#ruby baptiste

[sammick]

annie as a vampire moodboard 💌

[bohemian-nights]

Longing 🕯️

Lovecraft Country(2020); The Little Mermaid(2023); Sanditon(2019-2023); Tom Jones(2023); Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story(2023)

[pansexual-chocolate]

@rosie-dear-rosie tagged me in this game. They are an amazing writer so please read their fics and they have such a great blog.

honorable mentions because I can only do 12 Donna final fantasy x/x2 Rose quartz (Steven universe)

The beyonder (Moon girl and devil dinosaur)

Aloysius Fogg (Undeadwood critical role). Bilquis (American gods) So many characters I am hooked on and love so much. But they aren't recent characters

tagging: @six2vii @xshingie @angel-hawthorne @sunshine-hime @jemgirl86 also whoever wants to play

[phantomstatistician]

Fandom: Lovecraft Country

Sample Size: 242 stories

Source: AO3

[moistvonlipwig]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Lovecraft Country (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Ruby Baptiste/Christina Braithwhite Characters: Ruby Baptiste, Christina Braithwhite Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Nebulously Canon Divergent, Canon-Typical Violence Summary:

William gets invited to a wedding. Christina asks Ruby to come along and cause some chaos.

For the @yearoftheotpevent’s June prompt “wedding/proposal.”

[edtype]

Wunmi Flexes

And in this particular show, she had an—um—breakout role.

RUBY BAPTISTE + singing

[androm3da868]

I hate DDG for exposing the sun nakshatra women…Why are they obsessing over this fucking NARCISSIST HES NOT EVEN TALL!!!! NO TALENT!!!! I hate Hasta men so much

[kittybuckets]

ma meilleure ennemie

[edtype]

Celebrating a Queen: Melanated Beauty

Taking a moment to admire the beautiful Wunmi Mosaku. Glamour queens of old fully appreciated the skill lighting and cinematography. Black actors also benefit when care is taken to highlight their beauty.

LOVECRAFT COUNTRY | Ruby Baptiste

Christina gave me a potion that can turn me into a white lady. Yeah. And I finally got that job at Marshall Field’s, and you know what I learned? I don’t wanna be white. I’m just sick of forgiving every space that I enter ‘cause it’s not for me. I wanna create my own space. I can do that with magic.

[hazelnutjoy]

Terrance is pan and polyam and like... he's pretty young too. He definitely wants to experience being with different people. And it's not even the opinions of the 60s holding him back, really, or at least if he was to move in the right circles it wouldn't be.

It's that he feels so indebted to his fiance because her experience with coconut Joy incapacitated her to the point she needs someone, really, to take care of her. And yeah, Ruby loves Julie and would happily care for her but Julie only has eyes for Terry, she sees actual butterflies when she looks at him.

So yeah, most of Terry's songs are sarcastic, biting takes on WW that the Wellies/Wellettes think are just happy little tunes. But a lot are about queer longing, too, and Ruby really vibes with them, neither of them knowing just how much they long to be in each others shoes.

[the-bi-library]

Happy March! Here are bisexual books out in March!

PS: I totally recommend (and kindly am asking authors or anyone else) to use the tags #bisexualbooks , #bibooks , #bisexualrep or any other variation of them when promoting (your) books with bi main character as it makes it easier for me to find books with like that since I follow those tags! 💖

Books listed:

When Worlds Collide by Erin Zak The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste Comet Cruise by Niska Morrow Never Leave, Never Lie by Thea Verdone Go Lightly by Brydie Lee-Kennedy The Phoenix Bride by Natasha Siegel Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorn Icarus by K. Ancrum Falls From Grace (Grace Notes #1) by Ruby Landers Ellipses by Vanessa Lawrence The Fealty of Monsters (The Fealty of Monsters, Volume 1) by Ladz Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste These Bodies Between Us by Sarah Van Name The Night Compass (Wilderlore, #4) by Amanda Foody Small Gods of Calamity by Sam Kyung Yoo The Dark Feather by Anna Stephens Like Happiness by Ursula Villarreal-Moura That Secret Something by Emily Wright Heirs of Bone and Sea (Dark Depths) by Kay Adams One Last Breath by Ginny Myers Sain The Weavers of Alamaxa (The Alamaxa Duology, #2) by Hadeer Elsbai Saint, Sorrow, Sinner (The Gideon Testaments, #3) by Freydís Moon The Safe Zone by Amy Marsden Tempting Olivia (Oxford Romance #2) by Clare Ashton Crossing Bridges by Chelsey Lynford Sounds of the City by Stacey Ennis-Theobald Searching for Someday by Renee Roman Back to Us by Addison Clarke

[sapphirelotus]

a guide to the witch’s sabbats

This honestly took a lot longer than I thought but here’s my post on each of the Sabbats

POSTER’S NOTE: I will be posting the dates for each Sabbat when they are celebrated in the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere

•Imbolc

Northern Hemisphere: February 1-2

Southern Hemisphere: August 1-2

Midpoint between Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox

Fire Festival • Quickening

Animals: bears, ewes, goats, groundhogs, sheep, snakes, wolves

Beverages: beer, milk, spiced wine

Colors: blue, green, red, white, lavender

Gods: Aengus Mac Og, Eros, Faunus, Februus, Freyr, Innus, Lupercus, Pan

Goddesses: Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Brigid/St. Brigid, Diana, Gaia, Persephone, Selene, Venus

Foods: butter, cheese, garlic, grains, leeks, onions, peppers, shallots, yogurt

Gemstones: amethyst, bloodstone, garnet, ruby

Incense: basil, cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh, rosemary, vanilla

Plants: acorns, crocus, grape hyacinth, primrose, snowdrops

Symbols: besom, Brigid’s Cross, candles, seeds, Shepherd’s Crook, sun wheel

Magickal Energies: agriculture, beginning, birth, cleansing, courtship, divination, fertility, growth, life, love, protection, purity, rebirth, return of the sun, spring

•Ostara

Northern Hemisphere: held between March 19-22

Southern Hemisphere: held between September 21-23

Spring Equinox

Solar Festival • Growth

Animals: bears, bees, butterflies, birds, goats, rams, rabbits/hares

Beverages: milk, cream

Colors: gold, green, lavender, light blue, pink, white, yellow

Gods: Adonis, Attis, Dagda, Holly King,Oak King, Jesus, Odin, Osiris

Goddesses: Aphrodite, Cybele, Demeter, Eostra, Hera, Ishtar, Persephone

Foods: chard, dairy, eggs, honey, lemon balm, lettuce, marjoram, nuts, seeds, spinach, thyme

Gemstones: agate, amethyst, red jasper, lapis lazuli, moonstone, clear quartz, rose quartz

Incense: cinnamon, dragon’s blood, frankincense, jasmine, myrrh, orange peel, rose, strawberry, violet

Plants: daffodil, daisy, dandelion, honeysuckle, hyacinth, jasmine, lily, primrose, tulip, violet

Symbols: basket, cauldron, eggs, feathers, seedlings

Magickal Energies: balance, beauty, beginnings, birth, cleansing, duality, fertility, life, nurturing, rebirth, renewal, sex

•Beltane

Northern Hemisphere: May 1

Southern Hemisphere: October 31

Beginning of summer

Fire Festival • Rebirth

Animals: bees, bulls, cats, cattle, goats, rabbits, sheep, snakes

Beverages: milk, water, wine

Colors: green, light blue, orange, pink, purple, red, yellow, white

Gods: Apollo, Bacchus, Cernunnos, Cupid, Dionysus, Eros, Frey

Goddesses: Aphrodite, Bast, Brigid, Diana, Flora, Freya, Rhiannon, Venus

Foods: butter, dairy, oat/barley cakes, fresh fruit, herbs

Gemstones: amber, carnelian, emerald, garnet, malachite, rose quartz, pink tourmaline

Incense: vanilla, jasmine, lilac, rose, peach

Plants: daisy, honeysuckle, ivy, mint, primrose, rose, violet

Symbols: bells, bonfire, candles, cauldron, chalice, faeries, flowers, may basket, may doll, may pole, may queen, sun, wool, yggdrasil

Magickal Energies: bounty, commitment, community, divination, divine marriage, fertility, fire, fruition, good fortune, growth, handfasting, happiness, healing, health, joy, life, light, love, lust, mating, maturity, prosperity, protection, sex, summer, sun, vows, warmth

•Litha

Northern Hemisphere: held between June 20-22

Southern Hemisphere: held between December 20-22

Summer Solstice

Solar Festival • Fire Festival • Culmination

Animals: bees, birds, cattle, donkeys, horses

Beverages: fruit juice, herbal teas, mead, milk

Colors: gold, green, orange, red, white, yellow

Gods: Bel/Belenus, Lugh, St. John the Baptist, Holly King, Oak King, Apollo, Dagda, Helios, Ra, Ares, Mars, Zeus

Goddesses: Artemis, Isis, Vesta, Diana, Freya, Aphrodite, Venus, Inanna, Epona

Foods: barbecue chicken, barbecue pork, cheese, cinnamon, eggs, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, ginger, honey, lemon, lime, mint, nuts, oranges, turmeric, yogurt

Gemstones: amethyst, emerald, jade, lapis lazuli, malachite, gold topaz

Incense: jasmine, lemon, lotus, rose, sandalwood

Plants: basil, chamomile, daisy, dogwood, lavender, mint, mistletoe, oak, rose, saffron, sage, sunflower, thyme, verbena, vervain

Symbols: bonfire, candle, circle, dagger, feathers, oak leaf, sun dial, sun wreath, sword, wreath

Magickal Energies: abundance, blessing, blooming, divination, faery work, feasting, fertility, fire, fulfillment, good health, growing, life, light, love, luck, marriage, maturity, passion, pregnancy, prosperity, protection, repelling evil spirits, success, summer, transformation, unions

•Lughnasadh

Northern Hemisphere: August 1

Southern Hemisphere: February 1 

Midpoint between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox

Fire Festival • Harvest Festival • Decline

Animals: calf, phoenix

Beverages: beer, cider, herbal tea

Colors: gold, green, red, orange, yellow

Gods: Adonis, Hermes, Jesus, Lugh, Mercury, Osiris, Vulcan

Goddesses: Ceres, Corn Grandmother, Demeter, Isis, Persephone, Rhiannon

Foods: apples, breads, fish, fruit, grains, honeycomb toffee

Gemstones: amber, aventurine, carnelian, citrine, obsidian, peridot, gold topaz

Incense: chamomile, rosemary, sandalwood

Plants: apples, barley, corn, garlic, marigold, myrtle, onion, sunflower

Symbols: candles, corn dolly, scythe, wheat sheaves

Magickal Energies: agriculture, competition, cultivation, fertility, gardening, growth, harvest, hope, preparation, rebirth, reflection, resurrection, transitions

•Mabon

Northern Hemisphere: held between September 20-22

Southern Hemisphere: held between March 20-22

Autumn Equinox

Solar Festival • Harvest Festival • Harvest

Animals: goose, swan

Beverages: beer, cider, mead, wine

Colors: blue, brown, gold, green, orange, red, yellow

Gods: Adonis, Arwan, Bacchus, Cernunnos, Dagda, Dionysus, Freyr, Hades, Odin, Osiris, Pluto, Saturn

Goddesses: Ceres, Demeter, Freyja, Gaia, Isis, Persephone, Proserpina, Terra

Foods: apples, corn, grain, nuts, pears, pomegranates, pumpkin, sweet potatoes

Gemstones: amber, citrine, sapphire, tiger’s eye, gold topaz

Incense: frankincense, myrrh, pine, sage

Plants: acorns, apples, corn, grain, grapes, gourds, nuts, pinecones, pomegranates, pumpkins, wheat

Symbols: cornucopia, double spiral, scales, scythe, sun wheel

Magickal Energies: acknowledge hard work, agriculture, balance, bounty, completion, crone, harvest, reflection

•Samhain

Northern Hemisphere: October 31

Southern Hemisphere: May 1

Midpoint between Autumn Equinox and Winter Solstice

Harvest Festival • Death

Animals: bats, cats, spiders, owls

Beverages: cider, mead, mulled wine

Colors: black, green, gray, orange, purple, white

Gods: Anubis, Cernunnos, Odin, Osiris, Mercury

Goddesses: Baba Yaga, Hecate, Demeter, Pomona, Hel, Ishtar, Isis, Lilith, Morrigan, Persephone, Rihannon

Foods: allspice, apples, cinnamon, corn, gourds, meats, pumpkins, root vegetables, rosemary, sage, turnips

Gemstones: apache tears, carnelian, smokey quartz, onyx, obsidian

Incense: copal, rosemary, sandalwood, sweetgrass

Plants: calendula, gourds, grains, mugwort, oak leaf, pumpkins, rue, wormwood

Symbols: ancestor photos, bat, black cat, broomstick, cauldron, coffin, crossroads, faeries, ghosts, ghoul, jack-o-lantern, mirror, pumpkin, skeleton, mirror, skull

Magickal Energies: ancestors, astral travel, changes, chaos, courage, crossroads, darkness, death, divination, harvest, honoring the deceased, life changes, memorials, mortality, scrying, séance, shadows, souls, spirit contact, transformation, transitions

•Yule

Northern Hemisphere: held between December 20-22

Southern Hemisphere: held between June 20-22

Winter Solstice • Longest Night

Solar Festival • Rebirth

Animals: goats, pigs

Beverages: mead, mulled cider, mulled wine, wassail

Colors: green, gold, white, red, silver

Gods: Bacchus, Dionysus, Holly King, Oak King, Jesus, Mithras, Odin, Ra, Saturn, Thor, Sol, Apollo, Baldur, Cronus

Goddesses: Ceres, Frigga, La Befana, Ishtar, Skadi, Lachesis, Brigid

Foods: cookies, fruits, pork

Gemstones: bloodstone, orange calcite, citrine, diamond, garnet, ruby

Incense: bayberry, cedar, cinnamon, clove, frankincense, myrrh, pine, sandalwood, spruce

Plants: balsam, evergreens, fir, holly, ivy, mistletoe, oak, pine, pine cones, poinsettias*

Symbols: bonfires, candles, caroling, coal, evergreens, fire, garlands, gifts, lights, mistletoe, ornaments, poinsettias*, reindeer, sleigh, stars, stockings, Sun Wheel, trees, wreaths, Yule Log

Magickal Energies: beginnings, birth, daylight, death, divination, feasting, fertility, good health, good luck, growth, life, life cycle, light, luck, miracles, rebirth, resurrection, return, sacrifice

*I feel as if it’s important to note that the name “poinsettia” is the colonized name of the plant cuetlaxochitl, as the plant is native to Mexico and has roots in Aztec culture. It was introduced to the United States in the 1820s by Joel Roberts Poinsett, who was an American ambassador to Mexico at the time and is where the name “poinsettia” comes from.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

hi bestie, i am just dropping by to say that i LOVE the keys of heaven so far!!!!!!!!!! i am already eagerly anticipating their hookup and i know it is going to be 🥵🥵🥵 i was just curious as to if you had any personal experience with catholicism that inspired this story? thank you and if its too personal of course you dont have to answer :)

Hello bestie!!! Thank you so much for your question 🥰 Okay so here's some storytime with Maggie you did not sign up for:

So I generally was not raised to be religious, my mom dabbled in a lot of random religions and my dad and stepmom are kinda Southern Baptists but I never really felt drawn to any particular faith.

But for a few years when I was a kid, my mom was married to this Italian dude Charles. Charles was kind of odd but pretty harmless and he tried to buy my love with donuts and goldfish (which kept dying). Anyway, Charles believed I should go to Catholic school, so that's what I did for 1st and 2nd grade when I was approximately 6-7 years old. I don't have a ton of memories from Catholic school, but I remember the nuns and teachers being mean to me because I was a really quiet creative kid with bad handwriting. Overall I wouldn't say it was a positive experience, but I did think the rituals and saint stories were neat!

The strongest memory I have from Catholic school is my best friend Scott. When we met he was pretty sad because his mom had recently died of cancer. I don't remember how we started hanging out but soon we were together ALL the time, and we would sit next to each other in every class, and when I got my ears pierced I chose his birthstone as the color (ruby for July). The teachers would joke about it and say we were going to get married one day.

Scott and I were so obsessed with each other that our parents started arranging playdates. Scott's dad Hugo was nice and they had this cute dog named Bandit and I absolutely LOVED getting to go to Scott's house and play with toy dinosaurs and stuff. My mom actually left me with Scott + Hugo for a long weekend so she could go on a work trip and we saw the first Harry Potter movie in the theater together. Hugo gave me coal for Christmas as a joke but I like rocks so I was genuinely into it, and he thought that was hilarious and had to explain the joke to me.

Then my mom and Charles broke up (she kicked him out of the main part of the house and he had to live in the basement and "shower" in the pool out back with a bar of soap), and Hugo wanted to marry my mom so we could be a big happy family. Scott and I were SOOOOO down for this and thought we were going to be real siblings, which obviously would have made things weird if we did end up getting married one day, but we were simple souls and didn't realize this. My mom and Hugo dated for a while but from what she said I guess Hugo was reallllllllllllllly Catholic and had strict ideas of gender roles and didn't believe in sex except for procreation and stuff, so my mom thought he was a freak (derogatory) and it did not work out.

We moved across town and since I didn't have an Italian stepdad anymore, my mom didn't see any point in me going to Catholic school and couldn't afford it anyway, so I switched schools and never really saw Scott again, except for ONE TIME when my mom randomly invited Scott and Hugo over for dinner and didn't tell me in advance, and when I saw Scott I legitimately started crying because I was so happy and we hugged for like 10 minutes.

It's strange because it was always super innocent (we never even tried to kiss or anything) but also emotionally consuming, and to this day when I think about Catholic school I remember Scott and I can still physically feel that drive to be close to him and how comfortable I felt in that "relationship."

Anyway, since then I've looked him up on Facebook (we have mutual friends) and he seems like kind of a loser so I guess it worked out for the best! Or maybe I could have fixed him 😢

[royalpain16]

Royal Tiara Challenge 2024

Day 12 - The Danish Ruby Parure Tiara

The Danish Ruby Parure Tiara

This tiara began its life as a series of hair combs, purchased by Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte for his wife, Desiree, to wear at Napoleon’s coronation in 1804. When Bernadotte was elected Crown Prince of Sweden, the rubies became royal jewels. The combs were made into a bandeau by Queen Alexandrine of Denmark, who had received them from her mother-in-law, Lovisa of Sweden. Queen Ingrid turned the bandeau into a grand wreath tiara, which is now worn by Crown Princess Mary of Denmark. - The court Jewellery.com

[hellerfanboy91]

Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 4x10 Heaven and Hell

This episode begins seconds after the end of 4x09 IKWYDLS where Cas and Uriel turned up at the barn where Ruby had sequestered Anna away. 4x09 ended with Cas saying he and Uriel were there to kill Anna, and 4x10 Heaven and Hell begins with Sam wanting to know why Anna has to die. In order to not reveal his hand too early, the writers (Kripke, Sands, and Carver) has Dean conclude they want her dead because of her ability to hear Angel Radio. Neither Cas nor Uriel does anything to divest him of that notion, nor do they listen to his case in Anna’s defence. “You’re some heartless sons of bitches, you know that?” says Dean, which is met with agreement and dismissal by Cas. “As a matter of fact, we are. And?”

I would argue this is not entirely true, but rather the angels have been forced to ignore their ‘heart’ in order to obey. In this same scene, Cas says Anna is ‘far from innocent’, to which Uriel adds ‘worse than this abomination [Ruby] you’ve [Sam] been screwing’. This is in reference of course to Anna choosing to reject God and her angelic duties by tearing out her grace and becoming human. In short, disobeying. Choice and freedom are forbidden among angels who are supposed to be instruments of God’s will and the pawns of higher-ranking angels. Some of the greatest transgressions among them are to question and/or disobey orders. This being the case, the resemblance of the angels to a cult is striking. The leaders are to be obeyed without question, and all personal identity and agency is to be surrendered.

However, leaving cults is not always a death sentence. The number of people who have left the Westboro Baptist Church and are still alive to talk about it testifies to this, but they are excommunicated and essentially dead to those still in the cult. The same is true of Jehovah’s Witnesses who leave the fold (a plot in Jonas Gardell’s Don’t Ever Dry Tears without Gloves which I will never miss an opportunity to talk about). The angels, however, take a much harsher course of action which anybody familiar with Islam will recognise: if somebody discards his religion, kill him (Sahih il-Bukhari 3017: Book 56, Hadith 226). There must be negative consequences for leaving, as apostasy:

1) brings the authority of those in power into question 2) dispels the illusion of the religion being all-encompassing 3) invites others to leave the faith

This being the case, Anna leaving the angels is an unforgivable sin which compels the angels to respond with extreme prejudice. Cast your mind back two paragraphs to the part about the angels being ‘heartless’ and my claim that it might not be wholly true. Knowing the penalty for disobedience is death, the angels would be forced to deaden their conscience and get the job done.

Given that several angels such as Balthazar and Gabriel later show quite the penchant for partying and hedonism (and Gabriel left Heaven several thousand years ago), it is no great leap to conclude that angels actually do have feelings. It is also only three episodes since Cas confessed his doubts and questions to Dean in 4x07 It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester, so the situation is more complicated than Cas’s statement would have us believe.

Likely the inclusion of this exchange was to give context for Anna’s later descriptions of angels as statues without choice or feelings, only obedience. According to her, there is no love or loyalty among angels. They are all forced to be automatons, but the very fact Anna chose to not be like them anymore presupposes the possibility for choice and agency in the first place. The show has not quite revealed it yet, but this is of course the reason why Lucifer rebelled against God and Heaven in the first place: he could choose to do so if he wanted.

Anna is ranked almost with Lucifer because of her apostasy, a fact which makes me wonder why two low-ranked angels were sent to kill her rather than e.g. Raphael or Michael. Whatever the case, Anna’s reasons for choosing to leave leave Heaven are quite different than Lucifer’s. Depending on the version of the story, Lucifer’s reason for rebelling was either wounded pride at the idea of having to bow to humans, or a refusal to bow to anybody but God. We can get into that discussion much later (not least because I need to refresh my memory on the different versions and interpretations of the story), but Anna’s ostensible reasons for leaving Heaven were love and admiration for humanity and a longing to experience life as a human. While I felt that the idea of ‘chocolate cake’ and ‘sex’ being worth becoming human for a bit difficult to believe, I will accept the general idea in a Little Mermaid kind of way.

In the same scene where Anna talks to Dean about all this about fifteen minutes into the episode, she talks about God as essentially an absent father and believes Dean cannot understand it. Unbeknownst to her, her description sounds almost exactly like John, meaning Dean understands her better than she realises. This also raises the fact that John, Dean, and Sam really are parallels to God, Michael, and Lucifer. ...At least generally, if not in the specifics. John gives the orders and demands obedience, Dean obeys due to brainwashing and conditioning, whereas Sam rebels and comes into conflict with Dean and John.

If we look at this in reverse, God, Michael, and Lucifer (sometimes associated with Samael) are parallels of John, Dean, and Sam. God is the abusive drill sergeant, Michael the subjugated soldier, and Lucifer the self-absorbed emo king who resembles his dad all too much. Given what we see of God later in the show, this seems accurate enough to me.

Moving on, a few minutes later Anna talks to Dean about what he did in Hell after she heard the angels talking about it on Angel Radio. She does not push him to talk about anything, but rather lets him know she does not hold him to blame, that he should forgive himself, and that he can talk to her about it when and if he is ready. Dean is most certainly not ready to talk, but he is apparently ready to bone Anna’s brains out.

Or is he? Paula’s take on the sex between Anna and Dean is that he did not particularly seem to want it, but had no reason to say no. I struggle to believe Dean especially cared about Anna after knowing her for such a short time, and probably just wanted something fun to do and a bit of comfort, like a hug. Except wetter. Or is this one of those occasions where I am supposed to believe a man and a woman in a show like each other just because one has a hoo-hoo and the other a haa-haa? Is that how it works? Do I need to go on another rant about The Last of Us?

That said, the sheer obnoxious length of the sex scene (significantly longer than Sam and Ruby’s in 4x09 IKWYDLS and almost rivalling many of the ridiculously-long sex scenes in the American version of Queer as Folk) suggest this was supposed to be a Very Important Moment, i.e. that this was supposed to be the beginning of DeanAnna. Or Deanna. You know, like the name of Dean’s dead nan. There is another universe where indeed Dean and Anna were an end-game couple, but that is not this universe and Anna’s days are already numbered. It was almost definitely unintentional, but intent is irrelevant here: during the sex scene, Anna puts her hand on the scar Cas left on Dean’s shoulder when pulling him out of Hell. Considering Cas replaced Anna and Anna purposefully puts her hand on Cas’s handprint during sex… there is something there.

And as a brief aside: what is the point of sex scenes in shows like this? What am I supposed to be doing while the characters are getting pelvic? Here I am sitting with my knitting or crochet, or making notes, and suddenly Anna’s cowgirling Dean. What am I supposed to do, imagine myself cowboying Dean?

While on the subject of angels, sex, and Cas, one of the ‘arguments’ used by people in denial about Cas saying ‘I love you’ to Dean in 15x18 Despair is that ‘angels are sexless and don’t have sexual feelings for anybody’. Ignoring for now the fact that aromantic people exist and that one can be in love with somebody without feeling sexual attraction, the idea that angels in the show are ‘sexless’ holds no water. So far, the show has introduced us to five angels: Gabriel, Azazel, Anna, Castiel, and Uriel. (Alistair is also possibly an angel like Azazel, but the show never specifies this.) Azazel was shown to have at least some kind of sexuality in 4x03 In the Beginning when he commented on wanting to bone Mary, Gabriel was heavily implied to have had sex with the women he conjured out of nowhere, and Anna was an angel for about five minutes before she spread her legs for Dean.

Three of the five angels we are first introduced to are sexual beings, and more than a few of the angels introduced later such as Balthazar are also sexual beings. Trying to deny that Cas is gay for Dean by claiming ‘angels are sexless’ is therefore an utterly invalid reading of the text, especially given that Cas has sex later on in the show. One could hide out on the little hillock of ‘Anna grew up a human’ and ‘Cas was a human then’, but Gabriel was never a human, neither was Balthazar. Please do not choose that hill to die on.

Anyway, while Anna and Dean are bumping uglies, Sam is asleep after researching. Ruby takes advantage of everybody else being otherwise occupied to summon Alistair in order to make a deal. The deal she proposes is giving up Anna in exchange for Alistair letting Ruby, Dean, and Sam leave town. It can be concluded from their conversation that Alistair is unaware of Ruby working for Lilith. Given that Alistair is one of the highest-ranking archdemons, it is surprising he seems utterly unaware of the double-crossing taking place right beneath his nose.

Alistair does not like the terms for Ruby’s deal. His henchmen grab Ruby and cart her off to his torture chamber which looks like an abandoned toilet. The torture scene is reminiscent of the one I recalled in my analysis 3x15 Time is on My Side. There I discussed the fact that sexual violence and rape were almost definitely part of the torture in Hell, and that a scene in 6x10 Caged Heat strongly hinted at that. It might in fact have been this scene with Ruby I had in mind, but the most important part of this torture scene was that Alistair and his minions tortured Dean. Everything happening to Ruby in this scene happened to Dean, and worse. When Ruby screamed, it was Dean’s screams I heard.

I am aware that someone someday reading this might have something to say on the subject of women’s bodies and women’s suffering being used to further men’s plots, to which my reply would be ‘I don’t care about Ruby’s body.’ I do not care about Ruby at all.

Further to that subject, Paula wondered why Ruby had to be naked while being tortured (not that we saw anything), but of course a torture victim would be naked. Nudity can be vulnerability and dehumanisation, as well as a violation. It strips the one to be tortured of a layer of defence and allows a gross intimacy. If it makes you uncomfortable, it should. That is the point of it.

Most of the blood, guts, and general gore in the show is men anyway, so even if Ruby’s nudity is gratuitous… So are all the bits of dead men, and as I have said before, people are generally numb to dead men.

Whether or not this was all part of Ruby’s 4D chess plan is never ascertained (unless I have forgotten), but it could have been. What better way of convincing Dean et al that she was on their side than turning up after being tortured. After the fight in the barn, it is revealed that summoning Alistair and getting the angels and demons to fight each other was not Ruby’s plan, but all of their plan.

This brings the conversation round to the fight in the barn. Uriel appeared to Dean in a ‘dream’ after Dean heard the angels’ ultimatum: give them Anna or Dean gets tossed back into Hell. Whether or not this was an empty threat is also uncertain, but given Dean’s role in the Apocalypse it was probably a bluff. The fact Uriel did not send Dean straight to Hell when Dean refused to surrender Anna also suggests it was a ploy. Is one fallen angel really more important to Heaven than Dean at the moment? Nah.

This is also the ‘dream’ where Uriel gives the famous line ‘You see, [Cas] has this weakness. He likes you.’ Yes, yes, ‘like’ can mean a lot of things, and one of those things is ‘erotic attraction’.

By the way, the ‘you cut yourself a slice of angel food cake’ did not amuse me. I get it was supposed to be funny, but it was too cognisant to give me the chuckles. There was no cutting, slices, nor food involved, so it does not work for me. Another ‘joke’ which fell flat for me was Sam saying Dean got reality and porn mixed up ‘again’, but he has never been shown to mix up reality and porn. I understand it was supposed to be funny, but if a joke does not have some form of truth in it, it is just stupidity.

Anyway, Uriel was careless enough in the dream to reveal Anna’s grace in a bottle tied around his own neck. Only while skipping through the episode to remind myself what happens did I connect the fact that Dean knew where Anna’s grace was with his ‘surrender’ of her. No conversation between Dean and Anna was ever shown between Dean’s dream and the fight in the barn, but Anna seemed prepared to grab her grace back from around Uriel’s neck, as if she were just waiting for the right moment.

Anna becomes an angel again, vaporising Alistair’s vessel in the process, and disappears in a flash of light. Uriel and Cas depart.

The final scene sees Dean and Sam sitting/leaning on the car in a lay-by near a motorway, and it is here that Dean finally talks about what happened to him in Hell in any detail. Once again, Jensen’s performance makes me wonder why he stuck with this small-scale show for so long, and also makes me wonder where on Earth people got the obnoxious ‘single man-tear’ thing from.

On his blog, Leonard has discussed more than once the difficult position the show has placed itself in by having Dean spend so long in Hell in such conditions (see this post). Days or weeks of torture (or even hours depending on the kind of torture and the person being tortured) would be enough to leave severe damage, but being tortured to death would be almost guaranteed to do irreparable damage. For this to happen to Dean every day for a week would be enough to destroy his mind beyond repair, let alone every day for thirty years.

To be fair, the show does not specify he was tortured to death every day, but it is heavily implied it happened more often than not. At the end of each day, he was then restored to how he was before, then the torture would begin again. Dean does not say that his mind was restored to how it was before, but if it were not then there would be little left of Dean before long.

The logical conclusion is that the worst damage done to his mind would have been healed every day along with his body, but this is all becoming quite convoluted. The main issue is that Dean could have been tortured for a few months or a few days before becoming a torturer and the story would have been the same. Dean would not have seemed weak, and his relative normality upon return would have been less conspicuous.

In the latter half of my analyses for series three, I started referencing the damage done to men and boys through relatively minor traumas such as routine infant circumcision. I discussed the industrial castration or complete emasculation of millions of European and African men taken into slavery in the Arab world and the horrific death rates. I progressed to things such as the life-long trauma suffered by Sofi Oksanen’s maternal great-aunt after being raped by Soviet authorities in 1940s occupied Estonia (which inspired a plot point in her novel Puhdistus ‘Purge’), among others. As recently at 4x06 Yellow Fever I brought up dissociative identity disorder as a result of serious mental and/or physical trauma.

Being tortured himself would have severely damaged Dean, but torturing others would have been traumatic because it brought him face to face with the monster inside him. It must be hard to believe that one is fundamentally a good, worthy person if one remembers torturing other people to death. I have heard that one of the main reasons for war veterans suffering PTSD is the violence they enact on others. They know that they have the potential for great brutality which shakes their self-image to the core.

A less extreme example is that of a nurse I know who has spent his whole working career caring for other people when they are at their most vulnerable. At a difficult time in his life, he was greatly distressed by a dream he had of killing somebody with a hammer. I was once on anti-depressants which caused intrusive thoughts of enacting violence on others, and it is scary knowing that monster is inside and can come out one day.

...and yet Dean is relatively okay after his decades in Hell. Perhaps the root of this issue is a lack of planning. Perhaps the writers did not really know how long Dean had spent in Hell before they started writing series four, or what happened to Dean there. Given how vague the dialogue is (‘The things I did to them…’ ‘I ripped them apart’) I doubt they gave the specifics much thought. Had they planned it properly in advance, perhaps Dean’s return would have been quite a bit different.

At the end of Buffy series two, Angel is sent to a Hell dimension where he remains for a few centuries (amounting to only a few months in ‘this’ universe). When he returns a few episodes into series three, he is almost feral and takes quite a while to return to who he was before. Something like this would have been appropriate for Dean, had only the writers planned properly.

Funnily enough, series three of Buffy also begins with the episode 3x01 Anne where Buffy discovers a Hell dimension in Los Angeles where one day on Earth is several decades. Perhaps this is where the idea came from in Supernatural.

Another solution to the issue could be that Cas returning Dean to life in 4x01 Lazarus Rising healed most of the mental damage done to Dean.

Perhaps torturing others is a form of torture. Far back in my discussion of 3x09 Malleus Malificarum I likened Hell to the orcification process in The Silmarillion, where it is heavily implied that the orcs were created by Morgoth through torture and mutilation of some of the first elves to ever exist in Middle-Earth.

Hell is a factory for making demons to fight for Lucifer, and making people torture other souls is an effective way to strip them of their humanity and turn them into demons. Alistair offered Dean relief from torture every day in exchange for Dean torturing others, an offer Dean rejected for roughly thirty years. It is not hard to imagine the same offer being given to every other soul in Hell every day.

Returning to Dean, getting him to hurt other people is one of the worst things which could be done to him. He loves others deeply and sacrifices himself to keep others safe, yet has to deal with the belief that he is inherently monstrous.

Personally, I rather dislike that the show refers to Hell as ‘the pit’ or ‘down there’, or to people being tortured as ‘putting them on the rack’. I am aware that it might be easier for Dean to think and discuss things in these vague terms in order to distance himself from it, but rather often it feels inappropriate and unnecessarily obscure. It is almost as if the show wants to avoid saying ‘Hell’ or really discussing exactly what happened to Dean and what Dean did.

One last thing before I finish: this episode told us that Cas ‘likes’ Dean, then soon thereafter cut between Dean and Anna kissing and Cas’s face. Why was this here? Was it to suggest Cas might have doubts about what he and Uriel were supposed to do? Or was it because he wished he were in Anna’s shoes? Or Dean’s? Canonically, Cas is eventually in love with Dean, so is this where it really started?

And with that, this analysis is at an end. You can read more of my reviews here:

Series 1

Series 2

Series 3

Series 4

Sundry

And you can read Paula’s review here.

And in case you missed it, Dean was once again twatted across a room. He really is the Worf of this show.

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

💙💜💖 Bi Books Coming Out March 2024

💖💜💙 Do you know what we could always use a little more of? Bi books! Here are a few coming out in March that would make fabulous additions to your never-ending TBR! Happy reading!

💖 The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste 💜 Falls From Grace by Ruby Landers 💙 These Bodies Between Us by Sarah Van Name 💖 Never Leave, Never Lie by Thea Verdone 💜 When Worlds Collide by Erin Zak 💙 Comet Cruise by Niska Morrow 💖 The Fealty of Monsters by Ladz 💜 The Phoenix Bride by Natasha Siegel 💙 Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland 💖 The Perfect Guy Doesn't Exist by Sophie Gonzales 💜 Saint, Sorrow, Sinner by Freydís Moon 💙 Ellipses by Vanessa Lawrence 💖 Diavola by Jennifer Marie Thorne 💜 Small Gods of Calamity by Sam Kyung Yoo 💙 The Dark Feather by Anna Stephens 💖 Go Lightly by Brydie Lee-Kennedy 💜 The Night Compass by Amanda Foody 💙 Icarus by K. Ancrum 💖 The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste 💜 The Safe Zone by Amy Marsden 💙 Tempting Olivia by Clare Ashton 💖 Like Happiness by Ursula Villarreal-Moura 💜 That Secret Something by Emily Wright 💙 Back to Us by Addison Clarke 💖 Heirs of Bone and Sea by Kay Adams 💜 Searching for Someday by Renee Roman 💙 One Last Breath by Ginny Myers Sain 💖 Crossing Bridges by Chelsey Lynford 💜 The Weavers of Alamaxa by Hadeer Elsbai 💙 Trouble by Lex Croucher