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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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(WLW anon) I really don’t like the “bad rep is better then none at all”. I hate that. We should want good rep, because bad rep has been used time and time again by homophobes as to say we shouldn’t get representation. To me it’s not “gay can have the same flaws as het”, it’s “fix the flaws in the het”. Also I know Renora being independent was a good, I was just saying in comparison BB. Also, yes, they were separated, but also didn’t stop thinking about each other. Especially bad with Yang.

Indulge me for a moment because I want to take a trip down memory lane and list some—just some—of the queer rep that has been important to me over the years:

Ellen comes out both as herself and as her character… years later, she’s a hated millionaire who is criticized for how she treats her staff

The wildly influential Buffy gives us two women entering a loving relationship… except then Tara is killed off, Willow goes evil for a time, and Buffy comes under fire for Joss Whedon’s everything

The beloved and respectable headmaster of one of the most popular book series ever published is revealed to be gay… except it doesn’t count because it wasn’t in the text and now all of Harry Potter is cancelled because JKR is transphobic

Kurt is an unambiguously gay teen in a hugely popular TV series, acting as one of the first overt representations a generation has seen… except he’s way too stereotypical and Glee is a joke now

Orange is the New Black gives us a number of queer women, including one of our first trans characters… but isn’t it problematic that they’re all criminals?

Brooklyn Nine-Nine hosts an out gay captain and gives us a bisexual coming out story that resonated with many, myself included… except now we’re supposed to hate all the characters on principle because they’re cops

Korra and Asami walk off into the spiritual sunset together… but they never kiss or anything, so that doesn’t count either

Steven Universe gives us a queer relationship and a wedding… but it’s an issue that this is just a kid’s show and, really, does it count when the rep is embodied by space rocks whose entire species only creates a single gender? Feels like a cop-out

Same with Good Omens. Yeah, Crowley and Aziraphale clearly love each other… but you never see them kiss or declare their intentions. It’s great ace rep though! Unless you want to level the criticism that asexual characters are always nonhuman

A character intended to be a minor guest becomes a show staple and eventually declares his love for one of the two main characters… except then Castiel immediately dies, Dean doesn’t respond, and they never meet on screen again

I finished Queen’s Gambit the other day and the main character had a one-night stand with a woman! … but everyone is talking about how bisexuality is used to represent her lowest point, so that’s bad too

I could go on for literal pages. Some of these arguments I agree with (Dumbledore), others I’ve pushed back against quite strongly (Crowley and Aziraphale), but all of them are valid criticisms depending on what part of the queer community you’re in and what your expectations are. My point here is that it’s all “bad rep.” I mean that seriously. If anyone reading this is scrambling for the comment section to say why [insert media title here] is actually fantastic rep, I guarantee that someone disagrees. Or if they don’t, give it some time. Just wait until the characterization becomes offensively outdated, or another part of the story ruins the relationship, or it comes out that the author did something truly horrific, or the terminology changes and it’s labeled as “problematic” now… just wait. At some point, any rep we feel is good rep now will be criticized, cancelled, and dragged through the mud. The rep that I personally haven’t seen much push-back against—like the beloved Captain Jack Harkness in Doctor Who, or Schitts Creek that just won a ton of awards—is wrapped up in the criticism, “So it’s all just about able-bodied, cis, (mostly) white dudes, huh? :/” Even the argument that queer characters need to be written by queer authors doesn’t hold up. I absolutely adored Sense8. “Wow, a gay main character in a loving relationship with another gay man, both of whom enter a loving poly relationship with a woman, another lesbian trans main character who marries the love of her life on screen, an entire cast arguably queer due to them sharing orgy scenes centered around the emotional intimacy they share, everyone survives, and this was written by two trans women! Great, right?” Well, not according to the wealth of opinions explaining how Sense8 is horrible rep, actually. Every piece of rep we’ve got is either currently flawed or will become flawed in the future.

So what do we do with that?

That’s where my “I’d rather have bad rep than no rep at all” comes in. For me, that’s not waving the white flag. That’s not an oath that I won’t expect better rep in the future (I do) or that I won’t criticize the rep we get (BOY DO I), but rather just an acknowledgement of reality. The vast majority—if not the entirety—of rep is “bad rep” in one way or another, but I’d still rather have it than nothing at all. Because I’ve lived just long enough and studied media just enough to know what nothing looked like. It was watching all queer characters meet untimely deaths. Before that it was watching queer characters be derided and treated as jokes. Before that it was nothing but coding, where queer characters didn’t exist except in our own headcanons and interpretations. Obviously “bad rep” covers a very large range of issues and “They haven’t even confirmed this relationship yet” is a bigger issue than “This queer character embodies one or two, mild stereotypes,” but ultimately I’d take any of it over nothing at all. And enjoying what we’ve currently got doesn’t mean I’m willing to settle for it indefinitely.

To use an iffy analogy, imagine there’s a factory. This factory makes plates. So. Many. Plates. Big plates, small plates, plain plates, decorative plates, plates for every possible occasion in your life—and everyone with a steak for dinner is pleased as punch. You though? You’ve got soup. You need a bowl. Your entire life you’ve been struggling to eat your soup off a plate (it doesn’t work) and listening to friends and family claim that the plate with a slightly raised edge could be a bowl if you squint (it’s not). To say it’s frustrating is an understatement.

But then, one day, the factory starts producing bowls too. Hurray! Except as soon as you get your hands on one, you’re told you really shouldn’t be using it, let alone praising it. Look at the state of that bowl! It’s cracked right down the middle, ugly as hell, shoddily made all around… you’re not really going to settle for that, are you? And no, you obviously still want the factory to produce better bowls, but at the same time, this is a bowl. You’ve never gotten one before and you can finally enjoy your meal, even if the soup leaks at times. Sometimes a lot. But you’re still feeling better about your meal than you ever have before. And what you then begin to realize is that lots of the plates are a mess too. They also have cracks, they’re also ugly, many are also shoddily made. The difference is that the factory is producing so many plates at such a rapid pace that every steak eater is able to get by. One plate breaks completely? You’ve got a thousand fallbacks. Don’t like the look of this one? A thousand other options. You disagree about what “shoddily made” means? Luckily there are enough plates that everyone can find what they prefer! But the bowls… there’s only a few. Some are really expensive. Others are only available for a limited time before they suddenly disappear. Your bowl breaks and you have to wait months, years sometimes, to get another one. You’re constantly told to go buy this one obscure bowl no one else has heard about and yeah, you like it... but you’d also like to buy one of the bowls everyone is already enjoying. You find yourself looking at the plates and thinking, “I’d like that. I’d like to have so many options that the flaws, while still a problem, are much more bearable.” You’re still going to demand that the factory get its shit together, you’re still going to (rightly) complain about the awful quality of your bowl… but it’s still nice to have a bowl, period. There are still things you like about it, even if it’s a mess: the color, the size, the beauty of the shape of it. Its potential. You’re still pleased you have something to enjoy and that helps serve the need you’re looking to fill, even if that something is imperfect.

That’s “bad rep is better than no rep.” To bring this very long response back to Blake/Yang, I don’t think their problems negate their benefits. Is their relationship currently non-canonical and filled with a number of writing issues everyone has a right to be angry about? Yup. I express that anger a great deal. Are they still half of a team on a very popular show that is (presumably) set to be canonized as queer? Yup. I’d much rather live in a world where big shows like RWBY try to include queer rep and fail in a multitude of ways—with the expectation and hope that they’ll continue to improve—rather than in a world where authors a) don’t care or b) are too scared to try. Because that’s where a “good rep or no rep” stance leads. The danger isn’t homophobes because they’re, well, homophobes. It doesn’t matter if the rep is good or not, they hate it on principle. But if queer authors writing for other queer identities, or allies writing queer identities, or even queer authors writing their own experiences (like in Sense8) continually come under non-stop fire for their attempts… there’s a good chance that many people won’t ever try. We’re already seeing that here on tumblr with young authors admitting that they wouldn’t touch [insert topic here] with a ten-foot pole because just look at what happens when you get it wrong. And authors will get things wrong because authors are fallible people forever unlearning their own ignorance. So though it might sound strange coming from a blog that has turned into such a RWBY critical space, I am glad that RWBY’s queer rep exists, despite all the frustrations that I share about it. I think a RWBY with various types of “bad” queer rep is better than a RWBY with no queer rep at all, particularly when “bad” or “good” is so intensely subjective. There’s a middle ground between passively accepting whatever we’re given, and tearing into rep with such ferocity that we end up rejecting it all. There’s a space where we can be critical of rep and embrace the parts that work for us, simultaneously.

I hope and expect the het rep will get better too, but… that’s never going to happen instantly. To quote RWBY, there’s no magic wand we can wave to fix all our problems. Rather, it will take slow, plodding, meandering, lifetimes’ worth of work to see that change occur and I personally don’t want to spend the one life I have waiting for that perfect rep to show up. Because it’s unlikely that it will. While we work, I’d rather find the good in what rep we’ve already got.

#rwby #queer #mymetas #Anonymous

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thegeminisage · 3 years

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I'm so sorry if this is rude or disrespectful, I just wondered if you think Mary Winchester was a bad parent too?

WELL first of all i don’t think mary has ever done anything wrong in her entire life even when she did so jot that down

by which i mean i AM a mary winchester apologist. if she ever did do anything wrong no she didn’t. if she does have shitty taste in men no she doesn’t. you see what i’m saying? and by the way like fuck the audience for not loving to her just because she had her own agenda and wasn’t always bending over backwards to take care of dean’s pwecious wittle feewings. like he’s a grown-ass man. why were we STILL expecting the women in his life to do that kind of emotional labor for him in 2016 smh this is why she got refridged i’ll be bitter about it until i die

but to actually attempt to put all of that down and answer your question: i think she just wasn’t a parent. like i don’t mean in the deadbeat way i mean she LITERALLY wasn’t there to do any parenting. by the time your kids become adults 95% of your parenting duties are finished - mostly older parents of adult children offer wisdom and emotional support/a financial safety net in trying times, right? but when mary came back, she was YOUNGER than them; what wisdom did she have to offer? same on the other two fronts - finances mean nothing in supernatural, and as for emotional support, she had just lost her entire life and gotten captain america’d 33 years forward into the future to, again i stress this, HER CHILDREN BEING OLDER THAN HER. she couldn’t offer any emotional support because she was the one needing it...and dean kind of screwed the pooch on that one, because he needed some serious emotional support himself, and he threw a tantrum about not getting it from her, about her not being the mom he remembered.

and as an aside: speaking on the mary dean remembered, i DO think she was a good parent for the first four years of dean’s life. she tried to keep her voice down on the phone when she fought with john, and tried to convince john to come home to their kids - even when she disappeared for a few days to go on werewolf hunts, there’s no evidence that she didn’t believe she was leaving her kids in capable hands (because i also prefer to think that john was a decent parent/person before the fire; it’s more fun and fucked up that way). we know she fed dean and made him feel safe because he has fond memories of both. and she REALLY wanted to be a mother - this mothering urge never really left her (look how she throws longing glances at children and parents in public, look how she is with jack - she never totally stopped missing her little boys). there’s no reason to assume she didn’t give it her all.

but again, once she’s back, there’s not much parenting left to be done, and what there is left to do is all stuff she’s incapable of. even after mary and dean made their peace and formed a stronger, more honest relationship after the end of s12, i’d argue that it’s not a mother and son relationship. she’s a little motherly with him sometimes as a treat to them both; she wants to mother, and he wants to be mothered. but they’re sort of just tacitly agreeing to play pretend because it makes them both happy - she’s still younger than him, and he’s still as protective of her as ever, just the same way he’s protective of john and sam.

so if they’re not mother/son, what are they? well, mary and dean both functionally filled the gap as john’s spouse, so instead i think they act as peers/equals/maybe even siblings? even though we don’t see as much of mary and sam’s relationship (which is a SHAAAME) i’d argue that the two of THEM have a more traditional mother/son dynamic. mary is one of the people who falls in next to dean as sam’s co-parent (along with cas, who DEFINITELY doesn’t have a parental dynamic with sam, but functionally protects him at all costs like a parent would because that’s what dean does and dean is his life partner).

so all of that is to say: no, i don’t think mary was a bad parent simply because she never got to BE a parent. we don’t really know what kind of parent she would have been - when your kids are that young it’s hard to fuck it up as long as you keep them fed and cared for and don’t neglect or abuse them. we never got to see her do the hard childhood/teenhood stuff and we never will! like she simply was not there because she was like, dead. i guess some people might blame her for being dead (like john...) but one could also argue she’d have never made the deal if she had known how it would have turned out.

but i think what matters most in the end, to both mary and her boys, is that she’s there and they’re not on the outs with each other. the winchesters have such fucked up and complicated family dynamics that that’s pretty much the best you can possibly expect, so it makes me happy that they got there for a little while <3 even if it got ruined later :/

[spn masterpost]

#liz answers asks #anonymous #mary winchester #liz's meta #liz's spn stuff #long post #anyway stan mary. she's one of the most complex and layered female characters this show ever had #and they WASTED her to give dean and cas something to divorce over. i will literally never forgive them

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imaginationintowords · 4 years

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Folklore [song series]

illicit affairs

Modern Day AU! Bucky Barnes x OC!Reader; Steve Rogers x OC!Reader

Plot: Inspired by Taylor Swift’s new album Folklore. The story follows the timeline of Bucky and Elizabeth’s life throughout the years

Word count: 2393

Warnings: some swearing, nothing too unsettling, Bucky being Bucky.

[a/n: please let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist or if you’d like to be removed. If you’d like to be added to the taglist just simply message me]

Previous part

Series Masterlist

Age: 19

Year: 2013

Location: New York

When Bucky had brought up taking it slow with Elizabeth he truly meant it because he wanted to give their relationship a fair shot. He really did want the relationship to work. He really wanted to be with Elizabeth again.

At least that's what he had thought.

For the past year, while away at school he always had this notion that they would be getting back together once they returned fro the summer.

For the first couple of months at school Bucky ignored any person who tried getting with him. He was determined to change, to prove to not just Elizabeth, but to himself that he's a changed man.

He was going to focus on himself. Truly work on himself.

And it was all going well until he and his roommate Sam went to a party. The party was being thrown at a nearby fraternity. Everything was going well until these two girls started to flirt with him and Sam.

Bucky ended up leaving with one of the girls and as did Sam.

Bucky had woken up the next morning feeling completely awful about what he had done. He spent the greater part of his morning self-loathing.

Once Same had gotten back he became worried over seeing the state Bucky was in.

"Hey are you okay?" Sam asked

"No, I fucked up," Bucky said sitting at the edge of his bed, pulling on his hair.

"What did you do?" Sam asked concerned.

"I hooked up with that girl from last night."

"Are you serious?" Sam shook his head in disbelief over Bucky's freak out.

"Yes, I'm serious."

"Aren't you single?"

"Yeah," Bucky looked at him as if he had three heads.

"Did you both consent to having sex?" Sam asked sitting down on his own bed across from Bucky.

"Yeah."

"Then I don't see the problem," Sam said, "You both consented and you're both single. So what am I missing?"

Bucky froze. Realistically he didn't do anything wrong. He and Elizabeth weren't together, and it's not like she knew he wanted to get back together. Plus, she was on the other side of the country. It's not like she would hear about this.

"You're right. There isn't a problem," Bucky said, feeling himself calming down, "Just had a bit of a moment."

"Are you sure you're good now?" Sam asked, "I don't want to come back from taking a shower to find you spiraling again."

"Yeah, I'm good," Bucky assured Sam.

That girl wasn't the last girl Bucky hooked up with. But he also didn't go crazy with it. He was at NYU on partial scolarship, so he needed to also focus on maintaining high grades.

Over the course of his first semester he found a good balance between school and having a personal life. The one thing Bucky did make sure not to touch was alcohol. Growing up he had a front row seat to the negatives of what alcohol could do to a person. The last thing he ever wanted to do was be like his father.

By the end of his first year of school he was thriving, mentally and physically. He had made it onto the Dean's List and he made a lot of wonderful new friends. He had also decided to take some summer courses, wanting to speed up his timeline to graduate.

For the first time in a very long time Bucky was proud of himself. He couldn't wait to show Elizabeth the young man he had become. Someone worthy of being with her.

Bucky was back home a week before Steve was due to return. He had spent part of the week unpacking and spending time with his family.

It was one day, the same day Steve was flying back in, that he took Rebecca to the mall.

Rebecca was browsing the candles in Bath and Body Works, that's when Bucky bumped into her.

Natasha Romanoff.

He hadn't seen her since the end of last summer before she left to go to Yale University.

Nothing romantic had happened between them after everyone found out about their affair. Natasha did try bringing up the idea of them giving it a try, but Bucky had told her he wasn't ready for that. His head space wasn't in the right place to be with anyone.

"Hey Bucky," she smiled brightly, subtly checking him out.

"Uh hey Nat," he awkwardly said.

"You look good," she complimented him.

"So do you," he cleared his throat, finally taking in her appearance.

He would be lying if he didn't say she didn't look good, hell even better than before.

"I see you're back as well," she lightly laughed, trying to make small talk.

"Yeah, just got back last week," he said, "When did you come back?"

"Two days ago," she said, "It's kind of weird being back home, not going to lie."

"Yeah I know what you mean. Even though I was close by, it feels weird," he laughed.

"Bucky, I'm ready to go," he turns around to see Rebecca walking up to them with a bag in her hand.

"Hi Rebecca," Natasha friendly greeted.

"Hi," Rebecca said curtly forcing a fake smile.

Bucky's eyes widen at his sister's rude behavior. Before he could say anything Rebecca was already by the exit of the store.

"Sorry about that," he embarrassedly apologized.

"No worries," Natasha lied, shaking off the feeling.

"I better go," Bucky said starting to walk away, "It was good to see you again."

"You too," she said.

As Bucky walked away, Natasha called out his name. She walked to where he was standing in front of the open store door.

"Maybe if you have some time today, you want to meet up for some coffee?" She hesitantly asked.

Bucky didn't know what to say. He knew he should've rejected the offer, but after the way Rebecca treated Natasha he felt like he needed to accept. And a part of him was missing her.

"Sure," he smiled, "I have to drop off Rebecca first, how about we meet at the cafe a block away from the high school in 30 minutes."

"Deal," she winked.

Bucky thought he was being careful. He thought he had covered up the tracks of what had happened in his car two hours before picking up Steve.

He thought wrong, the second Steve held up Natasha's red lace panties.

After his hook up with Natasha he had promised himself that that was it. With Elizabeth being back home, he couldn't risk her finding out.

Bucky was clearly lying to himself.

That first week Steve was back he alternated going from Steve's to Natasha's. Making up excuses about where he was. Steve didn't suspect a thing, too focused on unpacking his things.

Bucky was actively avoiding his house, afraid of seeing Elizabeth. Part of it was that he wasn't ready to see her quite yet, the other part was guilt for what he was doing with Natasha.

He tried to push that guilt aside, reminding himself that the difference this time was that he was actually single. He and Natasha even agreed to keeping it casual, seeing as Bucky would be busy with school this summer.

When Bucky saw Elizabeth walk into the Rogers' backyard all his thoughts stopped. Steve was right, she looked happy.

He was taken back when she made the first move to talk to him. He was even more surprised when she invited him into her empty house. Which he declined. It's not like he didn't want to, because he really did. His conscious wouldn't allow him to do so. He knew if he really wanted this to work with Elizabeth, they couldn't rush the process. Bucky went to bed that night promising himself he would end it with Natasha in the morning.

That didn't happen.

He told Natasha the truth, that he and Elizabeth were going to try again. When she asked if they were officially back together, Bucky told her no.

He ended up back in her bed.

That's how he spent his summer, going back and forth between the two young women.

It was going well. Or so he thought.

Word had gotten around that he and Elizabeth were spotted out on a date.

Thanks Inez.

So Bucky and Nat had to be extra careful about their meetings. They found themselves meeting in empty parking lots during the early mornings before Bucky headed to class.

As July approached Bucky found his schedule getting much busier, he and Elizabeth weren't seeing each other as often as they were used to.

Truth be told he and Elizabeth weren't even being physical with each other.

Not for the lack of trying on Elizabeth's part. He just couldn't bring himself to do it, not when he had spent his mornings with Natasha.

He knew she was getting slightly frustrated. He just kept telling her that he needed them to take it slow. He knew he would have to end it with Natasha, if he wanted to be with Elizabeth.

So that's what he did.

The week of Steve's birthday Hamptons getaway, he ended it with Nat. He explained to her how he really needed him and Elizabeth to work.

Natasha pretended to understand letting him know there weren't any bad feelings between them.

She spent that week crying over the same boy who couldn't love her back. She felt humiliated about letting him do this to her once again.

Yet she couldn't help but to long for him.

She loved Bucky like she had never loved anyone else.

If that meant always coming second to Elizabeth Sanchez, she would. As long as she had him.

______________

Natasha ended up going to the Hamptons with some of her sorority sisters for the 4th of July. They had heard about a party down the street and decided to check it out. Natasha wasn't expecting to find anyone she knew there, let alone Bucky, with Elizabeth by his side laughing.

She managed to avoid Bucky and any of her hometown classmates. She didn't want that drama. She also didn't want her new friends finding out about her past.

When everyone went out front to watch the fireworks she stayed behind. She just wanted some time alone, away from the crowds. She also didn't want to see the happy couple together.

As she sat on the couch scrolling through her phone she heard someone walking in. She looked up expecting to see a stranger's face, only to be met with a surprised face Bucky.

"Wh-what are you doing here?" He asked, turning around making sure no one had followed him inside.

"Don't worry, I didn't come here to stalk you," she rolled her eyes, "I'm here with some sorority sisters, didn't expect to see you or them here."

"Oh," Bucky tried to ease his nervous tone, he was standing awkwardly by the living room entrance.

"I'm not going to bite," Natasha said annoyed by the way Bucky is behaving, "So either come into the room or leave."

Bucky hesitated for a second. He knew he could've just gone upstairs to his own room. That would've been the safer choice. Yet he found his body making it's way towards the couch, sitting a cushion away from Natasha.

"Big crowds?" She asked him.

"Yeah just felt a little suffocating," he admits wringing his right wrist.

"Tell me about it," she sighed.

"So are you two official?" Natasha asked looking everywhere but at him.

"Nat," Bucky sighed, not wanting to start any drama.

"What? It's just a question," she raised her eyebrows at him.

"I'm going to take that as a no," she answered for him after a few moments of silence.

"What are you trying to prove Nat?"

"Nothing," she defended, "Just don't understand why we had to end things when you two aren't even 'official'."

"Nat, I need this to work with her," Bucky admitted looking into her eyes.

He saw the hurt behind them. He feels guilty for all the pain he's caused her. He never meant to hurt her. Never meant for things to go this way. Bucky truly did care for Natasha, even though it doesn't seem like it. He really did. He just doesn't get why he can't fully give himself to her. He had no trouble physically, and at time mentally. There was just something keeping him from doing so, like a tight grip on his arm tugging him away.

Natasha just stared at the silent boy in front of her.

“I really am sorry for the way everything played out,” Bucky sincerely apologized, feeling his eyes begin to tear up, “I know I keep saying this, but I never meant for all of this to happen. I never meant to hurt you.”

“Can I ask you just one thing?” She asked clearing her throat, feeling a lump in her throat.

Bucky nodded his head, letting her continue on.

“What makes her so special?” She asked, tears threatening to fall.

“She was my first love.”

“And you were mine,” she confessed, tears silently falling down her face.

Bucky scooted closer to her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder, bringing her into his side as she cried.

“Natasha, I really did love you,” he whispered.

“Not more than her,” she looked up in his eyes.

Bucky didn’t know how to respond to that. He himself didn’t know if he did or not.

“We never got a proper goodbye,” her voice cracked, breaking him out of his thoughts.

“Nat-”

“Please,” she begged, “Just one last time. I promise I’ll leave you both alone. Please.”

Bucky quietly got up front he couch, taking a moment to think his next move over.

He surprised Natasha by sticking his left hand out for her to take.

She reached out for it, letting Bucky lead her upstairs to his room. When he reached his room he opened the door for Natasha to walk in, before entering he turned around making sure no one was watching.

_______________

As they walked out Natasha made a joke lightening the mood, causing both of them to laugh as they made their exit.

Bucky walked out behind Natasha, only to meet the eyes of the last person he would want to catch this moment.

He froze in his spot.

Nothings changed.

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quillquiver · 4 years

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Alex’s Big Nerdy Destiel Canon Rant

I love talking about canon: what it is, what gets to be part of canon, etc. so I want to add my two cents to all the discourse! To my mind, yeah, literary theory uses the word ‘canon’ to describe the complete text (including subtext), but like... that definition isn’t necessarily useful in a fannish context, and it’s certainly not useful in the Destiel fandom.

Just hear me out: even deciding what is part of SPN canon text-wise is a mine-field. Are we counting what Jensen and Misha have said at cons? Are we counting tweets? What about the series of SPN tie-in books that exist? If all these things are paratext, and we’re really only looking at what has been said on the show that’s cool, but I suspect that many people have differing opinions on what SPN canon even consists of! And this makes a lot of sense: the show has been around for 15 years, and the fandom is composed of a whole bunch of people whose ideas about canon, even coming into the fandom, are probably pretty different. Plus, we’re an online fandom, so things are de-centralized and it’s wayyyy harder to even agree on or establish a definition of what the actual, canonical source text even consists of.

Setting that aside, language has also always evolved to suit the needs of the community using it. Queer culture, for example, re-appropriates, reclaims and creates new terms all the time (that then may get picked up in mainstream media, where the meaning may change yet again!). Because fandoms can sometimes drastically differ in terms of language usage, I can’t speak to other fandoms besides the ones I’m in. But! By my reckoning, Destiel fandom took the word canon, (which in a perfect world refers to a single, total, indisputable source text, subtext included), and changed its meaning. In the linguistics world, this is called a semantic change! We’ve largely removed ‘subtext’ from one of the things we consider canon, because that doesn’t suit our purposes - due to the really fraught history between SPN creators and DeanCas fans, canon for us has come to mean something different. But more on that later.

At this point, I know a lot of people are gonna argue with me. BUT THAT MAKES IT SOUND LIKE THERE’S AN AGENDA! LANGUAGE IS OBJECTIVE! IT’S A TOOL! To which I say: language has never ever been objective, because people aren’t objective. If you think that language does not exist to serve a purpose, consider the assimilation of Indigenous peoples through the use of English. Or the fact that the Ancient Greeks used to describe colour differently than we do, because that served them better. Language always exists so we can better communicate and understand each other, and policing it has always been a form of subjugation, whether that be through the policing of what language or dialect you are/are not allowed to speak, or how to speak it. One of my profs loved to remind us that grammar is classist - as long as we can understand each other, how something is spelled really shouldn’t matter.

But back to SPN. We as a general fandom have a really unique relationship to our content producers. We always have. It’s the reason we’re the go-to case study when fan studies scholars want to look at the fan/producer relationship in western media fandom. Destiel fandom? An even more fraught relationship, because for a very long time, the producers did not consider Destiel as part of the canon of their own show. If they had, we wouldn’t be having this conversation! But the first time SPNs narrative even deigned entertain the idea of Destiel as existing seriously and explicitly in the narrative, it was during their 200th episode, and it was a “you have your interpretation, we have ours”, which super invalidates the mocking hell they put us through beforehand. The fact that DeanCas fans have been condescended to and queerbaited for so long means that, largely, we’ve decided that DeanCas canon cannot and does not include subtext... even though, yes, the existence of Destiel romantic subtext technically means the ship is, was and has always been canon (i.e. part of the complete episodic source text). After being told you’re delusional, you’re wrong, you’re crazy for so many years, the idea of a canon DeanCas became entwined with the idea of explicit, incontrovertible romantic text in the show, because it’s not only about Dean and Cas... it’s about the recognition that our reading is also correct. That we were right all along.

People will argue with me here, but don’t misunderstand me: I’m not saying that fandom needs approval or validation from the creators - we really, really don’t. Whatever we see in any show is canon just by virtue of it being there, and so is a valid reading, and that is definitely enough. But SPN is nothing if not the exception to almost every rule, because context: 12 years of being told you’re insane by the people in the diver’s seat, and 15 years of having this on-and-off fraught relationship with creators in a way that had previously never happened. SPN fans are close to the writers and producers and actors in a way that very few other shows are, and we have been for a long-ass time. The writer’s room is an authority, for sure, but they’re also like a group of fans we're constantly at odds with, and that means we treat them like we would other fans. We discuss, we ask questions, we argue. And yeah, the mentality of fighting over ownership of the narrative is one that is very early 2000s, but considering that’s when the show started, it’s not a surprise that it never really left us. In other words: because of our closeness to TPTB and our history with them, there’s a desire for recognition and validation (vindication?) that is unique, but nonetheless there and important.

Back to canon. In the literary world, canon is used to describe a complete text (which again, people have a hard time agreeing on what that even consists of), but it’s also used to describe a complete body of literature. For example, you often hear literary scholars talking about “British literary canon”. Here, canon is used as a way of organizing the most important, worthwhile works of a community, and so is also used as a tool of exclusion and subjugation. Canon excludes people, like BIPOC and women writers, to serve the most powerful culture’s interests - it has a very specific purpose. In this same way, I’ve seen people using their own definitions of canon to invalidate the feelings, experiences and definitions of other fans. For example, there have been a couple posts floating around saying that we absolutely and in no uncertain terms need to use the canonical definition of literary theory (one single, subtext-included source text to rule them all) and I have an issue with that because first of all, not everyone knows literary theory, and second of all... why? Canon is and always has been a polysemic term - it has multiple meanings. The OG example of this is religious canon: it eventually stabilized, but like, I’m Greek Orthodox, and my bible does not look the same as that of a Catholic Christian. But to hear both sides talk, they each have the real canon. So canon can mean something different depending on who you’re talking to, even when you’re talking about the same thing. The important thing is that whatever a community decides is canon, that’s it. That’s what canon becomes.

But what if your community doesn’t have one single definition, because canon means something slightly different to everyone? Well, that’s also fine! Because again, language is only there to allow us to understand each other. If we’ve all been talking about canon and largely understanding one another for the past 12 years, that means we actually never had to have these kinds of conversations, because we largely agreed that subtext was not canon, and destiel never really left the subtext. But we just had Castiel confess his love to Dean (still reeling from that), and so the minutiae of what constitutes canon (a kiss, a hand-hold, a love confession) is suddenly pertinent and important - because we’re all on the same side, but we all have slightly different ideas regarding the details, and who the heck knows what we’re gonna get in the finale, if we even get anything. So we’re all talking and yelling at each other, all trying to say my very specific definition is the right one because xyz when in reality... all of us are right.

Believe it or not, this discourse about what the minutiae of canon is, is actually how we come to a more specific definition. That takes years, and will be infinitely more difficult in a community that is so de-centralized and whose members are always changing, but it’ll eventually happen. Maybe. For now, though: your definition? That’s the right one for you.

Do not let anyone shame you for thinking Destiel was already canon, or not thinking it is by the end, or insisting their definition is the best, right and only one. Canon is a polysemic term, and that means your reading is in there. But that also means everyone else’s is, too.

#fan studies #canon #how do i even tag this #canon discourse #?#destiel #linguistics #literary theory #i'm a big nerd #alex attempts to be a lady and a scholar #long post

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orionsangel86 · 4 years

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How are y'all puzzled by the end and how TPTB, Dabb and Singer seemingly got the wrong message about fandom, when I've seen countless of Destiel shippers being "pro-ship". Advocating to treat incest, pedo*lia and best*ality the same as queer ships, and how it's totally ok. How often "meta crew" called me terf, fascist for saying it shouldn't be accepted into our queer spaces. It got Bobo to write a char for superwiki. They prob thought we're all just thirsty women who want to see two dudes b*ng

I have no idea what you are talking about.

I’m not puzzled. I know some fuckery went down. I’ve stated my opinions countless times now over the past few months over on Twitter and since coming back to Tumblr properly on my conspiracies post:

TPTB are all business, and they made a last minute business decision based on backing the Walker horse and not wanting Destiel to distract from Jared/Sam, whilst being fearful of the gAY scaring away the CisHet Male audience that they so desperately wanted to cling on to for Walker.

Singer has always been a bronly. Has always seen any queer subtext purely as homoeroticism and is definitely the kind of person who would queerbait fans to get views.

Dabb was weak. He backed down and let his script get butchered.

I don’t know what you mean by destiel shippers advocating those things? Unless you mean supporting AO3 not being censored and regulated of course? Because if you are one of these people that thinks that AO3 needs censoring then you are part of the problem. Believe me, no one in Destiel fandom that I know of is normalising incest, pedophilia or bestiality. No one thinks those things are part of queer spaces.

Some people multiship though. So long as they respect tagging systems and don’t force other people to have to see nasty stuff like what you’ve mentioned, then let people be into what they’re into. I might personally find it gross, and a bit strange, but people are always gonna wanna explore fucked up topics for all manner of reasons. We ain’t purity police here.

Also something I feel I need to be very clear on, which I haven’t mentioned before but um “meta crew”. Which meta crew would that be? There are many many meta writers in spn fandom. We are not a hive mind. Some are some of the nicest people I have ever met, some I don’t interact with much but write some really beautiful stuff and seem to be good people, but there are others who call themselves meta writers who are just bullies, who mock and harass anyone who disagrees with their opinion. Do NOT lump us all into the same boat.

Why any meta writers would call you a terf or a fascist without a good reason is beyond me. I don’t have context here do i? Could you look back over what you said and consider if it sounded terfy? Or fascist? I dunno man I don’t have a say in this, if people have called you out for something you’ve said, maybe look back over what you said and try to see it from their angle? Especially if it was transphobic.

A general rule of thumb for interacting with any fandom:

Ship and let Ship - in other words, don’t judge people on the pairings they like, even if they are problematic, so long as those pairings are well tagged and labelled so people can block as necessary.

Your kink is not my kink - Don’t kink shame people. If people wanna write really fucked up shit, that’s their right. Again, so long as it is all tagged and clearly labelled with content warnings, then there shouldn’t be a problem. It’s not on you to psychoanalyse people for their reasons for being into twisted things. Some people may genuinely be abuse survivors who are using it as a coping mechanism. You don’t know.

The Archive is a fandom holy place - it is protected. It is adored. Do not attack it or you will feel the wrath of 100 different fandoms coming at you. The archive is free from censorship, free from corporate manipulation, free from outside sources trying to mess with it. The archive belongs to US.

Just generally don’t be an asshole. Fandoms tend to attract people who are different from the general norms of society. We were the nerds and losers in school, the queer kids, the ones struggling with MHI. We all have a lot of shit and are all just trying to navigate our way through life via our passions. Don’t shit on peoples passions. You’ll come across a load of people who disagree with you, and occassionally you might be unfortunate enough to come across actual bullies. But most of the time, it won’t take much to rub someone the wrong way because everyone in these spaces tends to be at least kind of emotional, and attached to their passions. So you really do have to be polite. I can’t even tell you how many people in this fandom hate me - some to the point of obsession and slander. I’ve got a block list a mile long and continue to add people to it. There are posts out there with my name and screenshots from my SM spreading lies and hate about me, encouraging people to laugh at me and accusing me of doing things that I have never had the time or the energy to do. Shit happens. Don’t be those people, and you’re golden.

Superwiki is well known by SPN writers for being a bible of information for the show. The writers have previously confirmed that they refer to the SuperWiki when wanting quick research for their episodes. Yes, Bobo named a character after the person who runs the wiki, but I doubt Bobo is aware of how problematic that person is. The name was just in honour of someone who put a lot of work into building the wiki, hell, even I use the wiki! But I certainly don’t support any of Jules personal views. Don’t read into things like that. It never means what you think.

The thirsty women part I would have agreed with back 6 years ago. But they have adapted with us now. We are no longer Becky in season 4. We became Charlie remember? And after that we became intelligent teenagers wanted to tell an exciting story. If they thought destiel shippers were all about the hot guys banging, they certainly wouldn’t have made the love story canon, and they did that. Remember? Cas confessed his love for Dean, and it was the most beautiful, touching, heartfelt moment in the entire series. They did that. Not because they wanted us to objectify the actors, but because they knew how much that love story meant to us. Unfortunately, the network had other ideas for the actual finale. But that doesn’t take away the writers intentions up to that point. So please don’t erase what they worked for.

Ultimately I’m not sure what point you were trying to make with this ask, but this post is I suppose my very long way of saying you are wrong.

#spn conspiracy theories #anti spn finale #destiel #fandom wank #asks #anon #Anonymous

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goblinconceivable · 4 years

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All The Feels

Random bulletpoints of Annie/Jeff analysis because I am overcome with shippiness. :D Also more like bullet-lengthy-paragraphs. You tried, self, you tried.

Pascal’s Triangle (PT) is not a love triangle.

Sure, look at the top two rows and you’ve got a binary split, ie, choice between two women. But PT is row based, your current row based on the one above. It’s complex. Look below the binary surface of choice to row 3, where it actually becomes PT, where the complexity begins (and Community is about complexity.) 1, 2, 1, a total of 4. The 2 is the merging of the two 1s from row two - Ie, two women who get lumped together. And beyond them is a 1 that springs out of nowhere - Annie. Surprise!

Kiss at the end of S1

Jeff’s major deal is being afraid of expressing caring/vulnerability, while desperately craving/needing it. Britta and Slater were both saying they loved him, and he does want to take that, but runs scared because they are challenging him to admit his feelings in public, which no one who really knows and cares about him would do. His scene with Annie is private. And she isn’t asking him FOR anything, she’s just asking what’s up, because she cares about the answer. He feels safe, he opens up, it’s intimacy, which is both giving and taking. Notably he admits he’s glad she’s staying after his share, this is him saying he cares about her too.

His explanation of the situation is a perceived choice between being the New Year’s guy (who he wants to be) and the Three Weeks Later guy (who he is.) But the thing about New Year’s is the initial momentum always fades, and you have to put in the work, which Slater doesn’t help him with. And he WON’T be able to sustain it on is own. The guy he IS isn’t who he wants to be, it’s just giving up, rather than striving, even if imperfectly, to reach those goals. Annie falls into the sweet spot: she understands what his default is, but shows him that he CAN be the man he wants to be, shows him what those steps ARE, encourages him to take the steps to be that person, and rewards him when he succeeds. Which he does, with her behind him.

And she kisses him first. Which is an offering similar to Britta and Slater’s public announcements, but through action, not words. Jeff uses words as shield and weapon, as did the other two. Bypassing this essentially shortcircuits his brain. His brain will warp and analyze and question, but she kisses him gently, an invitation not a demand. He’s already put aside his sword and shield during their talk, and doesn’t feel the need to pick them up because he feels safe and cared for and is okay accepting and reciprocating that.

Play

Jeff is all adult and aloof and beyond such petty childish pursuits such as play, which is the scoffed at domain of Annie/Troy/Abed. But he actually really wants it. It likely stems in part from his loss of a proper childhood, but it’s also just who he is. Imagination isn’t just for the young, the loss of the ability to play is an oft-bemoaned feature of adulthood, one the learned remind us we ought recapture. (And a joy of parenthood is getting to do that through your children.) But look, he literally was playacting being a lawyer. It��s how he engages with the world. He just justified that as a means to an end and did it for power and profit, rather than for enjoyment.

We see this, I argue, when responding to Annie’s playacting they were married. Annie anticipates a bad reaction, but he doesn’t give one. No judgment. He then establishes it’s not a deeper issue (”do I have to worry about this” ie, is this real/insanity). When he says “I can tell you one thing your fantasy got wrong...” he’s not challenging her, or even taking offense, and while he’s not entering into her fantasy world (which is over anyway), he’s offering fodder. He’s involving himself in the narrative process for her benefit. And in the couched language of daydream he’s reassuring her -if- it was true, he would be devoted. IF is a super important word in play, because you don’t have to believe, for example, you ARE a pirate. You just need to act as IF you were a pirate.

Also cute, I take as justified fanon the deleted scene where he orders her appletini. He was whining to her about it but it was relaxed because they both know he’d do it anyway. And when the bartender turns out to be a believer in Annie’s created fantasy world, Jeff stops himself from correcting him and destroying the world. Instead, he lets it persist just far enough to let himself glance at Annie as if it was true, and in that moment he sees her through the eyes of fantasy, and sees a beautiful woman, rather than all the complexity of their relationship.

Then there’s basically all the giant Greendale instances of play. Which one way or the other, he gets roped into and ends up jumping into with abandon. (Paintball, lava etc.) And they’re often paired, because he enjoys playing with her, and the “if this” acts as license for them to explore their compatibility. And their capers, when they pair up in the “real world”, is really just a sophisticated form of play. As brought up pointedly when they were searching for the ASB, there’s a dual nature here. They aren’t just buddies, like Troy and Abed, who are also very fantasy oriented (cardboard submarine!). There’s a level of daydream beneath the fantasy world where they can set aside the complexities of their relationship, and say “if we’re solving this crime, then we can live in this bubble and just be together.”

I also really love the whole Professor Professorson episode because of course the layers are just so intricate and delightful when they unfold. He tackles her which was total overreaction, he’s in a heightened world and committed to it. They plot out this crazy intricate play to teach the Dean a lesson together, where they involve real emotions. Many of which are Annie’s, but that means they’re creating a world in which it is safe to amplify her feelings which they are both aware of but are usually repressed, especially by Jeff. And he praises her for that later (she went off book and deceived like a master) rather than being uncomfortable. They exit play safely because they trust each other while playing and can leave that permissive world as an if. And it ends with the blanket fort collapsing and cocooning them. It is a play space literally being broken, begging the question of how much impact our play can have on our real selves.

Season 6

So basically I think I missed fandom the first time around and just binged on meta and there’s (fanon?) that Jeff spent the season looking for her attention, but Annie had pulled back? I zipped through a bunch of scenes they were in together, and heartily agree. Also I think I went a little nutty but What I see:

Annie doesn’t ignore him or anything, but where she might have previously inserted herself in his life, she starts to let him fend for himself while she diverts her attention to other relationships, and treats him more like she does the others. I don’t think she really does anything like taking his class so she can evaluate his teaching and bludgeon him into being better? But when they’re in a situation, like City College’s ad, she stands up to him as normal, challenging him to be better and do the right thing, as she always has. Rewards him with approval when he does, and his whispered “thank you” is the cutest thing ever because it’s an intimate choice in a rather boisterous exchange.

Meanwhile Jeff does seem to spend a lot of time and energy trying to get back to a place where he’s first in her eyes. There are a lot of shots in S6 a the Table and group scenes that involve him looking at her disproportionately, first, last, or only when speaking, esp when they’re all at the table. When I went back and tried to do the same to S5 those scenes are set up a bit differently and I saw less of it but I think there’s just fewer group scenes in general though?. In S6, he often ends a comment directed at the group (non table) by looking at Annie, indicating he wants her response, and thus her attention and engagement. And often, she is the next person to speak. Which is her personality as a leader, which supports the idea that while he’s seeking her out, she isn’t necessarily responding to that but just being her.

Finale

I’ve sort of run myself dry thinking through other things. And great analysis is plentiful and most recent. So not even bullet points just ramble But:

Oh3, so when Garrett proposed and Abed noted Jeff had a funny look, he’s been daydreaming marrying Annie for that lone plus longer? That took me a long time to put together as an actual literal thing.

Oh2, it’s all canon that he has issues with prolonged eye contact because he doesn’t want people to see him broken and he doesn’t break eye contact through any of this. He knows she knows he’s broken already and is quietly fine with her seeing everything and this is a moment for *sobs*

Oh wait hey, so callback to that bit where she’s like “your words don’t mean anything” and he’s like “That’s what conversation is, people saying things to get stuff.” Because he’s 100% not trying to get anything by telling her he’s let her go. And he means a lot by saying it. And if he said “I love you” there’s an implied sense of obligation to say it back and since he means romantically he can’t do that. So this is just him letting her know, no pressure, no expectation, that he loves her and has loved her but it’s okay because she’s free and he wants her to be free because he loves her. And he means it so hard when she says “kiss me goodbye” he’s all “you don’t owe me anything.”

But she does love him too, except she knows she’s in a different place emotionally and professionally. And it’s sweet and a gift because she doesn’t make this about her but about him and his feelings. So she preempts his regrets because she knows he WON’T kiss her goodbye unless she invites him to. There’s something I’m reaching for and can’t find here. She doesn’t admit to anything because there’s no point? It would just hurt him either way? Sharing her feelings through action rather than words?

And so much squee thinking how far everyone’s come for this scene to be a thing which could happen.

Callback to Annie’s marriage fantasy when Jeff has his own. Hers was external, by her personality (esp at the time of her maturation) and thus public and psychologically working out a reasonable feeling of abandonment as she gave their fictional selves marital difficulties. His is very internal, and occurs after Abed, always so reliable as a gateway to fantasy, turns the tables on him. He’s experiencing reasonable feelings of abandonment, and while he runs, it’s to a safe space of “what if,” a coping mechanism he has learned, and which allows for working out of psychological issues.

It’s dual: in that the larger issue is his need for a sense of stability. Though he’s staring at the table the scene doesn’t involve Greendale at all, he already had that fantasy. This is about wanting a life outside of the safe zone of the college. And while he suggests a dog as an option he imagined a kid because having one represents stability for him - it was his father who left, and he won’t leave. If there’s a kid, this is a life, Annie can’t leave. But he offers her imaginary self complete editing powers, because all he really wants is to be able to love and be loved. It’s indulgence, a desperate grasp at balm because while he let her go, he can’t let her -go.- He was okay with being close friends, they do love each other as friends. See his pitch. But faced with losing that, he’s stripped bare. He indulges in his supressed hearts desire and is faced with the reality of what he already knows: it’s not in the cards.

And he’s stripped down to insecurities that aren’t limited to Annie. It’s cute how they jive over Marvel, though it’s weird to me and takes up more time and weird dramatic looking around that doesn’t feel playful enough to be justified. The tone of their voices is too serious, it’s a mismatch. I like how he admits the huge thing that he let her go as far as he has control, and suddenly a time pressure is on their alone time. Everything is immediate right now, everything happening fast. I wonder what Annie would have said if not for the text. But that’s the thing, it’s the wrong time for them and this is a goodbye. It’s too late but just under the wire all at once.

In this chapter at least. In the safety of the group Annie brings up a season 7, which we all know could happen years down the line. Would have been more fitting if she said movie though. Still, he takes that as the comfort in which it was intended.

WTF with his all coed season 7? Yes, we cut to it so it totally isn’t happening, but has he put his issues to rest and is just fantasizing crap or what? It makes no sense to me.

I love that he not only puts her first after she invites him to kiss her goodbye by asking “what about you,” but is -asking for consent.- He doesn’t even move towards her until he gets it, he’s literally just standing back. What’s up with the penis thing? Meta reference to shortcut arguments that it’s not true love but lust? Is it Jeff acknowledging his own cynicism and how he’s dropped it? Since he’s so clearly not in a lust mode here. Is he adding a tiny bit of his usual pointed add ins to his speeches?

I guess it’s like... this is one of his speeches, but it feels out of place because of his delivery? Which is beautifully subdued and resigned and honest and just defeated, but defeated in the sense that he defeated all the barriers he still keeps around himself.

and goodbye hug and kiss at the airport.

#community #jeff x annie #meta

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thesleeplessb · 4 years

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What's up with straight white dudes giving the worst possible endings to their tv series ??

I guess I shouldn't be suprised but they keep lowering the bar like it's almost a competition. Do they have a secret club where they meet every week to come up with ideas to piss off their fans ?

The sad reality is that there is a huge connection to these shows ending badly and them being loved by girls/young women, queers and POC. Like, are they so upset that their main demographic is the one society just loves to hate (just think about Twilight, One direction, BTS), that they just fuck up their own work as a revenge scheme ?? It may not be it, but it does look like it.

It may seem like I'm exaggerating here but Sarah Z. on youtube made a really good video essay on the Sherlock fandom where she made a great point that underlines how the creators actively incited the fandom to look for secret clues and then made fun of them in an episode of the show for being so invested. Or how they have jokes and hints about John and Sherlock being gay from the 1st episode and then act like it is crazy to think they actually may be gay.

And from what I have gathered this is also done in a similar fashion in Supernatural, where they actually have an episode where a fangirl writes some kind of play on their story and the actresses for Dean and Castiel (2 girls) are together in real life (when I found out about this being an actual thing I was so speechless). And obviously the jokes and hints about the "gayness" are also heavily present here too.

Misogyny also seem to be a pretty common factor. I am not well versed on Supernatural, but it does seem the fandom all agrees that their treatment of women is absolutely awful and the same is for POC characters. And seeing that the ending only involves a nameless faceless woman and no POC, does lead me to just trust them on this.

Only thinking about the Game of thrones treatment of women makes my skin crawl. Daenerys, the most powerful woman in the story, was transformed into a Hitler figure and one of the main causes they provide for this happening is the death of her best friend, a woman of color, and they have her killed by the man she loves while he kisses her, while still framing him like a tragic hero who had to do it (BIG YIKES). They had Brienne, another powerful women, betrayed by the man she just made love to, so that he could go back to be with his sister/lover, and at the end she still does a good thing in his memory (have some more YIKES). Even Sansa, who seems to have a pretty good ending as Lady of Winterfell, obtained it by alienating another woman and betraying her because as the writer said "she was jealous she was prettier than her" (the YIKES never stop). And those are just 3 examples.

The 100 also follows these trends, even if they tried to hide it more. We have a classic bury your gays with Lexa and even if they do treat the love story as important, they still do not give a good resolution to the couple. There are other queer couples or characters but they are very sidelined. The women are very powerful and good representation most of the time, but there is this bad trend of making women good because they are mothers or mother figures. This reaches a point where to have a redemption arc these women either need to have a baby or be a mother figure to one and the main character is reduced to being her child protector and nothing else. Don't get me wrong making powerful mothers is not bad in itself, but when it is a costant pattern it just seem to reduce women to their reproductive abilities. A similar thing happens to POC where they have great characters, but somehow they always end up sidelined or dead (again, YIKES). Also it has to be pointed out that one of the main POC characters got killed in the earliers season cause the actor didn't like the way the character was treated by the showrunner (even BIGGER YIKES, we don't know how the actor was mistreated, but I don't doubt he was).

So, I mean, these are a just few examples, but there seems to be some kind of pattern I don't like. Also sorry it became a rant but the more I thought about this the more I wanted to say.

I am very sorry for the way you were mistreated, you deserved better, like SO MUCH better.

P.S. if you have some good recommendations for shows put them in the comments. I love the Good Place and Agents of Shield, and both ended in a satisfying way.

#supernatural #destiel #sherlock #johnlock #game of thrones #the 100

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thecleverdame · 5 years

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The Oath - 2

Parings: Dark!Alpha!Sam x Omega!Reader

Masterlist

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Summary: After an unsuccessful escape attempt, the reader finds herself taken as a spoil of war. She ends up in the bed of a ruthless Alpha, the son of John Winchester, leader of the kingdom of Gilead. She struggles to conceal her true identity and navigate a society where being an Omega means nothing more than serving at the pleasure of powerful men.

Warnings: non-con, sexual assault, rape, attempted suicide, sexual slavery, branding, torture, ownership, voyeurism, anal play, smut, violence, and murder.

Sam is dark in this story. If any of the warnings are triggers for you, I would suggest skipping this one. Please read and heed all the warnings.

Beta: ilikaicalie

Chapters 1-9 are currently available on Patreon. To get access to this and many other stories, subscribe for a pledge of 2.50 per month. CLICK HERE

TWO

“What’s this?” Sam asks.

He could smell you from the moment his brother dragged you into their tent. Your Omega is masked by something but it’s there and it’s unmistakable.

“An Omega the men were about to ruin.” Your captor lets you go and you stand there, eyes finding a rock on the dirt floor and staring at it.

Two Alphas. This is not what you hoped. But maybe you can still make it out alive.

You’re a squirmy little thing, and it’s hard to get a good look at you. At first glance, it would be easy to dismiss you as just another desperate Omega trying to get away. In Sam’s experience, your kind rarely embraces your place in the natural order of things. Yes, it would be easy to overlook you, but Sam pays attention to details. He can see past your stringy hair and tear-stained face, your bloodied knees, and dirty breasts. He’s willing to bet you’re really something to see when you’re not a snot covered mess.

The scent coming from between your legs is thick like honeysuckles in the summer, you’re still sweet. On the verge of being broken but holding yourself together.

Dean looks unhappy and Sam waits for what’s to follow.

“As much as I’d love to stay and play with her, I have to ride the outer camps. If one of us doesn’t do the rounds the men start thinking they’re above the rules. We need to do something. They can’t be trusted, they didn’t even check before they started on her.” Dean pushes you forward and you nearly fall over. “She’s yours, for now at least. Unless you want to take a ride...”

“It’s your turn to go.” Sam looks to Dean for the first time.

Dean shrugs, snorting as he shakes his head. “Better you than me. She’s a fucking mess.”

“Leave her to me.” Sam watches you with interest, your eyes bulging wide with uncertainty. Dean grabs his saddlebags and heads out.

Moments later you’re alone with this new Alpha who’s circling you slowly, examining every inch of your battered skin. He moves as a predator, a wolf stalking its prey with slow, deliberate steps.

“Did they fuck you?” he asks.

“N-no,” you stammer, awash with both shame and paralyzing fear.

“But they did touch you?” He stops directly in front of you, looking at your breasts, then to the patch of hair between your legs.

“Yes. They touched me.” You don't know if you should look at him. Everything is a calculated choice. These sorts of men are volatile, he may not think you’re worthy to make eye contact. Further punishment is the last thing you can withstand, so you keep your eyes on the floor.

“I’ll deal with them in the morning.” He tilts his head, wiping off his hands with a cloth before tossing it on the table. “Do you know who I am?”

“No,” you whisper, a tear rolling down your cheek. You don’t want to know.

“Samuel. The son of John Winchester,” he explains. You think you may vomit. Samuel Winchester. Of all the cruel twists of fate, this has to be one of the most merciless. You’ve heard of him, you can’t recall the specifics but you know his general reputation; brutal and sadistic. “The man who brought you here was my brother, Dean.” He pauses and you say nothing. “You lived in Hayward Village?”

“Yes,” you nod, sneaking a peek. He’s a beast of a man. All you can do now is pray he doesn’t kill you, or do irreparable damage.

“I need you to understand you’re never going back there,” he explains calmly.

Hayward never felt like your home. It was a place to hide, to fade into the background. But hearing him say that makes this all too real. You will never be the same again.

“I understand,” you confirm.

“The rest of your life will be very different. You’re the property of Gilead now. You belong to me. Do you understand?”

It’s clear you don’t like that declaration of ownership. Your eyes snap up to his, swallowing hard. It’s always difficult for Omegas to truly understand this new world order. It’s best to be up front. False hope only creates desperation. He doesn’t need you trying to run in the middle of the night.

He looks on with interest, the way you swallow your emotions, holding them back at all costs. In his experience not many women would be able to express such self control under these circumstances. You’re strong, whether you know it or not.

“I understand,” you agree quietly, unsuccessfully covering the tremor in your voice. “M-may I ask what I should call you?”

“Alpha,” Sam explains. “In Lebanon Omegas don’t use the names of their Alphas. It breeds familiarity and that can be a dangerous thing.”

You shift and squeal in pain, cradling your arm. Fresh tears fall. You’re in agony and he can’t have that. He needs you in working order.

“What’s wrong with your arm?” Inching closer he tries to get a better look.

“I-I think i-it’s broken,” you sputter.

“One of the men did this?” His eyes narrow, displeased by the news. “Intentionally?”

The fucking men have been on his last nerve for weeks and now this. They think themselves equal. Deserving of such riches that they would cross this of all lines. It makes his blood boil.

“He threw me down from the horse. I don’t think he meant to hurt me.” You’re shaking, entire body rattling in cold and in pain.

“He should have been more careful. An Omega requires special handling. Come here, let me see it.” He sits down in a chair, his expression unflinching as he waits for you to move closer. “Move your hand so I can see the damage.”

You let go of your arm and howl as the bones shift, but he takes your elbow and wrist, holding them in a manner that offers the first relief you’ve felt in hours. It makes sense, he’s a soldier. He knows how to treat wounds on the battlefield. He’s seen a thousand broken bones worse than this.

“Here.” He carefully tightens his grip on your elbow, sliding his hand along your forearm until he’s holding it in place. He changes the position and you think you might vomit, the pain is so great. It’s making you sweat and squirm as he feels where the bone has snapped. “This is going to hurt.”

Before his words register, he pulls on your wrist and elbow at the same time, realigning the bone as the two pieces snap back into place with a sickening crack.

You scream, trying to pull back but he grabs you by the hair to keep you from retreating.

“You’ll be fine, calm down,” he orders. He doesn’t exactly care, but seeing a woman in pain doesn’t bring him pleasure like many of his men. In fact, it’s always made him uncomfortable.“I’ll find something to hold your arm in place. Sit down and don’t move.”

He points to the chair and you lower yourself into it, cradling your newly set arm, watching as he looks in trunks and sacks. Finding long, flat pieces of wood he kneels in front of you, and using a thin rope and cloth he secures the wood around your arm until it’s completely immobile.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

Your mind races. You need to give him something, anything but your real name. The hours in the forest come back to you. The wild things all around you, as you search for any name to give him. You blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.

“Sparrow,” you sniffle, wiping tears from your cheek.

“Sparrow,” he repeats, looking up at you. “A fitting name given your broken wing.” One massive hand grips your knee and you jerk in surprise, looking him in the eyes. You almost forgot you were naked. “Do you know what’s expected of Omegas in my country?”

“I’ve heard stories but...no,” you answer honestly, looking at him as your heart breaks. You’ll never see your family again. Not that your father would ever take you back after this. There’s no coming back from being with a Winchester. If he did nothing more than talk to you, it would be a permanent black mark.

And if Sam knew who you were he’d kill you on the spot. You’re damned any way you look at it.

“You belong to us. The sooner you accept this, the easier things will be. You’re lucky, most of your village was killed. A half dozen were taken as servants. And you are the lone prize. The only thing worth the effort of that Godforsaken place.” Lucky. It’s a strange way to describe being driven from your home and nearly raped by a group of disgusting men. “Depending on how well you perform, you’ll be offered as a prize to a high ranking Alpha. Or perhaps you’re bound for greater things.”

Sam’s words are unmistakable. There’s a hunger in his eyes as he looks from your breasts down to the patch of hair between your thighs. One could find him handsome in other circumstances, but right now he’s simply terrifying. He’s large enough that he could easily take anything he wanted from you. His eyes burning with an intensity you can practically feel.

“I understand,” you whisper. “I’ll do my best.”

“You stink. I’ll have someone clean you up.” He stands, arms folded across his chest. “Then we’ll have a good look at you.”

The tent doesn’t feel like a temporary shelter set in the middle of a makeshift camp. There are clothes and weapons everywhere as if the two brothers have been here for months. Carefully marked maps are spread across a long wooden table. There are markers in the form of little metal horses across it. It’s a miniature version of the war raging on around them. There’s a treasure trove of valuable information here if you could get it to someone, but it’s a fool's errand. This is where your journey ends, you can feel it in your bones.

The only available woman in the camp is a gray-haired cook who bathes you while Sam watches from the corner of the room. The light of the fire licks across his face, his eyes never faltering as the old woman washes your hair and helps you scrub until the mud and grime are gone.

The cook helps you bathe and leaves in a rush, never looking up. She’s more terrified of him than you are, a fact that doesn’t escape you.

Sam was right, you’re beautiful underneath it all. Healthy Omegas have a glow about them, not that he’s seen a healthy one in years, but he remembers. Yours is faint but there’s a glimmer to you, like an aura emanating from your body. You’re holding your arm, with eyes trained on the floor but your head is held high, back straight despite the oppression of the situation. It’s that inner strength that fascinates him. You may be compliant or you might try to stab him in the middle of the night. There’s only one way to know for sure.

“May I have something to drink?” you ask, naked and dripping in front of the fire.

“Yes. What would you like?” He’s on his feet again, slinking closer with the stealth of cat “Wine? Water?”

“Tea. I’m very cold. Something to warm me up would be appreciated.”

He takes herbs from a pouch, grinding them into the bottom of a mug before adding hot water. Then he sits across the table watching you sip.

“You’re beautiful,” he asserts and your breath catches, fear churning. “And unclaimed. How is it that an Omega like you hasn’t been claimed already?”

The truth is that your father kept you under lock and key. And when he was forced to send you away, he picked the one place you’d be the least likely to cross paths with an Alpha.

“There were no Alphas in my village.” You explain the question away praying that's the end of it. A tingling sensation is blooming to life in your belly, dulling your senses. “What is in this tea?”

“Herbs to help with the pain. I broke a rib last year, it’s the only thing that brought relief.” His eyes drop to your tits, licking his lower lip. “We’re lucky my brother had to leave. You wouldn’t have lasted an hour. He would have knotted you the moment he realized how pristine you are.”

Your cheeks flush hot as you fight off tears. While you overheard crude talk in the village, it’s rare that any man has ever spoken so frankly to, or about you in such a way.

“Have you been with a man before?” You hesitate and he rolls his eyes. “I expect honest answers.”

“Yes,” you admit, feeling shame wash over you. At least he doesn’t know who you are, it would only serve to exacerbate your sins. A woman of your standing should be a chaste virgin, untouched by any man until her husband. But as a country girl from a small village its less of a transgression. Either way you think about it, the admission makes you feel like a whore.

“How many?” he asks.

Jesus, you’re not sure you can stand much more of this intimate questioning.

“Two.”

“Interesting.” A smile pulls at the corner of his mouth, entertained by the confession. “Have you taken a knot?”

Your whole body goes tense, a fact that doesn’t escape him. You’re scared but with fear comes compliance. He’s good at reading people, maybe he won’t have to worry about you trying to slit his throat.

“No,” you whisper, barely audible. “I’ve never been with an Alpha.”

“Good.” His fingers strum the table. “I’ll be your first then.”

There, now it’s a sure thing. No more guessing. He plans to have you for himself, at least tonight. While he’s nowhere near the nightmare of men that had you envisioned earlier, there’s a darkness in him that’s simmering right there for anyone to see and it scares the daylights out of you.

“Will you open your legs for me?” he asks evenly. “Or will I have to have to show you who’s in charge?”

“Please don’t,” you beseech, looking to him in desperation.

“You don’t get that choice,” he counters, unhappy with any pushback.

“I’m just in so much pain.” Your voice is shaking, hand curled into a fist at your side. “I haven’t slept in days. If you would wait until morning, I’ll do anything you want. I’ll give myself to you freely. I just...I’m not sure how much more I can take tonight. I’m so exhausted I can barely stay upright.”

He’s silent, contemplating your request. The men found you in the forest. You probably are exhausted. You could also be exaggerating, trying to buy yourself a little time before he fucks you. And yet he’s inclined to believe you. He can read the exhaustion on your face like the war maps on the table.

“How long were you in the forest?” he asks.

“Two days.”

“With no shoes and no cloak?”

“There was no time. When the men attacked my home I ran with what I had on, nothing more.”

“I see.” He sits back, rubbing over the pads of his fingers as he decides what to do. “You should sleep. You’re no good to me broken and delirious. You’ve already been mishandled enough.”

If you were any other Omega he’d have you gag on his cock and make you sleep on the floor next to his bed, but you have this smell about you. That sweet lingering scent he’s never encountered before. He wants to fuck you, see what it feels like to be inside you, to give you his knot.

“Thank you.” You close your eyes, trying unsuccessfully to hold back the tears that fall. “Thank you.”

“Are you still cold?” he asks gesturing at your bare tits.

“Yes,” you admit, embarrassed to the point of giving up as your nipples stand out like little pebbles. “I’ve been cold for days.”

“Then come to bed and I’ll warm you.” He gets up, pulling his shirt over his head as he walks to the bed farthest from the fire. He toes off his boots and drops his trousers to the floor, stepping out of them.

He’s a sight to behold. Long, lean muscle, just as powerful as you suspected. His cock is thick, bobbing just below his stomach. He fists himself, looking to you as you dutifully walk over to the bed, careful of your arm.

Has he changed his mind?

“Lay down,” he instructs, waiting as you shimmy under a heavy fur pelt. He pulls a small pillow from somewhere under the bed and places it beside you. “Turn on your side and rest your arm here.”

You do as he instructs, watching him with a wary eye as you settle into the bed.

Sam climbs in behind you, pressing hot, naked skin against your back, letting his erection poke at your buttocks.

“How is your arm?” he inquires as his mouth connects with your shoulder, open lips dragging over skin. Can this be happening? You jump as his teeth scrape over the back of your neck, praying that he’ll be true to his word and allow you time to recuperate.

“It’s not as painful as it was,” you admit, feeling your eyes fall heavy. Exhaustion trumps all. “The tea helped.”

“Good. Go to sleep, little bird. The next few weeks will be difficult ones for many reasons. You should rest when you can.”

His warning sends a thousand thoughts spiraling. A thick arm lays over your hip and you close your eyes as sleep overtakes you. For the first time in nearly three days, you’re allowed to rest.

#alpha!sam x omega!reader #alpha!sam winchester #sam winchester x reader #sam winchester au #sam winchester smut

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tonyglowheart · 4 years

Note

This entire thing is a rant, feel free to ignore it, but I saw your post about how destiel fans can’t win in this context, and yeah. So have some rambles.

I’ve been thinking about the fact we (current spn/destiel fans) can’t win all night... I’ve seen so many people talking about how homophobic it is - and while I would very much like to argue, as every point I’ve seen made by a non-spn fan has been wrong so far, if I did everyone inside the fandom would agree and everyone outside would either call me straight or pity me for believing it’s okay.

(Cas wasn’t even sent to hell lmao. He was sent to angel death (the empty), a place he has escaped in the past. Other points, like that meta about spn has been predicting exactly this for months, that Dean ended up sobbing on the floor because he was so upset, like that death means next to nothing on spn, like that there is two episodes left, etc etc. you feel me right? I just don’t want to post wank to other spn blogs atm, we’re getting enough frustration as it is, no need to add to it.

It’s also worth pointing out that the bar is very, very low. Spn is a prominent TV show - not a Netflix show, or indie, or whatever - and it just said “main character in gay love saved the world”. [insert gif of ghostfacers dude saying that gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the day here]

I just saw someone saying that spn having Naomi try to brainwash Cas out of loving dean makes spn homophobic (it is a conversion therapy parallel). My first response to that is that Naomi was the villain lmao? I guess we can’t write villains doing anything homophobic because having villains do homophobic things makes, uh - checks notes - villains look homophobic, and clearly we can’t have that.

There certainly are legitimate things to criticise spn about, but this isn’t it lol.

Also now some people are unironically trying to cancel Jensen because “his acting was homophobic, and so he’s clearly homophobic”, nevermind that he’s an actor and his character struggles with understanding his emotions (which I think he played excellently, myself. That scene had a very Dean delayed emotional response), nevermind the support he’s given to us queers in the past. Like. Idek man.

We would have been laughed at if we got no destiel, too.

It would have been worse, had the writers pulled a dumbledore. At this point I also trust the writers not to pull a GoT - they have explicitly criticised that ending in spn’s canon.

Spn’s writers did that by making the main villain of this season, Chuck / God, say GoT had a good ending. To reiterate a previous point I had: villains do bad things because they’re bad. And the bad things they do make them bad. For the people out there not still following, if someone does something in a story and it makes them a villain, that is explicitly telling you the story (and probably the writers) thinks that thing is bad. In this case, Chuck likes to write things for him, and we the audience have been shown and told that is bad.

Apparently thinking a gay confession is good in 2020 makes me straight. Seems unlikely, but whatever. Sorry for the length, I guess I went overboard, I’ve been holding it in lol. Anyway, DESTIEL IS CANON 💚💙 hope you have a good night

Helloo supernatural anon I hope you are living your best life right now. Yeah I’m like..... skeptical and leery myself but having lived through some absolute garbage discourse that is general purity wank, as well as the C/QL greater fandom here and on Twitter I find myself... much more wanting to question the “general wisdom” of things esp in terms of negativity, bc a lot of the time I find.... it’s wrong? Like so wrong. Or at least presents such an incomplete picture of the whole situation and also presents it in such a removed context that words that have meaning and are operationalized in a certain way for a reason, no longer have meaningful usage.

Anyway I don’t... know too much about the specifics of Spn but someone I follow is into it and talks a lot about the Gnostic stuff and that all was very fascinating to me, and I also have been grappling a lot with cultural Christianity bc of cmedia and the way ppl just *clenches fist* unthinkingly or uncritically slap some Christian norms on it and call it a day 😩 help I’m Tired. My thing here being... I actually got tired of the uncritical “superhell”s at some pt bc I am, in fact, incredibly exhausted with cultural Christianity, and because it does seem like, even possibly(?) without the Gnostic stuff it’s different from a “hell” or other Protestant-derived afterlife concept, and also yeah that it wasn’t seeded out of nowhere, it was set up to happen, which then... lends credence to the idea that whatever the current era of Spn is doing, the current showrunners are doing it with purpose.

And idk I just... refuse to believe the concept that ALL of the fans of Spn - esp the ones who have been following it still, or got back into it and are following it currently, are acting under delusion or are fooling themselves into liking it or thinking it’s good or whatever. I personally find that kinda infantilizing and patronizing and playing into issues of dismissing things women and/or other marginalized identities like.

Plus I find the concept that (from what I think I’ve been seeing Spn fans say) that the current era of the show is quite actively grappling with itself, its past, its legacy. to be very interesting and compelling; it hearkens back to like an old lore kind of feeling, of a thing that has grown into a nigh undefeatable monster and realizing that, also realizing that the only way to defeat itself is through grappling with its own nature and transforming and transmuting itself into something else. I personally find that more plausible and compelling than “Supernatural has been actively and continuously queerbaiting for 15 homophobic homophobic years., so right now we’re all very sorry for you because this maybe is no longer queerbaiting but it’s still homophobic and it can never be anything different ever.” I’ve been sort of tangentially aware of Spn thru the years and didn’t we agree, around the time of that in-universe play about Spn and with the lil Destiel shoutout, that Spn has come a ways as far as coming to terms with its fandom and working to treat its fans better? Why the sudden regression into “oh no, Supernatural is and forever will be homophobic and a hate crime”? 🤔

The rest under a cut bc the ask is already long and then my rambling will get longer-

But yeah I mean..... I get that the legacy of Supernatural has been certifiably Rough, but I think people also forget how different of a time 2005 was? Hell, how different of a time 2015 was, even, prior to, say, Obergefell v. Hodges. Now I’m not saying that to blanket-excuse Supernatural, but like, you look at mainstream shows from the era and... there’s a lot of shit lmao. The fact that Supernatural has existed this long seems to me like.... maybe we CAN look at how it’s developed through the years vs just insisting it is what it was 15, 10, hell, 5 years ago. Especially since, to my knowledge, there’s been showrunner changes? Which seems to me like it would... affect things? I mean honestly, I remember back when I got into Spn for a hot second because of Castiel, I remember watching panel, Q&A, etc vids thru the years, and like... I thought we agreed that... it was the fans who were going a bit far pushing the shipping question like literally ALL the time to the actors, who are not in control of the show and.... like at the time.... that could have had personal implications for them? And yes homophobia bad, and people can still be allies despite that, but again like.... I do feel like - from what I’ve seen - that these guys were NOT ready to deal with a lot of that but they’ve (okay Jensen I’m talking about Jensen here) genuinely grown and learned? Also how many years ago was the essay autograph thing that people keep trotting out, like what year was it in and what year of spn was it, and what were the prevailing opinions on LGBT issues and bisexuality then.

I’ve been seeing some murmurings of identity politicsing surrounding ppl who enjoy Supernatural, and I’m sorry that that’s happening to you, it really fucking sucks and it’s also the dumbest way to “make” or “win” an argument because it shouldn’t ever be a final determiner, just factors to consider when considering what life experiences might have informed someone else’s PoV and views as well as maybe how you can better communicate with them. Instead of it being a “weapon” or “tool” to either dismiss someone or de facto validate an argument.

Also yeah I get it that you don’t want to send discourse to spn blogs bc I imagine you guys ARE actively grappling with all the bs rn and it’s a lot. Even just from like, the stuff I see around, I’m like tired of it. I’m genuinely having more fun with ppl who are having a good time with Supernatural than the ppl who are hating on it, even in this sort of backhanded “oh we’re not clowning YOU we’re clowning the writers and showrunners who think you should be satisfied with this,” when... yeah? the people who HAVE been watching the show and therefore... know what’s up.. DO seem to be? And all this based on *fake gasp* context. And that’s where the backhandedness becomes kind of poisonous to me, because it implies that it IS bad, and that you SHOULDN’T be satisfied, but poor little you are but don’t worry, we’re not making fun of YOU for liking garbage, you’re just the hapless victim who is consuming the garbage bc... idk, whatever reasons ppl are coming up with ig.

idk man it’s 2020. Fandom isn’t activism, performative or otherwise, it’s okay to let people enjoy things even if you think they’re “objectively” bad, and like... I don’t know if people can call something bad when they’re not even working with the whole context and instead are dealing with rumor and reputation.

#supernatural cw #I tag this for ppl who I know want nothing to do with spn rn and are blacklisting and so it doesn't end up in main tag #Anonymous #asks answered #long post

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mittensmorgul · 5 years

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So. The lamp. As in, a sexy lamp. Like that one test. And wouldn't that just be a bibro early seasons' manly macho man ideal of heterostraight Dean (so, like, Chuck's), getting "intimate" with a disposable female eyecandy. But then he just, waves it goodbye. Good riddance, lamp. I have stuff to do, places to tapdance on. This was obviously supposed to be a crack ask but it sorta kinda almost holds water?? I'm???

Lol... but seriously... I had this exact thought... but like... haven’t said it out loud because, first off, was that lamp sexy? It wasn’t this lamp:

but it WAS dancing... Dean made it sexy by his interaction with it, I guess we could say.

Supernatural has a long-standing cracky history of Lamp Abuse, and a lot of folks immediately picked it up in that respect. I mean, I have a tag for this going back to May 2015:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/tagged/this%20is%20a%20lamp%20abuse%20awareness%20blog/chrono

So I didn’t mention the Sexy Lamp Test, because heck... SPN also has a long history of Female Character Issues, and making the comparison to actual abused lamps, even in a joking way, just struck me as... an uncomfortable subject... An Actual Lamp got treated with respect before some of the female characters SPN has treated horrifically. And I don’t think that’s the message this scene was attempting to convey.

For reference purposes, as I’m typing this, I’ve got 4.16 on in the background, and Alistair is singing Dancing Cheek to Cheek, and I’m feeling really grateful they didn’t pick THAT song for Dean’s dream sequence... okay moving on from that >.>

For people who don’t know what we’re talking about, please read the Fanlore page on what is meant by the Sexy Lamp Test:

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Sexy_Lamp_Test

It’s similar to the Bechdel-Wallace test (that at least two named female character have a conversation that isn’t about a man), but again, both of these “tests” are also specifically regarding the representation of women in media. When fandom also began ascribing meaning to Dean’s dance with the lamp, suggesting the lamp he actaully wanted to dance with was Cas... I began to rethink this. Or at least to rethink how I could discuss this.

Andrew Dabb really likes using one scene to say or suggest multiple things. The more references or parallels he can pack into a single thing, the happier he is. I mean, he brought us Jack, after all, who has served as a narrative mirror focal point for no less than six other characters. It’s... his favorite thing, I think. :’D

So, bearing that in mind, and understanding that I am NOT suggesting that any of those other interpretations are wrong, because I completely agree with them, too, and argue that all of these interpretations can be applied to the same scene at the same time here without conflicting, and that this is legitimately a valid interpretation of Dean’s Lamp Dance as well, please have a loose definition of the Sexy Lamp Test:

If you can take out a female character and replace her with a sexy lamp without changing anything else about the story, then you’ve failed.

I don’t know if there’s a Queer Content Sexy Lamp Test, but considering this phenomenon of sequestering queer content to easy to edit out quarantine zones, the fact that major media outlets are literally doing the sexy lamp to LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, etc, and literally leaving them on the cutting room floor entirely... well... that is something I find even more disturbing than the Sexy Lamp. But that’s a conversation for another post, and for someone with a more direct knowledge of this phenomenon in media in general. I’m just here to talk about one dude tap dancing with a lamp in an anesthesia-induced dream sequence, not the whole of the media industry...

The dance sequence was lampshaded (lol... I love discussing this because I get to be punny without actually even making a pun... this is literally what they did) Dean’s dance with his lamp partner as romantic, by tying it directly to his observation of and comments on Bess and Garth’s explicitly romantically coded dance at the end of the episode.

Is this a commentary on Dean’s past relationships? He sure has had a lot of encounters with women who could’ve just as easily been replaced by sexy lamps. Characters we don’t even have names for, sometimes, or whose only lines were directly about flirtation or innuendo, or even as the unwitting objects of Dean’s innuendo. And while the show may have been making a commentary about that, I don’t think that was the main intent of him dancing with a lamp, directly connected with a sense of longing for a real dance partner (irrespective of gender... a lamp is inanimate, and even in this context serves as a stand-in for a person. Technically, in this test, the person is a female character, but lamps-- at least in English-- don’t have an inherent gender).

It’s also been a while since Dean’s “danced with a lamp” in that respect. He’s “kissed that dance goodbye” a while ago. And had even been struggling with it going back as far as s9, you know? He wants a relationship, but something truly meaningful, and not just occasional dances with random lamps.

They tied this to Garth and Bess, who found something truly special together. They found a way to live their best lives, and they’re both happy together. They’re... metaphorically on top of the world, like Dean dancing on the map table at the end of his scene. All Dean needs is a real dance partner who’s willing to learn the steps with him. Much as he might know who he’d like that to be, Dean himself still doesn’t know if that partner is willing to dance with him...

(I’m talking about Cas... obviously... the guy who was literally introduced to the narrative in a non-human form of screeching sound and light that shattered glass and had Dean diving for cover and hiding his face, whose original form is a “wavelength of celestial intent.” Who’s since rejected that Celestial Intent and truly come to identify with Humanity when confronted by the Divine. Who’s now had an entire decade-plus-long character arc of un-lamp-ifying himself in the story, in every possible interpretation of that phrase, metaphorical and literal.)

Dean’s moved beyond wanting to just dance with passing lamps. But he still isn’t sure the dance partner he’s longing for even wants to learn how to dance, you know? But this episode accomplished one thing in that regard. Dean actively knows what he wants. We now have to wait and see if he works up the nerve to ask for it...

#spn 15.10 #spn s15 spoilers #destiel #the scheherazade of supernatural #lol still dancing around it but heck hanging lampshades all over the place...#Anonymous

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emptycanvasposts · 4 years

Text

The Dinner

Summary: Keegan has always had a crush on her best friend’s dad. Sam Winchester has always thought of his daughter’s best friend as his own daughter. What will a dinner all together begin to prove?

Warnings: None

Word Count: 2.4k

A/N: This is the first part to my first series posted! I’m excited to see how it turns out! Please give me feedback!

I stared at my reflection in the mirror, admiring the dress that I had picked up for graduation earlier while shopping with my best friend. The ruffles along my shoulders and at the bottom near the middle of my thighs were adorable, the fabric was soft to the touch, and the dress hugged my curves perfectly. In the mirror I could see Brook, my best friend, walking up behind me. She looked at me in the dress and said, “Kee, you could not have picked a better dress for yourself. It fits you perfectly and looks absolutely amazing on you! You could steal anyone’s heart wearing that dress!”

Brook and I have shared an apartment for the past three years that we have been in college. Freshman year we were roommates in the dorms and instantly clicked as friends, by the end of the year we agreed to split the rent on an apartment and it was the utmost best decision we ever could have made. Now we’re seniors with two weeks left before graduation and inseparable.

“Don’t get me wrong Kee, I love seeing you in that dress but we need to get ready. My dad is meeting us at the restaurant in an hour.”

“Shit! B! You couldn’t have told me sooner?! I still need to shower, dry my hair, and get dressed! Ughhh I hate when I’m running behind.”

“You have time, jeez, it’s not like you have to dress to impress, it's only us and my dad going. Chloe told me she has to go to dinner with her sisters so I’m a lone woman tonight alongside my bestie.”

Not known to Brook, I have to dress at least half decent because of the fact that Brook’s father, Sam Winchester, is the hottest and sweetest man to ever walk the earth. No matter how many times he has seen me dressed in sweatpants and a baggy t-shirt with a messy bun on top of my head, if I have the chance to dress in a way that he might find to be attractive I will.

Pulling off the dress and hanging it against the body-length mirror near my desk, I headed to the bathroom connected to my room to take a shower. Grabbing a towel from a shelf in the bathroom I placed it on the vanity before turning on the water to the shower. Stripping my bra and panties, I stepped into the shower feeling the hot water brush off the nervousness of sitting at the dinner table with Sam and Brook for around an hour.

After washing up, I stepped out of the shower wrapping the towel I had grabbed before around my body and walking to my closet to pick out an outfit for dinner. Looking at my clothes I decided on a pair of high-waisted white skinny jeans with a hole in each knee, a simple flowy black spaghetti strapped shirt, and a pair of black booties. Grabbing my black push up bra and matching thong I put them on before pulling my jeans up my legs and my shirt over my head. Walking back into the bathroom, I put on a little mascara and swiped some clear lip gloss and kept it as I walked over to my desk putting it in my purse. Putting my purse on my shoulder, I slid on my jean jacket that was hanging on the back of my desk chair and walked out of my room to meet Brook.

“Are you driving?” Brook asked as she locked the door to our apartment and we headed down the stairs to the parking lot.

“Don’t I always?” I laughed and pulled my keys out of my purse just as we got to my jeep parked in the front of the parking lot.

Both of us laughed at the comment I made because of how true it is, we hopped into my jeep and I started asking her what restaurant we were meeting her dad at.

“The italian restaurant on the corner that we always go to,” she told me as I pulled out of my parking spot and headed to the exit of the lot.

Pulling out onto the main road, Brook turned the music on the radio up loud and we both sang our hearts out for the quick ten minute drive to the restaurant. Getting into the parking lot I found a parking spot easily in the front since it was only a Wednesday. Turning off my jeep and both of us getting out grabbing our purses, I locked it and we made our way to the front doors of the restaurant.

When we walked in the front door Brook immediately saw her dad sitting at a booth in the back. As we walked up to the booth he looked up and saw each of us, getting up to greet us both he hugged Brook tightly first. I slightly looked over every square inch of him. He was wearing a nice pair of dark blue jeans that made his legs look longer if that was even possible, the black shirt he had on was just tight enough to show off his muscular chest, and the flannel he wore over his shirt was rolled up to his elbows and showed off his fantastic arms. Not to mention his long, brown hair looked soft enough that I just wanted to run my fingers through it and the scruff on his jawline like he hadn’t shaved in a couple days was beyond sexy. God how was this man in his forties?

After Sam finished hugging Brook, I walked up and gave him a hug. Pulling away slightly from the hug, Sam looked at me with a smile, “Keegan, you look just as gorgeous as always,” his hand lingering on the small of my back as I sat in the booth next to Brook, followed by Sam sitting on his side across from us. My mind couldn’t get over the way he kept his hand on my back for so long but I just chalked it up to me overthinking it.

After we ordered our drinks, Brook looked at me telling me that she needed the bathroom so I got up and let her out before sitting back down, alone at the table with Sam. Silently cursing myself for not going with Brook.

“So, Mr. Winchester, how are things going over at the bar?” I asked trying to make small talk until Brook got back.

“Keegan, how many times have I told you that you can call me Sam?” he chuckled and flashed a huge smile at me before continuing with his response. “Well you know my brother, Dean, has always been such a great help and it was such a great idea for us to go in as partners instead of alone, and he’s been helping out a lot with the bartending especially now since I’m getting prepared for you and Brook to be graduating,” he said as he rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous tick of his you had noticed over the past few years but it confused me as to why he was doing it while talking to me. “Um, Dean actually tells me that he sees you in there quite a bit, but somehow you manage to be there when I’m not.”

Letting out a nervous chuckle, I looked up at him through my eyelashes, “Yea, uh, I tend to go when I have a rough or long day, you know? And with graduation coming up it seems there’s been a lot of those lately. You might as well give me a job helping bartend. I have been there so often.”

“If you’re interested. It couldn’t hurt having such a pretty woman behind the bar,” he said, meeting my eyes. I gave him a soft smile but neither one of us pulled our eyes away from the other, I could swear I saw some time of emotion in his eye that I hadn’t seen before.

Hearing Brook’s voice as she came back to the table, both me and Sam looked away from each other before I got out of the booth to let Brook back in. As the waiter came back with our drinks we all ordered our food and started to talk about what Brook and I had left for our classes.

“I know Brook only has one final left on Friday, do you have anything left to do Keegan?” Sam asked me after taking a sip of his water.

“Well, actually, no. I took my last final on Monday so I have absolutely nothing to do until graduation,” I told him and took a sip of my sweet tea.

“You could start training on Friday if you’d like. I wasn’t joking about you coming bartend. Plus you’d start getting free drinks instead of having to pay every time you came,” he told me with a laugh.

Brook looked at both of us with this quizzical expression on her face, completely confused about what we were talking about.

Looking to Brook I gave her a smile, “Your dad offered me a job bartending at the bar,” I told her to clear up her confusion.

“Ohh, that sounds like a great idea, are you going to take it Kee?” she asked me.

Biting my lip and looking between her and Sam, I let out a nervous laugh, “Sure, I don’t see why not,” and I instantly regretted my statement because that would mean I’d be spending a whole lot more time with Sam without Brook being there.

Finishing our meals, we were all completely full and ready to go home. The waiter came by with the check and Sam automatically gave him his card. Brook looked at him with a glare, “Dad, you don’t have to do that, we can pay for ourselves.” After Sam took the last sip of his water, he looked between me and Brook, “I know, but consider it my treat. I don’t get to see you two women as often as I’d like,” and with his last few words his eyes landed on me. Those words instantly made me blush and I had to look down so that he wouldn’t notice.

When the waiter got back with Sam’s card and the receipt we all got up and made our way to the doors. After Brook gave her dad a hug goodbye, Sam looked at me and asked if I could stay and talk to him about Friday. “Oh, uh, yeah of course,” I responded when he asked, giving the keys to Brook I said with a laugh, “You can start it. Just do not go anywhere because that gives you the ability to wreck it!”

Turning back to Sam, “So what about Friday did you want to talk about?” I asked him.

“I genuinely am offering you a job if you don’t think I am,” he started with a chuckle and started rubbing to back of his neck nervously for some unknown reason, “and, uh, I’m going to personally train you on Friday so that you don’t have to worry about it being Dean, someone that you don’t know all that well,” he explained to me.

“I actually was a bartender for a few months freshman year so it’s fine if Dean trains me, I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly,” I assured him, desperately trying to not have to spend an entire first night working with him.

“Keegan, I insist. Plus, it’ll give me some time to get to know you more because I don’t know really all too much about you,” he said with what looked to be a nervous smile on his face.

“Okay, I guess if you insist. I’ll see you Friday, I have to go before Brook messes anything up in my jeep,” I said with a laugh, “you know how that is.”

“Yep I sure do,” he laughed. Giving me a hug goodbye I again felt as if his hand lingered on my lower back but it was probably nothing.

Walking to my jeep I put my head in my hands out of nervous habit over actually agreeing to take a job at Sam’s bar and to be trained by him. Yet, I smiled when I lifted my head back up because I was kind of happy to spend alone time with him and that he wanted to get to know me more, even if it was just because I’m his daughter's best friend.

Sam POV

Running my hands down my face I let out a huge sigh, not out of relief but out of nervousness surprisingly. I had been nervous throughout the whole dinner and I couldn’t even start to understand why.

Keegan is Brook’s best friend, I’ve known her for four years, but yet somehow she surprises me. She always looked amazing, but tonight for some unknown reason her looks really hit me. The way her dark hair flowed over her shoulders, the way her shirt had dipped just low enough to show off a little cleavage, and the way her jeans perfectly shaped her hips and ass. And damn, the ass that woman had. But god, there was no reason for me to be thinking about her in that way, she was basically a daughter to me, right? Then I had to go and offer her a job, where she would wear clothes a lot more revealing than what she wore tonight.

Throwing my head back against the seat I kept thinking about how I couldn’t even talk to her without getting nervous. Not even because of how she looks but because of how sweet her voice sounded and how cute she was when she was laughing.

What was going on in my pants? Sure it had been way too long since I’d been with someone else but that didn’t mean I was becoming attracted to Keegan that way because of it. And more importantly what was going on with my heart and why was I feeling this way all of a sudden?

I would really have to get it together before I spent the whole night with her on Friday. Putting the key in the ignition of my car I turned it on and quickly pulled out hoping that occupying myself with driving would take my mind off of her.

#sam winchester x ofc #Sam Winchester #dad!sam #ofc #supernatural #dean winchester #spnfanficpond #SPN #emptycanvasposts #guppy #ecpwrites

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incarnateirony · 5 years

Text

Terms and Conditioning and Meanings

Okay, so it’s something a lot of people heard me bang on about several times over the last few years, but recently I found a thread (x) by yet another lit professor -- this one in another fandom.

I’m sure some people will choose to reactively and malignly pick at parts of what they say without reading the heart of their body of work, in a blazing display of self-blind irony, but well-- I went off on my usual tear I go on ‘round these parts and unsurprisingly they went through and liked every single one while QTing other Typical Fandom Asshats to shoot them down, so let’s roll here.

I’ll start with the TLDR edition but then break down the actual content behind a cut -- because this? This is something this fandom DESPERATELY NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCES OF, and how they DO and DON’T relate.

CODING = CONSCIOUS CHOICE OF CONSTRUCTION BY AUTHOR SUBTEXT = THEMATIC RESONANCE THROUGH MOST OF OR THE ENTIRE WORK THAT EMBOLDENS THE TALE INTERPRETATION = LITERALLY WHATEVER YOU WANT BUT STRONGER IF YOU KNOW WHAT THE OTHER 2 ARE AND WHERE THEY ARE. THANKS KIDS DEATH OF THE AUTHOR = NOT AN EXCUSE FOR EIGHTH-ASSED READINGS CANON = WHAT EXISTS WITHIN A WORK, OR AN AGREED UPON BODY OF ACCEPTED WORKS (episodes, books, etc not part of the ecclesiastical body) NO, it is not a MAGIC WORD for “NOW THEY KISSED” and there are MANY FORMS OF WHAT IS CANON WITHIN AN ACCEPTED BODY OF WORK. QUEERBAIT = VERY FEW OF THESE THINGS AND YET CAN BE ALL OF THESE THINGS AND THIS IS THE MOST BUSTED WORD Y’ALL HAVE FUCKING RUINED.

(Edit: I saw someone reblog this with “really aggressive in an offputting way” before a tag of “but I agree” so I’ma put this out here: Yeah. It fucking is. Because this fandom is fucking exhausting. And I am tired. Of having to fucking repeat things. That are literal common sense. In a fandom that insists on flushing common sense. Of otherwise intelligent people sending themselves into destructive spirals. Of even friends losing friends to people sliding off into bitter pits these problems lead to. So if you’re someone that favors common sense, maybe you actually should feel this frustration in your soul. The lit folks reblogging this with commentary so far seem to.)

To quote the linked OP and give credit where credit is due for resparking this conversation in my mind and realizing I haven’t said this for a long time and new followers may not know, even if this is familiar to like 90% of people who follow me -- but I feel they touched aptly on parts I haven’t even really done more than brush over.

queer-coding is quite sinister in a lot of ways (though can be employed subversively to great effect) but also very interesting! studies have shown that children who like or identify with queer-coded villains are more likely to be lgbt, even if they don't realise what's going on.

during the hays era it was mostly a way to show that a villain was bad (because gay = evil), but it could also be a way for closeted queer creators to sneak lgbt representation into their work, which is why so many queer-coded villains are so damn *likeable*.

what's also interesting is that lgbt creators would sometimes explicitly *straight-code* their villains - gaston from disney's beauty and the beast is a great example of this. highly recommend that you read up on the story of his creation!

all of which is to say: queer-coding has a meaning, it's not the same as queer-*baiting*, and it DEFINITELY isn't the same as "I'm gonna read this character as gay because I wanna imagine him as gay" - the name for that is fanon, and some trek fans

there are lots of academic works on the history of queer-coding if you want to spend an afternoon down a google scholar rabbit hole! just, you know. terms have meanings.

that's the thing. coding literally is intentional. what you're talking about is an alternate or resistant reading, or a world-context-centred critical approach.

you're right that it's got nothing to do with representation, but unlike semiotics, which is text-centred but may or may not rely on reading into intentional authorial choices, queer-coding refers specifically to an authorial choice. it's a defined term.

I didn't just take AP and honours english. I *taught* AP and honours english. for y e a r s.

--by @jaythenerdkid who I just accidentally found the tumblr of by preparing to make a twitter link but I checked and it’s the same person.

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

Okay so let’s pick through this a little bit before people start spinning this up in their heads.

TO START: QUEER CODING

I’ve seen people say “This character has villain attributes or dark attributes ergo he is queer coded.” That is absolutely not the way to apply this history, this works in reverse. As handled here, villains were either malignly codified to make queer characters evil and/or were then used as a slip-in of representation. A villain being a villain is not in fact itself an actual queer coding point. A dark history is not itself a queer coding point. Addiction stories are not themselves a queer coding point. In fact, trying to apply itself in this order is like BLAZINGLY homophobic and gross as hell and if you’re doing this, you should stop now. Yes, I’ve seen this.

I fucking promise you Gaston wasn’t consciously “queer coded” in being a villain, being a villain does not give him a Magic Gay Point.

Are we good on that point? Have we figured out the direction these Magic Gay Points fly in and don’t? Cool. If the author consciously added elements that will harmonize with a straight audience as queer to make them seem bad, that’s malignant queer coding; if an author consciously added elements that will harmonize with a queer audience to make them somehow familiar or likable, that is subversive queer coding.

An example of subversive queer coding: In the Legend of Korra, the creators had limitations on what the network would allow them to do. Later, they confirmed their intent was a WLW couple being portrayed at the end, but it hovers in the area of a hand hold that people can unfortunately choose to negotiate away into bestest friends despite all the other story flags for them along the way.

People have/can/will call queerbait about this. In this case, this is not queerbait. This is attempted representation to bypass restrictions and is not malign, but are authors doing their best to give their queer audience something, anything, in the case of it. Yes, it was post-air acknowledgment but it was what they were goddamn trying to give us gays out here. It’s not hiding their gays on the creator’s part -- it’s hiding their gays on the network’s part -- WHICH IS A STEP A LOT OF PEOPLE GET VERY CONFUSED ABOUT.

Hell, just because *one* show or property on a specific channel even allows X Amount Of Gay in it doesn’t even mean they’ll allow their other properties that amount of gay every time, and can and WILL step in and block creators. It happens even on premium networks like HBO or Starz. Because they have their ideas of what the demographic they dump a bunch of marketing money into is okay with, half-educated and half massive fiery balls of projection from whatever old white dude is reviewing the data. So no, never just bank on “well X network made the Gay Bar exactly This Tall To Ride here so all their other shows can be Exactly This Gay.” -- you do that, you’re gonna set yourself up for a FUCKTON of disappointment.

Hell, LGBT aren’t even treated equally to other LGBT. Bi men have like 1/3 the representation of bi women because media is held in a largely male gaze corporately and well, bi women are sexy to straight guys, give them some of that lesbian action. But oh, nono, don’t put the bi dudes near their network, no homo. If you drape a rainbow boa on this lamp post though we’ll let you have a gay guy run around that is there to make other characters uncomfortable as a stereotype, that’s fine. LITERALLY do *NOT* simply assume for *ANY REASON* that because one kind of LGBT person cleared on one show that others will too, there’s so many ways that drops through the floor.

That small aside about network bullshittery handled, let’s get back to the terms.

Negative queer coding I can think of with things like, I dunno. Jafar. Honestly very few LGBT people will actively associate with most of these attributes because a great wealth of them are attributes in the eyes of straight creators villainizing gay people, rather than gay people making gay people that just happen to be villains, and this distinction *DOES MATTER.* The long, snaky body -- the coy, venomous tone, embellished gestures; I mean sure, some people are like that, and that’s fine, you be you, but it’s a stereotype most try to shed rather than play into. It’s not the sum of who we are but put into the wrong creator’s hands, they *make* that the perceivable sum of who we are, + villainy.

But queer coding CAN be suggestively used to paint positive role models in situations they can’t necessarily be written as Overtly Gay, and the list of those reasons is unfortunately Very Long. But they are always things that are active choice, and your interpretation of what is Active Choice is not the same as Proven Active Choice.

For example: “The wallpaper was green and blue in this scene so Dean is thinking of Castiel even if he isn’t saying it.” Okay. We’re gonna go to Subtext and Interpretation later, but summarily: no. Hell, maybe it even is, but that’s a huge vault you actually have to exorbitantly prove and you can’t just say “but movie lighting theory” because I promise Dean = Green Cas = Blue isn’t general lighting theory.

An alternate example: “Bobo Berens, the first LGBT author on Supernatural, affirmed that Castiel was written in place of Colette, Cain’s wife, in Dean’s mirrored life; this is recurring symbolism and reflects often in Beren’s work, wherein his first episode showrunner Carver opted them to act as jilted lovers, and made a vast wash of content involving bold partnership ideals such as ‘at the altar’, ‘secret admirer’, and more that mysteriously hit the cutting room floor, but resonates very loudly through several directly connected seasons and all future work by Berens such as classic romantic partnership gifts and ideas [mixtape, heart connect, etc].”

This is simultaneously coding and subtext. We could frankly make 200 page dissertations about this chain of text -- and most of us already have -- that doesn’t require loudly extrapolating interpretation of external elements or single unrelated lines.

“But subtext is just QUEERBAIT. It’s JUST SUBTEXT, it’s NOT CANON.”

Okay honey let me stop you right there. This is like the most common bad hot take in this fucking fandom. Like every part of it is bad but everybody kind of strings it together into one big Ball of Bad.

Subtext is, summarily, a hidden body of text that is felt in the work. Beyond Who You Want To Be Gay, subtext is a lot of things. Subtext is the value of humanity above all powers and principalities, in Supernatural. And there’s all kinds of other subtext. Whenever you see someone blink and have black eyes in SPN without them saying “I’m a demon” and you know they’re a demon, that’s... kind of subtext too. I mean, we know textually demons have black eyes, but nothing ever said only demons have black eyes. So what if I wanted to say it’s the ghost of big bird? It’s MY INTERPRETATION and MY INTERPRETATION IS VALID TOO.

Shit you can even cobble together half assed unrelated extrapolations--some demons have yellow eyes and Jack had yellow eyes so he wasn’t a demon so clearly not all black eyes are demons and uh... the angel blade kills lots of things, that black eyed thing still wasn’t a demon.

See how easy it is to absolutely BULLSHIT around it with decontextualized BULLSHIT? It almost passes at a glance until held up to the smallest bit of scrutiny and following episodes.

Okay, so look, “It’s my interpretation, and my interpretation is valid” is only as far as it holds up soundly to *you.* As long as it is truly valid to *you.* And that doesn’t mean big brave faces you put on For The Twitter Stan Wars because you don’t want to lose digital clout when the newest episode falls through and blows your entire house of cards out of the water because you weren’t reading the actual subtext being hewn into the story by the authors -- or even forming a resilient resistant read of your own subtext that can hold -- but once that interpretation leaves your mouth to try to bounce off of other people’s viewpoints, you’re now indirectly challenging their viewpoint with theirs. If you stay in your cabal where you think the spirit of big bird has black eyes, and never subtweet or @ or whatever anybody else about this Hot Take, that’s fine, just don’t be surprised when you’re left defending that to whatever followers you pulled into the Big Bird Cabal.

Or you all sit in angry silence with each other and then start helicopter swinging at the writers for ruining The Spirit Of Big Bird that was never fucking there. Because you’re trying to apply patchy, unstable, and generally very piss poorly founded readings to a still released work.

So THAT lead in shoved off to the side about interpretation and keeping your interpretation to yourself if you don’t want to be challenged by far more solid interpretations, Because that’s how content discussion works,

SUBTEXT IS OFTEN A FORMULATIVE PART OF CANON, ESPECIALLY IF IT IS CODED, WHETHER WE ARE TALKING QUEER CODING OR ANY OTHER KIND OF CODING.

Subtext is a thematic undercurrent. Subtext is the unspoken soul of a piece, what lies in the blank space between the lines, but not just whatever you take the lines to be. If you sit down and write a lit paper, you’re gonna have to explain where you pulled your subtext out of.

You can either go the “Death of the Author” route where you summarily erase any commentary ever made and build your own, but you still need to be able to read the sum of the text and present what it all is. And most importantly you can’t just present what it’s not. If your entire reading of a work is trying to explain away common sense bullshit and it ends up reading like All Work No Play Makes Johnny Dull Boy because you had to build 82 nonlinear explanations around what you don’t want, and those all lead to nowhere, that professor is going to flunk the shit out of you. And if you use Death of an Author DEFINITELY don’t simultaneously try to appeal to authority with other quotes convenient to you.

Not Wanting something to Be So and going completely over the river and through the woods in completely disjointed intentionally maladapted readings of refusal doesn’t mean you’ve found subtext, it means you’ve chosen to make a reading -- an interpretation -- that is not really thematically sound with the body of work but for whatever reason, you’ve chosen to make that the meaning it has to *you.* And that’s fine. Unless you’re trying to impress a professor. Or jousting your opinion off of somebody else that isn’t doing cartwheels around the content to avoid the parts they don’t like (and get mad about it later.)

Removing all genuine thematic subtext and disregarding it from any part of the canon discussion of a piece is, however, devastating and essentially rips out the foundation of a piece. This has become all the more common as junk TV gets junkier and continues to appeal to the lowest common denominator that need to be reminded that 2+2=4 every three episodes before they accept that 2+2=4 in their respective canon universe, because otherwise they’ll claim it’s just subtext or someone else’s opinion that it equals 4.

And that’s not what these words mean and I am left eternally climbing up walls, because in this fandom, like... subtext, interpretation, coding, queerbait have all become one amorphous blob that just gets hurled around like four stuck together balls of Gak at a grade school party and just seeing where they splatter.

It is entirely possible for content to be subtextual and canon, if it is thematically resonant with the piece and a loud and fundamental part of its storytelling that it can not operate without acknowledging. Discussion of queer content aside, there’s a lot of shit this applies to. There’s a certain sense of good faith most authors put in their readers/viewers/whatever that people will have an fundamental understanding of the spirit of a work they’re conveying. This good faith amount varies depending on their projected demographic, but let me assure you, if your respective creator essentially has the characters stop and do “today I learned” narratives, or interruption explanation inserts over everything, there’s one of two reasons: 1. It’s a literal parody/comedy 2. It’s either geared for kids or they think you’re all fucking idiots.

As I don’t tend to watch parody, comedy, or kid shows, I tend to favor shows that don’t feel the need to handhold me through every instance of the show. Because I am not nor do I appreciate being treated like an idiot.

Subtext is a valuable part of canon as long as we are talking by virtue of “coding” not “random unfounded interpretation.”

Now, to the topic of queer coding, is it fundamentally gratifying to our primitive lizard brain survival instinct if we see characters kiss or whatever your personal landmark for gratification is? I mean, sure. Does the romance leading up to the kiss absolutely not matter at all until the kiss, or was that early state of subtext, dance, and non-consummation itself a valid romantic journey?

Because honestly this is something I feel current LGBT dialogue is missing. We’re so wounded from being caught in the subtext veil that we want confirmation, but everybody wants to skip the journey to the sweet stuff. I’m not saying every story needs to be a years long slow burn, but y’all. You know how we talk about het romance being boring as fuck because it’s like “dude/chick look at each other and they fuck and now they’re insufferable, hahahah is this what het culture is like is this what they call romance what kind of standards--”? Yeah, we’re rapidly snowplowing towards that.

I’m also not saying quick confirmation is bad either. There’s shows and stories where even pre-confirmed LGBT couples are GREAT to see, just existing in the population. Not every story needs to be THE grand romance, or THE great coming out adventure, some can have already had their adventures just like the Totally Het Neighbors Next Door and that’s... fine. That’s great, even.

But we are approaching Absolute Bottom Barrel Trash Content at terminal velocity, mostly just being exploited and monetized by corporations that are virtue signaling us to give at best sub-par turnout. The amount of currently airing shows with quality queer content can probably be counted on your two hands.QED there’s hundreds of shows, thousands depending on which networks you’re counting in your numbers. Off the top of my head, Legends of Tomorrow has a fabulously queer cast that Just Is without being defined only by having a partner nor being a rainbow lamp with a sticky note of plot directions.

But we are also signaling creators that it’s no longer safe *to* give us gradual, slow burns, or genuine romance either. And we’re ALSO signaling creators -- INCLUDING QUEER CREATORS -- that it is no longer safe to make subtextual or coded content.

“Well good!” you probably say.

NO, THIS IS BAD, THIS IS REALLY, REALLY BAD.

Because while you may live in a fantasy universe where X Network had Y show exactly This Gay To Ride, it’s in blatant disregard of inconsistent landmarks and limbo sticks different shows, creators, and products have to go through, and some people in some shows are trying REALLY REALLY HARD to give you resonant queer content and you’re just shitting all over them and yelling that it’s queerbait.

I mean, queerbait is the idea that someone is giving queer content without intent to follow through and generally to exploit a queer audience. The problem is, all queerbait accusations are launched in default bad faith. Some of that bad faith is earned. Some of it is not. Sometimes there’s a lesbian with a network executive breathing down her neck that just wants to let her girls be together so she has them hold hands, even if she knows The Straights will talk it away as best friends, no matter how many canonically romantic storylines they’ve wedged into the subtext through loudly recognizable tropes.

Queerbait is a VERY DANGEROUS CARD and MUST BE USED WITH EXTREME CAUTION. Because depending on the longevity of what you’re crowing about, without understanding of what’s going on beyond the production veil, you can very easily even get creatives and creators hard shut down on a network level for wanting to protect the product. I’m sure you think “make it gay!” is the one answer to that, but no, it isn’t always, not depending on what the old white guy network exec I mentioned a while ago has in his papers about what or who he interprets pulls his income and what they like via demographics or inconsistent marketing test groups.

That’s not to say never call out queerbait, but the internet desperately needs to be more conscious about when and where they fling it around. What if Korra fans started horrifically screeching about queerbait and blasting it all over the internet and @’ing production or even network people and making devoted articles to make it a shitshow that even hit GA impact zones? Do you really think Nickelodeon would look at their demographic paperwork and throw it in the air and go “Oh! Well we make it gay then.”

Or do you think they’d have left a hard feedback note to further divide those characters with a strong warning about limits and restrictions.

We are slowly moving out of the area of things like queer coded villains and have more migrated into an area of subversive queer coding, but a great deal of subversive queer coding has people lose their SHIT because Some Idiot On The Internet With A Shitty Take And Quarter Assed Interpretation told them “it’s just subtext so it’s not valid until they kiss”, setting out this roving goalpost everybody keeps running after like a goddamn donkey chasing a carrot on a stick, and in some cases completely unable to be reached, despite the LITERAL BEST INTENTION of the authors.

I’ve heard “well if they can’t Bring It All The Way, they shouldn’t at all.” What the FUCK? What kind of UNBEARABLY STRAIGHT WASHED WORLD do you want to live in? What kind of world do you think we’re living in right now? I regret to inform you, Trump got elected to office somehow and reversed a lot of LGBT protections somehow and it’s not just “because Russia,” it’s because there’s still a SHITTON of assholes out there that make corporations that bankroll TV SHITTONS of money and whether we like it or not, TV is a BUSINESS and we’re all DOLLAR SIGNS.

Stripping subversive queer coding, especially from the hands of queer authors, sets us back into a weird offset of primitive ages and extremized content, where the latter becomes poorly packaged lesbians dropped as a marketing plan to upsell Trendy New Teen Show without daring to rattle the middle aged demographic of a split political demographic in another show. No. Absolutely fucking not. Use some responsibility and apply some critical thinking before yelling queerbait and figure out where a problem is in any given situation, that’s all I fucking ask.

Hell for all you know those queer creators could be pitching it again and again behind the scenes, or baited on that side with maybes, or being stalled out by being told to wait for test marketing groups, and generally tugged around on their own leash where corporate is summarily watching the feedback to the blatant but subtextual and coded queer content.

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Now, ALL OF THIS becomes a fucking mess in discussion when people don’t box off these definitions and issues.

If people don’t realize the value of subtext to canon,

And people don’t understand the difference between coding and interpretation,

And people confuse queerbait with any of this,

You end up with some giant VAT of literally EVERYBODY sounding like dipshits because Anti A told Shipper B who loves queer author C and relationship D that It’s Just Subtext, and then Shipper B turns around and yells ITS NOT CANON YOU’RE IDIOTS FOR LOVING IT in their pained bitterness, but then Anti A brings Anti B back and they decide they optically prefer relationship Z that has no actual coding or subtext, but they’ve strapped together their own interpretation, but they confuse interpretation and subtext, and break out all interpretations are equal even if they are not in the body of the actual canon work, but now everybody is yelling it’s not canon because nobody even fucking knows what any of these words mean anymore, and then Shippers A-Z turn around and start yelling queerbait at a gay author just trying to write his little gay heart out-- you see the problem, right?

On the other hand, there’s fandoms where people confuse these same points and think their uncorroborated interpretation is subtext simply because they chose to interpret it that way, and with enough voices drawn into it in the vat of “all interpretations are equal”, turn around and yell queerbait at authors who are scratching their heads going “the fuck are you on about”

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Other bad takes: The opinions of actors really don’t fucking matter. I don’t care if they’re pro-relationship or anti-relationship or just pro/anti any idea other than a relationship. This is like taking the opinion of some dude who played Hamlet an eternity ago for Shakespeare while Shakespeare was still alive and writing about what Shakespeare’s writing meant. His opinion may be meaningful to him, but it is his own interpretation. If Shakespeare wrote Hamlet The Sequel the actor could turn out entirely wrong about what he was babbling about.

Actors are just interpreting the art to screen like you are. Acting is an interpretive art. They’re just. Interpreting. Just like you. So stop whipping out statements of actors against each other. You might as well be quoting jared-uwu-cest.tumblr dot com as an authority for your bad fucking take. Stop it. If actors on the same set have conflicting opinions and are just talking about their opinion, their opinion doesn’t mean shit more than any other fan of the source content, unless they are hand delivering statements, cited, from specific authors they’ve communicated with about the work they’re interpreting from (coming to mind, the time Jensen Ackles went to showrunner Jeremy Carver confused about the romance with Amara feeling right, only to tell us that Jeremy Carver told us that Amara wasn’t his romance, she was his kryptonite).

Now if you’re choosing death of the author NONE of this is relevant, obviously, because you shouldn’t be citing ANY of this, because then you’re just playing to discussion points for convenience. But if you are looking for actual intent, the actor’s interpretation is only as valid as any other dedicated interpretation, albeit possibly more or less sounded in awareness of the text, but is otherwise only as valuable for how direct of a voice box they are being for what authors said about specific scenes. Hell, most things are filmed out of order and many actors don’t watch the whole piece. It already consumes their work life, it won’t consume their home life, no matter how much they love it, they haven’t reviewed the full body of the piece externally as a finished product, just processed emotions out of sequence.

THERE WAS A NEW AVENGER THAT DIDNT EVEN REALIZE HE WAS ACTING A NEW AVENGER UNTIL HE TOOK HIS KIDS TO THE MOVIES AND WAS LIKE “OH SHIT I’M AN AVENGER.” Stop BANKING on actor statements.

This also gets more complicated in group writing projects such as TV shows with multiple authors. And MORE complicated explaining that complication to fandom when they get positive statements from the creator of a show who is the *only* author and then turn around and yell “WHY DIDN’T [OTHER FANDOM]” do that when like, IDK, 6/40 authors have over the course of however long it’s been written on, most have been radio silent and one other had a different opinion and then you just expect some group borg rising of everybody who’s ever written on the show to come and hand deliver you individual hand-fed statements about what they meant.

This entire thing also foregoes the import of directors and how they work with their set dressers as part of the creative process; they’re what manifest the text into a visual medium of the story, which may or may not be identical to the author’s intent. Again, to hearken back to Supernatural as my root fandom here, it’s been mentioned Sgriccia knew how to work with everyone and get what they were meaning to convey with how long he worked on set, so generally, authors and Sgriccia cooperated really well in a full art. Whereas that nightmare of an episode Don’t Go In The Woods was directed by a VFX guy as his first directing experience and we could see he barely knew how to work with actors much less the spirit of the text; he just had great understanding of environment.

These things, these opinions, these takes also matter. Because TV is a different form. I generally don’t see people arguing Pride & Prejudice on twitter, it’s usually TV/movies. Lit theory is incredibly valid for understanding the pace and flow of a body of work but you also have to understand what authors are deeply plugged into that, what directors are deeply plugged in, who’s an experimental folly they’ll patch up the work of afterward, it’s not the same as just reading a novel by one author or, at most, a few co authors in immediate harmony.

Like I don’t know if people think I did my Crazy Pagan Magic to come up with the season 14 ending like I had a pages-long rant reel of direct quotes and shots that literally predicted that Jack was going to lose his soul, become faux-god, and Dean was going to be given an ultimatum of shooting him, probably after killing Mary, because getting the yellow eyed thing was the point right--but that the true scarlet letterman wasn’t their lost child, but the absent father. The Great Father who left all questions--the god of control. But dad told you to put a bullet in me, and you didn’t.

Like, anyone remember me spouting literally all of these things across different posts? It’s not magic. So while Christians in fandom are turning themselves into pretzels making shitbrained theories trying to explain why it Wasn’t Really Chuck Or Chuck Isn’t Really God, I’ve got a few hundred pages of thesises here talking about this being exactly where they were going because of SUBTEXT. Because it’s PART OF THE CANON AND BUILDING THE FUNDAMENTAL STORY.

If it comes to a textual head like Chuck, great. But people have to recognize whatever landmark they set for what they consider a textual head is entirely subject to the creators or, worse, a network. The same way in season 11 they got told they couldn’t kill God, here we go on take 2, maybe the network changed it’s mind, we’ll find out.

These things all interplay VERY IMPORTANTLY with each other and also, this issue goes WELL BEYOND Supernatural fandom. At some point in history a bunch of people in multiple fandoms started slinging these words around without understanding them and bounced them off of more people that don’t understand them and it turns into a goddamn hot mess because nobody’s using words like they mean anymore, just vaguely beating each over the head with it, and it’s driving me i n s a n e. Hell, y’all are undermining YOURSELVES half the time by the way people have taught you to misuse words.

ALSO WRT “CANON”

Most of the above covers what canon is within the way it’s abused in fandom, but I’ve seen some people take the idea of it being accepted into a body of work by the authors as meaning like, every reading of the material needs to be acknowledged by the authors. I already detailed what it means. It’s absolutely not that. 100%. I don’t give a shit how you choose to interpret that. Because there is literally no way on planet earth an author has made a full statement confirming every detail about every part of their book and that goalpost doesn’t just magically manifest when we’re talking about, say, gay shit. Or powers you don’t like. If it’s thematically there, it’s thematically there, you can’t hackjob it out of canon just because This Specific Idea doesn’t have a Canon For Dummies statement attached to it, or worse, one attached to it specifically to your liking, since people like interpreting away ones based on their preferences rather than reason.

Similarly it doesn’t mean there’s a magic goalpost of a vagueblogged percentage of people that must accept the content for it to be canon. Hell, like half the fandom still tricked themselves into thinking there was a reaper retcon in season 9 (x) that NEVER FUCKING EXISTED IN ANY DAMN CAPACITY. Large groups of people choosing to miss the point doesn’t mean the canon didn’t hold the point, simply that they chose to draw another point out of it. Generally, in a still releasing work, that also leaves them disappointed and confused later (such as when someone claimed they retconned the nonexistent reaper retcon, because I heard you like retcons.)

There is no magic percent, no magic statement. These things are nice, but they aren’t what makes canon. Canon is the actual accepted body of work such as seasons, episodes, books, movies, or whatever else as part of the universe. (Eg: Supernatural’s novels are officially noncanonical and not part of discussion of canon content. They are not accepted into canon. That’s what this means.)

Also if you’re talking about canon quantify it. You can be as tired as you want about bad rep, but bad rep quality has nothing to do with the canon source content. You can be as tired about lowkey gayness as you want but are you saying the canon material isn’t romantic at all, or are you saying the characters aren’t consummated yet. If the canon material isn’t canonically romantic why are you yelling queerbait; or acknowledge the value of queer unconsummated canon romances even if you aspire for more, but don’t bounce that goalpost around for convenience, fuck sake.

DID U KNOW that things can be CANONICALLY ROMANTIC without being CANONICALLY CONSUMMATED? Or that even a queer author’s idea of what reads as consummated canon may not be the same as yours? Did you know that a MLM LGBT author in his 40s may have very different ideas of how to express an MLM romance than a bunch of WLW LGBT women of any age, because there’s intersectionality at play? If you don’t want bi men determining how lesbians should be represented we need to apply that all around, kids.

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So sure, your interpretation can be valid, for you. But once you joust others, or pin your interpretation on the show without careful exploration of the actual intentful themes, you’re gonna probably be disappointed as it releases and uproots your ideas. Now the question is if you are willing to hold mature intelligent discourse about other people’s potential interpretations and readings, or if you’re going to grapple onto your old, broken interpretation like Gollum with the Ring because it’s your precious and you’ll let it send you crawling into a moldy cave hissing at anyone happily walking by.

Is Your Interpretation worth your anger when it falls through Do you even WANT to like the show? Do you literally prefer staying angry over reviewing your take compared to people who are still happy with it? Why AREN’T you willing to figure out where you went left of canon?

And furthermore, is your anger and broken interpretation/expectations worth holding onto a damn ring/show that clearly isn’t what you thought it was, or can you toss your fiery stan rage into Mordor before you turn into a twitter goblin and find a place you can interpret differently that makes you happy?

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Lesson: Stop being fandom goblins

Also @tinkdw

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evening-blossoms · 5 years

Text

So um. I'm a total idiot and forgot an entire day of my own challenge. I was gonna keep it that way since nobody had noticed but... that day was something I'd wanted to talk about for a while so...

Welcome to the very late and out-of-schedule day 10 of my SGE Challenge

Characters I would rewrite

Buckle down cause oooooh boy do I have shit to say - and because of this I'll be deviating from what I usually do and write a rant post instead! Given I don't want to make a way too long post, I'll simply go over a brief explanation of why they're in the list and what I'd change.

Kei of Foxwood (tw: drugging mention)

So this fucking asshole here apparently will get a redemption arc uh. I Actually already talked about this in this post I submitted but I will go over it again because it was kinda poorly worded imo (especially because it was written by sleep-deprived me at 3am)

Which is poorly driven given it starts with "Oh No! My beloved Rhian is dead, what shall be of me without my dear?". No. A good redemption arc should start with "Fuck I did something terrible and genuinly regret this and want to work on becoming a better person and fixing the mess I've made." Also, seems like Kei's form of redemption will be death and no, he should live with the consequences of what he's done.

Speaking of which - his redemption will also feel like an insult to the readers because seriously? He's way past redemption point for me now. He already was from QFG when he drugged Dot (which was something quite unecessary and Soman used an Extremely complicated and sensitive topic for the sake of shock value - but that's a whole new rabbit hole I'm not jumping into right now). And in ACOT he follows Rhian's orders which include attacking practically defenseless teenagers

So with that in mind, I'd either have Kei die the piece of shit he is or rewrite his arc from QFG in order to make a good redemption. First, erase that part with Dot and find another way to get to the keys. Again, it was an act that can be considered violence against women written down just for shock value. Given we do not have other scenes with Kei (except for the dungeons one), I'll leave it that for QFG.

In ACOT, start on his very first actual scene - the dinner scene. Have him hesitant on following Rhian's orders there, and perhaps hint it goes a bit deeper than hesitance. Then escalate it to him openly challenging Rhian's orders during that moment before the Blessing. The attack on SGE would be the first moment we see a greater act from him - maybe somehow going behind Rhian's back to stop that attack??? His last scene in the book is during the carriage ride with Sophie - when Kei tells her he's been going behind Rhian's back to stop the attacks he was able to, and knew he had to fix he'd made when he locked Tedros in the dungeons back in QFG. He agrees to help her somehow - but it goes terribly wrong when Japeth survives.

I myself still need to see a bit more how that could be well executed but that's the basic idea - have Kei's actions start from much earlier and have doing the right thing as motivation, not his love for Rhian - if anything, that should be a source of struggle.

Hort of Bloodbrook

This is can be either a rewrite of his own arc or a rewrite of the light he's written in.

He is a Nice Guy tm. Lets not try to pretend he isn't because he is.

He spends the entire first trilogy obssessing over Sophie, and acting entitled to her because he's a guy who's "genuine and truthful" or what so ever. Sure, Sophie might not be a perfect innocent girl and she did treat people who cared for her like shit at times, but that doesn't change the fact she never liked him. And even though she was wrong in parading him around like a "suitor" when trying to win Tedros' attention, she never again makes mention to liking Hort, or wanting to date him, or what so ever, and honestly, good for her! You should never date someone just because they have feelings for you.

Liking someone doesn't make you entitled to having them, and it doesn't make them obligated to like you back. And this what Hort can't understand. And not to mention he acts pretty sexist during the School Years:

"Every time he was free of rivals for Sophie’s attention, they always returned, more meddling than ever. Why couldn’t these toads mind their own business? Or die like Rafal did? True, he’d had Sophie to himself these past six months, but most of that was spent waiting out her I’m-an-Independent-Woman phase..." Quests for Glory, chapter 9: "Who Would Want a Hort?"

And also later during ACOT, in which he treats Nicola pretty badly

“Not bad enough, whatever it is,” Hort’s voice said, hijacking the demon. “He got us into this mess by fawning over Rhian like a lovedrunk girl.”

“Oh, so being a ‘girl’ is an insult now?” Nicola’s voice ripped, the demon suddenly looking animated in agreement. (A Crystal Of Time, chapter 5: Sophie's Choice)

There are other examples but I don't want to digress so this is how Hort is. I'd like to rewrite him into a person who had a immature crush on a girl and bent over backwards to get her attention - all of this a product of his own insecurity - but that grows out of it and in the process, also into a mature person who's confident in himself.

Also, in case someone doesn't understand: the problem isn't a crush. Having crushes is totally normal and ok, and so is not having them! The problem is when your crush over someone becomes nearly obssessive because of your immaturity and inner problems.

And as I was gonna talk about the light Hort's written in: all of this bullshit, and he's written as the nice underdog who we are supposed to root for. Soman keeps romanticizing him and that kind of behavior and that's terrible. So I'd either change Hort's behavior or write him in the light of what it truly is.

Rhian of Foxwood

Honestly? I liked him as a villain. I have no problem with him believing he was doing Good - in fact, I liked it! It's a good contrast to the previous villains, who knew they were Evil, wanted to be this way and took pride in it.

What I would change are just two things: one is that last kiss scene with Sophie during chapter 25 of ACOT, since it was absolute bullshit after all the shit he did to her which I don't feel the need to list - we all know it.

Second thing, I'd have made him a seer! Soman missed a huge potential when he made Rhian a Sader without giving him the seer abilities. That whole "Third Mysterious Pen" deal was unecessary, and it could be replaced by Rhian's visions.

And guys, come on - EVIL SEER IS A DOPE CONCEPT.

Nicola of Woods Beyond

Don't get me wrong, I love Nicola - and this is kind of why she's in this list, actually.

She's an amazing character - bookworm represent! She's also one of the few poc representation this book has, so I like it went to someone as amazing and smart as Nic.

So for that I think Nicola should have been explored more. She's usually put as background character and only brought up when it's convenient - she's basically plot device. Which sucks because again, she's awesome. I'd have explored her ability to apply what she learns in stories to real-life issues a bit more, and paired her up with Agatha more times! Both are brilliant girls and I feel Agatha was at times dumbed down so Nicola could solve the problems, and honestly, I hate it when a character is dimmed so the other can shine.

So I'd have put them together - Agatha, experienced and quick-thinker, and Nicola, an extremely smart girl who doesn't really have half the experience Agatha has in the Woods. They both learn from each other - it's a deal of teacher (Agatha) learning from the student (Nicola).

And allow me to push the Nicphie agenda here - I'd totally expand her relation with Sophie - explored their feelings going from mutual hatred to mutual respect to liking each other to very lesbian love. The Best enemies to lovers.

Also, SOMAN WHAT WAS THAT OF CAVING IN THE SCHOOL FOR EVIL AND SADER TELLING THE DEANS TO ACCEPT HER I DEMAND EXPLANATIONS

And lastly I'd remove the Hicola part super unecessary lmao

So that's it! I actually have some more to talk about but I didn't know how to word it properly and I don't want to make a super long post lmao. I might make a part two of this, but separate for the challenge!

I apologize for the disruption in schedule, I legit forgot day 10 lmao. I'll be doing Day 13 tomorrow so hopefully everything will go back to normal!

#long post #sge rants #the school for good and evil #school for good and evil #sge #sge challenge #day 10 #im an idiot lmao #kei of foxwood #nicola of woods beyond #rhian of foxwood #hort of bloodbrook #tw drug mention

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