*googles number i dont recognize calling me instead of answering*
Author: hearseeno
How God Created Animals (via boredpanda)
Previously: Dad Tweets
I’m just watching 10.05 Fan Fiction again, and at the VERY END when Maeve comes running down to the stage to tell Marie that the publisher’s ticket was claimed, THIS is her response:
MAEVE : The ticket you left for the publisher? Someone claimed it!
(We see the arm of a man. When Marie sees him, she’s shocked.)
MARIE : Oh my gosh! But wait… does that mean that– Calliope came for me or for–?
MAEVE : Who cares? Go, fangirl!So Marie’s very first thought on seeing Chuck, or Carver Edlund, is that maybe Calliope was there for him, because it had been his story first. But it was “Marie’s vision” they were writing and performing.
In the previous scene, though, she proved she really did understand that she was talking to “the real Dean” when she handed him the prop Samulet and told him to take it, calling him “jerk.” Dean reflex-replied “bitch,” and immediately realized how bad that must sound… But Marie just grins at him while Dean awkwardly shuffles away.
And it struck me funny, because when we see Chuck again at the end of s11, we see him repeatedly dodge claiming full responsibility for problems he’s directly responsible for. Beginning in 11.20 and running right up through the final scenes of 11.23, we see Chuck hiding out, writing a highly sanitized and self-glorifying version of his own story, foisting off the responsibility to clean up his own mess onto anyone and everyone else. He’s a hybrid slippery eel/weasel. He’s got an explanation and an excuse for everything. He’s the embodiment of obfuscation and denial whose solution to every problem is to lock it up and try to pretend it doesn’t exist.
While we’re here (and since it’s also a Robbie Thompson episode) I’ll also quickly bring up the scene in 11.04 where Sam is talking to “his dad” in his dream. I still think there’s a lot of evidence pointing to that not being Lucifer, but Chuck himself sending that particular vision to Sam.
And since 11.20 was also penned by Robbie, I think it’s only reasonable to tie a few things together for comparison’s sake. I think he was already setting up the culmination of Chuck’s story all the way back in 10.05, even if the full measure of Chuck (as God) wouldn’t finally unravel until the end of 11.23.
From 11.20:
Metatron: It’s not. But you helped the Winchesters before.
Chuck: Helped them? I’ve saved them! I’ve rebuilt Castiel more times than I can remember. Look where that got me.
Metatron: So you’re just gonna let Amara win?
Chuck: Eh, it’s her time to shine.First of all, can I point out that he used the word shine to describe The Darkness? The dark don’t shine on its own…
Okay, back to the point (hopefully!).Compare what he’s said to Metatron here, that he’s saved the Winchesters (including Castiel) over and over again, but John said this to Sam back in 11.04:
SAM: No, my father is dead.
JOHN: When has death ever stopped a Winchester?
SAM: Look, I don’t know what this is, but –
JOHN: What you said about relationships, wanting something more … I never wanted this for you boys. This life. Not really.
SAM: We turned out okay.
JOHN: You did, didn’t you? But that was on you boys. You did that, not me.
SAM: Well, you played your part.
JOHN: I did my best, anyway, for what it was worth.
SAM: This isn’t real.
JOHN: I never could fool you, could I?Let’s start with death never having stopped a Winchester. In 11.20 quoted above, Chuck claims responsibility for all the Winchester resurrections. Death hasn’t stopped them only because Chuck has repeatedly interfered to make it so. Chuck needed the Winchesters to keep doing his work for him. Sure, he complained about all the work resurrecting them again and again created for him, but he still got to hide out and take the back seat while they did all the really grueling work for him. He played his part, for what it was worth, i.e. kept the Winchesters in the game to keep doing his wetwork.
Back in 11.04, “John” tells Sam that how the boys turned out was all on them. This entire exchange works if “John” is really Chuck, as well. He goes on to say:
SAM: I prayed when I was in that church, and I saw … Something. And now, here you are, whoever you are, whatever you are. What the hell is this?
JOHN: Dream. Vision. Call it what you want. The message is still the same. The Darkness is coming … And only you boys can stop it.
SAM: Okay, fine. How? We need help, not visions of dead people.
JOHN: God helps those who help themselves.
SAM: Who are you?
Int. Impala: Sam wakes from his dream to find Dean has pulled over and is parked.Sam has seen through the illusion, he knows it’s not really his dad, and then immediately implies that Sam thinks this is the same entity who sent him the vision back in 11.02. “John” neither confirms nor denies this, but the message of the previous vision Sam got was DEFINITELY not “the same” as what he’s receiving now. His previous vision wasn’t about the Darkness coming and only Sam and Dean being able to stop it. This is distinctly new information for Sam.
The “God helps those who help themselves” line has always bugged me, because that’s really what Chuck has always done, at least as far as the Winchesters are concerned. His help has never been particularly helpful, other than keeping them in play on his giant game board.
Telling Sam that “only you boys can stop it,” well… we know full well after 11.23 that no, ONLY Chuck and Amara themselves can stop it. Only going all the way back to the river’s ugly source can they actually stop it, and that source was Chuck betraying Amara and locking her away in the first place.
So finally getting back to the original point here, way back in 10.05 where Marie sort of sees straight through to the heart of the issue (since Robbie has just shown us that she also saw through Dean’s mask, much the same way he showed us that Mildred saw through his mask in 11.11.. Robbie loves writing the Wise Women), and got it even just for a second that hey, maybe Calliope wasn’t there to eat HER, but because of CHUCK being there. She was just the “puppet” that stood in for the REAL AUTHOR OF THE STORY.
I think even just for a split second, Marie realized she might have been nothing more than a proxy, a stand-in stunt double, for a higher power. Because we know from 11.20-11.23 that that is exactly Chuck’s modus operandi when it comes to handling his problems.
It’s what he tried to convince Sam to do in 11.04. It’s what he tried to convince Metatron to do in 11.20. It’s what he tried to convince EVERYONE to do in 11.22. It’s the responsibility he tried one last time to foist off to Dean with the ridiculous Soul Bomb plan. And finally in 11.23, Amara refused to let the game continue and brought them face to face to finally hash out their issues themselves. No more proxies, no more puppets, no more hiding.
And it all started with this one little acknowledgement to Marie. When she asked him what he thought of her version of his story, he said, “Not bad.”
It was the first step in him acknowledging one of his proxies and validating their work. And it only comes full circle at the end of 11.23 when he basically says the same thing to Dean.
Ugh, reblobbed again because I left off one of the points I wanted to add here, and that’s the fact that Chuck himself was the one who reminded me of Sam’s 11.04 dream again in 11.21:
Chuck: You’re frustrated. I get it. Believe me, I was hands-on – Real hands-on, for, wow, ages. I was so sure if I kept stepping in, teaching, punishing, that these beautiful creatures that I created… would grow up. But it only stayed the same. And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting. It’s enabling.
Dean: But it didn’t get better.
Chuck: Wel,l, I’ve been mulling it over. And from where I sit, I think it has.
Dean: Well from where I sit, it feels like you left us and you’re trying to to justify.
Chuck: I know you had a complicated upbringing, Dean. But don’t confuse me with your dad.Don’t confuse me with your dad.
Is it one more deflection from Dean’s accusations? One more attempt for Chuck to shift the blame and avoid the real issue: that everything has been one long slippery slope we can trace all the way back to locking up the Darkness.
And that reminded me of this post I made a while ago about whose fault this whole mess really is.
Okay, I need to stop thinking about this for a while now. 😀
Giant Artwork Reflects The Gorgeous Complexity of The Human Brain
The new work at The Franklin Institute may be the most complex and detailed artistic depiction of the brain ever.
Your brain has approximately 86 billion neurons joined together through some 100 trillion connections, giving rise to a complex biological machine capable of pulling off amazing feats. Yet it’s difficult to truly grasp the sophistication of this interconnected web of cells.
Now, a new work of art based on actual scientific data provides a glimpse into this complexity.
The 8-by-12-foot gold panel, depicting a sagittal slice of the human brain, blends hand drawing and multiple human brain datasets from several universities. The work was created by Greg Dunn, a neuroscientist-turned-artist, and Brian Edwards, a physicist at the University of Pennsylvania, and goes on display at The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
“The human brain is insanely complicated,” Dunn said. “Rather than being told that your brain has 80 billion neurons, you can see with your own eyes what the activity of 500,000 of them looks like, and that has a much greater capacity to make an emotional impact than does a factoid in a book someplace.”
To reflect the neural activity within the brain, Dunn and Edwards have developed a technique called micro-etching: They paint the neurons by making microscopic ridges on a reflective sheet in such a way that they catch and reflect light from certain angles. When the light source moves in relation to the gold panel, the image appears to be animated, as if waves of activity are sweeping through it.
First, the visual cortex at the back of the brain lights up, then light propagates to the rest of the brain, gleaming and dimming in various regions — just as neurons would signal inside a real brain when you look at a piece of art.
That’s the idea behind the name of Dunn and Edwards’ piece: “Self Reflected.” It’s basically an animated painting of your brain perceiving itself in an animated painting.
To make the artwork resemble a real brain as closely as possible, the artists used actual MRI scans and human brain maps, but the datasets were not detailed enough. “There were a lot of holes to fill in,” Dunn said. Several students working with the duo explored scientific literature to figure out what types of neurons are in a given brain region, what they look like and what they are connected to. Then the artists drew each neuron.
Dunn and Edwards then used data from DTI scans — a special type of imaging that maps bundles of white matter connecting different regions of the brain. This completed the picture, and the results were scanned into a computer. Using photolithography, the artists etched the image onto a panel covered with gold leaf.
“A lot of times in science and engineering, we take a complex object and distill it down to its bare essential components, and study that component really well” Edwards said. But when it comes to the brain, understanding one neuron is very different from understanding how billions of neurons work together and give rise to consciousness.
“Of course, we can’t explain consciousness through an art piece, but we can give a sense of the fact that it is more complicated than just a few neurons,” he added.
The artists hope their work will inspire people, even professional neuroscientists, “to take a moment and remember that our brains are absolutely insanely beautiful and they are buzzing with activity every instant of our lives,” Dunn said. “Everybody takes it for granted, but we have, at the very core of our being, the most complex machine in the entire universe.”
Image 1: A computer image of “Self Reflected,” an etching of a human brain created by artists Greg Dunn and Brian Edwards.
Image 2: A close-up of the cerebellum in the finished work.
Image 3: A close-up of the motor cortex in the finished work.
Image 4: This is what “Self Reflected” looks like when it’s illuminated with all white light.
Image 5: Pons and brainstem close up.
Image 6: Putkinje neurons – color encodes reflective position in microetching.
Image 7: Primary visual cortex in the calcarine fissure.
Image 8: Basal ganglia and connected circuitry.
Image 9: Parietal cortex.
Image 10: Cerebellum.
Credit for all Images: Greg Dunn – “Self Reflected”
Source: The Huffington Post (by Bahar Gholipour)
There is something peculiar in a small boat upon the wide sea. Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness. When your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, taken care of you. It is as if the souls of men floating on an abyss and in touch with immensity had been set free for any excess of heroism, absurdity, or abomination. Of course, as with belief, thought, love, hate, conviction, or even the visual aspect of material things, there are as many shipwrecks as there are men, and in this one there was something abject which made the isolation more complete – there was a villainy of circumstances that cut these men off more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke.
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
And finally, I think I get why that little boat was there outside the church at the end of season 8. They took the lifeboat. (And then in the next season, Sam struggles with having taken it and we see him next to this book.)
drst:
Lin-Manuel Miranda has launched a merchandise site called Tee-Rico that will sell fan art inspired by his work. (AP)
WHAT
Among Miranda’s latest endeavors is the merchandising venture launched this week at teerico.com for Miranda-related, and not completely “Hamilton”-centric, items. (WaPo)
“I’m opening a merch line of Hamilton-inspired art. I don’t want to stop artists from making things they love. That doesn’t feel right to me. So I’m joining them. This morning we launched TeeRico.com.
“I’m not selling Hamilton merch. Hamilton merch is Hamilton merch… But I sought out people who were making Hamilton art that I really liked… and said ‘Come work for me.’ I’ve hired them to make tee Lin-inspired stuff, they share in the proceeds. It’s a totally family-owned business. My brother-in-law is running Tee-Rico. There’s Heights merch, stuff based on my tweets, it’s really crazy…To quote Heights, it’s our ‘mom-and-pop Stop-&-Shop.”’ (Deadline.com)
OH.
WELL THIS IS GREAT
Interesting?
huh. That’s an interesting wrinkle in the evolution of creator-fan relationships.
drst:
Breaking: Supreme Court rules people convicted of domestic violence can’t buy guns
On Monday, in the case of Voisine v. the United States, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision that prohibits people convicted of domestic violence from purchasing guns in a 6-2 vote. The court also ruled on the restrictive Texas abortion law that caused numerous clinics to close.
SCOTUS had a good day today.
halle-fuckin’-luiah.
Hearseeno 