ursula k le guin was right

heaven is a place on earth for @brother-touching 💫

erica jong, “dear anne sexton, ii” (2013) // supernatural, “all hell breaks loose: part one” (2007), “all hell breaks loose: part two” (2007)

THE SUPERNATURAL GIF CHALLENGE   |   stephanie-likes vs. @fuckitykidneys round 21   |  Season 11 +  Favourite Episode  |  11.17 Red Meat “I watched the man I love die. There’s no normal after that.”

If angels are terrifying monstrosities that tell you “be not afraid” are demons adorable harmless creatures that demand to be feared?

BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN [x]

"Let me be your inside man." -Harry Wilson

Harry Wilson is a nice man.

Gotta admit, I wasn't expecting that. I guess when I heard "fixer" and "lawyer to the wealthy," I was expecting a brash, arrogant scumbag who would eventually un-sleaze with the power of found family and vigilante justice.

But he's not?? He's likeable right off the bat, visibly vulnerable, and he latched on to the crew without any degree of chill. He's open with his emotions, comfortable with being the butt of the joke, and humble about being out of his depth. He accepts rebuke, listens to advice, and offers support with remarkable earnestness. This man is—against all my expectations—a damn sweetheart.

But the narrative makes no bones about it: Harry Wilson is—or has been, until very recently—a bad man. He's done incredible damage, blithely rationalizing it all as "just doing his job." So caught up in the rush of the challenge and the thrill of his own competence, he failed to realize that his veneer of neutrality is flimsy cover for the fact that he's slipped completely over to the dark side. He could've been one of Leverage's targets not so long ago, and he would've deserved it.

This isn't new, but it's an uncomfortable truth we often forget: evil can be nice. Evil people can be just doing their job and doing it well, then going home to dote on their family and sleep soundly at night, oblivious to the harm they'd inflicted. Their victims know they're evil, but everyone else would call them nice. Nice is not the same as good.

The interesting thing about Harry is that he actually had a paradigm shift and saw himself for what he was. Do you know how difficult that is, for a man insulated by all the trappings of wealth, success, and privilege to actually be shaken from complacency to confront his own broken humanity? There was no personal tragedy, no near-death experience nor voice from heaven giving him an epiphany. But he looked at his victims, and for once he saw them, and he took the hit. He let his self-delusions shatter, made himself sit with his shame and remorse, and now he's actively trying to make it right. The nice man on the path to becoming a good one.

So, like Hardison said: it's a start. He's got work to do. And I have high hopes for our Mr. Wilson—after all, he's found the perfect people to travel with on the road to redemption.

now their spirits are cursed, walking backroads, waterways. and if they find an unfaithful man, they kill him. 

1.01    PILOT

when two musicians sing into the same microphone and lean in very close to each other… like omg are you guys gonna kiss now to relieve the homoerotic tension?😳

So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?

In the morning they wore each other’s face. (Lovesong by Ted Hughes)  

Supernatural is depressing as a rewatch. It has its fun moments, but that show hurts. It wasn’t depressing when I first watched it, but over time…. The rewatches are especially depressing. You just know they aren’t going to get their happy ever after since the life of a hunter is absolute hell. Well, I guess no happy ever after in their actual life, they do get to enjoy heaven together. So yeah, I get you there. What shows do you usually rewatch instead? Have you seen Parks & Recs? It seems like you would like it! Such a comfort show.

Yeah, the Supernatural rewatch can be hard. I have to say though, I’ve rewatched the show more since it ended, because I liked the end and knowing the show ended in a way that made me happy (well, it was obviously a fucking tragedy, but like, narratively speaking, it was a good ending because this entire show is a horror/tragedy), it made it way easier to enjoy the rewatches. The knowledge that in the end, they get an ending that honors the life they led and that they got a period of happiness on earth without apocalyptic disasters and then happiness in heaven. Occasionally, like every few years, I get the bug and start a rewatch from the start, and then at some point, which can vary, I start skipping eps 😅 Mostly though I have a few… thematic rewatches I do.

I either do a Fun Episode rewatch, including eps like Hell House, Monster Movie, Bad Day at Black Rock, The French Mistake (controversial, I know, I know), Mint Condition etc. Then there’s the Extreme Brothering rewatch, which is Sam and Dean being codependent little soulmates and just brothering all over the place, like Scarecrow, The Usual Suspects, Red Meat, Safe House, etc. Sometimes I also rewatch early season Winchesters vs Law Enforcement, which is fun and some really good episodes. So there’s room for rewatches, but except for the Fun Episodes, it’s not really comforting.

I do enjoy Parks and Recs, mostly. Tom is a lot, especially in the early seasons; I don’t do well with that particular brand of womanizing character, and I had to fight my way through season one, but then they really hit their stride. I love Leslie’s and Ron’s friendship, and generally a lot of th friendships and romances in the show are just really well done. I really disliked Andy in season one, but he got good with April. Ron and April is adorable and of course, Ben is just a gem in whatever combo.

I do rewatch Leverage a lot, Sophie is a queen, I loooove the OT3 and watching evil rich people get what they deserve is just very cathartic right now. Plus, I love a good heist and the new characters in the reboot are actually great. Maybe I should rewatch White Collar next...

Recently, I rewatched the Good Place and Schitt’s Creek, though I do have to fast forward through the more annoying scenes with Roland and Moira, sometimes they get a little much 😅

Sometimes, I rewatch old Crime shows, the early seasons of Bones and Castle, before they went too far off the rails lol. Like all procedural shows, they somehow think they need to go bigger every season, with bigger and badder villains, and it just gets ridiculous when an NYPD homicide detective needs to save New York from a bomb and Homeland only sends someone to liaison. Well, you know, more ridiculous than it is anyway. There’s a sweet spot, and small procedural shows saving cities/states/the world ain’t it.

I do also rewatch movies a lot, old romcoms, old action movies, Star Wars and Marvel when it was still good. Easy viewing. And now I just sound really old and crotchety…

I also like new stuff! And sometimes, when I have enough spoons or the right company, I even watch more serious and heavy stuff. It depends a little on whatever is available on streaming, I don't have all services all the time, so sometimes I'm limited in my choices.

(If someone’s interested, I guess I could make a rec list? For whatever?)

Nonnie, I’m not sure, but I think you might have sent me several asks, so if you want, just message me! No pressure, obviously, but the door’s open. Or, well, the inbox is. Seems we're kinda on the same wavelength, entertainment wise. Otherwise, feel free to keep sending me asks!

What’s the most surprising thing that’s popped out in a fic as you were writing it? That was totally unexpected?

Oh, this one's easy. In the underneath verse, when Jensen proposed to Jared. I didn't even want a wedding, I am not a wedding person, especially not planning it. But Jensen basically forced my hand with it. It took me like eight months to write it, that's how difficult it was for me 😅

And I realize considering what I've written this answer might be surprising or maybe a little tame 😂 but that was definitely me staring at my screen in the most disbelief, probably because writing, let's say dino fic, was something I did consciously (though the first time I was a little surprised where my mind could go), but that proposal just popped up put of nowhere.

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to

Fix you.

You said you haven’t been in any fandoms before, what made you pick this one and stick with it for as long as you have? I can answer for myself and say I watched Supernatural during a really important and influential time of my life and it just really impacted me. I’ll watch other shows and enjoy them, but it’ll never mean as much to me as this show and fandom does. I will forever be thinking about Sam and Dean and the insane love they had for each other. What about you? What has made you stay this long? Is it the friends, the fanfic, Sam & Dean?

That sounds very familiar 😅

Sam and Dean were definitely the main draw. They just sucked me in and wouldn't let me go. I basically bought the DVDs immediately and made all of my friends watch it with me.

And yeah, I started watching the show in a time of my life where I had a lot going on and I don't know if it was the show itself, but fandom and the creative outlet definitely helped me work through some things.

more ramblings under the cut

There are other shows that I really love and that, at this point I might even rewatch more often (supernatural is rarely a fun, lighthearted, comfort rewatch. There are a couple of eps with uncomplicated joy like Monster Movie or Hell House, but a lot of the time there's too much pain in there fora light rewatch 😅).

I started reading other fandom's fanfic along the way whenever I discovered the gift of fanfic extended to other shows, but I was really hesitant about writing. I think I mentioned before how much harder it is for me to write existing characters, get their voice right etc. But supernatural had a huge, probably the biggest, rpf fandom connected to a TV show. So I got all the wonderful fanfic tropes without the constraints of an existing world/canon/characters. And like, lots of fandoms have thriving AU fics. SPN I think is special in that most fics are set in the canon universe. So all the AU stuff basically happens in rpf. And that's what I enjoy writing and that's why I stuck with it for so long. Plus the community I found is absolutely lovely and I really enjoy brainstorming fics with friends, running and participating in challenges together. I've been reading in many other fandoms, but it takes a lot for me to want to write for them, both in interest and in confidence. And then I need even more confidence to actually finish and post it, so… it's just not a common occurrence. Recently I've been dipping my toe into the rwrb fandom, both because I really love these two characters and what you can do with them and because the spn fandom (esp the rpf side) is shrinking and being plagued by conflict and wank which is getting harder to avoid and it's just nice to be in a new enthusiastic fandom instead of a few apocalypse survivors sitting around a campfire trading war stories. Now don't get me wrong, I'll probably be sitting at the fire until it goes out, but I'll have to spend some time in the shiny new spaces as well.

I'll always love spn, and I still enjoy rewatching it, and I'm hopeful that I'll keep the friends I've been lucky enough to find long after all of this is only glowing ashes in a half-forgotten firepit. But the spn fandom is a persistent hunch, so I think we'll be here for some time longer.