#(I don’t actually blame her but I’m putting out the inherent guilt you’d probably feel for unknowingly doing all of this..)

[jrwiyuri]

Do u ever look at a ficitonal story and be like “man I’m ngl in the long run I just don’t think anyone will be ok ever.” That’s how I feel about d&daddies

[kuiperblog]

There’s a thread that’s been circulating about The Last Duel, specifically in response to remarks made by Ridley Scott blames the failure of the movie on the fact that millennial audiences who were raised on Youtube and Vine simply don’t have the attention span for a historical drama. I’m not really inclined to go to bat for Ridley Scott (I think that the main problem with the movie flopping was a failure of marketing), but his comments have inspired a wave of response from millennials dunking on Scott with various takes that, if anything, seem to reinforce his points.

Like, one specific meme says, “Well, of course no one wanted to see The Last Duel!  It’s got traumatic subject matter!”  (The Last Duel is a story about a woman who was sexually assaulted by a man who later claims the encounter was consensual, and the eponymous duel in which her husband challenges the perpetrator in a battle to the death in order to defend her honor.)

But I’m not really sure to what extent this is actually disagreeing with Ridley Scott’s argument where he specifically calls out millennial movie-goers. Traumatic subject matter isn’t inherently box office poison, if we turn back the clock a few decades.

Take, for example, Ordinary People, which I’m about to spoil (so be warned if you were one of those people who was planning to watch the 1980 Oscar winner for Best Picture but hadn’t gotten around to it yet). Ordinary People is about a family trying to recover after two sons went on an outing together, and one of them died in an accident.  His brother, overwhelmed with guilt, attempted suicide, and spent four months in a psychiatric hospital before being discharged. That’s where we start from. And this doesn’t turn out to be some heartwarming uplifting tale about how a tragedy causes the family to come together: the mother, played by Mary Tyler Moore in an Oscar-winning performance for best actress, actually resents the surviving son, not only blaming him for the death of the boy who was her “favorite,” but even blaming him for his own suicide attempt, pointing out that her older son (who died in the accident) would have never put her through the indignity of having to be the mother of a suicidal boy, as if her son’s mental heath crisis is something that is happening to her.  The ending is, I suppose, “good” in the sense that the movie ends with the mother abandoning her husband and surviving son, saving them from having to continue living with her.

Anyway, this movie, in addition to winning numerous Oscars, also made $90 million at the box office on a $6.2 million budget, which adjusted for inflation would be the 2021 equivalent of grossing $302 million on a $20.8 million dollar budget.

So that we have sample size n>1, let’s look to the year before (1979) at Kramer vs Kramer, a movie about divorce which (again, spoilers) isn’t exactly what you’d describe as a feel-good romp. It’s actually slightly analogous to 2021′s The Last Duel, in the sense that it’s tackling subject matter that’s prominent in the discourse: The Last Duel could sort of be couched as a “#metoo” movie (which involves a case that explicitly pits the story told by the victim against the story told by her accuser, and deals with the fact that people in 14th century France were not particularly inclined to believe women), while Kramer vs Kramer deals with divorce (and the ensuing custody battle) which was a pretty hot-button issue back in 1979. (Though, in terms of subject matter and how things actually play out, it’s probably most similar to 2019′s Marriage Story.) The movie begins with the mother (played by Meryl Streep) leaving her husband (Dustin Hoffman) and son, and Hoffman spends the entire movie experiencing the ups and downs of learning to be a single father.

The custody battle ends with the court awarding custody to the mother (which is very much framed by the movie as a bad thing, since the father has been the one fighting the difficult battle of learning what it takes to be a single parent after the the mother left, and apart from the facts of the case, Hoffman has been our viewpoint character for the entire movie so he’s the one we’re supposed to sympathize with and root for).  It doesn’t end on a completely dour note, since in the end mother in the end decides that she doesn’t want to accept custody since she knows her son will be happier with his father, a revelation that literally happens in the final minute of the movie.

Anyway, Kramer vs Kramer made $173 million at the box office on a $8 budget, which adjusted for inflation is the 2021 equivalent of earning $659 million (on a $30.5 million budget). That 1979 movie about Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep’s divorce made more money than some MCU movies.

So, anyway, I think that part of Ridley Scott’s argument is that audiences raised on Youtube and Vine demand instant gratification, and simply don’t have the stomach for anything that is going to delay or even withhold gratification. And the people who dunk on him by saying that “nobody wants to watch a drama with a serious or traumatic subject,” are, I think, kind of proving his point?

The other category of dunk is the more general, going beyond the subject matter and attacking the form of the movie, “nobody wants to watch your boring movie, old man:”

And look, I think that this argument could work if The Last Duel were in fact a boring movie that nobody liked. But it seems to be liked by critics and audiences alike, if we’re to believe Rotten Tomatoes (85% critics score, 81% audience score) and the exitpoll that is Cinemascore, where audiences give it a B+, which is the same score earned by Venom (which made $856 million at the box office and was liked enough for its sequel, also a B+ Cinemascore, to gross $469 million in 2021 amid the pandemic).  So, it seems like the people who do watch The Last Duel quite like it, it’s just that nobody went out to see it, because it’s not the kind of thing that modern movie audiences find “exciting.” At least, I think that’s the point that Ridley Scott is making when he says that people raised on Youtube and Vine don’t have the patience for historical dramas, and I don’t really see how people are disagreeing with him when they come out of the woodwork in droves to say “I, a millennial, didn’t watch your movie because I thought it looked boring.”

Of course, the real disagreement here is taking place on a slightly different level.  Because when Ridley Scott blames the failure of his movie on millennials raised on Youtube and Vine, he isn’t just performing an autopsy and trying to determine the cause of death (which even many of his seem to be in agreement about); he’s also implying a value judgment.  The spoken part is “Kids these days don’t want to watch historical dramas because they think they’re boring,” with the implication being, “and that’s a bad thing.”  And there’s a large portion of these “kids” who seem to be coming at this from the angle of “People like me days don’t want to watch historical dramas because we think they’re boring,” with that sort of being a normative statement: I that if you asked them to clarify, these people would say that they’re glad that the market is creating fewer movies like The Last Duel and instead devoting more resources to creating movies about superheroes punching things. (At least, that’s what I infer from the amount of glee that people seem to exhibit when telling Ridley Scott that no one wants to watch his movie.)

I think the more interesting level on which one could disagree with Ridley Scott (and probably be proven right by the basic facts of the case) isn’t by quibbling with his implied value judgment, but by disputing the basic premise: he blames it on those damn millennials whose attention span has been ruined by Youtube and Vine.  By far the most effective rebuttal to Scott’s argument comes from the people who say, “I literally didn’t know that this movie existed.”  It’s not just that the marketing for this film was bad, but that it was practically non-existent.

(I think there’s also a sense in which the marketing of the movie, to the extent that existed, was mishandled; the trailer plays up the fact that it’s about a duel, which is certainly what you’d expect from The Last Duel, but there’s a real sense in which it’s a courtroom drama, and the most interesting part of the movie is getting to see the different “narratives” at play against each other. I hesitate to use the word “fun” to describe a movie that is, at its core, about #metoo related stuff and sexual violence and whatnot, but the movie is definitely clever in the way that it tells the story from the viewpoint of 3 different characters, allowing us to see more and more of the truth as we see an event from multiple perspectives, and shows the sometimes subtle ways in which the narratives diverge from each other.)

But “marketing” aside, I think that the real issue is one of awareness, which is covariant with but not synonymous with marketing. Because, I’m sure that Sony (or maybe Disney, I have no idea at this point) has spent a lot of money marketing the new Spider-Man movie, but even if they never spent a single cent to promote the movie to me, I would still be getting these reminders every 2 weeks about the movie’s upcoming release because any time a new trailer is released, it is an event.  Which is to say, I think that marketing can serve as a convenient proxy for “awareness,” but I don’t really rely on advertising to tell me about upcoming movies; I rely on “hype cycles” to tell me about upcoming movies, and while marketing dollars are certainly a part of that, most of what I actually see is organic. Like, when I visit tumblr dot com on [current day], to the right of my feed, I see this:

Maybe it’s possible that I’m seeing this because Amazon Prime Video wanted to promote their new fantasy series and is paying Tumblr to promote posts that are tagged #WheelOfTime? (Or maybe it’s not possible, because if that were the case they’d have to make some kind of advertising disclosure?)  As best I can tell, I’m seeing it because it has a lot of notes, and I’m guessing that’s because a lot of people are following the #WheelOfTime tag.

The best “awareness” comes from word-of-mouth. It used to be that the way you got people to talk about an upcoming movie was to cast Cary Grant or Tom Cruise. Now, you do it by basing your movie streaming series on a beloved fantasy series.

It feels like “movie stars,” in the classic sense, are a thing of the past: it’s notable that Kramer vs Kramer, the divorce movie that (adjusted for inflation) outgrossed several MCU movies, was about a divorce between Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.  Now, you can have The Last Duel, starring Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Adam Driver in leading roles, and it makes $30 million off a $100 million budget. (I feel kind of weird leaving Jodie Comer out of that list of actors, given that the entire movie is about how 14th century France really was a “man’s world” where women were treated incredibly poorly, but hopefully it’s not too controversial to say that Jodie Comer isn’t a “movie star” in the same way that Ben Affleck is.)

People no longer care about movie stars; they care about IP. Daisy Ridley and John Boyega were basically unknown before they were chosen to costar in Star Wars VII. And I think there’s a way in which you could look at this as a positive development: you no longer need to base your casting decisions on which big names will draw people to the box office, and you can instead cast actors based on how good a fit they are for the role. Instead of star actors propelling movies to success, movies can propel actors to stardom. I mean, it definitely feels like the MCU has lost some of its “star power” now that Chris Evans has retired, but to whatever extent Chris Evans can be considered a “movie star,” he’s a star because he spent ten years as the face of Captain America. Like, if you search for “Chris Evans,” the top-recommended related term is “Captain America,” and the second is “Sebastian Stan.”

(As an aside, every photograph of Chris Evans and Sebastian Stan together is MCU content. I mean that as a literal observation: every time these two are getting photographed together, it’s at the red carpet premiere for an MCU movie, or from a Comic-Con where they appeared on a panel together, or from some other type of press event that they were doing to promote an upcoming MCU movie.)

When IP is the bedrock that you rely on for your 9-figure of production budget to be “safe” enough to get corporate approval, you get to take “risks” on lesser-known or up-and-coming actors. (Directors too, for that matter: a year after Taika Waititi got to spend $5.2 million making Hunt for the Wilderpeople, he got to make a $180 million Thor movie; ditto Chloe Zhao.) And if your goal is to increase diversity in casting (and the director’s chair), that’s a big win.  The problem with the old model of relying on movie stars is that, well, you keep seeing the same faces over and over again. Back in 2014, it came out that Aaron Sorkin said (in a private leaked email) that Flash Boys couldn’t get made because “The protagonist is Asian-American (actually Asian-Canadian) and there aren't any Asian movie stars.”  But in an IP-driven world, you no longer need movie stars to sell movie tickets. People who have never heard of Simu Liu will still show up in droves to watch Shang-Chi.

But to the same extent that Disney can play fast and loose with who shows up in their movies, they can’t afford to take risks with the movies that they create.  (You probably still can’t make Flash Boys, not because of a lack of Asian movie stars, but because it’s not connected to a recognizable IP; there is no The Big Short extended universe.) Because the thing is, when the selling point for your movie is “it stars Dustin Hoffman opposite some other household name,” the movie can be anything. You can put him opposite Meryl Streep and get a 1979 movie about divorce (Kramer vs Kramer), or pair him with Tom Cruise and get a 1988 movie about an autistic man (Rain Man), in a decade when plenty of people had never even heard of autism.  (By the way, Rain Man made $355 million at the box office, which adjusted for inflation is $829 million today. And that was with an R-rating!)

While this is a new paradigm for Hollywood, it’s hardly new for fandom. In fact, if there’s one thing that’s true of fandom, it’s that it’s all about the IP. When you’re reading Marvel fanfic, or looking at fanart, the actors aren’t even present, except to the extent that their creative contributions became memes or iconic moments within fandom, like David Bautista’s ad-libbed line, “I’ll do you one better: why is Gamora?” or Hayley Atwell admiring Chris Evans’ pecs. You go to AO3 to read about a specific ship, without particularly caring about who wrote the fic, in the same way that people go to the movie theater to watch the new MCU movie without particularly caring which actors are in it. (There were people who went out to see Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2017 because they were excited that Tom Holland, but I’m guessing that the vast majority of those people only knew who Tom Holland was because he had already been Spider-Man in 2016′s Captain America: Civil War.)

Of course, AO3 can also be a place to discover new writers, in the same way that the MCU can be a place to discover new actors, but the writers are not the draw; the IP is.  This contrasts starkly with traditional publishing, where the book covers for bestselling authors literally emphasize the author over the IP:

Simon and Schuster doesn’t even particularly care that you remember the name “Billy Summers,” as long as you know to show up at the Barnes and Noble and ask for the new Stephen King book.  Just kidding: you don’t have to ask for the new Stephen King book, all you need to do is walk into the bookstore and see this on the front table as soon as you enter:

(Because the only thing better than selling you the latest Stephen King book is selling you the latest Stephen King book and several other Stephen King books to go along with it.)

Anyway, I’m not sure that all of this leads to a single point or observation, but it does seem like “popular culture” is starting to look more and more like “fandom,” which is, I think, a real distinction, and something that was not always the case. (Jaws made a ton of money in 1975, with a whopping $2.4 billion adjusted for inflation, but despite being an adaptation of a popular novel that got multiple film sequels, it was not really an “IP” with a “fandom” in the same way that e.g. Harry Potter or The Hunger Games were.) And I think it would be pretty fair to say that if you look at “fandom,” you’ll find that it’s mostly millennials who consider it their native stomping ground (and not boomers like Ridley Scott). Of course, it’s important not to reverse cause and effect: maybe it’s not that millennials have preferences that are molded by the fandom paradigm, but rather that they just have a set of preferences, and given that set of preferences, fandom (and the accompanying paradigm) are where they feel most at home.

[angrylizardjacket]

wishful drinking // Charlotte&Lola

Summary: After Charlotte, Peach, and Eileen go missing, everyone else believes they're dead. Everyone but Lola and Tommy. It's difficult to cope and hope at the same time, and sometimes it even reopens old wounds.

A/N: Wow a song fic, christ. Loosely based on Wishful Drinking by Tessa Violet which just gives me so many emotions about Lola. Ido believe this is the single angstiest thing I've ever written on this blog. @misscharlottelee @peachonscreen I'm so very sorry this is so sad and dark jfc. WARNINGS: Focuses on alcohol addiction as a coping mechanism, there is a funeral, acute references to Lola's childhood trauma, a panic attack, and heroin use right at the end there, and there is some very mild implied suicidal ideation

----

separate me from the rest of the herd so I can run away from all of my hurt oh

drink what I want, be what I want, say what you want me to say like I can pretend that I don't wanna end I'm afraid

I'm dangerous

Everyone keeps saying they're dead, but there's no proof so how can they sound so certain?

Lola's already halfway through a bottle of rum, as Charlotte's parents scowl their way through a list of rules that sound more like demands, of what the band is and isn't allowed to do at Charlotte's funeral. For which their is no body. Lola rolls her eyes and takes another drink.

This is the second speech like this that they've had to sit through this week, since Peach and Eileen's parents seemed equally sceptical of the band's ability to behave appropriately at their daughters' funeral. Which was a farce with no bodies. Lola takes another drink and squeezes her eyes shut.

Nikki's got a hand on her thigh, and Tommy's got an arm around her, the three of them squeezed onto a sofa probably built for two.

Nikki was fucked up out of his mind on more drugs than Lola had ever known him to take. Losing Charlotte had broken something inside of him, and when Lola had told him that she and the other girls had gone missing, he'd sworn until his voice was hoarse, crying more genuinely than she'd ever seen him do before. He was terrified of being lucid, of remembering his reality and reacting like that again.

"I wasn't... I was never in love with Charlie, but I really did love her, you know, like I love Tommy; he's like my brother, but she... she was good for us. Better than any of us ever deserved."

Lola takes another drink.

Tommy's lucid and full of rage, two cans of beer and a line of coke before lunch is all he takes now since she's gone, high off anger, demanding people find her, reading maps, triangulating where she could possibly have gotten lost, trying to put together search parties. He, like Lola, won't believe she's gone until he knows for certain, but unlike Lola, he won't take 'her plane disappeared in the mountains of another country, there's nothing we can really do, I'm so sorry' as an answer.

He holds Lola tighter when Charlotte's parents level a teary-eyed glare at him and spit that he's not allowed to start spouting his conspiracy bullshit about her still being alive, at the funeral. He squeezes his eyes shut and turns, pressing his face into Lola's hair and heaving an irritated sigh.

"I know," Lola mumbles back, words spilling into each other. Tommy's breathing is deep and level in a way that's completely controlled, like he's working on subduing his feelings. Nikki gives Lola's thigh a squeeze, but she's not quite sure if he meant to, it could have been a hand twitch. Lola leans against Tommy just a little more, "I know."

She takes another drink.

None of them are allowed to make a speech; Charlotte's mother and Tommy's sister will both be reading eulogies, but if any of the band speaks up, they will be removed from the ceremony.

"What about Razzle?" Vince is the one to speak up, and Lola's breath catches in her throat.

"Nicholas..." Charlotte's mother finally softens her tone, and casts a look to her father, a silent question.

"Nicholas will do his best to prepare an address, but has also told us that he will decide on the day if he will be able to present it," its the fairest thing they've said all day. Their sensitivity to Razzle and his situation keeps Lola from hurling her bottle at them; if they'd shit-talked Charlotte's grieving fiance, she'd have no qualms beating up her missing friend's parents there and then. Instead, all Lola can picture is Razzle, overwhelmingly upset to the point that he can't even bring himself to read a eulogy at his fiance's sham of a funeral.

As much as Lola believes its a sham, she won't push that on Razzle, either way, Charlotte's not here; it hurts like a fresh wound, she can't even begin to imagine how he must be feeling if he really believes she's gone for good.

Lola's bottle is emptying quickly.

"Is Penny okay?" Vince asks, voice soft and concerned for the missing woman's two-year-old daughter.

"She's with Nicholas," Charlotte's mother says, but tears well in her eyes and the words catch in her throat. Charlotte's father puts his arm around her, drawing her in close.

"She keeps asking for Charlotte," his voice cracks, "and... and none of us know what to tell her."

weave a story so I don't have to talk, no, it's not a problem if I never get caught oh

drink what I want, be what I want, say what you want me to say like I can pretend that I don't wanna end I'm afraid

I'm dangerous

Charlotte would either be right furious, or annoyingly understanding, about the fact that Lola is wine drunk and trying to act sober at her funeral. But if Charlotte has a problem with Lola's behaviour at her sham funeral, she should come home and tell Lola herself.

The only people who Lola isn't glowering at are Razzle and Penny. Razzle's in the quietest outfit she's ever seen him in, all black, not a hint of flair or personality, and Penny's been put in a little, frilly black dress, with a black headband which she has thrown on the ground, since she's in the middle of a screaming fit.

Razzle is desperately trying to hold himself together while Penny demands to see her mother at the top of her lungs. Tommy, for all he loathes the pageantry of this funeral, feeling as though it's being put on to make Charlotte's extended friends and family feel less guilty about giving up the search for her, has nothing but kindness and gentle understanding for the man he considered to practically be his brother-in-law.

Kneeling in front of where Razzle's bouncing Penny on his knee, Tommy lays a gentle hand on his other knee, and when Razzle looks to him, as if startled out of focusing entirely on his daughter, there's tears in his eyes. He can't even form words, mouth opening and closing like a fish, but he quickly stills moving Penny, who tries to throw herself on him, her little fists beating his hands insistently, somehow getting louder with her demands.

"I miss mommy! I want mommy!"

Tommy quickly scoops Penny from her father's hands, and Razzle doesn't stop him, just looks on with a painfully helpless expression, like he's not sure what to do with himself now. Tommy chatters away to Penny, hugging her as he takes her to walk around in the sunshine, away from the other guests, and Razzle's lip trembles as his eyes refuse to focus on anything but the beautiful picture of Charlotte her parents chose to display for the event.

Right as he bursts into tears, Lola slides into the seat beside him. No words pass between them, but she wraps him up in a hug, and he holds her tight in response, nails digging into her, apologies babbles almost incoherently, and Lola feels a wave of guilt sweep through her.

The night she'd found out Charlotte had gone missing, she'd gone to Razzle's hotel in tears, full of fury, looking for answers, for anything, knowing only that he and Charlotte had fought right before Charlotte, Peach, and Eileen had taken the spontaneous flight on which they had gone missing. She'd blamed him, at the time, for Charlotte leaving. She'd blamed him, at the time, for Charlotte going missing.

Lola whispers apologies back as best she can in her quietly drunken state, rubbing his back, wishing she'd thought to being her flask; maybe it would have helped ease some of his pain, she knew it definitely would have eased some of hers.

She can't find the words to tell him that she knows its not his fault, not before Tommy comes back right before the ceremony starts, and sits himself on Razzle's other side, Penny quiet in his arms.

When Razzle turns to see his daughter, he sees her reach out with both her arms, asking for a hug. Razzle holds her close, holds her tight, and looks to Tommy with question in his eyes.

"Told her that it was like when you went back to Finland to make music, but a bit longer."

"Momma was sad," Penny's little voice was muffled against Razzle as she refused to let go of her father. Tommy nodded sagely, and Razzle's lip trembled.

"Charlie needed a lot of hugs from Pennylope while you were away; told Penny that you'd need a lot of hugs too, now." Tommy's voice was quiet, his tone gentle like he was still explaining to Penny, and Razzle pulled his daughter back a little, giving her as much of a smile as he could muster.

"You're too good to me, Pennylope; I do need a lot of hugs," and he holds her close again, taking a deep, shake breath, "I'm never gonna let you go."

oh, wishful drinking

tell myself that I'm not thinking bout how I could drown

drown drown drown

wishful drinking

Perhaps part of the reason why Lola can't believe Charlotte's really dead is the fact that Lola had kind of always assumed Charlotte would outlive her. Its morbid, but its not ab inherently false assumption to make, considering Lola drinks probably more spirits than water and gets into fights for fun. Statistically, she should already be dead. So why was she at a funeral for Charlotte.

She finishes her glass of wine and reminds herself firmly that the funeral's a sham.

She can't actually remember how she got to the bar of the hotel that she and Nikki we're staying at in Charlotte and Tommy's home town, but a majority of the people from the funeral were there, to drink and pay their final respects, so Lola assumes one of them had brought her.

She sits at the bar and orders drinks in rapid succession, while Tommy mulls over the same glass of JD for half an hour beside her while chain-smoking and people watching. It feels like they're the only two on the same page, knowing intrinsically that Charlotte's still out there any everyone who refuses to believe that is betraying her.

"Why her?" Lola mumbles into her drink.

"She's not dead, don't you start talking like she is, too," Tommy frowns into his glass. Lola finishes her drink and pushes it out of the way as she rests her arms on the bar, and her head on her arms, looking at Tommy with a strangely blank expression.

"I know, but she's still not here; why any of them? None of them deserve it, deserve to be missing, deserve to have people stop caring about looking for them," Lola's brow creased into the barest frown, "but if people knew that they weren't gone and were just missing, just needed to be found, they'd know they still need the girls," and she gives a forlorn sigh, "they don't deserve this, people still need them."

Behind her, Tommy sees where all of Hanoi Rocks has crowded into a booth with Razzle to keep him company, doing their best to cheer him, to comfort him, each of them taking it in turn to entertain Penny, who was overjoyed at seeing her band-uncles again. The picture looked incomplete without Charlotte.

"Why them?" Lola said softly, sitting back up and ordering another drink, and Tommy hears what she really means this time, the way she implies 'it should have been me'.

go ahead and stop your thinking now

and throw it down

down down down

wishful drinking now

Lola develops a new game over the following weeks, where every time someone mentions Charlotte, she takes a shot. Or four.

Nikki's getting back to normal faster than Lola is, just says that Charlie wouldn't want to see them moping around.

Vince and Mick, still shaken by the loss of Peach and Eileen respectively, agree.

Tommy's still looking for ways to try and find them in his spare time, but focuses on the band so Charlotte will be able to come back and be proud; something about his reasoning makes bile rise in the back of Lola's throat for reasons she can't quite put her finger on.

Lola drinks, because she's come to realise she's useless. She doesn't have the actual band resources to put into helping find the girls, and Doc only keeps her on the payroll because the band won't let him fire her, he doesn't need an assistant.

The only person she would felt safe talking about all of this to was missing.

So Lola drinks.

What else is there to do?

hide your demons where no one can see em, outta sight but in your mind you believe em

drink what you want, be what they want, say what they want you to say like I can pretend that I don't wanna end I'm afraid

I'm dangerous

Lola knows now why Tommy's desperate playing to make sure Charlotte's happy upon her return makes Lola feel sick.

He kept mentioning it, kept asking whether the others thought their new album would be as good as their old stuff, the stuff Charlotte liked, and Nikki had snapped, fed up.

Lola had been in the kitchen when he'd started yelling that she wasn't coming back, and when Tommy hollered that he was an asshole at the top of his lungs.

"If she was alive, she'd be here! But she's fucking not!" Nikki's words rung through the air and were met with stunned silence, "you know why she's not here?" He hissed venomously, and Lola drops the glass she'd been holding, recognising that tone from almost a decade ago.

Nikki, in the present, snaps that its because Charlotte's gone for good, but Lola doesn't hear that. Lola hears her mother.

Lola hears that her father's never coming back because she's a disappointment, because shes not good enough, or kind enough, or talented enough.

The wrong wires connect in Lola's brain in a way that's all too familiar, in a way that makes her scars ache and tears well in her eyes.

And in another moment its gone, and Lola sees the shards on the ground and knows that Charlotte would hate a dirty kitchen. She sweeps them up.

Later, Tommy will find her, and before he can even open his mouth, she's holding his face in her hands, reassuring him that Charlotte would love their new music. His expression brightens, and he kisses her in thanks; something eases in Lola's chest.

No matter where Charlotte is, Lola will never let Tommy believe what was beaten into her for years, she'll never let him believe that he is the reason Charlotte's not here. Nobody deserves to believe that... And yet a voice in the back of Lola's mind tells her she has to do better, for Charlotte.

The voice sounds like her mother's.

do you think do you think that they notice

I keep a bottle by my bed it's the focus

drink what I want, be what I want, say what you want me to say like I can pretend that I don't wanna end I'm afraid

I'm dangerous

After a while, Doc stops praising Lola for showing up to the studio on time and sober - she's absolutely not sober, but she's also not had enough to drink for it to effect her composure. When he stops praising her, she worries that he knows she's always a little buzzed, and then she gets annoyed, thinking that he's just an asshole. It takes her a full week to realise that it's neither, in fact, its just that she's been doing it consistently enough that he's come to expect it of her.

People note her improved work ethic, compliment her even, and its nice, and she knows that if Charlotte were here that she'd be saying nice things right along side everyone else.

Nikki had been right, Charlotte wouldn't want to mope around, so Lola had to actually do well so when Charlotte came back, she could prove that she hadn't been moping.

Sometimes that voice in the back of her mind gets harsh, tells her she's not doing enough, but Lola reminds that voice that Charlotte would roll her eyes at Lola's antics, but she'd somehow always be understanding in the end. Lola didn't need to be perfect, she just needed to be better.

And she was!

She takes a shot to quiet the voice down in those moments anyways, just for good measure.

No-one seems to notice if she's four shots in before noon, one more won't hurt.

this is not a problem if I don't want it to stop

can't call it a problem if I never let a plate drop

this is not a problem if convincing that it's not

don't call it a problem it's the only thing that I still got

Nikki is spiralling into his heroin addiction of his own accord, but Lola knows Charlotte would think they're both better than that; Lola won't be able to convince Nikki, but she can keep herself away from it.

Her job's going well, and she and Tommy are still close, and she is allowed to babysit Penny on nights when Vince takes Razzle out partying. Its trust earned, that she never would have been able to earn if she hadn't been trying to do good for when Charlotte gets back.

But the world goes to hell in a single night.

What the fuck are they meant to tell Penny?

Her dad is dead.

Another thing Charlotte can't come back to.

Turns out they don't have to be the ones to tell Penny; Razzle's parents come to pick up her and their son's body, and though Tommy begs for them not to take her, they're terrified of her ending up just like her parents -

"Charlotte's not dead -"

"Wake up, Thomas, you're putting false hope into this girl's head, it'll ruin her mind if you don't let her live in reality!" Razzle's mother spits, while his father has already taken Penny out to the car to take her to the airport.

Tommy's in tears when he calls Lola.

The pair of them are devastated.

Why would Charlotte come back here if Penny and Razzle weren't here? The only person she'd loved more than Razzle was Penny, and now they were both -

"Lo, what's the point?"

"The point?"

"Of being all good and shit, for Charlie?"

"What do you mean?"

"She's not gonna come back to us," Tommy sighed, sniffling, "she's out there, but she'd go to Penny before any of us, and now..."

"Please don't say that," Lola's voice trembled, her heart beating in an erratic staccato in her chest.

"There's nothing worth coming back here for -"

Lola drops the receiver, curling in on herself, shaking all over as his words play over and over and over in her mind while all she can think about is the fact that yet again, she's not enough for someone she loved and felt safe with.

She's gasping for air, chest tight and tears stinging her eyes, heart beating in her ears while she's shaking like a leaf, in the full throes of a panic attack.

It takes her a long while to calm down, to ground herself in the feel of the carpet beneath her and the sound of the ocean outside, and the cars and the wind and the smell of the sea.

The first thing she does after she stands, is to get a drink, and then another, and then another, then to take the bottle into the bedroom, in to Nikki.

"Babe -?" He sees her red rimmed eyes first as she jostles him awake, and he wants to ask questions.

"I need something to get me out of my fucking mind, please, anything," she begs, lip trembling as she tries to focus on Nikki and not Tommy's words on loop in her mind.

"You sure?"

"Anything, the world is a fucking nightmare, and nothing fucking matters," and Nikki leans over to his nightstand, opening the drawer and pulling out a kit Lola knew was his heroin kit. Now it didn't seem like a bad choice.

"Is this about Razz?" Nikki asks, making quick work of preparing the drug for her. Lola swallows hard, and sits on the bed.

"Neither of them fucking deserved it," and Nikki knows immediately that she's referring to both Charlotte and Razzle, and he pauses, "the world needs people like them."

The room is very quiet for the few moments where Nikki cooks the powder to a liquid, pulling it up into his syringe. He instructs Lola on how to tie off her arm, and carefully injects her after double checking that its what she wanted.

As the tie around her arm is loosened, and the drug hits, Lola laughs, but there's no humour in it, her head tipping back, bottle still clutched firmly in her other hand.

"Its a fucking joke that the world is stuck with people like me."

[mittensmorgul]

The TNT loop got me good today. 7.21 is... a new level of angst now. I’ve been yelling my incoherent feelings at @wigglebox about this, and decided I just needed to make all the parallels. So I’m just gonna quote chunks of the transcript for 7.21 here, and then comment on it. Because it is A Lot™

(honestly y’all should be glad I’m not a gif maker because a) it probably would make this post lethal, and 2) the first casualty would’ve been me)

Okay, here we go. For reference, I’m just using the transcript here, and basically annotating it with thoughts from the POV of 15.03. Some of it will be directly quoted from this transcript at the superwiki if you’d like to follow along for maximum pain (or to fill in any blanks I’ve left in the rest of the episode), and some of it will just be direct commentary. 

We begin with Cas awakening, bolting upright, from the catatonic state he’s been in since he’d healed Sam’s Hell Trauma. Remember, Cas took that wound into himself. Cas’s awakening wasn’t “natural.” It coincided with the awakening of the Prophet Kevin Tran, and Dean shattering the ancient rock concealing a long-buried “Word Of God.” I’d like to take a moment here to remind everyone why Sam had even suffered this trauma that Cas had to heal in the first place. Not only was “breaking Sam’s wall” one of the “terrible things” Cas had done in s6 in the name of trying to keep Dean from being conscripted back into service in the new Apocalypse Raphael was plotting, but it also led directly to The Worst Thing Cas Has Ever Done In The Name Of Doing The Right Thing Of His Own Free Will. Because ALL of this was couched in that language. In 6.20, in that final scene, this was the specific language that Cas used with Dean in his final attempt to earn Dean’s trust and support in his (soon to be) catastrophic plan. And Dean couldn’t give it to him. ALL of this is now currently wrapped up into the events of the first three episodes of s15. Free Will, the Word of God, a Cosmic Wound that has injured both Sam and Cas (and that Cas was unable to heal this time), Kevin Tran forced into service, A Plot to gather god-like power through the consumption of souls, a Rift into an afterlife for the purposes of releasing a terrible apocalypse on the world... heck... there’s probably more, but this will do nicely for a start, for the purposes of Painful, Awful Context.

FLASH TO TITLE CARD

(see what I mean? this is gonna be a long, bumpy ride... I should probably put this under a cut...)

The lightning flashes and odd weather effects from breaking open the tablet caused a worldwide disruption to the weather, to the point that a meteorologist on the radio said he wasn’t baffled by it, but offended.

So the Word of God being freed, from being given power by having been revealed, revealed something that went beyond confusion, and was just so wrong it actually made the guy ANGRY. Hmm. Kinda like Dean in early s15, yes? Dean’s our “offended weatherman.”

(I really miss the text separator line function. Thanks for taking that away from us, tungl. I guess I’ll have to insert something else between commentary... asterisks it is... I’ll keep it to three for a visual separation that hopefully won’t screw too badly with screen readers)

DEAN: So, what? We start the storm heard 'round the world? SAM: When we broke this thing [SAM touches the stone tablet] open last night, every maternity ward within a hundred-mile radius got slammed. Looks like any woman in the last month of her pregnancy went into labor.

WELL that’s definitely an interesting parallel... motherhood, giving birth. With the imagery of Rowena’s spell in 15.03 looking both like Mary and Jess in 1.01 as well as a weird sort of “reverse birth” of hundreds of souls.

***

Sam and Dean were planning to head West to Rufus’ cabin, until THIS, that had them heading in the exact opposite direction, because Cas:

SAM: What? [to DEAN] Cas is awake. DEAN: When? [SAM puts the phone on speaker and holds it out.] When? MEG: Last night about eight. DEAN: And you waited till now to call us? MEG: I've been busy with Cas. He's just a tad different than when he dozed off, 'kay? DEAN: What do you mean, different? MEG: Hey, Seacrest, guess what – not a nurse. Just playing one on TV. Want answers? Start driving.

Or, because Demon who teamed up with them specifically because they intended to use Cas for his specific power... Meg intended to earn Cas’s loyalty for her own security/protection/personal mission against Crowley, so she could swing him like a big hammer. In s15, Belphegor’s machinations were much the same, with his long-term plan to earn just enough of Cas’s trust to use him as the key to open the box holding Lilith’s Crook. By hook or by crook, right? Demons, man. I mean, I’ve mentioned the parallel to 8.17, and the crypt scene with the unlocking of this box in a different crypt for a different god-level power item (in 8.17 it was brainwashing and the angel tablet, and in 7.21 it’s denial and the leviathan tablet, but you can draw a big fat straight line through all of it). And this is just another go-around of all those same themes.

***

DEAN: We raced all the way here, and now I don't know. I can't say I'm fired up to see what's left of the guy. SAM: You think he remembers at all? DEAN: That, and I'm guessing whatever kind of hell baggage he lifted off of your plate. It's not gonna be pretty.

Oh remember this? Previously on Supernatural, this was owie, but now it’s been weaponized with new context from s15, with this endless cycle of guilt and blame laid on the table between Dean and Cas. He couldn’t look at Cas, was terrified to see what had become of Cas because of ALL of this. Because of everything that began in s6 and culminated with them finally cracking the Word of God. Or at least A word of god, since we know now that this wasn’t the only thing Chuck wrote, you know? And we’re still due to progress through Metatron’s hackneyed retelling, too. But even back then, Dean’s feelings of guilt, blame, and loss were all tangled up together regarding Cas, and infused with a confusing dollop of friendship, need, and (dare I suggest) love. Because the kind of stuff Dean (and Sam) have forgiven Cas for over the years? Even if it was only in knowing the underlying good intentions and wondering about all of Cas’s motivations, this isn’t the kind of thing you forgive someone for unless you truly care about them, deep down. The only ones who truly have the power to break you like this are the ones you love.

***

After Cas’s unsettling attempt at a “joke,” (pull my finger *lights explode* *disturbing chortling*), Dean needs information, and needs it from Cas.

DEAN: Okay, just hang on, Cas. Wait. Let us catch up to you for a second. SAM: So, you're saying you remember who you are, what you are. CASTIEL: Yes. Of course. Oh. Outside today, in the garden, I followed a honeybee. I saw the route of flowers. It's all right there, the whole plan. There's nothing to add. SAM: You might want to add a little Thorazine. MEG: Right? He's been like the naked guy at the rave ever since he woke up. Totally useless.

Let’s start at the end of this mess and work our way back to the start. Meg declares Cas “totally useless.” Because in his current state (I don’t fight, I watch the bees), he literally can’t be the weapon she hoped he’d be for her own personal needs. Like Belphegor in s15, it took some chipping away before Cas could even remotely be “useful” to him. Cas couldn’t even look at him, and he certainly would never agree to fight for him (the muscle).

Next let’s tackle Cas’s perception of creation, as told in metaphor between his observation on the micro-level scale of the “route of flowers,” which he directly compared to the macro-level scale of “the whole plan.” As if there was a “whole plan” to the universe. I could write a doctoral thesis on just this statement alone, of how Cas’s observation of the plan inherently altered it, how his presence in the garden as observer watching the bees do their thing, following them along their paths to the flowers irrevocably inserted him into the “whole plan,” and whether he or the bees realized it or not, those bees by necessity altered their paths to accommodate Cas’s presence in their daily routine. Did this make their lives easier? More difficult? Regardless, it had to affect their choices, which flowers to visit, which paths to fly, because Cas’s mere presence provided an obstacle to their routes. They couldn’t fly through him, you know? Left or right, over and around, He became something the “whole plan” needed to work around. And isn’t that what Chuck’s been doing since the start? And on an entirely different level, Chuck’s done it all with intent, because “the whole plan” had been his creation from the beginning.

And then, both first and last depending on your perspective, is Dean, asking Cas to stop just long enough for him to finally catch up. Asking Cas to wait. Because Dean feels like he’s the one who’s fallen behind.

Okay, everyone take five to have a good cry *passes out tissues*

***

CASTIEL: Will you look at her? My caretaker. All of that thorny pain. So beautiful. MEG: We've been over this. I don't like poetry. Put up or shut up.

Ah, Cas and “poetry.” He’s temporarily given up on seeking Free Will, temporarily abandoned the attempt to “teach poetry to fish,” as he’d said in 6.20. And Meg doesn’t like poetry either. She just wants Cas to suck it up and do what she needs him to-- be her personal hammer. She doesn’t care about him, but only what he can do for her. Put up or shut up.

***

CASTIEL: Oh. Of course. Now I understand. SAM: Understand what? CASTIEL: You were the ones. Well... I guess that makes sense. DEAN: What makes sense? CASTIEL: If someone was going to free the Word from the vault of the earth, it would end up being you two. Oh, I love you guys. CASTIEL pulls DEAN and SAM into a hug.

Of course The Winchesters would be the Disruptors™ to the natural order, right? Even though Sam and Dean had only stumbled across the word of God by accident, while trying to clean up the planet-wide epidemic of cosmic Goo left behind after Cas’s attempt to rewrite the story and play god. But still, of course it would be Sam and Dean, because it’s always Sam and Dean, right? I mean, Cas already hung a lampshade on “The Whole Plan” being right there for anyone to see, in everything from the path of the flowers right up to the unearthing of the Word.

Chalk another one up to the spiral narrative as everything.

***

Cas mutters something about cat penises, and females not being consulted on that terrible bit of creation. Chuck, man. Throwing barbed penises around with zero consideration for the ladies. Ow. But on to the bigger things:

DEAN: Cas, please, we're losing ground out there, okay? We need your help. Can you not see that? CASTIEL: This is the handwriting of Metatron. SAM: Metatron? You saying a Transformer wrote that? DEAN: No. That's Megatron. SAM: What? DEAN: The Transformer – it's Megatron. SAM: What? CASTIEL: Metatron. He's an angel. He's the scribe of God. He took down dictation when creation was being formed. SAM: And that's the Word of God? CASTIEL: One of them, yes.

They’ve been drowning in goo for months, and Cas coming back had represented a beacon of hope in the darkness. But the reality of the whole situation at hand wasn’t something Cas could deal with. He was so burdened with personal guilt that he chose to ignore the mess, reacting with anger (and by disappearing) with directly confronted with it. In s15, Dean... can’t just disappear, even though he’s the one drowning now.

A... Transformer. A misinterpreted word that changes the meaning, creating a baffling misunderstanding that requires a re-translation and correction before understanding can occur. That’s so meta I could cry. “I always get the words right.” Cas had no idea what “Megatron” or “Transformers” were, but saw that Sam and Dean were literally “speaking language he didn’t understand,” but that they’d come to a satisfactory conclusion that seemed irrelevant to their current conversation anyway, and just... continued on as if the disruption had never occurred. An entire loop of conversation just flew right over his head. He might not get words wrong, but sometimes he just doesn’t get them at all, you know? Nor does Dean always understand what the intent behind Cas’s words are. They need a translator. Or they need to stop speaking in references and metaphor, and speak clearly in unmistakable language. And all of this is wrapped up in the parallel to the indecipherable Word of God, which will require a unique translator to interpret.

Author to Scribe to Prophet, because the knowledge within is not meant for angels. It’s not even meant for humans. It’s just another randomly-scattered puzzle left by Chuck to be simultaneously helpful and dangerous. Choices and drama.

***

CASTIEL: Don't like conflict. CASTIEL disappears and the stone tablet drops to the floor, breaking into three pieces.

Aah, the conflict, that Meg attempts to blame on Dean, when she was the one who (I mean, understandably she was curious, but she’s still a demon that Dean still doesn’t trust, who once possessed Sam and tried to force Dean to kill him, so... she’s not actually their friend, she was “mutually assured destruction” in case things with Cas went sideways while Sam and Dean were running around trying to clean up the Leviathan mess...). Cas’s reaction to conflict back then had been to drop the Word like a hot potato, smashing it to pieces on the floor. Even when he isn’t trying, he’s tearing up pages and altering the shape of Chuck’s story. Bless him. But he’s still... actively avoiding doing anything, including acknowledging his own role in the events that have brought them to this point, and to everything Dean had been fighting almost on his own (Sam’s been “in the bell jar” most of s7 fighting the Hallucifers) and basically surviving with whiskey, denial, and pasting a fake smile on and pushing through trauma after trauma without Cas (or... pretty much anyone else in any measurably reliable way). But we all know this isn’t how DEAN reacts to trauma, right? He pushes people away, by manufacturing conflict when he runs out of organic conflict.

***

DEAN: All right, I'll go handle Cas. Sam, will you please pick up the Word of God?

Dean, delegating responsibilities. He’ll take the broken angel, and Sam will take the broken Word.

***

MEG: We both call, who do you think Cas will come to? I'm guessing me. You heard him – thorny beauty, blah, blah. I'm the saint who stayed with him. He owes me. His words. SAM: Yeah, what about what he owes us? MEG: Well, work on him a little. Maybe he'll start crushing on you, too, hot stuff. SAM: What are you gonna do with a broken angel? Don't be stupid. MEG: I'll take power where I can get it. I've got myself to look out for.

Unlike Belphegor, Meg never even attempted to disguise her motives. She wanted Cas for his power, broken or not. She’d find a way to manipulate him to defend her-- despite his insistence that he doesn’t fight. And it’s interesting it’s Sam who’s given the line “what about what he owes us?” While Dean’s discussion with Cas is far more personal.

***

DEAN: You realize you just broke God's Word? CASTIEL looks away and DEAN sits down at the table opposite him. DEAN: It's Sam's thing, isn't it? You taking on his, uh, cage-match scars. I'm guessing that's what broke your bank, right? CASTIEL: Well, it took... everything to get me here. DEAN: What are you talking about, man? CASTIEL: Dean, I know you want different answers. DEAN: No, I want you to button up your coat and help us take down Leviathans. Do you remember what you did? CASTIEL holds up the board game “Sorry!” He shakes it once and the board and pieces appear on the table, set up ready to play. CASTIEL sets the box aside. CASTIEL: Do you want to go first?

Dean’s still kind of in awe at the notion of directly defying God’s Word, and Cas just... doesn’t even seem bothered. Dean needs to find an explanation for Cas’s avoidance of the Urgent Matter at Hand. He blames it on what Cas suffered after taking on Sam’s Hell trauma, but Cas tries to tell him it’s so much more than that, that his entire experience since the moment he gripped Dean tight and raised him from perdition had led to this moment. But that’s too much for Dean to even wrap his head around, and Cas is just... speaking in riddles anyway. So he presses on and demands a direct answer. Cas continues speaking in riddles.

And pushing for a more direct personal conversation, despite the chasm of misunderstandings separating them. For possibly the first time ever, it’s Cas speaking in metaphors and references that Dean does not understand. And it frustrates the hell out of him. He just wants to get some straight answers out of Cas before the world goes up in flames. Or drowns in dark waters.

He needs Cas to “button up his coat” and help save the world. Save it from the mess he technically made of it. But Cas won’t even engage with what Dean’s saying to him, like in s15 Dean doesn’t even engage with what Cas is saying to him (but Cas is also refusing to button up his coat and do what had to be done in s15, refusing to even look at Belphegor... despite actively assuming another equally important job... he wasn’t avoiding HELPING, just avoiding the specific task Dean had tried to give him... as the one of them most qualified to monitor a demon for ~demonic hinkiness~ or whatever. Sam and Dean would’ve just assumed they were dealing with Jack if Cas hadn’t been the one to tell them it was actually a demon, you know?

***

Meanwhile, back in Cas’s room, Kevin is knitting the Word of God back together, while being simultaneously baffled and terrified by everything that’s going on.

***

DEAN picks up a “Sorry!” card. CASTIEL: You know, we weren't sure at first which monkeys were gonna make it. No offense, but I [DEAN moves a marker on the board] was backing the Neanderthals because their poetry was... just amazing. It's in perfect tune [CASTIEL picks up a card] with the spheres. But in the end, it was you – the [CASTIEL moves a marker] homo sapiens sapiens. You guys ate the apple, invented pants. DEAN: Cas, where can we find this, uh, Metatron? Is he still alive? CASTIEL: I'm sorry. I – I think you have to go back to start. DEAN moves a marker. DEAN: This is important. CASTIEL motions for DEAN to pick up another card. DEAN does and moves another marker. DEAN: I think Metatron could stop a lot of bad. You understand that? CASTIEL picks up another card. CASTIEL: We live in a "sorry" universe. It's engineered to create conflict. I mean, why should I prosper from... your misfortune? [CASTIEL puts down a marker and moves DEAN’s marker back to the start.] But these are the rules. I didn't make them. DEAN: You made some of them. When you tried to become God, when you cut that hole into that wall. CASTIEL: Dean... it's your move. DEAN pounds a fist on the table and swipes the board to the floor. DEAN: Forget the damn game! Forget the game, Cas. CASTIEL: I'm sorry, Dean. DEAN: No. You're playing "Sorry!"

Dean’s still trying to solve their bigger problems, but he’s really trying to play along to appease Cas, trying to speak to him on a level he can understand. Trying to “play his game” and hope that Cas will play by the rules Dean had thought they both understood-- give and take. Mutual contribution to the conversation. But Cas continued talking about things Dean believed were irrelevant in the face of the current crisis. Neanderthals losing out to homo sapiens. And again, Cas talking poetry, and referencing the spiral narrative of creation.

The thing about Sorry! is that the game involves a lot of elements of chance, but also a lot of elements of CHOICE. I know someone’s written meta on this in the past, but really quickly, in Sorry, each player controls a number of different pawns, all of which must eventually be advanced from the starting point to their respective finish line. The playing board itself is the defined and accepted parameters of the world the game will play out on, yet there are multiple different “paths” for each player to take. The players draw cards in turn (the element of Chance) and then decide which of their pieces to advance according to the instructions on the card they selected (the element of Choice).

The thing is, in this game, Cas could’ve chosen to “play a different piece.” He could’ve made the game easier on Dean while still advancing his own position, and yet he chose to strategically remove Dean’s piece from the board. Cas was playing not just to win for himself, but to frustrate Dean’s chances to even get a fair turn to play. Cas was playing by the rules, after all, which encourage competition over teamwork. The name of the game is Sorry! after all, and “sending your opponent back to the start” is half the point of the game. Cas wasn’t going to even play in the spirit of cooperation with Dean. He wasn’t going to provide answers. This was, in a horrific way, Cas’s attempt to revert himself back to the “reprogrammed” Cas that came back from Heaven at the end of 4.20. All under the guise of playing sorry, without having to engage with it in good faith.

Dean wasn’t even asking Cas to fight here. He was trying to respect Cas’s choice to “avoid conflict.” But Cas wouldn’t even TALK to him, wasn’t even engaging with him as if HE was real. And Dean was not unreasonably frustrated.

Dean’s been fighting back against an impossible enemy that can’t be killed and has devised a way to suppress human free will into submission, so that all of humanity will willingly march themselves into the slaughterhouse. It’s horrifically WORSE than the apocalypse to Dean, and he’s desperate and at the end of his rope, and is hoping for even a spark of hope to keep fighting himself... and Cas has nothing but poetry for him.

***

And then the angels show up, prepared to take the Prophet with them, as if Kevin was their property. Kinda raises some questions about how the Prophet Chuck could’ve been unaware of what he was, you know? Almost as if it had literally been a lie...

HESTER: You smote thousands in Heaven. You gave a big, scary speech. Then you were gone. What the hell was that?! CASTIEL: Rude, for one thing. INIAS: Where have you been? CASTIEL: Oh, Inias. Hester, I... I know you want something – answers. I... I wish it could be that… There are still many things I can teach you. I can offer, um, well, perspective. Here. [CASTIEL points a finger at HESTER.] Pull my finger. [HESTER doesn’t move.] Uh... Uh... Meg will – will get another light, and I'll – I'll blow it out again. And, well, this time, it'll be funny, and – and we'll all look back and laugh. HESTER: You're insane. DEAN: Hey. DEAN is standing in the doorway. DEAN: Heads up, Sunshine. DEAN puts his hand in an angel-banishing sigil he’s drawn on the wall outside the room. White light flares and the angels vanish.

Unlike Dean, who’d tried to be patient and understanding with Cas despite everything, Hester simply angrily demanded answers from him. And Cas... was equally evasive with her. She labeled his evasion “insane,” but Cas is 100% sane. He knows exactly what it is he’s avoiding answering for, but he’s paralyzed with fear that anything he does will only add to the problem. And Dean gets rid of the angels before they can start killing everyone (including Cas).

I mean, Cas’s answers are pretty obvious anyway, you know? His guilt, his hubris for believing he was choosing the right thing, in trying to teach the angels a better way-- Free Will and the protection of humanity-- that in the execution he lost his own free will (and his life) and unleashed a horror onto Heaven and Earth that he’s entirely incapable of fixing. It’s not like he doesn’t HAVE answers, they’re just... to much for him to even face. Guilt is a terrible thing.

***

DEAN: That is back in one piece, I see. And you're saying that there's some sort of a "How to punch Dick" recipe in there somewhere? KEVIN: I-I don't know what you're saying, but it seems kind of like an "in case of emergency" note. What did they mean by "prophet"? DEAN: Oh, no. [to SAM] Really? SAM: Yeah. Yeah, that's what the angel said. KEVIN: I don't want to be a prophet. DEAN: No. You don't at all.

Yeah... nobody wants to be a prophet. It’s a terrible job. No free will, no freedom at all, just ensnared into the service to God’s Word. (oh, and poor Kevin will try to resist, will willingly nearly kill himself trying to turn God’s Word around into a weapon he can wield. I can see why Chuck would single him out for specific “punishment” for messing around with his story like that.

***

MEG: Yeah. Yeah, Castiel. It's me. DEAN: Cas? Where? Where is he? MEG: [to DEAN] Shut up. CASTIEL: I’ll stop speaking. MEG: No. No, Cas. You talk. CASTIEL: [audible over MEG’s phone] I’m in a place called Perth. MEG: Perth? DEAN: Perth? As in Australia? MEG: What dogs? [to DEAN] He says he's surrounded by unhappy dogs. CASTIEL: They’re chasing a rabbit around [indistinct]… MEG: Oh. Okay. He's at a dog track in Perth. CASTIEL: I’m surrounded by large unhappy dogs. MEG: Yeah, they're unhappy 'cause the rabbit's fake. Listen, we're on highway 94, north of St. Cloud, Minnesota, just passing mile marker 79. CASTIEL materializes in the back seat between MEG and KEVIN.

Okay, first off, miscommunication. This is just riddled with miscommunication. But the background conversation, Cas is at a dog track surrounded by large, unhappy dogs. Kinda makes interesting light of all the “Dean is a Weird Dog” the show has been hammering on for years-- both literally and metaphorically. But... these dogs at the track are given the runaround. They’re trained to run a specific track for the entertainment of the spectators, running in endless circles chasing after a lure that they can never quite catch before they arrive at the finish line, where even winning the race just means they’ll have to run another round around the track the next day. And the lure? The rabbit they’re trained to follow after? It’s fake. It’s all part of the bigger game the poor dogs can’t escape from. I’d be unhappy, too.

Which is all a tidy metaphor for how Dean feels in s15, but how Cas has seen pretty much everything since way back at this point, if not far earlier.

Hence even more miscommunications, or at the very least each of them not understanding where the other is even coming from, based on these wildly different baseline perspectives. Cas, as an angel, had always been one of the spectators before Dean had pulled him into the race, so to speak. He’s always understood all of existence as a sort of game in this way, but Dean had never even had an inkling of the bigger game they were all part of all along. He’d thought he understood the rules, understood his role in the game, and it took until s15 for him to see that all of it had been a game to Chuck. That even when he’d thought he’d escaped the endless go-around of fake rabbits, it had only put him back at the startling line over and over again to run another race. And Cas... can’t understand Dean’s perspective here any more than Dean can understand Cas’s, despite them each believing they actually understand one another and just don’t care... awful, right?

***

CASTIEL: They're from the Garrison – my old Garrison. Looks like Hester's taken over. We were assigned to watch the earth. Often, it was boring. The wars were very boring and the sex – you know, the repetition. Anyway, I was, uh... I was their captain. Isn't that strange? SAM: Cas, why are they pissed at us now? CASTIEL: [to MEG] You know, those racing dogs were absolutely miserable. They can only think in ovals. DEAN: Cas, don't make me pull this car over! Why are angels after us? CASTIEL: Are you angry? Why are you angry? DEAN: No, I-I'm... Please, can we just stay on target? CASTIEL: There is no reason for anger. They're only following protocol. If the Word of God is revealed, a keeper of the Word will awaken, like this [He touches KEVIN’s nose] hot potato right here.

Observing creation enabled Cas to see the “repetition.” The endless loops. Like the dogs running in ovals. But he’s unable to connect with humanity directly right now, unable to risk feeling. And we’re back to doorways to doubt, and the same “only humans can feel true joy.” But also suffering. As long as he remains at a distance, he can protect himself from feeling all of that, from having to recognize his part in it.

And he doesn’t understand why Dean is angry that he keeps talking in circles.

Dean just wants to know why the angels are angry at THEM, why they’re coming after THEM when they’ve got so many other bigger problems they’re trying to solve.

***

CASTIEL: Anyway, Garrison code dictates you take the keeper to the desert to learn the Word away from men. DEAN: What kind of sense does that make? He has to tell us so that we can use it. CASTIEL: That's God and his shiny red apples.

Cas didn’t expect anything less from God. Dean just wants to stop the Leviathan from eating humanity and destroying life as they knew it, and Cas... doesn’t have anything to give.

***

DEAN: Okay, you know what? Screw the Garrison. We need the tablet to end Sick Roman's "Soylent Us" crap. CASTIEL: If you want the Word, you'll have to duck Hester and her soldiers. SAM: Yeah, you're in our corner, right, Cas? CASTIEL: No, I don't fight anymore. I watch the bees.

see? yet despite that declaration, Cas does try to help how he feels comfortable-- painting sigils to hide them from angels, but leaving off banishing sigils or he himself wouldn’t be able to stay. Kind of a conundrum, right? Sacrificing some of the safety Sam and Dean could’ve worked into the sigils so he himself could remain in the room with them.

***

CASTIEL: You seem troubled. Of course, that's a primary aspect of your personality, so I sometimes ignore it. SAM: Okay. Um... right now I'm just wondering about you. CASTIEL: What about me? You're worried about the burden I lifted from you. SAM: I think I was done for. Do you see Lucifer? CASTIEL: I did at first. But that was... It was a projection of yours, I think, sort of an aftertaste. Now I more see... well, everything. It's funny. I was – I was done for, too. The weight of all my mistakes, all those lives and souls lost, I... I couldn't take it, either. I was… I was lost until I took on your pain. It's strange to think that that helped, but – SAM: I know you never did anything but try to help. I realize that, Cas, and I'm grateful. We're all grateful. And we're gonna help you get better, okay? No matter what it takes. CASTIEL: What do you mean, "better"?

And here we have it. Sam plainly expresses his own guilt and regret over what’s become of Cas. But Cas hasn’t even begun to see how deep he’s buried himself to avoid dealing with his own guilt. Using Sam’s trauma as a sort of penance, he’s using that to “transfer” his own guilt away from himself, the way he shifted Sam’s trauma into himself. As if the second shift washes away the first and he’s wiped the slate clean. As long as he lets himself believe that, he doesn’t have to face what he’s done, and the consequences of his own choices.

Which is... kinda what Dean’s doing in early s15.

***

KEVIN: I am not prepared to factor the supernatural into my [DEAN puts the brown paper bag over KEVIN’s face] world view. DEAN: Okay, there we go. [He pats KEVIN on the back.] That's it. That's it. Just breathe. Take it easy. KEVIN holds onto the bag and breathes into it. DEAN: Oh, I don't know, man. What can I say? You've been chosen. And it sucks. Believe me. There's no use asking "why me?" 'Cause the angels – they don't care. I think maybe they just don't have the equipment to care. Seems like when they try, it just... breaks them apart.

I mean, Dean’s seen what trying to care has done to Cas. And Dean... was the one who pushed Cas to care in the first place.

***

And Meg kills a couple of demons who’d picked up their track, but that also brings the angels back down on them:

MEG: Typical. I save our bacon, and you're sitting here, waiting by a devil's trap. Seriously, I just killed two of Crowley's men. I could have gone the other way on that. CASTIEL: It's true, incidentally. There's other demons' blood on that blade. MEG: Look, I'm simpler than you think. I've figured one thing out about this world – just one, pretty much. You find a cause, and you serve it. Give yourself over, and it orders your life. Lucifer and Yellow Eyes – their mission was it for me. DEAN: So, what? We should trust you because you wanted to free Satan from Hell? MEG: I'm talking "cause," douchebag, as in reason to get up in the morning. Obviously, these things shift over time. We learn, we grow. Now, for me currently, the cause is bringing down the King. And I know we'll need help to do it. DEAN: Crowley ain't the problem this year. MEG: When are you gonna get it? Crowley's always the problem. He's just waiting for the right moment to strike. I know what I'm supposed to do. And it isn't screw with Sam and Dean or lose the only angel who'd go to bat for me. SAM breaks the devil’s trap with his foot. CASTIEL: This is good – harmony and communication. Now our only problem is Hester.

yeah, but they haven’t really communicated anything useful yet. But Cas does know that the angels are about to find them again...

***

HESTER: You took the Prophet from us?! CASTIEL: I'm – I'm sorry? HESTER: You have fallen in every way imaginable. INAIS: Please, Castiel. We have to follow the code. Help us do our work. DEAN: He can't help you. He can't help anybody. HESTER: We don't need his help... or his permission. HESTER nods to INAIS, who nods back. There is the sound of angel wings and INAIS disappears. HESTER: The Keeper goes to the desert tonight. INAIS reappears with KEVIN. DEAN: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back off. We're actually trying to clean up one of your angel's messes! You know that. CASTIEL: He's right. An angel brought the Leviathan back into this world, and – and they begged him. They begged him not to do it. DEAN: Look, just give us some time, okay? We will take care of your Prophet. HESTER: Why should we give you anything... After everything you have taken from us? The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost! For that, you're going to pay. HESTER walks towards DEAN. CASTIEL: Please. They're the ones we were put here to protect. HESTER: No, Castiel. HESTER backhands CASTIEL and he falls to the ground. INAIS and the other MALE ANGEL each hold up two fingers to stop DEAN and SAM from going to CASTIEL’s aid. HESTER: No more madness! [She punches CASTIEL.] No more promises! [She punches CASTIEL again.] No more new Gods! [She punches CASTIEL repeatedly and then holds up an angel knife.]

I couldn’t decide how to break this up to talk about it, because one thing leads directly into the next, and it all goes to context.

Hester accuses Cas of falling “in every way imaginable.” In the wake of their brush with free will, the remaining angels are attempting to restore the old order to Heaven, because there’s not much left to them than what they’d known before. When the new rules fail, the only thing they know to do is revert to the old rules.

Dean calls them out on it, and Cas even steps in to support Dean’s words. Only Cas can’t even say *I* and *me* here. He talks about himself in the third person, but at least he’s acknowledging what kicked off this mess, even if he’s still not taking direct responsibility for it. Not only that, he acknowledges that Dean had tried to stop him, and that he’d refused to listen. This seems to be a key point again in 15.03. The inability to acknowledge guilt and responsibility, and the refusal to listen. This entire conversation is just a few painful twists away from the Breakup Scene in 15.03.

But Hester lays down The Worst Truth, that Dean himself is at fault for destroying Cas, for just the TOUCH of him “corrupting” Cas, breaking him until he broke the world. To Dean, this was the equivalent confirmation of all his worst fears-- he’s poison, he’s worthless-- that Cas got from Belphegor in 15.03-- that Dean doesn’t care about him beyond his usefulness. But this is something that Dean will carry with him for YEARS, and which Dean will continue to feel in every dealing he has with Cas going forward-- that HE is at fault, that HE is unworthy, that everything that makes Cas “fall” in any way is because of him, because he’s poison. And so he internalizes every mistake that Cas makes, every burden he endures, as his own, because it’s all his fault anyway, right?

But Cas, too, learned a lesson here as Hester beat and prepared to kill him: NO MORE MADNESS. NO MORE NEW GODS. And when confronted with the truth of what Belphegor planned-- to become a new god in the same way that Cas had-- he understood what he had to do. He would not exchange one problem for another, exchange one apocalypse for one that would likely be even worse. It was a terrible choice, and I think this is the root of his decision.

***

Here have some dramatic irony, and the demon saving Cas’s life:

INAIS: Hester! No! [He grabs HESTER’s arm.] Please! There's so few of us left. HESTER punches INAIS in the face with the hand holding the knife. HESTER: [to CASTIEL] You wanted free will. Now I'm making the choices. HESTER raises the knife. White light blazes from her chest and she falls to the ground. MEG has stabbed her. MEG: What? Someone had to.

Hester claimed she was choosing her actions now, using the same excuse of Free Will that Cas himself had claimed as his motivation for swallowing Purgatory in the first place. Even when everything she’d done had been in the name of restoring the Old Order, of following the Rules that angels had always obeyed. Talk about not getting the point of Free Will.

This is what Dean’s struggling with now in s15, with his own long-held understanding of what Free Will even meant, with this new context that Chuck had repeatedly thrown new obstacles in his path, personally. There are no rules left, or so it feels like to him. There’s nothing to revert back to, or hold on to as an ideal, when every choice they make has been engineered to lead them to equally bad outcomes.

***

But Cas... he’s understood this for a very long time:

INAIS: These are strange times. CASTIEL: I think they've always been. INAIS puts a hand on CASTIEL’s arm. INAIS: I wish you'd come with us. CASTIEL: Oh, I'm not part of the Garrison anymore, Inias. I'm sorry.

Sure, he’ll be forced back against his will, but in a way that will help save him eventually. It won’t feel like salvation for years to come, though, but it’s a journey.

***

SAM: Here. “Leviathan cannot be slain but by a bone of a righteous mortal washed in the three bloods of the fallen.” Uh... It says we need to start with the blood of a fallen angel. SAM and DEAN look at CASTIEL. CASTIEL: Well, you know me. [He holds out a small bottle.] I'm always happy to bleed for the Winchesters. CASTIEL hands the bottle, which is filled with blood, to DEAN. DEAN: What are you gonna do, Cas? CASTIEL: I don't know. [He smiles.] Isn't that amazing?

AAAAHAHAHAH. Angel blood, required by Belphegor’s first spell. This scene was directly paralleled in 15.01, and with context, it’s it awful? After refusing to fight for the entire episode, Cas is happy to bleed. To do penance, but not to be burdened with action or responsibility. And with complete freedom to choose his next move, to choose for himself what to do with himself, he... chooses nothing. And heck, I get it, after billions of years of thinking he didn’t have ANY choices, suddenly he’s presented with EVERY OPTION, and is DELIGHTED by that.

But the one thing he WON’T choose? Staying with Dean. Standing by Dean’s side while he fights to clean up Cas’s mess.

Dean’s next line to Sam after Cas leaves? “Well, let’s get to work.”

They can’t rest yet. They can’t stop, because the world’s still ending and they’re still entirely on their own. Only now they’re armed with at least a DIRECTION they can work toward. It’s something, but... it’s still just the two of them alone against the apocalypse. Which is what Cas had spent s6 trying to avoid. And can’t face at all now.

And this is what Dean had long since resigned himself to-- that Cas, given the choice, would leave. So Cas choosing to leave in 15.03? I think Dean was shocked he hadn’t left sooner.

And then of course there’s the angels dying when they return Kevin to his home, only to be deceived by Leviathan and abducted.

He just couldn’t win. And neither could Cas, and neither could Dean and Sam. It was an unwinnable game that would just break them all again.

I could do a post like this for 7.22, and for 7.23, and probably for every other episode from all the episodes between then and now, but this has taken me all day. I really hope y’all are making all the same connections, spotting all the thematic subversions and twists of every turn of the narrative spiral between then and now. But this episode killed me today. And it gives a lot of obvious context to Dean and Cas’s choices and issues in early s15 that led to the Breakup. But hopefully it also lays down the foundation of what they truly need to put out on the table to move past this impasse.

They need to put down something better than Sorry! They need to use real words and actually listen to each other. But the fact that scene in 15.03 directly called out this miscommunication, this refusal to listen (and it’s not just on Dean here, but Cas has refused to listen, too). And now the narrative demands they have that conversation for real. For their own good, but for the good of the world, to break these eternal ovals and finally break free of this endless chasing after the fake rabbit.

[ember373]

8/6/2022 10:37pm

Aw A…

You weren’t supposed to let me go. But…I knew that you would. Which is why I’d been holding it in for so long. It’s not that I think you’re not capable of loving me, it’s that I know it would take a lot of time to get there. Your slow burn. And until then…I am not as important to you as I’d like to be and my patience gave way. :/ Perhaps I’m just fooling myself tho and deep down I know I will never be that important to you. Always ranking below family, work, free time, friends, and anything and everything else out there. Now that I think about it, I really don’t know that there’s anything I actually rank above. *sigh*

So…here we are again. Just friends. Nothing has really changed on your end. You still get to talk to me. Which, I think is all you ever wanted anyway. I’m not that nice to look at so you never asked for pictures. I’m not that interesting to talk to on the phone so you never asked for phone calls. Just the few messages in between when you have a moment or are bored. Never time set aside because I’m not that important after all. I never made it that far. But I’m sure I make you feel cared about so you’ll keep me around.

Did you know that I had written you a letter before the one I sent that ended things? No…of course you wouldn’t…lol…because I never sent it. It explained why I love you and why you make me happy and why, despite what you may think, that you actually weren’t bad for me. In fact, you were actually quite good. But you’d never listen to me. It’s probably for the better anyway seeing as I bring you so much shame and guilt. You should be with someone you’re not ashamed of and who doesn’t make you feel guilty. How can one be happy if that’s all they feel? Sheesh.

Since I never told you, I’ll just put it here. Part of it anyway. I know you think that you’re so bad for me and the way you treat me is awful. I’ve told you a million times that I like it when you control me because it makes me feel loved that you would even want to. Especially in the way that you do it. Other men try to tell me what to do in every aspect of my life and that never works. But you… you have a very specific control and let me make decisions about other areas of my life. Maybe it’s a lack of interest or laziness or whatever, but it works. Lol. And I realized while I was with you that I don’t have to be this sexy creature. Because I’m not. Not that I can’t be. But my inherent nature is to be cute and adorable and somewhat dorky and that’s what you liked, no? I learned over the years of my life that most men didn’t like that. They wanted sexy and bold and all that so that’s what I became. But it’s not something I’m necessarily I’m comfortable with. It’s a role I played. But you didn’t care for that role and I just got to be myself. For the most part. it was nice.

But now we’re just friends. And I’m pretty sure you’re not coming back. You’ve seen all of me and there’s a lot of me. It’s not too pretty. I don’t blame you for jumping on board the train I sent your way to get out of whatever it was we had. I’m fat. I’m old. I’m not that cute. And I mess up a lot. I can’t believe you agreed to any of it in the first place, let alone last almost 6 months. but…if I couldn’t get in your heart in those six months, then I’m probably not the woman for you. When you find the woman you feel love for-hang on to her man and don’t let go. Especially since you told me you’ve never loved anyone. She’ll be something special if you fall in love with her. I wish it could have been me, and it breaks my heart that it wasn’t, but I always said we had a lot going against us.

I was thinking the other day tho. We listed our ages, our families, our locations, and maybe some other things. But I think the thing that we had going against us the most was ourselves. We both weren’t selfish enough. Maybe regular love isn’t selfish, but I think for people like us that maybe think the other person would be better off without us…we kind of have to be. Selfish enough to put aside our selfless bravado and say nope…too bad…you’re stuck with me. I know you kept saying you’re a selfish person, but really you’re not. At least, not selfish enough when it came to me.

It drives me crazy thinking you’ll find some hot young thing in NC or over in Germany. Someone to fool around with and get your urges out. Those women will get to see your face. They’ll get to touch you and feel you and be with you. Things I never got to do. When I think how people at the damn grocery store are important enough to see your face but I never got to…ugh. It burns me up inside and shatters my heart. But what can I do? Absolutely nothing. I gave you so much of myself and you couldn’t even give me a song. Or a reading. Or anything. You didn’t even remember my birthday or try to make it up to me when you forgot. You told me I should break up with you. Perhaps…you really wanted me to back then. I guess I should have so I didn’t have to prolong your torture of being with me.

So now we’re friends. Fun. I’m not brave enough to tell you this but this friendship won’t last forever. It will only last until you get yourself a woman, and then it will end. Because it will eat me up inside to know that you found someone else. Someone better in all ways than I could ever be. Someone that will get to touch you and see you and hear you and taste you. things I just wasn’t good enough for. I wish I was good enough for you. I tried to be. I really really tried to be. But I just wasn’t enough. I’m never enough.

The hardest part? Not telling you I love you anymore. Calling you baby. Asking you if you want me, adore me, and am I yours. Nobody wants me. Or adores me. And I’m nobody’s again. But I still love you. And I don’t want anyone else. I’m reading a novel where the fl had this whole life and then woke up and found it was a dream. That’s what this feel like at times. Just a dream. A dream I made up. And now I have to wake up. I was going to try to treat it as such. How can one be sad over a dream? Or feel heartbreak over something that didn’t happen in reality? But there’s very real hurt in my heart and I very much love you so it’s not quite working. So…I’ll just do the best I can. Tell you good morning, be there to chit chat, and anxiously wait for the day I’ll be replaced. I know you might think we’ll be friends for a very long time, and I really would like that, but I know myself. I’m a very jealous bitch and I’m not that selfless. So I guess we’ll see how long it takes for you to find the woman you’ll finally think is worth it to drop your walls for and let in your heart. And I’ll hate her with all that I am.

Because I still love you. I even thought of something to message you and you won’t have any clue whatsoever what it means. You like to type :3 a lot. I think it means embarassed but I don’t know that you use it for that all the time. Lol. I think sometimes you use it for awkward. Lol. But I thought…I could start using ;3. I thought of the semi colon from the whole tattoo thing. And I was thinking it meant life goes on. So I thought great. Life goes on. And the 3 is for the 3 words: I love you. That way I could still tell you I love you without you knowing and it getting all weird. But then I looked the whole semi colon thing up and read that a writer uses a semi colon when they could have ended the sentence but chose to continue instead. And I thought…yeh. I guess that is really it. Because, I really should end what I have in my heart for you, but I can’t. So until then… ;3. I should end it, but I won’t. And…I love you. But you’ll never really know because normal people move on and you’ll have think that I have too. And I’ll let you, because it will make you happy. All I want is for you to be happy. Even if I hate her for it.

;3