#but also aesthetically and thematically blood and killing and blood and killing. you understand | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ikiruwill · 4 years

Note

ok, but what does shinji actually think of his eva? personally, but also aesthetically

OHH omg?? 😭 thank you for asking this, amazing surprise!! mhajsjsj I ended up writing something verrrry long bc my brain kept throwing info at me, so now this a meta I guess rip

For Shinji’s personal thoughts / relationship with Unit-01, there’s extra long detail mainly of Ep1 bc of first impressions / context ( then I’ll try to summarize ). Insight into some tiny details like Shinji’s unspoken thoughts that were maybe missed:

Shinji’s early and personal impressions of Unit-01 is mostly fear if we’re summing things up. The very first scene with it is even a jump scare to emphasize that:

The frame is black, and then after the lights turn on, boom, this:

A GIANT FACE WITH MONSTER EYES THAT GLOW YES I AM LOOKING DIRECTLY AT YOU NOW SON ( with bby framed right in the middle so you know how tiny he is in comparison / and narratively, that he’s also the subject of focus )

.... can confirm scare. Plz no

Much fear. But even before this scene, it’s great to remember that Shinji is already terrified bc he saw Fourth Angel-kun AKA Sachiel wrecking havoc outside, understandably freaked out by its monster appearance / how it was shooting down military planes like they were pieces of paper. Shinji was also directly caught in that earlier crossfire and legit could’ve died just bc everything happening was too close for comfort until Misato finally shows up in her car to pick him up. Best uber But after that they get caught in a huge N2 mine explosion that hits Sachiel dead on but it comes out with barely a scratch / casually just regrows a head or something. Sachiel seems invincible to Shinji by this point and that fact already scares him— as it should.

But back to the Unit-01 scene: as far as Shinji can remember, he’s never seen an Eva or heard of one and he lets everyone know this once Gendo starts pressuring him to pilot it and do the thing to save the world right now plz or else everyone in city dead including Shinji-kun gg

Ofc to Shinji, it’s not a good feeling at all, he’s running through all the sudden facts : Unit-01 is manmade, looks powerful, and it’s supposed to protect us. It isn’t an Angel destroying the city and nonchalantly killing things of military force so there’s no need to hide and run from it— but it’s still alien to me and scary and now my impression of it is even worse because my estranged father and adult strangers are forcing me to get comfortable with it immediately to fight the ‘Angel’ I saw earlier. So I might die after all today.

Fear of death on top of feeling useless / cowardly / abandoned etc is a lot. Then injured Rei scene AKA Gendo’s master guilt tripping plan happens, and it works, but this is also where his impression of Unit-01 changes for the better : There’s a huge tremor, Rei falls off her stretcher, and giant debris is coming down from the ceiling right above her Shinji—

Unit-01 moves on its own does a giant good thing

So this part : It saved him? This robot that he’s only had bad feelings about so far? Shinji is confused af but now feels a strangely positive connection to Unit-01, one he probably can’t put into words, but it ultimately influences his decision on not to run away. bc now it finally feels like there’ll be at least something on his side if he agrees to do this— AKA Unit-01 is the literal “something that can protect / help him”, which we all know is a concept Shinji desperately wants and chases. In this terrifying mess, it’s encouraging to him. And then Shinji says the thing:

Brave bby ( it’s nice to know that he ends up saving Rei again a few eps later, shamelessly serious and gallant / heroic Shinji is underrated don’t @ me )

Fast forward : after that he gets in, syncs perfectly with it, fights Sachiel but almost dies bc he missteps once, starts to panic, but mainly bc he’s never had any proper training prior gg NERV. Unit-01 goes berserk, violently kicks Sachiel’s ass, scares the living hell out of everyone watching etc.

At the end of Ep 2, after Shinji wakes up in the hospital and moves in with Misato, he remembers everything that night, traumatized:

The blood has settled, an already freaked out Shinji turns to see Unit-01 without its cool sci-fi unicorn headplate thing that it shed earlier in battle:

Oh.

It’s once again looking straight at him. Oh no this is much scarier than the first time plz no I want the yellow sci-fi Spiderman mask eyes back

Then Shinji understandably screams his lungs out ( and that’s when he probably fell unconscious? ) So now he’s back to fearing Unit-01 bc his Eva is a beast of a robot, on top of now having PTSD from the fight with Sachiel. Unit-01 protected Shinji twice now by going berserk, sure, but it’s also extremely unknown and frightening to him after in ways he couldn’t have expected when he first saw it— the primal kind of fear. ( side note: Primal fear, primal wants, and primal feelings, primal anything in general are a big thematic thing in nge, so it really lingers and comes back even harder in eoe )

Finally for the rest of his personal thoughts on Unit-01, badly summarized bc this is already 2 fucking long thank you to whoever’s still reading LMAOO: Shinji eventually gets used to piloting and tries to push the existential fear of his Eva to the back of his mind, mostly. He always wonders what it is exactly, once admitting that he really doesn’t know anything about Evas while peering into his NERV manual episodes later ( bc NERV is weird about everything and he’s too scared anyone ask past a certain point, ect ). Shinji thinks his Eva smells / feels weirdly calming to him inside despite being scary, but only when his life isn’t in violent danger. Things only suck whenever Unit-01 goes berserk / he loses control somehow / when he finds out certain truths about it. Youknow

On his opinions about Unit-01 aesthetically, I don’t think Shinji has any preferences that make him go ‘YES I totally vibe with this neon genesis green and purple it’s so me’ or anything, he’s just not caught up in the awesome looking giant robot idea at all ( Unlike Kensuke and Asuka ). For example his reaction was just ‘huh? oh... ok. I see?’ at Asuka when they first met when she was showing off shiny and red Unit-02 to him ( which is cool and cooler with a cape ). If you tell Shinji his giant robot is awesome and that you’re in love with the purple paint job, other than demurely acknowledge your praise, he might try to thank you surface level, very awkwardly bc he can’t take credit for that ( also will 1000/10 think that you remind him of Kensuke depending on who’s more intense LOL )

Confused and serious, I guess that’s Shinji’s attitude towards Evas in general ( minus when he’s not freaking out mhajsja ) and it fits the rest of his mild / boring / unassuming personality— like Kaji and Kaworu both said to his face, he can be clueless about his own position as a pilot and how it affects everyone around him. Like the random girls in his class, lots of people think Shinji’s cool for what he gets to do but to him it’s just a thing he has to do, for the most part.

On a sadder note, makes sense bc the only time we see Shinji enjoying something as a hobby is when he’s playing the cello and smiling, even then he just downplays his talent when asked. I think he would be a lot more passionate about music if his circumstances were better. That probably contributes to why he doesn’t care much about Evas in an aesthetic way either. But I think eventually, he’d come to prefer his own Eva just because of how familiar it would look and feel to him, plus his past experiences with it. Many ones.

Unrelated bonus note!! It’s interesting that Unit-01 is the only Eva with a completely different colour scheme when compared to its respective pilot’s plugsuit— in this case, Shinji’s plugsuit being blue and white instead ( as a side note Unit-13 is also purple and green but Shinji and Kaworu’s plugsuits match this time ) But why purple huh? My guess is that aside from wanting the main character’s giant robot to also stand out bc it’s special and awesome, Yui also wears a purple shirt in one of the later episodes showing a long flashback. That screencap stuck with me, idk why. Purple shirt confirmed in nge holy shit mind blown LOL jk in all seriousness we can only speculate. Maybe Yui’s fav colour was purple and Gendo decided to pay tribute to that when they made the Evas. Whatever headcanon hurts us more!

#skyvar #answer ; 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐤.#ooc .#meta .#bless you always give me random and awesome asks q-q #long post /

6 notes · View notes

eisforeidolon · 4 years

Text

Episode: Back and to the Future

I get why, thematically, they chose that song for the previouslies that kick off the final season. However, from my perspective I just do not think it actually works at all. It is far too sedate for the action it’s recapping and the scene it cuts into. The juxtaposition of such different paces is just ... odd.

I guess I'm supposed to feel all sad and shit from the lingering shots of dead!Jack's burned out eye holes? Maybe if he'd had a personality other than being an amorphous shifting blob of unbelievable power and permanent intellectual infancy I was supposed to care about because of the number of times they had the other characters say he was their son/family/awesome. As is? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wish I could say I was surprised that the veritable army of animate corpses making a beeline for the Winchesters and Cas just … somehow … let them escape and run away. I'd have been a lot more surprised if the writers had actually bothered to do the work to get the characters out of the corner the last finale put them into, at this point.�� Then there's the bit where the writers shove some nonsense into Dean's mouth to try and make it seem like this whole thing with Chuck isn't a sudden random asspull to go for the most absurdly overpowered villain they could think of for the last season. Totally believable, oh yeah.

Although the idea of a sewer running through a graveyard including right to the wall of a crypt does not exactly seem likely to me, I do actually give the writers points for having that not actually work as an escape route. Also awarding some points for them remembering that as an angel, Castiel should be able to see demons.

As other people have already pointed out, considering what he did to the Novak family and how haphazardly he handled Claire, especially? Him bitching about any other creature defiling somebody's corpse is pretty fucking hilarious. Though I'd possibly be more sympathetic if demon!Jack didn't already show a 500% more interesting personality in thirty seconds than actual!Jack did in two seasons. So far as I’ve been concerned, the only think Jack has really had going for him is Alex, so Alex as a different character, even a demon, I’m calling a win.

I honestly do not get the decision of trying garner fan nostalgia by bringing back ghosts from previous seasons if they're just going to arbitrarily make them kill anyone at random for kicks. Would it have been that hard to have shown “Bloody Mary” killing one person who might have had a secret where someone died? Because I could buy it for one of those teen girls, but not both. Or limiting the “Woman in White” to attacking men along highways who might possibly be unfaithful? Maybe we're supposed to believe that they're all just so pissed off at having spent all that time in hell that they have completely lost touch with what originally tied them to earth and drove them to kill in the first place? I don't mind them no longer being tied to a physical location since they were banished and unnaturally returned, but to be so disconnected to what drove them to become angry spirits seems much more intrinsic to who and what they were. I guess even the ghosts lose their personalities to become cardboard in the hands of Dabbernatural.

Oh, look, mysteriously, big G God's tantrum opening up hell is not actually big enough to impact the whole planet – or even, you know, more than the literal next town over. This is my surprised face.

Then we get to the bit where the Winchesters find an abandoned car with a bloody mess inside and are all, “Look at this Woman in White kill! Obviously it was a Woman in White! Totally the specific one we sent to hell! Because … car! And, uh, blood! And, oh, because the fucking script says so.” REASONS, YO.

Aren't all garage doors required to have an emergency pull for if the power goes out? Obviously the script required the pair of VotW end up stuck hiding in the garage, which, uh, a ghost can't find people hiding now? Did I miss something in there that explained that silly convenience that makes the ghost even less spooky in an episode that really really fails on that count even more later on?

I guess maybe I should be happy that it's Castiel that gets hit with the dumb characterization stick to necessitate Sam & Dean not work together to clear out the town? Look, at this point, considering the way the writers have had him act as a constant disaster zone of idiotic choices and betrayals for several seasons now, my ability to sympathize with Cas is a wee bit limited. To have him now sulk like a toddler and refuse to work with the demon to help the Winchesters save an entire town full of people and prevent the spread of angry hell ghosts to the world beyond that? Because oh noes it's wearing Jack's face and he was just sooooo attached? Even though all of them supposedly thought of Jack as their kid? He doesn't even try to offer up alternatives to working with the demon with the very convenient solution, just whines about it?

So basically this billions of years old angel somehow has less fucking practicality than the Winchesters (despite how easily he killed the shit out of his fellow angels when it suited his plans). Not to mention that by refusing, he's saddling Dean with having to work with demon!Jack. The human guy who was just recently convinced he had to kill Jack for the good of the world after Jack killed his mother, only to have a change of heart when he saw Jack’s understanding, only for Jack to end up killed anyway – you know, emotions a hell of a lot more conflicted about their supposed kid's than Castiel's? Castiel is just fine with that! What a self-centered dick.

I liked Dean's conversation with Rowena on the phone and his response to her presumable demand to ask more nicely. I laughed at Sam accidentally shooting Cas and Cas' resultant reaction. I thought it was curious that they had the demon bring up Dean's time as a torturer in hell, though I'd be pleasantly surprised if it was anything but a way to segue into the Cage getting opened. One utterly wasted Michael storyline is apparently not enough for Dabb! Maybe it's just supposed to be some kind of weird demon idea of flattery, but I did find their interactions interesting. I would be intrigued by the weird flashes when Cas was trying to heal Sam (Another angel power that actually works for once? Wow!) … if Dabb hadn't already yammered on about what it means in an interview. That dude is absolutely allergic to leaving any kind of major storyline an open mystery or letting it retain any intrigue for fans to speculate about. I was not impressed with Sam getting damsel-ed to be saved by Castiel at least twice. Come on, show.

As I speculated before and said above, I’m fine with the Chuckified nature of their release meaning some rules don’t apply. I could maybe even understand the thought process that them being out in the daytime, without being limited to darkness, was scarier? I just wish anyone behind the camera was awake enough to actually look at the aesthetics of what they did here and realize that no, it's really really not. The whole thing just looked so embarrassingly mediocre - pantomime actors in bad bargain basement costumes silly. I think it was @hippychick006 that suggested gifs of the whole end portion looked like they should be set to Yackety Sax? The context of the episode does not in any way negate that. Just … wow. Like with the wire fight, I am flabbergasted that this made it to air without somebody finding the brakes.

I'm not sure if the writers actually made a failed reference by having the Woman in White say Dean was the one who took her home when it was Sam, or if they meant to imply he and Sam together had been there/responsible and Dean was the one she was addressing. Regardless, I'm not impressed with how all the ghosts Sam & Cas were being confronted by just … stood there to be shot one by one for a while. And then … ran … literally ran … chasing them down the street instead of doing the whole ghost teleport thing. There are way, way too many times in this episode where the guys get away or win a fight because reasons and there is absolutely no tension in that. Even if it didn't also look ridiculous. Dean’s part of the confrontation was a little less absurd in that respect, at least. And the spell effects actually looked reasonably cool.

I'm a little annoyed at myself that the obligatory brother scene at the end of the episode kind of works on me. Though I’m not particularly impressed with Sam's conclusion that God is totally going to leave them alone now. Sure, Chuck has a long habit of leaving when he's bored, but he isn't leaving this world because he's bored. You guys actively pissed him off! Yet Sam treats it like a foregone conclusion Chuck will have buggered off instead of sticking around to watch his previously favorite but now uncooperative toys suffer and die first. Though I'm not sure if that's a writer issue, actually, or just a legit choice I don’t care for. I could see Sam insisting on trying to sell a potential positive side with no room for doubt with as fatalistic as Dean is being. I could also see it just being one of those things Sam convinces himself must be true because he's reasoned it out in his head and refuses to consider alternatives may exist. Like how he was so convinced it could only be God planting visions in his head back in season 11. Still, I like the callback and I can even see why Dean is the most immediately cynical and pissed off, so hey! There was actually one whole entire scene I enjoyed in there!

#negativity for ts #anti dabb #anti castiel #anti jack kline #writer incompetence #spn 15x01 #spn season 15 #long post

23 notes · View notes

elizabethrobertajones · 5 years

Text

14x07 watching notes

In Which It Is Now Completely Apparent Which Of Buck And Leming Are Writing A Scene At Any Given Time

A Tale Of Lizbob Being Tormented By Toddlers

Hello it is 3:32am and I am awake from a dream of what the episode might have been (plus side: overt Destiel motel room sharing, downside: Jack accidentally killed Dean) because my tantruming toddler neighbour who just moved into the haunted house next door was screaming, and threw something at our adjoining wall. At 3am. So I'm not exactly well-rested and I'm kinda pissed, which isn't the best combo for a Buckleming episode, but when you wake up with a scream and a thump, you aren't going back to sleep for a lil while :P

Kudos to the rest of the writing team, we're 7 episodes in and I've thoroughly forgotten Nick exists. I've just been assuming he was caught, featured on a true crime program, and is already gone and locked up for the new murder and likely solving of a cold case.

Ahahahaaaa the opening of the recap is "when it comes to killing you, I'll be the one to do it" so that's ominous. As you might tell, my psyche is utterly wrapped around this whole Shakespearean tragedy of Jack vs Dean, and perhaps they're not gonna murder each other today but the constant reminders they're living in a murder or get murdered delicate thematic plot balance is exactly the sort of thing that we need to have hanging over their dynamic, as well of course as being the start point of their relationship to show how far they've come and how much they've changed and now love each other and how just last episode Dean got in his "fine i have a son now" episode a season or two later than everyone else and just in time for it to be "so now you bonded with him of course he's caught Doom because you can't have nice things for literally a single episode and this is your fault for bonding with him, Dean"

This recap is designed to wound me, a Jack fan and lover of how TFW loves their son

Ew, it's Nick. The first time in my life I've been tempted to skip at least a lil of the recap.

Imagine how tight it would have been to just do a 10 second "here's Jack" recap and cut to the action

and the action includes an episode without Nick stealing time from the boy

You know i spend exactly 0 time speculating on how Eugenie might write her personal fave bits of the episodes but if you had to throw together "nick is now a serial killer ritually murdering priests on a satanic bender" then that would have been a pretty close thing to what I could have come up with as distilled Buckleming essence. (gross)

There's a vague continued overlap of the human!Cas arc with the parallel to the open of 9x03 and the general aesthetic of season 11's Lucifer's satanic rampage bender thrown together but you know what that's more meta than this arc deserves and my boy is sick

OH NO CAS IS THE ONE WATCHING OVER HIM ABORT ABORT

His grace looks pathetic. Maybe he's trying not to wake Jack up. Maybe he doesn't have a whole lot left.

That's not helping, Cas

ANXIOUS PARENTS OUTSIDE HIS ROOM

I bet Cas sent them away because they were hovering

Dean this is not what happens to kids, stop trying to kid yourself that this is like having a regular demonic toddler

Man am I glad I do not have kids right now both because I don't have to worry about them and also because they scream and throw stuff at the walls at 3am

Dean angry at Cas cuz he's worried about Jack oh no oh no oh no look at these stressed parents. Cas is forced into the doctor role because he magic but he is just as stressed as they are and tensions are high, and then the boy starts convulsing

Oh my god they snapped, they are actually bringing Jack to an emergency room. This is horrifying and kind of a trip to imagine what they're going to tell any authority figures about who this guy is and what their relationship is to him.

Do they remember that he has barcode fingerprints and probably is gonna be Medically Weird just as default?

(Alex is 29 like me and Misha is early 40s and Jimmy is canonically a year older than Misha for some reason, so at a push Cas could be his dad and have made some very early mistakes but the boy is biologically only like 10 years younger than them on average... JACK looks another half that at times but this is a hospital so idk if "smiles like a toddler" "early teenage adorableness" is a good measure of age)

(I'm stress-typing)

"His full name, please"

All 3 dads look at each other baffled.

Sam goes with Jack Kline, which, a season and a bit later, is the first canonical use of it as Jack's surname

They're cautious about using Winchester, understandably, but it's a nice reminder that Kelly is family too and as the dead parent, naming Jack in tribute to her should have been something they were doing all along (like, season 13 all along), especially as he even visited the Klines earlier this season. Sam being the one who thinks to do this is nice because he's the most dad-aligned to Jack in a traditional sense when it's come to raising him (Cas got the pre-birth role as the traditional father role) and Cas obviously had the strongest connection to Kelly before that but this isn't a moment about her so much as these 3 stressed dads.

LOL Date of birth. Sam wins another point for knowing it, while Dean makes back and forth guesses on '99/2000, making Jack 19 or 20, which would at least mean any one of them could have fathered him and chopping 10 years off Alex's age to compromise between look and feel.

Given Jack's symptoms the nurse should have been a lil more concerned asking about trips to West Africa or other likely Ebola places lately. (This may be poor timing on the show's part but isn't there a fresh outbreak right now?)

(Oof I googled it and there's "Congo Ebola outbreak 2nd worst in history" articles dated 6 hours ago... Maybe a bad year to write haemorraghic diseases for fun and also how comes no one is talking about this in the news and it's all blah blah brexit... Have we just stopped fearing it now a few outbreaks have shown it mostly stays contained in African countries so now they can just suffer it on their own? I'm making a 4am donation to relief efforts)

*returns from the doctors without borders website* anyway back to the fictional sick white boy

And his very stressed dads

I have no idea how much of this is medically accurate but I feel like this is particularly dramatised to match hospital visits people have experienced which did not involve bringing in a stumbling, feverish, person who is having seizures and coughing blood

it's still objectively sad to see TFW lined up all stressed out and Cas and Dean holding hands while they stare through the giant window

The doctors aren't wearing masks even though he has been COUGHING BLOOD

sheesh this entire hospital is in quarantine now

Nick saying he was "getting hammered" the night of the murder isn't super subtle

Cas aggressively still trying to watch over Jack even though they won't let him in the room. Dean paces and talks about ghouls in the middle of the hospital to let off stress.

Cas goes to watch over him in person while Sam and Dean have a personal chat. This is awful D:

I appreciate the sentiment of busting Jack out before they pay the hospital bills because they're running out of medical options and need to turn to magic ones, a la every dramatic event ever in their lives except that one time Dean broke his leg and Sam was too out of it with the Hallucifers to sell his soul to make it better, but if Jack's in system shutdown wouldn't at least keeping him with state of the art equipment mean things like transfusion and machines that keep him propped up?

Mind you his bloodtype is probably, like, X evil negative or something Bucklemingy

It's in his DNA... He might be cute but he's still born of their episodes and wacky non con ideas... It was gonna catch up to him eventually D: You can't outrun it forever!!

I accidentally hit a button and 8x02 started playing on VLC

"DEEEAN" Cas shoves him through the portal out of purgatory, credits roll, this was officially the weirdest episode ever.

(No I didn't watch the whole thing, I was literally paused on the last shot from where I was about to gif it last night when I fell asleep)

Sam already called Rowena... Smart cookie

obligatory yell at Cas shedding the coat to put on Jack so they don't walk him out in a hospital gown

Oh my god Jack's so sick he's white as a sheet and being carried out by 2 of his dads and he still has a lil well of snark to be like "fine we're leaving" to the doctor.

"There's just no talking to him when he gets like this"

We're at the promo scene and I'm still not 100% sure after sleeping on it that Rowena definitely did not have the Book of the Damned, and that she hadn't been able to make off with it at the end of season 11, never for it to be seen again, because she was very much in the process of stealing the Black Grimoire in 13x22, but this does, I guess, make sense in regards to which book would serve Jack better, and Mittens tried her best to convince me that Rowena plausibly did not have it because the Winchesters did... I'm still suspicious because I really did just assume that she took it and the implication was we didn't see it because SHE had hidden it, and from a line in a Buckleming episode as well. And either way around her showing up with it makes sense that she had it but I'd have occam's razor'd it that she stole the obvious books at the obvious times and not that 13x22 became a BotD heist on top of everything else :P

Jack is up and about!!

He's using a more gravelly voice and it's actually a really hot voice and for literally the first time the Alex/Jack divide (gulf) in my head that one is my age and hot and the other is a 12 year old is a bit shaken. I mean Jack's canonically now supposed to be around 19-20? Which explains why he has a "wooo spring break" attitude when we see in the promo he snaps and wants to go to Vegas.

They grow up so fast.

Anyway considering he was in total organ shutdown a lil while ago it seems a night's rest has done him well if he's wandering around the bunker

Can't tell if we swapped writers or what... well, it seems like it's possible given Jack's fluctuating sickness, which of course could just be a plot thing but also a mark of the inconsistencies in Buckleming episodes. It's still odd to me that in the filming process it didn't occur to them that Jack might not at least sway on the spot at little, but he's really standing there like a little trooper, upright and talking confidently.

And betraying to Rowena that his dads like her and say nice things about her behind her back, which is catastrophic for them. How dare. You're damaging the foundations of their relationship.

*cough cough*

"Bollocks"

Yep, her heart has softened, Jack won her over in record time, and she's just thinking about that time she adopted a wee Polish lad and loved him as her own because Jack is genetically engineered to be a blank slate son version of a Mary Sue. You take one look at him and he is Your Son in whatever way will most harm you.

Good grief I wish Crowley was still around to see what HILARIOUS overlap with Gavin we'd have wrung out of Jack's main superpower.

Cas offering his grace to stabilise Jack on the spot. Halp. It's more important to him that his son lives by miles, that this isn't even an internal debate for him. In a way, obvious that Cas would be like this as a parent, in another, Cas just offered to give up his grace live on TV

Rowena shoots down the obvious solution (oh and thank god that for once the show actually even references obvious solutions) and starts talking about how we need archangel grace and as soon as she says that I think "oh, Michael" and Dean starts to come over weird with a wooziness that makes me wonder if that was timed for the audience "oh there's one out there right now" and why would DEAN be personally affected right thiiiiiis second..............................

When they go on spring break together we're getting right to the murderin

I mean SOMETHING is up and Dean's right now having his own weird moment as Rowena talks about how Jack will now have a fluctuating set of symptoms for the sake of the plot so

It's possible this is just his internal POV emotional reaction to bad news because this is what happens to me when I hear it but I suspect Dean is a lil more healthy than me in the first place so doesn't verge on passing out whenever a catastrophe happens regularly. And also Sam and Cas aren't similarly struck with physical symptoms at the news their son is dying.

Ya know, Buckleming, or probably Eugenie specifically which makes it all the worse, writing this woman taking a call in a dark alleyway, then not being terrified to be approached by a weird man and on top of that stopping and turning to invite him to join her in the club... this is the kind of thing where they're writing someone going against all natural instinct that it's bad characterisation for someone we've literally never met before just to put her in danger.

I mean at least they didn't make Nick stab a random woman (and a black woman at that to add to their overall awful stats)

I like how Jack's just decided Vegas or Tahiti are places you just kinda go to die... I mean I don't know what he's learned about them but it all has to be absorbed through the media in his most innocent way. I feel like there's something very sweet about whatever he thinks you do in these places of reputed sin and blaze of glory live fast die young lifestyles, but also utterly tragic. Consumptive tragic hero but with a twist of the reckless and dangerous later tropes of... It's 5am and I can't think but like. Vegas. Drugs and gambling high life style tropey films and books from the American tradition.

And of course it's Dean (who utterly fits into this trope and even has yearly Vegas trips with Sam since discovering his psychic powers back in season 1 and also lives a blaze of glory mindset) who brings him the deadly glass of milk (film trope about innocence but also like, people dying) and a sandwich loaded with salami. Dean went all out to make that for Jack - a couple of episodes after sending a woman off to "make him a sandwich" and regretting it as he spoke, we see the yank the cloth away reveal of Dean's nurturing side where he is the caregiver who shows affection through food and will go to the trouble of making his boy a delicious sandwich.

"Nice." See? He's Dean's son and Dean approves his choice of places to die. "You sure this is the best time?"

"Pretty sure it is," Jack says, backpack on, already almost out the door. He's found a brown corduroy jacket which is both unlike his beige jackets and suits from the rest of his life aside from the blue apocalypse world one, and also very very much like Sam's iconic season 1-2 brown corduroy jacket that he mostly stopped wearing although I think was the one Dean wore in 4x01 as one of its sporadic dwindling appearances, if I'm not wrong.

I probably am but either way, it's a change to darker colours, something Sam-associated to fit the gap of this smol dangerous dying kid Dean has to deal with, and puts Jack in thick earthier tones, thicker clothes to ward against the cold of death, and dressed more like TFW than normal as he usually has quite a distinct child-like version of their clothes.

Jack's concept of life and mortality is fucked, possibly because he was a functioning being after a day or two of gathering his thoughts and starting to come to terms with asking deep philosophical questions about himself, so in a way discovering he only has a couple more weeks to live is hardly anything. He's a fucking mayfly.

Ugh it's now solidly 5am and I am clearly not going back to sleep so I give up, I'm finally getting coffee. The rest of the notes will be maybe a wee bit more coherent :P

Anyway kettle thought: due to Jack and Dean's murder or be murdered relationship (lordy how is this the only way you relate to fatherhood, my guy?) I kinda suspect that Dean's about to abscond with Jack without even telling dad 1 or dad 2, because he is dad 3 and that's totally cool and he's a responsible adult, but, you know, woozy and doomed while Jack is also consumptive and doomed. BAD COMBO.

I charge you with grounds of diminished responsibility due to mutual murder narrative doom

"I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it"

Okay remember in season 1 episode 14 where Dean was like "LOL WE SHOULD GO TO VEGAS BECAUSE YOU ARE PSYCHIC"? and I referenced that like 5 minutes ago so you should, obviously I've only ever been able to headcanon the reveal of Vegas Week in season 7 (Dabb episode, take a shot) dates back to that and is one of their between episode activities which makes sense that since they only started travelling as adults together in the canon of the show (and Sam 1 year older than drinking age) that it might as well have been when they started the tradition?

Well Jack here is reacting like Dean would have if HE were the one in Sam's shoes in 1x14, and being the fun lil brother who actually would be like fuck it let's go to Vegas and see how psychic I am in the casinos! In the context of season 1 Sam is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too angsty and tragic to do anything other than come across as a stick in the mud who thinks Dean is joking and they're gonna carry on being tragic and hunting monsters instead. Dean in season 2, episode 9, also wanted to fuck off and go have fun when Sam's scary destiny got too much for him to carry, and that was when he was locked in the murder or save him vow from John's last words, which is a similar burden to the narrative bind he's in with Jack.

Jack, all of his fathers' son, finally shows up as the god damn first person to take his doom sensibly and actually want to fuck off to Vegas, and that's demon!Dean levels of fuck it.

Incidentally I half-suspect that Crowley, who has billions of dollars and once bid the moon in an auction (hi I watched 99% of 8x02 yesterday and 1% of it just now) probably was steering demon!Dean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay carefully around the thought of wait a minute I have an extremely rich and powerful sugar daddy and no responsibilities... VEGAAAAAAAS.

Like, any time Dean started to form the thought, bam, naked triplets show up in their room.

Anyway Jack's busy being tragic, talking about wanting to get a tan (Beach now linked to something to do before death) or see a hockey game (oh shit we forgot Adam) or get a parking ticket (oh so that's why Dean murders him)

"And when it's all over... die."

Dean looks over his shoulder, mind made up to abduct the boy and take him joyriding

"So that's your plan, huh?"

"I don't want to waste time arguing"

"Did I say I disagree"

jack, this is Fun Dad

I know, the concept is completely radical and you've never seen Dean be fun but trust me.

Even with your very, very limited options, Sam has literally had 3 episodes about how he's Scrooge, and Cas is... Cas. But Dean is legitimately fun dad when you get him on a good day. Trust me.

No one's speaking to Rowena??? How wild.

Poor thing is never going to get her mega coven

Dean (who has rocked up already wearing his jacket) spaces out as Sam starts blahing on about the culturally appropriative shaman Ketch has located.

Same, buddy

At least Dean isn't lying to them about stealing Jack. Somewhat. Not the whole Vegas plan.

Jack smiles at Sam and Cas in a kind of way that somehow conveys in its entirety "this may be the last time you see me but I'm cool with you NOT seeing me die of coughing my lungs up and fun dad has this covered and we've always had a weird death cult about our relationship anyway so I'm okay with it and you guys were the best dads but now fun dad is going to take me out back and shoot me where you can't see and I love you bye"

"Why don't you drive?"

Jack is like ?!?!?!?!? D:

EVEN ON HIS DEATHBED he hadn't figured this would ever happen

It's the make a wish foundation :')

This is, of course, the ultimate sign of Dean loving you and caring for you in Dean's own special way of not telling you he does but showing it with a gesture of absolute confidence and letting you in, and in the vast annuls of the show dates back to the second ever episode where Dean let Sam drive at the end for all of 1 shot (seriously, they've swapped back by the long shot at the end of 1x02 where you can't see them in the car but the prop drivers are definitely doing a generic Sam in the passenger seat Dean driving routine for stock footage :P)

Anyway Dean loves Jack enough that he's letting a kid who does not know how to drive learn to drive in the Impala, like he and Sam did.

I can see Alex sweating bullets about being seated next to Jensen in the beloved Impala and having to mess up turning it on... never mind the fact that both Jensen AND Dean will murder him if he harms the car, and being murdered on both levels at once is spiritually unsettling and he will probably end up an unquiet ghost.

And yet, the glee at being behind the wheel of this legendary gal

TRAGIC NYOOOOOM

"It's like I'm you! :D"

"No, it's not! :D (but with implied murder)"

"THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER"

Look if he survives this, you're creating a speed demon who will want his own classic car

And then you'll have to teach him how to maintain it

oh god

But yeah, non-toxic parenting in the John Winchester As He Could Have Been style.

At least as long as Dean is in the Make A Wish mode and not back to tragic murder mode

And that wooziness that he may or may not be associating with no sleep and too much stress suggests this isn't going to last as a Fun Day Trip For The Boy

"Cas are you sure you want to handle this alone?"

NO HE NEEDS A HUG HIS SON IS DYING

Sam, go hug him, you need a hug and your son is dying.

Also, of course, you mutually need each other in this instance and Sam is reaching out to Cas with presumably the intent that he wants to be in on it but is asking as if just concerned about Cas

Cas, being Cas, has somehow deduced that Dean is "taking this particularly hard" despite the fact all three of them are Concerned Dads and CAS WHAT THE FUCK are you doing being selflessly concerned about DEAN and sizing up his emotional state when all three of you are wrecked and your son is dying?

You literally have 3x the sitting at his bedside holding his hand moments of any of them and montaged the heck out of the concern at the start of the episode

I remember way back someone wankily made a chart of how often people talked to Dean about stuff and other people talked to each other about Dean, and Sam is now crying about Dean beating himself up over being mean to Jack at the start of season 13 and regretting it, so this entire conversation is Sam and Cas man paining at each other about how much man pain Dean is in.

I say with no wank in my heart, just sheer horrified amusement at this data point if they still are hate-watching the show and being horrified about how Sam never gets stuff for himself etc (I mean. He and Cas both have had extended chunks of seasons about them parenting Jack and this is Dean's time to come belatedly to what the two of them already had)

Cas finally says "son" a season and change after Jack was wandering around calling him "father" and Sam doesn't seem inclined to disagree that this is how it feels for all 3 of them.

Obviously he's crying about Jack and it was just the context above that made it look like he was crying about Dean and I always knew that, I'm not a monster, I'm just deflecting because owwwwwwwww this hurts

HUG EACH OTHER YOU DUMB FUCKS SO I FEEL BETTER

Cas walks off instead and Sam finally after 1000 years discovers how Dean feels when Cas does that when he was angling to come along and they miscommunicated and didn't say what they meant. Except Sam wanted to come out of mutual Dad Angst comfort while Dean normally wants to go with Cas places so he can hold his hand.

Jack's so proud of himself for being able to drive.

"Born with a wheel in your hand"

He literally stole the Impala from you when he was 7 months in the womb

Dean is like, we could get you laid? And Jack is like. Nah. I have a better idea.

No idea what right now but he still doesn't wanna bang anyone

Ugh a Nick scene. Tag yourself I'm the old tyre in the foreground

Is this the house from Family Remains aka the self-admitted worst episode of the show by Kripke and Carver's explicit design

I am going to puke Jack wanted to go on a fishing trip with his dad

There were spoilers about them doing this but I repressed it the fuck down and lied to myself that Jensen was randomly teaching Alex to fish on set because I didn't want to think about Dean doing this with Jack because oh my god someone has taken my heart and gouged it out with a rusty spoon.

Also: someone design Jack a t-shirt with a witty slogan about fishing rather than hook ups. Like, dude bro fishing culture but in a world where you're as likely to get dumb slogans about not wanting sex as you are for it making you a babe magnet

"I'd rather be fishin" is a thing people get on mugs for the workplace but we could start with this sentiment and play

ALSO AS I MENTIONED I WATCHED 8x02 IN THE LAST 24 HOURS AND DEAN NEAR RIVERS SUCKS. We also have 10x01 and Daniel the fishing angel (who was the pizza man from Monster Movie, see above: slogans about fishing, pizza man innuendo, we got a thing going here) who was happy on Earth just fishing and enjoying the planet and not wanting to go back to Heaven, in a very heavy metaphor for Cas to deal with, as the angel who once compared free will to teaching poetry to fish. Lots and lots to unpack here, when we turn this into a Dean and Jack father son bonding moment and throw in Dean's peaceful dream of fishing in 4x20 that Cas interrupted. Fishing is about peace and idyll and comes as a temporary respite in this show. Traditionally, also, of course it's a sport of patience, and a classic father son bonding activity as the long stillness allows for both manly silence and sharing beers in peace, but also talk if they want to open up a conversation.

For Jack, it's an overlap of both Cas and Dean parental stuff, Cas's issues with angelic nature, where he wants to be, WHO he wants to be (just OFFERING to give up his grace to save Jack) and then with Dean we have more classic human cultural tropes but none less painful for Jack's nature and relationships. Especially throwing in that this was his choice and Dean is indulging him completely here.

John may or may not have taught them to fish but I feel like it may have had a "so you are dying in the woods" aspect to it rather than for peace and bonding. BOBBY taught Sam and Dean some basic woodsmanship so he was more likely to be the father figure teaching them to fish if anyone did.

Okay so obviously I typed that just after clutching my heart at the reveal and hitting pause, as Jack immediately goes on to say that John DID teach Dean how to fish and that it was his happiest memory of him - and it comes as a surprise for the expectations (like, that the above paragraph now stands as what I would expect of canon if I was only taking from it and not as an actual writer of the show being allowed to insert new details in which challenge us about the characters, which is where I find the line between fan fic and original fiction really is when it comes to characterisation... Anything out of left-field and you have to tag it as an AU version or explain why instead of just writing it as taken for granted).

And it's unexpected in the sense that it is such a peaceful thing and above all I think the message is that Jack intuited from whatever Dean said about it that it WAS a happy peaceful memory of John which stood so much at odds with the rest of his life. Filed under as well the thing where Mary started talking about how nice John was to Sam and Sam recoiled in confusion until Mary clarfied it was her John, not theirs. Good memories of a gentle soft John are alarming, and yet perhaps this is a way to really confront and exorcise his ghost more than anything - the sort of funeral servive memorialising of the good with the bad and working through it to come to peace in a different sort of way that lets the wounds heal and the anger leave those scars.

"It was how you said it. I could tell." He's such a smart cookie and I think that often takes Dean by surprise in the sense that Jack has been very shrewdly watching him and learning from him and absorbing anything and everything he does, which unfortunately gives him the ability to cold read Dean like very few people do, seeing past the layers and bluffs and into Dean's core.

Jack just murdered Dean by saying if he doesn't make it he wouldn't miss Tahiti or the Taj Mahal or implied going to seedy bars and hooking up, he'd miss more time with Dean.

I mean that's not a literal way to kill someone but you should see Dean's face. He's been shot.

And again, it's a metaphor for what you want from life for DEAN to absorb, the prompt that his family is right here and he doesn't need to chase pleasure outside of them, that hook up bar nearby their home base where he never strikes out, that's irrelevant to the family he has built and it's been put in the subtext of what Dean goes after that's empty pleasure when he has this core family unit around him, by the way Jack has also rejected it and is explaining to Dean the real meaning of Christmas.

Of course, this all gets a bit weird unless you account for the fact he has an angel wearing a trenchcoat made of husband material waiting back at the Bunker because the chronic singleton life otherwise probably ought to account for an outlet for Dean like a hook up bar if his happy ending is a platonic family bond so, you know, end the show 10 minutes from now with everyone happy and alive and not dying, and all Dean's learned is they're 3 dads, one son, a mom and her AUBobby, but he still has unused romantic potential and for seasons and seasons they've been trying to close the door on him seeking out random hook ups in the subtext of what Dean WANTS vs what he thinks he can have. This frank conversation about what Jack wants from life before it's all over is once again ignoring fleeting human connection for the family bonds he values above everything.

"I've had a good life, Dean" the other reason they're having this sentimental conversation by a river is because Jack is a fucking mayfly and I hate this

@ Dabb please never make me see Cas driving this car ever again

Why are you irritating Cas like this. First boring holy fire oh it must be thursday followed by the indignity of making him sit on a pouffe? Listen, when Cas gets irritated he gets snarky and then people die because he snarked them to death. I saw it he did it to the Empty. And Lucifer in 13x12. And Kip.

I just feel sorry for Cas. Why can't he go on fishing trips with the boy. Oh no he has to sit on a squishy pouffe that won't let him be intimidating so that he can cure the boy even though Jack's already decided he's gonna die and will probably Ophelia himself into the river at the end of the fishing trip.

Sergei is basically like "Have you tried turning it off and on again"

Nephilim have a reboot button on the back of their neck, if you get a paperclip and poke it in there.

At least Sergei is so... whatever he is... I can't even tell who he is supposed to be offensive towards :P I guess with the name, I lean Russian, and then he has world esoterica and occult nonsense in his caravan...

The real question is how does he know anything about Nephilim and why hasn't Cas asked that already.

LOL he has a vial of Gabriel grace just lying around. Of course, because Gabriel was just offering it up to everyone.

Considering how he was exploited for it by Asmodeus there's a weird tinge of retconning his own abuse by saying he was going around giving it to everyone before Asmodeus ever bought him and started stealing it on the regular.

Still, it IS awfully tempting a fix to have Uncle Gabriel help Jack out from beyond.

/distantly: "I'm not dead!"

sometimes I can still hear his voice.

It's way more likely Shit Goes Down and this is lost but then Cas has learned what to do with archangel grace to fix Jack just so long as they can pin down Michael and grab his instead.

But I guess in that circumstance at least once again Gabriel gave them part of the answer from beyond the grave as he did in season 5.

("Still not dead!!")

shush Gabriel. The show wants us to think you're dead and my complete disbelief in that doesn't change anything for now.

Except that maybe Gabriel came back, is fine, but has been removing his grace and selling it in the here and now while claiming not to be Gabriel and that he just haaaappens to have it and because he has no grace he could just be any old guy who happens to have an endless renewable resource of archangel grace secretly on tap to sell to fund his life of laying low. Sergei even says HE got it as part of keeping Gabriel hidden.

I'm kind of assuming Sergei isn't Gabriel unless he offers Cas kielbasa

I mean unless later I get a bonus cookie for immediately assuming Sergei is Gabriel based on the holy fire he just happened to have prepared and how similar it looked to Gabriel being trapped in 5x08.

On the other hand this may be the first time this season but pointing at literally everyone and going, that's probably Gabriel, will get old and also dock me cookie points the more wrong guesses I throw out there. Still, this one has pretty strong evidence, from messing with Cas to making him say "Porn stars"

To, um, having Gabriel's grace

Okay so Sergei gives Cas all of this out of the goodness of his heart and a "you owe me" and I AM wondering if that's a Buckleming special because remember in 8x19 where they were like hi we need to go to Hell immediately, and Ajay was like sure, I will take you to Hell and this episode is even titled after me so clearly I am an important character who *stab stab reaper dying noises* wow look I guess we don't have a bargain after all despite me saying you owe me but then Crowley just maaaaagically made it so you never had to find out what a reaper would want in exchange for taking you to Hell off the books.

Also fuck you I never got to finish my pizza

While I've been typing some random ass justice for Ajay screed, Nick has revealed a flashback to 14x02 where it turns out his neighbour said it was a cop who he saw coming out of the house. I literally went back and checked the episode and that wasn't in it, so perhaps it's a new flashback for here, fleshing out that conversation and revealing more for us, and changing the narrative of what Nick's up to, but honestly who cares enough about all this... I was double zoned out for flashbacks I'd already seen for a side story i don't care about

Wow, Nick, demons killed ya family. Could have told you that.

Aw, Dean brought Jack home. No dying out in the wilderness for you, clearly Cas phoned up before Jack could work out his plan to fling himself into the river.

Also Nick has taken up too much of this episode so there's no room for complicated twists and turns, if Buckleming are banned from introducing too many of them.

It's incredible how subdividing them so Eugenie writes all the Nick stuff and Brad writes the rest has elevated the parts of the story we care about to pretty much passable, give or take whatever Sergei was and who he was offensive to aside from the whole concept of calling yourself a shaman because you travelled the world collecting occult stuff in a sort of Aleister Crowley way.

'cept you can't namedrop Aleister on this show because both Alastair and Crowley have stolen too much from him.

So you get a knock off Sergei instead.

Jack hasn't been having as many of the supposed fainting fits that had everyone dogpiling him as I thought - maybe that's next episode too. Could have had one at the start but that doesn't seem enough to be a repeated annoyance of Alex's life :P

Anyway I was just going to comment on his sweater but that thought hopped in there first wondering if the spell was about to knock him flat, as he's sitting on a chair instead of safely in bed.

All the more dramatic for flinging yourself around if the spell messes you up

(honestly if the spells don't work, and they took him out of the hospital, how much of a bizarre commentary is this on trusting modern medicine and vaccinating your nephilims?)

It's 7:20 and my neighbours are yelling again

At least being awake since 3 meant I got a bit more peace and quiet than normal. I feel gross but I may go to yoga just to not be stuck in this room with such awful screeching on both sides of me >.>

Oh I can tell Sergei is Gabriel, he put the grace in a gold container instead of the silver ones

I'm sorry for the expenses, Zerbe

I wonder if they use her products on the show and I'm gonna go on my dash and find her beaming about a specially commissioned shiny gold grace that she made for them :P

"Here, hold this bottle of your uncle's essence"

".... okay I understand how weird that sounded on hindsight"

I love the idea of Jack's grace now being fuelled by Nice Uncle Gabriel who felt kindly towards him, even if this can't be a permanent fix, it changes his internal make up just a bit so that he symbolically has his grace stolen by his shitty bio father but the power only came from him in the first place and there was all the hoo ha about if Lucifer as his father made him inherently evil. Now whatever happens to Jack, he's had a grace transplant from a suitable donor, very much like a parallel of say he needed a kidney transplant and his 2 viable donors were his shitty deadbeat dad who gave him the kidney condition in the first place and his nice dead uncle who happened to have been an organ donor and was the only other one with the same type (if Lucifer's was X evil negative, then I guess Gabriel's is like X tricksy negative which has enough receptors to be a compatible transfusion, while Cas has like, Z dumbass positive grace and no compatibility)

And Gabriel is a beloved character who proved his kind feeling towards Jack even if they had very little bonding overall, he clearly cared and there was an immediate sort of uncle-y kindness about him in relation to Jack (just the comment alone about identifying that Jack liked shiny things and magic tricks is very much how uncles view small children who they may watch and entertain but not in the end have parental responsibility for), which is hilarious to me because Gabriel deeply reminds me of all 3 of my uncles on my mum's side, who are all 3 different shades of trickster god in their own right, and he always has reminded me of them, and now the show has sort of made Uncle Gabriel his new legacy.

I mean. I love it to bits.

It's not a sacrifice FOR Jack like Cas would have given up his grace, but it's still a part of him passed on to Jack.

I am very very aware that like me running my mouth about John (ironically the name of one of my uncles) while hitting pause, I've stopped while Jack is looking up with glowing eyes and he's almost certainly about to spew a fountain of blood across the room and fall on the floor. But I like that the grace even interacted with him and lit up his eyes and unless he physically barfs out the grace to I'm sticking by that ramble.

Cas smiled!! That's the once per season and we already hit it at episode 7, woe betide us

This does look, however, like the scene where they were all looking on from the door so... blood spew in 5 4 3 2 1...

DOGPILE THE BOY

Er, I mean, help him

God I would not want Jared to dogpile me, the man weighs literally as much as an actual moose

Uhoh Sergei made Cas mad

I mean

he made him sit on a pouffe, this was always coming

What do you mean Eugenie can't let Lucifer go wow what a shock

*kicks a pebble*

Ah, here's the concerned dads scene. I'm just going to let that be a balm to my soul while Dean laments ever taking Jack out to have fun.

"You made him happy. You did more for him than any of us"

1 dude you tried, 2 you took him on hunting trips and had fun already this season so he got his Cas Time before he died like he wanted 3 just fucking abduct him wrapped in a duvet and go fishing in the dead of night if you have to, trust me, he'd love it and your family is such a mess he wouldn't even think it's weird.

I mean you've literally absconded illegally with him before, what's a trip up to that beach where he was born and some fishing gear really going to cost you with annoyance from Dean

"What can we do?" "Watch over him," Rowena says with Cas in the background, and continues to carve me out with a rusty spoon

"As he dies"

Nah he'll be fine shut up Rowena D:

*whimper*

Well that was a very good episode if you act like me and pretend that none of the Nick stuff happened at all.

#14x07 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

198 notes · View notes

actress-in-ur-bad-dreams · 5 years

Conversation

The actual text conversation I had on the release of the LWYMMD lyric video

Disclaimer-- posting this for the memories. This conversation happened just after the lyric video dropped. Not even the music video. A lot was in the air about the themes of the album and the content that would follow. Still, i stand by around 95% of what i said about the lead single and how lead singles are, in general, an introduction to a larger body of work with broader themes.

Me: I have many opinions. [Friend] sent me a text this morning about how he felt it was a disappointment and I've seen a fair amount of criticism for it but also a lot of 'she's saving 2017'.

When I first heard it was in the zone of NEW TAYLOR AFTER 3 YEARS GIMME but then after a few goes I was like 'what kind of chorus are we going for here' we go from a femme fatale start to a pulsing beat in the verses which I am so here for omg and then a drop for the chorus???¿¿¿

I want a bad blood feat. Kendrick Lamar style chorus. The build to the chorus is so YESSS but I don't understand why you'd drop it all for 'look what you made me do'

The bridge brings me life like 'I'll be the actress starring in your bad dreams' is so reminiscent of blank space and I think it speaks to character development with the edge of it all-- Like the 'dressed like a daydream' has gone, pure nightmare is here and 'don't say she didn't warn us'.

I don't think this is the best song the album has to offer. Taylor said before that she would only release more if she could make something as good, if not better, than 1989 but time will tell. But my faith is hinged on the fact that although shake it off was a BOP it was not the best song on the album IMO. It was an introduction to the era and the aesthetic and feel and I feel the same is true for reputation. LWYMMD is the introduction to the story by saying that the old taylor is dead.

[Friend] said that he was disappointed that Taylor was stooping to a level of diss tracks and anger but to that I argue I think we'd all drop a diss ALBUM if we were virally double crossed by KimYe after a very public make up. She was painted as a snake in front of the world because of misunderstanding of what she consented to Kanye saying about her. After years of repairing a relationship with the media it was torn down in a heartbeat and there was nothing she could do except write a statement. People she called her friends took sides against her for something she hadn't done so yeah, I think she's entitled to a track or two about how she's out for the kill.

Artists write about exes who double cross them so why can't they write about the people who betray them. God knows I would.

Think the single is good given its context, without an album context it seems out of place. So at the moment I'm highlighting it as an introduction and not the full she-bang

It's not the introduction we want but probably the introduction we need.

I think that's everything I have to offer atm

Tl;dr - it's an introduction to the album and I don't think it's the best the album has to offer but without this the era would jumpstart. Oh- I'm also thinking that if the video had come at the same time as the song it would have given more context to the song as a lead single

Her: Blood hell that was a lot but I agree. It’s by no means bad but I don’t feel like it’s the best she can do, but like you said it’s an introduction so they’ll be more

You should right reviews

Me: ahaha I doubt my opinion carried THAT much weight to it. I just like being thorough with my views.

I've also had a thought about reasoning for the chorus drop being a thematic move-- it may be a play on the stomach drop feeling you get when someone does something terrible to you. Like you feel the build up of emotions and you sense something big is coming but then it actually happens and you can't quite believe it. It's all an explosion of silence and all you can think about it what happened and maybe the last thing they said ie. 'look what you made me do' if that makes sense.

I'm always here for deep thinking about artists who do deep thinking with their work because I am annoyingly pretentious like that.

I'm still doing the thinking-- currently on the continuous metaphors of the dramas of the past being a stage performance curated by KimYe(?) or Perry(?)

I Am. So. Here. For. This.

Her: Jesus do you want to do my degree for me. That is some A* analysis right there. I am excited for the new Taylor stage

Me: If only I’d done English literature ahaha.

The only thing I'm sad about this far is that there have been no interviews, no livestream, no clues in instagrams, no cryptic tweets, no YouTube video announcement style things bar the snake vids and the promo posts.

It's a distancing from the media as I imagine she reached her final straw with them. I doubt she's willing to give her time to answer her critics who will eventually receive their answers in the album's discussion of the whirlwind of 2016.

She's IS scooting round it through the two 72 page magazines she's releasing with the album with Target which promise pretty much all the background material we'd otherwise get through media. She's cutting out the middleman and I respect that because I understand the need to avoid having her rebuilt narrative be hers and not an interviewers interpretation of her narrative.

The media has twisted her before but it's a shame it's come to an avoidance altogether.

Her: So much content. But I think you’re right and you can’t blame her. She’s been in the public eye in the wrong way because of the media and it is a massive F you to them to cut them out all together.

Me: It's so cute that even though she wiped everything on social network she stayed following her fans on tumblr and liked like 1000 posts last night. It's like a cute little club of happy

Her: I think she loves how she’s been gone for so many months yet everyone still supports her and her music is still massive

Me: i think its a love and a show of power. it was the ACM awards last night and artists there were asked if they were excited and one guy said he found it amazing how she could just post a snake tail and everybody KNOWS a new album is coming. Jack antonoff and Joseph Kahn have had their twitters spammed all year about ts6 questions. People were anticipating a response to Kanye. imagine there would be some worry in her about whether the fanbase would reject her reinventing herself AGAIN from going country to pop to edge-pop. but here we all are. my body is ready.

Her: My soul is ready

#lwymmd #taylor swift

1 note · View note

idontrememberthetitans · 5 years

Text

The Best Films of 2018

Top 10 Films of the Year:

1. ROMA (Netflix)

If I harbored any doubt that Alfonso Cuarón was among the greatest filmmakers/storytellers of this (or last) century, it was forever dispelled with Roma. Cuarón’s hyper-naturalistic memoir reveals the thorny relationships between employers, caregivers, and those who receive care. It possesses a kind of clarity, maturity, and tenderness that only comes with distance and time. As it communicates the innumerable intersections of and parallels between ethnicity, class, and gender, it neither rushes nor exaggerates and romanticize, which is quite commendable considering just how visually rapturous Cuarón’s execution is. Moreover, he does so without pontificating or criticizing. Some of the film’s detractors claim it’s an elitist exaltation of domestic workers; I find that assertion unfair, for it would require a larger conversation about who is able to represent whom. I believe Cuarón respectfully illuminates and savors the mundane for therein lies the clandestine miracles of life. It’s clear he has so much love for the ghosts of long ago. Roma is a paean celebrating and lamenting all the pains and pleasures that usher us through any given year. (Watch the trailer.)

2. COLD WAR (Amazon Studios)

Sexy, sad, and everything in between, Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War chronicles a nearly two decade-long love affair between Wiktor - an accomplished music director - and Zula - a rising singer - in a world in threat of extinction. The film examines the violation of cultural identity and the mechanism of war which thwart any attempt to preserve authenticity. Epic and tactfully sparse in equal amounts, the film is comprised of unbearably terse episodes peppered over fifteen years. Thus, we are only privy to fragments of the characters’ tumultuous timeline together. Within the interlude – between each passionate episodes - Pawlikowski brilliantly employs subtext and chilly atmospheric tension to sustains the pair’s longings – and subsequently preserves our infatuation with them. Cold War is a rich love story swathed in bitterness. By the end, we can’t help but envy, pity, and mourn each part of Wiktor and Zula’s hot-blooded romance. (Watch the trailer.)

3. THE TALE (HBO Films)

The Tale is a work in progress. I say this without insult but unrestrained admiration. Documentarian Jennifer Fox’s devastating filmic memoir about childhood sexual assault is personal exercise in understanding deeply entrenched trauma. Much of the film’s approbation notes its nuanced handling of difficult thematic material and Dern’s towering yet understated performance, but Fox’s haunting lyricism – the way she manifests a cinematic conversation between her present self and her younger self from dispersed memories – makes this film a formal and aesthetic triumph just as much as a cultural watershed.

Initially, I questioned how “accurate” the film’s conclusion was. Did the events unfold with the same amount of understated poetic justice? Did Fox have the opportunity for confrontation and vindication as depicted? I realize that asking for explication undercuts the power of Fox’s investigation and exemplary subjectivity. The film itself is an act of introspective healing. As harrowing as The Tale is, it is essential viewing. (Watch the trailer.)

4. THE FAVOURITE (Fox Searchlight Pictures)

I’m still quite ambivalent towards the film’s nauseating photography, but make no mistake; The Favourite is the best writing and acting you’ll witness this year. While Lanthimos other films (Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer) are the superlative statements on the auteur’s résumé – perhaps in part because he also penned them – his dark, stomach-churning talents certainly lend themselves well to this gleefully filthy farce. The deliciously dicey sexual politics between the characters provides a scathing critique of class, decorum, regal period pieces, and the current political climate on a grand scale. The trio’s absurd antics keep the film alive with color and candor, but film’s lasting impact comes with the glimmers of profound sadness laced within Olivia Colman’s performance as the sovereign. Colman, one of the finest living actors, carefully vacillates between her character’s illogical command and her surprising frailty. The Favourite typifies the best kind of satire: deliciously catty as it plays out with a melancholic sting in its aftermath. (Watch the trailer.)

5. HEREDITARY (A24)

Balance is key in life – and because we’ve relished the delectable delights of Mary Poppins Returns and Paddington 2, a hearty dose of uncompromising nihilism is also imperative. Hereditary more than excels in that role. It is a grotesque descent into unimaginable horror led by Toni Collette in a game-changing performance. Following films like Antichrist (2009), Babadook (2014), The VVitch (2015) and this year’s equally terrific and terrifying The Haunting of Hill House series, Hereditary marks an apex in the horror subgenre exploring the connection between loss and dread. It’s aware of the genre’s robust history. Consequently much of its success lies in its perceptive ability to draw from other classics like Rosemary’s Baby, Don’t Look Now, and The Exorcist while continuing to probe the complexities of grief and unconscious shame. (Watch the trailer.)

6. YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE (Amazon Studios)

Had the titles not already been taken, You Were Never Really Here could have easily be called “Making a Murderer,” “Gone Girl,” or “Vengeance Is Mine.” Lynne Ramsay’s follow-up to We Need to Talk About Kevin follows a damaged antihero hired to rescue trafficked girls. Her The story’s presentation is so lean and alienating that it’s difficult to ever form a comprehensive understanding of merciless world the characters inhabit. The violence is graphic, however Ramsey rarely shows the actual acts as they are committed. Instead, she takes us through static terrains in the wake of horrific brutality. Her juxtaposition of overwhelming ambient noises creates a particularly affecting cacophony. Surreal, distressing, yet oddly tender and uplifting, You Were Never Really Here confirms once again that Ramsay is an artist of the highest order. (Watch the trailer.)

7. EIGHTH GRADE (A24)

Bo Burham’s Eighth Grade a wonder to behold – that is, if you can endure an utterly distressing experience to endure. Eighth Grade’s young heroine, Kayla, navigates the frightening contours of adolescence. During my initial viewing of Eighth Grade, it felt like a slideshow of memories from the most repellent stages of childhood. I only allowed myself to recognize it all at a distance – perhaps a self-induced safety mechanism – as if all of it existed in a half-remembered past. Revisiting the film months later, it felt startlingly indicative of not only my eighth grade year but every year of life. If we cut through the handful of distinct aches of puberty, I’m really not so different now than I was at age thirteen – though Kayla is perhaps a bit less polished. What’s more, Kayla’s anxieties, comforts, and hopes function the same way mine do now. Burham’s film brims with compassion, so it’s easy to see - and feel - that eighth grade wasn’t that long ago. (Watch the trailer.)

8. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (Annapurna Pictures)

Fear begets fear... until it eats the soul. Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel is a exquisite study of how fear - internalized and externalized - leads to systematic racism and discrimination. As Baldwin and Jenkins reveal, the only remedy to combat this fear is love – and there’s so much of it in and around Beale Street. (Perhaps Donnie Darko’s Jim Cunningham and his simplistic binary theory were actually prophetic?) It’s difficult to examine Jenkins’ expertise without acknowledging his stylistic and thematic influences – specifically Wong Kar-wai and his intoxicating visual romanticism and Douglas Sirk and his flair for weepy melodrama. Yet even as glimmers of other great works shine through Beale Street, Jenkins contributes his own unique voice to the pantheon of Cinema. Using Baldwin’s poignant prose as a template, he blends the conventions of great American stage plays with docudrama tenets to craft a vast universe of feeling. Furthermore, If Beale Street Could Talk is evidence that Moonlight certainly wasn’t a fluke. (Watch the trailer.)

9. MARY POPPINS RETURNS (Disney)

It feels inappropriate to include such an imperfect movie among intimidating achievements like Roma and Cold War. Even with all its excessive schmaltz, saccharine sentiment and scenery-chewing cameos, Mary Poppins Returns represents a kind of homage I feared was entirely lost. Not so; I learned nothing’s gone forever, only out of place. Sure, the film’s nostalgic structure (or lack thereof), design, quips and songs are all aggressive imitations of a perfect cinematic and cultural touchstone, but the whole ordeal is just so beautifully flattering it’s impossible not to melt in its warmth. It reverently and earnestly reminds us just how lucky we are to have a classic like Mary Poppins to return to. It sends up and throws back to the pinnacle of the expansive (and now unforgivably carnivorous) Disney kingdom. As demonstrated here, indulging nostalgia from time to time can be quite healthy. Unlike most current family movies that pander to the lowest common denominator, Mary Poppins Returns transcends cynicism, pop iconography, and humor ingrained in the present moment. Although much of the film’s success is due to the collaboration of a surplus of talent, the film belongs to Emily Blunt. She, in fact, IS practically perfect as she evades mimicry and adds nuanced wit and benevolence. (Watch the trailer.)

10. MADELINE’S MADELINE (Oscilloscope Laboratories)

Madeline’s Madeline, an experimental coming-of-age thriller, is a film for those who care deeply about grueling and convoluted “artistic process.” It deftly walks a tight rope between satire and an earnest exploration of psychosis and performance – not unlike Bergman’s Persona or Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Co-Writer/Director Josephine Decker fashions a platform for the fascinating newcomer Helena Howard; she reveals a rare kind of brashness and vulnerability in the title role. Alongside Howard, Molly Parker and the ever-brilliant Miranda July put their trust in Josephine Decker’s peculiar process. As such, they elevate and legitimize Madeline’s nightmare. There is palpable malice woven through the confounding narrative, though it is impossible to discern its primary source. Thematically, the film picks up the baton where Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York left it, but Decker uses a film language loaded with obtuse codes and metaphors. Aesthetically, the film is something else entirely – more dangerous and anomalous than we’re comfortable seeing. And for that reason, it’s quite difficult to shake. (Watch the trailer.)

Another Praiseworthy 10 (in alphabetical order):

BEN IS BACK

BLACK PANTHER

BLACKkKLANSMAN

BURNING

CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

THE DEATH OF STALIN

LEAVE NO TRACE

SHOPLIFTERS

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

A STAR IS BORN

Best Direction:

1. Alfonso Cuarón for ROMA

2. Paweł Pawlikowski for COLD WAR

3. Lynne Ramsay for YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

4. Barry Jenkins for IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

5. Yorgos Lanthimos for THE FAVOURITE

Best Adapted Screenplays:

1. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

2. BLACKkKLANSMAN

3. BURNING

4. CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

5. BLACK PANTHER

Best Original Screenplays:

1. THE FAVOURITE

2. SHOPLIFTERS

3. EIGHTH GRADE

4. THE DEATH OF STALIN

5. EIGHTH GRADE

Best Leading Actors:

1. Bradley Cooper in A STAR IS BORN

2. Ethan Hawke in FIRST REFORMED

3. Joaquin Phoenix in YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

4. John David Washington in BLACKkKLANSMAN

5. Lucas Hedges in BEN IS BACK

Best Leading Actresses:

1. Toni Collette in HEREDITARY

2. Olivia Coleman in THE FAVOURITE

3. Emily Blunt in MARY POPPINS RETURNS

4. Laura Dern in THE TALE

5. Yalitza Aparicio in ROMA

Best Supporting Actors:

1. Timothee Chalamet in BEAUTIFUL BOY

2. Steven Yeun in BURNING

3. Richard E. Grant in CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME?

4. Adam Driver in BLACKkKLANSMAN

5. Josh Hamilton in EIGHTH GRADE

Best Supporting Actresses:

1. Natalie Portman in VOX LUX

2. Emma Stone & Rachel Weisz in THE FAVOURITE

3. Regina King in IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

4. Amy Adams in VICE

5. Emily Blunt in A QUIET PLACE

Best Cinematography:

1. ROMA

2. COLD WAR

3. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

4. AT ETERNITY’S GATE

5. SUSPIRIA

Best Film Editing:

1. SUSPIRIA

2. BLACK PANTHER

3. FIRST MAN

4. ASSASSINATION NATION

5. WIDOWS

Best Sound Design:

1. YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

2. FIRST MAN

3. A QUIET PLACE

4. ROMA

5. SUSPIRIA

Best Production Design:

1. SUSPIRIA

2. MARY POPPINS RETURNS

3. THE FAVOURITE

4. BLACK PANTHER

5. READY PLAYER ONE

Best Costume Design:

1. MARY POPPINS RETURNS

2. SUSPIRIA

3. THE FAVOURITE

4. BLACK PANTHER

5. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

Best Original Scores:

1. Marc Shaiman for MARY POPPINS RETURNS

2. Ludwig Göransson for BLACK PANTHER

3. Alexander Desplat for ISLE OF DOGS

4. Justin Hurwitz for FIRST MAN

5. Nicholas Britell for IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

Best Original Songs:

1. “The Place Where Lost Things Go” from MARY POPPINS RETURNS

2. “Shallow” from A STAR IS BORN

3. “Suspirium” from SUSPIRIA

4. “All the Stars” from BLACK PANTHER

5. “Treasure” from BEAUTIFUL BOY

Best Animated Features:

1. SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

2. ISLE OF DOGS

3. THE INCREDIBLES 2

4. MIRAI

5. RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET

Best Acting Ensembles:

1. MARY POPPINS RETURNS

2. SHOPLIFTERS

3. BALCKkKLANSMAN

4. THE DEATH OF STALIN

5. A STAR IS BORN

2018′s Most Important Films:

1. THE TALE

2. SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE

3. BLACK PANTHER

4. INSTANT FAMILY

5. CRAZY RICH ASIANS

To commemorate Ingmar Bergman’s 100th Birthday (and a sold-out Criterion Collection boxset of 39 of his films), let’s recall his greatest works:

1. PERSONA

2. THE SEVENTH SEAL

3. CRIES & WHISPERS

4. WILD STRAWBERRIES

5. SHAME

6. FANNY & ALEXANDER

7. AUTUMN SONATA

8. THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY | WINTER LIGHT | THE SILENCE

9. SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE

10. THE VIRGIN SPRING

3 notes · View notes