#i can't really put it in words. i think it's the subverted expectations that work well enough with my fear

[mishkakagehishka]

Do you guys undeestand how much i love kuro btw

[smytherines]

Alright. We know that Owen is trying to get Chimera's surveillance network up and global, to have "a world without agencies, a world without spies, a world without secrets."

We also know that the US government is attempting to do basically the same thing as Chimera.

Hear me out. What if it isn't that Owen doesn't care about exposing men like him and Curt. What if he's actually, in some weird way, trying to protect Curt? Or liberate him? Or at least, men like them?

Like maybe it started out as wanting to destroy Curt, as DMA he certainly wanted to kill Curt. But he didn't. I don't think he would've even if Tatiana hadn't rescued him. At least not from behind, without showing Curt who he really was first.

DMA was a role for Owen. He probably tortured a bunch of people. He probably even enjoyed it. He's kind of fucked up after breaking probably half the bones in his body and watching his partner run away before getting a building exploded on him. I think it's easier for him to be DMA than to be Owen Carvour. He is literally masking (autistic Owen headcanon for the win).

Owen has no logical reason to tell Curt about his plan or reveal who he really is after killing Von N*zi. The only possible reason is to get Curt to chase after him. So much of my Owen Carvour headcanon is based entirely on the acting choices Joey Richter makes during the staircase scene, because holy shit it is truly spectacular (obviously Curt Mega does an amazing job too, but it doesn't subvert anything about the character for me until the Big Reveal).

It looks like Owen has so much he wants to say, he has the gun on Curt for quite awhile just chattering away at him, but he's so furious and he hates Curt so much and he loves Curt so much that he can't find the words. He tries to be icy and distant and cold and condescending, but he looks... I dunno, incredibly sad? He's frustrated, like he cannot understand how Curt still worships all of this macho spy shit, working for a government that would destroy him for being gay.

My headcanon is that Owen wants to dismantle everything Curt ever believed in because what he believes in led to Owen nearly dying and Curt diving off the deep end with his alcohol use. Their governments destroy men like them, and having a surveillance network will only make that task easier. If Owen has control of that network, he'll be a God. Nobody will be able to touch him, or use his secrets against him. Maybe even somewhere in the back of his mind he thinks that he'd be able to protect them, as a couple.

Back to the acting choices, the part where Curt reminds Owen of their relationship, where he steps right into the gun and Owen lowers it (pointing it at Curt's heart, ugh) and he genuinely looks hesitant, he looks taken aback, like he didn't expect Curt to care about him or about their relationship at all anymore. And then he remembers what Curt did to him, remembers how much he suffered for Curt's hubris, maybe has a lil PTSD flashback of his own, and raises the gun back up and says "that secret died the night you left me for dead." That whole moment is just... a really tremendous acting job. He loves Curt, but he can't forgive him. He hates Curt, but he can't kill him.

It's a great scene on paper, but the choices they make here are all perfect. The staircase scene swap really drove this point home for me too, because actor Curt Mega is incredible, he nails the menace and the arrogance that are definitely part of that performance, but it's a cold read and definitely a different read on the character.

The thing that makes me an Owen Carvour apologist is how much emotion and vulnerability and uncertainty Joey Richter puts into the role. For an evil guy doing evil guy shit, he doesn't play it very arch. He does the menace and arrogance, but those aspects keep getting pushed to the background by the little breaks in his voice and the sadness in his eyes.

For me, the moment before Curt pulls the trigger, Owen looks almost... disappointed in him? Like he really thought that despite everything that has happened, that Curt would never choose to hurt him on purpose. I said it before, but it's like in some way he's still in the rubble waiting for Curt to save him. To care enough about him to save him.

I know how I interpret this show is based a lot more in acting choices and real-world politics and my political beliefs than it is in the text of the show, that this is a genre show with genre rules, but I really fucking appreciate having gay characters who were canonically in a relationship, who have enough complexity and are played with enough sincerity for people (me) to have long, involved headcanon about them.

(Also to be very very clear, actor Curt Mega does an incredible job in the staircase scene, the moments where agent Mega gets to be vulnerable and sincere are some of the best acting moments in the show and hurt every single time, when he steps into that gun I feel like I'm dying)

[plethomacademia]

I've always wanted to ask: You have such a different approach to me to interrogating your craft in writing that I really admire. How do you know your path through longer work? Is there a conscious plan you have for certain pieces in your influences and intentions for the actual writing? You take so much influence from so many genres, and I find it really amazing how you play with trope, expectation, and language.

Wahhhhh I feel the same way! I have learned so much from talking to you! You are one of the best things to come from my participation in this space and I hope we never lose touch, truly.

Cutting bc I talked too much

I do sometimes do this consciously. Duet is the best example: I did sit and think of all the tropes I love most about historical romance, especially around ballrooms and lord/commoner relationships, and I proceeded to shove every single one in that I could manage. It's a shorter fic so I really didn't need a longer plot for it, I could hang on purely scene by scene and just cram in what I wanted to play with.

Most of the time, I feel like I don't even pick up the influences until later on if I do at all. I didn't even realize how much I like to subvert tropes until you pointed it out to me and it makes sense I think! I love tropes in romance especially because they set up a lot of expectations and what better way to understand a space than to look for the seams?

There's just something enticing about the word "but." This but also that. This pairing but this plot. I do think romance has taught me how to break things down into their parts though, I think that genre at its best is very self aware and I love that about it.

Back to longer work though. I only have the one and I think the only way I got away with it truly was all the guard rails put in by lore. I know the beats and I can generally just follow them. That gets you a lot of an outline! From there, I could do similar things to what I did with Duet: I knew some scenes I wanted to see, some tensions I wanted to play with, and I tried to find a place for them along the path. The ones that couldn't hang got to be one shots.

I think this will be a struggle if I ever do for example try to write my own romance novel. Controlling plot and scenes and influences seems like a lot! I expect my first one will hang hard on the standard three act romance novel structure (even the third act break up, as much as I hate it), or at least it will at first. I like to think of all the ways something can go so I do thrive when I can constrain myself a little bit.

This is also why as much as I love playing with modern Maeve, I don't think it will ever be anything because I don't know the plot! I know the vibes (bad) and I know some moments (bad and sweet?) and I know the message (women can't win no matter how much they seem like they are winning) but like what ... are they doing? I have no idea.

[cilil]

3 and 12 for the writing asks

Thanks for the ask, dear ^^

3: how you feel about your current WIP

To sum it up in one word: Passionate. While I always have several things in the works, I suppose you could say that I have a sort of "main WIP" at the moment, due to it being a bigger project and all, and I'm just having so much fun coming up with more and more details, developing the plot and interpersonal relationships and outlining and writing scenes.

I'm also aware that I have already been and will continue to be incredibly annoying about it and I'm so grateful for everyone who's been listening to me and putting up with this random obsession I developed haha. Sorry, really can't help it when something sparks my interest and passion like this...🙈

12: a trope you’re really into right now

While maybe less of a trope in the traditional sense, it would certainly be one if you looked at and analyzed my writing as a whole, so here goes: Subverting tropes and messing with expectations. I swear, I'm not trying to be one of these annoying hacks who subvert for subversion's sake and think themselves smarter than everybody else for it as the story falls apart in their grubby hands; there is always a purpose to it. At least in my head.

For example, I enjoy putting male characters in situations typically experienced by female characters and vice versa, letting evil characters show the tiny bit of good that remains in them and vice versa, explore the victimization of characters who would not be deemed perfect or even acceptable victims by society, exploring a different dynamic between characters than what one would assume at first glance, etc (just to name a few).

I'm hoping this can be at least entertaining to read about and maybe in some cases, if I dare to think I might be a sufficiently capable writer for it to happen, even be thought-provoking or challenging. Either way, it's super fun and cathartic for me :D

[theonethatyaks93]

Quick Animaniacs Review: Episode 84 (Original Show)

Hello Animaniacs community! To honor this amazing episode's 27th anniversary, I've decided to make a quick review showcasing my opinions on these segments from episode 84 of the OG show. I plan on doing this for more episodes in the future, so if you want to see more, let me know. Alright, let's get into the review.

What's In This Episode?: Episode 84 of Animaniacs was released on September 7th, 1996. It contained four segments featuring the Warners and Chicken Boo: "Cutie and the Beast", "Boo Happens", "Noel", and a cold ending, which is technically not a segment, but it's close enough. In my opinion, this episode is one of the last great hurrahs of this show, containing amazing animation by TMS, hilarious segments (some of the funniest in the show), and a consistent level of quality. Each segment brings something new to the table; the Warners bringing comedy, Chicken Boo offering some of his best work, the song portion being iconic, and the ending bit being laugh-out-loud funny. Overall, this is a very great episode that I'd recommend.

"Cutie and the Beast":

"Ladies and Gentlemen, Ms. Banana Folana!" This segment has some of the best moments of the season, and some of my favorite gags in the entire show. The opening bit with Dot messing up her lines is hysterical, with great voice acting. The fact that they repeat it so many times also makes it more funny. There are a ton of little jabs, innuendos, and meta jokes in these first few minutes alone. Dot swearing and it being bleeped out? Hilarious! It really just feels like the writers, animators, and voice actors were having a blast. The rest of this episode is solid as well. The fact that the beast is in fact the Tasmanian Devil makes for a great cameo from a Looney Tunes star. The jokes surrounding Taz from the Warners are funny and the songs are super catchy despite being short. The twist at the end where instead of Taz becoming a prince, he becomes a prince before Dot changes him back, is a nice subversion of the Disney story. I really enjoyed this segment, and when I first watching the opening, I laughed so hard I think my parents though something was wrong with me. Just a fantastic watch.

"Boo Happens":

I'll be honest, when I first watched the Chicken Boo segments back in 2020, they were my least favorite segments of all. I hated how repetitive they were, and I disliked the titular character especially. Now, a few years later, I don't hate these segments as much as others (i.e. Buttons and Mindy, Katie-Ka Boom, The Hip-Hippos), but they can still be bland. Luckily, this segment is one of the better Chicken Boo sketches. The setup is interesting, being a Forrest Gump parody and all, and the plot at least has a purpose. I like the narration and the allusions to the titular movie were amusing I can't praise it too much since it is a Chicken Boo segment and all, but out of the entire lot, this is one of the better segments featuring this giant chicken.

"Noel":

This is one of the musical highlights for the show in my opinion. It's an amazing piece that contains funny moments, great rhymes, and it definitely puts you in the holiday mood, though this was released many months before Christmas. The cleverness of the different rhymes and the substitutions for the word noel are so well done that it's shocking. The fact that the whole song just stems from a decent pun is frankly hilarious. I love how it's not only Yakko doing the song, as Wakko and Dot also join in. The animation is so charming and simple, but it works. It makes it feel like a Christmas song, while subverting expectations in that traditional Animaniacs way. This song definitely puts me in a good mood while also being really funny. It's not as good as songs like Yakko's World and There's Only One of You, but it stands on its own as a classic. If you want a Christmas melody from this show that will make you smile, or laugh, I recommend this 100%.

Cold Ending:

If there's a great beginning, a great ending will follow. And in terms of Animaniacs, this is by far the best ending to an episode in the franchise's history. Just an ending bit where the Warners wish us farewell, only for the cameras to keep rolling with the siblings making random remarks about different things, including the cast and crew. It seems simple, but it's so well done. This is where the voice acting and writing really stand out. I mean, you couldn't get a more perfect situation; Yakko, Wakko, and Dot picking on the crew who made the show, and even referencing their own voice actors is so hysterical, I was wheezing after first seeing this. The delivery of the lines is great, with the timing landing so well. They even still make pop culture references; can you get any better than this? It's a very meta portion of the episode, but that's the fun of it. These writers were paid to make the Warners talk about the people who worked on the show, and it, of course, went incredibly well. When the siblings finally realize the camera is still rolling and that their mics are still on, it's so humorous. This is a very tounge-and-cheek way of referencing the amazing talent behind Animaniacs and I couldn't be more happier this was how this episode and TMS's animation contributions ended. What a perfect way to wrap up one of this show's last great stands.

Conclusion:

While this episode was made in the Kids WB era of Animaniacs, it still managed to make an impact. Noel is still fondly remembered, "Cutie and the Beast" is named a highlight, and the cold ending is also acknowledged by many a fan. Though I never say Animaniacs got outright terrible, it did suffer from some failings in the writing department while other shows, mainly its spin-off series Pinky and The Brain flourished. This episode still proves that there were some decent writers working on the show, and I consider it to be one of the last outstanding things this show ever did. Not everything here is amazing, but there is enough great things here to justify my opinion on it. The team did an amazing job and the voice actors brought their a-game once again. I love this episode and I recommend it very highly. Well done Animaniacs team. Happy 27th Anniversary to these fantastic segments!

And that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed this new idea I had about reviewing Animaniacs segments. I plan on making two very big posts in the upcoming weeks, so I'm very excited about that. Stay tuned! Thank you everyone for reading and have a great day! Stay zany to the max!!!

[night-market-if]

Dear sweet author, poet-est of words, curator of comfort and IF deity of angst...I am not ok. WE are not ok. I'm going preface this "ask" that actually isn't one at all (my very first ever, mind you) with an apology for how rambly and unhinged and it may end up being. I've been wrestling back and forth with my Anxiety about sending this (people-ing makes me nervous) but after finishing Book 1 I cannot get your story out of my head, and you deserve all the love and gushing.

The plot, the characters, the prose are all just so amazing! You're so very talented and deserve all the recognition for this work of art. I've been with your story since before the first Chapter was released and it has gone from something I have enjoyed immensely to one of my favorite IF's ever and oh boy have I read a lot! The lore and environment are rich, and each character has a distinct voice that is their own. There are so many wonderful things I could say but I don't think I'm eloquent enough with words to do it justice.

*SPOLIERS AHEAD*

Reading through the last few chapters, specifically 11 and 12, for obvious reasons I believe I can confidently say I have gone through the 5 stages of grief and more. lol I knew what was coming and it still completely subverted all of my expectations. Played through first as my Milomancer and the literal gut punch I felt in some of that ending dialogue, specifically on whether he cares or not wrecked me. I haven't had a visceral response to a story like this in so long it completely took me by surprise. Oh, and can we just praise you for that buildup of suspense leading to the talk with Milo. I was legitimately holding my breath so convinced we were going to find him at Mals and it was just the invitation. *Screeches*

Anyway, reading this has made me an absolutely feral, sobbing, punching the air howling into the abyss of a mess and I just can't stop thinking of all the possibilities of things to come. When I finished, I immediately went back, read through all the routes with all the variations because I just couldn't get enough. It's crazy to see all the hints, correlation within everything and put it all together. Just genius. There are so many other things I want to touch upon, but this has gotten so out of hand, I apologize. (I hope this doesn't come off as too overly familiar) But now that I've finally sent my first ask I think I'll be comfortable sending more in the future.

So, congrats on technically finishing book 1!! I'm looking forward to reading the beefed-up version and in the future the next book (which ofcourse is a long way off). I'm sure you're chomping at the bit to get everything completed but I do hope you take time for yourself to just relax and be proud of all you have accomplished. Remember to stay hydrated and take care of yourself!

Much love from an old broad who is just a big fan <3

Unhinged asks are my favorite!!!!!

Thank you so much for being here from the get go. I look back on almost a year ago now and kind of feel like I was looking at someone who had no idea what she was doing but was going to barrel through it all anyway. Which, to be fair, is how I treat most things in life.

I'm so glad that you went back and read it again after chapter twelve! I have been peppering in little hints from the get go. So much so that I thought nearly every chapter, someone was going to call me out. LOL! And some people did but most did not which leaves me just in awe.

I've taken next to no time for me, if we're going to be honest. LOL! But I'm hoping to son. Mainly, personal life has been hectic so I am looking forward to sitting and diving into my work again.

I really hope you send more asks in the future! I'm not scary and would love to hear from you. Thank you again so much for reading!

🪷✨🪷✨ If you want to support me 🪷 ✨🪷✨ 

Demo 🌿 Patreon 🌿 Ko-fi 🌿Discord🌿Kickstarter🌿FAQS

[kattahj]

A personal musing on La Pluie, soulmates, and predestination

My reaction to La Pluie really made me examine how I feel about soulmates.

Now, this is more of me untangling my own feelings than it is any type of analysis of the show, so be aware of that before you hit read more (if you do).

I've always had a distaste of soulmates, but this show had me thinking more about why, and how, I get that reaction.

I did like the show, for the most part. While I put it on the backburner sometimes, I had no problem watching the whole thing (and I'm not someone who has to finish watching everything I start). In a way, how the show examined and subverted the tropes worked for me, at least up to a point, because every time I hear the word "soulmate" it's like Psycho shower scene music in my head, and that's not so dissimilar to what Saengtai feels.

But whether or not the soulmate thing is "real" in the La Pluie universe, and whether that makes it easier or harder for couples to find happiness, this is still a BL, and so the main characters HAVE to end up together! Which, poor Patts! It's not his fault I hear shower scene music every time I see his face, just because he unfortunately happens to believe in soulmates.

Would I have preferred Lomfon as a partner for Tai? No, not really. I don't think there was ever much basis for it. Tai didn't seem particularly interested, and Lomfon only interested in the way you're interested in that hot person you've talked to a couple of times.

I think I would have liked everyone to just go, "Okay, this has been interesting, but let's go our separate ways and forget this rain-fueled soulmate situation ever happened." And that wasn't ever going to be the end of a BL.

So, why the shower scene music?

What I realized was, it's the exact same feeling I get from "chosen one", or "prophecy" or "destiny". I hate them all. I hate the notion that there's some cosmic force that steers our lives in a specific direction that we cannot deviate from in a meaningful way, and we don't even get to know who that force is or what their reasoning is. I mean, if it were Cupid shooting his arrows at people, and I had a quibble with his decision, I could at least go, "Cupid clearly has shit aim" and be done with it. :-) It's hard to do that in the face of ineffability.

Most of my favourite characters have been people who do something completely different from what was expected of them. They were supposed to be meaningless, and became meaningful. They were supposed to be villains, and became heroes. My unchosen ones.

I guess it also ties into religion, and ideas of predestination. Now, I'm agnostic these days, but even the brand of Christianity I was raised in didn't believe in predestination, for which I'm grateful. There might be better and worse choices, but never just one correct path. Life as "choose your own adventure", rather than a straightforward story. (Or, to use the discussion of Cain and Abel from East of Eden, "thou mayest" rather than "thou shalt" or "do thou".)

And of course La Pluie is Thai, with entirely different religious customs and expectations, and I can't really speak of that. Nor can I make any deep analysis of how it uses soulmate tropes compared to how it's usually done, since I stay the fuck away from every love story that so much as breathes of soulmate, if I can help it, and only watched this one specifically because of the subversions.

The only other BL show I've watched that went there was Never Let Me Go, in its Our Skyy 2 epilogue. I wasn't happy about that, and wished they hadn't, but it was a bit easier to handle, in part because it came so late (after I was already invested in the ship), and in part because it seemed  more based on personality, and less on the random whims of the universe. We were told that Palm and Nueng, since they are who they are, will always be attracted to each other, but since they are who they are they will never be happy long-term until they learn to communicate better. Which, that's okay, I guess.

I still much prefer characters who get together just because they want to. And my absolute favourite kind are the ones whose time together is so valuable that they could break up tomorrow and it'd still be worth it.

Thinking of Moonlight Chicken as an example. If Jim and Wen break up, Jim has still learned to process his feelings after Beam's death, and not close himself off so much. Wen has still learned to live on his own and not stay in a bad situation because he can't stand being alone. If Li Ming and Heart break up, both of them have still won their freedom and started exploring the world, away from, yet reconciled with, their families.

A path doesn't have to end up a specific place to be worth taking.

And of course, it's rather ironic, feeling like this, that I sit here watching dozens of QLs, with their guaranteed HEAs (whether I want them or not).  The cosmic powers dictating the outcome do exist, and they're called the audience.

But I guess that's where decades of Bury Your Gays has taken me. If the alternative is death, I can take a little predestination. Just coat it in the chocolate of supposed free choice. :-)

[deltaengineering]

Spring Anime 2021: Embarrassment of Riches

So this current anime season absolutely stinks, which just makes the last one look even more impressive. Well, maybe not all of it...

Zombieland Saga Revenge

First off, you don't need to tell me that the following is a severe outlier opinion. We good? Ok. ZLSR is, in a word, subpar. I liked S1 back in the day, but it was already in the process of getting lazy towards the end. S2 continues this trend and is basically just another idol show. And as someone who actually does watch other idol shows I have to say that it's not a particularly good one of those either. The zombie gimmick has mostly stopped mattering and we're just doing what every idol show does, only with the odd occasional sight gag. The alleged subversive qualities mostly amount to a flashback for Yuugiri, which is admittedly the best part of the show but feels like it barely has anything to do with anything. Apart from that, it's a bunch of generic idol plots, rehashed character beats, shoddy attempts at twists (while not connecting to any setups from S1), and the obligatory "idols give us hope" ending, which is terribly hackneyed and flat out bad. Tae gets further memed into the ground, because of course she does. And there's stuff that was simply never good to begin with, like Kotarou and his comedy schtick, which gets truly insufferable now that there's no qualities to distract from it. It really makes me think that S1 wasn't even all that good to begin with and seems like an attempt to turn this surprise success into an easy money longrunner with no edge and no ambitions. "The idol show for people who don't watch idol shows" indeed, but not the way you mean it. 4/10

Bakuten

But not to dwell on the failures, with the second show we're already above the cut — barely. This one got my attention with its really impressive performance scenes early on and it totally sticks to that, which is even more impressive. But besides that? Well, this is by far the most predictable show in a season where I watched an unambitious Kiraralike and put ZLS on blast for having no ideas. The characters are a mixed bag, some are cool (Shida, Asawo), some are very annoying (Mashiro), but those are the supports. The main cast is extremely one-dimensional, which is fine until they try to heap a ton of pathos on their lead, which doesn't go well. But I guess execution matters, and Bakuten is slick enough to get by. Writing this down in stark daylight I feel like I overrated this show somewhat (I actually put it over the next one originally, which definitely doesn't hold up when thinking about it), but I was indeed mostly entertained. 6/10

Yakunara Mug Cup mo

Yeah. Of course Mug Cup definitely doesn't invent or subvert anything either, but it's a pretty good Kiraralike that's always entertaining to watch. Explaining the qualities of such a nothing genre is as difficult as ever, but it mostly comes down to me liking the characters and it having nothing to annoy me. It's shorter than normal, which is a plus for slim shows like this. And yeah, you can make an excessive amount of dick jokes with the clay fondling. That helps too. Looks are just fine, pleasant but nothing out of the ordinary. Comfy low-effort anime. 6/10

Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song

This one is decent, but sadly still a major letdown. Because the first few episodes of Vivy were excellent and kicked ass, but then it became increasingly clear that the writing can't cash the checks the ideas wrote while the action starts running into severely diminishing returns. Vivy just keeps slowly getting worse and worse as it goes on, not by a huge amount each episode but by the end there's a pretty sizeable gulf between potential and result. Going into detail would probably be a little much for this venue because there's a lot, but from the top level view the issue is that while Vivy has good fundamental ideas and steals at the right places, it just isn't a smart show — it's schlock, and by the end, poorly thought out schlock that tries to smooth out every problem with liberal application of the big feels hammer and le epic twist at that. Yeah, couldn't tell that the Re:Zero dude was aboard here, for sure. That said, it still works pretty well as entertaining schlock that is not to be taken too seriously, and the characters are generally just very fun to watch even when they're doing stupid things. Still, I can't in good conscience rate this higher than Beatless, a show that looks like butt but properly executes on its ideas. 6/10

Super Cub

So this is 100% a Honda commercial, and I got really mad a Yuru Camp last season for being a blatant shill. Yet I'm feeling this, what gives? I think the main difference is that Super Cub is specifically a commercial for one product (and a very iconic product at that), while Yuru Camp is so all over the place that it ends up mostly a commercial for consumerism in general. And when Super Cub goes too hard on the product (which it does), it's at least pretty entertaining. That's something about Super Cub in general: It goes hard. Your regular Kiraralike this is not, because it's uncommonly slow, focused and moody - yes, it almost measures up to Yuru Camp at its best and demolishes it at its worst. Also, it's just extremely amusing to see sadblob Koguma grow a huge grizzly biker beard and become a badass outlaw dad to her goofy wife and cute daughter, all thanks to the power of afforable personal transportation. Needless to say, that can get unintentionally silly, but Super Cub has so much charm that it doesn't matter — it's great when it's good and still funny when it's not. 7/10

Shadows House

Shadows House turned up with a lot of potential, and I have to say it at least delivered on most of it. It has some problems; notably I'm not a fan of how the entire middle turned out to be a tournament arc of sorts that seems curiously inspired by Resident Evil memes, crest-shaped intentations and boulder punching included. I also think that this is a show that would be perfectly fine without explaining much, but I guess it is a shounen manga after all so we got dumped on eventually anyway. At least that came late - close relative Promised Neverland didn't show that much restraint. Shadows House is generally well written though, with great characters, interesting interactions and a great hook. But what really makes it memorable is that it's exceptionally good at the cute/creepy contrast, something that is often tried but rarely works as well as here, with great character designs and very appropriate production. I hope this gets a sequel, because it seems like it's just getting started. 7/10

SSSS.Dynazenon

Coming in with a fondness for Gridman, Dynazenon didn't have to do much to convince me. The surprise though is that it's not a rehash even if it's basically the same show, a character drama where occasionally huge and goofy fights break out. Dynazenon is Gridman done better, and the interesting part is how it accomplishes this - mainly by being far more conventional. I do appreciate that Gridman went for something weird and almost experimental, but that only really paid off towards the end while most of the show was a distraction/holding pattern. It just didn't feel like there was enough material for a full series there, more like a movie maybe, if even that. Dynazenon fixes this by just being a TV show, with an actual cast of characters that each have their own arc. And by spreading the material this way, Dynazenon ends up having a lot more nuance than its intensely focused predecessor, while having the same themes and not actually being any deeper. In a way, Gridman ends up looking like the spinoff in retrospect, while Dynazenon is the full package. 8/10

Thunderbolt Fantasy S3

So how good was this season? So good that Thunderbolt Fantasy doesn't end up at the top, that's how. And all the elements that made Tbolt such a sure thing are still there, big hammy puppets doing stunts and scheming never gets old. However, I do have to note that at this point, the writing appears to have gotten too comfortable. I don't expect it to ever top the amazing S1 ending, but at this point it's like Tbolt has stopped trying to deliver on endings at all and seems in the process of retooling itself into a longrunner instead. Barely anything gets resolved in S3 (the climax is that the climax of S2 is resolved again, for good this time... maybe), and everything else is just setting up plotpoints for the next season. Tbolt is truly lucky that it doesn't actually need to resolve anything to be a great time, but at this point I have to say that I'd appreciate it if they wrapped it up with S4. 8/10

Nomad: Megalobox 2

Speaking of sequels to shows I liked, Nomad doesn't so much improve upon its predecessor but steamrolls right over it. This is a tall order, since Megalobox was surprisingly good for a sports shounen and had a real nice, heartwarming ending that Nomad instantly negates for purposes of drama and everyone being extremely miserable. That sounds like a pretty terrible idea - and it would be, if Nomad wasn't as excellent as it is. To call it not the same show would be an understatement, because it's a true sequel, not just the same characters doing their thing some more, or new characters doing the same thing as the old ones did. Indeed my biggest problem with Megalobox was that it still closely adhered to its genre template and was very predictable; Nomad fixes this issue thoroughly. Nomad is about questioning what being a hotblooded shounen protagonist eventually leads you to, and how to fix everything you screwed up by being one. You could call it a deconstruction, but that term has been so abused for cynical, edgy "thing you like actually sucks" takes that I feel like it doesn't really fit here. Nomad isn't cynical at all, it's just a character drama about some boxers past their prime, and it being a sequel to a show that is indeed rather formulaic just enhances the experience. My biggest issue with it was that I really like what they did with Joe in this story, so the big focus on Mac's backstory felt like a distraction for a long time. But in the end that turned out to be absolutely necessary to make the ending work. The ending's just great, by the way, and I shall say not more about it. 9/10

Odd Taxi

Yeah boy, here's the show that has apparently become somewhat of a "greatest show you didn't watch" meme, which I can feel smug about because I don't need YouTubers to tell me what's good and followed this from day one. Anyway, Odd Taxi is indeed great, the greatest show in a few years even. What starts out as seemingly a relaxed hangout show in the vein of Midnight Diners quickly turns into a psychological murder mystery while never losing its quirky humor. The character writing is outstanding, with even small bit players being on a level that the average anime wishes it could have for leads. And the rollout of the mystery is exemplary, with answers given and new questions raised every episode with a satisfying and logical payoff in the end. This is also the rare anime that has rock solid production from the first to the last second; it's never really flashy but excellently done and highly consistent nonetheless. And the music just owns. I have a few complaints, mainly that there's a few logical weaknesses in the story (which wouldn't even register in a lesser show, but sticks out here since the rest is so immaculately constructed) and that the ending overextends on the emotions when the rest of the show is so reserved and dry in comparison. But those are only the reasons why I didn't give it perfect marks, and I almost did that anyway. 9/10

[youidiotprince]

i'm convinced wtfock writers are homophobes. they made us wait for sander's appearance for two weeks. they didn't develope their connection before first kiss like og did (they talked two times really?!). they made robbe use slur. they included hate crime. they made sander cheat on robbe bc apparently no bi person can't keep it in their pants by all stereotypes. they prolonged hell weeks and ohn clip and didn't made last week about sobbe but all about zoenne.

My answer doesn’t really make any sense, but I basically went point by point to try to offer another interpretation of these events that doesn’t prove the writers are homophobes. Um but good luck making sense of this haha

I don’t know that we can make such a claim about the people behind the season based on those instances. I think they made some mistakes, but I don’t think it was rooted in malicious homophobia, I think it was because of irresponsibility and a prioritization of drama, though some of these events did play really important roles in the season and I think were really well done. like, they didn’t introduce Sander for two weeks, perhaps to build suspense and subvert audience expectations, and it also helped to introduce audiences to Robbe’s internalized homophobia and his desire to genuinely make things work with Noor, because he was so far away from accepting his sexuality.

and then, honestly, if I went on a trip with a group of friends, and there was a person I was interested in that I straight up didn’t exchange a word with but became enamored by from a distance, and then after that trip got drunk with them one night and hung out alone, I would absolutely be okay with kissing them. so I would still find the first kiss scene realistic even if they hadn’t exchanged any words at all, and I especially find it realistic after watching them talk to each other the few times they did. like you don’t need to be in love with someone or know every single thing about them to want to kiss them and enjoy kissing them. I still believe their connection at that moment.

they made Robbe use a slur, perhaps to increase the drama of the season, but also to show that just because Robbe got caught up in the moment with this human that he was intensely crushing on and interested in and enamored by, it didn’t erase the years of homophobia and toxic masculinity that he was surrounded by and socialized in. he still had his internalized homophobia, and he was disgusted with himself after letting himself get caught up in his attraction to and connection with Sander, and so he threw an ugly word at Sander that he meant for himself. that was exactly the way he was feeling about himself. and this can be such a real experience for lgbtq+ individuals who are coming of age in these kinds of toxic environments where this aspect of them feels so ugly and wrong and not normal.

the hate crime and prolonged hell weeks I think are the two places that they really messed up, and it seems like they kind of were only included to increase the drama. I have like a whole rant about how the hate crime didn’t need to be what it was to still have the same effect it did on Robbe and Sander, but I don’t feel like getting into that and so I’ll just say that they turned it up way too high purely for the sake of drama, in my opinion. it was irresponsible and careless, but I don’t know that we can accuse the writers of being homophobic bc of it. it is incredibly harmful that they did that, absolutely, but they were trying to portray a harsh reality that some lgbtq+ youths face. I just wish they would have done more with the aftermath, then. the extended hell weeks absolutely were just to increase suspense and subvert audience expectations, and it was irresponsible and careless, but not homophobic.

I think making Sander cheat is harmful in that it plays into and perpetuates harmful stereotypes about bi individuals, but I don’t think the intention was to do that, I think they were just trying to hit that part from the og while putting their own spin on it, bc they had changed so much from the og already. still problematic though.

I wish they would have separated Robbe and Sander waking up together and Zoë and Senne breaking up into two separate clips, bc I really do think that they ruined what’s supposed to be a beautiful clip by having the second half be so sad? like why wouldn’t you want Robbe and Sander finally being together and happy and “altijd” to stand alone? idk I really don’t agree with that creative choice, but I don’t think it was due to homophobia but was just that they had too much to wrap up in the last episode and didn’t have time to treat each thing individually. but other than that clip, like not much of the last ep was about Zoenne? So I don’t think that’s really a valid point.

[mysticgalaxychaos]

"In depth" analysis (commentary) on Mcs vs Yaha dialogue (part 2)

This is the continuation from the previous thing he said and now he downright flirts with Nowe in a very very creepy way. This phrase can be read so wrong and I guess it's meant to be that way. Again with the weird word choice! Is "look into my eyes" that bad? I mean we all know you're trying to smash so why be weird about it?? And that tone!! So horny!

Imma assume this one is referring to Nowe too and there is just nothing I can really say. I guess the battle got him in the mood for flirting and... Other stuff... Ngl tho those horror-fied slowed down roblox death sound effects set a pretty good mood!

*Ah yes! Nothing gets you going like watching your pact partners, whose existence your life depends on being slaughtered!*

Now the focus turns to Urick and we also move to different footage because the other one had the order mixed up (apparently these quotes appear in a certain order but it depends to the time you take and finishing the fight quickly cuts out some important ones). Here Yaha talks about "the old good days" when he and Urick were... Friends?? (A couple??). This tells us that Yaha up until this point had hopes of them going back to what they used to be which is a bit of a sad thing considering how they were friends and Yaha was trying to change the relationship into a romantic one. Him wanting to at least be friends again is pretty sad... (Urick's just heatless man!)

This is also a very weird line! On the surface it just seems like it's the first line that reveals Yaha's feelings for Urick... and that's why I've went out of my way to overanalyze the shit out of it, so LISTEN! This will tie to later quotes as well (of course) but not in the way that you might think. This does seem to be a question, askig Urick and assuming that he did know about Yaha's feelings but the way that "Right, Urick" is spoken kinda gives a vibe of "Right, Urick? We were FRIENDS, RIGHT??? Friends? Were we FRIENDS Urick? Were we really friends, though???" But this is kinda contradicted by the "you must have known". I think it would be more appropriate to say something like "You knew" or "You did know"

Now, now, NOW this is a bit of a ground breaking quote, and given the context, it seems like it's addressed at Urick. From what I've seen, if the gameplay goes by quickly you get this like after the "Come now, I'm waiting" line which makes this seem like it's about "General Oror" but this is an idea I am not willing to entertain so for our sanity's sake we will take Urick as a fact here. Now the first time I watched a gameplay of this game, I missed this quote completely, but it affects the story quite a bit mainly for one reason, we don't know what he's talking about! Is this "exquisite moment" that day he met Urick at the orphanage? Was it the day he discovered Lord of the Rings is a thing? Was General Oror really that good?? We don't know? But considering the context and Yaha's perceived personality (both before and after pact deal) we can safely assume that General Oror is in fact really THAT good that this was an incident involving Urick and Yaha. This is the "event" I talked about before. My interpretation is that something (probably sexual) happened between them (It could have been romantic but judging by how much emphasis is put by both Urick and Yaha on the fact that he lost his ability to feel *sexual* pleasure, we can see they are both very sex oriented). Also we know this thing happened before the pact deal both from something that's said later on and from the fact that if this was a sexual experience, he seems to have enjoyed it which he wouldn't be able to do after the pact deal (*Dramatically looks down*). Either way, Yaha here talks about what appears to be a very big moment for him, probably involving Urick

This is were Yaha goes off and begins telling us the story of his life (not really, his pact deal) and it kinda messes up the narrative of what we've had so far. Because if this "exquisite moment" he talked about before was something that happened between them that would render them "more than friends" this takes us back to square one ("The friendzone"). A bit random, but this quote also makes me sad. If you think about it, the man sacrificed a part of himself (all be it not a super important one) for Urick and it still didn't work for a completely uncknown reason. The mention of the word "finally" implies he tried to "get" him using other means to, but it could just mean he waited for super long, even though again, given the context, it doesn't look like it. Urick hates this poor guy for a reason, that reason, though uncknown, could very well be Yaha's attempts to get Urick to date him.

:(... He sounds so heartbroken... But, as sad as this is, it gives us what might be the most important piece of information we've had so far, that being that Urick rejected Yaha. Not only that, but "rejected me then" implies that Urick had rejected him before. This tells us that Urick didn't want a romantic relationship, that Yaha probably made multiple attempts to get him and that Urick is (drum roll, important plot hole incoming) immune to Yaha's charm! YEP! The supernatural charm he paid with his (*dramatic gasp*) ability to feel pleasure!!! (*Dramatically faints with arm on forehead*). Also, this tells us Yaha hadn't been the most loyal to his love for Urick, as Urick was "The only one" who wouldn't go with him. That does have a couple of scary implications given the rest of the cast, but we won't judge Yaha's taste (or lack thereof) in men now. The phrasing used here also gives the impression that Urick was never involved with Yaha in any way that was not friendly which makes the other quote ("I want to relieve that exquisite moment") super confusing... Guess we'll have to assume it was about General Oror after all...

This is Yaha's quote when you defeat all his gnomes and the gnome king (?) appears. It doesn't have any plot relevance, but the phrasing is interesting. Yaha's described the battle as "playing" before and addresses his gnomes as "children". I honestly have no clue what this means or why he does it, it just kinda makes him sound super innocent and child like, which I think the devs were kinda going for with his voice and everything. Which is just really weird... Cause he's a massive pervert who might have fucked every single adult male character we know... I really don't understand what they were going for. Maybe some short of subverting expectations/stereotypes kinda thing, like "Look! He's an elf! You know how elves are in fiction, pure. And look at how innocent he sounds and how he addresses these gnomes as children and... Oh look! We tricked you! He's actually a creepy prevy guy!!!¡¡" On the other hand, he is supposed to be an illusionist so I guess it might make sense...

Here is where the bosse's helth begins to get kinda critical and Yaha begins to realise that he might die, so he starts talking about it, trying to get who I will again assume to be Urick to maybe spare him (spoiler alert, Urick is a heatless rock of a human being and he won't spare anyone). Again I have to point out this part because they just keep giving us contradictory statements!! Here Yaha is trying to convince Urick (and Urick's friends) to not kill him, and his argument is "I will die and the crystal will be destroyed", but here, the crystal really doesn't make for a convincing argument. Urick (or his friends) isn't attached to this crystal, so Yaha's argument here really is something along the lines of "Urick if I die you ain't getting none". Really he is using his "beautiful body" to get Urick to spare him. It's either that these two really, REALLY don't understand each other, at ALL, or that something has happened in the past that would lead to Urick not wanting to loose Yaha's "beautiful body". Interesting word order there as well. "YOU would let THAT happen?" instead of "Would you let that happen". Placing emphasis on "You" reinforces this idea. Also that final line sounds kinda mocking.

And this is Yaha's final quote before he dies and we go into the cutsceen. As you can see he's fully gone insane, presumably because of the extreme levels of power given to him by the Hogyoku in a short amount of... Wait, what am I even writing about?? Yaha's definitely kinda loosing it there and I can't make sense of this at all... In what way is this romantic? Unless it's meant to be ironic.

"Oh, so you're killing me! Yes, Urick this is the perfect ending to our date! You are SUCH a romantic guy!!"

[helshades]

idk if you watch rupaul's drag race or have any interest in drag queens in general at all but opinions on this dress+the censoring of it on the show for ~bad taste~ reasons? (i find it gorgeous and smartly funny esp when the theme was "padded for the gods" i mean, you can't get more padded than that lmao. almost a feminist look/statement imo) instagram. com/p /BsUaPvenYcj/

I can appreciate the tongue-in-cheek literal-mindedness of the dress and the model makes an interesting comment about intent:

Nevertheless, such statement may be a pad, sorry, a tad misplaced considering the fact that exactly none of the participants in that reality show happens to be someone who could menstruate, and that there is more than one argument that could be weighed against drag-queens, of all artists, trying to make feminist statements, of all things…

In passing, I really wish people would retire from using the term ‘empowerment’ every five minutes about things that have nothing to do with this concept, which was coined to refer to marginalised people, usually in the Third World, chiefly women, gaining self-determination through economic and political means, aiming to become self-sufficient. Empowerment is a sociological concept rooted in Marxist theory, intertwined in the very basis of democracy—peoples’ right to govern themselves. In other words, we are rather far remote from putting on extravagant gowns to wriggle one’s equally padded arse in the face of people meant to elect one individual the best performer in a group of individuals obsessed with being gazed at admiringly for their looks.

One comment I found on Instagram about this post:

‘You’re absolutely fantastic. I would have loved to see this on the runway. This is not distasteful at all, it’s beautiful couture and art that normalizes an unfortunately shamed experience that many folks go through regularly. It is so important to honor and celebrate the bodies that inspire drag. It warms my heart the respect you bring for female-organed folk.’

‘Female-organed folk’. It is more than a little disheartening (though it doesn’t exactly surprise) to see ‘woman’ become a forbidden word amongst people who supposedly are all about celebrating the luxurious aspects of womanhood, and usually appear to crave femaleness—and not in the way a straight man would, longing for the otherness of femininity that complete his half of the heterosexual union… but, rather, here, femaleness as a template, woman as the typical object of man’s desires.

I am perhaps a divergent feminist—not like other girls!—inasmuch as I tend to regard femininity and masculinity as indissociable from womanhood and manhood, and necessary things, to a certain extent. On the other hand, I am not enough of a deviant yet that I might deem drag queen shows feminist. Drag attire, for all intents and purposes, is a caricature of femininity, whose ambivalence has often verged on the schizophrenic: at once an interesting parody of sexist beauty standards and… well, an uninhibited exploitation of the exact same thing, which, as it is being performed by the one sex that precisely isn’t subjected to such standards in civilian life, makes one wish dearly that men would find a more personal way to subvert canonical virility.

I have no doubt men can be feminists. Of this, a stellar example comes to mind with Doctor Denis Mukwege, the famous Congolese gynaecologist who received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2018 for his remarkable work on healing women who were victims of genital mutilations. This is feminism—and it is noteworthy indeed that Dr. Mukwege’s help is not only surgical, but economic and judicial as well. This is feminism. A million-dollar reality show about men performing as images of exaggerated femininity? I don’t think so.

On the other hand… on the other hand, I do not happen to believe that not being feminist per se would be drag’s original sin. In fact, I happen to find it a very, very interesting play on masculinity, as no one, deep down, actually doubts the presence of a man, a male, under all that outrageous make-up, getup and beneath the exhilarating wigs. Only, on top of that default maleness, there is an exceptionally loud mask, like one of the painted personae of ancient theatre, never meant to hide oneself, but to show, on the contrary, the truth of the character behind. In more ways than one, drag costuming is a support for the expression of all emotions and sentiments that men are traditionally expected to reign in and dissimulate in order to perform virility.

Sharon Needles:

‘It can be perceived as misogynistic, and I can understand why, but I don’t think there’s any drag queen who intends it to be. Most drag queens dress up as super women, as an over exaggeration of the female form, because we like women, usually powerful women. I think that’s why we are so over exaggerated; we are an amplification of the women who empowered us in our youth. The most powerful woman I know is my mother, and she doesn’t wear any make up at all. We’re exaggerating the western consumerist culture that happens to plague women more than men; and thank god, because it’s so much prettier.’

Alaska Thunderfuck 5000:

‘Since I was a kid, I’ve always been skinny and frail framed. I felt powerless as a child, but I always saw so much power in femininity and female sexuality. I was always drawn to beautiful women. We don’t mock anything innate about femininity, but some of the trappings that come alongside.’

Sharon Needles:

‘Look at her, over there, look who you see in the mirror. When I’m fully done and look in there, the real you inside is pushed way back.’

(x)

At the end of the day, this is only a reality televised show where vulnerable people with self-esteem issues go to masquerade and parade because our society confuses personal success with fame and a controlled appearance of self-satisfaction. All it says is not said wittingly—but it never does mean that there is nothing to be said, I suppose.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Hello! Sorry for this stupid question, but here it is... how do you notice subtext?? Like, is it something that is obvious to you or do you know what/where to look for?? Am I dumb for not seeing it by myself, or is it actually okay and you need a skill for it, that's what I would like to know... *sigh*.. but also it's not like I'll accept any explanation that someone gives, I'll take it only if I find it reasonable, but lmao do I even have a right when I can't come up with anything by myself??

Oh gosh, that’s not an easy answer… Good thing I just had a coffee and my brain is nearly back online!

Essentially, it’s just about awareness and willingness to engage with the text on the level of being aware that it’s a text, rather than losing yourself to it. In a very good movie you forget where you are and you’re 100% in there and your thoughts are just absorbing what is in front of you. In a bad movie you’re gossiping and joking about the characters, even in your mind if you are polite in the cinema, and identifying shit like “oh wow what a surprise his sketchy brother is betraying him” or whatever. Aka you are viewing it as a bad movie rather than disappearing into the good one. 

And at that point you are an objective level removed, and your awareness of tropes and storytelling and general themes of the genre means you’re now engaging with the story and its subtext on a higher level than pure indulgent viewership. (Which is a blessed state and extremely important for creators to cause that to happen in us, but if we want to be critical of a text we then need to lovingly make this step back to critique and explore and analyse and understand WHY we liked the thing we liked. Or, of course, hated the thing we hated.)

This is the answer the internet gives on What Are Subtext?

The important thing is that the subtext is an actual, solid, understandable part of the story, but it’s not one that the text will actually announce with words… Unless it’s being extremely post-modern.

(You should watch Jane the Virgin, it’s amazing)

In that example, it’s extremely obvious in context that the situation sucks, and our narrator is telling us, as a voice outside the scene, how it feels for the characters even though it’s blatant on screen, it’s humorous for us to be told this as part of the overall conceit of the show, which is extremely postmodern and constantly types out the details of the story and how the characters feel, things they don’t know, etc, on screen for us to make sure we’re all on board and understand what’s going on. Using the narration like this is making what is subtext in the acted scenes, for example jealous eyebrows and the sort of other micro-expressions we over-analyse, into stated fact about the feelings. The serious nuance comes in other, much more intelligent ways in the story.

Another direct and frequent way we interact with subtext aside from it being just literally anything happening on screen that is not directly commented on but may be evident from the work of acting, camera, and setting-related design and other choices, is dramatic irony, which is a very good use of subtext which draws us in and makes us extremely aware of what we know that the other characters don’t, and plays on that for our attention and investment in the story, but of course MUST go unstated at least to some characters, meaning that any engagement we have with the conceit around said character(s) means we’re seeing the subtext they miss. Growing up reading Lemony Snicket was a masterclass in storytelling and general life so I’ll let him explain:

“Simply put, dramatic irony is when a person makes a harmless remark, and someone else who hears it knows something that makes the remark have a different, and usually unpleasant, meaning. For instance, if you were in a restaurant and said out loud, “I can’t wait to eat the veal marsala I ordered,” and there were people around who knew that the veal marsala was poisoned and that you would die as soon as you took a bite, your situation would be one of dramatic irony.”

When we’re reading a text to identify subtext, we need to have awareness of some pretty basic foundations, such as the major story tropes and styles, and character and setting and a lot of other things… Fortunately as long as you read books, watch films and TV series and otherwise consume tons of media, you will have at least unconsciously absorbed a LOT of the toolbox needed for this. You just need to know enough to know how to expect what happens next, OR to know when a story has done something radical which is NOT what you would have expected, and breaks a mould you thought it was set in.

For example, the cold open of 2x03 features a vampire, a panicked, conventionally attractive woman in a white top running through woods, being hunted by Gordon, with the vampire as the typical tropey victim, and Gordon facelessly featured as a seeming hook-handed killer. It LOOKS like it’s going to play into an extremely typical slasher story, but once Sam and Dean realise the victim was a vampire, it turns the entire set up on its head and is immensely unsettling to the foundation of the show (which is how Dean handles the episode). I use that example a lot but it’s one of the most blatantly tropey cold opens on the show which gives away nothing to suggest it will be subverted, because it’s so early in the show their mould is extremely simple, and you could almost not trust that they wouldn’t do another extremely on the nose urban legend, before they have really established themselves beyond the season 1 style.

That whole set up relies on giving us invisible cues we read which are the subtext of the scene, and then using the fact that this set up plays us really hard to believe one thing and the other, in order to make it so complex and confusing and uncertain even for us, as we relied on the cold open to tell us what was what and who was good and who was bad, which if we followed one emotional POV of the episode, could last as long as Dean’s uncertainty that the vampires weren’t bad.

Storytelling is built enormously on this foundation of subtext and stuff, and one of the things that you can tell is bad about Buckleming episodes is that they really don’t put in much subtext: things are fairly straightforward, subterfuge is broadcast, and there’s rarely deeper meanings or connections between events in their stories. It comes across shallow and weird, especially with side characters with bizarre and unexplored motivations, or surface level motivations which are not explored and we can only take it on face value what they actually care about. One of the most hilarious Buckleming scenes to me is the one where Crowley “forces” Lucifer to tell the court of demons that Crowley is the best and he is in charge, while with his back turned to Crowley, Lucifer winks and implies with his tone of voice that he is/will be in charge and is the real king they should be bowing to. This is their idea of dramatic irony, subtlety and subtext in character interactions and it is utterly, truly dreadful to behold, in the sort of way I want to put it in a museum as an example to future children to learn what not to do. You can press a button and Lucifer’s eyes light up in the exhibit!

In any case you’re probably really mostly asking about Destiel and bi Dean subtext etc, because this is what majorly concerns the meta-interested peeps. But to me it is really really essential to know and care about the entire house of cards. Billie’s words about the structure and function and behaviour of the universe in 13x05 are a wonderful description of how writing works, and as a bonus she doesn’t say “this is a writing metaphor” and wink directly into the camera, as Buckleming would have written it, but Yockey leaves this idea in the writing itself for us to interpret and understand. There’s a LOT of commentary in this show about writing but this one in particular really resonates with me when it comes to talking about interpretation, because we really have to understand and handle the entire story in order to really line up any of the pieces in a way that makes sense.

Right now I have that lil lesson in visual subtext floating around, about Ketch and Dean in 13x18 and Dean n Cas in 13x19. I think it’s a great example because Ketch and Dean have a real history, and that’s super important to remember when on the surface it looks like just a joke. The history goes back as far as 2x03, when I’ve written before about seduction and the trap Dean falls into with men filling a space in his life. The tl;dr of this linked meta is that Gordon, the Siren and then Crowley as a main arc over season 9-10 seduced Dean in a very similar pattern. 9x11 is the best example of a Dean seduction episode, but through season 10, Crowley is so successful that he has the dubious honour of having actually managed to bed Dean in the process, while the others failed, though the Siren at least got a proxy-kiss.

Ketch comes on to Dean in 12x14 and there was even a shot or promo image (I can’t remember which this is now) where they had this bottle in the middle of the table between them.

Bottles are suggestive imagery in any case, and we have Cas flirting outrageously (for Cas) with Dean in 9x09 including this action of stroking his bottle in front of Dean:

Ketch’s approach with Dean was a lot like Crowley’s, emphasising their similiarity and trying to get his little adventure with Dean to tap into all the dark parts Dean denies. In the end Ketch went overboard beating up the vampire girl, Dean went into protective mode, and didn’t unleash an inner killer, like Gordon and Crowley in particular had wanted him to, and so this Manly Bonding Over Violence failed to occur, they went their separate ways, and Ketch shacked up with Mary instead because this is a fucked up story :D

Once this incestuous connection to Ketch occurred, he for once is off-limits to Dean now, so he’s having this oddly romantic bonding episode with Dean in a sense - the kind that without this context would be huge alarm bells because it combines the ridiculous homoeroticism of Dean x Cole (thank the fucking lord that stopped short) and the plausible good chemistry of Dean x Crowley in the sense of Jensen and DHJ being a fucking delight when they’re together. This would be EXTREEEEEEEEMELY shippable in other circumstances, but instead Dean knows Ketch slept with Mary, they mother and son killed him and destroyed that gross connection, and then he floated back up like a turd, and so they mostly just talk about when and how they get to kill him again, and not in the “this is a blatant flirtation” way Crowley pointed out it was basically a come on from Dean to threaten to kill him in the closing lines of 9x10 and the opening lines of 9x11 featured Dean threatening to kill Crowley.

So Dean chilling 5ft away from Ketch in a hot tub because he’s not gay in the woods, and telling him flat out he’s not his type, is legit and not connected to subtext telling us that Dean isn’t bi, it’s that Dean in a zillion years is not going to sleep with Ketch, that if he was younger and dumber he would have, but he knows what’s up and now Ketch slept with Mary, this is fucked up in a way that we’re now verging into bizarre John subtext instead. The phallic symbol of a gun - used a lot by Dean from between his legs in humourous or not so humorous scenes and teased as penis subtext a lot (especially in #THINMAN with the “say hello to my little pistola” moment where Dean directly compares dick and gun in coded talk while having it out with Harry) - is therefore presented as Dean with it loose and not pointed at Ketch. Surface level, he’s not gonna shoot Ketch right now. Subtext… He’s… not gonna… shoot……. ketch right now…

And then you go to the kitchen scene with Dean n Cas, the subtext of beer as dicks is also deeply established as well as alcohol as sexual bonding between men, right back to Gordon and the Siren and Crowley, in a bad way, but also positive; Dean bonds with people who share a drink with him and his primary way of picking up women is in bars. In the open of 1x19 he and Sam have full beers on their table, and Dean goes over and buys more beers to talk to the women he wants to pick up, then goes to Sam and puts those beers down - in the end Sam has 4 full, untouched beers on the table in front of him when Dean runs off to go seal the deal at the end of the scene. I find that so utterly hilarious.

But yeah. Between Dean n Cas it has a much deeper level of symbolism about their connection, and the major moments are pretty numerous, but I love in 10x18 at the Last Supper, the Kingdom Beer bottle superimposed over the whole of Cas for a moment in the fade between scenes, before Dean picks it up and drinks from it. There’s also moments like 6x03 when Dean is praying to Cas where he’s holding a bottle directly between his legs, as Cas arrives in the room. Details like this always make me laugh. You need a dirty mind for this sort of subtext :P The show itself has a dirty mind… Season 7 is full of Dick jokes, but they’re only the most overt that the show makes. 9x17 is RIDICULOUS because Misha has the foulest mind and spent roughly 50% of the time he was directing doing close ups of Dean’s face as he drinks seductively from a bottle, or with him standing with a pool cue between his legs, running his hand up and down it. I… Am not going to comment further. It was, however, the episode where Crowley thought he had sealed the deal with Dean.

In any case the subtext of the beer in 13x19 is more likely to link directly to 12x10 and “this will do nothing for me but I appreciate the gesture” and the more wholesome theme of Dean trying to be nurturing and inviting Cas into the home and family - 12x10 was basically addressing and fixing an enormous problem of miscommunication about this. In the end despite the gesture - of both not killing Cas just to spite Ishim, or giving Cas a beer when it won’t make him drunk, Cas ended up still leaving on the mission that ended up with him stealing the Colt and then going off with Jack and Kelly. And this season the theme remains of miscommuncation, this time with so much dramatic irony that WE know that the characters don’t that their cross purposes can be seen from space… Hopefully for the sake of addressing it.

But I have a dirty mind and this is an established part of Destiel subtext from other scenes where the beer was more directly in focus, such as 9x09, meaning no harm in highlighting the upwards pointing phallic symbols in the room and grabbing an awkward shot of Dean holding the beer pointed Caswards from his lower torso… :P

I think in the end spotting innuendo is important to know when it is and isn’t intended by signifiers in the story and characters that it is just random. There’s almost certainly accidental moments where characters with no chemistry or emotional subplot have done things which might look suggestive but it’s up to us to use logic and reason to guess they’re not really telling us they have a boner for each other. Since Dean n Cas have romantic subtext and a strong history of innuendo and sexual subtext as well, it’s fair game to at least laugh about unfortunate implications, wonder about the Big O Slush Machine that Cas spilled over the phone to Dean in 9x06, or look stonefaced into the camera and say “that’s a dick.”

[helianthus21]

Hello! From one bitter Cass stan (who used to be all TFW positive) to another, I too am scared. Because I can't shake the feeling that Castiel won't have that much involvement in the season's arc, if at all. I don't believe a word that comes out of Dabb's mouth because he's a known liar (queue s12). I'm just wondering how disappointed I will be 😞

hey! Okay I’ll do this under the cut because while I guess by now ppl who follow me know I’m not S13 positive, I want the ones who are to have a chance to be able to easily scroll past thisAlso warning: This got more bitter in tone than I expected, so if you want sb to give you some hope and positivity, turn away now! But since you came into my ask box I doubt you wished for that:P

(Just in general: if you wanna vent about the show, my message thingy is always open, turns out I’m not done venting yet either, and that way I can keep it mostly off my blog;) anyway, dude, I feel you. I had tentative hope at the beggining of S12 that with the new showrunner things are gonna change for the better, but honestly? I don’t trust Dabb anymore either. Don’t get me wrong, I still think he’s a good screen writer, but there are things that happened in S12 that I think if he really wanted the show to change he’d not have let them pass. I’m aware that Ross-Leming is married to Singer, and Singer has a lot say in things, and yeah I have no idea how the showrunning business works, but things like Sam/Toni? Couldn’t he have put his foot down on that one if he initially had other plans for her character? And 12x21 man, this time Dabb can’t hold his hands up in all innocence like he did after Charlie. Because he might not have written her death scene, but he’s the fucking showrunner. I doubt Bucklemming are authorized to decide getting rid of her on their own, so like. Yeah, I have a grudge against Dabb. I mean, on the one hand I think if Cas actually gets to have some introspection before he comes back, gets to talk with someone important (Chuck? Billie? himself?) in the Empty or wherever, that could be a real chance for him to overcome his depression and accept himself the way he is (’Are you an angel or a man?’ - ‘Neither. Both.’) (^which would be my ideal way for this to go as you probably already know:P).But on the other hand - argh, I get that they’re going this ‘accentuate his importance via the boys pining in his absence’ route - but good lord, haven’t they done this enough in S12? Haven’t they done this enough in S11 too? Back then I was so hopeful that it was gonna lead somewhere. I told myself, “Okay, Cas is practically gone for the second half of the season but it’s gonna be worth it in the end! At the season finale he’s gonna come back and he’s gonna have some major role to subvert all the things Amara and Ambriel said and what he himself believes about himself, because he’s gonna prove himself as a hero! He’ll reject Lucifer as a first step on the long way to get his self-worth back and show that he’s not someone who just ‘helps’ and that he’s far from ‘expendable’.” I told myself that the whole time - 12 EPISODES, he was gone for 12 EPISODES!! - that he was gonna come back with a bang and it was all gonna be worth it. Because I liked the Casifer arc goddammit, it had potential. Because, for me, this was the only logical way for this to go! But then, of course, he came back and basically just stood around while everyone else got to do a part (yeah, being insulted some more by his fellow angels does not count in my book, and neither does this terrible beer run conversation, don’t even get me started on that one) while everyone got a bit of a scene with Chuck. Everyone except the one who, you know, spent basically his whole character arc searching for God, playing God, losing his faith in God - nah, that’s apparently not of import to the writers  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯So you’ll excuse me if I don’t get my hopes up that Cas’ death in 12x23 is gonna actually lead to something this time. I’m not very interested in spending the first few episodes without Cas - “really feeling his absence” bc dude I’ve been feeling his absence all the damn time! They exlude him from scenes and episodes when it’s actually working against the plot and against all logic not to have him there (see 11x09), because the format for some reason demands Misha to be in X episodes and so he won’t be in more than X episodes.I mean, sure, the three Cas-centric episodes in S12 were honestly glorious! But that doesn’t change the fact that he was in less episodes than Mary or Crowley. Quality before Quantity, yes, but then please give me this quality in all of his episodes. I don’t know about you, but him going around interviewing a few ppl, ‘searching for a lead’, that’s not what I’d call quality. That’s not really all there is to hunting and Dabb promised more hunter!Cas in S12 didn’t he. Also is quantity and quality really so hard to pull off? I mean...?? As for his involvement in the next season - I don’t know man. I probably can’t say a lot about that, or shouldn’t, because I’ve run out of chances to give the writers so I’m not gonna keep watching. They did say he shared some ‘bond’ or whatever with Jack so he’s probably gonna have a role in the overall arc, but then I had similar thoughts during the Casifer arc so..At least, the bond’s not gonna be of a romantic kind since Jack is a boy, not a girl, so there won’t be sexual undertones there, although tbh I can’t bring myself to be interested in Jack and his story? Maybe I’d think differently if they’d handled things with Kelly differently.. A shame, really, because the nature vs nurture thing does make for an interesting subject. Anyway, I know it’s too early to judge, but I get the people who worry that this storyline will yet again be taken away from him and fall instead into Sam and Dean’s hands. Wouldn’t be the first time ya know. And like I said, I’m not the best person to talk to about this, bc I can’t seem to find this storyline all too appealing bc of the way they led up to it.. which normally wouldn’t bother me too much since the characters are still A+ and they can make up for any not-so-interesting plot points, but after Eileen, not even that is enough for me tbh.So yeah, you can tell I’m still high-key pissed at the writers. Hey, I watched 12x21, the whole abomination of an episode, I think I deserve to still be bitter. Sorry though.But on a lighter note: the Empty does have potential and we shouldn’t write it off before we - well you - see it (I’m sure I’ll look at gifsets of it^^). And there’s The Hug to look forward to which I’m sure won’t be downplayed if just because Misha and Jensen and Jared know their characters and they wouldn’t half-ass this important reunion.If you wanna give S13 a chance, I’d say don’t get your hopes up too much, but also don’t think the worst? Because having your hopes crushed sucks, but if you only expect the worst, you probably won’t be satisfied with anything. This is all the advice I can give if I put myself into a more neutral position for a minute^^.