#cw paranoid thoughts from this point on. like examples of them

[msuic-lovr]

okay so my nighttime anxiety (paranoia???) is back for the first time in like. ayear. okay great.

(holy yap in the tags i reached the tag limit lmao)

(yeah vent in the tags. also tw paranoia for that)

[rubra-wav]

Vox's death - personal headcanons/rambles

A/N I've been sitting on this for a while HDHDH

A lot of this is building on prior headcanons of mine and shots in the dark based on vibes so yeah - I could be completely wrong in season 2 and thus I will eat my hat if that's the case /lh

Just wanted to throw my thoughts out there on this 🙏

CW: SFW, murder, mentions of suicide/mental breakdown, references to staticmoth, angst

In my personal opinion Vox didn't die from a TV falling on his head: he died from poisoning.

The first thing that differs from a lotta stuff I keep seeing is that I don't think the red lines that come from Vox's mouth are actually Val's saliva from kissing him.

In some scenes, it probably is (like in the poison music vid) but when he's very obviously done with Val's bs during the off periods in their relationship that they go through? Nah.

It just wouldn't make sense that it's always from Val. Especially when we have examples like the beginning of episode 8. It just starts seeping from his mouth as he's saying the "I can't wait to watch you get fucked" line.

They show up whenever he's more unstable (like in Stayed Gone) and/or when he's having a sadistic power high (ep 8 ) and is particularly out of his mind.

I think it's symbolic of actually being blood from being poisoned in an instance when he was like that in his life.

Actually getting into it: The leadup to his death

Regardless of how it happened exactly, imo in the end every single one of his relationships while he was alive broke down in the height of his popularity.

He became more and more insufferable to keep around: constantly egotistical and looking down on everyone the more famous and powerful he grew, and became utterly obsessed with maintaining his power. (Also what he's doing in hell - fixated at all times on appearing a certain way and staying at the top)

His mental state declined terribly as he grew paranoid that he would lose his control and have to start from where he was (which wasn't good to say the least), and all of his friends and family left due to how he treated them which only added to his instability due to having no support system.

Not that it would have changed much because yeesh.

The second someone would try to reality check him (if they did) during this time, it only would have made him even more unstable.

He most likely believed that stepping on everyone to maintain his power was more important than anything, and meeting someone who disagreed, he would have just discarded them without a second thought, all the while internalising it deep down to be brought back up whenever he finally crashed.

His actual death

I have two main headcanons of how the poisoning may have gone:

1. The first main one is that he was murdered.

He treated his staff so badly during his gradually worsening mental decline that one (or maybe more) got so fed up by his poor treatment of them that his morning coffee was poisoned, and while on air he started spitting up blood and then died (hence why his head is a TV).

This one makes particular sense to me because the red lines show up when he's being a sadistic asshole - as he would have been leading up to his murder.

2. The second: he poisoned himself on purpose as suicide.

His mental state declined so much, so stuck in his delusions of grandeur that when he was either reality checked and it actually took hold of him or his content started performing badly in comparison to someone else's he experienced the inevitable crash after having a high in that way and had a full on breakdown (or both tbh).

Him taking a stance of 'I'd rather die now while eyes are still on me then when they're all gone again and my existence is unknown once again'.

I think it's far likelier the former, though considering everything.

I am probably reading too damn much into all this but like... the brainrot is all-consuming.

I want to write a fic about his death at some point but like.. I don't think anyone would gaf enough to read it for one, and I also have a bunch of stuff I'm already working on that my brain is buffering about/lh

I'm thinking about how bad he's probably gonna be done in season 2 and slightly dying inside. I HOPE I'm proved wrong so desperately bc I love him too damn much.

Either way I do NOT think there is enough time to properly explore his chara even if Viv wanted to dip into the interesting asf things under the surface. 🗿

My masterlist

[schizodiaries]

my first psychotic episode

I wanted to talk about this for so long, so I’m finally getting it off my chest. I want to share my first experience with psychosis and how it affected me in the long run, and hopefully my story resonates with others as well.

This is going to be a really long post so I’m putting it under the cut.

(cw for descriptions of psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, and paranoid ideation)

It was around Valentine’s Day 2021 and I first started noticing something was off while I was at work. I was feeling unusually paranoid about everything. I would think people were following me to work, that my bosses were conspiring against me, or that customers recognized me from somewhere. This made me incredibly stressed from work, even more stressed than usual, and after my shifts I would sit in my car for half an hour in complete silence just trying to process everything that occurred.

After a few days I noticed I wasn’t sleeping well. I had trouble falling asleep and I was only getting a few hours of sleep each night. Not only that, but my appetite became severely reduced. I would constantly skip meals because I just didn’t feel like eating. My boyfriend actually noticed this and notified my mom, who tried making me my favorite foods but I couldn’t get myself to eat any of it.

At some point I started having ideas of reference. I would scroll through social media and think the posts had a special meaning behind them, or had some kind of code that needed to be deciphered. I would also misinterpret posts as being directed towards me when that wasn’t the case. For example one of my friends made a post about grief, and I thought she was describing how I was about to experience grief soon. Another friend posted “god is real” and I thought he was specifically telling me I was going to meet god soon. It was very confusing and off-putting.

Then came the voices. I began hearing whispers at night, which caused me to lose even more sleep, and they eventually turned into command hallucinations telling me to attack my boyfriend. This frightened me, and at this point I knew something was very wrong. I even tried reaching out to a crisis text line although it wasn’t much help at this stage. So I told my bf and mom that I was hearing voices and not getting any sleep and they encouraged me to call an advice nurse, which I did after a sleepless night. I described my symptoms to the nurse, who determined that I needed to be taken to the emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation.

My mom and I got ready to go to the ER. This is when my psychosis really took off and reality started to warp. Notifications on my phone became the FBI searching for me. A noise at the front door meant the cops were after me. I was suddenly in major trouble because I chose to trust the advice nurse, who was one of them. On the drive to the ER, I had to ask to turn the radio off because it was talking to me. I also thought cars were following us and trying to contact me. I was having illusions of other drivers waving at me and asking if I needed help. Upon arriving to the ER, a security guard walked by and I thought he was there to arrest and deport me. While I was being evaluated I kept muttering nonsense to myself while the staff asked me questions about my symptoms. I was really starting to lose it.

There wasn’t enough room in the ER to accommodate every patient so I was placed on a gurney in the middle of the hallway with other patients. At this point I began to experience more delusions. I could feel one of the patients reading my mind and I complained about it to the doctor who evaluated me. I started to realize this was all fake, all staged, and there were actually people behind the scenes watching me like the Truman Show. I wasn’t really in the ER, it was all just a game. So I left my gurney and tried to escape, but a security guard stopped me, and we got into a minor physical altercation but no one was hurt. I calmed down and went back to my gurney. I talked to other patients and staff as if we were friends because I genuinely thought we were. I had absolutely no social boundaries, and even insulted another patient completely unprovoked. I felt like I had no control of my thoughts or actions at this point.

After spending the night in the ER, I was determined to be 1. gravely disabled (due to not sleeping/eating) and 2. a danger to myself, and I was put on a 5150 hold and transferred to a mental hospital. I still was convinced this was all part of some kind of game, and didn’t take it very seriously. So when the staff at the hospital asked me questions about my name, age, etc., I would give them false answers. Some of the other patients tried talking to me but I would brush them off and respond with something either rude or nonsensical. Why did it matter when none of this was even real?

The first night at the hospital was rough. I would sit in the admissions chair unmoving for hours, going through countless delusions at once. When it was time for dinner, I refused to even open my food because I thought it was a bomb. When I was finally made to open it, I refused to eat it because I thought it was poison. I tried hanging out in the day room, but I was bothered by the TV because I felt like it was talking to me. I also thought I recognized some of the other patients and tried talking to them like they were my friends, which they were put off by. When it was bedtime, I would wander the hallway like a lost child, wondering where the hell I was and why I wasn’t waking up from this nightmare. One of the MHT’s escorted me to my room and encouraged me to sleep, but I got no sleep that night. I was too terrified that the staff or roommate would try to kill me.

It didn’t get much better from there. I spent 11 days in the mental hospital and I was psychotic the whole time. I got into trouble a couple times, as my social boundaries continued to be broken. For example I would rummage through my roommate’s belongings, and one time I barged into my neighbor’s room unannounced because the voices told me to go there. I had multiple terrifying delusions about the hospital, including that they were performing human experimentation, that they were serving us human meat, and that they were killing patients. I was able to see a psychiatrist while I was there, who I complained to about my delusions. He informed me that I was experiencing a psychotic episode, and diagnosed me with depression with psychotic features. I was put on a bunch of different antipsychotics, including ones that had awful side effects like muscle stiffness and trouble speaking.

When I was finally discharged, I didn’t feel like myself. I was heavily medicated, and still psychotic. I was having a hard time adjusting back to normal life. I couldn’t take walks because I still felt like cars were following me or neighbors were watching me. I couldn’t go to the craft store without feeling like the employees were secretly talking about me or that other customers were calling the police on me. I was able to get a doctor’s note for work, but upon returning a few weeks later my work performance was severely impacted by my symptoms and medication side effects and I was fired. My life just wasn’t the same anymore.

When I finally started to come out of psychosis, it felt like waking up from a long dream. It was like I could breathe again, but I also felt like I left so much devastation behind. I started to realize how unacceptable my behavior was, how ridiculous my delusions were, and just how much irreversible damage psychosis did to my mental health. I felt like there was a permanent scar left on my psyche. I wondered if I could ever get my old life back or if I was doomed to be like this forever. I started to mourn the life I once had before psychosis, before I lost my mind.

Psychosis took away a part of me I can never get back. It took control of me and caused me to lose myself almost completely, as if I were possessed by a spirit. But it also taught me a lot about myself and how fragile the mind can be. Before psychosis, I took my mental health for granted. Now I’m grateful for every moment I feel mentally stable. I still experience mild psychosis every now and again, but none as intense and disruptive as my first psychotic episode. I think it’s easier to manage nowadays, because I know what to look out for. But psychosis has a way of creeping up on me when I least expect it and I can never be fully prepared for a psychotic episode.

I am now on medication that works for me and has minimal side effects. I have a good support system and I’m receiving therapy and psychiatric help. I think I’m taking good care of my mental health and I have not experienced a psychotic episode in months. I like to think I’m still recovering from my first one, even two years later. But now I’m slowly getting my life back, one day at a time.

[syn0vial]

important question number 3 what do you have on boba and sintas vel 👀 - lekkui

i have... some things! honestly, i wish sintas’s portrayal had been a little more solid in the EU. it varied wildly between writers and in certain comics, she had little more characterization than “beautiful, tough bounty hunter chick.” i hope if they revisit her in new canon, they give her a more nuanced, more consistent depiction. also i’ll be ignoring said comics for the purposes of this post bc it’s my blog and i’m too sleepy for salt right now

but yes, onto the bullet points!

for those unaware, sintas vel was a female kiffar bounty hunter who boba tried to start a new life with when they were teenagers. they both got out of the bounty hunting game and settled down on concord dawn, where they got married and had a daughter, ailyn. boba was 16 and sintas was 18 at the time.

one of the things i find most interesting about the two of them, especially when they were teenagers: ailyn was consistently the more logical and level-headed of the two of them, while boba was always more emotional and impulsive. tragically, it’s this impulsivity that leads boba to fuck up so badly and, ironically, to transform into the emotionally detached asshole we know later on.

but yeah, this dichotomy is seen pretty early on in a flashback-by-proxy, in which we learn that the whole romantic run-away-together-and-get-married-and-start-a-new-life-somewhere-far-away plan? 100% BOBA’S IDEA. 

in particular, we get the briefest snippet of an exchange where boba is trying his hardest to convince sintas that this would be a good idea. and, no exaggeration, it goes like:

sintas: “i mean, it’s kind of very obvious that you don’t know what you’re doing--” boba: “THINGS I KNOW: YOU’RE GOOD AT SHOOTING THINGS. YOU’RE PRETTY??? I TRUST YOU A LOT. see this is a good idea :)”

TEENAGE BOBA FETT: PURE OF HEART, DUMB OF ASS

anyway, boba fett and noted-morosexual sintas vel make their way to concord dawn. here’s some things we know about their relationship before everything went to shit:

nicknames! they referred to each other with the first syllable of each others’ names: bo and sin. very cute :)

they got married using a traditional mandalorian wedding vow. neither of them had any idea what the mando’a meant, bless their hearts.

as a marriage token, boba gave sintas a small red heart-of-fire gemstone tied on a simple leather cord. it was the best he could afford which, at the time, wasn’t much. however, it had significance to sintas as a kiffar; kiffars are near-humans whose members possess an unusually high occurrence rate of telemetry, or the ability to read memories from objects. heart-of-fire gemstones were said to be among the best for storing such memories.

SHIPPY FIC WRITERS TAKE NOTE. three words to describe boba in a committed relationship: PROTECTIVE. AS. HELL. absolutely unwilling to tolerate so much as a dirty look towards sintas. maybe even a little paranoid. kind of understandable given how much grief he’d already endured in his short life.

it didn’t save them

ok, fair warning, here’s the point where shit gets traumatic, so if you want to know nothing but the relatively happy stuff, STOP READING HERE. also, CWs for manipulation, sexual assault, murder, and imprisonment, bc nobody in this canon is allowed to be happy :(

last chance to turn back!

ok. onto the traumatic shit.

so! boba and sintas are doing fine. operation stop-being-teenaged-bounty-hunters-and-try-to-pass-for-normal is going pretty well! not only do they have their own functional little family unit, but boba has a job as a journeyman protector. basically think of them as like. mando frontier lawmen. and on top of that, boba has been taken under the wing of his superior officer and son of a local magistrate, lenovar. 

we don’t know much about lenovar (like, is that his first or his last name, for example...) but we know that boba and sintas trusted him and that boba in particular looked up to him as both a friend and mentor. 

however, lenovar was not what he seemed. once he had the young couple’s trust, he managed to get sintas alone and raped her.

in the aftermath, sintas performed some brutally pragmatic mental calculus: lenovar was a high-ranking journeyman protector and son of a magistrate. she and boba were two struggling teenagers with a baby, escaping checkered pasts. retaliating against lenovar would likely destroy them. which meant not only that she couldn’t retaliate against lenovar; she had to make sure boba wouldn’t, either.

so. how do you keep your extremely protective, impulsive former-bounty-hunter husband from flying off the handle and murdering your rapist?

you don’t tell him about it. you don’t tell anyone about it :(

argh just reading this i’m feeling salty that we get so little of sintas’s perspective on any of this. it’s all just “how did this make boba feel? how did it affect boba’s life?” and it’s like GOOD GOD. this woman is now maybe 20 years old, making the absolutely-gutting decision to keep her sexual assault a secret from her closest friend bc it’s the only way to protect her and him and their daughter from being steamrolled by the system. and like, nobody thought to expand on that? 

nope, we just get a comic where she’s needlessly sexualized and drawn to look young enough to be boba’s daughter despite the fact that she’s older than him and ugh

OKAY. enough salt. moving on.

sintas’s plan works for all of a year, at which point boba somehow finds out the truth. and everything goes straight to hell.

boba, finding out that sintas kept her sexual assault by lenovar a secret for a whole year (and remember, boba was probably continuing to work under and look up to lenovar during this time), is utterly furious. of course, he wants nothing more than to murder the shit out of lenovar and is only further enraged when sintas tries to logically talk him out of it. in his anger, he proceeds to verbally torch ALL the bridges in their relationship, at one point even cruelly questioning if ailyn is even his daughter. he then storms off and makes good on his threats to kill lenovar

in the aftermath, boba was branded not just a murderer, but the murderer of his superior officer—an even more serious crime. yet, despite repeated interrogations, he refused to say why he had done it, fearing that doing so would drag sintas down with him. he only insisted that he felt no remorse for killing lenovar and that lenovar deserved to die.

in the end, his efforts didn’t save sintas—the courts seized all of what meager assets they had, leaving them all penniless. boba was then exiled from concord dawn and wouldn’t see his wife and daughter again for fifty years.

after everything that happened, boba was a changed person. it’s as if that spark of optimism and dare-i-say goodness that had survived his father’s death was snuffed out, leaving only a cynical, angry shell, laser-focused on violence because it was the one part of his father’s legacy he hadn’t yet failed.

sintas and ailyn, meanwhile, struggled to pull themselves out of poverty, with sintas reluctantly returning to bounty hunting to support them. ailyn never forgave her father for abandoning them, which led to its own equally-disastrous tragedy some decades down the line.

moral of the story is to listen to your wife and don’t make her sexual assault all about your stupid need for revenge. like, i get that the rapist needs to die but maybe like... work with your wife and make it look like an accident? don’t be an impulsive fucking inconsiderate idiot? maybe realize that your wife probably just endured the most hellish year of her life to protect YOUR dumb ass?

honestly, as frustrating as teenage!boba is, you can’t even be that angry at him bc like... he and sintas were both victims reacting imperfectly to absolutely shit circumstances. lenovar is the real villain here.

never going to be over how tragic it is that these two kids tried so fucking hard to derail their villainous origin stories, only to be forced onto even more brutal tracks bc the one adult they should’ve been able to trust in their situation ended up being a predator :(

[sasstablook]

voidpunk feels, let’s go

quote, OG voidpunk @arotaro​: “I don’t have a voidsona because I don’t have much of a sense of self”

what is voidpunk? 1 2

a history of voidpunk

alright, the rest of it is under the cut!

cw: discussion of “scary” mental disorders, self harm mention, dysphoria talk, anorexia mention, violence mention, some mentions of sex, abuse discussion

so to start out with, these are my Official Diagnoses: C-PTSD, bipolar-1, and fibromyalgia. I am not against self-diagnosis, but I tend not to self-diagnose myself, for fear of using the wrong term and it coming back to bite me in the ass. that being said, I'm pretty certain (especially in regards to my bipolar disorder) that there's something else going on here that the professionals are missing. I'll only be discussing my symptoms from here on out, not my disorders as a whole.

my main symptoms I experience that make me "not human" are:

intrusive thoughts and impulsiveness

paranoia and psychosis

body, social, and mind dysphoria

memory loss and executive dysfunction

disorganized speech and being nonverbal

hypo/hyperactivity

ambivalence and black+white thinking

I started with a very long list, and I tried to group related symptoms together. so...

I'm going to refrain from inputting sources and various denotative definitions, speaking only on my personal experiences.

1. intrusive thoughts and impulsiveness

a lot of "normal" people get random unwanted thoughts. like that little voice that says "throw your phone in the river" when walking across a bridge. these aren't necessarily intrusive. the main thing that separates these two experiences is intensity. my personal pattern of intrusive thoughts includes a lot of violence. for fear of stigma, I won't go into further detail. but often times, these intrusive thoughts develop into impulses. these are things I do without thinking them through. I don't think about consequences, I just act. my brain tells me to... let's say, scream. like blood curdling, someone's getting murdered, scream. I just do it.

my brain tells me to hurt myself. I don't know why. I do it without further questioning or examination. not even to just get my brain to shut up, necessarily. there are some persistent intrusive thoughts that never get acted on. but some of them do lead to action, even if they're the least persistent of the bunch

2. paranoia and psychosis

these aren't necessarily linked in the way intrusive thoughts and impulsiveness are, being that one can exist without the other (impulsiveness is always caused by an intrusive thought). but they very often go hand in hand, with paranoid thinking leading to psychotic symptoms. example: I am paranoid that my roommates are talking about me in the other room; I then begin to hear voices-- which may or may not belong to my roommates-- whispering unintelligibly

3. body, social, and mind dysphoria

https://imgur.com/vp1EjlA

dysphoria is something a lot of trans folk can relate to. but my dysphoria isn't exclusively tied to my gender. my dysphoria is invariably linked to my dissociation and depersonalization experience. this ties into my inability to connect with human beings.

I experience body dysphoria in that I despise basic bodily functions and necessities to keep the body alive. this includes consuming food stuffs, which ties into my experiences with disordered eating (y'all remember when I was anorexic? yeah, the thoughts haven't went away, but I'm doing better with my actions now). also can humans just... not... with the bathroom thing. like is it absolutely necessary to piss and shit all the goddamn time.

I experience social dysphoria in the way I am perceived by others. this mostly ties into my gender. no matter what I do, I am always read as a girl. but even so, I struggle to be read as masculine in that I don't necessarily *want* to be read as masculine. because men are just flat out awful. and this isn't exclusive to cis men. I don't *want* to be associated with men. because if men are bad.... and I'm a man... then I must be bad, right?

which leads us to mind dysphoria and the same line of thinking in regards to my masculinity. I am at war with myself on exactly how I would like to be perceived by others. my feelings on The Way Men Are and my feelings on my own identity as a man do not coexist peacefully

4. memory loss and executive dysfunction

memory problems are a symptom of all three of my Official Diagnoses, so it's no surprise I struggle with short and long term memory. if the event occurred even last month, I probably won't remember it. I struggle to recall basic details about people I've known for years, including age and last names. so you can imagine what it's like when I meet someone new!

as far as executive dysfunction goes? I just... don't remember. I don't remember how to do the most basic things. I've had to have loved ones walk me through the steps of preparing a bowl of cereal before. no, I'm not joking

5. disorganized speech and being nonverbal

I love language. I'm a poet. language is my thing. I got a perfect 36 on the English portion of my ACT, dammit

but as time goes on, I'm losing my command of the English language. I use the wrong word in the middle of sentences. sometimes the word isn't even related to the word I meant to use, though I can't think of any specific examples right now. sometimes it's just straight up word salads, which make sense to me, but not to those around me.

sometimes my brain's language center just... gives up. during those times, I may utter one or two word sentences. I might just make noises. I might use gestures or ASL. I might text full sentences or just a couple words at a time. or I could just become completely and utterly silent, not even attempting to communicate. I don't understand this

6. hypo/hyperactivity

note: I chose the suffix "-activity" rather than "-sexuality" because this isn't just limited to my problems in bed, though that's a large part of it.

this is something that I've only become aware of after others have pointed it out to me. there are days where I move too slow for their comfort. and it isn't always related to my pain either. I can be having a good physical day and still move like a sloth. on the other hand, there are days when I'm bouncing off the walls

I also fluctuate between hypo/hypersexual. there are days when I am sex repulsed. there are days when all I want to do is fuck

7. ambivalence and black+white thinking

I live in such a state of contradiction. I don't know how to feel about people, concepts, what have you. in order to cope with this, my brain often sorts others into 2 categories: perfect and evil.

sometimes, someone who was perfect yesterday can be put in the evil category the next day (I'm currently experiencing this with a lover of mine). I don't see gray areas. I'm incapable of processing gray. which is odd, considering I'm on the gray-ace spectrum

all of these combined tend to cause certain thoughts, feelings, and actions in other people.

"that's not normal"

"that's weird"

"you're crazy"

"you're broken"

"what's wrong with you?"

"we're putting you here for your own safety"

"this will fix you"

sure, help me out a little. give me some medication, some therapy. but... "fix" me? what about me needs to be "fixed"? why do I need to be "fixed"? namely, why won't you listen when I tell you what I need in order to cope with my brain's battle against me? I don't need crisis intervention. I don't need an institution. I just need medication for my chemical imbalances and therapy to learn how to live with my brain. when you talk about "fixing" me... it's like the only reason you care is because I'm not a "productive" member of society. it's like you want to "fix" me for your benefit. does that make sense to anyone else but me? this comes back around to the disorganized speech and communication, I'm really not sure I'm getting across my thoughts effectively here.

people hurt me... I feel like they do this because they think I'm a villain. I feel like they hurt me to protect themselves. even if I go out of my way to shield them from the way I am inside, it might not be enough to help them feel safe around me

I'm scary.

for so long, I've been in love with aliens, and cryptids, and monsters, among other inhuman creatures. I relate to them. I feel so disconnected with my humanity, that these beings bring me comfort

and now, I'm not the only one

voidpunk

bonus: actual notes from my notepad that I took in an attempt to gather my thoughts

my voidpunk: aliens, cryptids, slasher horror, cyborgs/androids, uncanny valley, Homestuck, primal, cannibal, afterlife, demons, liminal spaces, occult, FNAF, psychedelics, Undertale, dandelions, hoarding, Twilight vampires, parasites, X-Men, we're all made of star stuff, death and decay, bugs and creepy crawlies, succubus/incubus, god complex, yandere simulator, fae, transparent, Nathan W. Pyle comics, the world is quiet here, Lemony Snicket, escapism, fernweh, unconventional beauty

things that make me voidpunk: sleep paralysis, hurting others, an urge to kill, impulsive violence, using sex to get what I want, hyper/hyposexuality, xenogenders, microlabels, neopronouns, dissociation, an inability to connect and relate to other humans, lack of "common sense", "men are trash", inability to distinguish between My Reality and Real Reality, I Don't Remember Anything, psychosis, can't pick up on subtlety, unsure how to socialize properly, I'm Scary, ambivalence, inability to make concrete decisions, self medicating, Out Of Control, how do I move properly, broken executive functioning, disorganized speech, paranoia, I despise basic bodily functions like eating and bathroom, what do you mean you can't read my mind, google: how to communicate effectively, black and white thinking

[tinkdw]

Do you have any expectations for 12x19? Personally I'm a bit apprehensive. The previous two Cas heavy episodes were really well made but this time I don't know why I just have this apprehension concerning this ep. (Here's hoping I'm being unnecessarily paranoid 🍺)

I have so many expectations and theories and I am so excited for 12x19!  But on the other hand I have delved into this in detail already and I don’t want bang on too much….

We are supposed to be worried and I love this! 

All the build up and pining/separation/Cas hiatus is making us worry for and miss Cas and seeing how much Dean is worried and misses him is very exciting :) Also, again with the Destiel/Sastiel comparisons, I love how they do this, how they show that Sam still cares but Dean is just another level. Pfft. 

We are seeing so much through Dean’s eyes this season and I think it’s been done so well (e.g. all this but also the opening scene of the season with Mary, the waitress in 12x18 for example is portrayed through Dean’s eyes in terms of what she means to him (literally just a distraction etc) .

Seeing Kelly start to wonder about her choices? YES! Seeing Cas get hurt in front of Sam and Dean? YES! Seeing multiple clips and therefore an important focus on Dean being pissed at Cas and Sam kind of hovering behind still pissed but not getting too involved in this domestic fight? YESSSSSSSSS! 

I’m gonna link you to a couple of posts:

my overall season spec: 12x18 analysis & spec.

this post from @postmodernmulticoloredcloak where they/we did some spec.

this post from @bluestar86 which mirrors some of my own thoughts.

The main one that the rest of my Dean/Cas meta sits on at the moment is my break up theory which 12x19 is central to I hope, here

I feel like this black moment / break up point is going to be 12x19 (and/or 12x23 or a culmination of all of this season). 

I have strong feelings of a 6x20 parallel coming into 12x19 and I will be disappointed if we don’t some sort of full on argument and angry/sad eye-longing as a call back to this. Although I imagine as the depth of their feelings are so much stronger now Dean will be less overtly hurt and more just plain angry by this point, I’m imagining some sort of CW-okayed version of “well just F*** off then Cas”.

My best bet is on… something along the lines of: 

12x19 Dean being angry and pushing Cas away for ‘abandoning’ him  (which seems to be what the promo is showing in the brief glimpse we have). I think this is pretty much standard, easy spec, I mean, it’s not even spec at this point it’s clearly canon.

Cas probably going away with the angels as HE feels pushed away and rejected or being ‘taken’ in someway, but I have a feeling it’s going to be more the former, especially after the waitress thing shows how bad Dean is dealing and the promo shows Dean is clearly gonna be pissed. 

I was going to type out again my theories for 20-23 and endgame but i think they’re in the above posts … basically chosen separation 20-21, probable reconciliation, out of their hands separation from 23 into hiatus…

The way the 3 episodes are titled with past, present, future connotations and just the fact that they literally can’t kill Misha or Cas off the show anyway and the heavily moved forwards Destiel storyline I am not worried for Cas overall.

So, for 12x19 - while I think it will be super painful the endgame is gonna be worth it :)

Given the overall dramatic turn of their relationship this season and all the pining, the love talk etc. the writing now means that really they CANNOT be around each other without it becoming canon or them having to back out completely (which I really don’t see them doing at this point, what would be the point of creating this whole drama this season to then just back it down to bro-talk), so really for me, they have to be separated for *reasons*, the show has backed themselves into the proverbial corner…

Hence the idea of ‘winning him back’ for s13 and some great Cas-centric stuff moving forwards. Even if it might be Cas-light in terms of screen time, as I heavily parallel s6 with s12 and therefore s7 separation to a s13 probable separation, I think he will have a great arc leading to series end…. we shall see.

[briangroth27]

Justice League Review

I really wanted to like this. While I hated Batman V Superman, I found good points in both Suicide Squad and Man of Steel despite their flaws and absolutely loved Wonder Woman, which immediately became one of my favorite superhero films. I wanted to believe DC’s films were on an upswing with Patty Jenkins’ movie, but even with low expectations, I wasn’t a fan of Justice League. I don’t think it’s terrible, but I did think it was very boring.

Full Spoilers…

Justice League’s plot was fine and made sense—perhaps minus the convenient weirdness of a parademon leaving the impression of Mother Boxes on a wall when it blew up at the beginning—but didn't thrill me at all. I liked the friendlier tone of the movie and its superheroes, even if not a lot of the jokes landed for me. The effects were good, but the action wasn't memorable. I can't help but compare this to The CW’s latest DC crossover, Crisis on Earth-X; the four-part crossover did have a more luxurious runtime with an extra hour allowing them to do more, but each episode was packed full of engaging characters and moments that made me cheer and geek out. Justice League had none of that. The CW's multiverse is definitely my preferred DCU.

The problem here wasn’t that Batman, Aquaman, Cyborg, and Flash didn’t get solo films first. If Justice League were the same film with previously established characters, it still would’ve been boring. You don't need to give each hero a separate movie to establish everyone before teaming them up. Suicide Squad proved that, though that film should’ve trusted itself not to reiterate who everyone was three times over in the first act. Justice League could’ve easily introduced iconic versions of these heroes as established superheroes in their corners of the world (enough people know Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman at least to understand the gist of them), had Cyborg go to them for help controlling his machinery, and then used him as our eyes into the world of DC’s biggest heroes. Instead, what we got was several half-baked character arcs, an uninteresting and lackluster villain, and forgettable action.   Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) was great as usual, but I hate that they reiterated that she'd been doing nothing (at least in public) between World War 1 in her film and BvS. I wish she'd responded to Batman (Ben Affleck) calling her out about not being a public hero with a retort about working all those years in secret or something (I refuse to believe she sat out World War 2, for example). At least it didn't seem like people were surprised to see her when she stopped the terrorist attack in her introductory scene, so we know she's been active since the epilogue of her film. I also didn't like that they confirmed she's Zeus' biological daughter ("you have the blood of the old gods") rather than magically-imbued clay (her film left it open-ended, with Ares calling her the child Zeus and Hippolyta (Connie Nielson) “made” but not elaborating on what he meant or giving her a major reaction to that comment), unless Zeus' blood is what brought the clay to life. It was bizarre that they seemingly depowered her so much against Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds); how can she defeat Ares alone but not this third-stringer with help? There’s no reason a demigod like her shouldn’t be on Superman’s level, and if the only reason for depowering her is to justify the need for Superman, that’s a failure on the writing level. I would be all for Diana leading the League, so I was disappointed that even though they set up an arc about that with Diana being unsure of herself in any leadership position, it was still Bruce's show in the climax. Her reluctance to lead was an interesting wrinkle to her character and bit of reflection on Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) I didn't see coming, so I'd definitely like that explored more. I did like her respect for Superman (Henry Cavill), though as I saw pointed out elsewhere, more time spent with him in BvS (or at least some kind of line about her following the impact he was having on the world) would’ve helped to sell that connection better. I thought Cyborg (Ray Fisher) had the most interesting arc of the heroes: his cybernetic body parts were taking over his body and continually upgrading him, but into what? That was a fresh spin on the routine “am I still human?” cyborg question and I wish they had expanded on it more. Those upgrades should’ve been a much harder struggle for Vic to fight against, but once he joined the League that concern was almost totally forgotten. It seemed like all the pieces were there to neatly wrap his constant upgrades into the Mother Box plot; perhaps his cybernetic body could’ve attempted to help Steppenwolf or even just sped up the planet-destruction by working against Vic and the League to unite the Mother Boxes, since his cybernetics were created by a Mother Box. This would’ve given him a fight to control himself, but the movie just let him take control anyway without even attempting to explain how he could suddenly control the growth and development of his cybernetics in the epilogue. Assuming his fight with his cybernetics isn’t actually over, I would be interested in learning more of his story and watching him struggle with the idea of what he's becoming vs. what he wants to be. There’s a solid solo film in that idea and I’d definitely be down to watch it. As for Flash (Ezra Miller), I didn't feel like much of anything about his character was justified. The Batman of this universe was a dark, violent, paranoid murderer who branded criminals (knowing they'd get killed in prison for it) and tried to kill Superman. That's pretty much the exact opposite of someone this Barry would look up to or think is cool. Barry finally getting a job at the CCPD didn't feel motivated by anything he wanted—he was clearly into science, but he also wasn’t investigating his mom's murder at all—and it just seemed like a more permanent job to appease his father (Billy Crudup) than the result of a drive to prove his dad innocent or even just to contribute to society by pursuing justice in his day job. If lines referring to his attempts to solve his mom’s murder were cut out of the film, fair, but from what was on screen he definitely wasn’t trying to do that; if he were, getting his iconic crime lab job would’ve been about finally getting to look into that case officially instead of just being “hey I got a real job.” Barry’s refusal to move forward in life in any way was just...disappointing, and the film gave no real reason for it. I'm not sure why he was characterized as the scared one in battle situations, when he seemed much more confident in his cameo in Suicide Squad and his powers allow him to see any danger in slow motion; “inexperienced” doesn’t have to mean constantly overwhelmed, as the Justice League cartoon’s cocky Flash handily demonstrated. The kind of fear the movie saddled Barry with would’ve been more suited to a Cyborg whose power usage allows his cybernetics to overwrite him faster or to Aquaman (Jason Momoa), who literally admits he doesn’t want to die by getting involved. I also don't get why having no friends was necessary for Barry’s character. He makes a comment about people being “too slow,” so I could understand super speed being such a burden if Barry couldn’t turn it off, but he clearly can in this movie. Instead they focus his loneliness on not understanding people or their affection for things like brunch, which…if you don't understand or like brunch, just don't go to brunch. That disconnect from society seems like such a weird choice for what’s arguably the friendliest character in the comics’ Justice League. Barry could've been just as eager to join Bruce’s team because it would be fun, an adventure, or simply the right thing to do. Getting into the world at the end of the movie with his new job would’ve felt like more of an accomplishment if there was more to his societal disconnect in the first place, or if he’d found a greater understanding of other people by the end. Miller got a few fun moments/lines and delivered them well (particularly his confusion and surprise about Clark seeing him move at super speed and their competitions), but while he was likable and I give them props for trying something new, I wasn’t a fan of this direction for the character. Grant Gustin’s still my favorite Flash, though I’m glad there’s one for every fan. Even though I didn't like the Batman of BvS, I appreciate that they used his actions there to fuel his growth and development here. That's what I wish they'd done with Clark in BvS in the wake of killing Zod (Michael Shannon) in Man of Steel. That said, it would’ve been nice for other characters to comment on Batman’s 180 from killing criminals and his significant change in demeanor; have all those actions just been forgotten and forgiven? I wish Bruce had pushed Diana to be the leader more; they could've used his "Superman is evil and must die" blinders in BvS to justify Bruce doubting himself and his leadership choices. They could also have shown Bruce struggling to trust people with god-like powers to be actual heroes, fighting the urge to create defensive strategies against his own teammates (which would’ve been perfect had Cyborg’s robotic components had a mind of their own) and/or insisting on being the leader. I did like that he seemed very humbled here instead of the uber-confident and insanely prepared Batman of the past two decade’s comics, cartoons, and movies. I loved his comment about Clark living in the world while he hid from it; his insistence on raising Superman from the dead absolutely felt more like guilt than just a strategy for defeating Steppenwolf and that was perfect. While it would’ve certainly helped if BvS showed us more of the hope Superman specifically was bringing to the world, I liked that Bruce voiced the lack of hope he was feeling and that he realized he couldn’t do the same for the world (though it makes no sense that, say, Diana couldn’t have stepped up to that “protector of hope” title). I smiled at the use of Danny Elfman’s 1989 Batman score, but scoring a scene of “evil” Superman with John Williams’ iconic theme didn’t make much sense. While I do like this evolution of Batman better than the character Affleck introduced in BvS, I’m pretty Batman-ed out and am not really looking forward to his solo film purely because there is so much Batman out there already. I'm glad they finally brought some warmth and humor (and bright color!) to Superman. His introductory cell phone "interview" was well done (even if, as I’ve seen pointed out elsewhere, giving offhand interviews and talking to civilians was not something Man of Steel or BvS established in their depictions of Superman; if anything, he actively avoided explaining himself until it was too late). I'm very glad I was wrong about Clark being brainwashed into being Steppenwolf or some other evil force, since that would’ve given us a third “dark” Superman in as many movies. I do wonder why (and when) Barry went back in time to tell Bruce about Lois (Amy Adams) being “the key,” though, and the League’s fight with the revived Superman felt much more obligatory than exciting. The race with Flash was fun though, I’m glad they focused on evacuating bystanders, and I really liked Clark’s reunions with Lois and Martha (Diane Lane). I wish the film had taken the time to have Clark deal with the idea that he was essentially carrying the entire world’s hopes on his back and to show us his reaction to the loss of hope in the wake of his death. Just dealing with coming back to life (beyond a joke about feeling “itchy”) would’ve been an interesting moment. I liked that his powers were on full display throughout the film, though again I don’t think he needed to be so much more powerful than the rest of the League. I didn't think the CGI removal of Cavill’s Mission: Impossible 6 mustache looked weird. It was weird that Bruce and Clark didn’t seem to care about their secret identities at all; they both had open conversations in front of total strangers about their superhero alter egos and Clark walked around the farm without his glasses on despite an army of movers there. Kent is going to have a very awkward conversation with Perry White (Laurence Fishburne) about his resurrection too; I wonder if they’ll gloss over that. Either way, I think I could definitely be talked into giving Cavill’s Superman another shot in a solo movie. I fully believe he could give an excellent performance of a more iconic Superman with better material. Aquaman was mediocre. My favorite version of the character is the Batman Brave and the Bold “Outrageous!” adventurer king, and this was similar, but ultimately I wasn’t pulled in by the character as presented here. I did like the moment where he accidentally sat on the lasso of truth in front of the team though. Arthur not wanting to die was an understandable motivation for not helping at first, but I wish we'd gotten an idea of all those other things he wanted to do with his life and a better arc of him getting over his fear of a premature death. Similarly, taking responsibility for the Atlantean Mother Box felt offhand and underdeveloped; I’m not really sure why Mera (Amber Heard) wasn’t on her way to following Steppenwolf when Arthur showed up (maybe his arrival interrupted her exit?), prompting Arthur to really argue his case for why it should be him pursuing their enemy when he’d spent so much time avoiding Atlantis and his place there. In light of his showing here, I'm not really looking forward to his solo movie next year. I also wasn’t thrilled that they seemed to be embarrassed of Arthur’s ability to talk to fish and downplayed it. I didn't like that both Diana and Lois were so completely crushed by the deaths of Steve and Clark. They both seem like they should be stronger than that (Diana even got up after it and killed a god!). Mera was fine, but neither she nor JK Simmons as Commissioner Gordon got much to do. Alfred didn’t either. Steppenwolf was so bland and poorly drawn as the villain. His CGI wasn’t the best and they isolated him from large groups of civilians for the most part, lessening the connection to the world-destroying threat he actually posed (endangering one nameless family we see and many we don’t isn’t the same as unleashing him in a city). He had no argument with the heroes (even killing Amazons only resulted in a few flashes of anger in Diana and his attack on Atlantis had no effect on Arthur) or a belief system that clashed with theirs beyond "I want to destroy this planet." His motivation was that he’d been banished from Apokalips, so they could’ve elaborated on that to make him a better foil for these outsider heroes—particularly Diana, Clark, and Arthur—and how far they’d go to fit in, but didn’t. For some bizarre reason, the writers instead chose to give him a plot that looks for all the world like a rip-off of the Infinity Stones. Why not just do Darkseid if they had to go to the alien well (or better yet, Brainiac)? I think it would've been smarter to do the Legion of Doom here. They could've said the Legion wanted to take advantage of the fact that the biggest hero was dead by swarming and wiping out the rest once and for all; Lex was even already spying on all of them! You'd already have built-in animosity between the heroes and their villains, a simple reason to explore each of the heroes’ homes/lives outside their costumes, a villain team-up isn't something Marvel has done yet, and you'd have a variety of villainous personalities with personal vendettas and different abilities instead of a tall guy with an ax and a faceless horde of parademons (who were no scarier or more menacing than Ultron's drones or the Chitauri) collecting Mother Boxes. Speaking of the parademons, at least some of them were innocent people and not one of these heroes cared about killing or curing them.

At this rate, I hope they don’t do Darkseid at all. He’s been used as the ultimate DC villain far too often and it doesn’t seem like he’d be very different from what they just did with Steppenwolf. Apokaliptan forces didn’t prove to be impressive or imposing here either. Hopefully the sequel—if there is one—will bring an awesome Legion of Doom battle (the second post-credits scene certainly implies this is happening) and will continue the series’ upward trajectory. On a side note, I’m annoyed that apparently the film division won’t let Arrow use Deathstroke again because he’s involved in the movies; what’s the point of having separate universes if both can’t use all the characters? This is especially silly given Arrow was using Slade long before the movies wanted to.

Justice League may have dropped the ball on using and exploring (or even finishing) the interesting character arcs it introduced, but at least the DC film writers have good ideas at the core of most of the characters they’re playing with. The movie left me eager to see more of Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and Superman in their solo films. That said, this movie should’ve been treated like it was the only film in the DC cinematic canon coming out in the near future, not a springboard for everyone’s spinoff films (that was also rushing to compete with Marvel’s Avengers). They should’ve all had arcs that concluded here, rather than just taking half-steps toward their “real” development in their future films. Hopefully DC’s stated lack of focus on strict continuity will allow them to take greater strides in character development in each film, rather than parceling out a single arc over several movies. This movie proved there are interesting, unexpected stories to tell with these characters while ushering in a friendlier, more classic tone, and I hope future DC films learn from Justice League’s missteps to fully realize the full potential of these heroes.

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