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comicbookhyperfixationtime · 4 months

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An Important Aside

CW: Statutory Rape

So, the next issue I have to cover is #197, and it focuses on Kitty Pryde and Colossus. I've briefly mentioned my very strong thoughts on their relationship before, but I think I need to go into more detail about this topic, and I don't want it sandwiched between a bunch of bad jokes and philistine art opinions. When Kitty and Piotr's romance began, she was 14. He was 19. This is statutory assault.

This is definitely ephebophilia and I'm not sure but it may be considered pedophilia as well. Its really, really awful. But the narrative never treats it that way. They write Kitty as a child for sure, she acts in a very childish and immature manner throughout this romance. Its pretty clear Piotr's on a completely different maturity level than her. But he is never portrayed as the absolute monster he is for taking advantage of that. And its not that he doesn't know this is wrong, he angsts plenty about his feelings for Kitty. At one point, the two are in a precarious situation they're not sure they'll live through, and Kitty asks Piotr to have sex with her before they die. He refuses, because he knows she's too young and immature. He knows its wrong and he does it anyway. Which means that the writer and artist of that issue, Chris Claremont and John Byrne, would have to know it was wrong too.

None of the other X-men ever take issue with this. In fact, multiple other X-men encourage their relationship. This includes characters like Storm and Wolverine, Kitty's parental figures on the team. It also includes Professor X, who, may I remind you, has a doctorate in psychology (of course, I shouldn't be surprised Chuck is so blasé considering he had a hots for a teenage Jean Grey and only refrained from pursuing her because of his disability). Eventually, however, somebody finally did take issue with this disgusting situation; the Marvel higher ups.

Claremont was pressured by his bosses to break up the pair, so he did, in the most convoluted, comic book-y way possible; during the Secret Wars event, Colossus is separated from Kitty and meets and falls in love with an alien woman who dies tragically at the end of the event. When he returns to Earth he realizes he's still in mourning for her and has fallen out of love with Kitty. And you'd think that, that's it right? It sucks that they didn't break up because, like, you know, Piotr finally got his head out of his ass and realized he was dating a child, but at least we can move on! But no, we can't, because they reactions that the other X-men have, especially Wolverine are fucking appalling.

They're finally angry at Piotr. But not for starting a relationship with a literal child, no, they're angry at him for finally doing the right thing and ending that relationship. Wolverine especially goes off on him for breaking Kitty's heart. Again, Wolverine who is supposed to be Kitty's mentor and father figure.

I don't really know how to end this because I don't have any important insights aside from "this is fucked up, I hope you know this fucked up, fuck the people who made this." There's definitely a lot more to say about how Kitty Pryde and other teenage characters are sexualized in comics. There's a lot more to say about age-gap relationships in comics (this wasn't the first time a superhero committed statutory rape and wouldn't be the last). But I really don't want to say any of this. I'm not sure now if I want to write a full review of X-men #197 now, because I would rather not spend any more time on this. I might do a mini post about some of the specific panels or scenes I have opinions on.

This whole thing has really ruined 616 Colossus for me, and its tainted other versions too. But I want to make it clear, if he's still a character you like, that's ok. If (adult!) Kitty x Colossus is still one of your ships, that's ok! You can like problematic characters. In long running comic books especially, you can ignore problematic actions or personality traits of your favorite characters, God knows I do all the time. I just needed to get this off my chest.

#marvel comics #comic books #kitty pryde #colossus #piotr rasputin #rant post #serious post

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prairiedust · 6 months

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one thousand days of destiel, or cas: fuckerupper of endings

Idk why I’m crawling out from under my woodpile to write this, except that it occurred to me that in three years I’ve not rewatched a single episode of Supernatural and have at least two dozen tags yet blacklisted on tumblr, and that I am still not okay about this stupid show.

I never tried to tie up the folklore/author themes I’d been geeking out about through the last seasons, neither as the show was ending nor afterwards. I’ve been simmering now for over a thousand days. I could not even write a complete sentence about spn for all this time, and so I just left that pot on the back burner and did other things. Finished my Master’s degree. Started a new job. Saw my oldest child graduate from high school and move off to college, and helped my younger child move on to sixth grade. Watched some other shows, got a new blorbo, saw some movies, started painting again, picked up a couple of new hobbies as I am wont to do.

Today is the 5th of November, 2023. (ETA i sat on this for a bit.)

November 5th, 2020, was exactly one thousand and ninety-five days ago.

I see gifs from the show from time to time and I think to myself, wow, that scene/episode/series is completely irrelevant to my life now. I am fine and normal about everything. But if it really was, if I really was, it would not hurt so much to see the gifs and the lyric posts and the amvs when they aren’t caught in my tag filters. So maybe it’s time to get some things out of my head and onto paper.

I genuinely, nearsightedly, naively thought that since Dabb et al had been the ones writing the whole folk v author themes, and thus posing as someone we could count as being on “our side,” the folk-side of the postmodern audience, they’d honor that conceit, even to the very last shot.

They did not.

And yet… they absolutely did.

Which hurts and is fucked up, but also it’s fine. It’s fine.

In the end, the only “folk hero” (by which I mean the only force in the spn universe capable of warping the threads of the story with any permanence) was Castiel. When Castiel left the story (of his own volition, if you can find a comfortable layer of this meta pie for that concept to rest in,) the writers reverted to God Mode. Because Castiel had been their freedom, their mouthpiece, their avenue for improvisation, and so at the end of the series…

well, we got You changed me/I love you

•

and then we got “Cas helped.”

So much has been written about that pivot point, but genuinely I don’t give a rat’s ass about rewrites, producers, the cutting room floor, or COVID. It exhausts me, and I’m not beholden to writing about spn for grades or notes or any kind of other bullshit that would oblige me to do research.

I feel like… we got what we got.

So let’s criticize some media.

The Paradox:

Cas imploded— went from flexing the narrative from within to being narrated by a force from without. And I couldn’t bear to wrap my head around that for a long time. It seemed that this “twist” was beyond cruel. That’s what he got. Vanished and nerfed. For saying ily. That was what happened when he was finally in focus, fully revealed. He lost. He was relegated, along with Jack, to become heaven’s Two Men and a Truck.

It was a trick, the whole “Chuck is a writer” plotline. The Author regained control of the character that had previously been acting independently. Very Pirandellesque, very frustrating, ultimately even tragic.

So, yes, thematically and critically, having Castiel give up his Agency for Characterhood– giving up his ability to create plot for a role as a character in a plot— was ‘literary’ brilliance. It cemented his status as a grand fucker-upper of the show in a way that any show writer “authoring” a requited destiel ending would not and could not have done. Even Jack, I believe, had been “manipulated” into god-hood from within the narrative. Jack was Dabb’s grand metaphor, he was a product of Author. Castiel was… well, he was a chaos engine from the moment he walked through those barn doors.

To seal the metaphor, the writers ended up living that truth.

I really don’t know if I’m being cogent about this. I’ve been struggling to turn this idea into words for, like, ONE THOUSAND DAYS.

The folk-vs-Author themes becoming A Thing in The Supernatural Show was like a chemical reaction: once the ions had bonded, the resultant compound could not be separated back into the different materials. What on that screen was Author, what was “author,” ie show writer, and what was text-experiencer-as-author? Where did the Sam-as-magician arc go, what were we supposed to do with the semi-metatextual moments that Mary had, having been brought back into the narrative by Amara, not Chuck? Everything got so out of control. Add in a smidgen of secret-sauce-TPTB possibly superseding the author/Author, and what you get is that ridiculous mess of a final two episodes.

It’s not about the rusty trombone or the butt hole pleasures. It’s about love. And kids.

Thank you, hon. It really is. (The above line was left in this doc by my spouse. It is a quote from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. I’ll allow it.)

Anyway. It was hard to see past the sound and the fury of it all.

*****

I was feeling nostalgic several months ago and took a swim in my old meta tags; I found a gem from season…10? Idk and idc, but it was from “The Things We Left Behind.”

I compared Claire to Sleeping Beauty (a tale that got a lot of use in later seasons) and wrote: “I tend to think that Castiel’s entire arc is about desperate and unintentionally misguided attempts to Change The Ending of whatever story he’s shown up in” and reading that again really kind of sucker-punched me.

‘We’re making it up as we go’ was the crux of Cas’ existence. Remember that half-related story in Baby wherein Cas got himself hitched to the Djinn queen? Remember when Jack died and the Empty came to claim him in Heaven and Cas made that terrible bargain? The last-minute attempt to gank Lucifer that actually got him killed and sent to The Empty?

Time and time again, Castiel’s go-to for “changing the narrative,” for advancing his plot, is self-sacrifice. In Chuck’s house against the archangel. The Leviathan disaster. Saying ‘yes’ to Lucifer. The Bargain for Jack in Heaven. And those times it worked out. Not without great pain for both the other characters and for the viewers, but he always came back.

And with each return, his motivation became clearer. (Picture your favorite screencap of Dean here.)

Cas’ love grew, crystalized, and then disappeared, like frost on the windowpane of a house on fire.

If they had continued the CasDean storyline, it would have ultimately been The Author IRL writing/creating/manifesting/materializing ‘destiel.’ And so by putting a torch to all of that architecture, they essentially gave everything to us. Unspoilt. Fingerprints wiped. Serial numbers scratched away. Jailbroken. Whatever floats your boat.

The confession was both affirmation and abnegation. Symbolically, The AuthorTM had washed his hands of it, but with destiel out of the picture, The Author also got his ending.

This is why “Cas helped” felt like a ‘fuck you.’ If Cas was out of the narrative, why did he come back as one of Heaven’s real estate developers? It did not fit.

And yet. It did. Because Chuck won. Chuck, or everything that an Author represents in television land– TPTB, showrunner legacies, multiple producers, a chaotic and treacherous and politically messy writer’s room, multiple incompatible or unresolvable MOs and visions— all that ends up being packaged and presented as a single unerring vision.

So I have to admit, although I don’t have to do it with any ion of grace, that in the end it was pretty fucking smart.

Destiel is ours. Destiel is the folk ending. The Author never got to touch it, never so much as breathed on it, was so far divorced from the concept that the absence thereof going forward hit us like a truck full of bricks.

Yes, it hurts that Dean was just left on the floor until the credits rolled, that there were no final words, no ensuing acknowledgement.

I’ll go so far outside the Text as to address the ‘Dean can’t reciprocate’ direction from one of the scripts:

If Dean had made a single move onscreen. Uttered a word. In Despair or either of the other two episodes.

Destiel would have been claimed by The Author.

Anyway. I’ve been collecting posts now and again under the tag ‘the endless folklore of supernatural.’ For three years, the fandom has continued to loot, to ransack, to graffiti, to create and re-create, to burn, to mix, and to distill.

There’s all kinds of things in that tag, it’s sort of a kitchen sink of everything that I thought was even tangentially relevant to folk-Destiel and the postmodern experience of creating text as a reader/viewer etc.

We turned a literary story based on an urban folktale back into folklore.

And so it goes.

I doubt I will do much more analysis of this show, even if it comes back, and I unfortunately can’t touch The Winchesters. But I can’t say I never will. I just thought three years, one thousand days, was a pretty good place to leave a marker on the trail.

—

Epilogue: About The Winchesters:

I did not finish watching The Winchesters because of something wildly, randomly, but highly personally triggering that was built into one of the episodes; however I am very sorry that it was canceled or possibly ironically lost to the WGA-SAGAFTRA strike of 2023.

“What is the maddest thing a man can do? Let himself die.” That’s the clue that leads Castiel to his hidden grace in a copy of The Man of LaMancha in 10.18 ‘The Book of the Damned,’ written by one Robbie Thompson.

I noticed from the get-go that Thompson gave Carlos the last name Cervantez. He was nodding to the self-immolation of the last cadre of writers of Supernatural and stating clearly that he was holding a pen, not a match.

Want some very fun and amusing and wildly pertinent facts about the Don Quixote books?

The narrative conceit of Don Quixote IN THE FIRST PLACE LOL is that Cervantes claims to have found a manuscript by a historian named Cide Hamete Benegeli and Cervantes thought the story was pretty neat, if a little rough; Cervantes retells the story for us from what he’d read by that author, distilling the “original” into the book we experience as Don Quixote the Man of La Mancha.

The final words of Cervantes’ Part One are “perhaps another will sing with a better pick.”

Later, someone publishing under the pseudonym Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda wrote their own part two, feeling that the original author was taking too long to get their ass in gear (or judging by their own preface they felt that Cervantes had not even done the original story justice in the first place. Which is A Mood.)

So when someone actually did have the audacity to run off with his characters and commit word crimes with them, Cervantes absolutely obliterated the dude in his own Part Two.

Thompson left Spn after season eleven. But, lest someone think this is a commentary about fan fic, he also wrote the episode Fan Fiction. So anyway all the Cervantez-Cervantes business was certainly something.

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jasper-book-stash · 22 days

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March 2024 Reading Wrap Up

I got bronchitis and my period at the same time in March, and then spilled tea on my computer, so March was a very stressful time for me. Regardless, I managed to read 10 books! And honestly, overall, this is one of the better months - the lowest I've ranked a book is 6/10, which is damn good considering the absolute bullshit I usually read.

Religious Text

None applicable.

1/10 - Why Did They Publish This?

None applicable.

2/10 - Trash

None applicable.

3/10 - Meh

None applicable.

4 to 6/10 - Mid-Tier

Tomb Sweeping | Alexandra Chang

I read this book while sick. And boy howdy, did that make it a weird experience. I get what it was going for, but it really wasn't my vibe. It just felt like everything was...unfinished. Which was the point, I suppose, but it was still annoying.

7 to 8/10 - Good With Caveats

What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality | Daniel A Helminiak

This is a very short book compared to my usual reads, topping at 152 pages. And I appreciate a book that gets straight to the point and analyzes the historical context around various works, particularly religious works. Good job. My only complaint is some editing issues.

Born to Love, Cursed to Feel | Samantha King

This was a poetry collection and was the only other book I read while sick, and boy howdy did I have a time of it. I spent most of the reading just...putting post-it notes in and nodding along to the lines. It was a surprisingly good book, considering I found it in the back alley version of a book store.

Southern Cunning: Folkloric Witchcraft in the American South | Aaron Oberon

Look. This is not a 101 book. It's not a 102 book. It's not even a 201 book. It simply is. And as much as I enjoyed it and enjoyed reading it, the fact that I spent most of my reading time fixing the editing means that I cannot, in good faith, put this any higher than an 8 out of 10. Dear Aaron Oberon, if you ever read this, PLEASE give me access to the original file so I can fix your punctuation and spelling mistakes. Sincerely, a fellow Southerner.

9/10 - Very Very Good

Snow White with the Red Hair, volumes 21-23 | Sorata Akiduki

I am still so fucking feral over this series. I love them so fucking much. I want them all to be happy but I also like seeing their shenanigans. Unfortunately, though we're at 26 published volumes, we've reached the end of the ones in Missouri Evergreen that I may access. I'll either have to wait and hope that someone gets them, or I'll have to bite the bullet and buy them myself.

Not Pounded By Anything: Six Platonic Tales Of Non-Sexual Encounters | Chuck Tingle

This is my first expedition into the erotic Tingleverse after reading some pieces of the horror Tingleverse in Straight and Camp Damascus. And I really, really like this book. It's 77 pages and is such an easy read. Godspeed, you glorious bastard.

10/10 - Unironically Recommend To Everyone

Well, everyone who's into the genre these fall under, at least.

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, tenth edition | Janet Burroway

I found this in the free section of a bookstore in the middle of nowhere, and let me tell you, it is now marked up one side and down the other with highlighter, because I needed it. There are so many good parts of this book that it's genuinely one I would recommend to people who are trying to figure out why their writing feels flat.

Sacred Gender: Create Trans and Nonbinary Spiritual Connections | Ariana Serpentine

First, I want to congratulate the author on what is possibly the coolest name ever.

Second, if you're an occultist, polytheist, witch, magic practitioner, or in any other way affiliated with things beyond or within mortal ken...get this book. It's making me rethink a lot of my own experiences with my craft and my religion, but in a good way.

#jasper post #books #bookblr #authors #reading wrap up #2024 #march 2024

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soleminisanction · 9 months

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How much of Stephanie’s flaws do you think is character flaws and how much is sexist writing? Because while some stuff I’ve heard about her seemed like red flag, but I’m also wary of pointing them out because there’s so much sexism in DC Comics and I don’t wanna fall victim to sexist takes. Do you have any clarity on that conundrum?

That is, I think, a much more complicated question than you'd intended it to be. Let me narrow this down to just one flaw to show you what I mean:

In Steph's original appearance (Detective Comics #647-649), her one real "character flaw" is anger. It's what drives her to move against her father, sure, but it's also what nearly leads her to murdering him, it drives the conflict between her and Batman & Robin, and it's the reason Bruce describes her as being, quote, "on no one's team but her own."

When she's made a supporting cast member in Robin, however, the anger is still there, but it's no longer treated as a character flaw... partially because Chuck Dixon has a tendency to write angry characters as a default. Instead of being something that gets her into trouble, it's treated as a trait that makes her a "spitfire" full of "righteous anger," by which I mean Dixon used her as a mouthpiece to scream insults at anyone with an opinion he didn't like and had her beat up men that "deserved it," both with the assumption that readers will agree with her, because the narrative is on her side and portrays her as being in the right.

This is largely how Steph's anger is handled for the rest of her characterization, when the exception of one storyline written by Jon Lewis, who framed it more as a thing to get Steph sympathy -- it gets her into trouble at one point, sure, but is otherwise written with an undercurrent of, "this poor girl, the world has been so very mean to her, don't you just want to comfort her?"

The thing is, that treatment of her violent anger as something righteous and okay, where she's always in the right and the people she hurts always Deserve It? You can argue that that's a form of sexist writing, because there are scenes where she behaves abusively and it's not treated as abuse or even a bad thing, because she's a girl and women's abuse is not taken seriously. You even see this in how she's treated by the audience -- she's got basically the same anger issues as Jack Drake, and yet while interpreting Jack as a abusive is widely accepted by certain parts of the fandom, the same is not true of Steph.

Other people would argue that portraying her as angry at all is inherently sexist (and I don't agree with this, but I have heard people make this argument, stupid as it is) because it makes her look like a "shrew" or a "woman scorned" or otherwise plays into negative stereotypes of women's emotions.

Which then leads the modern version of her, colored by and primarily based on her portrayal in Batgirl (2009) by Brian Q. Miller, where Steph just, doesn't have anger issues, at all, or at least so the narrative would claim. She gets fired up in a fight, sure, but ~she doesn't have a mean bone in her body~ and is always so ~smiley~ and ~happy~ and just a ~sweet widdle polyanna~ who only wants to do ~the right thing.~

But see, that, ditching the anger issues entirely? That's also sexist! Women should be allowed to be angry and still have the potential to be treated as heroes! Getting rid of it because you can't think of how to make a woman with anger issues into a likable and compelling character is sexist! Especially because it takes away her initial motivation and doesn't replace it with anything.

And that's just kind of how it is for all of the traits you could call her character flaws. The only ones we can say for sure are deliberate are those that wind up contributing to the plot, and even then, they very well might have some sexist writing wrapped up in them.

It's really not a simple black or white situation. But like I mentioned in one of my other posts, I ultimately think that the best way to address both deliberate character flaws and sexist writing is to work them into the plot and make them matter, resolve and explore them somehow, rather than trying to toss them away and pretend they never happened. That option is just as sexist as any other, and it's also unsatisfying and lazy. There's a long history of comics that proves people can do better.

#dc comics asks #stephanie brown critical #apologies if this one is rambly I had trouble getting my thoughts together

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thekimspoblog · 2 months

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More chatting about BCS w/ @brilliantalpaca

Them: I read the whole thing, Ill reblog it later because there is some stuff I want to give my two cents on

But this is wild to me

Hello? He graduated from law school? Why is blud in charge of the mail?

Me: I mean OP is right; Jimmy isn't OWED a partnership at HHM. The problem is that when Jimmy and Kim ACCEPTED that the firm wasn't going to promote them and struck out on their own, HHM still interfered. I do think Jimmy has a bit of a NiceGuy complex, but not nearly as badly as Walt did. "NiceGuys finish last, so if you're pulling ahead you were never really that nice" is definitely a theme of BCS. But "Who is watching the watchers? Who gets to decide who the gatekeeper is?" is also a theme. Plus... Kim is a god and when she asks for something, you give it to her or you die. Granted, Howard and Chuck had no way of knowing that last part, but still.

Them: The whole middle part is so cracked

Cooked with gas

In any case, and considering Jimothy started a law firm inside a beauty parlor, I think he would have been happy at HMM the second he stopped to push a cart, at least for a while

Like, I dont think the man is ambitious for power or a title or authoritas, but for respect

Thats why he leaves the firm at... You know, the cocobono table place, sorry its been a while

So I think if his brother had respected him a little bit more, well

Me: On the one hand, he just wanted to work next to his brother and his girlfriend. But like... he got that opportunity with Davis and Mainn and he hated it. That place was stuffy; he needed his freedom. It's one thing for Chuck to say "I don't think my brother would be a good fit at my firm. Even if he is talented, his eccentricities are a liability; I don't want to hire him"; I mean that's basically the same conclusion Kim reached. The problem is we never see Howard do any actual work, so the impression we get is that HHM siphons off labor from its employees, then refuses to compensate them adequately or even acknowledge their role as contributing partners. And again, there was definitely some sort of discrimination going on with the way Chuck penalized Kim for associating with Jimmy.

Them: They also put him an intern-copter on his ass, which would sit badly with anyone

And Chuck actively tried to prevent him to practice

Which is very messed up

Me: Again, I can't really blame them. Frankly Jimmy should have treated Erin with more respect; she had worked there longer and even if she was kind of passive aggressive about it, she was just trying to show him the ropes.

Them: I can't blame them either, but thats because I know Jimmy

In any case, trusting the narrative at one hundred percent and confusing Jimmy with a poor little meow meow is something I'm guilty of

Ill admit that

When he usually makes his own bed

Me: Under normal circumstances, I would say wanting to get someone disbarred for sabotaging you is pretty understandable. But again, Chuck started it by stealing Mesa Verde. Jimmy loved Chuck, but he wanted Chuck to admit that he too could be a bit of a hypocrite and a sleazebag. That he wasn't better than Jimmy. And the truth is he really wasn't.

Them: He really really wasnt, he just dressed it up better

Chuck is such an university profesor its insane, they nailed him

Me: To by a hypocrite is to be human. And honestly I think you're an irresponsible lawyer if you CAN'T acknowledge your own biases.

Them: I also didnt realize that yeah, we never see Howard doing... Work on his own, huh?

Like he's there at meetings, with Chuck at the Mesa Verde hearing

But what does he *do*

Me: I assume Howard does actually do quite a bit of paperwork. But this is a tv show, so if they didn't want us to see him as a symbol of the owning class, as a wage thief, they should have framed the story differently.

Them: It is implied, if not stated, hes riding his dad coat tails, right?

I dont know, he may actually just... Be there

Well, no, hes at court at times

Because if we didnt had anything, you know, to a point that becomes a conscious choice even if hes a secondary character ok a tv show

Me: The main reason I'm inclined to cut Jimmy some slack is that on some level, Jimmy knows that he's just plain bad at making choices for himself. He wants to be bossed around, just by someone he trusts. He spent half his life outsourcing his ethical code to his brother, and the other half just following whatever marching orders his wife gave him. So at least in the later seasons of BCS, the best defense to the idea that Jimmy is a bad person is simply "That part was Kim's idea; you want to complain, take it up with management". Right or wrong, he's a man who can biblically submit to his wife; that kind of puts him in a whole other moral universe.

Them: The show also makes ir very easy to fall into the "Jimmy logic hole", where everything he does gets justified by a slight that happened six episodes ago

Me: But like I said, this is why him going to prison is kinda fucked. Instead of growing the hell up and thinking for himself for once, Jimmy surrenders and turns his agency over to the ultimate daddy; the government.

Them: Lel true

Thats actually a good reading

Me: I think it's best to think of Hamlin-Hamlin-McGill-McGill-and-Wexler as just one big firm that ended up cannibalizing itself; neither half of the entity ever became fully independent from the other, and eventually fighting over clients sunk both halves of the business. Kind of fitting with the theme of wildflowers growing on an unmarked grave, I like to think about Iris's relationship to that business and that building. This big, bombastic story we spent six years chronicling, in just two short decades nothing will be remembered about it besides a "how I met your mother" anecdote. George Hamlin wanted to build a family business... well, he got one.

Them: The causes of the firm's undoing bring writing on its own foundation

You know, George Hamlin bringing his son and Chuck bringing his brother

Kim getting dragged into the drama of the whole thing and doing what she does in the show

Me: yes exactly

Them: It all becomes inevitable

Me: Instead of having a long(er) life in prison, my timeline ends with Jimmy dying at age 69 from a heart-attack while fleeing a protest-turned-riot, being remembered as a beloved patriarch martyred for a righteous cause. It's a happier ending than what Vince and Peter would leave him to, but it's still supposed to feel a little perverse: this was the path Kim put him on when she got him out on parole, and on some level she knew this. Iris blames their mother for what happened, and they're not wrong, but at this point remorse is an emotion that doesn't come easily to Kim anymore. She gave him the best life she could, but nothing lasts forever. Still, nothing is set in stone. Jimmy will be a martyr for Kim's revolution if he lets her make him one. But saying "no" to her - AND MEANING IT - is the hardest thing to do. Especially when he knows she's right; that Iris is going to inherit a police state if the parents don't act preemptively.

#better call saul #jimmy x kim #saul goodman

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septembersghost · 2 years

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literally there are dudebros that r like Kim doesn't actually love him she's gonna con him she's actually evil etc and its soooo low-key misogynistic its like can't imagine a woman being nuanced in any way. but also its so obvious they complete each other

they've been like this for years, but they were usually silenced quickly before - recent events have sadly given them the excuse to double down on their heinous misogyny with less push back. these guys have been swearing for years that she was playing him - at the very least since S4 (and chuck's letter), but it began even more in earnest at, "maybe we get married," which for some reason made a whole host of them decide they hated her and she must be conning him, instead of understanding literally anything about the context of that scene. as if getting married didn't cause their bond to blossom even further. it's like they refuse to believe women are anything other than conniving harpies. :|

i was telling a friend about this, but it's legitimately horrifying to me that they're also rushing to unrestrained glee at not only the thought of her being violently murdered now (too bad for them, i fully believe this isn't going to happen), and additionally wishing cartel s*x slave/assault on her, as if this show would ever do such a thing, there's not even a TRACE of that threat in this narrative and they're foaming at the mouth wishing it on her as "punishment," as if she 1. pulled the trigger herself (she very much did not), or 2. as if that's a perfectly reasonable thing to hope a woman has to endure to bring her low in ANY circumstance. it's disgusting and it speaks to the way their minds work and how little they value women generally, tbh at a certain point that level of misogyny is so sick that it ripples far beyond fiction. they live like this? they see the world like this? despicable. i had to completely tap out of the subreddit because the comments i was seeing were too upsetting. /rant

she is a complicated, nuanced, insular woman. she always has been. this show has been a masterclass in how to communicate things with stillness, or minute movements that accumulate to far more. they've trusted us to spend enough time with her that we empathize and understand who she is as a person. she keeps herself tightly contained, so we see her measuring moments, being cautious with circumstances, but then when she lets that break open, we also see the complexity of her intellect, her emotions, and her fierce belief system - a system which includes jimmy. her moral compass being something that shifts seems to confuse some of them into thinking it means she's ~wicked~ rather than realizing WHY that shift has taken place. even her devotion to justice - it's very much something she uses to frame her world, but her sense of it changes as time goes on, and she experiences more, and gets more angry and frustrated at the broken aspects of the system. kim "breaking bad" is fueled by a sense of injustice mixed with hubris mixed with an almost fanciful quality. jimmy is capricious, but with kim to me it's almost like she's rational to the point of tipping into sophistry. she wanted to be atticus finch. she wants to improve the world, she wants people who aren't afforded fairness, who aren't heard, to be treated better, and if this means she has to make some sneaky moves and damage a few reputations and defy these men with privilege and power who keep the system unbalanced, doesn't she have the right to do it? we know it's illogical and ultimately even immoral, but she kept thinking the ends justified the means. after all, if they get the settlement faster, that means she can do good with it, right? they never foresaw it being blood money, which of course ruins everything. the hand of fate here isn't like...it's not coming down on the side of who is Good and who is Evil, which is why i wrote the post about EVERYONE in the entire story being to blame for this falling out the way it did. the repercussions are a reminder that even when we desperately want to, we can't take justice into our own hands.

the very quick turn to buy into howard's, "you're soulless, you're sociopaths" rant is an utter lack of nuance or understanding - they've been lying in wait for the chance to tear kim apart and they believe this handed it to them, and i do not in any way blame schauz or the rest of the writers' room for it, any more than i blame them for the way a much too large percentage of this same audience reacted to skyler back in the day. that damning judgment is not the intent of the storytelling imho, but the rot of the misogyny takes hold. we know that it isn't true. she isn't "evil." she hasn't been "psychopathic from the beginning" (lmao what? they're wholesale rewriting canon now, along with "howard never did anything wrong." he definitely did a number of things wrong, and acknowledging that isn't saying that what happened to him was justified). we have these small glimpses of her life and upbringing - an unreliable mother, an unstable home, her desire to achieve and accomplish things, her reaching for more - we know precisely why she and jimmy connect, and why their experiences of the world end up informing one another. we know why she defends him so fiercely. we know how deeply she loves him, and he her (but notice they don't question his love for her). i feel as though a lot of the comments convinced she's somehow playing a long con on him don't understand what this form of love and intimacy look like? it isn't spelled out for us in simple terms, it exists in their actions, gestures, even subtextually, but there's a startling, lovely realism about it that i personally find gorgeous and refreshing to watch, because we rarely see relationships depicted in this way. i don't know what more they needed than the beginning and end of bad choice road, which in and of itself speaks more volumes than some fictional couples ever do. it's such a genuine connection and it has always been portrayed that way.

they are very intentionally two parts of a whole. (whatever our souls are made of! i will keep saying it!) like you said, it's obvious they complete each other, they have from the start. where that eventually ends is difficult to say - violent delights or lovers meeting - but this has absolutely been a story about how these two people are united, and restorative and destructive, in one another.

#does this make sense i'm so tired #my brain is going: the thoughts are there the articulation is coming out as bzzzzz #regardless you're spot on correct anon #anonymous #letterbox #kim wexler #better call saul #bcs spoilers

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micamicster · 2 years

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⭐(yes this is a second ask bc i want to Know everything)

Hi honey thank you again for being so enthusiastic! It means alot <3

You've given me free rein so I'm going to talk kiss scene/hook up scene! Because I owe my sister credit for some (one) of the decisions I made with that, and I know she's reading these asks lol

Okay so what I'd written first was what i've been calling the Implied Blowjob scene (and what my sister pointed out isn't even an implied blow job just the gross awkward spitting at the end of a blow job so like. there's something to be said again about me and my need to undercut anything sexy or romantic by making it awkward or funny instead. but I digress). And then I wrote a different version of the bus scene where they don't kiss, and I wrote the hotel room scene where they still don't kiss, and I kept putting off the first kiss scene and struggling with it. It took me ages to actually write a kiss to lead into implied festival blowjobs with. And so what my sister gets credit for is taking that kiss scene and chucking it, and saying no, you were right the first time you sent this draft to me, and they don't need a first kiss before the first time they hook up.

And the reason she's right is that, to me at least, I feel like the important part of a first kiss scene is the decision to kiss each other. Like there's a part of it where a choice is being made, a tipping point is being crossed, and you're deciding to change the relationship. (I've talked about this a little before i think). And for this couple, the decision point, aka the point where a kiss is meaningful to the narrative, is actually after they hook up the first time. Because the decision being made is to continue doing this, instead of just having it be a weird thing that happened once, if that makes sense?

Of course if I was someone who actually wrote sex scenes instead of fading to black over all the fun parts then things might be different. But I'm not and i can't write a sex scene for my sister to read and so the most important physical moment in my writing will remain the Kiss Scene, which is why I analyze them to death lol

#thank you for asking! have a few hundred words on kiss scenes and how i conceptualize them thank u <3 #the load out

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nobodyfamousposts · 3 years

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Any Tikki/Plagg salt?

So I'm taking this to mean you are asking if I have salt about Tikki and Plagg.

Here's the main central issue: Why are the kwamis even necessary? I mean this narratively. What purpose do they serve to the story that couldn't be accomplished without them?

When I was originally introduced to the show and the concept behind it, I thought Plagg and Tikki were going to be the Wise Mentors/Wise Animal Mentors for the heroes. The ones who offer the "moral of the story", give advice to their respective chosen, and...y'know...train them. Prepare them. Give them some lore and history of how things worked for them in the past as well as info on what they are, what their powers are, and what they're up against.

We got a little of that with Tikki offering lessons and advice, but the advice is minimal and comes few and far between for what should be warranted by the situations they face. Tikki had no problem with judging and admonishing Marinette for things, but Tikki has done very little to actually help guide Marinette on the "right" decisions she seems to want Marinette to take. She did reprimand Marinette for selfish use of her Lucky Charm in Bubbler and trying to help Juleka in a dishonest way in Reflekta, but she didn't really come up with other options for her or offer any real advice or input other than telling Marinette that she disapproves.

With Plagg, we didn't get that at all. Sure, he's made catty comments on Adrien's behavior such as in Copycat and Desperada, but since Adrien "is perfect" and thus never needs to learn a lesson, Plagg never needs to be the mouthpiece for the episode's moral. This also cements Plagg as the lazy and "fun" kwami in contrast to Tikki—which would work if we had more consistent interaction between the two to highlight that comparison.

The only purpose the kwamis seem to have is to 1) be the cute mascot characters for the series and 2) have someone for Marinette and Adrien to talk to and play off of—the second of which is specifically notable in the case of Plagg, who is ultimately the only thing about any of Adrien's scenes when he's not Chat Noir that makes them entertaining or interesting to watch.

This is especially noteworthy as the writers clearly struggle with the "show, don't tell" philosophy of writing, and the kwamis are prime tools to try to get around that little issue without putting in any actual effort because Miraculous has all the subtlety of a brick to the face. Why SHOW the Main Duo falling in love over time through their interactions and slowly growing closeness and relationship building among all four sides of the love square that is touted as the main draw of the series in the first place...when they can just have the two be cringingly awkward around one another and chuck in a magical plot device I mean mouthpiece I mean kwami for the heroes to expound on their "unrequited love" to?

Also, much like many things in this series, everything about the kwamis from their powers to their natures to their personalities are contradictory and confusing. For all powerful beings who serve as the focus of the plot as well as the plot device around which the series is supposed to revolve, they are demoted both narratively and in the story itself.

If they HAVE any personality, it's that of children. Children who don't understand the world, don't understand people, don't actually actually embody the concepts of which they are supposed to be centered around, and quite frankly don't seem to have any business having the level of power they seem to have given the complete lack of control they display they actually have over it. These ancient beings—OLDER than the universe, who should at least have SOME idea of how their own powers work or at least what the leaking from people's eyes means but honestly come off as the biggest threat to everyone around them through sheer callousness and ignorance.

It's the same issue with Adrien that if this individual is supposed to be the moral mouthpiece for the writers, one would think they would have more maturity, especially as ancient all powerful beings that they are who predate humanity. It could be argued that it's a result of them being trapped in the Miracle Box for so long, but that still doesn't account for all the time they existed BEFORE being put in the Box or the times they were taken out and used after it was made. Nor does it account for why they all seem to have a childish mob mentality.

It'd make sense if their childishness served a purpose in a narrative sense—like haivng them actually learn about the world and get some growth of their own, but that doesn't happen. And if two or more kamis appear on screen together, they seem to revert to the same personality.

As it stands, all of this really countermines the idea that the kwamis are supposed to be the guides or go-to figures for morals and lessons for our main heroes or even the temporary heroes. It'd be one thing if their morals were just "different" due to being active at different ages and time frames. That would explain some discrepancy. But the writers don't use that and all the kwamis pretty much act the same.

Then comes the OTHER narrative issue that as soon as Fu and the Order of the Guardians officially enter the picture, the idea of kwamis being guides or mentors for the heroes is made completely moot. And it says something when a guy who never completed the test to become a true Guardian and whom was ultimately responsible for the entire Order being destroyed made for a better mentor figure than the kwamis whose power is supposed to be running the show.

It would be one thing if it ultimately became a sort of reversal where Marinette's time with the kwamis makes her reevaluate their roles and look at Tikki in a new way as someone who ISN'T perfect and who CAN be wrong. But the show still has Marinette looking to Tikki for answers in a way that gives me the same impression as if she was looking for life guidance from Manon.

Other than giving credence to the "5 minute time limit" and some "missing kwami/can't transform" shenanigans, removing the kwamis really wouldn't lose anything narratively from the show.

...well, other than what entertainment there can be had from Adrien's scenes secondary to Plagg's involvement in them.

So, tl;dr, my biggest salt about the kwamis boils down to:

They have little purpose narratively.

Anything they could do is devalued by the presence of others that perform their roles and explain or use their abilities better than they can.

For ancient beings with immense lore and involvement in history, they don't do much to expand on that.

For moral mouthpieces, they don't do much to actually HELP their holders.

In and of themselves, they are used by the writers in such a way that they end up limiting the ability of the narrative to tell a good story instead of adding it.

#ml salt

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charlie-minion · 3 years

Text

Could the same SPN finale make a little more sense with some additions/changes?

I’ve had the idea for this post stuck in my head for days now, but with every new conspiracy theory and every new eventuality in the fandom, it became difficult to cool down enough to write something less ship-related and more narrative-focused.

What Supernatural and non-SPN fans have to understand is that a lot of us have expressed disappointment and frustration after 15x20, not because of Destiel (that’s just one part of the whole problem), but because the finale doesn’t make sense. Everything was leading up to something beautifully crafted until the end of 15x19. Beyond that, it’s hard to understand what happened. The story rendered all the character growth irrelevant, invalidated the themes of free will and “family don’t end in blood”, regressed to the original brother codependency they spent 15 years trying to overcome, made a queer non-binary character in a male vessel and a deaf female character basically disposable, and kept the show’s reputation of queerbaiting and misogyny until its very last breath.

That’s not going out with a bang! At least not a positive one. We all were ready to mourn Supernatural, but we wanted to feel proud of its legacy, and somehow TPTB managed to tarnish that legacy in less than 45 minutes. What a way to ruin the other more than 13,600 minutes of story!

It doesn’t matter who is to blame (The CW, Robert Singer, Andrew Dabb). It doesn’t matter why it happened (homophobia, censorship, marketing for Walker, bad writing). What matters is that at the end of the day, the finale that aired is what we got and that’s going to hurt for a long time. It hurts even more when we realize that the same finale could have easily made more sense, even without being perfect.

That’s what I want to do in this post. I want to show you how things would have been less jarring (for the fandom), while still keeping the goal to please the general audience.

Before I begin rewriting 15x20, I have to mention that I talked to my conservative boomer sister about the finale. She hasn’t watched the second half of season 15 yet (she’s waiting for Netflix to have it), but she’s been watching the show for a long time (she introduced me to it 8 years ago). She’s the perfect example of a viewer from the general audience. Loves the show but doesn’t give a second thought to it and definitely isn’t paying attention to character development or themes. Doesn’t engage with fandom, actors, or any of the show’s social media. Pure GA! When I told her the series finale had aired, she asked me about it and I refused to give her spoilers. Because of that, she told me the ending SHE wanted. She said she would be happy with either of two possibilities: the boys retiring and finally living a normal life OR they going to heaven and finding peace at last. She saw Sam and Dean as a unit, which means: both retiring or both going to heaven. AND she saw Cas as part of that, too. She wasn’t so sure about Jack. And for her, we could use the “Eileen who?” and it wouldn’t be a joke. She didn’t remember her.

NOW IT’S TIME TO WRITE A NEW VERSION OF 15X20 (KEEPING 15X18 AND 15X19 EXACTLY THE SAME AS THEY AIRED). This will be a very long post:

The opening remains almost the same. No “Carry on my wayward son” to induce feels. Too soon and too predictable! (Reasoning: Everyone was expecting it to play right there, so it would bring more tears at the end)

In the opening, after the scene where Jack says “People won’t need to pray to me or sacrifice to me”, we also see the scene from 15x19 where he says “I won’t be hands on”. Then we see the rest of the opening as it was. (Reasoning: People needed to be reminded that Jack would NOT intervene and that’s why later on, he would NOT save Dean).

We get the same montage, but when Sam takes a break from his morning run, we see him reading a message on his phone. A simple: “Hey Sam, what’s new?” from Eileen. Sam smiles fondly and begins to type a response we don’t get to see. The next scene continues the same, Sam making breakfast. (Reasoning: A text was a very simple way to show that Eileen was alive and still in communication with Sam).

The montage slowly ends as Sam enters the library (not after he sits down). He seems to be talking on the phone but we only hear an “I’ll tell him. Bye”. As he walks towards the table, he tells Dean: “Charlie says hi. Mentioned something about Stevie’s perfect scrambled eggs we have to try.” Dean’s answer is “Awesome!” (Reasoning: Just ONE line was needed to unbury Charlie and her girlfriend. ONE LINE).

Sam sits down, opens his laptop and everything continues the same. The title card shows for the last time.

YOU SEE? In the first 4 minutes they could have acknowledged that THREE WOMEN were alive and safe: Eileen, Charlie and Stevie. It wasn’t hard! Don’t blame bad writing on Covid! Now let’s continue.

Sam and Dean arrive at the Pie Fest just the same. Dean goes to get some “damn pie” and Sam takes out his phone. He dials and when someone picks up, he says “Hey, Jody, how are ya?” We don’t hear the rest of the conversation. The scene moves to Dean coming with his 6 portions of pie. Dean sits down and Sam tells him, “Talked to Jody. The other hunters haven’t had much work lately.” “That’s good, isn’t it?”, Dean says. All we get from Sam is “Yeah.” So, Dean looks at him and asks “what’s wrong?” like it happened in the episode. (Reasoning: Again, a couple of lines to make sure the people that were killed in 15x18 are safe and remembered by the boys in 15x20. Why is this important? Because they’re family!)

The conversation about Sam’s sad face happens the same. Sam is the one that mentions Cas and Jack. (Reasoning: Because this episode was so Sam-centered, it’s obvious he was the protagonist in the finale. If we see him communicating with Eileen, Charlie, and Jody, then it’s NORMAL, even expected of him to be the one to bring up Cas and Jack). Without these additions, it’s harder for people to understand that most of the finale was NOT from Dean’s POV but from Sam’s.

Dean’s “if we don’t keep living, then all that sacrifice is gonna be for nothing” stays the same. (Reasoning: I believe it’s necessary that the show sticks to the importance of “letting go” and “what is dead should stay dead” for the first time ever because the message is “even when you lose someone you love, you can still find some form of happiness and keep living, for you and for them, because that’s what they would have wanted”. Bringing someone back means “I can’t live without you”, and that’s just more codependency. It’s how the demon deals began in the Winchester family –Mary being the first one to do it. This would explain why Dean didn’t ask Jack to bring Cas back, as he asked Chuck. He understood Jack was NOT going to interfere anymore and accepted it. Besides, when Cas saved Dean from hell, Dean thought he didn’t deserve to be saved. This time that Cas saved him, Dean finally feels worthy enough to accept that YES, HE DESERVED TO BE SAVED ALL ALONG, just as much as he deserved to be loved by that angel of the Lord. In this scene, Dean also says that the pain is not gonna go away, which means that from HIS PERPECTIVE, it still hurts that Cas is not there. The problem is that the finale is not showing his POV but Sam’s.

Sam pies Dean on the face just the same. (Reasoning: That part was just to avoid ending the scene on a sad note).

Everything related to the case happens exactly the same. (Reasoning: At this point, people don’t really care about the MoTW, they care about Sam and Dean).

NOTE 1: The case is important to show that even when the Winchesters are finally free of Chuck’s influence, they CHOOSE to keep hunting. It isn’t something they do out of revenge or because it is their destiny anymore. Maybe they were forced into the life at first, but they’ve learned to find joy in saving people. Being hunters is who they are. However, the fact that a job application was shown on Dean’s desk is also important because it means he was willing to explore what else was there for him besides hunting. Maybe he could find a balance? Maybe he was thinking it was time to quit? We will never know! The thing is that Sam only finds out about it when he goes into Dean’s room after his brother is dead, so maybe that’s when it hits him that Dean wanted to explore his options, and Sam starts to think it’s time for him to do the same.

NOTE 2: I believe the masks the vampires are wearing is something we can blame on covid. If they had their faces covered, it was easier to use people from the SPN crew for some scenes, instead of using more actors unnecessarily.

NOTE 3: When Sam and Dean arrive at the barn, we get 3 visuals to remember Cas in the same scene (those are for the fandom, not for the general audience): a) the barn, obviously; b) the bag that resembles Cas’ trenchcoat so much that many people thought that’s what it was; and c) two feathers hanging on Dean’s right when he opens the trunk.

The scene with the throwing star happens the same. (Reasoning: The episode is still told from Sam’s point of view, so it makes sense that he fondly sees his brother as a man child).

Jenny the vampire? Uhhh… I mean, it’s not the best piece of writing I’ve ever seen, but it’s not the worst, so okay. That stays the same. (Reasoning: There is none, but she’s not what really ruined the finale, so whatever!)

Dean still dies impaled on a rebar. (Reasoning: OK. HERE ME OUT!!! I hate as much as everyone else that Dean is killed. I think it’s lazy writing, but that’s what we got and I can’t change that in this re-write, so if killing Dean is what we have to work around, then, memes aside, death by rebar is better and here’s why. There’s no one to blame for Dean’s death: no Chuck (the boys were willingly hunting even after Chuck was defeated), no vampires (they were all killed and were no real threat, so it was impossible for Sam to begin a quest for revenge against all vampires. What was Sam going to blame? A rebar? Can you kill it? Hunt it? NO. It was an ordinary death, a stupid accident. Just like any person can die at any moment by slipping on a banana peel. Is it a good death? No, but it’s good to know he doesn’t die trying to save Sam or Cas, because Dean Winchester is NOT willing to give up his life in exchange for anyone else’s anymore.

Sam takes out his phone and says he’ll call for help, but his phone is more visible to the audience. He dials and it’s almost to his ear when Dean stops him and Sam hesitantly hangs up. (Reasoning: People have complained that Sam didn’t call an ambulance, but actually he tried to. It’s just that people missed that part, maybe?)

After Sam puts his phone back in his pocket and says “OK” to Dean, he adds, “I’ll pray to Jack”. Dean’s immediate answer is: “No hands on, remember?” “But Dean”, Sam says, and Dean interrupts him with “OK listen to me” and tells Sam what to do with the kids they rescued. (Reasoning: Jack is God now and how come Sam didn’t remember? The viewers remembered, so it was necessary to include a line that ruled the option out and that showed Dean didn’t want Jack to intervene. The rest was fine).

The lines “You knew it was always gonna end like this for me. It was supposed to end like this, right?” disappear completely from Dean’s monologue. (Reasoning: This is the most problematic part of Dean’s dying speech. He fought God and earned free will, he is no longer controlled by fate or destiny. Accepting that he is supposed to die on a hunt regresses his character development and denies his desire to keep living. This was a total mistake and should be removed).

Instead, if going to heaven is the ending TPTB wanted to give Dean, at least he should say something more empowering. Sam tells him that both of them are going to take the kids somewhere safe. Dean answers and the scene follows like this: “No. Sammy, we made our choice, didn’t we?”, he smiles with difficulty. “We were free to write our own story and we did. We decided to keep saving people, hunting things. Because it’s what we love despite the risks.” (Reasoning: If Dean’s going to die it doesn’t have to feel like it was always meant to be that way. He should die knowing that he exerted his free will until his last breath).

The rest of the dialogue between Sam and Dean happens almost the same. Except that instead of Dean saying “‘cause when it all came down to it, it was always you and me. It’s always been you and me”, he says “’cause when it all came down to it, we’ve always had each other’s backs. Always.” And instead of Sam saying “Don’t leave me”, he says “I still can try to save you.” (Reasoning: It sounds way less codependent without diminishing the importance of their love and support for each other).

Besides, let’s change Dean’s “I’m not leaving you” for “You don’t have to be alone. You’ve still got family.” The rest stays the same word by word. (Reasoning: Dean reminds Sam that “family don’t end in blood” and there are still lots of people out there who love Sam and will be with him).

“I love you so much, my baby brother” stays exactly the same. (Reasoning: Dean always had trouble to express the big L word. I always believed and said many times that before Dean could say “I love you” to Cas or any other character, he had to say it to Sam. So, this is important as part of Dean speaking his truth).

The last part when Dean insists Sam tell him that it’s okay stays the same. (Reasoning: It’s the final moment when the codependency cycle breaks. No more running in circles).

The forehead touch between them stays the same. (Reasoning: I think I would do something similar if my sister were dying. I know there are w*ncest shippers out there, but it shouldn’t matter because the moment feels appropriate for that kind of goodbye).

See? There are changes but not too many. That’s why I’ve been saying that it was easier to get it right, yet they still managed to screw it up.

The second montage stays the same. (Reasoning: Life goes on, but of course Sam has to mourn).

The call about a case in Austin remains the same. (Reasoning: It’s the only part of the episode where someone from the found family is mentioned, so I think that Donna’s name is perfect in that moment. However, without the other additions I’ve made in this re-write, that off-hand mention feels too little. Its purpose was to tell the viewers that if Donna was alive, so were the others, but the way the episode was executed gave us an isolated Sam, incapable of having friends and a family without Dean).

After 30 minutes of Sam’s POV, let’s finally see the last bit of Dean’s POV that we’ll ever get.

Dean arrives in Heaven and Bobby receives him. All their conversation stays almost the same, except that after mentioning Rufus and before saying “and your mom and dad…”, Bobby adds an “Ellen and Jo let me borrow their place”. (Reasoning: If you’re gonna put the man outside the Harvelle’s place, at least mention them for Jack’s sake!).

Besides, after Bobby tells Dean that Sam will be along and that time in heaven is different, Dean gives a small smile and says, “Well, there’s no rush. I want him to have a long, happy life.” Bobby answers with: “I would expect nothing less from you, boy” and tells him he got everything he could ever want, etc., just like it happened in the episode, and finishes by asking “What are you gonna do now, Dean?” (Reasoning: It’s important we know for sure that Dean is NOT codependent anymore and that he doesn’t expect to have a miserable afterlife just because his brother is not there yet).

Instead of saying “I think I’ll go for a drive” Dean says, “I think I know what I want” and walks towards baby. Bobby still tells him to have fun. (Reasoning: “Know what I want” is ambiguous enough to help us introduce the last piece of the puzzle, the one thing Dean’s wanted for many seasons and has never been able to express).

The biggest change is coming:

Dean gets on the Impala and has a moment of silence while he contemplates the wheel. He begins to pray: “Hey, Cas, you got your ears on? I hear you’ve been busy working on this updated Heaven with Jack. You were right about him, Cas. You had faith in him and he saved us all. You could always see the best in everyone, even when they couldn’t see it themselves. Even when I couldn’t see it myself. There’s so much I want to tell you. Maybe you can visit sometime. I hope prayer’s still a thing up here.” (Reasoning: Dean’s side of the confession was unaddressed and that was terrible writing. If there was no way to get him to speak his truth textually, at least take him as close to it as possible).

We listen to a flutter of wings and a “Hello, Dean” from the back seat. We don’t see Cas, but the camera shows us Dean’s cocky smile and he says “Took you long enough.” He turns around slowly. End of scene. (Reasoning: The flutter of wings confirms that angels have their wings back and ties that loose end. The final “hello, Dean” was highly anticipated and it made sense. If Misha couldn’t be there to film, for whatever reason, or if the problem was the kind of conversation Dean and Cas would have, then don’t show it, but leave the door open. Let us know that the two characters were reunited and will talk, but whatever Dean has to say is so private that it’s not for us to hear, only for Cas.

We finally hear “Carry on my wayward son” and get a montage that begins with Sam playing with his kid. Then we see Dean driving, super happy, and Sam living his life to the fullest. We still get Sam’s Blurry Wife, BUT… we see pictures of Eileen in the living room (not just of John, Mary, Sam, and Dean). We also see photos of Jody, Donna, Charlie, and AU!Bobby. (Reasoning: FAMILY DON’T END IN BLOOD).

The scene where Sam is wearing the party wig and looks miserable inside the Impala is cut and nobody talks about it ever again because it never existed. We get a scene of Sam teaching his son how to fix the car instead. (Reasoning: First of all, don’t give Sam a life where years later he’s still in pain. Second of all, the fucking wig was a crime).

Sam’s dying scene stays the same. The only thing is that his son signs a couple of phrases to him before actually speaking. (Reasoning: More confirmation that Dean Jr. is Eileen’s son).

We hear the final “Evanescence-like Carry on my wayward son”. Again we see the photos and there’s family other than the Winchesters there. (Reasoning: Obvious at this point).

The rest is exactly the same. The show began with two brothers and it’s okay if the last scene is with the two brothers reunited in Heaven. At this point, the other parts of the story are acceptable enough for us to feel happy that they get to see each other again after years of a happy (after)life.

Now look me in the eye and tell me this was too hard to execute. I still think that bad writing is a thing we can’t deny here, adding to the possible meddling of the Network. Maybe Dabb wanted us to hate the finale because he couldn’t get away with what he truly wanted. If that was his intention, then kudos to him. He and The CW really gave us a finale that only 30% of the fandom liked.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this and it helps to give you some peace of mind. In my heart, this was the finale we got. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t drop the ball either.

#supernatural #15x20 #spn 15x20 #spn finale #rewrite #dean winchester #dean deserved better #cas deserved better #destiel #the characters deserved better #we deserved better #it was easier to get it right #yet they screwed up big time #alternate ending

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you-cant-spell-subtext-without · 3 years

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ahdflksjaklf;jsls ok buddies - I hate talking about 14x13: Lebanon, but it has relevancy in the “John Winchester is a villain and cannot and should not be redeemed” discourse as well as being a crucial piece of finale denialist lore so I Have Been Thinking About It Too Much.

As you may recall, the Occult Object of the Week - the pearl - in Lebanon is supposed to grant Dean’s “heart’s desire.” Dean and Sam are Very Sure this means expelling Michael (the Dean Winchester Must Be Saved installment of season 14) (honestly that premise always seemed a little slim to me, I was hoping for Dean’s heart’s desire to be Cas, on Dean’s car, naked, covered in bees).

Instead they summon Dad of the Year, which at first feels infuriating. However after discussion with my earworms, I Have Fixed It (and also turned it into a grenade to launch at 15x20.)

Finale denialists and John Winchester derogatorians ASSEMBLE! and let’s discuss after the cut.

I’ve written in depth about Dean’s struggles with the cycle of abuse, so I won’t go too far into it here, but if you want to revisit any of that meta this is a good place to begin. This post hinges on the same theory - that Dean’s true freedom is established in his release from that cycle - that is the logical outcome of any hero’s journey for him, and where he would finally be able to accept happiness and love. This logically would also make release from the cycle of abuse and the feelings of self-hatred Dean struggles with his “heart’s desire” for purposes of the pearl. When it comes to emotions, we also know Dean doesn’t deal with them well. He punches things instead. So odds are, Dean hasn’t really worked through these feelings.

Dean also mentions when John returns that “it was what [Dean] wanted since he was 4″ - when they lost Mary, right before John became obsessed with revenge. Season 12 Mary canonically remembers John as a “good dad,” so we can draw a line from that to the abuse really starting shortly after her death. This is also corroborated by Dean himself:

DEAN: You know when you died, it changed Dad.

(A visual of the John Mary remembers) (just my excuse to put pictures of Matt Cohen on your dash) (I shouldn’t need an excuse) (Matt Cohen hi you are on Tumblr please don’t read any of this I’m embarrassed).

So what Dean has is pre-Mary’s-death John and post-Mary’s-death John, post-Mary’s-death John being the one whose abuse created Dean’s own damaged persona. Dean thinks the fix is to stop things on the front end (he is ignoring any process-centered solution, he just wants it to never have happened, he is in denial that he has to work through this and just wants it to be erased, etc etc etc).

***also keep in mind that going back in time to change things on the front end as a “fix it” is a storyline SPN repeats regularly***

***and it always ends up being impossible to do***

Ok so for Dean, his damage/anger/brutal nature/darkness is always linked to John, and this cycle “began” for Dean once their family was torn apart by Mary’s death. So the fix is his “blood family” together. That’s his heart’s desire in Lebanon because Dean hasn’t really worked through any of his emotions, and it’s his very Dean way of fixing it - “oh if my family gets put back together I will be put back together too.”

***speaking of quick fixes, I’d like to note that any case in SPN that is referred to as a “milk run” inevitably becomes complicated and messy***

***continuing the thematics of there’s no such thing as a quick fix***

This is no different. Stopping the cycle by simply erasing it from the narrative erases anything else that happened along the way during the journey. It erases this Mary (who they know as a person by this point and not just the mom on a pedestal)

and (most importantly) it erases this Cas (the episode specifically replaces Cas with one who Doesn’t Know Dean).

We Emphasize This Of Course In The Dialogue In Case You Missed It

DEAN Cas, you know us. ALTERNATE CAS I don’t know you.

***Simply erasing the origin of Dean’s trauma erases all of Dean’s growth. It erases this family that Dean is so proud to tell John he has now. It erases everything he has already overcome despite how hard it was to achieve it.

So, John goes back. In that way, the pearl does give Dean his heart’s desire - his realization that this is not about a quick fix, it is about the journey to the good, and all you gain and become along the way (kind of similar to “Happiness isn't in the having. It's in just being. It's in just saying it" eh?). it’s the process. It’s every moment along the way. It’s the people who help him get there.

And then he starts the healing journey by taking control of his own life, by owning his feelings instead of displacing the blame, by recognizing he is NOT guided solely by the actions of his father and this cycle:

DEAN

And for the longest time, I blamed Dad. I mean, hell, I blamed Mom, too, you know? I was angry. But say we could send Dad back knowing everything. Why stop there? Why not send him even further back and let some other poor sons of bitches save the world? But here’s the problem. Who does that make us? Would we be better off? Well, maybe. But I gotta be honest – I don’t know who that Dean Winchester is.

And the episode fucking ends with Cas, the Cas Who Knows Them coming into the bunker and asking them what happened, calling each of them by name just to emphasize again That He Knows Them, because Cas knowing Dean, and Cas being Dean’s family is the cornerstone of what Dean’s heart desires.

[CAS walks in from the door at the top of the stairs. SAM, DEAN and MARY walk out from the library to see him.]

CAS Mary, Sam, Dean. What happened?

So yeah, it took 14 damn seasons but Lebanon is where Dean realizes he can be defined by more than the acts of his father. (That’s why it’s so terrifying for Dean when Chuck snatches back any control he gained in Season 15. Because for Dean, Chuck is just John Winchester Controls My Every Action all over again, except he’s God which makes it even worse.)

That’s also why the final blow to Chuck is not Dean killing him.

The last stage in the journey that begins here with Dean’s “I’m good with who I am” - [I’m still bad and dark and damaged but I’m good with it]

is Dean’s “that’s not who I am.” [the most caring man on Earth; the most selfless, loving human being I will ever know]

Thats equally why 15x18 is so brilliant, 15x19 is at least acceptable, and 15x20 simply does. not. work.

Dean Winchester’s perfect heaven cannot possibly center on the blood family. It does not have John Winchester and Mary, husband and wife, who took away his own free will. It is THIS FAMILY. The found family. Cas and Jack and Sam and the Mary that was resurrected. Dean’s entire character arc supports this journey, and to have it culminate in something that is so established in the season prior to this one as something Dean knows he no longer wants is maddening.

I’m even more mad now because I just remembered that the most prominent picture above Dying Sam’s bed was the blood family portrait from this episode; almost like they wanted us to remember this particular stupid lesson. This show is so stupid when it could have been so so so very good.

***I want to say thanks again to all of you who read my spiraling if you got this far. It’s therapeutic for me to do it, but it makes it all the better that people actually read it. Seeing you in my notes MAKES my entire day****

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orionsangel86 · 3 years

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I’ve been thinking a LOT this morning about this comparison that keeps getting drawn between what meta writers are saying now about 15x20 and Destiel and the JohnLock Conspiracy(TM) and aside from just linking you all back to THIS POST by @winchestersingerautorepair which explains it all perfectly anyway, I do feel the need to stress some very clear and very glaringly different points that basically prove outright that this situation is Not That.

1. We already have confirmed Canon Destiel. The romantic feelings are confirmed in text. Destiel is canon. Arguably currently textually unrequited canon (yeah right) but it IS canon. It’s also Word of God canon. Basically, where we currently are is actually more canon than even Aziraphale and Crowley ever were. You can NOT say the same for JohnLock.

2. The JohnLock Conspiracy was all about how the actual final episode of the show was a “fake” bad finale, and how they would release a secret finale which would fix everything and make JohnLock canon a few weeks later. There was zero actual evidence of this anywhere. (Sorry JohnLock shippers, I feel for you I really do, but I just couldn’t ever see any evidence that the secret good finale was ever gonna happen.)

In contrast, we haven’t seen the Supernatural finale yet. It actually is next week. This is FACT. 15x20 is not a figment of Destiel shippers imaginations. We really do have one episode left which hopefully will give us everything we wish for.

3. All of this comparison has come out of meta writers saying 15x19 was written like a finale. We are calling it a finale and that’s why for some reason we are being mocked and compared to the JohnLock conspiracy... but... did those people who mock us not watch 15x19?!? (or at least get a plot summary and watch the final 10 minutes like me).

I can’t speak for my own opinion on the episode being bad, as I haven’t watched it. I have seen reactions both saying it was bad, and others saying it was good, or funny, or “so bad it’s good” but like, whatever. The point is, it WAS a finale. It was the episode that wrapped up the mytharc plot, had a callback montage to brother best moments and had them driving off into the sunset together now they are finally free. Like??? Call it whatever you want, but that was a finale.

Which is WHHHYYYY its SO WEIRD that there is still one episode left. What could POSSIBLY BE OUTSTANDING?

4. So yes. the FACTS are that UNLIKE Sherlock, Supernatural DOES have two finales. This isn’t some conspiracy. It’s a fact. We can joke that 15x19 was the “bronly” finale, but however you wanna see it, that was a finale. 15x20 can only be the long epilogue. The episode that wraps up the entire show. The episode JohnLock shippers dreamed about.

I really don’t mean to rub salt in the wound either. I don’t wanna insult anyone who believed in the conspiracy at the time, because hope is a funny thing that can have devastating effects - believe me, I know. But mocking us and trying to say the two are the same thing is just... wrong.

We don’t know how 15x20 will play out. But we do know the following FACTS:

Chuck is defeated. The big bad is gone.

There are no raised stakes anymore

the brothers are free (textually they confirmed this)

Jack as the new God, has fulfilled Castiel’s prophecy that he would bring about peace and balance to the universe. It’s done.

There is no story left concerning any of these big plot points.

BUT

Castiel is still in the Empty

Sam didn’t reunite with Eileen

Dean hasn’t said a damn thing about Castiel’s textually explicity confession of homosexual love for him

These are literally the ONLY things left to wrap up. There is NO WAY that the finale is going to be just a brothers road trip, growing old together, meeting random women, having kids and saying “Castiel Adam Jack Winchester you are named after the bravest men I know” kind of ending! It would be UNTHINKABLE for Dabb to do that.

I am seriously rubbing my temples on this whole thing because there are still so many naysayers that are pissing me off - particularly certain wannabe SPN writer BBFs who steal meta from Tumblr and pawn it off as their own “journalism” spewing crap all over Twitter about the matter because they have super secret insider knowledge from people who worked on the show that confirmed Misha isn’t back.

Oh Misha’s not back you say? Fuck you. Seriously. Fuck you. Everyone knows he went back to filming. He confirmed it himself over and over again until the CW finally panicked and told him to shut his damn mouth and change his story. These are the same people who have been feeding rumours into fandom for years to misdirect us. The same people who probably convinced KNOWN DESTIEL SHIPPER and SPN writer Meghan Fiztmartin to laugh at, deny, and mock Destiel shippers on Twitter literally only a few weeks before IT WENT CANON. They are doing everything in their power to put us off the scent. They don’t want us to know Cas is back because the ENTIRE ENDING RESTS ON CAS COMING BACK AND IF WE ALL KNEW IT WOULD BE SPOILED. DESTIEL IS THE ENDGAME THEY DON’T WANT SPOILED.

This is not anything like the JohnLock conspiracy because we have actual facts to back it up. We have all the evidence, we have all the logic, the narrative is BEGGING for the love story to be wrapped up. Dean MUST use his words and tell Castiel he loves him. Even the General Audience at this point can see that. So I beg you, stop mocking us for something you don’t know anything about.

If there is ONE THING you should trust right now. It’s the meta writers. We are the ones who have been telling you for YEARS that Destiel is a thing. That there was writer intent. Hell, we even predicted Jack would become God in the end (like seriously anyone with any understanding of literary analysis could see it was going that way). Mocking us after we have already been validated by canon confirmation of the DeanCas romance is just idiotic at this point.

#breaths #okay that became a rant #destiel #supernatural #spn endgame #15x20 #15x19 #the johnlock conspiracy #wank for ts #fucking twitter #im not even on it right now and im still getting drip fed

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incarnateirony · 3 years

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Hi! I’m still not really over the last episode (and that happy montage in the end i-) and I’m feel confused about what’s part of the episode was fake. I mean the end totally is. But all Chuck scene was superweird too. And sometimes i think that it should be Cas instead of Lucifer and Jack felt him. I mean... confused! How do you feel about that?

Okay so here’s the thing -- this is a multifaceted episode--

BuckLeming, while often herded efficiently by Dabb, can muddy up the textual waters, leave gaps, and things unexplained.

However, that doesn’t account for Showalter’s choices in direction. Dutch shots out the ASS which are typically used to evoke that something is "wrong." Lots of panoramas, tracking shots, zooms and blurs in ways that simply are-not-standard for SPN. Extreme aerial shots.

One might even think “maybe it’s Chuck looking in on them!” but then you realize the same overhead view zoomed out on *Chuck* even and panned out to the horizon again.

One of the early mega-zooms literally zoomed out to The World, even. I’m just gonna gesture people to my tag on that and let them think on that, much less the empty world orbiting on the news or whatever the hell else.

There were *several* Cas-baits, yes. Yes, that was intentional from our actual authors.

But when it comes down to “fake episode”, here’s where we were at.

15.17-19 run immediately concurrently. At the end of 17, Chuck says this was his ending.

Now, the Winchesters largely derailed that ending, so Chuck was writing new material.

But Chuck is also seeking death.

He wrote a suicide note in 11. He wrote the story that would end in him and Amara being eradicated. And whatever influence he was exerting forcefully with Michael and Lucifer to bop the story around was all in the interest of seeing his book. One might think “to keep the Winchesters from killing him”, but he was desperate to see what his ending WAS, to know it and experience it and scream after them.

The dour taking of “no one cares” right after “I care(d)” about humanity is its own highlight going on. But wait, there’s MORE.

When Dabb dropped his pre-episode thing, we started talking before the episode.

So I mean, I think what we were *mostly* witnessing is the pen being ripped away.

But this is that emptiness that lingers even with Chuck generally resolved. They’re still kinda on the pages. The book is presented as shut, and the next steps are not taken. Development stops, if not drops.

This entire thing is so meta my damn head hurts.

Summarily: Is it just like, some weird AU that’s gonna go away? Not so much. Is it an incomplete portion of the story told from a skew? Absolutely. And is there still someone watching over them? T’would seem so. The whole World, even. Beyond Chuck.

Now the point at which we start blocking off issues of “eugenie writes like she’s 3″ is where we ask about things like “god power” or whatever else being thrown in the mix along with eugenie’s ki ball special effects that are literally always unique to her episodes, even if other people have to add the SFX.

So while it was a good bit of masterful work to do it via buckleming for this style of bump, it still inevitably has its flaws because... buckleming. But... Showalter was there. And one thing to note is almost every single scene entrance had some sort of major pan or zoom effect. That’s not typical for him.

The entire thing is designed to evoke, directorially:

One style: crooked shots, unlevel, unbalanced, uneasy feeling.

Second style: Over-under; some force is watching them on high, while others have a sort of brechtian absurdity, which seats it like a play on an elevated stage.

We are the audience, looking up at figures half the episode; but a second audience is looking in from “on high” and out over the world. As if perhaps even from the heavens.

Third style: CSI Miami, basically? Parts of this episode were sectioned off to be like a procedural crime drama in its cinematography and flashbacks. Which is ironic, because Dean loathes procedural dramas, but at the same time some of this fandom demands a procedural monster show instead of a family drama show.

Sam and Dean barely have any lines in the episode *until* we hit Crime Drama Time. Then suddenly, they reveal all of their case work. Despite Dean’s hatred of crime dramas, this is honestly when I feel like the brothers kicked in their own pen.

Let’s play a game-- the winchesters are aware they can write their own story. So they start telling the story they think people want to hear, or maybe just fill in the gaps from when Chuck gets dropped on his ass. Maybe Dean’s the one writing about how many times god punched them in the face whereas Sam is breaking down the crime scene investigation front. Another, where it feels like we’re loosely circling the war table as others lightly wander too.

But everything before that is the first and second style, and even after that, the overview-angle remains. The uneasiness is gone but there is an emptiness otherwise. But we are no longer spectators from beneath the stage, but staring into them.

I still very much expect everyone to “die” one more time and several specifics to choose to walk back into life at the end of it.

Is it a *complete* false narrative? No. We’re not just gonna turn around and be like “oh that whole ep didn’t happen.” But the writer lost his pen and got jacked at one point, while we also observed the stage from a series of angles as different audiences.

Riddle me this: Why show the World? “Because it’s empty and just them!” okay but there’s a lot of ways to show that which actually gets that point a whole lot better across than “here, here’s a planet that still looks lit up”--yes I know electricity is still running until stuff runs out but essentially speaking, the end of the episode shows us the kind of dramatic shots that could be used for that.

CASey just poofed in the World in the TV, seems legit.

Let’s see these overhead angles again, knowing it isn’t just Chuck.

This sort of overview is known for causing a “dollhouse effect” that derealizes the episode and makes them seem, well, like toys. Which is interesting. Because Chuck isn’t the only one watching them on high.

Cool, this is fine.

Either way, the entire episode is DESIGNED to cause some major uncanny valley. There’s a lot of parts that simply *haven’t been told or filled in.* It’s almost like evasive maneuvering, half the content just never made it to print, and what did wasn’t in its best draft. There may be battling authors, or a transition of authorship. But the thing is: this is not the complete story.

There is an entire missing section about Sam and Dean even finding out that Jack is a power siphon which they hadn’t witnessed yet much less arranged an entire plan.

Even Chuck’s episodes are generally told from the general POVs of the Winchesters, but this was absolutely not.

Matthew 28: 18: And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Put a pin in that one.

Unless CHUCK IS WRITING HIS OWN FAKE DRAMATIC END, the overhead view, however, IS NOT CHUCK PERSPECTIVE.

-- Regardless, the metaness of “fish in a toilet bowl BRL plot” stacked into this makes it very difficult to accurately decipher the lines, especially with only one watch so far--just skimming back through right now to grab a few things I remember.

Some parts are plot salad buckleming.

Some parts are us as forced spectators of a stage play.

some parts are shifting authorship

Some parts are the heavens looking out over the earth it loves.

------

It almost feels as if, within enclosed spaces, unsteadiness and stageplay, we have Chuck’s POV.

But by the end it ceases to have any relevance, as he is no longer the author, and instead, we have the Presence of Being overseeing them, letting the Winchesters argue for their own proverbial pen in their own storytellings between here and there.

ALTERNATE PROPOSAL:

it is all one point of view. All of it. Pretend you’re someone’s eyes on a situation, you just happen to be in the sky half the time, and the uncanny valley is pulling forward the concept of being a presence that simply isn’t *there.* For example we're looking extremely closely at passed out dean but the camera turns and raises to level with Sam before Dean gets up. Our viewership lens is rising to meet Sam.

The camera stays in motion to fill a role or slot of a viewer. At first it’s haunting and ominous, but at other times, it’s simply part of the room, when it isn’t hovering from on high. Rather than speaking of empty space, we are viewing The World through that empty space, as if it were a Being.

Just a few more eye catching shots.

But whoever or whatever frames the end, even without Chuck--like the story is still turning on the pages, roughly.

The montage at the end feels like the Swan Song one, more or less, but there’s no narrator, no chuck.

The writer, the writer we know at least, is Absent.

Men are writing their own Stories.

But they aren’t alone.

I know how you see yourself. Angry and dark like your father. You think that’s what you are. But you are the most loving man in the whole world. That is who you are.

Someone does care. Even if right now, Sam and Dean don’t feel like anyone does.

...Because of you. I cared. For you, for Sam, for Jack, for the Whole World.

I cared.

“That’s not who I am.”

I am.

I speak therefore I am.

#supernatural #spn #15.19 #meta #my meta #the world #world #absence #being #polol

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rallamajoop · 2 years

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What We Do In The Shadows

So (surprising probably no-one) I, er, would seem to have tripped and fallen into yet another vampire canon.

To chuck the elevator-pitch for why-you-should-ABSOLUTELY-watch-this-show up top: it is laugh-out-loud hilarious, gleefully queer, and still manages to be both brilliantly paced and just so wonderfully satisfying on a narrative level too. (And you’d better believe I am going to end up writing the most ridiculous smut for this thing that I have created since I last wrote for Deadpool, you see if I don’t!)

This whole thing is so very much my jam that it might surprise you to know how long it took the-friend-who-got-me-into-it to convince me to give it a go. Terrific as the original 2014 film was, I couldn’t imagine how a regular TV series could hope to capture that same tone and level of brilliance. It had to be a mistake even to try, surely?

Rarely have I been so thrilled to be so wrong.

In some not-insignificant ways, What We Do In The Shadows the show is even better than even the film, which – great as it legitimately was – was a bit much of a sausage-fest for my preferences. Whereas the show gives us the magnificent Nadja, billed right up there with the top cast:

Who I am pleased to say is a) every bit as much of a lovably ridiculous moron as all the rest of her housemates, and b) allowed to be horny AF without ever being treated in a skeezy, male-gazey way.

(And it kind of has to be said – one female character out of five mains is still pretty much the bare minimum. But with so many more memorable female characters rounding out the guest cast and with how much the household has come to feel like two-couples-plus-Colin-Robinson, I’m not sure I’d could tell you I’d want it any other way.)

And then there’s how gloriously queer this show is, which is just YES. Vampires have not been this openly pansexual since they heyday of Anne Rice (may she rest in peace / rise again, whichever seems more appropriate). But then, I could happily give anyone willing to stand still long enough this whole spiel on how the entire vampire literary tradition has always been so a lot queerer than it gets credit for – and if you’re going to do a spoof like WWDITS, not acknowledging that front-and-centre would be a crime. Which WWDITS has obvious not committed, given how every vampire (and many of the humans) on this show seem to exist on a spectrum starting at “at least heteroflexible” and going upwards from there.

And just for a change, our most enthusiastically equal-opportunity character is one of the dudes.

Meet Laszlo, who has been on screen maybe two minutes in the first episode before we’re hearing the charming tale of the time he and his wife both cheated on each other with the same man.

(And who I had to stare at way too long before realising I was recognising him as the boss from the IT Crowd, who is somewhere very far down the list of “actors I least suspected would someday play my new favourite bi male character,” but hell is he perfect in the role.)

As much as all the queer-rep talk about this show tends to focus on the Nandor/Guillermo not-even-subtext-anymore (and-I-mean-was-it-ever?), Laszlo still takes the prize for being not so much out-and-proud as horny-and-does-not-give-a-fuck.

But as much as I love Nadja and Laszlo (and, you know, EVERYONE), I’d have to admit that WWDITS is, to me, still pretty much The Guillermo Show, starring Guillermo.

(Yeah, like a Van Helsing descendent whose wardrobe consists mostly of cardigans and Serious Business vests was ever gonna be a hard sell to me.)

Though he starts out as the vampires’ awkward, much abused live-in slave “familiar”, Guillermo’s character arc – as he discovers a nigh-supernatural knack for vampire-slaying, develops some self-respect, and finally starts demanding and getting it – has been easily the best part of what was already a truly excellent show (and not least because Harvey Guillen turns out to be unexpectedly brilliant at action scenes).

Of course, you can’t talk about Guillermo without also talking about his twisted relationship with Nandor (the master he is so obviously in love with from the very first episode), and boy has that been a ride.

Over three seasons, I’ve gone from “oh, Guillermo, you can do better,” to “if this show DOESN’T end with them fucking happily ever after, I do not know what I am going to do.” Which is always a kind of nerve-wracking place to be in with a gay ship on mainstream TV – even on a show that seems to be so very eager to go there – but there, we can only wait, gnaw our fingernails, and see how far The Powers That Be are going to let this go.

And there are just so many things in this show that should not work, but do. For example:

The casual attitude to murder. These vampires produce the kind of innocent body-count that could only work in a comedy, but the fact they remain so lovable throughout still kind of blows my mind. And it’s not like death doesn’t matter on this show: Guillermo has never been comfortable being an accessory to so much murder, and he’s more than once been reminded that these are people his masters eat (even people he knows and cares about, sometimes) and all that implies. By all logic, that should tumble this straight into dark tragedy – how on earth does this show manage to balance all that baggage and still stay so light-hearted? I am more sensitive to this sort of thing than many (The Good Place has some brilliant writing, for example, and I still struggled with the horrifying subtext where this is a world where effectively everyone goes to hell) and yet WWDITS pulls it all off without a hitch. That’s a tonal balancing act worthy of some sort of oscar.

For such a dumbass sitcom mockumentary, this thing is surprisingly and adorably affirmational. It’s not just Guillermo, going from pudgy, forgotten butt-monkey to certified badass – you’ve also got smaller players like Jenna, the awkward, nervous, LARPer nerd, who gets singled out by Nadja, and follows a similar of 0-to-awesome arc in much less time. People who look like Jenna don’t get arcs like that, if they even appear on TV at all. It’s fantastic what the mockumentary format lets you do. Then you have characters like Gail, who has been on-again, off-again with Nandor for 40 years (but still isn’t ready to settle down), putting her well into her 60’s – and he’s still just as eager to go for another round. Or the scene where all those witches revert to their ‘true’ (ie. aged) selves, and Nandor and Laszlo’s instant reactions are “still into it.” Like, you know how the original movie ends with Viago getting back together with his now-geriatric ex and not caring one bit that she’s aged? That’s clearly still the whole ethos of this franchise, and I love it.

Did I mention how ridiculously horny the whole vampire world is, without the show ever feeling creepy because of it? Because I feel that deserves to be mentioned again.

Colin Robinson the Energy Vampire. You know we had to get to him eventually. Because Colin is exactly the sort of gag character who should get old fast, and yet somehow never does – if anything, he does the show a massive service just by giving them a whole other genre of comedy potential to tap into.

And for all the death and stupidity and other nonsense, maybe the best thing that’s carried on from the movie is just how unashamedly heart-warming this show can be. It would be so easy to take this gang of murderous idiots and let us laugh at how hateable they are – heck, you could probably still get great TV out of that angle – but they don’t, and I love them for it.

In short: you should watch this thing.

As of writing, it’s at three seasons and counting (season 4 due out around April, I believe), with each season consisting of 10 twenty minute-ish episodes. It’s available on Hulu (I believe) in the US, on Binge here in AU, and I have to say, it is almost too bingeable viewing (seriously, I watched the whole thing in a weekend and slightly regretted it afterwards). The original 2014 film (if you haven’t seen it already) is worth tracking down, but not essential viewing to follow the show. As always, I can only speculate whether later seasons are going to be able to keep up the amazing standard they’ve set for themselves so far – but I have to say, they’d have to sink like a stone to lose me now.

(I do feel it badly needs more lesbian vampires. But considering that my review of many adaptations of Carmilla would probably go “needs more lesbian vampires” you may take that as you will.)

#What We Do In The Shadows #WWDITS #fannish rambling

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astudyinfreewill · 3 years

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“it all comes down to the soul(s) in the end”: or, characters make the story work, and not the other way around

outing myself yet again as a dabb era critical blog here but. i just think the difference between carver era and dabb era is that carver era was character-arc driven while dabb era was overarching-main-plot driven with some good character moments thrown in (which may be to do with the fact that - iirc - during carver era for a while they didn’t know if they’d get renewed so they couldn’t plan too far ahead and just progressed the story by increments, as opposed to dabb era knowing they had a longer time frame to work with and deciding the plot beforehand).

the thing is, i think most of us can agree that after the kripke era - which, for all its flaws and setbacks (hello writers’ strike), had a self-contained myth arc involving both an internally coherent narrative and certain well-defined character beats - and going into the gamble “hot girl summer but make it angst” era, the appeal of supernatural relies largely on the characters. it has to, because for a show to keep running after 6-7 seasons, you have to be invested not just in the story/stories being told, but in the people driving the story forward. it simply won’t work otherwise.

and - to my perception at least - the carver era (perhaps largely due to ben edlund’s imprint in s8, lbr) knew that. some examples of what i mean:

it gave dean an arc about dealing with the toxicity of his upbringing and his unhealthy attachment to sam, as well as starting to explore other meaningful relationships for himself (benny, charlie, and of course him continuously reaching out to cas) - essentially it allowed dean to confront that he wanted things.

it gave sam an arc about dealing with his trauma re: demon blood, and having to confront what it means to be good, how he always felt impure through no fault of his own - and it shifted him over into accepting that his calling in life is as a keeper of lore and mentor to other people, by contrasting the failure of the sam/amelia relationship with him finding the bunker and discovering a different part of the hunting world

it forced cas to confront what he wants for himself, by making him deal with his own changing nature (being human, then an angel again, and the whole arc about living on borrowed grace), and with the other angels falling and what that meant for him; he got the chance to be on his own and be with the winchesters, to both make mistakes and be a leader to other angels - and then give up that leadership by choice because he prioritised his human family to his reputation in heaven (which should have been a clear indication of endgame human cas but i digress)

it brought in compelling new characters - primarily charlie and kevin, though they were both horrendously mistreated by bucklemming writing them off - claire novak as an angry teenager, aaron and his golem, metatron as a fascinatingly meta (ha) antagonist, rowena as a frenemy, and gave old characters compelling story beats (crowley and his “humanity addiction”). also, it had writers like robbie thompson who were attuned to the fan community in an unprecedented way.

with the dabb era, i feel like because they’d set their mind on where the story was going (e.g.: killing dean, having a new and “better” god in place, giving sam a white picket fence ending) they didn’t really care if they had to break the protagonists’ characterisation to get us there. we still had moments of great characterisation - steve yockey episodes first and foremost, and of course robert berens carrying the dean/castiel beats - but mostly, characterisation came second to what the story would need. this is how we get dean winchester, friend and protector to kids everywhere, being A-Okay with sacrificing a kid he supposedly cares about, not once but several times over, because the plot needed Emotional Stakes™️.

(and this, by and large, is my issue with jack as a character too, because he spends so much of his time on the show so clearly being a plot device - a literal deus ex machina - that he ends up being not very compelling to me. “but baby jack!” i hear you say. and yes, yes, he’s cute and i like him, but listen -- his characterisation reads as a blank slate because ultimately that’s what the narrative needs from him - and there’s a whole separate post i could make on that, really).

but i think the main problem is that the endgame the dabb era had in mind conflicted openly with the stakes they had set up in the carver era - and that the most attuned writers kept up with even in seasons 12-15, which is why the finale felt as stridently wrong as it did (other than being ridiculously badly written). by which i mean:

dean was set up as wanting something more for himself, more than hunting and violence, and we see that in moments - but it’s not what he ends up getting. additionally, he spends so much of seasons 8-10 breaking down his toxic traits, and then bam - suddenly, he’s turned into john 2.0, because the story demands it.

sam was set up to become a new kind of hunter, one with a men of letters background, and find happiness in the life - so you get a side plot where he successfully organises and leads a group of hunters - but ultimately he leaves all that behind and abandons the bunker (and eileen, his natural companion going forward).

cas was set up as choosing humanity over heaven because that’s where he wants to be, and choosing to become a hunter because he wants to be useful and do good - but that gets boiled down to “cas is still an angel but now he’s Also A Dad and that’s his one purpose in life now” (i’m sorry, i am not here for the hot take of “jack is good for cas because he can’t just revolve around dean”. first of all, that’s a disservice to cas’s character over the seasons, and second of all-- oh but it’s ok for cas to just revolve around jack? it don’t make no cents luv!)

i don’t think story-driven eras are inherently bad. i enjoyed seasons 1-5, but they take place when we’re still getting to know the characters; and there is a certain evolution for them there that you may like or dislike, but it makes narrative sense for them. but if you decide to go forward into a new era with well-established and beloved characters, you have to know who the characters are and what they want or your story will always ring hollow. the main problem i have with the dabb era is that it decided the story it wanted to tell - and didn’t stop to consider whether the characters living it out would actually organically fit into it. and isn’t that chuck’s whole mistake?

#spn #meta #spn meta #supernatural #dabb critical #team free will #my meta #mp #ambra.txt #in short: carver era my beloved. you committed some atrocities but i forgive you #big BIG thanks to tierney for watching me work out a shorter version of this in real time #tier i'm tagging you just in case you want to see me ramble even HARDER about this #katebushstandean #will i get cancelled for being critical of jack? stay tuned to find out #long post #long post for ts

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neongreengummiebears · 3 years

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Disorganized Thoughts on Sex Education Season 3

I binge watched the entirety of season 3 on Friday, and after sitting with it for a couple days, I have composed myself enough to offer some thoroughly disorganized thoughts on what I’ve seen.

While I did enjoy many things about this season, I don’t understand the people who claim it was the strongest. In fact, I believe that it was the weakest. I don’t know what exactly happened during the delay, but I swear they have to have lost staff. Writers, perhaps editors? Whoever usually reins things in a bit, keeps the show grounded, and everyone in character. Whoever had that job, they’re either gone, or they’ve just stopped giving a fuck which, while relatable, is unfortunate in regards to this show. Now what do I mean by that? Let me elaborate:

1. This season was gross. And I don’t mean in general, like I didn’t like it. No, I mean that the writers decided that being sexually explicit wasn’t funny enough and decided to add just a fuck-ton of fart jokes and toilet humor. And I get it, okay? This show prides itself on being crass. But you can be crass without being disgusting. I acknowledge that this comes entirely down to personal preference, but I can’t stand toilet humor and I feel like this season really ramped it up. Every episode was someone farting or talking about shit, or that god forsaken thrice cursed bus scene. Sex doesn’t gross me out, talk about sex all fucking day I don’t care, but I don’t need to watch an extended scene of someone digging their own shit out of a bus toilet in a sock and chucking it out the window onto someone’s car. And even just smaller things, like Aimee talking about the flour constipating her or her taking a massive shit in Jean’s toilet when she and Maureen were there. Those scenes weren’t necessary for the plot in any way, which leads me to believe they were just there because someone thought they were funny and if that’s you’re thing go off, but it most definitely isn’t mine.

2. Ruby and Otis. And more importantly, what was the point of Ruby and Otis? Now don’t get me wrong, I like Ruby as a character and I found their relationship interesting. And I think that it would have been even more interesting if the writers had devoted more time to properly developing it- Ruby was getting better as a person but she wasn’t there yet. I liked it once Otis started standing up for himself more, and demanding respect in the relationship and as she started to actually care for him she did come to treat him more respectfully. I think with more time they could have been really good. But they didn’t get that time- she said she loved him and they didn’t even work through that fiasco before he was kissing Maeve at a gas station. Overall it had a lot of potential but the way they played it left me just sitting here like...why? Like from a narrative standpoint what was even the purpose? Because from where I’m sitting it really only served as yet another roadblock standing between Otis and Maeve and even though I shipped them like CRAZY in season 1 and 2 the constant unnecessary roadblocks are getting a little old. Which leads me to my next point...

3. Why was Maeve and Otis so unsatisfying? That’s not actually a rhetorical question, I can tell you: Because the writers put so little effort into what is supposed to be the main couple on the show. I feel like they put more effort into keeping them apart and then when it comes time to put them together they’re just kind of like NOW KISS, they only talk like once after and then they ship Maeve off to America. Now I’ve heard rumors that Emma Mackey might not want to return to the show for season 4 so if I had to guess at all of this I would say that both this point and the last was a sloppy attempt to cover their asses in the event that they can’t get her to sign back on. If she does return, they can explore the relationship between her and Otis in season 4. If she doesn’t, they’re probably going to put him back with Ruby. But they couldn’t just write her off without at least touching on the relationship they spent the past 2 seasons building, even though Otis and Maeve barely interact in this season, which is frankly another reason why it felt so shoddy. They spent exponentially more time talking to other people and then half the time when Otis was talking to her he was super cringe.

Overall, despite loving their relationship initially, the characters have changed so much from their original dynamic, and have interacted so little, that I really don’t even know what’s pulling these characters together. It’s disappointing to admit that I’m kind of over it but honestly even the writers don’t feel invested. it kind of feels like they put them together because the audience expected it and after 3 seasons of anticipation the payoff was generally underwhelming.

4. Otis. Just...Otis. I understand that Otis was introduced as being a very nice helpful character in season one. He was the quintessential good guy. And then in season 2 he got to explore being a douche for a bit- which is fine. He is a teenager and he was going through some shit. But I really felt that by the end of season 2 he should have resolved that particular plot point. And he was a little better in season 3 I guess? But he didn’t really progress until the end of this season and from a writing standpoint I feel like they really dragged that out for too long.

5. What’s with this show and it’s hard on for cheating? Like seriously, why does almost every relationship have some kind of infidelity. Like, were Otis and Ruby officially broken up when he kissed Maeve? Maeve certainly hadn’t broken up with Isaac, and this was almost directly on the heels of their very emotional sex scene. There was the issue with Jean and Jakob last season, and Eric cheating on Rahim with Adam. And then Eric (for some reason) cheating on Adam this season with random Nigerian dude whose name I can’t remember. Just...why is this a thing?

But also can we just talk about how weird the break up was? And out of left field? Like they literally spent the whole season developing their relationship, and then they get to Nigeria and after hiding the whole time he is subtly able to talk about Adam to his grandmother. And he sounds so proud, and so nice when he’s doing so, and not at all like he’s planning to end this wonderful relationship he’s describing. And then when he gets back, guilty after cheating on said boyfriend (like he should be) he asks Adam, seemingly as a test, if he would go out to a club with him. And Adam says no because that isn’t his scene and like...Eric knows that isn’t his scene. But at the same time, I feel like if Eric had sat him down and been like “You don’t have to wear makeup or dress outlandishly, just come to the club with me because it’s important to me” I really think Adam would have gone. And if the clothes and make-up were a dealbreaker like...why? You know who you’re dating. And while wanting him to tell his mom isn’t an overwhelmingly outrageous request, when you start getting into his physical appearance then that’s just actually trying to change him as a person and that’s just a really shitty thing to do.

6. I promise there will be some positives in this list at some point but before that...what the fuck Eric? Like, I understand that Eric wants to get out there and explore his options, find someone more comfortable doing the things that he wants to go do. That’s realistic I guess, your high school relationships don’t work out and just because Adam came out for him he still isn’t obligated to stay in a relationship with him. But from a fictional narrative standpoint? What the fuck is this? Adam and Eric were one of the most popular ships on the show. They have been foreshadowed since season one, and had so so much effort put into developing them both as characters. Adam has come such a long way. They have brought him so far out of him comfort zone that Adam in season 3 is almost a completely different person to Adam in season 1. They spent so much of this season further developing the relationship they established last season, and for what? To break them up at the very end? WHY?

7. Following on the heels of point 6, Aimee and Steve. They didn’t need to break up. I understand the direction the writers were taking this- Aimee wants to be single for a while to fully process her trauma and get to know her own body again. And that’s valid. I just don’t like it because I very strongly suspect that she will have a new love interest next season and that all her stuff about being single isn’t going to be shown. It will all happen off screen during whatever time skip they employ between seasons and then they’re going to use the fact that she is single to introduce a new more dramatic love interest for her since golden retriever boy Steve wasn’t interesting enough for them. Maybe that’s just me being cynical but if anyone can come out of season 3 NOT feeling a little cynical it would probably be a miracle.

8. A positive! Finally a positive! I love the relationship between Adam and Rahim. Do I want them to date? Not particularly. I wouldn’t be mad if it happens, but I really just like them as like awkward begrudging friends. Some of my favorite scenes this season were the interactions between the two of them (Once again, the disgusting bus ride notwithstanding) I like Rahim a lot more when he isn’t interrupting my ship (which is a habit of mine. I liked Ola a lot more once she broke up with Otis)

9. I don’t think Viv was out of character. Some people have been saying that she was, but I don’t think so. She has always been ambitious and even Jackson understand that about her in the show. And even when she was working for Hope and carrying out her rules, she was never an antagonist because she never gave up her personal morals to do it. For example, when Hope had them divided into boy and girl lines, Jackson asked her where Cal should go. She told him that boys went to the left and girls went to the right but as soon as Cal was like “Im not a boy or a girl,” Viv was immediately like, “ Oh! Right! Let me ask Hope.” She approached the situation in a way that made it clear that she recognized this issue as a legitimate problem and when she went to Hope it wasn’t framed like “This person is being an issue refusing to choose,” but instead like “We didn’t account for this possibility, that was our bad. How should we fix it?” Later on, on the class trip, Viv even lied to Hope and told her everything was fine because she didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. Viv took the opportunities presented to her, but I never interpreted it as her being an antagonist in any way.

10. I love that Viv and Jackson remained friends, and I love that Viv has her sexy long-distance boyfriend who sexts about wheat XD Her sexting was one of my favorite scenes- well written, laugh out loud hilarious. No complaints. Sexy boyfriend was indeed very sexy and honestly, Viv absolutely deserves him.

11. Mr. Groff better apologize to Adam next season, or at the very least have any kind of fucking conversation with his son at all or else why the fuck did I watch SO MANY scenes developing him as a sympathetic character? They could have spent that time developing ANYONE, but instead we were focused on him so like...I’m going to need some kind of payoff. Make it relevant

12. I want more bonding scenes between Adam and Maureen. I love Maureen- I love her friendship with Jean and I love how she always chooses her son over her estranged husband (as she should) I especially love her very loving and supportive relationship with Adam, even though Adam is terrible at communication. It’s a self indulgent wish, I’d just like to see more.

13. Isaac. I made many posts after the season 2 release, about how much I despised Isaac. Unlike Ola, I find that I didn’t have a complete change of heart but I don’t hate him AS MUCH as I did before. I still don’t like him though and while you might think “Yeah but you hate anyone who stands in the way of Otis and Maeve” no. This is historically accurate and yet, this season? Not true. For example, I don’t hate Ruby. Do I think her inclusion in the story was handled poorly in a way that made the entire plot point unnecessary? Yes I do. I also feel that way about Isaac, but less so because I feel like the relationship between him and Maeve deepening was better foreshadowed and was kind of the natural conclusion given the events of the previous season. As a character though, I still don’t really like him, and after 2 seasons of him I don’t think it has anything to do with him interfering with Maeve’s relationship with Otis- I just legitimately don’t like him. And I don’t like him with Maeve. I think the biggest irritant this season was the way that, after confessing about deleting the message he was like “yeah I fucked up but only because I like you so much, just forgive me” And then at one point I believe I remember Maeve apologizing to him for her reaction to everything. But then when he found out that she kissed Otis (admittedly a shitty thing to do) he got so mad and like, held a fucking grudge about it. And I get it, he has a right to be mad, but also boy you were the one groveling like 2 episodes ago get over yourself. They both fucked up in different ways but he acts like he has the moral high ground all the time and it gets really annoying. I don’t know, maybe I’m letting my general dislike of the character color my perception of events, but this show has managed to change my opinion on characters before but it still hasn’t made me like him so I think it’s just not going to.

14. What the hell were they trying to do with Hope? Like legitimately, what? Because I can’t quite figure it out. And that’s mostly because I feel like they were trying to make her a nuanced and sympathetic villain, but they broke a cardinal rule- To make a villain sympathetic you must also ensure that nothing they do is inherently irredeemable. For example, principal Groff. He was a grade A dick for the past 2 seasons but I still feel that, now that we have a sympathetic backstory, if handled properly he could still come back from this. He can see the error of his ways and if he works really really hard to make amends to his family he could perhaps have his character turned around. In Hope’s case however, I would argue that they did makes her nuanced, but failed to make her sympathetic because as a character she went too far. If they had stuck to her just being a general tyrant of a headmaster - enforcing strict rules and regulations but doing so out of insurmountable pressure from her own bosses - and then softened us towards the character by showing us her willingness to help Maeve get a scholarship, her troubled marriage, and her inability to conceive, it could have worked. The trouble is when they brought in her racism and general bigotry. Those weren’t flaws brought on by stress, those were deeply rooted character flaws that the character isn’t going to overcome because by the end of the season the character hasn’t even admitted them to herself. The issues were addressed by others, but not by Hope herself, leaving me to believe that the character herself still views them as a nonissue. I would be very surprised if she even appears in season 4 and moreso if they manage to even half-way redeem her. I’m relatively certain we won’t see her again, which makes me question the effort put into her character development.

15. I like Jakob as a character, I don’t like him as a love interest for Jean, but I LOVE him as a father figure for Otis. It’s very conflicting because I want him to stay in Otis’s life, but I don’t like him as a romantic interest for Jean. also it’s pretty clear he isn’t Joy’s father so that’s going to be an awkward fucking conversation. If she even tells him. The way the show is going I kind of feel like she won’t, or will at least put it off for as long as possible.

16. I want more interaction between Otis and Jean. Positive interaction, not just her being intrusive or Otis being a little bitch. I like their mother-son dynamic when they’re getting along so I just generally want more of it.

17. Adam. Adam has become my favorite character in this show and I just generally want more of him and his relationships with others. I love his relationship with his mother but I want more if him and Emily, and him and Ola and now him and Ruby. I want to see him and Ruby discussing the Kardashians. I want him to train Madam and enter her in more competitions and just ultimately grow his social circle. Get all the love and support for god’s sake this boy needs it.

Im sure there are plenty of things I’m forgetting and you can ask me about them if you like but for now it’s late and I’m tired.

#sex education season 3 #sex education season 3 spoilers #sex education #otis milburn #eric effiong #adam groff #jean milburn #maeve wiley #Aimee #I don't know Aimee's last name #My bad

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