“This sentinel thing… You know, it’s more than just a research project. Uh… it’s about friendship. I just didn’t get it before.” [x]
“friendship,” yeah.
I used to watch this show with my mother, who crushed superhard on Jim and was always annoyed by how he was constantly all over Blair.
Te: *Do I tell her? Do I…? Maybe I’ll just go read some Bone and Aristide instead….*
Oldies, but goodies.
OMG SENTINEL CONTENT ON TUMBLR <3 <3 <3
MY SECOND EVER FANDOM!!!
I had the entire series on VHS. Before TV series were released on VHS. Someone bootlegged it.
God, they were so married
Oh my God, they were roommates
theroseandthebeast asked:
#wait sentinel aus are based on an actual show???#I thought they were just one of those inexplicable Fandom Things - im WHEEZING, i love this so much
impossibletruths answered:
never Once have I ever seen a reference to an actual extant intellectual property, it’s always “what if we had this super complicated codependent pseudo-magic sci-fi thing going on” and then just running with it OTL
i do not have the spoons to FULLY get into it, as it demands, but the one with the military haircut (he’s a cop, a “protector”, c’est la vie) is Jim Ellison, former Army Ranger, repressed fool. curly haired bb is Blair Sandburg, an anthropology grad student who realizes Jim is a Sentinel of legend, latches onto him like a remora, and Jim basically leans on Blair like a crutch all the while pretending he doesn’t care for him in a very “I made you a friendship bracelet” “ugh gross” “well you don’t have to---” “shut up I’m gonna wear it” way
they moved in together in like. ep one.
they become partners in the cop sense, they do a lot of gift of the magi shit for each other, every time I start to think of the stupid shit they do for another I remember More Weird Shit, codependent fucking weirdos
Okay, I absolutely MUST chime in For The Sentinel which NEVER gets the respect of its peers just because "the plots were a little convoluted" and the "central premise wore a little thin as the seasons went on." those men were in love. THOSE MEN WERE LOVERS!!!!!
What you need to know about The Sentinel is that the very first episode is about Jim Ellison acquiring mystical powers. YES I want to be clear, the way he acquires these powers is "problematical" and "not great, respecting indigenous cultures wise" but okay, so he's got these powers that make all of his senses amped up to dangeous levels. he can hear things no one else can hear, he can see things like he's fucking legolas, you get the deal.
so he goes to the doctor to be like "i feel weird" because of course, and Blair Sandberg, twink anthropologist to the stars, BREAKS SEVERAL LAWS to get in Jim's exam room and say—i know how to help you. i know what's wrong with you. i know how to make life better. and jim ellison looked at the little twink man and said yes....YES to love YES to life YES to living in a 1 bedroom LOFT apartment together. YES to being soulmates and life partners! YES I'LL MARRY YOU!!!!!!
This is the ORIGINAL big gruff german sheppard/lil yapping chihuahua pairing. And fandom looked at this show and said "this is good. i will build a kingdom upon this land. from now on, these are the two genders: big, angry, powerful, forced to their knees by circumstances beyond their control AND small, jokester, has skills INVALUABLE to Big, bad self worth. And then so the sentinel/guide aus RULED the pervert community, and everyone rejoiced.
And then SPN looked at this, and said "but what if the guides also had wet butts" and u kno what? innovation is CRUCIAL.
my friend had Sentinel VHS tapes acquired from someone on the internet and basically every episode featured tough military man Jim being driven to his knees in agony verging on madness bc of his mystical senses being overwhelmed and tiny commie academic Blair soothing him and healing his agonies by touching him (and communicating with him via psychic leopards????) so they could save lives and the show wasn’t GOOD but my god it was something
It's also the little black dress of AUs for other fandoms - Mulder/Scully, Clark/Lex, Derek/Stiles. It goes with everything! :)
So today I learned that The Sentinel was a show, and so what is the term for when you get un-Goncharoved?
I THOUGHT IT WAS A FANDOM TROPE LIKE OMEGAVERSE
God this was such an important fandom to me. My Sentinel friends are my family now, more than a quarter of a century later. Merryish, who first offered my fanfic a home* in —1997? 1998?—taught my kid to snorkel 20 years later. Flummery are my kid’s fairy godmothers. I basically married astolat 25 years ago. And every time I see one of you Sentinel people online (waves to a bunch of you who reblogged this) I feel like I’ve run into someone from the old country! That fandom literally changed my life.
But also, fannishly, so inventive! Some of the first vids I ever saw back before there were computers –VHS vids, wonderful ones. (Shout out to GloRo!) Great great fanfic and art. I still have gorgeous zines from this period. And the loft tape! Go to fanlore and look up the loft tape you guys!!
*before the AO3! When you needed someone to host your fic! This is part of why we built the AO3! So many (so many!!!) Sentinel people involved in building the AO3! Astolat built the Sentinel archive, 852 Prospect, a decade before the AO3, that was our first practice archive software. That software was adapted and used in other fandoms like due South. Seah and I were both DS archivists. This is all part of the story of how the AO3 came about. The sentinel/guide trope is the least of it. The Sentinel’s impact on fandom is totally outsized considering what a minor show it was. But it had a great concept that it did not fully exploit, which I think is in fact, what an amazing fandom needs.
Yes, The Sentinel was a real show in the 1990s, and gave us one of the classic fandom tropes, please check out The Sentinel, Jim/Blair, and Sentinel AU pages on Fanlore!
There are published Chinese novels that'd just fully use this trope, and I love it. May copyright law never find them 🙏
This show really went the distance in cultural influence.
"never once have i ever seen a reference to an actual extant intellectual property" well, the show was called The Sentinel, so probably people using the term "sentinel" in their AUs thought that WAS a reference to the show. if you know it as a word but not as a tv show that becomes less effective but like.
"The horrors persist but so do libraries, books, iced coffee, sunsets, trees, the word 'fuck', the moon and the sea."
i love people who love evil characters without feeling the need to defend them! i love it when people love their characters evil and nasty and vile in all the ways they can be, from the regular stuff to the taboo, and can confidently say it without having to defend their horrible, nasty, vile actions. i love people who don't feel the need to woobify their favourite characters. i love people who don't try to twist the bad deeds of a character into good deeds with wild leaps of logic just to have reason to like them. i love people who don't try to iron out all the bad deeds of their favourite characters to like them, essentially defanging them and their actions and making them boring. i love people who know their favourite characters are manipulative and self serving and who love them for that because it makes them just as complex as their good qualities. i love people who leave room for their favourite characters to be flawed and intricately complex in every way. i love people who are secure enough that they understand you do not have to vehemently defend the terrible actions of a character to love them. i love you all, you're so rad and interesting and smart.
My dad is Deaf and has been since before he met my mother. He had multiple different devices to monitor my sisters and I growing up- including a noise detector that would vibrate the bed or the couch and say exactly which room the loud noise was being made in. As a child I remember understanding that he could not "hear" me if we weren't looking at each other, and that I had to speak clearly in order for him to understand. He tells me as a toddler I used to ask him to get on my level, put my hands on his face, and ask him if he could understand me- and only once he verified would I say or ask anything. He used to leave me a signed note every day before school when I was in high school, giving me a different blessing and a couple bucks to buy a snack.
But also- hearing children of deaf adults (CODAs) are often more empathetic, more accepting of others' differences and challenges, more emotionally mature and able to read others' body language and visual cues, with experiences more similar to bicultural and bilingual children of the same age, because being raised Deaf while hearing is a look into two very different worlds. Not that I think anyone should need to prove their worth, but the statistics show the exact opposite of these doctors' expectations of Deaf parents. Deaf adults more often than not raise intelligent and well-structured kids that connect more readily with others, there is no additional risk of neglect more than any hearing parent.
What in the Hua Cheng
100% true
but also it's low key funny that wre is a little jealous of that devotion to a fake version of himself
real and true Wenren E was this 🤏 close to going "stop paying attention to the memorial and look at me instead"
bedlamsbard