#what was airing in 2017 was that carver era?

[chintzwife]

okay i saw people on here mention cinderwings one too many times and i streamed it all day today all like 181k words or whatever and. GOLD

[mittensmorgul]

So I have a question about 9x14. Bart talks to Cas about leading "an incursion against Raphael and his loyalists." So we can assume he's talking about season 6 stuff. But later, Bart also talks about how Cas was called back to the battlefield because "our leaders wanted those captives killed, and they knew you'd stand in the way of their order." I thought Cas was the main commander in season 6, since he led the rebellion. Why were there other "leaders" that acted against Cas's wishes?

(9x14 Anon here, I know these kind of questions are kind of inconsequential to the overall story but I still like to understand these small things, especially when it comes to Cas. Sorry if that’s not your thing, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to 🙃)

Hi there! I’ll start by saying that this is EXACTLY the sort of detail I LOVE TALKING ABOUT THE MOST. :’D I love picking at things like this and attempting to find the truth, as much as we can in a work of fiction.

I’ll start by saying I have already asked myself this question, even if I didn’t give myself a fully satisfying answer, back the week before 13.03 first aired, in October 2017.

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/166754538920/rewatching-914-i-love-this-episode-so-much

The series of thoughts I posed in this rewatch are:

Who ordered Bartholomew to kill those captives, if Castiel had been the one to leave them in his care? Who other than Castiel had the right to give that order? Just like the demon Crowley left in charge of his own captives, who tortured and killed Crowley’s captives without Crowley’s orders to do so.

It is sort of hand-wavey of s6 as a whole, isn’t it? Then again, s6 sort of handwaved itself in 6.20… Or at least dropped the curtain on all the secrecy surrounding the war in heaven that we’d only heard hints and whispers of until that point. But it also leaves out the entire previous year of events between 5.22 and 6.01, which we only saw in a few occasional flashbacks.

6.20 does kind of give us a vague timeline for events post 5.22, but not really. We don’t know how much time passed between Dean showing up at Lisa’s and Cas watching him rake leaves, for example. Cas only describes the time span as “those first weeks back in Heaven,” so it could be two weeks, or it could be twelve weeks, or more, before Raphael pulled him over and gave him his ultimatum.

We know Cas was building alliances with other angels at that time. They sort of hastily tried to show us the extent of that with Rachel, that Cas had other trusted angels working with him, but we also have been shown since s4 that… angels are difficult to keep in line. Uriel, Balthazar, and of course Cas himself. And a lot of others. We’re left to wonder just how “in charge” of the “rebel faction” Cas actually was in s6, especially when TWO of his closest generals? Commanders? Whatever, the terminology isn’t important here, but their PERCEIVED position of power is. But Cas was BETRAYED TWICE in s6 by angels he was supposedly “in charge” of– Rachel and Balthazar.

But what was the perception of all the other angels that were being told they needed to choose a side in this war? The angels who didn’t WANT to choose a side? Maybe they were fine with the status quo. Maybe they just didn’t want to fight. Maybe they wanted nothing to do with an apocalypse, but Raphael was demanding it, and Cas and his cohorts were trying to stop it. But when Raphael began laying down ultimatums, like the one he issued Cas to basically fall in line or die, I think Cas and a LOT of his cohorts were likely able to win the loyalty of angels who’d otherwise have had nothing to do with Cas, you know?

How many of Cas’s legions were converted to his side, to his cause, by angels loyal to Rachel, or to Balthazar, or to any of the other angels Cas had gathered to his cause? How many of them thought Rachel’s ideas were more compelling that Cas’s? How many of them actually knew about Cas’s ACTUAL plans to take down Raphael, and how many thought this was really a fight between the “foot soldiers” in each faction?

We know, for example, that Rachel was supposed to be one of his closest Lieutenants (THAT’S the word I was looking for earlier… >.>). Rachel… had no real idea what Cas was up to until she began to uncover his larger schemes in 6.18 (i.e. the episode we both meet her for the first time, and Cas kills her for challenging his plan once she begins to understand the reality of it).

But Carver era spent a LOT of time showing us just how little we actually understood s6. I mean, three episodes before 9.14, we hear it from Cas’s own mouth:

SAM [slaps his hand away]: You’re a terrible liar.CASTIEL: That is not true. I once deceived and betrayed both you and your brother.

He’s talking about s6. That season where he spent very little time in Heaven, despite constantly telling the Winchesters that it was Heaven and his troubles there that had been keeping him away from them all season. It sounds very much like his strategy in Purgatory, you know? At least on the surface, how he ran away from Dean to draw off the Leviathan… because that’s what he was doing in the Raking Leaves scene in 6.20, too… everything to keep Dean safe, to keep him out of it.

(meanwhile he’d unleashed soulless!Sam on the world, and didn’t seem to have any qualms getting Sam tangentially involved in his side quest with Crowley… which was his ACTUAL mission during s6.)

Back to the point, which was that Cas was deceiving BOTH his angel comrades in Heaven AND the Winchesters throughout s6. He wasn’t spending most of his time in the nitty-gritty fights in Heaven. In fact, we know very little about what those fights entailed, and really DIDN’T know there were “prisoners” involved on either side of that battle until s9. Well, we knew Cas-as-Godstiel intended to destroy Raphael’s followers, who refused to side with him during the war, but that’s ALL we knew until Bart told us about “prisoners” that had been taken, and apparently executed.

Because what Bartholomew’s little comments to Cas tell me is that Bart… really didn’t know what Cas’s real mission, his real plan, had been all along. The little scrums in heaven were a distraction for him, that he left to play out while he raced to find the power to kill Raphael and end the war himself.

But he apparently did occasionally peek in and lead a “mission,” or a “fight” or a “skirmish” in heaven, but then was sent away– or possibly not SENT away, but went back to his main quest for the Purgatory souls. Perception is everything here, and if Cas just.. left the fight, might Bart PERCEIVE him as having been sent away, right before “alternate orders” to kill the prisoners came from someone else?

Either that, or Cas did take himself out of the direct leadership of the rebel army in Heaven, and DID take orders from someone else while on that battlefield? We honestly do not know, and I don’t know if it’s even relevant now, because it’s all a game of perception.

Now that we know the full extent of Chuck’s involvement in arranging troubles all over creation, could Bart’s description and “recollection” of those events have even been “edited” after the fact? Heck, we don’t even need Chuck to explain this one… how about Naomi? The narrative has honestly never fully addressed it, and I don’t think it will be. Which is part of what makes it so interesting to think about, to me anyway.

Because what really was Cas’s role in the war in Heaven? Was he merely a figurehead who dared to challenge Raphael and then left most of the day-to-day running of the war to his lieutenants? Because that’s how his conversations with Rachel made it seem. And how s6 seems to make the most sense to me overall. Almost as if the war in heaven and those battles that had consumed Bartholomew’s entire perspective of that time… were barely even on Cas’s radar at all. He had so many other more important things to think about.

This is one reason why I found the whole “Cas as Commander” toward the end of s9 so fascinating. Because that was a role he was FORCED into by Metatron, and not something he was comfortable with. He took the responsibility seriously though, but I had seen it at least partly as more of his eternal penance for s6, and a chance to get a do-over on a lot of the things he always felt he screwed up during that time. And Heaven is near the top of that list– not because he directed the wars there, but because he’d neglected them.

The image of Cas as some great Leader Of Heaven’s Armies is just… not and never has been the reality of his character, despite being an incredibly popular fanon interpretation of his character. Even back in early s4, when he seemed to have Authority, he seemed so confident in the Plans of Heaven, seemed so in charge, the reality of that began to crack through by 4.07, and had completely shaken apart by the end of the season. I’ve applied that thematic to essentially everything having to do with Heaven and the organizational system up there ever since.

We like to think of Heaven as a military organization, and angels as soldiers with well-defined ranks and positions within a hierarchy. I think the reality is far more like Heaven is a bureaucracy, and half the people in the organization are scheming to overthrow the other half at any given time, there’s no clear leadership level by level and no clearly delineated pecking order or chain of command. More like a conglomerate of different divisions who each think their group is the one in charge, while getting very little input or guidance from the supposed leadership of the whole organization. A bunch of petty middle-managers scrambling for as much power and control as they could amass.

Heaven was made up of Zachariahs and Metatrons and Naomis, after all. 

eta: after I read the whole thing again :’D

Bart was just another low-level bureaucrat attempting to seize power for himself where he saw an opportunity. And like the vast majority of other angels, he died for it. And there’s now so few of them left and they’re STILL behaving this same exact way-- with Dumah having schemed her way into getting Naomi locked up in s14. I mean, nothing ever changes, right? Even when there’s only a handful of angels left, they can’t let go and work together. They’ll be the death of themselves.

(Except the few that seem to have realized there’s a better way-- like Cas, like Naomi who was at least trying to learn a better way, like Anael who would rather live a sham life on Earth helping people than return to Heaven even after seeing more sides of the bureaucracy than most other angels, and like Metatron who only learned better after he lost his grace and still ended up dying for trying to do the right thing... Chuck really is a jerk, you know?)

[upalldown]

Bruce Springsteen - Western Stars

Nineteenth solo album and first in fourteen years from the veteran singer-songwriter, produced by Ron Aniello

10/13

Between October 2017 and December last year, Bruce Springsteen took what essentially amounted to a day job, clocking in at the Walter Kerr Theatre on West 48th Street in midtown Manhattan. Despite the high visibility of a 236-performance residency, during which he evocatively leafed through his back pages and punctuated familiar songs with revealing and eloquent anecdotes, the man himself gave very few interviews to a media craving insight pertaining to the hottest ticket in town. Consequently, it was left to others to ponder where next for this icon, this articulate chronicler of the American Condition, this unswerving blue-collar champion. Some, including those comparatively close to or even embedded in the Springsteen camp, went as far as to suggest the Broadway run might be a last hurrah, a carefully choreographed farewell after more than two-thirds of a life lived in the spotlight. The evidence, while not irrefutable, was persuasive. In practical terms, prior to the arrival of Western Stars, it had been more than seven years since Springsteen’s last album of entirely new material, Wrecking Ball. Following that dizzying benchmark (in a career littered with same), 2014’s High Hopes was a patchwork woven together from outtakes of varying archival stripe, re-workings of former glories and a smattering of cover versions. When promoting the album on a world tour, Bruce and his trusty E Street Band routinely shoehorned entire earlier long-players into their set; it was a lottery as to which audience would get Born To Run, Darkness On The Edge Of Town or Born In The USA, performed in full and in sequence. Yet that hugely popular conceit was just the start of a five-year period of Springsteen curating his past. His next global jaunt took the form of a 35th anniversary celebration of The River, followed by the 2016 publication of his weighty Born To Run autobiography (he narrated the 18-hour audio version himself) and its companion compilation Chapter And Verse. Concurrent to all this was the launch of downloads of full concerts from years gone by on an official, dedicated archive website – at the time of writing the series runs to 39 gigs. That doesn’t include three themed digital-only live compilations marketed by his Sony paymasters, nor the Springsteen On Broadway set accompanying the Netflix film of the theatre show. All have been devoured by fans with relish, but understandably prompted questions about the future. Was the man who’d gleaned so much inspiration from the highway and the vehicles that rode it finally, unfathomably, running on empty? It remains to be seen whether Western Stars is the beginning of a fresh and newly fecund narrative in Springsteen’s career arc, or if it will prove to be a whispered, introspective strum taking him ever closer to the end credits. Certainly, it arrives shorn of the pizazz and hullabaloo of a sell-out stint on the Great White Way, but like Bruce’s theatre “piece” (which is what it was, to all intents and purposes) it’s informed by tangible echoes of what went before. In April, when announcing it was on its way, Springsteen said the new album would be “a return to my solo recordings featuring character-driven songs and sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements.” The first part of that description places it firmly in a triptych with Nebraska and Devils & Dust, while also revisiting the more contemplative corners of Tunnel Of Love, albeit without the emotional baggage. Western Stars is Springsteen at his most novelistic, scratching out pocket portraits that owe as much to the printed word of John Steinbeck, Raymond Carver or even Jack Kerouac as they do a lineage that would boast weather-beaten troubadours like Kris Kristofferson, Jimmy Webb, or his younger self. And while all 13 songs are written in the first person, it’s fairly clear none of them are autobiographical and are, for the most part, inhabited by Americana archetypes. He may well identify directly with the jobbing songsmith in North Of Nashville, nursing a drink at the city’s famed musician hangout the Bluebird Cafe while ruing the love he left behind as he followed dreams of stardom. Most prosaic, given the album’s title, is the modern-day ranch hand of Chasin’ Wild Horses (“We’re out before sun-up, in after sundown/Two men in the chopper, two under saddle on the ground”), likening the pursuit of feral equines to taming his own internal beasts. The movie world rears its head in Drive Fast, as a stuntman, legs full of corrective steel pins, reminisces about a romance with a B-movie starlet, and again in the title track in which the protagonist veteran actor looks down on Tinseltown from his home in the Hollywood hills before dining out for the thousandth time on the day he was shot by John Wayne. It’s almost as if the songs can be neatly filed into one of two drawers: the search for the end of a rainbow, or the disillusionment of discovering the pot of gold never shines as bright as he hoped. A filmic air settles over much of the actual music; the “sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements” evoke the scores of, say, Elmer Bernstein or others tasked with adding sonic grandeur to the Monument Valley westerns of John Ford. That said, the swoon of strings on the uncomplicated heartache of There Goes My Miracle is closer in tone to the pop melodrama of The Walker Brothers. In more subdued pockets (Somewhere North Of Nashville, the detail-rich Moonlight Motel), the sparse intimacy of just Springsteen and multi-instrumentalist producer Ron Aniello is enough to convey a mood of longing, of confession. Early 70s collaborator David Sancious returns to add occasional piano and Hammond, but there is no place for long-serving E Streeters, and perhaps those goodbyes have already been exchanged. Pure conjecture, maybe, but just a few months shy of his 70th birthday how likely is it, realistically, that Springsteen has a hungry enough heart to strap on the Strat and set out on a marathon trek with his erstwhile fellow travellers? Western Stars feels like either the epilogue to a magnificent era or the discreet prologue to a more modest one.

https://recordcollectormag.com/reviews/western-stars

[carandreviews-blog]

Mercedes Benz C Class AMG S 2017

At the point when Mercedes-Benz brought the W201 stage here as the to some degree strangely named 190E 2.3, it was instantly nicknamed the "infant Benz." The successor to that auto, yclept "C-Class" to fit unequivocally inside Daimler-Benz's new imbecile good terminology, ended up noticeably known as the "Modest Class" at Mercedes-Benz dealerships.

The auto you see above, steered by Danger Girl at Sebring International Raceway in what was not an infringement of the Hertz Dream Cars rental understanding, is no longer child estimated. Nor is it especially modest at the as-tried cost of simply over $74,000. So what is it, precisely?

All things considered, it's foolishly capable; the Pep-Boys-style square "S" toward the finish of the C63 identification shows an entire 503 strength from a twin-turbo 4.0-liter V8. It's astoundingly very much prepared, despite the fact that there are a couple of oversights about which one could fuss and I'll examine those beneath. It's as able as you'd expect, being the top-spec car variant of an auto that is shockingly not too bad even in its neediness spec, MB-Tex-prepared four-chamber frame.

The majority of all, in any case, the 2017 Mercedes-AMG C63 S is a sharp update that AMG isn't what it used to be, for better or in negative ways.

Your unassuming creator has a long relationship with execution situated Benzes. I had a 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth reestablished in 2005 and ran it in the One Lap of America; that auto has quite recently experienced yet another entire rebuilding on account of the fourth proprietor since I sold it 10 years back. In the years that tailed, I invested a considerable measure of energy driving different AMG autos from the C43 to the SL65; I additionally ran a CL55 as an organization auto around 10 years before Ed Bolian put two or three bedpans in one and persuaded individuals that he'd set a world record for illicit movement.

The AMG logic has dependably been one centered around straight-line speed and Autobahn ability, blended with a solid measurements of extravagance. These are not, and have never been, track rats. Indeed, even the first 300SEL 6.3 hustled by the organizers of AMG was all the more a straight-line fear than a corner carver.

Around 12 years back, AMG disclosed a bespoke 6.2-liter actually suctioned V8 that would locate a home in essentially every style of back wheel-drive Benz auto, SUV, and G-wagen. If at any time there was a motor that could be truly blamed for having a spirit, that was the one. It was unadulterated enchantment from stem to stern, anxious to rev and as characterful as it was capable, finding maybe its finest expression in the last boomerang-eye variations of the past era SL63, additionally equipped for transforming staid vehicles like the E63 into gigantically attractive rocketships.

All things considered, as my future third spouse Este Haim likes to state, those days are no more. Presently AMG manages with the twin-turbo 4.0-liter. On paper, it's more than a match for the active 6.2 actually suctioned huge piece. Against the stopwatch, it's somewhat better, helped impressively by a level torque bend with a lot of region underneath that "bend."

Lamentably for those of us who think about something other than the spec sheet, nonetheless, this new biturbo plant is depressingly, frustratingly anodyne, yet another triumph of designing over pleasure. I happen to know this motor can sparkle in the correct application, and I'll get to that in a bit. In the C63 S car, however, it's a bit so-along these lines, notwithstanding when you flick the plasti-chrome "mode selector" on the left half of the middle support the distance to "Race."

Between the V8 and the back wheels, we get the "Speedshift MCT" transmission. It's best to consider it the old 7G-Tronic programmed with a PC controlled wet grasp where the torque converter used to be. This sounds like a worthless measure yet there's a great deal to suggest. Mercedes-Benz really sees how to fabricate a solid planetary-outfit transmission; they're one of only a handful couple of makers who can design one sans preparation and have it not break apart in overwhelming obligation utilize. The issue with the wet-grasp hack, maybe, is that you need to approach it with deference. With 6,260 rental miles on the odometer when I lifted it up, this C63 S was at that point hinting at MCT wretchedness, most eminently a hesitance to connect with appropriately from a dead stop.

The base cost of the C63 S gets you the Burmester sound framework, multi-customizable front seats, and enormous steel brakes. It doesn't get you a power trunk nearer, Distronic radar journey control, ventilated seats, window shades, the lodge air scent framework, Parktronic, encompass see cameras, or a hefty portion of alternate elements you'd anticipate from a full-pontoon AMG. It's conceivable to spend another twelve thousand or so to understand that stuff, on the off chance that you need it.

In the resale-accommodating triple dark of our test auto, the C63 S is not especially nice looking or great. You can really get more visual value for your money with a CLA 43, which will accompany carbon-fiber jump planes, matte paint, and a wide range of other decoration. Obviously, that would be crazy on the grounds that the C63 S is a legitimate, customary, raise wheel drive Benz vehicle while the CLA 43 is, well, it's something else altogether.

At 187 crawls long, the C63 S is a sensible size for two grown-ups with baggage or four grown-ups after all other options have been exhausted. It's not implied for that cliché two-couples-on-the-superhighway-to-Munich situation unless the couples being referred to are worked to twentieth-century mittel-European outlines. A six-foot-two driver and a since quite a while ago legged five-nine young lady in the traveler situate won't leave much space for anyone behind them.

So what's it jump at the chance to drive? The best answer is "inquisitively disenchanting." With the mode change set to "Game Plus" or over, the power is constantly prepared to kick the tail out from under you and send you TCS-squeaking to triple digits, the tail swaying delicately as the back calipers clasp and clop the wheels into consistence with the accessible hold out and about. In the event that you abandon it in Comfort, you'll need to floor it, tally "one-thousand, two one-thousand" as the MCT awakens and shows some signs of life, then a similar thing will happen. Ninety-five percent of the time, in any case, this auto is indistinct from the Cheap-classes that encompass it on the dealership parcel.