#do not worry friends the paid writers don’t know the canon either

[britcision]

Anyway in case anyone was wondering why I do firmly aver I did not get to DPxDC from DC and am not a DC fan despite having consumed all of the Harley Quinn and Suicide Squad runs up to 2018

(And have an exciting grab bag of shows, movies, and assorted trivia under my belt besides

Batman vs Dracula was fucking great fight me)

It’s because DC as a whole is hostile as fuck to the concept of being a casual fan

(And about 90% of the main heroes annoy the hell out of me for the very tropes that DC is known and praised for in their heroes I am here for villains, antiheroes, and sidekicks exclusively)

There is no such thing as consistent characterization, especially as you consume more content or fall down a rabbit hole, and the rabbit holes are ENDLESS

Everyone cameos everywhere else, referential jokes are often dropped in as Easter eggs for people who have read every single other DC comic put out in the same decade and yet within the same comics you get glaringly inconsistent characterization and different retcons for the same events

Big stories are retold and retconned every couple years, we got 3 separate Spiderman origin movies and the exact same Batman origin in more than half the live action movies; DC PAYS PEOPLE to make up their own different versions of canon events

There is a REASON that the Marvel and DC cinematic universes are both officially divorced from comic canon; the sheer volume of canon content is inaccessible to most of the population, and DC and Marvel know it

That’s why the New 52 was a big divorce from all previous canon too - it’s an on ramp for new fans, because sorting through the web of old content is off putting as fuck

It’s the one thing not a single DC fan I’ve spoken to who complained about “canon characterization” has bothered defending or even acknowledging, and yet it has been the core of all of their arguments:

“Canon is what I want it to be, not what any of the sources say”

And listen, I was a Torchwood fan, we were the archetypal example of “canon only happened if I acknowledge it” (so sad that show ended after only two seasons and nothing else ever happened again Children of Earth who), you just gotta acknowledge that that’s what you’re doing

But you frankly cannot have a serious conversation about canon characterization with someone who does not acknowledge entire swaths of canon and cannot understand why that makes their argument completely invalid

Any kind of conversation about the “right” characterization for a DC character necessarily has to involve the acknowledgement that it’s your personal preferred characterization, not a One True Canon, because I guarantee there are canon incidents for every single big name and most of the small ones that directly counter the ones you like

You may note I share a bunch of posts with things like “My Batman would never do this”, as opposed to “canon Batman would never do this”

Hell, on Batman specifically there are hundreds of beautifully put together posts talking about how the different canon runs get him wrong; I too prefer a Bruce Wayne who does genuinely care about his family and tries to protect them, but isn’t perfect or always right over the massive asshole elitist who just grunts and treats them like soldiers

Canon Batman slaps his kids around, it’s the meme that broke containment and you don’t have to like it or accept it as something your Batman would do!

But it’s still canon

Both versions have a massive well of canon support, and exist simultaneously in the multiverse

Every single characterization of a character is true and exists in the multiverse

And that is why the idea of a “canon version” of any DC character is utterly meaningless

TL;DR: write DC characters however the fuck you want and do not worry about it for more than 10 minutes together, that is what the paid DC writing staff do

There will be at least two pieces of canon media to back up whatever interpretation of the character you pick

Not everyone will like that characterization or agree with how you see the character, and that is all fine and good! But “canon” is meaningless in this context, neatly encapsulated by the “multiverse” explanation

Everything is canon, which means that nothing is canon

[quillyfied]

Omenstuck Act 2 Bonus Content

Hello! Here’s just some extra bonus content from the pretty weighty upd8 I posted to my fanfic Omenstuck today (for Chapter 4: Act 2 specifically). A lot of background info went into it that I’m not going to get much occasion to use, so I’m doing what any self-respecting writer would do and dumping it here instead. Obviously has huge spoilers for Omenstuck so if you haven’t read the upd8s from today, don’t look. Hope the readmore holds on mobile, and there are some images below, too. Enjoy!

So for starters, I’m going to post the little cheat sheet that I had on hand for remembering all the characters’ assigned blood colors, Trollian handles, god tier titles, and quadrants (both filled and experimented with):

In order, here’s what we’ve got:

Crowley. Blood: burgundy. UN: anthomanicCaduceus. GT: Rogue of Life. Quadrants: Aziraphale (matesprit), Eric (auspistice, unwitting) and Hastur (other leaf of auspisticism quadrant, unwitting). Lusus: snake

Eric. Blood: brown. UN: coneyCloning. GT: Heir of Time. Quadrants: Auspistice to Crowley and Hastur (unwitting); Uriel (auspistice between arguing Erics, short-lived). Lusus: rabbit

Beelzebub. Blood: yellow. UN: carrionTyrant. GT: Prince of Rage. Quadrants: Dagon (moirail), Gabriel (kismesis). Lusus: giant fly

Ligur. Blood: lime/red (vacillating glitch). UN: guanineChameleon. GT: Sylph of Space. Quadrants: Hastur (moirail), Michael (kismesis). Lusus: chameleon

Hastur. Blood: olive. UN: amphibiousGrunt. GT: Knight of Breath. Quadrants: Ligur (moirail), Eric (auspistice, unwitting) and Crowley (other leaf of auspisticism quadrant, unwitting). Lusus: frog

Dagon. Blood: jade. UN: aquaticTaskmaster. GT: Witch of Mind. Quadrants: Beelzebub (moirail), Sandalphon (matesprit, short-lived), Metatron (kismesis, one-sided crush). Lusus: lungfish

Aziraphale. Blood: teal. UN: aetherialAntiquarian. GT: Thief of Doom. Quadrants: Crowley (matesprit), Michael (auspistice, coercing) and Sandalphon (other leaf of auspisticism quadrant, coercing). Lusus: ??? (dragon, owl?)

Michael. Blood: cerulean. UN: tenebrousAgent. GT: Seer of Void. Quadrants: Uriel (moirail), Aziraphale (one leaf of auspisticism quadrant, coerced) and Sandalphon (other leaf of auspisticism quadrant, co-conspirator), Ligur (kismesis). Lusus: ??? (tbh spider would still fit here)

Sandalphon. Blood: indigo. UN: toughenedCrusader. GT: Page of Blood. Quadrants: Michael (auspistice, co-conspirator) and Aziraphale (other leaf of auspisticism quadrant, coerced), Gabriel (moirail), Dagon (matesprit, short-lived). Lusus: ??? (Possibly musclebeast)

Uriel. Blood: purple. UN: celestialAureate. GT: Maid of Heart. Quadrants: Michael (moirail), Eric (mediated between two of his arguing selves, short-lived). Lusus: ??? (sea-goat still viable)

Gabriel. Blood: violet. UN: gregariousArchangel. GT: Bard of Hope. Quadrants: Sandalphon (moirail), Beelzebub (kismesis). Lusus: ??? (seahorse or shark)

Metatron. Blood: fuchsia. UN: communicantGodhead. GT: Mage of Light. Quadrants: object of one-sided pitch crush from Dagon. Lusus: Horrorterror from Beyond (Gl’bgol’yb, probably)

Here’s the shipping chart of what this madness looked like:

Solid lines for established or longer-lasting relationships, dotted lines for either crushes or experiments that didn’t pan out. Crowley, Eric, and Hastur’s auspisticism is dotted because it’s not a consciously-thought out relationship that’s actually been defined so much as a convenient social contract that keeps Hastur from killing Crowley by distracting him with a multitude of Erics, which makes it a pretty functional auspisticism, actually.

Some notes:

- If you’re thinking that the blood colors and god tier titles don’t exactly fit, you’re right, but there’s a reason, and we’ll get to it in future chapters of Omenstuck. Maybe one day I’ll do the thing proper and give them all more accurate classpects and blood colors, but I think I did pretty well, given everything.

- This means that it was Hastur and Ligur’s jobs, as the Knight and Space players, to breed the Genesis Frog, which creates each new universe, and that tickles me to the bone.

- Ligur’s whole situation is a nod to both Good Omens and to Homestuck; for a bit I entertained making Crowley the hemo-mutant that Karkat is, but thought he fit best lower on the totem pole (on his belly he shall crawl and all that). Canonically, Karkat’s bright red human-like blood is a mutation off of an old hemospectrum caste, the limebloods, and it tickled me to think of Ligur occupying both the limebloods and the red mutation that spawned from it, as a nod to his color-changing in Good Omens and his affiliation with chameleons. Also, apparently it’s the guanine in their skin that makes chameleons change color, which is what the G in Homestuck pesterchum handles stands for (bc the chats are all supposed to represent DNA strands that make up each Genesis Frog that creates each new universe), so it came together kinda perfectly. If Ligur ever was in a pesterlog, I was going to code it so his lines would alternate colors, but it didn’t pan out that way.

- Was it overly simplistic to cast Hell as the lowbloods and Heaven as the highbloods? Yes. But there are two reasons for this, one of which I can’t say because spoilers, one of which I will freely admit, which is that I got tired and just simplified where I could because I was already putting more effort into backstory that turned out to be less relevant than I thought once I finally got the dang thing written.

- In the bowels of my Instagram there is a doodle of Gabriel with the traditional Bardic codpiece and an expression to match, but I didn’t keep it in canon. It is definitely there in spirit and more loving detail will be paid attention to it if I ever go back and do a proper Homestuck troll AU.

- There was a subplot I discarded when thinking of the quadrant entanglements that involved Dagon hooking up with both Sandalphon and Michael in a redrom way and that being one of the catalysts for the bloodbath at the end, because I adore Dagon/Michael and wanted to go there first but she was already appearing so much, and I remember reading about Dagon/Sandalphon once in a fic I wish I could remember off the top of my head and it was so bizarre I adored it. Ultimately I stuck with Dagon and Sandalphon having a redrom fling, because why not.

- Dagon was also going to have a whole Thing against Metatron that boiled down to her having vestigial seadweller traits and being jealous of an actual seadweller that didn’t do his heritage credit, but Metatron was such a non-entity that it didn’t feel relevant to bring up, with so much already getting crammed into this upd8.

- Gabriel and Eridan have some eerie synergy and that’s a hill I’ll die on.

- Uriel was supposed to have a bigger part, too, delving into how they fit into the whole purpleblood Mirthful Messiahs cult and how they use their paint to emphasize their vitiligo (inspired by their canonical pretty gold face markings), but once again...not enough room, not enough interaction with Crowley or Aziraphale. They were either going to be a huge part of it, or eschew it entirely in favor of worshipping Metatron and possibly Metatron’s eldritch lusus instead, but eh. Roads untraveled. I also didn’t doodle their facepaint while I was doing my concept sketches/brainstorming activities so I just let it be.

- The whole Michael and Sandalphon using a heavily manipulative auspisticism to blackmail and control Aziraphale was a concept I had from the beginning, but when I wrote the scene, it actually shook me up a lot; Auspisticism is one of the platonic and weirder quadrants in Homestuck, but it didn’t hit me until I had written it how that particular dynamic could be exploited and turned into something kinda borderline abusive, if not outright abusive (I’m trying to be more careful in how I apply the word so I don’t know for sure if what I wrote counts as fully abusive, or just a super bad time). To be honest, in all the Homestuck fics that ever were, I don’t think I ever read a single one that described what I did in this fic (and RAPE MENTION TW a part of me that is forever struck by my friend’s fic that described a brutal pale rape, as in forcing the usual nonsexual markers of the pale quadrant on an unwilling victim, was worried that I had written ashen rape, which was NOT where I wanted to go; after worrying about it to friends and sleeping on it, I don’t think I quite went there, but the implication that it COULD happen is going to haunt me for a while).

- I did want to get more detailed with a lot of things, like Crowley and Aziraphale’s influencing and talking with humans, and how it was affecting things like their vocabulary and how they saw the world, but it was just too much to tackle in any great detail.

- the whole thing where Crowley uses his god tier powers to steal Life energy from his fellow stranded trolls and makes plants that could potentially feed them one day? Totally unexpected. I did a LOT of refreshing myself on the classes and aspects of god tiers when I was doing the groundwork for this part of the fic, but it didn’t strike me that that was a thing Crowley could do until I was already writing it. And maybe Aziraphale should’ve been a little more horrified by it, but Crowley’s right, they ARE immortal now. Also the whole “taking Life energy and redistributing it among allies” thing probably wasn’t meant to be interpreted as “puts the other trolls in the Mood for quadrant hookups” but it was too hilarious a coincidence to ignore. Life needs things to live, as a wise internet dnd player once said, and when you’re the last of your species, you’ve gotta do what you can to propagate (even if it’s functionally impossible to restore your species, since there’s no Mother Grub to donate slurry to and no ectobiological lab to make ectobabies from. God loves a trier). Does that make all the hookups dubious consent, since weird Life magic was involved? I don’t think so, I think it just accelerated what was already present, but I’ll leave that to y’all to judge.

- Crowley was actually supposed to be the one to die. It said so in my notes. It was a whole Thing, Crowley getting speared or shot or whatever and looking at Aziraphale like “ha I got this one better luck next time”. But then I made Aziraphale a Thief of Doom, which was originally a joke to myself about how he hoards books (Thief players are hoarders and Doom can represent rules or systems), and then he got all contemplative and hit ME back with “no, no, sister, you made me a Thief of Doom, I’m gonna steal this death meant for Crowley and keep it all to myself, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” And he was RIGHT. I can’t believe I’ve killed Aziraphale THREE TIMES now. And I completely forgot about how god tier players are also immortal from being killed unless the death is Heroic or Just until, again Aziraphale reminded me by pushing Crowley out of the way--therefore making his death to sacrifice himself for his friend and beloved Heroic. I played myself in every possible way. Checkmate, brain. (As for what that means in future chapters, stick around, it’s only gonna get weirder, but Homestucks who are puzzled at the inclusion of Dream Shards rather than Dream Bubbles are encouraged to draw some conclusions of their own.)

I think that’s all I wanted to talk about, so have a doodle of Michael with her Seer hood drawn for funsies.

See y’all later! Feel free to send me an ask or a comment or whatever if you have any questions or just wanna talk about this madness I’m creating!

[gothamangelwings]

Okay, so I wasn’t sure if I was going to say anything about this, but I have to, for my own sanity. Excuse me for my rambling (especially about Castiel) and repeating myself, which I probably will do in this post.

Truth is I only got into Supernatural a little over a year ago. I just kept avoiding it over the years. I think when it was in it’s 7th or 8th season, I thought to myself “oh this should be ending soon. I’ll just wait til its over and watch it then” That did not happen. Jump to last year when I heard about the Scoobynatural episode. I love Scooby so I had to watch. And I loved it. And I really loved Sam and Dean. But I also couldn’t stop thinking about the guy in the trench coat with the deep voice named Castiel. Did very little research to find out he’s an angel. That’s all I wanted to know. Went to netflix and started watching the show from the beginning. By the time I got midway thru season 3 I was hooked. I started buying the dvds in bunches. Watching as much as a I could a week. When I got to season 4 I was Cass on the cover of the boxset and said “that’s him! That’s the angel! He’s in the season!” I actually didn’t know he would show up right in the beginning of the season but when Dean was at that gas station and gas started shattering I thought. That’s him isn’t it? That’s Castiel. Misha’s actual entrance on the show is the best in history. I do love Sam and Dean but I’m not going to lie and pretend like Castiel isn’t my favorite. Because he is. I adore that awkward angel. He is the reason I happily kept watching and brought all the dvds because I knew Misha was still working on the show. He is the reason I will buy season 15. I started shipping Destiel in season 5 but when I re-watched the series (Yes I watched it twice in less than a year. One over a period of several months the other over a few weeks before the show came back after hiatus.) I saw moments in season 4 that i missed the first time around.

So yes this finale makes me cry and not in a good way. although there are a few saving graces.

Let’s begin.

First let me start by saying I do not in any way blame the actors. Especially Jensen. He said he thought the ending was bad and had to be talked into it. Dean/Jensen deserved better. I blame the writers and producers and The CW

Second, repeat after me:

Cass is in heaven with Dean

Cass is in heaven with Dean

Cass is in heaven with Dean

Cass is in heaven with Dean

Now speaking of Castiel, who I mostly want to talk about before addressing the rest of this mess. Castiel/Misha deserved better. There really is no reason Misha couldn’t be in the final episode unless there was something on his end. Although seeing that he recently went to California to shoot a something for Amazon and took West to the Winchester House. He can definitely travel. But if there was some reason on his end, then okay, fine then. However that doesn’t excuse the way the handled his character in these last two episodes.

Yes in 15x19 Dean demands Chuck bring Cass back. Dean remembers Cass’s words when Chuck calls him the ultimate killer. Yes, Dean runs to the door when he thinks Cass has just called him. Instead in was Lucifer. What a slap in the face to the fans and an insult to Misha after that beautiful confession of love.

But the end of the episode. Jack becomes God and no one says “What about Cass?”

Now 15x20. Sam brings up Castiel and Dean is just like “move on“. No, That is not Dean. No matter what Dean cared about Castiel, to the point that being without him in the past led him to depression. i understand he doesn’t want Castiel’s sacrifice to be in vein. But come on. There’s living on and being happy and then there’s acting like the guy didn’t matter. Again, no. That is not Dean. Not after all the development those two have had. I know Dean wasn’t always perfect when it came to Cass but he did care. What happened to “We lost everything. Now you’re going to bring him back” What happened to the purgatory apology and admitting his anger issues. And so much more.

Again Castiel is in heaven. Jack got him out of The Empty. But they could of made it more clear. ( I swear, if they are leaving this up to interpretation....) Because I see so many people who have “conveniently” missed what Bobby said and insist he’s still in The Empty. Or just want to say “well that’s not what he meant. Cas is still dead, he just meant his influence on Jack” or some shit like that.(Now that I think about maybe influence isn’t the right word to use with this fandom lol)

Anyway lets say that Misha could not in anyway be there for filming. YOU CAN STILL ADDRESS HIS CHARACTER PROPERLY AND GIVE HIM A SATISFYING ENDING. In fact you barely have to change the scene between Dean and Bobby just add a few more lines.

Dean: “So Jack did all that?”

Bobby: “Well Cass helped”

Dean: “Wait, Cass is here?!”

Bobby: ‘Yep, Kid got him out.”

Dean: “Well where is he? Can I see him?”

Bobby (smiling): “Now calm down ya idjit. He’ll be back soon. Had some business to take of. But he is planning to stick around here with the rest of us.’

Dean (smiling, happy because he’s getting a second chance): Good. He belongs with us. With me. (takes a drink) It’s just too bad...

Bobby (knowing he’s talking about Sam: “Don’t worry he’ll be here shortly...”

Scene plays out as normal but instead when Sam and Dean are reunited. Dean tells him “Let’s head back, Mom, Dad, Bobby, and Cass are waiting for us. Along with everyone else we loved and lost when we were alive.”

Or... a few scenarios with Castiel there (even for a few moments)

1. When Dean dies (yeah we’ll talk about that) Jack sends down Cass to take him to heaven. Dean leaves his body. Watches as Sam falls apart and then hears “Hello Dean” turns and there’s Cass to guide him to heaven and also let him know Sam will be okay and will live a happy life”

2. The scene with Bobby starts the way it did but instead after he says “Well Cass helped” he points behind Dean.

Cass: “Hello Dean.”

Dean: “Cas! Aw, it’s good to see you. You have no idea.”

They embrace. Maybe the say something about the confession maybe they don’t but at least they’re together and we know that they have time to talk.

Episode continues as it did but again Dean tells Sam that Castiel is here waiting for them.

3. Episode plays exactly as it did. Except at the very end after Sam and Dean reunite on the bridge...

Cass: “Hello Dean. Hello Sam”

Both: Cass!

The three hug. Dean a bit longer.

Dean: “Well look at that. Team Free Will back together again. This time forever.”

In any scenario Castiel is living in heaven with the boys. Him and Dean eventually talk about what happened. In my canon Dean returns his feelings but even if he can’t it’s okay because Dean does care about Cass. And Castiel’s happiness was just in being able to say it. Either way they’re together along with everyone else they love and will be waiting for those who haven’t arrived yet.

Also Cass finally gets his guinea pig. Because he deserves it.

ONCE AGAIN, EVEN IF MISHA COULDN’T BE THERE. THERE WERE STILL BETTER WAYS TO HANDLE THIS ENDING! OH AND THERE BETTER NOT BE SOME LAME ASS THING LIKE ‘HE’S IN HEAVEN WORKING WITH JACK BUT ISN’T ALLOWED HERE BECAUSE THE NEW GOD LIKES TO KEEP ANGELS SEPARATE FROM THE REST OF US’

NO. CASTIEL IS DEFINITELY WITH DEAN IN HEAVEN. END OF STORY.

Moving on the other problems which I won’t go into full detail in like I did Castiel.

Dean’s death. The ever loving fuck was that? A nail?! I get that they finally get to call the shots in there own lives now but come on! A nail. And this is what a few weeks after defeating Chuck. Who, if he wants to can have a happy life. You know when Cass heard about this he rolled his eyes. Like “Really?!”

Ewwww that forehead touch. I know for most people it’s just a sweet final moment between two siblings as one dies. But we all know this is fuel for the Winc*sters and b*bros. I mean come on now. You’re afraid to have Dean even acknowledge Castiel’s feelings but a forehead touch that can and will be taken out of context as romantic between two brothers is fine and dandy. I was watching this with my Mom and even she was like “That forehead touch,,, why.. just why...”

Funny thing about my Mom. (Sorry not sorry going back to talk about Cass for a moment) She has been watching SPN with me this year but honestly only (not even) half paid attention. She has a habit of always looking at her phone even when it’s something she wants to watch. Two weeks ago after 15X18 I asked “Do you believe Cass’s confession was romantic?”

Her response. “No, they’re just friends. Angels aren’t supposed to feel romantic love.’ We get into a small argument.

A few days later...

Me: “Misha confirmed it was romantic.”

Mom: “Oh, well that settles it then. I just was taught that angels didn’t feel that kind of love.”

Me: “Yeah but your forgetting a few things. 1. Cass isn’t like other angels and 2. This is a fictional tv show not the actual bible.

Mom laughs: “Good point, Guess I didn’t think about that.”

Me: “Y’know people are actually saying  that Cass can’t be gay or bi because Dean isn’t.”

Mom: “That’s stupid. One has nothing to do with the other. Even if Dean doesn’t feel the same way that doesn’t change Castiel’s feelings.”

Jump to the last few days.

Mom: “Cass is going to show up in the finale. He and Dean will be reunited! Maybe he’s one of those people in the masks being controlled by The Empty. Or maybe there will be a scene in the barn where Dean is on the ground about to be stabbed and Cass saves him in the knick of time!”

Mom after the finale: “That was terrible. Very disappointed. They really couldn’t get Misha for few minutes. They better not use covid as an excuse with all those people on that bridge. Everything about this episode felt wrong” (she said that about 15x19 too). (Grabs her phone to look at twitter) “Misha is crying. This episode doesn’t deserve pie.”

We brought pie. We did not eat it.

Moving on.. .yeah yeah the wig on Jared was awful. But who cares. What I want to know is who is the mother? Is it Eileen? I hope it’s Eileen. It better be Eileen.

The barn. Why? Why that barn? Did they really think no one would notice. I get reusing sets and locations as completely different places. But that just hurt.

Did we need so many songs with no dialogue being spoken. I mean yes Carry On was a must have but so much time could’ve been spent talking about other characters during the other songs .

And again why are they trying to make Dean look bad. It’s not his/Jensen’s fault it’s the horrible writing of these final two episodes. Why did they not take to opportunity to talk about Castiel’s confession. Yes I’m  back on Cas again. I warned you. Also he’s probably the main reason you’re reading this anyway, so yeah...

I would like to believe a conversation happened off screen but the way Sam and Dean acted it doesn’t seem like it.

Again would it be so hard. Two scenarios

1.

Dean: “Before Cass got dragged into the Empty he told me...

Sam: :Told you what?”

Dean: He told me... he told me he loved me.”

Sam (smiling): “That’s not news Dean,”

Dean: “No Sammy. He really loved me... like... you know..”

Sam: “Again, not news Dean. How do you feel? “

Dean (hesitates): “ I think... no, I know I love him too. He’s the only man I’ll ever love.”

Sam: “Well you know technically Cass really isn’t male... so...

Dean: “Oh please Sammy. Could you imagine Cass in any other body? Especially a chicks. It would be so weird.”

Sam: “Good point.”

Dean: “Besides, he was perfect the way he was.”

2.

Dean: “Before Cass got dragged into the Empty he told me...

Sam: :Told you what?

”Dean: He told me... he told me he loved me.”

Sam (smiling): “That’s not news Dean,”

Dean: “No Sammy. He really loved me... like... you know..”

Sam: “Again, not news Dean. How do you feel? “

Dean: “I can’t return his feelings. I see him as a man and you know I’m attracted to women.”

Sam: “Alright then.”

Dean. “But y’know...”

Sam: “Hmmm?”

Dean: “I still miss him. I wish he was here with us.”

There were so many easy ways to fix this and they did nothing. Did they not think 15x18 would have a huge impact. I really hope the writers are kicking themselves for this. Funny, by ignoring Castiel and his feelings they actually brought more attention and love to him and Misha.

I really don’t know if a rewrite and reshoot for the dvd release is possible. Has that ever been done, I feel like it has but I’m not sure. But if it is. Fix it. It only took a few weeks to film these last two episodes. I’m sure all the actors can come back to film for a few weeks. Once there are less Covid restrictions of courses. I know there’s been talk about a possible movie. That could fix it. As long as they bring back the angel in the trench coat. Or how about a bonus episode for the dvd 15x21 where everyone is gathered in heaven. Sam, Dean, Cass, Bobby, Mary, John, Kevin, Charlie, Eileen, Jo, Ellen, Pam. Even Crowley and Rowena because why not. Oooh and Meg too because she did sacrifice herself for them and also I just love her.  Anyway they all gather and talk about old times. Perfect excuse for an old fashion clip show. Funny/heartwarming banter in between. Make Destiel canon at the end. Another possible way to fix it is do a comic book season or even just a few issues to flesh out the ending in heaven. Just fix it.

At least we have fanfiction.

If there are any positives to take away it’s this:

1: Castiel is in heaven with Dean. They are together. They have a second chance.

2. It was said only 30% of the fanbase would like this ending. Like many people I assumed that meant a Destiel ending. Cause I thought out of the whole fanbase shippers were in the minority. Nope turns of the the Winc*sters/B*bros are the 30%. Destiel fans, Cass fans, Misha fans are part of the 70% who hate this. Though why you would want to only please 30% of your fanbase is beyond me.

3. Sam was able to live a long happy life without being codependent on his brother.

I absolutely hated the last two episodes and how this show ended. Again the only saving grace is knowing Jack got Castiel out of The Empty and he and Dean reunited in heaven. But no matter how much I hated 99% of the ending. I still love this show and all it’s characters. I will happily go back and watch it over again to relive the good, funny, sad, bittersweet moments. The final 90 minutes of the series is not going to ruin that for me. I love Sam and Dean but Castiel is my favorite and I will happily go back and enjoy everything about his character. I am not going  to let this ruin Supernatural for me. Next summer I am going to my first SPN Convention and I can’t wait. I may have only discovered the greatness of Supernatural a year ago after avoiding it for so long but I want it to stay apart of my life. Like I said I only got into Supernatural a little over a year ago but this hurt my heart so much I only imagine how those of your who’ve been here for over a decade feel.

I know this was very, very long and I probably actually forgot some things I wanted to say. But I’m tired.

Cass and Dean are in heaven together. I believe they are canon 💙💚

[marta-bee]

On Fanworks as Commodities

I've been thinking lately about commodification and how it applies to fandom.

 At the risk of giving an unhelpful circular explanation, commodification just means treating something like a commodity when it really isn't. And by commodity, I mean the kind of good or service that it's the kind of thing we can "reduce" to market terms. A loaf of bread is a commodity. So is a house or the services of an accountant- you're not losing anything or "debasing" anyone when you suggest these things can be bought and sold.

 But what about surrogacy pregnancy? This is the question Elizabeth Anderson asked in her philosophy paper, "Is Women's Labor a Commodity?" (This is where I first encountered the concept.) She asks what exactly is being sold when we pay a woman to go through a pregnancy and then give up the resulting child to someone else. Anderson said if it's the child that's being sold that seems obviously inappropriate- we rightly consider a human person as the kind of thing you can't just buy and sell- but she also argued even if the woman is just selling the use of her body for a period of time (say, implantation and surrogacy pregnancy of a fetus conceived through in vitro fertilization of the adults who will become the legal parents), there's still something lost. The argument is, pregnancy naturally (at least usually) forms a loving bond between mother and child, which a surrogate woman would wisely try to avoid; otherwise giving up the baby would be that much harder. In effect, it encourages her to alienate herself from the products of her pregnancy. It degrades the commercial surrogate, turns her into an emotionless, contextless factory. And it degrades women who might lovingly serve as surrogates (say, for a sister or friend) because it turns their gift into something indistinguishable from a market transaction.

 That's the argument, anyway. Once I found it convincing but these days, I have my doubts. For instance, I don't see any problem saying commercial surrogacy is a different kind of process than surrogacy offered as a gift to someone you know. Even if the result is the same, they seem like very different beasts. I'm also uncomfortable with this idea that certain kinds of work just can't be ethically paid for. Because this usually comes up with "caring" work, which is most often done by women even these days, it becomes too easy to not help bear the costs of that work. We can expect, say, a nurse to care about her patient even though she's paid a salary; is it so wrong if a child who quits her job to care for a sick parent to also be paid for her sacrifice?

 That's more a criticism of how the concept is applied, though. I think it's applied too quickly, and in ways that turn it into an either/or, where this doesn't need to be the case. I still think the basic idea has a lot going for it. We do give the market too much power to answer questions it really isn't well suited for. Healthcare, for instance; it needs to be paid for, but not in a way that keeps people from accessing it who need it, or even lets those who can pay get to it more quickly. And maybe market pressures can make it more efficient, to a point, but we really shouldn't reduce it to something that can be bought and sold and understand entirely on those terms.

So, what does all this have to do with fandom? Well, I'm of a different fannish generation than a lot of you young whippersnappers- I first got involved in fannish circles with the Lord of the Rings movies back in the original 2000s. This was pre-AO3 and pre-Tumblr, and only a few years after Anne Rice got ff.net to disallow all fanfic based on her novels. We posted our disclaimers about not owning the characters for a reason and professed our poverty because we believed (or feared at least) we could be sued by the canon's authors. I was mostly in the Tolkien fandom, and it was well known that the estate was never going to authorize fanfic, commercial or otherwise. They state as much on their website, though I can't remember how long that Q&A has existed in its current format.

 That gave us a lovely little commercial-free zone. If you couldn't sell your own work commercially, then you could give up all pretenses of success along the normal capitalistic lines and delve into areas that just would never have been very marketable in traditional publishing. Tolkien fandom itself was pretty conservative but I know other fandoms went much further in this regard, exploring genres that just would never be marketable especially before the niche and self-financed publishing the internet opened up for a lot of authors. If the law wouldn't let you do what you wanted to do anyway, why not become utterly ungovernable? So, fanfic became (for me at least) art about art rather than filthy lucre. We were doing what we did because we loved it, and as gifts for our friends, and as a way to be something that wasn't quite allowed in the "normal" culture for whatever reason- even just because we were women daring to make time for our weird little hobbies. It was glorious. And we worked hard enough in other areas of our life that we had the $$$ to indulge in this. We didn't need to be paid, and even if you offered to pay us for our works, we'd likely get a bit insulted and insist that wasn't what this was about at all.

I was told more than once by family that I was good enough to be a "real writer" and didn't I want to do my own thing. So yes, I did get a bit miffed and lean in to my identity of fanfic-writing as hobby not intended as a career.

 And I'll be honest: when I see people advertising for commissions or celebrating fan-authors going "professional" as if this is necessarily a step up from unpaid fannish work, I often have this old framework in the back of my head. And it's not really fair. For one thing, I was in college in the early 2000's and so even when we didn't have a lot of cash, we expected to soon get day jobs where we could afford to live comfortably and still afford our hobbies. The housing market crash and the Great Recession changed all of that, as did work opportunities like Instacart and Uber. For a lot of people even a few years younger than me, everything became a side-hustle and there just wasn't this expectation a hobby could be a hobby. I get that there's a lot of privilege entering into that.

 On top of which, there's all kinds of gender issues: professional artists, predominantly men, have been painting and selling drawings of comic book characters for years. Star Trek and Star Wars affiliated novels, and Sherlock Holmes pastiches (as opposed to fanfic), again written primarily by men, are also very much a thing. Hell, so are Renaissance artists and the patron system that was built off of. And of course, just because you sometimes produce fanworks just to sell and still do the less commercial work just for yourself if you ever want to. There's no real conflict in that. And it's not like producing art to sell is at all wrong. But to me it does feel like that kind of art is different than what I fancy I do, back when I occasionally wrote. :-) And I probably am more aware of this than I should be, because my backdrop is different from a lot of fans younger than myself, and really do try not to let my situation turn into a blind spot.

 Even so, I worry and struggle to find the balance between letting art turn a profit and be reduced to a strictly commercial venture. It's never been anything I've been even remotely drawn to do, and human nature being what it is, I probably do think more highly of the kind of thing I'd choose to do. But I don't want to be unfair, and I don't want to think just because art is paid for and written/drawn to order, it's some sort of assembly-line output with no heart put into it by the writer and artist. Just like an artisan shoemaker might take great pride in his art and work his hardest on each shoe he crafts, even if he must sell it to make ends meet. Somehow, I suspect thinking about this in terms of commodification, the dangers of evaluating artistry using market standards and the ways in which it can still have a value beyond commodity even if it’s bought and sold, might help. But I've not quit worked out what insight that kind of thought would provide, if any.

Do you think there's a special value in fandom or art generally that's not made to be bought and sold? Or am I perhaps making too big a deal over nothing and revealing myself to be an old fuddy-duddy in the process. (It's always a possibility!) I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts if you have any to share.

[lawonderlandwriter]

So I just realized/thought of something today cruising through the Jonerys tag on A03. I’ve noticed it before, but never really paid much mind to it. But now with all this hate centered on the writers who allegedly hate Jon Snow - all of us who’ve written cheating or cuck or post-resurrection punishment fics or whatever - made me realize the extent of the hypocrisy in the tag/fandom.

I’m sure you guys have seen it. And maybe you’ve paid it no mind too because you, like me, just scroll past things that don’t interest you or you’re looking for a fave author or whatever. Anyway.

Are you guys familiar with the A03 Jonerys collection “Blessed Fics?” No? Let me give you a brief rundown:

Are you guys seeing a pattern here?

Ohhh, and who could forget these two gems:

And last, but certainly not least, this lovely piece of work right here:

“Implied/Referenced Cheating” “Mistress Daenerys”

I find this last one particularly hilarious given the shit some writers got recently for having Jon hook up with a married Dany.

Many of these fics were written over the summer, I’m guessing when the “tag policing” phenomenon started to pick up steam, but I’m not entirely sure. Idk. I wasn’t in the tag much this summer as I was in Europe for work.

Now, it may surprise people to see me say this, but I actually am not bothered by any of these fics or their tags or their content. I truly don’t give a shit. This kind of thing doesn’t bother me nearly a faction as much as, say, a beastiality fic (and even then, I’m still able to scroll past it like an ADULT).

But anyway, yeah, I don’t care. 

I know some readers hate this kind of thing though. I’ve seen people complain before about the Jon/Dany dubcon fics. Dubcon is certainly potentially divisive and “problematic”.  But again, these fics don’t have nearly the amount of discourse happening on them as the other problematic fics in the tag (aka the “Jon hater fics” or whatever you’d all like the call them).

So, it’s perfectly okay for people to write fics where Dany is kinda forced to have sex with Jon but ohhh don’t worry it’s okay cuz she grows to like it - but it’s not okay to write fics where Jon’s shown in a less than positive light?

So it seems that the discord (one of them) IS responsible for “rape” fics in the tag - because in case any of you didn’t know, dubcon, if not outright rape, is on the rape spectrum (dear god, I can’t believe I just wrote that fucking sentence, no I don’t believe their is a rape spectrum in real life, dubcon is rape in real life). 

And they have been filling up the tag, oh, I’m sorry, “cleaning the tag” :

....since this summer. 

So how about this? 

WE won’t bitch about your fantasy Jon-rapes-Dany-kinda-but-Dany-eventually-likes-it fics, and YOU stop bitching about us writing fics where Jon is somehow “punished” in the narrative.

One of the things I keep seeing get repeated in comments sections of fics is how us “Tumblrinas” are punishing Jon in our Jonerys fics for what happened in Season 8. 

But...these “Modern Targcest” fics seem to be punishing Dany for some reason (as if the S8 narrative didn’t punish her enough seeing as how she went crazy and she’s fucking dead). Dany gets slapped around by Jon, Dany gets dominated by Jon, Dany takes it up the ass with Jon, Dany is blackmailed into fucking Jon, Dany is held down and fucked by Jon when she repeatedly tells him “no”...oh but again, don’t worry, cuz she likes it!

Seriously, what the fuck.

So all you “discord” bros, don’t even fucking try. Don’t. Just fucking don’t. 

Write your rapey Targcest fics. I don’t care.

But do not come for me and my friends again for writing a Jon-“punishment” fic or cheating fic or cuck fic or whatever. 

Stay in your lane. 

We’ll stay in ours. 

You do not have a claim over Season 8 content either. It’s all fucking fair game. We can write fics set in whatever timeline we wish. Season 8 fic does not equal “serious fic” - whatever the fuck you all mean by that. 

As I keep saying, it’s all fanfiction. If it were 100% canon compliant, it wouldn’t be fan fiction, it’d be plagiarism. So shut up.

*Edit/added: I love how another of the arguments with this whole debacle was “If you're a true Jonerys fan, you want Jon and Dany to be 100% EQUAL!” Well, apparently not everyone wants Jon and Dany equal and it’s some of the people spouting this idiotic message. 

[mfackenthal]

The MFackenthal Show with Special Guest @choicesarehard

banner created by the amazing @choicesarehard

Disclaimer:  This interview was conducted on July 1, 2019. 

Megs: Welcome, welcome everyone to my 10th show!  I am so blessed that this show has done so well and the network has given me a full 23 episode slot.  I have to tell you - the remaining 13 slots are currently filled!  Which just means that my producers are working on a season 2.  If you want to be on the show - please let me know.  And if you think someone else should be on the show - let me know that too. In fact, today’s show couldn’t have happened without the help of @leelee10898.  

Tonight, I have a wonderful special guest with me tonight, everyone please give a round of applause to @choicesarehard!

Ellie:  stays seated next to Megs on the couch, gives a little smile and waves to the audience. 

Megs:  Ellie, I am so excited to have you on the show tonight.  When we were chatting backstage, I promised I would start today’s show with a story - something to help you forget that my amazing audience is staring at you.  Hmmm .. I’m trying to think of an embarrassing one … let’s see ... I’ve been taught to always sing loud and proud … but that means people often catch me not quite knowing the words to the song I’m singing.  That’s not terribly embarrassing though … Oh!  I understand that you like to travel … I have to be really careful that I don’t sing when I’m on a plane.  It’s harder for me than it sounds.  Ooooh oooh oh - idea forming right now!  We should have plane karaoke.  I really think flights could be more fun if we had a little more to drink and a few more songs to sing together.  Plus I never forget the words when I’m singing karaoke - the words are always right there on the screen.  

Ellie: laughs.  You would certainly have a captive audience.  

Megs:  Exactly!  Okay, your turn.  Tell me a travel story. 

Ellie: Hmmm ... well, Megs, you see, I’m a Texan, and we tend to be really friendly people. Sometimes, a little too friendly. On a flight home from London recently, a British man in front of us was struggling to fill out his immigration form. He asked the flight attendant “What if I don’t know where I’m staying?” This Texas woman next to me, who does not know this man at all, immediately pipes up, “Sugar, don’t give it another thought, you’ll stay with us. We have a spare room.” And the British man looks absolutely terrified, and squeaks “I meant I don't know the address!” It was the most perfect culture clash I’ve ever seen, and I loved every second of it. 

Megs:  Oh, that is a great story.  Gotta love Texans.  

Ellie:  Agreed!

Megs:  Okay, so Ellie, tell me, when did you join the fandom and what brought you here? 

Ellie:  I joined Tumblr in January, after reading every single Damien x MC story on the Choices Fan Fiction Archive. No, seriously, like, all of them. I was desperately Googling for more content, and discovered all the amazing creators on here. I made an account that night!

Now, as I can be pretty shy, I didn’t make a single post or even comment on stories my first month on Tumblr. I probably would have stayed a wallflower if @walkerismychoice hadn’t written a story so amazing I had to say something. So I sent her a DM and panicked until she responded. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Maggie took me under her wing, showed me how to tag and post, sent me my first Ask, and even encouraged me to write my first drabble! Friends like her and what really brought me away from the metaphorical wall and onto the fandom dance-floor.

Megs:  And we’re so glad you are here!  Megs turns to the audience.  As there may be a few of you here who don’t know Ellie very well, let me tell you - she is multi-talented. Not only does she write, but she also creates gorgeous edits.  Seriously, did you see that banner of us when you first turned on the show?  That was all Ellie!  She’s amazing. 

Ellie:  Megs - stop, you’re making me blush!

Megs:  Nope, won’t stop.  Seriously Ellie, you should charge a commission fee! I would have paid for my icon and banners!!! *wink* Ellie:  Ha! You are the sweetest, and I actually get that a lot. But edits are my little way of saying thank you to the fandom for being so kind to the new kid! 

Megs:  Awh, you’re not so new anymore, friend!  So tell us a little about your work.  What’s your favorite work that you’ve written?  

Ellie:  Oh goodness, I can be pretty critical of my own work, but I’m trying to shake that habit.  And I am definitely proud of His Hands. Sometimes the things we hate about ourselves are the things that draw others to us, and it was fun to show both those perspectives in one piece.

Megs:  Oh, that is so beautiful!  Can you tell me more about your edits? 

Ellie:  The edits started as a way to illustrate one of my Outfit Drabbles — these kind of insane little stories I write about the worst outfits in the game. But I started doing edits seriously about two months ago! Clearly, it has kind of spiraled out of control since then, and I’m slapping wrinkles and tattoos and prison uniforms on everyone. I’ve also started making Choices Aesthetics recently. I love trying to capture the feeling and mood of a book or character in just six panels. My Wishful Thinking Emu board is probably my favorite thing I’ve ever made. 

Megs:  Everyone should check those out.  That Wishful Thinking board is amazing!  So, do you prefer writing or the edits? 

Ellie: Oh Megs! Don’t make me choose! Oh goodness, let me think. Making an edit is definitely more fun than writing. I’m giggling almost the entire time I’m creating one. And it’s a much, much faster process. But I pour so much of myself into my stories, and I really love getting to share them with other fans. And I think my stories mean more to me on a personal level. So uh...both? Can I say both? 

Megs:  Of course! I mean, I should probably share something really fast ... if ever I am playing a game - I will look for a way to cheat.  So in either/or questions - I highly respect an answer of both.  

Ellie:  That does explain so much about you, Megs. 

Megs:  Laughs.  Okay, well, getting back to you sharing your work with this fandom.  What do you love about this fandom?  Is there anything you’re less than happy with? 

Ellie: I love how welcoming the fandom is to new writers and artists. My first drabble was literally 77 words… and I had a whopping 13 followers. It should have been totally lost in the noise. But wonderful people like @bobasheebaby @sinclaire-made-me-sin and @ritachacha were so supportive; it made me feel brave enough to write a second story, and a third, and…well, here we are!

And listen, I know no online experience is going to be perfect, but if I don’t like a given topic or series I just filter it from my dashboard, or unfollow the user.  Beyond that, I just try to surround myself with people who are kind. 

Megs:  Do you have any advice for other people in the fandom?  Especially other fanfic writers? 

Ellie: I’m an incredibly slow writer. Seriously, trees grow to maturity while I finish a single drabble. And it can be intimidating to see a flurry of new content appear as I’m writing. But I’ve had to teach myself not to worry about what stories have already been told or are being told as I write. Our voices will always be unique, so even if the trope or setting is familiar, our work will be something that only we could have created.

Megs:  Well … I can’t say much about anyone’s speed of writing.  I’m lucky if I get something out every other week.   Those are truly beautiful words about uniqueness.  Thank you, Ellie!  What’s your writing process? 

Ellie: Simple - I write three words. Then I panic. Erase two of them. Panic some more. I’m kidding…mostly. In all seriousness, most of my writing wouldn’t exist without @brightpinkpeppercorn. We’re both night owls, and tend to brainstorm ideas long past midnight. Telling a story’s concept to a friend helps me develop the idea without the pressure of formatting or picking the perfect words — especially when that friend has an incredible sense of narrative and how to move a story forward. I really do think writing takes a community sometimes, and I’m so lucky to have one on Tumblr. 

Megs:  I love hearing about the community really coming together.  And speaking of community and coming together … fangirl with me about Choices for a little while.  Have you read all the books, what’s your favorite book, favorite One True Pairing (OTP), etc? 

Ellie:  Well, Megs, don’t tell anyone but … I actually haven’t played three of the biggest series — The Crown and the Flame, Endless Summer, and It Lives Beneath. I really want to, but there’s so much amazing new content each week, how’s a girl supposed to find the time?  

Megs:  I don’t know!  I often whine about not being paid to read all the fanfiction out there.  I’m behind right now on both canon and so much fanfiction ... and that is so weird for me.  Oh, but I saw that you’ve decided to read Veil of Secrets next.  Everyone, check out this post on how you can read or reread it with Ellie, if you want! 

Ellie:  Awh, thanks Megs.  Yeah - everyone should read it with me.  As for a favorite choices book … Saying this in an interview makes it real, doesn’t it?  gets up and starts to pace in front of Megs  Oh gosh, oh gosh … sits back down and takes Megs hands … I’m so sorry Damien, but...it’s Ride or Die. Releases Megs hands and faces the audience.  Listen, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Ride or Die was supposed to be a fluffy little story I’d play for diamonds and laugh at. But the narrative has so much more depth and nuance than I’d expected, and your decisions have real consequences. And did I mention the three incredible Love Interests?

Megs:  You actually didn’t no. 

Ellie:  Oh - shush you!  Laughs.  Well, let me get back to my OTP -  It will always be Damien and Kai from Perfect Match. Damien is a man who loves every part of you — your bad jokes, your terrible cooking — and has loved you for years. Besides, his banter is hysterical, and his ability in bed is literally legendary on Tumblr. I mean, come on. It’s a no brainer.

Megs: I do miss Damien!  Sigh  And, on that note, we are out of time.  Thank you, Ellie, for joining me on today’s show.  It was a pleasure to have you on the show.  

Ellie:  Wait, wait - Megs.  Before you go, I have one thing I have to give you. 

This is an edit of us on today’s show.  Thank you for having me and for helping me through my shyness.  

Megs:  It is gorgeous, Ellie!  Thank you soooooo much!  I love it!

Ellie:  You’re so very welcome. 

Megs and Ellie hug then turn to the audience and wave.  

Megs:  Have a great weekend, everyone!

~~~~~

And now for the tags.  If you want to be added to the tag list for these or removed, please let me know!

@hopefulmoonobject @queen-among-writers, @hopelessromantic1352, @lilyofchoices, @msjpuddleduck, @theroyalweisme, @lady-kato

[zmediaoutlet]

you saw endgame! please share with the class! assemble!

haha, okay, well–here’s some thoughts, since we’re far enough out that I don’t think this will be too spoilery for people – but it’s gonna be super long, so it’s under a cut, either way:

Well, it was–spectacular! In that it was literally a spectacle, for one thing. I had pretty lowered expectations after not particularly enjoying Captain Marvel (it was fine, but boring) or Infinity War for that matter (better-made, but the stakes were obviously nonexistent because we knew something was going to be done). Here, though… I just really, thoroughly enjoyed it. It was thoughtfully done, well-executed, and just as a moment of payoff for those of us who have been here all ten years… It was just really something. I saw Iron Man on opening weekend in 2008 and fell in love, and even if I haven’t loved every single movie since then, I feel like Marvel just sent me a love letter, and I was so–glad. What a good movie-going experience it was.

I say all that having seen SO MUCH rending of garments and gnashing of teeth from the !stans and shippers, but all of that’s so very much missing the point. This is the story of *this series*, this great arc that led to this point. The thing to remember is that the MCU is fanfiction itself–it’s based off of characters who are based off of characters from a canon that’s been rebooted and re-blended about a billion times. This is the story this group of fic-writers, essentially, chose to tell, and I think they did it pretty damn well. You can write your own fic where Steve weeps into Bucky’s hair for 70 years if you want to. This story isn’t that, and that’s okay. (Genuinely, if fandomites could take like half a step back they’d be much happier people. I know it’s hard–I’ve been in a process of letting go with SPN that I haven’t really managed to do well–but c’mon. Don’t get so het up about it.)

Some things:

1) I was genuinely impressed with the time travel mechanism, especially as it bounced meta-ly off of other examples we’ve seen in pop culture. Finally, a story that allows ACTUAL alternate-universe time travel instead of boring-ass time loops. I’ve always thought it was spectacularly dumb when the worry is “but if I kill myself in the past, I’ll die now!” Nope! Avoided! Thank you, folks. It’s kind of weirding me out that so many people online seem confused about how the time travel worked, but it was incredibly clean and I just want to high five the people involved. The one thing that seemed like a plot hole was Old Steve at the end, with the implication that he was co-existent in this timeline for 70 years (and did nothing about Hydra??)–but then the Russos said that they assume he went to an alternate timeline, and then came back to this one to give Sam the shield. It wasn’t on screen either way so you can make your own headcanon, but I’m good with that. So: successful time travel. Hoo-fucking-rah.

2) Thor. This was the one real spoiler I had going in, that Thor Got Fat. All this weeping about how he’d been mistreated by the narrative. So, I was pre-emptively worried… and then ended up not thinking it was that bad. Look, I’m a chubster, I’m well-aware of how sensitive that can be for people. What I found interesting about it was that it was, yes, kind of a visual joke, just because The God of Abs was a pudge, but it was actually treated remarkably kindly by every character for whom that would be in-character. Meaning, sure, Rocket makes fun of him, and Rhodey’s kind of a dick (because Rhodey’s like that with Tony, even)–but Bruce, Steve, and even Tony all deal with him quite gently. That scene where he tries to volunteer for the gauntlet and Tony carefully holds him back was so sweet and sad. Poor guy. It was a good exploration of the depths that the last ~10 years of his life have pummeled him into. It wasn’t that he was fat, it’s that he was broken. People will make up their own minds about the equivalencies there and what’s being implied, but it was a good visual metaphor as far as I was concerned. If he were “just” a sad drunk no one would have believed that he wasn’t ready for what was coming, and he wasn’t. But he got better, because his friends really were there for him. (Also, Korg was wearing Taika’s pineapple shirt! I hope there are nice fics where Korg and Maik gently just play XBox with Thor because that’s all they can do for him.) 

Also on Thor, re: Thor/Loki – more rending of garments about how he didn’t go see Loki. Let’s think about this: you’re on a top-secret time mission to save the universe (Time Heist!), and you go see your trickster god little brother who, yes, you miss, but who also hates you at this point in his life. That’ll go well. I completely understand why there wasn’t a scene. The scene with Frigga was all I needed there.

3) Steeb: I’ve never been the… biggest fan of Steve. I mean, he’s fine. His character is caught awkwardly between the man, Steve Rogers, who abhors bullies and will break rules to do what’s right, and between The Man, Captain America, who kinda Is Rules and needs to do what’s right but also represents an idea greater than himself. There’s a lot of wonderful tension there, but the movies haven’t particularly capitalized on it, and when they’ve tried it’s been in a lip-servicey way.

That said, this movie deals with it really, really well, I think. At the beginning he’s trying to live, and isn’t doing a great job of it. The plan they come up with is simple, perfect heroism – he’s not representing an Ideal, but he is one: he’s the man and the ideal simultaneously, that striving toward right will eventually create a more just, fairer world. If sacrifice is required he’s willing to make it. That scene of him standing alone against the massed forces of Thanos with his broken shield strapped tight to his arm is like a distillation of who Captain America should be. I’m so glad we got that, at the end.

As someone who doesn’t invest in Steve/Bucky but who completely understands it, I also see no issue with the thing where he goes back to Peggy. Bucky understands, too. That moment where they hug and he tells Steve, so-softly, “I’ll miss you,” oh man, oof. Bucky knows. I hope there’s a lot of pining!Bucky in that fandom, y’all are missing out on a STELLAR opportunity if not. Especially pining!Bucky where Steve knows and can only do his best to be Bucky’s friend. Steve going back isn’t out of character, either, despite the clamoring. He misses Peggy, he misses peace. Who knows what they got up to in that alternate timeline–maybe he and Peg went and routed Hydra early, maybe they saved Bucky, maybe they had a WWThreesome with Buck, whatever. But Natasha and Tony both told Steve to “get a life,” and he finally got to. He’d done enough. He earned it.

4) OH MY GOD, NATASHA. What a character arc. I friggin’ adore the mirroring of her and Clint’s stories. The brutal assassin who gained a family and learned what it meant to love something so much she wanted to sacrifice herself for it–those scenes on Vormire were heartbreaking. I’m also super glad that the movie paused, after that. Someone called her death “fridging” – wow. No. She was a hero, as much as Tony was. Whatever it takes.

5) Tony. Holy shit. In a lot of ways this was his movie–in a more meta way, it was RDJ’s movie, and Favreau’s, and Feige’s. It all started with Iron Man, and that’s where it ended. There wasn’t a stinger scene because we got that funeral and then the moment in the credits with the originals signing the screen, and of course they saved Robert for last. The success of this movie is really a testament to the risk everyone took, way back then. It sure as hell paid off.

“You wouldn’t lay down on a grenade to save your men,” Steve said. How many different ways can Tony prove him wrong? At least once more. ;-;  I’m just super emotional about the whole thing. So many good moments all leading up to what happened. Little Morgan in his helmet, Pepper’s faith. Steve’s faith, for that matter. (I still have a tiny pocket of my heart reserved for Steve/Tony, no matter how non-canon it is. What a great relationship they have.) The panic and misery when Carol brought them back, calling Steve a liar, and Steve just–gentle with him, again, and how there was no anger there anymore. Argh. 

That’s the thing that I think I appreciated about the movie most, in the end. Despite all the craziness, the spectacle, the easter eggs slinging at you left and right (”Hail Hydra.” !!!!!!!!!!!!!), what I loved most is that in the face of this ultimate goal, this literally universe-saving moment, the stakes were actually felt because the characters (and actors, and script) sold how unimaginably important it was. Interpersonal bickering fell by the wayside; any dumb conflicts just washed away. No drama for its own sake, or manufactured arguments. Just–working together. The Avengers we hoped to get in the aftermath of the first team movie. We got ‘em, finally, even if we lost a lot too.

This all sounds super elegiac, I guess. It sort of is. It wasn’t a perfect movie by any means, but it might be perfect for what it meant to do, and what it set out to do. There were a couple of little nitpicky things that I might change, but they’re so small so as not even to be mentioned. And so many more tiny moments that I loved, loved, loved. It’s the first one of these movies that I’ve wanted to rewatch in literal years, and that’s making me really happy all on its own. I’m just left with this utter… satisfaction. Not sad, just happy that they made it worth my while.

Put another way: when I was leaving Shazam I felt like I’d spent about 4 hours wasting my time. When I was leaving Endgame, I felt like it had been an instant. Just yay, all ‘round. I loved it three thousand.

What did you think?

[hithelleth]

The Originals 5 x 06 “What, Will, I, Have, Left”

I went into it already hating it. Justifiably.

Let’s get away with the few good things first.

Klaus and Caroline (who went after Hope and Roman on a road trip) were cute and great, but it’s hard to be happy about it, considering.

(Though, there was also that BS about Caroline never feeling safe, when Caroline was the only one who was safe around Klaus to the point that the gang sent her to distract him because he would never hurt her – except that one time... you know, these writers and their inconsistencies started long before now in TVD S4.)

As always, loved Vincent and Freya’s friendship.

I also loved Ivy and Vincent and her asking him when he was last happy (poor guy, before Sabine even) and telling him keeping things away from people is also taking away their choice and not knowing is sometimes worse than knowing (re: telling Declan about the supernatural, since he was worried about Hayley.)

Oh, and BTW, Declan is Camille’s cousin? (Okay, he’s Irish, fine, but weren’t the O’Connells the last of their line or something? IDK, my memory is faulty. And I don’t give a fuck either way.)

I also loved Hayley and Hope (Hayley is really such a great mother!), but that is where the pain starts.

We’ve all known this would happen since last year’s SDCC and I can’t even cry; I’m just beyond pissed off.

Okay, so, Roman brought Hope to Hayley, believing Greta just wants them to bind their hybrid side and then they would let them go and everyone would live in peace. Stupid naïve boy. Though, I guess him having his family slaughtered twice, once by werewolves and then by Klaus (Although, wait, Klaus didn’t do it, did he? (I guess he meant ‘extended family’ or something’?)) explains his devotion to Greta, but still.

Greta, meanwhile, went to Antoinette to lie about being worried about Roman’s involvement with Hope that required Elijah protecting him from Klaus and they fell hook-line-and-sinker for it. Antoinette was clued in that it wasn’t like that when Roman called with the true version, but couldn’t go after them before nightfall.

Hayley agreed to the binding so she would break the cloaking spell (because Hope cloaked her as a hybrid) and so Hope could escape – because Hayley couldn’t due to being just a vampire now and it being daylight outside.

Unfortunately, Greta arrived just then, backed by Elijah who snapped Caroline’s neck and fought Klaus who arrived at the same time.

Greta tried to convince Roman to kill Hope, then a fight with Hayley ensued and since Hayley was impeded by sunlight, Greta got the upper hand and almost ripped her heart out, but Hayley broke her hand at the last moment and lurched both of them outside to burn in the sun.

And all that time, Elijah was repeatedly staking Klaus, so he couldn’t have helped.

Yeah, what a great fucking idea this train of events was.

And for what? For what?!

But before I get to that, this whole SL doesn’t make sense.

For starters, where was Marcel the entire episode? Yeah, I know CMD was directing, but he is more than capable of doing a great job of both directing and acting in the episode, as proved by 4x07 (not to mention all the eps directed and acted in by his co-stars and countless other actors on other shows.)

Are you telling me Marcel wouldn’t be the first Freya and/or Klaus called for reinforcements? Are you telling me he wouldn’t be doing everything he could on his own, anyway, to find Hayley and Hope and worrying every single moment? Are you saying he wouldn’t jump at the first possible moment to help when he learned where Hayley is? BS.

So, Marcel was just inexplicably non-existent.

That’s one, and far from stupidest writing decision.

Two: the whole Elijah is the only one who can stop Klaus thing? Are you kidding me? Did we forget how in S2 of TVD the only way for Elijah to get to kill Klaus was catching him when he was vulnerable during the moment of transformation when breaking the binding? And that was even before he was a hybrid! And ever since then, the only couple of times that Elijah one-upped Klaus was when catching him unawares and even that not for long.

But never mind. Let’s give that a pass, Elijah caught him by surprise and Klaus was perhaps not giving 100% because it was Elijah and he was also distracted by wanting to help Hayley (but wouldn’t he achieve that by incapacitating Elijah the fastest? And wouldn’t Klaus in a rage fit to help the mother of his child be even stronger than normally?) But, fine, let’s leave it.

Three: we also forgot about the Hollow and two Originals being in proximity for more than a second brining all the signs of doomsday around, let alone two Originals being in proximity to each other AND Hope. No, nada this episode.

So much sloppy writing.

(Three/II: Elijah’s memory loss/compulsion. Why didn’t it wear off by him having burnt himself in the sun? That could count as a temporary death even for an original? (Speaking of, even an Original should need some time to recover from that, but it’s been a few days at most and he’s as good as new.) Also, apparently Elijah put his daylight ring back or had a new one made? For the greater cause, right? Or did we just forget the burning in the same line that we mentioned taking the ring off? Shoddy writing galore. Okay, whatever.

Also, I’ll grant them that since Vincent and Marcel compelled Elijah for his own good/per his own request, they maybe wouldn’t want to decompel him and/or they couldn’t have done it on such a short notice when seeing his being compelled is actually detrimental to everyone. Just let’s not forget that per universe canon people can be decompelled by whoever compelled them.)

Four: Rebekah and Kol haven’t existed since 5x02/3, either. No need to at least mention them by a line of them being worried about Hayley and Hope or anything, nope.

Five: I get that Vincent might not want to help, as he doesn’t, but why wasn’t at least Freya there? Maybe she was still on the way? Because you’re not telling me she wouldn’t think that maybe they would need a powerful witch to help? She broke up with Keelin for her family’s sake, FFS, and now she would just idly sit by when finally finding Hayley, not run to her aid? Please.

And, lastly, but not the least important reason why this doesn’t make sense: I’ve heard a lot of people saying the writers chose to kill off Hayley to free Klaus for Caroline, and I don’t know what the writers were thinking, but as much as killing one ‘love interest’ to make space for another is shitty, it’s even shittier in this case (if that had been their reasoning), because it was completely unnecessary.

Because, as per canon, Hayley and Klaus weren’t even a thing. Ship and fanon them as much as you want, but in canon Hayley and Klaus had a one-night stand resulting in pregnancy that had them gradually become friends and amazing co-parents, but Hayley was no obstacle whatsoever for Caroline.

So, Hayley died for nothing.

(I mean, her dying so she could free up the space for Caroline would’ve been terrible, but they don’t even get to have that excuse for killing her off. The fuck!)

Sure, she took Greta with her. But Greta could have been dealt with in a number of different ways, by Klaus himself, by Freya, by Marcel, or the three combined; by writing Elijah’s memory loss differently, or not at all, etc.… and if I can think of that in a couple of minutes, there was no reason the writers who are paid to spend time on it couldn’t have done it, except that they didn’t want to.

They just wanted to kill her off for ‘drama’ and they failed even at that because we’ve known about it for nearly a year now, so it was no shock at all. (It does still make me beyond angry, though.) And they knew it wouldn’t go over well and had the time to change it, but went on with it anyway.

Fuck that.

And if Elijah miraculously regains his memory by seeing Hayley die, as I think some spoilers said as well, it will just be that much worse and senseless.

I knew this season would be shitty as soon as they said JP was taking back the reigns and Narducci was leaving (not that the team under Narducci was flawless; killing off Camille could’ve been avoided as well; but at least they made a lot more sense most of the time.)

Anyway, I’ll probably hate-watch the season through, because I’m a masochist, and then I’ll take the few worthy bits and pieces (mostly just the premiere, TBH) and forget the rest of the crap even happened.

And afterwards I’ll probably re-watch the first four seasons – because those were one great show – and just imagine myself a happy ending for everyone (which I’ve already written, ha!)

[kiconwrites]

Why You Shouldn’t Suggest Things to Writers

A while ago I received this message from a Tumblr user:

I noticed the first two parts of Through Their Eyes were from the perspectives of both sides of what would eventually become a couple. I don't see why this trend has to end. I am therefore suggesting that the next three parts of it be about Neville/Hannah, Daphne/Theodore, and Michael Corner/whoever (Cho isn't his final ship, as she married a Muggle). I would certainly love to see your take on Neville/Hannah, you've already indicated an interest in Daphne/Theo, and Michael needs more love.

I’ve been sitting on this message for a long time, trying to decide whether or not to reply to it and how.  In the end, I decided to reply privately to the individual, but also publicly as PSA as to why this kind of message is not great.

In a way, this person is correct.  There is no hard fast reason why the “trend” of ships has to end.  But there is one reason: I want it to, and that should be all that really matters.  I am the author, the writer, the creator (aside from what belongs to JKR, of course).  I wrote BIK because I was interested in exploring Dean and Seamus’ relationship and perspective during the HP books.  There was never any original intention to make it into a series.  Then I thought about Parvati and Lavender and decided to do the same thing with them.

I was hesitant about writing a Neville-centered story because he’s such a prevalent character that I was uncertain of how successful the story would be. The appeal of Dean and Seamus (and especially Lavender and Parvati) was that they were so minor that I could really make them into whatever I wanted them to be.  But Neville has so much of his character and his story written in the original series that I wasn’t sure what I could expand upon.

I did consider making the story Neville/Hannah-centered, but I’m not doing that for a few reasons, which I shouldn’t even have to outline but I’m going to anyway:

(Under a readmore bc I know long posts are annoying, and y’all know my answers are always long af)

A. They’re in different houses.  As you may have (but more than likely not) noticed, in both BIK and TIW, Dean/Seamus and Lavender/Parvati are in every chapter together until some chapters near the end.  There are some chapters where one or the other might make only a very minor appearance, but they’re still in practically every chapter together.  This was done on purpose to make chapters in which they’re separated inherently different from the rest of the story for symbolic/growth/plot reasons.

The chapters in BIK are when Dean is on the run and they’re forcibly separated. The chapters in TIW are 48 and 49, when Par and Lav each take a chapter to deal with their own issues, and then later for a reason that involves a spoiler. If I did a Neville/Hannah-centered story, I would want to continue this, but that would be impossible due to their characters being physically separate for most of their time at school (Like, have y’all noticed how many scenes in BIK and TIW are in Gryffindor tower?  So many)

B. In HBP, Hannah’s mom dies early in the school year and is pulled out of school and not seen for the rest of the year.  That would, again, make having Neville and Hannah in scenes together impossible, and I’m not interested in showing various scenes of Hannah at home grieving her mother for a whole year.

C. I ship Neville/Luna during Hogwarts, in the later years.  That would make a Neville/Hannah-centered story a little weird and honestly too much like the Seamus-Dean-Ginny and Parvati-Lavender-Ron love triangles in BIK and TIW.  Been there, done that.  Twice.

D. Regardless of the above point, “canonically” (aka, not in the books, but said/written by JKR), Neville and Hannah don’t get together until sometime after Hogwarts, and I try to keep the Through Their Eyes stories as canon compliant as possible.  This--in my mind--negates the purpose of writing a Neville/Hannah-centered story set during their Hogwarts years.

E. I decided I wanted to explore a more character-driven angle for this story rather than relationship-driven. I wanted to try something different.  I also like that Neville’s the only non-Trio Gryffindor in their year that I haven’t written about yet, and I wanted to dedicate a story to him.  Bottom line: I want to write an only Neville-centered story.

(Sidenote: Like I said, I shouldn’t have to list out these reasons.  What I want to write should be respected no matter what, but I wanted y’all to see that I don’t do things randomly or for no reason.)

Readers should not suggest things to writers (the exception being prompt requests and unless the writer specifically asks for plot ideas, which I know some writers do and that’s great because they asked for it).  Fanfic writers are not being paid by the readers; they’re writing because they love it, and they are going to write what they want to write.

But when readers suggest things, it makes things uncomfortable for the writer because then they feel their ideas maybe aren’t original or good enough, or maybe the reader will think they’re writing things because the reader suggested them but really it was the plan all along.  It can be upsetting, off-putting, and sometimes downright rude (which this user was not, but some people can be).

I do plan on someday writing a Daphne/Theo-centered story; I do plan on writing a Ravenclaw student-centered story, and the student might be Michael Corner or it might not (but he won’t be with Cho, because I imagine Cho and Padma becoming queerplatonic life partners who own Flourish and Blotts together; you can read more here but be warned for TIW spoilers).  I do plan on showing Neville and Hannah becoming friends and getting to know each other here and there throughout the story.  But none of these things will happen because of this user’s suggestion, but rather because I want them to.  And that’s really the point of this.

(Sidenote: people really shouldn’t suggest things to non-fanfic writers either.  No matter how much you love a book series, it can create serious legal issues for authors if you suggest things for them.  It becomes a whole thing with copyright and I don’t really have all the facts but I know it’s bad so please, y’all, stop tweeting your favorite authors and telling them what to put in the sequel)

I’m really not trying to be rude, just clear and no-so-concise.  I’m simply trying to express to y’all that writers have plans for their stories and reasons for what they do or write, or what they don’t do or don’t write.  I love that this user read BIK and TIW and that they feel passionately about the series enough to want to see certain things happen, but in the end they’re my stories.

If y’all want to see a Neville/Hannah-centered story set in Hogwarts, or you feel Michael needs more love, or whatever plot bunny bounces around in your head, I encourage y’all to write it.  Write the stories you want to read.  Take what you’re passionate about and write it yourself.  That’s how great stories happen.

Happy reading, Kicon

PS. I will make an update post regarding All I’ve Yet to Be tomorrow.  Don’t worry, it will still be written, I promise. <3

[elizabethrobertajones]

But its not the show being the show there is no problem with Jack moving in and going on hunts, its Cas specifically that the show doesnt want with the bros. And im sorry but the show is about Sam and Dean so I Cas to primarly (not only) with them. I want TFW to be a family but they wont if they never build a life together, and deancas will certainly never date this way either, they essentially only work together but go seperate ways privately. Maybe I really should stop watching I wont ever

I’m sorry, I know it sucks for some people, but this is literally the format the show has, and I know we can HOPE for more but I’ve always worked on the basis of give the show a cookie when it does something I like, but don’t expect it to magically just turn into a comfy sit com no matter how funny it has been to joke about it doing exactly that. (And I really hope the jokes haven’t hurt people with expectations, because no matter how much I blabber on about how hilarious it would be or aggressively reblog bunker fluff, to me the idea of the Bunker Family is definitely more of an endgame dream because I know the show needs its drama and tension from somewhere.)

And I do think if you take the show as ALREADY thinking it is doing the best it can and then realising it was wrong and it can try harder in season 11 and 12 you CAN see improvement, because I was bitter and miserable after season 10, thinking the show was getting so bad at including Cas and so on, but in season 11 they genuinely seemed to care about him in the narrative and season 12 was a season Cas’s story took a huge fair share of the stage on. I genuinely believe they’re doing at least a little better and trying to give Cas more relevance and time to the story, but they’re working within their own bounds and not rushing ahead into any sort of happy soft set up.

The show isn’t soft, and if Cas was happily nestled at the Bunker they would have to do something HORRIBLE to him. Jack is a disposable character to the story at this point and has a completely different relevance to the plot where he is not just magically family and he’s not just magically going to get all comfy with them, and there’s threat and a mcguffin for having him around. He’s not stealing Cas’s spot and he’s not muscling in getting to the good stuff about the domestic happy life. 

Cas is a friend and him staying at the Bunker resolves all their emotional problems.

Jack is an uncertain potential ally/timebomb they’re entrusted with/etc plot stuff about protecting him from people who’d misuse him, and having him at the Bunker is uneasy, and probably creates more problems for them as long as they have him around. Even in the peaceful/best version of the story where they shape him into a good man and can trust him, the first part of the season he’s difficult and problematical for them to have around. Probably, really, most or ALL of the season where they don’t know if this is good bad or the end of the world, and it all depends on Jack’s malleable character which has been placed in their hands.

They don’t compare at all and the show isn’t doing anything with Jack which will usurp Cas’s place. If he seems to be rushing ahead then that’s probably a feeling they WANT you to feel, to be uneasy and worried about his position in this new version of the family. 

If it’s stressful for you to watch while it unfolds, perhaps it would be better if you paid less attention to spoilers or only watched the episodes in chunks of like 5 or something so you’d be less stressed about the weight and the issues which seem MUCH worse waiting for episodes like “where is Cas” - when you speed watch any of the seasons, even season 10, which mis-used Cas the most, you still get to see him regularly and you get a sense of his ongoing story, thin as it was at that point. Season 11 even shows us Cas on average every 3 episodes while he is possessed by Lucifer and watching those all quickly in a row you get a much better sense of where he is as a person and how he’s doing, but watching it unfold real time that’s 4 months with like 10 minutes total Cas. ( @tatltaelfairies would have the screentime numbers for you :P)

I don’t know, this does seem to me like a self-made problem (not really you specifically but fandom in general who are upset about these things), that it’s hard to take the show for what it is but you’re fixating on the desired endgame and the need to see the characters doing situations far far far out of the reach or current intention of the show. If you scale right back you can see Cas being treated very well by the writers and Cas and Dean being soft and building an incredible relationship in front of our eyes, and the evolution just in the last couple of years of that has been very positive and heartwarming to me. But then I try to go into every episode and every season expecting same shit, different day, assume Buckleming is writing every episode, and just get surprised by everything they do that’s better than that. And the rest of the writers are all far better than that baseline and even with wonky main plots I can SEE the effort they put in to do good by Cas and flatter the Destiel relationship. 

But then I have always taken the show as is, casual-viewered it for years until season 9 so I had a good background in that, and I just don’t *need* them to make it all fluffy and soft and stop the bad things happening to be able to enjoy it. And I’m worried that for the people who DO, like you, it would be so much healthier and less-stressful for you to back off from canon, enjoy fluffy fanon, and engage cautiously with canon when you were in a good place or had heard enough good things to power on through. People who put off watching and then hear about, like the mixtape event, and then watch 18 episodes to get there, will have a less stressful time than someone who slogged through 18 episodes taking every cas-less episode as a sign of doom and every time Dean and Cas didn’t just step out on a date as a sign that the show was never doing anything with their relationship, and the gesture when you finally get there is small and not enough to satisfy the hole. 

I mean, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to advise you, just that my need for the fluff is so much smaller than yours that we are viewing the show in utterly different ways.

How about you watch Black Sails? I’m currently obsessed and it’s got excellent canon queer characters and also hilarious pirate shenanigans. Which also involve cannons sometimes.

Yes I did come back just to edit in that bad joke. :P

[televinita]

Zoo 3.11, “Cradles and Graves”

Maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me

I don't know if I'm more upset that this show had the gall to unironically use (a cover of)“Wonderwall” for dramatic effect, or that after 3 days of my inability to stop watching this episode, it's actually working for me.

I distinctly remember bursting out laughing when the first lyrics hit my ears, and now I'm like, teary eyed and nodding sagely through that whole montage. "Wow. So deep. So profound and meaningful."

------

A list of things I did not care for this week: the IADG bullpen unless Tessa was talking. Now that we've got that out of the way... Some things I like about the first 5 minutes -Imagining the Darkest Timeline version where they are all already dead by the time Clem finds them. -The (unintentional?) hilarity of the fact that Jackson's blood waits for the exactly perfect moment to ooze under the door for maximum dramatic effect -The fact that Mitch is found on the stairs instead of where he was shot, which suggests to me that he got to feel the full horror of seeing both Max and Jamie on the ground before he succumbed to his own wound (which is probably just an irresponsible directing choice because if he had, I'd think he'd be a little more grateful about the whole them-not-being-dead part, but it's fun to think about! Otherwise I just get bogged down again in wondering about the logistics of GSW injuries.) Ctrl + Z I loved it, but my parents and I could not stop laughing during the entire resurrection scene. "So I guess everybody's actively dying and no one can help us, but it's cool. Just gimme some of that tank serum (totally valid medical term) and mix it with water (just your basic home remedy recipe), and then we'll suffocate them back to life and five minutes later their mortal wounds will be fine and we can get on with the real problems." A.K.A. So there's example 57 or so of an entire episode's worth of possible plot being pushed aside because this show refuses to take a breath. We could have wrung so much more emotion out of Clementine, whilst ignoring her own signs of labor, trying to triage her father, grandfather, adoptive mother, surrogate uncle I'm pretending she is already attached to more than I'm sure she is, and other surrogate uncle who is also her best chance of saving her baby, the most important of all, if something goes wrong in delivery. ...and GDI now I gotta go find a special episode of Grey's Anatomy to get my mass tragedy fix. But I'm grateful that even at Zoo speed, they still gave me a little taste (in two flavors!) of people suffering the after-effects of injuries the serum couldn't fully fix. You're Responsible, You're the One to Blame, It's Your Fault :( to everyone being too busy hating her to notice Jamie cradling a clearly injured arm. But I love absolutely every sentence in this 7-way argument, including but not limited to Mitch's strangled "are you full term? how long was I out?!", the group-wide reveal of when exactly Mr. Duncan disappeared, Jackson's deadly-quiet anger, Jamie's valid defense of her actions, Mitch trying to take his daughter and blow this popsicle stand at a doubled-over limp, Clem taking her sweet time mentioning the quarantine, Max and Jamie's "oh" realizations about the plane, and Mitch's fabulously cranky echo and "what now" attitude. Last but far from least, the disgusted "I can't even look at you" was kind of my favorite part? I dig it when one member of an OTP is that intensely furious at the other out of hurt. (see also: Castle at the end of season 4)

A+ Comic Relief Laughing for 1 million years at Clem hopping off the exam table pantsless while all the men in the vicinity double take and look away* (except for Sam, whom Mitch hilariously whacks on the arm for his impudence, in my favorite sight gag since "Special Consultant") *the fact that Abe also does this, while understandably instinctive and appropriately respectful, is also kind of hilarious given where he just was 

Oh My Darling(s, Sam &) Clementine (who can't make a good shipmanteau to save their life) I don't have enough interest to do it myself, but it sure sounds like the story of how they met would make a pretty great YA novel plot. Anyone who doesn't actually want to spend the month trying to be a paid author need a NaNoWriMo prompt? Particularly someone who likes world-building, because this show leaves things wide open to fill in the details of U.S. society outside New York and the plane. Speaking of which! Did Clem happen to share with him the part of her backstory about being raised as an orphan basically the same way for the same reason? Because that seems like it would decently bond them. I like this parallel. Also update, I am getting a lot fonder of his face, mostly because he shut up and stayed out of the way except when I needed him to chime in to be sweet and supportive of Clementine (or side with her dad about ranking her over the baby on the priority list). He seems like he's really tried/is trying to be a good partner, and I'm impressed that he holds his ground despite a faceful of largely unwarranted hostility from her. I might actually be okay with him being the head of his family, even though up until now my head has danced with visions of Clem raising her baby under Mitch (and Jamie)'s purview and/or roof, Last Man Standing style. (although I guess there's always Reba-style, where both young parents are under that roof) (I realize I'm making a lot of assumptions about everyone's ability to stay alive and/or live a semi-normal life)

Beta Ship 2.0 / My Wonderwall** There's something immensely funny to me about the juxtaposition of Jackson being in his Brooding Cave Of Isolated Despair while Tessa is in a brightly ilt location, in the middle of the hustle and bustle and basically being like, "Buck up and stop being so melodramatic." (Jackson: The prophecies have spoken. Food turns to dust in my mouth. A great wave shall fall upon us all. // Tessa: is your plane out of groceries again?) But on a serious note, I love so much that he's thisclose to broken until she pulls him out of it that I'm not even gonna whine about him asking Tessa to do the same thing he's punishing Jamie for. Though in his defense, he did say "stop" her and not "kill her,” which is an important distinction for him. **My friend once wrote a Jim/Pam (The Office) parody of Jim/Pam stories using this title, and that is at least 50% of why I can't take this song seriously even though I actually have always loved it. 

I Don't Know What To Do My Whole Brain is Celebrating "How do you know the name of Jamie's scorpion?" "Because my son and Jamie have, uh, very lively pillow talk."** !!!!!!!!!! NO BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE.

The fact that Abe pipes up despite a sucking chest wound just so he can help take the mick out of Mitch is glorious. The cranky and ineffectual "shut up" in response is THE BEST. I love that Mitch has just always blatantly refused to publicly acknowledge how he feels about Jamie, despite the fact that everyone and their mother is like,  "Oh yeah, I know Mitch. Snarky scientist, walks around with hearts in his eyes to match the one on his sleeve?" (Mitch, in the distance: I do not LOVE her, okay, I just...miss her when she's not around, think about her all the time, and I imagine us one day running towards each other in slow motion and I'm wearing a brown suede vest.) I doubly appreciate this exchange because I was wondering when the hell these people actually sleep and I was getting worried there was no recognizable place in canon that they might have both had a chance to go to bed at the same time. **This writer could not have more clearly been flagging us with a fic prompt. Max Morgan, Love Doctor My very favorite of the small moments in this ep is Max insisting that Mitch let him patch him up. I was all on board for some serious injury, but I loved the subversion of his attention being caught by the scars I thought the show had forgotten about instead. "Oh, Mitch."

That just kills me. I want to unpack their relationship right here so much more, but also, it's 7pm on the night of new Zoo. Suffice to say Mitch isn't the only parent who suffers over the thought of his kid being in pain tonight, and that's beautiful. And gosh do I love him quietly, individually, nudging Mitch and Jamie back towards each other. The promise that Mitch will understand eventually was an immediate balm upon my soul. If Max says a thing about my ship, it must be true! Mitch + Being A Mess of Emotions About His Daughter (if anyone wanted to make a gifset off of this theme I would not be opposed) Words cannot express how thrilled I am that Mitch gives zero bothers about Sam's baby daddy rights and takes up prime positioning to stroke Clementine's hair nonstop throughout the whole labor,* even stealing the requisite final "you can do this" encouragement. He also gets to be the first one to hold the baby and it's amazing.

* and makes some pretty wonderful faces over how hard it is to see her in pain and not be able to do anything about it -- and remind me I've got either some meta or a story scrap about how this is what Audra was on the front lines for all those years he selfishly hid away, telling himself it was for the best P.S. As much as I love that Mitch just falls apart in full Worried Dad mode and can't seem to process a single medical term or physical symptom as it pertains to pregnancy, you know that if Abe weren't a sex doctor and the writers weren't butts, Mitch would absolutely be whipping out the stethoscopes and telling us all about the time he delivered a baby gorilla so this is basically the same thing -- I imagine Clem would take loud offense here -- while roping in Jamie as a delivery nurse to follow his instructions to the letter (because there are some things fathers just should not do no matter how brilliant they are). Things I would like to know Why Mitch -- who apparently had a through and through -- is the only one whose gunshot wound is still bothering him Why Clementine didn't once ask where Jamie was. (at which point I'd really like to see Mitch try and explain that one.)

It is straight up ridiculous to me that 19-year-old girl in labor, surrounded by men, would not want a woman with her, particularly one she loves. This is the most "what...man...[wrote] this" moment I have ever had about TV.

Did I just miss it, or is it kinda weird that Sam doesn't bat an eye upon finding out Charles Duncan is actually a different person and his girlfriend's father? 

Leftover Thoughts

This show is so nuts, I am just now realizing I didn't even stop to wonder how the hell Abigail reanimated herself last week before now.

Mitch being a testy bitch @ Abe is a thing that just does not get old. ("You put hybrid goo in my daughter? Was that not worth a little chat?")

Aww @ Mitch's mini pep-talk about being a good parent, followed by the "OK time to go" and the sweet "I'm having this baby?" / "You are having this baby."

I also really enjoy Mitch deciding to be cranky about Sam just because he's there and he can. It's kinda like sniping at Logan, but more fun and with way better reasons. (Which I hope is exactly what Mitch says when Clementine inevitably tells him to knock it off)

"Goodbye frequent flyer miles" lmao

I love that instead of shutting down the beacon by cutting the wire, they multiplied its effect by a thousand and destroyed a city, to which the response is basically, "Whoops."

"You've been good for my son. Take care of him for me." So I LOVE THIS, but also: dammit Max that is not what "die for our ship" means.

But I love the moment where Jamie and Max, individually, hear the baby crying. The joy dawning on their faces is so pure it actually makes it worthwhile that they're not present at the birth itself.

(I know we're especially mad about Jamie. But honestly, if it means All Mitch All The Time, that's an OK trade to me.)

tl;dr if something is not mentioned please assume I loved it

COMING SOON:

(will be links shortly) Mini essays analyzing Jamie V. Jackson, Mitch/Jamie and Max's death.

In conclusion: I spent my entire night writing this, but it was worth it. Future Me is gonna love looking back.

[jamesnovakwinchester]

(1) idk what u think about this from a writer's perspective but don't u think there's an oversaturation of bangs that may contribute to authors feeling overwhelmed by their schedule & not being able to do the work they want to do bc they're so worried about how much they have yet to do?? it's something i've noticed in this fandom in particular?? there's so many bangs coming out and they're all back to back that no one gets a chance to rest & breathe & live their lives without a schedule

(2) of bangs looming over their heads and thus fostering a sense of despair as authors feel guilty and immense pressure bc they feel like they have to write even tho their plate may already be too full,,, idk it just seems like there’s constant demand for new content that may be leaving authors wrung out especially since no one pays them for their free content (commissions not included obvs) it’s not a criticism just something i’ve seen in my time in the spn fandom

So I’m gonna answer this in two parts because I think there are a couple things being hinted at in this ask and I have a lot of thoughts about these topics.

So, one, do I think there is an oversaturation of bangs in the fandom and do I think that leads to author despair? Kinda yes but also kinda no.

There are a buttload of bangs in the spn fandom, that’s for sure. And, there have only been more in the past year. I can name at least four that were brand new this year and three of them are starting today. But I think these bangs exist for a very specific reason. I know the mods of the DCJ bang and I know a big motivation behind that bang was to get more art for Dean/Cas/Jimmy (there was literally one art work before the bang) and to get more fics that weren’t all written by the same few people. Seriously, prior to the DCJ BB announcement, there were maybe 100 works for that ship on A03 and most of those that had been written post Pitchers and Catchers and by people who all knew each other on tumblr. The Saileen BB, which I’m co-moding, was created as a retaliation to canon. It was a “fuck you, we’ll keep the love alive”, kind of thing. Other bangs like the Crowley BB and the BMoL BB were created out of love for those characters and fans who just weren’t done with them yet. In many ways, that’s what fandom is all about! And it encourages other writers who might be on the fence about writing their idea or don’t think anyone will care because it’s not one of the Two Big Ships to write and for readers to find authors who write something they’re interested it. It’s really awesome in that respect.

The issue, I think, comes when a person is a multishipper or a shipper in one of the ships that has an assload of challenges. Destiel has, currently, the BB, the reverse bang, the tropefest, the harlequin challenge, another BB (because there were issues with last year’s BB and some people got really pissed) and probably a few mini bangs, too. I know Wincest also has a BB and reverse bang, but I don’t know if they have challenges to the extent that Destiel does. If you’re a Destiel shipper, but particularly a writer, you know the issue with oversaturation that ship has. (But I will save that for the second part of the answer.) As a multishipper, I want to write for all the bangs. I want people who love the same ships as I do to have new content, and I want to read new content, too. I want long fics with character depth instead of just one-shots all the time (not that there’s anything wrong with one-shots or the people who stick to those, I just tend to be a long fic reader). For people like me, who want to read and write it all, the fact that a million and one bangs all at once can be stressful, and it does make me feel a little sad when I can’t participate in all of them. But I think the fact that there are a lot of specific bangs that deal with specific characters or ships is a good thing. Those of us who do ship obscure things and those who prefer genfic have a place to explore characters, make friends, and find new readers. And, not every writer is going to care about every bang. A strict Wincest shipper probably doesn’t care about the Crowley BB, and a genfic writer probably doesn’t care about ship focused bangs either. The people who are going to have the biggest issue with overextending themselves are going to be the people who write for a lot of ships and/or characters. In general, I think it’s a good thing that we have a lot of bangs. It’s a little strange, sure, but SPN’s fandom is wild. We want to see our favorite characters live on after the story is done, and I think that’s cool. I can definitely see how it’s stressful for some people, and I myself have stressed myself out trying to write multiple bangs at once, but it’s a learning curve and it is dependent on each author. Some can manage three or four projects at a time and others just can’t. I know a few authors (myself included) who stress out about bangs and feel there just isn’t enough time in the year to do everything they want. But bang participation is voluntary. I also know several writers who’ve never written in bang and are still stressed about the pressure to produce. Which leads me to part two…

…. it just seems like there’s constant demand for new content that may be leaving authors wrung out especially since no one pays them for their free content…

Yes. Yes, there is a lot of pressure for authors to produce new content but it has little to do with bangs, imo. I personally feel that bangs, in addition to being about celebrating characters that we lost too soon or rarer ships, are an opportunity for writers of The Two Big Ships to get attention. I’m gonna pick on Destiel a bit, but just because I think the prime example of what I’m talking about. The ship is a behemoth. Currently, (at least last I checked) it is the most written ship on Ao3.  Hundreds of thousands of words a cranked out yearly for this ship and because of that, smaller authors or new fics are lost. It doesn’t help, of course, that so many of the rec lists look exactly the same with the same few fics and authors populating them. In order to get noticed, the best chance a smaller author has is to participate in a bang or challenge and hopefully be interesting enough that bang readers will give them a shot. It sounds a little cynical, but I do think it plays a part in why there are so many challenges for that ship in particular. Authors are hungry for interaction, so we’re more likely to throw ourselves into challenges if we think we’ll get attention and interaction. It may sound a little vapid, but that’s how we’re paid. I don’t get paid in money to write, but I do get paid in kind words, so the more of that I get the better I feel and the more likely I am to continue to write. It’s kind of sucky thing, honestly.

Rather than being a main source of author despair, I think bangs and challenges are a response to it. We need to feel like we’re not just screaming into the void, here. Fanfic is an oversaturated market, but I don’t think it would be as much of an issue if readers were just a little more kind with their kudos and comments. I know that it’s different because 10% of readers leaving a “like” is actually pretty good but it still can sting and leave authors to feel that if they just produced more or better work or longer work or whatever they’d get more attention. (Or fewer “more!!” “update soon!” comments.)  It’s a strange thing, too, that most people who write for fun do so to make themselves feel better so we do tend to write other projects if one we’re doing is leaving us unsatisfied. (And then we feel more stressed because we’ve got a million things we’re working on and none of them are done and we start circling the drain in our minds.)

The demand for new content is definitely something that leaves authors feeling wrung out and unappreciated, but I think it’s separate from bangs. It may occur in bangs, too, but it happens independently of them as well. I think the stress surrounding having a lot of projects going can and does come from bangs, but I don’t think it’s the only thing that causes the stress. I think, by and large, authors feel the pressure to create lest they are regarded as unimportant. That’s, of course, not true, but that’s how a lot of us feel at times.

That’s my opinion, though. If anyone else wants to weigh in they’re more than welcome. 

[tumblunni]

Today’s pointless headcanon/oc for Yo-kai Watch! I dunno if there’s an actual word for taking a vaguely described backstory character and turning them into their own thing? Kinda an oc, kinda not... Anyway, some spoilers for Dr Maddiman’s new sidequests in Yo-kai Watch 3 which I just heard about today and CRIED A LOT OVER!

Okay now it has been officially confirmed that new YW3 Yo-kai Dr Kagemura is officially Dr Maddiman’s son who grew up! Imagine the world’s largest tears falling down my goddamn face right now. I really like that there was so much subtle evidence of it before this dlc update sidequest thing came out, it was a good way to build hype! Like Kagemura Hospital is apparantly what the Nocturne Hospital was called in japanese, and one of the preset nicknames when you catch Dr Kagemura could be read as ‘His Son’. Thanks infinately to kaialone for all those amazing translation posts, I’m so happy to know that all their work paid off with that headcanon coming true! Also, does this mean he’ll be called Dr Nocturne in the dub? Or I wonder if they might change it up a bit. Cos in japanese Maddiman’s name calls him a hospital director instead of JUST a doctor, maybe kagemura’s dub name might make it clearer that he’s lower ranking? I dunno if its a very important detail though, beyond making it easier to guess that theyre related. But the dub will probably include all these postgame bonus sidequest downloads as part of the main package, so it doesnt really matter as much.

ANYWAY THE HEADCANONS

Like.. I just want this whole awkward family to have a happy ending. Headcanon of what if Maddiman’s ex-wife also became a yo-kai!

I can hope for this!! or, at least, I can hope that if we ever hear more about kagemura’s backstory specifically then we can know if his mum ended up living a happy life in those 50 years before the game starts. But seeing how young kagemura seems to have been when he died, that’s got me worrying if his story ended up just as tragically as his father’s did. My old headcanons about this were that maybe maddiman’s son was very sickly as a child, and thats what started the whole ‘i will take over the world with yo-kai in order to protect my family’ obsession. And then the idea was that kagemura’s resentment of his father caused him to become obsessed with becoming a better doctor, putting everything into studying for medical school and dying in his late teens from overwork combined with his weak constitution. TRAGIC HEADCANONS! The Perfect Spice For Tragic Canon!

Aaaaaanyway, mystery unnamed wife lady headcanons! I was thinking if she became a yo-kai she might be like Nurse Taykeabreake, Laxy Daisy, maybe even Shirkly Temple? Or, tbh, it would make more sense if she had a different job to her husband. Easy Rider -> Easie Writer? I know that Cutta-Nah already exists as a Yo-Kai that makes people lazy, and there’s plenty for sleep, but I’m sure we could figure out a similar yet distinct thing to go with. maybe she’s specifically about procrastinating your homework? I’m thinking she’d look like a stereotypical strict teacher, or maybe a newspaper journalist or something. And her personality would kinda be that way, she’s all neat freak and easy to anger, and takes everything super seriously even though her ‘lessons’ are on how to completely fail at being productive. Eight hour essay on not writing essays! Oh, lol maybe she accidentally causes people to become MORE productive, cos she’s so bad at her job? XD

But yeah, the idea would be that her yo-kai form was manifested from her desire for her husband to come home from work every now and again. Just like his workaholic nature was exaggerated into mad science, her trying to get him to loosen up and take care of himself turned her into the personification of no rules ever. in a very strict and ruley way! Imagine if she ended up getting a gaggle of friends along the way too, but for her she just ended up in a group of baddinyan and co. Acts as the mom figure to all the gangsters! (”man look at how dirty all your jackets are!” *gets halfway to the washing machine before falling asleep*) Or maybe this could be an excuse for why her son appeared as a yo-kai before her? Like ‘i was gonna come back from the dead but I procrastinated’. So she only appears after her son and ex-husband reconcile and visit her grave together.

And the personality I’m thinking of for her is kinda just like the stereotypical ‘nagging housewife’ cartoon character, but portrayed sympathetically. Cos its not like she didnt have reason to get angry at him, this is the man she loves and she barely even sees him anymore, and he’s potentially gonna get himself killed in some extreme experiment and she doesnt even know that his motive for starting this all was just to protect his family in his own mad way. If anything, what little we know of her is that she’s abnormally patient with him. She put up with it for a long time, it seems, and deciding to divorce him and move back home must have been equally as painful for her. At least, I think it would be even more tragic if it was that way, yknow? Nobody is really a villain of the story, but it still ended up horribly because of just lack of communication and bad timing. I think her and maddiman always used to bicker and stuff, but it was more like a comical clashing of two larger than life personalities. Maybe they met in medical school and started off as just best friends, she was always all ‘darn it, stop with your endearing social awkwardness!’ and he was all ‘you need to relax, yo!’ and she was all ‘NO U NEED TO RELAX. AND ALSO STOP WEARING THE SAME LABCOAT TWO WEEKS IN A ROW’ *lovehearts in the air, somehow* Sassy couple. best couple. It all looked so promising at first! If anything, the problems came from when they stopped arguing, and just started being silent and stewing in their problems. Until it boiled down to a guy spending all day in work to avoid talking about his marital issues, just to come home and find that his wife had left a divorce note, unable to face him either. :(

And probably... honestly even if they both came back as ghosts, i doubt they would get back together. I think they would be incredibly happy to see each other, and they would be able to talk about what happened and apologise, but still they’ve changed so much that getting remarried wouldnt really be on the table. They’d totally be amicable exes and best friends, but its hard to start a relationship again when you know your breakup literally caused everyone in the family to die horribly and become earthbound spirits of misfortune. That’s a bit of an epic divorce... OH MAN I JUST GOT THE FEELS AGAIN Like... Maddiman’s diary talks about how he doesnt even take care of himself cos he’s so obsessed with work, and how his wife would complain as she tried to wash his clothes after he forgot to change them for weeks. So imagine like “oh god what would you do without me” and the answer is LITERALLY DIE! We don’t know HOW he died, but the japanese version seems to imply that he literally died halfway through writing this diary and just kept going. Like... after his wife left he just locked himself in his lab and kept working until he worked himself to death, and then got back up and kept working for fifty years afterwards... Can you imagine his wife and son’s perspective?? You still love this guy, it was really painful to leave but you thought it was necessary to give your kid a good life. Maybe you hoped that it’d be a wake up call and your ex is better off without you. You think about him every now and then and wonder if he’s doing okay, you wonder maybe about visitation rights for his son when he gets older. Then the first and only thing you hear about him in years is that he’s collapsed on the job and been hospitalized in critical condition. Maybe she had her own turn at being the one who walks through the door to find the worst possible goodbye? Desperately packing up all your things and flying back to japan to try and see your ex-husband in a coma, but when you walk into the hospital you find he’s just passed away. And then her and the child had to live the rest of their lives never knowing that he was just a few streets away as a yo-kai still haunting the same office. DEPRESSING HEADCANONS! FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!

seriously i just have to happy headcanons after this plz yo-kai hugs for all of this sadly doomed household ghosty ex-wife: Sit up straight and take your slacking off lessons! *agressively buries maddiman in blankets* *drags him away from his work with giant buff demon arms*

[nottrampis]

Possibly the last questions I will answer

Here are answers to questions that some-one dumped on me.

Why did I start this blog?

I did write about Castle on my normal blog ( which is mainly about economics and politics) but I felt I wanted to write a lot more.I wanted to did deep into Castle which I felt was being missed by others I had read and I admit to being frustrated by most simply shrugging their shoulders when the consistent contradictions or implausible plot lines invariably came up. A small example of this was the attempted portrayal of Beckett as a rebel. This claim was easily demolished by continual examples ( the first in the very FIRST episode of Beckett readily acceding to authority.

What do I think you have no idea meant?

Marlowe made this into some wonder sexual techniques that only Beckett knew of and Castle had never experienced in Season 5 episode 1. does anyone really think Beckett would know more about sexual technique than Meredith. without that Meredith would have few acting parts!!

We need to remember Beckett starts reading Castle when she is 19-20 and it becomes a way of helping her get past her mother’s murder. It may well have exacerbated he desire to join law enforcement. I think Beckett had a crush on Castle as she read his books. When he was divorced from Meredith she dreamed of marrying him. When he was divorced from Gina and began his ‘ladies man’escapades she dreamed of changing his ways. Much more romantic don’t you think and would have boosted both the canon and story line of Caskett.

How would have the 12th Reacted to Beckett becoming Captain?

I want to broaden this whilst answering this question. There would have been a riot at the 12th. Imagine the first monday ‘executive’ meeting of the lieutenant, ?Sergeant and leading detectives. Every one of them would have believed that had more reason to be captain than Beckett. They all remembered her suspension, her sacking in Washington, Her been given her old job back when she returned in disgrace. the  lieutenant and robbery would have long memories of her behaviour to Tom Demming as well!

The whole NYPD would be in uproar over her appointment. Think of all the lieutenants she has bypassed on her way to being Captain. It would make a complete mess of promotions in future. Think about all the rumours about why and how Beckett got the appointment. In the end it would be a political headache for the Mayor.

Were 3XK and Bracken good villains and were their endings done well?

They were excellent villains but no they endings were poor.

Take Bracken first. It make sense he is in a position to take the money and it enables him to go into politics. It is for the ‘greater good’. Bracken can mange this as there are only a small amount of people involved and in essence he only has to worry an] bout Montgomery. however once he gets into money laundering and drug running there are a large amount of people who know of his involvement. He would have no political future. This part is simply asinine and very lazy writing.

3XK up until the very last episode is always ( pun intended) way ahead of Castle yet suddenly Castle outsmarts 3XK? I do not think so. Of course Castle ans Espo providing summary justice to 3XK would be very easy to see and thus charge. If they made it luck that they got him such as a blind suddenly going up or whatever it would have been believable.

What part of the Caskett backstory was believable and what was not?

Castle living with a woman at University and then Kyra on the rebound marrying Meredith and then Gina with Sphia Turnewr in the mix before Beckett was totally believable as Castle was almost pathetic in his hope for a log term relationship.

He wasn’t a ladies man and could not have been one given this period is in Alexis’s formative years. He could only have sex whilst she was at school and how many women could afford to take a day off work simply to have nookie with Castle.no-one but no-one goes to either a playground or museum with his daughter and picks up women.Imagine the reaction of the women when they realise he is a single father!

Nor does he have the time up until he meets Beckett to have many girlfriends. A girlfriend means a relationship. this takes time to develop and grow. you cannot have say 6 girlfriends in a year!

Beckett is only at University in California for a year. It makes no sense for her to live with anyone let alone a loser Rogan O’Leary. In Aussie Terms the man is a bludger. He would have been living off Beckett’s allowance. Let us assume Johanna cuts this off when she hears of this which is why she has to take jobs such as being a naked model for artists although thinking about this surely working at McDonalds would have paid better. Her marks would have suffered as well. does anyone really believe she had so many boy friends whilst at high school? 

Who scorned Beckett?  We do not know. We found out in season 3 she was drowning until she met Mike Royle but in season 8 she was outstanding? huh

Can Beckett’s modeling times be reconciled?

Nope. In season 2 it was in early high school and in season 6 it was later. The canon is completely stuffed because the writers did  not do basic research.

Any small changes to Castle you think could have changed the series?

Yes,

Castle would have a significant property portfolio so why does he allow Martha to live at the Loft . It is unhealthy for both.

Once Alexis is at Uni move her out. Have he living at Uni and get her to a Phd. she was supposed to be smart!

Castle is only married once and make it Gina. this means a different Alexis who now becomes attractive, Gina is not his publisher either. Given Gina’s beauty it sets up a number of jealousy episodes! 

Allow Jackson Hunt to become part of the family