#this is an unrelated but adjacent rant:

[abirddogmoment]

An excerpt from training for directed retrieves during my coffee break!

Directed retrieves are a really fun gundog exercise where a dog fetches multiple birds or bumpers in a sequence that you (the handler) ask. They can be marked retrieves (where the dog sees where the bumper fell) or blind retrieves (where the dog doesn't see the fall and you have to guide them with your voice and hands). I'm teaching this mostly as an enrichment activity, but it's an important piece for irl hunting retrievers to ensure birds aren't wasted in the field. I started teaching this exercise by throwing kibble in two different directions while she stood in a heel and then releasing her to them one at a time. This was our first try with directed retrieving of bumpers!

In this video I'm asking Rory to get into heel position (and rewarding that heavily because heel position = best place to be), asking her to stand steady while I throw two bumpers, and then directing her to pick up the first bumper I threw.

The duck bumper (the second one) is her preferred bumper so I chose to throw the paint roller to my left - when I put my hand out to line her up, it sort of blocks her view of the duck bumper so she's more likely to go to the one I want even though she likes the other one better.

Because this was the first time we practiced this exercise with bumpers, I wasn't looking for a perfect retrieve to hand - when I sent her to the duck bumper (not in the video), she dropped it at my feet instead of waiting for me to take it. That's no big deal, we can work towards a tighter retrieve after she gets more confident with the game.

We're going to keep practicing indoors for a while and once she's looking confident (and assuming things don't get too icy) we'll start working outside so we can build distance and speed.

I will also keep practicing lining her up (using my hand to guide her line) so we can start working on send-outs for blind retrieves and commitment to running out in a straight line! I have some ideas on how to use very small pieces of food to start this indoors and then we can move it outdoors in the spring.

She's doing awesome though! I'm really happy with her steadiness and her ability to think through puzzles. It's gonna be a fun winter working on these skills!

[potatoofdefiance]

My two cents and a rant on the allegations and Good Omens

(I will probably regret this later)

This has been eating at me for a while now, ever since the news broke that Neil Gaiman was a sex pest (see infamous TERF-adjacent podcast by Tortoise media) and I have been consciously and unconsciously ruminating over it for weeks now, so here goes.

I think the news of Neil Gaiman hit me harder than I was expecting, and certainly harder than I would have liked.

I didn’t (and certainly do not now) consider myself a “true fan”. I was never a hard-core fan, one that goes to signings or book fairs or cons to meet my favourite author. Partly because I never latched that much on any of the authors of the books or movies I loved, and partly (maybe for the best now that I think about it) because I never had the money, or wasn’t located in a geographically favored area. Meaning I never lived anywhere near wherever events with Neil Gaiman were happening.

So, with all this in mind, how is it that the news managed to hit me so hard?

I thought (read: ruminated) about it, and I think it is because of Good Omens. And the latest times. In my life, and I think a good chunk of other people’s lives too, these last few years have been a roller-coaster. You choose which particular scenario the roller-coaster is set into; mine is on fire, running through a sea of shit and we are being slapped by gooey flaming eels hard in the face.

Maybe someone might enjoy this. That someone isn’t me.

But the point is: I have been struggling. With my life, with a mental health condition, with the world and my place in it.

Enter Good Omens. In an effort to actively expose myself to “nice” stuff, stuff that would, if not make me feel better, at least make me laugh, I started tapping more into the fandom.

I’m not a fandom person. Again, never latched onto anything that had a fandom big enough (where are the Ann Halam fans? No one is making cosplays of Sloe from Siberia, are they?).

But with Good Omens, it seemed perfect for me. I wasn’t invested so much, it didn’t make me feel like I was “lacking” something in order to be part of it. I just felt like I didn’t care enough to really be vulnerable to it, I felt like it could have been a nice innocuous hobby.

But that’s the point. Thinking it was innocuous made me let down my guard enough to actually fall in love with the fandom. Fall in love with those two weirdos of characters (which by the way, I’ll say this now: I think Aziraphale and Crowley as portrayed in the series are more a product of fans and Tennant and Sheen than they are a product of Gaiman and Pratchett. And this is not a bad thing per se, I think, but let’s give credit where credit is due).

And let me be clear: I gained so so much from joining the fandom. It has positively affected so many seemingly unrelated parts of my life, and I’m so grateful to so many kind strangers on the internet who have shared such wholesome art with me, and have gifted me so much, that even putting it into words is simply not enough to explain all of it.

And one of the results of this “wave of wholesomeness” is I also started following Gaiman more closely.

Like so many, I loved Coraline. Gaiman seemed a genuinely nice person. An old guy who had wisdom to share, and who seemed to be fascinatingly non-stereotypical? If that makes sense. What I mean is that he was everything my father warned me against. A goth, weird, a writer therefore an artist (and in my family we know artists are fools who end up on the street jobless and homeless). And yet, to me now he seemed such a normal guy. Yes maybe someone who enjoyed that fashion style, but otherwise very far away from the usual excess of a rockstar. Of course I was too young when he was at the peak of his rockstar years. English is not my first language, and when he was 40 I was in elementary school and just learning about him, and you know, they do not write about his fans passing out at signings or his groupies on the back cover of children’s books.

What I mean is that I didn’t have access to all the media and information about him.

So I start seemingly connecting to this writer, whose works I have enjoyed for the most part, and who seems such a nice guy in how he interacts with his fans and people in general. Such an inoffensive, kind person. And kind seemingly to everyone.

I started liking him. To the point where I remember telling my partner: you know, Neil Gaiman is someone I’d take a coffee with (which in Italian culture is one of the greatest honors one can give you. Having a coffee while sitting at a café and chat for hours is what good friends do).

So, in my mind he had a special place now. He was someone I started to admire and look up to.

And this is, I think, where it hurts. It hurts because even if I wasn’t personally victimized, I never met him, he never acted creepy with me, he doesn’t even know me, it still felt like I, as part of the fandom, had been used for his clout. And also, it hurts to feel like someone you trusted because of how they presented themselves has lied to you.

And on top of that: it is so fucking disrespectful. The fact he thought he could get away with it. With hurting so many people (one is one too many by the way), and causing so much pain, while also enjoying crowds of adoring fans, both online and in person.

I find it personally difficult to reconcile my love of the GO fandom with all of this right now. And I think it’s for a number of reasons.

Firstly because the silence of institutions and people around these facts has opened some old wounds and made me angry again towards a system that I perceive as hostile towards me and people like me who might be vulnerable.

What I mean is: I know that Gaiman is a powerful person, and a lot of people need to bring money home and are tied to contracts and what not (yeah I’m looking at our favorite two male presenting british actors here) and I understand it. I do. And this is exactly why this stuff makes me angry again. Angry at the whole shitty system we live in, where if you happen to be in some kind of power imbalance you might end up having to eat shit and shut up while witnessing violence against you or others and not being able to utter a word about it. This sucks. It makes me angry. It makes me angry that Michael Sheen, someone I like to believe would be among the first to shout “I BELIEVE THE VICTIMS” if he was talking to friends at a bar, likely has to shut up and play nicely because Darth Amazon has some fucking clause written in Braille somewhere that says he has to sacrifice his firstborn if he ever dares to suggest he doesn’t like anyone related to the franchise.

It makes me soooo angry that we stay in the dark, and we only know from those people who are brave, and powerful enough to speak up about something that (allegedly) has been known for fucking years in the writing community. That this person was a creep. That he was treating people, mainly women and non-binary folks, if not bad, at least poorly.

And you know, this makes me even more angry because I have been in such shitty situations too! I was a victim of a system where exploitation and borderline abuse were normalized in a work setting.

And it wakes something deep in me to read that “it was an open secret bla bla bla” and again: I understand why people set up whisper networks instead of taking these giants down. I understand it. It still makes me angry because I simply do not want to live in such systems. Systems where I’m either the sacrificial lamb or I’m the one tying it on the table, or handing the axe over to the butcher, or a witness who has no power to stop the suffering.

I don’t want to live in such a system. But I have to. In my real life. I have to put up with so much shit sometimes, shit that makes me feel like I cannot stand up for my values because hey, I need to pay the bills too. And Good Omens was one of those few things where I could escape a bit into an alternative reality, where everything could be a bit better.

And I’m sure the fandom is still like this for most of the fans. I have witnessed first-hand how supportive and cheerful this fandom can be.

For me though, it still makes me think of all this...tsunami of shit.

I want to be able to enjoy the silly fanart, the memes, the wait for season 3 again. But I can’t. I can’t because my brain does not work like that. Good Omens still means Neil Gaiman too much to me. And I cannot go around talking cheerfully about Good Omens while feeling like I’m feeding into the clout of someone who used their power to coerce vulnerable people. Because (and I might be wrong) it feels like the message I’m sending is: my comfort show/book is more important than your pain or your life. And I can’t. This is not the truth.

I feel for the victims. Probably I feel even more than it would be healthy for me, or normal. But I don’t know, I feel like I connect to them. Maybe because I’ve been a victim of abuse perpetrated in clear power-imbalanced relationships, or because I felt like nobody cared about me and my wellbeing for so long, that eventually I stopped caring too.

And it is bad. It’s dehumanizing to a point where you really start believing you don’t matter. Your wellbeing doesn’t matter. There are more important things.

Ok so, I don’t want the victims, the survivors, to feel like this. They matter. They matter to me because if there’s one thing that is going to re-ignate the sacred fire of defiance in me is being able to stop this self-feeding cycle of self-loathing and misery. You matter. We matter. Vulnerable people who have been hurt matter to me. If there is one thing we can do to resist these systems of oppression and these people who abuse their power, that thing is believing that the people they hurt matter. If not more, at least as much as them.

And the way I show myself and others that the victims and their lives matter to me is by distancing myself from Neil Gaiman and his works, at least for now.

I feel bad for people who might have found themselves unwillingly tied to all of this. I feel bad for Sheen and Tennant, for all the wonderful artists and craft-people who have put so much of their work and love in Good Omens and I don’t want to let them down.

My two cents are that season 3 will not be canceled if they see there’s enough traction, and definitely won’t be canceled unless fans start a crusade against it, which won’t happen most likely.

The fandom loves Tennant and Sheen too much, and these are too much nice people to really hold a grudge against them, so I don’t think it will be canceled.

I’m afraid we (I say “we” meaning everyone who loves Good Omens) will be “held hostage” by Gaiman in the sense that he knows season 3 is not going to happen without him, so it’s either “we” or the majority of “we” behave, or it’s not going to happen. Which again, I don’t think he would lose the opportunity to make some money, and he also has contract duties to fulfill, but it still is worth it for him to try to leverage his power.

I wanted to end this rant on a positive note, somehow. But I don't know exactly what to say. Recently one of the things that has brought me laughs and joy has been the Channel 4 series “We are Lady Parts”.

In one of the episodes they quote a very beautiful poem, which came back to mind when I was listening to Claire (the latest woman who has come forward with allegations) on the “Am I Broken” podcast.

The poem is Speak by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, I will paste the version from the show, because I think it’s very powerful and beautiful.

Speak, for your two lips are free Speak, for your tongue is still your own This straight body still is yours. Speak, your life is still your own.

See how in the blacksmith’s forge flames leap high and steel glows red, padlocks opening wide their jaws. Every chain’s embrace outspread.

Time enough is this brief hour Until body and tongue lie dead. Speak, for truth is living yet. Speak, whatever must be said.

[am3mb3r123]

hi yes i’m watching the Bad Batch arc of season 7 for the millionth time so here are this rewatch’s thoughts for all four episodes:

Marshall Commander Cody, highest ranked clone in the GAR: “let’s just wait until we’re in enemy airspace to debrief this highly important mission”

watching TBB inflict damage is always so much cooler than reading it, thanks aphantasia

wat tambor can suck a dick

Rex having both his greatest hope and worst fear confirmed is fucking *chefs kiss*

everytime they zoom in on Hunter it’s like a bad video game cut scene and i love it

poor Rex, Anakin puts him through so much

i will never get over Crosshair using Tech’s shoulder as a stabilization

god i wish TBB tv show showed more of Hunter giving incredibly specific orders in increasingly vague numbers

did i mention wat tambor can suck a dick?

yah know what? i’ll say it. Cross deserved that punch from Rex

TBB theme behind Anakin trying to brace Rex for Echo not being there?? kill me now

“Yeah, it’s a lift”

���His mind is ours” STFU TAMBOR

THE IMPLICATIONS THAT ECHO HAS BEEN RELIVING THE CITADEL FOR what TWO YEARS HELP

Anakin sees Echo back from the dead and doesn’t bat a fucking eye he’s seen so much since the start of this war

Wrecker blowing up Echo’s chamber so they can’t use it again warms my heart look at how much Wrecker cares!! (excuse me while i refrain from my full emotionally intelligent Wrecker rant)

I FORGOT ECHO JUMPED ON THE KEERADECK BY HIMSELF MINUTES AFTER WAKING UP FROM A MEDICAL COMA

so much time is devoted to the battle between the techo union and the TBB/Rex and Anakin/the Poltechs and i genuinely just want so much more of it

saying “hopefully it’s gonna be just like old times” to a man who’s been kept as a science experiment for two(?) years is insane

the narrator will not let us forget that Echo’s an ARC Trooper and i’m so grateful for it

whoever decided to give Echo a scomp arm i am kissing you on the mouth

“to be blunt” Tech you’ve never not been blunt in your entire life

has no one informed Admiral Trench that his “algorithm” has been compromised!?

Windu trying the “can we not?” method with the battle droids is so funny to me

“if it makes you feel better, it isn’t my plan” Anakin you little shit

unrelated but since when is the entire back of Jesse’s helmet blue??

Anakin wasn’t super justified in cutting off half of Admiral Trench’s limbs and then killing him, but who boy i love watching him go from Jedi to Jedi-adjacent to Sith

god i love Wrecker, if you’ve made it this far and have Wrecker-centric fics to recommend let me know

and, finally, love seeing TBB give a clean salute to Rex and knowing that they’re only doing it bc of Echo lmao

[solarpunkani]

Solarpunk Ideals and Aesthetics in Sonic Colors

--according to one Solarpunk Sonic fan specifically but dude trust me on this.

This post is the sequel/follow up to my previous post on Sonic the Hedgehog (the character) and Solarpunk Ideals, feel free to give that a read for some context! But for a basic run-down--Sonic the Hedgehog (the Dude) embodies several core Solarpunk tenants in his personality, Dr. Eggman is the antithesis to Solarpunk both in personality and in resulting actions, and I'm such a big nerd I had to split this post into 2 parts and they're still long as hell.

Special reminder: I am a Sonic nerd, have been for 10+ years now. I also have Write Too Much disease. I am going to talk. A lot. Prepare yourselves.

Special reminder part 2: Sonic the Hedgehog is not a perfect franchise, and it's owned by a corporation in the capitalistic hellscape we call life and I promise you I am aware of that. I'm not saying SEGA is Solarpunk, I am saying that parts of their franchise have Solarpunk elements. If I post this and someone skips this paragraph to instead rant at me about some unrelated shit that SEGA the Corporation Guys did That One Time Months/Years Ago I may snap. You have been warned.

Shout out to @modern-solarpunk for being a beta reader for this! Thank you for making sure I was actually being legible and coherent with this.

Let's dive right in.

Sonic Colors Let's Go Let's Go

Sonic Colors came out on the Nintendo Wii in 2010, with an alternate version made for the Nintendo DS. I’ve only played the Wii version, so we’re going to talk about the Wii version. We later got an 11 minute 2D animated short about the game, to celebrate the release of Sonic Colors: Ultimate (which was basically a remake for the Switch). Basic plot synopsis below.

Dr. Eggman claims that he’s turned over a new leaf and has created the Egg Planet Park to make up for his past deeds. Sonic is inherently suspicious, so he and Tails sneak in and start busting up Eggman’s latest evil plot--tying down planets and kidnapping alien creatures called Wisps and harnessing their powers to charge up a mind control ray and make Earth the star attraction of his space theme park. Sonic and Tails promptly set about stopping him, destroying the Eggman robots on each planet and freeing as many wisps as they can while they do so. Feel free to check out this video to see all the cutscenes.

“Ani, what’s Solarpunk about that? A space theme park made by chaining down planets is already pretty unrealistic--” let me get there.

First off, the storyline has resistance and anti-industrialization baked into it. In a sense, we’ve got anti-colonialism too (though by all means DO NOT take this as me comparing the immeasurable harms done to colonized peoples by their oppressors to little fictional alien dudes getting their juices sucked out. But Eggman literally is colonizing several planets). Since Sonic is fighting a villain who’s trying to turn all of space into his robotic wonderland, we are too--and we see this guy as the villain, since he is, which can make people think about how these themes play into other aspects of life. Or at least I did in the fifth grade. Bear with me here.

If you don’t wanna watch 50+ minutes of cutscenes originating from 2010s-era script writing, let’s look at a quote that I feel boils the solarpunk-adjacent parts of the storyline to its bare essentials.

In the 11 minute animated short, Rise of the Wisps, there’s a bit more. First off, we see the aliens resisting a bit more--in fact, there’s a group of little Wisp freedom fighters working to save other wisps before they’re… harvested, I guess is the word for it.

Do they have names? No. But in Sonic Colors we don’t even really see any Wisps with characterizing traits aside from Yacker, so I think having the next few be a band of freedom fighters is pretty cool.

Asides from admiring the visual style of this short (because man Sonic in 2D animation just feels right to me), there’s a quote that I feel fits the Solarpunk outlook on community and problem solving.

“When the problem seems too big to solve on your own, you do what you can. And maybe ask for a little help from your friends. Right?”

Like if I put that in the middle of any other Solarpunk post no one would bat an eye but I’m literally quoting Sonic the Hedgehog here.

The series as a whole, especially Sonic Colors in my eyes, is imbued with hope and standing strong in the face of difficult challenges--leaning on your friends for help when you need to accomplish bigger and better things than you can do on your own. In Sonic, that means defeating giant mech bots or mutated lizards trying to crash land on Earth or purify the world of an out of control zombot virus. For us? That can be restoring a native landscape, vouching for clean energy, starting a community garden, and fighting for what we believe in.

Now let’s talk aesthetics

The Aesthetics of Sonic Color

So we’ve got 5 planets (Sweet Mountain, Starlight Carnival, Planet Wisp, Aquarium Park, and Asteroid Coaster) and two parts of the main park (Tropical Resort and Terminal Velocity) that are playable zones in Sonic Colors. But what’s the most Solarpunky area to me?

Planet Wisp

Planet Wisp is described in the fandom wiki as “a beautiful natural planet full of vegetation and tall trees. The Area takes place during daytime, though stars can also be seen in the sky.” Another page on Planet Wisp says “when seen from space, it heavily resembles Earth,” but its not very big--described as “tiny” in the game. However, it has a wealth of “untouched, unspoiled and unmatched natural beauty”, full of blue-gray rocky canyons and mountains with valleys and fields, rock pillars, etc. covered by plants. The trees are extremely tall, with platform-tops and no other main branches. There’s also lakes and creeks. There’s a minimal level of urbanized civilization--mostly tree slides made from branches and roots and platforms and such. Overall, simplistic stuff--”its untouched nature being largely preserved by the Wisps’ harmonious way of living in nature.” which sounds great! Except this is before interference by Doctor Eggman. Afterwards, “Planet Wisp has large amounts of factories under construction, tearing apart the original plant life and rock and replacing it with red metal.” Eggman Empire-style structures like towers, half-pipes, and roads are clustered around the landscape, and there’s an unknown purple liquid polluting several bodies of water. So! Not all that great! 

‘Ani why do you find that Solarpunk?’ two reasons

A: We the player are literally here to defy the people building the factories so the planet can continue to be full of vegetation and home to its native creatures.

B: it’s pretty, okay? It’s fukin cool.

This map is so cool it was also featured in Sonic Generations (2011) and Team Sonic Racing (2019), so let’s find some pics!

But most of all, the music, you guys.

And here are some other versions of these tracks from subsequent games (Sonic Generations, Sonic Colors Ultimate) and tracks inspired by the Planet Wisp location (Team Sonic Racing)

These tracks. Especially the original ones, but oh my god these tracks. I cannot emphasize enough I feel like. These tracks feel like you uncorked a bottle labeled ‘hope, positivity, relief’ and put it to your ear. And what is Solarpunk about if not hope.

Speaking of Solarpunk and being about hope, let’s talk about the main theme for the Sonic Colors game--Reach for the Stars. If you couldn’t tell by the title alone, this song is also the embodiment of hope--in more of an upbeat, ‘we’ve got this together!’ kind of vibe, but it’s still important to me and also feels Solarpunky (at least Solarpunk-adjacent) so let’s talk about it!

(I ran out of audios I can add so we're getting Youtube Videos instead)

“I’m gonna reach for the stars, although they look pretty far! I’m gonna find my own way, and take a chance on today!” - as Solarpunks, we are reaching for the stars (the sun in particular I suppose) to find hope in a brighter future and share it with others. We’ve all got our own way of doing it, with solutions varying based on individual situations as well as what community efforts can yield, but even still we are daring to dream of a brighter future than the one most often visualized in popular culture. No matter what, we’re gonna keep striving to make changes and create a brighter world for ourselves and those who come after us.

“Just take a chance, we’ll do it right again (we’re gonna reach for the stars!) Just take my hand, we’ll take a chance tonight, reach for the stars, tonight!”

You know what else Solarpunks go crazy about? Community building! You know what else Sonic Colors covers musically? Community building! Or, more so, being open to other people’s viewpoints and communicating to resolve problems, but still!

Now keep in mind, this song is literally based around Sonic and Tails trying to communicate with an alien via a translator, but my point still stands let’s look at some lyrics.

“I’ve been here before, and I know that we must stand up tall! I’m not scared to ask when I’m not sure; we can overcome it all!” - what is community if not being able to lean on other people? Community support, mutual aid, working together to solve problems big and small, Solarpunks have got it!

“If you could tell me how to lend a hand, I would try to understand! No words could say how much I care! Together we can take a stand!” 

And let us not forget the refrain! “Speaking from nowhere else except your heart, you’ll never know if you don’t try! Listen and see the voice I carry with me: ‘Speak with your heart! Speak with your heart!’” In my humble Solarpunk opinion, this feels pretty solarpunk. One of the main things about being Solarpunk--at least, in my experience--is unabashed enthusiasm about our ideas and the colorful sustainable future we’re envisioning! Encouragement from others is what brought me to this space and what draws others to join and stay in Solarpunk spaces! From our art to our writings to our technological concepts and even our arguments all come from sincerity and passion about what we’re doing and the future we want! 

And keep in mind, these are the opening and ending themes of the game! These are the songs where the writers are trying to bottle up the essential vibes of the game into a few minutes of funky tunes! You open up the game for the first time, you hear Reach for the Stars! And after a wonderful story and the satisfaction of finishing a game, you hear Speak With Your Heart! Even the titles alone wouldn’t feel out of place in a discussion about Solarpunk ideals!

Final Words

The Sonic franchise has its flaws, but it sure does speak on hope and resistance. Is Sonic Solarpunk? Maybe not entirely, but I feel it’s got some core elements that are Solarpunk-aligned, even when it’s not always front and center like it is here. I’m not going to pretend that Sonic the hedgehog as a franchise is the pinnacle of a Solarpunk story/game--but it’s got some nice elements that could inspire other stories, and uses those elements in a way that makes people feel like they can and should take action against darker industrializing forces in their life.

Or at least it did for me, as a fifth grader. Maybe that’s not a lot. But if it can help open the eyes of a handful of kids and teens and make them feel hope? Make them feel like they could maybe find the courage to do something? Maybe that’s all we need from it.

[baekuras]

not me telling my boss i threw up and his suggestion being to take meds against diarrhea the specific one being the one i took on accident a few years back during my period in a hazen panic of pain starting at my internship and being in the worst pain i don't even remember anymore and just passing out the second i got home (up to my bed though) fully clothed

i was fine when i woke up again but dear god no i am NOT ever taking it if i have any other gut issues except for diarrhea no, stomach aches or twists do not count

also don't worry I am not actually sick It's a lie that sounds better than "I am actually feeling exhausted because I slept like 16 hours during one night of the weekend, then only up to 5 if I am lucky today, I feel like my life is wasting away and all I can do is sit there paralyzed because I don't even have the energy to go look for something-anything else"

if i am not overly petty i might join in a few hours because my coworkers are not at fault and understaffed but also...the comment made me salty because how do I go "Hey my guts are shit, I threw up-not feverish though don't worry it's fine, but it's not done yet" and you go "just pop in unrelated medical pills and join us soon" just the SOON is making my brain itch a bad way

whaddoyoumean sOON i called in NOW because there isn't a SOON if i knew there was a SOON i'd have mentioned it do not just assume that

more ranting beyond the line because i need to vent some and the tags will cut it off eventually

fun medical facts about ME :D diarrhea takes me about an hour-if it's bad maybe two-to subside enough for me not to run to the toilet every few minutes and start eating and keeping in food and water (might be able to eat tiniest pieces of toast before that-depends) (food here also means toast, i'd be fucked if i ate anything more substansial)

so i'd assume it's the same with throwing up I can't really use the last times I threw up because Last time I did that for like 5hours in 20 to 30minutes intervalls and I don't really remember much The time before was way back during my first period which I also don't remember much of....well anything except me crying and panicking, shugging apple juice to comfort myself only to throw it up and my mother feeling happy for me that I got my period while I just felt like dying so...not reliable sources

but just the casual assumption that i'll throw in some pills and join them in like 10minutes after opening or something just....grinds my gears just fuck off or i will get angry enough to actually throw up

again i do plan to join at least before 3pm for the sake of my coworkers (one shift ends at 3) but god fucking help him if he uses my overtime for the time I am away if he does i WILL leave and get sick-leave for that day and I will go tell my doctor i am pretty damn sure i am burnout-adjacent because I either just sleep or am at work and i'd really like to be able to do anything else in my free time thanks :D

[azzzhat]

LOOK me in the eyes and TELL ME you "may or may not have gone a lil overboard" you beautiful human being, I FUCKING DARE YOU

I cannot fathom the time you must've spent perfecting every detail down to the RUG and BOOKS. Like, holy fucking shit. Those novels even differ in size and some of them are leaning on adjacent ones. The flower motif on the rug and those sneaky little book covers has to be one of my favourite aspects. It just makes everything look so elegant and cohesive.

And don't get me started on that close-up of the books. I SCREAMED when I realised that NOT ONLY IS GEM'S HALF-AND-HALF WOLF FORM ON THE TOP BOOK COVER, THERE ARE FEATHERS AROUND IT REPRESENTING ORION AND THE SPINE FEATURES THEIR CONSTELLATIONS. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL. BENEATH THAT BOOK, IS ANOTHER BOOKMARKED ONE ON SOUL ANATOMY (and if I were to guess, the obscured illustration is of a mammal heart) WHICH IS JUST. INSANE. BECAUSE GEM IS MORE OF A BIOLOGY EXPERT AND I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU CAUGHT THAT.

The perspective and lighting are just GODLY. LOOK AT THOSE GOLDEN RAYS BATHING THE LIBRARY IN WARMTH AND BOUNCING OFF THE PILLAR LIGHTS. It's so realistic I feel like I'm actually in the scene itself, watching this exact moment unfold. The environment is drawn perfectly to where the objects sit in relation to the POV and I still can't get over it. It looks so perfect my eyes are burning

did I mention I screamed earlier? because I should tell you I screamed even louder when it finally clicked in my brain that doomy is curled up next to gem as they're reading, who looks so relaxed and genuinely happy to see orion that it's infectious. speaking of whom, i LOVE HIS WINGS. THE SOFT FLUFFY TEXTURE. THE SLIGHTLY UNEVEN SURFACE THAT YOU CAN ONLY SEE IF YOU ZOOM IN. THE CLEAR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE SECTIONS OF HIS FEATHERS.

which brings me to the last part of my rant!! the texture. god, the texture. the floor, the sofas, the pillows, EVEN THE LAMP, the walls and (although somewhat unrelated) the small creases in the cushions showing where gem and doomy have sat down. this whole piece is the definition of masterful and I'm flattered beyond words to receive this divine rendition. GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK. I CAN LIVE OFF THIS FOR A YEAR. ONE OF THESE DAYS I MIGHT START SOBBING OUT OF NOWHERE BECAUSE OF YOU.

MAY I LINK THIS ??? 🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️

@azzzhat

More fanart :D

kinda wanted to draw the library n may or may not have gone a lil overboard

click for better quality :]

hope u like it :>

also close up

[eddiemxnsons]

INTRÉPIDE — Nate Fick

Requested by: @bbysugarpink

hello, i would like to request something for nate from generation kill :) with the fluff prompts: “is there a reason you’re blushing like that” and “i’m not a damsel in distress. i’m a damsel doing damage” thank u so much! 🤍

To whatever sexist douchebag termed damsels — women — as always being in constant, unwarranted distress, Y/N Y/L/N could run laps around them with her intellect, physical build, and sharp tongue. She was a living illustration of an army disciplinary booklet, the words alive in calculated steps she’d approach a soldier with.

The men of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the Marine Corps vexed egos could attest to the goldenly shrewd behavior of their lieutenant. She was a great shot with her rifle, but her words walloped anyone with a more profound wound than any bullet could. Superiors would tease that if science could decipher the wonderstruck complexes of her mind and bottle it, they’d give it to every trooper to fortify some manhood in them that vanished with the diaphanous sand of the desert each dawn.

With the exception of First Lieutenant Nathaniel Fick.

The duo could forge a bickering storm within seconds of a misstep in strategy, a blazing crimson error of position that had a target pinned to their asses. The remainder of their platoon would settle in the beaten leather of their humvee’s, ears perked to open windows to listen to the rather amusing strings of hisses. They’d only interject if the woman was teetering on ripping the other lieutenant a new one, and it wasn’t for the paralyzed ego of their male superior, but for the sound discipline that should be happening.

Yet, as the cruel sun beat down on one afternoon, it's one malevolent eye unblinking, the sky it's co-conspirator with not even a wisp of cloud to obscure the unrelenting rays, there was no sound discipline to be enforced. Therefore, the feverish dispute erupting with a febrile existence as hot as the weather itself, was either eavesdropped by weary troopers or entirely disregarded by those who forced slumber.

Y/N stood in front of a glowering Nate Fick in a recognizable stance, arms folded sturdily across her chest and her jacket and pants littered with palpable burns from a imprudent stunt in the early morning. He was now ripping her a new one before a few other fellow lieutenants for the chaotic strategy that had her eluding a lethal shootout by her teeth.

“You were sent on a mission to collect intel, not engage in a fucking dogfight with Iraqi soldiers, Lieutenant Y/L/N. Lately, all you’ve been leaving is a trail of collateral damage wherever you go and I have to clean it up before any higher-up flames your ass,” Nate essentially snarled in her face, his gaze fervid with fluttering chaos and madness, whetting the edge of his cerulean eyes.

“If you’re going to chastise me for doing my job, I think you should be looking at yourself and everyone else in this damn platoon! We were ambushed and I merely retaliated to save the asses of my men like any lieutenant would do. I got the fucking intel for you and spared you from writing a few condolence letters,” she sneered in retort, beckoning an offending serpent of anger into their conversation with a spark of anger igniting in her chest, “And I would appreciate if you allowed me to do what I need to do to save my men—”

“And what if I had to write one for you?!” He interjected furiously, the rustle of the adjacent map indicating that his miffed outburst startled a few of the others. Their exasperation stood equal now, black marks on their consciousnesses. When it came to her — this brazen, shrewd female lieutenant — the stagnant, usually composed first lieutenant was easy to set off, almost like flicking the top off a grenade. Scrap the usually when it came to the woman before him now.

Y/N merely scoffed, a few sputters of laughter hissing from the rifts of her lips, “Besides a loss of a lieutenant, what is it to you if something happened out there? You could give less than two fucks about me, Fick.” She peered at him with frustration radiating, aghast that he would reprimand her recklessness.

Nearly everyday did he let Death almost beat the shit out of him, and it was always her that had to save his ass and dispel its clasp. The one day she didn’t duck for cover, demand them to fallback, had a momentary lapse of judgement was the day she was endlessly ridiculed. Her hand twitched at her side as she anticipated a reaction — an excuse — from the crimson-cheeked man, an identical grimace scattering out from beneath both of their helmets.

She sobered her tongue to her cheek for the sake of hearing this argument through and through, savor in levity the first thing the blonde could spare from his humiliated ass,

“Maybe if you pulled your head out your ass, you’d realize that there are some people in this platoon that give a shit about whether or not you live or die.”

“Like who?” she beckoned in challenge, true to her haughty dispotion, and her chest mere inches from seething against his own now.

She could taste the poignancy of his despair that fragilized in his light blues, the acidity of his wrath, and the blazing of his anguish, yet shook her head despite it all gradually soaking into her chest, “Like who, Lieutenant Fick?”

He was a man that knew no fear until he met this woman. He had met every dread of his in her heedless behavior. Certainly, she tends to sprint into danger on more instances than he could count, but managed to extinguish every flame of danger that lurked as a menace to her each damn time. Numerous wondered, even him in some moments, where Y/N’s tenacity emanated from, yet it could never really be pinpointed. Yet, that was just another aspect of the cumbersome girl he had spent his army career attempting to unravel.

And Nate Fick is a gritty man. He has strived for a while to not get his feelings for her entangled in the requisite of war. Love doesn’t belong in a war, where there’s a constant dance with Satan that would desecrate anything as vulnerable as love. Yet, there it was, keen as ever despite the uncertainty of the next few minutes. He loved her like there wasn’t a war occurring.

“Like me,” he admitted with his mouth abandoning all moisture for an arid wasteland of desert like his surroundings.

His whole mewl of a rant moments prior had fucked things up for sure. Even as he was blustering and calling into question her competence, he was aware how he was stirring an unspoken pot of exasperation between them. But she had scared him that morning. And Nate Fick thought himself a fool whenever he fussed in fright over something — someone. But, as he flanked position in the aforementioned dogfight with his own men, his peripheral — keen as always — had caught her dropping to the ground after a deluge of bullets mangled the metal of the humvee she had tucked herself behind. He had been certain that he had just bystanded her death and nearly got himself shot in the abyss of numbness that bittered his nerves.

“Well, of course, because who else would you bitch to about every damn problem you have?” she eclipsed his concern and amused the response, “Anyone else would simply kiss your ass and agree with your complaints — you’d never get your desired response and then the cycle repeats itself. I may as well be your therapist!”

“Would you just shut up?!” Nate let her have it, tearing into her steadfast role of a bitter disputer, eyes temporarily locking with her own.

Any other soldier at the brunt of his outburst would flinch, unravel in whatever mock confidence they tossed between them at the start of the quarrel. She was a pistol of a woman, and there is everything right with that as could be for regard to her character. You fired at her, you could be damn certain you’d get fired at in return.

“Are you issuing an order to me, lieutenant?” She ventured a step between their already existing close proximity, “Someone of your own rank that you’re belittling on account of your questioning of my sanity? Well, let me deal you back a taste of your own medicine — I question you on your clear defiency to keep a cool head whenever something, involving me, occurs and you lose your temper! The line between your professional life and whatever personal thing you have festering in your mind is blurring, lieutenant. And I question if you can execute your rank’s duties appropriately...”

“You make it rather difficult to when you stick your ass in every dangerous situation that comes wandering your way,” he ruefully sighed, abating his zealous tone and plucking her elbow to shift them into a quieter corner away from probing eyes. And, much to his surprise, she permitted the abrupt veering off and the linger of his hand on the bend of her elbow.

“And why is it so difficult?” she aligned her tone with his own, still a searing and acrimonious murmur in the shaded corner.

Nate’s frustration tensed with a clench of his jaw, eyes drowning with something deviating between anger and lust — the latter glimmer being one she regarded before he was even genuinely aware it had erupted to the surface. And her heart fluttered.

“You know why,” he indifferently stated, words slicing rather than tumbling through the dry air.

A hollow feeling bloomed at the center of her chest almost immediately as the words registered quicker than she would’ve preferred.

“Nate,” there was no agitation in her voice as if her heart beat so steadily now, the pistol-shot flare diminishing beneath a vulnerable facade. Certainly, she knew. She’d be daft to beat around the bush of his implications — the connotations of their intimate, clandestine relationship. “If the others — if our superiors — found out...”

“It’s been a year and they’re none the wiser,” Nate tread a few fingers through her messy, disheveled hair, her breathing almost instantaneously steadying with the slight yanks at the stray tufts of her ponytail brushing her neck. They rebounded to a silence with balanced inhales of arid desert air for a few moments, the din of adjacent soldiers in their makeshift tents curving around the flaps of the one they concealed behind. She glimpsed briefly through the heavy brush of her lashes, pressing a whisper of a kiss on his lips, lingering there with the ardor igniting her veins and no doubt his, defusing the ticking bomb of fury from minutes prior.

“Now, is there a reason why you’re blushing so profusely like that?” she mused with a curl of smirk in their departure from the kiss, her fingertips skimming the camoed cloth of the rear of his helmet while amused eyes adored the earnest crimson of his cheeks.

Nate chuckled with an eye roll spared for her radiating levity, his spur of mirth hindered by the dispute that anchored in the abyss of his stomach, “You could have died, you know.” He is vulnerable now, novel territory for Nate Fick to venture into, and he's found himself astray in the shallow waters of a defenseless position.

“You would’ve done the same,” she uttered through a throat she could’ve sworn was temporarily haboring jagged rock shards, “Besides, we both know that I’m not a damsel in distress needing you to swoop in as if you always need to do something to save me. I’m a damsel doing damage a majority of the time ‘round here.”

“Unfortunately,” Nate chuckled wryly, “And you leave it all to me to clean up.”

“It’s rather entertaining to watch — for everyone.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

[everybodyelsedying]

~

Forgive me a personal rant because I already ranted too much to a sleeping @pierre-renaldi and my mother is driving me up the wall

My mother lives with me. I own the condo, but she lives with me. That’s preface to all the rest of this. The person who used to live here put a dumb electronic lock on the door  that I agree I would like to replace, but it’s expensive and time consuming because likely the door would need to be replaced.

My mother is obsessed with the possibility that we will lose power when she is out of the house and not be able to get in. I’m working on trying to get the sliding door in the basement rekeyed as an alternate entrance, but she has started this conversation 15 times with me and never remembers what I have said about it. Either her memory is failing or she just doesn’t listen. Having lived with her for most of my life, I know it’s the latter.

While I agree it’s genuinely a little concerning that the power might go out and you might be locked out, we don’t live in a rural area. If that happened, and I wasn’t already home to let her in, she could go to my brother’s house (15 minutes away), go to any of my aunts and cousins houses (all 10 -20 mins away), come wherever I am (most likely work - 20 minutes away), go to a store (we live in the suburbs - there are three malls and countless stores nearby) or go to a hotel (again, suburbs directly adjacent to a major interstate en route to NYC). 

If we lost power due to a problem unrelated to say a hurricane, it would not be out long. To her point that what would happen with a hurricane - well, you probably won’t be outside and we can come and go as we please as long as we’re inside when it happens. Frankly, if one of us is inside, it’s not a problem.

So after fighting about this for the 15th time and having her threaten to move out - which at this point just -- fine. If you want to move out, I’m not fighting it. I like having what she kicks in for rent, but I don’t need it -- she went on her 1000th rant about feeling like a guest in my house. 

Firstly, I don’t want her to feel that way, but secondly -- She literally has gotten everything she wanted. Since she moved in, we have: 

1) Put up all the pictures and decor she wanted in the living room - None of it with the exception of the couch and 1 chair is my stuff or even really my aesthetic. Most of the pictures make it seem like a weird shrine to my brother.

2) She has the master bath and master bedroom so she wouldn’t have to climb stairs. Essentially the whole first floor.

3) She wanted to plant flowers outside. She did with no complaints from me

4) She has 2/3rds of the finished basement for an office/craft room - I have the other third for a gym. 

5) She picked out all of the kitchen furniture and brought a chest she wanted from our old place so that the kitchen mostly looks like hers

6) She wanted an exterminator hired so I did it and I pay for it monthly because she feels we live in the woods

7) She gets to be home alone for a good 10 hours of the day and only has to see, hear, speak or share a space with me for about 2 hours a day since I’m working out of the house and generally get home around 8pm and go to bed to at 10pm.

I don’t know what more she wants, frankly, and it’s very frustrating at this point when she has legitimately everything and any time I do say no - like to the lock situation - I’m treating her badly. 

[roccinan]

《According to logic like that, Berlin also did nothing wrong because the writers made him that way. It wasn’t Gandia’s fault Nairobi died because the writers made him do that. While we’re at it, Palermo’s not sexist either because that was a writing choice TM. Alicia never tortured Rio because the writer did that. 》LOL even I find this logic absolutely ridiculous 😂 this made me laugh, so thank you! Which character were they bashing tho?? Tokyo? She gets a lot of flak and tbh i dislike her too

But even with my dislike, there's always a limit. I hate when stans of Character X excuse all their character's actions and then bash some1 else just for breathing. It's why I always feel guilty for disliking literally ANYONE else from lcdp because my brain goes hello? you stan berlin?? that bastard, rmbr him? + I don't see how others just completely gloss over their character's mistakes, you can just accept they have flaws? Come off that high horse lmao and don't blame the writers 😆

and that thing about fans being salty their char/ship isn't as popular and it's less abt the morals than shaming others abt the worshipping of their CHOSEN ONE》that is also SO TRUE! And I hate fans like that. Just let people enjoy what they enjoy? At the end of the day, this is all FICTION, but there's also limits to that, fiction isn't an excuse to romanticise toxic stuff. There's a fine line and far too many idiots acc me. Anyway, I am up for hearing that rant lol :)

Welcome back, anon! LOL you’re welcome ;) And right?? What kind of clown logic is that. So it’s not the writer’s fault when characters you don’t like do “bad” things, but it is the writer’s fault when your fav isn’t perfect. Do these people hear themselves...

Oh, this isn’t about my girl, Tokyo (I in fact love seeing comments hating on her LOL I think because I’m tired of female characters always having to be unproblematic cinnamon rolls in order to be loved-- female characters deserve to be dumpster fires too and Tokyo embodies that!). If you pm me off anon, I can go into more detail about what “inspired” my rant haha Here, let’s just say it’s not about Tokyo. They were bashing Berlin/Palermo which is why I said, “valid” lmao. It’s the fact that they followed it up with that stupid apologizing logic for their own favs that I had to say no to the clown car.

So without disclosing anymore, I assure you this clown is not a berlermo or serquel or Tokyo fan, so this has got nothing to do with any fan of those ships/chars. That’s all I can say for now lol.

“I hate when stans of Character X excuse all their character's actions and then bash some1 else just for breathing.” This drives me crazy, anon!! You’re so right! This is peak clown behavior. And was exactly what was happening. On another note, you’re free to dislike whoever you want- no need to feel guilty! And you already know I share the guilt in liking Berlin LMAO, but what are we gonna do? He’s not real, and also dead.

Back to the main point, I have seen such wild takes even about Berlin/Palermo (unrelated to what inspired the rant, but adjacent to it!). With my own two eyes:

Palermo was possessive towards Berlin. WHERE??? I must have missed the part where Martin said, “andres, I forbid you from marrying Tatiana” in the flashbacks

Berlin pretended to love Palermo back as part of a sick practical joke. Guess I also missed the part where Andres went, :LOL Martin look at your face!!” in 4x08

And it’s like, people are free (and tbh encouraged) to dislike these two, but that doesn’t mean they can go around outright lying and expect to be taken seriously. Just admit your least favorite characters aren’t one-note villains and move on with your day. 

And it’s like, confident people don’t have to bash other characters to uplift their favs! For example, granted I haven’t read many serquel discussions but from what I have seen, most serquel fans acknowledge Sergio’s faults repeatedly. I know berlermo fans do the same for Andres. And from what I gather, Alicia fans don’t pretend she didn’t torture Rio of her own free will. 

I’ve also seen in passing someone say something like they were sick of scrolling through ten posts of berlermo per day. There’s a way to filter tags, first of all. Secondly, to be frank, that person should be grateful berlin and palermo are bad people. If they were good people, it’d be 100 posts per day! And it’s telling when someone with exclusively het ships hates on the one popular mlm pairing that doesn’t even affect anyone in their own ship lmao. And the only reason they can hide behind moral reasons is because the characters in question are that way- like, I really believe if berlin and palermo were actual saints, these people would still be salty over their chars/ships being less popular. Same trick, different fandom.

LOL to be fair, lcdp itself is romanticizing bank robbers XD I think most things can get a free pass in fiction, so long as the creators in question are aware of what they’re doing and warn beforehand and (preferably, but this might be expecting too much of professional creators) really think about the implications/views of certain subjects, and how to present them. It’s easier in the world of fanfiction, because tags are a blessing!

Anyway, that’s just my rant- thanks for taking some of it off my chest lol. Like I said before, everyone can love and hate what they want- it’s just a show, as you pointed out. But boy oh boy, do hypocrites drive me up the wall! If they can’t practice what they preach, I really have no obligation to take anything they say seriously. A clown is not a preacher, amen.

[categoryhouse]

“Come any closer and I’ll shoot, don’t fucking tempt me. Daddypool over here could use a couple ‘a headshots.”

Even with the mask on, Peter knew Wade well enough to know that the other man had no intention of being cruel, his hard exterior little more than a front - a means of protection from those who stared at him with disdain. 

To them, the jaded crowd of pedestrians, the ex-mercenary was inhuman; an otherworldly beast, present only to plague their collective existences. They didn’t see behind the bloodied mask, but when they could, they would muster nothing more than disgust, aiming it at the man like a barbed spear. 

The irony was nothing short of painful- they saw him as a bloodthirsty murderer, but the only weapons drawing blood were those of which they so proudly held.

Equipped in full suit, katanas and all, Wade could only stand and watch as they circled him. They were no angry mob, brandishing not much more than cellphones and cameras, but they scowled at him with contempt and nothing less. They only came so close, retaining a couple of meters of distance, because at the end of the day, he’d end any of them if they stepped to close. 

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t affected by their resentment. 

Peter stood to Wade’s left, the silver webbing along his suit glinting in the sunlight. The gunman him and Wade had just downed was curled at their feet, mouth bound by a gag and arms webbed to the pavement. He’d attempted to open fire three blocks down from Times Square, and if it hadn’t been for Wade spotting the poorly-concealed semi-automatic on his person, they wouldn't have been able to stop him in time. 

And that, unfortunately, was what the general public just couldn’t see- the side of Wade Wilson that was genuinely trying to change, to make a name for himself that didn’t just involve senseless contract killing. It was Deadpool that had potentially saved hundreds of lives, who had been on the ground and incapacitating the offender before Spiderman had even realized what was happening. 

The truth of the matter was that these days, Deadpool did nearly as much good as Peter. He was out on patrols daily, covering for Peter when he had to put in extra hours at the Bugle, but regardless, his previous reputation stained every life he saved and innocent he protected like wine, insidiously seeping into each one of his actions and marring his perceived intentions. 

Years prior, the media had a field day when they’d initially broke the story of the Spiderman-Deadpool partnership, taking the opportunity to make absurd claims about Spiderman’s ‘switch to the dark side’, and how they had been right all along about the hero’s intentions. There hadn’t been a paper in the greater New York area that wasn’t plastered with obscene rumours about the two of them. And yet, not one paper commented on Deadpool’s informal resignation from mercenary work, or the unofficial Avengers membership status granted by Stark himself. 

Instead, the papers chose to continuously frame him as a killer- unchanging, unrelenting, and insane. They chose to ignore the dozens of lives he saved daily, chose to accuse Spiderman of endangering the city by inviting the mercenary to stay. The truth of the matter was that Wade had been working towards change, towards using his powers in a more socially responsible manner even though it meant going against his every instinct. 

Peter could see the effort, could see how fucking hard the other man was trying in every way possible to be better. Wade tried, and though there were slip ups, and the occasional accidental murder, he was usually successful in refraining from maiming or permanently injuring enemies, instead opting to disarm them for the police to deal with.

And yet, regardless of his effort, of his blatant character change, the public still stared at him like some sort of freak, some sort of villain. Even standing next to their beloved Spiderman and the mass-murderer he’d just taken down, their loaded gazes firing loathing, disgust, hatred. 

“C’mon, ‘Pool,” Peter muttered, motioning towards the sidewalk, “Police are gonna be here soon, they’ll take care of this guy. Lets head out for food or something, huh?”

It was a struggle to keep his voice gentle, the unadulterated judgement emanating from the crowd of pedestrians provoking the anger expanding against his ribs. He once looked at Wade like that- when they had first met, when he hadn’t yet gotten to know the tender person beneath the leather costume. Part of him resented himself for ever thinking such a thing about Wade, and the other part just wanted to slap some sense into the deluded onlookers, make them see what he saw in the older man. 

Wade nodded, eyes trained defensively on their audience, before following Peter out of the commotion. The two of them were watched by wary eyes as they paced the streets, but there were no comments, no brave soul willing to approach.

No one wanted to bother Spiderman if Deadpool was around. It was both a blessing and a curse. 

They stopped at some tiny pizza joint sandwiched between a dry cleaner’s and a convenience store, grabbing a box to go and bailing as soon as possible, knowing that shopkeepers didn’t exactly enjoy having mercenaries (ex or not) as customers. 

The two men only travelled a couple of paces further before scaling an apartment complex, because unless they were unfairly high up, eating in peace as Deadpool and Spiderman wouldn’t go without garnering some sort of negative attention. 

Peter reached the top of the building first, tossing the pizza box onto an air conditioning unit as he waited for Wade, who threw his body over the roofs edge with little reserve. He pulled himself to his feet, adjusted one of his swords, and sauntered over to where Peter had settled. Wade left a few meters of space between them, and the distance was beyond uncomfortable for Peter, who was more than accustomed to Wade’s penchant for being as close as he could possibly get away with. 

Muscles still rigid from before, the ex-merc hardly reacted as Peter yanked his mask off, pitching it to the side and grabbing a slice of pizza. It was unusual, Wade not reacting in some capacity when the mask finally came off. At the very least, there should’ve been a whistle, a wink- something. The dead silence didn't sit well, caused his stomach to stir. 

He took a bite, dark eyes watching as Wade continued to stand still. “Hey man, take a slice. There’s no way you’re not starving after all that.” 

Only four storeys up, the wind wasn’t substantially stronger than it had been when they were level. But Wade’s continued wordless demeanour cut right through him, sent chills up his spine. 

When the other man finally opened his mouth, his voice was hard, vulnerable in a way Peter hadn’t ever heard before.

“What’s the point, Pete?”

The sun was beginning to set, casting a pale orange hue over the maroon planes of Wade’s suit. He stood with his back straight, chest puffed, a sign of external pride and confidence even though Peter knew that he was feeling neither of those things internally. For Wade, it was all about appearance, what others thought of him- more specifically, what others hated about him. He fed off of the negativity, took every bad thing said about him and convinced himself it was true. He truly, truly believed he was a monster- an irredeemable creature that was better off with a bullet through the skull.

It broke Peter’s heart. 

“If I’m killin’ the people they pay me to kill, they call me a maniac. If I’m savin’ their sorry asses, they call me disgusting. If I’m on my own, they think I'm about to shoot ‘em up or something. And if I’m with you, they’re convinced that I’ve brainwashed you or hurt you or turned ya evil and-” Wade, who’d been frozen in space up until that moment, began to pace back and forth, creating a warped oval of footsteps as words tumbled out of his mouth, “And there’s no point, is there? Me doin’ this? I could be fucking hot dudes in Australia, eating like a fucking king in Dubai- what am I doing here? If no one gives a shit, what the fuck am I doing here?”

Peter watched as he ripped a dagger from its hip-sheath, glaring at it only briefly before whipping it forwards into the ground. It stood up, perfectly adjacent to the roof it stuck out of. 

Having dropped his slice of pizza at the beginning of Wade’s rant, Peter waited until the man marinated in his temper before approaching, movements slow and steady and careful. The last thing he wanted was to make this harder than it needed to be. 

“You’re here with me, yeah? Figured out a long time ago that I couldn’t take New York on my own- actually have a shot now, with you as my partner.”

Wade’s shoulders hunched forwards, spine curving as he shifted his weight. Peter interpreted the motion as permission to take another few steps forwards, reaching a hand out to delicately brush at the other man’s wrist. 

When Wade didn’t throw himself off the building at the contact (which had, in fact, happened in the past, and wasn’t something Peter ever needed a repeat of), Peter moved even closer. He could feel the warmth radiating off of Wade’s chest, could smell the thick aroma of leather that wafted from his suit. 

“You’re here for me, being a better person for me and like- hey, maybe I’m not the best person out there but like, everything you’re doing? Just because they can’t see it doesn’t mean I don’t. Doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it more than I’d like to admit.” Carefully, so as to not startle the man, Peter leaned forwards, pressing his forehead against Wade’s collarbone. His enhanced hearing picked up a nearly imperceptible increase in heart-rate, but otherwise Wade didn’t react. 

“Doesn’t matter if they don’t see it, Wade,” Peter insisted, eyes fluttering shut as he close the little distance between their bodies in a barely-there hug, “Because I see it, all of it, and I love it. I love how you’re trying, how much good you’ve been doing. It’s unfair that they can’t see it and I’m sorry, they fucking suck, I get it. But I see it, and I’m sorry if that’s not enough.”

And, as though he’d done it thousands of times before, Wade pulled Peter tightly against his chest, masked face buried into the fluff of his hair. 

“Course you’re enough, baby boy,” Wade rumbled, grip against the younger man’s bones tight- comforting in a way that couldn’t be put into words. 

The sun had disappeared behind a high-rise by the time the two of them parted, their hands still entwined after their bodies separated. They ate together in silence, the contact feeling as natural as anything. 

The headlines and the disgust and the judgement would always be brutal, Peter knew, but watching as Wade tugged his own mask off to smile over at Peter, he had a feeling they’d be just fine. 

[ill-be-istj-if-no-one-else-is]

I really hope this doesn’t offend you or anything but I am wondering if you can infer on what type of reasoning my thoughts on religion are or if you think these concepts are completely unrelated. So to me it makes no sense that anyone can believe in hell and a just, living god at the same time. Even just the idea of sinners and nonbelievers being bound to Hell and still being able to believe in god seems crazy to me. Like if you know someone and love them dearly, think they’re kind and good (1)

...but they happen to believe in a different belief system so therefore would be sent to Hell. How could that be okay with someone? To me the image of god just doesn’t seem worth of worship. They’re either unforgiving and spiteful or insanely apathetic to human suffering. Lol ignoring that this is religious ranting but does a certain reasoning type jump out from this. To me it just makes no logical sense to believe this and be at peace with an image or god. is he all powerful and apathetic(2)            

Is he kind and forgiving or spiteful? Like how can one believe a merciful god would damn people for all eternity. Torture is cruel for any human being. An eternity of suffering seems overkill for any “sin”            

           (4) also sorry if that’s not really a format you like. I just wanted to be able to give an example of my thought process. Something else is i very much believe moral considerations should be considered as heavily as “facts.” I want the scientific background of everything but also the ethical considerations as well. Like trying to find a cure to cancer by doing a dangerous/deadly study on healthy humans with no guarantee of success wouldn’t be okay to me. Idk if any of this is enough lol srry            

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

Hi anon, so I can’t type you for this for a couple reasons but I am not at all offended!

My guesses here are first: you are in your teens, and second, you are from a majority Christian culture even if you personally would not call yourself Christian. For the record, the vast majority of United States atheists are still to an extent culturally Christian (eg: celebrating Christmas as a winter holiday is still Christian even if you don’t believe in God or Jesus; Jews and Muslims explicitly don’t celebrate Christmas for the most part).

Which brings me to my point which is I am way too Jewish to answer this in terms of type because I was not raised in a religion with a fixed concept of heaven, hell, or eternal damnation; I was also raised in a religion where one’s actions on earth are the vastly more important part and where questioning and arguing with established doctrine is part of the culture and tradition. So while I consider myself a somewhat religious person, basically at everything you’re saying I’m like “yeah eternal damnation seems pretty messed up and I too would question it as a concept”.

Which isn’t to say Christianity is monolithic either, and plenty of practicing Christians may very well agree with you too, but the general idea of eternal damnation and torture is as far as I know specific to Christianity.

Anyway my point is that a lot of people across all types feel this way; there are people of all types who are atheists, agnostics, or in various religions that don’t have this same concept, so it’s not something I could derive a type from. It’s also not a particularly original thought - which isn’t to say it’s not new to you or important! Pondering our meaning and place and whether a god exists is a really important thing! But it’s also something a very large number of people do, especially as they hit their teens and early adulthood and realize they don’t need to accept the religion in which they were raised if they don’t want to, or that they can practice their religion differently than they were initially taught. Hence my guess that you’re on the younger side - this is a life milestone, in a way.

I think the final part is also pretty normal; there are certainly people on the “fuck your feelings science at all costs” side of the spectrum as well as science deniers, just as there are absolutely selfless people, horrible stab-your-way-to-the-top people, and most people are in the middle. Ethics in science is a HUGE thing. I’ve assisted in medical-adjacent research and there are classes you need to take to be allowed by most organizations to work with human subjects and a huge number of requirements to ensure that human dignity and agency is maintained. Most scientific organizations of decent size have an ethics board. People major in the field of bioethics. Some are religious, some aren’t - morality can come from many places. And so I think most people would be in favor of working on things like cures for disease, but only if they can be achieved in a way that does not hurt others.

In other words: I think you’re thinking through difficult and fascinating ethical and religious areas, as many people do. I can’t type you from that, but I do support it!

[lyrasilverose]

Fuck today

I was actually having a pretty solid day.  It was gonna be long, I knew that, but it was going well and I was swimming through it pretty well.  Things at work have been the normal amount of frustrating, but I was excited about my new schedule that was set to start in a week. 

And then.  My aunt, for whom I work, did not show up to work.  At all.  She had promised to be here by 2:30 (well, 2, but I knew she’d be late, so I had planned for 2:30) so I could go home and get my kid.  She forgot.  I arranged something with a different staff member to cover the desk, which unfortunately cost her a client for the day (and more money) so I could go get said child.

I called my aunt, because frankly I was a pretty even mix of concerned (I had not heard from her today) and angry.  She was apparently napping when I reached her.  Book club went late last night, you see, (and I’m sure she drank an assload of wine, too) and she was tiiiiiired.  Then I expressed that I was angry.  This is where it went sideways.  Apparently I’m “always playing the victim,” and have made the “entire staff’s schedule revolve around me.”  Mind you, I am supposed to work 10-3 M-F and have been working 9:30-??? for who knows how long.  I never know when I’m going to be off, I never know when she’s going to show up, and I am left to run the business in her absence, but with virtually no actual power and limited knowledge of agreements she’s made with people/other businesses/etc.

She’s going to some woo-ass “Doctor” who prescribes homeopathic nonsense and does muscle testing to determine if you’re allowed to eat eggs, and now she wants to drag her brother (my uncle) who is currently scheduled for OPEN HEART SURGERY in another week in to see him because this dude things that the cardiologists and surgeons are wrong and he just needs... a hug, I guess?  I mean, she keeps saying stem cell therapy, but as far as I can find out, this guy doesn’t DO stem cell therapy (I’ve checked his website along with any other info I can find online).  And my uncle?  Not woo.  Not even woo adjacent.  But fuck it, right?  Cancel that surgery, and let’s see if his arms are weak when he holds a loaf of fucking bread.  She’s been pissing blood for weeks (so she tells me) and as far as I am aware (and I am much, much too aware of her personal nonsense) this Doc hasn’t so much as taken a urine sample.  He told her to stop doing heavy lifting (the heaviest thing I’ve seen her lift in the last year is a case of water bottles) and take more time for herself.

She has no grasp of how to run a business.  She doesn’t understand that being a small business owner means you don’t get days off, or downtime.  Especially when you can’t or won’t pay someone to take care of a lot of the daily operations.  She refuses to have an employee handbook, or approve any of the THREE I’ve already written.  She refuses to acknowledge any of the business advice she’s gotten from anyone, including the afore-mentioned uncle, who has owned and run more than one successful business in the past.  She abuses the goodwill of the people around her and just takes and takes and takes.  She does wildly inappropriate and downright illegal things, like handing a W-2 out to some random person who claimed to be the mother of one of our former employees.  When told that it was illegal, she rolled her eyes.  We finally got the FEDERALLY REQUIRED postings put up last month.  We opened more than two years ago.  She will get sued into the ground at some point, and it’s totally preventable. 

She’s always whining that she doesn’t get any time off, shows up late on the regular.  Sometimes catastrophically late.  I am forever putting out fires for the staff and the business while she’s not around.  Staff treats me as management, but I have no authority to actually make any decisions regarding them, so fuck me, I guess.  Oh, and up until his hip replacement and subsequent cardiac issues, she relied on my uncle to work 25+ hours a week for free.  Since he is no longer available, yeah, she’s had to be around more. So have I.  Only difference is that I get paid for the time I’m there, an expense the business can barely afford, as I’m constantly reminded.  But she won’t come work those hours herself, she needs downtime!

Speaking of the finances.  We were finally solvent.  We were making money.  Two years in for a small business, and in the black is a HUGE DEAL.  Then she goes and buys a $2,500 “vibroacoustic table” which is just a special massage table with a waterbed on it and speakers that make it vibrate.  I can’t sell that shit to people, nobody wants to lay there for an hour and be wiggled to the tunes of hippie flutes and drums.  It’s taking up an entire room (where we could put a massage therapist, but not now!) and tons of electricity, since we constantly have to run the heaters to keep the water from going cold.  She also hired an SEO company who, thus far, have done jack all and keep asking us for access to things we apparently don’t have the passwords to?  Like, we don’t, apparently, own the administrator account for our website.  And she doesn’t know how to get that or who might have it.  Which is fucking scary.  I’ve been informed we do not have the money for new towels, sheets, various cleaning products, light bulbs, and similar items, however.  Regularly. 

She’s not paying overtime, even when people work it.  42 hours in a week, but 0 overtime hours?  Hmmm, how does that work.  Keep in mind here that I’m a part-time employee who’s only scheduled to work 10-3 5 days a week, which, for people who don’t wanna do the math, is 25 hours a week.  Again, fuck me, I guess?  And I KNOW I’m not the only one getting fucked like this, so again, it’s only a matter of time until she gets sued into the ground.

Half our business correspondence is routed to her personal email, which only she has access to, and yet it’s somehow my fault when shit that goes in there doesn’t get actioned.  She fails to respond to business contacts and then gets angry with me for not, um, babysitting her and making sure she did it, I guess?  Anything that comes in to the business email or over the phones requires that I print it out, date it, put it directly in front of her, and repeatedly remind her of it, while she gets increasingly waspish about me “nagging” her.  So I get shit on from both sides, because I’ve told Person A she’d call them back, and they’re mad at me because she didn’t, and she’s mad at me because she doesn’t like being reminded to Do. Her. Damn. Job.

I’ve worked countless free hours, because it’s family and I’m too damn nice.  I get in at 9:30 every morning, and don’t clock in until 10.  I clock out at close, even when I stay late to work on shit.  Which goes unappreciated, because I get paid the rest of the time, I guess?  I can’t afford to work for free, I have a family and a life that requires money, like most people.

I just got screamed at for being “snarky”.  Because I have spent the last two months desperately trying to get through to her about some of the things I’ve just spent the last half hour ranting about, and she just... doesn’t hear it.  And so my tone has been steadily declining into snark.  She asks for help with things, then when I try to explain, for example, how to use Gmail (which is so intuitive it hurts), she randomly clicks shit and talks over me about unrelated nonsense and refuses to listen, then gets pissed that my tone starts to slide.  I do not have infinite patience.  I just don’t.  Especially when the person I’m trying to help just doesn’t seem to want it. 

TL;DR My boss is a mess, I’m related to her, and my life is about to explode.  So that’s fun, I guess

[stellardeer]

been watching "You" lately because my roommate put it on, and I had avoided it previously because I'd heard some negative things about it from people on here (it's told from the perspective of a man stalking a woman in the beginning which made me uncomfortable at first but i kept watching anyway and got sucked in), I wouldn't recommend it to teenagers but the writing is really compelling and it's really good if you like shows that make you go 'WHAT is gonna happen next??'

(more opinion/possible spoilers under cut)

(cw: stalking, killing, [unrelated to show] sexual assault mention) The reason I say that it's not for teenagers is because the show does kind of normalize the stalking/murdering to a degree, to an extent that might put wrong ideas into the heads of younger people who are still learning and developing. And I use the word "normalize" instead of "romanticize" or "glorify" because the show does repeatedly remind you that none of the main character's actions are okay, the response from all of the other characters is negative, none of the characters are going "aww it's okay what you did because you did it for love :)", which I believe is where the line is crossed when writers intend to make a negative behavior seem good. When I say "normalize", I mean that they're giving his perspective on his actions through his inner monologue, and his attempts to explain everything away and make it rational definitely give off the idea of like "People who do bad things are damaged too and not necessarily the monsters we think they are" and maybe even a little bit of "what if i stalk and kill people as a coping mechanism?? :(" And that's maybe not an idea that we want to be putting into the heads of young, impressionable people. Not saying that adults can't be affected too, but I think that it's less likely to change the mind of an adult, unless someone already thinks that way in which case they might just feel validated.

THAT BEING SAID THOUGH, I'm recommending this show because I think the storytelling and directing is phenomenal from a purely technical standpoint, disregarding the content. If you like shows with crime/mystery or just any story that leaves you wanting more, then it's a good show for those reasons. I don't necessarily think that it is the responsibility of the entertainment industry to show us 100% wholesome content at all times, and if there are already adults out there who think like "what i'm doing is fine because i'm doing it for the right reasons", then I don't think that avoiding showing that perspective in fiction is going to reverse that thinking. It's true that it may make it harder for people to justify their own actions if they never feel validated by a piece of fiction, and if you believe that is the right way to handle media then I can't really argue with that and I understand why you wouldn't support a story like this. I'm not trying to say "We should be promoting this show on every billboard across the world!" I'm just 1 person recommending this to my few meager followers who might actually even read this post, who may or may not enjoy media that depicts crime/violence.

If you've read this far and you have decided that this piece of media is not for you, then I definitely understand that, especially if you're someone who has experienced interpersonal violence of that kind, it could be very triggering. The first episode opens with the main character/narrator meeting a woman and then immediately stalking her for what I think is several weeks? (timeline slightly unknown) And the first season ends (spoiler alert, skip to next paragraph to avoid) with him murdering that same woman in what could be considered a crime of passion. It's terrifying to watch as a woman/woman-adjacent person. It makes you feel like nothing and no one is safe. I felt the same way about 13 Reasons Why in the end when (also spoiler, but not for 'You') the character who committed multiple sexual assaults WENT TO TRIAL was NOT convicted despite being FOUND GUILTY, it was infuriating and triggering to me, so if you have had a stalker and don't think that you could watch a show in which a stalker/murderer basically gets away with it (altho i dont fully know since it isn't over yet), then I would not recommend this for you either!

NOW FINALLY ON TO WHY YOU MIGHT LIKE IT, contains minor spoilers about general content but no specifics This is not a show like Hannibal or Dexter, about a serial killer who can't stop himself (I haven't watched those shows so sorry if I'm wrong). It's a show about a quote-unquote seemingly "normal" guy who essentially accidentally let his life get a little out of control, but ends up repeating the same patterns every time he thinks that he's out of the woods. Which, who knows, maybe he IS just like Hannibal or Dexter, who probably also think that what they're doing is justified somehow. But in 'You' this character is not someone who seeks to harm people, he doesn't want to harm anyone, he usually doesn't even plan to harm someone it just happens in the moment but he doesn't know what to do about it after. His goal is not to harm, his goal is love, and he ends up harming people who get in his way of his love.

I will say that I was put off by the first couple episodes because this man is just obsessively watching this woman from afar and claiming it's because he wants to make sure she's worth it before trying to date her, and I kept watching because I'm like "surely this will end poorly for him. surely justice will be served", and after a couple episodes and the twists and turns that ensue, I'm like.. well it's not ending in justice necessarily but what the FUCK is happening I need to see where this will go.

And then things get worse and you think "Well surely NOW he will get caught and there will be consequences??"

And somehow there are still no consequences. And eventually you find yourself (I use general 'you' because my roommate agrees) not necessarily rooting for him, not in a sense of "Wow I hope you get what you want and every bad thing you did is justified and never discovered and you live happily ever after (:" but it's more like... "Please just stop doing bad things. Please this one time just walk away and don't do the wrong thing. You can still salvage this. It's not too late in this one instance. REALLY you should be turning yourself in for what you've done, but it's not too late to avoid doing more harm!"

Which, again, is where it may get kind of dangerous, since even I went from "Wow this guy is fucked, i hate him and anyone like him and they should all die" to "Okay I get that you're messed up, but can you just fucking stop?" Throughout the series I just keep turning to my roommate and basically reminding myself out loud "he killed people, wtf" The show doesn't really let you forget, either. Again, it's not like the writers of the show want you to forget what he did and forgive him and let him be happy, they repeatedly remind you that he has done unspeakable harms, and then just when you think it's over and the jig is up, he manages to make it out unscathed.

If you've seen Death Note, it's very similar to the way that's written. In Death Note, you get Light's inner monologue. You almost want to support him because he's convinced HIMSELF that what he's doing is right and hearing his perspective almost convinces YOU that he shouldn't be punished for what he's doing. Death Note is a little different because Light is trying to "save the world" whereas the MC of You is just trying to fall in love, so you might find it harder to sympathize. However, the storytelling is pretty much the same. And what happened to Light? Justice caught up with him. He got what he ultimately deserved, no matter how much you might have wanted to root for him. It's a little harder to root for the MC of 'You' because his end goal is not as "noble" as "ridding the world of evil" or whatever, but I think that's better. It's easier to hate and fear him, especially if you feel like it's something that could happen to anyone. It's something that could happen to you. Which is why I think they chose the name 'You' for the show. For that matter, the you could even be the main character. He just seems like a normal guy. He's just trying his best to survive and make meaningful connections like anyone else. This could be 'You', given the right(wrong) circumstances.

Anyway, I've written a whole lot, glad I put it under a cut, but if you've paid attention to my blog at all you'll probably know that I don't normally talk about media too often on my blog, I'm not too much into "fandoms" or ranting and raving about the stuff I like, so I feel like the fact that I feel compelled to tell other people "omg have you seen You?? can we please talk about wtf is happening in this show??" is honestly reason enough for me to recommend to others and say "it's good!"

But I felt like all these caveats were necessary! Because I do remember seeing a lot of negative reactions from Tumblr users when the show first came out due to the nature of the content and its presentation. If the story were told from the perspective of the women, it would be a horror story. In fact, it wouldn't even be a horror story until the very end when the love-interest finally discovers what's been going on. It would be more like a boring love story until you finally found out "omg he was stalking her? how disgusting!" But that's how it is in real life, too. Real life horror stories aren't always actually horrible until it's too late. You often don't see the atrocities coming when they're committed by someone who you know and trust. That's how the majority of traumas/tragedies go.

By telling it from the bad dude's perspective you get an interesting story, you see how scary it can really be, you see how easily someone's good intentions and average crime-free life can turn sour by a few poorly calculated emotionally-driven decisions. You see how the trauma is created from the actions of authority/parental figures. There is a repeated theme throughout the show of neglected children, and the the people that they can become when it goes unchecked. I feel like that biggest takeaway from the show is that every child should be shown love and kindness. Lest they grow up to be fucking serial killers.

[lackadaisical-lesbian]

This is gonna sound very bitchy but this is my blog and I want to rant so~

I go to a small school, and it's one building surrounded by other, unrelated, buildings that all share a parking lot(think strip mall). And like separate but adjacent there's a QuickTrip(fancy gas station; the 'not like other girls' of gas stations).

So usually kids will stand outside and chat or wait for their ride. Never really loud.

Now apparently other businesses have complained about this, so the completely logical(/s) conclusion my school came up with to solve this problem is three fucking days of suspension the first time you break the new rule of 'stay the fuck inside or immediately leave the area'(keep in mind-this is a fairly large area, and no one was even doing anything wrong? Just like. Quietly talking) and the second time you get fucking expelled???

I am a bit peeved at this. Like we're not causing problems? Most people only stand there for a few minutes??? Other fucking people stand there who aren't students and they're not a problem?

It's a stupid fucking rule with an even fucking stupider punishment and how fucking dare you tell me where I can and cannot stand? Like if I wasn't a student here it wouldn't be a problem?

There's also a stupid rule against bra straps. Apparently if a teacher can see your bra strap you'll get dress coded. First of all- how do you know it's not an undershirt? Why do you care? It's not actually inappropriate? It's clothing made to hold boobs lmfao. Are they threatened by this? I don't even wear shirts that reveal my bra straps, but dear god I have never been more tempted to aggressively pull it over my shirt.

(Also when saying it the teacher was just like 'this goes for guys too, but at that point it'd be weird and a whole nother problem' like bro I know. You think your fucking hilarious just fucking hysterical🙄)

[words-writ-in-starlight]

So your rant on Supernatural? Also I fell in love with the story you're talking about and basically want to know more. Sorry.

My buddy, you have made An Error, but let’s do this shit.  To any SPN fans who have wound up herethrough Ye Olde Search Function, I encourage you to stop reading now.

I watched up to about halfway through Season Five before Idecided that I could Do It Better (I think this is the novel you’re talkingabout, anon, unless it’s Earth is where the trouble comes from), and draggedmyself up to about halfway through Season Seven before I packed it in and gaveup, resigned that the parts of the show I loved were about four to five seasonsdead.  So like that’s the information I’mworking on here.

So, obviously, lots of people have lots of legitimatecomplaints about Supernatural,including treatment of queer characters, characters of color, and women, aswell as their fairly rampant history of queerbaiting.  And lots of people have covered this in morecompetent detail than I could ever manage, so like google “sexism in Supernatural” or something and you cando your own reading there.  Hell, if youwant to do it the lazy way, you can knock out two of the above with this onearticle in friendly, easy-to-read Buzzfeed format.  To the nominal credit of the people involved,I will add that the cast seems acutely aware of these problems and finds itdistasteful, HOWEVER the problems persist and therefore that credit is minimal.  Anyway. These things are covered much more thoroughly by many other people whoare far more cogent than I could hope to be, so I’m going to leave those alone.

Instead, my rant is mostly summed up as “YOU CALL THIS SHITSTORYTELLING.”

So there are four basic parts to this rant, or rather fourbasic flaws that form the fundamentally weak foundation of Supernatural as a narrative.

Failure to commit to a single cohesive narrativearc, also known as “SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OF THAT AND SOME OFTHOSE” syndrome

The persistent and erroneous belief thatcharacter death = character development and narrative progression

Inability to commit to a major change ofparadigm, also known as out and out narrative cowardice, which I personallycall “flinching during Plot Roulette”

Total incapacity to put their characterizationwhere their script is regarding the Winchester brothers and the other major players

*cracks knuckles*

POINT THE FIRST

Right, so first it’s the story of Sam having strange powersand their dad being MIA, which segues pretty naturally into the story of Sampotentially being the Antichrist, and then there’s Dean’s sacrifice of his soul,which at very least holds up even ifit sort of acts like the previous plotline about their dad’s soul didn’t happen.  Upuntil this point, I was pretty comfy.  Ihad some complaints covered below, but I was copacetic.  Season Three is largely about getting rid ofthe contract on Dean’s soul.  Okay, seemslegit, you have a tangible problem with potentially serious consequences.  Now, having had not one but TWO seasons whichwere easily summed up with ‘so Sam is mebbe the Antichrist or at very leastAntichrist-adjacent,’ I made what I thought was a logical leap and went “well,gee, if I was mebbe at the very leastAntichrist-adjacent, I would leverage the fuck out of that to do somethingabout my apparently beloved brother’s soul.” Even when they didn’t go withthat (news flash: I wrote that novel mydamn self and amazingly it worked out 100x better, narratively speaking,because it’s fucking logical), I wasstill kind of like “gosh sure is a good thing they remembered that they spenttwo entire seasons building up to Sam mebbe being Antichrist-adjacent.”  And there’s the whole drama with Ruby which Ijust…am very uncomfortable with for a lot of reasons, not least of which isthat it’s a very thinly veiled endeavor to rehash the same ‘Sam being afraid oflosing touch with humanity’ plotline as Seasons One and Two but without havingto worry about really altering the paradigm, see Point The Third, and alsobecause it’s really intensely literal about the concept of having a femalecharacter exclusively as a prop for consumption.  And Castiel shows up and a thousand ships arelaunched, blah blah blah, and then after the end of Season Four…we never hearfrom Sam’s powers again for more than a couple lines.  

As of about Season Four, the focus of the show abandons Samand shifts tangibly onto Dean, who is now The Interesting Character because hehas Been Through Hell (literally). Furthermore, we are now given Dean’s POV on any quandry between him andSam, which is a personal complaint because I honestly just think it’ssloppy.  Season Four is mostly dealingwith angels being assholes, which is really not as original as SPN likes tothink (Good Omens did it first and Good Omens did it better, get out of myface), plus Dean being the Righteous Man and the question of the oncomingApocalypse (sure is interesting how we spent two seasons building up to Sambeing Antichrist-adjacent).  The Apocalypseis less oncoming and implied to be more ongoing by the end of Season Four.  So Lucifer escapes and Season Five is prettymuch About That, involving the fairly unhelpful description that Dean isMichael’s ‘sword’ and they’re the true vessels of Michael and Lucifer,culminating in Sam being locked in the Cage because presumably someone realizedthat, hey, we have two maincharacters and we must make them both Interesting Characters.  Season Six is 50% about finding Sam’s souland figuring out how he got out of the Cage (sure would be helpful if we’dspent two seasons building up to Sam having inhuman powers and beingAntichrist-adjacent) and 50% a wickedinexplicable plot about the Mother-of-All and some kind of fucking jigsawmonsters and…Alpha monsters?  But thatnever really gets explained in a pertinent way except that they needed to anteup because they beat the Devil at theend of Season Five.  Oh, and a bonus 50% of some bullshit withCastiel and Crowley and ~Scheming~.  Andthen Castiel gets possessed by Leviathans (?) from Purgatory, which he openedwith Crowley (??) who he then betrayed (???), and Castiel decides He’s God Nowand also dies (????), and somehow these metaphysical more-powerful-than-angelsbadder-than-Lucifer things are sensitive to fuckingBorax.  

And it was at this point that I stopped the show in themiddle of a fight scene like 1/3 through Season Seven and actually said outloud “Gosh it’s almost like you needsomeone who’s Antichrist-adjacent to help you out here” before turning off the TV. And then I stopped watching and got better taste in TV and blew throughwriting a 250K novel in 18 months of being a full-time student because I waspowered by pure bitter spite.

Now, here are the two major things that matter about thiswhole deal.  First of all, the firstplotline is the most reliably coherent, although some degree of cogence lastedup until about Season Five—we understand why Lucifer wants out of Hell, weunderstand to some extent why Dean and Sam matter on the cosmic scale, we getpretty bored of watching Castiel do heel-face and face-heel turns like he’s ona Lazy Susan but like logistically it all makes a reasonable degree of sense.  That being said, the whole plotline ofSeasons Four onward would make a lot moresense, would it not, if they remembered that they’d spent a good solid twoseasons and change (Season Three, intermittent, Season Four, major) designingan Antichrist-like character who is now the last survivor of that batch ofexperiments.  Then, instead of having Samand Dean just be Inexplicably Special, you have Dean (who can still be theRighteous Man!) acting as the foil for Sam being forced into increasingly darkchoices, and Sam who’s a viable candidate for Lucifer-puppet because he’s partdemon.  Or, alternatively, Sam whomaintains his stance as the gentler of the two despite his demon blood, which would add a lot more depth to Supernatural’s fanatical hardon for theAngelic Asshole trope.  Honestly Irewrote the entirety of this show one time, predicated on the assumption thatthey actually went with the idea of Sam as the Boy King, and I think it wouldbe much less haphazard.  (Basically: hey,what if Sam actually used his status to strong-arm Dean’s deal into beingdissolved, as it’s implied that he’s totally capable of doing that and totallywilling to sacrifice his own humanity for his brother, and then Heaven sentCastiel to kill Sam, which would add a fuckton of legitimacy to Castiel’s LazySusan and Dean’s antagonism.  But no. Instead there’s monsters whose only vulnerability is fucking Borax.)

Second, and far more critical, is the total failure tocommit to a single plotline.  Okay, Sam’sstatus as the possible Boy King is a major plot point for two seasons, not somuch for the third season (he literally…a demon straight up tells Sam that he could have an army if he took up hisposition and it never occurs to himthat he could use that to help Dean), more so in the fourth season, and then itnever comes up again.  Even when it is unarguably pertinent to thesituation—Lucifer!  Fucking Luciferpossesses Sam and drags him to Hell and he comes back soulless and yet none of the writers ever, not once, went “Gosh, maybe we should remember those seasonswe spent developing Sam into sort of the Antichrist?  Maybe including at least a minor nod to thator somehow wrapping up the plotline would help cohere our current trainwreck ofa plotline?”  Nope, it’s just left as aloose thread, flapping in the breeze with all the subtlety of a limp dick.  It’s like Supernaturalis actually a Frankenshow of two shows with the same characters but totallyunrelated plotlines—maybe when Lucifer escapes he shunts them all sideways intoan alternate universe and there’s another show somewhere with a Dean whosebrother has never been even a little bit demonic and died through normal huntershenanigans suddenly having to deal with Sam the possible Antichrist, andthat’s the show that an alternate me is still watching.

And this is an ongoing problem.  Sam’s powers are just the major point that Ialways latch onto, because, first, I always think the phenomenon of “well fuckme sideways I might be obligated to end the world and ain’t that a messy thing”is pretty great (I really, reallylike Hellboy), and second, IT’S FOURSEASONS OF WORK YOU CAN’T JUST ABANDON IT.  But seriously.  Just. Throw a dart, you’ll hit a loose end. Because Supernatural is theequivalent of that one fucker we all hate in sitcoms—you know, the guy who’sdating a great girl he totally doesn’t deserve, but he can’t ~commit~ sothere’s all this ongoing Drama™.  Exceptthat in Supernatural, not only canthey not commit, they accidentally defeated their biggest gun—the literal Devil—less than halfwaythrough their series!  Whoops!  Quick, someone call up Satan’s cousin twiceremoved who’s even worse and more evil than he is!  And sensitive to Borax!  

No, no, I’m kidding. We all know that Satan’s cousin twice removed, who’s even worse and moreevil than he is, is actually named Metatron.

Fuckin’ Supernatural.

POINT THE SECOND

I know this is going to come as a shock, but rampantcharacter death does not actuallyqualify as a legitimate way to progress your narrative or develop yourcharacters.  In order, the major players(nominally on the Winchesters’ side) who die or seem to die in the first fiveseasons are Sam’s girlfriend, John Winchester, Ash, Sam, Bela, Dean, (Deanseveral times in Mystery Spot), Ruby,Castiel, Jo, Ellen, Sam, Anna, Sam, Dean, Gabriel, Castiel, Bobby, and sort of Sam with the whole Cagething.  And those are just the peoplewith arcs that extend over more than a season (except for Sam’sgirlfriend).  It’s entirely possible,even probable, that I missed some.  Thatdoes not include the one- ortwo-episode characters whose deaths we’re supposed to observe as emotionallywringing, nor does it include the frankly vast numbers of civiliancasualties.  So, for the ease of reading,we’re going to divide ‘character death’ into ‘reversible character death,’which is largely the prerogative of the primary trio, and ‘permanent characterdeath,’ and we’re going to talk about why there are real problems with the way Supernatural treats both of them.

First of all, the problems with reversible character deathare obvious—there are no fucking stakes! Like, arguably the stakes are ‘the whole world,’ but obviously not (seePoint The Third), so practically speaking the stakes should be life or death, because the show tells you that the stakes are life or death.  Now, sometimes resurrection is an importantplot point, I get that, in my spite novel there is, in fact, aresurrection.  But here’s the thing.  Either you have to straight up establish arevolving door policy and change your stakes (example: the show Forever, where the point is that the MCis immortal and would very much like to not be immortal anymore), or you can only use that resurrection once.  You use it once, and you still get theemotional gut punch of “Oh God, they’re dead”and the flood of relief when it proves that they’re not dead after all.  You use it more than that, and the audiencebecomes complacent that, well, you won’t reallykill them.  By the time you’re on a levelwith Supernatural, it just…doesn’tmatter?  A major character dies, but youraudience has already hit compassion fatigue because of the death rate, whichI’m about to cover, so there’s not really any oomph to it.

The problems with permanent character death aresignificantly different.  Now, I myselfam a Happy Ending person (like…the world sucks …let me have my happy fiction),but even I recognize that a certain percentage of the characters in a story orshow like this one are basically just cannon fodder (it would be great if itwasn’t so consistently the women, POC, orLGBT folks, but whatever).  Theproblem is that it’s constant.  And not just “well that person’s a corpsebecause that’s what vampires do to people” or “some kid pissed off the localspirit and now they’re six feet under,” it would be totally fine and reasonableif that situation was an every episode thing (it…kind of is, that’s kind of thepoint).  But every few episodes, we’reexpected to get attached to a one-off character and then be deeply affectedwhen they die.  Take, say, Season Three:you have the hunters Isaac and Tamara in the first episode, Casey and FatherGil in the fourth episode (some flexibility as they’re demons, but we’resupposed to be shocked and horrified that Sam kills them both), Callie in thefifth episode, Gordon in the seventh episode (again, we’re supposed to behorrorstricken that Sam kills him, even though it’s clearly self-defense), all the civilians in the twelfthepisode, Corbett in the thirteenth episode, and finally Bela, who admittedlyhas had some nominal presence for a while. This does not include any Winchester trauma, which you’re always supposed to be deeply affectedby.  I’m sorry, but after a season or twoof being expected to work up that kind of emotional upset between five and tentimes over the course of thirteen to twenty episodes, your audience is going toburn out and start to lose emotional engagement.  

So, basic summary: the Anyone Can Die trope does not playwell with main characters who are on a Revolving Door of Death, because itmeans that minor characters don’t matter because Anyone Can Die, while majordamage or trauma to the main characters doesn’t matter either because they’reon a Revolving Door.  You can’t kill yourmain characters once (or more!) a season and expect people to still…worry aboutthem.

On a more strictly structural note, using character death asthe primary way to drive character development is just fucking lazy.  It’s just an indicator that the writers don’tactually know how to progress their character development in any other way,which is a major problem because, since they only develop the charactersthrough the deaths of others, they have to hit the Personality Reset buttonfairly regularly to make it look like things are actually happening to thepeople who are supposed to be developing. Which, in case you were curious, is why you feel that overwhelming senseof déjà vu when the Winchesters getinto a huge blowout fight about ‘don’t sacrifice yourself’ in about thethird-to-last episode, followed by one of them sneaking out to sacrificethemselves, followed by the other onebeing angry about it.  It’s the samegoddamn script, it’s just that Sam’s hair is probably longer and Dean isprobably scruffier.  Furthermore, thefixation on developing characters with the deaths of others means thatbasically every character is fair game but NO ONE’S DEATH HOLDS MEANING,because of the above, which means that SPN’s ‘character development’ turns intothis recursive self-congratulating circlejerk of killing someone, developingSam and Dean accordingly, and then somehow regressing them so that the writerscan do it over again and be proud of themselves for Such Dynamic Characters,Much Develop, So Change, Wow.

And I feel like the reasons that character death =/=narrative progression should be pretty clear from the rest of this rant, butbasically if you’re killing someone to progress your plot, it needs to be asolveable death (emotional payoff is what makes walking away from a booksatisfying, such as catching a murderer) or a terrible tragedy that drives thecharacters to great acts or both.  Supernatural is basically a horror/fantasymurder mystery, so it would be fine if they stuck with that model, but theykeep trying to sell the deaths of any number of major players and many many minor players as this greatand terrible tragedy that’s pushing the Winchesters forward.  And like, I’m sorry, but if you commit withinthe first episode to a dead mother anda dead girlfriend and a missingpotentially dead father, you’ve already pretty well maxed out your terribletragedies.  Find a different motivator,or else it looks like your characters just leave huge amounts of collateraldamage and refuse to take responsibility. Or, alternatively, it looks like the individual deaths don’t matter toyour main characters, which is NOT going to help with making your audience giveeven a single fractional fuck.

TL;DR: Character death is a powerful tool that rapidly losesits weight and import if you overuse it, and can make your audiencedisinterested and emotionally detached if they’re expected to care every time.  Slow your motherfucking roll, stick to aMAXIMUM of one resurrection per character unless their immortality is anexplicitly discussed plot point (at which point their deaths need to not mattermuch anymore), and remember that you can progress your plot in literally anyother way before you go for a shock-value death.

POINT THE THIRD

Don’t be a little bitch in your writing.  Honestly it’s that simple.  I’m gonna get into it some more, but that’sthe gist of it.  If you already know whatI mean, great, skip to the next point, because the TL;DR is “don’t be aninfant.”

This is something that plenty of shows are guilty of(Merlin, anyone?), but SPN is terrifiedof actually changing the paradigm.  Theshow must always include a certainlist of things:

The Winchesters in the Impala, which, sure, I’llgrant you that

A home base, also totally reasonable

Monsters to fight, fair enough

A masquerade (meaning ‘civilians do not knowabout magic’), which should honestly have broken down after, like, Season Twowhen they accidentally release massive numbers of demons into the world

A world to have the show happening in, which isa problem since they started theApocalypse in Season Four

Now…listen.

It’s fine, even necessary, to have some fixed points in anarrative.  It offers a way to anchoryour characters against the ongoing changes that the plot demands.  That, however, is very different from beingtoo much of a coward to alter the paradigm of your story when the major driving force is a change ofparadigm.

The first major change of paradigm they cop out on is Sam’spowers.  If Sam was the Boy King, thishypothetically Antichrist-esque position in the cosmic dichotomy, that would radically alter the dynamic.  Sam would automatically be the most powerfulbeing in any given room unless he was in a room with a respectably high-rankedangel or demon, and he would certainly be able to go toe-to-toe with most oftheir targets on their own terms. Telekinesis is an exceptionally goodpower, guys, like, as powers go—even disregarding his position in thehierarchy, Sam would be pretty strong in his own right.  Which, I’d like to point out, can be a reallythrilling change to a narrative, because it means that you have this additionallayer of ‘well, how do we deal with the fact that Sam doesn’t like being this strong, how do we dealwith the way demons and monsters have started to view him as more us than them’ and would give a much more legitimate basis for the questionof humanity that they shoehorn in later with the Ruby plotline.  Buffyhas its flaws, but at least it frequently brings up ‘hey, Buffy might be ostensiblyhuman, but she operates on the level of her enemies more than on the level ofher allies’ as an issue that she thinks about. But they don’t do that in Supernatural,they bail completely on the Sam plotline because they panic about theimplications of having such a powerful character.  And then they bring in fucking Castiel likethat’s not exactly the same problemcloaked in ‘well, noninterference.’  Like, please, that ship has fucking sailed,choke down your anxiety and figure out how the rules of your powerful characterwork, and then let them be powerful. It’s gonna be okay.  Deepbreaths.  If you make an OP character,that’s fine, you just have toactually deal with it rather than having their powers be an asspull every timethe main characters are in Real Trouble (*angry sigh* Merlin).

The second one they balk at is the unveiling of thesupernatural world and oh my God it is constant.  But let’s deal with the biggest and mostimprobable of these here: Season GoddamnTwo, where they bust open the doors of Hell and unleash some thousands ofdemons into the world.  Like, is that asmany demons as it could be, in comparison to your six to seven billionhumans?  No.  But it’s still a huge population and is implied to be accompanied by a huge uptickin various other supernatural happenings and is furthermore really visible.  The Devil’s Trap is suggested to pass throughat least a couple towns and it’s a big flashy event, so like…sure, maybe peoplewrite it off as swamp gas or what have you, but sooner or later people who havehad demons exorcised or seen some vampire/werewolf/etc shenanigans and lived totell about it are going to start running into each other.  They start hearing people say “it’s likeshe’s a totally different person” and they take that seriously rather thanwriting it off.  They were maybe saved bya hunter who confirmed that the supernatural exists and they maybe tell thatperson that, hey, something like that happened to them, maybe they could cometake a look around.  Maybe they couldcall the person who helped them out.  Andyou end up with this fucking Ponzi scheme of The Great Truth, where each personwho’s in the know finds one or two more people who’ve seen evidence and brings them into the loop, and then they find one or two more people who’veseen evidence.  And for every personwho’s determined to call it bullshit or think they’re insane, you’re going toget one who saw that person turn intoa hairy monster and murder someone, or who waspossessed by a demon, or who witnessedblack smoke merge with their spouse and turn them into a killer.  So you get this whole rickety network ofamateurs who’ve…kind of learned the thing. And like any Ponzi scheme, sooner or later it collapses.

Basically the point is: there is a limit to the parts permillion of The Great Truth that can be present before that shit becomes commonknowledge.  Look at any availablegovernment conspiracy for confirmation. The more people you tell, the looser the rules of ‘secret’ become, so ifyou have a big flashy visible disaster that involves drastically increasing the number of uninitiated civilians who areaware of The Great Truth…you’d better be ready to deal with that.  What I’m saying here is that by Season Seven,you’ve not only had this whole demon situation for a while, and increased those numbers several times with variousdisasters, but you’ve also had at least one big flashy disaster in a city.  So the Winchesters should pretty much be ableto walk into a given town and wander into the church or the bar or somethingand go “So, I heard there’ve been some weird murders” and have at least oneperson come up to them later and be like “Yeah it’s a ghost here’s all theinformation but I have no idea how to get rid of them.”  And when the Winchesters go *gasp* “How do you know The Thing” theperson should look at them like a fucking moron and go “It literally rainedblood last year, everyone in this time zone knows The Thing and also it’sevident that the end is pretty seriously nigh, so get on that.”  Commit to your big flashy disasters, youcowards, or at least have the decency to make it an ongoing Sunnydale joke.

Far more crucial is the fact that they bail on the end ofthe world…let’s see.  End of Season Fouris when the Apocalypse properly gets underway, so they balk at the end ofSeason Five (Lucifer and the Cage), end of Season Six (Mother of All andPurgatory), and like minimum once bythe middle of Season Seven (Godstiel) as well as at the end of Season Seven (Leviathans, I am now past where I kept watching),end of Season Eight (Metatron, angel tablets, falling angels), presumably endof Season Nine from what I understand of the summaries online (some…war onHeaven nonsense), and based on the trend I’m guessing that Seasons Ten throughThirteen keep to the model, do youunderstand my point here.  Thesearen’t even all the near-Apocalypses that they avert.  Off the cuff, I can think of the Croatoanvirus (…twice?  Three times?), as well asthree out of four Horsemen within episodes of each other.  They’re probably averting the Very Seriousand Catastrophic End of Days two or three times a season by Season Five, and that number only goes up.  This is very similar to the character deaththing: quite simply, if the audience is expected to get that worked up multipletimes a season, and brace for thatkind of disaster multiple times a season,you are inevitably going to bore them.  Yourplot has to be intensely recursive sothat you can ‘reset’ and avoid a new Apocalypse the next season, which getsboring, because it feels like you’ve been there before, similar to how usingcharacter death to advance character development demands that you hit thePersonality Reset button on the regular.

Furthermore, repeating the same level of disaster over and over and OVER again means that it starts to lack emotional weight, and yourcharacters start to seem really, really stupid if they don’t start to treatthings accordingly.  One of the things Ithought of constantly during thelast, say, season and a half that I watched of Supernatural was a quote from Buffy,specifically from Riley who I usually very much dislike but who NAILED thisparticular thing.  “When I saw you stopthe world from, you know, ending, I just assumed that was a big week for you.It turns out I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural ofapocalypse.”  And that’s the running jokein Buffy!  That they literallydeal with an Apocalypse every few episodes, and they lampshade it, and thecharacters respond accordingly—Buffy and the Scooby gang start to act cavalier,almost unimpressed, about each new disaster. Like “well, we saved the world, I say we party.”  That’s a direct quote from Buffy (IN SEASON ONE NO LESS), and Supernatural could stand to take a pageout of their book with that one.  BySeason Seven, the Winchesters seem like they have somehow missed out on thelast decade of their own lives because they always act so shocked and horrifiedthat somehow someone could try to endthe world.  Like!  Yes, yes they could and yes they would,welcome to the party boys!  Please try toget in touch with your own history on this subject!

So the highlights here are: don’t be a fucking baby aboutyour writing.  If you’re writing toward abig paradigm shift, you need to recognize that you’re playing Plot RussianRoulette, and you have to pull the trigger. Change the paradigm of your narrative and deal with the fallout like afucking adult, you tepid fools, you limp-necked cowards, you ink-stainedwalnuts.

POINT THE FOURTH

Listen very carefully. Do you hear that?  It’s the soundof the Winchesters promising eternal brotherly devotion and saying things like“you’re my brother, man” and vowing to always have each other’s backs.  

Now wait a moment longer, and listen very carefully.  Do you hear that?  It’s the inevitablesound of the Winchesters stabbing each other in the back and/or throwing eachother to the wolves because they’re feeling pissy, and then getting a whole(static! See Point The Second!) “character arc” about how distraught they are.

All right, y’all, I don’t have siblings so maybe I’m wrong, but I do write a lot and I think I’m right, and you should probably put yourcharacterization where your script is. If your primary relationship that you expect people to care about isfraternal devotion, you should maybe nothave those people cheerfully feed each other into metaphoricalwoodchippers.  Like.  Okay, maybe you get ONE chance to have adramatic falling out.  ONE.  And then when they repair the relationship,they need to actually sort their shit out and not keep having the exact same dramatic falling out because thatshit gets boring and is a sign of lazy writing and—shocker!—lack of character development.  Next time they fight, it has to be aboutsomething demonstrably different, notjust the same issue with a new set of tits (c’mon y’all, this is Supernatural, it’s always a set oftits).

Let’s do a real fast recap. There’s a one episode plot in Season One about the two of them fallingout over the question of whether they should follow their father’s orders.  Dean spends a good percentage of Season Twotaking his guilt over their dad’s death out on Sam, but we’ll give a passbecause they explicitly acknowledge it and take steps to resolve theproblem.  A major plotline develops inSeason Two that hunters have started trying to kill Sam, and Dean reliably,consistently has his back.  Props.  Season Three is kind of a mess (if you have a big visible semi-Apocalypseyou should probably deal with it, see Point The Third), but whatever.  Pertinently, Dean’s big ongoing concern isthat Sam isn’t acting like himself, because he’s being much more ruthless(something Dean has consistently told him to do), while Sam’s ongoing concernis that Dean is being reckless (justified, he has a death sentence onhim).  Season Four is when things startto break down.  Castiel shows up and Deanresponds with aggression, Sam gets his rehashed ‘humanity’ plotline with Ruby,there are a lot of really incredibly poor decisions made and a lot of lies toldwith minimal regard for the trouble that’s gotten them into before (@Sam).  There’s a fight that includes Dean callingSam a monster, which has been canonically identified as the thing Sam is mostafraid of, and acting like this whole demon blood thing is a terribletremendous shock, despite the fact that Dean…knew and totally failed to reactin any way except to penalize Sam (for trying to save him!  Much like Dean sold his soul for Sam!  And got pissy about Sam being pissed offabout!).  Cue Lucifer.  Apocalypse, possession, Horsemen, etc, etc,more Lazy Susan Castiel, infighting about who should say yes to what in orderto save whom, whatever.  

And then Sam apparently dies in the Cage and Dean…goes offto get a nice white picket fence? Um…this is not consistent with the characterization of a dude who soldhis soul to resurrect Sam literally just three years ago.  Their falling out has never been intenseenough nor consistent enough to justify this. Even if you say that Dean’s honoring his brother’s final wishes by nottrying to resurrect Sam or anything, Dean should be drinking himself to deathor something similarly dramatic, because allthe drama in this show comes from the relationship between the Winchesterbrothers.  

Basically, here’s the problem: the show spends a lot of time and effort on telling youthat the Winchesters would die for each other. And while they do use that trope a lot (John dies for Dean, who dies forSam, who sacrifices his humanity for Dean, who risks his life for Sam, whojumps into the Cage for Dean…), they seem to have forgotten that, generally,you’re only willing to die for people who you actually like.  Like, peopleto whom you are genuinely emotionally attached,not just people who are your family because Blood Is Thicker or whateverbullshit you’re trying to pull there. And by Season Five, I’m just…not convinced the Winchester brothersactually like each other anymore.  Andthat never gets dealt with, they just expect you to believe that the Winchsterslove each other because the show says so,and listen, I hate the saying of ‘show, don’t tell’ as much as the nextperson who’s suffered through a college writing class, but honestly.  Supernaturalneeds to stop telling its viewers that Sam and Dean care about each other andactually…demonstrate that shit on a regular basis.  

Example: there’s the incident at some point where someoneplants a phone call on (I think) Sam’s phone, apparently from Dean, telling himthat he’s a monster and he should go do an incredibly stupid and dangerousthing because the world and Dean would be better off if he was dead.  Which Sam then believes and listens to.  This seems totally justified based on therelationship they’ve had for the past season. Pro tip, kids.  If your majordynamic includes two people who readily and easily believe that the other isliterally calling them an inhuman abomination and telling them they should justdie, that…that is not a Loving Affectionate and Devoted Familial Relationship.  And if you’re pitching it as one, A, you needsome therapy, probably urgently, and, B, your audience is only going to stickit out for so long before they give it up as a lost cause.

The point of this whole thing is that you better be ready toput your money where your fucking mouth is, and keep your characterizationsconsistent with what you’re telling the audience.

ANYWAY.  

The ultimate TL;DR here is that Supernatural’s storytelling is approximately as competent as thenovel I wrote when I was eleven, which I have hidden in a deep dark hole neverto be seen or discussed ever again.  Less competent, even, because at least Icommitted to a single individual plotline and dealt with the fallout of majorchanges to the universe.  And it’sfucking tragic, because this was a show with some real potential buried underall the chaos.  If you ever want my fullrewrite, please do ask and I will tell you, but this is now over 6K words andon its tenth page, so I’m going to stop now.

Long story short?  Supernatural: What The Fuck.

[jobinterviewghost]

Why the worst loss of Al Iaquinta’s career can propel him to the top of the UFC’s lightweight division | PerthNow

Al Iaquinta copped a life-changing beating in the biggest fight of his life and it might be the best thing that’s ever happened to him.

Most of the fighters who have endured a prolonged Khabib Nurmagomedov belting are changed for the experience in the worst way.

The Dagestani lightweight is well accomplished in the fine art of thrashing the hell out of his opponents and of the 27 fighters who have faced him nobody lasted longer than Iaquinta, who is the only man to go five rounds with the champion.

Propelled into a title shot on 24 hours notice in April of last year, Iaquinta was battered through five hard, unrelenting rounds en route to a lopsided unanimous decisions loss.

But it was still a transformative experience for Iaquinta, who returns to the Octagon this Sunday in Ottawa to face Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone.

For starters, due to injury and conflicts with the UFC he’d had 90 seconds in the cage in the three years prior to his unlikely title shot. And even though Nurmagomedov won the fight going away Iaquinta still believes it’s what set him back on course.

“A lot of people have fought Khabib and it was a deflating experience and their careers have suffered,” Iaquinta told The Daily Telegraph.

“They’re not the same fighters afterwards. But I think it changed me for the better. It motivated me, it revamped me.

“I think I’m the one person who’s fought him and really come out of there a better fighter, not a worse fighter or a beat up fighter.”

On paper, Iaquinta’s theory checks out. The last four men apart from Iaquinta to face Nurmagomedov have a combined record of 4-7 since. Iaquinta’s only post-Nurmagomedov fight was the best performance of his career, a unanimous decision victory over former interim title challenger Kevin Lee.

It’s rare for a fighter’s value to rise in a loss and even rarer when they lose a title bout in dominant fashion but that’s how it’s been for Iaquinta.

Not long ago “Raging Al” was better known for his blues with the UFC brass, Twitter rants and suplementing his fighting income by becoming the world’s most dangerous realtor.

These days he and the UFC are in a good place — “Now they’re realizing the upside that I have and they want to make me happy,” he says — the bout with Cerrone will be his second main event in a row and he’s ranked fourth in the division.

Another victory and his name will be pitched into discussions for some of the biggest fights the sport’s deepest and most star-studded division has to offer.

Plus he’s still got the real estate hustle going – so much so he’d happily walk away from fighting if he wasn’t offered the kind of money he feels he deserves.

“I enjoy doing that almost as much as I enjoy fighting. I use that to my advantage. If you aren’t going to give me what I want then I’m just going to do that and it’ll be fine, no hard feelings,” he said.

“If I’m going to get paid a similar amount to not damage my body and brain and do something else I love doing then why not do that?”

In a twist of fate that didn’t seem possible during Iaquinta’s three-year layoff, he’s now on the cusp of stardom. Just fighting Nurmagomedov, being adjacent to the title picture, enters his name into the equation at the top of the division.

“I would have loved to have gotten the win, but my stock rose a lot,” Iaquinta said.

“I took that fight and I knew I was capable of winning it. I fought that way, but it didn’t work out.

“I’m really putting things together now differently to how I ever have. It’s a new level of composure, of technique, putting it all together. I don’t think people know what I’m capable of.

“I fight to win, I fight to dominate. A lot of these guys are trying too hard.

“They’re trying to portray themselves as something they’re not. The fans see right through that nonsense.

“I’m authentic with the way I do things, I speak from my heart. There’s no nonsense. That’s where I come from, that’s how I was raised. What you see is what you get and that’s it.

“You’re not going to get me to change for anything.”

Due to the fractured circumstances of the fight, Iaquinta views December’s rematch with Lee as his true return and the announcement of his arrival as a real contender at lightweight.

The brash Detroit man had no answer for Iaquinta, who took home the upset on the back of vastly improved stand up.

“Kevin Lee was a highly ranked, highly regarded opponent who was beating the crap out of a lot of guys and I kind of put it on him,” Iaquinta said.

“That was really the turning point when it came to people respecting my skills.

“I fought a great fight in that one. I would have liked to have gotten the finish but this is almost better, I think I embarrassed him, I humbled him.

“He seems confused now, I spun his head in a million different directions. It probably messed him up worse than if I’d finished him.

“I got in his face at the end and humiliated him. I could have landed a few more punches and got him out of there but his brains were scrambled and he didn’t know what to think.

“It confused the heck out of him, he’s never been through anything like that before.

“I yelled “Same Al” at him right at the end. We were at the weigh ins and he looked over and said “Same Al”, like I’m the same guy who fought before, that I hadn’t got any better.

“I looked at him and said ‘yup, same guy”, exact same guy’.”

Iaquinta has promised to continue his resurgence against Cerrone, who is also back on track after two spectacular finishes in a row.

The 32-year old is confident he can break Cerrone mentally, if not physically.

“Even though he’s not a champion and never has been he’s one of the most beloved fighters by the fans,” he said.

“I might get beat technically but I’ll never got beat mentally. I can accept a technical defeat because there’s things you can work on.

“There are fights you lose because of technical things and there are fights you’re never gonna win because you’re mentally inferior to the guy.

“This might be one of those cases where the longer the fight goes the more it favors me.”