#he is STRUGGLING in s6

[wereoz]

spencer reid unnervingly miming stabbing someone while talking in a low raspy voice about it. i love you mentally healthy girl<3

[s0fter-sin]

one of my favourite aspects of supernatural that you very rarely see in paranormal shows is that sam and dean are already versed in the world they live in. there’s no sudden discovery of ghosts and demons and now they have to learn about them along with the audience; they are born into it and already know all about it. it allows the audience to follow their personal story instead of also trying to figure out this new world and its rules

the first season is full of knowledge we never see them learn; “w*ndigoes are in the minnesota woods or- or northern michigan. i’ve never even heard of one this far west.” […] “great. well then this [his gun] is useless.” (1x02), “you don’t break a curse. you get the hell out of its way.” (1x08), d: “it’s a god. a pagan god, anyway.” […] “the annual cycle of its killings? and the fact that the victims are always a man and a woman. like some kind of fertility right.” […] s: “the last meal. given to sacrificial victims. d: “yeah, i’m thinking a ritual sacrifice to appease some pagan god.” (1x11)

almost every episode in the first season is a monster they’ve faced before that they then explain to the audience in a way that should feel patronising; like it’s the same speech given over and over again but instead, the audience almost feels included in the knowledge. it’s stated with such an innate confidence and comfort in said knowledge that it feels like we already knew it too; “spirits and demons don't have to unlock doors. if they want inside, they just go through the walls.” […] “the claws, the speed that it moves; could be a skinwalker, maybe a black dog.” (1x02), “it's biblical numerology. you know noah's ark, it rained for forty days. the number means death.” (1x04), “no no no, not the reaper, a reaper. there's reaper lore in pretty much every culture on earth, it goes by 100 different names.” […] “you said it yourself that the clock stopped, right? reapers stop time. and you can only see 'em when they're coming at you which is why i could see it and you couldn't.” (1x12)

they already know and, at least in the first season, already have what they need to kill whatever they’re hunting; already know to salt and burn bones for spirits, fire for a w*ndigo, exorcisms for demons, a silver bullet to the heart for shapeshifters. there’s only three times in the entire first season that they run into something new to them; 1x14 when sam gets his first vision that leads him to another psychic, 1x16 when dean calls caleb for help on the sigil he put together and he tells him about daevas, and 1x20 when they find out vampires are real- and they only don’t know that bc john thought they were hunted to extinction and not worth mentioning

(there’s also technically two half instances if you count one of them knowing something the other doesn’t - sam figuring out the tulpa in 1x17 and dean already knowing about the shtriga in 1x18 - but those still rely on sam and dean having prior knowledge)

even when they’re uncertain about facing something, it’s not bc they don’t know what it is; it’s precisely bc they know what it is and acknowledge that it’ll be a difficult hunt (“i don't know, man. this isn't our normal gig. i mean, demons, they don't want anything, just death and destruction for its own sake. this is big. and i wish dad was here.” 1x04)

so much of the tension in paranormal shows typically comes from the main character(s) not knowing what is happening to them/the people around them and having to find out how to resolve it. supernatural is unique in that it operates more like a police procedural. the tension comes from solving the clues and identifying patterns to figure out who (what) the killer is and intercepting before they can take another victim

it’s such a different tone to go for when compared to other shows that came both before, during, and after its run. it sets sam and dean on even footing with each other since they both have the same knowledge going in, and it puts them in a place of authority usually reserved for an outside character

the shows i compare spn to most is charmed, buffy and teen wolf; every main character in those shows are brought into the paranormal world knowing nothing, putting them on the same level as the audience, and they have their mc interact with others already knowledgeable about that world in order to overcome their problem/monster of the week. the audience organically learns about this new world as the characters learn about it. it’s a sound writing strategy that prevents “as we already know”-style exposition but something that complicates it is if your world building isn’t unique or intriguing enough, this slow introduction can become boring

we’ve seen shows like these before; sitting through the same tropes of characters learning to use their powers, struggling with no longer feeling normal/relating to the regular world around them, and not knowing how much they can trust the people already involved in this new world gets repetitive. all three shows eventually reach the same level of comfort with their new world that spn starts with but if the characters aren’t enough to draw you in, you can end up dropping it before they reach that point (and often, before the overarching plot can really kick in and evolve the show beyond the villain of the week format)

it’s the superhero origin movie in tv format; dragged out and overplayed. dropping the audience into an established world of course comes with its own problems but you also have the benefit of pre-existing established character dynamics that let the audience slot in like they’ve always been there instead of just getting to know all the characters while the characters also get to know each other

sam and dean already knowing about the supernatural lets the audience immediately get to the core of the story; the conflict between sam and dean, the search for their father, and the mystery of what killed their mother

[starssoblue]

"the reason adrien is just instantly good at everything he tries is because he is programmed to be that way as a senti" aside from the fact that i don't think that's how it works (and also while he was decent at everything he tried with marinette he wasn't instantly good at all of them, and what marinette actually said to him was that he could improve in anything with practice but it was a great first attempt) did we all collectively forget about how adrien actually canonically isn't the best singer?

[borgialucrezia]

i'm just thinking about arthur getting terrified of tommy when he broke down after the failed assassination of mosley and instead of approaching him and trying to reassure him, he sneakily took out the bullets of his gun while driving back to the mansion and let him roam wild in the field acting all suicidal. and by letting him run into the field alone at least he knows that tommy can't kill himself with an empty gun... it's batshit to me how his assumption of tommy killing himself turned out correct and he saved his life by emptying the gun...these two are so fucked up actually.

[solargeist]

thibking abt Mumbo always sharing his lunch with Grian or even making him snacks bc he forgets to eat sometimes

[timothyslucy]

thinking about that japril scene where april breaks down in tears when she tells jackson that they were having a baby boy, and how much i want that for chenford, but happy!!! like... they agree that they don't care about knowing the sex of their baby, but lucy accidentally finds out somehow, and in her excitement she stops by the precinct over lunch, or after shift to tell tim, "we're having a girl" with the biggest smile on her face, only to quickly go into a slight panic when his face drops like 😧 and she starts to ramble like, "l-look, i know you probably wanted a boy first-" but tim surprises her by interrupting her and crashing his lips to hers, only to pull away with tears in his eyes like, "no, i want this. i want exactly this."

[shrinkthisviolet]

“This was needed! Daniel needed to stop worshipping Mr. Miyagi and seeing he had flaws!”

OR maybe the writers/TB3 needed to stop acting like pacifist = passive, start writing Miyagi-Do with the same respect as they do Cobra Kai and Eagle Fang, and remember that KK1 already showed that Mr. Miyagi was imperfect and had grief and anger he needed to work through (he was human, imperfect, not always the perfect calm mentor—this is territory we’ve treaded in KK1 already!!)

[divinekangaroo]

Random thought that S1 could have instead had more consistent hinting/detail to it that Tommy *suspected* Grace in some way, and therefore his seduction of her wasn't entirely just the hearteyes it tried to be sold as, but rather attempting to sway her to his side. Because, given every other series has Tommy using his body/self/sex as a way to leverage influence he wouldn't otherwise have, it'd be consistent to have seen a hint of that with Grace.

And then to *still* have their revelation moment after the Garrison killings, because then how much more meaningful if he throws away his suspicions in favour of finding someone he feels sees him and gets him.

[camellcat]

girl in the fireplace is so funny to me. just seeing different people's reactions (and mine) to it. like, here's how I break it down:

if you love rose tyler and timepetals but maybe not as crazy for the doctor himself, this is the worst episode ever EVA!!!!! like hell on EARTH WHYYYY OH MY GOD ROSEEE MY GIRL I'M SO SORRY YOU'RE BEING TREATED LIKE THIS!!!!! DOCTOR go save ur girl goddamn don't just leave her so uncertain and feeling betrayed like that!!!! and don't PROUDLY KISS OTHER WOMEN 😰😰😰!!!!!

if you're a bigger doctor lover but still enjoy rose and maybe timepetals but eh it's whatever, this episode is very interesting and a fun exploration of the doctor, if a bit sad to see rose almost sidelined like that. ultimately one you quite enjoy

if you just care about the doctor and not rose or timepetals, this episode is the SHIT OH it's so good it's SO good oh my god yes please dive more into the doctor's fucked up psyche and life grahhHH!!!! ough. this man is FUCKED UP!! YEAHHHH!!!

[l4dymarika]

My question is why aren’t they looking at their selves like looking at your hands while you’re on a date is just so awkward

[wolfwarrior142]

Stella and Sneezles: We are here to be adorable and devious companions.

[ancient-romes]

agent Washington for character bingo

HIII JUMPING UP AND DOWN!!! TY FOR THIS

Wash as a character makes me insane like i cant even put into words i just have to explode . everytime i see him on screen i have to physically calm myself down its so bad. i think he and tucker has just permanently taken over my brain.

he's been through psychological horror you couldn't even imagine, he became worse before he became better, he could be so so much worse, he could heal, he could be happy, he could break. I want to see him pushed to his limit but also i just want him to be safe and happy. giving him a smooch

NO BINGO :(

[kinky-cas]

more thoughts on "who would dean have a harder time living without, sam or cas?" that i didn't want to dump on the poll

there are two scenarios here: 1) they're dead, or 2) they're alive and dean knows they're doing fine, but they're not in his life.

in the first scenario, the answer is objectively and provably cas. sam died and dean did his best to live a peaceful life with ben and lisa, and mostly succeeded. cas dies and dean kills himself the first chance he gets.

it’s not a matter of who he cares about more! he cares about them differently, it's not something you can compare like that. also, dean is capable of surviving the deaths of people he loves very dearly despite enormous grief (mary, jack, bobby, charlie, sam in s6 etc.). the deaths he doesn’t survive are sam in s2 (suicide via demon deal), cas in s12 (suicide via syringe), and cas in the finale (suicide via rebar, though you can argue this one).

the reason dean trades his life for sam’s in s2 isn’t because he can’t live without sam, it’s because he still believes that his entire purpose in life is to protect sam, and that he’s worth nothing if he’s failed that, with bonus guilt on top that john already died for him. the grief is a contributing factor but the guilt of failure is what kills him. and i don’t think he would have killed himself if it wouldn’t have gotten sam back. because when sam dies in s6 dean struggles and is depressed and grieving but he's trying, and it’s still the best year of lisa’s life. and that was with cas gone and while also trying to shove a lifetime of ptsd under the rug!

when cas dies in s7 dean is depressed and passively suicidal to a degree that terrifies sam and bobby. when cas dies in s12 dean kills himself 5 episodes later. and when cas dies at the end of s15 dean is dead within six months, in a way that very much reads as at least passive suicide. when cas is dead, dean does not want to live. and we are shown several times that despite his best efforts, sam is not capable of picking up the pieces and getting dean through that loss.

in the second scenario, alive but apart, imo the answer is also cas. at least by the end of the show.

sam is the little brother dean raised. he loves him, he'd miss him like hell if they couldn't ever talk or see each other again, but ultimately dean's happiest ending has always been one where sam is living an independent, happy, fulfilling and (relatively) safe life. it would just majorly suck if they couldn't be a part of each other's lives at all. your kids grow up, yk?

cas on the other hand is, by the end of the show, dean's chosen life partner. by the time romantic confessions happen, cas and dean have already been filling the role of spouse for each other for actual years. cas is the person dean leans on for support, both practical and emotional. cas is the person who sees him clearly and who he chooses to open up to. dean is far, far more resilient when cas is around! not having cas in his life means not just losing the life they had and the future dean wanted to build together, but also losing his emotional rock and the person he, a chronic caretaker in most of his relationships, is most comfortable relying on for support. so in that sense I think life without cas would be harder than life without sam.

[familyagrestefanblog]

Ladybug's Lucky Charms in Werepapas

Let's talk about another detail that people kinda REALLY wanna ignore about Marinette's decision in the Werepapas akuma battle. It's the fact that she hand-waves away FIVE Lucky Charms until she finally goes with the sixth:

No, that is NOT irrelevant. Marinette is not supposed to disregard her Lucky Charms left and right because they're trying to tell her what she's supposed to do. That's Lucky Charm 101 in an akuma battle.

I'm not gonna pretend like I know for 100% certainty what they all tried to tell her, but

1) a couple of them can be easily interpreted in very relevant ways.

And 2) I don't NEED to know what exactly they all mean because it doesn't need to be PROVEN that Marinette isn't supposed to cherry-pick her Lucky Charms. We've known since s1 how this works and it's still done like this in s6. Thanks to not being limited anymore to 1 Lucky Charm, she gained the luxury of sometimes just getting to summon one for the purpose of whooping ass instead of solving the actual situation - which is still a lucky charm's REAL purpose - but that doesn't change the fact that you're supposed to listen to the Lucky Charm, not the Lucky Charm to you!

Under special circumstances like a final battle, sure, use additional ones to whoop ass. But you can't just switch out the problem solving Charm with a purely ass whooping one which is what Marinette did here in "Werepapas". It's fine when you do that in an extremely dire situation, but a normal akuma battle is no dire situation. Especially not when the only real stakes there are is being reckless with Adrien's amoks!

She's supposed to use whatever she gets and that'll lead her to the right solution. Not going through a whole line of Lucky Charms until she gets one where she finally likes the first thought she gets from it because of how little it challenges her self-preservation (makes you wonder if having unlimited Lucky Charms now isnt the worst thing that ever happened to her. Now she can just ignore whole Lucky Charms until she finally gets one that tells her something closer to what she wants to hear instead of listening to the CHARM)

Let's take a look at her 6 Lucky Charms:

From my recollection (so correct me if I'm wrong), while the teapot sometimes shows up here and there as filler Charms it was firmly established and used several times as a visual cue for Marinette to go to Master Fu.

Obviously, she can't do that anymore, but she has Alya as co-guardian, Luka who was trained by Su-Han, and even Su-Han himself as Celestial Guardian who now does whatever she wants.

In a situation where Adrien's amoks are the akuma object, it's a pretty logical thing to happen that her first Lucky Charm tells her to get Guaridan-related help. She has the option, all the needed support, and all the resources, but doesn't use it because it wouldn't be nice having to face the baggage that could come with it.

And even if you wanna say "She didn't get help because she didn't wanted the new Butterfly to possibly find out that Adrien is a Sentibeing!" Then that excuse still falls flat because obviously Adrien's LIFE is supposed to be more important than preventing that secret from coming out. The secret has no value if Adrien is DEAD.

Afterwards she gets a fan and this obviously could VERY likely mean that she's supposed to get Felix involved because he's the Miraculous holder of the Peacock. And by "VERY likely" I mean "I doubt there is a likely chance that it ISNT a hint to get Felix".

I won't even elaborate on this further. Her second Lucky Charm tried telling her to get Felix when Adrien's amoks were on the line and she ignored it. It is what it is.

For the third and fifth ones, I personally don't know what they could mean because I already struggle recognizing what exactly they are supposed to be. Though, they do have recognizable shapes. I bet other people could look at them and know where they've seen these objects before in the show.

Then right between these two, the fourth Charm Marinette summons is an unicycle (that for some reason isn't polkadotted, but screw it)

An unicycle like she summoned back in season 2 "Sabotis", the episode in which Alya became Rena Rouge for the first time. Meaning this one pointed to getting Rena's help.

For me, this is one of the most interesting ones regarding Marinette's feelings of not wanting to face the Lucky Charm's solution to instead protect all her secrets. But if anything, I would want to give it its own post and not half-ass it here. Cause there are a lot of layers to this one.

And, of course, the last one: the scarf. It's alongside the fan the one for which the fandom does casually acknowledge the symbolism of it being a call back to 1x01 "The Bubbler" where Marinette now infamously made the decision to let Adrien believe that it was his father who made the scarf for him - and not her - because of how happy it made Adrien that his father finally "cared":

I don't think I need to explain why it makes sense that this is the one s6 Marinette cherry-picks to finally work with. The poor scarf has been made into the symbol of Marinette wanting to keep pretty much everything about Adrien's family a secret from him. Including him being a Sentibeing. I miss the good old days when we dreamed of the scarf being set-up to become the catalyst for Adrien to write off his father as a useless deadbeat who isnt worth his time and love.

So, unfortunately, of course this is the one she goes with now. Even if it means taking the risk to kill Adrien. Anything to keep the secrets save and lies unnoticed. How tf did we GET here?

[elysianholly]

So I got sucked into r/buffy again over the weekend (I know I know) and the amount of misogyny disguised as performative feminism is killing me. As is the attempt to distill S6 into a "Spike bad/Buffy victim" when the actual story is so much more complicated, nuanced, and heartbreaking than that.

I will say I absolutely sympathize with Buffy 100% throughout S6, more than I do Spike. This is a big reversal of how I felt 20 years ago, but reflective of my own experience with self-hatred and depression. That said, I also 100% sympathize with Spike and recognize a few fundamentals that antis can't seem to grasp:

He's trying to be what Buffy needs

He can't be what Buffy needs, but he doesn't understand why

He doesn't have a soul, ergo he's incapable of meeting her at the level she needs. This is not a choice on Spike's part; it's simply fucking nature.

Death/darkness/disassociating from society is a GOOD THING in Spike's mind. He found the ultimate freedom once he rejected societal pressures and stopped trying to win the approval of his peers. He fully believes Buffy will be happier if she does the same.

Is it selfish? OF COURSE IT'S SELFISH. He can't not be selfish because of the no-soul thing. But that doesn't mean his motives are inherently bad; it means his understanding of the situation is fundamentally flawed.

In Spike's mind, Buffy seeing things Spike's way is what will set her free. This mentality is of course wrong and toxic, but his intention is not to break her down, rather cut the chains he sees holding her back. Being human did him no favors. He's trying to share his experience and becomes increasingly desperate as these attempts fail.

Throughout all of S6, with very few exceptions, Buffy pursues Spike. She does in OMWF, Tabula Rasa, initiates sex in Smashed, Gone, Doublemeat Palace, and in Dead Things, save the balcony scene. We also see that she WANTS Spike in her dream sequence, specifically in her bed the way a normal boyfriend would be. Buffy's only source of comfort and support at a time when she needs it most is coming from someone she believes she should be ashamed of, and that is what hurts her more. She's expected to take care of Dawn, of Willow in the midst of her recovery, participate in a wedding, balance being the SOLE BREADWINNER in her home (for reasons that are never addressed, much less acknowledged), along with the intense trauma of having been ripped out of heaven and KNOWING that peace exists out there somewhere and she can't have it. That the only person who seems to see her struggle, understand her, and provide any reprieve is also someone she has been conditioned to believe she shouldn't like, much less love, compounds her intense self-loathing and her belief that she is wrong. She wants the answer to be that she came back wrong because being wrong means being released from the expectations and responsibilities of being Buffy Summers.

This is what Spike can't understand, and not because he's stupid or evil or selfish, but because by the show's own lore, he is incapable of understanding it. His best and only connection to the human world is broken; it's not Buffy's responsibility to be his compass, but she IS his compass. She's the reason he's changed as much as he has, how he models his behavior, the reason he has evolved, and she's emotionally incapable of being that for herself at the moment, much less him. Again, not a burden she should have to shoulder to begin with, but a result of the natural order as dictated by the show's lore. Spike's humanity is nurtured through his connection to Buffy, and his connection to Buffy changes from day to day as her internal processes change.

I don't think "mutually abusive" is the right term as we understand it outside of Buffyverse because that has a lot of real-world implications that are absent from this fictional paradigm. But setting aside those implications, the dynamic is MUTUAL and ABUSIVE. It is intellectually dishonest to apply human motivations and power dynamics on inhuman characters stripped of the very specific conditions that allowed those dynamics to become what they are. It's also appalling to claim that Buffy was Spike's victim when she was calling the shots throughout the bulk of their relationship; it completely strips Buffy of her agency. Women can be depressed. Women can make bad decisions. Women can flounder, struggle, and fail because of themselves and crack under the pressure others put them under without being someone's victim.

Also? Denying Buffy's abusive behavior to Spike is similarly appalling. Slayers are understood to be physically stronger than vampires, the same way as most men are understood to be physically stronger than women. If a man beat a woman bloody in an alley and abandoned her there, would you say she deserved it? Would it be acceptable if you knew she was asking for it? That the man had had a really bad day? That he was going through something and trying to work some stuff out?

Season 6 is complicated, especially the Spuffy dynamic, because these are two broken people trying to not be broken and unable to help each other the way they need. But they were broken people, and that fracture was mutual, regardless of how uncomfortable that is. It's also why Season 6 is one of the show's strongest seasons. It takes us to pretty awful places but also shows us the way out. Trying to minimize that or make it black-and-white is a lot of things, and none of them are good.

[thetrialsandtribulationsofeb]

kim’s storyline is so far the craziest thing that happened on the show from an emotional point of view, but it’s also the one thing that finally helped me wrap my head around eddie’s relationship with shannon

someone once said somewhere that eddie thinks shannon was the love of his life and buck is his best friend - but in reality, shannon was his best friend and buck is the love of his life

also, that part of the famous quote: “…and another guy who knows he’s in love with his best friend, but doesn’t know he’s gay”

and i can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something about the way eddie feels toward shannon and buck. his connection with each of them is similar, but also very different

i think he was in love with shannon platonically when they met and confused it for romantic love, ‘cause it was all he knew (growing up in a religious and heteronormative household)

like, i’d really like to believe that he loved her romantically, but every time she was at the tip of his fingertips, he didn’t know what to do with her - he either went to war or “was waiting for a sign”

and when he met buck, he fell in love with him romantically, but confused it for platonic love, ‘cause he doesn’t know that he can feel romantic feelings for a man, and because he didn’t have a lot of experience

like, shannon was his only point of reference

and he couldn’t find the same connection he had with her in all his other girlfriends because they weren’t his best friends. he didn’t really love them, even platonically, because he was laser-focused on his task to have sex with them (’cause that’s how relationships work, right?) and make them christopher’s “mothers” - hence the emotional cheating with kim (+ it’s about his unresolved grief)

so he really can’t understand what his feelings for buck are. he knows that he’s in love with him (meaning, that he has strong feelings for him), but he thinks that’s just what platonic love feels like - when in reality, if a more experienced and self-aware person felt that same way toward somebody, they would know that it’s romantic affection

so it’s like… he keeps trying to find shannon in every relationship he puts himself into because he thinks the love they had was what he needed, and he wants to recreate the same “magic”

when in fact, it wasn’t even the real “magic” - not in the sense of romantic love. but he found the actual magic with buck; he just couldn’t recognize it, ’cause he didn’t have the framework for it

it’s like bobby said both times when eddie struggled with his relationships:

“they’re so focused on what they don’t have that they miss the chance to have something else, something real” (s4)

“one thing you can’t do is compare what you had with what you think you’re gonna have. you just have to be open to whatever comes” (s6)

i don’t think bobby knew what exactly his words meant for eddie’s understanding of his feelings, but he was right when he said them - he just didn’t know what exactly he was right about

(also, did eddie hear himself when he was screaming at buck at the grocery store? like, why are you treating your best friend like your dead wife that walked out on you?? connect the dots, eddie, do it)

eddie loved shannon the way michael loved athena - it’s a very complex and layered kind of love until it’s resolved. except eddie, unfortunately, didn’t get a chance to do that, because shannon died

but, as the priest said, god already forgave eddie and he doesn’t want him to keep punishing himself - he wants him to allow himself joy despite his mistakes and failures

“so how’d you make it happen for you and athena?” *blah-blah-blah*

…so you definitely weren’t looking for it.

he and buck weren’t looking for it in each other, but they found it nonetheless

now they just need to figure out that they found it :D