#in pain becomes the baseline of existence and u get so used to it

[opyre]

one of these days im gonna do a big meta on joshua's illness btwwww

[lennythereviewer]

Getting my Showdown Bandit theory out before MatPat beats me to the punch

Gonna put it under a cut to avoid spoilers

Also gonna tag my fellow theory fren @adobe-outdesign TL;DR: This is a story about coming to terms with your own existence

Long Version Based on everything in the first chapter (And a few people making connections between this and Bendy possibly being in the same universe) here is the conclusion I’ve reached Like a certain Joey Drew, the creator of the Showdown Bandit Show used black magic to bring the puppets to life; to make them truly animated and alive, to have a show like no other! But of course something went horribly wrong. As we’re told, the Showdown Bandit Show was cancelled abruptly and suddenly at the peak of it’s popularity, and no one is quite sure why...

There are three laws in this universe that are repeatedly hammered in, in both the game and in the trailers:

Play Your Part Guard Your Strings Don’t Look Up

Translation: Don’t ask questions, do what you’re meant to do

The something that went horribly wrong was that the puppets started to become self-aware. They began to realize that they are just what they are; puppets being strung around and forced to perform. Their lives are just a show for children. 

Everyone took this revelation differently.

Miss Undertaker is very OBVIOUSLY aware of her true nature; she’s the one enforcing the three laws after all. Notes from Lookout in the game inform us that something happened that deeply troubled her, but she brushed it off pretending to be okay. She knows she’s just a puppet, but she wants to continue living the lie and is making sure no one else questions their existence so they can all continue on with the show. She could even be directly working with the Puppeteer

The Banker is very timid and scared, and he is questioning his existence; but is too frightened to act upon it

The Doctor is in on it with Miss Undertaker, but I’ll get to him in a moment

Penny IS self-aware, but presumably she’s seen what happens to those who step out of line, those who look up, so she yanked out her own eyes and that combined with the revelation has driven her mad

Which brings us to Bandit himself:

Presumably the inciting incident is that one day in the middle of a show; Bandit  became self-aware and had some kind of meltdown that frightened the children and ruined the whole show. 

And now... the creator is holed up in the old studio, still clinging to his precious show, and going through a process of trying again, and again to have ONE Bandit puppet that won’t become self-aware; in some vain hope the show will continue again

It’s obvious that there has been more than one Bandit, and we’re NOT the first. You get your gun from the corpse of another Bandit, Faceless IS a Bandit, and Undertaker even remarks: “I haven’t unboxed a Bandit that wasn’t quick on the draw!” also there’s the ominous line at the end: “You Bandits come a dime a dozen and no one bats a wooden eye”

Now, the very start of the game: Undertaker is searching for someone, who I believe to be Lookout; another puppet who became self-aware but got away. Undertaker then spots Bandit’s box and is genuinely surprised to see him

“I didn’t drag you up here on purpose, but if you’re here, it must be what HE wants” She says, while subtly pointing up to the ceiling

He, the Puppeteer:

It’s time for another attempt at a perfect Bandit that will do as he’s told.

The Strings are all a lie; Bandit is perfectly capable of moving on his own while he’s in the box; it’s only after he stumbles out do the strings latch onto him and seem to cause him pain at first. The strings are only there to keep the puppets in line and in control. We KNOW this because the Stringless are enemy marionettes that are perfectly mobile without their strings!

The Doctor reinforces the idea that you even need strings; he’s in on it with Undertaker. He even remarks how it’s yet another Bandit he’s tending to: “Another day, another Bandit...”

Faceless I’ll bet isn’t even a villain; I wager that he’s the original Bandit, and him carrying a scythe to cut your strings is him trying to FREE Bandit!

So where does this even go? How does all this even turn out? And what did the ending of that chapter mean? I couldn’t tell you, this is just a baseline for what I believe to be going on.

Now watch MatPat do this exact theory

[almaasi]

reaction post typed while watching SPN 14x05 “Nightmare Logic”

oh, what a perfectly soft and emotional Destiel-parallelly piece of Meredith Glynn artwork. so precious, so loved~

03:47pm

things i know about this: meredith glynn wrote it

LET’S WATCH

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03:50

noooo maggie don’t do things like this alooooone

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i like the music as she enters... kinda weird and sparkly and awkward

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03:53

sammy...... you know what you need

someone to do the night shift

if only...... you had.............. someone else........................

*looks pointedly at dean*

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03:55

where does sam get the financial resources for shit like body cams

we never see them running credit card scams any more so........ ???????

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03:57

i love these cable things by the roads

so aesthetic

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03:58

even more spooky pretty music as dean and sam enter the tomb

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03:59

dean and sam lie so effortlessly and so in sync

i always enjoy seeing them do this, ever since dean told a firefighter he needed to go back into his apartment because he has a yorkie who pees when he’s nervous

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04:01

aw man i thought the “colleagues” would be cas and jack

bobby and mary’s cool too

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04:02

bobby’s wearing a cap like michael’s

and mary’s wearing a coat like cas’

..does this mean this story’s gonna be about dean’s war between those two things, like the two worlds he knows

bobby’s parenting vs. mary’s parenting

michael’s need for him as a vessel vs. cas’ love for him as a bestest buddy bro friend

not sure how bobby = micheal / mary = cas but i’m sure there’ll be some kind of explanation later

OR maybe they’re just costumes and they mean nothing

but......is that ever true? trenchcoats are automatically a cas thing now. and that cap is so iconic as michael now???

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04:09

i relate to this lady in the suit who has had Too Much Of Everything

i enjoy seeing people know their limits and expressing them to others rather than continuing past breaking point

sam’s doing great but also....... no

take a page from this lady’s book, sammy

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04:11

mary’s walking with sam

and i just wanna take a minute to appreciate how EASY meredith glynn’s episodes are to watch

her scripts flow so gently and everything makes logical sense

and her characters are coherent

there’s just this nice touch of emotional human realism cloaking all the supernatural weirdness and i so, so appreciate that

like.. for me personally, there’s not a single writer on the current team whose writing comes close to glynn’s

i want her to write more episodes with cas though, i know she’d write him just right

i honestly feel like i’m being hugged by someone as i watch this

so soft around my heart

is good

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04:16

sam: “you [and bobby have] gotten pretty close lately”

mary: “i thought so too”

OH WAIT I GET IT

I GET THE COAT AND THE HAT NOW

IT’S A DESTIEL THING

OH MY FUCKING GOD HOW DID I MISS THAT

IT’S SO BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS HOLY FUCKING FUCKDISAFKDSHGF

even the casual viewers will probably have noticed this one. i know it took me a second but as soon as this discussion happened it clicked

 this is probably the most obvious parallel they’ve ever done i think

i didn’t see it before because i didn’t EXPECT it, you know?? ugh this is so validating

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04:22

now every word mary says, i’m just envisioning how it applies to cas’ perspective too

“he’s been hunting all the time, he won’t take a break even for a second. there’s something on his mind”

yeah, that mICHEAL HAT, quite literally sitting over his head like a dark halo

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04:26

the music in this episode is just so pleasing to my ears

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04:31

things i appreciate:

normal people being all “wtf you hunt monsters” and just being present while dean and sam talk about their shit

sam’s reference to “hunteri heroici” (my all-time fave episode besides “scoobynatural” jdgd that was five years ago what the hell)

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04:35

me: takes screenshot of this very pretty, very anxious lady because i want my hair to do what her hair does

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04:36

oop we just found the dean mirror and now we get to hear someone talk about the things he feels and offer advice that ultimately helps himself

god i love this

AND THE FACT I CAN UNDERSTAND THIS PARALLEL AND WHY IT’S HAPPENING

AGAIN SOLIDIFIES THE DEAN/CAS THING WITH BOBBY/MARY

because what mary said about bobby = what cas thinks about dean = what’s true about dean = this lady being overworked = dean not taking time off from hunting

(although it does seem to specifically apply to sam as well ?)

and sam mentioned earlier about how the dad he knew and the dad mary knew were different people, plus the earlier mentions this season about john’s problematic parenting (i forget when)

yeah that really makes a point of saying john abused his kids, for sure

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lady: “he was gone all the time, working for us, he said”

yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

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lady: “i worshipped him when i was a kid. didn’t know any better”

oh deanie

please take notes

please know it’s okay to be angry at john and not continue to love him in a way that excuses his behaviours, even 14 years after he died

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wait wait wait

dean tells her to let it go, it’s the past, there’s nothing you can do about it now so it’s just baggage

WAIT

THAT MEANS

THAT MEANS HE LET THAT SHIT GO ALREADY???????

WHOA

OKAY COOL. COOL COOL COOL I’M PROUD OF YOU

now go be gay with cas

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“i try. every single day.”

hell yeah dean winchester giving good mental health advice to people and also millions of depressed people with various traumas watching this

ngl this legit just helped me a tiny bit with my issues with my own dad

urhgutguugb meredith glynn you are the good we need in this world

..............suddenly getting real emotional because goddamn i wanna meet her someday ;~; i wanna meet 1. misha and 2. meredith glynn, maaaaybe 3. jensen idk

mEREDITH GLYNN IS MY KINDRED SPIRIT

and DEAN WINCHESTER HELPS ME BE A MORE SELF-ACCEPTING PERSON

yay

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04:49

no but like.......... everyone seemed to enjoy last week’s episode, i only saw people posting good reviews. and i felt bad not not enjoying it, even though all the things people pointed out should’ve been right up my alley, something about the overall thing just fell flat for me

but this one

this one speaks to my heart

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04:53

maggie: “i didn’t mean to get caught--”

sam: “no no no, stop that. you did nothing wrong. okay?”

sam being a better dad to maggie than john ever was to anyone

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04:57

OH NO BOBBY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OH NO!!!!!!!!!!!

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05:01

dean: “you’re giving him transfusions?”

nurse: “keeps up his iron”

suddenly i don’t trust the nurse

trying to take over the property maybe? a la scooby-doo, it’s always about real estate

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05:02

dean: “sasha, could you go....... make me a ....sandwich ?”

DEAN NO

(i type, in pain, as i laugh)

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/rewatches that interaction because it was actually really sweet the way dean mouthed “go” to sasha and she understood

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05:05

i’ve wanted a djinn story for SO LONG

(even wrote one myself - Prince of the Ether Realms)

trust glynn to be the one to re-weave the exact threads of this 14-year saga that also interest me specifically

also kudos for the fact she’s so obviously knowledgeable about the ENTIRE HISTORY of the show, as opposed to certain other writers who seem to contradict previous facts and re-reference things that were used differently before to make an important point, thereby nullifying the first point when used a second time

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05:11

hunter with the shaved head 10/10 style

headcanoning them as non-binary and into girls because of reasons

also there was a slight continuity error, this hunter hugs maggie twice in the two consecutive shots

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05:15

bobby: “it ends the same” [with bobby dead, i guess?]

mary: “no. you are not allowed to give up on me”

seeing this as dean and cas again

yeah i saw someone mention how at the end of last episode, dean suggesting they drive off a cliff and sam being like NOPE kind of reflected the wrongness of the they-all-die-at-the-end for the finale of SPN

and i think this brings it back to that again

i agree that the best ending is the one where they live to fight another day, not go out guns a-blazing

and this is cas telling dean he’s not allowed to give up and die because he wants to live side-by-side for as long as they can

i just really really want cas to say that to dean in a soft emotional scene like this. we don’t really get those unless they’re parallels??? and i wANT MORE DEAN AND CAS TALKING ABOUT THEIR FEELINGS DAMMIT

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05:20

DEAN AND CAS PARALLELS um i mean BOBBY AND MARY GOING OFF TO HANG OUT ALONE IN A CABIN OF LOVE AND HEALING

GDI LET DEAN AND CAS DO THAT TOO

but also awwww i actually kinda like the mary/bobby thing? because at the core, they ARE dean and sam’s parents, really

family don’t end with blood etc

bobby was the dad john never was

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05:23

sam: USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM

this is so satisfying

next up: hula hoops of salt and iron knuckle-dusters

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05:25

i love love love that dean can have a healthy mental approach to this shit, finally

i’m so fucking proud of him you don’t even know

i just......... i really wanna see him not only return to baseline mental goodness, but then overcome that and become greater at his zen thing, and then AT LAST be ready to accept cas’ love for what it is: romantic and everlasting and epic, and not have to interpret it into something else or ignore it to protect himself

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05:28

that light over dean’s shoulder is the angel on his shoulder

but is it michael or cas?

i’m going with cas, given that michael is a dark-hat-halo

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05:30pm

it’s over

that was amaziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing ;u;

bless meredith glynn for existing and bringing us such beautiful stories

BUT WHAT HAPPENED WITH THE GARDENER

WHY WAS HE THERE besides to ~add some colour~??? and i guess a red herring for viewers, so we have someone to suspect?

(idk. i never suspected him, because he was black and meredith glynn is better than that - unless she was trying to trick racist viewers?? (i know there's a lot of them, i saw the super-toxic comment section on instagram when jared, jensen and misha posted a “vote beto” thing the other day. and there was a poll mentioned at comic con once, half the american spn fanbase are republicans??? guess they really love guns and fascism))

i don’t really have anything to add here, i said it all as i went along

that dean/cas parallel....... oh boy

just please please please pleASE can we have Actual Destiel and not just parallels and hints. like. they barely talk???????? HOW IS THIS A SHOW WHERE TWO OF THE MAIN LEADS ARE CONSTANTLY FRAMED TO BE IN LOVE, WE’RE TOLD THEY’RE BEST FRIENDS, BUT WE ALMOST NEVER EVEN SEE THEM TOGETHER ANY MORE

HOW IS THIS HAPPENING

anyway the costuming was just so very UNSUBTLE and obvious and i think a lot of people would’ve caught that parallel even if they weren’t looking for it

music was good, directing was good, sasha’s hair was good, nobody we know actually died, that was good too

10/10

ten thumbs up

yeee