#but sam and dean are really legacies in blood only. what they want from the bunker is a home.

[quietwingsinthesky]

i know it’s just because control is my favorite video game BUT. to me, the bunker should be alive. a barely controlled, shifting mass of tunnels and doors and rooms that the Men of Letters found and chained down with the strongest magic they had at hand, tied lobotomized spirits to the halls to run and protect it and put cracks in the foundation to fill with their own blood so that “legacies” were safe to traverse it.

[bijoharvelle]

once upon a time i was writing a watch guide for All spn and i never finished it but i DID give the major plotlines hilarious titles and descriptions and the world deserves to see those

SEASON 1 John Winchester, CEO of Fuck These Kids: we learn about how the boys were raised and all the various ways it affected their inability to communicate or have more than One emotion (Dean has chosen: Rage, Sam has chosen: Conflict) Azazel’s Children: Mary wasn’t fridged for nothing, there was a whole PLOT involving DEMONS and FREDRIC LEHNE

SEASON 2 John Winchester, CEO of Fuck Those Kids: he still be fucking them up Deal with the Devil: we learn about how to sell your soul to demons for fun and profit

SEASON 3 John Winchester, CEO of Fuck These Kids: from beyond the grave, he’s still fuckface mcgee Adam’s First Wife: Lilith isn't really the Big Big bad but that comes in season 4 All Hellhounds Go to Hell: selling your soul to demons is actually not that fun because you have to go to super mega hell at the end of it I Can Kill You With My Brain: turns out drinking demon blood has some nifty side effects...

SEASON 4 Surprise! Dean Has Trauma!: he was in hell for like 40 years dudes. cowabummer. Toy Soldiers: angels and demons aren’t always working on the side that you think they are A Show at SeaWorld: Lucifer’s trying to get turnt on this earth

SEASON 5 Apocalypse: Take Two: turns out Daddy’s Boy Michael is here to end Lucifer’s fun, also something something The Four Horsemen Lucifer Needs A Suit For Prom: and Sam is just his size Noooo Dean Don’t Say “Yes” to Michael, You’re So Sexy Ahaha: Michael is also going to prom and needs a suit and wouldn't you know it... Thus Spoke Zarathustra: God is dead, long live God It’s Up That I’ve Fallen: tracking cas’s rebellion as he falls in love with one (1) idiot and all of humanity.

SEASON 6 You Just Can’t Have It All: dean wants the apple pie life, no he doesn’t, yes he does, no <3 Superman Goes Darkside: cas has been naughty The Hottest Sam Has Ever Been: Sam came back different from Hell Summer Camp They Just Hate Women: Eve is the big bad and the Writers keep proving their Misogyny

SEASON 7 We Are Legion: levianthans! Sorry, The Old Cas Can’t Come to the Phone Right Now!: why? well first it’s because he’s god and then it’s because he’s emmanuel and THEN it’s because he’s honey!cas Surprise! Dean Has Trauma!: this time it’s because he can’t save everyone in the world The Writers are Twelve-Year-Olds: convinced Dick Roman was only written to make Dick jokes Sam, Interrupted: speaking of, Lucifer is a dick AP Prophesizing: Kevin Tran deserved better

SEASON 8 Desaturated Monster Thunderdome: it’s purgatory! Boogie oogie oogie! Also Benny Hunters but in a Librarian!AU: the boys get a bunker and select their domestic skills (Dean has chosen: nesting, Sam has chosen: categorizing) which introduces us to the horrible retcon that John Winchester was also a legacy hunter but, like, the nerd to the Campbell’s jocks It’s A Purification Metaphor: Sam goes through trials It’s A Purification Metaphor, but with Angels: Cas isn’t himself Crowley At the Gates of Hell: more characters who deserved better than the writers of this show

SEASON 9 Earth Angels: the angels...they’re falling... Tahmoh Penikett Deserved Better: dean puts an angel in his brother. For safekeeping. Yas Kween: ABADDON!!! The Worst Character™: SURE METATRON HAS RIGHTS. THE RIGHT TO SHUT THE FUCK UP It’s All Biblical to Me: Turns out Dean and Sam are Cain and Abel Jody Mills’s Home for Wayward Girls: she collects them

SEASON 10 Deanmon: for like 3 seconds Dean is a demon Surprise! Claire Has Trauma!: Claire Novak comes to win hearts Future Queen of Hell: And what's this? It's Rowena, with the steel chair?!!? Commander Cas Needs His Grace

SEASON 11 I Guess God Has A Family: Amara and Chuck have domestics and I sprain something rolling my eyes so hard A Microaggression Against Me as A Queer: they tried to pretend that Dean and Amara had chemistry Casifer: the only Lucifer with rights

SEASON 12 Dead Mom Syndrome: guess who’s back from the dead! Surprise! Mary Has Trauma!: It runs in the family Damien Thorn In Utero: Cas is about to baby trap that man so good. Men of Letters, but British: nerd hunters from Britain String Theory for Dummies: pretty arrogant to think ours is the only universe

SEASON 13 i gotta be honest with you, i stopped watching season 13 after Wayward Sisters. I watched some scenes from some episodes, but I just couldn’t bring myself to care about the Apocalypse world thing. So figure it out for yourself, past that episode, okay?

Damien Thorn, Aged Up: jack kline protection squad A Curious Curl in the Metaphysics: what happens to an angel when it dies? Asmodeus Gross Lucifer Gross

SEASON 14 more honesty hour: I barely watched season 14. You’re on your own for this one, okay.

SEASON 15 Thus Spoke Zarathustra - We’re gonna kill God and we’re gonna be happy about it Sam Winchester, Physical Embodiment of Hope, I Guess: ?????? Dean Winchester is Losing His Damn Mind: like, damn, me too. he ain't special Damien Thorn Will Save the World: Once he learns how to tie his shoes A Curious Curl in the Metaphysics: bet you thought the writers forgot about Cas’s deal huh It’s Up That I’ve Fallen: CANON EDITION

[chaoticdean]

Supernatural and the topic of found family — family don’t end in blood… or does it?

I know I’ve talked a great deal about the way the complete erasure of both Cas and Eileen from the two final episodes of SPN made my blood boil, but after careful consideration and a lot of talking with several very clever people (you know who you are), I think what hurt me the most on top of it all is the way Supernatural decided to essentially throw away an entire section of what made the show what it was for the best part of the last decade and a half: the topic of found family, and how they’ve carefully crafted so many important side characters and relationships only to throw them all away for the sake of having one last episode essentially disconnected from the rest of the story. 

[Because I’ve talked about in great length over the course of the past week and a half, and although there are undoubtedly more issues with Supernatural’s series finale than just this (ie: the Destiel treatment and the queer erasure, along with the complete erasure of Eileen, the only disabled character this show has ever known), I’m going to concentrate solely on the treatment of found family, and why its erasure from the finale storyline is deeply upsetting on top of being utterly inexplicable. If you want to read an incredible article about this, I’d redirect you to @chill-legilimens article’s, The Trauma of Silence]

When Supernatural started airing in 2005, the show essentially focused on Sam and Dean and their relationship, with a dash of John Winchester and mending the broken pieces between a father and his sons into the mix. The first side character that gets introduced to the audience as some sort of surrogate father to both Winchesters is Bobby (1x22, Devil’s Trap), and he quickly became a fan favorite to the fandom. Interestingly enough, Bobby is also the one who comes up with the “Family don’t end with blood” line (if I’m not mistaken, the first time it’s said on the show is during 3x16, No Rest for the Wicked). Once this line gets said, it quickly became more than just a slogan within the fandom, and it’s often referenced as a motto for the show as well (Dean even uses it during his talk with Crowley in season 10 to explain what family means).

Over the years, so many characters got introduced and became fan favorites (off the top of my head, I can come up with half a dozen already) and have grown within the show, to the point where they’re introduced to the audience as some sort of found family to both Dean and Sam. The boys get invited to Jody Mills’ and her wayward daughter’s house for dinner, spend what can only be qualified as a slumber party watching Game of Thrones with Charlie Bradbury in the bunker, keep running around and bickering with Crowley, spends time in the bunker with Eileen (the margaritas and Sam and Eileen being hungover the morning after in the bunker’s kitchen lives rent-free in my head). Even the Ghostfacers keep popping in almost every season for a decade. The audience gets to learn who these characters are and connect with them on several levels, most of them also becoming fan favorites over time.

But if I had to pick only one side character to make a point, Castiel is undoubtedly the one that comes to mind first.

When Misha Collins came along during season 4, he was only supposed to be in for a couple of episodes and be done with it. But because of his masterful performance (and because the character of Anna, who gets introduced around the same time as Castiel, doesn’t seem to work as well as the writers thought it would), Misha stayed along for the whole ride, and ended his run on Supernatural 12 years and 144 episodes later, with a character that is so beloved by the fandom that it elevated him to the rank of third lead. Castiel is not only an angel of the Lord, he’s also Sam and Dean’s best friend who would do anything to protect them (and, well, has done so, multiple times). He’s grown within the show to the point where the audience directly refers to him as being one of the family, even though he’s not blood, because “Family don’t end with blood” after all.

Another example that is particularly telling over the course of the last couple of seasons is the treatment of Jack’s character, who’s quickly adopted by the boys and referred to as “their kid”, the three of them acting like surrogate dads even though in the end, Jack is Lucifer’s son. Once again, the show makes a point of showing the audience that although Jack is not related to Sam and Dean in any way (I’m guessing since Lucifer is basically Castiel’s brother, he is somewhat related to Cas, but since I don’t have a degree in angel DNA, I can’t 100% be sure), he’s still family, he still matters.

The story basically tells the audience that even though you might not have a blood-related family, that doesn’t prevent you to find people along your life’s journey that becomes intrinsically connected to your story, both on a deeply emotional and practical level. It tells you that you’re not required to have a blood family to be someone’s kid, or sister, or brother. It tells you that blood doesn’t define who you choose to share your life with, and most importantly, it tells you that you’re allowed to choose.

So why on Earth did anyone think that ending Supernatural’s 15-year run with an episode that essentially showcases Sam and Dean and sidelines the wide majority of the family they found along the way (with the exception of OG Bobby showing up in Heaven) was a good idea?

Don’t get me wrong, I love Bobby, I really do… But what was the excuse for not having either Misha back (the literal third lead of the show, who confessed to being in love with Dean, the second lead of the show, two episodes prior), or Alex (Jack being one of the main focus of the past two seasons at least)? I get that Covid made all of this difficult, but you can’t tell me you’ve been able to bring back Mark Pellegrino’s Lucifer for a two minutes and a half cameo in 15x19, but not Misha fucking Collins to end his character’s arc (and Dean’s, who’s arc is deeply wired with Castiel’s) after 12 years. 

I’m gonna say it again, because I feel like it’s been used as an excuse for everything ever since the finale aired: Covid cannot be the sole excuse for everything. It cannot account for the absence of literally EVERYONE around the Winchesters.

At that point, I should probably add that although I was incredible baffled by the one-off mention of Cas (well, two, if you count Sam saying he misses him and Dean deflecting during the Pie Fest at the beginning of the episode), what probably set me off the most is the part of Dean’s death speech where he says “when it all came down to it, it was always you and me, it’s always been you and me”. 

I’m sorry Dean, you know I love you to pieces, but what the actual fuck was that? What does it even mean? That single line essentially strips away any kind of meaningful contribution of any side characters… Including Castiel “always happy to bleed for the Winchesters”’s, and Jack’s who quite literally saved the whole world ONE EPISODE PRIOR.

Not to mention that the fact we don’t get to see Cas again leave Dean’s entire character’s arc incomplete. What was the point of season 15, which focused so deeply on Dean and Cas’ relationship, if in the end the entire character’s arc gets dropped?

So what’s the message being sent here? 

“Found family was a myth, it’s always been sorely about the Winchesters”? 

“Ha! Tricked ya!”?

Why did Supernatural, after a decade and a half spent consolidating the contribution of side characters, decided to essentially throw it all away?

Why did Supernatural, after a decade spent crafting meaningful relationships within the show, decided to light it all up on fire and end its run with an episode that basically tells the audience that none of it really mattered, it’s always been sorely about Dean and Sam.

I would’ve been fine with a Sam and Dean episode if Castiel had more than a one-off mention, if they didn’t give Sam a blurry wife, if Dean had the funeral he deserved (with a rock band, whisky, and all the fellow hunters and family he found along the way), if Sam didn’t spend the rest of his life mourning his brother. I would’ve been fine with only getting Jim Beaver on screen (because Covid) if we had been given something more than just Dean driving for his last 5 minutes on screen. It would have been FINE, if Supernatural hadn’t essentially forgotten about what made Supernatural, well, Supernatural.

Long story short, I feel tricked. And I know a lot of you feel tricked too, because this isn’t what we’ve been fed for the past 15 years. Supernatural was a show about finding your way through life and death and horror and trauma, with help from people you found along the way who became linked to your story because you cared for each other. And Supernatural ended by telling us that found family didn’t really matter, that Dean was always going to die on a random hunt, that Sam could never be truly happy without his brother by his side. Talk about a downgrade, uh?

I don’t know why they decided to throw their entire legacy to the wind. Truth be told, I don’t think we’ll ever get to know. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to stay pissed about it. That doesn’t mean I’m going to ever be okay with my favorite show deciding to end its run with a finale episode so deeply disconnected from their 15-year story that it felt utterly shallow.

They said “Family don’t end with blood”… But after all of this, doesn’t it, though?

[charlie-minion]

Could the same SPN finale make a little more sense with some additions/changes?

I’ve had the idea for this post stuck in my head for days now, but with every new conspiracy theory and every new eventuality in the fandom, it became difficult to cool down enough to write something less ship-related and more narrative-focused.

What Supernatural and non-SPN fans have to understand is that a lot of us have expressed disappointment and frustration after 15x20, not because of Destiel (that’s just one part of the whole problem), but because the finale doesn’t make sense. Everything was leading up to something beautifully crafted until the end of 15x19. Beyond that, it’s hard to understand what happened. The story rendered all the character growth irrelevant, invalidated the themes of free will and “family don’t end in blood”, regressed to the original brother codependency they spent 15 years trying to overcome, made a queer non-binary character in a male vessel and a deaf female character basically disposable, and kept the show’s reputation of queerbaiting and misogyny until its very last breath.

That’s not going out with a bang! At least not a positive one. We all were ready to mourn Supernatural, but we wanted to feel proud of its legacy, and somehow TPTB managed to tarnish that legacy in less than 45 minutes. What a way to ruin the other more than 13,600 minutes of story!

It doesn’t matter who is to blame (The CW, Robert Singer, Andrew Dabb). It doesn’t matter why it happened (homophobia, censorship, marketing for Walker, bad writing). What matters is that at the end of the day, the finale that aired is what we got and that’s going to hurt for a long time. It hurts even more when we realize that the same finale could have easily made more sense, even without being perfect.

That’s what I want to do in this post. I want to show you how things would have been less jarring (for the fandom), while still keeping the goal to please the general audience.

Before I begin rewriting 15x20, I have to mention that I talked to my conservative boomer sister about the finale. She hasn’t watched the second half of season 15 yet (she’s waiting for Netflix to have it), but she’s been watching the show for a long time (she introduced me to it 8 years ago). She’s the perfect example of a viewer from the general audience. Loves the show but doesn’t give a second thought to it and definitely isn’t paying attention to character development or themes. Doesn’t engage with fandom, actors, or any of the show’s social media. Pure GA! When I told her the series finale had aired, she asked me about it and I refused to give her spoilers. Because of that, she told me the ending SHE wanted. She said she would be happy with either of two possibilities: the boys retiring and finally living a normal life OR they going to heaven and finding peace at last. She saw Sam and Dean as a unit, which means: both retiring or both going to heaven. AND she saw Cas as part of that, too. She wasn’t so sure about Jack. And for her, we could use the “Eileen who?” and it wouldn’t be a joke. She didn’t remember her.

NOW IT’S TIME TO WRITE A NEW VERSION OF 15X20 (KEEPING 15X18 AND 15X19 EXACTLY THE SAME AS THEY AIRED). This will be a very long post:

The opening remains almost the same. No “Carry on my wayward son” to induce feels. Too soon and too predictable! (Reasoning: Everyone was expecting it to play right there, so it would bring more tears at the end)

In the opening, after the scene where Jack says “People won’t need to pray to me or sacrifice to me”, we also see the scene from 15x19 where he says “I won’t be hands on”. Then we see the rest of the opening as it was. (Reasoning: People needed to be reminded that Jack would NOT intervene and that’s why later on, he would NOT save Dean).

We get the same montage, but when Sam takes a break from his morning run, we see him reading a message on his phone. A simple: “Hey Sam, what’s new?” from Eileen. Sam smiles fondly and begins to type a response we don’t get to see. The next scene continues the same, Sam making breakfast. (Reasoning: A text was a very simple way to show that Eileen was alive and still in communication with Sam).

The montage slowly ends as Sam enters the library (not after he sits down). He seems to be talking on the phone but we only hear an “I’ll tell him. Bye”. As he walks towards the table, he tells Dean: “Charlie says hi. Mentioned something about Stevie’s perfect scrambled eggs we have to try.” Dean’s answer is “Awesome!” (Reasoning: Just ONE line was needed to unbury Charlie and her girlfriend. ONE LINE).

Sam sits down, opens his laptop and everything continues the same. The title card shows for the last time.

YOU SEE? In the first 4 minutes they could have acknowledged that THREE WOMEN were alive and safe: Eileen, Charlie and Stevie. It wasn’t hard! Don’t blame bad writing on Covid! Now let’s continue.

Sam and Dean arrive at the Pie Fest just the same. Dean goes to get some “damn pie” and Sam takes out his phone. He dials and when someone picks up, he says “Hey, Jody, how are ya?” We don’t hear the rest of the conversation. The scene moves to Dean coming with his 6 portions of pie. Dean sits down and Sam tells him, “Talked to Jody. The other hunters haven’t had much work lately.” “That’s good, isn’t it?”, Dean says. All we get from Sam is “Yeah.” So, Dean looks at him and asks “what’s wrong?” like it happened in the episode. (Reasoning: Again, a couple of lines to make sure the people that were killed in 15x18 are safe and remembered by the boys in 15x20. Why is this important? Because they’re family!)

The conversation about Sam’s sad face happens the same. Sam is the one that mentions Cas and Jack. (Reasoning: Because this episode was so Sam-centered, it’s obvious he was the protagonist in the finale. If we see him communicating with Eileen, Charlie, and Jody, then it’s NORMAL, even expected of him to be the one to bring up Cas and Jack). Without these additions, it’s harder for people to understand that most of the finale was NOT from Dean’s POV but from Sam’s.

Dean’s “if we don’t keep living, then all that sacrifice is gonna be for nothing” stays the same. (Reasoning: I believe it’s necessary that the show sticks to the importance of “letting go” and “what is dead should stay dead” for the first time ever because the message is “even when you lose someone you love, you can still find some form of happiness and keep living, for you and for them, because that’s what they would have wanted”. Bringing someone back means “I can’t live without you”, and that’s just more codependency. It’s how the demon deals began in the Winchester family –Mary being the first one to do it. This would explain why Dean didn’t ask Jack to bring Cas back, as he asked Chuck. He understood Jack was NOT going to interfere anymore and accepted it. Besides, when Cas saved Dean from hell, Dean thought he didn’t deserve to be saved. This time that Cas saved him, Dean finally feels worthy enough to accept that YES, HE DESERVED TO BE SAVED ALL ALONG, just as much as he deserved to be loved by that angel of the Lord. In this scene, Dean also says that the pain is not gonna go away, which means that from HIS PERPECTIVE, it still hurts that Cas is not there. The problem is that the finale is not showing his POV but Sam’s.  

Sam pies Dean on the face just the same. (Reasoning: That part was just to avoid ending the scene on a sad note).

Everything related to the case happens exactly the same. (Reasoning: At this point, people don’t really care about the MoTW, they care about Sam and Dean).

NOTE 1: The case is important to show that even when the Winchesters are finally free of Chuck’s influence, they CHOOSE to keep hunting. It isn’t something they do out of revenge or because it is their destiny anymore. Maybe they were forced into the life at first, but they’ve learned to find joy in saving people. Being hunters is who they are. However, the fact that a job application was shown on Dean’s desk is also important because it means he was willing to explore what else was there for him besides hunting. Maybe he could find a balance? Maybe he was thinking it was time to quit? We will never know! The thing is that Sam only finds out about it when he goes into Dean’s room after his brother is dead, so maybe that’s when it hits him that Dean wanted to explore his options, and Sam starts to think it’s time for him to do the same.  

NOTE 2: I believe the masks the vampires are wearing is something we can blame on covid. If they had their faces covered, it was easier to use people from the SPN crew for some scenes, instead of using more actors unnecessarily.

NOTE 3: When Sam and Dean arrive at the barn, we get 3 visuals to remember Cas in the same scene (those are for the fandom, not for the general audience): a) the barn, obviously; b) the bag that resembles Cas’ trenchcoat so much that many people thought that’s what it was; and c) two feathers hanging on Dean’s right when he opens the trunk.

The scene with the throwing star happens the same. (Reasoning: The episode is still told from Sam’s point of view, so it makes sense that he fondly sees his brother as a man child).

Jenny the vampire? Uhhh… I mean, it’s not the best piece of writing I’ve ever seen, but it’s not the worst, so okay. That stays the same. (Reasoning: There is none, but she’s not what really ruined the finale, so whatever!)

Dean still dies impaled on a rebar. (Reasoning: OK. HERE ME OUT!!! I hate as much as everyone else that Dean is killed. I think it’s lazy writing, but that’s what we got and I can’t change that in this re-write, so if killing Dean is what we have to work around, then, memes aside, death by rebar is better and here’s why. There’s no one to blame for Dean’s death: no Chuck (the boys were willingly hunting even after Chuck was defeated), no vampires (they were all killed and were no real threat, so it was impossible for Sam to begin a quest for revenge against all vampires. What was Sam going to blame? A rebar? Can you kill it? Hunt it? NO. It was an ordinary death, a stupid accident. Just like any person can die at any moment by slipping on a banana peel. Is it a good death? No, but it’s good to know he doesn’t die trying to save Sam or Cas, because Dean Winchester is NOT willing to give up his life in exchange for anyone else’s anymore.

Sam takes out his phone and says he’ll call for help, but his phone is more visible to the audience. He dials and it’s almost to his ear when Dean stops him and Sam hesitantly hangs up. (Reasoning: People have complained that Sam didn’t call an ambulance, but actually he tried to. It’s just that people missed that part, maybe?)

After Sam puts his phone back in his pocket and says “OK” to Dean, he adds, “I’ll pray to Jack”. Dean’s immediate answer is: “No hands on, remember?” “But Dean”, Sam says, and Dean interrupts him with “OK listen to me” and tells Sam what to do with the kids they rescued. (Reasoning: Jack is God now and how come Sam didn’t remember? The viewers remembered, so it was necessary to include a line that ruled the option out and that showed Dean didn’t want Jack to intervene. The rest was fine).

The lines “You knew it was always gonna end like this for me. It was supposed to end like this, right?” disappear completely from Dean’s monologue. (Reasoning: This is the most problematic part of Dean’s dying speech. He fought God and earned free will, he is no longer controlled by fate or destiny. Accepting that he is supposed to die on a hunt regresses his character development and denies his desire to keep living. This was a total mistake and should be removed).

Instead, if going to heaven is the ending TPTB wanted to give Dean, at least he should say something more empowering. Sam tells him that both of them are going to take the kids somewhere safe. Dean answers and the scene follows like this: “No. Sammy, we made our choice, didn’t we?”, he smiles with difficulty. “We were free to write our own story and we did. We decided to keep saving people, hunting things. Because it’s what we love despite the risks.” (Reasoning: If Dean’s going to die it doesn’t have to feel like it was always meant to be that way. He should die knowing that he exerted his free will until his last breath).

The rest of the dialogue between Sam and Dean happens almost the same. Except that instead of Dean saying “‘cause when it all came down to it, it was always you and me. It’s always been you and me”, he says “’cause when it all came down to it, we’ve always had each other’s backs. Always.” And instead of Sam saying “Don’t leave me”, he says “I still can try to save you.” (Reasoning: It sounds way less codependent without diminishing the importance of their love and support for each other).

Besides, let’s change Dean’s “I’m not leaving you” for “You don’t have to be alone. You’ve still got family.” The rest stays the same word by word. (Reasoning: Dean reminds Sam that “family don’t end in blood” and there are still lots of people out there who love Sam and will be with him).

“I love you so much, my baby brother” stays exactly the same. (Reasoning: Dean always had trouble to express the big L word. I always believed and said many times that before Dean could say “I love you” to Cas or any other character, he had to say it to Sam. So, this is important as part of Dean speaking his truth).

The last part when Dean insists Sam tell him that it’s okay stays the same. (Reasoning: It’s the final moment when the codependency cycle breaks. No more running in circles).

The forehead touch between them stays the same. (Reasoning: I think I would do something similar if my sister were dying. I know there are w*ncest shippers out there, but it shouldn’t matter because the moment feels appropriate for that kind of goodbye). 

See? There are changes but not too many. That’s why I’ve been saying that it was easier to get it right, yet they still managed to screw it up.

The second montage stays the same. (Reasoning: Life goes on, but of course Sam has to mourn).

The call about a case in Austin remains the same. (Reasoning: It’s the only part of the episode where someone from the found family is mentioned, so I think that Donna’s name is perfect in that moment. However, without the other additions I’ve made in this re-write, that off-hand mention feels too little. Its purpose was to tell the viewers that if Donna was alive, so were the others, but the way the episode was executed gave us an isolated Sam, incapable of having friends and a family without Dean).  

After 30 minutes of Sam’s POV, let’s finally see the last bit of Dean’s POV that we’ll ever get.

Dean arrives in Heaven and Bobby receives him. All their conversation stays almost the same, except that after mentioning Rufus and before saying “and your mom and dad…”, Bobby adds an “Ellen and Jo let me borrow their place”. (Reasoning: If you’re gonna put the man outside the Harvelle’s place, at least mention them for Jack’s sake!).

Besides, after Bobby tells Dean that Sam will be along and that time in heaven is different, Dean gives a small smile and says, “Well, there’s no rush. I want him to have a long, happy life.” Bobby answers with: “I would expect nothing less from you, boy” and tells him he got everything he could ever want, etc., just like it happened in the episode, and finishes by asking “What are you gonna do now, Dean?” (Reasoning: It’s important we know for sure that Dean is NOT codependent anymore and that he doesn’t expect to have a miserable afterlife just because his brother is not there yet).

Instead of saying “I think I’ll go for a drive” Dean says, “I think I know what I want” and walks towards baby. Bobby still tells him to have fun. (Reasoning: “Know what I want” is ambiguous enough to help us introduce the last piece of the puzzle, the one thing Dean’s wanted for many seasons and has never been able to express).

 The biggest change is coming:

Dean gets on the Impala and has a moment of silence while he contemplates the wheel. He begins to pray: “Hey, Cas, you got your ears on? I hear you’ve been busy working on this updated Heaven with Jack. You were right about him, Cas. You had faith in him and he saved us all. You could always see the best in everyone, even when they couldn’t see it themselves. Even when I couldn’t see it myself. There’s so much I want to tell you. Maybe you can visit sometime. I hope prayer’s still a thing up here.” (Reasoning: Dean’s side of the confession was unaddressed and that was terrible writing. If there was no way to get him to speak his truth textually, at least take him as close to it as possible).

We listen to a flutter of wings and a “Hello, Dean” from the back seat. We don’t see Cas, but the camera shows us Dean’s cocky smile and he says “Took you long enough.” He turns around slowly. End of scene. (Reasoning: The flutter of wings confirms that angels have their wings back and ties that loose end. The final “hello, Dean” was highly anticipated and it made sense. If Misha couldn’t be there to film, for whatever reason, or if the problem was the kind of conversation Dean and Cas would have, then don’t show it, but leave the door open. Let us know that the two characters were reunited and will talk, but whatever Dean has to say is so private that it’s not for us to hear, only for Cas.  

We finally hear “Carry on my wayward son” and get a montage that begins with Sam playing with his kid. Then we see Dean driving, super happy, and Sam living his life to the fullest. We still get Sam’s Blurry Wife, BUT… we see pictures of Eileen in the living room (not just of John, Mary, Sam, and Dean). We also see photos of Jody, Donna, Charlie, and AU!Bobby. (Reasoning: FAMILY DON’T END IN BLOOD).

The scene where Sam is wearing the party wig and looks miserable inside the Impala is cut and nobody talks about it ever again because it never existed. We get a scene of Sam teaching his son how to fix the car instead. (Reasoning: First of all, don’t give Sam a life where years later he’s still in pain. Second of all, the fucking wig was a crime).

Sam’s dying scene stays the same. The only thing is that his son signs a couple of phrases to him before actually speaking. (Reasoning: More confirmation that Dean Jr. is Eileen’s son).

We hear the final “Evanescence-like Carry on my wayward son”. Again we see the photos and there’s family other than the Winchesters there. (Reasoning: Obvious at this point).

The rest is exactly the same. The show began with two brothers and it’s okay if the last scene is with the two brothers reunited in Heaven. At this point, the other parts of the story are acceptable enough for us to feel happy that they get to see each other again after years of a happy (after)life.

Now look me in the eye and tell me this was too hard to execute. I still think that bad writing is a thing we can’t deny here, adding to the possible meddling of the Network. Maybe Dabb wanted us to hate the finale because he couldn’t get away with what he truly wanted. If that was his intention, then kudos to him. He and The CW really gave us a finale that only 30% of the fandom liked.

I hope you guys have enjoyed this and it helps to give you some peace of mind. In my heart, this was the finale we got. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t drop the ball either.

[deanisdarkness]

No but have you thought about how that ending invalidates everything the series stood for all these years?

Brotherly bond? Dean dies young and Sam moves on after crying for a hot minute. So much for the epic love story of Sam and Dean. Sam can live(flourish) without Dean, we already knew that back in season 8 so what exactly was the point in reaffirming that?

Family don’t end with blood? Neither Jack nor Cas save Dean from that dreaded rusty rebar. Dean’s found family doesn’t even attend his funeral. He’s forgotten by everyone except Sam, leaves no legacy, nothing. Of course, his heaven is devoid of the found family too, and I can’t really blame him for that.

Saving people, hunting things? Dean is dead and in Stepfod heaven, Sam’s apparently stopped hunting. Bunker is closed. Meanwhile the show has demonized hunting so much that you don’t want anyone to hunt at all.

Love wins? Cas sacrifices himself for Dean and it turns out to be utterly meaningless since Dean dies anyway. Cas also comes back after spending a hot minute in Empty so his sacrifice loses any kind of gravitas. And of course Cas doesn’t love Dean enough to save him from rusty rebar.

Humanity and free will? Dean dies three weeks after finally finding freedom. He fights throughout his life and finally achieves freedom only to die without even enjoying the said freedom. Since Dean is the stand in for humanity, the message seems to be crystal clear.

Always keep fighting? But why? Why must Sam keep fighting when he could just die and enjoy heaven with his brother? Why should anyone even opt to stay alive when heaven is the only place you can find peace?

So as you can see spn undid everything it supposedly stood for with that finale, and that’s why it’s so difficult for me to accept it and move on. There’s no silver lining, nothing to hold on to,  and we’re left with this awful mess and an unintentionally devastating message.

[assortedpuzzlepieces]

Ok, I’m about to go off on a GIANT rant about a specific issue I have with John Winchester & how the show intentionally & canonically portrays him as an ableist, homophobic asshole through his portrayal by JDM, so buckle up.

For the record, this is something I’ve always believed, but after listening to podcast episodes from @otrsupernatural & Carrying Wayward, one super clear example of why has just snapped into place & I feel compelled to share it.

So I want to start by noting a couple things that stand out. First & foremost, I think JDM is an incredible actor & I think he brings his A game with his portrayal of John. John Winchester is undeniably an asshole, & yet JDM balances that so well against the idea of loving parent, to not only make the character more realistic, but also to give real authenticity & depth to the trauma his children experienced at his hands & answer why they act the way they do in regards to him as their parent.

John is someone who, on the surface, appears to be a loving and concerned father, who makes mistakes, but does so because he’s in shitty circumstances & doesn’t have a lot of options or has his own trauma to battle that limits the choices he believes he has.

However, the show also gives us other content that proves there is more to John than that caring but broken man from as early as S1 & into the beginning of S2, & this content screams the truth of his ableism & homophobia, & gives some really strong evidence as to why these are two of the primary struggles of his children through the end of the series.

To explain, we 1st have to look at characters from earlier in S1. In 1x10, Asylum, we are introduced to Dr. Ellicott. He is shown to be someone who is canonically ableist to people with MHI. He sees them as less human, he does unethical experiments on them, he tortures them, just, lots of gross stuff there. On top of that, we see him as a ghost using what appears to be electrical shocks to Sam & Dean to possess & harm them, which resembles electroshock. There are also strong echoes of conversion therapy in this episode.

After this, we have 1x12, Faith, where Sue Ann is using dark magic to attack & murder people she hates, which specifically includes a woman who was pro choice & a gay man. This not only shows that she was homophobic, but that she condemned sexual freedom & bodily autonomy for women as well, which is in relation to homophobia, as well as deeply rooted in misogyny.

So essentially, we are shown a doctor who tries to force people to be less mentally ill or queer by “curing” them, & then a woman who took it a step further & murdered them to “cleanse” the town. We are given two different, but very interwoven ways with which society has tried to get rid of queers & disabled people, & it’s not subtext, it’s literally stated.

Now, in the show, both Dr. Ellicott & Sue Ann are the villains, & while the show demonstrates their ableism & homophobia, it also clearly condemns them for those actions. They are both dead/gone by the end of the episode & their actions are shown as evil. This is SO important, especially for a show that has failed in other episodes to truly state what exactly is the problematic action in the episode (looking at you, Bugs & Route 666).

That said, if Dr. Ellicott & Sue Ann are villains, then we must also extrapolate that ableism & homophobia are intentionally being written as evil in the show, so other characters who demonstrate these actions are also bad. (Yes, I know I’m being super redundant right now, but I just want to be really damn clear on this to demonstrate why I believe John’s characterization is intentional).

Now, in 1x21, John finally “learns” about Sam’s psychic abilities, & I say that in quotes bc there’s reason to believe he knew about it already from Missouri & was just in denial until confronted with the evidence, at which point he has a very strong reaction. As Ali pointed out, it’s interesting that he has such a strong negative reaction, as he clearly doesn’t have an issue with Missouri as a psychic, & yet he’s upset about Sam being one. He demonstrates the mindset of “othering” people outside of his family, which is a common treatment of both people w/ MHI & queer people - the mentality that “those people” are fine in general, but “not my son/daughter/family/me”.

So here in that episode, we are already getting an attitude from him that clearly parallels ableism & homophobia, & that is on top of other comments he made that are clearly rooted in misogyny, like his “that’s my man” to Dean in the flashback in Something Wicked This Way Comes (1x18).

THEN - the final nail in the coffin is the “secret” he tells Dean before he dies in 2x1; that Dean needs to either save Sam or stop him. By now it’s crystal clear he views Sam as something “other”, something not fully human, & his response? It’s literally “cure or cleanse”. Either make him “normal” or get rid of him.

To repeat, John LITERALLY uses ableist & homophobic language & tactics towards him son because he is different, & also tries to force Dean to do the same, passing on that legacy, by trying to erase anything about Sam thats not his personal definition of “normal”, all out of FEAR of who his son is & what he might do.

And the show CONDEMNS this behavior from the very beginning, even before we ever see him act this way!! They make it clear that ableism & homophobia are BAD, show John act that way, & then condemn him AGAIN when Dean tells Sam & it is made clear to the audience that what John asked of him was wrong.

Like… holy fuck. There is literally no way I can watch this & not believe that his characterization was not 100% intentional with him being set up as a bad person & his actions as condemnable. It’s just not narratively possible. John Winchester was intentionally written to be an asshole & we are supposed to see him as one, & any love we see from him is only meant to validate the complicated feelings Sam & Dean have towards him, not undermine the knowledge that he is a bad person. It’s literally in the text.

*Edit - Im adding a point here, since it’s been brought to my attention. John’s concern about Sam being infected with demon blood & possibly corrupted does not detract from the parallel being made between his actions & those of IRL people who are homophobic or ableist. In fact, this is another argument for that in interpretation, & here is why -

For literal thousands of years, mental illness has been viewed as demonic. People w/ MHI were thought to be possessed, evil incarnations, or even just sinfully corrupt & given to wickedness. People w/ physical disabilities were believed to be punished for moral failings, not faithful enough, etc, etc. Queer people were believed to be sexually deviant, witches, destroyers of families, etc.

These beliefs carry across many religions, but especially Christianity, & are present even today in some more extreme sects. And the people that believed these things? Well many of them were parents who “loved” their child & were trying to protect them from evil by purifying them. They too believed they had valid fears & good reasons to torture, maim, & even kill their children.

So to anyone who would argue “well it’s not the same because John had a good reason to be afraid of Sam” - shut the fuck up, because no, he didn’t.

Sam hadn’t hurt anyone. He wasn’t doing anything worth killing him over. He was a good kid who was hurt by someone outside his control & yet he only started doing anything that was truly wrong when he was pushed to it by circumstances that were again, beyond his control, & only then bc he was trying to do what was right!!

Anyone would do that, not just a kid w/ some demon blood powers. So let’s not act like he was inherently dangerous just BC he was different, bc guess what? That’s part of that mindset too. Sam was a good fucking person & John seeing him as less was John’s failing, not Sam’s.

[thelonelybrilliance]

2021 Fic List

*Gimli voice* "Final count? 120"

This included 55 for The Silmarillion (5 of those longer than 20k words), 65 for other fandoms (and 40+ of those for Friday Night Lights), plus, lucky Fixing on the Hour (NEW AND IMPROVED!), which I finished revising and reposting this year.

The Gold Rush AU is here, co-captained by @abadpoetwithdreams and @wearetakingthehobbitstogallifrey

A FNL masterlist is here

If you were wondering about the in-between pieces, here's a full, celebratory masterlist under the cut.

Marvel

Captain America/Agent Carter

where the light collects

Everyone’s life is framed by death. War hammers this point home like a nail. Peggy has scarcely stepped out from the shadow of her brother into the shape of Agent Carter before she meets another hero. This one is, at first, a good deal smaller than Michael was. This one, she is deadly certain, will not be allowed to break the rest of her heart.

Still—a hero.

Loki

those who expected lightning and thunder / are disappointed

Loki has not yet asked Sylvie about Thor.

Falcon and the Winter Soldier

The Man in the Moon

The thing about the moon is that all the world is in love with it, though no one has ever seen it up close.

what has to be done, again and again

You can’t change history. You can build a man out of bronze, and have that mean something to the world. You can, in turn, contend that the world means something to him.

But it takes a long time, to cast a legacy in metal, and most people only have one life to live.

Korean Dramas

The Guest: 손

have you no rebellion in your bones

You can be alive without really knowing you’re alive.

Ecdysis

The devil never gives up when he decides he wants a soul…

[Hwa Pyung knows he is blind.]

The Devil Judge: 악마판사

unending fires

Elijah remembers everything.

eat of the tree

"in another life we were of the same blood." - Louise Glück

(You are still the sound of his footsteps.)

Supernatural

Vintage Winchesters

I completed a series of season 1 episode tags, all 500 words a pop.

my heart was wild in me

Life of a hunter, and all that. There was no one else near this overlook; no cars passing on the stretch of highway nearby. He’d driven half an hour past the gas station before stopping. The mini-mart and lonely pumps had looked like the last place on earth, and he might have believed that, except he’d seen the ramshackle edges of the living world before. He rubbed his eyes. Then he got back in the car and kept driving.

The closer he got to Sam, the worse it was.

[Dean heads for California to get Sam]

the heart has two heads

A man had two sons, and was like God. Who is like God?

[Chuck character study]

we know who our enemies are (we know)

Funny thing is—funny—you don’t want to go to hell. Never did, of course, except for the single moment that mattered. Yes, you’ll do it. Yes, you’ll die for him. In a way, you want him to suffer, but only for you to see. You want him to suffer the abrasion of your protection: it means you’ll always be there for him. Death can’t take that away. In hell, you’ll still be here, because Sam will carry the pain of you.

[Dean, season 3]

Once Upon a Time

this spectacle that makes me small

Emma is not afraid of heights.

all love is time travel

Killian has long been a captain, and so he does not show weakness or indecision unless he wishes to. Still, the desire to vouch for their chances of success is difficult to balance with the pressing need to school those uninformed of Neverland’s horrors as to the dangers that lie ahead.

All this, under the sneer of Cora’s daughter and the reptile stare of his greatest enemy.

All this, before Emma Swan.

Shadowplay / The Defeated

the demon of the art of living

There are other conversations, stolen moments in a hopeless land, where she has teased a little and made Max smile at her. His eyes are never content, never at peace, but they are very kind. Claire knew at once what sort of man he was.

different heartbeats (but all the same heartbreak)

Pain is a small price to pay, but sometimes, it is also the final coin—the one placed in the mouths of corpses.

(How do you keep a soul from returning?)

[Max ponders the inevitable next move.]

The Vampire Diaries

the bright banner of your heart

Oh, death, where is your sting?

(Here.)

the drop-dead dream (the chosen one)

Damon doesn't write diaries. He writes letters he never sends.

Lord of the Rings

all kindled with an unconsuming fire

It was Boromir who first brought Faramir along the secret ways that led to the storied view of light through water.

Big Little Lies

here is my hand that will not harm you

Perry seemed like the answer to everything.

Sometimes he still does.

Black Sails

of the absence of regret

The sea’s a cruel mistress. It will pay you out, one way or another. It will kill you, but that comes later.

[Charles Vane/Eleanor Guthrie]

Fixing on the Hour (Genderbent P&P AU)

all that we are (is the greatest of victories)

Bing and Darcy explore Manhattan in winter.

[katsidhe]

15.20 Final Thoughts

Supernatural is over, and somehow, despite itself, it did the very best it could to please me. That was always going to be an impossible task. But truly, sincerely, that finale was as close to my desires as the show could ever bring itself to come, and so, so much closer than I ever dreamed it would dare.

I am so, so glad that no other regular characters were involved (Bobby aside, but he was brief). How better to encapsulate their own emptiness? How fundamentally fitting, than in the epilogue to their final battle, wherein the entire world beyond them was erased, the wider universe is merely set dressing for them to move through. And it was so quiet this way. This finale wasn’t overcrowded or rushed. It kept its own peace. And it preserved the tangible claustrophobia that 15.19 invoked: that tangled, lovely, solipsistic, toxic conviction that these are the only two people on earth that matter.

It’s unclear exactly how much time passed between 15.19 and 15.20. I like to think it’s been at least a year, given that they’ve settled into routine and that their grief seems less fresh. (Although yes, the concept of Dean dying on his very first hunt without a resurrection available is hilarious, I must confess.) Their calm domesticity, their peace, was lovely to watch (Sam kicking the laundry machine! Sam with wet hair! Sam running! Sam cooking, Sam looking a little less bulky than usual, and happy!) But man, it really is Dean’s world, isn’t it? Even the DOG, which really, really, really could reasonably have been primarily Sam’s, was Dean’s dog first and foremost. Then on Dean’s say-so, they get in Dean’s car to drive to a pie festival for Dean. Sam is perfectly content to go along with all of it.

As if we hadn’t gotten enough delightful fanservice, we also got one last scene of Sam threatening to torture someone to death. :) what a king.

I love that Dean died to an OSHA violation while fighting a random loose end from season 1 (which, by the way, I CALLED IT, I am so proud of myself). It’s perfectly mundane. I truly and deeply do not understand anyone complaining that Dean should have gone out in a way that’s more epic. He’s been there, done that, guys, and remember how miserable it was? Now there’s no cosmic safety net. Dean died in a broken down old barn, saving some kids. Moments like these are when Dean is at his best, at his most fundamentally sympathetic: when he’s not trying to control the shape of the universe or dictate righteousness or let his anger drive himself down into a destructive spiral. He’s just putting his money where his mouth is. He’s not making a broad moral statement. He’s simply putting his life on the line to defend someone who needs defending. It is not an unworthy end. It’s so much better than going out to, god forbid, God.

Did Dean earn a lifetime of peace? The concept of just desserts is fraught. But I also don’t think it’s something Dean wanted. He wanted to keep killing things in tetanus-infested barns until he died. He got what he wanted. And while the arc of his wants has adapted over the years, MOTW hunting is fulfilling for him.

Dean’s deathbed speech was, oh man. It got me good. Like many of the things I loved in this episode, it was quiet. No desperation, no revising history (or not too much, anyway). Just, “stay with me, please. I love you. Tell me it’s okay.”

The quiet of Sam’s grief, alone in the bunker. How still his face is, until for a little bit it crumples again, and then it comes back and goes still. He’s not trying to control his reactions or press back against his sorrow. There is no work to do, nothing to avenge, no one to find, nothing to defeat. He is alone, and the washes of visible grief simply come and go in waves that he doesn’t try to fight or force.

I need the gif of him flinching at the toaster. His startle reactions are my favorite thing. He’s alone underground, there is not a living soul for miles and miles, he’s just buried his brother, not for the first time, but this time, he knows, for the last. And the goddamn toaster goes off and he cannot control the way his heart leaps up into his throat and the way every one of his muscles tightens.

Sam grows old. Sam. Grows old. Sam grows old! SAM GROWS OLD.

Ohhh my God, Sam grows old. Without Dean! Without hunting! Without Cas! With people outside that claustrophobic world, beyond the four tight walls of SPN, beyond the people approved by Dean and by Fandom, who give him peace and love and fulfillment! SAM GOT OUT. Even with the truly terrible wig the image brings me to actual tears. I cannot believe SPN would allow him to have this. I cannot believe that the show let him be happy without Dean. I want to read the set of novelizations about Sam’s recovery.

Of course this was the only way for Sam to get unwound, and of course it had to happen offscreen in flashes. Thank god for the ambiguity. There’s so much potential there, years and years, we were simply told: and at some point Sam’s life gets better, at some point his mental health improves and he feels safe enough to start a family, with someone, and at some point he has a child, and he dies peacefully, he dies loved and with people who love him, and dammit I’m getting weepy again.

Sam quit hunting. Not in a sudden jolt. We see him leaving the bunker on another job. But when he leaves the bunker, he leaves for good. He has so much knowledge, but he does not preserve the Men of Letters. He does not honor their legacy of extermination and experimentation. Maybe he gives someone else the keys, for the books. Or maybe he’s digitized it all, and maybe it’s done.

Maybe his wife is Eileen, or maybe it’s Amelia, or maybe it’s Piper or Cara or maybe it’s someone new. Maybe it’s not even a woman. And maybe she’s a hunter, but I hope she isn’t, and when Sam tells her, haltingly, in fits and starts, the bare outline of the truth, she looks at him and she believes him. And she understands the shape of the trauma he carries, even if Sam can’t quite speak the details, and maybe Sam goes to therapy. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he wakes in pain and fear for many years, but over time, it dulls.

Sam’s son is still a young man when Sam is on his deathbed, probably in at least his eighties. Think about the mountain Sam had to climb to reach that point. How many years and years of work did it take before Sam felt safe enough to want a child? How long for him to gently conquer his terror at the legacy his blood might carry: Lucifer and Azazel are dead, he knows this, but how long before he lets himself believe it enough to permit the risk? And then he raises his child, not in fear and loneliness, but with love and support and care. And he makes sure his son is protected, that he knows to salt his thresholds and ward against demons, but his son will not suffer the way he suffered.

Maybe he untangles his thoughts about Dean, maybe he learns that to feel angry with his brother is not to betray him or to dishonor his memory, maybe he comes to a more complex understanding of their relationship. Maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he simply enshrines Dean, and Dean’s memory becomes ever more golden and untarnished, and the Impala becomes truly an altar. The details of how Sam carries Dean with him—the watch, the car, the absurdly large photos, his son’s name—perhaps these are played straight, and perhaps Sam never finds a more nuanced love. In the meta sense I think we are certainly meant to think this. We are meant to see Dean deified here, canonized into a saint. We are meant to view Sam’s fifty more years of life as worship, as a dedication and an offering.

This is the long shadow of the finale. These are the things untouched by necessity and by design: this is Dean’s apology in 15.18, this is Sam not wanting an apology, and not wanting to hear Dean offer one. This difficult work was always and inevitably going to be elided. But there is so much time, decades and decades, offscreen, for Sam to come to a quieter peace.

I think he can do it.

I think Sam can do anything.

I’m crying again.

I really didn’t think I would cry much about the finale. I thought I would cry at the concept of the show ending, but not at what the ending was. I didn’t think any details would actually affect me. But then Sam got old. I am truly and genuinely hung up on the canonical image of Sam finding peace. Good god. He had GLASSES. Help.

My chief complaint (aside from that absolutely awful Carry On cover, why oh why, they should have just played the original again), if I felt at all like complaining at the moment, would be how happy this ending is. But I can’t begrudge Sam that. I can’t even get too mad at the scene that I was SO SURE I would despise: that of Sam and Dean content in a Heaven that is now apparently Great, Actually (even though a prison dimension with an open floor plan is still a prison dimension, but hey, I guess we humans can’t leave earth either). Supernatural clearly wanted Sam and Dean to not be facing down an abyssally bleak afterlife, and I think I’d be complaining about the lack of bleakness a whole lot more if it didn’t have the (perhaps unintended??) side effect of giving Sam even more freedom from Dean than SPN already deigned to give him. Sam isn’t in a shared cell with Dean. He can be with his friends and his wife and his son.

One of the fundamental questions of SPN is, would Dean ever let Sam go? And it’s a question that the bulk of s13-15 has rendered moot with Sam’s growing passivity, and one that 15.20 neatly dodged. And I’m glad it did, because I wouldn’t have liked whatever 15.20 had to say on the matter. This deflection feels true to the spirit of what the show has become.

It was impossible for Sam to find peace while Dean was still alive. And on its own that kind of says everything, doesn’t it? And Sam is still forever denied the peace he truly longed for. Sam didn’t want death to force Dean’s hand. Sam wanted Dean to want to let him go. But the only way Sam and Dean could heal is apart. The potential of their relationship on earth becoming untangled is forever precluded, explictly. And yet Sam’s freedom is validated, Sam is allowed what he sought in season 1 and season 8, Sam is something beyond a hunter and Dean’s brother, and the show let him be, the show let him grow.

Supernatural said Sam Rights, and the world shook.

[what-do-1000-swords-look-like]

the Cas/Colette connection

I’ve seen some interesting posts that liken Colette from Cain’s MOC arc to Sam in Dean’s MOC arc. We all kind of know the deal with that whole arc and who represented whom, but below I’m going to break it all down, every bit the writers/show gave us, besides the obvious:

We already know the breakdown of the MOC arcs for both Dean & Cain:

Crowley -> Abbadon

Cas -> Colette

Sam -> Abel

Dean -> Cain

But here is where it gets really interesting to me:

in 10x09, we saw MOC!Dean slaughter Randy, the loan shark, and the thugs that were paying him a visit.

The loan shark was about to rape Claire, Randy had just basically traded her for his debt, and the thugs of course stayed with Randy as their boss went after Claire. All were complicit parties. Now, you can call me heartless, but I didn’t give a shit that these guys got slaughtered. To me, the only parties I felt bad for were Claire and Dean (because Dean is not a cold-blooded killer). I was actually a little surprised when Sam and Cas talk later, and Cas says that regardless of what those men were guilty of, they didn’t deserve that. But then I realized, well, of course to Cas’ character and Sam’s, they’re looking at the bigger picture here so they’re going to view it that way. And while I don’t agree, I get it. Because in my personal opinion, those assholes very much deserved it and possibly worse. 

And then of course, later on in the season, the Stynes murder Charlie and MOC!Dean once again goes on a rampage and kills all the Stynes and their henchmen. But there was one part that didn’t sit right with me about it, compared to the other group of people he had taken out, and that was this guy:

We saw during the whole Styne arc that he was not like his family, that he had no desire to perpetuate their legacy. But MOC!Dean takes over and sure enough, he kills him. Whereas Dean most likely would not have. This was obviously done to show how far gone Dean almost is, of course. 

“Because the Dean Winchester I know would never have murdered that kid”

Cas pleading with him to “stop” while also saying that he will be forced to watch Dean “murder the world” after everyone who Dean loves is gone. (x)

Cas keeps grabbing Dean’s left shoulder, trying to get through to Dean in that way, but what kills me is how Dean keeps looking at it (and this comes after “Yeah, well, that Dean has always been kind of a dick”), obviously not wanting to be gotten through to, and the second time Cas does it and says “I don’t want to have hurt you”, that’s when MOC!Dean snaps. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

Colette’s last words to Cain: “No, there's been enough killing. Promise me. You're better than all of this.”

“Dean. Stop. No, Dean. Please.” (& earlier: ““Because the Dean Winchester I know would never have murdered that kid”)

Notice how Dean’s theme is playing after Cas says “Stop” because MOC! Dean while influencing his anger, is not completely in control yet (& Cas is intrinsic to Dean’s character, this bond they have, no coincidence that this scene started with Cas trying to get through to him by grabbing where his mark used to be). This is Dean. And that is why he doesn’t kill Cas. Cas did get through to him by saying “stop” just as Colette did by what she says to Cain before she dies.

“You and Sam stay the hell away from me. Next time, I won’t miss.” - the two people who matter most to him that are left now that Charlie, Kevin, and Bobby are gone; next time he may not be able to be gotten through to, he may not be able to control it

And even though we get this scene back in 10x14 where Cain tells Dean how he’s living his life in reverse:

Technically, Dean finished up Cain’s arc for him. He killed Abbadon, Colette was already dead, and then he killed Cain. Dean himself did not kill any of the people that mirrored those in Cain’s story line. He had a chance to kill Cas in 10x22, he didn’t take it. He had a chance to kill Sam in the season 10 finale, he didn’t take it. He had several chances to try to kill Crowley if he wanted to but he doesn’t. And sure enough, in the end, Dean is cured of the MOC. 

Interestingly enough, after killing Cain, Dean gives the first blade to Cas, not Crowley.

And where does this final scene, where Cain’s story ends, take place? A barn. Where else have we seen a barn in Dean’s story?

Where else does a barn come into play that involves Dean?

And what do we see two episodes later? This scene:

“Recent events made me think that I might be closer to that [dying] than I really thought.” “I don’t know, there’s things...people, feelings...that I want to experience differently than I have before. Or maybe even for the first time.” (which is really interesting timing considering 6 episodes later, Cas will be fulfilling Colette’s role, asking Dean to “stop”)  

Not to mention, we see Cain kill all of the demons that took Colette hostage, that entered his home after he sends Dean & Crowley away, and then he has this scene with Cas in 10x14:

Where Cas finds a burial ground of all of Cain’s latest victims. Cain is cleaning house, of “poisoned issue”. It’s his responsibility. “If the Mark wants blood, I’ll give it mine.” (x)

And what does Dean say in 10x22, in the Cas scene from above when the latter confronts him about killing the youngest Styne? “I took down a monster. Because that’s what I do. And I will continue to do that until...” “Until you become the monster.” We know Dean feels everything is his responsibility throughout his story, and he just took out a family of monsters, after taking out the other monsters (the human ones).

What are Cain’s words about his brother, Abel? “Abel wasn't talking to God. He was talking to Lucifer. Lucifer was gonna make my brother into his pet. I couldn't bear to watch him be corrupted, so I offered a deal — Abel's soul in Heaven for my soul in Hell. Lucifer accepted... as long as I was the one who sent Abel to Heaven. So, I killed him. Became a soldier of Hell — a knight.”

For Sam, we saw:

him praying to God in season 11 re: The Darkness to which he gets responses/visions/flashes which are then revealed to be Lucifer later

find out he is Lucifer’s true vessel

be tortured by Lucifer in the cage in Hell after season 5 & then become a toy practically for Lucifer to mess with anytime he is around for the rest of the series (though tbf to Sam, he stood his ground with Lucifer every time he was able, 13x21 & 13x22 alone was epic)

John telling Dean he needed to “watch out for Sammy” aka kill Sam if he turned evil

Dean making a demon deal to bring Sam back, forfeiting his soul to Hell

Dean talking about how he has been raised as a soldier & being nothing more than a “grunt”

Dean eventually becoming a demon, a knight of Hell, briefly in season 10

Dean almost killing Sam in 10x03 had Cas not been able to intervene right then

Sam was Abel. Besides the obvious brother & Heaven/Hell dynamic.

Bonus:

(Gif credit)

Plus: “I know how you see yourself, Dean. You see yourself the same way our enemies see you. You’re destructive, and you’re angry, and you’re broken. You’re...you’re Daddy’s blunt instrument. And you think that hate and anger, that’s...that’s what drives you. That’s who you are. It’s not.” (x)

Extra Bonus:

Triple bonus:

“Come back to me” - Abbadon (inside Colette)

Crowley was always Abbadon, as we all already knew. While Cas made his own decisions, 6x20 shows how he tempted Cas with their deal, and then eventually led to the chasm between Cas & the brothers (namely Dean). Crowley may not have possessed Cas but he (& the deal) still got in between them, and Dean almost did kill Cas (by summoning Death) during that part of the story. 

Am I saying the writers created this huge part of it this early on, or even that they revolved this season 9/10 arc around later seasons? No. Do I think they might have kept some of what happened in earlier seasons in mind? Yes, I think it’s very possible. Does it flesh out that whole connection/mirroring arc out more? Hell yes.

And a little extra (that’s coming a long way around):

Not to mention:

Cassie - Dean’s ex-girlfriend who Sam confirms in dialogue that Dean loved (from season 1)

Carmen - Dean’s girlfriend in the Djinn dream who he was living with, based on an ad he saw before the Djinn got to him (from season 3)

Cas was always Colette.

[elizabethrobertajones]

Did Bobo really create the Wayward Sisters? If so, why weren't Jack and especially Cas included in that episode? That's my biggest issue with that pilot honestly, I mean, the fact that the show abandoned Claire and Cas' bond after season 10 and gave that storyline to Salmondean. Her bond with Cas is more interesting because of their connection to the Novaks. I also think that Claire and Jack would've made a more engaging dynamic and spin off together, I think they're strong characters & actors

Hi there!

Bobo isn’t the “creator” of Wayward so much as it can even have one, as it was a very organic idea, which even involved a healthy amount of fandom input. The original campaign in season 10 was for Wayward Daughters, and the idea picked up so much steam the altered title for, I guess, a mix of copyright and thematic relevance was the Sisters one. I’d say 10x08 was the real genesis of it as something that could be really solid. Once Kim and Briana were put together the chemistry and star power they could have had together was really meteoric as far as our small SPN world was concerned. Phil Sgriccia directed 9x13 and wrote 10x08 and was more of the parent of Wayward than any specific writer in that sense. Jody and Claire were pretty much common property of the show by that point. Claire was really introduced again in relation to plotlines and questions about Cas and less to do with them really going out of their way to re-launch her. I think they’d have been much cornier about it from the start and while YA protagonist diary writing her way through the end of Wayward Sisters was cute, it’s the sort of cutesy that really has to be earned. If she STARTED that way, like maybe me and 3 friends would be stanning her and everyone else would be revolted :P

(I am a YA fantasy novel author, but I do think everyone should make room in their hearts for this level of cheese)

In any case, Bobo just threw his hat into an already crowded ring with Alex, but obviously loving the characters and having his own personal wayward child to contribute did help elevate him to the prospective showrunner seat, but also all the other writers who’d written these characters except Dabb had left at that point. If Bobo was going to shepherd them through to their new show, he’d be the legacy writer, even though he was a new baby writer in the season Donna was introduced... Attrition aside, he did genuinely write them very well, loved their stories and was great with writing Jody when he could get her, so he would also have been a good choice even if all the others were left still... 

But anyway. Season 10′s subplot for Cas was about Claire and learning some stuff about himself along the way, but she was used very much for his personal development and for Dean as well, being a mini Dean herself in a season where he had lost a lot of his sense of self. It’s a total accident of scheduling but Angel Heart (10x20) being the last episode before 10x22 is a nice touch in that regard. And while Cas tried really hard with Claire and awoke his inner Dad side so that he’d be more prepared for fatherhood next time, it was pretty insurmountable between them to have anything more than a bittersweet relationship where the best he could do was make up with her and see her somewhere safe. The fact of him looking like her actual dead father is horrendous the more you think about it and while she managed to see him for who he was instead of a horrible monster, that’s more than enough trauma to inflict on an already traumatised girl for the sake of helping Cas’s manpain and tidying up the sticky question of Jimmy and Cas’s right to the vessel. 

Angel Heart very specifically ends with TFW mailing Claire to Jody because they know she’s already good with Alex in a genuine way and can handle these sort of issues and has done it before. And also because she can be a guardian who will not constantly remind Claire that her father is dead but something is walking around wearing a perfect reconstruction of his face. Carver era did a few things here and there with bodily autonomy and the problem of angel and demon vessels, but it was also really hit and miss. They’d get random waves of feeling guilty about it but then by necessity go back to stabbing angels in their still-living vessels an episode later. Claire was a way to address at the very least that whatever Cas was being put through was only a punishment on Cas and not on Jimmy as well, which is probably why we got such sappy Heaven scenes. We NEEDED to be shown he was in Heaven and largely okay with what was going on so that the show could justify using Cas at all as a character without breaking the code of ethics they tried to make their own characters adhere to. Aside from that it also gave Cas a side plot for when he wasn’t needed in the main plot, and any emotional connection to anything that wasn’t Sam and Dean.

Anyway 10x20 caused this huge fandom high which was followed by one of the lowest lows of the fandom immediately after, and both centred on female characters (in fact, now we know, 2 lesbians even! Though I’d wonder if, The Gay Agenda aside, Bobo spite-wrote that specifically because of the roots of Wayward) and I think that galvanised the whole movement of fans and hopefully some self-reflection in the show. They DID start making an effort in season 11, which shows some of the early signs of better inclusion but also backtracking or edging nervously away from the more intense Carver era stuff. Not just because Dean didn’t have the Mark any more but in general it was like someone had opened a window and let in some fresh air... Even before Carver bailed somewhere around the midseason to go do a different show and Dabb started to step up. 

All this to say that the Wayward stuff was always about the female characters and making up for the past sins of the show. It’s even a riff on the “wayward son” line which obviously centres around male protagonists and their journey. Claire stumbled into being a part of it in the lucky way of being in the right place and time, but the journey had already started even in the season 10 momentum with earlier work and it was that which suddenly made the prospect that Jody had two young women living with her now seem like a starter for the next generation of the show as it was a mirrored format to season 1 in a way, if you took Alex and Claire as the new Sam and Dean. It was exciting but people flipped out after Angel Heart because stuff had been bubbling since season 9 and earlier in season 10, so this was just pouring more candy into an already visibly full bowl of potential tasty gems. It made a possibility seem real that hadn’t before because we already had Kim bitterly complaining that the CW refused to hear the case for a Jody spin off because she was too old. The next best thing was a Jody spin off where she was the Gandalf to some CW age appropriate characters.

(the CW is and always has been garbage)

Anyway in season 13 Jack was introduced as a Claire 2.0 but as a male character with staying power for that reason, but he was filling the space she left for Cas. He couldn’t be a father to her and neither really wanted that set up anyway. But thematically it had created the possibility of Dadstiel and the space he had in his heart for that. Since the show was in its waning years they would be looking for endgame and handing Cas an easy win with a son he could unconditionally love who would love him back unconditionally absolutely filled that gap. It was a non SamnDean thing that Cas could have for himself outside of whatever happened with them. Not sure the memo came back that he was supposed to have mORE than that but oh well it’s not real if you don’t watch it :))) But yeah Jack was always going to be linked to Cas’s endgame, he wasn’t a free-floating character such as Jody who could go where she wanted and do as she pleased. He was main story relevant from start to finish and tied inexorably to another main character’s fate. Because the show wouldn’t do that with its female characters they could be bundled into spin offs but in practical terms Jack was both never what the Wayward as envisioned by fans or writers was about, nor would he have been free to go. 

Since it would have been about centering the stories of people overlooked by the main story, Claire a case in point that she had her life ruined in season 4 and it was a footnote until season ten, and then metaphorically more the concept of having queer and non-white characters in the mix of main characters, it would have represented a future of the story where the main show was unable to tread. Probably because of the CW. Also inherent biases in the writers. Bad cocktail. Jack is both too white and too male to fit the brief to ever leave SPN, and not only that but he is so as a precise mirror to the main white male characters, being passably any one of their sons if you squint, and meant to be instantly instinctively read as such... he was one of the safest bets of representing the show as the network wanted to imagine its target demographic.

So I really don’t think that Jack has any place being in a spin off of the show unless you want more of the same. They tried to give us something different and the CW didn’t like it because it wasn’t more of the same. Ironically a Jack spin off, with or without Claire, would have more chance of being greenlit and more chance of success. But the spin off they put their heart behind was Wayward Sisters as it was. And I think it was absolutely correct that never mind leaving Jack out of it after his work was done in the lead up episode to help set the table, but honestly they could have cut all the middle scenes of Sam and Dean wandering in the woods and gained precious seconds with the girls and still had a functioning story with those guys. It was like some cowardly missive was sent that the show couldn’t actually go more than 10 minutes without showing a flesh and blood Winchester or the whole thing would spontaneously sizzle out of syndication and the money tree would wither on the spot. And in the mean time, we could have been having Banter with the girls. Or Claire and Kaia holding hands some more. The good stuff :P 

[mattzerella-sticks]

Thoughts on "Carry On" after I've mulled it over:

Now that I've had time to sit on it, I can be a little more precise on my thoughts of this finale:

- Dean's 'ending': Taken out by a rusty nail... I hate it. Then I heard some opinions - without Chuck there were no magic fixes, and this was bound to happen if they continued hunting because of that. It was a human, ordinary, accidental death meaning the Winchesters are just ordinary. Still, being taken out by a nail or rebarb or whatever wasn't a satisfying death for Dean Winchester. Added to the fact he most certainly wanted to live (Miracle, job application, etc.) And he didn't want to hunt anymore either! He wasn't looking for hunts (like Sam was). They stumbled onto that hunt by accident.

From a writer's point of view, I can say now it makes sense with the plot of the episode (only). Dean's death was a catalyst - to give Sam 'freedom' and to show us, the audience, what Heaven was like now that Jack is God. His own sort of 'freedom', I guess.

Unfortunately the plot of the episode still sucked. Just because it makes sense 'story wise' (and I say that very loosely because Dean didn't even get his loose ends tied up nicely). A death during a hunt was something Dean figured would happen in his youth, and he didn't care because he practically was a ghost without many physical attachments. Now he has so many they decide to take him away and for what purpose? It is the last episode. A series finale should only hurt in saying goodbye to the characters, but not like this.

And a goodbye like this, for a character who has had suicidal tendencies and from the looks of it was moving past that, who never really thought about his wants until this moment, and who was on the cusp of being textually confirmed queer (which would have been monumental just saying), it felt like we as fans were stabbed by the rebarb. Which goes to show how much we love the character, one thing. And I think that's why they knew it would hurt. However, they were so wrapped up in this 'shock' they didn't think about any of the consequences listed above as to why this would hurt not only us but their legacy. They figured it'd be a bookend, only for a book whose story ended a decade ago.

- Cas: A one-sentence reference sucks. That's just it.

Fanfiction was mostly built around Cas, too, and I had a feeling they wouldn't show his rescue because leaving that to us would be a good gift. "Here, Cas is alive and human but we won't tell you how - our last fanfiction gap". But Cas's absence wasn't a fanfiction gap, it's a canyon. So much of this episode doesn't make sense without Cas. And, honestly, a good chunk of outrage could have been avoided if Misha was allowed to film (or, if rumors were true, if they left his scenes in). Like it's been proven the majority of fans love Cas, and Jensen and Jared love Misha, so not having him in the finale gives credence to, that the cast and crew might love Misha, TPTB certainly didn't. And doesn't that tarnish your legacy, that you have a man dedicate 12 years of his life to your show and this is how you repaid him? Even if they decided to 'no homo' Cas's declaration (which i doubt they would have because those optics are much worse) at least show it.

Which leads to why he wasn't included in the finale. If he was there, they'd have to have him and Dean talk. About that night, when Cas told Dean he loves him. And if they did, and had there be a reciprocal confession, I bet things on Tumblr would have felt a little different. An equal exchange instead of plain highway robbery.. Yes we would all still want Dean and Cas to live long, human lives, but at least Dean and Cas's emotional arcs were resolved by the SHOW WRITERS, whose job it is to do so. Not ours! But they never understood how to give Castiel good things. Clearly, they know how to make Castiel give good things (like creating Dean's perfect Heaven for him) but not receive them in kind (reciprocated love from Dean). By not having this, it plays exactly into the bury your gays trope we were all afraid of, even if Cas is back. Because he, a queer character, is still living his life for a character he believes doesn't love him back - even if Cas 'doesn't need to know if that's true'. The audience does, and I'm sure Misha did as well.

The writers set up such an easy win but what this finale did was put every character back to season one, and given Misha didn't show up until season 4, makes sense why he wasn't in this episode.

- Sam's life after Dean: Sam liked being a hunter. We had how many countless episodes show that? He enjoyed saving people, research, being a leader - he was good at it. Hell, they even made it a point to have him find someone in the life who understood what it was like to hunt and wrote a beautiful relationship that also gave disability rep.

Only they never followed through.

Like, with Dean, so much of this lead up was then tossed out the window by Sam starting a family, which he never had any indication he wanted to do in these later seasons. Since season 8, really. What we got was that he liked to hunt, he was good at it. He could have restarted the Men of Letters, America chapter, and made the hunters even more connected than before!

Not saying he didn't do that, but knowing how Sam was raised I doubt he would let himself hunt with a kid. So, by showing him marry and have Dean Jr., it's a non-textual confirmation he retired. Which, like with Dean's ending, didn't make sense with what he wanted. It felt like a "might as well" since Dean wasn't there any longer. Like, whats the point of doing something I love now that I don't have my brother with me?

Instead of leaving the Bunker he should have transformed it into a bustling center of activity so he wasn't alone. Extend the Winchester family further and become the hunters' patriarch. Eileen being the matriarch.

Which, circling back, Eileen should have had textual confirmation, too. They showed a brunette woman standing far back, and I get if the actress couldn't be there to film why they would do that. But why not show pictures of him and Eileen if they did marry? I mean, there's a giant picture of Sam with Dean, Mary, and John I DON'T remember them ever having. Why he would blow that up after having two previous episodes talk about how much of a bad father he is...

Sam's ending falls in the same vein as Dean's in that it's unsatisfactory and doesn't fit the character anymore. Not saying Sam didn't want this in the past, but we all saw him change. Hunting was in his blood, and he was fantastic at it. It used to be a way for him to hang with Dean but it would have also been good to see him carry on the legacy in Dean's honor. A better way then by naming his son Dean.

Which strikes another nail on the head. We have Dean, a subtextually queer/textually ambiguous sexuality character, die, and because of this Sam can go on and live the 'apple pie life'? Cas's confession scene wasn't homophobic, but damned if Sam didn't spend the thirty years after Dean's death yelling 'Straight Pride'.

Textually, giving characters a family is a common trope in these sort of epilogues. Harry Potter, Hunger Games, etc. A way to show they've moved on from trauma and are trying to be happy (albeit in a very antiquated way). But at least it fit with those characters and stories. This was Sam trying to be a person who he wasn't anymore, who clearly would rather be on the road hunting (given that ugly wig scene in the garage with Dean's Impala). Actually, worse, it felt like Sam was trying to live a life Dean always wanted. Which shows that even if he's alive Sam isn't happy with what his life was, he was content. He was waiting for death.

- Dean's time in Heaven: Like I said previously about Dean and his 'death', it makes sense to have Dean die early if the goal was to show how Heaven had been changed. Which hurts worse because that again reinforces how Dean's storyline truly is left unresolved for plot development.

And, honestly, they should have cut this entire sequence if they weren't gonna have the cameos. They should have changed the script so that Dean didn't die, because there was no emotional pay-off of Dean going to heaven. We're told it's freedom, however it's more like a waiting room. For Dean, driving endlessly until Sam dies. And for us, being told we can't start writing until Sam gets there and we finish his montage.

Like, is it beautiful that Jack and Cas remade heaven so Dean would be happy? Yes. Did I need to know this until like maybe the last few minutes? No. Dean could have lived a long life, with Cas/without Cas, and then die first and be taken to Heaven. And then after Bobby gives him the rundown, about how time works differently here, we get the Sam end of life and see him pop up too. And when Sam asks what happened to Heaven, Dean could have clapped him on the back and told him he'd explain in the car and they drive away knowing they lived a good life, and have eternity of peace.

Because having Heaven be an open sandbox, for us, to let characters roam free and see those they love without them being memories - beautiful and exactly how Heaven should be. It definitely is something we as writers would have enjoyed if we didn't get it how we did.

Because it hadn't felt like Dean nor Sam deserved the deaths they got. Making Heaven, ultimate freedom, seem such a dangerous idea. That the only true peace is in death (Dean) and life is spent waiting for death so you can be reunited (Sam). What about any of that makes it seem like any of what Sam and Dean did was worth it? Was good? At least on Earth. Sure, without them (and Cas and Jack) Heaven wouldn't be the way it was. But that doesn't seem like a good reward for them. Their reward should have been living long lives (both of them) and them buttoning it with those five to seven minutes of how Heaven changed (more if they decided to leave Cas as an angel despite that being, again, zero character growth and not aligning with how the story was unfolding)

And after a painful, undeserved death, we get Dean in Heaven but still not happy? It was clear Dean was still waiting to let himself enjoy seeing all his family, his friends, Cas, because Sam wasn't there. Which shows he hadn't broken the sacrificial cycle because he's not putting himself first! "Oh but he has eternity to do it!" Yes, but he shouldn't have had to wait still. His whole life has been spent waiting and he gets killed just before he gets his due, and we never see him particularly 'enjoy' his reward, which is too tragic for a series finale. "He could have done more than drive, we don't know!" Yes, but if they're not showing it then why should I read into it? This finale isn't deep. "But covid-" Yeah, I get that. They should have changed the script because without those cameos Dean's time in Heaven was more than pointless and this whole finale was just an exercise in how to hate your main characters.

What this boils down to is that we, as fans, were told that this was for us, except we already knew Heaven was ours because Heaven was supposed to be the implied. Heaven is whatever we make of it. We didn't need to be told this through the show. Having this be the goal of this episode, of the finale - which sums up the goal of the entire series, really - be totally focused on the life we get after death instead of doing the most to make life on Earth paradise for you, was rotten. And Sam's 'happily ever after' was cheapened because of Dean's death.

- Family Don't End in Blood?: Taking into account all of the above, the show has failed the core message of what we as a fandom loved. Family don't end in blood.

Again, I get that covid stole any chance of reunions in Heaven, but it also stole so many others. Like Sam wouldn't have called Garth, Jody, Donna, the girls and Eileen, to have them here for Dean's funeral? Sam wouldn't have burned Dean alone! We know there was some time that passed since the hunt and Dean's funeral by the dog being there, but it should have been more people. Which, again, they should have axed it from the story if they couldn't get them because, like these side characters have done from the beginning, they change the context of the show! Sam's loneliness would have hit harder if it was a room full of people all telling stories about Dean to then just him, alone, in the Bunker trying to move on.

The writers thought we didn't need all these cameos, but we did because - as we keep repeating - while the show, at its heart, is Sam and Dean, there were so many more people who gave their characters depth and allowed for this show to continue. It should have been a celebration of who the boys became and how it was through these bonds they were able to overcome so much.

Which, if redone in that context, Dean's speech to Sam could have been so much better. More poignant and hopeful instead of sad. I mean, I could barely focus on what was being said because I was in too much shock of what was being done to Dean. If they had a similar speech, given with Dean and Sam parting ways to start new lives. Dean reminding Sam he's done so much good, that he's proud of his brother and knows he can do so much even without him, the emotional beat would have still hit! Probably even better than with his death. Because my takeaway from Dean's death isn't "Dean is proud of Sam" it's "Dean died stupidly".

Going to show that this entire script was a series of choices that were all the worst possible outcome, stitched together and handed in. It didn't feel congruent to the story and, instead, a bunch of items checked off of a list the writers were given. It didn't feel like the culmination of the series like we were promised, instead a 'what if the show skipped fourteen years after season 2, John's dead, Mom's killer dead, and no demon deal'. It felt like (even if it wasn't intended) the writers telling us "don't expect people to change or that happy ending exist in life" which, given current climates and attitudes, is dangerous.

Overall:

They were trying to satisfy an audience built around fandom and fanworks, they wanted to leave so much "up to interpretation" so we can continue crafting our narratives through this open sandbox. What they failed to consider is that we don't care where the brothers, or any of the characters, physically are in this show, we care more about the characters themselves and their emotional goals. That's why we write fanfiction. That's why there's a lot of canon divergence. We thank them for the world and play around in it. So, by giving Sam and Dean these 'half-lives' on screen, letting loose threads hang so we, as an audience, can fill in the blanks (Dean and Cas's heaven reunion, who Sam married, what Dean did while driving for fifty years, etc.) was a poor and lazy decision because we are tired of having to do your job! Supernatural is a collaborative effort yes, but they misunderstood the assignment. We still need textual goalposts, like seeing Cas or Eileen. We needed them to finish what they were saying, so we could then take over and continue the story.

A series finale should feel poignant but the only really emotional moment was Dean's death (not for good reasons), and the rest was filler. Your series finale should not feel like filler. It felt rushed. It felt sloppy and - because of not including a certain character - plain rude. Just... it didn't work. The short of it is that the finale, as a whole, didn't work. It didn't wrap the show up in its entirety like we were promised it would. And if they do revive this show for a mini-series or movie, they best forget what happened in episode 20.

[queerfables]

"I am your mother, but I am not 'just a mom.' And you are not a child."

"I never was."

What's absolutely brilliant about this exchange between Mary and Dean is that they are both right and they are both facing the exact same problem: that a person is not just the things you want them to represent.

We're in Dean's head a lot so we know he struggles to reconcile the fantasy construction of his mother with the reality of who she is. What's really interesting though is that Mary does the exact same thing. Dean stares at photographs of his mother and remembers his Dad talk about her and he builds a picture of her in his mind that's not completely based in reality. But Mary is exactly the same. "I'm still mourning them as I knew them. My baby Sam. My little boy Dean." She misses the version of them that she had in heaven, but that version was just memories played out over and over again. For both of them, then, their relationship isn't a living thing, it's a shrine built from old, old memories.

This is one of those rare, incredible things that Supernatural did on purpose. They brought Mary back and framed it as a happy ending, the thing Dean desperately wanted made real. And then immediately, they deconstructed that. Immediately they ask, what are Mary and Dean to each other, really? The last time they knew each other, Dean was four years old. Mary had run away from hunting and Dean hadn't yet been indoctrinated into it yet. They don't know each other as the people they really are, just as the fantasy of what their life should have been.

Mary and Dean both long for normalcy. For them that's inextricably bound up in traditional concepts of family, something neither of them ever had for long. Their family units were distorted by violence: both of them raised as soldiers, both of them weapons before they were people. They try to undo the trauma of that by replacing their distorted family with a new one, safe and untainted by hunting. Mary runs away with John. Dean settles down with Lisa. They leave their old life behind, and they find themselves called back to it again, again, again.

They never really had something normal, but the closest either of them ever came was with each other. At the start of Dean's life and the end of Mary's, they got to be that for each other. And yeah, okay, maybe Mary was still slipping away to hunt sometimes. Maybe Dean was already taking on more of an emotional burden than he ever should have had to for his parents. It was still a lot better than what came before for Mary, and what came later for Dean. More importantly, that's not how they think of that time. Mary thinks of getting to be a mother, getting to have a child. Dean thinks of getting to be a child, and getting to have a mother. They romanticise the roles they played for each other and the people they got to be.

Mary dies, and the traditional nuclear family is shattered. And when she comes back to life 30 years later, it doesn't fix any of the things that got broken. Mary and Dean look at each other and they're both horrified because they're looking at the family that was supposed to be sanctified, the dream of a life free from hunting, and that family is a hunter too.

"You are not a child" and "I never was" is, for both of them, the gut wrenching admission of what they've lost. They're both grieving the life that was stolen from them, a life they can't get back. But more than that, now the family they wanted so badly is an actual person rather than an ideal. And both of them are forced to realise that not only do they not have the life they wanted, maybe that life was never more than a dream in the first place. Mary couldn't escape the cycle of hunting; she dies protecting her family and in death passes down her family legacy. Dean can't escape the cycle either; he rewrites his history, brings his mother back to life, and finds hunting in her blood the same as his. The tragedy of Mary and Dean is that they wanted each other to save them, they wanted each other to make them different, but they are, at their core, exactly the same.

[tibbinswrites]

Suptober - Day 1

It’s that time of year again! 

I can’t promise that I’ll be as active this year as I was last year but Suptober is a wonderful thing and I wanted to participate at least once. (Thank you Jackie!) Day 1: On The Road Again

Another call, another job. Load up the Impala, grab Sammy. Off they go.

It was routine by now, if any part of their lives could be called routine. There had always been a comfort to it that Dean just didn’t seem to feel today. If he was being truly honest with himself, he hadn’t felt much comfort in it for a good long while.

Dean loved the open road, he always had. Hell, he hadn’t really had much of a choice. The road had been pretty much all he’d known growing up. He liked long drives, watching Baby gobble up the miles, only the sparse signposts and the occasional roadside diner any indication that there was anything other than tarmac. There was only the journey and the rest didn’t matter.

Now though he worried about the destination. No, maybe ‘worried’ was the wrong word, he just didn’t look forward to it the way he used to. He wasn’t sure when hunting had become more of a chore than a calling, but when his phone rang this morning, distracting him from a joke Cas was telling, he realised that was exactly what it was.

The open road always seemed to be leading him away from where he wanted to be.

He longed for home. Every crappy motel mattress brought a grimace, every rusty shower brought a curse. They walked around another small town interviewing potential suspects, flashing their fed badges and teasing out clues, but even the thrill of the mystery didn’t excite him like it used to. He was pretty sure Sam had noticed. He’d seen the concerned looks, shaken them off, and was only after they’d cornered the thing (a ghoul) and killed it that Sam turned to him with his arms crossed.

“Okay, what’s up with you lately?”

Dean narrowed his eyes and wiped the ghoul blood off his face, “What do you mean?”

“You just killed something and you’re not smiling. You barely reacted at all. Usually you’re at least satisfied.”

“Creepy.”

“Dean I’m serious.” Sam caught his arm as he turned to head back towards the Impala. His hazel eyes earnest. “You’ve been acting like this for the past dozen hunts, like you’re defeated even when we win. What’s wrong?”

Dean brought a hand up to scratch the back of his head, then switched hands when he realised he was still holding the machete. He sighed.

“You think maybe it’s time we hung it up?” he asked, preferring to look towards his shoes rather than at his brother.

“Hung what up? Hunting?”

“Yeah.”

A strange kind of silence fell. Strange enough for Dean to break and look up, trying to gauge Sam’s reaction.

Sam’s face was impenetrable.

“Like, for a break or for good?”

Dean shrugged, the machete hanging heavy at his side. This time Sam followed him when he moved towards the car, opened the trunk and pulled out a cloth to wipe the blade with before tossing it in. Sam did likewise with his own gear. When Dean slammed the trunk back down though, Sam hopped up onto it and gave him a look that said, We’re not done talking.

“I think we’ve done enough, Sammy,” he said eventually, running a hand through blood-encrusted hair. “How many people are still walking around because of us? All of ’em, that’s how many. With all the ghouls and shifters and vamps we’ve ganked, all the big, world-ending bad guys we’ve taken down. Freaking God. I can’t help thinking that maybe it’s someone else’s turn, you know?”

Sam’s expression turned inward then, pensive, and Dean hurried to correct himself. “I mean, I’m with you, come whatever. I just—”

He trailed off when Sam held up a hand, a gentle smile on his face. “I get it,” he said.

“You do?”

“Of course I do. We’ve done a hell of a lot, more than anyone. You’ve got every right to want to retire.”

You

Oh.

Dean couldn’t help the disappointment deflating his chest and Sam’s smile turned a little sad.

“I’m not finished yet, Dean,” he said, seeming to sense Dean’s thoughts. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t—”

“No.” Dean said stubbornly. “You and me. I’ve always got your back, you know that.”

“Of course I know that. But there are other hunters out there that I can work with.”

“I only said I was thinking about it. It’s not like I’ve made any plans.” Only fantasies, passing daydreams of being able to sit down to binge Netflix without the fear that a phone call will have him on the road again within the hour, of scheduling a date night with Cas and actually being able to keep to it. Beginning a day with a clear notion of how it will go and not having it derail in the first fifteen minutes.

“Dean—”

“Sam.” Dean mocked, walking around the Impala to the driver-side door. “I’m good.”

“No, you’re not.” Sam slid off the trunk and around the other side, leaning his elbows on the roof. “You want out. And that’s okay. You can have that, Dean.”

“Whatever. We both know I’d go stir-crazy within two weeks.”

“Then after two weeks we can go kill something.”

“That’s not...” Dean began, then he paused. “Really?”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, really. You know you don’t have to go cold turkey, right? It’s okay if you skip a hunt or two and then pick up the third.”

“I guess I always thought that I’d just keep doing this until I died,” Dean said, his voice quivering a little.

“You did.” Sam pointed out. “We both did, and we kept going after that. But we have options now. The world is as safe as it’s gonna be and we made that happen. We get to pick our ending, we’ve earned that. And hell, we can change our minds too. There’s no path, no destiny, no freaking legacy to fulfil. It’s just us and what we want. So what do you want, Dean?”

Dean looked at his little snot-nosed brother for a long time, at the wise and capable man he’d become somehow when Dean wasn’t looking. He felt a wrench in his chest. This moment was important, it was the moment that he realised maybe he and Sam didn’t have to be on their own team anymore, that maybe he was ready to let him go.

“I wanna go home.” he said quietly. “And I wanna stay there for a while.”

Sam nodded, pride sparking in his eyes.

“Then let’s go home,” he said simply. “And you can stay as long as you want.”

Dean opened the door and settled in the driver’s seat before taking a deep breath and starting the engine. He gripped the wheel and pulled Baby out onto the road.

He felt lighter. He’d always thought that giving up hunting would feel like… well… giving up, but it didn’t. Instead it felt like the rest of his life had just opened ahead of him, no obligations, just choices. 

The road would always be waiting for him after all, and it would always take him where he wanted to go.

[seven-oomen]

Daddy’s little soldier trope | The parallel between Dean Winchester and Chris Argent

One of the tropes that became increasingly popular with the shows Supernatural and Teen Wolf is known in fandom as Daddy’s little soldier. This is a trope that usually features a son, who has been emotionally and/or physically abused and/or groomed by a father figure in order to carry out their legacy. However misguided that legacy may be.

The two most well known fictional characters for this trope, as far as I’m aware, are Dean Winchester (Supernatural, air date in 2005) and Chris Argent (Teen Wolf, air date in 2011) and this little piece of meta I will be drawing the parallels between these character and how they’ve grown over the years.

Let’s start with the Supernatural side. For the people that don’t know him, this is Dean Winchester.

When we first meet Dean it’s in the Pilot episode of Supernatural where he is portrayed as a confident, suave, and sassy hunter who drops by on his little brother’s doorstep because their father has gone missing and he needs his help. However, as the season progresses it becomes increasingly clear that Dean is far more complicated than what he appears to be.

Beneath all the confidence and sass lies a young man who’s increasingly taken out of his comfort zone while trying to keep his crumbling family together. Dean is shown as compassionate, insecure, and completely under the influence of his father’s will. Carrying out John Winchester’s wishes and commands even if that doesn’t benefit him and even endangers him. 

There’s also evidence throughout the show of emotional neglect, manipulation, and one could even go as far as to say Dean was brain washed into being Daddy’s little soldier. Following John Winchester’s every command as that who Dean was trained to be from a young age.

The show even draws the comparison that on occasions that Dean didn’t follow John’s command, he passively endangers his little brother and angers his father. (The episode where Sam is almost killed by a Shtriga after Dean leaves the motel room to go to the lobby/arcade.) When Dean returns to the motel room and learns that Sammy was attacked and almost had the life drained out of him, John yells at him and blames him for the attack. Even though Dean, was most likely (judging by the actor), around 8-12 years old.

This was one of the forming incidents for Dean to obey his father’s wishes, no matter the consequences. Because his father convinced him if he didn’t, people, and especially Sam, would get hurt.

Throughout the next few seasons we then see Dean within this role as Daddy’s little soldier, carrying out hunts for his father and uncovering more and more truths about who his father was along the way.  While also trying to keep his family from falling apart and keeping his younger brother as safe as he can. 

Dean is shown as a character that doesn’t seem to care about his own safety and who will sacrifice himself for his father or brother, without any questions asked. By all accounts, he sees himself as the expendable soldier he was raised to be.

It is only after their father has died by the means of a demon deal in Season 2,  and after learning of God and Angels and their heavenly war, that Dean finally starts to question everything he’s been taught. Although he doesn’t fully break away from his programming until later seasons where he truly tries to live life as he’s always wanted. Even though he eventually does return to hunting and the hunters life, he’s far more nuanced in his view regarding the supernatural due to everything he’s learned.

-

Now let’s have a look at Chris Argent, who first appeared in the pilot episode of Teen Wolf; Wolf Moon.

Chris Argent is a human hunter who was born into the Argent family of hunters. When we first meet him he’s depicted as a ruthless hunter who follows the hunter code: “We hunt those, who hunt us.” to the letter. He is shown as a smart, strong, and deadly hunter, who’s intimidation tactics leave a lot to be desired. (I honestly didn’t think one could threateningly wash a car or pick up a dessert, and that remains to be debated, but it was very funny to watch.) 

His devotion to the code is practically drilled into him from a young age by his father (and presumably mother), even if his father himself didn’t really stick to the code and used it more as a guideline.

Chris was raised as a soldier by his father, a fact that he makes abundantly clear on multiple occasions by stating; Our men are raised as soldiers, our women are raised as leaders. As far as Chris is concerned in the early seasons, that is all he is. A soldier raised for war.

Chris in the beginning obeys his father’s every command even if that may endanger him and doesn’t question it. As is evidenced when his father sends him off on an arms deal at the age of 18, without telling Chris that he’s dealing with the Japanese Maffia. This eventually leads to a situation where Chris ends up killing an Oni demon and barely escaping with his life.

After the incident Chris continues hunting and working for his father and eventually marries and has a daughter. Although he chooses not to raise his daughter in the life he was raised in. Effectively breaking the cycle of abuse. (At first, his daughter does end up hunting later in life, an event which eventually causes her death. Although Chris is generally not abusive but protective in the way that he trains Allison.)

His daughter Allison, and his father and sister’s disregard for the hunter’s code when it inconveniences them, is eventually what makes him see reason. And he adopts his daughter's code: “We protect those who cannot protect themselves.” as a result.

There are several instances in the first three seasons where we see the illusion of Chris’s little soldier image breaking. The first is when his wife is bitten and turned, and Chris begs his father to make an exception to the code. His father reminds him that they can’t, but Chris keeps protesting.

It is his wife, who has to step in and remind Chris that he is a soldier and he has to fall back in line. (So to speak.)

The other instances where his resolve and image break are when he finally learns the truth about his sister and father and what crimes they committed according to the hunter’s code. It is this disillusionment and the positive influence of his daughter and her friends that allows him to break free of the daddy’s little soldier ideal.

-

The parallels between these two characters are very clear. Both of them have been raised in a hunters life from a young age, receiving weapons training, learning supernatural lore, being emotionally groomed and manipulated by their fathers, while trying to protect a younger sibling.

Both of these characters also lost most of their family, be it by blood or found family, due to the lifestyle they were raised in. Chris’s wife and daughter are killed by Supernatural creatures, his sister turned into one by another. His sister then in turn kills their father by mauling him to death. Dean’s daughter (who was groomed by her Amazon mother to kill her father), surrogate father, parents, and other extended family like Charlie and Kevin, are also killed by the Supernatural.

Both of them also rose above who they were trained to be for a time, only to return to hunting in the later seasons.

The biggest difference between these two characters, is that one rose above his programming and re-found love and family, even going as far as to protect the supernatural from human threats (Chris), and the other eventually died a tragic death on a hunt started by his father 15 years earlier in the series finale (Dean).

-

I think for many of us the Daddy’s little soldier trope is very appealing. Mostly because it deals with children of neglect or abuse backgrounds breaking free from the influences of their parents and, usually, coming out on top.

Tagging a few people who might find it interesting below the cut.

@mostly-vo1d​ @veronicasummersfelton​ @msmischief101​ @gum-believable​ @fandoms-fiend​

[diminuel]

Hun I just read ur hate-letter to the SPN writers... and tbh same. I feel like they could have done so much!! It didn’t even have to be destiel related in my opinion (tho I am a fellow shopper) just like maybe seeing everyone they lost? Like everyone being there. Then it’s have covered the „found family“ aspect. Even with the heaven end we did get. Only getting to know where Bobby’s friend and Marry and John are!? What about Charlie!? Kevin!? Cas!? Cos apparently he got out of the empty... idk how but apparently he did. Yes sure it was good to see Bobby but... give us more. And Sam getting old? Cheap. Honestly cheap. Not only the method but also the wig. And then in the barn - as we are at cheap rn - the vamp heads were literal mannequin heads and it took so much from that scene. Also why vampires? And then so forcefully made important ones? Why not that child from one of Sam‘s ex girlfriends that promised to kill dean!? Like I could get that the writers wanted something unspectacular cos that’s how life is. And tbh now it doesn’t take away from Cas‘ end. But srsly the man went to hell and back (literally) he deserves better. So much better!! And again to Sam. Why not show us that he ended up with Eileen? And then I can only agree with you on the part of Cas‘ sacrifice as it was pure Fan service but please acknowledge it!! The man was in love with u dean!! That causes something. It felt half assed and in my opinion episode 19 was the end and 20 terrible „my-immortal“ level fanfic. And also Sam would’ve never let his son become a hunter. NEVER. The way he was forced into that life!? No. And also were are my girls!? Where’s Jody?! I missed her :(

Sorry for literally spamming this I needed to get it off my chest and have no other platform or friends that watch the show :((

Haha, I don’t think it was supposed to be a hate letter (I hope! though I do feel like my faith in them was seriously misplaced and I feel like an idiot for that).

You all bring up good questions, questions I feel the show has to answer for. I saw one writer say “covid, pal!” as a reason why people who were supposed to be there weren’t. What we got on screen was not what they promised at all. What happened to it being a celebration of Sam and Dean and the family they found on the way? There was no family they found on the way! And what about the assurance that even with covid they made sure that the people they really wanted to be there for the finale, where there. So...... the only person they wanted to be there is Bobby? 

How cheap! What about the characters you mentioned, what about Cas? They were supposed to be there too! And I clearly mean “supposed to be there”, not just because I as a fan wanted them there, but because the narrative that SPN has spun over the last few years was that Dean and Sam have a family; they have friends and family - even though they’re not related by blood - that mean something to them; that also give their fight more meaning. But in the end it was all just Sam and Dean again, all the people they lost not worth more than a shrug before the next mouthful of pie landed in Dean’s mouth. Maybe Bobby acted as a weak and cheap stand in for “family doesn’t end in blood”. But everything they showed us in this finale was that in the end this family they found for themselves was worth nothing? Why did Dean answer John in “Lebanon” that he had a family when John said that was what he wanted for Dean? Because clearly when you came down to it, nothing else mattered but Sam and Dean.

And Sam’s life was so gloomy if you think about it, the way he died framed by photographs of a life he lost that ONLY included the Winchesters, maybe one picture of Bobby and of his son... That’s like a shrine to “only blood” family matters. There’s no sign at all - apart from his son - that Sam lived a life, one that was worth commemorating at the end of his road. Where’s his wife? I think Sam’s fate was tragic too. I get the feeling that he was a shitty husband and a shitty dad, with one foot stuck in the past and the other already put into the grave so he could see his brother again. And that’s not... a good ending for a good character.

And don’t get me started on the wig. It haunts my dreams.

(And clearly don’t get me started on the utter betrayal that was Dean’s death. That’s the one thing I will not forgive. I cannot believe that they were putting so much effort into Dean’s personal growth, only to then say at the very end “ah, sorry folks, he has to die bloody, randomly, unmourned by anyone but Sam, uncelebrated by people he saved and loved, without a legacy but Sam naming his son after him! After all there’s no life for a man like him in civil society~!” Fuck off)

Sorry. I still have a lot of emotions.

[slipper007]

WIP: Sing Me To Sleep

Word Count: 2,485 (of 15000+ so far)

Tags: Destiel, Fix-It Fic, Grief and Mourning, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Canon-Typical Alcoholism, Ignores S15E20 Carry On, more to be added when I post the full piece

Notes: a little addition to celebrate hitting 15k words. Read the begining here. Once it's done, I'll post the whole fic here and on my AO3

As soon as they got back to the Bunker, Dean started making a home for Miracle. He gathered some spare blankets before having an epiphany: she could just sleep with him. She would love the bed, and he would love having her there with him.

It was just his luck the Men of Letters, stuffy old guys that they’d been, had some food dishes perfect for Miracle. He had seen them months ago when he had been looking for an artifact and left them in storage without another thought. He headed over to get them now only to freeze in front of the doorway.

The door to Room 7B was heavy and even standing in front of it took a toll. Mouth dry, Dean managed to put his hand on the knob but couldn’t find it in himself to open the door. He knew what waited on the other side for him, and he didn’t want to see it. The empty space, the sheer nothingness—not even goo or a coat this time—was too much.

He could get the dishes later. Better yet, he could buy new ones. Miracle would love that, wouldn’t she? She deserved nice new dishes to eat from. And while he was out, he could get her food and toys as well.

Dean went back to his room to start making space for Miracle’s things only to see himself in his mirror and freeze. There was a handprint on his shoulder, marked in blood. Slowly, Dean slotted his hand over the mark, aligning the fingers with his own.

Cas.

Dean turned away and bit his lip, hard. Tasting blood, he took his utility jacket off and folded it neatly before putting it in a drawer out of sight. He was too sober for this.

He wandered out into the library, looking for Miracle and pointedly ignoring everything else when he stopped. SW. DW. MW. His family, immortalized in the wood of the table. His fingers traced his mother’s initials absently in thought. Family didn’t end in blood, and the Bunker had been a home to far more than just the Winchesters. They deserved to have their legacy remembered, too.

Dean pulled out his pocketknife, the same one Castiel had used, back in the dungeon. Slowly, carefully, he dug it into the wood and painstakingly added two names: Jack and Castiel. They always should have been there. They should have known that they belonged. It was Dean’s fault for not including them enough, not helping them to feel seen. Maybe if he had, they wouldn’t have left. With a heavy heart, Dean remembered standing in this same library, shouting that Jack wasn’t family. He remembered nearly killing him and blaming him for things beyond his control. Just as bad was the memory of Castiel at this same table, sitting and eating a burrito and being content, happy even, just before Dean had kicked him out. That wasn’t even the worst, was it? No, he had done so much worse to Castiel, even just in the library.

What about beating him to a bloody pulp and leaving him broken on the floor? Mark or no Mark, he had done that. Even if it had taken him everything not to give in to the Mark and kill him. The Collette to his Cain, only asking him to stop. What about only a few months ago?

Something went wrong. You know this. Something always goes wrong.

Yeah, why does that something always seem to be you?

Dean felt sick just thinking about it. He could vividly remember the hurt on Cas’ face and the shock that Dean had said that. It was one of his biggest fears, being a useless screw-up, only around until he was no longer useful. Dean had known that and still said it. What kind of a person did that make him? And more than that, what did that make Cas’ true happiness? How do you love someone like that, someone irredeemable? It couldn’t be love.

Castiel was wrong. He hadn’t done everything out of love. If he had, he never would have pushed Cas away.

To distract himself, Dean tore his eyes from the newly added names and caught himself thinking about adding more. Who else was family, who else had they neglected to include?

Sam came out from the hallway looking ready to have a heart to heart and Dean couldn’t take it.

“You want a beer?” Without waiting for an answer, Dean stood. “I’m gonna grab a beer.” Then he headed towards the kitchen.

“It's pretty quiet,” Sam said once Dean returned, taking the offered beer. Dean hummed in agreement.

There was a silence, so heavy that Dean almost didn’t break it. In a rough voice, he managed to say, “To everyone that we lost along the way.” He clinked his beer against Sam’s and took a swig, ending it abruptly. He needed something stronger. Vodka, maybe, or bourbon, though he wasn’t sure if they had either of those in the Bunker anymore. He had already gone through a fair amount after Cas was taken, and then even more when it was the whole world. Still, maybe he had missed a bottle somewhere. He was about to stand to search when Sam started to speak.

“You know…with Chuck not writing our story anymore, we get to write our own.” His voice lilted upwards, optimistic in a way that Dean hadn’t heard in months. “You know, just you and me going wherever the story takes us…. Just us.”

“Finally free,” Dean summed up. He thought about the last few months, his own obsession with freedom. Sam’s statement was right—it was just them. They hadn’t reached out to anyone else yet, too overwhelmed with the implications of Chuck being defeated. That didn’t change the fact that Castiel wasn’t there to share it with them. Or Jack for that matter. He had been shoehorned into the position of God, had never gotten to be a kid. Dean’s heart ached in sympathy. If anything, Jack was more trapped than ever.

Sam and Dean had gotten their freedom, but at one hell of a cost. Still, Sam looked so hopeful…. Dean could be content, or at least pretend to be, for Sam’s sake.

He clapped his little brother on the shoulder, forced a smile, and they went for a drive.

For a little while, he dared to hope that by flooring it on the open road, with music blasting from the radio, Dean might be able to escape his grief. They could go anywhere, do anything. He and Sam had earned the right to a fresh start after at least three apocalypses, but Dean didn’t know if that was what he wanted. How could he start over if his best friend was dead and their kid was gone? He might still have Sam, but what about the rest of his family? Didn’t they all deserve the chance to begin again?

There was no destination to their journey and even Dean didn’t know where they were going. All he knew was that they were going away. To distract himself from the road, he paid more attention to the music, only to balk at it. Running on Empty. He couldn’t help grimacing at that last word and turned the music off rather than changing the station.

Sam, for his part, was watching Dean, taking in and gauging his reaction. Well, what was the damn point of the drive if neither of them was enjoying it?

When they got back, Sam seemed just as disturbed as Dean felt. The world had fundamentally changed, and it was like it hadn’t. The world went on, every moment passed as though there wasn’t a throbbing ache in Dean’s chest. They had lost their son and best friend. They were alone all over again, just like those first few lonely years when they had been looking for John.

Dean hated it.

The Winchesters settled in their respective spaces—Dean in the kitchen and Sam in the library. The stash of alcohol in the kitchen was gone. Had he really drunk it all already? Dean sighed and took a beer from the fridge instead while he made dinner. He managed to find some solace in it, as he always did. It was nice to cook and bake, to wear a silly apron and ask people to “try this!” After years of living on the road and killing monsters, Dean was able to flip the script. He was able to use his hands, hands that had become accustomed to being covered in blood and gore and dirt, to do good in another way. He didn’t need to be violent anymore; he could care for his family, or what was left of it.

Everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love.

Dean swallowed thickly as emotion rose within him, but managed to keep pushing it down, holding it back. He would deal with it later, once he was alone in his room and sure that Sam wouldn’t walk in. He finished cooking up the burgers and took a few steps over to where he had already laid out the plates and hamburger buns.

Four plates waited to be filled. Only Sam and Dean remained.

“Going out!” he shouted over his shoulder a few heartbeats later, running up the stairway and out the door before Sam could stop him.

He didn’t make it to the liquor store. His eyes were burning and his vision swimming only minutes after he left, and rapidly he found himself pulling off onto the side of the road. Everything was too much.

Castiel was gone. He was dead, after nearly a dozen years of it not sticking. Dean had thought that maybe grieving would get easier. After all, he had lost everyone: his mother, his father, his brother, Bobby, every friend they had ever had, and so many more. It hurt like hell, every single time, but eventually he could cope. He had lost Castiel before, five deaths and countless almosts before this one. Why did it hurt worse? Every single time, losing Castiel left him emptier and emptier.

Cas was… Cas was his best friend. A pillar in his life. Someone who he could count on. Someone who should have outlived him. But he was more than that, wasn’t he? Dean hadn’t gotten the chance to reply, had hardly gotten to process before Castiel was gone. Cas loved him, and Dean hadn’t—

Dean neither knew nor cared how long he sat there. His grief only grew deeper with each minute, especially with the sheer despair of realizing that Castiel’s true happiness was what had killed him. His happiness was coming out, speaking his truth, and now he was dead. Dean ran out of tears, but ugly, breathless sobs still racked his body when he found it in himself to pull back onto the road.

The sales clerk in the liquor store gave him a look as he checked out. Dean didn’t know if it was for the volume he was buying or how fucked he undoubtedly looked. Didn’t care, either. He held off for the drive back and started drinking in the garage. Then the library. When Sam found him on his way to his room, Dean was solidly drunk and sobbing again, too far gone to care about appearances anymore. He just wanted the pain of it all to be gone.

He fought to keep the bottle of bourbon but Sam managed to take it, along with the rest. Without something in his hands, they were restless. Dean ran them over his face and through his hair before they ended up clutching at Sam’s shirt as the weight of his grief pulled him down.

“They’re… they’re jus'… gone,” he mumbled into Sam’s shoulder. “Jack… ‘nd C— Cas…”

He felt his brother’s arms close tighter around him and somehow felt worse, like he didn’t deserve it.

“I…I k-killed ‘im, Sam. He tol’… me he l-loved me, ‘nd then he was…”

Sam helped him to his room and stayed with him until he fell asleep, listening and shushing him in equal regard. With his eyes bleary and full of unshed tears, Dean thought the silhouette of Sam in the extra chair looked almost like Castiel, and he took comfort in that for a few minutes.

When Dean woke up, his heart was racing and the distorted nightmare of black goo was rapidly fading. He turned to the empty chair in his room and then to the door before seeing Miracle. She had situated herself in between his legs and was whining loudly. If he had been a little less hungover, he probably would have found it terrifying, given the number of nightmares he’d had featuring whines and growls. The sound grated against his ears but she seemed to perk up seeing him awake. Decidedly less nightmare-ish. He carefully extracted himself from his bed and ran the cold tap water over his hands and wrists, letting it ground him before washing the sweat from his face and popping a pain-reliever. He looked rough, with bags under bloodshot eyes and stubble across his jaw and cheeks. He probably smelled as well, wearing yesterday’s clothes soiled by booze and sweat. It didn’t matter much; Dean had no intention of going anywhere and lacked the energy to get cleaned up.

Miracle whined loudly again and Dean allowed himself to get back into bed to lay with her until she was a little happier. He absentmindedly scratched Miracle’s head while waiting for the throbbing ache in his head and chest to dissipate. He settled for one of the two and, after a few hours, made his way out of his room.

Sam was on the phone in the library, but upon seeing his brother put an end to his conversation. Dean didn’t know what he expected: to be chastised, perhaps, or to be forced through a heart-to-heart. Worse, to have Sam look at him with pity without saying a damn thing. Instead, his brother wrapped him in a brief hug.

“How are you holding up?”

“’M fine.”

“Dean…”

“’M fine, Sam.” Dean kept his tone stiff as he pulled out a seat, unwilling to become the sobbing mess again in front of his brother. Maybe Sam understood that, as he changed the subject after a beat.

“Hey, I talked to Jody. She and the girls are okay, and she says Donna is, too.”

“That’s awesome,” Dean said, nodding.

“Yeah. She wanted to know if we wanted to catch dinner next week sometime.”

Dean froze for a second before shaking his head adamantly. “Maybe some other time.”

“What? Why?”

“Claire. Sam, I would have to tell her that Cas….”

Sam’s face filled with understanding and his own grief. “I’ll tell her we can’t make it.”

///

AN: I swear this is gonna end happily.

Tagging some people who might be interested in the update: (ask to be added or removed!)

@becky-srs @bizzlepotter @bonkybornes @casgirl @chaoticbisexualdean @evermorecastiel @ineffable-impala @lassoted @poohkeepsee @professorerudite @theangelwiththewormstache @thiscastielhasflown