#clickbait titles and all

[adragonsfriend]

Use this one trick to instantly fix all childhood trauma (Jedi Masters don’t want you to know this)!!!!!

That is what every “if Obi-Wan had just— *adds one extra scene to canon* —then Anakin would’ve had perfect mental health and never listened to Palpatine at all,” sounds like to me. Look I am not an expert on any kind of psychology at all let alone early childhood development but,

It is possible to do your very best to help or raise someone and still have bad or imperfect outcomes, especially when you have someone actively, secretly working against you (cough cough Sith Lord of the month cough), (for many reasons, but in this case particularly), because unravelling the mindset built in early childhood is hard, actually.

Coming at this from the “raised in a safe and loving environment” side of things, it took me years to figure out and internalize that my friends whose parents weren’t as great as mine were functioning in an entirely different landscape when it came to their interactions with adults.

Many years ago when I was in middle school a friend (acquaintance? idk I think most people thought I was annoying) told me that her ankle kept giving out and causing her pain. I asked if she'd told her parents so she could rest or go to the doctor. She told me she had, but her mother either hadn't listened or refused to help. My (approximate) responses?

"So it's not actually that bad then?"

"You should tell her again."

"Are you sure you explained it right?"

The only explanation I could comprehend at the time was that there must have been some unclear communication about the situation or its severity--if her mother had understood she was in pain, she couldn't possibly have just not done anything about it? Adults are responsible, caring, etcetera! They wouldn't do that?!

With more experience, I've come to understand better, and learned to respond in kinder, more helpful ways, but the shift in mindset was not and is not intuitive.

And I had the luxury of figuring all that out whilst being safe myself. Coming from the other direction, being in danger and trying to figure out why other people act like the world is safe? I can't say for sure, but I imagine it’s a lot more complicated.

Point with regard to Star Wars being, it really is harder for Anakin, coming in later, to acclimate to the Jedi ways and thought processes than it is for his peers who grew up in the safe environment of the Temple. And whatever arguments people want to have about how much psychology and therapy exist in the Star Wars universe, or how much “Jedi just do cognitive behavioral therapy” (not totally inaccurate, but reductive on several levels), no matter what the answers to those questions, it will still be harder for Anakin.

There is a reason the council changes its mind on training him only after he is suddenly famous and the Sith are proven to be back. When Anakin was not in significant danger of being snatched up by someone else, it was genuinely probably the easier and safer option—for him and everyone else—for him to live a different life.

The Jedi are not necessarily fully prepared for a child with Anakin's history, and, there is nothing bad about living an ordinary life. Anakin would not have been somehow unforgivably robbed by living life as a mechanic or an engineer or something, rather than being a Jedi.

Anakin is a victim of many things in his life—Sidious, Watto, Gardulla, Tatooine’s everything, his own conscious choices—but he is not a victim of malice, incompetence, or idiocy by the Jedi just because they couldn't—in only a decade or so—help him fully and perfectly unravel the mindset he developed in his early childhood. If there was any lack of qualification on their part, it was one they were aware of—but which was outweighed by the danger of little Anakin getting kidnapped out of normal-kid elementary school.

Being brought up in and around slavery absolutely made him more vulnerable to Sidous and became the basis of their dynamic as master and apprentice. Acting like the trauma that affects his mindset and actions for his entire life can be obliterated just by making minimal changes to the plot is wild to me.

And don’t get me wrong, fics and headcanons can do whatever they want, not everyone wants or is trying to write a deep psychological character study (also fanfic and even fiction in general cannot and should not be held to any standard of realism if it's not serving the story and the author)—simple fix-it’s (my love) are fun and an excellent short-cut to other things like happiness and fluff (my other loves)—but don’t act serious about the idea that adding one conversation about his feelings or one extra explanation about Jedi philosophy would automatically lead to Anakin having perfect mental health outcomes and always making good decisions.

Disclaimer (if the ones throughout weren't enough) : please go forth and do whatever you want. the moral of this post is actually just that (1) you won’t convince me, (2) I wanted to talk about this, (3) the clickbait title was too funny not to post, (4) i literally can't open my mouth without phrasing things like i'm in the middle of a heated debate, and (5) i continue to not be an expert in early childhood development—my evidence is very literally anecdotal

[beautysurvives]

On Woman Coding in Supernatural

supernatural is a show where male characters want to become the new God and seek to create a new world that is better than His, by returning to an idealized past, creating an idealized future, or maintaining an idealized present. But in their pursuit of his power, they find that they cannot create anything new, they can only destroy. The first time this happens, it is in the death of Mary Winchester and the goal to create Lucifer’s perfect vessel for the sake of ushering in the apocalypse. Azazel is searching for a woman who will give birth to Lucifer’s perfect vessel. Both Heaven and Hell play a part in engineering things so that both Sam and Dean (Michael’s perfect vessel) are born, but no one can create them out of thin air.

The last time this happens, it is in Chuck (God) attempting to reunite with Amara in order to not only destroy his world (the canon spn universe) but to also leave it behind and create a new one. He tells her that he needs their combined power to achieve the one thing he can’t do on his own — a “reboot” or “reset.” Joining with Amara looks a lot like absorbing her into himself. We can’t see her, but he assures us that she’s “with him.”

Actually, the last time this happens, it’s when we see Sam with his son Dean II, and his blurry wife in the background. Sam has created a Dean who can have a better life than either of them. A reboot. A woman’s worth in this world is not herself or her identity, but the function of her sex organs. Her ability to house and then expel new life.

In season 4, Sam believes that he must kill Lilith to prevent Lucifer from rising / the apocalypse. However, her death is actually the last step in unsealing his cage. In this scene, a blonde Lilith wears a white dress, similar to both Mary and Jess in their deaths. She is the whore to their mother and maiden.

In mythology, Lilith is Adam’s flawed first wife, and the mother of monsters. In spn, she is Lucifer’s first “creation” — an already existent human soul that he himself corrupted. The first demon. Hence, Lilith is, symbolically, both mother and child. And her death at Sam’s hand signifies his role as the unwitting killer of his own mother, and the symbolic killer of the feminine. Similarly, Ruby’s presence at his side, feeding her her own blood (as Azazel did) and encouraging him to drink the blood of others, makes her (like Azazel) a sort of wet nurse or midwife, helping Lilith to birth the apocalypse with Sam as both the symbolic father and son. The man who brings Lucifer into being through violent action, and simultaneously the son who must continue to nurse on demon blood in order to grow into Lucifer.

Though there are many different ways to describe possession in Supernatural, it is clear that Lucifer’s possession of Sam is intended not as an act of violent penetration (in contrast to the language used to describe Michael’s theoretical possession of Dean), but as a literal embodiment. Sam is not just going to be “worn” or “wielded.” He is going to become, and as a matter of fact he always has been. This is illustrated to Sam through the revelation that many of Sam’s closest friends, advisors, and allies throughout his life were, in fact, planted there by Lucifer. And, just as Lucifer plans to take his vengeance and set things right, Sam undoubtedly wishes to do the same. Sam’s ability to cage Lucifer is the one instance in which victory does not require violence from him, but the opposite. Restraint. When he is reminded of his relationship with Dean, when he realizes how badly Lucifer has hurt him and allows himself to feel that pain as if it is his own — when he goes from embodying Lucifer to caging him within himself — from being to being a vessel — he sacrifices himself, discarding any hope of a future in order to protect his brother from any further harm. The same thing that Dean tried to do for him when they were children (informed by his own mother), and the same thing that Mary in her death.

In season 5, Cas takes Claire Novak as a vessel, and tells us that she, like Jimmy, is chosen. Jimmy pleads for Cas to release Claire and take him instead, and Cas, seemingly moved despite having just been forcibly reprogrammed as punishment for his empathy, repossess Jimmy.

In season 6 Cas takes Eve’s (the mother of monsters) children — the souls in purgatory — into himself. In this same season, Dean lives with Lisa and attempts to be a parent to her son Ben. He admits that he has started to feel like Ben is really his son, even though he isn’t. In episode one of s6, Exile on Main St, anticipating ridicule about his new domestic lifestyle by his family, Dean refers to himself as a soccer mom. Samuel Campbell, their resurrected grandfather, sincerely (not tauntingly) tells Dean that he reminds him of Mary. Dean, who, as we learned in s4, is named after Mary’s mother and Samuel’s wife, Deanna. In this world, settling down is always associated with becoming feminine. A man who quits hunting to live with a woman has been symbolically castrated, losing the aspect of his masculinity that is violent and heroic — a version of masculinity that Dean simultaneously rejects and feels compelled (by duty) to return to.

In season 11 we meet Amara, who was (symbolically) caged inside Dean, and who first manifests as a baby that he saves against Sam’s recommendation — as Sam very pragmatically wishes to focus on saving as many people as possible. In doing so, Sam finds himself afflicted with the same monstrous condition that plagues the people in this town. He can only save them and himself by expelling the sickness. In this same season, Crowley, still trying to get over his previous connection with Dean, raises Amara and guides her through her childhood, feeding her demons — which are corrupted human souls. As she matures and breaks free, she seems to prefer human souls, but she is seen eating angel souls/essences/grace as well. One human who had her soul taken describes it as “being with Amara” and seems to feel mainly release and relaxation. This is the same offer she makes to Dean. Though the language and implications are of sexual and romantic union, there is a clear womb-like connotation in her proposition. To be with her is to have ones soul kept safe inside her. The apocalypse she promises to bring is not only destruction, but a return to the state of being inside the womb. The state the universe was in before she and Chuck “split apart.” A state unruined by existence, everything preserved in a state of potential being, reduced to ideas, concepts, feelings, urges. Everything unconscious and unformed — the archetypical feminine. The darkness as ignorance.

Throughout the series, a primary question is whether or not any of the hunters (or Cas or Jack) can retire from hunting and live a normal human life. This is an essential part of Sam’s character journey — can he ever “settle down” and have a family of his own? Answering this is always contingent on the presence or absence of a woman at his side. We are asked, how can he achieve this if every woman who enters his life will inevitably be killed? He does not show the same consistent desire that Dean does to raise a child until s13 when he meets Jack. And then, in the final season, Eileen is reintroduced into his life, and the question comes up again about Sam “settling down.” Resurrecting Eileen is presented as a heroic act for Sam alone to achieve. Dean’s plan was to house her in a crystal — Rowena’s soul bomb — a metaphorical womb that can be repurposed as a weapon (only if enough souls are inside, just as Amara gained strength from consuming souls, as Cas gained power by consuming souls, and Dean was made into a bomb by absorbing the souls into himself). But Sam wants her to live again, and finds an opportunity through the spell that Jack forced Rowena to make in order to bring their mother back to life. The spell that failed, because Mary’s resurrected vessel was not capable of holding a soul within it. Like Mary herself, it fails at being what Amara was, a symbolic womb for the infant soul. It is empty, and incapable of being filled. Infertile.

But Sam is able to achieve it with Eileen, through a scene that mirrors both birth and baptism. Eileen emerges naked from a tub, her soul itself transformed into flesh. Where Dean, Cas, and Amara have all been related to the soul, gaining their power from it, ingesting souls and becoming, themselves, wombs — Sam is only concerned with the physical world. He is a character of action, who constantly leaves and returns to his heroic starting point. His blood drinking arc — in contrast to Cas’s soul eating, or the soul-bomb climax of Dean’s moc arc with Amara — is the physical alternative to the soul. Demon blood is also human blood — it is like the symbolic blood of Christ, the son of God — where Dean and Cas habitually ingest the spirit. This is further symbolized by Dean’s becoming a demon in s10, fulfilling his demonic duty by carrying out soul contracts for Crowley.

But in season 15, a season all about undoing the past and returning to an idealized one — to the beginning of the show itself, when it was just about two brothers hunting monsters, without angels and without God — Sam’s ability to leave hunting and finally accept a “normal life” is put in the spotlight, directly mirroring Chuck’s desire to leave this world behind and start a better one. Concepts like normal, human, Heaven and Paradise in spn, have always been related to the feminine — impossible to achieve for characters who view themselves as soldiers, only accessible through the consensual use and death of a woman and/or sacrifice (Mary, Kelly Kline). Those who seek to create a better world — a world safe from monsters — are not allowed to enjoy that world, because they can only seek it through violence.

For Chuck, a better world can only be achieved by abandoning any attachment he has to these characters and this world — and he can only join forces with Amara on his own terms, otherwise they will be locked in a constant power struggle. He only gets what he wants when Amara loses her own remaining attachment to the world (as before, she was content to passively enjoy it even while it was destroyed before her eyes) — her trust in Dean. She loses her tie to him an episode before he loses Cas, his own reason for existing.

Amara’s willing fusion with Chuck is neither her death, nor a fusion of their identities, but a reabsorption — or, consumption. It is the loss of her identity in favor of his. The final victory of the masculine aspect of God, the final act of submission from the feminine. Not equality or balance, but the continued structural placement of the masculine as higher/holier than the feminine despite her having power he cannot access. It is her becoming an organ, a womb — internal and unseen, but giving him the power to be able to leave this world behind. It’s the strength to be able to release. A paternal strength, both of them lacking emotional attachment to what they once loved. Chuck no longer desires to put himself in this story, just as he wants to end the show, he wants the death of this character — Chuck is the weaker version of God, the one that he wants to escape. He wants to transcend this earthly state, leaving this identity behind to create a new and improved one.

So every death in this final season, including Dean’s, Cas’s, Jack’s, and Eileen’s (as well as her erasure from the narrative), like Mary’s death and Amara’s absorption, are presented as necessary sacrifices. Like Jess. The symbolic death of the motherly/feminine aspect of God, which can nurture but attaches to the point of self destruction. Dean’s death was, I think, a suicide framed as an accident — his sacrifice, in order to force Sam to leave the hunting life behind, but also to ensure that, if one was truly destined to kill the other, he would never have to be the one to do it. Dean’s death is presented to us as the only possible end to the series which can not only scrub clean the sins of the past and return Sam to an idealized state (one of potential that can be fulfilled), but also allow him, like God!Jack (the better, more powerful version of Chuck, still containing the symbolic womb Amara, like the symbolic womb of the blurry wife), to set in motion a better future. A “reboot.” This is only possible in union with the feminine — but this union cannot look like becoming or attempting to replace, embody, be contained within, or contain the feminine, as it has been implied in both Dean and Cas’s past parental / Godlike roles — it must be done through consumption or use of the female as an organ. The womb (and vagina) as tools — a means to an end, but one which does not alter or lose the male identity.

[v-tired-queer]

If I had a nickel for every time a YouTuber that I watch was bleeding out of the butt, I'd have exactly two nickles, which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice

[right-there-ride-on]

Sbr is only mildly morally ambiguous and that’s okay

okay so the title is misleading 🫣 this is just a short examination of Johnny v Valentine (and Johnny & Valentine) with a little analysis of the confrontation.

for me valentine’s defining character trait isn’t his patriotism but that’s he’s a massive fucking liar. excellent writing for a politician. the only promise he ever kept was the one he made to lucy not to harm steven. and even then valentine is also super vindictive, so even though he didn’t kill him he made sure to torture him a little. Valentine is not at all the magnanimous man he presents himself to be and the constant discrepancy between his words and his actions proves that. when he’s trying to trick johnny into ending the rotation he hits all correct appeals but johnny knows in his gut that this man is a liar.

sometimes ppl act like sbr proposes a huge moral quandary about valentine’s intentions and whether he was the one “walking the righteous path” all along. but there’s really not. that’s Johnny’s internal battle. Since nick’s death johnny believed himself to be a curse / burden / bad person, but through the race he undergoes several trials that end in self-improvement and learning to have grace with himself. by the end of the narrative Johnny has evolved into someone who does have the strength of character and integrity necessary to judge the actions of someone else, whether he believes it or not, and regardless of whether he feels the right to. So yes, johnny was right to kill valentine. there’s no ifs or buts about it. the true brutality and cruelty of Valentine’s ideal world was very clearly portrayed in the way D4C Love Train functions. the corpse appeared to ‘choose’ Valentine by granting him Love Train, but at the same time it was also healing Johnny. if we look at the corpse through the lens of it primarily being a tool used to achieve the collector’s desires, we see that it empowered both Valentine and Johnny and indirectly or not set them on a collision course with each other. Perhaps there was a question of who was ‘righteous’ for the corpse itself, but the narrative itself tells us over and over again that it’s Johnny.

look at it this way. Johnny, who for most of his life believed he was spiritually and later physically damaged beyond hope, was empowered through the corpse and ended the narrative with a new chance at life. Valentine, who desired a world where not just America would prosper, but where he would be the head of said prospering state, and embody the power behind it, was granted the ability to achieve that world. Yet during their confrontation, the callous cruelty and negative consequences of Valentine’s vision is made apparent over and over again. First with Lucy, then with the innocents killed ‘somewhere else’, and lastly with Gyro and Johnny. Valentine’s actions always betray the truth of his intentions; once he proposed the deal, should Johnny have accepted, he intended to backstab Johnny and kill him the moment he got what he wanted. If he had truly been the ‘righteous one’, he would have kept his word and left Johnny alone once the rotation was reversed. But leaving Johnny alive would have meant he was no longer the most powerful man in the room, and that idea is something Valentine can’t stand.

Valentine is not a good person with good intentions. He claims to care about America, yet throughout the story discards his men and citizens like bugs (consider the train engineer). His actions continually demonstrate the reality: Valentine is power-hungry, petty, vindictive, ruthless, and above all else, a manipulative liar.

Valentine’s patriotism is the motivation behind his actions, but his brutality and deceptiveness defines those actions and is evident in everything he does. The implicit reason Alt!Diego failed was because he believed Valentine. By the end of the story there shouldn’t be a question on whether Valentine or Johnny was in the right. Valentine was the villain and he needed to be defeated. His ‘righteous’ world was, unequivocally, wrong.

[dandp]

Remember when they posted a video with "Dan and Phil Get Married" in the title on Valentine's Day

[sendpseuds]

sunrise sunset

[roseaesynstylae]

The only thing I’ve found about Star Wars YouTube that doesn’t give me a headache is that there seem to be some videos with some obscure/out there lore that might be interesting. Whether or not they’ll lessen my constant irritation over all the anti-Jedi bullshit remains to be seen.

[bataddictedloony]

hey uh, youtubers in general:

I get it. You wanna keep your followers in the loop. You wanna defend yourself. You’re a public personality so you feel like you have to make your bagage and private life public but, frankly, it is none of our business.

We’re not your friends, we’re not your family.

It feels disingenuous! It’s not about proof, it’s about who cries the most convincingly on screen or who has the most dedicated followers. IT’S NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. Figure this shit out in court, not youtube! Stop back-and-forthing, you’re just confusing everyone more and forcing your followers to pick a side, for something we DO NOT HAVE THE FULL PICTURE OF, AND NEVER WILL.

Tell us an accusation has been made, tell us you’re working on it and that videos will be delayed because of it, tell us you’ll let us know once the case has been closed, tell us what we learn, what are we raising awareness towards, and then move on in whatever way is appropriate . Everything else? Not for us. Not our monkeys. Not our business.

[phivorce]

did you know there's a firefox extension that replaces clickbait youtube titles with more informative titles voted on by users?

[uselessdancedata]

maybe this is just me being a skeptic but i really hate how social media-oriented yagp has been getting in recent years. it's my fault for always clicking on their story but damn

[comradejoanmir]

[fedorasaurus]

Did you know that there was a sequel to Altered Beast on the Gameboy Advance? Here's a video where I talk about it!

[creative-anchorage]

That is what social media does, it floods you with the world’s pain. […It’s] been taken over by people sending me images from Israel and Gaza, and they think they’re doing good things, they think they’re making sure no one is looking away.  There is an assumption from people who are very passionate that because someone isn’t posting these images then they must not care, because the only way that person knows how to care is to post the images.  I noticed I was doing less good because I was so distressed by the world that, counterintuitively you think, oh, I’m not burying my head in the sand, look at me observing and acknowledging the distress of the world. That is ethical only if you put it into action. If it makes you do nothing but feel distressed then you have to ask yourself the question, who else is suffering for my distress? […] It’s not that I’ve buried my head in the sand, I just need to have agency in what I’m seeing and what I’m reading.

[dravidious]

I really do appreciate the idea behind DeArrow but I really wish it had a block button because some of these people should not be writing titles. Like,

Is it really that bad to phrase a title as a question?

Putting more details in the title doesn't actually improve it

Jesus fucking christ your hyper-descriptive title doesn't even FIT!!

[knightsquire]

Inflammatory headlines aside, ppl acting like millie/ruby being in only one season is a bad and crazy thing when it's literally normal for companions to have one season lmao Martha, Donna and Bill are right there

[bleue-flora]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKZ5JtzSafQ&lc=UgyHmS4KpcI0Bm96set4AaABAg.AA7GRjCutdwAA7xFhe6Cuh here

Oh why thank you… ;)

I rest my case.