#i love cannibalism (IN MEDIA NOT IN REAL LIFE) as a metaphor for obsessive love 🥰

[its-a-pandamonium-in-my-brain]

🎵pick out her heart with a kitchen fork / and pin down her arms 🎵

(hey! big BIG warning for gore/blood/cannibalism/things-that-should-be-on-the-inside-of-the-body-and-not-exposed-to-the-air underneath the cut!)

i kinda had this idea floating around in my head for a while, and then got kitchen fork by jack conte stuck in my head and the rest is history

also um, im so sorry to cassandra's creator @/thaliaoftheveil for killing your girl lmao-

anyways you can tell by cyra's fully black wings, blue eyes, and blue halo that this is completed corruption arc cyra! meaning the power of love did NOT in fact save her (and cassandra). my personal take on this is 2 things:

if we think in the au where cyra completed her corruption arc, she's the one to kill cassandra the second and the third (and final) time, but oh boy! shes still got feelings for cassie, so in a fucked up way of showing that (now that cassies dead), she! eats cassie's heart!, and

in canon cyra doesn't complete her corruption arc, and so i headcanon/think that cyra has a nightmare (sent by lutheria) of eating cassie now that shes officially forsaken lutheria/been saved by the power of love 🥰

[connorgoldie604]

Artist Research

Tetsuo Aoki (1940 - unknown)

"The theme of my artwork is to express the pleasure, the deepness and the importance of touching each other. The original world of woodblock with Japanese paper (Washi) and Chinese ink (Sumi) is my basis."

Tetsuo Aoki – 青木鐵男 is a Japanese woodblock printmaker, who was born in 1940. He utilises wood to engrave his designs and uses a black and white colour scheme consistently throughout his prints. 

His elongated, disproportional and overstretched characters immediately caught my eye and he is now one of my biggest inspirations. I love the layouts he uses and the overall distorted aesthetic of his work. Aoki’s graphic style is far from ordinary. He utilizes defined shapes and little shadowing which creates a sense of sentimentality. 

Bryan Nash Gill (1961 - 2013)

"Art is (or should be) an authentic experience, which brings you closer to understanding yourself in relation to your surroundings." - Bryan Nash Gill

Bryan creates large-scale relief prints from the cross-sections of trees. It is up to us as viewers to find meaning in Bryans art. Personally, I find his art both beautiful and thought-provoking; it portrays the idea of growth and change yet makes me think about sustainability and the living things that surround us humans. 

Bryan believes that the journey is more important than the destination; "Strict concentration on the making, the process, is more important than the result." His take on the process of art is almost a metaphor for all things organic - he lived in the moment and did not let his thoughts guide him.

Gill creates patterns from fallen or damaged trees which he rescues from the property surrounding his studio. He prepares blocks of recycled wood, coats it in a thin layer of ink then makes prints by carefully pressing the contours of the wood until the intricate designs transfer from tree to paper. It is important to Gill that the entire tree and all it’s intricisies is documented.

Hulya Ozdemir

“I think my paintings are timeless. My portraits do not remain imprisoned in a single statement. Their gazes are changing, just like us. One day in the same picture is sad, another day is possible to see a happy face.” - Hulya Ozdemir 

Hulya Ozdemir  is an illustrator and painter of watercolor portraits who was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1972. Hulya focuses predominantly on female portraits and showcases women becoming self confident and breaking out of social norms created by a make-dominated society. Hulya does not sketch her work beforehand, she draws directly onto paper, adds patterns and then paints; “I can say, I rarely know what will happen in the next step.” 

Her work displays womens beauty and individuality through the use of texture, bold colours and many patterns. Her use of colour, pattern and texture stould out to me, and I used it as inspiration for a mixed media print.

Glenn Jones

Glenn Jones found internet fame in the 2000s with his unique T-shirt designs. His tees have even be worn by stars on the Big Bang Theory. He is an illustrator who’s work is now being published as prints. Glenns collection of prints are inspired by growing up and living in NZ, he has stated that he want’s to put  “my own spin on our pop culture”. 

His prints are some what comedic, he depicts relatable Kiwi experiences with a humorous touch. One source states “his prints are a statement in a picture about our collective identities and the shared experiences of living in Aotearoa in the early 21st century.” His kiwiana style and clever twists with a touch of nostalgia is inspiring. I find his work both quirky and fun.

Barry Ross Smith 

"I like to create a rapport with the viewer by playing with our reminiscences. Creating icons from our shared Kiwi past, the beach, the bach, the farm but mostly the people. We can identify with these characters as family, friends or someone we know." - Barry Ross Smith

Barry Ross Smith is a visual artist born in Kamo, Northland, New Zealand. When he first started producing art his medium was sign writing, and he has now been painting for over 25 years. As stated by New Zealand Fine Prints Ltd; “His work typically engages with the conception of myth and cultural identity, often exploring these avenues from a New Zealand male’s perspective.”His art is inspired by the relationship between individuals and their immediate environment, specifically our communion with the land & encompassing oceans. His work has been described as “hymns to rural New Zealand … tellingly observed and cleverly rendered” by NZ Hearld Critic TJ Mcnamara.

I admire Barry because his work showcases our beautiful land and animals. Aswell as how work, Barry inspires me as a person. He is involved with Pest free NZ; and helps restore native wildlife from extinction. He values New Zealand land not only in his work but in his day to day life, which I find extremely inspiring as I value sustainability and our saving our environment. I also find his use of surrealism and kiwiana themes interesting as it is something I want to experiment with in the future.

Tony Ogle

"Screen-printing allows me to express my love of the New Zealand landscape and ocean environment with strong colours in a direct and graphic manner".

Tony Ogle was born in 1959 and is one of New Zealand's most successful printmakers. Ogle’s prints are full of colour, vibrant and celebrates New Zealands coastal landscapes. His works are extremely technically complex and handmade, with only one edition ever produced. Ogle’s joyful prints celebrates the Kiwi beach life and showcases his authentic connection with New Zealand coastal landscapes.

He is inspired by locations off the beaten track and untouched stitches of the NZ coastlines that portray "unchanged timelessness". Tony strives to capture what he calls a "sense of place" in his art prints. 

His work is inspiring since I can relate to it as a Kiwi and I admire how he uses texture to convey a sense of calmness, he perfectly captures Aotearoas essence. 

Charles Frederick Goldie

Charles Frederick Goldie was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on 20 October 1870.   He is an ancestor of mine, who painted Māori history paintings and portraits of tattooed chiefs. His paintings have been turned into many prints nowadays, I’ve even seen his paintings on postcards and magnets whilst travelling the South Island. 

Goldie's career began in 1900 when he started painting images  depicting elderly Māori with moko, the 'noble relics of a noble race'. By 1904 Goldie was considered the leading portrait painter of Māori, and was renowned for his technical brilliance.  His portraits have become vitally significant to New Zealand art.

Goldie feared that Māori were about to die out or be assimilated by the pakeha so he set out to record the last survivors. This is reinforced through the poses of his elderly subjects and the titles of many of his paintings eg; Last of the Cannibals, A Noble Relic of a Noble Race. Two of his most celebrated works, Darby and Joan and The Widow, portray Goldie’s awareness of the hardships Maori were experiencing. Many Māori individuals see Goldie's works as taonga which represents irreplaceable ancestral images of koroua and kuia. Māori believe the wairua( spirit) of the subject resides in each picture. 

I am inspired by Goldie not only because I feel a cultural connection to him but because of his love for Māori culture. His paintings are full of intricate details, and his paintings often look like they can breathe which I find incredible. 

Lauren Liess

A crooked smile, wildflowers from the side of the road, a chip in the good china; I love it when things are slightly off and tell a story, because to me, that’s real life. And it’s beautiful.

Lauren Liess is an interior designer who’s style I find inspiring and aesthetic. What caught my eye is her use of prints and nature in her interior design. Her style is simple, relaxed and authentic. She utilizes natural materials, thoughtful art and decor that focuses on people rather than things. 

She has a toes-in-the-stream aesthetic and is obsessed with the outdoors, “I’m obsessed with what’s going on outside,” and utilizes a black, white and wood pallet paired with lots of greenery, “When you bring in bits of nature …artwork, interesting accents and fabrics, [the colors are] a museum showcase for it. It’s a textural, natural base.” 

I relate to her as we are both inspired by the outdoors. I also like how she incorporates living plants and wood into her modern style. 

[cupidsbower]

Making the most of teachable moments

Supernatural 12x12, “Stuck in the Middle (With You).”

Anon, a few days ago, you asked me, “Why drop the 'I love you' bomb right now? What do you think?” and lo, I have remembered, and actually have an answer for you! It’s all about the teachable moments, you see.

This isn’t the first time the show has used the phrase “teachable moment.” Way back in season 9, I believe, Dick Roman had a gross teachable moment that involved auto-cannibalism -- I didn’t watch that season (for which I’m newly grateful, because ewwwww), so I’m relying on transcripts and whatnot (I think elizabethrobertajones mentioned it in her meta too, which I haven’t finished reading yet). But anyway, as Dean tells us, teachable moments are important.

I mean, obviously he was being a little shit at the time, but what Dean says is nearly always Significant, and so it is here.

So, how do we recognise a teachable moment?

Recognize that your children often learn moral lessons unconsciously, in casual moments.

Be aware of situations that represent moral choices.

Talk with your children about the ethical challenges represented in everyday situations, the media and popular culture.

Praise your children for their ethical choices.

Point out ethical behavior in others.

Let your children see your own thought processes regarding ethical decisions. (x)

We have several different teachable moments in the episode, although I think it’s debatable that anyone learned anything from them (apart from Castiel).

All of these moments, Anon, are about love.

The episode opens with Mary and Mr Ketch, although we don’t know it’s Mary he’s talking to at first. Just that he asks for a story, a deliberate incongruous way of asking for a report, invoking bedtime stories which often have a moral to them.

In the background, we have a cliched be-bop song about true love, as “sweet as an angel.”

Lover Boy, by Toodlum Barker & Emil Lomax 

Put it all together, and we have the past raising its head. John is being evoked. Mary is still missing him, missing being a wife and partner, and loved by someone that doesn’t expect her to mother them. With hindsight, it’s obvious this is invoking John because by the end we know the McGuffin of the episode is the Colt. It has all that horrible history associated with it that Mary likely doesn’t know, but which is all about John and his obsession and loss after Mary’s death. In these opening moments of the episode, there’s something bittersweet and nostalgic about this song playing, and “Tell me a story.” John and Mary weren’t always a tragedy, even though it sometimes seems that way. Despite everything, there was love there too.

The next story we get is about cattle mutilations and missing virgins over breakfast, and it is a more of a story than Sam, Dean and Cas realise. We don’t know it yet, but Wally is lying at Mary’s behest. He doesn’t live long enough for a teachable moment.

Sure they all get an awesome power walk - most ironic ever, amirite? But poor Wally doesn’t live long enough to really appreciate the joke.

We learn about Wally’s lie in the flashback between he and Mary. We discover Mary has some kind of secret agenda, although not what it is. But the thing that interested me most was the song playing during this scene -- it’s a call-back to John again, and heartbreaking again.

Not For Me, by Bobby Darin

Mary tells us that technically she’s in her 60s in this conversation. Yeah, she is not okay. When she says to Sam, “Since when is life about getting what you want?” we should be reading it as a big fat red alert for just how not okay things are for Mary.

Do you know what the number one rule of storytelling is? It’s asking every main character, “What do you want?” And then showing us what they’ll do to try to get it.

So if Mary doesn’t think she’ll get what she wants -- and the subtext is telling us she wants love/John -- then what is motivating her? This is a woman who made a demon deal to get John back once before, remember. Do we even know what her limits are? If you’re not creeped out right now, you should be.

Skipping forward, we reach the climax of the episode, and at the tipping point of the season. Here is were we get our most important teachable moment.

Castiel’s love bomb

It is not a coincidence that Castiel looks towards Mary as well as Sam and Dean during this scene. The scene is obviously about many things, and a lot of meta has already been written about it, much of it excellent. It is about him loving Dean/Humanity and finally saying so. It is about the rule against angels loving humans that we learned about in 12x10. It is about taking the last chance to speak while he has it. It’s is about claiming family. It’s all of those things and more. But it’s also a reminder to Mary that families change and grow, that new people come into our lives, that love comes in other shapes than the ones in her memory, that love can change you for the better, that her sons are grown and have their own lives and can be more than a one-way emotional drain -- they can love back and be a support to her too, and so can the people they love.

And it’s also about the (unintended) consequences of Mary’s actions. The angel she always believed was watching over her boys has been mortally wounded as a direct result of her machinations. The family her boys made when she wasn’t there is going to be broken.

This is interesting. Heartbreaking, but super interesting.

It tells us a lot about whatever it is that Mary wants. She may have said to Sam that she doesn’t expect to get what she wants, but whatever this is, she must want it an awful lot to keep playing her hand after this.

Does she take the lesson of Castiel’s confession, though? Does the teachable moment work? I suspect not, or not yet. Later she tells Ketch that Castiel is one of her boys, the implication being that she accepted this love declaration, believed it, and valued it. But... she doesn’t come clean to Sam, Dean and Castiel either. Rather than honesty and sharing her plan, her response is to threaten death and destruction to the BMoL, an eye for an eye, and hello again Lily Sunder. We know how that ends already.

Is Mary doomed to repeat the same mistakes that Castiel, Dean, Sam and John have all made before her? Or will she figure it out and change the script?

Time for another teachable moment, perhaps. Because this is Crowley’s theme for the episode, and if anyone is an example of changing the script, it’s Crowley.

Crop Won’t Ever Come, by Robin Loxley & Jay Hawke 

Another fantastically chosen, but super depressing song. Crowley is still holding that torch for Dean, and it’s never going to end in anything good... well, not in terms of love. But it might in terms of Crowley’s soul. You never know.

What I enjoy about Crowley is that he’s actually all squishy inside, full of feelings, but he also has this genuine cunning streak that is nearly always underestimated. For all his personal investment in the Winchesters, there’s also a practical aspect to it -- the Winchesters win and win and win, so who wants them as an enemy? No-one smart, that’s who.

He’s at the point where he literally tells people the Winchesters always win, no matter what, and not to fuck with them, although he pitches it a bit differently depending on the audience -- calling them weapons to the weapons collector he’s trying to make a deal with, as a case in point. But no-one ever believes him. And then, for example, they get stuck in the middle by Sam wielding the Michael Lance and turn into dust. I do love a spot of black humour, and I’m sure Crowley does too. :)

I think the most delicious part of it is the way other demons roll their eyes and imply Crowley’s just saying that about the Winchesters because he’s their pet.

He really is Cas’ dark mirror in all things.

Anyway, he breaks the Lance, saves Cas, earns brownie points with the Winchesters, and thinks he has the Colt up his sleeve as insurance now that Ramiel is out of the picture. Poor Crowley. It’s so hard being the accidentally promoted King of Hell.

To return to the main theme of the episode: Love and Mary’s lesson, and being stuck. We have one final song to consider:

Stuck In The Middle With You, by Stealers Wheel

It’s surprisingly upbeat, right? And I think it’s because of that “you.” Being stuck is no fun, but with “you” has a different implication altogether, especially in light of Castiel’s love bomb.

The title of this episode is a pun, of course, as we do get two characters literally stuck in the middle. But it is also a metaphor.  It’s the middle of the season, half way between the set up of the themes (love through the lens of nature vs nurture) and their culmination. It’s the Sunrise Special, the moment that bridges day and night, darkness and light. It’s Humanity, stuck between Heaven and Hell. Crowley and Castiel, not quite Human, not quite Other. Mary, stuck half way between the past and the now, between her memories of her sons and the real men they are. It’s about love that’s stuck too, in a place between “chick flick moments” and the fear of never getting what you want -- ”Not for Me” and “Crop Won’t Ever Come.”

We just took a big step forward, though, on that last one. Because Castiel finally spoke, and Dean recognised the teachable moment and rewarded him for it too. He couldn’t say it back (yet), but he said, “Let’s go home,” and this time Castiel actually heard it.

Final things:

The British Men of Letters have terrible information. Where are they getting it? Do they even properly know what the gadgets and weapons they’ve got can do? I’m starting to think their gross incompetence is going to be their downfall.

Richard Speight Jr.’s direction was really slick. Very Tarantino, obviously, but I do love clever non-chron storytelling, and this was used to very good effect.

How does Lucifer fit into the season’s love theme? I’m fascinated - and want to find out.

Previously:

The Ministry of Information vs Wayward Sons Carrying On (12x01)

My, my, how can I resist you? (12x02) and follow-up about Bohemian Raphsody

So what am I so afraid of? (I think I love you) (12x03)

I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy Down in my heart (Where?) (12x04) and a follow-up about the codependency and about Dean’s self-flagellation and issues with space

There can be only one! (12x05), and a follow-up conversation with elizabethrobertajones on Freud vs Schwartz.

They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes (12x06)  

Presenting the Immaculate Heart Reunion Tour (12x07)    

I’m still living the life where you get home and open the fridge and there’s half a pot of yogurt and a half a can of flat Coca-Cola. ~Alan Rickman (12x08, 12x09)

When the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men (12x10)    

in re (12x11)