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evenmoregreener · 4 years ago

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Questionnaire of Laruku from B-PASS magazine (March. 1995)

Another translation of a translation from Russian. This "interview" was translated for Russian l'arc fan-club in 2018. I haven't found any other English translations on the net, so I decided that it will be interesting for you to read something like this. All credits are down below, big thank you to the original translator, what a great woman!

The original Russian text has some typos plus English isn't my first language, that's why text might seem a bit of strange. About special signs: (translator's note) - notes of an original translator; "*" - my own notes; (?) - neither me nor the original translator understood the context. Please, enjoy!

1. Date of birth Hyde: 13th of Friday Tetsu: 3 of October Ken: 28th of November, Sagittarius Sakura: Secret 2. Blood type Н: Color of the blood - red Т: А or 0 К: АВ S: The hot blood of a man runs in my veins 3. Place of birth Н: Jelsarem's Rod Т: Kansai К: Alaska’s native S: Kingdom of Nerima (Nerima is a ward in Tokyo, where Sakura was born - translator's note) 4. Height, weight, shoe size, visual acuity Н: “?” Т: Small, light, 24,5 – 25 cm К: 178 cm, 56 kg, shoe – 25,5 cm S: 5 feet 8 inches, 120 feet, 10 inches, about 1,0 and 1,0 5. Body size Н: As in the previous Т: I don’t know К: I prefer В 85, W 58 H 88 S: “Nice body” 6. Which musical instruments and how many years do you play? Н: I've been playing guitar for 9 years Т: 11 years on bass К: From about high school S: Secret 7. Where did you work? Н: Mister Donats Т: At the record store К: Jewelry store, tutor S: Secret 8. Skills Н: Shaolin martial arts, second dan Т: Calligraphy К: Youth baseball S: Secret 9. Hobby and special abilities (besides music) Н: Bite Т: Radio controlled models К: Tetris S: To make people do something

10. Philosophy of life Н: Do not stick sticks into the rice Т: I sleep today for tomorrow, tomorrow I sleep for today. (a phrase from manga - translator's note) К: Hurry slowly S: Live today 11. Real name Н: Jiji Т: Teppi К: Jakenosuke S: Sakurajima Samuel Tarot

12. Favorite musicians Н: Depeche mode Т: Me К: The The (an English new wave band — translator's note) S: Ishihara Yūjirō (Japanese actor, singer, film producer - translator's note) 13. Favorite celebrity Н: Takeda Tetsuya (Japanese singer and actor - translator's note) Т: Me К: Isshiki Sae (Japanese actress — translator's note) S: Saburo Ishikura (Japanese actor - translator's note) 14. Respected people Н: Yoshitada Hirai * Т: Me К: Professor Ichinose S: Takakura Ken (Japanese actor - translator's note) 15. Favorite films and films that you’ve recently watched Н: The Omen. Recently watched Jurassic Park. Т: Favorite film – The Outsider, recently watched “Cría cuervos” (Spanish film of 1976 - translator's note) К: Perfect World, cried when watched, although usually I don't cry during films S: Jingi Naki Tatakai (Battles Without Honor and Humanity) 16. Favorite books (including manga) and books that you’ve recently read Н: Stephen King. Recently read compilation that’s called Night Souls (?). Pretty interesting. Т: «Harper’s Bazaar», Vogue Italia, recently read Matsumoto Hitoshi’s “Isho”. К: «Kirin», about motorcycles, novels for men. It’s a bit of awkward, but I buy Young Rose which I love to read for a long time. S: I can't list everything. 17. Alcohol and tobacco Н: Both, about 10 years already. Alcohol – a little, tobacco – one piece. ** Т: I don’t smoke. Alcohol – yes, except sake, I drink rarely though. К: I love Kassis, always have it at home, drink 2-3 times a week. I don’t smoke right now. S: Any alcohol, I can drink a lot. Per day I smoke more than two packs (Seven Star) 18. Do you love animals? Do you have any pets? Н: I do, but I have allergy. Т: I do. I had 5 dogs and one cat, now I don’t. К: I love obedient and loving. S: More than pets I love girls. 19. The concert that left the strongest impression Н: GASTUNK in EGG PLANT (legendary club in Osaka of 80’s - translator's note) Т: Shiki-Yakou (the name of tour Dead End of 1985) К: In Aichi Kinrou Kaikan (concert hall in Nagoya — translator's note) S: Radio concert Anikies (Dankon Anikies – fictional band that was made up by ken, sakura and kyo (Die in Cries), when ken and sakura were guests at kyo’s radio program «kyo MIDNIGHT　ROCK　CITY» on 9th of December, 1994 - translator's note) 20. Three most beloved albums Н: Some Great Reward of Depeche Mode, God’s Own Medicine of The Mission, La Vie En Rose of D'erlanger*** Т: Laruku’s new album, Tierra, Dune К: Black Sabath – Heaven & Hell; Cure - Disintegration; Kisugi Takao (Japanese singer and composer - translator's note) - Best collection S: Secret 21. Recently bought CDs and your impressions of them Н: No Т: Second Coming/The Stone Roses К: Suede (Britpop band - translator's note) S: Secret 22. Concert that you visited recently Н: Haven't been on the concerts for about a year, but sometimes before Shibuya live watched Modern Choki Chokies (a Japanese pop band from the early 1990s - translator's note) Т: Echobelly (a British rock band — translator's note) К: kyo-chan’s solo S: Secret 23. TV shows that you often watch and radio shows that you often listen to Н: Doramas and MIDNIGHT ROCK CITY Т: TV – BEAT UK, I don't listen to radio К: Yoru-ni dakarete (dorama of 1994 - translator's note), though it has already ended. I don’t listen to radio, since I don’t have one S: I’m interested neither in TV nor radio 24. Favorite dish, favorite color and flower Н: Japanese cuisine. Monochrome color. Flowers that grow well in an apartment, even if they are not watered Т: Sushi, tillandsia, cacti, I like all of the colors К: Favorite dish – ice cream, caviar, sushi. Favorite flower – orchid. Favorite color – silver S: Anton rib (dish that was mentioned in Kinnikuman - translator's note), sakura, black 25. Musical instruments that you can play and ones that you want to learn to play Н: Guitar, bass, acoustic guitar, would like to learn to play flute. Т: Several guitars and basses К: Guitar, bass, synthesizer. Would like to learn how to play saxophone S: Variety which you can find in stores 26. Thing that you want the most right now Н: Hot blood of some girl. Т: Sharp Zaurus P1-5000 К: Onsen, pool S: “?” 27. How do you spend your weekend? Н: Sleep Т: Vacantly К: Go back and forth S: Stay under the waterfall 28. What do you do when you are all alone at home? Н: Sleep and writing lyrics Т: Play the guitar, listen to music К: Watch TV… S: Drumming Japanese drums 29. A dream that you have seen lately. Н: Back at night souls of dead sheep were hurrying through the window, I was worried where they are going. I told Sakura: when the sheep will come back, let’s go after them, but they didn’t come back. Т: A dream where I somehow ended up eating sushi in America. К: Relocation S: In loincloth and a bandage on the head I wandered in a stormy sea. And that was awesome! 30. Most attractive feature Н: Compact, compact and compact Т: “?” К: Ankles. Strong side: strong legs. Weak side: often catch cold. S: 31. Role in the band. Н: Probably, bringing everybody together Т: President К: Am-group (?) S: Educator of the head of singing monkeys 32. Describe in one word what Laruku is Н: Cloudy sky after heavy rain Т: Rock band К: Rainbow S: Soul of a man 33. What do you expect from the other band members? Н: I’d like everybody to stay as healthy as they are now Т: Perfection К: Rainbow! S: Soul of a man 34. Where do you want to go abroad? Н: Paris Т: To America К: Any countries where I could live. To drive back and forth S: Country on the shore of the Japanese Sea 35. Where have you been? Where have you recently traveled? Н: During the vacation in September traveled to Nagano to visit Osamu's house four years later, I would like to live calmly in the district of Karuizawa station. Т: To Okinawa. It was beautiful. К: Morocco. It was hot. S: In Morocco I saw the waves of the Atlantic Ocean 36. What do you recommend to see in your hometown? Н: On the roof of Nisshou haitsu Т: A lot of yankees. К: The view on the fast stream S: Secret 37. Enjoyable things that you like during tours (except for concerts) Н: Food Т: Except for concerts, nothing (laughs) К: You can overeat S: Meet different locals with the soul of a man 38. What do you definitely do before the concert, what do you pay special attention to? Н: I am in a deep thought Т: I listen to Metallica at full volume К: Going to a toilet S: Warm up and stretch of the muscles 39. What do you pay special attention to before the interview? Н: I find out the topic Т: So as not to be late К: I try to be serious S: Worried about whether I can express and tell about my masculine soul 40. What do you carry with you all the time? Н: Watch and two bracelets because I like them Т: Nothing К: Bracelet, necklace - I feel uncomfortable without them S: Pants 41. Memorable thing Н: The bracelet that I bought when I first came abroad. I really wanted it, but pretended that I am not interested, and bargained. But since there is no set price, I don’t know if it’s cheap or not. Т: No К: Various guitars, they are associated with different memories. S: Secret 42. Three biggest news in the last six months Н: 1. Motoka’s wedding. 2. The house in front of my window was demolished. 3. Because of the house, which has now been built, the lighting has become worse. Т: Promotion trip; creation of an official fan club; award from the director! К: Couldn't go to the sea. Swam in a pool in Morocco. Was in onsen. S: Secret 43. Plans for the end of the previous year and the beginning of the new Н: Composing music and lyrics Т: Car driving and karaoke К: Continue visiting onsen. S: Polish my masculine soul 44. Your personal plans for 1995 Н: Enjoy work Т: Become an artist № 1 К: Necessarily swim in the sea. Master the butterfly S: Gain a soul of a man 45. Music that you listened to this morning or last night Н: Laruku’s new song T: Morning call from the manager K: Maribeth S: Pink Floyd 46. Dish that turns out well when you are cooking Н: Chinese cuisine Т: I can't cook К: Ikuradon S: Sashimi 47. The image of the ideal woman Н: An optimistic and domestic woman Т: No К: Fujiko-chan S: That looks like Shiraishi Hitomi (Japanese actress - translator's note) 48. Favorite sport Н: No Т: No К: No S: Judo 49. If I were born again... Н: I would like to become an astronaut and fly into space Т: I would like to be genius К: I would like to be a dolphin S: I would like to be a woman, in order to live and not talk nevermore about the "soul of a man" 50. Goals in life Н: Enjoy the rest of the years Т: It’s a secret К: Live a long life S: Soul of a man 51. One word for readers of our magazine Н: If you're not careful, I'll bite you! Т: Nice to meet you К: Hello, this is Ken. I'll continue in answer 52 S: Life in a loincloth and headband 52. Free theme Н: Woof Т: Nowadays Laruku are fully different! К: In 1996 I want to perform a lot at concerts. That is why we definitely will meet, so look forward! S: And this year there will be Anikies!

* Marked in credits to HYDE’s “Roentgen” album as an art director and designer. ** Probably he meant one pack. *** Was covered by HYDE in D’ERLANGER TRIBUTE ALBUM ~Stairway to Heaven~.

Translation from Japanese: Liubov Chachanidze aka Diana_ Translation into English by me (The Green Explosion inc.)

Original: https://diary.ru/~l20arc-en-ciel/p216393417_anketa-iz-zhurnala-b-pass-za-mart-1995-goda.htm

#laruku #l'arc #hyde #hideto takarai #l’arc en ciel #ken kitamura #ken #tetsu #tetsuya ogawa #sakura #yasunori sakurazawa #interview #translation #jrock

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king-gob · 4 years ago

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What’s a good comic that doesn’t involve superheroes?

oh buddy. pal. friendo. I’ll limit myself to books currently running to keep this only a single mile long. Note that depending on how loose your definition of “superhero” is will affect this. I’ve seen people call John McClane a superhero so yeah.

Something is Killing the Children

by James Tynion IV and Werther Dell'Edera (Boom! Studios)

Kids have been going missing in a sleepy woodland town. A strange woman named Erica arrives, determined to do something about it. She partners with a young boy who claims to have seen the thing stalking the town, and things quickly spiral further out of control. Well-written characters and fantastic art. Easily my favorite book running right now.

The Department of Truth

by James Tynion IV and Martin Simmonds (Image)

Cole Turner is an FBI agent who specializes in conspiracy theories and the deleterious effect it has on the minds of people obsessed with them. Unfortunately for him, he is about to discover that there is more going on under the surface than he realized and belief is far more powerful than he could ever imagine. Tynion is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, and Simmonds’s art is even better here than it was in Dying Is Easy (which I also recommend). This series has one of the best first issues I’ve ever read, and I was hooked instantly. A definite recommend if you are as interested in conspiracy theories as I am.

Fire Power

by Robert Kirkman and Chris Samnee (Image)

Owen Johnson is a regular dad in the suburbs. He has a great wife, two kids and a job working at his father-in-law’s antique shop. What sets him apart is that he had spent years of his early life in a Shaolin temple, mastering martial arts, including the legendary Fire Power, the ability to generate fire from his body. He has long since turned his back on his order and the responsibilities they demand, but his former life is not ready to let him go. Written by Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead and with art by the great Chris Samnee, Fire Power is a great martial arts comic, recommended for fans of Street Fighter or anyone who likes seeing monks and ninjas beat each other up. I definitely recommend starting from the “Volume 0″ prequel trade. It’s not ESSENTIAL but I believe the story flows much better with it that way.

Fear Case

by Matt Kindt and Tyler Jenkins (Dark Horse)

Two Secret Service agents are investigating the Fear Case, the Service’s oldest open case. All agents are put on the case, but are only given a single year to investigate, as the case has the tendency to ruin the lives of those who get too close. Winters and Mitchum are in the last three weeks before they have to turn the case over, but they are closer than anyone has gotten in the history of the Service to getting their hands on the legendary box. But the closer they get, the more bodies they seem to find, and the duo’s mental and emotional limits are stretched to their breaking point. Everything Matt Kindt writes is worth reading, and this series is no different. Recommended for fans of the X-Files and other supernatural mysteries.

I Breathed a Body

by Zac Thompson and Andy MacDonald (Aftershock)

Telling too much about this comic would honestly be spoiling it. In the not-too-distant future, the biggest social media influencer in the world posts something horrific and the macabre lengths his PR team go to to handle it. The art is extremely good at showing the body horror involved and while I do recommend the comic, be warned, it is *extremely* fucked up. Excellent horror comic.

Once and Future

by Kieron Gillen and Dan Mora (Boom! Studios)

Terrorists resurrect King Arthur in a bid for power, but it turns out that the english legend is not what they thought or bargained for. Now, a retired monster hunter and her archeologist grandson must turn back the tide of returning myths before the world is irreversibly plunged into darkness. But their family history has plenty of shadows of their own. Really great book from two of my favorite creators, and really love the way they play with the metatextual nature of the myths and legends involved. Very fun.

Seven Secrets

by Tom Taylor and Daniele Di Nicuolo (Boom! Studios)

A clandestine order protects seven briefcases which hold seven secrets. However, a betrayal from within threatens to reveal those secrets, and Caspar, the son of two former protectors of the Seven Secrets, must discover the truth before all is lost. Tom Taylor is a fantastic writer that makes everything he writes infectiously fun, and with Di Nicuolo’s great eye for action scenes, this is an adventure book worth checking out.

Stillwater

by Chip Zdarsky and Ramón K. Pérez (Image)

A promise of a substantial inheritance brings Daniel West and his friend to the quiet town of Stillwater. However, they quickly realize the town’s sinister secret: in Stillwater, nobody dies. And as the marketing for the book says, that’s not just a promise, it’s a threat. Good writing and an intriguing mystery. Highly recommended.

That Texas Blood

by Chris Condon and Jacob Phillips (Image)

The murder of his brother brings an aspiring writer back to the Texas town of his youth, and puts him on a violent road to his own undoing. Fantastic writing. If you’re like me and love dark neo-western and crime stories, then I honestly can’t recommend this book enough. Look elsewhere if you want happy endings.

We Only Find Them When They’re Dead

by Al Ewing and Simone Di Meo (Boom! Studios)

Captain Malik and his crew pilot an autopsy ship, so named because they harvest meat, metal and other materials from the fresh corpses of dead gods that appear on the edge of space. Malik wants to see a living god, and is willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. But the ghosts of his past haunt him, and until he confronts them, making history won’t be easy. Fantastic cosmic sci-fi story with gorgeous art by Di Meo. Recommended for people who love stories set in space, and also for people who love long panels.

American Ronin

by Peter Milligan and ACO (AWA Upshot)

In a future where supercorporations rule everyone’s lives (I know that may be hard to visualize but try to imagine it), war is fought not by nations, but by enhanced operatives carrying out all manner of assassinations and espionage. But when one unnamed operative breaks his programming and goes on the hunt, the entire sick system is about to be violently brought down. Really interesting protagonist who has a great ability. Hunt down his targets by ingesting their DNA to learn how they think, and then using that empathic ability to get inside their heads. The cat and mouse games are really fun, and I highly recommend for anyone who likes superspy stories or seeing complex plans pay off.

Casual Fling

by Jason Starr and Dalibor Talajić (AWA Upshot)

Jennifer Ryan is a successful lawyer with a loving family and a great career, but a bad decision (that is, cheating on her stay-at-home husband) made on a whim has disastrous consequences. Saying much more would be spoiling, but there is definitely something sinister going on beneath the surface. Made in the style of erotic thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Eyes Wide Shut, this book features very well-written, realistic characters and importantly (to me anyway) refuses to condemn the protagonist while not shying away from the destructive results of her mistakes. I picked this book up because I liked Jason Starr’s previous book, Red Border, and enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Recommended.

Bitter Root

by David F. Walker, Chuck Brown and Sanford Greene (Image)

In 1920s Harlem, a long-standing family of monster hunters is splintering. Tragedy and conflicting worldviews are tearing them apart, and they’re going to need to stand together if they want to save New York City from the darkness that’s coming. Hate is a powerful thing, but also a cancer, and it’s about to metastasize. Really great worldbuilding and immediately likeable characters. Despite having a lot of themes about hate and prejudice (and utilizing them particularly well, in my opinion), the book is an exceptional action story. David F. Walker is a favorite writer of mine (See: Shaft, Nighthawk, Luke Cage) and Chuck Brown wrote the incredibly fun On the Stump (also highly recommended). The issues also feature essays from black scholars who expand on some of the historical events and themes that are present in the book, if you’re into that sort of thing (which I am). I’m not sure if those are in the trades, though.

Honorable Mentions/Books that I am too tired to give the full treatment to right now: Babyteeth (Aftershock) Chained to the Grave (IDW) Dead Dog’s Bite (Dark Horse) Decorum (Image) Deep Beyond (Image) Dryad (Oni Press) Family Tree (Image) The Goon (Albatross Funnybooks) Killadelphia (Image) Nocterra (Image) Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology (Dark Horse) Orcs (Boom! Studios) Orphan and the Five Beasts (Dark Horse) Outcast (Image) Proctor Valley Road (Boom! Studios) Redneck (Image) Sea of Sorrows (IDW) Second Coming (AHOY Comics) Silver Coin (Image) Tartarus (Image) Two Moons (Image) Undiscovered Country (Image) Undone by Blood (Aftershock) Vampire: The Masquerade (Vault Comics) Wynd (Boom! Studios) Year Zero (AWA Upshot) Honorable Mentions/Books that have ended but you should check out: A Walk Through Hell (Aftershock) American Born Chinese (First Second) American Vampire (DC Comics) Animosity (Aftershock) Archangel 8 (AWA Upshot) Bad Reception (Aftershock) Basketful of Heads (DC Comics) Black Science (Image) Blacksad (Dark Horse) Chew (Image) Dark Ark (Aftershock) Dark Red (Aftershock) Daytripper (DC Comics) Dead Day (Aftershock) Devil’s Highway (AWA Upshot) The Dollhouse Family (DC Comics) East of West (Image) Folklords (Boom! Studios) Gideon Falls (Image) God Country (Image) Grendel, KY (AWA Upshot) Hotell (AWA Upshot) Infidel (Image) Knights Temporal (Aftershock) Locke and Key (IDW) The Low, Low Woods (DC Comics) The Man Who Fucked Up Time (Aftershock) Midnight Nation (Image) Nailbiter (Image) Orc Stain (Image) Pestilence (Aftershock) Plunge (DC Comics) Preacher (DC Comics) Pride of Baghdad (DC Comics) Red Border (AWA Upshot) The Red Mother (Boom! Studios) The Replacer (Aftershock) Scalped (DC Comics) Scott Pilgrim (Oni Press) Strange Skies Over East Berlin (Boom! Studios) Tokyo Ghost (Image) Transmetropolitan (DC Comics) Unholy Grail (Aftershock) The Wicked + The Divine (Image) Y: The Last Man (DC Comics)

#please read this I worked a long time on it #and now I go to sleep #asks #baronegg #comics #m

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nevermorecrystal1 · 3 years ago

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So this will be my opinions on the FIRST episode of Paramount+’s Halo TV Series. This will be under a read more. I get it since it is ONLY 1 episode, there is more coming. Now, that Episode 2 is out. I feel that the I can post my 2 cents. It might be a long rant, I’m sorry not sorry! Still tagged with my Spoiler tag, to be safe.

I will start with that I am a MORE Book Lore based fan of the series, I started with the books rather then the games. Where my points come from the Books over the games. While I do understand that the TV Series is in it OWN timeline, called the Silver Timeline. So, it does not follow what we know as LORE for the franchise. I am also a HUGE Linda-058 Fan Girl, soo yeah....

I am actually happy that we start off with the Insurrectionists/Rebels over the UNSC. Since we all know that The SPARTAN II program started off as a way to combat them. Now, tell me why the Innie’s had a BETTER set up with their vehicles over the UNSC with Chief later on in the episode? Also did you catch the Elites going WORT WORT?? I sure did, that made me happy!

Silver Team; John-117 [ POINTMAN/LEADER ], Riz-028 [ COMM SPEC ], Vannak-134 [ SUB-LEADER/ASSAULT ], and Kai-125 [ Sniper/INTEL SPEC ]. So we know that the other three Spartan II’s are in lore, however not much is known about them. Love that we see other SII’s over the core of Linda, Kelly, Fred, and John. I feel that we do need to see more of them, it just makes sense to me. Granted I know in the games it more of the S-IVs. However, Silver Team feels like to me a ‘clone’ or a knock off of Blue Team. You have John, who is the always considered to be the leader and the Point-man of the team. Vannak-134 feels like a Fred-104 clone, but I don’t hate it to be honest. Like I don’t mind it because it seems like he has his back, similar to Fred has Chief’s. "They can't court martial all of us" - Fred-104, Halo 5.

Onto the females on the team. I am not the biggest fan of Kai-125. I think this stems from the fact that I am a HUGE Linda-058 Fan Girl. Cause Linda is kind of stated to be the GODDESS OF SNIPERS, she works them like they are a god damn art. John had to order Linda to let him rescue her. Linda is basically OVERWATCH [ in all caps ]. Perhaps, I need to watch more and perhaps she’ll grow on me. But right now it is a hard NO from me. Not only that, Linda would have acted like security in the cave they went into. That Elite would have had a near 0% chance of running/living, if Linda was there. Also those elites at the ‘base’ shooting at her, would have BEEN DEAD before she moved to provide more overwatch. Riz-028 is a near Kelly Clone but she is not. I mean she is fast, but not fast a Kelly. I am waiting to see more of her to be honest.

Onto the Cave part, John flagged Vannak with Vannak’s OWN WEAPON. THESE ARE CHILD SOLDIERS TURNED INTO ADULT SOLDIERS. Senior Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez and crew WOULD NEVER TRAIN HIS BOYS AND GIRLS TO FLAG FRIENDLIES WHILE HANDLING OFF A LOADED GUN. The fact that Kai-125 failed at acting as security for John and failed at surveying the area just screams maddness at me. But I am not tactical expert, Y’all should have heard my Boyfriend... With the scene at base on Reach, WHY WAS THERE A WORTHOG POSTED THAT CLOSE TO THE SHIP?

Loved the whole Friendly Fire bit, GUYS THEY THOUGHT SO HARD. Just imagine if there were more II’s there. That shit would have been chaotic as all fuck man. You know who I’m missing? 1 Sergeant Major Avery Junior Johnson, but in a way I am happy. Cause one would have to find a man who can pull off the SHEER CHARMISA of him.

Onto the last piece; John removing his fucking helmet. I get it, it is a TV show. But excuse me, that man should have had either a bald head or a cleaner high and tight and NO facial hair. Like I get the argument that people have about the helmet removal. I have to remind myself that this is just a tv show. Which they stated that they did not use the game as the base but looked at characters from it.

TELL ME YOU DID NOT READ THE LORE WITHOUT TELLING ME YOU DID NOT READ THE LORE!!

#also can I peition for Temura Morrsion to be Mendez?? based off the FoR design??#[ Space Mom ] has become an AI;;#Observing the Proper Channels; SPOILERS #i watched it like 3 times because i'm a mad woman who is off

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katoodlez · 4 years ago

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i tried to be productive this morning but i dont think my brain will let me until i do this, so sam and bucky show episode 4 letS GO

i would like to preface this post by saying that I literally got spoilers (before i watched the episode) from liTERALLY EVERYTHING from youtube to gOOGLE CHROME when i was trying to read the nEWS so in order to avoid spoiling it for anyone that hasnt seen it, STOP READING because this episode is inSANE and you don’t want it ruined for you.

Okay with that being said, let’s get started.

1. the first scene in wakanda absolutely deSTROYED ME. ayo helping bucky clear the winter soldier programming from his mind and then the silent shift of emotions on his face as the flashbacks happened and then when he realized he was free was just-- KDSFKSD the aCTING WAS SO GOOD thank you mr sebastian stan

2. bucky telling ayo that Zemo was a means to an end, especially in Wakandan, gave me chills bc it’s a direct parallel of Zemo telling Bucky that he was a means to an end. this show is just so carefully crafted omg

3. karli morgenthau got so much more screentime and development in this episode and i am hERE FOR IT. it’s really intriguing to get a deeper look into the Flag Smasher’s motivations and see a more personal side of their cause as well, especially in the memorial scene.

4. can we just take a moment. we need to take a moment. to just appreciate sam. hIS DIALOGUE IN THIS EPISODE. actually, in the whole show, but eSPECially in this episode just absolutely POPPED OFF. after this episode, I’m fully convinced that sam is 100% without a doubt the best character in this show. whoever wrote his lines is a genius. i love the scene where he talks to Karli, and I hope that they can have another chance to talk without *couGH* jOhn waLKER *coUGH* butting his head in because that conversation was just amazing. i loved how they discussed things they had in common, and a mutual understanding and how sam said “i agree with your fight, but not the way you’re fighting it.” this line was so good. and literally every other part of that conversation. the entire plot would have fallen to shambles by now if it wasn’t for sam so let’s give this man a round of applause please.

5. while we’re talking about sam, I might as well mention that i was very happy to see him in the falcon suit/wings again. he didn’t fly in episode 3 and i missed the action scenes with the wings. i think I gotta give Sam the most creativity points for the fight scenes in this show because he can fight both in the air and on the ground with a set of wings and weaponize them either way and that’s really cool

6. the dora milaje. I LOVE THEM. omg. i was so happy to see Ayo at the end of episode 3 and they just aSSERTED DOMINANCE in this episode and i loved it. their fighting style and weapons and clothing/armor design is just so elegant and mesmerizing to watch. “the dora milaje have jurisdiction wherever the dora milaje find themselves to be” omg. they took no crap from john walker and it was sO SATISFYING

7. on that note, watching walker get his butt kicked by the Dora Milaje while sam, bucky, and zemo just stood there was hilarious and probably one of my favorite scenes in this entire show so far.

8. WHEN AYO DISARMED BUCKY’s VIBRANIUM ARM. OMG. bucky was *surprised pikachu face* and so was I. I really, really hope they run into the wakandans again because there’s definitely a broken trust between them and i want that relationship to be more fully fleshed out and brought to closure too

9. there’s no way i’m making this list without talking about zemo singing to the kids and giving them candy at the beginning of the episode. that kinda gave me “creepy guy who kidnaps kids at the park” kinda vibes but it was also hilarious since Zemo was the only one making any progress on getting info in that scene xd

10. zemo getting away had the same energy as Loki yeeting with the tessaract in Endgame lmao

11. BUCKY WITH A KNIFE. when he caught the knife askdjfk i’ve been waiting for a bucky knife fight this enTIRE SHOW and i finally got it and me very happy : >>>> (i’m determined to learn how he does the flippy trick w the pocketknife in Winter Soldier)

12. when Karli called Sarah Wilson i got chills. first of all sarah is an absolute fearless qUEEN but also the fact that Karli threatened Sam’s nephews akdfjaksdj pls dont hurt them Marvel

13. the parallel discussions between Zemo and Sam, Lemar and Walker about taking the super soldier serum were really neat. they both hark back to the conversation between Steve Rogers and Dr. Erskine in First Avenger, and i think that was the key turning point in revealing/completely clarifying both Sam and Walker’s true colors, which will now directly contradict each other for the rest of the show.

14. people say that sam is the character who always tries to reason things out until he has absolutely no options left. i think that really shows through in this episode, and it’s also a good reference point/marker of the other characters’ development. Sam’s determination to talk things through with Karli actually brought them closer together (until sOMEONE decided to intervene coUGH) but his equal determination to keep peace/negotiate with Walker only drove them further apart, which makes me feel that even though karli and the flag smashers are the “villains” in this story, they are definitely not the antagonists (that would be walker, who’s directly trying to work against Sam and Bucky, the protagonists)

15. bucky’s “i know crazy when i see it cuz i am crazy” sent me LOL

16. when lemar died i think everyone just went 0 _ 0. i don’t think Karli intended to kill him when she kicked him into that wall, judging by the way they all ran off after they realized he was dead. tbh i’ve been netural towards lemar this entire time, tho i do appreciate his more pacifist attitude to walker’s explosive impulsiveness. he’s sort of like sam to bucky. but his death really felt like an accidental cross-fire casualty that cause walker to reach his breaking point

17. and lastly the scene with the bloody shield. 0 _ 0. the whole world was watching indeed

alright that’s it for this week. i can’t believe there’s only two episodes left 0 _ 0. to be honest, from our current point of view as fans i feel like this show needs another season, maybe 2. the reason being, I can’t really see a space that Sam and Bucky would fit into in the future of the MCU. Sam, maybe, if he resolves the deal with the Captain America mantle at the end of this show, but I feel like Bucky’s end goal is just to like, retire lmao. but also, the future of the MCU is gonna be really focused on like the more magicky characters like Wanda, Loki and Doctor Strange, and ofc Spiderman, Thor/Guardians and Captain Marvel, and then ppl are saying something abt the young avengers or something. But yeah, as near as i can figure this show seems like it should bring closure for Bucky at least, except i have no clue how they’re going to wrap all this stuff up in 2 episodes. in addition to the mess with Zemo and Walker and Sharon’s whole deal in Madripoor, I hope they also get back to America to bring their issues there full circle, like Bucky’s issue with Nakajima, Sam’s family and their home, and Isaiah Bradley. guess we’ll see, can’t wait for next week already ahhhh

#falcon and the winter soldier #bucky barnes #sam wilson #falcon #winter soldier #marvel #mcu #spoilers #falcon and the winter soldier spoilers #this show is too good

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slamsams-blog · 5 years ago

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Spectre - #24WeeksofBond

This week’s film in our 24 weeks of Bond marathon is the latest film in the franchise, 2015′s Spectre. This would be, (or so he thought at the time), Craig’s final Bond outing...hence why it’s been SO INCREDIBLY LONG for a new Bond movie to come out. Craig had other things he wanted to do before he could be convinced to suit up as Bond one more time. But man oh man, am I over these 3, 4, or 5 year gaps in between Bond films. Daniel Craig has held the role of Bond longer than any other actor - even longer than Roger Moore! That’s is pretty crazy to think about. Hopefully the next actor to play Bond isn’t so wishy-washy and we get regular installments at a better pace. Here’s hoping...ANYWAYS

Spectre is a beautifully cinematic, high speed, throwback to the classics that all too often gets the “Tomorrow Never Dies” treatment. This film was Sam Mendes’ second Bond film in a row, the first one being “Skyfall” which has been regarded as one of the best Bond films not just of the modern era, but of all time. So when Spectre came out with the same director at the helm, everyone was expecting it to be the greatest film in all of cinema history. Unfortunately, it just didn’t quite live up to the hype and therefor this movie gets unfairly ragged on.

Not just ragged on...but absolutely SHIT ON. I’m not kidding. I’ve seen a lot of “Bond ranking” posts and YouTube videos where this film is in the bottom 5, and one time I even saw it at the bottom. THE BOTTOM. Like, worse than “Die Another Day”. If you actually think that Spectre is a worse movie than Die Another Day, then you either have no clue what you are talking about, have poor taste in action movies, or are just trying to be controversial to be controversial. Spectre is by no means the best Bond movie ever, it has its plot holes for sure...but it is CERTAINLY not the worst, and y’all need to start showing this film some damn respect. Pardon my “R” rated language, YouTubers got me hot!

All that being said, I REALLY enjoy this film. Right from the beginning we have an incredibly visually stunning pre-title sequence at a Day of the Dead parade in Mexico where we see Bond mysteriously tracking a stooge. With heart pounding music, incredible costumes, and a beautifully shot scene of Craig tight-roping the roofs of the buildings that causes my anxiety to explode...this is such a stimulating experience. We later find out that Bond was going rogue and M is pissed and suspends him indefinitely. But Bond is just following a trail that Judi Dench left for him in a video she recorded before she died. Why didn’t she tell Bond about this before she died? Whatever...it’s just a movie.

This leads Bond to uncovering an organization called “Spectre”. You can find the acronym for it in my “From Russia With Love” post! Bond infiltrates a secret meeting to where he finds out the man at the head table is someone from his past. The man, who eventually turns out to be Franz Oberhauser (Christoph Waltz) was once a boy who’s father had taken Bond in when his parents died, making ole Franz jealous, and eventually kills his father and fakes his own death...after he was declared dead he adopted a new name - Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Odd choice, but here we are. We have a Blofeld again!

Waltz was an exciting pick for the part, but he doesn’t blow me away in the role. There is always a subtle creepiness to him, but I think he could’ve done more with it. There was talk of him being replaced as Blofeld in the next Bond movie, but there was enough fan outrage where they squashed that...so I guess he’s doing something right.

One fun aspect of this film is that there is a Bond villain, that Bond never deals with. Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott) or “C” as Bond dubs him, not really sure why, is a surveillance officer working for MI6, but secretly for Spectre. Not so secret though, if anyone has seen “Sherlock”, the mere sight of Andrew Scott makes you think he has to be a villain. He strolls in and politics his way into dumping the double 0 program in favor of ultra cyber security and drones. If successful, Spectre would have full control over everything. This guy is all M’s problem, and he deals with him from concept to completion. Atta boy M! I just always liked how M was on his own with this storyline.

Another aspect about this film is Bond is falling in love with Madeline Swann (Lea Seydoux), the daughter of Mr. White who has been a thorn in Bond’s side working for Spectre. Mr. White has seen the light and now Spectre has poisoned him, giving Mr. White reason to give Bond all the info he needs and to protect his daughter. To me this relationship is a bit rushed and forced. Bond and Vesper in Casino Royale was done properly, but here, Swann seems to fall in love rather out of the blue. And we’re supposed to believe he is leaving MI6 for her.

We’re also treated to a badass train car fight! I love me a good train car fight...sadly I don’t think there are any more in the series. Bond comes face to face with the silent, giant, dagger thumbnail mammoth of a man named Mr.Hinx (Batista). I’m a little biased here because I’ve been a lifelong Pro-Wrestling fan. But I gotta say, Batista has acting chops. This train car fight scene is BRUTAL, and is the scene I think about when I think about this movie.

In conclusion, Spectre is a beautifully shot film with an extra dash of humor, and an excessive amount of call backs to past Bond films. The voodoo-esque nature in the opening (Live and Let Die), the clinic where Bond finds Madeline Swann (On Her Majesties Secret Service), the crator where Blofeld resides (You Only Live Twice), the ejector seat! (Goldfinger). While it’s fun to see Spectre tip it’s hat to the past, as a die hard Bond fan, you kind of go “ok, I get it”. And of course, they kept dropping hints in the movie that Craig was leaving the franchise which stressed me out - especially at the end. I LOVE Daniel Craig as Bond and I, for one, was not ready to let him go just yet. Also, because of the number. What I mean by that is the number of films each actor has done has been different. After “No Time To Die” this will be the movie tally:

Lazenby: 1

Dalton: 2

Brosnan: 4

Craig: 5

Connery: 6

Moore: 7

The next actor to play Bond, can ONLY do 3 movies. If he doesn’t, it just might bother me for the rest of my life. Unless he goes for 8? Well, my obsessive compulsive disorder aside, Spectre is not the perfect Bond film...but it deserves respect for the cinematography, characters, and action scenes. We should all be thankful Sam Mendes came into the world of Bond, and threw a splash of paint on the franchise.

That’s it for this week! Hope you enjoyed it!

Reviews from Friends:

My Mom:

I was mesmerized by this film. I think the theme song and opening artwork were stunning. Daniel craig was an older, darker version of Bond. I was pretty thrilled to see him with a mature love interest for once. Someone near his own age. I was hoping she would go on through the story but it was not to be. I thought it was very well done. Anxious to see more of this mysterious dark Bond.

Jake Benrud

Until reading your blog, I didn’t realize this wasn’t a well received Bond! I actually really enjoyed this movie. I think this is the third time watching it for me, and I really appreciate the portrayal of Bond by Craig. I thought Waltz did a great job with Blofeld. The drilling scene is always a bit unnerving, but I’d expect nothing less from a sadistic Bond villain. I did think that for all the intelligence that Blofeld and the SPECTRE organization should have that it was pretty poor planning to be able to destroy their entire facility with one shot to the propane regulator. I mean if you can arrange for an elaborate Bond haunted house at MI6 ending with Blofeld hiding behind bullet proof glass, maybe take the time to protect the propane tank at your facility. Chances are if you’re an evil genius looking for world domination, you’re probably going to have Bond at your door step shooting up the place. I digress. Despite this, I thought the story moved along well and it’s a solid installment of the series.

24 Weeks of Bond will return next Monday with -

Thunderball

#24WeeksofBond

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racefortheironthrone · 5 years ago

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Thoughts on Powers of X #1

Well, I did this for the one, might as well do it for t’other...

Well, any thought that this mini-series might be less weird than its companion was completely blown away by the very first page, which revealed that Powers of X (pronounced Powers of Ten) is going to be taking place in four different times:

Year One (X^0)

Year Ten (X^1)

Year One Hundred (X^2)

Year One Thousand (X^3)

...with each segment increasing by a power of ten, because apparently Hickman has decided he’d like to drive us all mad with math puzzles. That first page is a doozy of design, I must say, laying out four key moments (and four or three key players) in the past and future of mutant-kind, with the layout suggesting a parallel between all of these characters (as well as a suggestion that the guy in the Cerebro mask shares Charles’ lower facial features exactly.

Year One

We then get an un-interrupted six page sequence which, on the surface, seems the most normal but is anything but. The first page shows Charles Xavier strolling through a fair and sitting down on a bench to enjoy the weather and his good mood, although the symbolic connection between the dwarf ringmaster and the strongman and Xavier’s dream of mutantkind is quite ominous. Then someone who looks a lot like Moira McTaggart sits down next to Xavier, and this is where x-fan’s expectations all of the sudden get flipped upside-down. On the face of it, Charles meeting Moira around the same time that he first has his Dream of mutant/human co-existence would be quite normal...except that Moira’s tarot cards are depicting people and places in the Year One Hundred (more on this in a bit), and Moira is talking to Charles very familiarly, but he hasn’t actually met her yet.

This is where a little alarum bell goes off in my mind shouting “TIME-TRAVEL SHENANIGANS!”

This much-hyped scene turns out to be Charles reading Moira’s mind, but it’s very clear from what we’ve just seen that this is not the Moira we know. And if this Moira is a clone from the future (I’ll get into that in a bit), the publicity tag-line would make sense: after all, time travel to avert a bad future goes way back in X-Men, and often that time travel has involved things happening to Charles Xavier before he could get his X-Men off the ground.

However, we’ve never see anyone go back just to tell Charles what happens in the future, even though that would profoundly change the timeline just by changing his mind. Is this what turns Charles Xavier into the be-helmeted man in Year Ten with the very different dream? Or would informing him of the future change or prevent the events of Year Ten?

Year Ten

Probably the most straightforward sequence - and the best argument for why HoX and PoX should be viewed as two halves of the same story - this sequence shows us exactly what happened to Mystique after she went through the Krakoa portal in Washington Square Park in HoX #1.

It turns out that, as much as even Magneto is feeling the “hope-y, change-y” vibes, he, Mystique, and Professor X all have their own agendas regarding the information - note the running theme of the issue - that she pulled out of Damage Control’s servers.

Further ominous notes: Charles Xavier has never been a telekinetic, and yet here he clearly uses telekinesis to grab Mystique’s thumb drive. That’s very ominous, especially given what we learn about cloned mutants have multiple, spliced-in mutant powers. Also, Professor X’s comment about “everyone who would live in...a better mutant world...owes something” echoes ominously with the interstitial material’s description of Omega class mutants as a natural resource for the state.

Year One Hundred

The most conventionally super-heroic segment, this section shows us an all-too familiar dystopian scenario, with cyborgized humans and cerberus-like sentinels working together to not merely kill mutants but violate their minds and bodies. Further signs of what they’ve been up to comes in the literally black-brained ex-Hound who was genetically designed for infiltration and subversion of her own people.

A sign that mutants have adapted to this conflict by abandoning moral principles as well comes in the fact that the dead mutant in question is not only programmed to mind-wipe on death, but is repeating Professor X’s speech from Year 10. In a parallel to that era, it turns out that the mutant group who’ve been interecepted were downloading information from the Nexus

We also meet our two main characters in this epoch - the red-skinned Nightcrawler lookalike Cardinal (whose Tarot card is the Devil, “the red god and the lost cardinal of the last religion” (no idea what that means)) and the metal-skinned Soulsword-slinging Rasputin (whose Tarot card is the Magician, “the metal metapmorph, the great sword, and the girl with one foot in two worlds” (no idea what that means)). As we will learn later, these are not names but clone-types, because war has its own way of getting us to dehumanize ourselves in the pursuit of victory.

Important Interstitial #1: The Sinister Line

It wouldn’t be a Hickman comic without infographics, and this one was a doozy: at some point after Year 10, a crisis rocked the mutant nation which caused “the almost universal death or disappearance of senior leaders.” This crisis apears to have been engineered by none other than Mister Sinister in order to motivate the remaining mutant leadership into approving “breeding pits” located on Mars, where he could breed and clone mutants for “aggressive, militaristic traits,” to counter-balance the humans’ HOUND program. That’s a hell of a fall from grace.

We then learn that there were four generations of Sinister clones before the whole thing fell apart in a horrific calamity and yet further declension occurred:

First generation: straight-up clones of existing x-men, although the language of “divergent copies of a...pure, uncompromised X-gene” is as disturbing as you might expect from a Victorian eugenicist. (Are these the mass-produced units following from the prototypes we saw emerging from Krakoan cocoons in HoX #1?) Anyway, they all got turned into child soldiers to defend Krakoa until it eventually fell 30 years later. (Keep this date in mind.)

Second generation: combinations of only two x-genes, “mostly predictable.”

Third generation: combinations of up to five x-genes, apparently were wildly successful against the “Man-Machine Supremacy” and about to win the war, when...

Fourth generation: apparently were “produced with a corrupted hive-mind,” went rogue, destroyed 40% of all mutants, destroyed Krakoa, and then killed themselves taking out Mars and the Sinister pits therein.

And now we learn what our protagonists are: Rasputin is (seemingly) a fourth generation mutant with the combined powers of Quentin Quire, Piotr Rasputin, Unus the Untouchable, Kitty Pryde, and Laura Kinney, rather than Kitty and Colossus’ kid as some had feared. Notably, however, Rasputin doesn’t have the same gifts in the same strength as her progenitors: she’s half as strong a telepath as Quire, half as good as phasing as Kitty, half as good at healing as Laura, and about half as good at force-fields as Unus. The only places where she equals them is in turning into organic steel. BTW, if those powers seem somewhat redundant - why would you need to be intangible, made of organic steel, force-fielded, and self-healing all at the same time rather than focusing on just a few of those - well, clearly the intent was to create a tank and a half.

Meanwhile, Cardinal is a (seemingly third-generation) “outlier,” a failure in the breeding program that gradually got worse and worse. All Cardinals - and it’s not clear whether all Cardinals look like Nightcrawler - are pacifists and have “an obsession with creation myths,” and are extreme communitarians who reject individual identity. (Incidentally, Cardinal is where we get the religious through-line of the issue.) One question: if he’s a pacifist, why is he carrying a rapier? Genetic holdover from Kurt Wagner?

Which raises an important question...given that more than 60% of generation four were pacifists, how exactly did they carry out so thorough a massacre of their own people?

And finally we learn that all of this was Mister Sinister’s plan...which ended with his execution. I remain skeptical, because while I absolutely buy that Mister Sinister would arrange things so that he could run his eugenics programs, I don’t get why he’d self-sabotage in order to defect to such an unrelentingly hostile enemy.

Year One Hundred, Part 2

Here’s where we see the structure described as “the ower, the axis, the pillar of collapse and rebirth, the monolith of ascension.” (Keep your eye on that word.) Here we meet Nimrod the Lesser and Omega, and see the other side.

And what we find is a society where the machine is clearly beginning to become the dominant part of the Supremacy, despite a formal pretense at equality, a society where Nimrod makes polite noises at decency (”I am embarrassed and ashamed at what we did in the name of both expediency and annihiliation”), but then claps with childlike glee at the thought of getting to turn mutants into biological databanks.

(In a much less important interstitial, we learn that the HOUND program turned out to be a failure, with the scary ones being “ineffective hunters of their own kind,” and the majority of the black brains defecting en masse.)

Finally, we see an old man Wolverine, along with a green-suited Magneto, a very tree-like Black Tom Cassidy, and a Xorn, rendezvousing with the team to receive the data and bring them in touch with “the Old Man.” Which raises all kinds of questions as to when this happened vis-a-vis Mister Sinister’s betrayal.

Important Interstitial #2

In the wake of the fall of Krakoa, we learn that the once-burgeoning mutant population has been reduced to less than 10,000 refugees living in Shiar protected territory, with only 8 mutants left in the solar system...presumably the group we saw in part 2.

Year One Thousand

And now we find out what happened to our poor Hound, namely that she’s been stuck in a tube for 900 years, a crumbling historical manuscript beyond the ability of the Librarian to preserve.

As we move outside, we learn something critically important: that the “human-machine-mutant war” ended, with humans reduced to zoo animals kept in a nature preserve. Does this mean mutants won? Or did the machines do away with both their enemies and their allies?

#xmen #xmen meta #powers of x #spoilers #hoxpox

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jayhartwinsterling · 6 years ago

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Bandersnatch (Black Mirror) Megapost

Now loading... A *very* sizeable post with a lot to get through - here I am going to talk about the five “main” endings, the Easter eggs, why constructing a traditional flowchart for this game is technically a bit of a vain effort, how it’s probably best to link everything up in a guide - and the implications this story has regarding *us*.

Chapter 1: The Endings

So, we basically have five “main” endings. I say “main” because... well, we’ll get back to it on ending number five.

Ending One Description: The first of which is what I call the “How It Was Meant To Go” - and getting this one is quite simple. All you need to do is accept the proposal Stefan’s given by the Boss to make Bandersnatch with a in-house team. Satpal shows up and then Colin tells Stefan as he’s leaving “Sorry mate, wrong path.” We then jump forward five months to find that Bandersnatch was rushed in production, cut down and done badly because of it being a team effort and it gets a 0/5 review.

We loop back around to that decision again but this time, Colin thinks he’s met Stefan before and Stefan knows the memory error with Colin’s game when it happens. And we come back to the decision. (Refusal again will give a similar scene btw where Stefan accepts and Colin tells him it was the wrong choice again - but Satpal doesn’t enter and we just... end.

Ending One Analysis: So this first ending is rather simple. But the key to it for me lies rather simply in the fact that it can be done... without doing anything at all. If you left your remote/controller/mouse/finger wherever it is and don’t make any choices, this is where you end up. In essence, the universe just runs as it should and we don’t play god over Stefan’s life at all. I know it might be a little difficult to get what I’m on about here but consider that Stefan makes a remark to Dr. Haynes not too long after you take the refuse path, that he wanted to accept the offer and he doesn’t know what made him refuse. We did. This is more clearly pressed upon if you get to the point in your path where Stefan realises something is dictating his life and asks for a sign. We directly throw him a sign - if you’re super direct, that sign happens to be the most direct interaction we could possibly make with him. Telling him that he’s on Netflix in the 21st century for our entertainment and we’re controlling his life.

So, as I say, Ending One is where we don’t have an impact and thus things play out in the universe as they should. Bandersnatch is finished, it gets a 0/5 and Stefan resolves to try again. Ironically, if you just sit back and don’t take the option of making a choice (because, remember, us even making a choice is in itself a choice), though all the game does terribly - this is arguably the best outcome for Stefan. And all because we listened to the exact advice the trailer gave us with its music choice: “Relax. Don’t do it.”

Ending Two: If you go straight to Dr. Haynes (rather than going after Colin) and take your pills when you get home, you get what I call the “” ending. Stefan takes the pills, we jump forward five months to find that Bandersnatch got completed by Stefan but due to his pills, it comes across flat after the midway point and only gets a 2.5/5 rating.

Ending Two Analysis: Not a lot to say here - but it’s worth noting that the review dude on the TV mentions that if the creator had second chances, they should go back and do this game all over again but differently. Keep that in mind for later. It’s worth noting that if you take Stefan off the path that the universe was “meant” to take and then leave it to its own devices (and Stefan to his own choices) again, not making choices for him - then you’ll end up at this one. Almost as if the universe was trying to course correct itself...

Ending Three: “Stefan Jumps.” explanatory how we get here... We jump forward four months, and find that due to Stefan’s accidental death, the game seems to have been speedily finished by someone else.

Ending Three Analysis: We get no rating this time but TV review guy does say the game is bad. He also mentions that it seems abrupt, jarring, bleak, creepy... Almost a perfect way to describe the ending - since it then just ends.

Ending Four: “The P.A.C.S. Ending”. In this one, we unlock Stefan’s dad’s safe with the password “PAC” (obtained by crossing over paths from following Colin to visiting Dr. Haynes... we’ll come by to the implications of such things later.) and find to our surprise that Stefan’s entire life is part of a conspiratorial program, not only well documented but also manufactured with the trauma of his mother’s death being totally falsified. Dad wakes up, refuses to speak and in his rage, Stefan hits him with somethi--- Oh wait, it’s a dream. Just a dream... But then it goes off the rails, quickly plunging us into the choice where we give Stefan a sign that he’s being controlled. Instead of Netflix, we now have the choice of P.A.C.S. - taking that option leads Stefan to kill his dad with the ashtray in a rage about the apparent conspiracy. Stefan then picks up the phone to phone Dr. Haynes - and we have to enter her number. Entering it correctly means that Stefan outright says to Hayne’s receptionist that he’s killed his dad. As he’s burying his dad, we hear distinct sirens and then cut to a review of Bandersnatch. The game is given a 2/5 rating and we discover that Stefan has been charged with killing his dad and locked up in jail.

Ending Four Analysis: It’s safe to say that P.A.C.S. didn’t actually exist outside of Stefan’s head and it’s his life paralleling Jerome F Davies’ obsession with conspiracy theories and delusions. But... what nobody seems to be really talking about is - we did that. Again. Leaving aside all the choices up to and including the safe, we make the P.A.C.S. sign appear and fuel Stefan’s dream-induced paranoia. In this ending, we in a way become Stefan’s delusion. (Oh, and don’t be surprised if you didn’t get this ending with your choices, or only part of it - again we’re coming to all that...)

Ending Five: “Time Rewritten” - now I’ll be honest, I did all these endings in one straight through run. Which made for a REALLY messy time in both my head and the game. Particularly with Colin... But anyway, for this one, I had to make Stefan pick up the family photo after having followed Colin and heard him say that mirrors let you travel through time. Stefan then seems to head through a mirror in the bathroom back in time to when he was a kid. And discovers that his dad took the teddy away from Stefan and locked it away in his room. He wakes up, I take him through the Netflix sign again. [During this, I led into what I’ll be addressing in a minute as Ending Four-B.] And take Stefan back to the locked room, this time entering the password “TOY”. Stefan unlocks the safe and finds his teddy within... And then it takes an odd turn. Stefan turns to find a younger dad - and then suddenly he is a child again. The younger dad relents and lets young Stefan put the teddy back under his bed. After doing so, suddenly older Stefan is looking at young Stefan sleeping. We cut back to young Stefan on the day Mum leaves... This time, he finds the teddy but his Mum is still running late. She’s gonna have to catch the next train - the one that leads to her demise - and we have to make the decision for young Stefan on whether to go or not. Of course, yes is my choice here - for though it’s a tragedy, it’s the last of these paths to take - we get young Stefan and Mum on the train, cut to black, and then see that older Stefan has died in Dr. Haynes’ office. We then get shown a TV screen and the credits come rolling in, whether we like it or not. And there’s what seems almost a tune playing but we’ll get back to that because if you’re a ZX Spectrum fan like myself, you know where that’s headed.

Ending Five Analysis: Alright, now there’s debate to be had here. Did Stefan really walk through a mirror and change time, undoing his own existence in the present, rendering himself dead on the spot? Did he slip away into a divergent reality and leave his original one behind? Or did he, in reliving the trauma with Dr. Haynes, live too far into it and died? Well, my opinion is that the last of those three is true. (Although, this conclusion is a little shot in the foot for me personally because I never discussed the death of Stefan’s mum with Dr. Haynes ever. Unless you try to make the conclusion that the entirety of my personal run through this game even from Stefan getting up at the very start of it was all in his reliving). Time to come clean about something I’ve been hinting through this post. Delusions. Almost all of the endings involve delusions. But, you’ll have to wait until the end of this chapter before I bring all of that together.

Ending Four-B: “Cut!” - having taken Stefan down the Netflix path and into a fight with Dr. Haynes, I told him to jump through the window. He runs to the window but it doesn’t open - and then we hear something shout CUT! The view pulls out to reveal that Stefan is in a studio, and that - in a very meta move - all of this is just a production being made (for TV, for film... for Netflix?) and that trying to jump out of the window isn’t in the script. Stefan is then addressed as Mike and it seems to be the case that he has fallen a little too much into character. The studio assistant, worried with his insistence that he is Stefan, rushes off to find a medic. And that’s the end of that.

Ending Four-B Analysis: Firstly, I put this with Ending Four because it’s down a similar path, and once again we become Stefan... sorry, Mike’s delusion. And this led me to an interesting thought about this universe where we’ve taken control of a delusional actor - is the alternative for taking the Netflix sign, which is having the fight with Dr. Haynes (as “scripted”) and being dragged off just a part of this universe’s production? In that instance, is the delusional then our own that this world is a reality when - surprise, surprise, it’s a Netflix production (and presumably, in that universe, also a Black Mirror episode)? Secondly, as an aside, the only option presented to me after this ending for a rewind was “Get Rabbit From Dad”...

Well, there you go, five “main” endings (and a bit) and an awful lot for me to explain...

Except... Ending Six. What I Believe Is The True “Main” Ending.

So we lead Stefan back to the sign, give him the Diverging Paths sign (or call it Whitebear, if thus inclined.), make him kill Dad, and make him chop up the body. Then, the Boss and Colin discuss the fact that Stefan is late with his work - Colin convinces him to leave Stefan be for another day. And what happens here on, well, happens. It’s worth noting the reluctance and pain Stefan has carrying out the order we gave him to chop up his Dad. But then, it’s contrasted by the lack of emotion he shows in Dr. Haynes’ office. Perhaps he’s taken that JFD documentary to heart about believing that if all paths occur, and there is no free will - then why care? Why feel guilt on behalf of what seems to be destiny? And honestly, I can’t blame Stefan... Because he doesn’t have free will here, we’re throwing decisions at him and he’s along for the ride. We made him kill his dad. We made him chop him up.

And herein lies our delusion. That in making these choices for him, we have a choice. Because we really don’t - we’re in a Bandersnatch of our own (if you’re a CYOA fan then you might’ve sensed this coming...) and honestly, we should’ve known from the start. We’re the ones that selected the option Black Mirror: Bandersnatch on Netflix and hit play, after all. Just as Stefan has pulled back from making an infinity of paths and left enough complexity to make it seem so. I mean, I’ll be blunt here even though I’ve yet to discuss it in depth in Chapter Two - technically, there is no way that any one human being is getting through every possible path/universe. To us, it may as well be infinite. And yet, it’s all just an illusion of free will.

Endings Two and Three all push us, the player, bluntly into going back into this warren of choices - to try again. Pushing us further on. Ending Four is more subtle, toying with us by giving us a tragic ending for Stefan so we feel inclined to go again and do better for him (and in my case, straight up offers up a path to Ending Five, and what seems a more hopeful ending until you get into it.) Ending One is even there if you decide to take the choice to not make any choices, to not interfere at all. Leaving the universe on course - but of course, this is our game and trap so it tells us not so subtly to try again as well.

And Ending Five leads us to ending with... A delusion. There’s the crux of the matter.

Ending One is our delusion that we can game the system by not getting involved.

Ending Two is Stefan’s (and our) delusion that if we play by the nicest choices and rules of life, it’s all going to turn out happily.

Ending Three is Stefan’s delusion (spurred on by the acid? by Colin’s way of thinking? by both?) that if infinite worlds are out there and free will is an illusion then what does it matter if he jumps?

Ending Four is where Stefan becomes delusional as a result of us and ends up locked up. We are the delusion. Four-B is where Stefan himself, as a person, is the delusion.

Ending Five is either the delusion of a man who relived his trauma too deeply or the delusion of us in thinking that when the paths were all clear and we had what seemed like a final end, that it would be happy. (Or none of the above, if you really want to go analysing this one differently.)

And Ending Six is our delusion. “And now, they’ve only got the illusion of free will but really, I decide the ending.”

In a few short seconds, we realise that we have been the Stefan of Charlie Brooker and co. - being led towards this ending that is out of our hands now. Despite all the paths and other endings you take, you’re likely to end up back here.

And as Stefan says about how he thinks Bandersnatch led to a happy ending, and we see him in his room, with his computer - and walls covered in paths; trying to make sense of the maze he’s playing... well, I think you can piece together the parallels between him and us.

And then we’re landed with the fact that he’s kept his dad’s head. And the 5/5 review we’ve been looking for all game finally comes, but then it turns out even that comes at a price. We’ve driven Stefan insane, certainly - and we’ve tainted the happiness of a moment we were striving for. And there’s a final delusion for us - the delusion that whatever choices were out there for us to make, we could get an ending where everyone lives, Stefan is happy, the game gets 5/5 and all is well. But we can’t. No matter what Stefan does, he can’t divert from the path we choose and no matter what we do, we can’t divert from the path Charlie Brooker chose.

Colin’s daughter takes up the mantle of her father, inspired by having found Stefan’s work, just as Stefan was inspired by having found Jerome F Davies’. (She even has Jerome’s book as well!) And one more time, we fall into the meta hole as it’s revealed that she’s creating her game for TVs and smart devices under Netflix. Her game is the Bandersnatch we’re playing.

As a parting shot, Charlie Brooker brings himself into the web the one we can without completely shattering what remains of the fourth wall. Pearl represents him, trapped in the same madness, trying to put this game together. We are given our final choice - and either way, it’s a moot choice. Both destroy Bandersnatch. Both cause the screen to cut out - did we just erase Bandersnatch? Does it matter, given that our choice or even abstaining meant nothing in the end?

And I suppose you have to feel sympathy for Charlie Brooker, because the pain Stefan felt and the pain we felt - he’s no stranger to it.

And we’re left with one question now that the game is gone: What about real life?

Chapter 2: Why A Flowchart Won’t Ever Cut It (Technically)

TO BE ADDED SOON

Chapter 3: So Many Easter Eggs

TO BE ADDED SOON

Chapter 4: The Best Way To Document Every Piece Of Bandersnatch

TO BE ADDED SOON

Chapter 5: Us

TO BE ADDED SOON

#blackmirror #bandersnatch #stefan #charlie brooker #black mirror

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hazzabeeforlou · 6 years ago

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11 questions

Yes I did this a bit ago but @helloamhere (thank you, ily, have fun bussing around Europe, did that once, had to follow apple maps to know where to get off ‘cause I speak ZERO German...) tagged me and I’m an anxious mess waiting for medical news today so WHY NOT!

Rules: answer 11 questions then pose 11 of your own.

1. What do you think fanfic does better than published fiction (if anything?)

Okay obvious answer and not very high brow, but SMUT. You will not see me perusing the gay aisles of Barnes and Noble romance novels :) For various reasons :)

2. What do you think it does worse

I think (maybe it’s just this fandom) overall it’s quite a bit more sanitary than novels, both in morality and subject matter. I hate to think what the purity police would say about some of the books I’ve read... especially the old ones? But then I usually come here looking for fluff and happiness too so perhaps that’s just the major draw of fanfic, idk.

3. What’s something another fandom has or does that you wish your fandom had or did?

To be honest I’m not well versed in other fandoms, but I’m going to go with I wish this fandom didn’t have constant infighting. Seriously in all my born days I have never seen a group of people claim such a similar goal and yet devour each other so viciously. Hence I usually avoid anything incredibly explosive or triggering here; I deal with and confront radical people (religious extremists, right wing extremists) in my everyday life and I cannot bring myself to turn my escapism into that same vortex of endless arguing, though I appreciate and support those who fight the fight. I often have very sharp opinions and fall to one side or the other of the fault line, but I draw a personal boundary at a point.

4. Do you consider yourself a “fandom” type of person in general, or committed to only one, and if so, tell me more about what this means to you.

I have been a HUGE fandom person my entire life, though this is the first time I’ve ever been in a community for it. Star Wars and Narnia consumed most of my adolescence, along with Lord of the Rings. I briefly dabbled in Dr. Who and Merlin (as one does) but because I didn't read HP until nearly the end of college, I kindof missed out on that one. Basically anything geeky or fantasy driven I have always loved, and I can’t really explain how I ended up here? But this is the only fandom I’m active in socially. The power of HL I guess...

5. I’m trying to get through writing a first draft right now and it’s a slog. How do you stay motivated for long projects, writing or otherwise?

Ah. A call out question! Like any good Aries, I love starting new things! And then letting them to languish unfinished. I have, however, trained in classical music, and thus I’ve programmed myself to just keep doing the thing because pieces take months and months and months to perfect and if you can’t stick with a project, you go nowhere. I also operate on a reward system, as in writing is the reward for practicing, then when I’m sick of words I go back to music, and so the turn tables. I have learned to ignore (I’m great at ostrich-ing) the crushing self doubt of creativity and just bulldoze ahead and do the thing, which results in very messy first drafts and often bad habits in my musical technique and a tendency to overplay, which wastes energy, but rehearsals wait for no one. I also thrive on last minute deadlines!

6. Tell me about what you read as a kid. Favorite book? Or if you weren’t into reading then, favorite TV show, etc?

I HAVE SO MANY. Narnia was my first love. I also adored George MacDonald (At The Back of the North Wind is a fucking masterpiece). My mom hardly let me read Redwall (see: hints of magic) but when she caved I devoured all of those. Anne of Green Gables. American Girl stuff (lots of it, yes Josefina and Kaya were my faves). I read far too many Star Wars expanded universe novels (New Jedi Order shaped me as a person, esp Traitor). I remember reading all the Eragon series, though these were dubiously approved... and I read various classics, as one is supposed to. In high school I printed out the entire Beowulf in Old English, got a CD of a dude reading it, and proceeded to memorize the first several lines. I can still recite Anglo Saxon but I have no clue what it means (see: I’m a good mimic). Everything non-Christian-magic-related I read during or after college, sigh.

7. Have your tastes changed?

This sounds bad but not really. I rarely read non fiction, oops. Biographies are a slog for me. I dislike historical fiction and I don’t have a good reason for that. I do love a good mystery, but usually not in book form (audio or visual Agatha Christie is my mana). I do adore socio-policial books, though (The Better Angels of our Nature a good example) or books doing a deep dive into a historical topic. These days I enjoy a good satire more than much else, and since I started on Terry Pratchett in 2016 I haven’t looked back.

8. I’ll steal your question above--tell me about a fic that changed you, or became a “touchstone” fic that you go back to!!

I didn’t read fics period when I entered the fandom, and stubbornly maintained that for a while, but the fic that changed my mind was (Take Me Home) Country Roads by @a-writerwrites (Awriterwrites). I read it during a drive through the very parts of the USA it’s set in, and I couldn’t put it down, spotty internet be damned. From there @horsegirlharry birthed me into the gay 1D world, though I can’t for the life of me remember which of hers I first read! (Does it matter? They’re all so beautiful...)

9. Tell me about a WIP, if applicable. How’s it going?? It sounds great.

I’m plodding along on The Garden, it’s going well, but urgency isn’t a priority. It’s going to be one of those things that I finish and then go in and make matter because right now my ideas are half formed and I know I’ll eventually know where I’m going but it’s a case of blind trust in instinct at this point!

10. What’s your favorite place to read and sitting position?

Like a true gay I cannot sit normally in a chair, coupled with my pain issues means I’m usually draped over the back of something with a cushy lumbar support, massive pillow, or propped sideways lying down. I love reading outside, but have a tendency to attract bugs, also I’m very light sensitive so my eyes hate the sun, especially if I’m reading from a screen.

11. Do you feel like fic reading and writing is social for you? E.g. do you share with friends (in or outside of fandom), or are you a lone wolf seeking out your fics in the dead of night??

I LOVE the social aspect of fic reading and writing within fandom! I have shared PITS with only two real life friends though; I am very tight lipped about the fact that I write fic. People are cruel and musicians are judgmental arseholes and if I prefer to spend my days dreaming up love stories for my OTP instead of pouring over scores, that’s my fucking business.

Alright, 11 from me (I wanted to include artists too so!!):

1. Are you a start small-work larger type creator, or map everything out then attend to detail?

2. What style of art/writing has most influenced your creative choices? (Genre, time period, muse)

3. How long have you been writing/arting? Is this something you knew you’d do your whole life?

4. What is your favorite thing about creating for your fandom? (reception, excitement, newness, etc.)

5. Have you met any recent creative goals that you’re really proud of?

6. What is your creative baby; what work do you want stamped on your proverbial gravestone as I MADE THIS (or have you made it yet?)

7. Do outside forces (politics, culture, hegemonies) play into your creations? Do you intentionally or subconsciously subvert norms or explore ideas?

8. Your creative mind is a garden. Describe what kind it would be and what it would contain (i.e. rock garden, palace garden, wildflowers, rose... etc.)

9. Do you believe that creative art has power and if so, how do you hope yours impacts others?

10. I’m double stealing this question: what’s a fic or fan art that changed your life or was a touchstone for you?

11. If you could pick any hero of yours to read/look at your creations, who would it be and why?

TOTALLY only if you want to, but @13ways-of-looking @twopoppies @alienfuckeronmain @prettytruthsandlies @pattern-pals @newleafover @disgruntledkittenface @lesbianiconharrystyles @lululawrence

#writing stuff #about me

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years ago

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14x07 watching notes

In Which It Is Now Completely Apparent Which Of Buck And Leming Are Writing A Scene At Any Given Time

A Tale Of Lizbob Being Tormented By Toddlers

Hello it is 3:32am and I am awake from a dream of what the episode might have been (plus side: overt Destiel motel room sharing, downside: Jack accidentally killed Dean) because my tantruming toddler neighbour who just moved into the haunted house next door was screaming, and threw something at our adjoining wall. At 3am. So I'm not exactly well-rested and I'm kinda pissed, which isn't the best combo for a Buckleming episode, but when you wake up with a scream and a thump, you aren't going back to sleep for a lil while :P

Kudos to the rest of the writing team, we're 7 episodes in and I've thoroughly forgotten Nick exists. I've just been assuming he was caught, featured on a true crime program, and is already gone and locked up for the new murder and likely solving of a cold case.

Ahahahaaaa the opening of the recap is "when it comes to killing you, I'll be the one to do it" so that's ominous. As you might tell, my psyche is utterly wrapped around this whole Shakespearean tragedy of Jack vs Dean, and perhaps they're not gonna murder each other today but the constant reminders they're living in a murder or get murdered delicate thematic plot balance is exactly the sort of thing that we need to have hanging over their dynamic, as well of course as being the start point of their relationship to show how far they've come and how much they've changed and now love each other and how just last episode Dean got in his "fine i have a son now" episode a season or two later than everyone else and just in time for it to be "so now you bonded with him of course he's caught Doom because you can't have nice things for literally a single episode and this is your fault for bonding with him, Dean"

This recap is designed to wound me, a Jack fan and lover of how TFW loves their son

Ew, it's Nick. The first time in my life I've been tempted to skip at least a lil of the recap.

Imagine how tight it would have been to just do a 10 second "here's Jack" recap and cut to the action

and the action includes an episode without Nick stealing time from the boy

You know i spend exactly 0 time speculating on how Eugenie might write her personal fave bits of the episodes but if you had to throw together "nick is now a serial killer ritually murdering priests on a satanic bender" then that would have been a pretty close thing to what I could have come up with as distilled Buckleming essence. (gross)

There's a vague continued overlap of the human!Cas arc with the parallel to the open of 9x03 and the general aesthetic of season 11's Lucifer's satanic rampage bender thrown together but you know what that's more meta than this arc deserves and my boy is sick

OH NO CAS IS THE ONE WATCHING OVER HIM ABORT ABORT

His grace looks pathetic. Maybe he's trying not to wake Jack up. Maybe he doesn't have a whole lot left.

That's not helping, Cas

ANXIOUS PARENTS OUTSIDE HIS ROOM

I bet Cas sent them away because they were hovering

Dean this is not what happens to kids, stop trying to kid yourself that this is like having a regular demonic toddler

Man am I glad I do not have kids right now both because I don't have to worry about them and also because they scream and throw stuff at the walls at 3am

Dean angry at Cas cuz he's worried about Jack oh no oh no oh no look at these stressed parents. Cas is forced into the doctor role because he magic but he is just as stressed as they are and tensions are high, and then the boy starts convulsing

Oh my god they snapped, they are actually bringing Jack to an emergency room. This is horrifying and kind of a trip to imagine what they're going to tell any authority figures about who this guy is and what their relationship is to him.

Do they remember that he has barcode fingerprints and probably is gonna be Medically Weird just as default?

(Alex is 29 like me and Misha is early 40s and Jimmy is canonically a year older than Misha for some reason, so at a push Cas could be his dad and have made some very early mistakes but the boy is biologically only like 10 years younger than them on average... JACK looks another half that at times but this is a hospital so idk if "smiles like a toddler" "early teenage adorableness" is a good measure of age)

(I'm stress-typing)

"His full name, please"

All 3 dads look at each other baffled.

Sam goes with Jack Kline, which, a season and a bit later, is the first canonical use of it as Jack's surname

They're cautious about using Winchester, understandably, but it's a nice reminder that Kelly is family too and as the dead parent, naming Jack in tribute to her should have been something they were doing all along (like, season 13 all along), especially as he even visited the Klines earlier this season. Sam being the one who thinks to do this is nice because he's the most dad-aligned to Jack in a traditional sense when it's come to raising him (Cas got the pre-birth role as the traditional father role) and Cas obviously had the strongest connection to Kelly before that but this isn't a moment about her so much as these 3 stressed dads.

LOL Date of birth. Sam wins another point for knowing it, while Dean makes back and forth guesses on '99/2000, making Jack 19 or 20, which would at least mean any one of them could have fathered him and chopping 10 years off Alex's age to compromise between look and feel.

Given Jack's symptoms the nurse should have been a lil more concerned asking about trips to West Africa or other likely Ebola places lately. (This may be poor timing on the show's part but isn't there a fresh outbreak right now?)

(Oof I googled it and there's "Congo Ebola outbreak 2nd worst in history" articles dated 6 hours ago... Maybe a bad year to write haemorraghic diseases for fun and also how comes no one is talking about this in the news and it's all blah blah brexit... Have we just stopped fearing it now a few outbreaks have shown it mostly stays contained in African countries so now they can just suffer it on their own? I'm making a 4am donation to relief efforts)

*returns from the doctors without borders website* anyway back to the fictional sick white boy

And his very stressed dads

I have no idea how much of this is medically accurate but I feel like this is particularly dramatised to match hospital visits people have experienced which did not involve bringing in a stumbling, feverish, person who is having seizures and coughing blood

it's still objectively sad to see TFW lined up all stressed out and Cas and Dean holding hands while they stare through the giant window

The doctors aren't wearing masks even though he has been COUGHING BLOOD

sheesh this entire hospital is in quarantine now

Nick saying he was "getting hammered" the night of the murder isn't super subtle

Cas aggressively still trying to watch over Jack even though they won't let him in the room. Dean paces and talks about ghouls in the middle of the hospital to let off stress.

Cas goes to watch over him in person while Sam and Dean have a personal chat. This is awful D:

I appreciate the sentiment of busting Jack out before they pay the hospital bills because they're running out of medical options and need to turn to magic ones, a la every dramatic event ever in their lives except that one time Dean broke his leg and Sam was too out of it with the Hallucifers to sell his soul to make it better, but if Jack's in system shutdown wouldn't at least keeping him with state of the art equipment mean things like transfusion and machines that keep him propped up?

Mind you his bloodtype is probably, like, X evil negative or something Bucklemingy

It's in his DNA... He might be cute but he's still born of their episodes and wacky non con ideas... It was gonna catch up to him eventually D: You can't outrun it forever!!

I accidentally hit a button and 8x02 started playing on VLC

"DEEEAN" Cas shoves him through the portal out of purgatory, credits roll, this was officially the weirdest episode ever.

(No I didn't watch the whole thing, I was literally paused on the last shot from where I was about to gif it last night when I fell asleep)

Sam already called Rowena... Smart cookie

obligatory yell at Cas shedding the coat to put on Jack so they don't walk him out in a hospital gown

Oh my god Jack's so sick he's white as a sheet and being carried out by 2 of his dads and he still has a lil well of snark to be like "fine we're leaving" to the doctor.

"There's just no talking to him when he gets like this"

We're at the promo scene and I'm still not 100% sure after sleeping on it that Rowena definitely did not have the Book of the Damned, and that she hadn't been able to make off with it at the end of season 11, never for it to be seen again, because she was very much in the process of stealing the Black Grimoire in 13x22, but this does, I guess, make sense in regards to which book would serve Jack better, and Mittens tried her best to convince me that Rowena plausibly did not have it because the Winchesters did... I'm still suspicious because I really did just assume that she took it and the implication was we didn't see it because SHE had hidden it, and from a line in a Buckleming episode as well. And either way around her showing up with it makes sense that she had it but I'd have occam's razor'd it that she stole the obvious books at the obvious times and not that 13x22 became a BotD heist on top of everything else :P

Jack is up and about!!

He's using a more gravelly voice and it's actually a really hot voice and for literally the first time the Alex/Jack divide (gulf) in my head that one is my age and hot and the other is a 12 year old is a bit shaken. I mean Jack's canonically now supposed to be around 19-20? Which explains why he has a "wooo spring break" attitude when we see in the promo he snaps and wants to go to Vegas.

They grow up so fast.

Anyway considering he was in total organ shutdown a lil while ago it seems a night's rest has done him well if he's wandering around the bunker

Can't tell if we swapped writers or what... well, it seems like it's possible given Jack's fluctuating sickness, which of course could just be a plot thing but also a mark of the inconsistencies in Buckleming episodes. It's still odd to me that in the filming process it didn't occur to them that Jack might not at least sway on the spot at little, but he's really standing there like a little trooper, upright and talking confidently.

And betraying to Rowena that his dads like her and say nice things about her behind her back, which is catastrophic for them. How dare. You're damaging the foundations of their relationship.

*cough cough*

"Bollocks"

Yep, her heart has softened, Jack won her over in record time, and she's just thinking about that time she adopted a wee Polish lad and loved him as her own because Jack is genetically engineered to be a blank slate son version of a Mary Sue. You take one look at him and he is Your Son in whatever way will most harm you.

Good grief I wish Crowley was still around to see what HILARIOUS overlap with Gavin we'd have wrung out of Jack's main superpower.

Cas offering his grace to stabilise Jack on the spot. Halp. It's more important to him that his son lives by miles, that this isn't even an internal debate for him. In a way, obvious that Cas would be like this as a parent, in another, Cas just offered to give up his grace live on TV

Rowena shoots down the obvious solution (oh and thank god that for once the show actually even references obvious solutions) and starts talking about how we need archangel grace and as soon as she says that I think "oh, Michael" and Dean starts to come over weird with a wooziness that makes me wonder if that was timed for the audience "oh there's one out there right now" and why would DEAN be personally affected right thiiiiiis second..............................

When they go on spring break together we're getting right to the murderin

I mean SOMETHING is up and Dean's right now having his own weird moment as Rowena talks about how Jack will now have a fluctuating set of symptoms for the sake of the plot so

It's possible this is just his internal POV emotional reaction to bad news because this is what happens to me when I hear it but I suspect Dean is a lil more healthy than me in the first place so doesn't verge on passing out whenever a catastrophe happens regularly. And also Sam and Cas aren't similarly struck with physical symptoms at the news their son is dying.

Ya know, Buckleming, or probably Eugenie specifically which makes it all the worse, writing this woman taking a call in a dark alleyway, then not being terrified to be approached by a weird man and on top of that stopping and turning to invite him to join her in the club... this is the kind of thing where they're writing someone going against all natural instinct that it's bad characterisation for someone we've literally never met before just to put her in danger.

I mean at least they didn't make Nick stab a random woman (and a black woman at that to add to their overall awful stats)

I like how Jack's just decided Vegas or Tahiti are places you just kinda go to die... I mean I don't know what he's learned about them but it all has to be absorbed through the media in his most innocent way. I feel like there's something very sweet about whatever he thinks you do in these places of reputed sin and blaze of glory live fast die young lifestyles, but also utterly tragic. Consumptive tragic hero but with a twist of the reckless and dangerous later tropes of... It's 5am and I can't think but like. Vegas. Drugs and gambling high life style tropey films and books from the American tradition.

And of course it's Dean (who utterly fits into this trope and even has yearly Vegas trips with Sam since discovering his psychic powers back in season 1 and also lives a blaze of glory mindset) who brings him the deadly glass of milk (film trope about innocence but also like, people dying) and a sandwich loaded with salami. Dean went all out to make that for Jack - a couple of episodes after sending a woman off to "make him a sandwich" and regretting it as he spoke, we see the yank the cloth away reveal of Dean's nurturing side where he is the caregiver who shows affection through food and will go to the trouble of making his boy a delicious sandwich.

"Nice." See? He's Dean's son and Dean approves his choice of places to die. "You sure this is the best time?"

"Pretty sure it is," Jack says, backpack on, already almost out the door. He's found a brown corduroy jacket which is both unlike his beige jackets and suits from the rest of his life aside from the blue apocalypse world one, and also very very much like Sam's iconic season 1-2 brown corduroy jacket that he mostly stopped wearing although I think was the one Dean wore in 4x01 as one of its sporadic dwindling appearances, if I'm not wrong.

I probably am but either way, it's a change to darker colours, something Sam-associated to fit the gap of this smol dangerous dying kid Dean has to deal with, and puts Jack in thick earthier tones, thicker clothes to ward against the cold of death, and dressed more like TFW than normal as he usually has quite a distinct child-like version of their clothes.

Jack's concept of life and mortality is fucked, possibly because he was a functioning being after a day or two of gathering his thoughts and starting to come to terms with asking deep philosophical questions about himself, so in a way discovering he only has a couple more weeks to live is hardly anything. He's a fucking mayfly.

Ugh it's now solidly 5am and I am clearly not going back to sleep so I give up, I'm finally getting coffee. The rest of the notes will be maybe a wee bit more coherent :P

Anyway kettle thought: due to Jack and Dean's murder or be murdered relationship (lordy how is this the only way you relate to fatherhood, my guy?) I kinda suspect that Dean's about to abscond with Jack without even telling dad 1 or dad 2, because he is dad 3 and that's totally cool and he's a responsible adult, but, you know, woozy and doomed while Jack is also consumptive and doomed. BAD COMBO.

I charge you with grounds of diminished responsibility due to mutual murder narrative doom

"I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it"

Okay remember in season 1 episode 14 where Dean was like "LOL WE SHOULD GO TO VEGAS BECAUSE YOU ARE PSYCHIC"? and I referenced that like 5 minutes ago so you should, obviously I've only ever been able to headcanon the reveal of Vegas Week in season 7 (Dabb episode, take a shot) dates back to that and is one of their between episode activities which makes sense that since they only started travelling as adults together in the canon of the show (and Sam 1 year older than drinking age) that it might as well have been when they started the tradition?

Well Jack here is reacting like Dean would have if HE were the one in Sam's shoes in 1x14, and being the fun lil brother who actually would be like fuck it let's go to Vegas and see how psychic I am in the casinos! In the context of season 1 Sam is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too angsty and tragic to do anything other than come across as a stick in the mud who thinks Dean is joking and they're gonna carry on being tragic and hunting monsters instead. Dean in season 2, episode 9, also wanted to fuck off and go have fun when Sam's scary destiny got too much for him to carry, and that was when he was locked in the murder or save him vow from John's last words, which is a similar burden to the narrative bind he's in with Jack.

Jack, all of his fathers' son, finally shows up as the god damn first person to take his doom sensibly and actually want to fuck off to Vegas, and that's demon!Dean levels of fuck it.

Incidentally I half-suspect that Crowley, who has billions of dollars and once bid the moon in an auction (hi I watched 99% of 8x02 yesterday and 1% of it just now) probably was steering demon!Dean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay carefully around the thought of wait a minute I have an extremely rich and powerful sugar daddy and no responsibilities... VEGAAAAAAAS.

Like, any time Dean started to form the thought, bam, naked triplets show up in their room.

Anyway Jack's busy being tragic, talking about wanting to get a tan (Beach now linked to something to do before death) or see a hockey game (oh shit we forgot Adam) or get a parking ticket (oh so that's why Dean murders him)

"And when it's all over... die."

Dean looks over his shoulder, mind made up to abduct the boy and take him joyriding

"So that's your plan, huh?"

"I don't want to waste time arguing"

"Did I say I disagree"

jack, this is Fun Dad

I know, the concept is completely radical and you've never seen Dean be fun but trust me.

Even with your very, very limited options, Sam has literally had 3 episodes about how he's Scrooge, and Cas is... Cas. But Dean is legitimately fun dad when you get him on a good day. Trust me.

No one's speaking to Rowena??? How wild.

Poor thing is never going to get her mega coven

Dean (who has rocked up already wearing his jacket) spaces out as Sam starts blahing on about the culturally appropriative shaman Ketch has located.

Same, buddy

At least Dean isn't lying to them about stealing Jack. Somewhat. Not the whole Vegas plan.

Jack smiles at Sam and Cas in a kind of way that somehow conveys in its entirety "this may be the last time you see me but I'm cool with you NOT seeing me die of coughing my lungs up and fun dad has this covered and we've always had a weird death cult about our relationship anyway so I'm okay with it and you guys were the best dads but now fun dad is going to take me out back and shoot me where you can't see and I love you bye"

"Why don't you drive?"

Jack is like ?!?!?!?!? D:

EVEN ON HIS DEATHBED he hadn't figured this would ever happen

It's the make a wish foundation :')

This is, of course, the ultimate sign of Dean loving you and caring for you in Dean's own special way of not telling you he does but showing it with a gesture of absolute confidence and letting you in, and in the vast annuls of the show dates back to the second ever episode where Dean let Sam drive at the end for all of 1 shot (seriously, they've swapped back by the long shot at the end of 1x02 where you can't see them in the car but the prop drivers are definitely doing a generic Sam in the passenger seat Dean driving routine for stock footage :P)

Anyway Dean loves Jack enough that he's letting a kid who does not know how to drive learn to drive in the Impala, like he and Sam did.

I can see Alex sweating bullets about being seated next to Jensen in the beloved Impala and having to mess up turning it on... never mind the fact that both Jensen AND Dean will murder him if he harms the car, and being murdered on both levels at once is spiritually unsettling and he will probably end up an unquiet ghost.

And yet, the glee at being behind the wheel of this legendary gal

TRAGIC NYOOOOOM

"It's like I'm you! :D"

"No, it's not! :D (but with implied murder)"

"THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER"

Look if he survives this, you're creating a speed demon who will want his own classic car

And then you'll have to teach him how to maintain it

oh god

But yeah, non-toxic parenting in the John Winchester As He Could Have Been style.

At least as long as Dean is in the Make A Wish mode and not back to tragic murder mode

And that wooziness that he may or may not be associating with no sleep and too much stress suggests this isn't going to last as a Fun Day Trip For The Boy

"Cas are you sure you want to handle this alone?"

NO HE NEEDS A HUG HIS SON IS DYING

Sam, go hug him, you need a hug and your son is dying.

Also, of course, you mutually need each other in this instance and Sam is reaching out to Cas with presumably the intent that he wants to be in on it but is asking as if just concerned about Cas

Cas, being Cas, has somehow deduced that Dean is "taking this particularly hard" despite the fact all three of them are Concerned Dads and CAS WHAT THE FUCK are you doing being selflessly concerned about DEAN and sizing up his emotional state when all three of you are wrecked and your son is dying?

You literally have 3x the sitting at his bedside holding his hand moments of any of them and montaged the heck out of the concern at the start of the episode

I remember way back someone wankily made a chart of how often people talked to Dean about stuff and other people talked to each other about Dean, and Sam is now crying about Dean beating himself up over being mean to Jack at the start of season 13 and regretting it, so this entire conversation is Sam and Cas man paining at each other about how much man pain Dean is in.

I say with no wank in my heart, just sheer horrified amusement at this data point if they still are hate-watching the show and being horrified about how Sam never gets stuff for himself etc (I mean. He and Cas both have had extended chunks of seasons about them parenting Jack and this is Dean's time to come belatedly to what the two of them already had)

Cas finally says "son" a season and change after Jack was wandering around calling him "father" and Sam doesn't seem inclined to disagree that this is how it feels for all 3 of them.

Obviously he's crying about Jack and it was just the context above that made it look like he was crying about Dean and I always knew that, I'm not a monster, I'm just deflecting because owwwwwwwww this hurts

HUG EACH OTHER YOU DUMB FUCKS SO I FEEL BETTER

Cas walks off instead and Sam finally after 1000 years discovers how Dean feels when Cas does that when he was angling to come along and they miscommunicated and didn't say what they meant. Except Sam wanted to come out of mutual Dad Angst comfort while Dean normally wants to go with Cas places so he can hold his hand.

Jack's so proud of himself for being able to drive.

"Born with a wheel in your hand"

He literally stole the Impala from you when he was 7 months in the womb

Dean is like, we could get you laid? And Jack is like. Nah. I have a better idea.

No idea what right now but he still doesn't wanna bang anyone

Ugh a Nick scene. Tag yourself I'm the old tyre in the foreground

Is this the house from Family Remains aka the self-admitted worst episode of the show by Kripke and Carver's explicit design

I am going to puke Jack wanted to go on a fishing trip with his dad

There were spoilers about them doing this but I repressed it the fuck down and lied to myself that Jensen was randomly teaching Alex to fish on set because I didn't want to think about Dean doing this with Jack because oh my god someone has taken my heart and gouged it out with a rusty spoon.

Also: someone design Jack a t-shirt with a witty slogan about fishing rather than hook ups. Like, dude bro fishing culture but in a world where you're as likely to get dumb slogans about not wanting sex as you are for it making you a babe magnet

"I'd rather be fishin" is a thing people get on mugs for the workplace but we could start with this sentiment and play

ALSO AS I MENTIONED I WATCHED 8x02 IN THE LAST 24 HOURS AND DEAN NEAR RIVERS SUCKS. We also have 10x01 and Daniel the fishing angel (who was the pizza man from Monster Movie, see above: slogans about fishing, pizza man innuendo, we got a thing going here) who was happy on Earth just fishing and enjoying the planet and not wanting to go back to Heaven, in a very heavy metaphor for Cas to deal with, as the angel who once compared free will to teaching poetry to fish. Lots and lots to unpack here, when we turn this into a Dean and Jack father son bonding moment and throw in Dean's peaceful dream of fishing in 4x20 that Cas interrupted. Fishing is about peace and idyll and comes as a temporary respite in this show. Traditionally, also, of course it's a sport of patience, and a classic father son bonding activity as the long stillness allows for both manly silence and sharing beers in peace, but also talk if they want to open up a conversation.

For Jack, it's an overlap of both Cas and Dean parental stuff, Cas's issues with angelic nature, where he wants to be, WHO he wants to be (just OFFERING to give up his grace to save Jack) and then with Dean we have more classic human cultural tropes but none less painful for Jack's nature and relationships. Especially throwing in that this was his choice and Dean is indulging him completely here.

John may or may not have taught them to fish but I feel like it may have had a "so you are dying in the woods" aspect to it rather than for peace and bonding. BOBBY taught Sam and Dean some basic woodsmanship so he was more likely to be the father figure teaching them to fish if anyone did.

Okay so obviously I typed that just after clutching my heart at the reveal and hitting pause, as Jack immediately goes on to say that John DID teach Dean how to fish and that it was his happiest memory of him - and it comes as a surprise for the expectations (like, that the above paragraph now stands as what I would expect of canon if I was only taking from it and not as an actual writer of the show being allowed to insert new details in which challenge us about the characters, which is where I find the line between fan fic and original fiction really is when it comes to characterisation... Anything out of left-field and you have to tag it as an AU version or explain why instead of just writing it as taken for granted).

And it's unexpected in the sense that it is such a peaceful thing and above all I think the message is that Jack intuited from whatever Dean said about it that it WAS a happy peaceful memory of John which stood so much at odds with the rest of his life. Filed under as well the thing where Mary started talking about how nice John was to Sam and Sam recoiled in confusion until Mary clarfied it was her John, not theirs. Good memories of a gentle soft John are alarming, and yet perhaps this is a way to really confront and exorcise his ghost more than anything - the sort of funeral servive memorialising of the good with the bad and working through it to come to peace in a different sort of way that lets the wounds heal and the anger leave those scars.

"It was how you said it. I could tell." He's such a smart cookie and I think that often takes Dean by surprise in the sense that Jack has been very shrewdly watching him and learning from him and absorbing anything and everything he does, which unfortunately gives him the ability to cold read Dean like very few people do, seeing past the layers and bluffs and into Dean's core.

Jack just murdered Dean by saying if he doesn't make it he wouldn't miss Tahiti or the Taj Mahal or implied going to seedy bars and hooking up, he'd miss more time with Dean.

I mean that's not a literal way to kill someone but you should see Dean's face. He's been shot.

And again, it's a metaphor for what you want from life for DEAN to absorb, the prompt that his family is right here and he doesn't need to chase pleasure outside of them, that hook up bar nearby their home base where he never strikes out, that's irrelevant to the family he has built and it's been put in the subtext of what Dean goes after that's empty pleasure when he has this core family unit around him, by the way Jack has also rejected it and is explaining to Dean the real meaning of Christmas.

Of course, this all gets a bit weird unless you account for the fact he has an angel wearing a trenchcoat made of husband material waiting back at the Bunker because the chronic singleton life otherwise probably ought to account for an outlet for Dean like a hook up bar if his happy ending is a platonic family bond so, you know, end the show 10 minutes from now with everyone happy and alive and not dying, and all Dean's learned is they're 3 dads, one son, a mom and her AUBobby, but he still has unused romantic potential and for seasons and seasons they've been trying to close the door on him seeking out random hook ups in the subtext of what Dean WANTS vs what he thinks he can have. This frank conversation about what Jack wants from life before it's all over is once again ignoring fleeting human connection for the family bonds he values above everything.

"I've had a good life, Dean" the other reason they're having this sentimental conversation by a river is because Jack is a fucking mayfly and I hate this

@ Dabb please never make me see Cas driving this car ever again

Why are you irritating Cas like this. First boring holy fire oh it must be thursday followed by the indignity of making him sit on a pouffe? Listen, when Cas gets irritated he gets snarky and then people die because he snarked them to death. I saw it he did it to the Empty. And Lucifer in 13x12. And Kip.

I just feel sorry for Cas. Why can't he go on fishing trips with the boy. Oh no he has to sit on a squishy pouffe that won't let him be intimidating so that he can cure the boy even though Jack's already decided he's gonna die and will probably Ophelia himself into the river at the end of the fishing trip.

Sergei is basically like "Have you tried turning it off and on again"

Nephilim have a reboot button on the back of their neck, if you get a paperclip and poke it in there.

At least Sergei is so... whatever he is... I can't even tell who he is supposed to be offensive towards :P I guess with the name, I lean Russian, and then he has world esoterica and occult nonsense in his caravan...

The real question is how does he know anything about Nephilim and why hasn't Cas asked that already.

LOL he has a vial of Gabriel grace just lying around. Of course, because Gabriel was just offering it up to everyone.

Considering how he was exploited for it by Asmodeus there's a weird tinge of retconning his own abuse by saying he was going around giving it to everyone before Asmodeus ever bought him and started stealing it on the regular.

Still, it IS awfully tempting a fix to have Uncle Gabriel help Jack out from beyond.

/distantly: "I'm not dead!"

sometimes I can still hear his voice.

It's way more likely Shit Goes Down and this is lost but then Cas has learned what to do with archangel grace to fix Jack just so long as they can pin down Michael and grab his instead.

But I guess in that circumstance at least once again Gabriel gave them part of the answer from beyond the grave as he did in season 5.

("Still not dead!!")

shush Gabriel. The show wants us to think you're dead and my complete disbelief in that doesn't change anything for now.

Except that maybe Gabriel came back, is fine, but has been removing his grace and selling it in the here and now while claiming not to be Gabriel and that he just haaaappens to have it and because he has no grace he could just be any old guy who happens to have an endless renewable resource of archangel grace secretly on tap to sell to fund his life of laying low. Sergei even says HE got it as part of keeping Gabriel hidden.

I'm kind of assuming Sergei isn't Gabriel unless he offers Cas kielbasa

I mean unless later I get a bonus cookie for immediately assuming Sergei is Gabriel based on the holy fire he just happened to have prepared and how similar it looked to Gabriel being trapped in 5x08.

On the other hand this may be the first time this season but pointing at literally everyone and going, that's probably Gabriel, will get old and also dock me cookie points the more wrong guesses I throw out there. Still, this one has pretty strong evidence, from messing with Cas to making him say "Porn stars"

To, um, having Gabriel's grace

Okay so Sergei gives Cas all of this out of the goodness of his heart and a "you owe me" and I AM wondering if that's a Buckleming special because remember in 8x19 where they were like hi we need to go to Hell immediately, and Ajay was like sure, I will take you to Hell and this episode is even titled after me so clearly I am an important character who *stab stab reaper dying noises* wow look I guess we don't have a bargain after all despite me saying you owe me but then Crowley just maaaaagically made it so you never had to find out what a reaper would want in exchange for taking you to Hell off the books.

Also fuck you I never got to finish my pizza

While I've been typing some random ass justice for Ajay screed, Nick has revealed a flashback to 14x02 where it turns out his neighbour said it was a cop who he saw coming out of the house. I literally went back and checked the episode and that wasn't in it, so perhaps it's a new flashback for here, fleshing out that conversation and revealing more for us, and changing the narrative of what Nick's up to, but honestly who cares enough about all this... I was double zoned out for flashbacks I'd already seen for a side story i don't care about

Wow, Nick, demons killed ya family. Could have told you that.

Aw, Dean brought Jack home. No dying out in the wilderness for you, clearly Cas phoned up before Jack could work out his plan to fling himself into the river.

Also Nick has taken up too much of this episode so there's no room for complicated twists and turns, if Buckleming are banned from introducing too many of them.

It's incredible how subdividing them so Eugenie writes all the Nick stuff and Brad writes the rest has elevated the parts of the story we care about to pretty much passable, give or take whatever Sergei was and who he was offensive to aside from the whole concept of calling yourself a shaman because you travelled the world collecting occult stuff in a sort of Aleister Crowley way.

'cept you can't namedrop Aleister on this show because both Alastair and Crowley have stolen too much from him.

So you get a knock off Sergei instead.

Jack hasn't been having as many of the supposed fainting fits that had everyone dogpiling him as I thought - maybe that's next episode too. Could have had one at the start but that doesn't seem enough to be a repeated annoyance of Alex's life :P

Anyway I was just going to comment on his sweater but that thought hopped in there first wondering if the spell was about to knock him flat, as he's sitting on a chair instead of safely in bed.

All the more dramatic for flinging yourself around if the spell messes you up

(honestly if the spells don't work, and they took him out of the hospital, how much of a bizarre commentary is this on trusting modern medicine and vaccinating your nephilims?)

It's 7:20 and my neighbours are yelling again

At least being awake since 3 meant I got a bit more peace and quiet than normal. I feel gross but I may go to yoga just to not be stuck in this room with such awful screeching on both sides of me >.>

Oh I can tell Sergei is Gabriel, he put the grace in a gold container instead of the silver ones

I'm sorry for the expenses, Zerbe

I wonder if they use her products on the show and I'm gonna go on my dash and find her beaming about a specially commissioned shiny gold grace that she made for them :P

"Here, hold this bottle of your uncle's essence"

".... okay I understand how weird that sounded on hindsight"

I love the idea of Jack's grace now being fuelled by Nice Uncle Gabriel who felt kindly towards him, even if this can't be a permanent fix, it changes his internal make up just a bit so that he symbolically has his grace stolen by his shitty bio father but the power only came from him in the first place and there was all the hoo ha about if Lucifer as his father made him inherently evil. Now whatever happens to Jack, he's had a grace transplant from a suitable donor, very much like a parallel of say he needed a kidney transplant and his 2 viable donors were his shitty deadbeat dad who gave him the kidney condition in the first place and his nice dead uncle who happened to have been an organ donor and was the only other one with the same type (if Lucifer's was X evil negative, then I guess Gabriel's is like X tricksy negative which has enough receptors to be a compatible transfusion, while Cas has like, Z dumbass positive grace and no compatibility)

And Gabriel is a beloved character who proved his kind feeling towards Jack even if they had very little bonding overall, he clearly cared and there was an immediate sort of uncle-y kindness about him in relation to Jack (just the comment alone about identifying that Jack liked shiny things and magic tricks is very much how uncles view small children who they may watch and entertain but not in the end have parental responsibility for), which is hilarious to me because Gabriel deeply reminds me of all 3 of my uncles on my mum's side, who are all 3 different shades of trickster god in their own right, and he always has reminded me of them, and now the show has sort of made Uncle Gabriel his new legacy.

I mean. I love it to bits.

It's not a sacrifice FOR Jack like Cas would have given up his grace, but it's still a part of him passed on to Jack.

I am very very aware that like me running my mouth about John (ironically the name of one of my uncles) while hitting pause, I've stopped while Jack is looking up with glowing eyes and he's almost certainly about to spew a fountain of blood across the room and fall on the floor. But I like that the grace even interacted with him and lit up his eyes and unless he physically barfs out the grace to I'm sticking by that ramble.

Cas smiled!! That's the once per season and we already hit it at episode 7, woe betide us

This does look, however, like the scene where they were all looking on from the door so... blood spew in 5 4 3 2 1...

DOGPILE THE BOY

Er, I mean, help him

God I would not want Jared to dogpile me, the man weighs literally as much as an actual moose

Uhoh Sergei made Cas mad

I mean

he made him sit on a pouffe, this was always coming

What do you mean Eugenie can't let Lucifer go wow what a shock

*kicks a pebble*

Ah, here's the concerned dads scene. I'm just going to let that be a balm to my soul while Dean laments ever taking Jack out to have fun.

"You made him happy. You did more for him than any of us"

1 dude you tried, 2 you took him on hunting trips and had fun already this season so he got his Cas Time before he died like he wanted 3 just fucking abduct him wrapped in a duvet and go fishing in the dead of night if you have to, trust me, he'd love it and your family is such a mess he wouldn't even think it's weird.

I mean you've literally absconded illegally with him before, what's a trip up to that beach where he was born and some fishing gear really going to cost you with annoyance from Dean

"What can we do?" "Watch over him," Rowena says with Cas in the background, and continues to carve me out with a rusty spoon

"As he dies"

Nah he'll be fine shut up Rowena D:

*whimper*

Well that was a very good episode if you act like me and pretend that none of the Nick stuff happened at all.

#14x07 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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