#This whole scene is very good and does a lot to show us several important traits about wwx:

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Introvert adoption

[First] Prev <–-> Next

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #wei wuxian #wen ning #jiang cheng #(The actual name of this season 2 extra is 'First meeting with Wen Ning' but I ran out of space.) #I am obligated to try and wiggle in Wen Ning scenes whenever I can. Our baby boy needs his screentime to grow big and strong. #This whole scene is very good and does a lot to show us several important traits about wwx: #1) He has no hesitation to put his own face or life at risk to help someone (even if they have never met). #2) He does not care for what others say or think about him; he will do what he thinks is right. #And he is smart enough to think is is always right about his judgement. This will be a problem later. #I also think the silly energy in this scene is top notch. #Wen Ning is the wild chipmunk wwx managed to catch and wants to keep as a pet. #Jiang Cheng is gently easing this boy out of wwx's extrovert maw and saying 'put him back outside'. #Can you imagine being blindsided by the full force of wwx out of nowhere? Getting his support and then archery tips? #You're done. You've been caught in his snare and you aren't getting out.

[ineffableteeth]

So I was rewatching Good omens and I realized something.

Season 2 brings up Memory. A lot

Specifically Crowleys memory

In every episode something is said about it and I find this really interesting

I’m only going to bring up what I think are major, I want to note there are more instances than this. This is gonna be messy and a little disorganized since I’m just throwing my words on this post as I think of them and read the episode transcripts but I had to write it out.

In Episode 1 we see pre-fall Crowley and are introduced to our amnesiac archangel. This will be important later

We don’t see much of Crowleys memory loss in this episode but the biggest example I could find was the way Beelzebub had said Extreme Sanctions after Crowley misunderstood

It was as if they were expecting him to remember

In Episode 2 we get the first blatant hint of Crowleys memory loss

When Gabriel said he couldn’t remember, Crowley doesn’t say “Well try anyway”

He says “Yes you can.”

Crowley knew Gabriel could remember, he knew he could make himself remember. As if he knew it from experience.

Also in this episode we get Crowleys “I’m a demon, I lied.” As well as several other instances where he lies in this episode.

I also feel like his “Lonliness” is important to point out, because I feel like that goes much much deeper than “[I’m on] my side”

In Episode 3 we get Crowley and Gabriel’s Conversation about “Gravity”

Crowley knows what gravity is on a base level. But he says “I don’t remember” when asked why gravity exists and proceeds to give a very nondescript explanation

Now for Episode 4. This episode is actually what triggered me to start looking for these instances.

Because of Furfur

Near the end of the episode when Furfur enters the dressing room he mentions that him and Crowley were directly next to eachother during the Great War, as well as the fact Crowley used to jump on his back “Like a little monkey in a waistcoat”

And Crowley didn’t remember

All he remembered was going to war

Why does Furfur — A demon — remember but Crowley doesn’t?

In Episode 5 we get one of the most crucial ‘memory’ scenes imo

The aftermath of Crowley threatening Gabriel

When Gabriel tells Crowley “It hurts to remember, my head isn’t built for that” Crowley replies with “I know, do it anyway”

Again it sounds like Crowley is speaking from experience

The most important quote to me though is when Crowley says “I know, looking at where the furniture isn’t.”

Because after the fact he proceeds to ask Gabriel if he wants a hot chocolate

This wasn’t a sympathetic action. It was Empathetic.

He feels for Gabriel, he knows what it’s like to not know

Finally in Episode 6 we get context.

This is where the whole amnesiac archangel comes into play.

Before I get into that though I want to bring up Crowleys meeting with Saraquael. Because something interesting stood out to me while reading her voicelines. After Crowley asks “Do we know eachother?” Saraquael says “When you were an Angel” and pauses before she says the following voiceline “We worked together on the horsehead nebula”

Those were two different sentences. I’m definitely looking too far into this but to me it sounded like she knew he wouldn’t remember so she gave unnecessary context. This as well as the fact she didn’t respond when Crowley essentially said he didn’t remember her.

Back to my original point though, during this episode we finally learn how (and why) Gabriel lost his memories. Angels can remove their own memories as well as have their memories removed by other angels.

But clearly Furfur still has his memories, as well as Shax, Dagon, and Beelzebub

And anytime Crowley mentions “remembering” something it’s post-fall

Adding on Neil’s post about “Crowley not being a reliable narrator on his fall” as well as showing Crowley pre-fall in episode one leads me to believe there’s some foreshadowing in there and something happened to Crowleys memory.

But What?

Why doesn’t he remember?

What did they do to him?

#good omens #crowley #crowley good omens #good omens crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #crowphale #ineffable husbands #gay omens #aziraphale x crowley #good omens aziracrow #aziracrow good omens #crowphale good omens #good omens crowphale #aziraphale good omens #good omens aziraphale #crowley loves aziraphale #aziraphale loves crowley #good omens theory

[noneorother]

The grand unified theory of Good Omens S2 hangs on - you guessed it - a double meaning (and art). *Part 4*

Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3 l Part 4 l Part 5 l The End?

This is major spoilers for season 3 territory. You have been warned. I'm also going to split this into parts because wow, I have so many ✨Clues✨! Friends, we have arrived at the prestige! Metatron come at me bro, catch these hands. Oh wait you can't, you always have your hands in your pockets...

People smarter than me have talked all about Aziraphale's magician outfits on this show, so I won't steal their thunder. Suffice it to say, The Metatron is wearing a weirdly dark coat and tie over his whole outfit. Which gives him a very only a white floating head look, but also keeps in the theme of ✨I am a magician✨. He's here to perform a trick!

I also won't talk a lot about him in the coffee shop because that's been done already. If we have learned anything from part 3, analyzing the coffee to death is what we are supposed to be doing, because He is distracting everyone with a benign object that we can inspect. So while he's waving this coffee around in the shop going "SEE I KNOW HOW EARTH WORKS" he's also doing something fascinating: Checking to see who recognizes him.

Weirdly, even though Aziraphael saw him in season one, and the angels all work with him, no one does right away. EXCEPT for Saraquiel and Crowley, who just saw his face not in person, but in a video tape of sorts up in heaven at Gabriel's trial by farce. And then something funny happens. Saraquiel is scared shitless and pretends to have 'forgotten' like Michael, but Crowley admits loud and proud that he does. Then Uriel gives THE BIGGEST SIDEYE I have ever seen on screen to Michael, as in "You don't recognize our boss? I am very afraid for what that means."

As far as I can understand, this is the reason the Metatron is here : "Are we in the version of events where I lose?" And the answer The Metatron gets after the question is : We are in the version of events where I have severely fucked with Michael, sort of fucked with the other angels, I have fucked with Aziraphale, and Crowley has seen me already in heaven. Now we're missing a lot of information as to WHY this specific answer is good for The Metatron, and how much Saraquiel knows, but it seems like he interprets this as an "I haven't lost yet, and I can still do my trick".

So now here we are, at the most important part of the episode, in my (and Aziraphale's) opinion. THE double meaning.

This line is insane. On the surface we have meaning 1) The Metatron is scolding over-zealous angels for meddling in this affair, and over reaching with their power, especially threatening to use the book of life on people. He's the good guy! But under the surface we have meaning 2) I HAVE THE BOOK OF LIFE and I have been using it on everybody in this room. If I don't get my way this time around, I will edit you guys again, and you will have done the right thing. And with that admission, Aziraphale severely twigs and becomes very afraid. From then on his voice shakes and he babbles, and he has trouble looking the Metatron in the eye. I'm willing to bet that this is the moment Aziraphale realizes what The Metatron just admitted: I am creating a version of reality as we speak where I change you and Crowley (and everyone else) so that you lose to me. A terrified Aziraphael goes off with The Metatron to have a chin wag. Now here's the trick.

We've already established that Maggie and Nina are here as stage assistants to The Metatron, so they need time to work on Crowley alone. If they talk to A/C together, like they would have without The Metatron's appearing in the scene before, better communication might have happened between them. He made Aziraphale disappear from the scene!

This does NOT look like the face of someone getting good news. We never heard what the details were besides inviting Crowley to the job promotion, so who knows what he threatened him with, but

This looks like the face of someone caught in a trap. So we are now seeing the prestige! We don't need that coffee anymore, that cup is GONE BABY. Aziraphale has been removed from the Nina/Maggie confession like a dove, and placed in The Metatron's dark coat pocket. Now he just needs to make our angel reappear in the scene the assistants have prepared for him and let him fail, thus completing the trick (uhg I hate it. So cruel).

I'm going to turn the final 15 into it's own post because this is already very long. Let's skip it for now, but we know our lovebirds get separated by heaven, and Aziraphale leaves. The Metatron breathes a huge sigh of relief in the elevator as he thinks his trick has worked, and he has won.

So it's finished now, and there's seemingly no way out. Aziraphale now knows what The Metatron meant when he communicated "I am creating a version of reality as we speak where I change you and Crowley and everything else so that you lose to me."

BUT! ARE YOU READY FOR THIS SHIT? BECAUSE IT HIT ME LIKE LIQUID JET FUEL. And I think it hits Aziraphale right here, (when he makes the creepy face after being hit with a beam of light i.e. realization)

That means that in the original version of events before all the edits, Crowley & Aziraphale won.

------

If you've gotten this far, thanks so much for reading. I'd love to hear what you thought, or even reblog it with your ✨Clues✨! Want to read more about the timey wimey business that we're gonna see in season 3, and why all this changes the final 15? Well I have *part 5* coming in just a bit. Parts 5 and The End are here! Part 1 l Part 2 l Part 3 l Part 4 l Part 5 l The End?

#good omens meta #good omens season two #art director talks good omens #go meta #good omens 2 #go season 2 #go2 #go3 #good omens prime #good omens s2 #aziraphale and crowley #aziraphale x crowley #crowley and aziraphale

[byclairs]

Lucas's arc seemed like he deserved to be put in his place and recognize that he was wrong for believing he could hope for better? And they did not even focus in his character that much. Most people say Mike has a spectacular forced conformity storyline waiting for s5 when we had a forced conformity storyline for Lucas but it was so sloppily written. I thought the forced conformity narrative is suppposed to be written good in any case for poc too, not just for your white character that you send a message with.

it feels like the duffers just don’t care enough to convey a cohesive message for lucas’ arc and/or don’t know how because on the one hand they’ve acknowledged several times the racism he faces both on and outside the show so they can’t even play dumb and yet they then constantly downplay what he goes through and so you end up with scenes like the end of s4 where he basically learns to know his place or whatever like..lucas is not in same boat as someone like mike who’s mainly bullied for being a nerd. he’s ostracized in a way that mike and dustin will literally never understand but the show almost never makes any attempt to show how he deals with that yet it’s explicitly talked about in an official book from his perspective (and i know lucas on the line is not technically canon but it’s still tied to netflix/st and if they had someone in the writer’s room who could’ve incorporated even part of the type of material from the book into the show i think it would’ve done wonders to flesh out his story) like i’m sorry if you’re gonna acknowledge that his situation is different than the rest of the party’s then you need to put more care into following through with that because the whole “i thought i wanted to be like you—popular, normal” scene was just..it felt like they were insinuating his main reason for joining basketball was just to be cool when we know it’s a lot more complex than that; he was trying to protect not only himself but his friends too even though they don’t face the same shit he does. and possibly even enjoy something new in the process god forbid. and you would think that he was ditching his friends and other interests for the basketball team when that’s not what happened at all? like he never started acting aloof with them or ignoring them, he was still very much in hellfire and he never turned his back on them he even used his status on the team to lure them away from where eddie was hiding even though everyone was saying he killed chrissy and lucas didn’t know what was going on yet. he never let his desire to fit in turn him into someone unrecognizable who needed to be taught a lesson and that’s why it pisses me off so bad that he was made to feel this deep regret in the end as if he made some huge mistake that he learned from because in reality he’s never been anything short of a loyal friend or strayed from his morals. and to top it all off mike and dustin get off the hook without having reflect on how they hurt lucas because apparently you should never support your friends unless you fully understand and agree with the things they want 👍🏼 idk.

i also think his conflicting feelings about helping his (ex) girlfriend deal with her grief for her canonically racist brother who traumatized and literally almost killed him would’ve been really interesting and important to explore especially since that most likely relates to the reasons he started feeling like it was urgent to fit in more in the first place but. none of that because this boy’s feelings are never taken into account

i also think everyone should read all of this

#and as far as mike stans go well if everything revolves around him in s5 and the writing for every other character was shit they’d still #call st the greatest show ever written and be dead serious about it so that’s what i’ll say about that lmao #so yeah this is all just my thoughts but i’d say the audience’s reception of lucas is equally their fault for not extending him the same #sympathy and interest as other characters and the writers for refusing to put more time and care into his storylines #*their own fault #asks #my brain is so fried for real right now sorry if this is super annoying to read

[vickysaurus]

If you’ve finished watching Prehistoric Planet, caught the dino bug, and want to watch more, well, I’ve got recommendations for some fantastic older Mesozoic documentaries and shows! I’m only gonna list my faves, but if you have good ones to add, feel free to do so!

Walking With Dinosaurs (1999)

The classic, the one I grew up with. A six episode miniseries that spans the entire Mesozoic, from the Triassic to the Cretaceous. Each episode focuses on a specific location and usually has one specific animal that’s more or less the main character, while also showing off others as they are encountered. The science and effects are 23 years old by now, so don’t expect much fluff or great CGI, but they used what they had very well. It helps a lot that the close-up shots are done using incredibly charming animatronics rather than CGI. The gorgeous music and Kenneth Branagh’s narration add a ton more personality to everything. You will cry about an Ornithocheirus at the end of his journey. There were three special bonus episodes released over the next few years that have Nigel Marven (more on him later) time travelling to see the dinosaurs in person. There are also two sequel series: Walking With Beasts and Walking With Monsters. WWM explores the Paleozoic but went through it too fast and suffers from some ‘Awesomebro-yness’ in my opinion but there’s not much else to turn to if you wanna see the Paleozoic unfortunately. WWB explores the Cenozoic and is every bit as good as WWD. When I had my recovery day after my third covid vaccine I put on all three in chronological order and just marathoned them and the various little aches didn’t bother me all day as I watched the history of the Earth from the Cambrian to the Quaternary.

Prehistoric Park (2006)

Time-travelling Nigel Marven returns from the Walking With Dinosaurs specials to bring back extinct animals to the present. As you might guess, it’s a bit more on the fictional side, but all the animals are really well done and scientific, as are the ecosystems they travel back to. The modern day parts are much more about actually properly running a zoo, including things like enrichment, proper animal care, and cranky zookeepers with a heart of gold becoming Ornithomimus parents than Jurassic Park type scenarios. Nigel doesn’t just get dinosaurs; he goes to the Cenozoic several times and even takes a trip to the Carboniferous for its giant arthropods. Recent enough that feathers are starting to appear on some dinosaurs, particularly the adorable Microraptors. Nigel is an absolute menace and I don’t know who gave him access to a time portal but i’m glad they did. The recent game Prehistoric Kingdom was strongly inspired by this one, to the point of having Nigel voice the tutorials and trailers. Features a friendly herd of Titanosaurs with a disregard for fences causing more havoc than any carnivores ever could.

When Dinosaurs Roamed America (2001)

America’s answer to Walking With Dinosaurs. A single two-hour long documentary spanning the whole of Mesozoic America and really focussing on how the dinosaurs developed between its segments. The only time I ever remember seeing the Early Jurassic depicted, and the only one on this list to treat the end-Permian and end-Triassic extinctions and how important they were for dinosaur evolution. Though it does blame asteroids for them. Very good stuff, aside from a scene where Velociraptors continue eating their prey even as a forest fire sets them on fire. It’s very America-centric, but that’s no weakness. John Goodman makes for a surprisingly good narrator and throws in a sneaky Flintstones joke or two.

Dinosaur Revolution (2011)

This is a bit of an odd one, and it might or might not be your jam, but it certainly is mine. It is essentially a mashup between a dinosaur documentary and dinosaur Looney Tunes. Very silly slapstick segments focussing on specific dinosaurs with somewhat anthropomorphic behaviours get intercut with scientists explaining the latest of 2011 paleontology. The animation is a bit naff but the designs are really good and there’s a lot of feathers. It highlights behavioural traits like intelligence and parental care a lot. Two of its episodes cover pretty much the whole Mesozoic in no particular order, two episodes do Walking With Dinosaurs style covering of a single animal’s story in a single ecosystem. Shunosaurus eats mushrooms and has a bad trip. Lots of mammals go flying after getting thrown about. In a true Blackadder Goes Forth type pivot, the final episode of this very silly slapsticky show has the most haunting and tragic depiction of the K-Pg extinction I’ve ever seen.

#prehistoric planet #walking with dinosaurs #prehistoric park #when dinosaurs roamed america #dinosaur revolution #dinosaur documentaries #feel free to add more

[poisonpercy]

Watching episode 2, here’s my thoughts

Stalker Annabeth and the “You drool when you sleep.” My girl!!

“PETER JOHNSON IS HERE!” Lol

“Yeah, Grover, I heard him the first time.” Mr. D is so funny. I feel like he’s severely underrated in book canon

“But did you?” Sassy Percy my beloved

“Excuse me your highness.” Lmao. I love how Mr. D cringed at that

Nooo not Mr. D messing with Percy and making him like that he’s Percy’s father 💀💀 Honestly, that scene is hard to watch. It’s too embarrassing for me lmao

The way that Chiron was just standing in the doorway is funny 🧍‍♂️

“Oh, no, Mr. D is not your father.” “I could be.” “Yes, but are you?” “Why must you ruin everything?” Lol Chiron and Mr. D are an underrated comedic duo

Mr. D telling Grover not to overthink it is cute. Glad to see that Mr. D’s care for the satyrs is present in the show

I like how Annabeth showed Percy around camp in the book. Chiron showing Percy around is fine, but it was better with Annabeth

Camp looks cool. It doesn’t look anything like how I personally imagined it, but I like how they made chb. The cabins look cool. A lot cooler than I ever imagined them lmao

Chiron’s horse ass 💀

The blue jellybeans 🥺

Luke my beloathed

IS THAR JUNIPER????! Or just some random wood nymph

Mr. D and Chiron as besties. You can pry that from my cold dead hands

“I assume that they would get really squishy or something. Like an old banana, maybe.” Yes, Grover, that’s exactly what would happen if a human was crushed to death. Grover’s not even wrong. His delivery of the line is just cute and hilarious

Mr. D is my favorite character so far. His casting is perfect imo. No notes

I like how they’ve done Percy’s nightmares so far. It’s kinda cool how the nigh are scenes are just there without any explanation so you as a viewer are like ??? but the moment you see Percy jerk awake you’re like “oh, nightmare!”

Luke explaining demigod qualities to Percy instead of Annabeth?? Please stop stealing roles from my girl

Hearing Luke speak makes me want to scream. I know what you are, Luke 😠

Clarisse!!! I love her. Her actress is so pretty

Badass demigod in a wheelchair doing archery. Ok, I absolutely love that!

Percy sucks at archery. Love my loser son

Percy in welding gear is so cute. He also sucks at it but at least he looks adorable

“Is there a Greek god of disappointment? Maybe someone should as him if he’s missing a kid.” Oh, Percy. He’s so relatable. Love this little dude

“They like the smell of begging.” Lmao

Percy burning the blue jellybeans to talk to his mom 🥺🥺 Percy saying he thinks he’s made friends. I just know Luke’s betrayal is going to hurt

“Ignoring me is one thing, but he doesn’t get to ignore you…I’m going to make him see us both.” Momma’s boy 🩷🩷

Clarisse’s delivery in the bathroom scene is so good. Love her

That being said, the bathroom scene is not great. Very underwhelming

Annabeth just stalking Percy is hilarious

Leah is such a good Annabeth. Absolutely love how she portrays her. That’s my daughter!!

“She’s my little sister.” Then why did you betray her, Luke. Why did you ask her if she loved you in the 5th book, Luke 😒

NO WHY ARE THEY PRONOUNCING THALIA LIKE THAT?!

The weapons and armor look so fake to me

Annabeth calling Percy sunshine is so cute wtf

ANNABETH FIXING PERCY’S STRAP ON HIS ARMOR!!!

Annabeth’s invisibility cap is so funny. I love it

The swords are so tiny??

Percy just by himself in the woods during capture the flag is so funny. He’s just a baby boy

I am once again saying that I love Clarisse. She’s perfect

Percy is doing so good during his fight in capture the flag. Also Clarisse’s scream when Percy breaks her spear is hilarious.

“Were you here the whole time?” “Yes.” STOP THIS IS WHY I LOVE ANNABETH

“I’m sorry.” *pushes Percy into the lake* Love that

Claiming scene is boring. The book does it better

Also no hellhound? What’s up with that? That’s kind of important

“Who stole it?” “You did.” “What?!” PERCY BABY I’M SORRY BUT THEY’RE FRAMING YOU. MY BOY IS INNOCENT (except for all the atrocities)

“I am Sally Jackson’s son!” “Who’s Sally Jackson?” “She’s the one that cared enough to call herself my mother!” <- I love momma’s boy Percy

I kind of wish Percy figured out Sally was still alive and wasn’t told. I like how they handled Percy accepting the quest in the book better. It felt more authentic to Percy’s character

Ok, I like this episode a lot better than the first one. They’ve changed some things around that I think they should have kept, but otherwise the show is looking good. There was not enough Annabeth in this episode. I don’t know why they are taking away all her roles and giving them to other characters, and I don’t like it. Give me Percy and Annabeth bonding before the quest or give me death. I still feel like the show is not doing a good job of showing me why I should care about the characters and the plot, but I have hope that that changes

#pjo adaptation #percy jackson #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #skys post

[astronnova]

I dont really see the shadowplay as a lie. Wukong was constantly leaving, contantly abadoning, his subjects and macaque for more power. It might have started out as protection for them, but he admits himself he lost sight of that. Macaque abandoned wukong too dont get me wrong, but wukong did it several times. In jttw alone he leaves ffm for years, decades at a time.

Macaque has no right to hurt mk, and his reaction is very bad, but if wukong never hurt or wronged him, then their possible reconciliation just tastes bitter to me. It only works if both monkeys were in the wrong

wukong had left about two or three times pre journey i believe? training with subodhi, then to work as heaven's stable boy, and maybe something else? i can't remember right now (and im falling asleep at my desk LOL....)

yeah, he does admit he lost sight of it! that's very true, and that's important to note that his goal grew to be unclear (as a narrative parallel to azure's conflict during the season and the special). i'm putting emphasis on the fact that wukong says to macaque twice (once directly to him and the other by proxy) that his intentions were overall good.

yes, in the original book he returns to ffm occasionally but then, imporantly, has to return to the journey. if wukong were truly free to make his choice, he could have very much stayed at ffm during the first time he left the journeying group, but he. couldn't do that. the celestial realm needed him to help retrieve/deliver(?) the scriptures and tripitaka still had him trapped with the circlet. and also important to note that in the original jttw, macaque and wukong didn't know eachother.

lego monkie kid is a sequel to the original journey to the west, but it also makes it very clear that lego monkie kid's version of journey to the west is very different from the one we know. claiming some things as canon because it was in the original books (like wukong being macaque's killer) doesn't track with the version of jttw that the show is presenting to us. (not saying this as a way to undermine your point, but more as like a general point that i feel i need to mention).

so, tldr for all that up there that i keyboard vomited is that yeah wukong did leave ffm occasionally but he always returned to ffm & macaque. in shadowplay, macaque's abandonment is portrayed as the time when wukong went off to work for heaven.

in this scene, wukong is dressed in his royal attire (the phoenix cap and armor) while turning around and smirking while joining the figures up in the clouds which is a representation of the celestial realm.

interestingly wukong's also wearing the circlet in this! so this scene can be taken as two things:

wukong leaving to work for the celestial realm as the stable boy (where he canonicaly comes back to macaque and macaque is fine, this is in season 4)

wukong joining the journeying group.

if the second point is what's happening, then macaque fundamentally misunderstands wukong's agency in the journey, since the circlet (aka his punishment/torture leash) took a lot of wukong's own choice out of the matter of if he should go on the journey or not. wukong even wanted to go back to his home when he was freed but had to stick with the journey!

macaque has always been a biased narrator, and that's really interesting to me because he's a trauma dumper too. he constantly tells his version of events without considering another side.

now, im not saying that wukong is an innocent person in their whole *gestures vaguely* situation either, but i am saying that shadowplay is macaque's biased narration that we as the audience can recognize because we know what's actually happening with wukong. the shadowplay is meant to put more doubt into MK and make the emotional rift between him and wukong larger because of wukong's lack of communication skills and MK's easy to influence personality. it's not factually correct, but it gives more insight and helps create more conflict for our characters to face.

i agree! the reconciliation wouldn't be as good imo if wukong had never wronged macaque either. i'm also just saying that objectively wukong has more... concrete? i think thats the word? reasons for doing what he does while macaque's motivations usually revolve around self preservation. its a cool character dynamic (that i am obsessed with)

#critical . txt #🐒 critical watches the kid monkie show #✉ mailbox

[breadvidence]

'72 part II in detail, part 1. My overall feelings are still "hmmm", but now they are "hmmm" backed with line-by-line film analysis. I'd emphasize that this adaptation accomplishes a lot that's interesting and fresh, and you can dig in to it critically in a way that would collapse a film like '52 or '98. Ultimately it fails for me as a whole, but not without me being glad to have the pieces in hand that are good.

Julien Verdier plays the best Mabeuf, which—well—just because the competition isn't brisk doesn't mean you didn't win it, right? We open part II with a little speech of his that if I'm not mistaken (correct me if I'm wrong!) does not come from the Brick, but is a bit of freewheeling on the adaptation's part. Given the placement, it seems significant, and the temptation to boil it down into some straightforward political sentiment is strong, given the series' overall sense of politicalness. Eventually this man's degradation (his priceless books being made cheap by the necessity of their sale to literal goods) makes him a revolutionary of sorts, if a very wobbly and incoherent one—some counterpoint, a complication, maybe, to the fact that poverty in this story otherwise leads to crime? Not sure.

Thénardier continues to have far more status in '72 than in the Brick or other adaptations. The musical master of the house wishes. You see, the narrator takes us on a breakneck adaptation of III.VII: we open with III.VII.I "Il y a sous la construction sociale, cette merveille compliquée d'une masure—" and skip mid-breath to III.VII.II "—et il y aura, tant que l'ignorance ne sera pas dissipée, la grande caverne du mal," it is a charge through a very dense section of novel, and these are as far as I can be fucked to pick out all direct quotes until we get to the very end: "Avoir faim, avoir soif, c'est le point de départ; être—" Well, in the novel, Satan. In '72? "—Thénardier, c'est l'arrivée." The camera zooms in on Alain Mottet's best quivery stare; his beard is very bad. I am of several minds: on the one hand, if you don't know the original sentence culminates in Satan, you wouldn't think it's odd to find Thénardier, and it's perfectly possible the script writer was only thinking, I've got these badass lines but I really need my tv series to be a little more concrete than Hugolian, and Alain Mottet is more concrete than the Father of Lies. On the other hand: perhaps they're saying that the original text sees the outcome of all this to be the Catholic concept that is Satan, but they see it to be the concrete harmful/harmed individual human. Or, on a foot: '72 Thénardier is the fucking Devil. Whatever the case may be, in the Brick Thénardier does not even appear in III.VII—Hugo is talking about Patron Minette, and he's not a member. Given Thénardier's importance to this series, I don't mind this change at all.

After this really significant and interesting alteration to its source text '72 proceeds to decide Brujon is now a fifth main player in PM. lol, ok.

Nicole Jamet looks stoned off her gourd this entire series, with an expressive range from numbly dull to a ghastly blank smile. I hunted down clips of her in La piovra to see if this is her acting style overall, and while she's a little flat there as well, it's more in the line of being afraid to show a wrinkle and less whatever's happening in Les Misérables. Since it's paired with Georges Géret's Valiumjean I derive this is a directorial choice. It's our luck she only appears in, generously, 20 minutes of part II. I don't think I've ever wanted less Cosette in a LM adaptation, but she's such an unpleasant take on the character that I'd rather simply not.

I re-read IV.V.VI to see whether my harsh judgment of Nicole Jamet's performance in this scene was unfair—maybe Hugo also described Cosette as baked, I've been wrong before, and I won't blame an adaptation for fidelity. But, nah. Jamet more or less stands and stares, a little head shake here, a little lips parting there. In the novel, while we aren't given as much of Cosette's interiority as Marius' (thanks, Hugo) and we don't hear her voice at all as much (THANKS, Hugo), we see her first caught between two impulses: "Cosette, though ready to swoon, uttered no cry. She retreated slowly, for she felt herself attracted." and then a point of drama, "And she sank down as though on the point of death." I'm not saying you have to be howling and flailing your way through it, but c'mon, there's life to be found in this moment, and Jamet is a stiff. There is the issue that Marius monologues and we have zero idea in the novel of Cosette's actions during this time—a challenge, yes; one the film doesn't meet.

Now I'm being a petty bitch, but I don't like that they changed the exchange from "Vous m'aimez donc?" "Tais-toi! tu le sais!" to "Et vous, est-ce que vous m'aimez?" "Je t'aime." Please, let someone tell Marius "tais-toi". (To be clear, I think it unfair to expect an adaptation to completely follow the source text. but. y'know. If you're going to have this many direct quotes, maybe don't put in bland substitutions where your deeply invested viewership will notice them.)

Great adaptation of Gavroche and the mômes in this. The whole exchange around "monsieur, pourquoi vous avez pas un chat?" "j'en avais un, mais les souris l'ont mangé" kills me, it hits the pitch perfectly of the combined humor and horror of the situation.

In continued "Thénardier is the main character of '72" news, the scene in which he's saved from the top of the wall takes about four minutes—about a minute and a half more screentime than Marius and Cosette's first love confession. Not to get into the nitty-gritty of what this series cares about, or anything.

By the by, Claquesous rather than Montparnasse comes to fetch Gavroche, a small change that I suppose is irrelevant overall when the series doesn't have the time to draw the Montparnasse-as-future-Gavroche connection anyway, but which falls into this pattern '72 has of odd small alterations to Patron Minette.

Hermine Karagheuz's performance is uneven overall, in my opinion, but I could watch on a loop as she replies to Thénardier's "Faut bien qu'on vive, tout de même" with a raspy "Crevez". Having driven off the would-be thieves, she takes a few shuddering breaths, she collapses back against the gates with a gagging exhalation, she looks like she's going to be sick. Is it dramatic? Hell, yes. I'm into it.

We cut to Jamet, who cannot even fake weep.

I feel awkward that I've got nothing meaningful to say as we swing into revolution mode even though this is an essential pivot point in the series. Shrug emoji.

I have a very bad ear for French but one of the terms I can pick out reliably is now "mouchard". Thanks, Javert. I got nothin' deep to say still as he is uncovered at the barricade, but I did laugh when the revolutionaries steal his hat in the process of searching him. Did they think he was hiding something up there? Better check in his whiskers next.

This adaptation really suffers from the lack of Le Cabuc.

On my initial watch of this series the poetry recital wrecked my shit, here we have one man say "Do you remember our sweet life, when we were so young, we two, and we had in our hearts no other desire than to be well-dressed, and to be in love," another responds "We... We lived hidden away"———the combination of the stutter and the furtiveness, y'all, I did a double take, I knew fandom would've alerted me if there was explicit homosexuality in this, and still I had a moment when I thought I saw the ripples in a waving rainbow flag.

They pull directly from Hugo's aside about civil war in IV.XIII.III for Enjolras' speech—I'm not sure how often '72 actually puts narration into characters' mouths rather than into the narrator's, now that I think about it (would have to re-rewatch which isn't going to happen anytime soon). This is interesting to me; we have here a character who makes several speeches, all pertinent to the politics of revolution, and yet instead the show decides to have him recite—a passage which occurs in the inglorious context of Marius justifying to himself that he is fine to shed French blood when his father shed that of foreigners.

I'll come back for the final thirty minutes another time—that's enough for now.

#les misérables 1972 #les mis

[thursdayinspace]

twenty questions for fanfic writers

I was tagged by the amazing @oohnotvery, thank you!! <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

10, but I orphaned my old account several years ago when I left fandom for a bit. I don't know how many I had back then, over 100 for sure.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

37.724

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The X-Files. There's most likely going to be some Star Trek in there eventually, and I ventured into other realms in the past, but right now, exclusively The X-Files.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

under construction (Torchwood)

wild side (The X-Files)

in conclusion (The X-Files)

the ghost circle (Torchwood)

the physics of being alive (Torchwood)

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes. If I ever forget, I'm sorry! I love every comment and it's important to me to say thank you.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

held safely in the dark (Torchwood). It's not even all that angsty by that fandom's standards, I suppose.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Good question. I rarely ever write unhappy endings. Fanfic is my happy place. But I think the one I most enjoyed writing because there was NO angst at all was in conclusion (The X-Files).

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Ohhhh my god one time in a different fandom on my old AO3, somebody left a scathing, vitriolic comment on one of my fics, but obviously meant to do it anonymously -- only they forgot to log out first. By the time I read it they had deleted their entire account. That made the whole thing actually funny in context.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes, I do. What kind? Hmm. Mostly pretty plain and boring. It's all about the feeeeeelings.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I used to. Back in the good old livejournal days I loved a good crossover. I wrote a Stargate Atlantis/Firefly crossover once, that might have been the craziest.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I'm...not sure? I think so? But that would have been like 15 years ago, I'm not sure anymore whether that actually happened or not.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes!! And it's so much fun. I've had a few co-writers over the years. Once life is less crazy, I might be tempted to give it another shot.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Mulder and Scully. There's a reason my tag for them is "the ship of all time."

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

None, currently. ...I'm. Hold on. That can't be true. But I truly can't think of a single one. I can't remember the last time that happened. This doesn't happen. But no, not one.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. Because it's fun, and through years and years of practice. One of my first betas drilled "show, don't tell" into my head to the point where I feel it's permanently tattooed onto the backs of my eyelids and I see it every time I blink when I'm writing. And in my very specific case, that meant learning to make people use their words. BUT it has helped me getting rid of unnecessary exposition, which at the same time made me get a lot of practice with dialogue instead. (Let's ignore the fact that I literally just posted a fic that has almost no dialogue at all...)

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Action. I can't do it, I'm sorry. Whose hand goes where when? Does this guy need three arms to do what I just told him to? Wait, you were just over there, how did you get here suddenly? Anyone who can write action scenes has powerful magic and I envy you and please teach me.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I'm bilingual, so I could do that, I suppose? The need for it has never come up. Sounds fun though.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Stargate Atlantis!! I still miss that fandom. Ahh the livejournal nostalgia is strong tonight...

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

It's usually always the last one I posted, but I'm gonna say in conclusion. I'm very fond of that one.

Tagging...I don't know who has done this and who hasn't! @mr-iskender if you want to?

#this was fun!

[mokushiyami]

What are some of the big differences between the anime and manga of Revolutionary Girl Utena? I've heard several times that the manga is rather weak compared to the anime but it's hard to find anything about it online.

Where do i even start? Sometimes it doesn’t even feel like the same story but i might not remember all the details because it’s been a long time since i read the manga for the last time. Also this is only about the main series i’m not gonna get into after the revolution and adolescence.

-Nanami and Shiori are not characters in the manga. Shiori does appear in the side story though

- The black rose saga again is just a side story, it doesn’t hold the same importance

- Touga’s character. The manga is a lot more forgiving to him than the anime, largely because nanami is not there so we don’t get him emulating akio in relation to his own sister and he seems to be more “awake” than the others

- Juri’s character. I’m not gonna go into super details but in the manga she’s in love with Touga…

- IIRC Miki’s affections are not towards Anthy but towards Utena and he is, well he is worse in the manga imo

- Utena is not that different, save for the ending

- Anthy and Akio have a very different backstory, there are no swords of hatred

- There is no projection motif which in turn makes Dios and The Castle semi-real, a construction of Anthy’s power

- The student council goes up to the castle with Utena and Anthy, the other three get locked up in coffins to protect them but Touga is with them to the very end giving us the idea that Touga is the next to leave

- The “good dios” and “bad dios” are a bit more literal in the manga. As in Akio says they are two souls who share a body and Akio himself tried to kill the good Dios when he kept on helping others

- Utena sort of kills Akio? Like slashes him across the chest unites him with the “good dios” which makes him cease to exist.

- Anthy… well anthy has more outwards agency for one. Unfortunately that manifests in the way of her damning herself to the rose bride fate and not it being a result of… well everything else, the swords of hatred and everything. However it is very much implied that she is the only thing that keeps this whole show running, it is her power at the end of the day that keeps dios alive (anthy says dios gave her the power but also neither of these people are reliable narrators).

- The manga is a lot less revolutionary (ha ha) than the show. While in the show you learn that the concept of the prince is futile, manga utena maintains her belief in the prince until the very end, she tells anthy “i will end as your prince” and takes the place that dios was occupying so far

- Because Akio basically dies, there’s no satisfying scene of Anthy telling him she’s leaving. Instead we see that after the castle has collapsed, no one but Anthy and Touga remember Utena. Anthy now wears a boy’s uniform and is basically living in honor of Utena. As the castle was collapsing a rose ring falls to her and it calls her name. Anthy says she is going to search for Utena bc as long as she has the rose she knows she’s out there. We do get a panel of them reuniting so that’s cool i guess.

That’s all that i can remember atm. All in all, i’d say if you have watched the series and have a couple of hours to spare you can read it. It’s probably online somewhere, and it’s only like 6 or 7 chapters and like 700 pages

#rgu #revolutionary girl utena #anthy himemiya #utena tenjou

[person8789]

Breakdown of Twst’s opening movie

Basically how it’s foreshadowed things so far and theorizing what other things it might be foreshadowing

Source from YouTube: Twisted Wonderland Opening Movie by Night Raven

Spoilers for the entirety of the game released this far, including the newest update in chapter 6!

Ok, so first we start off with a flame engulfing (the symbol of) Heartslabuyl before a pan out to Crowley in the mirror chamber and the other dorm’s symbols, also engulfed in flames.

Now, the reason why Heartslabuyl is the first, or, most prominent dorm to be shown here, could be for several reasons.

1. It (the opening) could be trying to foreshadow to us that Heartslabuyl is the first dorm we’ll be visiting in terms of arcs.

2. It could also be trying to tell us that Heartslabuyl will continue to be prominent throughout the game, possibly because two of the main characters are from there. (Or possibly for a different reason…?)

3. I could be reading too much into it and it could just be because the characters we’ve met so far are all from Heartslabuyl lol

The reason why the symbols are all engulfed in flames? I’m not so sure on that one…

So, next we see another pan on Crowley with what looks like a small grin on his face (I might be wrong, it’s kinda hard to tell,) then a pan to him walking into the dark mirror, which is shining a bright white, engulfing the screen in which before panning to ravens flying in a cloud covered sky.

What could this possibly mean? Well, I’m not exactly sure, since I believe it to be foreshadowing something for Crowley, but I’ll try to take some jabs at it..

1. The ravens are most likely there because Crowley himself seems to represent Maleficent’s raven from Sleeping Beauty. Does this mean Crowley has some sort of special connection with Diasomnia or even Malleus specifically?

2. I don’t know why he could be grinning, but it DOES make him look suspicious as hell. I don’t necessarily want to say that he’s the mastermind behind everything, though, mostly because that seems wayy too obvious. I think Crowley may be a red haring, or maybe he’s doing things with some other goal in mind.

3. The mirror showing white? Yeah, no clue.

The next thing to happen is the pan over all of the Great Seven, a pan to Night Raven College, then the title card. (Only provided title card pic cause I couldn’t get good enough pics of the other stuff)

To be honest, I don’t really think there’s a whole lot to say about this part, just that the Great Seven are important to Night Raven and the game in general.

After that we dive right in with a pan of both Ace and Deuce in Heartslabuyl, in true anime fashion, with Cater and Trey playing cards in the background.

Obviously the reason for the focus on adeuce is because of the fact that their main characters. Characters at this point we’re already familiar with since they were focused on in the prologue as well.

When it comes to the the two playing cards, I’m not sure as to the reason for their inclusion here. It might just be to showcase more characters. Maybe it’s to establish them as a duo so that we associate one with the other? I’ve seen some people mention how it’s possible that these two are actually trying to read into each other, like analyze each other in this scene, but… idk about that. Just doesn’t seem very likely to me. Anyways, though, there is one other thing I want to mention here, but I’ll do that a bit later.

[there’s also a picture of Jade grinning that I wanted to include here, but the image limit won’t allow for it unfortunately]

Lastly (at least for this part), we get a pan of Jade and Floyd going through (what looks like) contract stuff in a seemingly closed Monstro Lounge. You can tell what bits and pieces of what the papers say in the second pic, but I don’t really feel the need to go through it since they seem like normal contracts from Azul.

There are however a few other things I want to note:

1. The pictures under the contracts in the second picture. There is no way in hell that is not young Azul. Why do they have pictures of young Azul?? Hell, how do they pictures of young Azul??? The only picture of him that supposedly exists is the one inside the underwater museum, so it is… extremely suspicious that they have other pictures of him. Holy shit I didn’t notice that until now..

2. The fact that Floyd is showing off a contract to Jade. They seem to be normal contracts, so why show one off specifically?

3. This actually has to do with the picture of Cater and Trey as well as these two. So, these four characters are four of the characters that have gotten the least amount of attention/focus in the story so far, so why are they the focus of the majority of the beginning of this opening cinematic? Are they more important than they seem? I ask this especially about the twins, as they got the entire Monstro Lounge segment to themselves.

Unfortunately, that was all I could fit into this part~

#source: youtube #twst #twisted wonderland #twst analysis #dire crowley #twst crowley #twst heartslabyul #ace trappola #twst ace #deuce spade #deuce twst #cater diamond #cater twst #trey clover #twst trey #floyd leech #twst floyd #jade leech #twst jade #azul ashengrotto #twst azul #twst spoilers #SPOILERS #twisted wonderland spoilers #twst player #adventures through twst #twst theory #twst thoughts #:) #feel free to add on your thoughts as long as you’re nice~

[maskspurpose]

dramatica act 1 brief summary crosspost

its an adaptation of journey to the west but dont worry too much about it.

wataru plays the human monk sanzo, hokuto plays the monkey goku, nagisa is the dragon gyokuryu, shu is the pig hakkai & natsume is the kappa gojo

this summary was written for a specific conversation so its missing a lot of details id add otherwise. i wanna do a proper one eventually, im just backing up this version for now LMAO

sanzo frees goku from 500 years in prison under a mountain. after some conviction he gets him to follow along on his mission which is the journey to the west (specifically india), this involves putting like a headband on goku that sanzo can use to inflict pain on him by reciting a sutra to control goku (who does not want to do this)

they convince the other characters who follow along much easier. its very important to me to note that natsume has a rap song and is a rapping kappa

the fight and defeat ginkaku and kinkaku (also played by shu and natsume, theres a LOT of costume changes)

essentially after a timeskip of several years, the journey nears its end. they are attacked by human bandits. sanzo tells the others explicitly not to kill any humans. goku accidentally kills a human & is essentially banished from their travelling group.

the group (minus goku) settles down to rest bc sanzo got injured, they split to scrounge for supplies. sanzo, now alone, is attacked by a shapeshifter pretending to be first goku, then, when goku eventually shows up, the others

goku rescues sanzo and is let into the group. um he has a whole song about how true freedom for him means that hes choosing to be shackled to sanzo.

THE ACTUAL BIG SPOILERS HAPPEN HERE:

the group reaches the border of india but gojo receives a vision of some sort of "fire related disaster"

the fire-related disaster turns out to be some sort of volcanic eruption followed by gyokuryu, in a different costume, now addressed as "gyumaou" by sanzo attacking the other.

sanzo claims gyumaou's family was slaughtered by goku, when he walked the path of evil, and he is now attempting to exact his revenge

gyumaou is very clearly gyokuryu, under mind control

reveal: sanzo is attempting to bring the journey to a premature end, after some fighting the reason for it is revealed as well: if everyone perishes on this journey, they will be forced into reincarnation to attempt to finish it once again due to the importance of their mission, with everyone but sanzo losing their memories. sanzo has done this a LOT of times.

the group manages to defeat sanzo by essentially causing a giant explosion, killing all of them, but goku gets one chance to talk to sanzo again, essentially convincing him that like... clinging to memories like this and being unable to let go is NOT good & that he wants to be able to keep his memories rather than relive the entire journey over and over again

their conversation ends, the blast catches all of them. scene end.

when the lights come back we are back in gokus prison in the mountain, mirroring the opening scene of the play with a few changes; goku manages to remember a few things sanzo told him during their journey and is. overall abit more enthusiastic than before abt starting this journey. and thats basically where it ends

#enstars /

[destielshippingnews]

Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 1x21 Salvation

The penultimate episode of Supernatural’s first series begins with a scene which had potential to be ominous and atmospheric, but unfortunately suffered a lack of build-up, context, or reason to care. Pastor Jim received one or two mentions throughout the whole of series one, but never appeared on screen before this episode and whom the viewer never even heard speaking to Dean or Sam on the phone. As such, his death is gruesome and unpleasant but falls flat on the viewer because there is no particular reason to care. He has not been especially important to either the story or the Winchesters in series one, nor has he even had a face until he first appears in the same scene Meg kills him. Meg is using him to get to the Winchesters, regardless of the fact Jim does not know where they are, but since the viewer has never seen him before nor seen him contribute to the Winchesters’ goals in any way, it is unclear why exactly she goes after him in particular.

In her own analysis of this episode, Paula R. Stiles adds the fact that Meg going after Pastor Jim now is strange. We have no idea how easy or hard it was for her to locate him, and so we are left wondering why she did not go after him months ago. We are also left wondering why Meg did not simply go straight after dean, Sam, and John: she has managed to get very close to them on several occasions in the past, so what is different this time? The show has neither told nor shown the viewer anything about Dean, Sam, or John using any protecting warding on the place they are staying, and we have no information on whether or not they are wearing any protective amulets to prevent tracking. So what is stopping Meg simply going straight after them? And if she can get to John’s friends so easily to slit their throats, why did she not simply do that to John a few months ago before he got his hands on the colt? This is another instance of Supernatural suffering first draft problems. ...Which would be a problem if I watched it for the plot, but as has been made abundantly clear by now, I do not.

That aside, one thing this episode and the following episode 1x22 Devil’s Trap succeed in is giving demons a presence which they later completely lack. Meg of course is heralded by the wind blowing through the church, causing the candles to flicker, and Azazel is preceded later on by radio interference, electrical problems, strong winds, and creepy paranormal activity in the baby’s room. Things like this should have been a greater part of Supernatural’s aesthetic. People with black contact lenses are not scary, but people with black contact lenses who make candles flicker and die, whose presence causes winds to blow, electrics to fail, and clocks to stop are pure horror material. This kind of presence suggests much which we cannot see, and what we cannot see is scarier than what we can.

I have said before that I do not care much for Meg 1.0, and this opening scene exemplifies a lot of what did not suit my personal tastes. She sounds far too laconic and the dialogue written for her is bland, resulting in her sounding like a bored human. She also has some rather cheesy lines late in the episode which might have been amusing in 2006 but ‘We’re going to rip the skin from your bones’ is both anatomically questionable (skin covers fat and muscle, and muscle covers bone) and yawn-inducing.

That said, I do not think Nicki Aycox is a bad actress at all. I think she did both a good job with what she was given, and gives a very strong performance in 1x22 Devil’s Trap as well as 4x02 Are You There, God? It’s Me, Dean Winchester. She just got given sucky material in this show. I was saddened to find out she never got a long-term acting job, and that she is fighting leukaemia now (August 2022).

One thing I did like about Meg 1.0 is her motivation, determination, and dedication to her family and their goal. I said as much in my review of 1x16 Shadow, and Paula R. Stiles drew a parallel between her and Dean, describing her as a mirror image of Dean fighting for the other side.

Noteworthy in the first scene is that, even though Pastor Jim is a man of the church, he does not invoke either the Abrahamic God nor Jesus nor any other figure from Abrahamic mythologies to help ward off Meg. He does not even refer to the church as a ‘House of God’, but rather calls it ‘hallowed ground’.

Noteworthy is also that John’s tight-lipped withholding of information is likely the reason Pastor Jim and Caleb died: Pastor Jim seemed completely taken unaware and unprepared, and we can assume the same was true for Caleb. Surely if John were half the hunter we are told he is, he would have known that demons would be willing to use his friends and acquaintances to get to him just as they would his sons, yet he told them nothing which could have helped them prepare and protect themselves. John, however, had not made contact with Jim for over a year. Well done, John.

The cold open ends with Jim dead and Meg 1.0 smirking a Bad Ass Baddie smirk, then the scene switches to Dean, Sam, and John who are still in Manning, Colorado where they fought the vampires in 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood. They have been doing a lot of research, planning, and talking about the demon based on the sheer amount of stuff plastered on the walls. Base don their conversation, however, part of it has been conducted by John alone, and that is the research into weather patterns and sulphur, i.e. demonic activity. John reveals to his sons that he picked up the demons’s trail a year ago based on signs like these, whereupon he abandoned Dean (and all his other contacts) without warning or any information which might have helped him or kept him safe. The trail John found was linked to houses burnt down on the day a newborn turned six months old, i.e. the same circumstances surrounding Mary’s death and thereby similar to Jess’s death.

Once more I will refer to Paula R. Stiles here: episode 4x03 In the Beginning… makes it clear that Azazel visited these houses ten years after one of the parents made a deal with him. Mary made a deal with him in 1974 in order to bring John back to life, and Azazel appeared in Sam’s bedroom in 1984, to give just one example. If we assume Azazel stuck with this mode of operation, he would have been making his latest round of deals in 1995 and 1996. John was a hunter while this was going on, and he missed it completely after tracking the demon for over a decade at that point. If we are supposed to think John’s an awesome hunter, the writers are doing a bad job. Bobby also missed it, as did Missouri Moseley, Caleb, and Pastor Jim. How did they all miss loads of houses across America (and it does seem to be exclusively America for some reason, not even Canada or Mexico) burning up like that, and the occasional reports of mothers on ceilings? Surely this is something John would have been keeping an eye out for, and that the others would have been helping him with.

John reveals that he found the same signs, e.g. strange weather, cattle mutilations, and whatever else, in Lawrence and Palo Alto before Mary and Jess’s deaths. Sam, as always, proceeds to make this All About Sam. Sure Sam has psychic powers, and his conversation with Max in 1x14 Nightmare made him aware of other psychic kids whose mother died in similar circumstances, but a person’s response to this should be ‘This is because somebody wants us for something’ rather than ‘This is because of me.’ If you remember my analysis of 1x19 Provenance, I brought up Sam’s bipolar depression and that sometimes he believes he is the scum of the Earth. I can accept that this is a contributing factor to his response here, but only part. The rest is the writers wanting Sam to be the main protagonist and to tell his story accompanied by Sam’s own understandable guilt and trauma, but also his self-centred understanding of events, his self-centred motivations, and his narcissism. Everything has to be About Sam, even when there are dozens if not hundreds of other people effected in the same way.

On the subject of bad writing, Dean, Sam, and John investigate the town of Salvation, Iowa. Signs of demonic activity have been surrounding the town for a few days, and they suspect Azazel will appear soon in a baby’s room on the night of its sixth month. Posing as policemen in order to get information from hospital staff, they try to find out which babies in the area are approaching their sixth month. They split up, one taking each of the three medical centres in the county, and Dean’s first line of dialogue in the scene is just god-awful writing. A good-looking nurse at reception asks Dean ‘ Is there anything I can do to help you?’ to which his response is ‘Oh God, yes’.

I am aware I am supposed to laugh at this, but am I to believe that a man experienced in posing as police officers, federal agents, and whatever else who is on a case trying to find the demon who killed his mum is going to blow his cover almost straight away by acting incredibly unprofessional and turning into a twelve year-old boy who has just found out girls are pretty? Pfft. Miss me with that, show. Who wrote this? checks notes Wait, Gamble and Tucker? That is such a Sera Gamble line.

Apropos unprofessional, the costuming department also failed in this scene. I am to believe that Dean, Sam, and John look like working class or underclass men to the rest of society, and that people spot this straight away. However, all three of them waltz into the medical centres in their everyday clothes which are supposed to look like poor men’s attire, and claim to be policemen looking for information. Is this something about American society which I do not understand?

Rather than finding useful information in a hospital or doctor’s clinic, their breakthrough comes in the form of Sam’s vision of a woman being killed like Mary was. This leads him to a woman in a nice middle-class area of town pushing a baby in a pram down the street. He deduces this woman to be Azazel’s next target after she tells him that her baby is almost six months old.

One thing I wondered while watching Sam’s vision is why the mothers in these situations always have white nighties on. I have a mother and I have never seen her wearing a white nightie.

Moving on, Sam tells Dean and John about the woman and how he found her, which leads John to try chewing his sons out for not telling him about Sam’s psychic powers earlier. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’I wrote ‘chewing his sons out’, but he directed this specifically at Dean, tasking him specifically with informing John of Sam’s visions and holding Dean specifically accountable for John not knowing.

This, of course, after John took off without notice or warning, and then refused to answer any of Dean’s calls, even when Dean was dying. I swear to God, the balls on John would be impressive if I did not want to murder him. Perhaps emboldened by calling John out on his bullcrap at the end of 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood, Dean takes John to task for this ‘order’, calling him out his hypocrisy in demanding Dena call him when John never once answered a call from Dean in the year he was missing. Dean even brings up the fact he was dying in 1x12 Faith and even then John left Dean’s call unanswered. The gall, the impudence, the sheer unmitigated audacity of the man. Once again, I was so proud of Dean for standing up for himself against John.

I was disappointed, however, that the writers gave this specific grievance so little space. This was an opportunity for him to lay into John as Sam did in 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood and rip him apart. John clearly did not care, as his face hardened the moment Dean called him out. The expression John wore said loud and clear ‘Oh look, the door mat’s talking, and it thinks I care’, and Dean should have picked up on this. John apologised to Dean, but what exactly John meant when he said ‘I’m sorry’ is anybody’s guess. Presumably he intended Dean to interpret this as remorse for leaving him to die. Many viewers may understand John’s final ‘I’m sorry’ after Dean reads his articles of accusation as John admitting failure, but I saw it as little more than a weasel move to end the discussion. The fact John embeds his ‘I’m sorry’ in the sentence ‘Although I’m not crazy about this new tone of yours…’ shows clearly he is not sorry. Dean brought up John’s abandonment of him, and John’s response it to try asserting dominance by essentially saying ‘You are my child and my servant, and you will talk to me with respect’.

He did not mean his ‘I’m sorry’, he just did not want not have that conversation with Dean then. Dean had shown that John’s control over him was failing. Abusive parents fear their abused children shaking off their control and one day hitting them back. Given a chance, Dean could easily have John saying ‘I’m sorry’ from the other side of his head. John even tries to reassert his dominance over Dean by talking to him like he is a child:

Sit on a cactus, John. Naked.

Alas, I had to content myself with Dean giving John a minor bitch-slap with his words, a minor bitch-slap which is unfortunately the most Dean ever gets to say straight to John’s face. It is a huge moment for Dean, and should have been a major step on his road to recovering from John’s abuse of him, but… alas.

By the way, Dean still has a gay man’s heart which he got in 1x12 Faith. I just thought it was worth repeating.

A phone call from Meg ends this discussion and changes the subject completely. The conversation involves Meg murdering Caleb and making John listen to him die after she cuts his throat, and then Meg threatening to do the same to all John’s other friends and contacts unless John meets her in Lincoln, Oregon at midnight. It is all very clichéd (and Crowley tries something similar on Dean and Sam in 8x22 Clip Show) and it is hard to care much because I do not know any of John’s friends or contacts, other than Missouri Moseley (and we all know what I think of her). Meg’s actions mean nothing because the people she is doing them to mean nothing to me: they are just more male characters introduced with the sole purpose of being killed. Finding out Meg killed Jim clearly got to John (and he was visibly upset about his death when he found out from Caleb earlier), so he cares, but I do not. I am supposed to see Meg as a scary threat, but the conversation ends with me thinking ‘Shut up, Meg.’

‘The last time I saw you, you were thrown out of a window’ was an amusing line, though.

John devises a stupid plan to try to trick Meg with a fake gun, and gets Dean and Sam to remain in Iowa to deal with Azazel. The dialogue in this scene is awkward and amateurish and functions to spell out the plan to inattentive viewers, and to answer necessary questions. It was so bad that I almost saw actors acting rather than characters in a show. I find Jared’s acting passable most of the time in the early years of the show, but Jensen’s almost always top-notch. As much as I bitch about John, Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a great job with what little screen time he has. In this last part of the (long) scene in the motel, though, even Jensen and Jeffrey felt like they were acting because the writing was so off.

Anyway, Sam spells out the subtext for the viewer that John wants Dean and Sam to kill the demon alone, to which John gives a weirdly melodramatic response (I expect Sera Gamble wrote this scene). ‘No Sam, I want us to stop losing people we love. I want you to go to school [by which I presume he means ‘university’], I want Dean to have a home. I want Mary alive.’ I of course had to pause the episode here because I want Dean to have a home is a hilarious line coming from John who did his best to keep Dean from having a home (e.g. 9x07 Bad Boys) and made him into a man who could never fit into normal society or have a normal home.

We are of course supposed to empathise with John here, as we were in 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood when he admitted some of his wrongdoing, but I do not care about John’s sadness over losing Mary any more. His obsession over his dead wife ruined his sons’ lives.

Dean procures a colt from an antique shop (once again doing the heavy lifting in the episode off-screen) and then urges John to get himself to safety if things go wrong (spoiler warning: things go wrong). Their interaction here seems almost like a normal father-son interaction, and even I wonder whether I have sometimes taken my readings of John’s treatment of Dean too far. After all, Dean clearly cares about John and wants him safe, and their conversation in this scene bears no trace of John’s abuse.

Then I remember 1x06 Skin, 1x12 Faith, 1x14 Nightmare, 1x18 Something Wicked, and all the evidence of John’s abuse seen in Dean’s behaviour and other characters’ comments of John’s treatment of his children. ‘Child abuse, really,’ in Toni Bevell’s words (somewhere in series 12, in the episode where the British Men of Letters were torturing Mary is my best guess). I experience a little of what it is like to have a relationship with an abuser when I remember this. Often the abuser seems completely normal, even charming, warm, and loving. Occasionally that almost makes us forget about the other side of the abuser. It could not have been that bad, after all, surely. ...Except it was, and the abuser’s charm is part of the abuse. It makes us question our own reality and doubt ourselves, even blame ourselves for things being what they are.

(Here is a fan video on this very subject. Spoilers up to and including 15x20.)

Returning to 1x21, John somehow manages to drive from Iowa to Oregon (a journey of roughly 2,000 miles, equivalent to travelling from the north of Norway to the south of Germany) by midnight by car. He turns the contents of a water tank into holy water , then goes to meet Meg and her ‘brother’, left unnamed in this episode but whom I have given the delightful moniker of The Loquacious Terminator. John indeed tries to fool them with the fake colt, but this plans fails when The Loquacious Terminator fires a round into Meg, failing to kill her. John tries to escape them, opening a water valve and spraying the passage behind him with holy water, impeding the demons’ chase of him. For some reason, he stops to gloat over the holy water hose working rather than using that time to get away: once more, why exactly does John have a reputation as a brilliant hunter? His trick with turning the water supply into holy water was crafty, but other than that he is pretty basic and stupid. His car’s tyres are slashed, and before he can manage to get away, The Loquacious Terminator pins him to a wall with telekinesis. John is trapped.

This runs parallel to and interspersed with Dean and Sam’s part of the story. As John is travelling to Oregon. His sons are staking out the middle-class house and family from earlier in the episode. Quite how nobody noticed two men who are (apparently) obviously poor sitting in a car watching a house on a residential street is anybody’s guess. They have fake IDs and can make up a story, but what is the story?

Anyway, stake it out they do, and Sam takes advantage of the opportunity to thank Dean for always having his back and being somebody Sam can rely on. This was indeed a touching, gratifying moment. ...Or it would have been had it come a few episodes ago accompanied with an apology and penitence for shooting Dean twice in 1x10 Asylum, letting him take the fall for murder and assault in 1x06 Skin, and all his other less-than-decent behaviour. It would also actually mean something if his gratitude were reflected in his treatment of Dean, but that very night Sam tries starting something with Dean. As things are, it feels like Sam forcing an awkward conversation to give an empty performance. In Dean’s words, ‘I don’t wanna hear that friggin speech, man’.

This discussion ends with eerie interference coming over the radio, along with the wind outside picking up and the electrics flickering. They deduce it is Azazel approaching (and what presence he has this early in the show) and sneak into the house. Quite why a middle class house did not have an alarm is also unanswered, but within seconds of entering the house, the father attacks Dean while the mother runs into the baby’s room.

Being the drama queen he is, Azazel does not simply snap her neck, but goes through the whole show of lifting her up the wall onto the ceiling. Funnily enough, the same happened to Jensen’s character Jason Teague in Smallville 4x08 Spell, but that ended up with the witch possessing Lana yeeting him out of a window where he would have died had Clark not saved him.

(Jason survived the meteor shower in 4x22, by the way, and is currently living his best life in a committed relationship with Lex Luthor who faked his death to be with him. I will not hear a word to the contrary.)

Returning to the show Jensen left Smallville for, Sam enters the baby’s room in time to stop Azazel killing the mother, but he hesitates a second too long and fails to shoot Azazel. This raises the question of why Sam hesitated for all of five seconds before shooting. I am aware he has a lot of emotional baggage regarding Azazel, but he is an experienced hunter at this point and should not be freezing up like that. I understand the plot needed it to happen, but ‘the plot needed it to happen’ is never a good reason for something to happen.

I understand the plot also needed there to be a clear trail for John to follow in order to lead him to Azazel, but it is far too convenient that Azazel always kills in the same way, leaving the aforementioned clear trail for John to follow. It is soon revealed in 2x05 Simon Says that there are plenty of psychic children whose mother Azazel did not kill, but he killed enough in the same way for John to notice. This is too convenient.

Based on events in this episodes, I can also deduce that Meg and Azazel are not in frequent contact, and she does not know his exact whereabouts, nor he his, though they are supposedly working together. Had they communicated more, they might have been able to work out that the Winchesters were perhaps onto their plan. The Winchesters were now back together and had the colt, so they would have had good reason to plan contingencies for in case the Winchesters found out where Azazel would be. It is true that John has not been able to find Azazel for twenty years, but things were clearly changing and the action was building towards something. If Meg can find John’s friends, she can work out how to track phone numbers, and could have told Azazel the Winchesters were in Salvation, Iowa.

This brings me onto a gripe with demons on this show; they are mostly stupid. The same becomes true of angels later in the show. Meg and Azazel are not stupid, but they are not as threatening or ominous as they could be if they worked together and used all the resources available to them.

Returning to the episode at hand, while Sam rushes upstairs to help the mum, Dean knocks the father out (remember what I have said several times about blows to the head: a blow hard enough to knock a person out is hard enough to cause brain damage or death) and takes him outside. After rushing upstairs to find Azazel gone and the mother panicking, Dean orders Sam to get the other out and rescues the baby from the cot in the nick of time.

Quite why Azazel chose to try burning the baby when he needs as many psychic children as he can get is also a mystery, but as I said before: demons in Supernatural are often stupid.

After Dean once again does the heavy lifting in the episode, rescuing both the father AND the baby, the family and brothers escape the house moments before the first floor explodes in a fireball. In the flames, a Jensen cardboard cut-out the silhouette of Azazel stands wreathed in flames, watching the boys outside in the garden.

Sam tries to get back inside in order to kill Azazel, but Dean stops him because it would be suicide. ‘I don’t care!’ Sam says. ‘I do!’ is Dean’s reply. It is all moot anyway, as Azazel vanishes.

The final scene of the episode begins in the motel room. Dean is frustrated because John is not answering his phone, all the while Emo King Sam mopes on his bed like a petulant teenager. ‘If you had just let me go in there…’ Not for the first time, I am tempted to reach through my screen and slap some sense into Sam. He failed the first time when he had the element of surprise, five seconds and a clear shot, so why on Earth does he think he could possibly succeed in killing Azazel in a burning building when Azazel knows he is coming? This is exactly the same narrow-minded, self-indulgent, whiny attitude he displayed so clearly at the beginning of the episode, and it is as repellent now as it was then. This would be forgivable if he were a teenager, but he is a twenty three year old man now. Intertwined with this is his self-destructive tendencies, a trait he shares with John, a result of their obsessed fixation on revenge at all costs. Dean himself draws this parallel in the very next episode.

Sam is focused wholly on the goal, that is killing Azazel. Everything which has to be sacrificed along the way is worthwhile, as long as Sam gets his revenge. This is exactly like John. Dean represents sanity and moderation in this exchange: he also wants revenge, but Sam’s life is more important to him than killing Azazel (however, Dean’s life is secondary to Sam’s due to John grooming Dean to be his brother’s keeper).

Interesting is the change in Sam’s character evident in this scene. The scene was undoubtedly intended as a mirror of the scene on the bridge in 1x01 Pilot when Sam’s says ‘Mom’s never coming back’ as a way of dismissing the idea of joining Dean to hunt monsters. Dean gets upset and says ‘Don’t talk about her like that’. The roles are almost reversed in this scene: while Dean is not being dismissive of anything, he is trying to call Sam off the hunt, whilst Sam brings up Mary and Jess’s deaths as justification for continuing.

‘No matter what we do, they’re gone, and they’re never coming back.’ Sam gets all melodramatic, grabs Dean and slams him against the wall (Dean, predictably, offering no resistance). ‘Don’t you say that, not you,’ Sam says, dialogue befitting a soap opera more than Supernatural.

Wanting to protect Sam from getting killed is of course only part of Dean’s motivation for wanting Sam to give up his suicide mission: John is missing in action, and all Dean has left is Sam. If Dean loses Sam, he loses his brother and his sole reason for existing. Furthermore, he will be alone with John if John is still alive, and completely alone if John is dead.

Dean has no hope of ever having a normal life or having anything other than hunting. Paula R. Stiles points out in her analysis of this episode that Dean believes that whatever happens soon, the only life he is comfortable with will end. John is the reason for Dean being a broken mess, and Sam does not like Dean, but dean has nobody else. If Azazel dies, he believes their mission will be over: Sam will return to university, and John will stop hunting. Dean will either have to continue the hunting life alone, or struggle and fail to fit into normal society… where he is a wanted murderer and (unbeknownst to him) FBI agents already know a lot about the Winchesters. If, however, they fail in their quest, they will probably die anyway. Whatever the outcome, Dean’s life is beginning to fall apart, and his mental breakdown which leads to the decision he makes in 2x22 All Hell Breaks Loose Part II begins here.

Apropos John, Sam is a John mirror in this scene in both his obsession and his treatment of Dean. Sam turns his frustration, disappointment, and anger on Dean as an outlet (see above RE: kicking the cat). He is upset that Dean will not support his self-destructive behaviour, and Dean does not fight back when Sam turns his anger on him. Dean does not respond in kind: he could snap Sam like a twig if he wanted, but in spite of rough treatment, chooses care, compassion, and emotional connection to try to help Sam see sense.

It has been a few analyses since I last did this, so please allow me to indulge myself: Jensen’s acting, Dear Reader! Dear Reader, Jensen’s acting! The roller-coaster of emotions Dean goes through is plain to see on his face: steely determination o keep a straight face, then his façade fails and the broken, suicidal man from 1x12 Faith is revealed. He does this so well – and the Widower Arc from 13x01-13x05 – that I worry about him sometimes. ‘Sometimes I feel like I’m barely holding it together, man’ is delivered in a cracking voice of somebody speaking through the onset of tears. It even takes him a while to recover after Sam backs off: once the mask has been removed, it is difficult to put it back on.

Dean’s vulnerability snaps Sam out of his mood, but this vulnerable part of Dean is one Sam always seems to forget exists. His treatment of Dean has not changed since he found out about John’s treatment of him in 1x18 Something Wicked, and through out the whole show Sam simply does not see past the two dimensional idea Sam has in his brain of who his brother is. Regardless, Sam backs off after Dean lets his vulnerability show. This brings the focus back to John, who has still not answered his phone.

Dean makes one last call to John at Sam’s behest, only to be met by Meg on the other end. ‘You boys really screwed up this time… You’re never going to see your father again.’

Cue end credits...

#Youtube #edvard's supernatural guide #spn meta #meta analysis #spn #spn 1x21 salvation #spn 1x21 #supernatural 1x21 #dean winchester #sam wincehster #john winchester #meg masters #yellow-eyed demon #s01e21 #spn s01e21

[cangrellesteponme]

13, 14, and 19 for the writing asks!

What feedback did you receive for your writing that stuck with you?

This is going to sound very stupid, but what haunts me is the importance of making your work readable.

How well or shittily you write doesn't matter if your work is an ugly wall of text that no one will read. I was taught about that in detail when I was around 11 (harsh teachers...), and then I was told how to do it a bit better when I was 13. As you know, I'm 20, so... yeah never forgetting that.

But yeah, learn from me (and my French teachers) and fix your format. Prescriptivism is inherently wrong and all but if you want to listen, or at least know the rules before you break them, it's easy.

A new idea is a new paragraph. Dialogue is a new paragraph. Use the right quotation marks for your language. Use the right dialogue format too. Free Indirect Speech or Thought is a new paragraph unless it actually fits into the idea you're developing (and italicise that shit, for the love of god, unless you're intentionally making it unclear). Use your tenses correctly (English literally has two. Just pick one and stick to it, or if you want to switch it up, do so only if it actually adds to your storytelling).

This is like, some basic Writing Format 101, and I have a lot more things to say (especially as someone who has corrected, proofread, and reviewed a fuckton of writing from their peers) but that would take hours.

What is something that you feel weird/uncomfortable writing about?

Plenty of things, actually.

We all know that I only write sex scenes if I'm paid to do it, so there's that. I may fit the "all aces write good smut" cliché but I am not willing, okay.

But also writing very emotional characters is out of my comfort zone. For Open The Door, I wrote from Virgil's (the literal embodiment of anxiety) POV and through the whole thing I was like "what does severe anxiety even feel like... i think i'm actually writing sensory overload there let me fix that... oh no that's PTSD... eh, that works" because I'm simply not a very anxious person. And I struggle with big emotions in general for the same reason - I'm just a very repressed rational bitch.

I also have a hard time writing empathy, comfort, and all those complex... social things. I'm not talking in terms of skill, or ability - I mean that I'm honestly just not having a great time with those things because it takes so much effort (but I balance it out with more fun stuff! like heartbreaking angst <3).

Show us the line you want readers to remember from your story.

I'll answer this for Staring Contest, obviously.

It has to be one of those two:

"Baldroy does not like many things about many people, but today he decides that he particularly hates the way Sebastian Michaelis looks at their young master."

"There’s something fragile and worn, a breath away from breaking, bubbling under the surface but ready to cool down in a second."

Obviously, Staring Contest has no dialogue (except one line from Ciel, because I simply couldn't be bothered to change it) and a very honest focaliser, which kind of restricted my ability to hide the truth in a bunch of lies so I had to work a lot with omissions.

With the first line, I think what I'm implying is obvious (even the second, more disturbing layer of it also is. i mean we've all read the manga. canon seb is a creep), and I want the reader to keep that in mind, for reasons similar to the second line. For the second one, I wanted it to be a sweet, memorable line with just a hint of carefully sprinkled pain.

For both of those, what you should remember is that appearances or suddenly developed feelings of paternal affection don't matter - this is still a dangerous demon whose sole intent is to get that dinner. The affection is fragile not only because it's new, but also because it can and will be crushed if needed. Both of those line highlight, in different ways, how fucked up this all is. But yeah it's all hidden in the fluffy dadbastian vibes.

#i always write long ass answers i'm so sorry lmao #takes me ages to get to the damn point #but yeah i hope those answers are satisfying :) #ota's ask answers

[autistic-lalli]

I posted 67 times in 2022

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36 posts reblogged (54%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

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I tagged 61 of my posts in 2022

Only 9% of my posts had no tags

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Longest Tag: 93 characters

#i'm just reblogging my own post because i'm having feelings about them and also about iceland

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

See the full post

36 notes - Posted October 3, 2022

#4

Hi! I've been really curious about a specific section of the first adventure. I'm not sure if it's been covered already, but do you remember the part where Lalli overextended himself and had to rest for several days? The crew was really worried about him but when Lalli woke up nobody paid him any mind. He even had a little dream sequence showing how subconsciously Lalli wanted them to show concern. Would you please analyze that, I think it would be really interesting and I'd super appreciate it! Thank you

Oh my sweet anon, I would love to analyze this scene for you. It’s very long, so the rest is under the cut.

I have no idea how long this post is going to be as I write this, so we’re going to just go through this whole sequence of action from the beginning. I'm also going to try something new of citing page numbers! Probably because I have a deep destructive craving to be in school again.

First of all, Lalli’s autism is pretty important to understanding his perspective here (it always is, but, you know.) So check out my 30daysofautisticlalli tag if you haven’t already.

Lalli scouts a route for the tank, then promptly goes to sleep in the front of the tank (at Tuuri’s insistence.) He’s been working all night, he just wants to go to sleep, and now Tuuri’s trying to talk to him and making him sleep where he’s not comfortable. And, oh! Now he's motion sick as well (374).

Then, he gets woken up to find out there was something wrong with his path he scouted (381). This is important for two reasons:

One, Lalli made a mistake.

Two, something changed unexpectedly.

On the first point, Lalli relies on his competence. (If you’re into enneagram, thinking of a 5w4 will be useful here.) Lalli is good at what he does. He is independent. When you’re good, you survive. When you’re independent, you don’t need people, and you don’t get hurt. When you’re good, you stay under the radar. Lalli and Onni feed into one another in this way—Onni wants Lalli to be good so that Lalli can be safe from the world, and Lalli wants to be good to at least keep Onni off his back, if not to impress him.

And here he is, facing down a mistake.

He’s tired. He’s cold. He’s failed. And now Tuuri is yelling at him, and everyone is staring (382).

(We’ll come back to this.)

The unexpected change also plays into this. Change, even expected change, can be difficult for autistic individuals. For me, it feels like a massive turning of a ship—a huge movement that takes a long time and a lot of effort. So when Lalli is faced with the snowdrift, it’s a huge shift in his mental direction. His day doesn’t consist of sleeping and occasionally clarifying directions. And now he has to figure out what he should expect.

But, before he can figure it out—

He’s tired. He’s cold. He’s failed. There’s been sudden change. And Tuuri is yelling at him while everyone stares.

Lalli has a meltdown/shutdown.

I explain it more in this post, so I won’t go into detail here.

The rest of the crew is mildly distressed, I would say, disappointed perhaps. Moderately inconvenienced. But this situation is not as upsetting to them as it is to Lalli.

Notably, Sigrun comments that “We just have to accept today as a failure” (383). And how does Lalli respond?

He speaks directly to Sigrun and says, “I don’t fail.” He recognized one word in Norwegian, and it was failure (384).

He doesn’t fail. He’s not done. He’s not done working. This isn’t the end.

Failure means putting people in danger. Failure means drawing extra attention. Failure means not being good enough.

Lalli doesn’t fail.

When Lalli decides to go out scouting again, Tuuri knows he’s putting himself in unnecessary danger. She snapped at him, but she backs off pretty quick as soon as he decides to go (384).

Sigrun fully supports him going. On the one hand, this seems like poor leadership on Sigrun’s part. Lalli has absolutely overworked himself, and pressing on in adverse weather on top of that doesn’t seem wise. On the other hand, I suspect that this is a testament to her trust in Lalli—she knows he knows how to do his job well. If he couldn’t do his job well, she expects him to say something.

We get Lalli’s flashback now. And this really solidifies why Lalli is so determined to not fail.

“We’re not allowed to make mistakes, not under any circumstances! Grandma made one mistake, and see where that got us.” (390)

Failure brings catastrophe.

Failure brings grief.

Failure kills people.

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53 notes - Posted March 14, 2022

#3

every friend group should have

a himbo

a mean bisexual

See the full post

61 notes - Posted October 4, 2022

#2

74 notes - Posted March 5, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

110 notes - Posted March 5, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #lighter year for posting #but boy did we have some slam dunks #miss live slug reaction that was a good time #long post

[lunapwrites]

Omg I'm dying with the titles!!! Can I have something from "waiting room"?

Hi hello yes friend! <3 I am fairly certain this is another bit from LTL, but let me check...

OH NO. Ohhhhh this is from a VERY OLD version of the bathtub scene (still Remus POV!), before I ended up reworking a bunch of things. I'll note what changed under a cut, but uh. Here is a small, inoffensive snippet of this one lol

-

"I can't believe you did this." Dora snorted, squirting different coloured dyes into several small bowls. They'd broken out the good china for this exercise, he'd noticed. "I absolutely can." Sirius sighed dramatically, and Remus was beginning to suspect he'd somehow switched consciousness with his fifth-year self. "I just fancied a change."  "Then paint some walls or something, you prat, not…" He trailed off, gesturing vaguely at Sirius' hair, which truly looked horrid. "Eugh, look, no offence, cariad, blond is not your colour." "You don't think it makes me look like my cousin? My dear old mother used to say we had the same cheekbones." He pursed his lips, tapping his cheek with his index finger. He did have lovely cheekbones, but that was rather beside the point. "Probably why she tried to marry me off to her, come to think of it." "Cissy had actual colour to her hair. This is… erm…" "White?" Dora supplied, grinning as though she weren't at least partially responsible. "Well, that's a word for it, isn’t it? Thank you Dora." Sirius scowled; the effect was rather ruined by how ridiculous he looked. Don't laugh, Lupin, you'll just get him all het up again. Whatever made him happy, right?

Right. "I’m never staying blond, ta very much." Dora winked at Remus, then grabbed Sirius' head firmly and turned him so he was looking straight down into his lap. "Too right you're not, now sit still so I can apply this."

-

OK, so if you want to see the changes...

This was the version where Remus ALSO sat down and let Dora dye his hair (he no longer does this.) Fun fact: this is what my PFP is from lol. I'm still a little sad I lost that bit, but. Oh well. It really wasn't that important.

The hearing never happened in this version, so Sirius was still trying to figure out a legal way to clear his name rather than Remus flinging himself at the situation like an angry cat.

The whole borderline alcoholism angle with Sirius was not addressed yet like it has been in LTL-canon, and the problem was going to be a lot worse. I decided to walk it back a little because he didn't really get the chance to full-on spiral down that particular well like he did in actual-canon.

This version takes place the same night the Weasley kids + Harry show up at Grimmauld Place. I pushed it up earlier in the month instead because it was WAY too messy and honestly I didn't want to put a bunch of anxious teens in the same house as a couple of inebriated adults. As I was writing it out, the discomfort overrode any comic value.

Sirius got to be The Adult In The Room, which... I ended up reworking as a concept into some better/healthier moments, since it's important for his character arc.

The discussion between Remus and Dora re: his past addiction issues was originally going to happen here, and Remus was also going to mentally draw parallels between his past and Sirius' current struggles. I felt it was a little too on the nose.

I had been laying the groundwork for actual UST between Dora and Sirius here, which no longer strictly lines up with where they're headed in LTL.

There was a photograph of Remus with green hair. I will be working this into LTL canon SOMEWHERE, or so help me XD

Remus took paint thinner to Walburga's portrait, and Dora drew a dick on her with a sharpie which she couldn't scream about, owing to no longer having a mouth. While the scene is hilarious, I could not in good conscience keep this as is, and the writing in the dialogue is so genuinely terrible I want to cry lol. (Not like the words they're saying are bad, just I was still in the "need to write the way they sound" mode, and it just isn't a good look, it's going back in the hole forever.)

There's probably some other changes here but yeah, just generally tone and trajectory and pacing and plot alllllll changed from where this was at initially lol.

Thank you for the ask!!

#ask game #responses #giant massive plot rework #deleted scene #the quarantine mood chapter that never was #sirius black #remus lupin #nymphadora tonks #ltl #ot3 #hp #writing #my writing #old writing #definitely didn't ninja-edit so the formatting didn't get confusing.