Nym

A Bed of Thorns - the ending

2024-09-05T13:03:56Z

I've answered a few [Tumblr] Asks recently about the state, fate, and ending of my 12-year-old Belle/Rumple WIP, A Bed of Thorns.

I don't have it in me to admit that this thing defeated me (Once Upon a Time is all about not giving up hope, after all, so that would be silly) but I think it's time to put the ending out here for anyone who'd like the closure to find. It's not a huge secret. I've been sharing details of the ending and epilogue with anyone who asked privately since a couple of years into writing it, and I've never asked those people not to tell others.

As with all my works, anyone is welcome to snag my ideas and original characters for use in their own non-profit fanworks, so if my planned ending doesn't float your boat, by all means create your own! Of all my stories, I know that A Bed of Thorns was, is, and always will be so much bigger than myself. I lay claim to nothing but the words I've written. Even if I'm never able to complete it, the story lives in my head and heart, and the privilege of touching something once-in-a-fannish-career special still leaves me humbled (and more than a bit intimidated!)

Don't click the 'keep reading' if you don't want to know how the story ends!

( Keep Reading )

If you love A Bed of Thorns even a fraction as much as I do - thank you.

Nym - September 2024

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Vidding on a Mac

2024-07-08T06:39:48Z

I'm a recent MacOS user after a lifetime of Windows/DOS/Linux.

Must be about a year since I took the plunge and bought a good Macbook with enough power to be futureproof/keep some resale value. More reluctantly, I followed with phone and watch, giving Apple all my savings so I could get the integration. Thing is, I don't like how Apple does things. I'm confident with computers, command line, Linux... whatever. I can code, program, compile, hack - play confidently in the OS sandbox anywhere else. Mac's OS is just technobabble spellwork to me - I can't grasp how it does stuff.

I love the basic end-user ease of use and that it makes computers so accessible to folks who don't want to know how stuff works as long as it does, but the second I want to do something Apple doesn't deem essential to modern living, I have to ask a search engine or ChatGPT how the hell to make it happen. And half the time I still can't get it to happen.

Example: I decided to take the plunge and buy a month of Adobe Premiere Pro to find out if I can get my rusty, VCR-based vidding skills up to date. I signed up, I paid, I downloaded... and found that it's impossible to install the sodding thing on a computer that's - theoretically - the best machine short of a pro/studio one to run it. The MacOS system security won't take my admin/user password to allow the installation to proceed. The 'fix' is to reset the password, which works for some people but didn't work for me. Wut?

A quick google shows this has been a known issue since at least 2014. HEADDESK.

So I used an illegal copy of the software, which - lo and behold - installs and works perfectly first time with no fuss at all.

What the actual, Apple/Adobe? Is each so opposed to the other getting a slice of the money pie that they can't sort this out between them?

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Loki season 2 - take 2

2024-07-03T08:40:26Z

After a marathon through the MCU movies up to Endgame, I went back and watched both seasons of Loki through fresh, along with their behind-the-scenes features.

I still struggled with the pacing of season 2, and with the change in scale between 1 and 2, but I think I got it this time. I think I got what they were going for and understood what it means for the MCU multiverse plotline.

My brain is now doing the fannish equivalent of the Blue Screen of Death, but hopefully Loki the series is now percolating in there somewhere, and intelligent thoughts may follow.

Or just some shallow squee about Tom Hiddleston. Whichever.

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Impossible things

2024-06-30T10:08:21Z

Rob Benedict and Richard Speight Jr have achieved the impossible and got me to - subscribe and listen to their Supernatural: Then and Now virgin watch-through podcast.

I do not podcast. I do not radio. I just don't! Like phone calls, I find audio-recorded informal chatter incredibly hard on my brain. And I am finding Then and Now hard, to the point of having to lie in bed in the dark to listen, breaking the episodes into short chunks, but it's very rewarding. It goes without saying that the two hosts bring plenty of silly and laughter, and their interviews with fellow cast and crew seem to be saved from falling into total chaos only by Rob Benedict's impressive MC skillz.

The idea of trying to unpack what made Supernatural so successful as they watch it through for the first time is just where my own brain is at, at the moment. They can have my money, no problem, and even my braincells when I can spare them. Great project. Maximum fanservice. A+++

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Supernatural: Fornicating with the Fourth Wall

2024-06-27T12:04:43Z

I so love that Supernatural has so many layers - or is such a hot mess of badly-written contradictions, YMMV and I don't want to read the hate, thanks - that even that apparently very definitive series ending can be taken more than one way.

Sam and Dean think they won, that Jack won. They relax and behave as if they won, as if all is well now there's an Almighty with perspective and compassion, like they have free will, but ultimately they're plunged back into personal plot tragedy with barely time to draw breath first.

Did they win, or did they end up playing out the finale that Chuck wrote for them earlier in the season - so completely that, like fangirl Becky beta-reading Chuck's crabby, masturbatory, first-draft spooge of his sadistic ending on her laptop after she'd moved on from Chuck's canon to her own AUs, much of the fandom found it appalling, insulting, and unsatisfying?

Not saying they orchestrated a global pandemic to sabotage their own finale or anything, but, you know. Chuck might've. Supernatural 2: The Revenge of Chuck?

*side-eyes reality*

Supernatural used meta as a battering ram to do absolutely unholy things to the fourth wall, and I love to death that it's left me with headroom for both interpretations. And a slightly broken meta-brain.

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Supernatural sauce

2024-06-24T11:07:31Z

I wondered if I'd have some big revelation about Supernatural once I saw the whole thing - if I'd get some big epiphany about how it held up for 15 years or whatever.

My main takeaway overnight, however, has been marvelling (while ocassionally grinning crazily at a flashback) at what the creatives got away with just by building up to it slowly. Network TV in the US remains absolutely hogtied by the prevailing moral discourse, and by the money-power of controversy-shy advertisers to be the arbiters of what can and cannot be shown on a syndicated show. Syndication is its own money-slave and it's incapable of fully breaking free, short of the US viewership achieving consensus on both good taste and bad influences.

Supernatural worked its way up from a mythology of isolated urban legends and cryptids to pull in the occult, then religion. The latter two subjects have been shockingly taboo for telly even here in the arguably post-Christian UK market within my lifetime. The spluttering outrage of the Mary Whitehouse Brigade would've turned to fatal aneurysms watching Supernatural play witchcraft, demonic possession, and angelic lore with equal irony and humour.

The heroes drink so much and live so badly that only their canonical Plot Armour, courtesy of failed-writer God, keeps them functioning as human beings. They're outlaws, criminals Robin Hood-style, defrauding their way to a living because their day job, the heroing, doesn't pay for food and shelter. They pass themselves off as badged figures of authority without difficulty. They never have to face the everyday moral or practical consequences of career-criminal actions that would be the moral backbone of the average movie or miniseries.

Dean routinely has carefree, casual sex with equally willing and available women during his travels, free of consequence and guilt, while the (currently) male angel Castiel occupies the textual role of Dean's love interest/romantic antagonist for most of 12 seasons because that happened to be where the show found the equivalent chemistry. They didn't just let it lie - they upped the ante season after season. That can only mean that the creatives of Supernatural have awesome poker-faces in serious meetings with their network-suited counterparts. ("No homo," they said gravely, sipping coffee and resting one hand half over the scene(s) where Dean takes the role of devastated widower every time Cas gets dead.)

They made everything about free will and standing for what's right. Even some of the sparkier demons got there before their arcs closed, grabbing agency and choosing to serve the greater good, or to act from love, but the angels consistently struggled to do the same. The angels are an unholy mess on Supernatural, opting for largely self-inflicted genocide having been abandoned by God.

Supernatural made God the ultimate baddie then had Lucifer's son - actual son of Satan - kick his arse and replace him. The Antichrist showed up too, but turned out to be a nice kid who caused so little trouble he never returned to the show. Fantasy usually only gets away with that (Christianity-defined) blasphemy shit by cloaking it in not-our-world trappings; sword and sorcery, worldbuilding from the ground up to provide a safe otherspace for questions that half of society in the target market isn't comfortable even asking, let alone answering or turning into casual entertainment.

Supernatural did that too - 14 seasons of slow, epic worldbuilding set in what looks, sounds, feels and tastes like modern America, is a love poem to its land and uniqueness at times, especially under the original showrunner, but turns out in the end to be a fictional world written by a self-obsessed deity who's run out of new ideas and settled for endless reruns with his comfort characters. Our Heroes are puppets and God himself is the bad guy jerking them around. Season 15 pays off that buildup in spades, then wipes the floor with God, leaving him a pitiable irrelevance in the Supernatural America of free will and doing-what's-right.

I've seen the show take a lot of vitreol for being unambitious, and a lot of fans being very unhappy over what the show didn't do or attempt. After my first viewing, I'm just pouring one out for the cunning shit they got away with while the networks who kept the lights on for 15 years were too distracted by the comfortable, mainstream headline of "two marketable white dudes (but no homo) drive around America in a cool car being manly-man heroes" to do anything about it.

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I win crash

2024-06-24T05:51:57Z

I dun it. I watched Supernatural start to end in one go, over the course of a couple of months, having avoided spoilage since... since whenever I joined Tumblr and avoiding spoilers for not-my-fandom became really, really hard. 2012? Glad I made the effort - on both counts.

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Doctor Who 2024

2024-06-22T14:49:57Z

That was... a season. *headscratch*

I'll watch through from Whittaker's regeneration again before I try having major deep thinky thoughts, and I know from experience that I enjoy New Who more as a boxset than a weekly drip feed, but... Yeah, I think I still missed the point, there. It... hit all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order? It lacked the cohesion and satisfying pacing I've come to expect from RTD's works going back to Dark Season? I know Ruby better after this storyline than I know Fifteen, and can't square that with the new, more open and share-y Doctor?

Didn't hate it. Lost patience with it way too often and cringed more than I have since the tacky, nonsensical intro to the McGann pilot in 1996. Laughed where I was supposed to, went aww at the big kiss. Held my breath in genuine alarm during Ruby's near-solo ep. Followed the season arc, such as it was between musical interludes and left-field oddness. So, up from Flux. Down from New Who 2005 a la RTD.

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Climax

2024-06-22T07:10:31Z

Now Pinterest has followed up yesterday's Comic Con 2013 Loki conquest with dozens of pix of Tom Hiddleston attached to stunt wires and waiting to do whatever it is he's about to do, intermingled with Neil Gaiman's sass-based text posts. Still not complaining.

And my cat is stalking ever so slowly from the back of the couch towards the open back door, unaware that a) the bird she had her eye on has left the garden, and b) there's a small slug hanging from her saggy fluffy tits.

I got to Supernatural 15.09 yesterday. It's a cracking final season so far, with Chuck graduating from fickle author controlling of his fave OC's to fucking-lost-it diva tantrum. I've never seen Rob Benedict, who I know mainly from the shortlived/fast-cancelled Threshold oh-so-many moons ago, do full-on scary before. I've never once had to work at suspending my disbelief about Chuck's ability to snap his fingers and end the world just because he's feeling pissy. SCARY.

I'm guessing Jack's going to have to be the one to ultimately deal with (replace?) God, but I'd really like it if Sam and Dean got some licks in first. It's not looking promising at this point in the season, but Sam definitely hurt Chuck's feelings good and hard before getting his arse handed to him. And Dean just punched him. It's a start.

Loved the falling-out between Dean and Castiel spilling over from last season and running on for most of the first half of this one. Loved that it was Dean who finally unbent, his level of self-awareness, and that he was incapable of starting that conversation face to face, or at all until he thought he was about to lose Cas yet again.

Loved that once Dean moved on from that festering anger, he was able to accept Sam's 11th hour veto of the trap-God plan with trust and calm, like he purged so much poison with the acts of forgiveness and confession. I didn't expect the story to get to the mid-season point with Dean being in a much better headspace than either Cas, who's all but broken from losing Jack, or Sam who's lost hope in the face of Chuck's future-pocalypse clipshow. Innnteresting.

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Pinterest win

2024-06-21T17:55:17Z

Pinterest just filled my dash with good quality photos of that time Tom Hiddleston won Comic Con as Loki.

I died happy.

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Supernatural - ending as it means to go on

2024-06-21T09:13:51Z

They did NOT just open season 15 with Bob Seger's The Famous Final Scene... *jawdrop*

Holy cow. This is going to be one intense long goodbye, isn't it?

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Grand schemes

2024-06-20T05:51:54Z

My plan, whenever I finally got around to watching Supernatural, was to write about the experience as I went.

Despite my involvement in fandom and the peripheral awareness when the SPN fen were fighting over headcanons or unhappy about something from the show, and the little I know from keeping an eye on various of the show's actors over the years, I'm more or less a fresh pair of eyes - someone watching the show Netflix-style as if it just dropped, all in one go and with few preconceptions. Because Supernatural is such a pillar of fandom, fanfiction, 'shipping, conventions etc., because it's such a mammoth achievement of genre TV and popular culture to reach 15 seasons with the same leads as ep one, then to end on its own terms (apart from COVID), I thought a from-scratch viewing would make a good, meaty meta article to stand alongside the on-the-fly observations and analysis of the fen who followed the show in real time.

I've kept notes on each half season, blogged some of my more visceral reactions here (unsurprisingly angel-related, mainly), and (mostly) managed to keep my feeble braincell online to pay close attention to the experience. I've surprised myself by 'getting it' with SPN without a struggle - a welcome contrast to recent seasons of Doctor Who and other fave shows where I'm left headscratching about what the writers and showrunners are even trying to do (let alone whether or not they're succeeding).

Now that I'm approaching the end, about to start on season 15, I gathered my notes into one document last night. The word count for the notes alone is kinda daunting. I think I may have underestimated the size of the task I set myself - the amount of physical writing time required to get my idea onto the page, polished and publishable.

But let's face it, that's nothing new. I've been biting off more than I can chew since at least 2006, and while I hate leaving half-finished projects languishing in the hope of a one-day improvement in my brain and body function, I learn so much from the attempt. Supernatural meta is go. I'll accept bets on how many seasons I cover before I end up bedbound this time.

Footnote: Is there a wise elder of the SPN fandom who can tell me why the fandom insists on shortening Castiel to "Cas" instead of "Cass"? I know they do because I was firmly told so the first time I did it 'wrong' here! I watch with the subtitles on and it's never wavered from the latter spelling, and that matches every onscreen appearance of the diminutive on their phones or whatever. (And yes, I've had the pleasure of Misha Collins' (nearly) poker-faced video response to the "controversy" over this "issue". ;) I'm happy to follow the herd. I'd just like to know how it came about!

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Tolerances

2024-06-19T07:50:16Z

Interesting that the three main characters of Supernatural quietly reached their levels of tolerance at the 3/4 mark of season 14. Dean's ready, even eager to sacrifice himself to a fate worse than death; Sam can't take it and breaks down after sticking out the quiet stoicism thing for most of the season; Castiel's not taking it and angrily calls Dean out (without beating the shit out of him, this time). And for once it's Dean who backs down, letting his little brother need him.

Personal growth all around, everyone using their words, only for Jack to quietly go and lose his way the moment he gets his superpowers back. Donatello gave him good advice on making moral calls while soulless - what would the Winchesters (or Mr Rogers) do? - but forgot he was talking to a two-year-old incapable of applying it with any great insight. And Cas witnessed Jack's first chilly-logic slip into murderous mercy without confronting him? After Cas put all his faith in what Jack's meant to become?

This season finale isn't going to be pretty, is it?

ETA: I couldn't stop watching today 'til I got to the end of the season 14 finale. Chuck's OT3/father(s)-son melodrama jumped the rails and the boys are free. Chuck spat the dummy because his characters became self-aware and fought back, and he promptly went from genial self-insert cameo to getting all Old Testament on their disobedient asses.

"Writers lie." It was everything I've been itching for from the Chuck = God subplot. *chef's kiss*

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Sweet summer child (that mass murderer, Castiel)

2024-06-18T07:03:26Z

I just skipped back to the start of Supernatural season five to refresh my memory about how Nick/Lucifer's arc began. Accidentally landed on the scene in the hospital where Castiel, having picked his side at the end of S4, complains that he "killed two angels this week". Oh, bby.

The show's never delved deeply into that aspect of Castiel's storyline. He's feared and loathed by other angels but we've seen little of how he feels about that. Few characters can get a rise out of him under any provocation, so we just get occasional glimpses of his fear and anger when one of the Winchesters goes recklessly suicidal and makes Cas afraid his sacrifices are in vain and his faith misplaced. He needs to feel that it's been worth it and panics when that gets hard. He's killed so many of his own kind, both in combat and when he went nuclear at the start of S7. He's been significantly responsible for the genocide and near extinction of the angels, both through personal kills and through his epic hubris in seasons 6, 7, and 9.

He feels the guilt and shame, he undergoes atonement, and he learns to do and be better - but he keeps on killing angels when he needs to. All that slaughter, yet I truly believed him when he told Nick that it's the personal, human tragedy of Jimmy Novak and family - the unintended consequence of his ignorance and blind faith, his angelic innocence - that, metaphorically speaking, keeps Cas awake at night. That was just raw for him and Nick touched a nerve, while the fate of Heaven, in which he's taken a conscious part, is a dull burden that Cas carries and owns without outward displays of overwhelming emotion.

It ought to come over as a terrible, terrifying zealotry on Castiel's part - the kind that tips the balance from hero to antihero/villain, and the kind of cold absolutism he consciously walked away from at the end of S4 when Dean challenged him to choose between right and wrong instead of relying on blind faith, but it doesn't read that way. His self-doubt is infinitely more dangerous to bystanders - to his friends - than his righteous certainty.

When he succumbs to a dangerous anger in his private trauma, he has the insight to isolate himself, and when that fails, he has the self-awareness to stop short of beating the helpless Metatron to death because he can still draw a clear distinction between an enemy and a threat. He knows how dangerous he is and warns people when it's viable to do so. He does everything in his power to see that he's safely restrained when Rowena's slavering-killer spell overtakes him, when he knows the choice is going to be taken out of his hands. The rest of the time his self-control is epic. Even the tired, kind and caring dad!Cas of season 13/14 is first and foremost a soldier making a soldier's choices with a soldier's strategy, a defender rather than an aggressor. Somehow, even with the shocking death toll he's racked up, he's a protector figure, not something out of a nightmare. Just like the Winchesters.

It's like he's helpless to prevent his part in harming Heaven, even as he's the one stabbing and exploding his siblings all over the place. Mind you, the other angels never learn. They keep coming at him with pointy things and/or threatening the Winchesters, and when they do occasionally manage to take him off the board, Chuck puts him right back. As of S14, even Naomi seems to have grasped that making Castiel choose between his own kind and his adopted family isn't a survival strategy. I'm not optimistic that any of the angels (bar semi-angelic Jack, I guess) will be left standing by the series finale. The shape of the story seems to demand that they move over to make way for a better tomorrow - along with God. But if God's the one writing the story, it's unlikely to be that simple!

Poor (killy stabby fallen fratricidal) Castiel.

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Okaaaay...

2024-06-17T17:13:46Z

Okay. Okay. Some pivotal plot points emerged over the last handful of Supernatural eps, unless I'm very much mistaken. We've done 14x04 to 14x10 over the past two days. Strong episodes all.

Takeaways: I think I'm spoilered enough to know for sure that the deal Castiel just made with the Empty must lead to his much-GIFsetted swansong at the end of S15. He doesn't seem to be on board so far with the 'suffer first' bit of the arrangement, though - I'm not sure he thinks on such a small, human scale, even now he's more able to blend in outwardly. A dutiful death in a good cause probably still looks like a win from where he's standing.

Apocalypse-world-Michael may be an unreliable narrator, or even a liar, but his infodump about Chuck doing multiple drafts of the universe and moving on when unsatisfied was a definite ping on my plot radar. I've been convinced for ages that the free will they fight so hard for is constrained by the roadblocks Chuck - writing - puts in their path for the sake of dramatic tension and steering them towards his objectives. (Still the Cain and Abel 2.0 thing for Sam and Dean? Because having Michael and Lucifer go for it wasn't enough?)

So if evil-Michael is right, Chuck's also writing a whole multiverse and neglecting all of it because he likes AUs, redrafts obsessively looking for unattainable perfection, can't get his protagonists to do exactly what he wants no matter what he tries, or just gets bored easily, and... and are Our Heroes gonna have to deal with him at some point between now and the ending/his endgame to get any free will at all? Deal with God? Is God the ultimate Big Bad of Supernatural? It'd make sense for the story arc but, if so, I think they're going to need a bigger weapon and cooler heads. Which I guess is where Jack comes in? As much as they talk about Jack's scary off-the-chart power, we've seen very little of it other than when he opened the portals. He must be headed for something huge eventually.

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Prospective Feline - all mine for 10 years

2024-06-17T07:10:02Z

It's 10 years ago that I adopted my beautiful rescue cat from a cat hoarder via a shelter. She arrived with the name Snowy, which I planned to change but could never find the right name. (She's not snowy, she's creamy or milky with hints of ginger in her undercoat). About a year later, Mum saw her sitting all tiny and dainty in a sunbeam with her paws neatly together and decided she's a "Lady". I didn't find out until last year that this was a reference to I, Claudius, because I was calling Lady "Madam" in the same way people addressed Livia as, "Lady". I generally call her "the Cat", because she's the one and only. My definite article.

[The belleh on a sunny wall circa 2015]

"Snowy" had spent a long, miserable winter in outdoor heated pens confined with other cats (she hates other cats). She threw herself at me when I visited the pen to meet her and make a decision, though I'd fallen for her defeated-looking photo and friendly description. She was in poor condition, moulting dry handfuls as I petted her, clearly stressed by being shut in with other cats. Having to wait a week between meeting her and bringing her home was awful - I'd have carried her out there and then if I could. The first thing we did when I finally got her home was enjoy a mega brushing session together, with Lady purring hysterically and climbing all over me as if to say, "Please be my friend, please be my friend." It took months to get her properly hydrated, get her coat in good condition, get her to show a bit of catitude spark, and convince her that the food I brought was all hers - no Enemies here. She was just exhausted.

She's been everything I wanted - a peaceful, stay-at-home shadow who just wants love and obedient human slaves. She's undemanding, low-energy, and kind. In return I've made her feel safe again, given her every creature comfort, taught her how to tell us what she wants (she didn't meow when she arrived, though she did chirp constantly to keep us in the loop), sourced and bought nearly every cat food brand in Europe to find what works for her, taught her that most feet would never kick her, and paid her whopping healthcare bills. If not for my disability making it hell to actually deal with the vets - transport, phone calls, 'popping back' to pick up prescriptions, not being capable of taking prompt action when she gets sick on a 'bad day' - it would've been 10 years of unrelenting joy with her.

She's the gentlest cat I've ever known. I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard her growl (not including when she does it in her sleep, which is hilarious). Same with hissy-spits, which she's only done when stepped on or chasing an Enemy from her garden (all the local cats are petrified of this tiny, docile girl - definitely a double identity there!) She loves to stalk and bum-wiggle and dash, but never follows through to kill anything. I think 2 grasshoppers who didn't look before they leapt is her running kill total, but she'll go to town on her deer-hide dangly mousie now and then and carry it off to her lair, dragging the stick behind her. She's ridiculously passive when held, while making it clear that she'd rather you didn't. She's never deliberately scratched me, and her play bites are mother-to-kitten gentle.

For a few years she was fearful of new people in general and men in particular, then the patience of my gentle male neighbour coaxed her into accepting treats from him. She blossomed once she had that revelation - other humans can be friends, even the male ones. Now she visits him most days from March to October, staring at his kitchen window until he comes out to her with a bag of treats, then slutting and squirmy-rolling for him in a way she never does for us. He alone is allowed to rub her belly.

I love kittens, all that cute fun, but you never know what sort of cat they'll grow up to be. Being able to pick the personality I wanted to spend a lifetime with by getting a rescue cat has been perfect. She's perfect for me and I'm perfect for her, give or take the mobility fails on my side and the vet bills on hers. As I type she's on the back of the sofa with both feet extended towards me, toebeans flexing as she reaches for my hair without quite touching me. She rarely lets me out of her sight and wants to be part of everything I do, but on the days where I've no choice but to sit still, she sits with me, happy to just chill.

[The view from this post.]

We're not sure of her age. The estimate from the shelter was 4-6 years old, so we're assuming she's about 15 now. That tallies with her health issues, thyroid and kidney and arthritis in her hips. A few years ago we almost lost her when she had a dental operation and crashed into kidney failure during the following ten days. I was force-feeding and -hydrating her with a syringe for a couple of weeks, which she trusted me to do. She wasn't ready to die - she just couldn't make herself eat. Somehow she stabilised and now, after yet another dental to sort out her chronic gum disease, and with the help of the miracle drug Solensia for her elderly aches and pains and Felimazole to normalise her thyroid, she's the strongest and happiest she's ever been. Full of catitude, which she had almost none of when she first arrived. She's even adjusted to having a parade of strangers in her home giving me personal care every morning.

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Plot twists. Plot nukes!

2024-06-15T05:30:09Z

We hit the end of Supernatural's 13th season yesterday. I've been able to see most of the twists coming since about S3, mainly because the writers do what I'd do, being twisted and a lover of angst, but I didn't see the Dean-as-the-Michael-sword twist coming until the exact moment it occurred to Dean, when I alarmed/amused the parental unit by yelping, "Oh no. No, no, no!" and facepalming until the next scene shift.

I saw Gabriel's death (whimper) coming the moment Castiel started talking to him about how badly Gabriel was needed in Heaven, so I braced myself, but I didn't see Lucifer's death coming at all. Not that I trust it to stick. And Jack is... I guess human now? Human-ish? Didn't see that coming either. Oh, and I did a little girly scream when Naomi turned up. Love Amanda Tapping, but Naomi scared the pants off me. Other than Castiel in seasons 4-7, before he started to embrace human emotions, she's the only other angel character where the performance really sold their literal inhumanity - the sense that the human shape we see can barely contain them. I didn't expect to see Naomi turn up as part of the solution, nor Cas able to speak to her the narky way he did, then cooperate with her the way he did.

So my brain's playing catchup trying to anticipate season 14, now. In theory Dean should be able to kick Michael out, but for some reason he didn't or couldn't, so that has to be a major plot point in the first half of the season. Jack's at least as much magic as boy, so having his grace stolen can't be good for him. I mean, he popped from the womb to young manhood and instinctively used his power to defend and preserve himself long before he began to master it. Before he was even born, in fact, reaching out to snag Castiel as a parent/guardian/believer. Can he even survive without the archangel aspect of his makeup? It's not like his human body is just a vessel. He's been... gutted. By his own father, no less.

In the immortal words of Rowena, "Bum. Bollocks."

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Lucky Thirteen

2024-06-13T14:17:43Z

Season 13 of Supernatural is turning out to be a highlight for me. There hasn't yet been an episode I didn't fully enjoy, which is a first.

They've just revealed Gabriel's survival and given Lucifer unwanted human-style feels while showcasing how far Castiel's come - from 'Aww, the little human I saved from Hell just shot me repeatedly and stabbed me in the heart, I'm keeping it,' at his 4x01 debut to 'Hold still while I mindrape you and destroy your brain in the name of saving the people I love,' in 13x14. Talk about finding his feels.

Of the three, right now I'm more scared of Castiel than either of the archangels, or of the apocalypse-world Michael who I'm assuming is the season's big bad. Castiel's a captivating buddy slash romantic interest cum fish-out-of-water-archetype, but he's a pretty terrifying angelic soldier even when he's fighting alongside Our Heroes. He's suddenly more scary for not deferring to Dean, who's usually able to stop him going badass with a word or a touch. How many angels has Cas killed thus far? Jack seems capable of knocking them all on their asses, though, which is vaguely reassuring. I'm guessing he's the failsafe rather than the ticking time bomb everyone feared he'd be.

Hey, wait, has Gabriel been locked up and tortured all this time? Since season... 5? Yowzah! Is (the boring) Asmodeus that unexpectedly powerful because he's using Gabriel as a vending machine for archangelic grace the way Lucifer is milking Anael? Yikes!

This show isn't big on the 'comfort' but it supplies multiple good characters with epic amounts of 'hurt' for the enterprising fanficcer to play with. One of those moments where I'm glad our telly has shite contrast on dark scenes - is Gabriel's mouth sewn shut?

Angel angst all the way then. Keep it coming.

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Getting towards the end of Supernatural

2024-06-12T01:08:34Z

It's been brilliant marathoning Supernatural. That wasn't even physically possible when I first put the show on my 'to Watch' list and made the decision to avoid spoilers. I can currently access seasons 1-14 on ITVX, and all of it on Amazon Prime Video, which is something I take for granted far too easily. I still have actual stressy dreams about scrabbling around trying to collect and preserve shows on VHS, back when things aired once (if at all in the UK) then vanished.

I can say this for sure - watching this show air in real time would have driven me absolutely potty. Week to week, never mind season to season. Which may explain some of the fandom's wilder antics!

So, I'm a little way into season 13 now. The first few eps are emotionally brutal, with Dean basically falling apart at having lost so much during a single battle that he begs God - Chuck - for respite, praying, and turns inward when Chuck (to nobody's surprise) does nothing. I think I could've watched a whole season of Dean in that state of mind, with Sam trying to juggle that strain on their relationship, his own unsupported grief, and his nervous attempt to mentor Jack. But Dean's perked up because Castiel is back, by the efficent and simple ploy of having Cas irritate the boss of the celestial afterlife so much that it threw him back in disgust so it could get some sleep. Love it. (Is that the thingy that finally gets him in the end?)

I usually focus on characters, relationships, and performances as a viewer - that's my passion, after all. But some eps of Supernatural go above and beyond on the production side, especially the direction. Amanda Tapping brought her deep understanding of the sci-fantasy genre to her s12 ep (her first as director?) and Richard Speight Jr has done elegant wonders with some tricky material. The eps directed by Jensen Ackles highlight those particular passions of mine, characterisation-rich and full of heart. Speight's 12x12 Stuck in the Middle (With You) was so elaborately scripted that it could've been a hot mess in the wrong hands, but his direction delivered it pinpoint sharp and unsparing. I don't often smile at the direction alone, or even consciously notice it until I ponder the ep after the fact, but he practically had me punching the air while I watched. Impressive!

Next up is 13x07. Getting towards the sharp end!

ETA: Belated honourable mention for going with an ENTIRE SEASON of Dick gags that one time.

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I was born too late into a world that doesn't care...

2024-06-12T00:08:21Z

PARENT: Why is all the music on your 'nostalgia' playlist so bitter?
ME:... cuz I hit my teens and adulthood resonating with the music of the 80s and 90s, not the 60s and 70s.

(Oh, I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair.)

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I did a cry

2024-06-11T07:14:59Z

Parental unit is having a rewatch of the MCU movies in timeline order. I'm tagging along as brain allows. Yesterday was Captain America - Civil War and, being less familiar with the stuff that came after Age of Ultron, I'd completely forgotten that it was the introduction for Black Panther.

At the time I weathered the death of the beautiful Chadwick Boseman - and all he represented in the world of superhero media and role models - with a sniffle and a nod of respect. 2020 was a global shitshow and the news of his death was just another blow at the time.

I've since seen Wakanda Forever, a study in mourning and honouring the fallen, a young character and a young actor stepping in to fill a fucking daunting pair of shoes as the unplanned new Black Panther, and then the tender, grounded respect paid to the bitter black-superhero void by The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Sam and Shuri are perfect, but when I saw T'Challa's first closeup yesterday I just burst into tears at the loss of him.

A beautiful performer, a beautiful character, and a beautiful legacy of fierce, black dignity.

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Aaand there's the other (angelic) shoe

2024-06-10T01:35:15Z

Not the Doctor Who shoe I was waiting for, alas. Maybe on Saturday?

Supernatural 12x19 The Future and Castiel's found something new to put his faith in. Not terribly subtle after the Lily Sunder... flashback storyline about him helping to kill a kid who wasn't angelspawn after all, but I somehow failed to see the answering twist with Kelly's very-much-angelspawn baby coming. Is Cas headed for a custody battle with Lucifer now? Eep. I feel like I need to cover my eyes for the rest of the season.

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Bye bye braincell, it was nice knowing you

2024-06-09T06:53:24Z

It's actually impressive that my last surviving braincell got 12 and a half seasons into Supernatural before waving the white flag. We followed the plot this far and everything - even the small stuff, and for all the characters at once (except Garth. Lost track of him somehow). Today... blank. What is this Earth thing you call "plot"? Given how Crowley is poking Lucifer, the most powerful being left on the gameboard, with a big stick of uncharacteristic stupendous shortsighted stupidness, and that they just tied off the non-storyline with his son, I'm guessing this is the season where Crowley taps out? Love ya always, Mark A Sheppard.

Braincell and I watched the new Doctor Who episode yesterday while doing the mental equivalent of the 'buffering' spinning circle. I've followed both Doctor Who and the works of Russell T Davies for decades. I know how DW works and I know how RTD builds stories/characters, and this season I'm just confused. What the hell is going on and, whatever it is, why make it any new Doctor's introductory season? I don't know any more about Gatwa's Doctor today than I did after his intro beside Tennant and The Church on Ruby Road, and given the character-relevant events of yesterday's new ep, and how few episodes form a full season/arc these days, that's pretty bad. This story's almost over and there's only so many other-shoes you can drop in a finale.

I'm enjoying watching him do his thing, and enjoying Ruby doing it with him, and I've enjoyed most of the individual ep storylines this season - but I'm not feeling it. Maybe there isn't more to know about him? Is that the point? We knew enough by the end of Eccleston's and Tennant's first eps to take an educated guess at a lot of aspects of their character ("That's who I am - now forget me"/"No second chances"), so maybe... this is it? But Eccleston and Tennant had me riveted by ep 3, enchanted and half in love, and they kept on growing as Rose learned more about them. I'm not feeling it this time, maybe because I keep getting jarred out of the story by the impromptu musical numbers. Ruby seems to know him better and better - when not to offer her hand in support and when to hug him until he hugs back. What has she learned off-screen that we didn't learn on-screen?

Or is it that my braincell's waved the white flag and I'm just completely missing the point?

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Castiel - half an answer in the eps I watched yesterday

2024-06-08T03:23:41Z

The last Supernatural ep we watched last night was 12x10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets. It and the end of 12x09 went some way to answering the question I was getting nowhere with yesterday - 'where's my in for fanficcing Castiel?'. That angel finally reached max gross load there and got angry with his situation to the extent of taking it out on his friends. He's acting put-upon and under-appreciated, exasperated to tears with the Winchesters' latest attempt to sacrifice themselves to save each other. That sarcastic, bitter, 'You're welcome,' at the end of 12x09 was a huge moment for the character.

Since beating Dean senseless back in S5 he's sat on his frustrations, fears, disappointments, and failures like a champ and put up with those of others with tired stoicism and humility. When he's screwed up, he's done so from honest motives - protect Winchesters; fix what's broke; be of service. He's been learning and growing in every way he possibly can - from practical and emotional experience, from suffering and loss, from personal failure, from self-reflection, from the Novak family he nuked just by showing up, and from his friends.

The early evolution of the season 4/5 angels storyline showed Heaven flailing because God had left the building without leaving a plan, the remaining archangels holding it all together with the Apocalypse as the be-all-and-end-all of existence. By season 6 they're fighting a multi-front civil war. By season 8 they're all but destroyed, their numbers dangerously low, and we learn that it's taken brutal brainwashing - repeated full factory resets in Castiel's case - to keep the rank and file angels in line since at least Biblical times. Even the higher ranking angels are lost sheep, guessing at what God wants of them and - whether explicitly or not - asking, 'Father, why?'

By the time God dropped in at the end of season 11, when it looked like his last and only chance, Castiel had nothing left to say to him and no questions he felt were worth asking. On the one hand maybe a missed opportunity for the characters, but on the other... maybe that lack of a conversation with Cas said it all? Chuck had The Conversation with Dean, and with Lucifer, but he has no connection with the lower-ranking angels. None. God is over Castiel, who keeps not quite playing out his role in the story; and Cas has been pretty well cured of his zealous 'because God' angel programming, along with any illusion of a benign or worthy father figure in Chuck.

He's left with this quietly resentful disappointment that turns easily to self-loathing and self-doubt when he encounters failure. He doesn't take the opportunity to share that with Chuck, a detail hammered home by also having Misha Collins play Lucifer in that setup - a no-holds-barred, personal, messy-emotional father-son relationship with God that Castiel never had.

He's gone from resentment towards Dean for distracting him from his obligation to Heaven with its security blanket of narrow, emotionless certainty to the complete reverse, focusing everything he has on the Winchesters - Mary included - because Cas still needs something to believe in and something to serve. He equates that, now, with his protective love for this human found-family who taught him how to feel, love and live. With Dean especially, who doesn't see his own value and keeps endangering his life and soul.

Cas doesn't believe in himself, though, not even slightly. He still only defines himself, knows himself, relative to something he views as greater and more important than himself, and as a cause worth killing or dying for. He's trying to do his duty as he sees it - his duty to the thing he has faith in. It still hurts him when that faith lets him down, and that's the 'in' I was looking for.

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Cheeky telly

2024-06-07T05:17:19Z

One of my fave things about Supernatural is the invisibility of the hellhounds and the angels' wings. That CGI shit hard, so creeping massive dog pawprints and magnificent room-spanning birdlike angel wings visible only as occasional shadows when an angel dies or throws a power pissyfit, and a little fluttering sound when they teleport... it's sort of evil genius at work. It's pure cheek, and it's brilliant.

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Nym