#lata

[viejospellejos]

Dolorrr!!

[welele]

No hay rojo en esta foto.

[redmemoirs]

he's such a hater

[beta-la-come-pasteles]

Disfruta Dos Pinos latas

[bubblesthemonsterartist]

How about...more Lata and Obi shenanigans/banter for the drabble prompts? ^^

The office is blessedly silent. Still. Free from a persistent redhead. And it’s going to stay that way.

Throwing the bolt, Lata savors the sweet taste of reprieve.

It’s all too short lived.

He glowers. “What the hell are you doing here?”

A low whistle sounds behind him. “Not bad.” Shirayuki’s guard may play at being a knight, but he’s as good as a cat for all he gets underfoot. “Thought the hearing was supposed to go with old age.”

“I’m 36, and I’d wager my knees are in better condition than yours,” Lata complains, turning just a hair before his heartrate skyrockets. He’s across the room in two strides, snatching the opaque green specimen precipitously close to the infant’s face and returning it to its display. Then he grabs Obi – what sort of name is that anyway – and douses his hand in solution. “You didn’t lick the rock, did you?”

“Oye, oye!” The kid tries to pull back, eyes going wide when Lata’s grip doesn’t break. “Why would I-- No. What the hell is this stuff?”

“Something you’re not supposed to touch,” Lata remarks, glancing at his watch. “Never- And I mean ever- touch my specimens without permission again.”

[shallowseeker]

Howdy Howdy! Wishing you a fast recovery! Here's something to ponder while you're stuck inside: Are there any villains in spn you wish would have been redeemed? How about any characters you wish would have had a corruption arc? What would you want their redemption/corruption arcs to look like?

Hands-down, I wanna see Bela Talbot. I'd trade an embarrassing number of "golden era" regulars to see her come back and get the "demon Dean" treatment (i.e. having moral grayness around the "work/cases" Hell assigns to her).

Like other demon characters, having her work through her own corruption/toxicity/bitterness/despair would be great. The consequences of her survivorship would be Chef's Kiss for me.

//

Secondly, I wanted to see Andrea Kormos in an extended Purgatory Round II (15x09). She'd make a great mirrored Plot Device for the New Quest (finding the flower/escaping/fighting Lillith etc).

Like Bela, Andrea would work for me personally because she also has to work through her Stockholm Syndrome and corruption. Like Bela, she'd be dealing with the consequences of her survivorship. (I’m sensing I like a theme here…)

For narrative symmetry, of course, she clings to Cas. (I think Cas can be Very Appealing to "ruined/corrupted" characters, especially when he decides to extend his gentle version of non-judgment, so it could really, really work and create Big Emotional Complications). Theme: it's never too late/you can start being good any time.

//

That aside, I think the main three all need to finish their arcs as parents. Especially Sam. For me personally, his final turn was like lukewarm dishwater.

///

As for moral decay/corruption, I'd like to see characters like Eileen Leahy and Charlie Bradbury do a lot more fucking up. (I know Charlie split in the Oz thing and Eileen shot a MoL dude, but I found their mistakes to be generally very "safe.") Same for Lata from The Winchesters.

I'd kill for them to get the Mary Winchester treatment--that is, to be allowed to fuck up as much as The Boys Do.

For Eileen, it'd look like this, I think. I haven't got any good ideas for Charlie, because I find her annoying (I say this with Love now). Lata would naturally have to reckon with her pacifism and hypocrisy.

[spicy-clover-database]

[Black Clover Mobile] WEVE GOT EVERY MEMBER OF HOUSE MA’GAL GUYS

In order from left to right, top-bottom: Niamh, Andri, Mareh, Lata

[0heartless]

[cerebrodigital]

🤯 ¿Cómo es que nadie está hablando de esto?

La Agencia Espacial Mexicana tiene toda una sección en su portal de educación con planos detallados, instructivos e información sobre cómo crear un SATÉLITE EN UNA LATA y ENVIARLO AL ESPACIO. 😳👇

Te dejamos todos los pasos para su fabricación aquí:

[batgirlsay]

Expert in a Rocky Field

When the @ans-arcade gift exchange sent me your name, I immediately thought about making you a Lata playlist! Started digging through my old grad school playlists for some academic vibes, then I filled in the blanks with other songs about rocks. It ended up having more songs about the sadness and peril of academia, which I’m sure Lata knows about… I hope you like it, @meefy!

Expert in a Rocky Field

Expert in a Dying Field- The Beths Sisyphus- Andrew Bird Iridium Dream- Louie Zong Lazuli- Beach House Calcite Prism- Louie Zong Oblivion- David Bazan Postdoc Blues- John K. Samson May Their Brilliance Ever Linger- Louie Zong

Summary lyrics are posted after the cut:

Expert in a Dying Field- The Beths

Hours of phrases I've memorized Thousands of lines on the page All of my notes in a desolate pile I haven't touched in an age

How does it feel? To be an expert in a dying field And how do you know? It's over when you can't let go

You can't let go, you can't stop, can't rewind Love is learned over time 'Til you're an expert in a dying field

Sisyphus- Andrew Bird

Sisyphus peered into the mist A stone's throw from the precipice, paused Did he jump or did he fall as he gazed into the maw of the morning mist? Did he raise both fists and say, “To hell with this,” and just let the rock roll?

Let it roll, let it crash down low There's a house down there but I lost it long ago

It's got nothing to do with fate And everything to do with you

Lazuli- Beach House

In the blue Of this life Where it ends In the night Is nothing like lapis lazuli Let it go back to me

Like no other You can't be replaced

Oblivion- David Bazan

Hello again, Oblivion Can you find the frequency While the specters hover whispering

Hello again, Oblivion But it's no good to complain Of fatigue and existential pain

Hold on to what you've got Though it may not be a lot Cause now is not the time for second thoughts

You believe in it Now it's time to follow through You believe in it What does that say about you?

Postdoc Blues- John K. Samson

So your presentation went terrible All wrong dongles, sweat stains and stares

Don’t despair you’ll get it right tomorrow night

I believe in you and your PowerPoints I know why you can’t stay away

So take that laminate out of your wallet and read it And recommit yourself to the healing of the world And to the welfare of all creatures upon it Pursue of practice that will strengthen your heart

[aadyapandey]

Forever favourite 🌸

[viejospellejos]

Hoy he conocido la envidia:

[nuthingness]

तेरे होंठो पे रात ये बहाना था

गोरी तुझको तो आज नहीं आना था

[redmemoirs]

also just realised i never posted this! a little gift for @meefy, editing her oc féanne into shirayuki's place

[outofthecavern]

Can’t wait to see everyone in NJ! Especially these scoobies, even if we are missing Nida !! I’ll have to catch her another con 💙💚

[spnwin-reader]

Loss in common:

Enter Millie, The Prickly-but-Hopeful Fixer

[We note that, even after all this time, Millie's building carries the MoL Aquarian star of protection, and it's still Winchester Garage, not...whatever-her-maiden-name is.]

When we first meet Millie, she's bitter. As the one who "kept the lantern on," "the one who stayed," she's hurt and defensive, a lot like how Dean grows to be in latter seasons of SPN.

(Even post-demonicity, Dean is still expected to be the soft place to fall for everyone. Even after Jack kills Mary, Cas has this expectation of Dean's soft-heartedness: "it's possible he could work through this. One day, he may explode and let it all out and breathe deeply and move on.")

Anyway, Millie!

Her reunion with John is part passive-aggressive but loving. We see that Millie, like Dean, has intense abandonment trauma. She speaks abrasively-but-affectionately. She calls John "Kid, Kiddo, etc." which was a go-to with Dean for both Claire Novak and Jack Kline.

JOHN: Love what you've done with the place. MILLIE (passive-aggressive): Well, my husband and son walked out on me, so. It's the best I could do. (growing emotional) Dammit. Welcome home, Kiddo.

Gruff, abrasive, imperfect? Maybe. But full of love.

Alt John and Millie are united by the common loss of Henry, just as Prime John, Sam, and Dean were united by the common loss of Mary.

John thinks Henry walked out on them, but I think Millie is likely more complex. With her tacit knowledge of the Men of Letters, I think it's reasonable that she at least suspects that he might be dead.

What does that tell us about her? It tells us that the loss of Henry was unbelievably painful--it's probably easier for her to consider he left than the very likely truth: his demise.

She's a fixer. That's what she does.

She holds out hopeless hope.

JOHN: I'm fine, Mom. MILLIE: The Hell you are. You've been chasing your dad since he walked out that door. I know that's why you enlisted. But it is time to let the past go, kiddo.

But Millie isn't healed either. She hasn't let the past go, even as she pursues her dream of being a mechanic and owning a garage (like her father). Letting the past go hasn't helped her heal.

In fact, carrying on hunting and the MoL business is what seems to soothe her loss, giving her new meaning and purpose. Millie and John's push-pull dynamic with hunting is much like how it was with Ellen and Jo Harvelle.

///

But overall, we see what Henry's absence wrought. It's just as Henry feared in SPN Prime (9x17 Mother's Little Helper):

HENRY: Therein lies the problem. As our initiation grows closer, I... I worry that this might be a selfish endeavor on my part. JOSIE: Selfish. How? HENRY: If anything were to happen to me, what of John? Millie? JOSIE: They'd be proud to know that you answered the call. HENRY: No. My wife would be a widow, and my son fatherless. I don't expect you to understand. You don't have a fam--[he pauses] I'm sorry, Josie. I didn't mean it that way. JOSIE: I know, Henry. You're a good man. Millie is lucky to have you.

This directly parallels Cas and his allegiance to his work, Heaven, (Heaven is a truck, and Cas is a truck-driver; Dean thinks he's Josie when he's actually Millie).

It also beings to mind the visual of ("little John") Jack's entrance as he wanders around muttering, "Father. Fa-ther. Father. I need to find him. Castiel. He was supposed to be here," while looking for his long-expected, lost father in 13x01 Lost and Found.

But it's also an off-key parallel to prime John, who would become as Millie was, a bereft widower in the cold, floundering and ill-equipped to handle the dangers of the supernatural world.

///

Enter Mary, Action Hero

(Note: Mary's got a short range, so I love how she uses speed to her advantage to get larger targets off-balance.)

///

And importantly, John...is NOT allowed to look cool. It's a RULE. He's a dorky...little...guy.

Mary knocks the demon into a blessed holy water vat, a call-forward to something prime John will do in SPNprime 01x21 Salvation.

//

When Alt John and Alt Mary meet:

Mary's father has been absent (missing) from her life for a short time, and John's father Henry has been absent for most of his life, just as when Dean and Cas meet, theirs too is a tale of missing fathers. Cas's father was absent for all of his life, and Dean's flaky dad has been gone for a (relatively) short time. It also very obviously parallels Sam and Dean searching for their missing father.

When they break inside the Men of Letters clubhouse, Mary keys into John's emotions about his father. This reminds me of of the first time Dean keyed in really hard to Cas's emotions in 5x16.

///

JOHN: How do you cope with it all? MARY (wryly, jokingly): I'll let you know when I find out. (SPNwin 1x01)

//

DEAN: Yeah, I get it. I know how you feel. CASTIEL: How do you manage it? DEAN (wryly, jokingly): On a good day, you get to kill [The Whore of Babylon]. (SPN 5x17)

///

Recent losses of friends & family:

Additionally, Mary and John have both suffered recent losses. Mary lost her narrative twin Maggie, and John lost his comrade Murph to war.

[Mary's cousin went to Hell, just as Sam's brother went to Hell in season in vintage and mid-SPN.] Mary's hunting family was torn asunder, parents separating.

And John? WIth war, John signed up to fill a void left by his father, to find meaning in life.

We can even recall Dean's words to Gordon in 2x03 Bloodlust, how Dean struggled with the idea of "The Invincible Dad" and how his death made the word more terrifying, how it left a wound of depression inside of him that he sought to fill with meaning through work:

DEAN: Yeah. Yeah, you know. He was just one of those guys. Took some terrible beatings, just kept coming. So you're always thinking to yourself, he's indestructible. He'll always be around, nothing can kill my dad. Then just like that (snaps) he's gone. I can't talk about this to Sammy. You know, I gotta keep my game face on. (clears throat) But, uh, the truth is I'm not handling it very well. Feel like I have this - GORDON: Hole inside you? And it just gets bigger and bigger and darker and darker? Good. You can use it. Keeps you hungry. Trust me. There's plenty out there needs killing, and this'll help you do it. Dean, it's not a crime to need your job.

Dean lost his dad, and Gordon lost his sister. This emptiness is depression. John lost his dad and suffered that loss all his life. He signed up to the war for the GLORY OF PURPOSE. He didn't sign up to the war for more pain and grief, but that's exactly what he got.

What's the thing Dean can't fill up, not with booze or love or even sex? It's grief and pain. It can only be filled with love, which is what Cas's confession narratively does in 15x18.

It's also what Mary's love and the love of the Core 4 will eventually do for John.

///

SPN Prime season 8 side-parallel: Connections of recent grief ALSO calls to mind season 8, how Sam connected with Amelia when they had both suffered a loss, Sam lost his narrative twin to Purgatory and Amelia lost her husband to war.

Theirs was a fast-paced reactionary relationship born of grief, something that pinged and annoyed Amelia's father, leading him to be very passive-aggressive with Sam. (Her father was a dick, but he's both a soldier himself and does know her best and probably has her best interests in mind. He recognized that was Amelia mid-freakout, OOC. He pings that her out-of-characterness is a weird reaction to grief).

He was right to be concerned about the shallowness and stability of it. These types of reactionary relationships are well-known: they can be very shaky, melodramatic, idealized, and weak when stress-tested.

Sam (and vintage Dean) both have this tendency to be all-in or all-out when it comes to The Cause. Neither strike a balance very easily. They tend to either be ALL IN for the Perfect War with Perfect War Companions at Your Side...or rushing into something tenuous that represents a weak idea that winds up unsatisfying because it's not genuine: Perfect White Picket Fence or Howling-at-the-Moon Dishibitory Party Life.

In SPNwin, John is doing a lot of running, too. He rushes into the thing with Betty (weak and tenuous), then he rushes into war, he rushes into hunting, and he runs into the relationship with Mary.

This theme of Running into Danger / Running From Danger persists. John certainly struggles with it, BUT in a departure from his past behavior, this new thing with Mary gets a lot of stress-testing, eventually moving from limerence into turbulence, power struggle, and de-idealization. (SPNwin 1x12, The Tears of a Clown)

///

SO.

Mary and her ragtag gang of friends embark on a journey to look for the missing Samuel Campbell the way Sam and Dean look for the errant John Winchester, the way the Banes twins look for their mother Tasha Banes in Twigs, Twine, & Tasha Bane.

Certainly the core 4 are all "running scared" and clinging to one another, having all lost loved ones in a variety of ways. They are united in empathy over their respective losses:

John (dad, comrades)

Mary (narrative sibling, missing dad, splintered family and parental separation)

Carlos (whole family killed by a monster)

Lata (no-contact with her family because they allowed her beloved nanny to die; nonsensical/cruel hierarchy of human society)

Ada (husband lost to madness, son potentially a puppy-destined-to-be-wolf)

And finally we get Henry's letter:

If you're reading this, then I'm gone. I'm sorry I kept the truth from you, John. There's a dangerous world out there, and our family has fought that danger for centuries. The answers to all your questions are at the address below. I love you and your mother. Always.

I think this idea of Henry Winchester as a secret-keeper, and as Mary-prime as a secret-keeper fed into what we know about John-prime turned into: a neuroses of paranoia and over-preparedness.

But thanks to Dean, Alt John has some new tools to work through this: knowledge. Even his anger is useful, openly telling his mother how disappointed and betrayed he feels over being kept in the dark. For her part, she gives him her emotional truth: that she only wanted to protect him.

It's the first healing step for both of them.