#<- fully unrelated. make a new post idiot. the beauty of me still posting at 2:52 am is stream of consciousness tags. no pony cares rival!

[cartoonrival]

i feel like i should probably just wtch boruto. biggest issue is just that im pretty sure the central conflict is fucking dumb. in addition to the fact that the story's existence depends on the worlds biggest He Would Not Fucking Do That

[thisselflovecamebacktome]

My personal connection with Taylor’s discography, part eleven: Happiness

Basically this is just a series I’m doing where I write down my feelings on what each of the Taylor songs means to me personally on a line to line basis both for my own sake to have it somewhere and for anyone who wants to know anything further about me.

So with that in mind, let’s get started.

Happiness

So much like the majority of Evermore and Folklore, Happiness reminds me of my family and the trauma of losing them which I’m trying to move past. Particularly, Happiness is the connecting point of the progress I’ve made moving forth and the reality that there’s still a long way to go and wishing I was further along the recovery road.

 Honey, when I'm above the trees I see this for what it is

I feel like this lyric is pretty much what it’s like on ‘good’ days. Like when I have removed myself enough from the situation and pain, I can rationalise to myself that what happened to my family wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just a bunch of well meaning people who made choices they thought were for the best but ultimately did more harm than good. I can also acknowledge that what happened was probably for the best and that while I’m in pain now, it probably would have been worse otherwise.

But now I'm right down in it, all the years I've given is just shit we're dividin' up

But most days aren’t ‘good’ days. Most days, it feels inescapable that I gave between 16 to 23 years to these people that were meant to love me unconditionally for my whole lifetime just for them to decide that what we had wasn’t worth sticking around for. Most days, I can’t move past the bitterness that I have knowing that I feel like I’ve wasted my life because genuinely lived my life as a mirrorball and gave my all to make these people happy and keep us together just for it all to fall apart anyway.

Showed you all of my hiding spots

I’ve always been an oversharer that kept her heart on her sleeve. I genuinely feel like I showed my family, and especially my immediate family, every version of myself. My highs, my lows, my strengths, my weaknesses, my likes and dislikes; I showed it all.

I was dancing when the music stopped

I’ve mentioned this a few times in this project, but despite the issues my family had, I really fucking believed we’d get out of this okay and that the others wanted to. And I wore rose coloured glasses as things were ending and people were showing their true colours because I wanted so badly to believe that it was just a bad fight and once things cooled down, everyone would pitch in to fix things. So when it finally hit that none of them truly wanted to fix things, I realised that the music had stopped years beforehand and I had just been living in my own fantasy world dancing to a beat that wasn’t there.

And in the disbelief, I can't face reinvention. I haven’t met the new me yet

I saw a post recently that said this line is pretty much Right Where You Left Me condensed into one lyric and genuinely I have not seen anything more correct in years. Like I am still sitting here nearly six years after this started and nearly four years since I finally accepted it (god realising it’s been that long hit me like a fucking truck, not gonna lie) wondering who the fuck am I meant to be now? Like even without feeling like I devoted my life/existence for these people, who are you meant to be if not a reflection of the people who raised you and were meant to love you unconditionally?

There'll be happiness after you

I know I will get my balance back one day and be happy. There’s a lot of practical steps that need to happen first, but I know I’ll get there. And even though I wish it was with my family, I’ve accepted that it won’t be and it can’t be dependent on them or else I’m going to end up like my mother and never happy.

But there was happiness because of you

As much as I still cuss out my family, particularly my father, I grew up as a daddy’s girl and family orientated person and not all of that was negative. Though I can’t currently look back at them without crying, I have photos of birthdays, concerts, events, holidays and even just random day to day life at home that brought me so much joy. Likewise, though not directly involved, I would not have had one of the best experiences in my life of going to Japan with my school had my parents not cared enough to work their ass off for it. And though it’s hard to remember at times, especially on bad days, that is just as important to remember as the fact I’m going to be happy one day if I truly want to heal.

Both of these things can be true

Like I said, both past and future happiness is important and doesn’t negate each other. I can accept that someone from my past that made me happy isn’t going to be the one that does it in my future without either being more or lesser than the other.

There is happiness past the blood and bruise, past the curses and cries. Beyond the terror in the nightfall

Growing up in a mentally, emotionally and at times physically abusively household has left me with a lot of scars and while there’s no way to ‘prove’ it, I genuinely believe was the start of my then undiagnosed PTSD as opposed to the events of 2011. While ‘terror in the nightfall’ can directly be linked with the PTSD symptom of having chronic nightmares, I also link it just as strongly with general self doubting thoughts. Like I am very much still in a place where despite wanting to, I constantly question whether I should get married and have children or even just make new friends because I don’t feel worthy of it. All it would do is fuck over these other people. Because like end of the day, if the people who were supposed to love me unconditionally for my whole life didn’t, why the hell would anyone else?

Haunted by the look in my eyes that would've loved you for a lifetime

I will love my family forever. And genuinely, if they hadn’t of left, I would have done anything to make them happy for the rest of my life. And the fact that I do not get the chance to do that haunts me, and while I can never know for sure, I genuinely think it haunts them too.

Leave it all behind and there is happiness

Though it’s been hard, I’ve reached a point where I recognise that if I want to be happy, I need to leave behind the ‘what ifs’ and ‘what’s “meant” to be’ and focus on what is and the people who want to be in my life.

Tell me, when did your winning smile begin to look like a smirk?

Like I mentioned, I grew up as a daddy’s girl. Growing up, he was always the ‘fun’ parent. The one who was smiling and laughing all the time. The one who propped me up when I felt down. The one I really thought believed in me. But somewhere along the lines, he took offence to me wanting him to step up and face his choices so that we could fix our family. And as a result, he took joy in, in his own words, turning my sister against my mother and I and pushing me to still see him in order for mum to get spousal payments before the legal settlement out of spite. So I spent years begging him to be different, really thinking it was just a moment of hurt just for him to take pleasure in it.

When did all our lessons start to look like weapons pointed at my deepest hurt?

I’ve hinted at the fact that my mother is still less willing to recover and move past what happened with my family. Consequently, she’s spent the last 5 ½ years being like a bull seeing red at all times. And though I’ve tried everything I could to help her (literal hundreds of letters to politicians and other related parties to step in, reaching out to family, constant meetings with lawyers etc), even going as far as to go to law school hoping to find a solution there. But none of it panned out like we hoped. And because richer people with better connections, more money and “smaller” issues that are unrelated to ours won their cases in court and because I’m fighting for future laws to prevent this happening again rather than the unwinnable battle with my now fully adult and moved on family, suddenly it’s my fault things turned out like they did. She genuinely believes I did not try hard enough and did not care enough about my family, and particularly my sister, when in reality, losing her was, is, and always will be the biggest heartbreak of my life.

I hope she'll be your beautiful fool who takes my spot next to you

I’ve mentioned in a few other posts that both of my parents have, in their own way, raised my sister and I to be rivals rather than sisters. And so when my father chose to not reunite our family, it felt like he was picking her over me. And in my bitterness, I spent a long time making comments about how she was either just as bad as he is and using him financially or she was an idiot who couldn’t see through his bullshit and was fine being nothing more than a trophy so long as she was his favourite.

No, I didn't mean that. Sorry, I can't see facts through all of my fury

With time and distance away from my father and the refusal to constantly lend myself to my mother’s negativity however, I realised that I really had been aiming my anger at the wrong person. My sister was 16 when she left. A literal child. Each and every adult in my family, my then 20 year old self included, owed her more than what happened. Even if she was a “problem child” who physically and verbally lashed out, we owed her more and we failed her. That’s the part about all this that will haunt me forever. It’s not what happened to me. It’s what happened to her and the ways I let my anger and my parents cloud my vision to the point I know in my heart that things would have been different and I could have done more to save this family had I not. And I know that that anger probably traumatised and provoked a lot of my sister’s actions too. And in all honesty? The anger probably came from a place of projection too because in realising my father would rather stick with his lies than his family, I had to accept that I had been the fool that spent years soaking up praise about my achievements just to find out that’s as far as his ‘favouritism’ of me went.

You haven't met the new me yet

I somewhat joke about it, but I genuinely feel like I became a new person in 2019. Though I’m obviously not like magically healed from the trauma or anything, and while I don’t ever see a way I can have these people in my life again, on the most part I have a new outlook on everything. On top of no longer blaming my sister, I’ve been putting the focus back on myself both in terms of things I could have done differently but also doing my best to not see my family’s decision to lie and take the easy way out as being a reflection on me. Because ultimately, it’s not about me; and it took me a long time to realise that. And there’s a sense of peace in that which is the first of many parts that they won’t know about me. And in many ways, that feels like the first step to rebuilding myself.

There'll be happiness after me

Much like how my life has kept going, so has theirs. My now nearly 22 year old sister has a son who’s about to be a toddler. She has friends I’ve probably never met. My other family members probably have just as fulfilling relationships and memories that I’m not part of. It’s sad, but that’s how life goes.

But there was happiness because of me

Again, just like how my anger doesn’t negate the positive memories I’ve had with these people, realistically it’s doubtful that every second of the 16 – 23 years they knew me was neutral at best for them.

Both of these things, I believe

Logically you cannot have one of the above and not the other. Like despite what my mother thinks, you do not just stop being happy one day just because someone, or in this case many people, left. But that new happiness you have doesn’t make the old happiness any less honest. Also just in general In still in a place where like I really have to believe that my family loved and were happy with me but also happy now or else I’ll have a mental breakdown. So yeah…

There is happiness in our history, across our great divide there is a glorious sunrise, dappled with the flickers of light from the dress I wore at midnight

Like I’ve said, I have had a lot of good memories with my family, and with them being night owls and our Christmas day events at my uncle’s tending to run for 10 – 12 hours, the use of the time of midnight feels all the more personal to me. And while like I said, these fond memories aren’t enough to go back to that environment, they’re enough to be a light in the dark that reminds me that I’ve been happy before and illuminate the way across the divide to be happy again.

I can't make it go away by making you a villain

Listen, I will probably blame my father and other family members for the rest of my days over what happened. But with the new me that came in 2019, I’ve also accepted that focusing on that both internally and feeling the need to demonise them to everyone by acting like they were the only ones to make bad calls and that some of those calls didn’t come from a well-intentioned but misinformed place doesn’t make any of the pain go away. Even if they were the devil personified, I cannot change what happened. All I can focus on is myself and my future. And that’s the only way I’m going to heal and find peace.

I guess it's the price I paid for seven years in Heaven

Despite everything that happened in my childhood before the split, I am someone who got through it still loving my family and not feeling traumatised by them (or at least not processing it as such) until my adulthood. And while that may seem very bare minimum for a lot of people, it’s also a lot better than a lot of people had it.

And I pulled your body into mine every goddamn night, now I get fake niceties

I know a lot of people see this as a sexual line, but I gotta be real, from the first listen, I pictured the moments where I held/hugged my sister through anxiety attacks and lash outs and my father did the same for me. And again, despite that intimacy, we’re now in a place where we’re only polite in public (not that I’ve seen them out but if I did) in order to not cause a scene/get chucked out of wherever we were. Also, I can see this being how my father viewed all the awkward silences (which I spoke about in my It’s Time To Go post) and whatever when I did go to see him after my parents separation, because again, it did feel more like obligation than actually wanting to be there and while I know he somewhat caused that by deliberately keeping the family apart, I still feel bad over it.

No one teaches you what to do when a good man hurts you and you know you hurt him, too

Even the worst of families never expect things to blow up in the way my family’s relationships did. There isn’t and probably never will be a manual on that shit. And there’s an inherit loneliness about that because while your other loved ones can stand by your side, ultimately you gotta go through that shit alone because no one really knows what to say. So all the guilt, anger, depression and whatever else you’re feeling is exactly that: yours and yours alone. And that makes it all the rougher.

But now my eyes leak acid rain on the pillow where you used to lay your head

After my sister and father left, my mother couldn’t bare to sleep in her and my father’s old room nor my sister and my old room; instead opting to sleep in the lounge room. As a result, I moved into my parents’ old room. Though I have all new furniture, it’s set up in much the same way my parents had it and so it’s hard to not think about how my father slept in the same place I am now for 20 years of my life and the same can be said about my sister being in our childhood room for 16 years of her life. And while I’m somebody who has blocked out the ability to cry over most emotions, I’m still someone who cries very easily when I’m frustrated which as much as I wish I wasn’t, I still am frustrated and have cried more tears than I’d like to admit over how easy it should have been to keep our family together and how they just didn’t want to. And because there is that bitterness with the frustration, it does feel far more toxic than regular tears.

After giving you the best I had, tell me what to give after that

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve blamed myself a lot for decisions I should have made differently in this process, so I see this more as a line to remind myself that I did all I could. Like I took the ‘nice’ route with the adults in my family only to be rejected, I tried the assertive route and was only met with being cut off, and even if I took the ‘nice’ route with my sister, there is no reconnecting people who do not want to be. They all made their choices and could have come back at any time to hear our side even if they didn’t want to at the beginning, but again, taking the easy route was more important to them than taking the right one and no amount of me giving them what they wanted was going to change that.

All you want from me now is the green light of forgiveness... and I think she'll give you that

This is another fantasy moment for me. Like I really hope that one day I can forgive my family. Not to be in their life or anything, that ship has sailed. But just for my own peace of mind. I feel like I’m almost there with my sister, but honestly? It feels like I’m never going to get there with the rest of them. Alternatively, I see this line as again, being about forgiving myself for the bad calls I made, and while I’m not quite there either, I definitely think I will get there someday.

[whump-the-caretaker]

Shifter - pt. 1

Initially inspired by @whumpthisway‘s shapeshifter prompts, this got way out of hand and ended up pages and pages long. I’ll be posting it in chunks as editing allows. Later sections have some threatened but not depicted non-con and will be tagged as such. Non-consensual nudity throughout due to, you know, shapeshifting. 

--------

about the characters / next

Beck had been told to keep his shifting quiet.

Over and over, since he was a kid. It was dangerous for people to know, talents like that could be envied and abused. Being more than human could easily enough become less than human.

It’s not like he didn’t know.

It’s just that he hadn’t cared.  

He’d always been dumb and reckless. An idiot kid. His heart had been broken, and it hadn’t seemed to matter whether the dangers were real or not. Shifting was a skill he could use, so he would fucking use it. The whole city knew now, just like they knew not to fuck with him, and his powers were just another factor in the healthy respect he cultivated.

Except now he’d been grabbed. 

Now he was in a glass box with tiny air holes, staring out into a goddamn laboratory and trying not to panic.

Now a man in a fucking labcoat was stepping into the room, a clipboard in his hands and a cool look in his eyes. 

“Hello, beautiful,” he greeted, crossing over to the table where the glass case was perched, pen tapping against the metal clipboard. Beck bristled but was still formulating a response when he tapped on the glass and added, “Aren’t you just the perfect specimen?”

His jaw dropped. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

The man ignored him and turned away to look through the cabinets. 

“Did you just call me a specimen?”

On a tray, he was setting out an array of things Beck didn’t recognize, glass marbles and tiny rubber tubes. His anxiety and anger were warring in his gut until he thought he might be sick.  

“Tell me, what is your range of forms?” The man set the tray beside the case.

Beck’s jaw clenched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Mmhmm, of course you don’t.” 

He adjusted the items in front of him and picked up the first of the marbles.

“What is that?”

The man didn’t answer, just rolled the glass between his fingers and dropped it through the holes in the top of the case.

Beck pressed back against the case, eyeing it warily, and looked up in time to see the man deftly plugging rubber into the air holes. 

“Wait, don’t--”

The glass sphere shattered with a tiny clink and a soft grey gas drifted up from inside.

He looked sharply to the man for some explanation and coughed when the first breath of it hit his lungs. 

“I’ll take the plugs out when you can manage a human form again.”

“What--”

But he could already feel the pressure on his bones, his muscles being dragged out onto a new body. It wasn’t anything like his own shift. It was like being pulled apart and then crammed into an ill-fitting shape.

He panted at the exertion, at the fur blooming and the teeth lengthening in his jaw, and then he was finished, clothes in tatters around a canine body, his senses telling him that he was something big, something sharp, with a clear nose picking out each bitter chemical in the lingering smoke. 

“Beautiful,” the man commented, tapping again on the glass. “Shift back as soon as you can or you’ll run out of air.”

Beck’s heart pounded, the impulse to shift back shooting through his limbs. Nothing happened. He was still a wolf. A whine escaped his throat, paws scratching at the case. He couldn’t shift. 

He could feel his lungs working, panicking, heaving air in and out, and he knew he needed to stop. He was going to use all his air before the drugs had a chance to clear his system. But animals were driven by instinct so much more than humans, and his body told him he needed to escape. 

The panic took him, blinded him, overruled any human emotions, and his head didn’t come above water until he was sprawled, human, sweaty and unable to get a proper breath, on the floor of the case. The man was looking at him with disdain, and he felt exposed for reasons unrelated to being bare-ass naked in a display case. 

The plugs were pulled and cool air hit his face. He tried to breathe normally, but his lungs ached. 

“Seventy-two seconds. Not the fastest shift I’ve seen, but a place to start.” The man picked up a clipboard from a hook on the table and made a few notes. “Now. Range. How small can you shift?”

Beck shook his head slowly. 

The man held up another marble. “This is for an etruscan shrew. They’re only about 0.1 ounces. I’m told it’s extremely painful if your body rejects it.”

“No, I can’t. I can’t go that small.”

“There, was that so hard?”

Beck gritted his teeth and scowled at him. 

“What’s the smallest thing you’ve ever been?”

Beck swallowed roughly. “A ring snake. A small ring snake. That’s as small as I can go.”

He made a few notes. “And how big?”

“Big cats. I tried an elephant once and couldn’t. Never been anything bigger than a lion.”

“And have you ever gotten stuck?” the man asked, tapping his pen against the clipboard. 

Beck shook his head.

“Lying to me could be very dangerous.”

“No, I’ve never gotten stuck as anything. I’ve had trouble shifting into things if I was sick or stressed out, but I’m always able to get back to my real body.”

“By “real” body, you’re referring this one?” he asked, gesturing to Beck.

“Yeah,” Beck snapped. “My human body.”

“I see.” He walked in a circle around the table, making notes as he did so.

Beck’s skin itched. 

“Can you effect cosmetic changes? Hair color, body weight, etc.”

“Yeah.”

“No scars or visible skin markings outside of the tattoos… Do your animal forms retain the tattoos under the fur?”

He shook his head. “I only have them when I’m human.”

“Have you ever been a woman?”

Beck flushed, eyes dropping away.

“Ah, well. Good to know.” He tapped his clipboard a few times and hung it back on the hook. “That will do for now. Now, I’m going to film a few transformations for comparison purposes. I would hate to waste the time and resources to force you, so please do cooperate.”

The setup clicked up into place from under the table, and he adjusted it to focus on Beck, who angled himself away. He was still fucking naked. The man fiddled a moment more and a red light began to flash.

“All right. Mammal of choice.”

Beck looked away and shifted into a fox. His ears twitched in agitation. 

“Reptile.” 

The first shift of scales on the glass, and he immediately slipped back into his own body, shivers shaking his entire frame. “Fuck, too cold,” he said. 

The man looked displeased, but let it go. “Avian.”

Beck’s body was starting to ache from the quick succession, but it would be worse if the man chose for him. He slid into a falcon’s form and held it, despite the grating feel of talons unable to grasp onto the floor. 

“Amphibian.”

He didn’t often have cause for amphibian, but a toad was at least more pleasant than a falcon in this space.

“Fish.”

He blinked at the man, unsure whether he was stupid or cruel. 

“A moment as a fish is better than… what was your time? Seventy seconds?”

Cruel, then.

Beck got a breath, as well as he could manage in a toad’s body, and forced himself, against all instincts, into a fish. 

It hurt as bad as the cold and the panic combined. He managed three beats of his tail before he was back as himself, hands and knees, choking and retching. 

The man gave him a moment, but Beck was still coughing to clear his throat when he ordered, “Woman.” 

Shivers ran up his spine. He violently did not want to do that. 

“Shift into a woman.”

He didn’t honestly look much different when he complied, still fairly flat chested and narrow. But he crossed his arms over himself anyway and wished more than anything to have some of his clothing left. 

“Turn your hair brown.” 

He shivered and did so.

“All of your hair.”

He glanced down at the patch of white blond between his legs and swore at the man, cheeks hot and a tight coil of fury in his gut. He did it and flipped the camera off, too angry to keep his tits covered. 

“Small as you can go.”

Beck shook his head. “I can’t do much more of this.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Beck gaped at him. “It’s not something I can do indefinitely! I need to eat or rest or something. It fucking takes energy.”

He waved dismissively. “Two more, and we’ll be finished.”

Beck didn’t point out that that was actually three more, to get back to normal. Didn’t press again that he was exhausted.

“Small as you can go.”

He closed his eyes, picking a small rodent this time. He’d learned his lesson about snakes. 

His bones ached.

“Big as you can go.” 

Beck looked around. As small as he was, his perspective was skewed, but he was nearly certain that he wouldn’t fit in the space.

“If you were telling the truth to me earlier, you’ll be fine. Shift.”

He didn’t want to have to trust him. He didn’t want to. The thought of going from the size of a mouse to the size of a lion when his bones felt like they’d been broken a dozen times and poorly stitched back together made him want to puke.

“Shift.”

He did as he was told.

A tortured sound that couldn’t even generously be called a roar choked out of him as the flanks of a lion hit the walls of his confinement. His body tore itself apart building the new shape, twisting and pressing him into every available millimeter of the too small space. The hard barriers bruised his skin--it couldn’t be glass, because he pressed against it at all points, compressed and twisted and straining against the material.

He dropped back into human form, tears running down his face. Exhaustion and pain overrode his senses, and he just lay there, fully exposed, and shuddered through waves of shock. 

“That will be plenty. I see we have our work cut out for us.”

Beck looked dazedly towards him, watched him turn off the camera and write a few more notes on the clipboard. He hung it back on its hook and, with Beck collapsed, too weak to even move much less attempt an escape, opened the top of the case and dropped in a box of dried rations and a bottle of water. 

[charlie-artlie]

hhhhhggrrrmmhhhgggggggg aaaaaaa ok i got on in this white hell box to start slamming rvb s15 but that ep10 was so good!!!!!!! click below to watch me go back and forth on this topic for like 5or10 paragraphs lmao!!!!!!!!!

ok so lemme start with things i like which 

1). UHG??? that beach scene!!!!!!! perfect amazing perfection everything ive ever wanted???!!!!????!!!! they held hands im literally crying my hands were over my face the whole time like!!!!!!! AAAAAA so that was great

2). i........ like temple. even tho i got spoiled about him being a villain  i still thought the reveal was good and i have such a soft spot for smarmy yandere style “im gonna emotionally torture u :)” villains. it also probably doesnt help that i love and miss church so hes a fun stand in on that front AS WELL AS a stand in as tuckers new evil boyfriend now that felix is a pancake

2.5). unrelated but did we get confirm on felix being dead??? he aint dead til i see a body jussaiyin...

3). i have mixed feelings on church coming back that ill get into but church is maybe my favorite character so ultimately i view that as a plus?

4). i really put this one off cuz i was still reeling over this newest episode but all the potential grif development (and by extension red team development as a whole) that looks like its gonna happen this season has got me bittin the pillow like i kid u not im on the edge of my seat fam

ok but like. now onto the real shit. (THIS GOT SO LONG SHIT)

the one thing that is really REALLY holding me back from fully enjoying this season is wanting to know what the crews fuckin intentions are with this show. like. im gonna go ahead and put my hat on the fuckin table or whatever but season 13 was an ending. it was  good fucking ending too (and i know someones gonna go back and pull up receipts of me a year or so ago begging for a continuation season after s13 ended but dont do that pls) and to continue after an ending like that with a time skip like that makes this whole season feel like an epilogue to me? like a clean up? like there were some loose ends were tying up.

like. if theyre serious about this season and about ALL these new characters theyre bringing up then were looking at an arc here. like its gonna have to be to bring this to a proper close after all this extra shit?? they cant comfortably bring this to a close in one season

like what are they planning????whats the point of all this????

i honestly wouldn’t even  be so bent out of shape about it all, like it wouldn’t seem like such a stretch but the fact that we’re introduced to this season with dylan, who is also, largely, framed as a main character this season. who is. a new character. :/

like i get the narrative tool of using a reporter to drag your characters out of retirement for “one last job” (again, kinda framing it to be one season which worries me!) but whyyyyyy do we have to go through all this stuff with dylan and jax??????? like W H Y do we have to go through the same relationship development we’ve seen like three times already?????? jax is characteristically indistinguishable from caboose, so like???? weve seen this before!! the cold cynical “i dont need friends im just doing my job” person getting frustrated by having to deal with the idiot heart-of-gold tagalong who refuses to hate them no matter how mean or terrible they are like?? we saw it with church and caboose. we saw it later with wash and caboose. we saw it with church and caboose againnnnnnnn. we even kinda saw it with tucker and palomo!!!!! like whats the point of repeating this scene again and again!!!! we get it cynical mean assholes deserve unconditional love too i guess!!!!

like i just cant really get into it. and i dont even really mind dylan like i like her a lot more than i initially thought i would but i already can pretty much see the direction her character arch is going so im just sorta like shrug. shes gonna push jax until he leaves and then...........only then..........will she learn how much she should have valued his unconditional love.................even if he annoyed her and they didnt get along objectively in any way shape or form. but since he likes her then its her job to reciprocate even if she doesnt get anything out of the relationship at all. also she shot him. but whatever their friendship is beautiful (didnt know i had this much salt over this particular subject lmao whoops)

ok so narratively i only see two reasons to do this and im not crazy about either

1). theyre building up to draw some parallels between dylan and like wash or church or s/t but again i dont see the reasoning like why is this season framed around teacher dylan an important lesson about friendship you brought the show back from the jaws or death to give my a character arc for a new character????

2). this its more significant than it seems (i.e. theyre not who we think they are, i mean, its pretty suspicious we only have jax’s stage name rn) like theyre more significant players than we’ve been led to believe

(((also also im with grif on the whole bringing church back thing lmao. like WE DID THIS ALREADY??? there were a lot of AI why dont we ever go on an epic quest to save any of my other favs like oh idk TEX?????????!!!!!!!!!???????)))

but really tho my real and true problem is that i cant tell why theyre still making episodes. is it because theres still a story here that needs to be told or just because they can. and i know my hangup with this mostly stems from one interview i saw after s13 ended with miles and burnie where burnie pretty much said “yea if i had it my way uh i would end it here but hey it is what it is :/” and that just sorta struck a cord with me. maybe because he was a writer and one of the original people who created it i was sorta uncomfortable with taking the show places he didnt want to take it (and i could be TOTALLY off base with this assessment!!!! like i dont know how burnie really feels about this show rn he could be totally digging the new stuff this is just a personal things thats a hangup in just my own head!!!!)

ok so i think i covered pretty much everything i needed to say about this season so far if you actually read this far thanks if u gave up and skipped to the end then i have one last food for thought:

im gonna be the huge stick in the mud who says it: people are putting way too much faith in a company that is still using donut to make cheap gay jokes by actually thinking grimmons is going to become canon and im sorry that youre going to be disappointed. what we are going to get is a unsatisfying reunion and subsequent make up a la church and tucker in s12 and thats it.

thats not what i want to happen thats what i believe will happen. i am FULLY prepared to eat my own hat if im wrong. you may consider this text post legally binding