@flyingfish1 / flyingfish1.tumblr.com
Very interesting short thread here from a Queer, Māori cosplayer and artist on how to approach cosplaying and making art of Taika’s Blackbeard in a way that’s respectful. This is also a great thread to check out for more education on Māori culture in the context of OFMD (I know I’m definitely someone who could benefit from this).
Flaming marshmallow
The shaft of light descends for the first time in thousands of years and a voice like the peals of a million bells demands, “Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate…what are you doing with your flaming sword?”
Aziraphale, terrified, lifts his face, gathering the Them around him just in case a Smiting is about to occur. Brian is sticky with melted sugar, Pepper and Wensley have chocolate bars clenched in their hands, and Adam is serenely unconcerned, chewing on a graham cracker.
“Making S’mores with the children, O Lord,” Aziraphale admits.
The light flickers briefly.
“Very well,” She declares. “Save me one.”
“Of course, Lord.”
The light vanishes. Aziraphale very carefully sets aside a marshmallow for the Holiest of Holies.
“I bet She likes it when you burn the outside so the middle gets extra squashy,” Adam advises.
Crowley can’t believe it. She, after all this time, just wants Aziraphale to save Her a damned blessed ridiculous sugary abomination of a treat (and oh no…the angel is licking marshmallow off his fingers… and suddenly Crowley is both regretting and congratulating himself on any influence he had on the American confectionery arts…). He both wants to head for the hills to escape Her presence (he knows he’s never been in Her good books. Well, he’s in The Good Book, but that’s another story and really just proves his point) and give Her a real piece of his mind after all the bloody misery of the Apocawasn’t.
“Ngk,” he manages to get out.
Brian thumps him on the back and he nearly ends up sprawled on the grass.
“Careful. Those biscuits’re horrible if you choke on ‘em.”
Want to know how to search for multichapter fics? Or works without any relationship tags? How about only bookmarks that have tags added by the bookmarker? You’re in luck! You can find all this and more in our list of hidden search operators and neat tricks. \o/
There are a few different guidelines out there on how to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in order because simply going by the air dates doesn’t always make sense. I’m fairly sure I dug up every single guide available and I wasn’t satisfied with any of them, so I made my own.
I’m sure it’s subjective, but this is an order that I do genuinely recommend. I’ve tested it myself and I feel like it hits a good balance of chronology and storytelling while still hitting the emotional beats without interrupting them… all while still being appealing to today’s binge-watching society. ;) I also think this order will work for both Buffyverse veterans and first time watchers (just in case there are any brave souls out there).
With Buffy and Angel available on Hulu, this watch order is pretty easy to stick to, at least with the Hulu interface I work with (Android TV). Once you have both shows in your watch history, at the end of an episode it prompts you at the bottom for the next episode or switching to a new series. No disk switching required! (However, the Hulu version is the HD version, which is kind of horrid in some places… but it’s still the show.)
If you don’t feel like following my exact order, here are the guidelines for using this list just as a rough reference:
- Bold/Italics means you need to watch those episodes in the exact order as listed.
- Bold (no italics) means you need watch those episodes in order; if you reach a bold episode on the list and you haven’t watched the previous bold episode yet, you need to go back to the other series and get caught up to the last bold episode listed.
List is behind the cut.
I wanted to put my explanations for my watch order in a separate post so if any first time watchers come across it they could still have a spoiler-free guide. (Yes, I know that most of the major plot points of Buffy are public knowledge by now, but you never know.)
I’m sure other Buffyverse veterans might be looking at my list and scratching their head, wondering why I did certain things, so please allow me to explain myself.
I didn’t want to prioritize the story over the characters’ emotions, but I also didn’t want prioritizing the emotions to throw the story out of order. When the story is out of order, I get thrown out of the story, and I become disconnected from the characters’ emotions. I came up with my guide in order to make sure that didn’t happen. I feel like emotional beats happen without being drowned in the other show, and it encourages you to take a breather from one show or the other in certain places.
Me being a caricature of the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons is behind the cut.
Aah, 12.22– Two-step hybrid magic. Re-virginize their blood to use in a ritual to essentially “reboot” the bunker. But it doesn’t work because in addition to all the other systems on lockdown, even magic itself is locked out. We finally see some blueprints of the bunker, and Sam and Dean learn more about how the place works in these two days trapped inside it than they have in five years living there. In the end it takes blowing down a wall to find the escape hatch so Dean can pull the manual reboot lever, but still, the symbolism is there. The Bunker is officially reborn, reincarnated, reclaimed.
Not to mention they rocked that spell on the table with their initials carved into it.
ughhh i LOVE how much stuff i catch when rewatching bs! today i was rewatching 3x09 and this is what eleanor says to vane after punching him in that jail cell:
You’re deformed. Unformed. Flesh, bone, and bile, and missing all that which takes shape through a mother’s love.
and it immediately made me think of what dream!miranda says to flint in 3x03:
When I first met you, you were so… unformed. And then I spoke and bade you cast aside your shame, and Captain Flint was born into the world… the part of you that always existed yet never were you willing to allow into the light of day.
I was mistress to you when you needed love. I was wife to you when you needed understanding. But first and before all… I was mother.
I FUCKING LOVE THIS??? what eleanor says to vane illuminates what dream!miranda says to flint in such an interesting way. dream!miranda says that she’s the reason captain flint was born. the pirate, the ‘monster’. the darker, wilder part of him. the part of him that rages against england because england took the love between him and another man and tore it to pieces. it’s the part of him that civilisation rejects, that civilisation deems shameful. that is how she formed him with her “mother’s love”. she made him something that civilisation had no place for.
when eleanor talks about vane being unformed, she means he is uncivilised. he is not fit for civilisation. when she speaks of him missing a mother’s love, she is thinking of something that would make him civilised, that would make him feel shame for his actions. she is using the same words to signify the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what dream!miranda conveyed to flint.
man, i love this show
(i think there’s probably a lot more here that i’m not quite getting yet, so if anyone has stuff to add i would love to hear it!!)
Podcast available here. I tried transcribing the entire thing but it was taking forever. It’s worth a listen if you have time. Perez’s take on the writing room, Dabb as a showrunner, and how he navigates Sam and Dean is pretty interesting and he has a nice sense of humor.
BUT ONTO THE CAS INFO:
Perez wrote 12x12 and Richard Speight is currently directing. Script has a “unique nature” and thus Perez reached out early on to Speight and they’ve been emailing each other back and forth and also met up for coffee. Considers him a gift because he totally understands what the episode is about and the significance of certain moments.
12x12 was originally intended to be the story of Castiel’s past but things shifted and now 12x10 is the episode of Cas’ backstory (w/Steve Yockey writing).
Threads of 12x10 will tie directly into 12x12. “Cas is definitely a focus in this episode, a main part of the story, […] and it will be very apparent early on [..] the stakes and […] and how it’s centered on him.”
12x12′s title “Stuck In the Middle (With You)” hints to a bit of an homage to Quentin Tarantino. It’s not absurd or meta-level but definitely influences the series of events and how they unfold.
In regards to Cas, he most enjoys when he’s the “fish-out-of-water” and feeling like a man isolated from the people that understand him. He also enjoys when Cas is subconsciously feeling/not even aware he’s feeling emotion.
Said that Misha does a great job of teetering the line between “semi-robotic and reacting to the things around him.” Also was excited to dive into the nuance of the relationship between Cas and Sam and Dean–”peeling back the layers and showing how important that relationship is to everyone involved.”
