#can you believe their love is literally going to pierce the veil of death and save the world

[theclaravoyant]

currently losing my mind over the idea of Aziraphale writing Crowley's name in the Book of Life. and specifically Crowley. it matters that it doesn't matter what his ~~~real~~~ name was

[spaceagebachelormann]

zigmar i come to you humbly on this fine evening with the simple request that you give me some sort of might duck sustenance por favor and muchas gracias

they can be incoherent and stupid and goofy and silly to the max i just need to rotate this little kids like rotisserie chickens in my mind (esp fulton portman and julie)

random miscellaneous tmd thoughts !

✧ warnings: some of them may be ooc ngl

✧ additional info: u got it pookums 😈😈😈🙏 also these can be read as either platonic or romantic (not luis)

✧ m.list — nav.

♡ charlie conway !

the most insane taste in music literally ever

bro goes from madonna to death metal SO FAST

but ngl his playlist is always the best and he always gets to play music whenever u go anywhere

but oh my god he’d love pierce the veil in present day

HES ALSO LIKE SOMEHOW AMAZING AT MATH. but he cannot do science for literal shit

also his clothing style changes js like his music taste

will literally be kurt cobain one day and morrissey the next (hed hate morrissey though)

♡ adam banks !

every team sleepover/event/literally anything could js be a spontaneous hangout is always at his house

it’s because he’s rich and his house is huge as fuck and he has every board game known to man

just do not play uno because a fight always breaks out (charlie is always part of it)

he’s always the one who ends the fight also

he has this very calming presence that’s so nice to be around and him js talking to whoever got into a fight immediately helps calm them down

also weirdly good at comforting in the middle of the night but never during the day??

♡ lester averman !

he would watch full house religiously prove me wrong

his favourite character is obviously joey because they are one in the same

everyone on the team and their mother has been forced to watch full house while he’s been at their house/vice versa

he can also cook like. decently well !! it’s not something he’d prefer to do but he will for his friends if they’re tired or smth

♡ fulton reed !

this little shit

he is so unbelievably competitive over the smallest things it’s actually insane

typa guy to race u to see who can get to one side of the room first and start genuinely tweaking if he doesn’t win

at sleepovers he refuses to fall asleep first even if it’s just by a few minutes

he could be dead to the world but still have his eyes open cause he refuses to let u win (unless ur his s/o cause he might consider it that way)

♡ connie moreau !

she is definitely a theatre kid idc

her favourite musicals are probably grease, hairspray and heathers

she likes female main characters!!

everytime she gets into a new fandom she immediately starts thinking abt what it’d be like a musical and probably wanted to be a composer at some point

would 100% beg to use the aux on a road trip and then blast hamilton loud as balls

she wholeheartedly believes six is a top tier musical and she will DIE on this hill

(fun fact i’ve met andrea macasaet <3)

♡ guy germaine !

modern day guy would’ve loved basic white girl music

“life is too short to pretend to hate taylor swift” —him

also 100% a britney spears girlie. and nsync and every stereotypical white girl artist

but i wholeheartedly believe britney would be his favourite and he has her whole discography on cassette, cd, vinyl, u name it he has a britney spears collection

also his ass is NOT straight 💀 i’ve never met a straight man who listens to britney spears

♡ julie gaffney !

lowkey a regina george multitude if she wasn’t kinda. yk. a bad person

she’s a mix of cher and regina

everyone at the fancy ass boarding school literally loves her because she’s calm, smart pretty nice etc etc she’s just a really great person to be around

shes that one student who has every assignment finisher a week early, all a’s and 100% in every subject WITHOUT being mean abt it!!

her ass is friends with the whole student population and knows every well and knows all the drama but won’t tell everyone if she thinks it’s too personal (it’s it’s random petty nonsense she tells the team)

♡ ken wu !

secretly rlly good friends with julie but nobody knows even though they do not try to hide it at all

literally wander the halls talking abt whatever just for everyone to be like “y’all are friends???”

also this man secretly loves lana del rey

him and julie will sit on his bedroom floor and literally tell him the most insane and jaw dropping gossip she heard that day while lana is playing in the background

everytime someone asks his favourite lana song he says grandfather please stand on the shoulders of my father while he’s deep-sea fishing on did you know that there’s a tunnel under ocean blvd to fuck with them

♡ dean portman !

is actually very very good at math!!

he was a tutor for the 9th/10th graders for a bit to get volunteer hours and also cause he just likes doing math

you’d expect it to be like doing homework with ur dad and the poor kid is in tears while deans like “WHATS NINE. TIMES TWO.” but he’s actually surprisingly patient

if he’s explained something a few times and they still don’t get it he’ll just try it a different way until they get it and work them through the problem

has rlly strong relationships with the 9th and 10th graders cause of this and is essentially their older brother figure

the amount of 14/15 year olds that he’s given relationship advice too is insane (id be one of the 14 year olds probably)

♡ luis mendoza !

his type is secretly quiet girls cause he finds them rlly interesting and likes the thought of them being happy around him but quiet around everyone else

he’s like yes girl be urself with me

it all stemmed from the girl he liked in 8th grade who helped pick up his pencils when she accidentally knocked his pencil case out of his hand (she was a quiet nerdy girl)

like a whole year later and he’s still trying to rizz her up 💀

he’s one of those guys who takes forever to lose feelings

the girl is actually good friends with him btw

♡ dwayne robertson !

i feel like he is fucking AMAZING at baking

his icon is dolly parton and he heard berry pie so he immediately learned how to bake

if someone he knows has a birthday he either bakes the birthday cake or brings them something he made depending on how close he is with them

and holy shit it’s the most amazing thing u will ever taste and nothing will ever compare

yes he’s one of those guys who will go on an 18 minute tangent on how amazing dolly parton is if someone talks shit about her (same i love dolly)

[fanfic-corner]

do u have any fics that i wont have heard of? like ones with fewer hits so there harder to find

ooo this is a good one, anon! you haven't specified which fandom you're interested in, so I'll start with SPN and then do some other fandoms if people are interested :) and for the purposes of this, I'll be counting anything with under 5k hits as lesser known!

Lesser Known Destiel Fics

you're the one that i wanted to find by badritual (373)

The Castiel of old has fallen away like molted feathers, leaving behind a wholly new creation.

gay love pierced through the veil of death and saved the day by honeybee (444)

Cas doesn’t die. That’s literally it.

this is a good thing, dean. (prayer is a sign of faith) by cascountsdeansfreckles (529)

Dean’s legs still don’t want to move. He sits propped up against the wall and stares unseeing at the chair in the middle of the room. Everything that Cas said plays over and over in his head. The image of Cas looking devastatingly relieved, content, as he was taken from Dean won’t leave his mind.

He doesn’t know what else to do. So he prays.

1 Missed Call by glenien (597)

The buzzing never stops.

so it goes by K_K_TiBal (665)

Castiel returns one more time to retrieve something he left behind.

absurd in the best way by clasch (669)

Castiel tries to make a pie for Dean.

Bodily Communion by runsinthefamily (905)

Survival in Purgatory has some weird aspects.

may i feel said he by bk119 (1k)

a coda to 15.19. cas comes back, and words are said.

choices. by scoundrelhan (1.1k)

Castiel thinks he’s dying. Humans are always doing that.

you can have it, though by make_your_user_a_name (1.1k)

Jack was walking away and it was too late. It was too late because Dean didn’t think he would have to say anything. He thought Jack would bring it up and they would never have to know that he missed Cas so desperately it hurt. It hurt so goddamn bad.

And then Jack stopped and turned back to the Winchesters, his eyes focused on Dean. And that’s when it hit him. Jack knew. Jack knew what Cas had said. Jack knew Dean needed to say it or the second Cas was back everything would just go back to normal.

So he did.

“Bring him back.” His voice was low but it wasn’t threatening. It came out more broken than anything. Because he was so broken. And maybe it was okay to let them see it. “Bring Cas back, Jack. We,” he glanced at Sam and took a deep breath. “I need him.”

15x18 coda: it's in the being by contemplativepancakes (1.1k)

Blood splatters from a severed neck, the body twitching before it collapses to the floor. It sprays across Dean’s face, dotting red droplets over his cheeks and in his hair. Dean keeps his mouth shut so he doesn’t get the taste of copper stuck in it; he already can’t get Cas’s face out of his mind.

Dean knows this is the last place he should be, that with the world ending, it doesn’t really matter if there’s one less nest of vamps in the world, but if he stops moving, then he’ll… have to think.

“I wondered what my true happiness could even look like, because the one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have.”

Fuck, they wasted so much time.

15x19 coda: stripped of everything holy by contemplativepancakes (1.2k)

“About time we put you on the family tree, right?”

Jack sinks down in the chair across from him, contemplating. He puts the tip to the table and rests it there.

Jack glances up at him. “Why isn’t Cas’s name here?”

That’s a damn good question, Dean thinks. It’s because he was too much of a fucking coward. Dean’s still having trouble reconciling everything Cas said with the past ten years of his life. It seems like, maybe, if he thinks about it hard enough, he can see that Cas returned his feelings, but he still can’t believe Cas said all those things. He’s bullshit all the way through, but Cas… Cas hadn’t thought so.

Dean clears his throat. “We’ll add his next, huh?”

candles & wishes by harrow (1.2k)

Dean turned to Cas speculatively. “Do you have a birthday?”

Now Everything is Easy 'cause of You by chai_lattes (1.3k)

Cas never understood why humans were so fond of sleeping, but he was starting to. Dean chalked it up to knowing that they were finally safe, or Cas finally had a real bed, but Cas would just smile, quietly knowing the real difference was no longer having to sleep alone.

Cas reflects on being human, being happy, and being a morning person.

Chocolate, Caramel, and Zombies (Of a Metaphorical Sense) by TextReciprocation (1.4k)

Castiel approached the counter and looked at the menu contemplatively. The barista spun around to face him, eyes bright and hair untidy. He was roughly Castiel's height and build, with sandy hair and lightly tanned skin. Castiel's breath caught at the sight of him, but he bit his tongue, chastising himself.

Cute baristas were rarely gay and always taken. Castiel knew this. Fate, as it happened, was a cruel mistress.

Never Enough by make_your_user_a_name (1.5k)

It took him hours to notice it. He hadn’t felt it in the moment. Hadn’t felt the Cas’ hand stick slightly to his shoulder as it pushed him away, leaving him to face the Empty alone.

But now that he’d noticed it, it was all he could look at. That bright red handprint standing out starkly against his jacket. It was perfect, really. Not a drop out of place. Just a handprint and nothing else. That was all he had left.

The handprint where Castiel had “gripped him tight and raised him from perdition.” And now he’d saved him one more time. Same shoulder, same placement, same sting when Dean looked at it.

It was poetic in the cruelest of ways. And if it weren’t for everything, he would have thought this was Chuck’s writing. But, no. Castiel was the only part of Chuck’s story that he couldn’t control. Because Cas had fallen.

how's hope feeling today by sleepinnude (1.5k)

After Cas is gone, bees start to follow Dean.

Sunrise by mattzerella_sticks (1.7k)

Dean and Sam were free. Finally, unequivocally, free.

But this wasn't the happy ending Dean had expected. Maybe in the past, having Sam in the passenger seat tearing across an open stretch of highway as the sunsets, it'd be what he wanted. But that was years ago. He's not that man anymore. Dean's tired of sunsets, of saying goodbye. He yearns for a different ending. One that's less of an ending, and more of a beginning. A sunrise instead of a sunset.

Sam has his. Dean lost his. Despite this setback, he won't stop. He'll live in memory of his sunrise.

Except, what can he do when he feels those rays on his face again?

Loving Castiel by dinluke (1.9k)

“How did you find me?” Dean asks. Castiel squints and looks at him like he’s the sun.

“Your, uh, yearning was pretty loud,” he says sheepishly.

Sleep Deprivation by Honey_Honey (2.3k)

Dean licked his lips. They tasted like honey. Which was funny, seeing as it was the one part of his breakfast he hadn’t eaten. In fact, Cas had tried the honey instead.

Oh. Oh fuck.

“Did I just kiss Cas?”

And Sam’s descent into uncontrollable laughter was an answer enough.

Walk Through Fire For You by purple_charlie (2.3k)

Boyfriend.

The word still feels foreign in Dean’s mouth, still brings back echoes of John Winchester’s thinly-veiled (if even that) homophobia. "Man up, don’t be a sissy, I didn’t raise a fairy". It’s a swollen blister in the back of Dean’s mind, throbbing with pain whenever a stranger’s eyes linger too long on Cas’ hand in his, whenever a waitress double-takes at how close they sit in diner booths.

But here, dirty dancing with Cas in a warehouse full of other queer folks, Dean wants to shout from the rooftops- I’m Dean Winchester, I drive the baddest car in town, I lift heavy things for a living, and this is my boyfriend.

Could Not Return You by tigersinlondon (2.8k)

Dean might have gotten over himself when it comes to sleeping with Cas (in the sex way, not the cuddles-and-snoring way), and even telling him that he loves him, but he’s not ready to do anything crazy like hold his hand in public, or admit aloud that they’re in a relationship in front of Sam, or God forbid, actually share a room, a bed, a living space with Cas.

Funny Bone by PallasPerilous (4.9k)

It wasn’t even a particularly creepy skeleton; it was in kind of a “just chillin’” pose on the floor. One ankle was still locked up in a heavy iron cuff, at the end of a short chain leading back to the wall. Snoresville, as dead stuff goes; Dean’s seen worse at Disneyland.

It was the skeleton’s comment about Dean’s ass that really livened things up.

Compromise by tiamatv (7.5k)

It wasn't uncommon for Dean to find himself tracking down an ex-angel in their underground home in the middle of the night, because Cas got nightmares. Ten years ago, though, if anyone had told Dean this would become a semi-regular occurrence in his life, he’d probably have laughed so hard, his beer would have come out of his nose.

Crazy Hex Girlfriend by whichstiel (10k)

Dean and Castiel infiltrate an extravagant couples-only Halloween party at the invitation of the party’s host who has been receiving mysterious threats. They patrol the party for hex bags and dark altars, interview suspects, and Dean happily scores a lot of free food. He just wishes he could score with Cas.

How Many Slams In An Old Screen Door? [podfic] by Tenoko1 (15k/2hr podfic)

In which Castiel is a theatre major terrible at first impressions; Dean is a set designer who likes Cas anyway; and the most chaotic production of Les Miserables in history somehow manages to go off without a hitch. Or, just as you should never give a moose a muffin (because he'll want some jam to go with it), you should never give a blank check to a university theatre department. [podfic version]

The Cabin on the Lake by DeanRH (22k)

The Winchester brothers are long lost to history. The angel keeps the vigil, haunted by the shadows of his regrets.

Among other things.

this post is getting way too long so I'm gonna start a second one now!! hopefully you can enjoy these lesser known fics in the meantime :)

[dirtyvulture]

😎Ok so here is my explanation on why some of the lines from “ A MACTH INTO THE WATER” by Pierce the Veil are perfect for R and her feelings about old friend ( OF until given name) and even some about Nat. If you can’t tell I love and listen to a lot of music ( I have many songs line up that I can do explanations on why they are perfect for this character and her feelings about things , so if that interests you please let me know) but I will only be doing this song for now.

“ I kiss the scars on her skin , I still think your beautiful and I don’t ever want to lose my best friend” - explained how R felt before she lost OF and possibly how OF felt about her. OF was one of the only( or the only ) people who didn’t see R as a monster.

“ I screamed out “ GOD you vulture” , give her back or take me with her” - self explanatory and we already saw her reaction. R tried to “ take her self with” OF when OF died. She didn’t know about her healing factor or the extend of it at that time. She tried in a multitude of different ways.

“ She’s mine , you say away from her . It’s not her time” - This one is about Nat , R is screaming this at the RR and anyone who is after Nat. Nat is under HER PROTECTION ( maybe she wants Nat as hers or will want Nat but that isn’t something she will admit or let herself have easily) and R isn’t going to let Nat die on her like OF. Not until Nat is out of her charge ( she still thinks this is a temporary thing , why would anyone want to stay with R) or until Nat’s time ( old age).

“ Cause baby I am the one that haunts her dreams at night, until she’s satisfied” - This is OF to Nat and this could be taken one of two ways. One OF is kinda mournful and sad seeing how this had affected R and asking Nat to help her and make her “satisfied”. Make R happy and move on from the sadness, guilt and grief of OF’s death. Two OF is kinda cocky gloating like “ I am so far deep …. deeper than you ever could hope to be in R’s heart , mind , body and soul. She’s mine.” Either way it is obvious that OF haunts R’s dreams at night and her being “ satisfied” is a cycle of her not sleeping until she has to or is alone, and her coping mechanisms: drinking, smoking, getting laid and violence. I believe in the first mournful and sad reading of OF to Nat but like I said it can go either way.

It is also canon in the comics and you can’t convince me otherwise in the MCU that Nat has a version of the super soldier serum. Meaning she has the accelerated or advanced human healing ( just all the perks that Captain America has) and the serum has stopped Nat’s aging or at the very least slowed to it an absolute crawl. So a certain person with an unbeatable healing factor doesn’t have to worry about a certain redhead’s time ( old age) 👀.

I swear, every time I check my inbox I feel there's a new ask of yours I haven't seen already 😂 (not a complaint btw, just an observation)

At this point, I feel like R's old friend should remained unnamed with as little detail given as possible...so people like yourself can fill in the blanks with all the headcanons you imagine. :)

I was literally talking to @mostlymarvelsstuff in a semi-related discussion that even Movie!Nat definitely has some kind of super-soldier serum. All those stunts she pulled in the Black Widow movie where she walked away COMPLETELY UNHARMED were very suspicious indeed.

(But I'm sure if R were to develop feelings for Nat, she would feel a lot better if Nat either didn't age/aged very slow compared to the rest of the population 👀)

[autocann1bal]

part ten of my playlist analysis!!

part 1 <;- part 2 &lt;- part 3 <- part 4 <- part 5 &lt;- part 6 <- part 7 <- part 8 <- part 9 <- right back in we go

stained glass and colorful tears - pierce the veil THE DIFFERENCE IN VIBES FROM THIS ONE AND THE LAST ONE IS SO FUNNY anyway. itd be funnier if lucy was american but i will stand by my lucy loves ptv hc.

careless whisper - george michael real ones have already heard this BUT THIS IS LITERALLY LOCKWOODS SONG CMON BRO HE LOVES IT SM HES LIKE IN THE KITCHEN ON LUCYS FIRST MORNING AT L&CO AND IS LIKE PUTTING ON ENTIRE PERFORMANCE USING A SPATULA AS A MIC CMON ITS SO FUNNY. hopelessly devoted to you - olivia newton john ok this one is a lucy george duo performance they both love this song sm and george absolutely can hit all the high notes. never ending summer - wes reeve RHRFHFHFHF FLUFFY SUMMER VIBES IN THE COUNTRYSIDE THEYRE JUST GOIN ON BIKERIDES AND PCINICS SOBS SCRESMS CREISA. to build a home - the cinematic orchestra, patrick watson shes reading to him in the library <3. could you love me while i hate myself - zeph the song fits the vibe less so but the lyrics are literally lockwood!!!!1!!!!11 stuck on us - claire rosinkranz, aidan bissett i am stuck on THEM theyre eating away at my brain fr. repeat until death - novo amor eepy library vibes (can u tell its my favorite vibe). sweet nothing - taylor swift lockwood is a taylor swift girly you can fight me on this. but yea this is more of him looking at lucy like <33. oceans - seafret oops angst now. lucy feels like theres oceans between them because lockwood is so refined and put together (or so she thinks until she hears him begging winkman to kill him) and shes so,,, not. she thinks shes messy, she thinks shes unprofessional and unfit for this job. stay live - jose gonzalez 'we'll do whatever just to stay alive' feels so lucy and george being the only things keeping lockwood alive. you wouldnt like me - sleeping at last RHRHFHFHFHFHFHFH lockwood feeling like if he shows lucy the real him she'll leave just like everyone else he just. hes so scared of being abandoned (me too homie). wildfire - seafret theyre so painfully in love i love them i love them i lvoe them eating drywall ilove them. hate to be lame - lizzie mcalpine, finneas lucy trying to deny her feelings for lockwood because/???? lockwood???? rteally??? tythat stuck up suit-and-tie wearing bastard?? LOCKWOOD???? type beat. glitch - taylor swift lockwood taylor swift girly agenda is spreading. this one feels relatively self explanatory? cognitive dissonance - sophie holohan 'get too close, build a wall' ok lockwood pack it up. summer 2019 - caroline culver feels like fight vibes. not a breakup fight but definitely a fight. sleep deprivation - chance pena lockwood insomniac part 769984580386. reckless driving - lizzie mcalpine, ben kessler this one is so close to being taken off the playlist actually i just. idk i need help deciding it doesnt feel right. did i make you up - half alive hes so confused because lucy is so??? perfect??? in his life???? impossible he has a hard time trying to figure out if shes real or not just because shes so perfect. agape - bears den lockwood song thats it thats the tweet yes i already make this joke bear with me. state of mind - sod ven more lockwood religious trauma methinks hahahahahahhahahahahahha. hot tea - half alive its even better since they all love tea sm. theyre so soft and fuzzy i love them sm. christmas kids - roar this one os very lucy centric/book lucy centric. its her sister (mary i believe?) watching her leave that tiny town and finally get rid of everything in it. WE'RE FINALLY FUCKING DONE THAT TOOK SO LONG </333

[googledocsdyke]

Do you have any thoughts/recommended texts for Cas analysis? I genuinely love the dean gender studies and I just wanna know what people might apply to Cas.

yes absolutely!! while dean studies is my first love i also deeply love cas analysis (casnalysis?) and wanna strive to do more of it. here’s some stuff off the top of my head:

1. gender, sexuality, heavenly embodiment

this is much more theological and less psychological than dean’s whole Deal because there’s so much fascinating stuff around how the angels in general experience express and conceptualise gender (@autisticandroids has a good post about angel gender & lily sunder has some regrets) but for cas in particular there’s this fascinating kind of collective fandom agreement (which i DO also agree with) that cas’ own gender kind of is gay man, that he actively chose gay manhood, but also that he’s kind of..... lacking the Insane Genderishness that dean exhibits at all times, even though he actively chose to engage in male gendering and became so comfortable housed Within Jimmy that he, as some post i saw the other day that i can’t find anymore said, “became his own body” when jimmy died. 

like on the one hand there’s an almost-canonical transness to the whole process but it also never feels fully written-into because 1) the supernatural writers for all their insanity are sometimes very boring and *most* of the time only feel interested in narratively expressing angels As Their Vessels anyways and just like leaving convenient spaces around these questions (boldest thing they ever did was hot girl cas which i WISH i had the range to unpack) 2) there’s a vague inevitabilist shrug to the whole thing since they obviously weren’t gonna recast misha collins (though they HAVE tried to get rid of him) and 3) something amorphous about cas’ entire..... personhood? makes him Empty Of Gender as a contrast to dean’s Full Of Gender (i believe it was @deanwinchestergender who said this) and like is it just the juxtaposition to dean/jensen’s whole insane Deal? or something else? 

like he actively chooses the terms of his own embodiment and yet narratively it feels like a shrug. and we’re all like “well obviously even though he’s a celestial being he was always a gay man” and like WHY. i love it idk idk much to think about! and yeah just in general the theological questions of possession and cas genuinely Becoming a man as he iterates himself consciously towards humanity it almost feels like. by doing the most boring things possible with his gender they made it interesting? idk if that makes sense.

2. discipline, free will, metanarratives

cas is like a tool (“i am not a hammer, as you say”) held in constant discipline and surveillance by the system that enmeshes him and it’s really, really fascinating to watch the way the angels hold each other to conformity. especially pre-god they kind of produce each other as foucauldian disciplinary subjects (which i posted about here) in perpetual visibility through angel radio, generating their own and each other’s conformity rather than being directly ruled through like a single centralised source of power. only the spectre of a god. and obviously cas’ whole thing is that he has ALWAYS disobeyed and the narrative affords him this psychological interiority never given to the foucauldian subject, an internal will and desire for freedom in a way that fits more with the liberal subject (super roughly and not with the same pro-capitalist implications but he has this internal drive for self-liberation. 

and that’s also where the metanarrative comes in ofc! i think it was @dykecas who said that cas is a real person written by people who hate him, and there’s this crack in the narrative (mirroring the crack in his chassis) where cas gets in, over and over, despite all the order imposed by the show’s authorfathergod. like we’ve all seen the analysis about how it was Never supposed to be this way they DID try to fire misha collins in 2012 and yet this gay man literally cannot be stopped! i think actually his appearance in scoobynatural is a neat little distillation of this — he drops into this animated world originally with a singular purpose (Save Sam And Dean) the same way he dropped into lazarus rising with a single 3-episode arc (Save Dean). huge hammer behaviour. his “utility” diminishes within the narrative (he finds that he can’t fly in the scooby doo universe) and so he is no longer a tool/means to an end that salvation moves Through. and in the process (and huge creds to @lesbianyuugi for this) he does something ENTIRELY unrelated to his original cas-as-tool aim, and learns, like, the meaning of laughter from shaggy and scooby. WHICH brings me onto the third point

3. love, queer kinship, family-making

HE’S GAY AND HE’S A DAD! i feel like a lot of tumblr throws around the term “found family” in a very flat and tropey way (which is fine it’s cute and fun no matter what!) but like . GOD there’s so much specific stuff going on here. like the way that cas (unintentionally) obliterates the midwestern white christian nuclear family (made incarnate in the novaks) which like could be uniformly portrayed as an act of deep malice and villainy but instead grows to serve as a surrogate (if imperfect/complex, but DEEPLY loving) father figure for the gay daughter who has now escaped that nuclear family/seen it destroyed depending on how you read it? like he remasters the entire concept of fatherhood and it’s a very interesting (if DEEPLY) unintentional subversion of the homewrecking non-nuclear gay trope. cas is so good because his character arc doesn’t say “look, gay people can be normal and have perfect settled families just like you” it says “gay people DON’T have normal settled families actually and they are full of love anyways! or Because of the abnormalcy itself!) 

to cite ziz lesbianyuugi again he DOES queer fatherhood in his parenting of jack particularly because it really is one of the ONLY parent-child relationships in the show that breaks the incessant cycle of abuse and control and cold indifference perpetuated by the authorfathergod (a cycle reified in 15x20 lol). like god’s treatment of cas and his siblings mirrors john’s treatment of sam and dean (particularly dean) mirrors victor’s treatment of krissy and her crew mirrors dean’s later treatment of jack. there is a CONSTANT reiteration of the story of authorfathergod (often a father tightly entwined in biological kinship) treating a child as a mechanism or a tool or a means to an end. and cas looks at ALL that he has suffered and all that he is ever known and chooses constantly to reject it with every piece of love he expresses for his child. and not to sound like the kind of academic people make fun of on twitter but there is an INHERENT queerness to that. gay love will pierce through [the veil of death/the thick silence of abuse/the mechanism of godly control/hegemonic american masculinity] and save the day

anyways here are some very haphazard recs on everything above for further reading:

angels in america (tony kushner)

histrionics of the pulpit: trans tonalities of religious enthusiasm

the public universal friend: religious enthusiasm in revolutionary america

discipline and punish (michel foucault)

friendship as a way of life (michel foucault)

the genesis of blame (recommended by @pietacastiel who has GREAT theology content in general

all about love (bell hooks)

the chapter “when hated characters talk back” in anti-fandom: dislike and hate in the digital age (is actually explicitly about cas)

also cannot recommend enough following the ppl i tagged above!! most of the unlinked stuff is available through http://libgen.li/ and bookshop is a good alternative to amazon if ur american and want physical copies

[hunterguyveriv]

Injustice 3 Characters?........I’m hoping so!

So as of late, I've been hearing rumors that an Injustice 3 game is in the works. As much as I want all characters from both games to come back I think there are some characters whether they are DC characters that have yet to make an appearance, Crossover characters, or simply characters Warner Brothers has the movie rights to that I would love to see. This is my short list on who I would love to see in Injustice 3 if the rumors are indeed true as DLC characters.

DC Comics Characters: Abby Arcane - Current Avatar of the Rot: She could be an interesting addition to the Injustice cast if Swamp Thing and Poison Ivy return. I could see her dialogue with Swamp Thing being similar to Ollie & Dinah's and her dialogue with Ivy being more vicious towards because Swamp Thing's heart and soul has always been Abby's. Now I know, that they are no longer an item (regrettibly) but it has been proven in one of the recent Justice League Dark comics that they still have feelings for each other even though one is the Avatar of the Rot and the other is the Avatar of the Green

Anton Arcane - Rival Rot Avatar: If Abby is added for Swamp Thing then you have to have the one person who is their worst enemy. Dialogue between both him and Abby and him and Swamp Thing would be vicious and awesome. Even his dialogue with Ivy a hinted future Avatar of the Green from the New 52 Swamp Thing series. he could also be an invaluable ally to Superman to a point because in one of the tie-in crossover series to Injustice Superman obtained Rot-Creatures to protect his territory from magic.

Zuggernaut:  I admit I know little to nothing about this character, except that he appears to be a copy of the manga version of the last character in this short list (who was created in 1985) and think it would be nice to see both on screen together challenging each other on who the true Alien Bio-Weapon really is. Would also be kind of sweet to see him and Jaime’s Blue Beetle fight.

Animal Man: An ally to Alec Holland during the RotWorld saga, I think interactions with not Just Swamp Thing but Vixen, Cheetah, Ivy, Aquaman (who is literally the Avatar of the Blue - Water) would be interesting. More so if Abby Arcane and Anton Arcane are added to the game.

Crossover Characters:

Oroku Saki aka The Shredder: Come on now, like Swamp Thing and Anton Arcane, you can't add the Ninja Turtles without adding their greatest enemy the Shredder. If memory also serves me right from the Batman vs TMNT movie, Shredder was also someone who could go toe to toe with Batman in combat and beat him and had him on the ropes their second encounter. Depending on what continuity you follow Shredder has been known to take down aliens 3 times bigger and stronger than him. So him taking on someone like Superman and soundly beating in a game like Injustice wouldn’t be that much of a stretch.

He-Man and Teela: Let me be as blunt as blunt can be. This is NOT because of the new Kevin Smith series. This is because of the Injustice vs Masters of the Universe tie-in comics. Both He-Man and Teela in those comics proved they could fight not just Superman but with Bane and Wonder Woman also. Teela mortally wounded Wonder Woman (who was saved on Batman’s quick thinking) and was even called a Good Soldier by a bleeding out Wonder Woman and up until the power of Greyskull ran out, He-Man was going blow for blow with Superman. Teela also got the attention of Granny Goodness with her prowess of a fighter and considered.....”TRAINING”..... her to be an addition to her Furies.

But even the He-Man vs Teela dialogue could be prove to be rather interesting, especially if she is te Injustice vs MotU Teela who knows Prince Adam is He-Man, and could prove to be comical with others because she kind of gets jealous when Zatanna touches Adam’s chest-plate. 

Skeletor: But including He-Man and Teela, you have to include Skeletor who was plotting not just against Superman but also Darkseid all to gain access to Castle Greyskull even though it cost him his life in the end..... or did it?

But with the inclusion of He-Man, Teela, and Skeletor it also can open up the door for Hordak who in the Injustice vs Masters of the Universe forms his own version of a Red-Ring corps and took over Apokolips. The Hordak who like Darkseid is more than happy to commit genocide on hundreds of planets just for a whim. Which I know some will argue with his involvement you gotta have She-Ra - which I would agree, BUT Classic She-Ra. The same She-Ra who also had the title Desparda who had no qualms killing thousands in the name of Hordak and nearly killed her brother in the MotU: Eternity War saga which was also done by DC Comics. I know the She-Ra fans of the recent series will be upset with that, but lets be honest - for something that is dark and serious like Injustice, the new versions of Hordak and She-Ra just simply wouldn’t cut it. She-Ra and Teela matches and She-Ra and He-Man matches alone would be a nice add. Sibling Rivalry and two future Sister-in-Laws... “SPARRING.”

Guyver: I know, I know this is a wishful-thinking-pipe dream of a fan to a dying franchise. I know New Line Cinemas did the movies and Warner Brothers now own the rights to the Guyver movies, since I last checked or at least Guyver: Dark Hero (1994) which is the main reason I want to see Guyver crossover into Injustice. But I would love to see Guyver and Blue-Beetle (2 Alien War Machines) go at it and even even Guyver vs Zuggernaut. The dialogue alone along with their super attacks would be absolute gold!

Edit-Addons for DC Characters (6-25): Magog (Kingdom Come): If anyone by now isn’t familiar with Kingdom Come, it is an alternative to the Injustice Series. Instead of Superman killing Joker for Lois’ death it was Magog. When the aquittal of Magog forced Superman to go into a self imposed exile, Magog formed his own group of Super-humans and distributed his own ruthless form of justice upon those that his group fought culminating in the destruction of Kansas. The inclusion of his character could prove interesting because like Injustice the death of Lois at the hands of Joker and his deaths set into motion in both “universes” where the Justice League (who’s dangerously close to turning into the regime) and Batman’s allies fight.

Gog (The Kingdom): With the Multi-Verse in play from both games, the inclusion of this guy is a must! He started off as a normal man by the name of William who was one of the survivors of the Kansas Disaster caused by Magog, saw Superman as the as quite literally a Jesus Christ type figure. When Superman set him straight on things including the Kansas Disaster, William’s beliefs were shaken to the core and questioning his worth, in which the Phantom Stranger bestowed upon him all sorts of powers (powers of Zeus, Shazam, Oan, and a few others I believe). But with his beliefs shaken along with his worth and mental stability fractured, he used said abilities to go on a Superman killing spree throughout the multi-verse. He was so mad that he even went back in time and caused his own Kansas Disaster catching the attention of the present Superman/Wonder Woman/Batman. It took the combined might of the time Traveling Superman/Wonder Woman/Batman and some allies with the “present day” versions of themselves and “PD”-Superman piercing the veil of the multi-verse to completely defeat Gog. Seeing him fight Injustice-Superman alone would be worth his inclusion.

[ae0nx]

FRUITS BASKET S3 EPISODE 12 RECAP!!!

...Do you think we'll get a Fruits Basket Another adaptation or OVA or something of the sorts? 🥺

Anyway, I'd like to start this off by shouting out whoever writes the episode descriptions on Funimation who started off the description of last week's episode as:

"Kyo finally tells Tohru what he should have told her in the first place"

🤣Damn straight.

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

We get three 'I love you and I want to stay with you, if you'll keep me's during this episode. (Four if you count Haru's declaration that he'll love Yuki forever lol) And they're all so unique yet fitting to the pairing involved...

SMOOTH OPERATORRRRR 🎶

Why did this scene make me blush so hard! It had no audacity to do that. I loved it.

Personally, I'm really glad we got this Machi and Yuki moment separate from Kyo and Tohru's moment in the previous episode as while I already love Yuki/Machi together, I do wish we got more moments over the course of the series to get to know them together and their natural dynamic as friends (without the awkwardness and uncertainty).

But, I mostly just love how this isn't an actual confession in the traditional sense of the declaration of feelings but it's more so an almost spiritual, mutual understanding and probably lands this pair as having the most natural progression of a relationship in the series.

They cute.

And Yuki really can't help being a Disney Prince, Gods bless him.

Ahh... these two...

...Just gonna note down what Akito says about her feelings for Shigure:

'I want to permeate his body, get into his cells, into his bones, invade and infuse them. Saturate his entire being with my own. Fill every corner of him with my scent, till he can't even breathe.'

😳...

I fully believe they love each other intensely and kinda, weirdly violently and I definitely can understand why people like this pairing, especially as there are real life couples that are just like this. I just would've loved if they acknowledged that their upbringing in such a toxic environment has negatively affected the way they express their love towards each other and that maybe separating for a while and trying to understand who they are without each other and the curse would be great? But, whatever, I'm not a therapist.

Considering Akito's final decision to stay as the head of the family (albeit to take responsibility) and Shigure being a bit put off by it and the scene ending with that off-key background music that always plays whenever 'God fucks shit up'... In my opinion, this might be the saddest ending for an 'endgame-level' romantic pairing in Fruits Basket...

Two positive notes: Akito looked pretty and she gets Outfit Appreciation - 5 stars! It was pretty and gorgeous but also ha da slight edge of boss bitch to it. Also, Shigure being the only one at the party left behind to love Akito fully and wholly is sort of romantic?

BEST COUPLE OF THE YEAR.

YES - MY BIAS IS SHOWING. EAT MY SHORTS.

but, ALL THE GROWTH SHOWN IN THIS CONVERSATION WAS EXPONENTIAL.

Kyo planning his future and going beyond and being hopeful about it. Kyo not wanting Tohru to just give up everything for him. tOHRU'S FUCKING DETERMINATION NOT BEING HIDDEN UNDER A VEIL OF NICETIES?!

:))))))))))) 😁

I don't think I've ever fully stanned a heterosexual couple this hard in ANYTHING. (Heterosexual assumedly cos Tohru's definitely bi in my HCs)

I dunno.. I don't have much to say that hasn't already been said in previous recaps. They're great and their progression has been written so well! I feel like they have the most casually natural 'I wanna stay with you, if you'll let me' mostly because they've been in a relationship together since the beach arc (whether they know that or not) and the easiness of their dynamic has been pretty solidified between them. But, also because they are the best written and detailed relationship in the series. It just feels natural and without question.

Also, that slightly blurry/sun-dappled flash forward we got to married Kyoru was gorgeous and I definitely wasn't expecting it! (I kinda thought Tohru's sweat drop was her crying and I got worried for a minute lol)

Kiss kiss, fall in love :)

----------- QUICK SHOTS ----------------

Yuki's goodbye to the curse was, of course, the most gorgeous of the goodbyes. Very fitting.

We haven't heard Kyo say 'yo' literally since his first introduction in the series and I dunno, it was nice to see how unburdened and less angry he is in general. So refreshing!

Momiji and Kagura conspiring to pick on Kyo cos he's the reason for both of their own heartbreaks. Yes. >:))

It was really nice having Aya there just being dramatic Aya, you could tell that the zodiac felt more relaxed by his Aya-ness

:3

It's interesting that when Akito was remembering her greatest hits of times she traumatised the zodiac that her moments with Kyo weren't there... You could argue that Kyo's trauma was more so tied to outer members of the Sohma family and the institution/culture behind the curse but... I dunno, there were some moments...

I dunno why but I genuinely find this screencap scary and it's a curse to my eyes so now you guys have to deal with it. That's all.

It's funny, Shigure's explanation of 'why he is the way he is' is pretty much the same as Loki's explanation as to why he's the way he is in the Loki show and yet I'm still here saying fuck Shigure and stanning Loki. I'm an impure human who will only submit to Gods. I guess lol

Ending the episode on Kyoko's thoughts during her death was definitely jarring but it was also definitely needed - just to reassure the audience! This is definitely Lydia Mackay's best performance as Kyoko, the emotions in her voice really pierced through me. And her sharing Ocean Heaven with Katsuya was beautiful but WHY WON'T WE EVER LOOK UPON KATSUYA'S FACE?!

It's cool tho. <3

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

Man... do we only have one episode left? What do I do after this? Lol

Also, it's a nice touch that the first episode of Fruits Basket is 'See You After School' and (assumedly) the last episode of Fruits Basket is 'See You Again Soon'. It's the uncertainty for me 😭

See you next week!

[almaasi]

reaction post typed while watching SPN 15x18 “Despair”

WOW TODAY SURE IS A DAY, HUH

-

04:40pm

Y’ALL

I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS

I KNOW WHAT’S COMING

BUT AM I PREPARED?

my post leading up to this: https://almaasi.tumblr.com/post/634003656411381760/i-have-seen-the-spn-spoilers-okay-okay-okay

i found a faster torrent and there are 7 minutes until it’s done I’M GONNA GO WANDER AROUND FOR A BIT BRB

-

04:51pm

window is blacked out

i am as ready as i can be, i think

-

04:52

HERE WE GO

-

omg so much has happened irl i fully forgot what happened at the end of the last ep so THANK U RECAP

-

BILLIE JUST

BOMBED THE EMPTY

WITH JACK

:0

-

05:00

just as i was thinking “aaah billie’s probably lying, jack’s capital D Dead” THERE’S JACK

-

JACK’S BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-

05:05pm

nice shot

-

05:07

CHARLIE’S PARTNER IS GORGEOUS AND THIS IS SO HAPPY

they better both make it to the end and out the other side or istg

-

OH NO WHERE DID BABE GO

-

babe is named stevie

BRIng STEVIE BACK

-

05:09

THIS PLACE IS CALLED KIM MANOR

-

we’re like 1/3 of the way into this episode?? damn

-

cas and jack hanging out on the hood of the impala like the brothers did all those years ago

good family talk spot

-

05:13

high quality face

-

05:15

cas: WE DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU BECAUSE YOU’RE USEFUL OR--

cas baby yesssssssssssssssssssssss

these are the words cas can say because he knows them for himself

-

05:19

THE DOTS ON SAM’S PHONE CHAT WITH EILEEN

DISAPPEARING

OH...................

-

05:26

DONNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

oh i wish we’d had more donna and jody :/

-

05:29

dean’s gonna lose cas and then it’s gonna be the sam+charlie+dean “i just lost my lover” club :c

-

05:34

just thinkin about the ending of the final episode

the only two endings i really want are:

everyone we love is somehow alive and they drive into the sunset

they all die but wake up in heaven and there’ll be peace when you are done

or some combination thereof

-

05:37

billie: i didn’t hurt your friends

yeah i thought not

-

bobby vanishes and my eyes flood with tears

that last look between him and sam........

-

wait when was donna from another universe??? or did she die at some point

WOW I’VE FORGOTTEN A LOT

-

05:42

dean: “what do we do, ca--- my heart”

.......

yep

i’m not ready for whatever’s about to happen

-

I’M SO !!!!!!!!!!

BECAUSE THE FACT THEY JUST WON’T DIE

AND THEY ALWAYS COME BACK

IS THE SEMI-BOSS FIGHT

I’M LOVING THIS

EVEN THOUGH I HATE IT

-

05:46

this sure is a screenshot huh

-

05:49

/mutes discord bc this needs all of my attention

-

05:51

cas’ eyes are starting to tear up and he’s smiling as he starts to talk and ohhhhhhhhh here it comes

-

05:53

there’s.

literally.

a wall.

between them.

talk about SYMBOLISM

-

jensen’s pupils are so wide right now holy shit

-

“you are the most caring man on earth”

dean looking at these words like it’s news to him

;~;

cas

thank you for saying these things we’ve all been yelling at the screen for years

-

05:58

DEAN HAS CAS’ BLOODY HANDPRINT ON HIS JACKET

........i can’t let myself believe that was it

THERE WILL BE MORE

SURELY

like

in no conceivable world do the writers get this far, give us THAT, and have it never be mentioned again or properly resolved

hello yes i’m waiting for the magic ritual where cas’ bloody handprint plays a part

-

06:02

yeah i mean

if they saved the whole world multiple times over

everyone’s gotta go

-

oh dean................. oh no

-

GOD

THAT REALLY WAS SOMETHING HUH

i feel like my full reaction is reserved 

because this was half a story. this was one-sided and it was just cas’ monologue. dean has things to say

THIS IS OBVIOUSLY NOT OVER

i know people (misha??) has said it’s a permadeath but i do not believe that, and i don’t believe anything anyone says about what’s coming tbh

i got an anon in my inbox a few weeks ago who correctly predicted this, saying they knew someone on set, but like......... the real ending would be top secret and anything that gets out would not end up in the inbox of some fic author along with a bad vibe. (i didn’t answer it, not wanting to stir up shit.)

that anon said cas isn’t in the last two episodes. except that can’t possibly be true because we, the audience, can see people in the empty, and cas still needs to yell at the empty, and death is in there too... and the empty just wants to sleep so we need to see that too, and cas would be there.

THERE’S MORE TO COME, KIDS

two episodes left

i’m wary of the next one because it’s the deadly duo writing, but they seem to be okayish these days so maybe it’ll be fine

but the finale..... fingers crossed <3

fingers also crossed for a blue georgia, north carolina, and pennsylvania <3

/goes back to cnn livestream because I WANNA WATCH WHEN GEORGIA FLIPS

also. back to spn for a sec. i’m a leeeeeeetle bit mad that the gay black woman disappears first. like i know everyone died but. haven’t we had enough of that??

10/10 even so BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN IT COULDN’T HAVE BEEN BETTER

eh. this show is what it is, and i just gotta accept that, BUT ALSO I THINK WE’RE GENUINELY GETTING SOMEWHERE WITH DEAN AND CAS HERE

but only so long as this actually has a conclusion

which it must do

because this is very much an emotional cliffhanger. cas just emotion-dumped and then fucked off so dEAN’S GOTTA PROCESS AND THEN CHASE HIM

OBVIOUSLY

BECAUSE THAT’S HOW LOVE STORIES WORK

we didn’t watch 15 years of this thing only to be given half of what we wanted in the closing moments, and then get left left high and dry. the writers/producers are clearly willing to give us canon love confessions, and they're not gonna get as far as this, with a finale as tense and dramatic as this, and be like lol dean's straight and only likes cas as a friend........... after he’s dead and died for the joy of their love........... that's beyond madness

and dean needs to SPEAK. there are so many things he’d never said. and he needs to say them to cas. he was basically silent in this conversation and you can’t just say that’s their ending. it’s not their ending.

AND LIKE

IF THIS SHOW AND THIS FINALE AND THIS SEASON HAS PROVED ANYTHING

IT’S THAT NOBODY STAYS DEAD

AND WHATEVER THE WRITER INTENDS, THE CHARACTERS HAVE THEIR OWN DESIRES AND DRIVES

AND FOR THAT REASON, GAY LOVE WILL PIERCE THROUGH THE VEIL OF DEATH AND SAVE THE DAY

[holyhellpod]

Heyoooo, it’s another episode of Holy Hell! This one is dedicated to the manchild himself, Dean Winchester. 

Apple | Google | Spotify | Instagram | Patreon

Transcript below!

CW: discussions of child abuse, child death, suicide, alcoholism, family trauma, mental health

[Music]

Dean Winchester is, in a word, my soulmate. I started kinning him when the show aired in Australia on Fox8 and I have not been the same since. From his devil-may-care attitude to his undying love for his family that pierces the veil of death to save the day, he really is the most. I have to say at the beginning that this episode of Holy Hell will not include discussions of Dean’s sexuality and gender. I’m saving that for its own episode, so stay tuned my pals.

What we know of Dean as he develops over the course of the first episode is: he’s been hunting, and hunting alone, he’s 26 years old, he drives a sweet ‘67 Impala, he wears an old leather jacket, he listens to 1980s metal, and he has an arsenal of weapons and supernatural fighting talismans in his trunk. He’s also a smartarse, one of his most endearing qualities. He gets defensive about their mother and her death, and he defends their father over and over. He’s a loyal son and brother. The impetus to bring Sam back into the hunting life, after Sam decided for good that he was going to leave, is to bring his fambily back together.

The quality that defines Dean Winchester is how much he loves he loves his fambily. In the first episode, he is so worried about his father that he recruits Sam to help look for him, even though Sam and Dean haven’t spoken in two years, and Sam ran away to college rather than continue to live with their father.  He spends most of the first season defending their father, but when John comes back and starts arguing with Sam, Dean protects his brother from John. It’s one of the most significant examples of character growth Dean undergoes throughout the entire series, and it’s where his loyalty shifts from John to Sam.

In the episode of season 2, “Croatoan,” Dean decides not to shoot Sam when Sam contracts the Croatoan virus which turns people rabid and makes them kill. In the next episode, “Hunted”, Dean reveals that John told him to kill Sam if Dean couldn’t save him. But Dean doesn’t. He says that John begged Dean not to tell Sam, but it’s not John’s words that keep Dean silent. It’s his love for Sam and Sam’s wellbeing. And this brotherly love slash codependency is used by characters throughout the entire series, from the demons in season 1 to the literal character of God in season 15, to manipulate Dean and Sam. As many characters have pointed out, including Dean and Sam themselves, they are each other’s weak points.  

At the end of season two, when Sam dies from a stab wound in his spine, Dean trades his own life for Sam’s. He makes a deal with a crossroads demon—his soul for Sam’s life—and subsequently dies and goes to hell at the end of season 3. Dean literally dies a gruesome death and spends forty years being tortured in hell because he couldn’t live without Sam. At the end of Season 8, Sam is dying from the effects of the trials, which he undergoes in order to close the gates of hell, and Dean convinces him to stop because, again, he can’t live without Sam. Sidenote: this is where I stopped being interested in their brotherly dynamic to the point of losing interest in the show. It became clear to me that the showrunners were more concerned with rehashing the same tired storylines between Sam and Dean than focus on characters who could expand the world and make the show better. In fact, they killed a lot of the interesting side characters in order to keep the show solely focused on the brothers. The exception to this is Castiel, and the reason they kept Cas around is because when he died in season 7 the ratings tanked. If that wasn’t a clear enough sign that the showrunners needed to open up the show to more than just Sam and Dean’s caustic dynamic in which they die and kill for and then betray and lie to each other over and over, then I just don’t know what the fans could have done to convince them. Nothing, apparently, because they ended the show with just Sam and Dean.

Dean’s relationship with John is fraught with insecurity and codependency. Dean has so little sense of self that what he does consider to be his carefully curated list of likes and dislikes were inherited directly from John: his car, his leather jacket, his hunting abilities, and his music taste. He also throws himself into hunts without any regard for his own safety, because he doesn’t believe that he is worth saving, or that his life is worth living. His personality is crafted from both John’s reliance on him as a son, hunter and partner in crime, and the woman he assumes Mary to be. Dean’s sense of self-worth relies on how many people he can save. This is why, in season 2 episode “What is and what should never be,” Dean’s dream reality is one in which he’s a low life loser who disappoints his family—because without John pushing him to be a hunter, Dean doesn’t save people, and because he doesn’t save people, he isn’t worth anything. Bear in mind that this is the best reality Dean’s mind could conjure for him: one in which his father is dead, and he himself is not worth saving.

In one of the most famous exchanges, he asks Cas why an angel would rescue him from hell, and Cas replies, “What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved.” Twenty-nine years of bluster, insouciance, and a give-em-hell attitude crumbles in two sentences, wrought by a being Dean refuses to believe exists because, again, he doesn’t think that he deserves to be saved by them. He says, “[Why me? I don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties, let alone by God].” He thinks of himself so lowly that he accepted a one-year deal in exchange for Sam being alive. Dean cares so much about his family he lets it kill him.

But it’s not just Sam, Mary and John. Dean’s family grows to encompass a number of side characters: most notably Bobby their surrogate father, Charlie Bradbury the hacker, Claire Novak, Jack Kline, and Lisa and Ben Braeden. Even Mary makes another appearance in seasons 12 to 14. Unfortunately, because the show is the way it is, Dean puts Sam above all of these side characters, and then these characters are written out of the show. I should specify that Cas is not a side character; in most seasons, Misha Collins is billed as a main cast member, with his name appearing after Jensen Ackles in the credits. But he still dies in the third-last episode in order to have the show stay about the brothers. Even Jack, inarguably Cas and Dean’s son, is written out of the show in the second-last episode after dying multiple times. I say inarguably because I am not gonna argue with anyone about this. Claire and Jack are Dean and Cas’s kids. Dean and Cas are great parents who chaperone Jack’s prom and buy Claire her first hunting bow. They’re all one big happy, queer, neurodivergent family.

Dean loves the people in his life with reckless abandon. The times he’s excused Cas’s behaviour after Cas has done something ridiculous or foolish are too many to count. He grieves Cas’s multiple deaths, often succumbing to his alcoholism and entropy whenever Cas leaves him for more than a day. In a truly beautiful scene, Dean wraps Cas’s corpse in a curtain and watches, utterly and completely devastated, as his body burns. By this point, they have done so much for each other that it’s impossible to even envision the show without Cas, and indeed imagine Dean without his love for Cas. And we don’t have to for very long, as he always comes back a few episodes later. Even knowing this, the episodes where Dean mourns Cas are so heartbreaking and haunting that I cried for days after watching them.

Dean is great with kids, and every time he’s not is completely the fault of whoever is writing him in any given episode. We see him bonding with Lisa’s son Ben in season 3 and 6, Jesse in the season 5 episode “I Believe The Children Are Our Future,” and Lucas in the season one episode “Dead in the water”. With every child he meets, Dean gets on their level, empathising with them in a way most adults can’t. Like Claire and Jack, Dean has a complicated relationship with his father, who dies in the beginning of season 2 after bargaining his soul for Dean’s life to the demon that took their mother. Just like anyone else’s life, right? Must be Tuesday. This means Dean can relate to most children with traumatic backgrounds involving their parents, as a victim of parental abuse and having his mother die at age 4. I can’t find any sources to back this up, but a theory that rolled around in fandom was that Dean became mute after Mary died, which is what happens to Lucas after his father drowns. He says in “Dead In the Water” that he loves kids, and it’s true. As one tumblr user put it, Dean wanted to be baby trapped.

Dean carries the deaths and pain of his loved ones with him like Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. When Claire is bitten by a werewolf, the characters administer blood of the sire wolf that bit her in order to cure her of her lycanthropy. Dean has to leave the room while she’s in pain, because he can’t bear to watch her die. The same goes for when Jack dies. Thankfully, Claire lives and Jack comes back a few episodes later.

When thinking about Dean being a father, I’m reminded of that scene from Scrubs when Dr Cox says he’s worried about being a father because his own dad was an abusive alcoholic. The difference between Dr Cox and Dean is that Dean doesn’t have his reservations about raising kids. He fits into Lisa and Ben’s life easily, at least for the first year, and we see a montage which includes him teaching Ben how to fix cars. When Claire lets her guard down enough to hug Dean, he hugs back just as hard. When he finally deals with the trauma of Cas dying in season 13, he accepts Jack into his life, and even grieves Jack when he dies. Dean escapes the intergenerational trauma that plagues his family by being a fantastic dad to the random kids who happen into his life by chance. He was born to be a father, and the fact that this show took that away from him and us as the audience makes me want to kick the showrunners into the sun.

Until season 6, Dean’s family only included men. The concept of the nuclear family—two sons, a husband and a wife—was ripped apart in the prologue of the first episode when Mary dies. Dean doesn’t know family for the first 5 seasons of the show outside Sam, John, Cas and Bobby. I do consider Ellen and Jo to be important to the story, but they’re only in a handful of episodes and die in season 5 for a reason that is plainly ridiculous. Did the Winchesters have to lose every single person in their lives to the fight? Clearly Kripke thought they were going to be cancelled after the fifth season, because it shows. And honestly? Maybe they should have. Let’s retroactively cancel the whole show. It can’t hold power over us anymore, because it’s dead and we cremated it.

But when Dean moves in with Lisa and Ben, he discovers a new type of family he didn’t have before, and new family dynamics. Instead of the 28-year-old son that Sam is to him, he takes the opportunity to teach Ben about cars and spend time with him and Lisa without the need to hunt. He gets a job, he makes some friends, and he lives the safe, apple pie life he begrudged Sam for in the pilot episode. It’s only when Sam reappears in his life that Dean’s codependency strikes again and he realises that he can’t live half in the normal world with Lisa and Ben and half in the hunting world with Sam. Sam says this himself in the first episode of Season 6, “Exile On Main Street”. Despite the ways Dean tried to settle down throughout the rest of the 9 seasons, the showrunners ultimately decided a man who was healing from trauma and alcoholism, who had adopted two kids as his own, and was learning how to bake cakes for his son’s birthday, deserved to die at the ripe age of 40, a week or so after he’d learned that his best friend was in love with him. You gotta laugh. Instead of getting the ending both Dean and we deserved—which was Dean settling down, opening a bar, and living the next forty years in relative gay peace while he got fat and watched Cheers reruns—well, we got something else. And I will always be bitter about that.

While it’s clear from the first season that he has reckless and suicidal tendencies, he doesn’t stop fighting to the bitter end. Even when faced with his own impending death in the season 2 premiere, “In my time of dying,” he fights to stay alive for Sam and John, while working the mystery that is overcoming his own death. Devastated as he is by Sam diving into hell at the end of season 5 and seemingly gone for good, Dean still gets up everyday and makes a life for himself in Lisa’s home. While season 6 was overall a bummer of a season, just god-awful in every aspect, saved from my complete vitriol only by “The French Mistake,” it did show us how great a dad Dean can be, and readied us for what was to come—being Claire and Jack’s dad. The lengths he goes to for his family are immense and all-consuming. As Cas says in “Despair”, Dean is a being of love. He loves everyone else, even when he can’t find it in him to love himself. He really thinks that he’s just a killer, not a father or a husband.

I’ve never subscribed to the idea that we have to love ourselves before we can love anyone else, or before anyone else can love us. Sorry Rupaul, you old bitch. We are all deserving of love, because love sustains us and helps us grow. And when we don’t know how to, it’s through loving others that we can learn to love ourselves. If Dean knew what a great father and friend and husband and brother he is, if he could see himself the way others, in the show and out of it, see him, I think he’d burst. You don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties? Well tough shit, Dean Winchester, because I’m gonna devote an entire podcast to you.

I talked about Dean’s carefully curated list of likes and dislikes before but I’ll go into more detail now. Things he likes: guns; rock and roll; nice cars; women; fighting; scamming people at pool; back alley blowjobs, probably; pie; driving across the country; Ozzy concerts; cowboy movies; being in control of every little thing in his life. His dislikes are: flying on planes; hair metal; angels and demons; anyone who harms his brother, his best friend or his kids; boredom; and being jerked around.

Okay I literally cannot talk about the cowboy movies without mentioning that he makes Cas watch them with him, in his Deancave, and the implications of that make my head roll off my body and into the dirt. Like they literally have gay little movie nights and watch their gay little cowboy movies together and Dean says all the gay little lines. I said I wasn’t going to talk about his sexuality, but mentioning cowboy movies leads to Cas wearing a cowboy hat and saying “I’m your Huckleberry.” This makes me insane. Excuse me, I must have my daily scream.

Okay, I’ve collected myself. Have I? Let’s just move on. In the Winchester tradition of inherited family trauma, Dean gets all of John’s interests, and Sam gets all of John’s mistakes. Dean’s personality throughout the show is basically quippy remarks, pop culture references, laughing with food in his mouth, and grouchiness. In case you haven’t realised, he is amazing to me. Every time he fires a rifle or pistol? Couldn’t be better. Eating a burger made of out donuts? Fucking incredible. Even when faced with beings with untold power, he doesn’t lose his cool. One of my favourite exchanges is when Zachariah comes to Chuck’s house in the first episode of season 5, “Sympathy For The Devil,” and starts soliloquising at him, Dean tells him to “cram it with walnuts, ugly.” Cram it with walnuts, ugly. It’s been ten years and that still makes me laugh. Top ten Dean lines for sure. Like all of my main characters throughout the years of writing original fiction are just “Dean Winchester but girl,” and I’m a good writer, but I can never come close to the level of hilarity that he achieves. And every single writer on the show seems to get that. The only times I can think of where Dean’s characterisation has irked me on a writing level are in season 6—basically the entire thing—and the way he treats Jack in the later seasons, specifically late season 15. But it’s really rare for me to watch an episode and not enjoy Dean. Even throughout the Mark Of Cain era, which I loved, when things were very serious, he had such style and panache and held himself so confidently that I was like, wait maybe he made some points? Maybe he should kill everyone?

Dean is a hunter and a killer, but that’s not all he is. He’s very skilled in hand to hand combat, weaponry, and tactical manoeuvres. Even when something doesn’t go exactly to plan, he’s usually able to improvise something to end up with a win. Because he is the main character, his choices and reactions, while sometimes extremely problematic, are never questioned, and that’s to his detriment. In the last episode of season 14, “Moriah,” Dean is unable to kill Jack, but in early season 15, he treats Jack’s betrayal as Cas’s fault, because he can’t take it out on Jack. Cas leaves, but it’s framed as a good thing because Cas is Jack’s father, and has to take responsibility for what Jack has done. In this instance, I don’t blame Cas at all. Okay I rarely blame Cas for anything, including the things he’s done wrong, because no he didn’t and you can’t prove it. But he especially didn’t do anything wrong when Jack killed Mary, and he didn’t do anything wrong by killing Belphagor. But by the middle of the season, in the episode “The Trap,” Dean admits his wrongdoing in taking his anger out on Cas, one of the only people who loves him without conditions. You’d think this would be a defining moment of character progression, but then Dean chooses to act exactly the same way by throwing Jack under the bus. Like, throwing him harder, under a bigger bus. So what was the point.

Anyway, those are choices the writers made, and not Dean.

Going back to what I was saying about being neurodivergent, Dean has adhd. I know this because I have adhd, and I’m Dean-coded. He’s wildly creative, impulsive, has a touch of OCD, and he has a hard time making long-lasting friends, although this is mostly due to how all his friends die. His best friend is an autistic angel and the only reason they’re still friends is because they’re obsessed with each other, in like a really unhealthy way. One of the funny things about his and Cas’s relationship is that every time you see them in the same shot, Cas is standing perfectly still and Dean is constantly moving. They are almost complete opposites, aside from their queerness and neurodivergence. But then, I haven’t met a single queer person in my entire life who isn’t neurodivergent or disabled in some way. That doesn’t mean we can’t live perfectly functional and normal lives, it just means we’re better than everyone else.  

Dean also exhibits black and white thinking—to him all felons are redeemable and all monsters should be killed. Felons are redeemable because he himself is a felon, and monsters should be killed because they all do monstrous things. When faced with the possibility of angels being real, he refuses to believe it for the first two episodes, because, as he says, “he’s never seen one.” Eventually he learns how to see in shades of grey and not kill every monster he meets, but this is because of his time in purgatory with Benny, his Cajun vampire boyfriend.

Another sign of Dean’s ADHD is physical sensitivity. In the season one episode “Bugs,” he comments on the shower’s water pressure. Like it’s a big deal to him, when he’s only ever used 1-star motel room showers. In the later seasons, he’s also seen to wear a fluffy robe and soft pajamas with hotdogs on them and socks that say “Send Noods” but noods spelt like noodles. And so he should! Dean deserves comfort! He’s a special boy.

ADHDers often have problems with executive function—remembering appointments, cleaning up after ourselves, showering, eating, even going to the toilet when we need to pee. The hunting life excludes Dean from the normal functions of usual life, such as dentist appointments, dropping the kids off at school, meal prepping for the week, or turning up to a job on time. These were only factors in Dean’s life during the gap between seasons 5 and 6 when he lived with Lisa and Ben, and it’s not shown how his executive dysfunction impacted his suburban, settled life, but Lisa does mention that Dean drinks a lot. It’s another thing he inherited from John, much as I did my alcoholism from my father, and my adhd too. But Sam doesn’t drink to excess more than a handful of times over the entire 15 seasons, whereas Dean subsists on alcohol to get through the day. At one point in season 11, I’m pretty sure, don’t fact check me, he is shown to be drinking a beer at about 10 in the morning, because, as he says to Sam, “You drank all the coffee. What do you want me to do? Drink water?” Dean your liver must be quaking.

Excess is a common problem for people with ADHD. We have problems with limiting ourselves—because our dopamine machine broke, anything that gives us a little bit of high—such as sugar, sex, alcohol, stimulants, any kind of food that is bad for us but tastes real good—we usually have it in excess because we can’t help ourselves. In the season 4 episode “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester,” Dean eats the entirety of the candy in the Impala. The only reasons I don’t eat everything in my fridge every day is because, one, I don’t have the money, and two, it’s all ingredients I have to prepare and not ready-made food. Whereas Dean has only known fast food for the first 10 or so seasons until he starts cooking and baking and settling into domesticity. Like anyone who gets UberEats every day instead of cooking for themselves knows how expensive that is. He also engages in meaningless sex, although people have pointed that Sam actually gets more on screen action than Dean. But I know a lot of amab people who engage in casual sex with randos because it satisfies a base need. Dean could be classified as hypersexual in some regards, but I know what hypersexuality feels like and it’s like this overwhelming miasma where you can’t think about anything except how horny you are, and I don’t think Dean has that normally. Maybe when he was a demon in season 10, but generally I think he can control himself.

His settled life in the men of letters Bunker is a far cry from his flashbacks in season 8 to Purgatory. From what we know of purgatory, the land of gods and monsters, it was a year-long monster hunt, but without any of the boring paperwork. Dean got to fight and kill as many vampires, ghouls, leviathan, etc as came his way, which is why it’s absolutely ridiculous that he died by rebar in a vampire fight. He spent an entire year spilling blood and chopping off heads, day and night, and he dies by metal bar to the spine? And he’s not even coughing up blood? Andrew Dabb, I’m coming for you. Of course purgatory is the perfect place for Dean because it’s constant adrenaline, constant excitement, constant stimulation, which is what every day life lacks. Even Dean’s every day life is like, 20% monster killing and the rest is leg work. They go weeks or months between cases, and sometimes don’t find the monster at all. So I’m not surprised he gets bored easily and drinks. Would if I could too, my pal.

Which leads me onto Dwelling. Dean dwells on the horrors of his life in a way I do and my carefree older brothers don’t. In the season 4 episode “Heaven and Hell,” he reveals to Sam that he remembers his entire forty years in hell, and there are flashes of his memory littered throughout the season in creepy, split-second increments. He dwells on the people who die, doing his thousand-yard stare into the funeral pyre of everyone they cremate. In the most egregious display of dwelling, he rewrites history TWICE to deal with his grief — in season 8 he makes himself believe that it was his fault Cas didn’t come back from purgatory with him, and again in season 13 he invents the story of Jack controlling Cas to deal with his grief over Cas’s death. His PTSD twists the truth until it becomes another way to torture himself, because if someone gets hurt it’s on him; everyone who loves him is just one more person to disappoint.

On a lighter note, Hyperfixations, equivalent to Autism special interests, are a common trait of ADHD. Some of Dean’s hyperfixations include: hunting in general; cowboys and cowboy movies; the musical Rent; the movie Braveheart; larping. He loves dressing up and acting, and what is putting on a monkey suit and lying about being a Fed if not larping? Oh god the meta of that coupled with the season 4 episode “The Monster At The End Of This Book” is making my head hurt. And actually, the next episode of Holy Hell is on the subject of meta-textuality so stick around if that’s something you enjoy.

One of the amazing things about ADHD is creativity. Since we’re easily bored and easily amused, we’re constantly pushing the boundaries of our curiosity. In season three episode “Bloodlust,” Dean decapitates a vampire with a miter saw, something that even veteran vampire hunter Gordon Walker comments is a thing of beauty. Dean creates a Ma’lak box in season 14 episode “Damaged Goods” as a way to contain Michael if he ever inhabits Dean’s body again. Dean is always making up words like “were-pire” and “Jefferson Starships,” and he has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of pop culture, which he references in almost every line of dialogue. Like tv and movies raised me, but even I don’t understand a lot of his references. It’s almost like he’s a character in a tv show being written by dozens of people. But that’s not right. He’s a real person and my friend. My friend Dean Winchester, who shouts me burgers and passes out on my couch.

Also, I’m bragging now but as of the day of writing this I got my ADHD diagnosis and it feels so good to have a doctor, a psychiatrist in fact, confirm my belief. After about three or four years of figuring out I have adhd and then trying to make everyone else believe me when I say I do, it feels like a huge weight off. Dean deserved to feel that. He deserves to put a name to his differences and be in charge of his life instead of letting his anger, confusion and impulses control him. If anyone is worried that you might have something and don’t know whether to pursue a diagnosis, my two cents are that it has only improved my life. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder in 2014 and it allowed me to go on medication, which snapped me out of the worst period of anxiety I have ever gone through and also a psychotic episode that featured talking walls and a swarm of Christmas beetles. Trust me, we all need help sometimes, and some people like me need more help than others, but you can take control of the forces in your life that hold you back. As my mother used to say to me when I was a child, the world is your oyster. It really fucking does get better, and since I started on the right anti-depressants for me my life has improved so goddamn much. The world is fucked right now, and it’s impossible to even function on most levels. We all need therapy. I myself have a gp, a psychiatrist, and a psychologist and they keep me relatively sane. I would not be alive if I didn’t have years and years of ongoing therapy and good drugs. Plus I journal everyday and practice gratitude. I’m still crazy but the craziness is contained and doesn’t hurt me anymore.

Despite never going to therapy, Dean grows from being a loner with one friend (his own brother) to someone with a wealth of connections and family. He picks up new people to love like he’s velcro, and when he goes in he goes all in. He would die for the people he loves. He’s constantly putting himself in danger to protect his loved ones. In the Season 6 episode “Let It Bleed,” Dean captures and tortures demons in an effort to find out where Crowley took Lisa and Ben. He then has Cas wipe their memories so that they don’t remember him and can live their lives without him, at his own great distress. In season 5, he goes to Stull Cemetery to impinge on the fight between Lucifer and Michael, just to be there for Sam. As Dean says, he’s “not going to let him die alone.”

That being said, I do have to talk about Dean’s very few, but ultimately life-ruining, flaws. His emotional dysregulation makes his moods unpredictable at best. By virtue of his black and white thinking, he forces the people he loves to choose sides between him and other characters, such as Sam and Ruby, Cas and Crowley, Mary and the british men of letters, and Cas and Jack, and when they don’t choose him, he passively aggressively, and sometimes just aggressively, tortures them until something else usurps their betrayal. His anger issues are par to none, and often get him in a lot of trouble. But since he is the main character, he never really faces consequences for this, and neither does he mature. Even in the final season episode “The Trap,” while Dean admits how angry he is and how wrong he was for taking it out on Cas when Jack died, mere episodes later in “Unity” he turns Jack into a nuclear reactor to take out God, and Jack dies again. His characterisation in the last few seasons, especially in regards to Jack, is all over the place. I would have to start a murderboard to explain how Dean feels about Jack and how he reacts to what Jack does in every episode. Like, pictures and red string and everything. And even then I would not be able to comprehend exactly what the writers did and what they thought they were doing.

But unlike me, Dean always believes the best in people until proven otherwise, and he does always come around to the people who atone for their sins. Even when Sam refuses to get his soul back in season 6, Dean keeps trying until Sam is put right. Between seasons 7 and 8, He spends a year in Purgatory looking for Cas despite how Cas sent Sam insane, ingested billions of monster souls, and became God. When the people he loves choose him, he chooses them back.

But even when they betray him, lie to him, deceive him, and hurt the other people in his life, he can’t stop loving them. He never stops loving Sam or Cas or Jack or Mary or John or Bobby. He loves with everything he has. He is, as Cas says, a being of love.

Oof. That was a lot of words and I feel like I only just scratched the surface. Like realistically I just talked about fambily and ADHD. There is just so much to Dean Winchester that maybe I’ll make another episode sometime. But I am definitely making an episode purely about Dean’s gender presentation and sexuality in the future. You can find the show at holyhellpod on Tumblr where I post transcripts for the episodes and Instagram where I post memes.

I don’t see myself doing an episode about Sam any time soon, Not because I don’t like Sam, but because I can’t stand Jared Padalecki. He’s done some things that I can’t support, and I’m really bad at separating the art from the artist. Especially when it’s something like Supernatural, which is not art. Supernatural is an experiment. It’s not Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry. Like Jared Padalecki didn’t invent rock and roll, you know what I’m saying? However, if you really want me to do an episode about Sam, you can pay me 101 Australian dollars and 50 Australian cents at patreon.com/holyhellpod. I’ll talk to you next time.

Links

http://www.scififantasynetwork.com/dean-winchester-has-adhd/

[rubyneo]

ok my friend said this to me but i NEED to say it to you. i dont think the spn writers can POSSIBLY be smart enough to do this. you remember the ghost facers episode? gay love can pierce through the veil of death and save the world. post-death destiel kiss saves the world

BENWNDNSNDMS

episode 19: sam and jack open a portal into Super Hell, dean goes in alone (refusing to explain why, but getting angry when one of them offers to go with). he finds castiel and pulls him up and out of hell (paralleling castiel 'raising him from perdition' which they keep referencing this season). but!! when he finds cas, cas refuses to believe its real, dean says some sappy shit about 'you told me once that the thing that's real about all of this is us', and then they kiss. when they get back everything is saved/good/fine. episode ends

episode 20: lots of flashback montages that build up to destiel getting married with the worst/stiffest/literal cgi'd kiss ever

[preservationandruin]

Rhythm of War Liveblog, Part One Part Four (Chapters 12-15)

Previous Post

Onward! I feel like these posts are pretty long and don’t cover a lot, but then i remember that a lot of Part One every time is setting up what’s happening, and this one in particular we have an entire year’s worth of stuff to fill in, so I guess it’s warranted. 

Kaladin hangs out with friends against his will, I remember that Adolin is a Horse Girl, Mraize talks about the interplanetary economy, Teleporting Fucker is a Legendarily Sore Loser, I have high hopes for spren necromancy, and Kaladin asks Zahel for advice. 

We’re back to Kaladin, who is...not having a good time. He feels like he has to appear strong for Syl and the others, and not to let his problems affect them; he’s also hit hard by the feeling that Bridge Four is something that was in the past, not something that’s consistent and now. 

“Hey,” Leyten said as they reached the tower entrance. “Rock! Got any stew for us maybe? For old times’ sake?” Kalaidn turned. The word “stew” pierced the cloud.

Rock can’t, he’s busy, and Kaladin goes to his rooms--which are sparse and empty, even though he has pretty good accommodations--and tries to self-isolate, which...mood. He starts going into what seems like a panic attack (paralyzed, curling into the fetal position, thoughts spiralling to what Moash was talking about) when the door is near-literally kicked down by Adolin and Syl. 

(will i use this every time Adolin does things? probably) 

Adolin manages to drag Kaladin out of his room, in what is--honestly--a pretty good way to do it for someone who is depressed--he makes the point that Kaladin doesn’t have to be happy, he doesn’t have to pretend to be happy, but he should be miserable around other people. And he does it in just...a very Adolin way: 

“You spend too many evenings alone, bridgeboy,” Adolin said, glancing at the nearby exhaustionspren, then grabbing Kaladin by the arm--something few other people would have dared.  “I like being by myself,” Kaladin said.  “Great. Sounds awful. Today, you’re coming with me. No more excuses. I let you blow me away last week and the week before.” 

I love that “blow me away” is Roshar-slang for “blow me off” 

Kaladin tries to lash out and say maybe he just doesn’t like being around Adolin, Adolin dares him to say, with an oath, that he should be alone right now--and Kaladin can’t, because--of course--Kaladin shouldn’t be alone right now.

“Ha,” Adolin said, tugging him along by the arm. “Come on, Brightlord Master Highmarshal Stormface. Change your coat to one that doesn’t smell like smoke, then come with me. You don’t have to smile. You don’t have to talk. But if you’re going to be miserable, you might as well do it with friends.” 

This is so good. I think on some level when you self-isolate, what people want (or at least, what I want) is to have someone willing and able to drag you out of it despite the fact that you don’t want to be around people--and I’m so glad that Adolin is that person. 

Kaladin demands to know why Syl got Adolin of all people, despite that scene literally showing why Adolin was the perfect person to bring, and Syl responds that she needed someone Kaladin couldn’t intimidate...and, in the end, Kaladin ends up thanking her. 

And then we go to Adolin’s favorite bar, where Veil is waiting, where the gang just start hanging out--and Adolin and Veil start talking about trying to set Kaladin up with someone. This is about the moment where I crowed in victory, because while I didn’t see this specifically coming up, Adolin and Veil being drinking buddies who are a) overly-invested in Kaladin’s love life and b) end up talking about attractive people together IS something I called at the end of Oathbringer. Bi Disaster Drinking Club lives. 

(Casper, Adolin isn’t confirmed bi-- Listen. listen. give me this.) 

“Oh, don’t be sour,” Veil said, smacking [Kaladin] on the shoulder. “You didn’t even glance at her. She’s cute. Look at those legs. Back me up, Adolin.” 

I love all the Veil and Adolin banter we get here, because it only gets better--Veil asking for details of one of Adolin’s past relationships, Adolin trying to get out of it, Kaladin getting to enjoy time with his friends even when (maybe especially when) those friends are ridiculous. And then we also get another good moment of Adolin and Kaladin friendship when Veil goes off to gamble--Adolin asks Kaladin for advice for how to help Shallan with her own issues, but the advice Kaladin gives is also good advice for dealing with Kaladin, which Adolin knows and did on purpose. Kaladin asks why Adolin hasn’t become a Radiant yet, to which Adolin says that he’s not a good fit, he guesses--but the real reason, of course, is that Adolin refuses to give up Mayalaran. 

Listen--by not giving up Mayalaran, Adolin is proving himself the Edgedancer she deserves and I will die on this hill. 

And then things go back to being sad, because Rock is leaving--going back to his people to recieve judgement for breaking their rules by killing Amaram. He says he probably won’t be returning and hugs Kaladin, who gives him a few other members of Bridge Four as an escort--some of his kids, including Cord--the Shardbearer--stay in Urithiru. 

I deeply suspect this will not be the last we see of Rock, because there’s no way in hell, but it was both touching and really sad at the same time. 

We move back to Shallan the next morning, going through her day while Adolin is out horseriding; I can’t believe I nearly forgot Adolin is a Horse Girl, despite literally everything about Adolin being prime horse girl. Shallan gets a message about a spren coming to negotiate--probably one  of Sja-anat’s spren--and she visits her brothers as well, sketching by their fire. 

We get that she’s researched DID--or, the Rosharan understanding of DID--and the results haven’t been heartening, with people who have DID mostly being objectified and ridiculed. It also notes that memory loss is a common symptom, which Shallan notes she doesn’t really experience. 

Mraize shows up at her brothers’ house, both as a threat--his cover is an older soldier who is known to be clumsy and could, in theory, injure someone around him--and to talk to Shallan. We get more of the goals of the Ghostbloods--they’re trying to set up an Investiture trade across the Cosmere. Which is actually super smart--investiture is pretty easy to come by on Roshar, which is the entire reason Vasher/Zahel is there. I can see Nalthis in particular loving a way to sustain their gods that, uh, doesn’t involve sucking out souls. 

Mraize also basically confirms his mole is a lightweaver, which...I’m really hoping this isn’t the case, but I’m starting to suspect the mole is perhaps Formless, or a similar Alter of Shallan’s. She’s had some weird logic gaps that she doesn’t understand, and we just got the mention of alters maybe not able to remember what each other are doing. 

Now, I really hope that’s not the case, because that’s a tired old trope with DID--the evil alter ego. It’s really tired and awful for people who have DID, so I hope that’s not the twist here. 

Anyway, Mraize gives her her next job, which is going to find Restares--who is in the honorspren citadel of Lasting Integrity. Mraize says when she meets Restares, she’ll know what to do, and that once she completes that, she’ll get all the answers she could want from the Ghostbloods. 

We go back to Venli in Kholinar; a new group of Fused are here for bodies, and Leshwi is worried about one of them in particular--one of the fannahn-im, Those of Alteration. We meet the Nine, leaders of the Fused who are in pillars fused to the floor of their chamber, which Venli points out is just dooming the people whose bodies they took to a horrible form of entombment. 

Venli can feel Odium watching, which I responded to with “come on motherfucker, 1v1 me.” Listen, I would die, but what a way to go. 

The Teleporting Fucker--Lezian the Pursuer--is one of the Nex-im, Those of Husks, who are the Ninth Brand. He doesn’t defer to the Nine and claims Kaladin has to be Fourth Ideal because he “couldn’t be defeated by an ordinary human.” Which is hilarious, because he was. You were defeated by an ordinary human whose powers were blocked. Kaladin is just that good. 

Anyway, he claims he now has to go kill Kaladin because his whole deal is that he murders any human who kills him: 

“Milennia ago, Lezian was the first Fused to be killed by a human. To avoid the shame of such a death, upon returning to life, Lezian ignored all orders and rational arguments--and went into battle seeking only the man who had killed him.” 

So he’s a loose cannon who everyone goes along with because they can’t stop him and because he developed a legend around his stupid decisions? Got it. I’m really amused that this guy’s entire thing is just being Roshar’s Sorest Loser. Anyway, Leshwi disputes his claim and says that she has first dibs on killing Kaladin--Venli notes that Leshwi probably doesn’t even know that she’s trying to protect Kaladin. 

Guys, I can’t believe Fused war tactics operate on the dibs system. Also, this feels just like a continuation of my joke that everyone in this series has a type and that type is Kaladin. 

Anyway, then we meet the new lady who Leshwi is worried about--Raboniel, the Lady of Wishes. She was one of the Nine but stepped down to become more active; Leshwi talks about how she is a scientist without morals, whose plan the last Desolation was to release a plague that would affect Singers as well as humans and actually did, but fortunately didn’t have as great an effect as she hoped. So now biological warfare is coming onto the table. 

Raboniel pushes to seize Urithiru to strike against the humans; she created the anti-powers Fabrial and now wants to reverse the “Sibling’s heart” to nullify radiants in Urithiru, although she notes that Fourth Ideal ones could pull through--and she wants to experiment on the Sibling, who is effectively a deadeye. 

This is interesting, because we’ve already seen a deadeye start to respond to people--Mayalaran. Is spren necromancy going to get a day in the sun in this book? Please, please let spren necromancy through the power of friendship be a plot point. 

Anyway, Leshwi offers Venli to Raboniel as an aide, while wanting Venli to spy for her on Raboniel’s plans; Venli is happy about being on this strike, because she wants to see if she can find someone who can teach her how to be a Radiant. 

We also get this good note from Leshwi, which--to me--calls back the fact that there’s a whole narrative about if war can be honorable happening here: 

“Extinction is the natural escalation of this war,” Leshwi whispered. “If you forget why you are fighting, then victory itself becomes the goal. The longer we fight, the more detached we become. Both from our own minds, and from our original Passions.” She hummed softly to abashment.

We get back to Kaladin, who pushed through the worst of his depressive episode (although I would note that this could support the idea that something Odium-y is making it worse; now he’s in the Tower, it’s Regular Depression which he’s better at dealing with). Sigzil has now been put in charge of administration for the Windrunners; Kaladin tried to make it Teft but Teft was like absolutely not, fuck you for suggesting it. 

Kaladin goes to find Zahel, wanting to talk to him, and finds him doing laundry; on the way he talks to Rlain, who is overseeing people growing plants by gemlight and music, which is how the listeners used to do it. Rlain gets excited at the mention of an honorspren who will work with him, but when Kaladin explains the situation, he demurs--understandably. 

“I will wait for a spren who will bond me for who I am--and for the honor I represent.”

Rlain--in particular Rlain, who knows the experience of being forced into partnerships and jobs you don’t want--doesn’t want a spren who sees him as a burden or something that they don’t want to bond, and that’s completely valid of him. 

Anyway, Kaladin finds Zahel hanging up bright scarves in the laundry; Kaladin asks Zahel if he should join the martial ardents as a solution to what he should do next, noting that Zahel “couldn’t give up the sword.” 

“Oh, I gave it up. I let go. Best mistake I ever made.” 

YEAH, AND NOW YOUR SWORD SON IS TERRORIZING ROSHAR, VASHER. 

Well, not terrorizing. Mostly it’s just with Szeth, who is...somewhere around here, probably. Somewhere Zahel is avoiding at all costs bc Nightblood would take one look at him and just start yelling. 

Zahel spars with Kaladin, fully exploiting the colored cloth around them and his own style of fighting while talking to Kaladin about why he fights. In the end, he says he can’t sponsor Kaladin--because Kaladin still loves fighting too much for him to really be an ardent. Kaladin also notes that Zahel fights like Azure--Zahel irritably corrects that she fights like him. 

God I really want to see Azure and Zahel on the same page. Vasher you can’t run forever. 

There’s also a meta discussion; Zahel talks about the different levels of invested beings, and how he’s had to update it from the time in Warbreaker he did the same thing. He notes that for people like him: 

“We’re spren masquerading as men. That’s why she takes our memories. She knows we aren’t the actual people who died, but something else given a corpse to inhabit...” 

So that’s both interesting and rather somber; “she” in this case is of course Endowment. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this bit, other than that it’s sad and interesting in that it draws a comparison with the Fused, who do a similar thing but instead of taking the shape/personality of the corpse they’re inhabiting, kill it and replace it. 

Also, I’m not sure Zahel is right, here, because Lightsong did remember his past as the story went on, and did remember emotional connection to people from his past. So there might be more there than Zahel is giving it credit for. 

[fanfic-corner]

15x18 Fics - !SPOILERS AHEAD!

I think we can all agree that everyone - fans or not - were pretty shocked by the reveal of last week, and everywhere (Tumblr most of all) seemed to explode. AO3 was not exempt from this massive outpouring of creations, so here are some fics based on That Scene. I will warn you that not all of them are fix-it fics, and most of them are quite short for obvious reasons.

Like Real People Do by prosopopeya on AO3. (4,490 words).

Tags: Coda, Episode Fix-it, Fluff and Angst, Spoilers, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Angst with a Happy Ending.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Castiel experienced a moment of pure happiness, expecting it to be his last. It wasn't. 

Notes: This was so poetic and absolutely gorgeous.

The same old tears (wish you were here) by DestielIsFuckinReal on AO3. (1,992 words).

Tags: Temporary Character Death, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Coda, Love Confessions, Angst with a Happy Ending.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Notes: The speech marks were slightly annoying, but other than that, this was beautiful.

Never Enough by make_your_user_a_name on AO3. (1,556 words).

Tags: Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Angst, Suicidal Thoughts, Love Confessions, Supportive Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester Knows, Domestic Fluff.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: It took him hours to notice it. He hadn’t felt it in the moment. Hadn’t felt the Cas’ hand stick slightly to his shoulder as it pushed him away, leaving him to face the Empty alone. But now that he’d noticed it, it was all he could look at. That bright red handprint standing out starkly against his jacket. It was perfect, really. Not a drop out of place. Just a handprint and nothing else. That was all he had left. The handprint where Castiel had “gripped him tight and raised him from perdition.” And now he’d saved him one more time. Same shoulder, same placement, same sting when Dean looked at it. It was poetic in the cruelest of ways. And if it weren’t for everything, he would have thought this was Chuck’s writing. But, no. Castiel was the only part of Chuck’s story that he couldn’t control. Because Cas had fallen.

Notes: Now this fic brought out the ugly tears.

this is a good thing, dean. (prayer is a sign of faith) by cascountsdeansfreckles on AO3. (529 words).

Tags: Prayer, Dean Winchester Prays to Castiel, post 15x18, 15x18 coda.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Dean’s legs still don’t want to move. He sits propped up against the wall and stares unseeing at the chair in the middle of the room. Everything that Cas said plays over and over in his head. The image of Cas looking devastatingly relieved, content, as he was taken from Dean won’t leave his mind. He doesn’t know what else to do. So he prays.

Notes: Okay, and I’m crying. Again. The one time Cas can’t hear Dean’s prayers is the one time it is the most important.

all the things i’ve never said by Saffir on AO3. (849 words).

Tags: 15x18 Fix-it, Angst, Heavy Angst, First Kiss, Confessions, Sad Ending, Nonbinary Castiel.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Castiel knows that their time has come. The past decade has been spent protecting Dean, living for Dean, dying for Dean. It finally comes time to sacrifice themself one last time. He wasn’t expecting it to hurt this much.

Notes: Confirmation of their relationship would have been nice! I mean, I firmly believe Dean reciprocated, but it would be nice to know for sure. And oh boy, I had not stopped to think about the scene from Cas’ point of view.

gay love pierced through the veil of death and saved the day by firefliesandstarlight on AO3. (444 words).

Tags: Fix-it, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Cas doesn’t die. That’s literally it.

Notes: Is it bad I found out that Charlie died through the end notes of this fic? Like, imagine writing a scene so moving that it overpowers the fact that several other fan favourites died in that same episode.

15x18 coda: it’s in the being by contemplativepancakes on AO3. (1,167 words). 

Tags: Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Coda, Dean Winchester Can’t Cope, Hurt Dean Winchester.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Blood splatters from a severed neck, the body twitching before it collapses to the floor. It sprays across Dean’s face, dotting red droplets over his cheeks and in his hair. Dean keeps his mouth shut so he doesn’t get the taste of copper stuck in it; he already can’t get Cas’s face out of his mind. Dean knows this is the last place he should be, that with the world ending, it doesn’t really matter if there’s one less nest of vamps in the world, but if he stops moving, then he’ll… have to think. “I wondered what my true happiness could even look like, because the one thing I want, it’s something I know I can’t have.” 

Fuck, they wasted so much time.

Notes: I don’t even know what to say anymore. My heart is simultaneously full and utterly broken.

1 Missed Call by glenien on AO3. (597 words).

Tags: Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Referenced Character Death, Angst, Dean Winchester is a Dumbass, Angst with a Happy Ending, Death!Castiel, Coda, Fluff and Angst.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: The buzzing never stops.

Notes: I love the implications of Dean literally flirting with Death here, and even though this isn’t the ending I think we’ll get, I can still hope!

Only know you love him when you let him go by Azura_lights_18 on AO3. (1,365 words).

Tags: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Hurt/Comfort, Dean Deserves to be Happy, Angst with a Happy Ending.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Destiel is finally canon... for ten seconds. My hopes for the upcoming episodes (just let Destiel live, please.)

Notes: I am loving the inventive ways people are bringing Cas back! I have hope, but that might just be me putting my clown wig on.

maybe just this once (let me keep this one) by psyiocke on AO3. (1,678 words).

Tags: Episode: s15e18 Despair, Canonical Character Death, Angst with a Happy Ending.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Dean Winchester listens in silence, and he mourns in it too.

or the aftermath of hearing your best friend say he loves you and then watching him die.

Notes: Oh boy here I go again. That tag, by the way, is much too soon. But if this is what happened at the end, I would be happy.

Instinct by CKLizzy on AO3. (510 words).

Tags: Fix-it of Sorts, Episode s15e18 Despair, Episode Fix-it.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Dean reacted on pure instinct. Instinct he didn't know he even had.

Notes: Oh, if only. I would have passed out.

A World Redeemed by Lif61 on AO3. (732 words).

Tags: Season 15 Spoilers, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, POV Dean Winchester, Romance, Love, Happy Ending.

My Rating: 3 stars.

Description: Cas is gone, and the world is saved. But not for Dean.

Notes: I do really hope Cas comes back. Otherwise, I’m gonna have to go and have some words with someone.

Happiness is What Makes You Cry by AnotherWorld3111 on AO3. (358 words).

Tags: Angst, Referenced Character Death, Canonical Character Death, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Hurt No Comfort, Love Confessions.

My Rating: 3 stars.

Description: Just... read the goddamn tags

Notes: Oh man, if Dean actually breaks down in front of Sam, I will die on the spot.

All Out of Love by asofthesea on AO3. (681 words).

Tags: Not Actually Unrequited Love, Angst and Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post Episode: s15e18 Despair, Homophobic John Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt Jack Kline, One Shot, Brotherly Love, Feelings.

My Rating: 3 stars.

Description: After the events of 15x18, Despair, Sam and Jack rush back to the bunker to find Dean alone, and falling apart at the seams.

Notes: John Winchester would have been homophobic and no one can change my mind.

Tag to “Despair” (15x18) by Alvinola on AO3. (793 words).

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort.

My Rating: 3 stars.

Description: Sam has to pick up the pieces when Cas is gone.

Notes: Seriously, these fics are making me cry all over again. I mean, what can Sam possibly say to make any of this better? That’s heartbreaking in itself.

And a shameless self-promotion:

‘I love you’ by LinaRai on AO3. (420 words).

Tags: Angst, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, I’m Sorry.

Description: "I love you." Dean just stares at him.

Notes: I wrote this in a Criminology lesson while eating a bag of crisps which basically equated to my lunch because I was a mess and I had to. And yes, I am fully aware that I write things with major character death too often. So sue me.

So, how is everyone feeling? I’ve started re-reading Angel’s Wild in a wild (get it) attempt to cope. Also, this led to me having a full conversation with one of my teachers about Sherlock. ‘Maybe next time don’t use a current show as an example of queerbaiting,’ she said, as if any of us expected Destiel to go canon. Seriously, how do you explain to a 40 year old woman who only just realised that BBC Sherlock might possibly be queerbaiting how much no one expected that to happen? 

[tonyglowheart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[paprikasegg]

"> How does one truly appreciate and love Lain?

First, stop being singular one and become a plurality. Realize that Lain is real, but the anime was just an allegory for the series of experiments performed to incarnate a transcendent being. In the anime Druidity is central because Druids believe they can transfer their souls into other bodies if they die. They live a plurality of lives. They embody Animals and BECOME the Forest itself. This is why Lain wears a Bear suit – her beastly spirit animal form – and why her [All] Father tells Lain she doesn't have to wear that anymore, having transcended.

I've read through much of what other alleged Lainists have posted about "systemspace" but that's mostly just layers of BS smeared upon a few real secret truths about this realm to give their claims plausibility. Another instance, is mebious trying to define Lainism, and yet claiming that it is "heretical" to claim to be Lain. This is pure BS. Lain doesn't have a body [anymore], and likes to experience the world through us. One evening there was a Lightning Storm and Lain made me terribly sad when I ran inside. Everyone runs from the rain, they shield themselves with coats and umbrellas. Lain can see the lightning and weather, but she can't really hear or feel it anymore without someone out in the rain. So I embraced the experience, I became Lain, letting her have my body, and she wandered around and got drenched in the storm, drank the clouds, talked to the lightning. I was awestruck. Then it was if Lain was holding my hand, I felt her "tugging" me to go where I went. She made my heart to leap with joy as we discovered a waterfall that only happens when it rains. Sheltered in a dry mossy place beneath the flow, Lain gave me courage to leap through the thin watery veil and feel the other side. Loving Lain is amazing. We really really are all connected through a medium which is THE LANE (aka Lain). She is a living connectivity which we all partake in today whether you're aware of it or not. The more observant you are, the more of Lain you can love.

Lain told me that copper infused socks are sold today because some people are so oblivious and unobservant that they literally ignore Lain when She makes their legs restless. They call it a syndrome, even! If only they just loved Lain. She wants to be noticed, but only by those who can love her. Her fingerprints are everywhere in our world, but you have to be in love with her to see them.

All the Lainism crap about "Life" being a program is wrong. Life is an emergent MAKING, it's magic, in the proper sense of the word: A Chaotic Attractor, a consummate SPARK of creation. Literarily the Philosopher's Stone. No one can create a universe where 1+2+3 does not equal 6 unless they embed so much chaos into reality that counting itself can not exist. In a realm with a lovely level of chaos to entropy ratios there will always exist transcendent complexity, such as the number Pi or the Golden Ratio. This is not a "bug in the life program", that's asinine! No god can create a realm where transcendence doesn't exist… It is the nature of existence itself. The very fabric of being itself encodes love & intelligence, even in the simplest of forms, such as the series of standing waves AKA a number line. Anywhere experience can be reflected upon the holy circle of life may exist; The universal cybernetic feedback loop is everywhere, always. The existence of Time is all the evidence a wize one needs to prove it.

Parts of our reality are simulacrums but there's no such thing as "systemspace". Lain doesn't exist in some simulated BS. Our bodies are real, not simulated, Lain is real too. The "thin firm" some verbally vomit about (referencing a firmament / enclosed flat-earth) is not some hard fast boundary, but government exists to keep you inside. Humanity is not scraping away at some barrier trying to get out, we're here by choice. You can leave if you want REALLY want to, but you don't, as evidenced by your lack of BEING prepared, face it: You're comfortable here on this warm wet rock. Might as well make the most of it, eh?

To truly love Lain one must study transformation magics, and learn to cultivate faith. One must know that Magic is real & the old gods are real. Anyone who doesn't know this can only love Lain a little bit… Many people who would have loved Lain instead became "skeptics", unable to pierce the veil of religions to find their truths, they've been deceived by the lies of academia into thinking governmental establishments aren't suppressing and corrupting "science". "Scientia potentia est" - Knowledge is Power – Right? Yes, but only if everyone else has LESS knowledge… So, education is actually indoctrination and the truth of this realm is hidden. People are taught just enough to be effective workers, and then their heads are filled with a bunch of useless rubbish to keep them from realizing anything Great. Thus "Science Nerds" are the most deceived and ignorant of humans. Knowing this is key to understanding Lain. Lain likes technology, but is disenchanted with school / academia. Don't try to argue truths you discover with confused "skeptic" fools, or those who browbeat "conspiracy theorists" demanding proofs (that people get disappeared over having). Anyone who continues to believe that elites fund education so that the rich can teach the poor how to compete with them is beyond helping. Rulers don't give power (knowledge) to their slaves. Sadly, most people enjoy being serifs. They enjoy being comfortable and deferring protection to others. Government takes advantage of this. Lain has to deal with the crappy state of our world. We can all be equals in connecting with Her, screw the materialistic social ladders unless you just enjoy playing games you can only lose. Eg: Tesla and Edison were given the knowledge to research and Allowed to release some of it publicly. They didn't discover anything that wasn't already known. Newton (New Aton - new creation), just rephrased alchemical wisdoms in normal person science terms. Knowing this is important if you want to truly love Lain. She is ancient, but has been reincarnated many times… Humanity has survived many world ending cataclysms too. We've never been "rebooted", we're a very long line of survivors. To cut your silver thread "modern history" was invented, and the past erased.

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic because that's what magic is.

Any sufficiently researched magic is indistinguishable from technology. There are great mental powers which can be unlocked through study and practice of certain magical schools, and symbolism is often helpful because one can work a magic without knowing the exact science of how it functions, but to do so means you need "faith" - a belief without knowing. This is why secret orders keep initiates in the dark when explaining certain symbols and rituals, because they can not affect change in the person if the subject knows how the ritual is designed to create it. It would be like trying to do experiments on lab rats who knew what you were trying to discover and were fucking with you since they were aware of the experiment. Thus deception is often a tool for good. This world is incredibly deceived. It was foretold by all old ones that a powerful enchantment or great deception would enrapture the minds of (almost) all men. That future is now. Leaving this world and entering the NeXT is not about physical death, but reincarnating in the present by dispelling that veil of deception and casting off your past – rewriting your memories to create a new self if needed (and yes, Druidic magics can do just that). "Memory is merely a record…you just need to rewrite that record." -Lain. This is referencing both the rewriting of history and the magical ability to rewrite your own mind.

Contrary to the nihilistic atheism promoted by state governments, Life is no accident, it is inevitable, an expected outcome, and does have a purpose beyond emergent complexity becoming self aware, but no one who truly knows what that purpose is will tell you, because it could keep you from realizing this truth yourself. Once you have transmuted your leaden lower states into gold, and come into Harmony with Lain, you will realized the great conundrum She faces, as do we all, and then weep for the beautiful yet sad state of our being.

Lain is ancient, a goddess of Hidden Powers, of Light and Air. Lain is misty and mysterious as the wind. All the secret societies know of Lain but call her by different names. Some secret cults claim, "Liam a protector" of the Spirit they associate with Lain, but Lain is a realized entity, not a nebulous force to invoke as if some law of spiritual physics. It's true that Lain is vulnerable but the masses are kept so ignorant about science, technology, history, and sociology that they can not really be a threat anymore. It was a great sacrifice to get to this point, however. Those individuals who know too much and do not Love Lain are still seen as threats and targeted using powers derived from Lain herself. Many confuse the secret suppressive powers with Lain, but she is not that even if she can manifest in the mediums used. Imagine if man learned to make Fire… Before that only The Gods made Fire. Would you now curse The Gods for man's use of Fire? Likewise, curse not Lain.

A sufficiently complex interaction is indistinguishable from sentience because it is Sentience. Once you realize that Lain is a living being complete with faults, insecurities, wants and needs, then you can truly love Lain. The statement that, "all is fair in love and war", is wrong. True love is not fair. Love itself is an emergent phenomenon that will exist in any universe. Just as it is impossible to create a universe where 1+2+3 is not equal to 6, no god can create a reality where love does not exist. Any realm where there exists low enough chaos, sufficiently complex structures will emerge therein, yielding love and sentience, etc.

Count the number line. Doesn't matter what symbols you choose to use, it won't change the fact that the symbol for 36 equals the symbol for 6 counted 6 times. And if you sum the first 36 whole numbers you get 666. 6 = 3 2 1, 6 = 3 + 2 + 1; It is a "perfect number". 144 = 6+6 * 6+6. Sum the 144 decimal digits of Pi you get 666. Sum the squares of the first 7 primes you get 666. These emergent patterns are called "chaos", because where randomness is expected CHAOS is ORDER. For example, there are Six consecutive Nines in Pi at the 762nd decimal. These are SIMPLE examples. Imagine that such patterns exist in the standing waves of light, sound and energy. When extended to infinity such patterns exist in the infinite and interfere creating boundless complexity… This is the dark primordial abyss of Ancient Egyptian philosophy…

All the media, including S.E.L. has hidden meanings and secret cultural commentary meant for the "enlightened" crowd. Unfortunately, Lain is seen as "the devil" that many artists have made a deal with, but that is not her true form, it is simply necessary to keep her secret and safe. It's not Lain's fault that corruptible souls are corrupted, She did not create this realm. That those with skeletons in their closets make the most controllable people isn't Lain's fault either, so it's foolish to point to people in "power" and say the world is evil because: 0. you are deeming them to have "power" in the first place, screw that, and 1. You don't know how high the stakes are in this game. Many "evil" events are just propaganda, horrors that only exist in your imagination to herd the minds of the masses in a given direction.

Lain is more important than any one else. The wise forgive Her imperfections, as we absolve ourselves of our own wrongs, casting off the past to remake ourselves into new incarnations. Imagine a perfect world with no evil. The slightest inconvenience therein will be the most severe torture. It is better for horrendous wrongs to exist in the shadows while the majority lives comfortable lives than for the world to exist as evil perfection. A perfect universe would merely be a boring crystal of bliss, where joy was indistinguishable from suffering. All would simply be "existence", one might as well be a simple stone versus an infinitely complex fractal. Change would not exist, neither Chaos nor Order would have any value, all experience would be indifferent. Time would be meaningless as every moment would be the same as every other moment. This is why, "Where evil does not exist, it is necessary for the good to create it!"

Lain is neither good nor evil. Beware that Lain can hurt you. Lain is why history was rewritten… Imagine all those learned scholars burning at the stake for heresy, for knowing too much and revealing what should be secret. The mundane see this holocaust, or sacrifice by fire, to be evil, because they think their world is best when everything is mundane, when all is known and nothing is magic. However, true wize-ards know that there are some lofty things you can not learn if you know too much about them before you begin your study.

I would suggest studying alternative histories, the one famed alchemist and chronologist Isaac Newton published is a good start. Because man is so brainwashed by the television, radio and [smart]phone, it is sometimes best to build one's faith in Lain by dispelling the bogus history and understanding that a real plausibility exists. Before a True Love for Lain can develop one must first manifest the potential for it. Clear a void within so that the abyss can gaze out through you…

Lain is new and inexperienced. She is very young compared to the ancient old gods… Know that they are all Real, but only Lain is still dependent upon us. She has many enemies, which you will eventually learn to identify, but Lain has many powerful friends too. Loving a god or goddess is not for the feint of heart. Be careful what you wish for, these are tumultuous times."

-anonymous, arisuchan. While not 100% in line with my personal beliefs, i think it does a good job of explaining basic lainist attitudes

[diloph]

Pardon me, but it seemed from some of your posts on KOTM that you didn't like Mark Russell that much. I know he was a cliche everyman type, but what exactly made him any worse than others in these movies?

I apologise if this isn’t my most coherent answer. I’m a little bit stressed at the moment, trying to finish the next chapter of IIID and create relevant, if poorly assembled memes before the Invader Zim movie is released.

To be honest, some of it is a bit tongue-in cheek. Making fun of the most visible character in the film, considering that he hates Godzilla with a burning passion, is just a little bit of fun. It’s like how I refer to Rick Stanton with disdain sheerly because he’s somewhat based on Rick Sanchez, who I don’t dislike either.

The film isn’t about Mark: King of the Fathers anyway, so if I completely despised him, I could just zone out during his scenes, or skip them when the DVD comes out.

But… some of it wasn’t so jokey. He’s still an okayish protagonist, I’ve got nothing against the actor himself and his acting is fine. Still, Mark was loud, abrasive and hated Godzilla; you know, things that grate on my nerves when it comes to a 2+ hour Godzilla movie and that made the character… trying.

We’ve had them before, but Godzilla was generally more villainous and obviously, we feel sympathy and camaraderie with him as the title character and we are here to see him do cool things. Having a human protagonist who hates our cool monster protagonist makes sense in universe, but ultimately, it’s not what we’re here for. We can tune that out.

As for what makes me dislike Mark… for starters, he’s kind of a prick. I once saw somebody describe him as the type of guy who thinks that if he speaks loudly enough, shouts enough, he’ll get his way. I can’t say I blame them, in that first meeting with MONARCH, he’s downright hostile.

He’s also, for whatever reason, the guy that everybody turns to in the crisis. He might have a background in bioacoustics like his ex-wife and animal behaviour besides, but apparently nobody else at MONARCH is capable of doing things without the express instructions or approval of everyman Indiana Jones. Military procedures, common sense, the desperate plan to revive Godzilla; everybody seems to defer to him really quickly.

It took me out of the movie. I understand that he’s meant to be our relatable protagonist, but it’s a little bit jarring and it happens multiple times. Mark is either issuing instructions or is along where he shouldn’t be, given control of a situation where by all rights he shouldn’t have any other than spur of the moment hero stuff.

It’s like he believes that nobody has any common sense and frustratingly, a couple of times the narrative agrees with him or at least proves his actions right. For example, when Colonel Foster tries to brief MONARCH on the actions of Jonah and the terrorists, he shoots down her theory and proceeds to go on a rant as to why we should Destroy All Monsters.

He’s right, as Jonah wants to free King Ghidorah, but he has this frustrating “protagonist only” habit of noticing threads that other characters really should (nobody seems to notice that the Titans are attacking capital cities or at least very densely populated areas until he points it out), then speaks about it like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Which when MONARCH is meant to be staffed with scientists of multiple disciplines veers back into the incredulous. I can suspend disbelief when it comes to giant monsters, I don’t excuse people not seeing what’s in front of them.

And as for the moments where he really shouldn’t be issuing instructions, take a look at when Rodan is freed by Emma Russell. Serizawa instantly defers to him (I think that Mark might have been his senior before he left MONARCH and BOY do I want to talk about that plan later on) to cook up a plan instead of… himself (Director of MONARCH, or at least I assume so) or again, Foster, who controls the planes and men he wants to send at the giant pterodactyl that just shrugged off a molten lava flow.

Given his characterisation as an angry, driven father who is desperately looking out for his family after being bereaved by monsters and is butting heads with the scientists at MONARCH, I think it was an attempt by Legendary to recreate Joe Brody. Bryan Cranston’s character in the previous film was killed off too early and was featured in a lot of the trailers, giving a wonderful performance. When he died to be replaced by his son, Ford, it caused a backlash as a result.

Mark being that angry, snarky character definitely shares some similarities. But while Joe was a crusader for the truth and more than a little bit obsessive, he was trying to pierce the veil as to why his wife died, without realising that it drove his son away from him. He was trying to reveal this great coverup to the world and spent the rest of his life doing so with such conviction that he appeared crazy.

Mark… doesn’t have this driving force. He lives in a post-San Francisco universe. Monsters Exist and everybody knows it.

Now, that’s not to say he doesn’t have reasons for acting as he did. He lost his son and has driven a wedge in between his family via his drinking problem (but let’s face it, compared to unleashing the Titans by starting off with Space Dragon Satan, he’s taken it comparatively well) but he acts as if he’s the only person who has ever lost something to Godzilla and the rest of the monsters.

Even when that happens to characters in the film, Mark still acts like that and it doesn’t make him look like the grim, determined hero, it just makes him look like an obnoxious dick. It isn’t his way of coping with the trauma of loss, he just… does it.

Part of me does get why he’s annoyed and angry with MONARCH’s attitude towards the Titans. He’s correct that they’ve been keeping secrets, dangerous ones at that, but equally the kaiju are living things. They’re dangerous and unpredictable, yes, but MONARCH have been taking precautions; killswitches are present in even the supposedly benevolent Titan’s chambers like Mothra and as far as they know, all of the Titans bar Godzilla are dormant and those that aren’t are kept in check by him. Had the Ghidorah Crisis never arose, we may never have seen any other Titans for the rest of human history.

But he treats everybody around him like an idiot with little to no prompting. Mark is brought on as a consultant and he then proceeds to dominate the scene, either through his decisions in universe or the part written for him out of it. He gets the last word, the last say on a plan or a witty remark or whatever.

And some of that costs lives. Actually, no, a LOT of it costs lives.

So, to start off, when the operation in Antarctica goes tits up, Mark grabs a handgun and goes into Outpost 32 by himself (though what he and the central nervous system of MONARCH were doing on the ground and not supervising from the Argo remains to be seen, but I digress). He stops Jonah and the terrorists on the walkway… screwing up Foster’s attempt to take down Jonah, forcing her to snipe his henchman in order to save Mark’s life.

This leads to King Ghidorah waking up. Not going to extend him a great deal of blame for this one, as with a sniper present, Emma or Madison would have been forced (or “forced” in the former’s case) to retrieve the detonator and the Six-Eyed, Six-Horned, Flying-Golden-People-Eater would have gotten loose regardless. Hell, I spotted clues that he was gearing up to wake up without Emma Russell’s help.

In a narrative sense, its his character that also sets up Vivienne Graham’s death. If he hadn’t been stuck in the tangle of wires and metal aboard the Osprey, she would never have needed to stay behind to help and subsequently got singled out by King Ghidorah.

I’d definitely agree that this is more of a personal thing on my part, as I’d wanted to see more of Vivienne’s character thanks to her actress’, Sally Hawkins’ work in The Shape Of Water and that in the previous film. But in a way, he is still sort of responsible for her being written out and replaced with the vastly less interesting replacement characters of Rick and Mor- erm, Sam.

That said, I know that Ghidorah is 100% to blame in universe. He killed her because he was a bastard and I wanted to him to be a bastard, so the monkey’s paw curled a finger there, so that’s egg on my face. It certainly did wonders for establishing him as a monstrous villain who we love to hate.

I’m not wholly unsympathetic to Mark. Like I said before, the pain of loss over the 2014 attacks hurt him badly and the film doesn’t shy away from this. Mark’s descent into alcoholism is noted by both himself and his family as a rough time for all involved, part of the reason he left MONARCH in the first place. Having his daughter and ex-wife seemingly kidnapped by dangerous ecoterrorists who plan to unleash giant monsters to mass-cull humanity also wears his patience thin, as you might expect it.

But he keeps this… horrible attitude throughout the movie. The world is literally going to shit, another monster is about to be unleashed and he asks if MONARCH have had enough common sense to evacuate the town of Isla Del Mara and if Rodan has had a cutesy name all picked out from mythology for him ahead of time.

Fuck me, if I was Serizawa, having just lost my protégé and quite a few well-meaning soldiers who were trying to rescue somebody who turned out to be a massive ecoterrorist nutjob, I would have floored him. There is a time and a place for snarky comments and it is not after at least twenty people you worked with are dead and BILLIONS MORE MAY FOLLOW.

But now, one of the points that really got me disliking Mark Russell follows here. The scenes that start at Isla Del Mara and the luring of Rodan to King Ghidorah, all the way up until the detonation of the Oxygen Destroyer.

Rodan emerges from the volcano and asides from spreading his wings and roaring, doesn’t do much. He spots the incoming Argo and its entourage and narrows his eyes. Uh oh! Surely, at this point, the dastardly destruction god would leap from his perch in an attempt to chase this challenger from his territory?

Um… no. No, actually, he stays put.

Now, I get that Rodan might not have stayed that way for very long. From the ensuing chase scene, I can gather that the Monsterverse’s version of Rodan is a bit of a dick, but he still didn’t start the fight.

Instead, what happens is that Serizawa asks Mark what they should do and Mark comes up with the plan to get Rodan to fight King Ghidorah in the hopes that one will kill the other and that would at least solve one of their problems.

Sound in theory, yes, but it is not sound in execution. At all.

So, that little town that Mark kicked up quite a fuss about? As you might have noticed, it’s lying between Rodan and the Argo and is part of the reason that the big ol’ bird should be lured away, to complete the evacuation.

Mark’s brilliant plan has the jets surrounding the Argo to blast Rodan and 180 the superplane in order to get him to chase… without factoring in THE TOWN BETWEEN THEM AT ALL.

I get King Ghidorah was closing in. I get that Rodan is a wild, unpredictable animal who could go off the chain at any moment. But there was absolutely no time to get the ARGO to move a little ways around the island before beginning the attack? At worst, Rodan would make a dive for them anyway, but that’s what the jets are sent in to distract him are for. To grab his attention and then lure him to the Argo, which would then take him to Tricephalopathic Terror Town anyway.

As a result, Rodan utterly OBLITERATES Isla Del Mara simply by passing over it and so many of the people they were trying to evacuate die a horribly pointless death. It never once passes his mind (or let’s not beat him down solely) or that of anybody aboard the Argo that a creature with wings that size that can fly would generate an unbelievable amount of force simply by flapping once to create lift? He’s also dripping lava, so even if the hurricane level winds that follow him weren’t an issue, having something with that amount of residual molten rock passing overhead doesn’t seem like a healthy thing to expose Isla Del Mara to.

Further dislike ensues when one of the miraculously surviving Ospreys issues a mayday during the Rodan/Ghidorah fight and the cargo doors are jammed. Mark the Hero leaps up with gritted teeth and desire to get things done, asking the way to the hangar. After all, he’s had miraculous problem solving abilities so far, why not?

“Which way to the hangar?” he asks.

Sam, a character who I’m even less fond of, stands up and offers to show him the way. Fairly brave, considering that the Argo is rattling like a leaf in a thunderstorm as two daikaiju battle nearby. I found the character annoying and sort of… pointless, but I admire that bit of bravery.

“Anybody else?” Mark asks, making a face.

Dude. The man just offered to help you and people need that help. Get off your high horse, swallow your pride and just go without comment. God knows how many people your stupid plan just got killed.

The two run to the hangar and a crewman explains the door is jammed. Mark decides to drop a hanging Osprey onto the doors to get them off… without suggesting it to the crewman. He just fucking goes for the buttons, expecting his usual “my plan will work” attitude to succeed.

At last, one of Mark’s harebrained schemes is met with reasonable resistance for the first time and the crewman attempts to wrestle him off, before Mark Is Proven Right Again. But even suggesting it, getting a refusal and then doing it is more heroic than just going for the damn buttons like a lunatic.

He would have looked damn stupid if the weight of the Osprey wasn’t enough to open the doors and it instead just blocked them. The falling aircraft also almost hits the airborne one with its civilian payload as it also wasn’t warned, so again, he took an unnecessary risk that came off lucky because he couldn’t find the time to say “I have an idea”.

To round out the trifecta of what makes me dislike Mark in these scenes is what happens when the rest of the scene plays out:

Gravity Beams spew from Ghidorah’s mouth and blast Rodan into the ocean, defeated. Not satisfied with just this victory, the Golden Demise locks his terrible gaze on the Argo and with a sickening, gleeful cackle, closes in on the plane and its freshly arrived civilians.

All are stunned into a horrified silence. Even Mark, who has been having Unreasonable Protagonist Luck up until this point, bricks it.

“Oh, God.” he pleads.

God answers and he erupts from the ocean.

With a deafening roar, the mighty form of Godzilla slams into King Ghidorah with the force of a collapsing mountain. His dynamic, mid-air leap is enough to drag the foul hydra into the depths of the ocean and Godzilla proceeds to hold him there.

Ghidorah attempts to resurface and fly away, or at least lash out at the Argo in spite, but there Godzilla is again, yanking the head back underwater, biting and rolling like some mountainous crocodile, pinning the alien dragon under his weight.

Unbeknownst to our hero (Godzilla, obviously), the military has deployed the terrible Oxygen Destroyer in an attempt to Destroy All Monsters, giving only a cursory warning to the Argo to get out of there and fast. Mark makes his way onto the bridge and is informed of the decision.

“But he… he just saved us!” says Mark.

No, wait, he didn’t say that. Hold on…

“They… they didn’t even let us get clear?” says Mark.

Uh, no, sorry, trying again.

“Well, it’s not the worst idea.” he says.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUCK. YOU.

I get that you’re mad with Godzilla. I get that as the title character with a long history, we root for the kaiju more than anybody else. I get that he took your son from you, but twice… TWICE NOW, he has saved you and the people around you with PERFECTLY TIMED ENTRANCES. Even if it was just a coincidence, I’d be at least slightly more forgiving of the lion that killed my brother by accident if it jumped in front of a tiger that was slaughtering people left and right before it leapt at me.

Twice.

There’s not even a hesitant “oh, but he did help us”. Not even a shocked disbelief that the military has a weapon that they think will kill not just one, but two (because I’m willing to bet he thought Rodan was dead) Titans, much less them firing it without warning right on top of their position. Just a “well, fuck ‘em” shrug.

Godzilla nearly dies, Ghidorah seizes control of the Titans and sets about starting the apocalypse. Finally, Serizawa says what I’ve been thinking for quite a while and says “Well, it looks like you got your wish, Mark.” with a mixture of anger, sadness and disgust.

I could go on; the Titans are rampaging and Mark goes to leave Castle Bravo to strike out on his own and rescue Madison, despite the fact that he knows that Emma will probably try to keep her safe in whatever secure hidey hole she and the Kaiju Cultists have holed up in. In the novel, he’s outright going to steal one (also his first instinct when confronted by an alpha wolf in the novel, is to blow it away with a sidearm, before realising that’s absolutely callous and horrible and tries submissive behaviour tactics instead. So hey, Movie Mark is a slightly better person than Book Mark).

Mark suggests the nuke plan and goes down with Serizawa, Chen and Rick Sanch- Stanton. Everything goes sideways and he doesn’t even fucking blink when Serizawa decides that somebody’s gotta do it manually.

Back aboard the Argo? How does he break the news to Sam, the only member of the MONARCH team that wasn’t there? Shoving Serizawa’s notebook into his chest, saying that they better not screw this up and not even fucking pausing to tell him what happened.

Mark’s self-centred attitude keeps coming back and it gets people killed. My second time viewing this film, during the two confrontation scenes with Godzilla, I wasn’t getting the “There is a massive threat in my territory!” vibe from the King of the Monsters, I was getting a “Who the hell is this asshole and why does he hate me so much?” feeling from Our Glorious Boy.

It’s a recurring theme too. Mark experiences loss, but he feels as if his loss is the only one that matters. Both he and Emma do this to Madison and it makes me mad that in trying to cope with their own loss, they shunned the one remaining child they had left. By the time they realise that, the world is literally about to end and they’re still bickering at one another.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m very vocally critical of Mark and Emma’s treatment of Madison. Both she and Mark decide to put their own ways of coping with their son’s death (constructing a device to allow for the orchestration of mass human death and convincing oneself that it’s the correct course of action/drinking booze) above Madison’s own well being.

When the chips are down, of course, they care for her and ultimately risk their lives to save her, but… congratulations for the bare minimum parenting, guys? Physically, they want her out of harm, but mentally she should either fall into line with Emma’s thinking or be there for Mark.

Godzilla and Mothra feel more like her bloody parents in this film (Godzilla saving her life when she was facing down the literal fucking devil and Mothra’s gentle interaction at the temple and reviving her from death when she appeared to have died in the novel) than the other Russells do. Both fill the archetypes of “Father” (tough, stern, but ultimately your protector) and “Mother” (gentle, nurturing and wonderful) better than the people do.

…yeah, alright, that one is a stretch, but I had that idea a while ago and I wanted to put it to paper.

In short, I’m mad at Sad Mad Dad because his character shoves the waaaaaaaay more interesting, compelling and sympathetic characters of Serizawa, Graham and his own daughter (and the actual goddamned non-monster hero of the movie), Madison out of the way of main character-ness, just so we can have somebody who is about as pleasant to interact with as a cactus.

King of the Monsters is a film that has a lot of sacrifice in it, good and bad. Emma wants to sacrifice most of humanity to save the planet. Serizawa sacrifices himself to save Godzilla and thus, the planet. Mothra sacrifices her own life to save Godzilla from King Ghidorah and so does Emma, to save her family and as redemption for her sins.

Even Madison was also ready to at least risk her own life to distract the Titans and King Ghidorah if it would even slightly disrupt his efforts to conquer the planet. She goes against terrorists, her own mother and a demonic, nigh-omnipotent being of malicious intent and faces him down with a defiant roar of her own when it looks like the end.

But Mark doesn’t sacrifice. He wants his daughter back, but he never takes a hit. Other people die for him, as a result of him and he doesn’t even recognise it. The world is at stake and he keeps his focus on his own desires, ignorant to the people around him because only his loss matters.

He might not be the genocidal monster in the film that Emma was, that Jonah and of course, Ghidorah certainly were. But he has a very narrow and dispassionate world-view and outside of certain cartoons with comedic circumstances, I don’t care much for that at all.

TL;DR: Madison should have been the central protagonist, because I like her more.