#and then decided to pick a song to go with the everett bros… and immediately thought that i bet my life fit them

[shirtlesssammy]

10x12: About a Boy

At a bar in Pendleton, Oregon, two men almost break out in a grand old bar fight. One kicks the other, JP, out and tells him he’ll kill JP if he sees him around again. JP’s a little worse for wear and he stumbles off to his car. The tooth fairy A man appears behind JP, and grabs what appears to be a hex bag and JP is engulfed in a bright light. A homeless man looks on, rushing to JP’s car, only to find nothing but his empty suit sizzling on the ground.

Dean is in a bad way, guys. The Mark of Cain is haunting his every thought and removing it is consuming his every action. He’s in full-on research mode, which means things are really bad.

For Library Science:

Sam checks in on his big bro (in his VERY messy bedroom, ugh. It hurts to look at.) He’s got a case --missing people. Dean’s gonna sit this one out, thx Sam. Sam refuses to listen to Dean’s pity party and gives him the old Football Coach lecture about getting out there and beating this thing. To ease into agreeing with Sam, Dean makes fun of him for believing in the Easter Bunny until he was 12. Sam, knowing he got Dean, partially agrees (he was 11 ½).

They head off on the road. Once in Oregon, they interview the homeless man that saw the abduction. He explained it all and while he didn’t smell sulfur, he did smell flowers. They were flowery flowers. Also, he knows exactly what’s going on --Aliens. Specifically, probing aliens. 

The boys are at a loss and decide to split up to investigate. Dean heads inside to the bar, while Sam heads to JP’s place.

At the bar Dean orders a drink and talks up the bartender about JP.

While the bartender didn’t have much, a woman, Tina, at the bar knew JP a bit (I like the idea that Dean decided to listen to her, not because she mentioned JP, but because she dropped a pop culture reference. She’s speaking his language.) Later, we find Tina and Dean bonding over their shitty childhoods (#JohnWinchesterA+parenting). I don’t know what this says about my own childhood but I totally added ketchup to mac and cheese as a kid. And he added Fluff marshmallow mix to mac and cheese? No wonder Sam had a sweet tooth that he’s spent his entire adult life trying to suppress. Sam phones Dean and Tina makes her exit.

Sam has nothing good to report. (Uh, I’m just going to skip right over the weird devil’s butt joke because, what? I find zero humor in Sam’s Lucifer trauma. My in-show excuse for this is the Mark of Cain.) Just as Dean is admitting to Sam that he’s got nothing, he sees Buddy the Elf’s mailroom friend a man follow Tina out of the bar. He cuts Sam off and follows. He hears a scream, sees a light flash, and pulls his gun. He finds nothing but her clothes --and before he knows it, the man grabs his hex bag necklace and Dean is blasted with bright light.

He awakens in a basement cell, and to a MUCH younger face.

Oh dear, our Dean Bean is now a tiny Dean Sprout. There’s a girl in the next cell ---Tina. She’s freaking out a bit, but Dean assures her that he won’t let anything happen to her anything else happen to her. ALL PRAISE DYLAN EVERETT. I just love his portrayal of Dean. He just nails every beat of Dean. There’s another boy in the cell with Tina who Dean realizes is JP. He’s whisked away by the man before the others can stop it.

At the bar, Sam doesn’t find Dean so he tries calling him. The bartender has a phone that mysteriously rings to Sam’s call. HMMM.

The Moose™ faceplants the dude into the bar to get some answers.

Meanwhile, in Cellblock C, Dean is busy enjoying a piece of cake. Dude. DUDE. Tina thinks the cake was poisoned. Which, lol, Dean way to think ahead. He stops eating it reluctantly. And then he starts to formulate an idea to break them out of their prison. Using part of a bed frame, he tries jimmying the window open (and declares that he’s a “functioning alcoholic” --I see no lie, unfortunately). Tina wants to know who/what he is. “That is a long-ass story,” Dean responds. Ha, 14 years and going!

Sam finds Dean’s clothes and gun behind the bar. He also find flower pollen all over Dean’s gun.

Just as Dean has made some headway on their escape, the man comes back. Tina tells Dean to get out. She’ll distract the man while Dean gets help. She starts to scream while Dean makes his escape.

Sam is busy researching yarrow at their motel when a knock sounds at his door. Dean’s there! And Sammy is surprised. Dean is in full hunter mode and bursts into the room and finds his things. Sam needs a moment, but Dean doesn’t have that. He needs to save Tina. HOW IS HE STILL THE OLDER BROTHER? I believe this on a cellular level. This child is bossing Sam around and it’s amazing. Dean runs out. A woman in the next room is heading into her place and drops her keys. Dean stops and picks them up for her. She compliments a frazzled Sam on what a polite son he’s raising. LOLOL. Dean’s driving, but one bench seat adjustment makes Sam suggest Dean take shotgun.

They head out to save Tina. While Sam drives them to the witch’s creepy, old house, they talk about Dean’s sudden de-aging. Dean confesses his troubling enjoyment of a Taylor Swift song in addition to other puberty-related bodily hijinks. The biggest change though? The Mark has disappeared from his arm. I have…so many questions. Does it exist in some pocket universe waiting for Dean to grow up again? Does he still carry it...just not the scar? Knowing what we know now about the function of the Mark, this is the only thing that gives me pause about this episode - the rest of which I LOVE. Dean entertains the idea of staying a teen if it means he doesn’t have the Mark anymore. (Boris: I think it’s still there, but won’t show itself until Dean ages to the point when he got it.)

At the witch’s house, Tina’s already been removed from her cell. Dean sneaks in through his cellar window while giant moose Sam finds his own way in. Watching Dean carefully stalk the basement, it’s suddenly easy to picture him while he was young - hunting creatures clutching a gun and a flashlight and grown up far too quickly. We don’t have much time to reflect on this, though, because the creepy guy who stalked after Tina shows up. “I’m not a witch,” the guy protests when they confront him at last. “I just work for one.”

The guy starts to plead, confessing that he’s worked for the witch for centuries doing terrible things. For example, he was forced to eat “poor Gretel’s heart.” Oooooh my. Meet Hansel of THE Hansel and Gretel, folks. Dean’s on board with killing a famous witch.

“You can’t kill her,” Hansel tells them. “You’re just men.”

Sam identifies themselves as hunters and Hansel immediately volunteers to help them kill the witch. Sam first demands to know how to turn Dean back. That this isn’t Dean’s first priority is a lovely nod to his character and also a little heartbreaking. It turns out that turning back into an adult is easy. Just squeeze the hex bag around Hansel’s neck and BOOM you’re transformed.

Upstairs, the witch prepares vegetables for her young-child stew. JP, she grouses, didn’t have much meat on his bones. But stew is a great way to stretch meat, amirite? For Tina, the witch envisions a nice sweet chili glaze and an apple in her mouth. (Boris: How great is it that Mrs. Patmore is COOKING in her guest spot on this show?)

It turns out that the witch has a walk-in oven. As one does. When Dean, Sam, and Hansel emerge from the basement, she’s nothing but pleased. Her joy should be off-putting but it’s okay. The Winchesters and Hansel are a united front against her! Oh wait, it turns out that Hansel gleefully ate his own sister and is allied with the witch. Things go south quickly and both brothers are soon disarmed and held at gunpoint by Hansel.

The witch grouses about society these days. She used to steal and eat children back when child mortality was so high that nobody missed the odd kid here or there. Now she transforms adults that no one will miss into children and eats them instead. Is that...recycling?

While she cuts vegetables, the witch reveals that she’s in the U.S. for the first time and appreciates our body fat just as much as the Leviathans. Um. Thanks? She’d been sent by the Grand Coven to hunt down Rowena. (Any theories I had that the Grand Coven was somehow more civilized, or less murdery than Rowena just went out the window.) While the witch is temporarily distracted by their discussion about Rowena, Sam makes his move. Dean tries to help but gets pummeled by Hansel. He’s young and small, after all. The witch stokes the fire, her victory imminent, and orders Hansel to turn Sam into a child as well.

Dean rises to the occasion and hauls out the hex bag that he stole from Hansel’s neck during their fight. He grabs it, transforms back into adult Dean, and uses the surprise and his adult size to drive a knife home between Hansel’s ribs. Dean does what Hansel never could and stuffs the witch plus her hex bag into her giant walk-in oven. She burns into nothing.

Outside, they talk with the still-young Tina. She asks about transforming back into an adult but the Winchesters sadly inform her that the hex bag was destroyed. They don’t have a spell at the ready to turn her back but they can probably figure it out. Tina thinks about this for a moment. She has ex-husbands, a ton of debt, and a sorrowful adult life. If she stays young, she can take this as a second chance for building a better life for herself. Dean’s not jealous of this AT ALL. They drive her to the bus stop, give her all their cash (because they’re good dudes), and see her off on her new life. (I always scoffed at people who yearned to go back to their childhood, but a “do-over” is certainly a compelling argument for de-aging.) (Boris: If I knew what I know now, I’d do it over again in a heartbeat.)

After Tina leaves, they mull over this new bit of information about a “Grand Coven.” Dean thinks it sounds like an eighties hair metal band. YES. Sam’s not in the mood for jokes, though. He asks Dean about the Mark.

Dean pulls up his sleeve to reveal it and Sam has to look away for a moment in disappointment. Sam tells Dean that he “pulled a Dean Winchester” by sacrificing something in order to save Sam and Tina. Oh. Man. That’s so true. (I’ll just be over here weeping in the corner.) Regardless of the Mark, however, Sam’s happy to have Dean restored. He missed his brother. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

Dean drives them out of town while Taylor swift sings about shaking it off. (This led to the Hillywood Sisters singing about Shaking it Off as well. We are truly #blessed.)

Quote it off, Quote it off:

Those suckers, they grabbed me, and they probed me everywhere.

Son of a Bitch.

Yahtzee.

Hiya, Sammy.

Hey, we got any grenades?

About time this gig got an R rating.

I’m a freakin’ teen and you look like some One Direction reject!

I can still hunt, I’m just…dewier.

You can drink in another seven years.

If you’re going to fry that candy-coated bitch, I want in.

Word on the street is people kinda taste like chicken.

I’m painting a word picture here.

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[thebibliosphere]

An entirely random question: in a modern au, what sort of music would Vlad, Nathan, and Ursula like, respectively?

Oh boy I love asks like these cause it means I get to pull up my obscure character notes.

In the modern human AU, Vlad’s mother was a classical pianist and taught him how to play, as well as the violin. Ursula once remarked that he plays with a beautiful kind of heavy sorrow. His taste in music is predictably, somewhat moody and more than a little bit eclectic. He went through an emo goth phase in high school and never really left and still listens to things like JJ72 and Staind when he’s working, but draws the line at “The Sound of Silence” because he’s actively trying to stay sober these days and he still remembers the way his mother’s voice would crack on certain notes while listening to the original. He still can’t really listen to Joni Mitchell because of this, and God help anyone who tries to play Don McLean without warning him first cause you’re going to have to pick him up off the floor afterwards.

When he wants to be angry but upbeat while he works he has things like Muse and Awolnation on a loop. He’s more than a little in love with Hozier and refers to him as “my other boyfriend” in conversation. You’ll also hear a lot of Jefferson Airplane coming from his art studio, something he’s managed to reclaim from his mother’s collection without breaking his heart listening to it, more recently however it’s been this song on a loop, for obvious reasons. It makes him happy despite the gently melancholic tone of it.

If he were a Queen song he’d be Under Pressure.

Nathan is a total mess when it comes to music, it doesn’t matter what is playing, he’s here for it and ready to dance whether it’s Brittany Spears Toxic or Electric Six’s Danger! High Voltage. That said his phone is primarily loaded with theme songs from films and video games. The battle themes from Elder Scrolls makes great running tunes on the treadmill as far as he’s concerned. As does the main theme for Pacific Rim. Ursula got him addicted to Florence and the Machine sometime around the first week they started dating and he apologetically listens to Howl all the time while wearing his “do you even shift bro” werewolf t-shirt. Ursula likes to joke that his love song for Vlad is Jace Everett’s Bad Things. And not just because it was on True Blood and he’s never gotten over his vampire fixation from early adolescence and Vlad is absolutely 100% his Type in that regard, aka romantic sad goth in skinny jeans who looks good in fangs, nope, nope, nope, how very dare. (He feels attacked. This is slander. But yea, actually, no that’s...fair...)

He’s also got about 20 nieces and nephews at this point (or is it twelve, feels like a hundred) so he’s also got a million and one Disney songs stuck in his head at any given moment and can sing them all on command. Right now he’s had Shakira’s Try Everything from Zootopia on a loop in the kitchen for the last six months and the other two are on the verge of forming an intervention. Again. 

If he were a Queen song he’d be Don’t Stop Me Now

Ursula identifies with Florence Welch on a spiritual level because she too is both the aesthetic of Here Comes The Hurricane To Fuck Up Your Life and Ethereal Early Morning Light Glinting On Still Waters.

On the flipside of this she’s pretty certain Hozier is her patronus and also refers to him as “my other, other, boyfriend” in unity with Vlad. Him and Jeff Buckley, who she’s not unconvinced wasn’t a celestial being who decided to grace this world with his voice before he was called back to beyond the ether.

Like the other two she’ll listen to pretty much anything, but tends to avoid the more melancholy choices Vlad makes. She’s more of a “burn the sadness out of your veins with rage” sort of person than a “I need to sit down and have a good cry”. You always know when she’s annoyed at something because she likes to scream along to the opening of Immigrant Song regardless of the time of day or night. It’s best to just let her get on with it. (Their neighbors are mercifully old and deaf.) If the boys hear Martha Wainwright's Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole coming from the crafting room however it’s usually a good idea to go in armed with chocolate and a blanket because she’s probably under the desk not crying. She never cries. Vlad finds it unnerving and wishes she would. He thinks it’d help.

There’s a lot of Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks in there too, as well as  Loreena Mckennitt and the occasional insertion of Bill Hicks (yes the comedian) singing his song, The Moon Is Smiling.

She also likes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and listens to Sacrilege fairly often. It’s the song she left on her ultra conservative adopted family’s voice mail when they found out about both Nathan and Vlad and called her a sinner. Immediately followed by Millie Jackson’s Fuck You Symphony. They haven’t tried to speak to her since and their voicemail appears to be deactivated. She can’t imagine why.

At the moment her personal anthem is What's Up by 4 Non Blondes and you’ll often find her gently singing it to herself while she works. Vlad tends to join in, not even realizing he’s doing it. It’s easy for them to harmonize together and Nathan enjoys listening to them both.

If she were a Queen song she’d undeniably be Killer Queen.

Regardless of their differing tastes, no matter where they are in the house if The Killers Mister Brightside comes on they’ll all bust into the same room singing it. They’re aware the lyrics are ironic for them but it’s impossible not to sing along. 

If the trio were a Queen Song it’d probably be Bohemian Rhapsody. They take turns singing all the parts. Nathan’s family have banned the song on long car rides for this reason. No. Once is enough. Don’t put it on a loop. Stop. Don’t make us split you up between cars. Again.