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ghostcat3000 · 3 years

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SKAM season 3 talkback series: episode 5, “Samme tid et helt annet sted”

The SKAM season 3 rewatch talkback series was done in conjunction with a first-time watch for a small group of newbies. I talked to a cross-section of fans about each episode so our newbies could get a varied taste of what the SKAM fandom was about.

Talk back with the talented @nofeartina (also nofeartina on AO3)

SKAM 3.5: Samme tid et helt annet sted conducted on 9, November 2019

@ghostcat3000: Hello, hello!

@nofeartina: Hi! :smile:

Ghostcat: Thank you for coming by today and talking to me about episode 3.5.

nofeartina: My favorite episode!

Ghostcat: “Samme tid et helt annet sted.”

nofeartina: Happy sigh.

Ghostcat: I stared at that for a long time to make sure I spelled it right.

nofeartina: Hahahaha. Well, I can't spell Norwegian so.... xD

Ghostcat: I'm going to mix things up a little and start off by asking you how did you start watching SKAM?

nofeartina: Well, Skam was really known here in Denmark after season 2 and it seemed like everybody was watching (except me). And then season 3 kinda exploded and I thought "well, might as well". xD So I binged seasons 1 and 2 and then came up to speed with season 3 when there were two or three episodes left. Exciting and nerve wracking!

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha, oh boy, that's a lot to pack in!

nofeartina: It was!! But I was SO invested. Ha ha ha!

Ghostcat: So you started watching in real time right at the end of the season! That must have been an experience.

nofeartina: Yes!

Ghostcat: Were you an Isak fan from the start or was it his season that hooked you?

nofeartina: I felt like I was constantly trying not to get spoiled when there were clips. I was very busy with work at the time, so there was a lot of sneaking to the bathroom.

Ghostcat: Oh my God, I feel you. “I just need to check something...'scuse me.” (anxiously checks phone for updates)

nofeartina: Exactly! Ha ha ha. Since I watched chronologically, I was very hooked by Eva's story, originally, really hated William and Noora together, so I was a bit "let's see how good s3 really is" when I started it. Everybody was talking about Isak and Even so I wanted to know what the fuss was about.

Ghostcat: Really? I don't know very much about SKAM's reception in Denmark other than: the whole adorable Antichrist conversation (and that is the only time that film and the word “adorable” will be in the same sentence) and the fact that there is a play version of SKAM that was done there.

nofeartina: Ha ha ha. It was so popular in Denmark.

Ghostcat: Huh.

nofeartina: The play is the Danish remake. :smile:

Ghostcat: Nice one, Danes. That's one way to Geoblock.

nofeartina: Ha ha ha, yes. Very efficient. xD

Ghostcat: Scandinavian efficiency at its finest and most innovative.

nofeartina: Absolutely.

Ghostcat: Did you hear about it from friends, or just online? Or was there actual mainstream coverage?

nofeartina: It was everywhere. The news talked about Noora's talk to Nikolai, it was in the papers, it was talked about over coffee at work. EVERYWHERE.

Ghostcat: WOW.

nofeartina: And tumblr was stock-full of gifs of these two dudes chilling and it looked nice. :smile:

Ghostcat: And chill they do. Let's jump right into it. Where were you when that first shot popped up? And did you scream? Because I did and I was in public. I need to clarify that I'm a grown-ass adult so...that happened.

nofeartina: Ha ha ha, I was sitting on my couch in front of the TV and I remember just sitting there smiling and going "it's so soft!!!" But as I watched it as an episode that quickly went downhill...

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha, that's EXACTLY what one of our newbies said. “IT'S SO SOFT.”

nofeartina: AND TENDER. They're just cuddling?? And talking??

Ghostcat: Yes.

nofeartina: And kissing a bit??

Ghostcat: It blew my mind a little bit.

nofeartina: Same. I've never really seen two dudes do that on TV.

Ghostcat: I was watching it on the bus because I couldn't wait to get home.

@modestytreehouse: Softest clip ever. :heart_eyes: :sob: :heart_eyes:

nofeartina: I loved them so much for doing that. For BEING that.

Ghostcat: And I covered the screen with my hand because it was SO MUCH.

nofeartina: Ha ha ha ha, awwww. It was!!! Grumpy Isak who talks about listening to cool rap and never letting anyone in, and then that.

Ghostcat: It was that same feeling of reading fic in public and hitting a super emotional character moment and you have to look up, look around and take in everyone just living their lives while you have all-caps FEELINGS.

nofeartina: YES. You have to just sit there and breathe for a while.

Ghostcat: That is definitely the first time we see Isak talk so much about himself not about what's happening with someone else or his part in it.

nofeartina: Yes. He's letting Even in.

Ghostcat: Just talking excitedly about ALT! And Even too, we're getting closer to him as well, going past the "cool guy" and finding out more about him. What did you think of Even at that point in time?

nofeartina: I thought he was still cool. Ha ha ha.

Ghostcat: “Blah blah blah, cool story.”

nofeartina: I def saw this as a declaration. That Sonja was just a technicality now. "I'll make a movie about you."

Ghostcat: Sonja―who is still very present in this scene as a near-constant buzz.

nofeartina: Yes. Even's phone keeps ringing.

Ghostcat: All that bliss and buzz, buzz, buzz.

nofeartina: Yeah and Eskild banging on the door. Real life trying to seep through the bliss.

Ghostcat: I remember thinking at the time, omg, now Isak's become Eva.

nofeartina: With the cheating?

Ghostcat: Not so much cheating as such...and this is going to sound like semantics but that feeling of “It Should Be You and Me So Nothing Else Matters.”

nofeartina: Oh yeah. They definitely have that. Even though it DOES matter.

Ghostcat: Because we've seen what friendship really means to Eva at this point and her choice to pursue Jonas deepens a bit with distance It freaked me out because yes, like you say, it does matter and there's the buzz.

nofeartina: Yeah.

Ghostcat: And Eskild who is a kinder distraction.

nofeartina: Honestly, I was so engrossed in their bliss that I kinda went "ugh, Sonja."

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha. GO AWAY, SONJA.

nofeartina: Exactly! xD LET THEM BE. THEY'RE CUDDLING.

Ghostcat: I mean, he left her in someone's apartment and took off with the host.

nofeartina: They were complete scumbags the way they just ditched the girls. No wonder they were mad.

Ghostcat: And YET.

nofeartina: YET.

Ghostcat: I'm like, same.

nofeartina: ....you just want them to cuddle.

Ghostcat: “Get in your hoodies!” This was the first time we'd gotten a little bit of backstory in how Isak wound up in the Kollektiv. In my first watch, I found it a bit abrupt that Isak was just living there, upgraded from refugee status in the basement. In retrospect, I respect that "show, don’t tell" approach that SKAM often takes because you can have a moment like this where Even is the one to ask for us.

nofeartina: Yes, that's so great! And we've kinda forgotten we were curious about that until Even asks.

Ghostcat: Yeah, we forgot and just accepted that was the new reality Isak lives with Eskild and Linn and it's as if he's always been there.

nofeartina: Of course he lives there! xD

Ghostcat: So our boy and his inexplicable abs wake up the next day to no Even but a lovely note/picture that name checks the title.

nofeartina: Yeah, that drawing. And he checks his phone, and then wants to check outside his room. He clearly didn't expect Even to not be there.

Ghostcat: It's a subtle move to go from the hoodie make-outs to having him wake up in his boxers. Me the first time: :eyes:

nofeartina: Yeah, they're clearly indicating that they went past making out in hoodies on top of the bed, but we're never told how far...but far enough that Isak isn't expecting to wake up alone. AND THEN―Noora cleaning the walls??

Ghostcat: And there's Noora scrubbing walls and Eskild asking too many questions. I think Eskild says he met Even in the bathroom? And at the time, I was like, does everyone meet Even in the bathroom?

nofeartina: HA HA HA HA. Eskild is so CURIOUS!!!

Ghostcat: HE'S DYING TO KNOW but he's also trying to be SO CHILL about it.

nofeartina: Isak just wants to see Even, he's not ready for a third degree.

Ghostcat: Like Hey, who was that? So cool! This is all casual, my asking! which I LOVE because we've been primed to associate Eskild with a brash, direct approach.

nofeartina: "No pressure but tell me everything." Yeah, it's a good episode for Eskild-development.

Ghostcat: But he is consistently very careful with Isak, deliberately indirect...oh yes, we're going to get to that.

nofeartina: Very.

Ghostcat: And Isak returns to school and can't find Even anywhere...

nofeartina: Even though Even texted him "see you at school Monday."

Ghostcat: ...and Isak deftly tumbleweeds away from Emma

nofeartina: Yeah, that dive he does when he sees Emma. Subtle.

Ghostcat: I love Isak's moments of cartoonish panic. And there's the boy squad.

nofeartina: And the boy squad isn't having any of his "family dinner" excuses anymore.

Ghostcat: With very little, you feel him being on the outside of that conversation. There's distance between himself and his boys.

nofeartina: Yeah. they say "you had to be there" every time he asks what happened.

Ghostcat: Jonas's eyebrows are very disappointed.

nofeartina: Everything on Jonas is disappointed at this point.

Ghostcat: This is a question that's come up in the chat a bit but I've never really addressed―how sexually experienced do you think Isak is prior to Even? Because I think about what it must be like to walk up to his boys and hide this monumental thing.*

nofeartina: Honestly, I don't think he has any experience except kissing. Maybe a bit of groping.

Ghostcat: After having the weekend he did, with the person he was with, doing the things he (probably) did.

nofeartina: Yeah. But I also feel like he thinks they don't want to know. They use gay as a slur and has therefore made it very clear to him that he can't talk about that.

Ghostcat: There's an emotional dissonance to this because those are the experiences you want to talk about with your friends and yeah, he can't.

nofeartina: Absolutely. He's probably dying to tell someone.

Ghostcat: But there's no one.

nofeartina: No. :frowning: Poor Isak. But then he does―he tells Eskild.

Ghostcat: Yes, after sniffing his pillow and looking like an adorable puppy dog.

nofeartina: IT'S SO CUTE and he's all flushed and tired and looks so cute and I can't.

Ghostcat: He looks so cute and happy, it's infuriating

nofeartina: He's all OD'ed out. xD

Ghostcat: [Posts gif of Isak bashfully coming out to Eskild in the Pride clip.]

nofeartina: One of my absolute favorite Isak looks.

Ghostcat: Me too. So shiny-eyed and hopeful.

nofeartina: Look at that face fall. :sob: :sob:

Ghostcat: So happy to tell someone. And Eskild is incredible, so gentle in how he takes the news...even when Isak says "but I'm not gay."

nofeartina: Yes. That part's great.

Ghostcat: And Eskild pauses for a couple of seconds and goes..."of course." ESKILD! Who hilariously made fun of the dudes on Grindr who say they're straight.

nofeartina: He did. And then WHAM! So unpopular opinion: I'm not a fan of Eskild's pride-speech.

Ghostcat: Ooh, hot take. Tell us why.

nofeartina: The timing of it feels so horrible. Isak is putting words to his feelings for the FIRST TIME (and Eskild knows how huge this is) and Isak's not wrong when he says that he thinks it's hard to be his kind of gay in a world where every gay person in the media is portrayed as flamboyant. And I'm sure that Eskild knows gay guys like Isak, knows how they've struggled too, but he doesn't take that into account at all.

Ghostcat: Sure.

nofeartina: I get that the speech is important, and that Eskild should give it, just maybe not the first time Isak actually admits to having feelings for a boy to someone.

Ghostcat: I think Eskild cares for Isak but in that moment, Isak's words about Pride feel personal. So it's not about Isak as much as it is about anyone who has ever told Eskild that he is too flamboyant and offensive. I do love that scene, because even though it hurts, it's so clear to me how much they mean to one another. Which is wild to think of; an intense scene of disagreement that does nothing but underscore how much two friends care about each other...

nofeartina: No, that's true. But Isak is 17 and coming to terms with his sexuality, and then he's being told that he should embrace everything at once and shamed for not being able to. Eskild certainly sees so much of himself in Isak, and there's no doubt in my mind that he cares a great deal for him (just as Isak does him).

Ghostcat: But I see what you mean about the timing. It’s unfortunate.

nofeartina: I get why narratively, but maan, I hate the timing.

Ghostcat: Narratively, it's brilliant too in that it goes with all the reversals, BUT WE SKIPPED SOMETHING―Isak goes to P.E.! That's where the mystery abs come from! He has knees!

nofeartina: He plays football! xD

Ghostcat: And mysterious, missing Even creeps up in all his layers and lures him to the lockers.

nofeartina: In all his hipster layers, looking mighty fine.

Ghostcat: Which, same, I would also follow that yeti.

nofeartina: Who wouldn't? And Isak clearly doesn't know what to expect.

Ghostcat: He looks so young and out of his depth when he steps in that locker room.

nofeartina: Young with bags under his eyes and so nervous.

Ghostcat: No hat or hoodies to hide behind.

nofeartina: A complete contrast to Even.

Ghostcat: I feel like Even would be cool from being outside and Isak warm as hell from his 4.5 seconds of exercise. They are a study in contrasts.

nofeartina: They are.

Ghostcat: Take me to that moment when you first watched that scene. What was your take on it at the time? (Understanding that it probably changed later.)

nofeartina: I was relieved that Even had broken up with Sonja, delighted by Isak's soft, hesitant smile and the way he was asking if Even was okay with it.

Ghostcat: All trembly-voiced.

nofeartina: Yes!! He's so kind, he doesn't want to smile and be happy until he knows that Even isn't sad about it. Even though his heart is probably beating like crazy and he's ECSTATIC.

Ghostcat: Isak is a smart boy. This is the non-answer Even gives when Isak asks why he was not in school. It introduces a slight uncertainty. He's ecstatic but is Even? “Say you're ecstatic.”

nofeartina: Exactly.

Ghostcat: And more soft kissing.

nofeartina: “Be just as happy as me. Please.”

Ghostcat: Yes.

nofeartina: And Isak's trembling exhale after that first kiss??? Ded.

Ghostcat: UGH. DISGUSTING. HOW DARE HE. GROSS.

nofeartina: He just lets out all his nerves. Ha ha ha.

Ghostcat: Every time Isak is vulnerable, I scrunch up my face in fury. HOW DARE YOU MAKE FEEL THINGS, ISAK??

nofeartina: He's so open with Even.

Ghostcat: So open and bare.

nofeartina: And it makes my heart bleed for him. He's so ready for a change.

Ghostcat: Did Even's last line, which is translated into English in the past tense, read differently for you? How was that in Danish? Less ominous?

nofeartina: I watched with Norwegian subtitles and didn't notice anything off at all.

Ghostcat: Right, because it doesn't have the same tense suggestion in Norwegian. Everyone in the watch was like, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? I had to explain.

nofeartina: I was just relieved by the end of the clip that everything had worked out. :clown emoji:

Ghostcat: Yessssssssssss. (And I have to hurry now because we've gone past the time.)

nofeartina: Of course we have.

Ghostcat: Boy squad hang where Isak looks MISERABLE, keeps checking his phone, and is still on the outside of the conversation.

nofeartina: He's so OVER Magnus' lies and them shooting the shit and can they just not?

Ghostcat: -with Magnus's utter bullshit story. He's not even pretending to be part of it. NEBBETE all the way.

nofeartina: No, he doesn't want to listen to that crap. He's there because he has to be, because he owes them (and he said that he would bring the booze so… xD).

Ghostcat: RIGHT, he owes them (ugh).

nofeartina: He looks like he's drinking piss.

Ghostcat: I can taste that beer from his face.

nofeartina: Stale and warm.

Ghostcat: So they roll out into the night to Emma's party.

nofeartina: Emma. Of all people. He really doesn't want to go.

Ghostcat: Which, can I just say, how did Isak think he was going to avoid her at her own party??

nofeartina: And that shot of them walking there, him clearly in the back of the group, the other boys having fun.

Ghostcat: Isak has that intense mood flip when he sees that Even is inside.

nofeartina: LIKE ME.

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha.

nofeartina: I was like "EVEEEENNNNN!!!!!" GO TO HIM. TALK TO HIM. My pulse just exploded.

Ghostcat: Another moment where we ARE Isak.

nofeartina: YES.

Ghostcat: THERE HE IS! And Isak turns into an Even-seeking missile and gets himself inside.

nofeartina: And Even looks so fine, nothing's wrong, he's definitely not heartbroken.

Ghostcat: Laughing. He's laughing.

nofeartina: He is!!

Ghostcat: And he's so tall!

nofeartina: Why is he not more affected?

Ghostcat: He's laughing above the crowd!

nofeartina: He towers over everybody at that party.

Ghostcat: Doesn't even have the decency to be harder to spot.

nofeartina: No. Ugh. Or look rubbish. Ugh.

Ghostcat: What on earth did you think Isak was going to do? Or say?

nofeartina: I don't know! The main thing was just finding him!

Ghostcat: Did he even have a plan? Or was he just driven to go and get to him?

nofeartina: I don't think he did. He just wanted to go to him.

Ghostcat: Which is why he doesn't remember Emma.

nofeartina: EMMA. Angry Emma.

Ghostcat: Ole Emma.

nofeartina: Who outs him on the dance floor.

Ghostcat: What a place to be outed.

nofeartina: "It's 2016, Isak, get the fuck out of the closet."

Ghostcat: Brutal and insensitive but what does she care about sensitivity at this point when she made him a costume and he ditched her at his own house for a guy.

nofeartina: Yeah, he's just a drittsekk. That moment of spotting her is really just an OH NO moment.

Ghostcat: Hell hath no fury like a sixteen year old girl who is used to dating models and gets ditched by a drittsekk.

nofeartina: Once again, we're in Isak's shoes completely.

Ghostcat: I know it's a season full of record scratch moments but OH SHIT.

nofeartina: It is! Especially this episode because THEN!!

Ghostcat: and also me screaming RUN.

nofeartina: Isak turns around and there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ghostcat: Don't look, Isak DON'T.

nofeartina: What does he see????

Ghostcat: LOOK.

nofeartina: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Ghostcat: Ha ha ha ha.

nofeartina: What is happening??????? THEY WERE OVER.

Ghostcat: I don't know what I expected. I mean, I went oh shit! the first time Even introduced Sonja.

nofeartina: My heart stopped for a few seconds, my hand clutched my chest dramatically.

Ghostcat: Here I was, PLAYED AGAIN, just like Isak.

nofeartina: Right!! And it's so horrible!!

Ghostcat: My oh shit! the second time was like that basketball player shaking his head meme. Should have seen that coming. should have known, cue the 'Ye.

nofeartina: :sob: :sob: And THEN Mahdi teasing him outside the party. Could he not?

Ghostcat: no idea

nofeartina: Isak's heart has just been broken And Isak turns violent

Ghostcat: And Isak about to throw the fuck down.

nofeartina: Which he doesn't normally.

Ghostcat: BITCH I'M BACK FROM MY COMA. screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeech

nofeartina: THE WAY THAT IS SHOT.

Ghostcat: Those brilliant blackouts.

nofeartina: With the pauses.

Ghostcat: Going to black.

nofeartina: I was crying!!!!!

Ghostcat: And staying on his back.

nofeartina: Kicking the bushes.

Ghostcat: I have so much respect for Andem for staying on his back.

nofeartina: YES.

Ghostcat: ...and not shooting his face.

nofeartina: Tarjei is such a great actor, he doesn't need more than that.

Ghostcat: -because it feels like we're chasing after him...

nofeartina: And the small snippets of sound coming through the music-

Ghostcat: ...just as bewildered and disappointed.

nofeartina: -him screaming.

Ghostcat: We can't help him.

nofeartina: Him sobbing at the end. It's horrible (good).

Ghostcat: We're absolutely with him, but there's nothing we can do.

nofeartina: No! We're just feeling everything he is.

Ghostcat: Oh yeah, it's a brilliant use of POV.

nofeartina: The culmination of a shit week where everything that could go wrong did.

Ghostcat: His season, I feel, has a strong Isak POV but also a very strong AUDIENCE POV―which sounds redundant.

nofeartina: Ha ha ha.

Ghostcat: Obviously, we have POV.

nofeartina: But it's true. We're right there with Isak the entire way.

Ghostcat: There's a complicity that we have with everything that's happening. Chasing after Isak in that moment feels like running after a friend.

nofeartina: Yes! He was just so alone in the world.

Ghostcat: Following our tradition of guests having a question for our upcoming episode ambassadors, here is @hakkepippern’s question for you: “Did you see the social media/texts before or after the episode and did the vibe of the episode change when you did?”

nofeartina: After the episode. I rewatched the season after it was done with all the extras afterwards and I def think it made an impact, like deepened my experience of the season, but I don't remember it changing the vibe of the episode for me. Thanks for your question. :heart:

hakkepippern:: Thank you :heart: I see what you mean by making an impact instead of changing the vibe. I just love how forward Isak is that Sunday texting Pick up your phone to Even and how at ease he is with the janitor on the OD-day. But I guess that shines through in the episode as well.

nofeartina: God, I'm so happy I didn't have to live through the hiatus after this clip.

Ghostcat: We were supposed to have a hiatus but the watchers nixed it.

nofeartina: Completely understandable.

Ghostcat: So we're barreling on to next week.

nofeartina: So did I. I had to watch the next episode right after. But this is the episode I've seen the most. I just love how it starts out so soft and ends in pain. Ha ha ha.

Ghostcat: Really takes us from a high to a low. Before I let you go...at this time, what did you think would come next? Where did you think Isak was headed? It's the midpoint of the season and it's a dramatically brilliant episode.

nofeartina: Well, since it was widely talked about I was pretty spoiled with what was gonna happen, so.

Ghostcat: HA HA HA. CHEATER. Well, then don't answer that then.

nofeartina: No, I can't without spoiling. Ha ha ha.

Ghostcat: Instead I'll leave the last comment to you. What do you love most about this episode?

nofeartina: That's a hard question.

Ghostcat: TOO MANY THINGS.

nofeartina: I love the softness of the beginning, how the music was used, because the way the music was used in the end made such an impact. I really am weak for how many things this episode made me feel. Still do.

Ghostcat: It makes one feel a LOT.

nofeartina: All over the place!

Ghostcat: Yes, the blush on Isak's cheeks in this episode is a big one for me.

nofeartina: Happy sigh.

Ghostcat: He has a shame blush on his face after his talk with Eskild too.

nofeartina: Yeah. :frowning:

Ghostcat: Not a bad actor, that one. Not shabby.

nofeartina: Ha ha, no. He's alright.

Ghostcat: Well, thank you so much, nofeartina for taking the time to chat with me about this wonderful episode!

nofeartina: You are so welcome! It was fun! :smile:

Ghostcat: Especially since we always seem to go over and I promised everyone it would be fifteen minutes. Oops.

nofeartina: Well, a lot happens in this episode! xD

*UPDATED ASTERISK - Ghostcat: A chat with @lightsandlostbells made me realize I need to clarify this point so that I’m not misunderstood. I don’t think that Even and Isak had full-on sex in this episode, BUT I do think they went past kissing into some heavy petting. This for many, isn’t particularly monumental or important information, but from a character perspective, particularly Isak, where we would have expected him to freak out a little and absolutely doesn’t, feels like a turning point. And I love the quiet, matter-of-fact way it’s handled here. We don’t need to see it. Just seeing Isak wake up in his boxers and being that much bolder with Even via text says everything.

We shall return next Wednesday to discuss SKAM episode 3.6: Escobar Season with the delightful @Delongpaw.

#SKAM #Isak Valtersen #Even Bech Næsheim #skams3rewatch2020 #SKAM season 3 talkback interviews #3.5 #Samme tid et helt annet sted #nofeartina #writer of Matryoshka doll-constructed fandom classic Alphabet Aerobics #what an episode!#posting early because ugh elections and WHY NOT

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thingwithfeathers · 3 years

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tag 9 people to learn more about their interests

tagged by: @enniomorricone :)

MUSIC

fave genre? indie/alternative rock, and pop but not really current pop more like 80s/90s.

fave artist? bastille, twenty one pilots, fleetwood mac, the clash, the smiths, abba, probably a lot more i can’t think of right now.

fave song? my joint favourite songs are ‘with or without you — u2′ and ‘landslide — fleetwood mac’

most listened song recently? 'song for zula — phosphorescent’ it’s become one of my favoure songs ever.

song currently stuck in your head? any abba song because i was listening to them a lot earlier.

5 fave lyrics?

“It’s a hell of a long way to fall just to learn to get up” — the mess, the naked and famous.

“But now it’s just another show / and you leave them laughing when you go / and if you care, don’t let them know / don’t give yourself away / i’ve looked at love from both sides now / from give and take and still somehow / it’s loves illusions that i recall / i really don’t know love at all.” — both sides now, joni mitchell (this entire song though! really hard to choose lyrically because it’s a masterpiece).

“See, honey, i saw love / you see it came to me / it put it’s face up to my face so i could see / yeah then i saw love, disfugure me / into something i am not recognising / see the cage, it called, i said come on in / i will not open myself up this way again / but my heart is wild and my bones are steel / and i could kill you with my bare hands if i was free.” — song for zula, phosphorescent.

"Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love? / can the child within my heart rise above? / can i sail through the changing ocean tides? / can i handle the seasons of my life? / well, i’ve been afraid of changing / ‘cause i’ve built my life around you / but time makes you bolder / even children get older / and i’m getting older too.” — landslide, fleetwood mac.

“And then you put your hand in mine / and pulled me back from things divine / stop looking up for heaven / waiting to be buried / and all their words for glory / they always sounded empty / when we’re looking up for heaven.” — bastille, glory.

BOOKS

fav book genre? just fiction in general. i’ve kind of grown out of young adult so i don’t really read a lot of that, and have been reading classics lately. just any books that make you really think and are written so beautifully that you can highlight quote after quote. i’ve also been reading a lot of non fiction spiritual books lately.

fav writer? recently, taylor jenkins reid. i’ve read two of her books and they’re incredibly gripping. love the simplicity and warmth of benjamin alire saenz as well, the care that ari & dante was written with. and also emily dickinson, especially her letters in particular to susan are just gorgeous.

fav book? aristotle & dante discover the secrets of the universe, wuthering heights, little women, a little life, and recently the seven husbands of evelyn hugo.

fav book series? i don’t really read book series, so the only thing coming to mind is harry potter which i only read for the first time about five years ago now.

comfort book? little women and aristotle & dante.

perfect book to read on a rainy day? any easy read, probably several i listed above.

fave characters? aristotle & dante, jo & beth march (little women), mina murray (dracula).

5 quotes from your fave books that you know by heart?

“You teach me now how cruel you’ve been — cruel and false. why did you despise me? why did you betray your own heart, cathy? i have not one word of comfort. you deserve this. you have killed yourself. yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you — they’ll damn you. you loved me — what right had you to leave me? what right — answer me — for the poor fancy you felt for linton? because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that god or satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. i have not broken your heart — you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. so much the worse for me that i am strong. do i want to live? what kind of living will it be when you — oh god! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?” — wuthering heights, emily bronte (i could choose so many from this book but this is the most underrated one in my opinion and deserves more recognition).

“I will love you forever, whatever happens. ‘til i die and after i die, and when i find my way out of the land of the dead i’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, ‘till i find you again. i’ll be looking for you, will, every moment, evert single moment. and when we do find each other again we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart. every atom of me and every atom of you... we’ll live in the birds and the flowers, and the dragonflies and pine trees, and in the clouds and in those little specks of light you see floating in sunbeams... and when they use our atoms to make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two, one of you and one of me, we’ll be joined so tight...” — his dark materials (amber spyglass), philip pullman. (don’t talk to me, this quote makes me actually ache)

“I wanted to tell them that i’d never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. until dante. i wanted to tell them that i never knew that people like dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren’t meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. i wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that i would never be the same, not ever. and that somehow it felt like it was dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. i wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. i wanted to tell them so many things and yet i didn’t have the words. so, i just stupidly repeated myself, “dante’s my friend.”” — aristotle & dante discover the secrets of the universe, benjamin alire saenz.

“There are many beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind.”— little women, louisa may alcott.

“And so i try to be kind to everything i see and in everything i see, i see him.”— a little life, hanya yanagihara.

hardcover or paperback (paperback for general reading and hardback for special editions!) | buy or rent | standalone novels or book series | ebook or physical copy | reading at night or during the day | reading at home or in nature (i love nature and want to be able to read outside but i cannot be in nature without being hypervigilent of bugs so wouldn’t be able to concentrate) | listening to music while reading or reading in silence | reading in order or reading the ending (i also used to read the last line of a book first for a long time but i started to piss myself off when it wasn’t vague enough) | reliable or unreliable narrator | realism or fantasy | one or multiple POVS | judging by the covers or by the summary (i can’t help it, i love pretty covers) | rereading or reading just once.

TV AND MOVIES

fave tv/movie genre? disaster/post apocalyptic, drama, sci-fi, documentary, occasional fantasy. i’m pretty on board with most things, other than horror but even that has some exceptions.

fave movie? titanic, shaun of the dead, little women (1994), eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, wuthering heights (2009 tv movie), portrait of a lady on fire, practical magic, the greatest showman, finding nemo, the grinch (2000).

comfort movie? finding nemo, little women (1994), shaun of the dead, all my favourite christmas movies which are too many to list.

fave tv show? friends, charmed, golden girls, gilmore girls, the walking dead, new girl. currently: 911.

most rewatched tv show? friends. i watch it almost every day and it would be impossible for me to count just how many times i’ve watched it from start to finish.

5 fave characters? all the friends on friends, piper halliwell (charmed), tara chambler (twd), glenn rhee (twd), maddie buckley (911).

tv shows or movies | short seasons (8-13 episodes) or full seasons (22 episodes or more) | one episode a week or binging (i’m conflicted because i miss the event of catching a show every week but at the same time once you binge watch you can’t go back) | one season or multiple seasons (but shows need to know when to stop) | one part or saga | half hour or one hour long episodes (depends on my mood) | subtitles on or off | rewatching or watching just once.

tagging: @bettyhofstadtdraper / @kubrickking / @koningen / @urispatty / @marmaladepotion / @mixye + anyone else that wants to do this, feel free to tag me to read :) !

#thank you for tagging me in this! it was really fun #i enjoyed reading your answers as well #:) <3 #enniomorricone #;

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abouthoundsandlittlebirds · 4 years

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What if...

So, I don’t want to get excited about something that has only 1% of chance of happening but as I was rewatching InuYasha I made some theories in my mind about Kagura and it seemed logical to me... First, let me explain the 3 most important facts that made me have this way of thinking: 1. When Kagura first shows in episode 39 of the anime, the wolves Youkais thought she was a human in first glance... We know that wolves and dogs are really good with their noses, so if she smelled like an Youkai, they would not need to see to guess what she is, right? 2. The InuGroup in the same episode thought Naraku was near because they smelled Naraku’s in Kagura (and Naraku’s is a Hanyo). But the smell of a Youkai, an Human or an Hanyo is quite different, even if they have a bond. When InuYasha first saw Kagome he thought she was Kikyou, but the smell that came from her was different from the Miko, even though he could sense the humanity in her. 3. When Kagura was dying, Sesshomaru couldn’t save her because Tenseiga wouldn’t work on her and he couldn’t even see those ‘imps’(I don’t know what they are called, actually) carrying her soul to the death land, and I didn’t pay so much attention in it in the first time because I was really sad with her death (I am still, that is why my mind went this way and made me post it at 4am). So here comes the theory I made up with those facts in hand: When I rewatched the episode about Sakasagami no Yura and related it to Kagura’s death episode I realized that PERHAPS the Wind Sorceress body was not her true form in the end... I mean, I know she needed her heart to be free and if her human body was not her true form, nothing could make her stay alongside with Naraku, right? But when she was created she had a full grown body (she wasn’t an adult, but yet she was in her latest teen) and the fact that she was created by an object could be a secret that Naraku kept (I will talk about it later). But then again, returning to the heart issue, we never saw a Naraku’s incarnation dying because he squished their heart out (human body can feel pain, but won’t die from it, if they have a true form that is an object. And only in the anime Kanna had her heart squished, not in the manga), but every incarnation that he created he made some improvements and the first incarnation of his was Kanna followed by Kagura, both created at the same time... and we can see that they have a personal object to be related... For example: Kanna had a mirror as her personal artifact and weapon, and Kanna died in the end because that monster that was her mirror was crashed, not because she was injuried in her human body (and again, in the manga I don’t remember Naraku ever holding her heart and giving it back to her). So both in anime and in manga, when Kagura died they focused in showing us one of the 2 feathers she had as an hair ornament and worked as a flying transport (the other one she gave to Kohaku to help him runaway) flying in the air after she was gone. When I first saw it, I sensed some artistic ‘good-bye’, but when I tied the knots, it looked more than an artistic thing. Naraku wanted to kill Kagura? Yes, a bunch of times. And he did it? No, he tortured her all those times and even in the end he did so (he could have just squished her heart or poisoned her heart when giving it back to her, but he never touched her heart, leaving it intact). I guess he formed a bond with her even when he clearly knew she was betraying him and this could be a reason that would allow him to kill her human body, but not her true form... It would be another way to impose suffering to her (and he was found of it) because she could take a REAL long time to have a walking body again (I like to think that even Youkais needs cultivation to grow power when they have an object as their true form). Also, both Yura and Kanna have their true form’s object as a magical item that could do things, and that can make Kagura’s feather has a valid sense in being her true form... Let’s talk about Naraku’s death now. When he died, Byakuya died along with him because their lives were connected. But Byakuya was the last incarnation that Naraku created and in every incarnation he did improvements. Kanna and Kagura were the first ones and their lives may not have been connected to Naraku’s life, being able to live even after his death... I can’t think straight right now and english is not my main language (sorry about the typos, guys), but I would LOVE to see what you guys think about it! I know that I am crazy, so no need to say the obvious hahahaha, but I want to know if you guys think that she is a Youkai or an Hanyo or if there is a remote possibily that she can still be alive! It’s been more than 15 years that I have a hole in my heart after reading/watching her death... She was my favorite japanese character of all times and even if I am a strong SessKagu supporter, just knowing that she is alive is enough for me, since I know that this ship can never happen (maybe 1% of chance aswell?)...

#inuyasha #kagura #naraku #sesskagu #youkai #sesshomaru #kanna #hanyo no yashahime #byakuya #yuraofthehair

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Top 10 Thanksgiving Episodes

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody! Time to eat a ton, pass out, and watch MST3K and all that. And since I already covered most of the general stuff about how diffrent this holiday is in my Loud House Review, and to reitarate to anyone having a big, 20 or so people crammed in a room thanksgiving this year

For the rest of us like all of the big three of Holidays, thanksgivings also the time for some classic episodes of television. Granted most shows stick to one, with some exceptions like friends, roseanne and new girl, but most make their one count. Thanksgiving may not be as big as the holidays it’s sandwitched in between, to the point christmas is slowly but surely trying to swallow it whole, but it’s still a time for family, fighting, and food that brings plenty of opprotunity for greatness and even with a smaller pool, I stiill had signifigant trouble narrowing down my list to 10. But I stand by what I got it wittled down to. This is my top 10 thanksgiving episodes! And for my regular readers, there’s a suprising lack of animation but i’m more than willing ot go outside that and now’s the right time, asi’m currently having a black friday sale with reviews marked down by two bucks to just 3 dollars for an episode of any tv show. Yes it’s a shameless plug but since when have I ever had shame? So with that in mind let’s chow down, it’s my top 10 thanksgiving episodes!

10. Pangs (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) Buffy is as a show I REALLY need to revisit. While lately, what with the abuse he did that we can’t get details on when making justice league or his you know cheating on his wife on and off over a decade, I’m not at all a fan of series creator Joss Whedon, Buffy itself is still a classic in my eyes.

The tale of a teenager given the role of the Slayer, a chosen female asskicker given moderate super powers and the duty to defend the world from vampires and other ghouls. The show dealt with the usual teen superhero stuff, ballancing asskicking with saving the world and arguably codified the genre, to the point I hold it at least partially responsible for the bigger wave of teen heroes in the 2000′s in animation and comics. The show had smart dialouge, metaphors, mythology and a rich, and vibrant cast. Sure some things haven’t aged well like an adult vampire dating a teenager or the really dated ways Willow’s sexuality were handled, as groundbreaking as it was, from barely letting her kiss her girlfriend or be shown being intimate iwth her, or just entirley shutting out the posiblity she’s bisexual. But a few age wrinkles aside the show is still good and I still need to rewatch it and that includes our number 10 pangs, one of hte most memorable and well done thanksgiving specials and one fo the shows more comedy moments. It’s thanksgiving, and Buffys mom’s going out of town, so she decides to hold thanksgiving at Giles place to bring her slowly drifting surrogate family together. Naturally given the way things usually go for our Slayer, she has a hard time of it as Willow chafes at celebrating colonolsim, Giles dosen’t get what the big fuss is about that or the meal being british, and Spike shows up looking for protection from season big bads the initiative, a secret military unit that’s chipped him so he can’t harm humans, so he has no way to eat and spends the mal tied to a chair. Oh and of course, a vengeful native american spriti from the chumash tribe has given Xander syphilis and killed a currator as revenge for his people’s suffering, so now Buffy has to fight a ghost bear if she want sa happy thanksgiving. Also Angel is back in town and being kind of a dick, but hey it leads to a good episode of his spinoff so whatever.

Pangs is just a fun episode, not only does it do well by not ignoring american colonalisim, but it just has a fun energy to it as Buffy desperately tries to have a good thanksgiving, Spike instnatly proves his worth as an addition to the gang both chemstiry and comedy wise, and we of course get this classic moment.

It had to fight it’s way onto the list, but pangs is a holiday dish worthy of sinking your fangs into.

9. The Dressing (Aqua Teen Hunger Force) Speaking of nutty fun thanksgiving episodes.. this one is simply that. I love Aqua Teen Hunger force.. even if like a lot of comedy shows it drooped in later seasons, it still has it’s classics earlier on and even later on has a few gems. But on the earlier on side we have their utterly bonkers and delightful thanksgiving episode “The Dressing”, a sequel to the Christmas Episode “The Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past from The Future”, which itself is an utter classic, but we’ll possibly get to that in december’s list.

The Aqua Teens are having Thanksgiving with Carl, whose naturally onlyt here for the free food and staying outside. it’s also days before or after, with black colored frito pie,a t urkey, and whatever else their broke selves could scrounge up. However, naturally, like Buffy a normal day for the Aqua Teens just isn’t complete without some weird shit happening, thanksgiving gets interrupted by the cybernetic ghost of Christmas past fromt he future, whose transformed himself into a turkey and wants to save their turkey so it can lead a rebellion in the bizzare hilarious distopian hellscape he comes from. This of course leads to him getting drunk, eating all their food and later showing up with a laser sock to murder carl after the episodes over. It’s just a fun time, a really funny episode and one of the teens more memorable outings. Not a lot to say here, it’s just really damn funny.

8. Arnold’s Thanksgiving (Hey Arnold!) Anoter classic I really need to revist but that more than earns his place here. Hey Arnold.. is easily one of the best animated shows ever. I say that with no hyperbole as it handled slice of life well while still getting dramatic when needed to, and is easily the gold standard for slice of life children’s cartoons to this day. And naturally it’s holiday specials were great, and I only r eally haven’t revisited them because they also hurt.. a lot. So unsuprisingly this one makes the list.

IT’s thanksgiving and given how chaotic things are for both Arnold and Helga’s families, our heroes are miserable. Arnold would understandably like just once to have thanksgiving on thanksgiving, his family instead doing fourth of july due to his grandmother being who she is. And Helga naturally is ignored and mistrteated as usual since her sisters home and her dad and alchoholic mother ignore her as usual even when she’s not around. What i’m saying is while Arnold’s issue is understandable, helga always wins a “whose got the shitter life” contest.

So the two flee to their teacher Mr Simmons, a character I genuinely loved and loved even more finding out he was gay as an adult, as he was a kind , supportive teacher who could be a bit softhearted but wasn’t afraid to step the fuck up when needed. But they find his thanksgiving isn’t much better, as his Mother and wont’ stop sniping at his boyfriend peter and clearly isn’t entirely comfortable with her son’s sexuality, his friend keeps snapping at peter and mooching off him, and his uncle.. well he’s just a loud asshole who wants turkey.. The kids naturally realize the meaning of the holiday, reconclie with their families who DID take genuine steps to make up for them being gone and missed them, all is well. It just shows nobody’s family is perfect, and is well done in that but also shows why thanksgiving has grown beyond it’s roots: It’s a day for families to get together and even if they may fight, recognize why they love one another. I also give the show balls for heavily imiplying a character is gay and not slapping a girlfriend on him or any of the usual bollocks: Simmons just very clearly is gay and it’s as transparent as the show could get at the time, with the show making it crystal clear years later with the revivial movie. Nice. We’ll have more servings of thanksgiving classics after the cut.

7. Slapsgiving (How I Met Your Mother) Oh How I Met Your Mother. You started out really good but boy did that go downhill fast and land in a nuclear inferno didn’t it? But I can bitch about the How I Met Your Mother Ending some other time, and probably will. In the show’s prime before they decided to stick with an ending no one wanted anymore, it was pretty great and while season 1′s also impressive Thanksgiving outing “Belly Full of Turkey” was considered, there was ultimately one slaptastic king when it came to Thanksgiving: Slapsgiving.

Naturally for this show Slapsgiving ties into the show’s suprisngly deep and rich lore: The season before this, Marshall and Barney made a “Slap Bet”, which is exactly what it says on the tin: A bet where the winner slaps the looser. And due to Barney prematurely slapping Marshall, Marshall got 5 penalty slaps to be dolled out whenever, one in that episode and another in a coda to another. For his next one though Marshall decided to outdo himself and set up a counter.. and it all comes down to thanskgiving. So we get a good ten minutes of Jason Siegel making meancing slap based refrences while NPH’s barney cowers in fear before Marshall’s wife lily pumps the breaks on the bet as comissoner.. only to reconsider when Barney makes the mistake of tormenting Marshall over it, resuling in the inevitible, and in THE thanksgiving song.

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Basically it’s what happen when you give three really funny people a subplot together. Magic happens. The subplot is not bad either as a pre-totallyinsufferabledouchebag Ted hooks up with Robin again over lingering feelings and thanksgiving prep and the two have to deal with that... though it’s mostly funny for Robin’s new boyfriend, who Future Ted acknowledges is barely older than them, but admits to remembering as decrept old man, which results in a 30 something’s dialouge coming out of a very old man and me laughing very hard. A simple joke but one that really works. Overall a slaptacular good time.

6. Two Turkeys (Brooklyn Nine-Nine)

NINE NINE BITCHES! I’m honestly shocked I haven’t talked about Brooklyn Nine Nine on here already, but it’s easily one of the best sitcoms in recent memory, if not of all time. It has one of the best ensemble casts, great jokes and timing, yet still ballances things out with a sense of realisim beneath the madness> It’s also noticable for holding it’s officers more accountable than most real world police departments, to the point all scripts that were written up for next season were thrown out post George Floyd. It’s truly a joy to watch.

So naturally they’ve had their share of Holiday episodes, with them easily having the best crop of halloween episodes since roseanne with their annual heists, and having some pretty damn memorable christmases, opening with this:

So naturally thanksgiving is no exception, with it’s last two being the best and it being a really hard choice wether to go with season 4′s “Detective Santiago” or this one. But as good as the other ep was.. this one inched it out for good reason.

The episode’s split into two equally good, equally hilarious plot lines. In the B-Plot, the 99′s Captain Raymond Holt, one of the best characters in sitcom history and gay icon, and his husband Kevin take their annual trip to get a pie for Holt’s families thanksgiving and come back with the well crafted pie, even if both prefer their food nice and bland. But the pie go missing and Captain Holt procedes to hilariously drill into each of the other members of the 99 and uncovering holes int their previous thanksgving stories with Rosa’s being suprisingly heartwarming (She’s going to a humilating minons on ice show with her family because they reconnected in jail.. setting up the equally awesome “Game Night” episode where she comes out.) and Boyle’s being utterly pathetic as you’d expect (Cooking his son mac and cheese because he’ll eat nothing else and declaring him a “basic bitch”). The solution however ends up being heartwarming as the culprit is actually Kevin, who hated the pie.. as did Raymond who suggests just taking the drive anyway because they enjoy the silent ride there and back every year. It may be boring to us.. but it’s preicious and really sweet all the same.. as it is hilarous when Kevin treats this as a big endugence and seems turned on by that. What i’m saying is these men are couple goals and Marc Evan Jakcson was awesome long before ducktlaes. The main plot is also great, as Jake and Amy, now engaged after this year’s halloween episode which is also , coincidentally, the series best, try to unite their families. It just goes about as well as you’d expect as Amy’s are type a control freaks, jake’s mom is a retired hippie school teacher and his dad is a human disaster area who has to be told to put on pants, cheated on his mom constantly, somehow got her back, and in general is barely functional on a good day. The families do bond breifly but things ineveitbly break down, hilarity and severed limbs insue and family comes together. IT’s just a funny, well done 20 mintues that’s also really damn sweet, with this plot ending with Amy’s dad accepting the chaos as that’s’ts what you do with family. Also jake naturally finds out he has a ton of step siblings as his dad was and still is a man whore. Happy Thanksgiving!

5. Bart Vs Thanksgiving (The SImpsons)

Let’s face it: if you follow my reviews at all you knew this was coming. While not one I go back to due to being an emotional kidney punch, i’d be doing this list a diservice if this classic wasn’t on there. In a nutshell, Bart starts a petty fight with Lisa over her centerpiece that ends with it in the fireplace, Bart sent to his room till he apologizes, and Bart seething insiting he did no wrong. It takes a visit to the homeless shelter after running away, and ending up on the news, to realize what an ass he’s been and one nightmarish dream sequence later, seriously why do you think I don’t revisit this one that often? This thing has traumatized me since I was a kid and unlike the slap song I will not be showing it to you, has a heartwarming reconcliation with his sister on the roof. It’s just a nice, sweet special that gets the holiday just right and i’d expect nothing less from Golden Age Simpsons.

4. A Deep Fried Korean Thanksgiving (Gilmore Girls) Another show I need to talk about more, Gilmore Girls is fucking awesome. The story of a woman who ran away pregnant at age 16 and built her own life for her daughter in the quirky town of stars hollow who finds herself reconnecting with her parents in present day against her will.. is really good stuff. Funny, heartfelt and really damn well acted with one hell of a cast, the show is part of me and I make no bones about that, so it’s big thanksgiving outing naturally belongs on here. The premise is simple: Rory and Loreli end up having to go to four diffrent thanksgivings, which even for big eaters like them is a massive task, each unique and entertaining. The main event of course is Suki’s, where everyone’s faviorite chef agreed to let her husband cook the turkey.. of course with the plan to sneak in mid cooking and add her own touches. This gets foiled when Jackson and his family decide to deep fry the thing.. probably in part because Jackson knows his wife well and knows what she was planning. Though over the night while our heroines are at their other meals, it devolves into them deepfrying everything they can get their hand son including a shoe, and Suki getting plastered to tolerate it. While not topping it the other meals and the sheer lunacy of four thanksigvings in one day, are still memorable: There’s the natural posh one at Richards and Emilys, the dour joyless one at The Kims where Mrs Kim forces the band to play the whole time and forces our heroines to eat food as joyless as Mrs. Kim, and Lukes for a nice round of Rory grappling with having PDA with her boyfirend Jess before resolving it at the end. Also dean’s a jackass. No one is suprised. Jess isn’t one at this stage in his character which is. Also Kirk adopts a cat that slowly pushes him out of his own house which works comedically becaus Sean Gunn is a national treasure. Overall a really good episode and if you have netflix and haven’t checked the series out, this is a good one to try out.

3. The Thanksgiving Special (Regular Show) I already talked about this one in my top 11 Regular Show episodes so i’ll try to be brief. In a nutshell Mordecai and Rigby destroy thanksgiving and genuinelly feeling bad about it, scramble to win a thanksgiving bird from a Thanksgiving Song Contest, going up against an all star super group comissioned by Donald Trump. Yes really. Meanwhile Muscle Man and High Five Ghost go to get sides and the rest of the park staff’s attemtps to get a turkey are thwarted by a bunch of thanksgiving reinactors who go unexplained in any way shape or form which given how rare that is for regular show, which usually has some sort of explination for the madness, just makes it funnier. It ends with a REALLY touching song, a fight on a blimp with outgoing president trump, and a truly heartwarming thanksgiving meal. All in all a nice special that combines the shows madcap nature with the genuine warm fuzzies of thanksgiving.

2. We Gather Together (Roseanne) Another series I need to talk about more.. and another series where one of the creators has turned out to be a terrible human being. Seriously Roseanne Barr is is a terible person, she deserved to be removed from her show, and while the Conner’s isn’t GREAT it’s still FAR better without her. That being said I will still stick up for the original as she wasn’t the only one involved (indeed the aformentioned Joss Whedon worked on the show breifly and Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman Paladino not only worked there but later adapted one of Roseanne’s insane antics, making all the writers wear caps with a number instead of referring to them by name , to Gilmore Girls.). Her being a bad person even then dosen’t change the fact that the show is sitcom gold, one of my faviorite shows, and a true classic. And this episode helps showcase WHY.

What makes this episode special, even among Roseanne episodes is it’s structure: While there are things going on it’s mostly a free floating day in the Families life and thus feels like your there with them through thanksgiving. It feels genuine, like past thanksgivings i’ve remembered: Everyone has their own stuff going on, they all eat, and there’s naturally a big blowup.. and one that eveyrone else ignores to eat which I can relate to. That authenticity really elevates the episode and is why I seek it out every year.

That’s not to say nothing happens, it just flows in and out like it would in a normal thanksgiving. Roseanne deals with her parents, a pre-abuser version of her dad and her overbearing nightmare of a mother beverly, and the inevetible blow up when Bev’s needling about Jackie’s life goes too far , prompting Jackie to reveal her new job as a police officer before bursting into tears, all to Roseanne’s annoyance. Rosie also moves them to a hotel despite an attempted guilt trip from her mom.

Speaking of Mom’s we see Dan’s for the only time before the later seasons and the utterly terrible last season, a professional career woman whose moved on well from her ex and brought her new boyfriend there. Ed, despite some comptemplation over it is firmly accepting and instead starts flirting with the Conner’s friend Crystal. Dan, being overprotective because of his Daddy Issues, but ed cals him out on it “Being lonely is a hell of a lot for two people to have in common, you woudln’t knwo anything abotu that son, and I pray to god you never do” A great caper to a fantastic episode.. one I thought was going to top the list... THOUGHT is the key word here...

1. Turkey in A Can (Bob’s Burgers) This one is. Bob’s Burgers is one of the best things to come out of the 2010′s and i’ve fallen way too far behind on it, so I can’t say if any thanksgivings after thankshoarding top this one.. what I can say is this one is the gold standard for thanksgiving episodes, and is filled with great stuffing.

Thanksgiving is Bob’s holiday. Being a chef he loves the chance to go all out, and really flex his muscles for his families when it comes to cooking up a storm, and it’s endearing when bob gets just as nuts as his family. But this year someone keeps flushing his turkeys down the toilet despite his best efforts, so while Louise hilariously tries to solve things to proe it wasn’t her (though it’s entirely fair they thought it was her consdering.. everything), while LInda, Gene and LInda’s flighty sister Gale try to write THE thanksgiving song. And while it’s no you just got slapped, damn if they didn’t succeed.

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Sailors in your mouth indeed. It leads to plenty of great jokes the best being the guy at the Deli Counter thinking Bob’s into him and bob not being sure how to respond, but being mildly recpetive. But the climax is what makes the episode as when Bob falls asleep we find his medication has been making him sleepwalk.. and thus put the turkey s int he toilet, as Tina’s desire to be at the Grown Up Table, itslef a REALLY funny runner as you’d expect, has him panicking internally and thus reliving her potty training. The episode ends with Bob letting her come to the adults table, and a rather heartwarming thanksgiving feast. All in all an excellent episode. It also leads to the chaos seen above whic hif htat’s not thanksgiving, I don’t know what is.

Have a happy thanksgiving and check out my black friday sale! Until then there’s always another rainbow!

#thanksgiving #top 10 #bob's burgers #gilmore girls #buffy the vampire slayer #aqua teen hunger force #hey arnold #how I met your mother #the simpsons #roseanne #regular show #brooklyn nine nine #brooklyn 99 #99

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autoplaysdigimon · 4 years

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Top Five Main Character List

#5 Gatomon

Idk man, if I’ve got any sort of Buttons in good characters it’s ones who defect to the Good Guys, and Gatomon filled that role pretty nicely. (also oh man am I excited for 02 for reasons that may or may not be related to this) Not only is there the whole thing about introducing a new character (or pair of characters!) into the group, therefore having a fresh pair of eyes on the situation and new inter-character interactions; there’s something fantastic about a character who gets to show both antagonist and protagonist shades to them.

Unfortunately, Gatomon didn’t really have time for much development after this all went down - she went from being a cool and interesting villain, to the star of an arc, to yet another Digimon in the pile of protagonists. Just another symptom of the large cast, I guess, but it was still disappointing. Even her voice acting was better as a villain - she had this kinda silky, purring inflection to it that she kinda lost as a main character.

Still, though, kitty cute :3

#4 Tentomon

Alright so I may or may not be cribbing off my favourite Digimon list for this buuuut

and also to be fair the Digimon who make this list might be some of my favourites because they were the best characters in the show but ANYWAY

Tentomon! I mean, come on, he’s an electric ladybug who’s also some kind of robotic insect thing??? He’s the perfect foil to Izzy, he gets some of the best lines that are just stupid jokes but they’re so dumb they’re hilarious, he’s got an interesting voice that seems to be somewhere between a stereotypical “insect voice” and a goofy robot but also without being artificially synthesised, Medabots style (which is also cool, but it’s neat that they didn’t for Tentomon, I think).

Also, his VA Jeff Nimoy was on the writing team for the dub, which is neat but also he’s one of the ones to blame for the Everything about the dub.

#3 Joe Kido

Man, I never expected to empathise with this dude as much as I ended up doing in this rewatch, but hey! Dude’s got a good head on his shoulders, he’s got that Anxiety Relatable Feels, he’s a nervous wreck and he’s also got a surprising amount of great lines. I never appreciated him as a kid, but as an adult... hoo boy. Also his partner is a little seal man and that’s just :3

I’ve come to the conclusion that, if I were to go to the Digital World myself like these kids did, I’d react somewhere between Joe and Mimi. Nooo nothing’s clean enough and I’m tired and hungry and shouldn’t we at least have some cover while we sleep in case we’re attacked and it’s too hot here and we’re all gonna die and and and...

And then I’m booted off the island.

#2 Mimi Tachikawa

Oh hey, speaking of which!

Despite the dub team’s tendency to give her the most shallow, stereotypical lines in the show, Mimi’s fantastic. She’s kind of a boss-ass bitch and I can’t help but respect that, and also pink cowboy aesthetic??? YES PLEASE.

There was also that phase I went through as a kid where I rejected traditional femininity, and being a Sora fan over Mimi was definitely part of that. Nowadays I don’t really have any strong feelings about Sora one way or another, but I’ve really grown to like Mimi. Is this just me over-correcting from my kid views? Who knows! She’s got a pink cowboy hat!

#1 Palmon

SHE’S A LITTLE FLOWER LADY AND SHE’S PRECIOUS.

Her voice acting was some of my favourite in the series so far, having little voice cracks and just generally being so full of character. She’s an amazing foil to Mimi, not only in occasionally challenging her views and ideals but going along with them at the same time, when they’re not actively harmful. And then that one time when they were. Plus her in that little dress that one time! And wearing Mimi’s hat??? Truly the fashion icon we need in these trying times.

Honourable Mentions

Gabumon and Matt Ishida - They were pretty cool, I liked their whole Friendship thing (especially the Inspiring Crest Emotion being inspired by the Digimon partner and not one of the other kids for once!) but I couldn’t really get behind their reasoning for attacking Tai and going off on their own.

Gomamon - his face goes :3 and that makes me go :3

TK Takaishi - For a little kid, he sure steps the fuck up when nobody else will, huh? There’s something endearing and naive about the youngest one, knowing the least about the situation and the world at large, adapting the best because he’s just not as experienced in the Real World as the other kids, so he’s got less of a frame of reference to place it in. Actually, this all applies to Kari Kamiya as well.

Dishonourable Mentions

Hoo boy, this is gonna be controversial.

Tai Kamiya.

I don’t hate the guy, really. I’ve got his Funko Pop* and everything! But he’s got that Anime Protagonist Syndrome down pat, including centering his own problems over all others, taking the lead when nobody really asked him to, and being kind of a dick. I’ve definitely touched on that before, but come on, Tai, punching is not the solution to all your problems. At least he (sometimes) learns his lesson about it, like with the Skullgreymon thing.

I’ve really got nothing against Agumon either, I like his voice acting as well. But he just wasn’t as interesting to me as the others were, or as much as some of his expies in the future will be.

Hint. Hint.

*I’ve also got Spyro and Sparx, Gay Batman, and Tiabeanie in a wedding dress :)

#digimon #digimon anime #digimon adventure #auto plays digimon #auto watches digimon adventure #character analysis

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supergay-supergirl · 4 years

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why supergirl season 5 was actually good: sort of an essay

This has been sitting in my sticky notes for months and I figured now that I have a Supergirl blog, I can actually post it.

People love hating on Supergirl Season 5. And I get it. I admit that it had a lot of problems. But I did like the season overall, and there's enough out there about Season 5’s problems, so here is a post about some things that were great about Season 5!

1. Lena’s Arc

Apparently everyone hates how this was executed, but I really liked it. I like how 5A allows her to scheme and lie and altogether explore the darker (Luthor) side of herself, because only after experiencing what she’s been afraid of becoming can she fully come to know herself. I like how in 5x07, she gets to scream and cry, to express to Supergirl how much she’s hurting, and how betrayed she feels. I like how in 5x13, Kara finally accepts that Lena joining Lex was not her fault, and that she didn’t deserve to be manipulated (“From now on, you’re accountable for your own actions.”). I like Lena’s growing obsession with erasing human pain through 5B and the fact that we know exactly where her motivations come from, and we feel for her because we’ve seen how much pain she’s in herself -- but at the same time, we can still oppose her ultimately villainous actions, which leads us to hope for her redemption. (A lot of this is due to Katie McGrath’s stellar acting as well.)

I love how the season shows just how much Lex’s continual abuse and manipulation affects her, and shows her standing up to him at the end. I wish they had focused more on Lena instead of pushing her aside in favor of Lex in 5B, but overall I liked how they expanded on the Luthor sibling relationship from Season 4, even if it was missing some of the complexity of the previous season. And finally, I love the way Lena fights so hard to regain Kara’s trust in 5x19 (and succeeds!). It felt like there was more of a balance between the two starting from 5x13, where previously it had always been Kara apologizing and trying to gain Lena’s trust.

2. Supergirl’s New Look

PANTS. PANTS. PANTS. PANTS.

For Season 4, Kara the Reporter got a more professional wardrobe as she began to mentor Nia, and the switch to pants feels like the same thing for Supergirl. It completes the transition from “young adult” to just “adult.” It may have been reasonable to call Kara a “girl” in Season 1, but by now, she is an adult woman, and I’m glad that her wardrobe reflects that.

I was opposed to Kara’s bangs at the beginning of the season, but they have definitely grown on me. Like the pants, I think they mark an important change in Supergirl’s character, one that is better appreciated by the audience than the characters. Now, when I rewatch previous seasons, I think, “Wow, Kara looks so different now.” I didn’t think that when I rewatched episodes after Season 4. The bangs are a way to identify Adult Kara as having changed a lot from how she was at the beginning, and like the pants, I feel like they complete her transition into adulthood.

(But are the writers expecting us to believe that nobody who knows Kara would be suspicious that Kara and Supergirl got bangs on the exact same day? Seriously.)

3. Eve Teschmacher

In Season 4, Eve Teschmacher was a brilliant, eager-to-please young woman who (whoops) turned out to be evil. And she was great. But I was dissatisfied with her betrayal because it came so out of the blue, and it was a complete 180 without much buildup at all. Season 5 gave her the humanity that she was lacking, first with her mom, then with her desperation not to have to kill. Not to mention, some pretty badass fight scenes.

4. J’onn’s Swagger

J’onn’s storyline in Season 5 is not nearly as deep as in Season 4, and I see that as a good thing. Season 4 J’onn was wonderful and necessary, but in a season that has a lot of strong development for Kara and Lena, it was nice to have a relatively static character who’s at a good place in his life. Season 4 let J’onn discover the man he wanted to be, and David Harewood brings a new confidence to Season 5 as a result of that. It’s fun to watch him strut around in his supersuit and say normal things as if they’re great proclamations. It’s nice to see the happy, healthy adult relationship between him and M’gann. The easy trust they have with each other causes them to act more like they’re married than dating, as opposed to the younger characters who are often caught up in relationship drama.

5. Kelly Therapy Face

All the characters need a therapist, and they finally got one! Well, Kelly is technically a psychologist, which I believe means she could be a therapist but is not necessarily? I don’t know things. Anyway, it’s nice to have a calm, supportive presence in the group, and this effect is helped by Kelly Therapy Face. Kelly Therapy Face is the face Kelly makes when she’s listening to you talk about your problems. Kelly Therapy Face and her generally calm presence bring down the interpersonal drama of the group and solidify the idea that all these people are growing into full adults, with adult relationships and adult responses to issues. Their emotions are stabilizing, they’re building stronger support systems, and they’re gaining a better understanding of how the world works and their places in it.

This is more of a Season 4 thing -- this season really didn’t give Kelly the screentime she deserved -- but I also love how even though Kelly acts as a source of support for others, her own fear and trauma are rarely glossed over (see: the end of 5x05). This gives Kelly a humanity and realistic quality that many emotional-support characters don’t get. It also shows the key difference between Dansen and Sanvers: whenever Alex and Maggie had conflict, they swept it aside rather than working through it, leading to their eventual breakup, but when Alex and Kelly have conflict, they listen to each other and try to fix it. In accordance with their adult-ness, Alex and Kelly also seem to be in agreement that it’s okay to have conflict in their relationship (“And I might not know every little detail about you yet, but I know you,” 5x02).

6. Reality Bytes

Calling attention to violence against trans folk, exploring Dreamer’s dark side, and showing the strength of Kara and Nia’s mentor-student relationship in one episode? Just. Yes. Either Nicole Maines was projecting a lot or she’s a really good actor (probably both), but either way, as a trans person, I felt this episode on a personal level: the anger, fear, and frustration at knowing that your community is being targeted and the people you’re supposed to trust (i.e. the police) are probably not going to do anything about it. Additionally, Kara and Nia’s conflict in 5x15, and the fact that Kara compares Nia’s experience to her own, is a great marker of how far Kara has come. In Season 1, Supergirl felt a similar anger and hurt when villains sought her out, but by now, she’s more at peace and can offer Dreamer reassurance and comfort.

7. Brainy’s Plot

Brainy’s storyline in Season 5 is nice because it manages to remain stable as an important, but secondary, plot. It enhances the sense that there’s more going on than we realize and gives us a view into the scheming of the villains, while not taking over too much screentime or audience brainspace.

8. Jon Cryer

As annoying as it is that the writers gave up a lot of Lena’s screentime to Lex, Jon Cryer’s performance in Season 5 is just wonderful. He can go from acting totally in control to screaming in a matter of seconds. Lex Luthor is witty, assured, and charming in a weird way. On the other side of his personality, he is a madman who cares about no one’s interests but his own. Jon Cryer’s acting manages to package all this great but conflicting writing into a brilliant, awful, occasionally sympathetic villain who has more than his share of awesome (and terrifying) scenes.

9. Alex’s Grief

I like that Alex gets to let go of her emotions a little this season and express herself. Especially when Jeremiah dies before 5x16, Alex has a really tough time (and a mention of her possibly drinking problem! Expand, please!). She tries to escape from the pain of real life through virtual reality, but eventually realizes that she has to face her pain rather than avoid it, which is a major theme of the season. What’s great about 5x16 and the next couple episodes is that the other characters allow her to grieve. They could have told her to get over it and see all the happiness in the real world — it would have fit with the theme — but instead, they support Alex as she grieves. They listen without judgement when she expresses her anger that Jeremiah left and forced her to take care of Kara. Kara and Kelly are (mostly) understanding when Alex doesn’t want to go to Jeremiah’s funeral, and when Alex arrives late at the end of the episode, Kara lets her know how much she appreciates that Alex came at all. Throughout her life, Alex hasn’t had much opportunity to be herself and express her emotions, an idea that’s repeated over and over again starting from her coming-out arc in Season 2 or even earlier. Now that Kara can for the most part take care of herself and Alex has a good support system, she finally gets the opportunity to be vulnerable.

10. Andrea Rojas’s Moral Ambiguity

Is Andrea good or bad? Neither. She’s a person who wants love, success, and money, who does sketchy things to promote her company but also fights fiercely for her father and cares about the safety of her technology. Before Andrea, Lena was the main morally ambiguous character, and she could be categorized as “playing for her own team.” However, Andrea goes a step further, crossing into a territory I would call “not playing a game at all.” She’s just a human being trying to have a good life, and that causes her to do good things, bad things, and everything in between. In a show that often accentuates the difference between heroes and villains (“Don’t let them down by stooping to his level,” 5x15), Andrea is a reminder that most people aren’t good or bad -- they’re just living their lives.

TL;DR: They’re all adults now and Lena needs a hug.

#supergirl #supergirl season 5 #kara danvers #lena luthor #j'onn j'onzz #kelly olsen #dansen #nia nal #dreamer #brainiac 5 #alex danvers #andrea rojas

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moviemunchies · 4 years

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Hey! Last weekend I rewatched SHAZAM! so check out the review I did when I saw the movie in theaters:

Shazam! is a 2019 superhero film that has the distinction of being the superhero film with the title that’s the most fun to shout at the top of your lungs. It’s also known by DC fans as “The Other Captain Marvel Movie” but that’s a bit of a confusing mouthful, so if you’re curious how that happened it’s best you read up on that somewhere else. The seventh film of the DC Extended Universe, it chronicles the story of the orphaned boy Billy Batson, who meets a wizard that gives him the ability to turn into a magical superhero upon saying the word “Shazam.”

Amongst the roster of comics characters that DC was hoping to turn into a big budget movie, this was hardly one of the ones that people were expecting. It’s not as if Shazam is one of their A-list characters, and often when he shows up in cartoons it’s to be someone for Superman to fight on his level. But because Dwayne Johnson was such a fan of the character and his evil counterpart, Black Adam, he’d been making publicity about the idea of this movie for years; you’ll notice in the credits he’s one of the producers of the film. So when DC decided to get the ball rolling on some of their solo movies as opposed to the big team-ups, Shazam got his big break.

Smaller in scope than many of the other solo movies, Shazam! goes to basics with an origin story. Billy Batson is a fourteen-year-old orphan in Philadelphia looking for his real mother, and in his search has run away from over two dozen foster homes. But the system is giving him one last chance with the Vasquez family, and though he fully intends to leave, he can’t help but stand up for his foster brother Freddie when he’s picked on by bullies at school. This gains him an audience with the wizard Shazam, who summons him to his realm and grants him powers--upon saying his name, he’ll turn into a full-grown superhero.

Of course, being a teenage boy who just got both superpowers and the body of an adult, Billy quickly uses this power the ways you’d expect, working with Freddie to figure out and document the exact powers he has and their uses. But it turns out that the wizard went through a lot of candidates to find Billy, and one of them, Dr. Thaddeus Sivana, is back and wants to claim those powers for himself.

What sets this movie apart from other superhero films is how from the premise it’s very lighthearted and fun. Yes, there are plenty of Marvel films that are lighthearted and fun, but most of them are quirky takes on serious premises, like the space opera or the wealthy industrialist learning how his actions affect people. No, the very premise of ‘child getting superpowers’ is funny, and the film milks it for all its worth, showing us all the terrible decisions a teenage boy would make when he gets superpowers and his best friend decides to make him a YouTube star because of it.

But a superhero film has to be more than funny to work, and luckily this film also has a lot of heart. Billy Batson’s foster family gets quite a lot of focus, more than the ads would lead you to suspect. And unlike the usual of a Hollywood film, the foster family is actually a very likable and supportive family, and their involvement in the film’s climax is as heartwarming as it’s clearly meant to be.

Because a huge part of this story involves children and teenagers, I was somewhat concerned about the use of child actors, because unlike many other screen works the teenagers and children in the foster family are mostly played by performers of their actual age (with the exception of Mary, who is a high school senior about to enter college and played by an actress in her early twenties, so it’s not too egregious). Child actors don’t have a great reputation for their acting skills, but it turned out I had no reason to worry because their performances here are top-notch. Of note Asher Angel is fantastic as Billy, a kid who is both likable but also kind of a jerk sometimes, and Jack Dylan Grazer perfectly plays Freddie as a boy who is both vulnerable and endearing but also really annoying without even trying. Their relationship and becoming foster brothers is really what makes the movie work.

As Billy in his adult form, Zachary Levi is inspired casting. He’s not the first choice when I think ‘superhero’ but watching him in works like Chuck he’s definitely the perfect choice to portray a kid who is currently in an adult’s body. He infuses the role with enough energy and playfulness that you buy him as Billy, even if the suit is a bit ridiculous-looking (though I suspect that’s part of the point).

Mark Strong turns in another strong performance as the villain Thaddeus Sivana, with a character arc so that you understand where he’s coming from. That being said he doesn’t particularly wow you with his motivations or characterization. He’s a good villain, but he’s not an outstanding one, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if non-comic fans didn’t remember his name a week after seeing this movie. What isn’t helped is that he’s helped by his own goons who are meant to represent the Seven Deadly Sins, and instead of them each having their own motif and distinctive looks, they all pretty much look like generic evil monsters that eat people.

I would have liked to have seen more out of some of the supporting cast. It’s not until the second half of the movie that most of the foster family has enough time to shine, though that’s intentional as Billy is deliberately keeping himself separated from them. I also would have liked for the film to further flesh out some of the other villains in Shazam’s rogue gallery that are only given brief mentions in this movie; not to share the spotlight with Sivana, of course, but to give us something else to look forward to if sequels do come. The makers of the film admitted though that they were more concerned with making sure this film stands on its own two feet though, and I think in that regard they succeeded.

Shazam! is everything I wanted from a film about the titular character, and I think anyone that’s read the comics or seen him adapted in various mediums will find the experience just as rewarding. But if you’re not a comics fan, you’ll still find this film appealing, if only because the sheer joy of watching what teenagers do with superpowers. It’s goofy and good-hearted and glorious. I heartily recommend.

#SHAZAM!#Zachary Levi #Mark Strong #Billy Batson #reviews #Movie Munchies

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thedogsled · 4 years

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You seem to be having a not a great day today, so here's a light-hearted ask. I'm having a good day, curled up in pjs with cuddly pets watching Leverage with my sister. Leverage is one of my favorite shows, because it's smart and fun and has great characters that grow over the seasons. Besides Supernatural, what's a show you really enjoy and why?

Thank you so much for the ask! I’m sorry I didn’t reply to it sooner, I’ve come down with a head cold and this is really the first day in several I’ve been able to compose more than a tweet about how much it sucks (swallowing = a knife jammed right into my inner ear, it’s super fun). But I did want to answer your question so I’ve been musing on it since your ask came in.

If it was just “what’s your favorite show right now” it’d be an easy answer: The Boys. The Boys, back to front, front to back, upside down and inside out. The first season was fantastic, and it felt like it woke me up to being excited about TV again after my interest in The Walking Dead waned mid-season. Everything new has seemed very plastic recently, and even The Mandalorian, which is super cool, is kind of like the Cartoon Network dub of Dragonball Z, so Disneyfied in its bloodlessness that although I’m enjoying it it feels even more synthetic as a result. The Boys was the opposite of that, and also just whoever invented Karl Urban, period, just deserves a nobel prize for that masterpiece. He pronounces twat wrong (okay okay it’s a dialect thing) but you can’t have everything =D

So instead (and because it’s cheating that I can pimp The Boys and wax lyrical about loves of old) I interpret your question as sort of like “Which show is your comfort food?” Which show do I go back to when I’m feeling like TV needs to give me a cuddle. I had a good think about it, because there’s a few…

(aside: I shouldn’t have put that gif in before I started writing. ahem.)

There’s been a few over the years, for sure. As a thirteen year old I used to watch and rewatch Buffy episodes, mostly season 2 (baby Spike!). At eighteen, it was old VHS of Deep Space Nine, my favorite ep was “Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night” which I watched repeatedly and think about constantly even today.

But the show I keep coming back to is due South.

This post is a long post, it also deals with discourse (because my relationship to entertainment is so often mired in it, so please don’t proceed if you’re rather avoid it) and this is where it begins:

Okay, so fun fact: I watched due South the first time it aired with my parents (I was about 9) and then when it was on TV again as a repeat, I recorded it on VHS by RUSHING home every single day from school with nothing else on my mind but sitting on the floor two feet from the telly to watch it. Quantum Leap was on right after, and I had an entire different set of VHS tapes to record that on, so had to quickly switch between them. I’d stop recording at every break so that I could get more episodes on a tape. It’s not unsurprising to me now that both shows vibed with me as a young person who hadn’t yet really accepted that she was queer; due South’s main character is coded as Other both to the Americans whom he lives with, and his fellow Canadians, while Quantum Leap explores a straight white man jumping into the lives of Others, and living through them some of the hardest moments in their lives. Even though both keep it exceedingly, textually hetero, one has two men riding off into the snowy sunset together (leaving behind a straight lover to do so) and the other features a love between two men that in the original framing of the finale would have seen God/fate reconnecting the two of them even though one was lost in time, and the partner’s wife begging him to go.)

Of course young me didn’t give a shit about that, or didn’t realize that’s what she cared about. Young me loved the buddy-cop partnership of both shows. Young me liked the half-wolf, and the episodes where they ride horses, and honestly just waiting with bated breath to find out where Sam would jump to this time. “Oh boy!” Retrospectively, these shows (especially QL) are a lot more oh boy in a yikes context now than they used to be, but it’s good that shows age into yikes territory because it means that society is steadily advancing. Particularly, pointing out that these shows both feature white straight guys like…welcome to the nineties.

I was introduced to queer coding in part by watching due South. The show is laden with it. With writers, actors, and ultimately an executive producer who was all three, it makes you wonder if they would have gone there if they could; certainly the ending reads that way. They couldn’t, of course, because it was the nineties (and it was CBS that revived it after enormous international fan demand). Still, there was just nothing else analogous to what we have now that was going there on TV at the time. If you were queer (or discovering your queerness) then watching the show meant everything, as it did to me. So I snuggle up on the couch often these days and go back to that, because it gave me such joy, and because I was left with the opportunity to decide for myself how deep the relationship was. There was no promise of anything, because the context at the time was of course you can’t go there, nobody can go there. Queerbaiting was a word that simply hadn’t been breathed. There was no intent, no companies behind the curtain pulling strings going “Yes, make it more gay, we want those queer dollars”, just invested people slipping what they could past the studio censors.

Like this:

Sigh. A less enlightened time. =P (Incidentally fun meta here but this was after a conversation where Ray suggested that communication in a relationship should be intuitive, like breathing.)

So I guess in part I escape back there because none of that representation was ever as loaded as it is today. It doesn’t require me to judge it, or weigh it against the harm it does - because the politics of the time meant I thought it was doing good (retrospectively, and only through the lens of someone who had nothing to lose). It seemed to scream out into an unyielding universe to force it to move. It did a fraction of that, because of course it did. It was the nineties. It stole indigenous narratives and romanticized colonialism just as much as it beat the drum of environmentalism and kicked at the doors of corporate greed and racism. Old shows are inherently problematic. Today’s shows are too. Being able to examine them doesn’t mean not loving them, but it lets you say “Okay, so what do I expect from the things I watch today? What do I expect from the things I watch in five years time?”

All that aside, the show is just damn good. It’s watchable and rewatchable. It struggles to age because it was already so out of pace with the age it was made in–despite its flaws in representation, it was better than other shows at the time that demonized, tokenized, or outright killed minorities to push white narratives on their own shows (Kendra being murdered on Buffy, for example). It’s standalone enough that you can go back and watch any episode you like because overarching story arcs were way less of a staple as they are today. It’s witty, fast paced, full of action and moral dilemma, do gooding and the consequences of it. Although still severely unbalanced, and very, very white, it did still have indigenous actors playing indigenous characters, and minorities portrayed in stories about them. There’s a dog. There’s classic cars. And it’s all put to the soundtrack of Canadian bands and singers.

tl;dr ahead for rambling about subtext and being a disaster queer, but please scroll past for more gifs.

Queer me needed this show, in a world where I’d been taught to look and see myself in straight white male protagonists, it felt like A Lot to see all this on screen. It wasn’t, but it was all I got when I was growing up. I envy the good fortune of kids who can see themselves on screen these days while they try and figure themselves out (and hopefully more so in the future) with far less of having to negotiate through the confusion of looking at it through confusing fractals of different lenses and instead just see someone who looks like them showing them that their POV is normal, heroic and wonderful. Those lenses fucked me up big time. Like I’m not even sure right now what flavor of queer I am. I cling to bi like a lifeline of sense in my life, but it is complicated because I overwhelmingly desire the company of women way way more. But also I was was taught to look through the lens of a white dude in order to see myself universally, taught to be both desirous of the female body and humiliated by it, ashamed by sex, taught men were awful, and taught that I was supposed to marry one anyway. I look at my sexuality/romanticism like it’s a meta puzzle that I haven’t figured out yet, wondering how to put it on paper, how to break apart the different influences I experienced as a youngling and as an adult to try and negotiate if I’m misreading my own impulses. How I was brought up, who I’ve known, the relationships I’ve experienced and seen in real life and on TV. I’m 34 and I’m still no more certain. Subtext is both my friend and my enemy. I hate it, and I owe everything to it.

So when I need a rest from giving a shit about any of that noise, I go back to my comfort food. I go right back to subtext, which gave me the tools I needed to desire romance that wasn’t heterosexual, that somehow was more intimate because it relied on longing stares and never stepping foot out of the closet, that was just someone liking another person without any expectation of sex just because they have opposing genitals, and their colleagues hassle them a lot. There’s nothing wrong with the sex, I write a lot of consommation of the feelings that I see bubbling under the surface. I have even grown to appreciate het romance when it’s done in a way that doesn’t reduce the woman to a love interest–I was thrilled when Simon Baker’s Patrick Jane got together with Teresa Lisbon in The Mentalist. Their relationship was filled with subtext too. Subtext isn’t a queer thing, it has a role in all well written romance. Hell, it has a role in terriblebad tropey misogynistic romance, too. And just you know basically all storytelling (and more).

Queer romance existing only in the subtext, though? It’s heartbreaking explicitly because it feels like a story that isn’t finished, and that’s where subtext reliant shows can hand off the story to be finished by fandom itself. In due South, as I mentioned before, Ray and Fraser jump into a dogsled and ride off over the snowy horizon to “Find the hand of Franklin, reaching for the Beaufort sea”. It’s where I chose my meta name, as I’ve mentioned before, because that ending - that ending - handed us all the subtext so far and said “Here, take it, it’s yours now. Do with it what you like”–and we did. But that was twenty years ago. I loved that ending (I still think it was a very elegant solution) and it was expected and appropriate for a show that in itself is a “Faves Are Problematic” show, but that’s also why I get so passionate about discussing the subtext in Supernatural.

It’s younger than due South. While it may have begun back when Willow from Buffy had her first girlfriend, it is ending now, not at the turn of the century where a dogsled was still good enough to get the point across and none of us had Twitter. My own experiences, my lifelong queer confusion make it so I feel pretty damn bad for people trying to use Supernatural as a medium for their own self-exploration, using characters from SPN as their lenses. A show these days that makes bank on those tropes and doesn’t inform its audience (positively or negatively) is doing so irresponsibly because of the modern context in which the show presently (not historically) sits, and the increasing awareness of the issues surrounding it. Networks, then, are ultimately responsible for that, but they are in a way which is entirely different and far more directly culpable than they were 20 years ago, because people are out there making money out of those intentional subtextual devices. They chose to do it; took a deep breath and backed right up away from Gamble’s problematic queerbashing tropes, chewed it over, then hired gay writers and dived right back in with more grown up, progressive, and less shitty subtext–but still subtext.

This show that ended 20 years ago was able to cross way more lines with subtext in one episode than Supernatural has done sometimes in an entire season. It did so despite and because of it’s international audience, on a conservative network that would late purchase Paramount, and Star Trek, and ended with a powerfully subtextual ending. Supernatural, of course, is under a far more powerful microscope from the bigots than those oblivious to subtext back in the 90s could have ever produced. due South, like SPN was just “wholesome family entertainment” to a conservative audience that was completely oblivious by all accounts, yet was laden heavily with queer innuendo. It was also blissfully short, and existed in a social media world which consisted of Yahoo groups and not much else.

In modern context, Supernatural gets a fox in the henhouse treatment from that same audience, and acts accordingly (when it’s not using that same subtext to deliver earnest Fuck You’s to that audience). While I expect Supernatural to bravely - even considering this scrutiny - deliver a dogsled subtextual ending on a good day, there are bad days, too, because the queer subtext has been underlined so loudly that everyone can see it, because it’s “practically text”, because the bottom line is increasingly more concerned with satisfying those bigots (even while they mock them), and because queer fans are “too loud” about what they want. How dare they. /s The pushback caused by being loud about things you care about, the bigots actually seeing subtext in front of their noses, isn’t bad because now they know what we’ve been doing all along, and we won’t be able to get away with it any more; it means they’re becoming more aware of narratives other than their own. Yes, some people will push back, but “when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression”, and they can shove it right up their asses.

All I ever ask of myself when I interrogate my present day viewing experience, is this: when I sat as a youngster watching due South thinking “This subtextual ending is enough for me”, did I truly believe it was okay to be watching a show about two white guys with a subtextual ending 20 years later? Was that the future I dreamed of and aspired to? Would I be disappointed? The answer is yes, I am disappointed. No matter the whys, the fundamental and societal reasons–I am disappointed. I still love the show probably more than I should, but I am disappointed in the society it sits in - which is increasingly capitulating to far more powerful global financial powers than a couple of red state homophobes - and I’m disappointed in the way we’re treating each other for even caring, and I’m disappointed in myself, too, for being naive and imagining we would be much further down this road now than we are. But we are a capitalistic society, and being both the commodity and the customer should be a surprise to literally nobody at this point. It doesn’t mean you have to like it.

And if you don’t feel that way, that’s okay. We all come from different places. We have different perspectives. We need and want different things, for different reasons, and find joy in different things for different reasons. Variety of opinion is as much a wonderful thing as it is completely terrifying.

I’ve wandered somewhat off topic, so I’m going to go back to the show I love, my chocolate pudding and custard comfort food TV show, and the long stares and the beautiful uncomplicated subtext.

And sign off with half a dozen gifs.

Eye fucking:

Conversations in closets and bathrooms:

Going down with the ship

Intuitively understanding each other without a word spoken

His hobbies humiliate me in public

“Do you find me attractive?”

Sulking in the corridor while you reunite with your ex

This whole ep with original Ray:

And his wolf approving of both

Not pictured “I love you” “And I you”, “Get out of the closet”, actual hand holding when it’s unnecessary, formally handcuffing your buddy, getting stuck in an ice crevasse and a mini submarine together–and so so much more. I invite you to watch the show if you can find it (I have it on a really nice set of DVDs, but there’s some dodgy ones out there that look like they recorded the DVD straight off a VHS, so do check reviews) or else try and find it online. There was a Canada promoting YouTube channel which published both due South and shows like Slings and Arrows, which I recommend as well (It’s not actually bury your gays if the ghost of your gay best friend haunts you, right?) so you should be able to poke around and find a legit copy somewhere. I’ve bigged it up and talked it down, and wandered a long way off topic (that describes my relationship with every show, but especially when I recommend them) but I hope somewhere along the line I also answered the question. The way I hear it Leverage is a similar sort of comfort food, though I haven’t seen it. Sounds like I should put it on my To Watch list.

#due south #dogsled replies #queerbaiting #subtext #destiel #about me

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astro-b-o-y-d · 4 years

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Once again it’s time to talk about something that annoys me. And by something, I mean Gyro Gearloose and maybe explaining my full thoughts on why I dislike him as much as I do.

This post is all over the place and I can already hear Gyro fans trying to convince me otherwise, but this is just how I feel and after spending a month or two TRYING to get my feelings in order about him, I don’t think anything’s going to change my mind until we see more episodes.

----

Let’s just say that first things first, I went into DT17 fully prepared to hate Mark Beaks. I knew about how awful he was from the get-go, I had heard that he was just such an asshole. How a lot of folks in the fandom were happy to drag his ass for being a racist prick to Fenton.

And I did hate him. A lot. And he is a racist prick. There’s no arguments there.

So I was so distracted by Mark and how obnoxious he was, that Gyro as a whole kind of got swept under the rug. I hadn’t heard much from the fandom about him (or at least, I paid little attention), other than the occasional ‘Yeah I like him’, so I didn’t form much of an opinion.

But after Astro Boyd sparked a burning hatred inside me for the man, despite him earning at least one (only one) right by the end, I was like “Maybe I’m being unfair. I mean, a lot of people seem to like him, so maybe I should rewatch the show to see if I’m missing something. Maybe he really is just kind of misunderstood. I mean, yes, he was clearly wrong in this episode but he did learn his lesson. Maybe I am missing what makes this character fun.”

So I rewatched Ducktales to give Gyro another chance. Admittedly I did go into it kind of sour at him to begin with but I tried to keep an open mind.

And...he’s terrible.

He was always terrible.

Not just in personality but he is so AWFUL to Fenton, to the point where I’m surprised by people not pointing out how absolutely dehumanizing he is to Fenton at times. Like wow, he might not be as outright as Mark is, but he is just AWFUL to Fenton. I’m less surprised by his behavior in AstroBoyd after my rewatch because that’s how he ALWAYS was to people he saw as lesser than him.

Now, I understand liking awful characters. As I’ve stated hundreds of times, I would be a HYPOCRITE to judge. I love the Director from RvB, I love Felix from RvB, I love Daniel Camp Camp. Heck, in an odd way, I kind of enjoy seeing Mark Beaks on screen (at least when he’s nowhere near Fenton) because while he is a terrible person, at least there’s some entertainment to be had from his obnoxious-whiny-rich-white-boy personality.

But like....why does Mark get dragged for treating Fenton like shit, and I SEE people dragging him, but I didn’t see as much of that with Gyro.

All the posts I’ve seen are like “Oh I love Gyro” “Oh I love his development” “Oh he’s such a good character” and....again, no judgement there. I don’t think his character in itself is bad and I recognize growth that some people might connect with.

But it’s just baffling. To see so many people after AstroBoyd completely ignore what a horrible person he was and even go so far as to think he’s even CLOSE to being a good parent for Boyd after one hug (I had to outright block ‘Boyd G*arloose’ as a tag because every time I see that man being all happy-cutesy Dad Mode with my favorite character in the show, my stomach twists so painfully), when he still has two-and-a-half seasons of horrible behavior still under his belt, while happily dragging Mark for his shit behavior.

Now do I think Gyro is as bad as Mark? Absolutely not. Unlike Mark, he at least has the potential to recognize when he is wrong. He can recognize that he has, in fact, been a VERY toxic person to a lot of people in his life. In fact, that’s one thing I do like about his character.

However, him recognizing this fact now does not excuse the damage he’s already done, nor does it make me any less sour that it took two-and-a-half seasons of him treating Fenton like garbage, 3/4s of an episode dehumanizing a little neurodivergent robot child (yeah reminder that Boyd is a CHILD and Gyro is a GROWN ADULT, that’s even more infuriating) and nearly SHUTTING HIM DOWN WITH NO REMORSE. YEAH, CAN YOU IMAGINE WHAT WOULD’VE HAPPENED IF HUEY HADN’T BEEN THERE??? Boyd would probably be DEAD if Huey hadn’t been like “Hey, Gyro, maybe look closer at these memories?”.

He is on the right track. But he has only taken a step in the right direction, and I’m not about to praise him for taking that step after he spent a mile stepping on others. If you want to, that’s awesome and I hope you have fun. But I need more steps from him before the sour feelings about him dissipate.

And don’t even talk to me about how ‘people handle trauma in different ways’ regarding his behavior in AstroBoyd. Like excuse me, trauma or not, you don’t treat people like that and you don’t treat CHILDREN, especially not NEURODIVERGENT CHILDREN like that. He’s well within his rights to be scared of Boyd after what happened, but the absolutely MALICE in his tone and behavior towards him was inexcusable.

#Hayley Speaks #Gyro Hate Club #Long Post #Also I kind of want a reference for if/when people ask me why I don't like Gyro #So I can just be like 'here's a link'#Also I'm really REALLY not looking for a debate about him #Like seriously #I'm just trying to piece together my thoughts #Also to anyone who's like 'WELL YEAH HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE AWFUL UNTIL THIS POINT'#...Okay?#So?#He was supposed to be unlikable and it worked #I do not like him #I don't know what that changes

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i-prefer-wonderboy · 4 years

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I'm so happy I found your blog! Hercules holds a very dear place in my heart, too. I agree with you that it's underrated, like so many other actual classics that have been cast aside. I have vague memories of when it came out in theaters. Going to see it, and coming home with a cardboard box full of little Hercules treasures that I think were part of the premiere. Like many 90s Disney films, the soundtrack stands the test of time. I could go on forever, but I'm down to 8 characters, lol.

Awww, thank you so much! This movie means so much to me. I’m really glad that creating this blog has been so positively received by the Disney community here on tumblr. I was so anxious about doing it because most Disney blogs focus on all the movies or specific eras. And most of the ones that are one movie/franchise centric are for newer films that came out within the past decade (mostly Tangled and Frozen from what I’ve seen). So I was self conscious about making a blog for a Disney movie that is over 20 years old, probably isn’t in the conscience of the masses, and doesn’t have any new content coming. But in the end, the love was too strong and it won.

I just love Hercules so much. I honestly think it’s my favorite Disney movie. I’ve tried to deny that it’s my number one, but I really think it is. There’s just something so unique and unconventional about it compared to other Disney movies. While I do love all the animated Disney movies to a degree, my personal taste in favorites tend to gravitate towards the non-princess/fairytale/animal films (Hercules, Lilo and Stitch, Treasure Planet, and Atlantis to name a few). That feels very niche, but it is what it is and I know what I like.

And yes, Hercules is definitely underrated (not the most underrated but definitely up there). It’s so hard to find merch out there (especially in the parks) and Disney hardly ever acknowledges its existence. But that’s amazing that you got to see it in theaters. I really wish I did, but the first animated Disney movie I saw in theaters was Mulan a year later (I was 7). But I had the Hercules VHS (which I still have even now as an adult) and I remember having some Hercules toys (none of the dolls sadly). And I watched the animated series too ( rewatching that on Disney Plus has been such a treat!). I wish I wasn’t so young back then so I could have experienced it and actually remembered it.But anyways…that’s so cool!

My obsession with Hercules didn’t really blossom until I became an adult though. In 2009, at the age of 18, I went to Disney World for the first time (I went twice that year actually). And it sparked this new love and appreciation for everything Disney that wasn’t really wasn’t a big part of my life since childhood. But after that I took a deep dive into a lot of the Disney movies that I honestly hadn’t watched since I was a child. And I don’t know why, but Hercules just really resonated with me and I loved it so much. Then that love ran its course and died down for about 10 years….but I still loved it and Disney. But this past summer I did a rewatch of most of the animated Disney movies (from Snow White to Wreck It Ralph 2) before going to Disney World back in September (which has been an almost annual thing for me since 2009). I reconnected with my Hercules love and it made me really happy. And now I’m like a hardcore fan. So I decided to make this blog. As a place where I could fangirl about it, but also share it with others and contribute to keeping whatever love there is for Hercules thriving.

And I’m really glad that other people love this movie as much as I do. Just everything about it is so good. The style, the colors, the animation, the music, the characters and their development (Herc and Meg at least), the script, the story, the voice acting…..everything! I don’t care that it’s not perfect. I don’t care that it obliterates Greek mythology. I don’t care if it’s a weird movie to be obsessed with. I don’t care that I am a grown adult obsessed with a “kid’s” movie. It’s a feel good movie, it’s relatable, and it’s inspiring.

I just adore Hercules so much and could gush about it all day. Please come talk to me about it anytime. I’m always willing. :)

#sorry this turned into a long rant #sillysymphony #hercules #disney hercules #personal #text #ask #reply #2019

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jordanrosenburg · 5 years

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The Reboot Bubble

When your favorite TV show ends, how do you feel? Lost? Depressed? Lonely? All of the above? I am someone who usually sobs at the end of a beloved TV show. The end of Avatar: The Last Airbender still gets me, I can remember crying when Awkward ended, and even having not watched the last two seasons, I absolutely bawled my eyes out at the series finale of Glee. There are times we want the shows we love to go on forever. Adventure Time was on for over ten years, a dystopian cartoon about a boy and his dog. Even though I was sad, I knew it was time for it to come to an end. That was a show, much like Glee, that I had stopped watching before it ended. But like a good, true fan, I watched its finale.

I think we feel sad when these shows end, especially the ones that last for many years, because we have grown with many of the characters. I started watching many of the above shows when I was in middle school and high school, and some didn’t end until I was in college, or even after college. It’s like a piece of our younger selves end with it. We wait for these shows to pop up on Netflix or Hulu, so maybe once in a while we can fall down the rabbit hole again. Usually I have to ask myself, “Am I really going to put myself through this again?”, as I push play to rewatch Glee for the seventh time.

Not every show I rewatch gives me such emotion. I can contently watch reruns of That 70′s Show or Sex and the City and pretty much not feel a thing. I will admit when Eric and Donna break up I feel sad, but not enough to cry!

I think it’s when our favorite TV shows end in a way that we didn’t like when we feel like it should come back for one more round. Fix the mistakes it made, let the characters we love be happy. Some of us turn to fandom to help cushion the blow. We chat with each other, read what others have to say, or even read fanfiction to help us grieve the loss over one of the things that would help us escape for a little while.

Reunion specials started happening. These could be simple panels when actors get together to answer questions about a show. Or even as witty as the Seinfeld season on Curb Your Enthusiasm. A lot of people wanted to see their favorite characters together again. One of the reasons I had actually made an account on Tumblr back in 2012 was because The Legend of Korra had come out and I wanted to see how other fans had felt about the sequel series to the show I held so closely to my heart. As much as I wanted to see the characters I knew, I was happy to see new characters in the same universe.

And then...Fuller House became an extension of Full House. I couldn’t even get through the first episode if I’m being honest. Watching all of the actors turn to the camera and make a funny face after making a joke about the Olsen Twins really turned me off. Gilmore Girls had a four episode reboot. I would say this one of the first, worthy of note reboots. I think most fans were disappointed with how the show actually ended, so getting to see these characters ten years later helped fill in a lot of gaps. I won’t get into how I felt, but I will say I didn’t love what they did with Rory. I was sad to see that she didn’t end being a successful journalist as she had hoped, but such is life. Will and Grace got a reboot around the same time, or shortly after. A show, ahead of its time, had come back. I would have been fine with just a reunion special, but a whole season was made, and then a second season was picked up shortly after. Clearly, there were some stories left to tell.

Murphy Brown had a failed reboot, which came to no surprise. Did people really want to see a woman in her 60′s going through the same problems she had in her 30′s/40′s? But the networks must have seen how well Will and Grace was doing, and hopped on the bandwagon. Many networks are realizing that the 90′s nostalgia is alive and well. Whose Line is it Anyway also comes to mind. Another beloved show, but this time with a new host and some new comedians. A bit of a face lift, but still funny. Roseanne, now The Connors, was something I was surprised to see comeback. A program that truly showed what a middle class family looked like, and how they lived. This show came back at a good time because many other sitcoms today are all rich families. Is Modern Family only modern because of the different races and sexual orientations depicted? I know a lot of families, and they do not live nearly as comfortably as these people.

Roswell New Mexico is an example of a reboot that no one really asked for, but am so glad it happened. This is a show that, to me, is the true definition of a reboot. They took the good stuff from the original, recast the entire thing with adults playing adults, not adults playing teenagers, and gave this show a fresh new spin. I sat and watched the original series, and it had its moments, but there’s a reason it only lasted three seasons. This new version of it is something I can see lasting for many seasons to come.

I know everyone says they want a F.R.I.E.N.D.S. reboot, or an Office reboot, but do they really? Wouldn’t you rather see someone die a hero than see them live long enough to become the villain?

What made me want to write this in the first place was because I was on Facebook the other day and saw that a reboot of Reba had been green-lit...SERIOUSLY REBA? A show that I know only because they would show re-runs on ABC Family. Don’t get me wrong, Reba wasn’t the worst show in the world, but what stories do they really have to tell that warrants 12-24 episodes? AN ENTIRE SEASON? I could see a reunion special on Netflix, a tasteful hour, to an hour and a half of Reba roasting Barbara Jeanne would be great.

Rocko’s Modern Life and Invader Zim both have specials on Netflix right now. Rocko’s Modern Life did it right. A quick special, twenty or so years later, that pretty much made fun of itself. I haven’t been able to watch the Invader Zim special yet, but I’m sure it will be done in a similar way of just answering the burning questions fans have. Even Hey Arnold came out with another movie a couple of years ago. This was something fans wanted for years! We all wanted to know what happened to Arnold’s parents. We finally found out, and it was great. Do all of these shows have a chance of coming back with a full season? It depends on the ratings and what the creators of the shows want to do, but these small specials are enough. It’s good fan service.

But now the networks are just getting greedy. Not only is getting harder to watch TV because every network now has their own app, or they will, that you need to pay for to use, but it seems like every network is rebooting just to make profits! Netflix made watching TV without cable a cheaper option. Now I have to pay for all of these apps separately just to watch TV? Is cable going to become the cheaper option again? Or are all of these shows going to be exclusively on these apps? It’s ridiculous!

I digress...Let’s talk about Disney for a second. Raven’s Home became an extension of That’s So Raven. I will say, I think this reboot was done right because it’s about Raven and her kids, but now even shows like Lizzie McGuire are getting rebooted. Yes, we’re all excited to see Hillary Duff back at it in the big city, but who are the target markets for these shows? Are people my age sitting down to watch them? Are families watching these shows together? Do the younger generations know or care about the original shows? High School Musical is also coming back, but this time it’s mocumentary style about the kids who actually went to east high that also do theater. At that point I’d just love to see the original cast do another movie. They really missed their opportunity for High School Musical: 10 Year Reunion if you ask me.

I just want to know when will it all end? Are there truly no original ideas left out there anymore? Are we only able to produce TV shows based off of ones that have been off the air for years, only to bring them back? What’s next? Dharma and Greg, a modern Mork and Mindy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer??? Let’s go back to thinking of these shows fondly, and letting the good ones rest as they were. Eventually the networks will run out of shows to reboot, and the bubble will burst.

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astreetcarnamedwynn · 5 years

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bnha rewatch: episodes 6-8

In which I dive deep into Bakugou’s head, how society has helped warp him into the asshole that he is at the start of the show, and how he is schooled by Aizawa, All Might, Momo, Todoroki, and especially Midoriya to start his path to becoming a hero. Prepare yourself. I love Angry Explosion Boy and his fraught bond with Midoriya, so there are a lot of words here. If you’d like to read my thoughts about prior episodes, click on the ‘bnha rewatch’ tag. I’m also posting them on AO3; you can find the link to my account at the top of my Tumblr.

“Rage You Damn Nerd,” “Deku vs. Kacchan,” and “Bakugou’s Start Line”

Episode eight’s title (“Bakugo’s Start Line”) defines this set of episodes as it is this set that dive headfirst into Bakugou’s primary arc for the first three seasons. Part of Midoriya’s arc so far is to have the curtain pulled back on the hero world so he can learn the harsh truth of it (exemplified primarily by Toshinori in his true form and by Aizawa as well). This knowledge will likely help him to become an even greater hero than All Might, who saved people and provided them a sense of safety, but who also bears responsibility for skewing heroics into a singular, spectacular show. I doubt Midoriya will ever be a performative hero like Toshinori is with All Might. Though Midoriya has a mask with his costume (the bunny ears and mouth guard, i.e. the All Might components to the costume), it’s been consistently forgotten or destroyed. Midoriya as a hero is Midoriya himself. It’s why his hero name is Deku, after all, and not some pseudonym that highlights his powers or some other flashy attribute.

Bakugou’s arc reflects Midoriya’s. If Fanboy Midoriya at the start of the story reflects society’s warped view of heroism (utterly dazzled by the RAZZLE DAZZLE show aspect of heroing that I’ve discussed previously with All Might and Mic), then Bakugou reflects the product of such a society and its warped view. Bakugou’s sense of himself and his place in the world is largely shaped by society and its twisted views on quirks and heroism. This is not to say that Bakugou does not bear responsibility for his beliefs and his actions. He does. It’s just that those beliefs, which prompted many of those actions, were not the product of himself alone.

It’s notable that, before Bakugou got his quirk, Midoriya describes him as confident: “It seemed like [Bakugou] could do anything. No matter what he decided to do, he was always so confident.” This confidence changes after Bakugou receives his quirk. Bakugou changes after he receives his quirk, and it’s due in part to society’s twisted view of quirks (and thus to his twisted view of quirks as he has grown up in and been influenced by this society).

A side note → This is another place we can hold Toshinori partially at fault for how society and its view on quirks and heroism has developed. He’s kept the nature of his power secret from everyone. In episode eight, Recovery Girl confronts him about this: “Does it really matter if you were born with your quirk? Do you have to be the symbol of peace? Is it that important?” He says yes, proclaiming that, if people knew this power could be passed from one person to another, the temptation of it would become too great. This is likely true. This is a society that reveres power, after all. We see this in the first episode when one of the bystanders in the opening fight wishes he had a powerful quirk like Death Arms does. However, Toshinori keeping the true nature of his power a secret also upholds this reverence for “natural power,” meaning it upholds the idea of judging someone’s worth based on the quirk they inherit, rather than on their other qualities. Toshinori’s secret has contributed to the society in which Midoriya is deemed useless and worthless due to his quirklessness. This is why I think that the truth of Midoriya’s quirk will be revealed to society as a whole, and this revelation will rock society and change it for the better. It’s not “luck” or “destiny” that matters, meaning it’s not the quirk you inherit that is important. It’s the effort you put forth, how you use that power, the kind of person you are that counts the most.

As Toshinori tells Midoriya, there’s a difference between being lucky and deserving: the first is an accident and the latter is one you earn through effort.

Back to Bakugou → The fabulous montage in episode seven (“Deku vs. Kacchan”) shows how society’s reverence for quirks and power inflate his ego. Kids and adults, including his teachers, constantly praise him (“a flashy quirk for a future hero”), and young Bakugou comes to believe this wholly: “I am amazing. I bet there’s no one as great as I am!” To Bakugou (and to society) he has an awesome quirk, which means that he himself is awesome (although he did absolutely nothing to receive this quirk, it being determined by luck and genetics). Bakugou’s life up until his abduction by the sludge villain reinforces this. The first scene we see of him in his middle school classroom shows this most clearly. He blows up Midoriya’s desk and threatens him with an explosion (he looms over Midoriya, who cowers on the floor, with smoking hands), AND HIS TEACHER DOES ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO STOP HIM. His bad behavior is condoned by society because he has a good quirk.

Contrast this to the first class Bakugou has at UA (seen at the start of “Rage You Damn Nerd”). He does as he has in the past- he threatens Midoriya with his quirk when he gets angry- and yet here Aizawa shuts him down immediately. This begins the crucial second step of “Bakugou Gets His Twisted Illusions about Himself, Quirks, and Heroics Stripped Away until He’s Confronted with the Truth of All Things (and of All Might).” The first step, of course, was the sludge villain and Midoriya (“useless Deku”) helping to save him, which rocked his views of himself and of Midoriya too, which he uses to reinforce his view of himself. In this second step, not only is Bakugou forced to deal with adults who chastise him for doing as he’s always done (Aizawa and then All Might, who calls him out on his inflated pride), he’s forced to deal with the even more shocking fact that the feature upon which he’s built his entire sense of self-worth (his quirk) may not be all that it’s cracked up to be.

See Momo, Todoroki, and Midoriya (here representing the head, hand, and heart- or intelligence, power, and character).

I think it’s important that the characters who cause Bakugou to reasses are two of the four who got into the hero program on recommendations (and thus are “better” than Bakugou) and the one who (in his view) should not even be there. The ‘best’ beat him (Momo intellectually and Todoroki with his power), and the ‘worst’ beats him (Midoriya in the heroes vs. villains match up) as well. I don’t think one by themselves would have such the profound impact that both have on Bakugou.

Momo criticizes Bakugou for his grenade blast, the massive display of power that he wielded in the match. The grenade blast displays the utter power of his quirk. It’s supposed to be both effective and impressive, yet to Momo, it’s neither. All that move showed was Bakugou’s lack of good judgment, a point reinforced by All Might when he chastises Bakugou for using it and says he’ll be penalized if he does it again. How much must that burn for Bakugou: his first interaction with his idol, and his idol criticizes, rather than praises, him.

And then Todoroki. He beat his opposing team BY HIMSELF in less than a minute. Bakugou spent the entire 15 minutes of his allotted time fighting “quirkless, useless Deku,” AND HE LOST. Momo and Todoroki (and Aizawa and All Might) show how the way that Bakugou has operated before as well as the tools of his operation (his quirk) are insufficient.

Side note → I find it interesting that what finally pulls Todoroki into the narrative is Bakugou, not Midoriya. The first time Todoroki speaks in the show is when Bakugou finally demonstrates how skilled he is with his quirk, when he pivots midair over Midoriya in their one-on-one fight to blast Midoriya in the back. Todoroki says of Bakugou, “He doesn’t come off as a guy with a strategy, but he’s actually quite intelligent… very clever.”

Back to Bakugou. If he’s been schooled so far at UA by Aizawa, All Might, Momo, and Todoroki, his most significant schooling comes from the source of his first schooling: Midoriya. He’s right at the end of episode eight when he says that Midoriya humiliated him. Midoriya, obviously, does not do this intentionally. He wanted to beat Bakugou, not beat him down. But beating him IS beating him down in Bakugou’s mind. For the majority of their time, Midoriya (without his quirk, thus as ‘quirkless, useless Deku’) outsmarts Bakugou. He predicts Bakugou’s opening right hook and flips him flat on his back, he nearly captures Bakugou with the capture tape, he successfully evades Bakugou for a significant chunk of time. In fact, Bakugou only gets the upper hand after he goes FULL QUIRK with his grenade blast. But even after this Midoriya humiliates him because, for Bakugou, this has been ALL ABOUT DEKU, but for Midoriya, this has ultimately been about winning the match (Bakugou to Midoriya as he’s talking to Uraraka on the comm: “Are you ignoring me again? I’ll get your attention”). How much must that vex Bakugou? The first reminiscence of his that we get is of Midoriya trailing after him with a look of utter adoration in his eyes, and now he’s not even top priority for Midoriya any more.

The reason he gives for hating Midoriya is tied to this as well. Bakugou flashes back to the first time Midoriya stands up to him (what we see in the first few minutes of the first episode). Here, not only is Midoriya NOT fawning all over Bakugou and his explosive perfection, he’s daring to criticize Bakugou for his bad behavior. Midoriya is one of the few people in these opening episodes (either in the present or in the flashbacks) that criticizes Bakugou for his behavior (Bakugou’s lackeys do it seconds before the sludge villain is set free, calling him out for his harsh bullying of Midoriya, but they didn’t try to stop him as he was doing it, not like Midoriya does in the flashback). To Bakugou, the least important and significant of society, quirkless and thus useless Deku, dares to criticize him, the most gifted and awesome of anyone he knows. It’s easy to see how he twists this into Midoriya thinking that he’s better than Bakugou. If Midoriya didn’t think he was better than Bakugou, he wouldn’t be criticizing him. He’d be fawning all over him as everyone else does.

The irony is that Midoriya DOES revere Bakugou, but he does so in spite of Bakugou’s flaws, not because Bakugou lacks any flaws altogether.

To Bakugou, this incorrect belief that he has of Midoriya thinking he’s better than him is reinforced by the revelation of Midoriya’s quirk. Midoriya mentions in the third episode how no one thinks quirks can be passed on the way that One for All is passed along. Knowing this, he proclaims, would force society to completely rethink everything it knows and thinks about quirks. So of course Bakugou thinks that Midoriya just kept his quirk a secret from him. This becomes then either Midoriya not thinking that Bakugou was worth telling, or that Midoriya was just laughing at him and his cluelessness the entire time they knew each other. In no way does Bakugou think that Midoriya wouldn’t tell him of his “secret quirk” because he’s treated Midoriya like dirt nearly his entire life. To Bakugou, the fault lies with Midoriya, not with himself. To admit that would be to admit that his entire sense of self is wrong, that HE is wrong. Which he is and thankfully, eventually, begins to learn, starting here.

Just a few words on Midoriya in these episodes. If it’s vitally important for Bakugou in the long run that Midoriya beats him, it’s equally as important for Midoriya. All Might recognizes this and (foolishly as a teacher, but feelingly as a mentor) lets the wild fight progress. Bakugou at this point represents both the worst and the best for Midoriya. Bakugou is the worst in his constant dismissal of Midoriya as useless and worthless because he doesn’t have a quirk. For Midoriya to go toe-to-toe with Bakugou for so long in this match without using his quirk is an important step in him building his self-confidence. He CAN do it. He’s not useless Deku anymore. Deku is the name of a hero. Additionally, Bakugou represents the best for Midoriya. He came in first in the entrance exam (and likely the quirk assessment test too). As Midoriya tells Uraraka, Bakugou’s “strength and confidence and ambition, not to mention his quirk, they’re so much greater than mine… but that just means I have to do better.” Qurikless Midoriya needed to prove that he could against Bakugou. Quirked Midoriya needs to do the same. Deku is the name of a hero.

The only way he can do that at this point though is reckless self-sacrifice, which many people call out, including Momo and Recovery Girl. That is not sustainable, as Aizawa said in episode five. What use is such power if Midoriya is rendered useless after one punch? Just as Bakugou’s big blast was reckless and stupid, so too was Midoriya’s. They may have allowed both of them to accomplish their short term goals, but in the long term such actions will only result in their self-destruction. Thankfully, both will learn.

#bnha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #katsuki bakugou #midoriya izuku #bakudeku #toshinori yagi #all might #todoroki shouto #aizawa shouta #momo yaoyorozu #bnha meta #bnha analysis #bnha rewatch

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bre95611 · 5 years

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Dean’s Biggest Fears

So while writing part 2 of my meta series about Anna, Cas, and Dean in season 4, I wrote a meta within my meta. I was rewatching “Yellow Fever” for the series and realized there’s just way too much content to try and put in one small section. So I cut a lot of it. And then the amazing @theirprofoundbond read through what I had and suggested that I just bite the bullet and make a mini-meta about just what all I dug into about “Yellow Fever”. So now, here we are!

There is another amazing meta the @drsilverfish wrote about the queer reading of this episode and I highly recommend you all check it out. You can find it here.

“Yellow Fever” is a treasure trove of subtext, showing everything that Dean is afraid of. Textually, it’s all fairly common fears, albeit some a bit more exaggerated than others. I believe it is important to look in to why the fears that manifested, did. The Sheriff, shown as a germaphobe before he develops symptoms of ghost sickness, is later shown using steel wool to try and clean his arms, showing us that the ghost sickness feeds on fears that are already there! Because of this, “Yellow Fever” gives us wonderful insight into the inner workings of the most emotionally constipated man ever. We can use this episode to find out what Dean is truly afraid of.

Chronologically the fears get worse, so we can see subtextually what Dean’s worst fear is, as the sickness progresses.

The episode opens on Dean running from the cutest little dog ever. We know, looking back on the episode as a whole, that this happen when Dean’s time is pretty close to up, maxing out the ridiculous factor of the manifestations of his fears. The further in the sickness he gets, the less mundane they seem. We also know that he was hallucinating then, perceiving that cute dog as a Hellhound, a point that is shown through the mirroring of the scene in season 3 when he is being chased through the woods and us hearing the snarling of a Hellhound. SO, the very first manifestation the audience sees of Dean’s fears is something that has to do with Hell. The biggest fear Dean currently has is Hell. What happened when he was there. What HE DID while he was there. It is shown time and time again throughout this episode.

Backing up to when Dean is first infected.

The first fear we see chronologically is the teenagers! Going off the inference that the sickness triggers your worst fears the closer to death you are, we can take this as a manifestation of Dean's least pressing overarching fear. So what do the teenagers mean?

Dean wants to walk on the opposite side of the street because of the teenagers. This man that has been to Hell and back, kills the things that go bump in the night, is scared of the youths. (Any New Girl fans?) This strikes me as a representation of his lost childhood. Dean never got a chance to be a teenage burnout, at least, not in the same way as a standard teenager. Yes, he dropped out, but not because he was partying. Because his DAD. Because of the lifestyle they had to lead in their line of work. So he is afraid of not having had a normal childhood, afraid of his dad’s influence on his life during his formative years.

Next is the snake!

I’m not going to go in to much detail on this one as its heavily mentioned in the above meta. (Seriously, go read it.) But just so we’re all on the same page, it’s the D. Dean is afraid of the D. Afraid to acknowledge his attraction to men. This establishes Dean's closeted sexuality as the most pressing fear thus far.

Dean driving like a grandma is hilarious. When Sam mentions he is going the speed limit. And then he passes the motel they are staying at because he isn’t going to make a left hand turn into oncoming traffic. “I’m not suicidal!” I think what we can take from this is Baby is his HOME. And Dean is afraid of doing something to damage that home. This ties into the teenagers bit as well, in regards to his childhood. That car has been more of a home to him than any other building throughout his life. And that love for Baby was definitely established during those formative years, the initials, toy soldier, legos in the heat vents, all things that happened when his DAD was driving (do we sense a theme yet, kids? It's all John's fault). Recently having lost that home, when he went to Hell, he feels that fear a little stronger, knowing how much it hurts to lose Baby, and not wanting to experience that again.

The scene where Dean states he didn’t go to their room because of it being on the fourth floor is lovely for giving us the gift of the “Eye of the Tiger” blooper, but other than that, it doesn’t serve much else of a purpose, besides reinforcing the fear of heights Dean has, something the audience is already aware of due to the fear of flying. However, I do think it’s humbling almost that this larger than life, macho dude is scared shitless of heights, such a common fear. I believe it also serves the purpose of believability for the GA, presenting another common, meaningless fear amidst the subtext.

Next we see where Dean’s hallucinations start.

This screams fragile masculinity. The fear is essentially that he isn’t allowed to feel fear, or any emotions for that matter. This is another fear that has a link back to his childhood, especially his dad’s role in that upbringing. John raised him as a soldier, masculine to a fault. No “softer” emotions are allowed, real men don’t cry. So the words in that book are taunting him and his conditioned inability to show his softer side and experience a full spectrum of emotions and reactions. John raised a man, not a baby. This manifestation also doubles as showing us the overlap in Dean's closeted sexuality and his militaristic upbringing. It makes a connection in the viewership's minds between the way Dean was raised and the reason he is literally in Narnia. I think it's moments like these that have created the "John Winchester's A+ Parenting" tag on AO3.

The creepy lumber yard is just that, creepy. I really can’t think of ANY other way this could be read, but by god did I try. The gun though! Another one that gives me a fragile masculinity feel. Considering this episode is fairly logical in it's order of the fears, that view is on track. This is a portrayal of his fear of being pigeon-holed into his father’s alpha male plan for his life. Guns have a very phallic feel to them as well, so something that as well, a continuation of that childhood/sexuality overlap. Afraid to act on his bisexuality and pursue men.

The CAT!

OMG one of my favorite scenes in the show cause god bless that prepubescent scream Jensen manages to pull off. But I think this is another one that hints subtextually at bisexual Dean. Cats are typically treated as a more feminine pet, so Dean is afraid to embrace his more feminine qualities, embracing his emotions, chick flicks, etc. More literally though, a euphemism for vagina is pussy. So maybe this is a manifestation of his fear of only ever being with women and not being able to experience things for the first time (Coughcoughseason10coughcough).

Next we have him freaking out about the badges. The fake FBI badges. Flustered Dean is just a cutie. Fear of getting caught being someone he’s not though? Fear of not being himself??? FEAR OF STAYING IN THE CLOSET.

Yellow Eyed Sam was creepy and made me very uncomfortable. But here is our first manifestation of his fear of Hell. AND his fear of losing Sam to Ruby. It ties in directly to his confusion over what to do in regards to Sam and everything that happened with Ruby during his time in Hell. Sam is telling Dean how he’s going to go back to Hell. Which we have established is WAY up there in Dean’s list of fears.

After that, we have Dean hallucinating Hellhounds coming for him followed by the Sheriff showing up and having black eyes. Guys. Dean hated Hell. He REALLY doesn’t want to go back, I can’t stress this enough.

Final thing we get is Lillith. Now drsilverfish’s meta has a really great queer reading of this scene. I absolutely love it. But another way that scene could be read is DEAN IS SCARED OF GOING TO HELL AGAIN. Like seriously guys, it’s at the forefront of his mind constantly. He is terrified of HIMSELF and what he did there. When Dean asks why him, Lillith says Dean knows why and that he should listen to his heart. Queer reading, Dean likes dudes. Non-queer reading though, he liked torturing souls in Hell, he was good at it. And that is something he doesn't know how to deal with. He’s afraid to be that guy again (which makes what Cas asks him to do in 4x16 even more fucked up, but that's for another time) and he’s confused as to how to move forward with that sort of knowledge about himself.

Summary of Yellow Fever, Cause I know I just threw a lot at you:

Dean’s fears are 3 pretty neat and tidy categories.

From least to most on a fear level:

1. Childhood/Daddy Issues

Dean fears what the loss of his formative years mean for him now as a grown man. He fears how the lost childhood, and what was basically the norm for him and his family due to his dad’s influence, has affected his development into an adult. This is the least pressing fear, as it is something Dean has been dealing with basically since he was a kid. I feel a lot of the initial introspection he might have had would have come into play back when the show canonically starts, with Dean having to face Sam, the biggest reason Dean didn’t really have a childhood.

2. Dean’s Closeted Bisexuality

There is a lot of bleed from Daddy Issues into this category, because of the influence John obviously had on Dean’s view of masculinity. The only reason this doesn’t rank number one in this episode is because its something Dean has been dealing with for a lot longer, and thus had time to adjust.

3. Hell

Dean is terrified of Hell. He’s afraid of what he did, who he is, who he became, and more than ANYTHING, he’s afraid to go back. This one gets top rank due to how fresh in Dean’s mind it is. At this point in the timeline of the show, Dean’s been topside for months at most, if not only weeks. We know he has been struggling to sleep and up until now hasn’t talked about it at all. The end of this episode is the first time we find out that Dean tortured souls in Hell, too. It puts repeat viewers in a cool situation where we see all these things Dean does in early season 4, desperately trying to save everyone he can, to make amends for what he did under Alastair’s tutelage. And it allows us to see early signs like the Lillith scene that depict Dean’s fear that all of this is happening to him because he was a bully in Hell, because he enjoyed hurting people. The layers of this show. Geez.

So hopefully here soon I will be able to get it together about get part 2 of the series finished soon. If you would like to read part 1 you can check it out right here, and I’ll update this one with links as I finish more of the series. Once again, thanks to @agusvedder for the gifs! I appreciate you!

Thanks everyone for reading! Let me know what you think!

#spn #supernatural #supernatural meta #spn meta #spn 4x06 #spn yellow fever #Dean Winchester #my meta

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