#the mommy issues I used to project on The Mother Mary are now being projected onto Alicent

[dirtytransmasc]

Alicent and Aegon are so Virgin Mary and Jesus coded, in a sick and twisted way that it barely makes sense, but at the same time just... does.

a mother and her child born damned from the start, yet she loved him to her core, accepting her fate, accepting she would lose him and then herself.

she carried him, birthed him, raised him, loved him, devoted her very being to him... she lost him, grieved him, lost her mind in his absence. the gods her only respite, yet, when she needed them most, when she needed them to protect her son, her baby, her reason for being, where were they?

[yououghtaknow]

18 and 20 for the meta asks? also I already commented on clip 3 but fr this clip was so good that was such a good execution of that scene and s5 has been so good and literally brightens my day thank u 💛 i hope you’re doing well

hi, thank you so much!!!!!!!! i hope you’re doing well too <3 <3

i am putting a read more because i am a rambley person, but underneath you will find talks of unused plot points, the parallels between the girl squad and the lad squad, and what taylor swift album(s) i believe each season has the vibe of.

tw for discussion of abuse, mental health problems, addiction and eating disorders

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

skam brighton has. so many aus. because it itself is an au of an original work. me and two of my great writing friends have written a great numbers of aus including but not limited to riordian-verse, glee, doctor who, rwrb, trc, a murder mystery au, and many aus based on comfort media of mine that i started on never finished (house of anubis, barbie movies, etc.). and many of them are unironically so good???? @fingersmithbysarahwaters and @nightwing642 are incredibly talented screenwriters. but also i did write a screenplay adaptations of the first two books in the raven cycle series and 2/3s of rwrb for no reason other than fun and autism.

as for skam brighton. oh boy. not many plot points have been changed, but some certain scenes/character moments were changed. for example, the scene in season 2 episode 8 where liz has a meltdown at the shopping centre and she has a heart to heart with mary was originally liz having a meltdown and running into al in the sensory room. but i wanted to hold back on revealing al as a main character until season 3. 

also in the og season 3, jake and al didn’t break up. as i was finishing the season, i was getting ideas for how i wanted the series to develop (james’s crush on al namely) so i thought it would be good for both of their developments for them not to end up together. also in season 3 i hadn’t planned for jake to move house originally, so there was a scene in the finale episode of the lad squad hanging out, but it got cut because it just didn’t make sense. 

in season 4, al and bree were a lot meaner to each other originally, because i love it when it gets busy at the brighton and the gay people get mean, but then i thought about it and decided it was out of character for both of them to be downright cruel. al and bree also had a scene in season 4 that was cut due to just not making sense. 

also, in season 5, the “inner white girl” scene originally wasn’t in the show at all, but one day i was listening to the song, and about a week before the episode came out, i wrote it. also, bree wasn’t written to be a she/they until literally the day of putting the clip out because i thought it would be cool. that’s it :)

also the way i write is that i write the full clip out in a google doc and then edit it in ao3 about an hour before i put it out, so a lot of changes happen there. just small things, like making dialogue flow better, changing certain songs because i just want to, and sometimes adding in new sequences that i just thought of.

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?)

oh!!!! there!!!!! is!!!!! 

personally, my favourite thing to write is little symbolic moments that make me happy because i play 4d chess in my head with myself every time i write.

before i go off, i must say, so many hints and clues have been dropped for season six so far. season six has been my favourite season to write and i’m already planning a spin-off project based on it to write, and it’s gonna be starting sooner than you think.

so a piece of writing i’ve been thinking about lately is the parallels between the girl squad and the lad squad. before i begin to go off, these are the characters i think parallel each other the most.

jake - sandy james - bree nick - rori theo - esther al - liz

jake and sandy is quite an obvious parallel to draw - both are football players, both begin the series closeted and having a close relationship with bryan - but their personalities are quite similar. both of them are closer with their mother than their father, both use their relationships as a method of protection, and both are afraid of of societal rejection at the beginning of the series. they also both discovered their sexualities and mental health issues over the course of their seasons, and both of their love interests are more outgoing theatre kids. jake and sandy’s relationship is also so interesting to me - because they start as very awkward friends, and jake tries to help sandy by making bryan break up with her, but outs her in the process, and sandy doesn’t want to forgive him. she takes her time and comes to terms with it on her own and decides to forgive him because sandy’s just a sweetheart - and this also parallels the way jake takes his time to forgive his mother. also, in their friend groups, they’re both the newcomer to them, and we get the introductions to the group dynamics in their seasons, and in the later seasons, they’re both a lot more relaxed as they’re in recovery <3

james and bree are also very similar characters. both have problems with substance abuse, both have promiscuous reputations, both have both mommy and daddy issues. they are both dean girls, to put it in spn terms. they’re both very funny, and use humour to cover up their struggles. both are dealing with a lot of mental illness and, throughout the series, it becomes more and more clear. they’re also both seen as “the hot ones” of their groups, with a lot of the characters canonically having small crushes on them (liz, rori and nick with james; rori, esther and annabell with bree). they’ve also both canonically hooked up with sophie. which i just think is fun. they also played mimi and roger together, which i think shows their parallels as addicts and people (with roger struggling with recovery and depression until the end, when he begins to get help, and mimi living the high life until it all crumbles down around her). they also share a want for independence and both are very sana-esque characters (james being middle eastern and religious, bree being the cool rebel girl in season 1).

nick and rori are both the “fun friend”. they’re both comedic relief in the early seasons, but we do get in depth with them as the show goes on. in grease, they play james and bree’s love interests (which is ironic, as rori and bree get together and nick is in love with james), and in rent, they play angel and maureen, the two main comedic relief characters. both of them struggle to connect their asian identity with their british identity, and both struggle with how the world perceives them (nick with their gender presentation and rori with her eating disorder). they both struggle with toxic masculinity and toxic femininity and use humour to cover up their struggles.

theo and esther are similar in the fact that they’re the squad members we know the least about. they’re both jewish, they’re both the mum friend of their respective groups, they’re both autistic and they’re both quite nerdy. they’re the most grounded member of their respective groups and tend to take charge and help make decisions. they’re also both quite sarcastic and very firm in their opinions. 

al and liz are parallels simply because they are both nooras and vildes. they’r eboth autistic, they’re both the odd one out in their friend groups - liz being a lot more serious than the girl squad, al being a lot more in his own little world than the lad squad. they’re both very blunt and straight forward and say whatever they’re thinking.

also just some of my favourite bits of foreshadowing: nick being bitchy to liz throughout season 2 because they’re in love with james….. al talking about his sister to jake in season 3 and whenever al talks to the girl squad, bree insults him or walks away…… in season 4 episode 1, audrey mentions bree’s cousin is pregnant and then when bree finds out the results of her pregnancy test, oh no by marina plays (i’m now becoming my own self fulfilling prophecy)....... nick and all of his gender stuff throughout the series……. just all of the character stuff with grease and rent….. also just bree and rori’s whole relationship arc because it has everything. queerbaiting. subverting expectations. musical homoeroticism. a little cheating for fun. and they were best friends. honestly bree and rori season 3 is very august by taylor swift…… you weren’t mine to lose…….. 

speaking of, no one asked by here’s each season of skambr and the taylor swift albums they’re most like.

season 1 - debut/fearless

bro sandy is just such a debut/fearless era person. she’s looking for her place in this world!!!!!! she has the teardrops on my guitar energy (quite literally sandy pre-canon voice i bet he’s beautiful that boy she talks about and he has everything that i have to live without about bryan and sophie)..... the fun giggly crush songs that are deeply homoerotic….. esther season 1 voice the entirety of you belong with me. like esther really made a deeper connection with sandy in one month that bryan did in years of knowing her. sandy also is the type of person to stan love story, she just thinks it’s such a fun song and she does yell the key change every time it comes on. 

season 2 - speak now/lover

elizabeth!!!!! liz is the type of person who only liked old taylor and then got internalised misogyny and then got over it and loves taylor again. the story of us is canonically a liz/rori song…. yes i am still a liz/rori subtext warrior….. liz is very never grow up and dear john is a very her and james song in the fact that they both relate to it……. when they bonded over their trauma “don’t you think i was too young”...... also lover is a liz season 2 album because it’s about liz learning that love is the most important thing in the world….. liz voice i want to be defined by the things that i love. also the archer is just a skam brighton song because it is an isaac song. also i’m just gonna say it. i like me! it’s a good song when brendon urie isn’t in it, you all are just afraid of having fun. also though liz in season 5 is very better than revenge because, while her season is about unlearning your internalised prejudices, i believe she deserves to be misogynistic for 3 minutes 37 seconds.

season 3 - red

now this is controversial. this season is about depression, grief and anger, and these feelings are red. literally jake voice so you were never a saint and i loved in shades of wrong we learn to live with the pain mosaic broken hearts….. like treacherous….. holy ground….. the whole country pop vibe….. the bitchy songs mocking people’s perceptions of the singer…..  22 is a lad squad song…. also jake voice i remember it all too well but it’s about his father’s abuse and his mother’s neglect…… like the whole season is just jake getting to the point where he is at “begin again”. also i feel like jake would like red because he spent a lot of time watching taylor swift music videos as a youth both because he liked the music and had crushes on the guys in them, and he feels red is the perfect middle between the country and the pop and the indie and he just really likes being sad.

season 4 - reputation

bree big reputation holland!!!!!!!!! she has it all - the romantic drama, the hatred of men, the fucking homoeroticism. bree stans the reputation tour and they have made the entire holland-fletcher family watch it on their netflix (al fucking loved it because he’s a canon swiftie, audrey had a fun time, patrick was a little confused, but has the spirit). listen bree “i did something bad”. bree “look what you made me do”. bree and rori “new year’s day”. bree voice i swear i don’t love the drama, it loves me!!!!!!!!! like the reason the season has a lot of reputation songs and ends with daylight from lover is a metaphor for bree leaving their reputation era…. also reputation has she/they vibes

season 5 - 1989

1989 my best friend 1989!!!!!!! i am coming out here as a 1989 (deluxe) stan. it’s just a serotonin album for me and it is just so nick. the mocking songs about their reputation…… the genuinely deeply depressing homoerotic songs that have fun upbeat music…… the cars….. also clean is just such a nick song. he is in recovery, he is just so personal to me. also nick voice one night he wakes strange look on his face pauses then says you’re my best friend and you knew what it was he is in love!!!!!!! nick canonically in love with all of their best friends braxton!!!!! also nick feels like a 1989 stan because they just have those fun energies. nick WILL scream the spoken part of shake it off at the top of his lungs. also new romantic is just a skamverse song in general. also just. out of the woods. no reason for me to say it other than it’s one of my favourite songs of all time.

season 6 - folklore/evermore

no evermore is not out yet. yes i am claiming it for season 6. see taylor has said that these albums are all about telling stories/fairy tales and that’s what season 6 is about. i cannot wait until next friday when the main and my plans for the hiatus are revealed…….. genuinely i do not know how anyone perceives skam brighton so i don’t know who people think the next main is, but…… i can only describe the state of me writing this season as the various ambiguous disorder gifs.

[firelxdykatara]

🔥 tvd. unleash the salt.

YOU BROUGHT THIS ON YOURSELF MEEKS

-cough-

no but ok, my biggest unpopular opinion re: tvd? (judging mostly from what i’ve seen come out of what’s left of the ‘fandom’ since s6 when 99% of it jumped fuckin’ ship, but anyway)

the show turning to shit had absolutely nothing to do with delena becoming canon

like, i’ll be reading someone’s anti tvd post, and i’ll see something like ‘it started going downhill in s4′ and nod along, but then ‘when dullena became canon’ and it’s like -record scratch-

no. hold up. -squirts with a waterbottle-

anyone who didn’t realize that damon and elena were being set up to become canon down the line as early as season one were either in denial or just weren’t paying attention. i could write for days about all the signs and all the ways their relationship developed and how they each developed as characters, but i don’t have the energy to focus on the good about tvd anymore so i don’t feel like it. (i always have energy for salt, though. must be my high-sodium diet.)

there are a couple things we know for a fact about early tvd. one is that kevin williamson was largely in charge of the show as head showrunner for the first three seasons. another is that williamson left the show after season three–his name was still on it, but he moved onto another project, and julie plec was left in charge. given those two facts, and my belief that the show’s decline in s4 was far more gradual and less visible than it was in s5, when the show jumped the shark and over a fucking cliff, we (or at least i do, you don’t have to agree but it’s the story that makes the most sense to me so i’m sticking to it) can infer that kevin williamson left at least something of an outline behind for the season following his departure, and the rest was left up to julie as she meandered her way through three more seasons–two of which the show should never have had–with only the vaguest idea of an endpoint in mind.

(as early as season 2, julie said that she and kevin already knew how they wanted the show to end–or at least, they knew what they wanted the last words to be. given that the series finale ended the same way the pilot episode did, with damon showing up on stefan’s porch wearing his trademark smirk and saying ‘hello brother’, i can buy that they had this particular scene in mind when initially planning the overall series arc. i also think that julie plec went mad with the power she suddenly had over the story once williamson left, and any other tentative plans that may have been made were either forgotten or discarded in favor of magic vampire uteruses and pointless romantic arcs and killing characters off right before the end of the show for no real reason. but anyway, i digress.)

I THINK I’VE GOTTEN A LITTLE OFF TOPIC. anyway. if delena wasn’t the beginning of the end (we’ve established that delena–if not as an endgame, but certainly as a relationship that would need to be explored–was in the cards from the very beginning, and had achieved most of its crucial relationship beats by the s3 finale [all that remained was elena gaining closure for her decaying relationship with stefan before she could fully move on]), what was?

two things, primarily: the sire bond, and the cure.

now, neither of these things seemed particularly egregious at first. in fact, up until the end of the season, i was convinced the sire bond would be revealed to have never actually existed, because the ‘signs’ were so badly contrived that they had to be red herrings designed to make the characters doubt themselves and their feelings. in hindsight, i realize the piss poor writing surrounding the bond was emblematic of issues that would plague, and eventually destroy, the rest of the series. and until it came back in season six and undid literal years worth of character development for the central character of the fucking series, i actually thought the cure plotline in s4 was a stroke of brilliance–shoddily handled in a few places, but still solid enough in execution to make up for it.

because elena, having become a vampire, needed to have the option to become human again presented to her–and then she needed to reject it. Which she did, twice, at the end of the season–first when she offered it to Stefan without a second thought, and second when she shoved it down Katherine’s throat, again without a moment of hesitation. (Technically three times, if you count the fact that she was ready to force it on Damon, but that, at least, was motivated by her desire to save his life, since he was dying from werewolf venom at the time.)

elena’s arc throughout season 4 (and that’s another of my unpopular opinions–elena didn’t change into an unrecognizable monster when she became a vampire, becoming a vampire allowed her to let go of the gloomy graveyard girl and finally learn to love LIVING again, and the fandom was so used to her as the suicidal martyr ready to sacrifice anything and everything without a second’s hesitation that they turned on her, en masse, when she realized it was actually ok to want things for herself but…. that’s a different rant altogether, ahem ANYWAY) was about learning how to be herself again.

not herself as she was immediately pre-vamping–herself as she was before her parents died. it’s no coincidence, i think, that the s3 finale (when she was being turned) and then s4 were some of the only real glimpses we got of elena’s parents, and her life with them before they died. she literally hallucinated her mother, in one of the most heartbreaking scenes of the entire show, trying to convince her to kill herself because of what she’d become–but this, notably, was a curse enacted on her by a vampire hunter. (here’s another unpopular opinion–elena killing connor had nothing to do with the sire bond. she would have killed him anyway, because he was threatening her brother’s life. am i the only one who remembers that elena, as a human, went to denver with the sole purpose of figuring out which original sired mary, so she’d know which ones it was safe to kill to protect her family? she was a human and willing to kill 75% of all remaining vampires on the planet. girl could be fucking ruthless when it came to protecting the people she loved, especially after losing so many.)

“mommy, i never meant to disappoint you.”

and then the sun came up. and just as the light hit her and began to burn, because she’d thrown her ring into the river, she looked to damon and whispered his name, panic in her eyes–because she suddenly realized she didn’t want to die. she wanted to LIVE. she DESERVED to live. and damon did what he always did best–he saved elena gilbert’s life. and that’s when she realized she couldn’t keep ignoring the things she felt for him, the way her feelings for stefan had never really recovered, the fact that she wanted to learn to enjoy the life she had instead of subscribing to stefan’s tortured broody vampire bullshit.

(ok, in fairness to stefan [loathe as i am to be fair to mister Hero Hair], i don’t think he actually realized what he was doing to elena. i don’t think he quite understood just how badly he was feeding into her self-loathing and how much he was making her think she would become a monster just like him–just like ripper!stefan if she didn’t take to the bunny diet and make like a good little vampire who never stepped a toe out of line. but i do think that as those first few episodes wore on, elena realized, more and more, that she would not survive being a vampire if she had to do things stefan’s way. and it became clear that the elena stefan was in love with was the idealized, human version of elena who’d died going over that bridge–the elena who could remind stefan of his own humanity and be his anchor to non-ripperness. she couldn’t be his sober companion/humanity anchor if she wasn’t subscribing to his bunny blood ideals.)

the bottom line being, season 4 was about elena not only becoming a vampire, but learning to enjoy her life AS a vampire. no, it wasn’t something she’d chosen for herself, and maybe it wasn’t something she ever would have chosen for herself–considering that even as far back as the end of s2, when the possibility of turning was first presented to her as a real possibility, she was talking about a future where she grew old and maybe even had kids and started a family, things she wouldn’t be able to do with stefan, meaning that even then, in the back of her mind, their relationship came with a potential expiry date (and then we got ‘i can’t think about always, i can only think about right now‘ in the s3 finale, further cementing that)–but while she’d gotten exposed to so much of the darkness inherent in being a vampire throughout the first three seasons and then her own vampiric awakening, she also got to see the good.

her no-humanity arc was kind of essential for this, btw. (is this an unpopular opinion? probably. i’m gonna pretend it is so it doesn’t seem like i’ve gone too far afield here.) which is another reason i hated that stupid fucking sire bond, after i gave up the idea it’d be revealed to be fake, and choose to ignore it in my own interpretation of canon–because there was no need for it. elena just lost her brother, the one remaining member of her immediate family, the one she’d gone to extraordinary lengths the entire season to protect. she was in unimaginable fucking pain. she was in agony, because not only was her brother dead, but she was still a very new vampire and her emotions were spiraling out of fucking control.

she would have absolutely destroyed herself in her grief, if she hadn’t been presented with an outlet. something she absolutely would have chosen for herself, in that moment–damon talking to her softly, reminding her that there was a way she could just be without needing to feel everything, and elena latching onto that one tiny bit of hope, that maybe for now she didn’t have to be in so much pain she thought she might actually fucking die on the spot from it. elena making that choice for herself–actually, you know, having some fucking agency as the central character of the series–would have been a much better choice, both from a narrative and character perspective. BUT ANYWAY.

it was during her stint with the switch turned off that elena first got a real taste of how fun and how freeing being a vampire could be. if the Idiot Brothers hadn’t banded together to try and force elena to be human again against her will, i really don’t doubt that the worst she would’ve done was snatch-eat-erase a whole bunch of people and live it up in the seedier unberbellies of various big party cities for a while. but whatever, the damage was done and eventually elena had her switch turned on by watching matt die, and feeling the relief at seeing him wearing the gilbert ring, and etc.

she largely had vengeance in mind once she was back to her more or less ‘normal’ self, but a crucial part of her development over that particular arc was the fact that she no longer hated herself for existing.

that was huge. it wasn’t given the focus or prominence it should have had, and i’ll again blame that on the weaker writing that was filling the gaps left by kevin williamson’s departure, but elena was no longer the suicidal martyr she’d been since the beginning of the show. she enjoyed living. she reveled in the strength she had, in the fact that she was no longer the Token Human, the doppelganger whose blood attracted all kinds of atrocities. she could protect herself now. she got closure with her brother, when the ghosts came back for a while, and with alaric, and she basically gave herself permission to want to have forever with the man she loved.

(and the fandom villified her, for it. because of fucking course they did. because she was a teenage girl who’d spent most of the previous four seasons dying or preparing to die or literally ready to slit her own throat without a second’s hesitation when it came to protecting people she cared about, but now that she’d decided it was ok to want to be selfish for a while and be with who she wanted without feeling guilty, suddenly it was open fucking season. but ANYWAY.)

where was i?

oh. yeah. season 5.

like i said, season 4 was a little shaky, but more or less solid–it wasn’t until after season 6 that i realized the signs of the show’s downfall had started in s4, with the cure and the sire bond heralding much worse things to come. it was s5 where the show really went off the rails.

here’s another unpopular opinion–it was absolutely character regression to have damon acting out the way he did that season. yes, in seasons past, damon acting out was a big part of his progression–two steps forward, one step back, but still slowly but steadily moving forward. but by the time we get to s5, damon had literally everything he wanted. he was BLISSFULLY happy, with the woman of his dreams, living in utter domestic bliss for an entire summer before she went off to university. and this trashfire of a show actually tried to convince me that he would’ve left their bedroom for more than five minutes, let alone long enough to drive across the state and murder some innocent human woman over a sixty-year-old grudge he’d never so much as thought about the entire time he was in mystic falls????? really?????

as if that weren’t enough, this man who witnessed, first hand, elena’s love for her brother, and who had grown to love him too–who was desperate to save his life on more than one occasion, including VERY RECENTLY in the show–would let enzo waltz in and nearly murder him??? i’m????? god

and then katherine stole elena’s body, and i was fucking done.

 literally ragequit the show once elena got her body back, because i was that fucking pissed. they literally had to do so much character regression and assassination to even make it work???? they had to put bonnie on a bus to ‘away from the main plot’ville just so that she couldn’t tell anyone that katherine hadn’t actually crossed over–even though she was right fucking there in the living room with them when she saw katherine’s ghost, and she would have known immediately that something was wrong because katherine disappeared rather than crossing over. and then they had to make damon devolve so he wouldn’t be in a position to realize elena wasn’t herself. and then everyone else carried the fucking idiot ball, except matt who was promptly compelled, and TYLER who nearly died about it, ALL so that no one would notice what had happened until damon was right there with katherine!elena trying to get him to kill her so she could kill him so he wouldn’t reveal what she’d done, and i JUST.

anyway. the awful thing is, the last few episodes of season 5 were really fucking good. it felt like the show had gone back to circa s3 levels of writing. and then s6 was ok for two episodes and then…. fucking nosedived off a cliff and into the abyss.

elena losing all her good memories of damon just so she could fall in love with him all over again was one of the worst writing decisions ever made. just, in history. completely. we didn’t need to see them fall in love in a rushed and half-assed manner when we’d already gotten a beautiful four-season arc of their love story. at the VERY LEAST, they could have had her just lose all her memories, similar to stefan’s s5 memory wipe, so that it wouldn’t seem weird that she thought he was a monster and loved him anyway because something something toxic bullshit. (oh, yeah, i’m still bitter af that they had to beat us over the head with DELENA IS TOXIC YOU GAIZ as if they didn’t have one of the healthier relationships in the show until it was decided that there wasn’t enough drama so they had to make damon regress and elena excuse it in a series of increasingly ooc writing decisions)

UH. ANYWAY YEAH.

as a sidenote, tyler and elena’s friendship had a lot of potential to be something kind of fucking amazing, and it’s one of the most underrated friendships in the fandom, which is a fucking shame because i would have loved to see them get closer and have a real bond as supernatural orphans who’d had almost everything and everyone they cared about torn away at one point or another.

god. ugh. TL;DR: delena was planned from the beginning and was in no way responsible for the show going to shit, it just had the unfortunate timing of becoming canon right before the show became terrible; elena gilbert was an amazing protagonist and character in general, who should not have been hated for daring to be a teenage girl who wasn’t always fully aware or in control of her own feelings, and who dealt with so much grief and trauma in such a short time that it’s nothing short of a miracle that she eventually found her way back to the girl she’d been before, happy and sure of herself, and people just couldn’t recognize elena when she was happy so they decided she randomly changed when she became a vampire and it was All Damon’s and Delena’s Fault; stefan was a terrible boyfriend for most of their relationship; damon was wildly out of character for most of season 5; and the memory loss arc in s6 was pathetic and actively harmful to the show as a whole and especially damon and elena’s relationship and perception in fandom; oh, and tyler and elena had an amazing and horribly underrated friendship that should have gotten a lot more focus than it did. (i’m still mad tyler was put on a bus so much rather than allowed to be like, present in the lives of his only remaining friends lmfao.)

[toongrrl-blog]

The Mommy Myth: Threats from Within (Part Two)

For sure Carl and Harriette, because this terrain is going to get racist.

If Mary Beth Whitehead faced negative media scrutiny, what of the many women of color who were dealing with addiction and gave birth to “crack babies”? 

One thing I want to note: there were medical researchers who did find “crack babies”, however most of them were horrified to see how the issue was sensationalized and, like Ira Chasnoff, were horrified at the term and found that poverty was more unhealthy than cocaine. As noted in the video, most of the babies filmed were premature birthed babies in general, but that didn’t stop the media (high from Reagan’s War on Drugs) from depicting the mothers as in-human beasts and their children as sieves for the taxpayer. It was another way to pit moms against other moms and it pumped up a ablelist narrative. 

1982: Nancy Reagan, tired of her image of a frivolous rich woman who spent a butt-ton of money on White House china, Adolfo suits, and brought a astrologist to the White House, took up the War On Drugs as her cause. Despite the sensationalization of the media, drug use was declining since it’s peak in 1979-1980 and a April 1986 poll said only 2% of respondents named drugs as a very important national problem. In September 1986, Dan Rather hosted a CBS special called 48 Hours on Crack Street which influenced a different number on a new poll where respondents named drugs as the most important problem in the nation. Did I mention that this exacerbated the stigma against inner-city neighborhoods? 

That was a scene from National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) and if you thought I used this video as a illustration as what “Middle America” viewed inner cities and (indirectly) poor people of color (or POC in general), you’re probably right. 

That’s right Erica, stick it to the so-called “All-American” label with all it’s exclusive implications that plagued little girls of color in the 1980s and 1990s (still figuring it out now for myself). It also didn't help that unlike in the Mad Men days when pregnant women, to quote Mark Darcy, smoked like a chimney and drank like fishes, that we were more aware of the dangers of pregnancy than in the past and as a result, expectant mothers were faced with a list of don’ts. Of course this information wasn’t readily available (we didn’t have social media like we do now for example), health care is often out of reach for poor people of color, many poor people of color are often doubtful of doctors, there is racist and sexist bias in the medical profession, and also many communities lack the access to educational resources about health. And speaking of mothers lacking access to educational resources, NBC news connected teen pregnancy with drug abuse, especially black and brown teen moms. 

“Crack Babies” were noted to be, very expensive and high-maintenance (are all these old men in the news a bunch of fuckboys?): short attention spans, learning handicaps, lack of discipline and impulse control, they had disabilities like cerebral palsy, they “cost” the taxpayer up to $20 billion a year (of course the price tag for the “Star Wars” program was high), and many white figures of influence (judges and politicians) lamented that the “social service delivery system” will be overwhelmed and they will be delinquents. Most of these figures surrounding “crack babies” were pulled out of someone’s seat of their pants. But these sensationalized reports contributed to the idea that poor people, people of color, and poor people of color were hopeless cases and not worth devoting time or a cent to assisting them with their lives. 

In 1989, the Los Angeles Times had a headline about “Drug Orphans” and about crack mothers who seemed to have lost or lacked maternal instincts and about kids abandoned by their drug addicted mothers (sometimes until mom found her fix); aside from the Welfare Mom, the Addict Mom was used to marginalized women of color who are poor and require some sort of assistance. Unlike the speed-abusing Pamela Rae Stewart Monson, they were an anonymous face on which the news viewer and reader can project their prejudices upon and we weren’t asked to sympathize with such mothers nor their children. And then when the mothers directly abused their children? NBC covered three black women up on charges of child abuse for doing coke while pregnant and one district attorney considered them “wanton” and these womens’ soundbites emphasized their lack of restraint: “I could not help myself”. Then there was the case of Jennifer Johnson, who was charged with delivering drugs to a minor, she admitted to being an addict but had no intentions of hurting her baby and told her doctors she had used cocaine to get treatment; this resulted in her getting arrested and she was given the distinction of being the first woman convicted of using drugs while pregnant. The news focused on a black woman up on manslaughter charges in Illinois because she allegedly used crack and it killed her baby but then the charges were dropped.

While the Karen Wheeler’s/Betty Draper’s of the world were sipping their 5th glass of wine when the kids got home from school or even balancing a lit cigarette with that champagne, the Joyce Byers and Tamme Dawsons of the world were being more scrutinized by law enforcement, society, and the media at large. There was more support for arresting mothers with drug addiction, and it was women of color who were more arrested and charged for “a crime against the fetus” than white women. When the media got out addicted mothers trying to get clean, it was white women who had the limelight while women of color were nameless, while the white mom was ultimately humanized. It was poor women of color and poor white women who were arrested the most and no arrests have been made at country clubs, Bloomingdales, at chic restaurants, or even in Congress. 

Speaking of humanizing mothers, the media hardly featured a drug addicted mother who loved her kids. Marsha Rosenbaum, a researcher with The Lindesmith Center, had studied “crack mothers” and found that most of these women had a strong sense of responsibility and pride for their children, nurturing them and wanting to be better role models. Many tried to quit (but Reagan cut many drug rehabs from the budget) but found, like wine moms and wine, that crack helped them escape temporarily from the stresses of life and parenthood especially in impoverished settings. Claire Sterk, in her 1999 study on women addicted to crack cocaine, pointed out many of these mothers survived a multitude of traumas like physical and sexual abuse, neighborhood violence, racism, sexism, but turned to crack out of desperation; they viewed motherhood as their most important role and often worked overtime to provide for their children and get help to quit their addiction, often upon the news of their pregnancy. But this wasn’t seen on the networks. The Crack Baby Epidemic was hype! Motor skill issues associated have disappeared after seven months! (And let’s be real, there are adults who lack good motor control even well into adulthood)

In fact what was less covered was infants suffering under the effects of alcohol (wine mom and fetal alcohol syndrome), other drugs, tobacco (”I need a cigarette”), poverty, lack of prenatal care, and poor diet. In fact one study stated:

Cocaine does not produce physical dependence and babies exposed to it prenatally do not exhibit symptoms of drug withdrawal. Other symptoms of drug dependence--such as ‘craving’ and ‘compulsion’---cannot be detected in babies. In fact, without knowing that cocaine was used by their mothers, clinicians cannot distinguish so-called crack-addicted babies from babies born to comparable mothers who had never used cocaine or crack.

The Celebrity Mom obsession made ordinary moms feel like flabby pieces of shit, so the “Crack Baby” hype made these moms feel more superior. But really, is pitting women against women a good idea? Is beating someone down or feeling superior to them very productive? Make our lives better? Let’s have Cady Heron tell us something.

Next we will cover some more notorious moms in the media, with actual names, whose kids have died (some by their own hand). 

[shirtlesssammy]

First Blood : Recap

250 episodes. I can't believe we've already reached the quarter episode mark of Supernatural! Who am I kidding, they've got more than 1000 episodes in them, right?

Then:

The British Men of Letters are a menace and the family that hunts together, stays together, er, except for the whole mom leaving, the angel hunting Lucifer alone, and sons getting imprisoned in solitary confinement thing.

Now:

Mary sits quietly at a diner, sipping her coffee, when she gets a call from Castiel. He wonders where she is: Lawrence. Sensing Cas's distress, she asks what's wrong. "I, ah, need you to meet me at the bunker." *Click* Still working on that Chatty Cathy thing, I see. He wanders off screen, presumably to the bunker.

"Six hours ago, Sam and Dean Winchester tried to kill the president of the United States." An unknown government operative (UGO #1) briefs another unknown government operative (UGO #2) about the new guests in their secret, underground bunker. UGO #2 wants the full dossier on the boys. UGO #1: "Assault, murder, multiple accounts of desecrating a corpse." "The same corpse?" As UGO #2 learns the full details of the attempt on the POTUS's life, Sam and Dean are transported to their new shinier bunker, and locked away.

UGO #1 suggests they take care of the Winchesters the easy way, but UGO #2 likes to play with his prey before breaking them. They could connect to something much bigger. I like the calm 1950's Interrogator vibe UGO #2's got going on.

UGO #2 proceeds to talk with Sam and Dean, separately. He questions them about their motive for the attempted assassination. "You're going to talk to me, son." He then lets them know that torture doesn't work. You know what does work? Nothing. 

He's just going to let them sit, and think, and stare at the blank walls of their cells. They'll talk eventually. And no one is coming for them so they've got all the time in the world.

Sidenote: UGO #2 doesn't know about this motherfucker~

Meanwhile, Metatron Mick (and his cartoon beard) sits at a magical typewriter to relay the latest to the Home Office.

He's been trying to make inroads with American hunters, but he's not having much luck "Let me paint you a picture, of a world without monsters or demons, or any of those little buggers that go bump in the night; of a world where no one has to die because of the supernatural." Uh, dude, we like to watch our Winchesters so we'll just keep things as is. Thxkby. Ok, that's not what the hunter dude Mick is talking to is thinking, but he seems super impressed to me.

Actually, what he really says is gold all on its own: "You can take your offer, and you can shove it up your ass. I'm sure it won't be too painful, what with those soft hands of yours."

Back at the bunker, Mary is completely UNIRONICALLY angry at Cas -CAS!- for leaving Sam and Dean. <INSERT A THOUSAND GIFS OF CAS SAYING "I’ll go with you"> It breaks my little Cas-loving heart to watch this scene. Mary's emotional and projecting her own guilt on Cas. (Hmm, who else in that little family projects his issues onto others?) Cas is so demoralized he just takes it because he feels like he did fail the brothers.

Dean finds a loose screw in his cell, and starts the daily scratch on his wall. Man, with walls that soft, all he needs to do is ask for a poster of Raquel Welch and he'd be outta that place in no time! It's feeding time anyway. Dean's a-ok with the grub, but sadly, Sam did not get the kale smoothie he requested at the commissary.

Cas reaches out to Crowley for help, but Fergus is too busy drinking his mai-ti to expend any more energy on Sam and Dean Winchester. "Do you even care that they're gone?" Cas implores. "No." Crowley has full faith that they'll make it out ok; they always do. 

Mary consults John's journal (like, that seems to be the one thing that won't help the Winchesters in this new "humans are the real bad guys" world). Anyway, she hears a phone ring in Dean's room. It's Alicia, Asa Fox's daughter. They need help with a pack of werewolves. She's on the case! Very Dean of her ---if she can't solve the most pressing issue, might as well keep hunting for the sake of distraction.

Dean now has quite a few hash-marks on his wall. And while watching the episode live, Boris literally called it on Sam exercising about two seconds before we saw him start his calisthenic routine. So like Sam. Things are looking pretty grim though for our boys.

With time passing, and no hope of finding Sam and Dean, Mary and Cas meet up at a bar. Mary is sorry for her previous actions, but Cas still takes full blame. Poor bby. They have no leads. And Sam and Dean have been gone "Six weeks, two days, and ten hours." Oh, Cas. Cas then tells Mary about his inability to even solve a case. I know people are confused about how this is "Cas with his mojo back" but I think this speaks to Cas's mental state --and how human he feels. He has zero confidence in himself right now. He's no angel. He doesn't feel at home anywhere. He thinks he's still a hunter-in-training, and he's failing without his support system. And just like the man he fell from heaven for, he's going to take full blame for everything if he can't fix them. Mary suggests they take care of the case together, but Cas declines. "No, I'll only get in your way."

Chow Time. Only NOT! Sam and Dean are both DEAD!!! I love how they supposedly did CPR on Sam but he hadn't been moved. Lol.

In the morgue, the Dead!chesters are laid out. UGO #1 and #2 are arguing it out about what a waste keeping them locked up was, before turning off the lights and leaving.

Cas is alone in the dark bunker. 

Back at the morgue...*SURPRISE* Dean gasps awake! He's ALIVE! Praise Chuck! They're both alive! I was worried there for a mo. Just then the morgue doctor walks in and they ambush him for answers. Where are they? He doesn’t know. They steal his phone, and take off. Making it outside before any CCTV catches them, Dean calls Cas. “This is my voicemail. Make your voice…a mail” No answer!

Dean tries again, and again. Finally:

Cas: What?

Dean: Cas

Cas: Dean!?

Dean: Hey, buddy. Long time.

Us: SQUEEEEEEE

Dean quickly cuts to the chase and tells Cas they’re in Rocky Mountain National Park. Meet them as soon as possible, they’re kind of on the clock. *Click* Sam asks Dean if “he told him.” “Nope.” Hmmm. (Natasha: On a rewatch this hit me hard. They’re on the clock because they’re trying to escape, but also so that one of them can say goodbye forever to Cas before they die. God DAMN it, Winchesters.)

Mary walks away from a den of beheaded vampires when her phone rings. It's Cas! He tells her that he heard from Sam and Dean and she rockets her way to meet him in Colorado.

UGO #1 and 2 walk into the examining room to check out the Winchesters' remains only to find both bodies gone and a tapping sound coming from the body drawers on the wall. It's our bumbling doctor!

“Whoopsie daisy,” he might as well have said. The troops move out to the Benny Hill theme song. “These guys are killers. You got eyes, you pull the trigger,” UGO #1 orders curtly so that we all know the stakes.

Cas meets up with Mary and suggests backup – perhaps Crowley and Rowena? Mary scoffs at turning to the King of Hell and a witch so Cas thinks of someone else...t.b.a. (You know in the old days it woulda been Charlie. *mourns quietly to myself* *Boris joins in*)

Agents Surly and Affable hunt the Winchesters and rib each other. You’re out of shape! You’re mentally unstable! Bromance!

Cut to Dean and Sam – still hunted. Sam guesses that they've got about about an hour until dark, 6 hours to midnight. “Dean,” Sam says. “We've gotta talk about this.” Is “this” feelings? An escape plan? Stay tuned, kids. For now, they leave their big ole bootprints in the mud before wading into a stream. (Bobby would be chewing you out, boys.)

Back on the road with Mary and Cas, our guilt-fueled duo meets with Mick and Mr. Ketch. Mary is understandably NOT OKAY with this plan. “Suddenly the demon and his mommy don't look so bad.” Cas sticks up for his Crowley/Rowena plan and mentions that they helped take care of Lucifer.

Mick is impressed. “THE Lucifer?”

“Did you win?” asks Mr. Ketch. When Cas answers in the affirmative, Ketch lauds their success while he stares at Cas with his horrible, cold shark eyes...

“But, Sam and Dean were taken,” Mary interjects, pulling this recap back on course. They need help. And, huzzah, the BMoL are happy to help.

Mick notes that the American hunters have been a difficult barrier to their main goal in the U.S., which is to “make friends.” Right. Anyway, he goes on to describe hunters as “surly, suspicious, [and they] don't play well with others.”

“Well, that is accurate,” Cas notes.

Mick tells Mary that if word gets out that they helped save THE Sam and Dean Winchester then it'll help their cause with American hunters. Mary reluctantly agrees and tells them that her boys are being held in the Rocky Mountain National Forest – which the BMoL immediately identify as “Site 94”, a shadow-ops facility. They'll run a satellite scan of the area. The pairs depart, ready to find our boys.

Back in the woods UGO #1 and UGO #2, best buddies by now, find the Winchesters’ footprints. They're on the trail! The camera pans back to the Winchesters who are awfully close by. The boys hide behind a tree and tackle one of the soldiers who has trailed off on his own.

Dean picks up the solder's walkie talkie and has a friendly chat with the agents. “What we have here is a failure to communicate,” He says with relish. “’Cause we're not trapped out here with you. You're trapped out here with us.”

Dean and Sam find an old cabin and immediately take stock of what's inside. Sam lights a lantern, which seems like a really terrible idea. Dean grabs a bear trap. Yeah! Let's Home Alone this mother. The boys get to work and soon enough, the agents are upon them. They see the lantern illuminating the room, and someone passes in front of the curtain. Those wily Winchesters must be inside.

Once inside, the cabin appears empty. The soldiers stalk in and around the cabin when the Winchesters begin their attack. Soldiers are non-fatally shot and knocked unconscious and then we're down to two: UGO nos. 1 through 2.  UGO #1, the bigger jerk, gets trapped in Dean's Home Alone bear trap while UGO #2 gets cornered by Sam with a gun at his head. The boys walk away. Really, with that swagger they might as well be wearing sunglasses and walking away from an explosion.

“Who are you?” UGO #2 calls after them.

“We're that guys that saved the world,” says Sam Fucking Winchester.

Cas greets Sam and Dean in the woods. Sam gives him a giant moose hug before flying to hug his mom. Dean gives Cas a solid bro hug before joining the Mary Winchester hug pile. Cas looks on, happy to see his family together again.

Sam and Dean aren’t pleased to find the BMoL hanging out by the cars but there’s no time to hash it out - they’ve got to high tail it out of there. The people they left will call for backup. Mr. Ketch immediately gloms onto this, calling their mercy “a bit unprofessional.” They all exchange meaningful LOOKS of suspicion before getting into the car and taking off.

As they drive back home Mary's car cuts out suddenly. “It's time,” Sam says. Cas throws Dean a goddamnit what did you do look and they all get out of the car. Billie waits for them on the road. She reveals that Dean and Sam made a deal. Billie would kill them and then bring them back to life, thereby helping them escape. On one condition: Billie gets to kill one Winchester for good by midnight. Ding, dong, Cinderella.

In response to Mary and Cas’s looks of horror Dean explains that being locked in that solitary cell was worse than Hell. “You don't have to do this,” Cas grinds out. But Billie tells them that they made a blood pact, strong as the cosmos.

“Who's it gonna be?” Billie asks and Dean and Sam exchange sorrowful looks, ready to engage in a sacrifice-off. They're surprised by Mary, though, who offers herself. Billie magically pins down Sam and Dean and Mary, trembling, takes a gun and points it at her own head. DAMN IT, WINCHESTERS.

Mary tells them she loves them. And then Billie dies, stabbed through the heart with an angel blade.

Fuck yeah, Castiel

(Though I am genuinely sorry about Billie.)

I know the entirety of Tumblr has already done this quote but I'm including it for reasons, okay?

Cas heartbreakingly, emotionally tells them, “This world. This sad, doomed little world. It needs you. It needs every last Winchester it can get and I will not let you die. I won’t let any of you die. And I won't let you sacrifice yourselves. You mean too much to me. To everything. Yeah, you made a deal. You made a stupid deal. And I broke it. You're welcome.”

FUCK. YEAH. CASTIEL.

The Winchesters all look at each other. Because. Damn. (Boris: I want a 5 page analysis paralleling Cas killing Billie to Dean killing Death. Please and thank you.)

Cut to Mick typing away merrily on his magic typewriter. We learn that Mr. Ketch has “dealt with” everyone who knew about Sam and Dean's arrest. He's also made inroads with the American hunters. Great! Good job Mick.

Oh wait. He's talking about Mary.

God damn it, Winchesters.

Boris: Man, after this episode, this show needs to rename itself Natural. Barely a supernatural being around. But seriously, I don’t know if it was the hiatus or what, but I loved this episode. It hit all the right notes —enough to hand wave away the questions about Cas’s abilities. That being said, Andrew Dabb loves Cas, and we love him for that. This was such a strong episode for Cas. I think it’s really setting up the rest of the season for a major character development. Yay! We know he’s a Winchester, but it’s going to be so nice to see him realize he’s a Winchester (goddamnit, this better be the endgame.) I also have to give kudos to Mary’s story. Mary continues to have her own story and agency. I'm so trained to having the woman be a plot advancement or helper or foil for the main characters (not necessarily spn, but all tv/movies) that I'm just shocked and mad at her for wanting to find her own way... but I'm cool with her working with the BMoL because this is her path. She’s not just here to bake pie for Dean. They better not fucking kill her. And finally, and most controversially: Destiel doesn’t exist. Lolz.

There are no friendly quotes:

They might be the tip of some nasty-ass iceberg.

Chow time!

Sam and Dean, they're like herpes...just when you think they're gone, hello, the boys are back!

This is my voicemail. Make your voice...a mail.

The last two months we've been sitting around with our junk in our hands because you wanted to wait them out.

Maybe this is some slow your heartbeat kung-fu crap.