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OKAY new ship bingo card!! i’m gonna be really angry in like 2 minutes when i realize I’ve forgotten a dynamic i wish i’d included but whatever. let’s go :D

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happy april 30th!

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if you guys dont know anything about canadian politics, i dont think you realize how insane this liberal victory is.

just months ago, the conservatives had an almost guaranteed win. Trudeau was insanely unpopular even among his own party, the progressive vote was split between them and the NDP, and the conservatives had gained so much more ground with the up-and-comer poilievre who came in with a canadian trump campaign strategy. We were resigned to losing, canadian minorities were making backup plans for their livelihoods in the likely event that we would be targeted by poilievre and his goons. His victory seemed like a sad inevitability that we could only stand up for so long against

And then trump was elected. and then canadians woke the fuck up from their conservative pipe dreams as we were hit with tariffs and annexation threats. and then trudeau resigned, leaving his bad blood behind. and then the NDP nuked themselves by publicly betraying the minorities they claimed to serve with their "we dont care who you vote for as long as they arent liberal" strategy, ending the split progressive vote as they were left behind. and then Mark Carney, the best possible liberal leader for this moment in time to win as many people over as possible, was elected liberal leader. Not all of these things are good, many are terrible, many are complicated, but politics is incredibly complicated, and it's the system we work on, so it's the hand we have to play.

And it was close tonight. It was uncomfortably, nauseatingly close, even with all these factors at play, even with ridings in the prariries of all regions going red, because that's how guaranteed a conservative win seemed not too long ago.

But they didn't win. We won.

I want us all to take this moment in time and think back on it when it all seems hopeless and like it'll never be right again. An anti-doomerism moment if you will. Because he was going to win, that wasn't a question, he WAS going to win. And then he didn't.

NEVER. KILL. YOURSELF.

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If Sebastian Smythe took a political compass test:

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Noah Puckerman and Lauren Zizes in Glee S2E14 Blame It On The Alcohol

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i find kurtbastian so interesting because neither sebastian or blaine thought about each other that much, they seemed to have object permanence about one another after about michael and even then, sebastian truly did not give any indication he gives a shit about kurt’s existence after omw except for vaguely helping out with blaine’s proposal (and being present, most presumably) AND YET. KURT... kurt himself spent several years seething at sebastian’s existence, letting him live in his head rent free. he did not even mind eli c, the actual guy blaine actually did cheat on him with, that much since about lll onwards he seems to find it more amusing than anything.

but put sebastian in front of him and he is immediately taken over by rage. you don’t even need to show him sebastian, you can merely allude to the existence of sebastian, let he himself fill the blanks - and he will ALWAYS find a way to make it about sebastian - and if you listen carefully, you can still hear his confidence dropping about two stories and shattering, a cascade of paranoia and inferiority taking him over.

sebastian triggering such a knee-jerk dislike, then unbridled rage in kurt (from the very first scene!) is sooo fucking funny to me. especially since sebastian didn’t even care about how kurt felt about him.

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"part of the reason why klaine looove chasing after each other instead of actually being together is that blaine chases the feeling of caging an exotic bird foremost"

can i hear more about this specifically? i love reading ur analyses :)

AH i'm so happy to hear you enjoy them! ;_;

i always like to give a fair disclaimer even if by this point it feels kind of redundant (and i'm starting to realize people may not be as exasparated by the unnecessarily convoluted and largely self-indulgent way i analyze glee as i initially thought haha), but, it's really just my interpretation. i'm not unbiased and don't strive to be.

so i guess this may be as perfect time as any to share my take on The Klaine Bird Thing.

while klaine share a relationship riddled with birds and bird symbolism that is applicable to both (a warbler refers to perching birds, kurt sings 'blackbird' as a sort of eulogy for pavarotti which is how blaine realizes his feelings, blaine likens the council to "privileged porcelain birds" before asking kurt to duet with him, they share their first kiss over pavarottis's (bedazzled) casket, to name a few) i'm largely influenced by pavarotti symbolizing kurt's dalton arc in an almost shamelessy 1:1 ratio.

pavarotti is molting in special education and passes in original song. kurt's first day is in special education and achieves what the dalton arc set out for him by original song even if btw's setup is needed - and loosely non's as well, i believe, because santana has had her own revelations by this time as well - for kurt to actually be able to go back to mckinley.

just as the pavarotti-kurt metaphor is hard to miss, it's similarly why i'm kind of surprised dalton has a reputation as anything other than the gilded cage it serves in the narrative, for kurt and blaine at the very least. kurt transfers to dalton just before winter to hibernate through a particularly cold season in his life and by spring, he is ready to come alive again, while blaine has been stuck hibernating for - presumably - a few years now. transferring in tppp tracks as well, since kurt is his spring, in a sense.

the thing about hibernating though, while you are focused on surviving you do not have the expandable energy to grow. i've always been extremely lenient with season 4 blaine (though mostly because he entertains me greatly) but i also found it made a lot of sense that in order to achieve the growth he just pretended to have in dalton, he would have to go through the uncomfortable growing pains eventually, and that's what season 4 is for him. it's why the warblers are comically evil in dd, because they threaten all the progress blaine has made since transferring.

kurt himself recognizes that in order to grow, he needs to leave and challenge himself - but i also think kurt is just someone so used to some amount of misery that he needs to struggle with, the absence of it can make him queasy just as well. kurt is not at a point in his life yet where he can accept unchallenged happiness so he yearns for what's outside even while he enjoys dalton's safety.

and i get that it is a lot of flowery language and grandeur to attribute to a simple setup of "bullied boys not safe in the public system need the protection only money can buy, unfortunately" but i think if you try to remain too realistic, it rids dalton as a very satisfying narrative element.

dalton!kurt also seems to be a permanent resident in blaine's mind, haunting him everytime we see just a bit too much from blaine's pov. he watches blaine performing in barely breathing, sings to blaine in it's too late and in tested, blaine outright says he loved it when kurt was something precious to protect back in dalton.

i think, especially to blaine, kurt IS the bird in the relationship (which is also why i have trouble viewing blaine as a bird myself haha.)

he has the "all this bird talk is turning me on" line and also refers to his nightbird costume as something that he could wear to "a creepy fetish club" (i have a "blaine is a canonical pervert" masterlist locked and loaded but i never end up posting it... i'm afraid not everyone would understand it was a labour of love) which both make me think the bird thing is more about his connection with kurt. which is a very generous interpretation of an obvious inside joke made by the writers, but so be it, i don't care, i'll play along.

he invented nightbird at the peak of his depression and self loathing and we get explicit confirmation in latter episodes that he thinks of himself as the protector in his relationship with kurt, so i can't not interpret it as anything other than a huge bat signal projected into the sky that says "see, kurt? i'm still your knight in shining armor who can protect you, please look at me and give me another chance." even if kurt may never see it, even if it's only to prove to himself there is still some good in him.

i think it just aligns extremely well with the already established dalton!kurt-pavarotti symbolism.

there is also another reason why blaine realizes his feelings in original song, when kurt starts getting a little mean but also more unapologetically himself even in front of blaine, because kurt is a person who values his uniqueness in himself above all, whether it's being gay, effeminate, a show-off, a diva and so on.

blackbird's lyrics are also about being free, underlining the moral of kurt's arc. he could stay in the gilded cage of dalton with the rest of the privileged porcelain birds, or he could learn to fly with these broken wings and sunken eyes.

and i think this is another recurring thing with blaine - as much as he wants to be with kurt, sometimes to a worrying degree, kurt's independence and individiuality is something he finds especially alluring. one of the very last lines he has in the entire show is telling kurt "you are the only one". it's why he can push kurt to go to new york yet resent him for leaving at the same time. he wants kurt to live freely and be appreciated by everyone, but when he gets outside of his reach just enough that he can question if kurt will come back again, he grows depressed and insecure. this was already alluded to in dws, explicitly in makeover ("You're hanging out with fashion goddess Isabelle Wright. And I'm running for Student Body President with a former stripper." always sticks out to me in particular) tbu ("I needed you around, and you weren't there." - not to mention that blaine is paralleled with finn, to whom rachel tells "Okay, and only just because you told me that you wanted me to be free." which i think is interesting to note) and tested (his entire cheetos monolouge goes here, tbh) as well.

i can't help but think of the engagement ring as if he was banding kurt with it like a bird especially with lines like "What if he meets someone else?" from wonder-ful.

klaine are also... worse at actually being with each other than pining after each other, imo. or i think they enjoy it considerably less than the mating dance and all that leads up to it. huge focal points in seasons 2, 4 and 6 are klaine not being able to stay away from each other. which makes sense to me, because the allure of an exotic bird is that it's free, unique and coveted - even before os, blaine gladly involves himself in kurt's business and while blaine is not cold-hearted by any means, i don't think it is his mo to stick his neck out for just anyone. kurt values his freedom and can't handle blaine getting too close (nny and their break up in llm come to mind) and blaine does not handle a perceivedly ever widening distance between them well (tbu and dws.)

i think i'm so particularly fond of this interpretation, to the point of allowing myself to sound crazy, because i really love how unknowingly klaine can pull off something as cliché as opposites attract. sometimes i wish it was pushed even further.

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@blog-carmex

If your life is horrible and you need a new source of meaning and direction.... Do NOT find religion. Learn to identify plants.

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gifmakers be like yes i know this will flop i simply have too much love for the thing. and i think that is VERY sexy of us

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As you can tell I think voting is very important and I encourage all those that can to do so.

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hi sebklaine dynamic enjoyers I just want to say I appreciate you. I've been looking for you forever and I feel like you have finally arriven (I've decided this is a word now). Thank you for your service to such a messy ass trio <3

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on a similar note, my ideal "kurtbastian got married" scenario includes sebastian never giving a single fuck about what he posts so his online presence can be summed up by several suspended accounts and one where he is still active, which houses an ungodly combination of getting into random twitter fights and ragebaiting people and while sebastian can afford to not gaf about it (rich nepo baby lawyer for the kind of people who would hire a rich nepo baby lawyer) kurt's rabid fanbase is far too scrutinizing so he has to course correct by making psa posts on his instagram and donations in both of their names

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happy birthday bells!!!! have a wonderful day and enjoy this little freak <3 @backslashdelta

(ref)

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“The claw raises, and it looks like it’s going to lose grip of the foot as it pulls the toy out of the pile, but it somehow hangs on and Sebastian is glad for that until he realizes what kind of animal it is. Kurt bursts into laughter beside him. “It’s a meerkat,” he giggles, actually giggles.” — It Was Only A Kiss, Chapter 9

A birthday gift for @backslashdelta

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Kurtbastian + Ever After by Marianas Trench

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wore my thigh high boots on a walk today and we had to take a path through some long grass and while everyone else was rolling their pants into their socks and putting on jackets to protect themselves from ticks i was standing there smug as hell in my thigh high leather boots.