#I am not plugged in enough to the fandom to have this knowledge

[she-karev]

First Date Part 2

Age Rating: 12+

Fandom: Grey’s Anatomy

AN: Here’s part two of three the last chapter will be posted hopefully by tomorrow but for now enjoy this chapter. The next two chapters will be posted tomorrow.

Summary: Amber and Andrew go on their first date.

Words: 1898

It’s 6:45 and the T-Mobile stadium is already packed with people. I’m standing outside in the rain wearing my black North Face rain jacket holding an umbrella. I read that it rains in Seattle about 150 days out of the year which is more than it rains in Iowa or New York. I’m still getting used to the wet weather, I’m used to cold breezes though so that’s a good thing. I’m pretty much the only one with an umbrella because all of the other fans lined up outside are clad in either Yankee’s or Mariner’s hoodies.

I fully agree that the Yankee’s suck but the Mariner’s haven’t had a great season either so I just opt for a black v neck with skinny jeans, black combat boots and a red scarf around my neck. I decided to go with casual for tonight because we agreed to start slow and a dress with do me pumps doesn’t scream slow. He’s still trying to get past my relation to Alex and I am trying not to bring it up not that it’s hard not to. Plus talking about our families will open a Pandora’s Box of misery that will scare him away.

I finally see him get out of a cab and run towards me in his black jacket, jeans and a beanie. He looks at me with remorse for leaving me out in the rain for the past 15 minutes, “Hey I’m really sorry I had to move some things around and the cab I took arrived late and for some reason she likes to drive like a senior citizen. But I’m here now and I think if we hurry, we can get the good nachos.”

I shake my head at his lack of baseball knowledge, “Nachos aren’t the main baseball food it’s hot dogs. You know what we’ll discuss this later let’s get inside the line is long enough already.”

Andrew takes my hand in his and leads us inside the building where a long jam of people crowded one of the arched entrances. Andrew paused to pull out the tickets and gave one of them to me and held my hand as we kept walking with me behind him. The stadium wasn’t just filled with people it was filled with sounds too, from screaming to laughing. We took a few steps toward the shortest line we could find and soon I was between the wall and the crowd.

A sudden unease raced through me and I was familiar with it. No, no, not here, not now Andrew is oblivious to my racing thoughts and feelings of being trapped. I try to remember the breathing exercises I was taught but it’s been a while since my last incident and I left my Bcalm in one of my boxes back in my place because I didn’t think I would need it. I try to draw in breath but it was impossible. The air is stale and hot from all the bodies and it was like my nose was stuffed with plugs.

Panic hit me hard and fast and I froze in line even when it was moving. A coat of sweat was breaking out on my forehead, my chest tightened. Black spots started to swarm my vision and I knew in the moment what I needed to do but I couldn’t do it. Nobody noticed it I mean how could they? A girl having a panic attack in a large crowd is like a needle in a haystack. Fear paralyzes me in that moment and I couldn’t do anything even with the college kid behind me yelling at me to move up.

Andrew turned around and even in my state I could see him. He looks at me with concern and walks toward me and gently grabs my arm.

“Hey are you okay? What’s wrong?” I hear him talking to me but his voice sounds like it’s distorted which means this attack is just as bad as I fear.

I try to get past it and have words come out, a few get past my lips in a whisper, “P-Panic attack need…need to…b-breathe.” Andrew looks at me worriedly and immediately walks us away from the crowd. I clench his arm holding on for dear life and exhale as we exit the stadium. I have never been happier to feel the cold air and rain on me. I move away from him so I can get room to breathe and sit on the bench.

Andrew moves toward me and pulls my scarf away from my throat and it helps a lot. The rush of air is a welcome relief on my hot skin. It only helps a little and without the crowd I finally hear myself hyperventilating. I am so overcome with this need to breathe that I don’t even realize Andrew is here and witnessing me at my absolute worst. I would have gladly taken cursing over hyperventilating on a first date. 

Andrew holds my face in his hands and turns me to face him instead of the street, “Okay Amber look at me you’re having a panic attack it’s okay I’ve got you. Take a deep breath in do what I’m doing, nice and slow.” Andrew breathes in slowly and I copy him managing to pull a breath into my lungs, “Good again.” He repeats and so do I. Normally a new different fear would arise around Andrew’s proximity but instead his hands on my face and the rumble of his voice loosened the constrictions in my chest, “Do you feel better? Are you getting air in your lungs?” I stare at his serious and caring expression and nod, “Okay good let’s keep going until you feel better.” We kept breathing together a few more times and I felt my heartbeat steading and the tension exit my body.

When I finally felt more in control I pull Andrew’s hands away from my face and wipe my damp forehead with the back of my hand. Instead of facing him I rested my elbows on my knees and stared at the ground trying my hardest not to cry. I was about ready to sob not because of the panic attack but because of the shame and embarrassment that replaced the anxiety. I try not to look at him because I can imagine he looks scared and freaked out that his first date with me was trying to get me back from a panic attack. God, I want to die.

He rubs my back as a soothing gesture but I still don’t look at him, “Do you need anything? Water? I can run inside and get some.” I’m thirsty but all I want to do now is go home under my weighted blanket and never talk to him again.

“N-No I’m good…you should go though the game is about to start and you bought the tickets.” I try to give him a way out so I can save myself the shame but he is relentless as I see him shake his head out of the corner of my eye.

“I don’t care about the game.” I don’t know if he’s staying out of concern or pity, “Can you walk home or should I call us a cab? Where do you live?”

“Columbia City it’s a studio.”

“My place is closer we can walk there it might help you and you can spend the night.” I close my eyes at his kindness. Most girls would find it endearing but right now I feel like crawling under a rock and never coming out.

“You don’t have to.”

“I’ll feel a lot better if you did, come on let’s go.” Andrew takes my hand and we both stand up. I finally look at him and see that he’s genuinely concerned about me. I don’t know if it’s as a doctor or as a date but truth be told I don’t feel comfortable being in a tight space after what happened and his place is a lot bigger than mine. Hell, the on-call rooms are bigger than my studio so I nod and we walk side by side away from the park into the city at night.

After about 30 minutes of walking, I felt better as the cold air and movement was good for me and dispelled the threads of anxiety that remained. We didn’t talk the entire way, neither of us initiated conversation and I am so grateful for that because I wouldn’t know what to say or how to explain this. We finally reached the house which surprisingly looks bigger than most residents can afford in a big city.

“Nice place.” I say numbly, “I thought you were staying with Dr. Robbins.”

“Yeah, I was but her kid came back and I needed to move out so I’m living with Dr. Hunt until I find a place of my own.” I nod and look down in shame and he catches it, “Are you okay?”

I sniffle, “…I am so sorry.” He looks at me in pity over my sadness and tries to cheer me up.

“Hey, come on it’s just baseball at least I didn’t spill a drink on you or hit you again.” The corner of my lips goes up slightly at his attempts to make feel less like crap. Despite the slight amusement in his tone his eyes are dark with concern. I have had bad dates before but having a panic attack in front of Andrew and him coddling me like a child, God in heaven.

“I’m not a basket case.” I state bluntly trying to put it out there. Andrew looks taken back by what I said but responds.

“I never said you were. Come on you can sleep in my bed and I’ll take the sofa tonight.”

I look at him touched, could this guy be any more perfect and could I be any less? “You don’t have to do that. You can sleep in the bed with me I won’t mind.”

“Are you sure? I wouldn’t mind at all.” Andrew asks to be sure.

“It’s not like it’s the first time we slept together only those were much better circumstances and I wasn’t such a crock pot.” Andrew looks at me as if offended I’m being so hard on myself.

“Hey.” I look at him, “You are not a crock pot or a basket case. I’m pretty sure those terms are outdated and it’s okay I’m not mad. Don’t be so hard on yourself it’s not like you caused a panic attack to get out of some stupid game.”

“I really didn’t.” I say kicking myself again causing Andrew to be stern.

“Stop it it's not your fault. Let’s go inside and get some sleep okay?”

I nodded at his request and we headed inside the house without even speaking to each other. We go to his room where Andrew gives me a red flannel shirt of his to wear for the night. After taking my clothes off and slipping into the shirt with the bottom reaching the top of my thighs. I opt to shower in the morning because I’m exhausted and just want to pass out. As soon as I lay on my side in bed and pull the blanket to my neck, I close my eyes and let the lull of the night take me.

#greys anatomy #andrew deluca #amber karev #elizabeth gillies #liz gillies #headcanon

[nostalgia-tblr]

(okay so I apparently can’t send asks from my sideblog but I saw your asks post!)

13, 30, 60, 66

You get to choose the fic for the 60 and 66 ones because I bet you have something you’d like to say abt those particular ones <3

13. Do you listen to music while you write?  If yes, what have you been listening to recently?

Yes! I have a playlist of Songs That Evoke The Right Sort Of Feels For Fic-Writing that I change up from time to time and some of them are there for inspiring one specific story and some are more generic. Recent adds to that have been from ongoing attempts to listen to some slightly-more-modern music by buying secondhand CDs of artists who were born in this century. I am weird about telling people what music I like, I always feel I will be judged, even more than I normally assume that, not sure why that is.

30. How much do you edit your fics?  Do you edit as you write or wait until you finish the first draft?

I don't think I *do* edit, really? At least, there's no stage of going over things and rewriting beyond just fixing typos. By the end I'm usually like "well I spent AGES on this I am not changing any of it now, I don't want to have wasted those minutes thinking of each sentence." It's written, it's done, I'm not willing to change it now that it's in a form I like! Maybe that means I edit as I go? Does it?

60. In [insert fic], what inspired the idea for the plot?

I am gonna go with Forget-Me-Not, picked for being recent enough that I can remember why I wrote it. It was one of them "fandom-inspired" works because MCU fandom (what I know of it) seems to see Frigga entirely through the lens of how nurturing and comforting she is (or isn't, but usually is) to Loki and this is obviously quite reductive especially when there's only two women on Asgard who have names. And she gets used as the Perfect Loving Mother in contrast to Odin The Worst Parent Ever and like many fannish dichotemies this is both understandable and a bit reductive. So I decided I should write something where she is not the Best Parent Ever, but where she can justify everything she does as Good Parenting and so it's fucked up but the reader can see how she ended up there.

BTW when I say "spite" was my motivation for a fic this is usually what I mean - that something in fandom has annoyed me to the point where I want to write the opposite thing just to make a point. (Even a stupid and/or petty point is still a point!)

And also because I have read enough Historical Shite to know that everyone - everyone!!! - knows when a queen is pregnant. And yet I am seemingly expected to believe that Odin came home carrying a baby and Frigga wasn't pregnant and yet somehow Loki being adopted is not common knowledge? I had to plug that plothole for my own mental wellbeing! Frigga having mindwiped everyone including her own children kills two birds with one fucked-up stone!

66. What’s a fun fact about [insert fic]?

The bit with Donna and the chameleon arch in Continuity Errors (or, Five Things The TARDIS Half-Remembers) is something I'd been trying to turn into a fic since literally 2005, ie 'The Companion Becomes A Time Lord' Is Not Necessarily An Unreservedly Good Thing. I don't know how long I'd been trying to turn 'continuity errors' into an in-universe bit of jargon but that was Bloody Ages as well, I'm sure of it.

#replies #fanfiction writing asks meme

[sevensided]

You're back! So glad to see u again. Don't know how caught up u are on... well, everything, but what are your thoughts at this point in time? How are u feeling about Mike and the Cali crew and all of that? 😀

Hello, thank you so much! I'm pretty caught up - as soon as information started getting leaked at a steadier pace I plugged myself back in. It's only been today that I decided to come back to Tumblr. :b

Hmm... great questions, and thank you for taking the time to ask me! I don't think I have anything especially poignant to say, except that I am... optimistic. I said way back in the depths of the hiatus that I was cautiously optimistic about S4, and that feeling hasn't changed much. I am relieved and pleased that they've finally more or less confirmed Will's feelings/sexuality, but to that I would say: what next?

I do think it's significant that they've confirmed Will's sexuality relatively early out from the season. At this stage, the average viewer would have knowledge of a few key facts for S4, one of them being that Will is gay. So, that begs the question, what else could we learn from S4? What else is there that will surprise viewers? Could it be something entirely unexpected - maybe something that involves Mike, too?

I'm trying to think about this from the perspectives of story craft and from marketing. It's this fine balance between wanting to tease the story to get potential views, while ensuring there's enough to keep people hooked. I know the obvious continuation of this line of thought is to say 'oh, but that's queerbaiting', except it's not? I really do think that we may be pleasantly surprised, and for that to happen we do need to stay positive. We haven't seen anything yet!

But, also, the purpose of fandom is to 'right the wrongs' of canon. So, like, in the event that we get no-homo Mike... we're surrounded by talented, gifted members of our fandom who will rise to the occasion.

#answered #one last thing i think it's interesting that so much of the cali stills #feature mike/will #they're often positioned closely in stills/shots and mirror/mimic each other frequently #idk just something to consider #it's almost like it IS them against the world...

[1mnobodywhoareyou]

20 questions writer meme!

Tagged by @onlygenxhere, Thanks! :)

1. How many works do you have on AO3? 12 (I'm still just a bebe writer)

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 106,918

3. What fandoms do you write for? Julie and the Phantoms

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Phantoms Watch JatP: I am actually so, so proud of this one and have been considering rereading it for myself because I know I did some really funny shit. It's like the title says but they're in a QPR and aged up quite a few years. It was my very first ever fanfic and I'm happy that it led me to writing as much as I do now.

I'm Underneath the Undertow: This has been such a labour of love and a processing device for some really traumatic shit in my life and I'm so happy that others are enjoying reading it. Basic premise is Reggie supporting Julie through grief (in a platonic friendship - this is important to me) and then Julie and the rest of their friends (and Ray) supporting Reggie through major trauma.

Gem in a Black Leather Jacket: I still can't believe how this one came about. This entire series exists because I was trying to find an organic way for the boys to be introduced to a band I love and connect to them and then it spiraled fantastically. This was such a fun way for me to play with Reggie's bi crisis.

Neurotic to the Bone, No Doubt About it: Some Alex backstory and bonding with Julie wrapped up in the band's love of Green Day and Pansy Division. Also the result of aforementioned band introduction attempt.

Hit Like a Girl: My newest addition to the same band-related series and it was a lot of fun. I wanted a way to plug some women rockers I love, complain about algorithms 😅, and make Carrie a closet metalhead.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? YES! Gosh, I appreciate comments so much and for me, receiving ao3 emails about a writer replying to one of my comments is often almost as great as receiving an email about a comment of my own.

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? This is complicated but technically I guess Underneath the Undertow? Even though it doesn't end on angst but there isn't like... a happy resolution to the big trauma. Most of my endings are probably just neutral? I don't actually know (feelings are hard for me).

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Hmmm... I guess probably The Phantoms Watch JatP? I only have one plot-driven fic so far but this one ends with a cuddle pile sleepover iirc.

8. Do you get hate on fics? – Not yet. I don't really know whether to expect any or not but I do wrap my politic into my writing so I'm preparing for it to happen eventually. Hopefully with the shrunken fandom I'm safe? We'll see.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Negatory. I've found my way back to reading it but I don't think writing it is within my skillset or comfort zone.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? omg. I'm actually so mad about this. No. I have not. Yet. But a dear mutual (whom I will not tag without their permission) has put a crossover idea into my brain and I HATE IT but it will probably get written eventually so it can leave me in peace.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not to my knowledge

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? No

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Not yet but I am in the middle of one exploring asexuality that I may co-write with an allo friend because there are too many things I don't think I understand well enough to write how I want to. We shall see. I'm also a bit of a control freak so the premise terrifies me a little bit but also seems fun.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship? Oof. Within JatP only? For canon compliant, probably Juke or Rayvorose (I will fight you, I said compliant)? But gosh, I love Willex too. The longer I spend in the fandom, the more ships I love. Polycurve and polyphantoms? Adore. Flarrie. Boggie.

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will? I don't have high hopes for the one based on an old band vlog. I keep toying around with how to make it work but I think a lot of what I find funny or want to use for the Sunset Curve boys requires video. We'll see though. I thought I'd never get anywhere with my 'Bad Bobby' fic and now I'm... a whole lotta words in.

16. What are your writing strengths? I don't like this question. Not just because I don't know how to compliment myself but because I genuinely do not know. Maybe someone who's read my stuff can share their opinion.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? I struggle with connecting scenes and endings. I'm sure there's other stuff too but honestly same note as above. Oh. And titles.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? If it's something I can easily google (not translate but actually get context for) without falling into a deep rabbit hole, I'll do it. But I would generally prefer not to.

19. First fandom you wrote for? JatP

20. Favorite fic you've written? Oh. Like of ALL of them or just what's on ao3 so far? Because I'm quite fond of some of my little Tumblr ficlets... 🤔 I need better guidelines! If we go for >1k... AH I still don't know. I'm just gonna say The Phantoms watch Julie and the Phantoms cuz it's been on my brain lately.

I'm not going to tag anyone directly but if you see this and want to write one up, please pretend I did (and tag me so I can read it?). I get really in my head about not missing anyone or tagging someone who doesn't want to be tagged so to avoid that, I'm gonna skip this step.

#writer asks #writer ask game #writers of tumblr

[lizziebennet92]

Was "The Rundown Job" originally a backdoor pilot for a spinoff?

Like I love it, but it's not really a "leverage" episode.

Maybe they just wanted to have fun. I'm sure someone with more fandom info than me knows.

#I am not plugged in enough to the fandom to have this knowledge #but usually that info is listed on imdb #maybe they just wanted to do something fun and different for an episode #leverage #the rundown job

[narcoticwriter]

Giving an anon from a fanfic account what they asked for with no other reason than because I can.

Yes, I'm outing myself within like a week lmao, but a request for information is something I'm more than willing to fulfill.

Dearest anon, you asked on a @bumbleklee's account if I had the links, and I assure you I most certainly do.

For those of you who don't know, I am currently responsible for a few walls of text surrounding the realm of the so-called 'Genshin Impact Damage Meta-gaming' despite - and note this - never playing the game myself.

It's funny, considering that I specialize in the dealing of information and I don't really care if I don't have access to the game and do not want access at this time. I'm here to vibe and vibe only until the Venti rerun is officially announced. So really, I'm the filthiest casual in this place and the fandom would eat me alive outside of here. But!

I have also endowed myself with an unholy amount of knowledge surrounding the damage calculations specifically to the characters' respective toolkit and what their base numbers are built for. You can find some semblance of an explanation under '#going ham'. The pages are long and thick full of a summary of how damage works, but I focus on that specifically.

This is optional, by the way I wouldn't make you do that anon.

So in summary, I will be able to answer that request for you! You said you wanted five links, and while I have them, some of the ways that the material is presented is okay for me, but might not be your speed which is why I included some other ones for you that still have the desired impact because I highly doubt you want to read through a long-ass Reddit thread.

The links in question:

The Best Teams as of 2.4 (Simple explanation and top teams)

A Thorough List of All Possible Teams as of 2.4 (Complex explanations along with all the builds)

Keqing Mains (Has yet to be updated to all playable characters as they are tactful and take the utmost time to make sure there are no misconceptions)

Genshin Builds (Dedicated solely to building characters and party builds and from what I gather, very informative while simple to understand to the point that I may use it in the future)

Genshin Impact Damage Calculator (Simply plug in characters, artifacts, weapons, constellations, external buffs from party members, etc.; requires a little bit of learning how to navigate)

These sources are credible and have stood in the community long enough to be mentioned in a multitude of forums and for my personal use.

If you want my personal opinion, however, you will have to inquire further because the amount of times I clarified when no one asked me to is quite embarrassing ehe so that I don't overwhelm you with a full-blown analysis when you just want receipts.

I hope this helps you in whatever you're trying to build!

~ Meta anon (AKA the new menace on Genshin Tumblr that's clogging up the respective tags with my bullshit)

#going ham #genshin analysis #genshin meta #narky thinks #meta anon #genshin impact #first request?? #genshin discourse #quick post #this took like fifteen minutes to make lmao

[fromthedeskofelizabeththird]

Habanero

You're a good girl, well behaved.

Absolutely not the type to rail random guys in nightclubs.

Until you are.

Fandom: BNHA

Pairing: Aizawa x Reader, eventual polyamorous Erasermic x Reader

Rating: Gen

Trigger Warnings: Referenced child abuse, blood

AO3: Here | Want to support me? I have a Kofi

Chapter: 4/16 (all chapters)

You were scared of a lot of things: bugs, dark places, ghosts, drowning and more. Your friends often joked that you were a wimp and you’d bever been inclined to disagree.

There was one thing, however, that scared you above all others. It sent shivers down your spine and left your legs wobbling from under you.

It was the door to your father’s home office.

Your father was a prosecutor and a pretty notorious one at that, famous for the number of guilty verdicts he had achieved over the years. He had an incredible advantage, of course- the same lie detection quirk that he had passed onto you. He spent most of his evenings alternating between his work and home offices, going over the details of cases and preparing for a never ending stream of plaintiffs.

His home office was a near perfect replica of the one in the city, complete with a golden name plaque on the door. You passed it every day, multiple times a day, and each time broke out in goosebumps as if the door watched you in turn.

It wasn’t only the plaintiffs your father needed to find guilty.

Your father was not in the least bit conservative with his quirk. You spent many an afternoon there, jaw clenched and skin crawling at his line of questioning.

Tell me… why were you late?

Tell me… how long did you study?

Tell me… who were you with?

You hated being left so exposed and, in retrospect, you weren’t in the least bit surprised that you ended up vanilla instead of habanero, desperately seeking a simple married life.

The anxiety of standing outside of your father’s home office stayed with you into adulthood, even now that you had your own home. You had started to believe it no longer had an effect on you; that you no longer remembered how it felt.

As you stood outside of the hospital door, though, you remembered clearly.

Hand trembling, you reached up to knock.

━

SEVERAL HOURS EARLIER

“Maybe if I move it that way…”

You scrolled through your calendar and let out a sigh at the appointments already there.

“No good, no good.”

You sat back in your chair and stretched, popping your shoulders and wiggling your toes.

“Maybe…”

You had a moment of inspiration, only to groan and click out of the window.

With the sports festival around the corner, your schedule was on the verge of taking a beating. Between modifying your office hours to make appointments with students to discuss their offers, to making room for counselling for those suffering disappointment, to keeping your usual appointments and open office hours, you were starting to consider bringing a futon and moving into your office for the foreseeable future. You’d known it was going to be a tight squeeze, but hadn’t counted on it being this bad.

You logged out of your computer and climbed out of your chair, giving your back a quick rub before leaving your office. You needed an IV of coffee, but a cup would have to do.

You were still thinking about your itinerary as you passed the 1-A classroom. Normally, between Kirishima, Bakugo and Iida, you heard the classroom long before you passed it. Today, though, it was silent and you peered through the window.

You’d heard that they were going on a trip with Thirteen to the USJ for specialist training and, if their empty desks were anything to go by, had already left. You had taken a tour of the facility during your initial induction and it had taken everything you had to keep your jaw from hitting the ground. You knew that UA was well funded, but it didn’t really sink in until then.

You wondered how they were getting on. Had Bakugou destroyed anything yet? Had Midoriya broken any of his bones?

You were still considering it as you passed the faculty lounge, dragged out of your thoughts by the sound of voices within. It sounded like the principal, though you weren’t sure who he was speaking to. You wondered if it was a private conversation and you should come back another time.

You knocked a couple of times before peeping around the door.

“Sorry,” you said, “am I interrupting?”

You really had heard the principal and he appeared to be sharing tea with All Might.

You weren’t sure you would ever be prepared for the sight of All Might in his skinnier form. Like most youngsters of your generation, you had watched his heroic acts in awe. You hadn’t known he was going to join the faculty at the time of your own job application and still found your heart racing whenever you passed him in the corridors.

You had signed eighteen different nondisclosure agreements after successfully taking on the job at UA, of which well over half related to the Symbol of Peace. You knew that he had been injured very badly and was losing his strength at an alarming rate. Even so, it was difficult to adjust to the reality.

“Ah, (Name), come in, come in,” said Principal Nezu, “we were just sharing a cup of tea, would you like some?”

You wanted coffee, but Nezu had already started to pour.

“Of course,” you said, closing the door behind you and taking a seat.

“You got here just in time,” said Nezu, pushing your cup across the coffee table. “We were discussing the fundamentals of teaching.”

“That sounds interesting,” you said, taking a sip of tea. “You must have a lot of insight.”

All Might twitched beside you, visibly restless. You wondered how long Nezu had been talking.

“Apologies,” he said, setting down his cup, “I should get going. I’ve already rested for far too long.”

He got up and walked towards the door, taking a deep breath before transforming into the muscular form the world knew and loved.

You would never get used to that either.

“So, (Name),” said Principal Nezu, “how are you finding the school? I trust you’ve had support from our staff?”

“Everyone’s been really kind,” you said. “I know they’re busy with their own workloads this term, but they’ve had so much time for me.”

You wrapped your hands around your cup, warmth flooding your fingers. You wanted to explain how grateful you were for the opportunity -that not so long ago your life had been falling apart- but you never got the chance, for the door to the lounge flew open and a student stormed inside.

“Principal Nezu! Something terrible has happened!”

It was Iida from 1-A, dressed in his hero costume and visibly out of breath. Your blood ran cold and you glanced across at Nezu, who had gotten to his feet.

“USJ...there’s been an invasion at USJ! Please help!”

Nezu’s response to the matter was swift and efficient. He turned to you, visibly transformed from the mild mannered principal who had offered you a cup of tea.

“(Name),” he said. “I’m going to gather everyone available. I need you to liaise with the authorities.”

“Of course,” you said, setting aside your tea and whipping out your phone.

“Meet us there,” he said as you began to dial.

“S-sir?”

You weren’t a pro hero; what possible use could you be?

━

His intentions soon became clear.

While your colleagues rushed into the danger zone, you stayed behind with the police, hitching a ride with Tsukauchi to the station once the area was secure.

Time was of the essence. You had read enough crime statistics to know that villain attacks very often came in waves, making the next few hours crucial to the safety of UA. Having a human lie detector on hand during the interrogations was more than a little bit useful.

You only wished you could concentrate.

Everything you knew about the incident came straight from Tsukauchi, so even though you had never actually seen the full extent of the carnage, you knew enough for your imagination to run wild.

You knew that the students had escaped with minor injuries and, while Shouta was badly hurt, he wasn’t dead. You couldn’t stop thinking about it, especially since the only image of the incident you had seen was that of his goggles broken on the floor.

You sat beside Tsukauchi in the interrogation room, silent as they brought in prisoner after prisoner. You only spoke to activate your quirk; only dragged yourself out of your contemplations to ask the same set of questions.

Three hours later, you knew only fractionally more than you did to begin with. The villains you’d caught were blatant throwaways, with no knowledge at all of the man they’d followed into battle or a greater scheme. They’d all wanted to take a shot at the symbol of peace and had no idea how close they had come to succeeding.

“Are you going to be alright?” Tsukauchi asked as interrogations came to a close.

You knew you must have looked a mess, popping aspirin and pinching the bridge of your nose.

“I’ll be fine,” you said, “honestly.”

“I’ll organise a car to take you to UA,” he said, but you shook your head.

“No, no that’s okay. I need to go somewhere first.”

━

Technically, you had two places to go first.

You stopped by the police station washroom to freshen up, leaning over the sink as the migraine set in. You pinched the bridge of your nose and watched as it began to bleed.

You weren’t used to using your quirk for such a long period of time and had almost certainly overdone it. The bleeding began to slow and you switched on the tap, washing away the blood on your face before plugging your nostrils with tissue paper. Unfortunately, you had still managed to bleed on your collar.

Just your luck that you would use your quirk too much on the day you decided to wear your new white blouse. You cursed at your reflection, trying and failing to adjust your shirt in such a way that it wasn’t noticeable.

Even now, you couldn’t concentrate.

You had never crossed paths with so many villains in one day. You had watched your father cross examine witnesses and plaintiffs many, many times, but had never been in his shoes. You hated it.

You knew exactly how they felt when you activated your quirk, recognised the squirming as it crawled through their skin. Part of you had enjoyed it, knowing that their discomfort in that moment did not compare to the violence they had inflicted on others.

Shouta.

The violence they had inflicted on Shouta.

He was a hero, you told yourself. He had signed up to fight those very same villains.

Even so, you hated them for it in ways you’d never hated a villain before.

You thought back to your training and took a deep breath.

“This is normal,” you whispered. “This is normal. This is a negative emotional response to a distressing situation. This is normal, we’ll move on.”

You took another deep breath, but your heart still rattled.

What is it that’s bothering me?

You reached into your purse for your makeup, painting away the shock for now at least.

We can work through that later.

━

PRESENT

And so, there you were, standing outside of Shouta’s room in the hospital.

They’d put him under the care of one of the best doctors in Musutafu, who assured you that surgery had been a success and his life was not in danger. There was a high chance his quirk would be affected by the damage to his orbital floor but even that was lucky, all things considered.

You tapped at the door and let yourself inside, taking in the calm and quiet of the room. Shouta was tucked up in bed and connected to numerous monitors, their steady beeps breaking the silence. You closed the door behind you and crept over to the bed, taking in the bandages that covered almost every inch of his body.

You had always known that heroes risked death and worse on a daily basis but had never seen it in person. You didn’t know how to feel about seeing him bloodied and broken. You had seen this man naked; you’d held onto the arms that a villain had broken. Did it always feel this personal?

You took a seat next to his bed, taking note of exactly how much of him was covered in bandages. You wouldn’t have known it was him if you hadn’t been told otherwise.

You didn't know what you had expected to find at the hospital, only that it would give you closure.

Why, then, did you still feel so uneasy?

You recalled his words from only recently, after you had given him a faceful of pepper spray.

Why would you try and confront a villain without help? You could have gotten yourself killed.

You need to be more rational in these things. Running head on into danger gets people killed.

Why hadn’t he followed his own advice?

Truthfully, you knew exactly why.

He had been well aware of the danger, but made the call anyway. He had analysed the situation and prioritised the lives and safety of his students over his own. It was the right thing to do and the rational part of you knew that, but you didn’t feel very rational right then.

You had to report back to Nezu; had to adjust your schedule ready for trauma counselling. You weren’t the only one who had been exposed to an unprecedented amount of villains that day. 1-A had almost certainly seen too much too soon.

You knew you had to leave, yet felt guilty as you got to your feet.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, hoping that your words would reach him through the anesthesia. “I have to go...but I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”

You promised yourself that you’d skip lunch if you had to.

“See you,” you said, leaning over to kiss his forehead as if on autopilot.

Your heart skipped a beat once you realised what you’d done.

Oh God, what were you thinking?

You reached into your purse for your chapstick as you left the room, so focused on painting away the kiss that you didn’t notice his fingers twitch.

#aizawa x reader #eraserhead x reader #shouta aizawa #aizawa shouta #boku no hero academia #habanero

[holyhellpod]

Holy Hell: 3. Metanarrativity: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship? aka the analysis no one asked for.

In this ep, we delve into authorship, narrative, fandom and narrative meaning. And somehow, as always, bring it back to Cas and Misha Collins.

(Note: the reason I didn’t talk about Billie’s authorship and library is because I completely forgot it existed until I watched season 13 “Advanced Thanatology” again, while waiting for this episode to upload. I’ll find a way to work her into later episodes tho!)

I had to upload it as a new podcast to Spotify so if you could just re-subscribe that would be great! Or listen to it at these other links.

Please listen to the bit at the beginning about monetisation and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to message me here.

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

Warnings: discussions of incest, date rape, rpf, war, 9/11, the bush administration, abuse, mental health, addiction, homelessness. Most of these are just one off comments, they’re not full discussions.

Meta-Textuality: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship?

In the third episode of Season 6, “The Third Man,” Balthazar says to Cas, “you tore up the whole script and burned the pages.” That is the fundamental idea the writers of the first five seasons were trying to sell us: whatever grand plan the biblical God had cooking up is worth nothing in face of the love these men have—for each other and the world. Sam, Bobby, Cas and Dean will go to any lengths to protect one another and keep people safe. What’s real? What’s worth saving? People are real. Families are worth saving. 

This show plugs free will as the most important thing a person, angel, demon or otherwise can have. The fact of the matter is that Dean was always going to fight against the status quo, Sam was always going to go his own way, and Bobby was always going to do his best for his boys. The only uncertainty in the entire narrative is Cas. He was never meant to rebel. He was never meant to fall from Heaven. He was supposed to fall in line, be a good soldier, and help bring on the apocalypse, but Cas was the first agent of free will in the show’s timeline. Sam followed Lucifer, Dean followed Michael, and John gave himself up for the sins of his children, at once both a God and Jesus figure. But Cas wasn’t modelled off anyone else. He is original. There are definitely some parallels to Ruby, but I would argue those are largely unintentional. Cas broke the mold. 

That’s to say nothing of the impact he’s had on the fanbase, and the show itself, which would not have reached 15 seasons and be able to end the way they wanted it to without Cas and Misha Collins. His back must be breaking from carrying the entire show. 

But what the holy hell are we doing here today? Not just talking about Cas. We’re talking about metanarrativity: as I define it, and for purposes of this episode, the story within a story, and the act of storytelling. We’re going to go through a select few episodes which I think exemplify the best of what this show has to offer in terms of framing the narrative. We’ll talk about characters like Chuck and Becky and the baby dykes in season 10. And most importantly we’ll talk about the audience’s role, our role, in the reciprocal relationship of storytelling. After all, a tv show is nothing without the viewer.

I was in fact introduced to the concept of metanarrativity by Supernatural, so the fact that I’m revisiting it six years after I finished my degree to talk about the show is one of life’s little jokes.

 I’m brushing off my degree and bringing out the big guns (aka literary theorists) to examine this concept. This will be yet another piece of analysis that would’ve gone well in my English Lit degree, but I’ll try not to make it dry as dog shit. 

First off, I’m going to argue that the relationship between the creators of Supernatural and the fans has always been a dialogue, albeit with a power imbalance. Throughout the series, even before explicitly metanarrative episodes like season 10 “Fan Fiction” and season 4 “the monster at the end of this book,” the creators have always engaged in conversations with the fans through the show. This includes but is not limited to fan conventions, where the creators have actual, live conversations with the fans. Misha Collins admitted at a con that he’d read fanfiction of Cas while he was filming season 4, but it’s pretty clear even from the first season that the creators, at the very least Eric Kripke, were engaging with fans. The show aired around the same time as Twitter and Tumblr were created, both of which opened up new passageways for fans to interact with each other, and for Twitter and Facebook especially, new passageways for fans to interact with creators and celebrities.

But being the creators, they have ultimate control over what is written, filmed and aired, while we can only speculate and make our own transformative interpretations. But at least since s4, they have engaged in meta narrative construction that at once speaks to fans as well as expands the universe in fun and creative ways. My favourite episodes are the ones where we see the Winchesters through the lens of other characters, such as the season 3 episode “Jus In Bello,” in which Sam and Dean are arrested by Victor Henriksen, and the season 7 episode “Slash Fiction” in which Dean and Sam’s dopplegangers rob banks and kill a bunch of people, loathe as I am to admit that season 7 had an effect on any part of me except my upchuck reflex. My second favourite episodes are the meta episodes, and for this episode of Holy Hell, we’ll be discussing a few: The French Mistake, he Monster at the end of this book, the real ghostbusters, Fan Fiction, Metafiction, and Don’t Call Me Shurley. I’ll also discuss Becky more broadly, because, like, of course I’ll be discussing Becky, she died for our sins. 

Let’s take it back. The Monster At The End Of This Book — written by Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner and directed by Mike Rohl. Inarguably one of the better episodes in the first five seasons. Not only is Cas in it, looking so beautiful, but Sam gets something to do, thank god, and it introduces the character of Chuck, who becomes a source of comic relief over the next two seasons. The episode starts with Chuck Shurley, pen named Carver Edlund after my besties, having a vision while passed out drunk. He dreams of Sam and Dean larping as Feds and finding a series of books based on their lives that Chuck has written. They eventually track Chuck down, interrogate him, and realise that he’s a prophet of the lord, tasked with writing the Winchester Gospels. The B plot is Sam plotting to kill Lilith while Dean fails to get them out of the town to escape her. The C plot is Dean and Cas having a moment that strengthens their friendship and leads further into Cas’s eventual disobedience for Dean. Like the movie Disobedience. Exactly like the movie Disobedience. Cas definitely spits in Dean’s mouth, it’s kinda gross to be honest. Maybe I’m just not allo enough to appreciate art. 

When Eric Kripke was showrunner of the first five seasons of Supernatural,  he conceptualised the character of Chuck. Kripke as the author-god introduced the character of the author-prophet who would later become in Jeremy Carver’s showrun seasons the biblical God. Judith May Fathallah writes in “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural” that Kripke writes himself both into and out of the text, ending his era with Chuck winking at the camera, saying, “nothing really ends,” and disappearing. Kripke stayed on as producer, continuing to write episodes through Sera Gamble’s era, and was even inserted in text in the season 6 episode “The French Mistake”. So nothing really does end, not Kripke’s grip on the show he created, not even the show itself, which fans have jokingly referred to as continuing into its 16th season. Except we’re not joking. It will die when all of us are dead, when there is no one left to remember it. According to W R Fisher, humans are homo narrans, natural storytellers. The Supernatural fandom is telling a fidelitous narrative, one which matches our own beliefs, values and experiences instead of that of canon. Instead of, at Fathallah says, “the Greek tradition, that we should struggle to do the right thing simply because it is right, though we will suffer and be punished anyway,” the fans have created an ending for the characters that satisfies each and every one of our desires, because we each create our own endings. It’s better because we get to share them with each other, in the tradition of campfire stories, each telling our own version and building upon the others. If that’s not the epitome of mythmaking then I don’t know. It’s just great. Dean and Cas are married, Eileen and Sam are married, Jack is sometimes a baby who Claire and Kaia are forced to babysit, Jody and Donna are gonna get hitched soon. It’s season 17, time for many weddings, and Kevin Tran is alive. Kripke, you have no control over this anymore, you crusty hag. 

Chuck is introduced as someone with power, but not influence over the story, only how the story is told through the medium of the novels. It’s basically a very badly written, non authorised biography, and Charlie reading literally every book and referencing things she should have no knowledge of is so damn creepy and funny. At first Chuck is surprised by his characters coming to life, despite having written it already, and when shown the intimidating array of weapons in Baby’s trunk he gets real scared. Which is the appropriate response for a skinny 5-foot-8 white guy in a bathrobe who writes terrible fantasy novels for a living. 

As far as I can remember, this is the first explicitly metanarrative episode in the series, or at least the first one with in world consequences. It builds upon the lore of Christianity, angels, and God, while teasing what’s to come. Chuck and Sam have a conversation about how the rest of the season is going to play out, and Sam comes away with the impression that he’ll go down with the ship. They touch on Sam’s addiction to demon blood, which Chuck admits he didn’t write into the books, because in the world of supernatural, addiction should be demonised ha ha at every opportunity, except for Dean’s alcoholism which is cool and manly and should never be analysed as an unhealthy trauma coping mechanism. 

Chuck is mostly impotent in the story of Sam and Dean, but his very presence presents an element of good luck that turns quickly into a force of antagonism in the series four finale, “Lucifer Rising”, when the archangel Raphael who defeats Lilith in this episode also kills Cas in the finale. It’s Cas’s quick thinking and Dean’s quick doing that resolve the episode and save them from Lilith, once again proving that free will is the greatest force in the universe. Cas is already tearing up pages and burning scripts. The fandom does the same, acting as gods of their own making in taking canon and transforming it into fan art. The fans aren’t impotent like Chuck, but neither do we have sway over the story in the way that Cas and Dean do. Sam isn’t interested in changing the story in the same way—he wants to kill Lilith and save the world, but in doing so continues the story in the way it was always supposed to go, the way the angels and the demons and even God wanted him to. 

Neither of them are author-gods in the way that God is. We find out later that Chuck is in fact the real biblical god, and he engineers everything. The one thing he doesn’t engineer, however, is Castiel, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Real Ghostbusters

Season 5’s “The real ghostbusters,” written by Nancy Weiner and Erik Kripke, and directed by James L Conway, situates the Winchesters at a fan convention for the Supernatural books. While there, they are confronted by a slew of fans cosplaying as Sam, Dean, Bobby, the scarecrow, Azazel, and more. They happen to stumble upon a case, in the midst of the game where the fans pretend to be on a case, and with the help of two fans cosplaying as Sam and Dean, they put to rest a group of homicidal ghost children and save the day. Chuck as the special guest of the con has a hero moment that spurs Becky on to return his affections. And at the end, we learn that the Colt, which they’ve been hunting down to kill the devil, was given to a demon named Crowley. It’s a fun episode, but ultimately skippable. This episode isn’t so much metanarrative as it is metatextual—metatextual meaning more than one layer of text but not necessarily about the storytelling in those texts—but let’s take a look at it anyway.

The metanarrative element of a show about a series of books about the brothers the show is based on is dope and expands upon what we saw in “the monster at the end of this book”. But the episode tells a tale about about the show itself, and the fandom that surrounds it. 

Where “The Monster At The End Of This Book” and the season 5 premiere “Sympathy For The Devil” poked at the coiled snake of fans and the concept of fandom, “the real ghostbusters” drags them into the harsh light of an enclosure and antagonises them in front of an audience. The metanarrative element revolves around not only the books themselves, but the stories concocted within the episode: namely Barnes and Demian the cosplayers and the story of the ghosts. The Winchester brothers’s history that we’ve seen throughout the first five seasons of the show is bared in a tongue in cheek way: while we cried with them when Sam and Dean fought with John, now the story is thrown out in such a way as to mock both the story and the fans’ relationship to it. Let me tell you, there is a lot to be made fun of on this show, but the fans’ relationship to the story of Sam, Dean and everyone they encounter along the way isn’t part of it. I don’t mean to be like, wow you can’t make fun of us ever because we’re special little snowflakes and we take everything so seriously, because you are welcome to make fun of us, but when the creators do it, I can’t help but notice a hint of malice. And I think that’s understandable in a way. Like The relationship between creator and fan is both layered and symbiotic. While Kripke and co no doubt owe the show’s popularity to the fans, especially as the fandom has grown and evolved over time, we’re not exactly free of sin. And don’t get me wrong, no fandom is. But the bad apples always seem to outweigh the good ones, and bad experiences can stick with us long past their due.

However, portraying us as losers with no lives who get too obsessed with this show — well, you know, actually, maybe they’re right. I am a loser with no life and I am too obsessed with this show. So maybe they have a point. But they’re so harsh about it. From wincestie Becky who they paint as a desperate shrew to these cosplayers who threaten Dean’s very perception of himself, we’re not painted in a very good light. 

Dean says to Demian and Barnes, “It must be nice to get out of your mom’s basement.” He’s judging them for deriving pleasure from dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a night. He doesn’t seem to get the irony that he does that for a living. As the seasons wore on, the creators made sure to include episodes where Dean’s inner geek could run rampant, often in the form of dressing up like a cowboy, such as season six “Frontierland” and season 13 “Tombstone”. I had to take a break from writing this to laugh for five minutes because Dean is so funny. He’s a car gay but he only likes one car. He doesn’t follow sports. His echolalia causes him to blurt out lines from his favourite movies. He’s a posse magnet. And he loves cosplay. But he will continually degrade and insult anyone who expresses interest in role play, fandom, or interests in general. Maybe that’s why Sam is such a boring person, because Dean as his mother didn’t allow him to have any interests outside of hunting. And when Sam does express interests, Dean insults him too. What a dick. He’s my soulmate, but I am not going to stop listening to hair metal for him. That’s where I draw the line. 

 Where “the monster at the end of this book” is concerned with narrative and authorship, “the real ghostbusters” is concerned with fandom and fan reactions to the show. It’s not really the best example to talk about in an episode about metanarrativity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It veers from talk of narrative by focusing on the people in the periphery of the narrative—the fans and the author. In season 9 “Metafiction,” Metatron asks the question, who gives the story meaning? The text would have you believe it’s the characters. The angels think it’s God. The fandom think it’s us. The creators think it’s them. Perhaps we will never come to a consensus or even a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps that’s the point.

The ultimate takeaway from this episode is that ordinary people, the people Sam and Dean save, the people they save the world for, the people they die for again and again, are what give their story meaning. Chuck defeats a ghost and saves the people in the conference room from being murdered. Demian and Barnes, don’t ask me which is which, burn the bodies of the ghost children and lay their spirits to rest. The text says that ordinary, every day people can rise to the challenge of becoming extraordinary. It’s not a bad note to end on, by any means. And then we find out that Demian and Barnes are a couple, which of course Dean is surprised at, because he lacks object permanence. 

This is no doubt influenced by how a good portion of the transformative fandom are queer, and also a nod to the wincesties and RPF writers like Becky who continue to bottom feed off the wrong message of this show. But then, the creators encourage that sort of thing, so who are the real clowns here? Everyone. Everyone involved with this show in any way is a clown, except for the crew, who were able to feed their families for more than a decade. 

Okay side note… over the past year or so I’ve been in process of realising that even in fandom queers are in the minority. I know the statistic is that 10% of the world population is queer, but that doesn’t seem right to me? Maybe because 4/5 closest friends are queer and I hang around queers online, but I also think I lack object permanence when it comes to straight people. Like I just do not interact with straight people on a regular basis outside of my best friend and parents and school. So when I hear that someone in fandom is straight I’m like, what the fuck… can you keep that to yourself please? Like if I saw Misha Collins coming out as straight I would be like, I didn’t ask and you didn’t have to tell. Okay I’m mostly joking, but I do forget straight people exist. Mostly I don’t think about whether people are gay or trans or cis or straight unless they’ve explicitly said it and then yes it does colour my perception of them, because of course it would. If they’re part of the queer community, they’re my people. And if they’re straight and cis, then they could very well pose a threat to me and my wellbeing. But I never ask people because it’s not my business to ask. If they feel comfortable enough to tell me, that’s awesome.  I think Dean feels the same way. Towards the later seasons at least, he has a good reaction when it’s revealed that someone is queer, even if it is mostly played off as a joke. It’s just that he doesn’t have a frame of reference in his own life to having a gay relationship, either his or someone he’s close to. He says to Cesar and Jesse in season 11 “The Critters” that they fight like brothers, because that’s the only way he knows how to conceptualise it. He doesn’t have a way to categorise his and Cas’s relationship, which is in many ways, long before season 15 “Despair,” harking back even to the parallels between Ruby and Cas in season 3 and 4, a romantic one, aside from that Cas is like a brother to him. Because he’s never had anyone in his life care for him the way Cas does that wasn’t Sam and Bobby, and he doesn’t recognise the romantic element of their relationship until literally Cas says it to him in the third last episode, he just—doesn’t know what his and Cas’s relationship is. He just really doesn’t know. And he grew up with a father who despised him for taking the mom and wife role in their family, the role that John placed him in, for being subservient to John’s wishes where Sam was more rebellious, so of course he wouldn’t understand either his own desires or those of anyone around him who isn’t explicitly shoving their tits in his face. He moulded his entire personality around what he thought John wanted of him, and John says to him explicitly in season 14 “Lebanon”, “I thought you’d have a family,” meaning, like him, wife and two rugrats. And then, dear god, Dean says, thinking of Sam, Cas, Jack, Claire, and Mary, “I have a family.” God that hurts so much. But since for most of his life he hasn’t been himself, he’s been the man he thought his father wanted him to be, he’s never been able to examine his own desires, wants and goals. So even though he’s really good at reading people, he is not good at reading other people’s desires unless they have nefarious intentions. Because he doesn’t recognise what he feels is attraction to men, he doesn’t recognise that in anyone else. 

Okay that’s completely off topic, wow. Getting back to metanarrativity in “The Real Ghostbusters,” I’ll just cap it off by saying that the books in this episode are more a frame for the events than the events themselves. However, there are some good outtakes where Chuck answers some questions, and I’m not sure how much of that is scripted and how much is Rob Benedict just going for it, but it lends another element to the idea of Kripke as author-god. The idea of a fan convention is really cool, because at this point Supernatural conventions had been running for about 4 years, since 2006. It’s definitely a tribute to the fans, but also to their own self importance. So it’s a mixed bag, considering there were plenty of elements in there that show the good side of fandom and fans, but ultimately the Winchesters want nothing to do with it, consider it weird, and threaten Chuck when he says he’ll start releasing books again, which as far as they know is his only source of income. But it’s a fun episode and Dean is a grouchy bitch, so who the holy hell cares?

Season 10 episode “fanfiction” written by my close personal friend Robbie Thompson and directed by Phil Sgriccia is one of the funniest episodes this show has ever done. Not only is it full of metatextual and metanarrative jokes, the entire premise revolves around fanservice, but in like a fun and interesting way, not fanservice like killing the band Kansas so that Dean can listen to “Carry On My Wayward Son” in heaven twice. Twice. One version after another. Like I would watch this musical seven times in theatre, I would buy the soundtrack, I would listen to it on repeat and make all my friends listen to it when they attend my online Jitsi birthday party. This musical is my Hamilton. Top ten episodes of this show for sure. The only way it could be better is if Cas was there. And he deserved to be there. He deserved to watch little dyke Castiel make out with her girlfriend with her cute little wings, after which he and Dean share uncomfortable eye contact. Dean himself is forever coming to terms with the fact that gay people exist, but Cas should get every opportunity he can to hear that it’s super cool and great and awesome to be queer. But really he should be in every episode, all of them, all 300 plus episodes including the ones before angels were introduced. I’m going to commission the guy who edits Paddington into every movie to superimpose Cas standing on the highway into every episode at least once.

“Fan Fiction” starts with a tv script and the words “Supernatural pilot created by Eric Kripke”. This Immediately sets up the idea that it’s toying with narrative. Blah blah blah, some people go missing, they stumble into a scene from their worst nightmares: the school is putting on a musical production of a show inspired by the Supernatural books. It’s a comedy of errors. When people continue to go missing, Sam and Dean have to convince the girls that something supernatural is happening, while retaining their dignity and respect. They reveal that they are the real Sam and Dean, and Dean gives the director Marie a summary of their lives over the last five seasons, but they aren’t taken seriously. Because, like, of course they aren’t. Even when the girls realise that something supernatural is happening, they don’t actually believe that the musical they’ve made and the series of books they’re basing it on are real. Despite how Sam and Dean Winchester were literal fugitives for many years at many different times, and this was on the news, and they were wanted by the FBI, despite how they pretend to be FBI, and no one mentions it??? Did any of the staffwriters do the required reading or just do what I used to do for my 40 plus page readings of Baudrillard and just skim the first sentence of every paragraph? Neat hack for you: paragraphs are set up in a logical order of Topic, Example, Elaboration, Linking sentence. Do you have to read 60 pages of some crusty French dude waxing poetic about how his best friend Pierre wants to shag his wife and making that your problem? Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Boom, done. Just cut your work in half. 

The musical highlights a lot of the important moments of the show so far. The brothers have, as Charlie Bradbury says, their “broment,” and as Marie says, their “boy melodrama scene,” while she insinuates that there is a sexual element to their relationship. This show never passed up an opportunity to mention incest. It’s like: mentioning incest 5000 km, not being disgusting 1 km, what a hard decision. Actually, they do have to walk on their knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. But there are other moments—such as Mary burning on the ceiling, a classic, Castiel waiting for Dean at the side of the highway, and Azazel poisoning Sam. With the help of the high schoolers, Sam and Dean overcome Calliope, the muse and bad guy of the episode, and save the day. What began as their lives reinterpreted and told back to them turns into a story they have some agency over.

In this episode, as opposed to “The Monster At The End Of This Book,” The storytelling has transferred from an alcoholic in a bathrobe into the hands of an overbearing and overachieving teenage girl, and honestly why not. Transformative fiction is by and large run by women, and queer women, so Marie and her stage manager slash Jody Mills’s understudy Maeve are just following in the footsteps of legends. This kind of really succinctly summarises the difference between curative fandom and transformative fandom, the former of which is populated mostly by men, and the latter mostly by women. As defined by LordByronic in 2015, Curative fandom is more like enjoying the text, collecting the merchandise, organising the knowledge — basically Reddit in terms of fandom curation. Transformative fandom is transforming the source text in some way — making fanart, fanfic, mvs, or a musical — basically Tumblr in general, and Archive of our own specifically. Like what do non fandom people even do on Tumblr? It is a complete mystery to me. Whereas Chuck literally writes himself into the narrative he receives through visions, Marie and co have agency and control over the narrative by writing it themselves. 

Chuck does appear in the episode towards the end, his first appearance after five seasons. The theory that he killed those lesbian theatre girls makes me wanna curl up and die, so I don’t subscribe to it. Chuck watched the musical and he liked it and he gave unwarranted notes and then he left, the end.

The Supernatural creative team is explicitly acknowledging the fandom’s efforts by making this episode. They’re writing us in again, with more obsessive fans, but with lethbians this time, which makes it infinitely better. And instead of showing us as potential date rapists, we’re just cool chicks who like to make art. And that’s fucken awesome. 

I just have to note that the characters literally say the word Destiel after Dean sees the actors playing Dean and Cas making out. He storms off and tells Sam to shut the fuck up when Sam makes fun of him, because Dean’s sexuality is NOT threatened he just needs to assert his dominance as a straight hetero man who has NEVER looked at another man’s lips and licked his own. He just… forgets that gay people exist until someone reminds him. BUT THEN, after a rousing speech that is stolen from Rent or Wicked or something, he echoes Marie’s words back, saying “put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” What does Dean know about subbing, I wonder. Okay I’m suddenly reminded that he did literally go to a kink bar and get hit on by a leather daddy. Oh Dean, the experiences you have as a broad-shouldered, pixie-faced man with cowboy legs. You were born for this role.

Metatron is my favourite villain. As one tumblr user pointed out, he is an evil English literature major, which is just a normal English literature major. The season nine episode “Meta Fiction” written by my main man robbie thompson and directed by thomas j wright, happens within a curious season. Castiel, once again, becomes the leader of a portion of the heavenly host to take down Metatron, and Dean is affected by the Mark Of Cain. Sam was recently possessed by Gadreel, who killed Kevin in Sam’s body and then decided to run off with Metatron. Metatron himself is recruiting angels to join him, in the hopes that he can become the new God. It’s the first introduction of Hannah, who encourages Cas to recruit angels himself to take on Metatron. Also, we get to see Gabriel again, who is always a delight. 

This episode is a lot of fun. Metatron poses questions like, who tells a story and who is the most important person in the telling? Is it the writer? The audience? He starts off staring over his typewriter to address the camera, like a pompous dickhead. No longer content with consuming stories, he’s started to write his own. And they are hubristic ones about becoming God, a better god than Chuck ever was, but to do it he needs to kill a bunch of people and blame it on Cas. So really, he’s actually exactly like Chuck who blamed everything on Lucifer. 

But I think the most apt analogy we can use for this in terms of who is the creator is to think of Metatron as a fanfiction writer. He consumes the media—the Winchester Gospels—and starts to write his own version of events—leading an army to become God and kill Cas. Nevermind that no one has been able to kill Cas in a way that matters or a way that sticks. Which is canon, and what Metatron is trying to do is—well not fanon because it actually does impact the Winchesters’ storyline. It would be like if one of the writers of Supernatural began writing Supernatural fanfiction before they got a job on the show. Which as my generation and the generations coming after me get more comfortable with fanfiction and fandom, is going to be the case for a lot of shows. I think it’s already the case for Riverdale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the woman who wrote the bi Dean essay go to work on Riverdale? Or something? I dunno, I have the post saved in my tumblr likes but that is quagmire of epic proportions that I will easily get lost in if I try to find it. 

Okay let me flex my literary degree. As Englund and Leach say in “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity,” “The influential “literary turn,” in which the problems of ethnography were seen as largely textual and their solutions as lying in experimental writing seems to have lost its impetus.” This can be taken to mean, in the context of Supernatural, that while Metatron’s writings seek to forge a new path in history, forgoing fate for a new kind of divine intervention, the problem with Metatron is that he’s too caught up in the textual, too caught up in the writing, to be effectual. And this as we see throughout seasons 9, 10 and 11, has no lasting effect. Cas gets his grace back, Dean survives, and Metatron becomes a powerless human. In this case, the impetus is his grace, which he loses when Cas cuts it out of him, a mirror to Metatron cutting out Cas’s grace. 

However, I realise that the concept of ethnography in Supernatural is a flawed one, ethnography being the observation of another culture: a lot of the angels observe humanity and seem to fit in. However, Cas has to slowly acclimatise to the Winchesters as they tame him, but he never quite fit in—missing cues, not understanding jokes or Dean’s personal space, the scene where he says, “We have a guinea pig? Where?” Show him the guinea pig Sam!!! He wants to see it!!! At most he passes as a human with autism. Cas doesn’t really observe humanity—he observes nature, as seen in season 7 “reading is fundamental” and “survival of the fittest”. Even the human acts he talks about in season 6 “the man who would be king” are from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He certainly doesn’t observe popular culture, which puts him at odds with Dean, who is made up of 90 per cent pop culture references and 10 per cent flannel. Metatron doesn’t seek to blend in with humanity so much as control it, which actually is the most apt example of ethnography for white people in the last—you know, forever. But of course the writers didn’t seek to make this analogy. It is purely by chance, and maybe I’m the only person insane enough to realise it. But probably not. There are a lot of cookies much smarter than me in the Supernatural fandom and they’ve like me have grown up and gone to university and gotten real jobs in the real world and real haircuts. I’m probably the only person to apply Englund and Leach to it though.

And yes, as I read this paper I did need to have one tab open on Google, with the word “define” in the search bar. 

Metatron has a few lines in this that I really like. He says: 

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

“You’re going to have to follow my script.”

“I’m an entity of my word.”

It’s really obvious, but they’re pushing the idea that Metatron has become an agent of authorship instead of just a consumer of media. He even throws a Supernatural book into his fire — a symbolic act of burning the script and flipping the writer off, much like Cas did to God and the angels in season 5. He’s not a Kripke figure so much as maybe a Gamble, Carver or Dabb figure, in that he usurps Chuck and becomes the author-god. This would be extremely postmodern of him if he didn’t just do exactly what Chuck was doing, except worse somehow. In fact, it’s postmodern of Cas to reject heaven’s narrative and fall for Dean. As one tumblr user points out, Cas really said “What’s fate compared to Dean Winchester?”

Okay this transcript is almost 8000 words already, and I still have two more episodes to review, and more things to say, so I’ll leave you with this. Metatron says to Cas, “Out of all of God’s wind up toys, you’re the only one with any spunk.” Why Cas has captured his attention comes down more than anything to a process of elimination. Most angels fucking suck. They follow the rules of whoever puts themselves in charge, and they either love Cas or hate him, or just plainly wanna fuck him, and there have been few angels who stood out. Balthazar was awesome, even though I hated him the first time I watched season 6. He UNSUNK the Titanic. Legend status. And Gabriel was of course the OG who loves to fuck shit up. But they’re gone at this stage in the narrative, and Cas survives. Cas always survives. He does have spunk. And everyone wants to fuck him.  

Season 11 episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” the last episode written by the Christ like figure of Robbie Thompson — are we sensing a theme here? — and directed by my divine enemy Robert Singer, starts with Metatron dumpster diving for food. I’m not even going to bother commenting on this because like… it’s supernatural and it treats complex issues like homelessness and poverty with zero nuance. Like the Winchesters live in poverty but it’s fun and cool because they always scrape by but Metatron lives in poverty and it’s funny. Cas was homeless and it was hard but he needed to do it to atone for his sins, and Metatron is homeless and it’s funny because he brought it on himself by being a murderous dick. Fucking hell. Robbie, come on. The plot focuses on God, also known as Chuck Shurley, making himself known to Metatron and asking for Metatron’s opinion on his memoir. Meanwhile, the Winchesters battle another bout of infectious serial killer fog sent by Amara. At the end of the episode, Chuck heals everyone affected by the fog and reveals himself to Sam and Dean. 

Chuck says that he didn’t foresee Metatron trying to become god, but the idea of Season 15 is that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all their lives. When Metatron tries, he fails miserably, is locked up in prison, tortured by Dean, then rendered useless as a human and thrown into the world without a safety net. His authorship is reduced to nothing, and he is reduced to dumpster diving for food. He does actually attempt to live his life as someone who records tragedies as they happen and sells the footage to news stations, which is honestly hilarious and amazing and completely unsurprising because Metatron is, at the heart of it, an English Literature major. In true bastard style, he insults Chuck’s work and complains about the bar, but slips into his old role of editor when Chuck asks him to. 

The theory I’m consulting for this uses the term metanarrative in a different way than I am. They consider it an overarching narrative, a grand narrative like religion. Chuck’s biography is in a sense most loyal to Middleton and Walsh’s view of metanarrative: “the universal story of the world from arche to telos, a grand narrative encompassing world history from beginning to end.” Except instead of world history, it’s God’s history, and since God is construed in Supernatural as just some guy with some powers who is as fallible as the next some guy with some powers, his story has biases and agendas.  Okay so in the analysis I’m getting Middleton and Walsh’s quotes from, James K A Smith’s “A little story about metanarratives,” Smith dunks on them pretty bad, but for Supernatural purposes their words ring true. Think of them as the BuckLeming of Lyotard’s postmodern metanarrative analysis: a stopped clock right twice a day. Is anyone except me understanding the sequence of words I’m saying right now. Do I just have the most specific case of brain worms ever found in human history. I’m currently wearing my oversized Keith Haring shirt and dipping pretzels into peanut butter because it’s 3.18 in the morning and the homosexuals got to me. The total claims a comprehensive metanarrative of world history make do indeed, as Middleton and Walsh claim, lead to violence, stay with me here, because Chuck’s legacy is violence, and so is Metatron’s, and in trying to reject the metanarrative, Sam and Dean enact violence. Mostly Dean, because in season 15 he sacrifices his own son twice to defeat Chuck. But that means literally fighting violence with violence. Violence is, after all, all they know. Violence is the lens through which they interact with the world. If the writers wanted to do literally anything else, they could have continued Dean’s natural character progression into someone who eschews the violence that stems from intergeneration trauma — yes I will continue to use the phrase intergenerational trauma whenever I refer to Dean — and becomes a loving father and husband. Sam could eschew violence and start a monster rehabilitation centre with Eileen.

This episode of Holy Hell is me frantically grabbing at straws to make sense of a narrative that actively hates me and wants to kick me to death. But the violence Sam and Dean enact is not at a metanarrative level, because they are not author-gods of their own narrative. In season 15 “Atomic Monsters,” Becky points out that the ending of the Supernatural book series is bad because the brothers die, and then, in a shocking twist of fate, Dean does die, and the narrative is bad. The writers set themselves a goal post to kick through and instead just slammed their heat into the bars. They set up the dartboard and were like, let’s aim the darts at ourselves. Wouldn’t that be fun. Season 15’s writing is so grossly incompetent that I believe every single conspiracy theory that’s come out of the finale since November, because it’s so much more compelling than whatever the fuck happened on the road so far. Carry on? Why yes, I think I will carry on, carry on like a pork chop, screaming at the bars of my enclosure until I crack my voice open like an egg and spill out all my rage and frustration. The world will never know peace again. It’s now 3.29 and I’ve written over 9000 words of this transcript. And I’m not done.

Middleton and Walsh claim that metanarratives are merely social constructions masquerading as universal truths. Which is, exactly, Supernatural. The creators have constructed this elaborate web of narrative that they want to sell us as the be all and end all. They won’t let the actors discuss how they really feel about the finale. They won’t let Misha Collins talk about Destiel. They want us to believe it was good, actually, that Dean, a recovering alcoholic with a 30 year old infant son and a husband who loves him, deserved to die by getting NAILED, while Sam, who spent the last four seasons, the entirety of Andrew Dabb’s run as showrunner, excelling at creating a hunter network and romancing both the queen of hell and his deaf hunter girlfriend, should have lived a normie life with a normie faceless wife. Am I done? Not even close. I started this episode and I’m going to finish it.

When we find out that Chuck is God in the episode of season 11, it turns everything we knew about Chuck on its head. We find out in Season 15 that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all along, that everything that happened to them is his doing. The one thing he couldn’t control was Cas’s choice to rebel. If we take him at his word, Cas is the only true force of free will in the entire universe, and more specifically, the love that Cas had for Dean which caused him to rebel and fall from heaven. — This theory has holes of course. Why would Lucifer torture Lilith into becoming the first demon if he didn’t have free will? Did Chuck make him do that? And why? So that Chuck could be the hero and Lucifer the bad guy, like Lucifer claimed all along? That’s to say nothing of Adam and Eve, both characters the show introduced in different ways, one as an antagonist and the other as the narrative foil to Dean and Cas’s romance. Thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I’m just not gunna. 

So Chuck was doing the writing all along. And as Becky claims in “Atomic Monsters,” it’s bad writing. The writers explicitly said, the ending Chuck wrote is bad because there’s no Cas and everyone dies, and then they wrote an ending where there is no Cas and everyone dies. So talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Talk about giant craters in the earth you could see from 800 kilometres away but you still fell into. Meanwhile fan writers have the opportunity to write a million different endings, all of which satisfy at least one person. The fandom is a hydra, prolific and unstoppable, and we’ll keep rewriting the ending a million more times.

And all this is not even talking about the fact that Chuck is a man, Metatron is a man, Sam and Dean and Cas are men, and the writers and directors of the show are, by an overwhelming majority, men. Most of them are white, straight, cis men. Feminist scholarship has done a lot to unpack the damage done by paternalistic approaches to theory, sociology, ethnography, all the -ys, but I propose we go a step further with these men. Kill them. Metanarratively, of course. Amara, the Darkness, God’s sister, had a chance to write her own story without Chuck, after killing everything in the universe, and I think she had the right idea. Knock it all down to build it from the ground up. Billie also had the opportunity to write a narrative, but her folly was, of course, putting any kind of faith in the Winchesters who are also grossly incompetent and often fail up. She is, as all author-gods on this show are, undone by Castiel. The only one with any spunk, the only one who exists outside of his own narrative confines, the only one the author-gods don’t have any control over. The one who died for love, and in dying, gave life. 

The French Mistake

Let’s change the channel. Let’s calm ourselves and cleanse our libras. Let’s commune with nature and chug some sage bongs. 

“The French Mistake” is a song from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles. In the iconic second last scene of the film, as the cowboys fight amongst themselves, the camera pans back to reveal a studio lot and a door through which a chorus of gay dancersingers perform “the French Mistake”. The lyrics go, “Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push. You’ll be surprised you’re doing the French Mistake.” 

I’m not sure what went through the heads of the Supernatural creators when they came up with the season 6 episode, “The French Mistake,” written by the love of my life Ben Edlund and directed by some guy Charles Beeson. Just reading the Wikipedia summary is so batshit incomprehensible. In short: Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean on the tv show Supernatural. I don’t think this had ever been done in television history before. The first seven seasons of this show are certifiable. Like this was ten years ago. Think about the things that have happened in the last 10 slutty, slutty years. We have lived through atrocities and upheaval and the entire world stopping to mourn, but also we had twitter throughout that entire time, which makes it infinitely worse.

In this universe, Sam and Dean wear makeup, Cas is played by attractive crying man Misha Collins, and Genevieve Padalecki nee Cortese makes an appearance. Magic doesn’t exist, Serge has good ideas, and the two leads have to act in order to get through the day. Sorry man I do not know how to pronounce your name.

Sidenote: I don’t know if me being attracted aesthetically to Misha Collins is because he’s attractive, because this show has gaslighted me into thinking he’s attractive, or because Castiel’s iconic entrance in 2008 hit my developing mind like a torpedo full of spaghetti and blew my fucking brains all over the place. It’s one of life’s little mysteries and God’s little gifts.

Let’s talk about therapy. More specifically, “Agency and purpose in narrative therapy: questioning the postmodern rejection of metanarrative” by Cameron Lee. In this paper, Lee outlines four key ideas as proposed by Freedman and Combs:

Realities are socially constructed

Realities are constituted through language

Realities are organised and maintained through narrative

And there are no essential truths.

Let’s break this down in the case of this episode. Realities are socially constructed: the reality of Sam and Dean arose from the Bush era. Do I even need to elaborate? From what I understand with my limited Australian perception, and being a child at the time, 9/11 really was a prominent shifting point in the last twenty years. As Americans describe it, sometimes jokingly, it was the last time they were really truly innocent. That means to me that until they saw the repercussions of their government’s actions in funding turf wars throughout the middle east for a good chunk of the 20th Century, they allowed themselves to be hindered by their own ignorance. The threat of terrorism ran rampant throughout the States, spurred on by right wing nationalists and gun-toting NRA supporters, so it’s really no surprise that the show Supernatural started with the premise of killing everything in sight and driving around with only your closest kin and a trunk full of guns. Kripke constructed that reality from the social-political climate of the time, and it has wrought untold horrors on the minds of lesbians who lived through the noughties, in that we are now attracted to Misha Collins.

Number two: Realities are constituted through language. Before a show can become a show, it needs to be a script. It’s written down, typed up, and given to actors who say the lines out loud. In this respect, they are using the language of speech and words to convey meaning. But tv shows are not all about words, and they’re barely about scripts. From what I understand of being raised by television, they are about action, visuals, imagery, and behaviours. All of the work that goes into them—the scripts, the lighting, the audio, the sound mixing, the cameras, the extras, the ADs, the gaffing, the props, the stunts, everything—is about conveying a story through the medium of images. In that way, images are the language. The reality of the show Supernatural, inside the show Supernatural, is constituted through words: the script, the journalists talking to Sam, the makeup artist taking off Dean’s makeup, the conversations between the creators, the tweets Misha sends. But also through imagery: the fish tank in Jensen’s trailer, the model poses on the front cover of the magazine, the opulence of Jared’s house, Misha’s iconic sweater. Words and images are the language that constitutes both of these realities. Okay for real, I feel like I’ve only seen this episode max three times, including when I watched it for research for this episode, but I remember so much about it. 

Number three: realities are organised and maintained through narrative. In this universe of the French Mistake, their lives are structured around two narratives: the internal narrative of the show within the show, in which they are two actors on a tv set; and the episode narrative in which they need to keep the key safe and return to their own universe. This is made difficult by the revelation that magic doesn’t work in this universe, however, they find a way. Before they can get back, though, an avenging angel by the name of Virgil guns down author-god Eric Kripke and tries to kill the Winchesters. However, they are saved by Balthazar and the freeze frame and brought back into their own world, the world of Supernatural the show, not Supernatural the show within the show within the nesting doll. And then that reality is done with, never to be revisited or even mentioned, but with an impact that has lasted longer than the second Bush administration.

And number four: there are no essential truths. This one is a bit tricky because I can’t find what Lee means by essential truths, so I’m just going to interpret that. To me, essential truths means what lies beneath the narratives we tell ourselves. Supernatural was a show that ran for 15 years. Supernatural had actors. Supernatural was showrun by four different writers. In the show within a show, there is nothing, because that ceases to exist for longer than the forty two minute episode “The French Mistake”. And since Supernatural no longer exists except in our computers, it is nothing too. It is only the narratives we tell ourselves to sleep better at night, to wake up in the morning with a smile, to get through the day, to connect with other people, to understand ourselves better. It’s not even the narrative that the showrunners told, because they have no agency over it as soon as it shows up on our screens. The essential truth of the show is lost in the translation from creating to consuming. Who gives the story meaning? The people watching it and the people creating it. We all do. 

Lee says that humans are predisposed to construct narratives in order to make sense of the world. We see this in cultures from all over the world: from cave paintings to vases, from The Dreaming to Beowulf, humans have always constructed stories. The way you think about yourself is a story that you’ve constructed. The way you interact with your loved ones and the furries you rightfully cyberbully on Twitter is influenced by the narratives you tell yourself about them. And these narratives are intricate, expansive, personalised, and can colour our perceptions completely, so that we turn into a different person when we interact with one person as opposed to another. 

Whatever happened in season 6, most of which I want to forget, doesn’t interest me in the way I’m telling myself the writers intended. For me, the entirety of season 6 was based around the premise of Cas being in love with Dean, and the complete impotence of this love. He turns up when Dean calls, he agonises as he watches Dean rake leaves and live his apple pie life with Lisa, and Dean is the person he feels most horribly about betraying. He says, verbatim, to Sam, “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” And Balthazar says, “You’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you.” He says this in season 6, and we couldn’t do a fucken thing about it. 

The song “The French Mistake” shines a light on the hidden scene of gay men performing a gay narrative, in the midst of a scene about the manliest profession you can have: professional horse wrangler, poncho wearer, and rodeo meister, the cowboy. If this isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the lovestory between Dean and Cas, which Ben Edlund has been championing from day fucking one of Misha Collins walking onto that set with his sex hair and chapped lips, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re even doing here. What in the hell else could it possibly mean. The layers to this. The intricacy. The agendas. The subtextual AND blatant queerness. The micro aggressions Crowley aimed at Car in “The Man Who Would Be King,” another Bedlund special. Bed Edlund is a fucking genius. Bed Edlund is cool girl. Ben Edlund is the missing link. Bed Edlund IS wikileaks. Ben Edlund is a cool breeze on a humid summer day. Ben Edlund is the stop loading button on a browser tab. Ben Edlund is the perfect cross between Spotify and Apple Music, in which you can search for good playlists, but without having to be on Spotify. He can take my keys and fuck my wife. You best believe I’m doing an entire episode of Holy Hell on Bedlund’s top five. He is the reason I want to get into staffwriting on a tv show. I saw season 4 episode “On the head of a pin” when my brain was still torpedoed spaghetti mush from the premiere, and it nestled its way deep into my exposed bones, so that when I finally recovered from that, I was a changed person. My god, this transcript is 11,000 words, and I haven’t even finished the Becky section. Which is a good transition.

Oh, Becky. She is an incarnation of how the writers, or at least Kripke, view the fans. Watching season 5 “Sympathy for the Devil” live in 2009 was a whole fucking trip that I as a baby gay was not prepared for. Figuring out my sexuality was a journey that started with the Supernatural fandom and is in some aspects still raging against the dying of the light today. Add to that, this conception of the audience was this, like, personification of the librarian cellist from Juno, but also completely without boundaries, common sense, or shame. It made me wonder about my position in the narrative as a consumer consuming. Is that how Kripke saw me, specifically? Was I like Becky? Did my forays into DeanCasNatural on El Jay dot com make me a fucking loser whose only claim to fame is writing some nasty fanfiction that I’ve since deleted all traces of? Don’t get me wrong, me and my unhinged Casgirl friends loved Becky. I can’t remember if I ever wrote any fanfiction with her in it because I was mostly writing smut, which is extremely Becky coded of me, but I read some and my friends and I would always chat about her when she came up. She was great entertainment value before season 7. But in the eyes of the powers that be, Becky, like the fans themselves, are expendable. First they turned her into a desperate bride wannabe who drugs Sam so that he’ll be with her, then Chuck waves his hand and she disappears. We’re seeing now with regards to Destiel, Cas, and Misha Collins this erasure of them from the narrative. Becky says in season 15 “Atomic Monsters” that the ending Chuck writes is bad because, for one, there’s no Cas, and that’s exactly what’s happening to the text post-finale. It literally makes me insane akin to the throes of mania to think about the layers of this. They literally said, “No Cas = bad” and now Misha isn’t even allowed to talk in his Cassona voice—at least at the time I wrote that—to the detriment of the fans who care about him. It’s the same shit over and over. They introduce something we like, they realise they have no control over how much we like it, and then they pretend they never introduced it in the first place. Season 7, my god. The only reason Gamble brought back Cas was because the ratings were tanking the show. I didn’t even bother watching most of it live, and would just hear from my friends whether Cas was in the episodes or not. And then Sera, dear Sera, had the gall to say it was a Homer’s Odyssey narrative. I’m rusty on Homer aka I’ve never read it but apparently Odysseus goes away, ends up with a wife on an island somewhere, and then comes back to Terabithia like it never happened. How convenient. But since Sera Gamble loves to bury her gays, we can all guess why Cas was written out of the show: Cas being gay is a threat to the toxic heteronormativity spouted by both the show and the characters themselves. In season 15, after Becky gets her life together, has kids, gets married, and starts a business, she is outgrowing the narrative and Chuck kills her. The fans got Destiel Wedding trending on Twitter, and now the creators are acting like he doesn’t exist. New liver, same eagles.

I have to add an adendum: as of this morning, Sunday 11th, don’t ask me what time that is in Americaland, Misha Collins did an online con/Q&A thing and answered a bunch of questions about Cas and Dean, which goes to show that he cannot be silenced. So the narrative wants to be told. It’s continuing well into it’s 16th or 17th season. It’s going to keep happening and they have no recourse to stop it. So fuck you, Supernatural.

I did write the start of a speech about representation but, who the holy hell cares. I also read some disappointing Masters theses that I hope didn’t take them longer to research and write than this episode of a podcast I’m making for funsies took me, considering it’s the same number of pages. Then again I have the last four months and another 8 years of fandom fuelling my obsession, and when I don’t sleep I write, hence the 4,000 words I knocked out in the last 12 hours. 

Some final words. Lyotard defines postmodernism, the age we live in, as an incredulity towards metanarratives. Modernism was obsessed with order and meaning, but postmodernism seeks to disrupt that. Modernists lived within the frame of the narrative of their society, but postmodernists seek to destroy the frame and live within our own self-written contexts. Okay I love postmodernist theory so this has been a real treat for me. Yoghurt, Sam? Postmodernist theory? Could I BE more gay? 

Middleton and Walsh in their analysis of postmodernism claim that biblical faith is grounded in metanarrative, and explore how this intersects with an era that rejects metanarrative. This is one of the fundamental ideas Supernatural is getting at throughout definitely the last season, but other seasons as well. The narratives of Good vs Evil, Michael vs Lucifer, Dean vs Sam, were encoded into the overarching story of the show from season 1, and since then Sam and Dean have sought to break free of them. Sam broke free of John’s narrative, which was the hunting life, and revenge, and this moralistic machismo that they wrapped themselves up in. If they’re killing the evil, then they’re not the evil. That’s the story they told, and the impetus of the show that Sam was sucked back into. But this thread unravelled in later seasons when Dean became friends with Benny and the idea that all supernatural creatures are inherently evil unravelled as well. While they never completely broke free of John’s hold over them, welcoming Jack into their lives meant confronting a bias that had been ingrained in them since Dean was 4 years old and Sam 6 months. In the face of the question, “are all monsters monstrous?” the narrative loosens its control. Even by questioning it, it throws into doubt the overarching narrative of John’s plan, which is usurped at the end of season 2 when they kill Azazel by Dean’s demon deal and a new narrative unfolds. John as author-god is usurped by the actual God in season 4, who has his own narrative that controls the lives of Sam, Dean and Cas. 

Okay like for real, I do actually think the metanarrativity in Supernatural is something that should be studied by someone other than me, unless you wanna pay me for it and then shit yeah. It is extremely cool to introduce a biographical narrative about the fictional narrative it’s in. It’s cool that the characters are constantly calling this narrative into focus by fighting against it, struggling to break free from their textual confines to live a life outside of the external forces that control them. And the thing is? The really real, honest thing? They have. Sam, Dean and Cas have broken free of the narrative that Kripke, Carver, Gamble and Dabb wrote for them. The very fact that the textual confession of love that Cas has for Dean ushered in a resurgence of fans, fandom and activity that has kept the show trending for five months after it ended, is just phenomenal. People have pointed out that fans stopped caring about Game of Thrones as soon as it ended. Despite the hold they had over tv watchers everywhere, their cultural currency has been spent. The opposite is true for Supernatural. Despite how the finale of the show angered and confused people, it gains more momentum every day. More fanworks, more videos, more fics, more art, more ire, more merch is being generated by the fans still. The Supernatural subreddit, which was averaging a few posts a week by season 15, has been incensed by the finale. And yours truly happily traipsed back into the fandom snake pit after 8 years with a smile on my face and a skip in my step ready to pump that dopamine straight into my veins babeeeeeeyyyyy. It’s been WILD. I recently reconnected with one of my mutuals from 2010 and it’s like nothing’s changed. We’re both still unhinged and we both still simp for Supernatural. Even before season 15, I was obsessed with the podcast Ride Or Die, which I started listening to in late 2019, and Supernatural was always in the back of my mind. You just don’t get over your first fandom. Actually, Danny Phantom was my first fandom, and I remember being 12 talking on Danny Phantom forums to people much too old to be the target audience of the show. So I guess that hasn’t left me either. And the fondest memories I have of Supernatural is how the characters have usurped their creators to become mythic, long past the point they were supposed to die a quiet death. The myth weaving that the Supernatural fandom is doing right now is the legacy that will endure. 

References

I got all of these for free from Google Scholar! 

Judith May Fathallah, “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural.” 

James K A Smith, “A Little Story About Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion and Postmodernism Revisited.” 2001.

Cameron Lee, “Agency and Purpose in Narrative Therapy: Questioning the Postmodern Rejection of Metanarrative.” 2004.

Harri Englund and James Leach, “Ethnography and the Meta Narratives of Modernity.” 2000.

https://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/mel-brooks-explains-french-mistake-blazing-saddles-blu-ray/

#transcripts #supernatural #supernatural podcast #<60mins #this is first and foremost a podcast about cas and misha collins

[imacrowcawcaw]

Hi I come with a rather silly question, but I was curious, according to your perception how would you describe the personality of every girl in the GVF fandom here at tumblr

That's not a silly question at all, I think it's great and actually quite creative!!!

It seems to me that there are a couple types, which is normal cause there's a lot of us lol. We're not all the same, even if we have some interests in common!

Types of Greta Van Fleet Fans on Tumblr as Observed By Me

Type 1: The Casual Fan

She knows their music, but it's not her favorite. She might reblog a few photos or funny things about the boys on occasion, but her blog is no where near dedicated to Greta and they probably aren't even one of her hyper-obsessions, just another artist in her library. She's more on the outs of the fandom; it's rare that she's tagged or mentioned in anything because not many of us know her. Greta Van Fleet is, most likely, an outlier in her music taste: either heavier than she's used to, or more classic rock when she's a straight up metalhead. All of this is absolutely okay! This girl is generally chill and sweet when she does get to interact, although if she ends up liking GVF more and wants to get "in" on the fandom it can be frustrating to make herself seen.

Type 2: The Die Hard Groupies

I feel kinda bad calling them this but, if given the chance, these chicks would become groupies in an instant. They love the band with their whole heart, and want to live a life of peace, sex, drugs, and rock n roll with their idols. But since they are contained to Tumblr at the moment, these ladies contend themselves with thirst tagging, sending various friends like @satans-helper and @dreams-madeof-strawberrylemonade naughty fanfiction requests and confessions, reblogging pictures of their favorite groupies from rock history, and, of course, listening to Greta Van Fleet (cause they do like the music, I want to make it clear it's not all about sex). It's a toss up whether this girl is open to any and all of the boys, or has a lane she will die in. Jake seems to be the most common.

Type 3: The Accuser

This can girl is much, much more common on Instagram, but I've seen a few here too... The Accuser takes "cancel culture" to the extreme and is canceling a person for something every single day (and encouraging others to do the same) despite the fact that she still likes them apparently (you'll see that she still posts about this person who is "awful")? She thinks the boys are abusing their fame by not promoting social justice very publicly at all times, she has problems with all their girlfriends, she thinks the album is taking too long and that they're being lazy; she goes on rants about symbolism in the songs, makes every conversation about social justice no matter the relevance, and picks fights about the most ridiculous things. (Again, this was on Instagram, but I had two girls fighting over which twin had the larger gay following and things got INTENSE). This girl is quick to anger and accuse, wants everyone to be on her side and thinks even minor disagreements are Literal Death, and still proclaims to love the band despite finding fault in everything they do. High probability she excludes Danny or hates him the most. Yikes.

Note: If you're mad at "The Accuser" one cause, hey, sometimes there are problems that need to be addressed, keep reading.

Type 4: The Defender

While I prefer this girl over The Accuser, she is also... not perfect. The Defender, in contrast to The Accuser (and probably fighting directly against her in a reblog chain no one else bothers to read cause ugh this again), thinks that the GVF boys are literal angels on earth who can do no wrong. She agrees and backs up every decision they and their management make, and always jump to their defense whether it’s music, looks, actions, or online activity being criticized. She is probably a pacifist, heavily dislikes fighting, and wholeheartedly believes in “peace love and unity”. I wouldn’t say that she is naive or irresponsible entirely, but she tends to ignore anything that she dislikes or else immediately jumps to the defense. Think One Direction fangirls circa the early 2010s. 

Type 5: The Happy Hippie Medium

This girl is what I, personally, would consider an enthusiastic yet responsible fan. She generally stays outside of the drama because it has nothing to do with her, she thinks it’s too silly to argue about, or she just values her sanity and peace. She does, occasionally, chime in on matters that she thinks are too important to be ignored, whether it’s the wait time for the album or their social media presence, and she’s always respectful about stating her opinion. She loves Greta and posts quite a bit about them, including original content, but she also has other interests that she blogs about. It could be other bands, aesthetic photos, astrology, artwork, tv shows, activism, it doesn’t really matter, but you’ll find that her blog is an interesting and utterly disorganized haven of herself. Gives great recommendations on all manner of things, and has probably been to a concert and had the time of her life.

Type 6: The Obsession Blog

This is the girl - or, rather, the blog - that is 100% about Greta Van Fleet. Every bit of content that comes in or out is GVF related; she’s the one you go to if you want a certain picture or an ear to hear your fantasies. Even more so if her blog has a specific topic, such as a Sam Kiszka blog! (Or @gretavanfleetconfessions lmao shameless self plug). She probably also has one or more side blogs where she has other content she is interested in, as well as personal information. I am surprised at how often I follow both blogs without knowing it’s the same person!!!

-----

So, I think that those 6 types covers pretty much all the types of fans of GVF on Tumblr, or maybe more accurately their attitudes and content. I admit that I probably walk the line between “Happy Hippie ” and “The Defender”; I try to keep a healthy balance between my obsessions and a healthy amount of affection to GVF, sometimes that means ignoring stuff! 

I have also noticed that there are things that a LOT of GVF fangirls have in common that aren’t band related, but make this fandom more vibrant and close nonetheless. Many of us:

are musicians

are writers 

are artists (plugging @sphoox cause she’s my favorite but seriously all the artists rock)

generally like to be creative, whether it’s crochet or cooking or making moodboards

have other shared bands, such as: Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Motley Crue, Guns n Roses, Nick Cave, Hanson, Harry Styles, Lana Del Ray, Twenty One Pilots, David Bowie, Pearl Jam, Metallica...

have other shared tv shows and movies, such as: Avatar the Last Airbender, The Witcher, Killing Eve, Mad Men, The Office, Parks and Rec, Labyrinth, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, The Adams Family, Pirates of the Carribean...

are interested in astrology and star signs

are interested in history

are interested in fashion

love to read and learn (not necessarily in school) and have all manner of knowledge

are in the LGBT+ community

are women of color, in and outside the U.S.!

are neurodivergent 

love nature and being active outdoors

love and share various aesthetics, whether it’s cottage core or ‘67 hippy or 80s rocker vibes

I love this fandom community and hope I can remain a part of it for a long time! There are things that diversify us and things that bring us closer together, plus, of course, the four wonderful (and sexy) musicians that brought us all together in the first place. What type of fan do you consider yourself to be? Was I accurate (enough), are there more types? I hope I haven’t wildly offended too many people lol....

#greta van fleet #gvf #lulucrowproductions #my writing #gvf fandom #peaceful army #jake kiszka #josh kiszka #sam kiszka #danny wagner

[nightinngales]

Dear gays and fans of Skyrim in general... 

Ever wanted a real slowburn fanfic for Serana/Female Dragonborn? Perhaps a fic that addresses Serana’s trauma and builds a relationship naturally over time?

Vigilance is an epic length novelization with F!DB/Serana as the main ship - wherein their relationship progresses organically, and Serana’s traumatic backstory is not sidestepped or ignored. 

Currently at over 470k altogether, there are 6 full acts or “books” available within the Vigilance series of varying lengths, with the 7th act currently in progress and updated regularly. 

Some links to get you started: 

Vigilance wiki: A more in-depth look at the series including relevant lore, timeline, current progress on the series, and character blurbs. Spoilers up to the end of act 5. Updated sporadically. 

Vigilance Series landing page: The series on AO3 - you can find all the links for each work here, or continue below the cut for a more in-depth explanation of the series. Updated regularly, usually at least 1-2 times per week.

Not a fan of Skyrim? Never played it? Vigilance is written in a way where it can be enjoyed regardless of your knowledge of the Elder Scrolls franchise. My so-called “beta” hasn’t played Skyrim and she’s more pushy about me updating than most lol. So, if you’ve never played Skyrim but want to read about a vampire lesbian? Try it out anyways, you might like it.

For more regular updates on progress, you can follow me here on tumblr.

This post may be updated on occasion with new information or mod credits below the cut.

About:

The series itself is broken into acts, which each follow a particular segment of the Dragonborn’s life. These acts can be further bundled into Arcs. So far, I would say there are three major “Arcs” of the story, broken up into the separate acts, not including the prologue. 

Vigilant Arc - Acts II - V: This arc of the story is, essentially, the first half of the series. Beginning with the prologue, the Vigilant arc covers Eres’ journey as a Vigilant of Stendarr, the Dawnguard DLC (and Serana), and finishes with her retirement as a Vigilant. Wordcount: ~316k, completed. 

Dragonborn Arc - Acts VI - VIII: This arc is currently in progress, and covers Eres stepping into her role as Dragonborn. This will include the main quest as well as the Dragonborn DLC. Currently we are on Act VII. Current wordcount: ~155k, ongoing. 

Final Arc - Act IX: Currently in the concept phase. This will cover what happens once Eres has stepped into her destiny as Dragonborn and fulfilled her role. Essentially - this is the end of the fic, and will serve to tie up loose ends and provide a nice ending to the series. ...For now. :)

Total current wordcount: ~471k, with around 2.5 acts remaining. The full series may reach somewhere between 6-700k - which will put it around the length of the entire LOTR series. 

Why the fuck is it so long? 

There’s three main reasons for this. 

1: I love slowburn fics, so when I say slowburn - I mean slowburn. 

2: Vigilance isn’t just about the pairing. In fact, Serana does not even enter the story until Act 3, where Eres tackles the Dawnguard questline. As the fic continues forward from there, obviously Serana becomes a secondary main character and is just as important as Eres, but I didn’t want to just start the fic with the pairing and leave it at that. I wanted it to be a journey, from beginning to end, from Eres’ arrival in Skyrim, to meeting Serana and falling for her, to facing her destiny as Dragonborn, and so on and so forth. 

3: Most importantly, I have read a lot of Serana/fem!DB fics, and to be clear I am not disparaging any of them. There are some incredibly talented authors out there who have written some of my favorites. But there is one thing that I always wanted from a fic for Serana/DB, and it was something that I hadn’t seen: An indepth handling of Serana’s trauma, front and center, showing how it affects her and how she might heal from it through love. As a survivor myself, this was an issue that was deeply important to me, and I was disappointed that even some of my favorite fics in the fandom had not addressed it more deeply. So I started writing Vigilance, and here we are nearly 500k later. 

That’s why I wanted to write this. I wanted to show, through my fic, a relationship developing between two people who are broken in different ways, and how they might come together, help each other heal, and lift each other up. The pairing of Serana and Eres, for me, is meant to be an ideal, something to aim for. With Eres’ help, and those around her, Serana will work through the issues she has due to her trauma. She will recover, and heal, and find the happiness she feels she doesn’t deserve. 

I hope, reading this, that maybe you take a bit of time out of your day to give it a chance. I know it’s long. I know it’s a hell of a thing to look at a fic that’s nearly 500k and decide to try reading through it all even knowing it’s not finished yet. But give it a chance... you might find that 500k doesn’t seem long enough once you catch up. 

CREDITS: 

Vigilance is a series that follows a modded playthrough of Skyrim. As such, I could not have written this fic without the following mods which provided the inspiration. 

VIGILANT LE / SE : Provides the basis for the Vigilant arc within the series. The basic plot of both Act 2 and Act 5 are based upon this mod. Please download and drop an endorsement, for this fic would not have been possible without the work of Vicn which it is based upon. Note: it requires an English addon if you plan to play it with voice acting, which can be found here: LE / SE 

LC BUILD YOUR NOBLE HOUSE LE / SE: Fellburg, Eres’ estate within Falkreath, is based upon this player home mod by Locaster. Highly recommend either this or LC Feudal Keep if you would like an idea of what the estate is supposed to look like, though the Keep mod is located near Loreius Farm instead of Falkreath. (However, the “Build your own” version needs to be built, obviously, whereas the Feudal Keep version is plug and play.) 

INIGO LE / SE: This companion mod by smartbluecat is one of the most life-like on the nexus, with thousands of lines of dialogue and quest and location-awareness. Inigo makes his first appearance in Act IV. I would highly recommend him if you’re looking for a game-long companion. 

Serana and Claire LE / SE: This is more of a cosmetic thing, but this mod is replacer I use for Serana to make her appearance mesh better with the other NPC appearance mods I use (such as WICO, Bijin etc). It’s close enough to her default that it doesn’t feel like a complete replacement. I use the Thorns (short hair) version with the Glowing red eyes option, pictured above. 

Mods that have been mentioned: 

Darkend LE / SE: This is only mentioned in passing by Mirabelle in act 3, where she references a cursed shipwreck to the north. More of an easter egg than anything else, but still well worth playing if you like. 

More to be added later as I remember them, I’m sure. 

#seres #seres fic #there it is yall #vigilance series #skyrim #female dragonborn #skyrim fanfic

[sineala]

Chronology of Tony’s heart

I'm pretty sure I've typed up a chronology of Tony's heart trauma before, but in case anyone reading this needs the issue references for the very basics of Things That Have Happened To Tony Stark's Chest, here we go.

As we all know, Tony was introduced to the comics in Tales of Suspense vol 1 #39. While in Vietnam, he triggers a booby trap and the resulting explosion leaves him with shrapnel embedded in his chest, nearing his heart. Together, he and Ho Yinsen engineer the first version of the Iron Man suit, which basically functions as a pacemaker, to keep his heart beating. He has to wear the chestplate continuously, even under his normal clothes (no, don't ask me how no one notices this), and it requires regular charging from a wall socket, which Tony usually leaves until the last possible moment so he can dramatically fling himself across the room and plug himself in.

There are a couple of assumptions you might make at this point that aren't canonically true. If you're coming from MCU fandom you might think that some part of this is subcutaneous or otherwise implanted, like the arc reactor -- but it isn't. It literally just sits on top of his chest. The other thing you might assume is that charging the chestplate is painful, but this doesn't appear to be the case; in Tales of Suspense #45, Tony likens the sensation to an adrenaline rush.

What is canonical is that Tony is at this point touch-averse, because he doesn't want people knowing he has the chestplate. Check out his behavior toward his (retconned) fiancee in Iron Man v1 #244; he pushes her away when she tries to hug him, lest she feel the chestplate.

But the world finds out that Tony has the chestplate in Tales of Suspense #84, when Tony has a heart attack while testifying before Congress and collapses on the Senate floor -- they open his shirt and find the chestplate. Note that no one knows he's Iron Man; he denies it when people ask, and Happy decides to suit up and pretend to be Iron Man for a bit so that way people will have seen the two of them separately and Tony can still keep his secret identity. But the chestplate itself is now public knowledge at this point. So presumably the Avengers know now, which I think is actually a pretty underexplored topic in fanfiction.

Tony ends up losing the chestplate in Iron Man v1 #17-19, a very dramatic early arc that pits him against a LMD he has made of himself. The LMD is wearing Tony's newest armor and Tony is forced to wear the original model, which doesn't have enough power for battle and his heart at the same time, and he passes out after defeating the LMD. At this point, he is implanted with a brand new "synthetic heart." This heart is, of course, very vulnerable to stress, so, don't worry, Tony can still have a heart attack whenever the plot calls for it.

There's an arc shortly after this where he has to wear the chestplate to live. I'm having trouble tracking down where it starts, but I know that he's wearing the chestplate in IM #45 because he's thankful that he can take it off long enough to shower. (In case, you know, you were wondering about how Tony showered with this.) In IM #97 and 98 his heart is failing him again but I don't know how long that goes on for.

The remainder of volume 1, as far as I am aware, doesn't feature any specific trauma to Tony's heart that you'd need to be aware of. Granted, a lot of terrible other things happen to his body -- chronic alcoholism, paralysis, et cetera -- but if you just need to know about his heart I'm pretty sure he just still has the synthetic heart.

When Franklin Richards brings everyone back at the beginning of volume 3, I am pretty sure that the standard fandom assumption is that he gives Tony back a normal heart, because he tries to "fix" everyone -- for one thing, he brings Clint back with his hearing restored. (Curiously, it's established as canonical later in IM v3, in the Manhunt arc -- IM v3 #65-69 -- that Tony's liver is in fact still trashed from the alcoholism, so I guess Franklin never fixed that.)

And then the Sentient Armor arc happens, in IM v3 #26-30. The arc ends with the armor trying to murder Tony and then having a change of heart. When Tony suffers a heart attack, the armor rips the cybernetic, artificial heart out of its own chest and puts it into Tony's. (Yeah, I know, comics. Don't think too hard.)

This artificial heart is the heart that Tony has for the remainder of volume 3. There's a charging port in the middle of his sternum. This doesn't run the armor -- it just is his heart. Charging this one does appear to be canonically painful, as far as I can tell from IM v3 #56; Tony's given himself a bar to bite down on while he charges it.

And then Extremis happens, in Iron Man v4 #1-6. Tony gives himself Actual Superpowers (because I guess he really likes talking to machines in his head), and since his Actual Superpowers include a healing factor, generally we all figure that this is what got rid of his artificial heart and made his body basically perfect. I mean, he was a grief-stricken mess and hallucinating dead people but he was pretty while he did it, right? Right?

But Extremis doesn't last forever. Tony loses it (or most of it -- exactly what he loses is kind of unclear) during Secret Invasion, and then what happens is that he has to go on the run from Norman Osborn, who wants the SHRA database, and then in the arc World's Most Wanted (Invincible Iron Man #8-19) he ends up deleting his mind in order to delete the database. 

So what he gets is the RT node (RT stands for "repulsor tech") implanted in his chest to control his brainstem, in the arc Stark Disassembled (Invincible Iron Man v1 #20-24). Pepper previously had it in her chest in the arc The Five Nightmares (Invincible Iron Man v1 #1-8), due to shrapnel problems, but she ends up okay, and anyway Tony needs it.

Now, the RT node looks (and functions) a lot more like what you might expect from the MCU arc reactor. (Yes, the MCU had started by this point.) It acts as a power source for Tony's armors -- Bleeding Edge, the first armor he builds, is stored entirely in his body. (The Extremis armor stored only the undersuit internally; all the plating was external.) But, again, it has nothing to do with his heart. His heart's fine now. This is what is keeping his brain running.

Tony has the RT up until very recently. He ends up comatose at the end of the event Civil War II, and when he is eventually revived (in approximately Iron Man #600 although if you want to be picky it's a little sooner but #600 is the Big Deal Milestone Issue) he does so in a brand-new body, without the RT. Currently he's having some kind of existential crisis about whether he's even himself now that he has a new body. But, anyway, he's fine now, though I'm sure he's due for another heart problem soon.

There we go. The saga of Tony Stark's Broken Heart.

#posts i actually wrote

[raywritesthings]

The Canary’s Wrath

My Writng Fandom: Arrow Characters: Laurel Lance, Oliver Queen, Jim Corrigan, Malcolm Merlyn, Thea Queen, Damien Darhk, John Diggle Pairing: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen Summary: When the Black Canary is killed before her time, she is offered the chance to ascend to a higher purpose. / AU Post-”Canary Cry”, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Deaths *Can be read on my AO3 and FFN, links are in bio*

They had told her she would be fine, yet Laurel had felt compelled, somehow, to make her deathbed confession anyway. It was important to her to clear the air at last with Oliver, to let the truth free. It might even help him to know that he was still worthy of love, capable of forgiveness.

She tried to hold on long enough for her father — the true target of tonight’s attack, and wasn’t that the bitterest part? — but it just wasn’t meant to be. There was so much more she could’ve done, should’ve done. A life cut short. It wasn’t fair. But it was too late, and she was slipping away.

Until she awoke again.

She recognized this place. The empty gym, the folding chairs in a circle. Laurel did what she did at any AA meeting and took a seat, wondering where everyone else was and what she was meant to be waiting for.

There was a noise to her left, and Laurel turned her head. Sitting in the chair beside hers was a man Laurel had never seen before. He had a dark beard and hair peppered heavily with gray, and there was something calming and ancient in his gaze. Foreboding, too, but she had looked into the eyes of dangerous men before and hadn’t flinched. She didn’t do so now.

“Who are you?”

“Who I was doesn’t matter,” the man said. “Who I am is what you should be concerned with, Dinah Laurel Lance.”

“You know who I am?” Laurel had to wonder what this really was. She didn’t recognize him from any part of her life. Was this some guide to the next stage or something?

“I do. You’re the Black Canary, a hero,” he told her. “In another life, I was a decorated police officer, a hero in my own right, but then I was called to a higher purpose.” He gestured around her. “Now that you have passed beyond the realm of living, you have the choice to answer that call.”

“To a higher purpose? To something other than just being dead?” Laurel didn’t want to just be dead, floating around on a cloud somewhere and watching events unfold with no way to help. Assuming that was what the afterlife was. Maybe it was nothing. An eternal sleep. She shuddered; enough of her life had been spent numbed to the world, sleepwalking through her own life because there had been nothing worth living for.

“You would pursue justice, even vengeance, against the guilty. You would be beyond their mortal powers, and you would have knowledge no mortal yet possesses about a coming Crisis unimaginable in scale and devastation,” he explained. “In another life, you might have stood against that Crisis as a hero with those you knew. Now, I believe to best prepare them, they must be able to trust the one who holds the power I currently possess.”

“How will I know what to do?” Laurel asked. It wasn’t a question of accepting; she was doing this. She was a bringer of justice, and vengeance suited the likes of the man who had tossed her life aside as a mere message just fine. Justice had failed to hold Darhk behind bars, so he would face worse at her hands before she could even think about resting in peace.

“The same way you know how to throw a punch or use a staff. I will train you in everything that I know. Then you will become the Spectre.”

“The Spectre,” Laurel echoed. It wasn’t a hero’s name, really. It sounded foreboding as she had thought before. But the darkness was already inside her, and with no life left to live, it was about time she embraced it.

Jim Corrigan, as she learned he had been called in his mortal life, was true to his word. He pushed her through the training of her life, literally. Every punch she had ever thrown in the ring, every gun she had fired, every defensive maneuver she had perfected was redone and relived. Then they went even beyond that.

“This Crisis looms, in part, because of reckless changes wrought on the fabric of time itself,” Jim explained. “There was another path that your life could have taken, that of the Black Canary until the end of a life well-lived. The Spectre cannot return that life to you, but I can transfer her strength to you.”

Laurel’s mind seemed to stretch and fill with new knowledge, new memories that had never happened. An early separation between her parents; running away from her alcoholic father’s home and traveling the world, learning everything there was to know about fighting to protect herself when no one else would; a Cry more powerful and dangerous bursting forth from her lips; those same lips locked in a kiss with the very same love of her life, who loved her back just as fiercely; the baby blue eyes of a son nestled in her arms; a growing family who held her up as Oliver drifted away with a smile on his face at 86; her own quiet passing a few years later.

It felt like the arrowhead was being driven into her again and twisted, this time in her heart. Laurel’s eyes welled up with tears — and wasn’t it just her luck that there were tears left to shed in Purgatory? — and the scream she had seen in the other life rattled the roof and the walls.

This had been stolen from her. She would have her vengeance on those who had done this, too.

It could have been months or years or eternity. There was no time in this place. She did not age and she did not weary. She forgot the feeling of sun or rain or wind. She felt little but cold emptiness, emptiness that could only be replaced by purpose and one that would soon be at hand.

She felt a pull on her very soul that echoed with a familiarity in her bones. Oliver, desperately reaching out, seeking aid from supernatural forces he only barely understood. He struggled to find the light in him, lost in his own darkness. She would take the darkness from him, channel it to do the things he could not.

It was time to return and seek retribution. The kind no one could run from.

---

Malcolm Merlyn felt satisfied that everything was finally coming together. After everything he had sacrificed and conceded, the fealty he had had to pledge after losing his own power and his very hand along with it, he would see the dawning of a new age.

Darhk’s plan was on a much larger scale than his own had once been, but that had made it all the more necessary to ensure that he and his own were deemed part of the select few. Thea would thank him for it one day once she realized what he had done for her; it hadn’t been easy to convince Damien to secret one of the very vigilantes he had been fighting the better part of the year into the inner sanctum that the dome represented. H.I.V.E.’s leader was retrieving Rubicon tonight, and after that it would be a short time until the missiles were launched and the surface of the Earth turned to little but ash.

Oliver and his team had lost. They didn’t realize how fully, yet, but he thought Oliver must know; must have known from the moment Laurel had breathed her last. Why else would he have allowed his sister a vacation, or gone on some fruitless trip to learn magic as if he expected to beat a master at it after a few hours’ practice? The group of heroes was directionless and still unaware of what was to come. It made perfect sense that Malcolm should have sided with Darhk. At least he and Thea would make it out of this alive.

Thea had arrived underground with the young man whose affections she was currently entertaining. He finished preparing the drug he would have to give her if she refused to cooperate, yet as he went to pick up the syringe to store it in a pouch on his belt, it rolled away from him. Malcolm frowned and reached again, and it rolled the other way.

He looked up. “Damien?”

There was no answer.

With honed reflexes, he plucked the syringe up from the table quick enough that it couldn’t move. Whatever had just happened, it was no match for him.

Then the syringe shattered in his hand.

“Ah!” Malcolm stumbled to the sink, washing tiny slivers of glass and trails of blood from his skin. He did not need damage to the one flesh and blood hand he had left. And how had it happened?

“You never really were sorry about drugging her the first time, were you?”

Malcolm gasped and whirled around. Standing in the kitchen was an impossibility.

“You… you can’t be here. You’re dead.”

“Death is exactly why I’m here,” said Laurel Lance. “The deaths you’ve caused have finally caught up with you, Malcolm. And your guilt is beyond doubt.”

His senses were screaming at him to fight or to flee. Whatever this was, it could not be Dinah Laurel Lance. He therefore felt not a shred of hesitation as he slipped a knife out of the block and flung it with precision — only for it to sail through her and embed itself in the wall behind.

“What,” he began, and swallowed around a mouth gone dry. “What is this? What are you?”

“I am the Spectre.” A black cloak suddenly folded down around her, a hood descending over her face, as her eyes glowed a bright green. Plates and mugs rattled in the cabinets, drawers pulled out and cutlery rose into the air. “My task is to punish the guilty whom the living cannot touch.”

The faucets turned on and began filling the basin as the plug went into the drain.

“Do you ever think about the men who drowned that night in the sea? Have you ever wondered how it might feel?”

“You can’t possibly expect to—” Malcolm made a run for it, around the kitchen island and through an archway into the sitting room. He could flee to any number of homes in this underground base, line low until Damien returned to expel the spirit of the woman Malcolm had watched him murder.

A great boom shook the house before he made it to the door, and Malcolm fell under the weight of part of the ceiling collapsing. Enough to pin him, but not crush him.

“There were many who died like this at your hand,” the Spectre told him, seeming to float around the ruin into his sight line. “Tell me, what made their lives worth less than your ambitions?”

“Laurel, stop this!” He begged. Another wall had collapsed and the weight was pressing down on him. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. Water covered the floor an inch deep and was rising. “I’m Thea’s father.”

“Yes, you are.” She raised an arm, and the wood and plaster and metal peeled back away from him. He drew in a shuddering breath.

Malcolm tensed as he felt three steps pulled from the quiver strapped to his back. Then he was flipped over, unable to move as those arrows rose into the arrow, then pointed down towards his chest.

“The murder she committed is your guilt, too.”

“Laurel!”

The arrows shot down with no bow to fire them. Malcolm felt a sharp, piercing pain as they punctured his chest and then was no more.

---

Thea didn’t know why or how this vacation had turned into a nightmare, but she wanted out now. Only problem with that was, there wasn’t a way out.

She pounded against whatever wall the fake sky was made of, not feeling it give even an inch. What even was this place?

A distant boom had her turning around. Something was going on, and if she could find out what maybe she would find a way out as well. Thea ran back into the quiet little suburb, searching for the source of the disturbance when a chilling scream stole her breath.

“Laurel!”

That had been Malcolm’s voice. He was here? And why had he said…?

Thea found a growing crowd gathering across the street from one of the cookie-cutter homes, only this one had seemingly collapsed in on itself. In the ruins lay her father’s broken body, a trail of blood leaking from his mouth. Thea was stunned speechless.

A cloaked figure stood over him, and as people whispered and murmured to each other in shock, the figure lifted their head to show off glowing green eyes and a frown on a face that Thea knew devastatingly well. She knew, too, why her father’s last word had been what it was. She gasped, but the woman who was somehow Laurel rose high into the air.

“Each of you agreed to join Damien Darhk deep below the Earth,” the figure said in Laurel’s voice, harsh and booming. “You believed yourselves to be the chosen few, the worthy. You turned your backs on humanity and wait for them to die.”

A rumbling started up. Panes of glass or whatever material the false sky was made of started to drop out of the ceiling one by one. People cried out, and parents hugged their children to them in terror.

“You will suffer the fate you left them to instead.”

“Wait!” Thea shouted, running out into the street to place herself apart from the crowd. If this went badly, she didn’t want anyone else caught in the crossfire. “Not everyone agreed to this.”

The cloaked woman paused, one arm lifted.

“I was taken down here without knowing what this place was. I’m still not sure what it has to do with Darhk’s plans,” Thea began. “And, and there’s children here. They didn’t get a choice, either. They’re minors, so they can’t consent,” she added, thinking of her lost friend and how she would have presented an argument such as this in a courtroom.

The woman — for it couldn’t truly be Laurel, not with everything she had done, considered this. Then hatch-like doors were flung open in the walls, revealing tunnels leading out and up from the dome. “Leave this place then, and never return.” And she vanished into thin air.

Thea stared up at the skies in vain, trying to spot her as the people in their gray uniforms began to flee. What had just happened? How could a being that powerful exist, and why did she have Laurel’s face? What had happened to her friend?

For now, all she could do was get to the surface and find the others. They needed to know about this apparition, whether it was friend or foe.

---

Oliver sped down the streets towards the open back doors of the truck Damien Darhk stood in. He had little hope of countering the man based on what Esrin Fortuna had told him about the darkness within him, but he could not allow further harm to come to his loved ones. If John lost Lyla the way he had lost Laurel… no one should ever feel that pain again.

It would be different for John, of course. At least Lyla knew how much her husband loved her. Oliver had let Laurel die believing herself not to be loved by him. He had lost the one person who continued to believe in him despite all he had done, and only when it had happened had he realized all the time he had wasted.

Darhk saw his approach and walked to the edge of the truck floor, arm raising — yet then he ducked as if dodging an attack. It happened a second time, and Darhk whirled from left to right.

“Show yourself! Enough with the games— ah!”

Oliver could not tell if it was gravity, the sharp movements on the edge of the truck or something else that knocked Darhk to the ground. The man went rolling, and Oliver turned his motorcycle to follow his path.

He cut the engine on the shoulder of the road, mere feet from Darhk who was only beginning to stand with his suit rumpled and torn. Oliver breathed in deeply, centering himself and searching within for the light as Esrin had explained. He thought of the team, of his family, of Laurel.

And it was Laurel’s voice that answered his seeking. “Damien Darhk.”

Before his eyes, a cloaked figure rippled into being just behind Darhk’s shoulder. The sorcerer spun and struck with a debilitating blow he would have learned in the League, yet it passed straight through, sending him sprawling back in the dirt. Standing there without Darhk obscuring her, Oliver could see the woman clearly, and his breath caught.

Laurel.

She turned away, towards Darhk who was again struggling back to his feet.

“You would set the world afire and begin it anew under your guidance. You are not a God, Damien, but a man who has incurred His Wrath.” There was something different to the timbre of her voice, not-quite her. A great power seemed to course through every word.

Darhk seemed to know it, too. “What are you?”

“I am the Spectre. I seek vengeance against the guilty.”

Darhk had gone, if possible, paler than he typically was. The name meant something to him. He caught sight of Oliver and raised his hand. Oliver felt his breath stutter in his chest for a single moment as he froze, but Laurel’s eyes shone with brilliant green light as she turned her head sharply in his direction.

Oliver’s breath returned, and he watched Damien sink to his knees, his hands going to his throat as his eyes bulged.

“Laurel,” Oliver said. She made no indication of hearing him, and seconds later Darhk fell on his side, a small chip slipping from his slackened grasp to land on the ground. The Spectre crushed it under her heel.

“Laurel,” Oliver pleaded this time. Whatever the Spectre meant or was, she could not have her form by accident. He had to believe there was something of the woman he had loved in her.

She turned on the spot towards him slowly, the cloak receding, and she was Laurel in jeans and a jacket and a loose-fitting shirt like he knew her best. Her eyebrows raised and her lips turned not quite to a smile. “Hi, Ollie.”

His lips pressed tight together, water stinging his eyes, and Oliver took two strides to reach her and pull her into his embrace. To his immense relief, he did not phase through Laurel’s body the way Darhk had. She felt real and solid in his arms.

“How- how is this possible?”

“After everything that’s happened in your life, are you really surprised by anything anymore?”

He pulled back, hands cupping her face. “I guess there’s not much that can keep a Lance down.” She watched him, her smile still small and not fully reaching her eyes. “Laurel, what… what is the Spectre?”

“It’s what I am now,” she answered simply. “A higher purpose I was called to after my death. I’m not really alive anymore, Ollie. Not in the way Sara is.”

He shook his head, thumbs brushing her cheeks. “Laurel, you’re — whatever this is, we can figure it out. The whole team. We’ve missed you so much. We need you.”

“But I can’t return,” she disputed. “Laurel Lance is dead, and if she was alive she would be a hunted vigilante.”

He let go of her, his stomach dropping. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know you didn’t. You couldn’t know this would happen. None of this was ever meant to,” Laurel said, a faint glow in her eyes again. “In another time, the Green Arrow and Black Canary fought side by side for years, but the constant meddling with time changed things, stole the life I would have had. A life with you.” She lifted her own hand to his cheek for a moment, then let it fall. “If I can’t have that life, then I want to be more than I was in life.”

Oliver struggled past the lump that threatened to block off his voice. “Where will you go?”

“Wherever there’s injustice.”

That caused him to smile, a twist of the mouth that felt painful. “Dinah Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world.”

“I’m not the world’s savior anymore, Ollie. I’m its avenger. It will be up to you and the other heroes to save this Earth and the many besides it.”

He didn’t understand what she meant by that last part, but it didn’t matter to him in the moment. “You were my hero,” he told her fiercely. “You are. And I love you, Laurel, please, you have to know that. I love you so much I couldn’t stand it at times—”

“Oliver!”

“Ollie!”

His teammates came running from opposite directions. John with his helmet off and baby Sara handed to Lyla who waited some ways off, and Thea in a plaid coat. He stopped in his tracks and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

A flutter of something in the wind had him looking back at Laurel, who had donned the Spectre’s cloak again.

“Please don’t leave,” he whispered. “Your father, Sara…”

“I will come to them when they need me most. Just as you will see me again,” she promised.

He didn’t know how she expected him to survive this a second time. But Oliver reached beneath the hood and pushed it back, bringing her lips to his. If she had to leave, he would not let it be without her knowing the truth.

Laurel responded to his kiss, but already she had begun fading away. She slipped through his fingers and left his mouth tingling with the phantom touch of hers. When he opened his eyes, she was gone.

In the absence of her, he could hear the sirens and the boots of ARGUS soldiers as they hurried about their business, as if the woman Oliver had loved and lost had not appeared and vanished from his world all over again.

“That was… was that really her?” John asked in a trembling voice. “I don’t understand.”

Thea drew up to him and tucked herself in at his side. “Malcolm’s, um, dead.”

Oliver blinked. Then a snort left him. A tired, grateful, ache of a laugh followed, to the point where Thea was helping to support his weight.

“Yeah, John. That was her.”

Dinah Laurel Lance had wanted to be a police officer; she had been denied and became a lawyer. She had wanted to be his protege in the field; she had been denied and became a hero of her own. She had loved being the Black Canary; and when that had been taken away from her, she had found another way like all the times before. A way that had never been meant for her, but the way her life had been forged by forces beyond either of their control.

Those who rose up in this city or around the world like Darhk would wish they were under the mercy of the Black Canary. For none would be able to hide from the Spectre. Just as he would never deny the love he held for her ever again.

Though they couldn’t be together, Laurel would remain forever a part of his life and his heart, and he would hers until the very end.

#lauriver #laurel x oliver #laurel lance #oliver queen #arrow #green arrow #black canary #my writing

[cruelangelstheses]

technical difficulties

fandom: fire emblem awakening rating: G characters: tiki/say’ri words: 1.1k additional tags: modern au, fluff, immortality description: when tiki wakes up from a century-long nap, she finds herself thoroughly confused by all the new technology. luckily, a friend may have found someone who can help her. a/n: hello hello!! i've been super busy but i managed to bang this out in time for sayriki day on twitter (run by @FEFemslash)! i love the idea of an immortal waking up in the modern day after a loooong time and being like “what the fuck. what the fuck is all this.” the idea was just too perfect to pass up

read it on ao3

—

Tiki isn’t sure if she loves humanity’s new technology or hates it.

On one hand, these machinations fascinate her beyond words—the way they glow at her touch, the way they respond to her every command, breathing life into her thoughts like whimsical libraries. On the other hand, though, she’s been asleep for about a hundred years, restoring her vitality as all immortals need to do from time to time, and she has a lot to catch up on. She’s never seen humanity progress so fast. She had assumed that she wouldn’t miss much, but evidently she was wrong. She still can’t quite wrap her head around an automobile, let alone a smartphone.

The only reason she’s been able to survive in this strange new world is because she entrusted a fellow immortal, a girl named Nowi, to keep an eye on her while she slept. Nowi is the one who got her a “social security number” and a fake birth certificate for when she woke up, and she’s the one who took her in and helped her to get back to her life.

Unfortunately, Nowi isn’t all that great at explaining how all this new technology works, so Tiki has pretty much had to figure it all out on her own, or at least try to. This hasn’t worked well for her, and now she’s sitting in her bed one evening, panicking because her laptop computer won’t turn back on. She turned it off the night before, but now, when she presses the button that’s supposed to make it come to life once again, nothing happens.

Tiki opens the top drawer of her nightstand and grabs a slip of paper with a ten-digit number written on it. “If you ever have any technical difficulties,” Nowi said when she handed it to her, “call this number. She’ll help you. No question is too stupid!”

It still takes Tiki about five minutes to find the keypad on her smartphone, even though Nowi showed her how to use it. Part of her is nervous, but Nowi’s reassurance replaying in her head gives her the courage to type in the number and press the “call” button.

The person answers on the second ring. “Hello?”

“Uh, hello,” Tiki says awkwardly, holding the phone up to her ear like she’s supposed to. It feels unnatural, pressing a hard, flat mini-machine against her skin, but no one ever said adjusting to a century’s worth of technological advancements would be easy. “I seem to be experiencing a problem with my laptop computer?” It comes out sounding more like a question than a statement.

“Ah,” the girl on the other end says immediately. “Are you Nowi’s friend, then?”

Tiki doesn’t really know why, but she can feel her cheeks flush. “Yes, I am,” she says slowly. “What has she told you of me?”

“Not a great deal,” the girl replies casually. “Just that you would likely be contacting me, and that you may have been living underneath the largest rock this side of Demon’s Ingle. No matter,” she adds quickly. “Your name is Tiki, yes?”

“Indeed,” Tiki says. Her face burns with embarrassment. She feels like she’s been caught red-handed, though her only “crime” is being technologically inept, and that’s not her fault. “And you are…?”

“Say’ri,” the girl says. It’s a name Tiki has always liked, and the way this girl says it gives it an almost musical quality. “Nowi and I share a class together. I’m majoring in computer science, which is probably why she asked me to be the one to help you.”

How Nowi managed to convince her college that she was old enough to attend is beyond the scope of Tiki’s knowledge. Nowi is, obviously, much older than the average college student, but she’s still young for an immortal, which gives her the unfortunate side effect of looking—and sometimes acting—like a child.

“So,” Say’ri says, “what seems to be the problem?”

Tiki frowns in confusion at her woefully dark computer screen. “I turned it off when I went to bed last night, but now it won’t turn back on. I keep pressing the button, but nothing’s happening.”

After a short pause, Say’ri asks, “Did you try holding down the power button for a few seconds instead of just pressing it?”

Tiki can’t help but feel a little proud of herself. “Yes, actually, I have. Nothing.”

“Hmm. Did you charge it?”

Oh. “Uh…”

Tiki knows how to charge her laptop—Nowi at least showed her that—but she didn’t think to charge it overnight. She doesn’t remember the battery being that low, but she might have just not been paying attention.

Say’ri laughs, a sound so soft and lovely that it catches Tiki completely by surprise. “Can I assume, then, that that’s a no?”

Tiki chuckles sheepishly. “Yes, you could assume that.”

She reaches down underneath her bed and pulls out her laptop charger, plugging one end into the outlet and the other into the computer. Nothing happens. This never would’ve been an issue a millennium ago. Back then, she could take a century-long nap and only miss a war or two.

“Still nothing,” she reports into the phone.

Without missing a beat, Say’ri asks, “Did you press the button again now that it’s plugged in?”

Any pride that Tiki might still have felt has, at this point, very much reverted itself back into embarrassment. Trying not to laugh at herself, she gingerly presses the power button and watches as her computer comes to life. “Oh.”

Say’ri giggles again. Tiki decides that she could listen to that sound forever. “Is it working now?”

“Yes, it is,” Tiki replies with a sigh. “I doubt any knowledge of computer science was required to help me with this. I apologize for bothering you—”

“You aren’t bothering me, my dear,” Say’ri says. “It’s been...enjoyable, talking to you.”

Her kind words make Tiki’s heart swell. It feels like it’s been so long since she bonded with anyone—and, technically, it has.

“Besides,” Say’ri adds, “I’m sure we’ll talk again soon. Even after you get the hang of everything, computers can be...capricious. And I’ll always be here to help.”

Tiki tries not to smile like an idiot and fails. “I...thank you, Say’ri,” she says softly. It feels strangely inadequate, but it’s all she has to offer. “I will certainly take you up on that.”

“It’s a date, love,” Say’ri replies before she hangs up. Tiki makes a mental note to kiss the ground Nowi walks on the next time she sees her.

#fire emblem awakening #sayri #tiki #sayriki #say'riki #say'ri #tiki fire emblem #fe13 #my fics

[incarnateirony]

Very unpopular opinion of a weird mesh of issues behind the cut. Likely to piss some people off. Strange mix of fandom issues and theological issues alongside fandom marketing and self promotion, and parallelism to the real world.

So let me get the offensive part out of the way first:

I fucking hate the SPN fandom tarot deck with the fury of a thousand suns. 

I don’t care that the person who makes it is a witch, that just makes it worse.

If we can be mad at christians mass boxing hollow versions of their imagery and selling it from the inside, I can be mad at my fellow pagans and practitioners for doing the same with ours.

It’s cute, it’s pretty. But it’d be infinitely less offensive to me if it was just made from someone on the outside, that knows next to nothing about how decks work and just thinks they’re cool, than someone upselling a broken version based on literal face value. Or the alternate reading that someone is fairly unread in what they practice still but still use it as a shield TO make it, but didn’t have the knowledge of deck construction enough to actually Do It.

In a showrunner stint doused front to back with hermetic imagery and storytelling and mythos and structure, it takes a strange kind of either active effort to mess up the available values of the cards or just an open willingness to shill out ones’ faith hollow of its actual merit for likes and the automatic “Well I’m pagan so”. So? So are christian marketers that have completely fucked over their religion. That doesn’t make it better.

Am I being oversensitive about it? Maybe. But it’s absolutely maddening to see a deck -- beautiful as the art may be -- profiting for views or even possible sales on a completely broken and nonfunctioning set of values. The Fool and Magician should not be bonded in place of the Lovers, even if it’s renamed Brothers. That breaks the entire process. Why is the Chariot card being shown in place of this major, pivotal process point in the deck behind the Not-Lovers? Where are the Emperor, the Empress, the poles? Why have we jumped to Castiel performing The Great Work without place in The Not Lovers, without any of the according union, without any tell of where The Great Work leads to? You’re clearly knocking off Rider-Waite some of the visual cards minus major related symbolism in the background, what are you even doing and why.  Why are we jumping to other simpler decks to streamline other cards? Why is there literally no journey between these?

Okay, sure, it’s super easy on a surface level to plug Castiel in the spot of the angel in The Lovers. But the two below absolutely should not be the magician and fool. This is a journey OF the fool.Sure we can vagueblog that the card independently is about choices and relationships so sure -- brothers! Except. We’re forgetting. Cards. Are written. As a process. I guess nevermind that the angel behind them is supposed to be Raphael for its own process reasons, just... just plug in the first angel you think of! Nevermind this process breaks transitions of everything from Fool, Magician, High priestess, Art/Temperance, I could keep going. But I guess Castiel now has a Tiphareth association in here. Because Reasons. Because Angel In a reframed card playing matchmaker. Even if you take the non-Raphael interpretation of the angel it’s supposed to actually be removed from being limited to the idea OF an angel, as much as a general creator by higher qabbalistic implications of Waite. And here we go. Another all around broken process.

Unless of course we take Castiel in Temperance pouring out the cup as somehow the angel creator in the background taking away that step from the pair (brokenly) journeyed into Lovers/Brothers oh LOOK *ANOTHER* broken process. Don’t want Temperance to travel visibly from Lovers, and be more like Rider Waite? You still missed everything from reflections of the journey from the subconscious, superconscious, union and all elements of the eucharist, but I guess it’s an angel pouring water in a bowl, so Good Enough For Reasons?

So even if we’re going by Rider Waite as the most obvious visual parallel we have, for unknown reasons, the Fool and the Magician bonded in the transition of the lovers, over the action of the Chariot for reasons unknown, and Castiel is somehow fulfilling the missing elements of their personalities and subconscious to be a matchmaker or like, WHAT is even going on in this hot mess-- are we removing the eucharist element from both cards and just making it about pursuit of goals and somehow Cas is their key representation of pursuing their goals, WHAT IS GOING ON, WTF -- WHERE HAS REPRESENTATION OF THE HIGH PRIESTESS GONE. WHAT. IS. GOING. ON.

Maybe it bothers me so bad because I’ve spent a few years on and off thinking about how to do one of these without wanting to just shell out my own faith for art attention, rebuilding it time and again to make sure everything actually connects, to do honor to both sources and then I just see it slammed down. 

I’m sure this is gonna piss people off but god DAMN.  

like OKIE DOKIE HERE YOU GO I USED THOTH BECAUSE IT FLOWS BEST WITH OUR AVAILABLE STRUCTURE BUT I’M SURE YOU COULD DO IT WITH RIDER WAITE, THEY’RE BOTH HERMETIC DECKS

Oh look! I can even trade which pairing is represented where, and give Cas a bee suit and DeanCas meaningful greenblue colors on two levels while trading their animal symbolism around! OH, and I can use that to trace backwards and easily put Mary in a high priestess position -- LOOK, WE HAVE FUNCTIONING CONVERSION, and even a 14.13 shoutout in The Great Work of Art. And have a path for Sam the Fool growing through the Hierophant into the pivotal image if I apply BASIC THINKIE THOUGHTS to HOW A DECK WORKS.

OH LOOK orphic jack is the chicken and the egg and the snake and the golden being of phanes/lucifer about to big bounce the universe even, holy WOW, you mean, the show itself is representing this shit? YOWZA.

AAAAAAAAAAAAGH

Edit: Ironically I wrote this, unwittingly, while my wife was building a really geomantically complex seal for someone. 

Me: Goes on a rant about magical symbolism Me: Goes to check what shea's doing Shea: happens to be building intensely complex geomantic seal for someone

Dean WinchesterToday at 2:31 PM

LMAO sorry we've been through that in dm like three times i'm at a point where i nod it off mostlyI MEAN WHAT

HuehuecoyotlToday at 2:32 PM

JSDFKsjdfsdf LOOK WHEN I SAY I GET MAD EVERY TIME I MEAN IT

------

PS one of my biggest frustrations of someone using “I’m a witch/pagan/whatever” to excuse bad practice and present themselves as An Accurate and Defensible Topical Authority is literally the same as “I’m a christian” to imply one knows better than anyone else, even far more educated and informed in their dogma and history, even within their own religion. Which we know leads to representable behavior. Please do not be this person. It’s not any better when polytheists do it than when monotheists dude. If history had gone a step to the left somebody would be cramming Zeus down your throat right now. Polytheists can be the same kind of assholes as monotheists if we don’t keep our methods and behaviors in check.

#pagan life #mildew