#celebrating the life of asa fox

[arcanespillo]

[winchestress]

fangirl moment

[bloodydeanwinchester]

✨12x06 Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox✨

I AM STILL SO MAD THAT THEY DIDN'T LET HIM RETIRE ON A BEACH WITH CASTIEL AND LIVE TIL HE WAS 90 AND DIE IN HIS SLEEP !!!

[suncaptor]

so obsessed with the fact just the previous episode a demon mocks Lucifer to Sam about how it's so "deliciously weak" that Lucifer left Sam alive.

[shallowseeker]

Jody: Huh. Is that why you spent the entire ride up here telling me in extreme, excruciating detail how you killed Hitler, but, uh, you neglected to mention the fact that your mom is back from the dead? Dean: Yeah, no big deal. Jody: That’s a lie. Dean: Jody… Jody: Look, maybe this isn't my place, and this is epic stuff, but, you know, if I could have my son and my husband back? I mean really back? I would give anything, absolutely anything to have that. And it would scare the hell out of me.

12x06

[ananke-xiii]

i loooove "celebrating the life of asa fox" such a great episode!

dean being totally awkward in group settings is everything, steve yockey really understood the assignment :)

and sam socializing with two witch siblings who are totally anti-social and (we'll know this later on but in in hindsight) have a totally co-dependent thing going on?

mary and jody together? woooooa!

mary feeling like shit and meeting lorraine telling her "you're the reason my son didn't become an astronaut"

mary and sam in a room with a dead hunter and another dead hunter pinned on the ceiling dripping blooooooddddd?

the brothers remember how to exorcise demons!

and the parallels between asa fox and cas?

i mean steve yockey was basically telling us the entire plot of s12 in this single episode, best friend dies! surprise children show up! grieving mothers! demons( A RED EYED CROSSROAD DEMON!!) fall in love with hunters and end up doing stupid shit! people do need some sweet sweet time alone with raggedly hot men! three bodies burning on the hunter pyre!

love love love this episode!!

[scripted-downfall]

Just saying, Mary's actions in s12e06 are hella suspicious. She shows up out of nowhere at the funeral of some random hunter she'd met once when he was a kid. And then, she disappears randomly in the middle of a demon attack to grab an angel blade (when she hadn't been there for the earlier conversation about it being there/being real, so how the hell did she know to go look for it???) And, when demon!Jody calls her on disappearing, she doesn't just say "I was getting the angel blade"; she looks vaguely guilty/nervous, and then she goes to kill the thing (and, thus, Jody)!

I understand why the boys aren't reading into this at all --- she's their mom and they just got her back --- but I'm increasingly not liking her, so I'm perfectly willing to be suspicious of her (and the above points are just objectively suspicious, I'm sorry).

[supernatural-rewatch-3]

So…. Do we all think that the werewolf Darla and the Tracy Gellar were hunting is the werewolf Mary finished in Celebrating the Life of Ada Fox?

Also, the sign on Tracy’s wall was the blood seal Eileen used in Into the mystic.

[deansamnatural]

[liopleurodean]

Season 12, Episode 6: Celebrating The Life Of Asa Fox

Oh, Canada

Rip this kid

...Mary?

What was she doing in Canada?

This was like. Three years before she died. Why was she hunting?

There are other hunters

He's still a hot mess, but okay

Nice

And now he's gonna start hunting

Montage!

Yeah, sure

Whoa. That was abrupt

Supernatural!

Yikes

Cute

...I'm pretty sure Omaha is closer to Lebanon than Sioux Falls at that point. Like, almost 100% sure.

Sounds great

HE KILLED HITLER

Absolutely!

Dean, you look invested

Dude. Seriously. Not cool

Poor Dean

Sam. Privacy

She okay?

He's a hunter

Nice. Not sure how he thought he'd get away with that one

Oh, Jody...

Nah, it's their pleasure

Sure.

Canada!

Quite an eclectic mix of rides

Dean and I -> same brainwave

Indeed

Asa's mom?

Yeah, I bet

Everyone is

Sure...

He can handle himself

Thee Dean Winchester.

More like a hundred

Dude, no

Unfortunately no

The standard, I assume

I should've known

Interesting

Awesome

Celebrities

Wow. That's a deep cut

Buddy...

At least they get it

Not when you're living it

Dude.

Please? I like them

Where'd he get an angel blade?

Makes sense

Dean...

Mmmmmmm

I am. Dying inside

Oh boy

Wow.

Oh yeah, remember Crowley?

Spooky

Oh no

Dean, stop talking

Mary!

Oh boy, this'll be good

Yeah...

That's the word for it

I love Jody

Makes sense

Dean.

She just barely missed him

Dean, come on

Not really

Perhaps

It wouldn't be the same

I think Dean needed the perspective

Long story

She's the one who got him into hunting

Oh boy

I don't know

That's not everything

Not really

Mary...

Finally, someone says it

It's in her blood

Poor guy

Oh no

Seems to be a hunter trait

Demons.

How does he know?

Okay...

Asa warded the whole place

Billie?

There's the clue

That's horrifying

How can they not hear him?

That's weird

Dean's not even in the house

The demon planned

She's being annoying

She is possessed

Yikes

That's not good

You can't just leave Lorraine!

Fine

Neat trick

Definitely not

He's used to people not knowing things

Dang it, I should've known

No kidding

It's been awhile since we've heard that

Oh no

Girl, keep it together

Great, now the power is out

Man, that's so weird. By this point, the hunting world at large knows about angel blades, but they've never seen a demon blade. It's all backwards

It'll come

Smart Dean truthing!!!

I feel like I've heard this music before. At least, the chord progression is familiar

That'll be handy

Harder to memorize

It's in Jody. She's being suspicious

Great question

Not without proof. It's definitely Jody

Right

Why would they do that?

Fantastic

It wasn't on purpose

Ooh, yikes

Oh, Jody...

Here we go

Keep it going

Seriously?

That was quick

Yeah, I bet

That's so stupid

Wow.

He'll never have a community again

I suppose so

That's true

I don't think that's what she needed

Seriously, Billie?

Uh, no. That wasn't their fault

Take it up with Amara

That's not what she means

Is she really considering it?

There it is

Yup. Winchesters

Sure.

Absolutely

[arcanespillo]

12.06, Celebrating The Life Of Asa Fox

[winchestress]

[suncaptor]

Coming out to a stranger that you just met like hello my mother taught me to seduce men is literally such a blatant flirtation and Sam was smiley about it too and then some guy has to ruin the room by bringing up Lucifer

[caslesbo]

“i mean, guys like us, we're not exactly the type of people they write about in history books, you know? but the people we saved, they're our legacy, and they'll remember us, and we'll eventually fade away, too. that's fine, because we left the world better than we found it.”

supernatural - season 12

[spnwin-reader]

Prime Dean gives Alt John the tools to unlock the truth and decide for himself if he will hunt

Original run context: John's feelings of betrayal

In the original #SPNprime, John was not allowed to fight for or defend himself until it was already too late. This made the wound of Mary's death much, much deeper than it would have otherwise been.

Unlike with Sam keeping the truth from Jess out of shame, Mary's keeping the truth from John may stem from incredible fear, watching Azazel kill him in The Beginning.

(It's perhaps more akin to Dean symbolically blinding Lisa and Ben to the truth to keep them safe than how Sam was with Jess.)

But the in The Song Remains the Same, John (temporarily) learns the truth, and he is (rightfully) frustrated by having been kept in the dark. He feels intense betrayal. He feels like a child.

JOHN: Monsters. Monsters? MARY: Yes. JOHN: Monsters are real. MARY: I'm sorry, I didn't know how— JOHN: And you fight them? All of you? SAM: Yeah. JOHN: How long? MARY: All my life. John, just try to understand— DEAN: She didn't exactly have a choice— JOHN: Shut up, all of you! Look, not another word, or so help me, I will turn this car around! Silence falls.

/// LATER ///

JOHN: What? Y'all might have treated me like a fool, but I am not useless. I can draw a damn— (JOHN picks up the paper from next to a large knife.)—whatever it is—a sigil.

///

Original run context: Mary continued to hunt near/during the beginning of her marriage?

In Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox, we learn that it could've been Mary who created much of the tension in their marriage by potentially stepping out on John to hunt, calling into question if the fight shown between them in Dark Side of the Moon.

MARY: "No, John. We're not having this conversation again. Time to think? About what? You have two boys at home." DEAN: "I remember this. Mom and dad were fighting, and then he moved out for a couple of days." MARY: "Fine. Then don't. There's nothing more to talk about."

Now we wonder: Was this fight even John's fault to begin with? The stereotype of "angry husband" might lull you into thinking so, but it's equally possible that it was Mary that originated the fight--Mary who had a long, canon-supported history of lying. She's even the one shutting down the conversation here!

Mary would probably rather John think she's unfaithful than risk John being dragged into hunting, and she'd probably pivot to supporting their kids as an excuse to smooth things over. (Just as Cas would rather Dean assume anything so long as he's not dragged into the dangerous world of angelic Civil War).

Alternatively, the fight may have even been part of the normal ebb-and-flow of a marriage. It may have been that the fight looked a LOT bigger through the eyes of a sensitive four-year-old.

(A couple of days ain't even that long, but boy it sure does feel big when you're a kid. But just because their marriage wasn't "perfect" doesn't mean it wasn't good, and the Dean-Sam conversation completely misses on that front.)

//

One of the things post-season 12 in #SPNprime does so beautifully is calls into question everything we know about Mary, including the cartoonish idea of John as the root of all evil.

Mary's lies are given rich complexity, as is Dean's memory of her.

Everything in Dark Side of the Moon, from the idea of "Heaven" as the "perfect place you grow up" to being simplistically at peace with your siblings/"littermates" in the ideal childhood home forever is given more complexity by the narrative unfridging of Mary.

(It's why the gate to Heaven is always associated with a playground. "There's no place like home," is literal in SPN. Heaven can even be seen as the idealization of childhood, as sharing the same history.)

///

Dean helps John because Dean was also "locked out" during critical periods in his life, prevented from Danger "for his own good"

Dean feels this pain acutely in season 6, when Samuel Campbell, his brother Sam, and Bobby Singer keep him out of the larger hunting plot in order to "keep him at peace."

Despite their good intentions, this denied him the right to choose for himself if he'd meet The Fight head on.

Cas, too, does this with the angelic Civil War, with Kelly Kline, general "angel business," and The Empty deal, and Dean feels that as unintended rejection.

He feels, like John, coddled. Like a child. Not getting the chance to be an equal comrade or partner in the fight.

///

Here, prime Dean is giving John the key to discover the truth about monsters and Henry's Men of Letters heritage.

Certainly John has a lot of emotional baggage and childhood abandonment trauma to work through, but at least this time he'll have more agency ahead of time, and he'll get to choose which path to prepare for rather than having the world of monsters thrust upon him in the midst of a grief-spiral.

Dean has handed that power of Choice back to John.

Perhaps prime Dean too is wounded from being kept in the dark. Perhaps he longs for a world were he's known about Cas's The Empty deal instead of, like John, being blindsided and struck dumb by grief.

[gh-0-stcup]

Just say Christo?