badzoodoo - Tumblr blog

[badzoodoo]

yknow it’s funny because cas’s decade-long commitment to Looking But Not Touching (and sometimes not even disclosing the looking) is to me like…partially a reflection of how cas is aware of the enormity of his own desire….. cas is positioning himself as the sailor in myth who lashes himself to the mast of his ship to avoid following the sirens call and drowning in the ocean, except in this case he’s both the sailor and the ocean…. the gravitational pull of their orbit around each other (the personal space, the staring too long, the itch under the skin) is such that cas is literally restraining himself 100% of the time, for both of their sakes. he watches dean rake leaves and he doesn’t reveal himself, because taking the cloth out of his ears would mean both succumbing to the siren’s call and drowning both of them…. what do you do when you’re convinced that revealing the force of your feelings would end in nought but destruction? you slowly persuade yourself that looking is enough, that staying away is an act of care, and that it’s not in the having, but just the being…. 

[badzoodoo]

Y’all is it just me or does Alicia have such a Charlie Bradbury vibe. Alicia is like the straight, physically bad-ass twin to Charlie. I luv her sooo much.

[badzoodoo]

lucifer rising (and frankly all of s4) is like okay. you are sam winchester, and your brother sold his soul and went to hell for you and you couldnt find a way to save him in time. you have to live with that, because if you cant, you fail him and his being in literal actual hell right now is all for nothing. so following in the family footsteps, you cling to revenge because you cant live for yourself, not when you hate yourself this much. and you do hate yourself! because your brother died for you, and your shit father died for him, and your normal life went up in flames and its your fault, and oh, right, youre a demonic freak. okay. so you start working with a demon which you know is bad but the end justifies the means, because she says that you can kill the one who held your brother’s fate in her hands, and you can save people while doing it. maybe you can finally do something good with this horrible curse in your veins. and you’re drinking demon blood because she says that it makes you stronger, so even though you hate it and you know that you shouldn’t be doing it, you do it anyways because you’ve already got that stain in your blood anyways, and its an addiction, and the end justifies the means still. so then you get your brother back but you’re in too deep, and you cant tell him what youre up to because he wouldnt understand and youre right! but once again, its the greater good, youre lying to him and getting further into this demon blood mess and apparently heaven and its angels (which exist, and which chose your brother and not you because you were already marked by demons even though your whole life you have just wanted to be good and forgiven) are saying that you need to be stopped but they dont understand either and it’s too late to stop. and then finally its go time, do or die, and you’ve chosen both because you know there’s no making it out of this one, not really. but youre too far gone and you know it, so finally at least you can die for something good, the way youve always wanted to. and youre doing horrible, awful things like bleeding a woman dry and leaving your bloody brother on the floor in a mess of broken glass and he hates you now but you dont blame him! you cant, because you hate yourself more! and then it all happens so fast, and youre finally getting revenge for your dead brother who is alive and pounding on the door, and she’s laughing at you, and you can feel the dark spot in your blood like a tumor and its spreading as she glows from the inside out and then goes dark.

and somehow you survive. you dont feel human and you wish it had killed you because maybe then youd be a martyr or a hero or someone who was good in the way only dead people can be, and then you realize it was all for nothing. less than nothing, worse than nothing; you didn’t fail, because you killed the thing. you did exactly what you wanted to, but it was never what you wanted it to be and instead it was all an elaborate plan that youve been forged for since you were an infant. you ruined everything - your life, your humanity, your relationship with your brother, your body, even your relationship with heaven - in a desperate horrible scheme that never even needed to happen because you were always the freak even without all the horrible things that you did, no feather needed. and now the entire world is going to burn because of you, and you dont even get to die like you hoped you would

[badzoodoo]

Y’all Down to Agincourt is my true addiction. Like I know why Cas isn’t doing any drugs and appears to have sobered up, it’s because seperis has put all of his goodies in the words of each chapter. Like how is that even possible?? I can’t do my normal life things because I keep pulling this story up to read it. Bills are not being paid, laundry is not being done, I’m abandoning my children and husband to their own devices and I don’t even feel guilty. I’m 8 chapters in to ITSTL and I’m so screwed.

[badzoodoo]

SPN hiatus creations | Week Six | Favorite Location

[badzoodoo]

I laughed so fucking hard at this

[badzoodoo]

Just... all of this. Even the soft cowboy. Especially the soft cowboy.

Like the thing about Loki in Norse mythology is there’s like 8000 myths about Loki just being chaotically mischievous and the other gods are like lol oh that scamp, no matter how disastrous his schemes are, their reaction is still pretty much always ‘haha oh that’s just Loki.’

EXCEPT for basically….one myth. Where Loki’s instrumental in the death of Baldur and the gods are all WHOA TOO FUCKING FAR DUDE and send him to Hel to be tormented for all eternity, leading to his ultimate escape/release in Ragnarok to end all things and lead the army of the damned and his monstrous children to pretty much…eat all the gods, destroy Asgard, and burn the World Tree all to the ground so it can all start over.

Here’s the thing though. Norse mythology spanned centuries. The tales of Loki as the mischievous trickster god were told for centuries.

However, for most of that time, the myths were told as part of oral traditions passed down generation to generation, until they were finally compiled in manuscript form in the 13th century, roughly. This is when pretty much all the sagas, as Norse myth compilations were called, are considered to have been written down for the first time, and so they included thousands of stories that had been told over hundreds of years.

They were also regional, though there was a lot of overlap, given that the Vikings traveled widely and regularly across the various parts of Scandinavia. Still, different parts of Scandinavia had their own sagas. Norway had different sagas than Denmark who had different sagas than Iceland, etc. Even though all of them featured primarily the same figures, they each had their own unique stories featuring the gods. However, very rarely did they have radically different takes on those gods.

Now what’s significant about the fact that pretty much every saga we have, where these myths were all finally written down and preserved, is from the 13th century….

Is that pretty much all of Scandinavia had converted to Christianity by the early 12th century, with active worship of the Norse gods being scattered and mostly underground from that point on.

Why is this significant?

Because it means every Norse myth we have a written recording of was not written by people who still actively worshiped those gods. Nor were they intended to be read as such at the time. 

They were written down by Christian scholars who wrote them AS stories. They were intended as collections of their regions’ cultural histories, but not by or for people who still actively believed in these stories or the figures they featured. They weren’t like….TRYING to be super accurate, is the thing. The scholars who wrote these sagas were writing down the stories that had been passed down for generations, but through the lens of people who saw them as stories their ancestors once believed, not ones that pertained to their own current worldview.

And they were writing these sagas for an audience of people who similarly believed as they believed.

Which means that inevitably, some things got ‘adjusted’ to fit the current world view, the zeitgeist of the scholars writing down the stories and that of the people who would read or have the stories read to them from thereon. Because again, they weren’t aiming for being 100% faithful to the tales as they’d been told to them. They were just treating them as stories. And what do you do when the story you’re writing down has elements that don’t make that much sense to you because they were born of and aimed a worldview that doesn’t match yours?

Well, if you’re the Christian scholars writing the Norse sagas, you ‘tweak’ those elements until they make a story that fits your worldview.

So remember how I said the various sagas were regional and had a lot of overlap but some stories were distinct to some regions and didn’t show up elsewhere?

Yeah, Ragnarok is one of those.

Thousands of sagas encompassing centuries of Norse mythology and oral traditions were written down all over the various regions of Scandinavia in the 13th century.

Ragnarok only showed up in one.

The most famous, granted, but still. Everything we’re told in Norse myths about the death of Baldur and Loki’s role in it, leading to his punishment and torment in Hel and his ultimate release and bringing forth the armies of Hel to slay the gods and end the world?

Comes from the Prose Edda and the later Poetic Edda, from Iceland.

Which had primarily converted to Christianity as far back as 1000.

Now, the Vikings? Were actually surprisingly not a big doom and gloom people. Pretty much every assumption of them as such comes from how synonymous we regard Ragnarok with their culture.

It is after all, the ultimate Judgment Day myth, isn’t it? Right up there with Christianity’s Book of Revelations. An apocalyptic end of the world scenario, a war between heaven and hell, where everything is destroyed so that the world can basically start fresh with a clean slate. Nothing old ‘deserves’ to survive, pretty much the only way for a world free of sin and evil to arise is from the ashes of the old, after everything has been cleansed with fire.

Now contrast this ‘myth’ with pretty much every other Norse myth that’s survived. Larger than life tales of grand adventures, noble quests, gods walking among mortals in disguise and heroes fighting giants and stealing from dragons.

Where the closest thing the Norse pantheon has to a devil figure is Loki, the god of mischief….not even evil, but MISCHIEF, because a far more accurate representation of the Vikings’ world view is that sometimes shit happens, because Loki the god of chaos likes to make a mess of things. And what do you do when that happens? If you’re the Vikings, you basically just shrug, go “well, that’s Loki” for you, and drink some more mead.

Loki isn’t vilified in a single myth until Ragnarok, because the Vikings didn’t hate him. And they certainly didn’t fear him. They LAUGHED at him. In nine out of ten myths, Loki ends up the subject of ridicule himself, as he has the tables turned on him or outsmarts himself

Until Ragnarok.

Which, granted, could very well be another Norse myth that was passed down generation to generation in Iceland, land of frequent volcanic eruptions and likely inspiration for Musplheim, the land of the fire giants.

BUT. Which could equally likely, and far more plausibly given the overall context of Norse mythology, simply be a story the scholar who wrote the Prose Edda made up to ‘finish off’ his saga of the world according to the Vikings, from beginning to end.

An ending his Christian audience of the times would understand and identify with a lot better than they would understand the concept of a devil-figure that existed to be LAUGHED at, to show how little the Vikings feared some mythical figure with the power to lie and deceive them….the complete opposite of the way Christians feared Satan.

Basically put….Ragnarok, for all that we think of it as the ultimate Norse myth….DOES NOT MAKE SENSE in the context of almost EVERY single other Norse myth AND in the context of how Norse society viewed the world and their place in it, or their gods and their relationship with them.

Same with Loki’s depiction in Ragnarok.

What both Ragnarok and Loki’s role in Ragnarok DO make sense in the context of, however, is in a bastardization of Christianity’s own doomsday tales of a Judgment Day, stylized to fit the trappings of Norse mythology and feature their gods instead of Christian figures.

With Loki recast in the role of the Devil, as he was the closest fit they could find to that.

And with Baldur, god of light (a Norse god who is at best a footnote in Norse myths other than Ragnarok, and certainly was never the major pantheon figure he’s assumed to be), recast in the role of the Christ figure. Whose death starts the ball rolling for Judgment Day and who is destined to return for it, to triumph over Loki/Satan and preside over the new, purified world once it’s reborn from the ashes of the old one.

Anyway, tl;dr, don’t believe the hype, Ragnarok’s probably not even an actual Norse myth but the invention of Christian writers who were like lol this would make for a great Book of Revelations fanfic AU, and Loki was almost certainly never regarded by actual Vikings as some evil, malicious world-destroyer who would lead armies of the dead at Armageddon whoops I mean Ragnarok.

[badzoodoo]

Here’s my take. The fist half of 15.20 was planned all along. The second half was rewritten last minute due to COVID or tptb being shitheads; cancelling the planned reunion of Dean and Cas in Heaven. Said reunion would have been Dean’s chance at his own confession. And Dean gets his reunion with all the dead family. No speed run to the end of Sammy’s life is seen, just Dean and Cas and the fams chillin’ while they wait for him at Harvell’s.

so can we all agree that season 15, story-wise, was constructed so that nothing but a happy ending made sense? literally the major conflict was a TV god trying to give the story a shitty ending. it even outlined all the things that would be included in a shitty ending. the whole complicated story was meta commentary on endings and you can’t tell me they had THAT finale planned from the start.

it’s more like they were warning us about that kind of ending all through the season. like look, here’s lamp, here’s garth and bess, here’s kaia saved, here’s adam and seraphina, here’s unity, here’s love, here’s rowena living her destiny. here’s what it’s supposed to be. now here’s … chuck’s idea of this story. know the difference. and oh boy did we

[badzoodoo]

Hey, as someone who is a fan of the show but new to Destiel, are there any episodes you could recommend? I’ve seen you mention season 12 as a stand out season?

Hey! Ooooh exciting! Okay so for a fully rounded Destiel experience you have to watch the following:

4x01 - Obviously. Castiel’s introduction is key.

4x07 - The conversation on the park bench is another key moment

4x10 - The first time the Gay piqued my interest because Castiel’s glare at Anna when Dean kisses her is legendary

4x16 - Honestly its just hands down one of the best episodes in the entire show.

4x20 - If nothing more than for the obvious LACK of sexual tension between Dean and Jimmy Novak

4x22 - Because Cas chooses Dean.

5x03 - Because DUH

5x04 - Just pay attention to everything Endverse!Cas does.

5x18 - “Last time someone looked at me like that, I got laid” *wink*

6x03 - “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.”

6x20 - Probably the most epic of all the Destiel episodes

7x17 - Castiel’s amnesic return is straight out of a love story.

8x02 - What happens in Purgatory stays in Purgatory

8x07 - WHAT HAPPENS IN PURGATORY STAYS IN PURGATORY

8x08 - Cas is gonna be a hunter! 

8x17 - “Cas, we’re family, we need you, I need you…”

8x22 - “You don’t understand, I NEED PIE!”

8x23 - “So this is it? E.T. goes home?” (and a cupid strikes two burley macho men in love)

9x03 - Push past the gross stuff. Dean’s despair at Cas’s death is worth it.

9x06 - EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS ROMANTIC ANGSTFEST

9x09 - Human!Cas gets drunk and flirts with Dean.

9x10 - Angel’d up Cas goes on a road trip with his lover and love rival. Dean is so loved up he thinks that atrocious new coat looks good.

9x18 - Okay so Metatron carries the Destiel torch here but EVERYTHING HE SAYS IS WORTH IT

9x22 - “He’s in love… with humanity

9x23 - “You draped yourself in the flag of heaven, but it was all about saving one man.”

10x01 - “I miss him” (whilst lying naked on a plaid covered bed)

10x03 - “You look terrible” “Well you, you look good” (Seriously that end scene in Dean’s room was so intimate I DIED)

10x05 - Just - give it a chance. The Destiel is played SO differently to the W*ncest. It is clearly treated more seriously and Dean’s reaction to Sam’s joking is BRILLIANT.

10x09 - THE LUNCH DATE

10x14 - Its just a REALLY good episode okay

10x16 - Okay so don’t watch the whole episode, just go on youtube and look up Dean’s confession. It is SO revealing and watching it for the first time had me in shock. I am still pissed off that this wasn’t picked up by the mainstream as a bigger deal. He basically admitted he was bisexual and wanted to try new things with certain people. 

10x20 - Dean and Cas co-parenting Claire was a delight.

10x22 - The reverse Crypt Scene with all its romantic coding and Cas pledging himself to Dean for all of eternity.

11x03 - Just for Dean wrapping Cas in a blanket and being so concerned about his boo.

(Note: Season 11 isn’t really full of actual Destiel moments, as there was a change in this season where Dean and Castiel’s story became fully ingrained in the narrative structure of the Season. Because of this they were separated the way star crossed lovers are and an active driving force was getting Castiel back. It’s worth watching the full season to pick up on this story.)

11x11 - Is a brilliant episode and well worth watching for the interactions between Dean and Casifer.

11x18 - “Cas! CAS! CAAAAS!” “CaAAaass” You MUST watch this one.

11x19 - Not for Destiel, but for the various subtextual implications of the episode. Jesse and Cesar are basically mirrors for Dean and Cas in a idealistic endgame setting. This is what we mean when we talk about potential endgame foundations being built in Dabb era.

11x22 - Purely for the fact that Amara literally locates Dean by using Cas’s heart.

12x01 - Introducing the boyfriend to the mother is always awkward :P

12x09 - For Castiel’s heartfelt speech about the Winchesters

12x10 - Just this whole episode is about Angels and Love and Dean is Castiels “human weakness”. Its just a masterpiece.

12x12 - Castiels confession. “I love you. I love all of you.” It was brilliant.

12x19 - One of the all time best Destiel episodes. The MIXTAPE, the intimate bedroom conversation, the “He took it from under my pillow” and all the implications behind THAT. The pushing against the wall, the heartbreak as Cas is brainwashed and walks away… URGH. Just its so good. 

12x23 - For that “NO!” at the end and Dean falling to his knees. Yes it is SO PAINFUL but OMG it was EVERYTHING.

13x01 - One of MY all time favourite episodes. I always cry. The angst, the EMOTION. Dean’s grief is just GUTTING. He wraps Cas’s body like a widow in mourning. the way he calls Cas his everything… This episode KILLED ME a thousand times over and continues to do so every time I watch it. 

13x03 - Dean snapping and screaming at Sam that he can’t get over Cas’s death is so intense that it causes Jack to reach through the veil of death and wake Cas up - thus saving the day :P

13x04 - “I have tiptoed through all your little tulips. I know what you hate, I know who you love, what you fear.”

13x05 - “It’s never too late to start all over again” the romantic turn around reveal! ARGH the romance was more intense than any other romantic film I have ever seen. If it was heterosexual I would have gagged so hard I’d have thrown up my dinner.

13x06 - CAN WE SAY BROKEBACKNATURAL? “he’s an angry sleeper. Like a bear” “I’m your Huckleberry” “It’s good to have you back Cas.”

13x14 - The whole married couple scene with Gog and Magog. Plus Castiel’s brutality towards Donatello when he tried to hurt Dean.

14x01 - “Joined at the Everything” and Cas’s determination to do anything to find Dean.

14x03 - the reunion, the sweeping romantic music specifically placed for Dean and Cas. Pfft.

14x08 - Again whilst not a Destiel episode exactly, the key component of Cas’s deal with the Empty Entity is that his happiness is tied to his doom. This is an inherently romantic story line.

14x10 - Dean’s dream world with heavily coded romantic desire especially in the song, and in Pamela. Cas appealing to Dean’s emotions compared to Sam appealing with well known code words.

14x12 - Doctor Cas! “So this is goodbye?” before Moosus Interruptus gets in the way. :P

14x14 - Dean and Cas as a united front. Always side by side like hunter husbands. the foreshadowing of the Death kiss and both of them dropping to the floor, plus the whole “maybe you’re not his type” and grumpy husband flirting. 

14x15 - Just watch because the whole episode is perfect and Cas is heavily coded as queer and it just WORKS and the opening conversation is just soft husbands and co-parents Destiel PLUS the mirror fight scene to 10x22 which displays the clear difference between the two scenes. Again. Perfect episode.

The season 12/13 escalation is a must if you are looking for practically textual Destiel. The episodes listed above in those seasons (from 12x09 to 13x06) are a lesson in building Destiel for the general audience. Since then they have not quite hit the breaks, but they have come off the throttle a lot. Instead we are getting little clues and morsels of information in practically every episode which confirms that at this point:

Castiel is living in the bunker with the boys

Castiel and Dean have movie nights together

Castiel and Dean call and text each other regularly between cases (privately away from Sam and Jack and anyone else)

Castiel invites himself into Dean’s room early in the mornings (probably before Dean is even awake) to update him on his whereabouts.

Castiel knows what Dean is like first thing in the morning - having woken him up before (he’s like a bear).

These kinds of things would have been practically unheard of pre Dabb era. Dean and Cas are already basically a married couple, currently co-parenting a Nephlim (with Sam). 

So a lot of people tend to moan that we aren’t seeing Dean and Cas interact as much as we used to, that the sexual tension isn’t there anymore, and all that. But I don’t see that. What I see is a progression of their relationship towards the domestic. It’s actually really lovely. When you compare fanfiction written now to fanfiction written in Season 4/5, its always practically pretty much already established married Destiel, or its very little effort to push them into romance when canon has already brought them so close. 

So I’m sorry that this isn’t just a short list, but its very difficult to condense Destiel into a few episodes when it is something that has been built into the foundations of this show since season 4. Destiel has always been a part of the show.

You can’t create the greatest love story ever told in a few short episodes. This is an epic dramatic love story spanning 10 years. It’s astounding when you really step back and look at it. If you are pressed for time, at least watch the episodes in bold, but really, for a true Destiel experience, you just need to watch the show. 

[badzoodoo]

top 10 mulder/scully episodes; you and your pretty partner seem awfully close. do you work well together? (3.17, ‘Pusher’)

[badzoodoo]

My favorite novel-length fanfics

These stories are some of my all-time favorites, for a variety of reasons… Happy reading!! 

All Things Bright and Beautiful - R - By: Dlynn - 227k

Set during Season 7 as Mulder and Scully embark on their physical relationship, while Dr. Daniel still pines for Scully.  

And Death Shall Have No Dominion - NC17 - By: Jean Healms - 1011k

A long journey with our favorite duo, but with so much angst it’ll keep you coming back for more. Mythology, MSR, angst….ugh. ONE OF MY TOP FIVE FAVORITES. 

Aphrodisia - VERY NC17 - By: Kristel St. Johns

Scully’s need for control takes her and Mulder into discovering the BDSM lifestyle. Okay, I was reluctant at first… but it was in-character, and so fucking hot. Set post-Orison. Some parts are a little meh and may take some effort to suspend disbelief but for the most part, I was amazed by how much this could work. The author did a great job in researching and informing the reader. 

As - NC17 - By: Dri - 452k

Mulder and Scully are set up just as they start their relationship and have to piece together who did it, and WHY. Angst. Angst. Angst. So good. 

Blinded by White Light - NC17 - By: @dashakay - 282k

Does this really need an introduction? I’m not generally a fan of AU, but this story changed my mind and I was sucked into it from the beginning. ONE OF MY TOP FIVE FAVORITES

Dr. Scully’s School for Exceptional Boys - R - By: Prufrock’s Love

MY FAVORITE STORY. Don’t let the title fool you, this story is hardly as sappy as it may seem. It’s tragically beautiful and I would pay good money to see this made into a miniseries. I WILL NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT PRUFROCK’S LOVE. You have to read it. Post-William, and it veers… It’s been 12 years since she’s seen him. ugh. I’m haunted by this story. Basically EVERYTHING she writes is amazing. Just read everything. 

Eleventh Hour - NC17 - By: Rachel Anton - 207k

Now that my opinion of AU has been broadened by BBWL, someone suggested I read Eleventh Hour, and I’m glad I did. What a journey. Mulder has to go back in time to save Scully from her fate…but will he want to return to present? 

Erosion - NC17 - By: Annie Sewell-Jennings -  226k

Be prepared to die. This story is beautiful. The consortium force Mulder and Scully to separate, but they find a way to still see each other. 

He is the Master of his Fate, She is the Captain of her Soul - NC17 - WIP - By: Scully Likes Science

Okay, basically this story CONSUMED my soul before the revival. It’s RIDICULOUSLY long in the best way possible. Covering everything from the beginning of Season 8 to IWTB and beyond, this story shows us what CC did not. It explains her pregnancy, what happened to Mulder while he was away and what they did on the run. Buckle your seat belts; it’s a long read, but well worth it.  

Iolokus Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 - NC17 - By: MustangSally, Rivka T

Just read it. Thank me later. Dark, dirty, but fucking amazing. If you haven’t read it, you need to…just so you can freak out with the rest of us. 

Mesabi Ferrum - NC17 - By: Zoonr 

I WILL NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT MESABI FERRUM. It is amazing. Between this and Machines of Freedom, CC had all of the ammo he needed for Seasons 10-11. William, mytharc, MSR, viruses, Doggett/Reyes and others… ONE OF MY TOP FIVE FAVORITES. 

Machines of Freedom - R - By: @amalnahurriyeh

I adore everything about this story. Set post-IWTB, it follows our agents as they figure out how to beat 2012… familiar faces reappear, and it has some of the best plot-twists around. READ IT. 

Worth Breaking - NC17 - By: Narida Law

They try to start having sex just to relieve sex. No strings attached. No emotions. Yeah right. 

[badzoodoo]

Is This A Film You Want To See?

[badzoodoo]

mulder even the random ass weatherman sees the connection you refuse to believe 

[badzoodoo]

One of the best Pokemon Go stories so far. 

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[badzoodoo]

I really like this because season 8 made Scully appear so weak at so many moments. She needed more moments like this.

An alternative version of Scully & The Shadow Man’s conversation in ‘Trust No1′