#the gifset earlier was just the beginning

[dazzlingkai]

Island (2022 – 2023) Cha Eunwoo as Priest John

#cha eunwoo #astro #eunwoo #island #kdrama #kdramaedit #kdramaedits #dramaedit #mgroupsedit #ultkpopnetwork #kpopccc #kdramanetwork #kdramanet #asiandramasource #gif #gifset #edit #my edit #I was supposed to post this earlier but I didn't get enough time to finish it until now #omggg if I had just waited to begin with I could have edited this with better quality since the first ep came out today I'm so 🙃 #oh well already spent hours on this so the quality is what it is😪

[maraschinomerry]

True to form I'm a day late but happy 10th anniversary to The Screaming Staircase! (And thank you Linnie for your post which reminded me this is a thing and inspired me to post my own)

Lockwood & Co as a show had been on my radar pretty much since it launched - it must have popped up on my Netflix at some point, and I already had a couple of mutuals posting about it. I saw and liked the gifsets with the spirit of "I don't even go here but this looks cool", finally in March I went "wait, why don't I watch this? There's literally no barrier beyond my own stubbornness" and thank goodness I did.

I still cannot get over how deeply I connected with the show, and the way it taps into everything I'd have loved at 13 or 18 alike and is equally enjoyable now at 25. The unabashed love shown between the Iron Trio is so refreshing and sincere, and it gives me hope for my own place within the group I've chosen as my second family. The world that Jonathan Stroud has constructed is amazing and I would love it wherever it was set, but like my other favourite shows/universe (Morseverse) being so intrinsically linked with Oxford that I can spend days there just wandering between locations I love that Lockwood & Co has a deliberate and well-established base in London. A few months ago I passed through St Pancras alone and was so ecstatic to be sharing in a little of Lucy's journey, and just last week I excitedly pointed out Sidcup on a station departure board when I was down there with my brother.

Of course, I couldn't talk about Lockwood & Co's impact without expressing my eternal gratitude to the show and the fandom for reigniting my creativity. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm further into The Screaming Staircase than I have been in a book for years. I'd been in the most intense artistic slump, having barely done anything creative in months, but then I was able to dedicate a good 10 hours to my Lockwood portrait and close to that on my unfinished George one, which in turn gave me the energy for other projects. In 2020-2022 I published just under 10,000 words of fic across 2 fandoms, plus about 2500 words earlier this year of one I'm still undecided on posting. In the 6 months since I started watching Lockwood & Co, I have written a whopping 46,610 words of published fic, with about 750 words towards some of the 12 requests I have yet to finish (side note: thank you so much to everyone who has been patient with all these unfinished requests, I know it's been months for some but I promise they'll all get finished eventually!) I cannot even begin to fathom that number - that's nearly 50,000 words, written entirely of my own accord, when by comparison my 3 years of essays for my degree probably amounted to a very forced 30,000 words. All that fic I owe to the beautifully characters created by Jonathan Stroud & brought to life by Ruby, Cameron and Ali, but I also couldn't have done it without the overwhelming support of everyone who has read, liked, commented, reblogged and requested. There aren't enough words to tell you all how grateful I am, and this post would be a mile long if I named everyone personally, but I wanted to take the time to thank some of the people who have made my experience so special.

@ettadear @givemea-dam-break @honey-with-tea @ikeasupremacy @marinalor @neewtmas @oblivious-idiot @personinthepalace @reckless-enough-serenade @tangledinlove @wellgoslowly @wordsarelife

If I've missed anyone important I'm so sorry, but I love you all and am so glad to have had this time with you! Happy 10th birthday to The Screaming Staircase and the wonderful fandom it's led to 🫶

Just reckless enough.

Love, Merry ❤️ xx

#lockwood & co #save lockwood and co #locknation #long post #merry mumbles #the screaming staircase #jonathan stroud #just reckless enough

[waitmyturtles]

TL;DR: My analysis of the quiet tone of the Cherry Magic movie -- the overarching theme of the movie was the development of family between Adachi and Kurosawa. 

Well, I’ve turned this space temporarily into a Cherry Magic hovel, a kind of messy sanctuary, really, maybe a cave full of hoarded passing thoughts, rising and cresting emotions, lots of SIIIIGGGHHS, at least two and a half re-watches of the movie, many reblogs, plummeting away my phone battery on consuming more and more gifsets. I regret not being here on Tumblr for the original series, but I feel like I’m more than making up for it by doing all I can to contribute to the dialogue around the movie, which I want to continue doing, meta-style!

Two things have cropped up in my reads of reviews here and on Twitter, one about the tone of the movie, and the other about the pace of growth between Adachi and Kurosawa. I think the first point goes into the second, so here we go:

I’ve seen a lot of comments about how the movie was quieter than the series. I reblogged a quick statement on quiet Japanese BLs earlier this weekend, and I also learned a bit about what the OG CM fandom hoped for with the original series way back when, when there were rumors of a real kiss for the final episode, and how the fandom was slightly let down. 

I think there’s an interesting dichotomy between heat and quiet in the kind of Japanese BLs I tend towards. If you read this space, y’all know my top three -- CM, Kinou Nani Tabeta, and Old Fashion Cupcake -- generally trend toward the quiet, with the slight exception of OFC, which turns up the heat in a panicked moment of revelation.

As I thought about this point, I asked myself -- why the draw towards quiet development and/or contemplation?

For me, all three of these dramas, especially KNT, center on family -- actively creating family, dealing with existing family, and/or managing expectations of creating a future family. 

If you’re Asian, as I am, the thinking on and managing of family issues is, in my opinion, the dominant issue that you spend the majority of your life dealing with. That’s not to say that in Western lifetimes, less time is spent on family issues. What I mean to say is that family issues, I would argue, take up more of your brain space and your sense of morality and ethical engagement in humanity if you’re an Asian, as opposed to the manifest destiny of the West. When I was right out of college, for instance, and rolling with a majority white hipster crew at that moment, my friends would comment on how I’d visit my family’s house once a month. That was tooooo much for them. And they’d legit tell me -- you care too much about your family, you need to separate yourself from them.

These are surface-scratching statements, and if you’re Asian, I know you’ll immediately guffaw at how ridiculous and impossible it would be to even BEGIN contemplating how to “separate yourself” from your family. It’s taken me a LOT of my old lady years to even come to grips with the fact that I needed to live an independent life away from the expectations of my family. And for hundreds of millions of people in our Asian cultures, those Western notions of “separation” and “independence” simply don’t exist. You can cohabitate, be co-dependent on, be enabled by your family, and that is just fine. Family is the structure that gives meaning to the lives of many Asians, without question. 

So to say that the movie tends towards the quiet, I think, possibly bypasses what I think is a major point that the movie is trying to make, both in a cultural arc and in the actual storyline: We are seeing Adachi and Kurosawa making a family together, THEIR family together. 

IMHO, the king of family-oriented BLs was KNT. Both Yoshinaga Fumi, the mangaka behind KNT, and Adachi Naoko, KNT’s screenwriter, deliberately gilded the KNT script with the tadaima and okaeri greetings that you hear when someone comes home at the end of the day. That set-up was meant to indicate that Shiro-san and Kenji considered themselves family to each other -- because, you might be saying tadaima to your parents when you’re a child, or your spouse as an adult. 

The clues to Adachi’s thinking about family are apparent. There’s the moment where he gives advice to his chief about the chief’s complaining wife. There’s the moment in the office when Rokakku and Fujisaki are talking about their lives, the very moment in their lives where they are single but happy at work and with friends. There’s the moment when Adachi picks up the mail and sees his name and Kurosawa’s name, while coming home. 

And of course, the gorgeous moment in the kitchen when Adachi states his desire for a public and permanently committed relationship with Kurosawa. 

Adachi is creating his new family in that moment. 

I want to tie this together with a comment I read on Twitter about how Adachi’s personal growth matched Kurosawa breaking down his walls of perfection, and how he originally projected his perfectionist nature on their relationship. We remember in the series Kurosawa being ULTRA cute in the office after Adachi’s original confession, saying he was going to create the best first date ever; and then all the practice dates they had; and all the planning that went into the Christmas date. 

Those walls began breaking down a little bit in the last episode of the series, and we saw that even more as the movie began, when we realized that they had not, indeed, bonked, as we thought they had, on Christmas Eve. When Adachi’s hunger interrupted their potential love sesh, Kurosawa was like, WEEEEELLLL, through gritted teeth -- I’ll still be patient for Adachi. 

That’s life. But as I originally wrote in my first review of the movie, what I didn’t expect to see in the film was that the movie would be utterly dominated by Adachi’s internal growth INTO the relationship, and how that ultimately steadied Kurosawa to be okay to be weak in front of Adachi, and in his own (Kurosawa’s) life. We know this is a HUGE DEAL, a HUUUUGE DEAL for Kurosawa. He mentions it in the essay he writes for Adachi’s family. He states it as a major point of being devoted to Adachi to his (Kurosawa’s) mother. Breaking down his walls is a major life moment for Kurosawa -- and it would not have happened without Adachi becoming his family.

Because -- family, often, is about rejiggering and redefining one’s boundaries, and creating new ones with the people you’ve chosen. If you’ve chosen well, and right, like our boys did, then your partner gives you the strength to do this major lifting.

AND: where else do we see these boundaries being rejiggered, besides between Adachi and Kurosawa themselves?

We see them in the family scenes. I think that the movie devoted a LOT of time to the family scenes says a lot about what I said earlier about Asian cultures.

I swear to jebus that I nearly had multiple heart attacks during the family scenes. Besides Kurosawa’s mom’s very apparent sadness and confusion, Adachi’s mom had me at moments, even though she outed herself as a fujoshi, basically, lol, when Kurosawa showed up. Why the heart attacks?

These confronting kinds of conversations to family about things like marriage -- I mean, I don’t know if I have the words to describe HOW MOTHERFUCKING HUGE THESE CONVERSATIONS CAN BE FOR MANY ASIANS. Like -- these conversations can be the culmination of a lifetime. They can destroy you. Y’all, if I wrote about what happened to me when my family learned I was dating my husband (in a cishetero relationship, peeps! Interracial and interfaith, yes, but otherwise, not really rocking the boat here!), I probably wouldn’t finish writing without breaking down in tears for an hour. It was horrible. My family couldn’t handle the growth, simply put. 

This Asian family dynamic that an individual’s original nuclear family unit carries SO MUCH WEIGHT IN THEIR APPROVAL OF WHO YOU ARE AND WHAT YOU DO -- I emphasize here that this theme was major in the movie. The movie NEEDED to spend time on this in order to achieve Adachi’s dream of permanence with Kurosawa. Adachi NEEDED to tell Kurosawa that he (Adachi) would be present in front of Kurosawa’s parents -- because Adachi KNEW that Kurosawa would NEED Adachi there, because of how BIG that BIG CONVERSATION would be. I’m talking BIG, here, BIG. And I believe that the movie’s OG Japanese audience understands this very implicitly and very, very deeply.

Adachi NEEDED to grow into himself -- he needed to lose his magic, his crutch -- and needed to FIND himself to be the strength and pillar that Kurosawa would need to face his family. I want to take this point, make it into a Cherry Magic teddy bear, brand it with Gelato Pique, and place it on a mantle. 

In order to face their families, our guys needed to become family. And that’s why I think the movie tended towards the quiet -- because THAT kind of growth takes a lot of internal work that comes out in the quiet moments of intimacy with the people you’ve chosen and you love. 

#cherry magic #cherry magic meta #cherry magic the movie #cherry magic the movie meta #adachi kiyoshi #kurosawa yuichi #akaso eiji #machida keita #adachi x kurosawa #kurosawa x adachi #kurodachi #asian family dynamics #asian family culture #family boundaries #asian families

[fandom-hoarder]

HIII i was wondering if you knew any more fics where its an older dean and younger sam together (like later seasons dean vs earlier seasons sam) like either young sam is in the future or older dean is in the past ~somehow~ i like the idea of these fics so much but ive barely been able to find any heh

For you, anon! <3

[the fic search that prompted this💜]

~

⏳Timey Wimey Wincest

Ft. Older!Dean x Younger!Sam⌛

~

[on tumblr]

💙 First of all, have you seen @hathfrozen's tumblr ficlet featuring s8!Dean and s2/3!Sam?

💙 Not exactly time travel, but adjacent: hath's s12 (vibes), 2.4k, and t-rated, Sam and Dean create a memory clone of s1 Sammy

~

💙 A couple gifsets I've reblogged:

Posted by @wertherproject

Posted by @wincestpoughkeepsie

~

[on AO3]

💟 Love, Family, Whatever It Is by sexier_in_enochian

Rating: Explicit | Words: 3491 | No Archive Warnings Apply

Summary: Alternate Wincesty spin on 5x04 The End, in which Sam and Dean find themselves put into 2014 together. I had a need to write this.

The night after the brothers finally succumb to this.. thing; whatever it is between them that neither of them wanted to or dared to acknowledge, Dean begins to withdraw from Sam in typical Dean Winchester fashion. Which couldn't come at a worse time; after Sam has pretty much just found out he's M.F.E.O with none other than the friggin' Devil.

Additional Tags: Wincest - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Endverse: Wincest Edition, If Sam And Dean Went To 2014 Together, In Which Endverse Dean Needs Comforting, And Dean Is A Voyeur, And Sam Is More Than Willing To Comply, Explicit Sexual Content, Accidental Voyeurism, Voyeur Dean

My note: A classic endverse!Dean/s5!Sam fic.

.

💟 Whatever It Is by theproblematique

Rating: Explicit | Words: 30931 | Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Summary: Both Sam and Dean get sent to the year 2014.

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, Angst, Pining, Unhealthy Relationships, Poor Life Choices, Morbid Humor, Explicit Sexual Content, Did I mention angst, and pining, Minor Character Death

My note: Another classic -- more plotty take on the premise from Love, Family, Whatever It Is. FAV!

.

💟 Disarm by hitokiri

Rating: Explicit | Words: 3771 | No Archive Warnings Apply

Summary: Zachariah sends Endverse Dean back to 2009 to see his little brother again. Dean can't control himself.

Additional Tags: Top Endverse Dean Winchester, Bottom Sam Winchester, Top Dean Winchester/Bottom Sam Winchester

.

💟 Timeless by MsImpala67

Rating: Explicit | Words: 4575 | No Archive Warnings Apply

Summary: Sam sends Dean to the past for unknown reasons. When Dean is faced with a twenty-two year old Sam who has no idea what they'll become, Dean figures those reasons out.

Additional Tags: Time Travel, season 13!Dean, season 1!Sam, Porn with Feelings, First Time, Sort Of, Blow Jobs, Frottage

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💟 Every version of you by largoindminor

Rating: Mature | Words: 1601 | No Archive Warnings Apply

Summary: To get him out of the way and prevent him from interfering with the war against the Darkness, a host of angels send Dean back in time to 2003. Against his better judgement, Dean pays his younger younger brother a visit

Additional Tags: Time Travel, 2003!sam, 2016!dean

.

💟 My Anchor by blackrose_17

Rating: Mature | Words: 13082 | No Archive Warnings Apply

Summary: Death was the ending that endverse Dean had been waiting for what he got was anything but that. Dean finds himself in a rundown motel with someone he thought he would never see again his Sam. Only this Sam is broken tormented by visions of Lucifer and his Dean missing he is on the edge. Two broken souls each missing their other half find a peace and sense of belonging to one another. A love story between Endverse!Dean and pre-season 8!Sam.

Additional Tags: Bottom Sam, Top Dean, Hallucifer tormenting Sam, Broken Sam, Hurt Sam Winchester

My notes: Endverse!Dean/Pre-s8!Sam (so 2014 AU Dean and 2013 Prime Sam); gets a little melodramatic in the dialogue sometimes, and there is gratuitous use of Sammy/De and "baby boy" -- not an issue for me, but I know it is for some people.

.

💟 Every Time I See Your Face by KassandraScarlett

Rating: Teen+ | Words: 4806 | Major Character Death

Summary: Based on a Tumblr prompt: After Sam falls into the cage, Dean asks Cas for one more favor. On Dean’s days off, he visits Sam in different time periods, even if only for an hour or two. Sam never tells Dean about these visits.

Additional Tags: Angst, Non-Linear Narrative, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Time Travel, First Kiss, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe, Kid Sam Winchester

My Notes: Like Another Go Round from the post that inspired this ask, this is another great one from the Time Travel Fics series by KassandraScarlett.

.

💟 no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin by AmyPond45

Rating: Mature | Words: 7649 | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Summary: Dean’s never been what you might call a man of faith. After all, he doesn’t have to believe in God. He knows God exists. But Dean has faith. Dean believes in Sam, and he believes he knows what’s best for his little brother. When Billie takes Dean on a midnight ride through Sam’s past, Dean learns that having faith isn’t just about believing in something you can’t see. Sometimes, it’s about seeing past your own self-doubt to recognize that the thing you never dared to pray for has been yours all along.

Additional Tags: First Time, Angst with a Happy Ending, Season/Series 13, Episode: s13e15 A Most Holy Man, Time Travel

.

💟 The Real Miracle of Christmas by waywardelle

Rating: Mature | Words: 7060 | Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Summary: After an argument over having their first real Christmas in the Bunker, Dean goes down to the storerooms to clear his head. Instead, he finds himself on a journey to a Christmas from his past, and one from his future that leads him to his ultimate and forever destination: back to Sam.

Additional Tags: Season/Series 11, Inspired by A Christmas Carol, Angst, re-establishing relationship, Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas album lmao, Season 3!Sam, Time Travel, very temporary death, Christmas in the Bunker

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💟 One More Coal by StripySock

Rating: Explicit | Words: 2724 | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Summary: Season 9 Dean accidentally meets Stanford-Sam. He probably won't forgive himself for what he does, but that's never stopped him.

Additional Tags: Sam at Stanford, Season 9 Dean, Time Travel, Rough Sex, Anal Sex, blowjob, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Incest

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💟 One Night to Remember by [orphan_account]

Rating: Explicit | Words: 18162 | No Archive Warnings Apply

Summary: We all know about the demon that killed Jess, and therefore forced Sam into the hunter life.

But what if it was another demon, who painted the path for the young Winchester? One much more sinister...and a lot handsomer.

Additional Tags: Time Travel, Bottom Sam, Top Dean, Demon Dean, Dubious consent at first, Light Bondage, Rough Sex, Humiliation, Dirty Talk, Stanford Sam, Forbidden Love, Fingering, Dean is a total asshole, An evil and perverted asshole, Violence, Kinky Sam in denial

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💟 False Pretenses by kelleigh (girlfromcarolina)

Rating: Explicit | Words: 1553 | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Summary: This Dean, however, the one who bore down on Sam, snarling and muttering about time travel being an ‘unexpected perk of the deal,’ and whose soul is warped and reeks of sulfur...well, Sam wants something very different from him.

Additional Tags: Demon Dean, Mark of Cain, Time Travel, Stanford Era, College Student Sam, Demon Dean Winchester, Rough Sex, Age Difference, Community: spn-masquerade, Don't copy to another site

~

[honorable mentions]

🧡 Sincerely, Sam by FallenKy

Rating: Mature | Words: 87505 | Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Summary: Sam Winchester is praying for death.

Dean's already gone after sacrificing himself to take out Amara and Sam's losing more and more of himself each day at Lady Bevell's hands. He's reached his limit. Then suddenly he finds himself in 1998 and the sole focus of a supernatural lawyer who has one very firm request; She needs Sam to cure a demon. Dad, Dean, and Bobby won't let him out of their sights and Sam has enough to juggle with the swarm of supernatural creatures who think the Boy King has come back to take his crown.

Additional Tags: Time Travel, Pre-Series, Weecest, Weechesters, Time Traveling Sam, BAMF Sam, Protective Dean Winchester, Miscommunication, Tortured Sam, Hurt Sam, Hurt/Comfort, powers!Sam, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Underage Kissing, Bottom Sam Winchester

My Notes: TBH the only reason this is Honorable Mention is this is a WIP that hasn't been updated since 2019. But it's at 17/19 chapters and it's a really awesome story. It's a Sam-time-swap, with 15-year-old Sam in the future with s12 Dean, and s12 Sam in 1998 with 19-year-old Dean. Hella plotty.

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🧡 Sam's Magic Time Closet by AmyPond45

Description: One day, Sam finds a magic closet in his room in the bunker. He uses it to travel back in time to fix mistakes he made in the past, to check on his brother, and to bring home other versions of himself and Dean. It's mostly complete, but there are always room for more storylines with this kind of trope, so.

My Note: I haven't read these yet, but they look fun. There's a mix of who is older and younger in each work.

~

[timey wimey wincest pt 2: younger!dean/older!sam]

#asks #my rec list #time travel dean #time travel wincest #younger!sam meets older!dean #endverse!dean #wincest #wincest fanfiction #wincest fic recs #time travel sam #weecest #demon!dean

[xiaoxiongmaos]

end (beginning?) of year appreciation post ♡

hello~ this is xixi (also @/choibeomggyu)!

♡ # ⏤ e

@20cm @97chwe @agibbangs @ambivartence ♡ @ashisland ♡ @awek-s @beomgyus @choiyeonjuns ♡ @connecteds @ddonghyun @digitalgirls ♡ @dongjusmilf @dreamaze​ @euijin 

♡ g ⏤ j

@go-saeng ♡ @hearttoshu ♡ @hoyounq ♡ @hueningkai @hwarizon @hyunjins @hyunpic @hyunsung @inhypen @injunnies @innielove @inracha @itshyuka ♡ @jaeyooniverse @jaeyunsim @jihan @junhee

♡ k ⏤ p

@kdongyoung @kyucob @leejinkie @leemarkies ♡ @leenow @letsstaywithstraykids @limsejun ♡ @maatryoshkaa @nevoono @parksnghoon @pjmsdior @polaroidlove

♡ r ⏤ z

@racha @saltys @scoupsy @seonghwaminho @seunglixes ♡ @seungminhos @seungs @slowrabbitpd​ @smallkore @song-mingi ♡ @strayz @usertae @wonjinist @y2kjungkook @yeonjuins ♡ @yeonjune @yjunies ♡ @yongseungkim ♡

(if there’s a ♡ after your url, i’ve left a little (or not so little hehe) note under the cut for you!)

♡ ⏤

i had originally planned to make a year-end post for all my lovely friends/mutuals which then got dragged into the first week of 2023 on my bday ;;;;; but thank you so much to all the lovely people that have followed this quaint little blog of mine and supported my content throughout my time here on tumblr! i can’t believe it’ll be a whole 1460 days since i made this account later this year... feels like just yesterday i signed up and logged in for the first time ever hehe

it always brings a smile to my face seeing each and every single silly, cute, sweet, supportive tag under any of my gifs, graphics, fanart etc.! i really cannot emphasize enough how wonderful it is to see people like my work enough to reblog it, take time out of their day to gush about it in the tags or send me the occasional ask/dm complimenting any aspect of it (´,,•ω•,,)♡ i truly appreciate all of you.

with the new year finally here and all, i’m sure a lot of people have resolutions and expectations set for the next 365 days so just remember to take it easy⏤start small and that’ll eventually lead you to kick bigger goals out there! you’ll see that every micro-habit has a monumentous impact when you look back on your progress, so read even one paragraph daily or go to sleep 15 mins earlier than you usually would. after all, buildings don’t just appear out of nowhere, you have to stack each brick one by one c: just make sure to not overexert yourself!

thank you to everyone once again, i love looking at all of your beautiful creations on the dashboard and seeing you in my notifications, as well as interacting with you whenever the opportunity arises c:

⏤ ♡

@itshyuka ⏤ oh, where to start... i just really, really, really miss you. a ton. thank you so much for teaching me how to gif, i don’t know where i’d be (probably still getting confused looking at the layers panel dljkdjfjf) if it weren’t for you, lia ♡ late 2019-early 2020 was one of the toughest years of my life and i’ll forever be indebted and grateful to you for being there to cheer me up with your hyuka info dumps, our inspiring conversations and your lovely gifsets. whenever i feel down i go to your blog and feel refreshed just looking at it :D i owe all of my knowledge on ps, vs & anything to do with creating content to you, thank you for supporting me all the way back then to rooting for me even now, no matter how scarce our encounters have become. i hope life is treating you well, and that you become a well-loved and respected educator!

@choiyeonjuns ⏤ vivi! i have been trying to write this for about an hour now; writing, erasing then repeating multiple times⏤how to put everything into a miniature paragraph? words can never truly relay the amount of love i have for you and your blog, thank you for being my friend from day 1 on moablr and always supporting me. i love my little conversations with you whenever they sporadically happen, and i’m so glad we have so many common interests, enabling me to support your content across all of your blogs :3 i hope you get back all the love and support you gives others tenfold, and are always surrounded by happiness!

@go-saeng ⏤ i miss talking to you and seeing you on the dash a lot kashi ;;;;; meeting you was one of the highlights of my 2020-2021 and talking to you was always such a nice part of my day. i’m still blown away each time i see your gfx and gifs on the dashboard as well as am so proud of your gif growth. i also always go back to that runaway & minho + jeongin set you dedicated to me⏤considering all of the effort you put in to make something for myself makes me tear up sometimes... but when life’s rough, the very words you put under them comfort me beyond measure and i gain the strength to face whatever new challenge is thrown my way! hope that you are well and happy, may 2023 bring you loads of blessings!

@hoyounq ⏤ i’m not sure if you’ll see this but you introduced me to so many lovely people, filled my days with laughter and it’s been an absolute pleasure being mutuals with you, han (´｡• ω •｡`) talking to you and hanjess shenanigans on the timeline will forever be ingrained in my heart and i just want you to know that i really appreciate having you in my life! you’re truly the sunshine and rainbows in one’s life personified ♡

@hearttoshu ⏤ jess dearest! i really don’t know what to say dhfdjsd but i appreciate you so very much, always putting up with my incessant rambles about life, beomgyu, my favourite groups and everything in between! you’re such a sweet and perceptive person, always looking out for others and offering your support⏤i hope i can offer you the same. seeing you jaeyuning everywhere makes my heart warm and i’m so glad you got me more into to1 and verivery ♡ i love seeing your creations on the dashboard and in the tags, your sharpening is one of my absolute favourites because of how almost sparkly your gifs turn out to be... like rhinestones under the moonlight! hope you have a lovely year ahead c:

@ashisland ⏤ dear gabi: you’re so cute when you talk about your ults & i can’t help but get giddy whenever i read your tags, both under my posts and when you’re gushing over serim :D i’m so sorry for making you the target of all my non-sense, but i also will tell you that i can’t promise that it’ll cease, you’re the yeonjun to my beomgyu after all djfjddj i love your gifs so much and thank you for spending your precious time to make me stuff whenever you see me talk about it. hope lab gets easier to deal with for you this year and please know that you’re always doing a good job and worked hard⏤please take it easy on yourself, even by just a little!

@yeonjuins ⏤ woo! your talent never ceases to amaze me, from your well-crafted graphics to how you come up with new ways to bully heeseung sodkdkfj i know it’s not been long since we’ve started talking but you have quickly made your way into my list of friends and i love conversing with you ♡ i love your energy and end up feeling content after talking to you. here’s to another year of yeonjuins & your delightful creations on tumblr, as well as our friendship!

@digitalgirls ⏤ thank you so, so much for always supporting my work, jo! it’s lovely having you on the dash/timeline and i always get so inspired by your content, you’re definitely one of my (if not the most) coolest mutuals, the quality on your work and blog is insane :o i still feel so shy whenever i realize you follow me back and have been for a long while ^^; thank you for all of your hard work and i hope you have a wonderful 2023!

@song-mingi ⏤ my favourite atinytual and justbtual... thank you for single-handedly carrying both fandoms on your back and presenting us with all of your lovely content along with it! it’s super fun having you on the dashboard and i love interacting with you; you’re sunshine and rainbows personified too hehe how fitting for hanri! hope you have a lovely year ahead and that there’s loads more of irigifs to see ♡

@seunglixes ⏤ luna! i know it’s been a while but i love seeing your creations, and you, all the same! i don’t think i’ve met anyone who loves felix more than you yet⏤i hope that i can make you a bday present again this year and not miss the date as last year ;;;;; keep creating and loving felix in 2023 as well!

@ambivartence ⏤ thank you so much for always supporting the art i post siyuan! i love seeing your sweet tags under it and also your gifs + fanart on the dashboard! i appreciate the advice and love you’ve given me and my blog ♡ hope you get to expand your reach and develop your art style even more this year!

@limsejun​ sam my dear friend! i am so glad i had the fortune of meeting you, i really love all of your sets from both your kpop and kdrama blog; you motivated me to start a kdrama sideblog and i hope to engage with your content through it as well~ i’m still holding you to that promise of loving me forever for the sejun url djkafsjfk

@yjunies ⏤ your entire blog is just so pleasing to look at and every single thing you create is really pretty, ana ♡ i aspire to be able to make such beautiful content like yours one day; until then, i’ll simply ooh and aah at everything you put out u.u you’re such a sweet and kind person & i hope only good things come your way, always!

@yongseungkim ⏤ shine! i don’t know if you’ll be seeing this soon either but i love talking to you and hearing you go on about yongseung... thank you for pushing me to be more confident in myself and being my korean teacher (though it was short-lived haha); i hope 2023 treats you well! 

@leemarkies ⏤ marie my beloved! i am so glad i got paired with you for the secret santa event last year, as it did lead to us becoming friends. i love reading all your idiosyncratic tags and thank you for supporting my stray kids content since day one! i hope we can engage more this year and that you are surrounded by love & happiness in this one as well as the next ♡

#xixi.2023 #long post #i have no idea on what to tag this thing fdjkssj #but thank you all for sticking around and choosing to follow me/support my content throughout the years; i have made so many mutuals #and friends that inspire me to improve at my craft and become a better person! #and to all the silent followers who reblog from me⏤thank you and happy new year ♡

[sonofsallyjackson]

I got to watch episode 4! Very happy with this episode as a whole even if not a huge fan of certain choices. Kept track of my reactions as I went in notes app and they’re below the cut.

I love baby Percy. However not a big fan of Sally in this scene. I get that she’s allowed to be frustrated but I don’t think she would hold the fact they paid for the lesson over Percy’s head.

Every time I hear forbidden kid all I can think of is CaffeinatedFlumadiddle’s Son of Sea Foam.

“I gotta earn it with you too” Damn I love them so much.

“It isn’t supposed to work that way.” I love baby Percy’s radicalization. You’re right you don’t deserve to be treated like that. “Pay your Child support” Percy has been here since the beginning.

“It’s everybody.“ oh poor baby Annabeth. I knew the backstory but framing it as her not being a gift hurt a lot.

HELL YEAH!!! PAN MENTION!!! I have been waiting for this since the season started. I’m an unproportionately excited about this.

The police officer scenes made me way too apprehensive. I’m so much more worried about them now given casting.

I am so confused by Echidnas earlier entrance. It feels less cinematic to meet her on the train versus the arch. There’s no element of surprise either. What was a cute moment of character growth as they visited somewhere Annabeth always wanted to go as they waited. It would be stupid to retreat to the Arch now.

“This has always been a family story” I want this overlaid on all the gifsets.

They’re really playing into the later themes where the demigods are monsters. Like I thought Percy really only starting to feel that way in Tartarus when faced with Bob. He might have felt bad about being a hero and trying to prove he was nothing like Hercules in TTC but it wasn’t an overarching demigods are the monsters mindset.

Really glad the Chimera didn’t appear as a service dog. Cute little puppy wandering down the corridor is perfect.

Oh so the Arch is a temple. I’m glad they have a reason to go there. I was worried they would go there despite being hunted.

Ugh I’m not a fan of how Athena blames Annabeth for the head.

Fuck Percy’s going to jump into the river thinking that he’s going to die. Sure he might pray but he won’t believe it.

Annabeth was going to sacrifice herself like Thalia. She wasn’t going to let a forbidden kid die for her again (and you know she was the one in best fighting shape)

The water grabbing him was so cool. I loved being able to see the concrete below him and then the water reached out for him. “He’s here and he’s so very proud” God I’m going to cry.

This tv show is very pro Poseidon. Like yeah it’s largely anti-gods but the comparison between Athena and Poseidon this episode had him way on top. Athena was essentially going to let her daughter be killed (which actually lines up with her treatment of Annabeth in MOA, just sending countless of her children to die on an impossible quest and treating it like an honor). Percy talks about not even wanting to pray to his dad and his dad saves him anyway. (Yes I realize last episode had the Medusa stuff but feel like that was less impactful after she tried to kill them.)

Really wish we had the reunion this episode but oh well guess I have to wait for next week.

#pjo tv spoilers #pjo disney plus #s1e4 #percy jackson

[addictedtostorytelling]

i’ve been rewatching csi from the beginning (because i’ve never been able to make it past season 9 without grissom) and i’m finally up to the end of season 7… i have like 3 episodes left and i’m SAD. this team dynamic is so special to me and i feel this slow crawl of devastation that i’m (again) witnessing the end of what has been for 7 seasons. soon sara won’t be her usually cute and passionate self (in love too) that we get see in season 7, and she’ll leave, and then warrick is going to die, and grissom will leave… and nothing will ever be the same on this show. i don’t know how to get over it. how did you do it? how do i move on? how do i mourn this team dynamic that i’ve loved for so long and get used to new variations of the team? god, i wish grissom came back for a proper full ep earlier than the freaking series finale and the new show. i’m just… not sure how to enjoy without them all 😭

hi, anon!

yours is a very heartfelt question, and, unfortunately, i am probably the wrong person to answer it, because i never really "got over" the changes to the show post-s7, either.

not gonna lie to you: i have only watched the s10-s15 era of the show once through in its entirety.

the s8 and s9 angst i can deal with in order to get to the happy gsr ending in episode 09x10 "one to go." however, i hate all later seasons of the show beyond that point with all the salt that is in me, not only because of the cast turnover but also because the writing and production values of the show changed so much as to make the series (and the remaining characters) unrecognizable.

most of the time, i just straight-up ignore the fact that those seasons exist, preferring to imagine my own canon-divergent au version of the show (starting from the end of s7) instead.

i really do not engage with them unless someone sends me an ask.

that so, i can't exactly tell you how to learn to accept the new team or get comfortable in that altered narrative landscape. i never did, on either count.

instead, my advice is this: keep in mind you're not obligated to finish watching csi if doing so isn't enjoyable to you. you fell in love with a particular group of characters, story universe, and cast dynamic, and if those things went away or ship of theseus'd themselves into a production that is fundamentally different from the one you fell in love with in every way save name, you don't have to stick around anymore.

remember: you're watching this show as a hobby, not a job.

the #1 rule of fandom is to follow your bliss, so if you're not naturally motivated to finish the series—and especially if the thought of doing so is actively causing you dread—then you don't have to force the issue.

give yourself permission to say, "for me, the series ends with episode 08x01 'dead doll' or episode 09x10 'one to go' (or wherever you want to draw your line in the sand)" and then walk away.

if you need closure, write your own au version of what happens after that point or else find some fanfic author whose vision aligns with your own. keep living blissfully in your s1-s7 happy place with the original team graveyard, where grissom is the boss and sara stays in vegas and warrick doesn't die and they all keep solving cases together until retirement.

and then don't sweat it.

you're not being a "bad fan" or letting anyone down, and there's still plenty of material in the early seasons for you to engage with.

now.

if you absolutely feel you must finish the show (for whatever reason), i guess one thing i might suggest is to engage with work from fans who genuinely enjoy the later seasons. i know there are some folks in this fandom who adore the new characters and team graveyard version 2.0. they write meta and fic and make gifsets about it, and they have a total blast doing so. hanging around their blogs might help you to find things to appreciate.

another thing you might do is give yourself permission to "cherry-pick." watch just to see what happens. if there's stuff you like, go ahead and incorporate it into your conception of the show. the rest, discard. as i said above, you're not obligated to enjoy the show in a certain way and especially not "across the board." so if you like the fact sara has mother-in-law drama but hate the fact she gets divorced? then keep the first thing and toss out the second. if canon makes a stupid-ass decision, you can elect to ignore it.

and regardless of whether you ultimately decide to finish out your watch-through or not, don't forget: the beginning of the story—i.e., those seven golden seasons you so love—will always be there, and you can return to them as often as you want. the beauty of a story is that it exists in perpetuity. grissom, catherine, warrick, nick, sara, and greg will all still be there waiting for you, and you can continue to enjoy their dynamics however you best prefer them.

good luck, anon! if you choose to continue your watch, i hope you enjoy yourself. if not, then i hope you have fun mentally setting up shop in the early seasons.

i certainly do!

thanks for the question! please feel welcome to send another any time.

#answered #anon #asks: csi #let's talk shop #csiverse #later seasons

[agardenandlibrary]

The Shadow Rising: chapters 35-37

Remember Rand and Mat? They're having a great time in the 3-fold land. Rand's got new tattoos - 2 dragons, one on each arm. Poor kid. He's like, I just wanted to be a shepherd and marry my childhood sweetheart but all of Creation says what I want doesn't matter. He's that gifset of Moiraine saying 'Destiny comes for us all, that relentless bitch." No wonder Rand is cracking. He laughs at everything - it's that or explode. 

Anyway, the Double Dragons mark him as He Who Comes With the Dawn and the Cara Acorn Car'a’carn -- chief of chiefs. OKAY Mr. Annux. I've read the Queen's Thief series. I know what's going on here.

The Aiel are universally conflicted about this. He is prophesied to destroy them, after all. But if they don't follow him, none of them will survive. Following him guarantees that a remnant of a remnant will survive. God that sucks. That's the best you can hope for? That only 99% of you will die?

Man, we GOTTA get more info on the Aiel origins. Rand calls for an Aielmoot and they mosey on their way to the meeting place. On the way they encounter Peddlers, not Tuatha'an. Rand finds them extremely sus, but of course we’re not in his perspective when he comes to this decision. He’s just like “You gotta watch the eyes, Mat. You gotta watch the eyes.”

The peddlers are nearly to Rhuidean and have no Aiel guiding them which IS mad suspicious.

Mat is spilling the beans on most of his Rhuidean experience to the Suspicious Gleeman who travels with the peddlers. SUS! 

Also, I'm mentally downvoting R.J. for having a fat woman be immediately Suspicious and possibly evil. As far as I can remember, no one else is described like she is. 

me, opening RJ's tomb: “hey, being fat is not a sign of evil – which I know you know, because you did the whole "Rand and Mat don't trust skinny innkeepers" bit – are you listening?”

There's this whole thing about Aviendha being set to watch Rand and pouting about it. She's like "You belong to Elayne!" and mad at him for existing near other women. It's 90% boring and 10% funny as hell. 

At an oasis they're attacked by Trollocs, which is weird because they're so far into the Wastes. Are there more unknown Way Gates? Probably not Portal Stones, unless one of the Forsaken is helping them with it?

Also, earlier, Rand's like "Buddy, I’m gonna break rules y'all have never heard of in ways you can't begin to imagine" and honestly, good for him. He deserves to go ham.

#cara reads wot #cara reads tsr #wheel of time #the shadow rising

[scribbling-punk]

Required Love - Chapter 43

The ring feels heavy in her pocket as she gazes out of the window, silently watching as rain pounds against the glass and blurs her view of the city. It’s a minor miracle that Kara’s neighborhood had survived relatively unscathed, but there are still the lingering signs of conflict.

Their favorite Chinese restaurant is boarded up, the owners forced to flee when the world around them started to collapse, several homes lying empty despite the buildings that still stand upright. In the distance, only a few blocks away, ruins are visibly apartment blocks and businesses stolen from the usual landscape, mere piles of rubble that are slowly, but surely removed from the streets.

Even as people show their resilience, begin to heal and rebuild, there’s a heaviness in the air that Andrea isn’t convinced won’t always be there.

She is lucky.

That much Andrea can recognize.

Despite the loss of her father and how close she came to losing her own life, Andrea cannot pretend that she has not scraped her way out of this much easier than those around them who were merely innocent bystanders—their lives destroyed before they could even realize what was happening. They hadn’t all been handed a piece of jewelry to hide the scars—both old and new—and bruises that the past few weeks had gifted them all.

She sighs and reaches up to touch the space between her brows, unsure of how she feels to no longer have that little scar between them.

Lena always liked it, would reach out to carefully trace it with her finger as they laid in bed, moonlight spilling across their naked bodies as they slowly regained their breath. It was just them. The two of them against the whole damn world, Lena a lovely and clingy little creature who belonged in Andrea’s arms, fit inside them just right as though they were two matching pieces of a puzzle.

And then Kara came along.

Kara, who deserved much more than the universe ever gave her.

Read chapter 43 of Required Love early on Patreon.

Earlier chapters are available on AO3.

Original gifset by the lovely @evilsnowswan

#required love #superrojascorp #early access

[jonathanbiers]

please, if you write something with s3 steve x argyle i NEED to read it. i just read all your stargyle stuff last night and they're so good!

omg fdjjkgfdk thank you so much for reading them! i'm so glad you like what i've written for them so far. and i am already in the process!! i'm currently undecided if i'll end up posting chapters as i go or if i want to wait until it's all done and post. it's at a little over 2k right now bc i haven't written any in it in like a week rip and is going to be a soft little thing set in a no upside down au where argyle moves to hawkins. i've been debating posting a snippet but, as a thank you for reading my stuff, here's a lil bit of the scene that was directly inspired by @ofalltheginjoints's gifset:

He gets distracted as the rest place their orders; the decor is loud, all bold contrasting colors and by the time Jonathan’s ordering, Argyle realizes he hasn’t even glanced at the menu. It’s just ice cream, though, how complicated can it be?   It turns out to be far more complicated than he thought possible when Jonathan walks away with his order and Argyle turns to look at the menu on the wall, only to get stuck on the boy behind the counter. Beneath the white sailor hat, he’s wearing an easy smile along with what has to be some kind of tinted lip balm at least. For the first time in his life, Argyle finds himself regretting the second blunt because he seems to have lost the ability to think entirely. “Ahoy, there,” he begins as if reciting a script he’s done a thousand times before.  “Hi,” Argyle blurts without thinking. Immediately, he snaps his mouth shut, opting for a smile and trying to recall how to successfully navigate social interactions.  The sailor pauses, but only for a moment, as if he’s been thrown off the script. The charming smile stays in place, though, and he recovers quickly. “Would you like to set sail on an ocean of flavor? I’m Steve, and I’ll be your captain.”  Argyle is called back to the kids’ bickering earlier, to El talking about Steve who gives us free ice cream and El’s redhead friend chipping in that he’s so cute, too. He doesn’t think he’s ever agreed so strongly with a fourteen-year-old.  Steve furrows his brows slightly, and it’s then Argyle realizes he hasn’t said anything, and with the fuzzy state of his mind he’s left scrambling for what to say. “Aye-aye, captain,” is what ends up coming out of his mouth, and he almost curses himself inwardly.  Something in Steve’s expression changes then; his head tilts slightly to the side as his eyes scan over Argyle’s face, his smile shifting from charming customer service to something less impersonal. He even laughs, but not in a way that makes Argyle feel laughed at—just a quick huff of air through his nose and a slight shift in his shoulders. “What’s your name?” 

#steviethebanished

[scoobydoodean]

hi it's gadreel anon from yesterday and i just wanna say 'there's no way in hell he'd say yes to being possessed by anything' <- direct quote from dean in 9x01. we don't know what sam would actually have said if given the choice but dean believes he would never agree to it so he and 'ezekiel' have to come up with a way to get a yes from sam without sam fully knowing what's happening. good of him to try to tell sam later but he did believe he had to wait until it was too late for sam to say no.

Hi Gadreel anon! For anyone who doesn't know, this would be related to my tags on a reblog last night about the "Gadreel Situation". Anon had also sent this very appreciated message about a much needed uquiz choice!

I also JUST got another anon message that begins with,

obsessed w people who compare sam’s willingness for death in s8/s9 (which, to me at least, read as him being suicidal) to a DNR.

So DNR anon—this is for you too!

So the issue is, Gadreel anon, in my tags I was thinking of a different moment from the one you were referring to! I was thinking of this moment:

and you were thinking of this moment earlier in the same episode:

So my bad in my tags!

(This makes me even more interested in, at some point, doing a uquiz about fandom memory haha).

Too late for Sam to say no though? I didn't say otherwise. I said that Dean wanted to put the choice back in Sam's hands as soon as possible, but then allowed himself to be convinced not to when he shouldn't have, and that either way, Gadreel would never have let Dean tell Sam.

But here's what I always come back to, which is what the OP whose post I tagged on was getting at and what I meant when I talked about analyzing the situation in a vacuum (I'm not saying this is something you are doing Gadreel Anon—it just got me thinking about some of the ways fandom talks about Sam in this context and then DNR anon came in with their frustrations):

Here's 8.14 "Trial and Error" when Sam originally insists on being the one to do The Trials.

This is a Sam full of hope. This is a Sam who knows his brother intends to treat The Trials as a way to off himself because he thinks he's disposable to everyone in his life and he's disposable to himself. So Sam insists, "No—absolutely not—you will NOT be doing The Trials in this state of mind!! I'm going to be the one to do The Trials and I am going to survive then I'm going to save you from your suicidal ideation!"

By 8.21 though, Sam is no longer a man full of hope. He's a man who believes he needs to die so everyone can be spared of him—so that he can become clean:

[Gifset (EVEN MORE HEARTBREAKING) here]. And here's a rant back and forth between me and a friend about that moment, which is also a more general commentary on my thoughts about fandom framing things as "Sam had peacefully come to the conclusion that he was ready to die and Dean shouldn't have tried to stop him from killing himself in "Sacrifice", and season 9 is just him doubling down on when he was "manipulative" and "selfish" in 8.23 because he *checks notes* convinced his suicidal brother not to kill himself, just like Sam did for him in 8.14 (also, if anyone is actively attempting to manipulate anyone in 8.23—which is not how I like to view the scene on my good days—it's not Dean <3 love and light <3).

So yeah—despite the popularity of reducing the entire thing down to "Sam was ready to die and Dean just couldn't let him go!!!" It is, in my opinion, a terrible take, because it ignores literally everything that happened and Sam's actual state of mind! He originally intended to live!! That was the WHOLE POINT!!! Then that changed to him wanting to kill himself because he thought he was dirty and that he deserved it!

So then Dean makes the same promise to Sam that Sam made to him in 8.14 and couldn't fulfill. He takes on the burden of that promise for both of them instead, and he becomes the one saying, "I'll show you to the light at the end of the tunnel and you'll see there's a future and a hope for you and that you are not irreparably broken and disposable". And Sam agrees!! He agrees that he wants to live!!!

Then they get to the hospital, and Gadreel is saying "There's only one way left I can think of to save Sam" and Dean immediately dismisses it, but then he asks Gadreel, "If I consider this – and I mean just consider it – I need something, man. You got to prove to me how bad he is." And when Dean says that, he means how suicidal is his brother? How much does he still hate himself and how much is he refusing to fight on his own because he hates himself? Is he even really fighting? And this is the answer he gets:

"Nobody else can get hurt because of me"!!! Ahhhhh!!!!

I do think one thing we can argue, is that Dean should have entered Sam's mind and convinced him to fight on his own! However, in desperation, Dean happened to have made an ill-thought-out prayer doxxing his location earlier in the day to a legion of very pissed off angels, all of whom hate his guts and know that a guy whose guts they hate even more is obsessed with him (like—Naomi making him kill thousands of fake Dean's obsessed), so beating him and his brother to death sounded really nice at that moment! So Dean did not have the time! And Sam's issues were far larger than one conversation could fix (as proved by Sam's state of mind in 9.01 coming immediately after agreeing to continue fighting in 8.23).

Dean, when he first made the decision to go into Sam's head through Gadreel to get him to say "Yes", considered the action he took as applying the charge to jolt Sam back to life after he tried to kill himself, which absolutely—was against Sam's expressed wish (re: conversation with Death) that he wanted to die. But when fans complain about that, they are complaining about something we as a society do all of the time when we want people who want to kill themselves to not kill themselves. It's just that this charge Dean applies is angelic and comes with extra strings and complications and another "thing that Sam did not want" besides just wanting to live. However, Dean was thinking, "As soon as Sam is back, I can put the decision in his hands!" Then he kept allowing himself to be convinced "A little longer", "a little longer", "just a little longer" and he thought, "Well, even if Sam hates me, at least he'll be alive!"

Some people will shrug and think, "Well, Dean should have just taken the L!" And that's okay! I have no problem with someone saying, "Dean should not have done it, because even though his motive was wanting to save his suicidal brother, the actions he took to do so were too far and therefore were wrong, and he should have prioritized respecting Sam's wishes and Sam's principles over applying angelic life-support Sam would disagree with". But that isn't what Dean did, and I... just don't think the motivations for his actions were nearly so selfish and evil as a lot of fandom wants to make them out to be, and are choices a lot of people would probably make in the same circumstances and in the same situation. Including, according to himself, Sam—who admits in 9.23, after his initial claim at the end of "The Purge" that he wouldn't do the same thing—"I lied". Then he spends all of season 10 proving all kinds of insane and morally questionable lengths he'll go to to keep Dean around!!! Things that he knows Dean does not agree with!!! While Sam doesn't directly let something possess Dean, in season 10, Dean does not want Sam to use the Book of the Damned and tells him directly not to use it several times—that he does NOT want to be saved using that book, because he is afraid of the consequences. However, Sam uses it anyway and orders Oskar up a human sacrifice in his wake with absolutely zero remorse—like he is ordering pizza—which is something Sam also knows, and has known since season 3 when Sam had a couple of plots that involved it, that Dean is not cool with at all!!! And hardcore Sam stans will argue "Well Sam was trying to save the world from Dean!" but actually no!! He chose this specific path that involved removing The Mark and saving his brother (despite the forewarned cosmic consequences and Dean's repeated insistence that said consequences were unacceptable) rather than locking Dean away forever, because he wanted his brother back!!! And while they were standing in a town being ripped to shreds by Amara, Sam said, "I would do it again"!

All of that to say—I'm not saying nothing Dean did was wrong, but fandom's analysis of the whole situation is bad and attributes motivations to Dean and Sam that are wrong!!!

#mail #9.01 #season 9 #gadreel #8.23 #season 8 #the flannel business

[zimshan]

august braindump: on the state of tv and heartstopper

the last year has been such a strange time for me and tv. i honestly cannot remember a time i watched less new tv shows. it’s not for lack of trying but every show/season i started, i was just dragging my heels to finish. some of that is because they’re older shows that aren’t as good as their earlier seasons. stranger things s4 took me an entire year to finish. the pacing was just wildly off to me, and that’s disappointing after the incredible structure of s1. some of that is because of subject matter. i haven’t been able to work myself up to watch outlander after the s5 finale because i just don’t have the mental bandwidth for a sexual trauma storyline. babylon berlin i stopped watching because they were threatening to kill another kid. i’ve noped out of so many shows because of the ratcheting stakes, something that i'm so so tired of seeing done just for the hell of it.

of all the shows, i probably watched the great s2 quickest because it was just so off the wall and the tone of s1 still fascinates me. but even that dragged and was partly guilt tripping to justify my hulu subscription, and i could never let my guard down because it was always going for the most outrageous grotesque thing. i’m stalled on s3 now that they’re killing off characters left and right.

i watched shadow and bone s2 like 15-20 minutes at a time in july because i just found it a snoozefest compared to s1. i legit just wanted to finish it to cross it off my list. how terrible is that? the moment i finished, i started the fame game, a bollywood show, literally because of one gifset on my dash. and watched that 4x faster than anything else i’ve seen all year. cementing my idea that the best of netflix is their international shows. but that shit was pretty dark too.

so beginning of august, i opened up netflix sleep deprived and looking for something to get my mind off my impossible deadline and fuel some writing inspiration. someone on my dash was recently talking about Heartstopper, and it reminded me i missed watching it last year when everyone was talking about it. so seeing it pop up on my netflix screen, i absentmindedly thought, "what the hell let’s see what the fuss is about" and started the first episode. and you know it did the impossible. it grabbed me from the first few frames, and i looked up 2 hours later like oh right sleep. and now i just want to analyze it like a bug. what the hell makes it work where others have failed?

the binging culture inherent to streaming tv is fascinating to me because i almost never do it. if there is one anti-binger out there, she is me. i miss the era of one episode a week on a certain night every day for years. my patience maxes out at 45 minutes every time. i think it’s terrible that shows need to be so bingeable millions of people have to watch an entire season in a weekend to get renewed. because even the best shows i can't commit to doing that for. where does anyone find the time or brainspace, idek.

i know most of the coverage and reaction to the show seem to be about representation and i agree. but there’s something about the elements of Heartstopper that just work where other tv shows lately have faltered and i want to break it down for parts. because on paper it does seem so simple. some of it really is just basic storytelling in tv. those first three episodes are key and the pacing is excellent, every second counts and the acting, editing, and music really drive the show and keep it compelling. on rewatch, i can see how the addictive quality is very much in the editing, in the music, to keep it punchy so that you never think to stop watching. but it’s also in the white space, the moments they give to the lead actors to let a moment breathe. i've been beating this drum for decades now but this show gave so many good examples of it.

several 5-minute sequences caught me thinking god that so compelling why how. the one that stood out on rewatch is the texting sequence in 102 after nick’s interception of the assault scene. there’s zero dialogue but the editing, acting, and music work together to feel the weight of the moment and then lift up from there.

all these essentials combine with something unique like the animations as visual representations of emotions and attraction and create some kind of magical alchemy. it’s been a long time since i’ve thought about it but “lightning in a bottle” describes the best seasons of tv i’ve seen: where it feels like everyone on set, all the actors, every one of the crew, writers, directors, care about the story and are working on all cylinders to do their best job. in the age of streaming, this seems to be more rare than ever and learning about mini writing rooms during the WGA strike has helped to understand why. so has seeing those checks to send home the overall state of residuals in the streaming era. to do the best job people need to be paid fairly. full stop.

so i started Heartstopper and watched 4 episodes in the blink of an eye. the next day, 6; the last day 4. then i did a thing i almost never do anymore: i looked up the soundtrack. music has always been a driver for me, a tv show that nails a score or soundtrack is always gonna get under my skin more than one that doesn’t. it’s part of the necessary ingredients for a good show for me. all my forever tv loves, music plays a central role, music that defines and sets the tone for the show and then becomes forever married to it. you can create a list of the songs and play it back and see the show unfurl again in your mind. its my favorite way of revisiting a show without actually watching it, after a good vid that is. but it works best when the music is a dead lock for the scene or character and typically this is sound driven more than lyrically driven. this show uses a 2012 era style sound i already have a strong affinity for, i have multiple work playlists from the last decade to drive me through a deadline with Foster The People, Fitz and the Tantrums, et al.

but it also did a thing i haven't seen in a long while: the lyrics were used as an extension of the script for internal character POV. in the first episode alone you have the following lyrical-visual pairs: -i'll go anywhere you want to go on charlie getting ben's text to meet -i wanna get lovesick with you on nick watching charlie run and asking him to join the team -right before i'm swallowed by my mind and cursing at the sky on charlie out of place on the rugby field before nick pulls him in to the group -what's the point of looking at the view? cause every time i do i just see you on elle and tao missing each other -the world ends it's you and me/in my head if we can be together/maybe we'll live forever on nick tackling charlie and the leaves animations around them -i see the signs of a lifetime on nick getting charlie's thank you x text paired with the flowing bird animations roll to the credits

this is vidding happening here.

so i spent a good two days listening to the soundtrack and related albums as i got through my deadline. and then i started getting some more questions about the timeline on the story (the soundtrack is of a style popular circa 2012 that i associate with 8tracks playlists even though the actual songs are a bit later, 2015 onwards) and looked up the books the show was based on. i started Solitaire after seeing it was the author’s first book and wanting to read tori’s POV after the glimpses in the show got me thinking about her elder daughter role.

then i looked up the comics when i realized the timeline of Solitaire was a year later and wanted to fill in the gaps. and wow, i’m in awe of how much of the show was already here, how much detail went into the show to match certain frames. the comics are basically acting as storyboards for the show. i used to do the most basic storyboarding for vidding a lifetime ago. i’ve recently gotten the storyboarding itch again the last few months after watching some BTS docs on TCM about storyboard artists and remembering how fascinating and underappreciated the skill actually is. there's some beautiful storyboarding out there, but it doesn't have to be beautiful, it's just got to be functional. at its heart, it's about the frame, the shot, the visual that tells the story. and a lot of that is already done in the comics and translated straight to screen.

i’m inspired learning about alice oseman’s story as a young author, how she started and finished Solitaire before graduating high school, writing the story she wished she saw on the shelves. then how she was taken with her two secondary characters and started teaching herself how to draw to visualize and bring to life their own journeys. it’s such a great example of how storytelling takes on a life of its own and how you are not defined by only your current skillset. there are no boundaries on creativity and curiosity but the ones we self-impose on ourselves.

the last few years, i’ve been thinking a lot about why some works fail to resonate while others succeed, especially in regard to book to screen adaptation. it probably started with the absolute fail that was GOT S8 and rereading THG next to the films and grown from there with my TCM pandemic focus. obviously it’s a gamechanger when the author is the showrunner and that alone is rare. the whole nature of Heartstopper as a webcomic first and driven by subscribers and kickstarter donations is unique as well. alice has built up a passionate audience to create for that helped promote the show and that makes a lot of difference.

but the streaming element is an added issue. by the time i finished season 2, my one overriding thought was wow, imagine society if this had aired 20 years ago. i couldn't help but think of the kids this show could have helped, seeing such an sincere example of queer community on screen. but interrogating that further, i know it’s a silly thought. it wouldn’t have gotten made at all. in 2000, dawson's creek kicked up hate over one gay kiss that amounted to almost nothing. my best friend at 15 came out as gay and felt like he had to pirate QaF asap as the only piece of queer rep around but something far outside of our age group. this story is age appropriate for the age that needs it. in 2023, homophobic parents are waging wars on the school board and libraries in our area for carrying books with queer representation including those of oseman's. no network would greenlight 22 episodes of a queer tumblr webcomic. netflix gave the show 4 hours for its first season in the middle of the pandemic. it only gets made in the streaming era. it is a product of the times, even if the story originates 10 years earlier.

[]

the picture of queer community and lifting up and supporting others is essential for the age this is targeting. i know i'm 20 years older than that target and am mindful of that. this show is not for me. but it's been a while since i've watched a teen series, probably skam, which is a big outliner in teen shows. i think from my dash i assumed the show was going to be pure teen fluff but instead was surprised how much texture it has. the love story is the focus of the gifsets, but it does sell the show short imo. the world doesn’t ignore the dark parts---homophobic bullies, abusive partners and clueless parents, trauma and its long tail, anxiety and eating disorders, the ways love and community can uplift and support but not cure. reading Solitaire i can see where it’s coming from, a dark story that starts the verse. the darkness is there not ignored but part of the journey. its presence makes the light more powerful. but its best virtue is that despite its dark parts, it’s at heart a comforting story. and i think this is an overarching reason why it succeeds as a show. the comic does right by each character and in turn cares for the reader. so everyone working on it saw the story as a comfort themselves and did right by the story. that care shows on screen.

the way Solitaire ends is a thesis statement of sorts for the osemanverse: support and lift each other up, you’re not alone and stronger as a community. it matches skam's thesis, and heartstopper continues it. that reminder is a balm to these times. it's the ethos of organizing but it got lost in isolation of the last few years. its simplicity is part of its power. part of lightning in a bottle is timing. i know some people have lived with this story for years, but after 4 long plague years, its sincerity speaks to me. i can’t think of a reminder i needed more than this story at this time. sometimes you really do stumble on the right story right when you need it.

anyway, this verse has gotten in my brain now so fair warning. heartstopper/osemanverse posting ahead.

#heartstopper #ive been stuck in bugs grief narrative for too long #this is a balm to my soul #i love it but im also breaking it down for parts #my txt #RB off #2023 #sometimes youre just running on empty and dont even realize it til a fandom blindsides you #havent done a tv braindump in ages #this is why #long post #pulling together all of my tag thoughts into one post

[frecklystars]

!!!!!!!!! thank you so much for the reply!!! i love how you described everything! Id loooove if you made the video! I wonder if part of the reason why Ryan speaks like that is because he trained his accent to be less Canadian and more New York?? I'm pretty sure he has mentioned that he modeled it after Marlon Brando!!

Oh!! There's no need to thank me!! Thank YOU for asking about it in the first place!!!!! :D I am always so excited to talk about voices of my F/Os!!! I've spent the last decade hyperfixating on villain F/Os, and I'm so used to their harsh voices + their enunciation and how they really drag out their vowels to sound more sinister (i.e. Starscream from Transformers Prime, Plankton from the Spongebob Musical). Hearing Ryan's characters' way of speaking... his delivery is the exact opposite and it's been sooo fun for me to dive into... I was having a bit of a rough time at work today and your prompt for me to go absolutely ham with describing it was exactly what I needed!! So thank YOU!!!! 🤗✨

AND YESSS AHH I'd love to make the video!!! I keep hoping that a high quality version of the Barbie movie will be streaming soon so I can jump onto that! I think September 5th it's coming out on some sort of streaming service and hopefully someone else will upload it. I'd love to get a clean rip of Ken's lines, esp his little "please?" 🥺🥺🥺 I'm also gonna watch Bladerunner 2049 at the end of this week. I can tell from the very few gifsets I've seen, I'm gonna go absolutely insane

And!!!! OOH that's a fun fact. I didn't know THAT 👀 Okay that totally makes sense now why Greta Gerwig said in an interview that "Ken by the end of the movie is more like Marlon Brando" and I thought to myself "well that is very specific, I'll have to look up who that is later" sfljsfdsdf I didn't even know he was Canadian until a month ago when I was digging through as many Barbie interviews as I could find, and he mentioned it in one of them (he called it Ken-adian, badum tss). Earlier this week I watched a much older interview he did for La La Land, and you can hear the accent just a little bit, but only when he's pushing it on purpose (timestamp about 1:12 to 1:56). In the beginning, it really surprised me when I first heard he was Canadian; I wouldn't have known otherwise bc he covers his accent so well!

#like when he first says 'hoser' he's intentionally pulling on that 'o' #and then when he says it again at 2:34 and 2:42 the accent isn't there at all #i had no idea he trained himself out of it!!!! anon thank you for that fun fact!!! #anonymous #asks #ryan gosling #i've loved having this little chat with you :D

[figr0llmouse]

A theory about that HCA quote at the beginning of the film

Warning: Slight spoilers

Many people who have seen The Little Mermaid live-action remake were quite surprised by the inclusion of the "But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers more" quote in literally the first shot of the film (myself included). And some have put forth their own interpretations and explanations for why it was put there by the filmmakers and how it fits into the (new) narrative. Well, one theory came to me these past few days, and I thought, why not share it here?

When we the audience read that quote, it is most likely assumed and taken for granted that it can only apply to the story's protagonist, the little mermaid Ariel herself. But I disagree; within the context of the story told in the 2023 remake, I feel that it not just applies to Ariel but also to all the mer-characters in the film, and it reveals a rather interesting implication about what living as a merperson in that ocean must feel like, in comparison to living on land.

Before I explain my "thesis", let's go back to the quote. It emphasises the importance of crying/shedding tears as a way to alleviate stress and suffering. I think we can all agree that having a good cry after having a bad day really helps us feel much better. Now imagine you are a mermaid/merman living in the world of the 2023 film, and you are deprived of crying and tears whenever you feel distressed, and cannot express your emotions in a healthy way. Feels horrible doesn't it? Many fans on Tumblr have already posted and shared gifsets of Ariel shedding her first tears of happiness at the end of the film when she says goodbye to her father and tying it to the HCA quote, symbolizing that her suffering throughout the film is no more. As for other characters:

King Triton:

Throughout the film we are told that prior to the film's events, King Triton's wife and mother of his daughters had died in a conflict between merpeople and humans, which causes him to develop a deep paranoia and hatred for humans, and for him to be over-protective over Ariel. That plus the grief he carries over losing his wife would spill over in the scene where he and Ariel argue right before he destroys her grotto. Now I do not have a visual example right now, but there is a shot where we see Triton's facial reaction when Ariel refuses to stop interacting with the human world, and his eyes are wet. He either doesn't know how or cannot express his anger, sadness and frustration with Ariel in a way that is beneficial for both of them, so his only resort is violence. Which brings me to:

Ursula:

If King Triton can be viewed as an emotionally turbulent character, than Ursula even more so. In the 2023 film, she is not only Triton's estranged sister but a pariah of the ocean, where it is implied that she might have been the cause of the conflict mentioned earlier. When we first meet her, she goes into a self-pitying monologue about her fifteen-year banishment and how she vows to take revenge on her family for punishing her. She is clearly mentally troubled by her predicament and this would come to a head when she accidentally kills Flotsam and Jetsam at the climax of the film. As soon as that happens, we see a shot of Ursula's face (excellent acting choices made by Melissa McCarthy here) on the verge of tears, her lower lip trembling before turning into seething rage. It makes a lot of sense that all the perceived injustices she suffered and ruminated on through the years without a healthy outlet and the death of her beloved eels would finally push her over the edge.

In a way it can be argued that by fighting for her freedom and happiness, Ariel manages to escape the rather bleak path that engulfs Ursula and almost gets Triton, had Ariel not saved his life. It is also worth noting that when Triton decides to turn Ariel back into a human, we see him crying for the first time.

#disney #the little mermaid #the little mermaid 2023 #my thoughts #emotions #emotional health #hans christian andersen

[scarecrow-brainrot]

I've been meaning to say this earlier, but I was scrolling through a tag of yours and saw you talk in ancient Greek and it reminded me that you *do* in fact know ancient Greek and that is so, so fascinating to me, goodness gracious. I believe the tag had something to do with not being able to capture the emotion properly in English, which intrigued me supremely. Are you self-taught or did you grow up with it?

Χαιρε! (Hi!)

Aw thank you!!

I love Ancient Greek so much! Practicing it is one of my favorite hobbies! I’m not smart enough to be self-taught, but I was extremely lucky that I got the opportunity to learn it for free a few years ago- so now I just keep up with it for fun! I absolutely would recommend it to anyone interested in learning! (or any dead language for that matter!)

I definitley think that Ancient Greek matches my way of thinking better than English (maybe it’s because of my particular neurodivergencies… I’m not sure!). It’s definitely a life goal to become fluent in it :)

Are you interested in learning it by chance??

One of the things I love about languages is that each one captures something different about the human mind, and idk in the moment my emotions just really wanted to be expressed in Greek! All I could think when I saw Oswald in that gifset was “σμικρος” (pronounces smeekros). “μικρος” means “small”, and adding the “s” at the beginning makes it this super cute diminutive. And then after that my brain just switched to Greek and it was the only way to communicate the rest of how I felt lol.

Ok I’m going to geek out about translating now I apologize in advance…

(I’m also going to embarrass myself a little here lol), but if you translate it literally, it says, “he is both very tiny and I love him the most! But god why! Ai! My heart grows because of great love!”

But ofc, every language has its own “vibes”, so if you “converted” it to English vibes, the translation is more accurate. So it’s more like: “he’s so small and cute and I love him so so much! Ahhhhh god why do I love him so much!! My hearting is melting because of it!”

But the vibes are still unique to the Greek, and it matches my brain-flow better, so that’s why my brain wrote it in Greek instead of just writing the paragraph above in English.

Ok this post is getting super long but I can’t stop talking, so I’m going to put some Greek details under the cut, but no pressure to read it if you don’t find it interesting! /gen

Hope what I said all made sense! Thanks for letting me blabber on about

Greek! :) <3 This made me so so happy!!

“τε… τε και” can be translated as “both...and”, but “και...και”  is also used to say “both...and”. So “τε… τε και” is more like “this one thing! But also this other thing!”

and by putting “ο” (“he”) before the “τε” (which you wouldnt do with “και”), you can really emphasize the subject

Ofc there’s “σμικρος” instead of “small”.

Another thing is that in English we say “very” and “the most”, but in Greek it’s “μαλα” and “μαλιστα”- so you’re like adding on an ending to the word to kinda show that overflowing feeling.

The “αλλα δια τι! αι!” is a very Ancient Greek exclamation that I love to use- it literally is just “but WHY! Ah!”, but using “αι” (ai) instead of the synonym “οιμοι” (oi moi) gives more a sense of shock than grievance.

“η καρδια μοι” is “my heart”, except “μοι” is more often used than “μου”- so instead of being “the heart of me”, it’s literally “the heart to me”, which gives me this more unique sense of possession that I really like.

In English, we would say “my heart melts for him”, but using “δια” as the “for” really creates a sense of cause (like “he’s the cause of my heart-melt”), which feels like a more powerful way of saying it.

But yeah basically all these little differences add up and makes it feel different than expressing the emotions in English!

Thanks for reading all the way through if you did!! I hope I didn’t annoy you and you enjoyed it! :)

#wow i talked a lot.... yeah this just proves ancient greek is a special interest to me lol #its just so much fun! #i cant thank you enough for letting me talk about it!! I almost never get to talk about it- so this was really nice :) #ainos chats #not gotham #ancient greek #greek #favorite #asks

[calliopecalling]

QOTS Rewatch - Season 5 Retrospective

Man, I've been dragging my feet on working on this. I've spent almost a full year on this rewatch (it really took on a life of its own; I didn't go into it planning to write involved metas or reblog a week's worth of gifsets for every episode but I am just THAT over the top) and I don't even know what I'm going to do with myself now that it's over. Watch something else?!?!?! Like what!?!?!?! Seriously though.

Anyway, where were we? Season 5. It's an interesting season to reflect back on. Sometimes it feels like my second-favorite season after season 2, and other times it feels like my second-least-favorite season after season 4. It ends up being really difficult to place. Its primary problem really in my opinion is that it's rushed, and there's so much plot to get through that the writers and editors had to leave us with sometimes frustratingly short character-driven scenes and force us to fill in the gap. But it does feel more Teresa-driven than season 1 does and, Kote notwithstanding, the non-Teresa-centered scenes still somehow feel a little more relevant or engaging than some of the Vargas stuff in seasons 1 and 3 both. (Epifanio and Batman's story took up a superfluous amount of screen time in season 1, I realized on rewatch, and season 3 has soooo much Cortez and Isabela and Loya and stuff that is way more painful to watch than Kelly Anne getting an ultrasound, even if Pote's sexist quips do make me roll my eyes.) So I don't know. I guess you'll have to give me a few more weeks to think about it. But season 5 as a whole entity in my opinion stands up pretty well on rewatch. It's the Jeresa content in season 5 that doesn't hold up as well as season 2 or 3's Jeresa. (Again, largely because of how rushed it is.)

But as always, I'll do my ranking and things:

My Top 3 Episodes

My Top 5 Scenes

Season 5 Episodes Ranked

Teresa’s Journey

Jeresa, DUH

Top 3 Season 5 Episodes

3: 5x05, Mas Dinero Mas Problemas

It actually was hard to choose the third place episode. There are several other contenders for this spot. But this episode as a whole is really fun to me. It's Teresa-centric. It features Oksana (yay female characters). It's set in Berlin. It features awesome Jeresa teamwork. It throws back to earlier show canon (Rocco de la Pena! Oleg!) and Teresa even gets to break an asshole's nose. James's all-black suit is to die for, as is Teresa's high pony, and best of all? The non-Teresa-focused material is focused on George and Boaz in Miami which, while definitely feeling sinister, gives both of them great material to work with. George buying Teresa that boat? Lol. This is an episode that I gladly watch in full without wanting to fast-forward through anything (a rarity for me among episodes after season 2) and it's a queenpin-esque version of Teresa that isn't as painful as the previous two episodes. All great stuff.

2: 5x09, A Prueba de Balas

Listen, I am not going to pretend that this is here for any other reason than the love confessions and long-awaited Jeresa hook-up, though I love every single Jeresa moment in the episode, I love that it's down to the two of them against the world (just like it was in the beginning before Teresa even knew that it was the two of them against the world), and I love that she takes out Kostya like the badass she is. We won't talk about the raccoons and peewee soccer.

1: 5x02, Me Llevo Manhattan

OBVIOUSLY. I mean: this episode might be my favorite episode of the entire series. It's perfect, classic, angsty, electric Jeresa; they actually talk to each other about stuff other than business (several times); they call back in their dialogue to earlier seasons. They KISS and it's magnetic. They dance around whatever the fuck it is that's happening between them. And they both just stumble around incoherently attracted to each other but refusing to talk about it because they are imbeciles. On top of all that, there's James back to his going-all-out-to-protect-Teresa habits and Teresa back to her taking-crazy-risks-but-earning-mad-respect bs. Teresa's whole "you work for me now; when I call, you answer on the second ring" speech to Lafayette is literal fire and even the non-Jeresa scenes in this episode are good: Kelly Anne with Judge Lafayette's business partner; Boaz with the Judge; the pregnancy reveal. My favorite scene of the episode, though, the one that makes me levitate, is the balcony scene between James and Teresa in Manhattan. Wtffffff that scene was like, designed to personally destroy me. But more about that later.

Top 5 Season 5 Scenes

This was so hard for me. The truth is that there are two types of scenes, Jeresa scenes and non-Jeresa scenes, and they belong on parallel ladders to me. The Teresa who shows up with James and the Teresa who shows up otherwise is so different (I mean: compare literally any of the 5x02 Jeresa scenes to, say, how Teresa interacts with Oksana and Oscar and the Judge in that same episode). And I love both kinds of scenes for her. The way she almost coyly greets those real estate developers in 5x06, knowing full well she's going to slaughter them? *shivers* sooooo good. But when push comes to shove, it's the Jeresa scenes that all slide to the top, because it's the version of herself she gives him that is the one we're ultimately rooting for. So without further ado:

#5:

The scene: Episode 5x02, bedroom conversation

What I love about it: Soooo muuuuuch subtext here. After Teresa in the previous episode gave James literally nothing to work with, now that she's wrapped her mind around him being back she is completely unable to keep up the act. Watching both of them dancing around what they're actually trying to talk about is so delightful, and the icing on the cake is Chicho walking in right in the middle of a particularly intimate gesture.

#4:

The scene: Episode 5x09, the balcony kiss

What I love about it: Do I really need to explain myself? I love this kiss so much because it's written all over Teresa's face what combination of fear, desire, and love is driving her. It's no longer impulsive as it was in 5x02 or tenuous as it was in 3x09 or generous as it was in 3x05, it's for her, it's because she wants him and she's terrified of dying without him knowing it. And then he returns it so wholly and confidently and damn. To me it's the moment they catch up to each other and finally land on the same page. The I love yous that follow were made possible by this kiss.

#3:

The scene: Episode 5x07, the waterfront launch party heart-eyes

What I love about it: Again, so much subtext here. The intense intimacy of a moment in which relatively little gets said (and all of it completely innocuous). The verbal callback to the season 3 finale made the fandom's collective hearts jump to our throats as we wondered, with Teresa, if he was about to say he was leaving. Teresa's clear display of vulnerability in this single 90 second scene made up for the four previous episodes of distance between them. But really.... it's all in the subtext here.

#2:

The scene: Episode 5x10, the final Queenpin scene

What I love about it: It's the perfect Queenpin send-off. It's perfectly appropriate that she shows up one last time and the way it's done here is so beautiful. She looks so serene and her nod of approval closes the circle with episodes 2x06 and 3x10 where Queenpin seemed to be nudging Teresa towards James. And THEN, as Queenpin departs, James steps in. 'You ok?' Could it be any clearer? She doesn't need Queenpin to be her guardian angel anymore. She has James. God, I must be in a mood today because I'm literally choking up as I write this 😭 Excuse me while I go rewatch this scene 28 more times.

#1:

The scene: Episode 5x02, the balcony scene

What I love about it: Was there ever any doubt this was going to be my number one scene of this season? No, there was not. It is the perfect combination of classic Jeresa--James pining, Teresa being cool and unruffled, an almost visible electric current of tension between them, and oh my god the subtexttttttt. Yes, I'm predictable. I don't even think I have enough words to convey exactly how much this scene breaks me apart and I definitely don't have the words to confess how often I rewatch it. Literally I AM JAMES when she says "you and me can't happen" and I feel my entire body turn to jelly, and then when she says "maybe in some other life" I'm like EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE GO GET IT JAMES. This scene to me is their crowning achievement as actors playing this couple of idiots. That chemistry is crazy.

Season 5 Episodes Ranked

5x02

5x09

5x05

5x06

5x08

5x07

5x01

5x03

5x04

5x10

Yes, the finale is my least-favorite episode of the season. There's just nowhere near enough Teresa, or James. Waaaaay too much Pote, and Pote is just not an interesting character. Plus it's so dominated by men. I just could not care about the fight between him and Boaz. It all felt like male viewership fan service. Ew. So, looking at episodes in their entirety, it falls at the bottom. Really though I think this speaks to honestly how strong the season is overall, when it comes down to it. I loved it on rewatch and looking back at this list I even feel sad about having 5x03 and 5x04 so low! I've grown to like even those, despite how painful some of the scenes are.

Teresa's Journey

So, this is the season that obviously brings her as close to Queenpin as she'll ever come, the season in which she faces the ultimate choice: fully abandon herself in a quest to become untouchable in her power, or fully abandon that quest in order to save her soul. Both of these are different sides of the "survival" coin. And both involve incredible risk. Having taken out Kostya, she came as close as really was possible to that untouchable power that the Queenpin visions throughout the series evoked. She would have been protected by the American CIA and would have run the largest and most powerful drug empire in the world. Of course when you're at the top, someone is always ready to take you out, so the risk of staying--despite the promise of safety and protection--was huge.

On the other hand, disappearing. So much risk there, too. So simple in concept: shed your identity, go somewhere remote, and start over from scratch. But when you're in the cartel world that deep, obviously it's not just possible to get out. Your continued existence is too threatening to everyone who stays in; you know way too much. And SO much could go wrong in the process of trying to escape.

So both of these choices offered the promise of safety and both came with a heaping side of risk. But the Teresa we were introduced to in season 1 would've had absolutely no difficulty picking between them, right? So in retrospect, her full character journey was to slowly and gradually become someone who would believably struggle with that choice, someone we would believably worry might make the "wrong" choice.

And I think they really did pull that off. Already by season 2, it's less clear that she would choose to disappear rather than become all-powerful. She'd already lost everyone she'd loved by then and felt herself to be alone, and I think loneliness was one of the biggest drivers for her in seeking power over feeding her soul. It was always loss and trauma that pushed her further into the business and, even though season 5 didn't super explicitly link her rapid power grabs to Tony's death the previous season, it was clearly the darkness of that loss (maybe combined with the unsettling reappearance of James) that pushed her over the edge.

So was it believable that, in the end, she chose her soul? Yeah. They made us worry about her for the first half of season 5, pushing away everyone she cared about and seeming like a hollow shell of herself. But by episode 5x08 her vulnerability is palpable again. Like George's loss, combined with pregnant Kelly Anne's kidnapping, and faced with the possibility of dying herself, and losing James in the process, that she gets her wakeup call. So to me, her final decision feels very earned. I just wish they hadn't wasted a full episode trying to convince us she wasn't going to make it 😂

Jeresa

And all inextricably tied up with Teresa's character turnaround in season 5 is her relationship with James. This is another thing the season didn't make super explicit, at least in the written dialogue, but on rewatch it feels exceptionally clear that his presence allowed her to make what no doubt seemed like an impossible decision to turn the train around that was fast hurtling towards a cliff. He:

showed up mortally wounded trying to save her life

stuck by her side even when she made a disappointing decision that showed how much she'd changed

tolerated her snapping at him and pushing him away because he wasn't going to just give up on her after the huge way she'd busted into HIS life and changed HIM from the inside out

gently challenged her, wherever possible, despite having had it made clear to him that doing that was risky

backed her up 100% and went the extra mile to show his loyalty (beating up Navarro's connect), care (delivering an entire army of ex-Mossad for her security), and competence (stealing the painting)

And then, when she'd sent Pote and Kelly Anne packing and it was just the two of them again (the symmetry to the beginning of the series is so lovely there), his steadiness in the face of her emotional undoing is such a visible factor of her turning everything around. Yes, she's scared for Kelly Anne and her baby. Yes, she's upset about George. But in 5x09 after she's sent Kote away and it's too late to save George, those aren't her motivators anymore. James is. You can see it in her eyes on the balcony that it's not her own death that she fears but the possibility of dying without having loved.

Teresa is a lover. We knew that from the very beginning. She essentially told us that in her own voice over in the pilot. Her drug of choice was Guero. Comparing Guero to a drug is so apt (and foreshadows all the events of the first three seasons and how Guero's actions underlie so much of what she had to go through) so that her fear of love also becomes understandable. She was so slow to fully trust James because of the betrayal she'd experienced before; she was slow to open herself up to him as a lover because the risk of that vulnerability was too devastating. But when she stares down death and realizes she's held real love at arm's-length, its pull and its promise is way too great to turn away from.

I think the writers and show runners of this season struggled with this because the love story they'd created was so powerful and yet they knew (and I agree) that this show wasn't intended to be a love story. The book that it's based on is not a love story. It's the story of a woman and her incredible journey from life on the streets of Culiacán to becoming a powerful druglord and then her final escape from that life. But Jeresa is so powerful that even without explicit efforts on the part of the writers this season it's clear that it's a story in which love wins. She gets out, because of love. She makes the choice to disappear, because of love. Yes, platonic and familial love play into it, too; and stacking up the losses of those she's loved over the years and the risks to those who remain are explicitly part of the story. But by 5x09 the only ones who remain are her and James. She's lost or sent away everyone else.

I guess I forgive the writers for leaving much of their relationship this season to the imagination. I would've loved more conversations between the two of them that were 5x02 or 3x08 caliber, but I think the writers were trying to strike a balance between the people who clearly watched the show for Jeresa and the people who clearly cared less. Do I think they should've just written the show the seasons 2-3 writers set up? Yes. Do I blame them for trying to please a broader base? No. I don't, because I think it's ultimately so obvious anyway that James helped Teresa out of the cave in the same way she did originally that it still ties together beautifully in the end.

So. Now what?

As I said yesterday, I have saved many hundreds of gifsets in my queue still to reblog that I didn't reblog as part of the "official" rewatch. And I'm sure I'll continue to find more, and will reblog any others that get created. I'm also a huuuuuge Alice fan (in case that's not abundantly obvious by now) and will stick around to reblog whatever Alice content I consumer and maybe even Peter content from time to time. I'll post a full series retrospective eventually, but I doubt it will be quite as comprehensive as these season metas because I think I've kind of covered a lot of the analytical ground by now!! But I still want to do my rankings and all that. All that to say: I'll be around. And I hope to continue to see some of you around too 🥰 Thanks for sticking with me.

#qots s5 #2021 rewatch #txt post #qots meta #season 5 retrospective #episode rankings #farewell beloved characters I shall miss thinking THIS level of profoundly about you every day #but I'm looking forward to becoming *slightly* more chill in my level of consumption of this show lol #I'll start my post-rewatch queue tomorrow #can't wait to see what the shuffle reveals lol