Used Kleenex and Costume Jewelry

The life and times of a self-professed Jane-of-All-Trades. Thus far, still a master of none.

[aleatoryw]

me doing normal human activities: is this allowed? is this allowed? am i allowed to do this? is this allowed? i don’t want to get in trouble can i do this is this allowed?

[neil-gaiman]

gofundme /nirvana-comics-knoxville-project-maus (Nirvana Comics Knoxville) is collecting funds to give free copies of MAUS to any student who requests one and doing a pretty bang-up job. Thought it might be of interest to you for signal-boosting.

Definitely.

[goteamwin]

I know pledged my allegiance to Marvel a long time ago but watching this dumpster fire burn just really sparks joy.

[goteamwin]

I know we're all hoping for:

But consider the possibilities:

[goteamwin]

The Big Band music was great, I loved it, very in-universe, but has anyone already cut fight scenes from What If - Captain Carter to Sabotage or do I have to figure that out my damn self?

[goteamwin]

He'd told Sam that the food was better here and that was true. Flavors were richer, deeper, more satisfying. Certainly more than those tinned beans that sustained him in Brooklyn or the rations in Europe. And the butter! He’d never imagined the future would be swimming in butter. Even the Barnes’ could only ever afford margarine, which was more than he could say for him and his own Ma. He wished he could’ve brought her to one of these over the top dinner parties. The memory of her always made him wish he could treat her to nice things.

Then again, he wondered if she’d like all this rich food after all. God knew he’d found shwarma to be an acquired taste, his mother would probably find everything too decadent. His Ma’s idea of fine dining was salt and pepper, which explained why his mother’s cooking was pretty forgettable.

But these days, there were galas and charity dinners where he’d stare down at a plate full of food that cost more than his mother made in a year and he’d think about soup. He’d think about those long nights as a kid, counting his breaths, wheezing in to the count of four, out to the count of eight, and his Ma coming in with a steaming bowl of soup, fresh off the stove. Too hot to eat, he’d sit there, propped against a dozen pillows, huffing in the steam to try and clear his lungs out. And when the steam was gone, he’d sip at it, the thin broth breaking up the sticky mucus that threatened to suffocate him. He could still feel the heat of it, easing the muscles in his too-tight chest, soothing his cough for even just a little while. The taste of it didn’t matter much, but in any case, there wasn’t much he could taste on those nights. God rest her soul, his Ma was no culinary artist, even when the money was good. If someone was being kind, they’d call it a “salt forward” dish, but the bright taste of salt was about all that could cut through the congestion and that was enough for him.

He never knew what went in that soup, other than hot water and salt. It was probably some brand of stock cube he’d never found after she was gone, something heavy on sodium and light on nutrition, but that didn’t matter. He’d tried to replicate it when she passed but nothing tasted the same. The closest anyone ever got was camping out behind enemy lines in Europe, when the Howlies were running low on supplies and trying to stretch what rations they had left long enough to complete the mission or for the allies to catch up. Nothing in the future ever got it right.

Nat had once asked him if he missed being in the past. He’d looked at her, then taken a long deep breath. In to the count of sixty, his nostrils flaring, his chest barreling out, until he could imagine the oxygen tickling the very bottom of his lungs. Then he let it out, a slow, controlled stream of air to the count of 120. “Nope,” he’d told her, and he meant it. He didn’t miss being small or frail or fragile. Didn’t miss the need to be cautious with every step, every breath. He didn’t miss being too poor to afford anything better than dehydrated soup packets. He certainly didn’t miss those hole-in-the-wall apartments that were always too hot in summer and too cold in winter (the company, sure, but never the space). The future was better, in a hundred thousand big ways and a hundred thousand small ways too. The future was swimming in butter. But God, there were days when he’d trade anything for another bowl of that soup.

[goteamwin]

Do you ever just have a social interaction with a stranger in a public place and you’re just like, grrrrrrll, YOUR anxiety level and MY anxiety level are living on the same plane of existence.

[goteamwin]

Listen y'all, ship and let ship, but you can't deny we should have all seen this coming.

[homo-sex-shoe-whale]

I’ve done something.. a little weird

[going2hell4everythingbutbeingbi]

seeing the fandoms people write fics for is honestly more concerning than the fact you made this.

[goteamwin]

Hot Take: Loki is just the spinoff sequel to Gravity Falls.

[goteamwin]

He is standing on a doorstep in...where is he? Westview. Oh right, he’s on a doorstep in Westview, the best little small town in the world! When you’re here, you’re home, so why would anyone want to be anywhere else?

He is standing on a doorstep in Westview, ringing a doorbell at a house he has never been to. How did he get here? Where was he before? A woman is opening the door to the house and it’s...it’s...

It’s Wanda!

He has never met this woman.

It’s your sister Wanda!

He does have a sister. Her name is Wanda. This is not Wanda.

Hey, don’t you remember Wanda?

He does not know this woman’s face.

C’mon, you know Wanda!

The voice in his head is friendly and it’s telling him all sorts of Fun Facts™ about him and his life and his family. It confirms this sudden rush of memories about his sister that are all definitely real. But they’re not the right memories are they? Like, he has them, so they must be his, right? He can describe them in perfect minute detail. He was there, he knows, he has memories of it.

But he also has memories of a completely different life that contradicts almost every memory he has of her. Of his sister. Of Wanda.

Like, ok, he remembers babysitting Wanda while mom went to work but, like, he also remembers Wanda and him walking to school together for their first day of kindergarten.

And he remembers moving into an orphanage in some Eastern Bloc leftover after their parents died. But the orphanage in his memories looks a little like the boarding school from The Facts of Life and a lot like a house in the suburbs outside of DC. And for some reason his mom is there and also his estranged father is on the TV.

And sometimes he remembers running around an old house in upstate New York but there never was a house and he was never in New York, he was running in Sokovia, almost always Sokovia, running with Wanda. And one time there were robots. At first they were friends with the robots and then they realized that the robots were trying to destroy the planet and so they were fighting the robots. Him and Wanda. Fighting robots with their powers. And then --

No. That part he can’t remember. He knows he died, on a street he’s never been on, 100 miles in the air, saving the life of a man whose face he recognizes but who he’s certain he’s never met before. But he can’t remember actually dying. And how could he be dead when he’s very much alive and talking to his sister? His Wanda. His twin sister Wanda. He has a twin sister named Wanda, and don’t you forget it!

I have a twin sister named Wanda, he thinks, and you can’t argue with the facts when they’re standing in front of you and calling you by your name - Peter? Pietro. Peter. No, it’s Pietro, she’s calling Pietro, that is your name. Your name is Pietro.

He is in the kitchen holding a can of cola. How did he get here? He has no memory of walking into this kitchen and finding a glass and filling that glass with cola and standing at just this angle, the better to showcase this Kane Cola from a can. Who is he showing it to? The boys are not in the kitchen with him. Wanda and Vision are not in the kitchen with him. It is important he shows off this can of cola while he is in the kitchen. He takes a long thirsty sip, and then, to the empty kitchen he says, “What’s better than the refreshing taste of a cold Kane Cola?” and honestly he can’t think of anything better, that must be it, that must be why he said it out loud.

Everything feels slower here. He’s running, he’s running faster than everyone else, but it’s slow. It feels slow. He feels slow. Maybe it’s all the memories from someone else. Some other past that’s not his. But it is his. He was there. He knows because he remembers. He lived them. The memories. Like getting shot in Sokovia. No, he got shot at the Pentagon. No, he stopped people getting shot at the Pentagon. When was he at the Pentagon? No, maybe he stopped the bullets in Sokovia. But then, how could he be dead if he stopped the bullets? But then again, he’s not dead so maybe he didn’t.

He’s teaching his nephews how to shotgun a can of Kane Cola. What’s better than the refreshing taste of a cold Kane Cola? He puts this question to the twins. He likes the twins. He likes kids. That’s why he works at a school. They all remind him of his little sister Wanda, just a little bit. But Wanda’s his twin. He doesn’t have a little sister. And he never worked at a school, he died in Sokovia. Right after he’d decided to turn his life around, too. That’s a real bummer.

But hey! Now he’s not dead. No, he’s very much alive, and he’s visiting with his sister, his twin sister, his Wanda. And she’s married! To a Robot! Er, a Synthazoid. Who is also Not Dead! There’s a lot of that going around. Him and the 'zoid are basically brothers since they both got their powers from the stone in Viz's forehead. The stone from that time that him and his sister, his twin sister (Wanda), volunteered to be lab rats. You know, for some quality twin bonding time. And maybe some light vengeance. So why does he remember pocketing candy in a convenience store and running from a shop clerk at age 10? Running blocks and blocks and crossing the city line from downtown to his home in Virginia in a matter of seconds. Blocks on a street in DC, with American flags and US postal service boxes. But thinking about those blocks makes his head hurt and then the post boxes are evenly spaced in the middle of a crumbling Sokovian warzone.

He cracks open another Kane Cola. So smooth, so refreshing. Is there anything better than a cold Kane Cola?

It’s Halloween. He doesn’t remember it being October but he doesn’t really remember life before Westview, so he’s not that worried about it. He’s very excited to take the kids trick-or-treating. He has to take the kids trick-or-treating. It’s very important that he takes the kids trick-or-treating. Afterall, he has to help out his sister, Wanda. She’s fighting with her manbot and he has to keep them from fighting because if she fights with the manbot one or both of them could destroy the fragile fantasy world that they are all currently inhabiting, innocent bystanders and all, and what kind of brother would he be if he let that happen? Just one of those twin things.

The kids are having a great time. Tommy’s obviously superior and not just because Billy doesn’t seem to trust or like him. These kids also came from Wanda and that’s one helluva mystery since, by the sounds of it, she was only pregnant for about 48 hours but who is he to judge anyone for speeding things up? He takes the kids to steal candy. And smash pumpkins. And spray silly string on all the trick-or-treaters. He hopes the audience likes the shenanigans. They better or else they won’t pick the show up for a season 2. Then what will Wanda do?

But now it’s time for Real Talk. Wanda’s in trouble and what’s a big brother to do? Sorry, a twin brother to do?

“How’d you do it?” he hears himself asking and although he knows, factually, what he means, he does not understand, literally, what it is that she has done or why he is asking about it. He guesses that’s why he asked.

She tells him she doesn’t know and he believes her. Or maybe he doesn’t because he keeps pressing her for answers.

“Where were you hiding these kids up 'till now?” And he looks around at the children in the square and wonders, again, what he means. “I assume they were sleeping peacefully in their beds. No need to traumatize beyond the occasional holiday episode cameo, right?” He’s not sure what that means either. “Hey, I'm not some stranger and I'm not your husband. You can talk to me.” That’s nice, he’s glad he’s said that to her. But then he forgets her face. He forgets that he’s known her all his life. He is sitting on a hay bale saying these words he doesn’t understand to a woman he’s never seen before in his life. But that’s silly. He’s known her all his life. They’re twins. This is his twin. His sister. Wanda.

And then it looks like she’ll answer these questions. She is thinking hard and there’s a glint of revelation in her eyes, as if she is on the verge of understanding these answers herself.

But then the kids break in.

“Mom! I hear Dad in my head. He's in trouble!” It’s the suspicious one, it’s Billy. He suddenly doesn’t like Billy all that much. Which is ridiculous cuz he likes all kids, doesn’t he?

“Hey, don't sweat it, sis. It's not like your dead husband can die twice.” He hears himself saying these words and they don’t really feel like his, but they’re coming out of his mouth so they must be, right? But honestly there’s no time to process what he’s said or why because Wanda’s anger, her fury, is palpable. It’s a physical force that he can see and taste and it burns inside him, like the anger is his now. He can feel it, like really feel it, like it is literally smacking him in the face so hard he is launched across the town square and into some hay bales and fake headstones.

But it is this, this moment, the force of it, that shakes loose the dream he’s been living in. This playacting he’s been a part of - no, not playacting. He’s not an actor, he’s a puppet. A puppet whose strings are pulled by a walking Nervous Breakdown who thinks he’s her brother. She manipulated him, she’s manipulating this whole world, into living out every sitcom trope she’s ever seen and he was just a single bit player in a larger than life television production. But now? Now he’s clear. Now he remembers - his life, his past, where he was before Westview. Best small town in the world my ass. The clouds in his mind are lifted for the first time in what feels like a long time and now he knows who he is.

He is Ralph Boehner.

[tealin]

#GNUTerryPratchett — view on Instagram https://ift.tt/3vlZwrA

[goteamwin]

Finishing up Shadow and Bone and I'm too...

distracted...

by this background...

[goteamwin]

Wait.

Did this...

Did this dumb bitch hang his medal crooked??

[goteamwin]

Y'all. What did I say.

[letterstothemidnightsociety]

It's 2007 and somehow, miraculously, Supernatural survives yet another rocky (?) season of mediocre ratings to come back for a third season, or at least, half season, but that season starts out with a real bang! Like, just a real solid trio of an opener for season three. It reminds me of all the things I love about SPN and also it reminds us of all the things that frustrate the hell out of me on SPN. So where did we leave things off?

First up, there’s Dean, who sold his soul to the devil in order to bring Sam back from the dead. Sam, you’ll remember, was part of some overly complicated ponzi scheme to find the perfect vessel to open a door - yep, open a door - and lost to Aldous Hodge who just straight up murders Sam in the season finale. So Dean get’s Sammy back, but in exchange, he’s only got one year left before he permanently moves down south. Oh! And even though they got Sam back and Sam kills Aldous Hodge (RIP pal), they neglected to keep the door from opening. The door to Hell, that is, and now they’ve allowed a shiz ton of demons out to freely roam the earth. Way to go, boys, you lost again! They are two for two on these season finales guys!

OH but they DO kill the Yellow Eyed Demon, so that’s a plus, but not before he plants the most perfect seed of doubt in Dean’s mind - “How do you know what you brought back is all Sammy?” Like, ugh, UGH, ugh!!!! What a way to drive the knife in deeper! What a way to make the heart of this show slowly start to crumble! C’est Magnifique!! *chef's kissy fingers*

So with all that emotional baggage weighing us down, how do we start season 3? How else - with a threesome of course! And also some technicolor grading, it’s wild guys.

Oh boy guys, let’s talk about this opener for a hot sec. I got into it a little bit last season, but as much as I love Dean, you HAVE to admit that that boy is gross. Just like...he’s a little gross. I’m also old enough now to see exactly how many red flags he’s raising through the last 45 episodes. Like, sorry Little Me, but he is not boyfriend material. Not to mention that all this debauchery is 1,000% him distracting himself from the consequences of his own actions, but we’ll get into that later.

Meanwhile, Sam is doing something constructive and trying to figure out how to reverse the curse and save Dean’s soul. And here we have the culmination of two seasons worth of character development - faced with the imminent demise of Dean Samuel Winchester, Sam tries to step up and take care of his brother for once in his life; Dean parties like it’s 1999. There were two things I thought of during this episode - 1) isn’t this not unlike the sort of behavior you see in suicidal people who have finally decided to take their own life? Which is just, like, further held up by the fact that Dean’s big monologue at the end literally has the line “Truth is I’m tired, Sam. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.” and like...dude, you are NOT ok! Why isn't??? ANYONE??? ADDRESSING THIS????? And 2) Dean is sharing a lot of similarities with the demons in this episode.

Because MEANwhile, there’s demons! So many demons! Specifically, the Seven Deadly Sins ones, but also, spoiler alert, Ruby, who is gettin’ reeeeealll into that ketchup.

All these baddies just really taking advantage of their time topside cuz Hell is, as they so artfully put it, it’s like Hell, so they’re just livin’ it up while they still can ~almost like foreshadowing or something~?!?!?

Real talk though, it being a real long time since I’ve watched this season, it’s these kinds of details that I’m impressed with this time around. There is so much character work that goes into this show and it’s something I definitely connected with the first time around, but not on conscious level. Now I can look at it through time and experience and articulate what I’m seeing, which makes this re-watch infinitely more enjoyable.

Episode 1 of this season continues what they started in season 2 and just keeps building out that Hunter Community. Like, there really is a whole Community out there that keeps in contact and works together and makes sure everyone’s up to date on the latest hot goss, and it all makes John Winchester come off like a real creepy splinter cell lone gunman type. And that in turn makes the Winchester sons look like total, unprofessional boneheads who managed to open a portal to Hell. “UGH Great Jorb Guys, but can we blame them? They’re John’s kids,” is a conversation between hunters that I am headcannoning, but also 100% support.

Honestly, I love the idea of the Winchesters being just these real, like, b-grade, Walmart Brand Hunters that other Hunters are just SO done with. We kind of see a little bit of that with Isaac and Tamara, but by the end of the episode, the Winchesters prove that they’re...better Hunters? I hope somewhere in the next 12 seasons I get an episode that is told from another Hunter’s POV who is legitimately better/more emotionally balanced than the Winchesters and the whole episode is them just, like, cleaning up a bunch of Winchester messes like, SONuvabitch, these two ASSholes. I think we see a fair amount of episodes from the POV of people who are less qualified than the Winchesters who end up being mentored by them, but I’d be stoked for them to run into just a group of people who hate them for totally legitimate, professional vs amature reasons.

Bobby does not count because Bobby signed up to be their Dad and so he agreed to take care of their messes when he took that job.

And then we get to “The Kids Are Alright” which showcases one of my fav changes for this season - BRIGHTLY! LIT! HIGH! SATURATION!!!! And of course, by fav, I mean, Most Hilarious.

I do walk a fine line on this one truth be told. Like, season 1 was definitely going for A Look. It’s super gritty and high contrasty and stylized. Now, I got what they were going for but I wasn’t always crazy about it, mostly because the quality on the DVD’s was terrible. Quick tip for everyone: in order to get 2+ hours worth of content on a DVD, you have to compress the final edit of the program to a pretty small bitrate. When we drop videos onto DVD’s at my work (it isn’t often, thank goodness), the discs themselves only hold, like, 2GB worth of content and that is NOT A LOT when it comes to video files. The more compressed a video file is, the less detail you’re gonna get in the visuals. Watching episodes on Netflix (where everything’s probably at a higher bitrate and therefore is a better quality visual), it’s not bad, but on my DVDs, the compression is so heavy that we get SUPER hot highlights and SUPER crunchy shadows - what a lot of people would called “crushed blacks” because you’ve lost all the detail in the shadows and you’re left with a grainy, noisy, black hole on the screen. Like I lost so much detail in the pilot episode guys, I could not make out this guy’s face.

A rough approximation of my DVD quality. Still recommend it over Netflix for the Accurate Soundtrack tho.

Season 2 SPN toned that Look down a lot, like, a lot a lot. Enough that you still got the general vibe they were going for but not enough that you couldn’t make out faces anymore. But through this whole process, the CW execs kept pushing for the show to look lighter, more colorful, less film noir more...well, CW. And in season 3 it finally happened!!!

I get what those execs were going for, but also, I feel like the colorists on these first few episodes just REALLY went wild out of spite. Lookit this shot from “Magnificent Seven” right before Envy causes some rando innocent bystander to beat a girl to death for her shoes -

GREEN GREEN GREEN GREEN!!!! I WONDER WHICH SIN THIS GUY IS????

Then in “The Kids Are Alright” the birthday party looks like everything is coated in day-glow neon.

The Winchester Bros look like they just got back from 3 weeks in Aruba - LOOK at the saturation levels in these skin tones! LOOK AT THEM!!

My screencap ability aside, only in SPN can a cemetery at night have brighter lighting than a diner in the middle of the afternoon.

This is definitely a thing I will be tracking the rest of the season because I have a distinct memory of a future episode where the brothers have been magically gifted completely different lives where they were never Hunters, they know nothing of Hunting, and they’re completely normal until the end when everything gets snapped back and the episode literally changes colors. V. Excited to see just how saturated this season stays through the end.

But maybe more importantly in “The Kids Are Alright” we learn that Dean does NOT, in fact, have a son. Not that he would be a good father...well...maybe? I mean, this Dean, this season 3, definitely-suicidal, completely-reckless, can’t-keep-it-together Dean, is not good Dad material. Later seasons Dean? Probably fine? Earlier seasons Dean might ALSO be fine? And if he’d found out that Ben was his legitimate kid, it could have made a WORLD of difference, who knows. I know he ultimately does become father-like to Ben and that gives me a lot of feelings. But this Dean is not in a good place to take care of anyone, including himself and really, someone ought to do something about that.

I gotta say, this is an actual bummer. I can’t remember if, in the later seasons, they do any clarifying on this or not, but I am legitimately bummed that Ben is not Dean’s kid and that as far as we know, Dean has no natural children floating around out there with surly attitudes and soft hearts. Dean’s motivation from Day 1 has always been family and despite what comments he may make in early seasons, Dean’s secret desire is to have the wife and the kids and the dog and the white picket fence. And honestly, we’re only 3 seasons in and I just want Dean to have nice things!!

And then guys, we come to “Bad Day at Black Rock,” and I just...WHAT a masterpiece. I had almost NO memory of ever watching this episode before and I don't understand why. What a glorious masterpiece this episode is. Let’s make a list -

More Hunters™, who should be really annoying but were actually kinda charming in a Marx Brothers kind of way

Gordon’s in jail, where he belongs, but also is masterminding a coup against the Winchesters which is A+ spooky stuff

Slapstick comedy that I didn’t know I was missing from my life

Bela F*cking Talbot

Guys, I think this is my fav episode so far purely because I felt, while watching it, that the last 10 years of my life were not in vain and that I had in fact grown as a human person. I remembered hating Bela Talbot. Like, I DID. NOT. LIKE. HER. To the point that I questioned if her British accent was even real. It is, her mother is from the UK and she lived there for a time, but like, honestly, the audacity of Little Me.

This time around? Oh she’s defs my new fav. Just everything about her is like, A+, Great Job, Why-Did-We-Cancel-Her??? Like, oh yeah, probably because somewhere in here they try to shoehorn a romantic side plot with Dean. I don’t actually mind rioting over shoehorned romance, but also, if they’d let this play out for a season or two and then got the two of them to bone? I’m on board. I’m 100% on board.

Maybe it’s just that she is unapologetically out for herself, maybe it’s the fact that she is definitely a match for the Winchesters in a non-murdery way, probably it is both of those things. She's smart, she’s crooked, she has impeccable taste, she’s honestly a helluva lot of fun and I am so excited to see more of her and so BUMMED that she will not make it past this season.

Despite the fact that I absolutely adore all three of these episodes, they also bring up the problem that I was starting to see in season 2 - WHO is this show about? Isn’t it supposed to be about the Brothers as a whole? But the majority of these first three lean pretty heavily on Dean’s emotional arc. Granted, it makes sense. I mean, of COURSE Dean’s demon deal is gonna be the BIG thing in a season where he is literally staring down the barrel, but knowing that there’s a side plot about Is Sam Evil?? seems like...something we should really explore more? I believe it comes up in season 4, or at least, Sam’s demon-blood powers become a bigger deal in season 4, but I would have enjoyed seeing Sam have a more active stake in this season. I can see planting some weird new ticks being planted for Alive-Again Sam that just get weirder and darker and then a mid-season finale or a run up episode to the end of the season where Dean (finally) decides he needs to stop his demon deal because he needs to stick around so he can keep Sam from going completely off the rails. As much as I love Dean 5ever, I do think the show works best when the emotional weight of the season is distributed equally is all. And to be fair to the writers this season, there could have been a bigger plan for something like that but they ran out of time - their season was cut by about a third due to the Writer’s Strike.

Still, all in all, a solid opening to the third season. I want to say that these episodes feel like Classic SPN, but then I remember that this is season three out of fifteen. These ARE Classic SPN. Mostly self contained with enough emotional drama to remind us of the overarching plot. Maybe a little heavy on the emotional drama, but Dean’s only got a year to live and the show’s only got 16 episodes to resolve that crisis, so it’s fine.

[goteamwin]

At the risk of fandom whiplash, here’s me picking up my sideblog again. For fun!

[goteamwin]

I kind of love that tfatws feels like somebody got a real big budget to produce a live action adaptation of their fanfic cuz on the one hand you’ve got

and on the other hand you have

And just for fun we’ll throw in

And that’s just some real quality programming.