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@adhdgwen
Hi, I'm raven.
You can follow my primary blog at: @sapphicanarchist but this is a seperate blog for fandom stuff. I'l spam reblogs, character analysis, ships brainrot, etc.
You can also follow me on twitter (dm first) though i'm multifandom and jump from one brainrot to another quite quickly.
Season 10 is such a âwhat the fuckâ season for me. Like genuinely, what the fuck is that season lmao.And the finale? Dean killed death? after summoning him to ask for a huge ass favour too, like damn thatâs just an asshole move.
Also I genuinely feel they could have done without the entirety of the mark of cain arc. And only partially because they killed off Charlie for it. Just this entire arc I feel could have been an email. Or better yet left in the writing drafts. The only thing I even marginally enjoyed was Crowley and even that I did not particularly LOVE his arc this season to make it worth it. like drowley was cute and all but that could have been incorporated into the show any other way so again, not worth it.
Like idk whatâs up with the spn writers tbh, like the writing just seems to be going downhill. Season 1-5 is pretty solid, kinda self-contained but very logical. Dudebro-ey even. Can see it being a show on itâs own. Season 6-8 is very fan-servicey which donât get me wrong, I enjoy. Iâm a fan who likes to be serviced okay but kinda different tonally from the previous five seasons. Could see it being a spin-off or a short sequel for the fans.
Seasons 9 and 10? it just seems the writers were on crack. And not even the good kind of crack. The bad kind that gives you hallucinations and apparently really shitty writing.
Stopped watching spn for a bit cause I couldnât believe the audacity they had in killing Charlie. Like I was genuinely gagged and not in a fun way in a âiâm literally speechless with disgustâ way. Writers are actually never beating the misogynistic allegations and for their only recurring queer character to be killed off so violently literally in service to a male characterâs storyline is so absurd from the doylist perspective, and from the watsonian persoective there was actually no reason for Charlie to head out by herself alone. It was stupid, and Charlie has never been stupid. Also youâre telling me she was under the radar for most of the season while the stynes were hunting her, but she leaves for less than an hour and she gets caught immediately? Sure Jan.
I know iâm too late to firebomb the spn headquarters in protest (metaphorically, also unrelated hi fbi agent donât be a stranger) but iâm really glad that from the brief search i made (cause iâve somehow managed to avoid all spoilers apart from the destiel finale one), it appears the fandom did a lot of protesting so the writers appear aware they SUCK.
cas meeting soulless sam: yup seems legit, regular human activity right there. what? no soul? humans have that? huh. anyways heâs probably better off so who cares?
cas less than a second into meeting moc!dean: my dean senses are tingling, something (other than me ofc) has marked him. In fact I can pinpoint it to this specific hand and now I will charge sam to watch out for him till I can get him back to normal
I kinda understand why thereâs a huge divide between sam and dean fans cause damn their relationship is messyyy
I understand Sam because Iâm the younger sister of the eldest daughter of an eldest daughter. Sometimes family is forced down your throat so long and so often that you choke on it. Family covers a multitude of sins, of disregard of your thoughts, feelings and opinions because god forbid you want to be your own person instead of an extension of your family. And you canât complain without being an asshole because objectively your elder sibling (who you love) has and will always sacrifice more for you even when you donât ask or want them to. So being yourself feels like a crime and youâre suffocating under the weight of familial expectations and god you just want out sometimes and not to be the thought of as evil for that.
I understand Dean because I have younger siblings and their mere existence kept me alive during some really dark times in my life. Sometimes you push yourself farther and farther away from what you want because of your family, because you love them, and that love in itself becomes everything. It becomes the Only thing. And you cling to it with a white-knuckled grip because if you let go for even an instant you stop knowing who you are. But the tighter you hold on, the more they slip away. Theyâre all you have and all you have told yourself you need or want, but by virtue of all youâve sacrificed for them they have been allowed to grow up with more and want more than just family. So theyâre grateful and resentful of the sacrifice, and you wonder what is so horrible about you loving them that pushes them away.
I even understand John-to an extent- because thereâs something so compelling about his love for his family driving him into a bitter angry neglectful man who never learnt how to be a dad and not a husband.
i love that everyoneâs reaction to realizing that Sam didnât try to get Dean back from Purgatory is shock and a little bit of horror. Cause there are only two universal truths in supernatural:
1. Charlie Bradbury is the fucking best, and
2. The Winchester brothers are obsessive, insane and toxically codependent
so it Is a little bit like finding out the sky turned idk fucking green while you were sleeping.
Dean is bi for sure, but honestly I think he prefers men. Apart from his obvious thing with Castiel, I swear every time we see him visibly flustered in the show itâs because of a dude. When he blushed and downright giggled with Dr. Sexy, the golem/nazi episode where he thought the guy was hitting on him (and actually walked into a table), etc.
It becomes a tad more overt in the later seasons, early seasons Dean was definitely seen more with women and I would say almost downright homophobic. Which is interesting from both a watsonian vs doylist perspective. I think a popular Watsonian fan theory is that John is homophobic and as Dean was exposed to him growing up, he internalized homophobic ideals that only got challenged when travelling with Sam Wokechester (who sidenote, I think is tragically straight which is honestly a shame cause his big brown eyes should be a weapon). Or my theory, which is: John was hardly ever around long enough and growing up in the 90s will just do that to a boy with no strong parental guidance apart from macho bullshit.
From a doylist perspective, itâs just clear that the writers were writing for a much different audience than the one they gained. Supernatural (early seasons anyways) was supposed to be a macho power fantasy, but they realized it garnered a largely female, liberal fanbase and had to tweak the writing to reflect that. Thatâs why the writing becomes visibly less misogynistic as the episodes go on because women are paying their bill, they stop using queer ppl as the butt of the joke (infamous âtwo queens? iâm sureâ) because queer people are paying their bills, and though Dean still says some macho bs that comes across as ignorant (because you canât really have Dean become a differenct character overnight no matter the suspension of belief), they use Sam more often to correct it.
However, a huge Thing about the macho power fantasy spn originally was, was the use and discarding of women to be love interests for the brothers. Which honestly had some misogynistic undertones that could alienate an audience that didnât want to deal with the âWinchesters come into town, kill the monster, have sex with the damselâ episodic fantasy and also the plot was getting more and more complicated so it didnât seem viable. But they Also didnât want Dean to settle down. Hence the parade of bromances who are taking the place of the women Dean would be having sex with otherwise. Obviously fans arenât blind or dumb and can read queer subtext. Hence Dean being more bi as the show goes on.
All this to say is that itâs thanks to my fujoshi elders who became powerful and active enough of a force during the airing that we have the existence of Dean Bichester
canât believe i went from being a sam girl to being a dean girl to being a cas girl like wow season 7 is so hard to sit through I keep checking the cast list wondering if cas is in the episode
scratch that, new fave character just dropped. Charlie, I just met you but I would absolutely die and kill for you
canât believe i went from being a sam girl to being a dean girl to being a cas girl like wow season 7 is so hard to sit through I keep checking the cast list wondering if cas is in the episode
watching supernatural for the first time and s6 destiel hits like crack cocaine
the only story in the progression fantasy/litrpg/etc space that i've really enjoyed and kept up with has been super supportive, tho that's with the caveat that the first sixty chapters are basically a self-contained novel that is pretty good, and then the next uh hundred and thirty chapters spend a lot of time defusing a lot of the setup. it's not just the slice-of-life stuff that predominates, it's the part where the story slowly picks away at the setup
like so, this is gonna have spoilers for the first chunk of super supportive. i've already made a post about this before i think but this will be post #2 i guess.
I read SuSu (terrible name) because of your last post and I've been enjoying it too (it's on my vanishingly small list of good ProFan fiction above the Last Orellian (RIP) and Mother of Learning). I broadly agree with your post, but I'm going to express some faith in the author to follow through in some form, if only because the story is so telegraphed towards antagonistic Artonians that it would be cartoonish for them *all* to be noble and kind. If the author didn't care about following through, why set such a strong indicator as a literally painfully tortured and enslaved servant? I guess the fail state is that the Artonian antagonists aren't the Contract or the Primary, but some kind of "fringe group" and the solution is for Alden to save his beloved colonial system from revolting because of the iron hand of Artonian ultra-nationalism and return it to the soft grasp of regular Artonian nationalism. That seems like an unfortunately plausible direction, given how sympathetically the Primary's compound has been portrayed... but idk, I smell a turning point on the horizon. My personal pet theory is that there's a perspective switch to Boe and that Alden's meant to be an unreliably pro-artonian narrator given he's a high school age guy who has been given a range of special help directly from his brain AI. That's maybe a long shot. Well, whatever. I'm not bored of SuSu, at least, so it hasn't committed the cardinal sin of WN's yet. Plot progression continues, however slowly, and things can still happen. Thanks for the recommendation post, I certainly wouldn't have checked out a story called "Super Supportive" without a good reason to.
Oh, and btw, does Alden's relationships with Lute and Stu'arth read kind of gay to you or is this a hallucination on my part? Both guys have had an "awkward meet the parents" session and there just seems like Killua/Gon levels of instant closeness between a sunny personality protagonist and his standoffish companion from a family of cold power brokers. I don't think the author intended it, (and I actually think they added that bit about Lute liking that rabbit girl b/c of it) but I was definitely going pride flag emoji question mark in a couple of places.
here's another like thousand words about super supportive
right, the thing is that there have been a lot of mentions that the artonans are still very shady, going from the subtle to the extremely overt. what is up with u-type affixations? there's the implication that picking a bad first skill might permanently hamstring your authority development! we still don't really know what the deal is with chaos, and it's been implied that no human really knows what the deal is with chaos. who was really behind the matadero attack, b/c it seems like the guy on the submerged boat was swayed into committing the attack precisely when the boat went into the system's dead zone, which implies whoever swayed him knew exactly how to keep things out of sight of the system. so there's all these things that are rife for elaboration that could totally upend our understanding of the dynamics at play. but...
okay so like the narrative makes a big deal about that one object shaper whose name alden can't remember, right? ha ha they're just a background character. except there are also like ten other students in his class that have literally never been mentioned at all, except in team totals (grouped as sets of like, "+5 other As" in the gym class notes). likewise with alden's psychologist appointments: he has apparently been meeting with psychologists his whole life and especially now after returning to earth and the matadero attack, but these are all just kinda offhand mentions that we never see on-screen. now, with the mind healer, some of alden's ptsd stuff has come into narrative focus, but there are all these bits of worldbuilding like, "this is some worldbuilding that was never really fully elaborated on and is only there in the margins as vague gestures towards a more fleshed-out world that the author never got around to writing b/c it's not really critical for the story they're telling," and that makes me wonder how many of the things above that i see as looming conflicts were actually written more as miscellaneous worldbuilding and minor threads that have been dropped.
at this point i'm really hoping that the secondary and tertiary are huge dicks, b/c that's kind of the only thing that would really make the political position of the knights make sense? the primary and quaternary are so nice and sweet and honorable, and alis-art'h explicitly had a bit about how she's not involved in politics (getting the thegund mission specifically because it was long and remote and she hates dealing with the grand council). but like. these are the people who have the most effective power in the entire known universe. it doesn't seem like they take orders from anybody? that's the whole point of the english 'general' translation. but it's very unclear how they fit into the artonan political landscape.
stu-art'h was even like 'it would be very easy for me to unlock your system and give you better skill choice options', and it's like, okay so if that doesn't even rise to the level of a special knight-only privilege, are we supposed to read that statement as saying that the situation for avowed being what it is on earth is solely b/c no interested knight (or wizard!!) has decided to instruct humans on how the system and skills actually work? or that the knights don't really care about resource worlds as such? or that instruction of a single human about skill construction would be political, but it might be overlooked for the son of the primary? b/c that's sure how i read that bit.
like there's definitely a reading of the story where alden is this hugely traumatized kid who's only getting special information from the system b/c it knows he's now too terrified of system collapse to try telling anybody that the system is kind of shady -- e.g., jeffy's level-ups almost certainly being timed to reinforce that doing jobs and obeying orders gets him power-ups, even though he presumably had some amount of that authority growth already banked for a while prior to the disaster. like, why not tell somebody that you know what a level is? b/c it sure seems like that's something humans in general don't know. but! i don't actually think that's an angle the story is going to take.
or like, something else that has been weighing on me: max is explicitly mentioned as being from south africa. the artonans landed in 1960, prior to the dissolution of aparthied. presumably the fact that 1. max is black, 2. he's from south africa, and 3. he still ended up on anesidora is intended to signify that yes, south africa got rid of aparthied. there's some gesturing that maybe racism itself doesn't exist any more? alden mentions it when they're watching the old video about alien contact, and boe is immediately like "but there's still anti-avowed sentiment", but he notably doesn't say "sure but there is still racism". but we actually have very little knowledge of what the entire world's political and social organization is. there's a part where a superhero blithely mentions that most non-supervillian work people do on earth has to do with guarding things and quelling riots, and it's like, oh are you gonna elaborate on that?? no???
all that is to say, i've found super supportive to be compelling in part b/c it does keep gesturing at all these subjects in a way that's way more involved than the usual "there's a system and it gives people superpowers" setup you usually see in litrpg/progression fantasy stories. (like, i mentioned it in that other post, but the thing where wordchains interact differently with the system compared to all other kinds of magic being because... the special-interest group supporting the chainer class has ideosyncratic ideas about how magic ought to be used is great imo. like oh yeah this is all a constructed system, with limitations due to politics. stuff like that is how i want to see the 'the system was made by a series of compromises where everybody/nobody really got what they wanted' worldbuilding fleshed out) but i have absolutely no clue if it's actually gonna hit all the bits of the story that caught my attention. almost certainly some of the above is just misc. minor worldbuilding details my brain just latched on to that will never really be followed up on meaningfully in the text.
(i have kinda been thinking about the story from a perspective 20 years in the future, where alden is some superhero-knight on multiversal adventures, and boe is probably an infamous supervillian involved with superhumans at large, and also jeremy is just some guy with a job who was childhood friends with both of them. but who knows if the story will ever really get there.)
re: gayness, i'm pretty sure alden is canonically asexual, on account of everything with natalie. him completely not understanding why the super-secret privacy booths all come with a giant bed was pretty funny. but wow that does not stop him from having a lot of intense emotionally-fraught interactions with other guys. boe, lute, stu-art'h... actually i kinda suspect this might be the kind of story when alden and stu end up as queerplatonic lifepartners. i'm not even sure what that would mean, but their friendship is so emotionally charged and is clearly being built up towards something. in the original draft of the sleepover chapter alden interrupts stu-art'h by saying 'hush' and it's like, wowwww okay i see why you changed that b/c that makes the entire scene read way more romantically
(there's also a lot of speculation about boe maybe having a one-sided crush on alden? i could see it. there's, again, like one mention of boe going 'natalie is hot' and then nothing else, & it's hard to say if that's just the author not wanting to dip into relationship and romance stuff or what.)
anyway i ship max/jeffy that would be a very cute pairing. max would be the tsunedere.
rlly late to the discourse but i found the writing of the antonian/earth relationship so interesting. It is a lot more complicated than one side being evil and one side being good, like thereâs a clear existential threat: Chaos, and itâs implied by his first teachings from Joe that the contract was originally supposed to be a fair beneficial relationship without such a strong power dynamic but the original idea got corrupted due to politics.
Itâs kinda difficult to have an objective view on what exactly is going on as Alden and Stuâarth and practically every character in the novel (apart from maybe Gorgon but he has literal chains preventing him from speaking) are all unreliable narrators, which is why the criticism of Anton and the power dynamic shifts often when new information is presented.
The contract originally is said by Joe to have been intended as good but with the original wizards not being powerful enough, it brought in all of Anton which is where it devolved into political bullshit. That is obviously unreliable because we Know Joe isnât particularly trustworthy, but it is the version that I think makes the most sense. Knights and the other âgood and just and trueâ Antonians in the book are implied to be under their own contracts and rules that prevent them from outright Telling earthlings all there is to know about the system and chaos, and this contract only makes sense if we go with Joeâs teaching about the intentions being good. The Earth Contract being so new that the influx of information could disrupt it, is only a deterrent to people who are said and implied to have good intentions if the disruption would be a bad thing. If the Knights and the Primary are working on a much grander scale that ultimately points towards good, the lack of information available to earth starts to become clearer.
This isnât to say that what theyâre doing isnât ultimately shitty or horrible. Aulia Velra appears to believe that what she is doing is ultimately right and good, but it doesnât change the fact that how she manipulated Lute was completely wrong. Earthlings are tying their authority too quickly, with little to no information about what theyâre doing or Why theyâre doing it or even the wider chaos-driven effects. Under such complete and total ignorance, the contract is manipulative and unfair, but Alden as the narrator has Never known a world without the contract and the only time the contract failed or blipped out was extremely traumatic to him. So even as he becomes aware of the way he and the other avowed are being screwed over and manipulated, he canât go further from his own core and central belief that the System and the Contract is still a Good thing.
In that way, he is more similar to Antonians, especially Knights, than even he may realize. Though they might occassionally think that things might be unfair or that certain avowed deserve more knowledge, they wonât act on those thoughts for fear of causing mass rejection and thus the contract failing. Because they, like Alden, think that ultimately the System is a good thing. Ironically, more morally dubious characters like Joe are more willing to take risks -as it pertains to the system breaking by an abundance of knowledge- than the upright Knights. (Except the Primary but tbh idrk his deal)
I donât think the Antonians have as much knowledge and sway over the system as you might think (personal theory), as what usually happens in a group project where everyone pushes their own agenda, some stuff slips by that only the person who has the agenda fully knows about or understands. The system itself is semi-sentient, continuously growing and changing so the Antonians control over it is limited. Knowledge on specific Earth Contract things is likely to be limited much like how Earth governments donât really tell Everyone everything about their dealings with foreign nations, so what the average Antonia believes their relationship with Earth is might not be based on truth, and most likely differs depending on who you ask. Ultimately, itâs a shitshow that is most likely going to come to a head at some point.
Re: the politics on earth. I do think most of the -isms and -phobias have taken a step back or more likely translated into Avowed vs non avowed, and then into Rank bs. It does seem a lot more heterosexual than I would expect for a post-homophobia world with a lot of the explicit canon relationships amongst humans being f/m, but that could be more about what Alden through the Author notices, than an actual indicator of the relationship preferences of Earth at large. Frankly, it would be weird for homophobia to still be a thing considering just howâŠ. strange the relationship and family dynamics of avowed in Anesidora are. The riots are implied to be Anti- Antonian sentiments from non avowed , unregistered avowed or low ranked avoweds. Especially in the latest chapters. It would be nice to have a Boe or Jeremy focused arc to expand the world a little, as Alden is a lot more Antonian and Anesidora-centric (for understandable plot reasons).
The plot has majorly slowed down recently but I kinda like that in itâs own way, itâs nice to have more downtime with Alden, get more insight into his personal dynamics with his friends and other students. I somewhat sense a huge plot arc coming (itâs already started) so Iâm liking the downtime before then.
cannot BELIEVE i got myself hooked on a progression fantasy story
5 years down the line it's going to be like -- alden hears about stu-art'h getting injured and gets a teleport to where he's being treated.
healer: stu-art'h, where is your <<first-intended>>? they should be notified about your wounds. stuart: do not call him, he is not-- oh. he is. here. oh no. Alden, you did not need to disrupt your studies for-- alden: yes I did. WHAT did they call me? "<<first-intended>>?" stuart, going purple: it is...the one to whom I would bind myself above and before all others... alden: ...we're ENGAGED??? stuart, faintly: ah, is that how to say it in English? alden: that's. definitely how people who read the subtitles will interpret it. aren't we...a little young for that??? stuart: well. it is. presumptuous after only five years, but we have woven ourselves so closely together-- I am deeply shamed, you should have been the first person I ever indicated such an intention to... alden: only five-- we've never even KISSED! stuart: what does THAT have to do with anything? we've shared our traumas, our deepest innermost thoughts, and our most profound life goals with each other. alden: well...yeah... stuart: ...do you...WANT to kiss? alden: ..........maybe? someday? but maybe never? stuart: that's fine, then. alden: ?!?!?!?
feeling so insane about them i cannot believe this
Blitzo sets the tone of their relationship while stolas sets the pace.
Childhood: Blitzo was paid to hang out with stolas, so it was a forced meeting brought about by stolas developing a mini crush on the imp clown. However, once they do meet, Stolas ends up doing any and everything Blitzo decides to do even if he might have wanted to do something else first.
25 years later: Blitzo is captured by Stolas's guards and brought to Stolas who then takes him to his room under the guise of "punishing him himself." Once again, a forced reconnection brought about by- okay I can't fully blame stolas because blitzo WAS stealing from him but the seduction was really brought about by Stolas teasing blitzo so he did kinda set the pace. However, the mood was still set by Blitzo who goes straight into kinky shit despite Stolas's first attempts to withdraw and hide.
The issue is after Blitzo set the mood, Stolas completely leaned into it, in a way that made Blitzo feel like that was all their relationship was.
However this does give way to a theory I have: Stolas is going to be the one ending their relationship. He began this so it does make sense, he should be the one to end it. I think he's going to give Blitzo the asmodean crystals and end their transactional fucking. By removing the one thing he has hanging over Blitzo's head, he's going to become unable to control the pacing of their relationship which will force Blitzo to be the one to reach out and stop hiding behind the safety of transactional sex when it comes to his feelings for Stolas. And I believe Stolas would be the one to ask for an actual relationship once Blitzo reaches out, therefore setting the tone of their future relationship.
Anyways just a thought.
I am such a genius oh my god i totally forgot I wrote this
shen jiu and yue qingyuanâŠ.. i am foaming at the mouth
So before I go into my stolitz meta breakdown, Iâm going to have to admit something first: the pacing in this episode wasnât⊠great. Maybe itâs just been so much time between episodes but did it feel tonally off to anyone else?
The script and dialogue just kept switching between âlaugh at this hahaâ to âthis is serious trauma going downâ to âlaugh at this hahaâ and normally, iâm all for shows that donât take themselves too seriously, but it wasnât consistent. It felt like the writers wanted a deep storyline but also wanted a comedic episode and tried putting the two together which⊠tbh made none of it work.
The animation is great as usual, but I just had to bring that up. I honestly hope this is just a one-off transitive experience and isnât going to be what the rest of the season is like.
I kinda figured the tone shifts were intentional. Blitz wasn't taking the Stolas thing seriously until the last scene.
see i would agree with that đŻ if the tonal shifts were the switch between Plot A and Plot B, but the shifts I had issue with were During the kidnapping and torture. It was like vivziepop didnât know how seriously they wanted us to take Strikerâs very real threat and the danger Stolas was in, and this resulted in off colour jokes and weird almost chunky pacing.
It actually seriously threw me off and messed with my immersion a tad bc of just how⊠weird it was. It just wasnât consistent.
So before I go into my stolitz meta breakdown, Iâm going to have to admit something first: the pacing in this episode wasnât⊠great. Maybe itâs just been so much time between episodes but did it feel tonally off to anyone else?
The script and dialogue just kept switching between âlaugh at this hahaâ to âthis is serious trauma going downâ to âlaugh at this hahaâ and normally, iâm all for shows that donât take themselves too seriously, but it wasnât consistent. It felt like the writers wanted a deep storyline but also wanted a comedic episode and tried putting the two together which⊠tbh made none of it work.
The animation is great as usual, but I just had to bring that up. I honestly hope this is just a one-off transitive experience and isnât going to be what the rest of the season is like.
And awe is well and goodâŠ
âŠbut it is poison to love.
Love has to be between equals.
