#yes i'm using it/its for michael while it resented its who and he/him for his last moments

[shadow-the-crow]

The Distortion didn’t like Michael as a who.

I mean, it says itself that it doesn’t want to be Michael. But the who and what thing actually brings us farther than that. It shows us his whole arc.

We all know the quote "i am not a who, archivist, i am a what." When i first heard it, i thought: Makes sense, it’s an inhuman creature, not a person, it just can’t have enough identity to be a who. Like it says itself.

But in Michael’s statement, it talks about having your who torn from your what, and replaced with another who. So it actually did have a who before becoming Michael. And it even admits that Michael also was a who, a who that became part of its being.

I think… it could just never accept being Michael. As it said, Michael Shelley was a constant reminder of its failure – the embodiment of it. The Distortion was forced to become the embodiment of its failure. To think with its mind. Of course it could never accept that. Imagine how horrible that must be – despising your own mind. (I think some people can relate to that, actually. I’m sorry if you can. I can.)

So it tried to disassociate itself completely from being Michael. To pretend it was only a what. I mean, we see that it’s comfortable with it/its pronouns as Michael, but not as Helen. As Michael, it embraced its inhumanity – not because it wasn’t comfortable with being a person in general, but with being that specific person it was forced to become. A person whose mind wasn’t made for the Spiral. Its failure incarnate.

But just before the Distortion in its Michael form dies, he ends his statement with "that is who i am". WHO. (thanks @totheidiot for pointing that out to me ^^) Michael finally got to talk about everything he had to endure. For the first time, he said the cruel truths out loud: How much it always hated being Michael Shelley. He told Jon everything, which also forced him to face the truth himself. And i think facing it finally allowed him to accept it. Accepting how shitty something is is the first step towards learning to live with it and maybe even learning not to hate it.

He could finally accept his mind. His who. Every part of himself.

And not even two minutes later, he died.

(Of course, the Distortion itself didn’t die. But its current state of existence died. It finally accepted its who, only to get it painfully torn from its what again.)

Because he got too lost in his who. Talking to Jon allowed him to be more human. But the cruel world he lived in doesn't reward humanity. It exploits the weakness that comes with it.

[mittensmorgul]

I'm shook. Dean actually admitted that Chuck doesn't care, that Chuck just left and ignored all of his responsibilities. I thought Dean was pro-Chuck, I mean, he called Chuck a bestie, didn't he? I'm not sure if he really resents Chuck or he was just too depressed to think straight. I'm still shook though. (Oh, and if you're feeling unwell I hope you recover. I wish you luck. May October be kind to you.)

Aahhh, thank you. :P And yeah, I’ve been sick since Walker-Stalker Philly a few weeks ago, stupid con crud that turned into bronchitis because I am a weakling with no immune system. :D

I’ve also been debating whether I should write tonight (fic, which I have a deadline of december 2 on and I’m not even close to finished on), or if I should write a long meta on Fathers, or if I should just go to sleep and try again tomorrow. But this bit about Chuck, and how Dean feels about Chuck as an absent father figure, would factor into that meta.

I mean Dean’s always held a grudge against God since… ever probably, but at least in text as far back as 5.02 when Cas set out in search of God to help stop the apocalypse. Chuck never really grew into anything Dean could really respect any more than that, you know? Even the burden Chuck laid on him at the end of s11 wasn’t what Dean wanted. Dean had his ENTIRE LIFE ruined because of Chuck’s inability to clean up his own mess, and then suddenly Dean fixes it FOR him, and Chuck just sashays off into the sunset with Amara and again lays the entire burden for taking care of EVERYTHING at Dean’s feet… but Dean’s still just a guy doing a job. He doesn’t have Cosmic God Powers to just fix stuff when it goes wrong. How the hell is he meant to take care of the entire world?

He does try, though. Oh, how he tries. Until it crushes and breaks him.

(and whoopsie this is actually shaping up to BE that meta on fathers I’ve been thinking about, so guess how I’m gonna spend the next hour! WHEEE! *tosses fic writing plans out the window*)

I’ll start with the easiest one: Dean referring to Chuck as his bestie. In 12.04:

Gail: Do you know God, gentlemen?Dean: Oh yeah. Yeah, we’re- we’re besties.

Said with about 9 tons of sarcasm. I’d find a gif to demonstrate just how done Dean was in that scene, but he was pretty much done with EVERYTHING in 12.04. I think that nicely sums up his attitude going into that conversation.

But yes, I 100% do feel like Dean resents Chuck– for laying this burden on him and not giving him ANYTHING else. He laid this out to Chuck’s face in 11.21:

Dean: Here’s the thing, um…Chuck… And I mean no disrespect. Um… I’m guessing you came back to help with the Darkness, and that’s great. That’s, you know – It’s fantastic. Um, but you’ve been gone a – a… long, long time. And there’s so much crap that has gone down on the Earth for thousands of years. I mean, plagues and wars, slaughters. And you were, I don’t know, writing books, going to fan conventions. Were you even aware, o-or did you just tune it out?Chuck: I was aware, Dean.Dean: But you did nothing. And, again, I-I’m not trying to piss you off. You know, I don’t want to turn into a pillar of salt.Chuck: I actually… didn’t do that.Dean: Okay. People – People pray to you. People build churches for you. They fight wars in your name, and you did nothing.Chuck: You’re frustrated. I get it. Believe me, I was hands-on – Real hands-on for, wow, ages. I was so sure if I kept stepping in, teaching, punishing, that these beautiful creatures that I created… would grow up. But it only stayed the same. And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting. [Sighs] It’s enabling.Dean: But it didn’t get better.Chuck: Well, I’ve been mulling it over. And from where I sit, I think it has.Dean: Well, from where I sit, it feels like you left us and you’re trying to justify it.Chuck: I know you had a complicated upbringing, Dean, but don’t confuse me with your dad.

And that’s it, really. The crux of Dean’s feelings toward Chuck. And that never really changed. Dean still had to take the burden of sacrifice on HIMSELF (carrying the Soul Bomb to Amara) because Chuck didn’t or couldn’t or just wouldn’t. It wasn’t Chuck that saved the world there, it was Dean using his words with Amara, dragging Chuck kicking and screaming into the conversation.

Okay, not kicking and screaming, more like whimpering and huddling… whatever… :P

But Chuck told Dean not to confuse him with John, and mistake his own “complicated upbringing” for Chuck’s “parenting” of the entire universe. And yet… as above, so below. And Chuck himself “chose” Dean as his mirror.

Then we have Dean’s own complicated Father Issues, from how John raised him, to how he was forced to raise Sam. As he said in 12.22 to Mary, he was forced to not only be a father to Sam, but a mother as well. And it wasn’t fair to Dean, and he hated Mary for her deal that put him in that position in the first place. What was unsaid there, but plain as day anyway, was that he hated John for it, too.

Lizbob and I were talking earlier about how Jack was describing the fact that he WAS his mother for a while before he was born, and how the very act of his birth sucked the life out of Kelly, and how that was a horrifying metaphor for motherhood, but Dean has said it himself, of Sam. Back in 10.03, when Sam was curing him of being a demon:

DEAN: You notice I tried to get as far away from you as possible? Away from your whining, your complaining. I chose the King of Hell over you! Maybe I was just … tired of babysitting you. Or always having to yank your lame ass out of the fire since … [Dean laughs.] Forever. Or maybe … Maybe it was the fact that my mother would still be alive if it wasn’t for you. That your very existence sucked the life out of my life!SAM: This isn’t my brother talking.DEAN: You never had a brother! Just an excuse for not manning up. But guess what: I quit.SAM: No. No, you don’t. You don’t get to quit. We don’t get to quit in this family! This family is all we have ever had!DEAN: Well, then, we got nothin’.SAM: Would you say that to Dad?DEAN: Dad? Oh, there’s a prize. There’s a man who brainwashed us into wasting our lives fighting his losing battle!

Sam’s “very existence sucked the life” out of Dean’s life, just like Jack literally did to his mother, just TWO EPISODES AFTER Dean broke through to Mary with his confession about the horrors of his life, and his anger over having to be both mother and father to Sam.

And this was about the point I hit my EUREKA! moment over why the idea of Dean being forced to be a parent to Jack just pushed every NOPE NOPE NOPE button in my entire body. Because he’s JUST NOW finally letting go of feeling like his entire life had been one long forced obligation to be a parent to Sam, and now here’s this new pseudo-manbaby with frightening and potentially Dangerous Magical Abilities who needs parenting and looking after that was foisted on him against his will AGAIN.

I mean, it’s like the ultimate in Cosmically Un-Fucking-Fair.

And even the notion that Cas should be responsible for “parenting” the giant nougat-loving nuke in lost-and-found clothes just… sits so wrong with me for the exact same reason. How long has Cas been a guardian to Dean? How big was the whole “You aren’t our babysitter” theme last season? That Cas never really had time to internalize before Jack hijacked Cas’s “babysitter” instincts for his own purposes?

Yes, it’s sweet and I can see that the parallels between Jack and Cas are being written really well so far, but the cutesy Cas-as-Jack’s-Daddy stuff just physically sickens me (which is saying something considering how physically sick I am as a baseline here…). I don’t think it’s “cute.” And I’m saying this as someone who LOVES Jack as a character.

Kelly (who was literally already “dead” at the point she met Cas, and was technically– according to Jack himself– already “Jack” at that point) had sized up Cas and decided that he would make a good guardian for Jack, and that Dagon would make a bad guardian for him, and took matters into her own hands in order to make that happen. Literally took Cas’s hand without his permission, after he’d declined to touch her stomach, and then forced his hand again after literally hijacking Baby and driving Cas to the scene of her “vision.” Then literally taking Cas’s hand again to force events to unfold as they had in the vision, without regard to any of the other horrors that played out as a result– such as Joshua having been killed by Dagon, the Colt being destroyed, Sam and Dean being hurt, Cas nearly getting killed, and then zapping enough power through Cas to kill Dagon, a being of a type we’ve only ever seen harmed by the Colt and the Lance of Michael. It was clear early on that Jack had Serious Power and yet we see he has practically NO CONTROL over it.

I am soooo tempted to apply a little bit of Miriam’s description of Becky to Jack… 

He sees something he wants and just takes it without a thought for who it might hurt. He took candy from the vending machine in 13.01, but… he kinda did that to Cas, too. Even before he was born, he saw the sort of devotion Cas had to the people he cared about and even if he didn’t understand WHY, he understood through Kelly that this was something he would need for himself. So he took it, even if it might hurt other people.

Just like he flung his power out at the sheriff when she touched him while he was being assaulted by angel radio. He didn’t intend to hurt her, but he was already in pain and frightened and that’s just how his power works for him right now… as if it’s “him but not him.” Almost like it’s an independent entity that’s in Extreme Self-Protection Mode.

That’s how Miriam described Dean, as someone who takes things and breaks things no matter who it hurts. But really… that’s not Dean, and that’s not Jack either– or at least not what Jack would CHOOSE to be. But from the outside, it kinda looks that way.

So, yeah, I LOVE the idea that Sam is finally getting a turn at forced parenthood from the other side of the equation. It fits beautifully with his own arc toward self-forgiveness and acceptance of his own powers and feelings of whether or not he was inherently evil because of what had been done to him as a baby. I LOVE the idea that Sam will get to experience being a father and mother to someone going through much the same things he did all his life (albeit as an adult, which was not a luxury Dean had when he was forced into a parental role at the age of almost five).

But for Dean? I’m horrified that this has been forced on him again. And for Cas? The fact it’s not something he chose of his own free will, nor gave informed consent to before he was sock-puppeted into becoming Jack’s babysitter… yeah, I find it moderately to seriously disturbing…

And for the sake little baby Jesus, I AM NOT IMPLYING THAT JACK IS EVIL. I AM NOT IMPLYING THAT JACK IS NOT “GOOD.” Good and evil are entirely irrelevant to this conversation.

But Jack’s power did something to Kelly. And it did something to Cas. It wasn’t done with malicious intent, but IT WAS DONE TO THEM. And it’s something that severely limited their free will. We’ve seen how Jack’s power works, without his active CHOICE to make stuff happen. He’s on a fight or flight sort of level with it right now, and it just happens to be set to overkill, you know? I’m sure he’ll get a better handle on it eventually, but I think it’s also going to be a vulnerability that others may try to exploit (enter Asmodeus, or potentially AU Michael, and possibly eventually Lucifer… this isn’t going to be an easy journey for Jack).

Anyway I think I’ve wandered so far off topic of your original question, but congrats, you won the Which Question Will Result In Actual Meta award this week! :P

I think it’s been more than an hour. *checks clock* *what even is time anymore* It’s definitely been more than an hour.

[jeremichal-archive]

okay I'm in LOVE with your jeremy/meg ultimate rarepair. any hcs you wanna share?? pls??

nonnie nonnie nonNIE NONNIE FUCK YES,,, I have so many damn headcanons and i’d be delighted to share them with ya 

(honestly, you’ve created a monster mwahaha)

SO, i’ve got two main au’s with those two, first is high school au:

they met each other in high school. Meg was the pretty popular girl and Jeremy was the class clown. 

She hated him and he didn’t give a crap about her

They barely interacted, unless it was in sports class. They both particularly liked gymnastics and they’d stay behind to use the equipment, and end up just practising together. 

The first time they really talked to each other was when meg came into the gym upset after an asshole had spread a rumour about her, and Jeremy was already in there.

He didn’t know if he should comfort her or just leave her alone, but meg made the decision for him because she came over made him hug her. 

After that, they were the best of buds. Jeremy beat up the asshole for her and she got him a date with a couple of girls in the sewing club.

By the end of high school, they were inseparable and when they moved to college (different ones) they only lasted a semester before they were meeting back up.

They had their first kiss in megs dorm while Jeremy visited her. They were playing video games and meg leaned over and kissed his cheek to distract him, and then when Jeremy went completely red, she couldn’t stop her self from kissing him properly. 

Jeremy wanted to move closer to Meg, but she told him not to until he finished college. she didn’t want him to resent her because he dropped out for her or because he had to change courses

The first day after Jeremy graduates he drives back to Meg, picks her up when it’s well past midnight and they drive back to their old high school. 

They sneak into the gym and Jeremy catches meg before she can go off exploring, and he gets down on one knee.

Meg cries and Jeremy makes a joke about the last time she cried there. She ends up hitting him and he just laughs, pulling her into a hug

the second is really specific to a story that I have planned, I won't give away too much but it’s kinda a big amalgamation of jeremichael/jereturney with a bit of unrequited love and a couple of super powers as well. 

aka. michael has powers and is in love with jeremy, who is in love with meg, who doesn’t really care about boys right now. they’re in college and it’s gonna be super angsty

i have no idea who i want jeremy to end up as of right now, cause its so hard being a multi-shipper,,, because??? i can’t??? just pick one?? (with the way things are going it might be an ot3 honestly)

and then the kinda general ideas:

Meg and Jeremy have two stray kittens that they saved, they were hanging around their apartment and after they started feeding them it was too hard not to just keep ‘em

Jeremy wears his ring around his neck on a necklace and Meg keeps hers on her finger, even if she's cosplaying something.

they stream together and megs tried multiple times to get them to do some kind of stripping rules, and the only reason jeremy refuses is because twitch would ban ‘em

meg loves it when jeremy falls asleep on the couch cause then she gets to come lay all over him like a cat and falls asleep. jeremy’s woken up multiple times to meg dozing on his chest, face pressed into the crook of his neck.

[moviesihaveseenbeforeiamdea-blog]

#1172 Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Source

Released: October 17, 2014

Director:  Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Written by: Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris Jr., and Armando Bo

Starring: Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, Zach Galifianakis, Naomi Watts, Andrea Riseborough

Had I Seen it Before? Yes

Why the Oscars are Irrelevant, part 329: For a reason beyond comprehension, the Academy decided that Antonio Sánchez’s iconic drum score for the film was disqualified from contention because it was “diluted” by other musical cues, which they believed lessened the impact. This same academy didn’t feel that the lack of self-awareness disqualified Crash from winning Best Picture. 

Birdman is a pretentious film, and that makes me love it all the more so. 

From the casting of Michael Keaton and Edward Norton as parodies of themselves to the film’s entire construction mirroring the pretension of Riggan Thomson’s staging of a Raymond Carver adaptation to revive his critical respect, there is nothing about this movie that isn’t self-aware. 

This is a movie where Michael Keaton stands on a ledge overlooking the streets of New York City, looking like he’s going to jump, only to have a woman shout out her question if it’s for real or for a film, to which Keaton’s Riggan Thomson replies “A film!” and the woman responds that “you people” are full of shit. This movie is Iñárritu‘s wink at the audience, accompanied by the man screaming at you “I'M WINKING!”

Some people did not appreciate this. Scott Tobias at The Dissolve had a notoriously savage review of not only the film but Iñárritu’s career as a whole (I liked 21 Grams, even if it is self-serious). The review is worth checking out, even if only for giggles. Everyone loves a good hatchet job. (For a more considerate take on the limitations of Birdman and its director’s career, look at James Robert Douglas’s examination for Junkee.)

Michael Keaton as Birdman and Riggan Thomson (Source)

But I don’t agree with Tobias’s analysis, if only because his review seems as self-serious and preposterous as the film and director it supposedly detests. It also feels defensive. As Douglas notes in his review, the conflicts in artistic vision and philosophy in Birdman may be unrefined and lame, but the resolution is so “absurd” that it doesn’t feel like Iñárritu honestly thinks of them as all that meaningful. 

I don’t think the Iñárritu s attempting to make a juvenile point about The Meaning of True Art, I think he’s presenting all sides of a boring argument with rudimentary viewpoints before casting it all aside as pointless, because fuck you, I’m Alejandro G. Iñárritu and I’m going to make my movies the way I want. 

What tips me off to this interpretation the most is the author whose work Riggan is attempting to adapt for the stage. For anyone who has ever attended a creative writing workshop or majored in English in college, Raymond Carver is an unavoidable, typically insufferable writer who exists---as Emma Stone’s Sam points out---for rich or well-educated white people who really have nothing invested in its point or outcome besides the bullshit cultural validation of knowing they are experiencing the “right kind” of bullshit cultural validation. 

Carver’s not a hack writer, but he is overrated and boring. Painfully boring. He is the archetypal “respectable artist” in fiction: obsessed with a self-serious style repeating the same maudlin, mundane themes of mortality, uncertainty, and trauma over and over to death without any awareness of the limitations of his work. In short, everything Iñárritu is accused of in his films.

I’m a sucker for long-takes. I know they’re a little saturated right now and everyone has their opinion on them, but they’re not a flash in the pan. There’s Rope, which I reviewed earlier, there’s the opening of Touch of Evil, a film I have seen and loved but haven’t gotten to yet here, there’s Children of Men, which has several classics in the style, and there are recent examples in television, like True Detective and Game of Thrones. In Birdman, they do what they’re supposed to do, ratcheting up the tension and prolonging the inevitable, dragging scenes out for all they’re worth before letting us off the hook with a minute to breathe. The claustrophobic setting in St. James Theatre also contributes to this, with the characters packed together tightly with little room to collect themselves and separate from each other. Everyone is losing their goddamned minds in this movie, and it’s hilarious.

Riggan and Edward Norton as Mike Shiner (Source)

I’m not sure if the part of Riggan was written specifically with Michael Keaton in mind, I think it has to have been, but I’m not going to bother looking it up because I don’t really care, the fact that it’s him in this role is perfect, and his bitterness towards ushering in the superhero movie industry with his performance as Birdman without reaping the astronomical benefits that the genre would later bring give Riggan a poisonous edge. In his mind, he sees himself as a respectable artist who tried to bring talent into his performance as a pop-cultural icon, something he sees as distinct from Robert Downey Jr. performing in endless Marvel movies as the tiresome and one-dimensional Tony Stark/Iron Man.

There are a few movies given as the example of when the modern superhero movie came to be. Blade is credited with giving Marvel any early success, and both X-Men and Spider-Man are seen as two important milestones, but it’s Burton and Keaton’s Batman has the most credible claim to it for me. And in the cultural conversations around these movies, Keaton doesn’t seem to have much respect afforded to him (and so little a legacy that his casting as Vulture in the newest Spider-Man movie isn’t seen as any sort of breach of the genre canon).

I doubt Keaton has that much resentment for the modern superhero movie, and his relatively unglamorous and restrained output for the better part of two decades seems like a personal choice rather than a career failure. He’s a particular actor who never seemed too much interested in superstardom, but maybe I’m only projecting my conceptions of the guy onto the man himself. Still, he channels what could reasonably be expected to be his real feelings of superhero movies into Riggan well.

Also notable is Edward Norton’s performance as Mike Shiner, a theatre purist and notorious bastard. I’ve heard all sorts of suggestions that Norton is a difficult actor to work with, which would explain why someone with his talent and intensity has been in so few prominent roles over the years. His own foray into superheroism with 2008’s The Incredible Hulk is another superhero touchstone that has gone on mostly unregarded (it was, in fact, the kick-off of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, predating Iron Man by months, but Iron Man is usually given the credit). I’ve never heard any definitive explanation for why Norton didn’t return as Bruce Banner, but I honestly can’t see him fitting into it all how it is now---he’s too niche in his appeal. But that this confluence goes unremarked on in Birdman tells me that maybe that’s a stone best left unturned.

Another facet of the movie that I enjoy to no end is Iñárritu’s preemptive rebuttal to the theatre critics bemoaning his commandeering of the St. James for two months to film the movie. The over-the-top antagonistic theatre critic in the film excoriates Riggan for being a celebrity playing dress-up with the theatre instead of with the superhero costumes where she feels he belongs, reeling with disgust at the idea that an acting nitwit like Riggan would have the balls to piss all over the hallowed ground. She tells him pointedly she’s going to ruin his reputation before even seeing the play. 

Riggan’s response is to literally shoot off his nose’s critic-problem to spite his face’s prestige-insecurity problem. And it works, he secures the celebration he wants from yet another audience (again, as Sam points out, one that is equally as vapid and useless as the popcorn-flick audiences). Given the problem of critical respectability feeding off its own unabashed hatred for a director, Iñárritu resolves it by implying that blockbuster or theatre, all audiences want is a little blood.

So there you have it, Birdman in a nutshell. I adore this movie. And yeah, I can admit its humor is petty and vindictive, but it is, in the end, and most importantly, funny. Iñárritu takes heed of his critics’ repeated condemnations of his work and its over-seriousness, whips out his dick, helicopters it while blowing raspberries into the air, and then asks if they’re satisfied now. He followed this movie up by directing The Revenant, another overwrought, super-serious (and some would say joyless) excursion into ridiculous intensity in form and function. I’m not nearly as much a fan of that movie as this one, but all the same, if the aim of Birdman was to give the finger to his critics before embarking on the movie he wanted to make most of all was the price I have to pay for living in a world that has Birdman, so be it.

Final thoughts:

Riggan talking about his body: “I look like a turkey with leukemia.”

The tailor on Mike undressing: “What’s happening? Where are your underpants?”

When Mike Shiner chastises society for looking at life through a phone I was taking a Snapchat of my cat on the entertainment stand swatting Edward Norton’s face

I enjoy the detail of Shiner not being able to get an erection with Lesley in their relationship but having no problem wanting to fuck her in front of a live audience. Birdman pulls no punches when it comes to mocking anyone involved with the production of Riggan’s play.