#it's been 6 months and I'm still here

[onceuponapuffin]

Metatron Meta

Okay, so first of all let’s get a few things straight: I do not like the Metatron. I hate his big dumb floaty face, and these thoughts of mine in no way, shape, or form are meant to imply otherwise. He is perfectly responsible for his own actions and behaviours and is deserving of all resulting consequences. This is not a defense, excuse, or justification for any of his bullshit.

Got it? Are we clear? Yes? Yes.

So from here on out, will you promise to take a few minutes to hear me out, and then a few more to sit and actually think about what I’m saying? Okay, good, I trust you.

Here’s what happened: One night I was indulging in a stress-relief, fan-fiction-type, self-insert fantasy where I get to tell the Metatron exactly what I think of him straight to his dumb face, and as I’m imagining this conversation, a lightbulb goes off. He feels threatened by Aziraphale and Crowley.

Feeling threatened is a defensive reaction; he’s afraid. And so the question became the following: What could the Metatron, the most powerful angel in Heaven, be afraid of?

Come, walk with me.

The only being I can possibly imagine that the Metatron would actually be afraid of is God, but more specifically, afraid of upsetting or disappointing Her.

People have generally come to the consensus that God hasn’t been around for a while. Anytime anyone wants to talk to God, they talk to the Metatron. Anytime they’re given instructions, it comes from the Metatron. The lack of God’s narration in Season 2 seems to support this conclusion.

As far as I’ve seen, people have been happy enough to leave it here: God’s not actually calling the shots anymore, oh that evil Metatron grabbing at power, Metatron is playing God and doing terrible things.

I haven’t seen anyone – not one person (and if there is someone else who’s asked, please forgive me – it’s entirely because I haven’t come across your work) – say “If God hasn’t been around for a while, what does that mean for Metatron?”

Think about it – his whole existence, his whole purpose, is to talk to God and relay Her instructions to the rest of the angels. If his purpose and reason for existence has disappeared...I mean how would you feel?

Let’s not forget that Metatron is an angel. He was created to be a being of literal love and joy and light. He loves God and loves his job as Her voice – and she disappeared a while ago and hasn’t come back.

Let me say that one more time to make sure it gets through – THE CENTRE OF HIS EXISTENCE LEFT AND HASN’T COME BACK.

Are you with me? Good, because we’re going deeper.

Okay so let’s suppose that the last time Metatron heard anything from God direct was, say, Job. Sometime after Job, God disappears. Metatron, worried (and smarter than the other angels) goes back through the files, and notices a few things: the children are the same, the plan was disrupted. Also Crowley and Aziraphale are there.

(Right now, our beloved husbands are just a footnote, but keep this in the back of your mind for later.)

 For now, Metatron realizes that God’s plan for the bet wasn’t carried out properly. Right now, Metatron – a being of purity and love and light, whose Most Precious Thing is his connection to God – thinks he has messed up.

Maybe he expects to Fall. Maybe he lives in terrible, shaking fear that God will be angry with him for a bit. Maybe what he doesn’t expect is the Silent Treatment. And maybe what he doesn’t expect, then, is for it to last. He doesn’t expect the radio silence. He’s been ghosted by the being he loves most.

Alright, he figures, he hasn’t Fallen so the Almighty can’t be THAT angry with him. All he needs to do is go back do doing things RIGHT. He just needs to do the best job he can and God will forgive him and come back and talk to him again. He just needs to do a Good Job. He just needs to Do Everything Right. He needs to follow The Plan, as he knows it, and if he does it well enough, She will come back to him. His existence, his purpose, depends on it. And so, nothing can get in the way.

He can NOT let ANYTHING get in the way of The Plan.

So he keeps up appearances. He can’t let anyone know that God isn’t around. Who knows what kind of chaos that might occur? (And chaos is certainly not what God wants.)

He sees Crowley and Aziraphale avert the First Apocalypse (and this is where something perks up in his memory), but no matter because The Plan includes a clause for The Second Coming. Then their miracle together gets his attention.

Oh no, he thinks, this is what messed up my life the first time. Not again, I’m so close. I’m so close to getting Her to love me again.

And so he separates them.

You see, the thing about abuse is that it’s a cycle. The abuse that Metatron is imposing on Aziraphale and Crowley comes from somewhere I think. Everything in Heaven was created to be for the sake of Love. Maybe She left hoping that it would encourage the angels to love the universe as She does – take away the distraction, so to speak. Maybe God realized that Love isn’t enough and Nope’d  out, but whatever happened, when She left it royally fucked up everything.

Metatron has been desperately trying to Do A Good Job so that God will give him a CRUMB of affection, and that attitude has trickled down until all of Heaven runs on it.

If you haven’t ever lived like that, you might not realize the way it warps you. The way that getting that affection becomes all-encompassing; the way you keep collecting crumbs, thinking you can make a whole cake.

I don’t have sympathy for the Metatron. Regardless of what has happened in our lives, we are in full control of what we do and how we do it. He has let his love for God warp him into something that he wasn’t supposed to be. He’s become driven by obsession, while convincing himself it’s love. The way I see it, he’s come to a point of selfishness. His desire has warped him into the antithesis of what God made him to be, and I hope that comes back around to bite him.

[egophiliac]

was this anyone else's first thought, or

[rockpaperscissuhs]

HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH + BAND OF BROTHERS:

JOSEPH "JOE" RAMIREZ

Born October 5th, 1921, in Nebraska

Died April 8th, 1988 (age 66), in Martinez, California

Joe Ramirez enlisted in September 1942 (age 20) in San Francisco, CA, and he trained with Easy Company at Toccoa. Holding the rank of Private, he served in Normandy, Holland, and Bastogne. He was hospitalized in January 1945, and discharged in July 1945. After the war, he was married for many years, and had children and grandchildren. When he passed away he was buried with his wife, who had passed away 11 years earlier. Further information about him is scarce, but the brief character profile in the Band of Brothers series bible describes him as Mexican-American, and his personality as "sensitive and nervous."

Appears in Episodes 1, 3-8, and 10; portrayed by actor Rene L. Moreno

Sources below

A million thanks to @bleedingcoffee42 for tracking down this info for me!

[seventh-district]

Could've left me just the way you found me, but you came and put your wings around me. You went out of your way, to fix what you didn't break.

This song is so incredibly Sam & Darlin' coded and no one can tell me otherwise.

[lots of lyrical analysis below the cut] [there's also a short little fanfic blurb of them stargazing down there too (this post got really out of hand lmao)]

For those not fully caught up, note that the following commentary contains various spoilers for Sam and Darlin's stories.

Note: Unfortunately this song is gendered, using the word 'girl' several times. Which sucks a little bit for immersion purposes, not only for keeping Darlin' gender-neutral, but also because I see this song as a duet between them, and Darlin' obviously wouldn't be addressing Sam with the word 'girl' either. So! As with most songs on their playlist, we're just gonna mentally omit any gendered terms we come across.

Side note: Frustratingly, this is one of those songs that didn't really even need to gender the subject in the first place. No part of the story or message is lost without it. But alas, many songs are like that, and so the playlist-makers of the world shall continue to suffer. [/lh]

Anyways, preamble's over. It's lyric time now yay!

Sam's Part

I was a ten-year train wreck

Technically for Sam I suppose it was 13 years, but ten is close enough (and 'ten' admittedly flows a lot better in the rhythm of the song than 'thirteen' would.) Anyways, we're not here to split hairs, (I have to remind myself), we're just here to point out similarities.

In Sam's Dec. '22 HBW, he says "For the last 13 years or so I haven't had to care too much about how I look. Seemed a little redundant after turnin', considerin' I didn't wanna be around much'a anybody anyway."

I think he's mentioned or alluded to that roughly 13 year period of time more than once, but that's the one I remember best so it's the example I'm using. There's still about 4 Sam audios I've yet to listen to as of making this post, so if I'm missing some Key Lore I'll edit this later. But for now, I don't think Sam has given many specifics on exactly how bad things got during that time. Luckily, 'train wreck' is a pretty broad and subjective term, so it easily covers any degree to which he may have fallen apart during those years.

It also feels like a very 'him' way of quickly brushing over the details of his past/his hurt, as he seems to tend to do with Darlin', (not all the time ofc but it's still something I've noticed) putting his own hurt on the backburner to prioritize and attend to theirs. Even outside of his dynamic with them, I think as a healer, it's something he learned to do. And now he does it with everyone. Put on a brave face, compartmentalize things and unpack them later, etc. I could go on and on but there'll be time for that in other posts I'm sure. For now, lets get back to the song at hand.

With a last-call longneck

Due to personal reasons, I've yet to decide if I want to HC him as having used alcohol as a coping mechanism during that time. I don't recall him having mentioned alcohol much, if at all, (maybe one mention of whiskey that I don't have time to find right now) so I don't think it's necessarily canon that he did, but it's certainly possible. My personal preferences aside, I'll admit it makes for some good additional angst. (And- self-indulgently- it makes some other songs on my playlist for them more fitting.) So, for the sake of this song, let's imagine that he did.

I was searchin', I'd been hurt real bad

This one feels pretty self-explanatory given what Alexis did, (and, if you wanna get even angstier with it, whatever his family did earlier on in his life) so there isn't much commentary to add on my end.

I HC that in spite of 'not wanting to be around anybody', he- like Darlin- still had a tiny part of himself buried deep down that was, in a way, 'searching' for someone to find solace in. (No this isn't me projecting onto them both haha what are you talking about-)

Movin' on, gettin' sidetracked One step forward and five back

This is generally applicable enough that I don't feel the need to give too much of a specific example. Anyone who's recovered or is recovering from trauma knows this non-linear, back-and-forth struggle well already, and I'm sure he was no stranger to it.

If I were to give some examples though, I could point to Darlin's (and subsequently, Sam's) encounter with Alexis at the summit, or the shit that Quinn dredged up about Fredrick and threw at Sam in the interrogation room. Those are both more recent examples and I imagine these lines of the song to be coming from a place of him prior to meeting Darlin', but still, they're some instances where I'm sure he felt like the past was pulling him back in. I'm sure that there's been many throughout those 13 years that we were never witness to.

Not your fault, I was scared to fall

This line reminds me of their 'Cuddles and Confessions' audio. I don't think he ever explicitly said he was 'scared' per se, so afaik there's no specific line I can quote, but in that and every audio prior, he was obviously hesitant to admit, perhaps even to himself, that he was gradually falling for them. Even after the initial confession, there's certain limits of his (e.g. biting) that he carries for far longer, and some that I (and others) HC that he'll carry forever. So this line feels to me like him reassuring Darlin' that his reluctance isn't the fault of them, but his past.

Darlin's Part

You were the star in the pitch black Shine the way on the way back

We don't have any canon instances of them comparing Sam to a star, but I can see it being something they'd say (perhaps less poetically, but the sentiment would be there) one night while laying up on their roof watching the stars with him. Maybe they're dead-tired, talking nonsense with lidded eyes at the end of a long day, fighting sleep in favor of more time spent with him.

"What- what're you pointin' at Darlin'?"

Their hazy focus is trained on the brightest star visible in their line of sight, arm stretched out to the sky above them. "That really bright one, to the... to the left."

Sam does his best to follow their less-than-specific directions of 'to the left', their pointed finger doing little to help given the difference in perspective. Luckily, after all these years, he knows this stretch of night sky like the back of his hand, so it isn't hard to locate the brightest one. Ghosting his fingers up along their arm, he takes their hand in his and brings it back down to earth. "Okay, yeah, I see it now. What about it though?"

"That's you." They say, matter-of-factly.

"That's me?" He questions, humor in his tone.

"Mhm." They nod with finality, blinking slow.

Sam considers the odd statement for a moment before gently correcting them. "I'm uh, I'm pretty sure that's Sirius, actually."

They scoff. "I am being serious."

Sam stifles a laugh into their hair. "No- no I mean- like... what's another name for it... Oh! It's also called the Dog Star."

"C'mon Sam, at least call it the Wolf Star if you're trying to turn this around on me..."

He shakes his head and readies himself to explain further, but they cut him off before he can start. "But no- no, this one isn't about me. That's you."

He decides to play along, finding something endearing in their overtired nonsense. "Okay... then would'ja be so kind as to explain to this confused old man just how, or why that star is me?"

Their frown is audible in their voice as they latch onto the wrong part of his sentence. "You're not old, Sam. ...Do I need to tell Asher to kick the jokes down a notch?"

He smiles at their over-protectivity. "There'll be no need for that, now. Was just a joke, darlin', I promise."

They huff, but thankfully shift focus back to the prior topic. "It's... I dunno. It's just you, Sam. It's... bright. Light. Something warm, out there in the cold dark. Standing out amongst all the rest. Calling to me, stealing my attention. I... I didn't come out here looking for it, but there it is. ...There you were. In the dark. The only bright thing I'd seen in... fuck, in years. Years of chasing fleeting warmth, tripping over myself in the pitch black, falling into... places 'n people I shouldn't have. You were the light in that darkness. Even there, surrounded by the ghost of him. You outshone it. Your warmth didn't hurt. I didn't have to squint when I looked at you. You weren't the blinding sun. You were the brightest star I'd ever seen. You guided me back home."

In the back of their mind, they recall something they once heard, something about light, and time, and distance. Space. Something about... how you can see a star that's already burnt out, because it's light hasn't reached earth yet. The ghost of a star that's already died. Only still perceptible thanks to time, and distance.

They remember Sam's words, once whispered to them on this very roof.

"Whatever your choice is... I'm not gonna live forever. I made that decision a long time ago."

They think about dead stars.

They think about time.

"...-lin'? Darlin'?" Sam's calloused hand slides up their forearm, pulling them out of their thoughts. "There you are. Think I lost ya' for a minute there... you good?"

They look up at Sam, concern creasing his features, shadows cast across his face from the light of the dying stars above him.

They reach out, pulling him down into them. Burying their face into his collar, Sam's concern grows when he feels it saturate with tears. A human might struggle to hear their words, muffled against the thick fabric, but his hearing catches it just fine.

"Don't burn out too quick. Please. I still need you here. I don't- I don't wanna be left in the dark again. Please, please Sam. Don't leave me here. I'm not selfish enough to ask you for forever, but please. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet."

.......Whoopsies! Really, genuinely didn't mean to improv an entire scene there, good god. Also didn't mean to swerve hard into angst at the end but uh. that's what came out! so I'm rolling with it lmao. Aaanyways let's move on, it's getting late and this is a song analysis post, not a fic.

Out of nowhere, answered all my prayers

'Out of nowhere' reminds me of Sam's words from the same HBW video I referenced earlier. "You came into my life like a damn wreckin' ball. There was no preparing for that, clothing or otherwise." While those were Sam's words, not Darlin's, I still feel like they feel similarly to how suddenly Sam came into their life as well. (Not in a bad way, mind you!)

[the significance of 'answered all my prayers' edges into my own personal more headcanon-y/personal/OC-ified Darlin' territory, so we can just gloss over this one for the sake of at least attempting to keep this more universally applicable]

Picked up the towel that I threw in Took in a heart that was ruined

Again, largely self-explanatory I feel. (*proceeds to explain anyways*) I imagine that Darlin' was at the point of throwing in the towel, hellbent on a solo-mission to find Quinn regardless of the danger it posed to them. I doubt they were looking toward the future anymore, (to reference Sam,) fully willing to throw themself at their problems until they really did break.

The specific use of 'ruined' hits hard here, because after everything they went through with Quinn, and especially after he recounted it all to Sam in that interrogation room, I imagine that they really, truly did feel ruined.

Showed me the past ain't a tattoo Loved me even when you didn't have to

These lines in particular make me sick with emotion every time I hear this song, because I feel like they hit the nail on the head for how Darlin' feels.

I'll be here citing various quotes all night that I feel showcase that sentiment, but we don't have time for that! So instead I'm just pointing to the entirety of 'Quinn's Aftermath' video, and leaving you with this single quote from it.

"Everything that he said reflects nothin' on you, and everything on him."

Equally Applicable Lines

And I don't know why Why you saw something in me, baby But you saw right through All the pain, and you came and saved me Yeah, I know you didn't leave me lonely Weren't the one that put the heartbreak on me Picked up the pieces It wasn't the mess that you made Could've left me just the way you found me But you came and put your wings around me You went out of your way To fix what you didn't break

Again, I think these lines are all pretty self-explanatory, and are just as accurate coming from either one of them. To me, at least, their entire dynamic is that they saved each other, in their own ways.

(But I will admit, the final verses about 'going out of your way to fix what you didn't break' are definitely conjuring up memories of Sam in the early days, literally going out of his way to visit and heal Darlin' after their fight with the two vamps. In general, his continued/repeated healing of them after they once again hurt themselves is the very literal definition of fixing what he didn't break.

But! While we may have more blatant examples of Sam being 'the fixer' so to speak, I think he'd argue that Darlin' has done plenty fixing of their own. Physical wounds aren't the only things that need healing, after all.)

-------

[shameless self-promo of my Sam & Darlin' playlist for those few of u interested enough to make it to the very end of this wall of text. if u liked this then u might like some of the other songs on there soooo maybe go check it out and maybe perhaps give it a follow so i can get a little serotonin boost or dopamine or whatever the chemical is that's released when Number Go Up. ...okay that's it i hope u enjoyed my fixation-induced ramblings! thank u and goodnight]

[swagging-back-to]

finally went and got my GED diploma a year after i graduated :)))))

[icantalk710]

🤔

[saltyloafy]

good to know that the ace attorney hyperfixation is alive and well as I turned on samurai on a mission to listen to during my lunch break and a primal uncontrollable squeak came out of me and my hands started flapping like I was trying to gain altitude

the pure happiness I feel after thinking abt kazuma asogi is proof in of itself that these lawyers still have my brain in a death grip and I couldn't be happier to know that

including these cats bc these kazumas specifically give me heart palpitations

[pinktinselmonstrosity]

I GOT A PLACE ON THE MASTER'S COURSE!!!!!!!!!

[loumauve]

I snapped today at work, and by snapped I mean I politely commented on a help desk ticket by summing up an mess of an (type of) issue that's come up for at least the fourth time in the 2+ months I've been managing user accounts, and asked the person responsible to fix it (himself for once) because last time I fixed his mess-up it took me two whole days to work out the details with at least four other colleagues from different departments and I really don't want to do it again. there's other shit that needs doing, I've been working 10+ hour days for most of this week already, so I need to cut down not add on more.

(good thing tho - at least we managed to fix the issue where the dataset of a newer employee got mixed up with another one of the same name and therefore wasn't able to apply for any of the access/accounts she needed. technically not entirely my area but it does impact us not being allowed to create an account for her so I figured I might as well track that issue down. took three days and at least three other people, but hey - it should all work out now. yay for that)

[dernarrleid]

ya'll I'm still here, I'm just in the thick of it.

[egophiliac]

I have a question about the jp server pickups, since I really want knight Sebek, but I’m trying to save gems for bloom malleus + the 3rd tsum event that’s gonna show up sooner or later. Iirc, after knight Sebek, the next story update’s pickup had all of the previous story cards (ie cerberus Ortho, general Lilia, and knight Sebek). Is this true, and if it is, did it include a token system like the dorm pickups where you can just do 100 pulls and then buy the specific card you want directly? Because if that is how it works, then I can wait until then and be sure I won’t have to go to 200 for him.

we did indeed get a second chance at those three when 7-7 came out! I'm pretty sure there was not a token system -- though admittedly I don't 100% remember, sorry! 🙇 I took a quick search through some past posts/videos from people who tend to include the gacha and news stuff, but I didn't see any mention of it, so I'm inclined to think there really wasn't one. :( they were all separate pickups with their own pull counts rather than a combined one, if that info helps at all.

speaking as a strict f2p who hoards keys/gems like the lovechild of a dragon and a magpie, given the choice between saving for a story card and a birthday card, I'd go for story -- it does require a lot of patience, but there are way more opportunities to get past birthday cards, both from the anniversary events and the rerun pickups! tsums is a bit harder to say anything on because Eng doesn't follow the same event schedule, but it's a longish event and those pickups let you have a free 10-roll, so I think they're also a bit easier to save up for.

(ALSO speaking of free rolls, starting with the fifth round of birthdays -- the kutsurogi my room ones -- the birthday boy/union jacket/bloom cards have had a separate pickup that you can get two free 10-pulls at by doing missions! I got a bloom Jade from it a couple weeks ago. :D meanwhile general Lilia is the only story card I've ever managed to pull, so...I'm probably kinda biased. whoops.)

[sleepinglionhearts]

I can just see it now, I'll get asked by my manager what I mean by saying my period started "unexpectedly" when I come in tomorrow and she'll probably also say, again, that many people just deal with it when it hurts, you know, why not just push through it??

Ma'am they stOPPED REFILLING MY BIRTH CONTROL PRESCRIPTION THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE CONSISTENTLY TAKEN UNTIL SOME TIME NEXT SUMMER, IT WAS UNE X PEC TE D

[stabbingandorbeingstabbed]

sleeping in my childhood bedroom for the first time since i moved out is it supposed to feel this bad and fucked up or is this just a me thing lmaooo

[maburito]

Man....I hate having a job.

[fidgetspringer]

.

[vampnyx]

unbelievable depression hit bc my roommate is coming back after a long weekend away and god I just need her to move out already