#maybe they think she’s boring BECAUSE they only see her as a vessel for exposition? but I still think that’s bullshit

[raining-its-pouring]

Rereading Moon’s pearl dialogue and it’s all so good. I genuinely don’t get how people think she’s boring she’s so expressive in them.

[aethylas]

For anonymous: a series of answers/clarifications/amendments on The Goldenrod Revisions! (I've answered these all in one post just to make it easier). Thank you so much for the asks, this helped me a) clarify my thoughts b) solve some canon continuity issues so I really appreciate them!

THANK U for agreeing to answer my questions! I'll have to ask them separately so they're not in 1 super-long impossible-to-read ask. I have 3 about 15x19, 1 about 15x20, 2 about 15x21, 2 about 15x22, and 2 about 15x23. quick disclaimer: i don't mean any offense at all by my question count! I didn't even notice these oddities the first time I read this; once I read it and accepted it as the true canon, I took a closer look and then noticed. but plz don't think these made your fic any less great!!

No worries anon! It is literally my pleasure to answer them and I am VERY very happy to find discrepancies with canon in the fic - then I can hopefully fix them and make the fic better :) Also I really appreciate the very systematic way you laid all these out, it really helped me reply, and also subsequently make a couple of edits to the fic!

For 15x19:

1. Why did Chuck trust Michael with the task of killing Jack? As God he should know Michael betrayed him in 15.08; did he expect Michael to disobey him again?

I think in this case we're/Chuck is relying on knowledge from the canon 15.19, i.e. Chuck would assume the outcome predicted by the show - that Michael WOULD betray the Winchesters/the world in order to please his father. So God assumed Michael would act the way he did in Inherit The Earth. But additionally, Chuck isn't actually very keyed-in to his own characters' motivations (esp. when love is involved) or very attached to certain results - he basically sends Michael and Lucifer to kill Jack because he figures it will entertain him no matter what happens - whether Michael and Lucifer kill each other, whether they kill the Winchesters/Jack, etc. - either Jack dies this way or Chuck will think of another way to do it.

2. How was Sam able to kill Lucifer? It was said only an archangel could kill another archangel with the archangel blade; was this a total lie or could Sam do it since he's Lucifer's true vessel? (plz don't change it to have Michael kill him; Sam being the one to do it was perfect, I just wanna understand how he could do it).

So glad you raised this because I honestly totally forgot! But now that you have, I have corrected that lore continuity with a line about biblical metaphors.

3. How is Rowena alive? She said she was dead in 15.08, so I initially assumed as a witch and the Queen of Hell she found a way to travel between Hell and Earth despite being dead. But then Sam says "Michael could've killed you" and then Chuck kills her twice in 15.21, both of which indicate she's alive here - does this mean Michael resurrected her when she summoned him?

God okay this is like - please call me out if this is incorrect or still confusing - but it's kind of like, based on the very inconsistent and confusing lore of the SPN afterlife that I assume Rowena is 'dead' but also 'alive' in the sense that Crowley was 'alive' and is now 'dead'. Does that make sense? She's not 'alive' as a human but rather as a demon (or something like it). So as Queen of Hell and a presumably demonic-adjacent entity, when she's 'killed' she gets sent to the Empty now vs. being 'killed' as a human and going to Heaven/Hell. (Based on when we see her in Hell, I assume she possesses her own body? Unclear. Just go with it. They've never been great with what it means to show vessels in Heaven/Hell etc.)

4. I thought asked all I wanted to know about Goldenrod but I just thought of 1 more thing: I don’t get why some dialogue implies Michael was dead? He mentions how he “found himself back on Earth” and tells the Empty it couldn’t stop Chuck from resurrecting him & Lucifer, but prior to 15.19 we last saw Michael leaving the bunker with Adam alive and well in 15.08, and it seemed like he was gonna stay on Earth for Adam’s sake. So what happened to him?

Oh that's a great point! I think that is actually just a confusing choice on my part that Chuck killed absolutely everyone including Michael/Adam in 15.18 Despair and THEN chose to resurrect Michael (but not Adam) alongside Lucifer when he was bored/wanting to kill Jack. I made some slight adjustments in-text to hopefully make it less confusing because I know that's different to the lore of canon 15.19 Inherit the Earth.

For 15x20:

1. How did the angels and demons in the Empty wake up? Did Michael use the last of his grace to wake everyone up? Were they already awake thanks to Jack blowing up in 15x18 or did they somehow sleep through that? (Not expanding on the Empty's claim that "you made it loud" is one of countless things I'll never forgive the actual show for, so THANK YOU for taking the show back to the Empty in the first place; I was just curious about this one element.)

So the Empty was already 'loud' according to canon, but since canon is vague on what exactly that means (thank you writers!...) I got the impression it meant the Empty wasn't 'peaceful' anymore but still powerful enough to suppress the beings inside, like the beings in there were awake and suffering but unable to rebel. Sort of what we see with Cas in this version of 15.20. Maybe like, additional suffering in sleep paralysis? Regardless, Michael does expend his grace to weaken the Empty enough that other beings wake up and/or are able to fight back and exist outside their own personal nightmare chamber. So whatever your impression of 'loud' is with regards to the other beings in there, assume Michael was able to free them from the Empty's control.

For 15x21:

1. Having Jack & Amara take out Hell & Purgatory was a BRILLIANT idea; I love that they ended all the places of suffering and changed the system. I just wonder - what happened to the souls and the demons still in Hell at that point, and the Leviathans and other monsters still in Purgatory? Were they just wiped out completely and sent to the Empty? Or did Jack turn them human and add them to the cycle? (I don't think the show clarified whether or not Leviathans have souls, so...)

No matter whether they were monster or demon or even angel, they would eventually be given human life. I broke it down to 'human enough souls' vs. 'not human enough souls'. Human-enough were immediately brought to life with memories and versions of their original bodies, and not-human-enough were sent to the Soul Queue to be born as infants. I assume Leviathan and most demons fall into 'not human enough', therefore, whatever tiny microbe of personality/soul they had was added to the cycle of rebirth and would be translated to a new human soul. Of course this might have a WILDLY different impact on the world depending on how many people go to hell in this system, how many people were 'human enough', etc.... But we're basically fudging those numbers a bit one way or another just to give certain characters the revival they deserve haha.

2. Did Cas drown and die after Chuck threw him in the lake and Jack left their limbo-dream world? If so, did he go through the same question-&-answer situation with Death that Sam & Dean did? Or was he with Jack & Amara when they rebuilt the world?

Cas was already dead/dying even when he was talking to Jack, he was sort of in a different version of the 'Veil' per se. VERY wishy-washy, but basically he and Jack were on a different dream-plane that they were jolted to in the chaos of the disorganised no-Death world.

I think Cas, Rowena, Lucifer, Michael, etc. as beings who were killed after the snap is a bit ambiguous. Rowena and Lucifer, I think, as entities who were demonic-dead or Empty-level-dead pre-Snap probably went through the reincarnation Yes/No Death questionnaire. Cas and Michael might not have since they were technically 'alive' and human before the Snap. Regardless, I think they probably wouldn't remember the interaction even if they had it.

The reason the question happened to the Winchesters AND that they remember it is Main Character Syndrome... they were the only people left alive when Jack and Amara did a hard reset, and that honestly Death took time to chill/exposition at them because he likes them. Really. Despite all appearances. Or respects them enough to let them know what's gone down, anyway.

Metatextually, it was really just to reaffirm to the audience that Dean (and Sam) want to live, in contrast to 15.20 Carry On 😅

3. Did all the snapped people (Eileen, Adam, the Waywards, etc.) also go through the Death question-&-answer process but not remember it, or did Jack & Amara just send them back?

Snapped people were reset automatically! Normally the new-humans also wouldn't remember their interactions with Death/reapers, just like in canon lore when someone like Dean has a near-death experience.

I realise this whole section and various other lore reformation parts of the fic aren't SUPER clear on specific logistics but on some occasions I'm like, I've done enough info-dumping, I don't want to overwrite exposition. But if you think it's worth clarifying certain points let me know and I can try to do so!

For 15x22:

1. The twenty something blonde guy in sunglasses getting hot tea, is that Belphegor? sure sounds like it but I wanted to confirm.

Yep!

2. Since Death mentioned that Jack only resurrected the angels, demons, and monsters from the Empty who had enough of a soul, and since all the human souls from the Veil went to Heaven as confirmed by Kevin's presence, how exactly are Anna's human parents and Bela alive now?

Great question - 1) I SOMEHOW FORGOT ANNA'S PARENTS DIED? Complete screw up on my part, I don't know how that happened. I fixed this so it's her grandparents now. 2) Bela was sent to Hell as part of her deal, so I was assuming she was a demon by this point in canon (since it would be... MANY Hell-years since she died.) Therefore she had a 'human' enough demon soul to be put back as a human.

3. Oh, and the tall woman with the flyer in 15.22; who is this supposed to be? Hannah I’m guessing?

To be honest I didn't have anyone in particular in mind for that scene; it was kind of a catch-all for missing characters like, it COULD be Hannah. It could be Raphael. Hell, it could be Abbadon. I didn't want to do a full shot of every single person missing from the cast who had died (esp since like - we wouldn't know who they were anyway! Their bodies would be different). So this one is literally just fill-in-the-blank. But if I had to assign a character there I'd say it would probably be one of the more arrogant angels like Raphael or Uriel.

For 15x23:

1. How is Bobby in the Roadhouse with the gang? 10x17 seemed to imply the angels were about to throw him in the dungeons to punish him for helping Cas; did Ash hack him out of prison, or was he never imprisoned at all? Also, is Jack not surprised to see another Bobby in Heaven because the boys already told him there was another Bobby besides the one he knows from Apocalypseverse? (I was half-expecting him to comment about that and confuse Bobby).

Oh that's a great point! I think that's another sort of fill in the blank since it's been five years since 10.17... even if he was in prison of some kind, I think it's likely either Ash helped him get out in the same way he helped everyone else, and since the angels were extremely short-staffed I doubt getting Bobby suitably imprisoned/punished was their top priority. But honestly I'm not super clear on how the angels intended to punish Bobby, I don't think canon is clear either... like, We Just Don't Know.

Finally I'd like to know, has Sam proposed to Eileen yet by the end of the final episode? The script doesn't mention a ring on her finger, and as Sam's fiancee, I'd assume she'd also have carved her name on the table. Sam mentions the innuendos Dean has said "in the past year," so it's been a while since Jack's prayer scene, yet Cas says Dean & Claire's argument was the last time they spoke, and it doesn't seem likely to me that Dean wouldn't call Claire in a year given how close they are...

Nope! I think Sam is saying 'I'm going to marry her' as a declaration of certainty of his feelings and faith in the future, not neccessarily as something that immediately happens. With regards to 'in the past year', that referred to the period when Eileen was alive during s15 as well! I assume Dean did teasing off-screen (and I mean, he did plenty on-screen too.)

I honestly think that Sam and Dean are just very very busy in the aftermath of the events of the 15.20 reset, like they have to deal with the new world AND try to wrangle all these hunters into this new system of collaboration. I didn't put Eileen on the table because she isn't there in the finale and because I do think the Sam/Dean/Cas/Jack family unit was a bit more central and important to the show, but maybe they add her (and any possible kids, if they have any) later on. God, imagine generations of hunters and/or Winchesters carving on that table. Sacred Artefact...

(1) Ok that's all the questions I have. Again, so sorry to blow up your inbox - I really appreciate your willingness to clarify these things! If there are some things you'd rather not explain and leave ambiguous, I totally get that. And in spite of these aforementioned confusing parts, I still ADORE your fic and will continue to read it whenever I feel like re-"watching" how Supernatural really ended! Thank you so much!! .... (2) I’m SO sorry to overload u! I know I asked a lot and I didn’t mean to sound like a hater saying “none of ur story makes sense”; that’s not what I meant at all! If this was a regular good ol fix it fic I wouldn’t have said anything but since u said u wanted it to wrap up the show as replacement canon, I thought maybe I should point out places that didn’t line up. But take as MUCH time as you need! Good for you working to meet your deadlines; I hope you succeeded!! And again I really appreciate you taking the time to answer whenever you have time—absolutely no rush!! Have a GREAT Memorial Day Weekend!!!

Anon thank you SO SO much for all these questions, as you can see it really helped me identify problems or straight up errors in my work wrt continuity and I'm so happy that means I can improve it. If any of the answers weren't clear or you think I should modify the fic to make certain things clearer than they are right now (other than the things I said I'd fix in-text for sure) let me know! It's really been a pleasure answering them too, I'm sorry it took me so long to get around to it, I actually went back and proofed/edited the whole fic as part of adding some of these corrections in (and that took like... three weeks...) and as you said, it's very important to me to get it as true to canon as possible so - yeah, just, once again, thank you!! You're wonderful! ♥♥♥

[marybeatriceofmodena]

TFW when you try to do Anastasia but you also suck at your job: A Master Class by The Rise of Skywalker

Okay. So, I promised you guys a TROS review, and it’s coming, I promise… except I’ll be making two “spin-off posts” about specific issues just in order to clear up some stuff, mainly because in my mind, those issues are important.

First post is going to be, of course, about Rey’s parentage.

So. After TFA, it would have been possible for Rey to have been the kid of “someone”. However, TLJ made it impossible to do so, unless you’d have some serious, bullshit retconning going on – which is exactly what happened.

I know this is a VERY controversial thing to say at this point, but post-TFA, Rey Palpatine “could” have been possible. Okay, maybe not have her be Palpatine’s granddaughter, but more of a descendant of his.

This said, I “tried” making an origin story for Rey Palpatine that “works” for the purposes of this meta, on a hypothetical basis, while making it consistent with canon (something JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio clearly couldn’t be bothered to do, LMAO). I had plotholes no matter what. I do think I could have eventually found something with a little bit of brainstorming, but truth is, IT’S HARD, and a lot of exposition would have been for novels/comics only.

From a thematic perspective, though? It wouldn’t have been a bad idea. For this to work, though, you would have needed to go on full-blown Romeo and Juliet mode with sprinkles of Anastasia, though. I mean, The Lion King 2 did something similar, so why the fuck not. Because, yeah, Ben Solo, the grandson of Darth Vader, son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, the last prince of Alderaan, who falls in love with the last Imperial princess Rey Palpatine while they’re on opposite sides of the war but not the ones you’d think of is the stuff of fairy tales and star-crossed romances, except this one would have a happy ending and brought peace to the galaxy.

Truth be told, I still really enjoy fanfics who go for that story and find a way to make it work in canonverse or in AUs – because it’s genuinely fun. But in canon itself, as I point out earlier… it’s not easy.

So, we have Rian Johnson who said he made a list of potential origins for Rey while he was working on TLJ’s script. You bet Rey Palpatine was on that list. However, he came to the conclusion that Rey Nobody was the best way to go, and whatdyaknow, he made the right call.

Why? Rey Nobody requires minimal exposition. Storytelling-wise, you don’t have a lot of brainstorming to do, and it’s easy to have Ben revealing it, and easy to present it as a repressed memory of Rey’s. On a thematic level, that puts Rey on the same level as Jane Eyre or the main character from Rebecca: she’s a nobody from nowhere who is thrown into a family drama, and since she’s the glitch in the matrix, she must stop the story from becoming a tragedy.

See? Simple. You got your easy exposition, you got your thematic coherence, and you got the literary call-backs.

So, JJ and Terrio decided to retcon this shit because, as they said, they thought it was boring. I think Colin Trevorrow probably thought it was boring too, because I have my reasons to think a lot of TROS is from him (but more on that in my main review). But thing is, it’s not it’s “boring”, it’s literally that they didn’t know what the fuck to do with Rey. No, more than that, they don’t understand her, and frankly, they can’t be bothered to do so. She’s an empty vessel they can toy with at their ease, and in the process, turn her in a Mary-Sue. Because yes, TROS!Rey was a Mary-Sue, whereas TFA/TLJ!Rey was not. So, what I say above regarding Rey might be a bomb for some, considering how people are (understandably) defensive when it comes to that statement. I promise I will elaborate more about it in the main review, once again.

So, with the lineage aspect addressed, it’s time to talk about Rey’s parents themselves.

It’s hilarious how HARD JJ and Terrio tried to make Kylo’s explanation work – because as much as they butchered the shit out of him, they said: “Well he’s a bad liar, right? Gotta keep that in mind.”

Although, I don’t think it was a case of them being concerned with Kylo’s characterization – they’re not that graceful. They had to figure out QUICK why the hell Kylo wouldn’t have known Rey was a Palpatine from the get-go, because the Force is a great DNA test and shit, and I guess that’s how Palps located Ben’s Mighty Skywalker Blood™. Except that still doesn’t work because Palps couldn’t even locate his own goddamn granddaughter, but I digress.

Seriously, why would Kylo lie to Rey about her being a nobody instead of her being a Palpatine? It makes no sense, because if you’re going to roll with the theory Kylo just wants UNLIMITED POWAH, the Palpatine princess is not only a great asset (since marrying her legitimizes your claim to the throne in the eyes of the Imperial Remnants, I mean, that’s literally why Henry VII married Elizabeth of York), it’s also the one argument she needs to hear in order to sway her to your side. So I guess JJ and Terrio’s one shared brain cell kinda flicked a bit at that moment.

This said, getting the Palpatine princess on his side is clearly Kylo’s intention in TROS (which, again, makes no sense with what was set up in TLJ but that’s something I’m keeping for another post), except they trip all over themselves by having Kylo say he didn’t lie to Rey in TLJ. Except…

So, what Ben said in TLJ was the following:

Her parents sold her for drinking money.

They’re dead and buried in a pauper’s grave somewhere on Jakku.

Rey is related to no one.

Here’s what Ben reveals to Rey in TROS:

Her parents sold her for her protection.

They died on another planet, while being hunted down by a guy working for Palpatine and instructed to bring Rey back to them.

Rey’s dad is a Palpatine and Rey’s mom is Villanelle (nah, for real: the actress who plays Rey’s mom is Jodie Comer).

So, um, yeah, it’s the EXACT opposite of what Ben said in TLJ. Just say Palps was fucking with Ben’s mind-reading or Rey’s memories instead, JJ. Not that “Oh Ben was telling the truth, but he didn’t have the whole story”, because that’s not it.

For the latter, once again, it would have been feasible: the one thing, for me, that was possible to be added was that Rey had killed her parents accidentally, by having their ship to leave Jakku crash down with the Force: that’s what made her Force powers go dormant for all those years and provoked her trauma. It would also make sense that Ben would willfully not bring that back to her memories, because she’d understandably not be able to cope with the truth, which is often what happens to a lot of trauma victims. THAT was the theory I had pre-TROS, because that’s the only answer I could come up with when it came to JJ saying that there was more to Rey’s past. I guess I expected JJ to be, like, actually able to write, lmao.

I even wonder if that was actually in the cards, considering we see Rey in TROS bringing down a transport that supposedly has Chewie in it… but I guess they deemed that to be “too dark” for their heroine. Except the bullshit that comes instead is actually… much worse.

To make things simple, I’ll just take the above points and develop them.

Rey’s parents sold her for her protection.

Okay, so, Rey’s parents need to hide her to make sure Palps doesn’t get his hands on her. Fair enough. This said, why did it have to be Jakku and not, like, ANYWHERE ELSE? Especially that Palpatine had interest in Jakku at some point and that maybe having Rey anywhere close to that place would not be a good idea?

But let’s play the game and say that Jakku is the only place they can hide her because… I don’t know, it’s hard to find someone there with the Force. Whatever. Even then, why the fuck would they think Unkar Plutt is a proper guardian for a tiny little girl? You know they could have walked a few miles more and found a nice old man who likes the Light Side of the Force and the Jedi and all that shit called Lor San Tekka? Hey, why not even try to find a guy like Luke Skywalker who’s like, a Jedi and shit, and have him take care of their little girl and protect her? 

Even then, why the hell doesn’t Rey’s mom stay with her daughter? Her husband is the Palpatine, not her. All Rey’s mom has to do is find a nicer hiding place for her and Rey somewhere on Jakku, like, not Niima Outpost (again, Tuanul is just a few miles away), and just let Dad hide somewhere else. He’s a grownass man, he can take care of himself and he just has to hide on Nar Shaadaa or some shit. Fuck, why don’t all three of them hide on Nar Shaadaa? Or in the Coruscant undercity? ANYWHERE ELSE?

Also, wouldn’t Plutt clearly see two desperate parents as a business opportunity? Like, if you want to do a Les Misérables comparison here, he wouldn’t “buy” Rey from them, he’d try to get money for them à la Thénardier with Fantine. Except Rey’s parents make Fantine look like frigging Einstein because at least she had the excuse of thinking Madame Thénardier would take good care of Cosette since Éponine and Azelma seemed well-cared for.  

Again, a creepy-looking alien who exploits the outpost’s inhabitants for portions in exchange for junk, who asks you to pay him to take care of your kid should be a big fucking red flag – unless you want to involve blackmail, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Seriously, why the hell would Rey’s parents even ACCEPT money that comes from selling their own child? Were they really that desperate? Fuck, even if I had no other way of getting off Jakku, I wouldn’t even THINK of using money that comes from selling my own child. Any parent who’d even CONSIDER doing that is automatically a godawful parent in my book. Shame on you. And shame on JJ for trying to make me buy them as saints, because THEY’RE NOT, JUST BY THAT SINGLE ACTION.

They died on another planet, while being hunted down by a guy working for Palpatine and instructed to bring Rey back to them.

I didn’t notice it until Jenny Nicholson pointed it out in her TROS review, because it SOMEHOW completely escaped my notice, but… Rey’s mom saying Rey is DEFINITELY NOT on Jakku is like the worst fucking lie I’ve ever seen in a film because it’s so hilariously bad. Congratulations, Space Villanelle, may you be forever remembered for this line.

Also, it’s stupid af that Oshi (that’s his name, right? Can’t be bothered to Google it, might just call him Barney the Bounty Hunter from now on) just kills Rey’s parents, because HE’S EVUL MUAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA, because he literally creates a dead end for himself. He still has no fucking clue where Rey is, and he just killed off his only leads. CONGRATULATIONS BARNEY THE BOUNTY HUNTER, YOU SUCK AT YOUR JOB.

Rey’s dad is a Palpatine and Rey’s mom is Villanelle.

So, Rey’s dad looks like he’s in his early thirties at most, right? Maybe a little younger than Luke and Leia, then. So, unless he got frozen in carbonite at some point, that means Palpatine fucked at some point while looking like this:

Anyway, I sure hope Sly Moore was Grandma Palpatine because she’s pretty much the only person who’d be game to smash raisin ass. Which leaves me with extremely disturbing pictures of Palps and Sly having sex, so I’ll spare you the more graphic details of my twisted mind that’s screaming for an end to this misery. 

I sure hope having Rey’s mom as Jodie Comer isn’t a clue that we’ll get spin-offs with those two (GOD PLEASE NO), but while I crack jokes about how Rey’s mom is Villanelle and Palpadad kinda looks like Ramsay Bolton… I find it fucking hilarious they dressed Rey’s mom in BLUE. LIKE, SEE? SEE? SHE’S IN BLUE, LIKE THE VIRGIN MARY, BECAUSE REY IS SPACE JESUS!!!! GET IT??? GETIT???? PLEASE TELL ME YA GET IT, OKAY???? *gross sobbing* I knew we should have had Rey born in a manger, that would have made the artistic intentions clear *wipes tear*

All right. There’s a lot more that could be said about Rey’s lineage, but I’m keeping that for my main review because what’s left to say ties up to the bigger picture. What I tried to point out with this preliminary post is that while Rey Palpatine *could* have worked, in different circumstances, it couldn’t have had post-TLJ… and we’re left to see a mutilated horse who was dead on arrival. And that’s tragic.

[angst-fairygodmother]

Sing Once Again With Me: Madame Giry’s Tale (The Witcher; A Phantom of the Opera AU)

A/N: Alternate title: Yennefer explains. This was a hard chapter for me, and a turning point in the story, because I had to decide if we were dealing with a man or a monster. Word Count: 1370 Content Warning: None; Exposition heavy Taglist: @ficsandcatsandficsandcats​ @joz-stankovich​ @sennextheassasinkingoflight​ Previous Chapter: Masquerade/Why So Silent Cross-posted to AO3: here

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yennefer stared the guard down with a look somewhere between wry and the kind of bored where people start disappearing without a trace. He appeared to be reading the papers she brought with her for the fourth time.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” she snapped. “Are you going to let me see the prisoner or not?”

“You know, we don’t allow…conjugal visits until the person has been condemned.”

“You know,” she mocked his tone near perfectly. “I could make your death incredibly painful.”

The guard swallowed nervously and rushed to stand and lead her back into the heart of the prison. Geralt sat, head bowed over his knees, on the rough straw pallet in the darkest, dankest cell in the building. He was still in his party clothes, though the doublet was unbuttoned, his hair unbraided, and in general he looked worse for wear. In fact, as she inspected the witcher, Yennefer guessed that he had been subjected to torture, or at least a harsh beating, more than once in the days since his arrest.

“There is to be a trial,” she told him without preamble. “Jaskier’s spent a year’s worth of earnings to find you a defense.”

Geralt looked up, startled by her voice as it echoed against the stone, briefly considering that she was just an illusion. Only the nonsense she spoke told him she might, might be real.

“Whose earnings?” he asked, voice cracking with disuse. “I know well enough that he doesn’t save money.”

“He took an advance. He indebted himself to the music hall for you. So you had better not screw it up.”

Shame made Geralt drop his head once more, staring at the hands he saw stained with blood even if no one else did, before turning back to the sorceress.

“Tell me what’s going on here Yennefer.”

“There haven’t been any new sightings or events since the masquerade…everyone is rehearsing the Phantom’s show because they’re too frightened not to. Most people don’t believe that you’re him, but there’s still enough people pushing the narrative that they won’t just release you.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it. The creature, spirit, whatever. Tell me about it.”

“What makes you think…” she was cut off by Geralt’s snarl.

“Your wife implied that you know more than you’re letting on Yennefer. And when she wasn’t busy vaguely threatening me with piscine nicknames, she also told me how much you’ve come to care about Jaskier. I can’t protect him, or Y/N, or anyone else, if I don’t have answers. Please Yen?”

She sighed. “Very well. I hate it when you’re right.” She rubbed one hand against her temple in frustration. “I don’t know Valdo Marx, though I spent enough time in courts to be familiar with him by reputation. And of course, from listening to Jaskier’s stories.”

Geralt raised an eyebrow expectantly.

“He used to perform at the music hall; he was their lead for years. Until a few years ago when the city was sacked…”

“Nilfgaard,” Geralt growled, unsurprised that the empire was the root of yet another problem in his life.

“By Cintra.” Yennefer corrected pointedly. “And the music hall was all but destroyed. Valdo Marx was listed dead after everything was over, but they never actually found his body.”

“So you think that the thing beneath the music hall could actually be Valdo Marx?”

“Well no. Not just him…”

Geralt sighed in frustration. Even after all this time, with everything at stake, she was still holding out on him.

“I think, and I could be wrong, I haven’t been able to find proof, that Valdo Marx merged with something much eviler, or was taken over by it. I might even know the creature that is…inhabiting him.” She turned away from Geralt’s piercing gaze, wrapping one arm across her chest to grip the folded elbow of the other. “I brought it here when I was younger and…stupider.”

Geralt sighed, knowing that she was referring to the years of her desperate, reckless quest to undo her sterilization by Aretuza.

“I came here chasing a rumor, and because it wasn’t a city considered important enough for the Brotherhood to bother with. There was supposedly a creature here, a spirit older than the city, maybe even older than humanity. It was said to be made of pure chaos, to be dark and powerful, to hold sway over the fabric of reality, to play with life and death like one might light matches just to let them burn out. I thought…if I could bind the creature to a single place for a while, I could bargain with it.”

“Yennefer…” the tone of Geralt’s voice bored a little too close to pity for her taste and she shot him a glare.

“It worked. I was able to bind the spirit, to a point in the catacombs that is now long buried under the basement of the music hall. When I left, I didn’t bother to consider the spirit; I had no more use for it, and didn’t care what happened. That is part of why I took the position here, to make up for that. But when I went down, it was gone, and it left behind no violent sign of escape. I thought it must have been freed. So I waited. And now all of this happening, I can’t buy as a coincidence.”

She began to pace, the swishing of her skirt highlighting her agitation.

“I didn’t bind the spirit alone though. I had help. It would have been too powerful otherwise, overwhelmed me. And after the djinn…well I did learn. There were three other mages who helped me do it, but I don’t think we can turn to any of them to help undo it. Sabrina is dealing with something of her own; Istredd’s lost behind Nilfgaardian lines. And Triss …is soft. I think she would view the creature as a something to save instead of destroy. We have to do this ourselves.”

She stopped, facing Geralt head on and meeting his gilded eyes in all their anger.

“I don’t know how or why it merged with Valdo Marx. He may have been trying to escape or survive the attack and accidentally released or he may have done it intentionally. But it is some shadow of his memories that is why the creature has fixated as it has. Having human vessel is making it more dangerous and unpredictable than it would have been alone.”

“If something happens to Jaskier…” the threat did not need to be finished, his tone said enough.

She laughed, harsh and mirthless. “I am less afraid of your wrath than I am of my own self-hatred, should anyone else come to harm from this.” She met his sharp gaze with one of her own, burning equal parts rage and fear. “I’ve no love or loyalty left to the spirit Geralt. And if you seek to destroy it, I’ll help you. But if at any point it comes to a choice between you or her, I will not lose Y/N.”

“I understand Yennefer. I would never ask…” his shoulders slumped, knowing that he was probably lying even as he spoke.

She reached through the bars to give his hand a gentle squeeze before turning sharply on her heel and returning to the prison office.

“You have a single piece of easily planted evidence,” she accused the guard captain before she was even through the door completely. “The rest of your case is based on conjecture and prejudice.”

“Excuse me?” the guard captain snapped, standing from his desk and blustering, fat walrus-like mustache wobbling. “How dare you barge in here?!”

She looked him up and down and narrowed her eyes. “Do you really want it getting around that you arrested and held a man for murder based on a single word from the lyrics of a ballad?”

“The trial hasn’t taken place yet. What would you have me do, Mistress…?” he waved his hand as if waiting for her name.

“Yennefer of Vengerberg.” She smiled somewhat smugly as he paled. “Release the witcher…into my watchful custody. I’ll ensure he shows up for the trial, and we can put him to use in the meantime.”

[venus-says]

Star Twinkle Precure Episode 46

This escalated VERY QUICKLY.

Star Twinkle jumped into its finale, and when I say jumped I really mean it.

Like, the episode started very normal, the girls were called to the Star Palace, we had a little flashback of the day the Palace was first attacked, things seemed very chill, I was ready to have a few minutes of exposition, maybe a scene at the villains' lair, I was ready to see the action happening only in the second half, but then all of sudden the Nottrayders were attacking AND I WASN'T READY.

This finale didn't come for play, they went all the way in even though they didn't have the best budget for animation this week. It's kinda hard for me to pinpoint things to say since this episode was more or less just a big battle, but I'll try my best.

Before everything let me just say I love the design of the generals with the Darknest armor, I expected this was part of Darknest's plan when we had that fight on the Christmas episode and the execution was pretty well done so I'm very pleased with it. My only complaint is that Galogre looks horrible with that snake headpiece, but Galogre always looks horrible so there's nothing new here. Before moving to my next point I feel like I need to highlight the presence of the Starscape Alliance here, it's the most logical thing and if they weren't present I'd be very pissed off about it so I'm very glad.

This episode had three major points.

The first one is Hikaru's speech in the middle of the fight. At a first moment, when I saw Hikaru being hesitant about this fight I got really scared, all I had in my mind was "oh no, this is a red flag, they'll do some boring speech and I'm not here for it", but when Hikaru stopped that whole war zone and started talking about how foolish both sides were because the universe doesn't belong to a single person, it belongs to all of us that live on it I was speechless. That was such a strong moment, and that's also a very Hikaru thing to say and I appreciate it even more. Of course the moment had to be ruined by Hikaru saying we're all aliens, but as funny as it sounds, she's not wrong there so I give it a pass. Last year we were all precure, this year we're all aliens, let's wear those "titles" with honor.

The second huge moment was the Darknest reveal. Of course, the majority of fans already knew that Darknest was the Ophiucus Princess so the surprise element wasn't there, but even with taking this into consideration I still think the reveal moment was kinda meh, but it worked. What I like is that she used the armors of her underlings as a way to power-up herself and that was such a smart move, I already love this lady. This thing of the Star Princesses being the ones that created the universe and Ophiucus decided to leave because she thought the universe was running way wilder than she liked got me kinda iffy, I feel like we need at least another piece of information to make me fully buy this backstory, but I guess this just adds to her coolness so I'm okay with it.

The third and final big moment was the raid at the Star Palace. This was very strong and I really could feel the despair going on in that situation but I feel like the stock footage spam kinda ruined it for me, I'd rather if we had seen either Ophiucus confronting her sisters or Prunce doing something trying to protect Fuwa, a sequence of the five girls attacking really took me out of that moment. Another thing that kinda threw me off is that Ophiucus seems to be a very smart and strategic villain, I mean she obviously was putting fire under her generals asses in order to make them angrier so she could consume the power generated from the armor, so I had in mind that she was taunting the girls to have them attack her/her minions with their Twinkle Imagination so she could somehow capture that power and use it for the ritual they mentioned, but it seems that that wasn't the case so that got me a little disappointed. But regardless of that Ophiucus is still very powerful and I still enjoyed every second that she was on screen so...

Before I sign off, here are a few random points I want to mention but I didn't find a place for it yet:

Apparently, Prunce isn't a stand-alone gelatinous alien, there's a whole race of them!  I didn't think the Star Palace had other habitants that weren't the princesses, this is very cool!

The princesses are supposed to be powerful but they haven't done much, have they? Like, I know the Nottrayders' forces were very overwhelming, but c'mon if they created the universe 12 of them should be able to at least maintain a barrier, shouldn't they?

Eyewon wasn't completely forgotten in the barbecue and she was back for this final fight!!! And she was there to save Cosmo!!! That's so cute, it made me very happy seeing her back.

Ophiucus has dark hole powers, HOW FREAKING COOL IS THAT???? COME ON.

I really want more backstory here, like did the princesses know Ophiucus was Darknest? How it was that whole period once Ophiucus decided to live? What exactly happened there? Why is Fuwa the vessel? What exactly is Fuwa? I don't think we'll get many answers next week, but I wish at least some of these mysteries were solved.

It kinda pisses me off that the whole universe is in danger and still the final concern of these girls (or at least Hikaru) is save Fuwa. Like, I get that by saving Fuwa they probably are saving the universe as well, but come on people, y'all need to give a second check to your priorities. 

And that's pretty much it, we still have three more weeks so I'm expecting the final showdown won't happen next week despite the title of the next episode, I'm curious to see what they will do. In any case, these are my thoughts on this episode, let me know yours in the comments. I'll see you all the next time. o/

[whataboutmeh]

Superwholock Theories

Supernatural- 3 Theories    

 JOHN WINCHESTER WAS POSSESSED BY MICHAEL

1.    This fan theory posits that because John said “yes” to the Archangel Michael when he was younger, Michael continued possessing him later in life. Fans believe that this would explain the disparity between John’s treatment of Sam and Dean, as opposed to the vastly different relationship he shared with his other son, Adam. Perhaps John was actually preparing the boys for their futures as vessels for Michael and Lucifer.

Although this probably isn’t the case, that doesn’t mean this theory is without merit. The series has already previously established that an angel could possess a human without their knowledge, so it’s not out of the question. If John were a puppet for Michael, it would certainly lead to an identity crisis for the Winchester brothers. How could they trust anything or anyone after a revelation like that?

 THE VIEWER IS GOD

2.    Despite fans’ love for the prophet who turned out to be God, not everyone is sold on Chuck Shurley as the one true Almighty. One anonymous fan actually suggests that God is not any character that we have or will ever meet on Supernatural for one simple reason: God is the viewer.

At some point, archangels wrested the power from God, leaving him or her helpless to stop them. However, God remains omniscient, and so continues to see and hear every aspect of the story, although there is no way to impact anything that happens. This fan also points out that this would mean that the closest the Winchester brothers ever came to truly tracking down God was in season 6 episode “The French Mistake”, in which Sam and Dean travel to a fourth wall-breaking alternate universe.

 GABRIEL IS ALIVE

    3. This theory is one that has not only been fueled by fans, but by Richard Speight Jr. as well. Lucifer killed Gabriel in Season 5… or did he? Gabriel was not only ridiculously powerful, but also incredibly clever. He did appear in season 9 episode, “Meta Fiction”, although he was then revealed to be nothing but a ruse performed by Metatron.

According to Speight Jr., “One theory is that obviously Metatron is controlling the whole thing and that I’m really just a projection…but that makes you wonder why he doesn’t just appear.” The jury may be out on whether or not Gabriel will return, but the actor who played him is reasonably sure that the archangel is alive and well. Perhaps there is hope for Sabriel fans after all.

      Doctor Who- 3 theories

WEEPING ANGELS ARE DEAD TIME LORD

    1. No monster in New Who has gained quite as much popularity as the Weeping Angels – after initially being introduced in the Tennant-era episode Blink, the villains have been referenced multiple times by both the Doctor and other characters throughout the show.

One such reference, in The End of Time Part Two, has Time Lords covering their faces ‘like the Weeping Angels of Old’. This has led to fan speculation that Weeping Angels might be the ghosts of fallen Time Lords, whose constant exposure to the Time Vortex has left them capable of displacing people through time and feeding on the resultant lost potential.

Considering that Weeping Angels are incorporeal until the moment they’re seen, and that they’re considered one of the oldest races in the universe, this theory does hold up to a certain extent. It certainly would explain why Weeping Angels patrol graveyards and crypts so commonly in the show.

 SEASON SEVEN PART ONE HAPPENS IN REVERSE

       2. No fan of modern Doctor Who will forget the heartbreaking end to Amy and Rory’s time as companions to the Doctor – sentenced to death by a Weeping Angel, the pair are given the opportunity to grow old together in New York, but are unable to ever see the Doctor again. Some question why the Doctor couldn’t simply pick them up in another part of their timeline – and others wonder if that’s exactly what he does.

In A Town Called Mercy, two episodes before Rory and Amy’s departure, an offhand reference is made to Rory leaving his phone charger in King Henry the VIII’s bedroom. In the next episode, audiences see this very scene play out, suggesting that the episodes A Town Called Mercy and The Power of Three are out of order.

Some fans have taken this to suggest that the Doctor’s appearances throughout the Ponds’ final adventures are in reverse order – having lost Amy and Rory to the Weeping Angels, the Doctor is travelling backwards through their timestream to visit them at different times. This culminates with the Doctor saving their marriage from divorce before finally saying goodbye to them and moving on to live in Victorian London.

 THE DALEKS ARE INCAPABLE OF KILLING THE DOCTOR

       3. In any given episode of Doctor Who, it’s taken for granted that the Doctor will spout a lot of expositional dialogue, and that the villain of the week will allow him to do so unchallenged. Such is frequently the case with the Daleks, the Doctor’s greatest enemies, who, while regularly in a position to end the Doctor’s life, instead choose to let him ramble for a while before he makes his escape.

 While many might see this as simply a convention of the show’s formula, others have begun speculating that there might be a reason for the Daleks’ inaction and repeated failure to kill the Doctor. Way back during the Tom Baker era of Doctor Who, the Fourth Doctor found himself in a position to destroy the Daleks – one which he rejected, ultimately leading to their initial creation in the first place. Some fans believe that because of this paradox, the Daleks are actually unable to kill the Doctor – they can’t do so for risk of eliminating themselves from the timeline as a result.

 This theory gained more traction as a result of the most recent Season Nine of the modern Doctor Who, in which the Doctor saved the life of the child who would grow up to be Davros, creator of the Daleks. Thus the Daleks are forever desperate to kill the Doctor, but ultimately unable to do so without risking the life of their creator.

 Sherlock- 3 Theories

The whole series is just Mycroft keeping Sherlock sane, and John is an actor

               1.This theory is quite a convoluted one, so strap yourselves in. What if all this time, everything was just a fake-out that Sherlock's enormously powerful big brother is making up? All these crimes and villains are just there so he has something to do, and to keep him off the drugs.Whenever Sherlock's bored, he turns to drugs. But Mycroft is fully aware of this, so he sets up elaborate crimes for Sherlock to solve. And maybe to help him, he hired an actor named John Watson.

Yes, we know what you're thinking. Utter baloney. But when Sherlock first meets John, he lists of a load of facts about him, and John is astounded. But we see no actual evidence to support Sherlock's claims, aside from a brief flashback of John's time in the army. And even that is a dream sequence in which you don't actually see John himself. Is he just preparing for his next role?

We never actually meet John's supposed lesbian sister that he mentions at their first meeting, and when John does doctor-y things, he doesn't look very convincing (like checking Sherlock's pulse in his wrist rather than his neck, and falling asleep while working at a clinic).

When John first meets Mycroft at an abandoned warehouse, he offers Sherlock's new friend money to spy on him, which John turns down. Why wouldn't John recognise his new employer? Mycroft could have done it anonymously. And maybe he just wants to see how John can handle such a threatening situation.

All this would explain all the odd moments that Sherlock manages to triumph in, in particular that odd scene where he manages to easily rescue Irene Adler from a group of terrorists. But what about Moriarty? Simple, he actually was an actor called Richard Brook after all.How did Moriarty get all the money to carry out his dastardly schemes? Mycroft, of course. Sherlock's big bro needed to come up with a supervillain with seriously dangerous crimes to go along with him. This also explains how Moriarty knows so much about Sherlock.

In 'The Reichenbach Fall', Moriarty suddenly claims to be an actor named Richard, and was hired to make detective seem like he was solving crimes. While we all assume this to be a horrible and clever lie, what if it was the truth? He actually wanted to get rid of this weird acting gig. And the next time he's on screen, he's gone mad, is forced to carry on the charade, and shoots himself.

 Sherlock and John are secretly dating and will CANNON!     

         2. there's some real logic behind it (sort of).

Followers of the 'JohnLock' conspiracy reckon that creators Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss will eventually turn Sherlock and John's bromance into a full blown romance by the end of the series.

And it's not silly 50 Shades-style fan fiction, but there's been a massively in-depth analysis of scenes and scripts that apparently alludes to a secret relationship.

According to the theory, some fans reckon that the duo's story features plenty of narrative and filming techniques that frame them as a proper couple, not just good friends.

One example is a reference to the ending of Casablanca in 'His Last Vow', and how there are secret hearts littered in their scenes:

Plus, John doesn't correct Irene Adler when she mentions how the two of them are attracted to Sherlock, even though they're usually interested in the opposite sex.

 Sherlock used to be an MI6 agent

               3.We know little about Sherlock and Mycroft's spiky relationship, but there's one theory that could help explain it a little better. Sherlock once worked for him as a secret agent.

It's easy to guess that Mycroft is the head of the British secret service, so perhaps he once hired his baby brother as one of his top agents.

There have been clues pointing towards a third Holmes brother, so maybe he was also an agent but had a rather nasty death on the job.

This terrible event could have sent Sherlock a bit doolally, forcing him to quit the gig and eventually become a private detective, causing a bit of a rift between the two remaining siblings.

This would explain just how Sherlock also has quite the skills when it comes to kicking ass and infiltrating a terrorist gang and all that.

[simpmaru-nara]

Re: Thor Ragnarok

Okay so I’ve got a lot to say about this movie so I recommend you settle in for the long haul. Also there’s gonna be spoilers obv since I’ll have to reference the movie to make some of my points. I’ll try to stay away from any big ones, but go into this knowing that it will spoil some points.

To get started I’d like to say that if you are going to see the movie for pure entertainment value then the movie’s pretty alright; gorgeous graphics, some good jokes, fun costumes, etc. But even in that aspect much of the action was lackluster simply because it was often diminished to make room for dialogue or to cut to uninteresting parts of a fight. For instance in the final big fight there are three different points of interest and we spend too much time seeing the least fun parts of all those fights. And the gladiator scenes, which were extremely played up in the trailers, only last for about ten minutes and end by leaving the viewers both confused and disappointed.

In fact “confused and disappointed” was the mood for the entire movie

Despite excessive exposition the story somehow manages to be extremely vague with lots of unanswered questions. The first ten minutes of the movie is just Thor explaining how he ended up in the position we find him in and explaining the plot-important villain he faces. It tells instead of shows and is interrupted several times to make way for uncharacteristic jokes. It’s boring as hell and still doesn’t answer most questions one could have about what’s been happening to Thor since last we saw him. Then it transitions in probably the most disappointing way possible to answer a question that people have been burning with since the cliffhanger in the last Thor movie; what happened to Asgard and Loki? Thor arrives in Asgard to find Loki; who apparently has been met with zero suspicion in the face of extremely odd behavior and the creation of a god damn gold statue. Despite being questioned at every turn by the Warriors Three and Sif (who was suspiciously absent in this movie but I’ll get to that later) in the first movie, apparently in this movie everyone is content to praise the saint Loki who died for their sins. The entire situation is treated with a lot of nonchalance even after Loki is unmasked. Even more casual is the mention of the time that has passed with Loki in charge and absolutely nothing is said about what he’s done as king. Several movies building up Loki’s desire to rule, believing himself more worthy than his hot-headed brother, only for it to end up being something he does nothing note-worthy with. We were led to expect more. Oh and also apparently Thor and Jane broke up? Why? Oh right because we needed room for his new love interest. Of course this type of empty story telling carries on throughout the entire movie. It’s never truly explained how the last Valkyrie survived or how Bruce ended up in space.

Actually I’d like to talk about that last one a little more. The writers behind this movie used huge cop-outs in a few key points. One of the biggest was Hulk explaining what happened to him after the events of Age of Ultron. They used the dumb child-like personality they built for him as a way of dodging responsibility for explaining how the hell Hulk even ended up where he was. The quinjet, as far as we know, is not a space-faring vessel. It’s a god damn plane and yet we’re meant to believe that somehow the Hulk managed to fly that thing into space and make it far away from Earth and crash land on Sakaar before anywhere else. It’s ridiculous yet it’s the only explanation we’re offered from an illiterate Hulk. More than that we aren’t given any reason for why Thor is in the Hulk’s quarters. It’s made fairly clear that Hulk’s feelings towards Thor are mixed and the Grand Master wanted Thor dead in order to keep his Champion but for some reason both keep Thor alive and even choose to let him stay with Hulk? And no one questions it; not even Thor.

Thor, and the entire cast for that matter, is wildly out of character the entirety of the movie. Everyone is ripped to shreds in favor of humor. It’s like the writers went, “Hmmm, how do we make Bruce Banner funny? Oh!! I know! Just make him really weird for no apparent reason and also give him mood swings because we’re just going to forget that he had complete control prior to this movie and instead he’s going to be neurotic.” And they did that to everyone. Thor had a sense of humor in the earlier movies; typically more subtle and friendly, but here he’s openly sarcastic bordering on cynical. His jokes come across more Stark-ish (if Tony suddenly genuinely stopped caring) than they do Thor’s brand of humor. And Loki. God Loki... he’s reduced to a running joke about betrayal and being untrustworthy. “Silver tongued” Loki appears to have lost any amount of wit or actual mischief and is instead predictable and weirdly subdued. And all of this humor is ill-timed.

The writers absolutely refuse to give a single moment in the movie any depth. Any time that the plot manages to touch on something meaningful there’s humor thrown in as a buffer that only succeeds in forcefully detaching you from the plights of the characters. Thor’s in a cage and being threatened by the literal catalyst of Ragnarok? Better toss in a couple of jokes so it doesn’t seem too intense. Thor and Loki actually have a chance to talk about their problems and/or work as a team to establish a dynamic? Better make a joke about how easily Loki will throw Thor under the bus. Odin just died and Mjolnir was destroyed? Quick lets move onto the next thing before things get too heavy. The movie completely fails in making you care about anyone in the main cast. In fact, the person I was most invested in for the entire movie was Heimdal. The man has a total of maybe 10 minutes of screen time, but damn if he wasn’t the most interesting thing going on in the story. That’s at least half way because they didn’t try to force any awkward humor with him and they didn’t kill him. Which they killed a lot of characters in this movie and never give it the proper time or even weight to be grieved over.

Among the characters who were killed were the Warriors Three. A fact which is never acknowledged even as it happens. We at least get told (through Exposition Golem Alien because the audience can’t be trusted to deduce anything obviously) that Mjolnir being destroyed is a heavy weight on Thor and we see briefly the level of grief Thor feels for the loss of Odin, but the Warriors Three were Thor’s best friends. He grew up around them, adventured with them, they play a significant part in the first Thor movie, yet even before they die they’re widely forgotten about both by the plot and by Thor. Interestingly enough, however, is that Sif does not appear in this movie.

Sif remains completely AWOL for the entire movie, and honestly I’m pretty sure the reason is because the writers were reluctant to kill her off since she’s the Hot Warrior Babe. Because obviously they showed no hesitation in getting rid of the warriors as a casualty of the opposition to Hela and if Sif had been present she would have been right beside them and equally dead. Couldn’t do that so instead she’s just mysteriously not there. And I make this accusation with more than just Sif in mind. The movie also doesn’t want you to think that Hela isn’t attractive. In every scene we see her in she starts with her hair down in a sexy cat suit until she’s ready to fight at which point her wild black hair turns into her war helmet. There’s no real reason for the transition other than the fact that if she was always sporting the war helmet then she would come across as less attractive.

Besides the casual “must remain sexy” attitude towards Hela there was also a huge lack of continuity in the story, which kind of ties in with the lack questions answered, but still stands as it’s own problem. In the first Thor movie Odin takes Thor’s powers and casts an enchantment on Mjolnir. “Whosoever holds this hammer, should he be worth, shall possess the power of Thor.” Obviously Thor is the one to eventually pick up the hammer again and regain his power, but the importance of Mjolnir relative to Thor’s abilities is not diminished at that point. Yet magically in this movie Thor doesn’t need Mjolnir he just has these powers naturally. Even though, you know, Asgardians have never been shown to just naturally have elemental abilities and it was established that Thor doesn’t have much magic prowess the way Loki does. But that’s okay we’ll just ignore that because it’s really cool to see Thor turn into an anime character with glowing white eyes and electric fists (an ability he didn’t have even when he possessed Mjolnir). Also there’s the fact that Asgard’s history is vaguely outlined in the first movie as well and it’s made very clear that Odin is not the one who carved a spot for the golden city. He’s not the first king; his father was king before him. So no, Hela, you didn’t help Odin drown the realms in blood especially not while he was busy trying to end a war with Jotunheim as was explained as what he was doing around the time Thor was born and Loki was adopted. And it’s not just this either; there were plenty of other errors there, even with Doctor Strange.

And the scene with the Doc was odd in it’s own right. Last we saw of Doctor Strange he was giving up the infinity stone and taking over the New York sanctum as a talented, but still young sorcerer. When we see him in this movie he throws around magic like candy; appearing to be extremely proficient and wearing a familiar comic-book-esque outfit. Which raises the question, where is he relative to the power he (if we’re to go off the comics) is meant to possess? Is he the supreme now? What has he been doing since the end of his movie? The timeline is wonky at best and leaves you grasping blindly to try and put it together. It’s only made worse by the first after-credits scene which seems to be leaning into Infinity Wars territory.

Honestly I could talk about everything this movie could have done better for hours. I could pick apart the entire movie start to finish for all the things that were just wrong. But this is already an essay sized post so I’m gonna wrap it up. I care about this franchise. I care about the MCU. And that’s why it makes me so upset, as a fellow writer, to see how god damn lazy every part of Thor: Ragnarok was. The writer’s consistently and shamelessly cop-out of any meaningful story telling. “Show not tell” is a concept burned, drowned, and buried. They tear apart these beloved characters so thoroughly that they are nearly unrecognizable all in the pursuit of getting some good one-liners out there. I don’t have the words to describe my disappointment because Thor isn’t the first recent Marvel movie to do this. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 made some similar mistakes and now I’m feeling like the MCU no longer cares about building a coherent story line with dimensional characters. Instead they just care about making a movie as quotable as possible so that they sell some merch. And that’s a shame; I don’t want to see the MCU die because of a cash grab that sacrifices legitimate investment in the franchise.

[ashroadtrek-blog]

Tomorrow is Yesterday

Air Date: January 26, 1967

Writer: D.C. Fontana

Director: Michael O’Herlihy

I want to start off by saying that I fucking love time travel. I love alternate/parallel universes, I love Q episodes, I love crossovers, I love Klingons, and I love all the crazy sci-fi stuff that Star Trek pioneered. 

I did not particularly care for this episode. No, it wasn’t a boring pile of action like Arena, but it was a dull episode about some guy from 1967 getting trapped on the Enterprise and Kirk has to go steal some evidence. 

Tomorrow is Yesterday starts off by showing us a jet scramble at a contemporary (for 1967) audiences and the Enterprise against a blue sky - a new and exciting image that I found very pleasant. 

Apparently the Enterprise went too close to a black hole (which is called a “black star of high gravitational attraction”) and hit a time warp back in time; somehow this puts them over Earth...1967 (or 1966, whenever it was produced - likely in 1966.) The engines and power systems need some time to recover, but nobody is dead...and the Enterprise has a jet on its tail. 

Interestingly, Star Trek predicts the moon landing as being in the ‘late 1960s’ - the date of the moon landing was July 20th, 1969 (a proud moment for all humankind.) Less interestingly, Captain Christopher’s son is said to head the first Earth-Saturn probe (presumably in the 1980s or 1990s) - all we’ve got so far is the ISS in orbit (another proud achievement for all humankind anyways.)

So the conflict of this episode is that they beam a pilot aboard after their tractor beam breaks up his jet - now what the hell kind of force does the beam exert, anyway? Is it like a clamping jet that crushes anything not made of cast rodinium? In that case they should have kept the NX-01′s grappling hook throughout the development of later Starfleet vessels. I guess they just rely on the transporter if one crewmen gets blown out the airlock - or more likely, give them up for dead.

Moving on. 

They transport the captain on the ship, and he immediately pops off with name, rank, and serial number all bug-eyed. He’s shocked to see Kirk is a human, speaks english, and has a normal all-American name like James T. Kirk. Well, he is from Iowa, after all. 

Kirk is fairly hospitable and brings Captain Primitive to the bridge. On the way he guffaws at a female crewman like “A WOMAN ON A SPACESHIP?” It’s one of the best glimpses into the attitudes of the 60s. 

What’s next - a black woman, an asian man, and an alien in the command center?!

Captain Chris is impressed by the ship - when he was flying towards it he saw that it was pretty massive, and indeed it is quite the behemoth at 947 feet long (the current USS Enterprise (CVN-65) is 1,122 feet long), 416 feet wide, and 238 feet tall. My house is like 12 feet floor to the peak of the roof. Kirk informs him that there are only 12 like them, which seems like a small number for Starfleet but hey, it was early in the franchise history. UESPA and Starfleet are both mentioned in this episode, though. 

Chris looks at Spock like he’s an alien, but I just don’t get it - I mean, back in the 60s, most audiences just getting television and seeing things they never had before, maybe the pointed ears and eyebrows and bangs seemed genuinely alien...but that’s really the only difference between Spock and a human on the surface. I’d be more inclined to buy his shock if Spock were blue and had antennae coming out of his head.

“What are you looking at...pink-skin?”

I’m really surprised Captain Wash-Out doesn’t look at Uhura like “A BLACK PERSON ON THE BRIDGE? WHAAAA?” or “A WOMAN ON THE BRIDGE? WHAAAA?” because part of the problem they had with The Cage was nobody was comfortable with a woman on the bridge in a command position - and while Uhura may be the communications officer, she’s still an officer and presumably still has a higher position of authority over much of the crew. (43 officers, the rest enlisted crewmen. Uhura is 1 of those 43 officers who attended the Academy.)

I wonder what contemporary audiences thought of their silent interaction?

The initial conundrum is that Spock can’t let Kirk have Captain Chris go all Biff Tannen with the timeline, and therefore they have to keep him. Then again, if they get back to their time he won’t really fit as a throwback. Chris does not want this, and he argues that NOT sending him back will affect the timeline - to which Spock responds that he’s already space-googled him and found out he’s not important at all.

"Did he fart or is that the smell of his ego shattering?”

Chris wants to do his duty: report back to base, get home to a hot supper from his picture perfect housewife and 2.5 kid nuclear family. Then there’s another problem - the Enterprise is still stuck in 1967, and they can’t really go anywhere. I mean, what if another Vulcan survey ship passes through the system (ala Carbon Creek)? They can’t exactly risk going into outer space and contaminating the timeline. 

Friendly reminder that this guy is still hanging out in Pennsylvania during this episode

Chris tries to escape and Kirk drops him. Bones brings up the obvious predicament if they can’t get home - imagine the damage a Riley can do to the timeline?

This but with a nuclear submarine off the coast of New York and a tab of LSD - it was that time, after all

So Spock shows up and mentions he forgot to include Chris’ descendants in his google search and hey, what do you know, his son heads the mission to Saturn!

The news is music to the captain’s ears - but now they have to break into the base and get evidence of the Enterprise out and destroy the captain’s credibility so that he’ll become a despondent alcoholic after his career is ruined and spur his son into becoming an astronaut so he can go to Saturn and finally measure up in his father’s eyes. Okay, only part of that is real.

Kirk and Sulu are the ones who beam down, and Sulu is positively delighted to be part of a mission to an authentic 20th century military installation - after all, he did fetishize that old gun in Shore Leave and has a fencing hobby.

"Captain, look! An old-style message array!”

Meanwhile, Spock does temporal equations in his head and Bones experiences mild anxiety.

Kirk and Sulu pull some tapes out of an ancient (even by modern standards) tape-reading computer and then they get caught by base police, leading to this hilarious image:

“D-did the south rise again?”

The guy is in such incredible shock he spends most of the episode standing there. 

Anyways, Kirk gets caught (Sulu beams out) and acts like a smartass with the base police. The boys up top figure out how to get him back, Chris makes a bad attempt at betrayal, and the army cop on the ship is still in shock.

At this point I think the chief was just fucking with him

To finish the episode, Spock and Scotty figure the old slingshot-around-the-sun maneuver is just the trick to initiate a time warp, beam Chris and the cop back to where they belong (and erasing their memories to boot) and manage to get back to their own time. There’s a lot of technobabble involved, but that’s the gist of it. 

This is the first time they use the slingshot maneuver to go back in time. I wonder why they didn’t use the matter/antimatter intermix from The Naked Time? Well it turns out this episode was to be the second part of a two-parter with The Naked Time as its first part, and the time warp they entered in that episode is what shoots them back in the past of this episode. In retrospect, if you ignore the black star exposition it still works pretty well; canonically, however, this episode is roughly 6 months after The Naked Time. 

When they get back they are hailed by Starfleet control; a happy ending for our crew. 

This episode was written by D.C. Fontana, a rare female television writer from in the early era of television. Dorothy also wrote Charlie X and has credits on 8 more TOS episodes, TAS Yesteryear, 5 TNG episodes, and the DS9 episode Dax. Notable episodes she penned (or helped pen) include The Enterprise Incident, Journey to Babel, and Encounter at Farpoint. To me, she’s hit and miss, like Gene L. Coon (who wrote my least-favorite episode thus far yet also penned the upcoming The Devil in the Dark), but there’s one thing I agree with her on - Deep Space 9 was her favorite Star Trek spin-off because it had the best character development, and that’s exactly why I love that of all Star Trek series the most. 

I actually forgot to mention the sexy-voice computer! So what, Starfleet’s computer systems come from Signet 14, a planet of women? Or did they mean they got it updated at Signet 14 and the sultry voice was a prank by the Signetians? Either way, Kirk did not appreciate it and it was pretty funny.

Rating: 2/5; Don’t Rewatch

Tomorrow is Yesterday is a boring episode that doesn’t have much going on. While it doesn’t mishandle action like Arena, it lacks the interesting events of an average episode like Miri, and there’s nothing in the episode worth sticking around for. 

[alxndre-0001]

Alex’s Literary Reads of 2019 (from the months of June to September)

Caution: Bad, unedited writing ahead. Alex is a lazy person

Being a law student is an exhausting line of self-inflicted harm. Your life becomes an onslaught of reading materials and even more reading materials to catch up to. Now, reading has been second nature to me since I was four years old, so you can just imagine the sheer amount of readings my law professors have given us for me to consider detesting reading. 

I’ve managed to keep my sobriety from purely academic books by inserting novels, short stories and some poetry along the way. In all my four years in law school, this is the only year that I read as much as I wanted to. Mostly, short stories and essays that could be finished in one sitting. I had summer classes and wasn’t able to go home at all since January or February so I kept myself preoccupied by reading leisurely ( I know, gasp! Is that even possible for Alex in this economy?).

So here they are ++ some reviews and thoughts on the books.

1. Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

I read this book at the same time as a friend of mine. It was my first time diving into erotica considered to hold literary merit, the ones I had before were utterly terrible, by the way. But we are talking of Anais Nin anyway, so there’s that. It’s actually a collection of erotic short stories involving different, unconnected characters although a few of them were referenced in other stories. As someone who’s always been fine with sex in plots, this one left me feeling visibly unsettled. I realized how truly romanticized sex can be in popular books (e.g Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy). The outpouring of feminine pleasure on those books was strictly gratuitous and self-indulgent. Delta of Venus was an uncomfortable experience because it fleshed out several discomfiting realities of sex and titillation – violence is often an element of power play in the bedroom, voyeuristic tendencies of everyone, depraved fantasies which are almost immoral in their insistence. 

Of particular impressions were ‘The Hungarian Adventurer’ and ‘Boarding School’ which explored themes of rape, incest, and even bestiality at one point.  It wasn’t the fact of preference that appalled me, it was the simple exposition of the truth – sex is all things good and bad, inexplicable and sensual. I have a problem with how media portrays sex, especially in popular culture which is partial with idealistic notions of sexual roles apparent in concepts like the male gaze and fantasy in porn. You see, these things eventually become damaging. When we glamorize something as common as sex, it either becomes fodder for taboo or fantasy, which incidentally what occurs with conversations of sex. Either it is a subject much condemned for its alleged impurity or a dirty little secret which encourages unrealistic expectations for both sexes. 

Nin’s style of writing borders on the absurd, but it is done intentionally. In one interview, she narrated how a client wanted her to write erotica which was basically porn and just skip the poetry. She refused as any self-respecting and intelligent woman would.  And well, we need to appreciate her for that. If she let the client have his way, then what we’d have is an exaggerated image of sex instead of the unnerving stories of Delta. In a sense, we can consider Delta as a commentary on sex literature which caters to a male audience. The stories were rife with feeling, of emotion, which feminized a genre so overtly masculine, pandering to the male gaze.

There were quite a number of jibes at the male gaze as well with stories like ‘Marianne’ and the ‘The Veiled Woman’. My favorite was when Marianne (Marianne) met a man who felt erotic pleasure by only being looked at, like an object of desire. It appeared to me as a reverse of the male gaze, which often portrayed women as the object of desire, effacing her human qualities to turn her into just a vessel to express lust, infatuation or even love. But here, the object of desire is a man and we are made privy into his thoughts and actions, humanizing him instead of treating him as just an object. 

Overall, Delta of Venus was a fine starter for anyone who wished to know more of Anais Nin. The prose flowed well, even lyrically so, despite sex being a subject which can easily turn stale if not carefully written. 

2. Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe

My first experience with Poe was when I was around nine or ten years old. I was a nosy child when it came to other people’s books and one day I found printed copies of short stories of my cousin’s in his room. One of them was A Tell-Tale Heart.  I still remember feeling on edge as I read the slightly blurred lines in cheap brown paper, it was utterly thrilling. The horror of the story comes less from the almost supernatural obsession of the unnamed character with the eye of the old man. It was more on his slipping attempts of overcoming the inhuman desire to kill the man for his eye. 

There’s always something that fascinates me with horror that is internally driven. More than the hostility of vampires, the looming threats of an apocalypse, the real horror for me lies in the deep recesses of the human heart, that inscrutable machine that throbs inextricably within all of us. And I feel like that’s what always impressed me with Poe. He had the excellent ability to articulate darkness that is motivated by the self and that is a feat for writers. Stephen King, for example, is great at understanding that his monsters are metaphors for his inner demons but he relates them into tangible forms be it demon dogs, telekinetic teenagers to give them an external existence. 

Poe has a clear grasp of fear and all its friends. And though some critics would lend an idea that Poe writes well with supernatural elements, I beg to disagree. He uses, for one, unreliable narrators (Berenice, William Williamson, Fall of the House of Usher). The thing with unreliable narrators is they warp the sense of reality of the stories, an indication to the reader that everything is not what it seems. And if one pays enough attention, then they could ask the all-important question: Is this the real-life or is this just fantasy? If you’re playing with those two possibilities, then you’d be less scared with the supernatural/ external world than the worldview of the narrator. You start to scrutinize him more closely, dog his steps, intimate his intentions, etc like some fixated lover. In doing so, in peering into the mind of another, you stumble into your own inner motivations, your thoughts and who knows you might mirror the darkness the narrator is struggling with? 

And there is the true gift of Poe – he reads everyone like how he reads himself. He doesn’t do this by getting acquainted with thousands of people with innumerable different lives. No, sir. He forces readers to examine themselves and the darkness inherent in men but constantly, through our self-delusion denied as present in others but not in ourselves. I need not belabor that this kind of writer is my favorite, the ones with a very vivid understanding of humanity, no matter how bleak the answers that arrive to them.

I went at liberties with Poe (lol) but some favorites inside the collection of stories are The Case of M. Valdemar, Black Cat, Descent into the Maelstrom and Pit of the Pendulum. My only issue is Poe’s tendency to philosophize in protracted terms that I was afraid I was going to get bored to death ( Domain of Arnheim, The Island of the Fay) with the possible exception of ‘The Colloquy of Monos and Una’ since I like the ideas presented there. 

3. Slapstick! or Lonesome No More by Kurt Vonnegut

I was supposed to start with Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions or Cat’s Cradle but the only available copy of the writer’s work in the book fair (thanks BBW!!) was this one. It seemed like a light read, a stark contrast from Poe’s grim, verbose collection, so I decided to give it a go. The last time I read a sci-fi novel was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 ( a real shame since I planned on reading more sci-fi this year). I finished it in less than a day and I wouldn’t say it left me with any remarkable opinion as much as the other books have had on me except that Vonnegut seemed like that fun, carefree uncle in reunions who has an alcohol abuse problem, is unmarried, and eats grapefruit for breakfast.

It’s not a very long novel and Vonnegut kept ending every part with ‘Hi, ho’. There’s a deeper sadness that is thinly veiled in the book as well, yeah slapstick, which reminded me of David Wallace’s Infinite Jest except the latter presents a more serious nod to its humor. 

It tells the story of Wilbur and Eliza, twins who are considered conventionally horrendous and abnormal in physical qualities. They are tall, too tall in fact. But thank god for rich parents who secretly dislike them, that they lived a sheltered existence away from everyone else other than their servants and a doctor who checks them every day. Unbeknownst to the parents and everyone else, the twins are super smart but only if they are allowed to share their intelligence by being close to each other. 

Long story made short, it’s a light read and perhaps a good overview of Vonnegut’s style of writing. I did want to read Slaughterhouse-Five after this one, so maybe that’s a good start. 

4. Dubliners by James Joyce

I’m having a hard time deciding whether this is my favorite out of everything else in this list or not. James Joyce was actually one of the writers I wanted to read very closely and understand his style better. He had such status and influence in modernism, plus the mythic reputations of both Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses for their wrought complexity and ingenuity in style that I felt drawn to his works.  You should have seen my face when I got a copy of this book at the BBW Fair last August – think of a kid in a candy store for an accurate depiction. 

Let’s cut right down to the chase. What do I really think of this book? To sum up my thoughts about it: If there is a master class for short story writing, Dubliners should be a required reading. I am by no means a writer or journalist but as someone who reads short stories often (more often than novels or poetry) for the last two or three years, Dubliners was a standout. 

Dubliners is actually a collection of short stories (hell I’ve only been having collections, is this a pattern? lol). They are set in Ireland mediated through the simplicity of daily life.  I admired the craftsmanship of Joyce in this one, the prose was written so concisely, dispensing with the arduous descriptions that lead nowhere.  

The characters, too, were forged from the circumstances of ordinariness – a dead priest, an abused woman, a boy about to come of age and so on. The characters themselves feel like semblances of a collective consciousness – that of Ireland during a tumultuous time in the  20th century.  In a way, the mundane, individual aspects of a character’s life was a mirror to the social conditions Joyce wanted to portray emphatically in the stories. The style was polished in a way that one is made to occupy the places mentioned in Dublin through the familiarity of an old friend, a returning local into the arms of unchanged memories. There hung in each story, a great atmosphere of nostalgia and I suspect it is because Joyce knows how to excavate sentiments for places which we haven’t even visited or seen but that somehow we recognize as phantoms of our very own lives. 

There is indeed great beauty in the most ordinary things and it takes the eye of an artist to take the uneventful and reveal its exquisiteness. Joyce made me grasp a show of that ability in the days that I pored through his collection. Whatever he intended while writing Dubliners, whether as a mirror of a conflicted Irish society or as a commentary to the social context borne through those times, it is his style that won me over. The plots were as simplistic as possible and there was no way to harness more meaning from the events of a character’s life rather than to take them at face value and coming to the understanding of just how nuanced and visceral our daily lives can be if only we looked hard enough, paid attention enough.

Dubliners reminded me of what I look for most in a book. It really is less of the plot or even it’s overarching theme and more of the style. Language as an art form has always been my standard in saying if a book has taken me in or not.  The great writer, Vladimir Nabokov is similarly convinced that language can elevate a story into an art form. There is artistic merit in a writer’s style just by itself and I would rather read a book with a weak plot but with a sound use of language than a novel plot with a severely exploited and copied style. 

5. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Perhaps the other strong contender for favorite in this list is Heart of Darkness. To be fair, it was less a book and more of an experience. An experience of what literature can do when it goes beyond style and narration to get to the bottom of the writer’s innermost motivations for writing the book. I ended Heart of Darkness, perplexed and in much quandary. There are only two possible explanations: First either the book was beyond me and my mediocre mind that try as I might, meaning of any sort would only elude me. Second, it was so condensed with significance that reading it once simply didn’t qualify as reading it at all. By the end of maybe two days, I realized it was the latter. For the lack of any other time, I’m going to try and process its entirety with the sum of my reading it only once.

I confess I looked up a video review off YouTube before getting to the book, mostly because classics have a way of being exhaustively discussed without losing their ability to sustain a reader’s interest. In my case, spoilers don’t do any damage or if there is any, of only negligible consequence since I look for other things other than the stream of events.

According to the video review, the book is an example of darkness as a location. To put context to this description, it would be good to tell a bit of the story. This is about an English man named Marlow who went to Congo to take on greener chances in the trade therein and for which the backdrop is meant to replicate the inhuman conditions of the slave trade. Amidst all this is another man named Kurtz, who was quite illustrious as a prodigious ivory trader and who was steeped in so much mystery. Upon arriving at the Congo, Marlow witnesses the cruel treatment of the ‘slaves’ under the supervision of the Europeans. 

[elizabethrobertajones]

12x17 watching notes

(Finally :P)

expectations - well, I had pretty low ones before this episode came out but while I was mucking around waiting for it to become available through some channel or another, a couple of people have expressed actual excitement to me about it so now I'm confused, especially as they didn't offer any qualifiers about that, aside from that the Crowley and Lucifer stuff would be pretty boring, which was a lesser problem on my list of things to worry about.

Let's see what happens :P

-

The recap starts with the Crowley and Lucifer stuff. Yay.

Blah blah Dagon and Kelly... EILEEN HI

-

Okay interesting BMoL recap - starting with Mick and his character development so far, then sliding over to Ketch, punchy punchy Mary hitting things in time with him. So they're linked (see also: gloomy expectations :P) and actually doesn't tell us anything else about Mary in that moment, but keeps on recapping Sam and Dean's issues with the BMoL - Mary's been swallowed up into them.

-

Kendricks! With their creepy motto about being stronger together. Which is I guess what Sam accidentally echoed about the better the MoL are the better they are

(Mittens just told me the crossed keys on there are a symbol of heaven too which *anvils*

-

It is never a good sign when you're called into an office and they put plastic sheeting down. I guess one of these kids isn't coming out alive... I don't think they've said names yet but I think the pale dark haired one is Mick because duh

odds are they make him murder his friend for shits and giggles

I can't visuale "Michael" being Mick because that name just doesn't fit :P Also anvils again the whole Michael thing - we had his lance not too long ago. He's LURKING.

-

LOL the Headmistress pauses with horns behind her head. Not ominous about her being evil at aaaall.

-

LOL they are Michael and Lucifer parallels

And Michael wins. Obviously. Since we know Mick kinda makes it out of there. :P

-

So Headmistress with her codes is God, Mick actually wins the damn fight which is NOT good because the only other repetition of the entire cycle to win the fight was Cain and that ended *so well* for him.

All the Cas mirroring just got blown out of the water though. I guess he now gets to carry the weirdly dubious honour of dealing with the Michael mirroring... Michael who would not back down from the apocalypse because God Said So and he was going to be a good son and do what was destined of him, no matter if it meant killing his brother. Of course we've had that exact conflict remembered earlier this season with Ramiel musing on how Michael made his spear to kill Lucifer slowly and painfully. Cain mirrored down the line to Dean - Mick mirrors back up to it Michael. Interesting that they want to address this again even just thematically with parallels like this... I'm so not convinced ever at any point that Michael will actually come back, if nothing than for the show to dig in its heels and enjoy the "You forgot Adam" jokes to the end of time, but Michael IS a loose end narratively in that he's so heavily NOT been involved in the story again, and carries a real, terrifying weight that Lucifer does not, and tbh never really did, since he popped up in 5x01 all like hey I'm the villain, but Michael had a much more insidious awfulness to him... And with 2 appearances ever, remains far more mysterious and powerful in the story than the now over-blown cartoon villain Lucifer's been since, well, honestly, season 7, though obviously Hallucifer was not meant to be the real deal...

Anyway I should maybe not take forever to watch the thing because I always do and I started so late thanks to download links being terrible >.>

-

Wait

Mick is alone and drinking in the office at the BMoL compound remembering all this (yay alcoholism all of a sudden out of nowhere - he really has utterly switched gears to the Michael-Cain-Dean thread)

and now Sam n Dean are driving off to meet him

when the hell was the promo scene and was it even in this episode :P

-

EILEEN IMMEDIATELY

Yesssssss

I am immediately also upset that she loves Sam so much but doesn't tell him to not let Dean talk to her while he's driving if it means he has to keep looking down at the ipad to make it clear what he's saying to her >.> EYES ON THE ROAD. Sam's no good to you dead.

-

I am mostly admiring Eileen's hair because Kelly stuff is like... okay.

-

Aw she said goodbye to Sam specially. My heart.

-

Dean thinks it's cute too.

Sam's like "come on" oh god he's in love too.

Sammy, this is how it feels to be in the hot seat when people mock you for having an adorable crush. Leap behind denial and pretending there was nothing special about that "bye Sam" :3

And you should know you've seen it happen to Dean enough :P

-

Dean ships it.

And he always knows what's true and good :3

-

"He stole my line" says Crowley somewhere or other. I love how Dean was literally just saying not to call Crowley, and there's Mick in the library with the whiskey, "hello boys" and suuuuper ominous music, because he just let himself in. Does he know about Kelly? Sam and Dean are coordinating all the other hunters they know on this, but it's their resources. And they actually have other hunters they know and trust and are good, working with them.

And of course, the whole thing with the BMoL imposing on them - no privacy, the keys giving him full access to their lives, and, I think, assuming in a way they're their superiors because Sam n Dean are hunters, but Mick has the desk job and the education...

-

Sam and Dean present a united front stomping towards Mick, who has come to hang out. Now HE is on the case of Kelly, and of course it comes out that they were keeping it a secret...

Mick mentions cosmic shockwave but it's not Cas's cosmic consequences. I think we need to limit the word cosmic to one per season relevant things.

Anyway as with 12x14 showing the BMoL are playing on their stage but are tragically behind and under informed. I was recently musing on if they had the same technology as a start point as the Bunker and that detected the angel fall, they would have obviously a lot more time to develop it and would have equipment sensitive enough to detect all sorts of big events (I was wondering about the seals breaking in that context, but a Nephilim being conceived counts)

Now I have to listen to Dean recapping 12x08...

I feel like I should just leave a blank space for watching them arguing about killing Kelly or making her get an abortion. Just because... Buckleming, no, why are you even handling this subject. Why.

Mick takes the far more hardline approach that they should have killed her, but I mean, Sam and Dean start from the point of, we thought she agreed to get an abortion (are you not allowed to say abortion on American TV?)

-

I do love Sam and Dean sitting on the table side by side like this KNOWING they're like, the most intimidating men Mick will ever meet and if they play up the double act, he's so much more likely to crack from the pressure :')

This is rapidly turning into Buckleming's favourite trope of Sam n Dean judging you together, which I can't remember how often they do it but it is a Thing and 9x21 is not the only example though it’s the only one I can think of, and none of the other writers ever make them do exactly this.

I think part of why it stands out to me is just because while Sam n Dean are great and can be united against a mock-worthy foe, they actually aren't usually *united* and even when things are great, they play to their strengths, but often moments of unity highlight their differences, especially current conflicts or whatever. Moments of inward reflection occur and so on.

Here, they're just a block on this table which says "exposition: Winchester POV" while Mick is over there like "exposition: drop more anvils" (he just called the nephilim an "abomination" out of the blue)

-

"Until then, we drink" - I think Dean is distracting Mick more than anything - he already showed up in the Bunker, drinking, and Dean knows they have a lead thanks to Eileen. If they can get Mick trashed, who knows, maybe he'll forget, maybe this will all seem less urgent in the morning, maybe he can be reasoned with differently when the plan is he has the hangover and Dean is doing dishes noisily in the kitchen, if, you know, Mick had not out-drunk them

-

wait why is Lucifer back in that chair - did Buckleming literally not watch 12x15? It's so pointless to chain him up... he should be like, sitting in the corner of Crowley's room or whatever, LOOKING free and suffering.

The fact you could fade out from 12x13 and into 12x16 for the Lucifer stuff makes me think that Perez did the best he could and bless his cotton socks but you just can't un-fuck Buckleming writing when they're on a roll, because if they think Lucifer should be chained up in this chair like they wanted him, then here he is.

I mean aside from anything it's yet more complete disrespect for canon - that they clearly didn't do any homework for 12x13 because holy crap the Gavin stuff was badly handled, and that was their own story so you'd think they'd know how follow on from their OWN writing - and now they're not even playing ball with the other writers on current stuff >.>

As I said in an ask I answered a little before this episode, they have their own canon running adjacent to main canon, where all their mad plot stuff happens, and everyone else just has to deal with it as a sort of weird fever dream that happens in the background of the Winchesters' lives. You can't reason with it when they aren't listening. Or they just do not understand the point of what someone else wrote.

-

Anyway I guess Dagon feels like she failed Lucifer over something or other, which makes her a kid desperately trying to prove herself to her father.

Sounds ominous about Kelly "lasting" and that the pregnancy will probably include all sorts of body horror and then kill her - I suppose more burning up like the vessels or something in that vein.

So I suppose now we have the whole do you let the baby get born at the expense of the mother dying stuff - I really really hope this is not some wacky anti-abortion message but actually makes this look WRONG. I mean you'd think Lucifer and a trusted underling not valuing the mother over the baby would be a good start that this is a bad POV on abortion because it's again choosing for the mother what's "best" and which life to value more, but, well.

I also just don't trust the writers because the message was so bad in 12x08 with all the men arguing over what to do about her baby and Kelly's characterisation to not even consider abortion seriously despite having a baby from rape, before we even get into the ethical horror show of what it may or may not be intentionally saying about aborting babies with problems you just don't think you can deal with as a parent regardless of their potential

I mean fucking hell can we just not have this story arc?

-

Wait if we're having more Mick flashbacks did he actually kill his friend or are we just wallowing on this

I can't tell with these writers if I should expect a plot twist or just over-writing :P

-

the Headmistress has a chessboard in front of her, currently all set up and not played. But in the actual game, her chess pieces are all over the board. Does she think she has them in neat lines, but they're actually running everywhere?

Who knows - Mick tries to complain he's still cleaning up after Toni's mess while the Headmistress thinks that they're hopeless because Toni said so. She doesn't want chess pieces she can't get neatly in line.

Not how the game works, ma'am

-

She seems to think so - "assimilate or eliminate" - she really does not understand the Winchesters and their role in the whole... cosmic order. You work around them, or with them, not over them. :P

-

Blah blah Kelly and Dagon - Dagon doing the bare minimum to keep Kelly alive while off the radar of everyone looking for her, clearly not caring about Kelly... Kelly demands to see a doctor because of course we need her to make stupid decisions.

I bet the baby has like, little horns and a pitchfork in there and the weird pains are because it's poking the inside of her tummy with the pitchfork.

Cackling comes over the ultrasound, somehow.

Also, better odds the doctor is randomly an angel, maybe because they've possessed every single doctor in the country waiting for Kelly to drop by because she wants pics of Satan jr to share on Facebook to make all her schoolfriends jealous.

-

The hangover scene - Sam and Dean have their sleeves rolled the exact same way. They really are still being a unified front. Of course, the whole table thing - they're in their rightful places while confronting a cheery Mick hanging out in their kitchen. Last interloper to do that was God.

-

Of course this implies that Sam and Dean keep the resources to make Bloody Marys in their fridge in the first place.

Which is completely and utterly horrifying, that Mick comes in right as they're asking each other about Mary, and makes himself a Bloody Mary.

-

Binge drinking: a national sport and we're GOOD at it

-

I am disappointed that Dagon did not just roll with the fake relationship thing because that would have been hilarious and maybe actually made me interested in the character dynamics going on here. She's not exactly done anything to make her look like more than the standard standoffish demon with old school lucifer loyalties and not much interest in being nice except for what it gets her. Of course there's a Meg vibe going on but like... without all the oozing charisma and personality that in Meg 2.0 was just in one eyebrow all the time. I mean, she could just stand there and eyebrow slightly and... gah, Rachel Miner just has ridiculous stage presence :P I don’t DISLIKE Dagon but she’s trapped in this writing and has no room to do anything fun or challenging.

-

I just took a little break to come up with a much better way to write this story with Mittens, and we've concluded if Kelly's not going to be HORRIFIED by what's happening inside her, she should be intentionally stoned out of her mind with nephilim baby brain, which Dagon has to deal with like "UGH" and long story short, she has to throw Kelly a baby shower to keep her happy and they sit there crocheting booties together and AGAIN would give us real character dynamics - Kelly wavering between "what's happening to me?" and wandering around their dilapidated hide out of the week wondering where to put the nursery while singing to herself, and Dagon grinding her teeth and helping Kelly pick out names all sweetly :P

-

I just want these poor actresses to have something real to work with

-

Can't see horns on the nephilim

-

oh well

-

*slowly decays on my chair into a neat little pile of dust while Crowley is being boring with Lucifer* I was just watching 9x02 before this, and Crowley chained up in the dungeon there, playing Kevin for all its worth, and oh my god that was excellent writing

boring

... I do not remember typing that

Oh, Michael reference. Cool. Cool cool cool. Nothing new about him, but with his presence in the narrative I have to wonder if Lucifer is lying or exaggerating.

-

Giving Crowley what he "wants" in order to make him bored or unsatisfied or whatever Lucifer seems to be playing with seems to go back to a much less interesting version of Crowley than the one who seemed to have a lot more fun torturing Lucifer in 12x15 with a genuinely clever way to BREAK him but oh well

the "you win" obviously is really fake and Lucifer attempting to manipuate Crowley while under his control and ugh Crowley does it so much better. He broke Kevin in like 3 lines of dialogue

-

Ooh Mary

She has a bigass gun - ha, as I was typing that she added another attachment and made it bigger

-

I suppose that's not a metaphor about their relationship - "I've learned not to argue"

-

"Major in murder, minor in mayhem?" okay we've switched to whichever of Buckner and Ross-Leming is the quippy one :P I like these lines, to be clear. Mary is fun. Mary and Ketch fascinates me, if you didn't notice me writing a 6k fic where they were married in the aftermath of the world without monsters :P

-

Oh my god is she actually going to talk about her life with Ketch? I was hoping nearer the start of the season she'd open up to Cas but obviously that would be too positive for the both of them. And now it's part of Ketch seducing her, so I'm gonna cut off that thought right here, since it would have been for sweet family reasons with Cas but sooo not where it's going here :P

She's wearing the same shirt with the XOXOX pattern from 12x02 and we can see the chain with the ring on but it's not really obvious the ring is there

-

Oh NOW we can see the ring, after the "Mrs Winchester, I believe you're drawn to danger" line and the camera changes to a wider shot and you can see the ring finally, like, they parted her plaid a little.

-

I kind of want to be more emo about Mary talking about her life, and I am in other contexts but this episode has exhausted me, so her laughing sadly about her quiet normal life not happening was kind of a non-moment to me >.> I suppose she's sort of coming through to a state of acceptance if you apply the stages of grief, but she's still dealing with it all wrong by not talking to her family - even Cas - but bonding with the worst possible character to bond with this season. I mean, c'mon, if she'd started hanging out with Crowley he'd have got weirdly attached in a non-creepy way and kind of hate himself for giving her honest girl talk advice :P

-

Mick can't seem to move without ominous music following him

-

Pfft there's another, worse Brit here now who is the Poshest and even drinking tea while he comes to chat with Mick. Mick being all rough and stubble-y and pointing a gun at him is immediately looking like a more relatable character in terms of what we're asked to relate to with hunters and all - he's picking up their mannerisms

-

The posh boy talks about another set of hands - NOT a Cas parallel or at least the worst freakin Cas parallel ever. I think in a way, if that line does mean anything, then the parallels to Heaven here, have Mick as the Cas here, and posh boy as the Establishment Cas is up against.

-

Oooh the blood is on the floor there next to Mick, but last episode Dean was standing directly on top of it so I missed that detail. Now it's just casually in the frame with Mick, reminding us and I guess therefore telling us what's on his mind. And, you know, showing us Mick framed with what was a huge pool of blood.

-

Okay I guess the guy who just murdered the doctor is a demon despite no eyes flashing because he didn't use an angel blade and an angel might have been a bit more, sorry have to murder you hope you understand - no idea why he did that unless Dagon's commanding some demons to clear up Kelly's mess, knowing her little mind control thingy might not be permanent. Or Crowley also is looking for the nephilim on the side to pointlessly torturing Lucifer.

I mean without the eyes he could have just been a really proactive hunter or BMoL

-

Oh gosh no Dean's on the phone to Cas, listening to his terrible voicemail. Help.

-

OH NO EILEEN'S HERE AND SHE'S SITTING IN THE 'COME AND GET ME' POSE

Sam you need to take her on that table right now

Dean will clear the heck out, he understands and thinks you're cute together

-

I literally did not listen to a thing they said while screeching about that *rewinds for plot*

-

Also just the whole Cas n Dean thing on one side and Sam n Eileen in the other room

-

OH gosh they saved the demon reveal for Eileen having a badass fucking showdown with him both showing their cards with him doing the eyes, and her pulling out an ANGEL BLADE

I know they're a lot cheaper in the current economy but I have to think Sam gave it to her from their spares pile, because of the Asa Fox thing on the one hand, that they ARE rare for hunters to best and angel in any way but also just this way it's sweet

but oh boy the Cas/Dean Sam/Eileen stuff that happens when you show her pulling an angel blade

-

Ah, the demon did work for Dagon

-

(Which means Crowley is flagging in this race, if he's even in it >.>)

-

But anyway Dean third-wheeling Sam and Eileen is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Sam is awkward and smiling! Eileen is gorgeous and smiling! Dean likes Eileen a lot with respect as a hunter (thinks it's cool she stabbed a demon in the heart) but is totally cut out of the final moment where Sam and Eileen clink beer bottles, I mean, he just *vanishes*

and then I realise - this is how Sam feels all the time when he's stuck in a scene with Dean and Cas :P

-

What is Crowley even doing

I suppose this scene is very blatantly illustrating how 2 stories can happen at once - Crowley thinks he's showing ultimate dominance, and Lucifer is subverting it by using the words Crowley wants to hear for his own ends, with actual wink wink nod nod to how he's the one saying how it will be. The demons are confused and hesitant about what they're clapping for... Not entirely sure which power is ruling them and how it's going to turn out for them - who do you support in this race? Crowley is the surface text, presenting what he thinks is obvious from the visuals. But Lucifer is the subtext, with his back turned to Crowley he's free to convey what ever else he wants, even to the point of painting the exact opposite story to what's going on

discord between surface and subtext.

-

Kelly seems to be genuinely trying to be totally normal about her pregnancy... is this denial?

-

Literally did not recognise Sam's voice... I knew it had to be SOMEONE putting on a voice but what the heck Sam can ACT?

-

I mean I'm not complaining I love it but AAAH

-

Also me whenever Sam and Eileen are on screen together: hands over my mouth, eyes all big and anime shiny, faint squealing whistle escaping from between my fingers

-

Aw Mick no don't ruin this party

-

Eileen: "no one cares" *continues making heart eyes at her* *sam sends heart eyes at her*

Oh god we're all in love with Eileen, this is not going to end well, because I can't fight Sam for her. I am smol and he will kill me.

-

Anyway more class struggle between the BMoL and hunters... they have files on them but think they have no training, despite the fact they survived. I mean, Eileen has made it as a deaf hunter. Can they not appreciate how fucking badass she must be? :P Learning on the job with live monsters means any hunter who makes it so far has not been killed by literally every “class” or “test” they ever had.

-

Blah blah Sam gets handed the colt while standing in the shadow of a bridge blah blah 1x21 parallels. In 1x21 they did not get the shot they wanted. Although Dean was handed the Colt by John (who Mick is now standing in for) and gave it to Sam before he didn't make the shot. I wonder if Sam will give the gun to someone else.

(For no reason other than that she's here, I'd love to see Eileen do it, although of course it would take away some narrative impact from a major character parallel. But I love her so)

-

Well that was an easy kidnap

Kelly really is not coming out of this well. I'm going to blame as much as I can on baby brain. She's such a pawn in this narrative and it sucks on a grand scale.

-

*nyoom*

-

Is Dean just taking her straight to the others for them to maybe shoot her? I mean, what is the actual plan here

-

*Dean continues missing Cas out loud* *doesn't care about this other guy who showed up instead*

-

Anyway a whole bunch of blokes are here to talk to Kelly about it, though she's now too hugely preggers for take-backsies

-

Sam wants to help, Mick has the unsympathetic POV that the baby won't even love Kelly because it's a monster, Kelly actually gets to say out loud that she was used and is upset about the Lucifer thing (woah, a whole line of dialogue about it :P) and that she loves her baby anyway.

Blonde posh twat just wants to kill her immediately, which causes Dean to go into human shield mode to Kelly

-

Eileen's just like, not everyone is looking directly at me, what is going on

-

*individual reaction shots for literally everyone being thrown around*

-

*everyone shoots Dagon pointlessly*

-

elizabethrobertajones has anyone talked about how Kelly looked when Dagon came to get her

mittensmorgul Not that I've seen... How did she look?

elizabethrobertajones she has such muted reactions to everything but in this case Dagon walks right up to her and Kelly says nothing but is leaning away reluctantly and then Dagon grabs her hand and pulls her and the shot of her being led off screen is like this defeated school kid who was caught going truant

mittensmorgul She knows she's still being used...

elizabethrobertajones yeah NOW I feel sorry for her because she seems defeated and used and broken

mittensmorgul yeah.

elizabethrobertajones it's just sucky they didn't write her well enough before to build any of that up or like... actually make her look genuinely depressed and unwell

mittensmorgul yep they just made her seem like a flake

elizabethrobertajones that one little defeated kid being taken home moment where Dagon grabs her hand says EVERYTHING but they had like FOUR SCENES together already and I didn't see this!!

-

YES Eileen has the Colt!!!! GO GO EILEEN

-

I guess she shoots british blonde dickhead instead because he was gonna shoot Kelly or something

-

Colt slow mo! It really does slow down the flow of time every time it's shot.

-

Aw, crap, she shot the blonde loser instead but because Dagon did, well, the 1x21 thing, and we got to see how a Colt kills a human (which I ALWAYS wondered, because it can't just make you sort of die normally from gunshot wounds - you have to, you know, DIE of a kill anything gun wound, so messy, quick and awful :P)

Anyway Eileen NOOOO you look so horrified :( I was just saying to Mittens her Cas mirroring piles on and I can't even think what this is, just that she now feels like shit for things which aren't her fault but she has this death on her conscience, and it didn't even happen in defence of anyone, it was just he stood in the way like an idiot and Dagon didn't feel like getting shot today and knew exactly what was happening because Eileen hesitated just long enough to let her disappear.

-

... Does Dean actually know the Colt is in play because UGH we were robbed of that reveal

-

MICK NO

EILEEN IS PRECIOUS AND THIS IS DEFINITELY CROSSING A LINE. YOU LEAVE HER THE FUCK ALONE

-

I guess the Code IS brainwashing, and this is again a Cas parallel - this would be a crypt scene kind of moment for him except that the cute love story is between Sam and Eileen, and Mick's interloping on that with the brainwashedness and the whole... already killed his puppy because the Headmistress said so flashbacks, so what is random old hunter Eileen to do with anything, but even someone he openly disliked as much as whatsisface was a BMoL and should be defended

honestly he should remember Eileen's being defended by 2 legacies and she herself is a legacy and I think if I remember correctly was raised by a hunter with connections to the Irish chapter?

-

We're crossing over into the final 10 minutes of a Buckleming episode here

-

Sam argues for free will, which is a bit of a turn around when Dean's right there (not that Sam isn't about free will - they ARE Team Free Will after all, but Dean tends to lead the way on this while Sam has a much more interesting relationship with it for other reasons), but hey, it's a Buckleming episode - themes can bounce around pretty wildly and get connected to anyone. :P Sam's been all in the centre of attention and having a lot of big dramatic moments lately. Plus, crypt scene parallel and all, he had to talk the brainwashed person out of killing the one he loves so that at least the romance angle is in there somewhere. It's like, one step removed from the original, but allows Sam to interject himself into the scene, without getting tangled up in crypt scene stuff himself (don't think he's ever really done more than a few cursory I know you're in there moments, back and forth with being the one in there or the one saying it, which were MotW little things and not part of the big narrative, just the supporting mirrors :P).

Of course also parallels the subverted crypt scene, by the crypt scene obsessed director in 12x10, where again Ishim was used as an intermediary to break the back and forth-ing of the crypt scene repeats between Dean and Cas, and didn't need a I know you're in there, but again boiled it down simply to protecting a loved one in a particular framing playing off previous iterations (10x22, which was much more in the formula) - Sam gets this parallel where he can fight for his loved one without it being all twisted up and weird in possession that THEY have to deal with, just the attacker. So it looks nothing like the actual crypt scene, guy in a long tan coat and scruff trying to kill a loved one because brainwashing aside, but is still part of the organic growth of the way this subtext has gone.

-

Aaand Mary took off the ring. Do not want John to see this.

-

Ketch like, wow, I thought I'd just end up killing you. 

Charming. 

Flash some more of your excellent calves at her to make her forget you said that.

(I am personally offended by his calves as I made Mary practically gag over him having pallid calves in said fic where they were married. Dammit DHJ can you stop being amazing because I need to hate every aspect of your character down to his calves and you're like, hi, I'm going to sit in this ridiculous pose now so you can see my calves are indeed the same colour as all the rest of me and not the garish calves of the man who wears a suit all year until you drag him to the beach)

-

Anyway Ketch is like blah blah thanks for giving up your family and throwing yourself into hunting and my bed with no strings attached, isn't this grand, and Mary's like, uh, I like my family and I want to have it all, hunting and family, and Ketch is like wow I just started to like you and now I really have to kill you and oh dear. 

Oh dearie dearie me.

Imminent attempt on her life by Ketch aside, I think Mary has a bit of a misunderstanding about hunting and family - 12x03 was them trying to show her how their life actually was, but she was too messed up to appreciate it and actually needed the space. But it was trying desperately to build a life where Mom comes along on hunts and that's cool because we hunt and Mom hunts and she's here, so... uh, this is what we do now. 

But instead Mary split off from them entirely - 12x06 showed she hunted in secret away from her family in the past, and kept the two completely partitioned - I think something Sam also has issues with although he had been more open to the idea of marrying someone in the life, said in a Robbie episode before the Robbie episode where Eileen showed up and uh hey guess who's here right now... Uh, slightly sidetracked (slightly hit by a massive shipping container that is Sam and Eileen)... But yeah, Mary needs to reconcile that she has a hunting family, that that isn't a bad thing, and the two things can coexist perfectly normally. They don't NEED her to get rid of all the monsters and in a way she's talking to Ketch about two life choices, to hunt and have a family, ignoring the detail that she and Ketch are on an extermination run against all monsters, so eventually there won't BE hunting to define herself by so she won't be able to have it all because one part will be over... and of course, the more she goes on like this, the more precarious it seems for the other part too. Dean's worrying about not hearing from Mary although he's making a bigger fuss about not hearing from Cas. And their arcs are paralleled, though to obviously different ends that Cas is romantically estranged from Dean and Mary's estranged from being his mom.

-

Blah blah Lucifer, he's shirtless, exposition is still happening, Crowley's found himself a hacker to crack the spells on him. he just made it out of this scene but I suppose next Buckleming episode he's queued for untimely death of a black guy.

-

Him leaving and the sounds of the Bunker door overlap nicely.

-

Eileen <3

-

(She hasn't done anything yet, she just looks sad)

-

Sam and Dean agree with me. Dean says nice things, and then Sam gently touches her shoulder (I am officially, like, noped out of these DeanCas parallels I just can't) and turns her around and signs to her and and he's touchign her hairrrrr and aannanodsigrdoh epjddpawhtiwoeugipeow[pe[wkgo[rdf

-

I'm all overcome with emotions about Sam touching her hair all gently and her weeping into his chest and I can't deal with Kelly and Dagon scenes immediately after. Now Kelly really is the scolded child who tried to run away, and Dagon is showing Kelly FINALLY that she only cares about the baby in no uncertain terms (it seemed fairly obvious in their first scene but I guess it just wasn't obvious enough to Kelly, who has the worst case of baby brain ever, which I always thought was a thing where you put the kettle back in the fridge after you made tea or something, not trusting a Prince of Hell with your unborn nephilim baby and your own life)

-

okay now Kelly has a nearly appropriate horror level to what's going on with her baby

-

Oh noes Headmistress has shown up

-

More schoolboys getting scolded

-

Everyone is children

-

But Mick is our inside guy at least. He actually wants to argue against it because he passed a crypt scene test. I still don't know if he's gonna survive but I mean, at least he had this? Sometimes cool characters get an entire backstory right before they get murdered and I can honestly see this ending with Ketch being in the room because he's about to slice Mick's throat, probably with the same dagger he once killed his BFF with back in Kendricks because why not :P

Which means Mick softening up only serves a metaphorical purpose unless he left some inside way for the Winchesters, like idk his bottle of tomato juice and recipe for a Bloody Mary turns out to be the code or something

WHO KNOWS

-

Well me if I ever finished the episode

-

She asks if the hunters obey him, but Mick obeyed them >.>

-

Mick's chest hair is trying to get out of the room before him... 

Dang, sir. I was gonna joke about it during last episode when he was hanging out in the back of the car, but I didn't feel like it was worth mentioning and i now regret that comment not happening completely; it's definitely actually heightening the tension here, with his half-open shirt.

-

Nooooo they can't kill Eileen... Why is she on their shitlist? I mean I know why but this is so unfair

-

MICK IS REBELLING

-

he is so gonna die because he's doing the Naomi Gadreel Metatron redemption moment

especially because they're all symbolic useless deaths; I think Gadreel was the only one who even made any sort of real difference

-

RIP Mick

-

Your scruff will be missed

-

Dean you can not sigh like that about Cas, with the big soulful heaving of shoulders and audibly wet breath and all I mean

someone might think you were in love with him or something, the way you're carrying on

-

Incidentally I thought there was something fishy about it and Mittens confirmed to me it's literally 2 days later and Sam and Dean appear not to have seen each other since shit went down, but Sam was the last person to talk to Eileen and know what she's doing, so I'm guessing Sam and Eileen spent 2 days in Sam's room rearranging the furniture.

I am beyond proud of my boy.

-

HEY Dean gets the Colt. I mean it's almost enough to fill the gap between Sam x Eileen and Dean x Colt and forget Destiel :P

It parallels him and Ketch again (he also had sweet talky words to the Colt, which mirrored back to Dean getting her in 6x18), so I'm starting to feel like he kills Ketch with it? Like, symbolically needing to use it on a human person instead of the monster big bad or something? I know Eileen already accidentally killed a dude with it, but I mean, Dean and Ketch seem to have a reckoning coming, whether Dean knows Ketch and Mary hooked up or not (although, narratively, ends up heaping on weirdass subtext whether he knows or not >.> Dean vs the step father kind of thing)... this would be sort of neat.

-

Poor Mick just laying there.

-

Oh I typed that thing about Dean and Ketch before the Headmistress threw down the files for the Winchesters with Dean's on top, so, yeah. That's their reckoning a'coming.

-

It's 1am and I really have not conclusive thoughts about this except that I am delighted Sam and Eileen hooked up and she fled the country instead of sticking around making me nervous about her getting the hit on her, and Sam did a bad Irish accent earlier because he's like, goofily in love with her, so I guess he might just like, randomly fly to Ireland in the season finale to help her and they get married while they're out there and -

Oh and also whenever Cas comes back Dean narratively has full permission to take him back to his room and not let him out for an entire two days.

[orionsangel86]

Part 2 - Episode Review of 12x15

Part 1 for 12x14 review

Of the past three episodes this one was my favourite, but of course it was, it had Cas in it - however small his part was. I think it was the best structured for the story as well though and for where it left us in terms of speculation and meta. Basically I have a lot to say.

Davy Perez returns for 12x15 and I think he had a lot of fun with this one. Lucille makes an appearance and I am sure that fans of the Walking Dead recoiled in horror watching Dean Winchester carry that horrid bat, I also enjoyed poor suffering Castiel dealing with the crazy “lizard people” man and the Queen making an appearance (much to Misha’s delight I’m sure).

Other smaller moments I liked – the overlapping conversations both Dean and Sam had to Cas and Mary respectively that led to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment where it was easy to mishear Dean saying “I love you too” to Castiel. In a Perez episode. When his last episode was 12x12. Which was the episode where Cas confessed his undying love? Yeah that ain’t a coincidence guys.

Also Gwen was a totally awesome character of the week who was twice able to fight off a hellhound that she couldn’t see. Please keep giving us these awesome female characters show. We are starved and scramble for this kind of stuff.

Final small point - Winchesters in glasses *drools*.

For the longer meta points however I’ll start with something that grinded my gears on first watch...

Dean Winchester – No longer a Germaphobe?

Yeah this bothered me.. When did DEAN “bathing in purell tonight” Winchester not care about showering after getting covered in monster goop? There is only ONE OTHER time in the whole series that that was the case… Purgatory. Perez sure loves his call backs to previous seasons. I didn’t pick up on it at first and basically huffed a “that’s out of character” at the screen. But I have since thought about this and re-watched the episode a couple of times and well, its clearly a purgatory callback now. I had to kick myself for getting grumpy at first.

So why are we calling back to Purgatory Dean? Where it “felt pure” and his mission was to “find the angel” at all costs? I know Davy Perez is new, but I can’t imagine him getting the characterisation so wrong here, especially after what he has given us so far. Dean is in purgatory mode. He is going from hunt to hunt unknowingly from the BMOL’s leads and thriving in the kill. Could this be because after twice being told “you’re a killer Dean Winchester” he’s decided to accept it? The last time he truly embraced that killer side of him was in purgatory after all (the mark of cain does not count since he fought against it with every fibre of his being). I think the nod to Lucille also kinda comes into this here. Dean with a distinctive weapon, being the thing that the monsters fear most, it’s some very strong imagery. We are being lead to believe that Dean truly IS the “killer”, the “American Ketch” if you like. So of course I fully expect him to defy the BMOL expectations and fight against that eventually. Dean is on a journey of self-acceptance after all. When he realises he is SO MUCH MORE than just a “killer” (no matter how pure he felt in purgatory) his journey will be complete.

Sam and Lying

I have already covered this briefly in part 1, but Dean is our token excellent liar in this show and yet right now he really is on an honesty kick. Sam however, is not. “Oh so we lie?”  “Yeah. A lot” The interesting thing about Sam’s lying is that when he does lie, he generally thinks it is for the best. This is the case with their lies to Gwen and it is also the case with his lies to Dean about the BMOL. He thinks it will give his brother “peace” to just keep it to himself for the time being. Then he has this conversation with Gwen where she says:

“If I’d just told him, why couldn’t I just tell him the truth”

“but I didn’t, I lied, I lied to make things easier”

This show does love its character parallels after all. This one was pretty obvious. Marcus is Dean getting ripped to shreds by the hellhound, Gwen is Sam lying to make things easier.

Now aside from the uncomfortable wincest implications of such a mirror this is a good point. Because as I said about 12x14, Sam chooses the objective path rather than the emotional path pretty much all the time, because it is easier for him. He may be emotionally intelligent in how he deals with difficult situations generally, but when it comes to his brother and potentially difficult differences of opinion, he would rather keep things quiet.

(I will talk more about Gwen and Marcus as mirrors a bit later)

It is pretty clear to the audience that this conversation with Gwen is what makes Sam decide to tell Dean the truth about working with the Brits. It is evident of how far the boys have come that we are no longer seeing such a  toxic relationship of lying and sacrifice etc etc so much anymore (since it was getting super old). Though he still hasn’t told Dean all the details, and whilst Dean warns that “the minute something feels off we bail” I can’t see Sam actually bailing now. For some reason I reckon Sam has picked his side and is determined to set things right. I expect to see his relationship with Mick develop into almost trust by season end and I ALSO expect that another wedge will be formed between Dean and Sam because of this.

Crowley – rubbing off on everyone

I’m sorry I couldn’t help but make a joke about that line. Which I will never get out of my head! Crowley was really the star of this episode (mainly because Cas only had a small part and even my extremely biased self couldn’t give this one to him and that hot angel dude who was manipulating him). Nope Crowley wins it. He was brilliant. Crowley is still desperately trying to pull his “I don’t care about the Winchesters” act. I’m glad to see that EVERYONE sees through this at this stage.

I was talking to @purplesummer91 after watching this episode (we watched it together with pizza) about how I was so infuriated with Bucklemming for writing Crowley so fucking dumb in 12x13. For choosing to put Lucifer into a purpose built vessel and chain him up in a way that was clearly not going to go well for Crowley. We were both super pissed off about it. Even all the painfully cringe worthy exposition couldn’t save Crowleys character in 12x13. Bucklemming probably had some stupid plan for Lucifer to get out and rape a few more people before finally doing something really stupid and out of character for Lucifer and move to LA to solve crimes… pfft…

Davy Perez however, is now the hero who has saved the script, and Crowley, from their slimy incompetent hands. What he managed to do in this episode was actually have Crowley’s plan make sense again. His “ten steps ahead” speech was really clever of Perez. Giving Crowley the upper hand and putting him right back where his character belongs – as the smartest character in the whole fucking show. Now, I get bored of generic suit wearing demons and angels as much as the next person, and the weakest part of this episode was those two idiots trying to barter with Lucifer and set him free (everyone in hell should really know by now that you stick with Crowley if you actually wanna live at least a little while longer) and whilst I am really bored of Lucifer (and don’t like the season 12 rendition of him at all) I enjoyed watching Crowley beat him down again. It felt like some spiteful revenge on Bucklemming and their idiocy – your next job Davy is to bring Charlie back and have her joke about how terribly stupid her supposed “death” was and how only an idiot would really believe her quick thinking glamour magic from Oz to put the Stines off her trail (if you haven’t noticed already, I’m still super bitter).

Let’s talk about Drowley for a moment though. Because as @purplesummer91 and I discussed after watching, we still can’t believe this is still a thing. I mean, okay, sure. They had their fun together in early season 10, but the fact that the writers continuously bring this back and shove it rather graphically in all of our faces is something else. Never let a hater tell you that Bi!Dean is all in your head, or that you only want it for your ship… because NO ONE ASKED FOR FUCKING DROWLEY. The show chose that. They chose to shove that down our throats and practically make it canon. The fact that it is so fucking obvious in canon is still unbelievable every time we get another Drowley joke.

“Maybe you rubbed off on me, maybe I rubbed off all over you”. Thanks Crowley for that mental image. Where is Sam so I can borrow his brain bleach?

If you are doubting the impact of this line from a shipping perspective, ask yourselves this:  would that line have had as much impact if he had said it to Sam?

Yes, Crowley talks in innuendos, and loves to be overly sexual with the boys, BUT since season 10 and Crowley and Dean’s “summer of love” his sexual jokes have been almost exclusively to Dean. Because Crowley, being the intelligent guy he is, knows that they would have far greater effect on Dean – Since they are fucking true and there is nothing Dean can do about that. Crowley has been Dean’s subtextual ex-boyfriend for two and a half seasons now. This is not something we as fangirls wanted or needed, but the show went there. I’m never getting over that. Ever.

The other important Crowley point to talk about is how he was actually validated this episode for the good he has done. Dean’s sincere thank you for saving Cas, even though Crowley tries to brush it off as wanting to spare himself from the man pain, it is obvious at this stage that he cares for Cas (we talked about this in 12x12 anyway so I won’t go into detail). Sam’s thank you was even more heartfelt, and genuine and sincere, and Crowley didn’t even come back with a snarky remark that time, nor did he brush off Gwen’s hug which was extremely heartwarming. Oh Crowley, you big softy. We all know you still just want to be loved.

Castiel – Angel of Earth – Hunter of Lizard People?

Why is it every time Cas graces our screens I grin like an idiot in love. I was a bit sad that Cas’s role in this episode was so small baring in mind we don’t get him for another three episodes (which I’m slightly pissy about FYI) and we didn’t get him for the last two either. But, Perez seems to be becoming the next Robbie Thompson for giving us a lot of info and meta content in a short space of time.

Cas was so freaking adorable in this episode. Who would have thought that it was canon that Cas is a Beyoncé fan to start with – enough that he knows the name of her sister and used it as his alias. Honestly I can see Dean rolling his eyes but still gazing at him with heaps of affection. The upside down FBI badge really has become a running joke. Cas just isn’t quite there yet in his hunter skills. (all this means for me is that I hope by the end of the series we will get an episode where Cas swoops in like a skilled hunter, flashes his badge in sync with Dean and is perfectly able to interview a witness without any issues whatsoever – AND give them a classic flirtatious wink at the end.)

His utter exasperation over the conspiracy theorists lizard people story was hilarious. As was Cas banging his head against the door. Cas was so done with this guy. But at least he got his Kelly Kline lead.

I think it is important to point out that at this stage, Cas is so disillusioned with his siblings that the moment he sees one he pulls out his blade to defend himself. It breaks my heart but the Dean Winchester in me wants to scream out “Damn right you defend yourself sweetheart. You stab that dick with wings!” As hot as Kelvin is I just don’t trust him one bit. Nor do I buy what he is selling here. What I LOVE is that we are getting MORE unanswered questions to Cas too add to the heap we already have.

“You ever miss it? Upstairs?”

“I love Earth, smells like hay, but it’s not home is it?”

“imagine it Castiel, for you to come and go as you please, be part of your family, your true family again”

Castiel doesn’t answer ANY of these questions, he diverts them. And this is so so interesting to see happening in a script written by the same writer who gave us “Knowing you has been the best part of my life, you’re my family, I love you, I love all of you”. We KNOW as an audience that Cas has chosen who his family, his home is, and it’s not heaven. But the fact that the angels don’t know this, that they STILL think they can manipulate Castiel with talk of acceptance and power… I can’t wait for him to turn to them and basically say “fuck you guys. I am going back to my boyfriend because HE LOVES ME.” And honestly this is where all the coming out/non accepting family of a queer kid metaphors come into play and I LOVE THEM.

In fact the ONLY part of Kelvins whole little speech there that perked Castiel’s interest was mentioning Joshua and this:

”the gardeners got a plan, all we ask is that you hear him out for the greater good.” And at that moment we know Cas is done for, because his second biggest weakness (next to a certain Mr Humanity) is doing the right thing – doing it for the “greater good”.

Cas isn’t going back to heaven for acceptance, to get his ‘home’ back, or for power. He is going back because Joshua has a plan that may help ‘the greater good’ and that is a pitch that Cas can’t say no to. His face when Kelvin asked him if he was ready at the end, again, no answer. He didn’t look ready at all, and I HATE seeing Cas in pain. Especially since apparently we ain’t gonna see him again until 12x19 which I am super pissed off about. Urgh.

But I just need to mention that final moment, Dean Winchester looks down at his phone after Cas hung up and says “he sound weird to you?” we don’t get an answer from Sam but I would bet money on that answer being “no?” because only Dean has that connection to Cas that means he can tell if something is wrong over a fucking PHONE CALL. They are such husbands OMG. Dean is gonna be so upset when he finds out Cas has gone back to heaven. This is gonna hurt to watch.

Gwen and Marcus – Parallels?

The last point I wanted to talk about was how Gwen and Marcus appear to be a mirror for Sam and Dean’s relationship in the show. This was obvious when Gwen spoke to Sam in the car and Sam clearly took her experience and advice and was inspired to tell Dean the truth. The show does this A LOT with various MOTW characters being some way mirrored with the boys in order for the boys to learn a lesson of some kind. There are often multiple parallels in place however and the other parallel here was Dean and Cas. Yes, there are both Wincest and Destiel readings in this doomed couple. Am I happy about this? Not really, but the interpretation is there.

Now, obviously the wincest parallel is easily disregarded as a legitimate romantic thing because the show is NEVER gonna go there. Don’t stress people. That’s not what I’m saying. If it was I’d quit watching in a heartbeat. *shudder*. The meaning of the mirror here is that our Sam character Gwen, kept lying to the Dean character Marcus, which ultimately lead to Marcus’s death. Gwen blames herself for his death because she lied about her feelings for him.

There are multiple layers to this reading. Marcus was clearly in love with Gwen, he wanted her by his side and dreaded her leaving him to go to college. (this all plays nicely with the Winchesters history and Sam leaving Dean to go to Stanford). The main point of takeaway here is that Gwen didn’t feel the same way about Marcus that he did about her. Gwen wanted something more in her life, she wanted to pursue a future that she didn’t feel she could have with Marcus by her side. Is this foreshadowing of the Winchesters going their separate ways? Dean always has been the clingier of the two, and I have been saying throughout this entire post that Dean is emotional whereas Sam is logical. The situation matches Gwen and Marcus. Marcus was holding on to a dream ruled by his feelings, whereas Gwen was far more logical and rational about their situation. Is Sam going to break away from Dean? If he doesn’t break away? Could this lead to Dean’s doom?

Ultimately I don’t think this season is gonna end well for Dean – call it a hunch, but with the way Ketch was eyeing him up and the differences between them I dunno, I can just see a clash in the future that I think will involve Cas somehow… but that is pure speculation. I also think that this could foreshadow Sam choosing to go to the UK to learn with the BMOL…

The other parallel is similar. In this episode Cas struggles with choosing to leaving earth and going back to heaven. Leaving Dean. The difference is that unlike Gwen, we KNOW that Cas loves Dean. His feelings have been laid out in the text. But poor self-hating Dean doesn’t know that. Will Cas keep the fact that he went back to heaven/is working with heaven again from Dean? How will that affect their relationship? We know that Dean loves Cas, but we have yet to have the moment where he admits to Cas that he loves him too (which I will put money on happening by season end). Dean could EASILY view Cas’s heartfelt confession as platonic familial love and therefore feel rejected, especially if Cas now leaves him for heaven once again. Dean’s main issue throughout pretty much ALL OF THE SERIES prior to Cas’s break up with heaven in season 11 was that Cas kept leaving him. Ironic since they are now paralleled by a couple where the Cas mirror NOT leaving him and telling him the truth lead the Dean mirror to his death.

Basically this is how I see it. If Cas and Sam chose to stay by Dean’s side and keep secrets from him, then Dean is likely to die. If they are honest with him, and leave him, then he will live. Could this be foreshadowing an ultimatum somewhere along the way? If you leave Earth, return to heaven and stay away from OUR territory, then we won’t kill the man you love.

OR, If you go to London with us, work with us there, then we won’t kill your brother?

This is pure speculation of course, but I liked the parallel, and how it foreshadows Dean ending this season very much alone and feeling like he was rejected by choice.

How very heartbreaking indeed.

[icestorm1196]

Supernatural 12x13

It really is a pity to go from an amazing episode to a...mediocre one.  I didn’t hate it like I did the one where Lucifer was president and we were introduced to one of the worst characters ever (12x8 I think?).  I despise Kelly Kline.  She is boring (which just shouldn’t happen), and exposition heavy, and a total idiot.  I am also not super impressed with her actor, but that might be the writing which has been very flat and one-dimensional when it comes to her character.

Dagon too, though I knew she was coming (Supernatural is actually pretty good on mentioning something and then following through, at least the once, even if it is bad at continuing momentum), was...only okay.  That might be the acting, or it might be the weird and stilted dialogue.   Also, I have a bad feeling about why she might be interested--Supernatural sort of has a bad track record with misogyny and things of that nature.  Lucifer does seem to be pulling the strings a bit, with Dagon, but I am terrified that she’s only interested because she wants kids and can’t have them or something.

I am glad Mary decided to stop lying to Sam and Dean.  That storyline is old and tired and it was after the first time they did it.  Still, I can’t help but think that Ketch and the BMoL are still manipulating things somehow.  He wanted her to go tell her sons, because now, maybe they will work with them on occasion (as it appears they will in the next episode).  I don’t know what else the BMoL want other than eradication of monsters, but there has to be something.  And indiscriminately killing everything that even had contact with a monster is...well, that is obviously not okay.  Hopefully, Mary will find out about that soon and she’ll leave.

I didn’t really like the structure of this episode either.  Three ‘main’ plots was too many, especially since all of them were boring and only two of them intersected in the last minute.  

I am glad they tied up the Gavin storyline.  And hey, turns out that Gavin was a hero!  Good for Gavin.  I loved Rowena in this episode.  She is almost as good a manipulator as Lucifer, which is impressive.  I totally believed her when she said that Crowley had to let Gavin do what is right.  Which just goes to show, her redemption arc is working.  When she first came onto the show I never believed a single thing that came out of her mouth.  And ultimately, she did do this for revenge, but also love and hurt.  She’s always gonna be morally grey, but she could quickly approach antihero status.  Or maybe chaotic neutral.  Or even chaotic good.  She was my favorite thing about this episode.

Cas....sigh.  Missing.  Again.  And next week too, it looks like.  I’m sorry, but to have such a heartfelt episode and then totally have him...not there is annoying.  I can understand it though, this time.  It is sort of in character.  I can buy that Castiel felt embarrassed and wrongfooted by his confession in the last episode.  And he doesn’t know how to do much but run from his feelings (thanks Dean) and so he did; throwing himself back into the search for Kelly Kline (though why the other angels can find her and he can’t is another annoyance).  I’m okay with him not being in the next episode too, because it seems that most of the writers have totally forgotten that he is a warrior and he’d probably have been taken down in like thirty seconds by the first vampire they see.

And lastly---I don’t really care about Crowley fucking up the spell to put Lucifer back in his cage, or his explanation about why he is back in Nick’s vessel.  I’m down with Mark Pellegrino being Lucifer.  He was the best one.  But...god, he’s not even being original with his revenge.  He’s just doing the same things that Lucifer made him do.  And obviously Lucifer is right and he’ll manage to get out. Hopefully weakened, but he’ll manage to do it and Crowley is an idiot for needing to personally dole out the revenge.  The best revenge would have been to put Lucifer back in his cage and then bury it so deep that no one could ever find it again.  

Anyway.  This turned into more of a rant than I anticipated.