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gggoldfinch · 2 years

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Rammstein rant post ready GO!

I know like nothing about them but I love hearing about people’s interests info dump to your heart’s content my friend! Teach me all about these concerningly sweaty dirty (?) men and their pyrotechnic shenanigans I am sitting here with my favorite pen and notepad ready to take notes. <3

anon. I love you so much. thank you for enabling my insanity. this is gonna be a long, unhinged post

Okay, here we go. My darling anon, I had to HUNT in my blog archive to find this post, but here is my basic rundown of Rammstein itself as a band (<-linked). So come back here after reading that post if you really don't know anything about the band bc this def won't make any sense. In THIS post I'd love to discuss WHY I'm so obsessed R+ and all the things that I personally love about them. I will format it in bullet points to spare myself and everyone's sanity:

I feel like the most obvious point should be the first; I love their music! I grew up on industrial and synth, so introducing metal to that mix is like a heavenly mashup. The heavy guitar, the synth keyboard, the gorgeous vocals and deep (often complicated) lyrics??? I would insert the music directly into my chest cavity if I could and that sounds really fucking weird but that's where I feel like it should live 🧍🏻‍♀️

I have daddy issues point blank, that much is obvious from my blog LMAOOO so ofc latching onto gruff middle aged men is a fundamental human need for me at this point

The style and uniqueness of the band is incredible. Who else do you know that lights everything on fire while looking like they just walked off a movie set? Their outfits are so fucking awesome. Like every time I see a new fit I eat that shit up and stare at pics for hours on end because they're so intricate and cool and kinda kinky?? I WISH I could be their fashion designer like jfc. Also their makeup/ face paint is always killer. I need to kiss their stylists fr !!! The 90's-y2k looks are some of my favs

the history of the band is also very interesting. a bunch of weird dudes from East Germany end up becoming pals and form a band and rise to stardom while soldiering through the trials and tribulations such fame throws their way? love an underdog story. I highly recommend watching the documentary Rammstein in Amerika, it gives a lot of insight into the band's origins and history up through 2015

Some of the shit they pull is so freaky and weird that its camp at this point. The dick mold dildos? camp. The fact that they need licenses to use all their pyrotechnics? camp. Being arrested for public indecency? camp.

I am incredibly, overwhelmingly, unhingedly down bad for Till, Richard, and Paul (and also Schneider to an extent but not as much). I would allow for unspeakable things to be done to me if given even the slightest opportunity if you know what I'm saying

PAUL'S HAIR !!!! He is so silly goofy but I fucking LOVE Paul's stupid little haircuts. like yass go off with your little monk bowl cuts I'm eating it up I'm putting you in my pocket

(the photo of his red hair isn't even showing the back where he LITERALLY shaved it like the fuckin monk tonsure)

everyone is so fucking queer. like. deadass. Paul and Richard regularly kissing on stage is so precious ???? they're just two besties being besties kissing n shit. The band also supports the lgbtq+ community and are outspokenly against bigotry which is always a win. A lot of people have accused them of being bigots themselves and they're like ummm haha no get fucked (cue "Links 2 3 4")

Richard is a perfect little baby angel and I would die for him. I love his spiky hair. I love his nail polish; I paint my nails like him. He is so cute. I love the way he speaks, in German and in English. I also LOVE his band Emigrate, esp the most recent album. He's so awesome 😭 that being said I wish he wouldn't smoke like a chimney because I dread hearing the news one day that he has cancer but ofc I can't do anything about that in the slightest

I mean. do I need to make a bullet point dedicated to Till being built like a fucking brick house?? because I think I do. He is soooo,,, AUAUGHHHHH !!!! Like, the guy is 60 and still looks that incredibly built ?!!!!! homeboy was an olympic swimmer he can swim in my p *gets shot*

Till has a precious smile 🥺 I love his fucked up teeth. he's such a sweetie fr, a big scary looking teddy bear. I need him fr

Flake in his entirety is just so silly goofy. Like homeboy looks like just Some Dude.. he's so normal (he also looks like my step grandfather only tall and skinny, which is very strange...). But then he pulls shit like whacking Till with a keyboard or getting fake fucked on stage. Homeboy also apparently just up and ditched everyone in America and went home after 9/11 because he was so freaked, which in itself isn't funny but imagining him just fucking leaving is a little bit...

Darling little (not so little...) Doom Schneider has an incredibly gorgeous side profile. And I love the pornstache he occasionally sports. He's also another one who is just like. A Normal Guy in my head. He is also very very pretty and very well spoken. I loved listening to him talk during the Rammstein in Amerika documentary

I also think Ollie is also just a Dude,, tho admittedly I don't really even think about him much because he is so normal and not unhinged that he kinda just blends into the background most times. He is 6'7 tho so that is fucking insane

Anyway yep that's all for now I'll stop torturing everyone with my depraved insanity 👍🏻 THANK YOU AGAIN ANON for indulging me for a moment

#is it bad that this took hours to write and it isn't even everything #I wrote so much oh my god #thank you anon ilysm #anon ask

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orionsangel86 · 4 years

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SPN Conspiracies - Applying Logic to Chaos

Its been over 2 months now since the Supernatural finale aired. I am still so angry, hurt, and confused by it and I don’t think I will ever get closure unless someone like Andrew Dabb, or Jensen Ackles, actually opens up and gives us an explanation that makes sense.

What annoys me most right now is people trying to gaslight fans into believing that we should accept the narrative we have been given at face value: That the finale was always planned to be that way, that Destiel was never on the cards, that there was no Network interference, that the only changes made were due to covid and were minor at best.

This harmful gaslighting is FALSE.

NO ONE KNOWS THE TRUTH OF WHAT HAPPENED.

Look, I don’t agree with some of the crazier conspiracy theories. I don’t believe that there was some huge campaign among the CW Network execs to remove anything remotely gay out of homophobia. I don’t believe that the finale was changed because of some desire to make it into a Walker promo. I don’t believe that the finale was really bad on purpose in protest by Dabb for not getting to do an ending he truly wanted. I don’t believe that Dabb left us smart fans a bunch of secret messages in the finale to hint that he was on our side all along and that everything was fake.

I do, however, believe that all of these conspiracy theories have some elements in them that are plausible. At least, more plausible than the bullshit narrative mentioned above that some people are pushing in some desperate attempt to defend the Network (which imo is really strange behaviour anyway - why would anyone care about a TV network with a history of terrible behaviour?!?)

We have facts, based on information provided before the covid lockdown, which for some reason, people like Misha have since backpeddled on. So let me try to outline some of the information that makes no sense.

Below the cut I go on a deep dive into the conspiracies and statements I have heard about the SPN finale and try to make some sense of this whole fucked up situation. It gets long.

1. “Cas was never gonna be in the finale”.

False: We have many fan accounts of Misha confirming that he was filming the finale. We have video evidence of Misha confirming he was going back to film the finale after the lockdown. We have confirmation from fans in Misha M&Gs from March that he had about 5 days of filming left.

We also had fan accounts of discussions with Alex Calvert (I think) where he confirmed the final shot of the final episode was all four of them though I would LOVE if someone can find a source for this.

2. Okay, Misha was gonna be in the finale, but only as Jimmy Novak

False: I heavily side eyed Misha when he said this. But I think I can come up with a plausible explanation for it. Per above, Misha was supposed to film for 5 days. This does not align with the half a day he described of filming as Jimmy Novak. My own belief is that after Cas was cut from the finale (for whatever reason we don’t know) someone (probably Jensen Ackles) put up a fight and complained that Misha should be there for the final episode. The writers probably tried to come up with a way to bring Misha back without having to deal with Cas, and pitched the idea of Jimmy Novak being in Heaven. Misha, obviously annoyed about this, turned this stupid pitch down.

3. Destiel was never a thing, never planned, never part of Dabb’s ending. Bobo and Misha pushing the confession was the part of the season that was Wrong.

False: We have a SPN writer on record saying that Castiel’s confession was the first thing written for Season 15 when the writers returned to the writers room. If it wasn’t planned, why was it the first thing written, why does it align so well with the rest of season 15? Look I know some people either a. hate destiel and refuse to see it even if it slaps them in the face, or b. have major heteronormative goggles on, or c. are just homophobes in denial, but 15x18 fits in perfectly with the narrative of season 15. Everything Cas says, everything that happened in that scene was so in character it just works. It fit. If you just rewatch the season whilst applying some critical thinking skills and pay attention to the narrative and character arcs, trust me, the confession fits in with pretty much every other plot point, and character story in the season.

Also: We have known for a while that the network did market research into Destiel, wanting to know if it would go down well or not. They were well aware of its popularity and considering it. Where would this have come from if not pitched by the showrunner? Dabb must have at least been considering it. If you take all of Dabb era into consideration, starting with mid season 11, all the way through the season 12 build up, season 13 grief arc, and then Bobo’s Destiel break up arc in late season 14, early season 15, it is clear that there was some toing and froing on the issue of Destiel, but ultimately, I still believe that Dabb was on board. He wrote 13x01 for christs sake. No way he wasn’t taking it seriously.

4. It’s always been about the brothers. The finale just stays true to what Supernatural is all about.

*rubs temples* Fundamentally FALSE: The show has time and again reasserted the message of “Family don’t end with blood”, as well as the messages of AKF and YANA. Sam and Dean may be at the heart of the show, but a heart can’t exist without a body to support it. Without bones, and lungs, and blood, and muscles, and a BRAIN. The finale abandons the shows core messages. It forces the characters back into their season 1 characterisations and the whole thing becomes hollow and souless. But I’m not here to complain, I’m here to lay down the facts. Dean’s heaven was supposed to be surrounded by loved ones right? We know OG Charlie Bradbury was gonna be in his Heaven, we also know CAS was gonna be in there. So this idea that the finale as it currently stands was how it was meant to be is wrong. Dean was supposed to die and reunite with his found family and loved ones. This alone would have been a far better ending than the one given. Do I think this was solely a covid issue? Fuck no.

The randoms that WERE in the finale are proof alone that they could have got people in and quarantined. We also have several actors on record saying that they WOULD have quarantined for the finale had they been asked to return but they WEREN’T.

Lies have been told. Samantha Ferris and Chad Limberg have confirmed that we have been lied to about the original plans for the finale.

This alone is proof enough that there is more plausibility in some of the conspiracy theories than any bullshit narrative some people are pushing in defence of the barbaric mess of a finale we were given.

So lets address some of the conspiracy theories now:

Conspiracy No.1: The CW Network reviewed Supernatural during the covid break, and due to homophobia, refused any Destiel arc that wasn’t already filmed, shut down any potential reciprocation from Dean, and forced Dabb to change his finale.

I don’t think this is entirely what happened. But I do think it is very strange how there is a such a huge disconnect particularly in Dean’s characterisations between what had come before the lockdown, and what came after. The one fact we have here, and please someone provide a source if you can find it because I know there is one, the finale script was still going through changes up to only 2 weeks before it was filmed. We know that there was some weird editing in 15x18 (which was still in post and uncompleted before lockdown) and we know from Jensen’s own mouth that there was more to the confession scene on Dean’s side that was cut. We also know that this isn’t the first time that Destiel heavy moments have been changed in post - the prayer scene is another big scene that went through a lot of changes and Bobo fought to have his script play out the way he wanted it.

There are certain things that in my own opinions, are basically true of SPN which I have put together from years of keeping one eye on the writers room, the network, and all the various comments made. My opinion is this:

The writers room has always been split on Destiel. Some writers heavily supported making it canon, others did not care, or were against it.

The Network considered it over the course of several years, did market research, green lit it, then changed their minds, possibly several times over the course of Dabb’s era. Destiel was pitched to the Network early in Dabb era.

The crew on set were also split. Some people heavily supported it, and worked to assist the reading, whereas others did not care/did not support it. The same can be said for the editing room.

Bob Singer supported the subtextual homoeroticism, but never supported bringing it into text (this is an opinion, but I think it aligns with everything we know about him.) IMO Bob Singer also supported subtextual homoeroticism between Sam and Dean - the guy is gross is what I’m saying. He isn’t exactly a progressive person.

Fun fact - a while back our old enemy Sera Gamble went on a Twitter rant about writers rooms and the ways a script goes through changes. I don’t think this was in relation to the SPN finale wank but she basically inadvertantly confirmed that the Network can step in and make sweeping changes to a script if they want to and if they decide they don’t like the direction of a story. Sera Gamble confirmed this as a fact.

Now. I’m not saying that this is what the CW did with Destiel. I just think its very strange how pre lockdown, the last thing filmed is a heartfelt homosexual declaration of love between Dean and Cas, and we have a finale script that Misha had not seen, but knew that he was meant to film as Castiel for 5 days (5 days on set is over half of an episode as far as I know). Then all of a sudden, Covid happens, and Cas is cut from the finale completely, a desperate attempt to bring Misha back only as Jimmy Novak takes place, which Misha rightly refuses, leading to a finale which makes zero sense narratively and appears in every way completely and utterly butchered.

The only explanation provided by anyone involved is that Covid meant changes had to happen - but that covid didn’t change the actual story at all.

But this makes no sense because we know that Cas was cut from the finale. This is FACT. Do not let anyone gaslight you into thinking otherwise. Misha was preparing to quaranting to return to set as Cas post Covid, so whatever happened to cut Cas from the finale, it wasn’t Covid.

I’m gonna have to Occum’s Razor this and say that the most logical explanation here is the one that is most likely true. Someone got cold feet with the Destiel story, and to prevent any possible interpretation that included Dean reciprocating, any hints of Destiel were removed from the finale script, including Castiel’s whole appearance.

Now, this isn’t me saying I think that Dabb’s original finale was full of Destiel love confessions and a homosexual kiss or whatever, but I am asking you all to really think about it and ask yourselves WHY Cas would have been totally cut from an episode he was supposed to be in at LEAST half of?

We will probably never know the real reason Cas was cut, but he WAS cut. I’m not saying it was all homophobia, but some fuckery went down.

Conspiracy No. 2: The CW Network changed the finale to make it into a Walker promo because they only cared about raising up Jared and not Jensen and Misha as they were losing them anyway.

I don’t agree with this in terms of the finale being butchered solely to make it into a Walker promo. There are however moments in the finale that are clearly supposed to be Walker Easter Eggs and added to excite fans of Jared/Sam in particular such as Sam’s gratuitous and unnecessary topless scene, as well as the call on the “case in Austin”.

I will take this moment to say something pretty damn controversial though.

*Deep breath*

The fact is, Dean Winchester has been the “lead” character of Supernatural’s narrative for years now, with Sam often being sidelined and not given great storylines himself. Even in Season 15, right up until the finale, I myself felt bad for Sam sometimes because so much of this show has become all about Dean. Jensen Ackles is clearly the better actor when it comes to emotional story arcs, so the emotional heart of the story has most often leant on him.

So you can understand my confusion, when this is turned on its head in the final episode, to make Sam carry all the emotional weight, and have the most lines/screentime, and story resolution (even if his story resolution was just as crappy as Dean’s).

If we pretend that Destiel is not a thing, and ignore Cas’s confession, the story change in the finale from Dean focus to Sam focus is still rather suspicious. Again, I’m not saying I completely approve of or agree to the conspiracy theory that Walker influenced the butchering of the script, but I can believe that perhaps a note went down from the CW to someone like Bob Singer, to emphasise Sam/Jared more than they perhaps would normally, because the CW wanted to shine the spotlight on Jared to raise excitement for Walker.

I can also believe this note might have said something like “we wanna cater to fans of Sam/Jared the most - don’t do anything to piss them off.” but now I am getting into my own conspiracy theories so by all means dismiss this as me being bitter.

Conspiracy No.3: Dabb purposely made it bad, as a secret message to Destiel fans that he had been silenced, by layering meta clues into the episode that he knew fans would notice.

I doubt this one is true. Though some of the theories are quite compelling. The old vampire silent movie theory for instance starts off quite well, but loses me the moment it brings up Urban Dictionary slang.

Sometimes I have just had to accept that Supernatural is a bad show that is sometimes accidentally a masterpiece. However, some writers really did go That Deep with their stories - anything by Ben Edlund or Steve Yockey for instance, their episodes are meta masterpieces with a hundred different layers of beautiful subtextual storytelling and are a joy to analyse. Bobo Berens has certainly done some A+++ work especially now we KNOW that he was working hard all this time to bring Destiel to canon text (so any analysis of Destiel in the subtext in his episodes is very accurate). There have been many other key elements analysed over the years which have been confirmed true. Cas’s death in Season 12, Dean’s time as a demon in season 10, Season 11 ending in unity of dark and light, these were all plot points predicted by meta writers just by analysing the narrative. Sometimes the writers really have been very smart and they do add things to the show to aid us in our meta.

Richard Speight Jr for instance, confirmed that SPN has a visual library that the production team use to give clues and hints in the narrative. Pizza, for example, always means a lie has been told. Whenever Pizza is being eaten or even just mentioned on screen, there is dishonesty in that particular moment.

The beers also have a very specific message and the one thing I can’t let go about the finale, was that Dean was drinking El Sol beer. The beer his dad gave him, that was terrible.

El Sol has been used in the show to indicate something being wrong, a fake reality, or another lie, for the longest time. It is the beer of deception.

The fact that in the final episode of this entire show, Dean is in Heaven, supposedly at peace, and then he gets handed an El Sol beer to drink? Thats a HUGE red flag for any meta writer watching who can read SPNs visual library.

If they had given him the Margiekugel beer of family then it would make sense. Dean is in Heaven, with Bobby, his family, at peace. Margiekugel should have been the beer of choice. But nope. El Sol. Something is wrong.

I don’t know if it was Dabb, or Singer, or some disgruntled ADs and crew members who added these elements into the finale, but their very presence confirms some message of Wrongness.

I could go into a huge rant about Vampire Mimes not making sense and the very glaringly obvious symbolism of cutting out peoples tongues too, but that is high school level film analysis. It’s obvious. It means to silence someone. There is validity in interpreting this as Dabb saying he was silenced. I don’t know how true it is, but i can’t 100% dismiss it, because as I said, this is high school analysis levels of obvious subtextual storytelling.

So in summary, whilst I don’t think that Dabb intentionally went out of his way to sabotage his own script, and leave a breadtrail of secret messages for savvy fans to put together to confirm that he was silenced by an evil network into not getting what he wanted... I do think that there is validity in questioning these odd choices for the finale. Cutting out tongues? Vampire Mimes? El Sol beer?

The evidence is somewhat compelling is all I’m saying. I don’t believe the full conspiracy theories, but as I have said many times before, some fuckery went down.

So What Do I Believe?

That some fuckery went down and whatever company line they are pushing is bullshit.

I believe that the original script included Cas (since thats fact). I believe that the original script probably always had Dean dying on a vampire hunt (due to Jensen’s issues with it and in particular, his sarcastic comments about vampires in the past year or so which in hindsight are hilarious and prove he never really came to terms with Dean’s idiotic death). I believe Dabb’s original script was some less crappy version of what we got, which potentially included showing Jack rescuing Cas from the Empty and resolving the outstanding Empty plot points (potentially this was actually a 15x19 plot since Mark P commented that his final scenes were supposed to be with Jack and Cas), had Cas reunite with Dean in Heaven and had them have a discussion about Cas’s confession. I believe that there was probably a lot of back and forth over how to handle that with some people wanting Dean to obviously reciprocate and others believing they should keep it ambiguous. I believe that Dean and Cas would have reunited with Charlie Bradbury, and Bobby Singer, and possibly others (though if this was the case it must have been very early on since no one ever looped in Sam Ferris, Chad Linberg or any other Roadhouse people).

I believe that Sam’s ending probably didn’t change much, but I do feel that initially they were planning on him ending up with Eileen, because it is the only thing that narratively makes sense. Cutting Eileen and giving him a blurry wife is something I won’t ever understand and Jared’s bullshit explanations are quite clearly pulled out of his ass to appease bronly types. I believe the reunion on the bridge would have included Cas and Jack, with a final shot of all four of them together, at peace (as this aligns with Alex’s comments from around a year or so ago that the final shot was all four of them). (I also am not sure it was always supposed to be on a bridge since the foreshadowing in an earlier episode showed Dean, Cas and Sam all in the Roadhouse together).

I believe that script went through countless changes and redrafts, and not even production people or the types that some fandom people claim as their “sources” would even have seen those early scripts, since even Misha never saw it. I believe that these rumours of Dabb never having Cas in his finale and ignoring all Destiel elements likely come from people who only saw later versions, weren’t party to network discussions and felt bitter about the final scripts they did see (being the crappy butchered one that was ultimately filmed). Those “sources” are now spreading rumours to discredit Dabb.

I obviously believe Dabb is a weak ass pushover who either didn’t care enough to fight back, or gave up since he’s been stuck with fucking Bob Singer on his back for years, but I will NEVER believe he didn’t care about the DeanCas love story, because he has been one of the few writers who has championed for it for years. You can’t look back at Dabb’s episodes in earlier seasons and claim he didn’t care. Dabb was a writer whose creative ideas were beaten out of him by an unforgiving Network only concerned about where their future money was coming from. Do I think he gave up too easily? Yes. But I also have one other huge reason for not believing the bullshit about Dabb being this anti-Destiel villain.

Bobo. Because if Bobo truly believed Dabb was gonna fuck that up at the end, I don’t think he would have given us Cas’s love confession to begin with. If he had known it was gonna end like that, I think he would have reconsidered, because had Cas not confessed his love, I don’t think he would have been cut from the finale. Bobo - a gay man, would not have wanted such a horrible message for queer fans being put across in the show he worked so hard on. He started writing that confession scene the day they returned to the writers room. Dabb would have been there, would have seen what he was writing, probably discussed it with him, after all, other episodes were written with the confession in mind. No way was Dabb planning to fuck up the ending knowing what Bobo was giving us. Nope.

Something went very wrong over lockdown. Someone, somewhere up the chain of power caught wind of the confession scene in 15x18, realised that it demanded a resolution which would make Dean Winchester, their protagonist, queer, and pulled the plug. I believe this did not come from a place of homophobia, but of bad business sense.

The CW is constantly trying to win the approval and attention of the one demo group that they seem to fail at getting the most: young straight men. Supernatural was one of their only remaining shows that appeals to young straight men, and Dean Winchester is more often than not the fave character of those young straight men who project onto him. Making Dean Winchester, established Han Solo of Supernatural, queer and in love with his best friend in the finale would have come across as a betrayal to those young straight men. The CW probably feared they would lose that demo group for good, and with a show like Walker starting soon with Jared at the helm, they couldn’t take the risk.

Hence there was probably a whole bunch of back and forth script redrafts with the Network, with Dabb and Singer fighting to make a finale that would appeal to everyone. There was most likely no way that they could bring Cas back without addressing what had already been filmed, because any resolution of that plot would either a. make Dean queer, or b. address it awkwardly by having Dean reject Cas (this storyline would probably have been slammed by critics worse than the finale because it meant addressing it. It might have got the attention of LGBTQ activist groups and caused a bigger shitstorm than what we got). The best option was therefore C. Bury it and Cas, pretend it never happened. Never address it again and distract Dean with other things. Hope that Destiel fans will accept no answer from Dean as ambiguous enough to imagine a future reunion rather than shutting it down with a rejection, and still keep hold of the blissfully ignorant heteronormative straight boys so they can carry over to Walker when it starts.

I also believe (controversially probably) that there was concern that any resolution of Dean and Cas would have overshadowed network darling Jared Padalecki. If Dean and Cas had come together in the finale, with a very clearly textual homosexual reunion, then that would have been all anyone talked about. The reviewers, the critics, the audience, everyone. It would have been nothing but Dean and Cas (and look, if they did think this, they were right, Destiel trending over the US ELECTION.)

So what is the network to do, when they are losing the two stars who would get the most attention from this storyline? The one star they were holding on to and getting his own show, relegated to third place in the finale of the show where he was first on the call sheet? Nope. That’s pretty unacceptable. Even without Walker I can imagine people at all levels side eyeing the Destiel thing over the years. This IS a show about two brothers, and their relationship should be the core relationship, we can’t have one brother pushed aside in the finale to make way for a queer relationship that will get all the attention instead. It was never gonna get approved for this reason ALONE.

At the end of the day, if I look at it from a business perspective, it makes far more sense that the CW shut down Destiel, rather than “oh Dabb never cared and ruined it because he’s an idiot.” The writers cared, and had built on that story over years. But their mistake was leaving any Destiel resolution to the finale. If they had instead gone and got Dean and Cas together in early season 15, then they could have ended it in a way that satisfied everyone. Destiel wouldn’t have threatened pulling focus away from Sam and Dean, and the show could have gone out on a high.

When I lay out all the conspiracy theories, and line them up next to the cold hard facts, the conspiracy theories in some way or another, make more sense. To believe the company line, the narrative we have been fed, is to ignore your own eyes, ears, and memories pre March 2020.

All I’m asking people to do is take a look at the show, the narrative presented in the show, and the information presented above. I’m not telling you to believe what I’ve written here, half of which is just my own opinion. I’m asking you to ask yourselves if it makes sense to you. Because it sure as hell doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied.

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dramarising-replacement · 4 years

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as someone in lightning who has never participated directly in dom nor been on any of the lightning discord servers but has kept a loose orbit of the dramasphere and periodically skims the dom threads to check the schedule and see if anything's being voted on, the fact that consistently for the last 4 or more years every time i see someone in public say anything that even slightly sounds like it could be questioning the leadership on any level get slammed with the same guilt-trippy sounding "in LIGHTNING we're a GOOD dom flight and our leadership is WONDERFUL because you can TAKE THIS ISSUE UP WITH OUR DOM LEADERS DIRECTLY ANDTHEY'LL LISTEN BECAUSE THEY ARE GOOD rather than COMPLAINING ABOUT IT which you would know if you were COMPLAINING IN GOOD FAITH because otherwise you'd have gone through the PROPER channels to contact our LEADERS rather than WHINING IN PUBLIC and i'm going to heavily imply that the issues you raised don't exist and/or are stupid and wrong and based on a fundamentally idiotically wrong understanding of how our flight works" wall of text puts me right the hell off lightning dom as a whole real hard.

even if i had been the sort of person to have an interest in dom battles, that whole thing combined with a lot of other subtle things and the fact that almost everything is on a discord server out of the public eye at this point gives me uncomfortable vibes, and the fact that these copypasta response posts always seem to have this weird unspoken emphasis on the real problem being that it's visible in public gives me, as someone trapped in an abusive family of exactly that type, who's mother has told me this phrase exactly word for word, MASSIVE "there's some things we don't talk about outside this family." vibes.

the fact that literally nothing is really particularly known or spoken about lightning as a flight outside of people being like "uhh spreadsheets" makes me even more nervous of my own flight, because in my experience dramasphere silence like that only means that they're just very good at hiding where the drama is happening. no news is not the same thing as neutral news. no news means the news isn't getting out. there was also that major dom leader guy with a game of thrones name a year or two back who if i remember correctly did something along the lines of enter himself on his own ticket spreadsheet for a dom raffle he was running so that he could draw himself to win prizes, then when someone asked about that he exploded on them about how they're an entitled brat and ranted on about how as dom leaders they work so hard and are entitled to a cut of the prizes of their work? then fucked off to plague where he proceeded to do some other questionable things i don't remember? that was a thing, and that didn't exactly make me feel less weird something not right here vibes from what little contact i had with the lightning dom situation. i just get a huge feeling of guilt tripping from all of the few interactions i've ever seen of the dom scene interacting with anyone who asks questions and i also get the impression of this heavy unspoken frowning upon anyone speaking about anything going on in-flight outside it.

unfortunately if it turns out there is weird shit going on, or if this spirals into drama topic whether or not there is, given the fact that up until this point there has been literally nothing on lightning in the collective consciousness of fr up until this point beyond "idk spreadsheet probably" and the fact that right now the popular attitude of 90% of the userbase seems to be that all plague users are problematic rude edgelords and entitled whiny babies because they complain about getting shafted on their aesthetic (and the fact that the site artists are very blatantly going out of their way to exclude the damn color RED) and because the very act of being into such a non-wholesome aesthetic in the first place is apparently enough to make one inherently suspect, this will most likely result in lightning members as a whole coming to be viewed in popular consciousness as inherently problematic, corrupt, suspect, drama-causers, and untrustworthy. after all, there won't be any other preconceived notions on us there for people's brains to gravitate to automatically when they think of us. if my bad vibes feelings turn out to be not unfounded after all i'm going to be completely fucked by association because people on flight rising, even if they won't admit it, are horrifyingly steeped in category-based prejudices towards eachother and ESPECIALLY towards anyone who happens to have anything to do on any level with a flight that's been deemed a "drama" one. just cause they won't say it to your face on-site doesn't mean they don't think it and pass judgements based on it. and lightning if it does turn out to be corrupt will be especially fucked because we have nothing else going for us in the case that we end up being deemed one of the shitty drama flights where all the stupid entitled whiny baby untrustworthy asshole bad people are and everyone there is an problematic whiny scambitch they all suck and their flight sucks too and is probably conceptually problematic or offensive against a real life group or something inherently as a concept too and therefore everyone in it is cosigning causing people epileptic seizures because thrage was a dick about that and blah blah blah because i know damn well how these toxic-ass circles of tumblr that scream 24/7 about what a sweet welcoming wholesome community not like those horrible toxic communities outside they are run.

this whole situation is a mess of uncomfortable ambiguity, guilt tripping, and certain bad times ahead if anyone's suspicions turn out to be even slightly shy of totally unfounded, which i'm not inclined to find likely because insert that phrase about how if something presents itself as too good to be true here. flight rising as a community is already dreadfully susceptible to the worst kinds of aggressive isolationist cult mentality, and the guilt tripping every time i see someone ask questions in public thing has been setting off my warning bells for years. people already almost universally dislike lightning in general just for it's aesthetic and lore, and the kind of tumblr people fr is populated by are very much the type to jump on any chance to rationalize and justify their personal distaste of a fictional thing as a morality thing that allows them to condemn people morally over association with it and thus eradicate the disliked thing's presence and stop people being allowed to like the thing they don't like.

idk this is rambling. some things i've seen and the things i haven't seen make me nervous and everything about the potential outcomes sucks.

#Drama #Rant #Flight Rising #Cursing #Dominance #Long post #Confessions #Shady #Forums #submission

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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Darkwing Duck Reviews: Tiff of the Titans

Uh-Oh, Gizmoduck Comes to town! In the first of a series of reviews building up to Just Us Justice Ducks, the dopey, arrogant, anti-charasmatic, national embarrassment heads to St. Canard to guard a super weapon from F.O.W.L. Naturally, he ends up being more of a problem for our hero than the actual bad guys. Also a look at Tad Stone’s claims the series isn’t in the same universe as Ducktales. Full review and recap commissioned by @weirdkev27 under the cut

This review, much like Death, Taxes and Thanos, was inevitable. I’d been planning to watch and review the first appearances of each of the justice ducks and fearsome five as my next step in watching Darkwing duck anyway, and while I’ve already got one member’s appearance in the wings anyway, I’ll get to that tomorrow or Saturday just in time for Halloween, hint hint, Kev pushed this one into the queue with a commission and I was happy to take the side trip to see just what the Darkwing version of Gizmoduck and Steelbeak, two of my favorites in the reboot, were like originally. So welcome folks to the build to the greatest superhero team made up of ducks of all time, let’s get quackin.

We open, here in Duckburg, where the Eggmen are breaking in. Sadly they do not have the master plan, but they are here to steel the Comarant, a super powerful land, sea and air device the military is storing there. They instead find Gizmoduck! Who makes a good first impression, being a hoaky superman parody in iron man’s costume in this continuity, but it’s a nice way to contrast to Darkwing’s batman parody with a touch of Sandman.. the pulp one not the neil gaiman one. Sadly he doesn’t have a cool gas mask but the Darkwing Duck costume is iconic without it.

Point is the eggmen are easily repelled, though they do get away by blasting Gizmo with a tank. The General in charge is thankful for Gizmoduck’s help, but notes the Comarant will be heading to St. Canard soon for a demonstration at the big air show, and asks that Giz go over and protect it, maybe even work with Darkwing to protect it. Though Gizmo shoots that down, and not only insults Darkwing but says he’s not sure if he’s good or bad. While the latter comment did sour me on the guy.. research bears out Darkwing has been framed once or twice, and my own experience with the pilot saw him you know breaking out of jail and basically clamming superheroes are above the law, so I COULD get why someone wouldn’t trust him, even if Giz’s attitude about it still isn’t great. So fenton quick changes behind a sign and heads off to see his old buddy Launchpad. A quick aside before we get going this episode doesn’t so much torch Tad Stone’s retroactive claim this isn’t the same universe as Ducktales, as burn it to ashes, take a whiz on those ashes and send each separate ash on a seperate probe to the farthest reaches of space. This episode not only has a cameo by Scrooge on a billboard.. but it’s one for DUCKBURG. Where Gizmoduck is said to be from. He also knows launchpad well, and vice versa, and outright mentions McDuck Manor. the episode couldn’t be saying “this is the same universe as ducktales’ harder if Scrooge himself showed up and started ranting about a Sea Monster eating his ice cream. I do like and respect Tad Stones, but I will never like or respect this claim of his and even if HE had that idea in his head during production of the show, it’s very clear everyone else including Disney who greenlit the Darkwing Duck comics explicitly connecting the two universes, felt it was a shared universe, and there’s really no reason they can’t coexist.

If it’s because “Well launchpad wouldn’t leave scrooge”.. besides the fact Scrooge tried to fire him MULTIPLE times, it’s not farfetched Scrooge would put him in charge of a hangar both because he trusts him.. and to get rid of him since he doesn’t like Launchpad very much. Plus Donald has to come back from his tour of duty sometime and likely could easily do Launchpad’s job as pilot, as he did in the source material. My point is there’s tons of ways to write the man out easily, and he could just as easily be doing both jobs like in the reboot. This feels like a weird, unnecessary retcon no one wanted and everyone just politely ignores, like the creators of Doug saying he and Patti didn’t end up together after High School. Which even then makes more sense than this claim, since at least there I get the creators not thinking a high school romance would last forever. That’s fair.. it’s just not something fans really wanted to hear after spending two separate series and a movie getting them together. It would be like if Girl Meets World had revealed Cory and Topanga had divorced. Yes it’d be possible since they’d broken up twice over the course of the series, but no one wanted that, why would you do that. I’m getting off topic, the point is a few breakups aside Doug and Patti clearly married eventually, and Darkwing Duck and Ducktales are in the same universe. Sometimes you just have to ignore Word of God for your own sanity.

Back at the actual episode we cut to Steelbeak’s Bowling Alley Hideout... and I do love a job that allows me to say things like that. But in a really fantastic bit Steelbeak is bowling his minions over as punishment for failure.. even though they have a valid reason but eh he’s the bad guy and he has to get his bowling average up for FOWL’s bowling team somehow. Their insurance covers evil punishment related accidents anyways, they’ll be fine.

But yeah let’s talk about Steelbeak for a second. I honestly hadn’t seen any of the original version so I was curious.. and he’s really damn awesome. Rob Paulsen always does a great job though and is always a pleasure, but he really does a good job here and with the contrast in him: He’d seem like a dumb thug, what with his gangster accent and general cockiness and swagger.. but he backs it up with great combat and even greater planning. He’s a schemer, a fighter and damn if he isn’t fun to watch. It also makes me love the reboot version even more. While I already loved him for being played by Jason Mantzokus, being enjoyably dim, while also still enough of a threat to be freaking cool, it’s even cooler knowing he’s still fundamentally the same character. Much like Drake he’s simply been tweaked a bit. For drake it was softening the edges since Ducktales isn’t as broad a show, and neither will the darkwing reboot i’m betting, so his ego and selfishness is sanded down considerably. For Steelbeak it’s giving him an actual origin: Instead of starting at the top of FOWL, he’s starting as a very competent but very wet behind the ears and full of himself agent, working his way up to becoming justifably full of himself like the original show. He has the same swagger and badassery, he’s just not a master planner yet and he’ll get there. Like many of the reboot characters, he’s simply an already great character given some extra depth and rounding out. I love both and can’t wait to see him again next ep and hopefully he’ll show up in the Darkwing reboot so they can go for round 2.

So with that out of the way, Darkwing naturally interrupts, and cleans house with his gas gun, forcing Steelbeak and his crew to literally go underground into the sewers. This successfully fools drake, and Steelbeak bemoans how both Darkwing and Gizmoduck have been thwarting his plans.. until he gets a great idea; pit them against each other so he can pilfer the comerant while their too busy fighting. It’s a classic supervillain tactic, and one that works perfectly because one of them’s an egotist and a dick and the other is also that but with more style and likeability. Back at Drake’s place, Gosalyn and Honker are watching a horror movie they clearly aren’t supposed to till Drake and launchpad come back in via their easy chairs flipping them in from Darkwing Tower which is just.. really cool. I like it. I also like that much like the Shakespeare bust in Wayne Manor, Darkwing has his own neat statue to provide acess to his lair... a tiny bronze statue of Basil from the Great Mouse Detective.. I REALLY need to fucking watch that film but it’s a nice nod. But yeah Launchpad brought them back because he feels drake could use a break while Drake refuses to stop because crime never stops and he doesn’t have time for it and your usual self destructive bollocks. It’s interrupted by a knock at the door?

It’s Fenton! Whose stopped in to see his old buddy launchpad, who is happy to see his old friend and the two catch up, though Drake dosen’t like the interuption because Classic Drake is kind of a grumpus. Fenton naturally is here because Gizmoduck is but says he’s doing a job for the military.. which makes no sense but given Drake doesn’t know what he does and Launchpad dares to be stupid, if not nearly as stupid as his reboot version, no one questions it. When Fenton says he needs to find a hotel Launchpad, being Launchpad, invites him to stay and while Fenton watches the movie with the kids, Drake wants him gone because you know he has a secret identity to keep and a case to work on and they don’t know if they can trust him with it. It’s fair.. but since this is Drake he almost handles it with the subtly of a howitzer. But before he can try to literally throw Fenton out on his ass, a news report comes on about an attack at a local theater and both head off to take care of it.. we also get a nice moment where both react to it with the same words at the same time. Fenton.. is actually really likeable. He’s a bit awkward, more in that he sort of barges in and makes himself comfy.. but it’s very easy to see from this and the one Ducktales episode of his i’ve seen where the utterly marvelous reboot version gets some traits from: his nervousness, his pluckness, his lack of thinking things through ocasionally when he’s not overthinking them. Fenton is charming. The issue is once he switches on the costume he goes from utterly charming to punchable REALLL quick. I’ll explain my problems with his alter ego in a sec.

At the theater Steelbeak fakes it to look like Darkwing’s doing the bombing, if half haphazardly and leaves Darkwing with the bomb so when Gizmo shows up he thinks he’s responsible. Darkwing naturally says it wasn’t him, but Gizmo dosen’t buy it and asks if he’s so good how come he wears a mask... says the guy in a helmeted visor’s whose only defense when that’s pointed out is it came with the suit. Which yes is a joke.. but it fails to land and instead of being funny just makes Gizmo look like a hypocritical dick whose assuming someone is evil based on flimsy evidence, and what’s very obviously a setup. it makes him come off as the biggest dumbass alive instead of this world’s superman and that is annoying. More ranting about him in a minute. We do end up getting an incredibly funny bit where the two end up arguing over who gets to defuse a bomb, with both wrestling over it till Gizmoduck takes care of it and both fall into the theater. Gizmoduck tries to arrest Darkwing who ignores him and runs off. The next day the Mallard family, including Honker naturally, watches Gizmoduck get a parade, a key to the city and other good stuff on the news while Drake sulks before turning it off. And yeah i’ve waited long enough let’s talk about this version of Gizmoduck and why he does not work. I get in theory he’s supposed to be “The Cape”, minus the cape: The big cheese that everyone looks up to and loves to Darkwing’s dark avenger of the night, a parody of that whose also really dumb. The issue is two fold. The first is .. the classic archtypical cape type chracter has been parodied to hell and back by 2020. He’s been a monster, an asshole and as with here an idiot. And even for then a superman parody, if not in apperance or powers but in treatment, whose really dumb wasn’t very new.

And you CAN parody a big silver age type hero: Justice League International did so well without being too overt, having most of the team either annoyed or actively hostile to Shazam/Captain Marvel. But it was done well there because well.. billy’s a very corny very earnest and likeable kid in an adult’s body. To us he’s charming and loveable. But to a bunch of actual adults he’d be offputting at best and annoying at worst. While some have been annoyed at how he was handled, I a fan of both JLI and Shazam liked it and thought it was an interesting take. Another REALLY good and REALLY hilarious take on this is from fellow superhero action comedy Danny Phantom, one of my favorites and one I need to revisit. One episode had Danny split himself in two so he could crimefight and have fun with his friends resulting in one self whose a burnt out slacker, and another whose an over the top crimefighter who says things like “you Felonious fiend!” And “This looks like a job for the vacuum cleaner!”. It’s a damn good episode. My point is it’s been better done before and since.

What doesn’t help is the episode tries to paint it as equal, since Darkwing’s problem in part is Gizmoduck stealing his thunder.. but it doesn’t work. Darkwing is a fully fleshed out character we know and love who despite his huge ego and rampant jackassery, is a decent person whose fought hard for St. Canard, loves his daughter and most damingly... is entertainingly sickish. Gizmoduck’s dickery just makes him come off less likeable and incredibly dense, while Darkwing’s is part of his charm and, along with his ego, has backfired enough to balance it out. Gizmo just doesn’t get comeuppance for his behavior, and instead gets rewarded with a parade, a key to the city, cheerleaders and Gosalyn looking up to him just for having powers in his gadgets. And really his methods aren’t that different from dark wing: While Darkwing is secretive, a loner and uses gadgets.. Gizmoduck’s suit is basically one BIG gadget, and he refuses to see. And I get that’s probably the joke but it just. doesn’t. LAND. It just makes him insufferable. And as far as I can tell in the original show he wasn’t: he was an awkward dork we root for like in the reboot, not a gloryhogging jackass whose squandered his good will long before he gets Darkwing isn’t evil and tries working with him to the point I don’t care by the time that happens: He’s already been so obnoxious it dosen’t make up for it. Maybe later appearances are better but he’s just a chore to watch in costume here. And that’s WITHOUT comparing him to the 2017 version, one of my favorites there, one of the best animated superheroes i’ve seen in a long time, and a toughly likeable character who struggles due to his superhero identity but took it up for exactly the right reasons and wants to help people. Darkwing Gizmoduck thinks he’s the cape and an inspiration when a good guy when he’s worse than the guy he hates at times. Reboot Gizmo is an honest, decent guy who simply wants to help people and use the gizmotech as a way to do that, to help change the world for the better and save the helpless, and only clashes with Darkwing due to his ego and lack of understanding that Gizmoduck and him really aren’t that different. Finally if THIS is why Tad Stones wants them to be different universes, because this Fenton is different from the Ducktales one in personality.. then that’s on HIM. That’s on him for writing this version poorly or letting him get written so poorly and not on the fans who had no reason not to connect a dot. God this character was disappointing and hopefully when I watch more of him at work in Ducktales, he isn’t this obnoxious, nor will he hopefully be in his sequel episodes. Thankfully moving on Darkwing gets to work, because you know he has experience, and finds Steelbeak trying to pilfer the cormorant but Captain Clueless interrupts and tries to arrest him. The two then finally fight and while it’s sadly short, it’s a fun clash and I genuinely hope the reboot has it’s own fight with them, as given how damn good they are at fight scenes, it’s bound to be even more awesome. But Steelbeak gets away, and uses the comarant’s secret weapon.. a giant fake egg that drops a giant pile of yolk to drown them. Gizmo finally realizes he’s been fighting the wrong guy but our hero's are now running out of time. Darkwing , being the actually capable one here, has Gizmo uses his propeller to beat the eggs and the two head off.. though after a funny bit where Gizmo breaks the Ratcatcher’s sidecar Darkwing lets him use his spare tier, which is huge and likely intended for the main vehicle. Good stuff. The two get after Steelbeak and while Gizmo makes me pray for death but death won’t come we get a fun battle with Steelbeak including Steelbeak using his beak to bite down and destroy the gas gun. It’s a damn fun bit I must say. But eventually the good guys win, disable the comarant and Darkwing beats Steelbeak. The day is save, FOWL is foiled, our heroes are on shaky but better terms, and Drake and Fenton depart on good if equally shaky terms, before arguing about which of them is better. And we’re out. Final Thoughts: This.. was a disappointingly mixed bag. Gizmoduck REALLY drug down what was otherwise a good episode with a great concept: Bringing in a hero whose stronger and more popular than Darkwing.. but mostly uses it to make Darkwing look good, which he didn’t need, and make Gizmoduck look REALLY bad, intentionally or otherwise. Steelbeak is a delight and his plan, and the egg trap, are really good, and as mentioned there are enough good set pieces to prevent this from being a terrible episode.. but as an old friend says for me time and time again...

youtube

#darkwing duck #drake mallard #gizmoduck #fenton crackshell #fenton crackshell cabrera #launchpad mcquack #steelbeak #gosalyn mallard #honker #tiff of the titans #tad stone

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heterophobiclanwangji · 4 years

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Stupid Sexy Shizun

(an unnecessarily long post about Shen QIngqiu, romantic storylines, and dangerous fanon)

I see a lot of varying characterizations for Shen Qingqiu, especially vis a vis his allure to the other (typically male) members of the cast. Frankly, I do think the entire thing is funnier if a lot of people are in love with Shen Qingqiu, who only really recognizes Luo Binghe (and even then only after nearly apocalyptic levels of drama), and I’m willing to believe that he is unwittingly attractive for the following reasons:

he unintentionally falls into suggestive situations (the Skinner incident with the immortal binding cables, the Huan Hua Palace Water Dungeon, also with immortal binding cables For Some Reason, the succubus incident with Liu Qingge, etc.)

he may fall into improper/informal forms of address (for example, calling Binghe by name the first time they meet, rather than Luo Binghe or any of the previous Shen Qingqiu’s, er, nicknames)

he doesn’t always understand physical boundaries the same way as other characters (yikes @ the scene in one of the extras where he gives Binghe spiritual energy via skin-to-skin contact and fails to understand how/why that would be inappropriate, and potentially the situation with Liu Qingge cleansing his meridians, although I have reservations about that)

he tends to objectify people, which makes more sense when you realize he’s evaluating them based on his understanding of their characters and function in the original plot and cataloging differences, but reads differently to people who don’t have that context (which is almost everyone) (he makes internal comments about how hot a lot of the characters are, and I feel like he stares at people, but I can’t remember a specific incident for this; in conversations, it comes up in lines like “even if something bad happens, it won’t happen to you,” or “I knew you would definitely win,” both spoken to Binghe--at this point Shen Qingqiu doesn’t know Binghe very well and still sees him as The Protagonist, but to Binghe they just seem like heartwarming moments of security and belief)

he has trouble enforcing platonic guidelines to his relationships due to his fundamental belief that no one would find him attractive, be it romantically or sexually, and therefore sees no reason to draw that distinction (not going to cite specific incidences for this, it’s more of a recurring combination of his low self-esteem and lack of self-awareness, which I may talk about later in another post).

however, some reasons I have seen in fandom that do not seem likely based on my understanding of the plot and characters (although I will be the first to admit that I do not remember every single detail of the novel or extras, and that Shen Qingqiu is not the most reliable narrator to start with) are as follows:

fan language (technically possible, no indications given in canon, and you cannot convince me that Mr. I-Named-This-Poison-With-No-Cure-Without-A-Cure, Great God Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky had the patience and wherewithal to research or create a comprehensive fan language)

owning and using slutty, slutty inner robes (this would require the cutthroat, inscrutable original Shen Qingqiu to own such robes in the first place, I don’t remember any canonical references to improper dress aside from instances where he has been disrobed--the Skinner incident, Huan Hua Palace Water Dungeon, and his QingSi treatment--, and Shen Qingqiu has a healthy paranoia about governing his appearances so people won’t realize he isn’t the original goods; yes, the Peak Lords suspect him of being possessed anyway, but to my knowledge their reasons centered around his personability and investment in his students rather than robes or hair ornamentation)

eating suggestive foods (this one is slightly debatable. again, he doesn’t see himself as someone people would find attractive, so I can’t discount the idea that he would inadvertently eat something in a suggestive manner. however, I saw someone have him request dishes involving aphrodisiacs, and I was like, WACK. He probably had a cataloged index of the different weird plants and monsters of PIDW before his transmigration and ranted excessively in the comments about all of the pointless precursors to papapa, up to and including creating different plants/animal organs that have the same or better effects and then yelled at Airplane for not keeping better track of his own inventions. This is the guy who saw Liu Qingge under the effects of succubus poison or whatever and immediately knocked him into a cold bath. you won’t catch him slipping that easily)

enabling Binghe to get away with suggestive/improper and sexualized behavior while he was still a teenaged disciple. I think this one really gets to me because that narrative of the virginal innocent Shizun and his perverted disciple is the exact view that the outside world has of their dynamic, as represented by the fragments of The Resentment of Chunshan that we see in the extras. People see Binghe as a depraved monster (he is a demon, after all) and make insinuations about his treatment of Shen Qingqiu’s corpse during the five years between his death and resurrection. For contrast, the crux of the novel is Shen Qingqiu realizing that Binghe is hurt and insecure and desperately begging to be loved. In the extras he even goes through some of Binghe’s memories and remarks about how, contrary to rumor, all Binghe did was keep his body from rotting while he searched for ways to revive him. I won’t say that Binghe wasn’t a teenage boy and never did what teenage boys do, but the extras showed us that Binghe would rather throw himself into a cold lake than act inappropriately towards his Shizun, and I can’t remember him making any sexual advances until after Shen Qingqiu came back to life. In canon, Binghe is ill-informed and generally bad at sex, which doesn’t speak to me like someone who was just waiting for the right moment to strike.

I will read a hundred fics about Shen Qingqiu inadvertently causing people to fall in love with him, but a lot of fanworks try to make it about a physical allure rather than his personality and the ways in which he feels comfortable interacting with other people. People respond to his kindness and his feelings of duty and honor, and it makes me feel cheated to see interpretations downplay characteristics of his actual personality, especially when it degrades the characters around him, too. Yue Qingyuan feels protective of him but generally listens when Shen Qingqiu tells him not to draw his sword, and in canon he gave Shen Qingqiu enough space that he was surprised by the extent of his grief when Binghe was in the Endless Abyss. Liu Qingge is also protective of Shen Qingqiu and is involved in getting Shen Qingqiu’s promise to remain with Cang Qiong Mountain Sect before the Maigu Ridge incident, but doesn’t stop him from leaving when he decides to go. Binghe makes some questionable choices, but his anger and insecurity are understandable even without the rampant communication failures and the influence of Xin Mo, and the end of the novel shows that Luo Binghe is willing to leave if that’s what Shen Qingqiu wants.

Sometimes fan interpretations get really intense about this, as if Yue Qingyuan, Liu Qingge, and Luo Binghe would catfight over Shen Qingqiu. Granted, Liu Qingge and Luo Binghe are willing to throw down at any given time, but the main romantic development comes from Shen Qingqiu treating other people with respect and receiving respect in return. While people do try to influence Shen QIngqiu’s decisions, the ultimate choice is his own.

One of the points of the novel is that people matter and their choices affect not only themselves but the people around them. I don’t care if Shen Qingqiu is some kind of accidental sex god, because his choices and especially his decision to care about other people give Yue Qingyuan, Liu Qingge, and Luo Binghe each something they didn’t have in the original storyline: Yue Qingyuan gets a chance to explain himself and his failures, and is relieved of his burden of caring for Shen Qingqiu; Liu Qingge gets to live and see his little sister grow up; and Luo Binghe gets to be loved and cared for.

As for Shen Qingqiu, he got to choose his own happy ending.

#scum villain #shen qingqiu #scum villain meta #bingqiu #svsss #svss #other characters and ships to a lesser extent #sorry yue qingyuan and liu qingge #me when i was most of the way through the post: wait am i a luo binghe apologist???#i keep a 'luo binghe did some things wrong' sign next to my 'the misunderstandings in scum villain make sense actually' sign #i feel like i got. way too passionate about this #i do not expect this to get notes #my posts

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amillioninprizes · 5 years

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Some thoughts on Veronica Mars, fan service, and noir

I’ve been on winter break and at home with a nasty combo cold-ear infection-stomach virus the past couple of weeks, and as so often happens when I don’t have much going on, my thoughts have turned to ruminating over the steaming pile of excrement that was season 4 of Veronica Mars. Why yes, almost six months and one cancellation notice later and I’m still complaining about it--as I told someone on Twitter, it was so stupid that it’s going to take years to unpack.

This particular rant is brought to you by a common refrain seen in both professional critics’ and S4 supporters’ reviews of S4: the movie was schlocky fan service, while S4 is TRUE NOIR. I’m here to argue that neither of those things are true, and that in the grand scheme of things trying to definitively call Veronica Mars noir or not isn’t the best qualitative judgement of the series.

A note on “fanservice”

Something that’s been very strange to me in the critical discussion around S4 is that the fan-funded movie has been retconned as a fanservicey failure. This is weird because it did get a positive Rotten Tomatoes score, actually turned a profit despite the unorthodox distribution model, and was overall well-received by fans except for maybe the 5 Piz lovers out there (he absolutely did not deserve better you guys; he works at This American Life and lives in Brooklyn, he’ll be fine).

A lot of the things pointed to in the movie as fan service actually weren’t. In every interview about the movie and S4, RT and KB always talk about how they started with the image of Veronica punching Madison at the high school reunion and worked from there. The problem is that almost no one had been asking for that. If they had bothered to read any online discourse about the show (and we know RT definitely does), they would know that fans are actually somewhat sympathetic to Madison--after all, she was the intended recipient of the drugged drink Veronica received at Shelly Pomeroy’s party, plus growing up in a family that she wasn’t meant to be a member of must have negatively impacted her. When the preview scene of Veronica encountering Madison at the reunion welcome table was released, Veronica didn’t come off sympathetically. In a similar vein, as much as I liked Corny as a side character in the original series, I didn’t need him to come back for that random scene at the reunion. Nor was anyone asking for an out-of-nowhere James Franco cameo (which given what we know about him now is super gross in hindsight).

So why was the movie well-received by fans? Veronica was in character after an unevenly written and performed S3, and she was back in Neptune, doing what (and who; Ay-yo!) she was meant to do. So while the mystery was subpar (and what Rob Thomas mystery isn’t?), the character side of the story made sense and was satisfying. I wouldn’t call that fan service so much as good writing. Plus, what is even the point of wasting time, money, and effort on making a tv show or movie if it’s going to actively alienate the audience?

S4: more trauma porn than true noir

Admittedly, I’m not exactly the world’s foremost scholar on film noir (in my opinion, the height of cinema is teen romcoms c. 1995-2005), but I do feel I have enough pop cultural knowledge to have a working understanding of what film noir is, and as internet folk would say, S4 ain’t it chief. Sure, S4 was bleak subject matter wise, but that does not automatically equal noir. HappilyShanghaied, who does have a film studies background, wrote a pretty excellent post about why that is shortly after S4 dropped that I could not improve upon, so I will just leave it here.

In addition to this analysis, I would also point out that S4 was lacking in a unique visual style common to noir films, especially compared to the original television series and the movie. The original series made use of green, blue, and yellow filters to fulfill a high school version of the noir aesthetic (quick shoutout to Cheshirecatstrut’s color theory posts for more on what we thought this meant before it turned out that Rob Thomas did not actually intend to imbue meaning into any of this), while the movie adopted a more mature muted blue-grey palette. S4, however, was more or less shot like a conventional drama and was brightly lit, perhaps signifying Rob Thomas’s apparent plans to turn the show into a conventional procedural.

The movie: more than fan service

If anything, the movie was more noir than S4. Take Gia’s storyline for instance. While Veronica was off obtaining elite degrees, Gia spent 9 years in a virtual cage being forced into a sexual relationship without her total consent (because that’s the only storyline women can have on this show), and then set herself up to be murdered at the very moment she could potentially break free. That’s pretty fucking grim.

Then there is the whole police corruption storyline, which is a hallmark of noir fiction. The glimpses we get of the Neptune sheriff’s department point to a larger conspiracy at play than just crooked cops; Sachs lost his life trying to expose it and Keith was gravely injured. This was the story I was excited for future installments of Veronica Mars to address, especially given its relevance to today’s politics. Unfortunately, this thread was entirely dropped in S4, where the police department (because, as Rob Thomas revealed in interviews but not onscreen, Neptune has incorporated) is merely overwhelmed by the scope of the bombing case rather than outright corrupt. (Side note but Marcia Langdon was also a more complex and morally grey character when introduced in the second book than she was on screen in S4. Another wasted opportunity).

Noir is also marked by a sense of inevitability or doom as a result of greater forces at play. An example of this in the movie is Weevil’s storyline. After building a life and family for himself, he ultimately ends up rejoining the PCHer gang he left as a teenager due to a misunderstanding based on his race and appearance and the assumptions authority figures make about him because of those things. No matter what he does, he is still limited by an unjust and racist society. Contrast this with the final explosion in S4; it’s not inevitable, just based on Veronica’s incompetence. Rob Thomas claims that he tried to create a sense of doom to LoVe’s relationship between the OOC Leo storyline and the last minute barriers before the wedding, but those aspects just served to make the story unnecessarily convoluted.

What is noir anyway? Was Veronica Mars ever noir? Does it matter?

But this is all assuming there is a set template for noir anyway. This New Yorker essay points out that trying to definitively establish a set of rules for noir is difficult and that the classic noir films were more a product of midcentury artistic and political movements than a defined genre. The noir filmmakers working at the time would not have described their work as such. The kicker of this essay is the final sentence: “But the film noir is historically determined by particular circumstances; that’s why latter-day attempts at film noir, or so-called neo-noirs, almost all feel like exercises in nostalgia.” I found this particularly amusing because as Rob Thomas infamously proclaimed in his S4 era interviews, he wanted to completely dispense with nostalgia going forward. Rob Thomas and S4 supporters have said that Logan needed to die because noir protagonists can’t have stable relationships; but, if there isn’t a defined set of rules other than “an element of crime”, then was it strictly necessary? Hell, writing a hardboiled detective who does have a stable relationship and maybe even a family could have been an interesting subversion of genre expectations. Unfortunately, Rob Thomas isn’t that imaginative.

There’s also the issue that noir and hardboiled detective fiction aren’t interchangeable genres. This article lays out that idea that they aren’t the same because noir is ultimately about doomed losers; in contrast, detective fiction, while dark, contains a moral center and has an ending where a sense of justice is achieved. An interview with author Megan Abbott makes a similar argument; she states that in hardboiled detective fiction, “At the end, everything is a mess, people have died, but the hero has done the right thing or close to it, and order has, to a certain extent, been restored.” Based on the descriptions laid out here, I would argue that in its original format Veronica Mars far better fit the detective fiction model; while she wasn’t always right, she was never a loser, and she solved the mystery. S1-3 all had relatively hopeful, if not totally happy, endings, but you never see anyone complaining that they weren’t noir enough; if anything, they were more emotionally complex than the ending of S4, where Logan’s death is essentially meaningless. One could make the argument that S4 did push Veronica towards a more noir characterization by the definition of these articles by making her more incompetent and meaner than she was in previous installments, but that is a fundamental change in character, which is not coherent writing.

And that is ultimately why S4 was so poorly received by longtime fans and why there will be no more installments of Veronica Mars anytime soon (at least on Hulu). Even if S4 had been noir (or at least shot like one), the serious issues with plotting, characterization, and lack of adherence to prior canon that this season exhibited would still exist. Defending the poor writing choices made in S4 with “it’s noir!” does not mask them or automatically heighten the quality of the product. Perhaps ironically, in ineptly trying to be noir in S4, Rob Thomas likely prematurely ended Veronica Mars by failing his creation and fans with lazy storytelling.

#Veronica Mars #Burnt Marshmallow #Yeah I'm still angry what of it #If only RT had put as much effort into writing the show as I did into this post

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mysticdragon3md3 · 4 years

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Reacting to last few episodes of Nippu Sentai Hurricanger.

4:07 PM 8/1/2020 Nippu Sentai Hurricanger ep49; last scenes.

Why is this tragic music playing during Shurikenger's battle scene?

Oh no...I just remembered that Super Sentai Hurricanger is a "ninja story". We know what's the most common trope in a story about ninja... Ninja sacrificing themselves. ;~~; . . . 4:13 PM 8/1/2020 ep50

Wait. Is Gozen dead too? Why did she appear in that flash of remembering Shurikenger being dead? Is that why Shurikenger sacrificed himself? Gozen was already dead?

I think I remember these antagonist ninja girls from Gokaiger. Ever since I started catching Hurricanger on Tokushoutsu, I've been wondering how these 2 kunoichi end up either surviving or defecting away from the villains' side.

And of course the villain in a ninja story is the one who betrays their master. Sandaaru.

Wait. Why did Ikkou and Isshu's mecha blow up? Did they do that cliche where you stab through yourself to get the enemy? Haven't seen that since Jin. I guess we gotta have more ninja sacrificing themselves before the series ends. ~.~; I want to go on about how "cliche" it is, but only to blunt the blow of the tragedy. Because honestly, these tropes really do hit me in the feels! ;o;!!!

Oboro and the Headmaster god killed to?!???? Jeeze, how much tragedy does this story need?!? ;O;!!! ...Oh, yeah, I forgot: This is a "ninja story". Tragedy and everyone dying is kind of the prerogative.

Wait. Why aren't they getting into their mecha to fight? Oh yeah. First gotta have the unmasked character introduction kata/mie pose sequence at the start of the series' last battle. I loved that in Gokaiger! (I'm going to refer to Gokaiger a lot. It's the only Super Sentai series I've finished. I barely started with Shinkenger before my source for episodes dried up.) . . . 4:30 PM 8/1/2020 ep51 "Final Scroll: Wind, Water, Earth".

Oh, yeah. Even though the lead Sentai is red like fire, there is no Fire in the Asian fundamental elements set---noWaitaminute! Yes thre is! Wind is the one that's missing! If anything, Wind is considered Ki. If Fire is there then why isn't the red Sentai representative of Fire? Is this a ninja thing? Ninja and the wind? Probably. lol

Tau Zant is back?! O.o?! Well, I guess building him up as the final boss, all season, and not giving him the final battle would've been disappointing.

Oh, wait. He's a conglomeration of all the villain's evil wills? I thought that trope was only for yokai stories... But I guess ninja stories do use a lot of magic and blur the line with the yokai genre.

I like that they won the mecha battle by pretending to be beaten. They used both the tropes of "an enemy is the most dangerous when about to be killed with a final blow" and "a ninja's primary weapon is deception", to get to Tau Zant's forehead weak spot. And I also like the trope of "the villain makes an obvious fatal flaw" during battle tactics, rather than just the plot. I know all these tropes are cliche in Japan, but I re~ally like them~! ;u;! It's so weird that at the hint of a cliche trope from American/Hollywood media, I get kind of bored, but I love all these Japanese pop culture tropes from anime, manga, and tokusatsu. ^.^; But I guess some things just speak to you, and some things don't. lol

The villains have a combined attack "canon" now? lol "Falling back from the exploooooooooooooosions!" LOL

WAit. Ikkou and Isshu are still alive? Well, it is nice to soften the blow of death for a kid's show. ^.^ And more importantly, they get to fight in the final final battle. If a series finale battle lacked in fanservice, like the fanserive of seeing all the main characters fighting together, then I'd be disappointed.

Now that they're doing their poses with minimal costuming, I can see more clearing that they're doing actual kabuki mie poses. ^o^ I love it! ^o^

Of course, Oboro and her dad turn out to still be alive. LOL I'm sorry, but I feel RELIEVED! ;u;!!!!!! All those tragic deaths, from the previous episodes, all at once, was too much. ;o;! I mean, it was really effective for The Feels at the time, but damnit, I watch fun kid shows to get away from my anxiety/depression! Later, some jerk always comes out of the fandom woodwork to complain about "undoing character deaths is cheap" or "it cheapens the story". Blahblahblah. I'm sorry, but if you can't retain the lessons/emotions/revealations you learned when you *thought* tragedy happened, unless the tragedy stays, then I've got to question your ability to learn from events and not take stuff for granted! All these crybaby fanboys complaining about the effects of a death not staying unless the death stays...I don't think they even got the important effects of a death. I don't think they really learned what's important. When a character dies, it's supposed to bring to mind all regrets left unresolved. And then, more importantly, the surviving character(s) is supposed to resolve to change themselves to not make those same mistakes. Not the mistake that specifically got the other character killed in their death scene, but the mistakes of all those everyday things that were left unresolved, out of an assumption that there would always be more time with that killed character. I personally think that striving everyday to guard against making those same mistakes is a whole other, brand new battle, that needs to be taken on everyday. To me, that's a whole new world of tension and drama that doesn't get erased when the "killed" character returns from the dead. When the "killed" character gets resurrected, that's the START of a brand new battle, a battle that the surviving character has already proven to have LOST BEFORE. That's why it became a regret---Though a regret unnoticed until the "killed" character died. The "killed" character's resurrection inherently has drama because the surviving character might fail again, might prove that they either learned nothing or more tragically, are unable to overcome their everyday flaws, to avoid repeating that same regret. That's a whole lot more tragic to me than a character staying dead. (When [spoiler] returned from the dead at the end of Kamen Rider W, I ranted so much against those fanboys complaining that his resurrection "ruined" everything. Urrrrgh!!! https://mysticdragon3md3.tumblr.com/post/111356254057/spoilertastic-rant-warning-for-kamen-rider-w)

But yeah, Gozen and Shurikenger remaining dead works. I didn't watch many episodes of this season, but there was a lot less connection between the audience and those 2, compared to with the other Hurricanger.

Is that a persimmon? He better be eating a persimmon! ^O^ Can't have a ninja story without eating persimmon! LOL

Wait. Did PlutoTV just cut off the last scene of the last episode?!?!?! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, good. Tokushoutsu came back. I wonder what all that back to back loading was all about?

I just realized "Ikkou" and "Isshu"... Doesn't that mean "Let's go together"? ;U;!

Aaaaahhhh! Another trope I love! Catch something from the master to complete your training! ^o^

Are they seriously intercutting between this graduation fight and their future careers? lol I guess it makes more sense

Big Shurikenger cameo at the end. lol Nice to get all the actors together. I did like that joke about never really know what Shurikenger's real face was.

Ah~ I didn't watch the full season, but Super Sentai finale episodes are always satisfying. ;u; . . . 5:02 PM 8/1/2020 I guess PlutoTV/Tokushoutsu is starting again with episode 1.

It was a persimmon in the final episode! ^o^

Wait. So the only reason this trio became Hurricanger was because they were the slackers playing hookie while everyone else was attacked?! LOL I love that trope. lol

But wait... So did all the other students DIE?????????????? ;O;!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaugh! O~O!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Omg. They just rushed into battle, all at the same time, with no cover, and all obvious moves... They really are idiots. lol I love them. ;u; Well, I love knowing how much they're going to grow from this low level. . . . 5:28 PM 8/1/2020 So I went on YouTube to try to find Power Rangers Ninja Storm episode 1, just to compare how they handled their character introductions. And OMG. I'm sorry, I hate them. ~_____~;;;;;;;;;;;; Everyone is snarky, disrespectful in ways that imply a lack of common compassion, and they're too much dialogue like "dude, I don't get this because I'm totally stupid". Uuuuuuuuuggh~ ~o~;;;;;;;;;;;;;; See, this is what I mean by how astonished I am that get sick of American fiction tropes so easily, but inexplicably just eat up those J-pop culture tropes. ~_~; . . . 5:31 PM 8/1/2020 Hurricanger ep2

Oh, these are the jobs that tied into the final episode's montage. I like the lesson about not forgetting the "important Fight in your heart" even while you're doing everyday mundane life.

Sorry, I'm not paying attention, but I've got stuff to do. ^^; Well, looks like Tokushoutsu is ending their Hurricanger marathon block, so I'm going to switch to some studying concentration ASMR.

Wait. Gotta listen to Kamen Rider Ichigo's opening theme! ^O^!!! "Rider jump! Rider kick! Kamen Rider, Kamen Rider! Rider! Rider!" ^U^!!!

#reactions #md3 watches hurricanger #nippu sentai hurricanger #super sentai #tokusatsu

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drowning-in-dennor · 5 years

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Nightmare

In a world where one can hear whatever music their soulmate is listening to, one can find themselves listening to some rather romantic songs. This is not the case for one unfortunate young man, though, whose soulmate has developed the tendency to listen to obnoxious meme music. [Written for day three of @weekofhetalia‘s Hetalia Extravaganza.]

The clock reads “3:00 a.m.”.

He smothers his face in the pillow, muffles a pained scream and tries to block out the annoying song in his head.

Whoever his soulmate is, Stellan’s ready to tear him apart with his bare hands. Who the hell is listening to some Barbie song at three in the morning!? He grabs his phone, plugs in his earphones and tries to wash his sorrows away with some of his own music, knowing that his soulmate’ll be listening to it, too. Take that, bastard.

The music stops around fifteen minutes later, and Stellan unplugs his earphones and tries to go back to sleep.

…

When he storms into his office the next day, shooting a murderous look at his poor secretary, Aleksander gets up from his seat and pats his shoulder sympathetically. “Your soulmate?”

“Obviously,” he seethes, “they started listening to some idiotic song in the middle of the night and woke me up. Again.” Stellan pulls his chair out and sits down, yanking out his notebook with a little too much force. “I really hope my soulmate isn’t someone who listens to children's cartoon music at strange hours.”

Aleksander laughs and takes his seat in the cubicle next to Stellan’s. “Ah, we’ve all heard that special someone listen to something weird. Bogden was scared out of his wits because I kept listening to, and I quote, ‘scary music’. Maybe they’ll actually be really nice.”

Stellan flips a page open, pulling a pen out and scribbling incoherently. “I highly doubt anyone who listens to Barbie songs at three in the morning could be ‘really nice’.”

“You never know,” he says, “I remember Bogden being all surprised when it turned out I was his soulmate. He said I was too cute to be listening to that kind of music!” At Stellan’s incredulous huff, Aleksander pokes his head over their divider. “Come on, have some faith! Your soulmate will be perfect for you.”

Rapidly clicking his pen, Stellan turns to another page and nearly rips it out of his notebook. “He better be, or I’m going to be very, very disappointed.”

…

Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down…

“Oh, are you FUC — “

“What’re they listening to?” Aleksander calls.

“Never Going to Give You Up!” Stellan resists the urge to slam his head on his desk and grabs his phone, plugging in his earphones again. “I swear, if they start listening to some idiotic song again, I will hunt them down and rip them apart limb from limb.”

The jaunty chorus of Never Going to Give you Up slowly melts away as the soothing voice of Patti Paige starts to play from his cell phone, and Stellan continues with his work.

I remember the nights and the Tennessee Waltz, now I know just how much I have lost…

…

...yes, I lost my little darling the night they were playing the beautiful Tennessee Waltz!

Stellan pushes the door open to Boulangerie Bonnefoy. “Good afternoon, Matthieu.”

“Hey, Stellan.” Matthieu waves from the counter, laying out fluffy brioche rolls in their display cases. “The usual?”

“Yes, please,” he says, sitting down at a table by the window, “and I’m sorry if I end up rather… cranky today. My soulmate’s being an asshole.”

Matthieu walks back into the kitchen. “Are they playing weird music?”

“They rickrolled me.”

“Ah, the classic trick.”

A few minutes later, Matthieu comes out with a bowl of steaming soup and a plate of barbajuan. “Here you go.” He smiles as he returns to the counter. “And good luck with your soulmate.”

To prevent any unpleasant surprises (and spilling of soup), Stellan puts on his earphones and starts playing his own music. For a good ten minutes, he manages to have his lunch in peace, enjoying the flaky, rich barbajuan and creamy soup.

Then the door swings open, and in walk a group of three incredibly loud men.

“I’m telling you, man,” one of them rants, “there’s no way my talented boy Michael lost to Wendy, of all his classmates! I bet the competition was rigged!”

“Or, Al,” another says, “Kirkland’s little girl just had a better speech. I mean, Michael’s speech started with, ‘hot take: uniforms are stupid and here’s why’.”

Al turns on his friend, crossing his arms. “It was a good intro!”

“It was good because you thought of it?” The last man asks.

“It was good because it was engaging and unconventional, Gilbert!”

“When did you learn those words?” Gilbert dodges a kick from Al and runs towards the counter, slamming his hands on top. “Hey, can we have, uh, three of those little quiche things, please? Thanks.”

A very startled-looking Matthieu pokes his head into the kitchen, presumably telling his brother to prepare the mens’ lunch. “Do you want anything else?”

“Nope.” He gestures for his friends to pay, dropping a few notes on the counter. “Hey Al, pass the dough. Henrik,” Gilbert looks to him, “you going to pay or not?”

Henrik clutches his head, rubbing at his temples. “One sec, my soulmate’s listening to their old-timey music again. Lemme shut them up.”

Exactly twenty seconds later, Stellan’s napkin flutters to the ground as he claps a hand against his forehead, the astonishingly obnoxious first verse of Take Me On suddenly screaming in his head.

“Yeah, there we go.” Henrik passes Gilbert his money, tightening his headphones. “I predict I’ll have five minutes until they retaliate.”

You must remember this — a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh! The fundamental things apply as time goes by…

“I thought so.”

He drops his spoon as the Soviet Union’s anthem starts playing in his head. Stellan fumbles for his phone and clicks on the first song in his playlist.

Nidelven River so still and so sweet, here I do go to dream, dreaming of you whom I once loved so dear, faded now to mere memories —

BAB —

Stellan rips his headphones out and jumps to his feet, shouting to nobody in particular, “will you STOP?”

Henrik drops his phone in surprise, staring at him. “...what?”

“Oh.” He sits back down, face burning. “I’m sorry, my soulmate’s playing some really stupid music, that’s all.”

“Don’t worry, so’s mine. All that old music’s driving me insane!”

And it clicks.

Getting up again, Stellan points at Henrik as his face blooms crimson. “So it was you!”

“What?”

“You were the one playing all that stupid music!” He approaches Henrik, scowling. “You woke me up at three in the morning today and scared the hell out of me with your idiotic prank!”

Henrik places his hands on his hips. “Well, you were the one playing all those boring songs that sound like they’re from the Stone Age!”

“That also means you two are soulmates,” Al interrupts.

Stellan looks at Henrik. “Wait.”

“Hold up.”

“No way you’re my soulmate!” He stomps towards Henrik, placing his hands on his shoulders. “No way the person I’m supposed to be with is a fan of such insipid music!”

“And no way is my soulmate someone who listens to sappy old songs! I mean, they’re super sweet and actually not that bad, but — “

“You think they’re sweet?”

Henrik pauses. “Yes? They’re kind of boring, but the lyrics are cute.”

Stellan’s face turns pink as he stares at him. “You know,” he slowly says, “maybe this won’t be too bad if you can appreciate my music.”

“And if you can appreciate mine.”

“No promises.” He smiles, barely so, at Henrik. “But I’ll try.”

#aph dennor #APH Denmark #APH Norway #aph robul #aph romania #APH America #APH Prussia #aph awesome trio #aph fanfiction #hetaliaextravanganza2k19 #my writing

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disappearinginq · 4 years

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Hey I was kind of a bitch to you in the past... Holy Fuck I’ve just understood why you hate shippers, ok I’m a shipper but yikes others are worse. I mean so many people who just want their faves to get together quickly, yikes that can ruin a show fast. I mean yes certain characters could be great together but it needs to be done right not in the batshit crazy cheesy cringe way the shippers demand, yikes. And sorry again for being a bitch in the past.

(2/3)Shippers who are like “and now kiss” or “oh that look they are going to become a thing” and a whole bunch of other BS annoy me so much. If the writers of any show are dumb enough to listen to that it would kill it fast (oh yeah ranting about the Magnum fandom). As a shipper (hahaha you probably hate me now sorry) I cringe when I see others behave like that, I think maybe there’s potential but kinda in a slow burn way (though not ultra show because way too slow and it would end like TIVA).1 (3/3) 2. If a ship is being done right the chemistry needs to build more over time and certain aspects need to change about the character. I just hate the “toxic shippers” who act all entitled wanting a relationship to just happen. Like no it needs to build and the characters need to grow and change slightly, though I can see the possibility of a relationship though I could also see one or two other possibilities that would probably make the psycho shippers burst into flames 😂😂

You know, I’ve held onto this for a long while because I wasn’t entirely sure how to answer it. It’s not even the people who basically mash characters together and don’t care about plot (though it does contribute). But I like watching some of my mutuals having their ‘ships that they follow and love and adore and I get these happy little moments of ‘awww, I just love them, look at their faces!’ or even talking with people about ‘oh, wouldn’t it be interesting if so and so wound up together? I think they could be good, etc’. People who have their happy little bubbles, and their happy little ships, and write their fun little coffee shop AUs where everyone gets to be happy....fine. It’s not my deal, just like dark, super angsty whump fic prrrrobably doesn’t fall into their orbit. It’s cool.

I do not like the little shitfucks who pop in just to harass people about either 1) preferring a different ship or 2) not liking their ship. I don’t like the people who get so fucking worked up about an imaginary character that they ruin real lives. Clearly, they don’t like getting that sort of hate, so their brave little selves show up on anonymous so I can’t (unless I feel like recalling OPSEC training that I wasn’t really paying attention to the first time around to back track their digital footprint to throw molotov cocktails at their very real front doors, but I am fundamentally lazy, so...). Shippers of that type are the reason why I stopped watching Voltron - you know, a goddamn kid’s cartoon. Because people were heinous and harassing the voice actors and the writers to the point that the creators didn’t want to work on it anymore.

And the romance thing I hate because it’s quite often lazy writing, and they make it super melodramatic just for the sake of arguing or having something stupid to bring up later. Chloe and Lucifer = I adore. They spend four whole seasons, each character evolving, becoming better, finding out more about themselves, having real life problems and doubts and trying to decide if they even like who they are with their person. Those stories? I love. But that is pretty much the only one I can think of that didn’t make me shriek at the TV “JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET A GODDAMN PLOT”. I hate that media and shipping just ignores any other relationship. I hate that years of friendship are ignored or put on the back burner because ROMANCE. I hate the stupid, awkward ‘oh, well, we once slept together and now we have to work together and this is weird haha’ - no, it’s fucking garbage. I hate that once shippers decide ‘this is what I want to happen’ they don’t care about anything else. I hate that relationships are becoming these awful, horrid things where people just fight and bicker and break up and make up and just become an awful round robin of WHERE THE HELL DID THE STORY DISAPPEAR TO?!

And it’s not like it can’t be done well. Like I said, Lucifer and Chloe. Danny Rand and Colleen Wing from Iron Fist (WHO I LOVE AND ADORE), Jessica Whitly and Gil Arroyo (talk about a trash fire where the least dramatic thing is almost having a moment with the guy who caught your serial killer ex-husband) in Prodigal Son, Martha and Francis from Mr. Right, Ty and Amy from Heartland, Jake and Leslie from Republic of Doyle, Danny and Lexi from Blood & Treasure, Jules and Shawn from Psych. And that’s just off the top of my head.

Thomas and Higgins have potential, but not if writing is still bullshit. There are honestly some moments in episodes where I love how Higgins changes. I love the way that she takes one look at Thomas as he considers having to tell a woman that her newly wed husband died and immediately does it for him rather than making him be the one. That is a solid example of character growth and mutual understanding. I hate the constant fake dating, fake marriage, fake whateverflavoroftheweek. I would hate it in any show, but I really hate how they use it in this show because they just...ruin any progress she mad as a character, and any progress they made as writers. The next thing we’re going to have is a fake pregnancy, or a fake shared child, or some other equally awful crap that sidelines Rick and TC to their own spin-off within their own show, doing exactly what they made fun of Robin for doing to them in the pilot episode despite the ‘rolling like Musketeers’.

And for anyone who thinks I just hate on Higgins, my least favorite episode is actually “Die He Said” which has nothing to do with her, but just...wtfuckery plot holes and shoddy writing.

Just....ARGH. They’ve proven they can do this story and these characters justice, but then they just keep shooting themselves in the foot.

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niennavalier · 5 years

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Okay I wasn’t planning on doing a DS9 rant post but here it is, under the cut in case I get annoying about DS9 and romance and Julian in particular

Okay, so I swear, the writers went into the show with this idea that Julian Bashir was gonna be this fresh-out-of-med-school brilliant, attractive doctor with charm to spare and something like this ladies’ man kinda attitude. Maybe (hopefully) not that sleazy, but still. And then it didn’t really work in season 1 in regards to Jadzia, so they dropped that storyline (thank fuck).

But then it’s so weird when I think they’re trying to kinda keep it alive through the show, except it literally never really works quite right? Even though the DS9 writers are legitimately good with writing the other romances on the show?? Kira and Odo? Absolutely adorable, I would die for them. Jadzia and Worf? Who would’ve that that’d work? Not me! But I’d die for them too!

(Yes, all of these characters have other romantic interests at times, some good - like Lenara Kahn - and others less so - Bareil is really boring and Lwaxana Troi DID NOT need to be there - but they also get these fantastic long-term stories)

Meanwhile, for my favorite doctor? I might be missing some but here’s what I could think of whilst typing: Melora was...sorta forgettable (I forgot about the episode until I was just scrolling through all of them). Technically fine but...forgettable. Leeta...honestly I never understood this pairing. I legitimately don’t remember ever seeing them get together on screen; best I recall, they were just together one day and we were supposed to just accept it. Which...whatever, I’m not a fan, and this pairing did nothing for either of them. Serena, I actually liked; they were cute together in that one episode, but at the same time I’m torn because I truly believe the writers made the right choice in that she had to experience the world for herself. For all the cuteness, I much prefer her discovering her own self-worth and think that’s better for her as her own character.

And then. There’s Dax. The first couple seasons? Awkward as fuck. No thanks. But then him and Jadzia become like, best science buddies! And he painfully third-wheels for her date with Lenara in Rejoined! And it’s like “wow now that’s true friendship right there”. And I loved that relationship so much! We watched Julian grow up a lot since the pilot, and honestly, him becoming best friends with Jadzia matched that change really well. Going from this kinda juvenile crush and strange persistence to a much more mature friendship. I mean, there’s one episode (which I can’t place at the moment) where there’s some crisis on the station and they’re hiding somewhere, she’s hurt, and they’re both freezing. And he’s holding her, and she makes some comment on how past-him would’ve used this as an opportunity to try and spark something between them. But present-him isn’t like that anymore, and watching as the audience, there truly isn’t weird romantic tension between them. It’s intimacy and familiarity and comfort without the weight of romance. And it’s perfect.

But then all of a sudden, the back half of season 6 starts happening, and apparently he’s always loved her? And it’s like...where did this come from?? You were doing so well, writers, what happened?? It just...suddenly brought back all the awkwardness of season 1, except at least this time, he’s not acting on it. So instead it’s just weirdly angsty and 100% out of left field. (Also Quark loves her, which is random but less concerning to me cause at least it wasn’t reviving an abandoned plot point, like with Julian) (The Quark point isn’t relevant, but I just felt like saying it)

And that whole thing just put the biggest pit in my stomach, cause I knew about Ezri joining them in season 7 and I was just like “nooo pleeeease don’t get him together with Ezri”

Apparently I just live to be disappointed.

Full disclosure, I actually haven’t fully watched the scene where they get together, but my roommate did end up coming upon a scene of them together in bed, and I’m not that stupid. Bonus: I’m about 6 away from the end, and that in itself is kinda concerning, because now I’m double concerned that it’s gonna be rushed even worse than I thought it would. Because, as of now, she has had barely any contact with Julian, outside of just being part of the senior staff (aka being a main character). I can honestly only actively remember them having one conversation, which just existed for her to say that if Worf hadn’t shown up, then Jadzia would’ve chosen Julian. Which...okay...what now? Worf didn’t show up until season 5, wtf is this about? If Jadzia was actually in love with Julian, she would’ve done something about it. Jadzia Dax is NOT passive about what she wants, and it’s what makes her such a joy to watch. She’s even willing to act against her own culture out of her love for Lenara, despite hesitation because yeah, that’s a lot of risk. She’s willing to leave her friends to be with the dude she met in that weird world that blipped between universes. She acts with her heart and without fear, even in situations where there are barriers stopping her from doing what she wants. There was never such a barrier with her and Julian, so yeah, no, if she’d wanted him - truly wanted him - she would’ve gone for it.

The scene only exists for them to try and justify putting him together with Ezri, and it SUCKS on every conceivable level.

(Also yes, I know they have some other, normal conversations, but they’re never particularly interesting or impactful, so I don’t remember them, and that probably says something in and of itself)

For one, their lack of conversation and just...general shared screentime is so small that I can’t buy the idea that the two of them actually know each other that well. Even if they did bond off-screen, thus far, the show itself never actually gives any evidence of that while they ARE on screen. They have the same level of chemistry that Julian and Kira should have (although, strangely, the characters have much better chemistry than their screentime would seem to indicate but...well they were married IRL so...yeah). Friendly colleagues, but that’s really it. And yet, he’s gonna fall in love with her?

I don’t think so.

He’s in love with Jadzia (apparently. but that’s a different complaint, seen above). He’s in love with a past life of the Dax symbiont. That past life just happens to be contained now within Ezri, and it’s the only conceivable reason I have for why he’s interested in her at all. Realistically, had Ezri Tegan never become Ezri Dax, I doubt Julian would’ve had the same thoughts about her. Granted, people can meet by circumstance and fall in love - I’m not shitting on that idea - and I’m not implying that Julian is a dick by any means, but the show itself doesn’t give us any reason that he would fall for her. Like...what traits of Ezri does Julian find himself attracted to, aside from the fact she was once Jadzia? I don’t think the show ever actually gives any answer to that question. She may carry some shades of Jadzia’s habits and idiosyncrasies and such, because that’s how joined Trill work, but she’s also very much still Ezri. And, for the sake of her character, that should be really important? So, frankly, it’s actually just...really insulting to Ezri? That she’s not loved for who she is, but who the Dax host was. And that’s honestly just awful.

And I actually just thought of this while writing this post and complaining about that one conversation, but it also sucks for Julian a bit, too? Like, the way Ezri phrases that one line - “If Worf hadn’t come along, it would’ve been you” - it feels to me like he was very much the second choice. And...would that not feel awful to be told that? Basically that you were someone else’s back-up plan. I mean, I can’t speak from experience, but I can’t imagine that feels good. And plus, now he knows that Jadzia apparently had those feelings for him, which Ezri now carries with her. Which...wouldn’t something about that just feel wrong? These aren’t Ezri’s feelings exactly; she’s just stuck with them. And Julian is fundamentally a good person who has some idea of how the Trill work; wouldn’t this be a little like he’s...not quite using her, but allowing her to act on feelings that aren’t actually, truly hers? So the situation ends up being that she might not really love him, not as Ezri, and that would really suck for both of them.

Granted, that’s not to say she couldn’t decide that on her own; she totally could, but the show hasn’t laid the groundwork for that. And it’s also not to discredit feelings that linger from past hosts. Jadzia and Lenara are drawn to each other because of Torias and Neilani, but they also do legitimately fall in love with the people they are now and bond over their shared interests in their present forms. Honestly, the show even makes this distinction? When Ezri and Worf are stuck together, they definitely sleep together, but the show makes it fairly clear that it’s pent up tension from the two of them not talking, combined with the fact he and Jadzia were newly married. I’m pretty sure they decide it’s not really something to pursue; it was just what happened out of old instincts, not out of actual love between the two people actually involved.

Mostly, I take issue because of the first sentence of that last paragraph. The show just never sets it up. If it showed her and Julian having chemistry, I’d have far fewer complaints about this. (For fuck’s sake, I think she had a deeper conversation with JORAN. THE MURDERER. Than she really did with Julian. Now that’s a problem)

Long story short: they really shouldn’t have kept trying to shoe-horn romance in for Julian. All of his stories work better without, particularly in the long-term. The chemistry is just...never there with his long-term potential partners the writers throw at him. He really does have the best chemistry with Miles and Garak. That’s all fantastic.

(Which is to also say: I get that it was the 90s but I really wish we could’ve gotten our disaster bi doctor and his lizard spy boyfriend. Just saying)

#from the mind of niennavalier #ds9 #did this turn into a long way to justify julian and garak?#a little #but im also annoyed #oh and to clarify #i dont speak from experience comes from the fact im very much not in a relationship #and never have been #just wanted to make sure im not coming off like im so perfect or something #im not #im the biggest dumbass i know and its fun #oh also i just thought of this but dont wanna reformat my rant #but the scene where ezris like #oh my god im in love with julian #and its such a surprise to her #its like #same #im also surprised #where is this coming from #tbh id think it was ironic if not for the fact she and julian are apparently gonna sleep together #also fun fact #my brother wanted to start a podcast of the two of us talking about random shit #with side series we do separated about whatever we want #he wants to do cars #and im like what do i do?#tv reactions??#and decided maybe i will #record my reaction to the two of them together #which will probably just be eternal screaming #but still

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langxue · 5 years

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Avengers Endgame Initial Thoughts

Okay. I have some Thoughts about Endgame, most of them fairly critical. Also highly subjective. So here goes. Spoilers abound, for Endgame and other MCU content.

1. OMFG they completely wasted Captain Marvel.* In her own movie, Carol is a fairly laid back, adaptable, competent, and Silly person. She has a wonderfully casual charm and sarcasm that’s really fun to watch. She’s also a powerhouse, and by the end she definitely knows it. (Like seriously, she destroyed multiple of Ronan’s ships in under a minute. In GotG, it took a whole fleet just to slow one of them down, plus a team on the inside to blow it up. And then Carol’s just like “nah, you’re done now.”) And then you hit Endgame. And we have a stoic, closed off Captain Marvel, who shows up, talks a lot about how awesome she is, and then spends fucking 80% of the movie on a shelf on the justification that she’s helping other worlds that are also in trouble. Which is a fine justification to keep her away for some of the setup. But the heroes’ main plan is time travel. Which means it’s not time sensitive, and they keep making a big deal about only having one shot. Why, in that case, wouldn’t you wait until you could get Carol on your team?? Thor is a psychological mess. Keep him on the bench and bring in Carol. OR have her on hand to use the gauntlet after all the stones are collected. But no, they just went with “eh, we’re not sure how to contact her, so we’ll just skip over that option entirely.” So they wasted her character as a character with minimal interactions with the others, and zero of those interactions actually being in character (except maaaybe with Peter at the end, but that very much felt like two actors trying very hard with very little to work with), and then also wasted her as far as plot impact, opting for a heroic re-entrance most of the way through the movie.

2. The time travel felt extremely poorly explained, which is really bad when your plot completely hinges on it, and is especially bad if you’re gonna rag on other movies with time travel. Back to the Future is paradoxical nonsense, but it’s self-consistent paradoxical nonsense. Endgame was some kind of multiverse with zero clear understanding of how different timelines/realities could and could not interact with each other. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of the possibilities and whether there actually is an internal logic, but at the very least, while watching the movie, it entirely felt like they were doing whatever they wanted to suit the plot. Which is a bad sign when dealing with time travel. (My general approach to time travel is that you either have to completely handwave it or completely explain it. And that explanation doesn’t have to be an info dump! It can just be apparent in the story itself, such as with Time-Turners. Though I personally don’t mind time travel info dump tbh.)

3. Relatedly, the secret to time travel is to model an inverted Möbius strip and get the eigenvector of that one particle there. I don’t think I’ve been that annoyed but technobabble in a long time. That’s math word salad, as far as I can tell (though I’m admittedly not a mathematician. If any mathematicians can clarify how this makes any sense, I’d appreciate it, but in the mean time, I’m going to assume it’s garbled nonsense.)

4. Still on time travel but I’m having one hell of a time figuring out Steve’s ending. Like, how can he do that within the confines of the time travel mechanics? Why wouldn’t he come back and spend that time with Bucky?? Since, you know, they’ve like barely spoken being reunited?? For Pete’s sake, don’t set up their bond like that, spend two full movies on the turmoil cause by Bucky’s return, and then just fucking drop the plot line on the floor because you wanted to stick Steve back with Peggy. What in the fuck.

5. IM. SO. MAD. ABOUT. GAMORA. (And also Natasha, though that’s a slightly different anger.) GAMORA’S DEATH WAS THE MOST BS THING IN INFINITY WAR AND WAS ALSO THE DEATH I WAS MOST CONCERNED THEY WOULDN’T CORRECT. AND GUESS WHAT. THEY DIDN’T. SHE’S STILL DEAD.** The soulstone mechanic can get Fucked, because Thanos should never have been able to get it like that (and relatedly, should Hawkeye have gotten it, since Natasha threw herself, rather than being sacrificed? I’m undecided, but mad either way).

6. Is Loki still dead? Was he ever dead? We just don’t know. If he is dead, that was an amazingly dumb end and I object. If he’s not dead, that is a dumb cliffhanger and I object.

7. I don’t love Thor + Guardians’ dynamic? It feels very off, and I can’t tell if that’s just because it’s Avengers and therefore all the characters have gotten slightly flattened or if it’s just an unappealing dynamic to me. But we already had Quill vs Rocket leadership tension. I don’t was more of that but with Thor. That’s dumb. I’m hoping that it gets more nuance/resolution going forward, but I’m not holding my breath.

8. Relatedly, why would you put Valkyrie in charge of Anything but a battle plan? Nothing I’ve seen of her makes me think she’s well suited to general leadership, and I think she’d chafe under it just as much as Thor does. She’s not the Responsible One to take things over so Thor can go have another finding himself adventure. Ffs.

9. Probably no one’s fault because actor contracts are complicated, but I’m still salty about Lady Sif being 100% absent and unacknowledged for this whole thing. Largely because I haven’t gotten to see her interact with Valkyrie OR Carol and I feel cheated.

10. Some quick minor things before I go on a big rant. It bothered me that Thor’s depression and poor coping was just a joke, basically just “Oh look he’s fat and scared now, isn’t that funny?” I’m so tired of Tony vs. Steve, and I hate that they waited until the last fucking movie to sort of kind of resolve it. You don’t get to pull on found family heartstrings and tropes when you’ve done such a bullshit job of actually showing us a family. You’ve had 20-odd movies to do so. Do better.

11. Okay. I like battle scenes. They’re fun! They’re dramatic! If done correctly, they can give a very tangible sense of odds and stakes. But. Not every movie with high stakes needs a big final battle.

Okay, to clarify a bit, I’m specifically referring to army vs. army battle scenes here. Big punch outs between titans, or scrambling to minimize damage from a disaster are different, and have their own applications and pitfalls. All clear? Great.

Battles, with two armies facing off against each other in fronts, look cool, but fundamentally make no sense in the context of Endgame. Battle lines exist so that you have not very many people actively fighting at once, and so that you can protect the people next to them. When the frontline gets tired, they rotate back and others take over. Battles are not the same thing as skirmishes and they are not mass melees. If a battle turns into a mass melee, something has gone very wrong and you should in all likelihood pull back immediately to regroup.

All of this breaks down when you have an opponent who can break up or ignore your battle lines. Historically, this was artillery and guns—things that forced battles into a cover-based issue. In superhero movies, it’s... pretty much every character of note.

Thor’s lightning —> broken battle line

Black Panther’s suit discharge —> broken battle line

Falcon attacking from above —> pointless battle line

Wanda or Carol doing... anything —> pointless battle line

All of Thanos’ many flying troops —> pointless battle line

Thanos’ warship overhead —> what are you doing pls stop this

All of which is to say that traditional battle tactics don’t apply to this conflict. But the battle we’re shown doesn’t reflect that, and it feels very... weird as a result. Where who’s winning is entirely arbitrary, rather than any kind of steady build.

This tends to lead to a very episodic battle, where you show off individual characters or small groups of characters fighting. Which is fine, though contributes to battle progress being unclear. But there’s a temptation then to give everyone equal levels of badassery in their vignettes, and I think that’s a mistake. The avengers et all are a complementary group. They have members suited to a battle field and members that aren’t. That isn’t to say that Hawkeye and Black Widow can’t hold their own, but their skill sets aren’t specialized for something like this, and so any attempt to make them seem equal in this way is going to either fall flat or cheapen the battle suited heroes’ specialty.

And this tendency to level the field of badassery can also lead to situations where Okoye is backing up Carol for a charge, and I just.... gah. I love Okoye. So much. Carol does not need her help to rush a group of enemies. Carol doesn’t need help from any of the women who showed up behind her except for maybe Scarlet Witch. I get what they were going for. I get that it was supposed to be a Girl PowerTM moment. It wasn’t. It was dumb. It was so very much the wrong time for that moment, because this was not a context where Carol needed help. She just flew through a spaceship. She can fly through some enemies no problem. And it’s probably easier if she’s not worried about her allies getting caught in the blast. And then they had to make the backup team useful, so they made Carol struggle in a moment where she just shouldn’t have. You don’t get points for Girl PowerTM if you have to de-power one of your women just to make it make sense. Give me more scenes with Gamora and Nebula helping each other through Thanos’ abuse. Give me scenes with Carol and Okoye bonding over putting up with impractical people. Don’t give me this battle scene bullshit, I don’t want it.

11. I remain pissed off that there are no actually articulated arguments against Thanos’ fucking stupid plan. What the actual fuck, this is not that hard.

Okay. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, some things I actually really liked.

1. Steve wielding Mjolnir was fucking amazing and I’m so pleased.

2. Any time Scott was on screen.

3. Peter Parker is a precious child and he needs to be protected.

4. I actually really like the set up for the time travel nonsense, and I liked that they seemed to be doing something other than a mass melee battle. That the group was divided into manageable teams, and sent on different kinds of missions that required them to be clever and play to their different strengths and help each other through. And then they shoved in a giant battle anyway, because fuck you that’s why.

5. I can appreciate what they were trying to do in giving all of the non-returning Avengers decent send-offs, even if I didn’t like some of those conclusions.

6. There were some genuinely funny moments, but I’m struggling to recall them right now.

7. Oh wait! “It’s an earthquake in the middle of the ocean. We handle it by not handling it.” That one was great.

Okay, that’s all for now. I might have more later, once I’ve picked apart the time travel a bit more and dined some processing.

I think it’s also worth noting that like... ensemble movies with a cast this big are *hard.* character are going to end up feeling confined, and there’s less time to grow because there’s just less time per character. But I think we could’ve had better, and I think if they focused more on group growth in the group movies instead of just drama, then they would’ve been in a better place and had a better story.

It’s probably also worth noting that I really liked Thor: Ragnarok, really like Captain Marvel and really didn’t like Infinity War. So I sort of went into Endgame feeling like it had to make up for Infinity War and live up to the higher at from the recent solo movies. And I really wanted to like it. I really wanted them to pull it off. But those are high and fairly specific standards, and so they fell quite short.

*This should be taken with a grain of salt, because I’d been dreading Endgame as an obligation to watch, and the Captain Marvel movie was the only thing that sparked my interest again. And then Endgame massively dropped the ball as far as I’m concerned.

** there was some stuff at the very end that makes me wonder if there’re plans to still bring her back in a later movie. But it doesn’t change me call bullshit on everything that Infinity War/Endgame has done to her.

#spoilers #Endgame Spoilers #Captain Marvel spoilers #just #general MCU spoilers #ye have been warned

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wojtekbc · 5 years

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Watch, as local idiot rants about garbage

Oh boy, if I could type the most deflated, defeated sigh, it would go here. Spoiler warning here. Hey losers! It’s GRRM Boot-licking Book Purist here. My local friends have heard me bitch and moan about Game of Thrones since Season 5, and they are S I C K O F I T so now you, my brilliant Tumblr friends, get to hear me scream about incompetent show-writers taking a Vietnam opposing hippie’s anti-war story which basically screams the message “Hey being ruled by sexism and tradition and racism makes the world shittier for everyone aside from the dude sitting at the top and he’s made it impossible for even the powerful players in his system to peacefully change anything,” amping up the American fetishisation of eugenics, male primogeniture and the idea of a Righteous War Against The Others and making quintillions of dollars off of the brainlet audience who just overlook how gross it all is! (Before I begin with the two or twenty issues I have with this episode I will say that if ASOIAF interests you at all, seriously do yourself a favour, read the books with an understanding of who GRRM is, and exclusively watch Preston Jacobs’ analysis.) One: Why the fuck is Euron just a disgusting sex fiend in the show? Do the show-writers know how to write a compelling villain or will they just defend this as if it’s a ‘creative decision’ to make one of, possibly the most compelling, “bad guy” completely one-note and gross? Okay, bare with me, because the last re-read I did of ASOIAF was like, end of 2016, so I may not be able to describe this all too well, but book Euron is like, part mad Blackbeard, part world-weary mystic, and part eerily compelling politician. Half of the reason he’s so fucking creepy in the book is that when he attends the Kingsmoot, not only is he just kind of a weird bloke, but he uses what seems to be magic (with the horn that has ash idk I can’t remember everything rn I’m kind of drunkenly rambling) in a very low magic setting, and speaks directly to what the traditionalist Ironborn want, which is blood and plunder, and it completely de-rails their growing acceptance of a less toxic lifestyle. The show just decided to make him some gross Jack Sparrow impersonator whose only characteristics include being a completely stereotypical pirate, and wanting to have sex with Cercei, pestering her and pushing the subject even after a firm “No.” A common thread with everything in the show is that the show-writers take the “Kick the dog” route basically every time even a modicum of understanding would be necessary to see why you feel like some character might be bad. Anyone with a brain could read the Victarion and Asha chapters and just feel that Euron was bad. The characters have their own reasons to dislike him, and they’re good enough, but when you as the reader simply look at what he does, and think for a moment, you KNOW why you think he’s bad, and honestly that kind of shit makes you feel good, it makes you feel like you get what is being told to you. The show-writers just believe that about 80% of their audience is comprised of troglodytic idiots who wouldn’t understand any subtlety at all, so everyone you’re “supposed to dislike” is now a creepy psychotic abusive rapist. Who knows? Maybe they’re on to something. Maybe the main audience is as stupid as they think. Two: This is something I don’t even try to discuss with people any more, because the camps are apparently “People who disagree with this,” and “People who do not care,” but what the fuck is up with American media and eugenics and male primogeniture, specifically how often they are intertwined? I could go on about the show’s interpretation of what Jon Snow “means,” forever, and I will someday, but I will stick to what this specific episode did that fucked me off. META INTERJECTION HERE: I cannot even phrase the question. What kind of back-flipping through loopholes, logical gymnastics type shit does one have to pull to create the drama that Jon Snow is somehow a more legitimate heir? No, this isn’t me refuting R+L=J, because not only is it canon, but it’s something I’ve been screaming as truth for longer than Game of Thrones has been a relevant cultural topic. WHAT I MEAN, is, how, in the fuck, can you try and pass your real-life bias against woman off as in-universe, canon logic, when it is fundamentally against every rule and precedent you’ve set? So the show seems to think that because Jon is Rhaegar’s son, he’s immediately the true king and the rightful heir and the most purebred child and he’s the genetically superior race and all that American bullshit. Only, first off, that implies Targs still have a rightful claim (which they do but that’s personal preference,) but MORE DAMNING is that characters imply, in canon, that he somehow passes his aunt’s PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE claim, simply because he’s a man. Now this is wrong on about 50 levels but I’ll skip that and tackle the issue two ways. I) This drama is the kind of forced, fumbled shit that has plagued the show since season 5. No one is acting logically and it leads to stupid shit like this. Only this time, the drama is not even caused by characters acting illogically in their own world, the show-runners are writing their own real-world bias in to these characters in spite of everything, because... II) Even in canon, (though I don’t know if the show has acknowledged it because who gives a fuck about what the show thinks) Targaryen queens have a precedent in Rhaenyra. If any dumbass is still reading this and argues with me on that by saying there was a war and she lost, sure, but like, look to the show’s OWN CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS, where 4 kingdoms are lead by women who have male relatives. The only reason this drama exists is because the show-writers are fucking idiots and they just decided the easiest thing for them to write was dudes being sexist and jerking off to how pure-blooded their candidate is. Oh boy, I just wrote for like 40 minutes. Sorry folks, but the whole “show v book” thing is not even a meme for me in regards to ASOIAF. I saw a video a few days ago where some guy was talking about he won’t make videos on his favourite anime because he doesn’t want to undersell how much they mean to him; he doesn’t want to make a video trying to summarise his experience with a show, because if someone says “Oh, I get what he thinks now,” they still won’t understand how much it means to him. Though it’s pretentious, I feel that way about a few things, and ASOIAF is one of them. I won’t go on about it, but those books mean so much to me, and the way the show not only butchered them as an adaptation, but also in their cultural understanding among the people I associate with, genuinely makes me sad. It kind of breaks my heart that ASOIAF will go down in cultural history as “The books for Game of Thrones,” and not as what they are; some old hippie’s anti-war, anti-tradition, pro-feminist fantasy epic with so many moving parts that something may never be attempted on such a scale again. It ruins my day when I see what Benioff and Weiss have done to the series, and how they managed to turn a writer’s heartfelt letter to fantasy, his magnum opus, in to generic, edgy-for-the-sake-of-shock, often disgusting, popcorn shlock for a mass audience. It fucking kills me to be a fan of ASOIAF. It kills me to have something so dear to me associated with this filth.

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honeylikewords · 6 years

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(P1) The pilgrim thing got me really disappointed!! Because they LITERALLY SAID!!! HE WAS GONNA BE FIGHTING A*T-RIGHT PEOPLE THIS SEASON!!!! I feel like this is a big let down to a lot of the people who were looking forward to frank, a character who is commonly misconstrued as an a*t-right figure himself to deny that once and for all, namely the fans who belong to minority groups (myself included) as well as the issue with the last I know they were doing it as a little easter egg by

(P2) recreating that one image from the comics but they could have put it in a better situation because a)those criminals were in fact rather young and the fact that the perfectly fit the "thug" stereotype is iffy at BEST. Because it also brings up something that was talked about in luke cage/defenders (a character I mcfrikken love) that black boys who are just trying to feed their family end up getting killed/beaten within an inch of their life meanwhile the white vigilante gets off free

(P3) (I know I'm writing a lot I apologize but m feeling heated ab thjs) because truly they looked roughly the same age as Amy. I will say I enjoyed his brotherly jokes with curtis (shout out to that man for dealing with his dumbass and not killing him for all the stress he causes him akdjsk) and the times he showed true care and softness (ie ACTUAL FRANK CHARACTERIZATION) towards amy. Im also iffy about the fact that he let a guy who peddles child porn go? S2 of dd he killed a dude doing that

Okay, first of all, don’t worry about apologizing, it’s TOTALLY fine to be heated about this. The media we consume is reflective of the thoughts and beliefs of the people creating it, and can influence the thoughts and beliefs of the people consuming it. As such, we SHOULD be heated about the content we see and create; it has impact and influence, and it matters that we call out issues when we see them, and remain intensely scrutinous of what we’re being shown. No need to be ashamed of that.

Second, I’m going to answer each point or comment made here in list format, just to try and keep things organized. Because it’d be really easy for me to spin out and start ranting, and I want to keep this cohesive and legible.

1) The letting Pilgrim live thing was just... so unimaginably stupid. They talked about him being a major antagonist and yet he played no important role in the series at all. From a functional, story-based level, the entire Pilgrim-Schultzes plot needed to be cut. It was convoluted, unnecessary, and wasteful, while also managing to be confusing and just flat out boring. Pilgrim wasn’t even an interesting character! He was just a waste of screentime! The two plots of Billy and Pilgrim were always fighting for attention, and it distracted from the linear progression of the show.

But on a more fundamental and moral level, it was also just... so, so bad to display him as an alt-r*ght neo-N*zi and just... let him live. As if he had an excuse. As if he was “equitable” to Frank because his weird little Christian fundamentalist wife died and he had two kids (off topic, but Lemuel is a horrible name). As if I was supposed to feel bad for him. As if I was supposed to sympathize with him, pity him. I don’t. And if I, a pacifist, soft-hearted, “forgiveness freely given” girl wouldn’t pity him, why on earth would a man like Frank?

It’s ridiculous. It’s shameful. Any piece of media that tries to “humanize” N*zis in a way where they are portrayed as sympathetic and “just people following orders” is disgusting. A N*zi chooses hate. A N*zi chooses bigotry. There is no mistake there, no human folly. That is choice and it is unforgivable. Pilgrim deserved to die, and that’s all I have to say about it.

2) I recognized that as a scene from the comics, an icon of Punisher-ing, but... You’re really, really right, and that’s something that worries me about Punisher and its fanbase. I’ve been stepping away from Punisher because I think it’s starting to cross the line into that territory; white vigilantism is, in many ways, a dangerous game to play, and when we start to romanticize white men with guns taking the law into their own hands and mowing down “thugs” (who, you are right to say, are usually just poor POC who are trying to make ends meet), we start walking a razor thin line.

Frank Castle in DD S2 was... different. This new Frank, this Punisher Frank? I don’t like him. And I don’t like what he stands for. Not anymore.

And I think the issue is that people like the idea of this big, bad white man with the guns calling all the shots, literal and metaphorical. And that scares me. Frank Castle is supposed to protect these infringed people, supposed to protect the downtrodden and oppressed. When he becomes a symbol and tool of that oppression, things get ugly, and things go wrong.

We can’t just excuse the inherent issues in something like Punisher just because we like Jon. I know I can’t. I have to ask these questions because they matter, and because it matters to me and to hundreds of thousands of other people who have to live with the fact that there is a chance that they could be shot down like that for no reason other than because someone decides their life doesn’t matter as much as, let’s say, a white one.

I know it sucks to bring politics into something we enjoy, but it also sucks that people have to deal with the real-life consequences of these issues. And it sucks that people see this show and idealize it, romanticize it, idolize the violence and the wickedness and the idea that they should be able to hold the scales of justice on their own and decide who matters based on their own personal whims.

The race discussion is very real with Punisher, and it’s a discussion we need to be having. We need to look at this critically and we need to see that, yes, there’s some very, very bad problems and some glaring issues. And we need to be honest about that, preferences all set aside.

3) Curtis Hoyle is a f*cking saint and deserves a break. He deserves it. (Also, what is going on with the show that they? Seemed to forget he has a prosthetic? He was leaping around and doing all manner of stunts as if he had both legs. Like... guys.)

4) Dad Frank was the only good thing about this season. Fight me.

5) The child p*rn thing upset me, too. I guess we’re supposed to infer that Frank is “growing” and not just killing whomever he pleases, and supposed to infer that he listens to Amy and wants to please her and not upset her, but... then he, like, murders anyone anytime anywhere after that. It seemed like they only showed the “growth” away from the urge to kill when it suited them, and it seems it only suited with regards to some of the lowest, most disgusting people ever.

Like, Frank takes the shot and kills Billy without even letting Billy say his final, dying words (which seemed to be an apology in the making?), but holds back from killing Pilgrim just because Pilgrim said “wait” and “I have sons”? Bullshit. Pilgrim and that child p*rn man should have died. End of discussion.

In the end, I guess I’d sum it up this way: Punisher season two lacks conviction. It wants to present the argument that things with Frank are complicated, but complicated just ends up coming across as nonsensical. Nothing about the show makes sense, there is no clear character development, every action is seemingly at random, and the plot is jumbled. The show can’t stick to anything without changing its mind, retconning itself into nothingness.

But worse yet are the implications of this jumbled mess; humanizing N*zis and white s*premacists, advocating the brutal violence of a white man with a gun as his own lawless lawmaker, and just a sort of devil-may-care attitude about what it means to be someone with power and exerting that over people who don’t stand a chance.

I have a lot of complaints, but I think, mostly, I’m just disappointed and sad. Frank deserves better than this. We deserve better than this.

We deserve heroes who will fight for what’s right. This Frank seemed to hardly know what on earth it was he was fighting for. And that makes me really, really frustrated.

(D/o/n’t r/e/b/lo/g, I don’t wanna get into any discourse, thnx)

#long post #messages #pettyprocrastination

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elizabethrobertajones · 6 years

Text

13x21 watching notes

Not. Enough. Hugs.

Expectations: Bobo is gonna write his last episode which will make every other writer heading to the door trying to churn out some swan song fare thee well nonsense taste like ash.

I will probably cry because this mofo makes me cry all the time and I hate it because I never cry at Supernatural and the last couple of years Bobo has me leaking everywhere

Recap!

Lucifer saying they'll find Jack and remake the world in his image. Gross. No thanks.

Sam and Rowena bonding over seeing Lucifer's true face and it being awful

Gabriel complaining they took all his grace

Michael, Mary and Jack's adventures

Gabriel and Rowena being the most powerful allies. What a world. Like 10 episodes ago it wasn't even like this at all :P

A last glimpse of Sam's stupid parting shot about them dying together. Whee. Sarcasm font.

Um.

Okay so this is either a dream or the future (yes.) or my next fic, and I'm only 1 second in, but all I know is that Jack, dressed all in white because he's Jesus, is watching Dean eat his 7th bit of pizza with pure horror, while Cas lovingly, smilingly, chides him for it.

Oh yeah there's Mary, laughing in the background. And she's wearing a different but still white and blue (Mother Mary) plaid.

This dialogue is literally bunker fluff banter about Jack counting Dean eating his pizza slices and Dean calling him a narc for saying so.

"John and me, we used to call him our little piglet" I am so happy. Pre-tragedy Winchester family fluff. My heart.

Sam offering to help Mary do the dishes

Dean getting Cas to punt him another pizza once Mom is no longer watching. Dear lord. The silent "gimme pizza" moment of our dreams.

Sam checking in on Mary!! How are you since... Being over there

Sam's wearing the same shirt from the end of 12x22

"I always knew you and Dean would come and save us. And you did."

Yep that was Sam's dream, which of all the available options was the absolute worst because he's the one who wasn't talking at the table, but has been missing a family the most, missing out on Mary, missing out on having Cas and Jack around, having Dean being normal. Wanting the relationship with Mary, and all the fun nuggets like "my little piglet" which makes her tease Dean and make Sam laugh... Oh god my heart. I'm a minute in and I can't take it.

And Mary starting to act like an alarm clock, Sam Sam Sam Sam, to wake him up. Oh no. Oh noooo it's awful. The alarm clock corrupted her in the dream: his image of her is so dependant on what's around him, so easy for her to be snatched away, when he thinks he's having a good moment with her at long freaking last

Last season I staked my entire house on the Sam and Mary dynamic being key and it felt like very few others cared, certainly not in the wider fandom, and along with that there was a whole lot of not understanding either of them. I'm so glad that Sam and Mary's dynamic has been more centrally placed this season and signposted because I'm so fed up that I spent all that energy on it last season and ended up feeling like I was shouting into a void :P

"He needed to extract his grace *finger quotes* in private" *Sam looks up like uuuuuh* "So I left him alone in Dean's room" *Dean looks up like EXCUSE ME DEAR DID YOU JUST SAY -

"What? No!"

Sam smirks, Dean looks pleadingly at Cas.

I was just joking in 13x20 about how Dean n Gabriel have a weird vibe about them, but I think at this point Dean is just thinking you left the skankiest archangel alone in my room???

I don't think there's a subtextual whatnow between them about this, he just doesn't want to know what angel grace looks like under a blacklight

Awww Rowena is wearing orange... With a turtleneck.....

#Samwitch forever #Jinkies!

making jokes about Gabriel's essence last episode and now the left him alone in the room to do it, and showing off Zerbe's merch and they're all just peering at that lil dot of glowiness... Gabriel is getting a lot of impotency jokes here.

"That is the jet fuel of divine emissions!"

*Dean pulls another face re: emissions*

Jesus CHRIST the rift is literally SAGGING FLACCIDLY

Bobo I hate you

of the 5 of them, Rowena's face remains, as ever, a total gem.

holy shit and then Gabriel lowers his blade as well

who DIRECTED THIS SHIT?

They all sigh and Gabriel lets his blade flop entirely to his side

Rowena looks completely unimpressed.

"Well that was fast" "One could say premature." "I thought it would be enough!"

Jesus christ what is happening in the latter part of the episode that we're getting this scene now?

Oh my god that was just the COLD OPEN

As always though, Cas being the one who has to say the really horrible thing, like, they will all just wait for him to proclaim the bad news. Maybe he just likes people to say things out loud even when they're obvious *clears throat* but also he always has that streak where he will suggest the awful plan and be first to realise some horrible path that they must take.

TFW retires to the kitchen to talk. Sam sits on the steps, now the exile, while Cas leans on the family dinner table. It's the place he goes in his head which has the best service. The connection to his family. Dean leans as well, Cas and Dean mirroring each other, providing more of a united front, as the two of them have the emotional headspace to root for this plan, however Sam feels, while Sam is caught by his trauma, isolated, hunched up and small on the floor, less of their party.

Every time it ends the same way - with the Devil on the loose again.

Hey at least this time he's already on the loose so even the worst case is that nothing changes :P

Well no the worst case is that he somehow possesses Rowena and takes the most powerful witch ever for a joyride.

Actually no he's locked in his vessel

the worst case scenario is they kill him before they get the grace, so they have to wait for Gabriel to charge up and *oh no* Lucifer is dead

God, Cas saying "the worst possible violation" re: being possessed by Lucifer is so ridiculously validating. He understands what Sam went through and he's showing he understands, feels the same way. The two of them have this connection of knowing what it's like, and Sam hears from Rowena that she knows what it's like to be tortured by him, hears from Cas what it's like to be possessed by him... His support group is here

I still love the camera angle of Cas standing in front of Dean and Dean behind him and the camera is flattening them together.

After the directing on the soggy rift, and Mittens telling me Phil is responsible I'm just like... no surprises here mate.

Plus. Cas had a shoulder!Dean there

Gabriel yoinks a book out of the shelf. It's Laying Pipe. A beginner's guide to plumbing and pipe fitting.

The cover is suitably phallic.

Gabriel is standing by the katana - the pointy one that the BMoL kept sharp. Ya know, sword sharpening.

Something he was having issues with just now despite all his sharp wooden swords last week.

Penis.

"It's not always like that!!""Gabriel, please."

She was waiting for him to break that tension.

*manly virile page turning*

*more angry defences*/"I don't need to hear excuses!"

... Rowena being left alone in the library to tease their other guests is the best part of the show and they should start a regular segment which is talkshow style of Rowena plus whatever poor sucker of the week is hanging out in the bunker

"It doesn't make me any less of an archangel!" "mright."

Oh now you're blaming Rowena for your perfomance, huh, buddy?

Rowena saying a drunk six year old could operate the spell is probably not commentary on the fact that Dean is the last person to do it, huh?

Rowena saying "the three amigos with their bro hugs, pep talks and melodrama" changes the fundamental dynamic - the stereotype of their nonsense is the three of them hugging it out, instead of in 10x05, the last time they were meta textually mocked for it, Sam n Dean getting the BM scenes, and Cas and Dean's in-show dynamic not being explictly referenced except for the fact that Dean clearly thought the personal space jokes were being taken too far before he had the explanation. This makes it clear the BM moments are about TFW, uses the fact that the 3 of them are all together right now to put them all in one room and have them talking out the latest issue together away from the others, in order to establish that Cas is firmly a part of what was once the bro dynamic.

Of course he's had moments where he hangs with them in what otherwise would be the BM scene of the episode right the way through, but THIS is a metatextual statement about the dynamic, one that is more than just Rowena's snark, but writer commentary on another level, pulling on our pre-existing understanding of the show mocking the BM moments to make it expressly clear that Cas is involved too.

If Bobo is on the way out to nurture the Wayward Sisters, then this is one of those closing statements on his way. That he wants us to understad that Cas is intrinsically a part of this dynamic, and that the FUNDAMENTAL CORE of the show, the BM Scene, is a TFW inclusive incident no matter whether all 3 of them are involved in it or not, it is a thing they do TOGETHER and is NOT a justthebros meta joke. The BM thing is not just the concept of Sam and Dean looking weepy at each other over the car. It's their FAMILY, together, just as Bobo shows Sam dreaming of their FAMILY being TFW, mom and Cas's weird son who counts how much pizza you eat.

Jesus christ I was going to make a joke that Rowena and Gabriel would probably bang as my next point to break the mood of that rant but I hit play and she's checking out his tush and inner monologuing it.

Never mind.

they gonna bang

"She's so tiny. and angry."

I stan 1 heterosexual couple.

Ahahahaha he noticed her dancer's body and wondered how flexible she is. Oh dear. I'm gonna back off because I may or may not have written this exact thing in my notes in her last episode

They're adorable.

"So, we've a little time."

Oh dean's room is not going to get out of this unscathed

She raises up the wooden pestle.

"to fill what?"

*red flashing sign which says 'PENIS' is glaring uncontrollably in the corner of the screen*

Listen, because these two are the skankiest archangel and rowena, who is, well, rowena, we are getting to enjoy subtext for the sake of immediate pay off that they're openly attracted to each other and we're literally getting their checking each other out and staring into each other's eyes montage.

Sure does help with the show doing this more subtly in other places.

SHE'S

Phil -

BOBO

yeah and abruptly to give them some privacy, back to TFW who are gonna come to whatever conclusion, go looking for Gabriel and Rowena, and end up knocking on Dean's door, open it, there they are in a heap in his bed.

Bobo "invented the fan fiction gap" Berens writing like it's going out of style

Oh no Sam's sitting next to the coffee maker that was briefly haunted by Kevin, in a Bobo episode.

"I don't like it, but it's our only choice. Our fun, great choice."

Bobo I forgot how much I love your Sam. Your Sam makes me laugh and cry. And here is sarcastic Sam, briefly returning from hiatus, and of course you are writing my favourite and the best version of Sam.

He gets to call out how they make these choices all the time where they have to go do horrible things, even against their own trauma. When he'd rather be anywhere else.

Dean points out they only have 24 hours as a complaint, but Sam has a "wait a second" which maaay or may not be resolving that. But first, they go find their archangel and witch -

Dean looks a little perturbed

Awwww they were only making out among the books, not defiling Dean's room.

Shame.

Cas's head immediately tilts.

Fan fic aside, this is the most action the Bunker has EVER seen.

Unless Sam and Eileen hooked up in 12x17, that is.

The most confirmed action. No one has ever brought a date back here.

Dean still has not hooked up with Cas. That we know of.

"Reading books... here in the library... Which is the room we are in now." Well okay sure

Sam is utterly horrified. Take your shipping pick on which one or both of them he's most affronted by.

Gabriel is 100% that guy you can NOT introduce to your attractive friends.

What is Cas even doing

he's like... I can't even look at you, Gabriel

Oh, bartender in the shirt Gabriel will be in very shortly. *pretends not to be surprised*

I guess we're not hearing the plan yet :P

The bartender sounds awfully concerned about how much Lucifer is drinking - if it's Gabriel, he's needling him about how much he's drinking, maybe just to hear how he justifies it.

"I had Heaven... Hell... in the palm of my hand. You know what I learned?" Me, internally: "Nothing."

Lucifer grumbling about how they don't matter, though. They don't matter to HIM, but they matter for the world running smoothly. The natural order, the cogs whirring as they should, would all do so much better without you around. Wherever you go, you don't fit in and you suck.

- He moves on to grumbling about Jack and how he can't find him, how it doesn't matter because "his bitch of a mother poisoned him against me, probably forever" - humanity is a poison to him. Love and compassion literally toxic.

"I'm sure things will work out in the end. Jack will come around!"

I know Gabriel is just trying to troll Lucifer, but it does read as ominous, because all season the low key threat has been there that Jack might end up going at least a little darkside. More darkside than being reckless and accidentally hurting people. Going over a darkside where he doesn't immediately feel dreadful about the people who get hurt around him.

Hahaha he's so drunk. Rowena can magically roofie him. Wonderful.

And of course at the reveal, Gabriel has Kingdom Beer signs on top of him. The sign of the Kingdom of Heaven.

(I continue kinda wondering/hoping about the prodigal son return for Gabriel)

The thing is, how did they know Lucifer would be here or receptive to being roofied? Honestly, if this episode keeps up the quality, I won't question it beyond this note :P

Oh I love this confrontation.

"Surprise"

He runs out of a bright white door and right through the other side. This feels a LOT like Chuck's bar in 11x20, which calls back to Robbie's fare thee well episode, and reminds us that Gabriel really is the most like his father of all his sons, but also is the trap in the fairy tent with Charlie in 8x11.

There's a stag on the door, and that's more virile imagery.

If Gabriel is low on grace, I'd imagine this is Rowena's work, for the most part, and Gabriel just has to be intimidating enough to make this work.

Oh look here's someone else "back from the dead" ... It's not Lucifer's day

and even if she's not on the fullest full power, she's ready to meet Lucifer, because Sam's the one who kills her.

He must think he's hallucinating some people he killed, until it all get too real.

"Put me out of my misery! Go ahead!"

this is what I like to hear.

Sadly, I doubt they will. But it's still music to my ears.

Lucifer reaching the nadir of this arc, wherever it's supposed to go... I hope to his death, and it would be nice if he did die at the end of the season and the show was brave enough to move on to a world without Lucifer. With the apparent draw of Mark P to some parts of the audience I'm scared they won't, but at the very least it's seeming somewhat plausible right now, as he's brought down again and again and shown to have no moral fibre, no redeeming qualities, no drive to do better. Through and through, vile and useless, the story tells us, agreeing with how he comes across, how Mark P as Lucifer makes us feel in a way that the energy of Casifer did not convey at all because that all seemed to be at least for a purpose and Casifer was fun, and it didn't seem to be implying Lucifer trailing on and on and unendingly on as it ended up being >.>

take 2 of the spell! Lucifer trussed up in the Bunker library, Dean perching on a table. Get your muddy boots off that chair.

I love watching him kneeling there leaking grace. I'm petty like that... I feel like everyone in the room is too. It has a feeling like when they stole Metatron's grace, but instead no one cares to heal him and they're not even really aiming to make him human, they're just kinda. Ew. Lucifer. Who cares.

Rowena's trousers are INCREDIBLE.

I swear they used "stuck pig" in the last couple of episodes, or I'm imagining that?

Anyway Sam's plan is the least they could do to Lucifer

hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

This is what happens when you suck: eventually a bunch of guys (gender neutral term) pin you down, leave you frozen in place dripping grace in a gross way, and all laugh at you before they leave

"When we get back, then we'll kill you."

Nice plan. Sadly, nice as it is, it gives Lucifer wiggle room to not be here or not be dead >.>

Rowena staying behind with him is unconcerning when Sam goes through the rift in the sense of character death (and she's a lot more confident around Lucifer all of a sudden :P) but I still don't want anything too bad to happen to her :( Still, it seems like a half-assurance that she will be okay.

"Save your mum," Rowena says.

The main problem, of course, being that Lucifer knows Mary is there, doesn't know Jack is there, but while they played it very cool, it's worryingly likely he's starting to guess that Jack is in there, whether he can sense him through the rift or he just has a feeling that this might be it...

Ahahahaha it's on a hill

Sam and Cas roll down it, Gabriel kinda cartwheels, and Dean comes out running and does a cool skid down the hill.

Oh gross, Gabriel ended up face first in Cas's crotch :P Dean is like FIRST YOU DEFILE ROWENA AND NOW CAS? HOW DARE -

IS THIS ENTIRE EPISODE ABOUT PENISES?

Dean is just... wow

You guys, sometimes it's easy to meta an episode and sometimes it is very very hard and sometimes you don't even wanna type the words very very hard

"Kentucky. North East Kentucky" are we here entirely because of Asmodeus or is this to put us kinda halfway between Michael and Jack's last known location? Not that they know Michael's current location.

Rowena has no time for concern trolling about being "left behind in the kitchen" when she knows the only reason Lucifer would care is because he wants out.

She also reminds him he's being emasculated, because yes, this episode is all about penises.

Lucifer switches to being annoying, singing the same song as the password to Billie's pad in 11x10 - the episode where he first killed Rowena.

Gabriel walking along holding his blade at a 90 dergee angle to his body

Cas drops by to casually check how Gabriel is feeling about running Heaven maybe perhaps pretty please?

Gabriel points out all the things which could kill them first before they ever need to worry about that

Oh gosh he did have sex with Rowena. At some point. Maybe not right then in the library unless he magically dressed her again. But some point between then and now. Pfft.

Poor Dean's room I guess.

Cas is remarkably good at steering this conversation, when he has a point to get to. He has learned a considerable amount of tact before getting to "Heaven's dying, Gabriel," because for one thing he hasn't hauled him aside and said all this sooner. I'm always pleased when Cas's people skills are apparent.

"They wouldn't want me back, Castiel. As far as they're concerned, I'm a screw up. Hell, as far as *I'm* concerned I'm a screw up."

Oh, no. Please don't make me like you any more than I already do. This is the opposite conversation to 9x18 in the car with meta!Gabriel, Cas having to bring up the subject of Gabriel leading Heaven. It has to be him because they need an archangel, so there's no double bluff to pull where Cas could do it instead. There were 9x18 vibes all over last episode right down to Dean having a soft moment over the phone from a motel with Cas while they worked 2 ends of a case, and now we have this. 9x18 is steering a little bit from the background.

I LIKE the idea of Gabriel as the leader of a mostly stable but much more chill Heaven. And this seems tentatively positive, that it's maaaaybe just a self-esteem/compatibility thing. This is what is immediately being offered as the first obstacle to mind. Gabriel left, because of his brothers, but they're all dead or bound in the main world. They daren't haul Michael out of the pit, even just to imprison him in Heaven to keep the lights on, apparently, which just leaves him. And his major reasons for leaving are all gone now. No more archangels. Just him.

Which means that I was right after Naomi asked Cas to see about getting him back, that this comes down to how Gabriel feels, that after all this isolation, it's about does he feel he can return home, and how will home feel about him returning.

"Well, heaven's been run into the ground by upstanding angels. Perhaps a screw up is what we need."

ILY babe

*Cas looks hopefully at Gabriel*

*Conversation ends with a long shot of their walk in the woods*

Well that was a veeeery interesting note to leave that. As I was saying a few hours ago about 13x20, it may be that Gabriel doesn't need to find something to stand for to die for, but to LIVE for, which is a much more positive thing. I really actually kinda like the way this dovetails with Heaven's problems as a reason to compel him to go back, because Gabriel approaching it like a screw up who doesn't want to break anything sure is better than an egomaniac having a go.

Sam is feeling bouncier just to be in the same universe as mom and Jack

he wants the pizza party

let him have the fucking pizza party

it was just his birthday!

He's wearing his dumb backpack he's had season season 1 and it makes me unhappy in a "oh god he was so tiny" way

He's also being unnervingly optimistic about how close they are to winning, to getting Mary and Jack back, and he's finally got optimism. His mood is basically defined by this to such a horrible degree.

... Which is totally not a parallel to the beginning of the season where Dean was miserable until they got Cas back at which point he was so happy that Sam called him out on it

*distant screams of campers being menaced by a wendigo in the woods*

"Not our world, not our problem."

Dude, they're hunters wherever

Interesting how everyone here knows about the supernatural, so random hikers keeping low off the grid will know what was attacking them. And some basic lore about how vampires were affected by the lower population and starvation

TBH the comparison to the wendigo in looks isn't too wildly far off; they're both humans who have become completely monstrous in a way where they go off the deep end

The rebels Jack and Mary set up a colony there ... that could be anyone

Oh, great, tunnel of terrifying vampires. This is a distraction/time waste that will probably eat up the rest of the episode for them and cause nothing but pain >.>

Oh, we're only halfway through...

Gah how are we only halfway through??

Oh no, Rowena. Being left alone with Lucifer being annoying is one thing. Being left alone with him talking about how he murdered her is not a thing where she can play up the vindictiveness of the situation... trauma is trauma and just because she has him bound and knows he can't kill her isn't something that makes her entirely immune to facing that :(

Oh Rowena

Oh no

... Although within that Rowena casually calls them "his three fathers" which is hilarious and also particularly awful for Lucifer to hear because it was bad enough knowing that Jack liked Cas more than him when he didn't know that

Yeeeep she didn't know that winding him up makes him stronger because anger is where his power comes from because he's so fuckin awful

Also ew he has something to fight for.

At least until Jack smushes him like a bug /wishful thinking

Oh for - he didn't even jump into the portal, she threw him off of her and he went in it by accident.

I mean, just for accountability stakes, adding it all up, could that have been any more her fault? Bleh :P

I assume the portal will still stay open a lil while, but

Oh, she's packing the Black Grimoire.

Good.

Now, is she actually going into the rift to save them, while putting on her fancy coat and scarf and all?

Or is she leaving?

"Not my problem!"

Those guys are your friends.

"BOLLOCKS!"

How DARE I have feelings. FEELINGS.

I guess Gabriel is also on the other side of the rift.

They're soulmates :P

Omg it's not the old mine from 1x02 and 11x19

I'm actually disappointed

Heheh everyone has glowsticks

party!Cas

THIS PLACE IS SCARY AND I DON'T LIKE IT

WHERE IS THE RAVE?

Wonder how much speculation we'll get about Dean looking up at that one bright light and being in a spotlight under it... Like, Michael-wise.

It is interesting to single him out with the spotlight.

*Cas and Gabriel just casually moving rocks*

Look, Cas could blast those all away but they're trying to play it cool for the campers

Who may or may not get picked off by vampires

No, Sam is wandering

he will be picked off by vampires

Bobo you need to stop killing Sam

I mean theoretically you just murdered Sam and are ditching the show to go write Wayward like hah hahahaha no consequences here I am the showrunner, now I will make Claire and Kaia kiss

Think of how Jody will feel, my guy

...

Okay that's enough of the "Sam is permanently dead lol" joking.

"Saaaam!" Cas yells and disappears down the tunnel

Cas comes back Sam-less and makes Dean leave too. I'm gonna be ship neutral on account of how Sam just got eaten by vampires. But it was intense and sad.

Yet, somehow, less sad than that time Cas died in front of Dean, when it comes to OTT melodrama. I mean there was a lot of shouting, but Dean's still moving.

Dean looks great

Hey, I guess 11x17 was good practice for this.

Cas ought to be walking with him holding his hand. It's criminal to make him do this alone

Wow, Sam you look terrible.

Guys, are you really going to destroy the angel warding on the camp? That's SUPER DANGEROUS

MARY

HUGS

YAY

(Why are you not hugging Cas?)

So yeah, you gotta tell mom that Sam's dead now

Just to get you

You can have one (1) family member at a time

Aw no don't cry!!!

Look, your brother was just taking a snooze because the rave got too real! He and his glowstick are fine!

...

Somehow

Is he a vampire?

Mittens tells me he's not a vampire, which just makes this all the more confusing

shit

Sam's like, can we go back to when I was dead?

Okay now he's heard Lucifer's story he's like can I REALLY go back to being dead?

This is like when someone wakes you up in the morning and you just don't wanna get out of bed. In that moment, no matter how much you love that person, they are to you metaphorically what Lucifer is to Sam right now.

Fitting, that it started with him vs his alarm clock as a loved one

Now we see the even darker side to mornings

Look, I'm kinda... horrified here so I'm just...

Can you kill this fucker and get back to your family already?

HONESTLY if I was Sam I'd take my chance with the wall of angry vampires rather than stick around for this conversation

"You need me"

... no shade on that concept though or anything, when it's a wall of angry vampires vs pretending to like Lucifer so he can hang out with Jack

I mean seriously I love Sam to bits but I'd be genuinely happy to see him torn apart by vampires again just to spite Lucifer.

Oh JACK no sweetie

We didn't even see them getting to hug each other, it's just straight to Gabriel sitting quietly, Jack pacing miserably, demanding why they didn't bring Sam back

Oh, he's fine

all that stress for nothing

"Please don't judge this friend I made at the rave, it was a really really bad night."

Do you ever find yourself staring into space thinking, "I would genuinely have been happier if the last shot of the episode was Sam being torn apart by vampires for the second time in 15 minutes?"

This is gonna go over swimmingly in a Buckleming episode for all the character dynamics. They are the only writers left who seem to actually like Lucifer.

Why does everything build up to stuff that needs to be handled by not-Buckleming right before a Buckleming episode anyway?

#13x21 #my stuff #I am in emotional shock #season 13 spoilers #D:#bobo fanclub #how very dare you

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