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secondtechnicianrimmer · 2 months

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Space Corp. Directive #1215225

For some ungodly reason, you fancy the second technician, but you'd be damned if you ever admitted it.

Pairing: Arnold Rimmer x (F) Reader

Warnings: None! Apart from some flirting

Chapter Eight: Dimension Jump

“Hey, little lady. Can you and me take a walk?”

You glanced sideways at Lister. He was beaming, of course. He was finding the whole thing too hilarious for words.

Here you were, bracketed by Rimmers, one who was too neurotic to realise you adored him, and one who swaggered about, handsome and confident and unavoidably likeable. Somehow, you’d stumbled into some kind of personalised hell.

“Yeah,” you sighed, already dreading what would come next. “Alright.”

You followed Ace out into the corridor, just hoping this would be over quickly.

He really was strange to look at. He was completely identical to Rimmer, the same warm eyes, the same restless hands. They were both so expressive but their backs, pulled taught as if by an invisible string, hinted at a restrictive and lonely childhood.

And yet, in a lot of ways, they could not have looked more different. It wasn’t just the amazing hair and the shiny gold spacesuit. Ace seemed taller somehow, his voice more sonorous. Perhaps it was just the confidence he oozed, something that Rimmer only seemed to have in buckets when he was absolutely sure about something he ultimately knew absolutely nothing about.

But despite everything, despite the bravery and the technical knowhow, the kindness and debonair charm, he didn’t make your chest flutter like Arnold did.

Still, you weren’t blind. It was still difficult to have a conversation with Ace without sounding like a babbling fool, everyone seemed to have the same trouble. And now you were alone with him for the first time in a dimly lit corridor, and the last time you’d seen a smile like that, it was when you were playing Better Than Life.

“Are you off then?” you asked, hoping he wouldn’t catch the way your voice cracked nervously.

Ace sighed, as if leaving Red Dwarf was the biggest heartbreak of his life and not, in actuality, a frankly enormous relief.

“‘Fraid so, sweetheart. There’s a lot of worlds out there. Someone’s gotta make sure things are ticking over nicely.”

You should hate him. You knew you should. He just wasn’t real. No one was that charismatic. No one could seriously go around being that heroic and sauve, and not come off as a huge, smarmy git. And yet, you found yourself thinking, what a guy…

“Well, it was great meeting you. Weird but…” You smiled and stuck out your hand. “Good luck.”

Ace took your hand and shook it firmly, like a good pilot should.

“Cheers, darling.”

In the brief moment that his palm was pressed to yours, you tried to capture the moment in your mind, the feeling of his skin against yours, the length of his fingers, the warmth of him, the strength in his movements. You knew it was weird, but if this was the closest you’d get to touching Rimmer, you wanted to make the most of it.

“Say, listen,” Ace looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was coming, then bent his head towards you, his voice low. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this all day, sweetheart. Been so damn busy with your brilliant crewmates, just haven’t had the time. But the you that I know, the you from my dimension, she’s…”

“Oh, God. She’s dead, isn’t she.”

The idea had been humming about your brain ever since Ace first burst into Starbug. There was another Lister, another Cat, even another Kryten in his world. Ace hadn’t mentioned anything about the other you. He was right, there hadn’t really been time. Between fixing the starboard engine and getting Starbug up and running again, you hadn't exactly had much of a chance for smalltalk.

Part of you had worried something terrible had happened to her. She must have gone down with the Atalanta IV. But then, how would Ace know her if this other you had never stepped foot inside Red Dwarf? The tangents and timelines were all too bizarre and unwieldy. It was the type of thing that made your head hurt if you focused on it for too long.

Ace smiled. It was a very nice smile. Rimmer sometimes smiled at you like that. Just you, no one else.

That was another difference. Ace had time and a good word for everyone. Rimmer was so sparing with his kindness, it had put you off him when you first met. Now you knew him better, now you understood him, or at least, you were starting to, it made you all the more proud to be the person he reserved his softer side for.

“No, no,” Ace said. “She’s very much alive. What a lady. She’s the pride of the Space Corp., you know. But, uh, I’m afraid to say she hates my guts.”

Your jaw dropped.

“No way.”

“It’s true!” Ace shrugged, still smiling. “She won’t even look at me.”

“What did you do!”

Ace laughed.

“I don’t know! She just never has time for me, sweetheart. Always something better to do than talk to boring old me. She’s a navigation officer, you see, and a damn good one. Doesn’t have time for an old pirate, and I don’t blame her.”

“Well… Wow…”

You tried to picture this other woman, this other you. She must be quite a person to be immune to Ace’s charms. Even Holly found him beguiling.

You imagined a fearsome figure, an officer at the helm of one of the most important ships in the JMC’s fleet. It was a life you could never see for yourself but, by Io, you couldn’t be more pleased for her.

“She must be the only person you’ve ever met who didn’t like you.”

You must’ve done a terrible job of hiding just how happy the thought made you because Ace laughed again, a great booming laugh that was so un-Rimmer, for a moment you forgot they were practically the same man.

“So far,” Ace said, ever self-effacing. “She’s about the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. I keep trying to work up the damn courage to ask her out to dinner but she just won’t talk to me.”

“You’re joking. You? Shy?”

“It’s been known to happen, sweetheart. I’m a sensitive old sod, really.”

You couldn’t imagine anyone saying no to Ace. Hell, you thought Lister would probably let him wine and dine him, given half the chance.

“But the way I figure it is,” Ace went on. “The way things seem to work here, events seem to be a little backward. It must mean that you and old Arnold, there…”

“Oh, no.” You shook your head so quickly you almost made yourself dizzy. “No, no, no. We’re not-”

Ace raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

“But you love him?”

You made an embarrassing choking noise in the back of your throat. God, you wished everyone would stop saying that. It was getting embarrassing.

“I never said-”

“You didn’t have to. The reason I ask is, well, it seems to me that my alternate self is, unfortunately, a bit of a bastard.”

“Yeah,” you said fondly.

“I need someone to look after him. I won’t be coming back here. I wanna make sure all the Rimmers out there are living as best they can. Can you help me with that?”

Mortified. You were completely mortified. But, you supposed, it was sweet of Ace to ask. You just wished you weren’t so obviously in love with such an idiot.

“I’ll do my best. And Ace? About the alternate me… I like films. And plants. And going for walks. Not exactly thrilling, I know, but… Maybe she does too?”

Ace looked down at the floor, and if you hadn’t been so distracted by his great hair, you might’ve seen a flash of sadness cross his face.

“I can’t go back to my dimension. I’ll never see her again.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Nevermind, hey, sweetheart. Ever onwards, as they say. Plenty more fish in the sea. It just wasn’t meant to be. Maybe there’s a dimension out there where we’re together.” Ace smirked. “Maybe this is it.”

Shaking your head, you tried to resist smiling, but it really was impossible when Ace was concerned.

“I’ll let you know.”

After Ace left, the ship felt tense and quiet.

It took you until late that evening to figure out what was so off. While the others were still gushing about how wonderful Ace was, Rimmer hadn’t spoken to anyone all afternoon. He didn’t even break his silence to bark orders at Kryten or chastise Lister for clipping his toenails in the kitchen.

It took you ages to find him. Wandering through A Deck, you called his name, poking your head in every room, but there was no sign of him. B, C and D Deck presented the same disappointing results.

Half exhausted from your trek, you considered giving up and just going to bed. It was late and Rimmer clearly didn’t want to be found, so why push it? Then you remembered what he’d said to you that night, when he described the hypothetical date he’d take you on.

The stairs up to the observation dome clanged underfoot, announcing your arrival long before you reached the summit. Your suspicions proved correct. You caught Rimmer scrambling to his feet. He’d been laying on his back, watching the stars, before you startled him.

He watched you, his brow furrowed slightly, like he was waiting for you to make fun of him. The thought hurt so you pushed it away.

“Hey, Arn,” You tried to smile. “Fancy a game of chess? Everyone else’s gone to bed so we’ve got the mess to ourselves.”

His eyes lowered to somewhere over your shoulder. Rimmer was silent but you could see his jaw working. His tongue poked irritably at the inside of his cheek, like he was investigating an achy gum.

“How was your date with Captain Flash?” he said eventually.

You rolled your eyes. You should’ve seen that coming, that one was on you.

“We just went for a walk, Arn. He’s nice. If a little…” You floundered for the right word before deciding he’d already pinned it down nicely. “Flash.”

Rimmer raised his eyebrows but said nothing, his tongue still pressing against the backs of his teeth.

“It’s funny,” You went on, even though the waters were starting to get choppy. “He told me there’s a version of me in his world too. And you’ll love this, she hates him.”

You thought that might cheer him up a little. Or, at the very least, make him smile or even laugh, it didn’t matter if it was scornful.

Rimmer’s lip did curl but only with disdain.

“Shocking.”

“Fancies her like mad, of course. But, hey, who can blame him?”

Still nothing. Rimmer’s gaze stayed somewhere over your shoulder. You wondered if that was simply where it felt safest to look right now. Staring at the ground or looking you in the eye would give too much away.

After a beat of silence, you wondered if you should just leave him to sulk. The stairs back down to the safety of the ship were looking more and more attractive, but you’d never been able to let sleeping dogs lie.

“Ace said he wanted to speak to you, before he went,” you said, slowly and steadily. “I think you should’ve gone to see him, Arn. I think he wanted to say goodbye to you properly.”

“Oh, he’s ‘Ace’ now, is he?” Rimmer sneered.

Baffled, you shook your head.

��That’s his name!”

“His name is Arnold. And what would I have to say to that goit? And since when did you become his carrier pigeon? Got you all wrapped around his finger like he has the others, has he?”

“Why are you being such a twat?”

“I’m not!”

“You are!” You took a breath, forcing yourself to lower your voice. “You’ve been a snarky bastard ever since he turned up. What’s wrong?”

“Everything’s wrong! Him! He’s wrong!”

“He’s you, Rimmer.”

“He’s not me. He’s everything I could be but I was never given the chance!”

Something chimed in the back of your head, a voice telling you to take a step back and really think about what he meant by that.

It had been a long time since you argued with Rimmer, and even though it was often a wonderful source of entertainment, especially since you always won, this felt different. This mattered. And now your relationship was different (even if neither of you seemed to know in what way) you felt strangely responsible for Rimmer. You knew you were the only person in the whole wide universe who would care enough to ask why it hurt.

“Arn, please.” You stepped closer like you were approaching a scared animal, not wanting him to feel hemmed in. “Just talk to me. What’s wrong?”

Rimmer withdrew into himself as you came closer, still avoiding your gaze. Keeping his back straight and his chin high seemed to be a kind of armour, probably something his father had drilled into him at a young age.

“He had the schooling. He had better parents. He had the relationships and the girls and the looks and the prospects. He has everything I’ve ever wanted and worst of all, everyone loves him! He was only here five minutes and you all fawned over him like everything he touched turned to gold.”

“Rimmer,” You tried to keep your voice steady but your patience, after a long, tiring day, was incredibly fragile. “He had the same schooling as you. The same parents as you. He’s had everything you had, things just happened differently for him.”

“And that’s-”

“And that must be hard to watch, I know. But all this stuff you blame for the way you are, it all happened a million years ago. No, sorry, three million years ago. Everyone who bullied you is long dead.”

Rimmer snorted.

“Well, not everyone,” you conceded. “But everything that held you back and knocked your confidence is stardust now. There’s no excuse, Arn. Every time you criticise and run away and cheat and lie, it’s your choice.”

Silence fell hard. Such deafening, awful silence. It was suddenly abundantly clear to you that no one had ever spoken to Rimmer like that, and you didn’t know if you were the right person, or the last person in the world who should be putting him in his place.

Rimmer seemed just as shocked.

“Why are you doing this?” He barely got the words out from between his clenched teeth. “I thought you were my friend.”

“Rimmer, I am! That’s why I’m telling you! No one else will! They've just accepted that you’re a mardy bastard who’s never going to change but I’m not gonna let you get away with blaming everybody else for your mistakes.”

Something shifted in his face. A chink had appeared in Rimmer’s otherwise impervious armour. You thanked every star that sailed slowly by above your heads.

“You have friends, Arn. You have a purpose here. You have a second chance at life and I just- I worry that you’re squandering it.”

Rimmer’s nose wrinkled. You thought he might cut you down with an acerbic comment or even simply storm off. You wouldn’t blame him. Between Ace turning up, beautiful and resplendent, and you shouting at him, it had been a bit of a day for Rimmer.

When he spoke at last, his voice was lower and more grave than you’d ever heard it.

“What would you know about it?”

“I know you.”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

He spoke quickly, spitefully, defensive beyond reasonable thought.

You sucked in a sharp breath. Heart hammering, you tried to remember that Rimmer was afraid and dismally bad at articulating what was going on inside his head. For someone who so desperately tried to bottle up his feelings, he wore his heart so vividly on his sleeve, and yet couldn’t describe what he saw there.

“Maybe you’re right,” you said quietly.

It seemed to bring Rimmer back into the room and remember who he was talking to. You watched his eyes as they switched about restlessly. Why did he have to hurt himself so much? When the whole universe seemed against him, why did he have to be his own cruel antagonist?

“I’m sorry,” Rimmer murmured. “I don’t think I’m the person you want me to be.”

Your chest felt like it could cave in.

Above your heads, the endless night sky seemed darker and emptier than ever. But if you tried, you could almost imagine you were home, back on Callisto or maybe on Io, where Rimmer grew up. Just the next moon. You’d missed him by a star-hop and found him again, against all odds, three million years from everything you had both ever known.

“You think I want him?”

“Why not? He’s actually real.”

“You’re real.”

“I’m not. I’m-”

“You’re real, Arnold.”

“He’s me but better.”

The idea was so painful, you couldn’t even laugh at it. Ace was great, he was handsome and brave and a whole skein of other positive adjectives, but he wasn’t yours.

“You’re so daft, Rimmer. You’re so stupid sometimes it makes me wanna scream.”

“Thanks, that really helps.”

“I just don’t know how else to show you that I care about you. You’re so important to me. It makes me so sad, Arn, I-”

Your voice cracked. It surprised you both.

Rimmer’s face finally softened. His shoulders went slack, like someone had cut all the strings keeping him upright. The voices in his head were finally quiet. His jealousy had been snuffed out. At last, you were the only people in the room.

“I’m not…” Rimmer raised a hand and curled his fingers towards his chest, until they tightened into a fist, almost like he wanted to hit himself. “I’m not worth all the trouble it takes to like me.”

Heart thudding, you drew in a shaky breath and tried very hard not to show just how much it hurt to know he thought that way. You wondered if the idea had always been there, a hissed, rasping voice that gnawed away in the back of his mind, or if it had taken the shock of today to make the thought clunk into place.

You stepped closer. He was only a hand’s breadth away now, not that it mattered. You couldn’t touch him, couldn’t slip your fingers through his, couldn’t hold his face in your hands as you said,

“You’re not hard to love, Arn.”

“I am. I am, I’m too much work.”

“Not to me.”

Rimmer’s eyes turned glassy, and you wondered if it was possible for holograms to cry. But the moment was gone as quickly as it appeared. Rimmer looked away and cleared his throat. When he looked back, the shine was gone.

“I’m…” His jaw worked awkwardly, like someone had punched it out of place. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for… I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” You tried to smile but it didn’t meet your eyes. “I’m sorry too. You’re right, he’s not you. I shouldn’t have said that. And anyway, he’s not that great. He’s got a daft hairdo.”

Rimmer seemed to perk up considerably at that. He even managed a laugh that didn’t sound completely contemptuous.

With a sigh, he looked around before deciding to sit back down on the floor. You didn’t get a chance to wonder if that meant he was done with the conversation and wanted to be alone. Rimmer held up his hand, inviting you to sit down beside him. Cold and hard as the floor was, you followed without complaint.

You gazed up at the stars together, your arms behind you, supporting your weight, your legs stretched out on the rust-red floor.

You were so close, the agony of not being able to touch him felt worse than ever. If you just tilted your head to the side, you could rest it on his broad shoulder. If you let your foot lean to the left, the toe of your boot would brush his. His hip was almost against yours, his arm, his ribs, his thigh. Almost, almost, but never.

“Nice spaceship though,” Rimmer said after a moment.

You shrugged, making a non-committal noise.

“Eh, it’s not all that. ‘Ere, did you know there’s only three words in the English language that begin with ‘DW-’?”

Rimmer looked thoughtful for a moment.

“I didn’t. Only three? Surely not.”

“Not slang and nothing not in common use. Only three.”

“Is that what they taught you at university?”

You shot him a wry smile.

Rimmer’s distaste for your lack of cadet training and animosity whenever your five years at Callisto’s top university came up were still as strong now as the day you met. But you liked it. It made you laugh, and you needed grounding. He was cute when he was annoyed about how impressed he was by you.

“Amongst other things, Second Technician.”

“There’s another thing. Is the other you a lieutenant too? What if she’s doing even better? Don’t you feel even a bit jealous of her? I mean, she’s out there, thriving and having fun and meeting people and- I don’t know.”

Rimmer sighed, then added,

“Dwell.”

“Yep, two more.” You smiled. “And… A bit,” you admitted. “But I guess I’m pleased there’s a me out there who’s having a laugh. But then I am too. And it’s not all good for her. She hates her Rimmer. I really quite like mine.”

He turned his head. Now, he was so close, you could almost press your lips to his. Just a few inches, that’s all it would take. And a bit of bravery. And several great feats of technological advance.

He really did have quite a nice mouth when he wasn’t sneering and grumbling. You wondered what it would feel like to have Rimmer moaning against your lips, pressed so close, his nose ended up crammed against your cheek, his chest rising and falling raggedly under your hands.

Your time in Better Than Life was supposed to sate your curiosity, to give you just enough to get over the ache in your heart. But if anything, it had only made it worse, and not a day went by where you didn’t catch yourself daydreaming about Rimmer’s needy, clumsy hands, and the rumble of his voice against your throat.

Io, it was agony. He was right there, and he liked you, you knew he did. You could push him onto his back right here, right now, and he’d go so easily, you just knew it, and all the while he’d be whimpering and whining your name, those big, ungainly hands touching you everywhere.

“I would perhaps avoid calling me ‘your Rimmer’,” he said. “Makes me sound like a new kind of sex toy.”

You blinked, face burning. Panic shot through but quickly cooled again. He hadn’t read your mind, he was just making a silly joke to fill the silence, to make you laugh. Still, it was funny he should say that. It reminded you of that funny fantasy you’d had about straddling him and using his buzzing light bee as- Well, it didn’t matter now.

“Noted,” you managed to get out.

“Anyway, I like when you call me ‘Arnie’.”

“Yeah?”

He’d never told you that before.

“My parents called me ‘Arnold’. Or ‘idiot’. Everyone else just calls me ‘Rimmer’. Or ‘idiot’. You’re the only one who calls me ‘Arnie’.”

You beamed.

“My Arnie.”

You really couldn’t have sounded more unbearably wistful if you tried. If he noticed, Rimmer didn’t give anything away. But he was still looking at you, watching you, waiting, you thought, for you to say something else. But the starlight in his hazel eyes was enough to make you forget your own name, and you thought about those words again and again, my Arnie, my Arnie, my Arnie…

He turned his gaze back to the stars, tilting his chin back until you could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

“Are you going to be alright, Arn? You know you can always talk to me, don’t you?”

“I’m fine,” he lied, and you let him for now. “I just- For once, I just want someone to be proud of me. The way you all looked at him…”

“I’m proud of you, Arn.”

Rimmed sighed.

“You have to say that, you’re my friend. Oh, dwindle?”

Shaking your head, you waved your hand in front of his face. It was the nearest equivalent you had to taking his arm and turning him to look at you, or wrapping your fingers around his jaw and turning his head, something you thought about often.

“Listen to me, Arn,” you said seriously. “You are the most disciplined, organised, dedicated, hard working man I have ever met. You make sure Lister stays alive, you keep everyone safe, and you’ve had this voice in your head your whole life telling you that you’re not good enough, but you still try. I’m proud of you, Arnie. I think you’re amazing.”

Beneath the shiny green material of his uniform, Rimmer’s chest was rising and falling heavily, shuddering ever so slightly with every inhale. Again, you wondered if it was possible for holograms to cry, and if Rimmer would even let himself if he could.

“But I’m also a smeghead,” he said quietly, but he was smiling, just a tiny smile, but something.

You hummed, tilting your head, and watched his gaze follow your movements.

“Hmm, sometimes. And a coward. And you’re arrogant. And a self-serving pain in the arse.”

“Are you new to this whole ‘cheering up’ thing, darling?”

“But we all are. In one way or another.” You shrugged, hoping he wouldn’t notice how much you loved it when he called you that. “You’re only human.”

“You’re the only one who makes me feel like I am.”

Rimmer watched you for a moment, worrying the inside of his cheek, then finally, he sat up straight.

“Could you do something for me? Go like this?”

He crossed his arms over his chest and hugged himself, his fingertips pressing into his own sides. Rimmer’s cheeks were tinged pink.

You copied him, hugging yourself tight. You tried to imagine it was Rimmer’s arms wrapped around you. You could almost feel his hands splayed on your back, keeping you close to his broad chest. It was heaven.

“You’re a soppy old git really, aren’t you, Arn. No, no! Don’t stop,” you said when he began to lower his arms. “Can you do the same?”

Rimmer smiled and hugged himself again.

You looked at each for a moment until you couldn’t resist any longer.

“This is so stupid.”

“A bit.” Rimmer laughed. “Nice though.”

“Yeah.”

You still didn’t lower your arms. Neither did he.

“When we get you a body, the first thing I’m gonna do is hug you.”

“Or punch me.”

“Depends how much of an idiot you’re being at the time.”

Rimmer, despite himself, still looked quite pleased.

He finally dropped his arms and turned his gaze back to the sky.

“Thanks, Lefty.”

Heart jittering, you rested your hands back on the floor. Your left passed through his right, your fingers entwined. He didn’t move away and neither did you.

“Anytime, Arn.”

You were silent for a while, then you heard Rimmer inhale, as if he was about to speak. You swallowed hard, your chest suddenly tight, wondering what on Jupiter he might be about to say.

“What was the last word?”

“I- What?”

“The third word beginning with ‘DW-’.”

“Dwarf, Rimmer.”

“Oh, for Io’s sake.”

Next Chapter

Master List

#red dwarf #arnold rimmer #chris barrie #my post #arnold rimmer imagine #arnold rimmer reader #arnold rimmer smut #arnold rimmer x reader #arnold rimmer x you #arnold rimmer you

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sevicia · 7 months

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I got really mad about this 👆 exchange and then went on a rant with 18393 tangents and it doesn't even make sense

I HATE when ppl do this like OK. Context: this is a video of a girl just like, doing her makeup, and the first comment goes like "she's my type" (not a direct translation but u get it etc) and the last comment in the screenshot goes "they're the ones that will traumatize you the most! from experience!" (also not direct translation sorry)

shut UUUUUP SHUT UP SHUT UP I hate people like this so bad esp. when it's about girls cause it feels like girls literally cannot fucking win like OK a girl likes Sanrio stuff! so cute forever! and then some fucking idiot goes "she's probably mentally ill or some shit" like who ISN'T mentally ill in this day and age ?! It's literally normal to seek comfort in cutesy stuff when you're in a bad place mentally because that's what it's FOR !!!

or when a girl like dresses in more revealing clothes like OK she likes to look sexy she enjoys feeling attractive yk good for her !!! and then the two most common reactions are like "she's obviously a slut" (common douchebag logic) OR "she's obviously trying to get attention from men / provoking them" (incel-y logic) AND THE WORST PART IS THAT BOTH TYPES OF GUYS WANNA FUCK HER!!!!!!! And they still judge her so bad come ONNNNN

LIKE no matter what a girl does, a lot of guys will always have something negative and dehumanizing to say about her and then they're like "WAHHH why do no girls want me, why do all my girlfriends leave me, why why why" BECAUSE YOU DON'T SEE THEM AS PEOPLE ‼️‼️

IDK something about fitting girls specifically into boxes feels so so wrong because it's Literally always been like this, like "this girl is ONLY this and nothing else about her matters", whereas with guys it obviously happens too like the "fitting into boxes" thing, but it's different because guys have never been denied jobs or opportunities or relationships or BASIC FUCKING RESPECT based on said boxes IN FACT people will OVERLOOK most flaws a guy can have with excuses like "just how guys are" "he's too young" "he can learn to be better" ET FUCKING CETERA and NEVER extend that same attitude towards women ⁉️⁉️⁉️ DIE

I feel like it sounds shallow (?) coming from a guy but it genuinely pisses me off SO BAD like hearing stories from my friends, the women in my family, girls online, all about men who have been violent or creepy or just shitty in general to them and them having to just fucking shrug it off and continue to deal with it every single day of their lives because even if everyone's like "ugh the feminists are taking over" truth is that it's still the same for many, MANY people all around the world but now that it's not socially acceptable to be a violent misogynist, the violent misogynists who want to maintain their image will just be less loud about it!!!

This might be kinda weird of me to say but I'm like, glad that I'm not a cis guy because I HAVE experienced life as a girl in a lot of ways so I kinda know how it feels (even though I haven't had many shitty experiences with men myself due to the way I live) and while that obviously doesn't mean I can't ever be misogynistic, it feels like I'm a lot more conscious about things that cis guys don't even think twice about and it's not even BIG things, it's stuff like listening to what girls say and by that I mean like, literally physically listening, because some of the grown ass men in my family will interrupt women AS THEY ARE SPEAKING, or just straight up LEAVE in the middle of a conversation !?!!! Like it's SO EASY to just not be a shitty person.... ?! It's basic decency and it's crazy how they ONLY do this to women and will gladly sit and listen to other men speak.

Sorry this post is a mile long I just get really fucking mad about this and AGAIN I feel like I sound like those guys that are like "I'm such a feminist you should totally date me because I respect women did I mention I'm a feminist" but truth is all I do is listen to the girls & women I know and become pissed off in their behalf like I don't even know what to DO about it except support them and try to show them how much I love them I love my friends and my sister and my mom so much!!!!! but I can't just blast all the shitty men in their lives from existence!!!!!! I forgor where I was going with this or if I was ever going anywhere at all in the first place T_T

#making me wanna kill somebody !#I do have like some sort of complex of people seeing me as something I'm not #like if someone told me I fit the ''nice guy'' stereotype I would jump off a bridge.#because that's not how I try to be or the intentions I have and I hate being misunderstood #WHATEVERRR #long post #OH and the phenomenon of trans guys who are like WILLINGLY misogynistic is absolutely baffling to me.#like you DO know that YOU get to decide what kinda guy you are right. Right ????#another tangent LOL but it's why I don't like most ''how to pass'' tips #because I saw some that were like ''don't cover ur mouth when u wanna speak while eating'' like WHAT!!!!!#have you considered that like. that's nasty. and also not something men should get a free pass on.#and also not something you should be encouraging in trans guys.#literally a mile long I'M SO SORRY

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parkerslatte · 3 years

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Dance With Me Tonight

Spencer Reid x Fem!Reader

Warnings: mentions of cheating

Word Count: 2k

Summary: While everyone is dancing at Derek and Savannah's wedding, Spencer is sat at one of the tables observing until one of Savannah's friends asks him to dance.

MASTERLIST

be added to my taglist --- HERE

***

The upbeat music with the addition of some bodies moving wildly on the dance floor was enough to put a smile on Y/N’s face. Taking a sip from her champagne, Y/N wandered around the edge of the dance floor. It wasn’t too long ago when she had been on the dance floor herself, dancing without a care in the world. She stepped off to have a bit of a breather and to get away from all the cramped bodies.

“Hey!” Savannah said, approaching her and wrapping her in a hug.

“There’s the bride!” Y/N responded, hugging her friend back, “I can’t believe you’re married.”

Savannah chuckled, “I can’t either,” She stared at Derek, who was standing on the other side of the dance floor, with a loving smile on her face. She turned back to Y/N, “What about you? Do you have anyone in your life right now?”

“Definitely not,” Y/N responded, “I haven’t really been out on dates since my last break up - it was messy. And besides, I’m not really looking for anyone right now.”

Savannah gave her a look that said she didn’t believe her, “Y/N it’s been four years, you can surely get out there and have a bit of fun.”

“I know but-”

“But nothing Y/N, there are plenty of single people here, go and mingle, ask someone to dance.” Savannah said.

Y/N sighed, “I’ll think about it.”

Savannah shook her head at her friend's hesitance. She looked over her shoulder slightly before smiling. Derek approached the two women. He greeted Savannah with a kiss on the cheek.

“What are you two ladies talking about?” He questioned.

“I’m trying to get Y/N to dance with someone,” Savannah answered, “She doesn’t want to.”

Derek scanned the crowd before his eyes landed on somebody. A small smirk fell onto his face before he turned to face Y/N, “Ask him to dance.”

Y/N turned and looked in the direction Derek was pointing. There was a man sitting on his own just watching the crowd. He looked like he had been sitting there a while.

“Why? I don’t even know him.” Y/N stated, turning back to the happily married couple.

“Then get to know him.” Savannah said before a slow song came on. The two bid goodbye to Y/N and headed to the dance floor.

Y/N gave them a parting smile and swirled her glass of champagne. She wanted to get back out and start dating again but after the whole thing with her last boyfriend, she was hesitant. Y/N was afraid that any new relationship she gets into, it will only end up like her previous one.

Looking back at the man that Derek had pointed to, Y/N noticed that he had no indication of moving. Nearly everyone who was in a relationship was dancing to the slow song that blasted out of the speakers. There were a few people who weren't dancing standing on the outskirts but they were engrossed in conversation. The only person on their own was the man.

Y/N finished off her champagne and headed over to the man. She sat down in a chair next to him. He didn’t question anything at first until he noticed that he had no idea who she was.

“Hi, I’m Y/N.” She introduced herself.

The man gave her a tight lipped smile, “I’m Spencer.”

“Nice to meet you.” Y/N said and internally cursed herself for how awkward she was making the situation.

“Nice to meet you too.” Spencer replied.

“I’m sorry if this is weird. I mean I don’t know you and I just randomly came over here.” Y/N spoke.

“No it’s fine,” Spencer dismissed, “I enjoy the company.”

Y/N smiled before the two fell into a surprisingly comfortable silence. After the slow song drew to a close, another was played. There were some couples who left the dance floor to get a drink or sit down but most stayed. Y/N caught sight of Savannah. Noticing that Y/N and Spencer were sitting together, she mouthed, ‘Ask him to dance.’

Y/N cast her gaze away from Savannah and turned to Spencer. He was watching all of the couples on the dance floor. At first she hadn’t noticed but he was extremely attractive. His hair was slightly messy, his eyes shone bright and felt warm and inviting. This nearly caused Y/N to back out of asking him altogether, she felt as if the man sitting next to her was way out of her league. It wasn’t until Spencer turned to face her when she spoke up and asked him.

“Do you want to dance?” Y/N blurted, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just thought that since we’re basically the only people not dancing, it’ll be fun.”

Spencer looked taken back by the question at first. It didn’t register on his face but he was surprised that Y/N had asked him. He had noticed her earlier in the night and thought that she was gorgeous. Normally Spencer would say no to dancing with someone, especially when it was someone he had just met, but his mouth was quicker than his brain.

“Sure.” Spencer said.

A wide smile stretched across Y/N’s face, she hopped up from the chair and offered her hand to Spencer. He placed his hand in hers and the two walked to the middle of the dance floor. They faced each other before Y/N slowly wrapped her arms around Spencer’s neck, locking her fingers at the back. Spencer’s arms snaked around her waist, pulling her close. Both Y/N and Spencer could feel their faces heating up due to the close contact. The two swayed gently to the music.

“So, you’re friends with Savannah?” Spencer asked quietly, pulling her slightly closer so she could hear him over the music.

Y/N nodded, “Yeah, we’ve been friends for a few years now. I take it you’re friends with Derek?”

“Yeah I am,” Spencer answered, “Do you work with Savannah?”

“No, I’m an interior designer, I met Savannah through another mutual friend. I’ve been close to her ever since,” Y/N answered, “How long have you known Derek?”

“Since I started working for the FBI.” Spencer stated.

Everything suddenly clicked into place for Y/N, “Wait. You’re Spencer Reid. Savannah mentioned you a couple times.” What Y/N failed to mention was that Savannah had said on numerous occasions how perfect Y/N and Spencer would be for each other. Now Y/N can see why Derek had sent her his way.

“Don’t worry, it was good stuff she mentioned.” Y/N added once she noticed Spencer’s confused expression.

Spencer smiled slightly, “Well, since you know a bit about me, can I know a little about you?”

The two fell into an easy conversation. Y/N’s arms were still wrapped around Spencer’s neck but she did find herself playing with the ends of his hair on multiple occasions and she quickly stopped herself. Spencer’s arms were still wrapped tightly around Y/N’s waist - their bodies close. The two were so wrapped up in conversation that they failed to notice that the music had changed to a more upbeat song. They still swayed slightly from side to side like no one was watching them - they were wrapped up in their own little world.

For the rest of the night, Y/N and Spencer didn’t leave each other's side. The two had spoken all night yet they never ran out of anything to talk about. There were multiple occasions where Spencer would go off on a tangent and Y/N would watch him with admiration. Once he noticed he was doing it however, he stopped and apologised.

“Don’t stop and don’t apologise, I’m learning things.” Y/N would reply before Spencer would give her a big smile before continuing on his tangent.

They both sat at a table on their own. Thir chairs were so close to each other that Y/N’s leg would brush against Spencer’s continuously, not that either of them minded. Somehow the topic of Y/N’s ex-boyfriend was brought up in conversation. She didn’t mean to bring it up but she was telling Spencer about the time when she decorated her and her ex’s apartment and he made her do it all again because he hated it.

“At the time I was too in love with him to argue,” Y/N explained, “We were talking about re-decorating the apartment before so while he was on a business trip, I did it. I thought I did a good job - wait scratch that - I did an amazing job, but he made me do it all again, this time he demanded what went where. He always did things like that, demand things of me.”

“Why didn’t you leave?” Spencer questioned.

“Believe me there were several occasions where I nearly did but I just felt obligated to stay, after all it was my apartment and he wasn’t leaving any time soon,” Y/N said, “It wasn’t until I found out that he hadn’t been going on business trips at all, he had been cheating on me the whole time,” Y/N sighed, “I kicked him out after that.”

Spencer couldn’t believe that someone would cheat on Y/N, to him she was perfect, “Then he was stupid.”

“You can say that again.” Y/N said, taking a sip from her drink.

“I’m serious, Y/N. It’s stupid that he cheated on you. You are intelligent, funny, kind, beautiful - he’s an idiot for not seeing something perfect in front of him.”

Y/N’s face flushed at Spencer’s words, “You don’t mean that-”

“I mean every word of it.” Spencer said seriously.

Y/N smiled at Spencer. No one had said something that kind to her before - especially not someone she had met only a few hours ago. Y/N didn’t know why, but it felt like she had known Spencer for ages. How easy they could have a conversation and joke around with each other - that was something that Y/N could only really do with her closest friends. There was something special about Spencer - something beautiful.

As the night drew to a close, everyone began leaving. While saying goodbye to Savannah and Derek, they gave her a knowing smirk. Y/N quickly dismissed it, not wanting to prove them right before heading to her car. She only had a couple of drinks that night before switching to water when she started her conversations with Spencer, so she was safe to drive since she sobered up through the night.

Before Y/N was about to climb in her car, someone called her name. Spencer rushed towards her and Y/N turned around and smiled. They had said goodbye to each other just before everyone else began leaving, Y/N gave her number to Spencer as well so they could keep in contact.

Spencer stopped in front of Y/N, “Hey.”

Y/N smiled, throwing her bag in her car, “Hey, what’s up?”

“If you aren’t busy tomorrow, do you want to get coffee with me?” Spencer asked.

“Of course, I’d love to!” Y/N said.

“Great.” Spencer smiled at her, giving her an awkward thumbs up.

Y/N shook her head slightly, a smile still evident on her face before wrapping her arms around Spencer, pulling him into a hug. Spencer wrapped his arms around her waist. He wasn’t a big hugger but with Y/N it was different, it felt nice.

Y/N pulled away after a moment, “Thank you for tonight, Spencer. It was fun,” Y/N leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Spencer’s cheek, “I’ll see you tomorrow. Text me where and when.”

Y/N climbed into her car and drove off, not before giving Spencer one parting smile. He was left standing on his own as he watched her car drive off, a dopey grin on his face.

#spencer reid #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #criminal minds x reader #criminal minds #criminal minds imagine #matthew gray gubler

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ratcandy · 3 years

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Subcon Forest Analysis

Hi everyone I'm here to spill my aggressive overflowing thoughts on Subcon Forest and what it represents because it's been driving me insane since I finished the Sleepy Subcon time rift. Okay let's go. Obvious spoilers for AHIT ahead so proceed with caution.

This is also very, very long.

Disclaimer/warning: I will be discussing abusive/unhealthy relationships in this analysis. I mean. Vanessa. Come on. Also, there is a section on the nooses, and that delves, of course, into mentions of suicide. It will be sectioned off and easily skipped, but if you'd rather be safe and skip the entire post, that's completely understandable! Please stay safe. <3

Alright. Main point to be had here:

Subcon Forest is a giant extended metaphor for Snatcher's mind and character.

You all get to now listen to me spout nonsense about metaphors and symbolism because I'm a sucker for analysis and I'm given an opportunity to go ham. So perish.

The Ice

Let's start with the most obvious and most glaring thing in Subcon. The ice. It's everywhere. Not just outside Vanessa's manor, either; no, it's throughout the village, too. Shows up in the well and in random locations sprinkled about. When it comes to literal plot, we know that ice is just what lingers after Vanessa's wintery curse on Subcon. But going deeper and analyzing the meaning behind it?

Well, let's look at this from the perspective I've suggested. Subcon Forest being an extended metaphor for Snatcher's mind and character. A symbol for Vanessa then litters his mind, enough where it's certainly noticeable at first but blends in more easily once more of Subcon is unlocked to Hat Kid. This is clearly meant to be his lingering trauma, whether or not he wants to acknowledge it. Which he doesn't, as he never mentions it directly in his forest (that I can recall). Her influence plagues him, as to be expected with the traumatic experiences he went through with her. Breaking the ice is something Hat Kid must do in order to fulfill the wishes of the Fire Spirits (another subject I'll get into shortly), which, if self-indulgently playing with the found family idea, could mean that Hat Kid is helping him heal; if indirectly. Even if fulfilling the Fire Spirits' wish to die is... counterproductive, in that measure, which I'm now getting ahead of myself so hold on a sec!!

Vanessa. Ice. Everywhere. Traces of it all over his forest. That's the effects of an abusive relationship! Especially in a worst-case scenario where... yknow! One party in the relationship dies! So of course ice would be everywhere.

In and of itself, ice is a common symbol in literature and other forms of media. In this case, it's presented as an antagonistic force; emphasis is placed upon freezing and the harm that comes with it. The cold is unwelcoming, threatening, merciless. Snow can act as an insulating force, at least, but ice cannot. It can only make things colder.

A slight stretch: Seeing as this game deals a lot with time shenaniganry, I'm not sure if it'd be too out of left field to connect "freezing" with the theme of time. Yknow. Frozen in time. Both parties here, Snatcher and Vanessa, would be in this frozen state. One largely repressing it and never fully moving on, and the other doomed to her isolation ever since the event in question. They never moved past that moment after the Prince and florist's interaction.

The Fire Spirits (& the Portraits)

I'll put a slight warning here for suicidal ideation, if only because... it's the Fire Spirits we're talking about. It's not as grossly in-detail as the noose discussion will be, though, so make of that what you will.

To me, the Fire Spirits are a very interesting case. After all, they're fire. They're a direct contrast to the ice, thus being the only thing we're shown that could potentially melt it. The Fire Spirits, in my opinion, represent hope or a strength to continue. A strength to move on after troubles of the past.

...And that hope wants to die.

The Fire Spirits wish to burn out, to leave this mortal coil and abandon the forest to the cold. They make no effort to melt the ice, they simply dance, blissfully ignorant towards their surroundings. This being a metaphor for Snatcher's own hope for moving on is made all the more obvious by the fact he wants them gone. The first contract is to kill the Fire Spirits, to kill the hope. Perhaps he believes that sort of thing to be fruitless or naïve, so it only clutters his mind or has him foolishly optimistic at points. So, get rid of it. And the hope is happy to oblige.

(That, or their willingness to leave the forest to its own suffering and not aid in the ice's thaw angers him. Besides the whole "bark bark growl I can't get to parts of my forest because of them!!" which... also could represent a naïve hope clouding his judgement, not allowing him to see a bigger picture. But hope can't all be lost if one wants to move forward...)

A little side-tangent now on the portraits! And it's another slight stretch but the idea is in my head and I can't let it go. Portraits are another common symbol, usually being a physical representation of a memory or idea. For our purposes, let's say they're memories. I know in canon they appear to just hold souls captive or something but for now we're just Ignoring That(tm). The Fire Spirits have to burn the portraits to disappear. See where I'm going with this, maybe?

Instead of handling bad memories (or perhaps memories of the past in general) in any healthy manner, Snatcher chooses to forget/repress them, which just allows his hope to progressively die out.

I'm really hoping this is making sense because it makes a lot of sense to me but I might be insane rn

The Fact that this is a Forest

Forest symbolism breakdown! What's a forest usually mean in literature? "Traditionally, the forest has come to represent being lost, exploration and potential danger as well as mystery and 'other worldliness'." Okay. Yeah. Fair enough. That certainly works with the whole aesthetic we've got going on. Wood usually is life, growth and strength. But the trees of subcon are all dead. So what about that? It stands for death, big whoop, very spooky, we know Snatcher's dead and so are the children, yadda yadda wowie wowie. But. :) The trees in Subcon look a lot like trees that were scorched in a forest fire. Don't believe me?

(You could also argue they're just regular marsh/swamp trees bUT SSHHSUUHSH HANG ON HEAR ME OUT LOOK LOOK,)

What I believe to have happened was a controlled fire to rid the forest of the majority of its ice and snow. Likely done by Snatcher. It leaves behind a very desolate, depressing, barren scene... but. What else do dead/burnt trees symbolize? Rebirth. After all, controlled fires happen to make way for new trees to take the place of old ones. Some trees only drop seeds in fires/hot temperatures, so new ones take root and begin anew. Weird. It's almost like... I dunno. Snatcher was given some sorta second chance, given he's not just a corpse in Vanessa's cellar. So were the subconites. Another life given then by Snatcher. All connected I tell ya!!

Generally, aside from that, forests have many connotations. Mystery, isolation, claustrophobia; a place to dwell on regrets, or the past; to worry over one's future; to seek escape from or escape inside of... hmgmrnmm!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- T / W -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The Nooses

The t/w is given at the top and another cut-off point will follow the bottom of this, for those that would like to skip. This will delve into talk of suicide and abusive tactics used by abusers. Please don't read if it will upset you or make you feel unsafe!!!

Personally, I cannot stand the nooses, but that's just due to my own triggers. Were there a way to hide those from the game or replace the damned talking ones with anything else. I would take it. In a heartbeat. But I can still appreciate the potential analysis to be had with them. So now i'm gonna talk about it despite how uncomfortable it will make me to do so. yEa

So, what about 'em? There are three types of nooses seen in Subcon. At least that I remember but I didn't really go looking for them. Empty ones, ones containing empty subconites, and the talking ones.

Nooses in general obviously can hint towards suicidal thoughts or behaviors of the characters that interact with them. If saying Subcon is Snatcher's mind, it could suggest that he suffered from some sort of suicidal thoughts in life (or currently, if second death is possible... or if he never truly died... or maybe he's trying to figure that out...which has given me... a separate idea...uh oh). But. And hear me out. Different perspective.

A talking noose. I hate them with a fiery passion that is unmatched. But think of the packed symbolism of a noose that talks. And think more about what it says. "I wouldn't mind being strapped around a cute neck like yours." "Be careful now, I don't want to see you meet a miserable end anywhere, but with me." Oddly, a lot of what the noose says seems almost... endearing? One could argue it's a way of luring someone to put it around their necks, which in and of itself is a whole lot to unpack when it comes to suicidal thoughts beckoning one forward; painting itself as something romantic, almost. But. Here's a wild idea, now. What if the nooses, at least the talking ones, are another symbol for Vanessa?

They're tinted blue, after all. While Vanessa's scheme is more red, one could argue two things: One, ice. Blue. Ice. yeah. Or two, the fact that Snatcher's scheme is more purple. Blue and red... make... purple. So, for all we know, Snatcher's current state was a compound effort between suicidal thoughts and Vanessa's treatment of him. Perhaps he even found a way to put himself out of his misery before freezing/starving to death. (I know he has dialogue that argues against that, but... are we certain Snatcher would be the kind to admit suicide over freezing to death?... I don't think so.)

At any rate, a common threat by those in "control" of an abusive relationship is that of killing themselves should the other person not do as they desire. It's a cruel form of emotional manipulation to get their way, worse off if the other party is an empathetic individual. As a person who has been the empathetic individual in relationships like this... I would know. I've been here, unfortunately So, it's not completely out of the question to say Vanessa could've used some tactic like that, even before the whole... cellar ordeal. Did she? I dunno. I'm tossing ideas around. But if she did, the threats of such would sit around in the Prince's mind easily. Even if she has a reputation of not going through with it. It doesn't matter. That shit sticks with you forever, that scare, the potential of it ever being true, is horrifying and it ruins you. I'm projecting, Squirtle.

Still. A noose cannot hang itself. It has to have a victim.

...yea.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- T / W PASSED -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Misc. Ideas

- The spiders: Aside from the usual things spiders can be chalked up to symbolizing - toxicity, alluring danger, just... general pain - I like the potential wordplay that can happen here. Yknow. A black widow. Say the Prince and Vanessa were married when one died. What would that leave Vanessa? A widow. ...She's red and black, too. Yknow. Like a black widow. HA wordplay is fun isn't it?

- Snatcher's tree: Love this place, love sitting in here. But not the point! The inside of Snatcher's tree is such a harsh juxtaposition to the rest of Subcon that it kinda throws ya off guard. After all, the dark, purples and blues then contrasted with the bright warm colors of the inside. Even the music switches over. The thorns outside aren't present indoors. Ohh yeah this is gonna be on the nose as hell but the Tree(tm) is 100% representing Snatcher's appearance/put-on personality vs. his truer nature. Spooky outside with thorns, foreboding, unwelcoming. Then the more comfortable interior. VULnerable. Have I even mentioned that the tree is HOLLOW I mean COME ON. The sturdiness of that tree? Nonexistent. He's not a sturdy guy at all no matter how he fronts

- Intrusions are unwelcome: Snatcher does not like the fact that Hat Kid sticks around in his forest. His personal space. His mind. In fact he tries desperately to get rid of her after their fight, not wanting her presence in his forest at all. He has no problem providing more contracts later on with the Death Wish thing, and he finds great entertainment in messing around with Hat Kid, so it's not just a weird sudden hatred he has for her; it's the fact that. After she's finished being useful, he no longer wants her around, lest she find some things she shouldn't find. Now he's just uncomfortable with her in his personal boundaries. Could just be a denial that she's helped him heal (breaking ice, stealing from Vanessa, being something interesting for his kids to interact with) or just not really wanting a child to get wrapped up in. All that. Most likely the former. Considering the amount of joke-hints he drops regarding his background during his Death Wish dialogue. I see you funny man, making jokes out of your trauma as a coping mechanism. Punts him

Annnd I think that's all I got, for now! I'll make an update post if I get any more sporadic ideas. If you read this whole thing, thank you!! and also!! Wow that was a lot!! Hell world. Please feel free to elaborate on any of my points or debate with me on em!! I'm always open to other ideas, just be aware that if I disagree I am not shy when it comes to debate hehehe, tho I won't be aggressive to any extent I prommy!!

Alrighty. goes to sleep goodnight

#clamtalk #VERY long ramble #a hat in time #snatcher #ahit snatcher #subcon forest #vanessa ahit #ahit #analysis #the prince ahit #goes crazy. goes insane #ask to tag #i'm frazzled I can't add more tags I'll do so later

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bustyasianbeautiespod · 2 years

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Episode 15 Transcript: 5'3" Dean Winchester Truthing

[intro guitar music]

G: Hello, my name is Grey.

C: And my name is Crystal.

G: And this is Busty Asian Beauties, the Supernatural commentary podcast where I, someone who has seen this show, several times…

C: And I, someone who only knows the show through social media, discuss every single episode of Supernatural from start to finish. Also, we are both Asian.

G: Both Asian!

G: So for today's episode, we will be discussing Season 1, Episode 15, “The Benders,” written by John Shiban, directed by Peter Ellis. It's him again.

C: Agh, fucking John Shiban again!

G: Yeah. Uh, if you guys- can we talk about the face gradient here? [laughing]

C: Yes.

G: To the audience of this episode, if you go to our socials and scroll through enough, you'll find-

C: -a post made by lesbianmarywinchester of basically, the faces of all the white man Supernatural writers in a sort of gradient to see who looks most similar to who. And it looks amazing. It's like, the power of it, the hard work behind it. Just incredible.

G: [laughing] Yes, the conceptualization and execution are both excellent. You guys should see it. It's so fucking funny. And now, every single time John Shiban shows up, or literally any writer shows up, I'll be like, "Oh, where are they in the gradient?" [laughing] Because it's so fucking funny.

C: John Shiban's in this nice little center spot here.

G: Yes, our friend called it the McElroy area.

C: [laughing] Oh, god, it literally is.

G: Okay, so, before going in, Crystal, what did you know about this episode?

C: Not very much. I knew that this was an episode without any supernatural creatures, so it was one of those "people are the real monsters" episodes. And I already0 and I also knew that there was a girl in it who was evil, but I didn't really know anything else about her, so I was disappointed that she didn't have more of a role.

C: So we're opening in Hibbing, Minnesota. Basically, we see a kid watching TV in his room, and then he looks outside, and there's some guy in a parking lot, and he's walking towards his car. There's some weird sound under it, so he looks down, and we don't see what he sees, but he freaks out and then gets pulled under the car and is still screaming. And then he sort of disappears. And then the boy upstairs just shuts his windows. [G laughs]

I think we're supposed to think he's scared, but he literally just looks like a stone-cold bitch. Like, he's like, "Not my fucking problem."

G: Yeah, he's like, "I don't care. Mm-hm." And then closes the window!

C: Yeah.

G: We fade in to Sam and Dean talking to the kid and the kid's mother. They're dressed up in-

C: [laughing] little sheriff outfits-

G: Yes!

C: - like it's Halloween. They look so funny.

G: They're talking to the kid, and the mother is kind of insistent that they don't want to talk, because the more they talk about it, the more the kid will believe what he saw. But Sam and Dean are doing their usual bit of "You just tell us whatever you saw, and we'll accept it, no matter what," so the kid does that, basically relays what happened, like, what Crystal just said. And the mother is like, standing unconvinced on the side, and then asks the kid, "You saw all those creepy things happen, what were you watching while the creepy things were happening?" And the kid says, "Oh, I was watching Godzilla vs Mothra." Which then sparks Dean's interest so much that he goes on a tangent about how it's the better Godzilla movie and that Sam likes the remake, and his taste sucks ass because he likes the remake. Which I guess I don't get because I haven't these watched movies .

C: Yeah, I haven't seen this franchise either, but it was a cute moment.

G: We're terrible Supernatural fans. As a Supernatural fan, you can, should, and must watch every single movie that Dean mentions.

Oh, and then the kid says, finally--this is the only important part of this conversation--that when the monster went away, it produced a whining growl.

C: So now we're at a bar. And apparently it's called Kugel's Keg, but it looked like it said "Kugel's Kec," like, the misspelled anime laugh. Dean is throwing darts, Sam's just chillin', and they're discussing the case. Dean thinks that it might just be a regular kidnapping, but Sam says that John's journal mentioned that this area had a lot of missing people, the most missing people per capita, like, out of all the counties in the US or something? Ooh, talk nerdy to me, Sam. And then they think that there's a phantom attacker that grabs people. And Dean's like, "Okay, yeah, sure, we can look into it tomorrow," but Sam wants to go to the motel and go to sleep. Dean thinks that this is unnecessary and wants to keep hanging out at the bar, and he calls Sam grandma for wanting their fun to be over so fast. He tells Sam to head out and that he'll meet him there, but he has to pee first.

And like, he's heading to the bathroom, which has this like, neon sign on it that says "Men's," and like... I don't know. [laughing] Something- something about Dean heading to a neon-lit men's bathroom in a bar just makes me really think that he, like, made some eye contact with a guy earlier at the bar today and is like, heading back there for a little fun.

G: Oh, come on. [laughs]

C: Okay, listen. Later- later, right? Like, Sam goes missing, and Dean goes outside, and he's like, "Oh no, where's Sam?"-

G: Yeah. It's been an hour.

C: And then he goes around asking people, "Have you seen anything-" yeah, "Have you seen anything in the last hour?" Like, Dean either has IBS or was sucking a dick, okay? [G laughing] Like, and I think that he was sucking a dick. Like, I- I just know it. I know it in my heart that he was sucking a dick. Like, I don't care what John Shiban meant here, but I know it.

G: I just realized, when I said "Oh, come on" earlier, I sounded like such a fucking homophobe. [C laughing] Please don't persecute me.

C: [laughing] I'm making a new tab on the spreadsheet for Grey homophobia moments.

Dean should be allowed to suck as many dicks in men's bathrooms as he wants. Love is love.

G: So Dean goes outside--no, no, no. So Sam goes outside--

C: Sam. Dean's sucking a dick.

G: [laughing] Yeah, while Dean is in the men's bathroom. He is walking towards the car when he hears a noise, so he turns on his flashlight, and then he bends down to look under the car where the noise is coming from. And we think he's gonna get grabbed, and it's all suspense music, but it's just a cat! It's a cat, and the cat is like, hissing at him.

C: Yeah. It's a cute cat.

G: Yeah. So he does a little laugh, which was so adorable. He looks so good.

C: Yeah, no, it's really cute. He looks really relieved and sweet, yeah.

G: Too bad he gets kidnapped immediately after. [C laughs]

C: [imitating Dean] My brother would give you this puppy dog look, and you would just kidnap him immediately.

G: So he gets up and then he proceeds to go to the car, at which point he just puts down this little folder that he has of the case on the side of the car. And then we go to a shot of his feet like, from below the car, which is supposed to tell us that somebody's watching him and somebody's about to grab him.

We cut to later, where Dean is walking out from the bar. And he walks towards the car, and then he sees the folder that Sam left behind. He realizes that Sam was missing. [laughs] He starts talking to the people who are going out of the bar. He's asking them if they've seen anyone within the last hour.

C: Hour!

G: He looks up, and he sees a surveillance camera. And then he's like, "Oh, okay, that's a clue. That can tell me where Sam is." And then he keeps on looking around, and he says, "Sam!" And then we cut to black.

C: You know that Tweet that's like, "Supernatural is just 15 years of two brothers stumbling around-"

G: Going, "Sam!"

C: "Crying, like, yeah, like crying drunk girls at a bar looking for each other"? Literally. "Sam! Dean! Where are you?"

C: Yeah, so now we're at a police department, and Dean's talking to a cop, who, I think we later find out her name is Kathleen. He's impersonating a guy called Gregory Washington, and he's saying that he's covering a missing persons case. He's looking for his cousin, who went missing by a bar last night. Kathleen asks if Sam has a drinking problem, and he says, "Sam? Two beers, and he's doing karaoke," which is- which is very cute. Also, do we never get to see Sam sing in all of Supernatural?

G: No, I don't think so.

C: But don't they let Dean sing, like, twice?

G: They let Dean sing in season 10 jokingly.

C: Right, the "I'm too sexy for my shirt."

G: Yeah, and season 15, seriously. Like, they let him sing for realsies.

C: Oh, yeah, 'cause fucking Jensen Ackles was trying to promote Radio Company or some shit.

G: [laughs] Yeah, all I could think of while saying that was that one post by one of our mutuals that was like-

C: Yes! Yes, the one about Mick Jagger?

G: Like, okay, we'll repeat the post. But the post goes like, "You know that- you know that joke that John Mulaney has about how Mick Jagger was like, in a stadium for fifty years with people shouting his name? That's basically what happened to Jensen Ackles," and that's all that person can think about every time Jensen Ackles sings. That's also all I can think about now. [both laugh]

C: Yeah, ugh, it's not fair that we never get to see Sam do karaoke. Like, oh god, I want to watch Sam just like, belt Celine Dion. Like, we deserved that; Sam deserved that; we all deserve it.

G: I mean, Jared can play the guitar, so like, we could have had a moment where Sam played-

C: Jared's not a real person, so I don't see how that's relevant, but I see.

G: [laughing] No, I know this because I saw a post once that's like, "aw, poor Jared, he's so insecure about his guitar skills, but everyone else is so supportive!" [C laughing] And it's like, a picture- it's like, a video of like, the cast like, huddling around him while he plays the guitar and like, hyping him up. [laughing] And it's so fucking funny! Like, I watched it, and I was like, "This is- I don't- like, what am I doing with my life?"

C: So Kathleen asks for the full name of the missing person. Dean says, "Sam Winchester," and she asks, "Like the rifle?" Is this the first time that we hear about the name inspiration here?

G: I think so, yeah.

C: Well, that's fun, I guess. They were like, "Well, eventually we need to point out how clever we were when we came up with the names for these characters, may as well do it now." So Kathleen types Sam's name into a computer, and there's a Sam Winchester record and [laughing] a Dean Winchester record. And immediately we go, "Uh-oh."

And then we finally find out why no one has tried to arrest Dean in the many episodes since "Skin." It's because everyone thinks he's dead for realsies. So, I guess Dean's safe.

So Kathleen brings up that Dean is suspected of murder, and Dean says, "Oh, yeah he was kind of the black sheep of the family. [in unison] Handsome, though." [both laugh] God, you're insufferable.

Dean's like, "Okay, well, can I look at the surveillance camera by the highway? Maybe it'll show us some clues." Kathleen makes him fill out a missing persons report. And Dean starts his wheedling that will continue through this episode where he's like, "He's my family, I look out for the kid, you have to let me go with you, you have to let me help." When she's resistant, he mentions that none of the missing people so far have ever come back. And then, "Sam's my responsibility, and he's coming back. I'm bringing him back."

Kathleen's showing Dean the photos from the surveillance camera, and basically, around the time that Sam disappeared, there was a rusty truck driving away [G starts laughing] that was- [laughs]

G: [laughing] Ever since the finale, every time anyone says the word "rusty"-

C: The word "rusty" just hurts you?

G: Yeah. Yeah.

C: There's a [laughs] rusty truck, and there's- the license plate on it looks completely new, so the truck was probably stolen. And, so that means that Sam was probably kidnapped by someone driving that truck. And just as that's being discussed, some old van is driving by, and it sounds like a high-pitched whining noise. And Dean's like, "Oh, that was the high-pitched shrieking that the kid was talking about that sounded like a monster."

G: It was a car.

C: Oh my god, it's another monster truck! [G laughs]

G: Sam wakes up in a- like, this dingy-as-shit cage in like, the middle of a barn. And he looks around, and he sees that there's other cages in the barn, and in one of the cages, there is a guy sleeping. So he starts rattling the cage, and he starts trying to kick it down. In a scene that- where he looks super hot. [laughing]

C: Yeah, no, he's strong and his knuckles are kind of bloody. Like, hi. He's like, doing fucking chin-ups on the cage.

G: Yeah, he's wearing just a shirt, and you can see his pecs through it, and he looks good.

C: Yeah, there's a- there's a scene in the Sam "Slumber Party" AMV, I think, that's about- on like, a line about his titties, that I think comes from this episode. [laughs] He's suffering horribly and being kidnapped. That. [both laughing]

G: But he looks good!

C: He does.

G: While he's kicking down the cage, the guy from the other cage wakes up from the noise. And Sam realizes that this guy is Alvin Jenkins. So like, the guy from earlier who went missing and they're looking for. He tells the guy that like, he's looking for him, and the guy immediately is like, "Oh, you're doing a piss-poor job of looking for me," so we know that this Jenkins guy is fucking insufferable.

C: I mean, he's in a cage. He's been in a cage for a while. I get it.

G: Yeah, I mean, yes, but like, they really make a point of making him like, not listen. That was his personality type.

Sam asks like, "Do you know where we are?" And Jenkins says, "We're in the middle of nowhere. It smells like the country." And Sam asks, like, "Have you seen the people who took you? What do they look like?"

C: Well, "Have you seen what took you," right?

G: Yeah, yeah. What took you. Like, he's very adamant about the whole "what" thing. And I guess maybe because I don't like, in regular conversation, it's not like I speak English fully. If someone asked me, like, "What took you?" I wouldn't even bat an eye. So, like, Jenkins being like, "What are you talking about? What are you talking about?" Like, just say "they're people" or something, like, "They're wearing hoods."

C: Yeah, but they really wanted to build up the suspense.

G: The barn door opens, and two men wearing black coats walk in. So their heads are covered and everything. And they're carrying big wooden sticks, which they start hitting the cages with, while the other person like, unlocks the cages. And it's important to know the cages are locked and unlocked through this electric mechanism. So, it's not a key. No, actually it is a key. How would you describe the lock?

C: There's a key, but there's also some kind of electric mechanism. Well, I don't really know.

G: Yeah. Like, the keyhole is very far from the cage, so it's not like Sam and Jenkins can just reach the keyhole and pick it.

They start hitting the cage to make Jenkins move away, and then they open the cage and give him food. They do the same to Sam's cage.

C: Did Sam get food? I didn't see him get food.

G: Oh, really? But they hit Sam's cage as well.

C: They just hit him, like, for fun.

G: Noo! That's so sad! I'm so sorry, Sam.

C: More foreshadowing for Sam in cages.

G: They go out, and Sam is in shock. He's like, "Oh my god, I'll be damned, they're just people!" So they continue talking about the circumstances of the cage, so, when do they feed Jenkins, etc. etc.

What's Ned Beatty? Do you know what that is?

C: Yeah, so I didn't understand the reference either, so I looked it up. And he's an actor, and I think one of his most famous roles is like, one where he gets kidnapped and raped by a bunch of like, random country guys. So, yep.

C: 'Cause later he calls them "a bunch of psycho hillbilly rednecks looking for love in all the wrong places," so he's very fixated on them being lower-class country people who are also gay and rapists. Like, that's- that's sort of what Jenkins thinks is going on.

G: So Sam is unconvinced by this, like, this remark that "it's Ned Beatty time." Jenkins, like, asks like, "If that's not what's gonna happen, what do they want?" And Sam says, "Oh, I don't know." Then we cut back to Kathleen and Dean.

C: They're driving along, trying to find where Sam was taken. And they know that the truck was not caught by a certain traffic camera, but it was caught by one earlier, so it must have turned off into a side road somewhere in between. Meanwhile, something comes up on Kathleen's computer, and she realizes something. So she's like, "hey, Dean," or, sorry, "hey, Gregory-"

G: [laughing] Succession/Supernatural crossover.

C: Noo! Yeah, "hey, Cousin Greg," I ran your badge number-

G: [laughing] And it says here you work at ANT! Is that the name of the- I forgot. Whatever.

C: ATN is the name of the news network, but it's- yeah, doesn't he not work with the ATN section? I thought he worked with the parks.

G: Oh, you haven't watched enough Succession.

C: Yeah, so she says, "hey, Cousin Greg, uh, quick question, I just looked up your badge, and it says that it was stolen, and also there's a picture of you," and it's like, it's clearly not him. It's like, an older, heavier Black man. [both laughing] And Dean says, "I lost some weight. And I've got that Michael Jackson skin disease." "Mr. Yamashiro's son," part two.

G: [still laughing] I genuinely laughed out loud when he said that. I was like, "Okay, this is funny."

C: Kathleen's like, "Okay, get out of the car time, to arrest you," and Dean goes like, "Hey, that's fine, I'll cooperate, but like, please, first, let me find Sam." Um, Kathleen's not allowing him, and Dean says, "Look into my eyes and tell me if I'm lying about this," which is just so fucking funny. Every time Dean tries to convince people of things, it's so fucking funny. Like, he just seems to think that, like, if he meow-meows it up, like, people will just automatically understand him and be on his side.

G: And he's like- he's really into the "look into my eyes," because he does it with Cas too, right?

C: Yeah, yeah, he does it in "The Man Who Would be King," right?

C: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I can't believe it worked with Kathleen.

C: I mean, I get it, 'cause- her brother, right? Like, that- that's why.

G: Yeah, like, they- they did, like, some exposition and some backstory, but like, even then, it's like, this man can be dangerous.

C: Yeah, it- I mean, I think- she takes a little while to trust him, so I think that that- like, it was unrealistic, but I could somewhat believe it. And also, he's unarmed. I feel like if he had a gun on him, like, she would probably act completely differently.

Kathleen's not budging still. Even though she looked into Dean's eyes and everything! [G laughs] Like, how could she still not? [laughs]

Right, so Dean's, like, tearing up a little, and he says, "Look, here's the thing. When we were young, I pretty much pulled him from a fire. And ever since then, I've felt responsible for him. Like it's my job to keep him safe. I'm just afraid if we don't find him fast," and like, his throat starts getting all clogged, and he's like, crying harder, he's like, "Please. He's my family." He's so pathetic. It's fun to watch.

And Kathleen's like, "Nuh-uh, gonna arrest you," but then she sees a photo in her car, and it's of her and her brother, and she looks sad, and she's like, "Ugh, I've changed my mind." So she's like, "Okay, fine, we can go find Sam."

G: We go to back to Sam and Jenkins. And Sam is trying- so he's trying to pull this thing that is like, a metal pipe/wire/whatever from above his cage. And Jenkins is like, "Oh, what's your name again?" And Sam's like, "It's Sam," and then Jenkins say- Jenkins says, uh, "Give it up, Sammy, there's no way out." And Sam says, "Don't- [gasps] call me Sammy."

C: Yeah, it's so good. 'Cause after Jenkins said that, I paused the episode to write down the note "Don't call him Sammy!" and Sam said it right after.

G: Like, immediately after he says that, the metal pipe/wire/whatever gets pulled down, and a small piece of metal falls to the floor. And then Sam picks it up and says, "Oh, it's a bracket." [laughs]

C: I don't know what that is. I don't know how metal tools and parts work.

G: Yeah, me too. I just find it so funny that he was like, "Oh my god, it's a bracket." Like, obviously, a bracket is holding up that thing. Like, you probably- you probably saw it before it fell. But whatever. And then Jenkins, like, you know, extremely pessimistic, he's like, "Oh, what are we gonna do with the bracket?"

Suddenly, the cage unlocks. Jenkins's cage. Sam's remains locked. Jenkins realizes that when Sam was pulling the thing, he must have shorted something. So he gets out of the cage, and Sam immediately is like, "You have to get back in there. This seems too easy." But Jenkins doesn't listen. He says that he's gonna ask for help, he's gonna get out of here, and he's gonna send people back for Sam. So he gets out.

C: Jenkins is walking outside. It's like, some kind of muddy woods area, and there's this house that looks pretty beat down. He finds this little knife on the ground, and he says, like, "thank you" to God. Which is quite ironic when we later find out that the weapons are deliberately left out by the Benders to make the hunt more fun. So, he's walking through the woods, and then he hears noises, and it's like, creepy laughter and whooping. As he starts- it starts raining, also, and he's running, and there's some guy in camouflage who jumps him. Jenkins stabs him and then keeps running, but then some other guy shows up and shoves a knife through Jenkins's leg. Jenkins is now running away. Okay, also, at this point, we notice that the men- they're in camouflage, and also they have like, what, like, mud smeared on their faces for the camouflage.

G: Yeah.

C: But like, for a second, I like, thought it was legit blackface, and I was like, "What the fuck." But, no. It's still quite uncomfortable.

G: Yeah. I think the intention was like- actually, I don't know. To make them look dirty, I guess?

C: Yeah, I mean, I feel like it was for camouflage, so like, like their skin wouldn't like, reflect the moonlight very much. But it kind of just- it was it was highly uncomfortable to look at.

G: Mm-hm.

C: So Jenkins is still running. The two men are still like, laughing at him and chasing him. Jenkins seems to be starting to get away, but then we see that there's this tripwire on the ground, and he stumbles over it and falls. Jenkins is now on his back on the ground. The two men rise up above him with knives like, ready to stab him in the chest. It cuts to Sam, but we can hear Jenkins scream.

G: So, we go to Dean and Kathleen holding coffee. Which I find so funny, that like, Kathleen, look, this felon is-

C: I'll buy him coffee!

G: Yeah, let's buy coffee! Let's have some coffee.

So Dean says, like, "I don't mean to press my luck, but..." And then Kathleen is like, "Oh, your luck is so pressed." And this is like, a recurring thing that Dean says throughout the episode. So that's fun.

And Dean asks, like, "Why are you helping me out, anyway?" Kathleen then reveals her backstory, which is that, three years ago, her brother Riley went missing, just like Sam. They were not able to find him. She says, I know what it feels like to feel responsible for someone, and for them... and then she cuts herself off. And then she says, "Come on. Let's keep at it."

So they pull over to like, a little side road. Dean like, steps out of the car, but Kathleen tells him that he's not coming with her. But Dean is like, insisting that, "No, I'll go with you, I'll go with you, it's fine, it's fine." So Kathleen, like, makes him promise that they would go together, but Dean will let Kathleen take the lead and won't do anything that will, you know, harm them, etc etc. Kathleen tells Dean to shake on it. So as Dean goes in for the shake, she cuffs him, and then attaches him to the car, and then walks away.

C: It's fun. I enjoyed that.

G: This is like, a common thing that people do, right? Like, in media, at least.

C: I feel like it is. Yeah, like, I've seen it happen in plenty of shows. Dean should have watched even more TV than he already does to avoid falling for that one.

C: Kathleen's now walking into the woods and sees the house that we saw earlier. She knocks on the door, and a little girl comes out. She's got like, straggly hair, and she's like, got dirt on her. She's like a perfect little evil horror girl. Her vibes are impeccable.

Yeah, she seems to not really be used to interaction with people, or just sort of is talking kind of awkwardly. Kathleen asks who she is, and the girls, "Who are you?" Kathleen introduce herself, and the girl says, that her name is Missy, and that her mom is dead, and her dad's not home. Kathleen asks if she can come in, but Missy says no, and Kathleen is like, "Okay, then like, here," and shows her picture of Sam and is like, "Have you seen this guy?" And Missy start smiling.

G: Yes! Go, Missy!

C: Kathleen's like "What?" And Missy says, "That's gonna hurt." And behind Kathleen, this guy hits her in the head with a shovel, and she falls on the ground. It's so good.

G: Yeah, it's so fun.

C: And, yeah. Yeah. The dad's like, "Hey, Missy, go tell your brothers that I want to see them," and Missy in her like, evil little evil girl voice is like, "Yes, Daddy," and walks away.

This is an episode where I really wish I'd watched a lot more horror media than I have. 'Cause like, I feel like this is definitely borrowing from a lot of iconic movies out here, and I just don't know what they are. Have you watched much horror?

G: I haven't seen much horror 'cause it's not my jam, but I have played Red Dead Redemption, as we know, because I love mentioning this video game.

C: Yeah. Right.

G: But it's just that, you know, there are two American things that I'm really into that are like, defined by their American-ness. And it's Supernatural and Red Dead Redemption.

C: Right.

G: So, like, this episode is like, the combination of the two. Because it's like, backwoods America.

C: Um, I definitely like this episode from a horror perspective. I do, I think, have a bit of an issue with, like, backwoods horror and the way that the Benders are portrayed.

G: Mm-hm.

C: Like, you know, like, during the hunt. The brothers laugh. They don't talk. We don't hear the Benders talk until way later in the episode. Like, they're portrayed in a very animalistic way, which is like fine and fun because, like, they're hunters or whatever, but like, I don't know. Just their whole portrayal feels quite classist. The way that Jenkins, is like, "Ah, fucking country people, blah blah blah," the way Dean later makes a joke about like, country people like, engaging them incest, like, it's just all... yeah, I don't know. Like, can't they just be people? Can't they just be people?

G: Yeah, like, this is what I'm going to say. Like, for an episode where the whole point is that people are fucking monsters, you really made a point to make the people as un-people-like as you possibly can.

C: Right. And like, specifically, like, poor, and unsanitary because they're poor.

G: Yes.

C: Like, I don't know. I just think that like, for example, I know that season 7 has like, attempts some kind of anti-capitalism rhetoric with Dick Roman being the bad guy, but like, Derek Roman is a Leviathan. Like, he's a monster who literally devours people, and they sort of use that as like, a metaphor for capitalism or whatever, but like, here where they're having actual people be monsters, yeah, they're making them as un-person as possible. Like, I wish- I wish that if they were doing an episode about people being monsters, that it would be about like, power and wealth making people monstrous, not just like, these people being quote unquote "crazy" as Dean keeps calling them.

G: So we cut to a scene that is often giffed. A while ago, we were just talking about Dean sucking dick but like, [laughs] I see this scene like, giffed a lot so that it looks like Dean's dick is getting sucked. So like, good for him.

C: [laughing] I don't think I've seen this.

G: You haven't? I'll try to look for that and show you. [C laughs] But like, basically, the scene is, Dean is trying to figure out how to unlock his cuffs. So he's reaching out to the side of the car for the antenna off the bar. So he's reaching out for that, and it's like, kind of comedic because, like, he can't reach it, and it's quite funny, and he's stretching a lot. But then, he starts hearing noises basically going through his direction, and he realizes that "the people probably took Kathleen and are gonna take me now."

So he very urgently like, gets the wire and and picks his cuffs, but the brothers are getting nearer and nearer. And it's like, a little suspense, like, "Are they gonna catch Dean? Are they not gonna catch Dean?" But they don't because Dean was able to uncuff himself and run away.

Jared and Lee, which are the two brothers that are hunting these people-

C: [laughing] It's so funny that one of them is named Jared.

G: Yeah.

- Go into the car, and then they're laughing and talking about how they've never seen their father that angry before, but, also, the police have never followed them before, so this is a first for them.

C: So now we're back to the barn, and Kathleen's there in a cage. They've like, taken her uniform, and her hair's all messed up, which- eugh- is bad to look at.

G: Yeah, why take her uniform? Why leave her in a shirt?

C: Yeah, like, what was- like, what was the point? I don't know.

G: Well, they also took Sam's jacket.

C: Well, we also see that they took Sam's jacket, right.

G: So it's not a misogyny.

C: Yeah it's not a- yeah, no. We got- we got Sam's tits, and we got Kathleen's tits. Hashtag equality.

G: So true.

C: Kathleen sees Sam and is like, "Oh, are you Sam Winchester? Your cousin's looking-"

G: Your cousin Greg.

C: [laughing] Yeah, your cousin Greg! "Your cousin Greg's looking for you." And Sam's like, "Oh, yay we're gonna be rescued. Where is he?" And Kathleen's like, "So I, um, handcuffed him to my car..." And Sam's like, "Well, goddamn it."

And then the door opens, and we see like, two boots come in, and a pair of jeans, and we're like, "Oh no, is it the Benders, or is it Dean?" And we pan up-

G: It looks immediately like Dean.

C: Um, I feel like when it was at the boots, I wasn't sure. When we saw the bottom of the jacket, I was like, "Ah, okay, it's him."

G: Yeah, you see the bowlegs, and you're like, "That's fucking Dean." [laughs]

C: Oh, yeah, I guess I'm not as much of a bowleg connoisseur as you, so I couldn't tell.

Yeah, so it's Dean, and he sees Sam, and he's really relieved. He says, "Sam, are you hurt? It's so good to see you." And then he sees Kathleen there. He's like, "Oh, yeah, I know a trick or two. I got out of the cuffs." And he's trying to figure out the locks, but he can't really. Seems like there has to be a key that he has to find. He and Sam talk a bit about the Jenkins- um, about how they're just people, and I'm sure Kathleen's being really weirded out about how they're talking like it could have not been people. Sam mentions the whole Jenkins situation and how it doesn't make any sense, and yeah, Dean says, "With our usual playmates, there's rules, there's patterns. But with people, they're just crazy." Booo.

G: I mean, there were patterns, with this one. Like, you were able to find it.

C: Right. I just feel like, there was like, so much interesting stuff that could have done with this episode, given that it's a "people are the real monsters" episode, given that it's about a family of hunters, but I just feel like they really- they really dropped the ball on this one.

And Dean says, "Whenever they kidnap someone, they seem to take their car too, so there's a bunch of cars in the back," and Kathleen asks if he saw a black Mustang about 10 years old. And Dean's like, "Yeah," so that was her brother's, and he definitely got hunted to death.

So Dean heads out to find the keys, and Sam tells him to be careful.

G: So Dean is walking inside a room, and it's very dark, so he has his flashlight out. And he's looking around, and there are jars and jars of things. [laughs]

C: Yeah, like [in unison] organs.

G: -right? Like, body parts.

C: It's really fun how they just pulled in every single horror movie aesthetic into this episode. They're like, "We're only gonna get one non-paranormal episode, so let's have like, the backwoods, let's have the hunting, let's have organs in jars," like, there's so much happening.

G: He continues walking around, and he sees Polaroids of basically the two brothers, Jared and Lee, standing next to dead bodies.

Oh! The transcript says one of them is Jenkins. I didn't notice that. I thought it was just some random guy.

C: Yeah. No, so remember, Dean picks up the photo, and he flips it over, so he can see the face better.

G: Yeah.

C: And it's so that we and he know that they done got Jenkins.

G: No, I thought it was just a random guy, still! [laughs]

C: No, no. Yeah, I mean, his facial hair is pretty clearly Jenkins.

G: I have face blindness for white men.

C: Yeah, that was John Shiban, actually. [both laugh]

G: I think that was- it could be John Shiban. It could be Jeremy Carver. It could be Robert Berens. We don't know! [C laughs]

So he says the line again. [laughs] And he says it by saying, "I'll say it again." [C laughs] Which I thought was so funny, like, yeah, we get it!

C: Self-aware king.

G: So he says, "I'll say it again, demons I get. People are crazy." Boo.

C: Booo.

G: So he goes upstairs, and then, there is old-timey music playing. It's very atmospheric, actually. This scene was very fun.

C: Yeah. It's fun.

G: Papa Bender- [laughs] as the transcript says, which I think is so funny. The dad, the father of the family, is in the kitchen, and he is cutting apart something. So we can assume it's like, human remains, I guess.

C: Yeah, I wish we got to like, properly see him carving up Jenkins's corpse. Like, they could have gone harder with the cannibalism this episode.

G: Yeah.

C: Like, that would have been fun to see.

G: Like, we could have seen a Hannibal-esque scene where-

C: Yeah, exactly.

G: - he cuts up the foot of the person. That would have been fun.

C: I feel like this episode is fairly reminiscent of- I haven't watched Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I read the Wikipedia summary after I watched Tinashe's latest music video. [G laughs] So, I feel like maybe they thought that if they went too hard on the cannibalism thing, people would be like, "This is so clearly just Texas Chainsaw Massacre."

G: Yeah.

C: Um, but also, yeah, it would have been really fun to see like, a family dinner scene where like, they're serving up Jenkins.

G: At some point, Dean is walking, and he bumps into some chimes. And at first he's like, "Oh, it's chimes, I have to shut this thing so that Papa Bender doesn't hear me." And then he takes a double look- oh my god. They're bones. So like, there's jaws and skulls, and that's what the chimes were made off. So, you know. Very fun, very horror.

C: So fun. Yeah. Who do you think in the families is like, making all the bone furniture?

G: [laughs] What's your guess? I would say Lee because he has the name that I like the most.

C: Yeah, okay, yeah. I'll go with that. I think Lee works. Um... hm. I guess I've been wondering what Missy's role in this family tradition is. Like, I'm assuming she's kind of too young so far to like join into the hunt.

G: Later on, like, Papa Bender says, "We pass this down from father to son." And then they pan specifically to Missy which I was like, "Huh. Hm."

C: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think it's not her turn yet to hunt people, but I feel like maybe they let her play around with the bones a bit to get acclimated to the whole corpses thing. Yeah, so I think maybe she made the windchime.

G: He keeps on walking, and then he notices, you know, some keys. So he goes for it, and then he notices some other things, like a jar full of teeth.

C: He gets distracted. He's like, picking up the jar of teeth instead of just grabbing the box of keys. Like, come on, Dean.

G: Yeah, and then he hears a creak behind him. So he turns around, and then he sees a little girl. Missy. He sees Missy.

C: [laughs] Yeah, and we know she's a badass bitch, but he doesn't.

G: Yeah. And he says, "Okay, okay, I'm not gonna hurt you." And then she says, with a little smile, "I know." [delighted laugh]

C: "I know."

G: Go, Missy!

C: Soo good!

G: And then she- And then she throws her little knife towards Dean's jacket, so it sticks him to the wall, basically. And then we start a little fight scene.

Missy calls her father, and Jared and Lee starts attacking Dean. So, yeah. It's just a fight scene. I have no idea how to describe it.

C: It's, yeah, it's pretty fun to watch. They're getting thrown around the room a lot.

G: It's fun to watch, but it's not like, a describable fight scene. Like, they're just fighting, because, you know, other fight scenes in Supernatural, like, Sam cuts his hand with the- with the knife, like, etc etc. But this is one just whatever.

C: Dean gets thrown against a wall, and there's like, blood on his face, and he's sort of on the ground.

G: Yeah.

C: And he's like, "I'm gonna kick your ass first. And then yours."

G: And then Daddy Bender hits him at the back of the head, and he falls to the ground.

C: So now Dean's tied up in a chair, and the family is around him, talking about how fun it would be to funt--sorry how fun it would be to hunt him.

G: Oh, I have a- I have a remark. They never say “Bender” in the episode, no?

C: Um, does Missy ever- yeah, Missy doesn't say her last name, right? She just says, "I'm Missy."

G: Yeah. So they never say "Bender." So did they just go, "Oh, fuck, we didn't put Bender in the episode, but like, we already have the title, so might as well"? [C laughs] Or is "The Benders" a reference?

C: Not that I'm aware of.

G: Yeah, me too. This is what we get for being so uncultured. [laughs]

C: Ugh. Sorry for not being white! [both laugh]

So, uh, yeah, they're talking about how fun it would be to hunt Dean, and Dean goes, "You've gotta be kidding me. That's what this is about? You yahoos hunt people?" Dean, what do you do? Like, with your time. Huh? Like, what do you do?

G: No, I guess, like, the difference between them is that, you know, these people enjoy it and, like Sam and Dean are scared, you know? Like, they make a point-

C: I'm a- okay, I'm aware of how much they enjoy torturing that vampire in the finale, though, like-

G: No, yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

C: Like, they- currently, they are scared.

G: Yeah, like, they make a point at the beginning of the show that Sam and Dean are, like, scared of hunting, and Sam specifically gets nightmares from it, right? Remember? But, [both laugh] as we proceed into the show, they start- they start losing that like, self-awareness that this is a terrible job.

C: Yeah.

G: And like, it does become more and more like they're the fucking Benders, but for monsters. And sometimes for people! [laughs]

C: And sometimes for people.

Yeah, so, yeah, the dad asks, "You ever killed before?" And Dean says, "That depends on what you mean." I love how the dad doesn't like, ask about that. He's not like, "Oh, you mean you stepped on an ant once?" Like, he's just too caught up in his fun little monologue.

G: Yeah, he doesn't fucking care about what Dean has to say. And you know what? Good for him.

C: Yeah. He doesn't care about Dean's- right, ah, I love- yeah, what if, like, he caught someone, and [laughing] they were like, "Yeah, I love killing people all the time. I do it so often." Like, would he still keep going? [both laugh]

So, yeah he says, "I've hunted all my life, just like my father and his before him. I've hunted deer and bear, I even got a cougar once. But the best hunt is human. There's nothing like it. Holding their life in your hands... seeing the fear in their eyes, just before they go dark. Makes you feel powerful alive." It's a good villain monologue.

G: Yeah.

C: Good for him.

Um, and Dean calls him "a sick puppy." [laughs]

G: Go, Dean.

C: Like, they're allowed to say "bastard" on Supernatural, right?

G: Yeah, yeah, they are.

C: "You're a sick puppy."

The dad says- this is where we find out that he gives the people that he hunts a weapon on purpose to give them a fighting chance so that the hunt's more fun. And he calls it "a family tradition that's passed down, father to son," and yeah, as that's being said, the camera pans specifically to Missy. Who isn't even like, gonna get her bossass bitch murder era 'cause she's probably just- I don't know, going somewhere else after this episode. Ugh.

Yeah, and he says that they only really hunt one or two people a year. Usually, the cops don't go after them. The dad asks if Dean is with, quote unquote, "that pretty cop," which begins the sort of gendered language used against Kathleen that continues throughout this episode that makes me highly uncomfortable.

G: But, like, they're making it, you know, they're making the villain say it.

C: Yeah, they're- like it's bad on purpose. Yeah, like, I get that, but also it's- I just think it's striking that Sam and Dean don't get insulted at all by the Benders. Like, the Benders are very big on dehumanizing people and feeling like they have power above them, but they never really insult Sam or Dean, they just try to kill them. With Kathleen, they try to kill her, and they call her a bitch like, 20 times.

G: Yeah. Also, like, when like, when we see the pictures, right? It's all men. So like, probably they don't get like, a female victim a lot, so that's why, like, they get one, and they're like, super into it for some fucking reason.

C: Dean's like, "Okay, I'll answer your questions if you promise not to make me into an ashtray." This doesn't go over well.

G: [laughing] Oh, yeah, because he gets burned later.

C: [laughing] Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah, like, the dad takes out a hot poker from the fireplace and is ready to burn Dean's eye out.

G: In an amazing shot that they linger on for too long. So like, you're aware it's amazing, but you're also like, "Come on, you're showing off." [both laugh]

C: Oh, Peter Ellis.

Yeah and then- this is when Dean makes the joke that makes no sense, which is, "How about it's not nice to marry your sister?" Which is like, okay, cool, I'm glad we're continuing to make fun of country people for being poor and quote unquote "uncultured." That's fun. But also, Dean said anti-Wincest king. [both laughing] Dean has a Tumblr blog, and he writes "Wincests DNI" in the bio.

And the dad's like, "You have to tell me if the cops are gonna come looking for you, because I need to protect my family." And Dean's like, "Oh, eat me. No, wait, you actually might." Like, that wasn't even a good joke, Dean. But I get it, whatever, like, there's a hot poker near your eye. You can't come up with the best jokes yet.

And then this is where Papa Bender says, "You think this is funny? You brought this down on my family." Seriously, like, again, they could've gone way harder on the parallels with like, hunting family that will do anything to protect their own, but they just sort of breeze past it. Ugh.

He's like, "Okay, well, let's- we're gonna hunt tonight. And Dean, you get to pick who's getting hunted. The boy or the cop." Which puts Dean in a pretty difficult position, but like, I was Dean, [laughing] I would have just said "the cop," like, immediately like, I wouldn't even-

G: [laughing] Yeah, like, I- I just watched this episode recently, and even I was like, "Oh, he's gonna say the cop, right?" And then he didn't, and I was like, "Oh, okay."

C: Well, like, I know he says Sam because he thinks-

G: Sam can make it.

C: Like, "Oh, maybe Sam can take these guys," but like, I would not have risked it. I would've been like, "Oh, you're asking me? Great. Um, yeah, go for Kathleen." [laughing] Like, go right ahead.

Dean's trying to refuse to choose, and Papa Bender burns his chest with the hot poker, and then puts it right near his eye. Dean starts freaking out, and says, "Yeah, take the guy, take the guy." The dad sends his sons out to do it, but he says, like, "Don't let him out of the cage, just shoot him right there." Which obviously freaks Dean out. And then the dad continues, "When you're done with the boy, shoot the bitch too." Eugh. Eugh. I think, specifically, I wrote down here, "Don't talk like that in front of your daughter!" [G laughs] Like-

G: Yeah!

C: Missy's right there! Like, come on.

G: Be a good influence, Papa Bender.

C: Exactly. Like, the murder thing is like, chill, like, whatever. Like, family business, go ahead, I'm not gonna go against your customs here. But like, drink a little bit of respect women juice in front of your 13-year-old daughter, Like, come on!

Oh, I was just gonna say, and, yeah, the reason that he wants them both to be shot is that he doesn't want them to have the chance to get out because more cops might start coming.

G: Yeah. So Lee enters the barn. He opens Sam's cage, which is so unnecessary! Just shoot Sam. Literally just shoot him.

And then he opens the- Sam's cage, and then he aims the gun at Sam.

C: We see Sam, like, grab the bracket.

G: Yeah. [laughs] For what? For what is the bracket?

C: I mean, it worked.

G: But we don't it work.

C: Yeah, but we assume that he got the better of Lee with the bracket.

G: Yeah, so he grabs the bracket. And then we cut back to the house with Dean and Papa Bender and Missy and the other guy. And we hear screaming. Dean says, "If you hurt my brother, I'll kill you. I'll kill you all." Fun.

C: Yeah, he's yelling really loud. It's- it's a good scene. I enjoy when Dean gets a bit unhinged.

G: So, Papa Bender starts calling out for Lee. We cut back to the cage, where Sam is- has taken the upper hand, and he's grabbing the gun. Sam tries to fire the gun, but it doesn't work, so he throws it away and basically imprisons Lee in the cage.

C: Yeah, also the whole time, his like, chest is heaving up and down, and you can really see his titties through the gray T-shirt.

G: This is his hot boy moment.

G: So, in the living room, because Lee is not responding, Papa Bender, like, asks the other brother to go with him to the barn. So they go. They find Lee unconscious. And they try to open the lights, but apparently, Sam like, blew the fuse or something.

So they go to look around the barn for Sam and Kathleen. Sam is like, located in some haze, and Kathleen opens a cabinet, which she closes immediately, in a shot that looks so out of place. Jared goes up to the cabinet and starts shooting it because he thinks that Kathleen is in there. He opens the cabinet, and it's empty, and then Kathleen jumps him.

C: Yeah, like, from like, like another floor of the barn. Like, she falls on top of his back. It's a fun shot.

G: Yeah, she jumps him, and then, like, they start tackling each other. But Jared ends up having the upper hand afterwards, and he's about to shoot Kathleen when Sam comes in.

C: Yeah. Also, he specifically calls her "You stupid bitch," like, they're really doing this here.

G: So, there's like, a bluff thing that happens when Sam attacks Jared. Because, like, he attacks Jared, and Jared is about to shoot him, but Sam ducks, so Jared ends up shooting Papa Bender instead. So Papa Bender’s on the ground. And then Sam grabs the gun and hits Jared in the face, and they all collapse, and then, we cut to black.

C: This is a metaphor for how Sam Winchester the character like, killed Jared Padalecki the guy by being the bestest little guy ever and rendering Jared Padalecki obsolete.

G: [laughing] So true.

G: So Sam takes Jared and then puts him in the same cage as Lee. And then he locks the cage. But Papa Bender’s still on the floor of the barn, and Kathleen is pointing a gun at him. She tells Sam that he can go look for Dean and save him from Missy.

Kathleen remains behind, and she's talking to Papa Bender. She says, "You killed my brother. Why? I just want to know why?" Papa Bender says, "Because it's fun." And then Kathleen fires the gun.

Okay. So what do you think of this scene?

C: I mean, cops should not just kill people, but like, for like, in the horror genre, like, people kill people all the time, and it's fun. [laughs]

G: Yeah.

C: [laughs] Yeah.

G: I don't know, it just made me uncomfortable because later on, she tells Sam and Dean that he fought for his life.

C: Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.

G: Like, he fought for his life-

C: Yeah, no, she's saying that she killed him out of self-defense, and like, she didn't. She did it out of revenge.

G: Yeah.

C: And that's not okay.

G: Like, it just reminded me of--because, like, you know, like, war on drugs in the Philippines, like, every single day, we would get like, police officers saying that like, "Oh, nanlaban, like, this person acted def- tried to defend themselves, so like, whatever, we shot him." And it's just-

C: Right.

G: It took me back, and I was like, "Okay, this is quite unpleasant." But I can get that, like, the mechanics of a horror genre is different. So I'm not saying that like, "Oh, you know." You know what I'm saying.

C: No, I mean it is... yeah, it is uncomfortable still, but I guess it's- it was expected.

G: Yeah.

C: So, yeah it was like, bad, but like, expectedly bad. Not unexpectedly bad, which is a different emotion.

G: Yes.

C: Like the fucking half blackface hunting scene.

C: Sam and Dean are walking out of the house, and they mentioned that they locked Missy in a closet. [laughs] Um, and yeah, she lies to them, and tells them that Papa Bender was trying to escape, and she shot him. But all of them sort of look at each other, so I feel like they're all aware that she's lying.

G: Yeah.

C: And the police are about to show up to this house, and Kathleen says, "Hey, you should probably head out before they get here." And Dean asks- well, he says, "I don't mean to press our luck, but we're kind of in the middle of nowhere. Could we catch a ride?" And Kathleen says, "Nope. Start walking!" And Sam's, like, a polite little boy. He's like, "Sounds great to me! Thanks!" And Dean apologizes for what happened to Kathleen's brother. Yeah, she starts tearing up, and she says that "It was really hard, not knowing what happened to him. I thought it would be easier once I knew the truth, but it isn't, really." Which, ugh.

Okay. Mm- I feel like- okay, so we've talked about how women in Supernatural do not seem like people besides Cassie and Missouri. I feel like Kathleen seems more like a person than a lot of other women in Supernatural. Have you gotten that vibe too, or am I just- is that just me?

G: I think her actress is really good.

C: Yeah, yeah.

G: And like, she was able to make the character feel alive. About the writing, I don't think she was given enough.

C: Yeah, she could sell her even though she didn't make sense.

G: Yeah. I mean, she made some sense, and like, I wasn't say it's the writing. I would say it's the actor.

C: Okay, so yeah, I'm glad that it was mostly the part of the acting and not the writing that made her seem more like a person. Because I know later, like, Supernatural has this bad habit of like, "Oh, we'll make some women people, but like, just the cops. Like, just Jody and Donna." So I was like, "Oh, god does this start early?" But no, I think her writing was still subpar, so this is more of an acting choice that caused her to be more like, sympathetic or whatever. Yeah.

G: Yeah. Like, when when she was standing there, and she- they were all like, kind of nodding at each other when he says that he shot the guy because he tried to escape, it's like, "Oh, okay, so like, I ca-n I can empathize," you know, like, the acting is actually really good. So yeah.

C: Finally, we cut to, like, this high shot of Sam and Dean walking down a road in the dark. Dean says, "Never do that again." Sam says, "Do what?" Dean says, "Go missing like that." Yeah, which is sweet. Like, obviously Sam can't stop being kidnapped, but, you know, it's Dean's way of showing concern. Um, yeah, Sam says, "You were worried about me," and like, is making fun of him for it, which is, I guess, par for the course in Supernatural.

G: Yeah.

C: Yeah, and Dean's like, "if you vanish like that again, I'm not looking for you," and they're teasing each other. Sam's like, "Heard that you got beat up by a 13-year-old girl. Getting rusty there, kiddo." And they're just sorta laughing and talking as they walk off. And that's the end of the episode.

G: Okay, I have a question. Was it ever explained how they took the people in the first place, like, under the car? How does that work? Did they just sneak under the car?

C: I don't know. They were just- they just dragged them under the car, I guess. I don't know.

G: [laughs] It's so unnecessary, like, the car thing is so unnecessary.

C: Well it's just so that we don't know that it's people until way later, but I guess there are better ways to show it. Because I know- isn't-

G: "Gimme Shelter." Like, the person is human. The person who's doing the things is human. And they also do like, the whole, gets taken by a teddy bear thing to like, lure you away from the idea that it's a human. [C laughs] God.

C: That's very fun.

G: Yeah.

So, anyway, that's how the episode ends. So what did you think of this one, Crystal?

C: I mean, yeah, I feel like- this one felt like a different genre than Supernatural usually is. And I feel like, like I- as someone who hasn't engaged in much horror, I found this horror pretty fun, but I also, you know, as we've mentioned, have an issue with just the "backwoods poor country people being evil and craaazy" being a horror trope in the first place.

G: Yeah. I'm going to say that, you know, how, in "Faith," we were complaining that only the beginning was contrary to a Supernatural episode, but the rest is just a case episode? I think this is an example of one where the beginning is contrary to like, how Supernatural usually goes, and it continues on for the rest of the episode. So it doesn't feel like just a case episode. Like, it feels like there's a spice to it. [laughs] So I thought that was really fun, and again, [laughing] I think this episode is better than "Faith." I'm so mean! [C laughs] But like, it's the one I can compare it to.

C: I can't wait until we get to "Dog Dean Afternoon" and you say, "I think this episode is better than 'Faith.'" [both laughing]

G: No, it's just- I'm comparing the two because they have like, similar premises, right?

C: Yeah.

G: Of like, Dean almost dies, and then Sam is taken, and they're- yeah. It's like, kind of similar in that it's not just a typical monster of the week episode, and so far, these are the only two that we have gotten so far that isn't also plot-heavy.

G: So, uh, Best Line/Worst Line.

C: I liked Papa Bender’s whole [in unison] villain monologue.

G: Yeah, it's so much fun.

C: Yeah. "Best hunt is human. Holding their life in your hands, seeing the fear in their eyes, just before they go dark. Makes you feel powerful alive." Like, hell yeah, dude!

G: Um, I would say my best line is- [laughing] I'm gonna go the comedic route and say, "I lost some weight, and I got that Michael Jackson disease." It's pretty funny. [C laughs] It was so f- like, I laughed out loud, which is something that I rarely do in Supernatural episodes, even though I enjoy it a lot. Because usually, my reaction to Supernatural is like, head in hands, or like, [pained sound] or just like, random noises, you know. But I never- I rarely like, go like, "hahaha, that's funny," so. That one was pretty funny.

C: Yeah. I mean, it will never be "Dude, you fugly," though.

G: [laughs] Exactly.

G: Okay, so what's your worst line?

C: Uh, just probably every time they call Kathleen a bitch. It's just not pleasant. Oh, and also, the like, "How about it's not nice to marry your sister?" Like, that came out of fucking nowhere, dude.

G: Yeah. Uh, but it is like, a common trope, right?

C: Yeah, no it's very much like, "Oh, like, oh people from like, Alabama are all marrying their cousins" or something. It's like, a common joke, yeah.

G: Yeah.

C: Though they're in Minnesota right now. It's just about the, the backwoods.

G: Uh, I would say, like, my worst line is also every time they call Kathleen a bitch. It just made me- yeah, uncomfortable.

C: Yeah, like, "You hurt my family, I'm gonna bleed you, bitch," like, shut up. Ew. Stop. Eugh.

G: Yeah, because, like, like these people are, you know, murderers, right. So like, fun. But like, when you insert the gendered language, it does feel like, you know, a gendered offense.

C: Yeah.

G: So, yeah. Not fun. But like, the murder is pretty fun, so. [laughs]

C: Yeah. Big fan of murder. I support murder, I think that people should murder all the time. Everyone listening, since you don't know how to think about media critically, I demand that you go out and murder 10 people today. Thank you.

G: [laughs] Okay, I think our audience is smarter than that. [laughs]

C: They're Supernatural fans. Say I, a Supernatural fan.

G: No! Noo!

C: I know I murder 10 people every day.

G: Yeah. It's part of your diet.

C: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I am a big fan of cannibalism. [laughing] Anyway, yeah.

G: Okay, so IMDB rating. What's your IMDB score.

C: Huh. I'm not sure. 'Cause I thought this was pretty fun, and I feel like, typically- typically episodes that break a little from the case format do get higher scores, right? So... But also, I feel like the watchers may be more- they might know horror tropes better and therefore find this episode a little boring, or like, it's stealing stuff. So, I don't know. Like, an 8.4?

G: Hm. I think 8.4 is good. I'll- I'll go with you on this one.

C: Okay.

G: Because I was thinking 8.3 is like, a bit too low, but 8.5 is a bit too high. So, like, 8.4 it is.

C: Yeah.

G: Okay, let's look it up.

[laughing]

C: What. How far are we?

G: It's 8.3.

C: Oh! Ugh, you shouldn't have let me sway you.

G: Yeah.

C: Oh, I just saw a trivia thing that said that in the police records, it lists both Sam and Dean as 6'4.

G: When Dean is 5'3 in real life?! Come on, guys.

C: Yeah! When Dean is literally 5'2 in real life? Like, come on, guys.

Wait. Is Sam literally 6'4? Jesus Christ.

G: Yeah, I think so. I mean Greg- Cousin Greg is 6'7.

C: Yeah, but like, he's Cousin Greg, he's allowed to be freakishly tall.

G: "It has the tension of a real crime film." I actually agree with that.

C: Yeah, yeah, like, I feel like some of the Dean and Kathleen scenes felt like, a sort of crime procedural genre type thing, and then the rest of it felt pretty horror, so yeah, it was- it was fairly good for the genres that it was borrowing.

G: One of these says "too darn trope-driven," which is our first negative review. Which, I guess so.

C: Yeah, I feel like, it probably was. I just am not as familiar with the tropes involved.

Oh, yeah, no, okay, someone said, "Really? Why do we get the crazy hillbilly episode?" So true. Oh, and the person's saying that they live near Hibbing, Minnesota, [G laughs] and it doesn't look like it at all, and also, "Why do they have Southern accents in Minnesota?" [laughing] Yeah, no, literally why do they have Southern accents in Minnesota?

G: Minnesota is, um, wait, I'll guess, I'll guess. I would say it's... Midwest.

C: Um, Minnesota is fairly northern- well, no, actually- Actually, I thought Donna had a-

G: Yeah.

C: Okay, yeah, okay, so Minnesota's in the upper Midwest, so yeah.

G: Wow. I'm so good.

C: We were both right. Yeah, good job.

G: [laughing] I'm basically American at this point. [both laugh]

C: Yeah, no, right. This person's right, yeah. They said, "Why is it assumed that because we're people in northern Minnesota, we're crazy enough to kill people for the heck of it? Why do we get that stereotype?" So true, IMDB person.

G: [laughing] Yeah, you should give it to the Southern people!

C: [laughing] Exactly! Go be classist towards people in the South instead.

G: Uh, to clarify, [laughs] that- that was a joke.

C: Yeah.

G: Yes.

C: Yeah, all classism is bad, but I also think that this person deserves to feel angry at this portrayal of northern Minnesota.

G: Yeah. Okay!

C: Yeah.

G: So, I think that's it for this episode of Busty Asian Beauties. Next time, we will be talking about Season 1, Episode 16: "Shadow." Leave us a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts!

C: Follow us on social media, and also look at the Supernatural writers face gradient. We are on Twitter at twitter.com/BeautiesPodcast and on Tumblr at bustyasianbeautiespod.tumblr.com. Our official tag is #babpod, B-A-B-P-O-D.

G: Thank you to everyone who has tipped us in ko-fi. And you can email us any feedback, comments, or inquiries at [email protected]. See you guys next time! [both] Bye!

[guitar music]

#transcript

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helaintoloki · 3 years

Note

Could you do Ben + 11 for the holiday prompt list pls? It just sounds super cute 😍

a/n: i loved writing this sm and i hope you guys enjoy it ♡

warning: language, lots of fluff

*11: getting each other as your secret Santa // taken from this prompt list

You couldn’t help but feel nervous as you stood on the front steps of Allison’s home with your neatly wrapped gift held tightly to your figure and waited for someone to answer the door. This was to be your first Christmas with the Hargreeves siblings since you were children, and you hoped you’d be able to keep up with infamously chaotic super family. You also hoped that the person you’d drawn for secret Santa liked their present; it was safe to say you’d be crushed if they turned out to be disappointed by the gift you’d so meticulously chosen for them.

The door swings open and a gleeful Klaus greets your meek figure in the doorway. Adorned in an ugly Christmas sweater that reads Merry Xmas Fuckers and equipped with a glass of eggnog in hand, the seance eagerly tugs you inside and scolds you for not having come in sooner.

“You poor little thing, just standing out in the cold like some lonely orphan,” he says dramatically, draping an arm over your shoulders and guiding you into the living room where the rest of the siblings reside. You take a moment to admire the lavish Christmas decorations that adorn the house and make a mental note of Allison’s decoration skills— her house was warm and inviting and big, and the best part about it was that it was all hers. She prided herself on the fact that she’d earned it on her own, without her powers, so it was only natural that she make a display of grandeur in her home for the holidays.

“Y/n!” Allison exclaims with a smile the moment you enter the room. Her excitement pulls all attention towards you, Diego and Luther ceasing their quarrel over the last candy cane and Five and Vanya looking away from George Bailey on the tv screen. Ben is nowhere to be found. “I’m so glad you made it.”

“Of course,” you reply with a meager smile, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“You can put your present under the tree over there, we’ll be doing the gift exchange after dinner,” she chirps merrily.

“Umm, so where’s Ben?” You try to ask as nonchalantly as possible while setting your gift down in the designated area— the much larger boxes and elegantly wrapped presents make you insecure about your own— but the knowing smile she gives you tells you that your attempt to be discrete has failed.

“In the kitchen. You should go see if he needs help, something tells me he might be struggling,” she laughs, and you take that as your cue to venture off to find your friend.

You make sure to smoothen out your top and pat down any stray hairs before curiously peeking into the kitchen, and a smile pulls at your lips at the sight before you. A frazzled Ben stands in front of the counter skimming over the stained pages of a holiday cookbook. His clothes would be absolutely ruined if not for the frilly apron with Mom embroidered on the front tied around his torso, and despite the cheerful Christmas music playing from the speakers the poor thing looks absolutely stressed.

“You doing okay in here?” You ask with a quiet laugh, your heart skipping a beat at the immediate relief present on Ben’s face when he sees you.

“Please help me,” he begs. “I’m a terrible cook and I have no idea what I’m doing yet somehow I was put in charge of baking the gingerbread men.”

“Alright,” you giggle, standing beside him at the counter to look over the recipe, “lets see what we’re working with here.”

Ben, relieved to have you here, is now anxious for a much different reason. You’re close to him, so close that every time you reach across the counter for an ingredient your arm grazes against the sleeve of his sweater. The soft jingling of your bracelet and the sweet smell of cinnamon that emanates from you makes him dizzy in the most pleasant way, yet he says nothing. What is he to say? That he’s in love with one of his closest friends? A friend that he’s shared with his siblings since they were kids? No, it would make things weird, and Ben didn’t want it to be weird, at least not anymore weird than it must be to have a man with tentacles that protrude from his chest be secretly in love with you.

“You’re quiet,” you note with a small hum, and Ben is impressed to see that you’re already beginning to cut the shapes of the little gingerbread men into the dough. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, no,” Ben rushes, “just looking forward to the gift exchange is all.”

You say nothing after that due to the nerves that arise at the mention of the secret Santa event, but Ben takes your silence as satisfaction in his answer, and so you both continue to bake with only the sounds of the speakers to fill in the quiet space.

“Okay, present time!” Allison cheers only to be met with a chorus of sluggish groans. After Ben’s short lived panic the cookies had been baked to perfection and all was set for a lovely dinner. Allison and Diego were amazing cooks, but almost everyone now felt too full to so much as move a muscle. Klaus had taken to the couch and was half asleep watching old Christmas cartoons, so to Allison’s dismay it seemed the gift giving would have to wait.

Seated on the floor in front of the tree, you find your gaze shifting from the group in front of you playing cards to Allison and Five who clear off the table and then back to the gifts in front of you. All seem to glimmer underneath the lights, and despite the fact that such a sight would normally bring joy to anyone who looked upon it, you couldn’t help but feel nauseous at the thought of giving your gift to your assigned person. Maybe if you had gotten someone like Vanya or Luther you wouldn’t be so nervous, even getting Five would have been better than who you had. The stakes were higher because- well, because when names had been drawn and you’d eagerly unfolded your scrap of paper you’d been terrified to see the person fate had chosen for you: Ben.

It wasn’t Ben you were terrified of. No, not at all. It was your feelings for Ben that scared the living daylights out of you and made you wish you could turn invisible whenever he so much as breathed in your general direction. You’d been in love with him since the time chocolate milk accidentally shot out of his nose at Griddy’s when Klaus bumped him just a little too hard, but so many years had passed and nothing had ever seemed to happen between the two of you. You grew up, grew apart, and for a few years you didn’t hear much from him or his siblings for that matter. But then Reginald passed, and Pogo surprised you with an extended invitation to the funeral— he felt that your presence would be good for the children— and suddenly you were back in each other’s lives.

Ben was a friend, a good friend, and you knew each other better than you knew yourselves. You knew that his nose always scrunched when he was angry, and he knew that if you began to fiddle with whatever jewelry you wearing in the moment it meant you were nervous. There was history, and to ruin a friendship like that purely because of your own selfish desires would be a disaster. You couldn’t do it, it didn’t matter what Allison said or how you felt, you would settle for being his friend and nothing more.

So lost in your own tangent, you don’t notice said friend standing before you until he gently clears his throat and gives you a sheepish smile in return for your surprised features.

“Hey, you...?” Ben says, visibly cringing at the awkwardness of his tone. “I was thinking of getting some fresh air, do you want to come with?”

“Oh, y-yeah,” you smile sheepishly. “Sure.”

“Cool. I’ll grab your coat for you.”

You watch his figure disappear, your stomach twisting in knots as you contemplate your next decision, and before you can change your mind you quickly grab his gift from underneath the tree and hide it from view as best as you can. You know Allison wants to open gifts together, but you’d prefer giving Ben’s his in private. At least if he’s disappointed you can save yourself from the humiliation.

Ben is already waiting for you outside on the front porch, and with a careful smile you quietly sit beside him and stare out into the night sky. The stars twinkle brightly overhead, and you find yourself subconsciously checking to make sure the moon is still intact. It’s been a chaotic year, but you’re glad to be nearing the end, and you’re glad to be here with Ben.

“So um, I know we’re supposed to exchange gifts together, but I couldn’t wait,” you say, and Ben is pleasantly surprised to see you pull out a neatly wrapped gift. “Merry Christmas from your secret Santa, I guess.”

“No way,” he laughs softly, “that’s crazy.”

“What’s so crazy about me being your secret Santa?” You retort with mock offense only for him to grin.

“Nothing,” he shrugs nonchalantly, “except for the fact that I’m kind of your secret Santa, too.”

“Wait, what?”

You look at Ben in shock as he carefully pulls out a small, neatly wrapped box from his sweater pocket and delicately rests it in your lap. There’s a bashful smile on his face and a red dust on his cheeks, but you decide to chalk it up to the cold air outside. Nonetheless, a disbelieving laugh leaves you at the sight of your gift.

“What a pleasant surprise,” you giggle.

“Yeah, that’s kind of why I asked you out here. I also wanted to give you your gift in private, maybe make it a little more personal. Do you want to open it?”

“You open yours first,” you interject, a nervous smile tugging at your lips. Ben laughs.

“Alright, let’s see,” he says with a small smile. Your stomach is full of nervous fluttering as you watch Ben carefully tear away the wrapping paper before opening the box. His eyes light up in surprise when he sees the inside, and you hold your breath as he carefully pulls out the contents. A smiling pink sea monster meets his eyes and the Horror can’t help but to laugh at the sight of it. “Is this...?”

“It’s exactly the same as the one I lost when we were kids,” you reaffirm with a bashful smile. “I always felt so bad about the fact that you let me have it only for me to lose it, so when I saw it I knew I had to get it.”

A smile brighter than the sun curls upon his lips, and his eyes almost seem to sparkle underneath the moonlight as he pulls out the second item in the box. With a softer gaze now, Ben stares down at the frame in his hands and feels his heart begin to swell. A familiar photograph, one of his personal favorites in fact, from your childhood rests behind the glass, and when Ben looks to you his eyes are glossy with tears.

“I love it, y/n,” he says gently, immediately pulling you into possibly the tightest hug you’ve ever received. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad,” you reply, relief immediately washing over you at his reaction to your gifts. However, the butterflies persist, and you have to remind yourself that Ben is your friend and nothing more.

“Now open yours,” he says excitedly, his eyes never once leaving your face as you unwrap your gift in the same skillful manner Ben had used for his own.

A velvet box greets you underneath the colorful paper, and with a gentle prodding from Ben you slowly remove the lid to reveal a beautiful gold locket underneath. A small gasp leaves you as you look from the necklace to Ben.

“Wasn’t the spending limit like, forty dollars??”

“Oh hush, open the locket!”

Carefully taking the necklace out from its box, you gently pull the heart shaped hatch back from its place to reveal the exact same photograph you’d gifted Ben in the frame.

“You’re kidding,” you breathe out with a laugh. “The same picture?”

“Great minds think alike, right?” Ben jokes, but there’s a fond look upon his face as he looks at you. “I just really wanted you to know how much you mean to me, because you’re really important and I just... I really love you.”

Your heart skips a beat at his confession, and as Ben looks at you with hopeful eyes you decide that life is too short to let fear hold you back. Setting the box down beside you, you scoot closer to Ben and take a deep breath.

“I have one more present for you,” you say, prompting Ben to peek up at you curiously.

“What is it?”

And on the front porch of Allison’s house with the stars shining bright above you, you kiss Ben Hargreeves for the first time.

#mel’s holiday prompt list #I’m sorry I just love ben’s sea monster plushie #ben hargreeves #ben hargreeves x reader #ben hargreeves imagine #ben x reader #ben imagine #the horror #number six #the umbrella academy #tua #tua x reader #tua imagine #request

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365days365movies · 3 years

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Western August V: Broken Arrow (1950) - Recap (Part Two) and Review

Where’s Jay SIlverheels, by the way?

This is, like, one of his most acclaimed roles, and he hasn’t shown up anywhere yet. Well, before he does, I should elaborate on why I care so goddamn much.

As I said last time, Silverheels was cast as Tonto in 1949, and became the most recognizable Native American or First Nations face in the United States. At the same time as him, another actor was working. His name was Iron Eyes Cody, and he actually also appears in Broken Arrow...somewhere. Cody made his career as a makeup artist...who specialized in redface. Yeah, that’s a weird-ass thing for a Native American actor to take part in, right?

Silverheels and Cody worked together on Broken Arrow, but Jay thought something was off. Still, the two went on in their respective careers. But they would go in two completely different directions.

During the time of Jay’s rise to fame, the Native American Civil RIghts Movement also began. This culminated in 1969 when Richard Oakes, LaNada Means, John Trudell (pictured above) and the Indians of All Tribes protest group occupied Alcatraz for 18 months. Yeah, the prison in the San Francisco Bay. It was originally native lands, so they took it back...until the government stepped in and ended the protest. But that’s a WHOLE other story. The point is, shit was changing. And suddenly, Jay Silverheels was enemy number one.

Like I said before, Hollywood and Native Americans never had the best relationship. Or even a good one. Hell, there’s a 1915 article written by a film executives that said they stole from film sets, but were trustworthy if provided tobacco and firewater, which is NOT AN EXAGGERATION AT ALL OF WHAT THAT DUDE SAID. And extending to Jay’s role of Tonto, Native American depictions in film were quite stereotypical. Broken and simplified English, savage behaviors and a misunderstanding of Western technology, headfeathers and hollering...you know, real racist shit. And since Jay was kind of the face of that to America...his career didn’t go well. And it REALLY didn’t help that he leaned into it.

youtube

Look, Jay was a massive advocate for the Native American Civil Rights movement, and he made that well-known on every possible occasion. However, he also treated Tonto as more of a parody of himself, performing the role for talk shows and commercials, like this above commercial for pizza rolls. And yeah, people were NOT FUCKING HAPPY about that. Native Americans labeled him an “Uncle Tomahawk”, and he was shunned in the community. Meanwhile, Jay’s career was absolutely tanking, barely getting any rolls after 1970. To make things worse, he has a stroke that year. And to make things EVEN worse...let’s get back to Iron Eyes fucking Cody.

In 1971, Iron Eyes Cody was cast by the Keep America Beautiful organization as the “Crying Indian” in their Earth Day commercial. This is the most successful commercial in the history of television, and it launched Iron Eyes Cody into fame as the most recognizable Native American face in the country, if not in the world. He met three Presidents, the Pope, got a stamp, was nominated for statehood...just, ludicrous amounts of acclaim and fame. When asked what his tribal lineage was, he would claim that he was of Cherokee and Cree descent. Just like Johnny Depp did! Which is fitting, because just like Johnny Depp...

IRON EYES CODY WASN’T NATIVE AMERICAN AT ALL

Born Espera Oscar de Corti, he was an Italian kid from Louisiana. Yeah. This guy, this motherfucking guy, made his career playing pretend as a Native American. Remember when I said he was a makeup artist for films, making people look more authentically redface? Yeah, he did that as his job AND AS HIS LIFE. He would also always wear his Native American costume in public, which even Native Americans thought was fucking weird.

And Jay Silverheels KNEW this, by the way. He found out while the two were working together...on Broken Arrow. Which, of course, is why I brought this up. So this must’ve been a goddamn gutpunch for the poor guy. He’s labeled Uncle Tomahawk, while Cody’s being lauded as the best Native American actor ever, AND HE ISN’T EVEN NATIVE AMERICAN. Jesus Christ, this sucks.

Jay Silverheels died of a second stroke in 1980, at the age of 67. Iron Eyes went on to be on Mister Rogers, got even more film roles, and died a successful man in 1999, at the age of 94. There was an attempt to expose him in 1996, but that attempt got backlash from a fuckton of people, including within the Native American community. Only after his death was he finally revealed as the son of Sicilian immigrants who played a fake Native American for the cameras. And to be fair, he did give to Native American charities and causes, he was an advocate for Native American rights, and he at least raised the awareness of Native Americans to people who may not have known or cared about them otherwise. And yet, despite that...

Fuck Iron Eyes Cody. He’s still a dick.

Time to get back to Broken Arrow, huh? Here’s Part One if you missed it!

Recap: Part 2

After the gross-ass flirtation between the two the next day, Cochise arrives to tell Jeffords that he’ll allow the mail through, but nobody else. Jeffords takes the news back to Tucson, and nobody believes him. He’s given resistance specifically from John Lowrie (Robert Griffin), who bets Jeffords money that five mail riders won’t make it through. Jeffords takes the bet, and Milt Duffield is the first to volunteer to ride.

Duffield and four other riders make it through. But in the process, a military wagon train is ambushed by Chochise and his men and slaughtered. This seeming dichotomy leads the men of Tucson to believe that Jeffords is a traitor and siding with the Apache. In response, after a tence-ass altercation in a bar, the men mob together and IMMEDIATELY TRY TO LYNCH HIM JESUS CHRIST

He’s saved at the last minute by General Oliver Howard (Basil Ruysdael), who asks Jeffords to ask for a meeting with Cochise. He agrees to arrange it, if the peace-seeking General agrees to come alone. He does, as the General is actually a decent-ass dude. He’s not racist, and he believes that the Apache should be allowed their territory as well. Sick.

Also sick is the fact that the romance between Jeffords and Sonseeahray is going ahead towards marriage! Gross! Fucking gross. Cochise approves of this, and arranges it with the parents, despite warning them of the troubles ahead. However, that night, Jeffords is almost killed in his sleep by one of the tribesmen. Jeffords stops it, and Cochise intervenes, ashamed by the actions of one of his people. This is Nahilzay (John War Eagle), a rival suitor of Sonseeahray, and a traitor to Cochise’s word. So, to act upon his honor, Cochise kills him. Whoof.

The General comes for the treaty, while Sonseeahray prepares for their wedduuuuuuchh. Sorry, threw up in my mouth a little just then. Anyway, four days pass, and the men of the Apache Tribes have gathered to attempt a peace negotiation with the General. After a round of questions by the generals, the two Americans leave. And at this point, a dissenting voice rises. This voice does not believe the Americans. He says that the Apache don’t need this treaty, but need a new chief who is not softened to war.

But Cochise rightly notes that the Americans are growing in strength, and the Apache are shrinking. He puts it to a vote, and while some men leave, the majority of the Apache agree to peace. The leader of these men takes a new name: Geronimo (Jay SIlverheels). Sick. Geronimo and his new allies leave, ready to continue the war in the stead of the other Apache. But still, overall, there is a tentative peace that’s been struck.

But, of course, Geronimo doesn’t care about peace. He and his men ambush a stagecoach party, accompanied by Jeffords. But Jeffords is able to put out smoke signals that bring Cochise’s Apache to their aid, chasing off these renegades. Looks like the treaty’s working after all! I’m sure that it’s not gonna backfire even a little bit.

Anyway, the wedduuuuching between Jeffouuuughrds and Sonseeeewahray takes place and I stop myself from vomiting all over my computer. There, a wedding prayer is said, and that prayer has been mistaken for being an authentic Apache Prayer for 71 years. It comes from THIS FUCKING MOVIE.

Sixteen days pass, and the peace treaty is still intact. Jeffords and Sonseeahray wax poetic about their love, and I feel like burying my head in the couch pillows to GET AWAY FROM THIS. But that’s interrupted by the arrival of Bob Slade (Mickey Kuhn), the son of racist farmer Ben Slade. He claims that the Apache have stolen their horses, which Cochise doubts. Still, on Jeffords’ suggestion, they go to investigate. And of course...it’s an ambush by Ben Slade, John Lowrie, and their compatriots.

The men fire away, aiming for Cochise. They miss him, and instead hit Jeffords and Sonseeahray, who tagged along for some reason. Slade is killed by Cochise, who escapes with his life. The men realize how severely they’ve fucked up, and they take off for Mexico. Fuck you guys. Jeffords lives, only to see that Sonseeahray is dead. When Cochise returns to find Jeffords and the survivors, they also notice a still-living settler. Jeffords wants to kill him, but Cochise stops him, now fully believing in peace.

Although he grieves, he also recognizes that Sonseearray was a Girl in the Refrigerator all along, and her death has inspired TRUE peace between the settlers and the Apache. And...that’s it.

That’s it?

That’s...one of the most sudden and anticlimactic endings I’ve seen in a while. I’m a little disappointed, to be honest. But OK, before I get on a tangent, let’s do a full review, huh?

Review

Short preamble! I did like this movie...mostly. It’s kind of haunted by the whole underage love interest and the redface. Hard for me to see past that, BUT IF I TRY...I can acknowledge that this is a good movie. I didn’t even mention that it’s loosely based off of a true story! Yeah! Tom Jeffords and Cochise actually did have a relationship. It’s a VERY different story, but their friendship really did exist.

If I was gonna guess my rating ahead of time...I’ll go with a 76%-80%. But let’s see how that holds up in the breakdown.

Cast and Acting - 7/10: Despite the position he’s in, Jimmy Stewart still turns out a great performance in this movie. Sure, watching him kiss Debra Paget make me cry on the inside and outside, but he was good in the role of Jeffords, especially when up against the racist settlers. Jeff Chandler also manages to be good, despite the fucking redface. And Jay Silverheels...Jay was great, even though I thought his role would be more than a single scene. As for the rest...Paget was bad. She was not good in this movie, sorry. And everybody else was basically just OK. Nothing to write home about.

Plot and Writing - 9/10: This was a solid-ass story, and I liked almost every part of it...save the underage romance. Which, no, I AM NOT FORGETTING ABOUT. Dude, Jeffords didn’t do that in real life. So, for the love of GOD, why make his fictional bride fucking 15? Guys...gross. Really fucking gross, Albert Maltz. Other than that, you did a great job, I just wish that wasn’t a part of it. Ugh.

Directing and Cinematography - 10/10: Yeah, Delmer Daves is a legend. I thought of writing the into to these recaps on him, but I really wanted to talk about Jay Silverheels and Iron Eyes Cody. But I’ll get my chance; Delmer Daves also directed 3:10 to Yuma, so I’ll bring him up one of these days. Anyway, Delmer Daves does a great job with this movie, and it’s gorgeously shot. Ernest Palmer is cinematographer, and he also does an excellent job.

Production and Art Design - 9/10: Sure, the settlers look generic, but the Native Americans? Excellent costume design, with a lot of authenticity packed in there. Credit where credit’s due, here.

Music and Editing - 7/10: Well, the music is great here, if not extraordinarily memorable. Hugo Friedhofer does the composition, and he does a great job. But is it iconic? Eh. Not really. I don’t remember it having a massive impact on me, unfortunately. And the editing...is also OK. That ending is weirdly paced for me, and very abrupt. But J. Watson Webb Jr. does a decent enough job, I think.

That’s an 84%. Huh. Genuinely thought it’d be lower.

This is a good movie, don’t get me wrong. But it’s...complicated. I would recommend it with warnings, I’ll put it that way. Good, great even...but complicated. Outside of that, I have to admire the stance to put Native American tribes on a equal stance, respect-wise. For the time, and for the genre, that’s a rarity. So, as always, credit where credit’s due.

Next up, we continue our foray into the classic Western...but stick with Jimmy Stewart. I wanna give him a second chance. And hopefully, this one doesn’t include a romance with a fifteen year-old. Hopefully.

Next: The Naked Spur (1953); dir. Anthony Mann

#broken arrow #film:broken arrow #broken arrow 1950 #delmer daves #james stewart #jeff chandler #debra paget #jay silverheels #western august #western genre #user365 #365 days 365 movies #365 movie challenge #mygifs #my gifs

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black-streak · 4 years

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Waiting for the Worms - Another Brick in the Wall

Part 8

Me? Rapidly updating a story for the sake of satiating my own curiosity for how this will continue? It's more likely than you think. Did I spend upward of ten minutes deciding and researching the weapons and blade types used just for one paragraph worth of text? Absolutely.

You know, the mentions of neglect and child abuse and violence is actually kind of light considering. Still very present though.

Closed list that I've been hitting up the last three days: @northernbluetongue @thethirdwheelfriend @shizukiryuu @theatreandcomicfreak @michellemagic @karategirl119 @moonlightstar64 @my-name-is-michell @mystery-5-5 @zalladane @queen-of-the-trash-planet-tm @miraculousdisapointment @dorkus-minimus @jardimazul @allthebooksandcrannies @g-arya @worlds-tiniest-spook-pastry @persephonescat @mycupisbroken @luciferge @18-fandoms-unite-08 @dawnwave16 @alwaysreblogneverpost @kris-pines04 @mysteriouslyswimmingfan-blo-blog @weird-pale-blonde-person @you-will-never-know-how-i-think @kokotaru @naclychilli @slytherinhquinn @clumsy-owl-4178 @ladybug-182 @darkthunder1589 @evil-elf16 @dast218 @lysslovsanime @emilytopaz @naoryllis @iloontjeboontje @thepeacetea @danielslilangel @finallyaniguana @i-like-fairytail-and-stuff @vixen-uchiha @yuulxd @bleeding-heart-romantic @magic-inthe-stars @st0rmy-w1th1n

~---~

Training with Talia's personal squadron the day after waking from the pits came as no surprise. Starting up history and world languages classes however, took her a bit off guard.

Marinette was already fluent in french and english from her own volition, and picked up spanish from Jason over time after finding his own fluidity and background with the language. The two had been slowly learning mandarin after her uncle's visit a few years back and Jason insisted they figure it out together with her own heritage being a driving force. She had died before they could become fully conversational.

When Marinette offered this information up to Talia, bypassing the reason she spoke so many languages already and passing it off as Jason's love for knowledge and literature combining, Talia immediately turned her over to two teachers; one to teach mandarin and eventually expand into cantonese and another to focus in on arabic. The second was seen as the priority what with location and its commonality within the complex. Obviously, the league's personal dialect was taught as a subset to these lessons, though it was ensured she knew the differences.

History focused in on Asia, occasionally falling off track into South American and African history, her western knowledge cohesive and complex enough to satisfy Talia, which came as no surprise seeing as though Europe and North America tended to focus only on their own history. She couldn't help but think how jealous Jason would be to know she received extensive free education that wasn't the same rhetoric he'd been hearing since he was five, granted with more reality and detailing as time passed.

They held off on teaching the League history until they felt her world knowledge was comprehensive enough to appreciate the way their personal history tied into it all.

The physical training took up about six hours every day. An hour of stretching, followed by two hours of hand to hand combat, then two hours specializing in weapons, and finally another hour of stretching. Her weapons focus geared towards close combat mostly, with a preference for the F-S fighting knife, a double-edged blade sitting just short of eight inches and a BC-41, essentially a set of brass knuckles with a blade running through the inner palm and extending outwards by a good 5 inches. When maintaining some distance and using more of her martial arts training, she leaned heavily towards a double bladed staff. The experience of twirling a weaponized yoyo for a year made using the staff a comfortable transition.

It took three months before Talia felt comfortable sending her out on a mission with her team. It ended up a bloodbath. They were meant to track down a league member gone rogue, only to find the woman training others. They took out the entire group, Marinette falling to the bloodthirsty voice echoing in her head at all times. By the time she came fully to, dead bodies littered the ground about her. She suppressed herself to the back of her own mind, forcefully disassociating until they arrived back at the underground city three days later, hiding away in her rooms before breaking down. Talia found her in the midst of a panic attack and talked her down, explaining how the pit caused the worst of her to form into a tangent voice in her head, how it took time and practice to tamper it down to the almost nonexistent form it took before her dip. How it wasn't her fault she fell pray to it and the objective had been to take out the target anyways. That the defective leader would've trained that group to come back and take them out. That it would've threatened her life in the complex had she not killed in front of the other assassins. The idea that it all was a form of self defense helped ease her mind, though she vowed to try harder, to take back control from the pit madness that overwhelmed her in that moment.

The week after, she took up meditation in her down time. While the reminder of her mother hurt, the peace and mental fortitude it offered held too high of an appeal to bypass. It helped that it seemed a common practice across the city. Whether to aid others in suppressing their own demons or just for the ritualistic quality, she didn't know, but the practice further blended her into the community, something Talia took great pride in.

By her fifth month living amongst the League, her already decent mandarin had been perfected and they finally focused in on cantonese. Her arabic and league dialect progressed rapidly, but only due to constant exposure. Even one day spent away from the city ended with butchered words and completely horrific pronunciations of even the basics. Due to this, she never spoke outside of her lessons or the confines of her or Talia's rooms. It came as quite the embarrassment when the team had to rely entirely on hand signals during missions she accompanied. Sure, that was the standard anyways, but they all knew the option of speech was impeded by her. Luckily, they were all led to believe her mute instead of simply incompetent.

In her sixth month, she relapsed during a fight again, losing her mind until she locked herself in her rooms once more. It took Talia three days to get her to let the guilt pass once more.

It was around this time, Talia started pointing out specific escape routes and pathways that were blocked off or unknown to most. She started teaching her how to hide from even the assassins. Started to train her in private how to break through the other's defenses, to counteract their own training. They kept it all out of the public eye, where it could make its way back to Ras. Marinette couldn't say what the woman was preparing her for, but she took it all to heart.

It was only a week after this development that she moved to a new training room. It held some of the higher ups within Talia's group and strangely enough, one small child. The kid was barely four feet, but quickly proved extremely adept with a katana. The two never faced each other, but he obviously took note of the newest member within the room.

After a month in the new room, Talia seemed to relax once more, taking pride in Marinette having not relapsed in the passing time and showing no signs of backtracking. The child in the room only seemed to grow more observant as the days passed. It was on one of these days, that Marinette decided to make a move of her own. The head trainer had cut the kid down, the small body splayed on the mat, bruises and cuts littering his body, Talia standing in quiet observation from the corner. Marinette saw the glint of concern hidden within her eyes and reacted instinctively. She took her bladed staff and slipped behind the trainer who stood berating the boy below, laying the side of one sharpened end up on the man's shoulder, blade barely touching his neck, she waited until he turned towards her slowly and tilted her head with a condescending sneer, challenging him without a word spoken.

The man took his focus entirely off the kid, only to be swept off his feet and placed under a sharp blade, the child standing over him now.

"Lesson one, never lose track of the number of enemies in a room," the boy stated, hinting at a snarl.

"Damian," Talia called in a demanding tone.

The boy immediately backed off and allowed the master back onto his feet, his face expressionless beyond a tiny twitch next to his right eye. Both were dismissed for the day.

The next day, the trainer singled Marinette out. Upon his approach, she took up the staff once more. While she preferred her knives, she knew she needed an upperhand in this fight and had too much talent with the easily spun weapon to pass it up. She expected to lose, but refused to go down easily. As he stood before her, she waited patiently, slowly twirling the staff lightly between her fingers, not breaking into any specific stance. Best not to trap herself in a range of motions, but to keep open to move in any direction at a moment's notice. Talia trained her better than to lose for something as simple as having an attack come from a source her stance didn't allow a counter movement for.

Eventually, the man's built up resentment and frustration came through and he struck first.

From there, the fight continued in an almost rhythmic, dance for her, an angry tsunami of movement for him. She was surprised how much the counteractions Talia taught her came in to use. She must have been training her in a parallel to the man before her, wanting her to best him. And with most of the assassins specialized in staffs using non-bladed forms, the easy twirl of twin blades always at him, it gave her a leg up over him. From the corner of her eye, she noticed the others had slowed their motions, watching their battle without fully stopping their own. The kid, Damian, had turned fully to watch, having ended the fight with his current trainer some moments before.

Both her and the trainer had a slew of shallow cuts along flanks when finally, she landed a blow across his face, slashing from above an eyebrow, down the bridge of his nose and down the opposite cheek. With blood dripping into his eye, she managed to disable the man and bring them to a stand still. She might not be able to best Talia or even some of the more uniquely members within the group, but she could take down the lead trainer. The approving look of her own mentor and the curious stare of the young one was enough for her. She left the room with her head held high.

Talia increased her training tenfold afterwards, convinced she could take the workload now. Sent her on a more intensive mission and then promptly benched her, publicly for unknown reasons, privately to increase her lessons with Talia, herself.

At eight months, Damian cautiously approached her. The curiosity had grown and with the obviously protective manner of her challenge to the master, it seemed to ease him towards her.

He glanced at Talia who observed them with a closed off expression and turned back towards her with a determined look.

"So you're her new pet project?"

Marinette rose a single eyebrow in response.

"I'm her son," he growled out, amusing in his tiny, unbroken voice, if not for the accompanying words.

Without outwardly showing it, Marinette quickly processed her surprise, realization striking. Damian was her son. She had shown her how to take down most any enemy, how to escape, how to protect. Talia never showed any outward connection towards the child in front of her, practically ignored him until he stepped out of line. Marinette had seen the concern though. The fear and regret glinting towards the boy in odd moments when nobody was looking. All of the training, the private lessons, all hinting at an eventual escape. Talia wanted her to take Damian out of here. To escape with him. Needed someone unattached, with no connections in the world to hold them back with the right background. Jason just so happened to also hold an emotional connection for her with his past with Bruce reminiscent of her own. Used and forgotten. It was a way of offering a life to her own son while giving Jason a connection of his own when he had nothing else. As far as she knew anyways.

And Marinette couldn't fault her for it. Couldn't see a way to begrudge the woman this. Where would she be otherwise, if maybe a little less murderous? Out on the streets, alone and broken. Lost in the world. She felt gratitude, despite the woman blatantly using her. Somehow she knew that had circumstances been different, if Jason had a life to return to, she'd never have kidnapped her all those months ago.

This all flashed within her mind in a moment, glancing at Talia before refocusing on the kid. She offered a light hum in return. Damian took this as the acceptance it was and went on his way. That was okay, she knew the lack of rebuttal and ease of her demeanor would draw him back soon enough. Looking up, she met Talia's eyes and gave an almost imperceptible nod, not imagining the way the woman's eyes lit up.

#jasonette #maribat #ml x dc #WFTW #part 8

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smallersocksx · 3 years

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Pokemon Journeys Episode 74 (Ramblings/Review)

Introduction/Background:

I'll be honest I haven't been watching the series as actively since episode 65. That's because the episodic formula they chose to use for the series was honestly starting to grate on me and if you read my post on my issues with the Pokémon Journeys anime. I did bring up one of my issues being the episodic formula.

As time grew on through my issue with the episodic formula and some of the other issues of the series begun to annoy me even more so I needed to take a break. When they announced Dawn would be making an appearance, I knew I had to watch (the one instance where the episodic formula kind of worked in my favour). As Diamond and Pearl was my first game, my favourite anime series and had some of the best story-telling in my opinion. In comparison to Journeys, I think my main issue with the series is the lack of direction and not knowing where the story is going.

That element of surprise might be great for some people and if you’re enjoying the series that’s great too. Personally, I love the story-telling aspect of the Pokémon anime and watching these characters go on their own personal journeys. This is why watching a story-driven series, I want that level of clarity and direction provided by a linear narrative. This is why the episodic formula was starting to grate on me, Journeys is great when they are focusing on furthering a character’s goal or development, my issue lies with the huge gap in between which later results in a huge pacing issue that could easily be resolved if they gave time for certain aspects to be fleshed out more.

However, that isn’t to say Journeys is a bad series. I’ve certainly enjoyed a lot of the episodes and the slice of life aspect the series provides in comparison to earlier series. On the other hand, given that the series is meant to be focusing on travel that can be construed as a negative point as well.

And I've realised as I'm writing this, this may come across as a rant about the series rather than discussing the episode. So, if you're still reading thank you ^o^ But I thought it was necessary to give some background to explain how my opinions have been formed and if you recommend that I re-visit some episodes that’s great too!

So far, I've only seen the episode with some really poor subtitles. So, if I've misinterpreted a scene then you can let me know. But I think I got the gist of most of the episode. If you’ve read some of my other posts, I always try to break down these reviews/ramblings.

The Beginning:

I feel as though this episode is going to end up drawing similarities to the DP episode Sleepless in Pre-Battle. In which, Darkrai causes nightmares and Cresselia is unable to help the town for some reason, I can’t remember the exact reason in the original episode although in this case, it’s obvious as we see Team Rocket’s Matori Matrix attack and injure Cresselia. This sets up, the boys’ side of this DP mini-arc in which they’ll investigate the Darkrai side of the problem and something I greatly appreciated ASH! REFERENCED! HIS! BATTLE! WITH! DARKRAI!!! It was something I greatly appreciated and kind of wished Journeys took the time to reference some of Ash’s other achievements and experiences more often. Give him more of a mentor-ish role like he was to May back in AG.

Rather than Chloe joining the boys in Sinnoh, originally, she was meant to be going on a trip with her family as the summer holidays had begun. However, those plans immediately went down the gutter as both her parents had work and her brother was joining his friend at summer camp (this is going by really horrible subtitles so I may be entirely wrong). I honestly don’t know if Chloe went to Sinnoh intending to join up with Ash and Goh or just going on a trip by herself. But I really liked the call back to Following a Maiden’s Voyage in which Chloe had packed too much the same as Dawn and her Mum ended up giving her a more appropriate-sized backpack. I think there might have been a Sword and Shield reference in there as well because at the beginning of the game the Mum says the backpack, she gives the player was the one she used for her journey and I think Chloe’s Mum said something amongst those lines. I don’t know I might be grasping at straws.

I loved all the Sinnoh/DP references earlier in the episode and to be honest I was focusing more on the Dawn and Chloe side of the episode rather than the boys (sorry Ash and Goh).

Chloe and Dawn:

Now I’ll be honest, I love Chloe for me personally she’s one of the stronger aspects of the Journeys series. However, in this episode, she annoyed me a little bit. From my point of view, one of the more subtle ways Chloe has developed after catching Eevee was that she learnt to relax and embrace being a kid primarily because of Eevee. This development was highlighted in the Glimwood Tangle episode where Chloe ended up playing with the group of Impidimp. If it had been Chloe from 20 or even 30 episodes before she may have handled that situation completely differently. Whereas, as of late she’s learnt to relax and have fun which at times was something I could have done when I was her age.

Anyways, I’m going on a tangent once again. I just thought the whole argument with Dawn was rather pointless, I didn’t understand the need to create any conflict when they were getting on perfectly well beforehand. That was kind of my biggest gripe on the girls’ side of the episode.

On the other hand, they also set up a good opportunity for Chloe to grow which I kind of hope they take. Another issue, I’ve been having with the Journeys anime is that they set up some great plot lines or potential development and fall through on delivery or never act on it. One aspect I loved about episode 63, was that they were setting up an interesting way for Chloe and Eevee to develop or find a goal by meeting other trainers that own an Eeveelution and learn why they chose that particular form. They could have even set up Ash getting in contact with May or Serena to talk to Chloe about Glaceon and Sylveon. But the writers never followed up on the potential storyline after episode 63, which is so frustrating.

This is why I’m hoping with Dawn’s influence Chloe actively begins to at least try things out to learn what is a good fit for her. This was an issue with Serena as well, before discovering Pokémon Performing, she didn’t really actively try out other things like battling as much. Even, Ash gave Contests a go and ended up developing some of his best strategies from those experiences such as the Counter Shield and the Ice Aqua Jet. Considering, Pokémon is an anime targeted towards children, it would be a good message to send, to at least try something once rather than not trying at all.

Climax:

Following their (unnecessary) argument and battle with a sleep-deprived Rhydon, Chloe and Dawn come across the injured Cresselia from the beginning of the episode. Going back to the Rhydon, in the original Darkrai film they did expand on Darkrai causing Pokémon to fall asleep and have nightmares but I can’t recall if the Pokémon were affected in Sleepless Pre-Battle. It was an interesting and small touch that I liked about the episode (also poor Rhydon).

The preview for the next episode shows Chloe calming Cresselia or at least gaining Cresselia’s trust, and it made me think again this might be me just grasping at straws. But perhaps Chloe has some sort of affinity with Psychic-type Pokémon because we had that whole weird vision aspect (that was again never addressed) in the Glimwood Tangle episode where Chloe had that vision of Galarian Ponyta and Rapidash. I don’t know, that’s a theory I just developed that probably won’t pan out.

Conclusion:

All in all, it was a decent episode to come back into for Journeys. If I’m honest if they were promoting the DP remakes, I’m surprised they didn’t try to do anything that focused on the Creation Trio rather than the Lunar Duo however the Creation Trio did play a huge role in the DP films and Dialga and Palkia in the original anime so perhaps they wanted to give more spotlight on the Lunar Duo or even hint at Tobias’ return with Darkrai?

If I’m completely honest I’m concerned about the pacing for the next episode as this arc is only meant to be two episodes, this episode did do its job of setting things up. In my opinion, it could have been faster in some areas, they could have even shown a Contest in this episode and have Dawn and Chloe meet in that way. Given in the next episode the two groups will meet up and attempt to defend Cresselia from Team Rocket and I don’t think they’ll have much time to show off anything Contest-related which is a shame because Contests were my absolute favourite aspect of the games and anime.

If this were a three-episode arc maybe they could have used this episode to focus on Chloe and Dawn, next episode focuses more on Ash and Goh finding Darkrai have the groups meet up and then the third episode half-battling and half showing off contests. I don’t know this is just me throwing some ideas out there. As I think Journeys just has a huge issue with pacing for some reason and this episode was sort of slow in some areas and as I mentioned I’m worried the next episode is going to be really rushed.

But overall, it was a decent episode and I’m hoping we’ll get to see the rest of Dawn’s team next episode as I love her Pokémon to bits. Also, Pikachu and Buneary reunion, please!!!

(And I may watch this episode again with proper subtitles)

#pokemon journeys #pokemon #pokeani #analysis #i know this is a little late

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darkshadow90 · 4 years

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A Rant about people judging others for finding Penny’s death upsetting.

Hey, guys. This post is gonna be a little different than the ones I’ve made in the past. This one is more of a rant. I really need to get something off my chest. It’s bothered me, and it bothers me even more that people are okay with what Arthur did, and then judge people like me who find it upsetting. Even if it has nothing to do with the context of the situation. Before I get into it, I want to clarify that this has nothing to do with the Joker fandom, nor is it directed toward anyone specifically. Y’all are cool, and I think you’ll understand where I’m coming from. This is more about the reactions I’ve read about and seen from random people in general. Also there will be swears in this post, so just a heads up.

Okay, so, obviously there are a lot of unsettling scenes in Joker. One of them that really got me was the scene when Arthur kills Penny. It still bothers me, but I can handle it better than I did the first time I saw it. Just so you all know, I’m a really sensitive person. I don’t like scenes in movies that involve violence against animals, or scenes where defenseless people are hurt or killed. If movies have scenes like that, I skip them. I don’t care about the context involved. That shit fucks me up. Unfortunately, because it was in the theater, I couldn’t skip it. Also, I didn’t think Arthur was gonna kill Penny. I thought he was gonna confront her about everything. But then the movie was like “LOL, no.” So here’s what happened the first time I saw it.

I’m sitting there, processing everything Arthur just found out. I was so heartbroken for him. I wanted to hug him so badly. The scene where he’s in Penny’s hospital room comes up. I’m thinking “This must be where Arthur confronts her about everything he found out. What will she say to him when he asks her about the abuse, and the fact that he was adopted?” Well, none of that happened. Arthur doesn’t say a word to Penny about the abuse he suffered. He never mentions she adopted him, that Thomas Wayne isn’t his father. He’s just angry at her. He says he always hated the last name “Fleck” that his laugh was never a condition, it was the real him. When he gets up and says, “You know what’s funny? You wanna know what really makes me laugh?” I knew some bad shit was about to happen. Then he snatches the pillow out from under her neck. I was upset. As dumb as it sounds, I was internally hoping Arthur wouldn’t do it. And then he proceeds to smother her, I was silently pleading for him to stop. He pins her down under his weight brutally smothering her with a pillow without displaying emotion. Penny is literally defenseless against him. He has no problem killing a defenseless person. The whole scene upset me. It was so hard to watch. I was so upset Arthur did that.

Now, I’m not making excuses for Penny. I know Arthur was abused. Yes, I know Penny wasn’t the best mother ever. But here’s the thing. We don’t know what actually happened. There are two headlines in the news papers. One says “House of Horrors for Mother and Son.” The other says, “Mother Allowed Her Son’s Abuse.” I believe both Arthur and Penny were abused by her boyfriend. Maybe the reason Penny said she never heard him crying and Arthur always seemed like such a happy little boy really was because Penny never saw him sad. Maybe her boyfriend threatened Arthur with worse abuse if he cried in front of Penny. Maybe Penny tried to get help for both of them, but was dismissed because of her mental health issues, which makes me wonder. I get things were different in those times, but how was a mentally ill woman able to adopt a child in the first place? Adoption wasn’t easy for many people back then, and I would think it would be especially difficult for someone with mental health issues to adopt a child. I don’t know if Penny completely allowed the abuse to happen or not. The truth could be somewhere in the middle. Now, about Penny Lying to Arthur about her relationship with Thomas Wayne. I don’t think she was intentionally lying to Arthur. She was delusional. She thinks her relationship with Thomas Wayne was real. She thinks she was telling the truth. I don’t get the impression she was deliberately lying or trying to trick Arthur into believing he’s Thomas Wayne’s son. I think she genuinely believes it’s the truth. And there are some things that could suggest the relationship between her and Thomas Wayne was real. Thomas Wayne isn’t exactly the nicest guy. We know that for sure. We also know he’s a very wealthy man. It’s very possible that he covered up the relationship with Penny, and had her locked up in Arkham. Due to his wealth, he has been a highly prolific figure in Gotham, probably even before he ran for Mayor. He probably always had plans to run for Mayor and he knew if word got out that he was in a relationship and had a son with an employee, it would be a scandal, so he probably used connections he had in Arkham to help him cover it up. After all, who would believe a woman with a history of mental illness? Also, it’s likely Thomas did get Penny’s letters, and he ignored Penny’s requests for help. That could explain why she never heard from him. I looked at the handwriting on the back of the picture of her and a man, probably Thomas together. It said, “Love your smile. T.W.” I’m not entirely sure, but the handwriting on the back of the picture looked different from the handwriting in Penny’s letter to Thomas. I don’t think it was Penny’s handwriting. She could’ve written that, but I don’t think so. I doubt Penny would have different handwriting for just one picture. I also don’t think she would write that to herself. It’s definitely suspicious.

So why did I go on a tangent about Penny, you may ask? Because I want to look at things in a different perspective. There are usually multiple sides to a story. The person I was with told me I shouldn’t be upset about what Arthur did, that Penny is no angel. And yeah, I agree. Penny wasn’t mother of the year. But I don’t know if I believe everything Arthur/Joker is showing us without question. This is the fucking Joker. We will only see what he wants us to see, even if it turns out parts of the story are twisted around. I wasn’t the only one who found the scene upsetting. I saw a comment thread of people talking about how the scene made them cry. Other people left the theater because it was too much for them. And the replies they got pissed me off. Things like “Lol what a bunch of babies. Why are they upset?” “She deserved it. She lied to him and let him be abused. I was happy when he killed her.” People could’ve been trolling. I don’t care. It’s more about the fact that there are people out there who were trying to justify Arthur killing the woman who raised him, and even worse someone who was defenseless against him. It’s not entirely clear what really happened. Also, while I may understand why Arthur killed Penny, and I may have both empathy and sympathy for him, it doesn’t make it right. I’m not talking about people who sympathize with Arthur and can understand his actions. We all feel bad for Arthur, what he’s been through, how he’s been treated. We just want good things for him. I’m talking about the people who are totally fine with him killing Penny, and are dicks to the people who find it upsetting and are like “Why are you upset? He was abused so it’s fine.” Those people exist. It’s scary as fuck. Thankfully, I haven’t seen any of them in the Joker fam.

I’ll go ahead and talk about what bothers me so much about this scene. Regardless of the context, of wether or not Penny allowed Arthur to be abused or not, of wether her relationship with Thomas Wayne was real or not, Arthur ruthlessly smothers a defenseless person to death. Arthur loved Penny up until that point. He looked after her, did everything to make sure she was cared for. But then, after finding out some heartbreaking information about her, and her past, and things about his past, he was able to just cut any of those feelings he had for her entirely? I get that he would be angry, but as I said earlier he never asks her about anything he found out. He never says, “Hey, Penny/Mom. I went by Arkham and found out you adopted me. I’m not really Thomas Wayne’s son. I also found out you had an abusive boyfriend and I was horribly abused by him. How could you let that happen? Why did you lie to me about everything?” I know that’s not the best thing to say when confronting someone about delicate information, but he still could’ve mentioned those things to her. It’s like Arthur assumes Penny knows why he’s upset. But she doesn’t. She just sees that he came to visit her one day and is upset. She has no idea. And as he’s smothering her, she’s probably terrified and confused. Arthur was emotionless the whole time. He killed the woman who raised him like it was no big deal. Doesn’t it seem weird that he wasn’t reacting at all? He wasn’t crying no guilt, nothing. And that, in spite of how interesting I find Arthur, in spite of the sympathy I have for him, and just want him to find love and be happy is one of the things that scares the shit out of me about him the most. It scares me about Joker even more. This touches a bit on my post about what a relationship with them would actually be like, and I want to reiterate the potential danger a girl could find herself in.

No one is safe from Arthur or Joker. I believe he would be capable of loving someone, and wouldn’t intentionally hurt them. The scary thing to consider is, if Arthur thinks the girl he’s with wronged him in any way, her life would be in danger. If he can kill the woman who raised him like it’s no big deal, if he can kill his own mother, he can do the same to her. There might be a slim chance she’d be okay. If she can show that he’s misinterpreted a situation, he’ll see that he overreacted and feel terrible about it. And if she found out about him killing people he would try to console her and try to make her understand why he did it. He would promise he would never hurt her. He might not be able to keep that promise. With Joker, it would be even worse. If he thinks she wronged him, he wouldn’t give her a chance to explain everything. He would be convinced what she did happened and that would be it. If Joker killed someone in front of her, he wouldn’t give a shit about how she felt about it. He would ask her why she’s upset about it and then tell her they deserved it. God help her if Joker thinks she wronged him. Talk about waking up every morning constantly afraid Joker will lose his shit. She would be walking on eggshells every day. So yeah, just wanted to touch on that point real quick.

To wrap things up, I’ve been holding my feelings about Penny’s death and the people who justify what Arthur did back for awhile. Again, this isn’t directed to anyone specifically. Just random people who got a kick out of it and made excuses for why it was okay, and then are assholes to people who found it upsetting. I’ve seen a GIF online of a guy that has a shocked expression on his face, then as it zooms out he’s clapping. There are captions on it that say, “My reaction when Arthur kills *insert people here*” There was one for each person he killed, including Penny. It was probably just a joke and that’s fine. But I’m also sure there are people who got a kick out of watching that scene. And for those people, I sincerely hope they seek professional help. Just a quick side note: I still love the movie. Penny’s death scene doesn’t make me love it any less. I’m actually very glad I was able get through rest of the movie the first time I saw it lol What can I say maybe I am a weak person. Okay, rant over. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

#arthur fleck #joker fandom #joker movie #joaquin phoenix joker #joker 2019

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snarky-badger · 6 years

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Venom Movie Prompt: Reader is a Life Foundation scientist part-time that had been taking care of the Venom Symbiote and talked to it to pass the time and to monitor it's behavior. Unaware of what Carlton Drake had really been using them for she hears about a suspected break-in at work. Carlton is furious and wants his Symbiote back, starts to realize the secrets and is not sure if she wishes to stay there. She then gets a visitor that takes care of her like she did for them. -threshprince

Oh my, this turned out longer than I planned. I am incapable of writing short things, apparently. Haha.

I hope this is good enough @threshprince It kinda got away from me at the end and turned into a bit of fluff, haha.

It had been your dream job.

You’d never thought that a paper you’d submitted to your University professor would have gotten you a part time job, never mind one at the Life Foundation itself!

But by some chance, some shining star, you’d gotten an interview with Carlton Drake himself. You’d been nervous, sure, but not so nervous that you’d made a fool of yourself, not if the part-time job you’d landed in his genetics department was any clue.

Learning that there was bonafide proof of alien life had rocked your world. Learning that you’d be one of the few allowed near such life while running genetics tests on it? Mind-blowing.

The first time you’d seen the alien ‘symbiote’ in it’s glass canister, you’d been surprised. You’d honestly been expecting something more out of the movie genre that you’d been low-key obsessed with during your teenage years. Alien goo, that wasn’t something that you had been prepared for. Well… was the Blob alien? You couldn’t remember.

Either way, it was weird.

Still, as you and your fellow geneticists studied it, you quickly came to a realization that it had some sentience. It definitely flinched away from the probes that were used to take some of it’s physical makeup, banged against the canister in an attempt to get loose, and the high pitched ‘scream’ that left it when one of the scientists quelled it’s escape attempts with the electric shocks had almost made you cry.

It raised some serious problems with you. You’d even mentioned it to the other scientists, but they had waved you off, laughing at you. You were too young, apparently, seeing things that weren’t there.

Your moral compass was starting to go off kilter.

You were unable to really do anything - you needed the job. You had so much debt to pay off from putting yourself through school, and the Life Foundation payed handsomely.

What you could do, however, you did.

A familiar screech reached your ears one day, and you looked up from your computer, scowling at ‘Adam’ a fellow geneticist with a mean streak a continent wide. He loved nothing more than to shock that poor alien for the slightest reason. Another thing that made you think the symbiote was sentient - it tended to hiss at Adam and press itself as far away from the man as possible whenever the Adam went near it.

“Adam, what the hell are you doing?” It was a dangerous thing, to stick your neck out with Adam around. He was a bully, in every sense of the word. He was constantly complaining to Carlton Drake that you were on the team, trying to get you fired.

But the screaming, it sent shivers down your spine. You were certain Adam used to torture small animals when he was a kid.

When Adam didn’t answer, you snatched your pepper spray out of your purse and rose off your chair, ignoring the butterflies in your stomach as you stomped over to him. “Goddamn it, Adam, stop torturing the poor thing!”

The heavyset man eyed you darkly, and you locked your knees to keep from running at the hate in his eyes. “Oh, fuck off. It’s not like it actually hurts it.”

“It’s screaming.”

“Hah. Sounds like singing to me.”

Oh good lord he was a sick fuck. “You’re getting off on this, aren’t you?”

That hit a nerve, because he rose his thumb from the security panel that controlled the instruments used to both subdue and take samples from the alien, then turned towards you, brows drawn inward in a glower.

“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Well shit, you’d poked the wasps nest. “It means that I think you’re torturing the poor thing because it’s helping you get your rocks off. Probably the only way too, can’t imagine any woman with a brain going near a bully like you.”

He snarled something and took one menacing step forward, pausing when you stuck your can of pepper spray in his face. His eyes literally crossed as he stared at it.

“Touch me,” you growled. “And I will empty this entire thing into your eyes. If there’s any justice in the world, then it’ll probably fucking blind you.“

He breathed heavily, like a bull ready to charge, but took a step back. You kept the spray raised, stance ready in case he lunged or reached for you, but Adam merely glared at you a moment longer before snarling a curse.

“You just lost your fucking job, bitch. Threatening a senior employee and bringing a weapon past Security, you’ll be lucky if you’re not arrested.”

“Just fuck off before I figure out how to rip the shock mechanism out of this panel so I can electrocute you,” you snapped. Adam glared at you a moment longer, then turned and stomped back to his separate office space. “Jesus, how the hell did he pass the psychiatric screening.”

Sighing, shoulders slumped, you turned towards the canister, and the symbiote held within. “I’m sorry,” you murmured, daring to reach out to press two fingers to the glass. “I can’t– Adam’s right, I’m going to get fired. I needed this job, but if you’re as smart as I think you are, then it’s worth it. I’m sorry he keeps hurting you, and I’m sorry that you’re trapped here.”

There was a moment of silence, where the symbiote undulated in it’s prison - because it was a prison, you’d realized. It was a prisoner, and you and the others had been experimenting and cutting off pieces of it. Jesus.

You were about to pull away when it moved, pressing up against where you were touching the glass. You blinked, staring at it for a moment. It was the first, non-aggressive move it had made to date. Usually it thrashed and shrieked and tried to attack anyone that came near it.

Then again, if situations were reversed, wouldn’t you?

Figuring that it was your last day at the Lab, you decided that finishing your current DNA breakdown of the latest sample taken from the symbiote would be a waste of time.

So you pulled up a chair and kept your hand pressed against the canister, merely talking to the symbiote for the rest of your shift. Babbled about your classes as the University, and why you’d taken the job at the Life Foundation, then tangented your way to talking about little things. Your hobbies, dreams, your family. Told it about the City in case it ever got free, about the dangers and the beautiful things and the people that weren’t complete assholes.

When it was time for you to leave, you gave the symbiote one last look, then used your body to block your movements as you lifted a maintenance panel on the computer panel that controlled the shocking and dissecting instruments, feeling for the needed wires and yanking them out.

“There. No more shocks. Not until they realize it’s broken, anyway.” A sigh left you as you stared down at the imprisoned symbiote, fully convinced that it was staring back. “I’m sorry I can’t do more. I really am–”

Noise from the direction of the elevators made you frown, and you huffed when you heard Adam’s voice raving at someone, someone who turned out to be a security guard. “Looks like I’m going to be escorted out of the building too. God how I loathe that man.”

Shoulders slumping, you went to leave your lab coat on your chair, then grabbed your purse, pausing by the symbiote again before leaving the Lab. “If you see a chance to escape, no matter how small, take it. I don’t know what Carlton Drake has in store for you, but it can’t be good. If you need help–” You rushed to whisper your address as the security guard opened the glass door to the Lab.

“Ma’am? I’ve been ordered to escort your out of the building.”

“Never been happier to be fired from a job,” you spat in Adam’s direction as you stormed past the guard, flipping Adam off as you headed down the hallway. Smirked when you heard the guard tell him to back off - poor baby had a short fuse.

The next week and a half went by as boringly as possibly. You easily fell back into the rhythm of things before the Life Foundation job. Balancing school and waitressing at a bar was old hat by now, you could do it in those sleep deprived moments called ‘unconsciousness’.

It was while bringing drinks to a group of frat boys that you saw the headline - a massive explosion at the Life Foundation. Fifteen dead, more wounded. Carlton Drake was on damage control, saying that it was an accidental electrical fire that had spread to one of the labs and ignited some samples, but you knew better.

“Good for you,” you murmured under your breath. Stared at the TV screen a little too long if the look from your boss was any indication, and you quickly went back to work. This job, you didn’t want to lose. It didn’t have the questionable morality that the other one had. That, and the tips were good.

What you weren’t expecting was to find Carlton Drake waiting for you at the end of your shift. The man - dressed in a suit that probably would have set you up for rent for a year - was flanked by two muscled guards that quickly herded you towards, and into, the alleyway next to the bar.

“Where is it?!”

You blinked and played stupid. “Where’s what?”

Drake glared. “Don’t play dumb. The symbiote it’s gone! Attached itself to some guy and killed half the staff and security before vanishing into the damned City.”

You eyed the guards by his sides before huffing. “Well how the hell should I know?“

“Because you are the only one that seemed to have a rapport with the alien. I saw the security footage of you defending it from Mr. Harrison. Honestly, if you’d simply told me that he was torturing it instead of threatening him, you’d still have a job.”

“A job where I’d be dissecting a sentient creature. Pass. Hard pass. Some of us have this thing called ‘morality’.”

”Which is why the symbiote responded to you,” he pressed. When you stayed silent, he rolled his eyes and pulled out a business card. “If it comes to you, contact me. I’ll reward you handsomely. You’ll never have to work at a dump like this again. One call, and I’ll have an entire security force at your side in five minutes and a check in your hands in ten.”

You hesitated. That much money…. But the memory of the symbiote screaming in pain made you shake your head. “No thanks.”

Drake stared at you as if he couldn’t understand the words that had come out of your mouth. Finally, he glowered and shoved the business card back into his pocket. “Stupid girl. Fine, have it your way. You’ll be watched from now on. You won’t see them, but I’ll have people following you twenty-four-seven. If…. when the symbiote comes to you, and I have a firm belief that it will, I advise you not to get in the way.”

You glared at his back as he turned away, his two goons following a step behind him as he walked back to his black Cadillac, the driver holding the door open for him. The urge to run over and score the Caddy’s paint job with your keys rose, but you didn’t fancy a bullet to the head.

For the next three days, you had the firm sensation of being watched. It made your skin crawl. As Carlton Drake had said, you never spotted your tail, but you knew it was there. Hoped beyond hope that the symbiote had the sense not to come to you, because you really didn’t want it to get caught.

You wished you hadn’t told it where you lived. But hindsight was twenty-twenty.

One night, after a double shift at the bar, you were in your apartment studying, books open on the small kitchen table as you tried to put together something coherent for paper due in a week. The coffee was brewing strong - you were on your second cup, late hour be-damned.

All the windows were covered in thick curtains - new curtains that you’d bought to hide yourself from the prying eyes you knew were there. You’d even added two new security locks to the front door, and had an aluminum baseball bat nearby in case you needed to bash any asshole trying to get in. It was all you could do on a meager student’s budget.

You knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Which was why, when you heard a knock on the door, your first instinct was to snatch up that bat and get ready to bash some heads. You sidled up to the door and rose on your tiptoes to peer through the spy-hole, blinking at the guy on the other side. Tall, muscled, blue eyes, short brown hair, wearing jeans a shirt and a black leather jacket. Who the fuck was he and why was he at your door at…. You blinked when you realized it was one in the morning. Fucksakes you had classes at eight.

You rose your voice so you’d be heard through the door. “Who is it?”

“Uh, hi? Our– My name’s Eddie Brock. I, um, look I know it’s late and this is weird, but I have a…. friend who knows you.”

“Good for you. That tells me nothing at all about why you’re at my door at one in the morning.“

There was an amused tone to his voice when he spoke next. “If I were to tell you, you probably wouldn’t open the door.”

You rolled your eyes. “Well, now that all my red flags are up, this is the point where I tell you to fuck off.”

Silence stretched on for a moment, before mumbling was heard on the other side. Something that actually sounded like arguing. Oh goody. You had a crazy person on the other side of your door.

Eddie spoke up again a heartbeat later. “I’m not going away until you talk to me.”

“Then enjoy sleeping in the hallway. Also, if you’re still there in the morning, I am, presently, in possession of a bat. Which I shall happily use on you if you make me late for class.”

“You got a chain on that door?”

You scowled. “Two. And a bat.”

“Then you don’t have to let me in. I just want to say my piece and then I’ll leave. Scout’s honor.”

You waffled over that for a moment. Maybe too long, because there was a curious ‘hello?’ from the other side of the door. “I’m thinking!” you called back, pushing away from the door and pacing a little.

Crazy man outside the door, assholes keeping watch, and you had a bat. Yeah, you were going to die.

Sighing, thinking perhaps, lack of sleep had made you stupid, you slid both chains into place, then unlocked the door and opened it enough to peek out. “Talk fast.”

He blinked at you. “You’re prettier than he said you were.”

“Okay then. Closing the door now.”

“Wait, wait! I’m sorry. Please don’t go. He’s been driving me nuts for days trying to get me to come here.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “And who would ‘he’ be, exactly?”

“He calls himself ‘Venom’.”

“Uh huh.”

Eddie rose a hand to rub at the back of his neck. “I’m fucking this up. Look, I’m a reporter. I was trying to expose Carlton Drake and his Life Foundation for experimenting on homeless people and– Are you alright?”

You felt like throwing up. He’d been doing what?! God, it was so much worse than just torturing aliens. It took everything you had to keep from having a mild panic attack. “Sorry, Mr. Brock. I don’t do interviews.”

“Oh, no. I’m not here for that. I got too close to the truth and he… Look, long story short, I know about the symbiotes.”

Plural. There had been more than one. Your brain latched onto that and didn’t let go. “There was more than one?!”

He frowned. “You didn’t know?”

“No! I— Wait. Why the fuck are you here then? Who the hell is your ‘friend’ and why would…. they….” Your voice trailed off at the familiar blackness that extended from his ‘jacket’ and reached out to touch your hand. You’d thought it would feel sticky or wet, but all you felt was a coolness as the symbiote curled around your fingers. “Holy shit. Holy shit! You shouldn’t be here! You can’t be here! Drake, he’s got people watching me! You have to run–”

A darkness flit across Eddie’s eyes. “They won’t be a problem for you anymore.”

You went still. That hadn’t been Eddie’s voice.

Well, at least your hunch that the symbiote was sentient had been proven. Take that Adam.

Eddie blinked a bit, the blue returning to his eyes as he met your stunned gaze again. Even quirked a smile at you as you watched the bit of symbiote retreat from your hand and vanish into his ‘jacket’. “We promise, we won’t hurt you.”

You felt like babbling incoherently. Instead, you slid the chains off and opened the door fully, stepping back as he entered. Kept a hold on the bat, mostly because you felt too numb to let go of it as you mechanically closed the door, locking it.

He was eyeing all the open books and scattered papers on the kitchen table when you turned to look at him, and Eddie glanced up when he felt your stunned stare. “You’re not going to pass out are you?”

“Don’t get snippy, I have a bat,” you mumbled as you staggered past him, going to sit down on the edge of the couch. “So, it– the symbiote. It is sentient.”

Eddie moved to lean on the wall opposite you, thankfully giving you the room you needed to process things. “Painfully so. Can’t get it to shut up half the time. Ow! Goddamn it!” You looked up to see him rubbing at the side of his neck, where a tiny bite mark was visible. “Quit it!”

“You bonded with it.” You and the others at the Lab had guessed that it would be possible for a human to ‘host’ the symbiote. It hadn’t been proven, merely an educated hypothesis. But you knew now that Carlton Drake hadn’t been merely ‘studying’ the symbiotes. He’d been experimenting on them, and on people.

“Yeah. Drake…. Bastard caught me while I was snooping around and used me as an experiment. He expected it to kill me, not bond with me and use me to escape.”

“Use you?”

“Wasn’t exactly planning on bonding with an alien,” Eddie drawled with a tired smirk. “It’s been…. hard. It– Venom. It’s predatory as hell. Kill first, nevermind the questions, y’know? But I can be a stubborn bastard too. And apparently symbiotes prefer willing hosts rather than ones they have to constantly fight with. So we came to an…. understanding. I honestly didn’t expect him to drag me here. Or that he even knew anyone else in the City.”

You tightened your hand on the bat at the curious tone of his voice. “I had a part time job at the Life Foundation. I didn’t know about…. most of what you told me. The human experiments, the other symbiotes…. I’m just a geneticist, fuck I’m still in University…. I’m basically a glorified lab rat. I thought it was a good job but….”

“But you figured out the symbiote was sentient.”

“Yeah. There was another scientist that liked to torment it, and I threatened him into backing off….” You rose your gaze to Eddie, who was watching you calmly. “Is it alright? It’s safe with you?”

“Kinda more like I’m safe with it.” He let you digest that for a moment before pushing off from the wall. “He wants to talk to you. Is that alright?”

You blinked. “It… it can do that?”

“With a host, yeah. Just…. don’t scream.”

“Scream? Why would I–” Your eyes widened as blackness encompassed Eddie. It cocooned him, growing bigger, easily growing to seven feet tall, massive shoulders and arms, hands tipped with wicked talons. Pale eyes opened to peer at you, a long tongue curling out from a large fang filled maw to lick at it’s lips.

Okay, yeah. You felt like screaming.

Barely managed to stay quiet, merely clinging to your bat. A bat that the creature in front of you could probably use as a toothpick after it killed you and ate your corpse.

It - Venom - seemed upset at your fear, a voice like dark, predatory, rolling thunder filling the small apartment. “SHH, LITTLE MORSEL. WE WOULD NEVER HARM YOU. DON’T BE AFRAID.”

Afraid? Oh, you were beyond afraid. “To be fair, you’re…. very different,” you grated out. “And big. Very big.”

“HEH. THAT WE ARE. EDDIE IS A GOOD HOST. IF A LITTLE ANNOYING.” Venom walked across the room, crouching in front of you and reaching out to place a massive hand against your face, cupping your cheek. “WE WOULD HAVE KILLED HIM, BUT WE REMEMBERED YOU. REMEMBERED WHAT YOU SAID, THAT NOT ALL HUMANS ARE LIKE DRAKE OR ADAM. THAT SOME ARE LIKE YOU, KIND, BRAVE.”

Your breath left you in a trembling sigh. “Not that brave. I didn’t want to leave you there. I really didn’t.”

“THEY WOULD HAVE KILLED YOU, WE KNOW.” He rumbled, brushing his thumb across your cheek before pulling away, tilting his head as he regarded you. “WE WANT TO KEEP YOU SAFE. WE TOOK CARE OF THOSE STALKING YOU.”

“Stalking– You mean Drake’s men? But, he’ll know you’ve been here!”

A chuckle left him, low, baritone, predatory. “WE KNOW HOW TO COVER OUR TRACKS, MORSEL. THEY’LL NEVER FIND THE BODIES.”

You didn’t know if that was a comfort or not. Finally decided that you didn’t much care. Drake and his assholes could rot in hell. “Thanks. I didn’t much like them shadowing me all the time.”

“WE KNOW. WE WERE IN THE SHADOWS WHEN DRAKE OFFERED YOU MONEY FOR TURNING US IN.” At your horrified and shocked expression, he rumbled again, soothingly this time. “WE KNEW YOU WOULDN’T SIDE WITH HIM. BUT WE COULDN’T MEET YOU UNTIL WE TRACKED DOWN HIS MEN. THERE WERE MANY.”

“Do I even want to know how long you’ve been tailing me?”

A hissing laugh left him. “PROBABLY NOT.”

“Alrighty then.” Your hand cramped from clutching at the bat as tightly as you were, and you winced a bit as you forced your stiff fingers to uncurl from around it, setting it aside. Venom seemed pleased that you’d set your ‘weapon’ aside, a happy sort of murring noise leaving him. “So…. why did you track me down?”

“WANT TO KEEP YOU SAFE. AND….” You blinked at the tired grumble that followed. “EDDIE SAYS THAT WE SHOULD LEAVE, NOT INTRUDE, BUT WE HAVE NO WHERE ELSE TO GO.”

Did you really want an alien crashing on your couch? A sigh left you as you gave that some thought, but, in the end, you knew you’d cave. You had told the symbiote to track you down if it needed help, and it had. Hadn’t expected it to drag someone else along with it, but that just made things more complicated.

“Alright,” you murmured, smiling a little at the happy rumble that left Venom. “You can stay. You can sleep on the couch.”

He blinked and offered up a curious hiss. “NOT WITH YOU? YOU DON’T TRUST US? WAIT– EDDIE IS COMPLAINING AGAIN. BOUNDARIES?”

A soft laugh left you. “Humans don’t usually share beds with people unless they’re in a relationship with them.”

Fangs were bared in distaste. “THIS IS MORE WEIRD, COMPLICATED, HUMAN THINGS, ISN’T IT?”

“Yup.” You sent a glance at a clock, sighing when you saw it was past two-am. No way you were going to get any work done on that paper now. Class was at eight, and you had to be up and out of the apartment by seven. Five hours sleep…. ugh. “Look, I’m tired, and it’s so late that I’m going to skip my classes tomorrow. Lemme get some sleep, and I’ll let you ask all the questions you want about us weird, complicated, humans. Deal?”

“HEH. DEAL.”

Two hours later, you woke up to the feeling of a large body slipping into bed behind you, now-familiar cool tendrils curling around you as large arms encased you in a hug.

A low rumble sounded in your ear. “COUCH WAS LONELY. AND TOO SMALL.”

Absolutely no clue about boundaries.

#snarky is writing #venom #venom prompt #filled prompts #venom x reader #reader x venom

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jumpchain-drop · 4 years

Text

Chapter 4.1: 0.0 Years

“….aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

SPLASH!

Ow.

“...ey… Hey… Hey…! Wake up…!”

My head was swimming as I slowly came to. I was soaked; I had washed upon a beach on a very green-looking piece of land. Various flotsam and jetsam were on the beach, though my eyes were drawn to the piece in the direction of the voice.

It was the closest, and it was a little bronze cage. Inside was a red ball of light with... fluttering wings.

“You’re awake!” came the voice from before. “You’ve been there for… I dunno how long, I was asleep when you washed ashore. Can you get up?”

“Just… give me a minute…” I got up. I don’t know why I was having trouble with this. For almost the last every ten years, I’ve been dropped roughly three times in a span of a week to a similar situation. Then again, even though I was winded after each of those, I was never hurt, and the voice said it was for his amusement. Maybe those were like… slapstick or something? I’m tangenting.

A few moments later, I got up to my feet and opened the cage door. The light inside flew out and fluttered around me joyously.

“Freedom!” it shouted. “Oh, I’ve been in that cage for weeks! I love getting to stretch my wings again!”

“You’re welcome, by the way,” I mumbled as I looked around at all the other stuff on the beach. On closer examination, there weren’t cut pieces of kelp or chunks of driftwood – they didn’t even seem to be damaged. The bottle looked the most like trash, and it had what looked like some kind of coupon inside it. Some strange red gem. A box that vaguely resembled a camera. A large shoulder bag, with the ends of apparently two scrolls sticking out, one a dull red and the other a more vibrant crimson. A fancy-looking hourglass, and a large old-looking mallet with an equally-old-looking shield right next to it.

“Oh, right, I haven’t introduced myself yet!” the ball stopped in front of me. “Thanks for letting me out! The name’s Twig! I’m a spirit of power – a fairy!”

I think I was mouthing “fairy” when it dawned on me. I turned to mouthing “Zelda” as I snapped my fingers.

I turned and looked around all my surroundings. Beyond the beach spread a vast ocean, stretching all the way to the horizon in every direction I could see it in.

Wind Waker.

I was in freakin’ Wind Waker.

“...So, are you going to tell me your name, or…?”

“O-Oh, my apologies,” I said, returning my focus to Twig. “I’m… Robert, sure, why not. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Same, Robert. You’re a weird one and really spacey, but you still rescued me, so I’m gonna stick around. So now that you’re awake, what are you gonna do now?”

“Well, for starters...” I looked around at the items that littered the beach. “I’m going to clean this up.”

“Is it all yours?”

“Knowing my life as I do, it probably is.”

“Good enough for me! I’m pretty strong, so I’ll help how I can!”

I rolled my eyes, but I appreciated the sentiment. I decided to get the bag first, for the obvious reason one gets a bag when collecting a lot of stuff.

When I picked the bag up, I found something was half-buried in the sand underneath it. “A giant scale…?”

Twig fluttered over to look at it. “I know this. This is one of the scales of the Sky Spirit, Valoo. Boy, you must be pretty mixed-up to be a Rito and not recognize it.”

“Wait, I’m a what?” I blurted out, but already my memories were stirring. I put my face to my hands and found my beak. How’d it taken me this long?

Felt my arms; no wings. Wait, were Rito wings always out? I reached for my memories of playing Wind Waker HD, but… dang, I played a lot of games just to experience them. Pokémon was something that was popular enough with me, and Banjo-Kazooie was important to my childhood (plus I had strategy guides for it), so I was able to recall details about those worlds with little hassle. But Wind Waker? I hadn’t played it until it came out on the Wii U; hell, I hadn’t played any Zelda game with anything resembling competency until the 3DS. I knew the critical path at a macro level and what each of the dungeons and bosses were, as well as the major characters, but I was drawing a blank on pretty much anything else.

“Seeing how out of sorts you are,” Twig said, “I probably need to fill you in on what should probably be obvious.”

“...Yeah, probably.” I mean, I wasn’t making any progress on my end.

“The first step to improvement is acknowledging there’s a problem.” He fluttered around the scale as he continued. “So, the Rito worship and attend to this super-old dragon, Valoo, that’s about as old at the ocean itself on their home on Dragon Roost Island. In exchange, the Rito get some of his scales. They do some kind of ritual with them, and that lets them grow wings so they can fly and get from island to island without a hitch.”

Right, that was coming back to me a little. “’Some kind of?’” I pressed.

“Hey, I don’t know everything or anything!” Twig answered, jerking up and down in an angry manner. “I have no idea how they use the scale. If you want your wings, we’ll probably have to take it to Dragon Roost Island and ask.”

“Works for me,” I said, putting the scale in the bag. Shouldering it – which was actually closer to the small of my back, but same effect – I started to pick up everything else. Twig actually wasn’t joking when he said he could help, but as he struggled to pick up the camera-box, it was clearly closer to exaggeration. I appreciate the thought.

When I picked up the hourglass, I took a moment to look it over. The sand that filled its bottom half reflected the sunlight with a beautiful gleam, looking less like sand and more like gold.

“Hey, Twig, you know anything about this?”

He fluttered around it for a bit, examining it. “I’m not sure… It feels familiar in some way, but I can’t put my finger on it. It definitely looks like a valuable treasure, though.”

“I’m kinda all about valuable treasures,” I said. “So I’m definitely holding onto it.”

It wasn’t too much longer before everything else was in there. I ruffled through everything and found that already inside the bag was the notebook. I wasn’t surprised in the slightest at this point. Like every other time, there was writing on the first page.

Layer 4:

You have ten years in this world.

Eight of your companions have been imported into native forms.

Two of your companions have landed in an alternate world. You will eventually be able to reach them.

Space will be made in the warehouse to ensure all purchased items will fit.

Entertain me.

“‘Ten years in this world’?” Twig asked from over my shoulder. “Are you sick or something?”

“No, I’m not- Wait… You can read this?”

“Yeah. Should I not?”

That was weird. As a test, I had previously shown the notebook to a couple of the Gray Jinjos, who unlike Team Firma I was certain were capable of reading English. However, they couldn’t make anything out but incomprehensibly cryptic scribbles, even the parts I had written myself – and my handwritng’s not that shit.

“No,” I answered. “I can’t explain it, but only me and a certain few people should be able to...”

Wait.

What the heck.

I just got here, I haven’t even seen a door yet, much less a locked one, and I’m pretty sure even without flawless memory I wouldn’t forget putting a fairy in a stasis pod.

“Hey, there’s more writing now!” said Twig. I looked back at the notebook.

Oh right, forgot to mention. One new companion has been chosen as able to join you without use of the stasis pod. You have the means by which to identify them. If they agree to join you, they will do so automatically.

“Oh come on, I’m not even allowed to choose my team anymore…?!” I grumbled.

“From everything you’ve said, I’m sure it’s talking about me,” Twig said. “Do you not want me, or…?”

“No, no, it’s not like that,” I said quickly. “Just… I’ve been jerked around a lot. I’ll explain more later, but… welcome to the team, Twig.”

“I won’t let you down, Robert!” His true fairy form was faintly visible in the light he admitted, and I saw him salute. “So, what’s the first order of business?”

“Well, if six of my companions are in this world, maybe some landed on this island too. Let’s go look for them.”

“Alright, I’ll follow your lead.”

“First off, any idea where we are, Twig?”

“I believe the residents refer to this place as Windfall Island. Dragon Roost is due east of here.”

“Wings are item number two. Let’s start exploring this place.”

Windfall Island is a large (for this world’s standard) and busy place, so finding stuff that was relevant information wasn’t easy. Most the Hylians – even though they don’t seem to call themselves that now – were nice enough, even though they kept assuming I was lost while trying to deliver the mail. To be fair to them, I was essentially carrying a mail bag around with me, but it made trying to figure out things that weren’t where people’s houses were a bit of a pain.

The first major bit of news I learned was that I was the second Rito on the island that no one had seen before. The first was female, a bit younger-looking than I did, but dressed in some expensive-looking clothing. She was last seen standing on the high cliff overlooking the ocean, the one with some kind of tombstone on it. For lack of better options, I decided to check it out.

I first saw her from behind when we got there. I was in more traditional – standard, I guess – Rito tunic, according to Twig. She, on the other hand, looked almost like royalty. Her body was covered with this almost form-hugging white dress. There was a short red cape flowing over her shoulders, more of a mantle than a cape, I guess. Her actual body, however, was far from mature; she honestly looked more than a little like a girl playing queen. The main things counting against this was her more-than-shoulder length hair that was mostly white but the tips were dyed red, and the halberd she was holding.

I started the uphill approach towards her. “Hi there-”

“Not another step.”

I stopped less from the command than from the sudden cold tone of it.

“...I didn’t think you would find me so quickly,” she said after a moment. “I would have put more thought into my ultimatum if I did. But I guess it’s better to rip that bandage off quickly.”

“That expression is stupid,” I blurted out. “Anyone that thinks it’s a better idea to rip a bandage off quickly doesn’t know how to take it off without uprooting more than a couple hairs underneath it.”

“I don’t think mouthing off to her is going to make her act nicer,” said Twig.

“Your new friend is right, Robert.” She started to turn around, revealing distinctive golden eyes.

“...Anita?”

“Correct.”

“...You look very nice.”

“Thank you, but flattery will not help you.”

“If she’s your friend, she’s kind of a mean one,” Twig whispered.

“Hmm, yeah...” I muttered. “She’s always been a little aloof, but...”

“It’s rude to just mutter to yourself while having a conversation,” Anita butted in.

“Doesn’t seem like much of a conversation to me,” I said. “What’s with the attitude, Anita?”

“What’s wrong with it? It’s a perfectly fine response to what’s been done to me.”

I wanted to ask what she was talking about, then I remembered Manaphy being Piddle before, as well as the idea of the two Terras that became one. I guess when you picked any arrival option besides the ones I was seemingly always shunted into, you got a background and memories to go with it. Problem was I had no idea what those backgrounds could be.

“OK,” I said. “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere like this. How about we take a deep breath, assume I’m an idiot, and you explain your perspective on this?”

“...Very well,” she replied. “But any sudden moves and I will not hesitate to strike.”

“Fine by me.”

She turned back to the cliff a little and took a deep breath of the sea breeze before facing me again. “Indeed, my name is Anita. I was born thirteen years ago on Dragon Roost Island. I’m sure even the idiot you want me to assume you are knows about their own species?”

“I know about the Rito,” I answered. “They need a scale from the great dragon Valoo to fly.”

“They also operate the mail system around the Great Sea,” Twig added. “Taking everyone’s letters and packages from the mailboxes, taking them to Dragon Roost to sort them, and then delivering them where they need to go. It’s a noble profession, and it helps connect those that can’t leave their islands.”

“Unfair, isn’t it?” Anita said suddenly. “A whole race dedicated to serving other races – and as the Korok don’t use the mail system, only the Hylians benefit. Only the line of attendants to Valoo himself do not have to undergo a mail Rito’s training. As a hatchling, I often wondered why the Rito would allow themselves to be used like this, so I dug through our history, even the parts that the chief would rather everyone not see. What I found blew my mind: the Rito didn’t always exist. Long ago, the Great Sea was a vast land, a kingdom, and living in that land was the race we once were: the Zora.”

“I’ve heard about that,” I commented. “When the Great Sea rose, the Zora tribe went onto land and evolved over time to develop wings, probably with Valoo’s help, and in turn became the Rito. Which never made sense to me – the Zora were aquatic creatures, and given the indication of ‘sea Zora,’ I was of the impression they could also live in salt water. If anything, the land turning into a sea would it make it better for them.”

“Well, despite being an ocean,” Twig spoke, “the Great Sea is remarkably hostile to intelligent life. We can still drink it after filtering, but the only ones that can live in it are the Fishmen. The occasional dumb monster get by just fine too. Any other living thing, though, can only swim in it for about thirty seconds at most before sinking like a rock, no matter how good a swimmer they may be. Almost as if the Sea itself was pulling them into its depths. Almost no one goes swimming at all anymore. Not voluntarily, at least.”

“Oh gheeze…” I winced. That was fucking terrifying to consider.

“The fairy speaks true,” Anita said, almost hugging her halberd to her. “Such a shame the Zora had to become these forms to survive. Their swimming was of great importance to them. Did you know that the Zora did not wear clothing? So dedicated to swimming they were, they wanted nothing to hold them back. They often had extra fins to give the impression of clothing. The only Zora to have clothing was the Zora king in traditional garb of red cloak, who was often extremely bloated and unable to swim anyway. I had to model my dress after the appearance of one of the past Zora queens.”

“.,.Boy, you’ve sure researched this a lot.”

“It has been my obsession.” Her eyes certainly seemed mad enough when she said it. “So much about them was washed away in the flood that created the Great Sea. So much lost… So much to discover. And once I have it all… I’ll be able to restart the old rites… and bring the Zora back.”

“Given the whole ‘ocean that hates sapient swimmers’ thing going on here-”

“Silence!” She brandished the tip of the halberd at us just only a second longer than it took to confirm I wouldn’t continue talking. “The Zora will return, I will make sure of it. No matter the cost. What cost could there be left, given I was banished from Dragon Roost for my research and for hoarding any Zora artifact I could find, including this halberd. And once they have returned, I shall be their new Queen in their gratitude. I know I will fit the role; I know that I am a reincarnation of a Zora Queen. It’s in my very soul to retrieve my people.”

Wisely, I decided to think to myself how absolutely deluded she sounded about that instead of saying it out loud.

“Or at least I thought I knew,” said Anita, her voice seeming to switch tracks entirely, “until at dawn today, when I suddenly woke up to the truth of my reincarnation. That, in a previous life, I was a monster under the ownership of an unworthy young man, and not the Queen I was sure I was. A life that I have full memories of as if I’ve lived it myself. As you might imagine, this makes me very upset. Especially at the one that I am now certain is the reincarnation of that young man.”

I could feel Twig looking at me.

“...Given my circumstances, ‘reincarnation’ might not be the right word...” I eventually said. My concern for my life was probably pretty apparent given none of what I said, well, said so.

“Regardless!” She swept her halberd in a large gesture. “While I still have my goals as the Anita I am, the Anita I was – or perhaps also truly am – has her own will to carry out, and seeing as it involves raking you over the coals, I’m inclined to go along with it.”

“Boy, Robert, your choice of friends leaves something to be desired,” said Twig.

“Shut up, Twig.” I groaned. “The hell you going on about? Why the hell would you – either of you – want to be so antagonistic?”

“Then I’ll be as clear as I can manage,” said Antia. “I’ve listened to all the stories you’ve given us inside that warehouse. You and everyone else you brought along and changed, enough accounts and evidence of the truth. You’ve been going around for three decades, doing crazy things and fighting monsters and getting treasure. Meanwhile, I’ve known you for a total of a little more than two weeks, as the fourth trainer in a row to win my Ball in a card game.”

I felt my soul wince at that. Only now, after Terra’s talk on how Pokémon view equality, did I truly realize that winning a Pokémon from a hand of poker would probably be the worst way to get a new trainer from the Pokémon’s perspective. “You don’t think I’m your equal. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“At least you have that figured out,” she replied, her words too bitter to even really be sarcasm. “I am done with being another trophy. So you’re going to prove to me that you are my equal, my way.”

“And what way is that?”

“I made a deal with the voice in the elevator,” she said. The dangerous vibe that surrounded her was the only thing keeping my temper regarding the asshole voice from shooting my mouth off. “I selected my choices towards its fulfillment. You have these ten years to show me you are worthy of my loyalty. If you don’t… I’m staying here.”

“Staying here…?” My eyes widened with the realization. “You don’t mean…?”

“I do. Your little jaunts across the universe continue without me.”

I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to… hate? No, it wasn’t that. Pokémon didn’t broil themselves like that. She wanted me to prove myself her equal. She was challenging me. “Fine. So how am I supposed to prove myself then?”

“It’s quite simple,” she answered. “I have plans to carry out. Selfish plans that will no doubt ruin many lives in these oceans. You will have to stop me. But I’ll keep getting stronger; I don’t think you can do it.”

“If it’s a battle you want, I can give you one,” I said, getting into a fighting stance. “Right now. I’m a Pokémon too now. I’m pretty sure I could give you more than a run for your money.”

“Oh I’ve no doubt you’d win,” she said, not breaking her composure once. “Which is why you have to prove your dedication further than a mere single battle. It would not show the strength you’ve claimed to use in those two decades I slept through. No, foiling a much larger campaign is the only way. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if you declined, if you decided my value to your team isn’t worth the effort of taking me down.”

“...” What could I say to something like that…? Did she… really think I didn’t care…?

“But if you do truly value me… come and get me.”

And then, before I could react, she hopped backwards off the ledge.

“Anita!” I ran over to the ledge shouting, when it was crested by a large puff of red smoke as a red-and-white streak shot curving into the sky. The resulting burst of wind knocked me to the ground and sent Twig reeling into a nearby wall. By the time we recovered, she was gone.

“...OK,” Twig said, dusting himself off. “I am so out of the loop here that I’m completely off the necklace. Nothing about that made sense. What the hell is your deal? And her deal? And the general deal? And what the hell is a ‘Pokémon?’”

I was still getting my thoughts together when Twig’s interjection broke me out of my thoughts. “...Let’s get something to eat, to discuss it over. There’s a good bit to cover...”

“...So, you’re from another world where this world is some kind of game. And you weren’t always a Rito, but a human – which is like a Hylian but less pointy ears. And the voice of a jerk in an elevator because I don’t feel comfortable with the word you used is doing all this, they take you to a different world every ten years, and you use the notebook to talk to them.”

“That’s the short of it.”

“...Wow. And I thought the entire idea of this place not always being an endless ocean was farfetched. I mean, there’s the legend on the wind about the kingdom that disappeared, but I never thought we were right on top of it.”

We were – well, I was – sitting on the edge of a fountain the most town square-like spot in Windfall, eating a seaweed wrap. It took me awhile to get somewhat used to the taste of seaweed. Twig was used to it already, and had the occasional nibble from it.

I swallowed my latest bite. “If it’s ever too much for you, it’s fine if you jump ship. Wordplay not intended.”

“No, I think my curiosity insists on me sticking around. Besides, you could use my help against that girl Rito.”

“How so?”

“All we need to do is find a few gems like the one you have already!”

“The gem?” I asked. I ruffled through my bag a little before pulling out the small red gem.

“Yeah, that one!” Twig bounced happily. “That’s a Power Gem! See, you can see the mark of Power on it!”

I turned it over. Indeed, there was some wavy white mark on it.

“As a spirit of power, I can make use of these Gems!” he continued. “Once you have enough, I can absorb the energy within them, and I’d be able to grant you new strength!”

“I’m certainly going to need all the strength I can get if I’m going to win over Anita. Do you know where the others are?”

“If I knew where they were, well, I certainly wouldn’t be in my current state. I know there’s twenty altogether, but that’s it.”

I sighed. “That makes sense enough… First one of my companions goes rogue for perfectly reasonable reasons and now this treasure hunt… Not that I don’t like a good treasure hunt, but I’m feeling overwhelmed… I really could use one of my girlfriends right about n-”

It was at that moment the second major bit of news suddenly attached itself to my face. In the resulting shouting and flailing, I fell backwards into the fountain with a large splash.

“Robert!” said the leaf-faced creature that stood in front of me. “I’ve been looking all over the island for you!”

“Personal space!” I shouted, lifting the deceptively-lightweight living branch off me. “Who are you?”

“I’m Terra!”

“Terra?!” I brought the creature back down to hug her. “Boy I’m glad to see you- OK I’d like to get out of the water now.”

During the time I was drying off, we exchanged situations and got everything sorted out. First of all, Terra was now going by the name of “Elmily,” as the Korok (a species I’m like half-sure I actively tried to ignore the existence of back home) had names derived from trees. The second was that she already had an idea of what Anita was up to already. Due to being an elevator and not a meeting hall, the voice had each of the eight imported companions come in and make their builds one at a time, and it was very generous with talking about what those before had selected. As such, she had a general idea of what everyone before her was doing, which turned out to consist of the five teammates I had prioritized. It also turned out this time the voice was deciding the starting location for each companion individually of my own, at random.

First new thing we confirmed was, far as she knew, she was the only Korok and Anita and I were the only Rito; everyone else had chosen to be a Hylian.

“If two companions landed in a different world,” she said, “one of them was probably Maria. Her location was selected to be ‘World of the Ocean King.’”

“Ocean King...” I pondered for a bit. “I think that name came up in the sequel, Phantom Hourglass. It’s certainly not in the Great Sea, I’m certain of that.”

I heard Twig mutter “Phantom Hourglass…?” but Elmily continued talking before I could respond.

“One of those after me must have gone there too. Though I’m mostly concerned with one location in particular...”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, Cody landed on Outset Isle...”

“I think that’s the tutorial island, he’ll be fine.”

“...but Bolt and Shadow landed someplace called ‘Forsaken Fortress.’ And judging by how your eyes are bugging out, my concerns are well-founded.”

With that knowledge, the matter of transportation became very important. Turned out everyone had gotten a free boat, but the non-Hylians also had a flight item – i.e. Valoo’s scale – that could be received for free by foregoing said boat. All three known non-Hylians had done so, including me, and I had no idea how to use mine. Twig wasn’t big about flying across the ocean by herself, so Elmily offered to fly her Deku Leaf across to Dragon Roost Island while the wind was blowing that way and find a local adult Rito that could help me with that while also not asking too many questions.

Before she did that, though, we came to the consensus that “Robert” really wasn’t enough of a Rito name to pass casual inspection. After a couple hours of debate and getting as much info about Rito names out of Twig as we could, we eventually settled on “Naskema.” Hopefully it doesn’t mean anything bad.

Year 1, day 2: Elmily has come back with a Rito named Quill. He’s a little surprised that someone as old as I am hasn’t already undergone gotten my wings, but true to the plan, he didn’t ask too many questions. Guess I owe him a favor or something for this? Honestly, I’m already tired of this island and want off it already. At least it has locked doors and I found enough rupees hammering down the grass to pay someone to build a doorframe for me, so it wasn’t like I was sleeping outside.

(The new plate has an icon that looks like the Triforce with the Wind Waker overlaid over it and I think I see a hint of lime green; it’s only day 2, so the colored wedge is practically invisible. As well, the only light on the roster board that’s red is Bitbit’s, so everyone else was imported, and the two Terra didn’t know the builds of were Tooty and Manaphy.

I tried calling in Bitbit like I did Shadow before to make the trip instead of Elmily, only for nothing to happen. When I demanded answers to the notebook, it replied I could only have up to eight active companions by default. That sucks, missing a flyer in this setting, but there’s not really anything I can do about it.)

In the intermediate time, I more examined my belongings and found that the two scrolls in the bag are treasure maps! X marking spots and everything! Spots that are all in the ocean. I’m certainly not going swimming in the Psychonauts death water, but surely a sea-faring society such as this has access to some kind of salvage mechanisms that could be used.

Quill’s getting the necessary things set up in the other room now. Hopefully this will be quick and painless.

Year 1, day 8: THIS WAS NOT QUICK AND PAINLESS

I AM NEVER GROWING WINGS EVER AGAIN

#jumpchain #a man chooses #jumpchain a man chooses #story #layer 4 the legend of zelda the wind waker

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cruddyborderlandstheories · 5 years

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Sanctuary-III: Demo Analysis

Hi again! I’m here to do my full Sanctuary-III analysis. (im back on my bullshit of actually structuring posts like a functioning human. holy mother of g-)

Tl;Dr: So from what I’ve gathered so far, Sanctuary-III looks like a Maliwan-inspired ship, but was actually built by a company named <SUPAMAX MFG>. I do think the ship we go on in the demo is taken from another part of the game, probably the time period when we’ve reached the Maliwan/Monastery planet of which I don’t know the name (the one we see Maya on). I understand that we can see Pandora in the demo, but it’d be easy to travel back there and simply remove the option for the monastery planet when we go to Promethea. I have a couple reasons for thinking this, so I’ll go over it when we get there.

For now, let’s get started :D

So, even though we’re going to be doing a full analysis of the demo, I did want to start with our previous sightings of the ship.

Ellie hanging onto a smaller version of the ship.

Lorelei resting her foot on a larger model

one hiding behind Zane near the car

better view below:

and a ship as we see it on the cover art:

notice I say A ship because there are definitely differences between this one and the Sanctuary-III we meet in the demo.

Most notably the colors/design, but also the back engines are missing from below the spoiler and the fins on the front are different shapes. Additionally, the one in the cover has windows that are significantly different from the demo and the engines in demo have fins coming off the tops that we don’t see here. I’ve been yelled at before that this isn’t a noticeable enough difference to think about, that the developers just decided to roll with it, but honestly I believe if the designers put that much time into ensuring the cover art has a dozen easter eggs to solve, why would they look at the ship and decide “eh, that’s good enough”? I wanna believe they’re not that laidback about this.

So I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for now and provide a handful of theories as to what this cover art ship could be:

1. Sanctuary-II or an earlier model of Sanc-III (or both)

2. A shuttle used to move people to-and-from places Sanctuary-III is too large to access and the drop pods are too violent to hit (I’m thinking meteors/asteroids here) annnd hopefully we get to putz around space in one

3. A fully separate ship from Sanctuary-III that we’ll have to use later on in the game, either due to Sanctuary-III being destroyed, or other weird circumstances that would render it unavailable. Could possibly be used to reach Elpis?

Anyway, enough of that. Let’s get right into the thick of things with the actual ship from the demo!

This hit me right in the heart. I love that u can see Pandora in the background, too.

The actual ship! Do you see what I mean by those minor differences to the cover art ship? Moving on.

The reason I thought this ship was mainly because of the huge swaths of orange and the blue engines/bridge. I had thought it was Atlas as well at one point, but retracted both those statements when I saw the name of the manufacturer printed everywhere inside lol

It is possible it was made specifically for either of those companies. I am leaning towards Maliwan, so I’ll point out my reasons why as we move through this.

Also, check out the docking bay on the bottom there. That door leads to the large room we see Ellie in. I think the fins on the front of the ship are to hold it up when it’s landed so we can drive vehicles out the bottom. I am hoping for a scene near endgame where the ship is shielding us from huge attacks from above as we drive out of the bottom and, right as we escape, it collapses behind us. Fingers crossed.

the back of the ship. And the engines I mention you can’t see protruding out the back on the cover art.

Oh, and say hi to the CoV!

that’s where Troy’s sword gets launched from orbit

as we zoom in, we can see a whole bunch of things

to start, looks like Hyperion got some nice rebranding. I hope Blake took over tbh

a poster of moxxxi’s. I love the feather in her hat; I wonder if that means her a mordy got back together...

also im going to take the time to point out

how much I love that each Vault Hunter gets something that glows. Amara has her tattoos (and she can customize the color!), Fl4k has their eye, Moze has Iron Bear’s digistruct pack, and Zane has a cool jacket. Rock on my babies, you’re all beautiful. Oh, and the whole teleporting animation for this, I don’t know if its like a “first time” only thing or what, but I love it, I love it so much. I’m so glad we’re going to be able to see our Vault Hunters in the third person.

okay moving on

so right away you notice the guide telling you where places are, with arrows point in different directions. It’s quite hard to read at the moment, but we do see it again later.

We all know about the quick change station and the lost-and-found, so I don’t think I ought to go over those right now.

claptrap seems to have his own little cereal or something, not sure if that’s been sighted anywhere else, but im afraid for anyone who eats it

player quarters! holy balls im so excited for these

We can see the display cases everywhere, but there’s also a vault (not that kind) in the back left. I imagine that’s the bank. Hoooopefully we get a larger storage capacity or my mule characters are gonna have a ton of new buddies to talk to lol

better look at the cereals.

also apparently that water bottle we see in the Game of Thrones joke the twitter posted is an actual asset in the game.

While we have singular display cases for guns, it looks like items get their own display cases

it can show off rarity color and on the bottom left, you get to see exactly what you’re looking at. no more confusing grenade mods for shields in this house

a non-holographic poster for the Typhon Deleon movie. I think this is the first we’ve seen outside of Promethea. I guess Amara’s a fan.

A vault symbol rug, and the symbol spray painted onto her punching bag. I think that poster in the back is a Monty Python reference? I didn’t get quite a good look at it, we might see another one later on.

Amara has a window seat, I’m actually hoping we’ll be able to hang out in our rooms and look out the window at space. I would honestly spend so much time here. Also, regarding the bed (not pictured, that’s the window seat), I’m wondering if that will have any gameplay effects or if it's just aesthetics. I hope it’s at least bouncy...

she does have some jakobs crates holding up the plants. Don’t know if that has anything to do with her backstory or if its just to fit the aesthetic of her room.

we’re also told “again, you can modify your player quarters to how you want to play” which... I don’t know if I’m looking too deeply into that, but it seems like we’ll be able to pick and choose things like furniture or overall layout. I wonder if they’d let us cycle between the other VH’s rooms. Not sure exactly what it’s supposed to imply, but it is something to point out.

Our first look at the SUPAMAX MFG logo. “Ships made Quick”

We also get our first look at Ellie’s cargo bay. More on this later

behind the curtains to the left of here

a poster of Jack and some lootable washing machines. We’ve seen the poster before, from what I’ve heard it's a movie poster starring timothy doppleman. Which... What a legend.

Now, I do want to point out we see this logo next to the cargo bay

this is one of the reasons I thought the ship was Atlas at first, however you can tell there’s no gap on the right of the triangle and the bottom edges don’t match. I definitely think the new Atlas logo is a delta to signify change, though, cause Rhys is a big ol nerd.

some blueprints of the ship and a bunch of reused posters from BL2 thrown in for decor purposes. There’s another poster of Typhon to the left of that, but since we’ve already seen it, fuck ‘em

We also see a buttload of Maliwan crates hanging around the ship, matching the color design of the one we saw floating around space

here’s one of them!

a better look at the blueprints as a standalone poster. It looks like ‘Sanctuary’ was written over with something, but I can’t make out what. also checkout how the paint on top doesn’t match the paint on the cover art’s ship. Nor does the cover art have the fins coming off the engines like we see here. I actually just noticed that even the spoilers are different shapes.

Moving on before I go off on another tangent

a poster for Marcus’s shop

the new golden chest as Randy called it. I believe we’ve seen the animation already, where the guns splay upwards like a peacock or smth

a cowgirl hangin out on more Maliwan chests

Marcus’s new sign. Honestly? He’s rocking the bun.

this dude we find walking out of the store. Don’t know what his deal is, but I’m digging it.

this Amara already has 5/8 Pistol SDUs unlocked! (Also, there are 8 max SDUs) Makes me think she’s a high level character. That’ll come into play later lol

5/8 Backpack SDUS. I didn’t show it but she also had 1/8 Shotgun SDUs. Also only +3 to backpack space each. Considering Amara already has 5 unlocked, that means we get the regular 12 backpack space to start. D:

bank space only gets +2. Amara already has 2, meaning the bank can only hold 8 items without upgrades. F in chat for the big bank dreams. Max amount the bank can hold is 24. Somebody comfort me... hopefully these SDUs increase exponentially 😭

the mystery SDU. It looks like a box with a question mark on it, giving out guns and grenades. Makes me worry this is some form of loot box, but considering it can be bought with cash in-game, that’s probably a good sign. Maybe you can buy golden keys in game to open the gold chest now? Randy said no microtransactions and, while he is Randy, I want to believe him (disregarding the skins fiasco because we all knew that was coming).

since i’ve also seen speculation that it’s the upgrade for the capacity of the Lost-And-Found, I think that’s probably what this actually is.

the shooting range we can see from here. Doesn’t appear to have any targets yet, but it may be like the one in BL2 where they only appear when we enter.

more Maliwan boxes to the left of the shooting range.

Crew Quarters sign!

some very big (tm) Maliwan crates

tannis’s sign!

this NPC actually seems important, I’m wondering if she’ll give us a side quest or something

what i’m guessing is the power core to the ship. It’s in such a great place to get shot... i wonder if perhaps... we’re going to have to do that at some point...

“ain’t no place like space” I love this place.

also looks like there’s a shortcut here. You can see the planks across the pipes, the balcony, and the railing here that’s gonna be easy to get over. Excitement!

looks like a control panel right in front of the core. Yeah, there’s definitely going to be something related to it. Maybe we’ll get attacked and we have to go stabilize it. Maybe our ship will get hijacked and we’ll have to blow it up from the inside. I can’t be the only one who thinks this place is wayyy too grand to not get destroyed...

better look at that bad boy

the opening to moxxi’s bar

actual bar

i have no idea what this is, but i dig it. Also the zer0 for the O is making me go 🤔 i don’t THINK Zer0 would get involved, but then again, they are doing missions for Moxxi in Tales, so maybe the two got together to make something

this door seems different enough and detailed enough (red glowing light) to make me think we’re going to be unlocking this and going through it at some point. Then it shall glow green and make me happy instead of frustrated. the minimap, unfortunately, does not agree with me, but I want to believe. or that’s gonna bother me to no end. Maybe some sort of “we just escaped control core angel” situation, idk.

some slot machines. Ca$hTrap! and Tinx’s Hijinx. Looks like an NPC is using the latter though so idk if it will be available to use.

scoring system. Looks like the ??x row will give us a new character skin!! hype.

the uhhh... Lava Lamp column... will give us...? ???

A devil fruit?? A grenade? wtf is that???

3 bananas gives us new colors! Crowns = head

the... Eridium...? That seems way too pink to be Eridium tbqh. It reminds me more of Seraph crystals, but maybe its a reference to the ‘Eridium’ growing out of the ground on Promethea? ...... Maybe that’s growing because Atlas/Typhon actually DID open the Vault on Promethea

uh anyway

The last column is about more crystals and then cash and then the last one... I assume the icons are Claptrap’s eye (considering the game), but the reward? i think that’s the grenade the demo player gets in the demo

we’ve also got Loot Boxer (also taken by an NPC) and Vault Line. I’m wondering if the NPCs using the machines are just a gameplay mechanic and they’ll disappear after a certain level/event. Maybe those ones give us better loot. idk.

for Vault Line, i think that says “Knockout Prizes” but I could be wrong. More importantly, it looks like we can get legendaries from this one! First column shows a green/purple/yellow (legendary?) gun. I can’t tell what the other icons are meant to be, though. i think the next 3 are shields, then maybe class mods? or... grenade mods? i don’t know. The last one is a total blob for me, no ideas on that. Also wondering if that machine costs Eridium to play or something, 1) because of its design and 2) because the rewards seem sooo much better than Claptrap’s.

outside we see the Crew Quarters sign for the first time and, interestingly enough, a TV broadcasting the same symbol we see being broadcasted all across the CoV camps. What’s up with that?

infirmary and crew quarters signs on the wall this time

more Maliwan crap. even says it right on the tin. Why is there a pokeball on there?

a map of the ship. We see this on a bunch of monitors, even ones on Promethea, for some reason. This one is mirrored. dunno why.

more signs. Left top to bottom: “Cargo Bay” “Armory” “Infirmary”

Right top to bottom: “Engine Room” (OwO) “Crew Quarters” “Cargo Bay” “Armory” annnd nothing on the last line this bend around. when they turn the corner, you can see that it, too, says “infirmary”

Also, the Heatant and Coolant Pipes lmao

“LAB/SICK BAY” pointing to the left towards Tannis’s corner

so, here’s where we get our first glance at something very very interesting

now, the crew makes us think this is our first time visiting Promethea in the demo. But if it is, why are there Promethea civilians wandering around the ship? I believe i go over this some in an older post, but I’ll recap:

1) It could be that Sanctuary III was already in the air before the game starts and had already visited Promethea to take some Civilians off Rhys’s hands so he had less to worry about. That would mean that we’d need a shuttle or something to reach the ship in order to activate the fast travel station, which is (possibly) where the ship on the cover art could come in. Because in the borderlands universe, you need to reach a Fast Travel station first before you’re able to teleport to it and if Sanc III is flying and Lilith doesn’t have her powers, we’re stranded on Pandora. (Alternatively, the ship could come down from space, but... I kinda doubt it can without not being able to take off again. Maybe borderlands just has cooler spaceships... idk. They were able to make a caravan space capable). Unfortunately, this would mean those screencaps from the new trailer that looks like Sanctuary III being infested with wildlife would not take place on early-game Pandora/that we wouldn’t rescue the ship and claim it as our own. (We could possibly get Sanctuary III in the air in the new BL2 DLC if this is the case.) The ship getting infested then could take place above the Maliwan planet or Promethea or soon after we join the crew and we’re sent down there to clean it up as a side quest. Or there’s a time skip and the ship gets overrun and we have to fix it. Now that’d be rad...

2) gearbox is being sneaky beaky about the demo time. We do see Maya later on, which leads me to believe this takes place after we meet her. Where does it look like she’ll be? On the Maliwan/Monastery planet. It could be possible that the devs took the ship back to Pandora and simply removed the Maliwan planet from the list of places to take our ship. That would leave Promethea as an option while also explaining why there are both Promethean citizens and Maya on board. Could also explain Lilith having her tattoos back, since we don’t know the events of the story that lead to us going to find Maya. Though, I think I have an idea... I’ll leave that for my Maya masterpost though. Lilith also says “We arrived in one piece... that’s a first” when we travel to Promethea, leading me to believe either that’s where Sanctuary-II warped and got destroyed (maybe explaining why there are Promethea Civilians with us now), possibly in the asteroid fields, also maybe due to a mechanical failure, or Sanctuary-III, when it first went to Promethea with us, got a bit damaged by the rocks floating around Promethea or some other thing like the CoV attacking, idk. What are those rocks for, anyway? ....... I gotta make a post on that, don’t I? oi oi oi...

Moving on

the front of the Infirmary

....

this kinda looks like a baby T-Rex. There are T-Rexes on the swamp planet, which we now are assuming is Promethea, aren’t there? Oh hell yeah. If the swamp planet ISN’T Promethea I’m gonna be all like [shocked pikachu face]. that outskirts area was really making me believe.

anyway, see above lol

we also get another glimpse at the SUPAMAX logo

some lootables in the back

not sure if these are Maliwan or not.

Zed also has a machine in the back here. We haven’t seen him around yet, but odds are he’s still kicking because of this. And hopefully still friendly with the crimson raiders. Maybe Tannis locked him in a closet or something, idk.

oooo i haven’t seen this screen before

i want to know what it isssss

this also looks eerily familiar. brb, gonna go find what this reminds me of

okay, so

not sure if its exactly the same material/type of symbol, but this location, what i have dubbed the “temple” cuz i got no better name for it, does have square emblems across the floor with borders.

so, interestingly, this one has what looks like an eye with beams shooting out of it. if that description sounds familiar to you, it should, because

EYEBALL

now i got no idea if these are related aside from being in the same game, but it does interest me that they’ve both got eyeballs and streaky beams.

Oh and Tannis’s Vault symbol doesn’t have the writing (?) across the edges, but I will say, it does kinda look like cuneiform and eridian writing had a baby. Like, if you super heavily pixelate the Watcher’s name on her title card...

tbh I’ve theorized a lot about this place, but haven’t found anything I particularly like. From the place where the first Vault Atlas ever opened is (meaning its on Promethea and could explain why Tannis has that slab), the Great Vault’s holding place (where the skeleton on the ground is Typhon and his final journal) (perhaps the Great Vault is the entryway to the Eridian homeworld... that could explain why the CoV are trying to find it... might be a reason why they’re being manipulated by new aliens to find it. god please let them be the Seraphs...) uh, anyway, I also had an idea that it was someplace on the Maliwan planet, and maybe that it was in the archives area that was taken over by Maliwan and that the skeleton was of a Siren. That would explain why Maya is shown handing the book to Little Blue in the MoM. I go over that in an old post though, so moving on.

oh, there’s also a frame of Tannis’s animation where the dinosaur she was inside stands up and clips through the table:

there’s a small room over here we don’t get to see, and I’m wondering if there’s another NPC joining us on Sanctuary-III that isn’t showcased. god I hope if its pickle he got more bearable as he got older because dear god i hated him in tps. I can’t see Athena nor Janey with a desk like that. Maybe Vaughn? Though would he really want to go back to being an accountant after everything...?

more maliwan boxes btw. looks like someone scribbled on this one lol

now we head to the bridge!!!

looks like an arcade game lol

but possibly a control mechanism for shuttles coming in??? 👀 👀 👀

Crew Quarters and the SUPAMAX logo

oh yeah, and in case you were doubtful that this was a borderlands game:

“Caution: Excessive Farts Detected”

the Bridge!!!

We’ve got a holo-projector thing up front like we’ve seen Rhys use, as well as a mini one used as a digistructer during Lorelei’s hamburger quest. Most interesting, Lily has her tattoos! Definitely wondering if this takes place later on in the story or if they swapped her early game model in. either way, they’re definitely there.

some cool art of Sanctuary III zooming away

just have to say

i love this so much

its great

okay moving on

I wish they’d be more specific. do ruins = vault? Typhon says he discovers the Vault and the Key in one fell swoop. if Typhon DID give atlas the Vault key and the location to the Vault (and we’re not just listening to an ARG for the movie or smth) then why didn’t Atlas open it immediately?! I mean, in TFTBL Cassius says Gortys is their last ditch attempt at opening a Vault! So what the heck?? I can’t believe that it would be less than 200 years from the first Vault being discovered to the Eridians abandoning everything. like vault keys take 200 years to naturally charge so there’s no reason why it wouldn’t be already charged and available (Unless its more of a cycle thing where it charges and then discharges after a while for safety’s sake??).

And another thing, if that IS Eridium growing out of the ground on Promethea, then they totally DID open the first Vault. Or at least Typhon did. Unless there was something stopping them... like... Maybe in the temple those demon-looking-things stopped them from getting through and that’s why we find a bunch of skeletons around the place? Or maybe the Guardians got to them, or some other Eridian protection scheme. i don’t know... im so confused... brain hurt...

anyway

why the fuck does Elpis look like this

is that the light side of the moon? dear god im blind.

hhhh at least we can still see the crackening

lowkey wondering if the ship is based off of Eridian tech. I could totally see a slip-space drive being based off Lilith’s phasewalking

when we finish travelling, Lily says “We’ve arrived in one piece. that’s a first” and yeeah, i can see whyyy

rocks. rocks everywhere. tbh i think these rocks are 1) why lilith says that (we’ve either been to Promethea before in Sanc-III or Sanc-II got decimated slip jumping here) and 2) why the VH’s entry into Promethea is apparently so awful Lilith needs to ask if they’re actually still alive. also, we get to see just how much of Promethea is cities and goddamn. that’s a lot for a borderworld.

sorry for the youtube bar.

Deck A: Hammerlock - Infirmary/Tannis - Deck B: Marcus - Moxxi Deck C: Cargo Bay

I am honestly so curious how they got this ship with that lettering on it. I guess they could’ve made it themselves, but... you gotta wonder... maybe we get the ship built on Pandora by Ellie. Or she helps us fix it up after we remove all gross rat things from it.

MAYAAAAA

better look at the Monty poster plus some other stuff, like a clock, dartboard, and a gas mask. Also if anyone knows what that says up top there, please let me know, im super curious!

Hammerlock’s quarters!

this guy has the same facial hair as Zane. I swear to god if I hear “Oh, that’s me fourth brother” im gonna lose my absolute shit

something to the far left outside of Hammerlock’s quarters we’re not allowed to see yet :(

there’s also graffiti of “Charge port here” around the ship and i think that’s hilarious. It’s like an airport

put your ports in, damn it!

Ellie!!!

More maliwan boxes to her left, btw

the actual cargo bay. remember how i said to look at the bottom of sanctuary III to find the door? I’m like 90% sure that’s it right there. Randy also says “down here we can check out the vehicles we’ve collected AND this is how/where we get access to the planets while we’re in orbit”.

Crazy Earl’s black market! dunno how he’s actually, like, connected to the black market from here, but, hey, who knows what he’s got in there.

veteran rewards, apparently drawn over one of Marcus’s machines lol

“Inter-Galactic” a little drawing of Sanc-III and another Maliwan box (you can see why I think this ship is Maliwan, right?)

Clappy and his GF... yeah...

one very big digistruct pad. listen... im praying for a space shuttle. i really am.

finally:

the drop pod

god this looks awesome. I bet we’re gonna have many a fun time in there lol

I finally get to live out my dream of being an ODST in borderlands. what badasses they are.

#borderlands #borderlands 3 #bl3 #sanctuary 3 #sanctuary iii #sanctuary-iii #yeet #sanctuary

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travllingbunny · 5 years

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The 100 rewatch: 1x04 Murphy’s Law

I’m a new fan of The 100, who first binged it last year, August to November. This is my first full rewatch of the show. I was planning to start it anyway and finish it before the season 6 premiere on April 30, and when I saw that Fox Serbia was airing a rerun (Monday to Friday, 40 min. after midnight, with repeats the next day), starting on 1st February, it was a great opportunity to start my rewatch in HDTV on my beautiful new TV. I decided to do write-ups and tag other fans on SpoilerTV website, as I did when I was first watching the show. But my posts turned into full blown essays. So, finally, after over a week, I’ve realized: Why don’t I post them on my Tumblr blog, too? I’ll copy my write-ups of the first 7 episodes, and then I’ll post my rewatch posts after I watch each episode. (The next one, 1x08, is on Monday’Tuesday.)

Spoilers below for all 5 seasons of the show. I go of on a tangents and make a lot of references to future events.

Rating: 7/10

The first 3 episodes took place over something like a day or two, This one happens a week later. Which is a way to avoid having to show Clarke's immediate reaction to Wells' death, and to have to spend a lot of screentime on her mourning, because most of it took place off-screen (we just see her at his grave, and later talking to Finn about him and how good he was to her while they were growing up). At least Finn got an entire episode, even though it lasted just about a day in-universe. This is something that TV shows like to do - have the characters mourn for an episode or a few scenes for a dead character and then never have them mention that person again. Well, at least they did have Wells' father see apparitions of his son multiple times and mention him several times, including when he was dying.

This episode instead isn't at all about Wells, but starts with the Delinquents learning that he wasn't killed by the Grounders and that it was instead one of them, using Murphy's knife. The title of this episode, Murphy's Law, aside from being a pun, also describes the chain of events not just in this episode, but the show in general: everything that can possibly go wrong, will go wrong. This a really good episode right until the last 5 minutes or so. The interactions between Clarke, Bellamy and Murphy are really interesting. Murphy is at this point at his peak obnoxiousness. He's basically acting in the textbook "How to make enemies and alienate people" way. In the first couple of episodes, he was only antagonistic towards Wells, but now he's using his position as Bellamy's sidekick to bully other Delinquents for no reason at all, to try to make himself feel bigger, out of his own envy and hate and resentment, and his inferiority complex. To use a Buffy reference, if Murphy was a high school Mean Girl, he wouldn't be "Queen C" Cordelia Chase, he would be one of the Cordettes - people who latch onto someone more powerful and popular (in this case, Bellamy) and then bully others through that newfound 'power'. The infamous scene where he urinates on another Delinquent happens when he's overseeing the work (the Delinquents are building a wall to have a defense against a possible Grounder attack, since they still have almost no weapons) after he's first mocked that guy for not working hard enough (implying 12 year old Charlotte would work harder), and then mocked him when he said he needed water, but then Bellamy told Murphy to go and get him water. And that's probably why Murphy then urinated on the guy, he couldn't take it when Bellamy took the guy's side, so to speak, and cut down his position of power (or what Murphy sees as such) by sending him to fetch water. Hey, look, here's Manny Jacinto as one of the boys bullied by Murphy. Of course I didn't notice him before, he appears for like a second. Even with knowing Murphy's later development, there's no two ways about it, he was a total dick at this point. Which makes the situation more ambiguous when he's blamed and almost lynched for something he didn't actually do - Wells' murder - though he had threatened to do it, and together with Clarke jumping to conclusions and accusing him of it, because Wells was murdered by Murphy's knife, and the fact that most Delinquents obviously really dislike Murphy at this point (no surprise) leads to that result. What happens to him is wrong, and someone should have apologized for it. But that doesn't excuse him at all for what he does next, trying to make people kill Charlotte instead, after she has confessed, and then, after realizing no one is supporting him, doing his best to kill her, including threatening Clarke's life at one point. I wouldn't think this needed to be pointed out, but I've seen some people in comments to YouTube reaction videos to this episode actually, in all seriousness, argue that he was right and that Charlotte should have been killed. WTF? What's wrong with people that they don't get the whole being 12 year old thing? I know that USA has the weird habit of putting minors on trial as adults, but even then, I'm pretty sure even US legal system doesn't go that far to execute 12 year olds. At which point did the writers and viewers decide that Clarke was "the Head" and Bellamy "the Heart" (which the show made explicit in the season 4 finale, and then overturned in season 5)? I've always felt that was a huge oversimplification and I'm generally not too fond of it. Season 1 Clarke was pretty impulsive in some situations, especially in this episode (it was her best friend who was murdered, after all), immediately deciding that Murphy is the killer and should be punished, while Bellamy argued that this would be a bad idea, because it would create unrest and make the Delinquents turn on each other, and that it was better for them to keep thinking it was the Grounders who did it. Which was maybe cynical, but pragmatic and rational. (BTW, I don't think Bellamy made a connection that Charlotte was the killer - he probably forgot about giving her Murphy's knife or thought someone else took it, but in any case, I don't think it would have occurred to him that she would do it.) Then Clarke actually confronts Murphy angrily in front of everyone, which causes the avalanche of disastrous events, as the boy that Murphy bullied earlier and a bunch of others immediately decide to hang Murphy and ask Bellamy to do it.

Clarke had a lot of moral certainly at this point (which will be eroded slowly over the course of the show) but sometimes it was a bit too straightforward (she didn't stop to think how people will react - you could say, she didn't know her audience that well as Bellamy did), and here she realized that things weren't that simple - she wanted to get some kind of justice, but didn't want Murphy killed, and seeing what she had caused, she admits to Bellamy "I was wrong earlier, you were right".

But where Bellamy goes really wrong in 1x04 is decide to "give people what they want" - in this case, a culprit they want and his death. It's one of his biggest mistakes in S1 and one that will come to bite him in the a.$s, especially at the end of the season when Murphy starts his revenge spree, which will be directed at the guys who first wanted to hang him, but most of all at Bellamy himself. And Bellamy will learn his lesson, an opposite one from Clarke, that you need to do the right thing and not just give the crowd what they want (in 1x12 he tells Clarke "Crowds make bad decisions, just ask Murphy").

The moment when Bellamy goes ballistic and starts acting on pure emotion - and tries to kill Murphy immediately - is later after Charlotte commits suicide, due largely to Murphy's pressure - because of course he would react like that to her death. Guess what, Finn acting decently (actually decently, not just on the surface) didn't last. We find out he was exploring woods by his own and found an old shelter, but he didn't tell anyone. Instead, he gives Clarke a pencil to impress her (right after she's told him about how Wells used to give her stuff when they were growing up, and that she didn't realize at the time that he was denying himself things to give them to her... hmmm). Later he reveals the shelter to Clarke when they need to hide Charlotte from Murphy and his gang. Clarke asks why he hasn't told anyone, and immediately thinks about how they could use things, but Finn tries to justify himself, saying that the food has all expired and there are no weapons, and besides, if he had told everyone, then they couldn't use the shelter now that they need it. So how does that work - he foresaw they would need to hide someone from the rest of the Delinquents?? Or he was just waiting for a chance to use that shelter to show it to Clarke and just Clarke, impress her and show her how good he is to her and how much she needs him? Am I being too harsh on Finn? He does some good things in this episode, like do his best to stop the crowd from hanging Murphy. But still... I never liked him much, my perspective on him is different now, after I have seen season 2 Finn with his "I killed all those people for you, Clarke!" thing, At the time I first watched this, I assumed that Finn was meant to be likable, but that the combination of bad writing and bad acting made him unlikable. I didn't know what it was about Finn that rubbed me the wrong way or that didn't resonate with me. But now I see more and more reasons to dislike him, and I think that his character is more consistent than I initially thought, but that he was never meant to be a really great guy, and that his romance with Clarke was just supposed to create drama and angst rather than be a great ship people would root for. (The whole thing with Raven really shows that.) Maybe I was too harsh on Thomas McDonell, though. He wasn't as good as some other cast members, but he's not that bad, now I have Tasya Teles' acting to compare it with. (I'm sure Tasya is a nice person, but she just can't act.) It's kind of funny that the climax of this episode is focused on Clarke and Bellamy being shocked at Charlotte's death in such a way that it seems like their child just died, and then arguing about leadership (it's already pretty clear that the two of them are those who decide on most things), as Finn just looks on. This may be the crucial moment where their co-leadership begins. Clarke argues "We don't decide who lives and who dies". It's so ironic that she will later during the show be expected and asked to decide just that, more than once. Meanwhile, on the Ark, we get to meet a couple of new characters - Kane's mother, a preacher, who'll be around for a couple of episodes, and Nigel, a woman at the Mecha station who runs a black market, and who, I think, won't ever appear again. But she gets Abby arrested by Kane, and also, through her, we get to learn more about Raven's backstory - that her mother was an alcoholic and that she used to prostitute herself to get stuff. Life on the Ark, especially those of lower classes, seems so freaking wonderful... The last few minutes of this episode initially annoyed me a lot, because it seemed like a return to the cheesy teen soapy bullcrap of the first couple of episodes. The love triangle was set up - Raven takes the pod by herself, since Abby can't go, and is arriving to Earth, while we get a confirmation that Finn is the boyfriend she wants to save - just as Finn and Clarke end up kissing and having sex for the first time. Now that I know and love how this triangle is eventually resolved, I don't hate this so much, but this scene is still really cheesy and feels like the classic TV insta-romance. And it's not just that, I also hated the scene where Octavia kisses Jasper, after praising his courage (for "standing up to a bully" -? I still have no idea what she was referring to, it's always confused me) and telling him that heroism gets rewarded. Ugh. And then Monty gives him a high-five. One of the things I hate the most in fictional romance is when romance/sex is portrayed as a reward that someone - usually a female - gives another person - usually a male, for performing heroic deeds. Gross. I'm so relieved, because of that, that the Jasper/Octavia ship went nowhere, even though I wasn't a big fan of how her romance with Lincoln was portrayed in S1, either.

#The 100 #the 100 rewatch #the 100 1x04 #murphy's law #clarke griffin #bellamy blake #john murphy #raven reyes #wells jaha #octavia blake #jasper jordan

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earwaxinggibbous · 5 years

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10 Worst Hits of 2018!

I hate the 2018 hit list.

I hate all the artists we brought back. I hate all the new ones we got. I hate the fact that Lil Peep kicked the bucket without getting on the hot 100 but XXXfuckassaton got three hits. I hate that nothing off of Kamikaze reached the year end hot 100 despite it being one of the only good hip-hop albums that dropped this year. I hate that we’re all alive and that Tumblr has banned porn. But life goes on.

Bad hit songs. Bing bang boom.

Fair warning, I’m gonna be hitting a lot of trigger topics including abuse, pedophilia and rape.

10. Lucid Dreams - Juice WRLD

Before I say anything, can I just point out that ‘Juice WRLD’ is one of the absolute worst rap names I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

Anyway, Lucid Dreams.

I feel like rap music has been having a lot of sad pathetic break-up songs lately. And this won’t be the last one, absolutely not. Pretty much everything about Lucid Dreams, much like a seizing, dying epileptic old man, is wriggling and frothing uselessly in a puddle of its own filth. With nothing to do but choke out on a mouthful of blood it can only try to scream weakly through a pool of foamy spit that’s settling towards the back of its throat. It’s sad in the same way that ASPCA commercials are sad, as opposed to how a good break-up song feels.

As Juice WRLD brokely copies the beat of Lil Uzi Vert’s smash hit XO Tour Llif3 from last year, and also randomly samples a song by Sting, he stumbles weakly through lyric after insipid lyric that sounds like it was written by a 13-year-old. I tried to find an example of specific bad lyrics but holy shit, I’d honestly be better off just putting the lyric genius page here, complete with verified translations of this lyrical xanax binge from our boy Juice WRLD himself.

It’s a break-up song, but it’s as whiny as one can get. With Juice WRLD claiming “evil girls have the prettiest face” (gag) and insisting the girl in this song “wants him dead”. His whimpery vocals don’t help any part of this droning septic tank that I can only describe as the closest similarity we’ll ever get between a song and the pokemon Muk.

Even the music video is just a shittier version of XO Tour Llif3, and while it’s honestly more interesting than the other 75% of rap videos, what does it really add? I can only imagine that whoever was directing it realized this song has literally nothing going for it other than the possibility that stoners and pill-poppers will mistake it for XO Tour Llif3 if they’re high enough and threw in some surrealist imagery with the excuse being that, well, it’s titled Lucid Dreams.

Really the most egregious thing about this song is that, in the lyric genius page, Juice WRLD goes on some tangent about how popping pills isn’t cool and he was popping pills “before it was cool” and now kids are doing it. Hey Hi-C, you know these kids look up to people like you, right? Why not actually make a song about how doing drugs is bad instead of just offhandedly mentioning how you used to pop pills to, quote, “feel a-okay”? Not that I’m assuming you ever thought of that when you were writing this, most likely dosed up on a gallon of cough syrup.

Then again, I dunno if I wanna be preached to by the man who wrote a song titled All Girls Are The Same.

A lot of songs this year were underwritten and boring. Lucid Dreams isn’t the worst offender, but it’s definitely the saddest. And I don’t think it was sad the way ol’ Juicy Juice was intending. Personally, I’d rather just drink the kool-aid.

Blurgh... Muk cannot change you... Muk must replace you...

9. Meant to Be - Bebe Rexha ft. Florida Georgia Line

Is it bad that I honestly wasn’t sure who was the feature and who was the headline of this song?

Anyway, here we have Florida Georgia Line returning for another year of meathead bro-country crap and Bebe Rexha returning for another year of having literally no personality whatsoever with a song that has so little substance it may as well just be air.

I’ve never really extrapolated my thoughts on Bebe, mostly because she’s a complete and utter non-presence in every track she appears on. I honestly didn’t even realize she had a music career of her own, I felt like she just existed to feature on everyone else’s shitty music. What the hell is she gonna sing about besides the damn factory she was built in?

I’ve also never extrapolated my thoughts on Florida Georgia Line.

Here’s what I’m imagining their brains look like:

Yeah. So a combination between two walking cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a literal sex robot. What can go wrong? Well. Everything.

With a title like Meant to Be, you’d think it’s about running screaming into a relationship because you know it’s gonna work. Not so, as it’s actually about staying relaxed in a relationship. We got time, right? At least that’s what like, 75% of it is about that.

Bebe seems more than ready to rush in and get sloppy, but you think Florida Georgia Line are 100% ready to enter a steady relationship with a dead person? I wouldn’t be.

The production is just a piano and some sad trap drums, so basically every other Florida Georgia Line song. It has nothing going for it other than maybe masturbating to the music video and Bebe’s sweet, sweet inflatable titties trying desperately to crawl their way out of her country girl flannel.

And that’s really it.

You tried.

(Or did you?)

8. Friends - Marshmello ft. Anne-Marie

Aww! They’re so cute.

Marshmello is kind of a cryptid to me. I never really understood the whole trend of producers and DJs wearing these weird things on their head. And part of me, well, all of me feels like Marshmello rides purely on quirkiness alone.

Look at him! He’s so wacky!

The production on this isn’t bad per se, other than this high-pitched squeal they drop into the final chorus, but it’s definitely not great and kinda has me wondering why Marshmello is basically producer of the year despite not doing anything much more interesting than all the other producers. At best he has a little bit more energy behind him.

Anne-Marie has apparently, allegedly existed before this year, but I have literally no recollection of any song by her. But if this song is anything to go by, she’s annoying and sucks.

Friends touts itself as “the friendzone anthem” and tries to be relatable to teenage girls who’ve had to friendzone a boy, and if I had to guess this is sort of in response to all the friendzone songs from 2016 like Treat You Better. This would be fine except 1. you’re two years late, 2. nobody wants to hear a friendzone anthem and 3. this song is the highest level of cuntiness anyone can comprehend.

Here’s the thing about the concept of the friendzone. Nobody sits around wanting to friendzone people. Nobody is chilling in their bedroom with their friends wishing they could have a friend who has a crush on them and then that friend is like “I like you” so they can be like “uhh we’re just friends”.

Which is why we don’t really need an anthem for it.

The friendzone sucks. It’s not even a real problem, dudes just make it a problem because apparently being friends isn’t good enough for them. Nobody wants to have a friend who’s crushing on them, nobody’s happy about that. And the catty Mean Girls tone that Anne-Marie takes to it makes it seem like she’s a strong independent woman trouncing on the hearts of men like some kind of TERF horse when really nobody feels that way when having to “friendzone” a person.

Plus judging by the lyrics, this guy is showing up at 2 AM in the rain. At some point you need to stop being friends when he starts obsessively stalking you, maybe a few words to consider would be R-E-S-T-R-A-I-N-I-N-G O-R-D-E-R.

Women have the right to see their male friends as just that. But nobody is proud of having to do it. It’s not a point of pride, it’s just a choice people make, like what shirt they wanna wear in the morning. Trying to sell it as some kind of bootleg female empowerment anthem is pathetic.

Also I swear to god she spells friends as “F-R-I-N-D-S” in the chorus.

“We’re just frinds, Deadmau5.”

7. Yes Indeed - Lil Baby and Drake

Who the good god damn is Lil Baby? I’d never actually heard of him until someone in my music history class gave us a presentation on Lil Baby and how cool he is. I’d literally never heard of the guy before, because I never really listen to any of these hits until the end of the year.

Turns out Lil Baby is just another mumble-rapper, this time jacking his style from Young Thug. Color me surprised, I guess. How come none of the mumble rappers I actually like came back this year? No Desiigner, no Lil Uzi Vert, no Lil Xan? No. Fuck you. You get Juice WRLD and Lil Baby, two of the worst rap names on the planet.

He’s on the list of rappers made famous by Drake, and Drake had a monster year this year. Even with me living in a hole I knew the impact God’s Plan had, but apparently all 25 of his crummy songs charted at some point. That is 25 monotonous Drake songs circulating through the radio stations, 25 Drake songs constantly weighing on the shoulders of the collective public, and 25 Drake songs even his detractors probably knew all the words to just through exposure. Even I’m sick of the guy, and I have Hotline Bling on my Google Play Music library.

Yes Indeed is honestly void of things to say about it. Drake is boring, Lil Baby has one of the worst voices in recent history I can think of, the beat is nothing, it’s just a nothing song. The only noteworthy thing about it is that Lil Baby references Pikachu, a big mistake, as Young Thug also referenced Pikachu on one of his first hits. Though I’ll admit a yellow car has more similarities to the electric mouse pokemon than diamonds do.

What bothers me about this song is less the song itself, as the song is a non-presence, but moreso that in a world where streaming has finally seeped its way into the Hot 100, we have come to the conclusion that this is what people want to hear. They wanna hear Yes Indeed. And I just don’t get it.

Also, “waah waah waah, bitch I’m a baby”. High art.

6. Te Bote - A whole shitload of people

I feel like Spanish reggaeton has been an on-and-off interest of the American public. But it really reached a head recently thanks to Despacito, which all Alexa memes aside, is a great fucking song. But the fruits of its labor have been less than impressive, from last year’s goat-screeching jam Mi Gente to whatever the hell this is.

It’s nice knowing that foreigners write music as shitty as we do.

The title, Te Bote, roughly translates to “I dump you”. But it can be read much harsher in Spanish as bote is often the verb people use to describe tossing out garbage. And boy, is this song... uh... you know.

I don’t like to barf out the word “misogyny” constantly just because, well, anything can be misogynistic if you look deep enough. There’s a point where even I, the ratty little feminist I am, just don’t care. But Jesus, referring to your woman as garbage in the most backhanded way is... wow.

But I’ll be honest, being an English speaking moron, I don’t care about the lyrics. My problems run much deeper than blatant misogyny and pettiness.

Namely that this song sounds like ass.

Te Bote has six artists on it. Six artists, and not a single one sounds good. Most of them are squealy. I don’t actually know who’s who except Ozuna and Bad Bunny. Ozuna is considered one of the worst Spanish artists of today, and I can see why, because he just straight-up sounds like the lovechild of Akon and Lloyd.

As for Bad Bunny, I was slightly more drawn in by him because he looks like a cross between Blackbear and Pitbull, and I dunno if he’s dropped any other better singles, but on this he straight-up sounds like Barney the Dinosaur. Not as much as Lil Yachty, but still. Most of the others sound like autotuned mice, but there’s one guy who tries some kind of low-voiced speed-rapping and it sounds weird and wrong. The production is nothing notable, and uses the bum, bum-bum drumline of literally every reggaeton and Spanish pop song including Despacito.

And I could forgive all of that.

But let’s look at this for a moment. Each artist has their own verse. That’s six verses. Six verses plus five choruses, one pre-chorus, an intro and an outro. And how much does that add up to?

Nearly seven minutes.

Seven minutes of the same beat. Seven minutes of basically the same kinds of singers. Seven minutes of misogynistic lyrics. Seven minutes of garbage, garbage, garbage. Imagine listening to this whole thing. There are people on this earth who have actually sat through this whole garbage song multiple times and thought, “yeah. I like this.”

I mean of course Te Bote barely got any radio play, it’s nearly 7 minutes long with no breaks. So obviously some massive group of people had to be streaming it and listening to it by choice.

5. Taste - Tyga ft. Offset

Remember Tyga? He was one of the Young Money rappers that didn’t completely fall off after the 2000′s, along with Nikki Minaj and Drake. But after he put out $timulated, a song about how he fucked a 17-year-old Kylie Jenner but, in the words of Slim Shady, “look at her bush: do it got hair?”

we all dropped him, because that’s fucking gross. Kylie Jenner dumped him and is now dating someone else, I forget who because I don’t care. And with us having to deal with 6ix9ine I was comfortable leaving Tyga in the wastelands.

Honestly? The only reason this song is even here is because it’s a return Tyga single. I’m not even mad about Freaky Friday, because like, whatever, it made me laugh like a stupid idiot, but this? We asked for this. A Tyga single in 2018, about nothing, with a nothing beat, and Offset still bragging that he’s the best member of Migos when that’s like being the twinkiest member of One Direction. And once again, people actively wanted to hear this song about nothing in a year full of songs about nothing that, at the very least aren’t by pedophiles.

I don’t even wanna talk about this anymore.

4. I’m Upset - Drake

Me fucking too.

Like I said, Drake dropped 25 songs on his new album Scorpion, and all of them became hits. The worst of which, in my opinion, being I’m Upset. Just look at that title. That’s how your father talks to you when you slam a window open with a baseball and he walks through the glass shards.

This one has backstory, my favorite, longtime rival Pusha-T stated in some song that Drake actually had a secret child with a porn star and was planning on using that kid for like, an Adidas sponsorship or something. Which is fucked up. And at least part of that has been confirmed on Drake’s end, he did have a secret son with a porn star.

And then Scorpion and I’m Upset dropped. And it sucked. All of it.

The chorus of I’m Upset is weirdly catchy, but the beat is like every other Drake beat, Drake himself sounds about as upset as he can convey, which is very little, and it’s all just really really boring soundwise. When Drake goes on for long enough he begins to just sound like a bunch of bees. Bees, bees, bees, nothing but bees. And I’m tired of Drake bees! I’m sick of it! I don’t want anymore!

Anyway, lyrically the gist of I’m Upset is about how Drake doesn’t like paying alimony, and NO.

BAD DRAKE! BAD! BAD RAPPER! GO TO YOUR ROOM!

You do not get to be a world-famous rapper with fuckillions of dollars to your name and get to whine and bitch about paying alimony to your baby mama. You don’t get to roll on the floor whimpering about how your evil harpy whore of a porn star one-night-stand is (legally) receiving money from you to take care of the son that YOU ditched.

You had 25 hits this year. 25. And you’re getting pissy because you have to pay and I quote fifty to a hundred thousand dollars child support. For you that should be nothing. You are practically drowning in money, and if you really don’t wanna pay child support you could, I dunno, raise your goddamn son instead of leaving him in the hands of someone who probably barely makes a fraction in a year of what you make in a month?

Look, say what you want about Eminem. At least he was a good father on record, and if he isn’t a good one in real life I’ll be very very shocked.

I’m upset too, Drake.

3. Roll in Peace - Kodak Black ft. XXXTENTACION

I fUCKING HATE KODAK BLACK

Might wanna consider writing stuff down, Kodes.

May I call you Kodes?

Anyway, Roll In Peace is the only song on this list that isn’t ACTUALLY in the Year End Hot 100, but I couldn’t just let it slide. Not when it’s a collab beween Kodak Black and XXX. Not when it sounds like ass and feels like being shot.

If Drake sounds like bees then Kodak sounds like mosquitos, right in your ear, in the deepest parts that can only be reached by one of those earwax slurping tools. The beat has that flute again, probably because it’s half of what made Tunnel Vision famous. (The other half being controversy of course.) X’s verse has like, two lines to do with the actual plot of this song. And what is the plot?

Oh, poor pitiful Kodak can’t roll in peace. Poor Kodak Black can’t have any time to himself! The media is just all over him and X for no reason whatsoever! He’s never done anything wrong, other than, oh I don’t know, the rape allegations? The abuse? Armed robbery? Assault? That one time X nearly killed a gay dude in prison for no reason other than the gay part?

Yeah, fuck you.

You can’t “roll in peace” because you don’t have the right to anymore. You are a bad person. And X, when he was alive, was a bad person too. Sure maybe he was claiming to be working on self-improvement, but the only way I’d believe it is if I saw it, and it’s too late for that now.

As long as you refuse to apologize, you will not “roll in peace”. As long as you don’t see that you have done something wrong and continue to blame it on systemic racism which is a very real thing that you continue to trivialize again and again so you can avoid your rape allegations, you aren’t allowed to have any peace in your goddamn fucking life.

You can’t try to deflect it on Lil Uzi who posts Satanic imagery on his Instagram despite wearing a Jesus piece. You don’t get to deflect. You get nothing, and you deserve to go broke and fuck off.

There’s a joke I can make, but it’s too soon.

2. Gummo - 6ix9ine

Oh, okay, I can do this.

Uh, Gummo is this really good movie directed by Harmony Korine about some kids in this town that was totally wrecked by a tornado. And after that everything’s in shambles, so these kids can just do whatever they wa...

Oh. Oh dammit.

GOD IS DEAD GOD IS DEAD GOD IS DEAD.

So imagine you’re me looking at the Hot 100 for one of the very first times about a year ago, and you see a song titled after one of your favorite flicks of all time. And sure, it’s being sung by a guy who looks like a Lisa Frank condom, but god you just love that movie so much. And sure, Nicole Dollanganger has already made songs referencing that movie, but you want MORE.

Then you play it and it has literally nothing to do with it.

It’s loud and obnoxious and stupid and has a very clearly hispanic dude dropping the n-word like he fucking owns it. He’s just screaming these nonsense lyrics about nothing. And it’s not like I just don’t get songs with screaming. I have the entirety of Carcass’ Reek of Putrefaction on my phone. But this? This sucks. It sucks! The beat doesn’t fit at all and no matter how I look at it it wouldn’t fit anywhere else, and 6ix9ine’s flow is the death of all art. The only thing he can do, much like a child in a well, is scream and scream and scream and it’s horrible.

And trust me.

This was far before I knew of 6ix9ine’s baggage.

In case you don’t know somehow, this Rainbow Brite little fucker was actually convicted of filming a sex tape of a 13-year-old. While I don’t think he actually had sex with her, he was at some level sexually involved with her.

How did we respond? We gave the ugly fucker a hit. And his hit was this. Where he directly references his sexual involvement with this 13-YEAR-OLD GIRL.

He doesn’t give a shit. And he knows his fans don’t either. He continues to release low-effort garbage music, and in an interview about FEFE he even openly stated that he doesn’t put any effort into writing lyrics. He doesn’t try, he’s a bad person, and his blind fanbase continues to shower him in money like he deserves it.

We’re idiots.

An awful song made by an awful person. The only way to hold a candle to it would be, well, an even worse song made by an awful person.

Anyway, dishonorable mentions.

FEFE - 6ix9ine ft. Nikki Minaj

This song sucks too. And Nikki Minaj should be ashamed for working with this fuckhead.

God’s Plan - Drake

I’m almost definitely a minority in absolutely loathing this song, but I can’t stand it. It’s not structured, there’s no flow to it, it just feels like a whole lot of nothing with no point. And while I will give it to Drake that throwing money at homeless people is a really good thing regardless of why he did it, it was still a super obvious publicity stunt.

Plug Walk - Rich The Kid

Boring.

Girls Like You - Maroon 5 ft. Cardi B

Also boring. My tolerance for Maroon 5 has lasted way longer than anyone else’s, but I think it’s about time we let them go.

I Like Me Better - Lauv

I’ll be honest, the only part of this song I really hate is the weird synth interludes. The singing is fine, the content is fine, it’s all the perfect level of mediocre without that violin fart synth.

No Brainer - The ‘I’m The One’ crew, but we replaced Wayne with an actual baby

Really just an even less interesting version of I’m The One, but without Li’l Wayne. Also Justin Bieber kind of looks like a trucker now, and I hate to say it, but that’s the most attractive he’s ever been in my opinion.

Freaky Friday - Li’l Dicky ft. Chris Brown

I’ll be honest, I actually love this song. It’s funny to me, I mean, maybe I’m a simple-minded man, but a good dick joke can send me off the rails. But I’m still at least a little miffed that we’re letting Chris Brown have money, so it gets a mention.

Gucci Gang - Li’l Pump

It would be here if it wasn’t also a hit last year. Consider this a placeholder for any crossover hits I didn’t like, like Mi Gente, Perfect, Believer, and Sorry Not Sorry.

Let’s do number one. And if you know me, you know what this is. If you don’t, don’t just immediately get pissed with me when you read it. Okay? We’re good here? Alright.

1. SAD! - XXXTENTACION

So here’s a fun little sobstory for you. Less than a year ago, my boyfriend introduced me to this great artist. They were in a really oversaturated genre but doing something completely different with it, and I fell in love immediately with their dark topics, interesting production, cool music videos, and general aesthetic. And their name was not XXXTENTACION, it was Melanie Martinez.

Late last year she was pressed with a rape allegation, and one that couldn’t be proved either way. Desperately I scraped through the bowels of the internet in search of something that could disprove it and came back largely empty-handed and wounded. Because Melanie’s music meant a lot to me, and I do mean that. I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t sure what to do knowing that a person I’d based my own aesthetic, my own writing, my art, and my music on would do something like that. I tried to force myself not to listen to her music, but it just wasn’t possible.

Over time the wound scabbed up and closed and I finally gave up and decided to split the art from the artist, feeling like at the very least I wasn’t directly giving her any money by downloading her music on Google Play. But I’ll still never be able to get back the way she used to make me feel.

So what I’m saying is, I get it.

I’ve actually gone and listened to a few of X’s songs on my own before doing this. And I put myself in the mind of me a year ago discovering a new artist without those preconceptions. And I felt it. I don’t know how, but I did. I felt it. I listened to Look At Me, and I felt like if I’d heard it before I knew what X had done, I’d probably love it. Sure the production is a fucking disaster but the lyrics are just the kind of shock rap that entertains me. The production on Moonlight is really interesting and while I didn’t think Changes was very good and kind of guilt trippy, I could definitely understand it.

But then I circled back around to SAD!

And I lost it.

Something about this song just kills all the good will I might have ever had for this kid or his fans. And really it’s all because of one line, and everyone probably knows what that line is already.

So according to lyric genius this line might not actually mean what I think it means and could potentially be referring to X’s friend Jocelyn Flores, who took her own life tragically. And though on X’s song about her and every time he addresses her he seems to make it all about himself, he really did seem wounded by it. He seemed like a wounded, mentally fucked-up person who needed help.

Except that this song is about Geneva.

The girlfriend he allegedly abused.

The girlfriend who was pregnant, who he abused, and judging by this line, who he is now performing the age-old manipulation tactic of threatening suicide if she ever leaves on.

When I remove this song from context, there’s no way of excusing that line. The rest of it I can understand, and he really does seem emotional in the verses, and I know we’ve all been in a place at some point of being somehow spurned by a lover and still missing them in spite of it. But to threaten suicide if they try to leave is inexcusable.

His voice sounds fine, and the beat is once again stolen from XO Tour Llif3, but there’s a point where I can’t really care about it. Because children do listen to this kind of music. And along with Melanie Martinez, this song brings me back to when I was young and one of my favorite songs was What The Hell by Avril Lavigne. A song about cheating on your S/O and not seeing a problem with it. My sister and I would sing and dance to that song all the time, so much that I never really realized what it was about, or that there was anything wrong with it. Not until I was an adult and I looked back on it. And wouldn’t you know it, children can sing along to SAD! too.

I know X is dead. And I know it’s not my business to dictate how people should feel about things. Geneva deserves the right to be sad about X’s death, and she forgives him, even though I really don’t. But the way people have treated her especially after X died is inexcusable, and it’s in part because he wrote songs like this. He didn’t just manipulate her. He manipulated everyone. Every single one of his fans probably really did think he would kill himself if his girlfriend left her. And yes, X is on record having thoughts of suicide, I would never take that from someone.

I used to have a close friend who would feign a panic attack every time someone criticized him. It felt like he was threatening suicide once a week. And I always supported him because I cared about him. It was exhausting. I ostracized people because they knew he was a bad person. I shut people, good people, out of my life because they wanted to help, and I said bad things to them. Eventually we fell out and I was left cold and alone with nobody left to take me back, and I slugged through mud for a year just to pick myself back up.

I can imagine that’s kind of what being an XXXTENTACION fan is like.

And like me, with any luck, they’ll regret saying the things they did too.

That’s all for this year. I’ll get to the best when I have more energy, but now I just can’t.

#panda posts #top 10 #worst hits of 2018 #top 10 worst hits of 2018 #pop song review #negative review

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