#jess does NOT have to go

[toby-determined]

Serendipity || One Shot

@notbad-justsungthatway

indignantmarker's New Year's gift to CranberryMarker.

Toby had been having such a hard time trying to think of something to get CranberryShortcake. Almost to the point that he regretted ever asking them if he could get them a gift! And this was all while he had such a time even thinking of something to get Tiana Truitt! It was supposed to be the season of giving, though, and he always felt like gifts were such a nice gesture. This could have perhaps stemmed from his lack of ever getting them, and when he did, they were prizes to behold. A physical reminder that someone had thought about him when looking at something that wasn’t him. 

Then, one day, he had gotten an advertisement in his email. Not his main email or his work email, the email he used for spam and to sign up for certain websites that he knew would only raid his inbox with promotions and reminders and headaches. This email was from a jazz website he had signed up for, telling him about upcoming concerts for the area. Or for the UK, anyway. There were quite a few, mostly at small venues and names that he didn’t necessarily recognize. 

But there was one he did. 

Laufey. 

He tried to remember why, going back to his recent history on Spotify to see if the artist was in there. Sure enough, they were! And that was how he remembered that it was his email friend who had told him about Laufey. Saying that she was a recent discovery, but a quickly beloved one. 

Toby thought this was serendipitous! 

He had clicked through the links until he found the artists’ website and tour dates, only to find that the ones nearest had been sold out. And he probably should have given up there but…well. He couldn’t. It seemed like the perfect gift for someone who loved music, who loved concerts, who needed a bit of a relaxing and nice get away from it all! 

It would have been easy to just go with a pair of headphones but now that Toby had this idea between his teeth, he couldn’t give it up. 

He spent quite a bit of time online trying to find a way to get a ticket through the proper channels. Of course there were none. Not even the choice for resellers to get their chunk of flesh. 

So, then he went into the real thick of it by spending the hours scrolling around on social media in search of someone trying to sell their tickets. It was a bit of a task but he didn’t mind it, getting to read people’s little stories of their agonies of waiting in online queues for hours, how ticket selling websites were the worst and resellers could rot for the ticket prices, others having their victories and being so thrilled to be able to go see the concert coming near them. 

It made Toby think of his sister. 

Eventually, he found what he had been looking for. 

There was a tweet of someone saying they wished they could go to the concert in London and someone in their replies said: 

Hey, please message my aunt on instagram! @heatherthe_forever33 she’s trying to sell her extra tickets. 

The original poster had replied: oh i just mean i’ll be on holiday while she’s here 😭 but thanks!!

It had been posted only ten minutes prior. Toby quickly headed over to instagram and found the account, giving them a message. 

Hello, I saw you’re looking to sell you Laufey concert tickets. How much are you looking for? 

It only took a few minutes for him to get a reply.

Hi! You saw correctly. How many tickets are you looking to get? I have 4 available for the EartH 17/2/24 performance. 

Toby hesitated, wondering how many he should get. Obviously one for CranberryShortcake, but should he get another as well? Would it be odd to only get them the one without thinking they would want to take a friend with them? Yes, it would probably be safe to make sure they had the option to take someone along if they wanted. 

2? 

Okay! Here are the options. 

They sent him screenshots of their seats, the dots all in a row in a section of the venue. He didn’t know what CranberryShortcake would prefer, but he chose the aisle seat along with the one next to it. It may have to involve a lot of people stepping over them to get to their seats, but it would be nice to have a bit of elbow room, wouldn’t it? 

He told the person. They replied back with a cost. He haggled. They accepted. 

Then he went through a bit of a journey in setting up account on a ticket website for the person to transfer him the tickets. It was for the best that he hadn’t had one in the past though, since he figured that if he made this account for CranberryShortcake, it would continue to keep their identities from one another. 

Thank you very much! he messaged the person on Instagram. Heather, he supposed. 

You’re so welcome! Thank you! I couldn’t make it but I’m glad you’ll enjoy! :) x

They’re a gift for someone, actually! But I hope they will enjoy. 

Oh! Wow! That’s a great gift!!! Now I am extra glad I could give them to someone like you!! :D xx

Toby smiled, tapping his hand on his desk for a moment as he read over that message a few times. Then he quickly got a move on, printing a picture of the venue's advertisement of the concert and then scrambling around his desk for a pen. He wrote down the website, the g-mail he’d created for the website and password to that, then the password for the tickets website on the paper. Under that he wrote, I know it’s a bit of a hike to London, sorry! -indignantmarker

He placed the folded piece of paper into an envelope, licked it, and closed it up. On the front he wrote, To CranberryShortcake and stood, walking to the front desks of Town Hall. He started to approach, thinking he could leave it with the receptionist, but then stopped because, well, then the receptionist would know who he was. And then she would also know who CranberryShortcake was, which meant he could ask and find out. Knowing himself, he wouldn’t be able to resist. 

So, new plan. Where would be a good place to hide the envelope that no one would bother it but would be easy to access for his friend? 

Under one of the seats? No, people were constantly fidgeting in those. A plant? No, what if someone decided to water them and smudge the ink? A vent? No, if they got caught messing with it they would surely be…maybe not punished, but embarrassed by someone making a fuss over nothing. 

Toby sighed, wandering the halls, taking a look at the nice paintings that were hung up on the walls. 

…ah ha! 

He approached one of them, looked to his left and then his right to make sure no one was around to see him, and gave it a wiggle. The frame moves a bit, enough to move away from the wall. So it wasn’t completely nailed down to it. Toby stepped back, assessing his options. He would need one that he could describe to CranberryShortcake that wouldn’t make them have to spend a lot of time going through, more chances of getting caught. He decided to go with one of the portraits, finding the features of it quite distinguishable. 

He returned to the Squire office, quickly adding the closing paragraphs to his most recent email to them, and sent it off. 

It was only a few minutes later that he realized that he could have just sent everything in the email instead.

[velvetjune]

saga would fit in perfectly with the whimsy and horror of the fbc after the events of alan wake 2. she’s already technically with them after getting clearance from kiran and ahti is the world’s best reference when it comes to applying for a job at the oldest house. no one would even question her seer powers because life is already so weird when you’re at the fbc

[butchjess]

Well. hrm. the way they all connect to each other. like it’s all starting to look like a circle of some sort. jess as rory’s mirror/reflection/narrative foil but also jess as he pertains to luke and jess as he pertains to lorelai. luke breaking the church bells luke who says he was troubled but they gave him a chance and just bc a kid has issues doesnt mean they don’t deserve that. luke who is a figure placed against the rest of the town, just in the sense that he is not like them, he does not hold their values, he doesn’t even sound like them. which is of course a result of scott patterson’s new york accent, but adds to this theme anyway. and they use jess to build this picture, because they walk the same and talk the same and they’re stubborn—independent to a near self-endangering degree—and emotionally repressed in the same way and luke himself admits that he spent more time working at his dad’s shop than he did at school, which jess also does. but jess and luke are also. very very different when you get past these similar values that are maybe ingrained into them through different circumstances and same genetic makeup. and in their differences you get a lot of jess and lorelai’s similarities. when it comes to their family dynamics and how it’s affected them in particular. it’s made them independent yes, but it’s also made them hypervigilant, almost paranoid in the way they are allergic to accepting help and especially accepting help from the people who hurt them. jess only goes to his mother’s wedding because luke asks him to, lorelai only asks her parents for money because rory needs it for school. and they, and this is where they differ from luke, don’t know how to trust people and so they don’t know how to talk to people. where luke’s particular brand of emotional constipation comes from a general cluelessness as to how to do it—which is why the tapes helped him so much—lorelai and jess’ come from emotional responses to the situations they grew up in. while it was different—lorelai growing up rich, jess growing up poor—the effect it had on them still resulted in something similar. lorelai with her overbearing manipulative mother and (emotionally) absent father, and jess with his neglecting manipulative mother and (in all senses of the word) absent father. the ways that, despite their effort to distance themselves, they still end up with similar mannerisms to the parent they have the most conflict with (lorelai and her controlling nature + that scene where they have the same nighttime routine, jess and his love for books + tendency to run away). and of course, their romanticism. their big confessions and period drama-esque speeches and, yeah, i do think in a way jess was asking rory to marry him in 4x21. come with me. let’s get married. luke and rory both being the most important people in their lives. literati+javajunkie where they are all melding into each other, and luke is rory and lorelai is jess but on the surface level dynamic luke is jess and lorelai is rory and they are all each other. on accident. by sheer nature of making jess as a character for the sole purpose of interfering with luke and lorelai’s relationship (which means he is important narratively to them both) and by making him rory’s love interest/foil (because ASP casted him before she even had the idea for the character) you have now made an accidental blending of them all together. he is like a skeleton key of a character. Okay. okay.

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

was meaning to write a serious and thoughtful meta on this shot as the show's first use of metatextual framing (a story within a story) linking its premise to the war movie as a genre (the show as a fascist gothic work) but yknow what. scratch all of that lmao. the only thought that matters is: the moment you really start thinking about the show as a reactionary post 9/11 power fantasy, you can't stop.

[pupkashi]

he makes me so not normal, i love him in every way possible

[gaybearwedding]

hi hi hello i have been gone forever due to various reasons such as “work” and “mental illness” and “having developed a kpop hyperfixation that has been occupying most of my attention recently” but i need everyone to know that i saw off book live twice last week (in philly with a friend and then in nyc with my girlfriend) and it was truly so everything. i didn’t get many pictures but i did get a few and none of them are very good but one of them is of jess’ amazing stool balancing act and that’s all i need really

[helmarok]

since it's a bit of a mini discussion rn... i don't like female jesse's voice acting. while cat taber was able to do SOME emotional scenes well, she falls flat. like a lot. like she sounds like a disney channel actress more often than not. and that's not to say patton oswalt's performance doesn't have flaws, because it does, but his feels like someone who knows what they're doing vs cat taber who sounds like, again, a disney channel actress. and her performance also makes female jesse seem a different personality from male. which isn't a huge deal but there is supposed to be like, no difference. like when they put the warning sign for the heckmouth down, jesse's response to the situation as a whole is wildly different, like female jesse should've been just as unhinged about it and i dislike how calm and collected she is vs the male one. you know, all that + the zionism thing.

[thelivingautomaton]

alright, since the Remedy brainworms got me I've been replaying Control, got to the AWE expansion last night and picking up on all the echoes/foreshadowing for Alan Wake 2 is making me go utterly bonkers, but like. has anyone picked up on or talked about how in all of Alan's Hotline messages to Jesse, when he's writing about her POV, he exclusively calls her 'Faden'

like, maybe it didn't poke my brain the first time I played it since he does the same thing when talking about Hartman, but coming from AW2 it's pretty jarring as a stylistic oddity...almost like there's a reason (in-universe and/or out-of-universe) that he doesn't call her 'Jesse'...almost like there's only one Faden in his story...

and given how in AW2 we also get some (quasi-) clarification regarding the limits of Alan's ability to "make stuff up" vs alter and rewrite "real-world" events that he sees in clairvoyant flashes...given the Night Springs screenplay pages you can find in AWE that parallels the FBC and the events of Control (i.e. a Director and a Scientist opening a portal to another dimension, finding an eldritch Entity, the Director trying to take its power for himself and then getting taken over before shooting himself)...given how literally all of the "dreams" Dylan tells Jesse about are descriptions/viewings of stuff that takes place on one level of reality or another ("I was the director and you were an intern"; "we were in a game, and it was a fucking boring game but you couldn't stop playing it"; Mister Door, and "a world with a writer writing about a cop, and another world where the writer was real"; a "musical" about Jesse), except, seemingly, the dream about "Jesse Dylan Faden"...

guys. are you picking up what I'm putting down here. guys. GUYS

[stabbyfoxandrew]

every time my dad does anything he has to do it in the most annoying and loudest way possible. and honestly i'm not sure if he means to or he's just really goddamn stupid but it's really really grating. and i'm suffering the werewolf curse rn so i'm ready to die

[july-19th-club]

there are a lot of powerfully, artfully, incredibly awkward scenes in breaking bad but one of the ones of of all time is the scene where walt is firing gale by saying that gale is jazz and walt is classical . and in the middle of this jesse shows up and gale realizes that classical has just broken up with jazz in order to hook back up with skeevy white rap

[iwasbored777]

When Jessica's apologists hate on Gwen it's hilarious cuz if there's one person Jessica owes an apology to it's literally Gwen

[grinchwrapsupreme]

This line so succinctly captures Siegfried's relationship with Tristan. And the fact that this is the line that make Tristan realize what Siegfried is doing, that he knows INSTANTLY that the answer is him, it's so so good

[iwozlegit]

Fat Earthspark Spoilers - pt. 2

( I ain’t done yet! )

|| 🍍• Please tell me I’m not the only fucking person who saw that Starscream’s optics were…

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Blue 👀👀👀

The fuck does this mean

[coolcattime]

Playing Until Dawn got the first time where I'm actually the one holding the controller because I wanna play the full game and get my personal favourite ending before the movie and the remaster/remake comes out:

On one hand despite my typical shaking hand problems, I literally got no moment whatsoever in the first Don't Move, so I think playing that weird meditation minigame from Wii Fit Plus years ago has actually given me some benefit.

On the other hand, it had been so long since I have used a PlayStation controller and am struggling so hard to remember which button is which. I am very worried for the quick time events as this game progresses.

[litres-of-cocaine]

yes walter white was a hopeless misogynist aroused by violence and everyone (or one side of the fandom anyway) seems to fixate on that but i’d argue that the way these themes are presented aren’t really about walt. obviously toxic masculinity - though i dislike that term with walt as he is an emasculated figure in the show - and male egocentrism are key points of his character but they seem to present more as a scrutiny of these characteristics within the male breadwinner.

and there can be more point to a theme, like whether that’s within a character or just the larger commentary of the show. i feel like the dynamics of misogyny and chauvinism within walt and his relationships are extremely interesting on their own for sure, and that’s why they provoke such animosity towards him but i’d also say they make such a cruel joke of what the west values within family and it’s horrible but so reflective if that makes sense. i almost view the disruption of the nuclear family (or american dream if you prefer) in brba as satirical with how clearly the ideas of the male provider are stressed over and over and over again. like gus’s attempts to manipulate walt by highlighting this pretence he puts on about his reasons for cooking. i think this pushes forth the examination of the male patriarch given the breadwinner of the show’s main family is a murderer and meth cook. especially considering that walt’s family is technically the only nuclear social unit that we see intact - with the whites still being regarded ‘as a family’ up to the end of s5 even through separation periods and different living scenarios as there is no actual divorce. and when a say ‘traditional’ nuclear family i’m talking married mother and father with multiple children (and i’m not counting jesse’s family as intact, but that’s up to interpretation).

but i think this ironic and incredibly fucking dark focal point of families promoted as ‘ideal’ within america and the west at large really doesn’t operate as a part of walt’s character, but rather uses him as a stand-in for the domestic male figure; the absentee, distanced, violent, and self-martyring qualities that are expected and even praised. so, obviously, as the domestic male figure it is a part of his character but it’s not what makes him unique or interesting. it’s our only view of fatherhood and spousal responsibility within the so-called successful family unit, so it comes to reflect every ‘successful’ nuclear family, not walt. the final thing that walt says whilst his immediate family are all together is ‘we’re a family’ *twice*. it’s practically an affirmation. their family is a success.

again that’s not me saying that walt like isn’t responsible for anything he does lmao, on the fictive level he absolutely is, but also he was created as a construct and as a stand in for patriarchy itself. like the individualistic hatred of walt as a terrible person kind of overlooks the effect of having him as the lone domestic male figure.

and i actually don’t think an embodiment of misogyny is the point of walt’s character necessarily, i would argue mortality is a much more pertinent issue (if i start talking about that i will never stop tho lol), but this crumbling format of what is desirable for neoliberal america makes far more sense to me than just walt as a dickhead to hate if that makes sense.