#i think i answered it

[shallowseeker]

I think you make a good point about how weird it is that Sam didn't mentor Jack about his similar experience of being soulless, but don't you think Cas should have too?

Yes. That was actually one of my first metas here back in 2022: "Cas should've taken the lead on the soullessness situation." Note: My views have evolved somewhat, especially with what is clearly a partnership where Dean is knowingly taking Jack to mentor his crisis and Cas is taking Sam to mentor his crisis, but I still agree with a lot of it.

Particularly this:

Cas spent billions of years as a soulless being. Surely hearing about Cas’s journey throughout that, and hearing about Cas struggling with doing the right thing, regardless of his soul status, would have soothed Jack’s anxiety. He could’ve brought a friendly angel like Anael to see Jack and discussed how souls aren’t the end-all, be-all of existing. Discussed how difficult it is to stay in control of angelic powers and to be careful and tender with the concept of human morality. Dean’s move to visit Donatello was fine and all, but Donny has no grace. Jack is soulless, but he’s not graceless.

Only recently, though, have I really keyed into how Sam tends to default to generic, hand-wavey explanations and tends to avoid personal details, especially in his mentoring and parenting style. Sam's non-reciprocal communication style is a much newer insight for me, one that I started turning over in my brain when I rewatched Tombstone with Jack in mind. Once I saw it, I seemed to keep seeing it. Sam tends to keep a distance, which can sometimes make his heart-to-hearts come off as "therapizing" rather than personal.

While Sam and Dean both manifest shame and perfectionism in different ways, I think Sam's inability to look at his mistakes is definitely tied to his perfectionism. And in 14x19, we see this again: Sam's line about how Dean could see that Jack was a "lost cause from the beginning," rather than breaking down his own specific actions with regards to Jack's condition are, I think, part of the overall trend.

///

But yeah, just as Sam's soullessness positioned him to be a unique sounding board for Jack, so too did Cas's "inherent" soullessness (And Anael's, for that matter. Why couldn't we have more Anael in the bunker why? *cries*)

They didn't *have* to go to Donatello for advice about souls, but I can understand how the "soullessness" periods of their lives are tied up with a lot of painful memories, too. And those are hard as Hell to face.(And I love Donny, you guys know I love Donny, but even he tried to kill them when he was corrupted through the tablet, in part due to his soullessness. To take his word as proof of wellbeing isn't just shortsighted, it's denial in action.)

But on the whole, I think all of TFW has sufficient experience with "losing themselves" and/or "losing their family members," especially in the pursuit of heroics... They could have offered a better united front and guidance on this issue.

(Note: I give Mary a half-pass about Jack though, maybe, because as I said, I don't think Mary had any idea what the Hell was going on with Jack in season 14. So she'd have had no reason to share her painful experience of becoming NBK!Mary with him. She tries to offer support in basic ways, though: “We'll help you. We're family. We'll support you. That's what we do." etc)

Conjecture: I suspect that, in typical TFW-fashion, a lot of Jack-resurrection and Jack-eating-Michael details were purposefully hidden from Mary so as to spare her the worry/burden. (The way Dean hid the Ma'lak box plan from Cas and Jack, or how Cas hid the Empty deal from Dean and Sam.)

Something something you want peace for your loved ones, not pain. But sparing an initial pain sometimes makes things worse later. Sigh. It's so hard to find the line! :(

But as a personal aside// it IS a little crunchy/interesting seeing crucial information (potentially) kept from Mary, because Mary is a child-raised soldier-hunter who also prefers to solve things on her own, or hide and evade the truth until shit has already hit the fan. The taste of our own medicine: always bitter.

[unforth]

Y'all I know that when so-called AI generates ridiculous results it's hilarious and I find it as funny as the next guy but I NEED y'all to remember that every single time an AI answer is generated it uses 5x as much energy as a conventional websearch and burns through 10 ml of water. FOR EVERY ANSWER. Each big llm is equal to 300,000 kiligrams of carbon dioxide emissions.

LLMs are killing the environment, and when we generate answers for the lolz we're still contributing to it.

Stop using it. Stop using it for a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. We need to kill it.

Sources:

[everythingwasnormalhere]

pls rb if you think cuddling doesn't have to be s3xual

im tryna prove a point to my bf's mother help me out

[ideas-ideasideasideas]

Batman gives each of his Robins a different code to use when they’re in trouble and need immediate extraction. He promises that when they call, he’ll drop everything just to get to them, come hell or high water.

Jason, during his time with the League, shares his code with Damian, to be used “only in the direst of circumstances, when you have exhausted all other options.” He doesn’t know if Bruce will answer, given how fractured their relationship was before he died, but it is better than nothing. Every tool counts when they live such dangerous lives.

Damian uses it exactly once, and Bruce, who still feels the loss of his son like a yawning chasm in his chest, responds to it even though he knows it can’t be Jason because Jason’s dead. What he finds, instead of Jason, is a boy in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-small feet, with a face that Bruce sees himself and Talia in, requesting asylum from a grandfather who wishes to possess his body. Bruce doesn’t question how this boy who is so clearly his son knew the code. Talia al Ghul is resourceful and places family above all; the code is not beyond her abilities to discover, and she is not above using Bruce’s desperate love for his dead son to ensure that hers does not meet the same fate.

Bruce takes Damian in, because of course he does, and since Jason is dead he allows Damian to keep using the code. After all, it’s not like Jason is alive to use it, right? If someone uses the code, there’s no one it could be but Damian, right?

The next time the code is used, Bruce traces the location to Gotham even though Damian was supposed to be in Bludhaven visiting Dick. But whatever happened that resulted in Damian being in Gotham can wait, because he has already failed one son and he will not fail another, his son is in trouble and he needs to get to him, he needs to—

What he finds, instead of Damian, is a boy (just eighteen, too young, but also too old, but also he will always be a boy to him) in League garbs, drenched in blood from the tips of his midnight-black hair to his too-large feet (when had he gotten so big), wearing the face of his dead son.

(Who, maybe, just maybe, may no longer be so dead.)

[nymphoutofwater]

And why? Cultural norms? Personal schedule? “Cause I’m always late to everything”?

Bonus points: Region and/or ethnicity?

[misslilies]

Omg Jayvik nation hiiiii hope you're doing great today

[vigilante-apologist]

Main character trios are meant to end up as a polycule and you can’t change my mind

[creekfiend]

something that drives me insane on a relatively regular basis as a body jewelry understander is talking to people who have sensitive skin who are like "oh well I just can't wear any earrings without my ears getting inflamed" and I say "well what have you tried" and they say "well I've tried sterling silver and I've tried gold..." and it's like. ok. I don't know how gold and sterling somehow got spun by the jewelry industry as being especially good for sensitive skin but whenever I'm like "well have you tried implant grade titanium" they're always like "no....... but I've tried sterling silver... and it didn't work ..." like. I don't know how this narrative about sterling silver somehow got so strong but when they put pins in your fucking legs when you snap your leg in half are those pins made of sterling silver or are they made of implant grade titanium or surgical steel????????? HELLO. HI. YOU MIGHT BENEFIT FROM TRYING IMPLANT GRADE TITANIUM I AM JUST SAYING

[notherpuppet]

Were you friends before? ⚔️🎀🪽

[150en]

can you do gem and joel as fast and furious 😎🔥

Yeah!! They're having the best day ever!

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

Yeah, I don't know about you, Fidds, but I'd fold at this 🙏

Previous!!

Next!!

First!!

[marshmellowtea]

i desperately need people to realize there's a difference between "women need to coddle (cis) men's feelings even when they're being misogynistic uwu" and "we shouldn't tolerate misogyny but actively keeping men separate from women and treating them like they're inherently dangerous to women is only going to worsen the problem (and also this mindset causes IMMEASURABLE harm to nonbinary, trans, and intersex people, who are already incredibly at risk right now)" and i need people to realize that NOW

[anotherpapercut]

do you guys think Karl Marx would've liked Thrift Shop by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis because it promotes waste reduction and the subversion of both capitalism generally and brand commodification¹ specifically through second hand buying or do you think he would not like it because it still promotes consumption as an activity especially of items one does not actually need.² or do you think he'd like it cause it's a banger³

References

¹ Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. (2012). Thrift shop. s.n. [2:38]: ""They be like, "Oh, that Gucci? That's hella tight", I'm like, "Yo, that's fifty dollars for a T-shirt", Limited edition, let's do some simple addition, Fifty dollars for a T-shirt, that's just some ignorant bitch shit, I call that getting-swindled-and-pimped shit, I call that getting tricked by business, That shirt's hella dope, And having the same one as six other people in this club is a hella don't"

² Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. (2012). Thrift shop. s.n. [1:29]: "They had a broken keyboard, I bought a broken keyboard, I bought a skeet blanket, then I bought a knee board"

�� trust

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

pls pls heard me out...FIDDLESTAN! <3

ok, i got this ask ten days ago, and I've been thinking about it ever since. Because I got two other asks asking for fiddauthor, and I dON'T KNOW HOW TO LET THEM DOWN LIGHTLY BECAUSE I'M A FIDDLESTAN BITCH THROUGH AND THROUGH 😭😭😭😭 I LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!!!!

Don't get me wrong, fiddauthor is great and makes sense and everything. But listen. Billford and fiddauthor are multidimensional ships, they are good! But FIDDLESTAN!?!? that shit is the WHAT-THE-HECK-A-HEDRON!!!!!!! Even though it's literally 100% speculation, the implications are FUCKING CRAZY!!!!!!!!! I jumped between three ships so far during this gravity falls thing, each time thinking one is better than the other. I've decided that FIDDLESTAN IS KING!!!!!! I'm sorry. I could rant about them forever. I've been listening to nothing but extended versions of disco music for the past week. (YES THEY HAD A CRAZY ROMANTIC FLING IN VEGAS NO I WILL NOT ELABORATE!!!! (yes i will. I will elaborate at some point. it will be like ten pages or text. or I will draw it. idk.))

Here is a sketchbook doodle from like a week ago. I'm gonna post another fiddlestan thing in a few moments, but my style changes like I'm a completely different artist every week without warning, so I'm gonna leave this by itself!

He comes into YOUR house, he steals YOUR identity, and he fucks YOUR research partner!!! Fuck you!!!!!!!!!!

[egophiliac]

WAIT when did he get FANGS