#and jimmy just wants chuck’s validation/to like him

[kissingrhi]

what are your nsfw jimmy headcanons? (i really see him as a subby service top, eager to please, to do anything you want.) idk i just love ur headcanons id love to hear!!

oh yes. absolutely. do u see this man. i know what you are jimmy!

early jimmy (seasons 1-3) is on a completely different realm than late jimmy and saul (seasons 4-6).

by that i mean, early jimmy is the most fragile, shattered-shell of an individual, and that 100% seeps into the bedroom.

a crier. he's sensitive, what can he say? (his words)

sheepishly weeps when you tease him too much, whining when you only push him further for a fresh set of pretty tears.

stuttery, bated breaths escape his throat. "i- i don't understand why you're being so mean?" he asks, his voice cracking right on the highest octave he can reach.

he only groans and wails the more you push him. he definitely gets harder no matter what.

gets nervous every single time you two interact sexually!

a whore for semi-public acts.

if you two are in the car in a (mostly) empty parking lot, he'll almost cum in his pants the moment you press a mischievous hand against his tender thigh.

100000% a service top (you are so real anon!!)

will literally cry against your neck while he's inside of you, continuing even when he's came "God-knows how many times."

all because he "wants you to feel good"

such a sweetheart, huh?

NO!

a tease......big time.

he is still the infamous jimmy mcgill.

will pull faux innocence till it's near snapping like a band of outstretched elastic.

"i was literally just resting my hand. you're being over-fucking-dramatic." knowing damn well his hand under the dining table was far too close for comfort.

the moment 'fucking' drops from his mouth, he's mentally preparing himself for the steady hand against his throat, airing out his windpipes.

you can bet your sweet ass that even when he is fucked stupid, a sheer layer of sweat against his forehead, a deep maroon spreading all over his skin, he will still have a smart remark!

it's only when he's hissing and cursing through his teeth at the stimulation of his very sensitive head, or begging to breathe from between your thighs, that he actually keeps his (very beautiful) mouth shut.

LOVES bondage. like LOVES. BONDAGE.

adores when you've got pent up anger at work, so much that you call him and let him know he needs to have on of his colorful ties ready for you after work. makes him feel so special :>

cracks SO many corny ass jokes during the act.

loses his mind if you play with his nipples. if you even run a hand over his dress shirt after giving him a hug and his knees will literally buckle underneath him.

his praise kink.

as we know from the show, jimmy early-on was pretty insecure, and often seeking validation from chuck.

so if he ever needs an escape, away from any sort of attention, you refuse.

instead, you'll hold longer, more intense eye contact when you run your fingers along his sides. you'll make him look. praise him for "how well he handles you." how "good of a boy he is."

it makes him want to melt into the floor, but he loves every minute of it.

he swears a part of himself is healed when you praise him.

.....whimpers "thank you" over and over again every time he cums. if you want to make him blush, mock him after.

in conclusion, early jimmy is an insanely praise-deprived, emotionally needy sub

thank you for coming to my ted talk!

[litres-of-cocaine]

what’s so awesome about the early episodes of better call saul - i’m talking before chuck has his ‘you’re not a real lawyer speech’ - is how painstaking jimmy’s love for his brother is. it’s obvious how great an actor bob odenkirk just from…. everything aha but. hmmmm. hmmmm!

even before it becomes completely transparent how chuck feels about him, the way jimmy looks at him is devastating. and i don’t mean because we already know how the story turns out from brba, because even if we are looking at it completely isolated from context, jimmy’s care for chuck feels almost like grief. there are lots of ways to communicate love across media in joy or happiness or whatever but i think what makes the way BCS shows what jimmy feels for his brother so unique is that jimmy’s love is conveyed through sadness anytime he looks at chuck.

there are two types of looks/interactions i would categorise this presentation of love:

a) the caregiving kind - it’s jimmy in the hospital, jimmy leading chuck out the door of his house to hhm; the kind where this view of what was compared to what is sits so stark against everything else. it’s like anytime someone’s loved one is suffering, like this failing desperation to help.

b) the ache - this desire jimmy has to not be viewed as a ‘scumbag’, basically beyond slippin’ jimmy. it’s him telling chuck he passed the bar and having to ask if he’s proud because his brother won’t say it at first. jimmy is yearning for his brother to think highly of him and even if chuck did what makes the way jimmy responds to him in these situations so goddamn sad is the way it illustrates how low his self esteem is. he needs chuck to encourage him and tell him he’s good otherwise suddenly all his worst fears about himself are just bam correct in his mind.

and like if we compare these showcases of feelings to the flashback of jimmy in custody after his chicago sunroof incident i would argue that we *don’t* see this kind of display. like here he’s interested in escaping the charges and he wants chuck to help him, yes, there’s the underlying tensions of chuck being successful in a way that jimmy decidedly isn’t but this crushing desire to be better at all costs doesn’t appear here. it’s not in the scene where we see a flashback scam play out or barely at all when jimmy has *just* got off his charge and is heading to new mexico.

chuck’s urgency for jimmy to quit his scams and be better is what crushes any positive idea jimmy has of himself (granted if we’re speaking morally - which we aren’t bcs this is fictitious but still - is a societal improvement as he was a con artist) and then his refusal to validate any progress he makes just pushes him down further and further. but jimmy loves him for it anyway. jimmy genuinely wants to be good, he wants so so so much to be a good lawyer and a good person and *like chuck*. he returns the kettleman’s money, warns them about nacho, and actually wants to advocate and help (in exchange for payment ofc, he is a lawyer) for the elderly people he works with.

like he’s viewing his brother as like this redemptive figure for him to a certain extent as he’s realised that he wasn’t a good person before. but chuck ‘saving’ him does make him a better person but just makes him feel crap about himself.

jimmy’s love for his brother is folded over and over and over again and seems so genuine and sincere so that watching chuck’s kind of dispassionate coldness even in the first episode makes it seem all the more desperate and intense. (you could compare him to the way jesse’s parents act a lil probably)

i’m not suggesting that chuck is like malicious in this or anything, but what he does for jimmy seems wayyy more like obligation than care. like he has an understanding of the familial responsibility he has and what i’d call an objective ‘love’ because of that connection, but that’s it. jimmy, on the other hand, idolises him. jimmy in trying to be a good person is still so far from perfect lmao even with the way he is with chuck but it’s clear that is brother is everything to him. the short (and not very revolutionary) answer lol: jimmy loves chuck more than chuck loves jimmy. and again i’m strictly talking. like. episodes 1-9 here.

and now if we put that -back- in context of breaking bad…..

it’s like a fucking sledgehammer to the chest.

we known that jimmy becomes saul before the program starts. even if someone who hasn’t seen breaking bad is watching BCS chronologically, they are seeing saul after the events of the initial show from the start. it’s clear exactly *what* he ends up as. so we know what saul represents in relation to this ideal of a ‘good’ lawyer.

the cars already crashed, the bomb’s gone off, we are reading jimmy mcgill’s obituary.

this care that jimmy shows for chuck (even after the betrayal yaknow) feels so fucking cataclysmic because of that as not only is he trying so hard and the viewers are seeing from his perspective in the early episodes but. we know that he fails. and we know that chuck, the arsehole who i would say, if not directly causes, at least contributes to jimmy’s negative arc, ends up being right.

[shallowseeker]

Shal SPN meta masterpost

(The thought of labeling my unhinged ramblings as "essays" or "meta" honestly gives me hives.) But well. After a year, I'm still here, and I am making and updating this (A) to happily re-visit my thoughts for my own enjoyment and (B) to add to my pinned post.

MY META:

==Most Liked==

Dean, Cas, and sharing pockets

Jack's nephilim eyesight triggering Dean's germ anxiety

== Roles, Identity, Careers, Class ==

Performing Dean, the AV Club, and Jack as varsity MVP

Even when Chuck "humiliates" Castiel, Dean still likes him

Cas + "dad material"

Anna and the angelic non-integration of her own emotions

Are angels terrified of fathering Nephilim?

Jack is not part of a traditional, cookie-cutter nuclear family. That's the WHOLE POINT

Nazi Cas, and the implications for Jimmy Novak

Beware the validity of Cupid in My Bloody Valentine

== Core traits ==

Dean + I don't deserve happiness

Cas + shabby angel of the Lord

Lucifer + cognitive empathy

Lucifer...doesn't really rib Cas that hard about his feelings for Dean

Dean's guilt and emotions make him LOOK guiltier than other characters

Dean + ashamed of being alive

== Symbols ==

Castiel's coat of arms - When Cas dons the overcoat, he hijacks the narrative

Dean, the Cupid, and the insidious motive to demoralize his faith in ever finding "True Love"

Searching for a rainbow + forbidden love is forbidden

Jack ate the world: foreshadowing gods eating souls + nephilim lore

Cas died on a beach! + Jack's place of birth was specifically the famously doomed Washaway Beach

==Car meta ==

Cas + cars (!)

The pimpmobile as a marker of Cas's unsettled identity

The truck is the mark of a family protector and Sam loves little blue cars teehee

Family cars + protecting the ones you love

==Pop culture, music, media ==

Head canon that Dean buried Cas by a windmill, but it’s because he and Cas have had deep conversations about Animal House.

Jack + Dean + hyperfixations on music

==Grief ==

The familial murder of the mother, the blaming of absent father, and the symbolic death of a child in 14x18 Absence

Dean looks around for Cas after he prays in 13x01

Smiting Belphegor made Jack's death real

Harper Sayles and the romanticized first love

How Jack & Dean wanted to look ahead in Optimism and fail at doing it when Jack dies just two episodes later

==TFW dynamics ==

Dean's family was willing to sacrifice him, and that gets overlooked (from an ask)

Dean's Farewell Tour + Avoiding Cas - part 1

TFW are messy disaster parents and I dig it

When Dean killed Belphegor, it was about Rowena, but it was ALSO about [OMITTED]

Cas + resilience + repeat existential crises

Dean & Cas + Covert Communication in 15x09

Claire & Jack are uneasy around each other at best; actively dislike each other at worst

== Breakdowns ==

Jack's best memory was in 13x06; some notes about the scene

Oh, my GOD, Cas. Dean was so stupidly worried about you, you dumbass. (12x17-12x19)

Season 11-12 Lucifer + war + rejection + Jack -> the thing that will give his life new meaning

== Script talk ==

Like a baby lion is proud of his kill, Jack overkills Nick with graphic, brutal efficiency in SPN 14x17 Game Night

The mission before all else + Mary's trust in Jack in 14x17 Game Night

Dean & Cas in season 15: doomed by too much faith in each other?

== Unpopular and/or controversial opinions ==

Dean would never say I Love You to ANYONE in those circumstances.

How Dean and Cas lost the thread of free will in SPN season 15

The incest jokes and innuendos are primarily about class disrespect

The argument that Cas has no parental authority over Jack (and Sam and Dean do)...doesn't hold up

Ben is not's Dean's son. Full stop.

Heaven is a war machine

Endverse Cas + The Nephilim-making Strategy

-> Contrarian takes:

Purgatory isn’t pure in the *good* sense; it’s a suicide trap and a black-and-white, unthinking world (long)

Cas actually DID check out naked Hannah (very long)

Cas has good reason to need forgiveness during the divorce arc...he is not blameless (long)

Does Chuck's female coding carry ill intent?

==Finale metas==

What if Dean dying on the rebar was an accidental manifestation of Chuck!God!Amara!Jack’s latent feelings? (long)

Searchin' for a rainbow + Cas's death + forbidden love (long)

== Funny thoughts ==

Jack + typewriter

Lebanon inhabitants + TFW fake jobs

Jack & Dean + nephilim eyesight + GERMS

Ketch, the father

Sam wigged out when Eileen didn't leave and note and Dean deserved to say things about it - lol

Cas is SO old, y'all

Dean hate-watches Gone with the Wind

Dean doesn't "feel more deeply than anyone," you FOOL

Dean/Cas are that unsettling, unhinged couple who looks absolutely demented when they kiss

== Random ideas ==

What if Cas's Enochian rib carvings affected Cas's abilities to hear Sam and Dean's prayers?

== SPNwin ==

There’s a lot of merit in being anti-destiny, anti-soulmate, anti-chosen-one, anti-Cupid, anti-mirrors/anti-parallels. (long)

Natural crisis points built into The Winchesters character arcs (long)

To be updated.

///

(Text Attributions// Supernatural scripts here via @spnscripthunt. Transcripts are located here via SPNWiki. Visit their Tumblr to donate.)

[kimwexlers-brownhair]

Thinking about Tom in the past constantly asking Shiv if she likes this, and Jimmy in Pinata asking Kim if it’s okay that he doesn’t go to therapy.

They're both seeking validation for different reasons. For Tom, yes, he wants Shiv to love him, but it's also to validate that he's worthy even to be in her presence. That he can play her and her father's game. For Jimmy, it's all about Kim, just Kim, especially with Chuck now gone.

[cauldronofmorning]

You mentioned Chuck is convinced Rebecca and Ruth loved Jimmy more than him. Maybe that's another reason why Chuck made Howard play the bad guy in the beginning, orher than out of cowardice. Howard practically worshipped Chuck, and like I said in my post about Logan and Roman, Chuck needed that validation. When he picked up on Howard getting along with Charlie Hustle, a part of him probably panicked. In his mind, people can't just like him and Jimmy both, they always, ALWAYS end up preferring Jimmy. By setting Howard up as the fall guy keeping Jimmy from HHM, Chuck knows that will destroy any good feeling between them. Jimmy will hate Howard and make his life hell. And that's what happens.

Gould himself said Chuck engineered Howard and Jimmy into being Cain and Abel. 🔪 Howard wants so bad to pretend that everything is fine behind closed doors (yes for PR, but Chuck is knight in shining armor) and Jimmy thinks that Howard is his well treated replacement. Of course what Jimmy (and Kim with her Red Cloud baggage) does to Howard is fucked, but even Howard by season six thinks Jimmy deserved to punch his brother and should get some catharsis. Ah the perils of being kind.

[otogariado]

can't stop thinking about that post mentioning how "jimmy feels like he is owed things"... i've been rewatching s1 with a friend and i still maintain the first impression i had when i watched it for the first time. jimmy is a guy who's so painfully trying to do the right thing but he just keeps getting screwed over whenever he does, getting punished instead of rewarded. and that just doesn't work for a person like jimmy who's internalized the need to "win" and "not be a sucker" since he was a kid by seeing how his dad and his dad's kindness and empathy specifically got taken advantage of. (a kindness and empathy that jimmy is shown to similarly share himself.) he's a guy who thrives on reward and validation.

and this is the most crushing thing about the reveal, the betrayal at the end of the season. jimmy thinks the world of chuck and his brother basically giving him a second chance is his main driving force to do things right. he spends ten years having a solid record, working hard and not getting himself into trouble, and eventually kim also becomes another person that strongly influences him for the better. he pursues the law because of chuck and kim. jimmy was trying to do things right, to keep his head above water (above board), and a big part of it was because he wanted his brother to be proud of him. but HHM doesn't hire him anyway, despite how much he worked his ass off to pass the bar and get his license. "no one ever accused you of being lazy... every other sin in the book, but not that one."

the betrayal cuts deep. jimmy deserved a chance to at least be properly considered by HHM as a potential employee, and cry about nepotism as they may in "chicanery", if only chuck had given jimmy a chance, this chance to prove himself—then maybe he wouldn't have gone back to resorting to questionable habits. to jimmy, he worked his ass off and still gained nothing from it. after he gets rejected by HHM i don't think much time passes until the start of the show and we see how demeaning his job can get sometimes.

it's not just his job or his relationship with chuck, though. "god forbid you have an office with me." this is a guy who's made big leaps in acts of love, even though kim hasn't witnessed some of it herself. (he did everything he did with the kettlemans to help her get her clients back. he pulled the ol' switcheroo on the mesa verde address to, again, help her get her client back. he left this job because at that point he only thing he really wanted was to work with her in their office. he doesn't like working with/under other people, especially when they feel stifling to him.) at that moment, he feels like he's owed an office—a "real" one, a joint practice and not just some shared office-but-separate practices thing. his insecurities tell him he's not good enough for her otherwise if there's not this big tangible proof of it. (and this is why that moment stings a lot for kim, because similarly, she's been sticking out for him—standing up to howard, standing up to chuck, standing up to suzanne... all people who belittled him, and she sticks out for him because she believes in him. and because she loves him.)

idk how to conclude this post i've just been thinking a lot about "jimmy feeling like he's owed things"... this isn't me condemning him for it or anything it's just more of a post trying to observe things from his perspective. (and as such some stuff i point out in this post doesn't necessarily have to reflect my perspective. although ftr i don't think being driven by rewards is necessarily a bad thing. everybody's just trying to find their own motivation to get through life, yo.)

[becomingpart2]

am I the only one who thinks it’s wild that chuckjimmy gets compared to waltjesse??? like Walt was actively abusive to jesse to an insane degree meanwhile the chuckjimmy relationship is way more complicated imo, and jimmy actively manipulated chuck’s poor health. idk I’ve even seen people compare jimmy to Jesse and it annoys me so much because Jesse was basically an abused kid just in his 20’s and jimmy is a 40-50 year old criminal and actively horrible person.

Hahaha, it's funny that you said that because I was gonna mention the walt/jesse comparison in that other ask and say I don't think it's all that comparable as people think.

Sure, there are some similarities: Chuck and Walt constantly berate Jimmy and Jesse respectively and make them doubt their self-worth; Jimmy and Jesse both seek validation from other people in differing degrees and they do have some sort of admiration or respect in reference to Chuck/Walt, whom are older and exert some level of "authority" over them; both Walt and Chuck place a lot of value on what a person does, including their own, which in turn makes them believe they're above most people...

But I'd say most of those similarities are superficial. For one, Jesse and Jimmy are very different as people; Jimmy seeks validation but he also has a greater ambition than Jesse, he doesn't just want to be accepted or liked, he wants be better, the best. He wants be seen and admired. Jesse on the other hand has a stronger sense of morality and because of that, there are things he will not do, regardless of how they may affect him, which isn't like Jimmy at all. Walt doesn't like that what he does is illegal but his need to be seen and recognized outweighs the law (similarly to Jimmy), which is very unlike Chuck whom will end his life because of it.

Like you said, Walt actively takes advantage of Jesse's vulnerability and there's no denying that that is an abusive relationship. Chuck and Jimmy had a whole life together that we weren't privy to that certainly informs a lot of their reactions to each other and that people don't seem to take into account. There's history there. Jimmy seems like he was always the favoured kid even though he was also the one stealing from their family's business because he didn't want to be a "sheep". He spent most of his life cutting corners trying to be the smartest one while Chuck who walked the line had to constantly bail him out and watch him get away with it. I think the resentment he has for Jimmy and his "lifestyle" is understandable to say the least. Chuck also had first hand account of most of Jimmy's "encounters" with the law, making him out to be the bad guy because he didn't want to hand him a high position in his law firm is not only unfair but a bit unreasonable.

So yeah, their relationship is more nuanced and complex than how people paint it. Reading it simply as "Chuck is mean to Jimmy while Jimmy tries his best" is shallow and not accurate to their history.

[aoitrinity]

Why Do I Have to Feel Like a Fucking Conspiracy Theorist -- OR -- How I Find a Semblance of Peace on Sunday Night

I’m also going to start this out with a GIANT DISCLAIMER.

I am about to theorize about what may have happened to the SPN finale. I have absolutely no insider knowledge. I am merely speculating here based on the panels and a bunch of Twitter and Tumblr posts that I have been reading over the last few days. If you are not in a good place to read such things, TURN BACK PLEASE. Go take care of yourself and your mental health. You and your feelings are valid and deserve to be handled gently right now.

Additionally, if you are here to give me shit for being unhappy with the ending, please walk away as well. I am here to reach out and share my feelings with people who might be struggling to make sense of something that upset some of us in very deep-seated ways. I am not here to bother you or critique you or tell you that you’re lesser because you liked the ending. If you felt it was good, then go enjoy it.

Long-ass post beneath the cut, everyone.

Alrighty folks...I debated whether or not to do this because I have been spiraling down the hell that is the SPN finale since Thursday. The travesty of what happened to our show--to this beloved show that seemed to have been so perfectly and precisely written for at least four years that it had basically already paved its own tarmac on which to land its plane and we all thought we knew exactly what we were going to get. And then we didn’t. We had a nigh Cas-less and entirely Eileen-less ending. We had no goodbye between Cas and Jack. We had Dean dying young after finally finding his freedom, only to ascend to heaven with no one but Bobby. We had the weird, weird, weird incest-y death scene. We had the bridge crane shot thing because...sure. You do you, Robert Singer.

It was so terrible, so truly awful, and I couldn’t seem to square any of it with anything we had known going in. I tossed and turned and cried and didn’t eat or sleep all weekend. I spent hours just reloading tumblr and twitter, going to the Misha panel, reading and reading and listening and trying to figure out what the fucking hell is going on because I needed to know exactly where to direct my anger. And after a fuckton of talking with @winchester-reload, I think we have at least a very plausible theory about what happened here--I’m laying it out below as much for my own peace of mind as anything else, because otherwise all of these thoughts are going to continue to spin around in my head for weeks and I won’t be able to do jack shit.

Now to start off, unfortunately I do think Dean was slated to die from the beginning of this season. I don’t know WHY they thought that was the best way to go, and I wish they had listened to Jensen on this one. Part of me wonders if it was an order from on high based on the discussion between Becky and Chuck earlier this season--the writers knew it wasn’t a great choice, but they were trying to signal to us that we should feel free to write our own endings to the story because they’d be better (I can wax poetic on the signs of why many of the writers probably wanted Dean to live, but that’s another post). I’m not defending that choice by any means, just laying it out there that I think they didn’t necessarily all want to kill Dean like they did.

However, what I THINK I can explain now is what happened with Misha and why we got so jerked around with Cas’s story. Consider what we know (I can’t immediately source all of it, but I did my best):

At the end of episode 15x19, Lucifer has been returned to the Empty after being killed AGAIN. He talks with Cas. Maybe harasses him a bit about Dean, idk. But then...Jack shows up. New God Jack. And he picks up Cas and pulls him out of the Empty, leaving Lucifer behind, because seriously. Fuck that guy (also leaving behind his abusive father is character growth for Jack, so yay for that).

-Misha was contracted to film 15 episodes this season. He was only in 14.

-Misha told Michael Sheen he had to go back to film 1.5 episodes after the shutdown in March. (Starts at 6:13)

-Misha was in Vancouver during filming of the finale.

-Mark P said at Darklight Con that the last scene he filmed was with Alex and Misha (and Mark P was only in episode 19).

-Misha implied that he was present for various filming moments, including Dean’s death (start at 35:15), and said that it felt like a “mini-reunion.”

-Various sources have mentioned that Jimmy Novak was supposed to be in the finale.

-After episode 18, Stands tweeted a fan who was angered and hurt by Cas's death that they could talk about the “bury the gays” issue after the finale aired.

-In episode 19 we know there were takes of the parking lot scene where the only thing fans observing could hear was Dean yelling “CAS” at Chuck (fuck I can’t find this one right now, but it’s definitely out there)

-Also in episode 19, we had a very strange, awkward montage at the end of the episode.

-In episode 20, we know there were a FUCKTON of missing scenes

-We also had no opening montage, but three other separate montages.

-Carry on My Wayward Son was played TWICE, back-to-back at the end of the episode.

-Episode 20 was shorter than normal and had surprisingly little dialogue. The pacing was VERY strange.

-The cast and crew has been almost completely silent about the finale since it came out. When they have spoken, it has been with an awkward excuse of “Uh...COVID?”

-Samantha Ferris has specifically noted that, despite the Harvelle’s being back in play and a big heaven reunion having been planned pre-COVID, neither she nor Chad Lindberg received any such invitation to return.

-Cas and Dean POP Funko figures were pictured together in a replica of Harvelle’s in 15x04.

NOW with all of this in mind (and I’m probably missing some stuff too because there is so much--feel free to add on to that list), please bear with me because here is what I think we were SUPPOSED to get POST-COVID (after it was determined that the reunion couldn’t happen because of the virus):

In episode 20, we start with our NORMAL OPENING MONTAGE, like always. It traces everything that happened during the season. We are reminded of Cas. The confession. Rowena. Eileen. Jack. Billie, God, the Empty, all of it. 

Things then follow along in the episode where they did up until Dean dies and wakes up in heaven. After his conversation with Bobby, he drives off to find Cas (who, in the script, was listed as “Jimmy Novak” in order to protect against script leaks--who wouldn’t want to do their best to avoid spoilers about the finale with the wrapping of a fifteen-year show?). He does indeed find Cas. We get Dean’s end of the confession. Hell, maybe we even get a kiss. And then Dean sets up his new heaven home in the recreated Harvelle’s. Maybe Cas even fucking moves in. 

Years pass. We get Sam having his life on Earth (still can’t explain why they cut Eileen and couldn’t even have Sam signing vaguely to the blurry brunette in the background; if anyone wants to take that on, go for it). Eventually, Cas tells Dean that it’s almost Sam’s time. Dean takes Baby and goes to meet Sam at the bridge. The cover of Carry on My Wayward Son plays during this much shorter sequence. End of episode.

But that’s not what we got. Instead, much of what I just wrote about was excised from the episode. The remnants were stitched together after shooting had been wrapped. Filler was added in the form of montages and long, unnecessary extra shots to get the episode to something approaching a reasonable length. 

But why? Why would they spend all that time and money and quarantining on Misha, only to almost completely cut him out of the finale? I struggled with why the fuck the CW would want this mammoth show to go down as the greatest queerbait in TV history when they had the chance to do something truly beautiful and monumental with it? It couldn’t just be sheer homophobia, right? Well, I think that factored into it, my friends, but here is where my head is at right now.

It was about cold, hard cash.

Now I could be wrong, but this is what I’m thinking at the moment: Supernatural is going off of the air. Supernatural, the CW’s cash cow for fifteen years. Sure there is still money to be made on blu-rays and merchandise and cons...but they need people watching their shows. They need that sweet advertising revenue. And you know what show they have about to premiere? A show that could, potentially, bring with it a chunk of that SPN revenue?

Walker.

And if any of you know anything about the original Walker Texas Ranger, you know that the show was predominantly a show about a very heterosexual white man being very excessively heterosexual. And for SOME REASON over the years, many of the execs at the CW still seem to think that this show, Supernatural, is really attractive to a lot of middle-American white men...whom they desperately want to watch this new show with this guy from Supernatural that they already know.

Now here’s where COVID fucked us. I think Destiel was greenlit by TPTB, at least in SOME form, before COVID. But then the pandemic happened, and they panicked. They got the cut of the last two episodes and watched them in their original, probably queer form. And then, the execs at CW looked at the economy. They looked at their cash cow, about to make its journey to the great beyond. And they looked at this new little calf Walker that they were so desperately worried about. And they made a choice.

They decided that it would be too risky to take the step with Destiel. They were worried about frightening off their ever-so-valuable hetero male demographic with the possibility that a traditionally masculine man in his 40s could be in love with another man in an overt way. It was homophobia mixed with greed, spun up by fear for their revenues because of COVID.

So they called in Singer, possibly Dabb, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they went straight to Singer. They told them that Destiel had to go: executive orders. And the only way to make it go in a way that removed any trace of what had been there was to rewrite what happened to Cas and cut him out from the last two episodes entirely. It was too late to reshoot anything. They had to just cut and stitch and fill with bullshit montages. 

They removed the scene at the end of 19, probably because Cas and Lucifer discussed Dean. All that was left of Misha there was his voice on that fake phone call. They may have cut other things too, but I would bet my life that they cut a scene from the end of the episode and replaced it with that very strange montage. Then they moved onto 20. They cut out every scene with Cas. And left in only two platonic mentions of him, neither made by Dean. They tried to imply that Cas might show up in Dean’s heaven at some point, but that was as far as the editors could go in the time they had. They filled in with montages, awkwardly long shots, anything they could do to fill all of those missing scenes.

And they even had to take the opening montage, because literally everything in it pointed to Cas being there at the end of it all. They wouldn’t be able to leave out his scenes, they were too critical to the season. They couldn’t cut his confession without raising eyebrows. So they cut the whole thing and moved “Carry On My Wayward Son” to one of the newly-added driving montages at the end. Which is why we awkwardly had both songs play back-to-back--again, such a strange choice unless they were out of options and couldn’t exactly buy rights to a new track or compose anything else.

And so we were left with the shadow of the finale that we deserved, that Cas and Dean deserved. We were left without resolution or happiness or words. Bobo told us the most important thing about happiness is just “saying it” and our characters were silenced without anyone ever knowing the truth.

I think the writers might have known and been given the new party line that “Misha never filmed, he couldn’t, sorry, it was COVID, no one’s fault!” But I don’t think most of the cast even knew it had happened until they watched the finale on Thursday with us (though they might have been confused why the bit from 15x19 was sliced, they could reasonably have assumed it was a time thing and also BL episodes don’t make sense anyway). Why do I say that?

Well, first of all, Misha started sending out a bunch of excited texts to fans with some old BTS pictures about an hour before the show started airing on EST. He also wanted his children to see the episode, his YOUNG children. Why would he show them such a traumatic episode if their Dad wasn’t in it? What if it was because he wanted them to witness what was going to be a monumental moment in queer television history that their DAD got to be a part of? And then that was all dashed.

Which is why I think the cast and crew went almost completely radio silent the next day. I don’t think they knew. And based on how they have been acting on social media since then, I think many of them are absolutely furious, but they have been silenced because of NDAs, because they want to find work again in a cutthroat industry, because they don’t want to bring down the hellfire of Warner Brothers Entertainment upon themselves. So the most we have gotten is a little acknowledgement from the MERCHANDISING COMPANY trying to validate our pain (god bless Shirts, she is a LIFESAVER) and a response to my salty tweet about keeping good stuff in the closet from Adam Williams (the VFX coordinator) that seemed to acknowledge the validity of my complaint.

Then there was a scramble behind the scenes, I would bet my life. Talking points were fed to the boys who had panels today, to CE, to all the cast and crew:

Toe the party line. Misha never filmed. This was always about COVID. Do not mention Destiel. Do not mention Dean’s feelings for Cas. Do not promote the Castiel Project or anything that validates the idea that this was anything less than a superb ending.

And that is why we have heard so little from the cast on this front, and what we have heard has been muddled and contradictory. That is why the writers are saying nothing. That is why we have been left adrift.

Now before I close this out, I do want to say that I really, genuinely do not think this was on the writers at all. I feel like they tried to give us the best ending that they could, in a writers room that we know is notorious for splitting along party lines about the overall story (BL and Singer, who have always been about the brothers and their man-pain vs. Dabb and the rest who always seemed to want more for them and for Cas). I think they did everything in their power to at least end with Dean and Cas happy together. If they could give us nothing else, they wanted to give us that. And then the network took it from them. From us. From everyone.

For the sake of fucking money. 

And the WORST PART OF IT ALL, for me, is that in the wake of this disaster, the fans have been left to try and figure out what happened. We have had to wade through a mire of conflicting information in the midst of all of our collective anger and grief over this garbage ending of a show many of us have loved and even relied on for YEARS, all the while wondering if we’re just fucking crazy, if we have all fallen collectively into the hole of conspiracy theories. That hurts ESPECIALLY badly because we have taken so many hits over the years from other groups on social media saying we were crazy for seeing things that weren’t there (especially Destiel), for writing meta and analyzing tropes and believing the evidence of our eyes and ears. The network has made us relive that entire nightmare WHILE processing our grief for a show we wanted so badly to celebrate and which instead we now have to mourn.

So again guys, I cannot prove that this is exactly what happened at all; this is simply my idea of what may have happened. But right now, it’s the most sense I can make from this mess, and to be honest, the act of typing it out has helped me enormously in my processing of it all. I feel like I can see more clearly, like I know where to target my outrage and where to direct empathy. I feel like just fucking maybe, I might be able to do my job tomorrow without bursting into tears at random moments. 

I really hope that this post has helped some of you to, in some small way, process this too. We get through this the way that Misha told us at his panel this morning, the way the writers have told us to do all season long...we throw out the story God gave us and we make it better. We write our characters the happy endings they deserve. 

We save them.

One last thing--if you have not already, please consider channeling your rage into a donation to one of the five causes our fandom has put together to pay tribute to our beloved show and to mourn the ending it should have had:

-The Castiel Project

-Dean Winchester is Love

-Sam Winchester Project

-The National Association of the Deaf

-The Jack Kline Project

[sunkcost]

On Jimmy being willing to change himself to however Kim wants, it really hurts my feelings that those lines are almost the exact same as when he’s begging Chuck in “Nacho” (I’d also add to the pile Inflatable where he actually admits he tries to be what they want, and the Fall commentary where they said he steals costuming and lines from everyone else). Like I’m not trying to woobify, but fuck he deserves a little peace with himself, and not just hiding behind a loud and colourful mask.

no, i'm totally with you. there's something so sad about jimmy's desperation for acceptance. i think that's one of the major contributing factors in how he reaches this point. he's constantly chaffing against people's expectations but he also cares so much about what other people think of him. he wants to be wanted. i really never stop thinking about that peter gould quote saying walt turned out to be driven by a desire for power but jimmy's always been driven by a need for approval and acceptance and it's something he never quite gets. i think that one of jimmy's major problems is that he is so fixated on how people see him, even as he doesn't want to be. it's the same problem he has with morality, really, that he's too caught up in external justification.

trying to refrain from getting too into the weeds on it, but if the show is in many ways about the non-existence of objective morality, the idea that there are things which can be existentially proven to be right or wrong, then there's something really perfect about how jimmy's need for external approval is so tied up in his struggle with identity. looking at morality from an existential perspective, the idea is really that if you cannot objectively prove things to be wrong or right then justifying your actions is fundamentally impossible. there's no logical foundation to base your argument on because the ideas of 'wrong' and 'right' themselves are ideological constructs. they only mean as much as you decide to allow them mean. therefore, the idea is more about acting in good vs. bad faith than being wrong or right, deciding what you personally believe to be correct or incorrect courses of action, knowing there's nothing objective to dictate that decision and that you cannot justify it to anyone else. all that to say, jimmy steps outside the law, the socially agreed upon idea of morality, but he isn't ever really able to give up the need to justify his actions to other people. he has left the social standard of moral acceptance but he doesn't have the internal conviction to stand by his decisions when they aren't understood by other people.

i think he has the same problem with identity. he doesn't want to live his life defined by societal norms but he also can't deal with the fact that people reject him when he steps outside of them. there's a constant tension between him not wanting to conform and him wanting to be wanted. he has an identity in there somewhere, i do believe that, but his identity is incompatible with his need for acceptance and so he gets stuck in this awful place in the middle where no one understands or accepts him and he doesn't understand or accept himself. that is my very longwinded way of saying that i completely agree. to me it feels like the only way he can really move forward is to start relying on internal conviction instead of external validation. he has to give up on being accepted, which for him i think is an extremely difficult thing to do. at the same time, there is something about him going from jimmy, a person torn between being who he is and being who people want him to be, to saul, who is neither who he is nor who people want him to be, to gene who is, like he says, a shadow or a ghost, not really a person at all.

i also think it kind of has to do with observation. saul is about controlling how people look at him, even if negatively. on the surface it seems to be about giving up on what people think of him, but i think it's the opposite. i think it's nothing but an awareness of how people think of him, and it's at once an attempt to control it (he can't make them love him but he can make them hate him), and to punish himself (he's existing in his own personal hell, a world where no one understands him and no one wants him). gene is also something like that, but different as well. saul is like a perversion of jimmy, all the things people dislike about him taken to the extreme, playing into their preexisting perceptions even as they don't actually reflect what he wants or who he is. gene is totally average, accepted by people, but not in a real way, because no one knows him well enough for the acceptance to mean anything. jimmy's real identity is still somewhere inside of him but it's not perceived by anyone and so he remains unknown and unwanted. that's a big part of the reason why i don't think further punishing jimmy is the best outcome for the series. it feels like the trajectory of his identity has pushed him to a point where he could either disappear entirely or realize his identity as something outside of other people's perceptions. to me that feels like the only way to stabilize his struggles with morality and identity.

[cinemaocd]

Howard Hamlin Had it Coming: Plan and Execution

OK props to the writers for this title because it works on so many levels...

This is the climax of season six. This is the high point, the successful grift, pulled off brilliantly at the last minute and ending with a blurry makeout session while on a conference call. Truly a high water mark for Gisell and Victor! They celebrate by watching Born Yesterday (someday I need to make a whole post about classic film refs in BCS) which is perfect because it is about the intelligence of a supposedly dumb person. Then Howard walks in, the dupe, the dumb guy the pretty face in the Hamlinigo blue tie, looking and sounding a lot worse for wear. He speaks his truth and dies in a terribly matter of fact way at the hand of Lalo.

I think I disagree with almost everyone in the fandom when I say that Howard actually does deserve this comeupance. There are the reasons Howard mentions: "I took Chuck's side too often, I took away Kim's office and put Kim in dock review," but there is more than that.

When the series opens Howard is the principal antagonist to Jimmy. We don't know why but Jimmy is struggling to care for his brother, he has no income, is living in nail salon and trying to get his practice off the ground. Howard offers Jimmy an allowance to help him care for his brother, but Jimmy wants to take his brother's power of attorney and take control of Chuck's money. That would have been a very bad thing, I think, but Jimmy sees it as just another way in which he is treated like a child by his brother and his brother's partner. I also can't help but wonder if Howard isn't happy with Chuck out of the way because he can run HMM like he wants to despite all appearances to the contrary. Howard seems as lost in Chuck's shadow as Jimmy is.

And there is so much more to the situation with Kim than dumping her in dock review. Remember she is the one that got Mesa Verde and they took it away from her. The patronizing way they take control of the case, and push her out of the spotlight is what drives her flight from HMM. It wasn't the office and dock review, it was taking Mesa Verde away that triggered her to leave. You can say yeah well they put her through law school, but hasn't she paid them back for that? Her years in the mailroom alone...She is an indentured servant to them and when she tries to go her own way, they slap her down and punish her.

Howard's patronizing "Charlie Hustle" crap all through Jimmy's mailroom days was enough to earn him the bowling balls. It wasn't all Howard's fault of course, but it couldn't have happened without Howard's complicity. Then there is the Howard's role in the disbarring. Again, it was mostly Chuck, but Howard facilitated and validated it and Jimmy and Kim repeatedly saw him as being in league with Chuck.

I think Jimmy has rationalized Chuck's death and completely blames Howard for forcing Chuck out of HMM. He saw the evidence that Chuck had had a complete relapse. We the audience know that was triggered by Jimmy's visit and his insincere "apology" but I don't think Jimmy can ever accept that. He clings to the fact that he was forced out of HMM at the same time.

Did Howard deserve to die? Fuck no. That was horrible. But from JImmy and Kim's perspective, Howard has always been the bad guy, always been against them, and has profited greatly from both of their hard work and talent. All they want is what is owed to them and the grift is the way to get it. They have balanced the scales by imagining the good work Kim will do with that money. The whole point of it wasn't to destroy him anyway, it was to settle the Sandpiper suit so they could get paid. And Howard sees that as "childish" but actually it makes a lot of sense given that Kim has quit Big Law and Jimmy is recovering from the disbarring. It also makes sense for the elderly residents of Sandpiper. Cliff and Howard want to get more money in theory for the residents, but how many will be around to actually enjoy it? And lets face it they want to get their payday.

I don't believe Jimmy and Kim are souless as Howard says. I think they have acted selfishly and been vindictive when they should have just moved on, but it's because they've both been patronized and put off by Howard that they've done it. When Kim makes the U turn on the highway, she is choosing revenge, not justice. Jimmy is looking to her for moral guidance (a completely unfair and imbalanced part of their relationship by the way) and she decides for them to go ahead with the grift.

I feel like the whole point of this season is the ways in which revenge destroys the people who try to enact it, how it robs them of their happiness and peace of mind and slowly consumes them and becomes far worse than the original grievance or grief. We see this with Jim and Kimmy and especially Gus and Mike as well.

[katoska]

Ok. So I guess The Winchesters is supposed to be the original, organic, Good Timeline ("the True story of how John and Mary fell in love") while all of SPN happens in a split-off, artificial, way grittier Bad Timeline that lead to what Dean sees in 4x03 In The Beginning and which was very likely created by Chuck through time-travel and/or mind-wipes and a Cupid (can they time-travel and mind-wipe? If not, Seraph partnered with Cupid. Actually, just to do that anyway for the lulz) because the first timeline had an upper limit on how much John could possibly mess up his sons if he never had to wonder what creature had killed his wife or work hard to find any info on monsters.

TW!John made hunter buddies and apparently knew about his dad and the Men of Letters. TW!Mary would have told John about the demon deal with Azazel because why wouldn't she? They could have researched the enemy together and gained a fighting chance before those ten years were up . At least one of them could have marked their calendar to not fucking forget the date, too. And even if Mary still died - or John did - neither one would go paranoid over it because hunters being killed by demons is just what happens. That blood ritual and fire otoh? That's weird shit, but at least if you are a hunter/MOL you know where to start your research. You know people who can help you and how to check they aren't demons or shifters or ghouls.

TW!John and Mary got to meet in a totally different genre of show than the one SPN is generally set in. I mean, look at it! It's a peppy teenage RomCom with some mystery and horror elements so the (in-universe) audience can pretend they are in it for those rather than the relationships dynamics... which look rather wholesome, at least going by the trailer. Everyone seems supportive and honest with one another. Even the violence looks cartoonish what with the yeeted demon and the holy water pistol. Nothing gritty or bloody. The special effects look outdated and cheap, but in a deliberate Ghostfacers Effect kinda way because the story takes place in 1972. The orange-ness of everything always feels like an in-joke about the lighting analysts in fandom.

Anyway, I expect the tragedy of this timeline to be that John and Mary didn't get to be the versions of themselves that they first fell in non-Cupid-induced love with, and instead were forced to become the versions of themselves that would later produce Sam and Dean('s childhood trauma).

And if I wanted to go for a real gut-punch, I'd make Castiel that angel who had orders to mess with John and Mary's timeline. Orders that he'd only understand the impact of... well, in several stages throughout the show, though most accutely in S4 (especially E03).

It would explain why Cas became so protective of Dean and fought for him even though he... should have felt zero obligation to do that, and definitely not so early on, if there was no specific reason for it (no, "gay" is not a valid reason for a heel-face-turn of this size). Cause usually that only happens with people he had harmed or thought he had failed in some way (Jimmy, Claire, Sam, Dean, Meg, post-fall angels, post-Leviathan humanity, Kelly, Jack.... Not Crowley though lol). It would also explain why he never seems angry about the brothers' childhood anecdotes, only sad. I'd be diplomatic and stick with "your father was a complicated man", too, if I felt partly responsible for 'complicating' him and inadvertently made my friends' - and especially Dean's - lives way worse.

Though don't ask me who the hell is supposed to play Cas' vessel. How about Misha playing Cas walking around in Jimmy Novak's dad and wearing the worst possible 70s outfit?

[jimmymcgools]

Director's commentary on the Twenty-Sixth of December from missing scenes series? 🙏

yesss! don't mind me working through these so slowly, i'm using them as nice little writing breaks 💖

this is a cool choice for commentary, i havent read this since i posted it and i've forgotten a lot, so it almost feels like reading a brand new thing? i remember i wanted to write a soft christmas oneshot, especially because the christmas chapter of safs was that sad 1979 flashback with angsty teen jimmy mcgill and his sads.

“Hey,” he says. He grins, and it actually reaches his eyes. They crinkle.

i wanted this to stand alone if it needed to, but in the wider acb context i don't think jimmy's smiles have reached his eyes for a while! this comes right after the end of chapter 15, when he's just had some fragile validation from chuck and reconnected with kim.

She takes the bowl and the two spoons. Their handles are criss-crossed.

idk why but this always makes me think of those shots in the show of their two briefcases lying together!

with the kim pov stuff, i often try to keep the descriptions limited to simple physical descriptions of things. just their tangible properties like colours or positions, but still try to draw mood from that? i don't know if that makes any sense. it's a little challenge.

From somewhere in the darkness, he pulls out a long-sleeved shirt, one she hasn’t seen before. It’s purple and white and blue, densely patterned. He slips his arms into it with his back to her then turns toward the room, looking down at his fingers as they do up the buttons.

slippin jimmy voice: they have this one shirt that costs one thousand dollars because the pattern's SO wild! i want that one SO BAD!

“What is that?” she says, leaning her head closer. “Is it paisley?” He looks down again. “I think it’s purple?”

s6 give us more dumb dumb jimbo, please, i dare you. "finish... translating?"

“Hey,” he says, settling beside her, “the ladies back home loved this.” “Sure.” She scoops another spoonful of cereal into her mouth. “Sure they did.”

oh for kim to hear that little speech he gave the skate rat twins. all the finest babes. ok buddy sure. and everyone in the bar stood up and applauded.

“Maybe we had an extra round at Arno’s that night,” he adds, eventually. “Threw bottles against the wall. Like fireworks, right?”

a reminder of the story he tells her before the HHM party!

He chuckles and nudges her. “Oh, I meant yesterday.” Yesterday? (And she hears a phone ringing, hears the shrill bell of it on the wall, and she knows who’s on the other end of the line, knows without knowing how she knows it.)

oh shit i'd forgotten how much fun this little technique of intrusive kim thoughts is!

this is making me want to do another kim pov thing. i love thinking about this kind of narrative voice stuff. even that "Yesterday?" is kind of surprising, like suddenly her thoughts are allowed in the narration in a totally transparent way, and then the bracketed part is like... something poking at the back of her mind, even as she tries not to think of it. so much fun.

Lifts her hand from his leg, pressing it to his cheek. Transferring warmth from one place on him to the other.

obsessed with these two each thinking of the other as a source of warmth and light

(And she wants to know how he managed to get through so much life but still look like that, because even when the dark spots come over him it’s still a bright kind of darkness, she thinks, bright and loud like back-alley fireworks.)

aw man, this really condenses so much of their relationship for me.

i love thinking about like... scenes presented in jimmy pov where he's deep in the throes of an emo fit, but from kim's pov she still sees the bafflingly optimistic and scrappy dude who never quits. i really love the thought of this bright golden thing being there in him, that he never sees in himself but kim always sees.

Into his neck, she murmurs, “Yeah, who’d miss this?” and she can feel his laughter on her lips against his throat.

always happy when i can get these two memeing during sex

(And the heaviness of him on her surrounds her, closes her in, closes her in the way you close a circle, in the way you close a door, because being closed is just the touch of things connecting, right? And she can feel everything closing to one warm layer and spreading beneath her skin, closing inside her and him amongst it.)

ahhh i forgot i went on such a tear about this! there's like this duality of meaning that i'm trying to pick apart. you hear the word "closed" and you think inaccessible or cut-off, but it also means things connecting. two things have to touch for something to be closed. i don't know!

“Jimmy,” she murmurs, and he smiles like he always does when she says his name.

this is another one of those things where like... i love to picture acb/safs/siaml jimmy smiling a little identical smile every time kim says his name, and we don't know he's doing it because he doesn't think of himself doing it, but kim sees it every time.

She can feel the closeness spreading beneath her skin again, and it’s like she’s the warm one now, like she’s the one passing the heat through to him, as she finally reaches down and tangles her fingers in his hair. Holds him in place.

LISTEN i know this is him doing down on her but are these not also character arc words??? no???

He hums, and then softly: “Merry Christmas.” She runs her thumb along his crown. “Not Christmas anymore, you know.” He shakes his head, hair catching in her fingers. “It’s still Christmas on the West Coast.” “Ah,” she says. “The west coast. Of—where, exactly?”

i love this dynamic these two do of like... one of them consciously playing the straight man and the other being silly. it's too cute. i love that they trade off the straight man role, too.

His face draws together. And he murmurs, “D’you think his name was really McDuck?”

poor sleepy jimmo is very concerned about this.

oh man, thank you so much for picking this one for the commentary! like i said, i hadnt looked at it since i posted it, and i usually dont enjoy reading over my stuff but i had a really nice time going through this one 🥺 so thank you!

[amwritingmeta]

15x20: New Beginnings

I’d like to speak of the cause and effect of the ending.

I agree that the execution could’ve been skewered just a tiny bit and it would’ve made the overall impression more palatable, but assuming production was at the very least hampered by COVID restrictions, we know that this wasn’t actually Dabb’s final vision. It’s what we’ve got, though, and it still leaves us with a lot of tying up of narrative threads. 

How?

We have a final image of Dean and Sam together and I understand why this is irksome and why it feels regressive. Here’s why I think it actually isn’t:

Dark Side of the Moon tells us that Dean and Sam are most definitely not soulmates meant to share a Heaven. Dean’s memories are focused on Sam while Sam’s memories are completely devoid of Dean. Dean also needs to find Sam (and is helped to do so by Cas). Ie. they brothers are not in a shared Heaven, the way Jimmy and Amelia and Mary and John are highlighted to be.

We also know that Heaven’s system is basically a prison for the mind of the souls of those who have died, right? You get stuck in your best memories. This is simply Heaven’s idea of benevolence, because Heaven, and the angels, have never understood how much choice and free will matter to humanity.

So. No matter how much Dean and Sam succeeded in saving the world throughout our narrative, they were still always headed for forced separation and this prison for their minds and being filed away behind one of those white doors, in essence ceasing to exist, and the point of all their trials and tribulations would have been what? Living a long and happy life, only to die and go to what Dean wouldn’t have chosen for himself with a gun to his head? Eternally brainwashed into thinking he’s content? 

Can you think of anything more horrible to be waiting at the end of their road?

So the point to this ending we got is, to me, gloriously clear and it’s this:

The journeys of these men, throughout this entire narrative, made the new Heaven possible. 

This new Heaven, where there’s freedom of choice and endless possibility for exploration. Where human souls are now granted an afterlife worth actually living, where everyone can reconnect with the people they’ve cared about, the people they’ve loved. 

(Buddhists have six Heavens and believe life exists on multiple planes meaning when you die you simply transcend to the next plane where there’s more living to be done) (Swedish children’s author Astrid Lindgren explored the death of two brothers through sacrifice and illness in her novel The Brothers Lionheart and in the mythology of this book the first Heaven one enters just after death is called Nangijala, and once you die in Nangijala you move onto Nangilima and so on) (etc.) 

What we get in the Supernatural mythos is that there’s no more prison for the mind. No more only soulmates get a shared Heaven: ie. family genuinely doesn’t end in blood.

So look at what this means for the entire structure of our narrative and our character journeys -->

The Road 

If Dean and Sam hadn’t been codependent, they wouldn’t have made those bad choices that brought Cas into the narrative. 

If Cas hadn’t been influenced by Dean to rebel and start making bad choices of his own, he never would’ve made Heaven fall apart by trying to stitch it together and teach angels free will and stepping into a leader role he wasn’t quite ready for, and he wouldn’t have begun on the journey that brought him right to the moment when he expressed his need of bringing back a win for Dean, and for himself.

That win, turns out, was Jack. 

Cas’ faith in Jack, Cas fighting for Jack, Cas feeling responsible and stepping into the Good Father Figure in order to keep his promise to Kelly and protect Jack was what led to Cas making a bad deal with the Empty, but that bad deal also left Cas with the opportunity to save Dean’s life when death was threatening to break down that door and kill them both.

The remarkable truth that’s added to this moment is that Cas’ journey has brought him to a place in his progression where he’s no longer afraid of his feelings, he’s no longer questioning them or thinking they mean a weakness he shouldn’t let define him, because he realises that what he needs isn’t Dean to love him back for that love to be real, to be valuable and valid. His fear of alienating Dean through loving him is the lie. That’s where his happiness stems from, him recognising and finally embracing this truth. 

Because the love he feels isn’t a weakness. It never was: it’s his strength. It’s always guided him, even when he didn’t realise it.

And the strength of it lets him tell Dean exactly how he sees him and that he loves him, and opening up to and being honest with himself is what allows Cas to integrate with his shadow. The Empty takes him, but Cas is at peace, because he no longer fears and avoids his unconscious, he no longer needs to engage in suppression and repression of his emotions, and so his shadow no longer holds any sway over him, which is a fact given to us by how Cas’ ending in this narrative means him being free of the Empty. 

A freedom that never would have been granted, never would have been possible, without his faith in, his fighting for and his protection of Jack.

Cas’ words to Dean makes Dean begin his final steps into integration as well, meaning Cas’ declaration of love directly affects the outcome of the fight against Chuck, because Dean wants Cas back, but it’s not everything he’s focused on, since it shouldn’t be everything he’s focused on. 

It can’t be, since there are bigger fish to fry, and because of Cas’ view of him, Dean is opening up to his true self, to trust, to having faith in himself, which allows for a letting go of the need for control and thinking it’s all on him and everything is his responsibility or everyone dies. 

Thanks to this, we get Dean in teamwork mode with Sam and Jack, the three of them together figuring out how to manipulate Michael into bringing Chuck to them in order for Jack to de-power him. 

Dean’s integration is complete, and given to us through the symbology of his inner child (Jack) sucking the power out of his shadow (Chuck) and is then underlined by the ego (Dean) telling his de-powered shadow that it’s to be forgotten. Dean’s shadow, which has fed on and also fuelled the need in Dean for repression and suppression, no longer holds any sway over him. 

And Dean’s understanding and embracing of his true identity is highlighted by how he refuses to kill Chuck. 

Because that’s not who Dean is: he’s not a killer. He’s internalised Cas’ view of him. Cas’ truth making way for Dean’s own truth to shine a light. 

Dean is done with self-denial. And self-destruction. 

Which is what 15x20 is all about: that lack of self-destruction and the finality of goodbye.

Because Dean being shown to accept the finality of the loss of Cas has such direct bearing on Dean’s ability to accept the finality of saying goodbye to his brother.

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

All of this, all of it, is because of and thanks to Cas’ LOVE for Dean. 

Thanks to the moment that allowed Cas to express it and to SEE Dean for who he truly is. 

Thanks to the moment of Cas’ integration we get Dean integrating.

And it’s so beautiful that it’s the loss of Cas this time that allows for Dean to do this, because he’s always plummeted into despair without Cas. His progression has slowed to a crawl without Cas in the narrative. His entire sense of self, his entire source of faith in anything, being drained out of him. 

This has been romantic and lovely and fabulous, but it’s also so unhealthy. 

Dean being shown to mourn, to want Cas back, to expect Cas at the end of that phone call, only for him to move away from the need and want to have Cas back, recognising that it’s possible Cas’ return is now an improbability and choosing to look to the future, because now he’s feeling worthy of a future, this is such an important detail for the love story to move from profound bond territory...

(where Cas used the bond forged by Heaven as an excuse for why he kept hanging around Dean) (Dean was his charge, his mission, he was meant to protect him) (a view shattered by Hester in S8) (and properly dismantled by the human!Cas arc) (at least the way I see it because that’s where Cas got that love he feels brought into actual stark relay like oh fuck I’m in love with him)

...to the healthy, selfless, loving side to that bond, which isn’t about self-deception, miscommunication and fear, but about blowing all of that apart, letting feelings flow freely, opening up to the truth of them, the strength of them, and these two men being able to finally free themselves of all those past doubts by embracing their true identities.

I realise there’s frustration that we only got part-textual Destiel. I felt it too. But I never expected canon Destiel. I hoped and wished, but up until Cas’ declaration of love, I questioned whether the studio would be onboard, and it turns out they weren’t okay with making SPN an overtly queer narrative. Was Cas’ declaration of love baiting or BYG? I hope my meta reading in this post will tell you how little I feel it was.

So then. Letting go of the initial shock of it all, I’m leaning on what I did expect: the love story so strongly highlighted in the subtext that we were all left with zero doubt that we’d been seeing it there for a reason.

Subtext is part of the text. For any writer worth their salt, subtext is more important than the surface text. Text without subtext is flat and dull. The text we’ve been dealing with for fifteen years has always had layers upon layers.

These final three episodes, as I’ve already pulled on above, brings it in spades and our subtext tells us plainly:

Dean Winchester is in love with Castiel, just as much as Castiel is in love with him. 

How does it tell us this plainly?

Cas is finally able to integrate because he opens up to the truth he’s carried with him for so long: his love for Dean. Unconditional. He no longer needs Dean to say it back, to validate the emotion, Cas is realising that happiness in the feeling itself, in acknowledging it and allowing it free rein. Cas moves into making peace with himself, for himself.

Now, we know Cas loves Dean because, well, declared, but why is it plain that Dean loves Cas back?

Firstly, because of the episode being entirely structured around people in love losing one half. That’s as much of an in-our-faces use of mirroring as underlining of the subtextual love story that we’ve ever gotten from Berens. 

Even stronger than the mirroring, for me, is the fact that Cas’ love for Dean allows Dean to finally move into integration. 

Cas’ words infuse Dean with a sense of self-worth that immediately paves way for him beginning to have all that faith in himself that Cas has always represented to him. The build from 15x18 through to 15x20 is like a gentle moving away from Cas being the external source of Dean’s faith, to Cas’ love and expressed faith revealing Dean’s internal source of faith in himself.

A source which has been suppressed and repressed out of a whole layer of different fears, which have in turn brought on the belief that a toxic masculinity armour was necessary for survival and that all feelings are weaknesses, but because of Cas’ faith in him, because of Cas’ expressed love, Dean is able to no longer need an external source of faith, because he’s now internalised and embraced the truth of what makes him who he is.

Just like Cas is shown to do, we’re given Dean recognising that the love he feels isn’t a weakness, but a strength, because Cas’ words is about Dean’s capacity for LOVE. It’s this love that takes away Chuck’s ability to tell Dean who he is. 

No one can tell you who you are -- you choose who to be. 

For his entire life, right up until that moment in that room with Cas, facing death (literally) all Dean can see himself as is someone who can do nothing and who knows nothing except how to give into his anger (he’s never been able to control it because he’s never recognised the source of it) and find something to kill.

This view of himself has been constantly whispered to him and reinforced by his unconscious, his Shadow-side, who’s kept Dean thinking that he doesn’t have good things last for him, ever, so he can’t have love in his life or a future to look forward to, because he doesn’t deserve it. A perpetual emotional roundabout where his Shadow-side has stayed in complete control.

One might argue this has always been the source of Dean’s anger: his inability to dare open up to his true identity that has kept the toxic masculinity armour in place, kept the performance up, kept him more often than not lying even to himself of who he is and who he wants to be, because he never felt there was a choice in the matter. 

Truly allowing himself to recognise and feel all that longing for love that’s been like a tight ball in his chest always, meant giving into weakness meant getting Sammy killed or himself or both of them meant failure.

But the only way to beat back and conquer our Shadow-side is by recognising and accepting our flaws and no longer feeling unworthy because of them.

That’s what Cas’ words and his love does for Dean. 

That’s right there in the subtext: Dean, even in the moments before certain death, being unable to open up to the truth of who he is and what really drives him; Dean needing his external source of faith, this man that he’s loved for a long time, to tell him that how he sees himself is wrong, to afford him a different view of himself, to bring the truth to light so that Dean can finally feel worthy it, because Dean couldn’t beat his Shadow back on his own, his dark view of himself was much too ingrained for that.

It had to be Cas. The narrative tells us it always had to be Cas. And so it is Cas who saves Dean from himself. And saves Dean’s life. And saves Dean from having to spend his afterlife in a prison of the mind.

Love wins.

And Cas only ever entered the narrative due to Dean’s need to Protect Sammy at all costs, because that has always been such a huge identity marker for Dean, his entire self-understanding and sense of self tied to whether he can keep his brother alive and out of harms way, which, as he grows up, then translates itself into Dean’s enormous capacity for selflessness and caring about others. 

His core trait was never weapon, it was shield. It was protector. Stemming directly from all that love he carries around and can’t allow himself to feel because it means weakness and that means death and that means he’s failed and is worthless and around it has always gone.

And would always have gone, too. If not for Cas.

Love fucking WINS.

I mean. DAMN! It’s so gorgeous.

(this angle still holds even if Dean in any way was ever meant to actually reciprocate in that scene, because it’s made so clear to us how Cas never expects Dean to say it back) (if Dean is meant to say it back and the love story is meant to be textual that would be mind-blowing head-exploding joyful news) (but it doesn’t change the subtextual move away from unhealthy holding on to healthy letting go) (the textual would only ever strengthen the fact that we have subtextual confirmation) 

But what about...?

Yeah, but what about that ending then? What about the last twenty minutes? What about all the focus on the brothers? 

Was the execution of the finale perfect? No, I wouldn’t say it was, but I could see, when I watched the finale again on the 21st, that there was efforts made to make something good enough. Something geared toward tying our narrative up as best as possible with the means presented to Dabb. 

I understand why people feel stuff is missing.

Because stuff is missing. Dabb told us they had to change the ending, that they were supposed to have a whole lot of people back to populate Dean’s Heaven. Found family galore. Misha said the same thing. They couldn’t (I’m not going to speculate on why, it’s just clear that they couldn’t) and so the ending had to be modified. To me that’s fairly plain in how it’s structured.

Did they have to focus so hard on the brothers?

Well... given the restrictions, I think this was the only way to end this narrative, because the story has always been centred on these two brothers and the bad choices and sacrifices they’ve made, and the blood, sweat and tears they’ve shed in order to remain together.

Their absolute inability to let the other go actually kick-started their onscreen journey.

Because this is a story about dependency, and letting go of that dependency to make way for a healthy, equal coexisting; which is what, to me, that final shot is all about.

Should Cas and Jack have been there? Sure! There will always be stuff missing from the final two eps that I’ll wonder about. Like, if Cas was never meant to be in the story (as per Misha he was but let’s say for argument’s sake) then why didn’t Dean just ask, very calmly, in 15x19 of Jack our New God: “What about Cas?” and then Jack our New God could’ve answered gently, but plainly: “He’s at peace.” Simple. Why didn’t we get an establishing of Eileen as Sam’s wife? And it would’ve helped so much to have Charlie and Stevie reestablished in the visual narrative as alive, however plain it is to me that Jack will have brought them back with everyone else who were away-ed by Chuck.

Sure, there could’ve been more.

But what I love about that final shot of the brothers is this canonical fact:

It would not have been possible without Cas. 

Cas learning and growing and integrating to the point that he knows exactly how to fix the home he’s broken more than once, and how to bring free will, at long last, to Heaven, to the benefit of humanity.

And Dean’s little sideways smile (his “I want this smile”) when Cas is mentioned, when he realises that Heaven is different thanks to Cas, well, isn’t that just the darnedest thing? 

*forever headcanon that Dean was expecting to see Cas again somewhere somehow he just didn’t know when and now... here Cas is* 

When Cas went, it took a little time to adjust, but Dean let go of Cas and didn’t make a deal and didn’t go crazy or self-destructive, there was no nosediving into depression, because Cas’ words made those types of coping mechanisms no longer necessary. 

Dean drinks and indulges at the start of 15x19 because he’s still processing, but by 15x20 Cas’ words have been fully internalised, Dean has integrated, and he’s looking to the future. Set on living, because otherwise he’d render Cas’ sacrifice meaningless.

Dean’s death has zero blaze and glory to it. He didn’t expect this day to be the day. But it is. And he accepts it. And because he does, because he’s open and honest with his brother, because he tells Sam all the words he needs Sam to carry with him, gives Sam all the faith in himself that Cas left Dean with, he’s brought to a Heaven that has been readied for him by the love of his life. 

Cas is right there. And he’s been waiting. And he’s used his time well, because Heaven is now the afterlife that Dean deserves. The ultimate salvation. Love and happiness and companionship and LOVE LOVE LOVE. Forever.

If that isn’t the biggest reward for the both of them after everything they’ve been through, I don’t even know what is!

Sam arriving is a given, but I have to say I genuinely do not see Sam as living his life in pain and grief. He’s happy. He loves his kid. He’s a good father. Just like Dean was, and Bobby, and Cas. All the Good Father figures threaded through 15x20. And this narrative has been about these two brothers. It ending on them together, at peace, feels fitting. 

Yeah, but shouldn’t Dean have gotten to live his life?

Sure, this is my interpretation 100%, but Dean’s death feels softly ironic and fitting because it is unexpected. 

I can’t hit on this enough: there’s no blaze and glory.

Dean was ready to make the most of life, but through accepting death and accepting separation from Sam, Dean is brought into the same moment Cas was brought into, a moment of recognising what’s important, where Dean opens up fully to vulnerability and hands over his trust and faith in that Sam will be fine without him, which pushes Sam into the same integration that Cas’ words afforded Dean. Voicing trust and faith will do that for a person.

And Sam’s arc was always dependent, narratively, on the progression of Dean’s arc, so it makes a lot of narrative sense that this needed to happen for Sam to get pushed out of the nest and forced into having proper faith in himself. Because there’s no other choice. 

He’s left doing what he has to and it results in a balance between that family life he’s always wanted (foreshadowed in 15x01) and staying aware of and raising his son to be aware of the reality of their world, given to us via the tattoo on Dean Jr.’s wrist. (oofta I wish he’d had a different name but since everything had to be done in the visual narrative it’s the easiest way to connect us with Dean still being present in Sam’s life so I get it)

There’s also that romantic in me that feels as though Dean is greatly rewarded for all his suffering and struggles, for all those years of living his life in fear and feeling as though he doesn’t matter by not only bringing him into a Heaven he made possible, but by reuniting him with the love of his life and this time they’re equally immortal, equally made of light, equally eternal, equally integrated and balanced and ready to accept all that love and happiness.

That just makes me fucking happy. For them both.

Bring on the New Beginnings

The fact that the narrative has opened itself up to being interpreted as somehow glorifying death or saying that happiness can only be found in death is distressing, but I hope that the threads I’ve pulled on here gives enough of a basis for me to say how I truly feel like this is simplifying why the choice was made for Dean to die.

It’s not about happiness only being found in death. 

It’s not about devaluing living your life, it’s about the idea, the soft hope, even the narrative promise that death, for our characters, not for humanity as a whole, but for these specific men, who have always avoided it and made bad deals and feared separation and been brought into a crisis of identity (Dean because he doesn’t know who he is without Protect Sammy as purpose and Sam because he genuinely and continuously seem convinced that he can’t hunt without Dean to lead the way) whenever death has touched them have now reached a point where the separation is an accepted part of life.

And this acceptance is rewarded: because the separation isn’t forever.

Death is not the end. It makes way for new beginnings. For all three of TFW. Actually all four, because of course Jack is included in this endgame.

There’s a transformation that takes place, thanks to them integrating. They get to transcend what’s come before and move onto the next plane of existence together. 

Together.

TFW 3.0!

Death on this show has always been about a moment of rebirth, of entering a different leg of their journeys.  

I don’t find it out of place at all that the ultimate moment of death for our characters mean just that. 

Not an ending, but a new beginning.

In conclusion

Could there have been more? As said, yes. Absolutely yes. But I doubt Dabb isn’t aware of that. I don’t think this is the ending he originally intended. It might have been a brothers focused ending, because I think Dean was always meant to die and go to Heaven, but Dean’s Heaven was meant to be a celebration of found family. 

The subtext of this narrative is what I’ve been reading and what I’ve been hooked on for four years, and what I’ll continue to be hooked on for the rest of my life, I’m fairly sure. I wish it could be celebrated, the way it always has been, the way we’ve always known to look deeper.

I hoped Supernatural would turn out to be a vehicle for overt representation. I always hoped that, and believe that was what the writers wanted. The fact that we didn’t get overt bisexual Dean and Destiel as unquestionable canon was distressing to me too and I’ll always think of this ending as a missed opportunity and I wish the CW would learn and fucking do better already. 

I understand the frustration, I understand the anger, I just wish we could all look at the richness of this ending and everything it says about the narrative, about our subtext, about our love story, about our character journeys, and lean into the treasury of it.

And omfg we got Cas as canonically queer. 

We got a main character on our show that is overt representation, on a journey towards a moment where he gets to express love and hope and clarity and this in turn moving through and enabling the integration of Dean and ultimately of Sam as well.

Truth begetting truth. Happiness begetting happiness. And love saving the day.

So, my friends, I will say this: saying that all the writing is bad, or claiming that there’s no depth, nothing to pull on, that it all just plain sucked, that doesn’t quite cut it. These three final episodes, just as any episode ever of this goddamn show, contain all of those layers and layers, especially when looked at together and certainly when taken into the context of the show as a whole.

And yes, you are, of course, more than welcome to your own interpretation! 

To finish I’ll quote Bruce Almighty: 

Lovelovelovelovelovelovelove!! 

[liron-ao3]

Valid

Dean sets the moving box on their new dining table.

Their.

It still feels strange to say and think that. But this is their house. Castiel's and his. Fully furnished, a back garden with a bee-friendly meadow, and a huge garage at the front for Baby and whatever eco-friendly monstrosity his partner will be able to talk him into.

They fixed this house for months, working with their bare hands, sweating ridiculously, stealing kisses in between. They have been the best months of Dean's life, and even though his joints creak just a little more now and his knee is acting up like a bitch, Dean wouldn't change it for the world.

It's a house to be filled with memories. A home, like maybe only the bunker ever was to Dean. It's full of things, some shiny and new, some old, given a second life. Just like them.

Dean has never owned so many things before. Even in his year with Lisa. He had always known that he was only a guest in her life. He lived in her house, loved her son, mowed her lawn. Maybe that would have changed over time. Maybe a year is simply not enough to create an 'ours' from 'mine' and 'yours'.

It's their house already though, even though they are only moving in today.

Dean opens the box that holds the few things he might call his own forever, though. Like the picture of him and his mum before she died. Well, the first time when he was a kid. There are bits and bobs, knick-knacks picked up on the road, too. A tiny drawing that a little girl made for him after he saved her and her parents on a solo hunt. It's yellowed and crinkled. He smiles at it. That had been one of the good days.

Some pieces remind him of the women he used to love. A ring that he had meant to give Cassie more than a decade ago. He doesn't even know why he kept it. Maybe as a reminder? Of what, he isn't so sure. Maybe that someone once loved him, simply for being himself. It's a fucked-up, twisted way of thinking, but well. He's Dean Winchester, after all. Not the best boyfriend material.

He looks up and through the wide windows that give the impression of the garden reaching into their living room. He watches Castiel for a long moment, the way his shoulders twitch as the angel seems to be in deep conversation with a hummingbird. Dean huffs a laugh. Castiel is a weird little bean, avenging angel and little puppy cramped into an unfitting trench coat. At least, his boyfriend owns more clothes now. He simply wears it out of nostalgia.

It's still hard to believe that this man wants to be his, saw his very soul and fell in love with it. Dean still struggles, but he's tired of running away from himself, from love in the fear of losing it. Castiel is his best friend and the third love of his life. Hopefully the last.

Dean has slept with many, girls, guys, and non-binary people. It didn't matter. There only had to be the sparkle, the special tension that pulls two bodies together until they collide in an explosion of passion, fast-burning, the flame already extinct come morning.

It was all he thought he deserved. Everyone who stayed with a Winchester was destined to die for them. He can count the women in his life that didn't die through Chuck's stupid games on one hand.

Dean clicks the ring box open. He hopes that Cassie is happy with whatever bastard is blessed enough to have her at his side. She still holds a special place in Dean's heart. And he loves that he can talk about her with Castiel, that there is no jealousy, just happiness that Dean once had someone who loved him, and grief that it wasn't meant to be.

Like with Lisa. But that was different. Dean still doesn't know what he loved more—her or the idea of loving her, the version of himself that he was at her side. It doesn't matter now. Castiel made all their pictures disappear, along with the memories in her and Ben's heads. He left one photograph of their little family on Dean's pillow, though. The one he crammed into his duffle bag and put into his bedside drawer in the bunker.

Leaving Lisa and Ben had hurt like a bitch. And Castiel held him after a nightmare in which Dean dreamt they were taken by vampires. He had been so angry at him, shouting that it was all his fault. And Castiel had looked at him with sad eyes, saying, "I know."

But he was wrong. Dean knows it wasn't anybody's fault. Both of them tried to do the right thing. Even Castiel as he watched him raking the leaves and decided to let him go. Out of love, even though Castiel didn't have the word for this emotion back then.

Dean runs his fingers through the items that he only spilt from the drawer in a rush, already too late because of a hunt popping up. Castiel didn't comment on his tardiness. Dean knows that he worries about losing him. He can see it in his eyes, every time he needs to heal him. But Dean is worried about him, too. He has seen him die too many times. Castiel may be an angel, but he's far from invincible.

Dean stops still when he touches a small magnet, nestled between a soldier figure he played with growing up on the backseat of the Impala, and a flyer for a wedding venue that was haunted by a ghost before he and Castiel banished it. He took the leaflet, just in case. It's stupid, of course. He's officially dead and he won't marry Jimmy Novak. No way! And it's not as if he would think about marriage, or giving kids made orphans by the supernatural a home or something.

He takes the magnet and looks at it. It's bent a little, the colours slightly chapped. But the pink, purple, and blue are still recognisable. He got it many years ago when he stumbled into a pride event hunting a werewolf.

"So, what letter of the alphabet are you?" a gum bubble making twink had asked him, scanning him from head to toe, sending a rush of endorphins through Dean, better than the one after killing the rogue wolf half an hour earlier.

"B," Dean had said, flashing him his most winsome smile. He had never said it out loud before that moment. Why define who you are if you only share a bed for one night?

Sam had been surprised when he and Castiel got together. Eileen much less so. Maybe because she had known it all along, kindred souls and all that crap.

A smile tugs on the corner of Dean's lips, and he looks up from the magnet to the garden again. Castiel is standing on their porch, watching him with a soft, close-lipped smile.

"Creepy," Dean calls, heat rising into his cheeks. He's still not used to being looked at like this. With so much love and devotion. Castiel said he had to learn to live with it. Dean's trying, but as of yet, it still makes him squirm. But in a good way.

"Mind if I put these on the fridge?" He holds up the photographs and the drawing with a questioning, vulnerable look.

Castiel smiles even wider. "Of course. They're all family."

Dean takes out a breath, feeling like he hasn't drawn air for days. He nods, walks to the kitchen, and fixes the items with magnets on the fridge. Then he looks at the three-coloured magnet in his hand. He may not really have hidden his sexuality, but he didn't show it proudly either. Maybe it's time for it now.

He bends it so that it is plane again, and presses it under the pictures of him and his mum, a snapshot of him, Sam, Eileen, and Castiel. Next to the picture of him with Lisa and Ben, and the drawing of that little girl who drew him with a cowboy hat. He looks at the fridge door and nods. This is him.

Loving son and brother, friend, saviour, bisexual man, surrogate father, and boyfriend. He's more than a hunter, more than a piece on Chuck' checkerboard, more than the sum of his mistakes. He has loved, and he has failed. And despite it all, he is proud. Not too much. But he can feel it, burning in his chest. He is valid and worthy of having it all.

[jungkookienoona]

Rescue and Rehabilitation 1

|Masterlist|

Summary:

In a time where it’s no longer legal to own a hybrid, Jungkook is part of the Hybrid Rescue and Rehabilitation Unit. This is the story of how he found you.

~ Trying to make as little contact as possible he draped the blanket over you, covering your nudity and offering you some warmth. “There. You’re safe now.”~

Genre: Fluff, Angst

Pairing: Jungkook X Cat Hybrid!Reader (Y/N)

Warnings: Swearing, mentions of child abduction, suicidal thoughts (but no actual suicidal thoughts if that makes sense), mentions of non-con (before fic takes place), mentions of Nazis, mentions of human experimentaion on minority races, hybrid slavery, abuse, traumatised Y/N.

A/N: I was planning to upload this as a one-shot but I feel like I’ll be able to write more if I actually break it up into a mini series. Also I need validation because I submitted an altered version of this as coursework and made the changes suggested by my lecturer... then got marked down for making those changes...

Edit: I’m a dumbass and forgot to tag two very important people who read through this before uploading. Thank you @mhysaunburnt​ and @namjin-fangirling-again​ so much!

Word Count: 2731

It was just another day on the job, probably another false lead with some kid trying to piss off their neighbour by having the police turn up at their door. But Jungkook had a policy. ‘Always investigate a call’, he wasn’t the best in his unit for no reason after all. What unit was that? He was part of the Hybrid Rescue and Rehabilitation Unit. 

Hybrids were originally created by the Nazis during the Second World War to be super soldiers. Those who were experimented on to create this new species of human were those considered “subhuman” by the regime: The Jewish and Roma people. Luckily, the allied forces stumbled across the concentration camp in which these experiments were being conducted before they could be deployed. However, this did not mean a happy ending for the hybrids. They soon found themselves being used as soldiers for the allies, with more being created by the Russians using stolen research notes and prisoners of war. They modified the reproductive organs of the hybrids so that they can breed and multiply, along with their aging accelerated so they could be of use sooner.

The use of hybrid soldiers turned the tide of war but they were not given their freedom. Instead they were repurposed into slaves where they were explotied for free labour and sex trafficking.  A decade before Jungkook was born it became illegal to own, breed or sell hybrids. This happened due to an increased amount of people protesting the way hybrids were treated. Hybrids had become the new slaves. Yet 35 years since the law was implemented, since they were freed, hybrids were still being used as slaves. Abducted as children and sold to the highest bidder. It was Jungkook’s job to find these hybrids, arrest the perp and help the hybrid to become stable before reuniting them with their family.

So, taking a breath, he adjusted his backpack then raised his fist to the fading white door and gave a resounding knock. 

He heard a grunt from the other side of the door before there was a loud thud accompanied by a woman’s pained shout. He frowned. That wasn’t a good sign even if there wasn’t a hybrid in there. Once again, he knocked on the door, this time somewhat impatient to see what exactly was happening in there. There was some shuffling before the door was opened to show a sliver of a man’s face. His hair was matted and shaggy, eyes sunken and somewhat glazed, and his skin was pale and dirty. Possibly in his late forties, early fifties. 

“What d’ya want?” This man really needed to see a dentist. Teeth stained brown from coffee and cigarettes, some even missing or rotting. 

Squaring his shoulders, Jungkook mustered as much calm authority as he could, “We got a call about a disturbance. Possibly spousal related.”

A small lie but from experience, he found they would never let him in if he outright said he was there to find a hybrid. The man looked sceptical for a second before opening the door wider, revealing his torn, stained clothing. 

“Fine, ‘ave a looky-loo but ya ain’t gonna find shit.”

How drunk or high did the guy have to be to think Jungkook hadn’t heard the commotion that had happened inside? 

“I’ll be the one deciding if I’ve found anything or not.”

With that, he pushed past the man to enter the premises. Jungkook gave a quick scan of the main space. Cigarette butts littered the floor almost carpeting it. There were signs of struggle. In the centre of the room was an overturned table. On the left-hand side to that; a torn-up couch cushion, torn-up in a way that resembled how a cat hybrid would. Jungkook noticed a strange mark underneath one butt covered area. Crouching down, he swept away the mess to see ten fresh groves dug into the flooring. Claw marks. The female voice must have been a hybrid. And where the marks led to must have been where she was kept. Following them, he ended outside a metal door. He jimmied the handle and found it locked. Normally an officer would ask the occupant of the premises to unlock doors for them. But Jungkook wasn’t going to risk being ran out of the building. 

Once again crouching down, Jungkook pulled a lock picking kit from his pocket. It didn’t take him long to get the door open but the sight that met him had anger bubble in his stomach. There you were. Naked, beaten and bruised, chained to the wall by a metal collar around your neck. Turning on his heels, Jungkook marched back to where he had left the man and got his handcuffs from his belt. The man was stood by the front door, having a smoke, with his back to the angered officer. Perfect. Swiftly grabbing both the man’s arms, Jungkook pinned them behind his back and cuffed him.

“Sir, you are under arrest for the possession and abuse of a hybrid. You have the right to remain silent.”

He radioed in his arrest, asking for a squad to come out and take care of the perp as well as the crime scene so he could see to the hybrid. Luckily there was one close by who could be there in ten minutes. Once they arrived, Jungkook headed back to the room you were in. 

You looked absolutely terrified as you stared up at him, tears rolling down your cheeks as you gave a warning hiss. Jungkook quickly shrugged off his backpack and slid it closer to you then raised both hands in a gesture meant to pacify you. 

“It’s alright. No need to be alarmed. I’m here to help.” He said quietly as he got onto his knees to get level with you, shuffling towards you, “I’m going to undo the chains but you have to promise not to attack me.” He was wary of how your tail was wagging against the floor. With cat hybrids that could mean one of two things. You were excited at the idea of rescue or you felt threatened and about to attack. He hoped it was the former.

Finally, he reached you. Once again pulling out his lock pick kit, he kept eye-contact with you as he unlocked the collar. Not an easy feat. When you heard the lock click free you yanked the offending metal off and chucked it as far away from you as you possibly could. Jungkook went to place a soothing hand on your shoulder but you hissed at him once again.

“Whoa. Okay okay. I won’t touch you. Not without your permission.” Slowly, he reached for his backpack, unzipping it to pull out a large fleece blanket. Trying to make as little contact as possible he draped the blanket over you, covering your nudity and offering you some warmth. “There. You’re safe now.”

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It wasn’t exactly easy to get you out of the building and let alone into his car, but somehow, he managed and you were curled up in the backseat, staring intently out the window, ears twitching at every sound. The drive to his precinct was long and quiet. You weren’t a talker but hopefully, once you had calmed down and got used to him you would open up a little. 

Once arriving at the precinct, Jungkook had you follow him to his office. Though you kept a good metre behind him. Sensing your unease, he paused outside his door and gave you a gentle smile.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything to you. I just have some paperwork to do and file so I can begin your care.” He opened the door and pointed to a cupboard, “There are some modified clothes for hybrids in there. Wear whatever makes you comfortable, I’ll be out here as you dress.” You gave him a suspicious look, “Promise I won’t try to peek.”

You sent him another sceptical look then hesitantly entered the office space. Jungkook waited outside the door for you, keeping to his word and not opening the door after you had closed it. Even when he was a little concerned about how long you were taking. He knew that if he did try and check on you, you would mistake his concern for more perverse intentions. 

Eventually, the handle clicked as it turned and the door opened. There you stood, the blanket still wrapped around you but only loosely. You were dressed in a light blue t-shirt and a pair of Khaki shorts, seemingly having decided to remain barefoot. But you weren’t looking at him. Your eyes remained downcast as you stepped aside to let him in. The way a hybrid slave would do for their master. It appeared he would need to undo your conditioning as a part of your care programme.

He stepped closer to you but made sure he didn’t get too close, then crouched slightly to look you in the eyes, “You can look at me. You can look at anyone. From this day forward you are your own master.”

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Even when he was filling out all the necessary forms and reports you hadn’t uttered a single word. And that’s all it took for Jungkook to figure out what was going on. You were either mute due to a medical reason or a selective mute from trauma, he leaned more towards that latter since you still made little noises here and there. He made a point of including his realisation in his report.

“I hope you don’t mind me assigning you a temporary name, kind of need something to call you while your with me.”

You frowned, eyebrows furrowing as you tilted your head to the side in confusion.

“For me to help you, you have to live with me for a while until I think you’re ready to identify your family and return you to them. I’m hoping by that point you’ll be talking and will tell me your real name. It’ll make everything so much easier.” He chuckled, “No pressure by the way. Take as long as you need… I think I’ll call you… hmm… let’s see,” He scratched his cheek on thought, “Goyang-i (Cat/Kitty). I’ll call you Goyang-i. Short and sweet… but not very imaginative.” A sigh left his lips, disappointed in himself.

With one final signature, the last of the paperwork was finished. He rose from his seat at his desk and gestured for you to follow him. Your eyes once again looked towards the floor as you shuffled after him. He gave the paperwork to the necessary person for them to be filed before leaving the building and getting into his car with you in tow.

He shot you a gentle smile when you climbed into the back seat, still a blanket burrito, “Once we get back to mine you’re free to explore my apartment while I run you a bath.”

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Jungkook sat and watched as the water filled the tub. He had dealt with hybrids who had been found in worse conditions but you must have gone through something horrific to choose to go mute. Jungkook knew and understood that selective mutism was rarely caused by abuse and trauma, it was caused by social anxiety more often than not, but the trauma you went through seemed to be the case for you. 

The soft padding of your feet was near silent, the running water almost drowning them out completely. He could just make them out as you explored, drifting close then away again. It was best to let you do this by yourself, at your own speed. Rehabilitation worked best when it was self lead with guidance from him, is what he found out through trial and error. The first step was to get you to relax in your new temporary home. With that thought in mind he reached out to the collection of bath bombs he was gifted by a childhood friend, Yoongi. He was older than Jungkook by four years and was a cat hybrid. Unfortunately, he had been abducted himself, along with his little sister when they had gone out playing one day. Jungkook had successfully found and rescued Yoongi in his first year on the force but as for the little sister…

Jungkook shook his head to clear it, it was no time to dwell on his failure. After a bit of thought on what bath bomb to use, he chose Big Blue. It was meant to be calming, with arame to help the metabolism, sea salt to exfoliate, lemon oil to clear the mind and lavender oil to act as an antiseptic.  Hopefully it will do the trick of relaxing you and cleaning your injuries from the struggle with your former owner. Once the bath was filled, he placed the bomb in, watching as it fizzled and the steam became scented. It kind of reminded him of Busan with it’s subtle ocean smell thanks to the arame and sea salt. 

The creaking of the bathroom door opening let him know you had finished your little adventure for now, the padding of your feet more audible on the tiles. 

“As you can probably tell, your bath is ready.” Your stared at him warily, still a blanket burrito, “Don’t worry,  I won’t be in the room as you… yeah. I’m going to get started on dinner. We’ll eat when you’re done.”

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Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, also referred to as C-PTSD.  Jungkook was pretty sure you might be suffering from that. Although he had no way of actually knowing unless you spoke but he wasn’t going to force you to. It was never good to force a non-verbal person to speak when they’re uncomfortable with it. However, you had been through events that could cause it: abduction, abuse and slavery/possible sex slavery. All these events most likely happening from your childhood onwards, though that was a guess on his part, he had no idea what age you had been abducted at. But for a large majority of cases, it's as a child. So suffering multiple traumas to the extent of becoming mute… Yeah, this was definitely a complex situation he was dealing with.

Standard PTSD treatment wouldn’t be of any use to you. You were going to need long term, intensive support from both him and your family once he figured out who you were. For the meantime, he’ll have to keep a close eye on you as C-PTSD normally leads to attempts on one’s own life.

Jungkook frowned as he pushed about a meatball in the pasta sauce. It’s not like he hasn’t dealt with C-PTSD before, a lot of his rescues suffered from it. He’s just never dealt with a survivor that couldn’t talk, which meant that monitoring your mental health was going to be difficult. The best thing was to observe then create a plan of action. Taking the meatballs off the heat, he took a quick glance at the pasta. Shit. It was nearly boiling over. So he took that off the heat too.

“Goyang-i! Dinner’s ready!” He called, then flinched. Raising his voice wasn’t a good idea if the sudden splashing coming from the bathroom was anything to go by.

Distressed yowls accompanied it. He had to stop himself from rushing to your aid, if he burst in on you while you’re undressed after he shouted… There’s no way you’d trust him. His worry for you disappeared with the sound of water rushing down the drain, meaning you had managed to sort yourself out. And thus he busied himself with plating dinner. He briefly wondered if you would be able to use cutlery but, given the environment he found you in, quickly realised you most likely couldn’t. 

He didn’t want to, however, for the time being he would have to treat you like a child to an extent. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some rescues responded well to regression therapy because they get to experience the childhood that was stolen from them. It’s just there are those that can’t move past that stage or reject the idea of becoming an ‘adult’ all together which has happened to him a few times. With a sigh he put your portion in a bowl, then proceeded to cut it up into bite-sized pieces and store it in the fridge.

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Links: Mind.org.uk on C-PTSD

NHS on C-PTSD

A/N: If anyone has any links they think might be helpful that could be added, please send them my way. Also if you like my work please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi (no pressure though, I know there’s currently a global panademic and a lot of people aren’t able to work because of it)

This work of fiction is copyright © JungkookieNoona and protected under UK and international law. All rights reserved. Any unauthorised broadcasting, copying or reposting will constitute an infringement of copyright.

[dreadwhoop]

Reviewing the All Elite Wrestling personnel (Part 2)

Part 0 - https://dreadwhoop.tumblr.com/post/631091725056835584/reviewing-the-all-elite-wrestling-personnel-part Part 1 - https://dreadwhoop.tumblr.com/post/631092482075148288/reviewing-the-all-elite-wrestling-personnel-part

Wrestlers to Release

Let's start with an easy one. Chuck Taylor is damaged goods. Is he the worst wrestler? No. Is he unmarketable? Yes. What's his standing? Currently one of the top tag-teams in the company and personally ranked 8th in the overall scoring. Are you kidding me?! This guy makes you change the channel - bush league dime-a-dozen goof with bad gear, bad promos, and abyssmal credibility. The worst is how badly he holds Trent? back from being a break-out star. Eliminate this idiot.

Another popular choice for removal - he may be kind backstage but I never want him on TV. Carnie Hick. People constantly compare him to better wrestlers and the fact he was self-trained makes sense why he's so horrendous at fundementals, ring psychology, and stardom as a whole. We already have a 'Superbad' boy! This guy needs to go to a real school to learn the holes he's got and take every criticism to heart to return as a unique talent. Until then? Get rid of this glorified fan.

I finally have a legit reason among opinions - liability. Imagine if he took Matt Hardy's bump. He's not concussed. He's dead. What's more to say? This isn't a case like Riho in the women's division - Marko Stunt looks like the average untrained and out-of-shape wrestling fan could kick his scrawny ass. If you can't believe he'd kick your ass how can you believe he could kick the ass of any professional? He makes Rey Mysterio look like Andre the Giant. Toxic to this company - he doesn't deserve a single victory and I can't believe people can defend him beyond sympathy. He's a moron and attitudes of a child, gimmick or not, which makes people change the channel. Heel booked as face and a charity case. Same as Janela - go train and if he comes back then return dignified and not as a lost cause. Please stop leaning into the child-like persona and validating every criticism levied against you. THE FLOSS! !!CRINGE ALERT!!

AEW needs to get rid of their gimmick low-tier wrestlers. This isn't DDT or Chikara. This is national TV. If you want to keep Michael Nakazawa then I'm sure you're also happy with wrestling never being popular or you being called an idiot for watching it. This is their attempt at having a Toru Yano - a genuinely amusing comedy act who gets unexpected wins. The best thing he can do for talent is by not being involved at all. Considering AEW got rid of Jimmy Havoc for his real-life sexual misconduct, how the BTE YouTube show distanced itself from Joey Ryan, and the whole Jake/Brandi segment, it's unwise to have a wrestler whose main schtick is to joke about sexual assault and weaponise it.

I changed my mind and rules just this once for this guy - this friend of Tony Khan won't be released but every time he's on TV it's like releasing a wet fart into my face. He sucks! I can't believe how incapable he is at conducting interviews or even stringing complete sentences together. Why else would he be taken off commentary? The more you see someone else do his job in the same company the more you realise he has no place in the company. Dasha is a Buenos Días.

What a total failure. He's the modern day Billy Gunn and Billy is in the same company still wrestling! I mean it - Shawn Spears is the guy with a Million Dollar Body and a Ten Cent Brain. His manager has given up on him after he couldn't find a tag-partner, called Dustin a wash-up and then lost to him, and looks so stupid when he's with MJF running circles around him. Shawn Spears is a loser. A big loser. He's the embodiment of mid-card hell and he's a walking mid-life crisis. The only thing I can see even saving his career in AEW right now is if he teamed with Adam Page against FTR because it would be unexpected and interesting and would play into the whole 'Teambreaker' clause.

Where to even begin. The biggest indictment to her is how she was niche and needed when the women's roster had so few talents. Now it's growing she's shrinking in usefulness and we know her character or wrestling won't evolve - it's going to stay as bland and cliche as her looks and attitude. I hate she represents a stereotype and not a role model. She got over her disease? Good for her. She acting like she's hood-life and all? Change the channel.  

If you glanced at the Dark Order and saw John Silver, Alan Angels, and Stu Grayson, you may mistake one for the other. The difference though is John Silver has degenerated his value as a performer by being the absolute butt of every joke. The whole point of the Dark Order was to make people better so being a little servant and whipping boy is better than what he had before? Why isn't Alex Reynolds doing this? Oh it's because it's garbage. Fecal matter in the form of a human. I want 'long' John Silver to be 'long gone' Silver.

QT Marshall. So I say this name with reverence and think "wow this guy is going to light the world on fire?". Let's picture the scene - he's the hand-me-down MJF/Shaun Spears, teams with Dustin to get some starpower, and adopted DDP's move because he has nothing original to show. His entire arc is being a goofball tragic loser who got hair plugs and hangs with Allie...Allie, who incredibly has a better record than him! It's just bad bad bad throughout. Diet-Arn Anderson. He's not in the shadows he's just in the shade.

This will need a bit more explanation. Moxley is, at best, hit-or-miss with his promos and very specialist in his matches. AEW's executives have put a lot on him to see this company's growth and yet it feels since he beat Jericho it's been the opposite. Now you could blame the lockdown for this but it's an excuse. The truth is Moxley is always best being a chaser to the title not the title holder. Do I think he should be AEW Champion? Eventually, but this is AEW's biggest issue - they book for short-term gains and not long-term gains. The losses will be creeping in if his loyalties are questioned. When he loses the AEW championship, and the lockdown is over, he's jumping back to NJPW or WWE. Why would he want to elevate talent? He's not there for AEW he's there for himself and tell me I'm wrong. Everything about him was booked wrong - he should of never beaten Jericho, continued to chase for the title, had to deal with Hager, Brodie Lee, and then when Brian Cage became FTW Champion, go after this to make it a more legit title. The fact Moxley thinks he's Stone Cold, Hulk Hogan, HHH, Cena, Lesnar, and Roddy Piper all in one, is a complete embaressment to the legends. He tries too hard and it shows. His wife not joining AEW is a bad omen for his loyalties. Mox is Pox - a parasite of every proportion and we've seen his type before play to the ruination of companies.