#i already watched 1x12 and i love it more than life

[depressedstressedlemonzest]

So i dont annoy the ever loving crap out of @lunarmultishine Imma start live posting my watch of Once Upon A Time 12 years late.

[unstoppableforcce]

dirty, pretty, beautiful

— “goddamn… I love to watch you work”

pairing: billy russo x f! street fighter! reader

masterlist | 5.2k | ko-fi

warnings: [18+], fighting, blood, blood kink (?), semi-public sex (? it’s a bar bathroom), slight choking, just overall violence (?) but enthusiastically consensual, all smut is from Billy’s POV

a/n: so maybe, I ignored every other WIP I have to write for billy russo. and yeah, this is 9000% inspired by the scene in 1x12 where billy is clearly turned on watching frank kill a man. but i really like the way this came out so I don’t even care

The warehouse had a stink to it. Musty, heady, metallic… Metallic like the remains of a handful of change against his palm. Metallic like waft of hot rain off the highest train tracks. Metallic like the taste of blood, coating his teeth, smothering his tongue until it was all he imagined he would ever taste again.

Fresh blood had a sweeter smell, a saltier smell even, but as more time passed, as the heat of the daily sunlight poured in through the windows left unboarded, as the frigid, damp night settled within the empty body of the building, the smell grew rancid. A ripe fruit passing it’s best by date, left to sit for far too long. A living liquor left to die, to rot, to stink. It was a smell he was far too familiar with, a smell that laced more of his memories than he cared to ever voice. A smell that, on his worst days, he found himself missing.

With hands heavy like weights, stuffed into his pockets to keep him anchored as the smell flooded his head, he managed his way forward towards the hum of the crowd. Hustlers worked the crowd, kids barely old enough to enlist waving hands full of crumpled bills and corralling bet after bet.

“We’ve got three fights! Three fights left until the main event!” One called.

“Place your bets and place them fast!” The next one chanted, over and over again, louder and louder each time a new wad of cash was pushed into his hands.

“This is a night you won’t want to miss.”

Clearly, the crowd agreed.

The itch of his sweater brought a new heat as he moved deeper into the crowd circled around the main cage, a cold sweat gathering at the back of his neck where the collar of his leather jacket met his skin. He knew better than to wear one of his suits to an event like this, but he still found himself missing the fond feel of the expensive fabric, the protective layer it granted him, the height it added to his already intimidating form. A few sideways stares told him he still stood out plenty on his own, but something about being dressed down struck a chord with him he didn’t like.

It was wearing a different skin, a more vulnerable skin, one that left him desperate in a way he hadn’t felt in far too long.

Billy Russo was a powerful man, but he hadn’t always been. It didn’t matter how many years it had been, he spent far too long walking on the edge, toeing a line. The group home, the bullies, the stares that followed his pretty fucking face wherever he went… one wrong move, one bad decision, and he could’ve ended up here under much different circumstances.

It could have been him in the ring, fighting for his next meal, fighting for his life.

His hand scratched at his beard as he shouldered further into the crowd for a better view, doing his best to ignore the brutal stench of violence and the unclean men surrounding him. It didn’t matter what feeling bubbled in his chest, nor what aching memories echoed in the back of his head, he was here for a reason. Recruiting discharged soldiers could only sustain their workforce for so long if special forces remnants and women remained hard to come by. When rumors started to grow, flowering up from the filthy underbelly of the city, a fighter to end all fights, he knew he had to get his offer on the table before anyone else could.

Anvil needed operatives. He had a job to do. The stench of blood and the avalanche of feelings that came with it, that was just… well, he could handle it. With or without his suit and tie.

“... El Tigre and the Mountain!”

The crowd roared for the first fight of the night.

There was a particular bias for the Mountain, which, upon laying eyes on him, made enough sense. He didn’t get the name out of irony, he towered over his opponent by a good foot, and no amount of speed on the smaller man’s part was going to make a difference. The fight lasted, violent hit after violent hit, but within a few minutes, the Mountain prevailed as expected.

Then another fight, just as brutal. Then another.

Watching men beat the shit out of each other, however, was nothing new. If he wanted unthinking violence and filthy brutality, he knew where he could get it a lot cheaper, he was here for overlooked skill, an underestimated killer. He was here for—

“The crowned royalty of chaos, the duchess of destruction, the princess of pain… the one and only…” his voice echoed across the warehouse, rumbling as the crowd grew uncontrollable. “The Queen of Combat!”

If the crowd had allowed enough space between where their rowdy bodies pressed against one another, Billy thought some of them might get on their knees and submit to you right there and then. Hell, the second he laid eyes on you, the thought even crossed his mind.

And he’d be lying if he said it didn’t linger.

The warehouse shook with unflinching loyalty, his ears defeaned by the corresponding cheers. Shoulders hit into his, shoved from behind, pushed by the guy in front of him, some of the crowd climbing up on the cage just to gain a mere inch closer to you. And yet, you made your way into the cage without sparing a glance to a single one of the aggressive animals clawing at the fencing, unphased by the noise, unflinching. Your chin lifted just above the noise and your graceful stature carried you the rest of the way in. Regal was an understatement, but, watching you as closely as everyone else, he wasn’t sure he even had the vocabulary to find a word that worked better.

Blood stained your hoodie, bruises scaled the ridges of your knuckles, and yet, he was sure that one word from you could summon an army out of the screaming crowd surrounding you. One word from you and Billy… well, the things he’d do for you.

His eyes locked on your knuckles, watching closely as you wrapped the brutalized skin away, then moved to your body as you tossed the old hoodie away. Scars and marks lined your torso—bruises left over from a fight a mere few days ago judging by the healing, scars from fights so long ago they were nearly faded, burns, cuts, slices, bumps… your skin was a war zone.

And he knew war zones. Shifting his weight from one foot to another, a hot pressure in his jeans apparent, he was sure he could lose himself in a war zone like that.

If the man who entered behind you was your opponent, it was clear there wasn’t more than a handful of souls in the whole arena who cared. There wasn’t a single clap out of beat, not one change in the roar of support aimed at you and you alone. He was bigger, sure, but if energy was anything to go by, he could be Paul fucking Bunyan and it wouldn’t have even come close to matching your unwavering support.

“Fighters, get ready.”

Your opponent took a few jumps, slapping his arms like he was Michael Phelps. You took one step forward, rolled your shoulders and leveled your stare.

There was no doubt in his mind who he considered a threat, who he considered a future asset.

“Tap out or knock out.” The kid stood between them reminded, and when neither of their deadly stares shifted, he nodded his head once, blew his whistle, and got the fuck out of the way as fast as possible.

But you… you waited.

Your opponent jumped at you, feigning left then right but not putting much strength either way, hoping for a flinch. A flinch he didn’t get. You didn’t even blink.

You just waited.

And when he opened up his left side in frustration after a series of perfectly blocked hits, you turned it on. He couldn’t even get his hands up fast enough.

It wasn’t like he was some nobody they pulled out of the gutter to have you fight tonight, he was clearly a skilled fighter of his own, it just didn’t matter in comparison. You were quick, controlled, deliberate. Two punches for every one of his. Perfectly placed to have him grunting and groaning while his landed with nothing more than a hiss or blink.

If he thought his sweater was suffocating him before, god, he had no idea what he was getting himself into.

He could feel the hum of his heart, and the sudden staccato everytime your fist connected with a crack. He could feel his pulse beating through every inch of his body, from his temples to his toes and every throbbing inch in between. Another hit, he could see the blood coating the wraps across your knuckles. Another hit, he could see the crimson staining your teeth.

He wanted a taste—no, he needed one.

A hit to the ribs had your opponent crinkling, a jab to the face had him spinning. A kick to the knee buckled him over, a knee to the chin sent his teeth up into his brain. As blood splattered up your bare thigh, your opponent collapsed to the concrete.

Knock out.

Even if he wasn’t truly out, he knew better than to move, his eyes already swelling shut, his unscarred skin bruised and bloodied.

The crowd went wild, but Billy couldn’t hear. He watched you swipe your wrapped hand against your chin, wiping away the blood from your lips, and he swore his mind short-circuited as his blood rerouted elsewhere. You were fucking gorgeous, you were delicious, you were his new religion, you were… Royalty.

A Queen.

Fuck, he was hard.

With your hand lifted in victory, the crowd reached a volume Billy hadn’t even thought possible, and when you ripped your hand away and moved back for your discarded sweats, the crowd again tried to swarm you. To touch you, to feel your power, to feel you up. He just watched. He’d catch you when you came back out, showered, with cash in your hand. In his experience, people were much more open to recruitment when they weren’t being verbally and sexually harassed by hoards of disgusting men with filthy leering stares.

It took about an hour, stood outside in the back alley where the late night wind beat him up with freezing gust after freezing gust, but when you came out, you were alone. That alone made it worth it.

Shouldering open the heavy metal door dressed in fresh sweats hanging loose off your hot muscles, you made it a whole two steps before you caught sight of where he lingered in your peripheral and nearly jumped out of your skin. “Staking out this door is a good way to get the shit beat out of you, you know.”

The cool bite in your tone hit even harder than the wind, but neither did anything to cool him down. In fact, his smirk only grew as you raised your chin in a stubborn challenge.

“Don’t worry, I come in peace.” He defended, lifting his hands where they held in his jacket pockets for the warmest show of surrender he could muster.

“Not interested.”

He took a careful step forward, eyes holding your piercing stare. “You haven’t even heard my offer.”

“Don’t have to.” The bag hanging over your shoulder shifted as the wind whipped by once more, and you quickly moved it down your arm as the weight found one of your more grueling injuries stretching the length of your collarbone. If he hadn’t been looking so closely, maybe you could have hidden your shrug, but he saw it all, he wanted to see it all, even as you argued back. “Whatever it is, I don’t need it in my life.”

Your feet found two more steps away before he pulled you back with his sly smile and slimier argument. “Just one drink.”

It’s not frustration that stops you this time, it’s curiosity, one brow raised as your arms cross over your chest. “Are you serious?”

For the first time, he doesn’t have an answer. For the first time, that perfect exterior cracks, his brow furrowing and his mouth left open. “What—“

“I mean…” your laugh shook him out of it, the sound something rough and throaty. “Seriously? I thought for sure you were here to recruit me for something, with this whole pretty boy soldier off-duty look you’ve got going on but no… you want to get a drink? Seriously? You waited out here for an hour in the cold because you want to fuck me?”

He cleared his throat as his stare and smirk absconded, was it really that obvious? Did he really even care if it was?

Business Billy, he reminded himself chastely.

Cutting the distance between the two of you in half, he extended his hand for a shake he knew he’d never get once his mouth opened. “Billy Russo,” he introduced.

Your smirk fell in the same second

“That Anvil guy?”

His hand pulled back and his disposition shifted to the only defense it knew, a cocky smirk and casual shrug. “My reputation precedes me, huh?”

“You take good people who get out and you toss them right back in.” The cold bite had vacated your tone entirely, and what replaced it, the heat of your righteous indignation, reignited the fire he felt when you were fighting. A match strike. A sharp cut against a stick of flint.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t gotten it before, but coming from you… well, he just couldn’t turn his cheek to it. “I help those who can’t get back on their feet—“

“You help them get back to the hell that messed them up in the first place, you mean. How charitable.” The sarcasm was a slap to the face, and still, he couldn’t find it in himself to take a step back.

“At least I take care of my people, I pay better, I—“

Your scoff echoed around the empty alley, bouncing off the dumpsters and brick walls, reverberating in his ears until it was all he could hear. “Yeah? And just how much is a life worth to you?”

His jaw clenched. “More than the government, sweetheart.”

“That’s not really saying much, is it?”

He let loose a sigh, a breath of tension he didn’t even know he was holding as his shoulder twitched and his stare found anything to look at that wasn’t you. What was he supposed to say? What argument could he voice back? You had a point. Hell, he could see a younger version of himself making the same argument back when things first got bad over there, back when he first thought about getting out.

The sentiment was respectable, and your stubborn tenacity was nothing to scoff at, but this wasn’t about heart.

Some people just don’t make it out. Some people can’t. Why was he so wrong for offering them a path back, what was so immoral about offering the opportunity for them to profit off of what they were previously exploited for? If he didn’t do it, then someone else would. And at least… at least he cared. At least he knew what it felt like to come back home and not have a home waiting for you, to have blood on your hands so violently red that you can’t go back into the real world without people noticing.

Your knuckles, scarred and scabbing, told him that you knew too. You found your way back to the fighting, just like the ones he recruited to work for him. Were you really so different?

And still, a part of him knew that voicing that question, in that way, was a good way to get beat up.

His eyes found yours again as his hands lifted and fell back down to his sides, defeated. “You’re right, but it’s just the way things are. Not all of us come home and end up underground fighting royalty.”

Your head shook as you muffled your rough laughter. “It’s not as glamorous as it looks.”

“Nothing ever is.”

Now it was your stare that redirected, eyes dropping to your feet before you let them scale their way back up the rocky terrain of his dressed down form. Worn boots, dark jeans, tight sweater, leather jacket, and that face. That pretty face. Exhaustion buried in the bags beneath his eyes, frustration laced in the furrow of his brow, a familiarity in the darkness of his eyes, a void of everything you remembered, skilled violence and inescapable grief, a void so familiar, a void you could lose yourself in.

It was late. It was cold. And you were alone. You were always alone.

You had made worse choices.

Sucking your bottom lip in tight between the bite of your teeth and slowly letting it out, you cocked your head to the side and began working on the last of your stubborn defenses. “If I say yes to the drink, is it just going to be more of this recruitment talk?”

His head twisted into a similar quirk, his smirk slowly gaining back its traction on his lips as he took you in with a similar once over. He inched one hesitant step forward, and when you didn’t shy away from the renewed heat of his attention, he took another. “Well I mean… I guess it depends.”

“On what?”

“On how much talking we do.”

—

It had been a while since he last had bathroom sex.

His boots stuck to the filthy linoleum floor, making every shift of his footing an extra effort. The shitty fluorescent light overhead flickered in and out with an infuriating lack of rhythm, blinding one second and pathetically inadequate to see you beneath him the next. But as his fingers gripped tighter around the flesh of your thighs, pushing you down into the cool porcelain of the sink he had you sat on, he had to admit that you were right. For everything it was, at least the sink was clean.

“So…” The burn was exactly what he remembered it to be, the cheap liquor clawing at his throat as he forced the shot down, chasing it with a quick swig of the even cheaper beer you had ordered for him. “This is your bar of choice?”

There had been six shots, three for each of you to start with, but you smirked around your final shot and he couldn’t even think ahead to his second. “Is that judgement I hear?”

He could feel his shoulder tick as he corrected with a slow drawl, “curiosity.”

“There are worse bars.”

“There are better ones too—“ His hand caught yours as you reached for one of his two remaining shots, his fingers wrapping carefully around yours. “Do you mind?”

You tried to pull back but his grip didn’t budge.

“You didn’t seem interested,” you fought, following his eyes as they dipped down to your busted lips. Again, you tried your hand. Again, he refused to let go.

“I’m plenty interested.”

You could feel his grip loosen, but this time, you let him hold it there. If anything, you leaned into it. Reaching with your other hand, you brought your bottle to your mouth and wasted no time licking up the remnants of your sip left behind across your bottom lip. Again, his stare followed, his nose scrunching as something deep in his chest began to burn. Again, you leaned into it, close enough for his cologne to overtake any of the thousand other smells swirling around the packed bar.

“Actually,” setting your beer back down, your unoccupied hand found the inseam of his jeans, his legs perched open on his stool with you sat between them. “I like this bar because the bathrooms are the cleanest.”

Picking up his next shot, he couldn't help the twist of his brow nor the uptick of his heart rate as your fingers teased higher. “The bathrooms?”

“Yeah…” your casual tone betrayed the tension pulled taut between the two of you. Every point of contact had him burning. Your hand in his, a candle flame he couldn’t stop drifting his hand over even as it burned. Your hand inching on his thigh, a creeping flame following a line of detcord towards explosion. Your stare, a rumbling volcanic heat mere seconds away from erupting. The rowdy crowd surrounding the two of you was nothing, the stuttering breath fleeing your chest all he could hear.

He leaned in, his brow still furrowed in confusion.

You leaned closer, pulling your hand from his thigh to take his last shot for him. “You ever been fucked over a filthy sink, Marine?”

He prided himself on his composure, in battle and in bed, but fuck, with two fingers inside you feeling you clench around him and his head buried deep in the crook of your neck inhaling the harsh stench of industrial soap trying it’s best to cover the smell of blood, he could feel himself skirting dangerously close to an edge he wasn’t ready to fall off of yet. His dick wasn’t even out of his pants and still, when he thrust a third finger into you and saw your brutalized knuckles wrapped around his bicep, nails digging through the thick fabric of his sweater, his name falling wrecked from your lips, he very nearly lost it.

“Russo— Fuck—”

“You like that?” He challenged breathlessly back, biting down hard on your battle bruised shoulder to keep it together as you grew closer and closer to the same edge. The light flickered and his stare shifted back up towards your face. A Queen brought to a trembling mess, teeth piercing the already torn center of your beaten lip. “Yeah, you do, don’t you?”

“Shut up.” The whine that accompanied your words betrayed the cut of them and his smirk only grew.

His lips scaled the scarred terrain of your shoulders, climbing up the bruised battlefield of your neck, nipping at every inch you offered him with your head thrown back against the steamed up mirror. “Shut me up.”

Your chuckle intercepted your heaving breath, the hot pants hitting his skin and flushing his cheek. “Yeah?” You challenged, your words ghosting over his lips as he drew ever closer. The cut of your nails dug into his arm pulled back, your grip settling comfortably around his throat instead as you inhaled his violent groan. “Make me cum.”

He fought against your vice-like grip as you squeezed tighter and tighter, stealing a singular kiss from your lips. “Yes, Ma’am.”

These were his cheapest jeans anyways.

Dropping slowly to his knees, his neck pulled from your grasp and his mouth found your ready and weeping heat. With one lick, your thighs closed around his ears, one suck of your clit between his lips and one of your calloused hands found his hair while the other gripped tight to the sink for any hope of stability.

“Billy—”

His fingers had worked you too close to the edge already, it didn’t take long before his fingers, still deep inside you, found the right spot and the burning pressure of his mouth on your clit had you soaring. The beating pump of your blood filled your head, the thumping echo all you could hear as your vision began flickering in time with the ancient fluorescent over head. You could feel him moaning into you, your stubborn grip holding tight to his previously pristine head of hair, dragging you closer as your screams no doubt echoed around the small bathroom.

Maybe the music and the boisterous crowd outside in the bar would be loud enough to cover the sounds. Maybe not. He couldn’t care less.

All he cared about as he fought his way back to his feet was the lazy pull of your hand in his hair. All he could ever imagine caring about for the remainder of his lifetime was the effortless drag of your tongue over his chin and lips, collecting the remains of your orgasm before sucking him in for the longest kiss of the night. Loose. Languid. Luxurious.

“Was that up to your standards, your highness…” he murmured with a smirk along the side of your mouth, his hands scraping down to your thighs, dragging himself closer.

Your grip found itself again in his hair, tugging tight. “Take your pants off.”

“Ask nicely.”

He felt the warmth of your scoff against his cheek, but you agreed in the only way you knew how, your hand not buried in his hair dropping to the bulge in his jeans. “Please…” your lips pressed once to his chin, then to his neck, soothing the crescent mark your own nails had left. One kiss, then another, and before he could reach his hand to his own belt to comply, you bit into the mark and deepened the color. “Take your fucking pants off.”

His lips twisted into a snarl, but he had his belt off and his pants open in record time.

The condom in his wallet was only supposed to be a backup, but he had never been more grateful for his disgustingly hopeful thinking than he was to find it exactly where he had remembered it being wedged between the folds of leather. And as you pulled him out of his boxerbriefs and rolled it on with a few lazy pumps, your satisfied smirk told him you were equally grateful.

Still, your fought. “It’s not expired, is it?”

“God, I hate you.” He swore back, but his heart left halfway through the words, his chest deflating, a nearly whimpering moan leaving his lips as he pushed into your soaking folds. “I fucking—“

Your hips rolled as he seated himself fully within you and again, his breathing stuttered. If he thought he was close before, this was just embarrassing.

He remembered the ruthless violence of your fight, the blood running from your nose and staining your teeth, the strong pull between your shoulders as you landed hit after hit. He gripped tight to one of your thighs with one hand and flattened his other palm to the mirror behind your head as his pace picked up. He remembered the echoing crack as you landed your final blows, the utter brutality that oozed from you as you moved from one hit to the next. He dragged your hips closer, he pulled you flush against his chest, muffling your cries into his sweater.

He remembered your knuckles and every groan they elicited. He kissed your jaw, unable to stop himself from thinking of how many you had broken.

The rough drag of him inside of you was taunting, the feel of him so full yet your climax still dancing out of reach. It was too much and too good all at once. Too little and too overwhelming in the same breath.

“Billy—“ your broken sob tore through his chest with a heat he didn’t even recognize, a burn so heavenly he swore a sunburst sliced through him. “Fuck— Russo, yes—“

Every muscle in your body tightened around him, squeezing him, clawing at him, destroying his composure. He tried to draw it out, he tried to fight back from the edge, but your moans turned to music and his head emptied out. “I—“

“Come on,” you cooed, your words slurring as you forced his lips back to yours. He was melting, the heat was too much, searing his insides, charring his heart and fuck… he was melting into you. “That’s it.”

His nose scrunched, his teeth baring, a guttural snarl escaping his fiery chest as he powered himself even further into you. Again and again and again and— “Shit…”

You whimpered as his hips stuttered, you whined as he fell still.

“Shit…” he repeated, trying one last languid thrust as he found his way back down from his blinding high. “That was… fuck…”

“Yeah,” you muster just enough breath for a chuckle. “Yeah it was.”

He barely had enough time to catch his breath before you were pushing him back on unsteady legs, he barely managed to catch himself on the neighboring stall before you hopped down of the sink. He wanted to laugh at your sudden urgency, make some kind of joke, or pull you close and disregard it entirely, but he still couldn’t breathe. His hair fell in his face, his sweater rucked up around his waist and his dick barely soft—

He was a mess. A wrecked mess without the words to stop you. You already had your pants back on by the time he had the condom tied off in the trash, you were fixing yourself in the mirror before he even found a hold on his belt.

“You know, I know some bars with nicer bathrooms.” He finally fought, catching your attention as he fed the tongue of his belt back through. “Better beer too—“

A battering knock sounded on the door, making both of you jump. “Can you two hurry it the fuck up! Some of us have to pee!”

Neither of you two could hold yourselves back from laughing at that, breathless or not, even Billy felt a subtle heat rise to his cheeks. Not for getting caught—no, surely that was inevitable in a place this packed—but because he really didn’t care, because he wanted nothing more than to do it again.

You had to feel the same, that had to be as good for you as it was for him, god it was better than good. If you wanted him on his knees, he would beg. If you wanted to wreck his shit, he’d say ‘yes, please’—

You pressed a firm hand to his chest, forcing him back to the stall wall. Your lips hovered over his, so close, he could taste your breath. “This won’t happen again, pretty boy.”

His head quirked with a glare, your hand keeping him in place as he fought towards your lips. “No?”

“No.” Your lips grazed his as they formed around the word but it wasn’t enough.

“That’s a maybe then?”

“No, it’s not.” He could feel your pulse, the beat of your chest pounding against his as you keep him just close enough and still too far away. He could feel the lie as you made it.

His smirk only grew as his lips touched yours. “Well, if we’re not having sex, you should just come work for me.”

You hand slammed him back but he just laughed.

“Not fucking likely, Russo.”

He surged against your grip for one last kiss before you pulled back. “Well,” he sighed, slumping back against the wall and finally accepting his defeat. “I know where to find you, at least.”

Even your stubborn tenacity couldn’t hide your smirk as you unlocked the door. “Maybe so.”

That wasn’t a no.

[redxblueihateloveyou]

Just want to say...Thank you so much for your blog. Because of you, now I'm shipping RinHaru....Before I found your tumblr, I ship MakotoHaru (even though I never satisfied with that ship). After I read your opinions,I found the answer and see them (makoharu) as best friend that almost like brothers.

Can I ask in which part that make you ship RinHaru (and made you love their dynamics)? And what other ship that remind you of their dynamics? I love reading your answers...Thanks a lot.....

Haha yay caught you!!! <3

Thank you so much, so happy u enjoy my posts :) And yeah, they're super addicting, right? Too much love and longing and passion in between T_T. I tbh don't know the exact moment, that was one of the first animes that I've watched and I by that time wasn't into BL world, so I just stared watching and I thought that that was their love story, like by 1x04 I knew that they just wanted to be together and by 1x12 I was long gone, crying at the end and that was it. I like never even saw anybody else there as more than bros, my vision was to say "untainted" in that time period xD like if I was back then already into shipping bromances, I'd maybe had doubts about the credibility of this, but with these two I never did have any haha. I just was sure it was like that, so everything I saw after getting on tags, YT and everywhere and seeing that there are other ships was to say an interesting expirience for me, bc again I just didn't see it when I was watching it, and then I've listened to creators and was like... I win lol

So I've read all the novels, novelization, stories, dramas, etc etc and fell in love even more. These two pushed me into BL world, bc I was so in love with their love, that everything else seemed dull and I couldn't move on from that and kept searching for something else that could give me the same amount of emotion and so far only chinese BL helped me with this. I've started watching "Mo Dao Zu Shi" and I was gone ofc, bc who would've thought, my whole family was like "oh no we've seen this idiocity in between before" haha and after the whole rh chat we've had of reincarnation AU about the two this vid was born. So yeah, you can really make about 1000 gifsets about the parallels between them and the dynamics and behavior are way too crazy similar.

I think I since forever had a thing for the stories like.. when one fires up the cold one, brings him out of his shell and turns his life upside down and makes him feel all the feels. It was like this since like "pride and prejudice" you know lmao. I was always into these.. cold one, who actually turns out feels the most and their other half who lights the match xD. And I also always loved opposites attract thing, bc in my opinion its the best thing for romantic relationships, when someone has smth you don't, but then they also have something you need, and then it becomes a perfection. And to me its also important for both to have their own independent personality, as in character of their own, I've always hated this thing, when someone's someone's accessory and not a character. Like I'd rather they clash until they get there bc they both have strong personaliies than them being about nothing, bc one I don't even know who he is haha. I'm not throwing shade here at mh, just saying that its a very common dynamics these days.

I need like I adore Haru and I adore Rin bc of who they are, before they fell in love they were amazing on their own, but then they fell in love and became another even more incredible thing, bc of what they gifted to one another, so then when you realize that they can't exist without each other anymore, bc they can't go back to the way it was and one has smth the other wants, it's 1sltly mega satusfying, 2ndly holy fuck ships like that are badass. Like they can rule the world together. I love these. It's like yeah, WWX is hella strong and the best and LZ is hella strong and the best, but put them together and its just holy shit haha. So yeah, that's my thing.

[aimmyarrowshigh]

Dark Greetings this Spooky Season Ms. V. Can we get a list of your favorite Halloween movies and specials? I know you have seen *everything* and I am trying to go beyond my usual rewatches this holiday month.

V. AIMMYARROWSHIGH’S CRITERIA FOR HALLOWEEN EPISODES

Does the Halloween element combine convincingly with the usual universe of the show (ex: Lizzie McGuire 2x09 “Those Freaky McGuires” is not good as a Halloween episode because it changes the rules of the Lizzie McGuire universe, whereas Community 2x06 “Epidemiology” is a GREAT Halloween episode because it manages to logically introduce zombies to the regular Community universe)?

Does the Halloween element advance the plot of the episode/series (ex: the reason Boy Meets World 5x17 “And Then There Was Shawn” is literally the best Halloween episode ever made is that it uses the horror movie tropes it satirizes to provide a CRUCIAL turning-point to the plot of the show)?

Is the Halloween episode in the forefront enough that it’s clearly a holiday episode (ex: HAVING ONE JACK-O’LANTERN ON A DESK DOES NOT A HALLOWEEN SPECIAL MAKE, LAW & ORDER 16x03 “GHOSTS”! You gotta go ALL-IN, like Bob’s Burgers 3x02 “Full Bars”!)?

Does the Halloween theme balance well between spooky and warm-n-fuzzy (ex: Criminal Minds 11x21 “Mr. Scratch” is too fucking bleak, but Criminal Minds 12x06 “Elliott’s Pond” has a joyous/celebratory tone to the ending despite being a genuinely scary episode)?

Is it generally a well-written, acted, and designed episode of television (ex: Saved by the Bell! 3x26 “Mystery Weekend” is seriously, not exaggerating, the worst thing I’ve ever watched in my life; Psych 1x15 “Scary Sherry, Or Bianca’s Toast” is a triumph of the medium)?

THE BEST, bar none, Halloween special ever made is Boy Meets World 5x17, “And Then There Was Shawn.” Period. There can be no argument, except MAYBE Community 3x06, “Epidemiology,” but I like “And Then There Was Shawn” better because the parody and homage as less… biting? And because I think it continues and addresses the emotional core of the regular BMW season better than “Epidemiology” does for Community s3. “Epi” DOES plant the seed (…heh) for the Season 3B major plot arc of Shirley’s pregnancy and Chang Deciding To Murder, but it gets some major minus points for mocking Yvette Nicole Brown’s weight with other characters’ responses to her costume, tbh. And “And Then There Was Shawn” is just fucking iconic. It is THE Halloween episode manual, IMO, if there were to be a textbook on how to write a perfect Halloween episode for your sitcom.

HOWEVER, I also have to give major props to Bob’s Burgers and Psych, as complete series, for their CONSISTENTLY excellent Halloween episodes. A lot of series that have multiple Halloween eps really phone it in after one or two, because they don’t have any more ideas for how to incorporate Halloween pastiches while maintaining the overall feeling of the series (tbh B99, while the Halloween Heists are excellent in general, is/has been coming very close to this line, and I think that if they HADN’T had to switch out the Heist to Cinco de Mayo in s6, they would have jumped their Heist Shark [and I think they know it, too, because it was lampshaded in the episode itself]) or they just straight-up don’t have any more ideas for what or how to have the characters they’re bound to parody or pay homage to a Halloween thing after they’ve already done one or two. And let’s be real: those one or two have probably been either The Shining or Rear Window, because those are pretty much the two that every show starts with.

Bob’s manages to make every Halloween episode feel very fresh and organic to the series, which I think they do have some leeway to do because of the nature of cartoons keeping the Belchers living a kind of loop of never aging, yk, but amazingly they’ve only done the “Tina feels too old to trick or treat, maybe? Nope, she’s not 14 yet, so there’s still time!” thing in a way that felt tropey once (in 3x02 Full Bars). They’ve been able to address Tina being 13/in 8th grade, and worrying about it being almost too late for her to keep trick or treating, in ways that were in-character and added to the overall episode in 4x02 Fort Night, 5x02 Tina and the Real Ghost, and 9x04 Nightmare on Ocean Avenue Street, without me rolling my eyes at the screen and going “TINA, EVERY SINGLE SHOW WITH A TWEEN IN IT HAS ALREADY DECIDED THAT THE AGE AT WHICH YOU MUST STOP TRICK OR TREATING IS FRESHMAN YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, COME ON NOW” which… at this point, is a Feat. Because like, I’ve POSTED over a thousand Halloween episodes, right? But I’ve watched and screencapped ::checks folder:: 3,905 Halloween episodes since 2014. Which is, um, a. lot. The ACTUAL BEST Bob’s Burgers Halloween episode is 6x03, “The Hauntening,” which is just… achingly perfect television. I know I’ve posted about it before (probably a couple times tbh) but the way that it aired originally back-to-back with The Simpsons 27x04, “Halloween of Horror,” so that the evening of Sunday cartoons juxtaposed eight-year-old Louise whose family worked so hard to scare her like she wanted with nine-year-old Lisa’s family working so hard to keep her from being too scared and make sure that she felt safe… reader, I FUCKIN CRIED. Little girls being deeply loved while also Spoopy Things!!!!!! IS WHAT HALLOWEEN SPECIALS ARE!!! FUCKIN!!!!!! ABOUT!!!!!!!

Psych, though, has the benefit of not really having any, like… central tone to the series? Beyond “friendship” and “having fun with joking,” tbh? So it’s able to do what a lot of series get docked “points” for in my Foolproof Halloween Special Ratings System That Is Completely Subjective To My Tastes And Mood, which is really just run full-tilt into parody and homage without really worrying about overall tonal connection to the rest of the season or series. 1x15, “Scary Sherry, or, Bianca’s Toast,” while it DOES fall victim to the way-too-common Halloween episode trap of making mental hospitals into a Scary Thing (they are a medical normality and a necessary thing for health for many people and should not be feared), is delightful Spooky Fun AND has the benefit of having Shannon Woodward in it.* We all know by now that if an episode of any show has Shannon Woodward as the guest star, it will by default end up being one of the best, if not THE best, episodes of that series. It’s just how having Shannon Woodward as your guest star rolls. I also really like, with Psych’s Halloween episodes, that quite a few of them understand the underlying thematic scope of Horror, which is “The Monstrous Feminine Is A Thing And All Horror Tropes Are Actually About Women’s Interior Lives Because Men Can’t Write Women And Fear Women Always,” yk, in a way that is neither TOO Actual Horror, which I am too afraid of to Do, or too trite and demeaning, which is the other basic trap that Halloween stuff falls into A Lot. Like, Scary Sherry is very much about women villainizing other women, avenging other women, and being in very specifically-female pain, even though Shawn & Gus are still the lens through which we solve the mystery, and so are 4x04 The Devil Is In The Details And The Upstairs Bedroom and 6x03 This Episode Sucks. But they give their Monstrous Females dignity and breadth, which is impressive, ESPECIALLY since they’re one-off guest characters. Also, 3x15 Tuesday the 17th is just plain funny and well-done, like, just give it props for the title alone.

*(Speaking of Shannon Woodward, another amazingly good Halloween episode is Raising Hope 4x07, “Murder, She Hoped,” which is among my very favorite Rear Window homage episodes and has probably the funniest gag in ANY Rear Window ep, in Martha Plimpton floating across the screen in the Grace Kelly silk nightgown and peignoir and announcing that it was on sale at Walmart, can you believe?! and honestly, yes. Perfection.)

Also excellent:

• The Addams Family (1991) + Addams Family Values (1993) • Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School (RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU WERE GAY FOR SIBELLA AS A CHILD!) • Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost (RAISE YOUR HAND IF YOU'RE GAY BECAUSE THE HEX GIRLS!) • Halloweentown + Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge • Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire! • Z•O•M•B•I•E•S (to a lesser extent, Z•O•M•B•I•E•S 2) • Clue (1985) • Coraline • Corpse Bride • 6teen 2x00 Dude of the Dead • Arthur 21x00 Arthur and the Haunted Treehouse • Lamb-Chop in the Haunted Studio • Arthur 8x04A Fern-kenstein's Monster • Arthur 10x02 The Squirrels • WandaVision 1x06 The All-New Halloween Spooktacular (I KNOW YOU, SPECIFICALLY, DEAR @plavoptice, HATE MCU!WANDA AND I DON'T BLAME YOU, YOUR REASONS ARE VERY VALID! But this is a good Halloween special so I'm putting it on my list In General.) • Boy Meets World 2x06 Who's Afraid of Cory Wolf? • Ghostbusters (2016) • Gravity Falls 1x12 Summerween • Leverage 4x02 Ten L'il Grifters Job • The Loud House 2x40 Tricked! • Mockingbird Lane 1x00 Unaired Pilot • It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! (Classic, etc.)

I'm SURE I'm forgetting some that I'll rewatch this year myself. I'm a big Halloween Baking Championship fan, tbh, which is on Discovery+ now so I recommend that if you like mostly-relaxing nice people baking cakes that look like bats and such.

I'm also IMMENSELY INTENSELY EXCITED for The Muppets' Haunted Mansion on Disney+ next week!!!

[darling-i-read-it]

Roti

1x11

Hannibal Lecter x reader x Will Graham 

Hannibal Re-Write Series Masterlist

Word Count: 2k

Warnings: spoilers for hannibal, murder, mental health problems 

Author’s Note: Will graham I will die for you any day of the week just text me 

I took lines directly from the script so some may seem familiar. Those sentences are not mine. 

Official Episode Summary : The BAU team searches for Dr. Gideon, who has escaped custody and intends to kill psychiatrists who have profiled him; Hannibal misleads the team in order to get Will and Gideon in the same room; Jack questions Dr. Chilton about Gideon's escape.

I don’t own these characters. They belong to author/director 

Tag List: @llperfectsymmetryll​

(not my gif)

It was snowing steadily outside when you went to sleep that night. There were a few inches above the ground by the time your consciousness slipped into no man's land. You woke up slowly, looking at the other side of the bed where Will had fallen asleep. The blankets had been kicked off of both of you and you were freezing the second you awoke. 

Will laid on his back, body tense but still asleep. Sweat clung to his gray shirt. He was hot when you grabbed his arm and he instantly woke up, staring at you with scared beady eyes.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” you whispered and he shook his head looking around to get his bearings. 

“Is this real?” he asked, voice wispy. You nodded quickly and scooted closer to him.

“Real,” you told him. When he looked at you his eyes pleaded and you sat all the way up, looking down at him. “Let’s go outside.” He nodded and clung to your arm as you got out of bed, wiping the sleep from your eyes. You led him outside and you stood on the porch, the dogs running past you into the yard. It had stopped snowing.

He shook beside you but it was colder outside. You didn’t touch him in fear of making him even hotter.

“Take the day off,” you whispered. 

“I can’t.” 

The alarm went off inside.

-

“You dodged a bullet Chilton. Gideon’s escape foregoes a trial and a very public humiliation for you,” Wil said as you walked together into the office of Frederick Chilton.  You looked around curiously. Will had asked you to come, having serious concerns that this time around they might not let him out. You were to be a trainee, if anyone asked.

Chilton sat behind his desk and raised an eyebrow at the sight of you. 

“Who’s this? I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure.” 

“Y/N Y/L/N. Trainee,” you said, shaking his hand. Will grabbed your arm and pulled it back quickly. He didn’t want any part of Chilton touching you beyond that handshake.

“They’re letting trainees come on such high profile cases now?” Chilton paused, looking between the two of you. “Ah no, you’re thee Y/N. I wasn’t aware I was in the presence of such a high profile couple.” Will let out an annoyed sigh. 

“We’re here to talk about Gideon,” Will said simply.

“How do you do it? Is there a part of you that hates your boyfriend's mind?” Chilton asked. 

“You sound like Freddie Lounds,” you said and he feigned hurt

“I can see where you like each other.”

-

Work that day was hard. 

Hannibal noticed.

He gestured for you to come into the office just before Will’s appointment. You stepped inside. You had never been in here alone with Hannibal you were pretty sure. With Will, heck with Tobias or Jack but never just with Hannibal. It made you feel like a patient. 

“How is Will?”

“Will is terrible but you know that already,” you whispered. You trailed your finger along his desk and turned around.

“Why don’t you have a seat in the chair?” he asked as you hoisted yourself up onto the desk.

“It makes me feel to much like a patient. When I’m on the desk I’m an observer. I don't’ have to have any input on what you and Will discuss,” you told him. Hannibal walked over to you and leaned against the desk beside you. “He wakes up at night sweating through the sheets, almost crying,” you whispered. “He doesn’t know if I’m real when I comfort him.” You stared straight ahead at the art on the walls. You took a deep breath in.

“How does that make you feel?” Hannibal asked.

“Broken hearted,” you breathed. “LIke I can’t help my best friend. Because I can’t.” You finally looked over at Hannibal. 

“You’re doing the best you can,” Hannibal said. “That is occasionally all we can do.” You shook your head and while  you stared into Hannibal’s eyes you felt a pull. An emotional pull you hadn’t felt beside him anymore. You pushed it away quickly, looking back at the wall.

You felt an angry lone tear go down your cheek.

“It isn’t enough.”

“Do you consider yourself in any of this? Perhaps that by attempting to take on WIll’s problems you are making more problems for yourself,” Hannibal suggested.

“I don’t care about me or my social life right now. I care about Will.”

The door, which was open, was knocked on as Will walked inside. You wiped your eyes and pushed yourself off the table.

“Am I interrupting?” Will asked. You shook your head and walked over to the door quickly, eager to leave Hannibal to it. Will grabbed your arm before you could leave. You quickly stopped. 

“Yeah?” 

“I-” he started. “I’m sorry about this morning.” You shook your head and put your hand to his cheek lovingly.

“Don’t worry about it. Have a good session thing,” you said quietly and he let you go. He thought about asking you to stay but thought better of it. He knew that he was hurting you daily by being like this and he hated seeing you hurt almost as much as you hated seeing him hurt. 

You shut the door behind you and Will’s eyes welled with tears.

“She loves you,” Hannibal said. “Very much.”

“Glad to know someone will always be in my corner,” he muttered. “Even when I’m not.”

-

With Gideons escape you were worried about pretty much everything. You sat on your own desk outside the office as Will and Hannibal talked. To get your mind off things you called Alana. 

“Hello?” 

“You alive? Is this the Chesapeake Ripper?” you asked. Alana laughed mockingly.

“Gideon isn’t the Ripper,” she told you.

“Still.” You paused. “Are you okay?” 

“I’m better than your boyfriend. Speaking of, you need a vacation when Will regains his stability for putting up with him. I can’t imagine living with him.” You sighed.

“He cuddles well. Good kisser. You get any hot protective detail?” She hummed a no.

“Thinking about giving into Hannibal's flirting,” she muttered.

“Hannibal's been flirting?” you asked. You kicked your feet around. This was what you needed. A girl talk.

“Sort of. I can’t tell.”

“You're a psychiatrist Alana, how can’t you tell?”

“Because I can’t be my own psychiatrist.” The door to the office opened. Will’s eyes were filled with water.

“I gotta go. Be safe.” You hung up the phone and stood you, bringing your hand to Will’s face. You wiped the tears and noticed very quickly how hot he was. “Wil you’re burning,” you whispered.

“I’m naturally hot,” he joked dryly.

“Shut up. What is your temperature? Take some aspirin.” 

“We can check later and I just took some. I just wanna go home.” YOu nodded stiffly and glanced at Hannibal behind him. He gave you a solemn look of pity. You wrapped your fingers around the side of Will’s neck and it ached with the heat. 

-

Alana handed you a bowl of ice cream and you took it, sitting on the chair in her office. She sat on her desk facing  you and the window.

“If you get killed hanging out with me Will is never going to forgive you,” she said, pointing her spoon at you. You took a bite of your ice cream and then pointed  your spoon at the men around the room, watching.

“If he gets through them perhaps it was fate,” you suggested. “Plus Will told me to come.” It was true. When Alana invited you for dinner Will practically shoved  you through the door. The hunt for Gideon was on and he figured it would be safer with a detail than with him at work. 

He almost dropped you off at Hannibal’s but decided against it when he thought about it. 

“I hope he’s okay,” you whispered offhandedly.

“You don’t need to worry about him,” Alana said.

“It’s literally my job as his girlfriend to worry about him.” Your foot bounced nervously.

“It’s why I didn’t date him when I had the chance,” she said.

“Because he’s to much work?”

“I didn’t know if he was stable or not.” You nodded slowly.

“But you like Hannibal whom is likely hiding his instability,” you said. She laughed and shook her head.

“I never said I liked him. I just said he might be flirting.” 

There was a shot outside the window. You stood up quickly and looked outside to see Gideon on the ground and Will, kneeling beside him.  You dropped your bowl. It broke.  You ran out the front door and quickly skidded to the ground beside Will, grabbing his arm. He looked at you and for a moment you weren’t sure if he recognized you.

“Real or-”

“Real. Real.” You put your hands on his cheeks and he was still burning. He put his head on your lap and you looked at Alana who had just come outside. “Call Jack. And Hannibal.” She nodded and ran back inside to get the phone.

You held Will on your lap, somehow calm, running your hands through his hair wildly to get  him to stop shaking.

-

Hannibal met  you at the hospital after talking to Jack. You sat beside Will’s bed, his hand in yours as you looked at his unconscious body. You were still crying, so scared for him.

“His temperature was 105, degrees and I didn’t make him go to the doctor,” you whispered. Hannibal shook his head, walking toward you. He pulled up a chair and sat beside you.

“You can’t blame yourself for this,” he whispered.

“What did Jack say?”

“Nothing you want to hear right now,” he told you. “I swear I will rip that man's head right off hi-”

“It’s okay. It’ll all be okay.” 

Hannibal took your other hand and you let him hold it as you stared at Will, your face tear stained and puffy.

“Will he be okay?” you whispered.

“Will’s going to be alright,” Hannibal whispered but he honestly wasn’t sure anymore.

1x12

[erricdraven]

relief with your heart

flufftober: day 14 - possibilities

AO3

a/n: this is part coda and part canon divergence for 1x12!

Alec had always excelled as a leader, a soldier, because he had never known the luxury of wanting—taking—for himself. It was what made him stand at the brink of pledging himself in perpetuity to someone he could never love, and even in the aftermath of the aborted nuptials, it made him sick to his stomach to think about just how far he could have gone. The fact that Magnus had come through the doors to make one last stand had given him more than just possibilities—it had granted him a stay of execution from regrets he hadn’t even had time to collect.

Still dressed in his wedding attire, Alec leaned against the stained-glass window that loomed above him in the deserted hallway. He was only just now starting to feel like he could breathe normally, away from the reticent gazes of judgment and discomfort that made his chest feel like it was being squeezed.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Magnus’ voice startled him upright, hands folded behind his back. “Hey. I didn’t know you were still here.” Heat crept up the back of Alec’s neck, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he would ever be able to look at Magnus without remembering how it felt to kiss him. Just the recollection of a kiss made his lips tingle faintly.

“Are you all right?” Magnus reached out to brush his knuckles against the back of Alec’s hand.

“Can we go somewhere and talk?” he asked instead, digging his blunt nails into his palm to ground himself. The shock from how quickly the events of the day had unfolded had worn off and left Alec with an uneasiness in the pit of his stomach over all the questions that were becoming an amalgamation of nonverbal panic. He liked to know what he was up against, to make the most informed decision for the greatest good—but this was a matter of the heart, and he had taken a leap of faith to follow it before. Only now, he wasn’t quite sure where he had landed.

There was something like relief in Magnus’ voice when he agreed. “I’d be happy to portal us somewhere right now, if you’d like.”

Alec looked pointedly down at his dress clothes. “I should change, but then, could I come over to the loft?”

“Of course you can; you’re always welcome.” Magnus had this way of making him feel that there was legitimacy in what he needed, and repeatedly met him where he was without making him feel exposed or weak. “I can make us some tea, if you like?”

“That sounds perfect,” Alec said softly, nodding.

If he had learned anything from watching the trials and tribulations of his siblings in lust and, seldom, love, it was that it could not exist without vulnerability. For the first time, he felt safe to gamble the risk for himself.

When he got back to his room, he stripped off his clothes and took a cursory, hot shower that soothed the ache of his tense muscles. By the time he was dressed to go to Magnus’ the weight of the day felt a little less heavy on his shoulders, and walking through the streets of New York to the loft felt like the start of a reprieve.

Alec had just stepped off the elevator when the door to Penthouse 1 opened—and Magnus was there to meet him with a smile. “Alexander. The kettle is on to boil, so we’ll have tea in just a few minutes.”

As he shouldered through the doorway, he reached instinctively to brush the back of Magnus’ hand with the pads of his fingers in greeting. They had kissed, truly kissed, just a few hours ago, and yet he felt suddenly very aware of the fact that he wasn’t sure where the boundary line between them lie. He was contending with the dissonance of his longing and his fear in a way he never had before. “I know this isn’t exactly the first date we’ve talked about, but I just…” Alec pursed his lips pensively, looking down at the scuffed toes of his boots. “I never really talk about how I feel but I—you make me want to. This makes me want to.” His motions were slightly chaotic with adrenaline-fueled nerves as he gestured between them.

Without judgement or question, Magnus nodded. “Of course. Open communication is the cornerstone to any relationship.”

Alec couldn’t help the pleased flush that warmed his cheeks. “Are we together?” he heard himself asking, making the gentle pink blush turn deep crimson.

A painfully tender look of knowing crossed Magnus’ face and with a snap of his fingers, he had a steaming mug of tea in either hand. He offered one to Alec, then sat down on the couch next to where he was standing. “Do you want to be?”

Alec’s fingers tapped a nervous rhythm against the ceramic for a moment before he sat down. “I think so.”

“I don’t want you to think that my intention in showing up to your wedding was to force your hand, Alexander.” He looked over at the chair across from them wistfully, as if recalling a memory. “A dear friend reminded me that when the right kind of love comes back to me, it’s my time to fight for it, and what I feel when I’m with you is…that possibility, I suppose.” Turning his attention back to Alec, Magnus fixed him with a purposeful gaze.

“You were right about me, Magnus. Being around you, I’ve felt things that I didn’t even know I could. It’s like I’m someone I’ve never been before, and that terrifies me. But I also know that whoever I am with you, I think I want to be.” His pulse was pounding in his ears and throbbing beneath his skin. “I think you saved me, showing up when you did.”

Magnus reached over and intertwined their fingers tightly. “I could say the same, Alexander.”

Alec started to lean towards him, but stopped himself abruptly. Spending his life thus far wanting what he couldn’t have was not going to be so easily resolved. In this moment, he had someone beautiful and extraordinary who was letting him in if it was what he wanted, and yet wanting was a possibility he didn’t yet know how to take advantage of most times. “I don’t know how to want you the way that I do,” he admitted in a whisper.

“You’re already doing it.” And it sounded so simple when Magnus just said so, even when it had always felt anything but. “Do you want to touch me? You can—I want you to.”

Closing his eyes against the fear and the shame, Alec leaned forward to touch his forehead to Magnus’. A shaky breath escaped his lips unbidden.

“If you want, you’re welcome to stay here tonight. On separate couches, of course.” Alec could hear the smile in Magnus’ voice.

“Actually, I don’t think I would mind if you stayed here with me.”

[aspiestvmusings]

ZEP PARALLELS: S2 vs S1

POSSIBLE SPOILERS?

WARNING: Super long post. 

Parallels & Similarities (and differences) between S1 & S2

Includes episodes 2x01, 2x02, 2x03: 

2x01 Zoeys Extraordinary Return

Wake-up songs/Zoey & Mo: Opening the season with Zoey being woken up by Mo singing "in real life" & waking her up. "Rise up" in 2x01 AND "Angel of the Morning/Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" in 1x01. We first see Zoey in her bedroom. And the first two characters we meet are Zoey & Mo.

Zoey + baby: In both premieres Zoey has an encounter with a baby. In 2x01 we see her interact with her brother's son (the new baby, Miles) VS in 1x01 she encounters  new mom with a baby on the cable car during the first ever big musical number she experiences (Help!) #whenwillshestarttohearthebabysheartsongs 

Clarkeman & Coffee: The first Zoey/Max scene/interactions happens over "coffee break before work". In 2x01 we see them meting up for a coffee on a park bench before she heads over to work VS in 1x01 we see them getting coffee at the cofee bar on their way to work. In both scenes Max, her best friend, encourages/supports her (you will get the promotion VS it's a shield...to shield you from the world when you need it").

Jumping to conclusions: In 2x01 Zoey assumes that Max giving her the small jewelry box means he's proposing ("Relax, I'm not proposing") VS In 1x02 Zoey assumes that Max is asking her on a romantic dinner date, when he tells her he won the lottery to the restaurant they both love. ("Thursday night. Is it a date?" / "Is it a date?" "No! I just mean like can you go?")

Legs up!: Peoples legs getting close to Zoey's face during big musicals numbers: Leif's & Simon's during "Hello Dolly" in 2x01 at the 4th floor bullpen VS Joan's during "Satisfaction" in the elevator in 1x03. 

Promotion: In 1x01 Zoey wants the promotion & has an "interview" with Joan to get it VS in 2x01 she does not want the new job (added responsibility, when she jsut wants to "lay low") but Joan just asks her to take it. And by the end of the episode she gets the promotion/accepts the promotion, and we see her "first day at work on the new job". And in both episodes she has a competitor - Leif, who is also interested in a promotion. 

Interesting: In 2x01 Mo tells Zoey "So the powers are back - you're interesting again!" VS 1x01 when she tells him about her new superpower Mo tells Zoey: "This is the 1st thing I find remotely interesting about you". 

Mo is the honest friend: In 2x01 Mo speaks the honest truth... which is what Zoey actually needs to hear JUST LIKE he has been doing throughout S1. He might not always say the nicest things, but he's alwyas honest. And its what Zoey's character needs. (eg. Mo knows that she just lost her dad & it's a hard time for her, but her problems are still not bigger than everyone elses. Or like he calls her out on her chase/hesitation over the two teams in S1)

Tech-savvy Zoey to the rescue: In 2x01 Zoey uses her tech skills to "hack into Mitch's e-mail account" when her mom can't find the password & access it for info she needs (that dad left them) VS in1x03 Zoey comes up with a way to communicate with Mitch... (after David comes up with the Yes/No buzzer) & creates a computer program which allows him to type his answers using a mouse. 

Etsy: In 2x01 Joan tells Zoey "I like your sweater, its cute that you shop at Etsy" VS in 1x01 Tobin tells Zoey: "I thought you would be doing each others nails & buying matching tote-bags off Etsy in there."

Blessing or curse? In 1x12 Zoey told her dad that she has chosen to look at her musical power more like a "gift/blessing" (it allowed her to communicate with dad, helped her form bonds with others, help people...) and she said she's not minding the big musical numbers the way she used to. She even considers they're helpin g her instead. VS in 2x01 she tells Mo that she hopes the power won't return & when it does, she finds it "overwhelming" & cannot deal with any of it. 

Bottling it up: In 2x01 George sings "Don't cry out loud. Just keep it inside. And learn how to hide your feelings."  That song is as much about George's feelings about being the new guy, as it is another reference to Zoey's state of mind VS in 1x01 we learn that both Zoey & Simon keep their grief emotions bottled up (and they should not). As the dilogue from the Pilot already told us: Zoey: "Are you talking to anyone about this?" Simon: "Other than you? No. I've become a real expert of bottling my shame & pain, and hiding it from the world." Zoey: "I'm not an expert on this or anything, but you cant just keep it in."

Family & Grief: The Clarke family all singing "Carry on" & sitting down the table to eat dinner together at the end of 2x01... with a happy note about the future in their minds VS The Clarke family all singing "American Pie" on the funeral day at the end of 1x12, and all sitting at the living room (on the coach, chairs)...with a sad note about the present in their minds. 

The premiere episodes end with a "surprise" Max (and Zoey) "twist": ep 1x01 ends with a surprise heart song from Max which makes Zoey & the viewers aware of his feelings for her VS 2x01 ends with a surprise decision from Zoey where she "chooses Max". Also parallels to 1x12: in both 2x01 & 1x12 Zoey comes onto/kisses Max as he's telling her about his new outlook on life & business ideas. In both cases she's (partly) trying to forget grieving her dad, and needs him for the distraction. Both endings were "sudden" & "unexpected"

Family picture wall: In 2x01 Maggie is holding baby Miles (her grandson) & "showing him" the family photos on the wall VS in 1x01 Zoey sees her & dad's reflection on the picture on the wall...as Mitch first communictes with her... by singing his first heart song to her.  

Move forward: Zoey's words to Max about the business plans & their relationship actually apply as much to herself and her grief as they do for this situation: "You should absolutely move forward with it" & "You always have to move forward" 

2x02 Zoeys Extraordinary Distraction [+ (base)balls]

Hooking up: In 2x02 Zoey says to Max "we have been hooking up for the last 5 minutes" VS in 1x12 she tells her dad "I just hooked up with my best friend". In both cases Zoey makes the first move & kisses Max. In both hooking up scenes the popcorn is forgotten...

She/They both want to believe she's feeling the moment & is ready, but it is mostly just one coping mechanism... her way of distracting herself from the grief. Cause in no way has she shown signs of actually choosing him. [what dawned on the characters only 2 weeks later was obvious to viewers before they "got together" aka the moment she "chose him"] 

We saw her pick a team, but there have been no actual reasons or feelings expressed  by her why she chose him (the reasons she gave in "act five"  were about her needing him at the moment, not about why or how she really feels about him). The writing has still not included her POV & her sharing her feelings (cause she’s not ready for that...yet) They gave small glimpses during few scenes, but no real look into it. 

Get out!: Tobin being kicked out of the meeting by DMD/Zoey - "Get out, Tobin"/"Would you like to get out, Tobin?" AND Zoey getting kicked out from the makeover night by Mo - "Get out!" / "Girl, I don't care that you look like Rafiki. Get out!"

That came out wrong: Zoey told Simon in 2x02 about making his job not so easy "I am gonna ride you so...hard... Nope, that came out wrong"...She adds the last part as she hears herself say the words. VS Tobin was talking about being commited to work in 1x08 by saying "Hardworking, committed, serious. Watch how fast I nail this. Speaking of nailing... Nope, not gonna make the joke.." He adds the last part as he hears himself say the words

Food stealer: Zoey "I steal food from my best friends plate/bowl" Clarke. She ate from his plate during their dinner date at her place. And then she ate from his cereal bowl during the Clarke family breakfast "the morning after".

Older siblings: Jenna's is the less successful older sibling/sister (2x02) just like Leif is the less successful older sibling/brother (1x05). They both feel like "not enough" compared to their younger sibling(s), who they feel are more "perfect". 

Cardigan buddies: Leif & Zoey: cardigan buddies! Interestingly these two are the two 4th Floor Team members, who are most similar: both have a bike/like cycling (Leif often hs his bicyle helmet on his desk, so he rides a bike to work & Zoey has a bike in her apartment). Both love to wear cardigans, and the wardrobe department often has them in matching outfits/colours...Same this week. Both were/are the team members, who are in many ways "biggest messes" (most awkward), but both had/have the most ambition...they wanted and got the promotions. Both struggled in their new manager position..at first (and got help and good advice from their boss).

Team Leaders: Leif doing all the work alone (and exhausting himself...because he wants to be liked & hasn't yet settled into his new role as team leader... He has to learn to be their boss,  ot just their buddy...to get the team listen & for there to be teamwork) VS Zoey doing all the work alone (pre-S1 when she wanted the promotion +) during S1 when she had just become the boss: sending everyone home, cause they "didn't try hard enough", and fixing all the issues alone... VS Mo wanting to do it all alone in his early 20s (when he took over the project he had been working on with his best friend, cause "he's too good at goobyes") Both struggled with the new job, both got help/advice from their boss (Zoey from Joan & Leif from Zoey)

Sleeping at work:  Lief  being woken up by Zoey in 2x03 after he falls asleep when pulling an all-night at work (working  all night) VS Simon waking up Zoey in 1x02 after she falls asleep at work (behind her desk) after pulling an all-nighter alone. 

Leif's pants: In 2x02 Zoey tells Leif "Dust off your slim-fitting chinos" VS in S1 Joan makes a comment on Leif's pants. [I cannot remember the ep number right now] 

Go big or go home!: We found out Mitch's/Zoey’s dads motto in S1. It's "bigger moments, bigger memories" AND In 2x02 Zoey goes for the "bigger moment" - she tailors their first time together to suit Max's wishes (it should be special: the swan & rose petals are more for him than her) VS In 1x07 Max organizes a flash mob to confess his love for Zoey (something she as her dad's daughter secretly appreciates). She calls it unexpected & amazing & while she runs, its not cause she does not appreciate the "big gesture". The only reason she is overwhelmed & runs is because she is doing everything in her power to bottle up her feelings towards Max (1x06 ending proved she has feelings for him) & she did not want to deal with them at the moment. (the flashmob is more his style, but she is not opposed to it)

Come here: Max saying "Come here" to Zoey in the 2x02 dinner date scene at her place & during act five bedroom scene AND Max saying the same line "Come here" to Zoey in 1x12 during the "All of me/Pitbull" scene. 

Mix of songs: In 2x02 during the Z/M bedroom scene the scene switched between different songs & tones (romantic/ballad vs comic/neutral baseball song VS romantic mutual duet) VS in 1x12 during the Z/M movie night turned more scene the scene switched between different songs & tones (romantic/ballad vs comic/fast song) 

Dueting: In 2x02 Zoey joins Max for "A Moment Like This" during Act 5. She chooses to duet with him, becuase she feels the same way as he does. VS in 1x08 Max joins Zoey for "Pressure" at the CHIRP meeting... salvaging the presentation, when she involuntarely sings the songs (cause of the "glitch"). 

Opera songs + Sex: In 2x02 Zoey & Max are distracted by Mo singing opera & it's ruining the specialness of them trying to "do the nasty" VS in 1x04 Max sings opera the morning after he & Autumn "make their first love"

It’s a very not next-level move: In 2x02 during the morning after Max & Zoey are "caught" by her mom/family, and though it is awkward for a moment (because they seem to be surprised by the sudden change), meeting the family/parents does not seem such a next-level move, because Max has been kind-of part of the family for a while already. VS 1x05 where Max tells Zoey that meeting Autum's parents (he was dating her at the time) seems like such a next-level move, and she was not ready for any of it. VS all the times we saw Max interact with Zoeys family... in 1x02 with Mitch, in 1x06 helping the family with Mitch, in 1x12 with Maggie...

2x03 Zoeys Extraordinary Dreams [+ eggs]

NASA/Space theme: Zoey's NASA/space themed PJs and Tees + all the space references in both her childhood bedroom and her current apartment (telescope, posters, etc) 

Musical nightmares/Dreams: In 2x03 Zoey is having a recurring nightmare where in the end she faces herself while the song "Nowhere to Run" plays #allbymyself VS in 1x02 Zoey was having a much happier weird dream...with a twist ending while the song "I've Got the Music in Me" plays

A sad Emma Stone Halloween costume: Black PJs Zoey wears in the nightmare in 2x03 are the same ones she wears in 2x01 on the last day of her time off. The look Mo calls "a sad Emma Stone Halloween costume" (as he suggests she put on some colours instead)

Coach & Photo on the wall: Basically the only items in the empty Clarke house during Zoeys nightmare are the coach (where Mitch used to sit all the time & where Zoey/the family sat in S1 finale...the day the music died) & the picture on the wall (where she saw Mitch reflection the first time he sang to her/communicated with her). Her nightmare/dance are directed at those objects. 

Breaking glass: In 2x03 George breaks the glass wall/window of Zoey's/The bosses office when the team plays baseball at the office VS in 1x02 Zoey breaks the glass award/throphy in Simons office when she throws the american football ball. George & Zoey aka "I'm terrible around glass" people 

On repeat: Zoey being hunted by the same nightmare/dream throughout the episode in 2x03... until she stopped trying to avoid them and talked about them/did something about it VS Zoey being haunted by the same song "(I Can't get no) Satisfaction" thoughtout episode 1x03... until she  stopped avoiding it and helped Joan. 

I can't get no sleep: Zoey not sleeping because of the nigtmares she's having VS David/Emily not getting any sleep because of the baby (most new parents are sleep-deprived, because babies don't always have the same sleep-schedule as adults do) 

Mitch's/Zoey's spot on the coach: Zoey sitting on the coach with a blank look on her face at the end of "Nowhere to Run" nightmare VS Zoey sitting on the coach with a sad look on her face at the end of "American Pie" in 1x12 [in the nightmare shes sitting at MItch's spot, in s1 finale she's looking at the empty spot next to her] 

Red dress: The red dress the OTHER Zoey is wearing in her nightmare as she opens her door VS The (same) red dress Zoey is wearing as she & her dad dance as instrumental version of "True Colours" is playing in 1x12 (as he's dying). Same dress. 

Too much on her plate: Zoey taking on too many responsibilities and not being able to handle it. In S2 she is living the post-loss stage of grief + she's taken the new promotion and added jobs and responsibilities + she is avoiding dealing with her issues + she has started a new relationship (she is not ready for, actually) + she keeps hearing heart songs which kinda help her with knowing what others feel, but it's also distracting and overwhelming to her "reducing stress is a little tricky since I've taken over the 4th floor & have 10-times the respnsibility now"]  VS in S1 she is dealing with losing her father soon + she's taken the new promotion and added job responsibilities + she is avoiding dealing with her own issues ("face her father") + she is helping people whose heart songs she hears. In S2 it kinda culminates in ep 3, in S1 it kinda culminated  in ep 8. when she says "How do I do that? Because helping myself would mean taking a vacation from Sprk Point, or curing my father's disease."

Manager advice: In 2x03 Zoey asks Simon advice about how to manage all the extra work & he tells her about delegating work (sharing responsibiities) VS in 1x02  Zoey asks/gets help from Simon on how to manage the team (and still get to go home on time/get all the work done on time) 

Not the right person to help: In 2x03 Zoey wants to hep her mom, but she feels like she's not the right person to do that, because she has no insight into the topic (does not know anything about landscaping & art) + she would probbly not have the time or energy right now, cause she has so much other things going on... VS in 1x11 she wants to help her mom, but feels since she has no personal experience (has not lost a husband of 4-years), she is not the right person to help her. Both times a heart-song heps her find the right person (in her opinion) for the job. In 2x03 it's Jenna, in 1x11 it was Deb. 

No communication: In S2 & 2x03 Zoey is not really opening up to Max, but she is communicating her feelings to him...somewhat. Telling him about her nightmares/dreams, and that they're affecting her. Though not really going too much into the experience (because she hopes they will magically disappear if she wishes they will...) VS In S1 Zoey avoided opening up to Max & sharing her feelings with him more. Though she still uses the same tactics - trying to keep it all inside, and avoid dealing with her feelings and grief and everything related to it (hoping that if she avoids it then it doesn't exist...even if she probably knows that this is not how any of it works). She's trying to share a bit more with him, her best friend, but at the same time she is still bottling it all up inside...

My heart song does not mean what you think it means: In 2x03 Max says to Zoey after she hears a heart song from him (which he assumes might be that he is "jealous" that she talks to Simon, her grief-buddy at work about her personal life & nightmares) that "People can have a lot of thoughts in their heads without meaning them. / You can't read into it." VS Zoey's quote: "I don't know what that song is saying exactly what we think its saying" & "You can't be mad at me for singing a song I didn't mean to sing" in 1x08. 

Dinner Date gone wrong: In 2x03 Max tries to cook a home-made dinner for Zoey (at her mom's place), but when she hears him singing a heart song it leads to an "argument" between the two and he leaves VS in 1x10 Simon tries to cook a home-made dinner for Zoey (at his new place), but when she hears him singing a heart song it leads to an "argument" and her leaving. 

PS. Based on Zoey's reaction the song is either "Say Something" (because a person sings theei song until Zoey responds/helps..and she only did at the end of the episode) OR it's a reprise of a certain song fro S1 (but if I'm right not a song you'd expect) OR ... it's a completely different song... that we would not expect. And based on Zoeys reaction & the shows choice not to show/tell us the song... it has to be a "surprise", and if it would be simply "he's feeling jealous over Z/S grief connection" or if it was "Say Something"...that would  not be a twist, but since I expect this to be setting up a future story, it'd be not very creative writing if it was one of these options. Which is why I have a theory... (I'm not sure about the song... I'm not even sure the showrunner/writer has decided yet... but I have a guess on the "theme/feelings")

Timing is off: In 2x03 Zoey & Max decide to put their new relationship on hold until she is ready...to give her time to grieve and work through the emotions VS in 1x10 Zoey & Simon decide to put breaks on their relationshop-to-be until he is ready... to give him time to work through his emotions.

Say Something/Happier: In S2/2x03 Zoey & Max are in a relationhip, but they do  not communicate well. Because she does not open up to him about her grief & "he does  not know how to help cause he has not had the same experience" VS in S1/1x05-1x09 Simon & Jessica are in a relationship, but they do not communicate well. Because he does not open up to her about his grief & she does not know how to help cause she has not had the same experience. 

While there are similarieties in the storylines, there are also differences. S/J let the third party in the relationship, grief, get between them and it drove them apart, cause they stayed together until it broke them apart. Z/M came to a mature decision to not let the third party in the relationship defy them, they took a break so the grief would not end up breaking them apart. 

PS. While we've ony seen the start of this storyline, I do believe that this is where it's going. They're not gonna repeat S/Js mistake, but instead they will "learn from it", and by deciding to take some time now they will be ready to continue where they left off once she's ready. Cause they both made the false assumption in 2x01 that she was ready. They were heading toward S/J, but theyre kinda trying to avoid that by the decisoon in 2x03.

Grief therapist: In S2 Simon is Zoey's grief councelor/therapist... he gives solid advice to her about her grief and how to deal with her feelings/emotions VS In S1 Zoey was Simon's grief councelor/therapist...she gave him often pretty solid advice about grief and how to deal with the situations. The roles have reversed.

   Mind-reader: In 2x03 Max brings up the topic that he is unconfortable how Zoey can just "read his mind" and know everything he thinks & feels (have insight into how he feels...also about her), while he has no idea what she thinks/how she feels...because she won't really share. VS 2x02 When in Act 5 he says he'd like to know what she's thinking/feeling & she tells him what she's feeling VS 1x07 when Max bring up the fact that he is uncomfortable with her knowing how he thinks while he has no insight into her mind (after which she promises 100% honesty to him.... that she'll be open with him... which to this day she has not been able to really do) VS 1x04 when Mo expresses concern that she can read other people thoughts & he's not okay with her having insight into his private thoughts & feelings. 

Time apart: In 2x03 Zoey puts some space between herself & Max, when they agree to take a break, cause she's not done grieving/not ready for a relationship VS In 1x02 Zoey puts space between her & Max when she sets him up with their barista in the previous episode (because she is not ready to let herself even consider  romantic path between them, so she "fixes it")

THE END...for now

[eurydicecas]

okay I went off about this in the tags of a post (sorry op) but then ran out of tags and had to cut it short but here's the thing: cas tells dean in 7x23 that maybe the reason he keeps being resurrected is that it's his punishment. he says it's a punishment because every time is worse than the last. now that may or may not be true (I don't think it is), but that's not what this post is about. this post is about dean and resurrection/salvation. because I think cas' words would have struck something in him.

dean doesn't think he deserves to be saved, so that already makes being healed from certain death or brought back to life hard to accept. it's a burden on him. but the kicker is, almost every time this has happened, it specifically hinged on someone else's suffering and/or death.

off the top of my head:

1x12 faith, dean is healed by roy from a weak heart that would have killed him within weeks, and another man dies in his place

2x01 in my time of dying (I almost forgot about this one), dean is saved thanks to john making a deal in exchange for his soul. I personally count this one as a win because fuck john winchester but from dean's pov it was a hard hit, having the man you idolised for so long die to save you

4x01 lazarus rising, cas raises dean from hell. no one is technically hurt in this, but this is the event that kickstarts cas' whole journey, fall from heaven's grace included. cas would see it as a good thing. dean, for whom this happened when he was at his very lowest, and who probably still doesn't realise that cas would much rather be with them than in heaven, most likely doesn't

9x23 do you believe in miracles, dean dies and is resurrected as a knight of hell. no one is injured in the process (I think - admittedly my memory is a bit foggy on this one) but like. he comes back as a demon. this one is pretty self explanatory

and then of course 15x18 despair, dean is saved from billie by cas summoning the empty and sacrificing himself in the process. has the double combo of the sacrifice and the love confession which I'm sure also shook some things loose in him

(I can't think of other instances but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more (especially in seasons 12-15 which I haven't fully watched yet))

I'm not saying all this was engineered by chuck specifically as a punishment for dean, to be honest I don't think that was the case (I could see it happening in the last couple of seasons when he's sick of the winchesters and wants to get rid of them but we also know cas is the one thing he could never control, so he for sure didn't have a hand in what happened in 15x18)

all I'm saying is... how do you think dean feels about being saved and brought back to life so many times? after all, from the point of view of someone who doesn't feel like he deserved to be saved in the first place, what good has ever come out of all these resurrections and salvations? people get hurt, and people die. and all they ever get in return is just. dean. doesn't seem like a very good trade from where he's standing. how do you deal with the guilt of something you never asked for, something you never would have allowed to happen if you had known what the cost was going to be?

[sparkandwolf]

A Strong If

Pairing: Peter Hale & Stiles Stilinski (Mentioned/Implied Stiles Stilinski/Derek Hale) Rating: General Summary: 1x12 Coda - “If it doesn't kill you - and it could - you'll become like us, like Derek.” Peter seemed to sense Stiles’ hesitation and watched him carefully. At the mention of Derek, Stiles’ chest tightened and he tried to slow his more rapidly beating heart, knowing Peter could hear every off beat. He needed more time, to think, to say no, to say… yes?

________________________

“Give me your keys,” Peter demanded, his eyes glancing around the parking garage as if expecting a predator. Stiles couldn’t imagine something more dangerous than Alpha Peter Hale and the fact he was so worried had Stiles on higher alert than he had already been. He sighed as he reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys, holding them out to Peter who took them aggressively. 

“Careful. She grinds in second.” Peter sent him a look that he was all too used to receiving and crushed the keys in his palm. He held them up to Stiles, bent every which way and Stiles resisted the urge to groan thinking about how he would explain that one to his dad. Peter turned, clearly uncaring for whatever internal conflict was happening inside Stiles. 

“So you're not gonna kill me?” Stiles regretted the words the minute he said them as Peter turned back toward him. He should have learned by then how to keep his mouth shut, but no, werewolves and kanima apparently didn’t scare him enough to smarten up. “Oh God,” he muttered as Peter took a few slow steps toward him. He tilted his head, studying Stiles with almost hungry eyes. The look sent chills through Stiles’ entire body. 

read the rest on ao3 or under the cut

“Don't you understand yet? I'm not the bad guy here,” Peter started. Stiles stood pin-straight, his hands barely fidgeting as they usually did. 

“You turn into a giant monster with red eyes and fangs, and you're not the bad guy here?” Stiles could feel his anger rising with every word. Peter had messed with his friends, his family, the people he loved most in this life, and Stiles wouldn’t let him stand there and pretend that he wasn’t the villain of the story. 

“I like you, Stiles,” Peter said seriously and Stiles couldn’t hold back his scoff. He sighed heavily, doing everything in his power to avoid looking back at the werewolf that was slowly ruining his life. “Since you've helped me, I'm going to give you something in return. Do you want the bite?” He asked the question so conversationally, Stiles thought he must have been joking. His eyes searched Peter’s, waiting for him to retract the statement, but they widened at the serious look on Peter’s face. 

“What?” Stiles had to ask. He knew he heard Peter correctly, but there was a part of him that couldn’t understand why he would be offering Stiles something so intimate, something to make him so powerful. Something Stiles wasn’t sure he deserved. 

“Do you want the bite?” Peter asked again, slower this time, and Stiles could hear the annoyance in his tone. It was like he was already regretting offering up something so special to Stiles. Stiles stared at him, unsure of how to answer. It should have been immediate, he knew. A ‘no, I don’t want to be a werewolf’ should have blurted from the mouth he never had control of. 

“If it doesn't kill you - and it could - you'll become like us, like Derek.” Peter seemed to sense Stiles’ hesitation and watched him carefully. At the mention of Derek, Stiles’ chest tightened and he tried to slow his more rapidly beating heart, knowing Peter could hear every off beat. He needed more time, to think, to say no, to say… yes?

“Like you,” Stiles said slowly, considering. “L-- Like Derek.” It shouldn’t have felt so right to consider it as much as he was. He knew his breathing was quickening with every second, the inevitable panic attack that lingered over him all day moving to the surface. No more panic attacks, Stiles thought. If he was a werewolf, he wouldn’t have to worry about the panic, the hyperactivity that annoyed everyone around him. He wouldn’t be so weak, so attacked by his own mind every time something went wrong. Which, to be fair, seemed to be Stiles’ life since Scott was bitten. 

Peter rolled his eyes and sighed. “Yes, a werewolf. Would you like me to draw you a picture?” Peter took another step closer and it took everything in Stiles not to run. They were almost toe to toe now, Peter’s gaze narrowing as he considered Stiles. 

“That first night in the woods, I took Scott because I needed a new pack. It could've easily been you.” Stiles knew it was true but hadn’t let himself stop to think about it. Stiles recognized now how powerful Peter was, how conniving he could be. He stalked them in those woods, waiting for the right moment to start a pack of his own. If he decided the right moment was a few minutes prior to his dad finding them, it would have been Stiles. It should have been Stiles. 

“You'd be every bit as powerful as him. No more standing by his side, watching him become stronger and quicker, more popular, watching him get the girl. You'd be equals. Maybe more.” Stiles gulped, looking away at the mention of a girl. He should have been thinking of Lydia, but his mind was racing, a rush of Derek’s eyes, his mouth, his warmth.

Scott had Derek’s attention since the moment he was turned. Derek was always around the corner, waiting for Scott, trying to prepare him for his new life, wanting to teach him how to be what he was, showing him the ropes that Derek had learned throughout his life. Ever since Scott was turned, by the werewolf in front of him no less, everyone Stiles knew had focused all of their attention on his best friend. Stiles wanted that, wanted Derek’s attention, and Peter smiled as if he knew.

Stiles felt Peter’s hand on his arm, a gentle touch that Stiles should have jerked away from. He should have resisted the pull as Peter lifted Stiles’ covered wrist to his mouth, littered with sharp teeth. 

“Yes or no?” Peter watched him, waiting. Stiles knew he was waiting for a yes; Peter wasn’t dumb, he knew that Stiles’ heart hadn’t slowed since the first mention of the bite, he could most likely hear the way his breath was heaving in and out of his lungs as he surprisingly considered what Peter was offering him. The flash of fangs as Peter opened his mouth snapped Stiles back into reality.  

“I don't wanna be like you,” Stiles said firmly, hoping the facade of fearlessness was clear in his voice. Peter stood surprised, mouth open as his fangs retracted and his human teeth shone. He hoped it was enough of the truth that Peter would leave him alone. The smirk that sent shivers down Stiles’ spine slowly appeared on Peter’s face as he narrowed his eyes at Stiles. 

“Do you know what I heard just then?” Stiles gulped. He knew exactly what Peter heard and he figured he couldn’t hide his true feelings even if he tried. “Your heart beating slightly faster over the words ‘I don't want.’ You may believe that you're telling me the truth, but you are lying to yourself.” Stiles shook his head frantically, unsure of who he was trying to convince as Peter started back toward the car. “Goodbye, St--”

“Wait!” The words escaped before Stiles could stop them and Peter stopped his steps, turning slowly, his shoulders rolling with each inch he moved. Stiles wasn’t sure why he didn’t just let Peter drive away, but something tugged at him, nagging his brain at every second. 

“I really have things to do, Mr. Stilinski,” Peter said, annoyance and intrigue lacing his tone. 

“I don’t want to be like you,” Stiles started, taking a cautious step forward. “If, and that’s a strong if, I decide to take the bite, it won’t be from you,” Stiles said, narrowing his eyes at Peter. “It’ll be from an alpha who deserves a pack, from a werewolf less sick and twisted than you.”

Peter laughed, a dark chuckle that had Stiles freezing in his step. “You think Derek won’t end up exactly like me? The bite is a gift, Stiles, and only the alpha decides when you get it. If, and that’s a strong if, Derek ever becomes alpha, he won’t give you the choice like I’m giving you. He wouldn’t be able to resist.” Before Stiles could ask what that meant, Peter’s hand was around his throat, his claws digging into the rapid pulse beating against Stiles’ skin. “And remember that I let you live on as a defenseless human no matter how much I want to rip your throat out.” He punctuated the words by flashing his fangs at Stiles who swallowed audibly, stumbling away as Peter let him go. 

“You’re just gonna leave me here?” Stiles yelled as Peter got into his car. Peter rolled down his window and raised his eyebrows at Stiles. 

“Why don’t you call your beloved werewolf boyfriend?” Peter suggested as he sped away. Stiles kicked at the ground, unable to keep his eyes from wandering to the pulsing beat in his wrist and the feel of Peter’s hot breath against his skin. He ran his hands over his head and leaned back against them as the pressed against the back of his neck before pulling his phone from his pocket to dial his dad’s number. He could think about what happened another day; right then, he had to figure out an explanation for his dad. 

[angrycowboy]

It’s sad Michael Guerin hours up in this blog. 

Okay, so. This moment. Michael has just spent two episodes thinking he was going to get answers. He starts out 1x12 talking about torturing Noah just to get them, only for Alex to show up and bring him along to a government alien torture facility where Michael finds his mother. The one person he’s literally spent his entire life looking for. He finds her, and then he accidentally triggers a fail safe that causes an explosion that kills her and everyone else in the facility. And Michael feels them die.

But Michael is so good, so practiced, in covering up his own trauma, the shit going on with him. He goes to Max’s, because Noah - Noah is still alive, he knows Noah has answers. It’s a bit of a single focus at that point. But Max - fuck - Max stops him. And I understand Max’s decision there, he wants Noah dead, and for good reason - but Max hasn’t spent his entire life trying to understand where they came from, why they’re on earth. Not like Michael has.

(Under the cut cuz my rambling got long.)

So of course, of course, in that moment Michael loses control. Fuck, I’m surprised it took that long for him to finally lose his grip on his abilities. And his plan isn’t exactly smart, but Michael isn’t exactly thinking straight he’s so fucking traumatized already. All he knows is that Noah knows where they’re from, Noah knows why their pods were put in the cave. Noah has answers. 

And of course, the whole thing goes to shit, and Michael bleeds out on the floor, and Max has to heal him, and of all the worst times in the world for Alex to show up, is in that moment with Noah on the loose and it’s a bad time. But it’s Alex, and he stops and he listens to Alex because fuck, Michael has never been able to say no to Alex. And Alex is talking about them, about their past, about things that have happened to them, and why he left, and Michael knows how important what Alex is saying is. He knows but there are other things happening, things that are more pressing, more important - in the grand scheme of things, he can put off Alex until the morning. Alex will still be there. They can talk later.

So Max kills Noah. And Michael is just - he lost this chance to get his answers. He knows it, and it’s already killing him, but he’s dealing with it. He’s not letting it show, because Isobel just watched her husband die. Isobel just told Noah she never loved him. Like, this is what Michael does - his problems aren’t as important, someone he loves is having it far worse than him, so he just pushes them down and supports Isobel. 

But Max, he’s riding high on lightning juice, and Noah is dead. This monster who did all these terrible things to Isobel, who killed innocent people, who controlled others into doing his bidding, is gone. “We are moments away from this guy being a bad memory,” Max told Michael earlier in the episode. Noah is gone, they don’t have to think about him anymore. But Michael, Michael is still talking about losing his chance at answers. And Max, he doesn’t understand, still doesn’t get it, why this is so important to Michael. They have the future now! They can do whatever they want! They’re free of this monster who messed with their lives since they were fourteen years old. 

So when Max says this, when he tells Michael the past doesn’t matter, its not malicious. But nevertheless, it hurts. Because Max is basically insulting everything Michael has spent his life working on, the research he’s done, the console he’s rebuilt, the spaceship he’s been designing. Earth has never been home to Michael the way it is for Max and Isobel. Humanity has never done a damn thing for Michael Guerin. All Michael has is the past because at some point in the past he was loved, he had a family, and someone cared about him.

So Max telling him to stop looking there? FUCK.

You get this moment, and Michael is just broken. Because then, as soon as Max says this, he grabs Michael’s hand and heals it. It’s been a decade that Michael has learned to live with these broken bones, with the spasms, and the pain. He told Max in 1x11, he kept the scars as a reminder for the future that there’s no good here, not for him. And Max took that away.

And then suzteel went and wrote these fucking... heartbreaking tags on my gifset about Michael saying “love is the worst thing that ever happened to me” and she’s right. Isobel is talking about Noah being the only person she loved, and yeah there’s some romantic implication in their conversation, but it would make sense that Michael is also talking about his mom. Love is the worst thing that ever happened to him - love brought him to Earth, love made him lose his mom, love made her put him in that pod, love made sure he was safe but it also is responsible for him being left alone, love made him try to free her at Caulfield, and love made him leave her in that cell to die. 

Michael has spent his entire life trying to embrace his alien side, and by the finale, it has only gotten him more pain. Is it any wonder after they find Rosa’s body, he’s saying they should try to be normal? Is it any wonder he ends up at the Pony? Maria doesn’t know any of this. She’s not tied to anything about his alien-side, and Michael is good at pushing aside his own problems and not dealing with them because there are other things that are more important, his are insignificant by comparison. So by going to her, it allows him to think that he’s moving forward. He’s embracing the future that Max talked about and leaving the past in the past. Because in that moment, Alex is part of that past, Alex has always been tied to it (both by the Manes family legacy and their own tumultuous relationship over the past decade), and as far as Michael knows in that moment, just loving Alex has never been enough. Hell, he and Alex have, as far as we know, never even talked about a future - a lot of their conversations, a lot of their relationship, is still stuck in what’s happened to them, not what it could be in the future. But Maria, that’s all they have, these feelings for each other, and he’s thinking that maybe without any of that interference from the alien-side of things, that maybe this is what Max is talking about. That maybe he can just be happy for once. 

Fuck. Bring on Season 2. I am going to be a complete fucking mess over this.

[queerfables]

Supernatural Post-Mortem (1x12 - 1x15)

P, N and I discuss these episodes after the fact, because I didn’t make notes while we watched them. I don’t think I actually have any major warnings for our conversation about these episodes. 

1x12 - Faith

Notes to self, as a reminder of what it was about: “Dean faith healed, reapers”

When I read these out to P & N, they both start making excited sounds and I join in because yeah, we all really loved this episode!!

N: This is when Dean nearly died saving kids, too. P&I: Is it? N: Yeah, at the beginning, when he got electrocuted! Another point for Dean is good with kids! P: A good boy!!

This is the episode where Dean’s life is saved when it’s traded for the life of the gay man.  Me: So, like, Dean was given his heart! P&N: Ohhhhhhhhh. N: Aw, Dean has a queer heart. Me: I mean, we knew that already.  N: Yes, but it’s surprisingly literal and I love it.

N says, “I think every time Dean tries to problem solve in an episode, there’s probably a simpler solution.” When he was in the tent trying to stop the faith healing from happening, he yells, fire, but he could have like ACTUALLY started a fire, which would have stopped the lady from hanging around and trying to continue killing the guy. Or he could have faked a heart attack, which might have made people doubt the whole faith healing thing. 

P&N disagree with me on this, but I personally think the subtext of the villain in this episode trying to kill Dean when she realises he’s trying to stop her is that it’s because he’s queer. She doesn’t try to kill Sam, even when he’s trying to stop her just as much - she locks him in a basement and tries to reason with him about why his brother is an abomination. (Ofc I do tend to think Sam is queer too, but maybe she hasn’t figured that out). 

I generally loved the lady who had a brain tumour in this episode. It was really powerful to set her up as, like, complicating the narrative of “We have to stop these healings from happening”. It’s not wrong but she kind of shows why it’s not that simple, there’s always a cost even to doing the right thing. She also feels like one of the first ladies Dean actually had a real connection with, their - maybe romance? maybe friendship? whatever it was - really worked for me. 

N says they loved how the reaper was super keen to kill the lady who’d been controlling him. “I mean, I would be too. I don’t wanna go around murdering queer people!” P agrees. “Right? I love queer people.” I would definitely rather murder homophobes instead. 

1x13 - Route 666

Notes to self: “Cassie, Racist Truck”

P: Oh! I loved Cassie!  N & I agree. Cassie was great. 

I actually did start making notes from this episode while we watched but I never finished them. Here’s what I had: --Dean says he was called by a friend who really wouldn't have called if it wasn't urgent. Me: "That sounds like an ex" --It's Cassie! I'm excited to meet her! --P, N & I agree Cassie is a babe and we're excited to see how Dean fucked this up

N says, “It might have been me reading too much into it but I actually thought this episode was a pretty solid commentary on race.” 

N: I really thought that, despite the entirety of supernatural handling race about as well as a greased football, this episode had a solid multiple-layer analogy for the way racism, historically and currently, expresses itself across communities and generations. the analogy goes as far as making it clear that the instigating incident that prompts the angry, racist resurgence is done by a white dude, but that he is shielded from the initial backlash and consequences while the revived racism starts out targeting tangentially-related black people instead--something that definitely happens irl. It also makes it clear that a) racism is something you have to actively examine and purge, sometimes multiple times, b) it is not over even when the racists are dead and its spectre lurks amongst our communities and, most importantly, c) respectability politics are junk and sometimes you have to help cover up a racist’s murder

P says that they love that the white dude was a cop but, like, actually a good cop. Again, because of the covering up racist murder. 

I’d like to emphasise that I loved the way that Dean and Cassie’s relationship was portrayed. It turned out it was actually not entirely Dean’s fault that this fell apart. I mean, I personally think he should have lied to her until he was able to come back and then told her the truth, so she wouldn’t think he was coming up with a bizarro lie to leave her, but also like... He was trying to be honest, he wanted to really connect with her, and I have a lot of feelings about that. 

I’m sad that Dean and Cassie aren’t going to work out in the long run but I understand why. Would have been cool to see her again, though.

I just want you all to know that through a very, VERY meandering conversation, we now have N and P arguing over whether octopi or alligators have the perfect body.  N: Sack! Tentacles! Beak! P: SCALES AND TEETH. N: I’m just saying that the number of problems you can cause as an alligator is kind of limited. All you can do is bite things.  P: That’s all you need!!!! We’ve declared the conversation a draw for now but they’ve promised (threat) to come back to it later

Also N is now looking at Giant Squid fanfic and keeps announcing things like “There’s a whole tag for ‘Dubious Consenticles’??” and “SQUIDITCH”

None of this is related to Supernatural but it IS very funny. 

1x14 - Nightmare 

Notes to self: “Sam’s visions, telekinetic abuse victim gets revenge”

N says, “This was just fucking intense, if I remember” and P says, “Yeah, it was scary.” 

N says they saw the guy’s death coming as soon as it was revealed it was him committing the murders.  Basically, Sam and Dean couldn’t have trusted a rehabilitation arc without being directly involved and the nature of the show is that they couldn’t have been directly involved.

We understand why the episode played out the way it did but we wish it handled it differently. We were all 1000% on the telekinetic victim’s side and fully supported him murdering his abusers. I remember when we were watching it, being, like, horrified by the things that happened to his dad and his uncle and then when we found out the truth about how they were abusing him we were like “Oh, yeah, warranted.” We do think the mother was probably abused too and that’s why she didn’t step in to stop anything. Still understandable that he can’t forgive her, though. 

My main thing I’d like to say about this one is that I love Sam connecting with the other people who’ve been affected by the yellow-eyed demon (in later episodes too) I would really, really love more of that tbh, I want him to form a network. I love how much he understands and relates to this kid, and how hard he tries to save him. 

I also love the part where seeing a vision of Dean in danger allows him to use telekinesis too. We’re in the middle of s2 now and we haven’t seen that again and it’s a shame!!! I want more of that!!!!

P says xer mad the show dropped Sam’s telekinesis stuff too. “In a later episode, Sam says he gets visions but other people get other things, and it’s like, ‘No! Buddy! You have more than that!’” N says it would be cool if they set it up so that Sam’s powers, in addition to getting visions about the other people like him, included being able to use their same powers when he’s near them. Like the episode later on where a guy can use mind control?? Instead of just being immune, wouldn’t it have been rad if Sam could do that too?? KILLER. 

1x15 - The Benders 

Notes to self: “THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME. Sam in a cage.”

P: OH YEAH, this was the one that wasn’t even like -- N: It was just people.  P: Yeah, it was just dudes being dudes. 

I very much enjoyed this episode. N agrees. I think P is distracted typing something on xer own computer. N says, “It wasn’t as fast paced as some of the other ones but it was fun.”

N: I have thoughts about the way they handled the cop killing the head of the family. I feel like he was already cartoonishly evil--to make him openly sneer in the cop’s face about her dead brother and hunting ppl as an in-the-moment justification for killing him seems... almost cowardly? he was an irredeemable human-hunter who raised an entire family to hunt ppl in the woods. that’s enough justification! i think viewers should get that. you don’t need to make him have a rude snarky one-liner to justify his death. commit to ‘some humans are Bad’ properly!  P: I have thoughts about the little girl. She was weird and creepy and I didn’t like it. I think my major issue with her was that she was a child, who was used as a twist to be the worst one of the family, which is so overdone. We get it, kids are creepy. And also, given that the rest of her family - her dad+uncles/brothers(??) and her grandpa/dad(??) - were murderers, implied cannibals, and general all around awful people, she’s more likely than not a victim of abuse. So I think portraying her as the worst of them all is callous at best, highly problematic at the worst. Get her therapy and away from the people that call themselves her family. Anyway, it boils down to that I think it’s overplayed, and I wish she had a happier path than “Oh, she’s so creepy!!!!”

I love N & P’s really interesting and coherent thoughts but I have to be completely honest that 90% of my thoughts about this episode were like “Mmmmmmm, Sam in a cage” and later “Mmmmmm, Dean tied to a chair.” The other 10% was me having emotions about Dean being desperate to find Sam. Don’t let that undercut the extent to which I loved the episode though. I really loved this episode. 

[amwritingmeta]

4x06 Deconstruction: This One Goes Out to All of Dean’s Fears

I started working on this after 14x19 and it’s been sat in a document folder needing to be turned into a post ever since. With all the fairly delicious callbacks to this particular ep in 15x07 this seems the opportune time to give it a polish and share. Hope y’all will enjoy!  xx

So, I’ve been meaning to do this ever since I wrote this meta on 4x05, because watching the opening half of S4 is like taking a nose dive into Dean’s character and what he needs to understand about himself in order to let go of old patterns of behaviour and belief systems, grow into his own person and find the answer to what will actually make him happy. 

The trajectory of this nose dive is set up through Castiel arriving on the scene with his way of looking into Dean’s soul and stating uncomfortable truths: You don’t think you deserve to be saved and Good Things Do Happen. 

S4 and Dean’s rebirth (or his rehymination, as he calls it in 4x05) is all about setting him on the path towards adulthood. This is where his coming-of-age story really begins in earnest. The need for him to let go of old patterns of behaviour has been hit on throughout S1-3, but those first seasons act more as a setting up of this fact, letting us follow the behavioural pattern, whereas in S4 we start to get more contrasts to it, including discovering new sides to him, like exactly how much he knows and reads etc.

Now, let’s focus on how Yellow Fever explores Dean’s inner fears and explicitly lets him know that he has to confront them. 

This episode states that this is the work that’s beginning for him, whether he likes it or not. 

(he likes it not) (which is why he rejects the proposition in the episode’s final scene) (and has continued to reject it out of narrative necessity ever since) (but I skip ahead)

I’m late to the party here, so I’m #sorrynotsorry for the repetition, but I’m really eager to finally dig into this episode, since how it comes off the back of 4x05 and how it leads right into the absolute smasher that is 4x07 has felt so weighty to me ever since I deconstructed Monster Movie.

Contemplating the visual and thematic callback in 14x16 to this very episode, established through Felix the snake, as well as the most recent callback we got through that lovely piece of dialogue in 15x07, I feel that the intricately crafted exploration of Dean’s fears in 4x06, and the stated need for him to confront them if he’s to be happy, is more intriguing than ever.

Alright, before we go ahead and dig in, I want to present you with a few thoughts on Dean. Namely, I’d like to list the fears I see this episode exploring and they are:

Fear of Rejection (linked to perception of societal judgement)

Fear of Death (linked to Hell)

Fear of Growth and Internal Transformation (linked to fear of happiness)

Fear of Happiness (linked to losing his mother at a young age)

Fear of Failure (linked to Protect Sammy, and, in turn, linked to all the above)

These fears, and how they interlink in rather amazing ways, inform his behaviour, and it’s his behaviour when confronted with all of these fears that the narrative of 4x06 explores. And to my brain it does so in staggering ways, yeah?

Yeah. Okay. Let’s dig.

Little Pink Bow

We start the episode with Dean, running for his life, terrified. 

I mean, he is literally running from his fears. It’s rather gorgeous. 

The scene also paints the mood for the rest of the episode, where Dean’s skewed perception of the root of his fears are explored in depth. 

As a viewer, you’re brought into the belief that Dean is truly running from Hellhounds because, of course, this belief is effectively established through use of sound as Dean is running away from the noise of barking dogs, teasing the idea that the fear Dean’s displaying has to do with seriously bad memories of getting ripped to shreds and sent to Hell. (remember that we’ve only had glimpses through snippets of nightmares up until now of how much Dean actually remembers of his time there)

The scene itself is shot with urgency and real threat. We feel Dean’s fear. We worry for him. We wonder what the fuck is going on. We don’t want him to get attacked and dragged back to Hell! 

We get an abrupt stop to Dean’s flight when he crashes into the cart of a homeless man, but Dean’s on his feet quick enough and it’s put in dialogue that what you should do is run from your fears. Because if you don’t, they’ll kill you! And then…

…we get the tiniest, friendliest little dog, complete with pink bow as a visual aid underlining exactly how non-threatening it really is meant to be perceived by us.

This reveal of Dean not being about to get dragged back to Hell is funny, obviously, on many levels because we’re relieved that Dean’s terror is unfounded, and then we get hit with the understanding of Dean the Soldier Warrior Man running away from the sweetest little creature ever.

So, though this is sincerely funny thanks to impeccable acting, to me, there’s a bit more to it, and it’s to do with how this scene really sets the tone for the entire episode.

This tone is all to do with the exploration of Dean’s character makeup and what really makes him tick. 

Surface level narrative explores our first impression of what this episode is about: Dean’s fear of dying and going back to Hell. (Run! It’ll kill you!) This episode is about to lay it bare to us how Dean’s struggling with his memories of Hell, with his lingering fear that God has made a serious mistake and that it’ll all get ripped away from him again. 

His feelings of guilt at how he caved and began to torture souls keeping his self-loathing as intact as ever, and that self-loathing keeps him feeling, very much, that he didn’t deserve to be saved. Which feeds his fear that it was all a big mistake. And around and around it goes.

But his persistent self-loathing and feelings of worthlessness are in turn anchored entirely in fears that have been with Dean his whole life. The fears listed above in the intro to this analysis. And, to me, these fears are what that pink bow is about. 

Because subtextually I see Dean running from himself when he tries to escape that little dog. He’s running from fears that are, if he really dared open his eyes and look at them, not nearly as threatening as he thinks they are. If he just dared recognise them for what they are and begin to face them, he’d see that they’re no more dangerous than that little dog is.

Subtextual level narrative explores those fears, the ones intrinsic to Dean’s character, the ones feeding the surface level narrative fear of Hell and that are keeping the guilt and sense of worthlessness and lack of faith in himself very much at the forefront of his self-perception.

S4 is all about pushing Dean to open up to who he truly is. It’s about asking himself what will make him happy. It’s all about identity. And, yes, the series as a whole is about identity, but this season pushes that theme into a whole new focus from previous seasons. 

There’s a shift with Castiel entering the narrative and God reaching down a hand to give Dean a mission. There’s tentative faith beginning to blossom in Dean, which is a hugely important building block for Dean to dare to face his fears, and is also something this episode picks up from 4x05 (It’s kind of like a mission… Like a mission from God…) and builds on.

His Heart Gave Out

So, we get an immediate plant that what we’re about to deal with is matters of the heart. 

This plant is important for the plot of the episode, of course, but symbolically hearts are tied to Dean and it’s been implied since as early as 2x01 (ah @mittensmorgul​ pointed out that it actually starts in 1x12 and of course! how could I neglect the episode that started the faith thread?? tut! thanks for the pointer Laura!) that heart issues could be what kills him, rather than a bullet between the eyes. Right? 

Right. But rather than looking at it as a direct foreshadowing of Dean’s death, it could be seen as a comment on what is keeping him from living, and what’s keeping him from truly living is the fact that he’s unable to open his heart, to have faith, to trust. (and how can you follow your heart if you don’t trust it?) (you can’t is how)

Also very much the reason why Castiel the angel of Heaven and bringer of faith (who’s biggest problem is having too much heart) has stepped onto the scene, but I shan’t digress. 

The fact that the coroner actually takes out the heart of our vic and places it in Dean’s hands gets a rather amazing bookend moment in the scene where Lilith tells Dean he knows why this is happening to him and that he should listen to his heart. *slow eyebrow raise* I’ll get back to that.

Sheriff’s Office

Please note that the cute young deputy is already noticing Dean, and Dean notices him noticing, and Sam is noticing them noticing each other. This is important to note not only because it’s fucking amazing to make note of it, but also because of the Moment that comes later. We all know it, I still gotta call it out, but that’s for later.

Now for the sheriff.

I just want us to make note of a few things regarding the sheriff as well:

The sheriff gave the deputy instructions he didn’t want to be disturbed and now scolds him for doing as told

The sheriff gets the brothers to take their shoes off

The sheriff keeps putting disinfectant on his hands

Conclusion, he’s a control freak, and he’s a control freak because? 

I’d say he’s a control freak out of fear. A man doesn’t use disinfectant like that if he’s not terrified of germs, right? And this character trait lowkey links him to another control freak germaphobe. Yup, that would be Dean.

I’d also like us to note that Dean can’t stay professional and act like an actual adult (because he’s not one) when the sheriff says the word gamecock. The sheriff, being an actual adult, gently corrects the behaviour, leaving Dean looking self-conscious.

Could Be a Hundred Things

We continue the setting up of how Dean’s fears are about to go through some serious deconstruction, and with it the man himself, when Sam and Dean leave the sheriff’s office to have this exchange (edited btw):

Dean: Something scared him to death. Sam: Alright, so what could do that? Dean: What can’t? Ghosts, vampires, chupacabra. It could be a hundred things. Sam: So, we make a list and start crossing things off.

Yeah, remember the list I made of Dean’s fears? Going through that list and exploring Dean’s fears is what the narrative of this episode is setting up to do. Dean is, as the brothers are soon to realise, infected with the same ghost sickness that killed the vic. So here we have foreshadowing, in dialogue, of exactly what this episode means to do: go through the list of Dean’s fears and highlight, with each new situation where one of these fears is explored, exactly what Dean’s issues are and why the biggest one is… his closed off heart.

First fear: rejection.

Because why exactly do those teenagers make Dean need to cross the street? He doesn’t like the look of them, but why? They’re just a group of friends standing on the sidewalk in broad daylight. 

I’d say it’s to do with Dean’s fear of societal judgement, that has kept the conviction and reliance on his toxic masculinity armour so firmly in place for so long. Even firmer in place, I’d argue, than John’s immediate influence. 

John introduced it as a necessity for survival, for keeping your head focused in a fight, for putting emotion aside and getting the job done, but wearing the armour also meant social status and acceptance, even admiration. I think Dean caught onto this at a young age. Because that’s how we all form our personas (how we present ourselves to the world), through societal conditioning. Or through growing aware of this conditioning and telling it to go fuck itself. (good for you if you’re in that place) (Dean’s journey has been all about getting there) 

The fact that Dean’s insecurity stretches to even the possibility of teenagers side-eyeing him is a really great set-up for how this very deep fear is about to get put under an extremely bright light for the rest of the episode, through Luther’s storyline. 

She Smells Fear

Sam and Dean go to see the vic’s neighbour Mark and oh, he really, really likes his reptiles. 

Second fear: growth and internal transformation.

Why do I see this scene as being indicative of this fear? Well, because of how snakes, as we know, symbolise transformation. They symbolise healing. (Ouroboros anyone?) 

Now, of course, surface narratively speaking, Dean doesn’t exactly enjoy having a huge albino python sliterhing onto his lap (though the dirtier connotations that can be made from the visual are all shades hilariously poignant) (also the fact that the Devil was a snake and Dean’s fear of Hell) (all part of the symbology for the surface level fear), but him freaking out at all the reptiles and one spider (also symbolic of transformation), to me, has much more to do with what these creatures all declare for the subtextual reading (the pink bow related one), and their declaration is a continuation of what 4x01 told us.

Dean needs to open himself up to much needed internal growth and transformation.

This is what the first five episodes of the season, landing us here in 4x06, are all about: deconstructing Dean, forcing him to gain new perspectives on himself, on his behavioural patterns, on what has shaped him into the man he’s always seen himself as. 

Look at how, in just a few short episodes, he’s had someone enter his life that has not only brought with him a whole new world view, where God and the Devil exist, and where Heaven, for whatever reason, actually seems to be on his side, but this someone has also brought him back in time to bring him a new understanding of his mother and who she really was, not who she was when filtered through John’s view of her. 

I mean, that’s giving an insight into his lack of faith in himself as well as laying the foundation for beginning to question his self-perception right there. Within the first three episodes of the season. *head explodes*

So, to my mind, this episode is an extension and, in many ways, a deepening of what the season has clearly set itself out to do, yeah?

The fact that Marie is stated in dialogue to smell fear is just delightful. 

Might I also draw your eye to how we, in this scene, are told that the vic was freaking out. About witches. Who is skeeved out by witches? Dean. So there’s a narrative tie there, which I find interesting. (that the witch-freakout for Frank is tied to The Wizard of Oz comment is just icing)

Why is Dean so skeeved out by witches? I would say because witches symbolise something deeply regressed within him, which is his feminine side. His non-performing side. Rowena comes as a Dean mirror, and a very powerful one at that, bringing deep truth and standing in, for her first seasons, as a representative of toxic masculinity traits not simply being allocated to men and underlining how we can all display these traits, regardless of gender.

There’s also the ghosts (the past), the vampires (dual nature of identity and wearing a mask to cope) and chupacabra (happiness, mayhaps?), and how Carl Jung talks about what monsters really represent to us and why they’re so prevailing throughout human mythology. I mean, I studied this at uni so Carl didn’t teach me this, but the fact that it ties in with Carl Jung’s doctrine just gives me a sense of synchronicity. But. This is already getting fucking long, guys. :)

Moving on.

When Mark says that Frank used to tape his butt cheeks together we get another moment of Dean being an absolute child about it, unable to keep a smile down, presumably at the idea of butt cheeks taped together, not the idea of bullying, and again he totally offends the person talking, and he grows sligthly self-conscious about it. 

He really needs some self-perspective, yeah? Yeah.

Scratching the Itch

I mean… Look, I think that Dean has never been able to scratch the proverbial itch because what he’s the most scared of is the idea of daring to believe in a good thing happening, because good things do not last, not in Dean’s experience. You know? 

He’s a big-hearted, soft-to-the-core, loving type of human being, who longs, more than anything, for real love, to be loved for who he truly is. And all of that, including his true identity, is being repressed out of his fear. Of happiness. Because Good Things Don’t Last. 

I’ll talk more about the root of this further down, but I just find the fact that in this episode, the ghost sickness, which is a manifestation of fear, is literally an itch he keeps trying to scratch, and it just gets bigger and worse and is a visual statement of how his internalised fears are pretty much driving him out of his head is a rather poetic choice.

So, we get the information that Frank’s wife committed suicide way back when and that Frank had an airtight alibi and then we get the reveal that Dean appears to be, by all accounts, haunted.

Ghosts as representatives of needing to put the past to rest… Just throwing that in there.

And Dean is driving slow. 

Second fear: death.

And this was already established through the fear of Hellhounds at the beginning of the episode, yeah? But given the deeper issues being addressed here, you could actually argue for Dean’s fear of death not only being linked to a very real fear of Hell, but of a genuine desire to live.

Peeling back the layers of the Blaze of Glory bravado that’s kept him on a self-destructive fast-track for so long and revealing the softer belly underneath. 

I mean, one could argue. Since this episode is all about stripping away the toxic masculinity armour and showing the non-performing side to Dean. Showing us the truth, rather than the lie he’s been telling Sam since he got back from Hell. And on a subtextual level, stripping away the armour that’s keeping him safe from himself and exposing those nerve endings.

Because he should listen to his heart. 

But we’ll get to that.

Eye of the Tiger

I really do appreciate the detail of the cowboy scene on that hotel. Like. Wow. It’s almost insane. To me, this show is all about deconstructing the American ideal of the 50s, right? The ideal that’s informed toxic masculinity patterns since then, as well as the toxic patterns of societal judgement at large. 

It was in the 50s that the Hollywood western shaped the cowboy/sheriff character into becoming a glorifed male hero ideal, moving away from the truth of the rather open-minded wild wild west and into the commersial version of a very white, very straight man’s man who got the job done, no matter what, and sorted shit out wherever he went. Yeah? 

Anyway, I digress. This deconstruction is why cowboys and native americans and the wild west symbology is just so poignant on the show. And here it is. In all its glory. Attached to a hotel that could be said to be low-key linked to happiness.

Because the bluebird is a symbol of happiness.

Fourth fear: happiness.

And, look, Dean’s fear of heights is linked to the hotel, okay? His fear of flying. And flying is linked to? Yeah, you get the idea here. Of course, Castiel. 

Here’s the thing, this is a highly dubious reading, because it’s absolutely not anywhere in the narrative that Bluebird is the chosen name for a hotel suddenly related to a fear of heights related to a fear of flying and being out of control and it tying back to Cas, who is making Dean feel all sorts of not-in-control. Yeah? That’s my reading.

But it’s my reading because there’s more. 

Wait for it.

First, let’s talk a bit more about this scene —>

Dean rejects food. (love Sam’s reaction face like the fuck?) 

Why the fuck does Dean reject the food?

I’d say because food is a superficial band-aid, right? It’s ineffective comfort at this point. A way to eat his emotions, rather than find healthy outlets for them, like, I don’t know, actually connecting to others because that’s just a recipe for disaster, death and loss. But his emotions, right now, will not be suppressed by simple means. They’re completely in control of him and refuse to be put back in their designated boxes. 

So the ghost sickness can be spread like any disease and, of course, attacks the heart. Dean got infected when holding Frank’s heart. 

Sam didn’t get infected and Sam and Bobby’s theory is that the men who got infected all had a history of being dicks. Which is, you know, funny, but tragic, when looking at the surface level fear of Hell. Because Dean became a torturer of souls. So kinda a dick. Very much using fear as his weapon. 

But when it comes to the principal and the bouncer, it’s not verified that they did. Sam and Bobby are just associating using fear as a weapon with the roles of principal and bouncer. Especially when looking at how Dean tries to reject the idea that he, as a hunter, uses fear to scare people, Sam telling him all they do is scare people, and fair enough, but the ghost sickness isn’t infecting Sam.

And it isn’t infecting Sam because, for the subtextual layer of Dean’s fear, this theory is too shallow.

For the subtextual layer of Dean’s fears I’d say that the ghost sickness actually latches onto guilt.

There’s even the aspect to Frank where guilt might actually be the foremost reason for why the ghost sickness infects him as well, since we’ll learn later through Luther’s brother that Frank’s wife wasn’t killed, but was a victim of suicide. We don’t get it extrapolated on what caused her to take her own life, but safe to say her marriage was anything but healthy, and Frank’s outrage and murder of Luther seems to be underpinned by him being wholly unable to process his own guilt,  instead ending up projecting it onto an easy target.

baby gonna cry?

The fear of dying and of going back to Hell is threaded through in this scene, clarifying it further for us that this is what Dean’s terrified of. 

The ticking clock pretty much acting like a visual underlining of Dean feeling like he’s back on borrowed time. It’s inevitable that he has to go back. For all the things he did while there. He can’t have been forgiven. He sure as shit hasn’t forgiven himself. 

Dean breaks the clock. Doesn’t need the reminder of how his head is, as he tells Sam, on the chopping block again. He’d almost forgotten what that feels like.

For a moment. Like a glimmer. There had been the thought that he was serving something bigger. That maybe he was off the hook. Chosen to do great deeds. Aw, Dean. You’re not meant to learn how to have faith in a higher power. You’re meant to learn how to have faith in yourself.

They realise, as Dean coughs up a wood chip, that he’s the biggest clue they have.

Dean doesn’t like it.

Cassity & Sons

Now. Of all the things to call this lumber mill, this haunted structure - housing Luther, our ghost of the hour who is in the narrative to be representative of Dean’s deepest issues, his most repressed fear - of all the things to call it, there’s a Cass in the name. 

It could just be a tounge-in-cheek thing. It could mean nothing. But I like to think it does. Coming off of the absolutely angel riddled narrative of 4x05 as well, I really do think it does.

From the Bluebird of happiness and Dean’s fear of flying/heights, to the structure that is about to be significant in exploring Dean’s deepest fear being owned by a man named Cassity… I feel there’s reason to think there’s a reason for it. 

But, either way, this structure and Luther himself are important for exploring Dean’s deepest fears.

(they’re not playing around with the sign and making sure to linger on it either)

Now. Dean takes one look at this place. A place he has no idea if it’s haunted or not, btw. And states he is not going in there. Sure, nine times out of ten a place like that, given Dean’s previous experience with places like this, turns out to be haunted. Fair enough.

But in a subtextual context, with the structure itself owned and run by Cassity… 

Dean doesn’t want to go in there because of what he’ll have to face. Which is, in essence, the need to face up to the fact that he’s already beginning to open himself up to the idea of change, to wanting change, because of this formidable someone who’s arrived in his life through a rain of sparks as a catalyst for Dean to begin to gain a sense of what faith actually feels like.

Dean doesn’t want to touch all that with a ten-foot pole. 

Because, and this is wholly unconscious, but because touching it means daring to have faith that Good Things Do Happen. And because Dean’s fear of happiness is fed by the conviction that Good Things Don’t Last, and this fear sits at his very core and so – he drinks.

He downs half a bottle of whiskey.

Because he’s gonna need liquid courage to face the idea of opening himself up.

And he mans the flashlight.

Rejecting that gun is interesting, because, of course it’s tied to his fear of injury resulting in death, but it’s also Dean rejecting something that’s always brought him a sense of control before. 

Consider: as he’s brought into situations of facing his fears, his armour falls away and the tools that  that armour relies on, to make him feel in control, don’t actually fill that function anymore.

Regarding Dean relies on that same peeling back of Dean’s layers, yeah? That same deconstruction. The shedding of the toxic masculinity armour to have a peak at what’s really underneath it all.

Dean masks his fear and he masks it really well. He feels he’s on control, all the time, thanks to the mask, thanks to the armour, but the truth is that he is a bundle of fear. Always. He’s just gotten so good at masking it that he’s masking the truth even to himself.

That’s what this episode is all about. Lifting that curtain. Forcing him into a position where all that raw emotion is exposed and he can’t lie to himself anymore. It helps set up the reveal of how he remembers Hell, but it also sets up for Dean’s journey of introspection this season, yeah?

Surface level vs. subtextual level.

EMF

If ghosts are representatives of the past (and needing to learn how to let go) then the fact that Dean is dealing with fears that were established in his childhood, meaning he’s one hundred percent facing his past and what’s shaped him into who he is with every new situation this episode, then that EMF meter wouldn’t work around him, would it?

He’s haunted by his past. Suppressed Hell-guilt, and repressed fears anchored in his childhood. Oh my.

I love Sam in this episode. He’s unfortunately a reactionary character, the straight man, as you’d call it, because this isn’t his journey, but oh what a reactionary character he is. Also —>

Can’t do a post on this episode and not have Dean screaming his head off. *sadism*

Now, I very much enjoy the fact that, once it’s time to do the detecting, Dean takes part in it without hesitation. Autopilot kicks in and he engages with the search for clues without any fear, because there’s nothing scary about it.

But when the ghost (the past) appears, he runs like the damn wind.

Sam is there, though, to take care of it.

And Dean downs the rest of the bottle. Taking us into that epicness of epicnessess that is —>

Drunk and Unabashedly Flirty

I mean, look, okay? This is blatant.

Dean stands there, having a slightly worried expression on when he notices the woman to his right, glancing over at her suspiciously, okay? We get that he’s still scratching at the itch, he’s still alert, even though he is drunk, right?

But what does not faze him? What makes him put on a goofy smile? The very cute (I’d even call him a pretty boy) deputy from earlier, with whom he exchanged looks, so that there’s an already established sense of mutual attraction there. 

Dean: You know what? You’re awesome.

And then Dean just keeps smiling goofily, taking the compliment that’s offered back to him, until Sam comes and pulls him out of there. 

And the fact that this is the one instance in this entire episode after the ghost sickness kicks in that Dean is not displaying even a whisper of fear is what has informed my impression of him being absolutely comfortable with his bisexuality. 

Here he’s dropping the toxic masculinty armour because?

Well, I’d say it’s because he wears that armour because it allows him to suppress/repress whatever fear is threatening to surface. Here, in this episode, we’re checking off a list, and he’s faced his fears at this point, and now only has to acknowledge them and learn how to actually dig deep and deal with them. (which he won’t) (but this episode is exposition for this being what the narrative wants him to do) (this is the big lesson it’s trying to teach Dean moving forward) (listen to your heart)

Luther

The habit of lying without a second thought (including to himself) is being stripped away with the rest of his coping mechanisms and here we get Dean freaking out over the thought of all the possible consequences that lying might actually land on their heads. 

Sam acts the parental figure as Dean regresses out of his control freak patterns and into a state where he’s in need of Sam’s protection, not the other way around. Whenever this happens on the show it’s always nice to see Sam stepping up to the plate without hesitation. It’s just that Sam doesn’t seem to remember his ability to do that and falls back on the codependency easily enough. Understandable, since it’s the core of the narrative motor, but oh, Sam. You’re such a clear leader.

Luther’s brother speaks of Luther’s backstory, and just as the characteristics of Frank and the sheriff make them Dean mirrors, the ghost of the hour is the biggest Dean mirror to me, and reveals a lot to us about Dean’s deepest fears.

Garland: Everybody was scared of Luther. They called him a monster. He was too big, too mean-looking. Just too different. Didn’t matter that he was the kindest man I ever knew. Didn’t matter he’s never hurt no one. A lot of people failed Luther, I was one of them. I was a widower with three young ones and I told myself there was nothing I could do.  Sam: Mr. Garland, do you recognise this woman? Garland: That’s Jessie O’Brian. Her man, Frank, killed Luther.  Sam: How do you know that? Garland: Everybody knows. They just don’t talk about it. Jessie was a receptionist at the mill. She was always real nice to Luther and he had a crush on her. But Frank didn’t like it. Then when Jessie went missing, Frank was sure that Luther had done something to her. Turns out the old gal killed herself, but Frank didn’t know that. They found Luther with a chain wrapped around his neck. He was dragged up and down the stretch outside that plant till he was past dead. 

Frank was the pillar of the community.

Luther was just the town freak. 

Frank was respected.

Luther was judged and dismissed as not even being human, simply because he didn’t look like everybody else. 

Frank is framed as being an abusive, violent dickhead - clearly not the most stabile marriage - and to find an outlet for his grief, Frank picks up a shotgun and then drags a man along a road until he’s dead.

Luther’s almost childlike innocense and kindness leads him to find an outlet for his unrequited feelings of love through drawing portraits of the object of his affections.

Frank is representative of toxic masculinity (performing Dean) while Luther is all about wearing his heart on his sleeve (non-performing Dean). 

And, to me, Luther’s backstory of how wearing his heart on his sleeve gets him nothing but societal judgement, and leads to his death, is telling of Dean’s deepest fear, and why it’s been perpetuated for so long through his experiences of societal judgement, because Dean’s deepest fear is his fear of happiness, and it sits at his core and informs the rest of his fears, which, in turn, inform his behavioural pattern of using coping mechanisms to suppress/repress his true emotions, locking himself away from ever really having to open up to them. 

And what is the root of Dean’s fear of happiness?

Well, here’s how I see it:

Dean’s biggest battle with his past isn’t the idealisation of his father, but why he idealised his father –>

The why stems entirely from Dean’s loss of his mother, because that loss meant having his life ripped to shreds, resulting in Dean losing his trust in that childlike sense of joy, tied to the stability of home, love, family –>

This is the root of his long-held belief that Good Things Don’t Last, which underpins the idea that happiness (and love) equals pain, an idea that’s been perpetuated throughout Dean’s formative years, since every time he’s come close to feeling happy, something’s happened to snatch that sense of stability and safety away –>

Fearing getting hurt by believing he deserves happiness was easily avoided by dressing himself in toxic masculinity armour, modelling himself after the strongest man he could think of: his father

So every time he came close to happiness and let himself believe, only to have things fall apart on him, that armour has gotten just a little thicker

Dean is stuck in an emotional loop that through this season’s first arc of deconstructing Dean with Chuck, but to me especially through the communication rift between Dean and Cas, is being highlighted, just as it was in 4x06. And we got the entrance into this mini-deconstruction thanks to the same occurance that lay the foundation for Dean’s fear of happiness: the loss of his mother.

It’s the brightest of threads, threading through all of the emotional subtext and necessary character progression that the series as a whole has been pushing for since forever for Dean (and through his progression what it’s been pushing Sam’s and Cas’ individual progression towards as well) *gorgeous*

We Are Insane!

This scene is so everything because omg the comedic timing is just!

And I love how, when thinking closer on the topic of a Dean deconstructed, in Yellow Fever, when all there is to him is fear, he rejects the life, and all sides to it, but when he lost his memories in Regarding Dean, and what was left was his innocence, all that was left for us to see was his wonder and excitement.

Meaning that Dean stripped of all of his fears (once he’s faced them and accepted them and integrated them) is a soft, happy, content human being. As long as he actually remembers who he is and exactly how to survive, he’ll be goddamn unstoppable. And he’ll be balanced and happy. 

*please, good gods, please*

Buh-Boom

Dean starts to have some serious hallucinations and any reason for Jared to play a different character or side to Sam is just all good with me (Gadreel is still just… mind-blowingly good). 

So Dean sees Sam with yellow eyes and here comes the final fear.

Fifth fear: failure.

Failing to Protect Sammy means pretty much losing his purpose at the Yellow Fever point in the narrative. It’s changed since S12, because of a big shift in Dean’s perspective, but of course, Protect Sammy is still at the top of the list of Dean’s self-worth check list. What’s he worth if he’s unable to protect Sam? To his mind, still not much. Protect Sammy as identity marker has tripped Dean up his whole life, and here that fact comes into stark relay.

Now if we stay with Dean in the hotel room, we get to witness how his inner fears attack him, and of course the surface level fear is the one that manifests: fear of death and going back to Hell.

Thusly – hellhounds.

They turn out to be the sheriff, who’s come to confront Dean about his investigation, and I love how Dean, no matter his fraught mental state, knocks that gun out of the sheriff’s hand and then has the rather amazing fortitude to tell the sheriff he has to calm down. Only it’s too late. The sheriff suffers a heart attack. 

Dean sits on the bed, scratching. Hears the voice of the Sam hallucination telling him he’s going back, and it’s about damn time too. 

Dean…

…picks up a Bible.

This visual ties right back in with 4x05 again, with the threads of faith beginning to show themselves in Dean’s progression. He’s beginning to want to believe. He looks at that Bible like it’s a life line. He presses his lips to it and hey, I’d say this might be his first moment of giving into prayer as recourse. 

But his prayer doesn’t exactly get him what he wants.

I’d theorise that it’s because he’s not meant to learn to have faith in God, but in himself, and this whole episode is about forcing him into a meltdown, which is what he’s in the middle of now. Zero faith in himself, zero faith that he’s not going back to Hell.

And that’s why Lilith appears.

I do love how Dean actually points the Bible at Lilith stating: You are not real.

He’s using God’s faith in him as a shield. Trying desperately to convince himself. Which is rather lovely given the context of how Lilith is a representation of something deep within him that he’s trying so hard to avoid confronting.

And here comes the reveal of exactly what the fear of Hell is really anchored in, because it’s not anchored in Dean’s memories of his gruesome death at the jaws of the Hellhound that killed him, it’s anchored in his memories of not four months in Hell, but forty years. 

Guilt.

And Dean’s heart starts to give out.

Dean: You’re not real. Lilith: Doesn’t matter. You’re still gonna die, you’re still gonna burn. Dean: Why me? Why’d I get infected? Lilith: Silly goose. You know why, Dean. 

What Lilith says now is, really, what’s informed my entire reading of this episode and I’ve mentioned it several times already. She tells Dean: Listen to your heart.

To me, it’s Dean at this point knowing, deep down, that the only way to keep himself from going back to Hell, the only way he can truly be saved, is all about him beginning to recognise his need to face his fears. 

It’s about him daring to listen to his heart and daring to let his emotions be his guide, rather than shutting them down, bottling them up, without question. 

This is what his journey is all about, yeah? To learn to let go of the past and all the fears that have been informed by what he’s been taught and told, and opening up to who he truly is and who he truly wants to be.

This is what the beginning of the season has set up for and what the rest of the season will continue to explore, slowly, of course, but meticulously, and it doesn’t slow down in S5 and, honestly, each season has added a new aspect of exactly this exploration, gently pushing Dean toward moments of daring to be honest with himself, which to this meta writer culminated in S11, when he finally had it pointed out to him that he’s not just attracted to or kind of enamoured with this angel dude, he is truly pining for him, and it made him unable to keep trying to deny the truth of how he’s fallen deeply in love, no matter the terror that comes with it. (and twice the worrying about getting ganked to boot)

I’d say that this realisation, this final admittance of his true feelings, is what opened Dean’s heart up to looking at what was really driving Amara from a different angle, and made it possible for him to, instead of blowing her to kingdom come using the soul bomb, actually talk to her on a more human level, about the feelings that were driving her actions. But, again, that’s my reading, not narratively stated anywhere so, you know, pinches of salt here.

Adding to all of this is how Dean needed Mary most because the loss of her is the root of Dean’s fear of happiness, and getting to have her back allowed him to gain perspective on so many things, like his idealisation of her (and through that beginning to slowly open his eyes to his idealisation of John as well) (though this didn’t take root until S13), and he got to tell her that he hated her for what she did to them, but that he loved her, he he got to forgive her, because he could finally see her as a human being, and human beings make mistakes, rather than only having her as an idealised memory, the loss of her idealised mothering love marring his ability to trust from a very young age. Especially his ability to trust himself, since he couldn’t save her.

This realisation is also what brought on the whole awkward 11x23 Brologue like… I don’t think you love me back because I couldn’t reach through to you, but hey, you mean a lot to me, bro.

I find it interesting that Sam’s the one to save Dean. Symbolically Sam and Bobby’s intervention saves Dean from being consumed by his fears. I’ve always felt like Sam stepping up and choosing to show Dean that he’s ready for independence, that he needs it, will push their unhealthy patterns to a breaking point, especially since Dean is already aware, he just doesn’t know how to let go when he’s not sure Sam’s ready. But we shall see.

I’ll Kill Anything

Look at where we land. Look at this absolutely stunning bookend and how it wraps the theme of fear and how it informs Dean’s behavioural pattern into a soft, warm statement of You Really Need to Stop This, Dean Winchester.

We start this episode with the visual of Dean running from his fears. The fears that are coming at him wrapped up in a neat pink bow. :P

We end this episode after it’s spent a good forty minutes picking through Dean’s fears, with him facing the two fears that always get to him the most, the ones that perpetuates his reliance on the toxic masculinity armour to help define who he is: his fear of rejection and his fear of failure.

We get the fear of rejection in how he completely overreacts to Sam and Bobby’s gentle teasing about how this line of work can get awfully scary, Dean forcefully reasserting how he’ll hunt, he’ll kill anything, unable to bear the thought that the men who know him best in the world could, for even a moment, think of him as yellow aka a coward (which of course they don’t) or question his killer instinct (which of course they wouldn’t). 

This brief emasculation, however, really bothers Dean in the moment (and Jensen plays it gorgeously) and he squares up to it without hesitation, the armour slamming down and leading right into the softer moment with Sam, when he gets the chance to be honest with his brother, to share some of the burden, but…

…Protect Sammy is still prevalent, and Dean chooses to downplay the ordeal he just went through, and lie through his teeth about the true nature of it, still not opening up to Sam about Hell.

So, back to square one we go, but with all this glorious insight into Dean as a character to warm us by, and here we now are at the end of it all, and I’m so very curious what Dabb - who cowrote this episode with Daniel Loflin btw - will give us. *hopeful for all the good things* *always*

[stahlop]

Once Upon a Time 3x01 “The Heart of the Truest Believer” Review

Reviews 1x01 1x02 1x03 1x04 1x05 1x06 1x07 1x08 1x09 1x10 1x111x12 1x13 1x14 1x15 1x16 1x17 1x18 1x19 1x20 1x21 1x22 2x01 2x02 2x032x04 2x05 2x06 2x07 2x08 2x09 2x10 2x11 2x12 2x13 2x14 2x152x16 2x17 2x18 2x19 2x20 2x21 2x22

Well, here we are. Season 3! And we are in Neverland! And Peter Pan is an evil little sucker. And Rumple has some emotional connection that we don’t know about. Plus a lot of fighting, evil mermaids, flying, and some things going on in the EF. This episode deals heavily with the idea of belief and believing, so I think we’ll be seeing a lot of that in this story arc. So batten down the hatches, we’ve got an unbelievable season ahead (see what I did there? Huh? Huh? Whatever.)!

Summary: While Emma tries to dissuade her parents, Regina, and Hook from tearing each other apart, Henry encounters a scared Lost Boy on Neverland and reminds him of the power of belief. In the Enchanted Forest, Neal goes to his father’s castle to figure out what’s going on with Emma.

Opening: Henry and Peter Pan flying.

New Characters: 

Peter Pan: Although we don’t know he’s Peter Pan until the end; he finds Henry when he’s running away from the Lost Boys and pretends to be another scared boy. My only problem with this is that the actor playing Pan looks at least 16, so him pretending to be scared to an 11-year-old Henry is a little odd. Maybe it’s supposed to be believable because Felix (Lost Boy Leader’s name according to the credits) is creepy as fuck. Also, why are the Lost Boys so old? Wasn’t the whole point of coming to Neverland to never grow up and be a kid forever? Wendy (in the Disney version) wanted to go there because she was being kicked out of the nursery because she was almost 13. So why are the Lost Boys teenagers? This makes no sense to me. But I digress. Henry tells him how Pan sent people to kidnap and the boy tells him if Pan sent for him he wants him for something. The basic gist of this whole ‘game’ is that Pan is pretending, he wants to make sure that Henry’s belief in magic(?) is real, and tricks him into using pixie dust in order to fly. Only then does Pan reveal himself to Henry and that he basically needs him because he has the heart of the truest believer. And then, in the most menacing way, he calls the Lost Boys and says they’re going to play. Yikes! What has Henry got himself into?

Character Observations:

Emma: We start with Emma giving birth to Henry 11 years ago. Her leg is shackled to the hospital bed and there is a prison guard watching over her. She absolutely refuses to see the baby when it’s born and says she can’t be a mother. But she’s absolutely devastated. We then move to the Jolly Roger where they are going through the portal, a true picture of a mother going after her son. Mary Margaret and David try to cheer her up, but instead, she blames them for giving her hope, for telling her that life is a fairy tale when that’s not her experience, and she can only go off of her experiences when saving Henry. She is just letting them have it while trying to keep herself together, and it’s some of the best acting I’ve seen Jennifer Morrison do on this show. She is so tired of the optimism that David and Mary Margaret have about everything and just wants them to realize that so many bad things have happened to them and to deal with that.  But they refuse to deal with reality and still hold on to hope, aggravating Emma even more. Gold comes out, now dressed like Rumple, and tells everyone that he is going to get Henry back. Emma, still upset from her talk with her parents, wants to know why Gold doesn’t think she can get Henry back. He tells her she doesn’t believe in her parents, magic, or herself. Emma says she’s pretty sure she believes in magic after everything they’ve seen, and that’s exactly the point. She only believes in what’s in front of her, she can’t talk a leap of faith without evidence, and since Neverland runs on imagination, that’s not going to fly. He basically tells her she’s the same person who came to Storybrooke and she can’t do anything without a little hand holding. Emma takes her stress out Sarah Connor style by doing pull ups down in the crew’s quarters, delighting Hook to no end. Hook gives her Bae’s old cutlass to fight with. They toast to Neal with some rum before their lovely moment is interrupted by a mermaid attack.  Everyone attacks them in different ways, but Mary Margaret and Emma catch one in a net and decide to bring it on board the ship. Everything starts going to hell when they bring her aboard. She calls a storm and everyone starts arguing with each other. You can see that Emma is finding this very strange and that this isn’t normal fighting. Regina finally turns the mermaid into a wooden statue and Emma is freaking the fuck out, especially because a wall of water comes at them after she does that. Emma and Hook are desperately trying to regain control of the ship while Mary Margaret and Regina duke it out. Hook and David end up fighting as well and Emma finally realizes that their fighting is causing the storm. She can’t get their attention, so, in a leap of faith, she jumps off the ship, which probably would’ve gotten them to stop fighting even without the rigging that flies off and hits her in the head, knocking her out under the water. Luckily, everyone works together to save her, and they get her back on the ship and she doesn’t have any type of head injury (not even a bruise!). But their working together gets the storm to stop and Emma gets in an ‘I told you so’ after she coughs up the water that could have drowned her. They finally make it onto Neverland and Emma goes into leader mode. She even admits that she was wrong and Gold was right about belief. Her parents think there’s a right way to find Henry, but Emma wants them to be who they are and do whatever it takes, no matter the consequences to save Henry and just cooperate with each other. Regina questions Emma’s role as something other than the Savior. She tells Regina she is a mother and their leader. She’s pretty much had enough of Regina’s lip and basically tells her to keep out of her way as they try to save Henry. They head off into the jungles of Neverland. So Emma has finally accepted her role as Henry’s mother and is finally taking a leadership role instead of letting everything just fall in her lap. We’ll see how she fares with Henry’s other mother.

Gold: He’s not very helpful to anyone. He does decide to dress more Enchanted Forest appropriate by wearing his crocodile skin outfit. He tells Emma that he’ll be the one to get Henry back since she doesn’t have enough belief. His speech borders on religious when he talks about taking a leap of faith (something Emma does later by jumping into the water and Henry does with the pixie dust), and then he vanishes from the ship, leaving his cane behind (I guess being back in a magical place makes it so he doesn’t need his cane anymore).  First he comes across the carnage that is Greg and Tamara. She is still alive so he makes it so she can tell him what happened to Henry. Tamara tells him that Henry ran, and then tries to justify her actions by saying she didn’t know she was working for Pan. She also apologizes for killing Neal. She asks for his forgiveness and Gold is done with this. He almost looks like he’s sympathetic to her plight, but then rips out her heart and crushes it. Bye bye, Tamara. You really did get what you deserved. He wanders around the island until he senses Felix nearby and tells him to come out. Felix addresses him as Rumplestiltskin and Gold does his little Rumple hand gesture with the biggest expression of disdain on his face. It’s hilarious. Felix tells him Pan welcomes him to the island and is happy to see him again. So now we know that Pan and Rumple have some sort of past together. What it is remains to be seen. Gold finds it hard to believe Pan wants him there. Felix tells him as long as he’s not there for the boy, he’s welcome, otherwise he’s Pan’s enemy. So I guess he’s Pan’s enemy.  Gold tells him nothing’s changed then. So I guess they’re already enemies. Felix tells him he won’t survive against Pan. Gold isn’t particularly disturbed by this. He’s more concerned about how many Lost Boys he can take with him when he goes down. Gold thinks their confrontation is over until Felix throws him a straw doll which instantly reduces Gold to tears. Holy crap! Who knew Gold could be so emotional when it didn’t have to do with Belle or Neal? Felix says something about things they haven’t thought about in years having the ability to make them cry, so I’m assuming his doll has something to do with Gold’s childhood. Felix leaves Gold crying over the doll in the middle of the jungle. Well that took a turn.

Regina: Annoying as ever, she immediately lays into Hook for the ship slowing down, and if he didn’t realize what the purpose of their trip was, it was to go rescue Henry (because they went through a portal just for the hell of it?). Like this whole conversation is completely ridiculous. Then she tells Hook about how Greg called her a villain, which she seems incredulous about (does she really not think she’s a villain, she is the Evil Queen after all), and that Greg said villains don’t get happy endings. Hook and Regina reflect on this and how they might have been wasting their lives if that’s true. Didn’t they have a similar conversation when they were below the library in The Evil Queen? Where Hook asked if their pursuit of vengeance was basically an ending and not a beginning? So, Regina doesn’t see herself as a villain, and she continues this belief throughout their journey. When the mermaids are attacking, she’s not a villain by sending fireballs after them. When Emma and Mary Margaret capture one, she yells at her (and is not above torturing her) for information, eventually causing a fight between herself and Mary Margaret (Regina wants to kill her or torture her for information, whereas Mary Margaret wants to free her), and Regina turns the mermaid into a wooden statue satisfied that that will end the storm. Except it brings a huge tidal wave upon them instead. She seems genuinely shocked that this plan didn’t work. Listen to Emma and think things through, Regina!!! Always thinking in the short term and never looking at the whole picture. Mary Margaret and Regina continue to go at it with each other (involving an actual fistfight between the two of them) and Regina, once again, plays the victim when Mary Margaret tells her to stop ruining her life. When Emma jumps off the ship she tells Mary Margaret she can’t see her in the storm to bring her back up. But they all end up working together to save Emma which stops the storm. Once they dock, Regina says she can fix the Jolly Roger and they can go with Hook’s original plan, but Emma tells her to save her magic and says that Pan already knows they’re there. Emma makes a moving speech about believing in each other and Regina poo poos this as her wanting them all to be friends. That’s not even close to what she said. Emma says they just need to be who they are to succeed and she calls Regina a villain in this speech. Regina keeps a very cool facade when Emma goes on about being a mother and their leader (both roles that are usually Regina’s forte), but seems to be on board when they go further into the jungle.

David/Mary Margaret: I just want to roll my eyes at their optimism like Emma does. Their unwavering belief that everything will work out is very annoying. They are genuinely shocked that Emma doesn’t share their optimism. You can see that Mary Margaret is doing all she can to not dissolve into tears when she tells Emma that her experience is all she has to go on and she could share some of her wisdom with her. But Emma reminds them that they are the same age with the same amount of experience. Ok, I see where Emma is coming from, but being the same age does not give them the same level of experience. They both have different experiences that they can both learn from. Mary Margaret is doing everything she can to placate Emma, but Emma is pissed off. Mary Margaret tells her that the moment she lets go of her belief the moment things will ultimately get worse (how much worse can it get? You’ve already been cursed, lost your daughter, Johanna was killed, and now your grandson has been kidnapped?). I’d be frustrated too.  David and Mary Margaret are trying to control the ship when the mermaids attack, and David’s the first to do something useful by making explosives and shooting the mermaids with the mini cannons (I will not be capsized by fish). And he looks hot doing it. Whew! Mary Margaret gets the idea to catch the mermaids, I’m not really sure what the thought process there was. Later on she thinks that talking to them and seeing if they can make some sort of deal with them will work, but all in all, the capturing a mermaid plan basically almost killed them all. When questioning the mermaid, David first goes from the yell and threaten approach (even bringing a sword to her throat, and Mary Margaret looks horrified at this), while Mary Margaret thinks that killing them with kindness is the way to go (she thinks they are scared of Pan and doing his bidding, even though Hook tells her mermaids are liars and just want to kill them). Regina continues to try and kill the mermaid even though everyone else tells her not to and she brings on a huge tidal wave when she turns her into wood. Mary Margaret blames Regina who doesn’t think this is her fault. She wants her to undo the spell and Regina calls Mary Margaret a naive princess, so Mary Margaret punches her! Damn girl! Get out all that pent up frustration! They continue punching each other so David goes to break them up, but Hook tells him to let them fight because he needs him to help with the ship, but he uses a derogatory term for women and David punches him. So now they’re fighting. He even tries to stab Hook with his own hook. Talk about cold blooded. They finally all get their acts together when Emma jumps in the water to stop them from fighting. Mary Margaret and David are terrified.  They all work together, with David jumping into the water to save her and the others pulling them up with rope. Once on the island, Emma tells them all they need to work together and David and Mary Margaret don’t want to work with Regina and Hook. I’m confused as to why they think they’re there then if they weren’t all going to work with each other. David wants to do things the right way (which is what exactly?), but Emma says they just need to be heroes while Regina is a villain and Hook is a pirate. They need those skills to get Henry back. When Emma says her skill is being a mother, Mary Margaret gets the proudest look on her face. Like Emma’s finally understanding what being a parent is all about. And then after she tells Regina to either help or get out of her way, David is the first to follow with a proud daddy smirk on his face.

Henry: Basically, he’s running from the Lost Boys. He has belief in magic and flies. And now Peter Pan and the Lost Boys have him surrounded.

Greg/Tamara: They know they’re in Neverland because it’s the mother lode of magic. They want to destroy it. Henry asks them who they work for that works on Neverland, but Greg says it’s none of his business. The Home Office takes care of them. Henry wonders how they’ll get back home once they destroy magic, but Greg is deep into the ‘it doesn’t matter as long as it gets done’ belief to worry about little things like getting home. They immediately realize something is wrong when their communicator is filled with sand. Tamara even wonders if it’s a toy and Henry remarks that it’s a good thing they don’t ask questions. Greg just gets angry while Tamara starts getting worried. Greg builds a fire to send a signal, but Tamara thinks the broken communicator was intentional. That’s when the Lost Boys emerge. They tell Greg and Tamara they’re the Home Office, and Tamara is getting really frightened now that they know the Home Office is run by teenagers. Henry clarifies that they’re the Lost Boys. Henry’s confused as to why the Lost Boys want to destroy magic, and Greg reminds him that that was their mission. Felix tells him they only told him what he wanted to hear so they could get Henry. Tamara finally gets some balls and asks how they’re getting home and Felix tells her they aren’t getting home. Greg tells them they aren’t getting Henry, but Felix summons the Shadow who rips Greg’s shadow from his body and kills him. Tamara tells Henry to run and gets shot with an arrow from a Lost Boy. Now, I have to admit, I really didn’t like Greg, but this was an awful way for him to die. After everything he went through as a kid he just wanted some justification in destroying magic, and unfortunately, he found the wrong organization who just used him for their own means.  Tamara manages not to die right off the bat and is found by Rumple later. He heals her so she can tell him where Henry went. She apologizes for everything and asks him for forgiveness over what she did to Neal. But Rumple don’t play that game and takes her heart and crushes it.  RIP Greg and Tamara, you will not be missed in the slightest.

Neal/Mulan: Ugh! I really wish Neal was just dead and I didn’t have to deal with all this. First off, we get no explanation about how they rescued Phillip from the wraith, he’s just there with them. Neal wakes up and is bandaged pretty modernly for being in the EF. Mulan immediately thinks he’s lying about being from the EF since he’s wearing clothes like Emma and Snow did. Which makes no sense because she knows about the curse and how they were all from the EF, so of course he’d be wearing modern clothes if he was from the same place they were. Once Mulan mentions Emma and Snow, Neal wants them to help him find her because Emma’s in danger. He also mentions Henry and Aurora quickly comes to the conclusion that he’s Henry’s father. Mulan questions how Neal got there, but he explains about the portal. He tells her they’re all considered fairy tale characters, or legends. When Aurora can’t make contact she thinks the worst. Neal realizes he needs to go to his father’s castle and reveals his father is the Dark One. Mulan and Neal have a deep discussion about why Emma never mentioned him when she was there. Neal says he broke her heart and then never came back for her even though he loved her and he regrets it. He claims he didn’t try because he didn’t want to be rejected. Or, maybe because you were engaged to Tamara up until she shot you? Seriously, what is up with all the Neal retconning. He didn’t want to risk seeing his father so he let Emma go to jail for him and then didn’t ever look for her once the curse broke because he’d moved on and still didn’t want to deal with his father. This whole still loving Emma thing is bullshit! Mulan seems to understand his regret more than she should. Still wondering if she’s in love with Phillip or Aurora. They get to the castle and Neal realizes that someone is there because they left out a goblet of wine. Then an arrow comes shooting near his head and Robin Hook makes his entrance. Neal is in disbelief. He tells Robin he can have the castle, he just needs to find something first and Robin believes he is the son of the Dark One, because who would admit to that if they weren’t.  He also tells Neal that Rumplestiltskin spared his life and Neal wants him to help him find whatever he needs to pay for that debt. Neal is looking for something magical that his father would have hidden away. Neal finds his father’s old cane, swings it around, and uncovers a magical cabinet. Convenient. Neal claims it’s blood magic that made it so he could uncloak the cabinet. Neal finds a crystal ball and laments about how he’s been running from magic most of his life and now it’s the only thing that can help him. Boo hoo. But he can’t make the crystal ball work. Like your father said, you have to believe. Mulan tells him he needs to think of Emma and not a place. And when he does he recognizes that she’s in Neverland. Uh oh!

Questions:

I get having a guard while Emma is giving birth, but shackled? I’ve given birth three times and trying to move without help after you’ve given birth is almost near impossible. I’m honestly surprised she didn’t break the cuff with the sheer force that is necessary to give birth.

With the way Henry fell out of that portal (and that he couldn’t brace himself since his hands are tied), shouldn’t he have broken something? That was a pretty high fall from the portal. 

Why didn’t Greg and Tamara’s portal spit them out in water since they went into it in water?

Why does Regina ask Hook about the ship slowing down? He hasn’t cast anchor, it’s not a car, it doesn’t just slow down. That’s not how it works. If Hook hasn’t put the anchor down then the ship is slowing down most likely due to lack of wind, or the fact that they just shot out of a portal, not because of anything he’s doing.

How is Aurora’s dress not shredded by now? She’s in the same dress that she was wearing in Broken.

Why is Aurora’s first reaction to not being able to reach Henry in her dream that he’s in trouble and not that he’s not asleep?

How does Neal a) know about his father’s castle (he left the EF before Rumplestiltskin owned a castle), and b) know where this castle is?

Doesn’t wearing a bag crossed over where Neal just got shot hurt? He’s acting like he was never shot at all.

Anyone else think David’s face is a little too close to the mini cannon? I was afraid he was going to at least burn his eyebrows off.

Why are Mary Margaret and Regina still wearing their suit jackets in the middle of a storm? Emma took off her turtleneck and David rolled up his sleeves. Having that extra soaking layer must suck.

First of all, Robin Hood says he arrived at Rumple’s castle shortly after the curse (I’m assuming after it ended) to find it already looted by thieves. Did it get looted after Rumple was taken captive by Snow and Charming?  Secondly, why did he decide to go back to Rumple’s castle after he was tortured and nearly killed the last time he was there? Did he know Rumple had been imprisoned beforehand?

I thought Felix was with the Lost Boys chasing Henry. Did he decide to take a break when they discovered Gold was on the island?

Where did Mary Margaret’s bow and quiver full of arrows come from? She only had a backpack when she came aboard the Jolly Roger in And Straight on ‘Til Morning.

Why is David questioning working with Regina and Hook to get Henry back? They all made the journey to Neverland. Were they just going to leave Regina and Hook on the ship?

Observations:

The lights flicker when Emma gives birth to Henry. The last time we saw this was in the Pilot. It seems this is a manifestation of Emma’s magic in our world.

It looks like Gold lost all the gray in his hair when he had his wardrobe change.

Apparently getting your shadow ripped from you will kill you.

Snow didn’t teach Aurora how to control the dreams and walk the dream world. Henry had the amulet that Gold gave him that let him control things (and David later broke). Not that they ever used it after the first dream.

Neal explains how portals work. You have to think about the place you want to go to.

I don’t know if it’s because of the difference between filming a live ship and then greenscreening a background when filming the actors, but the ship looks like it’s barely moving when it’s just a ship shot, and then it’s speeding along when you see the water behind the actors.

Robin Hood is played by a different actor than when we last saw him in Lacey.

I’ve decided that the forest that we saw in Cora’s bubble must be Sherwood Forest, as that’s the only explanation for Robin Hood to still be in the EF, and why he hasn’t aged.

So that’s the season premiere for season 3! We are officially in Neverland. We don’t even see Storybrooke. And we have to deal with characters we don’t particularly care for in the Enchanted Forest (although I like the smarminess of this Robin Hood). We’ll see how this all comes together. Some other thoughts: Regina is still Evil Queen Bitch. She seems to have learned nothing from her brushes with death just that morning. David and Mary Margaret also seem to think that if they just do the right thing then everything will be alright, when we’ve yet to see that work out for them. Emma is the only one who seems to have made any growth by calling herself Henry’s mother and finally taking a leadership role in finding him. And Hook just fancies Emma when she’s not yelling at him.

Please leave comments and reblog! Let me know if you’d like to be tagged in future reviews.

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[jerepars]

Shattered Extended Story Notes

1/1 Darkness and Light

Hyperlinks appear in blue (underlined on mobile). The story is posted here.

This is a follow-up of sorts to Steady. It will still make sense if you don’t read that one, though this does call back and make reference to that story a few times.

Whether Teresa knew James or could trust him after a long absence remained to be seen. But one thing she knew for sure, from all the time she’d spent around James before, was that he wasn’t ruthless. Some narcos enjoyed taking lives, took pleasure in it, but James didn’t. Sure, there were those he’d had no problem eliminating—those who got in the way of business (most of James’ feelings of distaste for people were business-related)—but he preferred there not be so many casualties, especially bystanders. He did it for the job, for the wagon he’d hitched himself to, but never for pleasure. Teresa knew James buried his humanity so far deep so no one else would find it—so even he could barely recognize it anymore—but he still had it, so he knew the weight of taking a life. A little girl, an innocent, that would have been so much for James, would have burned him up inside.

I think James’ humanity and the fact that he isn’t a cold-hearted killer (as someone in his position is supposed to be) is best shown in 1x12, when he has to deal with DEA Don to give up the location of the safehouse where Boaz is being held. His face when Camila says “just do it” (around 3:31 of the episode, if you have it on Netflix) is really telling, because he knows it’s over for Don. At around 3:46, James says “please don’t make me do this”. I find the framing on that shot interesting, because the camera is in close on his face, we don’t see the reactions of any of his crew, and James doesn’t look anywhere else but Don until the last second...like it’s a moment of honesty. 

Also, after James nods for Don to be taken out, he turns away and we don’t see his face when Don gets shot. We don’t see it until the moment after and James is processing what just happened and what needs to be done next. Seems very intentional on the part of the writers and director for James’ character-building.

Hearing the recount from James of what happened in Texas told Teresa what she needed to do. That was what she’d been focused on and was thinking about, trying to filter out Devon’s spiel as he went on. She wasn’t really listening to Devon; she wouldn’t have given James up to Devon no matter what he said. But she’d told James to get Ivan to work his magic online before she walked into the winery—and she’d sent them a signal, looking up to one of the surveillance cameras—so what she needed was time to stall, to prevent more bloodshed after they’d just set up shop in Phoenix and were on shaky ground with La Comisión.

I watched this scene (1:05) so many times in order to try and break it down for this part of the story. Teresa does look at Devon and James, but for a lot of it, she’s looking down, like she’s assessing the situation in the little time she has. To me it makes sense that she was really thinking about how she and James (and Kelly Anne) are going to get out of the mess they’re in since later she says “I’m not gonna let him take you.” Her mind was already made up and she was only mildly paying attention to what Devon said about James being the worst.

Instead of bullets flying, they got a hail Mary. Ivan used the online presence of Devon’s sister to figure out the two of them had a mother, alive and well. Lil’ T found her singing gospel hymns in a church. Devon lost the upper hand right there, lost his bargaining chip, and packed up his team once it was the life of his beloved on the line. Devon left with the promise of chaos in his eyes, like they’d bargained with the devil to be okay for the day, but would still have business to settle down the road.

Because of the mention of saving James for his soul later in the story, when I wrote that part it prompted me to think of the Jewel song “Who Will Save Your Soul” and the line that goes so you bargain with the devil but you’re okay for today. I’ve always really liked that part of the song, which might be ironic because I don’t even think that’s what the original lyric in the song was (I feel like I’ve read before that Jewel’s label made her change some of the lyrics for the album recording?) and Jewel always sings the song a bit differently in live versions, so it might be the one and only instance where she ever sang that line in the song.

The Devon problem was solved for the time being, but it didn’t put the million shattered pieces of James back together.

The story is named after “Shattered” by Saves the Day. There are small references to it throughout the story. Be forewarned that if for some reason you feel compelled to listen to it, the vocals on this are shrill and grating.

Many times James and Teresa had gotten into situations where they relied on one another to make it through. She remembered shooting the guy from Florida, because they had a job to do for Camila, and he’d seen James’ face in the ambush on the highway. She remembered going back for James after their rendezvous with the feds in the arena parking structure in downtown Dallas and following tire tracks to the militia camp in the desert. She also remembered what James had done for her—he hadn’t been wrong in Malta when he said he’d tried to keep her alive, so many times. She also recalled the times James had saved her in a different way, let her keep her conscience, lying for her when the maid disappeared, and taking care of El Contador, bringing the bloody bag of money back to Camila’s after it was done.

Going back to what is said earlier about James’ humanity and him not being ruthless, I think it’s interesting that James seems to have less issue with the difficult things he has to do when he’s cleaning up for Teresa’s actions. Like in 2x02, when Camila is talking to Teresa about the missing bag of money. When the scene flashes to James, the body language and look on his face is different than in the 1x12 scene with DEA Don. When he gets back to the house and says “we’re good now, right?” (1:33) and looks at Teresa, twice, there’s implication that he did that for her, to save her in more ways than one.

Camila says, “Your mistake cost a life. James just fixed it. That’s loyalty.” (1:45) Sure, he does it for Camila and the business, to protect all of them. But really, specifically, who is he protecting and being loyal to when he does it? 

Whether or not he’d earned her trust since being back, Teresa couldn’t deny James meant something to her. She loved him—that was something she’d figured out on the boat ride after Bolivia, when she woke up in El Santo’s sanctuary after her hallucination of kissing James, feeling safe with him, and him losing blood in her arms. They’d gone through even more after Bolivia, in Chicago, at the train depot, with the Vargas family in Mexico, in Malta, and earlier in the day at the winery. James always protected her, always saved her, even when it danced the line of lying and betrayal, because he believed he was doing it for her. The last time they’d spoken before Malta, on the train car, he’d said you can’t save me, Teresa, you can’t save any of us. But after learning what happened with Devon, in the time in between, she couldn’t accept that kind of defeat anymore. Now, Teresa needed to save James. For his soul, not for business.

Teresa knowing here that she loves James is a call back to the very last line in Steady.

In 3x02 and 3x03 James tells both Teresa and Pote that he never betrayed them, he was loyal to Camila. And as far as the El Santo money goes, in 2x13, when Guero shoots at James (around 30:03 of the episode), he says “If I give her that money, she’s gonna have a foothold in this business, and you and I both know how that ends.” 

Personally, I find the premise of whether or not James is trustworthy in S3 really annoying. Like what exactly does James have to do to prove himself to you people? But I get it, I’m in the audience, so I see everything, not like the characters. So anyway, if the narration in the story is specific to Teresa’s thoughts, then I suppose the way to reconcile James' lying and “betrayal” is because he’s trying to protect her when he does it. He says that directly to Teresa, too, in 3x02, when they’re arguing after she calls Rocco. “I didn’t betray you, I was protecting you.” “I didn’t want your protection.”

I mean, okay, T-rex. But you’re lucky James has your back even when you don’t want him to.

Early on, when they’d first started working together, James had used a metaphor about caves and learning to live in the dark, all survival instinct. And because she knew James wasn’t as closed off as he appeared to be on the surface, because the good in him was lurking beneath, Teresa had long acknowledged James’ decision to live his life in the dark was because too much light was dangerous for someone like him. So Teresa felt partly responsible. So then it was on her. She was the one who’d kept pulling him out of the cave, who let too much light in. And he was shattered because of it.

The part about too much light being dangerous for James is, again, a reference back to Steady.

For a second Teresa thought she’d gotten through to James, using his own words on him. He looked like he was on the verge of tears, and Teresa would have welcomed that, to hold him and share his sorrow. But there was a flash of darkness in his eyes and he retreated back into the depths of himself that were an endless sea of black water, like Suzie and his demons and his guilt were crying please don’t forget about me.

“I don’t deserve that,” he said instead, like he’d already spent too much time looking in the mirror lately and shot out the glass when he couldn’t stand what he saw, deemed himself unworthy of any absolution.

Part of the chorus in “Shattered” goes: The mirror is on the floor, shattered, a million eyes are crying, please, please don’t forget about me. I hadn’t heard this song in a while when I started writing the story, but I knew immediately that I was going incorporate it into the part where James says “I don’t deserve that” when I heard it.

I believe the million eyes in the song are actually referring to the artist seeing their own reflection in the broken glass of the shattered mirror. 

James’ vulnerability and self-loathing made Teresa’s heart clench. To see him broken down and defeated broke her up inside a little bit, too. After learning about what he’d done, and even with the uncertainty between them, Teresa didn’t love James any less.

The last line is purely because of the Said the Whale song “Loveless,” and the part that goes how could I love you less, now that I know you more?

They’d always been in it together, ever since he’d looked at her with his emotions in his eyes, telling her he wouldn’t have another dead drug mule on his watch. Once she’d told him that’s not who I am, that’s not who I want to become in anger, because they’d watched a man die without doing anything about it and he’d said too late. He hadn’t been wrong then either. They’d done a lot for survival, for business, for each other. Teresa thought James to be inherently good while having to do bad things. She wasn’t much different, not anymore. As much as she tried to stay a better path than those in the business who came before her, she, too, felt like she was elbows deep in blood sometimes. So if James didn’t deserve to be freed from the guilt and shame he’d racked himself with, where did that leave her? Where did that leave anyone, really?

To me (and maybe only me), it’s important that Teresa has some recognition of the fact that there was a price to pay to get her to this point, rising to become the leader of her own operation. She’s not the same person as she was in 1x06, on her moral high ground, telling James she’s better than what she did (or didn’t do?) because of him (0:35). In her rise to the top, there’s blood on her hands, too, and it isn’t just because of James or Camila or Epifanio. 

With James and Teresa on the same level, then, the song reference in this paragraph is indirect. In Daphne Loves Derby’s “Patterns and How They Change the Visible World,” it’s asked is there a reason why the rain only falls on your head? and if you don’t deserve to be happy, why would I? 

The very first time I watched this scene and James said “I don’t deserve that” those lyrics popped into my head.

Kissing James was a much more intense experience than it had been in her hallucination. That had been comfortable and comforting. Kissing James in reality, though tender, was hypnotizing and desperate. James kissed Teresa like he was going to lose her, like she would slip through his fingers and float out into the ether if their lips weren’t touching for more than a second and if he wasn’t holding her.

I don’t want to lose you, he’d told her months ago, on George’s boat after she’d secured the connection with El Santo. It was the one and only time they’d ever gotten close to acknowledging how they felt about each other. Every single feeling they’d ever had for one another remained unresolved, even when they crossed another boundary and blurred another line as they kissed.

It is The Gaslight Anthem’s “The ‘59 Sound” that the line when we float out into the ether, into the everlasting arms comes from. Also, in a more literal sense, since we learned in S2 that El Santo’s product is washed in ether, it felt very fitting.

James definitely does not say “I don’t want to lose you” in canon. That’s the last line of dialogue from Steady, one of the factors that helps Teresa figure out she loves James.

Teresa had noted James’ frame was bigger back when he showed up in Malta, and she was better able to appreciate it with his shirt off. After learning of his work with Devon, she wondered if it was because of that—to more easily do the things he’d had to do—or if he’d gotten bigger and stronger in reaction to what he’d done, physical challenge for relief from the actions that made him want to carve out his own lungs.

The album “Shattered” is on, Sound the Alarm, though upbeat in sound is actually really dark. One of the other songs on there is “Eulogy”. I’d burn up to see you again. I’ll carve out my lungs and it’s all just to see you again. Feels pretty spot on for James, because he’d probably rather be the one burned or carved up rather than Suzie at this point. 

(Again, warning that the vocals on this are super shrill.)

Also, I’m not the only one who sees how much bigger James/Peter is in S3, right? Compare his arms in 1x11 when he’s waiting for Kim to meet him at the trailer to 3x04 when Teresa asks him if he can set up a meeting with La Comisión (6:51 to 7:16 of the episode).

So Teresa liked that James was still the same, still himself in bed. She liked that there were stumbling blocks—awkward yet practical ones—from their first kiss to laying together. It reminded her to take in the moment, because it wasn’t dreamlike but it was real, and James always anchored her to reality, kept her steady without needing to filter through rose-colored glasses.

This kind of sums up what it is about the Jeresa dynamic that I love so much. I intentionally made sure to make no mention of Guero and the dreamy quality Teresa associated him with. Being a dreamer, having dreams of a “perfect” future with someone is great. But Jeresa is real.

James settled over Teresa at last, hands combing up the side of her body, leaving her shivering in the wake. He ran his thumb down her jawline from her chin towards her ear, then sunk his fingers into her hair, rubbing a few curly locks between his thumb and forefinger. He seemed confident not long before, taking Teresa over the edge, but down to nothing else in between them except for boundaries crossed, he seemed anxious.

In the hallucination with the ‘kiss’ in 2x06, James has his fingers in Teresa’s hair (1:45) before they hug. I wanted to make parallels to the actions and the words said.

There was something about the way James swore, always with intent and passion behind it, that moved something inside of Teresa. It made her feel heat on every pore of her skin, like those expletives were his pheromones. Hearing him swear on her account, because of her, it goaded her on.

Seriously though, why is it so delicious whenever James swears? All of the ones from the Bolivia episodes are great, but I think my favorite is in 2x03, before he headbutts Pete (1:25). I would not be opposed to James dropping an f-bomb in every episode of S5, tbh.

[aspiestvmusings]

ZEP: MY ISSUES WITH “ZOEY”

Here’s a new  long analysis post for ZEP S1. This one is focused on Zoey, and the things that I have issues with...about the writing & the character: 

Just me...dissecting & analyzing the storyline...with focus on Zoey & Team Max. But since the stories are so intertwined, there’s Zoey/dad & Zoey/Simon talk, too. Cause the so-called “love triangle” [the relationships between those three characters that they try to market as a love triangle] is one of my issues with the show.  

WARNING: Very long post & possibly full of unpopular opinions. 

I HAVE ISSUES...WITH “ZOEY” (READ: WRITING & CONTINUITY...)

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IMO Zoey is “unfair” with both men. She’s in such deep denial & even now that she’s learning empathy & be emotionally more available she’s still running from her feelings, cause she just doesn’t wanna deal with them (the truth). Every time when the three of them interact, she always claims that there’s nothing going on. She tells Simon that there’s nothing between her & Max, and they’re just friends. She tells Max that there’s nothing between her & Simon, and he’s just helping him with grief. She  tries to belittle the other man’s part in her life. 

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She actually knows how she feels about both. She actually knows it all. (we’ve seen her reveal the truth to her mom & to Mo...in some scenes...so we know that what she tells the men is half-truths..at best) But she is doing everything in her power to deny it, and so she “denies” it also to the two men. But...in doing so she’s been unfair to both men, kinda leading them on. I understand that that’s done intentionally... and is supposed to be one of her “character flaws”. That she was (and still is) emotionally challenged, and the new superpower is here to help her learn empathy & make her understand others (and her own) emotions. But while I know what the intent of the writers is... I get a bit of different impression from the actual storyline...as I watch it. Cause...there is some “inconsistency” here. 

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I did not get “Zoey sees Max in a new light, cause unlike Simon, who is stuck in the past, he’s now looking into future, and she needs that kind of “positivity” right now”. Instead I got the feeling that she’s not into him and how he’s become more confident and has a new outlook on life (all started with those peer reviews...), but his position of power. That she’s into the fact that he’s the boss. Cause she’s been fighting against “the universe” this whole time (however many days/months the events between the MRI & the Bad Moon Rising...took in their universe). And suddenly... (and it doesn’t feel like it’s cause she’s started to see the powers as something positive, or because she is accepting her loss, or dealing with her grief...it just feels like she’s being “superficial”) she finds him attractive. 

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I mean... in 1x05, when she sees Max shirtless, she can’t stop staring. She wants that body. Then in 1x06, when Max goes after what he wants [this all started with the peer reviews] - the scooter, she finds that ”action” hot. Same in the finale, when he says he enjoyed being the boss, she finds him attractive. Drawn to “power figure, manly man stereotype”. It’s like Zoeys “Button’s moment”. She seems to lean toards the man, who shows...at the time...”confidence” & muscles. 

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The other thing that makes her lean towards one of them is...”we’re just friends”. She wants what she can’t have. She wants more than the other person wants/offers. She starts really going after Simon..strong (obsessing over him) when he stays true to it not being ok to be more than friends, cause he’s engaged. After Simon says they should stay friends, she does not like that, and complains (to Mo) that the man doesn’t want to be more than friends. And she goes after him... to the point where she tries to hook up with him. Then when she & Max make up, and agree to start a fresh... and Max is all for friendship, she suddenly wants more, and goes after him... tries to hook up with him. When one of the two says that they should just be friends, she suddenly starts finding them irresistible & wanting more. That’s another sttange (planned or accidental) thing I noticed about S1...

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There is a very clear pattern in her behaviour throughout the season. And these are just a few of the “parallels” & patterns. And while very “human” & “real”, and “believable”...from someone grieving, emotionally challenged & “a mess”, none of this is “healthy behaviour”, or anything she should remain stuck in. Which is why they need to let it go... let the “triangle drama” rest. 

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And I’ve kinda started questioning if the girl is just frustrated, and perhaps she just needs some, cause this time she came onto Max (who was all in for the “let’s be just friends for now” thing movie nights and stuff...), and she REALLY could not wait... no more...for him to finish the singing... It kinda made me question if she truly sees him a new light as she says, or is this her “Buttons” moment, and nothing else. I mean..we saw her try to use similar tactic with Simon... on her “anger phase day”. She was trying to use se* as a tool to deal with her anger. And this time it seemed like she was trying to use se* as a tool to deal with loneliness or frustration. However “real” and “human” that is... it’s not “good”. At times I truly think, based on her behaviour, that she just wants to get some...cause she seems to be unable to deal with..anything.. until she’s gotten that out of her system. 

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She also does not seem to learn the lessons she gets. I mean.. Mo told her already in 1x04 that  “You’ll get better at using your superpower. As long as you see every failure not as defeat, but as a stepping stone on the road to success.”...yet she only got it & admitted it [in her speech to her dad] in the finale, 1x12. And also...she seems to not be so blind, and can help apply the lessons to others (giving Tobin the advice she got from Mo...about hard conversations between friends; helping Mo with Eddie...when her situation with Max is the same...as Mo points out). It does not seem “believable”...even if we apply the “she’s a grieving mess & emotionally challenged & running from her feelings & avoiding her own emotions” filter to her behaviour. It still doesn’t “fit”... she just goes back & forth...too much... and that makes it feel like it’s inconsistency in the writing [artificially created...delays & conflict], instead of it feeling as the writing probably means it to be - that its due to her “being a mess”.  

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What I need from S2: for Zoey to be honest with both men. Stop being in denial, and admit her feelings to herself, and to them. How she feels abut each. Telling Max about her kisses with Simon. Telling Simon about her history with Max. And...unless they all agree that it doesn’t have to be two, but it could be three (polygamy), then she has to make a choice, and stop leading them both on. And I want the men to bond, and “demand” honesty from her....if the show really does intend to keep the “love triangle” going...as they claim in their S2 plans interviews. This is why I like both actors (and based on the finale scenes..both of their characters) take on the whole thing (they’re Team Zoey), and I don’t support what seems to be the showrunners & the networks take on the thing (that it’s a competition between the two & that love triangles are the greatest device in writing...)

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Cause right now the S1 finale actually put that to rest...during the last song (as we saw Simon admit he saw them together, and knows she's into Max, and shook his hand...cause he knows what he did...calling him to let him know about her dad.... and how selfless that was, and we saw how Max was there next to her throughout the last song... just a shoulder to lean on...without any pressure or anything. So...on screen the triangle thing was actually put to rest. (except for Zoey’s last talk with her dad...which happened before the funeral,  but still gave them the out to leave things open... to keep the non-existent competition between teams alive...cause network/showrunner love the idea of TS vs TM...to the level that I feel is dloing disservice to the characters and story)

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I’ve said it before... I know what their intent is (cause network TV is easy to read... even the best written shows still follow the same simple formula & rules), but I don’t get that on screen. But most of the “love triangle” thing does not feel to me like it being because Zoey is grieving or because she has low EQ. It just feels like she’s almost intentionally playing with the mens feelings. And I don’t appreciate that. Even if it comes from her only learning to empathize, and not being in touch with her feelings. From her not being able to handle feelings, and hence denying the feelings she has...fighting against feeling... It comes off as like her not just being unfair, but downright playing with Simon’s & Max’s feelings. Cause by now she knows how both of them feel. She has absolute clarity about their feelings...and they have no real clarity about hers. 

They both had their moment(s) with her, but she has to have “hard conversations” with both of them...where she is completely honest with them. Yet she keeps telling Simon that there’s no need to be jealous of Max & her (and then goes and kisses him). And she keeps telling Max that she had no idea she had those feelings for Simon (and Max). When we know that there are two people who know...more of the truth... Maggie & Mo. Everyone else gets the tweaked truth. 

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So yeah...while the intent most likely was that Zoey was clinging to Simon, and in the process of doing so (holding on to the past... cause she was not ready to let go of her dad, so she tried to keep the status quo by creating that grief bond with Simon), I haven’t truly sensed that from the season as a whole. And even though we & Zoey saw that while Simon was still clinging to the past in 1x10, while she has been slowly starting to let go, he seems to have started to move on, slowly, too, in 1x12 (or has he? Maybe it’s all one of his great pretender tactics...like being too cheery outside on a Tuesday morning...while singing “mad world” inside) . But...he still probably represents the past to Zoey. And Max represents the future. That was most likely their intent with the S1 finale Max and his optimistic outlook.

This all comes back to what Zoey told her mom in 1x04 about her connection with Simon: “He’s the only person who I can talk to about what I’m going through with dad. No one else understands, and I guess I'm worried that if I let it go, or let him go, then I... won’t ever feel this way again.” And interestingly enough for her, Max represents the opposite in the finale (especially). While her outlook so far has been - “how do I live without my dad?”, her best friends speech gave her a new outlook “one can experience failure or something bad happening, but still look forward to what’s to come”. The finales intent was most likely to say that she doesn’t feel like letting her dad go or letting the grief go means she won’t ever feel this way again. She can live without her dad, she will find love again...if she just opens up to the possibilities. 

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In S2 I want the two men to bond, and ask her to make a choice. To stop being dishonest with them (and mostly herself). And since we saw the men talk to each other (when Max called Simon), and then saw them shake hands... we can hope that they kinda become “kinda friends”. They should both take a step back, and remove themselves from potential love interest roles...until she’s figured things out. Which can only happen after she’s had time to deal with her grief. Cause I’m not certain she’ll be able to stop playing her games even at this time, when her focus should (finally...after she ran from it all...during the whole time when her dad was still with them)  be only on grief & family. I don’t “trust” Zoey, but I believe in the two men. I see them being her friend at this time. But when she has gone through all the grief stages, they should have a talk...the three of them. And either they agree that “it could be three, not two” or they ask her to make a choice, and stop with her games. Finally be honest with herself, and them. Stop avoiding & running from her feelings. 

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So... that is what I hope from the future. I mean...we didn’t get enough focus on her grief story, cause so much of the screentime was devoted to her dilemma about the two men that it took away so much focus from dad/daughter, and those stories and dynamics. And that was a shame. That she (the story) didn’t focus so much on how she deals (or doesn’t really deal) with the fact that she’s about to lose No 1 man in her life, her dad... and instead of focusing on herself, and her dad...the story almost seemed to evolve around her “choosing between the two men” (the so-called love triangle storyline)

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In the S1 finale we saw how Zoey saw Simon sing he’s jealous of her & her best friend. And she kept that to herself. Then we saw her come on to her best friend, who was there for thier friends movie night. And all that barely days/weeks after...her fights with both of them (all events between 107 & 111). And then we hear her tell her dad that she likes that her hot new co-worker likes her back, and she’s also proud that at the same time she “hooked up” with her best friend. And how that complicates things. When it’s her who is complicating things...which are really uncomplicated. She still has no clarity. She still hides from her feelings. She is still in denial. She still tries to pursue both. And she needs to stop that. She needs to tell her best friend about her relationship & feelings for the engaged man (tell him about the kisses etc) & she needs to tell the grieving & newly single man about her long history with her best friend, and what (almost) happened... the night the music died. She “owes” it to them. 

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We all know what the shows endgame is, and it’s been clear since the start. To everyone...no matter which team you support or root for. And they’ve written the characters and the relationships differently enough to prove the point. Even with the heart song choices. And from the finale alone we see Simon sing that he’s jealous (of her taking her best friend to each cheesequakes...which he thinks is something only they did...that one time), while Max sang that she has all of him.  One song puts the feelings of the person first, the other puts the feelings of the person they sing to first. And we’ve seen that throughout the season, when Max’s songs have been love songs to her, while Simon’s songs have been more about his grief and his “inappropriate” (cause he was engaged) feelings for her. The songs alone reveal it all. Max songs and behaviour always put Zoey, his best friend, first (even during the times/episodes...when they were “taking a break”). His actions are selfless, and full of unconditional love. While Simon’s songs are more or less about his feelings, and what he needs from her (should he stay or go...considering he’s engaged; he’s jealous...of the other man who gets her attention..too). 

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And I’ve said this before...many times, but it’s worth to repeat: the two men in her lives, and their stories, and her relationship with them are written differently..on purpose. Both represent ...something...to her. I’ve compared Simons & Zoey’s grief before, and said how she is taking the same steps he did, making the same mistake he did, walking the same path..without learning from his mistakes. But..hopefully the s1 finale finally put an end to that. Because it did showcase how he is stuck, and she has been stuck in the same way. By clinging to him, she tried to keep things as they were, but at the same time things were changing... as her dad’d health was chaning..and no matter how much she tried to deny it, avoid it... life happens. 

I’ve said how she projects, and she definitely did that with Simon. And...unless they want to have her character stuck, and not have character growth, and be on the path to move on...there is no way they can keep up the love triangle or keep her relationship with Simon the same. Cause that means she’s going backwards, not forwads. And the S1 finale seemed to establish that she’s starting to see the world in new colours. And interstingly enough it took for her best friend, Max, to get through to her (Mo, Maggie, and others have tried...before..but it hasn’t clicked with her...til now), and so I think that they need to continue developing their friendship in S2. His optimistic outlook is what Zoey needs right now. (also... cannot wait for the episode when we hear Max sing “True Colours” to Zoey...oh the parallels...)

Choosing Simon now, after S1 end would mean that Zoey is going down Simon’s path - being stuck in grief, & that’s not what the intention is. To quote Simon from 1x10: “he’s jealous of his mom, cause she was able to move past the pain of loss & grief and she fond the joy...in life...again”. And since Z/S dialogue/story always kinda “parallels” the Z/M storyline, then her words can be applied to herself & Max, too, here. She tells him to go after that joy then...to realize it’s not as far as one might think. If she’d apply that to her own situation with Max, then she’d realize that for her (finding) the joy...again...is to realize it’s not as far as she thinks, cause for her her best friend reprsents that joy. 

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So she either chooses Simon (grief, being stuck, past...cause even though they were making Simon start to move past ...all...that), then as a choice he represents clinging to the past for her. Or she chooses Max (joy, moving past the grief, not making the same mistakes again, and choosing to go the other way/seeing things from other perspective from now on). And we saw her admit that shes “going the other way” with her look on her powers...during her speech to her dad. Yet, she still didn’t apply the same logic to her situation with the two men... cause Simon = choosing grief & Max = choosing joy. 

But...the love triangle can only remain exising if she’ll choose Simon for now. If she’ll be not taking the advice she has gotten, and if she will “wallow in her grief" instead of focusing on “healing”. So...the only question is...how much in denial is she? How scared of the truth, and her own feelings/emotions is she? Will she cling to the past & we’ll see her repeat every mistake she saw Simon make (and she didn’t like... based on snapping at him “you’re still stuck” in 1x10). So...based on these lines alone (bits of dialogue from 1x10 & 1x12 especially: which way she chooses...like which way she chooses to look at her powers), and the lines each sang during the final number... the road back to joy is choosing Max. And yet that choice would (thankfully) end the so-called love-triangle. And I’m not sure the showrunner wants to choose that options. I think their intent is to focus on the LONG grief process, and milk it to the max. ;)

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What I also need from S2: Seeing Simon really start working on his grief - seeing a therapist, continue on the path we saw starting in 1x11 & 1x12. Seeing Zoey take the time to actually grieve, and take time for herself (what Max told her to do...for now)..before she even starts thinking of dealing with her “complicated love triangle issues”. Seeing her stop being in denial, and admit her feelings to herself, and be honest with each man.  And ending this love triangle thing. Instead we need more focus on Mitch impact on Zoey. (via “flashbacks” & “dreams”...where we see her spend time with her dad). 

We need to see her relationships with each man, but without any romantic context. And she needs to apologize to both men...for her behaviour...even if they understand it was her grief anger. She really needs to acknowledge her behaviour, and she can do that best if she starts being honest with them. With her speech to her dad she took the first step... and as I predicted it’ll take losing her dad for real for her to start seeing the power as something positive, not negative. (but she also tries to be in a three-person relationship with both men..without admitting this to herself or them...and that’s not good)

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I’m not sure if it’s just the network or does the showrunner himself truly like the love triangle. Because it’s the one aspect of the show that turns me away & makes me dislike the main character...and hence the show. It doesn’t feel “organic” anymore, it doesn’t feel like a growing story...it feels like the storyline is telling us one thing, but then someone comes in and adds a bit that doesn’t fit into the storyline. That’s how the love triangle thing feels by now. It’s like the writer has one idea, but then the network adds notes, and demand they be added...and they don’t fit...THAT’S what I think & feel when they have “Zoey debate between the two”. 

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This is why I love the actors (Skylar & John) take so much. They both want to respect the character, and dare I say...they don’t seem to be into the idea of Zooey being “the prize” that their character have to “fight for”.  She is not that. They also all seem to acknowledge that each charater still needs to grow individually, and then and only then is Zoey gonna be ready to make her decision (after S & Z have gone through phases of grief, and done some therapy & after Max has figured out his new place in the world...), and I have mad respect for the two men. And I hope the message gets through also to the writers, showrunner & network. That they need to shift the focus, and let Zoey grieve...until they add the “love triangle drama” to the story. Only...unless it’s an actual agreement between all three that they’ll choose poly, there needs to be no actual “love triangle” & she has to choose - does she want the “for now = S.” or does she need the “forever = M.” Will she repeat her past mistakes & go for the overly complicated choice, or do as she planned...and take it slow & go for the right... “forever” guy.  

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The other thing that I need from S2 is something I have complained was missing from S1: team work. In the sense that Zoey needs to trust people more, and let them help her & learn to lean on others. This “character flaw” was introduced already in ep 2, when Joan told Zoey: “Listen...as talented as you are, you can't take on these projects all by yourself. It's unsustainable.” The same applies to her personal life/storyline. She needs to trust her team (friends: Max, Mo & family: mom) more. So while S1 was mostly about each characters individual growth...as little as we sadly saw it (amidst the drama-lama), then S2 needs to shift focus on her support system, and show how she has learned to lean on others, and how she doesn’t try to go through it all alone. So..friendship (and romance) with Max, with Simon (I wish he wasn’t in the picture & they’d bring in someone else/new... but I know he’s gonna be there for the grief-bond, so...), with Mo...

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We saw her have moments with Max (the advice he gave to her about going & talking to her dad..at the end on 1x08) & Joan (the advice she gave her in 1x11, when she told her about her own mom & her story). And surprise-surprise... there was no need for the other person to have gone through what she was/has gone through (dad dying) to be able to understand her, talk to her, give good advice, be there for her. 

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And I want to see her bond more with others... even if they don’t have the same experience as she does. Because one of the things I don’t understand about the shows claims is... how they seem to claim (the show, the character) that no one else besides the people, who have lost their dad (or are losing the same person..her dad...their husband...) would understand. That one has to have gone through the exact esperience to be able to understand them. This is why I never undrstood what they were trying to tell with Zoey/Simon grief-bond. Because... even if both lost their dads, their experiences are different, so neither can truly understand the others experience...no better than anyone else (who hasn’t had the same loss) would. But...also-...most adults have experienced loss (grandparent, friend, parent...), so to assume that no-one else would understand... is strange to me. Yet...they kept it up til the finale. And in my own exprience the best support system is not the person, who has had the same experience, but the person who is simply there for you, who wants to help. It does not require similar experience for others to understand you/get you. You don’t need a mirror to look at, you need just someone who cares, and is simply present. 

I have examples from my own life. I have examples from people I know. For example my childhood friend, who helped her then boyfriend (now husband) though a hard time. They met in HS, and they’ve been together since then (we’re all over 35 now). Her man lost both of his parents very young...with just a few months apart..when they were in Uni & had been together just a few years. And she had not yet been though such close loss yet (by now she is...her dad died before mine did), yet... you could say that she was his rock, and helped him through the time...the most. And they are one of the strongest couples I know. So it has been so strange for me to watch the season & interviews where it’s constantly mentioned that no-one else would understand Zoey...when I don’t think that’s true. When I know, for a fact, that that’s not true. 

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Team Max or Team Simon: 

Now.. I’ve come to realize that the answer to the question “Team Max or Team Simon” depends on a persons take on certain..things. And sometimes even depending on how peope view the actors that portay the characters.  And everyone can have their own opinion on this, and they should. And I know many of us agree (on both sides) that the season should’ve focused more on Team Zoey & that next season needs more focus on each characters growth individually... 

But...there is one thing I do not agree with from people who are not Team Max. And those are claims that Max is selfish, and rude towards Zoey. That how he acted after the flash mob rejection...and until they made up at the end of 1x11, was “acting out”....unfairly. That is the one thing I don’t agree with at all. 

Yes, just like Zoey (and Simon, and everyone else) Max has his character  flaws. And we certainly saw them in S1. But... unlike so many, I don’t think that he was OOC during the middle/end of the season (eps 7-11), which many have mentioned. Even Max fans. I find these POVs...interesting. Cause I interestingly did not find his behaviour such..

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[kinetic-elaboration]

August 28: 1x12 The Menagerie Part Two

Spock commits mutiny part two, where I realize I forgot some important stuff about this episode. Oh well.

Kirk’s personal log??? Is that like his diary lol?

I know it’s just a previously on segment but I don’t even care. The one thing this episode is missing is enough Kirk. Also I enjoy how he goes out of his way to mention he’s watching footage “of Spock in those days.”

Spock is not good at sounding apologetic. That is the least sorry I’m sorry I’ve ever heard.

The aesthetics of The Cage are SO dated.

Space vehicle??

Pike is a pretty hilarious specimen. “I know what telepathy is!!” And yet he continues to do exactly what they predict even as he can hear them predicting it.

“Buzzing about.”

“Hand lasers.”

So apparently there are literally “thousands” of Talosians. (”Thousands of us are reading his mind.”) Like, can you imagine if we could have seen that?

Pike just lacks charisma tbh. He couldn’t have carried this show.

“Brilliant deduction”--lol okay, Spock. I’d say it was pretty obvious that he’s in an elaborate illusion but I appreciate your unerring love for your Captain.

I agree with my mom’s assessment that there should have been a dragon in this medieval fantasy

Honestly, this sequence is so bizarre, because this is the pilot to a sci fi show but this set piece is a random medieval fantasy, with a castle and a princess. Like you’re going to show us new planets and aliens and stuff and you choose.... fake medieval?

Love Vina just in the background uselessly hitting this guy with a stick.

Spock: “Simply answering your questions outright would not provide the necessary Drama, so I decline.”

Reminds me of “You will... answer me.”

Lol at Vina’s “I’m here to please you” line. Pike is in fact there to please HER. That’s the whole point of him.

Pike trying to figure out what the Talosians get out of watching humans’ fantasies, and I feel like he’s one censor away from asking, “Is this a sex fantasy of theirs?”

Ridiculous giant sci fi gun.

Number One has blue painted nails.

“We can’t be sure of anything we do or anything we see.”

I totally forgot the Talosians’ backstory. One of my favorite Star Trek variants: they destroyed themselves, and then became something else as they adapted.

I know Pike is trying not to be too distracted by the Talosians as he realizes how to stop the thought intrusion--but he is actually being told important information about Vina lol.

The Talosians just really like humans! Perhaps.... more similar to the Talosians than humans would like to admit?

The fakery of this farm background.

Horsie!

Chris Pike, the perfect man? I mean to each her own lol.

“Orion slave girl” is such an awkward concept lol... Hard pass on that. It does make me miss Gaila and feel really bitter we didn’t get a proper back story on her.

Love Pike’s necklace in this fantasy though.

THE WOMEN!

Poor Vina, cock-blocked by the new women.

No cell service! Damn.

Or the illusion of no cell service.

“Number One is very smart and the redhead is very horny.”

“They don’t mean to be evil.”

I appreciate how Roddenberry really worked through all of the implications, or a lot of varied implications at least, of the power-of-illusion concept. Not just the fake survivors of the various set pieces, but the illusion punishments, the crew not being able to see their own successful use of their weapons, the Talosian turning into a gorilla, etc.

So they find Spock guilty and then just like continue having the trial anyway I guess.

I know the transporter system is still blocked but I don’t really think Pike needs to bargain that hard. I think he just really wants to leave Starfleet and stay with Vina tbh.

A twist! They didn’t realize humans hate captivity. How awkward. I guess they have reason to fear beings who are too violent, as they themselves were too violent once.

I don’t know why I thought they wanted the people to work underground (getting it confused with What Are Little Girls Made Of??) but I guess they wanted them to rebuild the surface. Which somehow makes a difference to me.

“No apology?” / “You have condemned the Talosian race to death. Isn’t that enough?”

Woah wait what.

I COMPLETELY forgot this part. Completely forgot Jose was an illusion. I remembered there was something fake about the court martial but not that the something was....everything actually. He really was just doing it ALL for the sake of the drama.

Spock’s a good actor.

“He is welcome to spend the rest of his life with us unfettered by his physical body.”

“I’ve been completely logical.” Yeah, right, okay.

How did Pike get down there so fast lol? Did the Talosians beam him down from right outside the door?

Okay, so. There’s still some stuff that needs untangling. I feel like I don’t entirely understand why Spock went to ALL the trouble he did to set up the fake court martial. I guess he knew that Kirk would follow him, and he wanted him distracted so, if the Talosians’ transmissions to Mendez didn’t work to get him special permission, Kirk wouldn’t get in trouble. Like, he’d have been bamboozled by the Talosians too? Alternately, he didn’t know Kirk would follow him (since I still think he seemed surprised when the vessel didn’t turn back), and the Talosians were initially only supposed to broadcast to the colony. But that doesn’t entirely explain why the Mendez illusion was on the shuttle. Perhaps to try to convince him to turn back?

Also... the only way the Talosians could have known Pike was injured is if Spock reached out and told them. Which is honestly a conversation I would have loved to hear.

And finally, why did the Talosians want Pike back? I feel like it had to be just compassion, both for him and for Vina. They have already decided people aren’t good successors to the planet. They can’t be trusted, and they wouldn’t be happy. And even if they had changed their mind and wanted their alleged human colony--Pike’s not going to father any children now. (Which is honestly probably part of why he’s allowed to go--the Federation can make a single exception for him without running the risk of some kind of accidental human colony being created on a forbidden planet.) But they still took care of Vina, and she still needs a companion. So why not Pike?

Also, not finally, one more thing. The Talosians realize they might really die out now, but they don’t want to form alliances with the Federation, and the Federation doesn’t ever want to communicate with them again, and ultimately, I have decided I do think this makes sense. If the Talosians could use people as just inferior labor--”directing” their activities, giving them whatever they want, but not treating them as equals in any way--then the people could live happy lives working for their own and the Talosians’ benefit, without ever learning or even asking for skills or knowledge the Talosians don’t want to give. But if they interact with the Federation as equals, in a negotiation setting, that opens up the possibility that humans or other aliens would want to learn the skill of illusion, or might inevitably learn it in some way. I mean what I’m saying is it doesn’t matter how obviously dangerous it is, there is gonna be SOME bozo out there who’s like “well maybe it will be different this time” and insist on picking up the skill. 

Overall, this is a great episode, but I will say, the CONCEPT of The Cage specifically is better than the execution. Jeffrey Hunter just wasn’t a charismatic, relatable, lovable main character, and the show wouldn’t have worked with him. Sorry, Jeffrey. So in a way I liked Part One better because there was more Spock and I enjoyed all of his manipulations and lying.

Next up: The Conscience of the King, one of the first TOS eps I ever saw.