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mittensmorgul · 5 years

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omg... wait, literally... in 14.08, while they’re all grieving Jack and Sam goes out to build a pyre, he feels like it’s once again a failure on his part when his ax breaks...

I need to do a rewatch of s14 and list all the potential moments we can now maybe chalk up to Chuck’s interference just nudging things in exceptionally tiny ways. Because that broken ax was the reason the rest of the episode happened this way.

This is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been talking about since 14.20 aired. Chuck hasn’t been shoving the narrative around in huge ways, but even these tiny nudges have sweeping consequences, and all of s14 needs to be reexamined for points where the entire narrative hinges on these seemingly inconsequential occurrences.

If Sam had finished building his pyre by the time Dean and Cas showed up, they wouldn’t have had a wake, they’d have had a funeral pyre. Jack would’ve been permanently lost to Heaven... or perhaps the Empty would’ve quietly snatched him as it planned to do and he would’ve had his little Empty Tea Party with the entity and Billie way back then. There would’ve been no deal for Cas’s happiness, just mourning Jack without Chuck feeling the need to show up and shove events over his personal desired finish line in 14.20. But instead, they go back to the bunker and drink to Jack’s memory, leading to Dean asking Cas, “We did everything we could, right?”

Next thing Dean knows, he’s waking up hung over in the kitchen, and Cas and Sam have brought in Lily Sunder. And the rest of the plot happens.

Sam found Kevin’s Angel Tablet translations in this episode, and Donatello is mentioned as well-- aka the soulless prophet they gave the demon tablet to last year when they may potentially have been able to give him Kevin’s translations (which we all screamed about in s13 so I’ll refrain here) of the tablet they were ACTUALLY trying to read... but Sam brings Lily Sunder instead to try to read them (this is the sort of stuff she was a professor of in life so it’s sensible this time at least).

We learn about Anubis who took over God’s duty to measure the fates of humans, but was that ever something Chuck would’ve done? Interesting, because Anubis himself tells them that God never decided, that people’s fates rest solely (pffft) within themselves, their choices.

Kelly Kline is distressed that Jack has died, of course, as any mother would be, but this feels like a bigger statement from her, to which Jack replies, “things didn’t go as planned.” YA THINK?!

Heaven’s distress signal. I’ve wondered for a while now if there was ever really anything “wrong” with Heaven, or if it was another symptom of Chuck’s interference in things...

Every gate in Heaven was opened, even the ones Metatron’s supposedly irreversible spell closed, when the Shadow invaded.

Cas meets three angels once he arrives-- the first lies dead on the floor near Dumah, who is apparently still alive-- but we quickly learn the Shadow is just using her form. Inside Jack’s heaven they meet Naomi, who I suspect is also being controlled by the Shadow just based on what she tells Cas: That in order to save Heaven, they need to hand Jack over to the Shadow.

BECAUSE! Jack’s soul, according to Anubis, was destined for Heaven based on his own cumulative life choices. And this ending... doesn’t fit Chuck’s narrative. Resurrecting Jack fits Chuck’s narrative. And the Empty has been waiting for Jack... but it’s also been waiting for Chuck. Cas’s sacrifice to save Jack? THAT fits Chuck’s narrative.

What doesn’t fit Chuck’s narrative is these uppity humans actually standing up for themselves to his face, not wanting to play his game anymore. Everything that happens in this episode seems to be setting the stage for them finally seeing they’ve been playing a game all along.

Right down to Lily Sunder visiting Anubis after her death and learning her act of sacrifice was enough to earn her soul admission to Heaven. And this minor god who’d been given this job that used to be Chuck’s... smiles on her and lets her go on to Heaven.

Cas earns a reward from Heaven, too, from Naomi. She gives him Michael’s location, which she suddenly seems to know. Which brings me back to everything I’ve written in this rewatch about Michael just being an irritating symptom of Chuck’s influence over their lives, intentionally flimsy and there only to serve Chuck’s narrative, manipulating his favorite characters into making these same awful choices again.

(and a random note because it pleases the heck outta me... in the final scene, where TFW 2.0 is enjoying a meal in the kitchen together: THEY ALL HAVE BURGERS AND BEERS. EVEN CAS. This has been a strange progression of Cas vs Food since 14.01.

below a cut, because I am an obsessive person who paused 14.09 to compile all sorts of food-related nonsense from all of s14 here, and it’s a lot... >.>

14.01 Cas told Kipling the demon that he doesn’t eat or drink and even questioned why Kipling would bother with food. Cas orders water:

KIPLING: Castiel, you sure I can't get you anything hot and black? CASTIEL: Coffee has no effect on me. KIPLING: Hm. Me either. (sips his coffee) You know, not anymore, but it's like saltwater taffy or infants -- you know, I just like the taste.

but now? 14.08, Jack’s Heaven Memory revolves around food, too. They’re at a burger stand they stopped at while working the case in 13.06, the first case where Cas came back from the Empty, and therefore Jack’s happiest memory, we have to assume. We don’t know if Cas actually ate or drank anything in 13.06 (he didn’t have coffee with Dean, though, but the assumption is that Cas MADE the coffee for him), but he did explicitly mention to Jack that he doesn’t sleep at all. So he probably wouldn’t have bothered with eating or drinking anything at that point. Yet for Jack, part of the happiness of that particular memory WAS eating, the whole family together.

14.06: Not Cas, but JACK, as we know his body is beginning to suffer the loss of his grace, sits at the ktichen table making himself coffee, pouring tons of sugar into it because it doesn’t taste right to him anymore now that his grace is gone:

DEAN - Geez, what's up with the sugar? JACK - Well, without my powers everything tastes different so, I can't get this how I like it.

I’m pointing this out for two reasons: Jack and his relationship with food serves as an inverse parallel to Cas’s here, but also it’s the first sign that something is wrong with him (which we learn by the end of the episode is catastrophically wrong when his coughing fits lead to him passing out). Coffee, specifically, has long been a direct metaphor for Cas and his relationship with humanity, going all the way back to 8.21 when he ordered coffee at every Biggersons he popped through while evading the angels, and explained to one waitress the history of humanity’s relationship with the drink-- you learned it from the goats. That’s literally my Cas vs His Own Humanity tag, and has been for years. So Jack feeling this disconnect from the coffee he used to enjoy-- and adding tons of sugar in the way we’ve seen angels like Ishim do before (considering we’ll be reminded of Lily Sunder two episodes later) feels like the first portent of Jack’s internal collapse.

In this episode, Dean also orders pie for Jack, telling him “pie is important.” At the end of the episode, Dean and Jack again sit at the kitchen table, Jack drinking his coffee with way too much sugar, Dean with some whiskey:

and then Jack collapses.

14.07: Dean and Jack’s father-son bonding road trip involves burgers, and after Jack falls ill, Dean brings him a sandwich and a glass of milk that Jack never even gets to eat.

14.08: After Jack’s been resurrected with Lily’s soul magic, we have the family dinner mentioned above. And Jack is the ONLY one we see eating his burger, despite all four of them having the same food on their plates. Everyone else is just watching HIM enjoy his meal, because they’re just happy that Jack is back and supposedly “cured” of his imbalance that sickened him in the first place, and his enjoyment of his food serves as a visible example of that fact.

14.09: Crunch Cookie Crunch. Sugary cereal that Jack is apparently sneaking behind Sam’s back, alone in the darkened kitchen in the middle of the night. At least he’s eating? But during this scene, while talking with Cas about the deal Cas made with the Empty in 14.08... Cas not only eats some of the cereal himself, we learn that he took the decoder ring prize from the box and decoded the secret message. Cas... has eaten some of the cereal in the past. Alone, without witnesses. And taken the prize inside. While having a conversation about keeping Cas’s secret. Cookietacular. (and further tying Jack’s experiences with food to Cas’s)

interesting side note, but since I’m still playing 14.09 in the background while I type this, here we see Ketch again-- the guy resurrected for nothing more than plot device purposes-- again functioning as an entry point to another narrative rabbit hole, i.e. something that initially seems like a success but becomes an abject failure for Plot Reasons. He has found the Yeet Egg, but it’s halfway around the world where it’s of no use to any of them. And as he tells them this, he’s sitting in a cafe sipping a tiny cup of coffee. This is how Michael gets hold of and destroys one of the two remaining weapons they had against him-- he snatches it out of the U.S. Mail. Two of Chuck’s little symptoms acting up and playing their roles, forcing the narrative to do what he needs it to do.

14.13: While Dean and Sam share a family dinner with their parents, knowing it will be their last because they plan to put everything to rights, Cas from the past who never broke ranks with the angels is brought to a pizza joint by Zachariah, walking over empty burger wrappers in the alley on their way there, where he threatens to kill the inhabitants if they don’t tell them what they need to know. I mean... worst case scenario for the Pizza Man and Babysitter trope, right?

14.14: An episode that forces A LOT of focus onto food-- both through the MotW as a gourmet chef preparing his victims, as well as through Jack, Cas, Dean, and Sam eating:

The entire cold open is devoted to watching the gorgon prepare his food-- chopping onions, sauteing things, dancing around a fancy kitchen, and yet having to flee before he can enjoy his meal.

Jack coughs while standing at the counter, and blames “pepper” in the food for it, insisting he’s not dying (spoiler alert: he is actually dying and knows this, yet lies about it to everyone), immediately before Rowena reminds us, “Everything means something.”

Cas, Dean, and Jack sit at a diner drinking coffee. But... only Dean and Jack have mugs in front of them. Not Cas. And Dean’s the only one who actually drinks.

Castiel: What you're doing, even just sitting here and having a cup of coffee, is a Herculean feat. I can't imagine the willpower it's taking to keep Michael imprisoned.

And then later in the episode, Jack... eats Michael. He burns up what’s left of his own soul to cook it up, too. Gourmet cannibalism at its best. Nom.

14.15: In an episode where Sam and Cas are faced with a series of food-related red herrings ranging from milkshakes to tiny coffee cups to pot roast to martinis, Dean and Jack have several interactions with food that all mean something more in the narrative itself: from the Angel Food/Devil’s Food cake test, to Jack unable to find something the Gorgon’s snake will eat, to the cup of coffee Donatello serves Jack in a huge mug and uses as a prop in his explanation of how he manages to do the right thing even without a soul to guide him, and what it feels like to him to be soulless.

14.16: Jack is put in charge of doing the grocery shopping, because Dean thought that was a safe activity for him. He buys the food, but then all the other terrible things happen... and he doesn’t eat any of it himself. And despite beer being on the list TWICE, that’s the one thing he fails to buy.

14.17: Back to Cas vs Coffee, and a waffle, waiting for Anael in the diner. He’s already ordered himself the waffle and coffee, and while Anael rejects a cup of coffee from the waitress, Cas orders ANOTHER. Unfortunately it’s never delivered to him (that we see), but he did order it, which means he’s already drunk his first cup. He ordered a refill. (he didn’t eat the waffle).

but also, back in the bunker as Dean sets up Mousetrap for family game night, Mary and Jack prepare a TON of snack foods. Jack makes popcorn, that Dean once made for Cas back in 8.22. Which again reminds me of our ridiculous crack theory from early s9 that popcorn had some sort of magical properties to weaken angels after Hannah is thrown into a rack of popcorn by Adina and is unable to fight back afterward. lol at the theory, but popcorn was also directly involved in Bobby’s final memory of Sam and Dean as they debated movie-watching snack foods, so it’s directly connected to death and humanity both. And Cas eats it. but back to 14.17...

They never get to eat all those snacks, because Sam never returns with the pizza he was supposed to be picking up, and they receive the emergency call from Donatello instead. Things go incredibly sideways from there.

(note that I might add to this as I finish rewatching the season, since I’m still on 14.09 and the rest is just from memory after that point-- hence putting it all under a read more cut)

#spn 14.08 #spn 14.09 #spiders georg of the tnt loop #you learned it from the goats #s14 hellatus rewatch #if you say 'mysterious ways' so help me i will kick your ass #jack nougat winchester #the waffle masterpost #spn 14.01 #spn 14.06 #spn 14.07 #spn 14.13 #spn 14.14 #spn 14.15 #spn 14.16 #spn 14.17

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newyorkgalblog-blog · 5 years

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Here’s Why I Don’t Let My Disability Get Me Down

Ever since I (admittedly) watched the Netflix series, 13 Reasons Why, I started to evaluate my life a bit. Side note: it was indeed not the smartest idea to watch the show’s second season while on vacation. Don’t ask me why I watched it then, because I honestly don’t know.

But, anyways, the show made me think of 13 reasons to want to live. My life is significantly influenced by my physical disability, cerebral palsy (CP for short).

Complications from my birth caused my CP. My mom suffered from an amniotic fluid embolism, which caused to seize during labor and ultimately killed her. Doctors performed a C-section to get me out of her. I didn’t receive enough oxygen during my first few minutes of life, which caused damaged to my brain. CP affects each person differently, and for me, it affects my motor skills, mobility, and speech. To be specific, I have spastic quad CP, which means it affects all four of my limbs. But, I have relatively good control of my limbs—the main issue is that my muscles and tendons get tight and stiff.

Most people with CP also have cognitive problems, but that’s not the case with me. I use a motorized chair for traveling long distances, although I can walk without any assistance or devices. There’s honestly nothing I can’t do; it just takes me a little more time than the average person.

When strangers look at me, most of them pity me. They believe that being in a wheelchair, especially as a young person, is the worst thing ever as if it’s a life sentence. However, often I pity them. CP allows me to see life from a different perspective, and it has taught me to appreciate the small things in life. I feel like I have a greater appreciation and love for life because of the life lessons CP teaches me on a daily basis.

Here are 13 reasons why I never, ever let my CP get me down…

1. Just like my race and gender, my disability is a part of my identity.

I honestly couldn’t imagine life without cerebral palsy. It is a facet of my identity that has shaped me into the person I am today. I don’t think I’d have as much drive, empathy, and appreciation as I do now if I hadn’t grown up with a disability. Just like I’ve gone through life as a female, an Asian-American, a daughter of immigrants, and a sister, living with a disability has shaped my life in the same way my other identities have. I would fundamentally not be the same person I am today if I didn’t have CP.

2. Having a disability often helps me find out who my real friends are relatively quick.

I’ve been learning this lesson ever since I was in middle school. Generally speaking, people are afraid of intolerable of difference. That’s why the various -isms exist (i.e., sexism, racism, ableism). And, I’ve been “friends,” loosely labeling, with people who ended up not accepting my disability and the hassles it comes with. So, from various experiences, I’ve developed a knack for recognizing the friends who are in it for the long run. I cannot adequately express my tremendous gratitude for my real friends who accept me as I am.

3. I am quicker to smile on a sunny day.

I’m not that much of an optimistic person, but I’m not that pessimistic either. I’m very much aware that anything can go wrong at any time. Life has thrown me many curveballs, but nothing will bring me down. I tend to hold onto things that bring me joy, like a sunny day, as long as possible and cherish every moment I have with them. I’m always aware of the fact that nothing stays good forever, so I try to live in the moment.

Image Credit: Nadia Naomi

4. I owe it to my birth-mom to live my best life.

Ultimately, my mother sacrificed her life for me, in the most literal sense. Instead of negatively associating my cerebral palsy to her death, I see the obstacles that I face as her way of teaching me valuable life lessons that no one else could teach me and keeping me grounded on my two left feet. I owe it to her to live the fullest life that I possibly can.

5. My CP gives me the freedom to use my creativity to the fullest.

The world, in its physicality, wasn’t made for people with physical disabilities. Even since the Americans with Disabilities Act passed, the country has been making progress in modifying more places to be accessible, but those improvements have been coming slow. So, often I need to think of creative ways to get myself and my chair to places. Also, I need to brainstorm different methods to do specific tasks, like tying my shoes and unscrewing a corkscrew.

6. I don’t take life for granted.

You probably can sense this by now. I cannot afford to take anything for granted. I am very much aware of the fact that my life is unpredictable, as it had been even at the time of my birth. My CP has not been progressive but like for anyone, bodies age. And, it has been known that for people with physical disabilities, bodies age at an exponentially faster rate than those of non-disabled people. So that’s why I’ve learned to appreciate the things I can do now.

7. I focus on my many abilities, not the ONE disability I have.

There’s nothing I absolutely cannot do. And I never understood the point of just focusing on my one disability. In fact, my CP is the aspect of my life that I think about the least. I do not let my CP define me or prevent me from doing anything I set my mind to undertake. I run 10-mile charity runs, bake and cook pretty good food, take care of my little sister, go grocery shopping, travel solo to new places, go on any and every rollercoaster, etc.

Image Credit: Dollar Photo Club

8. CP has made me fearless.

Some folks might equate my fearlessness to being an adrenaline junkie, but I genuinely love living on the edge. To be quite honest, living in NYC in a wheelchair isn’t the safest thing. I didn’t know that I could pop a wheelie with my wheelchair until I’ve gone through the streets of this city, where there are many potholes and cobblestones. But, over the years, I’ve learned a safer way to pop a wheelie. Since I’ve already bungee-jumped, next on my list is to go skydiving (okay, maybe I am an adrenaline junkie)!

If I were a fearful person, then I’d probably never go outside, especially since there are so many things that could go wrong. For example, I could be stranded on a subway platform because the elevator is out of service. However, by now I believe in my ability to get out of any situation that may come my way.

9. I make a lot of light-hearted jokes about the circumstances that CP puts me in.

I can walk independently without any assistance or walker. Since some people have no idea that I could walk, they are shocked when they see me out of my chair. It used to bug me that people treated it as if a miracle had happened when they saw me out of my chair for the first time. But, now I treat it as an inside joke; I go away with it. I also have a speech impediment, and some of my friends repeat the thing that they think I said, but they know it’s not what I said. For example, I’d say, “I love Reeses Pieces,” but a friend might hear it as “I love Ray’s penis.” And, then we laugh about how off she was. But, you need to be pretty close to me to do that without it seeming like you’re offending me.

10. My independence is the gift from life that I appreciate the most.

Over the years, independence became a big part of my identity and personhood. It reinforced the belief that I can do anything and everything I want — some things need little adjustments. As a teenager, I didn’t know that living in an NYC apartment alone with a legit career, let alone do everything for myself, was a possibility for me. At times, I need to do a reality check to make sure this is happening, and it’s not just a dream!

Image Credit: Nadia Naomi

11. My intellect often compensates for my lack of physical ability.

Not everyone has an Ivy League degree, let alone two Ivy League degrees. Ever since I was young, I genuinely liked school. Since I couldn’t play sports or move as freely as my peers could, I made school my game, and it was a game I was good at. My intellect and mind saw no limits, and I used the fact that studying and learning were easy for me, to my advantage. I became the first person in my family to earn a master’s degree.

12. I make people see my other characteristics before they see my wheelchair/disability.

The more you get to know me, the more it seems like my disability/wheelchair disappears. You get to see me as a human being, and not a “sick creature.” But, for starters, I put effort into my appearance and personality when I’m out and about. I’ve always had a thing for fashion, so I use that when I’m putting together my outfits. My style is an extension of my personality — bold, confident, and friendly. I want to demystify the notion that people with disabilities are sad/mad, pitiful, and a charity.

13. I have the knowledge and resources to make the world a better place for the next person who is in my shoes (or should I say ‘wheels’?).

I am aware that I am at a position of privilege, even as a woman of color with a disability. For starters, I am a natural-born citizen of America, a country that offers opportunities for people with disabilities. If I were born in my family’s motherland, South Korea, I probably would not have gotten this far in life. Also, two Ivy League degrees open doors to opportunities and networks that are not available to everyone. So, I want to use all the resources and skills I have to make the world more disability-friendly, both in terms of societal and physicality.

Original source: https://nygal.com/heres-why-i-dont-let-my-disability-get-me-down/

#Mental health #Disability

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