#maybe he had matured past revenge post res

[trans-xianxian]

nawt somebody saying that jin guangyao didn't actually wrong nie huaisang or nie mingjue in a way that they should get sympathy for and thus nie huaisang didn't deserve to kill him 😭

[fenristheorem]

Hi! can i ask you lance with a very motherly s/o? thank you

 You're my first ask! Thank you so much @marytheredqueen!

I was originally planning on posting headcanons in a few days regarding Lance and how growing up as an orphan effected him and his relationships in the long-term, so I'll add in headcanons about how growing up without his mother specifically effected him as well 😊

~Headcanons under the cut because these are long as always~

Growing up without a mother:

Oh boy

This is major ouch factor

Almost too much to explain

I said ‘almost’, not ‘it is’

And bear with me, really, because this is SO LONG

Lance and Valkyon were born in a volcano; hatched from dragon eggs and then lived in a nearby village until the time they decided to leave (based on what Lance said in Origins episode 26). There’s very little detail about the specific events, but it’s known that Lance was able to charm a lot of people at a very young age with his strength and self-confidence. It’s also known that he learned about and practiced his dragon powers beginning at a very young age while Valk never participated. It’s unknown if they told the villagers where they were from, how they were found and if they could even talk when they were taken in, but it seems that the villagers never knew about their heritage

Lance was raised by this village, everyone took part in teaching and caring for him and his brother. They knew everyone, played with all the kids, learned lessons from everyone. It was well known that they were orphans, but nobody thought ‘well, they’re not my kids so I won’t worry about them’. Lance and Valk literally had a village to raise them. They learned a lot of general things because of this, from people working all different types of jobs, so therefore Lance is well-versed (roughly because it’s a distant memory, but it’s still there) in a lot of general aspects of life. He’s pretty self-sufficient.

However, he had a village to raise him, and while everyone took care of him, nobody was his mother figure.

At first Lance wasn’t entirely sure why other kids had a mother and why he didn’t. Were him and his brother abandoned? He found it very endearing, but overall strange, that one specific male and female took care of certain kids when the whole village could raise them all together, like with him and his brother. Over time, he learned social constructs better and began to understand more that his case was a special one.

Lance realized then that he and his brother could have had the same things the other kids had. He could have had an actual home instead of floating between houses, he could have had an actual adult to cook meals for him each night, who would learn his specific tastes over time and treat him as a major priority. He began to learn that he could have had a mature figure to rely on when he felt sad, scared, overwhelmed or lost. Everything that he was providing for Valk, he could have had as well, with someone who had more knowledge about life and their heritage. In a way, Lance felt a bit lost. He had to think of everything when he was growing up, because while he did have the villagers to teach him lots of basics, he never had one specific adult that he could really connect to and ask all his really important questions to.

Lance began to realize what he’d been missing. He watched the interactions between child and mother more, and saw how safe and happy the kids looked, and then realized that he would never feel the safe, warm embrace of a mother who would love him unconditionally and without question.

And then he realized that his relationship with the villagers, while nice, could never truly fulfill his biological need to have a mother

Suddenly he had a painful hole in his chest every day

But he kept moving on, because he had been fine so far without

He was sad and disappointed by the fact that he would never experience having a mother, but he realized that he at least had the villagers to give him the basic skills in life. It wasn’t the same, but it could have been worse.

So he grew more, watched out for Valk and worked hard for every scrap of reward he gained in life. He came from humble beginnings.

But one day he felt a bit different, and by the end of the week he realized he had specific abilities that none of the other villagers seemed to have.

He decided to practice with these abilities, learn how they work, as he must have gained them from his heritage and, therefore, they’re the only part of his parents that he’ll possibly ever know. He kept it a secret, realizing that his powers could be used in many ways, hoping to someday surprise the villagers and defend them in their darkest hours; to show them that something good became of him because they helped him.

And then he learned about what his heritage is

Talking to a village elder, he realized that his powers aligned perfectly with the legendary dragons, so he inquired about what happened to them. Realizing their noble downfall, he learned the first thing about his mother and his people that would stay with him forever. He now aspired to make them proud, even if they weren’t with him.

Lance took to harsh training after that. Staying up late into the night, practicing all that he’s learned about basic life skills, but also alchemy, spells, rituals, and his abilities. He never told anyone his heritage, and he urged Valk to keep it a secret, too; you never know what dangers could lurk around two young, inexperienced dragons if the world knew about their heritage. However, Lance still practiced heavily, and the first time he managed a successful transformation into his dragon form, while messy and very tiring, he felt as thought some part of him was right. He finally felt closer to his family. But the effects of not having a mother would always stick with him

Time passed. Lance and Valkyon found the Guard of El, and Lance found a very comfortable position as Chief of the Obsidian Guard. He was one of the leader’s right-hand-men, nearly indestructible, the greatest warrior in the guard and the protector of the good and innocent. He was proud of himself, Valk was proud for him, he had everything, could have any woman, everyone loved him. It was the village but better, because he could uphold and defend what his family, his people, his mother had sacrificed themselves for.

And then reality hit him hard

He discovered a horrible truth; him and his brother weren’t the last surviving dragons, and the guard was hunting them down

Now beemoov never specifies anything of how Lance found out, why there were surviving dragons when allegedly all of them sacrificed to create Eldarya, etc. but I have a headcanon of my own on how he found out (and frankly his whole past in general). It deviates a bit from canon but at least it’s a nearly full backstory (I’ll write about it if anyone requests it)

So when Lance found out this truth he never felt more grateful that he decided to keep his heritage a secret. And he pressed Valk to keep it a secret even more, in fear that his brother may not take him seriously.

This discovery turned Lance around. Suddenly he was feeling sick to his stomach. He felt blind. Were his people angry at him for defending the people who live within the realm they created? Possibly. After all, they all fought each other. He felt lonely again; and he didn’t have his mother to guide or hold him in this time of fear.

Lance began to realize that he was looking through rose colored glasses. He began to realize that few people acknowledged the dragons’ sacrifice anymore, and instead the point of the guard was to shove their nose in others’ problems, problems that hurt each other after the dragons sacrificed to keep them safe, and the guard seemed to use violence at times as a solution to these already-violent issues.

Ok, I’ve been deviating from the original idea of growing up without a mother, but I promise this is important.

Lance felt disrespected at this realization; for his people, for his parents. How dare they destroy each other when the dragons sacrificed themselves to avoid that?

How dare he help them in that by acting for the guard?

Suddenly his mother’s sacrifice seemed worthless

Suddenly he grew up without a mother for nothing

Suddenly he was no longer noble, like his people, because he was helping to hurt the people the dragons died for

His whole life - screwed up from the beginning and left lonely and scared with so much responsibility - was for absolutely nothing.

He couldn’t stay there anymore, and he couldn’t look at himself anymore

He faked his death, and decided that the crystal had to be dealt with, and so the long, lonely road driven by hurt, loneliness and a desire for revenge began, because certainly the fairies of Eldarya no longer deserved the precious gift of life from the dragons. They did nothing but hurt each other, so why did they deserve it now?

And he wasn’t afraid to die in this quest if it guaranteed his success, because after helping the fairies in their destruction, he didn’t deserve the gift of life from the dragons, his people, his mother, either.

And then it got worse

Instead of succeeding, he took away the last of his family that he had

Suddenly he realized how much the gift of life is worth

Suddenly the hole in his heart, opened first long ago when he realized he would never have a mother, re-opened from the ice that froze it over for his sake

He realizes now, that just because he felt he had a valid point, he ended up worse than the fairies of Eldarya. None of them killed their own family in their own ambitions, none of them sought to destroy Eldarya. They fought to protect their families and people, like him, but they didn’t kill their own family

He resigns, numb from shock that he could ever do such a thing on impulse, and allows himself to be taken prisoner

He asks only one thing - he wants to help bury his brother. Maybe it will provide closure and begin the path to some sort of change from what just happened

No? Well... it’s not like he deserves that honor anyways

The take-away from this whole spiel is that Lance grew up with a tragic past and it all snowballed into a lashing out of anger and disappointment upon realizing one fact, and this could have been very different if he had a mother. He would have had a closer relationship with others, he would have known how to nurture others better, how to possibly work through his emotions better rather than jumping into different situations immediately because he feels a certain way. He missed out on many vital life lessons that he should have learned, but didn’t. And while a village to take care of a child is nearly always beneficial, the child still needs it’s parents. A village is not a substitute for parents, it’s an extra teacher.

Due to this, Lance will always be different from others. He had to be self-sufficient, he had to take care of his brother, he had to be the rock, he had to be curious. It was the only way he could truly assure his and his brother’s survival, because they needed to be prepared in case the villagers decided to make them leave. Why? Who knows, but they didn’t have their parents, so clearly they could always lose everything they have, even when what they have is so little

Overall, I believe Lance is very smart, professional and strives to be better everyday, especially in A New Era, but he’ll never truly grasp the understanding of having close personal relationships. He can hang out with others, have a bit of a laugh, but he’ll never really rely on anyone, he’ll always have a back-up plan, a second way out. In a way, he’s always planning for the possibility that everything could fall apart and be taken from him, even things that he never knew he had or should have, so he’ll always be distanced from everyone. He can play the part of ‘perfect Chief of Obsidian and greatest warrior’, but he will always have a hard time understanding how to maintain a close relationship, because the only person he was ever actually close with was Valkyon, and he’s gone now

Perhaps if he had his mother as a guide, a teacher, a brick house in the storm of life, he would have perceived things differently and things never would have ended up like this

Lance with a very motherly partner:

i proMISE THIS WON’T BE AS LONG AS THE FIRST HEADCANON

Firstly I want to give a quick overview of what I perceive to be a ‘very motherly’ S/O - Being motherly suggests that someone acts upon maternal instincts, and maternal instincts differ from person to person. However, seeing as this ask requests a very motherly S/O, I’m taking a lot of the major aspects about maternal instincts, and what is typically seen in a mother and a motherly S/O, and writing them all within one person. So while there are many motherly partners and people, many of them are motherly in specific ways and are a bit less so in other ways, but again; very motherly S/O = putting as many major points as possible into one person. I originally wanted to write specific traits under their own bullets, but they just merge so much with each other to the point that it’s easier to just describe the general relationship. Hopefully readers who love Lance find a bit of themselves within some of the traits that I provide 😊

Lance didn’t originally intend to get this attached. He enjoyed her company, found it endearing that she worried about him despite his past actions, and found it even more endearing and amusing that she worried about him getting hurt on missions (you know, he’s known as the best warrior in the guard for a reason). However, something about how she treated him struck a chord in him. The villagers he grew up with were never this worried about him... they always just let him do his thing without much bothering. But her... she brought back to surface a deep chasm of mixed emotions that he thought he had forgotten. He realized in time that, while he likes when others depend on him and look up to him, it’s also quite nice for him to have a bit of a break. He begins to notice that he spends so much time trying to provide for others that he forgets to take care of himself sometimes. Suddenly it felt nice to have someone look out for him. He spent so long alone, without his brother and with no one to watch his back, that he realized having a close companion is something that he craves.

And this scares him

He’ll withdraw a bit, try to press the fact that she doesn’t need to worry about him. He’ll be fine, he’ll survive, he’s been through worse, but she won’t have any of it. He’s so used to allowing himself to live only the basics in life that when she begins to tug him into trying to enjoy and appreciate his life a bit more, it startles him a bit. How does he do that? Does he deserve it? He doesn’t really think he does, or can. So he gets a bit irritated every now and again, his personality bristles a bit as he tries to stress that she shouldn’t worry about him. He doesn’t mean to be prickly towards her, but it’s just so hard for him to accept that she wants to offer something the he lived just fine without.

He softens in time, begins to wonder why she wants to offer care to him. He comes to her one night and questions her; her motives, her thoughts, her feelings

She explains that it’s just who she is - she worries - about everyone. She’s a caretaker, she wants to help provide, to help heal, and he doesn’t do a very good job at hiding the fact that he’s in pain...

He softens upon realizing that she’s like this with everyone - it makes sense now - and is then disappointed at the fact that she treats him the same as she treats everyone

Just like the villagers...

It strikes a painful chord in him again, but he’s more comfortable at least understanding her reasoning now... but he notices subtle differences in time...

She seems to check in on him more-often than she does with the others. She tells him to be careful on missions and stresses that she doesn’t want him to get hurt. She worries about every little thing to the point where he needn't bother worrying because she has it covered. When he does get a small wound, or in the rare case he falls ill - but it’s not enough to send him to the Infirmary - she’ll move herself into his room to take care of him. She’ll try to be more included in his life and offer new subjects that she knows more on because she loves to teach him about things and she knows he’s genuinely interested in learning new things

Lance realizes that he truly enjoys all of this - yes even her endless worrying and rants about how she told him to be careful

And when she tries to scold him in a fit of anger because she doesn’t approve of something?

Fucking adorable

He begins to realize that she seems to spend more time with him than with others, seems to worry about him more than she does the others, cares about him more than she does the others

So he asks her another night why she’s so adamant on this - why she feels the need to press all of this onto him instead of giving it to someone who will - almost for sure - be more responsive to this. After all, Lance doesn’t know how to react to this; why does she insist on doing all of this for him when he’ll be fine anyways?

She admits that she enjoys his company, that providing moments of happiness during the day makes her happy as well, and that she admired his sturdiness in the whirlwind of life, but knows it can be tiring, and she enjoys being his safe place when he needs a break

“Well what if I don’t want to be fixed or protected or supported?”

“Then why do you keep letting me care for you like this?”

That stops him

And then he realized; he can find it irritating, annoying, and even overbearing at times, but he really enjoys having someone to care for him in a way that he should have had but never had

“I know you grew up without parents, and without someone to really take care of you, so I understand if my actions seem very strange to you, but this is what it’s like to have someone watch out for you. I worry because I care for you...”

But the look in her eyes, the way she speaks in a soft - affectionate - tone, and how she leans slightly towards him, almost looking ready to take a step towards him but hesitating, all tells him that while she may be a very motherly person, her feelings for him run deeper than just friendship.

‘I worry because I care for you...’ and the more she cares the more she worries

The instant this all dawns on him, he finds one of his hands tangled in her hair, the other wrapped tightly around her small waist to leave as little distance between them as possible, and his lips on hers in a harsh, desperate kiss that reflects all the things he wished he had but never could

Nobody ever offered to care for him like this, nobody ever opened their arms and gave him the opportunity to collapse into them in fatigue, so why should he push this away?

It’s then he realizes that he told himself to control his impulses better. Who’s to say she was alright with moving this quickly?

But she doesn’t push him away - she pulls him closer and lets him take her down onto the bed, and although she allows him to take the lead, they both know that he’s the one basking in her presence

He begins to soften more in time. He begins to realize that instead of being irritated, it’s better to listen to, accept, and diffuse her worries and concerns for him by reminding her that he’s incredibly capable of taking care of himself because he has the knowledge and experience to do so - he’ll do his best to come home safe. And when he’s hurt or ill, he lets her help ease his suffering. She’s forgiving with him, but still needs to scold him and rant every now and again because she needs him to know that she really cares for him. He lets her into his life more, finds places to take her that will spark new conversations and listens intently

And over time, he notices he begins to pick up a few things from her. He tells her to be careful, expresses his worries to her, panics a bit upon finding out she’s in the Infirmary and then steels himself to prepare for the worst as he heads there to do what he can for her (although, unlike her, he doesn’t come bolting through the Infirmary door like a wild Black Dog before asking so many questions that one would wonder if he’s interrogating her). And it comes to the point where one of the two doesn’t need to move into the other’s room for a few nights to care for them; they live together now.

He does this all because he knows better now that that’s what you do when you care for someone

However, as much as he’s gotten used to the fact that his S/O can act very motherly about him - and has come to appreciate that he has someone who cares for him that much - he still hurts occasionally at the fact that he never had a mother. He never had the first caretaker that he should have had

His partner recognizes this once in a while, when it seems like it’s really bothering him again

“Are you ok?” - silence - “You can talk to me, I’ll always be here to listen...” - silence - “You don’t need to talk to me now if you don’t want, I understand, just know that I’ll listen if you need to talk it out.”

His piercing blue gaze meets her kind eyes, a soft glint of a mournful smile on her face. She knows he has moments like these; where he thinks about everything he lost and everything he never had and needs to take a while to mourn it all again. But instead of looking away again, as he used to do...

“I wish I knew her... She seemed so taken by her emotions at times, like me, but somehow she still managed to make the right decisions through it all... I just wish I knew her, had her as a mother...”

Silence

“I know no one could ever take her place, or teach you the full extent of what she could have taught you, but she’s still your mother. She’ll love you no matter what, she’ll encourage you no matter what. She may not be able to tell you, you may not have been raised by your mother, but you’ll always be her son and she will always be your mother.”

She hugs him, offers to make him a cup of hot tea and cuddle on their shared bed, and he doesn’t resist. He misses his mother, wishes he could know what she could have taught him, but as he settles on the bed and watches as his partner shuffles around, he realizes that his S/O is right. He has a mother, who does care for him, who does forgive him (hopefully, he can’t be sure), he just can’t see or talk with her

His S/O returns to his side, hands him the cup and lays against him, her shoulder resting on the headboard behind him as she wraps her arms around him and settles her head at his shoulder. He relaxes against her as she strokes his back, and it occurs to him that while he didn’t know his mother, she must have acted similar to this - caring for him and loving him unconditionally

It occurs to him that his motherly S/O could ease the pain and grief that he carried with him from the beginning, and it’s her natural personality that does so

I don’t think that second headcanon was much shorter than the first one, but hey, this was written with Lance in mind and there’s not really a quick and easy way to explain Lance and his emotions lol.

Have a request? Ask them here!

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[epicstuckyficrecs]

Weekly Recap | March 30-April 5

Out of self-isolation, woop woop! Also a first for me, there’s a podifc on the recap for the first time!

Complete

💙 [Podfic] If They Haven't Learned Your Name by quietnight/ @quietnighty​ (Post-WS | Podfic lenght: >10h | Not Rated): aka Steve and Bucky's Global Honeymoon Revenge World Tour.

in the heat of the moment by Deisderium/ @deisderium​ (ABO, Pre-TFA | 9K | Explicit): In which Steve presents very late as an omega. Bucky isn't supposed to go see him, but when has he ever done what he was supposed to do where Steve is concerned? (Part 1 of would smell as sweet)

💙 good on my own (needed me) by mcwho (Modern AU | 12K | Explicit): There are some mistakes that could be made by anybody. Anybody. Bucky taught high school pretty much his whole life, and that was fine, those were kids, and he knew all of them anyway, which meant there was very little chance of him accidentally fucking any of his students during an impulsive post-marital-breakdown Grindr hook-up. Which is exactly what he had done with Steve.or: bucky has not let steve rogers fuck him since his sophomore year (Part 1 of himbo-verse)

cheffing and sabotage by mcwho (Modern AU | 3K | Explicit): "So,” Steve says conversationally. “That’s a yes on the olive oil. For lube purposes.” Part 2 of himbo-verse

Brooklyn by togina/ @toli-a​ (Post-WS | 8,7K | Teen): "Captain America, what's your stance on gay marriage?" Everyone knows that, by now. Everyone but Bucky.

Poise and Rationality (Have Nothing to Do with Steve Rogers) by romanticalgirl (Canon-verse | 1K | Teen): Steve does something stupid.

💙 bullet in a gun (but in the end, my time will come) by voxofthevoid/ @voxofthevoid​ (Post-Endgame, Canon-divergent | 25K | Explicit): Post-Thanos, Bucky Barnes has happily settled into a life of peace and pining. That’s when alternate versions of the best friend he’s secretly in love with start showing up.

💙 Two Colors, White and Gold by Carelica (Canon-Divergent | 36K | Explicit): He’s here, he’s alive. His hand is on a tree.

Never go to bed alone when you have a library card by relenafanel/ @relenafanel​ (Library AU | 5K | Teen): Tall, blond hottie (in a sweater) was back, staring at the wall of new and popular titles with a thoughtful expression on his face. He came in every Tuesday night like clockwork, read through the summaries on the back of a handful of books with his profile turned just enough towards the front entrance that Bucky could see the slope of his nose and take joy in watching those arm muscles minutely flex as he shifted the book in his grasp.

💙 Like it’s the Only Thing I’ll Ever Do by howdoyousleep/ @howdoyousleep3​ (ABO AU | 39K | Explicit): When Steve opens the door, Bucky feels like he’s been living in clouds for the past few days, maybe even his entire life. Steve is life, Steve is happiness, Steve is the sun. He has such a visceral reaction to seeing the Alpha that he feels his knees go weak, feels his body draw tight towards the other man, pulled in. Or big Alpha Steve moves into sweet little Omega Bucky’s apartment building and a roller-coaster build of a romance ensues.

lay all your love on me by chilibabie07 (Canon | 1,4K | Mature): Bucky wakes up to an empty bed and goes to look for Steve so he can be cuddled.

WIP

Baby, you could be the death of me by SinpaiCasanova (Werewolf Steve, ABO AU | 1/2 | 3K | Explicit): It’s strange for him to consider that fate or the universe–whatever is driving this compulsion, really–needs Bucky here for some reason or another, but he’s passed by these woods at least a thousand times before on his way into town, and each time his eyes drifted toward the trees, his heart would give a restless tug against his ribs like an excited dog on a leash. Eventually, the call became too much for him to ignore, and so here he is, surrendering himself to the woods and praying like hell that he doesn’t end up in the belly of a beast by daylight.

The Mnemosyne Project by onymousann (Post-WS | 11K | 4/? | Explicit): Someone’s trying to talk to the Winter Soldier. Steve intends to find out who. (Part 2 of ocean eyes)

💙 How to Fuck With (and Feed) Your Soulmate by BlueSimplicity/ @bluesimplicity73​ (Soulmate AU, Shrunkyclunks | 11/? | 65K | Explicit): It’s called the Grey Space; a patch of skin marking you as blessed and the first sign you have a soulmate. Steve Rogers didn’t have one when he crashed into the ice. But he did when he woke up in the future. The second sign is the Sense, a sharing of one the senses to help soulmates find each other. Steve’s Sense, taste, is rare, but he loves a challenge and a soulmate is a gift from the Fates. Except instead of a blessing, it’s a curse, since his soulmate is a dick. Bucky Barnes loves food and a homecooked meal is something he cherishes. When his Grey Space starts to itch, Bucky can’t help his excitement, since the Sense he and his soulmate share is taste. But not for long. Whoever he’s bound to has the blandest diet in the world, ignoring all Bucky’s messages. After weeks of putting up with tasteless food, Bucky decides to strike back.

Re-Read

We're All Stupid When We're Hurting by Taste_is_Sweet/ @taste-is-sweet​ (Post-WS | 8K | Teen): Bucky had completed missions while in more terrible pain. It was amazing what you could push through when the punishment for failure was so much worse. But he hadn't needed to do that for over a year now. He'd gotten used to not being in pain, remembered what it was like to be human. He knew no one would ever put him in the chair again. He knew he was safe here. He knew Tony could fix his arm without hurting him. Of course he did. But it didn't make a damn bit of difference to the terror that shook him like a dog at just the thought of sitting down and stretching his arm out for Tony to fuck with. Might as well stretch out his neck to have his throat slit. Hell, that'd be easier.

💙 we gotta let go of all of our ghosts by hitlikehammers (Post-WS | 8K | Mature): It’s just hard, really, if he’s honest: this time, more than the first, here in a new millennium, having found Bucky again against all odds, in a time where there was hope, where they could have been… Well. It’s just that it’s bad enough to come in second place to a Stark once in his lifetime. But twice might just be more than Steve can bear.

The thing that drives the wolves away by caughtinanocean/ @wintergaydar​ (Post-WS | 7,8K | Teen): The thing about Bucky these days is that, while he might be a semi-mythical assassin, he's also vulnerable—the kind of vulnerable that makes total strangers want to drape a blanket over his shoulders and take him to safety. The problem is, of course, that Bucky is already safe.

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

Supernatural 15x16, Drag Me Away (From You) -- Overall Thoughts

I can’t believe we’re this late in the game and I’m still doing overall thoughts posts on this show instead of full-fledged reviews. I should be full swing reviewing and analyzing every detail, making predictions on what the endgame is going to entail...but I just can’t. This show just has not been giving me anything to really latch onto, it’s not giving me material I want to review and write meta about. The Final Episodes are really just episodes that are just kind of there. A couple of nice things sprinkled throughout but ultimately, not really anything that leaves much of a lasting impression on me. Like, why is this show that is so important to me, why are my SPN posts starting to sound more and more like my Shadowhunters posts (a show I did not enjoy and was very happy was cancelled)? Why am I getting so apathetic towards this show? And why is it that with every episode I’m just getting more and more pissed off at Dean? We’re in The Final Episodes; he should be getting better, not worse. 

But lets get on with this shall we? As always, I’m never too sure how spoilery I’m going to get when I write these posts so just a word of caution. Probably going to be spoilers. If you have plans to watch the episode yet and don’t want to be spoiled, probably skip this. 

Now, this episode was nice on the appreciation aspect that we get to see young Sam and Dean again possibly for the last time so I was happy we at least got that (although the moment was nearly ruined with young Dean’s whole “you’re not going to college because you’re too dumb” thing, Dean’s emotional manipulation and abuse started real early). It was still nice to see them regardless of how uninspired the writing might have been for this episode. Sorry Meghan, for me, this episode was not your best work. This episode was just a typical MotW episode and when the overall arching plot mythos is bad or boring as it kinda has been this season, I normally enjoy MotW episodes. But the material in this episode just lacked charm and I really didn’t care about anything that was happening. And then we had this real kind of cringey line at the end where the damsel tells Dean it’s not good to lie but the episode really wasn’t doing a whole lot to hammer that theme in. There were conversations with Young Dean not admitting that he was scared but honestly if I was a kid and looking at this self-proclaimed monster hunter, I don’t think I’d feel all that great if he revealed to me he was scared. And there was the part about Dean lying about the nest of dead children and again, I understand that kind of lie. He was a kid himself, with other kids and his kid brother. Of course he wouldn’t want to tell these kids about a nest of dead children. So the whole theme this episode was attempting to hammer in about lying really kind of misses its mark. If the damsel hadn’t had that super cringey line at the end, I would’ve thought the theme was telling white lies is okay to protect the ones you care about which would then propel Dean to continue to not tell Sam the truth about Jack Da Bomb. But instead, we get this real half-hearted attempt to tell us that lying is bad and just causes problems later which I mean really, this show has already hammered to death for the past 15 seasons. We really didn’t need to hit it again, Dean should really know better at this point.

But moving on, lets talk about another thing, lets talk about why is it that Cas continuously tells Dean he’s leaving and then leaves without a word to Sam? I’m sure the Destiel shippers out there will proclaim this is because in Cas’s eyes, Dean is the most important and Sam is just an afterthought and doesn’t really matter. But as a multi shipper, and someone who’s pretty big into Sastiel these days, my thought is that Cas doesn’t tell Sam when he’s leaving because he knows Sam will try to stop him. Now why did he trust Dean to tell Sam about Jack? Honestly, I just don’t think Cas realizes that Dean is not to be trusted when it comes to things like this. I think Cas told Dean this in a hope that just like with him, it stirred feelings of guilt within him about not being there for Jack but of course had the opposite affect Dean because Dean as a mentioned in previous posts is very much still a child and right now only sees his need for revenge. It’s not necessarily so much revenge against Jack, Dean has more re-directed his revenge to what he believes is the real cause of his pain which is Chuck and to a certain extent Amara. But he can’t be concerned about Jack because again, he has a child’s approach to things. He has tunnel vision when it comes to things he wants. He sees this thing he wants, he sees the most direct path to get it, so that’s the direction he’s going to walk in. He doesn’t care to look both ways before he crosses the street, he doesn’t care that the cars swerving to avoid him are instead about to hit telephone pulls and catch fire. All he sees is what he wants and if he can get to that point before he gets hurt, then that’s what he’s going to do. (Huh, maybe I am in the mood to meta after all, that was quite the metaphor I used). But the point is because Cas is an adjusted adult being he hears that Jack is going to die and he thinks, we need a plan C and expects Dean to feel the same way and tell Sam for him. Cas knows Sam upon hearing that with Plan B, Jack is going to die and Cas is now searching for a Plan C that could involve sacrificing himself instead, Sam would not be okay with either option. But because Cas unfortunately still has his Dean blinders on, he can’t see that even if Dean feels a smidge of potential guilt towards what’s going to happen to Jack, Dean is willing to sacrifice Jack in order to get what he wants. Unfortunate but a lovely Sastiel moment nonetheless. 

And then of course, we have the fight in the car with Sam and Dean. Sam understandably is very upset with Dean for keeping this from him. And Dean is yelliing at Sam that Sam would have hated it, he wasn’t on board with using Jack, he wasn’t on board with Amara and I just think that its funny. Because I remember a lot of meta writers within the Destiel fandom kind of talking about how Sam supposedly sympathizes while Dean empathizes and I’m just looking at this scene and thinking, “ok, how on earth does this correlate to that sentiment.” We’re not getting a whole lot of empathy from Dean here and instead Sam, as always, is being the moral compass here. But anyway, Dean is shouting how they don’t have a choice, this is their only option, blah, blah.blah. And I’m just like, “Dean, you do have a choice, but you’re just a child mentally and refuse to look at alternatives because killing Chuck and Amara ala Jack Da Bomb is the most direct path to what you want. And I’m just really happy the that Sam got to the point where he raised his voice at Dean. He didn’t simper down, he wanted Dean to hear that he was not okay with this and the scene just ended with Sam just telling Dean to not speak, not try to make Sam feel better or make any half-assed apologies to Sam, Sam tells Dean to “just drive”. And this is kind of nice character growth for Sam. Because with how Sam was in this scene, I half expected him to tell Dean to stop the car and let him out and he was going to leave. But, I also think unlike what Sam did in season 1, he’s now mature enough to understand that even if he leaves, it’s not going to change anything. He’s not good with what’s planned for Jack’s future but he knows that if he stays, he can maybe find a way to stop it from happening, which he might not be able to do if he had simply left. So character growth there. 

But anyway, thanks for listening to me ramble. I apparently had a lot more to say than I thought I did. But like I said, another episode in the books that I really don’t feel inclined to watch again. It’s another episode that’s there, it fills up space but really doesn’t mean a whole lot to me in the grand scheme of things and really feels kind of disjointed. This whole season has kind of been feeling that way. It’s like they only had a couple of ideas for the overall plot arch of this season and now they’re just stuck with filling up the empty space. Although, it was nice that Billy called the boys and essentially the writers out on them doing a MotW episode this late in the game when they should be focusing on other things. 

[why-this-kolaveri-machi]

what more can you do?

WOO! this week’s episode was sad and weird and badly paced and startlingly, unevenly mature in true titans fashion. i loved it (with reservations)! let’s talk about it in excruciating detail:

SPOILERS ahead.

1. i can’t say that i’m awfully thrilled about the show following up on a character’s literal suicide attempt by... not addressing said suicide attempt at all. maybe it’s the awkward way an entire episode’s worth of flashback was shoehorned in between the end of 2.07--where dick literally talked jason off the ledge while in the throes of a psychotic break of his own--and the beginning of this one, but it’s honestly not just bad storytelling, but irresponsible storytelling. 

1.5. in a general sense, tho, the tableau at the beginning of the episode is so egregiously unfair--so shockingly, plainly one-sided, with a slump shouldered dick facing the world, only kory on his side, that it’s quite apparent that it’s the lowest these heroes can go. and i do think their individual reactions to dick’s confession provide an interesting insight into their characters. hank and dawn have been operating alone for so long, each a reminder of their traumas and losses and very human frailty to the other, without even the resources that dick and the batman enjoy. it’s been them v the world for so goddamn long; is it any wonder that they were looking for the first excuse to bail out of there, to not Deal with the idea that what they were doing to deal with their traumas and guilt was clearly not working, and dick was--and has been always--so willing to be the scapegoat? hank punching dick was utterly unwarranted--but i can accept that as part of the unaddressed emotional outbursts arising out of years of accumulated head injuries from both college football and vigilantism. (this isn’t to excuse what he did but to contextualise it within hank’s history and personality.) their instinct when facing ugly truths is to retreat to what they think is familiar and what they need--except, as hank realises later in the episode, that’s exactly what’s fucking them up further.

rose is understandably upset at being lied to about her brother’s death and the titans being complicit in the same--but i’m curious that her reaction was to merely leave and not try and fight them. maybe after being defeated by dick while sparring and nearly being killed by rachel she was sensible enough to realise that she couldn’t take them on all at once? i don’t know--she’s curiously been a bit of a cipher this season. jason leaving with her made sense tho--unburdened of the weight of being the team’s scapegoat, understandably miffed at dick for keeping a secret that nearly cost him his life and left him with a great deal of trauma, just Angry at the world in general, he gravitates towards rose, the only other outsider/rebel who tried to reach out to him when everybody else shunned him or looked at him like an impostor. i think the decision was more impulsive than anything--they still look confused and uncertain in the taxi as they leave the tower behind. but--i don’t know. theirs is the storyline that i’m the most perplexed about. we just don’t have a lot of information about either of them, rose especially. 

(a part of me still thinks she’s slade’s mole in the tower. but why would she leave if she is? to keep up appearances bc to react in any other way to the news of her brother’s death would be suspicious? maybe she left because her job is done and the titans were splitting up? maybe she was part of the long game to seduce jason over to slade’s side--seeking revenge for dick swaying jericho over to the titans’? am i going to stop asking myself questions in this post? am i ever going to write a review that’s not just stream-of-consciousness nonsense? only time will tell.)

DONNA. oh, donna. her decision to leave seems to me a logical continuation of her s2 arc that i’d talked about in a previous review--paranoid, insecure, retraumatised, and taking out her frustrations on jason and dick. it’s also very interesting to me that she complained to rachel about dick treating them like “soldiers” and only told them things that he deemed that they “need[ed] to know.”  it was because of jillian and whatever mysterious business that themyscira was conducting in sf that she and garth and slade ever landed up in that airport at all; even worse, jillian deemed it was something that donna didn’t need to know until it was too late. donna lost so much in that fiasco--the man she loved, her friends, several members of her amazon family, and her sense of purpose, her belief in her strength and her destiny and her faith that other people trusted her as a warrior and as a leader. she’s projecting all that pain onto dick--who again, doesn’t deserve all this shit but takes it anyway because of his own issues.

1.8. and, like. as much as jericho’s death became the Traumatic Event that overshadowed almost everything else in dick’s life for the last five years and helps explain a lot of his hang-ups right from s1, it just doesn’t have the same significance for the others. don’t get me wrong--i’m sure hank, donna and dawn are devastated and guilty about the part that they had to play in manipulating jericho and his eventual death. but their issues with each other, with the titans tower and with their past run deeper and in different directions, and i think all of that came into play when they each decided to go their separate ways.

1.95. idek what the fuck is going on with rachel. i felt every ounce of dick’s heartbreak and devastation when she got up to leave with donna. for all that she saved dick in the first episode of this season, she still hasn’t reached the point where she’s willing to unburden her emotions and issues on him. it must be frustrating and sad for her to realise just how much dick didn’t trust her either. but there’s something else going on as well: maybe she’s realised she has no real control over her re-emerging powers, and, carrying on with the fatalistic attitude she had at the end of 2.05, she wants to spare the titans the chaos and darkness that she carries around with her. (she’s used to running away at this point, after all.) she goes with donna bc donna knows her the least: it would therefore be easy to fool her and escape. 

2. more faddei! and kory backstory! \o/ 

it’s curious that they never once bring up trigon, because s1 gave the impression that she’d come to earth with a specific mission to seek his portal out and destroy it before he could, y’know, Fuck The Universe Up. faddei makes it sound like kory just went on this fun little sabbatical before taking up royal duties, which kiiinda undercuts a lot of what was cool about her s1 arc. i realise you aren’t entirely happy with your freshman season, titans, and s2 looks like it might be a soft reboot, but you don’t have to mutilate it like this!

but seriously. the stakes just got upped exponentially for kory, and it would be really interesting to see where she goes from here. apart from a promise to rachel, she doesn’t really owe the rest of the titans anything--not that i think she views relationships in such transactional terms, of course. on the other hand, abandoning her responsibilities on tamaran has led to its takeover by an unfit leader and the deaths of several of her family and friends. the choice shouldn’t be a choice at all. she should go back home. and yet--she waited too long, and the choice has been taken away from her. faddei is dead, both of their ships are destroyed, and she is stuck on earth, grieving and frustrated and furious. kory is usually very clear headed about exactly where she stands emotionally, but after such a big event, she must be feeling so much pain, guilt, sorrow, anger, even resentment. it’s so easy to look at kory’s level-headedness and open, empathetic personality and use her to prop up other characters, but i hope that this isn’t always the case, and that she’ll be allowed to really work through these emotions while somebody else looks out for her. 

2.35. (the little snippets of faddei and kory just enjoying the shit out of the Little Things that humanity has to offer is just... it filled me with so much warmth. i wouldn’t mind an entire episode of them just chilling and exploring and annoying each other with badly-applied out-of-context pop culture references)

2.5. blackfire! i don’t know much about comics!blackfire beyond “she was starfire’s sister, Evil, and possibly sold her sister into slavery??? yikes” so i’m just going purely off what the show has revealed about her so far. it was honestly disconcerting to see so many references to her possible disability (?) and to see both that and the efforts to accommodate her spoken about in... i want to say mocking way? i don’t know. i just saw a murder mystery/thriller movie today where the serial killer was revealed to have been both disabled from birth and mentally ill, and maybe i’m just feeling extra sensitive to the truly disturbing and pervasive trope of having disabled characters be Evil--and tying their Evil to their disability. 

2.8. anyhow, blackfire appears to have accumulated a fair bit of power in the time that kory’s been gone: not only can she remotely possess other tamaraneans but she can blow up their ships too. (and didn’t faddei say that she had goons on the ground, looking for starfire?)

2.9. it’s a Lot to deal with this late in the season. maybe kory will leave for tamaran to deal with blackfire once and for all at the end of the season. and if titans ends up cancelled, wouldn’t that be a bittersweet ending.

(wherein ‘bittersweet’ translates to ‘devastating’ ofc)

3. oh where do i even start with dick

his worst fears came true. after his confession, not only did his old friends up and leave, but so did rachel and jason, which he found more heartbreaking than anything else. utterly consumed by guilt and convinced more than ever before of his culpability, he actively seeks out ways to self-flagellate, first by going to adeline to apologise, then by banishing himself, then by making sure he is punished (tho i have my doubts on that last one; will elaborate a little later). after watching him have an extended psychotic break and dash into not one but two suicide missions, watching dick grayson do this to himself feels like watching an extended feature on human suffering. it’s not fun, or pretty, and i can feel it reaching its nadir so that dick can bounce back up again, but i hope it happens soon.

(dick’s natural tendency to internalise guilt and responsibility into a hard little diamond core at his centre and his long training with batman with all the emphasis on secrets and subterfuge with a healthy underpinning of paranoia ironically means that he does so much goddamn emotional labour for this team. he’s the glue that keeps them together, that gives them purpose. he’s trying so hard to do good by everybody that he isn’t really able to achieve it with any of them, which leads to another self-flagellating spiral and him determining to try harder and the cycle just keeps going on. only kory seems to have ever broken this cycle, because she’s never demanded anything of him, nor he of her. it’s really sad to think how bereft dick feels right now, and more than that, how it’s stopping him from being there for the people who really do need him and trust him, like gar and rachel.)

3.25. adeline makes a very good point about how merely apologising doesn’t mean you’re owed forgiveness, and that seeking it out after all these years is a self-serving exercise in itself. but i can see dick taking it hard, especially after discovering that she’s letting slade--the man who actually killed her son--recuperate at her home. (and let’s be clear: however good her intentions, she participated in lying to her child about the truth of what his father actually does. wow, jericho was really just fucked over by pretty much every one he loved, wasn’t he?)

but i am glad to see dick isn’t so far gone that he takes the blame for jericho’s death in front of slade. he’s very aware that slade has permanently broken the team and very aware of the threat slade poses if they ever try to get back together again, but he’s not going to completely surrender every last shred of his self-worth and dignity to this man, and that was refreshing to see.

3.5. so he banishes himself to the farthest place he can think of with nothing more than the shirt on his back and a single duffel bag. it’s so over-the-top yet so... dick grayson.

3.8. BUT WAIT! ~PLOT TWIST~

ok so here’s what’s happening, all right? strap in:

a) jericho is one hundred percent inside slade. i have no doubts about this. adeline knows this too. it’s why she was so even-keeled while talking to dick, why she confidently said that jericho loved dick, and why she said “they” might be willing to forgive him. i’m thinking when slade crawled back home, jericho took advantage of his father’s momentary weakness to tell what was happening to his mother. 

b) jericho tried to communicate to dick. i saw something somewhere which said that slade had gestured something very specific in asl while conversing with dick? i’m willing to believe that was intentional.

c) when dick was turning to leave and slade called him one last time and gave his “banishment sentence” jericho likely jumped bodies from slade to dick

d) so why did dick get himself arrested at the airport?

- dick was going through, as others have speculated, a dissociative episode. given how he’s exhibited signs of mental illness throughout this season this isn’t that far out of the realm of possibility, but it’s a weak and redundant narrative bridge and wasn’t shot in a way that suggested that it was a mental break. so i’m ruling this out.

- jericho took over. maybe he felt that this was the only way he could force dick to stay in sf. maybe some of his father’s anger/resentment leeched into him and he wanted to dick to experience some actual punishment instead of scarpering again. maybe he was overwhelmed by dick’s own self-flagellating tendencies and chose the shortest route to maximum pain. maybe it’s a combination of all three.

- dick finally got his brain into gear and realised at the last minute that jericho had possessed slade and was trying to tell him something. why he then proceeded to get himself arrested instead of running out of the airport is a mystery.

personally, i’m leaning towards the ‘jericho possessed dick’ possibility.

4. gar is such a sweetheart and i am so glad that he took centrestage this episode, even though, like always, it was to support another character and ended up with him crying and begging for help from an unresponsive dick. *sighs*

4.5. much like dick himself, he’s trying to do good by everybody, only to end up badly misjudging a situation, and all alone. 

5. oof. this has gone on for far too long and i am Tired. more thoughts to come later, because right now my brain is as disorganised as... as disorganised as a titans episode. hah! self-burn!!!

[mittensmorgul]

Thought: Half of why John is more accepting in 14x13 than most of us would expect based on his past behavior is because John kinda thinks it's a dream. The other half is because he is just a better person when Mary is around. See the "John would have hated John" posts re 5x13.

I’m gonna use this opportunity to point out a few things about the episode that I think a lot of people may have missed, because it goes a very long way toward understanding John’s reaction here:

2003 John, who from the way he showed up in the bunker, armed and apparently mid-fight... I can’t even imagine the shock of suddenly finding oneself supposedly sixteen years in the future, you know? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

From Donna’s cabin, where Mary was before they called her back to the bunker, it would’ve been approximately a 12 hour drive. Sam and Dean had TWELVE HOURS or so to talk with John before we rejoin them in the kitchen just before Mary shows up. Because heck, they had SIXTEEN YEARS worth of stuff to catch him up on, you know?

First off, he had to be so shaken when he arrived. He might’ve been thinking he get clobbered in the fight he’d thought he was in and was this all a hallucination or a dream? Or was he actually killed, and this was heaven or something? Who even knows what he could’ve been thinking at first, but he seemed to pretty quickly accept that it was real.

This is where one of the lessons the show has been encouraging us to learn really comes in useful. That being, STUFF HAPPENS OFFSCREEN and the show has encouraged us to accept the fact that what happens offscreen actually counts. So we have to assume that in the hours upon hours they talked with John, they laid out the vast majority of stuff that’s happened in the last decade and a half.

Some of it would probably be pretty difficult to hear, like the fact John didn’t survive to get revenge on Azazel (heck, 2003 him might not even know he was legit getting CLOSE even), but that Sam and Dean DO. How difficult would it be to tell this version of John that Dean sold his soul to save Sam, that he spent 40 years in Hell and was rescued by an angel, to tell them about how angels and demons were manipulating them all for decades to start the apocalypse?

Or that Sam let himself be possessed by Lucifer to stop the apocalypse, pulling both Lucifer and Michael into a cage in Hell to save the world? Like... this is still just the tip of the iceberg here... There’s still Raphael and the second attempt at the apocalypse, Soulless!Sam, Dean’s year in the suburbs, Purgatory, Leviathans, how they’ve befriended angels and demons and monsters oh my... oh, and God. Who also wrote a series of novels about their lives that are technically one of the gospels now... all the way up to how Dean earned a gift from God’s sister, the primordial darkness herself... that Mary has been resurrected...

Plus all that stuff about time travel and alternate universes they’ve experienced.

And for John, personally, the story of how they discovered the bunker in the first place, when the father John had always thought abandoned him as a child had actually traveled into the future, saved Sam’s life, and was killed by the demon Abaddon in the process. I mean THAT RIGHT THERE had to be a horrific shocker to learn, you know?

For JOHN, that’s possibly the most life-alteringly earth-shattering thing they could’ve told him, you know? Just to have an ANSWER to that question that had plagued him since HE was four years old and his dad disappeared off the face of the earth. Not to mention learning that he should’ve been a MoL legacy himself, and that if his father hadn’t been hunted through time by a Knight of Hell, John would’ve grown up “in the life” of monsters and magic himself... Kinda an eye opener, you know?

Oh, and learning that their family was a bloodline going all the way back to Cain and Abel (yes, that Cain and Abel, and by the way Dean killed Cain that one time), and that their family was part of a much larger cosmic plot to bring on the apocalypse in the first place, and Azazel-- John’s lifelong obsession-- was only the first step in all of that and a whole bunch of worse stuff happened after.

Oh, plus, Dean killed Hitler.

They’ve met Samuel Colt, Eliot Ness, Dean was on a sub during WW2 for a day or so, and traveled back to 1973 and 1978 and met with John both times (oh, and Dean was the dude who talked John into buying the Impala when he’d intended to buy a stupid VW van).

And this is STILL only scraping the tip of the iceberg here... They talked for TWELVE. HOURS. or so...

Sam and Dean have had some shockingly full lives, you know? It’s not even a surprise to me that after all that, after seeing the evidence of his sons’ lives laid out like that for him-- the good, the bad, the cosmic and the mundane-- (GOD! HIMSELF! MADE THEM PANCAKES! RIGHT OVER THERE!) that John’s only possible reaction would be to understand just how far his children went after his death.

In the wake of learning all of that, what they went through pre-2005 is just kinda... overshadowed, you know? Almost unreal itself.

But yeah, because of all of this ^^, and then the absolute SHOCK of seeing Mary again after all this time, after spending the majority of his adult life seeking revenge and justice for her death, and the long and painful search for the truth that kinda wrecked ALL their lives, to see her again alive and happy and whole... well, heck... everything else kinda pales to that. The literal horror show he and Sam and Dean endured (even the bits that were blatantly his fault) just... they’re suddenly worth it all, just for that moment, you know?

In a weird way, in that moment John had the burden of suffering with Mary’s death lifted off of him, and he could stand there in the perspective of that more innocent John from 1978 who’d unwittingly judged his own future actions so harshly. For one night, he got to step through to the other side of all that trauma and look back on it from a point where he and his family had finally WON. Where they’d emerged from it and built a life for themselves that he might never be able to understand, but he can appreciate it.

Even in 1.21, he told Sam that his goal was to finally be able to walk away from their mission when it was done, for Sam to be able to go back to school, for Dean to have a normal life, for him to finally be able to rest thinking he’d been able to serve Justice on Mary’s behalf. John himself didn’t even plan to continue hunting out beyond killing the demon who killed Mary, you know? I’m not sure he even had considered a future at all for himself out beyond that singular life goal. Because that’s what living for revenge does to a person.

But this also offered him the fresh perspective that of course there wasn’t really an end to hunting, and that Azazel wasn’t the Final Boss they’d needed to defeat. And he’d have some small notion of just how awful the burden he’d left Sam and Dean with all those years ago-- which THIS John is still THREE YEARS AWAY FROM DUMPING ON THEM.

Ow, time travel.

Granted, the episode didn’t try to explain or defend any of this to the audience, because it should never HAVE to... Can you even imagine how much of a mess of an episode that would’ve been if they’d even tried? Because the story of this episode was being told on multiple levels:

they didn’t try to overwhelm the GA with all of this heaviness, because the GA wouldn’t even care. The GENERAL notion of Sam and Dean’s lives to this point and their emotional states in canon during s14 would be enough of an explanation (trust me that the GA doesn’t have Strong Feelings about John the way Fandom does)

this was also the big PR push episode this season, and a lot of JDM folks likely tuned in just for him while having only a tangential knowledge of SPN canon to go on... introducing 14 seasons worth of emotional turmoil for their sake is kinda... pointless...

They assumed that people in the fandom who ARE invested in these characters emotionally would actually understand all of this already without needed to be spoon-fed all of this again

Because that’s how writing works. The writers have to trust that the audience is actually engaging with the story and possesses critical thinking skills.

I think some of the disconnect here was that we each went into this episode with our own personal baggage attached, with our own feelings about how WE might personally react if we were in Sam and Dean’s positions here. And if Sam and Dean didn’t react the way we hoped they would, whether it be via expressing anger at John over how he raised them, or just yelling about any or all of the above, then it was OUR job as the Thinking Audience to ask WHY, and to consider the past fourteen years of canon in coming to a clearer understanding of Sam and Dean themselves.

I wrote something the other day (yesterday? maybe... hang on... http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/182723615495/rosewhipped22-so-i-havent-rewatched-lebanon-yet) about Dean’s wish that the pearl granted, because he HAS been thinking about his entire life-- including the baggage he’s been trying to lay down all season exemplified in his conversation with Sasha about her father in 14.05. And I think this episode nailed that aspect of Dean’s personal growth, by bringing John back the way they did and specifically NOT making it about anger or bitterness, but about finally being accepting of HIMSELF and of the entirety of his own life, setting down all the shit he can’t change while also acknowledging that he wouldn’t change any of it if it meant it wouldn’t bring him to this current point in his life. And that is HUGE. That is GROWTH and MATURITY.

Because this episode wasn’t really about John at all, but about Sam and Dean (and even Mary) finally getting to lay John’s memory to rest so they can move forward without dragging his ghost along in their wake.

[littleartistthoughts]

Romeo x Juliet

Sooo. Sometime during my middle school years, I was on the AMV side of YouTube. I stumbled across an AMV of the anime, Romeo x Juliet, to the background song: “Romeo and Juliet.” Out of curiosity, I searched up the anime, and I found it on YouTube. I think I watched the final scenes of the last episode first, without any context. I guess I was interested enough to start from the beginning. 

And I became obsessed. By obsessed, I mean, seriously, seriously, obsessed. I fell in love with everything -- the main characters, the music, the world. The romance was touching, the story was impacting, and it was just perfect. I cried sooo hard. It became one of those things that touched me so much to the point I thought about it for weeks and weeks. I searched up AMV’s and fanart and scoured the Wikipedia page over and over, so eager to have more. 

I even tried to burn the entire series on DVD because I wanted to watch it whenever I wanted (so I had to learn how to burn a DVD, though I don’t think I ever actually succeeded). Eventually, though, by some luck, I found the DVD at Best Buy, and my dad bought it for me. 

I shared it with my friends. I sent them all home to watch it, and I felt overjoyed when they came back to school the next day saying they binged it and cried and loved it. We became something of a fan club. Lol. 

Then time went on and I thought of it less and less, though I was always fond of the memory of watching it. I remembered it as a sad, beautiful anime that I loved so much. Actually, it impacted me so much that I’m borrowing some elements of the story for my own works. To this day, I reference the show when I’m wondering about the design of my own fantasy universes. 

These days, I’m slowly molding my Sol Verynda universe. I’ve been doing that for about four years now. I keep changing things or developing them further. Sometimes, I run out of inspiration. I’m still dragging details out of the world where I can find them. Sometimes you just need a giant push. 

I don’t remember the reason, but sometime during this past week or the last, Romeo x Juliet popped into my mind. I think I was just reminiscing the story. And then I decided to just watch it. You know. For the heck of it. 

So for the first time in a very, very long time, I watched the series. 

I’m a lot older now and more mature than I was in middle school, which means there’s a lot more that I can understand now. That means I’m also a lot more cynical now. And critical. And the devil’s always on my shoulder. Plus this raging depression that just won’t go away is in my mind. So I re-watched the anime through a different lens. 

Still me, but a different version. 

I watched the series over the course of a few days (busy with school and work). I decided to watch it in Dub because that’s the original way I watched it, and I wanted to recapture that feeling I got when I watched before. Even though my sister gave me such a hard time about it. Like, seriously. She came into my room and slapped my phone out of my hands because she was so disgusted. I retaliated. 

I like the Dub also because the script is so lovely in English. They incorporate some Shakespearian speak (I learned later that it’s really called iambic pentameter). So the characters sometimes speak like it’s the 14th or something century, and it’s pleasant to hear. I also just really like hearing them speak poetically in an American accent. 

Buuuut, I caved out of curiosity. I searched the Subbed version on YouTube and watched a few minutes of the first episode, just to see the difference. And, well. I get it. The show was made specifically for Japanese, and so that version is actually very fitting. Buuut, I still continued on with the dub. I’m thinking now, though, that I’m going to rewatch the show in the Subbed version sometime soon. It’ll be like seeing the story again, but with a different feel. So, yeah. 

Anywayyyy, so the story. The show takes liberties with the adaptation. I’ve never read the original play, but we all know how it goes. And I think I watched Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio, so I had an idea. In the original, Romeo belongs to the Montague family and Juliet belongs to the Capulets. Their families hate each other, but they fall in love anyway. After a string of events, Romeo and Juliet die together, and the family conflict is resolved by this tragedy. 

In the anime, Romeo’s father, Leontes Montague, murders every member of the Capulet family so he can take over the city, Neo Verona, as ruler. Only Juliet, who was rescued by her family’s loyalists, escapes. She’s two years old. Fourteen years later, Montague is the tyrannical king of the city, and Juliet is forced into hiding. She disguises herself as a boy, named Odin, though she was never told the reason why she had to do so. 

Montague is on the hunt to find her. In his tyranny, he allows his guards to torment the citizens. And so Juliet, disguised as a man, takes on the persona of the Red Whirlwind to defend the people. 

Eventually, Juliet winds up at the palace, dressed as a girl, for the Rose Ball. And she and Romeo meet. And it’s a love at first sight moment. 

Later, Juliet finally learns of her heritage, and her world becomes chaotic. 

One thing I didn’t realize when I was younger was just how much of a sweetheart Romeo is. He lived a rough life in the palace. His father was emotionally and physically abusive. His mother left him to join a convent (though she deeply regretted leaving him). He was alone at the palace except for his best friend, Benvolio, and his Dragon Steed (basically, flying pegasus), Cielo. Despite that, he had a big heart. He was nothing like his father. He genuinely was a good person. 

And Juliet just deserved so much better. The girl could never catch a break. She and Romeo had similar temperaments. She was really sweet and considerate with a good, forgiving heart. But she was also this badass swordsman secret vigilante who was a fearless leader and fought for justice. We see her character develop over the course of the series. She slowly matures after all her mistakes. And in the end she’s the one to save the world. 

The love shared between these two is really the driving force of the story. It’s the reason the two fought so hard to create a world of love instead of hatred. Instead of revenge, Juliet’s focus was on freedom and happiness. Without Romeo, she might have actually killed Montague and gone with the route of hatred. 

The series did get a little cheesy and naive sometimes, I felt while watching. That’s the cynical adult in me. However, the show doesn’t hesitate to admit that. For example, when Romeo’s trying to motivate a group of exiles to cultivate a dead land, his words do seem childish and idealistic. And several inmates point that out. But they do eventually try. 

I don’t know. To me, it’s a reminder that the idealism of children is so powerful. Adults don’t have that same spirit. A lot of us are always worried about the bad outcomes of things. We’re always tired. We’re so used to seeing bad things that we become cynical. But kids aren’t so used to it yet, so they still have these grand hopes. 

It can be a disadvantage, of course, such as when Juliet jumped into an opportunity out of her naivety, just to see her loyalists fall. 

But, still. We get characters like William (a caricature of Shakespeare himself), who is so childish and idealistic and perpetually inspired. 

When I was in middle school, I hadn’t yet experienced a real relationship. So it was fun to imagine what it would be like. Watching Romeo and Juliet’s relationship blossom gave me such a warm, fluttery feeling. You know. I wanted a romance like that. 

Re-watching it, post-heartbreak from my FL and other “romantic” endeavors, I view love a lot differently now. Honestly, I haven’t felt fondly about it for a long time. I’ve come to a point where I almost detest it. I detest boys and the hurt they can cause me. It’s hard to imagine myself in a good, loving, idealistic relationship again after all the guys I’ve encountered. 

Well. My heart is still too broken for a new love, but I still felt my heartstrings pulled by the anime. Maybe it’s too soon to tell, but I think my opinion has shifted a bit. I forgot, really, how amazing romantic love can be. How consuming. Even when I’m not a part of it, just seeing it unfold is so precious. It makes me feel all warm and happy inside. And inspired to write. 

Anyway. 

One other thing that I’m really noticing now that I just didn’t before is the symbolism. That scene where Romeo asked Juliet (without knowing she was present) what flower she would prefer for a garden, she answered with a “rose.” I remember feeling confused. The entire series, the white iris was the symbol of their relationship. But why would she answer a rose?

Well. The iris is on the Capulet family crest, and the rose is on the Montague family crest. Juliet was saying she wanted him. 

Also, Leontes Montague entered the family by becoming a ward, and then poisoning his way to the top. Also, his father is a Capulet, meaning Romeo and Juliet are distant cousins. Oof. 

Also, I know more about art and architecture now thanks to Art History courses. So seeing all the reliefs and structures in the series was astounding. Seriously. Astounding. There’s this constant image of a goddess with angel’s wings in prayer. It appears in statues, reliefs, statuettes, paintings, etc. There was a goddess statue at the fountain where Romeo and Juliet first met. 

In the end, we learned this goddess is a symbol of Escalus, the grand tree that serves as a life force to the continent. 

If anything, I really really really wish there was a prequel or something that went into the history of the Capulet family and the tree of Escalus. There were so many unanswered questions. Like, why was Neo Verona floating over the sky the whole time? How? Why did Escalus keep it afloat? Why did the Capulet family have to be the one to make sacrifices? Why the girls? Who was Ophelia, really? What’s the history? When they fell from the sky, did they just rejoin the larger world? They mention Christian and Greek mythos, so how do they know about it? They say Escalus is the patron goddess of Neo Verona, so are there others? 

Sadly, we might never find out. But it’s all still very interesting. 

Neo Verona is a living, breathing world. It’s a fantasy world that we fall in love with. 

All the side characters make us care for saving the world, and Juliet mentions this, too. She decides her sacrifice would be worth it if it meant her loved ones would get to live. And we agree, too, because we come to love all the minor characters. Every single one. Even though we don’t want her to die. 

Watching it this time around, I also started to understand Montague, and admire him as a villain. He’s layered. He’s vicious. He’s ruthless. He’s a little insane. He was never loved (he says this in his final moments). His mother died when he was young. He told Romeo he deeply cared for him, which I kind of believe. In a twisted way, I believe he did love him. I believe he also loved Romeo’s mother, Portia. When he visited her, he started by saying she could have lived in luxury with him if she didn’t leave. 

Montague also seemed to genuinely care for Escalus. For some reason. Maybe he didn’t want to the world to end with him in it. He seemed to be searching for a genuine solution to the problem. 

Anytime Montague was on screen, he was riveting. Truly terrifying. Charming with some, like Hermoine and other lady nobility. But murderous. And a swordsman. Underneath it all, all his heinous acts, he just wanted love. In the end, he died in Juliet’s arms. 

The mythos of the world was incredible as well. I’m a sucker for fantasy, and the show really runs with all my favorite things. Prophecy. Ancient things. Sacrifice. Enhanced nature. 

I haven’t watched anime in a long time. Honestly, I sort of shunned it from my mind when “Asian things” became more and more shameful. Well, that thinking is shameful. Because anime is truly beautiful. It captures humans in a different way. Anime knows how to do romance. It knows how to build tension and longing, it knows how to invest the audience. Every anime I ever watched has hooked me to the romance (something American TV can’t ever do with me). 

I just love the tone of anime. The wittiness, the playful scenes, the heavy moods, the characters and their attitudes. It’s all entirely distinct. I don’t know why, but it really gets you wanting. Plus the expressiveness of 2D animation that can do absolute wonders. 

I’m a really big fan of Game of Thrones, don’t get me wrong, and maybe the show just butchered the story, but for a while I just wanted to make a story similar in spirit to Thrones. You know. The realism. The darkness. The unfairness. 

But I forgot that you can make your own worlds with fiction. And your own rules. Life is life. It’ll always be unfair and tragically beautiful, and there are lovely stories to capture that. But then there are those stories that are an abstraction of reality, like Romeo x Juliet. Not totally realistic, but spellbinding. You’re thrown into this world, and you just want to be a part of it. For a while, you can escape the real world and join this one. 

It gets one inspired about living in a different world. 

So while realism is great, fiction and world-building are just so much more fun. And impactful. And creative. And magical. And fan-service isn’t a bad thing. 

I cried during the final episode, once right after Romeo died, and again during the Epilogue. Everyone who lived got a happy ending, and I was so sad and happy seeing them all enjoying life. After all the darkness that they went through, they all ended up living in the bright, joyous world that Romeo and Juliet dreamed of. 

That’s fucking inspiring. To the max. A little cheesy, but in a way that feels so earned and so right. 

So anyway, I’m glad I decided to rewatch it. I was in my early teens when I last watched it, and now I’m 21. Oh, and the decade is ending. Seems fitting. Maybe it’ll help me set the tone for the next decade, which I hope will be one of creativity. And maybe some romance. Maybe. Maybe it’ll have that attitude. 

It’s still one of my favorite stories of all time, and I’m definitely going to rewatch it again in the future. Next time will probably be soon. I have to spend some time recovering from the emotional roller coaster that I went through. Maybe next month. I’ll watch it in Sub, the way it was meant to be, I guess. And I’ll see the difference. And I’ll probably write another post about how I felt about it. 

Until the next time. 

[tsunrugi]

So I have a lot of thoughts about Ares that I haven’t been writing down/sharing on here! I was going to go through point by point with that trailer they did a few months ago, going in to my personal opinions/predictions for each team, situation, and what I think that means for the characters in them… but then I realised I really just want to talk about Teikoku. So i’m gonna. do that.

so aliea is a super influential arc for a lot of characters, and three of those have ended up at teikoku - sakuma, fudou and kazemaru (just mentally add + genda every time i mention sakuma, i love him but unfortunately he doesn’t get built on much after aliea). and actually the minute hino said this was an alternate timeline i was v. concerned in regards to the development for these characters bcs i see them as being v important to them growing up in to strong healthy beautiful adults! very briefly:

- it reaffirms sakuma’s sense of self in a teikoku w/out kidou. it helps him define himself w/out kidou. also like it’s super fucking mature of him to be able to encourage kidou to go to raimon when he knows it’ll hurt him in the process!! props for sakuma, look at all that Character Growth.

- it sets up fudou’s whole deal. on subsequent viewings it actually also sets up his isolation which is super super important for his later development.

- it shifts kazemaru’s perspective, shows us (and him) how destructive it can be to cling to things like being the best, how having high standards for yourself can, when left unchecked, be self destructive. the whole dark emperors thing makes him grow up very fast and kind of refocuses his priorities in sport (and life?).

so in ares, these things haven’t happened. maybe they won’t happen! that concerns me because i love that these things happened because it’s a testament to how well i11 develops its characters subtly and continuously through the series. i want to have faith but lbr, this is going to be one fucking crowded series. here’s maybe my thoughts re: all of these characters being together, on what appears to be the most fucked team in the competition. like, rip teikoku, you’re not getting anywhere and it’s not fair because you’re beautiful and you deserve it.

first up with sakuma. he’ll probably suffer enough being a captain on a team coached by kageyama, but i’m curious to see exactly how. not just because i enjoy suffering, but because kageyama brand suffering is pretty bland at this point, so the real question is - will this suffering bring about as nice character moments as shin teikoku did? shin teikoku was such a good story arc. it had purpose in the overall season as well as for the characters involved! and i’ll say it again, i really love how sakuma Grew because of it. it takes a lot to own up to your own mistakes, let alone as big as the one he made. he wasn’t just trying to absolve kidou of his guilt by telling him he was better at raimon: he was also in a way repenting himself, giving himself a stern talking to, to try and see past his own desires and fears and paranoia and to fight his loneliness with his friend’s happiness. it sounds so petty but this can be hard!! fomo is a Real Thing. and i think this kind of shapes sakuma later, in ffi - he gets setback after setback but he works through it and it’s Brilliant. he works hard to get back in to shape so he can play again. he works even harder to try and be on the representative team, and then gets knocked back. picks himself up and keeps going. puts aside his own beef with kageyama to support kidou. he works on himself constantly, physically and mentally and just As A Person, and it all starts with that guilt from shin teikoku. will ares have these moments for him?

i can see the whole “kidou come back to teikoku :cccccc” thing being solved by a casual conversation. it might even be OFF SCREEN. and that feels super anti-climactic considering the lasting impact of shin teikoku? what i want is for sakuma to lose it again - maybe have his anger at his own inability as captain boil over, have him lash out at kageyama in the Worst Possible Way. he’d have to be isolated. he’d have to ignore support from genda and kazemaru and whatever interaction he has with kidou. but it would be FUN and we also get to have his development and learning growth and i’d be happy*

i want to jump in with kazemaru next. because he’s kind of similar with sakuma in how dark emperors impacted his character, only his attachment was to the idea of winning/being the best rather than a person or idealised team/friendship situation. kazemaru doesn’t look like he’s in a good position in aliea which ngl gives me Life, but the question is - will this lead to his realisation and reconfiguration of his toxic mindset?

there’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve, or with having ambition or goals. but we all know how that ended for kazemaru, because of the way he internalised loss and failure and was eventually tempted by pure power. he’s very de-powered in ares. he has to play second fiddle to KAGEYAMA, of all fucking people, and idk i got the vibe from the trailer that he’s trying to start a coup with sakuma at least to usurp it all. but… is this consistent with s1 kazemaru, or even early aliea kazemaru? he feels very ffi kazemaru already. again, no doubt he’ll Suffer, but there was something to dark emperors that was so shocking, so impactful, that you can’t help but want something just as big? i don’t think there’s space for it in the ares story. and like sakuma, i don’t think he’s isolated to the point he was in aliea for it to happen all that naturally. so the question is - will his toxic mindset get addressed? will the dark parts of his ambition be dealt with, or will they still be there ready to explode?

i think that’s my major concern. aliea built kazemaru’s dark emperor turn so well. i don’t want that aspect of his character to just be ignored like it was never a thing, because imo it’d make the whole thing feel less like natural, human development and more like contrived plot device. and yeah, i know this is fiction, i know things have to happen for the plot, but i like i11 because it does treat character seriously, and does have the plot evolve along character lines. even in s1 kazemaru talks about how he wants to fight on the world stage. his break in s2 is believable. his stress, his fear, his anxiety, his despair, it’s all believable! please let elements of that stay in whatever he has to go through in ares.

and now for fudou! i love fudou. i was v. concerned when he turned up in the outer code and seemed Actually Stable. see, the thing with these three in aliea is that they were all isolated (sakuma you could argue had mentally separated his own suffering from genda’s, when you consider the extend he went to in shin teikoku in comparison). and they all dealt with that isolation by taking the power of the aliea meteorite. sakuma and kazemaru did that with a whole lot of passion. they let it consume them. fudou… didn’t. fudou was in control. and he seems to discard it without having to break like the other two did.

fudou is so interesting, i’d recommend an aliea rewatch just focusing on him. he’s all about the calculated revenge agains the world. he wants chaos, but he himself is not chaotic. he wants it to come apart around him, but to stay above it all. that’s why the only real moment of shock for him comes when kageyama rubs it in his face that he’s just as much of a pawn as the rest of them. this is a Deep Cut for him. this is Huge. and it’s huge because, as much as he wants to stay separate, he is still insanely affected by his family situation. it follows him in to ffi in that he can’t open up or trust any of his teammates, and how he deliberately antagonises them to keep them away. he doesn’t want, closeness. he doesn’t think he needs it, even though in many ways he craves it (snarky comments to himself that just serve to show how lonely he is, the fact that 90% of his hissatsu are combo moves, etc).

ANYWAY. why does this matter? well, in what we’ve seen of him in ares he’s…. playing nice? he’s sitting quietly and listening? he’s involved in team play? HE’S WEARING THE NO. 10 JERSEY JFC. this fudou already feels post-ffi. i can give them the benefit of the doubt - he doesn’t know why he’s at the teikoku meeting, and he doesn’t seem to have an established relationship with kageyama. maybe he’s just playing it save, sussing things out. but i hope there is some chaos. i hope he doesn’t play nice from the get-go. ffi was really fun in deconstructing his actions vs. everyone else’s intense dislike of him. it’s a really subtle unravelling of a villain, one that i missed on first watch because i was too god damn mad at him. but!! it’s so good. it’s so well done. and there are so many layers: we see fudou as we know him, just that Shithead who caused shin teikoku. we see fudou from the POV of kidou and sakuma, as someone who can’t be trusted, as someone who might still be working with kageyama. and then we see him through his own actions: he was fucked over too, and he wants to get back at kageyama just the same as everyone else. he’s insanely attentive to his teammates, even in the early stages of the season. he’s alone. and he grows. i love adult fudou because it’s such a lovely transformation from this isolated kid who dealt with his pain by causing chaos, to an actual well adjusted human being who has Friends and who Coaches and Helps people and Supports them while still retaining his own sense of self. IT’S REALLY NICE. BUT WE CAN’T HAVE THAT ARC IF HE’S ALREADY THERE.

so hino, please, make fudou a shit. make him the biggest shit. make him ambiguous and unpredictable and look I know there’s not that much time to deal with this but make him chaotic, just for a little bit. he is the joker - let him act like it before he joins up all buddy with sakuma and kazemaru, as per the implications of the trailer. you can do it, i have faith in you.

*i will most likely be happy with anything they do anyway this is all moot