#but that's okay i'll survive

[paellegere]

dean's sexuality is an overwhelming recurring theme throughout the show: his fetishes are prominent, he flaunts his sexuality and sexual behavior freely, he's a relentless flirt, and he has the most sexual encounters in the show. what i want to briefly consider here is how his sexuality and, more importantly, his fetishes may symbolize a freudian eroticization of a fantasized domestic life, particularly in his fetishization of femininity.

so hear me out: dean subconsciously eroticizes his mundane desires because he can't externalize them in a safe or realistic way. the desires are, namely, a longing for a domestic, "apple pie" life, which is a desire that has been explored in the show multiple times. dean routinely covets domesticity, through his desire to raise a child (ben and lisa subplot), the djinn fantasy (2.20), his "nesting" in the bunker (8.14), and his displacement of that desire onto sam (who is the primary subject of his erotic fixation in general and a subconscious extension of himself—if sam acquires a happy domestic life, dean can live vicariously through it).

he also routinely denies himself this domesticity because he's given up on getting out of the hunter life. he was raised in a survival environment and never was given a real opportunity to escape (even sam had to fight tooth and nail to get out, and we all know where that got him). the one time he had a chance to reject john and embrace normality he returned smiling because of sam (9.07). he's the one that vehemently secludes himself (and sam, like in 1.06) from society because connections are a liability. he leaves potential long-term relationships preemptively, always choosing hunting (and sam) over them before anything "real" can happen (1.13, 6.01, 6.21, also consider 8.19, perhaps more abstractly). he's so broken inside that he lacks any real desire at all (5.14). et cetera, et cetera. he denies himself his domestic desires to the point that he lacks desire at all—he's a broken shell of a man.

so the violent repression of the id causes the secret desire to leak out through erotic fantasy, a playground of fiction that is used by, well, most if not all people to explore desire in a safe and controlled medium (see: how many women have rape fantasies, for example—the sexual fantasy is a constructed world for safe exploration of certain desires, often abstracted through erotic symbols).

dean is so repressed as an individual, likely by external pressure to conform and control himself via john, that dean could subconsciously transform his secret desire for domesticity, into an erotic fantasy. he displaces those unacceptable desires from the unattainable mundane onto the safer erotic and they eventually distort into fetishes. the fetishes themselves are then abstractions of the things he covets but can't obtain.

and i want to focus specifically on his desire for domesticity and make an argument for feminization as a fetish (thank you rhonda hurley for your contributions to society) and how that relates back to that base desire.

there are several episodes in the show which suggest that dean fetishizes femininity itself, or rather feminization as it pertains to him (4.07, 5.04, also consider 10.05 in a more abstract sense). in 4.07, dean openly fantasizes about living in a "hot cheerleader's" body (youthfully feminine). in 5.04, dean recounts the time rhonda hurley forced him into her pink, satiny panties, saying that he liked it. 10.05 is a meta episode which additionally posits a plotline where dean becomes a woman through supernatural means, suggesting that fans are invited to draw a connection between dean and feminization. (these are the episodes i can pull off the top of my head; it's probably not comprehensive but i can't remember others atm)

so let's consider this feminization kink: we have dean fantasizing about femininity, womanhood, and especially girlhood, which he notoriously eroticizes (again in 4.07 and also in 4.13 and 10.13, to name specific references, but there are so many examples of this) in relation to himself, specifically. you can layer this in the way his deeper desires are of domesticity, and the home is traditionally (importantly) the domain of the woman. if dean would come to associate domesticity with femininity, then he would subconsciously connect his desire for domesticity with a desire for femininity. therefore, this feminization kink can represent an eroticization of his own (perceived) femininity. dean craves domesticity, but the domestic can only be achieved through womanhood, and therefore his desire for the domestic manifests through femininity, and thus feminization.

this "perceived femininity" of the domestic is important because of how dean conceptualizes the world largely through his consumption of media (see also: his "wild west fetish" via 6.18), which enforces gender roles and the relegating of the woman to the domestic sphere. this additionally aligns with dean's lived experiences: he had a domestic life while mary was alive, and when mary died the domesticity died with her. his only personal experiences with a settled home life are inexorably tied to the presence of femininity (his other excursion is when he lives with lisa, strengthening this association), and the absence of it and subsequent domination of john (the masculine) also took with it that domestic life.

and then you could even go so far as to make the argument that his eroticization of girlhood and his fetish for barely legal girls is a symbol of the domestic life he didn't get to live himself. it can represent a longing for youth in an environment that was inaccessible to him, a stability and domesticity walled off by womanhood. his youth was masculine, and his desire is for the feminine. it would stand to reason that when he yearns for an idealized youth, it would be through the lens of the symbolically feminine. and so this desire manifests through a fetishization of youth (girlhood) and his subsequent creep behavior. it all comes back to the life dean didn't get to live, eroticized and represented through a sexual fantasy born of rigidly enforced gender roles and the loss of femininity in his home life.

#supernatural #dean winchester #this is so long. i know no one is going to read it #but that's okay i'll survive #i've been thinking about this since before i saw a poll going around about 4.07 #and whether his 'hot cheerleader' thing was him being a creep or him being trans #and then i got to thinking about it again because i saw the poll. creep is much closer to my answer but this is my full response to it #i just think he is a mess of psychosexual fixations on everything he wants but can't have #and it manifests in the weirdest and creepiest behavior imaginable #so thanks for coming to my ted talk i guess #.txt #dean #the winchester gospel #spn posting

[booasaur]

Willow (2022) - 1x01

#willowedit #willow 2022 #kit tanthalos #jade claymore #commander ballantine #ruby cruz #erin kellyman #ralph ineson #willow 1x01 #y'all are going to be finished with the season and I'll be puttering around ep 1 still #tanthamore #femslash related stuff #uh okay gays #I love that this is the kind of deep intimate friendship that a million shows have done and we've gone okay that is super gay though #and they'd be like what can't women be friends #they can but they can also be super gay! #as these two are! #for kit and only kit sure #I can't survive this without you SURE #also I was torn with what to caption the last one since the closed captioning says she mouthed ''thank you'' but it looks like ''kill me'' #credit to my friend hamvil for suggesting I leave it uncaptioned since it's mouthed and people can interpret it how they want

[sophsun1]

#vcsource #jam reiderson #interview with the vampire #iwtv amc #jacob anderson #sam reid #im clawing at any crumbs i havent giffed #jacob is adorably awkwardly cute here apologising for shoving sam #who just laughs like it's okay mate I'll survive #😂😂😂

[taboo-delusion]

So, I just discovered something interesting.

This is a bit of a long one, so bear with me. It's important. Seriously.

I just woke up a few hours ago. My meds are starting to kick in. I was having a very serious and genuine, deep conversation (in-head) and it was... beautiful. It wasn't happy, but it was beautiful. Not the point.

Point is:

I had not had a single fucking intrusive thought today until someone made a noise in the other room.

I am so fucking PISSED OFF

Why my brain refuses to realize that intrusive thoughts CAUSED the good feeling to go away, I have no fucking idea. I've known that for almost a year now, yet my stupid fucking subconscious refuses to change anything it's doing

Before I snap my fucking android phone in half and yeet somebody's face into neptune, I thought I'd share the discovery!!!!

Basically:

MY INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS DID NOT START UNTIL SOMETHING STARTLED ME OUT OF FOCUS

AS I TYPE THIS, I REALIZE THAT INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS -AT LEAST FOR ADHDERS- ARE A SURVIVAL TACTIC.

Elaborating:

When you fall asleep and your heart slows too much, your body does the falling thing to make sure you're still alive.

It's not that intrusive thoughts are *Just* because your brain gets too quiet, It's because your life has never been completely quite before, or -like me- the few times it is quiet, something interrupts. And even if it doesn't piss you off, even if you don't jump like I do, your brain still registers it as not safe.

--

Falling asleep, heart slows a lot-

Body: *Sends adrenaline just to make sure it still actually works.*

Drowning, even mostly unconscious-

Body and brain: *Hold onto that last half-breath even if it feels like you're head is going to explode.*

Going grocery shopping or talking to someone you think is cool-

Brain: *Remembers what it felt like the first time your guardian was indifferent or mean about something that made you happy or calm.*

Things around you actually get quiet-

Brain *Sends a thought you hate just to make sure you're prepared for a sudden problem.*

TDLR 1: Your brain isn't mean on purpose, It's just paranoid and still has a will to live.

Listen. I know I'm just some random dude from a weird blog. But I'm trying to translate, to assist. Maybe somebody else needs this realization as much as I do. I apologize for the yelling earlier. I'm still just as upset, but only at my dumbass subconscious. Now some time has passed, and I have regained self-control.

(I also apologize for the above paragraph, my brain nags for me to do this, but I can't remember why. So:)

I am no psychologist. Here are my qualifications (why you should listen to me):

As my friends call it- "Disturbingly self-aware at all times."

Paranoid Schizophrenic with actual (unrelated) OCD, with years of experience dealing with it- more healthily in recent years.

Philosophy and deep thinking is simply my default. I use metaphors, but everything in this post is entirely literal, ...except the angry threat. (*begrudgingly accepts disappointment*)

I am a fiction writer. I don't know about healing people/first aid, but I know a LOT about how anatomy works, with many deep-dives on the psychology/evolution side.

People irl generally consider me a genius? Idk how to gauge that, IQ tests are irrelevant with this type of... smart?. I've been compared to both Da Vinci and Einstein. So, ...actually that's pretty fuckin' cool- (I AM NOT TRYING TO BRAG! I APOLOGIZE IF IT COMES OFF THAT WAY! I've never put it all down like this, and I'm just surprised and questioning my reputation.)

(Also, I love playing detective, so naturally I call myself Batman XD.)

Autistic; I experience the world, and every situation, from a view without any context.

ADHD: My brain automatically -As a guardian I hate describes- "Can watch three different movies at the same time, all in fast forward, and can keep up with all of them." ... Well, yes, but technically no. Idk if other ADHD people do this, but my brain "connects the dots" so quickly, I end up laughing at jokes I've never heard before the 'punchline', because I've already figured out what you're going to say next.

Now combine all that. I am kicking depression's ass and now I want to help you do the same.

I have only mentioned the relevant things. Please keep in mind that ALL of these have both advantages and disasters. Thank you for your patience and understanding. I am running on four hours of sleep. For the love of whatever, I hope this actually helps someone other than me.

Qualifications are noted because: This is all stuff (and stuff like this) that I am just always casually aware of.

TLDR2: Even if I wasn't trying to help people feel better, Apparently I was born with a nat 20 perception/insight check, so please don't argue that I truly understand what I'm talking about here.

#this is serious #serious #intrusive thoughts #adhd intrusive thoughts #especially adhd #psychology #psychological analogy #human instinct #evolutionary psychology #survival instinct #fighting depression #original content #adhd #it can be done #it can be fixed #mental health #mental illness #mental issues #actually mentally ill #mentally fucked #and still going #so i'll help where i can #and you can't stop me #hope #how to get better #get better #getting better #you're not alone #you're gonna be okay

[starry-bi-sky]

more cfau miscellaneous things because Childhood Friends Danny and Jason have my head and heart always and I need to finish rewriting chapter two dammit (and redo the half-finished chapter 4 because its just Not The Vibes). i'm almost through I need to get through the graveyard scene. (i just stubbornly refuse to have it be shorter than the original chapter and thats the little death. that is the mind killer.)

Danny and jason’s ghost forms both smell faintly like burnt flesh and cigarettes. However, Jason has a more smokey smell while Danny’s smells almost,,, electrical? In a sense? Like he just straight up smells like burnt flesh and sulphur while Jason smells like someone put him in a smoker first.

It’s very much an unpleasant smell but Danny finds an odd comfort in it just as much as he finds a comfort in the smell of nicotine.

(Jason post-revival smells burnt flesh once and is immediately offput by the fact that it brings him an instinctive comfort. He doesn’t realize its because it reminds him of Danny, and is uncomfortable by it.)

-

In an au of an au, Danny’s altercation with Rath ends with Rath regaining enough of his sanity to snap out of the grieving state and ends with him breaking down. Instead of being souped and imprisoned, Rath, who is permanently 14, decides to Move On into the unknown. He’s exhausted, heartbroken, and tired.

(Is this influenced heavily by the ParaNorman scene where he talks to Agatha and helps her move on? Yes. But it doesn’t fit with the Original Storyline so im shoving it into an Au of an Au.)

Rath tells Danny that Jason lied to them (which he genuinely believes), and that he’s tired of waiting/looking for him/grieving. Jason is gone. He isn’t coming back, he abandoned them. And he wants his mom and dad, and his sister, and his friends. And he’s ready to join them.

He leads Danny out to Gotham, which other than Amity Park might’ve been the only city left untouched due to Rath’s own mental block on the place. They go out to the park he and Jason used to frequent or up to one of crime alley’s rooftops, and there Rath lies down and goes to sleep. Only to never wake up again, materializing into nothing as his soul moves on.

Before Rath leaves, he forces Danny to promise him that he’ll only wait for Jason for ten years. After that if he doesn’t find him, or if Jason doesn’t show, then Danny has to move on. Whether that be like how Rath does, or if its inly mentally/emotionally, doesn’t matter. He has to move on. Don’t wait for him. Don’t waste his time any more.

(“Oh, and if you find him, kick his ass for me.”)

Danny reluctantly agrees, and Rath lies down. Danny sings to him as he falls asleep.

(Angsty points if the vigilantes including Red Hood caught wind of their presence and were silently watching from the shadows. Rath might know they’re there, but Danny’s too focused on Rath to notice.)

(If only so that Red Hood realizes that this is what happened to Danny, and that Danny is gone before he can make things right. The tragedy, folks. The angst. The initial realization that Danny was Rath, and then also that Danny was dead and has been dead for years, and that before he moved on, he moved on believing that Jason abandoned him.)

(like i said it doesn't fit in the original timeline/storyline hence why its an au of an au and isn't nearly a fleshed out, but i was largely just focusing on the tragedy of Rath moving on and Jason being alive to see it and realize just who Rath is.)

-

Just like how the Lazarus pits shot Jason's twiggy 4'6-5'4 (depending on what you find) feet tall and 86lb ass up like a tree an essentially fixed his malnutrition, the portal did the same thing for Danny.

(granted i forgot about malnutrition and danny's likely stunted growth at first -- his family lived in crime alley and despite both his parents working, I don't think they had enough food all the time. He probably wasn't as badly malnourished as Jason was, but he wasn't healthy either.)

Granted his ghost in its "natural" state (14) is short, and his growth spurts were slow at first, it did result in him reaching his dad's height. There were points where it just happened overnight, like a baby. He went to bed one night 5’6 and woke up the next day 5’10.

Jazz is shorter than him. Although I have't decided if she's even liminal at all (and if she is, it didn't cure everything because she would have also suffered childhood malnutrition, and since in au canon their parents didn't get their hands on physical ectoplasm until after they got to Amity Park. So the exposure is less.)

-

Danny's voice absolutely sounds like canon Dan's. It kinda just dropped one day when he was 16-17 and never went back up. Sam and Tucker sometimes ask him to just talk about anything because they find his voice soothing.

I'm not sure yet how Danny would feel about it at first considering Rath, but I imagine that Rath, when he did speak, would have had a quieter and scratchier/weaker voice considering he's spent the last decade shrieking and crying.

(and i suppose technically that shouldn't have any effect on his throat considering he's a ghost and idk if that would actually affect him, but i like the idea so im keeping it)

In the beginning you could hear him from a mile away by the sound of his loud, echoing wails, but ten years later you can only really hear him by the soft, shuddering sobs he makes. Like he's gasping for air that isn't there. The future is full of very quiet survivors.

And it's much easier to speak when you pitch your voice upwards (especially when whispering/speaking quietly) so he might've spoken in a higher, airy pitch in order to be heard. So Danny might actually find a comfort in having a lower voice.

#tw mentions of gore #cw gore #i suppose this counts as gore #dp x dc #danny fenton is not the ghost king #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc #dpxdc crossover #childhood friends au #cfau #really leaning into the idea of rath just being a horror. the horrors! i am delighted in the horrors! #im having fun with it #i swear to god turning 19 turned a switch on in my brain because i am much more comfortable with gore and heavy injury now than i was l #literally a year ago. the urge to write about some of danny's most horrific injuries in his fights is STRONG #like the hORRORS folks. *th horrors*. i dont think i'll ever write a dissection fic because that icks me out but the idea that danny's had #to stitch up his own throat because it got slit in a fight nd he cant shift back to human until he's done because his ghost will survive bu #his body wont #the idea that he's been impaled multiple times before and it hurts each fucking time but he still gets up and hurls the hurt right back in #equal measure. because that's how you wanna play? okay. lets play. he's 14 and his best friend is dead. he can play. #and the idea that all ghosts have 'corpse' forms where their ghosts look exactly like how they died. and danny is utterly unrecognizable #jazz being liminal or not just isnt important to me because she's barely gonna show up in the story anyways #same reason why i hardly use the headcanon that ellie becomes danny's daughter because what use is she to me like that? she'll hardly have #an impact on the story and i refuse to treat characters like props. if they can't help progress the story then they aren't included

[brasiliangp]

DRIVE TO SURVIVE | Season 06 | Episode 01, "Money Talks"

#okay sorry for the spam i'll put the rest of the gifs on queue #i'm doing each episode slowly bc i don't have much time #but i'll try to be done before bahrain next week xxxxx #lewis hamilton #pierre gasly #lewierre #dts #drive to survive #*gifs

[deiaiko]

#9 - Rescue

Masterlist

Previous

Next

Let me know your thoughts in the reblogs <3

#eyyy tsotsc is backkk im very excited #new hairstyles for everyone!! #okay i know how bad bam's fashion sense is but if i were to draw them in ridiculous outfit again and again i'm not sure i'll survive #i need grace to at least live up to his name ok #the two birds at the end is just a symbolic for their freedom #the scene took place at night time if you cant tell #I just had to use the pink on the background to give the panel warmer vibe - thus more hopeful #tower of god #tog #two sides of the same coin comic #my comic #my art #bam #baam #25th baam #25th bam #the 25th baam #the 25th bam #jue viole grace

[teddybeartoji]

the gojo that needs to kiss you after you swallow his cum with a girl that just wants to fuck but isn't okay with kissing (just for the plot)... and he's been obsessed with her for a while... boy would get RESTLESS

🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯NONNIE WHAT RHE FUCK oh he'd absolutely fucking lose it...... oh my fucking goddd he'd whine and he'd pout sooo much:(((( he just wants to kiss:(( i don't think he can survive without kissing honestly he needs that like he needs air he's such a loser (i love him sm)

fwb but without kissing would kill him fr................ no but this is such a delicious concept nonnie i need to kiss your brain.. if you'll allow me to ofc😔😔😔😔😔

#he's just like meeee!!!!! #i also wouldn't survive that #he's a loverboy okay!!!! #he'd get sooo poutyy:((( #🥺🥺🥺🥺this is him #🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 #thank u for this nonnie #i'll be thinking about it for a while hihihi #friends!!

[b4kuch1n]

I actually for real feel like my phone's scanning quality has dropped monumentally while I was away on thing so that's a fun thing to figure out now. anyways

#sk8 the infinity #kyan reki #hasegawa langa #renga #answering of ''sure'' whenever they ask ''are you gay'' strikes again #gods. genuinely at least on the export the quality of these dropped like to half. whats up with that #sorry if these are impossible to parse #anyways. scribbled these during ''holiday'' ''vacation'' ''getaway''' #sometimes it really is the simple things. hallucinating vividly about the casual life of a pair of teens to survive being in a car for 6hrs #WITH da family #so glad I picked up scribbling on paper again. I actually got stuff to do digitally today and!! literally it feels so much cleaner #like I feel like I relearned a bunch stuff doing traditional ink again for a sec #but yeah. u guys should know by now how much I think about food as a concept #took 3m off last year to write about it in fact. but now Im just microdosing by drawing langa #I'm also actually so insane about reki being a scaredy cat it's so. something. it means so much to me #this of course means koyomi is a jumpscare champion. among siblings that are close in age there must be #the one who sleeps in the lower bunk. and the one who ties a doll to a string by its neck and lower it down to be next to the others face #'why is that so specific' no further question. thank you #gods okay. I need to lay the fuck down it is now my time. to be in bed #Im onto some real exciting stuff rn! and when this piece is done I'll return to ink for a sec #so uh. ink comm maybe not this week. but the next #happy late labor day! seek and destroy. have a good night

[barghest-land]

"i have so much love in me how is this even possible i'm just gonna explode one day" says me while drawing 1911 javier

#barghest barks #insane. #i went through the mission with him in rdr1 #i'm still not okay and never will be. #i'm so afraid to go further and finish the game because of john #i'll never survive this #:( #fuck u rockstar...

[ghost-proofbaby]

i don't wanna post too much about it and be annoying but i will be streaming bg3 tomorrow around 5 PM MST (give or take. is az even on MST right now? it'd be 5 PM my time. GAH.)

it'll be a dark urge honor mode attempt. it'll be fun. i swear. in case any of you sweet souls might feel like poppin in and chatting for even a moment <3

i'll be posting the actual link when i go live, but also, my twitch is in my pinned now!

#ghost needs to stfu #ghost plays bg3 #it'll be a voice reveal but not a face reveal haha #i have a vague character idea so hopefully it's not just an hour of character creation #we can chat about anything or everything as i inevitably die within this stream because i'm not making a character built for survival #but instead for the Memes #it's not that funny of a character i'm joking #okay #i'll shut up

[osoreruna]

well — it happened.

#𝗦𝗠𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗠𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧 + [ OOC ] #tbd #officially laid off. as of this upcoming friday. #and i'm not really okay. #i will be in like...20 minutes #but right this second i'm not. #thank you everyone that gave me kind words and reassurances last night though i really needed it ! #i'm sorry i didn't reply to...just about anybody but i was just really overwhelmed. #give me like...an hour or so and i'll see if i can catch up on dm's at least. #maybe get to drafts now that the 'possibly getting let go' anxiety is gone lmao #now that i don't have to worry about that i have plenty of room for NEW anxiety. #this one's called: 'how will i survive' —

[marypsue]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on S1 of ST being a tragedy! No main character dies, so I never thought of it that way before

I mean, nobody has to die for a story to be a tragedy (at least, in the modern definition. I'm pretty sure '(almost) everybody dies' is a requirement of Greek tragedies and Renaissance revenge tragedies). But also, no main character dies in season one...if you take season one as part of a series. Which it wasn't originally conceived as.

I am not going looking for copies of the original pitch bible, because I am lazy, and also I only saw them floating around this webbed site. But the show changed a lot from the initial pitch (Joyce had a Long Island accent! Lucas' parents were divorcing! Murray was there and named Terry Ives! Most of what ended up in Hopper's character originally belonged to Mr. Clarke! The original pitch bible is fascinating). And part of the original pitch was a proposal for possible sequels.

The Duffers' proposal for a possible sequel was "It's ten years later, and Eleven is dead".

So that's the setup. Everything that came after season one was made up wholecloth after season one was a hit and people wanted more, but also people loved the adorable little psychic murder child (cue the Duffers shockedpikachu.jpg) and Netflix obviously recognised it would be a bad call to make a new season without her in it. So it makes sense to take season one as a unit, as a self-contained story on its own. You can also take it as part of a whole, but it makes sense to read it first as a complete story. Especially given the thematic drift of later seasons and the way they are...I'm just going to say it, each new season is very much added-on to what came before rather than being built on foundation that the earlier season(s) laid. It is very clear there was never a planned five-season story arc from the beginning. (This isn't necessarily always a bad thing, when it comes to sequels, but it does mean it makes sense to 'read' each season as its own thing.)

Okay, now that we've established all of that. Season one has one very clear goal, one very clear stake for the characters: save Will Byers from the Upside Down. (I like this. It makes the stakes both extremely high and extremely personal, it makes it very easy to understand each character's motivation, it also keeps the stakes grounded in reality. I like this a lot.) And by the end of the season, that goal is accomplished. So at first blush, you're right, season one doesn't look like a tragedy.

But when you start to unpack it a little, you start to see just how many important things were lost along the way. It's most glaringly obvious with Mike and El, with Nancy and Barb. The whole Wheeler family is fractured down the middle, with Mike and Nancy on one side and Ted, Karen, and Holly on the other, and Karen, who's been trying so hard the whole time to be part of her children's lives and understand what's going on with them, is aware of the ever-expanding gulf between them but will never be able to cross it, and will never fully know why. Hopper's finally managed to snatch a kid out of the jaws of death, save a woman he obviously cares about from the pain of losing a child, and Joyce has finally had someone believe her, support her, trust her. But it became blindingly obvious to me on my fourth rewatch that Hopper's plan, from the moment he went to leave the middle school gym, was always to trade El for Will. And that decision (and the fact that Joyce obviously understands that he did something to get the lab to let them go after Will, but she obviously doesn't dare press him on what) has broken her trust in him, and left him with what looks like an equally heavy burden of guilt as what he was carrying before. The lab stays open. The government gets away with everything. No one will ever know the true extent of the hurt they've caused.

And in the end, none of it even saved Will. He's back. He's alive. But he's spitting slugs in the sink. He's permanently marked by the Upside Down, and by trying to hide it from his family, he's putting a crack down the centre of them, as well. They're losing Will, just as surely as they had when they thought he was dead, just without him going anywhere.

And there's still a hole in the world.

The fragile bonds of community, the things that people share in common, the way catastrophe can bring people together and bring out the very best in them, are the major thematic threads woven through season one. Human connection is the only thing that can change what seems inevitable, the only thing that can bring back what's seemingly lost forever.

And it's still not enough to protect anyone from the random tragedy of the world.

The love was there. The love mattered. The love bent the entire course of the world around itself.

And it still wasn't quite enough.

If that's not a tragedy, then I don't know what is.

#stranger things #the pitch bible is also part of why I think they're gonna kill el for real at the end of s5 #and that the final epilogue scene of s5 is going to be a callback to the eggos-in-the-woods scene #a) the show's ending so they don't HAVE to let her survive. and we all know the duffers love it when other people are upset #b) they've said themselves they're 'going back to season one' #c) netflix would absolutely cream their pants for an opportunity to update the nostalgia marketing for this show to the now-trendy nineties #d) and also would want to leave the door open for 'well MAYBE she survived you don't know that we're not going to resurrect this franchise! #one of many many many reasons why I'm not bothering to watch any more of this show #I'll stick happily with my s1-s2 duology and steal characters from other seasons thanks #it's so frustrating because it's so CLEAR in season one that the love MATTERS #that these people care about each other and that MATTERS #even though it's not enough. #and by season four it's just like. well what if we just kept introducing new characters so we can kill them. aren't you sad about it #like there are so many ways to write a tragedy well and 'kill everyone kind of indiscriminately' is not one of them #okay rant over. i am climbing off the cafeteria table

[dandelion-wings]

consider

rosaria and barbara roleswap

in which rosaria is basically natasha and barbara is the one kidnapped by treasure hoarders when she was a child

Okay, I don't know who Natasha is (I assumed an NPC, but when I googled got nothing but Star Rail, and if that's who you meant I don't play that), but that would be a fascinating roleswap! Though Rosaria in particular seems like she would be so different, as so much of her personality was shaped by her bandit experiences, that I'm not sure I can really get a grasp on what she might be like without them. XD;; Presumably she grew up in her village here, and... who knows where she might have gone from there, without knowing more about her family and parents. Though I suppose there's the possibility that the roleswap is that they were all killed as in canon but she was rescued instead of kidnapped, which would mean she grew up in the Church but with that trauma of watching them die, which... okay, I can see where Rosaria might go from there, and I feel like she'd be a less hardened person in the way she treats others, but probably have this core, given her strength of conviction in canon, of wanting to grow up to make sure that never happens to another child. Which is to say, Knight!Rosaria, probably.

Barbara does seem more emotionally fragile overall than Rosaria, and while some of that was probably her family situation, we know from her character stories that she struggled more even as a child, so honestly, being kidnapped by bandits would probably make her even more timid. TBH I have an easier time imagining her dying in the rough-survival situation Rosaria's lore implies, especially if she struggled with the 'training' Rosaria went through the way she struggled with her mother's, but we're assuming she survives here, so. Maybe the false-father bandit Rosaria killed in canon develops a soft spot for Barbara, too, and protects her, and she eventually ends up the group's mascot. Possibly she starts learning rough wilderness healing skills, which would help--the person who can keep you alive if a fight went bad is worth feeding and protecting--but I still can't imagine her ever becoming the kind of killer Rosaria is. Just much more calculating, aware of the skills she lacks without being ashamed of them as in canon, but rather equally aware of the skills she possesses and determined not to devalue them in any trade for those skills she doesn't have.

...and then Sir Rosaria is with Varka's party when they clear out the bandit camp, desperate for revenge because these were the bandits who killed her family. But she's injured in the fight, and Barbara, cornered by Rosaria as the surviving bandits are being chased down and slaughtered, offers those exact skills to help her in exchange for her own life. Yeah, okay, I'm into that. XD

#asked and answered #rosaria doesn't work overtime #sing me a song barbara #this is extra-fascinating if you leave both of them in their starting family situations #because then barbara gets RECOGNIZED as the lost gunnhildr child when they come back to mondstadt #and she gets her family back! presuming any of them survived her kidnapping and for me it's more fun if jean at least does #so she has this sister who's eager to welcome her back and yet. this place isn't home #she doesn't know how to DEAL with this life and this sister she barely remembers #rosaria actually makes more sense to her (their initial meeting being transactional) and understands a bit better #being taken away from the family you knew and landed in the bright warm arms of mondstadt and the church #...i'll stop now i need to go to bed XD;; but okay this whole idea is fun

[sunliv]

like from what i can see in the trailer i don't see any 06 stages, they all seem to be from sa2 and shth but PLEASE? i guess it wouldnt make sense since the timeline was erased and shadow shouldn't remember anything 😔 ... agh.......... still!!!! how cool would that be???? i hope there's at least some kind of reference to it!!!!! maybe something abt a lookalike with no mouth or some weird dream or something abt meeting silver idk

#i just really really like sonic 06 and wish they mentioned it in the new game that's all abt remembering the past😔😔😔 #it's okay. i'll survive😔 #chatter

[razzek]

Okay I have been trying to finish this MagPickles Christmas smut fic for literally three goddamn years now. If y'all want some Magnus getting his ass kicked by a furious midwestern short king and then they fug please hassle me to finish the damn thing this weekend! I am so tired of not being done with this fic arg! It's like 4k words and they still haven't boned I'm going to throw myself out a goddamn window if I don't get this piece of shit done this year!!!

#it's okay I live on the ground floor I'll survive #but don't make me pay my landlord for a new window screen c'mon #pickles the drummer #magnus hammersmith #metalocalypse #magpickles #fanfic