#but fr like if everybody i love dies in the apocalypse

[neptuniant]

zombie apocalypse is the worst saddest just straight up worst not it thing to happen in sci fi movie. if that happened irl bye. BYE. either my loved ones make it through it WITH me or like it is done cause if i am the only one who is surviving?? because of whatever reason if im the only one surviving?? what is the point what is the fucking point

[elliethesuperfruitlover]

mega mega fumin'

ok yall so ive been in college for a week and two days (everybody clap) its been fun, most of the ppl here are queer and ppl are very nice, my classes are going well so far :))))))))

and ive been watching tua s4 as a part of my nightly routine while i redo my hair for bed.

and um

i combed my hair for the week today while finishing the season and i have some thoughts on the matter.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY SEASON 4 UNDER THE CUT

what in the everloving fuck was that

i already want to rewrite the lorax in a very dark manner after listening to biggering but that??? THAT?????? WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT??????

HE NEEDS TO COUNT HIS FUCKING DAYS WHO WAS IN THE GODDAMN WRITING ROOM IM THROWING CHAIRS AND TABLES, FUCK A HAND

the romance plotline was ass and wasnt in character AT ALL, i dont see it as a part of reality that exists, both for five and also lila.

lila is not that shallow of a woman or a mother to just do that, i think we all know that she cares a hell of a lot about her marriage with diego AS WELL AS HER FUCKING CHILDREN than to do something like that. even with her entire chaos personality and potentially using people, she would NOT go that far because her love for her family does not outweigh 7 years of no dick.

and five is quite literally one of the most intelligent characters in the series (it shouldve been him and dolores). nothing could ever convince me that he would fall in love with his BROTHER'S WIFE and feel no immediate remorse towards it, once again, 7 years or 7 fucking decades, please leave your complaints in my vacuum of "i dont give a fuck".

i actually liked ben and jennifer as characters interacting. if we take out the marigold and durango wimey shit, i wouldve loved to see them be in love and interact with each other as is. i think he deserves nice things. also since its literally been two years since i watched season 3 bc i watched it one, during a really shitty ongoing OCD episode and two, because i thought it was an "ok" season. (almost said bad, but we now know our standards were much much too low). there was also a point in which i thought that ben and jennifer were connected bc she came out of a giant squid (in which wtf), and ben has tentacle powers??? idk its odd to me too, don't worry.

reggie i hope you choke asshat, as well as you and your wife. at first i thought homegirl was a bootlicker but no i cant really call her that. she was fr like "well it was my death, you chose to bring me back fuck u hubby" erm yeah that was definitely something, viktor you shouldve killed him when you had the chance honey. also i blame reginald for that shit, he was the goddamn anomaly, not the entire umbrella academy???? at first i thought five blinking into the apocalypse all those years ago was the anomaly, but nooo we're gonna blame the abuse victims. *rolls eyes*

more about him um his entire "im gonna bring her back" shit was giving gendo ikari (for those of you who don't know, gendo ikari is an antagonist and key character in the anime neon genesis evangelion, in which he was a miserable fuck and loved his wife so much he killed the entire world to see her again, then that didnt even happen). him taking the shot on the ben and jennifer amalgamation which in the end triggered the cleanse???? that was weird to me. like him being an asshole wasn't weird, that's already been established, but their death and recombination just triggering an event that severe???? wild, still kinda confused.

the only way i could see raymond walking out on allison is if she really, and i mean REALLY fucked up. but given everything that she has done in the past, i think she learned her lesson. raymond would never, i wouldve preferred him to have died off-screen than to have walked out bc???? anyway moving tf on.

i enjoyed klaus a lot this season bc hes my favorite but also because a part of me enjoyed seeing a different, more "real" anxious side of him. (that i could relate to a bit more). after reading a few opinions and watching the deleted scene where he went to an AA meeting and finally actually admitted he was an alcoholic to himself......steve blackman wtf. was this the bad ending, did we all fuck up that bad in our choices that we got HERE????? im kissing him on the forehead, i cant believe the last time i saw klaus hargreeves on tv there were actual tears coming down his face im....im so sick y'all.

whoever decided to put all that vomit in the episode please dont do that again. i know you cant put warnings for literal barf on a tv show but as someone who suffered through the roaches of season 3, then had to take breaks watching the sick episode of this season bc emetophobia......ew. (the baby shark shit was funny as hell to me oopsie)

i actually kinda enjoyed jean and gene as characters, their dynamic was entertaining to me, but i wish i got to see more of their history, i especially found it a little weird how jean was holding gene's face in the episode that five and lila were in the meeting together.....i wanna know more.

erm i think the concept of the keepers was also interesting. like a little group of people who know they see some weird shit and find other folks, kinda neat.

the casual drop that one of the fives made the commission???? we're just gonna brush past that???? like it makes a fuck ton of sense bc its a collection of fives we're talking about but i just.....that was a shock to me, one in which i felt i had little time to recover from given it was the last fucking episode and everything that happened after that....happened.

i liked luther the most in this season methinks. i think i had to realize him being shitty in season 1 specifically was partially a trauma response, and he felt he still had to act how he was expected to. once again, fuck you reginald hargreeves, please kiss the darkest part of my black ass.

yeah lets all just ignore all the shit that happened and either let season 3 be the end where they all go their separate ways or even better, season 2 bc that shit was peak highkey.

[mittensmorgul]

today on the TNT loop (which I slept through because migraine which is mildly better now, so I'm watching the blu ray today), 2.13 Houses of the Holy. Aka that one where Dean's skepticism is put to its first real challenge and he's left with a HUGE question he can't answer. It's also where I can clearly see Chuck at work in the narrative, directly challenging Dean's beliefs and forcing him to consider this.

DEAN: That's cute. I'm just saying, man, there's just some legends that you just, you file under "bullcrap". SAM: And you've got angels on the bullcrap list. DEAN: Yep. SAM: Why? DEAN (looks up): Because I've never seen one. SAM: So what? DEAN: So I believe in what I can see. SAM: Dean! You and I have seen things that most people couldn't even dream about. DEAN: Exactly. With our own eyes. That's hard proof, okay? But in all this time I have never seen anything that looks like an angel. And don't you think that if they existed that we would have crossed paths with them? Or at least know someone that crossed paths with them? No. This is a ... a demon or a spirit. You know, they find people a few fries short of a Happy Meal, and they trick them into killing these randoms

Troubled people are being visited by "an angel" giving them orders to carry out "divine will," stopping others from committing horrific acts against innocent people by killing them before they can hurt anyone else. Sam wants desperately to believe it's actually an angel, and he confesses to Dean that he does have faith in God and that he prays every day. We also learn that-- because Mary had faith, had always told Dean that "angels are watching over you"-- that Dean hasn't trusted in that faith since Mary died.

There's a lot in this episode that will become the framework for actual angels when they eventually show up, as well as Heaven itself. Think of this as a smaller-scale version of what we eventually learn Heaven is, in an "as above, so below" sort of way:

DEAN: But she seriously believes that she was ... touched by an angel? SAM: Yeah. Blinding light, feelings of spiritual ecstasy, the works. I mean, she's living in a locked ward and she's totally at peace.

But then they start looking into the person she killed, and discover a literal pile of skeletons buried in the man's basement.

SAM: So much for the innocent churchgoing librarian. DEAN: Yeah, well, whatever spoke to Gloria about this knew what it was talking about, I'll give you that.

But Dean is still convinced it's some sort of spirit, and not an actual angel. Sam desperately wants to believe.

DEAN: Huh. Well, I guess if you're gonna stab someone, good timing. I don't know, man, this is weird, you know? I mean, sure, some spirits are out for vengeance, but this one's almost like a do-gooder, you know? Like, like a -- SAM: Avenging angel? (DEAN turns away) Well, how else do you explain it, Dean? Three guys, not connected to each other, all stabbed through the heart? At least two were world-class pervs, and I bet if you dug deep enough on the other guy —

What they do discover is the connection between all the victims and angel-inspired killers. They all attend the same church, where a priest had been murdered for his car a few months earlier, right before these killings began.

So they go to the church to find the truth, under the false pretenses of wanting to join the parish. Irony much? Even after being caught out in the lie about the previous parish they attended, they persist.

FR. REYNOLDS: Yes. The victims were parishioners of mine, I'd known them for years. SAM: And the killers said that an angel made them do that? FR. REYNOLDS: Yes. Misguided souls, to think that God's messenger would appear and incite people to murder. It's tragic. DEAN: So you don't believe in those angel yarns, huh? FR. REYNOLDS: Oh, no, I absolutely believe. Kind of goes with the job description. SAM: (nodding to a painting on the wall) Father, that's Michael, right? FR. REYNOLDS: That's right. The archangel Michael, with the flaming sword. The fighter of demons. Holy force against evil. SAM: So they're not really the Hallmark card version that everybody thinks? They're fierce, right? Vigilant? FR. REYNOLDS: Well, I like to think of them as more loving than wrathful. But, uh, yes, a lot of Scripture paints angels as God's warriors. "An angel of the Lord appeared to them, the glory of the Lord shone down upon them, and they were terrified." (SAM nods, DEAN looks confused) Luke. Two nine.

(moment to remind everyone what Cas's opinion on Luke was, from 4.18, when Dean was incredulous about learning that Chuck was a prophet of the Lord to be protected: "You should've seen Luke." Apparently prophets are historically disaster humans...)

It's interesting that Sam and Dean come away from this conversation with such wildly different conclusions based on their own personal biases-- Sam's Faith vs Dean's Skepticism. And then after visiting Father Gregory's grave, it's Sam the "angel" chooses to speak to, using his will to believe against Sam, to manipulate him, just like he had with the other troubled people he talked into doing his bidding. Because that's what he'd done.

Father Gregory's spirit believed he was doing the Lord's will, using information gleaned from listing to confessions, and possibly gleaned after his death about the ongoing lives of these people. Like Sue Ann in 1.12, he chose troubled yet essentially good people (drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill people) to give this twisted shot at "redemption" to by committing murder in the name of God, killing people guilty of far, far worse crimes.  And post 14.20, I'm wondering if his spirit wasn't given just a bit more info about certain members of his parish specifically to push Sam and Dean into their own crises of faith, especially considering what has come after this.

This episode has always been a game changer with Dean's experience throughout-- refusing to believe in anything he hasn't witnessed with his own eyes. And it's Sam's first test of his own faith in God that shakes his belief in a higher power when he's experiencing so much doubt in himself already. In some ways, we learn that it's his hope that God and angels and good things exist that powers him through his self-doubt, his feelings of unworthiness and impurity and his own confusing powers. We'll see this aspect of Sam's will to believe in God play out over and over again-- being tested by all his life experiences afterward, from learning about the demon blood by the end of s2, to his months without Dean developing his powers, to s4 in believing he can turn his demon-granted powers into something GOOD by saving people's lives... everything that leads to Sam's downfall is directly tied to his need to believe that a divine force he prays to is actually answering his prayers for help. Right on through desperately wanting to believe it was God talking to him in s11 (it was Lucifer), and believing that Chuck might actually help them deal with Jack by healing instead of manipulating and killing. It's 14.20 that finally shattered Sam's belief.

FR. GREGORY: You can't understand it now. But the rules of man and the rules of God are two very different things. SAM: Those people. They're locked up. FR. GREGORY: No, they're happy. They've found peace, beaten their demons. And I've given them the keys to Heaven. FR. REYNOLDS: No. No, this is vengeance, it's wrong. Thomas, this goes against everything you believed. You're lost, misguided. FR. GREGORY: Father. No, I'm not misguided. FR. REYNOLDS: You are not an angel, Thomas. Men cannot be angels. FR. GREGORY: But . . . but I, I don't understand. You prayed for me to come. FR. REYNOLDS: I prayed for God's help. Not this. What you're doing is not God's will. "Thou shalt not kill". That's the word of God.

Heck, Chuck's said a lot of things over the years, hasn't he? He simultaneously ordered the angels to watch over and protect humanity, while leaving instructions for the Apocalypse. Two orders that directly contradict one another, on a very basic level. Yes, thou shalt not kill, but... there's always that caveat of "no, they're happy! they found peace in death! heaven awaits the righteous and that's where they'll eventually find happiness and peace! life on earth is irrelevant in the face of eternal rest despite any and all suffering experienced while alive!"

eta: also, “Men cannot be angels.” Well, Jack may have proven that wrong, but he had to destroy their human souls and warp them into angel grace, just as destroying human souls to warp them into demon smoke makes them no longer human. When we didn’t know this was possible, it was more a theological curiosity, but now? We can see it for the sinister implication of the bigger picture at play on Chuck’s level of the narrative. And it’s chilling.

But Dean? He had to be crushed, to be brought to the point where he doubted everything he's ever stood for, be forced to doubt his own free will and identity through repeated possession and manipulation by Michael to be brought to the point where he would even be willing to sacrifice himself and Jack both in the belief that he truly had no other choice, that his lifelong belief in his own autonomy was a sham and that God's Will was the only force to be obeyed. And even then, gun raised to Jack's head, he couldn't submit. But that seed of doubt was planted in this episode, watching a series of events he could not explain nor justify with his current understanding of reality. He couldn't even explain what he'd seen to Sam.

All he could say in the face of having stopped this man from committing assault (and possibly worse), ending in a car chase where the man is impaled through his chest by a flying piece of pipe flung from a passing truck, was "Holy..." After which he's forced to confront the evidence of his own eyes and find an explanation for what he's seen on his own. He still isn't comfortable declaring it's proof that God exists and interfering in human events, but it shakes him:

DEAN: Gregory's spirit gave you some pretty good information. That guy in the car was bad news. I barely got there in time. SAM: What happened? DEAN: He's dead. SAM: Did . . . you? DEAN: No. But I'll tell you one thing. If . . . The way he died, if I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes I never would have believed it. I mean ... I don't know what to call it. SAM: What? Dean, what did you see? DEAN: Maybe . . . God's will.

The one thing Dean has yet to work out, once he's confronted with the reality of Angels, Heaven, and God's existence later down the line, is whether or not God's Will and God's Plans can even remotely be considered a good thing... and after 14.20, he's got the essential proof. "Good" and "Evil" become irrelevant in the face of that revelation. It becomes a case of Divine Manipulation vs Human Will, and the struggle for individual identity and free will in the face of some Grand Plan of the universe. Divine reward of peace and happiness in Heaven after a life of obedience and suffering? Nah, Dean wants his life back now. Screw the end of the road.

[mittensmorgul]

2.13: Father, is that Michael? (Sam points vaguely in Dean’s direction)

aka: It’s not an angel but holy crap that’s uncanny... and what is “God’s Will?”

TELEVANGELIST: You don't have to suffer, you don't have to be lost. The lord is talking to you right now; he's saying, you are my child and you have a purpose! You think God forgot about you? I tell you no! All you got to do is listen! Can't you just hear those angels singing? Isn't it beautiful? It's time. It's time to receive the message he's sending. It's time to listen to the Word of God! Do you hear the glory? I said, can you hear it? I said, can you just hear the glory?

So we start out with Dean having lost his identity, and his ability to hunt effectively, because of the lie Sam told in 2.12. He’s bored and grumpy, obviously. (Magic fingers to the rescue?)

GOOD VS EVIL, and what is “good” and what is “evil.”

Sam, struggling with the fear that he himself is going to “turn evil” under the influence of the demon, is so desperate to believe in something good here. God, angels... anything that might be able to redeem him from what he fears is his destiny.

Dean, meanwhile, fights him every step of the way on the existence of angels, or even God. We learn that Sam has always prayed, while angels are one of the few creatures Dean’s always had on his “bullshit list.”

SAM: And you've got angels on the bullcrap list. DEAN: Yep. SAM: Why? DEAN: Because I've never seen one. SAM: So what? DEAN: So I believe in what I can see. SAM: Dean! You and I have seen things that most people couldn't even dream about. DEAN: Exactly. With our own eyes. That's hard proof, okay? But in all this time I have never seen anything that looks like an angel. And don't you think that if they existed that we would have crossed paths with them? Or at least know someone that crossed paths with them? No. This is a, a demon or a spirit. You know, they find people a few fries short of a happy meal, and they trick them into killing these randoms.

Belief is a powerful thing, though. These people truly BELIEVED they’d been given instructions by an angel. And Dean keeps insisting it’s not an angel, while Sam tries desperately to believe.

(and Dean’s right, it’s not an angel it’s just the spirit of a priest who’d been murdered... but Sam’s also right that there might be some greater force in the universe...)

SAM: You know, we're just happy to be here now, Father. FR. REYNOLDS: And we're happy to have you, we could use some young blood around here. 

(oh gosh it’s a bloodline going back to Cain and Abel, culminating in Sam and Dean Winchester, the youngest of that bloodline... >.>)

FR. REYNOLDS: That's right. The archangel Michael, with the flaming sword. The fighter of demons. Holy force against evil. SAM: So they're not really the Hallmark card version that everybody thinks? They're fierce, right? Vigilant? FR. REYNOLDS: Well, I like to think of them as more loving than wrathful. But, uh, yes, a lot of Scripture paints angels as God's warriors. "An angel of the Lord appeared to them, the glory of the Lord shone down upon them, and they were terrified."

(it’s like the apocalypse encapsulated into its simplest notion right here in three lines)

They learn that Father Gregory had been murdered on the church steps two months ago, and Dean immediately latches on to Gregory as a potential vengeful spirit who could be responsible for these deaths. He would have the “insider information” on the victims from hearing their confessions. But Sam is still stuck on this notion that God could be intervening, because Father Reynolds started praying for God’s help right around that same time.

He just needs so desperately to believe in something greater, to feel like he’s not fighting this battle against “the evil inside himself” all alone. *spends five minutes crying for Sam*

Because he wants so badly to believe, Sam believes he has seen an angel while they were investigating Gregory’s grave. And what the “angel” told Sam when he asked what this person he’s supposed to kill has done wrong:

SAM: Actually I did, Dean. And the angel told me. He hasn't done anything. Yet. But he will.

(sort of like Sam hasn’t done anything wrong yet, he hasn’t gone “darkside”)

SAM: Dean, the angel hasn't been wrong yet! Someone's going to do something awful, and I can stop it! DEAN: You know, you're supposed to be bad too, maybe, maybe I should just stop you right now.

(and there it is, Sam’s biggest fear. Dean’s, too.)

SAM: Yes! Maybe we're hunting an angel here, and we should stop! Maybe this is God's will! DEAN: Okay, all right. You know what? I get it. You've got faith. That's — hey, good for you. I'm sure it makes things easier. I'll tell you who else had faith like that — Mom. She used to tell me when she tucked me in that angels were watching over us. In fact, that was the last thing she ever said to me. SAM: You never told me that. DEAN: Well, what's to tell? She was wrong. There was nothing protecting her. There's no higher power, there's no God. I mean, there's just chaos, and violence, and random unpredictable evil th-that comes out of nowhere, and rips you to shreds. You want me to believe in this stuff? I'm going to need to see some hard proof. You got any? Well, I do. Proof that we're dealing with a spirit.

And there’s the rub. Mary was the one who had faith, but she died. Her faith wasn’t enough to save her from evil. Sam was willing to just let this one go, but Dean wants concrete proof. “That's one of the perks of the job, Sam: we don't have to operate on faith. We can know for sure. Don't you wanna know for sure?”

So when Sam sees the “sign,” the person he’s supposed to stop, DEAN goes after the “evil” guy while Sam goes back to the church to summon Gregory’s spirit. Because Dean’s not operating under Sam’s “compulsion.” He can follow the evil guy without being forced to kill him against his will, like Sam may have been vulnerable to doing while he believed he was acting on some sort of Divine Orders.

Poor Sam has to try and explain to Father Reynolds why he’s performing a seance in the crypt. The stage directions here explain it perfectly:

As FR. REYNOLDS pulls SAM to the exit, a familiar bright glow builds behind them. They turn, FR. REYNOLDS in awe, SAM in disappointment. FR. REYNOLDS: Oh my god! Is that ... is that an angel? SAM: No, it's not. It's just Father Gregory.

Sam’s disappointed, because Dean was right. It’s not an angel. It was the spirit of Gregory all along.

SAM: Father, I'm sorry. But you're not an angel. FR. GREGORY: Of course I am. SAM: No. You're a man. You're a spirit. And you need to rest. FR. GREGORY: I was a man. But now I'm an angel. I was on the steps of the church. And I felt that bullet pierce right through me. But there was no pain. And suddenly I could see . . .everything. Father Reynolds, I saw you, praying and crying here. I came to help you.

He truly believed he was an angel, and was acting to answer prayers. He’d created a similar sort of metaphysical mathematics that Sam had been trying to make for himself, balancing out the “evil” inside himself by saving as many people as he possibly could. (which I mentioned in my 2.11 post)

Gregory truly did believe he was helping people, and doing it on God’s orders. And heck, maybe he was.

FR. REYNOLDS: How can you call this redemption? FR. GREGORY: You can't understand it now. But the rules of man and the rules of God are two very different things. SAM: Those people. They're locked up. FR. GREGORY: No, they're happy. They've found peace, beaten their demons. And I've given them the keys to Heaven.

(this strikes me as similar to the sort of “happiness” Sam thought Dean was experiencing in 12.11. Peace IS NOT happiness. Like this post postulates, heaven is about peace, not freedom. It’s not about “happiness,” which comes from free will-- at least in Dean’s mind it does. What these people experienced was the utter LOSS of their free will. Their “burdens” were taken from them and they’re just left to exist, just like the sort of memories that are conjured in Heaven. NOT happiness, but peace, at any cost.)

FR. REYNOLDS: No. No, this is vengeance, it's wrong. Thomas, this goes against everything you believed. You're lost, misguided. FR. GREGORY: Father. No, I'm not misguided. FR. REYNOLDS: You are not an angel, Thomas. Men cannot be angels. FR. GREGORY: But . . . but I, I don't understand. You prayed for me to come. FR. REYNOLDS: I prayed for God's help. Not this. What you're doing is not God's will. "Thou shalt not kill". That's the word of God.

Yeah, God says a lot of stuff that contradicts the other stuff >.>

While all this is going on, while Sam’s faith is breaking, Dean witnesses something he has no words for. He stops the man Sam had been given the sign to kill, about to rape a woman. The ensuing car chase ends in one of the most awesome things I have ever seen on this show. I totally get why Dean thought it might be an act of God’s will...

And then in 11.20 Chuck’s autobiography included chapters that pretty much explain this situation:

Chapter Ten – Why I Never Answer Prayers, and You Should Be Glad I Don't

Chapter Eleven – The Truth About Divine Intervention and Why I Avoid It At All Costs.

In s12, there’s still this element of doing things for the “greater good.” Preemptively killing people for their hidden “evil” intentions-- even if there’s pretty good evidence that they are actually going to carry out those evil intentions-- is a level of enacting “justice” that’s treading way too close to hubris.

Gregory used humans as weapons to target other humans, predicated on the belief that they were doing God’s will-- even extending to the murder of people who hadn’t yet even committed any crime.

Well, this is exactly like the BMoL killing all the monsters, whether or not they’d committed any crime. And yet again, Sam wants so desperately to believe in the righteousness of that mission, just for very different reasons this time around. He’s long since come to terms with whatever “evil” he believed he’d been tainted with, but now it’s finally about Mary, and in a strange, twisted way, restoring her “faith” that Sam lost long ago, finding redemption, finding peace.

Even if the premise that peace rests on is a misguided delusion like Father Gregory’s was.