Every time I make a post about the demonization of heterosexuality (especially male heterosexuality) in queer spaces I get people in the comments like "oh, so we're defending the Straights now 🙄" and I'm so fucking tired. Like first of all tell me you have zero critical thinking skills without telling me you have zero critical thinking skills, and second of all, yeah!!! We should defend the straights!!! Because if your anti-heterosexuality stance ends up turning into transphobia, which it inevitably does, then it needs to stop! We should defend trans people and there's no way to do that and continue shitting on (male) heterosexuality! Owning The Straights™ is not more important than actual trans people please use your fucking brains

i'm going to throw a brick at this man

when i say my gender changes to the tune of the bit i mean a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do and if he can’t then god forbid women do anything

‘Tiny’ meta on the guitars in Roswell New Mexico

Because I hate this show and it’s dumb.

So recently I was trying to figure out what kind of guitars Alex has, for fic reasons, and I had the brilliant idea to look at both of the guitars in 1x06 and the guitar Michael plays in the Wild Pony at the end of 1x13.

Unfortunately for me, you, and everyone, what I discovered is that the guitar Michael steals from Alex when they initially meet is the same guitar that he plays in the bar. (A Läg guitar, if you are interested, likely an occitania model of some sort. Interesting historical footnote: Neil Diamond also play(s/ed) this brand.)

For those interested, there are a total of five guitars show in the series so far: Alex’s Läg, the guitar Michael has in the photograph from 1x02(likely the same guitar Rosa is playing in the pilot), the guitar Alex gives to Michael in the toolshed in 1x06, and the two in Alex’s house in season 2(2x05+2x11).

So my meta/headcanon here is that when Alex leaves for Iraq, he gives Maria the guitar for safekeeping - since it’s likely he would know it wasn’t safe at his house. She keeps it, sometimes using it at the Pony for performances and as a backup guitar for impromtpu jam sessions. The only time we see it at the Pony there is also a drum kit set up.

During 1x13, Michael tells Isobel that he’s had the realization that his relationship with Alex isn’t healthy, that lately it ‘just hurts’ and ‘feels like a crash landing’; to which Isobel gives him the advice ‘Maybe Max is right. Maybe it’s time we stop looking back and start looking forward.’

For me this is a big reason why he goes to the Wild Pony later, rather than meeting Alex and talking about their entangled past together. Michael is trying to move forward.

And just like Alex will in Season 2, the best way for him to start to do that is through music. (Which…tfw your coping strategies and healing rituals are the same….COSMIC.)

Now that his hand is healed (however non-consensual the act itself) Michael actually has that chance to try and heal himself. It isn’t the magic remedy Max hoped his healing powers would be. (’To heal this, you’ll have to reopen the wound in your mind. All the pain you’ve hidden there.)

To really heal from grief, one of the key components is that you have to let go of the expectations and hopes that you wanted from whatever isn’t possible anymore. And Season 1 has a really interesting progression showing Michael starting on that journey. And in this moment in the finale he has the same chance Alex will get in Season 2: to say goodbye to the person he was and the relationship that could have been and all the hurt that he’s held onto because of that, and start trying to move forward.

So, Michael goes to Maria at the Wild Pony, and sees The Guitar. The same guitar that he ‘borrowed’ from Alex eleven years ago that started them on the path to where they are now.

He wants to be with Maria, he agrees with Maria that they need to talk. But first, he has to say goodbye to what he’s been holding onto with Alex.

By playing the same guitar that brought them together.

(The way he looks at the guitar in this moment reads so much more tender to me than just him being able to play music again. Yes, this is something he’s been hindered from doing for ten years, but Maria doesn’t seem overly surprised to hear Michael playing. She is only surprised when she notices his hand is healed. Moreso, I think that - especially since in the in-between scene is Liz talking to Rosa’s grave, wishing for all the things Rosa never got to experience - that this is Michael connecting with his grief in a way he hasn’t been able to, and reckoning with his own hopes for the past.)

Like he’s momentarily transported somewhere else.

And I don’t think this is coincidence. There are multiple guitars and to use *this one* - the one that started it all - feels significant.

It feels like a signifier that Alex still is and always will be an important part of Michael’s life. Even if he’s playing this guitar in Maria’s presence, even if he in this moment is choosing Maria, Alex is always, *always* going to be a part of him. (And we could do a whole *other* meta on how music is the language through which Michael and Alex - oh wait I already did that. But, regardless, music is a large part not just of how Michael finds peace, but how he connects to himself. And Alex is always going to be a part of that.)

(You could, if you chose, also see this as yet more foreshadowing of the three of them having a role in each other’s lives and healing journey, or you could not, but the fact that it is *Alex’s* guitar that Michael plays I think is undeniabley significant.)

Even if the relationship that he has with Alex right now hurts, Michael isn’t throwing the whole thing away. He might be forming a new relationship with it, but what he has with Alex is…well…you know.

@portraitofemmy​

*gently steps onto a soapbox*

Okay so I CAN actually say there is a reason, following the music is metaphor/rebirth of relationships line of the earlier seasons. I’m not saying it’s what the writers were thinking, because music is all but gone from the latter two seasons and a lot of the nuance from the first seasons just straight up goes away, BUT. Michael having a ‘new’ guitar makes sense in that Alex’s guitar has meant repeated patterns, past traumas and hurts.

The guitar Alex gives to Michael in 1x06 represents a future that was never meant to be. An impossible dream. It is only seen in a world which immediately gets destroyed when Jesse Manes finds them, and when Noah kills Rosa.

The guitar Michael has in the photo and that Rosa has in Max’s flashback represents nostalgia - it is only ever seen through rose-colored glasses. Again, it is a dream rather than a reality.

The guitars we see in Alex’s house in S2 might represent his personal journey - the first one we see is in 2x05 right before everything changes for him after being confronted with ‘I used to, too’. Alex does a *lot* of processing and letting go and realization in episodes 2x05 and 2x06, and I can’t help but think this guitar that is once again, only seen once, is a symbol of that. It’s a change in the wind that he isn’t still using his same guitar from when he was a teenager. That he has finally started giving up the old patterns. And then in 2x11 we see another new guitar - another evolution as Michael and Jesse search his house - when we know he’s already been working on Would You Come Home. Two forces competing for Alex’s future framed against a backdrop of ever evolving communication patterns.

And into all of this, we have Michael’s guitar way later in s4. Michael and Alex have gotten back together, started fixing and working on their problems. They stand together as a unit; they are no longer lost to miscommunications and past trauma and nostalgia and a life that couldn’t ever be, nor are they fumbling their way through declarations of someday. Michael specifically says “she helped me find my way in life”. We get that he’s had the guitar for ‘quite some time’ but we don’t ever get  a specific timeframe...it could be a year, it could be ten. Michael’s own journey of letting go of his past traumas starts a in late season 1/early season 2, and he could have even gotten it then. But either way, the significance of it *appearing* now, I think, is that it represents a new step in their journey, of which music has always been a part. I’ve harped on and on about how their whole arc in seasons 1-3 was about needing to let go, and in this, we’re subtly told they have. That they are ready and trying to make a new kind of music in which Michael is not dependent on Alex’s things, Alex’s whims. He can make his own rhythms independently, and he can work alongside Alex’s own music, as a partner and a harmony, rather than just taking whatever Alex is able to give him. 

(Edited to add: for those of you playing along at home Michael's guitar shares a similarity with every other guitar he and Alex have shared.

1) similar sound hole pattern to Alex's Läg w two rings.

2) dark edging and very rich finish like the 1x02 guitar.

3) black fret and headstock like the guitar that Alex gave him in 1x06.)

We want to hear from you!

The rnm2big2bang mod team is interested in hearing what you, the potential participants, think about a timeline for the event.

We've come up with several options to choose from, as well as a space for you to suggest your own, or to make comments regarding the existing choices.

There are three dates to choose from for a FINAL POSTING DATE: mid-September, mid-November, or mid-January 2024.

Check out the poll here, and let us know what you think!

-rnm2big2bang mod team

Imagine pulling over a literal angel.  For: @priceofwarmclothes​

The Roswell New Mexico Big Bang will be happening again in 2023!

There's a whole new mod team in town, so please hit that follow button to stay in the know, as updates are soon to follow!

We thank the moderators of the RNM Big Bang for their commitment to our little fandom, and putting on the event for three amazing years.

-the rnm2big2bang mod team

the point of this hellsite is not to get followers, it’s to make friends you would never have met otherwise and torture them with cursed memes and crack headcanons

yes btw i want homeless people to be able to sleep on benches in the metro. yes even if they are drunk. yes even if they smell bad.

as minuses are approaching im here to remind you that if you dont have a problem with anti homeless architecture you are a piece of shit and i hope you freeze to death one day

if you don't want homeless people sleeping on the benches in the metro give them a fucking apartment. and then still let people sleep on the benches anyway because fuck you.

I'll forgive a mutual for almost anything. Murder isn't even anywhere close to the top of the list of things I can overlook. For instance some of you are swifties

My old person trait is that I think a website should work in a web browser and not try to open an app

Stole a character meme from twitter let's go

wanna do this, wanna do this, wanna do this,

Happy Holidays y'all! This year I wrote a (super adorable) fic for @dankmalexmemes for the Malex Secret Santa exchange (@malexsanta) I hope you enjoy your gift as much as I enjoyed making it!

Huge, massive, gift-basket thanks to @burntotears and @im-the-punk-who for being the best betas ❤️

Title: we're made up of a thousand scars

Summary: “What are you worried about?” Alex interrupted Michael’s thoughts. “Are you sure about this?” “Isobel and I are more than capable of planning a holiday party together. Yes I’m sure.” -- Alex and Isobel plan the group's holiday party together. Michael has many feelings about it.

Man I hope everyone playing with that new AI art app for funny memes and jokes doesn’t accidentally normalize the production of AI art and desensitize people into becoming users!

Please do not give these assholes a photo of your face.

I think that what he means is: "Thank god, we really need help." It's so good to see you, Alex.

Knowing that “punk” was basically a synonym for “faggot” has me fucked up. Imagine the alternate timeline where they switched places and we have genres like “faggot rock” and “cyberfaggot”.

and with your help, we can make this dream a reality <3 

“so what’s your style called again?”

“oh, i’m a faggot”

ALEX MANES

Roswell, New Mexico | 2.05