#old rambles

[starborn-storyteller]

so apparently people are complaining about a new interpretation of the force that shows up in acolyte e3. for context, the idea itself is that the force is like a thread that winds through everything instead of an omnipresent semi-being as the jedi believe.

people are acting like this is retconning lore and changing things when it's not. we've never known for sure what the force is- because how would we? from within the universe, there isn't really a way to know. the ashla, bendu, and bogan model gives us a light/mix/dark alignment, but there's also the idea qui-gon brings up about the cosmic and living force, and now we have the idea of the thread! this is great! more context, more perspectives, more depth to this world!

this fandom tends to forget, I think, that the jedi are not scientists. they're a religion. and believing wholeheartedly that the jedi have the objective truth of everything- which, by the way, the thread doesn't disprove as they could straight up be wrong- is genuinely a terrible way to interact with the medium.

[shallowseeker]

I think it was you had this meta about how dean as when he's a leader has to be like a doctor that does surgery on his own family. This image stuck with me! I looked but tumblr won't let me find it. Was this yours? Do you know it off the top of your head?

I think you're talking about this? TFW are fascinating disaster parents and I dig it. There's a snippet at the end that compares Dean to a doctor operating on family.

///////

SNIPPET:

Dean craves safety and being protected, but that’s somewhat incompatible with protecting everyone

Dean never got to be valued and protected growing up, so he secretly craves that. But Sam is correct in his psycho-analysis. Dean’s neurosis is wanting to protect everyone, and this is often fundamentally, violently incompatible with letting your family fight alongside you.

All things considered, Dean rarely resorts to going lone wolf, like with the Mark of Cain. Despite his discomfort, he tries to marshal everyone under one roof, and that often results in a degree of my-way-or-the-highway type rigidity as a means of neurotically trying to keep everyone safe.

In fact, Cas often avoids this dilemma altogether by going lone wolf. (They all do this on occasion, but Cas's background as a soldier is especially tired to this. Mary, as a child soldier, has this issue, too. Jack has the same issue in AU earth when he tries to run away to confront Michael on his own.)

................ When the fights get too BIG (as they often do in Supernatural), Dean cannot ensure the safety of his loved ones, and he freaks the fuck out. When Dean can neither protect nor stop family/comrades from going into danger, you get these coping mechanisms:

Benching the player: “Wait, you might get hurt, so I’m gonna say that I don’t trust you to be in that fight at all so maybe you won't!" Sometimes, this need to kick people to the bench comes out as a barb: “You’re an incompetent baby who does stupid things. Baby in a trenchcoat. You’re an idiot. To Jack: You’re 98 pounds soaking wet.” etc etc.

Fatalism: “I’m powerless / this whole fight is meaningless / there’s nothing we can do / we have no choice.” All members of TFW slip into this in different ways. Giving up is a natural part of SPN, something that each family member goes through depending on the psychological wound of the moment.

Denial: Other times, Dean downplays the danger, which can result in meanness and occasionally a lack of support/neglect.

With regards to Cas, we see an even more colorful option deployed and one of my all-time favorites: goading him into being stronger. It's a barbed version of, “You can do it, Cas!”

SAM: Tell me again why you don’t just grab Adam and shazam the Hell out of there. CAS: Because there are at least five angels in there. DEAN: So? You’re fast. CAS: They’re faster. (CAS takes off his tie and wraps it around his palm. Dean looks on worriedly. ///Aside: Hilariously, two seconds later Dean is like WAIT YOU'RE GONNA TAKE ON FIVE ANGELS? :((((( )

Cas doesn't fit in his pre-conceived notions of anything

In early days, Dean is incredibly spun out and confused by Cas, who he wants to be protected by and protect. In the beginning, in season 4, he’s still wanting to think of Cas as invincible.

Post-Cas’s first death, Dean tries to pin him down as brother, and at times he even infantilizes Cas as he evolves into needing to protect him. 

But bottom line, he just can’t make Cas FIT. He’s a comrade, but there are extra layers to their relationship that get confusing real fast. We get these Dean coping mechanisms in seasons 5-6 alone!

(A) Goad him into being more powerful and better so he’s safe

(B) insult him to underscore that he’s in danger and maybe shouldn’t be fighting at all

© go full denial and pretend the situation isn’t that serious blah-blah Raphael

I think in season 8, Dean figures out what those extra layers are, and in season 9, they deal with rejecting each other by accident, and in season 10, they’re respectively dealing with their past traumas and baggage. Then, in seasons 11-12, they’re grappling with the whole embarrassing and terrifying fiasco of wanting to commit to each other.

But to my point about cosmic family members, there’s this simmering tension concerning the danger of celestial power running throughout. A feeling of:

“Dude you’re kinda scary and I instinctually know this because I’m a seasoned hunter. But I’m gonna keep ignoring that gut instinct because reasons.”

And confusingly, there’s also this feeling:

“I can’t really protect myself from you, since you’re stronger than me. And I’m not strong enough to protect you from your enemies�� or stop you from leaving.

See this quote from season 8:

CAS: See, it wasn’t that I was weak. I was stronger than you. I pulled away. Nothing you could have done would have saved me, because I didn’t want to be saved. DEAN (distraught): What the Hell are you talking about?

Dean was SO upset that Cas let go. That he didn’t even try. (Dean and Cas often give up, but they become unhinged if the other partner gives up.) For someone like Dean, whose instinct is to squirrel away his family in a protective underground bunker? That’s a tension that feels devastating.

///

As a main character/battle commander, Dean knows that tactically, Jack and Cas will take on big, scary responsibilities by virtue of being, as season 15’s Belphegor so eloquently puts it, “the muscle.”

…and this is in direct conflict with Dean’s baseline need to protect everyone.

He doesn’t want to gamble with them at all. (See season 12's "We gambled with Cas, and now Amara's got him!") He wants to say, “you’re more than a weapon,” (13x14 Good Intentions script) and Cas wants to tell him, “in times of peace, I can be.”

DEAN: Cas, you’re more than a weapon– CAS: In times of peace I can be, but if (war) is coming…

....

TFW and the burden of leading

This, at times, makes Dean a rigid, unhinged leader. That’s because he’s too often sending his own fam into battle. And who wouldn’t be unhinged about that? There’s a reason we don’t operate on our own family members in a medical setting, for example.

When Dean is a leader, he can be like a dog with rabies foaming at the mouth, backed into a corner. It’s the worst.

Sam, on the other hand, fares pretty well as a leader, because he values independence so highly, and that kinda works for him. (He’s pragmatic and he dissociates very effectively.)

[thewitchoftheweed]

in honor of 4chan exploding, I want to remind you all that they used to do “raids” on Tumblr.

they tried to flood the popular tags with gore and porn. this was when Homestuck was at its peak, so they were a target too. (side note: tags barely functioned at all at this point so trying to make them useless was like throwing a molotov into an already burning building but try telling that to 4channers)

but the Homestuck fandom was ready and countered by flooding the tag with weirder, more explicit Homestuck porn and gore.

to the point that the trolls themselves got weirded out, fucked off, and never attempted a “raid” again.

everyone moved on but I stayed there because that is one of the funniest fucking things to happen on this website.

[sadgirlautumn]

“kids spend too much time on their devices” well what else are they supposed to do? there’s no corner shops with pinball machines in them on every corner anymore. there’s no malls or stores in small towns for teens to hang out in without being suspected of shoplifting or kicked out for loitering. sidewalks are too broken for them to ride their bikes and there’s no bike lane in the street to make it safe for them. i just don’t understand where they expect these kids to go when they keep taking places away from them. and yes having no safe public places for them is what leads a lot of teens into addiction if they end up at a place where people aren’t truly looking out for them.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

Love it when Rolling Stone puts out an article about the 25 most influential internet creators and I've only heard of 7 of them

[tawnysoup]

Finally now that the comic is fully public on comicfury, I get to share it with all of you here, too <3

If you enjoyed, please consider supporting by buying a PDF of the comic on itch.io: https://tawnysoup.itch.io/home-in-the-woods

[foldingfittedsheets]

It is insane to me that timestamps are optional on this webbed site. A major context clue is just opt in so I’ll reblog something from four years ago and people think it’s happening right just now like babe. Enable your timestamps. Why are you stumbling through the world with one eye closed?

[dj-crack]

I’ve been on this site too long

[mobiusmybeloved]

everyone watching the season finale:

[dotty-literati]

"Dodge this."

[starborn-storyteller]

stretches, clears throat

alright sit down, strap in, get your popcorn! time to talk about my all-time FAVORITE dig site!

the cerutti mastodon (located in san diego county, california, us) is named after richard cerutti, a paleontologist credited with the discovery of the site. the fossilized remains of a juvenile male mastodon (mammut americanum) were found at the site. an unusually high number of the bones are broken, and the type of break and markings on the bones indicate that they may have been broken open by hominins (category of human-like creatures) using hammer-stones. additionally, the fossil is located in a silt layer (which means lots of soft rock and no large stones [aka cobbles]), but the bones were collected around a few cobbles. sounds like your typical hominin kill site, right?

one small issue.

the one thing that everyone can agree on- even crtics of the site- is that this mastodon died 130,700 years ago. if you don't see the problem there, let me give you a bit of context: the most commonly held current theory as to how homo sapiens got to north america has us coming over the bering land bridge along the shore, surviving off of a kelp forest. 19,000 to 26,000 years ago.

if the cerutti mastodon is what it seems to be- a hominin kill site- that pushes back the date of hominins arriving in north america over a hundred thousand years. not just north america, either- california. taking into account how long it'd take to get from alaska to california on foot? that's insane.

long story short, this site is absolutely ridiculous.

wikipedia article for more information & sourcing

[frownyalfred]

in the realm of like, rich kid problems, I want to someday read/write a fic where Nightwing is slowly establishing himself as a full-fledged JL member and everyone is relieved because finally, there's a nice Bat on the Watchtower who doesn't just shoot down their plans and deny their mission requests. but. while Nightwing is kind, and polite, and charming in all the ways the Bat isn't, he's still Dick Grayson. and Dick Grayson grew up as a very rich kid's suddenly very rich kid, which is to say while Bruce might not take it personally, Dick has been fending off people almost his entire life who were trying to use him for his Dad's money. which is to say, I think once Nightwing is on board and the relationship between him and Batman is at least somewhat well-known, there is suddenly a rush of younger, less-experienced members trying to take advantage of Nightwing, mistaking that kindness and openness for willingness to either voluntarily, or involuntarily, infringe upon and cross Batman's clear-cut boundaries. bribing Dick for a better monitor shift with Batman is one thing (it doesn't really work, Dick can't bribe Bruce with much as it is) but trying to convince Nightwing to lie to Batman? to go against him? his dad? the man who pulled him up when he had nothing and gave him meaning again? that man?? and then comes the inevitable, chilling realization, that while Nightwing might wear a different mask, might wear an open smile on the Watchtower and with friends off-shift, there are some lines he won't cross, same as Bruce. he won't, sure as the sun rises and the rot rolls off the Gotham Harbor in the morning.

[cavalierclavier]

When I broke the cycle, I made sure that the tear was rough. You carry a part of what should be her, and she carries a part of what should be you.

[a-little-ray-of-fantasy]

POV: you're into STEM/research and something happened in your field of work that gave you trauma and memory issues.

[goldensunset]

people who go through the main tags of big and tumultuous fandoms looking for new fresh good posts to reblog are essential to any circle. they’re like true hunter gatherers leaving the safety of settlement and braving the unknown wilderness to find food for the flock. they risk their lives every day and will come back with a few scratches at best and severe psychological damage at worst

[elalalune]

Omegaverse roommates au