#Actor singer director writer everything!!

[shut-up-rabert]

You wanna know what talent is? take a look at this:

Kishore Kumar isn’t only acting here, but dueting all by himself. He’s singing the female verses (although keeping the masculine touch) and Pran’s verses while imitating his speaking style. I repeat, Kishore Kumar was replicating Pran, and you can hear how well he did it yourself. Oh, did I mention that song was recorded a single time so he’s actually just switching between a female voice and Pran’s voice for real?

This isn’t the only time he did this either, In the famous track “hum the wo thi” from chalti ka naam gaadi (1958) he can be heard flickering between his own voice and that of Anoop Kumar for “Mannu tera hua” verses. (Credit where it’s due, in the title track for the very same film Manna Dey pulled a similar feat as he sang for both Ashok Kumar and Anoop Kumar. Similarly, I’ve read that in a track from Half ticket, Lata Mangeshkar hit the highest note, C#6, on her own.)

I’m frustrated as to why don’t we have any singers like that anymore. Honestly, How many singers in the present scenario do you know who can do any of all that? Say what you will, but Bollywood singer diaspora reached its peak in 50s-70s and never neared those heights ever again, which is a true shame.

#Just musing but #something to think about #How the fuck was Kishore Kumar so legendary #Mans was a whole in one package #Actor singer director writer everything!! #I can’t possibly get over the greatness of Kishore Kumar #Kishore Kumar #lata mangeshkar #manna dey #half ticket (1961) #Chalti ka naam gaadi (1958) #singer #singing #howww

[creators-island]

Showman!Macaque AU

Where the Six Eared Macaque doesn't exist, in this AU, He's THE Greatest Showman: Liu'er Mihou. Director, Actor, Writer, Singer, Dancer and everything you'd ever imagine to entertain you, this man can do it. And Wukong loves it, even if his brothers don't.

Please gimme more ideas for this au i need them

BASE IN THIS PLAYLIST

#lmk #lmk fanart #lmk wukong #lmk macaque #lmk comic #lego monkie kid #lego monkey kid fanart #lego monkey kid macaque #lmk au #Showman!macaque #lmk peng #lmk azure lion #monkie king #monkie kid sun wukong #lmk season 4 #shadowpeach #lmk shadowpeach #jttw macaque #jttw sun wukong #jttw six eared macaque #i need retroalimentación

[eddie-redmayne-italian-blog]

The Untold History of Cabaret: Revived and Kicking

As Broadway welcomes the ever-evolving musical, its star, Eddie Redmayne—along with Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey, and Sam Mendes—assess its enduring power.

As director Rebecca Frecknall was rehearsing a new cast for her hit London revival of Cabaret, the actor playing Clifford Bradshaw, an American writer living in Berlin during the final days of the Weimar Republic, came onstage carrying that day’s newspaper as a prop. It happened to be Metro, the free London tabloid commuters read on their way to work. The date was February 25, 2022. When the actor said his line—“We’ve got to leave Berlin—as soon as possible. Tomorrow!”—Frecknall was caught short. She noticed the paper’s headline: “Russia Invades Ukraine.”

Cabaret, the groundbreaking 1966 Broadway musical that tackles fascism, antisemitism, abortion, World War II, and the events leading up to the Holocaust, had certainly captured the times once again.

Back in rehearsals four months later, Frecknall and the cast got word that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade. Every time she checks up on Cabaret, “it feels like something else has happened in the world,” she told me over coffee in London in September.

A month later, as Frecknall was preparing her production of Cabaret for its Broadway premiere, something else did happen: On October 7, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, killing at least 1,200 people and taking more than 240 hostages.

The revival of Cabaret—starring Eddie Redmayne as the creepy yet seductive Emcee; Gayle Rankin as the gin-swilling nightclub singer Sally Bowles; and Bebe Neuwirth as Fraulein Schneider, a landlady struggling to scrape by—opens April 21 at Manhattan’s August Wilson Theatre. It will do so in the shadow of a pogrom not seen since the Einsatzgruppen slaughtered thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe and in the shadow of a war between Israel and Hamas that continues into its fifth month, with the killing of thousands of civilians in Gaza.

Nearly 60 years after its debut, Cabaret still stings. That is its brilliance. And its tragedy.

Redmayne has been haunted by Cabaret ever since he played the Emcee in prep school. “I was staggered by the character,” he says. “The lack of definition of it, the enigma of it.” He played the part again during his first year at Cambridge at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where nearly 3,500 shoestring productions jostle for attention each summer. Cabaret, performed in a tiny venue that “stank,” Redmayne recalls, did well enough that the producers added an extra show. He was leering at the Kit Kat Club girls from 8 p.m. till 10 p.m. and then from 11 p.m. till two in the morning. “You’d wake up at midday. You barely see sunshine. I just became this gaunt, skeletal figure.” His parents came to see him and said, “You need vitamin D!”

In 2021, Redmayne, by then an Oscar winner for The Theory of Everything and a Tony winner for Red, was playing the Emcee again, this time in Frecknall’s West End production. His dressing room on opening night was full of flowers. There was one bouquet with a card he did not have a chance to open until intermission. It was from Joel Grey, who originated the role on Broadway and won an Oscar for his performance alongside Liza Minnelli in the 1972 movie. He welcomed the young actor “to the family,” Redmayne says. “It was an extraordinary moment for me.”

Cabaret is based on Goodbye to Berlin, the British writer Christopher Isherwood’s collection of stories and character studies set in Weimar Germany as the Nazis are clawing their way to power. Isherwood, who went to Berlin for one reason—“boys,” he wrote in his memoir Christopher and His Kind—lived in a dingy boarding house amid an array of sleazy lodgers who inspired his characters. But aside from a fleeting mention of a host at a seedy nightclub, there is no emcee in his vignettes. Nor is there an emcee in I Am a Camera, John Van Druten’s hit 1951 Broadway play adapted from Isherwood’s story “Sally Bowles” from Goodbye to Berlin.

The character, one of the most famous in Broadway history, was created by Harold Prince​​, who produced and directed the original Cabaret. “People write about Cabaret all the time,” says John Kander, who composed the show’s music and is, at 96, the last living member of that creative team. “They write about Liza. They write about Joel, and sometimes about us [Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb]. None of that really matters. It’s all Hal. Everything about this piece, even the variations that happen in different versions of it, is all because of Hal.”

In 1964, Prince produced his biggest hit: Fiddler on the Roof. In the final scene, Tevye and his family, having survived a pogrom, leave for America. There is sadness but also hope. And what of the Jews who did not leave? Cabaret would provide the tragic answer.

But Prince was after something else. Without hitting the audience over the head, he wanted to create a musical that echoed what was happening in America: young men being sent to their deaths in Vietnam; racists such as Alabama politician “Bull” Connor siccing attack dogs on civil rights marchers. In rehearsals, Prince put up Will Counts’s iconic photograph of a white student screaming at a Black student during the Little Rock crisis of 1957. “That’s our show,” he told the cast.

A bold idea he had early on was to juxtapose the lives of Isherwood’s lodgers with one of the tawdry nightclubs Isherwood had frequented. In 1951, while stationed as a soldier in Stuttgart, Germany, Prince himself had hung around such a place. Presiding over the third-rate acts was a master of ceremonies in white makeup and of indeterminate sexuality. He “unnerved me,” Prince once told me. “But I never forgot him.”

Kander had seen the same kind of character at the opening of a Marlene Dietrich concert in Europe. “An overpainted little man waddled out and said, ‘Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome,’ ” Kander recalls.

The first song Kander and Ebb wrote for the show was called “Willkommen.” They wrote 60 more songs. “Some of them were outrageous,” Kander says. “We wrote some antisemitic songs”—of which there were many in Weimar cabarets—“ ‘Good neighbor Cohen, loaned you a loan.’ We didn’t get very far with that one.”

They did write one song about antisemitism: “If You Could See Her (The Gorilla Song),” in which the Emcee dances with his lover, a gorilla in a pink tutu. At the end of the number, he turns to the audience and whispers: “If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn’t look Jewishhh at all.” It was, they thought, the most powerful song in the score.

The working title of their musical was Welcome to Berlin. But then a woman who sold blocks of tickets to theater parties told Prince that her Jewish clients would not buy a show with “Berlin” in the title. Strolling along the beach one day, Joe Masteroff, who was writing the musical’s book, thought of two recent hits, Carnival and Camelot. Both started with a C and had three syllables. Why not call the show Cabaret?

To play the Emcee, Prince tapped his friend Joel Grey. A nightclub headliner, Grey could not break into Broadway. “The theater was very high-minded,” he once said. When Prince called him, he was playing a pirate in a third-rate musical in New York’s Jones Beach. “Hal knew I was dying,” Grey recounts over lunch in the West Village, where he lives. “I wanted to quit the business.”

At first, he struggled to create the Emcee, who did not interact with the other characters. He had numbers but “no words, no lines, no role,” Grey wrote in his memoir, Master of Ceremonies. A polished performer, he had no trouble with the songs, the dances, the antics. “But something was missing,” he says. Then he remembered a cheap comedian he’d once seen in St. Louis. The comic had told lecherous jokes, gay jokes, sexist jokes—anything to get a laugh. One day in rehearsal, Grey did everything the comedian had done “to get the audience crazy. I was all over the girls, squeezing their breasts, touching their bottoms. They were furious. I was horrible. When it was over I thought, This is the end of my career.” He disappeared backstage and cried. “And then from out of the darkness came Mr. Prince,” Grey says. “He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Joely, that’s it.’ ”

Cabaret played its first performance at the Shubert Theatre in Boston in the fall of 1966. Grey stopped the show with the opening number, “Willkommen.” “The audience wouldn’t stop applauding,” Grey recalls. “I turned to the stage manager and said, ‘Should I get changed for the next scene?’ ”

The musical ran long—it was in three acts—but it got a prolonged standing ovation. As the curtain came down, Richard Seff, an agent who represented Kander and Ebb, ran into Ebb in the aisle. “It’s wonderful,” Seff said. “You’ll fix the obvious flaws.” In the middle of the night, Seff’s phone rang. It was Ebb. “You hated it!” the songwriter screamed. “You are of no help at all!”

Ebb was reeling because he’d learned Prince was going to cut the show down to two acts. Ebb collapsed in his hotel bed, Kander holding one hand, Grey the other. “You’re not dying, Fred,” Kander told him. “Hal has not wrecked our show.”

Cabaret came roaring into New York, fueled by tremendous word of mouth. But there was a problem. Some Jewish groups were furious about “If You Could See Her.” How could you equate a gorilla with a Jew? they wanted to know, missing the point entirely. They threatened to boycott the show. Prince, his eye on ticket sales, told Ebb to change the line “She wouldn’t look Jewish at all” to something less offensive: “She isn’t a meeskite at all,” using the Yiddish word for a homely person.

It is difficult to imagine the impact Cabaret had on audiences in 1966. World War II had ended only 21 years before. Many New York theatergoers had fled Europe or fought the Nazis. There were Holocaust survivors in the audience; there were people whose relatives had died in the gas chambers. Grey knew the show’s power. Some nights, dancing with the gorilla, he’d whisper “Jewish” instead of “meeskite.” The audience gasped.

Cabaret won eight Tony Awards in 1967, catapulted Grey to Broadway stardom, and ran for three years. Seff sold the movie rights for $1.5 million, a record at the time. Prince, about to begin rehearsals for Stephen Sondheim’s Company, was unavailable to direct the movie, scheduled for a 1972 release. So the producers hired the director and choreographer Bob Fosse, who needed the job because his previous movie, Sweet Charity, had been a bust.

Fosse, who saw Prince as a rival, stamped out much of what Prince had done, including Joel Grey. He wanted Ruth Gordon to play the Emcee. But Grey was a sensation, and the studio wanted him. “It’s either me or Joel,” Fosse said. When the studio opted for Grey, Fosse backed down. But he resented Grey, and relations between them were icy.

A 26-year-old Liza Minnelli, on the way to stardom herself, was cast as Sally Bowles. The handsome Michael York would play the Cliff character, whose name in the movie was changed to Brian Roberts. And supermodel Marisa Berenson (who at the time seemed to be on the cover of Vogue every other month) got the role of a Jewish department store heiress, a character Fosse took from Isherwood’s short story “The Landauers.”

Cabaret was shot on location in Munich and Berlin. “The atmosphere was extremely heavy,” Berenson recalls. “There was the whole Nazi period, and I felt very much the Berlin Wall, that darkness, that fear, all that repression.” She adored Fosse, but he kept her off balance (she was playing a young woman traumatized by what was happening around her) by whispering “obscene things in my ear. He was shaking me up.”

Minnelli, costumed by Halston for the film, found Fosse “brilliant” and “incredibly intense,” she tells Vanity Fair in a rare interview. “He used every part of me, including my scoliosis. One of my great lessons in working with Fosse was never to think that whatever he was asking couldn’t be done. If he said do it, you had to figure out how to do it. You didn’t think about how much it hurt. You just made it happen.”

Back in New York, Fosse arranged a private screening of Cabaret for Kander and Ebb. When it was over, they said nothing. “We really hated it,” Kander admits. Then they went to the opening at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. The audience loved it. “We realized it was a masterpiece,” Kander says, laughing. “It just wasn’t our show.”

“PAPA WAS EVEN MORE EXCITED ABOUT THE OSCAR THAN I WAS,” SAYS LIZA MINNELLI. “AND, BABY, I WAS—NO, I AM STILL—EXCITED.”

The success of the movie—with its eight Academy Awards—soon overshadowed the musical. When people thought of Cabaret, they thought of finger snaps and bowler hats. They thought of Fosse and, of course, Minnelli, who would adopt the lyric “Life is a cabaret” as her signature. Her best-actress Oscar became part of a dynasty: Her mother, Judy Garland, and father, director Vincente Minnelli, each had one of their own. “Papa was even more excited about the Oscar than I was,” she says. “And, baby, I was—no, I am still—excited.”

By 1987—in part to burnish Cabaret’s theatrical legacy—Prince decided to recreate his original production on Broadway, with Grey once again serving as the Emcee. But it had the odor of mothballs. The New York Times drama critic Frank Rich wrote that it was not, as Sally Bowles sings, “perfectly marvelous,” but “it does approach the perfectly mediocre.” Much of the show, he added, was “old-fashioned and plodding.”

In the early 1990s, Sam Mendes, then a young director running a pocket-size theater in London called the Donmar Warehouse, heard the novelist Martin Amis give a talk. Amis was writing Time’s Arrow, about a German doctor who works in a concentration camp. “I’ve already written about the Nazis and people say to me, ‘Why are you doing it again?’ ” Amis said. “And I say, what else is there?”

At the end of the day,” Mendes tells me, “the biggest question of the 20th century is, ‘How could this have happened?’ ” Mendes decided to stage Cabaret at the Donmar in 1993. Another horror was unfolding at the time: Serb paramilitaries were slaughtering Bosnian Muslims, “ethnic cleansing” on an unimaginable scale.

Mendes hit on a terrific concept for his production: He transformed his theater into a nightclub. The audience sat at little tables with red lamps. And the performers were truly seedy. He told the actors playing the Kit Kat Club girls not to shave their armpits or their legs. “Unshaved armpits—it sent shock waves around the theater,” he recalls. Since there was no room—or money—for an orchestra, the actors played the instruments. Some of them could hit the right notes.

To play the Emcee, Mendes cast Alan Cumming, a young Scottish actor whose comedy act Mendes had enjoyed. “Can you sing?” Mendes asked him. “Yeah,” Cumming said. Mendes threw ideas at him and “he was open to everything.” Just before the first preview, Mendes suggested he come out during the intermission and chat up the audience, maybe dance with a woman. Mendes, frantic before the preview, never got around to giving Cumming any more direction than that. No matter. Cumming sauntered onstage as people were settling back at their tables, picked a man out of the crowd, and started dancing with him. “Watch your hands,” he said. “I lead.”

Cumming’s Emcee was impish, fun, gleefully licentious. The audience loved him. “I have never had less to do with a great performance in one of my shows than I had to do with Alan,” Mendes says.

When Joe Masteroff came to see the show in London, Mendes was nervous. He’d taken plenty of liberties with the script. Cliff, the narrator, was now openly gay. (One night, when Cliff kissed a male lover, a man in the audience shouted, “Rubbish!”) And he made the Emcee a victim of the Nazis. In the final scene, Cumming, in a concentration camp uniform affixed with a yellow Star of David and a pink triangle, is jolted, as if he’s thrown himself onto the electrified fence at Birkenau.

“I should be really pissed with you,” Masteroff told Mendes after the show. “But it works.” Kander liked it too, though he was not happy that the actors didn’t play his score all that well. Ebb hated it. “He wanted more professionalism,” Mendes says. “And he was not wrong. There was a dangerous edge of amateurishness about it.”

The Roundabout Theatre Company brought Cabaret to New York in 1998. Rob Marshall, who would go on to direct the movie Chicago, helped Mendes give the show some Broadway gloss while retaining its grittiness. The two young directors were “challenging each other, pushing each other,” Marshall remembers, “to create something unique.”

Cumming reprised his role as the Emcee. He was on fire. Natasha Richardson, the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson, played Sally Bowles. She was not on fire. She’d never been in a musical before, and when she sang, “There was absolutely no sound coming out,” Kander says.

“She beat herself up about her singing all the time,” Mendes adds. “There was a deep, self-critical aspect of Tash that was instilled by her dad, a brilliant man but extremely cutting.” He once said to her out of nowhere: “We’re going to have to do something about your chin, dear.” As Mendes saw it, she always felt that she could never measure up to her parents.

Kander went to work with her, and slowly a voice emerged. It was not a “polished sound,” Marshall says, but it was haunting, vulnerable. Still, Cumming was walking away with the show. At the first preview, when he took his bow, the audience roared. When Richardson took hers, they were polite. Mendes remembers going backstage and finding her “in tears.” But she persevered and through sheer force of will created a Sally Bowles that “will break your heart,” Masteroff told me the day before I saw that production in the spring of 1998. She did indeed. (Eleven years later, while learning how to ski on a bunny hill on Mont Tremblant, she fell down. She died of a head injury two days later.)

The revival of Cabaret won four Tony Awards, including one for Richardson as best actress in a musical. It ran nearly 2,400 performances at the Roundabout’s Studio 54 and was revived again in 2014. And the money, money, money, as the song goes, poured in. Once Masteroff, having already filed his taxes at the end of a lucrative Cabaret year, went to the mailbox and opened a royalty check for $60,000. “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” he snapped.

Rebecca Frecknall grew up on Mendes’s Donmar Warehouse production of Cabaret. The BBC filmed it, and when it aired, her father videotaped it. She watched it “religiously.” But when she came to direct her production, she had to put Mendes’s version out of her mind.

Mendes turned his little theater into a nightclub. Frecknall, working with the brilliant set and costume designer Tom Scutt, has upped the game. They have transformed the entire theater into a Weimar cabaret. You stand in line at the stage door, waiting, you hope, to be let in. Once inside, you’re served drinks while the Kit Kat Club girls dance and flirt with you. The show’s logo is a geometric eye. Scutt sprinkles the motif throughout his sets and costumes. “It’s all part of the voyeurism,” Scutt explains. “The sense of always being watched, always watching—responsibility, culpability, implication, blame.”

REDMAYNE’S EMCEE IS STILL SEXY AND SEDUCTIVE, BUT AS THE SHOW GOES ON HE BECOMES A PUPPET MASTER MANIPULATING THE OTHER CHARACTERS, SOMETIMES TO THEIR DOOM.

Mendes’s Cabaret, like Fosse’s, had a black-and-white aesthetic—black fishnet stockings, black leather coats, a white face for the Emcee. Frecknall and Scutt begin their show with bright colors, which slowly fade to gray as the walls close in on the characters. “Color and individuality—to grayness and homogeneity,” Frecknall says.

As the first woman to direct a major production of Cabaret, Frecknall has focused attention on the Kit Kat Club girls—Rosie, Fritzie, Frenchie, Lulu, and Texas. “Often what I’ve seen in other productions is this homogenized group of pretty, white, skinny girls in their underwear,” she insists. Her Kit Kat Club girls are multiethnic. Some are transgender. Through performances and costumes, they are no longer appendages of the Emcee but vivid characters in their own right.

Her boldest stroke has been to reinvent the Emcee. She and Redmayne have turned him into a force of malevolence. He is still sexy and seductive, but as the show goes on, he becomes a skeletal puppet master manipulating the other characters to, in many cases, their doom. If Cumming’s Emcee was, in the end, a Holocaust victim, Redmayne’s is, in Frecknall’s words, “a perpetrator.”

Unwrapping a grilled cheese sandwich in his enormous Upper West Side townhouse, Kander says that his husband had recently asked him a pointed question: “Did it ever occur to you that all of you guys who created Cabaret were Jewish?”

“Not really,” Kander replied. “We were just trying to put on a show.” Or, as Masteroff once said: “It was a job.”

It’s a “job” that has endured. The producers of the Broadway revival certainly have faith in the show’s staying power. They’ve spent $25 million on the production, a big chunk of it going to reconfigure the August Wilson Theatre into the Kit Kat Club. Audience members will enter through an alleyway, be given a glass of schnapps, and can then enjoy a preshow drink at a variety of lounges designed by Scutt: The Pineapple Room, Red Bar, Green Bar, and Vault Bar. The show will be performed in the round, tables and chairs ringing the stage. And they’ll be able to enjoy a bottle (or two) of top-flight Champagne throughout the performance.

This revival is certainly the most lavish Cabaret in a long time. But there have been hundreds of other, less heralded productions over the years, with more on the way. A few months before Russia invaded Ukraine, Cabaret was running in Moscow. Last December, Concord Theatricals, which licenses the show, authorized a production at the Molodyy Theatre in Kyiv. And a request is in for a production in Israel, the first since the show was produced in Tel Aviv in 2014.

“The interesting thing about the piece is that it seems to change with the times,” Kander says. “Nothing about it seems to be written in stone except its narrative and its implications.”

And whenever someone tells him the show is more relevant than ever, Kander shakes his head and says, “I know. And isn’t that awful?”′

You can also listen the entire article here !!

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/cabaret-revival

I know it's a very long article , but very interesting!!

#eddie redmayne #cabaret #cabaret story #theatre #vanity fair #liza minelli #alan cumming #rebecca frecknall #director #gayle rankin #sally bowles #the emcee #nyc #august wilson #broadway #tom scutt #costume designer #scenic theatre #emma stone

[youcanseethecosmos]

woah i didnt expect anyone to like the au HAHA just putting it out there. but i Do have more thoughts and it's going to be about the legacy family of actors: The Endless. I'll make another post about Hob soon!

to check out the first two posts about my dreamling actors au go here or here

The Endless

All the Endless siblings were child actors. Shining stars of the industry from the moment they were born.

Out of all the siblings, Desire loved acting the most. They loved the flashing lights, the constant attention, and the legions of adoring fans.

Dream loved stories ever since he was a little kid. He acts because he wants to be a part of the kinds of stories that inspire others, invoke emotions within people's hearts that couldn't be possible if he pursued writing instead. Although, he is a ghost writer on the side and no one knows his pseudonym except his parents and Death.

Just like in canon, Desire and Dream have a little bit of a sibling rivalry. But their movie genres are vastly different so Dream doesn't really see it as much of a rivalry – which pisses Desire off even more.

Despair is the only sibling who hates being in front of the camera. So her parents got her to start voice acting instead and she liked that more because she could essentially work in her pajamas. Desire misses her though because they used to do almost everything together. Now they are more apart than they are together. This causes a small rift between them.

Death and Delirium are the singers of the family. Death in particular was musically gifted in almost every way — playing instruments, composing, arranging music. Although all the siblings trained in theater, she was one of the only ones who continued to do theater regularly. She's won two Tonys so far in the span of her career.

Delirium never truly got out of her child actor phase. She's the kind where people still remember her from when she played a five year old girl in some old sitcom. So she broke away from TV and film and followed her eldest sister in theater. She even changed her stage name from Delight to Delirium to reflect that she's not a little kid anymore.

Though Death is more musically gifted, Delirium is the better singer. She sometimes posts covers on Social Media when she has the time and everyone is always mesmerized by her voice.

Destruction had a few critically acclaimed films in his early career. After that though he sort of went off the grid. He hasn't starred in a movie or TV show in years. He does a few voiceover commercials here and there, a cameo in a series once or twice, but he is notably the one sibling who has the least amount of projects under his belt.

Although he's sometimes seen playing the guitar for Delirium in her song covers. He really only ever shows up when Delirium asks him for help.

Destiny is way older than the rest of The Endless — around a decade older than Death. So he had been acting way before and way longer than everyone else. By the time he hit his thirties he was like "Yeah. I'm done." and became a Executive Producer and Director. He much more enjoyed working behind the scenes anyway.

Each of the siblings have been in a Destiny™️ produced/directed film at least once. It's a rite of passage.

However, none of the siblings have ever been in a project with their parents.

All the siblings were once in a production of Into The Woods when they were younger. It's the only project where everyone was there — Also the last time Dream and Desire ever got along.

Dream has had his fair share of off-screen romances with co-stars — none have been successful (yet)

Those are the headcanons I have for our favorite dysfunctional family <3 Let me know what else you wanna know through my ask box or replying here !! Especially stuff about Hob bc I'll make a post about him soon hehe. Thank you for liking this idea as much as I do 🥺

#the thick plottens #the sandman #dreamling #dream of the endless #lights camera action: sky's dreamling actors au #desire of the endless #death of the endless #despair of the endless #destruction of the endless #delirium of the endless #destiny of the endless

[bokettochild]

LU Opera AU

Links, Zeldas and other major characters run a moderately successful opera house/musical theater. Some are onstage, others are in the orchestra pit or are working Behind The Scenes (special effects, costuming, etc)

Wars is the headlining diva singer

I love it

I can see Four and Flora as like, the special effects crew, they handle anything and everything that isn't the actors and they're fantastic at it.

Lullaby is their director/the owner of the opera house, and Time is her trusty right hand who also acts as the choreography director and main stunt writer. He doesn't preform, but he runs the actors through their hoops before they can even think of stepping out onto the stage.

I see Wind less as a performer and more like the gopher, and Legend is less an actor and more a jack-of-all-trades. Costume department had a flummox? Call Legend, he'll fix it. One of the props is missing? Legend will find something you can use until that one shows up again. Someone's sick? Get a wig and a dress, Legend will fill in tonight. Just, dude does everything, but never consistently, and never without complaining at least a little.

Warriors would totally be a diva 100%, but he also works hard for it and puts his all into every role. Blood, sweat, and tears, baby, literally. He loves his work and will do whatever it takes to keep his role and status (short of harming someone else of course)

I see Twilight as playing one of two roles, or potentially both. He's the top stunt guy, but he also does the heavy lifting backstage and helps craft the sets with Four. Both are decent actors to boot, so if they need a large cast, both will fill in roles that suit them (Four ends up playing the villain a lot for some reason) as long as someone else can cover their asses in other departments (Flora had lights/sounds covered, no worries)

Wild is that one actor who plays random roles whenever is needed, and he's a comedy genius. My current manager's husband and I were in theater club together and he was brilliant with turning boring moments into comedy gold, and Wild does this 100%. He's best when paired with Fable (they make a good team in SMASH I hear) and they're a brilliant duo, although Legend threatens Wild about his sister a LOT.

Dusk and Artemis are both Warriors' most common co-stars (besides Twilight, Lullaby likes playing up their contrast with each other on stage) and Dusk takes an almost mentorly role with the younger woman. They and Warriors make up the Diva Trio of the group and are the ones who's names pull in teh most money. The only downside is that while Artemis and Wars can both sing, Dusk cannot and it's kinda acting as a road-block in her career.

For this reason, I can see Malon as a music coach Time hired (and is totally not falling in love with, what are you talking about) who kinda just works beside Ravio (their in house prop maker)to get this group of dedicated idiots to take care of themselves. not that Time's sisters and brothers (Saria and the others) don't try, but they don't work there.

Honestly, i'm running out of ideas. But to finish off Sky would be Time's best student. I mean, his sword-fighting and stunts are through the roof (sometimes literally) and he enjoys most of his work. maybe because he has a sword-fighting instructor outside of work (Fi) but that's beside the point.

Hyrule is the new kid who signed on to help Legend and Ravio with props and costumes and stuff, but he's like, really talented and crap and all the teams are trying to poach him from Leg and Rav, despite how fiercely protective of him they are. He's not exactly comfortable with the idea of performing yet, but everyone is trying to have him at least try (were this a story, warriors would try and coach him, end up mysteriously and plot-relevantly sick/injured and Hyrule would have to heroically step up and fill his role because Legend can't for some reason)

....

Okay that's all I got, sorry for the dump, but inspiration hit me like a lightning bolt to Legend's boat

#theater au #that i definitely will not be writing #linked universe #linkeduniverse #lu warriors #lu twilight #lu four #lu flora #lu fable #lu dusk #lu lullaby #lu artemis #lu hyrule #lu legend #lu sky #lu wild #lu wind #lu time #lu malon #lu ravio #opera house au

[thegameartist03]

@cryptidcaper I'd love to talk about them! This is gonna be a pretty long post, so I put in a couple tl;dr's for those who just want to get the gist of it.

I have no idea what to call this, so I'll keep running with it being a Phantom of the Paradise au. There are some changes to the themes and content of the original story based on what I felt comfortable writing about and discussing, but everything else is pretty much intact. If you have any questions, suggestions, or comments, feel free to throw them my way! I'll be happy to talk more about it.

(overall tl;dr: the au is set in the 2020s, the supernatural is part of everyday life, Swan is the head of media conglomerate Death Studios and working for an Entity known as Sparrow to collect souls, zombies and ghosts make for cheap labor, Winslow is trying to get his stage production of Faust seen, Phoenix has a YouTube channel for explaining the paranormal and wants her own show, Beef is a writer, actor, and director who gets an arguably worse fate than the movie, Swan took the band name Undeads too literally and now the Juicy Fruits are trapped working for him forever, Philbin is a stone construct disguised as a human)

A little context about the world to start. (tl;dr, it's the 2020s, paranormal beings like zombies exist and are well known but not talked about, Swan made a deal with a powerful Entity called Sparrow to stay young forever and collects souls for Sparrow in exchange, now Swan is head of the Death Studios media conglomerate, he's incredibly influential and successful, meanwhile he's using contracts to exploit and control his workforce which benefits both him and Sparrow, most workers are Undead or constructs because their labor is cheaper.)

This version of the story is set in the 2020s (partly because I didn't want to do a ton of research on the 70s, partly because I thought it'd be funny if Winslow started dissing Swan on twitter). The supernatural is very present and well known by people but not often acknowledged. Ghosts and zombies exist, spirits can decide to help your houseplants grow or give you bad luck, hand-carved constructs are used for jobs that would be too dangerous for humans, and fae-like beings known as Entities walk the lines between worlds and lure people into contracts to increase their power. Talking about these paranormal parts of the world is taboo for most so there's a lot of fear and misunderstanding surrounding them. It's also kept hush-hush by certain people who rely on the supernatural to profit.

Swan is one of these people. In the 50s, an Entity known as Sparrow approached him at his lowest and convinced him to sign a contract. In exchange for eternal youth and power, Swan would collect more souls for Sparrow. Swan has been largely successful with this through his company Death Studios (upgraded from Death Records) and has expanded from the music industry into general entertainment. He now directs a media conglomerate and makes use of social media to promote his definitely not stolen or exploited productions. Think Mr. Beast meets Disney meets Netflix. He's wildly popular, and partly due to the influence and power granted by Sparrow, almost no one questions how he's still so young and successful and those who do ask questions are quickly silenced. Every artist, writer, actor, singer, musician, producer, etc dreams of one day working for Swan.

Behind the scenes, Swan uses his sweeping control of the entertainment industry to hire fresh faces, sign them onto exploitative contracts, and then drain them of all they're worth. This benefits both him and Sparrow. And, if someone tries to leave or raise the alarm, they simply have a little 'accident' and are brought back as an Undead who can be exploited even more and paid even less. The majority of Swan's employees are actually Undead who have been trapped by their contracts and unable to move on as long as Swan finds them useful.

With that lengthy explanation over, onto the characters!

Winslow Leach is about the same, he's a composer and writer who's been working on a musical stage production of Faust for most of his life. He's not well known and dreams that his work will one day be seen by the world. He has a knack for getting into places he shouldn't be, he's bad with computers and writes most things out by hand, and at this point he's naive and almost blindly optimistic. I'm also giving him The Tism and reclaiming those vibes from the movie because Projection and Yes.

Phoenix never got into singing, though her voice is still terrific. Instead, she's a paranormal investigator and has her own small YouTube channel talking about the supernatural and its presence in their world. She's not as afraid of the unnatural as most people are, and she hopes that exposing these things that people try to sweep under the rug will help them understand the paranormal better and be less afraid of it. She dreams of having her own show one day with the budget to do proper explorations of lesser-known paranormal sites and beings. She's determined to reach this goal to the point of recklessness and risking her own safety, especially since some of these beings can be incredibly dangerous. She's waiting for her shot to get out of her dead end job and chase her goals, and she's not letting anything get in the way.

Swan is Swan, the only big difference is he has a bit more obvious supernatural-ness to him. His Entity-given power relies on perception, making people perceive him however he wants them to. He can extend this power to others and disguise his more inhuman staff so they blend in with the natural world. He plans to open a new major studio location/online streaming service called Paradise+ and is looking for the right content to do it. He's also on TikTok, which is horrifying enough.

Beef! He's a professional actor and writer who's directed and taken part in plenty of stage productions and films in his time. He's also a guitarist, which doesn't come into play in his work as often as he'd like. He suffers the same fate as he does in the movie, but that's far from the end of his story.

The Juicy Fruits are Swan's swiss army knife of an entertainment group, and of course they've all signed contracts with him. Whatever the trends are, the Juicy Fruits will adapt to them. They've gone from songs to gaming to children's entertainment. At one point, the group decided they wanted to move on from Death Studios and tried to exit their contract. Unfortunately, there was an 'accident' during one of the rehearsals, and now they're permanently trapped under Swan's thumb unable to escape or reenter society. The 'accident' also affected their looks, so when they perform they're either animated with motion capture or disguised by Swan or heavy makeup and prosthetics to hide the fact they are no longer alive.

Sometime in the 60s, Swan purchased an older property that included a number of stone gargoyles. In need of some body guards that wouldn't ask questions and weren't as fragile as the usual human grunts, he had them removed from the building and then brought them to life. Thus, Philbin was created. He's Swan's right hand man and does all the dirty work. He doesn't have much to complain about; Swan gave him a disguise so he can appear as human, he gets paid enough and treated better than most of the other employees, and he's got relative freedom in his job. Most contracts are signed through Philbin on behalf of Swan.

This is already really long, so I'll go in depth about the plot in a separate post. But, to give a short summary, the plot of the movie still happens (with a few twists and a different ending), and then the characters go through a few arcs trying to figure themselves out and how to escape Swan's influence. Winslow in particular struggles with his identity and who and what he is after getting Phantom'd. There's laughs to be had, horrors to be witnessed, and not everyone is going to be making it out alive (or un-alive). As a final note, if anyone has any ideas for what this should be called, lmk!

#gamma thoughts #phantom of the paradise #potp #potp au #gamma’s writing #faentom of the paradise

[rosie-the-posie]

🩷🎀 My DR List 🎀🩷

below is a pretty very long list of all the drs i’ve made scripts for

lmk if any of you want some more detail of any of them, dw i have EXTENSIVE detail on everything babes

don’t judge pls 😖😖 this is a safe space…hopefully 🩷

Fame DRs :

Phantasmagoria DR: my main fame dr where i’m the lead singer in a band called Phantasmagoria w my friends. We’re like, really famous. Like more famous than Taylor Swift famous. And I go on to become a really famous writer/director as well. This is the dr i think about all the time, i fucking rule guys. NO BAD SONGS. NO CONTROVERSIES. ONLY GOOD VIBES AND GREAT MUSIC. ofc i’m an EGOT and pretty much revitalize the film industry single handedly. 😋😘

Heartstopper Cast DR: i’m a part of the cast of Heartstopper (an OC named Vivienne Green - Harry’s sister - who’s besties with the group, helps Elle when she transfers school, and is Pansexual and eventually gets in a polycule). I’m honestly so cool in this one. I have my SHIT together at 19, like, it’s crazy. I’m dating Kit Connor cuz why not, and I eventually become one of the best actors of my generation no biggie 🤷🏻‍♀️

Harry DR 1: yes, I have more than one dr where i’m dating harry styles, who can blame me. I’m a songwriter that met Harry in his 1D days and became one of the band’s main songwriters. We became best friends after that and stayed close. We both become extremely famous in our respective areas in the music industry and are the power couple

Harry DR 2: this one came to me in a literal dream. I’m Harry’s secret fiance that literally no one knows about. My job is solving and rating puzzles (don’t ask me why idk either). I get pretty famous on tik tok for being one of those satisfying accs that people followed during the pandemic yk? Anyways, there’s this whole thing where I’m invited onto the Late Late Show to talk abt my job (Ellen style) and everyone loves me. Harry is just there ig

Harry DR 3 (LAST ONE): OK SO DONT JUDGE ME W THIS ONE. LET ME LIVE. so, basically, I’m Harry’s secret wife and - stay with me here - we have 6 children together. I really only wanted to go here bc I noticed how many tattoos he had of peoples names and i thought, hey, what if those were his kids’ names that he has tattooed on him and no one knows? like, why not? so this is a purely self-indulgent dr where I’m just living the domestic life with Harry Styles and our brood of children. this may or may not have been influenced by a fanfiction series i read

Hozier DR: in this one, I’m Mr. Andrew Hozier-Byrne’s girlfriend who lives with him in the Irish countryside. I’m a seamstress who has my own clothing brand. Think dresses to run through a field of flowers in, or to slowly decompose in a lake littered with petals yk? I end up making the dresses for the Folklore stretch of the Era’s tour. not to brag or anything hehe

MGG DR: I’m dating the one, the only, Matthew Gray Gubler. I just thought it would be really funny and interesting to go to a reality where him and I are pretty much polar opposites. I’m an ex-ballerina who still practices, so I have that grace and elegance around me. I love to dress in dark neutrals all year round. For my job, I’m a famous published horror author. I have an rbf and a WRY sense of humor. Literally black cat aesthetic to the max. And then there’s Matthew who’s a ball of sunshine compressed into colorful grandpa clothes. honestly i love this one

Tom Holland DR: okay so this one is from my Spider-Man phase. But i actually love it so much. I play Felicia Hardy in the Spider-Man films, who is as much of a love interest as MJ in this reality. Tom and I actually grew up together since I would always vacation at my aunt’s house in the UK who was also neighbors to the Hollands. We’ve always ‘hated’ each other growing up (when really we were closer to each other than anyone else) and so when we started working together on the Spider-Man movies, all those underlying feelings started coming to the surface

The Joes DR: Okay, so. In this one, I play Chrissy Cunningham in Stranger Things. Her character is actually a lot different than in this reality where she’s actually secretly dating Eddie Munson behind Jason’s back. She doesn’t die, her friend Angie does, so Eddie and Chrissy join the party to save the world n stuff. Basically, Joe Quinn (his name is Thomas in this reality) and I got really close on set and are rly flirty hehe. And, to make it even better, we ALSO have a thing with Joe Keery as well (hence the name change to make my life easier). So we’re all a budding throuple and we kinda try to sneak that dynamic into the show hehe. note: certain actors aren’t poopy people in this reality and don’t support genocide 🙄) 

Hogwarts DRs:

Draco DR: this was my first ever dr! draco tok got me into shifting. I’m a gryffindor who’s friends w the golden trio. I transferred into Hogwarts in 4th year and pretty much just am there for the ride as the canon happens. I’m in a secret relationship w Draco (shocking ik) and he’s actually not a bad person. i obvi scripted out the supremist in him guys, dw. i actually have so much detail about all the ways we meet up behind everyone’s back and stuff. you never forget your first guys 🩷

Tom Riddle DR: AGAIN. BEAR WITH ME. ITS NOT BAD. basically Hogwarts is more of an elite rich kid college for wizards than a high school type place. BLOOD SUPREMACY DOESNT EXIST. But there is a whole powerful family hierarchy. kind of like a mob family thing??Instead of Slytherins being the ones most likely to be death eaters, they’re the ones most likely to be from those more powerful families. The Riddles are one of the most powerful families (and rich bc sorry but i’m not dating a poor orphan guys). I’m a Gryffindor who transfers in and becomes besties with the Slytherin group (Theo, Enzo, Mattheo -i’m a mattheo truther, never matthew- Blaise, Pansy, and Draco). Anyways, I fall for Tommy bc of his whole dark and broody best friend’s older brother thing he has going on.

MCU DRs:

Peter Parker DR 1: i’m obsessed w the idea of being genius buddies w Peter Parker and eventually taking over SI, so this is that. We’ve been best friends and neighbors since we were little, and got bit by spiders at the same time. I’m Silk, and we fight crime tgt. We’re both geniuses and go to Midtown together. When we meet Tony Stark, him and Pepper pretty much take us under their wings and we become their heirs to SI. We revolutionize the tech industry before we even graduate high school, we’re that smart. example: we build a water filter that we use to completely clean the Hudson River. we create inter-dimensional communication to talk w the other spidey gang after we get sucked into a rift and meet miles. on like a random tuesday too. I absolutely love this one, i put SO MUCH DETAIL into this script it’s actually insane.

Peter Parker DR 2: My first Peter dr that i made, but kind of abandoned. Him and I have an enemies to loves relationship bc after talking w Ned, he thinks the way to attract me is to act as if he doesn’t care about me 🙄. these dumbasses. anyways, i’m Tony’s adoptive daughter who he rescued from these evil scientists who gave me powers n stuff. it was a pretty cool concept when i first thought of this reality. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Stucky DR: Takes place in the 1940s at first, bc I’m best friends and eventually dating Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. The three of us are a force to be reckoned with guys. I’m super fucking smart, Steve is super fucking stubborn, and Bucky is super fucking protective. So, chaos basically. I’m really interested in science and am offered a spot to work on the super soldier serum by Howard Stark. Canon events become canon, I create SHIELD with my besties Howie and Peggy, Howie tells me he’d been working on cryogenics but needs a volunteer to test it, so I agree. I wake up in 2017, after the Civil War was actually dealt with civilly and am reunited with my loves in the present time. One of my favorites that I ever scripted out. 🩷

Misc. DRs:

Peaky Blinders DR: I was a nurse during the war that took care of Tommy and his brothers, and him and I became really close and fell in love. We reconnected a couple of years after the war ended, and I basically become his right hand when it comes to all the Peaky business. He trusts me more than anyone else because we’re both ass over tits in LOVE with each other. Like, yall don’t understand how in love we are. Also, you know that scene of Elle Woods pulling up to Harvard in a full pink outfit? Literally me every single day. Me in my lil pink blazer and skirt sets and the brightest fucking smile on my face making everyone confused why tf someone is as happy as i am in birmingham of all places. Everyone thinks i’m ditzy and just Tommy’s arm candy when rly im the smartest person in the room at all times. i just love to manipulate people into thinking im harmless and then learning all their secrets 🩷🩷🎀

Haikyu DR: i’m the manager of Karasuno that takes over for Kiyoko. I’m the granddaughter of Nekoma’s coach, so i know all about the game and play just as good as the players. Just because those 4 minutes of him had me licking the screen, i’m Kiyoomi Sakusa’s girlfriend. I LOVE HIM SO MUCH ITS CRAZY. we have a whole friend group with Ushijima, Tendo, Iizuna, Komori, and Atsumu. Imagine the chaos that group brings everywhere. It’s such a fun dr, i should really revisit it more often.

Lloyd Hansen DR: i watched the gray man and this man with his white pants and pornstache burrowed his way into my heart. pretty much im his ditzy lil girlfriend who he adores and just skips around the place in pink and he spoils endlessly. 🩷

Mafia DR: didn’t really flesh this one out, but the gist is that i meet this guy in college and he turns out to be a part of the mob. 🤷🏻‍♀️ and so yeah.

Whore DR: yes, I have a whore dr. hehe. don’t judge me but like, a reality where slut shaming doesn’t exist and you can live out your horniest fantasies w/o any judgement whatsoever. bc that’s completely normal. 😋😋

Sunny DR: this is a better cr one, where i’m pretty much just really fucking smart and in a FANTASTIC AND LOVING relationship with this guy named Peter. He sadly doesn’t exist in this reality 😞😞. But he’s literally the sweetest ever and he’s blond, so I call him Sunny. Like, my sunshine boy ☀️. Literally everything i want in like, a mundane life is in this reality. also, for no other reason than i think it’s so funny, peter happens to be the son of one of my teachers in school. Why? i have no fucking clue 😭😭. like, i go to his house to meet his dad and he’s my fucking history teacher. it’s mortifying but absolutely fucking hilarious.

Criminal Minds DR: i join the BAU after Emily’s whole arc where she dips, and everyone but Hotch and Spencer are a bit prickly with me. I’m best friends and eventually get into a friends with benefits relationship with him (which is so out of character it’s crazy, but let me live). We obvi get our shit together and just start dating and become a power couple hehe

Deity DR: literally thought of this 2 days ago 😭. most of the details are on my prev posts, so you can check those out

Narnia DR: last but not least, I’m a human who was transported to Narnia a few years after the Pevensies saved Narnia from the White Witch. However, I’m instead sent to a nearby country where they take me in and basically make me their crowned princess. After a couple of years, I meet and fall in love w Edmund Pevensie. All Hail Queen Rosemary the Radiant. 🩷

THIS SHIT IS SO LONG TF. I DIDNT REALIZE HOW MANY SCRIPTS I MADE 😭😭😭😭

anyways, if you read all of this i love you 🩷

thanks to @luvieshifts for giving me the motivation to write all of this out

OKAY IM GOING TO SLEEP NOW GN POOKIE BEARS

you are the universe and more, babes 🎀

#reality shift #shiftblr #shifters #shifting #desired reality #reality shifting #shiftinconsciousness #shifttok

[theethemoon]

Yes im that basic girl

That girl who likes the basic kurta and jeans

Loves pinterest a little tooo much

Yes! my fav singer, song writer, director, actor is taylor swift

Yes! i like reading books and listen to music alll the damn time🎶

Yes, i do everything that can be seen as basic and dont really have smth exhilarating to offer you

Can't help, in me, u wont find anyth new

BUT

Being THAT basic girl

Also gives me immense joy

As, i, i am also that same girl who finds happiness in the smallest of things

The sky changing color or simply turning clear blue

I smile at leaves and grasses and flowers and wind

I find happiness in that simple cup of coffee which i pour in that one cup my friend gave me

I feel happy when someone sends me a text

When they send me a song

When they say the moon reminded them of me

That they saw flowers and thought of me

Being THAT basic girl

Gives me immense pleasures and you being 'the different one' probably wont find it all that easily

For i,

I smile in absence and feel joy in presence

I appreciate beauty, raw or made

I love a little too much

A little too hard

I feel immense pleasure as i get those handmade gifts of yours,

And those page long letters you write

After we have a fight

I am content w your long arse paragraphs

With your one line note

I feel so special

When you remember the poets i quote.

I think i like the world better, when it shows their colors, when they show they love

Being THAT girl,

I think i like the world better

When it tries to unfurl♡

#words #moon #basic #that girl #little things #small joys #pinterest #love #<3

[fratboykate]

Hold up first of all papi, I just wanted to hear it pronounced the correct way in general. I in no way tricked you. But boy am I glad you did.

Second of all, who voted 97% for a strike? I know nothing about the industry, so the sga-thingy I don’t understand

jlkshgkjdhfgkjsdhgkjsdhlfgkjsfdg I HAVE THE GROSSEST VOICE ON THE PLANET "boy am i glad i did" did what?! make your ears suffer??? lol

on-camera talent used to have two unions. sag and aftra. a few years ago they united to form one single union called...wait for it...sag-aftra lol. if im not mistaken they're the biggest union in the industry now with around 160,000 members. for comparison the wga (writer's union) are only 10k and dga (directors/other positions sort of related to directing) are only 20k. sag puts everyone else to shame. they represent the obvious actors but also announcers, voice over talent, broadcast journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, and other media typically on camera talent.

if sag strikes EVERYTHING comes to a halt. and for the past few years they've been getting fucked just as hard. y'all have this notion that because someone is on a show they're rich and you believe these random websites that know nothing about people's lives talking about their "net worth" based on literal pure speculation. throughout the strike A LOT of dirt has been coming out because people are talking now that they're pissed and don't give a fuck. for example today the union decided it was the day everyone took a turn exposing/shitting on apple because they're one of the worst exploiters in the industry. they didnt say what show, but a writer revealed that the principal talent on their show got paid $300/day for production. THREE HUNDRED BUCKS A DAY! episodes typically shot in 7-8 days on average. do the math. actors were making 2k per episode lol. and then you believe when some random website tells you that same actor is worth like ten million dollars.

so anyway...the actors have been fired up for A LOT of reasons. not just pay. i wont get into it. you can find all the ways they're getting abused too. but they just voted 98% to authorize a strike. they start negotiating on the 7th. their contract expires on the 30th. now that they have the strike authorization vote in hand if the studios dont give them a deal that the negotiating committee likes and the membership then ratifies then the entire indstry shuts down come july 1st. you cant do shit without writers AND actors. if they strike we all get a better deal but just the fact that they got this insane number when they're not a strike prone union is surely putting the fear of god into the studios tonight and they're going to come into negotiation with a different tone. for suuuuure. i hope they join us in a strike tho. i want to see these assholes suffer.

#i doubt they'll strike i think the studios will do everything they can to avoid the actors striking because then they're truly fucked #but i sure fucking hope they give us at least a week or two of strike i want to see the ceos squirm truly #rants #anonymous #answers #wga strike

[unproduciblesmackdown]

some more summer stock info from an interview with the writer cheri steinkellner

Her first move was to rewatch “Summer Stock” to see what it looks like now, decades later. She got out her Judy Garland boxed set and viewed “Summer Stock” on DVD. “I already had my writer’s head on and my adapter’s head, so I was trying to figure what from this movie can we pull and expand to really tell these characters’ stories because the film was built around the talents of the MGM lot — ‘More stars than there are in heaven.’ … When you’ve got those stars and those personalities, then the shape of the films can in large part be dictated by the stars and their charisma and so forth,” she said. When creating a musical, she focused on the characters and their stories — where the characters start, where they mess up and complicate each other’s lives, how they try to make it better and end up making it worse, and then how they resolve everything.

[...]

As she was reworking “Summer Stock,” Steinkellner not only considered the main triangle; she also expanded the supporting stories. She liked the idea of the city mice — the show people — and the country mice — the farm people — being so different yet coming together to save both the farm and the show in one unified way. “Anyone who has ever put on a show, new or old, knows that feeling when it feels like it’s going to fall apart but it starts to gel. We as a community of differently talented people all work together to make this thing that’s going to make people feel. There’s nothing like it. It’s a really, really good feeling,” Steinkellner said. The film, though, didn’t have diverse characters. “So we wanted to find a good, strong reason to purposefully bring a cast of characters together that represent our world. We talked a lot about color conscious casting,” Steinkellner said. In the stage version, the band of wannabe Broadway actors are old Army buddies who played to the troops during World War II to great success. But they are having trouble pushing their show forward in the civilian world.

[...]

Steinkellner and musical supervisor/arranger/orchestrator Doug Besterman wanted to integrate the tunes into “Summer Stock” as seamlessly as possible. She said it’s about “helping the song sing in the character’s voice and tell the story that we need to tell. It’s really important to me that I’m never just waiting until we get on with the story, that I have an understanding, whether it’s spoken in lyric or conveyed in emotion, that life is always happening.” As “Summer Stock” was being developed the last few months, there were times the story shifted, and so Steinkellner went back to find a new song that would better fit the latest rewrite. “Somehow in this beautiful Great American Songbook, there’s always the perfect song that I didn’t know until the moment arose for it. And I go, ‘Oh, you, come with me. We’re putting you back on the stage,’” she said. She found an Irving Berlin composition she hadn’t heard that now serves as “Summer Stock’s” Lindy Hop number. “I’m so excited to find an Irving Berlin song that I hadn’t been aware of,” she said. And when looking for a tune to open the second act, she gave Besterman and director/choreographer Donna Feore a list of titles to consider. Steinkellner wanted a song that would serve as “A Real Nice Clambake” did in “Carousel,” indicating post-intermission, she said, that “we’re happy to be back, settle in your seats, hope you had a good intermission, we’re back on the farm, we’re having a good time.” Besterman said “June Night” sounded like a good second-act opener. Steinkellner went back and listened to the only recording she could find, by the Ray Conniff Singers. “As soon as I heard it, I went, ‘Oh, “June Night” is exactly the right idea. And what if while they’re singing this song, we have all these city kids sitting around in the countryside. What if they see their first firefly and they hear their first cricket and owls, things that you don’t hear or feel or see in the city?’ “So Doug takes that and makes it into a whole Pentatonix kind of thing where we’re now bringing in all the noises of a summer night in Connecticut in song. It’s such a delight,” she said.

[...]

Although there are many changes, Steinkellner thinks the hearts of the characters are the same in the Goodspeed version as in the film. Jane is still a very practical family farmer trying to make things work. But the stage adaptation builds up the backstory of how this farmgirl is also a major triple-threat performer who sings “Get Happy” in a fedora and stockings at the end of the show. As for Joe, Steinkellner said the motivation and character changed greatly going from Kelly to Bleu. Echoing her earlier comments, she said, “We really set out to create something that was going to be a color conscious new telling of this period story.” A diverse cast of talented people have come together under the directorship of Bleu’s Joe, who has held this group together for five years. He encourages them, saying they will entertain audiences in America the way they entertained troops during the war. The story is set in 1950, and, in reality, it wasn’t until nine years later that a Black man directed a Broadway show. So, realistically, Steinkellner said, “They’re not going to get this show to Broadway, but they are going to get this up and find a home where they can all play at the top of their game together. It saves the farm and the show — and creates this thing called summer stock, in the telling of our show.” She said the cast in “Summer Stock” at Goodspeed is “staggeringly good.” They are, she said, “thrilling me with their talent and the heart that they’re bringing to it.”

#summer stock #''as for joe...the motivation and character changed greatly'' i Know this means ''he's not an asshole yeah lol'' #he also could stand to have more of an arc himself vs otherwise mainly being the vehicle for jane's arc of Realizing & Manifesting Passion #passions for theatre and for making out....thee tractor for jane's arc even. but they said no tractor lol #i like that bit of saying their show Creates the general summer stock practice lol.... #sure a hitch in looking it up like no not the generic term summer stock....

[starmaniamania]

Starmania/Tycoon

I found some old articles about the Tycoon project that I thought you would appreciate, @wildishmazz! There's not really anything comprehensive but I think it shows a little bit of how it went down.

As soon as July 1990, the Daily Mail wrote : "Master song writer Tim Rice is behind a new £1.5m rock opera that will open in London in the spring. He has translated and adapted Starmania - sweeping score by Michel Berger and original lyrics by Luc Plamondon - based on a French show about a Donald Trump-type tycoon who wants his corporation to control the globe."

Back then it said he already had a producer (David Land) and director (Frank Dunlop) lined up, but obviously nothing came of it. Meanwhile Plamondon and Berger had moved on to "La légende de Jimmy."

Then in Nov 1992 a Globe & Mail profile of Plamondon explains that the songs had been shown at a showcase at Andrew Lloyd Webber's estate (I put a long segment under the cut.)

And then in 1994 Plamondon gives a press conference saying he's "close to selling the production rights" to Tycoon (again??)

The whole thing is pretty much a mess, but also it sounds to me like Rice basically single-handedly revised a bunch of the show to be what he thought would be palatable to an English-speaking audience, which meant sanitizing it a lot. (Also apparently he's a Thatcher-admiring pro-Brexit Conservative, which does sort of make sense when you see what kind of changes he made tbh.)

And then when the show didn't actually get made in the UK but came back to Paris as the once-a-week English version, they changed some of the songs again to fit them as-is into the Furey staging.

It's not fully clear of course, but that's what I think after reading about it!

-------------------

Image maker and breaker - Ron Conlogue - The Globe & Mail, Nov 7, 1992

ON the first weekend in September, theatre producers from around the world gathered in a converted church on composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's estate in Sydmonton, England, to hear runthroughs of promising new musicals. One was Webber's own forthcoming show, Sunset Boulevard. The other was a Canadian musical called Tycoon.

Its author, Luc Plamondon, sat nervously in the darkness and contemplated the English-speaking world he hopes to conquer. The denim- clad, 50-year-old Montreal lyricist is already a celebrity throughout the French-speaking world. His musical, Starmania (Tycoon in English) has played four times in Montreal and Paris, including one run in Paris that lasted for three years.

As a parolier, he has written important lyrics for Quebec stars like Diane Dufresne and French ones like Diane Tell. Composers who have set his songs to music include Claude-Michel Schoenberg, who wrote Les Miserables. Singers who have recorded him include Petula Clark and, improbably, actor Gerard Depardieu. And he has yet another musical, Sand et les romantiques, which opened at the Paris Opera last week.

But this resonant Quebec voice fades to silence wherever English is spoken. "The Americans won't listen if it's in French," he says with rare chagrin. "Their ears are stopped up." His words will have to be carried into the anglophone world by others.

These others won't be nobodies. Plamondon's first release in English, The World Is Stone, is sung by Cyndi Lauper and has already reached the top 10 in England. Tycoon has been translated by Tim Rice, the author of Evita and Jesus Christ, Superstar. Twelve of its songs were recently released as an album in England, sung by the likes of Tom Jones, Nina Hagen, Ronnie Spector and Peter Kingsbery. The potential rewards are great, but nonetheless it is a painful thing for a lyricist to entrust his words to others.

[...]

In this remarkable November, with Sand et les romantiques playingat the Paris Opera, La Legende de Jimmy set to open in Montreal, and negotiations continuing toward a possible production of Tycoon in London's West End next year, Plamondon can hardly keep his hands on everything.

Of all these projects, Tycoon seems to excite him the most. It's hard for English-speakers to grasp, but the dominance of English pop music is so total that writers in other languages feel that they are missing the party. Even if their own party includes 60 million French speakers. "If you don't sing in English," says Plamondon disconsolately, "you can only sing in your own country."

Enter Tim Rice.

It was in 1988 that Rice, on the advice of a friend, went to see Starmania, then the hit of Paris. "It's not easy to hear rock lyrics in another language," he recalls over the phone from London, "but I could look around and see what was happening to the audience. They were ecstatic."

Rice's hit shows, written before his rupture with Lloyd Webber, are in the past now. On his own he did Chess, which did not succeed. Suddenly, he found himself looking at "a dynamic show with an amazing number of strong songs."

Plamondon was, to put it mildly, flattered by Rice's proposal to translate the show. He hesitated when told that the title Starmania would sound banal in English, but acceded to the change to Tycoon. And as a lyricist, he understood that Rice could not translate word-for-word into English. Musically, it can't work. "Of course he re-conceived the songs and put his own mark on them," says Plamondon. "I was honoured by that." And he is tickled that the project has at least got Rice and Lloyd Webber having lunch together.

But there is one more problem. English-language pop, for a number of reasons which mostly read "American," is homogenized and timid beside French music. Plamondon, who once wrote a sardonic song called Disneyland, knows it. He has watched his friend Celine Dion agree to sing a monotonous range of songs ("love, love, love, it's all so standardized") as the price of breaking into the American market. By contrast, she recently recorded an album of Plamondon songs whose titanic display of voice and passion eclipses her English albums altogether. "I hope the people who like her in English once in a while will listen to her in French," he says wistfully.

He expresses no such reservations about Tycoon, of course. But listening to the album, I couldn't help but notice that Rice had deleted the bits he didn't think an English-speaking audience would listen to: the sex symbol doesn't talk about men masturbating on her photograph, for example; and the businessman who wants to be an artist seems to have lost his poetic edge.

And Rice is also concerned about the story being set in the future. "Our scene is not very kind to shows set in the future," he says nervously. "We've got to make sure we get it right."

Getting it right, making it work may mean losing what makes Plamondon Plamondon. The song of Monopolis, from Starmania, foreshadows a world where there is no room for different voices:

From New York to Tokyo / Same thing everywhere / We take the same metro / To the same empty square / Single file, right there / Who can think of the sun / When the neon flares / And the radio blares / And we all dance the same / Day is gray, night is blue

But in the end it will not really matter what happens to Plamondon in English. The essence of what he is and does happens in French.

#starmania canon #luc plamondon #tim rice #tycoon #meta #in the press

[seggggga]

Some photos for iconic women in my eyes

Jennette McCurdy

Jennette is unbelievably independent and strong. From her eating disorders to Dan Schneider to her book. You may recognise her from "icarly" or, the spin-off, "Sam and Cat". She is not an actor now, and instead, a writer, singer, director and has her own podcast. She's grown stronger and found her own feet and I find that to be a great influence.

Evanna Lynch

Evanna was also such a brave and strong person due to beating anorexia. She had been hospitalised at eleven multiple times, she loved Harry Potter. During hospitalisation, Evanna would email J.K Rowling to escape it. She soon landed the role of (the very iconic) Luna Lovegood. Please do correct me if I'm wrong, I do not know everything. She did an amazing job beating it and she still is.

There will be more, I'll probably make this a weekly thing or a 'series' type thing.

Cya, Seggggga

[thebigshotman]

(Before continuing on to the movie review this week of “Annie Hall”, I feel I need to state this. Yes, this is a Woody Allen film. Yes, he is, without a doubt, a scumbag of a human being. However, I throughly enjoyed the movie. This is because separating the art from the artist is a very real thing people can do, no matter how influenced by the artist’s life the art was. I and everyone else in my class did the same thing.

As my professor said before the screening: “This is a film class, not an ethics class; take your scorn elsewhere”. So please do not come to me with anon hate about the fact that I enjoyed this movie. It will be immediately deleted as if you never sent it. (I know most of the regulars around here know not to do that, and know what kind of person I really am, but you never know who might see this 😬)

Anyway! With that disclaimer out of the way, the review is under the cut for those interested! Thank you all for being respectful and chill 😊)

Another week, another movie in film class! Last week’s “Godfather” didn’t give me much to talk about, but good golly did this one! This week we watched “Annie Hall” by Woody Allen, and it was a romantic comedy. Romantic comedies are something I usually don’t watch very often, with the sole exception of “Pretty Woman” and a couple of others. But this one had a lot of tricks up its sleeve to keep me interested!

The movie is about the relationship between Alvy Singer-Allen-and the titular Annie Hall-Diane Keaton-as it rises, falls, rises again, and eventually breaks up amicably. Alvy’s other relationships are also explored briefly to hammer in the point that he seems to be unlucky in love no matter what. We see this relationship out of order, with their awkward first meeting only coming about a third a ways in. We also break the fourth wall pretty frequently, with fantasy sequences woven in here and there by all characters and frequent asides to the camera by Alvy. In the end, they meet each other one last time for dinner, and the whole thing ends surprisingly poignantly with a metaphor involving love and eggs. Trust me, it was way better than it sounded 😂

The screenplay definitely deserved to win an Oscar, as it’s very tightly written and very funny, if odd and cringe worthy occasionally. What didn’t win an Oscar but was amazing, though, was the cinematography, done by the same dude that did “Godfather” funnily enough. It really captured what it must be like to fall in and out of love against the backdrop of a big city. The fantasy sequences and asides, very unusual for a romcom, also make it stand out from a crowd and keep you guessing what strange-but-realism-driven thing would happen next. The movie line scene with a cameo by Marshall McLuan (you can look it up if you want) was a highlight!

I’d say it’s a combination of what “Scenes from a Marriage” and “Ferris Buller’s Day Off” must be like…but I’ve never seen either lol

Keaton deserved the Oscar for playing Annie, bringing just enough of her real self into the role to make her realistic but enhancing everything when needed to make her the prototype “manic pixie dream girl” she is. Some of my classmates thought Alvy was annoying, what with his constant griping and distinctive voice, and I can definitely see why, but…I saw parts of myself in both of them. My positive qualities in Annie’s free-spiritness and definitely my negative ones in Alvy’s anxieties and overthinking. So I can’t bring myself to hate either, or their performances. They truly captured the “nervous romance” of the tagline!

So, yeah! Overall I really liked this movie! It did a lot of things I didn’t expect a romantic comedy too, and in a good way, too. The burden of how horribly its writer/director/lead actor forked up over the years weights heavy on it, make no mistake, but I think despite that it’s aged decently. If you can find it for free somewhere I recommend watching it! Just, y’know, do what I did. As for me, I will be watching it again as soon as I can find that aforementioned free source lol

Next week is “Network”, the origin of the famous “mad as hell” rant! Definitely a very big change from a romcom, but as someone going to school for media and a news reporter myself I can’t wait to see how it is! I’ll be sure to let you all know. In the meantime, hopefully I’ll be on in a few hours to get to threads.

La dee da la dee da…seriously I loved Annie. See you all soon!

My mission if there’s ever a 70s day at college is to dress like her in this gif 😁

#(sorry for the giant disclaimer but I know I needed to put it) #(otherwise I would be aching for the punishment of someone reading this out of context) #(and think I’m praising a movie and I have no idea what its maker has done 🤷‍♀️) #(but!!! I did enjoy it! and have no shame that I did) #STRING PULLER-out of character

[musingmixtape]

☆ muses !!

f.

audrey flynn. 23-26, bisexual, chemistry student (alisha boe fc). former prom queen, people take turns for her to break their heart, still learning how to let go.

blair irvine. 25 - 28, bisexual, podcast creator (rachel sennott fc). born to be the center of attention, always the most suspicious person in the room, will lie for fun.

camille cain. 24- 27 (centuries old in some verses), she/her, bisexual, vampire in some verses (anya taylor joy fc). pure evil, will manipulate her way into getting what she wants, devotion that corrupts.

celeste golding. 22-25, she/her, lesbian, former pageant queen / college student (mia healey fc). pathological people pleaser, the sorority president, has spent too many years wishing to be braver.

chloe prescott. 22-26, bisexual, personal assistant for a magazine / camgirl (sabrina carpenter fc). the glossiest of lipsticks, christmas sweater’s apologist, making others blush like it’s a hobby. 

elaine (lainey) bardot. 23-25, she/her, bisexual, professional tennis player (ella purnell fc). obsessed with winning, nothing she ever does is accidental, feelings are a liability. 

gemma harmon. 23 - 26, she/her, bisexual, coffeehouse waitress | alt modern day princess (jaz sinclair fc). sees the good in everything and everyone, doesn’t care about other people’s expectations, it’s hard for her to feel like she belongs.

iris reyes. 21-23, bisexual, film student | assistant to a movie director (jenna ortega fc). tiny but mean, wicked sense of loyalty, likes to play dirty.

jasmine alcott. 25-28, she/her, bisexual, chef (laura harrier fc). needs approval the same way others need air, just wants to take care of people, has cried tasting meals at least a dozen times.

juno faulkner. 24 - 27, she/her, bisexual (maddie phillips fc). aspiring actress | former theatre kid. wishes she could love people less, always gives a genuine reply whenever someone asks how her day was, lights up scented candles when she’s feeling stressed.

maude seong. 23 - 26, she/her, lesbian (london thor fc). journalist | writer of a “how to” column that’s frequently getting her in trouble. doesn’t know how to stay still, small tattoos from every country she’s visited, tries to come across as mysterious but will become best friends with every girl she meets at the nightclub's bathroom.

olivia ‘liv’ harrington. 22-24, bisexual, english lit student (daisy edgar jones fc | alt grace van dien fc). read all the classics before it was cool, loves to doodle, lingerie no one sees.

stella alvarado. 21 - 23, bisexual, office assistant. (clara galle fc). trying to find fun in the middle of her 9-to-5, usually the last one to leave but just because she’s not that productive, scribbled notes as a love language.

sylvia gilmore. 23-25, lesbian, college student (reneé rapp fc). will judge everyone who crosses her way, has a thing for older women, your favorite mean girl.

vera salazar. 23 - 25, bisexual, singer/songwriter (nicole wallace fc). keeps every love letter she’s ever received, stays up at night thinking about what-ifs, will do her makeup in a moving car and will make it look great.

willow graves. 23-26, she/her, bisexual, aspiring photographer (sophie thatcher fc). smudged mascara, will pick up fights for fun, 2am phone calls asking to get bailed out of jail.

m.

atlas dixon. 24 - 27, he/him, straight (asa germann fc). horror movie actor | aspiring director. dark circles under his eyes, can’t pretend to be interested when he’s not, gets into a lot of fights and loses most of them.

denver oakley. 26-30, he/him, straight, aspiring writer (logan lerman fc). dancing in the kitchen, getting in trouble because he’s always saying what he thinks, would die for you.

dylan bradshaw. 23-25, he/him, bisexual, english lit major | alt marketing assistant (mason gooding fc). a great shoulder to cry on but no one asks, will always offer if someone needs a place to stay, constantly misunderstood. 

graham munson. 25-29, he/him, bisexual, twitch video-game streamer (dylan o’brien fc). deep down he means well but still manages to screw things up, the creator of one night stands, late night walks around the park. 

jonah mei. 26 - 29, he/him, bisexual, event promoter (derek luh fc). humor as a coping mechanism, won't tell anyone but he loves gardening, will make people fall in love with him just for sport.

logan brody. 26-29, he/him, bicurious, full-time trust fund asshole (dacre montgomery fc). million dollar smile, online shops when he’s bored, adrenaline and bad decisions. 

marcus powell. 40-44, he/him, straight, college teacher (ryan gosling fc). late nights out and very early mornings, the desperate need to be in control, thinks in metaphors. 

matthew novak. 30-33, he/him, straight, programmer (lucien laviscount fc). logical thinker, can’t admit when he’s wrong, ivy league. 

nathan craven. 27 - 31, he/him, bisexual, camp counselor (joe keery fc). the golden boy, afraid he peaked at high school, everyone's best friend.

noah chazelle. 24-27, he/him, straight, waiter / gardener (timothée chalamet fc). not one plan about his future, got the job just so he could get some milfs, thinks he’s better than everyone else.

shane ledger. 24-27, he/him, bicurious, will take literally any job if he needs to pay rent, will also hate every second of it (joseph quinn fc). guitar string scars on his hands, the town’s dealer, will-pull-at-your-pigtails-if-he-likes-you kind of guy.

steven warhol. 36-40, he/him, straight, politician (andrew garfield fc). phone is always on less than 20%, following his family’s footsteps, charms his way through life.

fantasy muses (the olympians universe).

cassandra olson. she/her, bisexual. (sabrina carpenter fc/rain spencer fc). daughter of aphrodite. pomegranate juice, mischievousness personified, will put ribbons on everything.

conrad nye. he/him, bisexual. (drew starkey fc). son of poseidon. rebellious heart, will kill for you, rules don’t matter to him.

annika luna. she/they, lesbian. (lizeth selene fc). daughter of ares. shaking fists, sitting on the roof late at night, dark humor.

zion baxter. he/him, straight. (tom blyth fc). son of hermes. dealing with high expectations, trust issues, destined for greatness.

gaia turner. she/her, bisexual. (jessica alexander fc). daughter of athena. ancient knowledge, strong coffee, color coded bookshelf.

#saved as: muses.

[keiralanebooks]

Today I have been quite busy reorganizing #autimaginationmedia's website to make room for #bookreviews #musicreviews and our newest #contributor to have his very own space.

Check out the new digs at www.autimagination.org

We are working hard to bring things to the table to help all #creatives be it #directors #writers #actors #actress #movies #singers #songwriters etc.

If you'd like to help #support our cause, you can make a donation on the website as everything we do is unpaid and full of love.

[bustyasianbeautiespod]

Episode 43 Transcript: I Transed My Gender So I Don’t Cry About Supernatural Anymore

G: Hello, everyone. This is Grey here. I just want to say that this episode is gonna be a little bit rough because we had an episode locked and loaded, ready to be exported that is beautifully recorded and beautifully edited. Unfortunately, Audacity won't export it, so we're stuck with this one, and it's a bit rough, but I hope you guys still enjoy it. Also, in the episode, we mention that there's gonna be a Q&A and the deadline for the questions is September 18. Plans have changed; the deadline is now September 25, so if you're listening to this at the time of release, you still have time to send in questions! So please do. Thank you so much, have a nice day.

[intro guitar music]

G: Hello. My name is Grey.

C: And my name is Crystal.

G: And this is Busty Asian Beauties, the Supernatural commentary podcast where I, someone who has seen this show several times…

C: And I, someone who only knows the show through social media, discuss every single episode of Supernatural from start to finish. Also, we are both Asian

G: Both Asian! For today's episode, we will be discussing Season 2, Episode 21: "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part One," written by Sera Gamble, directed by Robert Singer.

C: Of course it was directed by Robert Singer. When the first zoom came in [G laughs], I was like, "Well, it's like near the end of the season, so I feel like this is a Kripke-directed episode, probably, right? So it's weird that he's doing this." And then there were more zooms, and then I was like, "Oh, okay,"

G: No, no, no. Kripke is primarily-

C: A writer.

G: A writer of the show, not a director.

C: Yeah. I think it's 'cause he directed the last-

G: That's like saying that Jensen Ackles is the director of Supernatural, like [laughs] he's primarily an actor, you know.

C: Yeah, yeah. I think I just got confused because Kripke directed last episode-

G: Last episode, yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: Yeah. Oh, Robert!

G: Oh, Robert! Oh, Miss Sera Gamble! [laughs]

C: Oh, Miss Sera Gamble.

G: Here we are again. [both laugh]

C: Mama Mia! [G laughs]

G: Okay, before everything, we just want to announce that we do have a Q&A. So send in questions. September 18, 11:59 pm is the deadline. Eastern Standard Time. Send us some stuff!

C: Please send questions. It'll be so embarrassing if no one sends us questions, so you should send us questions so we don't have to be embarrassed.

G: Exactly. So before going into the episode, Crystal, what do you know about our part one of our two-part finale for season two?

C: Ah, yeah, so I guess I didn't know exactly where the cutoff between parts one and two were, but I assumed it would probably end on Sam's death 'cause that's a good cliffhanger. So yeah, it's like a Hunger Games situation where a bunch of psychic kids are brought into the middle of nowhere, and like, only one can survive or whatever.

G: Ooh!

C: And I knew that we'd get to see Sam in leadership mode, but I guess I assumed that people would have been told even earlier about the Hunger Games situation, so I assumed a lot of his leadership would be about building trust between them, and less just like, "Let's all sit in a room and think about demons." [G laughs]

G: Exactly.

C: And I knew that the people there would be Jake, who was stationed in Afghanistan and then got brought here-

G: [laughs] Yeah.

C: Ava, who will turn out to secretly be a killer, which is really hot of her [laughs], and Lily, the homophobic lesbian, homophobic because of Sera Gamble's writing, not because of anything she did particularly [G laughs]. And also, I knew that we would see Azazel come to Sam in a dream and show him a scene of Mary's death, which is where we would learn fully about the demon blood feeding. So yeah, that's all I knew.

G: You knew more than me going into this episode.

C: Oh. [laughs]

G: I didn't know that our girl Ava is gonna turn out to be evil.

C: Wait, you had no clue?

G: I had no clue. I mean, I probably had some idea, but like, whatever ideas I've had, I've forgotten. So I was like, shock of my life. [both laughing] And like, when- spoiler, I guess- when Jake fucking breaks her neck, I was like, [loud gasp] because I didn't know that that was gonna happen. So that was fun.

C: Yeah.

G: I want to say- you mentioned that Azazel is gonna show up this episode. Cool, fun stuff. We still don't know that his name is Azazel.

C: Yeah.

G: [laughing] Which I think is incredibly funny.

C: Yeah, like, can we get a name please?

G: Can we get a name pwease?

C: What's the point of just thinking of him as the YED? Like, is it for the mystery?

G: [laughs] The YED? That's so- [laughs] This is my man, the YED.

C: [slightly singsong-y] Don't waste your time on me, you're already the voice inside my YED. You know. That YED?

G: [laughs] That's such a convoluted joke, just so you know.

C: It's one of Grey's favorite Destiel songs, and I've decided it's a Johnzazel song [G laughs] because they say YED instead of head. [G laughs]

G: It is one of my favorite Destiel songs, and I have no idea why. Who knows? Also, like, pre-episode thoughts, right- not pre-watching, like, pre-discussing the episode thoughts. I wish this is where the season ends.

C: Mm.

G: I wish that we cut in Sam dying, and then that's how the season ends. Because at least there would have been some semblance that this season was about Sam [laughing].

C: That's true! Because, like, I'm assuming that since this cuts off at about where I know about the season finale, so I'm assuming all of next episode is just Dean making a deal and being angsty.

G: Yeah! Like, Sam lying dead on like, a board or something. And Dean being like, "I need to sell my fucking soul now." [C laughs] And it's like, I just wish it ended here, and we had season three as a Dean season with all that stuff chucked in there at the beginning. But we can't always get what we want. And also, we've said time and time again that Supernatural values Dean's feelings more than Sam’s feelings and experiences.

C: Yep.

G: So, bummer. But yeah, let's start. So we start off with a "Road So Far" with some banging music.

C: Yeah.

G: I really like- well, there's nothing really significant about "The Road So Far," I feel like. Did you find anything like, "Oh my god, what a mashup of scenes."

C: No.

G: No, it's just whatever. What's so funny to me about it is that everything-

C: [laughing] They're like, "We've forgotten [G laughing]- we know we've forgotten about this storyline; we know you've forgotten about this storyline, we know that we don't care about this storyline, so we just need to remind you."

G: [laughing] Literally, like, everything that they showed is like, from the first half of the season, and nothing of the second half, and it's like, "Okay, cool, so that didn't matter, then?" [C laughs] I mean, it mattered because it happened, but like, it didn't matter to the overarching lot, and they literally just abandoned this, and then they were like, "Okay, It's about to end, the season's about to end. Let's pick it back up." And they did. Which, ugh.

C: They could have just spread out the first 10 episodes like, a bit more throughout the season, and then put like, their "Dean wears a silly outfit" episodes in between or something.

-

G: So we start with Sam and Dean in the car, and they're stopping by a restaurant, and Dean asks Sam to buy him a burger with- extra onions!

C: Extra onions. He's sick for this. [G laughs]

G: I noted that, like, "Crystal would hate this." Crystal already called Dean a monster when he asked Henriksen for extra onions in a burger. But now we have confirmed that, in fact, that was not a joke. It was for real of him. He does like extra onions. So- sick.

C: Yeah.

G: Also, he asks for pie, and there was so much fanfare about it. It's like, "Oh, give me pie, huh? I love pie. [C laughing] Love me some pie." [both laughing]

C: [laughing] What kind of dream dialogue? So bad.

G: This entire episode is written quite badly, I would say.

C: Acted quite badly-

G: Acted badly, written badly, everything is so bad. Like, it's just- we'll get into it when we get into those scenes, but there are scenes in this show where I feel like they were going for a super serious tone. I mean, there are scenes here that are comedic, for sure, but the ones where they're going for a super serious tone, and then they deliver a line, and I just burst out laughing. It's not a good episode. [laughs]

C: Which includes Dean's last "Sam!" [G laughs] I started laughing so hard.

G: Noo!

Well, anyway, Sam goes out, and Dean is still listening to the radio that's playing the song from "The Road So Far," Boston's- what's that? "Long Time"? My tran- not transcript. My captions called it Boston's "Long Time/Foreplay."

C: What??

G: So that's fun. Yeah, [laughs] I have no idea why. I think there's an alternative title to the song, and it's "Foreplay" by Boston.

C: Pog.

G: Pog!

G: He looks out; Sam is nowhere to be seen. Oh, he looks out because the music starts stuttering. He looks out, Sam is not in the cafe anymore, so he steps out of the car, walks towards the cafe. He opens it, and he's greeted with just fucking dead bodies, like, everyone has been slit in the throat. He goes to the back door and his hand touches sulfur. At first I was like, "Is this is gonna be-" Like, when he was touching the door, I was like, "Is this gonna become a plot point where he like, left fingerprints here or something?" But no, he's just feeling out the sulfur.

C: Oh, yeah, good point. Like, Henriksen is totally gonna think he killed all those people.

G: Exactly.

He walks out of the cafe, and the whole time he's screaming, "Sam! Sam! Sam!" and then we get one final, "Sam!!" [C laughs] And then we get a fade-out/fade-in. [laughs]

C: Yep.

G: Of Sam lying down in like, the middle of fucking nowhere. By middle of nowhere, I mean, like, an old-timey town, right?

C: Yeah. It's a one shot. It's a bird's eye shot, and it spins around and rotates until it's like, him upright but still on the ground.

Yeah, he starts walking around, and he tries to use his phone, to no avail. Then, yeah. We get our splash screen.

C: Splash screen.

-

G: I love the aesthetic that they use in this town.

C: Yeah.

G: Do you think there's a deeper meaning to like, using an old-timey, middle of America, like, town for this setup? I mean, I can't think of anything.

C: Yeah, I can't think of anything.

G: But like, I was wracking my brain earlier like, "Oh, surely there must be a reason why it's this kind of setting. Why they're in fucking- the one-" what's that?

C: Cold Oak, South Dakota?

G: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: Or something else?

G: No, like, why they're in like, fucking- What's the name of that TV show with the fucking- [laughs] with the fucking robots?

C: There's a lot of shows with robots?

G: Robot cowboys shows. Westworld.

C: Wait, there's cowboys in Westworld?

G: It's like a robot cowboy show.

C: I don't know what I thought Westworld was about, but it wasn't that. [G laughs]

G: No, it's like, it's an amusement park where it's like an old-timey, Red Dead Redemption cowboy, gunslinging type of town, and then people go there for entertainment. And then there's robots. Fun stuff!

C: Yeah. I mean, I get the cowboy thing, 'cause you know, like, "There's only room for one of us in this town" or whatever. [laughs]

G: Yeah, I guess you're right. Yeah, it's like the-

C: - Western individualism requiring this kind of fight to the death?

G: Yeah, exactly. No, yeah. And I mean, it does end with a duel, kind of.

C: Kind of, yeah.

G: Kind of. [laughs]

C: I can't believe they were like, "Jake's power is super strength-"

G: [laughing] And then Sam-

C: "-but Sam can defeat him!"

G: They should have- they could have used literally any other strength for Jake, is the thing. C: Yeah.

G: He could have had any power.

C: Because this didn't end up being plot relevant at all. Ugh. We're going ahead of ourselves, but yeah.

G: Yeah, and then like, I thought when Sam was beating on him, like, it's gonna be a more- you know, it's gonna be more of a challenge for Sam.

C: Yeah.

G: And I mean, he does die at the end, but [laughs]-

C: But like, not because he wasn't strong enough. Just because he looked away.

G: Yeah, exactly.

C: Boo.

G: Boo.

C: So we have Sam hearing a sound. So he picks up a weapon and sneaks behind a corner, and it's [both] Andy!

And Andy starts panicking and freaking out and screaming and crying and throwing up and saying like- asking where they are, and why Sam's here. And his acting is not good. [laughs]

G: I mean, all of them-

C: Yeah.

G: Absolutely terrible acting. Except Ava. Ava is my best friend.

C: I think Jake was fine, too.

G: I think Jake was fine, but like, it's impossible to kind of not act Jake well, because his whole deal is like, stoic, almost non-emotional type of guy.

C: Yeah, that's true.

So Sam asks what the last thing Andy remembers is, and he says, “Honestly, my fourth bong load.” [laughs] So true.

G: Good for him.

C: Also, Sam gives a little quirk of the lips at that. And I like all the moments of little friendship between all the psychic kids in this episode.

G: Yeah.

C: They're supposed to kill each other, but-

G: They're bonding!

C: They're all in this situation together. And yeah, as people, they want to connect and be friends.

G: Yeah.

C: Yeah. So Sam is worried about Dean and asking about that. And Andy also asks after Dean, which- is that when you sent me like, "Deanandy real" [G laughs] or something?

G: Yeah. [laughs] It's just so fascinating to me that Sam was there and Andy was like, "Oh, you're here, man. What situation are we in?" And then Sam mentions Dean, and Andy was like, "First off-"

C: Yeah, "Where's the hot Winchester?"

G: Starts giggling and twirling his hair, like, "Where's Dean? Is he also here?" [C laughs] Love that.

C: And then they start hearing screaming from like, this like, locked wood shack. So Sam breaks open the lock, and it's Ava! And like, she's like, panicked and crying, and as soon as she's out, she just like, launches herself into Sam's arms, and they hug, and it's really cute! Sorry that she was evil this whole time and none of this was real! [G laughs]

G: RIP.

C: RIP.

Yeah, also, like, whenever a hug happens, I go and check the Supernatural Wiki page for hugs. And Sam has actually gotten hugged quite a bit so far in this show, and mostly it's by like [laughs], women who he saves on cases. But yeah, I don't know, this felt like, one of his first-

G: Friend hugs.

C: Yeah, proper friendship hugs. Like, he hugged Rebecca in "Skin," but I don't know, I never really read them as connecting that well. Like, I always read Sam and Ava as like, getting each other.

G: Yeah, because Beckah, like, I mean, the point of that episode is that Sam doesn't fit in, so, you know.

C: Yeah. The hug isn't that deep. But I think that Sam genuinely cares a lot about Ava, and at one point, she cared a lot about him, and maybe still does.

So she tells Sam that like, "What do you mean I've been missing for five months? I saw you two days ago. Oh, no, my fiance who isn't dead must be so worried about me!" And also, we find out that his name is Brady.

G: Brady!

C: But he's not the Brady of Sambrady. I think.

G: No, he's not. He's not!

C: Yeah.

G: I feel like there would be more fanfare when Brady dies.

C: Right, they'd find the dead body, and Sam would be like, "Brady? My ex-boyfriend from Stanford? Noo!" [G laughing]

G: I'm positive it won't happen like that. [C laughs] But one can dream

C: Yeah, one can dream. And Sam just makes a little face but does not tell her that he's dead. And then we hear more sound around the corner, and it's Jake and Lily.

Yeah, Jake is like, wearing a tree outfit, which is what I call-

G: Camouflage, yeah.

C: - when US soldiers wear their camo things. Lily's like-

G: Goth.

C: Goth, yeah. This blonde goth look going on, complete with like, extremely pasty skin and eyebags.

G: She looks like she jumped out of the fucking Cullen family from Twilight. That's what she looks like.

C: Yeah! Yeah, no, definitely, she does. And she sort of has her arms crossed.

I don't get why she doesn't wear gloves. [G laughs]

G: No, exactly, you're right.

C: I feel like this could solve so many of her problems.

G: There are many problems that can be solved by wearing gloves. Like, I mean, it worked for like, fucking Elsa from Frozen. I'm sure it could work for you.

C: Yeah. It worked for like, whatever that person in Pushing Daisies was, I'm sure, so like, come on, Lily. Also, if she was like, "I'm not sure if wearing gloves will prevent the death touch," like, try touching some like, ants on the ground first [G laughs], you know, with the gloves.

G: Exactly.

C: Ugh. Yeah. Sorry that you have so much trauma and this terrible power, but have you considered pulling yourself up by your bootstraps [G laughing] and coming up with a solution?

G: Exactly.

C: So, yeah. Sam's like, "Omg, hi! We all got put here because we have special powers and we're all 23 and stuff." And Andy explains his powers [laughs], and he says that he can put thoughts in people's heads. But now, he can also put images.

G: Images, yeah.

C: And then, very importantly, he says that he knows this guy who's a total dick, and he just puts gay porn in his head 24/7. Which means that Andy has to be thinking about gay porn the whole time to beam that into the guy's head. [G laughs] So, you know. [laughing] Why are you, as a man...

G: Exactly.

C: I bet all the images, they look like- the actors look suspiciously like Dean. [G laughing]

G: Andy was like, "I'll take one for the team," and by the team, he meets the gay team, because he is also gay himself.

C: Yes. I mean, all those bongs that he sucks on... like?

Right, Ava and Sam are both like, "I get death visions telling me about future things." And Lily- and like- I don't know why her acting is so bad. I think it's just that everyone is at a zero until it's their time to speak, and then they go like, full school play monologue at the camera.

G: [laughs] No, exactly. It's-

C: Like, she's been standing there completely silent, whatever. And then she goes, [overacted] “Oh, well, that's great! [G laughs] You know what my power is?" [both laughing]

G: It's genuinely so bad. This is the point where I laughed out loud. Like, what is going on? It's- she-

C: Yeah. Maybe they killed her because of homophobia, but maybe they just didn't want her saying lines anymore [G laughs], and I get that.

G: Maybe they changed the plot mid-episode so that she will have to die first because her line delivery was ass.

C: Yeah, like it was going to be Andy hanging from that mill, and then they were like, "We have made a mistake in casting. [G laughs] Hey, Lily actress? Quick change to the plot."

So yeah, she explains that when she touches people, her heart stops-

G: Their heart stops.

C: Yeah, sorry, you're right. Lily explains that when she touches people, their hearts stop. And she like, holds up her bare hand during this explanation [laughs]. Like, girl, please. Please. [G laughing] Wear gloves!

G: Exactly.

C: So everyone's like, "Oh my god, who sent us here?" And Sam, dramatic-ass motherfucker that he is, is like, "It's not a who. It's more a what." Like, "You guys? It's... [both] a demon." [laughs]

G: What a drama king.

C: What a drama king.

-

G: So now we have Bobby and Dean. They're in the middle of the fucking road. Bobby, like, has a fucking tractor? [laughs] What is this? Is this a monster truck? What is this?

But, yeah, it's a hugeass truck. And he's talking to Dean, and they're discussing where in the map of the United States Sam could be. Bobby basically points out that there's nowhere that he can find it.

C: Yeah, because he says, “This is a map of all the demonic activity,” and it's completely blank-

G: [laughing] Yeah.

C: - like, he just pulled out a blank map, just like, to do a fun little PowerPoint reveal. [both laughs] He's lining up his TED Talk, meanwhile, Dean's like, on the brink of like, running Baby into a wall. [G laughing]

G: God. Talk about drama kings. Bobby is one. Good for him.

C: Yeah, Sam got it from somewhere, and he got it from Bobby.

G: Exactly.

Ash calls Dean, and he says that there's something that Dean has to know. Like, he did some investigating about where Sam is, and he can't tell Dean the thing over the phone, so he needs to come to the Roadhouse.

So they go to the Roadhouse. They hop into the Impala, and they leave the fucking truck behind.

C: Bobby's in the passenger seat, which is just a very funny visual to me. Like, that's your father. Like, show him some respect. He should be driving. [laughs]

G: Do you think that's how it ought to be?

C: I don't know.

G: Isn't it like, "You're young and virile. [C laughs] Like, you should be driving."

C: I mean, maybe so. But I don't know, I just feel like- I just feel like driving always goes by family seniority unless it's like, a grandparent with terrible vision. At least in my family. But it may change person to person.

G: Yeah. Anyway, we go back to the town, and Jake doesn't believe Sam. And so- also, everyone else doesn't really believe Sam. Everyone is very skeptical about the thing. But it's Jake who runs off, and he goes towards-

C: Yeah, Lily's like, "I can death-touch people, but demons? No. [G laughs] [laughing] There's a scientific explanation for this."

G: "I am-" yeah, whatever. I don't know what joke to make for that. [laughs]

When Jake walks away he ends up in a- what's this called?

C: An abandoned classroom, I think, because there's a blackboard on the wall.

G: Yeah. He ends up in an abandoned classroom, and he walks in because he sees like, a little girl peeping out of the door. So as he walks in, he's looking around, he's telling the girl there's so need to be scared, when suddenly-

C: You know, she's creepyass giggling the whole time.

G: Exactly.

C: Like, Jake, she's not scared. She's gonna kill you!

G: She's gonna kill you, Jake! And then he turns around, and then he hears chalk on the chalkboard of the classroom, and it says over and over again, “I will not kill. I will not kill. I will not kill.” And then he turns around. The girl fucking extends her hands into Wolverine hands and lunges at him. But Sam comes in and irons this motherfucker out of the room. And then he goes, “Just so you know? That was a demon.” [laughing] What is Sam even doing?

C: God, he's so dramatic.

G: What is he doing?

C: Was it- like, does iron work on demons? I thought that was a ghost thing.

G: I don't even know which works on what. I mean, I guess salt works for demons, right? That's for sure.

C: Mm.

G: But- don't they at some point in Supernatural shove salt in like, the mouth of a demon?

C: Do they?

G: I don't know. That's a pretty cool visual. I wonder what happened to the vessel, though.

C: Yeah, nothing good. [G laughs]

G: You when you messaged me that you wanted to buy like, a salt shaker just so you can salt-shake- you can shake salt into your mouth. [both laugh] Literally killing your kidneys ASAP.

C: Yeah. [laughing] Sometimes, I need to taste the sweet, not sweet taste of salt directly. [G laughs]

So he says that that demon was a special type of demon called like an- akiri- acheri-? I don't remember how he pronounced it. He only said it once.

G: I think it's Acheri.

C: Acheri? Okay. He says it was an Acheri. Do these ever come back?

G: No, I don't think so. I mean, it's just a special kind of demon, right?

C: Yeah.

G: I don't know why he was like, "It's an Acheri. A demon that poses as a young girl." Like, fuck off, Sam. Just say it's a fucking demon!

C: But also, every other demon that we know has had to have a vessel. This one seems to operate more like a ghost.

G: Oh, yeah, exactly. Exactly. You're right.

C: Yeah. So that's interesting.

So they go out, and they see this big bell, and Sam's like, "Omg, like, I recognize that bell. I know where we are. We're in Cold Oak, South Dakota, which is a town that was considered so haunted that every single resident just left it."

G: They really were like, "Let's deuce ex machina finding out this location by just making Sam like, a fucking nerd."

C: Yeah. Which he is. And later, Bobby is just as much of a nerd.

G: Yeah. I mean, I don't know, it kind of frustrated me. Like, I like that Sam was the leader type and it shows in this episode. However, I was a little bit frustrated that he was getting all this screen time. Like, you introduce these very fascinating characters, and you barely do anything with them because you have Sam, like, running around, running the whole show. Which is fine. Like, I mean it's fine. But I was kind of like, "Oh, Jake also seems like the leader type. Why are they not giving him any screen time?" And they do it later, but it's for murder reasons, so. [C laughs]

C: That's true. It is for murder reason.

Yeah, it's just- it's weird that they would make all these new characters to have them die in the same episode. Like, death touch is a very interesting power to explore. There are like, several shows that are main character-ed about people with death touch. And I get that they had to kill her [laughing] as soon as they saw the actress try to act [G laughs], but still!

Yeah. So Lily wants to leave. The town is surrounded by woods, and it's going to be several miles before they get anywhere, but she wants out. But Sam says that since they don't know what's going on, they should stick around and figure that out. And Jake agrees with Sam, and he says, like, “We need to-” And Lily does a whole, like, “Don't say we! I'm not part of 'we.'"

G: God.

C: [laughing] "I have nothing in common with any of you!"

G: She's completely fucking unbearable. Like, I'm sorry, hashtag homophobia moments.

C: Yeah, like, sorry women, sorry lesbians. [G laughs] Like, I mean, I get this is like, a reasonable reaction to the situation, I think, especially since she's probably someone who's had to be very independent and isolate herself because of death touch, she isn't really willing to trust people because she doesn't trust herself. But like, it's not acted well. She never gets like, a proper little monologue, either, to sort of make her actions make sense. She's just kind of here, saying things.

G: Yeah. And like, every single time she speaks, it's so out of the blue. And you're like, jolted by the fact that she's speaking. [laughs]

C: Yeah, because she doesn't really have much of a presence otherwise.

G: Yeah.

C: Yeah. Also, I can't believe she would say that she has nothing in common with any of them when everyone here is gay. [G laughs]

G: So true.

C: So yeah. And then she reveals the main thing people remember Lily for, which is like, she says, “You don't know anything.” And then, like, some strong emotion comes over her, and she says, “I accidentally touched my girlfriend.” And everyone makes like, sympathetic faces at her. I- Supernatural's hashtag first gay character, guys! [G laughs] And then immediately, they're like, "She needs to die." [G laughs]

Wait, wait, [laughing] headcanon that Ava's homophobic. [G laughs]

G: Literally, this is homophobia moments.

C: She's like, "Oh my god! What if she like, likes me that way? I have to get a demon to kill her now!" [G laughs]

G: Noo! What a terrible joke! Oh.

C: But, oh, god.

G: It's so- Like, I mean, okay. Let's lay out the gay moments in Supernatural thus far, right? We have the gay man who dies in “Faith” for being gay.

C: Yeah.

G: That one, he literally died because he was gay.

C: Yes.

G: And we have the lesbian kiss. I mean, I hesitate to call it the lesbian kiss, but that one from-

C: Well, yeah. The sexual assault between two women, yeah.

G: - what's that called?

C: "Dead Man's Blood"?

G: In "Dead Man's Blood," where she has gay nails on one hand and straight nails on the other. [both laugh] The thing about me is that I also cut my nails that way. I like to make my one hand, my right hand lengthy and then my left hand cut short.

C: Wait, your right hand lengthy?

G: Yeah, because like, left hand is for guitar and stuff.

C: Oh, okay.

G: So when I'm fretting, I like to keep it short, right? So [laughing] every time I look at my hands, I think of that. [both laughing] I'm like, "Omg, I'm just like that fucking vampire from Supernatural for real." And then this. And then this is the next gay moment in Supernatural. And they're not faring well.

C: Yeah, yeah. I just- the fact that she literally killed her girlfriend by touching her. [G laughs] Like, gay sex literally kills you, you guys.

G: Ugh.

C: Yeah, yeah. Alright.

-

C: So they are like, "Well, sorry about that, bro. But we have to go look for weapons." So they do. Sam's instructing them about finding iron and salt, and Lily follows behind for a little while but then she heads off on her own/ Sorry, Lily.

The speed run from the gay reveal to her death is [G laughing] only like- This is a record that was only broken by Castiel Supernatural. [both laughing]

G: Literally! At least Lily had like, one-fourth, like, maybe one-eighth of an episode, right? To be gay and out and about before her death.

C: Yeah.

G: Castiel had like, two minutes. Like, "I love you." And then he literally dies! That's not even two minutes!

C: Yeah. [both laughing] It's like, two seconds.

G: Literally, he was gay for thirty seconds, and then he was dead.

C: Yeah. I hope Cas and Lily have a bit of a support group in heaven where he's like, "When I'm gay I die," and she's like, "When I'm gay, other people die," and then they shake hands, and then Cas drops dead. [laughs]

G: Exactly.

C: Yeah.

G: Anyway. Uh, we go back to Dean and Bobby. They're at the Roadhouse-

C: But.

G: I received the shock of my life here. Like, I know the Roadhouse burns down-

C: Yeah, I also like, I didn't think that Ash was actually dead [G laughing] until later in the episode when I was like, "Wait, I don't think he's in season 2!"

G: In season 3?

C: Or season 3, yeah.

G: Yeah. So they burned down the Roadhouse, and by they, I mean, both Eric Kripke and the demons. [laughs] Yeah, the demons-

C: Yeah, I mean, Eric Kripke is also a demon, so-

G: Exactly. They enter the Roadhouse, and by enter, I mean it's fucking trashed. It's burned to the ground. And there's so many people lying there, burned with piles of wood over them. And the scene actually made me like, flinch. It was like, a very visceral scene. But they look for Ellen and Ash, and eventually, Dean finds Ash's watch amongst the rubble. So, he is dead. RIP.

C: [laughing] His reaction is so minimal. He just goes like, "Aw, Ash! Dammit."

G: [laughs] Like they didn't share a beer? Come on, Dean.

C: Yeah, come on, Dean.

Yeah. And again, I didn't even realize at this point that Ash is actually dead. I was like, "Oh, it's a fake out. Like Bakugou." [G laughs]

G: Wait! Is Bakugou now alive?

C: Ah, yeah, I think- I didn't read the link that my friend sent me, sorry friends, but I think some other character like, gave his like, life force to Bakugou and became his heart or something?

G: Oh my god, just like, Supernatural! [laughs]

C: Just like Supernatural. Any BNHA fans who are like, "That's not what happened!" [G laughing] Like, it's okay, I'll go click on the link later that my friend sent me. I'll know later.

G: Literally, Dean gave his life force so that Sam can live!

C: Yeah. Yeah. So-

G: I think I'm still taking this.

C: Oh, yeah, keep going. Yeah, that was short.

G: Yeah.

So we go to the woods where Lily is walking through. There's a girl laughing and going, "Haha! Haha!" I mean, it's the same girl from earlier, right?

C: Yeah.

G: And back in the house, Sam and Ava are together. Sam goes and picks up a knife from a trunk, and Ava gets a headache. And Sam is like, "Oh, are you having a vision?" And she's like, "No. Come on, Sam." And then Andy shouts, "Hey, guys, I found something!" So they run over to Andy, and he raises two bags of just giant bags of salt. You know. We see Jake smile, which I was like, "Aw, he's a human being!" He smiles at Andy going, "Here's the salt!" And then they look around, and they're like, "Oh, no, Lily is not with us." So they start looking for Lily, and then they hear this girl giggling, same girl from earlier, and they walk outside, and at the top of this, like, tower/windmill/thing, Lily is hanging by the neck. Ooh.

C: Ooh. It's a pretty upsetting image.

G: Yeah.

C: Sorry, Lily.

G: Yeah.

C: But also about the Jake smiling thing, I feel like he's shown to have like, a personality a bit earlier. Because Lily goes, like, “Oh my god! Like, what the fuck! Last night I went to sleep in San Diego,” and Jake says, “If it makes you feel any better, like, I went to sleep last night in Afghanistan.” So I feel like, he like, is shown to have a bit of a sense of humor and stuff early on.

G: Yeah. But this was like, the first time that he smiles.

C: Smiles, yeah.

G: Baby's first smile! [laughs] Let's take a picture. And then he dies. [laughing]

C: Aw, he's teething! [G laughing]

G: "He's teething!" This is his first life. [both laughing]

C: Yeah. Unlike that- who was the K-Pop idol that someone-

G: [laughing] We've talked about this before.

C: - thought was Princess Diana?

G: [laughing] Yeah, I think that was Jimin from BTS. [C screams] You know what? We have absolutely talked about this before.

C: Yes.

G: Season 2, Episode 21. Episode 42 or so of the podcast, and we're already running out of jokes.

C: Yeah. I think it's 43.

G: It's unfortunate. Oh, it's 43? Well, goddamn. We're about to reach episode 50!

C: Yeah. Exciting.

G: What's episode 50? It's "99 Problems," right?

C: I have no clue.

G: Ah, never mind. No, no, episode 100 is "99 Problems."

C: Mm, it's so far!

G: I know.

C: Okay.

G: Okay, go on. No, no, it's still me.

So they start saying that like, "We need to get out. We need to get out of here!" Blah blah blah. Ava is saying this. But Jake and Sam finally figured out that Lily was trying to leave, so that's why she died. But if they stay here and try to like, outwit the demon, they have a chance of surviving. So, stay it is.

C: Yeah, as a group, they have like, very distinct-

G: Personalities.

C: Like, horror movie archetype personalities.

G: Yeah.

C: Like, okay, I think that like, in Cabin in the Woods, like, they state the like, five slasher film archetypes are like, the w-slur, the athlete, the scholar, the fool, and the virgin, and I think, like, Jake's the athlete and Sam's the scholar and Andy's the fool. And then, I guess Lily has to be a virgin because her girlfriend died [G laughing] as soon as they tried anything. And I guess Ava has slept with people, but I would not characterize her as a w-slur, but also, that's just a bad archetype in general. But yeah. I think that they were sort of going for that here.

G: I can see that. I can see that. Also, Jake says in passing, “I'll get her down,” referring to Lily.

C: Yeah!

G: Which I appreciate. Love that for you, man.

C: Yeah, it was really nice. It was a very Sam with Mrs. Greeley moment.

G: Yeah, exactly. Like, I'm sure Sam appreciated that too.

C: Yeah. Right. What if Jake went to get her down and he actually touched her hand, and it turns out it still works. [laughs]

G: No, he's immune! He's immune.

C: Yeah, alright. Good for him.

G: Good for him.

C: Yeah. I wish I got to see, like, them like, try to bury her together, or, you know, like, do a little group funeral, because that would be a good bonding moment between all of them. [G laughs]

G: Yeah, a little bit, yeah.

C: Yeah.

G: I'm just- I suddenly am struck by how morbid like, the thought of burying someone is. You're literally putting them in the ground. Holy shit!

C: Yeah, I feel like putting them in the ground is okay, but then when you start shoveling dirt on top of them, and you're like, "Oh, they'll never be able to wipe this off!" Like, that's when it gets like, "Oh."

C: So Sam goes back to like, "Man, I wish Dean was here."

G: Yeah! It's so out of the blue. [C laughs]

C: Yeah. Like, why, dude? I mean, whatever, he's just feeling scared because a murder happened and Dean is like, a point of semi-stability in his life or whatever. So Andy's like, "Wait, I think that I can communicate to Dean if you give me something that he's touched that I totally won't jerk off to in my bunker later tonight. [G laughs] Then, I can like, track him down and send him an image." Society if Andy just sent Dean gay porn [both laughing] instead of anything pertaining to their location.

G: I mean, what I found about this was like, when Dean was receiving the images, he was like, doubling over in pain. So like, was the gay porn guy, like, [pained] "Oh, I'm thinking of dick! Oh my god!"

C: "Ow! Oh my god! Ow!"

G: "Yeowch!" [laughs]

C: "Owie!" [both laugh] Yeah.

So, right, he tries to do that. And then we cut back to Dean and Bobby, and Dean seems more sad that Ash is dead because of the information Ash was gonna give them more than like, just Ash being dead himself. He's like, "Dammit! Now that Ash is dead, how are we ever gonna find Sam?" [laughs] Like, girl. Like you didn't even share a beer.

G: Aw.

C: And just as that happens, Dean gets a splitting headache. He doubles over in pain, and he gets a quick vision of the bell in the town. And Dean's like, "Oh my god, I had a bad headache, and I feel like I saw something." And Bobby went, "Oh, like, those visions that Sam gets?" And Dean's like, "What? No, come on. I'm not some psychic!" Like, okay, what? He's so rude. Like, replace psychic with gay.

G: [laughing] Not so funny anymore, don't you think? [C laughing]

C: Exactly. Honestly, though, I wish that Dean had spent the whole drive to South Dakota being like, "Oh my god! I also have psychic powers, and they're manifesting now." But no. So and then he gets another flash, and it's Sam, briefly, and then the bell. So Bobby asks about the vision, and he's like, "What did the bell look like?" And he learned from Dean's description that they're gonna be heading to Cold Oak, South Dakota.

G: Yep.

-

G: Okay, back to fucking Cold Oak, South Dakota. Jake and Sam are talking. And Jake is trying to pull out some iron bars from like, a giant wheel, right? And he pulls about easy, just ch-ch-ch.

C: Yeah. With his hands.

G: Yeah, with his hands. And then Sam like, looks at him like, "Huh!" And Jake's like, "Oh, no no no, I'm not Superman or anything." But apparently like, back in Afghanistan, like, someone slipped on the road like, in their car, and he was able to lift the car, no problem.

C: Yeah, which is literally just that thing that happens in Les Mis that lets Javert know that Jean Valjean is like, the mayor guy. [G laughing]

G: So true! So true.

And then after that, everyone said that it was like, a fucking flux, and that it was because of adrenaline rush. But then, after that, he was able to bench press 800 pounds. Good for him.

C: Good for him.

G: I wonder, would your muscles deteriorate, if so?

C: Hm.

G: Like, for example, he's like, a bodybuilder, right? He likes to lift weights. And then suddenly, the weights like, weigh basically nothing to him anymore. Would his muscles then deteriorate?

C: Maybe, but I guess he he would still have super strength because it probably comes from somewhere other than just his muscles, it just works through his muscles.

G: No, yeah, exactly, like-

C: But yeah.

G: He'll be like, skinny noodle arms but like, can bench press 800 pounds.

C: Yeah. Good for him

G: Yeah. Anyway, he tells Sam that he appreciates what Sam is doing. And Sam's like, "What?" [laughs] And Jake is like, "You're calm, and you're keeping everybody else calm, and I appreciate that, especially considering how fucking freaked out you are in reality." And I wrote in my notes, "Aw! They're bonding."

C: Yeah.

G: "Too bad it's gonna end in murder." But it's sweet that they're bonding. I like it.

C: It is sweet. And Jake says, like, “I know that that's what's happening because I have done the same thing myself before.” So yeah. It's sweet. They could have been really good friends, or perhaps lovers, if they met in different situations.

G: Yeah, exactly.

And Sam starts talking about Dean again, and he says that Dean always tells him that he's gonna watch out for Sam, and that everything is gonna be okay, but he doesn't actually believe it anymore because of what's coming. Like, he doesn't know. And Jake says that “It doesn't matter if we're gonna make it, like if that's really true or not. What matters is they believe it." As in the other kids. So yeah. I found- I mean I guess we'll get into it later, but this discussion further exacerbates the way they literally just turn 180 on Jake's characterization later. When they were like, "Oh, we need him for a plot reason now, so he needs to be [laughs] a different person altogether." Like, you see him here, and yeah, he's tactical and stuff, but he empathizes, and blah blah blah. And then, like, later, he's like, "You need to die so I can kill the demon."

C: Right.

G: And like, the way he says it, too, is like, “I'm being completely fucking reasonable." Like we know that he's more rational and like, he understands the complexity of the situation more than that. And then we just see that it's like, "Okay. You just threw away his character, then."

C: Yeah. Yeah. It's highly unfortunate. Like, they make him like this when they're like, "I think he should be a Sam parallel." And then, as soon as they're like, "He should be an antagonist," they were like, "Okay, time to change everything."

G: Yeah.

C: Yeah. Also, he's such an interesting character because, like, he's like, a literal soldier for a metaphorical demon about to become a metaphorical soldier for a literal demon. Like, I would like to see him more, but I'm assuming that, like, in the next episode, Bobby's gonna run after him and kill him or something. [laughs]

G: No, exactly. I think Bobby's gonna run back and be like, "I killed him" [both laugh] or something, and that's the end.

C: Oh, hatred.

G: I mean, I'm not sure, but I'm betting my money on it.

C: Hatred and killing and biting.

Like, he's an actual soldier! Like, that's interesting to explore!

G: Yeah.

C: When you get to the demon or anything. But yeah, whatever, who cares. Who give a shit. Signed, Sera Gamble.

G: Who give a shit. [laughs]

-

G: So later, it's Sam and Ava, and they're back in the house, and they're setting up the salt. And Ava is saying like, "Oh, how are you, Sam? Me, I'm okay for what it is, but I can't wait to just go home and be with my fucking fiance," blah blah blah. And then Sam looks uneasy because he's incapable of lying, and Ava is like, "What's wrong? Are you not telling me something?" And Sam reveals that the fiance is dead. And the way he says it is like, “Your fiance didn't make it.” [laughing]

C: Yeah. But also he has like, a sweet little thing where he like, sort of like, faces her, and puts his hand on her shoulder before he tells her. And then, as soon as he finishes telling her, he like, pulls her into a hug, so she can sob into his shoulder. And it's like, "Oh my god! He like, cared about her for real!"

G: For real.

C: They could have been besties for real!

G: For realsies.

C: But she was put into a killing game situation for five months straight, and also- did they even give her food? I mean, she had to have food at some point, but where's the food?

G: Where's the water? Maybe there's a reward. Like, "If you killed a certain batch, it's like, 'Welp, you're dead. And here's your reward.'"

C: Yeah. A sammywich. [G laughs]

G: I think it's your turn.

C: Yeah.

-

C: So now everyone's in a room that's been barricaded with salt lines and stuff, and they're all trying to keep watch, but Andy is asleep. And Sam- so okay, there's like, a sound- you know, like, a music cue to make you scared. And I did jump a little. [G laughs] And then it zooms in really hard onto the yellow-eyed demon standing in the doorway behind Jake. And Sam realizes, when Jake doesn't react, that he is dreaming. Yeah, and then it like- Oh, wait, okay, there's some very dramatic zooms also when this happens.

G: Hell yeah.

C: Yeah, like Sam's backed up against the wall, and it goes big zoom on his face, and then it goes big zoom on Azazel's face. And this is when I like, checked the director, and I was like, "Yeah." [G laughs]

G: Yeah.

C: They go outside for a walk, and the yellow-eyed demon is like, being so friendly, and Sam's being all, "I'm gonna tear you to pieces as soon as I wake up." He also asks about Dean, and Azazel says, “Who give a shit.” Like, so true.

G: So true.

C: Yeah. Also, Sam says, like, “What? Are you gonna kill me?” And he does the Sam thing where he like, spreads his arms out, you know, in a semi-crucified position as a "Go ahead, take a shot." And I love that Sam position.

G: I feel like, this is quite a commonly-screencapped scene. Or maybe something akin to this is commonly screencapped.

C: No, the commonly-screencapped scene is the one where he's making the crossroads demon deal to-

G: Oh, yeah, the one where he is-

C: - and he's wearing that brown hoodie, and -

G: Yeah, I think he's wearing a similar outfit. That's why.

C: Yeah. It's so good.

G: A similar color scheme. It's the one where he raises his knife a certain way, and he looks super hot.

C: Yeahh, baby! [laughs] Hello, Sam. Your brother should die more often. [both laugh] Signed, Ruby.

Yeah, and it makes me sad, because later, when he does that, like I feel like the main time when he does that later is in "Swan Song," but it's no longer a cocky, like, "Come at me, bro." It's like-

G: Defeated, almost.

C: "I'm accepting my death, I'm defeated, and I am launching myself into Hell for 200 years." Ugh. Sorry, Sam. I wish you were still angry sometimes because it meant you were still fighting.

Yeah. So Azazel's like, "This is the Miss America pageant," because The Hunger Games hadn't come out yet as a book series. And he doesn't need soldiers. He needs soldier. He needs one of them to prove themselves in order to lead his army of demons.

G: And Sam says-

C: [laughing] Sam says, “You son of a bitch.” But like- not- like, he sounds angry, but his face is doing a thing where he actually widens his eyes and raises his eyebrows when he says "bitch." Like, he's going like, “Did I do that right?” [laughs] I went back rewatched that four times.

G: I mean, it's so funny to me that the yellow-eyed demon is like, "I have an army," and then he retracts, and he was like, "Well, I will have an army soon." [laughing]

C: Such a loser.

G: [laughing] This man had 23 years to prepare-

C: More because he said there were older generations of special kids.

G: Exactly. He had so many years to prepare, and he still doesn't have an army.

C: ADHD king. [G laughs]

G: "He should have set nearer a deadline" king.

C: Yeah. [laughs] Right, so- do we get to hear more about this Azazel plan? Because I think I thought for the longest time that he was just running the Hunger Games to find the best vessel for Lucifer-

G: No.

C: But this seems like a new thing. Like, he has his own goals to take over the world with a demon army?

G: Yeah, I think so.

C: So what? Like, it ony a world. [both laugh]

G: I think it's actually like, said by later Prince of H- because he's a Prince of Hell, right? And Dagon is also a Prince of Hell.

C: Yeah. Hii.

G: And Dagon was like, "Well, Azazel was always fucking weird." [both laughing]

C: Okay, that's very funny. Like, this has nothing to do with the bigger battles between Heaven and Hell. This guy, just like, woke up one day, and was like, "You know what would be so neat?" and pulled up a Google Docs to start planning. And everyone else was like, "Fine, just leave him alone. He'll like, peter out eventually."

G: Exactly.

C: Yeah, so he tells him that he's surprised that Sam hadn't already guessed the purpose of all of this. Like, "Why do you think everyone else died? It's because they weren't strong enough. I'm looking for the best and brightest of your generation." But okay, the two main ones that we know who died, besides Max Miller, are people that Azazel came to, like, in their dreams, right? Did he just hitch his horse to the wrong wagon? Like, he was like, "You're my favorite!" And then they die, and he's like-

G: Well, it's implied that he's lying about the favorite thing. Because he shows up for fucking Jake too.

C: Oh, yeah, he shows up for Jake too. He's like, "I'm only telling you, Sam, about this because I want you to like, win." But yeah, he told everybody. Yeah, which is quite funny. He's such a deadbeat dad. [G laughs]

Yeah, so I guess he really has no favorites. He's just going to people's dreams to like, see what happens and to move the plot along.

G: Yeah, exactly.

C: Yeah. And Sam asks, "My generation?" And he says, “There's other generations. But let's just worry about yours." Do we ever see any older psychic kid?

G: No idea.

C: Well, they probably all got killed in the Hunger Games.

G: Yeah.

C: That's probably it. But it would be fun to have an episode where we meet an elder psychic kid, I say the way people say "elder queer." [laughs]

Sam tells Azazel, "You ruined my life. You killed everyone I love." So true, he doesn't love Dean. [laughs] Like, he just meant "my parents and my girlfriend." Dean's alive, but he isn't part of everyone that Sam loves.

G: "Don't love him that much." [C laughs]

C: Yeah, Azazel says some misogynistic stuff about Jess and also how Sam was going to marry her, and that was gonna totally throw off his plan. He also says that Sam was gonna be a tax lawyer. Do you think that's canon? Like, he was watching Sam at college, and Sam was like, “You know, I'm really thinking about a career in like, tax law.”

G: He's like, one of those people who, like, fucking, gets Amazon the [laughs] tax cuts or something. [C laughs]

C: Noo! God, he totally would. He'd just be like, "The law has loopholes for a reason, and I'm not gonna think about who has the resources to exploit those loopholes."

So and then, Azazel says about like, Mary's death, “It wasn't about her. It was about you. It's always been about you.” And Sam looks shocked at this, even though he already literally suspected this in 1.21 “Salvation,” also written by Sera Gamble. Okay.

So Azazel's like, “Okay, since I'm feeling charitable, I'm gonna show you how- like, what happened the night that Mary died.” So they go to a vision of the childhood Lawrence home. And then this is where we get the iconic shot of Azazel slicing open his wrist, and then blood dripping down onto baby Sam, who looks so cute and sort of licks the blood off the corner of his mouth.

And Sam freaks out. He's like, "Does this mean I have..."

G: [dramatically] "Demon blood?" [laughs]

C: "I'm a whole new level of freak, Dean!" [laughs] So yeah. Poor Sam. Honestly, though, if I saw that I'd be like, "Eating like, a rare steak does not give me cow powers." [G laughs] Like,  whatever, Azazel's just weird.

G: I would have never connected the dots that that means I have demon blood in me.

C: Yeah, I would just be like, "Ew, why'd you do that?"

G: It went in and then out of my digestive system, and that's it. [C laughs]

C: For real. But yeah-

G: If he had like, a wound, and then the blood went into the wound, like, yeah, that makes sense.

C: Like, "Yeah, okay, that's like, in my veins a little bit. Sure. Maybe demon blood is potent enough that there would be traces of power left in there." But like, that is coming out in baby Sammy's next diaper.

G: [laughs] Yeah.

C: Yeah. Huh. So how does Sam feel right now? I guess he finally has a proper explanation for everything that's been going on.

G: Yeah.

C: Yeah. And I guess Dean's been spending all this time being like, "You can fight your destiny, like, you can make better choices, you don't have to become a killer," but I feel like- I guess there was no specific evidence that there was like, a biological change in Sam that was creating the powers or anything. Like, it could have been more of just a general destiny or Azazel's plan, Because, remember, Sam was saying, like, "I think maybe what he's doing is like, killing important people in our lives in order to drive us towards murder." So he thought it was more of a [both] nurture sort of sort of situation. But I think that Supernatural's take is that biology can very rarely be combated, like we see in “Heart”- still pisses me off so much! [G laughs] So I feel like, at least in the the mindset of Supernatural, this is Sam’s like, “Oh, there's no fixing me” moment.

G: Mm-hm.

C: Sorry, Sammy.

So Mary comes back. She sees the demon, and she says, “It's you!” Whoo!

G: And Sam goes, "She knows!" [laughs]

C: “She knew you?” So spicy,

And Azazel is about to kill Mary, but then he ends the vision because he's like, "You probably don't want to see this part." And Sam wakes up to the room. And Jake goes, "Sam. Ava's missing."

G: Yep, God, I'm so fucking sleepy! [C laughs] This is unimaginable.

-

G: So Sam and Jake, they go outside. They split up and look for Ava in different places, but like, as Sam leaves, we see Ava in the corner, and she goes inside the house again where she sees the only guy left behind, Andy. And Andy's like, "Oh, Ava, where have you been?" And Ava fucking destroys- not destroys. Ava swipes a line at the salt line so a demon can come in now, and she calls for a demon using her brain. It's pretty cool.

C: Yeah, it is cool.

G: It's pretty cool, honestly. And it's cool when the demon manifests beside her. And then she sics the demon onto Andy, Andy dies, and then she looks at Andy very straight face-

C: And then she smirks.

G: - and then smirks, and then her face changes as she screams.

C: Yeah, So hot of her.

G: You know what? For a moment, I was like. "Wait, is she like, conscious of what she's doing?" Like, I was like, fully fooled, man.

C: Yeah. What, you were like, "Oh my god, like, Azazel possessed her?"

G: Yeah! Exactly.

C: Yeah. No, sorry. She is just a stone cold killer.

G: Yeah. Sam hops in, and Ava is screaming and crying, screaming and crying. And Sam starts interrogating her on what happened and why there's a line on the salt and all that. And then Sam reveals that he is starting to figure out that Ava has unaccounted time, and she's the only one who could have been here longer than the others. Which doesn't make sense, because if Ava was like, "Oh, I've been missing for five months, but I only remember the last thirty minutes," like, what's to say that the others also don't feel that way, right? Like, they could say that like, "Oh, I was in Afghanistan last night, but I woke up here this morning," and, like-

C: It could have been five months.

G: It could have been five months ago. But whatever. This is Sam's logic. And then Sam is like, “What happened to you, Ava?" And Ava is like, "Ugh. Nothing happened to me." And then she wipes her eyes, and she flicks her fingers to dry them off. Agh, I love her. And she's like, "I had you going, though, didn't I?" Whoo!

C: Hii.

G: Hi, Ava!

C: Hello. Hi, Ava. How ya doin'? [laughs]

G: Yeah. Apparently, she's been here for a long time, and there's batches of people that show up. And she refers to them as children, which is interesting. Do you think this is like, the younger generation?

C: Oh, what, like, Azazel's sending like, 12-year-olds in first?

G: Yeah. [laughs] And Ava was like, "Well, this is very easy. These are 12-year-olds."

C: Maybe.

G: And then batches of three or four at a time. So they're plentiful right now, right? Because there's five of them. Anyway, she says that she killed them all, and that she's a undefeated, heavyweight champ

C: Hi. Yeah, she probably killed Lily first because death touch is- She needed to kill Lily before Lily found out it was a killing game because she'd be able to kill really easily.

G: Again, they're immune. [laughs]

C: Are they really?

G: Yeah!

C: Oh, right, ‘cause Andy says that he doesn't think that the control thing worked- yeah, it didn't work on Sam. Okay, but I still- are we sure? That sucks.

G: Yeah, pretty sure.

C: Wait, then Lily has literally nothing helpful.

G: Yeah. She's weak. She's depressed, she has a dead girlfriend... She's just like Sam for real. [laughs]

C: Yeah! She is.

G: So eventually, she says, like, “If you would just stop being so fucking anal, Sam Winchester, you can embrace our powers, too." And, like, "The learning curve is so fast. Like, in just a snap, you're able to do things you would never have imagined you could do." And all that. And she says she can control demons now.

C: Yeah. Which okay, so that implies that you can level up from like, where you started or whatever, right? Which I mean, I guess Sam does eventually level up because he can-

G: Kill demons.

C: Yeah, he can kill demons without-

G: Yeah, Max Miller leveled up, right?

C: Uh, Max? Do you mean Andy, or-?

G: No, Max.

C: Wait, what did he level up from?

G: Like, he leveled up from like, just from being able to control some stuff to being able to twirl a knife. Shit like that.

C: Oh.

G: He talked about it. Like, it just started out small. I guess Andy leveled up. But Sam is too too busy being repression boy [C laughs] and being like, "I'm evil. I'm so fucking evil."

C: "I can't use my powers because I'm evil." Yeah, poor Sam.

G: Yeah. And then Ava starts summoning a demon when Jake comes up from behind her, twists her neck, and she dies. RIP.

C: Yeah. Girlboss down.

I do want to know- like is there fic about Ava's five months?

G: That would be interesting.

C: Like, she's still- she's not a different person than the person that we knew before. Like, things just happened to her. I wonder at what point she found out about Brady's death, and I wonder if- you know, like, I feel like there's some people for like, after they die, then death is no longer that meaningful to you because the big death in your life has already happened.

G: Yeah.

C: I wonder if that was a factor in her killing people. I wonder, like, how resistant she was to killing people the first time Azazel came to her in a dream. Like, I don't know. And I wonder how she felt when Sam showed up, because, like, she like, got into the act of like, launching herself in his arms really fast. But maybe it was a surprise thing so that she could hide her expression because this is probably the first like, friend that she's had to kill, and like- Yeah, I wonder how she felt about that. I wonder if there was any regret or if she sort of blames Sam for like, getting her in the situation in the first place.

G: Uh-huh.

C: Yeah. Yeah, but she's dead. So we'll never know. [G laughs]

G: RIP.

C: Yeah. Also, everyone who ships Ava and Ruby are so sexy and Ruby should have totally been here during those- in fact, to me, Ruby is here during those five months, helping train Ava and helping her win the Hunger Games in the downtime between batches of children.

-

C: Alright, so outside, we see that Dean and Bobby have showed up. And they can't go further in the car, so they grab weapons and start walking. Meanwhile, back to Sam and Jake, Sam tells Jake like, "Hey, we can get out now, because all the demons in the woods, like, that was just Ava summoning them." So I guess she actually tried to kill Jake first, right? Like, that was the classroom girl.

G: Yeah, yeah.

C: Yeah. Okay. So the death touch doesn't work- okay, If the death touch doesn't work on fellow psychic kids. Maybe the super strength doesn't work on fellow psychic kids-

G: Ohh.

C: And that's why the fight went down like, pretty evenly?

G: Perhaps so, yeah.

C: Yeah, that's my explanation for-

G: But also, when he kicked Sam, when he punched Sam, that was a pretty lengthy flight that Sam took.

C: Yeah [laughs], Sam did fly over that fence.

G: Yeah.

C: Who knows? Consistent writing in my Supernatural? It's less likely than you think.

But as Sam's about to do that, Jake stops him, and he says, like, “Hey, listen, man. Like, I had a vision of that demon guy, and he said that only one of us can live, so honestly, it doesn't make sense for both of us to have to die. Like, I think I'm just gonna have to kill you so I can go and go after Azazel after that." Even though this man has no idea how to kill a demon, and the only thing that they know out there in the world that can kill a demon is the Colt. Like, honestly like, he's probably somewhat understandable, but, like- You know, I feel like if I had just met I had just met a demon, I wouldn't be like, "I'm sure I could one-punch man this guy to death." [laughs]

G: Couldn't it be that someone stays and then someone leaves? Like, "Only one of you can leave. The rest stays." [laughs]

C: Yeah.

G: Isn't that reasonable? Like, one of them leaves and then, like, let's say Sam leaves and then sucker-punches the demon, and then the demon dies. And then he comes back, and it's like, "Jake, we can finally live our happily ever after together! [C laughs] One body and one soul." [C laughing]

C: Yeah, no. Very, very true. Yeah. But I mean, I guess I get. Okay, Jake's logic- So Sam's like, "Well, why don't we just go hunt down the demon together, dude? Like, we don't have to have one of us die." But Jake says, like, “I don't trust that you won't turn on me.” And that's fair, because they just saw this Ava thing happening.

G: Yeah.

C: So I get like, being like, “I don't trust that there's anyone here who's not on the demon's side besides myself because I know myself.” Also because Sam knew so much beforehand, Jake might suspect that he was in a similar position to Ava where he's been here killing people for a while, you know?

G: Mm, especially because he knows so much.

C: Yeah, about the yellow-eyed demon and everything. Like, it's sus. And I mean, I feel like they definitely could have talked through this a little more rationally instead of upping the tension immediately by going to "Okay, sorry, I have to murder you now." But yeah, I mean, I get it. I get it. And if Jake was the main character of Supernatural, this would have been like considered a- I mean, this would have been like, basically like, Dean's kills in “Croatoan.” I feel like it could have been framed as similar to that. So yeah, it just depends on who you like more, and Supernatural likes Sam more right now.

Yeah, so, Sam goes like, "No, let's not do that." And he like, carefully puts his weapon down and says, like, “We shouldn't play into what the demon wants.” And I think this is the part that I found a bit character assassin-y for Jake. Because I feel he seems like a generally open and honest person, even if he's doing things that we don't like. Because he tricks Sam by seemingly putting his weapon down-

G: And attacking him.

C: So he's like, being ready to talk, and then he like, kicks Sam over a fence. [laughs]

G: Yeah.

C: Ah, so true. Yeah so then there's an ensuing brawl where Sam has the upper hand, like, eventually, it seems, which doesn't make sense.

G: Yeah, because he was like, about to kill Jake at the end of it.

C: Yeah. Yeah, like, Sam is winning, even though Jake should be able to one-punch man him.

G: At some point, I was like, "Is Jake playing dead right now? Is that what's happening?"

C: Oh, yeah.

G: Because he knows that Sam won't deal the final blow. So he's just there, like, "If I just lay down here, Sam is like a bear who will ignore me." [laughs]

C: Maybe. Maybe so. Yeah, okay, and also yeah, like you said, Jake's power didn't have to be super strength, and I don't like that it is super strength, because it just- Okay, well, it feels racist, I guess. Like, it's a stereotype that Black men are like, stronger or have more muscle mass and stuff. And I- yeah- I don't like- and Sera Gamble has a bad history of writing Black men because she originated Gordon, and in some ways, there are similarities here where it's like, seemingly reasonable but tactical guy who goes too extreme at the end or whatever-

G: Yeah.

C: - even if it's- even if it feels off for his character or something. So yeah, like, Miss Gamble. Please. Please, Miss Gamble. Stop it! [laughs]

Yeah, so Sam basically has Jake defeated almost, and he has this crowbar raised over him, ready to kill. And then he goes like, “No, I can't, because I'm a good guy.” And he simply walks away.

G: Yeah. And Dean comes in!

C: Yeah. Do you want to describe the iconic scene?

-

G: I mean, Dean comes in, and it's like, "Sam!" And then [laughs] Sam get stabbed in the literal back by Jake. And then Jake twists the knife, and Sam’s like, “Agh! Agh!” And then he falls down, and then Dean runs towards him and hugs him while Bobby runs after Jake. And then like, Dean is like there, like, "It's okay, it's okay. It's not even that bad." And then, he touches the wound and he sees that it is that bad, and he's like, "It's not that bad! It's not that bad." And then, Sam dies. [laughs] RIP.

C: Yeah, but also Dean says, like, "I'm gonna take care of you. I've got you. That's my job."

G: [laughing] I do not care.

C: Fine, you know what? Yeah. Whatever. [laughs] RIP.

G: [laughing] Who cares? RIP.

I mean, Dean is like, "I'm gonna to take care of you. That's my job," right? To-

C: Yeah, I mean I guess that matters only because Sam said earlier in the episode that like, "That's what I've been channeling with these psychic kids-"

G: "- but I don't believe it." And he's right. He's right to not believe it.

C: Yeah. Dean can't take care of him. And Dean shouldn't have to, either. But yeah. He can't. And Sam is dead,

And like, this whole time on like, Dean doing his whole like, crying over Sam dying thing, it's like, a bird's-eye shot that's zooming out further. But then, for the end of the episode, it goes back to like, an eye-level shot close-up of Dean, and then he yells like, [both] "Sam!" And that's where it ends. [laughs] And it's so funny. Like, you could have ended on the bird's-eye shot. Like, that choice to add the extra Sam really just kills the emotional aspect of the scene because it's just funny now.

G: Well, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think it was fine. Honestly- Okay. Thoughts for after the episode, what did you think about the episode, blah blah blah. Honestly, this episode was- I'm not sure. Maybe I'm just getting tired of season 2. Like, in my head, it's like, "Let's get it on, let's get it on." I mean, get it on as in "Let's fucking finish this shit." That's kind of the vibe that I have right now with season 2. 'Cause as we know, I didn't really enjoy the season that much. So it it kind of bleeds over for me in this episode, even though this episode is not that bad and is very action-packed.

C: Mm-hm.

G: Yeah. I mean, I did enjoy it while watching it. But, like, as we have said multiple times, there are episodes that are good for watching and not really that good for discussing. And then there are episodes that are bad for watching but [laughs] are absolutely hilarious to discuss. And this kind of falls in the good to watch, eh for discussion type of episode.

C: Yeah. Yeah. Also, I just-

G: It's not that good to watch, too, though. Like, the acting was incredibly funny. [laughs]

C: I remember during season 1 when like, you were like, crying every other episode?

G: I know!

C: And I like, I think I probably cried at least once. Like, I didn't cry during this episode, and I feel like they wrote this episode to have you cry.

G: A little bit, yeah.

C: So I feel like that's something. [laughs]

G: I feel like if I, a year ago, right, I watched this episode but I didn't do the every week thing, like I just watched, I just binged it, right? It would have pulled a more emotional punch out of me. But because we're dissecting these episodes, and we're peering behind the veil, you know, shit like that, because we kind of observed these episodes based on like, "What were they trying to do?" kind of situation, it lessens the emotional punch.

C: Yeah, that makes sense. Wait, can I just read out what it says in the Hug Wiki about this ending scene?

G: What?

C: So. Season 2 hugs. 2.21, "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part One. Ava Wilson and Sam." And then, "Dean and Sam," parentheses, "Sam is dead for most of the hug, however." [both laugh]

G: So true!

C: Yeah.

G: I love, too, that their first hug, too, is like, from "Home," and it's like, debatable-

C: They're like, "I don't know if it counts because Sam's being strangled." [laughs]

G: Sam has just been strangled by a lamp. Amazing.

C: Amazing. Yeah, my thoughts on the episode- the acting was bad. [laughs]

G: I wonder when we'll come back to the crying every other episode type of thing.

C: Cas. Cas.

G: I honestly, sincerely think it's season 4.

C: Yeah.

G: 'Cause not to- maybe we should discuss this in our season ender, but like, season  is a completely different season of Supernatural. It's unlike any other. It's like, a completely different show. And in a way, it's the closest to season one you can get in terms of just the difference between that season and the other seasons of the show. So I'm really looking forward to that. Whoo!

C: Whoo!

G: This is the only thing motivating me. Like, "After season 2, we'll get season 3, and after season 3, we'll get Castiel!"

C: Yeah. Okay, my general thoughts- yeah, like I said, acting bad. I mean, I feel like, every time Sam was like, "I miss Dean," I was like. "Why, though?" [laughs] And not just because I don't like Dean. Just- it felt very out of place every time he mentioned Dean, and it was, I feel like the only point was for us to like, care that Dean was gonna find Sam dead. They introduced a lot of new characters that I think are neat and would have liked to learn about more, but that didn't happen.

G: Yeah, unfortunately.

C: Yeah. It was fine. I think I just- I guess maybe I didn't like that it was like a survival game that didn't become a death game properly until later. Like, I feel like if you're gonna do a death game episode, it should just be death game from the beginning because that's a different genre than a survival game-

G: Yeah.

C: And there's like, morals and rules to play by that I feel like they just squeezed in at the very last minute.

G: Okay. Best Line/Worst Line..

C: Aw, geez. Um...

G: [laughing] I don't even remember any lines from this episode. I think my worst line is what Lily said. Like, her first line of dialogue. [C laughs] Wait. I'm gonna find it. Okay, here she is. So she goes, “So you go, ‘Simon says, “Give me your wallet,”' and they do? That's great. You have visions? That's great. I'd kill for something like that!" And then Sam’s like, “Lily. listen.” And she goes, “It's not okay! I touch people, [both] their hearts stop." [both laughing] "I can barely leave my house. My life's not exactly improved. So, screw you!" [both laughing] Literally, you know, she has the same vibes as that girl who was like, "Brodie, screw you!" [C laughing] What's her name, Tara Benchley?

C: Yeah, Tara Benchley.

G: From "Hollywood Babylon."

C: Yeah.

I think that Sam's "You son of a bitch" was so funny and out of place.

G: "Son of a bitch!" Oh, I have a best line.

C: Uh-huh.

G: "It's you." By Mary.

C: Ooh, yeah, that's spicy. Yeah, it's so quick, and it establishes so much.

G: So much, yeah.

C: Yeah, I agree.

G: What's your best line?

C: I don't have a best line. Like, I like Ava's whole reveal, but I don't know if there's a best line there. You know, okay, I'll just go with the, like, "Had you going, though, didn't I?"

G: Yeah.

C: Good for her.

G: And the acting in that scene, where again, I'll say it again, but she like, wipes her tears off with her fingers, and then flicks it off? I thought that was so cool.

C: Yeah.

G: Literally something to try out in the future, like, when I'm crying like, "Had you going, though, didn't I?" And I just takes my tears and flicks it off my finger. [C laughs]

C: So true.

G: Okay, IMDB.

C: I believe this is a liked season finale two-parter. So... 8.9?

G: 8.9. I'll go... I'll go 9.1. Okay, let's see... Ha! [laughs]

C: What?

G: I got it right, baby!

C: Nice!

G: 9.1. Let's see what everyone has to say.

This one says "Wowsers."

C: Ohh! Sorry, I didn't recognize Jake's actor when it happened, but he played Alec in Leverage.

G: Oh. I don't know what Leverage is.

C: It's like- I haven't watched it, but a lot of people I follow do. It's like a heist team show, and they're hired by people to like, heist stuff every episode. And most people seem to think that it's pretty well-written.

Ugh, okay, someone said about the last scene, "I'm a girl. It's okay to cry at Supernatural." [both laugh] I'm not a girl, and that's why I don't.

G: I'm literally also not a girl, and that's why I do not cry any more in Supernatural. That's part of the transition, right?

C: Yeah.

G: Like, you trans your gender, and then [laughing] you stop crying because of Supernatural.

C: [laughs] Yeah, exactly. This person also really likes the "bring me some pie" thing? Alright. Alright, girl.

G: This one is like- The review was from May 11, 2007, and it's an angry review because I think they think that Sam is permadead.

C: Oh my god! This is like, a historical primary source.

G: Yeah. "Five over ten. Now they've gone too far!" [both laugh] I love it.

Ooh, this one says "It's a timesink exposition dump." God, I miss the season 1 finale. Remember when it was that emotional? What the fuck.

C: Yeah.

G: And remember the beginning of season 2? Remember season 2, episodes 1? What the fuck was that episode? Just fun fact, back then, we were still releasing two episodes per week, right? And that one was like, two hours long. [laughing] So towards the end, I was realizing that it was gonna exceed two hours, so I just started cutting maniacally. And so like, if you listen to the end of that episode, it's just- you can hear the cuts, and you can hear the portion where I was like, "My best line is blah blah" with no explanation whatsoever [C laughs] because I cut the explanation out because I thought it was too long. And now we're just regularly releasing two-hour episodes like it's nothing

C: Yeah. I mean. we like to talk.

G: I mean, in our season summary. I guess we'll talk about our general thoughts of the season and all of that. So look out for that, yeah.

C: Yeah.

G: I think that's it for this episode of Busty Asian Beauties. Next week, we'll be discussing Season 2, Episode 22: "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part Two." Leave us a rating or a review wherever you get your podcasts.

C: Follow us on social media. We are on Twitter at twitter.com/BeautiesPodcast, and on Tumblr at bustyasianbeautiespod.tumblr.com. Our official tag is #BABPod, B-A-B-POD, and thank you to everyone who's donated to our Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/bustyasianbeautiespod. Also, please submit questions to our season 2 Q&A, pleek.

G: Pwease! Okay, you can email us any feedback, comments, inquiries, or questions at [email protected]. See you guys next time! [both] Bye!

[guitar music]

#transcript