#stop y'all this means so much to me :'))

[monstermoviedean]

let's talk about the bridge.

[spnwiki links known filming locations when available. in all three episodes, this is listed as the spur 4 bridge, lower seymour conservation reserve. it may appear in more episodes, but i'm not sure.]

the bridge appears in 05x02 (good god, y'all!), 13x18 (bring 'em back alive), and 15x20 (carry on). now. do i think this specific bridge was specially chosen each time to communicate a certain message? with respect to the crew, nah, probably not. do i think you can read a pattern here? ooh, yes. tl;dr: you cannot cross the bridge. merely standing on it means the rules have just changed in a reality-bending, fucked-up-beyond-all-repair sort of way. attempting to complete the crossing is an acceptance of the new rules.

in 05x02, the bridge appears as dean and sam are driving into river pass, colorado, the town controlled by war. the bridge is broken. they drive halfway across the bridge and stop. this is the first sign to sam and dean that something is seriously wrong here. this is no normal demon hunt. this is a problem on a scale larger than they can grasp. there's a literal gap between them and the town! they have to leave the car (/home) parked on the bridge and hike in. they are entering uncharted territory.

when they do, they find people killing each other and seeing demons where there are none. war is altering reality and playing people off each other. jo attacks ellen! rufus attacks sam! the townspeople turn on ellen and dean! you can't trust anyone! but actually...you can. none of them are demons. the danger is real, but it's not what it appears. and no one has ever come across anything like this before.

so what do sam and dean learn? the apocalypse is here. there's no going back. the rules have changed. the tactics they've always used don't work, because they are in a new reality now. and they accept that. while they can't physically walk/drive across the bridge, they do complete the crossing of their own volition. they accept that their world is different now and they will adapt to it.

in 13x18, dean and ketch are in apocalypse world walking near the bridge. they see a group of angels leading a group of shackled, hooded prisoners across the bridge.

two of the prisoners are executed by the angels right there. they do not cross the bridge. they die playing by the same rules they always have. it's the apocalypse, and they'll fight, but the angels are the angels and it's tough to win as a human. when i started writing this post i thought charlie had crossed the bridge, symbolizing her entrance into a new reality. but she doesn't! the angels fly away with her, without any of them ever crossing the bridge (below are back-to-back screencaps. sorry for the lack of visual but trust me on this)

charlie doesn't fully cross the bridge. she gets halfway across and then the angels fly her somewhere else. dean is hoping she finishes crossing. if she does, it's like she's crossing into his world. maybe this charlie will be just like the charlie he knew and lost. maybe he can save her. maybe he can undo it. but she doesn't cross and he so he can't get to her!

when he and ketch eventually catch up with her at the silo and escape, charlie hears about dean's universe and chooses to stay in hers. because it's hers. charlie's reality has been fucked with, certainly, but she chooses to accept the reality she knows and stay in it (for now at least). she's not outright rejecting the new reality of parallel universes, but she's also not letting the new reality dictate her actions. it's her home, it's her fight, and she's staying. she doesn't complete the crossing.

so that brings us to. deep sigh. 15x20. dean drives onto the bridge, ostensibly in heaven. he drives about halfway across. and stops. he does not cross the bridge. he gets out of the car and hesitantly walks around the front of it. i won't show you all the screencaps but he touches the car and stays pretty close to it as he walks.

the last one is about the furthest point he walks across the bridge, give or take. he doesn't go far from the car (which is a good strong symbol of dean's reality and home). you can see there's two vertical posts in the space between him and the car. when the final shot zooms out from him and sam, they are magically further across the bridge, about halfway across, about five vertical posts away.

dean standing on the bridge means the rules have changed. his world is different now. he cannot go back. this especially works with the next scene, which is the one of the cast and crew in our world saying goodbye. now, can you say that dean dying and going to heaven is the change? sure. but he doesn't cross the bridge. he doesn't accept it. could you say that simply means he's in denial about his death and apparent ascension? i guess. "but what about sam?!" shhhh, not right now.

i think it works much better as dean recognizing there is a new and unknown reality on the other side of that bridge, and instinctively knowing that there is something wrong. that he doesn't want to accept that reality. that if he finishes the crossing, he will be accepting it and will be unable to go back. and sam just appearing out of nowhere, seemingly materializing onto the middle of the bridge without actually taking steps to cross it? somehow moving dean with him so they're both further across the bridge? well maybe that's not real. maybe that's a trick to try to get dean to cross. maybe his acceptance of the new reality will sever his connection to his actual reality - war destroying the bridge in 05x02 certainly did that for the townspeople.

i know others have talked about dean crossing the bridge as an acceptance or an ascension, i'm nowhere near the first person to come up with that. but i do want to call attention to the previous iterations of the bridge. a broken bridge sam and dean cross, only to find war beyond it, an enemy the likes of which they have never seen. a bridge charlie is nearly forced to cross, but which she's taken away from before she can complete it (which would be more likely to lead her to jump realities). and a bridge dean starts to cross, but doesn't. a bridge that appears first in dean's reality, then in apocalypse world, then in dean's heaven, and then in our world, with jensen dressed as dean saying goodbye. and nobody ever crosses that bridge. it's a false promise. you can't do it. all you can do is stand on it and hope you'll be okay, even though you can't go back.

[drieddpetals]

(i feel like analyzing stuff again so here we go) kaz is smart because he knows people. he loves puzzles, loves locks, loves taking things apart to figure out how they work. he says in soc that you figure people out like you figure anything else out, by taking it apart. kaz is smart because he finds enough out about people to make assumptions.

he knows what people will do, and often times it leaves the ones being duped going "how did he do that? how did he know?" kaz never truely knows something will 100% happen, he's just assuming it will and is almost always right.

in the begining of soc, when the crows are breaking matthias out of hellgate, kaz assumes wrong, though. he knows that jesper has a reputation for being late, so he assumes that jesper will take to the task of releasing the animals like he will anything else he does, and be late doing it. he has, in some sense, taken jesper apart. he knows what jesper does, and he plans around this assumption, however ends up being wrong. nothing extremely consequential happens because of his assumption, but it proves that kaz will assume things with confidence.

a huge aspect to why kaz is so successful in his planning and overall schemes is because he knows how to make a good assumption. he has inej gathering him intel, which enables him to make such confident and correct guesses about how people will act.

one instance of kaz's assumptions being correct is the whole geels and 19 burstraat situation in the beginning of soc. when kaz threatens to burn down geels' lover's home, geels could have not cared, could have shot kaz right there, but he didn't. geels doesn't, and kaz continues very boldly facing him. why? because kaz knows how geels will act.

another instance is in ck when kaz kidnaps alys and uses her to get inej back. at this point, kaz knows how van eck will act. van eck has already duped kaz once, and i imagine after this one of the things kaz does to insure it never happens again is over analyzing and taking him apart. it works in this instance, because kaz has already seen how much van eck cares about a "worthy heir," and alys is literally holding that. kaz has taken van eck apart, and had figured him out enough to make a bold and correct act based on assumption.

all this to say, kaz thinks and thinks and thinks and is always thinking and picking everything apart, and that is the key to why he can get away with everything he does. and maybe one day his assumptions that make him so smart will fail him, and maybe one day they'll be fatally wrong.

[alicepao13]

"But Odysseus' jetpack" The serious part of Epic the Musical and the one that is up for debate and criticism is the songs. Not the animations. I didn't think that needed explaining.

[mangled-by-disuse]

been watching a bunch of youtube videos about snow white (because it is the topic du jour and i need background noise) and this is neither a critique of the video essays nor of the disney remake but like

it really makes me think about how much you lose from the story when you keep making Snow White an older teenager or an adult woman?

like

I realise it is Uncomfortable to have a story where the main conflict revolves around "this twelve year old is super hot", but also: idk about you but for me that's what's so impactful about the fairytale and to a lesser degree the 1937 film

it is ultimately a story about the very specific but unfortunately near-universal experience of the world deciding for you that you have changed from "child" to "woman" and proceeding to treat you as a fully adult agent while simultaneously denying you all agency and power

like. snow white is a child. this is incredibly obvious in the framing. she is hitting puberty and that is when the mirror is like "hey she's a Woman now". and that is a process that is finished when A Prince Occurs, and that sucks as a message, but there's so much about snow white as a story that is still so fucking resonant to my experience of growing up, and I imagine to the experience of most people raised as girls.

like, imagine you're nine or ten, right, and your dad remarries and then he dies. it is traumatic and sad and you are scared and alone. you look around and you see the changes happening in your home, and you make the very sensible decision: okay, all right, I need to keep my head down and make myself useful, and then nobody will have a reason to send me away.

and it works! because your stepmother is vain and self-centred, and she only cares about her looks and what makes her seem more beautiful. you are at most an accessory she can dress up and trot out when she wants to, but the vast majority of the time, she ignores you. you are annoying to her. you are neither an asset nor a threat. why would she care?

(you continue to make yourself useful, but to try and keep out of her way, because, well. a lot of your friends aren't around the palace any more. you try to get the approval of the people who will give you attention. you hang around with the cooks and the servants and the animals in the courtyard. you don't care about class differences. you are a neglected preteen)

and then

suddenly

you are twelve or thirteen. your body is doing strange things. people begin to look at you differently. people have always said you are beautiful, but now it comes more often and it seems... different somehow. men say things you no longer understand. women whisper. you are growing up, and you know that, but you don't understand that, not yet.

and out of the blue, your stepmother comes to find you, to invite you to go on a trip. you think: she's noticed! she's noticed that i'm growing up, that i'm responsible and dutiful and kind and obedient, and now that i'm not a child any more, maybe i'm no longer an annoyance. maybe if i'm really good, she'll understand that i just want to help!

(and she has. she has noticed you are growing up. she's noticed that you made the indefinable change from "girl" to "woman", and now in her eyes there is nothing of the child to you. you are a woman. you are beautiful. you are a rival. and women... women know what they're doing. you aren't innocent, you're coy. you aren't naive, you're coquettish. you aren't humble, you're manipulative. you are an enemy. you are her enemy.)

so she demands your heart. and yet, when the huntsman takes you out to the woods and draws his knife - listen, huntsmen have children too. he looks at you and he sees that you aren't a woman at all, that you're not even a doe but a fawn, and he thinks about his own children under the knife, and he isn't a monster, so he lets you go.

you are thirteen or so. you are wandering in the forest. you have no mother and no father and no guide. you are terrified, with good reason.

you see a cottage in the clearing. you think: i shouldn't, but i have to. you don't understand entitlement, you don't fully grasp how unreasonable it is to help yourself to someone else's home. but, you know... it's cold. it's dark. there might be wolves and monsters in the shadows. you want your mother, but your mother has been dead for years. you reason, with a child's reasoning, that whoever owns the cottage has to understand how desperately you need it.

and, like... you have already learned how to make yourself useful. and here are these men who own the cottage, and they seem like they never learned the things you're good at, and they say they need a woman to keep house. you know how men are, they say. and suddenly, at thirteen, you're mother to seven adult men. you cook and clean and sing them songs and comfort them and they say: oh, snow white, you're so good. you're so kind. you're so sweet.

(none of them says: oh, snow white, you're still so young. snow white, you should have time to play. snow white, you should be a child. they might not be attracted to you, but you're still a woman in their eyes.)

and eventually, an old woman comes to your door, and she says: take this apple. take it, it's sweet. it's good for you. it's a gift.

and you might doubt her intentions, but you are a good girl. you learned to respect your elders and to listen to grown-ups. and she's so insistent, and she knows so much more than you, and even if she's old and crooked, she's also here with you, alone in the woods, and it's rude to turn old ladies away, but it's also dangerous. you've spent your life - all thirteen years of it - learning to appease and learning to be small. you don't trust the apple. you don't even like apples. you take it anyway.

and suddenly, it's all your fault. suddenly, you're stupid for being so trusting. suddenly, you should have known better. you should have stood up for yourself. you should have been a grown-up about this.

you are snow white. you wake up in a coffin with a mouth full of dust and apple. you are thirteen, maybe fourteen years old. you are sweet. you are innocent. you are trusting. you are frozen under glass, simultaneously a child and a woman, not growing up.

you already grew up. you learned so many things in the wrong order, in the wrong ways. you are jolted back to life by accident, when a grown man trips carrying your coffin.

the prince marries you. the dwarves say goodbye to you. the evil queen dances herself to death in red-hot shoes. the story's over. you won.

you never asked to compete.

you never asked to be the fairest of them all. you never tried to be. you never even knew it was happening.

god. it's so unfair.

[the-acid-pear]

I like how Jack kind of treats Matt like a kid but not in a patronizing way exactly but rather an Old Man™ way which IS weird because Matt did confess to him he's basically immortal meaning he's probably very close to his age but i guess he does still look pretty young

[bright-eyes-strawberry-lies]

Despite Rick's attempts to stop me, I did finish my solgrace fic tonight.

[royalbstrd]

Modern Henry absolutely gets road ragey

[heffrondriving]

this is how i'm gonna fucking die i think

[nobodybetterlookatme]

Guess who's going on an actual fr date on Saturday ahsjakkskaksl

[moonsluvr]

hello fellow tumblr.com users haha... i am Here to tell everyone i am leaving </3. i made a new blog if moots wanna reconnect I MISS YALL but apart from that this is me officially signing off. i'll keep the blog up for the ladies but i'll probably stop coming on here. luv you guys endlessly, miss u all tons. goodbye my loves

face reveal before i go cuase i'm hot 😍😍 \ ALSO I'M SO PROUD OF MY CARRD FOR THE #NEW BLOG DID IT MYSLF Y'ALL LOOK AT IT

[saph-yells-into-the-void]

tbhk genuinely has... some of the most beautiful fucking quotes??

like oh my god I need reread this manga and start writing this shit down bc how did I not remember the the line—"one day you'll realize that you've loved someone and that you hated me."

LIKE BRO??

[prostocupoftea]

also big news

im into fish now i guess

...

yes this is about pressure

[imjustavenuxwithaboomerang]

current state: desperately trying to pull myself together after pathetically bawling over my laptop frame BREAKING

[bredforloyalty]

i see some hate for hugh jackman cameo in the new ricky morty. and all i'd like to say is. cranky because wolverine doesn't sound as funny in your language as it does in hungarian, aren't you

[outlandish-dreamer]

Thank you!!

Okay so anyone wanna explain to me how I got 60 followers? I know it's not a lot, but still. Like, how do that many people like my content, holy crap. You're all sweet and way too cool, seriously. I love all of the stuff you guys do, and I know it sounds annoying, but it's genuinely surprising that many of y'all stuck around. So, thank you, I guess is what I'm trying to say? (I hope this doesn't endd up scaring you away and if ti does, I'm so sorry 😭I'm just really grateful.)

Thank you all so much, I mean it. I'm not just saying this just to say it, it means a lot to me and I want you to know that. I hope you're all having an amazing day because each of y'all deserve it. Every one.

💙

[thesearchforbluejello]

I fundamentally do not understand this show. The Dominion War was RIGHT THERE. Like, RIGHT. THERE. Why did we need some whack Romulus-blew-up backstory when the federation was already decimated by the war?? A follow up on the fallout of that and how the ceding of territory, the betrayal by allies, and the xenophobia of threats from both within and outside would have been SO much more interesting to me.

And they're so busy pulling half developed plotlines out of thin air that they're not even pounding in their anchor points for it all. Like, case in point, Jay looking for Icheb's cortical node. SEVEN HAS IT. IT IS LITERALLY IN SEVEN'S FUCKING HEAD. Like, okay fine easter egg? Maybe? But a major plot point isn't exactly an Easter egg?? Like obviously Beyer knows a shitload about Voyager, so at least one of them must be aware of that, so I assume it's implied... but not everyone has seen every Trek and that is from one specific Voyager episode, and Seven had the perfect opportunity to rub that in Jay's face... And are we not going to talk about Seven becoming a Ranger which is HUGELY antithetical to where she was at in Voyager? Because the fact that she became an individual on a ship that was what, 1/3 Maquis? Um, that's a super fucking important fact? Love that for her, but Christ alive nail. these. plot points. home.

idk I guess these two are nitpicks, but I have so many more and just don't feel like writing a novel expounding upon what I perceive as their many (MANY) failures in writing this show. But this show is just full of those moments and I don't understand their choices. Easter eggs only work when there's actually something semi coherent to hide them in (hence why most of M*rvel's fail nowadays, just saying). This feels almost as incoherent as Renegades, and I am SOOOOO very sorry to be actually saying that because woooooof that is not a compliment. Like... it's the Romulans, it's the androids, it's the Borg. It feels like whatever unholy combination is happening with Applebee's and iHop right now. Like... Okay I guess? But it's just a weird combination and very unnecessary. Just fucking pick one and go from there.

I do however need like a lot more ex-Borg bonding that was such a good moment okay thanks bye