#anyway! that’s kind of a surface level explanation i guess and just my interpretation but that’s what i meant by that

[devilsskettle]

Can I ask about the milk and eggs imaginary? Like, why you think it is used because I did not clock that at all while watching

sure! in both films, motherhood is a central theme, especially fears about giving birth and raising children. eggs and milk are associated with fertility, motherhood, childbirth, etc.

in possession, when she smashes her groceries in the subway, it’s milk and eggs, and the fluids that — idk how to describe this scene without it sounding gross lol — that come out of her also resemble milk (and blood). those are also the fluids that come out of women during/after childbirth. what is happening to her mirrors a perverse version of pregnancy — that line that is alluded to in evil dead rise is “it’s in me,” then there’s a “gestation period” so to speak for the creature in that movie as it gradually develops into something humanoid, a process which involves sexual intercourse and conception. that milk/blood combination is also seen at the foot of the bed in the room that the creature is in, making a direct link between what’s happening in those two scenes. there’s also the distant relationship with her own child where she basically is unable to actually raise him and meet his needs. the story hinges on these ideas about marriage, the domestic sphere, sex and extramarital relationships, failed relationships, failure in parenthood, etc.

evil dead rise also picks up some of these themes, which is why i think it’s so smart for the writers to invoke these parallels to possession. ellie is also dealing with a recent separation, the family is adjusting to similar disturbances to their domestic life. so in the scene where possessed ellie starts breaking the eggs and talking about how she wants to kill her children etc, the eggs = her children. then immediately after, when she vomits, it’s that milk-like fluid also. part of the possession process in this movie is the characters frothing at the mouth which is also a white fluid (and which also happens in evil dead 2013) but ellie is the only one to actually puke up milk like that, in that amount. shortly after, she says she’s free of “titty-sucking parasites” which. yeah i feel like i don’t have to explain that lol but the insults she levels at her children are all about how they’re a burden basically (which the real ellie clearly does not feel, but which reflects a fear shared by parents and children that a resentment will grow directed at the child for relying on the parent for their basic needs to be met). then of course there’s the issue of beth’s pregnancy, and all the insults directed at her are playing off her fears of being a mother, how she’s not fit for parenthood, and how difficult having children is

something else i noticed was that both of the films take place mainly in an apartment/apartments, with only few scenes in either happening outside of this domestic urban setting. idk if there’s anything to interpret about that thematically lol just something to think about

[lavenderlyncis]

F, R, U?? :)

This turned out so so long, I'm very sorry <3

F: a snippet from a dialogue scene that I'm proud of with an explanation

This was kind of tricky, because there are so many scenes from tbwb that I would love to talk about and explain. I decided on this one purely, because I can talk about it without spoiling too much.

"This one is called 'sunflowers'," Regulus began.

James wheezed at this. "I wonder why."

"Shut the fuck up." He cleared his throat. "Anyway, this was painted with only three shades of yellow. He demonstrated that it was possible to paint with one singular colour, without losing any amount of eloquence. The sunflowers represented a sort of gratitude for Van Gogh. He once wrote that in a way, he owned the sunflower. I believe that to be true. No one else has ever painted sunflowers quite like he did."

"I guess." The dismissal in James' voice made Regulus' blood boil.

He sharply turned to him. This time, James was looking at the painting and not at him, which was strangely disappointing. "Excuse you?"

"I mean, yeah, he owns the sunflower, but that's not a very nice flower to own." He shrugged and focused on Regulus again.

Regulus was shocked. The sunflower, not a nice flower to own? Didn't James have any eyes? He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

James, the tasteless prick, continued. "It's not as impressive as painting... oh, I don't know, water lilies perhaps."

"Excuse you?!" Regulus saw red. "You did not just compare Van Gogh to Monet, did you?" His voice became shrill, and he had half a mind not to actually scream at James in public.

"He is the superior impressionist," he asserted with mischief glinting in his eyes.

Regulus sputtered. "He is- No! What? How do you even come to that conclusion? The audacity! You come into this museum and disrespect the man himself?!"

"What can I say, I just always liked water lilies better than sunflowers." He shrugged and Regulus paused.

Was James trying to tell him something? This had most likely been some teasing on James' part, but 'water lilies'? James had to be a fool to not read the hidden meaning of that. Was this his way of rejecting him yet again?

Regulus had gotten the message the first time. James didn't need to remind him.

I like this scene so much because it tells us everything we need to know about James and Reg's dynamic and the cause of their issue.

On a surface level, James tries to get under Regulus' skin because he likes seeing his reaction. Regulus is very reactionary when it comes to James. Those two know exactly what they have to say to rile the other up and that's a very important part of their relationship. It shows how well they know each other.

On a deeper level, the entire core conflict they are facing gets demonstrated here. James says something random without thinking about it and Regulus, lead by his insecurities, interprets a deeper meaning into it, that James didn't intend. They face a major miscommunication issue that they need to adress, but neither of them have realized that it's even happening.

I also just really enjoy the metaphor of Lily being waterlilies by Monet and Regulus being sunflowers by Van Gogh. The sunflower motive is going to be continued throughout the entire story, which can be seen by the title of the very chapter that scene is from, "blooming of a sunflower", which is a reference to Regulus' feelings being rekindled.

R: are there any writers that i consider an influence?

I would be a fool to not mention @mcplestreet here. I think my love for their work is widely known, but they are singlehandedly responsible for getting me to post my work, so they definitely had the lairgest influence on me.

Another writer I would consider an influence is actually @wegkreuzer. She's not a fanfic author, but she sends me poems and sometimes short stories of hers that always inspire me in some way. There's even going to be one of her poems featured in tbwb.

U: Three of my favourite fic writers and why I love them so much

I don't think I can choose just three. I'm sorry. These are in no particular order.

@aureusprongs. I don't think I even need to elaborate. Omnia vincit amor is a masterpiece. He just gets the characterisations of these characters right.

@euphorial-docx just delievers the best version of Regulus there is, but what I truly admire her for is how they're able to set the atmosphere. I have such a vivid image in my head when reading their work and it's wonderful.

@plutosmoony has an amazingly artistic portrayal of Regulus' mental health, which is so addicting to read. I love it when people put work into their themes and motifs and Pluto does that so much.

@thebattlehamster. No one is surprised by that. I love it when characters lament about the past and when you were mine is full of that. Yaz is able to create a story that's so dramatically beautiful and I love them for it.

Yes, I'm gonna put @mcplestreet here too. How could I not? They're stories are pure art. I especially admire them for portraying the Jegulus interactions in such a beautifully romantic way.

I just realized that I can't actually name everyone that I wanted to name and now I'm sad :(

Just know that if I follow you, you belong on this list as well. And if I don't follow you, you probably also belong on this list. I read a lot.

[ginmo]

How do you think the Bran and Jaime’s meeting will go in the books? I’ve read theories guessing he might end up as King Bran’s Hand, meta where the writers want him to become a mentor or father figure to the Starks in a full circle of his redemption arc, while others don’t want or think he should be involved with the Starks long-term either because of his and his family’s sins against the Starks or because they view his arc as reclamation rather than redemption or atonement. 1/2

This is what GRRM said about Bran and exploring time. 

“It's an obscenity to go into somebody's mind. So Bran may be responsible for Hodor's simplicity, due to going into his mind so powerfully that it rippled back through time. The explanation of Bran's powers, the whole questions of time and causality - can we affect the past? Is time a river you can only sail one way or an ocean that can be affected wherever you drop into it? These are issues I want to explore in the book, but it's harder to explain in a show.” - Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon

Hodor’s name reveal is neat and all, but Bran’s power to manipulate the past doesn't exist just so we can randomly learn Hodor’s pointless name origin. That would be ridiculous unless the scene was used to introduce that ability. Hodor’s name reveal is important to the narrative, and I believe its purpose is to set up a much bigger event/reveal involved around Bran interfering with the past, not just observing it. I’m pretty sure GRRM was hint-hinting to D&D about this, which is why he told them about the random ass Hodor scene that was already written, thinking it would be obvious what that means for the overall plot and letting them run with it but………………..

Because of this, I think it’s possible Bran brought himself to where he is. 

IF Bran isn’t involved in The Push, then he could have been involved with Jaime killing the Mad King. I kinda like the idea of Bran playing into Aerys’ madness, causing him to stock up on wildfire around the city, because then the wildfire would be an essential future plot element for a bigger purpose towards the end of the series and it would be a question of time, “a river you can only sail one way, or an ocean that can be affected wherever you drop it,” but for the entire series. (And, as someone with a passion in astrophysics, I’m a sucker for discussions around time. BUTTHAT’SJUSTME) 

Do I totally subscribe to this theory? Eh. I’m still not convinced Bran is King of All of Westeros for reasons, but I’m open-minded. I DO think Jaime is surviving the series, for reasonsssss, so I’m putting that disclaimer out there right now. I will never claim with absolute confidence that he is surviving though because, I mean, nobody fucking knows, and there’s an argument for death. I’m just going off of narrative clues that I perceive to be clues, and taking other character arcs into consideration. After literally drawing up a table because I’m weird, the column for Survive has more evidence and justification than the column for Dies, so that’s why I lean the way I lean. SO with that being said, I think it’s possible he has more of a political future.

IF this is what GRRM is writing, Jaime would still be responsible for pushing him, of course, but future Bran would want to be pushed. He'd be setting everything in motion to create the butterfly effect that makes it happen. 

Even if that isn’t what GRRM had intended with exploring time, it’s highly likely Bran’s character development is taking him down a path of apathy over it, meaning he wouldn’t be needing Jaime to do something for the purpose of redemption for him. 

Speaking of Redemption…

-deep breath-

I’m going to go off on this a bit because it IS relevant, I swear. 

“Limits of redemption” is probably the biggest wtf interpretation fandom has when it comes to what GRRM actually said. I’ll try not to go off on it too much here but -

Interviewer: Both Jaime and Cersei are clearly despicable in those moments. Later, though, we see a more humane side of Jaime when he rescues a woman, who had been an enemy, from rape. All of a sudden we don’t know what to feel about Jaime.

GRRM: One of the things I wanted to explore with Jaime, and with so many of the characters, is the whole issue of redemption. When can we be redeemed? Is redemption even possible? I don’t have an answer. But when do we forgive people? [...]  I want there to be a possibility of redemption for us, because we all do terrible things. We should be able to be forgiven. Because if there is no possibility of redemption, what’s the answer then?  [x]

I bolded “we” from the interviewer, because it gives context to GRRM’s answer with “we” being the readers, not the characters or Jaime himself. (I think there’s another interview where he says “limits of redemption” but it’s in the same context. I could be wrong but I SWEAR I heard it. Anyway…) 

“I kind of tried to ask, ‘do you think he’s changed?’ to get him to talk about Jaime’s redemption arc, so he said something like he wanted to explore the concept of forgiveness and whether it’s possible to be forgiven for doing such horrible things, and that his goal was to ask the question, not give an answer.” [x]

Fandom thinks this is the characters giving Jaime forgiveness, and maybe there will be a small element of that in the books, but the question is for the readers. No, Jaime is not actively seeking redemption from people. His redemption is for himself, through living his best life, by rediscovering the person he used to be. Yes He Will Be Redeemed and No He Will Fail assume redemption is some arbitrary checklist determined by One Big Act, and they’re answers to a question GRRM doesn’t want to give an answer to. 

The purpose of Jaime’s POVs is to ask the readers, and the most obvious moment of this was the bath scene. GRRM smacks us over the head with the Aerys confession, and then as we’re introduced to more and more of his POV chapters, he slowly chips away at the Jaime illusion that was intentionally established the moment he pushed one of the perceived child protagonists out of a window. It’s brilliant, and I’m sorry GRRM that a large chunk of your fandom is too dense to get it. How frustrating lol. I’ll be insulted for him. (I’m legit wondering if his recent angsty tweets about grey and redemption about real life stem from a concern that his fandom won’t understand the point of the series.) 

To give you an idea of where these people are coming from, at least one BNF idiot on Twitter believes redemption hasn’t been explored with Jaime yet. 

But uh… 

GRRM mentioned his intent is to “explore redemption” after delivering Jaime POVs, because... it’s... not a spoiler… he’s already exploring redemption, because the question is being asked TO US. We were supposed to have an “oh shit” moment, realizing this is more complex than the surface level, biased perspective we were delivered at the beginning of the story. “Maybe Westeros and my protagonist have it wrong.” -cough- the people in the village in BatB -cough- 

No matter how much fandom likes to pretend they love GRRM for pushing the boundaries of fantasy, they secretly fucking hate it. They love to be comfortable, dude. That’s why they read this series as if it’s a clear cut Good vs. Evil, because a) ego and b) that’s easy. If GRRM was writing Jaime as doing everything with ill intent then…. his… question isn’t being asked. They think everything he does right now is selfish and Bad, so they’re waiting. They want it spoon fed to them. They want classic fantasy. They want Starks = Good, Lannisters = Bad. 

But… if the author sees Jaime’s actions as grey and complex, enough to ask the question to the readers if he’s redeemed in their eyes or not, then he’s not going to write an endgame that punishes the character for narrative payoff, because he doesn’t see his actions as “sins” or “crimes” in the same way that these people are. Once upon a time, a person on tumblr reblogged one of my posts and said that Jaime will rape Cersei before he kills himself and that will be his endgame. But GRRM doesn’t view Jaime as a rapist, so he’s not going to write Jaime as a rapist. I’m bringing that up, because it’s the same phenomenon. People can ignore authorial intent all they want, but NOT when it comes to predicting narrative trajectory. The general fandom is terrible at that lol. 

The exploration of redemption for Jaime comes in the form of confronting his disillusioned self and everything attached to it. Before someone thinks, “lolllll he isn’t disillusioned” 

 “he actually was a very idealistic young man who was disillusioned by life” [x]

Jaime’s redemption is the path of returning to that idealistic man for himself. It’s by feeling ashamed of the things he’s done to hide his love for Cersei. It’s by gaining independence and detaching from the toxic relationship that caused a mess outside of them. It’s by wanting to be like the knights he admired in his youth, and like the woman warrior that inspired him. 

So when I think about narrative payoff for Jaime, I don’t see it framed as him being “punished” for actions viewed as “crimes,” when GRRM clearly established those “crimes” as complicated and grey with a character already going through some positive development, and especially when the characters judging are written to be flawed as well.

On the other side, having him be “punished” by succumbing to hatred and anger is for sure giving an answer (this just… -sits on hands- don’t even get me started on THIS fucking hot take). That answer would be a clear, solid, “No, no matter how hard he tries to turn his life around, he can’t be redeemed, because he’s a hateful, angry, fucked up person.” I’ve legit seen people think “limits of redemption” is a boundary of redemption drawn in the sand that Jaime is walking towards but he won’t be able to cross it. I-......................... 

And what’s even the point of his handchop if scenario number 2 happens?  

“And Jaime, losing a hand, losing the very thing he defined himself on is crucial to where I think I want to go with the character. And he questions what do you make of yourself if you’ve lost that.” - GRRM [x]

(I’m going to put this quote in every post sorry not sorry) 

So he’s going to take Jaime on this big identity journey just for him to be like “lol nah he isn’t that” …?? That makes the loss of his hand meaningless, not “crucial.” Is it really crucial for him to lose his hand if he’s bringing him back to the beginning? Is it really crucial for him to lose his hand to make himself realize he’s hateful and a failure and murder Cersei and then himself? No. He could have still met Brienne and been inspired by her knightly ways, attempted to live a better life, found out about Cersei’s affairs, etc. He doesn’t need to lose his hand to reach a point of fucking murder/suicide lmao fuck (not saying he’ll do that but I KNOW people are thinking it). 

The loss of his hand is “crucial,” because GRRM has bigger endgame plans for him in the form of politics, and the journey to believably get there requires the forced loss of his warrior identity and everything that the hand symbolized. 

AS FOR THE ACTUAL HAND THEORY...

Even though I’m undecided on it, I CAN see it IF Bran is King. I get it. Jaime’s missing his right Hand, he becomes the Hand to the kid he pushed out the window. Hardy har har. I understand how that would be pleasing.

And we all know GRRM said something about how the best ones for power are the ones who don’t want it…  

And… this suspicious scene at the very beginning of the series… 

“You should be the Hand.” 

“Gods forbid,” a man’s voice replied lazily. “It’s not an honor I’d want. There’s far too much work involved.” 

Bran hung, listening, suddenly afraid to go on. -AGOT

BUT IF that happens, it wouldn’t be there as some sort of #atonement #forredemption. It would be there because of Jaime’s growth as a character after developing into a political player, after asking himself, “what do you make of yourself if you’ve lost [the swordhand]?” He’s no longer the warrior he once was. He dislikes any sort of political position, because he feels most alive with a sword in his hand. But that was Warrior Jaime, and the point of “what do you make of yourself after you’ve lost that” is Jaime going down a different path after discovering that Warrior Jaime has died. I mean, he’d never be actively seeking power and thinking it’s the best career ever, like he’d probably be all -sighhhhhhh- about it, but he’d be doing the responsible thing and what’s necessary. He’d make himself useful in a new way. 

“The Warrior had been Jaime’s god since he was old enough to hold a sword. Other men might be fathers, sons, husbands, but never Jaime Lannister, whose sword was as golden as his hair. He was a warrior, and that was all he would ever be.” - AFFC (Do I really need to make a post about how GRRM foreshadows? Mr. Bran: “I never fall”...?)

Jaime losing his hand was the narrative consequence for The Push, making all of his development post handchop -ALL OF HIS POVS- the redemption theme. It was the hand that pushed Bran, fucked his twin, killed his king, swung the sword against fandom’s Precious Protagonists… 

“You ought to be pleased. I’ve lost the hand I killed the king with. The hand that flung the Stark boy from that tower. The hand I’d slide between my sister’s thighs to make her wet.” - AFFC

So if Jaime becomes his Hand, it would be the two characters meeting in the middle, not Jaime groveling at his feet, begging for forgiveness, framed as a punishment for sins - “sins” that fandom views as “sins” that need narrative payoff, because they don’t understand intent. 

[hidelaney]

Hi Delaney!

Ah, yes the quarantine. It’s getting to me. Definitely. Suddenly I have no office to go to. But it’s good, I think. Make the CEO realize the upper management has no literal reasons to keep us in the office. Like at all. Seriously, everyone from my team is working from home and the level of productivity is actually better. Because guess what? Not having people breathing down our necks is SUPER helpful. So HA!

Okay, about Larry Stylinson. You’re right, I did fall into YouTube Blackhole. And Twitter. And I just watched 1D San Siro concert. By watching, I mean I actually paused the work I’m doing and looked at the screen while it played. Admittedly I was also doing chores but! It wasn’t just background music! It counted!

When I said I could put Larry Stylinson in a microwave and be done with it, I mean the theories and compilation videos are so readily available and easy to digest like, comparable to instant meals.

It’s so neatly packaged, too. Like, I was introduced to Larry Stylinson basically yesterday. Now I could recite the storyline in my head whenever I please. Or when I want to please you, in this case.

Let’s see if I can get it all summarized down here. FYI, I’m borrowing your assumption that Taylor was in on it the whole time. And Eleanor, too. Because I actually know of her existence now! Character discovery! Except they’re real people so I feel the need to point out that I’m making all the assumptions all over the place. I’m doing this for you, my dear Delaney.

Keep in mind that we all need character growths and personal developments when I make non-flattering assumptions toward your favorite people here, ok?

First up! HS & TL met in a toilet.

Now it’s debatable whether it was during an X-Factor audition or Battle of the Bands. For the sake’s of my next argument, I’m going with they knew each other before X-Factor. Likely during their time in White Eskimo and The Rogue, respectively. Their (unconfirmed?) first words to each other were ‘Oops!’ & ‘Hi’

Up next, the X-Factor audition and getting put together in a band.

So here is where I kind of needed my first assumption for this to work. Their chemistry was so obviously through the roof. It made so much sense if they were already sort-of friends and then got put together in a band. Plus, I don’t think the way Louis jumped into Harry’s arms is something a relative stranger would do. And if they only knew each other out of everyone there, it’s no wonder they were both so apparently clingy and codependent. It’s like a situation where both of them went ‘I have no idea what’s gonna happen next, but at least I know you and you know me. So we’re bestie now. No take back!”

And then there’re video diaries, twitter cams, radio interviews, and other broadcasting media they appeared in. These need no explanation because you’ve probably seen all of them and I have functioning ears and eyes. So, yes, I saw videos of them being all disgustingly cute all over the place. During the so-called ‘Fetus’ phase (a wording which I personally find rather disturbing, no offense to your anatomy textbooks or anything.) They’re so sweet. Especially whenever there’s a mention of how they moved in and lived together. Their interactions must’ve been responsible for so many tooth cavities. So many aww-worthy moments. On stage, on screen, behind the scenes, potato cams. Basically everywhere in front of everyone.

Then 1D blew up and were well on their way to become their label’s biggest and brightest BCG-metrix star. It’s not hard to see why investors’d be invested (lol) in employing every marketing strategy possible to keep 1D in the spotlight.

There’s a twofold marketing exploitation to Larry Stylinson that I see from miles away.

Hard sell the heteronormative version of the boys. (To capture major market shares)

Never had Harry or Louis explicitly confirm nor deny their relationship status. (To capture additional market shares with queerbaiting)

But let’s say Harry and Louis were actually together and making 1) too difficult to achieve. Otherwise this whole thing falls apart like a wet house of cards.

Thus, here came what I’d like to call ‘dousing a fire with gasoline’. This is where there’s a sudden drop of their interactions in public and Larry Stylinson isn’t a cutesy smashup name of two boys who got along like a house on fire anymore. This is the part where a ship turned into a full fledged conspiracy theory. And it’s MEGA COOL WICKED awesome.

I say this in the nicest way possible. A tragedy is the grandest form of entertainments. Misery loves having friends.

Also, I’d like to say this. I’m having fun thinking of this as a fictional arc. Because I still feel like it will shatter my heart in to a million pieces if anything resembling what I write next was true.

Since breaking into US market was the Kickstarter into a global one, to the US 1D went.

This was where the heavy closeting got way more difficult to handle. Elounor had the excuse of Eleanor being a private citizen and therefore should be left alone for the most part. Haylor was the complete opposite. Taylor Swift was and still is an American Sweetheart. Harry Styles might have been the most famous British Harry if it weren’t for a (former?) prince and a wizard. (Seriously, we should not call any of our hypothetical future children ‘Harry’ unless you thought ‘Albus Severus Potter’ was a good idea. Poor kiddo.)

The saddest part about Harry Styles public image was how reminiscent of Emma Watson it felt. The minute they turned eighteen, their media portrayals immediately became hyper-sexualized. Suddenly, they left the human zoo into an open hunting game. Famous lives are terrifying.

Anyhow, say, Taylor Swift knew what the US music industry was like. She’s been playing the long game for quite some time. She got to know Harry and then became rather protective of him. Her conclusion was that ‘hyping up Haylor’ would: 1) increase media exposure for both Taylor and 1D which would translate to bigger channels of revenue for all involved, 2) hold the speculation about Harry’s sexual orientation at bay because, as horrible as it sounds, gays don’t sell in America.

This one fit nicely with your ‘Out of the Woods’ interpretation. Taylor wasn’t just spending time with Harry. She was actively enforcing the lock on the closet. Which explains why Louis seemed to resent Taylor quite obviously and quite a lot. His own heteronormative scripts with Eleanor had been relatively tame. Harry’s whirlwind series of romances in public had only just begun.

As Harry started gaining a womanizer reputation in earnest, so did the Almost-Subtle Couple Tattoo Sprees.

If ‘Always in my heart @Harry_Styles . Yours sincerely, Louis’ tweet was a sign that circumstances were about to go south for them. The tattoos were signs that the circumstances had already gone to shit. The tragic package had been shipped, signed, and delivered.

This is where non-flattering assumptions rise to the surface. I think 1D had been overworked past the point of exhaustion. Self-destruction as a coping mechanism became rather prevalent and pervasive within the band. The boys gleefully collected regrets as a new favorite pastime, some more than others. Consequences were nipping at their heels.

Then Zayn left right in the middle of a world tour and all hell broke loose.

Here comes the biggest Assumption Affair!

Louis and Liam, the last to release their solo debut albums, were the most prominent songwriters for the band. I’m not going to go on about Liam because I’m here to give you Larry Stylinson. And this is already way too long as it is. But, needless to say, the first discussion of a prospective solo career probably hit them the hardest.

If each song they wrote was a battle scar, Louis was still bleeding for the band when Harry, of all people, brought up the idea of a hiatus and solo careers. Realizing how many songs Harry already had waiting in the back catalogue must’ve felt like a slap in the face. Or a punch in the gut. Whichever you think is worse/more dramatic. I’m not picky.

Remember self-destruction as coping mechanism? What about relationship-destruction as coping mechanism? Louis cheated and had a baby with someone else. Infidelity at its finest.

ALERT! THIS IS A NEON SIGN OF ASSUMPTION AFFAIR! Please don’t kill me. I told you I was gonna make unflattering assumptions toward your favorite people. I just did as I promised!!! *run for cover*

Anyway...

I’m gonna take you back a little. I mentioned earlier how Eleanor was a private citizen and therefore should be left alone. At times when Louis desperately needed to be left alone, Elounor makes so much sense. If she’s a PR-only girlfriend, she’s a stellar employee. If it’s not just a PR thing, she’s as forgiving as a saint. Just, if it’s Harry and Louis, they likely both messed up and hurt each other badly. If it’s Louis and Eleanor,... I mean... Have you seen a meme where you misspell a word so badly that the autocorrect goes, ‘I don’t know what to tell you, man’?... Louis would be that misspelled word and Eleanor would be the very best autocorrect that practically brute force through every word in the Oxford AND Urban dictionary to find out what that word was. If that’s who she is, then bless her soul. However, for the sake of this argument, we will proceed with the assumption that she’s the star employee of the decade.

Losing loved ones and grieving for them are inevitable parts of human lives. Nothing put more things into perspectives than losing someone so fundamentally dear to you. When I heard Louis Tomlinson’s ‘Two of Us’ for the first time, I remembered walking through an actual forest my grandpa planted for us because he wanted to make sure his great grandkids would have a nice home to grow up in. Do you remember when you called and told me that he died the night I got on my first solo international flight ten months after the fact? I wanted to hate you for keeping something this big a secret from me. I wanted to hate everybody at home for that. But then you told me that it was what my grandpa had wanted. That he didn’t want me to be a sad sack of an exchange student. That you decided to not listen to my parents and call to tell me just before I was due home. So that I’d have time to feel hurt about being lied to. So that I could get all the angry words out. So that I wouldn’t scream at my parents when I got home and learnt the truth. So that you could take the brunt of my grief instead.

I just took a break to have a little cry. Where was I? Oh, yeah. You did the best you could for me when I lost my grandpa. I still managed to effectively shut you out for months. Just because you were the messenger of the bad news. What I’m trying to say is that grief changes people. It changed me. For the worst for a bit. And then for the better once I came to term with what it means to me. There’s a quote from Rosamund Lupton that sums it up neatly.

“Grief is love turned into an eternal missing.”

I guess this is the part where I connected the dots back to Harry and Louis. Well, their music definitely give grief different names. Both albums talk about coming to term with it and moving forward. Every songs they wrote could be woven to fit the narrative of Larry Stylinson and events surrounding them. If you buy the theory, then the good news is both Fine Line & Walls seemed to have a positive ending. One thing I know for sure, though, is that no matter how convincing a conspiracy theory maybe, it could all be built upon a faulty assumption. I’d probably have a way easier time disregarding Elouner if I didn’t have you as a solid proof in my life that, yes, people like the best autocorrect exists. It’s funny how I feel no hesitation at all in categorizing Haylor as a calculated move. Because in my head that’s just par for the course in business. And it genuinely terrifies me in a way. Who the hell I could’ve become if it weren’t for you knocking me off the ground and pouring kindness on me.

I know I skipped a lot of stuff. Missing names like Caroline, Danielle, Kendall, Freddie, Camille, Xander, etc. But HS and LT have a decade of history on public record and, frankly, my interest ran out four paragraphs ago. So just let me conclude this.

I think it’s tiring, spending this much time speculating on someone else’s relationship history. I must admit that I had to get it out of my chest because it was way too interesting to let go off. But now, I feel like I’m just going to stream Heartbreak Weather and listen to ‘No Judgement’ on repeat. Nile is my favorite non-problematic celebrity. I could spell his name so wrong and it probably won’t be an issue as long as I politely say, “Sorry, Mr Niall Horan”

This quarantine clearly leaves me with too much time on my hands.

Virtual hugs and kisses

Your Incredible Sasha 😘

[monstersdownthepath]

Spiritual Spotlight: Phlegyas, the Consort of Atheists

True Neutral Psychopomp Usher of Atheists, Legacies, and Reincarnation

Domains: Artifice, Earth, Knowledge, Repose Subdomains*: Industry, Petrification, Memory, Psychopomp

Concordance of Rivals, pg. 16

Obedience: Spend an hour creating something from the dead, such as by making jewelry or clothing from hair, flesh, bones, or teeth. Alternately, mummify or embalm a corpse. Benefit: Gain a +2 insight bonus on saving throws against Divine magic.

(*IMPORTANT NOTE: The Subdomains are my best guess; Subdomains are not listed in Concordance of Rivals.)

Macabre! I hope you’ve got a good explanation for your party about why you’re being a ghoulish scavenger, but personally I’ve yet to be in a party where there were no scavenger types. It seems that every group of people has at least one person who takes handfuls of teeth or other trophies from their kills, but that may just be a bigger signifier about what kinds of people that I hang out with than a true analysis of this Obedience.

It’s an easy Obedience to do if you can quell your party’s fears about your chosen medium for your arts and crafts, because as an adventurer, you’re not likely to have a shortage of usable parts. Hell, just ONE complete body has enough materials to carry you through several days or even weeks of this Obedience because you can just perform some scrimshaw on the larger bones before using the smaller ones as pieces for a larger work. For people who want a bit more oomph in their crafting, I’m not 100% certain on Pharasma and the Usher’s tolerance of using the dead as crafting material for your own Construct minions, but ‘creating something from the dead’ lends itself to some pretty broad interpretations. You can, technically, use them to make Wondrous Items like weaving their leather into a Bag of Holding, even. Crafting magic items takes way more than 1 hour to do, obviously, so you can really only combine this Obedience with your crafting during downtime... Unless they’re potions, in which case they take a mere 2 hours if they cost less than 250gp.

That counts, right? All else fails, though, a Sack Of Rats can be used here. Just pull one out, clonk it dead, and preserve that tiny corpse.

And while my mind is on it, this Obedience couples phenomenally with the Harvest Parts, Grisly Ornament, and Monstrous Crafter feats.

Also, the benefit is great. A blanket +2 on saves versus Divine spells from any source and any alignment? Sign me up! Unfortunately, it doesn’t really protect you from spell-like abilities, and the bonus by itself is rather small, but it’s always nice to have just an always-on bit of extra protection you don’t need to think about. Like Mage Armor!

Boons are gained slowly, gained at levels 12, 16, and 20. Servants of the Monitors, though, can enter the Proctor Prestige Class as early as level 8. If entered as early as possible, you can earn your Boons at levels 10, 14, and 16. You MUST take the Monitor Obedience feat, NOT Deific Obedience. Monitors grant only a single set of Boons.

Boon 1: Creator's Whispers. Gain Crafter's Fortune 3/day, Object Reading 2/day, or Detect Anxieties 1/day.

Crafter’s Fortune and Object Reading aren’t too useful in the day-to-day, lets get that out of the way. Fortune grants a target a +5 bonus to the next Craft check they make, which is GREAT for people in your party who actually create things (like you, potentially), but you don’t need it 3/day unless everyone is making stuff. You can also use it in tandem with the Fabricate spell, of course, but in general you likely won’t need it more than once a day.

Object Reading has its niche uses in a Whodunnit mystery or tracking down the owner of a particular item, allowing you to quickly gather information of whose hands the target has passed, but the +10 Appraise check is actually only worth +1 fact, giving you a minimum of +2 facts... which is all you probably need anyway. It’s up to you whether or not that means this ability is useful, but know that the +10 means that a mere 2 or 3 points in Appraise makes it impossible to fail your reading.

Which leaves Detect Anxieties, which works as Detect Thoughts, but instead of the infinitely more useful analysis of the victim’s surface thoughts, you instead learn of whatever anxieties and fears are plaguing its mind. While still potentially useful, this translates in-game to only providing a paltry +2 to Intimidation checks, which I think should be significantly higher. Perhaps you could also get bonuses to other skill checks if you choose to sooth their anxieties rather than exploiting them?

That being said, it’s a useful spell for scanning hallways and rooms for concealed enemies, and its ability to pass through the same materials Detect Thoughts can means you can peer into some rooms without opening the doors and get a general feel of the room’s mood. All three of these spells, however, remain pretty niche, making it difficult to pick which one to take each day.

Boon 2: Evader of Consequence. You can cast Reincarnate or Mindwipe 1/day as a spell-like ability. You must select which when you perform the obedience for that day. 

Mindwipe slaps a target with 2 temporary negative levels if they fail their save, with the side-effect of instantly wiping out the target’s two highest-level spells or spell slots, as well as erasing the knowledge of two of their highest-level spells known. It’s an alright spell in the hands of players, shaving -10 HP off the enemy and hitting them with a -2 penalty to every roll they make, and eating two of the caster’s most powerful tools in one go can cripple whatever trump card they had in their pocket.

Unfortunately, it’s negated entirely by a save, and a Will save at that. It’s going to be difficult to actually have it land on a caster for its full effect, but at the very least you can still aim it at the enemy frontline to debuff them for a few days.

That being said, Reincarnation is an interesting choice. Normally costing 1,000gp to cast, you pay nothing for this power. It requires only a small portion of a dead body to use and creates a new one in the prime of their youth, allowing the caster to bypass the usual “no old age” restriction of life-granting magic, allowing it to bring back people living way past their time. Also, since Reincarnate works on bodies less than a week old, you can just keep preparing Mindwipe until someone dies!

The true power of this Boon, however, is that it’s essentially a free Raise Dead that needs only a pinch of corpse dust to work, provided you’re feeling lucky on the slot machine of potential races to come back as. Some... complications may arise if they reincarnate as a race that doesn’t mesh well with their build, but the fact you get the spell for free means that you can just keep trying day after day if you need to. On a morbid note, this means you’ll never really be at a loss for parts for your Obedience! ... Or food, I suppose.

Boon 3: Though Only Breath. After completing your Obedience, choose one Craft, Perform, or Profession skill. Until you next perform your Obedience, you gain a +10 insight bonus on checks to create something permanent with your chosen skill, such as carving a statue, writing a play, or drafting meaningful legislature. A check result of 40 or higher indicates that the object you create is of such astonishing quality that it will remain in the public consciousness for generations to come. This bonus does not apply to checks made to earn money.

I hope you’re the party craftsman, because come level 16, everything you do has a chance of becoming something famous and beautiful. Note that, while this ability cannot be used to craft scrolls or potions, using it to craft magical items is perfectly valid. ALSO NOTE, though, that this affects your Craft check, not your Spellcraft check, so allocate your skill points accordingly. Spellcraft allows you to construct any magical item, but specific Craft checks are needed for things like working leather, carving stone, etc.

On the plus side, golems and other magical Constructs often require specific Craft checks to build rather than just relying on Spellcraft, allowing you to craft mechanical minions with greater accuracy than ever before. If your items cost less than 1000gp to create you can get them finished in one day, allowing you to swap your bonuses to another one if need be.

Two things about this Boon are cute: The first is that you can also use it to bolster Perform or Profession, and the second is the final portion, in which an especially impressive construction will endure “in the public consciousness for generations to come,” implying that whatever you make will either be so astonishingly breathtaking or so unbelievably horrifying that people won’t be able to stop thinking about it for centuries. Amusing as that is when making something that costs less than 1000gp, it’s still apparently noteworthy enough to have whispers of it passed from parent to child.

This makes spreading propaganda pathetically easy, by the way. Since Profession checks can be just about anything, you can go buck wild with Profession (Lawmaker) or Profession (Mayor) or Profession (Novelist)! ... Or, as my DM pointed out, a futuristic setting could have you use your Profession (Blogger) or Profession (Instagram Influencer) clout to shape the public zeitgeist. Even if they don’t like you or your ideas, they’ll be talking about you, possibly until long after you’re gone.

Even if you can’t change the world, but you can sure as hell leave your mark in it.

You can read more about her here.

[tsuyoi-hikari]

Memories of the Alhambra Review & Ending Explanation

I really love this drama as a whole. I love how groundbreaking and interesting it is that each episode seemed like its only 15 to 30 minutes long. I love how unpredictable it is like literally, you cant guess whats coming and I love how it is structured to make you speculate and ask questions. The editing was made to show the future first and later flashback scenes will follow aka Christopher Nolan’s ‘Momento’ kind of storytelling. You know that a story is great when it can evoke you all kind of emotions and this drama is exactly that. It made you care for the characters, only to play you around and makes you wanting for more. And I salute the writer for her ability to engage the viewers like she did in this drama.

Aside from that, I really love the writer’s little clues here and there. She did a looooot of foreshadowing in this drama. It sure raise a lot of questions but you know whats coming with that. I mean, we after all can predict Jeong Hun’s death the moment Jin Woo asked Jeong Hun to join him at Granada (as in the train flashback scene, Jin Woo is alone and not with Jeong Hun). We also know right away that Marco is the one who hunt Se Joo the moment he made his appearance in the drama (as a blue checkered guy is the one who shot Se Joo). We also know as early as in Episode 2 that Jin Woo’s leg will be injured but his limp is cured the moment he’s playing the game. The dynamic of Jin Woo and Hee Joo’s relationship is also foreshadow since in the earlier episode on how she’s sitting in front of Jin Woo in the rain is making him feel protected and safe. Hee Joo didnt kill the enemies like Jeong Hun would (since after all she cant see Hyeong Seok's NPC), but her presence and existence is like a buffer between Jin Woo and the game and that particular scene perfectly show what would her role be in Jin Woo’s life in the future. 

Jin Woo has become one of my very fave Kdramas’ lead characters ever. And I have to give credit to Hyun Bin for that. He played Jin Woo in such a depth that you literally feel his pain just by looking in his eyes. I have watched Hyun Bin for the past 15 years and I have to say that this is simply his best role to date (although Hyun Bin's Robin from 'Hyde, Jekyll, Me' is my soulmate :P). Its been a really long time that I’m this emotionally invested in a character and Hyun Bin portrayal of Jin Woo made me feel Jin Woo’s soul. Aside from his outburst in Episode 1, Jin Woo is actually a really nice, humble and level-headed guy. Its evidenced with the way he talk to other people despite their status – he actually use a polite language (instead of Banmal) to everyone even to his low-level workers. And not to mention that despite his trouble with the game, he still treat people with utmost respect and care despite he himself is facing a real life and death situations.

Now regarding the romance part of the drama, I thought it was done very tastefully and slowly -- in a mature kind of way. You could see clearly why Hee Joo falls for Jin Woo. The mixture of Jin Woo kindness (still giving her the full amount of the contract), to him touching her soft spot (playing guitar), to him still taking care of his ex-wife (despite he didnt need to), to him facing real & death situation when he falls at her hostel, to her taking care of him and Jin Woo asking her to stay... And later when she realised the length Jin Woo went through to find Se Joo. All this small details contribute to why she loves him. And as for Jin Woo, its obvious that he falls for Hee Joo's kindness and strength. He was impressed with her ability to feed her family and was also taken back by her kindness (the length she is willing to go to help him either in interpreting to taking care of him when he's sick), to her quirkiness on how she explodes when she's mad. Plus, the most important of all is how her presence made him feels safe -- even when Hyeong Seok NPC is in front of him (during the rain scene). Hee Joo is like a buffer between the game and Jin Woo. He just unintentionally ask her to stay by his side since he is just too scared to be alone. He didnt understand it either but later, he realised that he likes her for her sincerity -- the one he never get from Su Jin or Yu Ra. And he actually smile and laugh when she is around him which he never did the whole 1 year after their last meeting at Granada when the game make him question his sanity. That is why he had the urge to see her before he completed the final mission since she is someone important in his life. IMO, the romance part was dealt with many minor details and mature way thats why I ended up really liking how their relationship grows despite the horrible situation they're in -- its not too much nor too little. When you are deal with real life and death situation, your feelings intensifies which explain their relationship perfectly.

All in all, I give the drama 9.5/10. It is not perfect but it was interesting as hell and full of unpredictable plots. I would love it more if the writer actually explain how the characters die because loss of blood when they were killed in the game but I guess she just lump sum it up as part of the 'fantasy and mysterious’ part of the game when Emma made the reality and game world collide when Marco stabbed Se Joo with real knife. But aside from these minor details, this drama has become one of the most nerve-wrecking Kdramas in my book. Its rare for me to have palpitation when I watch Kdramas but this drama is one of a rare case and it will always be special in my heart because of that. :D

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

Explanation on the Ending:

ITS OBVIOUSLY A CLEAR CUT HAPPY ENDING. WHY?

I know that many people are really dissatisfied with this drama’s ending. I personally thought the writer trying to be creative with her ending but kind of backfired as many people got confuse with the game concepts and thought that the bug cycle was repeating themselves over and over again now that Jin Woo is still stuck in the game. 

On the surface, the drama ended with a bittersweet note with a glimmer of hope at the end. However, after a second viewing, I have to admit that it is after all a clear cut happy ending. I realised many small details that the writer gave to us – that it was clear that despite the ending is ambiguous, the writer aimed for a happy end to both of our main leads. First of all, lets clear the confusion regarding the concept of the game world.

1. At first, I thought that Emma, while one of her features is to delete bugs, is a bug itself as she’s the reason why the game world and the reality world collide when Marco stabbed Se Joo with real knife. I mean, if she’s not there, the whole mess of the game become real wouldn’t happen as Se Joo will just bleed after the stab and probably recover after he go to the hospital. Jin Woo wouldn’t be in that mess and the only one suffers is only Se Joo with the stab wounds on his stomach. 

2. Marco is Se Joo’s bug thus he do not need to be deleted for Jin Woo to reset the game. Plus, Jin Woo can't see Marco anyway unless he made an alliance with Se Joo. Bear in mind that Se Joo is the one who create this game and he set the rules. Among the rules are those who gave Fatima the Key to Heaven will win the game and become the new Master. And he also put one of Emma’ s features is to delete bugs and once bugs are deleted, the game will reset. And that is exactly what Jin Woo did; level up, get the key, kill the bugs and hand over the key to Emma and Emma reset the game. Now, why Jin Woo is a bug and need to be deleted? It is because he played the game while the game is in error state. Had other testers of the game made a duel and killed their opponents like Jin Woo, they will be in the same position as Jin Woo as well.

3. Jin Woo made sure he killed all of the bugs and also sacrificing himself in the process to end the game’s sinister elements. Since he already do this and reset the game to zero, there are no more evil cycle of one has to sacrifice themselves to save the others. Once Emma reset everything, it is a new game without bugs/errors/glitches. J One lost all the data and build the game back from scratch that is why it took them another 1 year to release the new game as they have to rebuild everything. The good thing about the whole thing is that is game is finally safe to be played unlike Se Joo’s original game which mix game world and the real world. The writer made it clear that the evil part of the game was buried once and for all when Jin Woo sacrificing himself at the end. 

4. It was obvious that Yang Ju finally delete Emma from the new game when we hear that he regretted of keeping Emma where Emma in the end reset the whole game and delete all their hard work for the past 1 year. So no Emma, no more error in the game. There is no more Emma so the features of her to delete bugs and reset back the game is no longer there as well. 

5. Regarding whether Hee Joo can see Jin Woo or not, she can see him as she is wearing lenses. All game users can see Jin Woo if he made an appearance that is why the guy at the restaurant insisted that Jin Woo is not NPC but an advanced user. But why there's no name for Jin Woo in the new game? It is because Emma has deleted everything including Jin Woo's game name 'Zinu' that is why he is without name. ‘Instance Dungeon’ is to make one become invisible from the enemies and hide themselves. Se Joo did hide himself for 1 year as Marco is there to hunt him so he keep using the instance dungeon feature to remain safe. Jin Woo in the other hand just use the feature to save himself from getting deleted by Emma. So if he didn't use the instant dungeon feature, other game users can see him. The problem is getting him out of the game and I believe that is Se Joo's task to do that. 

And now the for ending, the writer purposely tell us about the 'Instance Dungeon’ and how a user can use it to hide themselves. And later at the end, it is shown that Jin Woo after all did use that feature to save himself. But why is he helping in killing low-level NPCs for other game users just days after the game was released? It is not actually a 'Master’ task to do that and he knew the game is now free from bugs and no one is getting killed for real. But he did it anyway. Why? He did that as a call of help to alert everyone that he is after all still alive but somehow still stuck in the game. He clearly let them know that he is still alive by helping the other game users. Now that Hee Joo knew that he is alive and hidden, it is only a matter of time for him to be saved just like how he saved Se Joo the year earlier. So, technically, it is only a matter of time before he can get his happy ending. 

I am pretty much disappointed with the ending but upon second viewing, it wasn’t really that bad like I initially felt. The writer for surely aimed for a happy end, it just that, its not in-your-face type of ending like other dramas.

[elizabethrobertajones]

I've had a couple of requests for an explanation about this Jensen vs scripts thing since JIB, and I think the best way to explain it is to look at the "I read books" flip around... I can't for the life of me find versions where I've explained it before which aren't just messy quotes from my episode notes, so I'm just laying it out :)

In 9x04 we got these lines as filmed and presented to us:

DEAN Wow. That Joffrey's a dick.

CHARLIE Oh, you have no idea. Wait until he --

SAM Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! S-spoilers. I haven't read all the books yet.

DEAN You're gonna read the books?

SAM Yes, Dean. I like to read books -- you know, the ones without pictures.

[DEAN shoots an annoyed look at his brother.]

In conventions etc the boys have been quite happy to tell us how they flipped the lines around as if they had corrected a characterisation error; Sam is the one who reads books! Dean is a jock who will watch a T&A show but not get into the books.

Robbie, a dear fan of nerdy Dean (look no further than his total glee at LARP-ing in 8x11 and the direction of his getting dressed up as Aragorn which totally does not mirror a scene from the LotR movies...) had picked up on the fact that Dean has referenced Vonnegut and other writers before (with multiple references, I believe) and clearly does read for pleasure, though he seems to keep it on the DL most of the time, referencing movies and TV shows far more frequently.

The most egregious example other than this, which I don't know if it was scripted or not, is in 6x21 when Dean complains he has no idea what a Cthulu is because he was too busy having sex with women to read the books that Bobby and Sam know. Anyone who knows Dean's taste in music knows that his favourite bands frequently reference LotR and Lovecraft among other things, so he absolutely would have the cultural context. It's easier to interpret Dean as lying to cover his wounded pride in this situation but in 9x04 it's a mess.

The implication becomes Dean seeming SURPRISED that his nerdy ass brother, who he knows uses obscure Star Wars characters as fake names, wants to read a series of fantasy novels... In an episode by the same writer who once had Sam bond with Charlie over the Harry Potter books. Hrm.

Sam goes on to say the most condescendingly shitty line ever to mock Dean that books exist that don't just have pictures in them.

Now flip the lines back to how they're intended: Dean reacting in a panic when spoilers are about to start flying, and Sam surprised that his brother, who rarely admits to liking nerdy stuff, wants to read a stack of books as tall as Sam is, won over by the TV show. Dean, prickly and defensive of admitting he likes the things he likes - but standing his ground and reminding Sam he DOES like books - you know, even the ones without pictures. Dean's reading level is well beyond A Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Robbie's intent with these lines was clearly to expose new Dean characterisation ground, especially in an episode showing him comfortably at home and flourishing in the Bunker in contrast to Sam's reticence to call it home, that Charlie points out in the same scene. I also remember a line later about books or Charlie or something that would have made more sense if Dean had said the lines this way around, though I can’t recall which moment. Instead the lines sticking to enforcing the established surface level characterisation come across as regressive and unintentionally demeaning to the characters, just because Dean has always previously been the one to mock Sam for liking nerdy things, rather than understanding the nuance of the scene.

In 11x04, though, Robbie decided that it was time to try again and get the exact same line to come out of Dean's mouth, come hell or high water, and so we get this exchange in the iconic BM in the car scene, and I apologise for quoting loads of it, but its context is important:

DEAN: You were singing in your sleep, that song mom loved that dad used to always play for us. I think I've actually still got the tape.

SAM: Hey, Dean, um . . . You said when you saw the Darkness, you weren't sure whether it was, uh . . . the real thing or a vision, right?

DEAN: Mm-hmm

SAM: I think I've been having visions, too, lately. I mean, it's just images. I mean, more of a . . . feeling, really. But I just had one right now, and -- and Dad was in it. But it wasn't dad like -- like . . . The Dad that -- that I grew up with. It was Dad when he was our age. And I-I guess it wasn't even really Dad. It was someone pretending to be Dad and --

DEAN: Okay, what makes you say that?

SAM: For starters, he told me everything I wanted to hear.

DEAN: Yeah, that doesn't sound like dad.

SAM: No. Anyways, whoever it was . . . They had a message to deliver. They said the Darkness is coming, and . . . only you and I can stop it.

DEAN: Did they have him give you any helpful tips on how to do that?

SAM: He said, "God helps those who help themselves." I mean, maybe these visions are coming from God.

DEAN: Whoa. Pump the brakes.

SAM: I mean, Dean, the first one happened after I prayed.

DEAN: You prayed? When was this?

SAM: Back in the hospital.

DEAN: Why?

SAM: Because I was infected. I was infected. I'm not anymore. I-I-I never went full rabid. I . . .

DEAN: You get infected and you didn't even tell me.

SAM: Dean . . .

DEAN: What did you pray about?

SAM: I guess I was just looking for answers, you know?

DEAN: Well, I'm sure whatever is kicking around in your head right now is a side effect from the infection that you failed to tell me about.

SAM: You know, I don't think it's that simple.

DEAN: Come on, man. That quote? "God helps those who help themselves"? God didn't say that. That's not even in the Bible. That's an old proverb that dates way back to Aesop. I read. And more importantly, when was the last time God answered any one of our prayers? It's not a vision, Sam. All right? It's just some . . .Some fever dream. That's all. And as far as Dad goes, I dream about Dad all the time.

SAM: You do?

DEAN: Of course I do. It's usually the same one, too. We're all in the car. I'm sitting in the driver's seat, dad's sitting shotgun. But there aren't any shotguns. There's no monsters. There's no hunting. There's none of that. It's just . . . He's teaching me how to drive. And, uh, and I'm not little like I was when he actually taught me how to drive. I'm 16, and he's helping me get my learner's permit. Of course, you're in the backseat, just begging to take a turn. We pull up to the house -- the family house -- and I park in the driveway, and he looks over and he says, "perfect landing, son." I have that dream every couple of months. Kind of comforting, actually.

SAM: I always, uh . . . I always dream about mom. Usually the same kind of thing, though.

DEAN: Normal life?

SAM: Yeah. Normal life. But, Dean, this wasn't just a dream. I'm telling you.

DEAN: Why would somebody dress up like Dad to give you a message? I mean, Dad. You don't exactly have a history of listening to what he had to say.

SAM: But you said the Darkness is -- is sending messages to you. Maybe whatever is the opposite of the Darkness is sending messages to me.

DEAN: And you think that this thing is God? Come on. How many -- how many opportunities has God had to crack this pinata, and I don't see any candy on the floor, do you?

SAM: Okay, then maybe it's not God. But uh . . .

DEAN: I know what you're trying to do here. You're trying to find some -- some greater meaning to it all. Right? Some . . . Fate to what went down. But I'm telling you, Sam. The Darkness? It's on us. And no one's gonna help us, certainly not God, so we'll have to figure this thing out, like we always do. But until then . . . We hunt. This case for starters, course this case is . . .

The conversation has a couple of threads - that quote and who the mystery person might be, the family stuff and dreams, and the trust they have in each other, and faith in their family, their impressions and ideas about Mary and John. The dialogue wanders back and forth through the themes, starting with talking about visions, and the line about "god helps those who help themselves" is Inceptioned into Sam's brain in the previous dream sequence, the main subject for discussion. 

Sam brings its up while trying to explain what happened and immediately leaps to the conclusion that the vision came from God, and it takes a lot more back and forth before we get around to the quote again as the dialogue drifts into their trust about each other, before Dean uses that as a springboard to question Sam's faith in the quote, that he is taking on surface value. He points out it's not biblical at all, and it's important, thematically, to understand this quote, and Dean is analysing it, knowing it's from Aesop. 

His assessment that God didn't send this turns out to be true, and his explanation of WHY he doesn't trust this line means that explaining he read it in a book is essential to explaining his confidence; Sam's position as unquestioning and full of faith is too vitally plot important to turn it around. Even if Sam had ended up saying, "I know that, I read," defensively, the fact that Dean brings up the provenance of the quote still has to be something that Dean does, to fit the much more important, broader characterisation of the scene. Changing it is non-negotiable in the sense that the flow of the dialogue has firmly established who is on each side on each theme. 

This scene ends with that wonderful shot of Sam and Dean top and tail in the car, in their contrasting red and blue conflict characters. Very much emphasising the two halves of a whole and always utterly oil and water personalities and feelings they have. In this scene, Dean dreams of John, Sam dreams of Mary, Dean is doubting, Sam has faith. Dean's had visions from the Darkness that he doesn't trust, Sam has had visions from "god" that he does.

I love this moment so much because it is completely natural characterisation, but Robbie went out of his way to craft dialogue in such a way that even though he had a spiteful little motive to get that phrase out of Dean's mouth it still worked perfectly easily, and emphasised Dean's intelligence gently, while not making it a focus of the scene, it was still a line that added to what would have been an inarguable nod to Dean's intelligence without it, but with it is the "hey so Dean's gonna have this line come out of his mouth no matter what" comment, which in character is Dean just casually confirming that it SHOULDN'T be weird, the amount of lore books they have lying around, that he might have cracked one open at some point and learned a thing or two. 

(Back in 5x19 we get Dean's POV by the camera, showing us him identifying each and every one of the gods in the room with several photographic memory moments of books and illustrations of them, along with their name tags - the line after this is Sam being baffled about what's going on but Dean knows they're gods and can probably tell you their backstory all around the table. Dean has an excellent memory and recall from books... Even back in 1x16/17 they established his knowledge of symbols and lore with the blood splatters and BOC symbol things.)

So, yeah. It got fixed, but I feel like I don't even know half the things the actors change, and what later little corrections we're getting... :P There's a lot of ad libs I think have been good or funny, and in character, and of course the majority of their emotional choices are spot on for how to act a scene. But when it comes to forward character momentum, if they are missing the clues on why their characters are being written seemingly "backwards" from how they would normally act, and correct course back to the established way, they ARE shifting the nuance of scenes.

What I don't get about this whole ~scriptgate~ thing is that Sam had to absolutely be left alone dead in a hole so that Lucifer could come and get him, and motivate the entire of 13x22 and the direction that went in. I think in a way it's just character bleed that in some ways is good that he can act the raw horror and frustration of being dragged away from Sam, when every part of him is screaming that he doesn't want to do it. But like with the 11x04 scene the story boxes Dean in that he has to behave in the way the script says as the plot weighs too heavily on this scene, that it would require an enormous rewrite rather than a simple flip or something, in order to accommodate a different and more regressive interpretation of Dean's character in these instances. 

With a plot motivation that strong thankfully we seem to have got the scene as intended, and it's immensely powerful to the point that I don't think I can look at Dean's face in the gifs of Cas stopping him running after Sam. It's clear he cares and he's not callously abandoning Sam, but there's more going on at the same time, that he can't throw away all his characterisation to stay with Sam. The Lucifer and Jack storyline from next episode is the thumb pushing down on that pressure point, as much as in 11x04, Sam being wrong about his visions is forcing Dean to be the authority who read a thing in a book, and can not be portrayed as ignorant in this context. So really, if Jensen is saying he wanted Dean to stay with Sam, or go after him, it's a wholly emotional, in-character response, and I love what it brought to the scene, but at the end of the day, it's damaging to the overall story and I'm glad that like Cas restrains Dean, the story restrained Jensen from doing it...

But tbh because the story gets to lock lines into place like this, where actions have too much depending on them (and we see the disparity in Buckleming episodes where they have lines which do NOT depend on having read the other episodes beforehand and accidentally break continuity - yes I am still baffled about why Cas was wondering bloody around the woodland in 13x13) it's really the little characterisation beats which bother me more, because they can seem harmless, when nothing is really depending on them, but at the end of the day the asides and quips and little character jokes are the important place where a huge amount of our character interpretation comes from - small incidents can tell us so much more about what's up with them than huge decisions in moments of high tension, that changing quips around to the wrong characters can be really damaging. Especially when long-term plot things do rest on the characters and how they are coming across. 

People are quick to complain when characters are too cheerful one episode or too depressed the next. In season 9 while Sam was possessed by Gadreel there's a weird misinterpretation where all the other writers write Sam as perky and doing well, but in 9x08 Jenny Klein clearly misread how Dean was trying to convince Sam he was tired and unwell and needed to rest after the angel trials as Sam LITERALLY being this way, and so one episode before Gadreel makes off with Sam and 2 before he has to be freed from him, despite Sam getting up at 5 to go jogging not long after being possessed, he's now miserably sleeping on the kitchen table, like my chronic fatigued ass might. It's a small detail, but it throws Dean's attempt to wrangle Sam into a light where he seems to have a greater case, and generally undermines completely the forward momentum of the narrative about how Sam was doing that all the other writers in that block of episodes had kept up. When the actors are throwing in confusion with how they interpret the lines and swapping motivations etc as well, it becomes even harder for us to keep up and to get a clean read on the characterisation which is informing the major plot events.

Which, basically, as a meta writer who overhauls each episode to explain and interpret it into the narrative as I understand it, based as much as possible on the clues they're giving me, is a REAL HEADACHE when I slam into a wall of "this is literally just improbably backwards to how it was last episode" :P

But it’s not a criticism to point this out, really. After all, Edlund, one of the most beloved writers to have been on the show, wrote in his last episode how Sam and Dean went to the Grand Canyon and Dean rode a farty donkey, and it turned out that past canon had very firmly established that they had never been. Everyone makes character and plot errors, though when it comes on the actor level there is the problem that sometimes it may be they feel they are correcting a farty donkey plot hole (and I think they sometimes HAVE, such as Jared declining to sass and quip with Lucifer) when they’re really missing a cue from high above that their character is going places. 

[soyraktajino]

Something is going on with Tom Paris. And it isn’t solely due to the fact that an alien is currently inhabiting his body. Chakotay, B’Elanna, and even Captain Janeway are all referencing his behavior over a far greater period of time. 

On the surface of this episode it would appear as though he actually isn’t -- he’s just really invested in rebuilding this 1969 Chevy Camaro. But by the end of the episode he does at least admit that it’s been a way to avoid letting people in.  

Tom has made a lot of progress over the years and to see him slide backwards is concerning for a lot of people. It’s really important that Chakotay was the one to say that he’d grown a lot and that he’d hate to see Tom revert to old habits, because Chakotay and Tom hated each other at the start of the series. 

As mentioned I think this episode tells a lot about Tom’s character, and specifically I think there’s a lot of evidence to support a personal headcanon that Tom Paris is a trans man. All of this evidence separately can be interpreted otherwise, but I think together it adds to the theory. 

For one thing, Tom is avoiding the Doctor. 

Now, this isn’t out of character. And there’s even a joke made about that -- 

Tom: Since when is not wanting to spend time with the Doctor a capital offence? You’d have to throw the whole crew in the brig for that one. 

but Chakotay sees through it. 

Chakotay: Maybe. I was just wondering if there’s something on your mind. You’re showing up for your duty shifts, you do what’s required, but your heart doesn’t seem to be in it. You seem preoccupied. 

When the Doctor himself goes over it with Tom (who isn’t Tom at this point, he’s Steth wearing Tom’s body) his reasoning for why Tom is avoiding him is also made to be a joke, in that the Doctor is a little full of himself. (The Doctor is the butt of like, half the jokes in the series. It gets tiresome). 

But these are things Tom has been doing, these are rational conclusions to a series of behaviors he has been exhibiting. Chakotay said it as well, in the passage I put above -- he’s going through the motions. 

There’s something emotional there that’s affecting his work and his relationships.

But something I think is really interesting is that when confronted, Chakotay and B’Elanna both don’t try and make a guess at what’s happening. They’re both concerned, but they expect him to tell them what it is that’s bothering him. 

The two who make guesses are the Doctor, and Captain Janeway. 

It isn’t out of the ordinary in Star Trek for captains to assume that crewmen who are experiencing problems in their daily performance are ill in some way. It’s probably a good habit to keep -- something routine like a bout of insomnia would show up on scans, and more often than not it seems to be some kind of plot-important alien virus anyway, so I can’t blame Captain Janeway for wanting Paris to get checked out. 

But it isn’t a logical leap for her to have connected his behavior to his transition, nor is it a leap for her to suggest seeing the doctor if she suspects something about his transition is bothering him. Fluctuations in hormones are well known to alter behavior. I think that Captain Janeway thinks this is about his testosterone. 

And the way to check that would be through the blood. 

The first tests the doctor conducted were neurological scans and blood analysis. Neurological makes sense, because it’s regarding his behavior -- blood does too, as sort of a wider-ranged diagnostic tool. But the Doctor says that he’s still working on the results for the rest of the tests, so these are what he (or the Captain) decided to place the most importance on. 

Now, Tom’s stealth. That means he’s living as a man full time, doesn’t tell people he’s trans, doesn’t talk about it unless absolutely necessary, keeps it under wraps. It makes sense for someone who’s been living as male full-time for 5+ years, and it makes sense regarding his reluctance to let B’Elanna ‘in’ to all aspects of his life. (For the record, I do think that she knows by this point). The only people that would absolutely have to know that Tom is transgender would be the Doctor, and maybe the Captain. 

I don’t think Doc and Captain Janeway jumped to the conclusion, but since they know and since they care about him, it’s something they have to take into consideration. Of course, they found out that there’s something more important at play. (IE the evidence of another fragment of DNA in his blood stream, which turns out to be the alien that’s inhabiting his body). 

Speaking of! Steth is the most important character in this episode -- besides Tom himself, of course -- because he’s a representation of who Tom Paris used to be.

I think it’s also important to address, at this point, that this character is incredibly queer-coded. The fact alone that a major episode about Tom Paris and his character development centers around a queer-coded alien, whose shtick is that their original gender is unknown but their previous body is that of a woman who is hiding in a man’s body, who eventually hides in Tom Paris’ body is like. Wow. Surface-level stuff and vaguely problematic, but it’s the 90s, what do you expect.

Steth’s mannerisms are flirtatious in much of his interactions with the crew, and even his acts of violence are sexualized - he backs Tom against a wall as if they were in a tango and gets incredibly close to him before choking him, and in the transporter room he grabs B’Elanna’s arms as though he was going to pull her toward him and kiss her and then cups her face before pushing her away. There’s also the two images above -- the second goes without explanation as to queer coding but the first requires some backstory if you aren’t familiar with queer cinematography or how gay men have been presented in media... but it boils down to the idea that closeted gay men are compelled to cheat on their wives (”escap[ing] the shackles for a while” -- the phrase is almost identical to one used in Brokeback Mountain wherein another married-but-closeted gay man suggests he and Jack “escape for a little while” to his cabin in the mountains).

Beyond the obvious queercoding (which I have more screenshots of, seriously, it’s everywhere, but I felt that was evidence enough) of the character and the continual insistence that he is the mirror image of a former Tom Paris -- 

Steth delivers the most compelling dialogue of the entire episode at the very end, when the doctor is able to return them all to their bodies. 

Steth: Doctor, I can’t thank you enough. You’ve given me my life back. There were times when I thought I would be stuck in that body forever. 

... and Tom Paris enters into the shot at the end of the delivery of that line. Just as Steth says that he thought he “would be stuck in that body forever”. A woman’s body, mind you. The real Steth was stuck in the body of the thief's last identify victim. A woman. Steth, who through the whole episode was made to be a representation of Tom Paris, and his growth. 

Interpret all this as you will. 

Personally? I believed Tom Paris was a trans man from small segments of other episodes through the seasons, and I’ll continue to catalog them in my “#trans tom paris” tag. I’ve never had any doubt. 

But this episode confirms it beyond my wildest dreams.