#this exchange is really heartbreaking to me and a great example as to why i think gina is more complex than she’s often given credit for

[brandonxdylan]

[zainclaw]

Hello. I am a new symbrock shipper and i really appreciate your posts of the excerpts from the comics. But i was wondering which part of the comic people said the writer (the cates one) erased some kind of part about the eddie & venom? It gets me curious somehow and was wondering if you knew about this.

...I’ve actually been expecting someone to ask me about this, sooner or later. Kinda been dreading it, tbh XD But here goes.

(This is quite a long and serious answer, and I totally get if not everyone wanna read this, but as more and more people are becoming interested in the Venom comics, I do think this is an important thing to address.)

This is also a conversation about fandom.

*deep breath*

First of all. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and just like some people might be upset with the writers of a tv-show when things take a turn they don't agree with, some people are upset with the changes Donny Cates did when he took over the Venom comics after Mike Costa. Yes.

But here’s the thing:

The Venom comics have had many writers (and artists) over the years. I mean, jesus christ, the Venom symbiote’s very first appearance was back in 1988. That’s over 30 fucking years ago, people. At this point, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect the feel of the story to be the same under every single writer that comes on. I just don’t.

In 1996 Len Kaminski gave us Eddie and his symbiote holding hands and giving each other chocolate gifts with love hearts and the line “it’s not human, but it’s given me things no girlfriend ever could” in The Hunger. Then, 20 years later, in 2017-2018, we had Mike Costa give us Eddie calling the symbiote ‘my love’ and ‘dear’ and ‘darling’ and refer to their partnership as a relationship and finally made them have a baby together in First Host.

(I strongly recommend using my masterlist of comics excerpts as a timeline here to understand what the hell I’m talking about.)

Sure, Cates hasn’t had Eddie calling the symbiote ‘my love’ or ‘darling’ since he took over. I guess you could say he “removed” that. Do I miss that part? Yeah. Of course. But as far as I know, no one had Eddie and the symbiote hold hands again in the 20 years following The Hunger, either. Different writers have told different stories, chose to focus on different things.

Cates chose to go down a very angsty route. To, for example, bring back the topic of the Venom symbiote having a past with Flash Thompson, of sometimes wanting to be with him more than Eddie, and feeling torn about who to choose, and Eddie’s pain and jealousy over that. This is something Mike Costa barely touched on during his run. Costa wanted domestic bliss, so that’s what he did. But that doesn’t remove past canon. Not for him, or anyone else.

I’ve said this before - have basically warned people who’ve come to me saying they wanna start reading the comics because of my excerpts - but the comics are fucking angsty. There’s a reason I’ve made a point of posting Symbrock highlights from the comics, rather than just say “read the comics, they’re just never-ending domestic Symbrock bliss” because they’re not.

Eddie Brock is not a happy man, and his relationship with the Venom symbiote has been obsessive, possessive and unhealthy at times. They have grown a lot and come a long way over the years, but this has always been a part of their canon. Eddie’s fear of being alone, of being the symbiote’s second choice.

This side of them is part of why I, personally, find their relationship so intriguing. How they can’t stay away from each other, even though they're both so flawed and not always good “people”, and don’t really know how to keep their relationship healthy.

And I think Cates must have felt the same way, because he’s chose to dive into Eddie as his own person. He’s made Eddie face his demons, his past, deal with his fear of being alone and do a lot of growing in ways I haven’t seen him do in any previous comics. He wanted to tell the story of Eddie Brock, to perhaps let him become a better person than he was, in order to make the relationship between him and the Venom symbiote better. And in my personal opinion, he’s doing a great job of that.

I’m very much against the “fandom hive mind” thing, and the thought of new people entering the Venom/Symbrock fandom and simply adopting the “we hate Donny Cates, he ruined the comics” mentality because they see so many other shippers feel that way, is so upsetting to me. I don’t like how entitled fans can become at times.

(I don’t know how many people who still follow me from my Teen Wolf days, but, damn, I’m embarrassed about a lot of stuff that went down between that fandom and the show runners/actors. It was a silly teenage show on MTV, and yet so many adults (myself included) thought they should have a say in where the story went, and not. It took me a long time to realize that, but there it is.)

Donny Cates did NOT deserve the hate he got from so many Symbrock shippers back in 2018. He’s NOT unfaithful to the story of Venom as a whole, and has NOT ignored previous canon. He openly spoke to and supported the Symbrock shippers on Twitter, before they tore him to pieces for not being Mike Costa. For, in their opinion, completely ignoring the loving nature of their relationship.

But like?

Cates is the one who gave us the Venom symbiote’s first “I love you, Eddie”. Cates is the one who gave us Eddie getting phantom limb syndrome from being apart from the symbiote. Cates is the only one, in my opinion, who’s given us SO many beautifully heartbreaking inner dialogues from Eddie like that about love and loss and longing, all referring to the Venom symbiote. Cates is the one who gave us the exchange “You found me” / “Always” that I’m still crying about.

My point being: I don’t think it’s fair at all to say that Cates has ignored the intimate relationship between Eddie and the symbiote. Because he hasn’t.

And it wouldn’t surprise me if, one day, when the Venom comics get a writer who actually doesn’t treat Eddie and the symbiote like romantic partners, people will look back on previous runs and say “wow I miss what Cates did.”

But,

I’m not here to convince anyone that Cates’ run is better than, or even as good as, Costa’s. I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to love every Venom comic that’s come out in the past 30 years written by several different writers. That’s unrealistic. You’re allowed to have a favorite Venom writer. You’re allowed to think that where Mike Costa’s comics ended, Eddie and the Venom symbiote’s story ended, for you. You’re also allowed to, like me, enjoy the angsty and slow burn story currently being told by Donny Cates.

You don’t have to hate Cates just because you’re a Symbrock shipper.

That’s all I wanted to say, more or less.

[battlinghurricanes]

DEIPHOBUS TIME!

I'm honestly not entirely sure how I got such a deeply involved concept for his character and motivations, but I definitely did. I just feel like he fits into an especially interesting place in everything and that there's a lot of great potential with him.

Shout out to @petalveinedwarrior for enabling me and also I'm very sorry for being incredibly long winded. My bad.

Also DISCLAIMER! I am NOT an expert on the Trojan War and all its surrounding mythology lol. This is just for fun, based on my own fairly limited knowledge of the myths (though I think I pretty much cover everything that’s relevant to this). These are just my headcanons woven with some details from various myths. Sorry if anything’s missing or inaccurate!

SO!

-

First and foremost, I headcanon Deiphobus as the oldest of Priam and Hecuba’s children after Hektor.

Hektor calls Deiphobus the dearest of his brothers, and to me, this is why. They are the closest in age and they were the closest growing up, best friends when they were young. They also get the closest to being on equal footing which means a lot to Hektor, who often feels distance between him and his other siblings because of being heir to Troy.

Despite the relatively equal ground and Deiphobus treating Hektor with a very casual familiarity, deep down, he idolizes him. Deiphobus adores and admires Hektor, ever a younger brother in how he looks up to his strength and intelligence and reliability but close enough in age to not feel the same envy as so many of their younger siblings.

Deiphobus is aware that he is next in line to inherit the throne of Troy after Hektor, and the possibility of that is more real to him than to the rest. He doesn’t envy or want the responsibilities Hektor has to bear being the first son and admires him for it rather than resenting him. He never wants the weight of Troy on his shoulders.

Additionally, as close as they are, Hektor confides more openly in Deiphobus than the rest of their siblings. Consequently, he has a more realistic idea of both the burden he bears and also the ways he struggles to manage it like any human would.

Deiphobus holds Hektor in the highest regard- he means the world to him. It is a strange and unique combination of relating to and understanding Hektor exactly as he is and then loving him so dearly for how remarkably he seems to do in all of it, all that Deiphobus adores and strives to be like.

Hektor calls Deiphobus the dearest of his brothers, but Deiphobus would never need to say the same of Hektor, that much has always been obvious.

Deiphobus himself is ferociously loyal, boastful and fiery proud, wild and energetic, and always quick to smile and laugh with a sharp sense of humor. He’ll defend his own with tooth and nail, Hektor first and foremost, and they make a well balanced pair. Hektor’s level headed sense of responsibility softens many of Deiphobus’s rough edges, and Deiphobus’s enthusiasm breaks through many of Hektor’s more anxiously formed reservations.

Deiphobus would do near anything for Hektor, to a concerning degree in the eyes of some, but Hektor, by his nature, isn't overly controlling. He doesn't want Deiphobus to change how he is. Mostly, the only place Hektor truly pushes him is on moral grounds, for better rather than for worse.

Deiphobus hates to spend time overthinking anything, which benefits him in some ways, but also frequently has him following the example of those around him without considering what might lean towards cruelty. Hektor never tolerates hurtful and needless rudeness or otherwise, and their friendship doesn’t spare Deiphobus his reprimands.

Hektor's needling, though, has him step back and reexamine his actions and the second look is generally what he needs to correct his missteps. Admittedly, he’ll sometimes act better in some way solely to please Hektor, but far more often than not, he’ll come to recognize why it’s best with time and continue that way from his own compulsion.

(He grows and his conscience sounds irritatingly like Hektor.)

Deiphobus is actually one of the best of his siblings at not holding a grudge. He might for drama or humor’s sake, but once a squabble is past, he’ll easily set it aside in favor of having fun with whoever he fought with.

Regardless of his flaws, Deiphobus is amiable and of the opinion that it’s never worth passing up a good time over some pettiness. He’s never one to ignore the value of little joys, no matter how fleeting they are.

Before the war, when he is still younger, there is Antheus. He’s the pretty son of Antenor, and both Deiphobus and Paris are quite taken with him. Paris’s involvement rubs him the wrong way, but he elects to ignore it as best he can. It doesn’t sit right to consider policing Antheus’s actions. He can hardly demand he stop seeing Paris while still insisting on his company, after all.

Besides, he can’t really complain. Antheus favors him with his presence often, laughing at his jokes, stealing off his plate when they share meals, tumbling with him when they wrestle. And when Antheus lifts his hand to idly toy with his lower lip as he smiles slyly at him, Paris is the last thing on Deiphobus’s mind.

Hektor teases him sometimes when he turns up ruffled from some exchange turned overzealous, but his flustered frustration pales in comparison to his excitement, so Hektor gets away with it. Oh, he loves Antheus and the feeling is so heady, better than the most potent wine.

Then it all shatters when some men rush into the palace with Antheus’s limp body carried between them. He was in the gymnasium with Paris, they learn. One throw from Paris with a warped discus and Antheus was gone. Deiphobus stares at the blood soaked in his lovely hair.

Deiphobus is ready to rip Paris apart, but when his brother is guided in after, there’s just no room for it. He’s in complete hysterics, shaking all over as he hyperventilates, and screaming would have gotten through to him no more than their family’s vain attempts to calm him down.

Paris is inconsolable afterwards. He retreats in on himself, though without any attempt to defend himself, first to give himself the blame. He makes for a pitiful sight, and at first, Deiphobus can’t stand being in his presence at all, to take his anger and grief out on him or otherwise.

It doesn’t take that long for Deiphobus’s anger to grow more painful than cathartic anyway and, well, it is hard to lash out at someone acting exactly how he feels. He feels the same heartbreak and pain he sees in Paris and he can’t find it in himself to rage against him when he’d rather just sit and cry himself.

Paris does take it upon himself to face Deiphobus after a time and claim responsibility for what happened that day. Deiphobus doesn’t forgive him, doing that feels... off, but he manages to convey that he won’t turn on him for the accident with Antheus. He thinks that might make Paris feel better but he can’t truly tell.

It all still hurts then, even as they try to get things to settle. Nothing but more time can do anything more to heal those wounds.

And time passes and then Paris returns from Sparta with Helen, and, well.

The brewing war doesn’t drive a rift between Deiphobus and Hektor, but it does force a new distance between them. The pressure on Hektor spikes and never eases, and the time he has to spare becomes exceedingly rare.

Much of the time the two would have spent for themselves together now shifts to working together to manage the complications that come with this new conflict; Deiphobus has new responsibilities to shoulder himself. More work, less play, but the mutual affection and respect between them remains just as strong as before.

Deiphobus can’t help but feel a certain bitterness over having the casual companionship of his brother taken away from him, but he does all he can to set it aside. He refuses to let it be another source of stress for Hektor, so often too caring for his own good, and he doesn’t hold it against him anyway.

As always, Deiphobus remains aware that these tasks could easily have been his and, privately, he feels woefully inadequate in the face of that possibility. And truly, it just serves to make Hektor even greater in his eyes, handling it all with grace he can’t imagine. He knows he’s not perfect, yet still, it’s hard to imagine that anything could ever truly bring Hektor down.

And so, Deiphobus helps his brother in the ways he can and loves him as ever, always ready and eager to fight at his side.

Deiphobus leads a contingent himself, and does it well. It comes easier to him to manage a smaller group like that. He does as directed and guides his men through the fighting. One can say what they will about his ability to lead, but his capability as a warrior is undeniable.

Things shift between Deiphobus and Paris as well. Much of Troy turns on Paris, some faster than others. Deiphobus ignores the greater dramatics which, in his opinion, help nothing. Still, it is often tempting to berate him for his flippant disregard of the battles so he does, which is, admittedly, not entirely unwarranted.

However, Deiphobus and Paris share a mutual, unspoken understanding that they simply cannot focus on the war at all times. Sometimes it must be set aside. This is more often true to Paris than to Deiphobus, but that invites Deiphobus to keep Paris’s company when he can no longer bear all the stress.

In turn, when Deiphobus approaches him like that, Paris can trust not to be reprimanded as he so often is, as that gets ignored along with the rest of it. So there are times during the war where the two can be found together affably, chatting about nothing important. Their personalities can still mesh in such moments.

And, well, it’s shocking how steady things can stay over nine years of war, but they do. Death and loss become far too familiar companions, but they can do nothing but keep fighting through that, and things proceed much as they have been.

Until, of course, Achilles.

With all the cruelty of fate, it of course follows after they get the closest to driving away the Achaeans as they ever have. Such a brief, amazing hope. In his unmatched fury, Achilles slaughters their soldiers, butchers many of his brothers, escapes Scamander’s rage through the grace of the gods, and drives the army behind Troy’s wall with his advance, except for-

Then-

Hektor is dead.

Deiphobus tastes blood in his throat screaming at the sight behind the chariot.

In a way, it’s a blessing that it takes twelve days to get Hektor’s body and another twelve to bury it. With his death, command of Troy and her allies has passed to Deiphobus, and he could barely lead his own horse after losing Hektor, much less an army.

Deiphobus falls to pieces. He can barely process it, losing the one he held in the highest regard, held every confidence in, believed in to his core. Hektor was the best of all of them and now he’s dead, leaving him shattered. Deiphobus is hysterical, wildly heartbroken.

In this time is when Priam first turns on his remaining sons. He lashes out at them as he prepares to ransom Hektor’s corpse, degrading them as the most worthless of his sons. Still half blind with tears of grief he can’t hold back, he thinks that it’s true in the same moment he thinks of how he will now have to take Hektor’s place, worthless ruin though he is.

Most often, Priam refrains from speaking of his remaining sons after that, and in rare, fleeting heartbeats he almost seems contrite over cursing them. Neither is enough though to keep him from savagely reproaching them in unpredictable instances as Troy continues to spiral towards its doom. Deiphobus shakily chokes down his father’s abuse without a word.

Of course, he returns to the battlefield once Hektor is buried, coming to truly learn the crushing weight of his new role. How did his brother bear this? Every day feels like one failure after another; he’s not strong enough, not smart enough to do this. He tries anyway, each day more taxing than the last.

Deiphobus can hardly bear Paris after Hektor’s death. A large part of him hates him for it, desperate to pin the blame on someone despite knowing deep down that he’s not responsible. Though, even then, part of him is drawn to Paris, broken same as him, shaped by a sort of desperation to grieve for their brother with him. Misery loves company.

His anger burns hotter, but now he can’t bring himself to berate him even in the way he did sometimes before all this. He never confronts him with his hatred, such that it is. He simply avoids Paris entirely, knowing that if he indulges in the impulse to curse him for what happened to Hektor, he would fall apart at the seams.

Even now he can’t face the truth of what happened and keep going. It is all he can do to try never to think about it.

And then, with the aid of Lord Apollo, Paris kills Achilles.

The undecided limbo of Deiphobus’s feelings towards Paris topples into something like affection the moment he hears of it, connecting them once more. Paris has destroyed Hektor’s murderer, avenging him, and that matters to Deiphobus more than anything else.

That night, the two of them drink together until it half kills them, close enough to keep knocking shoulders as they revile Achilles with the worst profanities they know. It’s the only celebration they can muster after everything, but they’re both laughing for the first time since they lost him.

(When the night grows damnably late, Deiphobus’s attempt to laugh turns into retching and Paris collapses to the ground when he tries to get up to help. They suffer the agonizing morning together.)

They make a strange pair from then on. Friendship would be a generous word given the still unavoidable tension between them, but they somehow manage to maneuver around that and share a certain closeness. They maintain it despite differences that grind against each other. Sad as it is, it’s one of the only things either of them have left.

Paris and Deiphobus also weather Priam’s spontaneous tirades together. Usually wordlessly, but there is something to be said for the company of someone enduring the same pain you are. It is a quiet solidarity, but a significant one.

They talk of the war far more often now. Every day it devours more and more of their lives, always harder and harder to ignore or set aside. On rare occasions, they do still manage it. Those conversations make for a breath of fresh air, though that does little to stave off the feeling of drowning.

And then Paris takes a poisoned arrow and dies.

Deiphobus doesn’t wail and sob in the same way he did for Hektor. He’s too numb for it now. It hurts in an unnatural, distant sort of way. All he can muster is a ugly, stilted feeling of shame for letting himself come to care for him in the first place. Of course he would die like the rest, he should know this by now. He crumbles further.

After Paris’s loss, there's only two reasonable options for what to do with Helen. Either they need to return her to Menelaus or arrange a new marriage and keep her in Troy.

Helen pleads to be returned to her first husband but Deiphobus competes with Helenus to be the one who weds her. Troy does not stop them. There is a quiet but tangible tension to the city and he doesn’t think their people would tolerate Helen departing. He competes with everything he has left and he wins. And they marry.

That first night, Helen stares at his back while sitting in her new place on his bed. She expected to be treated like a piece of meat, a feeling she's grown well used to through living her life under the eyes of men, but he's barely even looking at her. He fought for her hand with an undeniable, feral sort of desperation. What was it for if he doesn't even want her?

"Why?" she asks him. "Why bother going through every effort to marry me only to be so cold now? What do you want?" Her voice would cut razor sharp if only she wasn't so tired.

He turns to face her with bloodshot eyes narrowed in a glare, riddled with barely restrained anger and grief. "I'm not letting you leave," he forces out and Helen pushes down the urge to scoff because that much is obvious.

"It has to be worth something," he continues. "There has to be something we fought for. If we just let you go back, then it won't have been worth jack shit." He paces, not looking at her again. "I won't allow that. Don't think you can avoid all this so easily now that Paris is gone. There has to be a point. My brother is dead because of this shit! If you're gone, then what would be the fucking point?!"

His brother. He means Hektor. He means Paris. He means every last one of them, so many dead. He means Hektor.

Helen doesn't reply. There is nothing she can say to that. For all that it doesn't make a difference, what he's laid before her is something she knows well. She's spent so long now berating herself and blaming herself for all that's come to pass and she understands. She hates this, all she wants is to go home, but she understands him.

She knows that they both hate each other and themselves all in equal measure. What a wretched pair they make, Helen thinks.

Not that they make much of a pair at all. They're rarely ever together. Deiphobus camps outside whenever he can, and when he can’t, he goes out of his way to avoid her. Helen accepts it as the best she can expect from the truly miserable situation this has become. The war drags on, but the truth hangs in the air that Troy is losing.

Then the horse.

The people, starving so desperately for peace, bring it inside the walls. Deiphobus tries to be cautious. He tries to think of what Hektor would have done. He commands Helen to walk around the horse, calling out in the voices of the Achaeans' wives. If there's some wretched spy or invader, let them show themselves. He'll kill them.

No one answers. Deep down just as desperate for peace as them all, he breathes a sigh of relief and leaves the damn horse.

He hopes the Achaeans filled their mouths with blood, biting their tongues as hard as they must have.

Troy is burning. The Achaeans fill the streets with slaughter; they are everywhere. Reunited with her husband after so, so long, Helen tells Menelaus where Deiphobus is. And so, Deiphobus dies alongside Troy.

(Deiphobus and Hektor meet again in the Underworld and Deiphobus tries to apologize for his failure to keep Troy safe. Hektor will hear none of it, refusing any of the anger he has every right to put on him. Still, a long time passes where Deiphobus silently and anxiously wonders if that was a lie, if Hektor truly does hate him for what happened.

Hektor keeps throwing him tense, unsettled glances sometimes when he thinks he’s not looking, even though he never says a thing. Each one worms further and further underneath his skin and he starts to squirm under the conviction that he’s done something wrong. Something Hektor holds against him.

When it finally grows so unbearable that Deiphobus confronts him about it at last, Hektor flinches and doesn’t disguise his fear and upset. Deiphobus braces himself. But then, mangled in with confusing, ashamed apologies, Hektor recounts for the first time how he died.

Athena luring him to his death in Deiphobus’s shape, speaking in his voice. How he turned to face Achilles believing he had support. When he called for a spear from his brother, he was alone.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I think of it at all, I’m so sorry I let you believe I was angry with you because of it. I’m not, it had nothing to do with you, you shouldn’t have to know of it at all. I just- remember it sometimes. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

Deiphobus feels nauseous. Hektor looks even more so.

“If I had actually been there-”

“No! Don’t do this. Achilles would have just killed you too.”

“We wouldn’t have died alone, then.”

They clutch at each other, these battered remnants of their souls, carrying with them the wounds of their lives.)

[lucky-dreamfisher]

Queer Subtext in The Illusion of Living - Part 5/5

It’s time to address the elephant in the room: Henry.

Joey tries very, very hard to ‘no homo’ his relationship with the man:

“His presence was helpful, I can happily admit, but his absence was even more so. Not having him at the studio ended up being one of the best things that could have happened to it. Of course, the funny thing is, I couldn't have not had him without having him in the first place. Just like you can't appreciate the light if you haven't spent time in the dark, so too does a person's absence become clear only if he has been around.” TIOL, page 154

“A letter from Henry. You might not think I'd keep such a thing, but I do. I have no ill will toward the man as you know. Him leaving, as I said, was the best thing that could have happened to the studio. His letter reminds me of that.” TIOL, page 218

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

The only hint we get regarding Joey’s true feelings for Henry is the following note by Nathan:

“NateA: Joey has always been a professional person, far more so in many ways than me. That is why this section of the book is so forgiving of the man who abandoned the studio he helped create. Joey can't help but see the good in people. That being said, as a good friend of Joey's, I know that Henry's departure was a great upheaval for him and a great personal betrayal. Joey never truly forgave Henry, and I don't think he should have felt obligated to. The fact that Joey is so gracious in this part of the book is a reflection of his incredible generosity in allowing Henry Stein to be stainless in the eyes of history. I think, had he lived longer, Joey might have in later years called it his greatest illusion.” TIOL, page 155

I’m very surprised by the harshness in Nathan’s tone here. Especially since Henry appears to believe that he and Joey have parted on good terms, and Joey admits that they have continued to exchange letters for a while after Henry’s departure. We’ve also seen Henry’s note to Joey in the game, and it comes across as warm and supportive:

It really doesn’t sound like anything ugly happened between him and Joey. So then why are both Joey and Nathan convinced that Henry is a monster?

While I can believe that Joey is pathetic enough to consider anyone who slights him his worst enemy, Nathan comes across as a more level-headed person. So for him to voice his approval for Joey’s petty grudge must mean that he knows something that we don’t. But what could it be?

Honestly, nothing else comes to mind except for romantic heartbreak. It’s the only thing that could justify a man holding such a deep grudge for so many years. This isn’t Joey’s first friendship that grew apart over the years - his army friends have moved on with their life as well. It’s a normal part of life and there’s nothing in TIOL that would suggest Joey is unable to cope with that. We also know that the studio did fine for quite some time after Henry’s departure, so it’s not like Henry left Joey deep in debt. Henry wasn’t even the only animator at the studio:

“When the studio opened I surrounded him with artists of all skill levels, and the Writing Department had its own de facto leader in Mr. Hemmings, and so the whole of Creative was well managed for that first year of the company before I had to part ways with Henry.“ TIOL, page 155

And so we’re left with only one rational explanation: that Joey isn’t so much hurt by Henry leaving his job, as by the fact that Henry left specifically for the sake of his marriage.

Try as I might, I found no reference to Linda in TIOL. Even though Joey claims to have been friends with Henry for many years, he makes zero mention of ever having met Linda. While there are some hints that Henry wasn’t yet married to her at the time when he and Joey opened the studio together (such as the fact that he claims he hasn’t seen her in “days” even though he presumably slept at home, implying that he and Linda weren’t living together at the time. A shopping list among his notes in the Handbook also suggests that he cooked his own meals, which would be unusual for a married man with a demanding job), the two were already a couple by then, and must have known each other for a while already. Surely, as Henry’s friend, Joey would have met her?

Even when talking about Henry leaving, Joey uses a cryptic language:

“Henry left for his own reasons, and the correspondence between us became less and less. To be honest, it was almost like a weight off when he left. He had grown more sensitive as the studio became more successful and giving him pep talks had become exhausting for me. All the good qualities he brought, the hard work and diligence, were being undermined by a restless need for something different. Something that wasn't Bendy. I will never understand that drive. Bendy was and is perfection.“ TIOL, page 177

In DCTL Norman claims that Henry left to spend time with his wife. Why doesn’t Joey say that? It doesn’t make him look bad to admit that an employee left to enjoy a quiet family life. It’s almost like he refuses to acknowledge Linda’s existence at all. Like it’s too painful for him to speak of her.

Perhaps the “personal betrayal” that Nathan is referring to is related to Henry choosing a real family, over the “studio family”, and the possibility of having a real child, as opposed to a fictional one?

The symbolic image of Bendy as a child shows up multiple times in the game: for example the drawing from Henry appears to depict Bendy, Alice and Boris as a happy family, with Bendy holding onto their hands like a child would:

There’s also Alice using a womb imagery to describe the ink machine:

And of course, the final monologue is centered on Henry’s choice to pursue a family:

That monologue is very interesting if we assume Joey to be gay. Because a gay man would never have been able to follow Henry’s road. Gay!Joey could never choose to have a real family with a man he loved, because that option was denied to him by the homophobic society he was living in. The studio is the closest thing to a family that gay!Joey could ever hope to have. 

And evidently, that was not enough for Henry.

If Joey’s indeed gay, that must have felt incredibly unfair to him - knowing that he had no chance of happiness in marital bliss from the start, through no fault of his own. This would explain his desire to create a real, living, breathing Bendy, no matter the cost, just to prove to Henry that Joey’s “child” can be just as real as the one Linda could give him.

“Bendy was Joey's child, and he felt just as strongly about Bendy as I feel about my flesh-and-blood son.“ TIOL, page 2

This idea of an illusory choice very much resembles the choice between the Angel Path and the Devil Path in Chapter 3. It’s the only choice that Henry ever gets to make in the game, yet no matter which way he chooses, he still ends up in the same corridor. Some of the golden messages highlight his helplessness:

The symbolic meaning of the choice between the Angel and the Devil also shows up TIOL. There’s a scene in the book, where Joey writes a play about an Angel and a Devil fighting over the soul of a human man. Eventually, the Devil confesses that he doesn’t want the human to make his choice, because then one of them would have to leave. The play was supposed to end with the man making his choice, but according to Joey they lacked a third actor, so the ending was never played out.

I believe that the play is symbolic of the relationship between Henry and Joey, specifically with regards to Henry choosing a relationship with Linda over his friendship with Joey.

There are several reasons that lead me to believe this:

The human in the play making a choice between the Angel and the Devil is reminiscent of Henry choosing between Devil Path and Angel path in BATIM.

The play highlights that the Devil is on the left side of the human, while the Angel is on his right side:

“ANGEL: Spending my time with a devil has been an enlightening experience. Working with you over these years with you sitting on that left shoulder, so far and yet so near, all our debates, they were invigorating for the spirit. 

DEVIL: I won't miss you! Fighting all the time, trying to trick you into agreeing with me, trying to push you off that right shoulder of yours. The violence and the anger. I won't miss it at all!”, TIOL page 89

Much like the Devil Path is on the left side in the game, while the Angel path is on the right side:

The Devil is obviously a stand-in for Bendy. Joey even dances on the stage at one point, and one of Bendy’s nicknames is “The Dancing Demon”. Joey also claims that the Devil from the play was an inspiration for Bendy:

“Let's start with the basic idea of a cartoon.You need a main character. Someone who has adventures and who the audience relates to." I did. I needed that. I needed a character who didn't just reflect the general population back to itself, but a more exciting version. I had no interest in moralizing, besides I didn't think moralizing was particularly realistic. People don't see the world as one populated by do-gooders. I thought of the angel in my play. She could never be a lead character. The devil on the other hand…” TIOL, 165

The fact that Joey claims the ending was never played out is strongly reminiscent of the missing ending of the Tombstone Picnic

It’s possible that Joey is lying about the ending not having been played out, to hide Henry’s role in the success of the play, much like he removed his part in Tombstone Picnic. After all, what would be the point of writing a play for 3 actors, when you only have 2? Why not ask someone to play the 3rd?

Although the play itself is centered more on the relationship between the Devil and the Angel, rather than their relationship with the human, there is still a strong queer symbolism in the play:

“Abby shifted nervously next to me the whole evening. She was in a dress for the first time in a long time, white and soft. I was pleased she'd come in character. For my part the only red thing I owned was a garish bow tie, so that was all I was able to contribute visually.” TIOL, page 82

The angel is played by a woman, who usually wears men’s clothing, but of course, the Angel being a symbol of Christian values couldn’t possibly be portrayed breaking the gender norms. She had to wear a dress, though Abby is clearly uncomfortable in it. She’s essentially performing heteronormative feminity. Next to her we have Joey as the Devil, dressed in a red bow tie, which as I’ve mentioned in the first part of this analysis, used to be a symbol of homosexuality. 

This contrast between the uncomfortably heteronormative Angel and flamboyantly queer Devil is striking. It’s also very much in line with the views of the society in the 1920s. For something to be the symbol of purity and goodness, it has to be heterosexual, and the Devil is queer, because he’s also the symbol of sin.

That symbolism could be indicative of Joey’s own internalized homophobia. Back in his army days, his friends used to bully him for breaking gender norms. Joey likes to present himself as the hero, who was easily able to outsmart the bullies, but many of his later remarks in the book and in DCTL show that some of that attitude has left a deep mark on him.

The symbolism could also be intentional. Joey boasts about having personal ties to Noel Coward, a real life gay playwright, who was known for his many affairs with men, and for putting an ungodly amount of queer symbolism in his works:

“The old woman took a liking to me, and she was nice enough. Besides, her connections were incredible. She knew everyone, she even had the playwright Noel Coward come to stay with her whenever he was in town.” TIOL, page 144

There’s a lot of evidence pointing to the play being symbolic of Henry’s choice between his relationship with Linda and with Joey. But it’s also symbolic of Henry’s choice between Bendy, and a real child. The studio family, and a traditional family. Heteronormative relationship vs a queer relationship. 

Although there’s no indication in canon that Henry might be bisexual, he doesn’t need to be. The game has beaten into our heads that the “choice” is an illusion. Henry was never going to choose the Devil, or at least that’s what Joey believes. Although we’re never told what choice the human in the play was going to make, we’re told that he was supposed to be dressed in white, which suggests that he chose the Angel. 

“(The door stage right opens. A man all in white enters calmly and chooses a seat, brushes it off carefully and sits. He takes his hat off and holds it gingerly in his lap.) (Quiet.) (Curtain.) THE END” TIOL, page 91

That might be why the Devil in the play confesses that he doesn’t want the human to make his choice, fearing that one of them will have to leave once such a choice is made:

“DEVIL: You think he has made a choice? 

ANGEL: It is possible. 

DEVIL: Do you think he might be all bad? 

ANGEL: I hope he is all good. 

DEVIL: If he is all bad, my job here is done. If he is all good, you can go home. 

DEVIL: Strange. If we win we also lose. You would think that would be something I would find delightful. 

ANGEL: You would think I would love to make such a personal sacrifice.” TIOL, page 89

The line about a “personal sacrifice” is very interesting in this context. The Angel and the Devil clearly care for each other and for the human, and don’t want their relationship to come to an end. Though the Devil in the play seems to make gestures that the audience interprets as romantic in nature, Joey insists that it isn’t the case:

“I leaned in and placed a hand on Abby's knee. There was a gasp from someone in the audience, but I knew Abby wouldn't be flustered by it. That wasn't the nature of our relationship.” TIOL, page 89 

It makes me wonder if perhaps Linda and Joey used to be friends at some point, and both competed over Henry’s attention.

There’s a much overused trope in fiction where two men compete over a woman, which ends up ruining their friendship. It would be really interesting and subversive to see a man and a woman competing over a man instead.

EDIT: I can’t believe I forgot to add this part:

"Joey, thanks for coming," said Henry, approaching from behind us. I turned to look at him He had dressed up for the event but every item of clothing looked slightly wrong. The sleeves of his shirt a bit short, his vest a bit long, his tie askew. He smiled, though, with such confidence that I couldn't help admire him. I still do.” TIOL, page 160

Joey fell for Henry’s smile, how romantic!

“We watched in silence as he worked. Despite his lack of genius, to this day, I will always say that watching Henry work was a real pleasure.“ TIOL, page 173

“It's fascinating. Henry was never the showman like I was. He didn't tend to be easily remembered by those who met him when we did business. I was invariably the face of the company, the one introduced first at a gala, the one to whom people slipped their business cards.Yet in the end he ended up setting up camp in this small corner of my memory. I can't deny that he is tied to the creation of Bendy, to the creation of the studio itself. That at one time, in one small apartment, one too warm evening, we had shaken hands. That once upon a time we had been partners. He'll always be there, in the dark recesses of my mind. Always linked to me that way. Funny how the forgettable man is now forever in my mind” TIOL, page 177

[desiarthoe]

Romantic aftercare : less cuddling and a lot of talking.

I often find myself equating to Carrie Bradshaw lately- I too like to splurge on shoes (but I don't; I'm poor), chase after emotionally unavailable men (not anymore, yuck),and occasionally find myself in front of my computer after a romantic event, picking it apart and going through the narration like I am a 90s romcom character. In that regard, I think I have only one similarity with Carrie; I'm team Miranda through n through. Regardless, this time around I find myself wrapping my proverbial pashmina shawl and fixing my rimless glasses on the bridge of my nose; to talk about that emptiness that grips a lot of us after coming home from a date.

Listen, beggars can't be choosers. I am very grateful to have been able to GO on a date after two years stuck in a gyrating loop of pandemic heartbreaks, romantic drought and just general distaste in romantic partners. It was a sweet affair-It was valentine's, we exchanged gifts (I don't think he liked mine), walked out haughtily from an overpriced fancy restaurant (fuck capitalism and elitists) and had local food instead (at another fancy place, but it wasn't trying to be a Ritz rip off so we were cool). It was an amazing day overall. But I couldn't help but feel that stinging breeze of loneliness once my date dropped me home.

If we are to look at this phenomenon analytically, I live in a rather collective and conservative country. Where dates themselves have only been normalized very recently; and 'staying over' after a date? IS an impossible dream. Thus any chances of physical intimacy to be achieved is just a no. Us humans, we are creatures of structures. Our whole concept of intimacy is divided into two- mental and physical. Think about it- you spent the whole day emotionally and mentally bonding with someone, wouldn't you require the physical bonding to complete the whole process? EXACTLY. This is why the emptiness creeps in, and the need for the emotional aftercare becomes crucial, as to not leave a bitter aftertaste in our metaphysical mouth.

Romantic aftercare involves the merging of the minds. The making sure of 'are you okay?' and 'did you like it' (much like sexual- but the issues addressed afterwards are far less intense). It involves communicating thoroughly about what your partner felt, liked or disliked and what you felt for them. Always express what you felt first, I am a firm believer of 'lead by example' thus if I start talking, I believe that it will provide space for my partner to express themselves too. And hey- it's a great trust building exercise. If you cant trust your person (or future might-be-person) then what's the point?

Lastly, AFFECTION. Note how i said physical intimacy is impossible here, well at least adequate expression of it. Different people require different amounts- I am a golden retriever in that sense, must.get.pets. (no kinks here). A crystal clear vocalization and gestures really do make up for the lack of real tangible-palpable-touchable intimacy for me. I cant touch you but i can surely tell you how much i want to. Or tell you that this stupid scrunched up face dog reminds me of when you eat lemon rinds; and how i find it weird that you eat lemon rinds ( the fuck). It's all in the details- of making it up, and recognizing the parts that need to be made up. So, reach out, give your person a virtual caress and make them give you one back if they're not aware of how to. That might open some windows for important and vulnerable conversations that might lead to affectionate sexting. Idk I definitely don't know if it will.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

"Oya, Miss Raven, I do hope you haven't forgotten what today is."

Jade allows himself a moment to orient himself in your otherwise busy attic. Once again you were playing host to yet another student of NRC, once again your feathers were ruffled by the commotion and energy.

It was quite enjoyable to see you flustered as you are when your attentions were pulled all which ways. Perhaps those distractions will allow him to slip past your high defenses.

"I seem to recall about a month ago you provided me with a gift, citing land customs. I too had researched about that same custom as well, and have come prepared for the accompanying day of returning the sentiment."

He holds out a tome, one with a brilliant sea-green cover. Whatever title that was written on the leather-bound book was in mermish, untranslateable to the non-mer layman. He chuckled at your stares.

"This is a first edition volume of a fairy tale from the Coral Sea. It is quite enchanting, the story of how the great Sea Witch, in all her compassion, gave the mermaid princess exactly what she wanted. I do hope you like it, Miss Raven. The Sea Witch's tales are all filled with heartbreak and heartmend. Romance from the ashes of tragedy. A happy ending as all creatures of both land and sea deserve."

His eyes twinkle in enjoyment as he places it in your palms.

"Oya, but I wonder about creatures of the sky? Fufufu... Happy White Day, Miss Raven."

I’M SORRY, SEBEK 😭 I’M SO, SO SORRY THAT MY J LEECH ROT THIS SLIMY EEL HAD TO COME AND DISRUPT YOUR BIRTHDAY TAKEOVER

This is a little late because I prioritized drafting my thesis and Sebek birthday takeover asks, but let’s just all pretend it’s still White Day, okay? Okay~

“H-Huh?” Raven scarcely had any time to react between Jade’s sudden appearance and the green leather-bound tome being dumped into her hands. The most she could manage was stuttering, “What... What are you doing here? D-Don’t tell me that you’re one of Sebek’s guests!”

“Need I remind you that I am a student of Night Raven College, Miss Raven? Thus, I am free to roam its campus as I please.”

“This is a private residence, entry granted upon invitation only!” Raven squawked, waving a hand around the attic. “Breaking and entering is considered a crime, you know.”

“Oya, is it? The front door was wide open, so I invited myself in.” Jade’s brows furrowed, and he pulled a sympathetic smile. “I did not think I needed an occupant’s invitation rather than my own. Silly me. It must have slipped my mind.”

“Don’t play dumb! You definitely, definitely know it’s a crime!”

The eel only laughed, tapping a finger teasingly against his lips. “If returning a Valentine’s Day gift is considered to be an act of criminal activity, then yes, I am guilty as charged.”

“Very romantic of you to say, Mister J Leech,” Raven replied dryly.

She avoided his eyes, allowing her gaze to instead fall upon the cover of the book she had been gifted. There were letters proclaiming the title--but they were unlike anything she had seen before. Strange points and elaborate curls adorned each character, forming small images that closely resembled symbols of the sea rather than letters. 

Mermish.

“You said that this is... a first edition of a fairy tale from the Coral Sea?” The bird rand a curious finger along the cover, tracing each intricate component of the title. “How in the world did you manage to afford such an item?”

“I have my ways.”

“Please tell me it didn’t involve some other crime.” 

“Fufufu. I have no idea what you may be referring to, Miss Raven.”

“Sure you don’t.” She snorted and returned her attention to the volume.

Her curiosity piqued, she flipped open to the first page to sample a bit of the writing. Raven’s heart sank upon spotting the prologue--also written entirely in Mermish. Of course. Why had she expected a book by and for merfolk to be in a language that creatures of the land could understand?

“I’m sure the Sea Witch’s story is enthralling, but unfortunately, I’m incapable of reading this.” Raven holding the tome out to Jade. “I’m afraid this may be more useful to you than it would be to me.”

“I insist that you keep it, as it is a gift from me to you,” he said with a gentle smile, pushing the book back to its intended recipient. “If you struggle to understand its contents, I would have no qualms with arranging a time for us sit down somewhere quiet and read it together. Say, over a cup of tea and a platter of snacks?”

... Ah.

Raven’s cheeks erupted into a bright pink.

I get it. So that was his goal all along.

Perhaps the party had already worn her down emotionally, or perhaps she was feeling particularly soft that day--but whatever the reason, she didn’t push him away. Not this time, at least. Instead, she just stood there, wide-eyed and stiff, hugging the book to her chest.

“Fufu. I take it that you are a fan of my proposal?”

“D-Don’t... Don’t be so presumptuous! I could just as easily ask for another translator! That would be a far smarter alternative to being indebted to you.”

“Is that your concern? Being indebted to me?” Jade chuckled into a hand. “If that is the case, I am sure we can work out some sort of equivalent exchange. For example, are there stories from the sky that you wish to share?”

“Well...” Raven chewed on her lower lip as she considered the idea. “Creatures of the sky tend to lack appendages for formally recording stories. We usually tell tales through strictly speech, not writing. In fact, writing is a relatively... new experience for me.”

“My, is that so? How fascinating. You really must tell me more over tea, then. In this manner, you would not ‘owe’ me anything, correct? We would be even.”

“... Fine.”

“Very well.” Jade nodded. “It’s a date.”

“... Don’t you mean deal? It’s a deal.”

“That is Azul’s phrase of choice,” he corrected with a polite smile. “I did not stutter in my phrasing whatsoever.”

“You...!!” Raven’s cheeks flared once more as her temper surged. “You’re... insufferable...!!”

“Fufu. So I have been told.”

But in the end, it did not matter—for the date had been set, just as he had intended all along.

[naralanis]

My first pen was a Pilot Metro Retro. And was promptly broke by an E-2 I let borrow it to sign paperwork (i kept the cap so he would have to give it back, but alas). And then a couple years later I jumped to a TWSBI Vac700 Iris. Anyway, i have a few different pens, but I havent found even a basic instruction on how to tune tines or maintain them besides washing them out with distilled water. And suggestions?

Hi there! Sorry about your Metro, and hope you're happy with the TWSBI! I once let someone borrow my Décimo and they... mangled it. Heartbreaking! I was eventually able to fix it, but it took some doing, and it was also a last ditch effort -- I was already fully prepared to dish out the money for a brand new nib unit, so I figured there was no harm in trying.

I'll get to the easy stuff first: if your fountain pen is writing OK, it doesn't really require more maintenance than a good flush every now and then. You don't even have to use distilled water (unless the water in your area is like, exceedingly mineral-heavy) -- plain tap water and regular dish soap will do just fine.

As for nib tuning/readjustments, they are not part of a pen's general maintenance. Readjustments are done if there's a problem with how your pen is writing, and personally I view nib tuning as something done to improve the experience to the user -- mostly to smooth a scratchy nib.

Here's the short answer as to why info on making these adjustments is a little less widespread (though still relatively easy to find):

1) While often simple, these alterations can be a bit fiddly, and it's very easy to irreparably damage your pen.

2) These alterations, but especially tuning/otherwise modifying your nib/feed, will almost certainly automatically void your pen's warranty.

Keep that in mind if you decide to undertake any tuning -- it is always at your own (and your pen's) risk.

That's the short of it! For the (much, much) longer version, as always, see below the cut!

sorry this one took so long, I got really, really into it and it is stupidly long adalskjadhls

So, first things first. Your pen writes completely fine, you wash it every now and then or whenever you're changing inks, and have an overall pleasurable experience writing with it.

Congrats! Nothing else needs to be done. Enjoy your pen.

Now, let's say your pen isn't writing completely fine. Maybe it's skipping, maybe it feels scratchy, maybe it's laying down too much ink or not enough.

Before you go straight to tuning your nib, the first thing you do is: you clean it.

"But Nara, I already cleaned it." Clean it again. You'd be amazed how often a more thorough flush fixes simple flow problems -- do it with dish soap if you used only water the second time.

The next step? Try a different ink, if you have some. Then, try some different paper. It's good to have a paper/ink combo that you're familiar with to use as a standard. I like to use a Rhodia No. 19 Dot Pad and Waterman Serenity Blue to test all of my pens -- nearly every pen I buy writes an 'inauguration' page with that exact combination.

If your pen is a cartridge/converter, always make sure the cartridge or converter is the right fit and that it's seated properly. It should fit securely without a ton of pressure -- if you can basically bop it off without trying, it's probably the wrong fit. If the converter provided to you by the retailer doesn't fit, contact them -- maybe you got a defective pen.

Alright, so you've done all of the above, but your pen is still writing funky or not at all. Now it's time to take a closer look at the nib.

Enjoy this expertly made reference image I made on my phone before I realized I could just link you to a better one.

Before you start researching how to tune/grind your nib, let's check the nib and feed alignment -- the feed is what allows the ink to travel from reservoir to paper, and if cleaning your pen hasn't solved the problem, there's a good chance it is probably not seated correctly.

Here's what you should check for:

1) Make sure your feed is flush to the underside of your nib

If there's a major gap between the underside of your nib and the top of the feed (where the ink channel is), the ink simply can't get to where it needs to be (i.e. the tip of the nib). I

If there is a major gap, you can check if your nib and feed are seated correctly in the nib section. This depends a little bit on the pen and the model, but most of the time, you can try grasping nib and feed together and gently pushing down. Remember to never grab your nib by the shoulders/tines, as that will most likely ruin it.

2) Make sure your feed is properly centered with the nib.

This is easier to check if your pen has a breather hole, which most of them do. Basically, check to see if the ink channel at the top of your feed (you can see it through the breather hole) lines up with the ink slit. Here's a good example:

And here are... not so good ones. Coincidentally, both on Conklin pens.

This is usually a simple fit -- sometimes you can gently wriggle it back in place. Other times, you need to remove the nib and feed from the collar (basically the plastic thing that holds the nib unit together) or they are friction fit to the section altogether (like in the Lamy AL-Star). Do a bit of research on your pen model before you try disassembling it.

Feed is centered? All good to go? OK, now we move on to checking the metalworks, so to speak. I recommend using a magnifying glass or loupe for this part. Here's the one I use.

4) Check your tines for a) factory oopsies and b) misalignment.

Here's an example of tines that were just... cut very wrong (sorry for poo-poo pic quality, but you should be able to see the tine on the right just... ain't right)

In the case above, contact your retailer. I noticed this one before even inking my pen, but they should cover a replacement regardless.

DISCLAIMER: all adjustments from here on out may void your pen's warranty.

(maybe not a simple realignment, but don't risk it, or ask your retailer before you try anything).

Here's an example of slightly misaligned tines (ON THE SAME PEN AFTER EXCHANGE BTW).

I stupidly didn't get pictures of my Décimo or the Duragraph above looking straight at nib pointing up -- you could actually see one of the tines sloping slightly downward. That causes unbearable (to me) scratchiness and can tear off paper fibers. No fun.

There are better examples from JetPens' Fountain Pen Troubleshooting Guide (which you should absolutely check out!)

You can fix misaligned tines yourself. It requires patience, a little pressure, and a lot of finesse not to overdo it. You can manually bend the tines back into place, but before you try it yourself, I recommend going to YouTube to see how other pen people do it. My method is similar to this one, but there are several others. You can use your fingernail to push it down, just be very careful with how much force you use.

The one method I personally don't recommend is, ironically, the one JetPens recommend on their guide. It might work just fine, but I just think it is way too easy to overdo it and get splayed tines or create a major gap between nib and feed.

OK, seems like the tines on your pen are fine? Time to...

5) Check the distance between your tines.

Your tines should, ideally, be juuust a hair apart-- only enough for the ink and capillary action do their thing. They shouldn't be touching, since that would hinder ink flow, but there should not be a gulf of distance between them either. Let's revisit another Conklin

Yay. Fun.

This is also fairly simple to fix, but again: you have to be delicate about it. I manually manipulate my tines into position and kind of go by feel by now, always testing and checking with my loupe. Here's how PenBoyRoy does it:

Again, there are many different methods, and you will often hear different things from different pen people. It's down to preference and what works for you!

OK, now we've gone through an odyssey of troubleshooting (I AM SO SORRY), let's talk about nib tuning.

Yet another disclaimer: doing anything I describe below will 100% void your pen's warranty.

Tuning your nib isn't necessarily fixing it. It certainly can, if you've done pretty much all of the above and everything looks fine but the pen isn't writing the way you want it to. I use it to smooth down pens that are technically writing OK, but the experience of writing with them isn't entirely pleasant for me.

Essentially, you're using a rougher surface to basically... 'sand down' your nib. There's a wide variety of techniques (from using a rough paper bag all the way to actual fine-grit sanding blocks), but the most important detail you need to remember is you're removing tipping material (however little).

While tuning your nibs isn't necessarily hard, it's very, very easy to overdo it, and that will cause pretty much irreparable damage. If tuning nibs is something you're interested in, practice on inexpensive pens first -- I practiced on ye olde Pilot Varsity.

The Varsity is great to practice tuning because 1) it's super cheap, so even if you fuck it up completely, it's not the end of the world. 2) It has a medium tip.

The bigger the tip = the more tipping material = more room for error.

I mainly use two things to tune my pens: micromesh and mylar paper, which are both super fine abrasives. Goulet (and other pen retailers) sell entire nib-tuning kits with everything you might need to get started, but here's my own (plus a few extras that may look scary, but trust me, you don't need all of this):

In my pen kit above, you can see my newer sheets of micromesh and mylar and the scribbles I use to tune my nibs. I hold the pen the way I normally would when writing with it, and scribble over the abrasive, but I don't do it randomly. Figure 8s are usually the go-to for simple tuning; you can also go a particular direction if you know exactly which area of your nib needs to be smoothed.

Again, even micromesh and mylar paper (particularly the latter) are incredibly fine abrasives, it is still very easy to overdo it. I have fucked up nibs before, mostly on my practice pens, but also on a not-super-cheap pen, and I had to buy a whole new nib unit.

So, like I said, possible? Very! Simple? Sure! Finicky? Hell yeah.

Side note: tuning a nib is mostly just making it write more smoothly. If you'd like to change the shape of the tipping material entirely (and thus create line variation), that is totally something that can be done!

It is called nib grinding, and it is better left to the professionals, but it is super cool!

pOK, I didn't quite mean to go into a full nib troubleshooting post, but I should have known my brain could not be stopped. Hopefully, this (extremely) long-winded, tangent-riddled descent into the rabbit hole was at least a little bit useful!

Thanks for dropping by!

[yellowdumduck]

Snapped (Mammon writing piece)

Thank you to @thehouseoflamentation for the idea for this one-shot!

-

Over the years, Mammon had accepted all the mistreatment he has gained. Being pushed around by his younger brothers, always being the butt of the joke and all the negative words that kept him awake at night. 

Maybe being the literal embodiment of greed had held him out for so long, his mind kept convincing him any type of attention is good. Any type of contact is enough. Mammon genuinely thought this was normal, so he never fought his younger, less powerful brothers back. Never showed them their place, unlike Lucifer.

Part of him also believed he deserved half this treatment because of him always stealing things from them, all the scams, everything he has done for a quick buck. Mammon was taking in the karma with open arms, accepting the mistreatment, abuse and hurt with open arms.

Until MC came.

They treated Mammon with such care. Whenever they teased him, it felt more loving, more light-hearted. He was desperate for contact, and they gave him the right type.

One night, they were exchanging silly little secrets. Like, for example, stupid things they believed in as a kid. Idols they looked up too. The atmosphere was light and full of laughter until the question was asked.

The question that MC has been too concerned about to ask, the question that Mammon did not know will change his point of view forever.

“Why do you let your brothers treat you like that?”

Silence followed the question, making Mammon choke on his spit. MC immediately regretted asking as they patted his back in the hope he will recover. 

His heart raced from the gentle touches, but did not let that fact distract him from the question, “W-what do you mean? They don’t mistreat me, no one would dare mistreat the Great Mammon!”

He tried to smirk, but the look of sadness on their face made him freeze.

“That’s how family treats family… right?” Mammon’s voice became unusually soft, like a childs.

MC felt their heartbreak. They look away, causing only silence for a reply.

“Oi, MC. Reply to the Great Mammon!” He says, but his tone does not match his words as he starts to feel is world crashing own.

“Oh, Mammon..” MC rushes to him and wraps their arms around him tightly. Mammon gasps from the positive attention, still not used to it and he returns the intensity of the hug. Quietly trying to figure out the puzzle that has scattered his brain.

---

Today has been a horrible day. 

First, Mammon realizes that Goldie has been taken again. Next, his modeling gig has been moved. Lastly, he was late for breakfast and Beel ate all the food, and having no money left, he was starving as he finally got to lunch.

MC offered to pay for his lunch, and he eagerly agreed. He wanted to get the highest things on the menu, but that was interrupted by being shoved to an empty cafeteria table.

Collective gasps rang out through the now deadly silent room, the only sound being heard is the angered taps of the third most powerful, Leviathan. 

Mammon groaned as his body slightly ached, only to be grabbed by the collar by Levi. He was in his demon form and his snake-like tail withered and snapped behind him.

“You. Little. SHIT!” Levi hissed, each word was delivered with a punch to Mammon’s face, “I heard from Belphie that you sold my Ruri-Chan figures for some shitty ass shoes.”

Mammon felt his mind become dizzy as he heard the false accusation. Something inside him was being lit, and he did not know what it was.

“I deal with your bullshit on a daily basis, and I’ve had ENOUGH!” He threw Mammon to the table again, causing him to break his sunglasses. The glass cut Mammon’s cheek, making him hiss. “Why is such a scummy dumbass like you have to be my older brother? Why do you even bother to try to get money?”

He kicked Mammon in the leg and proceeded to deliver the final blow by picking up the smaller brother (by height) by the throat.

“You don’t deserve to even have MC.” The words were whispered to add effect, but that’s all it took for Mammon to growl.

That is all it took for Mammon to finally snap.

His eyes started to gleam a bright golden yellow, the only source of light as the dark black smoke surrounded the cafeteria. Demons of lesser power started coughing and Levi lost his tight grip to cough. That was all the time Mammon needed.

With both legs, Mammon kicked Leviathan in the ribs, sending him flying backward. He knocked over multiple people as he flew into a concrete support beam. An unsettling crack followed the impact, but the angered demon was not done. 

He practically was a flash as he flew over to the injured brother, and started to punch, kick, and just take out his anger on him.

Everyone was quiet from shock as the local class clown was finally using his power. 

Soon, the area around the two was red and full of the destroyed building. Mammon got down on one knee and grasped Levi’s chin, looking straight into the barely consciousness boys’ eyes.

“For years, I have taken in your guys bullshit, all of your anger. I was only your punching bag, not a brother.” Levi’s eyes widened as he tried to deny it, only to whimper from the tightening grip on his jaw. “I had thought this is how family acted. This is how they love. I must have really been an idiot.”

The older demon had a cold look in his eyes as his fists were covered in the other’s blood. His wings were fully splayed out, almost to insert his power.

“I know I take things from you without permission, I know I probably deserve that treatment.” Again, Levi tried to deny it, only to get a left hook to his jaw. Mammon’s tone got colder by the second. “But now, I take whatever I want. And you do not mistreat me anymore.”

He could feel his brother shake underneath him, but Mammon could not care less at the moment. 

“Now, be useful and tell me where sweet little Belphie is.” As he said that, something in devildom had changed. No one dares to question the third most powerful demon again.

--

I don’t know how to tumblr-

Additional @’s: @bluelipsblueveins-blue

[holyhellpod]

Heyoooo, it’s another episode of Holy Hell! This one is dedicated to the manchild himself, Dean Winchester. 

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Transcript below!

CW: discussions of child abuse, child death, suicide, alcoholism, family trauma, mental health

[Music]

Dean Winchester is, in a word, my soulmate. I started kinning him when the show aired in Australia on Fox8 and I have not been the same since. From his devil-may-care attitude to his undying love for his family that pierces the veil of death to save the day, he really is the most. I have to say at the beginning that this episode of Holy Hell will not include discussions of Dean’s sexuality and gender. I’m saving that for its own episode, so stay tuned my pals.

What we know of Dean as he develops over the course of the first episode is: he’s been hunting, and hunting alone, he’s 26 years old, he drives a sweet ‘67 Impala, he wears an old leather jacket, he listens to 1980s metal, and he has an arsenal of weapons and supernatural fighting talismans in his trunk. He’s also a smartarse, one of his most endearing qualities. He gets defensive about their mother and her death, and he defends their father over and over. He’s a loyal son and brother. The impetus to bring Sam back into the hunting life, after Sam decided for good that he was going to leave, is to bring his fambily back together.

The quality that defines Dean Winchester is how much he loves he loves his fambily. In the first episode, he is so worried about his father that he recruits Sam to help look for him, even though Sam and Dean haven’t spoken in two years, and Sam ran away to college rather than continue to live with their father.  He spends most of the first season defending their father, but when John comes back and starts arguing with Sam, Dean protects his brother from John. It’s one of the most significant examples of character growth Dean undergoes throughout the entire series, and it’s where his loyalty shifts from John to Sam.

In the episode of season 2, “Croatoan,” Dean decides not to shoot Sam when Sam contracts the Croatoan virus which turns people rabid and makes them kill. In the next episode, “Hunted”, Dean reveals that John told him to kill Sam if Dean couldn’t save him. But Dean doesn’t. He says that John begged Dean not to tell Sam, but it’s not John’s words that keep Dean silent. It’s his love for Sam and Sam’s wellbeing. And this brotherly love slash codependency is used by characters throughout the entire series, from the demons in season 1 to the literal character of God in season 15, to manipulate Dean and Sam. As many characters have pointed out, including Dean and Sam themselves, they are each other’s weak points.  

At the end of season two, when Sam dies from a stab wound in his spine, Dean trades his own life for Sam’s. He makes a deal with a crossroads demon—his soul for Sam’s life—and subsequently dies and goes to hell at the end of season 3. Dean literally dies a gruesome death and spends forty years being tortured in hell because he couldn’t live without Sam. At the end of Season 8, Sam is dying from the effects of the trials, which he undergoes in order to close the gates of hell, and Dean convinces him to stop because, again, he can’t live without Sam. Sidenote: this is where I stopped being interested in their brotherly dynamic to the point of losing interest in the show. It became clear to me that the showrunners were more concerned with rehashing the same tired storylines between Sam and Dean than focus on characters who could expand the world and make the show better. In fact, they killed a lot of the interesting side characters in order to keep the show solely focused on the brothers. The exception to this is Castiel, and the reason they kept Cas around is because when he died in season 7 the ratings tanked. If that wasn’t a clear enough sign that the showrunners needed to open up the show to more than just Sam and Dean’s caustic dynamic in which they die and kill for and then betray and lie to each other over and over, then I just don’t know what the fans could have done to convince them. Nothing, apparently, because they ended the show with just Sam and Dean.

Dean’s relationship with John is fraught with insecurity and codependency. Dean has so little sense of self that what he does consider to be his carefully curated list of likes and dislikes were inherited directly from John: his car, his leather jacket, his hunting abilities, and his music taste. He also throws himself into hunts without any regard for his own safety, because he doesn’t believe that he is worth saving, or that his life is worth living. His personality is crafted from both John’s reliance on him as a son, hunter and partner in crime, and the woman he assumes Mary to be. Dean’s sense of self-worth relies on how many people he can save. This is why, in season 2 episode “What is and what should never be,” Dean’s dream reality is one in which he’s a low life loser who disappoints his family—because without John pushing him to be a hunter, Dean doesn’t save people, and because he doesn’t save people, he isn’t worth anything. Bear in mind that this is the best reality Dean’s mind could conjure for him: one in which his father is dead, and he himself is not worth saving.

In one of the most famous exchanges, he asks Cas why an angel would rescue him from hell, and Cas replies, “What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved.” Twenty-nine years of bluster, insouciance, and a give-em-hell attitude crumbles in two sentences, wrought by a being Dean refuses to believe exists because, again, he doesn’t think that he deserves to be saved by them. He says, “[Why me? I don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties, let alone by God].” He thinks of himself so lowly that he accepted a one-year deal in exchange for Sam being alive. Dean cares so much about his family he lets it kill him.

But it’s not just Sam, Mary and John. Dean’s family grows to encompass a number of side characters: most notably Bobby their surrogate father, Charlie Bradbury the hacker, Claire Novak, Jack Kline, and Lisa and Ben Braeden. Even Mary makes another appearance in seasons 12 to 14. Unfortunately, because the show is the way it is, Dean puts Sam above all of these side characters, and then these characters are written out of the show. I should specify that Cas is not a side character; in most seasons, Misha Collins is billed as a main cast member, with his name appearing after Jensen Ackles in the credits. But he still dies in the third-last episode in order to have the show stay about the brothers. Even Jack, inarguably Cas and Dean’s son, is written out of the show in the second-last episode after dying multiple times. I say inarguably because I am not gonna argue with anyone about this. Claire and Jack are Dean and Cas’s kids. Dean and Cas are great parents who chaperone Jack’s prom and buy Claire her first hunting bow. They’re all one big happy, queer, neurodivergent family.

Dean loves the people in his life with reckless abandon. The times he’s excused Cas’s behaviour after Cas has done something ridiculous or foolish are too many to count. He grieves Cas’s multiple deaths, often succumbing to his alcoholism and entropy whenever Cas leaves him for more than a day. In a truly beautiful scene, Dean wraps Cas’s corpse in a curtain and watches, utterly and completely devastated, as his body burns. By this point, they have done so much for each other that it’s impossible to even envision the show without Cas, and indeed imagine Dean without his love for Cas. And we don’t have to for very long, as he always comes back a few episodes later. Even knowing this, the episodes where Dean mourns Cas are so heartbreaking and haunting that I cried for days after watching them.

Dean is great with kids, and every time he’s not is completely the fault of whoever is writing him in any given episode. We see him bonding with Lisa’s son Ben in season 3 and 6, Jesse in the season 5 episode “I Believe The Children Are Our Future,” and Lucas in the season one episode “Dead in the water”. With every child he meets, Dean gets on their level, empathising with them in a way most adults can’t. Like Claire and Jack, Dean has a complicated relationship with his father, who dies in the beginning of season 2 after bargaining his soul for Dean’s life to the demon that took their mother. Just like anyone else’s life, right? Must be Tuesday. This means Dean can relate to most children with traumatic backgrounds involving their parents, as a victim of parental abuse and having his mother die at age 4. I can’t find any sources to back this up, but a theory that rolled around in fandom was that Dean became mute after Mary died, which is what happens to Lucas after his father drowns. He says in “Dead In the Water” that he loves kids, and it’s true. As one tumblr user put it, Dean wanted to be baby trapped.

Dean carries the deaths and pain of his loved ones with him like Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders. When Claire is bitten by a werewolf, the characters administer blood of the sire wolf that bit her in order to cure her of her lycanthropy. Dean has to leave the room while she’s in pain, because he can’t bear to watch her die. The same goes for when Jack dies. Thankfully, Claire lives and Jack comes back a few episodes later.

When thinking about Dean being a father, I’m reminded of that scene from Scrubs when Dr Cox says he’s worried about being a father because his own dad was an abusive alcoholic. The difference between Dr Cox and Dean is that Dean doesn’t have his reservations about raising kids. He fits into Lisa and Ben’s life easily, at least for the first year, and we see a montage which includes him teaching Ben how to fix cars. When Claire lets her guard down enough to hug Dean, he hugs back just as hard. When he finally deals with the trauma of Cas dying in season 13, he accepts Jack into his life, and even grieves Jack when he dies. Dean escapes the intergenerational trauma that plagues his family by being a fantastic dad to the random kids who happen into his life by chance. He was born to be a father, and the fact that this show took that away from him and us as the audience makes me want to kick the showrunners into the sun.

Until season 6, Dean’s family only included men. The concept of the nuclear family—two sons, a husband and a wife—was ripped apart in the prologue of the first episode when Mary dies. Dean doesn’t know family for the first 5 seasons of the show outside Sam, John, Cas and Bobby. I do consider Ellen and Jo to be important to the story, but they’re only in a handful of episodes and die in season 5 for a reason that is plainly ridiculous. Did the Winchesters have to lose every single person in their lives to the fight? Clearly Kripke thought they were going to be cancelled after the fifth season, because it shows. And honestly? Maybe they should have. Let’s retroactively cancel the whole show. It can’t hold power over us anymore, because it’s dead and we cremated it.

But when Dean moves in with Lisa and Ben, he discovers a new type of family he didn’t have before, and new family dynamics. Instead of the 28-year-old son that Sam is to him, he takes the opportunity to teach Ben about cars and spend time with him and Lisa without the need to hunt. He gets a job, he makes some friends, and he lives the safe, apple pie life he begrudged Sam for in the pilot episode. It’s only when Sam reappears in his life that Dean’s codependency strikes again and he realises that he can’t live half in the normal world with Lisa and Ben and half in the hunting world with Sam. Sam says this himself in the first episode of Season 6, “Exile On Main Street”. Despite the ways Dean tried to settle down throughout the rest of the 9 seasons, the showrunners ultimately decided a man who was healing from trauma and alcoholism, who had adopted two kids as his own, and was learning how to bake cakes for his son’s birthday, deserved to die at the ripe age of 40, a week or so after he’d learned that his best friend was in love with him. You gotta laugh. Instead of getting the ending both Dean and we deserved—which was Dean settling down, opening a bar, and living the next forty years in relative gay peace while he got fat and watched Cheers reruns—well, we got something else. And I will always be bitter about that.

While it’s clear from the first season that he has reckless and suicidal tendencies, he doesn’t stop fighting to the bitter end. Even when faced with his own impending death in the season 2 premiere, “In my time of dying,” he fights to stay alive for Sam and John, while working the mystery that is overcoming his own death. Devastated as he is by Sam diving into hell at the end of season 5 and seemingly gone for good, Dean still gets up everyday and makes a life for himself in Lisa’s home. While season 6 was overall a bummer of a season, just god-awful in every aspect, saved from my complete vitriol only by “The French Mistake,” it did show us how great a dad Dean can be, and readied us for what was to come—being Claire and Jack’s dad. The lengths he goes to for his family are immense and all-consuming. As Cas says in “Despair”, Dean is a being of love. He loves everyone else, even when he can’t find it in him to love himself. He really thinks that he’s just a killer, not a father or a husband.

I’ve never subscribed to the idea that we have to love ourselves before we can love anyone else, or before anyone else can love us. Sorry Rupaul, you old bitch. We are all deserving of love, because love sustains us and helps us grow. And when we don’t know how to, it’s through loving others that we can learn to love ourselves. If Dean knew what a great father and friend and husband and brother he is, if he could see himself the way others, in the show and out of it, see him, I think he’d burst. You don’t like getting singled out at birthday parties? Well tough shit, Dean Winchester, because I’m gonna devote an entire podcast to you.

I talked about Dean’s carefully curated list of likes and dislikes before but I’ll go into more detail now. Things he likes: guns; rock and roll; nice cars; women; fighting; scamming people at pool; back alley blowjobs, probably; pie; driving across the country; Ozzy concerts; cowboy movies; being in control of every little thing in his life. His dislikes are: flying on planes; hair metal; angels and demons; anyone who harms his brother, his best friend or his kids; boredom; and being jerked around.

Okay I literally cannot talk about the cowboy movies without mentioning that he makes Cas watch them with him, in his Deancave, and the implications of that make my head roll off my body and into the dirt. Like they literally have gay little movie nights and watch their gay little cowboy movies together and Dean says all the gay little lines. I said I wasn’t going to talk about his sexuality, but mentioning cowboy movies leads to Cas wearing a cowboy hat and saying “I’m your Huckleberry.” This makes me insane. Excuse me, I must have my daily scream.

Okay, I’ve collected myself. Have I? Let’s just move on. In the Winchester tradition of inherited family trauma, Dean gets all of John’s interests, and Sam gets all of John’s mistakes. Dean’s personality throughout the show is basically quippy remarks, pop culture references, laughing with food in his mouth, and grouchiness. In case you haven’t realised, he is amazing to me. Every time he fires a rifle or pistol? Couldn’t be better. Eating a burger made of out donuts? Fucking incredible. Even when faced with beings with untold power, he doesn’t lose his cool. One of my favourite exchanges is when Zachariah comes to Chuck’s house in the first episode of season 5, “Sympathy For The Devil,” and starts soliloquising at him, Dean tells him to “cram it with walnuts, ugly.” Cram it with walnuts, ugly. It’s been ten years and that still makes me laugh. Top ten Dean lines for sure. Like all of my main characters throughout the years of writing original fiction are just “Dean Winchester but girl,” and I’m a good writer, but I can never come close to the level of hilarity that he achieves. And every single writer on the show seems to get that. The only times I can think of where Dean’s characterisation has irked me on a writing level are in season 6—basically the entire thing—and the way he treats Jack in the later seasons, specifically late season 15. But it’s really rare for me to watch an episode and not enjoy Dean. Even throughout the Mark Of Cain era, which I loved, when things were very serious, he had such style and panache and held himself so confidently that I was like, wait maybe he made some points? Maybe he should kill everyone?

Dean is a hunter and a killer, but that’s not all he is. He’s very skilled in hand to hand combat, weaponry, and tactical manoeuvres. Even when something doesn’t go exactly to plan, he’s usually able to improvise something to end up with a win. Because he is the main character, his choices and reactions, while sometimes extremely problematic, are never questioned, and that’s to his detriment. In the last episode of season 14, “Moriah,” Dean is unable to kill Jack, but in early season 15, he treats Jack’s betrayal as Cas’s fault, because he can’t take it out on Jack. Cas leaves, but it’s framed as a good thing because Cas is Jack’s father, and has to take responsibility for what Jack has done. In this instance, I don’t blame Cas at all. Okay I rarely blame Cas for anything, including the things he’s done wrong, because no he didn’t and you can’t prove it. But he especially didn’t do anything wrong when Jack killed Mary, and he didn’t do anything wrong by killing Belphagor. But by the middle of the season, in the episode “The Trap,” Dean admits his wrongdoing in taking his anger out on Cas, one of the only people who loves him without conditions. You’d think this would be a defining moment of character progression, but then Dean chooses to act exactly the same way by throwing Jack under the bus. Like, throwing him harder, under a bigger bus. So what was the point.

Anyway, those are choices the writers made, and not Dean.

Going back to what I was saying about being neurodivergent, Dean has adhd. I know this because I have adhd, and I’m Dean-coded. He’s wildly creative, impulsive, has a touch of OCD, and he has a hard time making long-lasting friends, although this is mostly due to how all his friends die. His best friend is an autistic angel and the only reason they’re still friends is because they’re obsessed with each other, in like a really unhealthy way. One of the funny things about his and Cas’s relationship is that every time you see them in the same shot, Cas is standing perfectly still and Dean is constantly moving. They are almost complete opposites, aside from their queerness and neurodivergence. But then, I haven’t met a single queer person in my entire life who isn’t neurodivergent or disabled in some way. That doesn’t mean we can’t live perfectly functional and normal lives, it just means we’re better than everyone else.  

Dean also exhibits black and white thinking—to him all felons are redeemable and all monsters should be killed. Felons are redeemable because he himself is a felon, and monsters should be killed because they all do monstrous things. When faced with the possibility of angels being real, he refuses to believe it for the first two episodes, because, as he says, “he’s never seen one.” Eventually he learns how to see in shades of grey and not kill every monster he meets, but this is because of his time in purgatory with Benny, his Cajun vampire boyfriend.

Another sign of Dean’s ADHD is physical sensitivity. In the season one episode “Bugs,” he comments on the shower’s water pressure. Like it’s a big deal to him, when he’s only ever used 1-star motel room showers. In the later seasons, he’s also seen to wear a fluffy robe and soft pajamas with hotdogs on them and socks that say “Send Noods” but noods spelt like noodles. And so he should! Dean deserves comfort! He’s a special boy.

ADHDers often have problems with executive function—remembering appointments, cleaning up after ourselves, showering, eating, even going to the toilet when we need to pee. The hunting life excludes Dean from the normal functions of usual life, such as dentist appointments, dropping the kids off at school, meal prepping for the week, or turning up to a job on time. These were only factors in Dean’s life during the gap between seasons 5 and 6 when he lived with Lisa and Ben, and it’s not shown how his executive dysfunction impacted his suburban, settled life, but Lisa does mention that Dean drinks a lot. It’s another thing he inherited from John, much as I did my alcoholism from my father, and my adhd too. But Sam doesn’t drink to excess more than a handful of times over the entire 15 seasons, whereas Dean subsists on alcohol to get through the day. At one point in season 11, I’m pretty sure, don’t fact check me, he is shown to be drinking a beer at about 10 in the morning, because, as he says to Sam, “You drank all the coffee. What do you want me to do? Drink water?” Dean your liver must be quaking.

Excess is a common problem for people with ADHD. We have problems with limiting ourselves—because our dopamine machine broke, anything that gives us a little bit of high—such as sugar, sex, alcohol, stimulants, any kind of food that is bad for us but tastes real good—we usually have it in excess because we can’t help ourselves. In the season 4 episode “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester,” Dean eats the entirety of the candy in the Impala. The only reasons I don’t eat everything in my fridge every day is because, one, I don’t have the money, and two, it’s all ingredients I have to prepare and not ready-made food. Whereas Dean has only known fast food for the first 10 or so seasons until he starts cooking and baking and settling into domesticity. Like anyone who gets UberEats every day instead of cooking for themselves knows how expensive that is. He also engages in meaningless sex, although people have pointed that Sam actually gets more on screen action than Dean. But I know a lot of amab people who engage in casual sex with randos because it satisfies a base need. Dean could be classified as hypersexual in some regards, but I know what hypersexuality feels like and it’s like this overwhelming miasma where you can’t think about anything except how horny you are, and I don’t think Dean has that normally. Maybe when he was a demon in season 10, but generally I think he can control himself.

His settled life in the men of letters Bunker is a far cry from his flashbacks in season 8 to Purgatory. From what we know of purgatory, the land of gods and monsters, it was a year-long monster hunt, but without any of the boring paperwork. Dean got to fight and kill as many vampires, ghouls, leviathan, etc as came his way, which is why it’s absolutely ridiculous that he died by rebar in a vampire fight. He spent an entire year spilling blood and chopping off heads, day and night, and he dies by metal bar to the spine? And he’s not even coughing up blood? Andrew Dabb, I’m coming for you. Of course purgatory is the perfect place for Dean because it’s constant adrenaline, constant excitement, constant stimulation, which is what every day life lacks. Even Dean’s every day life is like, 20% monster killing and the rest is leg work. They go weeks or months between cases, and sometimes don’t find the monster at all. So I’m not surprised he gets bored easily and drinks. Would if I could too, my pal.

Which leads me onto Dwelling. Dean dwells on the horrors of his life in a way I do and my carefree older brothers don’t. In the season 4 episode “Heaven and Hell,” he reveals to Sam that he remembers his entire forty years in hell, and there are flashes of his memory littered throughout the season in creepy, split-second increments. He dwells on the people who die, doing his thousand-yard stare into the funeral pyre of everyone they cremate. In the most egregious display of dwelling, he rewrites history TWICE to deal with his grief — in season 8 he makes himself believe that it was his fault Cas didn’t come back from purgatory with him, and again in season 13 he invents the story of Jack controlling Cas to deal with his grief over Cas’s death. His PTSD twists the truth until it becomes another way to torture himself, because if someone gets hurt it’s on him; everyone who loves him is just one more person to disappoint.

On a lighter note, Hyperfixations, equivalent to Autism special interests, are a common trait of ADHD. Some of Dean’s hyperfixations include: hunting in general; cowboys and cowboy movies; the musical Rent; the movie Braveheart; larping. He loves dressing up and acting, and what is putting on a monkey suit and lying about being a Fed if not larping? Oh god the meta of that coupled with the season 4 episode “The Monster At The End Of This Book” is making my head hurt. And actually, the next episode of Holy Hell is on the subject of meta-textuality so stick around if that’s something you enjoy.

One of the amazing things about ADHD is creativity. Since we’re easily bored and easily amused, we’re constantly pushing the boundaries of our curiosity. In season three episode “Bloodlust,” Dean decapitates a vampire with a miter saw, something that even veteran vampire hunter Gordon Walker comments is a thing of beauty. Dean creates a Ma’lak box in season 14 episode “Damaged Goods” as a way to contain Michael if he ever inhabits Dean’s body again. Dean is always making up words like “were-pire” and “Jefferson Starships,” and he has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of pop culture, which he references in almost every line of dialogue. Like tv and movies raised me, but even I don’t understand a lot of his references. It’s almost like he’s a character in a tv show being written by dozens of people. But that’s not right. He’s a real person and my friend. My friend Dean Winchester, who shouts me burgers and passes out on my couch.

Also, I’m bragging now but as of the day of writing this I got my ADHD diagnosis and it feels so good to have a doctor, a psychiatrist in fact, confirm my belief. After about three or four years of figuring out I have adhd and then trying to make everyone else believe me when I say I do, it feels like a huge weight off. Dean deserved to feel that. He deserves to put a name to his differences and be in charge of his life instead of letting his anger, confusion and impulses control him. If anyone is worried that you might have something and don’t know whether to pursue a diagnosis, my two cents are that it has only improved my life. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder in 2014 and it allowed me to go on medication, which snapped me out of the worst period of anxiety I have ever gone through and also a psychotic episode that featured talking walls and a swarm of Christmas beetles. Trust me, we all need help sometimes, and some people like me need more help than others, but you can take control of the forces in your life that hold you back. As my mother used to say to me when I was a child, the world is your oyster. It really fucking does get better, and since I started on the right anti-depressants for me my life has improved so goddamn much. The world is fucked right now, and it’s impossible to even function on most levels. We all need therapy. I myself have a gp, a psychiatrist, and a psychologist and they keep me relatively sane. I would not be alive if I didn’t have years and years of ongoing therapy and good drugs. Plus I journal everyday and practice gratitude. I’m still crazy but the craziness is contained and doesn’t hurt me anymore.

Despite never going to therapy, Dean grows from being a loner with one friend (his own brother) to someone with a wealth of connections and family. He picks up new people to love like he’s velcro, and when he goes in he goes all in. He would die for the people he loves. He’s constantly putting himself in danger to protect his loved ones. In the Season 6 episode “Let It Bleed,” Dean captures and tortures demons in an effort to find out where Crowley took Lisa and Ben. He then has Cas wipe their memories so that they don’t remember him and can live their lives without him, at his own great distress. In season 5, he goes to Stull Cemetery to impinge on the fight between Lucifer and Michael, just to be there for Sam. As Dean says, he’s “not going to let him die alone.”

That being said, I do have to talk about Dean’s very few, but ultimately life-ruining, flaws. His emotional dysregulation makes his moods unpredictable at best. By virtue of his black and white thinking, he forces the people he loves to choose sides between him and other characters, such as Sam and Ruby, Cas and Crowley, Mary and the british men of letters, and Cas and Jack, and when they don’t choose him, he passively aggressively, and sometimes just aggressively, tortures them until something else usurps their betrayal. His anger issues are par to none, and often get him in a lot of trouble. But since he is the main character, he never really faces consequences for this, and neither does he mature. Even in the final season episode “The Trap,” while Dean admits how angry he is and how wrong he was for taking it out on Cas when Jack died, mere episodes later in “Unity” he turns Jack into a nuclear reactor to take out God, and Jack dies again. His characterisation in the last few seasons, especially in regards to Jack, is all over the place. I would have to start a murderboard to explain how Dean feels about Jack and how he reacts to what Jack does in every episode. Like, pictures and red string and everything. And even then I would not be able to comprehend exactly what the writers did and what they thought they were doing.

But unlike me, Dean always believes the best in people until proven otherwise, and he does always come around to the people who atone for their sins. Even when Sam refuses to get his soul back in season 6, Dean keeps trying until Sam is put right. Between seasons 7 and 8, He spends a year in Purgatory looking for Cas despite how Cas sent Sam insane, ingested billions of monster souls, and became God. When the people he loves choose him, he chooses them back.

But even when they betray him, lie to him, deceive him, and hurt the other people in his life, he can’t stop loving them. He never stops loving Sam or Cas or Jack or Mary or John or Bobby. He loves with everything he has. He is, as Cas says, a being of love.

Oof. That was a lot of words and I feel like I only just scratched the surface. Like realistically I just talked about fambily and ADHD. There is just so much to Dean Winchester that maybe I’ll make another episode sometime. But I am definitely making an episode purely about Dean’s gender presentation and sexuality in the future. You can find the show at holyhellpod on Tumblr where I post transcripts for the episodes and Instagram where I post memes.

I don’t see myself doing an episode about Sam any time soon, Not because I don’t like Sam, but because I can’t stand Jared Padalecki. He’s done some things that I can’t support, and I’m really bad at separating the art from the artist. Especially when it’s something like Supernatural, which is not art. Supernatural is an experiment. It’s not Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry. Like Jared Padalecki didn’t invent rock and roll, you know what I’m saying? However, if you really want me to do an episode about Sam, you can pay me 101 Australian dollars and 50 Australian cents at patreon.com/holyhellpod. I’ll talk to you next time.

Links

http://www.scififantasynetwork.com/dean-winchester-has-adhd/

[beastars-takes]

Zootopia Takes: The Power of Really Liking Each Other

Our main event, Beastars Takes, will resume soon, but in the meantime I want to talk about one of my favorite movie relationships:

Has this been talked about to death by other people? Yes. But this is my blog and I write it for free so I can do what I want.

Note: this is not a shipping post--this is just an examination of their canonical relationship in the movie and why it rules.

At first glance, this is your typical enemies-to-friends story. I love those. But while the typical arc tends to involve two characters who can’t stand each other, who eventually develop a grudging respect for one another (often through some kind of shared ordeal) and maybe thaw into actual friendliness at the end. Zootopia packs all of that into the first half--by the midway point they are clearly not just allies, but friends, and by the end of the film they’re inseparable.

It’s important to recognize this isn’t just for the hell of it, or just to be cute--the closeness and trust they build is the linchpin of their success in the final moments of the movie.

All the reasons why, after the jump.

Something I talked about in the previous post was the messaging of Zootopia, and I don’t want to rehash it too much here. It’s a movie about prejudice, and the work it takes to overcome it. A key theme (one that it shares with Beastars, incidentally) is that friendships with those who are different from you are hard--but they are worth it.

Part 1: They Hate Each Other! (Right?)

Now...it goes without saying that when these two first meet, they bounce off each other hard. Each is seeing the other at their absolute worst.

Judy can’t stand Nick because he takes every bit of optimism she has about this world and throws it back in her face. She want to use him as a prop in her vision of an equal society, where “not all foxes” are crooks. He laughs at her. He humiliates her. All he has to do is walk away, but he takes his time. He twists the knife.

For his part, Nick sees a laughably ineffectual bunny who condescends to him and threatens him with jail for the crime of...humiliating her. She may not personally be a threat to him, but she wields the institutional power of the ZPD--a power he has plenty of reason to be afraid of--and she does it irresponsibly.

On first viewing, Nick inarguably wins this exchange. He avoids arrest, reads her to absolute filth and leaves her stuck in cement.

And he makes her really sad. Nice!

But, and I don’t pretend to be the first person to have pointed this out, on second viewing it’s obvious he can guess her story so well because it’s basically his story. The only difference, in his mind, is that he’s accepted the reality that he’ll never be allowed to live the life he wants, while she is still vainly pursuing hers.

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but the people I’ve met who have always most pissed me off are the people who remind me of things I hate about myself. The people who seem to embody the flaws I’ve worked to minimize. Nick’s naive hope is what has brought him the most pain in his life. He sees this bunny full of the same naive hope, surmises that she’s facing the same failures he did and yet stubbornly refusing to learn from them. It’s irritating.

Pictured: irritation.

Maybe I am projecting, but if Nick is anything like me, he probably didn’t walk away entirely happy from this exchange. Yes, he “won,” but he was also reminded of everything about himself that he least wanted to think about.

Part 2: They Are Not Very Good at Hating Each Other

So, the thing about Judy is, she is naive. By default, she assumes people are her friend. But she’s not stupid.

Nick assumes she is stupid, not least because she hasn’t wisely given up on her dreams like he has, and...he learns that she maybe not so fun to pick on after all.

So they wind up doing the first part of this enemies-to-friends routine, allies of necessity.

So, naturally, because he is Him, he makes it his mission to torment her.

In fact, we get two whole scenes where all he does he does is watch her struggle and make this face.

The first read of this behavior is that he’s just enjoying the failures of someone he hates. He says as much later. But I would also argue--from a viewer’s perspective--Judy is ridiculously entertaining and charming throughout these encounters. She wears her heart on her sleeve, and it’s hard not to like people like that.

Is there more happening here than just schadenfreude? I won’t pretend to know for sure. But worth considering.

By the time they’re investigating the limousine, his sabotage has diminished into something more like gentle trolling. And you can’t see this face, in context...

...and tell me she isn’t starting to like him, at least a little bit.

He’s also starting to help! By the time they’re past the minor detour of almost being murdered by a mob boss, he’s entirely cooperative, helping her conduct interviews and look for clues. The movie doesn’t call particular attention to this, but it almost did.

Finally, let’s look at Nick’s behavior when they’re being chased by a rabid jaguar. He could have absolutely booked it, with no regard for the cop who was blackmailing him into helping her.

These moments go by so quickly, but they’re hugely revealing of his true character, even before he defends her in front of Chief Bogo.

He picks her up when she falls.

More importantly, when he gets to the skytram, his first instinct isn’t to jump in--it’s to hold the door for her:

He sees she can’t make it, and she even tells him to leave without her. He doesn’t. He holds the door until he can’t anymore, and as a result he’s nearly killed.

Nick is a good boy.

Part 3: They Are Friends Now

She save his life, so he saves her job. This is a key story beat, and it’s a Disney movie, so there’s not a lot of subtlety (except how the specular highlights in Judy’s eyes fade as Bogo asks for her badge--the light literally goes out of her. Go watch).

But it’s such a sweet moment of teamwork--he was contemptuous toward her from the start because she believed in herself. This is the first time she’s simply given up in the whole movie, and he steps up. Because he believes in her now.

And she believes in him! Or, she wants to.

Judy’s supportiveness here is sweet, but it’s also still a little selfish. It’s not that different from their interaction at the ice cream shop, really: she wants to meet a fox who defies stereotypes, who is easy for her to like. Someone who ticks all the boxes to prove her family wrong.

When he starts being more foxy, later--self-identifying as a predator, showing his claws, challenging her--we learn that her supportiveness is conditional.

Am I being too hard on her? Sure. She’s been in bunny country her whole life. She’s new to this and she’s trying. But that’s where she’s at.

But still! They’re friends now. They’re no longer pretending they don’t like each other. Judy’s openly encouraging, Nick is fully in her corner, and we get a few cute sequences where they keep being more and more impressed with each other.

He’s still not above affectionately messing with her, and she’s getting worse at pretending to dislike it.

And he trusts her enough to let her flush him down a toilet...

Which gives us this heartbreaking shot where he thinks she’s drowned. He cares a whole lot about this bunny.

She likes him too! Enough to want to team up on a more permanent basis. This is pretty standard-fare enemies-to-friends stuff now, but considering where we started, and considering they’ve known each other for all of two days? Not bad!

It’s clear this moment means far more to him than it does to her, too. It’s actually taken very little persuading from Judy to get him to step up and be brave and helpful and trustworthy. The fact that he’s turned around and opened up to her so fast suggests he’s been ready for an opportunity like this for his entire life, and never got it. I mean, look at his face.

The foundational flaw in her worldview is still there, though, and it’s about to do almost-irreparable damage to their whirlwind friendship.

Part 5: Fuck!

So Judy gives her press conference, and gives a great example of why police usually answer every question with “the matter is currently under investigation,” or “we’re not prepared to comment further at this time.” Honestly, though, this is on Bogo--I had coworkers who once did some press interviews, and they spent over a week doing media training. They didn’t even break a major kidnapping case. So, you know.

So she repeats some weird race science stuff she assumes is true because someone in a lab coat said it, which is amusingly similar to how race science (or “race realism”) often propagates--people with low-rent doctorates from crappy universities write a bunch of scientifically shoddy material and people say “well, he has a PhD!”

And then Nick has a PTSD flashback? I don’t want to be irresponsible and make an armchair diagnosis, but also...that is absolutely what is depicted on screen.

You’re not immediately “better” after something like this, which is why I cut Nick a bit of slack when he basically blows up their friendship.

Judy...doesn’t get it. It’s completely heartbreaking, because she likes him, and doesn’t understand why he’s mad, and isn’t self-reflective enough to stop and think maybe he has a point. Not until it’s too late. He tests her, and she fails.

Their friendship has always been a little inequal. He’s trusted her with everything, shown her his deepest vulnerabilities. She’s never trusted him completely.

So he leaves.

I don’t want to impugn her professionalism by suggesting she wouldn’t have quit the force if she hadn’t had that friendship-ending fight, but, you know. Maybe.

This is the second time she gives up, and this time he’s not there to pick her up again.

Judy is intensely goal-oriented, and I don’t think she realized what Nick’s friendship meant to her, as the first person in the city who truly believed in her, until it was too late. Judy is sweet and well-meaning but emotional intelligence is not really her strong suit (which is actually cool to see in a female Disney protagonist, imo).

So, while it would have been nice for her to track Nick down immediately and apologize, I think it makes sense for them to spend time apart. Her own self-perception has been shattered, and she needs time to figure out how she went so wrong.

So when she does come back, she delivers one of the best animated apologies I’ve ever seen. Only AtLA compares, in my mind.

Part 6: They Are Much Better Friends Now

Nick forgives her, because of course he does.

(Sidebar--people talk about how he kept her carrot pen the whole time they were apart. He also kept his handkerchief from Ranger Scouts, AND he only wears shirts that match the wallpaper in his mother’s house. He desperately needs a hug.)

Credit to Nick also, who can’t fight and has no police training whatsoever, who has multiple times been almost killed helping her out, now agreeing to help her out again. She’s not even threatening him with jail this time!

We, the viewers, are then rewarded with this great montage of them being best friends.

She’s finally stopped pretending not to be amused by his shenanigans.

(One other sidebar here--Nick is canonically a really gentle character. For all their adventuring, this is only time in the movie he gets physical with anyone: to protect the bunny. Again, he definitely can’t fight and immediately gets smacked across the room. But it’s the thought that counts, right?)

Per the post title, more visual evidence of them really liking each other.

Judy trips on a dead body, and here we get the second time in the movie that Judy tells Nick to leave without her, and he won’t--this time, he refuses explicitly.

Which then gives us the opportunity for the big moment--the culmination of all this care and intimacy and trust.

In order to con Bellwether, she lets him stalk her, and bite her throat. This has been often pointed out, but it’s important--throughout the movie, Judy’s wriggling rabbit nose has been used as a signifier of fear and suspicion. It wriggles when she’s spying on Nick at the beginning. It wriggles like hell when he confronts her after her press conference.

Not here. Doesn’t move. It’s a great, clearly intentional animation choice that tells a close observer (or more likely, a repeat viewer) that she’s completely unafraid.

She trusts him.

I could write a whole other post about how well-scripted this movie is, how every scene is doing half a dozen different things, but the way the personal and the professional come together here, the way the threads of prejudice and friendship and the police case all tie together in this moment. It’s good shit.

This is basically where things end, in terms of character development, but we get a bunch more shots of them clearly adoring each other:

So there it is.

To sum up, certainly not suggesting this movie invented “characters liking each other,” or anything like that. But it goes above and beyond in portraying a friendship that’s not just one born of circumstance, one that’s authentic and unmistakably loving. Characters who enjoy spending time with each other, regardless of what’s going on around them.

I hope everyone is able to experience friendships like that. I absolutely treasure the few I have.

Appendix: The Shipping Thing

I hope I’ve made all this ship-agnostic, which was my intention. I personally like the ship, and I think the reason it resonates with people is because that love and trust and closeness is clearly there, and a romantic relationship creates a lot more easy opportunities for dialing those things up even higher.

I would also argue, if pressed, that the amount of teasing and physicality that happens reads as pretty flirty. If they were humans I knew in real life, I’d definitely think there was something going on there. But I’m an American, where touching and emotional intimacy tends to be read as romantic. Also, animals are a lot more cuddly than humans. So who knows? I think it’s perfectly reasonable to read them as platonic friends until the end of time.

But, one way or another, they love each other a lot. Shout out to this, one of the most emotionally rewarding relationships I’ve ever seen in a cartoon.

[simsadventures]

Knight in Shinning Armour

Summary: You and Bucky tiptoe around each other for the longest time, unable to follow your hearts, until the compound gets attacked and one of you gets hurt, that is.

Warnings: mutual pining, angst, fluff, smut, sexy talk (whatever I mean by that), implied smut

Pairing: Bucky x plus size! reader

Word Count: 2333

A/N: This little story was requested by the sweet @rainbowunicorns92 (who I can’t seem to be able tag, for some bloody reason) and I’m horrible for taking so long to actually write it! Also, I wasn’t feeling too smutty, so I hope this will be ok. So so sorry love, hope you’ll enjoy it nevertheless, and that it is what you asked for :) Hope everyone else will enjoy reading it as well, and you know, feedback is gold so please, tell me what you thought :) xx

P.S.: I chose Lion King as the go to movie, because that’s my all time favourite. Don’t judge me :D

Full Request: Hello! I was the awkward turtle that ask if you take requests haha🙈 but I was wondering if I could request a Bucky x plus size reader where the reader is really sweet, shy, insecure and a Disney nerd and one day the Avengers compound gets attack and the reader gets hurt and Bucky confess his love to her? Fluffy smut? I’m sorry this is a hot mess haha! I’m new to this haha! Merry Christmas 💘🎄☃️❄️

Bucky Barnes Masterlist __ Masterlist

It was another quiet evening in the compound. You were seated in your favourite armchair in the common room, snuggled in your plush grey blanket with a cup of tea in your hand, watching the Lion King for the 1000 times.

You wouldn’t say you were addicted to Disney movies, you just liked them better than any other movies. Easy as that. You were at the part which always got you, Mufasa’s death, and even though you knew it would happen, tears welled up in your eyes. You just hated to see little Simba teary-eyed, trying to wake up his dad.

You felt somebody’s presence behind you, and when you turned around, you could see Bucky leaning against the door frame, watching the television with a frown on his face. You tried to make yourself invisible.

You had this big fat crush on Bucky ever since you joined the team as another super-soldier, even though your super strength didn’t reside in your body, but in your mind. And the little rolls of fat on your stomach were a great example of that. Not that you hated the way you looked, it was just that you weren’t exactly the top-model type, let’s say like Natasha or Wanda. You were just… you. And you were sure that somebody like Bucky would never go for somebody like you, so you just never said anything.

Staying friends with him was just fine with you, at least you tried to make yourself believe that. You definitely didn’t need him to think you were some weirdo who watched Disney movies all the time, being able to quote most of them line by line, singing all the songs.

You tried to reach for the remote control and switch it off, but then you heard Bucky say something under his breath, which sounded awfully like why the hell did he let those wildebeest stamp on him.

You raised your eyebrow and let the movie play, trying to see if you heard right. Your suspicion was real enough because, in a few minutes, Bucky was seated on the nearest couches to you, his eyes still glued to the screen.

“What kind of a fairytale is this? His dad just fucking died!” Bucky mumbled, his forehead still crunched, pout on his lips.

You snorted out a laugh, which made Bucky look at you and his frown even deepened.

“Why are you laughing, doll? This ain’t funny! This is fucking heartbreaking, and I’m not sure I wanna see more of this movie!”

“C’mon, Buck. I promise it’s only gonna get better. But this tragedy had to be there for the story to unfold properly, you know? And it also teaches us that we can lose those we value the most in a heartbeat and that we should really waste no time in telling them just how much they mean to us.”

By the time you finished your little speech, you weren’t sure if you were still talking about the movie, or if you were suggesting something a little deeper. You bit your lower lip, returning your attention back to the television as if you just didn’t have that little outburst.

You could see from the corner of your eye that Bucky was still watching, his sole attention on you. You knew that if he figured out what you were feeling, things would change between the two of you, and not for the better. And you didn’t want to risk your friendship for something as stupid as love. It just wasn’t worth it for you.

You could hear Bucky taking in a breath, and you just hoped he would turn back to the TV and let it go. But that wouldn’t be Bucky.

“Look, Y/N, are you talking just about the film? Or are you referring to something else as well?”

You shook your head, your eyes still glued to the screen.

“Nope, just the Lion King. What else could I possibly have in mind?” You asked, trying to sound as incredulous as possible, hoping your acting performance was good enough for Bucky to stop bugging you.

“Well, I-“

Crash

“The Avengers Compound is under attack. I repeat. The Avengers Compound is under attack. The left-wing has been compromised,” sounded from the speakers, as FRIDAY gave you a report on the attack.

You and Bucky exchanged horrified looks, before you both jumped out of your seats, running towards the left-wing. You were not as fast as Bucky, even though you’ve been trying to get in better shape lately.

You could see he was holding back for you, not running to the best of his abilities.

“Go, Bucky! I’m right behind you, but you need to go and try to have a look at what the fuck is happening,” you yelled at him, trying to be louder than the sirens booming across the whole building. Across the hall, you could see Steve running like a madman with his shield in his hand.

“What if something happens to you, Y/N?” Bucky asked, looking back at you.

A smile spread on your face, and you shook your head at him. “I’m an avenger as well, Buck. I’ll be just fine. Just go and be a hero before Steve gets all the praise!”

Bucky laughed at that, and checked you once again, trying to look for any hesitation in your features. When he couldn’t find none, he nodded, his face going rigid, preparing for the fight. He put on the full mode of his speed, and before you knew it, you were alone in the hall.

Well, not completely alone. You were about to turn the corner when you heard rustling from the other side of the hallway. You swiftly turned around, only to see a guy all in white running towards you, with a machete in his hand.

You only had time to duck, gasp leaving your lips as you did so. When you came back up, you felt an elbow hitting your ribs and a dull pain that followed and spread through your whole chest.

Your powers, being close to telekinesis, suddenly came in handy big time. Before he could hit you again, or worse, impale you on his fucking machete, you sent him flying against the opposite wall. The attacker tried to run towards you once again, but you were prepared this time.

Instead of sending him against a wall, you sent him flying out of the nearest window, shattering it in process. He fell through with a shout, and you had a little while for yourself, checking if your ribs were broken, but the only thing you could tell was that it hurt like hell and that if nothing else, the bruise would be massive.

You hissed as your fingers brushed against the skin on your ribcage, making a mental note to have somebody check it once this shitshow was over.

You wanted to get to running, but the pain shooting through your whole body wouldn’t let you do that. So you settled for a high-tempo walk, breathing through your mouth, and probably sounding like one of those crazy runners you often met in Central Park. All you could hear was whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, and if you weren’t in a deadly situation, you would probably even laugh.

You reached the left-wing corridor pretty soon, seeing that your fellow Avengers had it mostly under control. But just to be sure, you swiped a few guys against the walls, hard enough to knock them out.

Bucky was just fighting one of those attackers when he suddenly stood alone, his attacked splashed against the wall, falling down like a sack of potatoes. He knew it meant you were there, and you were ok, and he let himself relax a little.

Ever since he left you in that corridor, he had this uneasy feeling of you getting hurt while he wasn’t there, but from the looks of the guys passed out on the floor, you were as good as new.

He turned around to face you and smiled at you before he marched towards you and hugged you tightly. He had never done something so bold with you, but he just couldn’t help his giddiness. You were alright, and that was pretty much all that mattered.

It was only when you hissed almost inaudibly, and if he weren’t a super-soldier, he would have probably missed it. But he didn’t, and so he pulled away from you, inspecting your face. He could see you were trying to have a brave face, but underneath this courageous mask, you were hiding pain. And his blood started to boil.

“Where are you hurt? Who hurt you? Talk to me, Y/N!” Bucky almost shouted in your face, and you had to blink a few times from all that was happening. First, he hugged you as if his life depended on it, and now his seething face was all you saw.

“I’m fine, Bucky. Some idiot jabbed me in my ribs, but other than that, I’m good. I sent him on a flight from one of the windows, so I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

“I don’t have to worry about it? Are you fucking kidding me? He could’ve killed you! He could’ve killed the woman I love, and I wasn’t even there to protect you. So don’t tell me to not fucking worry about it. I’m gonna find him, and I’m gonna rip his limbs off of his body, one by one. He’ll wish he never even looked your way!”

Bucky hissed and wanted to march out of the room and towards the window you were talking about, but a soft hand on his chest stopped him in his tracks. He looked at the hand, and then at your face, which looked like a mix of awe and happiness.

“What did you just say?” You asked quietly, not really trusting your own voice at the moment. Bucky, the man you wanted more than anything in the world just told you he loved you, and you were sure as hell gonna address it. It was now or never.

“I said I’m gonna kill-“

“Yeah, I don’t mean that. I mean, what did you say about me? Did you mean it?” You tried not to be too hopeful, but your heart was failing you. Hard.

Bucky seemed puzzled until he realised what he just said out loud for the first time.

“I-uh, yeah, that! I mean, I like you, Y/N, like, you’re kinda amazing, but if you wanna be just-“

You didn’t even let him finish his rambling and pulled him closer by his collar, and kissing him passionately. Your shyness was suddenly nowhere to be found, Bucky’s love confession pouring new-found confidence to your system.

You were starting to worry that he wouldn’t kiss you back, but just as you were pulling away, beginning to feel the disappointment kicking in, his left arm snaked around your hips, pulling you closer, while his right hand found its way to the back of your head, cradling it, and interweaving his fingers with your hair.

He pulled your hair from its roots ever so slightly, but the pressure on your scalp made you gasp into his mouth, giving Bucky the perfect access to your tongue. He kissed you with so much fervour, taking your breath away by every swipe of his tongue against yours.

You were putty in his arms, and you were just kissing. You just hoped this could be continued in one of your apartments because the fire he ignited in your body could not be put down easily. In fact, there was only one thing that would satisfy you, and it was now well hidden in Bucky’s pants.

Bucky’s mind probably wandered the same way as yours, because he suddenly hauled you in his arms, and started to walk away from the mess left behind after the attackers. From the corner of your eye, you could see your teammates watching you with raised eyebrows, but they had enough of their own issues to care that the two of you finally admitted your very obvious crushes.

“Bucky, let me down. I’m too heavy for you to carry,” you whisper against his neck, sucking a hickey there.

Bucky stopped immediately, making you look up at him.

“Stop talking like that. You’re light as a feather for me, and I would be damned to let my dame walk such distance!” He scoffed and returned to walking. You giggled like a schoolgirl, letting him do as he pleased. You would be lying if you said it wasn’t another confidence boost for you, that Bucky didn’t see you as this big girl, and was willing you carry you anywhere. Ok, maybe now just to his bedroom, but still.

When you finally reached his door, Bucky was panting heavily, and it was not from your weight. You could feel his very hard member pressing against his pants, and right against your ass, which was bouncing as Bucky walked, adding another pleasure to his body.

“You keep wiggling that cute ass of yours a little longer, and Imma take you right against this door,” Bucky hissed to your ear.

Bucky pressed you against the wall next to his door, trying to fight with the door handle, but because he pushed you a little too hard, his enthusiasm evident from his moves, you hissed in pain again.

He let you to your legs immediately, cradling your face in his hands.

“Did I hurt you? Talk to me, doll.”

You smiled and kissed his nose sweetly. “Maybe let’s just not have crazy rough passionate sex tonight, huh?”

Bucky smiled at you like you were his sun, and caressed your cheek.

“I’ll be gentle, I promise.”

“Good, but also promise that once I’m all healed, you’ll give it to me good!”

Bucky laughed, throwing his head back before he looked back at you and winked.

“Oh, you bet doll. You fucking bet!”

Bucky Taglist

@this-kitten-is-smitten​ @paradisiacalsparks​ @crazybutconfidentaf​ @owlyannah​ @lassini​ @s-trawberryv-eins​ @reniescarlett​

Marvel Taglist

@voltage-my2dlove​ @kneel-begyourpardon​ @lumar014​ @ptrs-prkrs​

Forever Tag:

@eileenalone​ @sasbb23​ @p8tn0lish​ @coffeebooksandfandom​ @waiting4inspiration​ @caswinchester2000​ @mogaruke​ @justthatfangirloverthere​ @mushyjellybeans​ @livsheph​ @sebbbystaaan​ @notyourtypicalrose​

[dhwty-writes]

We Were Born Sick - 1

I love how we as a fandom somehow collectively decided that homophobia is Not A Thing on the Continent. However, I live for angst. So, naturally, I had to write a fic where this is not the case. I blame @spielzeugkaiser for this with their art and also their encouragement. I also guess that I should preamble this fic that I felt absolutely horrible and upset writing it. It is (for some parts) not a nice thing to read either. Read the tags. Read the warnings. Take care of yourselves.

Summary: The bard leaned against a pillar and propped one leg on a stool, strumming his lute loudly. Well, maybe he could wait a bit longer. Just a few glances more. Humans were so inattentive; they never saw him looking. If they did, if they suspected even for a moment, he'd be willing to do more than just stare- Let's say his parting from Blaviken would have been almost idyllic in comparison. 'Prejudiced pricks, the lot of them,' he thought angrily.

OR five times Geralt and Jaskier kept their sexuality a secret and one time they were found out.

Warnings: implied/referenced homophobia, homophobic language (or that can be interpreted as such)

Read on AO3

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Geralt eyed the bard blaring in the corner warily. Why did humans have to be so loud about everything? It was maddening, truly. Since his own trials he could understand Vesemir's complaints much better. Despite the decades gone by since then, he still envied them sometimes. They at least didn’t have to witness how obnoxious they were. No, most of them appeared to be completely oblivious to their loudness. 

Like this one, for example. It wasn't necessarily that the bard was bad — his voice was pretty enough, as was his face. But his songs were dreadful. And horribly inaccurate at that. As if that wasn't enough, that specimen wasn't just loud in his singing, he was loud about everything else, too. His clothes were too colourful for Geralt's eyes, his smiles too sweet, his gestures to grand. The witcher couldn't wait to finish his drink and be able to get out of the shitty town he was in.

The bard leaned against a pillar and propped one leg on a stool, strumming his lute loudly. Well, maybe he could wait a bit longer. Just a few glances more. Humans were so inattentive; they never saw him looking. If they did, if they suspected even for a moment, he'd be willing to do more than just stare- Let's say his parting from Blaviken would have been almost idyllic in comparison. 'Prejudiced pricks, the lot of them,' he thought angrily.

He could remember Vesemir's stern talk as if it had been yesterday. He had caught him and Eskel behind the barn, entangled in an almost innocent embrace, exchanging not so innocent kisses. With a heavy sigh he had separated them and led them back into the keep. "I won't say a word," he had said, "as long as the two of you won't be slacking. But in a few years the two of you will set out on the Path and humans disdain it when two men lie together."

"Why?" they had asked naively.

"Why do they call us monsters? Why do they abuse their peasants? Why do they despise whores? Most of them can only see as far as their noses. Just be careful, lads."

They had promised him and to this day they had kept their oath. Once on the path Geralt had discovered that he liked a woman's embrace just as well as a man's and that was that. It was alright. Still, he wasn't immune to the charm of a handsome young man. Especially not one with a pretty voice, who-

Who was coming right towards him. Shit.

"I love the way you just... sit in the corner and brood," the young man said with a sly smile and leaned against another pillar. Seemed to be a habit. He had fidgety hands, too. Geralt hated fidgety hands.

"I'm here to drink alone," he grunted and looked away. Best not be caught staring.

"Good, yeah, good," he answered quickly. Geralt could feel curious eyes sizing him up. "No-one else hesitated to comment on the quality of my performance, except..." He drew closer. "...for you." Before Geralt had a chance to respond he continued. "Come on," he drawled. "You don't want a man with...," he made an emphatic gesture, "... bread in his pants waiting."

Geralt gritted his teeth. Was this some kind of come on? If so, it was terrible.

"You must have some review for me," he babbled on and took a seat he hadn’t been offered. "Three words or less."

He half expected him to keep on talking. Instead an awkward silence stretched between them. "They don't exist," he answered trying to keep a straight face. 'Shit.' The bard was annoying as fuck, why did he find it endearing?

"What don't exist?" He started fidgeting with his hands again.

"The creatures in your song."

"And how would you know?"

Geralt almost snorted with laughter. Really? 'Why do the pretty ones always have to be that dumb?' Instead of saying that, however, he just glared pointedly.

"Oh, fun." The bard barely kept himself from drumming with his hands and licked his lips. "White hair..." He rubbed his hands and repeated that... tongue thing. Annoyingly adorable. "... big, old loner, two very..." Geralt reached for his coin purse and stood up, leaving his last coin on the table. He had heard quite enough. This conversation was getting out of hand. "... very scary-looking swords. I know who you are."

He grabbed his swords and fled as calmly as possible. Fuck, why was the bard still hurrying after him?

"You're the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia." He gritted his teeth again. Just his fucking luck. First time in years his stares had been noticed, then the bard had wanted to fucking talk and now he'd been recognised, too. "Called it," the bastard shouted as if nothing had happened. Geralt just hoped that he got out of town fast enough before a freaking mob formed.

His hopes sank when he heard heavy steps behind him. Oh, great. Fucking bards. Not a stealthy bone in their body, the lot of them. "A job I've got for ya," a young voice said, but Geralt kept on walking. He had quite enough of Posada. "I beg you."

'Shit.' He stopped. Vesemir always said his heart was too soft.

"A devil- he's been stealin' all our grain," the man explained and Geralt exhaled forcefully and turned. "In advance, I'll pay you. A hundred ducats."

He sighed. "One fifty," he demanded.

He pulled out a hefty coin purse, weighing it in his hands. "I've no doubt you'll come through. You take no prisoners, so I hear." As he offered up the purse the bard from before stepped into view again, looking at him intently. ‘Oh, hell no.’

Geralt swallowed the words that had been on the tip of his tongue. He grabbed the purse and left as quickly as he could.

He was far more surprised than he should be when he heard hurried steps behind him, the wheezing of the bard announcing his presence. "Need a hand?" he called and Geralt rolled his eyes. "I've got two. One for each of the, uh, devil's horns." Was this another attempt at flirting? He could only hope not.

"Go away," he answered gruffly. The last thing he needed was that... that... bardlet trailing after him. No matter how cute he looked.

"I won't be but silent back-up," the bardlet promised, nearly smacking him in the face with his wildly gesturing hands. Geralt doubted that very much. Apparently, he was waiting for a response, because there was a pause before he continued: "Look, I heard your note, and, yes, you're right, maybe real adventures would make better stories."

Roach snorted in amusement. The bard didn't care, though, and kept on babbling: "And you, sir, smell chock-full of them. Amongst other things. I mean, what is that? Is that onion? It doesn't matter. Whatever it is, you smell of death and destiny. Heroics and heartbreak."

Geralt had to take a steadying breath. How one human could spout so much bullshit in such a short time was beyond him. "It's onion," he grunted, hoping that would shut him up.

It didn't. Why was he even bothering? "Right, yeah. Yeah," the bard said with a quiet voice. This time Geralt didn't hope for silence. Still, what came next was so exceptionally stupid that he had to stop in his tracks: "Oh, I could be your barker, spreading the tales of Geralt of Rivia, the- the Butcher of Blaviken."

He closed his eyes and barely kept the pained grimace off his face. This lad was giving him a headache. 'Fucking idiot, don't you think, Roach?' He looked at his horse for a moment before turning to the bard. "Come here," he requested and motioned him over.

"Yeah," the bard said eagerly, a wide smile on his face. Geralt almost felt bad for the blow that punched that bard's air from his lungs. Almost. There were a lot of things he didn't need. Least of them a barker.

As the bard was still wheezing and groaning on the ground, Geralt turned and rolled his eyes with exasperation. "Come on, Roach," he said and tugged on her reins.

In hindsight, Geralt shouldn't be surprised that the lad kept following him. He also shouldn't be surprised that he didn't stop talking for one fucking minute, except for when he was unconscious. He really shouldn't be surprised that that got them captured.

'Fuck,' he thought as he woke up, bound to the laughingstock of a bard who, of all things, probably thought his smug comments about 'escaping' and 'witchering' were funny. Shit, how on earth was such an idiot allowed to travel unsupervised? 'Probably isn't,' he thought angrily. By the looks of him he had just escaped from his wetnurse. 'I hate humans sometimes.'

He guessed he should be allowed some surprise given the bard's apparent knowledge of Elder speech. Especially at his impeccable accent. 'Oxenfurt trained, then,' he noted. They really did admit any idiot these days.

As if to further prove his utter idiocy he kept. on. talking. 'So, he's not only stupid but blind, too.' Who the fuck kept teasing their captors about their golden palaces while obviously bound in a fucking stone cave?

In the end, he didn't remember how he'd managed to talk them out of that death trap. Or why it had been him and not the one who made money with his words. Or how he'd gotten a new lute for the bard on top. Or why. Shit, he was going to get an earful from Vesemir that winter. And Eskel. And Lambert, gods above and below, he'd never hear the end of it.

Still, somehow, they walked free. And the bard kept on talking: "Credit where credit is due, that whole reverse psychology thing you did on them was brilliant, by the way." His voice dropped as he tried to imitate Geralt. Annoyingly accurate, if he was honest. "'Kill me. I'm ready.'"

He looked down at him disbelievingly. Did the bard really think himself in a place to humour him?

Judging by the innocent look on his face, yes, he absolutely did. "That's the conclusion," the bard continued. "They just let us go and you give all of Nettly's coin to the elves."

"Filavandrel's lute not gift enough for you?" he asked, doing his best to keep a smile from his face.

"Yeah, she is a bit sexy, isn't she?"

Geralt was glad the bard couldn't see him grin at that. He didn't listen to what he was spouting next, but then-

Then, the bard started singing. "Will the elf king heed / What the witcher entreats? / Is history a wheel / Doomed to repeat?" Thankfully, it was him who said: "No, that's... that's shit." Geralt couldn't agree more.

"This is where we part ways, bard, for good."

He expected another joke at that. Maybe even an undignified gasp, or something of that sort. He didn't expect solemnity: "Look, I promised to change the public's tune about you. At least allow me to try."

To his even bigger surprise, the next lines out of the bard's mouth weren't complete rubbish: "When a humble bard / Graced a ride along / With Geralt of Rivia / Along came this song // When the White Wolf fought / A silver-tongued devil / His army of elves / At his hooves did they revel // They came after me / With masterful deceit / Broke down my lute and / They kicked in my teeth // While the devil's horns / Minced our tender meat / And so cried the Witcher / 'He can't be bleat!'"

Geralt tightened the reins sharply. "That's not how it happened," he accused him. "Where's your newfound respect?"

"Respect doesn't make history," the bard answered simply. As if that was a line, he could just come up with without carefully having to craft it for hours. While Geralt was still busy staring dumbstruck, the bard already carried on with his song.

'Shit,' he thought as the slightest of smiles curved his lips upwards. If he hadn't been able to discourage him before, there was no getting rid of him now. He suspected he should care more about that than he did.

Geralt soon discovered a lot of things about the bard. Firstly, his name was Jaskier. 'A pretty name for a pretty man,' his mind supplied unhelpfully.

Secondly, he was dramatic. Came with the profession, he figured. Still, who monologued about a torn seam? For three hours at that?!

That was the third thing — or rather the first: Jaskier never shut up. Not while setting up camp, not when he was wheezing from an impromptu sprint, not while eating, not even while pissing, if he knew Geralt was within earshot. He even talked in his sleep, for fuck's sake. It should be more annoying than it was. And way less attractive.

But Geralt quickly discovered that he enjoyed listening to Jaskier's tales. He also discovered that his stories were decidedly more accurate than his songs. He liked hearing of his time in Oxenfurt, of his lessons, his friends, his mischief. He loved to see his eyes light up when Geralt inquired about a particular professor he'd known in his youth. He adored to hear of his various conquests, always listening intently to hear if he was stumbling over pronouns. He didn't. Pity that.

But even if he had, he was human. And way too young. 'Eighteen, for Melitele's sake,' he thought, 'and still wet behind the ears.' At his age Geralt had already passed the Trial of the Grasses twice, slept with half the witchers his age and slain his first monster. 

Jaskier walked the Path blind for any danger, as if monster teeth and steel swords couldn't hurt him. He gave him three months before he begged to be returned to Oxenfurt, naive as he was. Always chasing skirts, too, blatantly ignoring the marital status of his conquests. He exclusively female conquests. “What do you think, Geralt?” Jaskier asked, unabashedly ogling the barmaid. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

“Hm,” he answered. It had become his standard reply to the incessant flood of words spilling from the bard’s mouth. ‘Not as pretty as you,’ he thought in the privacy of his mind. “Deserves better,” he muttered quiet enough he hoped the bard wouldn’t hear.

Of course, he did. And pouted adorably. “What, are you doubting my abilities as a lover? I assure you I never left a lover wanting.”

He snorted. “Thinking highly of yourself, do you?”

“Of course. Confidence is practically part of the job description as a bard. Well, excuse me now. I have to see to the needs of a pretty m- uh, maid.” He got up and quickly slipped away.

Geralt was left with his thoughts and his ale. ‘Huh,’ he thought. Jaskier usually didn’t stumble over his words like that. Maybe- He strained his ears but all he could hear was Jaskier conversing with the barmaid. ‘Not a queer, then,’ he decided finally. Still, a pity that. He was very pretty indeed.

[charliejrogers]

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) - Review & Analysis

Here’s a non-controversial statement: 2017’s Wonder Woman is a legitimately great film (if you discount the last act’s boring battle). A fun, yet emotional anti-war tale with a great period aesthetic. What elevated it from greatness was its starkly bleak reveal that Ares does not start man’s wars, but he merely gives humans ideas for how to instigate them. Ultimately, it is Man who holds responsibility for our own destruction, and despite this Wonder Woman still chooses to help us poor creatures. Cool themes, cool hero, cool movie.

Wonder Woman 1984 shares the main character from its 2017 forerunner, as well as its dedication to recreating a particular period aesthetic (here the 1980s), but the brilliant writing from the first film is gone. The main themes are essentially… “be careful what you wish for” and “winners never cheat; cheaters never win.” Not the most grand and interesting follow-up to the prior film’s genuine insight into human nature.

But that’s OK. I’m really not sure why this movie is getting so much flak online. If DC’s recent prior history with filmmaking should have taught us anything, it’s that 2017’s Wonder Woman was a fluke. Remember that this is the same studio that brought us the outstanding climax to Batman vs. Superman where one grown man learns that another grown man’s mother is also named Martha. Oh, and did we all just forget that Justice League is one of the worst movies we have all collectively ever seen?

So let’s not be too hard on WW84 for not meeting the quality of 2017’s Wonder Woman. Few comic book movies can. In the more fair comparison to other movies in the DCEU, it sits below Shazam! and Aquaman, and just a smidge below Birds of Prey, but certainly above Suicide Squad, and then literally leaps and bounds over every other movie they’ve made.

Let’s start with the good. Honestly, despite my gripes about the themes of the movie not being very profound, I found the story to be interesting. The movie centers around Diana Prince (Gal Gadot in her role as an archaeologist for the Smithsonian and not as Wonder Woman) stumbling upon an ancient stone whose inscription invites people who hold the stone to make a wish. No one takes it really seriously at first, so two people make wishes without thinking they could come true. The first person is Diana herself who wishes to bring her boyfriend (whom she only knew for about a week, mind you) from the dead. As a reminder from the first film, her boyfriend Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) had died nearly 70 years prior to the start of this film in a dramatic, sacrificial, world-saving act. Apparently, Diana hasn’t moved on at all from the 1910s and still considers her short-time lover to be her forever lover. She’s not really a human and did not grow up a human, so I think we can forgive her for not moving on… but it is weird to imagine that Diana somehow works at the Smithsonian (without going to college? Or did she?) without developing any friends or interest in life. Wouldn’t she have moved on... like a little bit?

Anyways, she wants her boyfriend back, and that’s wish #1. Wish #2 comes from new character Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig… who I am shocked to find is 47 years old! She looks fantastic and far younger in this film). Were Barbara a man, the way she is treated by her colleagues would put them in the stereotypical role of a future school shooter. Barbara is a brilliant gemologist for the Smithsonian, but goes completely unrecognized for her brilliance. She is shy and unconfident, and subsequently people frequently forget that they have even met her. Add on to that the fact that she has to work in the same office as Wonder Woman, and her loneliness and subjective feelings of unattractiveness increase as male employees drool over Diana while they ignore and mock Barbara. Therefore, we would forgive her for having a chip on her shoulder. Yet, for all this, Wiig avoids playing her as an angry, emo goth. Barbara kinda has this air about her of “Well, this is just how life is, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.” Given the character’s lack of self-confidence and lack of social grace, it at times seemed like Wiig was just reprising her old SNL character, Penelope, the socially awkward one-upper. But that’s not fair to her character. Wiig portrays Barbara with an earnest goodness to her. She’s one of those people who when allowed to talk one-on-one proves to be more eloquent and interesting than you could have imagine. Far from being angrily envious of Diana’s confidence and beauty, she’s more sadly jealous. Naturally, then, she wishes on the stone to be more like Diana… unaware that this wish might have some unintended benefits.

But then, there’s a third key character to the film (and a third wishmaker), the main villain Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal). I cannot tell you if this was a good character or not… and I cannot tell you whether the imperfections of the character are more due to the film’s writing or Pascal’s performance. Lord is another loser, and like Barbara, his “loser” status is the result of being a victim of America’s prejudicial attitudes. But whereas Barbara fell victim to sexism, Lord falls victim to racism. Hispanic in origin, Lord grew up in America with an abusive father at home and racist classmates at school. Beaten down from an early age, all he wants in life is to make a name for himself, to prove he’s not a loser. In a clever twist, Lord (the person who originally ordered the wish stone to come to America before it was confiscated by the FBI and sent to the Smithsonian for analysis) does not simply use the stone to wish for riches and power… he wishes to BECOME the stone. That way, he can get nearly infinite wishes so long as he can con the people around him to wish things for him.

The scenes of Max Lord as a flawed human who just wants to not be a loser show Pascal giving a great performance as a human being at the ends of desperation. The scenes of Max Lord the supervillain are… not good. In a long string of over-the-top, eccentric, hyperconfident supervillains in countless superhero movies, Pascal’s Lord is just not interesting. In fact, he is literally a weak character. He cannot fight for himself as his body is crumbling (a side effect of wishing to become a stone). Furthermore, his initially grounded motivations to finally be respected and successful seem to be just utterly lost by the end of the film when he just wishes for world chaos… only then to turn around and declare undying love for his son. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Failure to understand a character’s motivations casts a shadow over Barbara’s character arc as well. It is explained that the wish stone takes something in return for granting someone their wish. So as payment for bringing Steve Trevor back to life, Diana loses some of her strength. Still… this strains to fully explain why Barbara, after gaining Wonder Woman-like strength, turns into a walking humanoid cheetah (complete with bad CGI like she walked straight out of the cast of 2019’s Cats.) Like I get that she lost some of her humanity and morality in exchange for strength… but Cheetah girl seems like a little much. And though initially it is fun to see Wiig get to play Barbara as a confident and sexy woman who fights back against the patriarchy, the movie (I think) unfairly pushes her into the villain role. In my opinion, she should be treated as a tragic character, something akin to a Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight, as her villainous tendencies are not really her fault. She literally had the part of her that cares about other humans taken away from her when she naively and innocently wished to be like Diana. Instead, the movie has Diana lecture her that she shouldn’t be so evil. She literally can’t, lady! Stop being so hard on her! In any case, it seems like a failed opportunity to generate sympathy for a genuinely likable character who tragically becomes a villain not through her own accord.

That failure to create genuine emotions extends to Diana’s story as well. As soon as Steve is resurrected, you know by the movie’s end he will be dead again. There’s no other way this movie ends. Yet, the fact that Diana is so stubborn in refusing to give up Steve makes it hard to sympathize with her. She is simply being selfish, making her eventual decision to say goodbye to Steve feel more like her finally doing the right (and obvious) thing, and not some heartbreaking decision. Also the fact that seemingly Diana hasn’t even tried to move on in the last seventy years doesn’t help matters for me: it more just feels like a lazy way to write in Chris Pine’s popular character into the second movie. The move certainly weakens the idea of Diana as a strong, independent woman by making her emotionally stunted and crippled for the last 70 years. It would have been a much more satisfying (and daring) choice if Diana had moved on from Steve emotionally and had to deal with the guilt of having brought him back by accident, particularly if he didn’t want to go back to being dead. Instead... Steve knows he has to go back and Diana feels no guilt keeping him around. It’s weak character writing.

These poor choices I contrast with two of my favorite TV shows that demonstrate perfectly how former lovers who miraculously reunite eventually have to say goodbye for good: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Jane the Virgin. For risk of spoilers to those still watching Jane, I’ll stick to the Buffy example. There’s an episode of Buffy (though technically an episode of the spin-off show Angel) where Buffy and her vampire lover Angel are fresh off their recent and tumultuous break-up, but through some dark magic that neither seeks out, they are given the opportunity to live a life where Angel isn’t actually a vampire and their love can be fully expressed. Yet, in the end, Angel opts to give up his life as a human and return to being a vampire. The choice is so moving precisely because (due to circumstances I cannot begin to explain) in choosing to give up his life with Buffy, he saves her life as well. Whereas in this movie, Diana choosing to let Steve go is really just her choosing to undo her choice to essentially cheat death. Angel, however, is actively choosing to give up a life of happiness he never wished for but was just given on a silver platter, and will now live in a world where his lover will never know his selfless act and will go on hating him. It’s heartbreaking in a way Wonder Woman dreams it could be.

And not to get too Buffy-heavy… but that show also deals with the emotional consequences of being ripped out of the afterlife much better than this movie. Steve just kinda unrealistically adapts to being alive again in all of five minutes. If, perhaps, from the start he questioned why he was there and hinted to Diana that something was wrong, the emotional aspect of this story, the doomed nature, the feeling of “this is the last chance we’ll have together” could have made this a stronger movie. I wanted to find myself crying when Diana finally says bye to Steve, and I was no where close to that. Gal Gadot shares at least part of the blame. She’s a pretty wooden actress. It’s something I noticed in 2017’s Wonder Woman, but in that movie she was supposed to be a fish out of water so her stilted presence seemed appropriate. Here, where she’s supposedly become an assimilated American for 70 years… it is just bad acting.

Anyways, another aspect of this film that was lacking were the visuals. The bad CGI of Barbara as Cheetah is just scratching the surface here. The opening flashback to Diana as a girl performing in the Amazonian Olympics just… looks fake. I don’t know. The reliance on CGI over practical effects is clear and distracting. It’s only worse in the subsequent scene where Wonder Woman stops a theft from occurring in a mall. The effects are just bad. Like passable for a film in the 1990s or early 2000s. But for a 2020 blockbuster, it’s noticeably bad. And already the scene where Wonder Woman is running towards the camera with a weird green screen behind her seems to have become a meme given just how weird it looks.

And yet, for all the negatives I’ve listed, this is a decent action flick. There’s even some nice set pieces like the one in the White House. As little as I liked Max Lord as a supervillain, I found figuring out the other half of each of his various Monkey Paw wishes (i.e. the downside of each wish) to be clever. unfortunately, each of the main three characters fails to have a story line that takes full advantage of their emotional potential, or they are just poorly acted. With few exceptions, the film eschews “fun” in favor of “seriousness.” Really the only exception is, as in the first film, the chemistry between Pine and Gadot. Their chemistry makes for some of the movie’s best moments, like when Wonder Woman makes the plane they’re flying in invisible and the pair flies over fireworks on the fourth of July. But that sense of whimsy in their scenes is largely absent from the rest of the film. This is particularly true of the action sequences, especially those at the climax. The seriousness makes them rather boring. Really, I’m comparing these action scenes with the last half hour or so of Birds of Prey which really set the bar for superhero movie fight choreography. So in the end, it’s overall an OK movie. It certainly isn’t as bad as others make it out to be, but I cannot believe I’m saying this… in 2020 if you’re in the mood for a fun superhero movie, you’re better off with the Suicide Squad sequel than the Wonder Woman sequel.

**/ (Two and a half stars out of 4)

[rickybowxn]

let’s talk about ricky bowen again

dude ep5 and ep6 has crushed me. the way that they are alluding to ricky’s mental health these two episodes is so incredibly loud in the most subtle ways. and not to mention so damn relatable. 

ricky bowen is crying for help and comfort rn and it’s so sad and incredibly heartbreaking to watch. 

episode 5 mostly set up the emotion derivative and complexity for all of ricky’s actions in episode 6 to be as angsty and as wonderful as they were so i’m just gonna be pretty straight to the point with this first half of the post. let’s take a closer look and start with episode 5:

watching this sucked. he’s growing up, and bottling up all of these feelings to be strong for his dad. i love that they establish ricky’s response to conflict and trials: as someone who wants to be there for everyone else, even though it’s pretty sad to watch. he passively states what’s going in his life but never really talks about it, throughout the next few scenes, we realise that he deals with his conflict by being there for everyone else and well... not dealing with his conflict. he literally grows up and as fucked up as it is, becomes the parent. it made my stomach twist and it was written really well. my poor baby boi.

in his next two scenes with gina, we see exactly what was established with his dad:

in the first gif, he states his conflict in passing and then flips it to gina to talk about what’s going on with her. i’ve said again and again that he’s rlly bad with explicit verbal communication and this is a great example of how he’s good at being a support system for literally everyone, but has such a hard time being kind to himself. he uses ‘it’s a whole thing’ as a fast and sure way to dismiss his issue as not worth talking about and instantly wants to make gina the focus. the writers really did well with establishing that.

this gina and ricky interaction was great. not only did it establish rina’s chemistry, it also gave us the setup to ricky’s actions in the next episode - this play is what’s keeping him afloat rn. the people, the lines, the rehearsals are effectively helping him stay grounded and not lose his mind. it’s rlly heartbreaking to see how much he’s actually hurting, especially because he explicitly doesn’t show it throughout this episode or the next.

(i plan to do a rina arc post as well, and i’ll save most of my thoughts on them for that, but while we’re here, the last two scenes we broke down really established this strong and substantial connection between the characters really well. the writers pushed past the ‘we’re both outsiders’ arc and really gave ricky and gina substance and common ground for a solid dynamic. their motives and actions are very similar, and that’s why they have such a good foundation for gina’s understanding of, and being there for ricky in ep6, as well as where-ever the writers decide to take them - i personally prefer friendship but i know that some of y’all are rina shippers and that’s also very much on the table and i’m rlly okay with either! as much as i want rini to be endgame, they have established such wonderful characters with such amazing arcs and i want all of them to be explored and the writers are doing good work with it rn).

and now let’s look at episode 6, where they drive that stake into our hearts further. this is ricky’s reaction to carlos breaking the ms. jenn news to everyone:

you can see him unwind. you can see his world fall apart bit by bit as the realisation hits. the established safe haven he has, doubling down as a distraction for everything going on in his life right now, is being torn from under his feet. it was personally one of the hardest and heartbreaking things to see this ep, it’s just constant angst with him oof. 

but then, in the most ricky bowen fashion ever, he jumps right back to wanting to fight and keep trying, he stays despite everyone else leaving (starting with nini, and i’lll mention why that’s important in just a second). he puts aside all the anxiety he has if the play (at that point, most probably bound to end) falls apart and commits to fighting for it, clinging desperately to it:

and now as for everyone leaving, the writers used it as such a good way to establish how significantly important the play is for especially ricky, carlos and gina - the three people who stayed. as a side-note, carlos’s attachment to the play is established and developed later in the episode with the string of dialogue in big red’s basement, so i’m not gonna elaborate, it was way more explicit than ricky’s arc that led to the climatic monologue(ish) he delivered towards the end of that same scene.

for nini, the play is the path to her developing her self-confidence and maturity so she embraces it to grow (and she’s slowly rediscovering herself just generally), not to run away from the rest of her life, unlike ricky and gina:

like nini, the rest of the cast uses the play as an opportunity rather than a distraction, and that’s what sets ricky and gina apart from them. this made it easier from them to walk away and wallow in the possibility of the show ending (also that look ricky gave nini walking way *my heart shattered*). ricky (and gina) is established to clearly not have that same luxury. this scene sets up ricky and gina having the play as this tether that’s keeping them at bay from things that they should be dealing with (we don’t know about gina’s issues yet and i’m very ready and excited to cry about that angst by the way), so their instinct is to stay and try and fight for the play/keep practising. 

the next scene explicates why this play means the most to ricky, and as with everything about his arc rn, it’s heart-wrenching:

he’s in complete denial of the only thing keeping him together rn falling apart. it is sad, heart-breaking and gut-wrenching. this angst is delivered with such fucking excellence by joshua bassett that i kinda wanna punch him lmao

and here’s where it hits home. gina realises the reality that they might not come back to the show and is ready to face it (instituted by her even asking the question in the first place), but ricky’s denial contrast that so heavily this scene. that denial is what establishes the play meaning the most to ricky. just by watching the scene, you can tell how he’s unravelling, trying not to let himself be overwhelmed by the possibility of it. it’s so fucking angsty ugh.

(another side note, as i said before, i’m probably gonna make another entire post about the gina/ricky arc but i had to mention this. after this exchange, her supporting him and taking his mind off of all of this by asking him to do something he loves and perform the acoustic version of ‘when there was me and you’, grounding ricky for a bit, was one of my most favourite things to watch this entire episode, even being primarily a rini shipper - they rlly sold them i can see their growing popularity as completely justified, they were hella cute this ep).

now this moment is where i felt like sobbing and reaching into the screen to hug him:

he finally opens up about it. why he’s so desperate to keep this play alive and why saving ms. jenn’s job is so incredibly important to him. and i loved that nini helped him say the words he needed to say. the look of relief when he was assured that he didn’t have to do any of this alone, just with nini finishing that sentence for him - that nini, gina, big red and everyone else was going to be there for him, and hear him out - fuck, it was beautiful!! it also encouraged him to take charge and chant ‘what team?’, he was ready to fight and everyone readying with him was so magnetic to see. it was also clearly therapeutic to him bc during, and after the final number, he looks genuinely happy, and we see him fully smiling/laughing more than the last 5eps combined. 

he finally gets a win and it may not solve all his problems, but being one of the motivating factors in saving ms. jenn’s job through his vulnerability in this scene really gives him a leg up and i loved watching it. i hope they don’t dismiss everything he still has to continue to have to deal with (making this an all problem solving cure as sometimes disney does) but that aside, i’m so glad they had subtle continuity in furthering his character’s development these last two episodes even though he wasn’t a primary focus. it was subtle, nuanced and genuinely so complex and enjoyable to watch.

[neverheardnothing]

The Black Suits song ranking

Happy (late) Black Suits Day (eighteenth of September) y'all! Not that anyone asked but I have decided on my personal Black Suits song ranking. As always, I am very correct with my Joe Iconis music takes and will accept no criticism. Also I'm talking about 2013 here. Love yourself (and the work) and listen to 2013 instead of 2012 for better audio quality and a tighter book.

Spirit Song - I don't think anyone is surprised this is my top ranked song lol. "A melody only exists when someone hears, and the number one thing that I've learned through all my years. The fans and the family make the music strong, and the cheering is just as important as the song!" As Will describes it, it's a love letter to audiences (hey, that's me!) and when I listen to this song I'm always reminded of how much Joe believes in the message of this song, that the audience is part of the show.

Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang - [Joe Iconis voice] the language of the show. A lot of this list was influenced by not only how much I liked the song but by how well the songs functioned as extensions/expansions of the scene and the believability of that character singing the song. To me Bangx5 is one of the ultimate examples of this. The lyrics "there's a heavy metal hole where a soul used to be" like that's SO teenage angst and overdramatic just like Chris is supposed to be in this moment. I remember when I first heard the song I was like "is that it? Simple repeated [I am ___] lyrics for your act 1 finale? Seems a bit underwhelming even if it musically goes hard" but then after like another listen through of the show or so I realized that was the intention. When you're seventeen or so and you feel like your world is crashing down around you, sometimes the only way you can articulate it is "I am white boy rage, I am in a cage, I am bang bang bang bang bang bang bang." You are bang, you are loud crashing noises, your emotions are too loud and intense to be described with your limited vocabulary but you try anyways and fail. I love the contrast of the lyrics "I am chew my pens" and "I am hurt my friends" right next to each other. And the harmony at the end? Chefs fucking kiss.

Amphibian - This song is so goddamn fun. Like honestly. That’s it. Nato is chilling by himself and makes up a song about himself and his frog and it’s the best goddamn time in the show. You really get the feeling like these characters are actually friends. I love the “idiot” Nato vs “smart” Brandon. The “who cares about Beethoven. It’s a movie about a dog” joke never fails to make me laugh. When Brandon is expecting a regular bridge to the song and Nato whips out the falsetto and he goes “oh my God” like. Peak comedy here. And also Will Roland doing That? I’m in awe. Like this is what The Black Suits (the band) is, friends hanging out and having fun with music, that makes the next scene when the band formally break up so sad.

It's All Good - “So we’re cool and whatever?” It’s such a teenage boy thing to say. Like you want to acknowledge that you guys have been through something but at the same time you want to undercut it so you don’t run the risk of seeming too openly emotional. I’m also only very slightly bitter about that review that was like “oh wait so the only stakes of this show is the battle of the bands?” Like hello? Did you not see the show or listen to a single second of the finale? It’s about the way these characters communicate in their kinda inadequate ways and how they use music to express themselves. In a way it’s classic, cliche musical theater 101, with the characters unable to say what they feel with plain English so they resort to music, but of course with a Joe Iconis twist. The stakes aren’t the fucking battle of the band, it’s the friendship between the boys. It’s literally so obvious I want to scream. Anyways this song is fantastic way to end the show.

Car Ride To Long Beach - That's right. Car Ride To Long Beach is 5th place. I'm only very slightly bitter about the review that was like "is fried chicken REALLY the deciding factor in going on a drug run?" And by slightly bitter I mean this person goes on the list of people I want to beat up for being so fucking wrong about a Joe show. No, you fucking fool, that's not actually the deciding factor. She's at least on the fence, if not already secretly decided yes, about it from the moment he asks. It's about the company, it's about the road trip, it's about breaking the rules after having been "good" for so long. I am so adamant that this song is about desire and thrill and guilt and wanting to be seen for who you are and not just John saying obscene things. Like take the dialogue exchange right before she finally vocally says yes. "What do I look like right now?" "Uh. You look like... Lisa?" "... Alright let's go." Like tell me that does not drive you fucking crazy after Lisa's constant questions about others perception of her and trying to figure out who she is herself. Car Ride To Long Beach is good you guys are just mean.

Social Worker - Another example of an incredibly fitting character song. The refusal and reluctance of a teenage boy to admit that he actually needs or gets mental health help. I love the music-ification of a panic attack as loud drums and electric guitar. "I don't really go to the social worker," he says, as he goes to the social worker. It’s truly hilariously, heartbreakingly fitting for his character.

The Answer - When that Things To Ruin reviewer said Joe is a master of putting commonly shared moments to music no one else has done before, they were right. Who HASN’T taken a test and failed it so utterly they started questioning their entire life and worried for their future before? I love the repeated lyric questions like John is sitting there reading the question over and over trying to figure out what the answer is. I love the synthy keyboard. Fantastic choice @ Charlie Rosen.

Band-Aids and Cigarettes - Oh this song is so good I feel guilty about putting it at 8. It’s like honestly heartbreaking, not being able to give what the other person needs and being aware of it. And the unconventionality of it being sung by the mentor character instead of a love interest or something.

The Feeling (Part 1 and 2) - Yeah I’m combining them into one song and also assuming the entire beach/Chris & Mrs. Werring conversation is part of the song, too, with the interlude of the “I just want something good to happens.” This song is a jam, plain and simple. I love the absolutely terrible advice that Mrs. Werring gives Chris. “You got to push all your worries inside of yourself, and then they’ll mix creating a combustible boom.” Awful! But Annie Golden sings it so well. And it makes Band-Aids and Cigarettes later that much more sad. In part 2, I love how interconnected the two conversations are. “Just breathe them in -> I love the beach.” The synchronous “I don’t even remember why I liked him/her in the first place.” The score here having the Spirit Song melody. Also now feels like a good time to bring up my Lisa Bred is nonbinary headcanon (though it’s practically textual canon) with “I’m not a girl, I’m a song.” Like that right there, she literally states she’s not a girl, and that’s just the most obvious part. Twice before now, she’s asked people about how they perceive her (“what do I look like right now?” “my girlfriend?” / “Lisa”) and her arc in this show up to this point is discovering more about herself and trying new things. She’s aware of societal gender norms (“isn’t that what boyfriend girlfriends are supposed to do?”) and how she doesn’t really fit in with them. She’s experimenting with expressing herself (dyeing her hair blue, photography). Like it’s all right there. I don’t know if Joe was intentionally writing a nonbinary character figuring herself out but that’s what I get when I read the text straight. In Lisa’s mind, John is one of the gateways to trying new things (“you give me this feeling”) and then that blends right into the rest of The Feeling and it’s so fucking GOOD. I love this song.

Blue Hair - The OG Joe Iconis viral song! I love the music song of this song so much, specifically the guitar/piano riff. I love the multiple sources of motivation of doing it, from actually wanting to try something different, to getting a reaction from Chris and John, even if she denies that last part. And then again at the end of the song with her self-awareness. She’s doing something to stand out/express herself! I love it.

Nato's Song - A six minute clusterfuck of a song and it’s beautiful. Sticking to the actual Nato stuff right now, I think it’s a pretty clever way of passing time and seeing how it’s affecting him and everyone else in the show. With the interspersed content of other characters, it really is the musical equivalent of a film montage. I love seeing Chris’ further breakdown in the form of voicemails to his dad. The music of Blue Hair, Old Records, and Rather Be coming back is fucking great. Everyone is just struggling in this song and it’s great.

Rock 'N Roll Band (Reprise) - I love this re-introduction song so much and the differences between it and the original. I love the chaoticness of the solos all going at the same time. I love the cut Geek Rock Garage King still making in into the show as Brandon’s bridge and how out of place it is with the rest of the song musically but yet it’s still in it. I love the a capella break with Mrs. Werring cheering them on.

Old Records - The fact that John plays the guitar as Chris sings it for someone to hear is so good. When he gets affirmation that John likes the song, he continues. And it’s only after being called out about his writing revealing things about him that Chris feels bad about the song again and claims that they were just dummy lyrics. Once John leaves the backing music comes back on like glockenspiel or something and I love the lightness of it combined with the electric guitar that comes in after.

Black Suit On - I know we’re at like 3/4ths through but I honestly love this song. I love all the songs so much. This ranking honestly barely matters because I love all the songs in this show. I love the (unrealistic) idea of finally being able to be your best self, of all your problems going away, if only something symbolic but ultimately inconsequential thing were to happen. It’s about the (shared) vision for a different future than the one you’re currently living! (By the way I am so haunted by Jen Tepper saying this song was actually about LIHN. Like does anyone know what that means? Do I fundamentally misunderstand this song or LIHN? I don’t get the connection.)

Lisa - Once again, the relatability. Who hasn’t felt like they were good enough for another person? I love the specificity of the AOL verse. It’s so late 2000s. And the rest of the lyrics are so angsty and overdramatic as John is. Specifically in the context of the show this song really hurts after Lisa tells him she can’t fix whatever issues are wrong with him.

Rock 'N Roll Band - I love how the entire song is so what teenagers going through school, waiting for life to change, and seeking refuge in the only place where they feel like they are important and can be themselves. I love all their intros. I love Brandon going way too hard on the drums. “I’m gonna scream and shout, knock you out. I’m gonna conquer the world, get the girl. I’m gonna get some respect, finally connect. When I take a stand, with my rock ‘n roll band.” The extreme vividness of the type of stuck they feel here is so good and it’s a good summary of the show.

Pop Tarts - I love that this song is still called Pop Tarts despite all references to it having been removed except for one dialogue. I love the section of Chris’ vision for the band. The pre-reprise of the beginning of It’s All Good with “we’re cool and whatever?” and all of them joining in and getting on the same page. We love some boys just absolutely barely capable of communicating with each other with words.

Song In My Head/Only Person In The World - The absolute irony and poetry of John singing “I’m the only person in the world” and Chris singing about how everyone is gone when this is a duet. It’s literally so fucking good. When they both sing “I’m the only person in the world” at the same time? Are you kidding me? And this song is ranked 18th? Truly every song in this show is top tier.

Rather Be - This song is rather on the nose in its message, everyone would rather be at band rehearsal. It’s a solid song that helps us get into each of their characters more (“rather be where my buddies / now the same bands / and tolerate my drum fills” / “where my brothas like that I’m weird / and ask to see my squid impression” / “because we’ve only got a little while to get fantastic and get some style / if we do it soon then I won’t have to go to college” / “christ I’d rather be anywhere / but sitting trapped here taking this asshole test”). I love it when characters in shows all have different reasons for singing the same lines.

McFly Is Looking For A Drummer - Rip to this song, being ranked last. It’s not that I don’t like it because I actually do. Again, I just love all the songs in this show. He’s trying to communicate in his own way, which happens to be in music references, but that’s not how other people around him understand, and so he sees this opportunity to be with people who are more like him, but then he he gets scared that he wouldn’t fit in the way he hopes he would, which would be even worse than where he’s currently at where he knows that they don’t quite get him but are his friends anyways. I love that one moment where he drops out singing. It’s very reminiscent of in Michael In The Bathroom when you expect him to sing the title words but he doesn’t, so your brain fills it in for you. It functions a bit differently than that moment does in BMC though. I think in this song it’s the comparison of how he’s currently treated with the possibility of what McFly represents, that he could have the exact opposite experience there, that he’s imagining all the possibilities in that moment. Lol, ranked 20 and I still have so many things to say about this song.

[ppatpranss]

GAYA SA PELIKULA EP. 02 Review: Let’s talk about that dinner scene.

“May nahanap ka na bang mauuwian?”

I always have this kind of fear over a series that I already liked in the first episode: a fear that the second one will not live up to it, and so will the rest. But Gaya Sa Pelikula on its second episode did not disappoint, and instead set a whole new pace that further strengthens the story it wants to tell. In this episode, you get easy banters, hilarious make-believe and intriguing fantasies, heartwarming softness, a piercing tension at every turn, that very subtle buildup of romance, and of course, that wonderful conversation on the dining table.

Early warning that I have been gushing about the dinner scene since last night, so it will take up a lot of space in this review/discussion.

[WATCH EPISODE 02 HERE]

What sets Gaya apart

Every time I watch an episode of this show and would rewatch it, I am always overwhelmed with the amount of observations I am able to write down. There are a lot of elements that make this such a good watching experience, and all of those elements just naturally come together. By this, I mean that it does not rely solely on, say, just directing or writing or acting. All of these come together, and I appreciate that you can clearly see how well-thought out everything is.

Episode 02 is a lot more free-flowing and non-structured in my opinion. Transitions feel a lot smoother this time compared to the more scene-after-scene approach of the (no less incredible) pilot episode. Because of this, I actually feel like this point is the real beginning of the story – that this sets the tone for a lot of the future events that could possibly happen between Karl and Vlad, and the people in their lives.

Personally, this is what sets Gaya apart not just among the BL series, but also in Philippine TV in general. For the longest time, we got used to stagnant or repetitive conflicts. Sometimes all the drama are injected to overwhelm the audience. But this one takes its time well. This is a show that wants to bring its audience along its every journey.

Parallels, heartbreaks, buildups

The opening scene picks up where we left off, with Ate Judit now writing a check for Karl’s rent because Vlad will stay over. She reminds Karl that while she’s a cool sister, she won’t stand for her brother getting hurt again. With this, she specifically mentioned “a boy too sweet to swat a fly” who broke his brother’s heart before.

First of all, I’m getting a sudden whiplash whenever this is brought up because I know exactly who it is. Given the first encounter of Karl with Vlad, where he saw him drunkenly dancing to a song about intense heartbreak (again, stream tyl by kakie!), it must have been something truly painful. It doesn’t help as well that there is an obvious parallel going on here with the fact that the description also fits Karl. At one point, Vlad also tells him that he does not need to worry because he looks like someone who does not have a power to hurt him anyway. They are really setting us up as early as now for the heartache, no?

In the same way, I appreciate how this show inserts the sexual attraction also forming between the two of them. Sexual attraction is a part of romance. Gaya normalizes it and emphasizes that it is just natural. The couch scene was particularly genius because of the double meanings of Karl and Vlad’s exchange. But more than that, I like how it also unapologetically shows the physical component of that attraction by having Karl and Vlad sit close together. Vlad even has his arm around Karl. Even the fact that Karl stared at Vlad when he got out of the bathroom was a nice touch.

While the One More Chance dream fantasy was all sorts of hilarious and sexy, it is a testament to how Karl’s subconscious is already telling him something that he keeps on denying. I also like the nice touch there when Karl woke up, he was just disoriented that he had a dirty dream, but not disgusted by it (there are some series and dramas that do this). He is attracted to Vlad. However, for Karl to accept his feelings, it also means that he needs to accept his sexuality. A point which was discussed primarily in the scene before this – the conversation at the dining table.

The phenomenal dinner scene

I wish I am able to give justice to this scene through words, and I’ll try because we need to talk about it (or I need to talk about it). As a fan of films and TV series, I feel like conversations are the most difficult to bring to the surface. You need to keep the audience’s attention while also making sure that the depth is there. For me, what I always look for in conversation scenes are three things: (1) how normal these conversations would sound like as if you are overhearing them from the table next to you; (2) how a director captures the rawness of the exchange between the two actors; and (3) how natural would the delivery be of each line. I think the third point is very important. Some actors have this tendency to talk in a certain kind of perky tone that makes it sound superficial. Thank goodness, both Ian and Pao were really great in this scene.

Of course, the most well-known example for a good conversation scene is the entire Before trilogy – it remains the gold standard for exhibiting the power and the magic of conversations, of an entire film with just these two people talking and forming connections. While this dinner scene isn’t exactly a Before levels type of perfection, to me it was a perfect scene in the face of BL series and the Philippines TV landscape in general.

𝗚𝗮𝘆. 𝗕𝗮𝗸𝗹𝗮. 𝗕𝗮𝘆𝗼𝘁. 𝗕𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴. 𝗝𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝘆 𝗶𝘁. 𝗜𝘁 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱𝘀 𝗻𝗼 𝗲𝘂𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗺. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁.

One of the things best highlighted in this scene is when Karl did the gesture with his hand. That is unfortunately common in the Philippines, with people literally doing it to your face when they ask you. Or some of them done behind your back with matching giggling and knowing looks. I should know because I’ve seen it among my relatives when they try to refer to or describe a cousin or an uncle who is gay or might be gay. Karl was conditioned to think this way, and it’s no surprise that he would struggle to ask the question and get the word out. Meanwhile, Vlad is confident in his own skin. He doesn’t miss a beat and tries to get Karl to say the words in a way that both lectures him and encourages him.

This is what makes the scene purely amazing. It is confrontational, but it is not dramatic. It isn’t even preachy at all. It’s just a seemingly ordinary conversation between two people over a meal, trying to get to know and understand each other. You really got to hand it to Severo for constructing a dialogue this way because it also brings out both of Karl and Vlad’s current disposition. Moreover, this topic is a big deal and there are a lot of conversations that need to be had around it. But this scene easily summed it up around that one simple gesture. In less than a minute, it was able to tell you that being called gay, bakla, bayot, bading is not an insult. No grand monologue was needed.

Aside from that iconic exchange, I also loved the second part of it. It’s not going around much on Twitter so I can see some people reacting to the earlier exchange as if Karl was really just insulting Vlad. But the deal here is, Karl is also in the process of unlearning his bias and conditioning. He grew up in a household where his Dad would take digs against his gay uncle, Tito Santi. There’s even a hint of Tito Santi being physically hurt by his father if he’s “babakla-bakla” (basically another insulting way of saying lalambot-lambot). You can just imagine how difficult it must have been for him to grow up and feel like he needs to follow a certain path that his parents see for him.

Hence, when confronted by Vlad with the question, “Ikaw ba, bakla ka?” he was defensive. His tone shot up much higher than normal and was almost panicked. You can literally feel all of his guard come up. Vlad asked him why he was acting like he just accused him of a crime, and to his credit, Karl immediately apologized. But again, I just really understand Karl and I can’t wait for him to really see himself and get to know himself. There is so much about him that I am interested to learn and for him to learn as well about himself. I always see him as like a kid learning to take his first steps – he stumbles but tries to stand again even for just the sake of himself. His many mess-ups in life make his character compelling… and I guess this is just me on my #ProtectKarlAgenda.

Interestingly, as per Direk JP, above scene references an iconic scene from Jose Javier Reyes’ 1993 rom-com film MAY MINAMAHAL which, coincidentally, I just watched last month when I found its restored version on iWant. Amazing as well that the specific scene of them having a meal together was really my favourite from the film because it was a turning point for Carlitos (Aga Muhlach) and Monica (Aiko Melendez). It was when they finally start to get to know each other because for the longest time, they would just flirt in the cafeteria. It was a fitting reference because for Karl and Vlad, they are already starting to get to know each other by sharing even a small part of themselves. I also find it adorable watching Karl watch Vlad messily eat his food. I live for those small soft moments because it just seems so pure and innocent.

All in all, the dinner scene truly delivered. It was iconic and powerful. Major props to Gege and Direk JP, but also to both Ian and Pao. I loved how Pao was able to capture Karl’s reluctance and embarrassment, and Ian just exudes the confidence you need to see in Vlad. How can I describe this connection? Magnetic, I guess? They can easily throw these lines at each other, sustain the tension, and kind of just get lost in it. At every turn, Vlad has the power in this scene as he tries to pull Karl towards him, but also Karl stands on his own ground despite being unsure. I appreciate that about Karl – his life can be a mess, but he never really loses his sense of self and principles.

Finding a home

Aside from everything that happened in this episode, one of the things that I definitely loved is its subtle hint of these two people finding a home in each other. The most striking line for me, really, was when Karl asked Vlad, may nahanap ka na bang mauuwian? I like that this can translate to have you found a place to stay in? and have you found a place to go home to? The episode had such a great run in double meanings, and this one takes the cake more than anything. Karl was starting to feel guilty about kicking out Vlad, and it also happens that over his phone call with Tito Santi, he told him to always find a way to repay kindness with paying it forward to another person or to the community. Luckily, Vlad went back to his apartment to use the restroom.

When Vlad was about to leave, Karl called him back and asked, “Nag-dinner ka na ba?”

Vlad stayed for dinner.

When Vlad was done with dinner and was about to leave again, Karl stopped him and said, “Dito ka na lang matulog.”

Vlad stayed the night.

When Vlad was about to leave to come live with his ex-boyfriend after cooking breakfast as a thank-you, Karl offered him a place to stay, “Will you be my housemate?”

Vlad said yes and stayed.

Epilogue

In today’s epilogue, Karl is still seated on his side of the couch, but Vlad this time was standing at the back of the other side, leaning forward. A stuffed whale occupies the space beside Karl. Every now and then, the two of them would look at each other but it is Karl who would often glance back at Vlad – as to what his eyes are telling him, I don’t know. But if I am allowed to guess, perhaps he was trying to get him to sit beside him? Perhaps, as the closing note goes, there is always a space for Vlad there.

Comments; Ramblings

It’s only the second episode but Gaya is already sparking conversations and it does it in such an engaging way for its many fans. For me, this one really sets the foundation for what is yet to come for the story of Karl and Vlad. If anything, this episode emphasizes that struggle will always be a part of queer love, at least in our current socio-political climate. It isn’t just in regard to identity, but also with everything that comes with the acceptance of who you are by yourself and the Other.

For the pilot episode discussion, I talked about how there seems to be a running theme in this show about seeing – of looking at yourself, the other, or a beloved. This episode shows us Karl seeing Vlad; closely and slowly starting to unravel what it was about him that compels him. For Vlad’s part, I’m pretty sure he’s starting to see who Karl is, too. I feel like him feeling comfortable enough with the idea of staying in Karl’s place and actually living with him over the sem break is an indication of strangely feeling at ease (home?) with someone he just met.

The concept of persons as homes takes me back to a post from a Facebook page called Bibliophile, which was lifted from a poem written by Warsan Shire called ‘For Women Who Are Difficult to Love’: “You can’t make homes out of human beings. Someone should have already told you that.” This episode made me think a lot about that. On one hand, it feels romantic and uplifting to know that you have someone you can call your home, someone you can always return to as Yiu-fai put it in HAPPY TOGETHER [1997]. On the other hand, it feels scary because people change and if today the door and the windows are open, it might not be the same the next day. But I suppose I can feel hopeful for both Karl and Vlad. Perhaps, the door to Karl’s apartment will always be open for Vlad and the space beside the couch will always be reserved for him.

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Gaya Sa Pelikula airs new episodes every Friday 8PM (Manila time) on Globe Studios’ Youtube channel.

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