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i-make-fun-of-spn-characters · 3 years

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I feel like you've given most spn related things some lil spice but I always love the spice on this : hot spicy take on the "Dean is the most horrible character and ruins everyone's life and Sam and Cas are poor little meow meows who only do bad things sometimes because tyran Dean farted in their direction" takes that are not really only said by anti-Dean peeps ? Obsessed with that incredible thesis and would love the added spice ❤

SPICY HOT HOT GHOST PEPPERS CAROLINA REAPERS HELP I'M BURNING

I really try to respect other people’s opinions, and I believe there are a wealth of ways to interpret a story, and I think that’s a deeply beautiful thing. This applies to interpretations I don't agree with and outright dislike as well. That said, some opinions are simply and objectively bad, dishonest, and/or demonstrably false, and I truly do not believe you can sit down and honestly watch through the show with an open mind about all the characters, truly pay attention to what they do, say, and believe, and come to the conclusion that this show is about an evil manipulative abusive man terrorizing his pure and sinless brother and friend. It is an interpretation built from cherry picking facts to suit an ugly, miserable theory, making Mount Everest out of a bunch of the tiny mole hills, making the worst possible presumptions of feelings and intentions, and holding characters to completely different standards in order to neatly divide them into "abused" and "abuser" in a way that, frankly, fetishizes the abused person. I despise this interpretation of the story with every fiber of my being, and I have absolutely no respect for the opinion of anyone who peddles it, regardless of who they cast as villain/victim (because people have also done this with the others—it’s just more “popular” to do it with Dean... I mean... does anyone else remember how people were shitting on Sam after his emotional reaction in 14.12? Calling him an evil abuser? Because I do).

The thing that always gets me about this take isn't just how dishonest, unfair, mean-spirited, and compassionless it is in its treatment of Dean’s feelings, circumstances, and intentions... but how deeply reductive and offensive it is toward Sam and Castiel, sucking away their identities to turn them into effigies to mourn for their sad, Stockholm syndrome-esque attachment to their "abuser". Further, it grips the heart of the show—the relationship between Sam and Dean, and then the relationship among TFW as a whole—in a tight, uncompromising fist and pulverizes it. It literally rips out the heart of the show (the RELATIONSHIPS) and replaces it with something unprepossessing of any merit: A miserable, 15 years long story about a malicious abuser getting away with terrorizing those closest to him for his entire life, while his poor abuse victims suffer through until they die for him/happy to be reunited with him because they “don’t know any better” and never ever learned better, I guess. What a stupid, sad sack of a story.

Castiel is a thousands of years old celestial being who has literally beaten Dean into the pavement under no form of mind control, and has shown over and over again that he will do whatever the hell he wants, regardless of whatever Dean thinks about being sidelined. If he thinks whatever he is doing is in Dean's best interest, he literally does not care how Dean feels about it. He will nod and smile and then fly off and swallow thousands of souls with Dean begging him not to, shove Dean out of the way to attack the big bad, leave Dean alone in Purgatory, refuse to come out of Purgatory so he can self-flagellate, fly off with the angel tablet, help Sam with the Book of the Damned, let Lucifer possess him without anyone's knowledge or agreement, come into Dean's room under the guise of apologizing for ghosting him so that he can steal The Colt out from under his pillow and murder someone, decide not to murder that person and still prevent Sam and Dean from helping by knocking them both unconscious, get himself killed, make a deal to trade his life for Jack's and never tell anyone, hide information and worries and ignore phone calls, ghost Sam and Dean, and bicker and fight with Dean as if they are a married couple. Love sickness and feelings of worthlessness (which Cas has a wealth of reasons to feel—many of which aren’t even related to Dean but to his heavenly family) are reinterpreted as the result of some sort of constant, terrorizing emotional abuse. Power and authority that Dean does not actually have is forced into his hands by these fans. Maybe listen when Cas says, “Hey—not everything is your fault.” Maybe listen when he says “I loved the whole world because of you”, calls Dean a role model, says he enjoys their conversations, offers to die with him and dies for him multiple times. Maybe treat these feelings as genuine and valid and HIS and not as the delusions of some poor manipulated baby.

Sam is framed this way even more often than Cas, and it's a damn shame, because what I typically see is this: Sam’s development into a mediator and peacemaker is twisted and reinterpreted as coming from a place of weakness and/or fear. Rationality, maturity, wisdom, and compassion are not the traits of a scared, powerless child. They are the traits of a mature adult, who has been beaten down by life, and fought and raged against his circumstances, and somehow come out of it with more kindness and understanding and strength instead of less. He has made his own decisions whenever it was possible, within the set of circumstances doled out to him. From telling his dad to go fuck himself and going to college, to getting back into hunting to avenge Jess (NOT because of Dean—Dean took him home without complaint at the end of the woman in white case), to continuing to hunt after their father died because he wanted to feel close to him (Dean was actually weirded out and sort of disgusted by this), raging and fighting to save Dean from his deal against Dean’s wishes, continuing to hunt and working with Ruby (directly against Dean’s dying wish), drinking demon blood, jumping in the cage, leaving hunting to go be with Amelia, coming back to hunting to save Kevin, fighting with Dean over what he had with Amelia and threatening to leave if Dean didn't shut his mouth, leaving Amelia to go back to hunting (Dean ultimately suggests he go back to her—Sam chooses to stay), trying to kill Benny, demanding to be the one to do The Trials and saying he is going to SURVIVE them—that being the ENTIRE POINT, losing that resolve in a fit of depression but choosing to drop the knife, demanding space from Dean (and being given it), fighting to save Demon Dean who didn’t want to be found or saved, using the Book of the Damned against Dean’s wishes, telling Charlie that this is what he wants—that he used to want normal but now all he wants is to hunt with Dean and that he doesn’t know what he’ll do if he can’t have that, unleashing the Darkness in his desperation to keep Dean with him and even saying, “I would do it again” in the aftermath, saving the town being destroyed by Amara, getting into The Cage with Lucifer, leading a team against the British Men of Letters, nurturing Jack, punching Dean in the face when he was going to sacrifice himself, leading more hunters, wielding a gun against Chuck... and that’s just some highlights. Sam Fucking Winchester does not need your bullshit about him being some sad, scared, helpless baby lorded over by mean old Dean who has never let him do anything he wants.

Yes, in the text itself, there is jealousy and resentment at times, and there is legitimate and righteous anger on Sam’s part on a few occasions. There is blame cast on Dean by Sam for some of these choices/circumstances. Some of those moments where Dean is blamed are legitimate, and some of them... frankly, are not. Within the framework of the fucked up dynamics of the way they were raised, Sam and some fans bristle when they feel Dean is casting himself as the parent he is not, but Sam also has been guilty in the past of trying to reframe himself as Dean’s child when things got tough. Neither of them is responsible for the origin of that dynamic, but they BOTH have responsibility to change it, and they both, ultimately, succeed in doing so. For Sam, his part comes in recognizing and learning to fully own his own choices. Recognizing that he is not a child, and he is certainly not Dean’s child, and it isn’t just “Mummy—loosen the grip”, but Sam has to too—not claim independence only to blame Dean for his choices when his own decisions have an ultimate outcome he is unhappy with. That is a legitimate arc that Sam goes through imo, but he comes out the other side of it, and he and Dean relate to each other much better as peers from then on—and I’d like to note that throughout the entire series, when they don’t relate as perfect peers and teammates, it isn’t always Dean “bossing Sam around”, but Sam also trying to sideline Dean and yes—boss him around. And when they lied and hurt each other and yes, even manipulated each other, Dean most certainly wasn't always the one doing the lying and hurting and manipulating. Always, always, ALWAYS, they both had an understandable point of view, and it was complex, and you could understand why they made the choices they did, even if you thought of those choices as being wrong ones.

I also would like to point out (because this is basically what I see all of the time) that Dean being hurt by someone or simply voicing his feelings or opinion is in no way abusive or manipulative. Dean is certainly charismatic and loved and his returning love and respect is often deeply desired, but he is not an actual siren, who bends people to his will simply by speaking or being. People are, in fact, able to tell him “no”, and frequently FREQUENTLY do. Further more, no one is owed his affection, his unwavering loyalty, or his trust. He has a right to his boundaries, regardless of if it makes some poor sad sap feel deprived of the “wellspring of coveted love” while he works through things. He can be hurt and angry, and he can wear his heart on his sleeve at times, and he can be flawed, and broken. [Insert Castiel's speech from 15.18 here]. So can Sam. So can Cas. None of them are manipulating each other by virtue of getting angry, feeling hurt, being traumatized, needing space, or having differing opinions or feelings. Sam didn’t punch Dean in the face in 14.12 because he's a cruel, manipulative abuser trying to force Dean under his thumb. He didn’t work behind Dean’s back with Ruby, insist on doing The Trials, beg Dean to use Doc Benton’s alchemy, use the Book of the Damned to cure Dean, pump him full of blood to cure him of being a demon despite the fact that it might kill him, or scream at him and fight him for wanting to get in the Ma’lak box because he “doesn’t respect his autonomy” and “wants to control him” and “doesn’t respect his right to his own body”. He did it because he loves him desperately, and Dean could stand to fucking hate himself less, and he fiercely wanted Dean to live even when Dean didn’t want to or couldn’t picture what that could be like. He didn’t force Dean to do anything simply by opening his mouth to voice disagreement and swaying Dean when he did so. Now reverse that.

Cas didn't beat Dean into the ground in season 5 because he wanted to terrorize him into never going against Castiel ever again. He didn’t go behind his back dozens of times, sideline him, go MIA, all because he wanted to manipulate and control Dean and punish him. He didn’t throw sassy remarks at him to shatter his self-esteem. Now reverse that.

*Breathes*

Anyway, fuck "X is abusive” interpretations.

#being serious for 5 seconds #RANTING RANTING RANTING #spicy spicy ghost pepper extract #mail

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mittensmorgul · 3 years

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As Above, So Below

I’m still trying to pinpoint exactly why the focus on “heaven is fixed and actually a paradise now!” is just so deeply unsatisfying to me. And I think I need to preface this with a bit of backstory about me, because I think that gives the rest of this essay some relevant context.

I know this isn’t relevant to my main point here, but this is a metatextual and thematically identical example of the exact thing I’m gonna lay out, because context is always helpful. So please forgive this seemingly irrelevant detour, because I promise it will be relevant by the end.

(plus, would it really be an Essay By Mittens™ without at least one baffling tangent? no, it would not!)

Tangent time!

I think everyone that follows me knows how skeptical I was... or should I say how WARY I was of the way Eileen was returned to the narrative this season. We were warned in the PREVIOUS EPISODE how much Chuck was attempting to interfere in their lives. I was accused of some very nasty things, of hating the ship, or hating the character of Eileen, or of hating Sam and not wanting them to be happy. No amount of pointing at obvious warning signs in the text, no amount of yelling about Sam’s God Wound or the absolute klaxon warning that the wound had become “quiet” and his Chuck-O-Vision Nightmares had apparently stopped seemed to matter. I was declared “wrong” and told to shut up.

And then 15.09 happened, and basically everything I’d been wary of was shown to be what actually happened, but there were still unresolved issues. Eileen doubted her own feelings and walked away. She doubted what was actually real. And at the time, I said many times that I would be thrilled to see those issues resolved by the end of the season, and for her to truly know that what she’d felt growing between her and Sam was real. And by the end of the season, despite my personal horror at her previous situation (and having that personal horror compounded by the fandom literally gaslighting me and attempting to bully me into ignoring this basic actual plot detail of this specific growth process which... in the context of what my personal objection was to accepting her return at face value in the first place having been personal trauma associated with gaslighting and manipulation...) by the time 15.18 aired, I was 100% convinced that Sam and Eileen had fully chosen each other, and felt the traumatic pain Sam suffered during that text conversation with her during the snap. She NEEDED to come back, because she had been set up to be part of Sam’s Win. They were clearly each other’s future.

The show literally put in all the work to make even *me* feel this to be True and Right and Good. And then after that point we never even hear Eileen’s name again. We never were told that she was even returned at the end of 15.19. Sam, who had been so entirely devastated by her disappearance in the previous episode that he couldn’t even process it was apparently hit with an amnesia hammer and just... never even thought about her again through a long greyscale life with a blurry baby Dean factory vaguely in the background of a single scene of his life. I can’t credit or justify how after an entire year invested in making us all truly care about Sam and Eileen and the happiness they found in each other if only the cosmos would allow them to choose each other in the end would just... erase all of that in the series finale.

Which brings me to the second tangent, which is specifically about *me,* and how I feel about the cosmic order in the television show Supernatural. Because I feel a lot about it. Probably more than most people ever did. And this is also important to understanding the main underlying point I need to make here.

Something I’ve been most looking forward to, for YEARS, about Supernatural eventually ending someday was writing a book, or a thesis, or even just organizing and compiling all my observations into a cohesive narrative specifically about the cosmology of the Supernatural universe. I’ve been cobbling together my observations and realizations about the nature of heaven, hell, purgatory, the empty, the alternate universes we’ve seen, and yes, even the cosmic function of the mundane level of the story as told by events that transpired on Earth. So of everyone watching this dumb show for the last 15 years, I don’t actually know anyone who cared more that I did about finding a satisfactory resolution and transformation of every plane of existence-- the mortal world AND the “afterlife realms” we’ve experienced on this show. And in the wake of the finale, I feel cheated out of that. Because in the end, it wasn’t about the triumph of free will and a flip of the script, it was just more of the same.

And now that I have those two preliminaries out of the way, I’ll finally get to the point. :’D

(hooray, it didn’t even take 1k words to get there for once!)

The “main stage” of Supernatural has always been Earth. It’s always been “Humanity.” At the very start, we meet two men whose lives had always been dictated to them by higher powers. At first, that “higher power” was their father who raised them in his vengeance mission, who trained them to hunt the supernatural. It was the inciting incident of the entire series, after all, their realization that forces outside of their control had irrevocably altered the course of their lives. It had forever torn down what they’d trusted in family, in personal safety, and would become something they couldn’t outrun or fight back against for long before another wave of cosmic discord would settle over them once more.

We watched this story play out in ever increasing spheres of cosmic significance, until Gabriel laid it out on the table for them in the simplest possible terms (in 5.08).

GABRIEL: You do not know my family. What you guys call the apocalypse, I used to call Sunday dinner. That's why there's no stopping this, because this isn't about a war. It's about two brothers that loved each other and betrayed each other. You'd think you'd be able to relate. SAM: What are you talking about? GABRIEL: You sorry sons of bitches. Why do you think you two are the vessels? Think about it. Michael, the big brother, loyal to an absent father, and Lucifer, the little brother, rebellious of Daddy's plan. You were born to this, boys. It's your destiny! It was always you! As it is in heaven, so it must be on earth. One brother has to kill the other. DEAN: What the hell are you saying? GABRIEL: Why do you think I've always taken such an interest in you? Because from the moment Dad flipped on the lights around here, we knew it was all gonna end with you. Always. A long pause. SAM and DEAN look down, then at each other. DEAN: No. That's not gonna happen. GABRIEL: I'm sorry. But it is. GABRIEL sighs. GABRIEL: Guys. I wish this were a TV show. Easy answers, endings wrapped up in a bow...but this is real, and it's gonna end bloody for all of us. That's just how it's gotta be. ***

And isn’t that all even 1000x more painfully ironic that it all still happened even 10 years later? It was always going to end with them. And lol, “I wish this were a TV show” because if it was then it wouldn’t have to end bloody.

But this… was a Major Acknowledgement that the meta level of this story was consistent, and was telling us something important. It demonstrated that the Cosmic Structure Itself was the cause for Sam and Dean’s “destiny” in this story. But that’s not what the point of this story has ever been.

Nobody (including me, who is literally obsessed with this aspect of the story) has ever invested themselves in the narrative of Supernatural because they cared about the fate of the cosmic order over and above the fate of the characters who had committed to overthrowing it all, to “tearing up the pages” and writing their own destinies. I mean, we became invested because Sam, Dean, and Cas as characters took us by the hand and invited us to come along with them as they battled against fate for the good of EARTH and HUMANITY.

And certainly, Heaven being a horrific sort of eternal replay of the “highlights” of individual souls greatest hits, where free will didn’t apply as everyone was just boxed away into their individual holodecks to serve as some sort of giant Heaven Battery powering the furtherance of this narrative, this “cosmic order” that had become so powerful it dictated the events and manipulated the lives of people who still existed in the ostensible realm of free will and human life on Earth… that couldn’t stand in the end. But what the narrative (and people I’ve seen attempting to justify the finale as narratively sensible) seems to have forgotten was that all of that was Chuck’s construct to begin with. That without Chuck holding his kingdom in Heaven together, the walls of all those soul cubicles ceased to even be relevant.

After spending their entire lives to this point constantly fighting their way to the absolute pinnacle of the As Above, So Below narrative and pulling the plug on the original creator himself, Humanity should’ve triumphed. And I’d argue that it DID, through Jack restoring the missing essential “humanity” to the divine condition. And, silly me, I thought they’d achieved the promise of “paradise” heralded by Jack’s birth at last, and truly “flipped the entire script of the narrative.”

Ever since they thwarted the original apocalypse, I had hope that they would continue to achieve the same result right up the ladder. Metatron trying to fill the role of Chuck Junior hit his own narrative wall in TFW, while Dean’s battle with the Mark of Cain, and Cain telling him he was “living my life in reverse” and would succumb to destiny by killing his loved ones in the “reverse order” to Cain’s own path to downfall cemented this for me. Dean not only failed to kill any of his loved ones (you didn’t kill your own brother. why?), he SAVED them. He didn’t fulfil the prophecy in reverse, he subverted it. He UNMADE it.

Perhaps I was thinking on too grand a scale, that the ultimate inversion wouldn’t be “God is overthrown and replaced by more of the same,” but “God is overthrown and the entire order of the universe is restructured from the bottom up rather than the top down.

I’d hoped against hope that the conclusion of the narrative would be “As below, so above,” with the fundamental power of human love becoming the new foundation of the cosmic order. It never even occurred to me that “taking back the narrative to rewrite it for ourselves” was not the ultimate goal of Team Free Will, or the ultimate expression of their biggest win.

This whole “well heaven really needed to be rebuilt, there was still work to be done!” seems… irrelevant to me if they’d truly won free of the cosmic narrative. The entire structure of the universe-- including Heaven and Hell-- should’ve defaulted to the paradise state that Jack was literally born to bring to fruition. Wasn’t that the point of his entire role in the story, ultimately?

And if that wasn’t the case in the end, why did we never learn the fate of Hell? Was it just… irrelevant and unchanged after this? Or just… abandoned as a concept entirely? It’s just strange to me to put such a focus on heaven being the sole sphere of import in the end that it undercuts the essential humanity of the narrative for me.

The story itself had kept Heaven on a back burner for years, only occasionally mentioning that the structure of the place was falling further and further into disrepair with a dwindling force of angels struggling to keep the walls in place at all, that it seems like it could’ve been an afterthought at the end of the series rather than a focus so large it required the death of both main characters to make sure we all understood that Heaven Had Changed Now. Because TFW had never been fighting to make Heaven right. They’d been fighting to save the world itself, for humanity to all have a chance to live their lives as their own.

And we didn’t need to see that in the final hope they might get their own lives on Earth to explore. In the end, the fundamental narrative that Life On Earth was dictated by the cosmic structure of creation was never fully subverted. And for me, that’s the main reason I just… can’t accept the finale. It wasn’t a victory of free will and humanity, in the end it was just more of the same.

I appreciate the attempts to take the essential bones of the story we did get and apply a different polish to the surface of the skeleton, but to me it still feels like we’re looking at completely different beasts in the end. Like… to me this was as jarring a revelation as those drawing of modern animals reimagined as dinosaurs entirely based on their skeletons. Like, all along the narrative told me I was looking at a swan. They told me this skeleton they’re building out from is definitely a swan, without a doubt. I know what a swan looks like-- a graceful feather-covered bird with magnificent wings. I trusted that in the end it would be at least remotely swan-looking. And then the finale ended up looking like this

and I just don’t even know where everything went so wrong. Or maybe all along I just assumed they actually knew what a swan looked like, but weren’t sure they could actually pull it off and settled for whatever the heck this is instead. Either way, I’m actually kinda grateful to the finale for being so entirely disappointing on every level, because otherwise I probably would’ve tried to adopt the monstrosity of it anyway. And I’m really, really glad I don’t have to.

#spn 15.20 #spn cosmology #heaven hell purgatory and the empty #and this is why no amount of narrative defense of the finale is capable of making me feel any better about it #i admit i thought too big... but it was all right there in the narrative to see #oh well at least all i have to do to hold on to my grandest notion of the universe is throw out the finale :'D

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lewishamil10n · 3 years

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8, 9, and 28 💙

MORGAN <3

8. Thoughts on Sam’s demon blood arc

honestly, this might be kind of an unpopular opinion, but i didn’t like it. i didn’t like the wedge it drove between the brothers, and i didn’t like how it made sam kind of cold and self-righteous. i know he was only doing it to avenge dean, initially, and then he realized that he can use his powers to help people. it’s great that he could exorcise demons without harming the vessels. but ultimately, i don’t like what it did to him, and how it changed the way he views himself.

9. Thoughts on the Moc arc

again, hate that it drove a wedge between the brothers, but also dean looks hot holding a knife and covered in blood, sue me.

okay, on a serious note, i don’t think it made dean bloodthirsty. i think it just amplified what was already there, especially after hell and then purgatory. it made him harder, crueler, angrier. i really think dean should have thought about the consequences of his actions before he accepted the mark, and honestly i hate that he killed the youngest stine kid. i hate that he told sam “it should be you up there” instead of charlie on a funeral pyre, and they never brought it up again.

but also sam getting the mark off dean, just as dean kills death all because sam cried and made puppy eyes? delicious :’)

28. Cruelest things TFW has done to each other?

the cruelest things dean has done to sam are -- locking him in the panic room for that first detox, and then manipulating him into accepting gadreel into his body.

the cruelest thing sam has done to dean is replacing the beer with his gross ass green smoothies. (i’m not counting letting him become a vamp, bc that was soulless sam.)

the cruelest thing cas has done to dean is the multiple times he’s beat him up viciously, not even caring about the difference in their physical strengths. the cruelest thing he’s done to sam is to let lucifer out again, because he literally invalidated sam’s sacrifice and the centuries of torture, abuse, and rape that sam suffered at lucifer’s hands.

i don’t think sam and dean have done anything particularly cruel to cas?

send me a number

#long post #morgan #ask games #aihoshiduo #asks

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bre95611 · 4 years

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HI! I’m finally rewatching 15x17 so I’m doing an in-depth(ish?) super stoned commentary! Hooray!

Before I get into it, I just really have to say, god I love this season so so so much. The writing has just been beautiful, and it has me EMOTIONAL af. Anyway. Here we go!

I always like looking at the Then/Now scenes. I feel they can ring some really important storywide context to the show. A great example of this is the Pizza Man montage. This episode it starts with the conversation from a few episodes back with Dean and Sam discussing Jack killing God.

I’ve found the Dean/Amara relationship very interesting. After how it was played up in the 15x15 Gimme Shelter, always from Dean’s perspective in a joking manner. I believe it was @verobatto-angelxhunter that discussed the Big Married Energy it gave off, Dean teasing Castiel about a woman from his past. Season 11, as the beginning of the Dabb era, has been calling my name for a rewatch lately, especially with Amara being brought back. Its always been established that the connection Dean and Amara have was not something Dean liked. It wasn’t actual attraction. I’ll talk more about this later.

I have made some random posts here and there talking about the symmetry in endings between Season 11 and Season 15, I will also dig into this more later.

Saw a post about the amount of times “world” is said, want to keep track of that. I know there is a heavy Destiel attachment, and the second time it is said is during the Then sequence, Chuck’s dialogue from the episode with the tvs, talking about how its time to clear the board. (Want to look into Chess mentions this season, maybe even Dabb era as a whole? Because obviously there’s been a game going on at the cosmic level for quite some time). It doesn’t show the scene where Dean and Cas in the kitchen comes up on the tv where Chuck calls them “the world”. but it does have that section of dialogue as t screens are being shown, bringing that to mind.

Then we have Meg 2.0 as The Shadow, Cas is confused why he is being harmed since they’re on the same side. The Shadow makes their loyalty known. Keep this in mind. Will touch on this later as well.

Shit this is a lot for the episode not even starting yet. Below the cut for more!

God Amara is a QUEEN and I love her SO MUCH.

Sam tells Cas to “just get home” cause the Bunker is his FUCKING HOME

One thing I’ve seen brought up a lot is how Dean is always very action focused. Solve the problem at hand, “cross that bridge when we get to it” type of mentality. His plans always revolve around that. Cas and Sam are always very focused on there being another way, how there is always another way, especially when one oftheir lives are at stake. Sam calls him out. Sam wouldn’t care if Dean was saying that all the time if it were actually true, wouldn’t wonder if he ever got tired of saying it if they did only ever have one choice. TFW always subverts the problem at hand. Last season, their only shot of beating Michael was the Malak Box. Season 11 was soul bomb Dean, 13 was Dean saying yes to Michael. Ya’ll see a theme yet? Dean loves to sacrifice himself. Sam’s done the same exact thing, closing the Hell gates, letting out Lucifer. Cas’s whole thing in Season 6? They’ve all done the same things. over and over. Hamster wheel. Think of what made all those endings obsolete? What made them find another way, huh?

Fuck that paragraph went somewhere I wasn’t originally taking it, but still a good take IMHO.

I’m loving the SUITS!

I really hope that Amara is not gone. I know I’ve seen some stuff that talks about why that has to have been her last episode, but whatever. Imma still dream. And I really might have to just write a fix-it fic after the finale about Aunt Amara and Jack hanging out.

I just noticed world again (Dean to Amara: saving the whole world’s ass)

“You and I will always help each other.” That look on Dean’s face when she said that. Not the face of someone enjoying being flirted with by and “ex-flame” or whatever the hell

Saw a post about the generational family story that was being told (I believe it was @occamshipper) that basically has Sam is to Jack as Dean was to Sam growing up (Dean is John and Cas is Mary, super awesome read, will try to find and link in a bit). This whole family arc is about breaking the toxic circle, being a better parent than your parents, found family kinda things. So how has Dean reacted to Sam in these situations? Most recently, I think, is season 8, with the Trials. Sam was sacrificing himself, he knew that, he was okay with it. Sam was suicidal by the end of it, and Dean does what he normally does with Sam and keeps him from finishing the trials, and season 9 starts with Dean completely taking away his autonomy again, allowing Gadreel to possess him. Dean was angry, he was disappointed, he acted like Dean, and that is the kind of treatment he gets from his “big brother” father figure. But Sam breaks through his treatment, tells Jack he is brave and validates him, and doesn’t try and take away his FREE WILL.

Sam continues the path he started on when he told Dean to stop as he continuously made excuses/explained why he had kept things from Sam about Jack. He grows!! I love to see it!! He does NOT give up his FREE WILL. Guys I’m loving it. These boys are actively making HARD decisions and we are seeing growth in real time. TFW in every form has...not really lived up to its name? Sure, the world gets free will, but the boys never do. And not just in situations like they’re told they can’t do something. I’m talking constant violations of each other’s bodily autonomy. Dean all the time with Sam, Cas when he takes down the Hell wall from Sam’s mind, honestly....mostly its Sam having it violated. But the other guys have to stop fucking with it. They all need a variation. Dean needs the Free Will to stop being his father’s soldier, to live his true non performative life. Cas needs to be free of his self doubt. Permission to be happy, not happy in and of itself. Jack needs Free Will to be a fucking toddler.....

Sam SEES it dude, he knows something isn’t right, and he’s the one that figured it out like, every other time this season, too. Jesus. Dean is so desparately caught up in wanting to get the hell OUT of the hamster wheel, he’s too blind to see how deep into it he is. The first plan ANYONE gives him, he goes with it. He’s literally followed Billie’s plan because of one of her books before, and what happened? Cas and Sam brought him back from sacrificing himself.

I’ve really enjoyed how much Sam and Dean are fighting, honestly. Like, my spec for a while now has been that the brothers are going their seperate ways at the end of all this, the only way to satisfyingly bring an impactful end to their toxic codependency that they’ve been chipping away at for the last few seasons.

Guys I’m suuuuuuuper baked,

Dean says “Someone’s gotta be the grownup here” talking to Sam about taking Jack to do the final ritual. Dean is fully his father, talking to the “older brother” Sam protecting the “special child” Jack. Dean is not breaking the cycle established by his father, going mad with rage over his circumstances

Jesus Christ the LOOK ON SAM’S FACE when Dean says Jack’s not family. I’m dead. He looks so broken.

That line though is.....hm. All through season 14 and 15, its been established that Jack is family, their kid. When Lily Sunder comes back to help get his soul, Dean makes comments about not making them go through what she did with her daughter, and again to Belphegor in 15 when asked who he was (after a fight between Dean and Cas no less, calls him “our kid”). So this is how far Dean has spiralled? This is how he is choosing to try and deal with knowing Jack will die? Denial of his importance?

“He’s not like you. He’s not like Cas.” Dean feels he holds a different relationship with Cas than he does with Sam. Just...sayin....

Jared’s acting is......truly just phnomenal.

Man, i feel like the music is off? and it makes me think its intentional, cause Becky says something about how there’s no classic rock? So foreshadowing? nah.

This really does feel like....the last real Sam and Cas interaction. It is heart breaking really.

Alright, I’m posting this now......cause I literally just got to the first commercial break.... So

This is pt 1 I guess.

#spn 15x17 spoilers #spn 15 spoilers #spn spec #spn meta #my meta #my spec

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tora-the-cat · 4 years

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Phantom Troupe Members in order of who I'd be least to most upset to see die

No one asked for it but I just want to be clear on my opinions on the phantom troupe and no one’s been able to stop me yet <3

Disclaimers:

a. if you like these characters then yes I think thats objectively funny but like. it doesn't make you a bad person, cringe culture dead, like what you like, I'm just someone on the internet, etc etc. go ahead and leave angry rants/dissmissive insults/'umm actually's/etc etc for me to not read anyway tho <3

b. I refuse to look up anything about them, including their names, because I don't care enough. And also because I'm going to spell their names from memory and then laugh when people correct me. So, like, know that I'm not messing up any of the names on purpose, and might not mess them up at all, but I'm not doing a joke or anything with the spelling I just really care that little

c. Also!! Mild manga spoilers?? idk why you would care because it's literally just about the phantom troupe but if that bothers u for some reason then goodbye have a nice day <3 this WILL spoil deaths that I'm pretty sure happened. Maybe. No I haven't read the manga I have ADHD and haven't properly hyperfixated on HxH since I was 13 and didn't know what Manga was.

d. I lied through my teeth! I'm a Gemini bitch, if someone somehow actually cares enough about my correct opinions about the goddamned phantom troupe to leave a mean comment I'm absolutely going to read it.e. also if u actually somehow want to talk about the phantom troupe in a civil way (excluding H*soka) PLEASE hit me up. I don't know if reasonable Phantom Troupe stans exisit but I assume they do and I promise I'm funny and nice and surprisingly conflict avoidant and I'd honestly luv 2 study u. I'm not mean the worst I'll do is ghost u I'm an Aquarius mars I swear <3

Hisoka. I hate this clown man so fucking much. Like he has funny moments I guess but it doesn't make up for how uncomfortable I am every time I see him. The rest of this list will be funnier because the rest of them are funny and obviously shiny plot devices and not much else, but the fact that this clown man is alive makes me so angry. Also there'd be no entertainment value left here after the emotional exhaustion I'd have complaining about Illumi and also I forgot he joined until just now, so I'm grouping these bitches together and moving on.

Chrolo Lucifer: this man is so funny purely on a fandom level. Like he has half the personality of a stale potato chip, but he's hot and does atrocities and pretends to have thoughts so he lives in everyone's head rent free any way. Not me tho because I'm sexy and cool. Anyway I want him dead purely because the reactions would be hilarious (on BOTH sides to be clear, because people celebrating his death would be almost as funny as people mourning it), it's what Kurapika and the Kurta's deserve, and there's literally no reason for him to exist other then to eventually die.

sphinx: he's just. really annoying. I can't back this up because I don't remember anything he does I just remember thinking he was annoying.

nobabunga: He was mean to the boys!!!!! It's a death sentence those are just the facts. He cried and I gave a nice good chuckle. I want him 2 die then never get mentioned again until Illumi offhandedly mentions that he's Kikyo's brother or cousin or somehting so Kalluto can inherit his swords. Not because they should use them just because I think Kalluto deserves swords and also it would inspire a wave of people caring about Nobaunga WAY too much (one group hating him on principal for being a member of the Zoldyk family, one group deciding he's a Big Brother Icon and reimagining him having a cute and hillariously out of character relationship with Illumi/Kalluto/Killua/Gon, and a mix of the two pumping out psycology breakdowns with entirely too much time and effort put into them, none of which I will watch but each of which will add a week onto my lifetime out of the pure amused euphoria of knowing they exist).

Franklin: Boring. He's in the phantom troupe he can do better then overplayed-frankenstein-aesthetic and bullet fingers. uninspired. At least everyone else sucks in an interesting way.

Uvo: I can't lie his fight scenes were actually pretty dope, and I HAVE to admit that it is HILARIOUS just how much work Togashi put into overpowering/hyping up Uvo, specifically so he could have an established baseline for exactly how incomprehensibly and overwhelmingly excessive Kurapika's will and hatred is. Also that demi lavato AMV of his and Kurapika's fight is just free dopamine. Glad he's dead but he was funny while it lasted and I can appriciate what he gave to the story.

boxing gloves. I know nothing about them (including their name). They might already be dead in the manga but I don't think so.

Pakunda. I don't know how to elaborate on her bc I don't care about her all that much but some part of me can't help but kind of like her a little? I dunno. her loyalty would almost be commendable if it wasn't to Chr*llo.

Pheiten. his character concept and design is literally 'what if we combined Levi and Aizawa and then made him super fucked up' which is impressive because he was made like two decades before either of them. can't justify putting him this far up the list either because he's honestly kinda boring and overplayed but he looks cool and he's funny in a 'what the fuck is wrong with you??' way so here he is.

Kortopi. No I won't elaborate. Yes I know they're dead and I have no significant emotions about this besides >:I

Shizuku. She's cute and she has ADHD and plinky(?) the vaccum is one my favorite nen-things in the show. I'd love to study her and I honestly like her a bit more then I want to.

Machi. I love her specifically because she hates Hisoka. That's all she needs to get a pass in my book. doesn't hurt that she has pink hair and the closest thing to resembling common sense in the group. If Hisoka kills her I'll riot because she doesn't deserve that but if anyone else does it that's fine.

shalnark should be the leader of the Spiders, there, I said it. he embodies them and their narritive purpose and their nonexistant philosophy and arbitrary but unshakable rules and their faux 'emotional depth and complexity' that so many people buy into. He's so funny I love him so much. Like cholo is out here trying to double major in philosophy and theology and fooling thousands into thinking theres a single thought in his head meanwhile Shalnark's only personality trait is being a buisness major with no empathy, and if he was in charge the phantom troupe would loose all of the ambiguity people somehow beleive they have. Like Shalnark is played so straight that I can't help but lowkey love him. Kurta theory is fun in a fucked up way like tfw u become emblamatic of the group you helped kill your clan and you didn't even know because you live in meteor city. Yes I know he's dead and yes it's the closest I've ever come to caring about the troupe and yes it took me three whole days to get over it. Not my best moment I'll admit.

For the record if Kalluto dies I'm going to have at least one mental breakdown. Fuck you.

#hxh #phantom troupe #hisoka tw #hisoka #illumi zoldyck #chrollo lucilfer #phinks #shalnark #nobunaga hxh #franklin hxh #uvogin #pakunoda #kortopi #shizuku hxh #machi #kalluto zoldyck #luv u bby

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vvivacious101 · 4 years

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Re-rewatching S06E20 - The Man Who Would Be King

I have no words. This episode manages to floor me every single time. In 2020, when we have season 15 with all it’s blatant focus on Cas and Dean and their relationship, I’m still astounded by the sheer depth of this episode. It is so good. It is so heart-wrenching. It’s like witnessing a break-up. Wait, scratch that, it’s exactly like a break-up.

Rachel: What does God want?

Cas: God wants you to have freedom.

Rachel: What does he want us to do with it?

Cas: [narrating] If I knew then what I know now, I might have said, "It's simple. Freedom is a length of rope. God wants you to hang yourself with it."

This is Cas’ side of the story and it’s humbling. I mean a lot of the choices Cas makes aren’t bad. He realises that angels aren’t really built for freedom but he forgets he’s an angel too and literally freedom isn’t such an easy thing to deal with because as Cas realises with freedom comes responsibility and even so late in season 6, Cas wants to give up the responsibility.

In 4x16, On the Head of a Pin, when Cas first considered rebellion he went to Anna because he wanted her to make the decision for him but she refused which prepared Cas for just how treacherous the path he was preparing to walk on was but in a way, he never really understood it and I feel like Cas only ever learnt responsibilty after this disastrous attempt to do the right thing.

Those first weeks back in Heaven were surprisingly difficult. Explaining freedom to angels is a bit like teaching poetry to fish.

Of course, Cas with his talk of freedom comes in direct conflict with the new boss in town, Raphael who just wants the Apocalypse TFW averted back on the road. Cas tries to resist but it is made amply clear that Cas has nothing on Raphael.

So he turns to someone for help. Is it any surprise that he turns to Dean? I still regret that Dean actually doesn’t know this but the first time Cas was in trouble and he wanted help, he went to Dean but it was only his love for Dean that prevented him from breaching what he saw as Dean’s sanctuary.

And, that’s when Crowley saw his opportunity to strike. He convinces Cas that with the untapped potential of Purgatory on their side, he can defeat Raphael. Crowley of course already has a plan in place to figure out just where Purgatory is and Cas reluctantly agress. He starts a civil war in Heaven and teams up with Crowley to figure out where Purgatory is.

Presently, Crowley wants to get rid of the Winchesters but Cas won’t allow that no matter how good of an argument Crowley presents.

Cas: Don't worry about the Winchesters.

Crowley: Don't worry about... what, like Lucifer didn't worry? Or Michael, or Lilith, or Alistair, or Azazel didn't worry? Am I the only game piece on the board who doesn't underestimate those denim-wrapped nightmares?

Meanwhile, Sam, Dean and Bobby who, now that they know Crowley is alive, are looking for him behind Cas’ back. What they don’t know is that Cas is spying on them and he knows exactly what they are doing? Unfortuantely, Cas let’s slip something he couldn’t possibly have known and that’s when it shatters.

Dean’s trust in Cas. This entire episode is Dean defending Cas against Bobby and Sam but even more amazing is the fact that Dean doesn’t denounce Cas even when Cas admits to working with Crowley. Dean tells him that they can fix it and despite, everything Dean is ready to mend fences and move on and it isn’t till the very end when despite Dean begging Cas not to follow through on what he has set out to do, Cas refuses that these two truly break.

God, the dialogues in this episode are just so good but the ones between Dean and Cas... like, are so intense, like it’s unbelievable. We have Bobby, Sam and Dean confronting Cas and Bobby and Sam are just throwing accusations but you know what Dean’s says, Dean says this -

You got to look at me, man. You got to level with me and tell me what’s going on. Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not working with Crowley.

Like, I literally explode every time I hear this dialogue, like look me in the eye. All Dean wants is for Cas to meet his gaze and it literally doesn’t take him more than a few seconds to read Cas. Like the moment their eyes meet Dean can tell Cas is in fact working with Crowley. How has anyone not noticed just how blatant this moment is?

Cas: Raphael will kill us all. He'll turn the world into a graveyard. I had no choice.

Dean: No, you had a choice. You just made the wrong one.

Cas: You don’t understand. It’s complicated.

Dean: No, actually it’s not, and you know that. Why else would you keep this whole thing a secret, huh, unless you knew that it was wrong? When crap like this comes around we deal with it, like we always have. What we don’t do is we don’t go out and make another deal with the devil!

Cas: It sounds so simple when you say it like that. Where were you when I needed to hear it?

Dean: I was there. Where were you?

Like if this episode was trying to kill me it is doing an amazing job of it.

Dean: It's not too late. Dammit Cas we can fix this.

Cas: Dean, it's not broken.

The whole moment of hesitation that Dean has at the doorway... I don’t even have words for it.

And Cas wants to explain himself to Dean and specifically Dean because after the initial encounter goes to hell in a handbasket, Cas goes to explain himself to Dean, again.

The most important thing that Cas stresses on is that he is doing this for Dean, he doesn’t even try to bring up anyone else because after all Cas’ biggest motivation and truthfully his only motivation to avert the apocalypse and prevent it from ever going down is Dean.

The scene just before the last one in Bobby’s study/kitchen is oddly reminiscent of a similar scene from 4x02 - Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean Winchester. It’s like these two scenes are bookending their own little saga of Dean and Cas with that initial meeting and now with this breakup.

Before, I get into the meaning of it all, I would like to discuss another piece of dialogue. This one -

Sam: Look, Dean, he's our friend, too, okay? And I'd die for him, I would. But... I'm praying we're wrong here.

Bobby: But if we ain't, if there's a snowball of a snowball's chance here, that means we're dealing with a Superman who's gone dark side. Which means we gotta be cautious, we gotta be smart, and maybe stock up on some kryptonite.

Dean: [to Sam] This makes you Lois Lane.

This is a metaphor with Cas being Superman and no one needed to bring up Lois Lane but Dean does, which immediately puts a love interest into mind, specifically Cas’ love interest and the weird thing is Dean declares Sam as Cas’ Lois Lane when we all know that if anybody is Lois Lane in this metaphor it’s Dean. So, thank you, Dean for pointing that out.

Over time, I think I have often come back to this episode to point out that this was the episode that established that Cas loved Dean beyond any shadow of doubt what motivates Cas, what distresses him, the person he needs most on his side are all answers you can find in Dean Winchester. The person who teaches Cas free will and gives him his freedom, the person he turns to for help, the person he wants to protect at all costs and finally the person he desperately wants on his side. After all, he specifically goes to Dean to explain his reasons for doing what he’s doing. At this point, I don’t even think I need to point out that Dean and Cas are very, very different from Cas and Sam or Cas and Bobby. Though Cas betrayed all three of them, he only seems to really care about what Dean’s saying.

But, I think just because the narrative’s focus is on Cas, I forget how important this episode is for establishing Dean’s feelings for Cas. Like the whole “look me in the eye thing”, like that line spearates Dean and Cas and puts them in their own universe like Dean knows Cas can’t lie to him and Cas doesn’t even say a word but Dean knows. I mean for a relationship that consists of the most intense eye contacts in history, I seem to forget how much they seem to communicate with their eyes. And despite everything Cas does Dean wants to help him fix it, he doesn’t give up on Cas not even the second time Cas comes to talk to him, he wants to help, he wants Cas to abandon his plan of action and it’s only when Cas draws a line in the sand that Dean really consider a different course of actions.

It’s amazing how much drama Supernatural can generate simply by pitting Dean and Cas against each other, just a simple line of dialogue and the stakes sky rocket because we all know waht Dean and Cas mean to each other.

#supernatural #supernatural season 6 #spn 6x20 #the man who would be king #spn #sam #dean #cas #destiel #bobby #my posts #spn rewatch #crowley #sassy crowley has the best lines

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sortasirius · 4 years

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Sam and Jack for the ask? Wanna know the unpopular opinions :)

Ah yes two of my children. Hope you’re ready for a novel lmao

Sam

How I feel about this character: my son. 2000000000/10 would protect with my life. Sam is...man, I get emo when I talk about him, because of how strong he is, what a natural leader he is, how much he cares, not only about Dean, but about everyone they meet, about Cas, Jack, the random mother who lost her kid when they’re on a hunt. Sam cares, he cares so much and even when he majorly fucks up, he’s doing it for the right reasons, because he thinks it’s the best way forward. He loves to learn and he loves to read, he’s a natural at witchcraft. He loves dogs. He’s been willing to die for humanity any time it’s been necessary, and he’s never been afraid to stand up for what he believes in. He protects Dean as much as Dean protects him. Sam is also just so gentle, he’s gentle with the people they meet, he’s always been gentle with Jack, and so gentle with Eileen. But that gentleness isn’t everything, you know, he’s also a total fucking badass, he’s an amazing hunter, he literally was able to get LUCIFER under control and throw himself in the pit. He’s complex and flawed and it makes him so compelling, like I feel like I really know him, like he’s a person that I could sit down and have a conversation with. Damn, he is so amazing.

All the people I ship romantically with this character: FUCK I just want this boy to know happiness and peace. Eileen, obviously. Like her entire resurrection episode???? Hello??? Also when they make too many margaritas and get drunk together??? Icons????? Also Rowena, I just thought they had a lovely dynamic. Even Jess and Amelia y’all, like if it makes this boy happy it’s fine by me, his overprotective mom lmao. Also I dabble in Sabriel because the fic is always really good lmao

My non-romantic OTP for this character: it’s gotta be Dean right? Like they are the basis of the show. They’re so dumb and codependent sometimes, but idk, it’s been really nice, especially in 15 how they’re sorta getting towards being able to be brothers, hunting partners, not twins attached at the hip where they try and snip snap death to sacrifice themselves for each other. Sam has such amazing pissy little brother moments, he is always willing to throw down for Dean, but he also is going to call him out when he’s doing something reckless or stupid (can you say ALLOWING SAM TO BE POSSESSED BY AN ANGEL WITHOUT HIS CONSENT???). Like Jack and Cas are in there two, Team Free Will 2.0 is a unit, and they all compliment each other in different ways, but imho it’d be dumb for Sam and Dean not to be the ultimate platonic OTP, bc you know, they are the brothers of the show.

My unpopular opinion about this character: he and Dean aren’t soulmates. Imo their heavens may be “linked” in some way, but they aren’t destined to be in the same one. I think he and Dean need to separate at the end of the show, not in a “never speak to you again” sort of way, but in a way that they’re allowed to just be brothers for once. I also thought that he was way too forgiving of Mary but he’s a much calmer boy than I ever would be.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: he should’ve punched John in the face.

Jack

How I feel about this character: is baby. Okay so since I came back to SPN after a literal five year hiatus, I binged the season where Jack appeared, and so I didn’t really have to wait to warm up to him bc I was consuming as much SPN as I could. I just...I love him so much. It like physically hurt me to see him lose his soul. (I felt like I was being ripped in half when he killed his snake lol). I just love seeing how much like Sam, Dean, and Cas he is. He’s picked up traits from all of them and it’s so endearing to watch. I honestly didn’t think that an addition to TFW would work, but Jack fits so seamlessly it took about one episode before I was like “welp guess I’d lay down my life for him”

All the people I ship romantically with this character: literally no one. See point 1: is baby

My non-romantic OTP for this character: probably Cas. Cas took up the mantle of mom for Jack because of Kelly’s death, and Jack has never been afraid to ask him questions, even if they might sound stupid. He’s able to be completely emotionally open with Cas, and Cas is with him because of how much they care about each other, and how they share some similarities (nephilim and angel) surrounded by humans, living in a human world. Cas helps him understand not only his own feelings, but the feelings of others around him (specifically angsty boi Dean). I always love when they have a scene together.

My unpopular opinion about this character: homeboy was honestly justified with what happened to Mary. I didn’t want Mary to die, but she was literally IN HIS FACE, she kept pushing and pushing and pushing even when he told her to get back. She didn’t listen and BAM, vaporized.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: probably when that girl who was the Dean mirror got stabbed??? That was so awful and was like never brought up again. Also I really just hated when he killed his snake

Link to OG post

Ask me character opinions

#lilly answers #anonymous #ask games #spn #sam #jack #supernatural #sam winchester #jack kline

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naruhearts · 5 years

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14x18 First Watch Thoughts: Mary Winchester the Mirror, TFW and Destiel

**FLAILS**

My thoughts are practically incoherent because I’m having BIG FEELS right now...VERY big feels re: TFW/Destiel narratives.

I am SUPER glad Berens was the one who penned Mary’s death!! The episode was just well-done all around from start to finish and intensely executed, with the proper solid balance of angst, emotional insight from the characters placed inside Mary’s cathartic contextual role, and the consistent reiteration of Mary as TFW’s overall Parental Catharsis in 14x18′s storytelling (and S12-14′s whole parental premise in conjunction with John Winchester’s ghost).

Mary was portrayed as the singular contrasting foil to TFW’s individual and combined arcs. Absence was, obviously, a core theme, with Mary’s absence -- her death -- playing out as A. familial purpose (accountability and her death as the impetus to work together --> forgive each other, forgive yourself), B. self-purpose (self-realization via Jack: what did I do? Why did I do it? Why do we do things?), and C. romantic purpose on the Dean/Cas front.

Let me explain C. -- well, WE BEEN KNEW. The metasphere wrote about this (my post x).

Dean was HEAVILY subtextually framed as the angry spouse undergoing a rough patch with Cas over Mary’s death (the tension, juxtaposed by sad orchestral strings and soft lighting, Dean lashing out at Cas, romantic framing via Dean’s back turned to Cas, their interactions holding frustration yet still underpinned by certain tenderness etc *sighhhhh*) and Dean continuing down the route of giving Cas, not Sam, frosty shoulders -- emphasized by the romantic visual framing of space between them e.g. Sam preventing Cas from comforting Dean during Mary’s funeral, backs again facing each other, Dean and Cas interacting sparsely, Dean bitter and disengaged, Cas longing for forgiveness from Dean, Sam as the overt brother caught in the middle as he embodies the role of mediator and stable thinker for both of them etc -- just strengthens my belief that Destiel is going to experience another (hopefully) intense romance-coded confrontation as intense as the one they had in the cabin -- one that leads up to a lover’s make-up or some kind of emotional breakthrough/realization which has Cas happy enough to be taken by the Empty (remember, DEAN STILL DOESN’T KNOW ABOUT CAS’ DEAL. Cas’ life to save his son’s life, harking back to Dean’s own fatherly self-sacrificial deal by saying Yes to Michael. He is utterly unaware that he’ll lose Cas) and it’s a double punch here, because Dean will realize how stupid he is for not appreciating Cas -- more accurately, trying to be mutually transparent and honest with him (he has, though, and he’s made leaps and bounds) before it’s too late but failing (final regression before progression). He does appreciate Cas, and Cas means more to him than anyone could ever describe *points at his Mind!Bar 14x10* yet their love languages still don’t align. IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN, DEAN! 14x19 is written by BL so I additionally hope the D/C subtext from this point onwards works in our favour!!

As I said in above and in my liveblog posts, a summary:

The differences in Dean’s grieving are a COMPLETE visual comparison to 12x23, complete with overhead 📸 shots and differing funeral pyre scenes: when he grieved over Cas, he was alone, kneeling on the ground, and was blatantly numb/emotionally incapacitated – Dean mourned the loss of his lover. When he’s grieving Mary, Sam is by his side. Brothers mourning the loss of their mother. Romantic vs familial.

Overt romance-coded parallels with Sam/Rowena keeping constant contact just like Dean/Cas do both offscreen and onscreen

Sam telling Dean IT WASN’T JUST CAS and his own emotional pull in this ep as expressing accountability for TFW’s actions in general – besides internalizing/talking about the self-guilt, shame, and the inevitable pain of losing people despite saving people (also re: the 🔑 theme of doing the wrong, stupid thing for the right reasons) -- was character development on a marvelous scale. Dean was enlightened and began to admit it himself. Honest, open words. Dean and Cas should learn from him!!

Cas was absolutely humanized, subsuming the Winchester Way of Bringing Family Back, and he additionally evoked honesty/an emotional justification while admitting his mistakes and again representing FAITH: faith in Jack narratively linked to FAITH IN HIMSELF and the season-long theme of believing there’s another way -- in believing that good things shall come. As he appropriately told Anael last episode -- loneliness is a construct misconstrued by her; not being in one’s physical presence doesn’t mean they aren’t there -- they are there. They are there for you. Narrative symmetry with 14x17′s presence of emotional acknowledgement despite physical absence re: God (and TFW; just because Cas wasn’t with the Winchesters did not mean he loved them any less) vs 14x18′s absence of full-frontal communication despite physical presence re: Dean and Cas/TFW (being physically present also entails being emotionally present through HONESTY). Berens interlinked the subtext. Negative spaces are being filled. And there’s also an Evil/dark dimension added to this Presence vs Absence commentary: Lucifer’s a visage in Jack’s mind, just like Sam. Jack’s soullessness has come to a psychological crux. He’s teeter-tottering – tried desperately to bring Mary back, and now he might have fucked up the natural order (if BTS pics of zombies in 14x20 is linked to this). Furthermore:

(*clutches chest* There’s the heartbreaking spousal-coded visual narrative.)

Oh, Cas...Jack is BOTH good and evil. This is the intrinsic dualism of human nature. It’s what makes Jack human. And goodness involves badness.

CAS: [Jack] was good for us. Indeed, we know he was. The unhealthily-codependent-abusive notion of family TFW used to possess (where their overarching parental issues -- Chuck’s absence, John’s abuse and Mary’s absence -- crippled their early formative growth, extending into decades) was deconstructed and rebuilt in healthier ways. Being a parent to Jack offset their true capabilities/qualities: FAITH (Cas), HOPE (Sam), and LOVE (Dean), alongside all the stickiness that came with his birth. By direct association, Cas learned (is learning) how to believe in himself. Sam learned (is learning) how to hope in himself. Dean learned (is learning) how to love himself. Mental/emotional release from their internal chains took place (will come to its final culmination in S15). In other words, Jack the Unifying TFW Mirror -- like Mary -- was the great interpersonal conduit for (a Jesus-figure-representation) honesty, appreciation (spending time with your loved ones), positive vs negative self-process, and self-awareness. Keep in mind that Jack has characteristically taken the place of Dean, Cas and Sam’s own dark arcs (Soulless!Sam, in particular) with what looks like a Godstiel mirror in 14x19 -- he’s literally becoming textualized as TFW’s mirror -- and, like his parents, he is going to make his independent (wayward) choices and question the primacy of human nature: good, evil, and the grey in-between. Will he listen to his head or his heart? Most of all, Jack taught them that HuntingTM is filled with pain, horror, and death, but genuine purpose lies beyond it. The lives they live are also innumerably interlinked with joy and happiness. These positive things aren’t as sparse as they think: they have each other.

Mary Winchester is ⚰️ and resides in Heaven (her death successfully made me emotional and packed a deep personal punch; the black and white flashbacks interspersed throughout 14x18 relative to Mary’s influence on TFW was A++). She disappeared right when TFW’s arcs came together to display character progression. Her purpose – pushing TFW to engage in self-introspection, personal growth, and honesty with the Self and others – is done.

Mary, the Cas mirror, carved M.W. into the table with S.W and D.W. You know who should be next, right? CASTIEL W. (and Jack W.) (recall that in 14x17, Mary relayed to Dean that she treasured and enjoyed her time with him and Sam -- channeling Cas’ 14x12 farewell speech. Mary has always embodied LOVE, both romantic and familial, with the great virtue of honesty, and Dean, by proxy, has been telling his family he loves them. Again, who is the next family member he’ll say I LOVE YOU to? What do Dean and Cas WANT? Time to answer this question!!)

WE HAVE COME FULL CIRCLE. Narrative cyclism, y’all. Mary and John Winchester are finally at ✌️, and by so doing, TFW will experience emotional/personal/psychological ✌️ as they leave their past behind to create their own optimistic self-actualized future. THERE’LL BE GENUINE PEACE WHEN YOU ARE DONE.

TFW MUST TALK

I mean, I’ll probably reblog this with new thoughts during the next few days, but yes, ENDGAME’S UPON US, and all the extensive meta regarding Dabb Era Love and...Love, Unity, Family, Honesty, the centrality of interpersonal relationships and Reconciliation of the Past & Future since Season New Beginnings 12/13 over Season Who Am I 14 should be realized in the final two ANGST-filled eps. TL;DR a gigantic multilayered soup of character-positive/relationship growth-positive meta coming to fruition for the main plot.

Berens has killed us all. 14x18 is one of my favourite Emotion-centric episodes yet!

RATING: 10/10

Thank you for reading my sloppier-than-usual word-vomit!

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amwritingmeta · 5 years

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21 Supernatural Questions

I was tagged by @deletingpoint - thanks for the kind words, girl!! Made my day! You rock the block! And yes don’t mind if I do join in, this looks fun. :P

1. When did you start watching Supernatural?

I’d seen stray episodes before - I’ve absolutely no clue which ones - but then I binged S1-6 in 2013 while being ill with the flu and I was hooked before it came up, because I loved S1-3 and the brother dynamic and thought it was a really awesomely well-written piece of television, but when they introduced the will-they-won’t-they-make-this-uber-masculine-guy-be-into-guys-and-specifically-the-guy-with-wings I was pretty much gone for. So I caught up on the show and watched it until a few episodes into S9 (don’t judge me, I was surface watching and couldn’t get with the program at the time because why wasn’t Dean gay already??) and then I quit watching for a few years because I couldn’t stand the grey area and the uncertainty. I also wasn’t invested enough to stand it, tbh, and felt, naw, I’ll get back to this if it ever seems like they’re actually gonna do anything with this thing they’re hinting so strongly at. Picked it back up while S12 was airing and here we now are.

2. Who is your favorite in TFW?

But the other two might get jealous!

(okay, it’s Cas)

3. Who is your least favorite in TFW?

They’re the holy trinity and none of their character progression works without all of them taking up their allotted space in the narrative and how can you not love them all what is wrong with this question why am I hyperventilating why aren’t they beloved equally gaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh

(but Cas is my favourite)

4. Tag your top 5 Supernatural blogs!

I sincerely can’t, but I can tag a few people whom I very much appreciate and whose answers to this questionnaire I would be intrigued to see: @godshipsit @charlie-minion @mad-as-a-box-of-frogs @waywardliliana @natmoose @purgatory-jar @myed89 @inacatastrophicmind @rustling-pages @angelneedshunter @nerdylittleshit @obsessionisaperfume @assbuttboyfriends @misskittyspuffy @starsinursa @postmodernmulticoloredcloak @casismybestfriend @mittensmorgul @elizabethrobertajones - you’re all like bursts of colour and glitter glue and I’m happy you’re around! :) (btw I always find it awkward to tag specific peeps because there are so many of you lovelies that I would honestly tag so just know that this most likely includes you) (yeah that’s right) (YOU) <3

5. Who is your favorite character (not including TFW)?

Jack

6. Who is your favorite woman in Supernatural?

Rowena

7. John or Mary?

Mary

8. What were your first opinions of Sam, Dean, Cas, and Jack?

Sam: my first impression of him was very coloured by my impression of Jared as Dean on Gilmore Girls, so to hear someone call Jared Sam and then this Sam call someone else Dean was a bit jarring while watching the pilot. My earliest opinion of Sam was that he was kind, good with people, skilled, independent and, yes, haunted by past choices.

Dean: Immediate impression was oh, he’s one of those guys, and then almost straight away that first impression was blown to bits and everyone knows that he’s very, very easy to fall in love with quickly, so my love for him grew strong within a few episodes, for sure. First opinion formed holds until this day: someone who’s lost and who’s searching for a way home. In every sense of that sentence.

Cas: Holy shitballs, who’s this now?? was pretty much my first reaction to Cas’ entrance. It blew me away. It was an absolute game changer. It made me sit up. It made my brain go... are they... are they going to make Dean Winchester... is Dean Winchester into men?? And because on my first watch I’d not seen the little hints of this that now are so damn glaringly obvious, the chemistry between Dean and Cas literally made a lot of shit click into place for me regarding what I was potentially actually watching, and raised my emotional investment sky high considering the possible social commentary baked into the overall message of family and identity, and yeah, that still holds true to this day.

Jack: I was ready to fight tooth and nail for him after 12x19. That episode is still one of the best 42 or so minutes of television I’ve ever seen. The plant of Jack as a needed push for Cas’ progression hit me in the heart, and once it clicked that Jack represented the holy trinity of Heaven, Hell, Humanity, and how he might narratively prove a knitting point for TFW, something for them all to rally around, well, I was pretty much done for.

9. What’s your favorite season?

This is a really hard question because watching a season from start to finish means taking all of it in, and all of them - when start-to-finished - I feel are rather outstanding, but twist my arm and I’ll say: S1 or S4 or S5 or S8 or S9 or S11 or S13 (I can’t narrow it down to just one season alright?) and S14 and looking at what we have so far with this unfinished season I’d name S15, definitively.

10. What’s your least favorite season?

Oh, man. Make a girl sweat. So, here’s the thing, I genuinely see each season as adding something valuable to the whole, you know? I suppose S6 drags a bit, but I really like the tone and the noir sensibility of it, so I wouldn’t really call it my least favourite, but if I were to choose one season to binge over a weekend, S6 wouldn’t necessarily be first pick.

11. Opinions on Destiel?

Ah, yes, the obligatory essay question. Please see attachment. *points to blog*

12. Do you believe Supernatural queerbaits?

Look, to my mind, the reason Dean and Cas aren’t together yet is character related. They need to get their fucking ducks in a row. (and then those ducks will hopefully be fucking all over the place) (okay that’s graphic bird sex but you know what I mean) (not literally Dean and Cas dressed up as ducks and fucking) (but like... good stuff for the eyes will be happening that isn’t necessarily fucking feather related) (wait) (oh ffs brain!!) (you HAD to go there didn’t you??) (moving on) (or rather answering the question) --> I don’t believe they queerbait, no.

13. Seasons 1-7 or 8-14?

8-15x03

14. Favorite villain (plot wise)?

*chills are multiplying*

I love Chuck as the Big Bad, sincerely, but oh mannnn Michael.

15. Do you think they should end the Lucifer plot line?

Yeah, this questionnaire has been in drafts for a while now so um... I mean, the Lucifer plot line as it pertains to SAM should reach a satisfactory conclusion, but as it pertains to Lucifer’s play for Jack and breaking God’s toys etc. yeah, no, done.

16. Who do you think has gone through more trauma (Sam, Dean, or Cas)?

That’s too relative to their highly linked, and yet wholly individual relationship with their past and lingering sense of trauma. I think @deletingpoints reply was something along the lines of: Can you measure trauma? And I agree. They’ve all been deeply traumatised at different stages of their life and they’ve all dealt with their individual trauma in different ways.

17. What’s your favorite Supernatural episode?

I’m sorry, what? I thought you just asked me to pick one favourite episode out of 3678916236363487236783 times infinity. This is mathematically impossible and since I’m sadly not fluent in math and have absolutely no access to any type of calculator or abacus or, I don’t know, a neighbour who happens to make amazing fucking latte and dresses in knits and is attractive in a non-conventional way and also happens to be a math genius, I must reject the question outright and plead the 105th. (i.e. I cannot possibly)

18. Do you like case episodes?

Where’s that gif of Dean going Dude Yes?

^^^

19. Who do you relate most to in TFW?

Darling Cas. Socially awkward and lost but growing into his own skin Castiel. My God, I love him so dearly. There are not words for how much I relate to him, or for what he’s done for my personal self-reflection, or how much I’m now re-relating to his need to push himself out of his comfort zone and dare. I owe him. *hugs into oblivion*

20. Why do you like Supernatural?

Ohhhhh, goody, one of those multi-choice questions. Is it:

a) because of the absolutely stunning character journeys

b) because of the absolutely smashing world and all its mythology

c) because of the underlying social commentary and the intricate use of subtext to effectively, though subtly, bring ideas linked to the conscious/unconscious sides to us into not only the use of already mentioned mythology, influencing the world building, but also wholly guiding, impacting and giving momentum to the already mentioned stunning character journeys

d) all of the above

e) all of the above, and a little bit more that would take an actual book to relay

E. It’s E. All the way the answer is E.

21. If you could bring back one character and kill off another who would they be?

I’d bring back Eileen and holy moly Shoshanna is coming our way. And I don’t have a character to kill off tbh. Let them live, I say. :)

I genuinely tag EVERYONE. Go on, everyone, you know you wanna! :) xx

#tag me if you decide to #tag along #:D

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shirtlesssammy · 5 years

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5x22: Swan Song

In light of recent news, we thought we’d finally tackle what might have been the end (until someone went and made a demon deal, giving us 10 more years of our beloved show!) It’s weird watching this and seeing what a bummer this all would have been if it had ended like this. Sure, it was epic, but I guess I’m a sucker for a happy ending when it’s about characters I’ve come to love more than my own family. I’m also going to point to this Twitter thread about good and bad show endings. Swan Song wouldn’t have been bad had we only had TFW for five years, but we’ve watched them grow over 15 years now, and I want to see them get some peace. (Thanks to all the meta writers for throwing out the much needed hope!)

The Road So Far:

Carry on my wayward son...

Now:

We open with Chuck Shurley narrating the origin story of the most important object in pretty much the entire universe. And I’m literally two minutes into rewatching this episode and already crying. He’s tells us about it’s original owner, Sal Moriarty. (Oh, Eric Kripke, of course it was.)

And how, after he died, it ended up in the hands of John Winchester, after some persuasion by his time traveling son.

Fade to Sam and Dean in Bobby’s salvage yard, drinking beer from the little green cooler. Dean tells Sam that he’s “in” on having Sam say yes to the devil.

Dean acknowledges that Sam can make his own choices. “Watching out for you? That’s kinda been my job, you know? More than that, it’s kinda who I am.” Seeing this image Dean has of himself shift to NOT be this is really great. Dean asks if this is really what Sam wants. Sam is more resigned than enthusiastic to the plan, obv.

Cut to Team Free Will collecting demon blood like they’re stocking up for the apocalypse (err..). Dean confers with Bobby about Lucifer’s location and they determine it is Detroit.

Once on the road, Dean can’t help but notice what a cute, slumbering angel he has in the backseat. Sam logically points out that angels don’t sleep. They talk about their plan, the odds of it working, and the reality that Sam won’t be coming back from the cage. Sam makes Dean promise that he won’t try and get him back. Dean balks at the idea. Sam makes him promise that he’ll find Lisa and live “some normal, apple pie life.”

Once in Detroit, the group finds many demons out and about. Sam and Bobby have a moment. Then Sam asks Cas to “take care of these guys” for him. Cas tells Sam that it isn’t possible. Sam asks him to humor him. Cas catches on just a little too late that he’s supposed to lie. Oh Cas, you beautiful, literal goob.

Sam then gets to the business of downing four gallons of demon blood. With that done, Sam and Dean turn themselves in to the demons, who bring them to Lucifer.

Chuck continues his monologue on the Impala. He mentions the unimportant features, and then mentions the important features: Sam’s green army man, Dean’s legos, Sam and Dean’s initials. The devil doesn’t know or care about their car.

The devil wants to know what Sam and Dean are up to.

Sam says he’s ready to say “yes.” The devil reveals that he knows they have the rings that will reopen the Cage. Fuuuuuck. Sam tries bluffing, but the jig is up. Dean’s look of anguish is devastating. Lucifer likes his odds on the battle that will happen in Sam’s head. He agrees. Before Dean can do anything more than say “No”, Sam says “Yes.”

A bright light flashes and Dean finds Sam knocked out on the floor. He throws the rings on the wall and gets to opening the door to Hell. Sammy awakens and Dean helps him towards the portal. Only, PSYCH! It’s actually Lucifer. Sam didn’t stand a chance against him. He closes the portal and takes the rings.

Once away from Dean, Lucifer has a moment with Sam, where Sam makes it very clear that he’s not done fighting.

Lucifer appeals to Sam’s worst feelings about himself, but says he wants Sam to be happy. Sam doesn’t want anything from Lucifer. Lucifer then points out the group of demons behind him. They’re all people Sam knew in his life --they were all watching Sam for Azazel.

Dean, Bobby, and Cas are watching the fallout to Sam saying yes.

Shallow Sidenote:

(Those curls!)

Cas suggests they “imbibe copious quantities of alcohol and just wait for the inevitable blast wave.” GRIM, DUDE --but he ain’t wrong. Cas doesn’t think there’s any way they can stop Lucifer and Michael meeting. Dean is not giving up (and he’s desperate guys -his insult at Cas was way harsh). Bobby’s even resigned to the reality of the situation.

We cut back to the room full of demons, but they’re all dead this time. Lucifer smugly looks at Sam in the mirror. “We having fun yet?” Ugh, Lucifer, you’re the worst.

Chuck’s narration cuts in like a road narrative, all misty colored and gentle. “They could go anywhere and do anything. They drove one thousand miles for an Ozzy show, two days for a Jayhawks game. And when it was clear, they'd park her in the middle of nowhere, sit on the hood, and watch the stars for hours without saying a word.” This beautiful interlude dissipates with a phone call and Chuck picks up, expecting Mistress Magda. (Eyebrow waggle.) LOL, nope! It’s Dean.

“You got a real virgin / hooker thing going on, don’t you?” Dean observes. Excuse me while I laugh forever over this line, with the confirmed Chuck-is-God context. Dean wants to know where the fight will happen. It’ll be at Stull Cemetery at high noon, just outside of Lawrence. Chuck doesn’t have any more useful information than that…but it’s a place to start.

Bobby and Cas try to prevent Dean from heading to Lawrence to intervene in the upcoming archangel showdown but their arguments are weak sauce compared to Dean’s need to save Sam. He heads off alone to Stull.

The cemetery is wispy with mist and bedraggled with age. Michael (wearing Adam) flaps in to greet Lucifer. (Side note: Saying that Michael is “wearing Adam” sounds like Adam is a fashion designer. In this epic showdown, Michael has been dressed by the FABULOUS Adam!)

Both brothers seem regretful, but ultimately resolved. Lucifer questions why they’re fighting if neither of them wants to do it. Michael trots out the old “duty” argument. Lucifer offers an alternative: “We’re going to kill each other. And for what? One of Dad's tests. And we don't even know the answer. We're brothers. Let's just walk off the chessboard.” Hey, guys. It’s a really good point. It’s also an intentional mirror of Dean, Sam, and John that I refuse to stop getting emotional about.

Michael’s tempted for a moment. Damn serpent!! “I’m a good son,” Michael decides. “You haven't changed a bit, little brother. Always blaming everybody but yourself.” This is also an excellent fucking point, man. The rumble’s still on.

Speaking of rumbling, Dean approaches in Baby with Def Leppard cranked up loud. FUCK YEAH. “Sorry, am I interrupting something?” To quote Tess McGreer’s Twitter feed: MY SON!

Michael’s not into the whole threesome battle, and heads threateningly towards Dean when the camera cuts suddenly to Castiel and Bobby who have just flapped in. “Hey, assbutt!” Castiel shouts before lobbing a holy oil molotov cocktail at Michael. Bless.

Michael poofs away. “You got your five minutes,” Cas says to Dean just before Lucifer explodes him. NOOOOOOO

Lucifer’s pretty crabby by this point, so when Dean tries to verbally reach Sam again, he hurls Dean into Baby. Bobby shoots futilely at Lucifer before Lucifer snaps his neck. NOOOOOOO

“Sammy, are you in there?” Dean asks desperately. PROTECT.

“He’s gonna feel the snap of your bones,” Lucifer promises Dean. He’s gonna kill Dean slow. I’d chortle over the classic villain “kill you slow” trope except that Lucifer is beating Dean bloody and it’s really, really not funny.

“It’s okay. I’m here,” a very battered Dean tells Sam, leaving me to stare into space thinking about how he must have said this on quiet nights, comforting young Sam over nightmares or monster-under-the-bed scares.

Lucifer draws his fist back to deliver a killing blow as Dean slumps in his hold. His eye catches on a little army man stuck in the ashtray and we get a montage of Dean and Sam moments set to the soundtrack of howling wind. Sam’s fist uncurls.

And that’s it. Sam takes control. “I’ve got him,” Sam tells Dean. He hauls the rings out of his pocket and tosses them to the ground, chanting the incantation to open the cage. Dean sprawls on the ground, leaning against the car, bloodied and broken. Sam panics at the threshold to the cage when Michael!Adam appears.

Sam takes one more look at Dean before he opens his arms wide, ready to plunge into the cage. As Michael tries to haul him back, Sam pulls him in as well.

With a blast, the cage closes and Dean is left alone in the quiet, wind-swept cemetery.

He looks up a while later to find Castiel standing behind him, whole and unblemished. “You’re alive?” Dean asks.

“I’m better than that,” Cas says and…okay. He heals Dean with a touch, then brings Bobby back to life. Good job, Cas bby!

“Endings are hard,” Chuck says, and the scene switches to his office once again. “Endings are impossible. You try to tie up every loose end, but you never can. The fans are always gonna bitch. There's always gonna be holes. And since it's the ending, it's all supposed to add up to something. I'm telling you, they're a raging pain in the ass.”

We switch back to Dean and Cas in the Impala. Cas is headed back to Heaven to try to bring order upstairs. He’s ready to continue his heavenly mission, but Dean’s pissed off. “Where’s my grand prize? All I got is my brother in a hole.”

“You got what you asked for, Dean. No paradise. No hell. Just more of the same. I mean it, Dean. What would you rather have? Peace or freedom?”

Cas flaps out. “You really suck at goodbyes, you know that?” Always, Dean. Always.

Dean says a temporary farewell to Bobby, then shows up at Lisa’s house, CLEARLY TRAUMATIZED. What a non-booty booty call. Lisa reads the room and pulls him in for a comforting hug. (Stay tuned for my 8,000 word essay on why Lisa is the best.)

“Up against good, evil, angels, devils, destiny, and God himself, they made their own choice. They chose family. And, well... isn't that kinda the whole point? No doubt endings are hard. But then again nothing ever really ends, does it?” Chuck vanishes, which is apparently his equivalent of dropping the mic.

Then, the show proceeds to not end, in the best way. Dean is still lost at Lisa’s, putting on a “normal” front. And outside, Sam appears under a flickering street light. To be continued…for ten more seasons. <3

Quoting is Hard:

This 1967 Chevrolet Impala would turn out to be the most important car – no, the most important object – in pretty much the whole universe.

As far as foreboding goes, it's a little light in the loafers.

Ain’t he a little angel?

I told you. This would always happen in Detroit.

MFEO. Literally.

I suggest we imbibe copious quantities of alcohol and just wait for the inevitable blast wave.

Cas, are you God?

Every fiber he's got, wants to die, or find a way to bring Sam back. But he isn't gonna do either. Because he made a promise.

Want to read more? Check out our Recap Archive!

#spn recap #spn 5x22 #swan song #spn rewatch #dean winchester #sam winchester #castiel #cas #bobby singer #lucifer #michael #chuck shurley

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elizabethrobertajones · 5 years

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14x07 watching notes

In Which It Is Now Completely Apparent Which Of Buck And Leming Are Writing A Scene At Any Given Time

A Tale Of Lizbob Being Tormented By Toddlers

Hello it is 3:32am and I am awake from a dream of what the episode might have been (plus side: overt Destiel motel room sharing, downside: Jack accidentally killed Dean) because my tantruming toddler neighbour who just moved into the haunted house next door was screaming, and threw something at our adjoining wall. At 3am. So I'm not exactly well-rested and I'm kinda pissed, which isn't the best combo for a Buckleming episode, but when you wake up with a scream and a thump, you aren't going back to sleep for a lil while :P

Kudos to the rest of the writing team, we're 7 episodes in and I've thoroughly forgotten Nick exists. I've just been assuming he was caught, featured on a true crime program, and is already gone and locked up for the new murder and likely solving of a cold case.

Ahahahaaaa the opening of the recap is "when it comes to killing you, I'll be the one to do it" so that's ominous. As you might tell, my psyche is utterly wrapped around this whole Shakespearean tragedy of Jack vs Dean, and perhaps they're not gonna murder each other today but the constant reminders they're living in a murder or get murdered delicate thematic plot balance is exactly the sort of thing that we need to have hanging over their dynamic, as well of course as being the start point of their relationship to show how far they've come and how much they've changed and now love each other and how just last episode Dean got in his "fine i have a son now" episode a season or two later than everyone else and just in time for it to be "so now you bonded with him of course he's caught Doom because you can't have nice things for literally a single episode and this is your fault for bonding with him, Dean"

This recap is designed to wound me, a Jack fan and lover of how TFW loves their son

Ew, it's Nick. The first time in my life I've been tempted to skip at least a lil of the recap.

Imagine how tight it would have been to just do a 10 second "here's Jack" recap and cut to the action

and the action includes an episode without Nick stealing time from the boy

You know i spend exactly 0 time speculating on how Eugenie might write her personal fave bits of the episodes but if you had to throw together "nick is now a serial killer ritually murdering priests on a satanic bender" then that would have been a pretty close thing to what I could have come up with as distilled Buckleming essence. (gross)

There's a vague continued overlap of the human!Cas arc with the parallel to the open of 9x03 and the general aesthetic of season 11's Lucifer's satanic rampage bender thrown together but you know what that's more meta than this arc deserves and my boy is sick

OH NO CAS IS THE ONE WATCHING OVER HIM ABORT ABORT

His grace looks pathetic. Maybe he's trying not to wake Jack up. Maybe he doesn't have a whole lot left.

That's not helping, Cas

ANXIOUS PARENTS OUTSIDE HIS ROOM

I bet Cas sent them away because they were hovering

Dean this is not what happens to kids, stop trying to kid yourself that this is like having a regular demonic toddler

Man am I glad I do not have kids right now both because I don't have to worry about them and also because they scream and throw stuff at the walls at 3am

Dean angry at Cas cuz he's worried about Jack oh no oh no oh no look at these stressed parents. Cas is forced into the doctor role because he magic but he is just as stressed as they are and tensions are high, and then the boy starts convulsing

Oh my god they snapped, they are actually bringing Jack to an emergency room. This is horrifying and kind of a trip to imagine what they're going to tell any authority figures about who this guy is and what their relationship is to him.

Do they remember that he has barcode fingerprints and probably is gonna be Medically Weird just as default?

(Alex is 29 like me and Misha is early 40s and Jimmy is canonically a year older than Misha for some reason, so at a push Cas could be his dad and have made some very early mistakes but the boy is biologically only like 10 years younger than them on average... JACK looks another half that at times but this is a hospital so idk if "smiles like a toddler" "early teenage adorableness" is a good measure of age)

(I'm stress-typing)

"His full name, please"

All 3 dads look at each other baffled.

Sam goes with Jack Kline, which, a season and a bit later, is the first canonical use of it as Jack's surname

They're cautious about using Winchester, understandably, but it's a nice reminder that Kelly is family too and as the dead parent, naming Jack in tribute to her should have been something they were doing all along (like, season 13 all along), especially as he even visited the Klines earlier this season. Sam being the one who thinks to do this is nice because he's the most dad-aligned to Jack in a traditional sense when it's come to raising him (Cas got the pre-birth role as the traditional father role) and Cas obviously had the strongest connection to Kelly before that but this isn't a moment about her so much as these 3 stressed dads.

LOL Date of birth. Sam wins another point for knowing it, while Dean makes back and forth guesses on '99/2000, making Jack 19 or 20, which would at least mean any one of them could have fathered him and chopping 10 years off Alex's age to compromise between look and feel.

Given Jack's symptoms the nurse should have been a lil more concerned asking about trips to West Africa or other likely Ebola places lately. (This may be poor timing on the show's part but isn't there a fresh outbreak right now?)

(Oof I googled it and there's "Congo Ebola outbreak 2nd worst in history" articles dated 6 hours ago... Maybe a bad year to write haemorraghic diseases for fun and also how comes no one is talking about this in the news and it's all blah blah brexit... Have we just stopped fearing it now a few outbreaks have shown it mostly stays contained in African countries so now they can just suffer it on their own? I'm making a 4am donation to relief efforts)

*returns from the doctors without borders website* anyway back to the fictional sick white boy

And his very stressed dads

I have no idea how much of this is medically accurate but I feel like this is particularly dramatised to match hospital visits people have experienced which did not involve bringing in a stumbling, feverish, person who is having seizures and coughing blood

it's still objectively sad to see TFW lined up all stressed out and Cas and Dean holding hands while they stare through the giant window

The doctors aren't wearing masks even though he has been COUGHING BLOOD

sheesh this entire hospital is in quarantine now

Nick saying he was "getting hammered" the night of the murder isn't super subtle

Cas aggressively still trying to watch over Jack even though they won't let him in the room. Dean paces and talks about ghouls in the middle of the hospital to let off stress.

Cas goes to watch over him in person while Sam and Dean have a personal chat. This is awful D:

I appreciate the sentiment of busting Jack out before they pay the hospital bills because they're running out of medical options and need to turn to magic ones, a la every dramatic event ever in their lives except that one time Dean broke his leg and Sam was too out of it with the Hallucifers to sell his soul to make it better, but if Jack's in system shutdown wouldn't at least keeping him with state of the art equipment mean things like transfusion and machines that keep him propped up?

Mind you his bloodtype is probably, like, X evil negative or something Bucklemingy

It's in his DNA... He might be cute but he's still born of their episodes and wacky non con ideas... It was gonna catch up to him eventually D: You can't outrun it forever!!

I accidentally hit a button and 8x02 started playing on VLC

"DEEEAN" Cas shoves him through the portal out of purgatory, credits roll, this was officially the weirdest episode ever.

(No I didn't watch the whole thing, I was literally paused on the last shot from where I was about to gif it last night when I fell asleep)

Sam already called Rowena... Smart cookie

obligatory yell at Cas shedding the coat to put on Jack so they don't walk him out in a hospital gown

Oh my god Jack's so sick he's white as a sheet and being carried out by 2 of his dads and he still has a lil well of snark to be like "fine we're leaving" to the doctor.

"There's just no talking to him when he gets like this"

We're at the promo scene and I'm still not 100% sure after sleeping on it that Rowena definitely did not have the Book of the Damned, and that she hadn't been able to make off with it at the end of season 11, never for it to be seen again, because she was very much in the process of stealing the Black Grimoire in 13x22, but this does, I guess, make sense in regards to which book would serve Jack better, and Mittens tried her best to convince me that Rowena plausibly did not have it because the Winchesters did... I'm still suspicious because I really did just assume that she took it and the implication was we didn't see it because SHE had hidden it, and from a line in a Buckleming episode as well. And either way around her showing up with it makes sense that she had it but I'd have occam's razor'd it that she stole the obvious books at the obvious times and not that 13x22 became a BotD heist on top of everything else :P

Jack is up and about!!

He's using a more gravelly voice and it's actually a really hot voice and for literally the first time the Alex/Jack divide (gulf) in my head that one is my age and hot and the other is a 12 year old is a bit shaken. I mean Jack's canonically now supposed to be around 19-20? Which explains why he has a "wooo spring break" attitude when we see in the promo he snaps and wants to go to Vegas.

They grow up so fast.

Anyway considering he was in total organ shutdown a lil while ago it seems a night's rest has done him well if he's wandering around the bunker

Can't tell if we swapped writers or what... well, it seems like it's possible given Jack's fluctuating sickness, which of course could just be a plot thing but also a mark of the inconsistencies in Buckleming episodes. It's still odd to me that in the filming process it didn't occur to them that Jack might not at least sway on the spot at little, but he's really standing there like a little trooper, upright and talking confidently.

And betraying to Rowena that his dads like her and say nice things about her behind her back, which is catastrophic for them. How dare. You're damaging the foundations of their relationship.

*cough cough*

"Bollocks"

Yep, her heart has softened, Jack won her over in record time, and she's just thinking about that time she adopted a wee Polish lad and loved him as her own because Jack is genetically engineered to be a blank slate son version of a Mary Sue. You take one look at him and he is Your Son in whatever way will most harm you.

Good grief I wish Crowley was still around to see what HILARIOUS overlap with Gavin we'd have wrung out of Jack's main superpower.

Cas offering his grace to stabilise Jack on the spot. Halp. It's more important to him that his son lives by miles, that this isn't even an internal debate for him. In a way, obvious that Cas would be like this as a parent, in another, Cas just offered to give up his grace live on TV

Rowena shoots down the obvious solution (oh and thank god that for once the show actually even references obvious solutions) and starts talking about how we need archangel grace and as soon as she says that I think "oh, Michael" and Dean starts to come over weird with a wooziness that makes me wonder if that was timed for the audience "oh there's one out there right now" and why would DEAN be personally affected right thiiiiiis second..............................

When they go on spring break together we're getting right to the murderin

I mean SOMETHING is up and Dean's right now having his own weird moment as Rowena talks about how Jack will now have a fluctuating set of symptoms for the sake of the plot so

It's possible this is just his internal POV emotional reaction to bad news because this is what happens to me when I hear it but I suspect Dean is a lil more healthy than me in the first place so doesn't verge on passing out whenever a catastrophe happens regularly. And also Sam and Cas aren't similarly struck with physical symptoms at the news their son is dying.

Ya know, Buckleming, or probably Eugenie specifically which makes it all the worse, writing this woman taking a call in a dark alleyway, then not being terrified to be approached by a weird man and on top of that stopping and turning to invite him to join her in the club... this is the kind of thing where they're writing someone going against all natural instinct that it's bad characterisation for someone we've literally never met before just to put her in danger.

I mean at least they didn't make Nick stab a random woman (and a black woman at that to add to their overall awful stats)

I like how Jack's just decided Vegas or Tahiti are places you just kinda go to die... I mean I don't know what he's learned about them but it all has to be absorbed through the media in his most innocent way. I feel like there's something very sweet about whatever he thinks you do in these places of reputed sin and blaze of glory live fast die young lifestyles, but also utterly tragic. Consumptive tragic hero but with a twist of the reckless and dangerous later tropes of... It's 5am and I can't think but like. Vegas. Drugs and gambling high life style tropey films and books from the American tradition.

And of course it's Dean (who utterly fits into this trope and even has yearly Vegas trips with Sam since discovering his psychic powers back in season 1 and also lives a blaze of glory mindset) who brings him the deadly glass of milk (film trope about innocence but also like, people dying) and a sandwich loaded with salami. Dean went all out to make that for Jack - a couple of episodes after sending a woman off to "make him a sandwich" and regretting it as he spoke, we see the yank the cloth away reveal of Dean's nurturing side where he is the caregiver who shows affection through food and will go to the trouble of making his boy a delicious sandwich.

"Nice." See? He's Dean's son and Dean approves his choice of places to die. "You sure this is the best time?"

"Pretty sure it is," Jack says, backpack on, already almost out the door. He's found a brown corduroy jacket which is both unlike his beige jackets and suits from the rest of his life aside from the blue apocalypse world one, and also very very much like Sam's iconic season 1-2 brown corduroy jacket that he mostly stopped wearing although I think was the one Dean wore in 4x01 as one of its sporadic dwindling appearances, if I'm not wrong.

I probably am but either way, it's a change to darker colours, something Sam-associated to fit the gap of this smol dangerous dying kid Dean has to deal with, and puts Jack in thick earthier tones, thicker clothes to ward against the cold of death, and dressed more like TFW than normal as he usually has quite a distinct child-like version of their clothes.

Jack's concept of life and mortality is fucked, possibly because he was a functioning being after a day or two of gathering his thoughts and starting to come to terms with asking deep philosophical questions about himself, so in a way discovering he only has a couple more weeks to live is hardly anything. He's a fucking mayfly.

Ugh it's now solidly 5am and I am clearly not going back to sleep so I give up, I'm finally getting coffee. The rest of the notes will be maybe a wee bit more coherent :P

Anyway kettle thought: due to Jack and Dean's murder or be murdered relationship (lordy how is this the only way you relate to fatherhood, my guy?) I kinda suspect that Dean's about to abscond with Jack without even telling dad 1 or dad 2, because he is dad 3 and that's totally cool and he's a responsible adult, but, you know, woozy and doomed while Jack is also consumptive and doomed. BAD COMBO.

I charge you with grounds of diminished responsibility due to mutual murder narrative doom

"I'm done being special. Before my life is over, I want to live it"

Okay remember in season 1 episode 14 where Dean was like "LOL WE SHOULD GO TO VEGAS BECAUSE YOU ARE PSYCHIC"? and I referenced that like 5 minutes ago so you should, obviously I've only ever been able to headcanon the reveal of Vegas Week in season 7 (Dabb episode, take a shot) dates back to that and is one of their between episode activities which makes sense that since they only started travelling as adults together in the canon of the show (and Sam 1 year older than drinking age) that it might as well have been when they started the tradition?

Well Jack here is reacting like Dean would have if HE were the one in Sam's shoes in 1x14, and being the fun lil brother who actually would be like fuck it let's go to Vegas and see how psychic I am in the casinos! In the context of season 1 Sam is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too angsty and tragic to do anything other than come across as a stick in the mud who thinks Dean is joking and they're gonna carry on being tragic and hunting monsters instead. Dean in season 2, episode 9, also wanted to fuck off and go have fun when Sam's scary destiny got too much for him to carry, and that was when he was locked in the murder or save him vow from John's last words, which is a similar burden to the narrative bind he's in with Jack.

Jack, all of his fathers' son, finally shows up as the god damn first person to take his doom sensibly and actually want to fuck off to Vegas, and that's demon!Dean levels of fuck it.

Incidentally I half-suspect that Crowley, who has billions of dollars and once bid the moon in an auction (hi I watched 99% of 8x02 yesterday and 1% of it just now) probably was steering demon!Dean waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay carefully around the thought of wait a minute I have an extremely rich and powerful sugar daddy and no responsibilities... VEGAAAAAAAS.

Like, any time Dean started to form the thought, bam, naked triplets show up in their room.

Anyway Jack's busy being tragic, talking about wanting to get a tan (Beach now linked to something to do before death) or see a hockey game (oh shit we forgot Adam) or get a parking ticket (oh so that's why Dean murders him)

"And when it's all over... die."

Dean looks over his shoulder, mind made up to abduct the boy and take him joyriding

"So that's your plan, huh?"

"I don't want to waste time arguing"

"Did I say I disagree"

jack, this is Fun Dad

I know, the concept is completely radical and you've never seen Dean be fun but trust me.

Even with your very, very limited options, Sam has literally had 3 episodes about how he's Scrooge, and Cas is... Cas. But Dean is legitimately fun dad when you get him on a good day. Trust me.

No one's speaking to Rowena??? How wild.

Poor thing is never going to get her mega coven

Dean (who has rocked up already wearing his jacket) spaces out as Sam starts blahing on about the culturally appropriative shaman Ketch has located.

Same, buddy

At least Dean isn't lying to them about stealing Jack. Somewhat. Not the whole Vegas plan.

Jack smiles at Sam and Cas in a kind of way that somehow conveys in its entirety "this may be the last time you see me but I'm cool with you NOT seeing me die of coughing my lungs up and fun dad has this covered and we've always had a weird death cult about our relationship anyway so I'm okay with it and you guys were the best dads but now fun dad is going to take me out back and shoot me where you can't see and I love you bye"

"Why don't you drive?"

Jack is like ?!?!?!?!? D:

EVEN ON HIS DEATHBED he hadn't figured this would ever happen

It's the make a wish foundation :')

This is, of course, the ultimate sign of Dean loving you and caring for you in Dean's own special way of not telling you he does but showing it with a gesture of absolute confidence and letting you in, and in the vast annuls of the show dates back to the second ever episode where Dean let Sam drive at the end for all of 1 shot (seriously, they've swapped back by the long shot at the end of 1x02 where you can't see them in the car but the prop drivers are definitely doing a generic Sam in the passenger seat Dean driving routine for stock footage :P)

Anyway Dean loves Jack enough that he's letting a kid who does not know how to drive learn to drive in the Impala, like he and Sam did.

I can see Alex sweating bullets about being seated next to Jensen in the beloved Impala and having to mess up turning it on... never mind the fact that both Jensen AND Dean will murder him if he harms the car, and being murdered on both levels at once is spiritually unsettling and he will probably end up an unquiet ghost.

And yet, the glee at being behind the wheel of this legendary gal

TRAGIC NYOOOOOM

"It's like I'm you! :D"

"No, it's not! :D (but with implied murder)"

"THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER"

Look if he survives this, you're creating a speed demon who will want his own classic car

And then you'll have to teach him how to maintain it

oh god

But yeah, non-toxic parenting in the John Winchester As He Could Have Been style.

At least as long as Dean is in the Make A Wish mode and not back to tragic murder mode

And that wooziness that he may or may not be associating with no sleep and too much stress suggests this isn't going to last as a Fun Day Trip For The Boy

"Cas are you sure you want to handle this alone?"

NO HE NEEDS A HUG HIS SON IS DYING

Sam, go hug him, you need a hug and your son is dying.

Also, of course, you mutually need each other in this instance and Sam is reaching out to Cas with presumably the intent that he wants to be in on it but is asking as if just concerned about Cas

Cas, being Cas, has somehow deduced that Dean is "taking this particularly hard" despite the fact all three of them are Concerned Dads and CAS WHAT THE FUCK are you doing being selflessly concerned about DEAN and sizing up his emotional state when all three of you are wrecked and your son is dying?

You literally have 3x the sitting at his bedside holding his hand moments of any of them and montaged the heck out of the concern at the start of the episode

I remember way back someone wankily made a chart of how often people talked to Dean about stuff and other people talked to each other about Dean, and Sam is now crying about Dean beating himself up over being mean to Jack at the start of season 13 and regretting it, so this entire conversation is Sam and Cas man paining at each other about how much man pain Dean is in.

I say with no wank in my heart, just sheer horrified amusement at this data point if they still are hate-watching the show and being horrified about how Sam never gets stuff for himself etc (I mean. He and Cas both have had extended chunks of seasons about them parenting Jack and this is Dean's time to come belatedly to what the two of them already had)

Cas finally says "son" a season and change after Jack was wandering around calling him "father" and Sam doesn't seem inclined to disagree that this is how it feels for all 3 of them.

Obviously he's crying about Jack and it was just the context above that made it look like he was crying about Dean and I always knew that, I'm not a monster, I'm just deflecting because owwwwwwwww this hurts

HUG EACH OTHER YOU DUMB FUCKS SO I FEEL BETTER

Cas walks off instead and Sam finally after 1000 years discovers how Dean feels when Cas does that when he was angling to come along and they miscommunicated and didn't say what they meant. Except Sam wanted to come out of mutual Dad Angst comfort while Dean normally wants to go with Cas places so he can hold his hand.

Jack's so proud of himself for being able to drive.

"Born with a wheel in your hand"

He literally stole the Impala from you when he was 7 months in the womb

Dean is like, we could get you laid? And Jack is like. Nah. I have a better idea.

No idea what right now but he still doesn't wanna bang anyone

Ugh a Nick scene. Tag yourself I'm the old tyre in the foreground

Is this the house from Family Remains aka the self-admitted worst episode of the show by Kripke and Carver's explicit design

I am going to puke Jack wanted to go on a fishing trip with his dad

There were spoilers about them doing this but I repressed it the fuck down and lied to myself that Jensen was randomly teaching Alex to fish on set because I didn't want to think about Dean doing this with Jack because oh my god someone has taken my heart and gouged it out with a rusty spoon.

Also: someone design Jack a t-shirt with a witty slogan about fishing rather than hook ups. Like, dude bro fishing culture but in a world where you're as likely to get dumb slogans about not wanting sex as you are for it making you a babe magnet

"I'd rather be fishin" is a thing people get on mugs for the workplace but we could start with this sentiment and play

ALSO AS I MENTIONED I WATCHED 8x02 IN THE LAST 24 HOURS AND DEAN NEAR RIVERS SUCKS. We also have 10x01 and Daniel the fishing angel (who was the pizza man from Monster Movie, see above: slogans about fishing, pizza man innuendo, we got a thing going here) who was happy on Earth just fishing and enjoying the planet and not wanting to go back to Heaven, in a very heavy metaphor for Cas to deal with, as the angel who once compared free will to teaching poetry to fish. Lots and lots to unpack here, when we turn this into a Dean and Jack father son bonding moment and throw in Dean's peaceful dream of fishing in 4x20 that Cas interrupted. Fishing is about peace and idyll and comes as a temporary respite in this show. Traditionally, also, of course it's a sport of patience, and a classic father son bonding activity as the long stillness allows for both manly silence and sharing beers in peace, but also talk if they want to open up a conversation.

For Jack, it's an overlap of both Cas and Dean parental stuff, Cas's issues with angelic nature, where he wants to be, WHO he wants to be (just OFFERING to give up his grace to save Jack) and then with Dean we have more classic human cultural tropes but none less painful for Jack's nature and relationships. Especially throwing in that this was his choice and Dean is indulging him completely here.

John may or may not have taught them to fish but I feel like it may have had a "so you are dying in the woods" aspect to it rather than for peace and bonding. BOBBY taught Sam and Dean some basic woodsmanship so he was more likely to be the father figure teaching them to fish if anyone did.

Okay so obviously I typed that just after clutching my heart at the reveal and hitting pause, as Jack immediately goes on to say that John DID teach Dean how to fish and that it was his happiest memory of him - and it comes as a surprise for the expectations (like, that the above paragraph now stands as what I would expect of canon if I was only taking from it and not as an actual writer of the show being allowed to insert new details in which challenge us about the characters, which is where I find the line between fan fic and original fiction really is when it comes to characterisation... Anything out of left-field and you have to tag it as an AU version or explain why instead of just writing it as taken for granted).

And it's unexpected in the sense that it is such a peaceful thing and above all I think the message is that Jack intuited from whatever Dean said about it that it WAS a happy peaceful memory of John which stood so much at odds with the rest of his life. Filed under as well the thing where Mary started talking about how nice John was to Sam and Sam recoiled in confusion until Mary clarfied it was her John, not theirs. Good memories of a gentle soft John are alarming, and yet perhaps this is a way to really confront and exorcise his ghost more than anything - the sort of funeral servive memorialising of the good with the bad and working through it to come to peace in a different sort of way that lets the wounds heal and the anger leave those scars.

"It was how you said it. I could tell." He's such a smart cookie and I think that often takes Dean by surprise in the sense that Jack has been very shrewdly watching him and learning from him and absorbing anything and everything he does, which unfortunately gives him the ability to cold read Dean like very few people do, seeing past the layers and bluffs and into Dean's core.

Jack just murdered Dean by saying if he doesn't make it he wouldn't miss Tahiti or the Taj Mahal or implied going to seedy bars and hooking up, he'd miss more time with Dean.

I mean that's not a literal way to kill someone but you should see Dean's face. He's been shot.

And again, it's a metaphor for what you want from life for DEAN to absorb, the prompt that his family is right here and he doesn't need to chase pleasure outside of them, that hook up bar nearby their home base where he never strikes out, that's irrelevant to the family he has built and it's been put in the subtext of what Dean goes after that's empty pleasure when he has this core family unit around him, by the way Jack has also rejected it and is explaining to Dean the real meaning of Christmas.

Of course, this all gets a bit weird unless you account for the fact he has an angel wearing a trenchcoat made of husband material waiting back at the Bunker because the chronic singleton life otherwise probably ought to account for an outlet for Dean like a hook up bar if his happy ending is a platonic family bond so, you know, end the show 10 minutes from now with everyone happy and alive and not dying, and all Dean's learned is they're 3 dads, one son, a mom and her AUBobby, but he still has unused romantic potential and for seasons and seasons they've been trying to close the door on him seeking out random hook ups in the subtext of what Dean WANTS vs what he thinks he can have. This frank conversation about what Jack wants from life before it's all over is once again ignoring fleeting human connection for the family bonds he values above everything.

"I've had a good life, Dean" the other reason they're having this sentimental conversation by a river is because Jack is a fucking mayfly and I hate this

@ Dabb please never make me see Cas driving this car ever again

Why are you irritating Cas like this. First boring holy fire oh it must be thursday followed by the indignity of making him sit on a pouffe? Listen, when Cas gets irritated he gets snarky and then people die because he snarked them to death. I saw it he did it to the Empty. And Lucifer in 13x12. And Kip.

I just feel sorry for Cas. Why can't he go on fishing trips with the boy. Oh no he has to sit on a squishy pouffe that won't let him be intimidating so that he can cure the boy even though Jack's already decided he's gonna die and will probably Ophelia himself into the river at the end of the fishing trip.

Sergei is basically like "Have you tried turning it off and on again"

Nephilim have a reboot button on the back of their neck, if you get a paperclip and poke it in there.

At least Sergei is so... whatever he is... I can't even tell who he is supposed to be offensive towards :P I guess with the name, I lean Russian, and then he has world esoterica and occult nonsense in his caravan...

The real question is how does he know anything about Nephilim and why hasn't Cas asked that already.

LOL he has a vial of Gabriel grace just lying around. Of course, because Gabriel was just offering it up to everyone.

Considering how he was exploited for it by Asmodeus there's a weird tinge of retconning his own abuse by saying he was going around giving it to everyone before Asmodeus ever bought him and started stealing it on the regular.

Still, it IS awfully tempting a fix to have Uncle Gabriel help Jack out from beyond.

/distantly: "I'm not dead!"

sometimes I can still hear his voice.

It's way more likely Shit Goes Down and this is lost but then Cas has learned what to do with archangel grace to fix Jack just so long as they can pin down Michael and grab his instead.

But I guess in that circumstance at least once again Gabriel gave them part of the answer from beyond the grave as he did in season 5.

("Still not dead!!")

shush Gabriel. The show wants us to think you're dead and my complete disbelief in that doesn't change anything for now.

Except that maybe Gabriel came back, is fine, but has been removing his grace and selling it in the here and now while claiming not to be Gabriel and that he just haaaappens to have it and because he has no grace he could just be any old guy who happens to have an endless renewable resource of archangel grace secretly on tap to sell to fund his life of laying low. Sergei even says HE got it as part of keeping Gabriel hidden.

I'm kind of assuming Sergei isn't Gabriel unless he offers Cas kielbasa

I mean unless later I get a bonus cookie for immediately assuming Sergei is Gabriel based on the holy fire he just happened to have prepared and how similar it looked to Gabriel being trapped in 5x08.

On the other hand this may be the first time this season but pointing at literally everyone and going, that's probably Gabriel, will get old and also dock me cookie points the more wrong guesses I throw out there. Still, this one has pretty strong evidence, from messing with Cas to making him say "Porn stars"

To, um, having Gabriel's grace

Okay so Sergei gives Cas all of this out of the goodness of his heart and a "you owe me" and I AM wondering if that's a Buckleming special because remember in 8x19 where they were like hi we need to go to Hell immediately, and Ajay was like sure, I will take you to Hell and this episode is even titled after me so clearly I am an important character who *stab stab reaper dying noises* wow look I guess we don't have a bargain after all despite me saying you owe me but then Crowley just maaaaagically made it so you never had to find out what a reaper would want in exchange for taking you to Hell off the books.

Also fuck you I never got to finish my pizza

While I've been typing some random ass justice for Ajay screed, Nick has revealed a flashback to 14x02 where it turns out his neighbour said it was a cop who he saw coming out of the house. I literally went back and checked the episode and that wasn't in it, so perhaps it's a new flashback for here, fleshing out that conversation and revealing more for us, and changing the narrative of what Nick's up to, but honestly who cares enough about all this... I was double zoned out for flashbacks I'd already seen for a side story i don't care about

Wow, Nick, demons killed ya family. Could have told you that.

Aw, Dean brought Jack home. No dying out in the wilderness for you, clearly Cas phoned up before Jack could work out his plan to fling himself into the river.

Also Nick has taken up too much of this episode so there's no room for complicated twists and turns, if Buckleming are banned from introducing too many of them.

It's incredible how subdividing them so Eugenie writes all the Nick stuff and Brad writes the rest has elevated the parts of the story we care about to pretty much passable, give or take whatever Sergei was and who he was offensive to aside from the whole concept of calling yourself a shaman because you travelled the world collecting occult stuff in a sort of Aleister Crowley way.

'cept you can't namedrop Aleister on this show because both Alastair and Crowley have stolen too much from him.

So you get a knock off Sergei instead.

Jack hasn't been having as many of the supposed fainting fits that had everyone dogpiling him as I thought - maybe that's next episode too. Could have had one at the start but that doesn't seem enough to be a repeated annoyance of Alex's life :P

Anyway I was just going to comment on his sweater but that thought hopped in there first wondering if the spell was about to knock him flat, as he's sitting on a chair instead of safely in bed.

All the more dramatic for flinging yourself around if the spell messes you up

(honestly if the spells don't work, and they took him out of the hospital, how much of a bizarre commentary is this on trusting modern medicine and vaccinating your nephilims?)

It's 7:20 and my neighbours are yelling again

At least being awake since 3 meant I got a bit more peace and quiet than normal. I feel gross but I may go to yoga just to not be stuck in this room with such awful screeching on both sides of me >.>

Oh I can tell Sergei is Gabriel, he put the grace in a gold container instead of the silver ones

I'm sorry for the expenses, Zerbe

I wonder if they use her products on the show and I'm gonna go on my dash and find her beaming about a specially commissioned shiny gold grace that she made for them :P

"Here, hold this bottle of your uncle's essence"

".... okay I understand how weird that sounded on hindsight"

I love the idea of Jack's grace now being fuelled by Nice Uncle Gabriel who felt kindly towards him, even if this can't be a permanent fix, it changes his internal make up just a bit so that he symbolically has his grace stolen by his shitty bio father but the power only came from him in the first place and there was all the hoo ha about if Lucifer as his father made him inherently evil. Now whatever happens to Jack, he's had a grace transplant from a suitable donor, very much like a parallel of say he needed a kidney transplant and his 2 viable donors were his shitty deadbeat dad who gave him the kidney condition in the first place and his nice dead uncle who happened to have been an organ donor and was the only other one with the same type (if Lucifer's was X evil negative, then I guess Gabriel's is like X tricksy negative which has enough receptors to be a compatible transfusion, while Cas has like, Z dumbass positive grace and no compatibility)

And Gabriel is a beloved character who proved his kind feeling towards Jack even if they had very little bonding overall, he clearly cared and there was an immediate sort of uncle-y kindness about him in relation to Jack (just the comment alone about identifying that Jack liked shiny things and magic tricks is very much how uncles view small children who they may watch and entertain but not in the end have parental responsibility for), which is hilarious to me because Gabriel deeply reminds me of all 3 of my uncles on my mum's side, who are all 3 different shades of trickster god in their own right, and he always has reminded me of them, and now the show has sort of made Uncle Gabriel his new legacy.

I mean. I love it to bits.

It's not a sacrifice FOR Jack like Cas would have given up his grace, but it's still a part of him passed on to Jack.

I am very very aware that like me running my mouth about John (ironically the name of one of my uncles) while hitting pause, I've stopped while Jack is looking up with glowing eyes and he's almost certainly about to spew a fountain of blood across the room and fall on the floor. But I like that the grace even interacted with him and lit up his eyes and unless he physically barfs out the grace to I'm sticking by that ramble.

Cas smiled!! That's the once per season and we already hit it at episode 7, woe betide us

This does look, however, like the scene where they were all looking on from the door so... blood spew in 5 4 3 2 1...

DOGPILE THE BOY

Er, I mean, help him

God I would not want Jared to dogpile me, the man weighs literally as much as an actual moose

Uhoh Sergei made Cas mad

I mean

he made him sit on a pouffe, this was always coming

What do you mean Eugenie can't let Lucifer go wow what a shock

*kicks a pebble*

Ah, here's the concerned dads scene. I'm just going to let that be a balm to my soul while Dean laments ever taking Jack out to have fun.

"You made him happy. You did more for him than any of us"

1 dude you tried, 2 you took him on hunting trips and had fun already this season so he got his Cas Time before he died like he wanted 3 just fucking abduct him wrapped in a duvet and go fishing in the dead of night if you have to, trust me, he'd love it and your family is such a mess he wouldn't even think it's weird.

I mean you've literally absconded illegally with him before, what's a trip up to that beach where he was born and some fishing gear really going to cost you with annoyance from Dean

"What can we do?" "Watch over him," Rowena says with Cas in the background, and continues to carve me out with a rusty spoon

"As he dies"

Nah he'll be fine shut up Rowena D:

*whimper*

Well that was a very good episode if you act like me and pretend that none of the Nick stuff happened at all.

#14x07 #season 14 spoilers #my stuff

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mittensmorgul · 4 years

Note

At the end of season 11, was Chuck actually going to die? Or was he just acting and lying to try and keep the whole "one brother gets killed" narrative going?

You mean like if they did succeed in somehow also killing Amara? Because I could take your question several different ways. I just wanna be clear here :’D

Because you could mean that the soul bomb plan went off, and Amara was killed. That would leave the universe unbalanced. But one could argue that it’s always been unbalanced since she was locked away. Chuck may have “died” as well, without her to anchor him to the universe. But Dean would’ve also died, and I don’t think there was any coming back from that sort of death. The show would’ve fundamentally changed and/or ended...

Or you could mean that Chuck and Amara faced one another and mutually annihilated one another to restore balance to the universe. One way or another, balance needed to be achieved. That was the baseline minimum the show needed to achieve after s11 set that up as the Main Theme. All the grey morality stuff, all the “genocide is bad” stuff... I would’ve side-eyed any ending that didn’t somehow balance the cosmic order.

But I do believe he spent his entire time in s11 literally trying to write his way out of the corner Amara had backed him into, and he was never more slippery and hard to pin down. If you go back and rewatch everything from 11.20 through the end of the season, you can just watch his story change, watch his excuses (and lies) mount into a bigger and bigger pile of rubbish.

For example, if he’d actually apologized to Lucifer, he would’ve had to admit that his entire story was just self-aggrandizing bs (which it is, but he can’t admit that... it’s the only story he knows). So he went to his go-to play-- Lie.

“Amara is blocking me, I can’t find her,” etc. Meanwhile we have watched her spend most of the season trying to find HIM... so who was blocking whom here? Evasion and hiding is Chuck’s MO.

But you also may be talking about “the story” from a doylist perspective here, and what “our writers” were going for. Rumor has it that they wanted to kill Chuck in 11.23, but that the network said no, you can’t kill God. But ~the rest of s11~ makes me firmly believe that they didn’t actually write to “Chuck dies” at all. I know some folks firmly believe that he SHOULD have “died” or otherwise been rendered null, but like... the entire structure of the SPN universe doesn’t allow for that, and never has. And now Billie has acknowledged that in text, too. Chuck has “written himself into the universe” in such a way that he’s woven throughout the entirety of creation, and can’t just “be killed.”

Because we still have to maintain the cosmic balance, and for better or worse, Chuck’s existence is integral to that.

Could he still be somehow rendered null? Neutralized? If not outright “killed?” A true unification with Amara wherein the two of them cancel each other out, possibly. Or the “Chuck Persona” could be annihilated while the Cosmic Entity of God remains. Or he could be replaced by something else to hold the fabric of creation together.

But I don’t believe that he can actually BE “killed” in the way we think of it. I don’t know what the show has in store for him, but I doubt that the network has changed their minds about the concept of “killing God” on the show, too, so it will likely involve something that doesn’t look like a traditional death.

Because in the end, it’s The Story itself that must be defeated, not just “Chuck.” As you pointed out, he was just pushing his usual agenda of “one brother murders the other.” He needs that validation for himself, because literally it’s the story of HIM, told over and over again. The narrative spiral is HIS STORY, and that’s what’s keeping TFW trapped. In order for them to win, in order for Free Will and Humanity to “win” at the end of the series, the story itself and the spiral of Chuck’s eternal need for that validation must be defeated, too. It’s not just the guy Chuck-as-villain that must go down somehow, but the entire narrative.

Lol as I sit here watching shows about the edge of the universe and the physics of cosmic rays... I call it Existential Crisis Monday. :’D

#spn s11 #chuck's process #it's spirals all the way down #spn 11.20 #spn 11.23 #spn s15 #spn speculation #i gotta stop watching all the universe shows they marathon every monday on science channel #it makes me a bit weird... :'D #Anonymous

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dotthings · 5 years

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This felt a bit like a classic Twilight Zone episode, mixed with TFW 2.0 feelings all around.

I jotted notes and stuff. Feelings and thoughts and milkshakes.

Running with the Twilight Zone structure and style here, Cas would be the character who figures out something’s just not right and things unravel around him and he’s slowly freaking out and has to get others to wake up to it and stop whatever’s happening. The eps this most reminds me of are things like “The Monsters are out on maple street” or “It’s a good life.”

Starting from the top -- so Jack doesn’t seem right. Nope. Sam’s not okay either, and as I figured already from the promo clip, yes it turns out he’s got a raging case of PTSD from the bunker crew he led all being slaughtered. While the characters weren’t designed to stand out to audience individually (except, perhaps, Maggie, and she wasn’t much developed), they meant something to Sam. Not in the sense that he got deeply close to them. As I pointed out earlier in the season, the bunker crew is a bit like the cantina crowd in Star Wars. They’re there for world-building. They'd all have good stories of their own given a chance to tell the tale but that’s not what they are in the main story for. And Sam cares but isn’t really part of them. He’s a leader who hasn’t formed deep personal bonds.

But they were important to Sam, and Sam’s carrying a lot of guilt and trauma over their loss, which is why he blows past Dean’s protests that he’s tired and needs rest, they all need rests. Okay so everything I thought might be going on with Sam before this ep gets vocalized by the end of it, more on that in a moment.

That scene in the bunker kitchen is so...organic and domestic. I love that SPN is a monster-killing show. I’m a fan of genre shows and watching characters whose lives are strange and dangerous and how they cope with it and watch after each other, but the domestic grace notes are an important part of grounding it and making these characters seem real. This scene in the kitchen between Dean and Cas, with Sam blowing through it, was so good. So with Sam not in a frame of mind to understand Dean’s needs for rest or wait for him, and Dean needing to stay at the bunker to rest, and both Dean and Cas worried for Sam, and all of them worried for Jack, Cas basically steps into the role of family organizer, figuratively scooping them up under his wings because someone has to try to sort out this chaos and keep it together and try to make it better. So he volunteers to go on the hunt with PTSD fixated overly-driven Sam, assigns Dean to talk to possibly-soulless Jack and figure out what’s going on, tells Dean to get the sleep that he wants “’til the cows come home.”

I love that Dean says “they’re both full of crap” about Sam and Jack’s assertions of being fine. And then Cas, once he’s in the weird town with Sam, “yeah I know, everybody’s good,” Cas says grouchily. Cas is so DONE with everyone’s pretending-to-be-okay shit.

“Was it Scanners 1, 2, or 3?” I’m betting this wasn’t a Metatron pop culture upload. Oh guess what, Dean and Cas watch horror movies together. File this with the conversations and things we now Dean and Cas do together we don’t get to actually see. I wonder when their horror movie marathon was. Just after Mint Condition? Which expressly showed how great it is having a friend who’ll watch horror movies with you? Some other time?

The reveal that Cas reads the Saturday Evening Post after everyone else is asleep in the bunker is a small thing but it’s so damn good, it gives us another glimpse into what the heck Cas does while he’s not sleeping because he doesn’t need to sleep.

Sam and Cas weirded out together is adorable, as is their surprise milkshake date.

“I think the snake is sad.” Is Jack projecting onto the snake? Assigning his own feelings of hollowness and loss from his soul being eaten away onto the snake who just lost its original owner?

Dean trying to figure out how to talk to Jack is awkward af and endearing and Dean seems so very relieved when Jack picks the angel food cake over the devil’s food. Dean, I’m pretty sure things don’t really work that way and Jack’s choice of snack food isn’t the solution but I am appreciating the reasoning behind Dean’s relief. He knows angels are mostly dicks but hey, Cas is a thing in his life, and Jack picking angel food over devil’s food (Satan), Dean takes as an optimistic sign. Cas over Lucifer. Oh, Dean.

So. Much. Floral. And citris. Imagery. In this strange little town Sam and Cas are in. Sam holding that little rose teacup. Yellow tulips on the woman’s dress. Paintings with oranges and lemons. I think the set designer’s choices were are because citrus and flowers are generally bright, sunshine-y, "happy” things usually.

LOL Cas thinks Sam has beautiful hair. Well, he's not wrong.

Sam’s brainwashed altered persona is disturbing yet Jared is adorable so it’s weirdly adorable but disturbing and please make it stop this isn’t Sam make it stop.

“You will snap the hell out of it!” “I don’t wear a hat.”

Grumpy Cas incredibly put out and grumpy over one of his best friends in literally the history of the universe being brain-snatched by this stepford town is a delight.

As I said about structuring--things are unraveling around him and Cas is not a happy camper...so he deals with it. Much like he steps in and organizes Team Free Will 2.0 so everyone is looked after in different ways as needed, Cas takes charge of this case when Sam gets brainwashed. He is a competent hunter, abd he is a badass. What was that some have been saying about not seeing enough BAMF Cas? He can handle himself in a fight just fine. Albeit, his powers don’t seem to be as strong as in some previous season but I am more and more convinced this is purposeful because we know Heaven’s batteries are dying because the angels are and that’s bound to affect Cas’s power levels. So he has angel powers and he’s extra strong and self-healing and doesn’t need to eat or sleep but he’s also not the mega power we’ve sometimes seen. It makes sense.

Jack still doesn’t seem at all right and yet he seems to have a trace of a soul. He doesn’t want Sam and Dean and Cas to worry. Sam and Dean are his human role models (and no, this wasn’t Jack ommitting Cas--Cas isn’t human. We know Jack thinks the world of Cas). Which is sweet but at the same time uneasily reminds me of soulless Sam who observed Dean and then would say what he thought was expected to pass as normal. Jack latching onto Sam and Dean as models for how to act like he has a soul isn’t the same as really having one, and it’s not the same as early Cas, with all his confusing emotions broiling inside of him, adopting the Winchesters as an emotional compass and guides for how to human emotion. Jack’s going with Donatello (who is also soulless) WWTWD--What Would the Winchesters Do--literally just a plan to mimick them instead of Jack learning and feeling it himself.

“Maybe I don’t know what nothing feels like.”

Cas threatening to rip the info from the girl’s mind doesn’t seem like something he was actually going to carry out. That was a bluff, I’d say. Cas we’ve seen in the past is great at bluffing and does a good peacocking routine, a show of power. Not that he couldn’t rip the info from her. Maybe he would, at great need, to save Sam, and she was acting guilty. But I’m not sure.

“I won’t hurt you, Sam.” Of course you won’t, Cas. We been knew, sweetie.

So first Cas organizes and tucks Team Free Will 2.0 under his wings, so to speak, then he takes over the case when his parter Sam gets sucked into the happy vortex of brainwashing, and then Cas fights off like 4 people at once including Sam, who is very tall, without harming Sam, and then Cas talks Sam down from brainwashing and from killing him with an angel blade. Interesting parallels back to Dean and Cas’s fight in The Prisoner, but with differences. Because hey, ding!, these relationships are different. It’s not about the strength of the bonds, but they are different.

“I know what it’s like to lose your army. I know what it’s like to fail as a leader but you can’t lose yourself. You have to keep fighting. You can’t lose yourself. Because if you lose yourself you fail us. You fail all of those that we’ve lost. You fail Jack. You fail Dean.”

There’s so many things all at once in this scene and Misha is so good here. There’s a bit of a nod back to the “believe in us” concept from Prophet and Loss. I appreciate that SPN didn’t go for a simple, Sam regrets talking Dean out of it. Because much as I am all for Winchesters protecting the world, as I’ve pointed out already, I didn’t feel Sam was the least bit in a heedless frame of mind where he wasn’t thinking of the risks to others, and Dean was so extremely fatalistic, accepting the fate literally written down for him, it just didn’t feel right. I don’t think SPN is saying it’s right to be punished for hope, that Sam should suffer, gee that’s what you get for wanting a little more time just to find a better way, not let the world burn, not screw everything else, just a shot at finding some other way. But in the story they are telling, there is a cost for that hope and that’s heartbreaking. Also I don’t feel Dean’s plan was risk free either. It really was a lose/lose no win situation and that is the point. They have Dean free of Michael, they are free of Michael it seems, but now look, Jack is a mess. And so it goes.

As Cas did in Prophet and Loss, reaching out to Dean in a less overt way than Sam (but not unimportant), Cas is a voice of hope again. Urging Sam not to give up, and echoing what Cas said earlier this season about valuing yourself, the core self “without all the bells and whistles.” So there’s an important note for Sam here, and for Cas. S14 keeps having Cas vocalize on so many things it’s really important for Cas to say, about himself, but he does it via helping others. Cas has given advice to Jack, to Dean, and to Sam this season that indicates Cas listens to his own advice and has reached some insight about these things. Not only is Cas reassuring Sam, it shows that Cas understands despite his losses and failures, he’s worth not giving up on, and there are others who need him who are affected if he gives up. So Cas, having realized this, offers it to Sam in Sam’s moment of need and Sam drives the angel blade into the floor instead of into Cas (a familiar move), and shakes free of the brainwashing.

And Sam and Cas. Back in S9, Cas commiserated with Sam’s feelings of failure then too, and branded himself an even bigger screw up than Sam. SPN has shown for a while that Sam and Cas care about each other and have quite a few points in common, but it’s been a somewhat underdeveloped bond, and a little inconsistent. They’ve often bonded over their shared love of Dean, but we also have seen them caring for each other in their own right. I like their friendship. I appreciate that SPN shows that the relationships are different, and that Sam’s feelings for Cas aren’t the Sam as Dean’s, but I do think the Sam and Cas bond has been a bit neglected. So to land here, with a really big moment of connection for them over their particular shared traumas and specific senses of failures, is great to see. If we’re told they’re family, we should see it on the screen. Cas specifically was the person Sam needed right then. Just as Dean needs more than just Sam, Sam needs more than just Dean.

Moment to appreciate the absolute miracle Mishalecki in S14 is because anyone else remember when Misha and Jared could barely get any scenes filmed there was so much messing around and Jared loves to mess with Misha, and a director had to yell at them at one point to get serious scenes filmed between them. People used to say Mishalecki was the enemy of Sam & Cas scenes. Here we are, years later, they not only filmed this immensely dramatic key Sam & Cas scene together, but did it with Jared on top of Misha, pinning him to the floor. I don’t know how they got this filmed. But they did it. Think of the gag reel. And we got a wonderful Sam & Cas scene.

Cas takes a very proactive role in this ep which is also great to see, and it’s a really interesting note on his character development to see Cas in this role of the family member holding everyone else together, knowing the right words, watching after everybody, competently handling the case temporarily solo, saving Sam, watching after Dean and Jack.

However, notably it’s the young woman who actually saves the whole town by tapping into her own (genetically inherited) powers and taming her toxic, brainwashing father. Seizing back not only her own agency but for an entire town. There’s a Jack parallel on the tip of my brain here. The power is inherited from the parent, but what the offspring does with it is their choice.

“Yeah, I told him about the cardigan.” So Cas called Dean and told him about what happened...another Dean and Cas conversation we know took place we didn’t get to see first-hand. They talk way more than we are shown, more than we know. Unlikely they talk about the...stuff they actually need to but we keep being shown how much a part of each other’s lives they have become. They watch movies together, they talk all the time, they’ve had countless bunker kitchen talks. Cas is there. He’s been there for a while.

“I hate this place right now. Everywhere I look I see them.” That sound you heard was my heart shattering, and I’m not surprised Sam feels that way. He’s living in the place where he saw his whole team slaughtered. That’s...a lot to shoulder. But the bunker is also his home. What does a person do when their own home has been tainted by that kind of trauma (people suffer from home invasions, traumatic events, in their own home...how do people regain their sense of safety?) “this is my home. This is our home...I just need some time.” Again my heart shattering for Sam. Because he means that, yes that is home and I think Sam, as Dean did openly in SPN 300, is good with his life and who he is. But there’s no quick fix for that trauma. Sam’s not only dealing with guilt and grief and trauma, but his sense of home has been violated by what Michael did. We also know unpleasant things have happened in the Impala. Blood and trauma and fear. The Impala, like the bunker, has been home and shelter and safety, but like the bunker, has been the location of traumatic events in their lives (and who knows what kind of scary moments Sam and Dean had in that car when they were children). Yet their sense of home prevailed for the Impala and I think it will for Sam with the bunker too.

Okay. So. It seems like Jack’s soul really was fully gone already after all because he kills the snake to send its soul to Heaven to reunite with its original owner and that isn’t compassionate it’s murder and Jack thought that was a really good idea.

#Sam & Cas #Sam and Dean: a work in progress #Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #Castiel #Jack Kline #spn #supernatural #supernatural spoilers #meta #Dean & Cas

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