#my speculation is bad speculation because I hate doing it :P it's like pulling teeth

[elizabethrobertajones]

Do you have any ideas how Cas and Jack's relationship might look this season? We know Cas wants Jack to be the next coming if Christ that will bring "paradise" but Jack looks like a rando intern haha whats might happen if Jack isn't what Cas so ehh.. passiontely wanted him to be?

I have no clue how it will be even about these details you describe because to me these aren’t certain

(well the intern thing is)

I am on the side that Cas was… at the very least like… course corrected… onto having faith in Jack and that as per the name of the show there’s something slightly more supernatural going on there than JUST Cas having a complete change of opinion about Jack - that the factors are too complicated and confusing for it to just be Cas’s pure choice and just that he “wants” Jack to be the second coming, because nothing about it was framed as him making a decision to spare or believe in Jack until he flipped completely at the moment Kelly touched him - since I believe it all happened in that one hand hold power exchange thingy I can’t see Cas being given exactly perfect choice in it even if the alteration was just his motivations and faith when it came to interacting with him in 12x23 and his personality and emotional continuity were intact… It was sudden to me because it happened in a matter of seconds. So I think he’s not exactly like… bound to believe in Jack in that way when Jack is alive and conscious and making his own path in the world and can decide as well what part Cas has in that, and Cas has been through whatever he’s been through in death and back and how THAT has affected him… Basically I will need all 6 episodes before I will even venture to think about it unless there’s some really obvious stuff in the previous episodes. Because I want to see how Cas comes back. 

And I think even if he did randomly choose Jack and it was all his choice then it would be much easier for Cas to reconcile Jack doing whatever because he would believe in him and at least give him a say or whatever since that would make him just generally pro-Jack and think that as long as he wasn’t doing anything violent or evil then he’s going ahead being a force for good even if he is hanging out learning from the Winchesters rather than starting some grand plan (and Cas believes in the Winchesters and that they’re good people and a good influence ANYWAY so if it came to that it would be a non-problem if Jack was only chilling with them, although of course for the sake of drama it seems deeply unlikely he does spend the season just chilling with them…)

I mean idk the dynamic is so weird to me because Jack was influencing Cas from beyond the womb but I do NOT think he was doing it deliberately let alone with any sort of moral intent, because he was an unborn child and just super duper powerful, and the fact he was randomly opening AUs and causing power outages as well shows he has very little control over that power in the womb, and probably basically no idea what he was doing and just doing the god-tier level reacting to Kelly and whatever external stimulus he does recognise… 12x17 suggested he had above normal awareness because he looked at the doctor doing the ultrasound, but I think basically he will be mostly ~born yesterday~ and the whole point of the story will be to deal with his morality so it sort of demands he start as a blank slate which means that everything before that is the blank slate doing stuff without anything more than survival on his mind. So his relationship with Cas hasn’t really started but Cas may or may not have expectations of him. 

I think it just dovetails really nicely/badly with the overall addressing of Cas’s issues which essentially were put in the context of guardian angel to the Winchesters but in a bad way like the codependency, especially this year using Mary as the outside eyes on that and bringing back “angels are watching over you” etc… Cas’s issues are with the Winchesters (as 12x09 made abundantly clear) but then they transfer those over to Jack in a way that’s over dramatic for the sake of example and also so the Winchesters don’t have to screw over Cas to make the point that this is a bad thing… But I’m still waiting for pay off on any of these ideas, it’s just how I was reading the season and how it all came together. Because 12x01 set this up a LOT and we had in-depth discussions of it at the time, so I saw that as something that would naturally run through the season and I do think the Jack thing is an escalation of it in these terms and will continue thinking it unless it’s thoroughly trashed in season 13 (but I don’t think that will make my reading wrong this year because there’s so much textually like Kelly saying it and all the stuff on the side with the Winchesters is just plain text that is there to read).

But yeah however Cas reacts to Jack is something I can’t really guess at right now because the personal character level is really down to how Jack acts and is written, and as a character we basically know nothing about how he’ll shape up… Like it’s a pretty purposeful mystery about Cas and Jack both right now and from the few seconds of footage comparing Jack with season 4 Cas but even more spacey and with the born yesterday stuff on top of it to take away his depth that Cas obviously had as a billions of years old being and starting his personality from scratch… I mean I really have no clue but we’re not meant to >.> If Jack is a bit of a brat to Cas or sees him as a chance to get away from the Winchesters and start his grand plan, or Cas is furious at Jack or needy to him… That’s all stuff we CAN’T know yet and will determine a lot of what they want us to care about and how the story will play out but we’ll not know until we have actual footage of it all…

[tauntedoctopuses]

TO rereads HP

I'm rereading (well, listening to) the Harry Potter books and I have Thoughts, and I've been going "I want to post these on tumblr" and keep forgetting, so first post covers theough most of Prisoner of Azkaban. Tagging as "TO rereads HP"

Philospher's Stone

-JK definitely uses "ugly = bad" a lot. Here we have Dudley who is extremely fat, Aunt Petunia with a excessive neck and a face like a horse, Uncle Vernon who is "beefy" which is another word for especially large, and Piers who is "rat-faced". Snape is "sallow" and "greasy". I'll give her that she doesn't go in for describing her good characters as especially attractive - Harry is skinny (bc abuse) w untidy hair, Ron is gangly, Hermione has bushy hair and large front teeth - but that's not given connotations as "ugly" either.

-Harry's rationalization for why Dumbledore let him face Voldemort doesn't make sense from an adult POV. What reasonable adult would let a child risk death (and risk Voldemort's return) just to give him a chance to face the man who killed his parents and tried to kill him as a baby???

Chamber of Secrets

-I recently read Of a Linear Circle by @deadcatwithaflamethrower and it's AMAZING. I've also accepted her version of Hogwarts history as my headcanon. It makes a lot more sense than JK's version. : P It did leave me going "argh no wrong" through Professor Binns' spiel about the history of the Chamber of Secrets, and indignation about how Salazar's reputation has been twisted. Also FEELS about the basilisk. JALAAAAAAF D: D: D:

-Dumbledore asks if there was anything Harry wanted to tell him, and there's noted eye contact. Harry's mind immediately flashes through all the things he might want to tell Dumbledore/DOES NOT want to tell him. That's a sneaky trick for a Legilimens to pull, and yes, I do think that'a what he was doing.

-wait how did Aragog have kids unless... yep, Hagrid found him a mate. Why, Hagrid, why?

Prisoner of Azkaban

-How could Dumbledore let Harry send Harry to live with the Durlseys??? They abuse him like whoa, and there's no way the Weasleys didn't tell Dumbledore what happened last summer (locked up, starved, has to literally dodge a frying pan swung at his head??? The Dursleys never successfully hit him in canon, but there's sure enough evidence of them threatening/trying to). Even assuming the blood protection thing, there's no excuse for Dumbledore not to show up and make sure they treat Harry decently. (Unless you get into "Dumbledore was fine with/wanted Harry to be treated badly so he would trust Dumbledore so Dumbledore could use him to kill Voldemort.)

-Lovely, this time it's "masculine woman = bad". Aunt Marge looks like Uncle Vernon, big and beefy, and "even has a mustache like him". She's presented as even worse than the Dursleys, and since Uncle Vernon is already presented as ugly and ugly features on men are generally considered worse on women... ugh, JK. This ties in nicely with your transphobia.

-Again w "ugly=bad" with Snape and his yellow teeth.

-Hermione why did you bring Crookshanks up to the boys' dorm room when he keeps going for Scabbers? Bad planning.

-How do people keep their pets at Hogwarts? Do none of the rats and toads have enclosures? Scabbers is generally in Ron's pocket or sometimes sleeping in his bed. Neville is forever losing Trevor (although to be fair he'd probably manage that with an enclosure). Ron has Scabbers with him in Transfiguration when he (tried to) turns him into a goblet, and Trevor was apparently on hand in Potions to be fed Neville's attempt at a shrinking solution. Do they just... carry them around in their pockets all day? Cause that's a terrible idea for multiple reasons. 1) Critters need time and space to do their crittery thing. Run, dig, hide, sleep unbothered in a quiet place, etc. Enclosures are important for that. Toads may have specific temperature/humidity needs, too. 2) Where are these animals toileting? If they're in your pocket all day, guess what, it's in your pocket. Rats can be toilet trained, but if you don't give them the opportunity to go... you're stuck with the results. I doubt toads are smart enough for anything like that. And then the critter is stuck in its waste until the owner notices and cleans their pocket. Apart from the ew factor for people, it's not healthy for the animal. I suppose we could theorize magical self-cleaning pockets, but that seems like fairly advanced magic. Although I suppose parents/guardians could spell the pockets. I do very much like the idea of magical self-cleaning cat boxes, though. Hermione definitely has one of those for Crookshanks. 3) Allowing pets in class would be a big distraction, for owners and other students. Critters won't be content to just chill in pockets all the time, they move and make noise. I can't see most professors putting up with that.

-There are all of three other students staying over Christmas, two of whom are first years - for no reason whatsoever I headcanon that Derek and unnamed firstie are BFFs from Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw and they're taking the opportunity of everyone being gone to have sleepovers in each other's dorms every night. Maybe they rotate, maybe they just stick to Hufflepuff bc Hufflepuff is probably super cozy. Also Derek is the Puff bc apparently that sounds like a good Puff name to me.

-At one point a student speculates "maybe he knows how to apparate" like it's some rare feat, instead of the thing everyone learns in their sixth or seventh year like getting a driver's license. Must be a Muggle-born kid, because for a half- or pure-blood Apparition is "that thing my parent(s) do all the time". Can you imagine a non-magical kid, trying to figure out how an adult got around, going "maybe he can drive?"

-Harry tried *not* to blink when lying to Snape about having been in Hogsmeade, so in trying to lie convincingly he opened himself up to Legilimency instead. Welp.

-Everything in this setup screams Legilimency - there's the emphasis on eye contact, etc. Plus, what are the odds of Snape being restrained with it to a student he hates? How frustrating must it be for Snape to know exactly what happened and not be able to do anything about it?

-Harry "sees" Buckbeak flying away in his Divination final XD

-Why does Sirius try to choke Harry??? Is he just that crazed at that moment?

-When Harry is working himself up to kill Sirius, does he actually know how to kill someone with magic? Or is he just gonna point his wand and think killing thoughts?