#that doesnt matter as much to me as the narrative parallels though

[jerreeeeeee]

people so often interpret sazed as taako’s ex, which like, to each their own obviously, nothing wrong with that, but i think its so so much more interesting to interpret him as taako’s apprentice instead. and like all we have to go on is that he really looked up to taako who sort of taught him how to cook. “thought taako hung the moon and stars” or something like that iirc. which brings so much more depth to taako’s relationship with angus if sazed was to taako then what angus is to taako now, someone who idolized him and saw him as a mentor.

it puts some of the conversations taako’s had with angus into really interesting context. like the fact that the first person taako’s (ever?) told about what happened at glamour springs (which he didnt know at the time, but was sazed’s fault) is angus. does he tell angus because he doesn’t want him to be betrayed (like he assumes sazed was, since he ran away)? or because he doesn’t want angus learning from someone so clearly unfit to be a mentor (both since he was unfit to be sazed’s, because he was dismissive to him, and because he believes himself to be a murderer)? he teaches angus magic and cooking. when he implies that angus might become as or more skilled than him he jokes about striking him down. which is exactly what he did to sazed when he wanted equal share.

but taako redeems himself with angus. he mistreats angus in the beginning, bullying him and dismissing him and generally being a dick, but as angus becomes taako’s apprentice, he’s more open and a little nicer. still “open” and “nice” in his own way, but definitely more than he was before. learning from his mistake, letting angus in and being encouraging and honest in the way he wasn’t with sazed.

idk. i think it’s so interesting and so rarely explored

[angrylesbianstereotype]

how do u feel about breaking bad’s ending? i love breaking bad to death but my hatred of walt cant accept felina. i kinda understand what vince was going for but for me it doesnt align with the actions have consequences philosophy of the show. he deserved so much worse. i hate that jesse’s life was still in his hands and his choice to make. the only choice jesse gets thats truly his own is alsaka. you hate walt as passionately as i do so i was wondering if u agree.

Heyy @axolotlv sorry it took me so long to get around to answer this but honestly I haven’t quite parsed my feelings ab Felina myself, which is weird to think ab bc BrBa has been my hyperfixation for like six?? Some odd years?? It’s been awhile and there is no cure in sight. However I do have to disagree w your opinion on Jesse’s ending, esp now that we have the added context of El Camino to go off of. I thought it was perfect. I talked before in my post on Todd and Lydia as character foils to Jesse and Walt ab how Jesse strangling Todd is him freeing himself from a prison of both Walt’s making and his own, seeing as Todd and Lydia are both responsible for Jesse’s imprisonment and how they parallel Jesse and Walt respectively. I think the Gilliverse in general does a good job of both holding Jesse accountable for his choices while cutting him some moral slack on account of Walter’s abuse of power towards him. Jesse’s life is in Walter’s hands because Walter has essentially kept him in a state of mental captivity over the last few seasons, but he is the one who makes the choice to end it, by refusing to do Walt’s dirty work for him anymore, by refusing to commit another act of violence on his behalf. By putting the gun down. And in El Camino, he chooses not just to go to Alaska, but to accept what he has done and redeem himself not through jail time, but through becoming a better person, becoming the kind of person who puts as much good into the world as he did bad. And as much as we the viewers might have wanted Jesse to shoot Walter in the dick, at the end of the day, Jesse loves Walt. Despite everything, because of everything, Jesse loves and hates Walter as much as one might an actual abusive parent, and I think actually shooting Walt would have followed him for the rest of his life, no matter how justified he might have been in doing so.

With regards to Walter’s ending… my feelings are mixed. I’m willing to accept it because I think it brought Jesse a sense of closure that a more fitting punishment for Walt might not have, which was maybe the point. That it’s not about Walter anymore. He’s dead, his story is done, and he was so far gone that the only thing he could do in the way of redemption was do right by the person he hurt and loved the most. He allows Jesse’s story to continue at the expense of his own, and it’s maybe the first selfless thing he’s ever done in his life. And maybe the only thing he ever really did for his family. And, maybe, that he got what he wanted was also the point. Because on the surface, he’s had everything stripped away, he didn’t get what he wanted at all. Everyone who has ever met him wants him dead, including his whole family, his empire has fallen as soon and as fast as it rose. But all of those things were just stand-ins for what Walter really wanted, which was some agency over his own death, because he felt as though he didn’t have any over his own life (good thing he didn’t project this lack of agency onto anyone else, huh). So it’s sort of a monkey’s paw thing, where he gets what he wants, a good, meaningful death, at the expense of a good, meaningful life. Narratively speaking, it’s brilliant.

But I still kind of wish Jesse had shot him in the dick.

[shitty-davesprite-daily]

Hey Davesprite, I hope trying to intervene isn't stressing you out too much. Are you alright?

- ScAnon

(OOC: These goddamn anons are singlehandedly making me realise the narrative parallels between Davesprite and John Egbert that Hussie probably didn't consider. Fucking incredible. :,) )

TG: ...

TG: i dont know

TG: doesnt fucking matter either way though

[constellaj]

Genuine question to your last humorous post (it got a chuckle out of me so thank you for that) would you say Danny ITA here? Or Sidney for that matter? I keep seeing mixed reviews on the both of them in the phandom per this episode and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it!

ok bet

i think danny is 14

heres the thing right is yeah blahblah abuse or whatever bad but a) middle school bullying is always comedically exaggerated for kids media, esp and DP and b) 14 year olds are just like that. like literally the capacity for empathy is not fully developed at that age. this is also recognized in-universe; Vlad goes iirc "of course you wouldnt understand, you're what, fourteen?" and danny says "hello misplaced aggression"-- so applying the "children are shitheads" logic isnt just something I can say from the armchair, but within the show itself. basically i think he gets a bit of a free pass on being an asshole because of the Circumstances that are about being a teenager

2. the argument that "fighting your bullies makes you as bad as them" IS a shit argument, but theres Context DP has

yeah yeah fight back against ur oppressors or w/e (please god remember dp is a show about a nerdy elmersona who thinks hes a better person than he is, and NOT a succint and valuable critique on class relations in contemporary america.) but like. buddy. he can walk thru walls disappear and fly. dudes bringing a gun to a fork fight. if we're reading into deep metaphorical language here then literally whatever danny is doing is 100000% worse than dash. dash does physical assault (bad). DANNY does physical assault (bad), reputational ruining (bad), mental assault/gaslighting (bad), and psychological trauma (very bad. we see in that same episode that getting possessed is absolutely horrifying and dannys just doing it for a Bit. a Joke. a Gag if you will). what I'm saying is if you want to approach this issue as a microcosm of a larger conceptual element, you cannot walk away from here saying danny is NTA. luckily for me i dont give a shit about this point like, at all, and in fact am mostly tired of hearing it

3. fuck sidney

maybe this is rewrite bleed (it is <3 I made him a redditor) but sidney is just so much of a nothing, stupid character it hurts. dude haunted the locker NEXT TO DASH for at least a school year and his first conclusion was that dash was some POOR VICTIM OF BULLYING? if we gloss over that then its just like. what does he do here. 1) terrifies children internationally with that possession sequence 2) traps danny in 50s hell 3) is the episodic antagonist 4) has an annoying voice 5) gets. redeemed? for some ungodly reason? sidney in this ep is a metaphor/stand-in for danny's recompense and Not Bullying, but he's. EVIL? but we're supposed to be chill with it? except when we're not. and SIDNEY bullying bullies is (goood? funny???) except when the narrative needs him to be the Good Person he totally drops that entire personality and is now bffs with dash? i do not understand what the fuck he means within the larger narrative, like at all. as such im just like. fuck this kid fuck this episode in its entirety and it makes me want to disagree with the episode premise just bc its poorly written

4. dash did nothing wrong

dash did nothing wrong. i have a brand to keep but for real tho like, the conceit of this episode is that bullying is normal within the world yeah? like its not GREAT but danny and sidney aren't demonized for it (the conflict is about like. learning to be liked as a person? OKAY fucking ripoff side tangent here but SIDNEY gets to be bffs with DASH and ALSO his 50s bully -- if Sidney is a character parallel to danny WHY DOESNT DANNY BEFRIEND DASH BY THE END OF THE EPISODE? GOD? IT MAKES NO SENSE) and dash's is just like. slightly annoying slapstick. dash's character is also built on super dumb hypermasculine traits like hazing, ie, a bonding experience (even though danny might not see it as such). instead of like. talking w dash. or using his powers to impress him. (you know. what sidney does. right here). danny just goes "die a thousand deaths" and slams his head into a locker. like. bro. Unproductive. PLUS when sidney DOES stop being a shithead to dash (again i will never understand why. hes a fucking trainwreck of a character), dash IMMEDIATELY does a 180? like hazing continues but after the football scene dash is genuinely impressed. bro if you just get on dash's playing field he will literally do nothing. according to this episode anyway

summary: this episode fucking sucks

basically i think this episode is horribly plotted + written and the overall message/theme gets very muddled very quickly because its more of a "what would happen, realistically??" story than a "this is a story with a message that the universe will bend to accommodate" and thats just like. NOT good for this kind of "is he an asshole" discussion. in a realistic setting id say yeah danny ITA because. bro. you could do LITERALLY anything else. but not in a condemnatory way. like if danny was telling this story at college and making fun of himself when he was 14 id be like omggg daniel you did NOT. shut up thats so funny.

anyway if im extrapolating whatever message this ep was trying to push, and debating it with the rest of danny phantom tumblr as if it were a cohesive plot worth arguing about, id say ESH. sam is supposed to be a "rebel" yet she hates beating up dash. sidney is supposed to fight for the "little guys" yet he doesnt fucking know dash is the bully. danny psychologically tortures people which i think is probably a war crime.

except dash tho. i have a brand to keep and that means that everything he did in this episode was fine actually. he was having a bad day <3 he beats the shit out of dweebs to cope <3

[pocketsizedquasar]

it’s been a bit now so. misc 200/end of mag in general thoughts? under a cut because this is a bit long, and i will preface this to say that i mostly enjoyed the episode but this is going to be mostly my criticisms, bc i feel like the good parts have already been well covered by people other than me. so yeah just a warning this is mostly crit

- it’s Still very hard for me to parse how i feel about this episode, but i think after sitting on it for a bit, i’ve come to the general conclusion that i am very satisfied plot-wise (in terms of tragedy/the structure of tragedies, the open-endedness of our ending, the general Writing TM), but not so much satisfied character-wise (in terms of arc and relationship resolution). I think we deserved more resolution on wtgfs -- i wanted more with them! more with melanie and jon; more with the melanie and georgie and basira’s side of the plan. more than that really small tidbit that we got at the end! and... honestly? a little bit more emphasis on the weight of Jon actually dooming other worlds in the end, and what that means for Jon and for wtgfs/basira. Especially with the context of the consequences re: the Web...won. no caveats or complications, the Web got. Exactly what it wanted.

- on that note,  From a uh. Critique against capitalism standpoint I’m not sure how I feel about the ending? And I don’t really want to. Read too much into what isn’t there? But I mean mag has long been a pretty explicit anticapitalist narrative so...? Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the implications of WTGFs and basira basically just being treated as narratively right in terms of letting the eldritch evil stand-in for capitalism have whatever it wanted and feeding it and doing exactly what it asked them to do. and having Little consequence as a result of that. Obviously they’ll still face loads of hardship, but that comes from the apocalypse, not from, like,.,, doing the direct bidding of the Capitalist Monster/System/etc to be clear, i’m not like...mad they made the “wrong” decision; there was no wrong or right decision here. but I am a little upset that for all they spent 199 discussing the various consequences of each choice, we got to see very little of that actual consequence playing out...none of the survivors seem to really be carrying the guilt or even the full understanding of what they did, because they never saw the suffering they could create as anything more than a hypothetical. i feel like we could have spent just a bit more time with them dealing with that. a bit more time even with jon dealing with that, a bit more time spent on jon changing his mind. other people have said as much better than me but. yeah

- i feel like there was a lot of character stuff brought up in s5 and especially act iii that i would’ve loved to have seen more resolution of. why have that whole thing about Georgie telling jon to give melanie his last words himself, if Jon was going to come back but then never bring that up again (full disclosure this is smthn that @pronouncingitwang​ brought up!)? Why have Jon say he was “going to go  apologize to [his] boyfriend”/Jon tell Martin multiple times that they were going to talk about their fight “later” and then not have that happen on screen? Why did we have two whole episodes of cultist interactions if they were just going to be removed off screen? Why have martin’s “I’ll get jon to destroy me like the others” decision if that doesn’t really come up? what about salesa!! why tell us melanie hating jon is a projection of her self hatred and then not bring that up again? why give annabelle all those juicy interactions with martin and then turn her into a monster when jon shows up, why give her so much character and backstory and then so thoroughly remove her agency? why have all these really cool parallels between jon and annabelle if annabelle is just going to be this monstrous and agency-less plot device with no follow-up? what happened to her!

- on that note...annabelle. They... really took this character who is a Black woman and who had so many parallels to Jon and who they could’ve like. very easily Actually made into a protagonist of color (because we only got one!! and she’s a cop!!!!) (or if not protagonist, at least smthn more sympathetic), (which wouldn’t have negated previous racial problems w tma, but would’ve shown growth from them) and made her a scary monster who just Serves her capitalist entity overlord without personal agency and then bows out when she’s no longer needed...you can have whatever diagetic/watsonian explanations you want for how 197 went, like sure she was just ~being dramatic~ and putting on a show for jon, but all that is still something the writers Decided to do in the real world, and the racial implications of her character arc are just. not great. and her character had So much more narrative potential. idk i will forever be salty about annabelle

- i Still Don’t Like the web being sentient!! i said this after 197 and i’m sayin it again! i think it makes it less frightening and less interesting! with the End being aware of its own, well, end, I actually thought that worked, and i really liked the corpse routes ep, but for some reason I didn’t with the Web? which seems hypocritical of me, I know, but, look: The embodiment of the fear of dying being aware of and welcoming its own dying emphasizes the inevitability and the truth of that fear. Which is why it works for the End. It’s still not recognizably /human/, because it is inexorable and certain, in a way nothing human can be. So its awareness of its own end DOESNT feel like flattening the worldbuilding. And using my own logic, I guess sure you could say the embodiment of the fear of manipulation and schemes being capable of scheming does the same thing but it. It rly doesn’t feel the same to me? Bc that’s rly a fear borne of human sentience & behavior. and so to give it that sentience makes it feel more human, and less interesting within the context of the horror. this is definitely just a personal taste thing as far as how i like horror and eldritch deities and such but yeah.

- i liked the statement a lot like, as a little self contained story? it was really nice to have jon give us one last story before the end. I thought that was sweet and i liked how the statement was written! on the same note though, i could’ve also gone without knowing like. the entire cosmology of how the fears came into being. again, just a personal thing, i don’t like my horror to be known, even at the end of it all when it doesn’t matter what we’re still scared of anymore. I just. I want my fears to be frightening and beyond comprehension and unknowable. it just leads me to have more questions than i really need at the Final episode? i would love to keep the jon giving us one final statement thing, and you know what? i would've loved: statement of the archivist, regarding jonathan sims. no idea what you’d do with that but it sounds cool in my head.

- very minor and very specific-to-me thing but i Don’t Like that basira got to be the Last Words...sorry y’all I just don’t like basira i can’t get behind trying to make me feel sympathetic for a cop who stood by and let people get murdered by the state for years and only felt bad about it bc fearpocalypse i just can’t. i don’t like her never have never will and also melanie and georgie are right there why didn’t they get to have the last words it would have been so much better ... why not have the person who loved jon and Knew very deeply his tendency to self-sacrifice say something or why not the person who is in-canon very similar to Jon and self-admittedly projecting her self hatred onto him say some sort of her own attempt at peace why not either of these two ahhhh

- i uhhhh. really liked jon killing jonah. jon for once getting to be angry for himself. that felt really nice. no ceaseless watcher nonsense either, just him and a knife and beating the shit out of this guy who even now continues to underestimate and belittle him. and i liked jon doing what he did in general -- i actually changed my mind on this; i really didn’t like it at first but i do now. i’m sad that it came at the expense of his promise to martin, but it makes sense and...i don’t want to say jon was right, because i again don’t think any of the decisions were right per se, but in terms of like... not doing what the “elder fear deity who wants to feed on fear and pain for literal eternity” wanted... yeah. i get it. he would never have been able to go along with that willingly. and he really shouldn’t have been, considering all that he went through being a puppet for said elder fear deity. and from a tragedy standpoint too, i actually think it’s a really really well written end for him. considering how my favorite tragedies are structured and how the way out has to be presented to us, but the tragic hero Ultimately will always fall back on their faults, yeah, this makes a lot of sense. hamlet is granted a way out and he doesn’t take it; he always always hesitates. captain ahab is granted the chance to turn and leave his chase and love instead, and he doesn’t take it. orpheus turns around. etc etc. I think it was also really lovely that jon got a twist on that, that in the end he did change, for just a moment, and chose love instead. even in the face of all the horror that that might mean. i really like that he and martin are together, wherever or however they are. that martin is allowed to feel (rightly) furious and betrayed and still so, so unconditionally in love. 

idk i have more thoughts probably but again they’re very hard to parse and mostly just getting into the super specific realm which i don’t think is particularly helpful

i have a lot of feelings for jon and martin and their ending i think it was the best possible ending we could’ve gotten for those two and i Am really. I just have a lot of feelings.

[matoitech]

how do you feel about the aina has a crush on galo interpretation?

well my thoughts on it r that while i have no like positive or negative feelings toward it outright, i dont think its like bad or something i just struggle to know what trigger intended so my own interpretation is not that (bc if its my choice im choosing smth i find more interesting lol). in my cishet sisters opinion aina was ‘trying to flirt with him at the lake’ (i have to put it in quotes bc she did specify the ‘trying’ part is what made her have secondhand embarrassment) but i didnt get that at all when ive seen it, and i thinkits kind of based off of ‘trigger cant write women / no character REALLY has much character beyond galo and lio / you just assume she must have a crush on him bc thats generally how stories go’ it makes it hard for me to say anything abt intention w full confidence? 

i guess if i was trying to work my way back thru canon in my head rn i would say AN interpretation ID go with is she thought she had a crush on him but she didnt lol. comphet 'crush’ to reinforce what they were talking abt at the lake w pressure/expectation/conformity... they dont rly have much in common and she only started being kind of nice to him after the lake, its not like they particularly like each other or enjoy each others company, and also if trigger was smart theyd recognize that paralleling her w galo should mean she should get a gf. i think its more ‘trigger didnt know what to do w her character beyond the straightbaiting scene’ than like ‘heres a solid interpretation for aina and her relationship w galo thats 100% true’ to me? and triggers intention doesnt rly Matter that much i guess but in this case i WOULD be curious to know what they were going for. i think they didnt think hard abt her character though :/

also i generally dont go w it bc it just seems like kind of an easy way out for interpreting her character when theres other ways that r more interesting to me personally (also id like to give her more character beyond the guy protag), and since even if she did have a crush on him it would b unrequited so it just doesnt rly feel like theres a good reason for it to be there narrative wise or to include it in smth post-canon beyond a quick subplot or offhand remark about smth thats since passed. writing it as smth that was in the past and now shes happy w someone else (thyma <3) or smth is a way id do it if i wanted 2 incorporate that in. it adds a bit of character flavor i suppose its just not the type id generally go for! its personal opinion rly

so tldr i can easily see how youd get there and while its not smth i go with just bc i think theres more entertaining ways to go about writing her relationship w galo i dont think its like, terrible or bad, bc sometimes u have a crush on someone unattainable. i just didnt rly interpret it like that in the movie in the first place so my opinions like ‘i dont care i just dont write it like that’. i rambled a lot but i love talking abt promare so <3

[dahniwitchoflight]

fucking, god, he called his ship Theseus. Oh god im not ready to face this epilogue stuff in actual visual form oh jeesus

Dirk, Dirk pls. no one can take you seriously now that we can actually SEE your Villain-Sona. 

oh god, the second hand embarassment is real.

Alright so there seems to be like, a tinge of Rose existing as her own person, doing things that Dirk dislikes, but its in conversation only, so it seems facetious.

The other true thing though is the narrative is entirely Dirk’s perspective, and Dirk is exactly the kind of person who would absolutely love and believe he was capable of subsuming another person’s soul and idealogy entirely, but we went through this deceit in the epilogues with John and Roxy as well, with John’s unquetionaing hold on reality and what is canon also seeming to have an unconcious warping effect to whatever John thought was important, but Roxy gave a good point of how do you even know you did this and i didn’t choose it or wouldnt have chose it? you dont

So we could see that being repeated here, either as a parallel of that or a subversion, remains to be seen

“ Speaking of which, I think it's time I started undoing some of the more egregious mistakes this story has been subjected to over the years. Yes, I'm talking about that guy. The other orange one. Remember him? Vriska got stalked by him a bit and it was uncomfortable for everyone concerned. Anyway, the point is that he fucked up big time, and I'm here to clean up the horseshit. It's time to get this story back on the rails, back to what it was always supposed to be. I know it, and you've somehow always known it too. There was something else, some other route that Homestuck was meant to take but then didn't, a way that wouldn't've spent so much time dicking around with stuff nobody cares about. Like seriously, why did we all have to sit through talking about everyone's most intimate and private feelings for two hundred thousand fucking words. That would never have happened in Act 1. Where did it all go wrong? “

lol the andrew hussie is peeking through a bit here, so Homestuck2 is gonna be the exact thing I figured a sequel would be, its going to be a sort of retelling of the story, but its gonna flip the importance for certain things in the opposite directions, so right here its saying Homestuck is a story with a layer of importance on the characters themselves and their mindsets and how they lived in the environment they found themselves in, with the lore and the conceit of the story being a huge creation story more of a backdrop than the focus

so Homestuck2 is going to be a more "creation story” focused more on the sburb lore, buts its going to have less of a focus on the characters (perhaps even to the detrimnet? maybe characters will seem strange and out of character? but he kinda already made that feeling i the audience with the epilogues, thats what that intended effect was)

and neither one i think will turn out to better or worse than the others, theres definitely going to be benefit and downsides for both, but its not hard to see that Homestuck1 is the story that Hussie wanted to Tell, and Homestuck2 is how he’s changing it and telling a different story than he originally would have in the first place

not that hes changing Homestucks orignal story at all, but now hes telling a decidedly different one

Thus far, even though I understand Dirk’s basic mindset being “Hussie’s story sucks im gonna tell a BETTER one” and deciding that he alones gets to decide others will is unquestionably villainous train of thought, like why cant we let the characters just decide for themselves what kind of story they wanted to have and be genuine..

I AM dying of curiosity to see what sort of lore and information were going to get out of this, especially with the twist of that sort of focus being brought more into view, it’s a tantalizing glimpse of something very sexy that im into...

WORLDBUILDING :p

The World of Homestuck to me, HAS always been more infinitely exciting and interesting to me than the characters themselves, even though i liked them fine, they werent the reason why i kept reading the story for sure

Anything little thing we get about sburb or the world system out of this im happy with, regardless of what happens to the characters

(Would that be considered a villainous mindset if I was in canon? maybe ^^; good thing im not lol it does give off very “evil mad scientist morally corrupt experiments” kind of vibe lolol)

“ Look, I know what you're all really craving. I've been studying canon—or rather, what's left of it—and I think I've found it. The critical moment, in the wake of which everything started to take a nosedive into the protracted, endless slog of sheer insufferability we got saddled with near the end. This was the single most crucial error in the process that led to the present situation. The day when the story was wrested screaming from the arms of its readers like a bawling infant and carried helplessly away, from then on to be raised according to the whims of a masochistic menace with no thought for you, the common fan. “

I do have to laugh at this though, because your not wrong??? but also, it was inevitable that a story that started out like homestuck and was written like homestuck and ended like homestuck would inevitably turn out the way it did

it was a communal product of the screaming masses that turned into a singular mans story, it was unfortunately going to lose something to everyone, because everyones ideas couldnt all coexist in one canon at the same time (thats what outside of canon is for)

and then Dirk does something I DIDNT expect him to do

“Channelling my full potential as an ascended player of Heart, I expand my consciousness to commune with the boundless force of collective willpower that is the internet. My mind floods with its divine potency, a million formless cries coalescing into a sequence of discrete, formal instructions. It is a maelstrom as chaotic as it is deafening. And yet from this formless, uninterrupted spate of hard, unembellished data, a single suggestion takes form, as if bubbling up from a vast, infinite ocean of possibility. It is a whispered prayer to a compassionate god whose ear attends faithfully the will of his believers.Ok, let's see what you chucklefucks came up with.“

instead of entirely subsuming other’s will like a villain would, he has instead opened up his heart and conciousness to absorb the ideas, suggestions and wills of the masses, he is literally trying to bring back the act1 flavor of homestuck by taking suggestions, be he is ironically doing something no different than hussie did by curating and choosing which one to respond to

hah! he really does think he is the hero of this universe with Hussie as some sort of villain. 

So Hussie has probably intentionally curated this idea of himself as “Author Villain” who drives the story seemingly into mud by seeming to reject and upend the audiences expectation rather than curate them and bringing forth the best out, 

this happens with the epilogues undoubtedly, 

and this environment has gown a character from inside the story to step out and try to “oust” him from this position and instead tell a “good” story one that “everyone” wants, but is in fact detrimental to the story and world that the characters inside it themselves wants, which is was Hussie curated the whims to in the epilogues instead of the audience

So maybe this will be a “good” story, and hit all the marks for what the audience wanted originally, but there is no benevolent force to make sure a happy ending exists for any of the characters inside of it, because what the characters want doesnt matter anymore, only the lore does

[blookmallow]

looking at the Get Out script and my script site has again somehow obtained a strange, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT early version of the script 

( note: im white, my interpretation of this movie and the changes that were made are coming from a white perspective, this is not my subject to speak on and if im off on anything/reading it wrong by all means let me know!! )

theres this whole conversation (with like. i think its just a random family being shown alongside andre’s kidnapping) about mickey mouse mascots at disneyworld being “Always Happy :)”/”someone else on the inside” foreshadowing the twist later which i guess was probably ultimately deemed unnecessary or might’ve made disney angry lmao but its. something 

i think it was a white family ignoring/completely oblivious to the black man suffering right outside on their lawn too which was a good parallel though

also had this weird thing where the kidnapper’s car had a french tutorial going in it which caused this great juxtoposition but im not sure why this was here 

i dont remember this line, it might’ve been cut but apparently rose works at a hospital (or originally was going to, at least) 

i dont remember enough about the crucible to say what double meanings there are here (i was a lit major... the shame...) but theres also a line about rose being good at acting/There’s A Lot You Don’t Know

i like these little hints but i feel like removing them and making it less obvious was a good call all the same 

originally rose doesn’t pretend she didn’t know about the gathering and just goes “what, i told you :/” i think having her pretend to be just as shocked and “omg you GUYS no WAY” at her parents is a lot more effective at making us (and chris) think she’s on his side 

i dont remember this if it did make it to the final cut but rose mentions her mom also used hypnosis on her, kind of giving an implied sense that she might have been manipulated into this too but it isnt brought up again

one of the biggest changes is andre/”logan” was originally in a gay relationship, and like... on the one hand, there’s a particular horror in being forced into a relationship with someone outside your sexuality but this definitely reads very... predatory homosexuality/”they made him be GAY” as an Especially Scary Thing, whereas having him with an older woman instead flips over the “predatory black man/innocent defenseless white woman” stereotype in a much more effective way (which they also did with chris and rose) 

it would’ve been... more fitting with the themes to have andre be a gay man who is forced into compulsory heterosexuality if they were gonna go that route but i think the way its done in the final cut is done better than. this 

still pretty weird to me how docile and obedient “logan” is given that he’s presumably phil’s white husband in a stolen body though / same deal with the lady hes married to in the final film 

rose puts up a lot more resistance when chris wants to leave, she comes around eventually but she definitely is way less “I’m on your side, babe! :)” than she ended up being in the final cut, which i think is definitely for the better

i suspected from the beginning she probably wasnt trustworthy either but they did a way better job making the twist less blatant/we dont really know for sure if she’s in on it too yet 

she also randomly brings up the fact that she Might Be Pregnant, which is never mentioned again, im guessing probably another tactic to get him to stay since she thinks he’s trying to break up with her when he wants to leave 

if this got into the final cut i didnt catch it but we can probably assume it happened either way, the guy rose’s grandfather took over was one of her victim boyfriends which is REALLY fucked up 

another big change is that jeremy and rose’s positions are switched in the final confrontation, rose is the one who comes for chris for the procedure, and he kills her there, while jeremy is the one who comes after him later with the shotgun and gets shot by walter 

i think it hits much harder and feels much better from a narrative standpoint to have the confrontation with rose be the end, she’s the one he loved, she’s the one whose betrayal hurts the worst, she’s the one responsible for dragging him into this shit and him being forced to choke her to death is so hard to watch and such a huge moment i think it deserved to be the final showdown 

jeremy also is visibly distraught over georgina/his grandmother’s death, while i think its way creepier having rose stoically acknowledge it with no emotion

i know this wasnt supposed to be funny but i m laughinG 

last big thing is that it WAS actually the cops at the end originally, the whole last second bait and switch wave of flooding relief as we realize its ROD isnt there, chris actually gets arrested 

and like.... while the “and none of it even matters, he won, but of course the system is still going to favor the rich white family, no one’s going to believe him, he’s still ending up being blamed for this because in a black man’s story the arrival of the police does not in any way mean rescue” is also a strong point, i think having that “oh fuck oh FUCK” moment at the end where we realize what’s coming but then it turns out he’s SAVED, as a kind of “and that’s why we stick up for each other” message is so fuckign good and we want to see him win SO BAD

so many horror movies seem to think they Have to go with the hopeless “nobody wins” ending but the fact that this was in here and jordan peele made the decision to let his hero get his freedom back and GO HOME after all the shit he’s been through is like. i dont know, refreshing? i love jordan peele’s storytelling and im so glad for this change  

its such a weird ending too because he doesnt even seem like he cares. he’s done fighting. hes just like nah, man, it’s over, don’t worry about it. he’s not interested in justice or exposing whats been happening, he’s not worried it’ll start again (the armitages are all dead at this point but like, there were a lot of people at that party, this could happen again) he’s just. over it. which, yeah, after going through all that, i get it, but it feels. weird, somehow. and the thing with the song is referencing an earlier also-deleted scene where chris is forced to listen to that song over and over as a way of binding him to the white guy who’s trying to bodyswap him bc its his “favorite song” or something

so like. why is he still whistling that. it feels like a “he got out alive, but they still got in his head and he’s giving in and not fighting back anymore all the same” which!! i dont like that!! i dont know 

[mittensmorgul]

Hi. I really enjoy your blog and thank you for being so positive. All the negativity about last night's ep bothers me. I would love to see Dean/Cas finally have that big moment, but it wouldnt make for good story telling if we got it so easily. I have felt since s12...we are getting real personal growth! I also feel something big is coming for Dean/Cas with how they have kept them apart and all the emotional baggage getting adressed. There has been no hug either and there is so much unsaid. ❤

Yeah, I mean... I watch the show with the full knowledge that no matter how important Dean and Cas’s relationship is, even to the actual structure of the narrative, the way they’re writing the story and the actual focus of the main plot... will never focus that directly on destiel. This doesn’t mean I think destiel isn’t A Thing they are writing, just that Who Dean Is As A Person and Who Cas Is As A Person both take narrative precedence over the potential for a textual romantic relationship going forward for them.

I have no idea how to say that without sounding negative about it or drawing wank on it, which is why I don’t usually attempt to state it so blatantly in public. But I am 100% not negative about this. I’m just speaking about it from a narrative structure perspective here, which I’ve been yelling FOR LITERAL YEARS bears a close resemblance to the structure of 1001 Nights, and the Scheherazade/Shahryar relationship. Their romance is NEVER in the foreground of the tale, and yet somehow the entirety of 1001 Nights IS THE OVERARCHING STRUCTURE OF THEIR ROMANCE. Other aspects of the story are more pressing (like Scheherazade having sacrificed herself in the attempt to stop other women from being killed every morning, but not actually wanting to die herself because She Is Smart and Has A Plan and showed up with a buttload of awesome stories to slowly guide her plan to fruition). All those stories she weaves, in the gaps between them, she and Shahryar slowly fall in love. It’s not something they confess out loud, but it is something they both gradually begin to feel and to understand. Their interpersonal side-plot grows slowly, over 1001 actual nights of storytelling and companionship, and it takes nearly THREE YEARS of constant nightly stories, never letting one story end at the wrong time (at daybreak, when Shahryar might choose to kill her, but always timing it JUST RIGHT so that he’d ask for another story to fill the hours until dawn... which would inevitably be interrupted on a cliffhanger with words unspoken still between them... interrupting moose, anyone? That would be Scheherazade’s sister, Dunyazade, who accompanied her on what was supposed to be Scheherazade’s literal last night on Earth, but whose prompting and strategic interruptions actually furthered the romantic tension growing between Scheherazade and Shahryar, preventing their story from coming to an end too soon).

So while Scheherazade and Shahryar and their slow fall into love with one another is literally fundamental to the entire narrative, there was no way for any of it to pay off before the end of the larger narrative, you know?

If Scheherazade can patiently continue spinning out her stories, setting her own eventual (hopeful!) personal happiness aside because she sees the bigger picture at stake, then I can certainly wait until the end of Supernatural, however long it continues until its story is finally done.

Does this mean I’m saying that romantic love confessions and a clear, undeniable canon romantic relationship will factor in to the ending of the series? Nope. I have no guarantees to offer. But it does mean that as long as the show keeps factoring the fundamental importance of their relationship into the larger overarching narrative, as well as their own personal character arcs, and continuing to poke at it both through narrative mirrors and textually laying Big Questions for them out on the table, then I’m gonna be Scheherazade about it.

Every episode begins (emotionally, for me) with the Dread Pirate Roberts having spared Westley’s life because of True Love, and telling him “I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.” But then he doesn’t... and he continues not killing him, because it was all about true love. (yes, I’m saying the Princess Bride is a twist on the 1001 Nights narrative, at least insofar as The Dread Pirate Roberts persona goes. I mean... the parallel goes a lot deeper than this, into so much more of the metaphorical journey, the Hero’s Journey to prove himself worthy to his True Love, the quest for justice when he doubts the strength of that love to transcend death, after it was literally stolen away from him... I mean, this parallel also runs deep).

So that’s where we are with destiel. I’m perfectly 100% happy with that. Because I’m content to engage with the narrative they are actually presenting, and not delusionally projecting my own desire for Dean and Cas to just be happy now onto it in a way that it just does not exist in canon, you know?

All that said, YES. How long has it been since we’ve had a simple, “Hello, Dean.” Or even a HUG between them... since 13.06? YIKES THAT IS A WHILE. And we didn’t even get to hear the Hello, Dean at the end of 13.05 that we all yelled at the TV to fill that silent gap when Dean answered the phone and it was Cas calling him.

I choose to believe that the show is following their own unofficial theme song in this regard, though. They’ll be able to be happy at the end of the road. “There’ll be peace when you are done.” And until then, they’ve got a lot of road to cover, and a long way to go, and a lot of extraneous baggage to deal with. But they’re getting there, because they’ve always been headed there, even when they weren’t entirely sure where “there” was, you know?

But now we know Dean DOES know, at least in a general way. He’s not longing for a life that isn’t his anymore. He doesn’t feel cheated out of the white picket fence, apple pie life anymore. He’s made his own family (which absolutely does include Cas), and he recognizes there’s still work for them to do, but Dean himself is good with that. He’s in a strangely healthier place than he’s ever been in his whole entire life, including 4-year-old him who never knew death and fire and tragedy.

And that’s absolutely something to carry forward, wherever the road may lead.

And that’s also why I’ll eternally be frustrated with fandom bitterness over the literal structure of the entire narrative. I mean, this is not gonna change. This is the main story they are telling, and how they’re telling it. I only hope that being able to get some perspective on that will help people keep all of this in mind and truly appreciate the beauty of it all. This is why I personally feel this has the potential to be the greatest love story ever told, because it’s so much more than just an angel falling from heaven and raising a man from hell, and then meeting in the middle. It’s about BOTH of them, their choices, their failures and successes, and this entire process of understanding who they are in the larger structure of the universe, and who they could potentially be to one another.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

[fatmandd1]

The journey through god of war is very, very different from all the other hack and slash games in the genre. You no longer deal with Blades of Chaos and the gods of Olympus. You are completely thrust into a new world and mythology. You are dealing with Kratos after the death of his wife, as someone who’s moved on from his past and started a new life. And seeing the growth of him and his son Atreus, Kratos is a whole different character now, interacting with Norse mythology. Seeing the tag team style of playing with these two, the father and son aspect is like the bear and the cub, the bear being someone with a lot of age, youth, wisdom and time, Atreus as the young cub being stubborn and greedy and wanting to just have fun. Fighting enemies and leveling throughout the game is a struggle in itself and the hardest difficulty. We meet Freya, which is the wife of Odin. We meet the brothers Brok and Sindri, which are the best forgers in the game when you are able to level up and get more items. Even with these two characters and their story, they are interlocking brothers who hate each other and still love each other. They are always separate, found in different areas and have different ways of approaching their craft, but are still brothers. Sindri can listen to the metal differently than his brother when forging, He’s insanely clean and can communicate with humor which is incredible. Brok is a dirty, grungy, hands on type of specialist in feeling weapons when trying to forge. He gets the feel of the blade and gets it to tell him what it wants to be. His brother might not understand it because he doesnt wanna get his hands dirty. In that way they are different, but still similar because they are both still forgers, dedicated to their crafts. There’s also Freya, and seeing her story and the love that she has for her son Baldur. It drives her to cast a spell, making him invulnerable to pain and it drives his character throughout the game. He looks to undo it, and even though she did it to protect him, Baldur sees it as another way to try to control him. So we see a lot of comparison stories between family relationships and dynamics and, love that means well but doesn’t end well. Even when it comes to Kratos finally telling his son in Atreus’ most scary moments of possibly dying that he is half God and realizing the evolution of Atreus one day becoming Loki. Knowing his own past, he is unsure of how his son will react, especially after instilling the belief in him that Gods are bad and evil. The best part of the game is when you sit down and talk to Mneir, just a magical talking head. As you’re rowing through the waters, Mnir has all the stories every time you go to different lands and kill certain creatures. He tells the stories that have happened in Norse mythology, and they’re incredible. Knowing his history with Odin and how he lost his eye and got bound by a tree, is incredible. Even his relationship with one of the, supposedly, most loving, powerful, and wise Valkyries (which is one of the final battles in the game and extremely hard), is incredible.There are more interlocking stories with family and crewman-ship and fathers and gods killing their children, that you have to play to find out. The core mechanics may still be hack and slash but here, you must always have a plan of attack and a strategy. You have to be being quick on your feet, always waiting for the opponent’s next move and always being hesitant on what you can and can’t do with your weapons. No matter if the enemies are big, small, dragons, or even fighting Norse gods like Thor’s sons. The game tackles a lot of family aspects but also puts you in tough situations. Now you can make choices, which can be super detrimental towards the game. When you finally get the blades of chaos, when Atreus is dying, it feels like a return to the original God of War. That rage returns as well as the move set and attacks. Even the moment when you see Athena appear in front of Kratos as the boat is moving along in the river. Watching the world be destroyed around him, as Atreus is dying and as we get the blades, you as the player feel that it’s time to unleash the original God of War, no holding back, no more using the axes, now you have combo attacks, and you feel like you can defeat every difficulty (except on super hard cause they get super hard), even fighting the Valkyries takes almost everything you’ve got (and I believe they are the best things to fight in the game). Even though we never get to see Odin as a character, you always get the stories of him and his dictatorship and his overwhelming power as the all father. You get to see how Kratos’ wife would always defeat Thor without even fighting him, simply outsmarting him every step of the way because she planned steps ahead of him. You will always get something from this game, which is more backstory than what was given in the first 3 installations for the Greek mythology side. It’s a build up, even when you have Atreus back in good health and you tell him he’s a God, you feel the shift in his character—the cockiness of a young boy, the arrogance of a young god/giant—and that changes over the game, as he realizes his way and understands his father more. In more than one way, Kratos and Atreus both grow as characters. There is painful growth at the end when you kill Baldur, Freya’s son, as Kratos seems to parallel his father Zeus as a God and a father. Kratos says the same line that his father said in God of War 3, “we must be better,” and snaps Baldur’s neck. But, in that moment of release, Baldur is free to truly die. Freya may hate you and we may have created a new enemy, but the actions of killing her son were because Atreus didn’t want to see Freya’s son kill her. Here, Kratos chooses to end the cycle of children killing their parents (who are Gods), and brings it back to God’s killing Gods, by killing Baldur himself. And we may have created a new enemy in Freya but, Kratos and Atreus thought it best to protect her. Coming closer to the end, you find that Atreus’ mother laid everything in front of him. She knew their path would be almost harder than anything and even in the beginning. She had Kratos chop down those enchanted trees because she knew she would have to push Kratos one way or another to get what she needed done. It may have exposed their location to Odin, but that’s what she needed to happen. Kratos felt safe and hidden. She needed him to be exposed to the world and not lock himself away, trying to control his anger, and at the end when you spread her ashes over the giants that are all perished, Kratos is free to remove his bandages. He is no longer afraid to show his old scars and show that he is the God of War. And when you go home and finally beat the game, that ending is something that you wanna fight in the next game. That ending is something that I kind of played to see and hoped happened and there’s so much speculation and so many possibilities. So playing this game was a journey. I took days and days to extend my play, to make sure I got every single enjoyments out of it. As a fan of the series, as someone that brought a statue with a hardcover case, seeing Thor at the end made me happy because we only got to visit a few realms out of the game. For the next one, I can’t wait to visit the realms we couldn’t go to, and I hope that we get to play as Atreus only in the game and at the end we get to play as his father. This God of War game had so many conflicting emotions, but it was able to tell the story of a father, a family, a brother, and it was able to push you to hope and see and wait for what’s next. So, I thank Sony, Santa Monica Studios, Cory Barlog, and the entire team for GOW from voice actors to digital effects, to music. This game has overpowered me and changed my perception of how people can change over time and it was able to tell a beautiful narrative. So thank you, and I can’t wait for the next one. A. Ringling

[shametheshadow]

Okay so I finally finished Ready Player One. Got a little eh in the middle with the romance and sometimes a little too openly expositiony with some things but I otherwise loved it. I can definitely see why it's been considered the nerd bible. Between the references, the action packed and imaginative scenes, the subtle pushes at the darker sides of nerd culture (enough to make you feel a little uncomfortable but not open enough to feel like you -a nerd- were being lectured), and the inclusiveness that didnt feel forced... It definitely made for a good read. It's an old book by now but spoiler if you want to read it still. I cant use the read more on my phone so here's just a warning. You had an abysmally poor fat kid as the protagonist (even when he gets fit he still becomes bald and eyebrowless), a curvy "rubenesque" gal with a large birth mark on her face who word vomits when anxious, an african american lesbian who also rocks her curves using a caucasian male avatar, and two japanese otakus who have never met irl but are considered brothers in the OASIS. Like... I know I'm one of the biggest skeptics when it comes to so-called diversity in media, but this book does it right. It slips it in there and doesnt make a huge deal about anything. It doesnt hold up this huge sign that shouts "HEY! Look at our african american character and our female love interest who needs no man!" it just lets the story happen and the characters do their thing so you can judge them on their own merit and personality. Besides Wade, you dont even know the identities of the other four of the High Five till near the end. It perfectly uses the anonymity of the internet to it's greatest advantage. And on a last note of diversity, the two god like beings of the book Ogden and Halliday are examples of how introversion and extroversion are required to make great things... And Halliday, creator of this entire virtual world, is even believed to be on the autism spectrum. And as I said before, at no point do you feel like you are being lectured to go outside and play or that someone is telling you that your interests are wrong. Instead it speaks as a voice of experience, showing you an outsider perspective on the lives of unhealthy nerd culture in ways like Wade eventually only ever wearing two haptic suits that he wears in rotation and shaving off all of his body hair... Or the "missing million" where the hikikomori epidemic in Japan is driven to the extreme. It gives the main character the wealth and power to do whatever they want just for the very uber nerd Wade idolized to give a gentle reminder in his last message that reality matters more than escapism in something that isnt real. Then there are the references. 80's and even some late 70's, there was so much crammed into every page that I, as a 90's child, could not hope to understand every one even with my love for older media. But that's okay. At no point did I feel lost. Instead I felt... A lot of Wade did I think. There is a reverence for the 80's. For Wade it was because the 80's came to represent his entire life, everything that his hopes, dreams, and fantasies were built on because Halliday was an 80's kid who built the OASIS and filled it with an easter egg hunt dripping in nostalgia. For me, it's similar. The 80's was the basis for everything I loved in the 90's. From the music to the fashion to gaming, and most of our greatest nerdy pop culture icons wouldnt have existed without the groundwork being laid in the late 70's and 80's. 90's kids are marked as some of the first with widespread access to computers and the internet at childhood, but what would that be without the creation of games like pacman or programming prodigies like Wozniak. It wasnt something I considered much before, but it definitely made me feel something to read a book all about the 80's. Not exactly nostalgia but kind of parallel to it. I feel like the 80's is often overshadowed by the 90's. So yeah... This book is awesome. I really enjoy the Steve Jobs/Wozniak duo of Ogden and Halliday. I think it showed off the positives of their very different characters very well. I loved to hate the Sixxers. I loved all of the High Five (I do wish we got more of the Daisho guys though. The part where Daito was actually murdered had me going "Oh shit" outloud) especially Aech whose name I really like. I did want a little bit of payback to Ir0k and I wanted to know more of what happened afterwards, but overall I'd say that by the end I was pretty happy. I did make the mistake of purchasing the movie and watching that though... It made me a mixture of sad, upset, and disappointed. You would think with Spielberg behind the wheel it would nail all of the right buttons but it... It just doesnt. Like... What was up with the bug eyed, elfish avatars? Except for Aech, most of the high five are just more idealized versions of themselves. Totally human with some of their less personally desired traits. But then like Aech... Wth... You took an average white dude with a cheshire smile and turned him into a hulking grey beast. Totally lessens the impact when discovering that he is a black woman by already having her avatar be to unrealistic. And why is Art3mis's avatar given a more athletic gymnast build? One of the body types that Wade states in the book is commonly used by most people, which is why her more curvy figure is unique and interesting. Her entire avatar is supposed to be more realistic to herself, something that captures his attention from the beginning. He can imagine it's what she looks like because she doesnt hide those features like most everyone does. The only thing she really changes is her birthmark. And do we really need to give her one of the best moments Wade has in the book just to make it seem like she has more power in the narrative? Art3mis is great because at no point does she really need Wade's help or rescue until the very end when the gate requires 3 people. She figures out the first key by herself first and is just unlucky enough to not be skilled at one particular game in a million. Even without Wade's suggestion at switching to play the other side, she would have won eventually. She was clever enough to realize that she could have two plays by waiting till midnight and was practicing in every spare moment. And even after she and Wade start seeing one another, it is Wade who is infatuated beyond reason and her who tries to keep her head in the game and feet grounded in reality. She finds and obtains the second key without any help at all. It was Art3mis who knows everything about Tempest, one of the final hurdles Wade needs to overcome, including the bug that gives you 40 extra lives when Wade starts with only one (and he eats through the extras fast). She doesnt need help to be an awesome female character. Wade has skills, I wont take that from him, but he gets by mostly on a lack of self preservation, paranoia, and luck ex machina. If it werent for him getting the second clue wrong and going to the entirely wrong planet, then wandering a different direction out and stumbling upon an arcade machine that nobody has ever found before (despite claiming that the world was picked over by every Gunter ever) and then utilizing his skills in pacman to win a mysterious quarter that just so happens to grant him an extra life after everyone else is vaporized in the final battle just outside the third gate... He never would have won. In that entire scenario his skill is utilized once. Arguably his skills only really come into play during the actual challenges for the keys and the gates. Every other moment actually focused on is mostly him stumbling around either as a paranoid mess or obsessive and depressed. Even with the first key, it's only by chance that during his Latin class he selectively hears the right words to set his brain into motion that takes him from Schoolhouse Rock to D&D to omg the key is hidden on the same planet that has every school! Granted he put in the time to compile all the experience and knowledge needed to connect those dots, but it was still luck that laid the dots out to be connected. I think I've ranted enough though. Originally this was going to most be, "Man, I loved this book!" and "Boy, I hated the movie..." but it got away from me as it usually does.

[mittensmorgul]

I’m gonna lump 14.04 and 14.05 together here for the sake of simplicity, since they both look at one particular facet of the things I discussed in my last post about 14.03: Fathers.

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/185016627975/aah-1403-power-doesnt-fix-anything-dean-is

At the time 14.04 aired, we all SQUEALED at the direct parallel between Hatchet Man and John Winchester, and Dean’s admiration of the character despite actively recognizing him as a bad guy doomed to lose. It’s a complicated tangle of feelings that are (using the metaphor I started in the post linked above) symptoms of the underlying issues Dean has with John Winchester and how he was raised, what John forced him to become.

The early part of the season is positively crammed with foreshadowing that Dean will eventually get to confront the actual SOURCE of these symptoms, facing John himself and effectively not forgiving him, but as he tells Sasha in 14.05:

Dean: Can I give you a little advice? Let it go. The past is... There's nothing you can do about it now, so it's just baggage. Let it go. You'll feel a lot lighter. Sasha: Is that what you do? Dean: I try. Every single day.

because in 14.13 Dean gets to face John directly:

Dean: You saying you wish things would be different? Sam: Don't you? Can you imagine -- Dad in the past, knowing then what he knows now? I... I think it would be nice. Dean: Yeah. I used to think that, too. But, uh... I mean, look, we've been through some tough times. There's no denying that. And for the longest time, I blamed Dad. I mean, hell, I blamed Mom, too, you know? I was angry. But say we could send Dad back knowing everything. Why stop there? Why not send him even further back and let some other poor sons of bitches save the world? But here's the problem. Who does that make us? Would we be better off? Well, maybe. But I got to be honest -- I don't know who that Dean Winchester is. And I'm good with who I am. I'm good with who you are. 'Cause our lives -- they're ours. And maybe I'm just too damn old to want to change that.

This theme is pretty directly addressed in 14.04, but in 14.05, we begin to see it in a Bigger Picture sort of way that connects it directly to the overarching narrative themes of Chuck’s manipulation of the story revealed in 14.20.

We’ve discussed for eons how Sam and Dean have slowly been dropping the curtain on what they do when dealing with people directly involved in the cases they work. This goes back to s11, at the very least, this causal stating of facts about the horrors people are experiencing. In 11.13:

Dean: I don’t know. I mean it’s not like this thing is exactly following a pattern. I don’t even know what I’m looking for here. We cut out of there pretty quick though so maybe I bought us some time. Melissa: What was that? Dean: We think it was something called a shapeshifter, but it can’t be because I pumped the thing full of silver and it didn’t even flinch. Melissa: What kind of FBI agents are you? Dean: The fake kind. Sam: We’re hunters Melissa: Hunters? Dean: Look all you need to know is we save people like you from things like that.

They don’t exactly go out looking to the truth of what’s really out there to random people, but once people are exposed to the weird stuff, they’ve long ago stopped trying to explain it away. Once someone’s seen the truth, they’ve been providing helpful facts. I mean, recall Dean’s conversation with the Sheriff in 13.01 for the absolute most nihilistic version of this little chat.

And that’s what Dean does with Sasha in this episode.

But it’s Dean’s entire interaction with the djinn that becomes a microcosm on at least three levels of Chuck’s overarching power over all of them.

Take what we now know to be true of Chuck: that his need to retell his story over and over again trumps everything. Look at what this story involved, and zoom it all out to Chuck-level narrative:

A djinn-- a being capable of creating altered states of reality in his victims which he then “feeds” off of, sustaining himself through forcing people to live out the “stories” he implants in them. Just like Chuck altering their lives in subtle ways for his own sustenance.

But this djinn? Has had to “enhance” his powers through Michael’s grace in order to affect the story, to level the entire thing up. He went from keeping his victim’s in a comatose state only able to live out his fantasy worlds inside their own minds, to bringing those fantasies out into the world in three dimensions. Much the way Chuck was eventually compelled to insert himself into his own story again to level the whole thing up.

Michael, in both cases, was merely the narrative mechanism, the expositional character through which all of this was slowly revealed to us.

The djinn itself was only ever a symptom of this interference, just as his visions were only ever a symptom of his interference in the lives of his victims. Once they saw the truth, the whole illusion literally crumbled to dust.

And Dean has to begin to separate himself out from the trap of believing his own responsibility in any of this:

Dean: I know, I know. Not my fault. It's Michael. It's all Michael. You know, I've been trying to -- not forget, but to move on from what I -- from what we -- from what he did. And I got to be honest, I was starting to feel like myself again. Almost. Sam: So we'll work harder. Dean: How, Sam? You get three hours of sleep a night. Sam: All right, then I'll sleep two. Dean, we're going to find Michael, and when we do, we will kill him. Dean: How? Sam: I don't know. We'll -- We'll -- We'll track down Dark Kaia and her spear. We'll -- We'll find something.

And of course back in 14.05 he’s still unwittingly trapped in this level of the narrative, hasn’t been able to free himself from Michael completely yet. Hasn’t been able to completely free himself from that baggage he so desperately wants to put down Just as he hasn’t been able to free himself from Chuck’s Bigger Picture Version of this exact same narrative until 14.20.

To me this becomes fascinating when Michael retakes his vessel in 14.09, crushing Dean’s hope that Michael really had just “left” him. Because Chuck hadn’t really just “left” after 11.23, either. He was still actively involved in manipulating Dean’s life (all of their lives, really, but 14.05 tells this directly through the lens of Dean’s personal experience).

Dean must again overcome this control, but instead of being allowed to lay that baggage to rest, he locks it away in 14.10 with the help of Sam and Cas (a Chuck Move™ if ever I saw one-- if it’s a problem, lock it up and throw away the key). No matter how hard any of them fight against the narrative, against the monsters that have been “supercharged” by Michael’s interference, they’re still only battling the sorts of dust monsters the djinn sent after them in 14.05. It’s all a cosmic runaround designed to keep them living out this story over and over again. It’s only recognizing the actual source of the “curse,” the actual source of the power sucking the life out of their lives, that they’re actually able to see all of this for what it was.

Through each successive confrontation with this exact same theme on every level of the narrative, TFW becomes both more entrenched in fulfilling Chuck’s narrative wishes but also more savvy to how exactly they’re being used.

Heck, s14 is narratively perfect. It kicks s4′s ass, and effectively consumes s11 ouroboros-style.