shallowrambles

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Keep your messaging simple:

“Trump fired everyone in charge of airplane safety, and a week later planes started crashing into each other.”

That’s it. That’s the messaging. Don’t get bogged down disputing Trump’s false claims. Just blame him, in short and repeatable sentences.

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I'm saying it again: do not let MAGA rewrite the narrative.

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When people think I’m blocking them for their opinions, when really, it’s just that their constant ‘everyone is dumb but me’ and ‘everyone hates my religion because it's PaGaN’ vibe in my post tags is more annoying than insightful.

Congrats, you’re not censored—you’re exhausting.

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One of the weirder things about life is when the ppl who are crasser, rougher, and meaner give more meaningful support to you than the people who "say all the right words."

I know that's not everyone's experience, but it's been mine too many times to ignore.

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Shared here today by Matthew Boroson on Facebook.

Tanith Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel, for the second book of the Flat Earth series. She died in 2015. You can buy Tales From the Flat Earth here in paperback or here on Kindle.

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📞

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AMELIA Who's Everett? SAM How long have you been here? AMELIA Three months. Why? SAM Well, you know, usually when someone moves into a town, they – they actually, uh, you know, move into the town.

OMG. THIS IS EXACTLY HOW SAM ACTS WHEN HE'S IN LEBANON. Sam has solid reasons for not wanting to put down roots, in the bunker, in the town, but I chicken squealed because amelia has so much the same issue as a reaction to her own grief aghhhh

I knew there was something off about you, with your creepy Army-Navy and your sideburns –

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SAM Well, because somebody jammed about 800 limes down the drain... [he shows her the garbage disposal unit] and blew out the disposal. SAM takes a bag of limes out of one of the shopping bags. AMELIA Oh. Right. Don't touch the produce.

Look. I know girl is grieving. but she's weird. that's a WEIRD thing to do with even a coupla limes.

Maybe it's a nod to fighting her own alcoholism, or she's "sour" about limes because they represent happier times with the hub that she's now lost

I knew there was something off about you, with your creepy Army-Navy and your sideburns –

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I knew there was something off about you, with your creepy Army-Navy and your sideburns –

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When Dean says, "You just bought into the biggest hoax in history," it's a strange dialogue, given the recent context.

DEAN: This mess... all the messes. It turns out that we're just hamsters running in a wheel our whole lives. What do we have to show for it, huh? Tell me you don't feel conned. God's been lying to you, Cas, forever. You bought into the biggest scam in history.

"You bought into it," Dean says. Which... no.

Cas may have prayed to Chuck, he may have been a loyal soldier to Chuck for eons, but he's the one that turned away from Chuck's recent machinations. He's the one that challenged Chuck and walked away from him, even from Sam and Dean.

So, then.

What are Dean's words about? Well. They're about everything. But they're about Dean's shame. His despair.

//

I think (2) things. These words are directed at Cas because Dean's "putting on Cas what he can't take," but Dean's saying these words indirectly to himself.

It's Dean who just bought into Chuck's scam at the worst possible moment. (This was a momentary thing, but to Dean, this feels huge. A betrayal and a self-betrayal. A crisis of faith and a crisis of faith.) And Cas, kindly, does not call him on this. He's sympathetic. So sympathetic.

Why?

CASTIEL: You don't think I'm angry? After what Chuck did? After what he took from me? He killed Jack. But that doesn't mean it was all a lie. DEAN: Really? CASTIEL: Chuck is all-knowing. He knew the truth, he... he just kept it to himself. DEAN: Well, now that his cover's blown, everything that we've done is for what? Nothing? CASTIEL: Even if we didn't know that all of the challenges that we face were born of Chuck's machinations, how would we describe it all? We'd call it "life". Because that's precisely what life is. It's an obstacle course, and maybe Chuck designed the obstacles, but we ran our own race. We made our own moves. And mostly, we did well with that. DEAN: Did we?

15x02

And this is Dean's insecurities playing up again. Did Dean do well here? DID he?

He bought into Chuck's machinations and played right into his hands. Dean was spiraling, hurt, and he felt he had to do the "right thing" to save the world from Jack.

But the pain point is: Dean feels like the world's biggest dupe right now, and it's easier to blame Cas. If you're really squinting at the circumstances and considering Dean's propensity for stories and reading, it's even easy to be suspicious of Cas.

Mary's dead. Jack's dead. They didn't do "mostly well" with this obstacle course, with this game of Mouse Trap.

In Dean's mind, they have resoundingly lost.

//

Cas is trying to offer support, gently, saying "We're real." Because he went through this moment waaay back in season 4 with Heaven. Back then, it was Dean who snapped Cas out of it and helped him wrestle with Heaven's authority and what's really real:

DEAN: Destiny? Don't give me that "holy" crap. Destiny, God's plan... It's all a bunch of lies, you poor, stupid son of a bitch! It's just a way for your bosses to keep me and keep you in line! You know what's real? People, families -- that's real. And you're gonna watch them all burn? ... 'Cause I'll take the pain and the guilt. I'll even take Sam as is. ...This is simple, Cas! No more crap about being a good soldier. There is a right and there is a wrong here, and you know it. ... Look at me! (DEAN grabs CASTIEL’s shoulder and turns CASTIEL back to face him) You know it! You were gonna help me once, weren't you? You were gonna warn me about all this...Help me -- now. Please.

4x22

They're almost the same scene.

Cas can't bring up that families are real because their family just died—a whole big freakin' chunk of it, and it's too painful. So, instead of "families are real," we get "we're real." But Cas is effectively calling back Dean's own words.

Absolutely, it is mirroring 4x22.

Dean has become season 4 Cas, conflicted, horrified with himself, not knowing what's real, and seeming to make all the wrong moves. This is the soldier's burden, now unsure of the cause (and "we're real" IS the through-line for every soldier-coded character from vintage SPN all the way to terminal-season- Eileen.)

Dean charges Cas with being "the thing that goes wrong" because (1) he's rightfully suspicious of all things Chuck-adjacent and (2) Dean feels like he's the thing going wrong in big ways right now. That everything he does is for nothing.

Dean "choked" at the worst possibly time with AU Michael, back during The Spear in 14x09, and it devastated him. AU Michael said as much:

Michael Dean: To break him, to crush and disappoint him so completely that, this time, he'll be nice and quiet for a change -- buried. And he is. He's gone. 

For Dean, that moment has a clear path to THIS moment. And this is where he finds himself now, choking again with regards to Chuck.

It's devastating.

EDIT: I like this, because it's a little-discussed complicating factor in the trial separation, but it's a huge part of it, too: that Dean chose Chuck's plan, even for a moment.

It's a guilt Dean carries but will not easily admit, and for Cas, it's just painful. Painful because Chuck should have been a loved one to trust, but he was a piece of shit with ill intentions... and painful because Dean couldn't see it immediately.

BUT they did show amazing resilience, even in the face of all of it. We have to remember that, even after Mary died, even after Dean said Cas was dead to him, they stayed together, in the same house, speaking to one another.

When Mary was burning on the pyre, Cas was ready to run and try to take Dean in his arms (Sam stopped him). Chuck had to try to interfere directly to engineer a separation. Even after Jack, they were sticking like glue as they ran from the graveyard, then saying "thank you" and "welcome" to one another when dealing with the zombies. At a time when they should've been oil and water, they were trying to find a way to be around one another and leech much-needed support from the other. It was Belphagor that drove the biggest wedge. Then The levee broke after the burning of Jack's body and the loss of Rowena.

(And even after that levee broke, they swam to one another later in the season. As The Trap shows us, found new purpose together right up until Claire Novak died.)

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What is the most well-acted scene of SPN, in your opinion?

I think for a genre show, there are a lot of surprisingly hard-hitting moments. But today, I'm gonna say this:

CROWLEY: I'd like...to ask you a-a favor, Sam. Earlier, when you were confessing back there...what did you say? I only ask because, given my history...it raises the question... Where do I start...to even look for forgiveness? I mean...

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Discussion:

I think Mark's voice, and his whole everything in this scene was among the hardest-hitting of Supernatural. It was so incredibly well-done.

Crowley has been brutal this season. He killed Kevin's girlfriend and tortured Kevin, and yet here he is, asking for forgiveness in a Church, a symbol of penance and forgiveness. As he spirals down from the high of the "roofied disinhibition" of "being a demon," he starts to feel everything again, and he despairs.

It's a callback to the demon Father Thompson cured, the one who ate his own children. It's a callback to Sam's hopped-up stent on demon blood.

In SPN Prime, John thought he was doing the right thing by his neglect and absence and violence, to toughen up his children and prepare them to defend themselves in a world that wants to kill them. And in doing so, John let his family down, and he died before they could fix it. Sam grieving John is not just about grieving the man lost, it's about Sam grieving the loss of potential for healing and repair.

If John Winchester could have lived and reckoned with his crimes of absence and neglect and cruelty, could he have done the same? Asked for forgiveness? Sam will never know. Sam would've forgiven him. There's nothing he wants to put in front of his family either, when you get down to it.

And Sam feels this guilt in himself, too, in his powering up on demon blood in order to do the righteous thing and protect the world. (We'll see in season 15 that this power would've corrupted him, eventually killing those very things he longed to protect.)

Also, there's the guilt for what he perceives as his run to escapism purely for the sake of escaping, serving up an incomplete version of himself in order to fit into an idealized normal (Amelia is to Sam as Kate was to John Winchester, perhaps). In doing so, he let his family down when they needed him the most. (He abandoned Kevin, Dean, Cas because he couldn't face the pain of fighting alone, like how John had to fight alone, and like how Mary has to fight alone in the AU Earth-world. Having siblings is like having built-in allies, and because of that, Sam's never had to fight alone.)

Sam, too, will ask for forgiveness in this church, the symbol of forgiveness. Sam still has living family members to connect to and heal with, and in this scene at least, family is about forgiveness. Dean will be compared to Church by Jody, and it's linking this idea that there are things in your life you can rely on, no matter what. Church is supposed to be a "communal family of forgiveness, not judgment" after all. (Example: Jody turns to Church when she's alone.)

Siblings can be a built-in church in the same way that they are built-in comrades. But Sam was not there for his only kin, and he despairs over not being a reliable brother, lamenting that Dean has turned to his “new brothers” over him. Dean capitulates to Sam's mental state here in this scene, affirming his sense of worth and that he'll always be there no matter what. Critically, this is to preserve Sam's life, because Sam is not in his right mind; he's suicidal.

(Eventually, Crowley too will try to repair things with his son Gavin, and he'll also reckon with Rowena's abandonment.)

The nifty thing about this scene, I think, is that while the Church is the symbol of familial forgiveness and penance, the actual institution of Heaven is brutal and unforgiving and judging. Outside, the angels are falling. The idea of it is more powerful than the reality of it. Heaven would not let Cas do penance.

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Also, not to be depressing, but I really do think one of Cas's nightmares is his human family coming to save HIM.

Like literally, there is probably not one thing that this guy wants less.

Them being hurt on his behalf = torture.

*frantically whipping his head around, watching and hoping no one dies 💔 *

I just feel like...this is one of Cas's WAKING nightmares since Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets, and since Stuck in the Middle (with You)

They literally only escape because the leader got cocky and distracted by Ruby's "cool knife," otherwise Sam (who was pretty much outfought) would've been skewered. If the rest of the demons hadn't gotten scared and smoked out after said leader died, it could've been bad for everyone else, too. Even Mary, arguably the strongest brawler, was about to bite it!

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After it's all over, when the relief starts to settle in, it's so sad... 💔

Whew. Too close a call... Outgunned and outmatched, TFW escapes by taking advantage of dumb luck. Can you imagine the strength of Cas's dread when Sam walked through that door, and how horrifying it probably was when the rest showed up, too? OUGH.

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still waiting patiently for the news to zone in on Mallinckrodt, the most corrupt medical company in the world and the company that made my life a living hell and engaged in anti-competition that prevented me from getting a med i should've been able to get in the 80s

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Soas not to hijack this lovely post about Ruby's manipulation...

This goes back to the generic-fandom tendency to see absolutist truth in the mouths of villains instead of a layer of truth or an unflattering reflection of a character's hidden anxiety.

The villains so often chisel out the most uncharitable, two-dimensional explanation of a situation, and even utilize an underlying hang-up, like Sam's issues about feeling like a poverty-stricken, podunk outsider, "a freak."

And the thing is, sometimes the villain's interpretation is just flat-out wrong!

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Other times, it's a flattening of multiple complex, sometimes competing, truths, like how AU Michael acknowledges Dean's probably-real, underlying issues

of feeling like Sam is a burden who abandons him

that Jack is a burden he didn't ask for

that Cas is someone he owes everything to but who also hides things and makes mistakes over and over

But those are just a tiny portion of what Dean feels, and so you get this messed up, black-and-white, face-value interpretation of a situation.

Everyone has fleeting feelings of negativity. Sometimes, we even have drawn-out pity parties and languish in our worst thoughts. Sometimes, we all long for escape and easier lives, and that includes the love and work we put in to maintain our cherished relationships. We wish it could be easier, or that we could get away from it all.

But the thing is, we know Dean wasn't happier when it was just him and John, and extrapolating that, we know he was indeed grief-stricken by Jack's death and he does indeed want Castiel around just as much as he is grateful for his heroics and frustrated by their past baggage.

Real relationships have baggage. This is a theme that optimism and Amara's idealization of her nursery warn us about! We are supposed to beware of this kind of figmentary Apple White Romanticization/White Picket Fence Idealization.

Anyhoo...

///

Ruby uses insecurity to great effect. She plays Sam, disrespects Sam, and puffs up her plans as the right ones.

///

So does Zachariah, throughout his entire tenure.

We got our vintage, classist Zach, who showed Dean a world where not protecting Sam led to a devil-incarnate-Sam. And the other half of this nightmare scenario is the degradation of Cas, that staying with Cas would literally turn him into a performing!Dean 2.0 to the power of ten.

This never never happened, because it was a reflection of Dean's fear. In fact, when Cas broke bad, he broke bad in his own unique, tyrannical Chuck-adjacent way, not Dean's mode of fatalism. He never even saw it coming the way that it came!

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We also saw Zach turn his shit on Adam, hurling classist stereotypes about his half-brothers and trying to demean them in such a way as to get Adam to lose hope in them and in their hope of rescuing him.

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Then, we got the cruel, torturous Good Intentions AU version of Zach:

JACK: What about Sam and Dean? ZACH!CASTIEL: Well, if only they’d accepted you, instead of teaching you to fear your powers. JACK: My powers… ZACH!CASTIEL: Because they feared them. Now, if you’ll just do as I say—

We know that Sam, Dean, and Jack's powers is more complicated than simple fear, though fear is an undeniable layer of it!

///

Anyhoo. This tension.

It's why characters like AU Michael and season 15's Belphegor do what they do!

You're supposed to wonder, "Hey, wait a minute. That's not the full scope of the situation here, is it? That's not how life is. Life is waaaaay more complex. My feelings are letting me see the absolute worst of the situation!"

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Me waiting for the news to resurrect Mallinckrodt Pharmaceutical conversations

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Been watching Kevin Can Fuck Himself on Netflix this week. It's a fascinating show, and easy to digest as background noise while working.

Kevin Can Fuck Himself is a serious drama sendup of the classic sitcom dynamic. It's two different shows mashed into one another.

The show's front is your typical Manchild Husband sitcom about a man named Kevin McRoberts. Every episode, he has a new wacky shenanigan to drag his wife and neighbors into, which usually blows up in his face spectacularly.

But Kevin is not the show's main character. Whenever he's onscreen, the show is lit and shot in sitcom fashion, with laugh track and applause and musical cues and all that jazz. The universe revolves around him and responds as sitcoms do to his every whim.

But this show is actually about his wife Allison. And whenever she's away from Kevin, the show changes genres to a serious drama piece. It's a show about the emotional and financial abuse of being tied down to the role of the Manchild Husband's "Nagging Wife", and more broadly the effects that his Comedic Sociopathy have on the put-upon supporting cast around him as well.

It's the story of a woman's quest to finally escape from the cage that her marriage to an impulsive, inconsiderate, and entirely self-centered piece of shit has trapped her in.

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man how the hell is this stupid ass sport legal. why do we funnel HIGH SCHOOLERS into this