhere to put it. Im right back where i started. Nobody will read this. If they do they wont care. If by some chance they did they'll be put off by me being so negative.

"One day someone will hug you so tight all tour broken pieces will fit back together" yeah sure. Whatever.

[citialiin]

FIVE SONGS

list five songs associated with your muse and its meaning to them as a character, or to you as the writer. this can be applied in-character or out-of-character. it can go as deep as looking at the song’s real-world origins or meaning along with the themes it carries to the muses’ story, values, or experiences, or as simple as if your muse would listen to this kind of music, or even if you just listen to these pieces for inspiration.

TAGGED BY: @dansiere​​, who did such a good detailed job they even included an “honorable mentions list” ? i am embarrassed to type mine out now TAGGING: @blossomingbeelzebug​​ @zhrets​​ @dirtyfilthysunshine​​ @prcphesise​​ @hyakiru​ @foxcharmed​

01. kaun komsott - ros sereysothea

this song actually lyrically has absolutely nothing to do with ziggy !!!!  kaun komsott /  កូនកំសត់ actually just means “poor/pitiful child” it’s just a khmer dub of a song from a taiwanese movie lol but i feel like this is the kind of music he would listen to that made him fall in love with, like ... humanity, as dumb as that sounds. it’s time period appropriate (late 60s/early to mid 70s), the song is really good and it’s SO emotional.  i could see him sitting in the apartment of his bandmates after being “found” and they teach him how to use the record player and he sits there going through each and every record they have and listening to this and its like the fucking scene in ratatootie where the goddamn rat can visualize tastes as colors but he would be so enamored with the song he would see it in colors or something i dunno.  something has definitely fucking happened to my brain because ever since nat and alex and i rewatched ratatootie we keep referencing it for our characters. anyways i ended up using an instrumental of kaun komsott in the final film i made as the song that plays during the end.  so this song just also means a lot to me because it’s part of how i made this character and the film/story i animated to go along with him, i am sure you are all absolutely sick of hearing me talk about it <3  

02. who can i be now - daveed booweyywywy now you found me, now can I be real?  can I be real? if it’s all a vast creation / putting on a face that’s new someone has to see / a role for him and me someone might as well be you

one of z’s most obvious character motifs is figuring out self identity through adopting different guises.  he markets himself as being so overly confident and almost arrogantly certain of himself -- rock god space idol whatever -- as his own way of learning who he thinks he might be underneath it all.  i think at first it started off a little innocuous, a ‘ fake it till u make it ’ thing at the least and maybe more obviously a ‘ im not a human so i have to pretend to be someone else ’ deal, but over time it became almost all consuming and just obliterated all his previously held sense of self in favor of some weirdly demented version of who he wanted to be.  683 starts off with the same core personality traits as ziggy: maybe he’s a little vain, a little selfish, but he’s very interested in creativity/self-expression and he wants to be thought of as a unique individual and appreciated for his differences.  but the difference is that 683 isnt an arrogant asshole who has no regard for other people in the slightest.  so yeah ... who can u be now ... is it worth it to adopt a different guise or should he go through the effort of figuring out what parts of his personality were corroded by human influence and what parts are genuinely him?  my big endgame thoughts for his story would be that he eventually just decides to retire from the public eye and fucks off entirely.  this would be over the course of a long long long time -- maybe he has a good 20 yr run in the industry -- but there are some things about him he has to deal with (mental health issues, drug addiction, also the fact that you’re a freaky alien creature who doesnt age like a human so you’re physically like 46 and you still look like you’re 25?) so he inevitably decides he doesnt need the horrible pressure of fame and he ought to just live his life for himself.  i think this would be a nice final song for him to sing/perform -- then he goes into the dressing room and cuts his hair and just vanishes. bye.

03. sunny afternoon - the kinks Help me, help me, help me sail away Well give me two good reasons why I oughta stay 'Cause I love to live so pleasantly Live this life of luxury Lazing on a sunny afternoon

1. i think this would sound A LITTLE like the kind of music he would write/play albeit i feel like his would be more exciting and have more samplings of like laser noises or pewpewpew or weird spaceship sounds BUT.  its also pretty time period appropriate.  even in “modern” verses ziggy is inexplicably obsessed with the 1970s, he likes bell bottoms and thinks groovy patterns are neat and he owns too many lava lamps.  anywayz. 2. just the general idea of feeling unfulfilled with luxury -- even if ziggy enjoys his fame and wealth and the absolutely insane amount of pussy/dick he gets at some level he is still cognizantly aware of how weirdly empty he feels.  he ditched atomina and came here because he felt unfulfilled and bored and unwanted.  now he feels wanted (clearly, everyone loves him) and he feels entertained (earth is So Good at fun distractions) but his fulfillment still isnt quite there.  he’s getting there -- but in exchange of being able to live this life of fame, he’s had to kind of change everything about himself and live this almost caricature version of himself, and he knows he cant keep it up forever.  the luxury will run out one day and he’ll be a washup and no one cares about celebrities once they stop being hip.  it is literally only a matter of time before ziggy has to find out who he is because no one can be a “rockstar” forever.

04. i hate jimmy page - mindless self indulgence SUCKAS CAN REACH OUT TOUCH ME EAT ME BITE DA FUTURE & FUCK DA PAST  I'm lower than most animals and fear what might be weird and all those voices in my head have every right to be there i ain't a girl just cause i rock the boat i ain't a boy just cause i rock your world

i mean he does hate jimmy page but that’s beside the point. its just a good song about being a crazy rockstar and has the same Craziness that i feel like accompanies his character ... just go listen to it you will understand. there is nothing to explain here.  even the lyric “ill show u how official midgets jack me off” like just accept it. it’s whatever  but yeah i aint a girl i aint a boy ... i guess his gender (or lack thereof) never really comes up in rp but its still an important part of his character.  if any of u guys ever call him a man in prose again ill kick ur ass.  gender is like an accessory to him and he just takes whatever aspects of masculinity/femininity he prefers and discards everything else.  to him he’s just as much a “man” or a “woman” as he is a “human” which is to say he isnt, at all, and he just pretends to be because he feels obligated to.  also ziggy’s brain kind of sounds like this...just Noises.  his brain sounds like a microwave that’s been going off for 26 years.  i think his brain is a single uncooked pinto bean rolled in glitter that’s been left in a box with a cobweb

05. ghostride - crumb daydreaming I stay in the backseat / the slow beat rocks me back to sleep keeps me on automatic  press my face up close against the glass i see the people when they pass they move so automatic you wake up when I go down / the radio reminds me I'm alive we've been hearing it all night

i care more about 683 on atomina than i do about ziggy on earth sometimes (BUT I CARE THEM BOTH. DO U?) so ... 683 feeling aimless and drifting but trying to find purpose through passion, a person, some sort of concrete meaning -- going through the motions of life makes him feel empty he spends almost every day going through the same toil while feeling guilty or like a burden and also feeling like he’s ultimately nothing more than a replaceable cog in a machine. his species had a near extinction = bottleneck which made them so genetically similar they’re almost clones of each other.  no one ever seems to do anything wrong except him, he finds no joy or fulfillment in anything at all.  all he ever wanted (which isnt a selfish desire at all) was to feel purpose, or feel wanted, or appreciated. inevitably he leaves because of his own imagination -- he yearns for something More, and he doesn’t know What, so he figured he ought to at least Try instead of waste his life away. also atomina is supposed to sound like “automatic.”  do NOT make fun of my bad scifi.  i am trying to mimic the way 1970s scifi is endearingly cheesy.  come here.  i just want to touch you with this knife.  gently tho it wont go inside of you. bro you are bleeding. bro we are bleeding and i keep putting the knife in your soft parts.

[pbandjesse]

Jess is texting me and shes super upset because she had now tried to order food 3 times but each time the place calls and there is a reason they cant give her her order. And apparently her landlord caught her oven on fire today so she cant cook at home. I am trying to talk her down but shes really upset. We are so simpler in our meltdowns sometimes. But it is so hard to try to talk her down through text and I hate that she doesnt have someone like James there to ground her. Ugh. I just want my friend to be happy. 

It makes me want to be better so I can be there for her though. Like I am very tired and in pain but I am trying to hold off any sad feelings I might have because I need to be there for her. 

And today was a good day. I am just tired. 

I slept well but I didnt want to get up. Once I did I felt okay. I was annoyed because my stupid toothbrush isnt working right. Which made me leave a couple minutes later then I wanted. Not that it actually matters because no one notices if youre a few minutes late at camp. But still. 

I really liked my outfit today. And I used spin pins to put my hair back and that made me feel real cue. I said goodbye to James and headed out. And like I thought no one noticed when I was there a little later. Other people came after me. I felt very. Isolated today. Not for the whole day, but I mostly just wanted to be alone. People seem concerned about it but I just want to spend time with me. 

And my chest still hurt. So I talked to the nurse and she said to come by later. But first was check in. Except they didnt need me to walk anyone over to their cabins. Again. Like always. Just let me stay in the arts building you dont even need me!! But I did get a couple kids and walked them up as I was going to the arts shed but they only came with me because I stopped Ellen from walking them up since I was going over there anyway. 

After I dropped them off I went to get the art from yesterday. Took that all over to the cabins. I brought the doll eyes for one of the little girls that's stuffie lost an eye yesterday. And then I went to get set up. 

I didnt have the YPL student today, she'll be back friday apparently. But thats okay, Like I said I enjoyed my own company today. I had some podcasts to listen to. I set up my projects and chilled for a while. 

I did some cleaning. And I waited for my groups. I had 2 groups today, but they were big groups! 13 kids each. Which yes isnt actually big. But its big for camp. 

But honestly both groups were great. The first group I did have some behavioral issues with one boy who screamed at me. But they are littles and I just looked and him and I was like "Youre not going to hurt my feelings?" Like he was screaming because he had to wait to use to the bathroom? I cant let you wander away calm down. 

But they were still a good group and they did a good job making their stencil arts. 

I had a big break in the middle. I went to the nurse and got some ibuprofen. Which I then dropped in the field, didnt notice until I got back to the shed,  and had to search for it. But I found it. And it helped a lot.

In my time before lunch I collected materials and made sure I had enough for the thursday groups. I had to go and get a student list which was a whole thing. 

And while I waited for that I played Bop It! I hadnt played that in a long long time but I got the high score. It was beat a few times after that today but it was fun in that moment to get the highscore on my first time playing in over a decade. 

I had lunch on the porch. Enjoyed talking to other counselors. But soon after that I took a long walk around camp. Went and pet the ponies. Checked on Lani the rat. Still alive. And then back to arts and crafts to wait for my group.

The second group had more issue with the project but they were still great. And their counselor Matt is super helpful. Like he kept asking and I was like Im good! But I appreciate the offers regardless. 

I finished up cleaning after the kids headed out. I had like an hour before pick up so I tried to get some of the reclaimed clay I had in the water bucket dried and read to use. But omg. It smells like death. I dont know why but it smells so horrible. I put it between some large pieces of paper and left it out and well see if it improves but this might be a loss. I have plenty of clay for next week so Im not worried but I am frustrated. I washed my hands like 6 times and still struggled to get the terrible smell off. 

 After I did though I went to offer help with pick up but again they do not need me. So when there was a need to walk a child to the other side of camp I offered my services and then took the bus kids down from there to the office on my way back. I just want to be helpful. It was funny though one of my jobs in walking the kids was to stop them from eating the wineberries on the paths. Like they are basically ripe but they eat them all and then we dont have them for jam making and dying fabrics. I want to try these berries though. Maybe that will be an experiment tomorrow. 

I headed home after that. Was really glad to be back here. It felt like a longer drive than normal. And more and more cars are on the road and I hate that. But I got back in one piece. And Mr Will was painting in the foyer. It was nice to see him. He fixed the broken part of the roof which was nice. I joked with him for a minute. Then I saw I had some packages and was excited about that. 

I went upstairs. Had a snack. Opened my packages. One was my causebox and I know they had some issues because of the pandemic so while it wasnt the best box, it is still a good one. I got a fancy facial brush thing. And honestly it made my skin feel so soft when I used it to wash my face. Awesome. 

I played animal crossing for a little. I painted my nails. And now I am just laying here hoping Jess is okay and wishing James was home. 

Tomorrow is my day without classes. I have some stuff to do for this week and next. And then I might do some planning for future weeks. Because projects are supposed to start repeating but I am not 100% sure how Im doing that. So I will try to work through that and get supplies. Well see. 

I hope you all have a nice night tonight. Sleep good. 

[samwinchesterisourhero]

Sam WInchester: The Reluctant Hero

When we wonder in frustration, as to why Sam seems to suffer more than Dean does, instead of being angry at a narative bias, or assuming the show runners hate Sam, take into consideration that Sam and Dean, though equally heroic, are different types of heros  Dean is a willing hero. He has been proud of his job as a hunter since he was young, even if sometimes he was bored with it, or would have liked to persue a career as a machanic. From what we see in flash backs, Dean was boasting “Im a hero!” since high school, where Sam just wanted to be like every other kid.  Sam’s first choice in life is not to be a hero. Not directly anyway. He was studying to become a lawyer.  Azazel said he was becoming a Tax Attorney, but Dean saw him as a Criminal Justice Attorney in What is and What Should Never Be, which I think is more fitting for Sam. The indirect hero that would get justice for the victims. He would make a wonderful psycholigist also. Dean would be a very good cop, or soldier, or first responder.  This is not to say Sam wouldnt run into a burning building to save a family, he most certainly would, but his interests seem to lie mostly in long term after care. So for Sam to be in the front line with Dean, is something he does because its the right thing, not because it’s his chosen life path (early life anyway. he has stated in his later life that he did chose this life for himself) and this makes him a reluctant hero. The problem with that though, is that in literature, the reluctant hero always suffers the most. 

Its no argument that Dean suffers too. Both brothers have broken my heart on many occasions, but Sam’s suffering over any event, stretches far past the season he suffers it in. This is so we, the viewers, have an idea as to how much of a hardship Sam is willing to endure to save Dean and to save the world.  Sam and Dean both willingly went to Hell, but their experiences were greatly different, and unfolded on the show wildly unbalanced. Dean sold his soul for Sam, so Sam would live. He didnt want to go to Hell, but he did it willingly. in Dream a Little Dream, Dean said to his dream self, that he didnt deserve to go to Hell, and even though he made the choice on his own, I think we all feel like it’s a horrible punishment for a guy who just wanted his little brother to live. I know I hoped they could find a way to get him out of the deal, but unfortunately, he didnt. He stayed in Hell for 4 months, or 40 hell years. He was tortured by Alistair for 30 years until he became a torturer himself. Cas raised him out of Hell, completely whole, even old scars were gone, but we didnt know for a while that the memories were haunting him. How did we find out? Because he told Sam. He tearfully confessed to Sam on more than one occasion, what happened, what he did, what it felt like at the time and how it was hurting him then. What came of it is that he got to confront his torturer, and even though he couldnt kill him himelf, Sam killed him for him. Dean got justice.  Sam on the other hand, also willingly went to Hell to save the world, but he felt like he was mainly at fault for breaking the world in the first place, when it was expressed that it wasn’t only him, and he was completely unknowingly breaking it when he did. He obviously didnt want to go to Hell, but he felt it was the right thing to do. What he got for that though, was his soul in Hell, canonically, for 1.5 years, 180 Hell years. He was torured by Lucifer himself in the most brutal ways imaginable. Cas raised his body, soon after he went to the pit, but we arent given an exact amount of time, whether it be an hour or so, or a few weeks, we just know he was physically out for the majority of the year, but I can’t imagine 10 minutes in the cage with Lucifer is a picnic. However, he came back incomplete, without his soul, which endured unimaginable torture. If that’s not enough, while soulless, Sam did things he wasn’t proud of when he got his soul back, and suffered with this, Once he got his memories of Hell back, a whole new level of suffering began.  How was this handled? To our knowledge, he never told anyone the details of his Hell tour. All we know about it, was shown in flash backs and hallucinations, that ended up driving Sam insane. Sam was “fixed” by Cas, by simply shifting the pain to himself, not by Sam talking about it, or confronting his torturer, or anyone killing Lucifer.  Sam didnt get justice in any sense, and he still carries all of this with him. He has even had to work along side Lucifer to try to stop Amara. No one even brought this up, even though Sam had very recently been back to the cage and had to face Lucifer and the trauma all over again.  Season 13 and still Sam hasn’t been given justice or seen closure when Dean’s was answered in only a few episodes. How can we not see the imballance? Well, when we look at it as Sam is the long suffering Reluctant Hero, suck as it may, it makes more sense. It plays into the narrative that the pain piles on Sam, and Sam stuffs it down. We ourselves may forget this happens, if the show itself didn’t bring it up.  The case of Tracy Bell for example. A girl that pops up out of nowhere in 9x2 for no reason than to remind Sam that he let Lucifer out and people got killed. I know a bunch of you blame the writers of the episode for that, as though they hate Sam or Jared, but that was part of the Gardreel story. Something that the producers must have told the writers they wanted. “Bring something painful up from Sam’s past, so that when he feels good at the end of the episode, we can be reminded that theres an Angel healing him from the inside” is probably close to what was said in the meeting. We the viewers need to be reminded that Sam never lets things go, at the same time as he never really speaks of them either.  It took 13 seasons, but Dean confirms for us in 13x4 that Sam doesnt admit things or it makes them real, and then he has to deal with it. Sam even confirms it himself in 12X3 when he says he knows Mom is burying herself in hunting instead of dealing, through years of personal experience. Now that we understand this is part of Sam’s character, we can better understand why we dont get to see his emotional POV very often, and his traumas rarely get worked out.  The differences between Sam being the reluctant hero, and Dean being the willing hero, manifest in many ways.  Dean gets very antsy if its been a few days that they havent had a hunt to go on. Sam however, is content to stay home researching. Their short time of trying to live a domestic life with their girlfriends shows reluctant vs willing also. While Sam was with Amelia, he had nothing to do with hunting except reading the news paper and believing other hunters were taking care of things. He refused to tell Amelia about that part of his life. Dean didnt hunt, but he kept it at arms reach. He kept devils traps in the door ways, a rosary in water under the bed and a gun nearby, and he let Lisa know all about that part of his life, and even tried to live it and maintain a life with her.  Dean is the kind of guy who will show you every scar and tell you the details of how he got it, while Sam will hide his scars. Dean suffers when innocent life is lost, but he holds on to the fact that he’s saved more people than he’s hurt and it can help him make it day to day. Sam feels like he failed if he didnt save someone. This is precicely why Sam suffers the burdens of his wrongs for years,  and Dean doesnt. Dean did a lot of crap while he had the MoC but he hasnt had to visibly suffer from it after the fact. Sam however, is reminded of his poor choices for seasons after the fact. Now since its not a matter of Sam goes to jail for things and Dean doesn’t, we only need to realize its part of maintaining a character trait for us, so we dont forget that Sam never forgives himself and suffers for years over what he considers failures.  Now, this willingness vs reluctance shows in their relationship also. Im not going to try to prove one loves the other more, because I am convinced that Dean is #1 in Sam’s world and Sam is #1 in Dean’s world and they love each other as much as any two people can love each other (to steal from the mouth of JP) they both take care of each other, and neither had to be told to do so. Even when Sam was too little to actually take care of Dean, he still did the best he could by wanting to be with him, and giving him gifts. Dean didnt have to learn 100 ways to make mac and cheese, he did it because he wanted to make Sam happy. That being said, lets move on… Sam’s reluctance in their relationship, isnt that he loves Dean less, or doesn’t want to protect him, but his biggest fear is letting Dean down. He can save Dean’s life a million times but considers himself a failure if he let Dean down. Dean’s biggest fear however is Sam dying. He can let Sam down, he can piss him off, but if Sam isnt alive and well, Dean considers himself a failure. When Sam assumed Dean was dead in S8 and didnt look for him, he was going on a promise that he wouldnt look for him. Since we didnt get enough insight to Sam’s state of mind at the time, Im going to assume that Sam was crushed that Dean was dead, but for himself, it was more important, that he didnt let him down by breaking that promise. He saw how angry Dean was when Dean thought he made a deal that raised him from Hell, so he “knew” Dean would be disappointed if Sam looked for him now. Dean however, needs Sam to be alive, so he will risk Sam being disappointed and possibly hating him, as long as he’s alive.  So now in S11 its brought up again, that Sam didnt look for Dean in Purgatory, and Sam hadnt forgiven himself for it, its not the writers hating Sam/Jared, its showing us that Sam still hasnt gotten over letting Dean down. He’s a long suffering character, and doesnt see that he was justified in his actions, but instead blames himself for inaction. This fits right into Sam not finding a Win in a case where he couldnt save everyone. He knows he helps more people than he hurts, but the fact that he hurts people at all outweighs the good in his eyes.  There will be a time Im sure, and hopefully soon, given the events of the last 2 seasons, that Sam may collapse under all this weight. Maybe he will have some time to voice how badly things hurt him. But if he doesnt. try not to write it off as no one caring about his character, but understand his character feels like a burden if he unloads to people, even, and especially to Dean, who Im sure he believes has enough burden on his shoulders, without Sam sharing his. So try to be patient my friends. This would come out differently if it was a written story. The writer would be able to show us inside Sam’s head easier than they can this way. The only way into Sam’s head is through someone vocalizing it. If Sam does, then we dont see him burying things, if someone else does, it sometimes looks like hes being picked on for no reason…. but there is a good reason. It’s to keep his character consistant as the longsuffering reluctant hero. By @missjackil

[jasonvtodd]

11 QUESTION GAME

i was tagged by @kazsbrekkfast ✨❤ Rules: Answer the 11 questions you’ve been asked, nominate 11 other bloggers, ask your nominees 11 questions, let them know you’ve nominated them!

If you could be any character’s best friend, who would it be and why? default was: jason todd!! but then i thought about it and i mean yes obv him too buut... i genuinely believe that nothing would make any person feel more complete and happy and safe then if you were the wally west to dick graysons dick grayson. so... yeah dick grayson aoisuhd like boys a mess but damn if he doesnt do everything he can to let his friends and family know how much he loves them!!! 

What book is the most well-loved and well-read on your shelf? (stealing kat’s question lolol) i think the raven cycle?? i carried them all around a lot when i was doing classes in 2016 in my backpack when i was rereading them and my copy of gatsby was very worn and torn but :(( lent it to someone and have yet to have it back </3 also the things they carried by tim o’brien is also a Mess tm the spine is a wreck.

What book or book series got you into reading/creating your blog? the raven cycle got me back into reading and remembering i love books in 2015. buut then the foxhole court got me to change my url in 2016 for the first time since 2012 and go into a full lit blog for a while so aoishd i guess foxhole but wouldnt have gotten there without raven cycle?? the Best two tm

Quote one of your favourite books of all time. “I suppose it’s a cliché to say you’re glad to be alive, that life is short, but to say you’re glad to be not dead requires a specific intimacy with loss that comes only with age or deep experience. One has to know not simply what dying is like, but to know death itself, in all its absoluteness. After all, there are many ways to die—peacefully, violently, suddenly, slowly, happily, unhappily, too soon. But to be dead—one either is or isn’t. The same cannot be said of aliveness, of which there are countless degrees. One can be alive but half-asleep or half-noticing as the years fly, no matter how fully oxygenated the blood and brain or how steadily the heart beats. Fortunately, this is a reversible condition. One can learn to be alert to the extraordinary and press pause—to memorize moments of the everyday.” ― Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me (its long but i dont talk about this book a lot and i really adore every aspect of it)

Would you ever consider writing poetry if you’ve never done so before? its... possible i have done so before... and no, before you ask, i do not still have it... (even if i did i wouldnt tell you kiddo)

Do you have any of your own characters/original writings? youve... seen... my Past tm.... 

Opinion on fanfiction? love it but havent read much of it for a while tbh

Most meaningful book/book series you’ve ever read? oh fuck... no no... this is... no. i cant do this no you know i cant do this aisjdh cause how ‘meaningful’ the books are... is subjective to every person you know?? plus it also changes sometimes depending on my mood/mindset... standalones that really fucked me up that i read one after another is: they both die at the end, when breath becomes air, tin man, insomniac city. series is.. a whole other thing asodiuhf but you know them all anyway so eh

A book that made you cry? lmao again. this is too hard to answer and im gonna keep saying the same answers but tin man really fucked me up ok. and insomniac city had me crying a lot too and.. again.. theres a Lot tm

Do you like short stories or long novels? mhmm i dont mind novellas if they have characters i like from a anotherseries but generally speaking id prefer longer... in saying that though... tin man (yes, gone there again) was only 200 pages and managed too... HA.. so.. i guess if youre a good enough writer you dont need a long amount of pages sometimes

Who is the most interesting female character you’ve ever encountered? lila bard but she identifies as genderfluid anyways but still amazing and schwab!! gave us!! that beautiful pirate icon!! also obvious shoutout to nina zenik as well!!! and i just realized this isnt just book related so aisudh i could go on with comic characters too but then we’d be here for another few paragraphs SO!! we’ll just!! stick to books!! 

‘nominating’: @amritasher @dqstoevsky @kingormmarius @wickerjulias @thedreamertrilogies​ @brucewaynse @hawkgirls @bluejeanbarold @brvkker @wallewest @gracelessnites

MY QUESTIONS

24hrs till the end of the world... you can get to any place, to any person in an instant though.. where do you go, who do you see.. and why?

zombie apocalypse, who do you have on your team (rl buddies or fictional, your choice mates) 

five must read before you die books (or comics if you want)

if you had the power to time travel to any point in history, where would you go and why? 

one thing you’ve done this year that you’re proud of?

what’s something everyone loves, but you think is very overrated?

going to get real controversial here (how you answer this, will possibly end our mutual engagement...) ... pineapple on pizza... should it be on there?

whats an album that is your ride or die? (or artist/band)

apple or android? why.

advice you’d give to your past self at a time when you were struggling?

something you’re looking forward to?

[unproduciblesmackdown]

here’s me talking about the month since i was last online

firstly it was/is depressing not to be able to talk with ppl or hear from them. or just to be able to talk somewhere i know people CAN hear. i also mentioned being completely detached from the news. i like to be current about the news. anyways i was like “well not like this is anything new” as its technically unusual for me to NOT be cut off both irl and from the internet. but, shockingly, that doesnt make it not depressing. and having something for even a bit makes it more frustrating to lose it even if its “normal” for you not to have it. also by depressing i mean i was going like hmm i sure am even more tired than usual and i am less interested in my few lingering faint interests. whats up with that! and then i was like oh yeah thats called Even More Depression

it is funny because im someone who has never really had that many friends and when i do we often end up separated one way or another. Very Close friends &/or Very Longtime friends are a foreign concept. basically the heights of my “what i wish it was like” for life involve having a group of friends with whom you can have fun in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night just talking and hanging out and messing around. friends that you feel comfortable being yourself around and like they appreciate you as much as you do them. i do not think this is ever going to happen, but oh well because in reality i can be very picky about people because i am weird, to put it that way for now. my social landscape and language is not always considered normal or even tolerable. and i have a lot of standards for who i want to have around me in terms of traits and personality. theres a lot of things im not interested in. anyways. i also just, in the way things actually are, often prefer to be alone, so that i can be myself and do things i feel like. i dont have to worry about being strange or feeling like i need to please people. anyways. unfortunately i dont ONLY like being alone. i actually really like to be with people and talk with them but i rarely can, and i figure this is bad for me. isolation isnt good for anyone obviously. not being able to be around friends in person depresses me. not being able to talk online either depresses me further.

i think sometimes about how much i dont say. its a funny place to say it, in an overly long text post. but one of the reasons they can be so long is because irl i dont really talk much to people. so it builds up and can come out through writing. sometimes it comes out in talking. i think that in conversations, when i do talk, i talk too much because of this. so one of the reasons i dont talk much is to prevent this, which obviously is like “well that would just cancel out” but there are other reasons i dont talk. but i have loads of thoughts and things to say. i end up keeping so much of it to myself and wonder sometimes if i’ll ever get to say some of it. sometimes i’ll have something to say and bite it back. i’ve been “quiet” all these past twenty some years of talking and i know the reasons i dont talk. i was thinking about the feeling of biting something back in an individual occasion feeling like the cumulation of all the years worth of keeping my own voice running in my head alone. it kind of feels like what you want to say is in your chest and throat and the roof of your mouth.

speaking of the roof of your mouth, theres a weird sensation i can feel sometimes, seemingly at random but mostly in strange times like trying to fall asleep. it is so transient and unlike any actual externally caused sensations that its been difficult to try to get a grasp of how to describe it, but i think i have it thanks to ongoing effort and an unusually long period of it a few days ago during which i was especially alert about it. it’s like having a pressure radiating out from inside your mouth. like an orb pushing outwards against the teeth and roof of the mouth. which i’m fairly sure isn’t anything that would ever happen, so i am assuming its some little neurological hiccup that happens to align every now and then, but maybe a previous life cycle has put something weird in their mouth. or shot into it, because i would be like, well not much has changed.

anyways. words sitting like a pressure in your mouth. i was seeing a thread about how grief is ongoing and reoccurring which also mentioned that people who specialize in knowing how grieving and living with it works often consider it to be a form of grief when someone’s life is affected by something like trauma. they have to grieve themselves because of the possibilities taken away from them. i feel that, sometimes. thinking about how i wish i had a life where i felt free to speak and where my identity mattered and i got to feel like i could be myself and it was important and it was important what i thought and wanted and who i really was. and where i got to have friends and do things and realize what it was to actually feel happy, not try to understand an unhappy existence as what must be okay. its not just what couldve been in the past, but also how that couldve affected the present and future. im not sure who i’d be if my life didnt have to be about survival and escape. i say i never had dreams, which is true, but in retrospect i DO think that when i was fifteen and really bearing down in trying to figure out what i wanted to do, i was already seeing activism as the answer, which made sense why it wouldnt register as a dream or ambition and why it was also impossible to pursue. i still dont think of anything like personal fulfillment through a career/job or anything. but i also dont think of what i want to do as very relevant to anything at all anymore.

anyways. i’m “used” to things, but they still depress and hurt me. i actually have a lot of sadness and anger about some of these things, like never getting to have the friends i wanted or never being able to speak and it not mattering who i really was, and how long it took me to realize this really wasn’t okay and it wasn’t because of some personal deficiency which made me deserve it somehow. also the abuse. i remember i had this how-to book about weaving friendship bracelets which i got sometime in elementary school, and it even supplied some twine and stuff. i had always wanted to have occasion to use it, and i never did, which is just symbolic. the twine/potential friendship bracelets can also be things like positive social connections that feel real and open, or my ability to feel secure in expressing affection because it seems mutual. but anyways. i also just go along.

i was thinking about the Being Gone For A Month thing and the not-talking and holding all my words back even though i think so much about all sorts of junk and thus have too much to say, and about a week ago i just spent like six hours writing about myself. i was debating doing so in the first place because i figured i wouldnt post it. i did write it, but i won’t post it. its just good to talk to myself in the form of writing. getting thoughts into that form requires an extra level of analysis and coherent flow that can help put even things you already knew more in order. so here’s this stuff instead.

there’s not much to say about this past month. the worst of it was that discovering my weird tooth is all janky and broken has made me on edge about teeth. i mean, i’ve already all but stopped worrying about the broke tooth, because i kind of do that sometimes when i can. just worry hard and then stop, because what can you do? might as well try to avoid stressing even worse. and in this case i dont have money and doubt i will ever have a job w dental coverage, so i cant do anything about it. but im always worried about my teeth because, fittingly, my parents dental genes seem to combine into that of a tasmanian devil. i think im in some Dental Report b/c i had this weird situation that needed basically a root canal but it wasnt the normal kind of root canal situation and the dentist said he hadn’t seen it or heard of it even. special. i was horrified about needing the root canal, because of the clichés. but it ended up being fine and i really just sat there for an hour thinking about whatever. dental procedures are truly not what theyre hyped up to be. on account of local anesthetics. anyways. when i left my parents house i was specifically worried about leaving my access to a dentist, but obviously it wouldve been far from worth it. but that doesn’t mean i dont worry about my teeth. so i had these few days where i just had a spontaneously sensitive gum spot and another one which im guessing i caused by jamming corn shards down in there by eating corn on the cob. that happened sort of last year, i got really worried about an angry-looking spot on my gums and finally realized something was just up in there that needed to be flossed out. anyhow. the point is i got overly worried about everything that always worries me even though it used to worry me even before going to the dentist and they’d say the stuff was fine actually. but still. i got

very worried for a minute there and i realized very easily that if i start getting any really serious tooth problems i am out of here. i have no motivation at all to live through it. i don’t want to have to deal with that. it’s way too much. i dont even have motivation to be alive now. but when i was worrying i was thinking about not using my handful of cash to change locations, but instead to get some fancy Dying Equipment. there are still some methods by which im not sure i could try offing myself. but if things got a lot worse, like teeth problems, i could probably lower those standards. i COULD obtain some items for one method, or by necessity do it for free. im less worried about the tooth stuff now. it was just an unfortunate convergence of a couple tiny things. but ive still got a sensitive spot or two, and im always a bit worried. if something bad happens i cant do anything about it except get tf out of this life cycle, right.

there was something else unfortunate i was going to talk about. maybe just the depression.

there were nice, small things. i always knew how to enjoy those kinds of stuff. i like the sky, and i appreciate that its summer. theres a lot of fireflies sometimes and i saw kittens chasing them one day. one of those kittens mightve gotten killed by something since. i got to hear rain on the roof a few times. i like corn on the cob even if it betrayed me. i was wanting some last summer. i also got to make sweet tea and lemonade for the first time in forever. i’d been wanting that for a long time too.

the nicest surprise was that i had been writing extra hard since the start of june. i sort of really pushed at it and got to the dividing point between the section and the next, and i was sure it was shorter than previous sections. but actually it was just over 1000 words short of being 140k, and i’d written it all in about five weeks, and it was abt 22.5% longer than the next longest section i’d written. i’ve since gotten to a point i’ve been writing towards since this whole time, and im right on the verge of another long awaited one right now. it’s nice, but writing has been fun, and i hope i dont get depressed if i hopefully do finish it. i can just write some more, but doing so on my phone isnt the most efficient. it doesnt seem sustainable.

anyways thats it for now before i can think of anything else to say am i right

[baconpal]

so heres the long super paper mario post

strap in for why super paper mario is fucking bizarre and why that’s pretty much awesome

gonna be a good amounts of spoilers, so if you’re on desktop then hit that read more, and if your on mobile, then here’s your punishment for using this god awful app

super paper mario is a game that is incredibly difficult to put into words, but it leaves such a powerful, lasting impression on me and i can’t come to say anything first other than I love it so much, and if you havent played the game, please just go do it now, even if you have to pirate or emulate or something, just let yourself play this game. It’s one of those games that I really feel I can just recommend to anybody

it’s difficult to think of where to start with dissecting this thing so i’ll just start with the art since lookin at things is pretty easy

ART/WORLD DESIGN

every world in SPM is completely unique, not just in what type of environment, but it’s art style, and this is premised with the fact that none of these worlds are capable of existing together and are completely separate, and NOT part of a cohesive universe (LOOKIN AT YOU ODYSSEY I STILL THINK YOU LOOK STUPID)

The hub and the first 2 worlds are mostly just slight variants on the same general style of simplistic shapes and colors, with world 1 delving into more linework type aesthetics, and 2 focusing more on impressions and silhouettes, 

world 3 changes this completely with what is obviously an 8 bit kind of style, but instead of jarring over sized pixels, the world is composed of detailed tiles arranged to look like pixel art that imply a more real world, and not a gamey one, 

world 4 focuses on patterns and big patches of color to give the impression of the vast emptiness of both space and the surface of a barren planet, before giving you the “Whoa Zone”, with a striking mix of wire frame and futuristic UI style to it

world 5 takes the idea of nature being crude and simplistic and humanity being sharp, angular, and extreme and flips that on its head, with humanity and the space they occupy being these absolute memes with no sense of depth, and the plant life existing in a system of clean cut caves with futuristic technology and elegant historic values

world 6 simplifies a kind of colored Japanese painting aesthetic, down to the funny cylindrical cloud clusters and brushstroke trees

world 7 depicts what is essentially hell (yes there’s hell in this game keep your pants on) as a squarish blur of bright greens and warm reds and purples, and depicts heaven as fluffy land of clouds and Greek temples

and lastly, world 8 is inverted greyscale, where light is black and darkness is white, its simplistic and striking and i couldn’t think of a better style for the final area of a game so focused on the concept of light and dark

MUSIC

I’ll just try and keep it simple, the musics fucking cash money

The game makes great use of motifs when it needs to, where specific themes and instruments are used in other songs to suggest relationships and put battles and travels into perspective

And when it ISNT doing that, it’s just fucking funky stuff, with a weird trend of BOING and PLOP and SPLISH noises in the percussion because fuck you i guess

There’s a lot of good songs that do lots of interesting things, any of the like 5 final battle songs are great things to point to, but i’ll just go ahead and say the main theme of world 8 “Castle Bleck” is one of my favorites that isn’t super highly rated. It brings in the types of instruments that have been associated with the villain the entire game, but also throws in 2 very important things; a sudden triumphant burst of almost JRPG styled chiptune that pushes away the constantly building tension, which is then followed by the sound of a clock ticking, which is a musical motif only present in the songs “Memory” and “Promise” which is played whenever the memories of the player’s little guide thing and the main villain’s past lives together are alluded to. This one song holds a lot of weight, as well as simply being a fucking cool song.

GAMEPLAY

This is, sadly, the one place I’ll not mince any words and say the gameplay is not amazing by any standard, it’s pretty much a classic mario game if it had RPG stats, items, and random abilities granted through the character and partner systems. The 3D flipping mechanic is nothing astounding, though it is very interesting to see how worlds are constructed

One of the biggest flaws people will mark the game for in its gameplay is that it’s tedious, and while I have to agree, that’s because I’ve already played the game before, and the tedium only comes from not being completely invested in the experience anymore. I’ll get some specific examples in a bit, but there’s a few cases of “tedium” that i believe are 100% intentional and drive the story in an interesting way

STORY/WRITING/GAME DESIGN

Thats a fuckin broad section, but its pretty much everything else i have to say on the game, and where the most spoilers and random praise is gonna be

I’m not actually gonna talk about the whole story, more just the strong parts of it, under the assumption you’ve already played it or understand a story as simple as “villain wants to destroy world, hero wants that to not happen”

The writing and characters are just flawless, everyone is fun to be around, especially the bad guys, who you see more antics of than your own party. There’s goofy running plotlines about O’chunks and mimi essentially getting grounded and being forced to write essays about why they fucked up at beating mario, and big stinky brother dimentio teasting and bullying them and sneaking them out to do his bidding when The big Count Bleck is away

The game is full of referential humor to not just mario itself but all kinds of games, there’s skeletons in hell who are clearly just Marios from the mainline games who died in stupid ways, there’s an actual dragon quest turn based boss battle in hell too, and chapter 3 has an otaku villain who tried to get with peach in a simulated visual novel

but the humor exists not just in references, but in simple good scenarios, with things like “Having a game show in a bathroom when everyone's life is at stake” and “locating an ancient manuscript to use as toilet paper” or “flying through black holes to find a convenience store” and things of that nature

It also interacts with the players emotions in many interesting ways, one of the more lauded being chapter 2-3, where mario is forced into working off a massive debt of fictional money, and is required to do hard, boring labor. There isn’t anyway to avoid doing both the hitting a block 100 times and the running on a treadmill for a few minutes thing, but the constant feeling of “there has to be a faster way to do this” drives the player to prod around, find the secrets, and slowly discover how to break the system wide open and get to the end, and i love it for that

This entire game is some sort of bait and switch, to put it simply, while it’s already a bit of a departure from both mario itself and the paper series, the first 5 worlds are pretty fucking tame stuff, other than the void, which is a giant black and purple spot that sits in the sky, always, every single world has the void growing in its sky, and it does grow, every chapter it gets bigger and bigger and takes up the sky, but where this truly culminates into the “switch” part is chapter 6, which starts itself by presenting you with the most TEDIUS sounding chapter possible, fight 100 enemies in a row, and nothing else, and for 25 straight fights, that is all it is, so you’ve locked yourself into it at this point, you know whats up, but the void in the background begins to grow to the point of being the entire fucking background, and every enemy you face speaks as if they know they’re all going to die, and by the 30th fight, one of the villains comes to stall for time as the void completely swallows the world, and the party is sent back to the hub. When they decide to go back in to world 6, its empty, the entire world is a white void with a single black line making up the ground, and colorless destroyed structures occasionally peaking out of the ground.

and you walk on this white void for so long and you just feel nothing but regret and fear and no matter how fast you make yourself go you feel like you’ll never find anything, but you do eventually get your plot item and escape

then, Dimentio, one of the villains you’ve seen the least of, appears in the hub world, the safest place in the universe, and kills mario

he just fucking kills him

he puts mario in a box and fills the box with explosions and mario fucking dies and goes to hell because fuck you mario

then you go through all of chapter 7 just to escape hell (called the Underwhere cus how could we possibly be allowed to take hell seriously) and join up with your full party before confronting the final world, which i’ve already stated i just love the design off

the game just takes the comfortable ride you’re on and throws it into the fucking sun and burns you alive and i love it so much, even the very end of the game doesnt let up, where the main villain is overtaken by that absolute madman Dimentio (Whose name is a play on both Dimension and dementia), who clearly was powerful enough to have done the whole “ending of the world” himself, but did it this way for the theatrics of it

there’s a lot i could still say about the game, but this post is absolute rambling and its 2 in the morning but as usual, i just wanted to shit my thoughts onto the internet to people could maybe learn somethin about either the game or me and how i think and look at and respond to stuff, and as always, anybody who read this whole thing is cool and i love you a whole heck of a lot

[missjackil]

Sam Winchester: The Reluctant Hero

When we wonder in frustration, as to why Sam seems to suffer more than Dean does, instead of being angry at a narative bias, or assuming the show runners hate Sam, take into consideration that Sam and Dean, though equally heroic, are different types of heros  Dean is a willing hero. He has been proud of his job as a hunter since he was young, even if sometimes he was bored with it, or would have liked to persue a career as a machanic. From what we see in flash backs, Dean was boasting “Im a hero!” since high school, where Sam just wanted to be like every other kid.  Sam’s first choice in life is not to be a hero. Not directly anyway. He was studying to become a lawyer.  Azazel said he was becoming a Tax Attorney, but Dean saw him as a Criminal Justice Attorney in What is and What Should Never Be, which I think is more fitting for Sam. The indirect hero that would get justice for the victims. He would make a wonderful psycholigist also. Dean would be a very good cop, or soldier, or first responder.  This is not to say Sam wouldnt run into a burning building to save a family, he most certainly would, but his interests seem to lie mostly in long term after care. So for Sam to be in the front line with Dean, is something he does because its the right thing, not because it’s his chosen life path (early life anyway. he has stated in his later life that he did chose this life for himself) and this makes him a reluctant hero. The problem with that though, is that in literature, the reluctant hero always suffers the most. 

Its no argument that Dean suffers too. Both brothers have broken my heart on many occasions, but Sam’s suffering over any event, stretches far past the season he suffers it in. This is so we, the viewers, have an idea as to how much of a hardship Sam is willing to endure to save Dean and to save the world.  Sam and Dean both willingly went to Hell, but their experiences were greatly different, and unfolded on the show wildly unbalanced. Dean sold his soul for Sam, so Sam would live. He didnt want to go to Hell, but he did it willingly. in Dream a Little Dream, Dean said to his dream self, that he didnt deserve to go to Hell, and even though he made the choice on his own, I think we all feel like it’s a horrible punishment for a guy who just wanted his little brother to live. I know I hoped they could find a way to get him out of the deal, but unfortunately, he didnt. He stayed in Hell for 4 months, or 40 hell years. He was tortured by Alistair for 30 years until he became a torturer himself. Cas raised him out of Hell, completely whole, even old scars were gone, but we didnt know for a while that the memories were haunting him. How did we find out? Because he told Sam. He tearfully confessed to Sam on more than one occasion, what happened, what he did, what it felt like at the time and how it was hurting him then. What came of it is that he got to confront his torturer, and even though he couldnt kill him himelf, Sam killed him for him. Dean got justice.  Sam on the other hand, also willingly went to Hell to save the world, but he felt like he was mainly at fault for breaking the world in the first place, when it was expressed that it wasn’t only him, and he was completely unknowingly breaking it when he did. He obviously didnt want to go to Hell, but he felt it was the right thing to do. What he got for that though, was his soul in Hell, canonically, for 1.5 years, 180 Hell years. He was torured by Lucifer himself in the most brutal ways imaginable. Cas raised his body, soon after he went to the pit, but we arent given an exact amount of time, whether it be an hour or so, or a few weeks, we just know he was physically out for the majority of the year, but I can’t imagine 10 minutes in the cage with Lucifer is a picnic. However, he came back incomplete, without his soul, which endured unimaginable torture. If that’s not enough, while soulless, Sam did things he wasn’t proud of when he got his soul back, and suffered with this, Once he got his memories of Hell back, a whole new level of suffering began.  How was this handled? To our knowledge, he never told anyone the details of his Hell tour. All we know about it, was shown in flash backs and hallucinations, that ended up driving Sam insane. Sam was “fixed” by Cas, by simply shifting the pain to himself, not by Sam talking about it, or confronting his torturer, or anyone killing Lucifer.  Sam didnt get justice in any sense, and he still carries all of this with him. He has even had to work along side Lucifer to try to stop Amara. No one even brought this up, even though Sam had very recently been back to the cage and had to face Lucifer and the trauma all over again.  Season 13 and still Sam hasn’t been given justice or seen closure when Dean’s was answered in only a few episodes. How can we not see the imballance? Well, when we look at it as Sam is the long suffering Reluctant Hero, suck as it may, it makes more sense. It plays into the narrative that the pain piles on Sam, and Sam stuffs it down. We ourselves may forget this happens, if the show itself didn’t bring it up.  The case of Tracy Bell for example. A girl that pops up out of nowhere in 9x2 for no reason than to remind Sam that he let Lucifer out and people got killed. I know a bunch of you blame the writers of the episode for that, as though they hate Sam or Jared, but that was part of the Gardreel story. Something that the producers must have told the writers they wanted. “Bring something painful up from Sam’s past, so that when he feels good at the end of the episode, we can be reminded that theres an Angel healing him from the inside” is probably close to what was said in the meeting. We the viewers need to be reminded that Sam never lets things go, at the same time as he never really speaks of them either.  It took 13 seasons, but Dean confirms for us in 13x4 that Sam doesnt admit things or it makes them real, and then he has to deal with it. Sam even confirms it himself in 12X3 when he says he knows Mom is burying herself in hunting instead of dealing, through years of personal experience. Now that we understand this is part of Sam’s character, we can better understand why we dont get to see his emotional POV very often, and his traumas rarely get worked out.  The differences between Sam being the reluctant hero, and Dean being the willing hero, manifest in many ways.  Dean gets very antsy if its been a few days that they havent had a hunt to go on. Sam however, is content to stay home researching. Their short time of trying to live a domestic life with their girlfriends shows reluctant vs willing also. While Sam was with Amelia, he had nothing to do with hunting except reading the news paper and believing other hunters were taking care of things. He refused to tell Amelia about that part of his life. Dean didnt hunt, but he kept it at arms reach. He kept devils traps in the door ways, a rosary in water under the bed and a gun nearby, and he let Lisa know all about that part of his life, and even tried to live it and maintain a life with her.  Dean is the kind of guy who will show you every scar and tell you the details of how he got it, while Sam will hide his scars. Dean suffers when innocent life is lost, but he holds on to the fact that he’s saved more people than he’s hurt and it can help him make it day to day. Sam feels like he failed if he didnt save someone. This is precicely why Sam suffers the burdens of his wrongs for years,  and Dean doesnt. Dean did a lot of crap while he had the MoC but he hasnt had to visibly suffer from it after the fact. Sam however, is reminded of his poor choices for seasons after the fact. Now since its not a matter of Sam goes to jail for things and Dean doesn’t, we only need to realize its part of maintaining a character trait for us, so we dont forget that Sam never forgives himself and suffers for years over what he considers failures.  Now, this willingness vs reluctance shows in their relationship also. Im not going to try to prove one loves the other more, because I am convinced that Dean is #1 in Sam’s world and Sam is #1 in Dean’s world and they love each other as much as any two people can love each other (to steal from the mouth of JP) they both take care of each other, and neither had to be told to do so. Even when Sam was too little to actually take care of Dean, he still did the best he could by wanting to be with him, and giving him gifts. Dean didnt have to learn 100 ways to make mac and cheese, he did it because he wanted to make Sam happy. That being said, lets move on... Sam’s reluctance in their relationship, isnt that he loves Dean less, or doesn’t want to protect him, but his biggest fear is letting Dean down. He can save Dean’s life a million times but considers himself a failure if he let Dean down. Dean’s biggest fear however is Sam dying. He can let Sam down, he can piss him off, but if Sam isnt alive and well, Dean considers himself a failure. When Sam assumed Dean was dead in S8 and didnt look for him, he was going on a promise that he wouldnt look for him. Since we didnt get enough insight to Sam’s state of mind at the time, Im going to assume that Sam was crushed that Dean was dead, but for himself, it was more important, that he didnt let him down by breaking that promise. He saw how angry Dean was when Dean thought he made a deal that raised him from Hell, so he “knew” Dean would be disappointed if Sam looked for him now. Dean however, needs Sam to be alive, so he will risk Sam being disappointed and possibly hating him, as long as he’s alive.  So now in S11 its brought up again, that Sam didnt look for Dean in Purgatory, and Sam hadnt forgiven himself for it, its not the writers hating Sam/Jared, its showing us that Sam still hasnt gotten over letting Dean down. He’s a long suffering character, and doesnt see that he was justified in his actions, but instead blames himself for inaction. This fits right into Sam not finding a Win in a case where he couldnt save everyone. He knows he helps more people than he hurts, but the fact that he hurts people at all outweighs the good in his eyes.  There will be a time Im sure, and hopefully soon, given the events of the last 2 seasons, that Sam may collapse under all this weight. Maybe he will have some time to voice how badly things hurt him. But if he doesnt. try not to write it off as no one caring about his character, but understand his character feels like a burden if he unloads to people, even, and especially to Dean, who Im sure he believes has enough burden on his shoulders, without Sam sharing his. So try to be patient my friends. This would come out differently if it was a written story. The writer would be able to show us inside Sam’s head easier than they can this way. The only way into Sam’s head is through someone vocalizing it. If Sam does, then we dont see him burying things, if someone else does, it sometimes looks like hes being picked on for no reason.... but there is a good reason. It’s to keep his character consistant as the longsuffering reluctant hero.

[allisonjadehodgesjournal]

January 8, 2018

So this my first journal entry on here.  I finally got a laptop from my grandmother, she doesnt like this one.  Im not sure if I do either. 

My mom gave me $500 towards a new laptop for Christmas.  One of my Patreons has donated over $1000 and I think both of those selfless acts of kindness are nice.   I hope I live up to their expectations.

If anyone is reading this, or if I am reading this, know that a couple months ago in the beginning of October, I was broken up with.  Me and Jessie had an on and off again relationship.  We got back together after I came back from living in Reno, NV for a year.   The way I was broken up with was pretty cold.  I couldnt go to this music festival with him called Lost Lands because I had to work that weekend.   Everyday I think about how things would be different if I would have went anyway.  IF maybe we would still be together, and if maybe I still wouldnt have known about the cheating.  

When he broke up with me officially by the 3rd week of October, he did it in a text message.  He says “I think its best we go our separate ways”.. and of course the way its always been, I begin to beg him to stay.  IT was real this time though, I felt all the hope leave my body for the future of us.  The future of us is something I think that the past 8 years I have created as a false vision in my head, dwelling on the day that it would come to an end.  I was always afraid of the end, and there it was.. plain as day.  

Of course when the end comes, I wallow myself in it.  I feel it completely and its like home oddly enough.  Being used to this feeling is something that has become a routine these past 8 years.  I dont think we had a streak that lasted for more than 1 year ever.  Even when things were good, we clashed alot.  We think differently, I loved that about us though.  I was never bored.  I think he was afraid of it though.  How much our lives were different, our upbringing, and circumstances.  When both of his parents were still alive, he was still just as broken as he is now.  And I always defended his brokenness.  Sad boys, Ive always had a thing for them.  Jessie has to be one of my favorite ones.  I dont think he likes my demons.   For this has always been a one sided love affair.  A one sided dream of forever. 

I dont want to go into too much detail about the cheating, because I know someday I want this painful memory to seem like a bad dream that I barely will remember.  I want to remember the good things, but Jessie please stay away from me and my spirit.  I dont think he will ever find true love, because he doesnt really know what it is when its even sitting right in front of him.  He’s always found love in music, like my father.  Skateboarding with his friends.   Self medicating to become more “aware” but I know its all about escapism to him.  I think I was his escape at one point, well at multiple points when we would separate, change, and come back together again.  

Anyways the cheating, it happened at that festival I couldnt go to.  He flew her here from Texas to do drugs and keep himself from being lonely I guess..

His own friends told me about it, because they knew I still wanted to get back together with him before hearing about this.  One of his friends in particular told me that this wasnt the first time hes been unfaithful.  I guess as far as he knows, he cheated on me a few days prior to us leaving for my birthday camping trip in Lake Placid, NY.  Also again with someone else around the time we went to a Silent Disco in Buffalo, NY this past September.  

I think the thing that hurts the most, is all the people knew about this when I didnt.  Who let me believe Jessie really loved deep down.  

I think the thing that scares me the most, is I catch myself still making excuses for him.  To myself now.  Others can see who he truly is but I still cant.  HE still fucks with my head.  

I know that I could never be happy with him again, I would always be worried about other girls.  So I wont let myself, no matter how much pain it makes me feel.  So I guess I’m going to start to try dating again.  

I don’t know if this is technically a date that I just went on this weekend.  But I gotta say it was nice trying to get to know someone else for a change.  Knowing that no matter how this interaction ended, there isnt anywhere in the back of my mind that thinks I owe Jessie anything, that reguardless of not being together that I owe my faithfullness to him.  SO it went really well, I dont know the strong beers helped, or the fact that this guy has also been hurt in ways that I have.  We drove around for an hour or so after the bars closed, and he didnt even try kissing me once that night.  It was kinda surprising since any time I’ve gone on a “date” men always want some sort of “happy ending” if you catch my drift.  Kinda made me sad that he didnt try to.   It also makes me happy though,  I know he wants to go to a proper dinner now.   So I’ll let you know how that goes if and when it happens.  

The past two days I’ve spent alone and isolated.   This isnt an unusual ocurrance for me, I find both comfort and anxiety in this.  

However I am happy I finally started a journal again.  

Here’s to 2018 and the years beyond it at which I survive.

I hope one day I read back on this and feel thankful for the pain that led me to love and happiness for my future.  

xoxoxo

Allison