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deans-haunted-baby · 3 years

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Okay I see there are those who are confused as to why most of us are pissed about 15x19 I will gladly explain in depth:

Let’s start off with our boys Adam Milligan & Michael. These characters have not been seen for 10 fucking years. During that time there were Adam stans like myself campaigning like mad to have him and the infamous archangel return for some much needed closure. We had to content ourselves with headcanons, fanfictions and metas based on what we briefly knew of Adam and Michael as people while they unfairly sat in Hell. You might have seen the “Adam’s Still in Hell” memes that circulated. WE WAITED OVER A DECADE FOR THIS. And finally SPN answers our prayers and returns these boys back into the story for the final season. None of us anticipated what their arc and dynamic would look like. Before we could only imagine who these two characters were/are after having been trapped in a cage so long; what their personalities would be like and if they’d be antagonistic to TFW. 15x08 was a surprise because not only were Adam and Michael likable right out of the gate but the writing for them and their dynamic was damn near flawless! And Jake fucking stole the show he killed it as these two. It’s a crime they were not featured in more episodes because the chemistry between these characters is amazing and they’re played by the same dude.

We were given so much background into both Adam and Michael’s psyches in just a short period of time. Their motivations, interests and how they viewed those that wronged them (like the Winchesters); how Hell affected/changed them both and how they viewed their families. We got to see them banter, cooperate with one another and most importantly their different personalities. With Jake Abel appearing in only a handful of SPN episodes, he still fleshed out Michael and Adam beautifully; giving them layers and complexities that most side-characters (who’ve appeared more times than they have) didn’t. The way Jake played Adam’s anger and resentment towards his brothers was brilliant because it’s more under the surface compared to his angsty teenage self in 5x18. He’d become somewhat restrained, laid-back, gentler and wiser which works because Adam displays traits similar to Sam and Dean. He’s kinder and has a sense of humor but none of that distracts from rational thought as he’s quick to analyze and dissect situations. Man, he would’ve made a great hunter/Men of Letters recruit. We know right off the bat Adam’s pissed at his brothers for abandoning him in a thousand-year-prison-sentence and didn’t lift a finger BUT that ironically doesn’t compromise his willingness to help them unlike his past self in 5x18. Jake gets the point across with this character without saying much and that’s what made him so compelling to watch in this episode.

Now Michael was even more of a mystery onion since he wasn’t onscreen as much as Adam had been in past episodes so Jake got to really build on top of this character. Going from the uptight, cold-blooded merciless celestial warrior/dutiful son of God we saw in 5x22 to someone whom despite his arrogance and regal princely demeanor was very human, intelligent, fair, mindful and compassionate. He trusted Adam and respected his opinions even if he didn’t agree 100%. Whereas most angels take over the vessel completely from their original occupant; Michael chooses to share his vessel with Adam as a mutual agreement which says a lot about who he is. He’s fascinated with humanity and wanted to explore it instead of returning to his throne in the clouds. We know that Michael was created specifically to be Humanity’s protector and guardian of Heaven and Earth so these quirks he’d demonstrated in 15x08 aren’t too far off. He holds a lot of pain inside from his abandonment issues with his father whom he loves to a fault and grief over the death of his brothers. On the surface there’s very much an abused child syndrome thing going on with him though he masks it with a domineering presence. And above all this we saw that he was capable of forgiveness. Whether or not Michael always had these traits inside to begin with, its very evident that his friendship with Adam influenced the person he became post-Hell. And that was someone who, like Castiel, chose to rebel for the sake of free will by aligning himself with the Winchesters after witnessing the evil his father had committed. He actually cared about saving the world. This is what we call character development.

What does 15x19 do? It shits all over that. We don’t get to see Adam and Michael’s dynamic at all; and this was perhaps one of (if not the first) most healthy portrayal of a relationship between an angel and its original vessel occupant in the history of Supernatural. Adam is just killed off-screen Thanos style without so much as one last word and Michael barely reacts like he gives a crap. It was just established to us in 15x08 that he’d developed an emotional bond with Adam through years of inhabiting the same body. He protected Adam while they were trapped together in Hell. They were each other’s only friend and source of comfort. They’d developed a certain co-dependency on each other while respecting one another’s space. They’d both made peace with their joint situation. All they had was each other and the writing in 15x19 basically tells us their relationship meant absolutely NOTHING to Michael based on his OOC actions in this episode. He shows up much darker and shadier now that Adam is gone and its like all those years of friendship, things like that independence, newfound strength and humility he’d gained from living with a human for so long are erased. Michael just reverts back to Chuck’s 5x22 bitchboy persona in the most ridiculous 180 shift I’ve ever seen in my whole damn life. And all because his little brother called him mean names. Pitiful. Just when he lectures Lucifer about standing up for what’s right; he betrays his own words, his allies and the rest of humanity in T-minus 2 minutes. That is total character assassination. Nothing about this motivation makes any sense.

There’s no build up to it, no foreshadowing in 15x08 or throughout 15x19 until they get to the lake. He’s completely deconstructed as a character in this episode and rendered weak. It’s like 15x08 never happened. Stripped of all his development for lousy shock value. Instead utilizing all of what he’d learned through Adam and sticking it to Lucifer by proving he could be more than what Chuck tried to mold him into; Michael becomes just another NPC in the story forfeiting the hero he was. And his reasons for siding with Chuck are never specified. Was it about about saving Adam? Was it about proving something to Lucifer (whom he’d already killed in anti-climatic fashion)? Was it all an act that he was in on with the Winchesters; cause there’s absolutely NO FUCKING WAY they could’ve predicted he’d flip on them like that for their magical plan to work. Not after everything Chuck’s done, killing Adam and Jack and leaving Michael to rot in Hell for eternity. And why would he suddenly go along with destroying the Earth when defeating Chuck would probably get Adam back (if that was his goal) which IT DID not to mention its his sworn duty to freaking protect humanity, hello? So his betrayal meant jack shit in the end as it got him killed by his fucking dad!! He’s brought back into the show only to be ruined forever and killed off in the stupidest fashion.

Moving on.

Jack Kline & Castiel. This iron-clad relationship has been in development for 4 in 1/2 years since before Jack was even born. And next to Adam & Michael its the other most healthy relationship on the show. Castiel, a million year old celestial being, spent the first 9 years of his arc on Supernatural following around the Winchesters, being torn between his loyalty to them and to Heaven. He rebelled when he was supposed to be a straight-by-the-book warrior of God. And he defied every rule in the process even when the odds were stacked against him. There was an endless rinse and repeat cycle of love, loss, betrayal and redemption when it came to his relationship with Sam and Dean. It made his character complex, interesting and layered but it still didn’t give him an arc that was his own. Castiel started out moreso being written as just the Winchester’s angel BFF/side-kick. Until Lucifer got Kelly Kline pregnant in 12x08 then things really took off. Before this, Castiel was a lost soul. His faith was broken, he was depressed, lonely, battered and rundown from years of being conflicted over the other angels and Sam & Dean. He felt he’d lost a sense of self and meaning in his life. And didn’t have a mission. Once he turned on Heaven’s orders, Castiel was a rebel angel without a cause so to speak. But like I said this changes the moment he meets Kelly.

Originally Castiel was suppose to kill Kelly in 12x19 because she was carrying the child of the devil and Nephilim are considered forbidden abominations. Told that if Lucifer’s kid was born he could unleash even more evil into the world. But instead of doing what he thought he should, Castiel decides to runaway with her. Choosing to protect her from all threats (Lucifer, demons, other angels, princes of Hell); this especially included the Winchesters. During this short time-frame the angel develops a strong, emotional bond with Kelly and her unborn son that stretches all the way to the S12 finale; to the point where it actually gave him a power-boost. From the womb, Jack appoints Castiel to be his father and protector and he’s given a glimpse into the child’s destiny that he’ll bring paradise to the world. A prophecy that the writers establish head on. This is an unusual circumstance because right here is where Castiel’s solo arc apart from the Sam & Dean takes shape. The journey of becoming a first time parent and guardian. Its a new kind of independence that for the first time has nothing to do with his friends or his family members/colleagues in the sky. Its his own personal mission that he willingly accepts, the second he connects with Jack from inside Kelly. Castiel immediately falls in love with him, before they even see each other; and adopts the boy devoting himself to keeping him safe. Making a promise to Kelly that would later become a vital plot-point in the seasons to come.

Castiel literally risks everything (Heaven and Earth) to ensure Jack’s birth and ends up dead by 12x23′s startling conclusion. Leaving the newborn infant Nephilim alone in the care of the Winchesters going into season 13; scared, confused and aged into a seemingly 18 year old boy for his own protection. And Alexander Calvert who is a fantastic addition to the cast really brings something wonderful to this role; he’s like a breath of fresh air and a bright light in the middle of a dark room. Jack’s naïve, innocent and curious about his surroundings but also as Castiel once put it “remarkably intuitive”. Right when he’s introduced his arc is intentionally paralleled with Castiel’s. Their alien-fish-out-of-water beginning is practically identical as is their adorable stoic facial expressions. Like father like son. And this helps because while the angel is currently dead in the beginning of season 13, there’s an empty void he’s left behind. So Jack is kind of his temporary stand-in. Odd enough this type of switcharoo would’ve been considered very controversial but it’s handled quite well. Alex is so likable and charming I almost wish Supernatural had introduced him sooner. I mean I really thought I was looking at Castiel’s actual mini-me and not the son of Satan. But I digress Jack’s story in the first half of this season is pretty much about discovery and reuniting with Castiel. He’s a baby so everything is new to him but he’s also one of the most powerful beings in the universe destined for greatness which makes the Winchesters very nervous.

Jack remembers choosing Castiel as his dad which is why he already feels strongly connected to him. Its a bond so powerful that it actually resurrects Castiel out of the Empty the first time. Something Chuck himself was unable to do (that was until the mess that is 15x19). When they’re finally reunited the payoff comes so naturally. Misha and Alex have such a phenomenal onscreen chemistry starting with that first hug; they really play off one another so well that it doesn’t feel like two angels interacting but a genuine father and son duo. So much of what makes Jack and Castiel’s relationship so relatable, deep and endearing is because of what the actors bring to it. But they’re not just a fascinating relationship, they’re compelling on their own too. Both trying to find their way in the world and within the Winchesters’ lives. Death is no stranger to either of them (tragic being that Jack is only a toddler). They’ve each experienced their own personal pain, traumas, life lessons, mistakes and decisions. The biggest for Castiel would be his deal with the Empty to save Jack in 14x08. While for Jack it was the consequences of said deal that would lose his soul causing him to accidently kill Sam and Dean’s mom in 14x18 as a result (something that Jack struggles with immensely to the brink of depression from so much guilt and regret that he’d rather die). Repercussions that would follow into the shows final season. What’s interesting about this deal though is that Castiel made it on parental instinct alone not as a promise to Kelly. He chose to sacrifice himself for the sake of his son as a selfless act of love and kept it a secret from Sam & Dean until his death in 15x18. That’s the extent how much this child meant to him. The other great thing about their family dynamic is that it parallels nicely with the Winchesters. Castiel and Jack share this unconditional love that can never be broken. its even greater than their ties to the Winchesters themselves just as Sam & Dean’s love for each other is greater than any of their other relationships. They would do anything for each other. Castiel would go to the ends of the earth for the little nougat baby because that’s his son.

Each time these characters were faced with danger or died, Castiel and Jack were overcome with extreme devastation and distress. That said its not just pain that binds these two its happiness. Jack is the best thing that ever happened to Castiel. Literally becoming a father to that child saved him. It brought him back to life, restored his faith and gave him a sense of self-worth and hope he’d long since abandoned. And for Jack, Castiel is the best dad he’ll ever have! He gave this baby comfort, wisdom, nurturing, strength. Was always there when he needed him whether it was to talk or to have his back. No other person in Jack’s life has ever made such an important impact nor made him feel more safe and loved than Castiel. Even when Jack had done such a horrible thing to Mary alienating himself from his family; it was Castiel’s unyielding devotion to Jack that ended up being his salvation. This was huge because once again he’d chosen over the Winchesters proving that no matter what (whether it be the world ending) his son comes first. So when Castiel’s pact with the Empty finally comes due in 15x18 you’d think it’d have an earth-shattering affect on Jack in 15x19. I mean for the first bit it does...until he becomes God. Then its like to hell with that relationship. Castiel is a complete afterthought to Jack and the rest of TFW in this episode. JACK DOESN’T EVEN GET TO GRIEVE HIM PROPERLY. And he just lost his dad because of a deal he’d made a year ago for him. A DEAL JACK HAS BEEN FUCKING DREADING WHILE HE WAS SOULLESS MIND YOU. And when he finally has the power to bring him back, he doesn’t? Jack just walks around with a conceited smirk on his face, bids Sam and Dean adieu and fucks off. I mean who gives a shit right, its only your dad that you love more than anything. This was extremely OOC given that time in 14x14 Jack nearly lost his shit when Castiel got infected with gorgon poison; the anti-venom wasn’t working so Jack resorts to using his powers putting his soul at risk.

I mean if he was so limited to helping Castiel in the Empty AT LEAST FREAKING CLARIFIY THIS TO THE AUDIENCE. This is not about shipping a certain pairing btw. Jack becoming God is not the issue its his characterization after the fact. His first instinct would’ve been to save his dad above getting in touch with the Earth. Yes we knew this transformation was coming it was foreshowed way back in Season 12. Does that justify bad writing or character assassination?? HELL NO.

This is what I’m talking about, episode 15x19 deliberately butchers these characters and their relationships. It shat all over them. No one is behaving like themselves. The pacing is wonky and inconstant. The script feels like it underwent several rewrites and I swear there were scenes cut out. The acting is off too and maybe the pandemic could be blamed for these things but it ultimately falls on the writer. Buckleming screwed up by showing us they don’t know who the hell these characters are, their motivations nor do they give a rat’s ass. And its noticeable on screen. I’ve known better fanfiction writers for SPN than these guys. It’s like they all came back to work but just didn’t care to put the effort into it. That’s why people like me are upset and we have every freaking right to be. Some of us have been with this series for the entire 15 year run. I at least expect these characters to be handled better and for things to make sense. 15x19 doesn’t and its not satisfying its just a cruel joke. The writers and Dabb should be embarrassed to have put this out there thinking we’d just swallow it and shut up. But far as I’m concerned the only thing this episode serves is to disrespect and ruin everybody while angering long-time fans.

MICHAEL. ADAM MILLIGAN. JACK KLINE AND CASTIEL DESERVED BETTER. And that’s the tea.

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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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Hey Clyde, did you check out Wonder Egg Priority at all? The first ep is super promising, but the series as a whole is one of those real fascinating disasters from a story and a production standpoint that might be up your alley as a thing to pick apart haha.

I’d warn that it’s also reeeeal offensive and this generally gets worse as it goes though.

Hi, Phoenix! How are you and Cube doing?

Okay, I hadn't watched Wonder Egg Priority when I received your ask this morning. Now I have. In a fit of intense curiosity I settled down for a rare binge session and tore through all twelve episodes + OVA in a single sitting. It is now nearly 3:00am as I write this because I, oh so clearly, make fantastic life choices.

A question for you: what did I just watch?

The rest is going under a read more partly for spoilers, but more-so because WEP—and the summary I'm about to give, because I feel like I need to try and explain this to tumblr's faceless void for my own, dwindling sanity—comes with about every trigger warning under the sun. Seriously, if you are triggered by anything that we might think of as a "standard" trigger (meaning, not unique to you and your own experiences), best to proceed with caution.

Right! What the ever loving fuck happened in this show? Well, let's work through this chronologically. Two genius, frat boy brothers (I get their names mixed up so I'm not even gonna bother) are locked in their apartment and closely monitored because of Super Secret Science Research. Even though, I think, they're the ones who created this company. Not important! What is important is that they're bored enough to create an AI for funsies, thinking of her as their daughter and letting her name herself Frill. Frill is the perfect, cutesy, also genius child who has a habit of popping her lips — which the camera focuses on in an incredibly creepy fashion. One day Brother #1 (the hot one) falls in love with a random woman we know nothing about and Frill gets jealous.

"Jealous in a general sense?" you ask, thinking this show is in any way normal. "Like, just of her Dad giving attention to someone else?"

"No," I respond, patting your hand. "Jealous because she's in love with him." Which, beyond the subject matter itself, comes completely out of nowhere. Frill has a line about what you'd do if some woman stole your husband away. I, fool that I was, briefly considered that these two guys were lovers, not brothers. Oh no. They're brothers. Frill just considers Dad #1 to be her "husband."

So, in true evil AI fashion, she murders the wife, leaving only her newly born child behind. Who is a daughter.

Uh oh.

Dad #1 locks Frill in a coffin-esque hole in the basement and goes on with his life. Things are great! Until years later when the daughter reveals that she has fallen in love with her uncle (Dad #2 to Frill). She knows (somehow??) that both her dad and her uncle loved her mom, so if the loser uncle will just wait a few years he can marry her instead! He brushes her off, but the next day she’s found dead of an apparent suicide.

Realizing that this was somehow Frill’s doing, he marches down to the basement and confronts the murderous child they’ve had locked up for years. She’s now surrounded by screens in, again, true creep AI fashion. How did she get all this while she was locked up? Oh, just the three bug girls she created as friends prior to killing the wife. They’re devoted slaves, I guess. So the uncle says enough of this insanity and seemingly sets Frill on fire.

OH and Frill’s subtitled dialogue also puts “uncle” in quotation marks, implying that the daughter was always Dad #2’s??

Anyway, both brothers are now super obsessed with death and claim that they think Frill has had a hand in lots of girls’ suicides, even now after her own death. This is brought into question later when it’s revealed that they might have just concocted this scheme to try and bring back their daughter. I’m really not sure. Regardless, they use hand-wavey science to create eggs that I guess contain the souls of young girls who have committed suicide, then they sucker in other young girls who have lost people to suicide to try and rescue their loved ones in a dream world, saving others along the way. A tomboyish girl, Momoe, lost a classmate who admitted to loving her, but who Momoe rejected. Rika, a former junior idol, used and rejected an overweight fan only to learn later that she’d starved herself to death. Neiru, the 14yo president of some science company (yup) was attacked by her sister before she jumped off a bridge. Finally Ai, our protagonist, is a victim of bullying who managed to make friends with a single girl, Koito, who then jumped from their school building for unknown reasons. They’re all given the chance to bring these individuals back to life, provided they protect other victims of suicide by defeating the monstrous traumas that drove them to that act in the first place.

And you know what? That concept was great. However, the execution ranges from “Okay, that was pretty good for an anime. Kudos there” to “That’s the most offensive thing I’ve seen in my life.” Needless to say, unpacking all the battles they fight would take a lot more than this already absurd summary. Basically, if you can think of something horrible to happen to young girls (and one trans guy whose existence in that egg undermines the whole message of the episode), there’s an attempt to tackle it here.

During all this the four girls become friends and Ai works through her suspicions about Mr. Sawaki, a teacher at her school. What’s going on with Mr. Sawaki? Uh… everything! He’s somehow connected to Koito’s death, he’s dating Ai’s mom, and Ai apparently loves him too because her friends say so, even though this is never actually addressed and she barely interacts with him. It’s all quite the complication.

In time though the girls complete their “mission” of bringing their loved ones back to life. Rika and Momoe manage it first, only to find that Frill’s bug-girl lackeys have arrived to kill them. Why? Because that’s what Frill does, I guess. Momoe’s crocodile familiar (cute animals the girls were gifted to help them fight) takes a killing blow for her and the bug-lady then proceeds to carve up his corpse and force feed it to Momoe. Fantastic!! Building off of that, the next bug-lady who Rika encounters kills her turtle too, following in the footsteps of her bug-sister by, presumably, forcing her to eat parts of its head. Ai refuses to sacrifice her familiar to stay alive, but luckily the suicide she was protecting turns out to be herself from a parallel universe (that's a thing now!) and she takes the killing blow herself, which is done by pulling out the eye she’s sensitive about (she has heterochromia.) So parallel Ai passes on (again?) and the three girls don’t work through this trauma at all, instead becoming more traumatized through the realization that the loved ones they brought back no longer remember them. They’re alive, but the relationship they all had with them is dead.

It’s about this point that the main storyline wraps up and I’m relieved that there’s an OVA to finish things off. Surely they can somehow bring this all together in 45 minutes.

…25 minutes of that OVA is recap.

So with only about 20 minutes left, we learn that Neiru, the only one to not complete her mission yet, has mysteriously gone missing. It turns out she was an AI/clone/something all along, made to replace her sister and, presumably, that’s what caused the whole stabbing-suicide incident. She successfully brings her sister back, but stays behind in the dream world because Frill promises her she can become human. How is Frill here when she’s dead? How will Neiru become human? Isn’t Frill the “temptation of death” or whatever? There are no answers. A flashback finally reveals that Koito was having a relationship with a teacher at another school, he committed suicide, she transferred, she tried the same thing with Mr. Sawaki, he kept refusing her advances, and finally while threatening suicide to get his attention, she accidentally fell.

(So why was she in the suicide egg if it was an accident??)

Except, all this information comes through Mr. Sawaki himself, there’s a whole subplot about whether he’s really a villain, or if Ai is just making him into one, and this show might as well be titled How Much Pedophilia Can We Put into One Anime? So make of that what you will.

A dead character randomly shows up, but it's fine because she's actually just a version from a parallel world. How did she get here? Why is she here? Lol, it's cute that you think these are answered.

Rika, the character who cuts and almost committed suicide halfway through the show, breaks down saying how much she misses her dead loved ones, right after her friends refused to let her go on another mission that would surely end in her death and… that’s it. That’s all we get about her.

Momoe too, though she’s hopefully just vibing somewhere with that longed-for boyfriend.

Ai transfers schools and then one day randomly remembers that she loves Neiru and rushes back to start cracking eggs again because that will? Somehow?? Let her see Neiru???

When I say there are too many unanswered questions to possibly list here I really, really mean it.

Finally, in a personal attack on me, the protagonist with a name that is literally AI is not in any way an artificial intelligence.

And that’s it! Congratulations, you now “understand” WEP. And see, the funny thing is that the off-the-rails, bat-shit crazy aspects kind of catch you off guard? Yeah, the first episode is fantastic. In fact, I think I got through about six episodes thinking that this was a solid, if at times really messed up anime, but I was willing to shrug off a lot of stuff due solely to the amount of sensitive material they were attempting to cover (which is always quite difficult to do). Probably the only reason I was able to binge so fast was because the first half of the series was so engaging. The characters are charming. The animation is GORGEOUS. There's actually a ton of good here that is also worth yelling about. But then the plot comes in like a freight train and I was left staring dumbfounded at my screen as more and more insanity kept happening. Having watched the "explanations" I am now more confused about the show I just saw.

Phoenix, if you’ve bothered to read this rambling, 3:00am rant: thank you. I think? Idk if I should actually be thanking you or cursing you for tuning me into this, but it was definitely an experience, that’s for sure lol.

I'm off to bed now RIP the chance of having normal dreams ✌��

#mymetas

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melonsmessymusings · 3 years

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Preventing ‘Dark Willow’

This essay is based off an argument with my brother a long time ago. The question is if Giles staying in Sunnydale in S6 would have prevented Darth Rosenberg. There are many thoughts on this, but I’ve probably put my foot in my mouth as per usual and made a mess.

No. Giles staying in S6 would not have prevented Willow from being a magic junkie.

Throughout the show, magic is used as a metaphor for drugs and sex, albeit ham-handedly. In this case, it’s about drugs. With this in mind, let’s focus firstly on Willow. From as early as S1, Willow expressed an interest in learning magic. Her relationship with Jenny Calendar and her Technopagan badassery led to her forming what seemed at first to be a harmless interest in magic and Paganism. Towards the end of S2 in I Only Have Eyes For You, Willow admits to Giles: “I found loads of websites and stuff on paganism and magic... it’s really interesting.” which demonstrates her interest may be a little more than purely ‘educational fun’.

Her first taste of powerful magicks was restoring Angel’s soul at the end of S2. In Becoming Part 1, Giles warns Willow of the consequences of such mystical forces: “Channelling such potent magicks through yourself… it may open a door you won’t be able to close.” The Passion of the Nerd touched upon it briefly and explained the choice of phrasing is especially key here. It’s not as simple as a one-off spell that has no ramifications, the nature of the Soul Restoration uses a kind of magic that will stay with the caster forever. It leaves a mark. As we know, Willow does the spell anyway after waking up from a coma (don’t even go there) and successfully restores Angel’s soul. This is how her addiction started and it is the ONLY explicitly direct warning of the impact caused by using magicks that Giles gives her.

In Faith, Hope and Trick, Willow tries to persuade Giles to let her help him with the ‘spell’ to bind Acathla and lets slip that she knows more about the black arts than she’d originally led him to believe. There’s an interesting bit of dialogue between the two:

WILLOW: Are you mad at me?

GILES: No, of course not, no.

It’s obvious that Giles is anxious about this but because of his well-established role and priorities at this point, he’s not going to dwell on it too much, despite it being a genuine concern. Later in the episode, Willow also says, “Giles, I know you don’t like me messing with mystical forces…” so it has evidently been the topic of discussion previously. In Gingerbread, Willow is messing with magic again trying to make a protection spell for Buffy. The symbol used by Willow, Amy and that other kid is one commonly associated with human sacrifices according to Giles. The Black Arts. Even if that isn’t the spell they were casting, the symbol had other less pleasant implications. And so, it continues. By S4, Willow is doing much more than floating a pencil, progressing alarmingly quickly and becoming highly proficient by the end of the season. Giles reminds her of the dangers of magic subtly, “I don’t think it’s wise for you to be attempting spells, your energy is too unfocused” and Willow is still doing magic that is both powerful and harmful enough to have caught the attention of D’Hoffryn, Lord of the Vengeance Demons despite his apprehensions.

In S5 we get a first look at ‘Dark Willow’, when Tara gets brain sucked by Glory. There’s no way the whole gang didn’t know about that. Not a chance. Yet oddly, it’s never mentioned? Obviously, the writers had other priorities with the main plot and Glory etc. but it was criminally neglected. Willow used extremely dangerous dark magicks to go after Glory for hurting Tara at incredible risk to herself and the others who ended up having to rescue her. Justifiable or not, her actions were a reckless abuse of power that very nearly had fatal consequences. How any of them just let it slide without so much as a comment is infuriating. In The Weight of The World, Giles says to Xander, “It’s extraordinarily advanced” when he learns that Willow is trying to enter Buffy’s mind yet again, concerned. Also, we start to see the black eyes when Willow attempts more advanced spells, like teleporting Glory away in Blood Ties, or casting the protective wards in Spiral so it can be theorised that the magicks Willow evokes are steadily darkening.

Roll on S6. Set after Buffy’s death, a huge trauma for all the characters. Willow raising Buffy is evidently a massive achievement from her perspective. She considers herself to be a God. In Flooded, she gets the gut-punch from Giles that he is not in fact pleased with her at all. She’d expected him to be “impressed or something” which he was, but in the wrong ways.

GILES: The magicks you channelled are more ferocious and primal than anything you can hope to understand, and you are lucky to be alive you rank, arrogant amateur!

He blames himself for not stopping her, and rightfully so... to an extent. He failed to provide her with proper guidance or even show an interest in the types of magic that she was engaging with. If he had done so at an earlier stage, then perhaps Willow would not have taken things as far as she did. One interpretation of the argument in Flooded is that Giles is lashing out at Willow because he’s frightened. Most likely for Willow instead of Willow herself. He makes a point of saying that she was “the one [I] trusted most to respect the forces of nature” and bringing Buffy back defies the laws of nature. She had no respect for these forces, bending them to her will which is a scary concept. The argument that the Scoobies were selfish for bringing Buffy back notwithstanding, Willow was the one that actually performed the spell, hell bent in succeeding. That horrifies Giles and if anything, is a wakeup call for him to pull his head out of the sand and deal with this seriously. Willow meanwhile doesn’t want to hear a word of it, pacifying him instead of actually understanding the implications of her actions and listening to anything beyond his anger. There’s a lot that could be dissected in this scene but that’s unnecessary at this moment.

Magic is also the primary factor that caused Willow and Tara to split up at the end of Tabula Rasa. Tara had brought her concerns to Willow as early as Tough Love, saying that she was ‘scared’ about how powerful Willow was getting. When Tara tried to explain why she felt this way, Willow refused to listen. Every single time that Tara raised a concern about Willow’s use of magic, Willow either ignored it or reassured her that it was fine, and she was totally in control. But Willow has a history of altering people and their actions to suit her. She attempted to do so in Lover’s Walk by casting a spell on Xander to stop them having feelings for each other. Again, in Something Blue, while unaware of the effects of the spell, she still made the conscious choice to use magic to ‘have her will be done’. She ended up hurting her friends, however unintentionally. Then in S6 when Tara and Willow are arguing about magic, instead of having a proper conversation, Willow uses the Lethe’s Bramble to make Tara forget they were even arguing. A direct invasion of her mind. And Willow didn’t show any indication that she thought it was wrong. Barely two episodes later, Willow then used a spell which caused everyone to forget who they are after promising Tara that she would go a week without using magic. It’s no surprise that Tara wanted to break up.

Willow does get ‘clean’ by Entropy. Subsequently Tara comes back, and it all seems to go well until the brutal, vicious, non-sensical murder that causes Willow to launch herself back into the dark magicks stating, “I’m not coming back.” Only then does Giles do something about it. Only then does he take it upon himself to step up and realise that he has failed her, by which point it was far too late and resulted in her very nearly killing him, a price he deemed a suitable penance for his neglect.

But NOT ONCE prior to this did Giles intervene. He had the resources and was capable of it, and not once did he sit her down properly and say, “Willow, I think we need to talk about your use of magic because I’m a tad concerned.” Even after resurrecting Buffy, he only chastises her for her recklessness, he doesn’t actively do anything beyond this except a few powerful glares. He is watching her make all the mistakes he made as a young rapscallion and doing nothing about it. Then in S7, he fulfils the mentor role to her and helps keep on track of her recovery, an older addict helping the younger. It just highlights that he could have helped her sooner before it was out of control.

This comes back to Giles’ basic structure as a character. He’s a Watcher, the mentor to the Slayer. His purpose is to be in Sunnydale for Buffy. His whole life is revolved around Buffy, she is factored into every single one of his decisions. He never signed up to be the ‘father-figure’, despite appearing to adopt that role very quickly. He never signed up to care for Xander and Willow, he isn’t the Watcher of them. He has never given any indication that he wants that responsibility, and it shouldn’t fall to him to care for a group of random teenagers. It’s this fundamental construction of Giles’ character that means that he’s borderline dependant on Buffy, which isn’t her fault at all. He sacrifices everything, even parts of himself for her and most of the time gets nothing in return. The point is that Giles is so busy being a Watcher that he can’t think of anything else. It’s not necessarily his fault, that’s exactly how he was trained, and arguably after the whole Eyghon debacle, it’s unlikely that he ever truly had faith in his judgement again. Remember when Giles put Buffy before Jenny, the woman he loves? Buffy comes first, always because the mission is what matters.

On a more speculative note, Giles was aware of Willow’s obsession with magic and didn’t know what to do, instead choosing to believe that he wanted to help her, but he didn’t trust himself to teach her the control she needed. It does narratively fit for Giles to be reluctant to help Willow learn the magicks given his past. However, he neglected her and is at least partially to blame for Willow becoming a magic junkie. He had every opportunity over YEARS to step in and offer her a proper education. He had the skills and if he were hesitant, certainly had the connections to find someone who would teach Willow properly, e.g., the Coven in Devon. The audience is acutely aware after The Dark Age that Giles has a history of abusing dark magic. Note that throughout the series, he does not actually use that much magic himself. This abuse led to Giles having to murder one of his friends among whatever else he and his ‘friends’ got up to, which means he knows full well the ramifications of messing with that kind of power and doesn’t want to go down that rabbit hole again. Magic is an addiction and he’s a recovering addict.

Equally, Willow never asked Giles for help. It’s all very well blaming him for being negligent and grossly irresponsible, but she didn’t ask him to teach her. She didn’t ask him for guidance or whatever, at least not memorably. Assume that he did help her. That he trained her and gave her a proper education in the magicks. There’s no guarantee that any of that would have prevented Willow from taking it too far. Willow has an addictive personality and therefore it makes logical sense for her to become addicted to magic. Ultimately, Giles could have spent years training her, but he can’t make decisions for her, nor does he wish to. Willow is her own person, a bright, capable young woman who is an adult. He cannot push her to do anything and it’s not in his nature to do so. Dark Willow is an inevitability in a sense.

Essentially while Giles staying in Sunnydale would’ve been preferable on a personal level, it would have made very little difference as to whether Willow would abuse the magicks. She’d already done so on countless occasions with no intervention therefore he likely wouldn’t have interfered until it was too little too late. It’s not that he doesn’t care for Willow, but he had other priorities, right or wrong. Should he have helped her? Absolutely. But it takes two to Tango...

#btvs #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #rupert giles #willow rosenberg #meta #very long essay that took too long #sorry for my mess

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[Transcript] Season 2, Episode 2. Stereo Geeks Special: The CW’s Walker

We can't believe we're saying it, but we've enjoyed the first six episodes of The CW's Walker. What is this reboot of the 90s action show doing that's so unexpected and downright subversive? In this spoiler-free review of the first half of the opening season, the Stereo Geeks duo dive into why we're loving the show and why you should give it a try.

Walker promo image courtesy The CW.

Listen to the episode on Anchor.

Ron: Welcome to a new Stereo Geeks Special! In this episode we’ll be reviewing the first 6 episodes of The CW’s Walker.

I’m Ron.

Mon: And I’m Mon. Please note that this is a spoiler-filled review so if you haven’t caught up with the first 6 episodes, please watch them and return to our podcast!

[Continuum by Audionautix plays]

Ron: This show is adapted from the 1993 series, Walker, Texas Ranger. It was conceived by Jared Padalecki, and Anna Fricke is the showrunner. There are numerous women writing and directing the episodes. Despite the source material, this show is surprisingly subversive with regards to masculinity, gender roles, and race.

Mon: The original Walker, Texas Ranger TV show aired in the 90s, with Chuck Norris in the lead. The show was also inspired by a Chuck Norris film from the 1980s. So, as you can imagine, it was a punch-fest. Now we can't really attest to that, because we never saw it. We only ever caught the trailers on TV.

I have to say when you and I launched this podcast, I don't think we would have imagined that we would have even watched a single episode of the Walker reboot, forget actually dedicating an entire special to it. But here we are!

Ron: Well, I think part of the reason why we're actually talking about the show is because of Jared Padalecki. As Sam Winchester on Supernatural for 15 years, Padalecki has wormed his way into a lot of hearts.

But Walker is nothing like Supernatural and Cordell Walker, Jared Padalecki’s character on the show—yeah, he is no Sam Winchester.

Mon: The first episode really had me worried. It started off with a female character being fridged, and the entire storyline was confusing. Do you remember how many times I turned to you and said ‘I'm so confused. I'm so confused.’?

You were introduced to every character, and seemingly every character dynamic as well. All of that in the first 45 minutes. It was too much, and it was too messy. But the end of the episode really made us want to come back. And I think the success of this show really lies in the fact that every episode makes us want to come back and meet these characters, find out what they're doing and how are they surviving.

So, who are the characters?

Ron: As we’ve already mentioned, we have Jared Padalecki as Cordell Walker, the titular Texas Ranger. Alongside Cordell is his partner in crime—or in law enforcement— Lindsey Morgan’s Micki Ramirez. She is the first female Texas Ranger, and the first Latina Texas Ranger in the show.

Cordell’s wife, who we meet briefly in the first episode, and she returns in flashbacks in subsequent episodes, is Emily, played by Jared Padalecki’s real life wife Genevieve Padalecki. And fun fact, Jared and Genevieve met during Supernatural.

Keeping it in the Supernatural family, we have, Mitch Pileggi, playing Bonham, Cordell’s father. As Supernatural fans will remember. Mitch Pileggi played Sam and Dean's grandfather, Samuel Campbell in Supernatural.

We also meet Cordell’s mother, his children, his brother—who's also the ADA. And we also meet Coby Bell’s, Larry James, who is Cordell and Micki's captain, and has been Cordell’s long-suffering friend. There are several other characters that we meet as well. And all this happens in the first episode, so as you can imagine, it's a bit clunky.

From episode 2 onwards, it seems like they have a bit more focus. You don't have to meet every single character; they come in from time to time when they're needed in the story. And I think, overall, that kind of helped our connection with the show.

Not having watched the original, we don't really have a bouncing off point, but we do know that there was a lot of action, not much on the drama, not much on the emotions—there wasn't much human connection. I think a lot of people were hoping that they would just get something like that with this show. But Walker isn’t like that.

From the first episode onwards, it works really hard to balance the police procedural side with the family drama and dynamics. And six episodes in, I think it’s done a pretty good job.

Mon: It's been really successful in bringing these two rather disparate angles together. And what it does very well is to structurally interweave these two parallel storylines. We go from the investigation to the family drama and then we go back again, and it's not cyclical, as much as it is interwoven. And that structurally makes the episodes very interesting to watch.

Ron: But more importantly, the way they’ve balanced these two sides of Cordell’s life is actually pivotal to how the show proceeds, because Cordell is a single father now. He doesn't do a very good job of just being a Ranger, or just being a dad, and he's at the point where he's trying to figure out how to do those together. And it's actually quite amusing when you're watching it because you're like, ‘shouldn't you be with your kids right now?’ And then other times you're like ‘don’t you have a job to do?’

Mon: I feel like it's really important for us to see both these sides, not only of Cordell, but also of Micki, because it's always great to see how the job impacts the characters’ family dynamics, and the other way around. Because if you're being pulled out of your investigation because your kid did something ridiculous, or you're abandoning some kind of family trip because there's another bad guy on the loose, there will be explosions somewhere or the other. And it just makes it more relatable.

Also, we might be seeing some new pattern in The CW shows because Superman & Lois is doing something similar, right? And so's Black Lightning. They're constantly trying to show us what it's like to be a working parent. But since this is The CW, the working parents can’t just go into some office job— their office job happens to be being a Texas Ranger, or being superhero.

Ron: And that's really the crux of the show. So maybe that's why people aren't enjoying it because it isn't just, you know, fisticuffs and guns. This show is very much about subverting toxic masculinity. Walker isn’t pure as driven snow, he's definitely layered and tortured, and he does things that are questionable. But the important thing is that Micki, and the people around him, call him out on it. I especially love that about episode 6—which is fresh in our minds because we just saw it—but it's not something you see often.

Mon: I feel like in the pilot episode they kind of leaned in towards what people would have expected of Walker, being a reboot of the original Walker, Texas Ranger show. But it doesn't pan out like that, because as you said, toxic masculinity is nowhere over here.

But there are consequences to the actions that Walker takes in the pilot episode, which we see in episode 6, and that is a nuance that you need in the 21st century. We have moved beyond just watching people beat other people up. We need to know that there are people behind those fists, and that's what we’re finding out.

Ron: We started watching the show because Jared Padalecki was in it. But according to my research, Padalecki has been thinking about the show for a while.

Mon: I've been hearing about his name attached to a Walker reboot for a long time. And the only reason I think it finally got the green light is because Supernatural was announced to be coming to an end in 2020. It's been on hold for a while.

Ron: It's funny because in the initial concept apparently Padalecki was going to produce the show, and the Jensen Ackles who's going to be stepping in as Walker. [laughs]

Mon: I can see that. But you know, Ackles would have brought a kind of swagger that this version of Cordell Walker doesn't need. And I think it would have changed the dynamic a lot.

Ron: I totally agree with that, especially because Padalecki seems to have got the idea from reading a story about a policeman who walked away from his duties because he did not want to continue separating children from their parents, just because they were immigrants.

Mon: Wow.

Ron: Yeah.

Mon: That explains the undertone throughout.

Ron: Exactly.

Mon: We can't tell you too much…

Ron: …but it's what have you read that.

I'm actually very curious to see where this first season goes, because that kind of story is playing a certain part in this. We've seen it pop up quite a bit just in these first six episodes. Will they take it forward? How far will they go with that? Not sure.

Mon: It will be a bold move to really tackle immigration, immigrant problems, head on in a show like Walker. This is why we need a blank canvas. You do a reboot, you do something different. You bring it to the 21st century.

Ron: According to Padalecki’s interview with Variety, this is what we said: This is not a show about a martial artist kicking minorities in the face; this is a show about a legit Texan saying, ‘Hey, I need to hear the whole story before I make a decision.’ So this version is less about what goes through somebody’s fists and feet, and more about what goes through somebody’s head and heart.”

We've definitely seen that in the first six episodes, and following the events of the sixth episode, I think we're gonna see a lot more of that.

Mon: Exactly. They're not being completely in your face about immigrants and minority communities, how they're treated and the issues that they face, but that's definitely there.

Ron: So one of my concerns when I started watching the pilot episode was that, oh, we have a white family at the center of the story. The problem with having a completely white family is that everybody around them is also white, but this show doesn't do that.

For one, Micki, who is Cordell’s partner has a massive role; she's basically the second lead. We also have Captain James played by Coby Bell, who is a Black man, and he is trying to make a difference in his department. The Walker showrunner, Anna Fricke spoke to Variety about the characters of colour on the show: “This was always supposed to be a show that was set up to have conversations on both sides of the fence and that Walker is a character that can see things both ways — we call him the edge of the coin. We realized that unwittingly we were set up to have those conversations in the characters of Captain James, who is a Black man, and in Walker’s new partner, who is a Latinx woman.”

So, she went on to talk about the pilot episode especially, because it did get delayed in production. So they went back to the writers room, and they worked on a few things. So this is what she had to say about how the pilot was changed slightly to reflect the circumstances of 2020. “Given that we had the extra time, we tweaked the pilot slightly in that Captain James, as a newer captain who was promoted while Walker was gone on a case, is really here on a mission to bring progress into the department and to keep an eye on corruption.”

Now considering everything that we have seen in 2020 and the police violence that has been, well, it's been there in the US for a long time, but in 2020, it's just—you couldn't avoid it. So, the Black Lives Matter movement definitely had an impact on the show. I'm kind of surprised that there aren't other shows that are following the same example. 2020 threw everything out of balance, but writers rooms had the opportunity to really absorb everything that was happening around them. I like the fact that the Walker team went back and said, ‘You know what we can do something, we can show what's happening in the real world through our show’. And that's why, I guess, we’ve seeing so much of the subversion.

I think what we’ve seen till now is only a taste of what's to come, really.

Mon: Oh, I agree with you. Listening to what Anna Fricke had to say about Captain James, I want to see more of that, because right now, he's almost comic relief—which I love, I really love that about him. But you can tell that there is a serious story and a serious character simmering beneath what is seen.

And this is a really clever move by the writers room so far. They are going with the easy route—family drama and investigation, but they're slipping in these moments which are making you think, which are bringing the reality of the world into the fantasy of the show.

In the first episode, Micki highlights some of the racism that she's had to overcome to be a Texas Ranger. In episode two, Stella, Cordell’s daughter, she acknowledges her white privilege and how it lets her off the hook, but not her Latinx friend.

And throughout, we see the same thing—a person of color is accused of killing his boss. Did he really do it? This seems too easy; it's constantly happening in every episode. It's a pattern. And I feel like it is crescendoing to something major. Is it going to be a realization of just how harmful some of the Texas Rangers’ actions are in the real world? Or is it going to be something different? We don't know.

Ron: Whatever we've learned so far about the show is making me question why they've kept the name of the show, just Walker.

Mon: Ooooo. Good point.

Ron: Especially now that we know what the inspiration for the show was for Jared Padalecki. Hmmm.

Mon: Wow, that’s really making me think.

I really like how refreshing this show is. It could have just been an easy reboot; they could have just cruise controlled throughout the entire story. It could have been about guy loses his wife, he's drunk, he meets new partner, they build a romance, kids go on living their life—none of that is happening so far. There are real questions being asked here, and it's thought provoking.

It's entertaining but it's also thought provoking. And I like that; that's a good mix. I mean let's be honest, when you cast Jared Padalecki as Cordell Walker, you know you're going to get a different kind of hero. He's not just going to be broody. He's not just going to be an Action Man; there's going to be layers. And that's what we get.

He definitely comes across as somebody who is burdened by his loss. He's also a little bit arrogant, but he's coming to terms with the fact that he has made mistakes in his life; he's constantly continuing to make mistakes, and he has to address those. But he's also funny; because like, he's a real person.

He'll suddenly act out not realizing the consequences, or he'll say something because he got excited. He is so normal. And I really liked that because there are these instances of comic relief and you're like, ‘that came out of nowhere, but I really needed that’.

Ron: It's funny because we’ve kept mentioning how we watched the show because of Jared Padalecki and how, because he was Sam Winchester, it was just a natural progression. But watching Walker, I'm not getting anything of Sam Winchester. I'm commending Jared Padalecki for his performance because Sam Winchester was last year, Walker is just a few months later.

The person that Sam Winchester was, was kind of young, needed direction, always turned to his older brother. Walker isn't like that. Cordell is a grownass man with teenage children. Somehow I just can't get over that

Mon: And the fact that Sam Winchester was such a rule follower, whereas Cordell’s middle name is basically rule breaker. I just really like that. I mean, we know that an actor is supposed to be able to disappear into new roles, but it's always funny when you go from 15 years as one person and then suddenly he's just living in the boots of Cordell Walker.

Despite that, I have to say that the performances throughout are very The CW. Either people are speaking rather staccato, or they're a little bit singy-songy and melodious. I feel like they need to up the ante a little bit, because this kind of show, with its drama and its family dynamics, it requires a little bit more nuance. But it hasn't really affected how I enjoy the show.

Ron: I think for the most part, Jared Padalecki and Lindsey Morgan are doing a very good job. I love the chemistry between the two characters, they feel like their partners, and it makes it really fun to watch. The parents, played by Mitch Pileggi and Molly Hagan, that's a dynamic that I'm very interested in watching more of. I don't know where they're going with it, but it's not what I expected.

Mon: I feel like they’re teetering on the brink of being a soap opera with Abeline and Bonham, but they're constantly restraining, so I want to know what they're planning to do with them. Because I feel like Bonham, especially, he's changed since the pilot. He's not the person who we were introduced to during the pilot episode, and that's a good thing because I didn't like that guy. With Abeline, she's a very different kind of character, and I almost feel like she's an antihero,

Ron: Or is it Bonham who the antihero?

Mon: Oooooo

Ron: There is some tension between these two characters. We aren't given much information. They’re eking it out for the audience, and it's so unexpected. Every time they come on screen I'm just like, ‘What is going on what is happening with these two?’ Sometimes they're happy to be together, a lot of times they're not. I feel like we're gonna get to know something which is gonna change how we watch the show.

When it comes to acting, I think the young ones, Violet Brinson, who play Stella, and Kale Culley, who plays August, they've taken some time to settle into their roles. It's one of the same problems that we kind of have with Superman & Lois, where Superman and Lois are great to watch, but the children? Not so much.

Mon: Yeah, I would say the weakest link in the show is definitely Stella and August, especially August. I feel like they want to do something with this character, but he's just been left behind. With Stella, she's almost the conduit for some of the drama, some of the flashbacks, and some of the race-talk that is happening. But with August, he's not even an angsty teen; he's just there.

Ron: But I think that relates to how this show is gender swapping a lot of moments. Stella is basically the troublemaker, and it's an understandable reaction because she is grieving and her father wasn't there when she was grieving. So she's acting out just to get attention, which is something that teenagers do. August, on the other hand, is the ‘good’ child. He’s a saint. He doesn't do anything wrong. He immediately allows his father back into their lives and Stella is the one who's questioning, ‘why?’. This man was gone when we needed him. She wants August to stand up for them. But August doesn't. He wants to keep the piece. That's a fun little subversion that I’ve been wanting to see in shows but this one is giving it to us.

And then there are these other little things, like Stella is playing soccer. I have not seen soccer in an American TV show, so that's really unexpected. It's usually American football, or it’s lacrosse, like in Teen Wolf, but soccer? Not so much, so that's fun. You see August kind of helping with the cooking, but he's also very interested in photography. And that's a creative field that we usually see female characters get into. What's also quite interesting in Walker is that both Stella and August are taking after their mother. They do things that she used to like doing, that she was interested in, that they did with her. Their father, not so much, even though he was also absent so they would want to do something that he likes. But it seems like they're genetically predisposed to want to be like their mom, so that's fun.

From what we know of Emily, she was quite multitalented. She was a photographer. She was a great mom. She was a good friend; she was a wonderful wife; she was a handyman. And Walker, on the other hand, is terrible with tools. We don't usually get to see things like that.

Mon: In a way, Walker is defined by only two things: his job and his family. But Emily, despite having such curtailed screen time, is this fully-fledged character, who was so amazing in every way and everybody is like, kind of, always wishing that Emily was there, and not Walker. I don't know if they intended that as a subversion, but it sure comes across as that.

Ron: What Walker does well is that the subversion isn't just limited to the Walker family. Like we see Micki, is the Ranger, but her partner, Trey, is a nurse. Now, this is something that used to drive me up the wall about most shows that were, you know, in any way action-oriented, sci-fi, fantasy. Female characters were almost always relegated to the role of healer or nurturer, male characters got to go out there and fight. But here, it's exactly the opposite. Micki is the one who is going out and fighting, whereas Trey is the one who is there to help people and take care of them if things go bad.

Mon: And not just medically. He's also an emotional support for a lot of people. Like he's there for Stella, he's there for Walker. He's also there for Micki. So again, that's why we need a refreshing change from what we've always had. And I like that it’s the CW which is doing it because, yeah, they’re kind of on the map because of their superhero stuff, but we've always found that even with the superhero stuff, there have been times when we felt like they could have pushed some boundaries, but they didn't. And with this show, I'm not saying they're like, completely breaking every possible glass ceiling. I'm just saying that they're doing a very good job of making some cracks.

Ron: I mean there is a strip club scene which is not what it looks like. That's all I'm gonna say.

From episode 2 onwards, every story has been really, really exciting. So, from a writing point of view, the show is also doing a really good job. I've actually found myself surprised by the direction of some of the stories, and that's quite fun, considering we've watched a lot of police procedurals in our lives.

Mon: At this point, it's easy to get a little bit jaded with pop culture. This is our entertainment—action stuff, superhero stuff, we are for it. But you need to innovate. It's a tough landscape, there's so much new content coming out, so much of it is in the same genre. What I feel like with Walker is that, mostly because of Padalecki, he's gonna draw in a completely different crowd, which is the Supernatural crowd. And because it's on The CW, you're also getting eyeballs from an audience who is kind of watching Riverdale in the evenings. And then they got Walker. And you need that balance, because so much content is cruise control. And as we said, this show could easily have been that, but it wasn’t. And it's trying very hard not to.

As we said, there is a certain pattern, because in every episode, you're like, ‘Wait, did they just do that?’ And it makes you sit up and take notice and wonder, ‘okay in all these years, why did no other show have this particular scene?’ And more than anything else, I think that's what's making us come back. It's like, how are they innovating? How are they being more creative and more innovative with the same established storylines and dynamics.

Ron: I'm going to give Walker props for even trying to do things differently, because you just mentioned Riverdale, and that show is entertaining, but it's been so cliched from the very start. And considering its audience, I really would have wanted it to do something a little bit different. There have been times when I’ve watched Riverdal and I thought, ‘Oh okay, that's a little bit different.’ But honestly, it just doesn't try that hard.

Mon: No, in fact, some of the messaging in there is problematic to say the least. Young people are watching it, and, well, young people are on The CW a lot, and I do worry that they need to get a strong message about what's right, what's wrong and what you should be questioning,

And that's what Walker is doing. It is acknowledging the privilege of this family. But at the same time, it is also telling us that they have their own struggles. Are their struggles greater than other people? No. But this is the story that we’re being told, because we need the audience stand in, and as we know the easiest way for the audience to walk into a show is through somebody who apparently looks like them.

Ron: The people around the Walker family are people of color. So you have Micki, you have Trey, you have Captain James, Stella's friend, August’s possible love interest, they haven't got there yet. Even Cordell’s brother Liam, his partner is a person of color. So you've got this in with the Walker family, but around them, you’ve got all these people of color who we definitely are interested in and invested in. It could have easily been the other way around, and I would have liked that, but I'll take it.

Mon: I think the smart move by the writers has been that not only do we have an in with a white family, but we're also looking through their eyes to understand the different viewpoints of the people around them. And essentially what's happening is that no one is being made to feel alienated in a circumstance or an environment that they feel is their own. So, the fact that the white family has a ranch, and stuff like that okay, yeah, that's aspirational for a lot of people. But you also have the Black captain who is new. So you have that audience who is enjoying being part of a club, if you could say, that hasn't always represented them. And then you have, of course, with Micki, and the dichotomy of being a Texas Ranger, when the Texas Rangers are such a problem for the Latinx community. So it’s this inclusivity, which I guess we’re really, there for.

Ron: And that's all just within the first six episodes, so I really don't know where this show is going to be going. I'm very excited by its direction. And I'm really surprised that from all the shows that we've seen Walker is the one that's making us think, ‘well, this is doing something different’.

Mon: Yeah, and I think it's fortuitous that we are recording this episode after episode 6. That was some episode! A lot happened, they packed in a lot. There were a lot of twists and turns too; a lot of bombshells in there. And it's actually making us rethink how we have viewed some of the characters. There are some revelations coming and I don't think we're gonna like it.

Ron: Well, I for one, am totally invested in this show. Episode 6 felt like it was a turning point. According to Anna Fricke, the showrunner, things are gonna be happening. I cannot wait to find out what they are.

So, there you have it. We're really enjoying the first six episodes of Walker, which is not something we thought that we would be saying on our podcast.

Mon: But we’re glad we are. Because, you know what, if you haven't caught this show because you think it's not your kind of show, give it a shot. And give it a shot beyond just the pilot episode because you're in for a ride.

Ron: And some really great characters.

Mon: Absolutely.

Ron: Have you watched Walker? What did you think of it? We'd love to hear from you.

You can find us on Twitter @Stereo_Geeks. Or send us an email [email protected]. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And see you next week!

Mon: The Stereo Geeks logo was created using Canva. The music for our podcast comes courtesy Audionautix.

[Continuum by Audionautix plays]

Transcription by Otter.ai, Ron, and Mon.

#walker #the cw #jared paladecki #supernatural #stereo geeks #reboot #podcast

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fandomlurker · 3 years

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A Ponderous Rewatch: “Win Big”

And so we begin. For real, this time.

And to start, we have to go all the way back to Animaniacs season 1, episode 2, with the very first Pinky and the Brain skit which is named “Win Big”.

Interestingly enough, the duo are not directly trying to take over the world in this episode. The premise is that Brain needs money to buy the one part needed for his actual plan to take over the world using a machine he calls the “Super-Conductive Magnetic Infindibulator”, which will “deplete hydrogen and promote gravitational collapse [to produce] a magnetic charge from the center of the Earth so strong that every person who has loose change in their pockets will be magnetically drawn to the ground and stuck there”.

…

For those of you who are new to the series and for those of you who maybe can’t remember the show very well, I want to say that yes, what you’re probably asking yourself right now is true: Brain’s plans are almost always this complex and completely absurd with giant, glaring holes in logistics. There’s been a long-time “theory” that while their theme song says “one is a genius, the other’s insane” and intends to indicate that Brain is the genius while Pinky’s insane, it’s actually the other way around. And honestly? That doesn’t exactly hold up to any kind of scrutiny at all. Brain is actually a genius…he’s just also very, very short-sighted and lacks a lot of common sense. He’s so focused on his goal of world domination that he forgets to account for even the most obvious of details that would completely ruin what he’s trying to accomplish. And Pinky? Well, Pinky’s a lot smarter than he seems, but I wouldn’t exactly mark him as a genius. He’s just more worldly, more emotionally intelligent, and has a knack for pointing out the obvious. For you D&D nerds out there, think of it like this: Brain is a high INT low WIS character while Pinky is a high WIS low INT character.

As for which one is “insane”? Disregarding the…let’s just say “problematic” baggage that comes with that word, I’d argue that Pinky is just neurodivergent and Brain has a lot of problems. Like, a lot of problems. We’ll get more into that mess much farther down the line.

In any case, the opening of this episode has Brain pulling Pinky away from watching what is obviously supposed to be The Honeymooners, complete with “Bang, zoom, right in the kisser!” quote and everything. That quote, or one like it, was what the character Ralph Kramden would frustratedly yell at his wife, Alice, after she’d dismiss a get rich quick scheme of his. It was an ultimately impotent threat of violence, as he never did hit her. A lot of folks before me have delved into how messed up and controversial that whole running gag was, so I didn’t particularly feel the need to go over it here.

However, it does become immediately relevant because as Pinky laughs at the joke and excitedly quotes it while Brain is trying to get his attention, Brain reaches up and gently holds both their faces close for a few moments…

“Stop saying that, Pinky!...”

…then more aggressively tugs Pinky’s face down as he finishes with “…Or I shall have to hurt you.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry, Brain. NARF!”

Isn’t it interesting how the very first thing this series does is juxtapose Pinky and the Brain’s relationship with that of the main married couple on The Honeymooners? Like, it’s certainly not the most healthy of a relationship parallel to make, but in Pinky and Brain’s favour their world is governed by slapstick humour and thus any and all violence is much less serious. Also, there’s Pinky’s…uh…special relationship with physical pain that will become more apparent as the series goes on. Like, of course this kind of behaviour is wrong and appalling in real life, but this is a Warner Brothers Looney Toons-style cartoon and there’s a big difference between the two.

There’s also this little tidbit of information on the Animaniacs wiki regarding this episode and its writer, Peter Hastings:

“Although Peter Hastings has stated that he always tried to have Brain threaten to hurt Pinky but never actually hit him (because he felt this was both funnier and truer to the character), Tom Ruegger and the other producers would often have Brain actually hit Pinky. Even in this very first short, the Brain does follow through.”

Moving on, though, after Brain Rube Goldberg machine’s his way out of their cage and points out that Pinky has an “inordinately short attention span” after Pinky gets briefly distracted by another TV show that’s a very blatant parody of Jeopardy, he explains to Pinky his latest plan for world domination.

“EGAD, Brain, brilliant!”

“…Uh oh, no, wait…what if they take off their pants?”

^ The face of a man who somehow managed to forget that clothes are removable.

See what I mean about Pinky having a knack for pointing out the obvious? It’s very much needed to counteract Brain’s complete lack of foresight and introspection.

“Then…we’ll have to take over the world quickly.”

…Though there’s also something to be said for Brain’s stubbornness.

So they need a part for Brain’s machine called a Infindibulator, which is for some reason listed in the Farmer’s Almanac??? Which to my knowledge doesn’t sell anything at all??? Okay, Brain, whatever you say.

Brain actually kicks Pinky directly in the ass to get him up onto the Almanac to read it,

which would be alarming if not for Pinky’s completely happy and sincere “Thanks! :D” afterwards. It’s a mere hint to Pinky’s…predilections. I find it interesting that it’s so subtly foreshadowed in this very first short. I know you newer folks might think I’m joking, but I assure you I’m not. You will see.

As a side note, it’s so odd hearing Rob Paulsen’s early Pinky voice in these first several Animaniacs shorts. I’ve seen fans say that it’s more lispy than the standard Pinky voice that we’re all familiar with, but to me it just sounds like Pinky with a very, very bad cold and a stuffy nose. Get this mouse some nasal spray.

So Pinky finds the entry for the Infindibulator and it costs a whopping $99000. Where would two little lab mice find that kind of cash?

It sure is lucky and convenient that the TV is still on during that moment and tuned into an episode of Jeopardy—I mean “Gyp-Parody” (Really, writers? Really? In addition to being a horrible and lazy pun, I would rather not have to type a slur so much, so I’m just going to call it the name of the show it’s based on) where the reward for winning totals $99000.

And here we go, the first of its kind. The birth of the most famous running joke from Pinky and the Brain!

“Pinky… Are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

“I think so, Brain, but where are we going to get a duck and a hose at this hour?”

…Believe it or not, Pinky’s bizarre answers do have an explanation and a certain logic to them, but we find out the hows and whys much, much farther along in the series. That said, I’ll be damned if I know how he got to this particular train of thought right now. The inner machinations of Pinky’s mind are an enigma.

So Brain gets the idea to become a contestant on Jeopardy to win the amount of money they need for their plan. Pinky points out that the questions on the game show are very, very hard and Brain would have to get all of them right, and I just love Brain slowly turning his head to face Pinky with the most deadpan “Bitch, are you for real?” look on his face.

To Brain’s credit, he doesn’t berate the other mouse at all for his doubts. He just very calmly asks Pinky to quiz him about anything he can think of. When Pinky asks him “What is pie?”, well, see above for the summary of the answer Brain gives.

He then asks for a harder question, and Pinky asks him which TV character says “Bang! Zoom!—“ before Brain cuts him off with a wack of a pencil for quoting something inane and annoying him again.

Though he quivers a little before the smack, Pinky’s fine afterwards. Smiling, even.

And he happily gives Brain the answer anyway, complete with bows. “Ralph Kramden! TA-DAH! :D”

But Brain is insistent on preparing to go on Jeopardy, grabbing Pinky by the tail to drag him off-screen and Pinky is…

Hmm.

He’s, uhh, more than fine with it.

Now we get the debut of the human suit mecha. It’s quite the staple of the series; the go-to for a human disguise whenever the mice need one.

And it certainly is…something. You may be noticing the lack of a human head. Don’t worry about it. Brain certainly didn’t.

I love Brain’s playful little “Honey, I’m hoooome!~” when he pops his head out, despite having a deadpan look on his face the entire time. He’s having fun!

“Ahahaha! Oh, that’s a funny joke, Brain!”

“I am not devoid of humour.”

Pinky is having a little less fun with his tail accidentally tied along with the shoelaces, however.

It’s fine, he’s fine. He’ll be okay! Pinky is indestructible.

He’s a pocket pal now. He’s fine.

Makin’ my way downtown, walkin’ fast…~

Okay, sorry, he’s hailing a cab instead. Effectively, too!

Oh hi, Warners, nice to see you! Doing a literal running gag, I see. Nice, nice.

Goodbye!

So if you were wondering how regular humans would react to Brain’s “clever” and totally made without proper foresight disguise, well…

“Wh—HOA! Hey, if you don’t mind me askin’, bub, what happened to your head?”

“Nothing. I am a mouse in a large, mechanical suit.”

“Hehehehe! Okay, all right, my fault for askin’, right? Heh.”

Yup. This isn’t the first time this kind of thing happens. I guess since they’re in Hollywood the taxi driver’s seen worse.

So Brain gets on the show (don’t worry about how, shh) and the announcer calls him “Brian” instead and Brain politely tries to correct him. I can’t exactly fault the announcer because 1. “Brain” isn’t a name and 2. Look at Brain’s gloriously messed up handwriting.

The host walks on in. It’s pretty cute that they gave him the parody name “Alex Quebec”. It’s a suitable pun and rhyme to hint at the fact that Alex Trebek was born in Canada. Rest in peace, Mr. Trebek.

The first question is in the category of celebrity shoe sizes and asks what size sandals Plato wore. Umm. Okaaaaay… Thank goodness this show first aired before websites for foot fetishists cataloguing celebrity feet was a thing. Also is it just me, or does that font looks like something off of The Simpsons?

I don’t know if I should be worried or not that Brain got the correct answer to this question. (Seven and a half, if you’re curious.)

Question two is totally a trick question, though. There’s no such place as “Lestho”. “Lesotho”, however, is a real kingdom in South Africa. King Moshoeshoe I was indeed the ruler in 1820 as Brain answers, although the place was called “Basutoland” at the time and didn’t formally become a kingdom until 1822.

Educational!

Question three is a normal if extremely hard question for anyone unfamiliar with geographic locations off of the southeast of Asia. There are a lot of correct answers, and Brain answers correctly with “Bikar, Ailuk, and Ailinglaplap”. As this post notes, he is totally flexing on everyone by naming very obscure coral atoll islands that are some of the furthest neighbours from the Isle of Yap.

You smug asshole, Brain.

We don’t get the questions Brain answers correctly in the following montage, but we do get a close-up of his handwriting. Look at this. Just…look at it.

We get to see the aftermath of Brain’s monopolizing of the scores, though. The other contestants aren’t looking too good. Note that it seems there were times that they did manage to buzz in to answer before Brain did, but they must have got all of their answers or at least most of them wrong. They’re both in the negatives.

“Any plans on how you’ll spend your winnings?”

“Yes. I plan to take over the world!”

“...”

“…Ah haha, my fault for asking.”

Pinky claps and congratulates Brain on doing so well so far, because he’s a sweetheart like that, and

Brain flicks him back into the pocket. Man, you’re so quietly mean in this first episode, Brain.

Now it’s the final question, from the category “Quotable Quotes”. I remember this kind of category as usually being the easiest on Jeopardy, so it’s kind of surprising that it’s the Final Jeopardy question.

Uh-oh.

Looks like someone forgot that Jeopardy questions aren’t all science, history, and geography-related. Sometimes they’re about pop-culture.

Brain is…not very good with pop-culture. And Pinky’s been banished to the bottom of the coat pocket.

Whoops.

“Umm. Uh, who is, uhh… I, umm. Who is, uhh… Who is…uhh, Pinky…?”

Oh Brain, honey, it’s cute that you got so stumped and flustered that you just blurted out the only name that came to mind (and because Pinky was quoting it earlier, but still!), but it’s also so very, very sad.

Of course that’s incorrect, and Brain is just so monumentally defeated.

“And how much did you wager?”

“Everything…”

HUBRIS!

We then cut to the mice watching Brain’s horrible defeat on TV, and Pinky suggests a few other game shows they could try: Wheel of Misfortune, $10,000 Pile-A-Mud… The latter of which is supposed to be a parody of the old game show Pyramid, which wasn’t around in that format by the time this episode aired, so…good luck with that one, Pinky.

But no, Brain doesn’t plan on going on any more game shows. He instead walks sadly over to their cage to rest for tomorrow night.

It’s then that we are witness to the birth of the other memetic exchange this show is known for:

“Why, Brain? What are we going to do tomorrow night?”

“The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world!”

That wink, though. It’s the confident wink that sells this and tells us all you need to know about the Brain. No matter how bad his defeat, how humiliated he gets, or how sad he feels about failing, Brain always gets back to business sooner or later. He has determination on his side. And Pinky, of course.

And that was the very first Pinky and the Brain short! A pretty good start for the series, really. Nothing spectacular, and definitely not the worst, just a good start that sets the tone of the series well and establishes several of the running gags the show is known for. The creators pretty much have Brain as a character down right away: serious but not devoid of humour, single-minded, stubborn, egotistical, smart, and determined to meet his goals. There are a few things missing from him that we get later, and he certainly softens a bit by the time the spin-off starts, but they’ve set up a solid foundation to build on so far here. Pinky’s character is a little more nebulous in this episode, though. He’s shown to be generally good-natured, smarter than he first seems, easily distracted but well-meaning, and willing and able to help Brain achieve his goals. Still, he’s missing the much of the overwhelming kindness and his enthusiasm for Brain’s plans and awe at Brain’s intellect that he has as we go further through the series. I mean, there are hints of it here, too, but it’s much more understated compared to later on. Not to mention that Pinky gains a bit of a sassy side to him that somehow still manages to be friendly, like when you gently tease your friends while still caring about them.

I understand that you can’t really squeeze all of that into the first, like, fifteen minutes or so of a series, though.

Also, the animation for this episode wasn’t exactly the best of the series. There are points where Brain looks kinda muppet-y and Pinky is uncharacteristically gaunt and gangly. I mean, Pinky is usually a little gangly but not as hunched over and his nose stretched out so much. It’s not the worst, either, and serves as a decent baseline of how the characters look. Wang Film Production looks to be the animation studio behind this one, and I’d say their style is the most “normal” quality of the ones that get to animate for PatB. They do settle into a better and more consistent style for the show, so I’ll try and be on the look-out for that.

I’m not sure if the other posts I’m going to do on this rewatch will be quite so play-by-play as this one was. Since this is the first, I felt the need to establish in more detail the kind of things that happen in your average episode of PatB and the general rhythm of the show. I’m definitely going to try and include every instance of the ongoing running gags the series has, though.

I feel I should also say that from now on I might have to double or triple the amount of episodes in one post, too. There are some episodes in a long-running series like this where not too much of note happens, I’m sure, and I know at least a few are either silent shorts, cameos in other Animaniacs skits or little music videos and you can only get so much out of those entries.

Yes, music videos. Including a cameo appearance in a Macarena parody. I’ll prepare as best as I can to cringe so hard from secondhand embarrassment that I morph into a pretzel shape.

We’re only getting started, folks. Things are only going to get weirder and more interesting from here on out.

#Pinky and the Brain #PatB #Win Big

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amillioninprizes · 4 years

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A Tale of Two P.I.s: How Stumptown Succeeded Where Veronica Mars Failed

A hardboiled female private eye with a drinking problem, a litany of temporary sexual partners, and trauma resulting from her romantic soulmate dying in an explosion that’s partially her fault solves mysteries.

This could describe either the freshman ABC show Stumptown, starring Cobie Smulders as military veteran Dex Parios, or Rob Thomas’s intended vision for an adult Veronica Mars in the wake of the recent S4 that aired on Hulu. Many VM fans turned to the former after the supreme disappointment that was S4 in order to get their kickass lady detective fix; a common refrain that I’ve seen is that Stumptown is the show that adult Veronica Mars should have been. Notably, Stumptown was recently renewed for a second season, while Hulu has declined to order more seasons of Veronica Mars. Now that the pain of VM S4 is less fresh, I recently watched the first season of Stumptown to see if it was worth the hype. Here are the reasons why I think that Stumptown has been renewed for a second season while Veronica Mars has, much like Susan Knight, been left dead in the water:

Dex is a competent detective

Like, I shouldn’t even have to say this, but: if you’re going to make a show about a private investigator, that character should be able to crack cases. Rather infamously, Veronica did not solve any mysteries in VM S4: Keith solved the bomber mystery, Logan solved the congressman blackmail mystery, and Vinnie solved the missing ring mystery. Veronica just kind of floated around being a mean party girl.

Meanwhile Dex, despite being less experienced as a detective, uses her smarts and background as a military interrogator to solve the mystery of the week. She notably utilizes disguises and undercover work, two former features of Veronica’s investigating that were missing in S4. The show also makes a decent attempt to portray the realities of her having to obtain a license to be a PI and work legally, including an internship and dealing with consumer complaints. Contrast this with the proposed future seasons of VM as a traveling detective--something that would be nigh impossible giving licensing requirements.

I think the contrast between the two’s abilities can best be seen in their opening scenes of the season: Dex, at the casino, is able to suss out a married dude hitting on her pretty quickly, comprehensively listing his tells. Meanwhile, Veronica’s first scene in S4 has her randomly smashing a client’s belongings to find hidden cameras and then unprofessionally overcharging her. If that’s how she treats clients, it’s no wonder that Mars Investigations is financially struggling at the beginning of S4.

Stumptown also does a better job than VM S4 of showing why the protagonist chooses to be a detective. For Dex, it gives her stability and a sense of purpose that had been lacking since her return from Afghanistan. On the other hand, Veronica is shown to be somewhat dissatisfied with her life in S4, but it’s never explicitly addressed why; it’s also not examined why she remains in Neptune as a detective when she could use her Ivy League law degree at any time and live anywhere, especially when she appears to no longer have a talent for being a detective. Logan briefly broaches the subject in one scene, but it’s dropped just like every other VM plot thread.

Dex is a marshmallow

As has been covered extensively elsewhere (including the pages of this very blog), probably the largest issue that people had with S4 of Veronica Mars outside of Logan’s death was Veronica’s characterization. Rob Thomas said in interviews that he told the writers this season to write Veronica like a porcupine; the end result was a portrayal that dialed all of Veronica’s negative traits to 11, added new ones, and completely removed the softer aspects of her character that made her such a compelling and complex protagonist. There was an attempt to give Veronica an emotional connection to the bomber mystery via the character Matty, but for most viewers it didn’t resonate due the flat affect of both actresses and poor writing. It was hard to feel like Matty was a sympathetic underdog when she had a wealthy mother ready to whisk her away to Paris for Spring Break. Veronica also doesn’t appear to have retained her former drive for justice; she mostly seems interested in collecting a paycheck (and if that’s the case I again ask why she isn’t using her Columbia law degree). She also weaponizes her white womanhood against a Latino teenager. What a great role model!

Contrast this with the also outwardly caustic Dex, who initially IS only in it for the paycheck. First off, even that’s somewhat noble in that she needs to take care of her adult brother with Down’s syndrome. Yet she quickly finds her sense of justice overcoming her desire to make bank. We see this early in the season when she turns against the PI she is shadowing in order to help a young mother obtain custody of her child from her wealthy, abusive ex-husband. This is also seen when she brokers a deal to protect the privacy of the biological child of a political candidate she’s been hired to find dirt on.

Dex also relies heavily on her support system--namely her brother Ansel, best friend Gray, food truck purveyor Tookie, and even police detective Hoffman. She resists her brother moving out because she’d be lonely without him, and her entire found family are instrumental in helping her with her cases. This isn’t necessarily different from Veronica per se, although Veronica treated her loved ones cruelly in S4. Additionally, Rob Thomas wanted to continue the show without them, despite how heavily Veronica relied on them both to help her with cases as well as emotionally.

Stumptown also shows that even if Dex hasn’t fully processed her trauma, she is capable of growing. She makes nice with her high school enemy after clearing her daughter of suspected drug dealing. Contrast this with Veronica, who punched her high school nemesis at her high school reunion (and for the five millionth time, no one wanted to see that) and was shown to have regressed as an adult to be more immature at age 35 than she was at 17. That didn’t make her seem more cool or noir, just sad.

Also, Dex actually manages to brush her hair. (But srsly I need to know how they get her hair to do that great wavy thing).

Dex’s trauma is thoughtfully addressed

As a corollary to the above point: there was obviously Something Wrong with Veronica in S4, but the show didn’t bother to explain what had transpired between the end of the second book and S4 to explain her seeming personality transplant; as a fellow fan has said, the show pretended to deal with her trauma but glossed over it in reality. For example, in addition to depicting her as being depressed and cruel to her loved ones, she is shown drinking heavily and doing drugs, both of which are out of character for her. Yet the show seems to glamorize it; none of her loved ones express any concern about this behavior and there are no references made to her alcoholic mother, whose actions negatively affected her growing up to the extent that Veronica had previously expressed wanting to avoid becoming like her. But despite the fact that she was obviously struggling with something, Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell stated that they needed to kill Logan because Veronica was somehow not traumatized enough. Apparently, putting Logan’s ring on her finger just magically erased her previous issues (unrealistic and harmful messaging to trauma survivors), and he needed to die because women can only be interesting if they’re damaged (misogynistic). Adding insult to injury was Rob Thomas’s assertion that Logan’s memory wouldn’t play much of a part of the show going forward because it would be too depressing and he needed Veronica to not be consumed with thoughts of him while engaging in “strange sex”, whatever that means. Yeah Rob, it would def be realistic for Veronica to just get over the fact that her husband and love of her life died of a bomb due to her oversight in a year and then continue on her merry way without any support from her loved ones!

Stumptown, however, explicitly connects Dex’s self destructive behavior with her past trauma: in the very first episode Dex is shown frantically texting contacts for a sexual hookup in the midst of a PTSD episode. The most powerful scene of the entire season in my opinion is one where, after experiencing a flashback to her time as an interrogator in Afghanistan, she goes on a bender at home and trashes her house to the soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain.” (As an aside, I would also like to point out that Stumptown deftly portrays the trauma and grey morality associated with military service, which could have been an amazing (and noir!) storyline for naval intelligence officer Logan in future seasons of VM if Rob Thomas wasn’t such a dimwit).

Additionally, the death of her not quite-fiancé Benny hangs over her, even though the event took place twelve years prior to the start of the series. Even before Benny is introduced onscreen in flashbacks in the penultimate episode of S1, the show does a good job of portraying just how much he and their relationship meant to Dex. The season culminates in Dex finding out that his death in an explosion in Afghanistan was not in fact her fault, as she had previously assumed. Interestingly, the show’s writers considered revealing that Benny had faked his death, but the head writer later stated in an interview that doing so would invalidate the trauma Dex had experienced for 12 years and would ultimately be cruel. While on a shallow level I wouldn’t have minded them bringing Benny back since the actor who played him was super attractive and had great chemistry with Cobie Smulders, the decision the writers made instead makes more sense for the world they have built and is far more thoughtful: it allows Dex to obtain a sense of closure and growth while respecting her grief.

Women over the age of 35 aren’t Satan

A criticism of VM since it originally aired is that the show generally portrays female characters, especially mothers and other women over a certain age, in a negative light (and Rob Thomas has been defensive about it just as long). The books partially rectified this by introducing the characters of Petra Landros, the former model turned owner of the Neptune Grand, and Marcia Langdon, the new Balboa County sheriff with a murky past. Marcia was brought back for S4, but considerably dumbed down and less complex than in the books (and there’s definitely something to be said that the first time a BIPOC woman is shown in a position of power on screen in VM that her character is diminished).

Stumptown, on the other hand, has two women as older female mentors/nemeses in positions of power: Sue Lynn, the matriarch of the local Native American tribe, and Lieutenant Cosgrove of the Portland PD. Both have complicated relationships with Dex: Sue Lynn ended Dex’s relationship with Benny, her son, yet repeatedly seeks her out for help with matters on the reservation. Lieutenant Cosgrove often finds herself at odds with Dex while the latter is attempting to solve a case, though she also encourages her to legally obtain her PI license. It shouldn’t be revolutionary to have complex older female characters as supporting cast on a female-centered show in 2020, but after 15 years of misogyny from VM it certainly feels refreshing.

Where Stumptown falls short

All of this is not to say that Stumptown is flawless. Despite my praise for including older female characters above, the show is still pretty dude heavy, especially Dex’s inner circle. The mysteries of the week are of fairly average quality, and several were reminiscent of some seen in VM’s original run--the season even ends with a “Who’s at the door?” gambit. I also didn’t love the storyline where Grey’s girlfriend gets Dex drunk and tricks her into thinking they had slept together in order to drive Grey and Dex apart--that felt like something out of the mind of Rob Thomas. It also bears mentioning that in the context of current events the generally positive portrayal of the police department and Dex’s close relationship with them should bear more scrutiny. And while the show is well done overall, it never quite reaches the emotional resonance of original flavor VM (but then, neither did VM S4).

Despite those quibbles, I think it’s a good show overall. I felt like as the season progressed the creative team figured out what worked and the cast seemed to gel together. I love the classic rock soundtrack (another area where VM S4 failed, given that it abandoned VM’s signature indie soundtrack for generic pop music), which in conjunction with Dex’s wardrobe gives the show a fun retro feel. By the end of the season I was firmly won over, and I look forward to S2. Hopefully the writers of Stumptown paid attention to the backlash to VM S4 as a lesson in what not to do going forward.

#surprise bitch you thought you'd seen the last of me complaining about VM S4 #well think again #also this turned out way longer than I thought it would #i deleted a whole section on the stylistic choices in Stumptown vs. VM #Veronica Mars Hulu revival #Stumptown #Veronica Mars

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radiojamming · 5 years

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The Terror Meta - Tom Hartnell: Symbol of Death, Redemption, and Bravery

By now, I think it’s been established that The Terror’s writers went above and beyond when it came to making their characters. The question board picture has been circulated (including the question of when a character went from being in a high adventure story to horror), so it’s probably not a reach to say that every character had their place in the show carefully considered. And one of those characters is Tom Hartnell.

(Warning: Long post and spoiler heavy. Uh, people die. A lot.)

For the show’s time constraints, Tom’s backstory is mentioned in snippets, mostly in the first episode. David Young provides the majority of it:

“I don’t want you to do to me what you did to Tom Hartnell’s brother. [...] I want to go to my grave as I am. Don’t cut me open.”

Several times in the same episode, references are made to the men on Beechey Island, having been the first three casualties of the Expedition. Clearly, Tom’s brother was one of these three.

I’ve posted this on my blog before, but the original pilot script also gave Tom an extra role and provided deeper backstory, such as this:

With Tom on the Erebus watching Billy Orren drown and attempting to go after him, a role that was eventually given to Collins. And again in a removed flashback to Beechey Island, which provides not only backstory, but further explanation to why Tom is the way that he is:

While this isn’t included in the show, the writers probably kept this scene in mind with his character. Yeah, Tom walked in on his brother’s autopsy. From the very beginning of the Expedition, he dealt with death in the most direct and horrifying way possible. In the sense of the writer’s question of when it went from high adventure to horror? It was probably this moment, before the show even begins.

From this point, Tom is transferred to Terror for reasons not explained, but now everyone knows what’s happened to him. Even people as far down the hierarchy rungs as David Young know, and it makes them uneasy. But here’s where it gets interesting.

At the moment David Young starts coughing, Tom Hartnell appears in nearly every single scene involving a person either dying or about to die. Case in point.

He’s sitting right behind Hickey and looks over his shoulder when David starts coughing. Shortly after, when David retches, he’s standing up and watching him.

(It should probably be noted that David dies of exactly the same disease that killed Tom’s brother. Wuh-oh.)

“Okay, DJ, but that’s just one time. He’s an AB, so of course he would be there!” you might say.

You’re right! But the next time he appears in Episode 2 (”Gore”), look who he’s standing next to.

Lieutenant Graham Gore, that’s who! (And Morfin by extension, but that’s for later. Same with Des Voeux.)

Aaaand who goes next?

(Really big UH-OH.)

And if you want to go by extension, he’s also present when Silna’s father is shot, and is the one assigned to collect Silna’s things that are in the Erebus sick bay with her father’s body in Ep. 3 (”The Ladder”).

Where he looks, appropriately, uncomfortable. @theiceandbones absolutely brilliantly pointed out that yes, this is the Erebus sick bay where Tom walked in on his brother’s autopsy. It stands to mind that of course he’d be anxious. He knocks on the doorframe before he enters, walking in slowly and nervously. His body language here is interesting and hard to capture with just screenshots, but he keeps trying to look away from the body as much as possible, but is finding it very hard to look away. Even as he’s leaving the room, he looks again, while also bodily backing away from it. With his brother’s death in mind, he’s revisiting the place where it all happened, possibly for the first time since then.

While I think his death symbolism starts with David Young, it really picks up between here and the next scene, where he speaks to Silna.

In the short time he speaks to her, a few things are established, both said and unsaid. Unlike some of the crew, Tom doesn’t appear to be uneasy about Silna, but instead is sympathetic. His job was probably just to get her things and deliver them, but he goes out of his way to help her and extends kindness in packing her food. He offers his condolences, and again, in something that is hard to catch in screenshots, he thinks about it for a moment, looking conflicted before offering them and giving her the nickname she’ll have for the rest of the series.

It’s unsaid, but undoubtedly, he’s thinking of his own loss as well.

We don’t see Tom for a little while until near the end of the episode when Sir John is taken into the firehole. And then, sure enough:

There he is. (For an AB, he’s sure showing up with officers quite a bit.)

Tom is in-frame for death after death after death.

It gets subverted (like a lot of things) in Ep. 4 (”Punished, As a Boy”). Tom is not in frame during Private Heather’s attack, which may be owed to Heather not dying. Strong is taken off-screen, and Evans is only with Crozier when he’s killed. He reappears briefly and in-focus, sitting with Hickey and Peglar, when Tozer is talking about how baffled they all are that Heather hasn’t died.

He also doesn’t appear when the Strong-Evans mismatched corpse is found by Hickey, who proceeds to actually see the Tuunbaq for the first time. The next time he’s seen is at a very pivotal scene for not only him, but the entire plot.

At this point, Hickey’s claimed responsibility for capturing Silna, and Tom stands up a few seconds after to also claim responsibility. This is where I think the tone of his subplot changes completely, all in the matter of one scene:

The interrogation.

Now the above shot is kind of amazing, and I’ve only noticed it recently, but knowing how much detail the show crew put into this, I feel like it’s relevant to point out a few things. First, this shot is framed with Hartnell in the center and Hickey and Manson off to the side, just after Hickey says that Tom saw the Tuunbaq first. There’s a brief shot of Hartnell sort of side-glaring at Hickey with his lip twitching before he steels himself, and then this composition. Little and Fitzjames are looking at Hickey, but Crozier’s looking at Tom, fully and completely. He knows something, and it feels relevant to note that Hickey is level with a chessboard, while Tom is level with the light.

I’ve posted about Tom’s face journey here before, and I’ll recycle a few shots for this, but the turning point comes just after Crozier outlines what Hickey’s being accosted and punished for. He names the punishment (the lashes), and Tom’s face says it all.

Fear. His eyes are watering. He has to take in a few breaths, but then Crozier asks what do they have to say and without even a full second of hesitation (I counted):

Tom says, “Yes, sir!” as clearly as possible. He accepts the punishment immediately. Crozier’s reaction:

He stares at Tom for a long moment, thoughtful, until Little draws his attention away.

Now, what does this have to do with the theory of Tom being a symbol of death? Well, a lot. I’ll get to that.

First, during the lashing, you only hear Tom’s v/o telling Manson that the lashings will hurt, and that the pain is the point of why they’re lashed. He is deliberately kept out of sight and focus, because the punishment isn’t really for him in the audience’s eyes anymore. He was probably absolved the moment Crozier looked at him. The punishment is completely directed on Hickey after that.

Ep. 5 (”First Shot a Winner, Lads”) is where the change in Hartnell really shows. The episode starts off with scenes of life now. Officers and men are taking measurements of temperature and gauging the speed of sound and light. Fitzjames is working on the charts (towards Back’s Fish River). Goodsir and Lady Silence are talking and translating, and the trinkets from the men are shown as they’ve interacted with her. The show physically leans away from death for a moment, which up until now has been bloody and gruesome. The first person who dies is Hornby, and all that happens to him?

He simply falls to the ground. No blood. No viscera. His heart’s just stopped.

Of course, the next time Tom appears:

He’s handling Hornby’s body and taking it down to the dead room.

This scene is very poignant because it shows how four different characters handle the idea of death and the afterlife, all in very short order.

You have Magnus, scared of the hold because he’s certain he’s heard the voices of Strong and Evans. He’s afraid of the ghosts that he’s sure are there.

You have Irving, who is oddly indignant, technical when it comes to the dead with explaining that all that’s left of them are frozen remains and canvas shrouds, and furious at the idea of Manson believing in ghosts.

Hickey, who at first seems to be doing Manson a kindness, but probably just more eager to show Irving up.

And then Tom, completely unafraid of handling a body, and offering to Manson that he can get the job done if Manson lowers Hornby down.

The next shot we see is another interesting one, with Hartnell leading the way to the dead room, Hickey bringing up the rear, and Manson, the lantern-bearer, several steps behind. (You could say a lot for crossing the River Styx energies here, ya.)

And then the dead room is shown at a Dutch angle or Dutch tilt, a technique used to establish uneasiness or tension.

Manson is watching the two of them work in the dead room, out of the light, in a shot that is off-kilter (yes, the ship is off-kilter as well, but up until this point, everyone has been shown standing upright) to suggest that something is going to go wrong. But then:

Tom steps out of the dead room first, in the lantern light, standing upright against the angle, diffusing the tension. There are no ghosts, no eerie disembodied voices. And just like that, with a quiet affirmation--

The scene ends, with nothing having gone wrong.

To follow up on this in the sense of Tom’s character, he’s gone from being nervous and touchy around the dead to being completely alright with their presence.

Following this, there are more scenes of life against all odds. Tozer is cutting Heather’s nails and speaking to him as though he’s awake. Hodgson supervises another scientific experiment with the cannons. Goodsir and Lady Silence meet with Blanky and Crozier and speak, ending up with the fight that culminates between Fitzjames and Crozier. No one is killed. If anything, this is one the liveliest scenes thusfar.

The next time he appears?

Is when the Tuunbaq is on the ship and about to appear in full. Before, his appearance might have suggested that someone was about to die, but something kind of interesting happens.

The crew fire on the Tuunbaq after Blanky marks it with the lantern fire, and for one of the first times in the show, Tom actually appears happy.

He’s excited! He’s standing with Little, Hodgson, and Tozer, and they’re all thrilled. Even more amazing?

Blanky does not die.

He’s injured. His injuries require a pretty gruesome amputation, but of all the episodes in the show, Ep. 5 ends with the lowest body count.

Now Ep. 6 (”A Mercy”) is kind of all over the place for Tom and everyone else. He appears first talking to Hickey about Armitage, who is now revealed to have been part of their plot to kidnap Lady Silence. Hickey asks why Tom didn’t turn Armitage in, even after being flogged.

Hickey: You’d have been in your rights to.

Hartnell: I didn’t see the point in it.

Hickey: Even still? After getting flogged? That sort of thing can change your sense of what the point is.

Hartnell: It did. I’m grateful... is the point.

Hickey: [pause] Reformed you, did it?

Hartnell: I shouldn’t have listened to you. And I deserved to be flogged.

Hickey: [silence]

Hartnell: Yeah, and by ordering it, the Captain, he’s given me a chance to clean my record and start anew.

Hickey: Do you think Crozier sees it like that? A new Mr. Hartnell?

Hartnell: I do, yeah. [smiles] And I intend to use that charter well.

This is another turning point for both Hartnell and Hickey. Hickey is realizing that his list of allies is getting shorter (he starts by trying to drive a wedge between Tom and command, reminding him that he physically suffered because of them, and when he realizes that it isn’t going to work, he mocks him and leaves him) and now understands that Tom probably won’t work with him again.

Tom shows that his loyalty is now completely with Crozier. I’d even say that he never followed Hickey’s ideals in the first place, even with the kidnapping (remember how he acted toward Lady Silence before, and how quick he was to be held responsible). This is him now completely, as the phrase goes, on the side of angels. It’s going to add a new tone to his next few interactions, and really drive home his place as a death symbol.

Ep. 6 is as bloody and horrific as Ep. 5 was not. Fitzjames holds his Carnivale, Jopson and Crozier attend, and it all goes wrong very, very fast. One thing that @theiceandbones and I noticed was that before it-shay hits the an-fay, Tom is seen once in costume.

And he’s dressed as what appears to be a lion - a very poignant symbol of bravery (and Britain, if you want to go that far).

Of course, during the fire, Tom is there (as is everyone except Hickey who is outside of the tent), so I’d hesitate to call that a connection. His first mention after Carnivale is through Bridgens, who tells Crozier that Tom reported Dr. Peddie lost during the fire.

Going into Episode 7 (”Horrible from Supper”), Tom is officially an outlier to the people who are going to become the Mutineers. He’s excluded from anything Hickey begins to plan and is completely on the captains’ side. Literally. His next shot shows him between Crozier and Jopson.

But more relevant is the next time he’s seen with Crozier and Blanky, making notes of the ice and the movement of the compass. Blanky remarks:

Tom’s been completely redeemed in the eyes of Crozier, enough that he’s being asked to step outside the grunt work of hauling sledges, and his opinions and observations are trusted (”Very well. I’ll continue to rely on your eyes.”). The way he gives his observations also show an uptick in confidence and enthusiasm. He’s happy, and a far step away from his nervous, mournful attitude of earlier episodes.

Has he stepped out of the role of being a death symbol? Yes, and no.

Death has started to dog the crew of the Expedition again. Madness is seeping in with the lead. Hickey begins to weave the tapestry of his mutiny as the gruesome discovery of Fairholme’s party takes place (note that Tom isn’t present for this). Rescue seems impossible, and death is starting to become imminent.

Tom Hartnell’s role begins to change, and he goes from being present at the deaths to aiding in the recovery. Whereas death is everywhere, Tom is a symbol of something gentler (on a whole, this is talked about beautifully in this meta piece).

It starts with Morfin.

Remember that Tom was in the shot with Gore, Morfin, and Des Voeux in Ep. 2, and he’s seen with Morfin again with Lady Silence’s father in the Erebus sick bay later. His role changes with Morfin in Ep. 7 (I’d even through in the symbolism of Morfin singing The Silver Swan if we really want to go wild with the death icons). Morfin is shot, put out of his misery effectively, and Tom does not appear until after he is killed. More importantly, he’s now interacting with the scene - helping, as it were.

He’s at the center of the shot with Goodsir - not Morfin, who is technically the subject. His hand is on Goodsir, and he silently says something to him before Goodsir stands. Unlike with the other deaths, Tom is no longer directing his attention on the bodies, but on the people who are dealing with them.

Further on, he privately speaks with Crozier about Armitage’s involvement in Hickey’s earlier plot. Once more, he’s on Crozier’s side completely, which Crozier affirms for him, saying that he trusts him and does not want to put him in a position where he feels like he can’t speak. He says they’ll work together, and thanks Tom, earning a smile out of him.

D’awwww.

But back with his death symbolism, Tom is the first shown to be handling Morfin’s body, drawn into sharp focus against the corpse.

He’s responsible for the handling and burial, but rather than appearing nervous or upset about his job, he handles it as he did with Hornby’s body. It’s a job to do, and one that he doesn’t appear to mind doing anymore. He helps dig Morfin’s grave, juxtaposed with shots and conversation of Crozier talking about the lead in the cans that led to Morfin’s madness and death.

The episode ends with Jopson’s promotion and the start of Hickey’s bloody mutiny, in a way signaling the beginning of the end.

Tom doesn’t appear for a portion of Ep. 8 (”Terror Camp Clear”), removed from Irving’s violent death where he probably would have been before, and instead placed in the silent, mournful atmosphere of the dead Netsilik group.

He’s also removed from the general chaos of the imaginary raid on Terror Camp, but appears in probably one of the most pivotal and brilliantly-arranged scenes that he gets in the entire show.

The Tuunbaq attacks in full force, ripping the camp asunder, causing so much chaos that the mutineers manage to get away. Men are killed left and right, gruesomely torn apart. The fog makes it difficult to see what’s happening and where, and so only the sounds of roaring and screaming indicate what is happening around them.

And then there’s Tom.

He’s scared. Of course he is. He’s seen what the Tuunbaq can do, and he knows it’s coming. All he can do is tell the men with him to get down and out of sight, while he stands.

Trembling, he raises his gun and waits for the inevitable. He was on deck with they shot the Tuunbaq with the cannon, and he knows that even then, it got away. He knows its size and what it’s capable of doing. His gun will do nothing to it, and he knows this. All he can do is buy the men time and take at least one shot.

Tom Hartnell literally faces down death itself, and does not back away.

The camera pans in on him, drawing into focus how he steels himself, furrowing his brows, keeping his aim steady. If anything, this shot establishes his bravery in full detail. And then--

A rocket is launched at the Tuunbaq from behind -- completely parallel to Tom. In a similar focused shot is Fitzjames.

Complete with the same steely resolve and surety, establishing his own bravery. With him on one side and Tom on the other, the Tuunbaq is caught in a perfect intersection of selflessness and courage, even when no one’s around to witness it (”A man like me will do amazing things to be seen.”).

Ep. 9 (”The C, The C, The Open C”) opens with Lady Franklin formally, but with Tom and Golding on the Arctic side, dealing with the dead in the day after the attack on Terror Camp.

Once again, Tom is no longer present during the deaths, but is dealing with the aftermath. He offers to help Golding move the body. Golding wonders after the identity of the body, clearly shaken by what he’s seen. But Tom, turning his focus way from the corpse, puts his hand on Golding’s arm to comfort him, as he did with Goodsir.

“That won’t change what we do for him.”

It’s no longer a matter of the how’s and why’s, but rather how the men move on. Tom has come to represent something so much more in death than its execution. His own grief was mired in the memory of his brother and what was done to his body. Lashing out, curling into himself, allowing others to control his path, and then finding his own way to redemption, Tom has made the full walk of his own sorrow and gone through its stages, coming out on the other side with the sense of mind to help others cope with their losses.

Then, he’s standing before the row of the dead, hands respectfully folded in front of him. He’s in their presence again, but not in the violent hour of their death, but again, in the aftermath.

Crozier’s speech is examined so, so gorgeously in this post, with the words “courage” and “the end” focused on Tom. @theiceandbones also pointed out (and subsequently broke my heart) that after Crozier mentions bringing home the names of the dead so that their loved once can find solace, Tom’s bottom lip is trembling. I fully believe in his character, Jack Colgrave Hirst chose to keep the real Thomas Hartnell’s life in mind, thinking that he was going to have to go back to their mother with news of his brother’s death. He embodies this concept so well in that moment.

After Fitzjames’ death, Tom is seen again in that same role.

He’s at the center of the shot with Fitzjames’ body, sewing him into his shroud, surrounded and at the center of the focus of their party. He’s either volunteered or been chosen to the handle the body, which he does respectfully. As Shannon, my brilliant cohort noticed:

He’s working diligently and carefully. And again, it won’t change what he does for him.

Tom also helps with Peglar, who he has been shown with multiple times since the very first episode, possibly suggesting that they’ve been friends all along.

He helps lift Peglar into Bridgens’ arms, clearly worrying for him.

He’s not shown during Peglar’s death, but he helps handle him, allowing him to rest a little easier before he quietly passes on. Compared to what’s been happening in the mutineer camp, what Tom’s witnessing is a gentle passing of people.

It’s the last scene that stings the worst, as Crozier’s group is confronted by the mutineers, including Des Voeux, Hodgson, and Manson.

Des Voeux’s gun misfires, hitting Tom square in the chest.

Tom’s own death is not through the Tuunbaq, or through any of Hickey’s machinations, or anything more than an accident. It’s quick, but painful. Crozier kneels beside him, stroking his hair, comforting him as Tom’s done for others before. The next few lines speak for themselves.

It’s the end of Tom’s redemption, a sign of his bravery, of his own recovery and progress. Crozier calls him son, affirming a bond between them. Tom is not dying alone. Instead, he has someone at his side who cares for him, just as Tom had been for his own brother only a few years before.

He holds on, struggling against the agony of his wound, until Crozier, eyes filling with tears, lets him go with one phrase -- one that includes something that hasn’t been mentioned since Ep. 1.

John Hartnell hasn’t been mentioned since the first episode, and it’s been several years at that point since his death. But Crozier knows what Tom’s been through, and he’s certainly seen his displays of grief and development. If anything would cause Tom to let go, this would be it. With it, Tom goes quietly in only a few seconds. He goes without a sound, simply closing his eyes and letting out a breath.

Des Voeux, shaken, asks Crozier to stand up. With it, Crozier does Tom a final respect by asking Little to bury him, and to live. Tom’s body is kept out of sight completely, not seen again.

After his death, the others go quickly. By the time of Ep. 10, it’s almost wholesale loss, between Goodsir’s heroic suicide, the Tuunbaq, and others just disappearing into the mists of the Arctic. But Tom’s character appears to have represented a balance, showing grief and loss, but also recovery and redemption. He appears with nearly every major death in the show, going from anxious and shaken to brave and kind, more eager to help those left in the wake of death, making him the perfect representation to the concepts of loss, grief, and recovery for The Terror.

#amc the terror #terror blogging #thomas hartnell #jack colgrave hirst #meta #long post #really really long post #i just really love him a lot #this was originally titled THE TOM HARTNELL GRIM REAPER THEORY

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spn-safeandsound · 4 years

Text

06. Strong Abilities

Safe and Sound

Dean Winchester x Original Character

Episode: 1x09; Home

Word Count: 9, 163

Warning(s): Mature language, canon violence and gore

Author’s Note: Hope you enjoy! Don’t forget to reblog and like!

Masterlist in Profile Description!

Julia loved blue and purple. The bands that she used to tie up her hair were royal blue. Her toothbrush was turquoise. Her hunter's journal was navy. Her luggage was dark purple. Her favorite sundress was lavender. Her sexiest bra was lilac.

So, it made sense that her absolute favorite color was periwinkle—the perfect shade of blue and purple together. The problem was that it was hard to find anything that came in periwinkle and that frustrated the hell out of her. So, when she saw a bottle of periwinkle nail polish at the store when they went to pick up some supplies, she got three bottles. Sam had given her an incredulous look but she very pointedly ignored it.

She was just finishing up the second coat on her nails when Dean spoke up from the other side of the table, having done a search for cases all morning.

"All right, I've been cruising some websites and I think I found a few candidates for our next gig," he told her and Sam, who was sitting on his bed sketching. "A fishing trawler found off the coast of Cali. Its crew vanished. And, uh, we got some cattle mutilations in West Texas."

Julia hummed. Calf mutilations? Lovely.

"Hey," Julia looked up when Dean spoke but he was looking at Sam, who didn't seem to be paying attention. "Am I boring you with this hunting evil stuff?"

"No, I'm listening," Sam assured him while continuing to draw. "Keep going."

"And here, in Sacramento man shot himself in the head three times," Dean held up three fingers at his brother but when Sam didn't look up, he waved for his attention. "Any of these things blowing up your skirt, pal?"

Sam didn't answer as he flipped back to the other drawings he had sketched, so Julia shrugged, "I think the last one is interesting."

Dean nodded, satisfied that she had answered him at least. "I guess we're going to Sacramento then, shortcake."

Julia gave him a small smile and screwed the periwinkle top back on the bottle of the polish before grabbed the clear coat, brushing it on her nails. She was getting better with Dean after all that happened in St. Louis with the shifter that took his face. It was slow-going but it took about a month until they were mostly back to normal. The usual things he did, like poking her dimple or patching up her injuries were done with hesitation but he slowly got back to the regular intervals. She returned the favor by tapping him on the back or playfully punching his bicep. She still had nightmares but they were getting better, especially since things were getting better with Dean.

"Wait, I've seen this," Sam declared when he turned to his very first drawing of the same old creepy tree.

Dean gave him a weird look. "Seen what?"

Sam rolled off his bed and walked across the motel room, digging into his duffel bag. He pulled John's journal out of it and slapped it down on Dean's bed so he could go through it.

"Sam, is something wrong?" Julia asked, sensing that something was off about him. He was jumpy and kind of frantic as he searched through the photos in the front flap of the journal.

Sam absentmindedly nodded and finally pulled out a picture, comparing it to the notepad he had sketched on. He turned to Dean with wide eyes. "Dean, I know where we have to go next."

Dean eyed him curiously. "Where?"

"Back home. Back to Kansas."

Dean scoffed. "Okay, random. Where'd that come from?"

"All right, this photo was taken in front of our old house, right?" Sam handed the picture he took from the journal and handed it to Dean; the photo was of Dean and Sam when they were a child and a baby, respectively, with their dad and their mother, Mary. "The house where Mom died?"

"Yeah..."

"And it didn't burn down, right?" Sam went on quickly. "I mean, not completely. They rebuilt, right?"

"I guess so," Dean looked a little overwhelmed at Sam's questions. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Okay, look," Sam sat at the seat in the middle of Julia and Dean. "this is gonna sound crazy but the people who live in our old house? I think they might be in danger."

Julia furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. "Why do think that?"

"Uh...it's just...um," Sam grimaced nervously; Julia instantly knew that he had been keeping something from them—something important. "you guys have to just trust me on this, okay?"

"Sam, of course we trust you," Julia gave him a concerned look as he jumped up and crossed the room, starting to pack his bag. She really hoped that she didn't sound condescending because she didn't mean to. She was genuinely worried about him.

"Woah, hold on," Dean narrowed his eyes at his brother. "I think you gotta give us more of an explanation than that."

"I can't," Sam shoved his phone and laptop charger in his bag after he was done with his clothes.

"Well, tough," Dean got up to walk over to him. "I'm not going anywhere until you do."

Sam sighed heavily and paused his packing, turning to face him. "I have these nightmares..."

Dean nodded. "I've noticed."

No kidding, Julia thought. There had hardly been a night that she wasn't woken up by Sam's tossing and turning while he had his nightmares. She didn't blame him, of course, because she had her fair share, too. She just wished their bad dreams would sync up so they wouldn't wake each other up at different times.

"And sometimes they come true," Sam dropped a bomb.

Okay, that was unexpected. He had never given any hint that he was experiencing visions. She honestly wondered what it was like; she didn't see the things she knew, she just knew them.

"Come again?"

"Look, Dean," Sam sighed at Dean's look of disbelief. "I dreamt about Jessica's death for days before it happened."

That would explain why he had said that Bloody Mary would come after him. He wasn't to blame but if he actually thought that it was his fault Jess died because he didn't do anything about the nightmares he had, the spirit would have gone after him. And it did.

"Sam, some people have weird dreams," Dean tried to explain, sitting at the end of his bed. "I'm sure it's just a coincidence."

"No, I dreamt about the blood dripping, her on the ceiling, the fire, everything," Sam elaborated. "and I didn't do anything about it cause I didn't believe it. Now, I'm dreaming about that tree, about our house, and about some woman inside screaming for help. I mean, that's where it all started, man, this had to mean something, right?"

Dean bowed his head, shaking it slightly. "I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know, Dean?" Sam sat on the bed across from him. "This woman might be in danger. I mean, this might even be the thing that killed Mom and Jessica!"

Julia watched the brothers silently, not knowing what to say or whether she had a right to say anything at all. The air in the room was tense, making her spine stiffen, and both Sam and Dean were getting riled up. Sam was urgent; he wanted to go to Kansas and he wanted to go now. There was nothing that was going to change his mind. From the set of his shoulders, Julia could tell that Dean was struggling with the concept of returning to the only home he ever really had. He was just as sensitive about Mary Winchester's death as John was and he mourned her every day.

"All right, just slow down, would you?" Overwhelmed, Dean snapped at him, standing up to walk toward the table to get some space from his brother. "I mean, first you tell me you've got the Shining and then you tell me that I've gotta go back home? Especially when..."

Dean cut himself off sharply, his breath hitching. Julia felt her heart ache at the despair that practically wafted off of him.

"When what?" Sam asked.

"When I swore to myself that I would never go back there."

Dean abruptly turned around, hiding his grieved expression from his little brother. He didn't seem to realize that he was now facing Julia until it was too late. His face went blank—though his green eyes were still so sad—and she gave him a sad smile to show him that she was there for him if he needed her.

It wasn't the same kind of situation, but Dean had been so supportive of her over the past month. She owed it to him to be there for him, too.

"Look, Dean," Sam's tone softened significantly, realizing why his brother was so reluctant about going back to Kansas. "we have to check this out. Just to make sure."

Dean swallowed harshly, the muscle in his jaw working. "I know we do."

They arrived in Lawrence, Kansas around nine the next day. The ride was very quiet even with the rock music playing and Dean definitely didn't blast it like most days. The closer they got to the Winchester's old neighborhood, the more tense Dean got, the air shifting around him anxiously.

Dean pulled over to the curb across their old house, shutting off the Impala. He stared at the house, where there was no sign of the fire, dread. He was clearly rethinking the decision to come here.

"You gonna be all right, man?" Sam asked, noticing his brother's stare.

Dean pressed his lips together. "Let me get back to you on that."

The three of them got out of the car and crossed the street to the house. Julia hung back to walk with Dean, ignoring her slight uneasiness to briefly grab his hand and squeeze reassuringly. Dean's lips quirked slightly and he returned the action before pulling his hand away to stuff it in his jacket.

As Sam knocked on the door, she saw the tree that he had been drawing the day before.

A blonde woman older than all three of them opened the door. "Yes?"

"Sorry, to bother you, ma'am, but we're with the Federal—"

"I'm Sam Winchester," Sam cut off Dean to introduce them politely. "this is my brother, Dean, and our friend, Julia. Dean and I used to live here. You know, we were just driving by and we were wondering if we could come see the old place."

"Winchester," the woman breathed thoughtfully. "That is so funny. You know, I think I found some of your photos the other night."

Dean looked surprised. "You did?"

The woman nodded. "Come on in," she invited them into the house. "I'm Jenny."

"Nice to meet you," Julia smiled politely as she and the brothers entered the house and followed her through a hallway. "Thanks for letting us take a look around."

"No problem," Jenny nodded as they entered the kitchen. There was a little girl around six or so sitting at the table coloring, while a blonde toddler jumped up and down in a playpen, cheering for juice.

"That's Richie," she told Julia and the brothers as she took a sippy cup of juice over to the little boy. "He's kind of a juice junkie. But hey, at least he won't get scurvy."

Julia smiled and waved at the little boy, watching as he smiled in satisfaction when he popped the sippy-part into his mouth and started drinking. He was such a cutie.

"Sari," Jenny put her hands on her daughter's shoulders. "This is Julia, Sam, and Dean. The boys used to live here."

Sari smiled shyly. "Hi."

"Hi, Sari," Julia grinned at her while Sam and Dean waved.

"So," Dean looked to Jenny. "you just moved in?"

"Yeah, from Wichita."

"Do you have family in the area?" Julia wondered. Lawrence was kind of a small town, so it was hard to believe that someone would move here out of nowhere. Then again, Wichita was only two hours south.

"No," Jenny frowned. "We just, uh—we needed a fresh start, that's all. A new town, new job—I mean, as soon as I find one—and a new house."

"How are you liking it so far?" Sam asked as Jenny grabbed the empty plate by Sari's coloring book and took it to the sink.

"Well, uh, all due respect to your childhood home—I mean I'm sure you had lots of happy memories here—" Jenny started hesitantly; Dean smiled weakly. "—but this place has its issues."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's just getting old," she shrugged. "Like the wiring, you know? We've got flickering lights almost hourly."

"Oh, that's too bad," Dean said. "What else?"

"Um, the sink's backed up, there's rats in the basement..." when Dean grimaced softly, she trailed off. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to complain."

"No," Dean waved her off. "Have you seen the rats or have you just heard scratching?"

"Just the scratching, actually."

"Mom?" Sari spoke up quietly. "Ask them if it was here when they lived here."

Julia frowned in concern. "What, Sari?"

Hesitantly, Sari elaborated, "The thing in my closet."

"Oh, no, baby, there was nothing in their closets," Jenny assured her daughter before looking up at Sam and Dean pointedly. "Right?"

"Right," Sam nodded. "No, of course not."

"She had a nightmare the other night."

"I wasn't dreaming," Sari insisted indignantly. "It came into my bedroom and it was on fire."

On either side of her, Julia felt the brothers stiffen.

"Did you hear that?" Sam asked Dean as the three of them quickly walked out of their old house. "A figure on fire."

"And Jenny was the woman in your dream that needed help?" Julia asked him while Dean stared down at the ground as he walked, keeping quiet about what he had heard. He definitely did not want to believe that whatever killed his mom had stuck around afterwards.

"Yeah," Sam confirmed. "and did you hear what she was talking about? Scratching, flickering lights...both signs of a malevolent spirit."

When Dean looked up, Sam was looking at him expectantly. "Yeah, well, I'm just freaked out that your weirdo visions are coming true."

"Well, forget about that for a minute," Sam insisted as they crossed the street to the Impala. "The thing in the house, do you think it's the thing that killed Mom and Jessica?"

"I don't know!" Dean snapped.

"Well, has it come back or has it been here the whole time?" Sam matched the volume of his voice, becoming heated.

"Or maybe it's something else entirely, Sam!" Dean stopped by his door and faced his brother head-on, his eyes hard. "We don't know yet!"

"Those people are in danger, Dean! We have to get them out of that house!"

"And we will."

"No, I mean now."

Dean scoffed. "And how are you gonna do that, huh? You got a story that she's gonna believe?"

"Then what are we supposed to do?!"

"Guys!" Julia stepped in between them, looking around to make sure no one around the neighborhood was watching the brothers freak out at each other. "Stop shouting at each other."

She gave them pointed looks and got two angry glares in return.

"I know that this is difficult but you can't turn on each other," she advised, ignoring their ire. "We should leave and figure out what the hell is actually going on."

"But—"

"Stop talking, Samuel William," Julia gave him a hard look; Sam's face fell and Dean smirked at him. "I can first-and-middle-name you, too, Dean Jonah."

Dean scowled.

"Get in the car," she ordered as she opened the back door and slid into her seat.

She didn't like going all mom-mode on two grown ass men but she didn't know how else to get them to calm down and look at the case rationally. They were emotional about it and she didn't blame them but if they were going to save Jenny and her kids, they needed to pull themselves together.

If she could do this case by herself to save the boys the heartache, she would. But she couldn't—Sam and Dean knew way more stuff than she did and, knowing them, they probably wouldn't stay out of it anyway.

Thoroughly chastised, the brothers got into the Impala. Minutes later, they were pulling up to a gas station so Dean could fill the tank. Thankfully, the ride had given them time to think and calm down, which led to Dean to make a realization.

"We just gotta chill out, that's all," he told Sam and Julia as he pumped gas into the car. "You know, if this was any other kind of job, what would we do? Any ideas, Junior?"

Julia knew that he was testing her and she was going to rise to the occasion. "We'd try to figure out what we're dealing with," she answered. "and dig into the history of the house."

"Exactly," Dean nodded. "Except this time, we already know what happened."

"Yeah but how much do we know?" Sam spoke up as he leaned against the car. "I mean, how much do you actually remember?"

"About that night, you mean?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah."

"Not much. I remember the fire...the heat," Dean recalled quietly, his gaze far off in the distance like he was watching it in his head. "and then I carried you out the front door."

Julia frowned; so much responsibility had been placed on Dean at such a young age. From the moment he carried Sam out of that house, he had become his brother's caretaker and hadn't stopped since. Julia wished that the boys had a normal childhood like she had but, despite the fact that they didn't, they turned out to be great men.

Sam looked at Dean, surprised by his admission. "You did?"

"Yeah," Dean confirmed, looking over at him. "What, you never knew that?"

Sam shook his head. "No."

"Oh," Dean pressed on. "and, uh, well, you know Dad's story as well as I do. Mom was...she was on the ceiling and whatever put her there was long gone by the time Dad found her."

"And he never had a theory about what did it?"

"If he did, he kept it to himself," Dean said quietly, pulling the gas hose out of the gas tank to put it back on the pump. "God knows we asked him enough times."

"Okay, so, if we're gonna figure out what's going on now, we have to figure out what happened back then," Sam sighed.

"And see if it's the same thing," Julia added.

"Yeah," Dean confirmed. "We'll talk to Dad's friends, neighbors, people who were there at the time."

Sam scoffed softly and gave his brother a sad look. "Does this feel like another job to you?"

Dean didn't answer him, his lips quirking into the smallest and saddest smile that Julia had ever seen on him. "I'll be right back," he said instead. "I gotta go to the bathroom."

He walked off around the side of the gas station before Sam—or Julia, for that matter—could say another word or ask another question. Julia turned to Sam with a sad, sympathetic smile, and wrapped a supportive arm around his waist.

"How are you feeling?"

With Sam, she had always made more headway if she asked him how he was, rather than start right in. Sam could express his emotions far better than Dean could but he had to be in the right mind frame and ready to talk on his own. Sam did the same thing with her—it was cheaper than paying for therapy since they were both empathetic and gave good advice.

Sam sighed heavily. "I'm dealing," he told her. "I'm worried about Dean."

"Me too," she leaned her head against the top of his arm.

"You should talk to him," he suggested; Julia pulled away and gave him a confused look. "He would talk to you more than he would me."

"He's your brother, Sam."

"Well, you're his friend," Sam pointed out. "and he doesn't like talking about his feelings."

"What makes you think he would talk about them with me?"

"Because you're Julia," he said simply.

It didn't make a whole lot of sense but she agreed to talk to Dean anyway. She left the Impala to make her way around the gas station to wait for Dean outside of the bathroom. To her surprise, Dean was leaning against the brick wall, eyes clenched shut and his phone pressed against his forehead.

"Dean?"

Dean's eyes blinked open and he straightened himself, putting his phone in his jacket. "Yeah, what's up?"

Julia's chest tightened when she saw that his eyes were tinged a little red. She sighed sadly and stepped forward, wrapping her arms around him. She rested her head on his chest as he slowly returned the gesture, his chin sitting on top of her head.

"It's gonna be okay," she rubbed circles with her thumb on his back. "It hurts, I know."

Dean was quiet but she could feel his heavy breathing blow against her hair.

"It's okay to be sad."

Like a switch flipped at her words, Dean unwrapped himself from her and shoved his hands into his pockets. "I wanna be there for Sam."

"I know you do," she nodded, smiling softly up at him. "but Sam wants to be there for you, too, you know. I do, too."

The dimples at the corner of his lips deepened in emotion. She was pretty sure he wasn't going to say much but from the way his shoulders relaxed only slightly, she knew that he heard her and appreciated what she was saying.

"Come on," she grabbed his hand and tugged. "Where do you think we should go first?"

"Uh, probably the garage Dad worked at," Dean sighed as they started walking back to the car. "He co-owned it. Pretty much all of his friends worked there."

"Okay," Julia nodded, seeing that Sam had slid back into his seat to wait for them to come back to the car. "Do you remember where it is?"

Dean nodded.

The auto repair garage that John used to own with Keith Guenther was only a couple streets away from the gas station. Keith was a nice man with a belly and receding hairline who easily agreed to answer questions as they posed as state police.

"So, you and John Winchester, you used to own this garage together?" Dean asked as Keith led them through the garage where a couple mechanics were working.

"Yeah, we used to a long time ago," Keith confirmed before hesitating, "Matter of fact, it must be, uh, twenty years since John disappeared. Why are the cops interested all of a sudden?"

"We're re-opening some of our cold cases," Julia informed him with a polite smile. "The Winchester disappearance is one of them."

"Oh," Keith bought her lie. "Well, what do you want to know about John?"

"Well, whatever you remember," Dean told him. "You know, whatever sticks out in your mind."

"Well," he put his hands on his hips. "he was a stubborn bastard, I remember that," he chuckled. "And, uh, whatever the game, he hated to lose, you know? It's that whole Marine thing."

Dean and Sam nodded, exchanging a knowing look.

"But, oh, he sure loved Mary," Keith's smile fell. "and he doted on those kids."

Sam seemed surprised by that. "But that was before the fire?"

Keith nodded. "That's right."

"He ever talk about that night?"

"No, not at first," Keith answered Sam. "I think he was in shock."

"Did he eventually say anything about it?" Julia cocked her head curiously.

"Oh, he wasn't thinking straight," Keith shook his head slightly. "He said, uh, something caused that fire and killed Mary."

"Did he ever say what did it?" Dean wondered.

Keith shook his head. "Nothing did it. It was an accident—an electrical short in the ceiling or walls or something," he sighed. "I begged him to get some help, but..."

"But what?"

"He just got worse and worse."

"How?" Dean insisted.

"He started reading these strange old books," Keith recalled. "He started going to see this palm reader in town."

Julia raised an eyebrow. "Do you know the name of the palm reader?"

Keith scoffed. "No."

"Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Guenther," Sam shook his hand politely. "We'll see ourselves out."

"No problem."

"All right, so, there are a few psychics and palm readers in town," Sam sighed, looking down at the local phone book that was supplied at a public phone. "There's someone named El Divino. There's uh—" he laughed. "—the Mysterious Mister Fortinsky. Uh, Missouri Moseley. Some dude named—"

"Wait, wait," Dean interrupted, his face lit up in recognition. "Missouri Moseley?"

Sam gave him a curious look. "What?"

"That's a psychic?"

Sam looked back to the phone book. "Uh, yeah. Yeah, I guess so."

Dean opened the back door behind his seat, pulling out John's journal. "Dad's journal," he told Sam. "Here, look at this."

He opened the journal and went to the first page, holding it out to Sam. Sam set the phone book back down by the phone and walked over to Julia and Dean, taking the journal to see what Dean was talking about.

"First page, first sentence," Dean informed him, pointing at the page. "Read that."

Sam's eyes landed on the sentence. "I went to Missouri and I learned the truth."

Dean shrugged. "I always thought he meant the state."

Julia wrinkled her nose and took the journal from Sam, reading the entry for herself. It could be nothing but she found herself agreeing with Dean. It was too much of a coincidence that John had started seeing a palm reader in town and there happened to be one name that matched the first sentence of his hunter's journal.

She looked at Sam. "Was there an address?"

There was an address in the phone book and, luckily, Lawrence wasn't that big. Dean found the house where Missouri lived easily without stopping for directions. There was a cute little business sign in front of the house and a cozy waiting area for them to sit in while she finished up with her current appointment.

A black woman with the softest voice that Julia had ever heard escorted a middle-aged man out of her living room only ten minutes after they arrived.

"All right, there," she told him as she opened the door for him to leave. "Don't you worry about a thing. Your wife is crazy about you."

The man gave her his genuine thanks and, when the door was shut firmly behind him, she turned to Julia, Sam, and Dean. "Poor bastard. His woman is cold-banging the gardener."

"Why didn't you tell him?" Dean asked her, slightly amused.

"People don't come here for the truth, they come for good news," Missouri told him, pausing on her way to the living room. "Well, Sam, Dean, Julia...I ain't got all day."

Julia raised her eyebrows, impressed. "She knew our names," she whispered excitedly to Sam and Dean, standing from her seat on the couch. "She knew who we were."

"Calm down, shortcake," Dean grunted as the three of them made their way into the living room.

Julia rolled her eyes at him and turned to Missouri, already finding the woman staring at them.

"Well, let me look at ya," she laughed joyfully, looking between the three of them. "Oh, you boys grew up handsome. And you—" she pointed at Dean. "—were one goofy looking kid, too."

Julia's mouth fell open in amusement, looking over at Dean with bright eyes. Dean grimaced, looking uncomfortable, but relaxed when Missouri moved onto Julia.

"You look like your momma, girlie," she observed Julia carefully. "Petersen dimple and all. None of your daddy in you."

"You knew my dad?" Julia looked at her in shock.

"We've kept in touch over the years. He and Hannah used to live the town over," Missouri said; Julia's eyebrows furrowed—Hannah had been her dad's little sister who died a year before she was born. "Ooh, you got something special girl. I can feel your sensitivity."

Julia was quiet from the shock of all that Missouri knew about her. She hadn't known that her dad lived in Eudora because he hadn't said anything about it before. It was so strange that the Alexanders lived only a town over from the Winchesters but only met a few years later.

"Sam," Missouri touched his hand as Julia and Dean shared shocked looks and gave him a sympathetic look. "Oh, honey, I'm sorry about your girlfriend...and your father...he's missing?"

Another shock. None of them had said anything about John or the fact that they were looking for him—and Sam certainly hadn't shared about the death of his girlfriend.

"How'd you know all that?" he asked her, surprised.

"Well, you were thinking it just now."

Sam raised his eyebrows in disbelief.

"Well, where is he?" Dean asked hurriedly. "Is he okay?"

Missouri furrowed her eyebrows and shook her head. "I don't know."

"Don't know?" Dean repeated. "Well, you're supposed to be psychic, right?"

"Dean!"

"Boy, you see me sawing some bony tramp in half?" Missouri snapped at him. "You think I'm a magician?"

Dean went to defend himself but she kept going.

"I may be able to read thoughts and sense energies in the room but I can't just pull facts out of thin air. Sit, please," she said in one breath, nodding at the couch. Julia, Dean, and Sam all sat on the couch, the oldest man thoroughly chastised. "Boy, you put your foot on my coffee table I'm gonna whack you with a spoon!"

Dean's eyes widened at the finger she pointed at him. "I didn't do anything!"

"But you were thinking it," she retorted; Dean raised his eyebrows and Julia and Sam shared a smirk, amused that someone was setting him straight.

Julia looked around the living room with interest, taking in the homey decorations. She felt a little odd, like there was a sort of nostalgia that she couldn't place. She chalked it up to being in a stranger's presence.

"Okay, so," Sam cleared his throat. "our dad...When did you first meet him?"

"He came for a reading a few days after the fire," Missouri looked uncomfortable speaking about her encounters with John. "I just told him what was really out there in the dark. I guess you could say I drew back the curtains for him."

"What about the fire?" Dean asked her seriously. "Do you know about what killed our mom?"

"A little," Missouri admitted. "Your daddy took me to your house. He was hoping I could sense the echoes, the fingerprints of the thing."

Julia bit her lip nervously. "And could you?"

"I—" she cut herself off, shaking her head.

"What is it?" Sam asked softly, looking at her with pleading eyes.

"I don't know," she confessed. "Oh, but it was evil."

"Mrs. Moseley—"

"Please, it's Missouri," the older woman told Julia.

"Sorry...Missouri, we came to Lawrence because..." Julia trailed off, giving Sam a hesitant look. How could she explain why they were in Kansas when they couldn't have known about what was going on at the Winchester's old house.

"Because Sam had a vision," Missouri finished for her, not needing a rundown when she could hear their thoughts. "So, you think something is back in the house?"

Julia nodded. "Yes."

Missouri sighed. "I don't understand..."

"What?" Sam gave her a confused look.

"I haven't been back inside but I've been keeping an eye on the place. It's been quiet," Missouri told them. "No sudden deaths, no freak accidents...Why is it acting up now?"

"I don't know," Sam looked down at the carpet covering the floors. "but Dad going missing, Jessica dying, and now this house all happening at once? It just feels like something's starting."

Dean pressed his lips together. "That's a comforting thought."

Julia knocked on the door of the Winchester's old home, tapping her foot as she waited next to Missouri on the front step. Now that they were back at the house, Julia felt a little off. She didn't know if it was because Missouri's presence was strengthening whatever sensitivity—as the older woman called it—she had but she felt a weird energy around the house that didn't seem human.

It was making her anxious.

Jenny opened the door, looking upset and clutching Richie tightly against her chest. "Sam, Dean, Julia," she greeted them in confusion. "What are you doing here?"

"Hey, Jenny," Sam greeted her gently, noticing how upset she was. "This is our friend, Missouri."

Missouri nodded at her in greeting.

"If it's not too much trouble, we were hoping to show her the old house," Dean requested. "You know, for old time's sake."

"No, you know, this isn't a good time," Jenny denied them politely, her eyes sparkling with tears. "I'm kind of busy."

"Listen, Jenny, it's important—"

Missouri smacked Dean on the side of the head, causing him to grimace and grunt in pain. "Give the poor girl a break. Can't you see she's upset?" she snapped at him before turning to Jenny with an apologetic look on her face. "Forgive this boy, he means well but he's not the sharpest tool in the shed...but hear me out."

"About what?" Jenny asked, confused.

"About this house."

A flash of fear flickered in Jenny's eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"I think you know what I'm talking about," Missouri said knowingly. "You think there's something in this house. Something that wants to hurt your family, am I mistaken?"

Jenny stiffened. "Who are you?"

"We're people who can help," Julia spoke up, giving her a supportive smile. "We can stop this thing but you have to trust us a little."

Jenny reluctantly let them in. Missouri explained a little about who she was and what she did to Jenny. When Jenny was able to absorb that something was going on in her house that she didn't understand, she allowed them to go upstairs so Missouri could see if she felt any energies that didn't belong.

Missouri led them to the last room in the hall; it was painted light blue with stickers placed here and there on the walls and a butterfly comforter on the bed. Julia assumed that this was Sari's bedroom.

"If there's a dark energy around here, this room should be the center of it," Missouri told them as she looked around the room carefully.

"Why?" Sam asked.

"This used to be your nursery, Sam," she answered him. "This is where it all happened."

Julia's eyes immediately went to the ceiling like she was expecting there to be a mark or sign of Mary's horrific death. There was nothing and it was had a nice beam design, which relieved her. When she saw Dean look up, too, she grabbed his hand and gripped it tightly.

Dean pulled his EMF device from his jacket with his free hand, taking the comfort Julia offered. As the device buzzed and lit up, Missouri looked over at him.

"Is that an EMF?" she asked. Dean nodded, causing her to scoff. "Amateur."

Dean glared at her and Sam nudged him, silently warning him to behave and get along with her.

"Come here, Julia," Missouri spoke up, looking over at the youngest of the group who was fidgeting nervously. Julia gave her a confused look, let go of Dean's hand, and walked over to her. "I can feel your aura reaching out. You can sense something, can't you?"

Julia nodded jerkily, briefly glancing back at Sam and Dean to see that they were looking at them with confusion. Missouri was right; she did sense something. It was faint but it made her scared.

She didn't know exactly how to explain it but it was like she could feel the darkness in the room. It was pulsing with negativity and wickedness that had her scalp tingling and her hands shaking. She had never been afraid of her abilities—if that's what they actually were—but this made her afraid.

Missouri gave her a knowing look. "I want you to take a deep breath in," she instructed her. "and then slowly exhale. Really focus on what your mind and body are telling you."

Julia did as she was told, closing her eyes, taking in a deep breath, and slowly letting it out. She flinched from the violence she felt—whatever was here wanted to kill and it was stubborn. But...there was also something else. It was hidden by the dark presence but she could feel a slight gentleness from it.

When she opened her eyes, Missouri nodded at her before turning to the brothers who had been silently watching both of them.

"I don't know if you boys should be disappointed or relieved," she told them. "but this ain't the thing that took your mom."

"Wait, are you sure?" Sam stiffened, sure that there was something bad among them; Missouri nodded. "How do you know?"

"It isn't the same energy I felt the last time I was here," she explained. "It's something different."

"What is it?" Dean pressed her as she walked over to the closet and opened it.

"I think there's more than one," Julia spoke up hesitantly; Dean and Sam's eyes flashed over to her. "I mean, that's what I felt."

"Well, you'd be right," Missouri confirmed for her as she stood in the middle of the walk-in closet.

Dean stiffened. "What are they doing here?"

"They're here because of what happened to your family," Missouri informed Sam and Dean. "You see, all those years ago, real evil came to you. It walked this house. That kind of evil leaved wounds and, sometimes, wounds get infected."

Sam shook his head. "I don't understand."

"This place is a magnet for paranormal energy," she elaborated. "It's attracted a poltergeist. A nasty one that won't rest until Jenny and her babies are dead."

"And you and Julia said that there was more than one spirit," Sam pointed out, hoping that the other spirit was something that would be taken care of easier than a poltergeist.

Missouri turned to Julia, gesturing for her to explain herself to her friends.

"It's hard to make it out," Julia intertwined her fingers and squeezed her hands together. "but I don't think it's as bad as the poltergeist."

Sam and Dean were quiet after Julia's observation; Missouri walked out of the closet, making her way back over to them.

"Well, one thing's for damn sure," Dean said firmly. "nobody's dying in this house ever again. So, whatever is here, how do we stop it?"

Julia, Dean, Sam, and Missouri arrived back at Jenny's house just around sunset. They were armed with hex bags full of angelica root, van-van oil, crossroad dirt, and more ingredients that Missouri didn't elaborate on. They needed to put the bags in each of the four corners of the house—north, south, east, and west—and they would be able to destroy the spirits hanging around unwanted.

While Missouri ushered Jenny, Sari, and Richie safely away from the house for the night, Julia, Sam, and Dean split up the levels of the house. Sam and Missouri would get the basement and hit up the south and east ends while Dean got the north end on the main floor and Julia was appointed the west corner on the second floor.

Julia firmly held onto the mallet and plastic pipe in her hands as she walked up the stairs and to the room furthest to the west. The room was clearly Jenny's—the walls were covered in dark floral wallpaper and had a king-sized bed shoved against the most western wall.

She walked to the side of the bed nearest to the window. Tapping the plastic pipe against the wall to find a spot where there were no studs, she kneeled down to get to work. She found a place close to the floorboard to put the hex bag and went to smash through the drywall with the mallet when something slid around her neck.

Julia squeaked in pain as the lamp cord tightened around her neck, harshly pulling onto her back. She hit the floor with a hard thud, reaching up to try to pry the wire from around her neck. Her air was running out as she tried to dig her fingers under the cord but it tightened and tightened until there was no room for her fingers to slip underneath.

Her lungs ached and she was sure she let out an inhuman noise as she struggled to reach for the hex bag in her cardigan pocket. She gasped loudly, trying to get more air into her trachea but it was too hard.

She could feel her pulse pounding behind her eyes as her body fought for the oxygen it was deprived of. She had heard before that suffocating to death was peaceful but she thought it was bullshit. Every part of her body hurt from lack of oxygen, especially her lungs and the muscles around her neck where the cord was practically attached to her skin.

Nothing was peaceful about it and she had a morbid thought as her body went slack. This was what it felt like for her mom when she was suffering from her lung cancer. The horrible disease had made it so Naomi couldn't breathe and was forced to use a machine that did it for her.

"Julia!"

Julia wheezed loudly as Dean collapsed at her side, reaching for the cord wrapped tightly around her neck. She tried to help him, Dean grunting with effort but the poltergeist was too strong for both of them.

Knowing that the cord wasn't going to budge as long as the poltergeist had its power, Dean pulled away from her weak body and searched for the flimsy pocket he saw her put the hex bag in before she went upstairs. He moved the cardigan over and found the bag, pulling it out of the pocket and lunging at the wall.

Dean kicked the wall a few inches from the trim, making a huge hole in the drywall. He hurriedly placed the bag into the enclosed area, making the room flash with a bright light that had him turning away to protect his eyes.

Julia wheezed again as the cord relaxed against her throat. Dean hurried toward her and knelt down, quickly unwrapping it from around her neck where a dark red line was forming.

"It's okay," Dean pulled her up toward his chest so he had easier access to the cord that somehow knotted behind her neck. Julia breathed deeply, her lungs aching and feeling bruised as they expanded with air.

She almost fell back against the floor, completely exhausted and too weak to move, when Dean had to take his hands from her to throw away the cord but he quickly caught her again. His hand was on the back of her head, pushing her face into the crook of his neck; Julia inhaled his intoxicating scent, relieved that he was there to help her in time.

Julia blinked sluggishly and finally closed her eyes, falling into a slight sleep.

When she woke, an hour had passed. The spirits were supposed to be gone, with all four hex bags in their places in the walls, but Julia still felt uneasy. Something at the back of her head told her that they weren't gone but waiting for them to leave so they could attack Jenny, Sari, and Richie.

Sam felt the same; he turned to Missouri. "You're sure this is over?"

"I'm sure," Missouri confirmed as she looked around the kitchen that was messy from Dean's confrontation with the poltergeist. "Why do you ask?"

If Missouri was sure that the spirits were gone, Julia had to believe her, right? She didn't have the experience that the older woman had so there couldn't be a way that she was right about the spirits still being in the house.

Sam shook his head. "Never mind. It's nothing, I guess."

Julia leaned her head against Dean's upper arm and he allowed her to stay, neither of them minding the company and the comfort that it brought them. She eyed Sam curiously, wondering if he felt the same way as her, but he didn't speak up.

That brought something to mind, though; how did Sam know all of this stuff? How did he have visions? Before today, Julia had signs that she had special knowledge and abilities but Sam? According to him, he'd been without these visions his whole life until a few weeks before Jess died. So, what the hell was going on?

The front door opened. "Hello? We're home."

Within seconds, Jenny and Sari walked into the kitchen—Richie being in the former's arms—and looked around wide-eyed at the mess they had made.

"What happened?" Jenny asked, shocked.

"Sorry," Julia croaked hoarsely in greeting. "We'll pay for all of this."

"Don't you worry," Missouri assured her. "Dean's gonna clean up this mess."

Dean gave her an affronted look, not moving a muscle.

Missouri wasn't having it. "What are you waiting for, boy?" she shrilled. "Get the mop and don't you cuss at me!"

Hours later, after Dean cleaned up the kitchen—Sam reluctantly helping a little bit—the three of them sat in the Impala outside the house. Missouri had left, confident that everything was over, but Sam and Julia silently conferred and confessed that they felt differently.

They convinced Dean that they needed to keep watch just in case something happened, not entirely being truthful about the reason.

"All right," Dean spoke up among the chirping of crickets. "So, tell me again, what are we still doing here?"

"I don't know," Sam sighed, staring at the house. "I just...I still have a bad feeling."

"Why?" Dean gave him a confused look. "Missouri did her whole Zelda-Rubenstein thing. The house should be clean; it should be over."

"Maybe," Julia rested her head against the cool window. "but I have the same feeling as him. That can't be a coincidence."

"We just wanna make sure everything is all right."

"Yeah, well, the problem is I could be sleeping in a bed right now," Dean grumbled.

"Dean."

For some reason when Julia said his name in that tone, he always quieted down.

"...Shutting up."

"Dean, Julia, look!" Sam suddenly exclaimed, pointing at the house.

The two of them quickly looked over, spotting Jenny pounding the window in her bedroom on the second floor. They scrambled out of the car, running toward the house at full speed.

"You two grab the kids," Dean ordered as he ran up the front steps. "I'll get Jenny."

He kicked down the locked door after a few tries and they rushed upstairs, heading to Jenny, Sari, and Richie. Dean went straight to Jenny's room, where the door was inexplicably locked while Julia went to Richie and Sam went to Sari.

Richie was sobbing in his crib, clearly scared out of his mind from the pounding sounds coming from his mom's room next door. Julia made rushed soothing noises as she hurriedly picked him up out of his crib, grabbing his blanket so he wouldn't get cold outside. She ran back out of the room with the toddler in her arms, almost running into Sam and Sari in the process.

"Let's go!" Sam urged her as he went downstairs.

Julia was on his heels, being careful not to trip at her high speed. When they made it to the foyer, Sam put Sari down and gently pushed her toward Julia, giving his best friend a pointed look. Julia nodded in understanding.

"Sari," she got the little girl's attention, grabbing her hand with her free one. "you and me are gonna run outside as fast as we can, okay? Don't look back."

Sari nodded and looked back at Sam, screaming shrilly when she saw that he had been grabbed by the poltergeist. Julia tugged on her arm and they took off, sprinting out of the house and into the front yard where Dean and Jenny were waiting.

"Dean," Julia handed the kids off to Julia. "It got Sam!"

After getting his sawed off and some salt rounds from the trunk of the Impala, Dean and Julia ran back to the house. The door was forced shut as they approached and it took both of them together to kick it down in two tries.

"SAM!" Dean shouted as they ran into the house.

By the time they got to the kitchen, Sam was forcefully pinned against the cabinets, unable to move. Across the room, an invisible figure surrounded by fire approached him. Julia didn't feel the evil energy of the poltergeist from it but Dean aimed his sawed off at the figure anyway.

"No, don't!" Sam stopped him.

"What? Why?"

"Because I know who it is," Sam told him. "I can see her now."

As the figure stepped into the kitchen, the fire around it disappeared. Mary Winchester appeared, her long blonde hair floating with the nonexistent wind. She looked at her sons with fond, loving eyes, wearing a long white nightgown.

As Julia gaped at the beautiful woman who birthed two of her closest friends, Dean lowered his gun. He stared at his mom in awe, his eyes stinging with tears as she smiled softly at him.

"Mom..."

Mary slowly walked toward him, her smile growing. Dean looked a lot like her; he got his green eyes, nose, freckles, and dirty-blonde hair from her.

"Dean," she breathed lovingly, giving him a proud look.

Julia's own eyes filled with tears as she grabbed Dean's hand and squeezed tightly, gulping at the smile that Mary gave her as she passed them. She slowly walked up to Sam, who was still in the poltergeist's hold.

"Sam," Mary greeted him; Sam laughed breathlessly, tears falling from his eyes. "I'm sorry."

Sam furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. "For what?"

Mary didn't answer as she stared at him for a long moment. She silently turned back toward the living room, disappearing and reappearing a few feet forward. She stared at the ceiling with a dark glare.

"You," her voice trembled angrily. "get out of my house and let go of my son."

Dean tightened his grip on Julia's hand painfully as flames surrounded Mary once more. The fire flared brightly and raised to the ceiling, spreading and then disappearing all together.

"Mom?" Dean looked around frantically.

Julia sighed, feeling the relief from Mary's lighter energy colliding with the malevolent energy of the poltergeist. "It's done," she whispered as the force holding Sam fell away. "They're gone."

Dean frowned sadly and Sam breathed shakily, both of them devastated to see their mom for a last time before she suddenly disappeared again. Julia's heart ached so badly for them but she hoped that maybe seeing Mary could be a start to giving them some closure.

"Come here," Julia reached out for Sam's arm, tugging him toward her. She untangled her hand from Dean's and wrapped that arm around his waist, bringing both of them in for a hug at the same time.

When Sam rested his head on top of Julia's, his forehead reaching the tip of Dean's shoulder, he sighed in comfort. They were his family and he was so glad he had them around. Dean felt the same way; for the first time ever, he joined in on a group hug.

Julia and Sam sat side-by-side on the front steps of Jenny's house the next morning, watching as Dean looked at the photos of the Winchester family that Jenny had found in the basement. They had called Missouri to tell them about what happened the night before and she had rushed over to the house so she could check to make sure that everything was all right.

She did a quick walk around, trying to feel for the energies she felt the day before, before stepped out of the house.

"Well," Missouri sat on Sam's other side. "there are no spirits in there anymore. This time for sure."

Sam looked down at his feet sadly. "Not even my mom?"

"No."

"What happened?" he looked at her, hoping that she would explain how his mom had gotten rid of the poltergeist. Julia had said that she felt them both disappear at the same time, so he was pretty sure it had something to do with Mary.

"You're mom's spirit and the poltergeist's energy canceled each other out," Missouri explained. "Your momma destroyed herself going after the thing."

Sam pressed his lips together, swallowing the lump in his throat. "Why would she do something like that?"

"Well, to protect her boys, of course."

Julia smiled and patted Sam's knee comfortingly. Throughout their whole friendship, Sam had confessed many times that he felt disconnected from his mom because she died when he was only an infant. He didn't have the memories that Dean had of Mary and that rightfully upset him. Julia was glad that Sam knew that his mom would have done anything to protect him and his brother because she loved them so much.

"Sam, I'm sorry," Missouri apologized hesitantly.

Sam gave her a confused look. "For what?"

His mom had said that, too.

"You sensed it was here, didn't you? Even when I couldn't," Missouri stated, her eyes darting between both Sam and Julia. "Both of you did."

Julia nodded silently while Sam grimaced.

"What's happening to me?" he asked the older woman, fear coloring his voice.

"I know I should have all the answers, but," she shook her head slightly. "I don't know."

"Sam, Jules, you ready?" Dean called from the Impala as Jenny started walking back up to her house.

Julia and Sam got up from their spots on the stairs, giving Jenny smiles when she thanked them. The two of them and Dean gathered at the back of the Impala as Missouri walked over to them.

"Don't you three be strangers," she warned them.

"We won't," Dean promised.

"Julia," she called; Julia perked up at her name. "You take care of those boys, okay? They need you."

Julia looked at Sam and Dean, smiling softly. "I need them," she declared; they both grinned back at her. Looking back at Missouri, she nodded in a silent promise. "Bye, Missouri."

Missouri waved at the three of them. "See you around."

They all got into the car and settled in as Dean started the engine. Sam and Dean each gave their old house one last look. Dean pulled away from the curb, leaving the house behind in his rearview mirror.

(Gif is not mine)

#supernatural rewrite #dean winchester x oc #dean winchester x reader #supernatural #dean winchester #Sam Winchester #supernatural fanfiction #dean winchester fanfiction #dean winchester x original character

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shakethispeare · 4 years

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DARK : S1 - EP1 [ GEHEIMNISSE | SECRETS ]

NOTE: I'm only pouring my thoughts into this post. I'm taking notes every time I watch Dark since I heard the story-line is complicated. Also, my memories suck. It's not spoiler-free, of course. So, only read if you have seen this episode.

So, I have finally started watching this TV series. I was shocked to find that it had aired since 2017 because I've never heard of it before. It should have deserved the hype. What the fuck was I doing in 2017? Oh right, binging Game of Thrones.

Anyway, I've only watched the first episode, and I have to say, I am hooked, like a fish-getting-pulled-with-a-hook kind of hooked. The plot already nudges me in the head to start thinking and memorizing every single detail that will show up on the screen (although, I'm confident to say that I will most likely still miss some stuff). I'm sure that the makers of this series will drop valuable clues (subtle or not). Not to mention, a bunch of characters were introduced only in the first ten minutes and that’s when I feel like I have to start doing the connecting.

So, the episode starts with a grim quote:

Alright, in here, I can guess this is going to involve a series of flashbacks, probably one that is too many to count.

The date is 21st of June, 2019, and a man named Michael has a detailed mind-map filled with photos of, what I assume at first, would be the rest of the characters in the series (in other words, his neighbours). He had photos of them when they were young children and as adults. There were cuts of newspapers on a few of them too. And then, without saying anything, Michael commits suicide by hanging. But he leaves a letter with a warning that said, "Do not open before 4th of November, 10:13 PM."

JONAS KAHNWALD POV

Time-skip, the story now takes place on the 4th of November, 2019, roughly five months after Michael's death. It turns out he has a son named Jonas. I think Jonas suffers from depression after the passing of his father since it's shown that he took pills the moment he woke up. Then, Jonas goes out to meet his therapist named Peter Doppler. They both took a walk in the woods. Jonas was still mad about his father for not telling him why he committed suicide.

When he went to school, he meets his friend, Bartosz. Bartosz is currently dating Martha, who Jonas found shocking. The look he gave suggested something happened between them before. They attended the assembly where Katharina addressed Erik's issue and told everyone if they have any information regarding it, they should come forward.

Later on, Bartosz wanted to go to the cave rumoured to be where Erik hides his "stuff". Jonas was reluctant at first, but agreed to go with him eventually, Martha too. Then out of nowhere, Magnus overheard their conversation and insisted going with them to the cave.

That night, Jonas met with Martha first, who briefly discussed 'the thing that happened last summer'.

Shortly after, Magnus came, bringing along Mikkel.

Jonas and his friends continued to walk until they reach the cave, and Bartosz was disappointed not to find the weed there because Franziska had arrived first and claimed it. Interrupting Franziska's and Bartosz fight, a loud noise emitted from the cave, shocking everyone. Their flashlights go dark. Out of fear, they all ran. The last to run were Jonas and Mikkel. Jonas slipped and fell. He had a hallucination of his father covered in black liquid before starting to run again. But Mikkel was nowhere to be seen.

When he finally reached his friends, Mikkel was not with him, neither was he with his friends.

ULRICH NIELSEN POV

Ulrich's first seen having sex with Jonas' mother, Hannah. I assume a family affair is going on, and I was right. Ulrich has a family comprised of his wife, Katharina, who is a high school principal, and three kids, Magnus, Martha and Mikkel.

I feel like the dialogue above is significant towards the story. This is purely a hunch.

Ulrich works as a policeman along with a woman named Charlotte Doppler. We first see them together being confronted by Erik's parents, who admitted even though Erik used to run away before, he always returned. Ulrich thinks he ran away, but Charlotte thought otherwise, and she seemed to have set him off when she implied the situation is not the same as Ulrich's brother disappearance, which happened thirty-three years ago. Okay, so far, there have been two (prominent) people missing in Winden. I think they didn't have much luck in finding Ulrich's brother.

Ulrich's mother, named Jana claimed to have seen a creature roaming the woods, describing it to have a gigantic head. At this moment, I couldn't help but feel like this is some Stranger Things shit. Also, she found a snack wrapper his brother used to love before he went missing. Jana believes something is happening out there that their minds can not comprehend, and it's the same thing that happened 33 years ago. At this point, I'm starting to think, okay, what is up with 33 years ago?

When Ulrich heard the news that his son, Mikkel has gone missing, Ulrich ran into the forest yelling out his name. Dawn arrives, and he didn't find his son. Then, he heard a dispatcher's call claiming they found a child's body. Ulrich rushed to witness it. But after thoroughly checking to make sure it's Mikkel, it turns out the child wasn't Mikkel. I was also suspicious to see the child, because, based on his clothing, it wasn't the clothes Mikkel wore the night he went into the woods. Also, the child's eyes had burn marks for some reason. I’m suspecting it’s Ulrich’s brother. He has been missing for 33 years and if he died somewhere in between, he would not be the same age as Ulrich.

HANNAH KAHNWALD POV

When Jonas complained about the expired food and lack of electricity in the house, he yelled for his mother. His mother, named Hannah, was having sex with a man named Ulrich. I don't think Jonas knows about this. We'll see how this will fare in the future.

Hannah goes to the nuclear power plant with a large briefcase. It turns out she is a massage therapist and had massaged Aleksander, the power plant's director. He's worried about the nuclear power plant. He mentioned that it had been 33 years since the day he came to Winden. He looks like a bad guy to me. I don't think his work is clean. He gives off this Russian villain vibe who wants world domination.

Hannah went to school to attend the meeting. She meets Katharina. Katharina hasn't completely suspect her cheating with her husband. She left quietly and went outside to smoke. She met Ulrich, who was on his way, but stopped to meet Hannah.

REGINA TIEDEMANN POV

Regina Tiedemann answers a phone call from her bank who has been in business with her hotel for 20 years. She explains the reason why her hotel's business isn't good lately was due to Erik's disappearance, but it sounds like the problem has been going on for longer than two weeks. Then, Regina became angry with the bank's representative and slammed the phone down. She also mentioned that she build her hotel business by herself without help.

In the meeting, Regina had disagreements with Katharina, and when she said that Katharina should "mind her own problems", Katharina looked offended.

Everyone in the meeting received a phone call at the same time. It’s probably because of the kids reporting to the police that Mikkel has gone missing.

INES KAHNWALD POV

The old lady who's ripped out of the Kahnwald Family picture turned out to be Ines Kahnwald. In here, I don't know who she is, and the episode didn't explore about her yet. However, when Hannah called her, it doesn't seem to be her mother, so I'm guessing it's Michael's mother? Maybe. Also, Hannah seemed to harbour hate for Ines. She has Michael's suicide note and has been waiting for the whole day just to read it. When Ines finally opened it at 10:13, the camera didn't show the contents of the letter, nor did Ines read it out loud. Later, she placed the letter back in a box and cried. Perhaps the contents of the note will be explored in future episodes. I'm dying to know what's written in it.

OTHER CLUES:

In Winden's Rest Home, an old man named Helge repetitively says "It's going to happen again. It's going to happen again. It's going to happen again." What's going to happen? He knows something.

Helge then walked out of the rest home heading somewhere, chanting the same words. Eventually, Helge arrived at the school and walked into the meeting. Charlotte stopped him. He asked if it was too late before being escorted out.

---

A man walked out of the cave wearing a raincoat with a hoodie. Who is this man? I feel like he's the reason why Erik's missing. He could have kidnapped Erik or something.

---

The scene that surprised me was when they showed Erik being held somewhere in a brightly-lit room with an electric chair in the middle of it. It got me thinking where he could be. Was he abducted? Or did he go there willingly? The episode ends with Erik tied to the electric chair, and his eyes are blocked by a metal covering.

---

Despite being a therapist himself, he seemed to be troubled with something and he’s keeping secrets from his wife. I’m looking at him as a major suspect though. Not sure if the other characters are going look the same way as I do.

MY THEORY:

So my theory is this. I think Erik is hidden somewhere in the cave and the only person who knows the ways of the cave is the man in a raincoat. The deceased child found in the woods probably met the same fate as Erik. I think he got kidnapped before, and then this man in the raincoat did some experiments on him, resulting in him dead. This situation doesn't look good for Erik, though. I have a feeling he's going to die.

Also, why is it that whenever the camera showed the cave or the nuclear power plant, a forbidding soundtrack starts to play. What the fuck is going on—

#dark #dark season 1 #episode recap #dark tv series #tv series

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lionheart49er · 5 years

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My Take on the New Sanders Sides Video!

So like a lot of the fandom, I was excited about the new Sander Sides video. Especially after I found out from my brother that this video would introduce a new Dark Side. But I wasn’t expecting to get as emotionally involved with this video as I was. I’ve been rewatching this video so many times. And it gets better with every watch. This was definitely a powerful video for me and it came at a very appropriate time. Let me explain.

This video came out after I had just gone through a really painful bout of intrusive thoughts. I won’t go into detail over what they were. But I swear I went through a couple of weeks where they just kept bothering me. I remember walking up and having a panic attack. Then, spending most of the day under a blanket just having these thoughts run rampant in my mind. And then, having trouble falling asleep but I couldn’t get my mind to calm down. It would sometimes even appear in my dreams. I was desperate for an escape. I even considered buying pharmaceutical drugs that “might” have fixed my problems in the hopes of getting rid of them. (Fortunately, don’t worry nothing came out of that endeavor.) So when I was watching the video, a lot of what I experienced with my intrusive thoughts was conveyed in the video. I’m not sure how I would have reacted if I watched this video during my own bout of intrusive thoughts. But after having a bit of grace period from them (they still sometimes pop up but they aren’t as constantly dominating my thought space), I could appreciate the things this video offered.

It was almost distressing watching this video. Not for any of the things that warranted the trigger warning. (I have a sick sense of humor so I enjoyed some of those bits and could appreciate the darker humor of this episode) But rather because some of the ways Thomas tried to get rid of his intrusive thoughts were things I tried. And being reminded of that briefly brought back some of those intrusive thoughts while watching it. However, I was able to make it through. And when Logan was talking about how little effect intrusive thoughts actually have on a person. The more I was comforted by the advice. Like was mentioned in the video, you can never truly get rid of intrusive thoughts but you can definitely cope with them. And the less you take them seriously, the less bothersome they’ll be.

It was almost scary how much of this video I could relate. The scene where they tried to distract themselves from the thoughts by talking about “Just Like Heaven”. And then, unintentionally creating a connection between Just Like Heaven and those thoughts was a feeling I definitely experienced. Not with the movie, Just Like Heaven (never watched it), but I did make unintentional connections to things every time I tried not thinking about my thoughts. And those unintentional connections never helped. I definitely tried to repress those thoughts and realized that it only made those thoughts worse. I even struggled to talk about the issue with my college counselor and loved ones because I didn’t want to discuss my intrusive thoughts for fear of making it worse. Plus, that scene in the end where they “checked” to see if their intrusive thoughts were gone happened to me all the time. “Checking” to see if your intrusive thoughts are gone won’t help. The only progress I made in not being bothered by them was in accepting that thoughts had occurred and trying to move on from them. It wasn’t easy and took a while for things to get better. But they did eventually get better. Plus the reveal that it wasn’t Remus himself that was causing Thomas pain but rather Anxiety and Morality worrying about Remus. It definitely felt like the Anxiety around my intrusive thoughts was more bothersome than the thoughts themselves.

Overall, I really appreciate the effort they made in this video. As someone who actually experiences intrusive thoughts, I can say they nailed the topic on its head. It was almost scary how accurate the experience Thomas had was similar to my own. If my intrusive thoughts ever return to ruin my day and imagination, I could always look back at the advice in this video for help.

On a less personal note, I also just love the video in general. I commend the risks they took in this video for conveying the idea of intrusive thoughts in the character. While I can appreciate the darker humor, I understand others don’t and that’s ok. If you couldn’t watch the video because of its various triggers, I understand. Still I love the video, I love the characters in the video, I love the song (the song was so amazing on so many levels. It’ll be playing in my head for a long time). I loved how Logan was able to carefully break down what makes intrusive thoughts ineffective and how he was commended for it in the end. I love the reveal of Anxiety as a former dark side (I think a lot of us guessed that was the case but still the reveal was impactful). And I love Remus as a character. I definitely think/hope they bring him back again. Likely in a Remus vs. Roman video as I would like to see how these two “brothers” interact. (Similar to how Patton was mostly absent in Deceit’s first video only to get a later Patton vs. Deceit video) He was a great mix of hilarious ridiculousness and creepy disturbingness. The hammy, chaotic Dark Side in contrast to the colder, calculating Deceit (also love the little Deceit references in this video). Plus, they outright state that you can’t get rid of intrusive thoughts. So I could definitely see Remus literally popping out of nowhere to give us a bunch of “juicy” details of things we didn’t want to hear.

So yeah, here’s my hot take on the video. Hope you liked it. :)

#sanders sides #intrusive thoughts #remus sanders #remus #the duke #thomas sanders

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kcwcommentary · 5 years

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VLD4x02 – “Reunion”

4x02 – “Reunion”

This is another Pidge-centered episode. As I said in my commentary for last episode, in this episode, Pidge goes off on a personal mission, separate from the other Paladins. She doesn’t get yelled at or condemned for doing so by the other Paladins. Last episode though, she was fully participating with the other Paladins in yelling at Keith for him going off on a mission separate from the group. His mission was for the benefit of the group, hers is purely personal: searching for her brother. It’s like the writers treat Pidge differently than they do other characters, like she’s unnaturally perfect and never does anything wrong. Perfect Pidge.

The episode opens with a flashback. Pidge is sitting in class. The teacher is droning, “Photons from the visible spectrum are manipulated, creating a quantum storage network. It’s the most advanced storage system available.” Pidge, unable to read the mood of the room, interjects, “Actually, the Galaxy Garrison is performing tests using DNA helixes as storage. That’s the same way genetic information is stored in our bodies.” I don’t now why I get caught up on some comparatively minor things here, but I do. Pidge’s interjection is written with the intention of showing that she’s smarter than her teacher. Her specific interjection however isn’t successfully doing that: She cites the GG trying to develop DNA data storage, so that storage system is not one that is currently available, and the teacher was talking about what is currently available for use. If these students can understand the teacher’s words about photons and quantum storage, then I think they know what DNA is, and thus don’t need Pidge’s explanation that DNA is how “genetic information is stored in our bodies,” so that part of the line sounds written to explain it to viewers who don’t know what DNA is.

Me being me, this bit of dialog triggered my creative-writers-need-to-do-research rule, so I decided to do some minor googling. From the quick search (so no where near an exhaustive or scientific database search), there are specific benefits and problems of both atomic (quantum) storage and DNA storage that make both worth exploring, but neither better than the other. DNA storage systems are slow, whereas atomic storage requires ultracold environments to function. The idea in this narrative moment is that Pidge is demonstrating that she’s intellectually superior to the teacher and other students by suggesting potential DNA storage is better than their existing atomic storage, but the nature of both storage methods means she’s not right.

“Nerd!” another student bullies her. The class laughs. The teacher does nothing. I would like to say that, since this is set in the future, the teacher would have reacted to the bullying and reprimanded the bullying students, but the show doesn’t have it happen. It’s a writing choice to have the teacher standby and let the bullying happen. The effect is to make it look like, poor Pidge, so much smarter than everyone around her, and none of them can even see her genius, we should feel sorry for her that her inferiors, adult and peer alike, resent her for her superiority.

On to Pidge’s bedroom, which I really like. Whoever did the background art of her bedroom did a really nice job. I wouldn’t mind my bedroom being a real version of hers.

Matt enters her room, without knocking, and brings her cake. He calls her “Pidge,” and she replies that she hates it when he calls her that. This makes me want to know what the origin of him calling her Pidge is, and why is it such that she hates being called that. This detail is mostly there to set up the idea that her going on to call herself Pidge comes out of her wanting to reconnect with her brother.

“What’s the point,” Pidge asks in response to Matt telling her she has to keep studying hard. As a self-identifying nerd, I would say part of what makes us nerds is that we never feel the need to ask what’s the point in studying: We like learning new stuff, we’re constantly curious, and we pursue that need the same as we breathe because we need air. This “what’s the point” line from Pidge has a hollow tonal quality reminiscent of the post-episode moral moments that a lot of 80s cartoons had. Those moments were cloying to me when I watched them as a little kid back then, so imagine how this feels to me now as an adult.

Matt tells her that he’s gotten notice that he’s been accepted to the Galaxy Garrison. Pidge responds with excitement before grabbing her text book to keep studying. This continue studying moment seems so unnaturally silly.

Back to the current day of the story. Pidge takes off her glasses. The first time I watched this (and the second time too because I had forgotten), I was baffled by why Pidge could see when she took her glasses off. Sometimes, I feel lucky if I don’t walk into walls when I’m not wearing my glasses or contacts. The end of the episode reveals that Pidge wears Matt’s old glasses, and that she does not actually need to wear glasses herself. I’ll grudgingly admit that her wearing them to try to feel connected to him is sweet.

The only concern anyone expresses over Pidge going on her mission alone is that she might need backup. There is no concern that she’s splitting the group, which was such major importance to everyone regarding Keith last episode. The other Paladins are smiling while looking at the display of Pidge during their communication, so no one is bothered by the thing they were bothered by last episode. Pidge says, “Plus you guys still have plenty to do on Olkarion.” So, she is specifically leaving while the Paladins are working on something, which was the basis of their complaints against Keith last episode. Whatever the Paladins are doing on Olkarion is not mentioned, so it feels more like a one-line excuse to sideline their characters.

I could go into detail about the next couple of scenes, there are aspects that could easily be critiqued, but after writing it out, I’ve decided to just quickly summarize the events instead and move on. Pidge meets some alien on a planet because he’s one of only a few sellers of some substance that she’s identified the people in the video with Matt use. The alien and she briefly fight, and she acquires the identity of one of the people in the video. With just a couple of button pushes, she searches some database on the Green Lion and learns the last known location of Te-osh. She arrives on that moon, destroys a couple of attacking Galra fighters. She assumes that the guy running toward her as she lands is a member of the rebels (I don’t know why she makes this assumption). Lieutenant Ozar tells her that they’re trying to evacuate the base before more Galra can arrive. She tells him that the other Paladins aren’t coming (if these people need help, shouldn’t she relay that information to the other Paladins since they’re just sitting around on Olkarion doing an unidentified, and thus narratively unimportant, something?). She asks for Te-osh, who is inside a ship on top of a building, and Pidge goes to talk to her when a Galra fighter that no one could see starts blasting everything. Several other Galra ships join the attack. Te-osh’s ship takes off, pursued by Galra. Pidge jumps back in Green, destroys one Galra fighter.

With the attack on the moon over (Galra are still attacking Te-osh’s ship), the remaining rebels tell Pidge that with their one remaining ship damaged, they can’t go help Te-osh. “What about you?” Pidge asks. “We know what it means to fight the Galra. The supplies on that ship are more important than our lives,” Ozar says. I know the show thinks it’s making some dramatic statement about how the war is and how brave and awesome the rebels are, but I still don’t know why Pidge hasn’t called the other Paladins to tell them these people need help. Or even if not the Paladins, where are the billions of people that should now be a part of the Voltron Coalition that the show keeps having characters, notably Coran and Allura, brag about forming? Pidge refuses to leave them behind and yells, “Everyone aboard, now!” Aboard what? Not the Green Lion, which is what I thought they would have to board if their ship’s damaged. But later, the rebels are on, not just one, but three ships in space when Pidge tows Te-osh’s ship back to them. Whatever this performative decisive moment Pidge has right here telling them to get on board means nothing.

Pidge and Green catch up with Te-osh’s ship, she destroys the Galra fighters with the plant cannon (why not just use the regular cannon?), and boards Te-osh’s ship. Te-osh gives Pidge a transponder that every rebel has that can be used to find other rebels.

This is very important: Te-osh says, as she hands the transponder to Pidge, “He may not have his anymore, but this is his code.” This line of dialog does something very significant to this episode’s narrative: it undermines the emotion of a future scene. In this line of dialog, we viewers have learned something: Pidge will not find Matt when she finds the transponder. The entire point of “he may not have his anymore” is to set up him not having it anymore. There is no other reason to write that into the dialog. So then, when Pidge follows the transponder, and eventually finds what she thinks is Matt’s grave, we know that it’s not. The emotion of that graveside scene is totally undermined.

More flashbacks. Matt’s gotten a message from their dad on a “quantum frequency,” which bypasses Galaxy Garrison protocols. Matt says, “What the Garrison doesn’t know won’t hurt them.” So, the whole Holt family don’t care about safety protocols. For people who supposedly so eagerly want to be a part of the Garrison, this disdain they have for Garrison rules should get them kicked out of the GG. Sam and Matt Holt are characters who are pretty much just extensions of Pidge’s character. This disregard for GG rules comes from her character’s already established disregard for GG rules. That Sam and Matt are fine with violating the rules, and that they don’t get punished for doing so, is just another manifestation of Perfect Pidge.

There’s a long, unnecessarily drawn out explanation about how Sam and Matt have a special, secret, physical book-necessary encryption method to their communication. I haven’t studied encryption, but I imagine that any system that requires looking something up in a book is fundamentally not a complex encryption method. But then, there’s a second portion of Sam and Matt’s special code that involves them having memorized specific “additions and subtractions to numbers we send, so that even if someone intercepts our messages and has the same book, they still don’t know what we’re saying.” This makes no sense. Changing numbers in the message does not change the non-number portions of the message, so they would totally still know what Sam and Matt were saying.

This scene drags on way too long. It’s setting up the next step of Pidge’s journey once she realizes Matt’s not actually dead at the graveside, sure, but the scene is not interesting.

Pidge scoffs at how “low-tech” the method is. Matt responds, “You can’t rely too much on computers. The most powerful processor you have is right here,” and he points to his head. This is a giant cliché. And it’s wrong. If the brain was more powerful that computers, then we would never need computers to do calculations quickly for us. Yes, we have to program the computers to do what they do, but they can do what they do faster than we can mentally do the same processes, thus they are more powerful.

“And it can never be hacked,” Matt adds to his brain comment. Except, yeah, it can be. At this point in the show, we’ve seen Narti do so several times. Yeah, Matt wouldn’t have confirmation that psychic powers exist at this time in his story, but we viewers do. If Matt’s comment here was setting up a plot that involved something happening to hack his brain, then that might justify the inclusion of this line of dialog. But nothing like that happens for him, only for other characters. And the process of it happening to other characters – the clone of Shiro – results in everyone saying that being brain hacked makes a person evil. Knowing that future plot with the clone, I can’t help but be angry at this moment of the show.

Sam’s big message worth breaking Garrison rules and using some special actually-inferior but supposedly-superior encryption method is to tell Matt when his bedtime is. Are you kidding me!? This is neither cute, nor funny, despite the show intending it to be.

Back to now, Pidge finds the graveyard planet. The show again ignores that a planet has gravity in depicting large chunks of rock floating in the air. It’s a significant investment of resources to transport someone’s body to another planet for burial when it would be cheaper to just release their body into the black of space (assuming a space-located death), bury them on a planet in a normal graveyard, or cremate them. So, the setting of this graveyard is contrived. It doesn’t bother me too much, so I can accept it as a conceit for the sake of a good story. The problem is that I don’t feel like I’m getting a good story in this sequence.

Because again, I already know that Matt is not here.

Pidge’s armor translates engraved text: this is a monument to 127,098 warriors who died in a fight against tyranny. She runs toward the graves. The voice acting in this scene is really, really good, which is part of why it bothers me so much that the emotion has already been undermined by that line of dialog earlier letting us know that Matt’s not at the location of this transponder.

The episode overplays its attempt to create the emotion with a series of quick flashbacks that are supposed to make us upset at the idea that Matt is dead, and Pidge has failed to find him in time. Oh! the loss of their special sibling relationship! But this sequence is excessive since we know he’s not dead.

Also, it wasn’t that long ago that the rebels had been working with Matt. Having to bury 127,098 people who died in a war would take time and would have resulted in records as to when that conflict occurred. So, the underlying timing of these two events – the last time Matt was with the rebels and the conflict that killed these people and time it would take to bury them and construct the memorial to them – undermines the expectation that we believe Matt to be dead.

Again, the voice acting is really good in this scene, despite its other problems. Of course, it starts cliché raining.

Pidge says his birthday is wrong. I guess we are to assume Matt put his birthday into the grave’s information system when he buried his transponder here, and he did so specifically in case either Sam or Pidge came looking for his transponder? That is very, very contrived, convoluted, and convenient.

Pidge figures it out that hidden in the wrong birthday are coordinates, and she heads off to them. She’s being followed by the growly guy that interrogated the shopkeeper after her. Pidge makes her way to the coordinates: A large, weirdly shaped asteroid with an old mine carved down into it. Rocks are floating around as they do on this show. Green lands heavily, suggesting there’s gravity, but everything else, including Pidge, floats, which would mean no gravity. She descends further into the dark shaft. At the bottom, she picks up and drops a rock, which falls as if gravity. She’s literally in the exact same area of effect that the rock is in, but the rock is affected by gravity while she is not. This is not how gravity works. “Something must be generating gravity nearby,” she says. Yes, the giant asteroid you’re on right now would be generating gravity. Everything technically generates gravity, even Pidge’s own body. But the largest source of gravity would just be this big asteroid.

She uncovers a hatch down into a massive base with active displays and computers running. Someone attacks her. Oh, the drama, the excitement, the revelation! It’s Matt. (I’m not surprised whatsoever.) It’s supposed to be a touching reunion, but it’s not the resolution of narrative tension that it could be, so that emotion is unfortunately nowhere near as deep as the show wants it to be. “I can’t believe you found me. It doesn’t seem possible,” Matt says. Yeah, not possible except for the trail that you left that only Sam and Pidge could figure out, so not just possible, but specifically only possible for two people. I guess it could be Matt was expecting it was only possible for Sam and that Pidge was back on Earth.

Apparently, the name of Voltron has spread throughout the universe, but the names of the Paladins have not. So, Matt knows of Voltron but is surprised to learn Pidge is a Paladin. One would think that the rebels would by now know.

The growly cliché villain shows up and attacks. He’s a bounty hunter and has been hunting for Matt. The bounty hunter says, “Looks to me like you’re made of meat, just like everyone else.” This is a good line. It’s creepy and the least cliché thing this villain does. While before he was a boring nobody, with this one line, now I’m interested in this villain.

They fight. Matt weirdly yells, “Stay away from my sister,” in a mix of cliché and patriarchy. And yes, it’s patriarchal because Matt, in knowing that Pidge is a Paladin, knows she can fight. The Holts defeat the bounty hunter.

“Good thinking,” Pidge says, “exposing that electric whip to the asteroid’s magnetic field.” This makes no scientific sense whatsoever. One does not become electrocuted due to being in a magnetic field. If that were so, we wouldn’t be able to exist here on Earth. Whatever.

“I have the coolest little sister in the whole galaxy,” Matt says. In the galaxy? This show spans the whole universe, not just one galaxy (again, I think it would have been better had it been limited to one galaxy, but it’s not). So, Matt’s compliment is lacking in scope that matches that of the story’s setting.

More flashbacks. We finally get an explanation to Pidge taking off her glasses when she puts on her helmet. They’re not hers, they’re his. And since he had vision correction surgery, he doesn’t need them anymore. I don’t understand how until this moment Pidge didn’t know that Matt had had the corrective surgery though; if they have such a close relationship, wouldn’t she be privy to when he has surgery? She wants to be called Pidge now because of missing him when he goes on the Kerberos mission. These two elements are decently written, even if I originally was confused with her taking the glasses off at the beginning of the episode.

I am curious if the Kerberos mission was Matt’s first space mission. He acts excited in this flashback before his leaving on the mission as if it will be his first time in space. But no space organization is going to send someone who’s never been in space on a mission that has the long timeframe this one does.

The music of this last scene and credits is really nice.

So, Pidge ends the episode having achieved one of her big character goals: Find her brother. I just really wish the show had managed her progression better in this episode. It really bothers me that we know from the instant she gets Matt’s transponder from Te-osh that Matt is not going to be wherever that transponder is, thus undermining the emotion of the graveyard scene. Writing a fake character death and revelation can be done in different ways. You have to write with a different set of tonal qualities if the audience already knows that the death isn’t real than you would if the audience doesn’t know. The way the graveyard scene is written, it’s with tone suitable for an audience that doesn’t know. But because we do, it makes the fake death and supposed revelation that he’s alive feel hollow. It makes it feel like we’re being jerked around by the show. It further bothers me that this was done because the voice acting on Pidge in the graveyard scene is really good. I want to feel the emotion of the moment, but I can’t because I already know going into that scene that he’s alive.

#voltron legendary defender #voltron #vld #voltron criticism #vld criticism #voltron critical #vld critical #vld season 4 #vld 4x02 #commentary

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sanctuaryforalluniverses · 5 years

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Ramblings of an insane fic author

If I get one consistent compliment about my fanfiction, no matter which one of my dozens upon dozens of fic universes I happen to be in, it’s that I capture character voices really well. A dear friend recently asked me how it is I manage to do that.

The truth is, I have no idea.

Sure, there are the obvious things, bolstered by logic and writerly training. I have a good ear for dialogue, and am enough of an obsessive nerd to know that specific word choice is ludicrously important when it comes to capturing a character’s voice accurately. I also put a lot of effort into studying each character’s psychology, understanding their motivations so I can better understand how they might act or speak in brand-new sets of circumstances.

But writing, especially fic writing, gets so weird sometimes.

Like my current fic I’m writing, for Good Omens? If I’d had any control over where I started writing the gorram thing, it would have been about halfway through what is currently chapter 2. That’s where the actual new content starts. That’s where interesting things happen.

But the entire reason I started the blasted thing is that Aziraphale wanted to explain certain things, tell his side of the story. And Mr. “Ask for a simple explanation about why the Apocalypse is happening and I’ll try to give you mine and Crowley’s ENTIRE RELATIONSHIP HISTORY starting at the Garden of Eden” insisted on beginning at as close to the beginning as I would possibly allow him. Was I the one writing the story? Yes. Did that mean I had any control whatsoever on where the blasted thing started? No, no it did not.

And that’s nothing compared to Steve McGarrett and Leonard Snart, who have both made me start writing multi-chapter fanfic that I absolutely, positively, without a shadow of a doubt did NOT want to start writing. I was ANGRY that I had to start writing it. And Steve? He did it TWICE. TWICE!

You know my Magnum P.I. reboot fic? When I started watching the show, I HATED Magnum. Hated him SO MUCH. I would rant to my roommate about how poorly written/acted he was, and how much I would enjoy the show if he wasn’t there. I would even go so far as to say his entire existence deeply, deeply annoyed me.

Then I was watching a completely different show, one of the British detective ones, and a very young Juliet Higgins was on there as a one-episode-only supporting character. And suddenly, Magum was in my head, there solely for the opportunity to watch young Juliet onscreen. I yelled at him, he pointed out some things about his character that I’d missed, and after a long discussion I was forced to admit he was right. Two fanfics later, I kind of love the idiot a little bit.

And that doesn’t even BEGIN to explain Gendry, who is the only freaking reason I ever started watching Game of Thrones in the first place. Because honestly, my brother tried to get me to watch it. He tried for SEVEN YEARS to get me to watch it, and I couldn’t even make it through the first episode. Several people on my timeline watched the show, so I had the kind of vague knowledge of the program that happens when your entire exposure comes to through fan rants and memes. I briefly tried reading Arya/Gendry fic back in 2013, but lost interest without finishing one of them. They were well written, but I just wasn’t feeling it.

Fast forward FOUR YEARS, all the way to 2017. Season 7 was airing, and a couple of people on my timeline complained that Gendry hadn’t mentioned Arya’s name once in the first episode where he came back. I noted this with the same passive interest that I paid attention to Voltron, Teen Wolf, and all the other shows that I knew exclusively through Tumblr and promptly thought nothing more of it.

Then I was at my mom’s house, and there was just enough time to watch one thing on TV before I headed into work. She asked me whether I wanted to watch Stephen Colbert, or the most recent episode of Game of Thrones (the one where Gendry came back). I wasn’t in the mood for Colbert, so I decided Game of Thrones. I cared so little about the show I wouldn’t be emotionally engaged at all, and I could have a relaxing morning.

Hah. Hah hah hah.

Because as I was watching, I could FEEL Gendry’s voice in my head. He was trying to answer the question the people on Tumblr had wanted to know - why he hadn’t mentioned Arya - and he wanted me to be the one to tell them. I could hear actual LINES, blazing into my head as clearly as if he was speaking them directly to me. And he was REALLY, REALLY persistent about making sure his reasoning was heard.

I would like to remind you that this was the FIRST COMPLETE EPISODE I had ever seen of the show. It was only the second episode I’d even TRIED to watch. I hadn’t read a word of fanfic for the show in general, let alone one with Gendry in it, since 2013.

But Gendry, polite but firm, would NOT SHUT UP.

I bargained with him as I drove to work. If someone else had written the fic he wanted, I wouldn’t have to. I thought for SURE someone had - I was days late watching the episode, and my timeline was proof the ship still had fans - but a search of Ao3 came up with nothing that would fit his specifications. So I found a YouTube compilation of every interaction they’d had through seasons 2 and 3 - which was about a half hour long - and wrote the gorram thing. He looked over my shoulder the WHOLE TIME, correcting me when I was about to get his reasoning wrong. I immediately tossed the thing online and hoped the madness had passed.

Haha. Because, see, I’d gotten to know the bastard. And I couldn’t let someone that basically good and decent out alone in GAME OF THRONES, of all places, so I wrote until he’d reunited with Arya. Then she told me how much SHE had missed HIM, and of course I had to write them their happy ending.

Of course, I didn’t have HBO. And my brother was pissed at me for taking so long to get into the show, so he wouldn’t let me use his online account. Which meant I wrote a full 23,289 words of Game of Thrones fanfiction without EVER HAVING SEEN MORE THAN ONE FULL COMPLETE EPISODE OF THE SHOW. Bless every single person who posts illegal clips online. Bless them to the end of their days.

I got a few small details wrong (but hey, I had a better average than THE OFFICIAL SCRIPTWRITERS). But you know what? I still got complimented on how accurately I captured everyone’s voices.

So I genuinely don’t know how I channel the character’s voices so well. If anyone can tell me, I’d be really grateful.

#writing #about me #fanfic #got #steve mcgarrett #gendry baratheon

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missjackil · 5 years

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My 14x18 Opinion

Absence

WOW!! I totally missed the mark on at least some of my predictions eh? That’s fine, it means they can still surprise me, so its a win/win :)

This episode really had me stressed out. My empathy buttons were pushed for both Sam and Dean, and Jack. I literally shook through most of the episode! I thought it was a good episode, but now without its problems. At the risk of sounding more show negative than I actually am, I feel like now that there is a finish line in sight, that more attention is being paid to the drama, than to script writing. Don't get me wrong, I'm here for the drama, I always have been, but they’re spending too much dialogue on re-explaining past events, or emphasizing how great someone is before they kill them or something else bad happens. Im sure they could have come up with better dialogue between Sam and Dean before Cas called than to recall the good that Jack did in the last episode. We all watched it, and if we didn’t., it was in the “Then” we know Sam and Dean both care about Jack a lot, so they could have filled that time with a better convo IMO. But let’s move on..

I didn’t think Mary was dead, or at least that wouldnt be established in this episode. I thought she would be missing and the guys looking for her till maybe next episode. I liked the memory flashbacks, it was cool to add content to the recent past. The memory with Cas was strange though because Mary has never come across as being afraid of him and Cas had healed all 3 of them after the torture rescue in 12x2 which was about day 3 of her being back, so having her fearful of him was pretty dumb IMO.

I enjoyed the resurrection of Sam’s grief beard, but it had switched from being Jack’s memory to being Sam’s and that confused me for a second, then I thought OOOOHHHH MARY IS IN HEAVEN AND THESE ARE HER MEMORIES!!!! Then I instantly hurt for my boys.

As expected, the “You’re dead to me” statement in the trailer was misleading. I don't think Dean feels very profoundly bonded to Cas anymore, but I don't think he’s written him off forever either. However, don't believe all is forgiven. That scene between Sam Dean and Cas when Cas said “i have failed you” was very tense. I knew at least one Winchester was going to throw and break something

I knew Sam would defend Cas, and also blame himself. Sam has always been ridden with more guilt than he needs to carry, but this season especially has him drowning in it. can't think of an episode this season that doesn't have him on the verge of tears if he wasn't legitimately crying. Im very glad that Dean supported him and didn't blame him for anything. Dean blamed himself too, so I don't think Cas is disowned at this point, but Dean remained quiet and standoffish towards him like Cas deliberately hid information from them and now Mom is dead so Im sure both Dean and Sam are going to hold that grudge for a while.

On Jack’s end, if he was soulless, he wouldn't care that he killed Mary or that Sam and Dean won't ever trust him again. but it’s more than obvious something is wrong. Remember he doesn't have Nephilim grace, he has archangel grace and I can't help but think that might be messing him up too. I recall when we were first introduced to Jack, things would happen when he was scared and he couldn't control it. Hearing Angel Radio freaked him out really bad, which I still kinda think he was hearing Lucifer just before he exploded Mary.

I know many of you are worried the show is “destroying a well-loved character” but seriously, they never do that. Not by making them too bad to redeem that is. Some of you think Mary used to be a good character, and they ruined her now, but that’s not what happened either. In the early seasons, the only time we actually saw HER was briefly in the Pilot when she tucked Sam in, and for a second when she caught Azazel by his crib. Any other time we saw her was in a dream or hallucination, or when her image was being used to trigger a response from the boys. Both episodes in which she was her younger self, she wasn’t played by Sam Smith, and she didn't really care for Sam and Dean. She wasn’t very nice to them, and not even remotely motherly, so I'm really not sure what “wonderful character” you all believe she used to be and then got ruined.

She was/is not irredeemable She didn’t treat the boys the best, but certainly not the worst among people they consider “Family” (side eyes Cas). she never set out to hurt them, I never forgave her for wanting to stay in the AU after everything they went through to save her, but the boys did, and she hasn't been cold or mean to them since. She just never was a good actress.

So, Jack tries a spell to bring her back, and it didnt work. It just brought back her “shell”. Such a good broment when Dean held her body and Sam touched Dean and Mary. The funeral pyre was sad, but I loved Sam holding Cas back from trying to comfort Dean. The same as when Dean held Cas back from comforting Sam when Jack died. These brothers know what the other needs, and they’re going to be the one who provides it. Nice try Cas.

The one thing that affected me like nails on a chalkboard though, was Mary’s initials in the table. BIG NOPE! That’s Sam and Dean’s thing!! And I would have been more willing to accept it had John carved his initials too. Still wouldn't have liked it but at least it would have made sense. Also, every time they’re near that table I look for the carving, and its always there and her initials never were, not even in 14x17, so that just really sucked.

Overall I liked the episode, I was actually more worried for Rowena but shes OK thank Chuck. 2 more episodes this season and Im sure they’re gonna hurt.

On a scale of Bloodlines to Lebanon, I give this episode a 7. Not as good as it could be but worth a rewatch. And Sam’s hair looked great :D

#14x18 spoilers #absence #my opinion #rip mary winchester

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sebeth · 5 years

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Young Justice: The Return (Animation)

In an earlier post, I wrote my thoughts on the upcoming return of the Young Justice comic book. Now it’s time for the cartoon series.

I’ve tried to avoid most interviews but I have seen the promo images and watched the two trailers repeatedly. I like to go in as spoiler-free as possible when watching/reading media but I only have so much self-control.

Let’s start with the main plot –

There will be a time jump between season 2 and 3 – we’re just not sure of the exact length.

The formation of the Outsiders, along with the rescue of Terra, will be the main arc of season three.

Dick reunites with Conner and Artemis in the beginning of the season for “one last mission”. Black Lightning accompanies the trio to Markovia to shut down the metahuman trafficking ring. Why? Besides the fact that human trafficking is bad. Black Lightning has no previous connection to Young Justice but he has long-standing connections to Batman.

Has Batman already formed the Outsiders minus Geo-Force and Halo? We briefly see Batman, Katana, and Metamorpho jump from a plane and later brawl with Deathstroke. Batman formed the group in the comics - it would make sense for him to be behind the group’s organization in the cartoons. A covert group for more adult missions he wouldn’t want the Young Justice children to participate in.

I’m guessing the Markovia mission reveals the metahuman trafficking ring is way more extensive than previously thought – leading Dick to reunite with - and resume leadership – of Young Justice.

The Light and the Reach experimenting with metahuman activation began in season two. Per Wonder Woman, the Justice League “have confirmation that on multiple worlds, earth’s metahumans are being deployed by the enemy as weapons of mass destruction.”

Wonder Woman’s comment suggests the abducted metahumans are being subjected to brainwashing along with experimentation. I highly doubt the newly activated metahumans would rampage across the universe without mind control directing their actions.

The “multiple worlds” comment ties together Bart’s “we have a mission in space” with the glimpses of the New Gods, Superboy’s brawl with Lobo, and Dick and Conner fighting Sensei/Silver Monkey on a foreign world.

New Genesis might be one of the world’s affected by the “metahumans of mass destruction”, Lobo could have been hired by the Light, and Sensei/Silver Monkey is guarding one of Ra’s Al Ghul’s headquarters.

On to the characters:

First up, the Outsiders –

Geo-Force, Katana, Halo, Metamorpho, Black Lightning

Terra

The Markov Royal Family

As I said above, I’m fairly confident Batman has already formed the Outsiders before the beginning of the season. Possibly as a true “covert” group – as in without the Justice League’s knowledge or permission.

Young Justice was told they were a “covert” group by the Justice League but mostly it was a “training wheels” type group – smaller missions while being trained by the more experienced heroes. They did covert missions but were still in the press and public’s eyes.

The Outsiders will be the true covert group – sticking to the shadows, away from the press, down and dirty missions, etc.

As for the individual Outsiders:

Geo-Force - Brion is an adorable big brother. Noble, protective, eager to find his sister and stop the bad guys. Visually his powers should be awesome – they are similar to Terra’s.

Terra – Not a member of the Outsiders but I wanted to include her with Brion. The big question: will Terra be a villain? I’m guessing “yes”. Comic cannon dooms her to this fate. I do believe it will be the result of the Light’s brainwashing instead of the general “evil” nature. Possibly making her a tragic villain. Will Deathstroke be involved with Terra’s brainwashing? Comic cannon says “yes”. Could Batman, Metamorpho, and Katana storm the island looking for Terra? Is that why the Outsiders end up fighting Deathstroke?

Black Lightning – Jeff appears serious and mature. Love his visual design. Can’t wait to see him in costume.

Metamorpho – We only have a visual impression. Very nice. I wonder if we’ll see Sapphire or Simon Stagg? Rex will be the one who gives Deathstroke the most trouble in the upcoming fight.

Katana – Not much to go on yet except visually. Katana’s design reminds me of a more adult version of her DC Girls attire. Excited to see her in action.

Halo – Will be entirely different from the comics. She is a person of color and possibly Muslim? Let’s skip all the drama and hatred over the race change. Please?! She’s seems to be a new character. I highly doubt her name is going to be “Violet Harper”. For those unfamiliar with Halo, she wasn’t a great character. Apologies to Halo fans. Violet was a sociopath who was murdered by the 100, a criminal organization. Aurakle, an alien entity, merged with Violet’s deceased body. The “resurrection” caused amnesia. It gets more complicated from there. Let’s agree to start fresh and give the new Halo a chance. Halo’s powers are light-based – different colors have different effects. Halo’s colors were the same ones used by every color Lantern corps. However, Halo predated the emotional spectrum Lantern corps by twenty years. I’m betting Halo receives her powers in the cartoon due to the Light’s genetic manipulation. The one thing I would like to see carry over from the comic books is the maternal/big sister role Katana has in Halo’s life.

On to the Young Justice newbies:

Spoiler – I’m excited – I love Stephanie. She had a brief cameo in Season Two. How and why did she join the team? Is she involved with Tim? Will this cause friction with Cassie? I hope not as I would love to see Steph and Cassie bond. Cassie is very exuberant in the cartoon and Steph has the same approach to life – I would love to see the two become close friends.

Arrowette – A surprise choice since we already have Artemis, Roy, and clone Roy in the series. Glad to see her as she was a prominent member/supporting character in the comic book series. Will she develop a close friendship with Cassie and Bart? Those were her two besties in the comics.

Thirteen/Traci 13 – Another surprise choice. Traci can easily step into the void Zatana left when she joined the Justice League. Will Traci have a romance with Blue Beetle? They were a cute couple in the pre-New 52 era.

Oracle – Not a true new character but Barbara has clearly been through some changes since season two. Will we see a Killing Joke flashback? Or did Babs become Oracle in a different way?

Static – Like Oracle, Static is a returning character but with an upgrade. The writers seem to love electricity this season – we have Static, Black Lighting, and Live Wire also makes an appearance in the trailer.

Notable absences:

Miss Martian – I won’t miss M’gann if she’s absent this season. She started out cute in season one, became creepy with the Conner-molding, and became worse in season two with the unrepentant mind-frying and toying with Lagoon Boy. So no thank you unless Miss Martian has learned from her mistakes and expresses honest regret over her actions. Feeling bad for mind-frying Kaldur does not count as honest regret. M’ganns the easiest case for a “hero goes bad” if the show writers wanted to go that route.

Aqualad, Lagoon Boy, Aquaman, etc – Atlantis has had zero representation in either trailer. Did something happen to Atlantis during the time jump? Will that be one of the mysteries during the season?

Miscellaneous thoughts on the upcoming season:

We are all but guaranteed a fourth and fifth season of Young Justice. We know it’s going to be one of the heavyweights of the DC Universe streaming service so I don’t want various plotlines rushed.

Season Three will have 26 episodes. The majority will focus on the Outsiders and the metahuman trafficking ring alongside a “mission in space”. That leaves room for some “done in one” episodes or time for the development of various subplots.

The two big questions on fan’s minds: Will we see the return of Wally West or the debut of the Red Hood?

I would bet Wally’s return will be near the end of the season. The writers will want a “wow” ending for the season finale and that would be it.

As for Red Hood…I feel it’s a strong possibility. I don’t think the writers would have had Jason’s memorial hologram if they didn’t have any intention of using the Red Hood.

The writers could have Red Hood’s debut be similar to Jason’s appearance in the Teen Titans comics: Jason attacks Tim, and leaves the “Jason Todd/Red Hood Was Here” message on the walls. I’m not sure if the writers want to redo the entire “Under The Red Hood” storyline. At this point, it’s been done in the comic books, an animated movie, and a video game – most fans are familiar with the details by this point. Jason’s attack on Tim would allow Dick to fill in the rest of the team on the details of Jason’s resurrection. Dick has been keeping his distance from the team as indicated by his “one last mission” line. Dick’s distance would easily explain why the rest of the team is unaware of Jason’s return. Tim wouldn’t explain “Gotham business” to his teammates – he’s much more introverted and was way more intent on respecting Batman-imposed boundaries than Dick.

A developing friendship between Arsenal-Roy and Jason is a must. Not only because of the “Outlaws” comic book but because it’s a natural development between two traumatized boys prone to lashing out.

What I Don’t Want:

A Conner-M’gann relationship – The pairing started cute but is now toxic. Creepy molding combined with mind manipulation = abuse.

No Damian Wayne, Cassandra Cain, Starfire, Cyborg, or Raven. At least not this season. We have multiple new characters debuting this season, new characters who didn’t receive much focus last season, and a possibly debuting Red Hood. The seating capacity is full – no new debuts until season four.

I’ve rambled enough for now – so excited for January!

#Young Justice #Outsiders #Jason Todd #Red Hood #Roy Harper #Arsenal #Terra #Miss Martian #Halo

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