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yibennianyaji · 2 years ago

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Silent Hill Downpour

[Apologies for the late arrival, readers. Please enjoy this last look into the Silent Hill franchise, and prepare to enjoy some Dumas-inspired analysis to take this franchise’s place in the future.]

The final stop on our tour (because at present there’s nothing I can say about PT’s present that hasn’t been covered more adroitly, and it hasn’t been long enough for a real post-mortem; and Book of Memories isn’t part of the mainline canon) is the first draft of a really great Silent Hill game. This was tragically undermined by the fact that it got lumped into Konami’s shortsighted attempt to flood the market with three SH games during its 2012 “Month of Madness,” and the fact that despite getting delayed multiple times the final product was still a bug-ridden mess on top of the arguable conceptual problems. I mean, it came out better than the HD Collection, but desiccated corpses repurposed as compost heaps come out with a better smell of quality than the HD Collection did.

The main protagonist – well, the player character (more on that later) of Downpour is Murphy Pendleton (David Boyd Konrad), a prison inmate who winds up in Silent Hill when the bus transporting him to a maximum security facility crashes at the edge of town. Murphy is pursued by dogged police officer Anne Cunningham, and haunted by the town’s usual bag of head-spelunking hallucinations. You can watch a pretty thorough walkthrough of it here (alas, I’ve never found a version with commentary that particularly appealed).

Structure and Patchwork Feelings

This game is brimming with so much potential it hurts: Murphy has one of the most solid narratives of the latter-day Silent Hill protagonists (I’m excluding carryover like Shattered Memories), and the second-best lead performance after Brian Bloom’s turn as Alex Shepherd. There are a few amazing set piece scenes, and some genuine pathos too. The level design’s fondness for putting Murphy in tight, deathtrap-filled corridors or shimmying along bottomless pits makes for an effective visual metaphor regarding his conflict in the prison, and the water motif is both well tied to the narrative and effectively gloomy. Even the decision to move outside of Silent Hill’s usual locales mostly allows for some unique levels, though it should perhaps be concerning that some of the most unnerving moments are ones that take Murphy out of the player’s control (the mine cart is the best but not the only example).

It’s just a shame about all the decisions holding those good things together. The monster designs are for the most uninspired, comprised mostly of humanoids with some matter of facial deformity (which can be done well but requires getting much closer to the monsters in much better lighting than the game encourages), and many of them seem to have very little to do with Murphy’s internal conflicts (more on that later).

The nightmare world segments, while initially harrowing in their use of dream logic (the lengthening hallways), eventually become repetitive experiences of literally being chased by nothing until you reach the exit (a gameplay mechanic that was very much the low point of Shattered Memories). And while exploring the town was an appealingly eerie aspect of the first two games that got lost with time, the actual execution of the open-world approach in Downpour mostly results in padding, with the main narrative being forcibly stripped of quite a few characterizing details and looking downright anemic as a result. But if we’re talking fumbles, nothing quite matches up to the last hour of the game.

Choose Your Own Meaningless Ending

Amid all of the things that don’t work, the unilateral exception is the plot thread dealing with Murphy’s grief over the loss of his son (the fact that this is a thread being part of the Murphy-the-Protagonist problem). The entire orphanage section is a triumph, acted with devastating anguish by Konrad and paced with deliberate sureness in a way that threads in Murphy’s own issues with the town’s surreal monstrosities and even makes the Designated Pyramid Head Stand-In feel warranted. The level goes through the paces of Murphy’s core struggle and more or less resolves them, laying out a small slice of story about the hollowness of revenge and grief.

It’s powerful stuff, and even though this is basically the point where it stops being justifiably Murphy’s story and goes back to infringing over on what should be Anne’s struggle regarding her father, its length is far from a detriment to its effectiveness.

What IS a detriment is that the context of this scene can be entirely undermined by the ending, up to and including the revelation that Murphy killed Charlie himself. The goal in making the endings mutable based on Murphy’s in-game behavior seems clear, another attempt to translate something SH2 did well while potentially building on it. But there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the SH2 endings functioned at play here, and it very nearly cripples Murphy’s arc unless a player studiously sets out to ignore certain parts of canon.

The facts of James’ story, those being the events which lead him to come to Silent Hill, are immutable. No matter what the player does, it will always be true that James suffocated his terminally ill wife with a pillow. What the player’s actions – neglecting healing items, ignoring or protecting Maria, dwelling on certain imagery – affect is only James’ motivation in the thing that he definitely always did, as well as his ability to gain closure in regards to that concrete fact. Even Homecoming understood this, keeping Alex’s death consistent even when it played around with whether Alex had left the mental institution or not.

But Murphy’s story can involve anywhere from 0 to 3 murders, each with their own gradient of severe implications for the character and each with the power to undermine the parts of the game that do stay the same from playthrough to playthrough. Without a consistent point of origin Murphy is a cipher and his struggles are meaningless as a protagonist. The only way there would’ve been a sliver of a chance to successfully present Murphy as a Rorschach test of a character would’ve relied on the something the game refuses to do: focus on its far clearer choice for protagonist.

Murphy and Anne

The thing about Silent Hill games is that they are all, by and large, one person’s story. That person is not always the player character – Harry doesn’t grow or change much but is a vessel for discovering Alessa’s story, and the same can arguably be said of Henry and Walter – but there is almost always one source at the core of however Silent Hill has chosen to look for its present set of visitors. Even Travis, who shared time with Alessa by the nature of the way the game was structured, more or less had his own through line of monsters and conflict that happened to cross over with Alessa’s past rather than being directly related to it.

Murphy and Anne’s stories, uniquely, are heavily intertwined. Or rather, the fallout of Murphy’s narrative lead to the beginning of Anne’s. If Murphy doesn’t owe Sewell a favor there’s no setup for Anne’s father to get stabbed, therefore no reason for Anne to dedicate her life to a slowly consumptive need for revenge, therefore no prison transfer or drive past and subsequent crash outside of Silent Hill. But by the same token, Silent Hill 3 doesn’t happen without Claudia – her backstory is also heavily connected to Heather’s, and her actions cause the events of the game. But Heather is still the protagonist. It is still a story about her, one that she has an active stake in moving forward rather than simply trying to escape.

Downpour seems to think its narrative structure is a revisiting of SH2, wherein it was clear that something was affecting Angela and Eddie between their various meetings with James. The difference, the thing that ultimately puts Anne closer to Claudia than Angela, Eddie, Vincent, or even the other “lost” souls Murphy sees wandering the town, is that she has agency and goals. She concretely exists outside of Silent Hill (while the other SH2 characters could quite easily be argued as James’ projections), and the monsters reflect her struggles far more than Murphy’s (unlike Cybil, who is likewise a cop but doesn’t have much inner life outside of helping Harry).

The central boss of the prison confrontation, the climax of Murphy’s struggle before he’s literally transformed into the game’s personification of vengeance, involves a Coleridge Murphy would never have seen. It’s the Coleridge Anne describes looking at for years only to see “a monster,” and the colossal effort the player undertakes as Murphy to unplug the monster from life support was likely Anne’s real life agony. So why is Murphy the one facing a nightmare version of it? What meaning does it have to him, when his pain is centered in the moment when he failed to save a good man (who, as far as he knew, died in that moment)?

This disconnect is present in some of the other monster designs as well – one could make a stretch of an argument that the overwhelmingly female monsters Murphy faces down are representative of his wife blaming him for Charlie’s death, say, but it’s far more compelling to connect them to the “terrible things” Anne bitterly describes doing in pursuit of her revenge – but the wheelchair monster is really the bow on top of the entire package. She isn’t even playable in her own final boss fight (in the scene that determines Murphy as monster or man, another reflection of Anne’s struggle), and her ability to embrace forgiveness is tied to Murphy (the player)’s actions throughout the game rather than her own.

To call it baffling is to undersell the state of things considerably. The “first draft” aspect winds up creeping in again, since there might have been a way to experiment with a full-on dual playable protagonist model that incorporated both Anne and Murphy’s contributions to the central strategy. But that’s not what the game is, and the resulting mess leaves its most promising gems just outside of the player’s reach. Poorly handled promise can often be more frustrating to grapple with than an overall bad product with a few redeeming features, and Downpour is no exception. While there’s enough done well to make it worth remembering, the fact that this became the (main) swan song for one of gaming’s most well regarded horror series (especially when it might well have been a great game with more time and more thoughtful construction) is nothing short of a shame. Damn you, Konami.

#tiantalk

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elegiesforshiva · 5 years ago

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This is a review for the amazing sasusaku fanfic Perpetual Winter by @thefangirlslair It’s a brilliant modern AU and I highly recommend it!!! You can read it on fanfiction.net or tumblr :)))) FF: c l i c kkkk Tumblr: Part I, Special Chapter, Part II And time for a criminally late and obscenely long review!!!

Pt I

Winter has never been his favorite season

Damn what an intro, I’m already getting angst vibes lmao. I really like how you set the scene and stage the world of this AU. I didn’t expect the existence of clans in this piece, with it being a modern AU, but this is such a fascinating twist on the setting to me. I loved how you described Naruto’s endurance as unnatural, “like there’s a demon living inside him” and Sasuke and his clan have inexplicable warmth….inexplicable do I dare say…fire ???? ;))))))

Lmao seriously what a great way to pay homage to canon though. I love these attributes!

Modern au Sasuke that reads poetry and drinks coffee is a brand of pretentiousness I can get behind

Aaaaaaa omg I really REALLY REALLY fucking love this intro! I love how you describe Sasuke as appreciating liveliness, and vibrance—which we can honestly assume is canon with how his two closest people are the embodiment of these traits. And I love how you tie it back into the seasons. This really gives so much life to that motif in this story, and the title. That was clever af

…he was taken back to the time where winter was just a mere season, Bon Iver was playing on their shared earphones, and Sakura was his.

WHAT THE FUCK YOU JUST FUCKING DESTROYED ME WHAT A WAY TO SEGWAY INTO THE NEXT SCENE OOOOF IM KSJDFHLJSAKFL

There are so many things I love about this following scene… you really know how to write a couple in casual, mutual love. The banter and candidness of their interaction just has me floored. I also REALLY love that this is from Sasuke’s perspective, and how even though he doesn’t have an overwhelming amount of dialogue, we’re in his head, and his appreciation and love for Sakura just radiates. Lines like these:

From her latest discovered band to a recent discovery in medicine by a genius dude whose name he doesn’t even remember, she shares it with him. Favorite anime character, favorite memory with him, favorite pair of underwear — he knows it all because she’s that open to him about things she love.

They’re just….so good. I can hear his voice, his ardor, and his impeccable understanding of Sakura’s personality while also expressiong his own. The choice of having the narrative skewed through his lens was def a good decision. And ugh this piece is just overwhelmingly amazing already

He doesn’t know the pain to be dealt with when you’ve broken up with someone because Sakura was his first girlfriend. And honestly, he doesn’t, couldn’t, even think about being apart from her. Just the thought of them breaking up already makes him panic a little. He always thought to himself, ‘I will never let that happen.’

Okay this paragraph……………this paragraph tho……..dropping this. KNOWING. They’re gonna break up……….HOW DARE U

Seriously, what powerful writing. I don’t know how you do it……

I think it’s incredibly interesting that you chose music to be the catalyst for this beautiful, climactic moment of closeness My best friend/partner and I have had convos before about it, and she and i once talked about how we think of sex with music lol. I don’t know how to entirely explain myself on that, or where I’m really going with this, but I get the same vibe here too. Music that’s close to you is like an artistic intimacy and there’s something very personal and vulnerable about it. Maybe it’s an auditory thing, like getting lost in one of those guided meditations. (idk if you’ve ever had one that actually worked, they don’t always for me, but when they do god damn, it’s unreal) Either way, I really loved the way this scene played out, it was highly relatable and highly emotional, and I feel serenity and ardor just reading it. Beautifully done.

I love the way you moved back to the present and we immediately feel the differences and the similarities. The fondness and affection is still there, if not a little more muted, and it’s so obvious they still have feelings for each other. But there’s definitely moments that speak to their separation too, with the little differences in Sakura that Sasuke notices, or instances like her no longer drinking coffee or him deciding to open the door.

I really like how you inserted the interaction with Kakashi too. One thing I’m quickly noticing about this fic and your writing is how you very stealthily relay information to us readers. It’s seamless and entertaining, and I’m learning about this world and the past in ways that are so attention grabbing I don’t even notice it.

Also Itachi’s death and the way you handled it from Sasuke’s pov is so reminiscent of canon and also so gut wrenching. The lines

How dare Itachi leave him alone? How dare Itachi sacrifice himself and die? How dare Itachi pass his responsibilities onto his shoulders…

especially gutted me because of how is stands in stark parallels to the Sasuke we know in canon. This really smacked my head around with feels….poor Sasuke

OMFG POOR SASUKE !!!?!?!??!?!??!? THAT ENDING OOOLOGDSLGFSLKDGHLSDHFLKDFHVSLKV WHAT A FUCKING CURVE BALL LMAO

I mean maybe I should have seen that coming because like of course!!! But also I’M LOSING M Y SHIT HAHAHAHAAA

I can’t wait to see how this unfolds!!!!!

Special Chapter

This is such a powerful scene to start with. Itachi’s entire character was such a major influence in canon and seeing the way his death is affecting everyone now is so emotional. I feel so bad for Sasuke, having to take on all the burdens Itachi had left behind for him.

Also these lines:

“Mikoto cried, “Don’t you think it’s too soon? I just buried my first-born just barely a week ago and now we’re discussing how you’re gonna ruin my youngest’s life just like you did with Itachi?!”

The way her voice cracked when she said his brother’s name broke his heart. She’s still grieving, probably forever, and here they are talking about Sasuke’s suicide.”

Literally killed me. Dead. Deceased. Fallen to the Void. It’s so brilliant and powerful, and speaks so deeply on their dysfunctional family dynamics and feelings with so few lines. Really loved this…

This next scene was so stark and sad and beautiful. I meant to comment and pull lines again, but I couldn't stop reading tbh. Sasuke's thoughts and emotions concerning Sakura are so vividly gentle and full of praise. There's such a soft worship in the way you write his feelings towards her and tbh it's my absolute and only interpretation of feelings I care for concerning the depiction of their relationship. Still, you do this with a certain cleverness and mastery. It's really so moving for me...

The dream sequence that follows is absolutely debilitating, but so well done. I got the sense it was a dream only a few lines in just from the bluntness of the lines. It was truly very dream-like lol. I really could feel the panic and guilt along all of his inner turmoil. It's incredibly horrific to have such a dream about murder just after Itachi's too. This was devastating.

I really loved the way Sakura calms him groom the panic/anxiety attack. I've actually had a similar experience once, where I woke up from a nightmare and I was very frightened and stiff and couldn't really articulate myself. I remember I had felt deep horror and self loathing and nothing else. (I still remember the nightmare too, it was horrible.) My best friend at the time just threw herself on the bed and held me.

It's so crazy how grounding touch can be. I really felt that with Sasuke and Sakura too. The comfort she offers him is so seamless to her character and so ardently palpable. The repetition of "I got you" really touched me especially. It breaks my heart knowing the inevitable end of their relationship to come.

Oooooohhhh daaamnnnnn

I did NOT see the raunchy sex coming lmfao!! Although in hindsight, I probably should have. You already told us how they tend to get down and dirty when emotions run high with the arguments and make-up sex. I imagine this is instigated by Sasuke often, with him struggling to articulate his need for Sakura verbally so he does so physically. And I imagine Sakura is just kinky enough to crave this sort of animal want.

I do love how sexual interactions are easily moving in tandem with their emotions, how it just feels like another mode of communication. Sasuke breaking down during it leaves me feeling so tender too. It's tragic

She smiled. Sasuke doesn't know if he wants that smile or not.

These exit lines are going to fucking kill me istg

The following events honestly hurts to read because Damn haven't we all been there... the fallout of a relationship to the point where you're just dragging it through the mud… it’s a true deterioration of soul and you capture that slow death so well. I really feel terrible for Sakura—Sasuke too—but it sucks for her to be in the dark like this.

I love the way you write Karin!!! Honestly, I think it really mirrors the way she's written in canon. She's cold and strategically loud and generally calculating and overall kind of apathetic. She doesn't really know the value of meaningful relationships (and therefore doesn't prioritize them) until much later on in the series. I definitely get this sense of her here too. She's a little cold, but not cruel, and she has the pragmatic values of her and Sasuke's union in mind as she agrees to it all. I really like how you made her personality come through here.

Meanwhile there’s him, sucking all the hard traits from their father. His competitive streak, arrogant way of speaking, harsh words — it’s all Fugaku. And suddenly, he feels so exhausted.

This line hit me so hard. I love this fic already for an endless number of reasons but a striking one is how well you interrogate the relationships between family. When you described Itachi’s death as Sasuke losing a part of him, I really felt that. And here when you write about the way Sasuke takes after Fugaku and hates it and is also exasperated from it, just like how his father likely is, it just runs bone deep. You really know how to speak to life experiences and relationships in consistently intimate ways. I love that about you

This is his reality now — no more dream, no more Itachi; and pretty soon, no more Sakura.

’It hurts,�� Sasuke thought. 'It hurts, aniki.’

Wow death by angst lmao thanks for the pain, maren, glad to know you like to torture your readers as much as our ninja babies. Srsly tho the cadence of these lines and the material itself sync up perfectly. It’s such powerful writing

This entire scene is stuffed to the brim with dread and turbulence, and it’s so lifelike, I feel it’s haunting. The way you describe the suffocating atmosphere of the car ride, how Sasuke snaps at Sakura for simply knowing that something is up, the awkwardness of the dinner… You really brought so much passion into these scenes, I feel like I’m being tortured right with them lol

I looooooove the drama of this playing out omg. The way you have this convo go down is like a punch to the gut. Sakura announcing her acceptance to Harvard, and then her refusal to go. Sasuke knowing he’s the reason why…the guilt…the anger…

Also omfg these lines:

Sasuke hardened his resolve and stiffly said, “No. I don’t need you, Sakura.”

’Yes, I do.’

Sakura shook her head, “Yes, you do.”

I DIED. Sakura callin’ him out on his bull shit I fucking LOST IT lmaooOOooo I love this so much and I love how you write their dynamic! It’s funny how this fic plays into a lot of romantic clichés but also subverts them—gives them a twist that knocks the reader right off their feet. It’s honestly incredible

I loved the way you brought in winter into this scene too. The image of it, the feel of it, the terrible, lonely tone. It suits the entire mood of it all.

This is going to sound super dumb but I genuinely love how much agency you give Sakura btw. You probably know I’m a raging, batshit feminist by now and I gotta say, her dialogue is consistently powerful and reeks of someone who knows who they are, and their worth, even when in the fallout of a relationship where they are getting the short end of the stick. Like I’m just sitting here reading “Sasuke, you dumb jackass, what are you doing” lmfaoooo LIKE GURL I WOULD TREAT U SO GOOD…. SAKU BB IM SO SORRY BUT ALSO TRUST I KNOW HOW IT BE

I really do love it. And I love how you wrote Sakura as an orphan too. It really flips the script on the canon material (eat shit, kishimoto!! Women can have trauma and real backstories not centered around men, u misogynistic pile of adskjfhsklhfalkd) I just feel she’s very well written, and tangible, and powerfully human. I’d be just as smitten as Sasuke tbh

The last scene is so upsetting… it’s also strangely warming too though. It’s terrible Sasuke’s been broken down like this, but there’s something about this scene where he feels raw, and expresses his pain in a very infantile way, literally crying out to his mother about how it hurts. I really feel he’s been stripped of not just his life, but himself, under the weight of Itachi’s death and all that’s come with it, and it makes my heart ache. I loved this chapter, in all it’s infinite sadness.

Part II

He closed his eyes and thought about his talk with his father earlier, “We’re okay now. He called me while I was with Itachi.”

Love the ease and depth of this single line of dialogue. How Itachi is not alive but is still with him, and how it speaks to the way we humans grieve and the continuity and strength of relationships even after someone leaves. It’s just very simple and human, and it popped out at me.

He couldn’t even remember the last time they talked on the phone, or the last time he heard Fugaku as a father, not as the Uchiha patriarch.

Uggghhhhhhh this is exactly how I felt Fugaku was like in canon too. This fic is just full of brilliance, I really adore the way you describe all the relationships, but the complexity between Sasuke’s and Fugaku’s is really striking to me. You nail it perfectly.

And this whole intro where Fugaku apologizes to Sasuke and tells him he is proud…. I feel as if a major levee has been broken. While he’s in front of Itachi’s grave too. This Sasuke really has that same parallel with the one in canonverse where I feel he is held back by his family trauma, family obligations, the weight of blood. And this scene feels like a breaking point. Where Sasuke can be a man instead of an Uchiha, in the same way Fugaku gives him this moment as a father instead of an Uchiha patriarch. It certainly feels like a cleansing of sorts.

Once you thought you’re over it, one pink-haired beacon of spring will bloom in your eternal winter and blow all your progress into next week. What a woman. He will never find anyone better.

AaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA !!!! this IS what I mean!!! His inner thoughts of her ugh….i’m so weak…Sasuke you lovesick fool…. And the return of the beautiful seasons motif. I love this so much

You can say they were drunk — with liquor, with each other, with love.

I just adore this line. It really emphasizes the vibe of their past relationship and the picture as a whole, and just that electric feeling of being consumed with someone. The description and cadence of it is just really catching, and I love it

God, this entire scene. Damn, maren. It’s criminal how well you write the tension of such a casual conversation. It feels as if an interrogation of sorts is occurring, and yet it’s still a heartwarming kind. Sakura is not vicious or mal-intentioned in inquiries and yet it still leaves Sasuke weak and defenseless if only because of his feelings for her. There’s so many ways you assert it too. It’s in every line, every detail. This one in particular stood out to me:

Sasuke clenched his fist under the table and scoffed, “I hope my mother didn’t tell you how miserable I was.”

'Still am,’ he corrected in his mind. 'How miserable I still am.’

I remember you used this particular tactic when also describing Itachi’s feelings from Sasuke’s POV. (Something along the lines of how he does became how he did because he is gone) In this fic where time is moving back and forward in a non-linear fashion, these details are especially striking. Despite the changes and pushes and pull, this one fact is consistent—Sasuke loves Sakura. And we, as readers, relearn it with every line.

Also I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOvE that Mikoto saw Sakura off, and that there is this undertone of a bond. Like ughhhhh I’ve so been there, where there’s that depth of understanding between women and relationships that men don’t always know about or know how to grapple with it. My ex resented me for it lmfao

Adkjfasklfalsjdkfakls SASUKE CAN RELATE TO HIM APPARENTLY AHAHAHAAHHA B SNAPPEDDDD I totally get it though, it’s a little intrusive of Sakura to ask for that, but we all also know why she did. Poor saku bb is in love with this emotionally constipated idiot lmao. Oh I love the endless pining and miscommunication of it all !!!

“I thought you’d be here,” a voice came and knocked on the closed door of his heart. He turned his face towards it, he saw her and suddenly his doors came opening again.

The winter sun was directly behind her, giving her this eerie glow. Like a nymph; a spring nymph being born in his perpetual winter. He shivered inside.

Back at it again with that seasonal motif !!!! ugh you are killing me. I also really loved the phrase “knocked on the closed door of his hear.” You really have such a way with these metaphors and images, it’s so striking and makes the narrative of this piece so brilliant

and silence is a comfortable companion back then. When they became lovers, it was like their platonic third-wheel aside from Naruto.

Ngl I busted out laughing on that one. “aside from Naruto” hahaaaa I love the way you include him in this fic tbh. He’s not a very big focus, but he still feels like an integral part of this story, not just as Sasuke’s best friend, but also as another device to unite Sasuke and Sakura. Also he’s pretty fantastic comic relief, probably just as much for the two of them as for the reader.

I really love the way this convo goes down, and the change of scenery from the coffee shop to the playground. Considering the way their love at this point is founded in nostalgia (and perhaps something else, but let’s ignore that for a second) it’s so fitting for them to finally stripping away the masks and cloaks and being genuine with one another—Sakura talking about how she knew all along, and Sasuke finally admitting he still loves her.

I also loved that Karin broke off the engagement!!!!!! And how she did it and how you described it ughghhghg I love this. You really spoke to her character growth and development in canon too. It’s trivial compared to everything else that’s going on, but I love it.

…the pink of her hair, the green of her irises and the gold of the sun slowly setting down behind her.

Sasuke couldn’t see her clearly anymore, only the faint glow of her weeping eyes and the halo on her head made by the sun.

You think you’re slick don’t you…you think you’re some kind of mastermind with these subtle references/images…..well guess what bitch….YOU ARE

I looooove how you tied the music back in. Ugh this departure!! MY HEART!!! Also I’m seeing a handful of songs I love including OUR BOIIIII !!!! rex orange county uhhghhgjak maren this is the romance of a lifetime I AM WEAK

Ughh the forehead kiss…..that was so sweet. I loved Sakura’s choice to give him that bit of affection. This scene is so beautifully intimate, despite their positions.

Omg I FINISHED HOLY SHIT!!! And Sasuke doesn’t get back with her! Wow! Honestly, as much as my shipper heart is like, violently frothing at the mouth and saying “okay they totally got back together down the line tho like THEY HAD TO THEY ARE MADE FOR EACH OTHER WHAT IS TH—" I actually have such a deep appreciation for this ending. Their relationship in this almost feels dream-like, and with the way the story unfolds, even if they still loved each other in the end (and I really don’t doubt that they do. We don’t have Sakura’s perspective, but we also don’t need it. the affections are clear) it doesn’t mean they will end up together or are even really suited for each other in such a way.

Their love in this actually really reminds me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Have you seen that movie? I just really get that vibe at the end. This entire romance cuts very deep and is very passionate and leaves me feeling so whimsical. I really loved this story, Maren… thank you for sharing it with all of us. thank you for writing it. You’re really one of a kind and you and this story has my whole heart <333

Also I’m sorry this is so late, but when I said I am going to write you a review, what I meant was I am going to write you a review. This English degree is good for nothing but sending elaborate love letters to friends and writers in the form of literary analyses and stupid overreactions and BY GOD I WILL NOT LET THIS CRIPPLING COLLEGE DEBT GO TO WASTE !!!

#sasusaku #ss fanfiction #ik its been like a year im sorry #but ily and ur my fav 5evr pls marry me maren my love

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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years ago

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Pre-Wayward Sisters Rewatch Notes

1x09: HAVE SOME PATIENCE WHILE WE GO TO MISSOURI

I've been through here so recently but it still cracks me up in the intro when it recaps that Mary "is never coming back", and then the ground it goes on to cover with her which is literally just her season 12 arc she returns to deal with properly. It's pretty much neither here nor there, and while technically I'm rewatching this for Missouri, I have to admit I'm like 90% coming back here because of the phone call parallel to 13x01's prayer because I like tormenting myself and that really sealed the deal on if I would come back to rewatch, since I covered seasons 1-4 in the hiatus.

It's interesting to me that the recap covers so much of the already established Winchester Family History circa 1x09 because it's going over the mythos of the family that led us to this point where we go to the home to explore all this and dig down into the emotional drama behind everything... To actually expose some of the things that we've been sitting on until this point. Our first sight of John since the Pilot, and Mary's last moments in her chronological story until 11x23. And beginning to get into the mystery of the evil that was done to Sam, and Mary's part in it.

The reason I say all this is because obviously when we get to the season 13 episodes introducing us to our Wayward squad, the recaps of the episodes are going to have to cover this same ground - to tell us who everyone is, to bring them into the fold and to tie their stories together. Hopefully by the proper Wayward Sisters episode when we've had all the new girls' stories, we'll get a recap with a very similar feel: just a straightforward "this is the family, do you want to find out more about them?" sort of explanation.

I also remember from the rewatch I did in the summer that the Home one stood out to me for being so focused only on the Winchester mythos and the surrounding ones were more about the monsters and fighting and "saving people hunting things" that the family focus felt far more important here even before the episode started.

It's weird, it makes me preemptively excited to see the family come together just because I know they'll have to do the montage, and like this one was in a low key way, it will high key be a special event, because it will be ABOUT the new family we care about.

I am momentarily distracted by how this episode opens on Sam's vision and then him obsessing over drawing the tree from outside the house over and over. I watched 1x17 last night with my mum and it reminds me of this season's great subtle mirroring and repetition of moments and ideas and motifs, when Dean is obsessing over his mystery symbol. That was the silly example of this to break the tension but to keep consistency through the season, subtly repeating ideas in a way that just keeps it all kind of the same aesthetic, of Sam and Dean doodling on motel paper... Anyway, reminds me of Dabb era's methods but they have 12 seasons of past canon to play with and in season 11 it was extremely blatant the way they revisited old ideas and told us they were shaking them up and doing them differently or just bringing them back for our consideration. I wonder if anyone ever collected up all the ways season 1 internally mirrors itself. It's really just a spiral of mirrors that unlike the character development spiralling closer and closer to a desired end, this spirals out and out that the more canon there is the more there is to reference and repeat, and so it grows exponentially in mirrored subject matter...

At this point Wayward Sisters is going to have a bit of a job navigating the story to tell its own stuff in a fresh way without falling back on the repeated ideas - I don't know if we should be looking for mirroring or if introducing the characters as part of Supernatural's main canon means they can be used by the narrative in this way but only when they get to their own show will they then build their own language. The new show means they can play around with new ways of telling things and the tropes will probably be very different all over the place. Like, for once I'm not expecting a new psychic character to massively mirror Sam, even though Home and how Missouri and Sam bond over his powers is obviously like the main reason to come back here to rewatch before we get an episode where she does it with her own granddaughter. I don't think there's anything evil behind Patience's powers especially if we're assuming they're inherited from Missouri and they're not going to introduce some weird ideas about where those powers came from - it's enough having them I think :P

On the other hand if Patience is being hunted by a hungry wraith that likes her powers then it IS a parallel to all the interest in Jack for HIS powers. We'll see how it shakes out but once they're in a show where they're the main characters (and I really hope Patience is the POV character - I think actually not long after I was talking about that somewhere I saw an interview suggesting she WOULD be, which is AWESOME) then the fact that Patience is/was a Sam and Jack mirror will be utterly by the by. Really I just hope they don't bend her to meet the perfect criteria for a mirror but develop her for herself and put Sam and Jack in her shadow.

Sam realises they need to go home and this is the motivation to reveal that he has been having psychic nightmares - the fact that someone is in trouble and needs saving and the only way to explain to Dean why he knows this is because he suspects he's psychic. For narrative parallels to whatever might happen in 13x03 purposes, I'm interested in how Patience's story compares to Sam's, as she is reconnecting with Missouri by the sounds of things, and has her own issues with being disconnected from her family probably - this episode is still filled with massive disconnects and both of their parents withholding information or just outright avoiding them, seemingly for their own protection. (Mary being rather more direct about protecting them in a heroic way than John, hiding in the shadows refusing to confront them with the mytharc knowledge about Sam). Patience is prooobably going to be out of the loop on what's happening to her, or out of the family loop, which means that this is going to be personal discovery for her too.

Oh hey and then Sam gets them through the door into the house by using a conditional amount of the truth (they're sam and dean winchester and they used to live here) just like in 13x01 Dean just used the truth to the sheriff and got her on-board and them out of jail with that frankness... Sometimes it pays.

OH GOD Dean having to relive the fire by telling it to Sam... and 13x01 starting with Dean re-imagining/dreaming/having a vision about it again :<

I swear I started this trying to tell myself I would not make this about Man Pain because this is the Wayward Sisters watch but I am an addict

Dean goes to make the call and there's a big blue shipping container thing beside him and it's so claustrophobic, like he's chosen the most confined secret space to make the call... It's in total contrast to the vast open space he prayed in - but he STILL shuffled into the shadow of the (blue) building in order to make the prayer and get that illusion of privacy and confinement. The wide shot as he goes in here shows him behind the car and weaving between gas station junk and between these two buildings/large structures. In 13x02 just the random car parked at the back stops Dean from being entirely alone and exposed. I'll take that as a commentary on his layers and how open he is being, although it's sort of awkward when both times, of course, he's going for a super private call that he's going to open himself up for completely, revealing deep down things that have never been exposed before.

People literally started loving Dean about this exact second of the show because he broke so wonderfully to cry and reveal he's not all his top layer stuff. I think someone on the superspecpod (2 of them?) said/agreed on this moment.

Of course we can assume Chuck is listening and not acting, not just because he's omnipotent and abnormally attached to Dean of all humans, but also because John literally did hear this voicemail and either already was in or came straight to Lawrence.

God the fact he makes the call in front of the men's room but then it's the buccaneer's room in 13x02... what a goofy episode... I hate it... Pfft

THIS IS SO HARD TO WATCH.

I rank Dean's pain proportionate to his experience, and this is definitely the worst he's ever been at this point, mostly because we never see him cry until then.

He certainly is dealing better than in 13x02 because he still has a job to do and it might be hard but at least he has some sort of focus and a reason for being there, and even if everything is all messed up (he has to be back here AND Sam has just revealed he's psychic) that's not completely and utterly unbearable in the same way losing Mary and Cas (and even Crowley) has made him shut down so hard in season 13. There's no forward momentum for him. Jack is not enough of a motivation >.>

SAM: All right, so there are a few psychics and palm readers in town. There’s someone named El Divino. There’s, uh –-[He laughs.]—there’s the Mysterious Mister Fortinsky. Uh, Missouri Moseley—

Dear lord bring back these other guys just to kill them off for the epic 13 years of continuity you could get for free.

El Divino would be hilarious because I'm guessing the divine -> cas connection would be especially hilarious to play on

These lines are moments apart:

SAM: [reading] I went to Missouri and I learned the truth. [...] DEAN: Why didn’t you tell him? MISSOURI: People don’t come here for the truth. They come for good news.

Yeah, not that she gave John any.............................. or did she not tell him EVERYTHING she suspected/read about what had happened to Sam in that night? Exactly how far-ranging are her powers? Could she have seen what Azazel did by proximity to the attack around the time it happened and to John? She could see that dude's wife was having an affair, which is out of his knowledge range, so does that mean she knew about Mary's deal, which is loosely coded as infidelity to John with Azazel?

Gaaaah.

but oh NO - Missouri takes one look at Sam and Dean and specifically analyses Sam's woes as missing his dead loved one and Dean's as his missing parent...

*flippy flippy to season 13's entire framing of their loss*

TBH Missouri getting annoyed at Dean asking where their father is is probably specifically because she knows exactly where he is, aka hiding in the spare room upstairs doing whatever angsty things John does, and she's trying to shake Dean off of asking, and she is probably not that great at lying when she is in the middle of it all instead of just cheerfully telling people what they want to hear.

Maybe the whack you with a spoon thing was also to make Dean so uncomfortable with her he wouldn't keep bugging her for info about things she did not want to admit right then.

Keep them on track

I do feel like she was here to challenge them, not to nurture them, and I think it's weirdly the same issue people are having with Mary in season 12 and Dean "parenting" Jack in season 13, where she is not actually meant to be a motherly character, and I have historically had no issues with her in the past, before fandom and everything needing to be tuned to being good to your fave or otherwise the Worst. She's interesting and introduced even just with that guy she lies to as being mercurial and emotionally untrustworthy. She lets them behind the veil as it were since they know she's really psychic but clearly using that power carefully and not being too accurate all the time for people when the truth hurts and her powers can be better used for reading people and working out what would be best to tell them... But for hunters it's a different story... but that doesn't change her default personality... Especially as the end of the episode reveals she has been withholding literally the object of this season's quest from them at this early stage. She literally plays them like her customers except with the personal plot info she can't tell them.

So when she goes through the door saying Dean's not the sharpest tool the shed, she is not a person in a position of emotional responsibility to them, we just see Sam and Dean as scared confused little ducklings (like Jack in season 13) and people being harsh with them, especially I think when we come back to them with years of seeing them grow up and grow harder, so they're all soft and fluffy and mostly unharmed at this point, it's so easy to be defensive of them... And I mean I AM because DEAN, but not so much I think this means Missouri is a horrible person or that she's cruel or Dean shouldn't give her the time of day in season 13 or whatever. I find her to be interesting and she's an obstacle they DON'T overcome because she is twice as fast as them with her psychic advantage so she can help them for the GREATER GOOD, but conceal their much more personal issue from them, making her a minor (friendly and great good-motivated) antagonistic as far as the stuff that matters on the character side of things goes.

In season 13 she has nothing to lose in hiding things from them or lying to them, I bet, especially as she appears to be the one asking them for help rather than them coming to her, so I assume she will be more open, and I also assume that with 13 years space in between, Dean is not going to hold a serious grudge for the way she treated him - because those words are just a few from a one-off meeting with her rather than a childhood of negging or something. Like with Mary she doesn't have responsibility over them as adults, or a moral obligation to them in the same way a recognised caregiver would.

If she can read inside their heads and treats Dean this way she is doing it for a reason and she's running circles around them to not reveal that John has been in contact with her or that even at this point perhaps she knows he's already in town.

OH NO the nursery scene... This is where it all happened. A dark energy in the room...

And now we know that Jack being born and sloping off to the nursery to hide in the corner was heralded by a wave of powerful GOOD energy, not the "toxic" energy of Lucifer and the same thing that Azazel corrupted this room with.

Also Missouri calling Dean an amateur for using an EMF meter might be more of the negging but this scene is Missouri being a serious professional at the ghost hunting thing just by being herself... I think since she's coming back and it will be a less personally charged episode - pretty much has to be - then her natural competence at hunting will be an asset. She might not be able to handle wraiths as easily as ghosts but she certainly has a whole load of real spell ingredients and knowledge about things that really work for actual hunting. She's not a hapless bystander even if her day job is fortune telling...

Oh and then we have Sam out-psychic-ing Missouri. Probably because he's got demon blood but it is interesting what might happen with Patience - if she's more sensitive than Missouri as well, or if they have the same level of talent. It would change from being ominous about Sam - with Missouri as our default example of what the generic psychic of this world building can do as the season 1 intro of such a character, and how Sam is unnerving because he can do more - to a story about outgrowing the talent of your elders and forging your own way in the world with your own strength that only you can define since help can only go so far when you outshine them... In storytelling purposes I can't really imagine they won't make Patience as good as (but with a better innovative mindset) or better than Missouri (in raw power) just because "oh here's a slightly less psychic character" just doesn't really sparkle off the page as a hook. We'll see, but I can imagine it being kinda like the stuff that happens with Sam here, but not in an ominous way, just in a way that Patience is going to move on and join the Wayward Sisters.

Of course Missouri could just die and motivate her even if she has average/normal powers, because she won't be measuring herself against Missouri and it would be a motivation to be as good as she was from a start where her powers are a bit wonky.

(Although with Jack around I can see them being veeery tempted by her being super powerful but not knowing how to control it yet just for the sake of having a parallel.)

I am still not over Sam saying he can "see" Mary now before she appears to him, neatly book-ending this scene and 12x22 and Dean asking Mary to see HIM, and basically the fact they stole literally Mary's entire arc in season 12 from the staging of this scene.

And if you want to keep recycling it in reverse, she burns up again in 13x01 in Dean's dream, to cap that all off.

Wheee

It's weird having Mary on screen in this over-dramatic OMG it's MARY way where it's the most amazing thing that's ever happened, and then we got a whole season of her where she was just kinda around :P

SAM: What’s happening to me? MISSOURI: I know I should have all the answers, but I don’t know.

And yep she's still lying to them and hiding everything she knows, and as such even though she's kinder to Sam since he's probing her less and less snappy than Dean, she doesn't give him the exact advice and information he needs even though apparently she and John knew a hell of a lot for ages...

You know what I would like? This is a total pipe dream, but for her to tell Dean what she actually knew when they met her, and maybe even apologise for withholding information because John said it was for the best and all. Because Sam was FUCKED UP by all this and honestly considering it's all one emotional arc right through the show it makes you wonder what Sam being given actual information by someone other than Azazel when it amuses him to do so would have ever done to help him figure out who he was, what was happening to him, and how he should react to it.

He's sitting on these steps feeling probably somewhat the same as Jack did in 13x02 where he was sitting on that crate in the alley, although from a less aggressive situation, just, kinda reflecting on everything that happened. He sees there's a pattern in everything kicking off, and now Mary apologises to him... And he's got these powers he's only just daring to even voice exist and grappling with what will be his myth arc for basically ever... And Missouri lies to him and withholds information he needs. John knows stuff about Sam - he DIES knowing more about Sam than they ever did until waaay too late. He probably knew BY THEN that Sam had demon blood, which wasn't revealed until the end of season 2, but logically follows from John's last words to mean that whatever reveal about Sam came at the end of the season, this is what he was worried Dean had to save Sam from (or kill him) at the start of the season when he could last have any input on that. And he spent most of season 1 chasing Azazel or working out how to kill him rather than researching Sam so I go back to wondering if Missouri put most of it together herself.

I wonder how much she didn't tell John.

I wonder what she DID tell John the moment the credits rolled on the episode and they were free to talk plot without spoiling anything for us. Did Missouri get him a cup of tea, sit down with him and tell him her full professional opinion of Sam which kicked off the entire everything else John did re: Sam? It's only a couple of episodes before he's on the other side of the country chasing leads on Azazel.

I wonder if she'd tell us any of this 13 years later...

...

I bet she says basically nothing, but these are my hanging questions about season 1 and 2 which ONLY she can enlighten us on.

"Don't you boys be strangers!" "We won't." "See you around!"

welp, sorry Alpha Vampire and "see you next season" but this absolutely and emphatically takes the cake now she is actually returning at long last and it's not just an amusing line about her never coming back - it's an amusing line about her not coming back for thirteen freakin years.

Oh look it's JDM

This rewatch is so weird and messed up about what characters and plot things we're going to pass through. Sure the Wayward Sisters are utterly embedded in the show and even w/o the Patience thing go back more than half it's run - 3/4 of its run in fact - but they appear in such strange places tangential to massive happenings that following the characters around is going to be The Most Chaotic Rewatch Ever, for someone who likes meta-ing patterns.

I mean after this my next episode is to hop along to Claire's intro.

Anyway, John resisting going to see them but "not until I know the truth" which I assume is not the reason Chuck is being hands off in season 13 but I assume he thinks he has his reasons not to intervene.

John learned the truth from Missouri about monsters and the like, but now he's chasing the much bigger, plot important truths... It's going to mean he basically never sees his sons again, except for the prolonged contact at the end of this season/start of the next where he's sitting on whatever he knew about Sam which prompted his last words to Dean. I seriously, SERIOUSLY wonder if him saying he needs to know the truth ties back to "I went to Missouri and learned the truth" and that she DID tell John that Sam has demon blood and she put it all together between their initial contact and meeting Sam with his powers activated in their present day.

Oh gosh, I am sure someone has come up with that before, probably 13 years ago, but still. That's a good conspiracy to end on...

#1x09 #spn rewatches #I mean to post this last night and I'm already another episode through this thing :P #I'll keep adding the parts to this post #I hope I can do them all at the very least by the next time we see a wayward sisters episode #even if I don't think I can watch them all by Friday #at the very least this was the most important one to do for Patience's sake #:D #wayward sisters

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