#fun fact! dean does NOT have a journal he just writes stuff down on whatever piece of paper he can find and puts it in a box under his desk

[mittensmorgul]

So, Signs that 15x20 isn't real: El Sol beer; warm, saturated lighting; Dean's choice of clothes. Signs the writers were silenced: cut-out-tongue-vampire-thing. Sign it's about sexual repression: Vampires! Sign it's all about the gay: Dean was nailed from behind. Anything else to add to that list of symbols? Because this looks like the writers winking SOS at us in a kidnapper's video.

oh gosh... I keep meaning to rewatch the finale and make a full list of it all, because this is tip of the iceberg stuff. But I just... heck I just don’t want to watch it again :’D

That rewatch is on the agenda, and I’m currently watching 15.09 on the eternal loop. According to the TNT schedule, they’re showing 15.20 on Tuesday, looping directly back to the pilot immediately afterward. So... if I do decide to watch that (and I haven’t decided yet), that’s... gonna be some wild whiplash...

But anyway, back to the question!

You have a pretty good list going there...

I’ll add these things that made the episode feel like not-a-finale:

-no Road So Far segment, or even any sort of “important moments from the last 15 years that brought us to this point” sort of montage/retrospective of their lives

-no Carry On Wayward Son at the beginning, but TWO versions of it back to back at the end

And these things that were just general wtf moments for me:

-Sam? cooking breakfast? since when does Sam make breakfast, ever? that’s Dean’s thing

-Dean, with a dog? since when has Dean ever wanted a dog? That’s Sam’s thing

-Dean makes his bed, and it looks messier when he’s done than before he started (this is... not Dean-like... I actually went back and checked previous shots of his room)

-they never, not once in the episode, act like they have even one (1) single friend or any sort of goal or direction in life, which is weird...

-apparently they’d been unable to find a hunt, making it seem like the supernatural world had been quiet (for a moment I thought maybe monsters were no longer a problem in a post-Chuck world), until they stumbled on a hunt out of nowhere after choosing to go to a pie festival... as if the moment they chose to do something to move on and just have fun, suddenly there was work for them to do and they immediately abandoned everything to hunt these mystery monsters from John’s journal, which turned out to be a trap for them (specifically for them? considering the rando s1 vampire seemed to have lured them there?)

-The fact Dean recognized this vampire he never even interacted with and somehow magically knew her name, despite it never having been stated in canon and, again, Dean never having interacted with her outside of watching her escape with the vampire who actually DID bear them a grudge from 1.20...

-the weird lingering close up shot of the rebar during the fight scene

-the invocation of “destiny” and “don’t have a choice” as they went into a freaking pie festival... this hits bad right now because I’m rewatching 15.09 in the background as I type this, and it was almost word for word what the Dean in Chuck’s vision of the future said to Sam as they resigned themselves to go off on their final hunt (which was vampires btw), which they lost because in the next scene Sam and Dean have become vampires and are both killed... so like... this was Chuck’s story. The trappings might’ve been different, but it was still fundamentally the same... Cas locked away in a terrible place (ma’lak box in Chuck’s story, Empty in Dabb’s), Dean resigned to his fate because of a vampire hunt gone bad.

-then the pie festival itself... Dean’s got a huge tray with half a dozen different varieties he’s excited to try (purchased from Dabb’s Pies...), is eager to taste them all (like... metaphorically trying out different “apple pie life” ending scenarios, because he’s finally free to explore and maybe he actually wants the pecan pie life...), but before he can even taste the first bite, Sam... chooses one and smashes it in Dean’s face.

-even weirder, Dean never once in the episode says Cas’s name, or seemed even once to give a dang about Cas at all... and handwaved it when Sam mentioned Cas and Jack. It had been like... days, on screen (if they’d intended for more time to have passed, they would’ve indicated that on screen, and they did not... they showed us MAYBE three days passing since the events of 15.19). So like... did Dean have a personality transplant or what. Sam says Cas’s name in the ep, Bobby says it in Heaven. Dean... never does. Which is weird, considering how many times he’s said Cas in canon over the years, to the point it’s literally become memes...

-jumping around a bit here, but why Masked Vampires? Why had John failed to figure out they were vampires originally? Because he believed vampires were extinct? because he hadn’t been told they existed at all yet when he’d confronted them in 1986? Was John suddenly just A Bad Hunter after years of canon reinforcing that he was actually a really good hunter?

-and why THIS WEIRD CONGLOMORATION OF JOHN-RELATED CASE NONSENSE? From his journal to the murder clowns to rando vampire from their first vamp hunt? It’s like the perfect storm of erasing the last 15 years just to “bring it back to the start” to end it all like it could’ve had this been s1 still.

-speaking of John, and the El Sol in Heaven... WHY would Bobby hand Dean “John’s Beer” in Heaven? Especially since Dean expressed the fact that he didn’t even like it? Like... why wouldn’t he have been handed a beer he actually ENJOYED in Paradise? Why force a John Beer on him when he could literally have anything he wanted?

-and why was Heaven for Dean, in a place where he could literally have anything he wanted, go anywhere and do anything, why was he just driving through the woods along back roads? After years of talking about how he wanted to go “toes in the sand,” take a vacation, go fishing, or even finally get to eat a piece of pie? Or like ANYTHING he’d talked about wanting to do over the years that he never had a chance to... but apparently the thing he’d arguably spent the most time during his life doing is the only thing he wanted to do now that every possibility was open to him? Yeah, no that’s stupid...

-Tree (the final shot of 15.04 with bobblehead Sam and Dean by the tree like they didn’t have a thought of their own, Chuck’s plastic figurines dancing on his orders, very much like where they randomly parked and had the “vamp mime” conversation)

-Dean casually resorting to the threat of torture after YEARS of the show condemning this choice. Dean gratuitously being “a killer” when his acceptance of the fact that that’s not who he was in the previous episode was literally the thing that defeated Chuck... like... this was entirely stupid...

-just... the pacing of the episode was so weirdly wonky, with random cuts and no sense of time passing anywhere, nor interconnectedness between scenes, and the weirdly uncomfortable interminable death scene. Like, it looked like the death scene of a soap opera heroine. It was upsetting when Dean hit the spike and realized what had happened, but then he just... lingered... dangling on the hook for Sam’s benefit. Like Dean was nothing more than set decoration like a framed portrait for Sam to hang up and walk away from. Which is weird... and stupid... Dabb knows how to do pacing, and it’s like he forgot everything he ever knew about writing to force this “good way to die” trope, as if the previous 15 years of the show hadn’t been spent denouncing (and Dean finally overcoming) this mindset of “I always knew I’d go down swinging” or whatever. WHY. IT WAS STUPID.

-Wig

there’s probably more, but I’m tired and have reached my daily limit for the wtf of this episode >.>

Anyone else, please feel free to add more.

[lovelylogans]

Can I ask for more Rory salt? Right after finishing the show I didn't realize why everyone was so upset about her but now that I've rewatched I kind of understand. I'd like to hear more about your opinions on her! (Mostly bc I have 2 braincells so stuff like that flies over my head lol)

okay, granted, a Fair amount of my salt comes from the perspective of a journalism student, ie who they’re trying to portray, and also like. someone at a similar Point in their life, so. here we go. rory Salt.

like i will say she isn’t like, bonafide the Worst Character of all time, but like...... okay. like. this tracks back to one of my original and largest gripes with gilmore girls, and also a large reason of why i like the earlier seasons better than the later ones.

this post explains it very well; the early seasons (and first episodes) of gilmore girls seem to promise healing, moving forward, bettering familial relationships. the actuality of gilmore girls is the repetition of mistakes and things continuing in cycles, and often getting worse.

so, like. rory. rory’s character is established as this sweet, innocent, naive kid, with a fairly decent work ethic and big dreams to aspire to journalism and a certain level of fame (like christine amanpour, i think was the journalist she mentioned in the first day at chilton ep?) she’s smart, quiet, beginning to establish a relationship with her parents, but still a bit uncomfortable within the realm of chilton/privilege—i think this is best exemplified within the debutante episode, in which she’s uncomfortable with the premise, but goes through with it for the sake of making emily happy. same with the golfing episode with richard—she has zero interest in golf, but she gets to spend a day with her grandfather, and she wants to establish that relationship with him.

but then there’s that thing kicking in, in which gilmore girls is essentially a cyclical tragedy; rory gradually becomes more confident in herself and her abilities (becoming valedictorian, going up against paris for the speech on cspan) and in her relationship with boys; she goes after jess, and, once he leaves, lets him go and eventually is like “you shouldn’t have left me. but i’m saying goodbye to you, on my terms.” i think that s3 is where her character is strongest; she’s still sweet and shy, but she has a bit of an edge. she’s caring toward her friends, she, sure, makes the occasional mistake, but she eventually rallies from them. that’s when i like rory’s character best.

rory starts her decline in season four. this dates back to the whole cyclical thing; she’s the one who goes to her grandparents for money, echoing the original premise of the show, and a cycle starts anew. she goes to another new, prestigious school (yale) where she’s pushed to new limits. 

but rory makes mistakes. she stands up for herself, yes, namely taylor when he pushes for her to be ice cream queen, but she also has a certain level of... entitlement, i suppose. like. let’s take “die, jerk.”

(i’m gonna go briefly into a journalistic tangent here, which is especially heaped by the fact i’ve been writing a lot of reviews lately. also, it applies.)

so, first of all, she takes her mom to her job. her mom. literally think about every other job in the world and, barring a “family day” at the office, please name a situation in which that’s acceptable. right? there’s basically no other situation in which that’s a thing you do when you’re being professional. (this is a repeated gripe, by the way; she often brings lorelai along. this could have been achieved with some phone calls where she hangs up and then does her job. but i digress. this goes into a whole rant on how women in journalism are portrayed in tv shows and other media, but seriously, i digress.)

then there’s the review itself. it’s mean.

“she has the grace of a drunken dock worker.” compared her to a hippo. “the roll around the bra strap,” the line about regretting how evolution had led man to stand on two feet because it led to this night. the ballerina comes to yell at her, which is wrong, but holy god, that never even should have been published. sure, it’s partially the fault of doyle, who as an editor should have stepped in, said, “rewrite the holy hell out of this,” and given her a talking-to on how reviewing should be about the performance and not body-shaming her, because yes you can give things a bad review but not to that level, but rory is the one who wrote it. and she only begins to seem apologetic when people start to react to it other than doyle; the ballerina, her mom, emily and richard. this happens a few times throughout—rory (and lorelai) never seem to realize how mean they can get until people start reacting to what they’re doing and saying. 

she’s willing to write those things, read them, have other people read them, and put them out into the public, and doesn’t even consider the potential ramifications that it could have had on not only the dancer, but the ballet performance (which gets shut down, in part due to rory’s review) the costumer, the crew, everyone involved. yes, bad reviews exist, and yes, they can be brutal, but they’re almost never so personally vindictive and mean. she says she’s writing her opinion. look at how harsh that opinion is.

that’s part of why my opinion of rory takes a decline; being mean. another part of it is a certain level of entitlement.

because the revival is on my brain lately, let’s talk revival stuff. making it as a freelance journalist is hard. it’s hard work. it isn’t for a lot of people. especially in new york city, where the industry is so competitive that finding a job in journalism is a whole Thing. rory has a piece in the new yorker (not bad!) and is writing a piece for gq (also not bad, not bad at all!) about people waiting in line for a certain event.

now. let’s take, like, season four/season five rory, who compiled like three separate PILES of research for a story that wasn’t even hers, worked hard enough at chilton, a highly academically competitive school, to get valedictorian. rory is portrayed as a hard worker. she does what’s necessary for the job and to improve.

revival? whoosh, out the window!

she falls asleep during an interview for the gq job. she continually jets off to london to go see logan. she’s completely unprepared for a job interview, having absolutely zero ideas for any stories, despite the fact that freelance journalists are almost always working multiple stories and coming up with new ideas so they can, y’know, get paid. chilton offers her a job as a teacher if she gets her masters, but she turns it down, which, on one hand, sure, follow your dreams, on the other, if you’re continually complaining that you’ll take a job, ANY job, and get a very good job handed to you on a silver platter with the potential for more growth post that job with the addition of your masters and DON’T TAKE IT?!?!?!

plus, in the job interview, when she doesn’t get it, UNDERSTANDABLY, she calls the interviewer angrily saying that the interviewer practically promised her the job, despite the fact that it was a PRELIMINARY JOB INTERVIEW and there are OTHER CANDIDATES who DEFINITELY AT LEAST HAD STORY IDEAS. no matter how impressive your resume is, you have to at least show that you’re trying, because the whole thing in journalism (esp for those breaking into a business) is that EVERYONE has an extensive resume. that’s part of why it’s so competitive.

and still complains that she’s broke, in addition to the trust fund that we know she received at 25, plus whatever money richard left her in his will. if she was broke, she’d be living entirely above her means—those continual trips to london, living in a sizeable one-bedroom apartment in NEW YORK CITY, going out to eat very often. 

and then just??? i could ramble more (the whole sleeping with a MARRIED DEAN thing, her partnership with logan, i could go back in and ramble about how the body-shaming is continual despite the fact that they frequently eat fattening foods and make fun of sports and are only so thin bc, well, tv magic, but also because they have Miraculous metabolisms, the way that they treat their friends, to some extent, but. yeah. here is some Rory Salt.)

[danvssomethingorother]

YOUR AU RUSTY POST keeps coming across my dash omg so Im here fishing for headcanons!!! What do you think the better/Asshole Dimension is like? The boys, Brock, friends and foes?

Ohhh this is a fun ask.

Ok so like for the most part, for characters who have no personality in canon, I have a multiple choice kinda head canon thing since I write fics and like changing it up all the time. 

I know I have said in the past AU Rusty is probably a villain but since then I have also come to like the idea of him being more of neutral party neither on the OSI or Guild’s side.

I’m going to be using those head canons for my fic ‘Success in Progress’ and I don’t wan to give away future plot points.

But for this particular ask, I am going to go with my head canons for if AU Rusty is a villain.

- He started out his career in villainy when he was hanging out more and more with Action Johnny, neither liking that their dads were just forcing them into the roles of adventurer scientists. One day while they were smoking weed together, Johnny tells him they are going to rob their dads. Rusty is so high, he’s like whatever man, that sounds amazing.

- They both get super cheep, Scooby Doo like monster costumes and get their asses handed to them by the original team Venture who are freaking pissed these idiots were trying to steal dangerous chemicals that they were probably going to get high off cause they are super dumb teenagers.

- Rusty and Johnny are no longer allowed to hang out with each other after this but they are rebellious teenagers and are kinda sick of being controlled by their dads, so they run away together. They are both really bad for each other and only bring out the worse in each other. They were both living in their car, addicted to drugs and selling faulty doomsday weapons on the black market ready to murder each other when they are arrested. This draws the attention of not David Bowie who is just fascinated that Jonas’s son is out of control like this. He is the one to bail Rusty out and asks him if he really wants to do this, if he really wants to be a villain just to piss his dad off.

- Rusty becomes the sovereign‘s personal apprentice at 18 and begins working under him and learning from him personally how to be a professional bad guy.

- He meets Brock in Berlin a few years later on Brock’s first assignment with the OSI and they begin a rivalry of sorts. Brock always two steps behind Rusty when he becomes his own villain and they have a pretty love / hate sort of relationship.

- Rusty pretty much sets up most of his early years to messing with Brock who he has a huge crush on and yeah they start sleeping together. Rusty starts setting up traps and stuff just to lure Brock in and have him thwart him so they can have sex.

- Everything changes a few years later when Rusty has the twins, he has been caught up in his own selfish desires so long, he doesn’t stop and try to change for anyone until they are born and he realizes he doesn’t want to put them through the same shit his own dad constantly put him through.

- He moves to New York and puts all his focus on a career in Broadway, its the same basic principle as arching, its just acting and that’s what he finds he really likes to do.

- Brock and him get together officially and raise the twins together and later get married.

- The twins never die because Rusty asks a favor of his old mentor to make sure no one harms his family, sovereign cares enough about Rusty to agree to that. He pulls his strings so nothing can happen to Rusty and his family.

- When the twins go off to college, Rusty probably becomes the next sovereign  after the death of the former one because he was personally trained under him and knows the Guild inside out.

Just some random head canons I have:

- Monarch is probably obsessed with Rusty in this dimension too, so he probably also became a hero just to take him down. They also probably become friends because Rusty finds it amusing this man didn’t even sign up to be in the OSI or anything, he just has a super petty grudge against him and just started like breaking into his base to break things just because.

- Rusty probably went to a therapy group for side kicks like he did in canon but came out of it wanting to improve the lives of Boy adventurers and side kicks cause man all their lives are messed up.  He later uses his power as sovereign to make more direct changes like the Guild isn’t allowed to do such and such to children but he starts with charity organizations getting former sidekicks / boy adventurers the help they need.

- Before Rusty became sovereign, he arched Brock one last time, Dean and Hank rock, paper, scissored who would be on Brock’s side and who would be on Rusty’s side.

- Rusty the musical was only a big hit because it was based on a memoir Rusty wrote years ago about the abuse he went through as a boy adventurer.

- Rusty hired Jared on the spot as the lead role because Dean had a crush on him and he was trying to play match maker.

- Rusty never forgave his dad for the abuse he went through but he did eventual forgive and come to terms with the original team Venture and they probably went to therapy together.

- Rusty probably worked with Copy Cat a few dozen times in his career and considers him a good friend.

- I personally head canon him as trans and bi. 

- When canon Rusty comes to his dimension, he is more worried he is hitting on his husband then the fact he tried to murder him (that he can forgive cause they are Rusty, of course they are self destructive enough to try to kill themself like that) but him flirting with Brock is what lead him to work on a dimensional portal to get rid of him for good.

- Dean nor Hank become villains or heroes, Hank goes into acting like Rusty had because he always enjoyed helping his dad set up shows and Dean goes into journalism.

- JJ probably exists but he’s probably a failed Jonas clone Rusty found and took pity on then his twin brother he ate in the womb. They have a decent relationship, JJ doesn’t always agree with the weird dramatic things Rusty does but he loves his brother.

- Rusty is nicer and lot more stable then his canon self, mainly because not David Bowie supported him and encouraged him to get help when he needed it becoming a father figure to Rusty (the twins called him Grandpa before he died). He can still be a huge petty asshole when he wants to be though. 

And I’m going to stop now. Characters like AU Rusty are fun because you have a model of what they are like (I mean he is still Rusty Venture) but you can totally just go all my town now on him and change what you want as you see fit.

If you guys have more head canons, feel free to share them!

[elizabethrobertajones]

12x21 watching notes

not proof read 

expectations: I was in fandom for 10x21

Here is the lowest bar ever

-

*buckleming crawl under the bar*

-

I took a few hours and I'm sure I have nothing to say that hasn't already been yelled about in great length by others, and I mostly just don't care about anything they ever do ever again but let's watch this for the plot because I'm a completionist, and this is going to affect 12x22 and 12x23 whether I want it to or not >.>

-

Oh the first scene is the promo one, which we already discussed a bit with all the parallels and such. The entire room and set and everything is yelling a ton of parallels and references, which I have already got a post on on my blog. Okay.

The stuff we didn't get was Jody calling to tell Sam about Eileen.

*pictured: the blogger taking about as big a step back to think about this as Sam just did to prioritise freaking out over Mary over grieving for Eileen*

(this is a thing - Sam compartmentalises so much, and he has done all season, and Dean's called him out on it, but it's practical when hunters are dying, and mom's in trouble, that you don't ditch everything, you help out hunters who are in trouble (12x20 - what if Tasha had been got by the BMoL? It only doesn't fit the pattern once they know what happened to her)... Sam says they know of another hunter who disappeared recently, anyhow. He links Mary to being the 3rd in trouble in the same way, and they KNOW the BMoL are with her and being sketchy. So. There's that.)

Anyway, Jody serves 2 purposes - we have the horror of Claire being on the BMoL's list so her call could have been about her, but we also know Jody has the APB out on Cas - Jody is becoming the nerve centre of the hunters because she's the one with all the links when it comes to looking out for them, it seems. Raising girls who have a foot in the life, and keeping an eye out on the official record for other hunters who might be in trouble, as well as occasionally bringing them cases in the same way.

So that call could have been to tell them Cas had been found dead in a ditch like Dean feared, or Claire had been found dead in a ditch like WE fear, but instead it's Eileen for Sam. It's a sort of last horrible hurrah for using Cas and Eileen parallels - that both are connected to Jody like this. And Sam gets his horrible news while Dean had been waiting for it about Cas.

Sam shuts down and goes all business like, putting a potentially still living hunter (and also their mom but HONESTLY his compartmentalising is that good I wonder if mentioning this was only to get Dean emotionally hooked) ahead of dealing with what happened to Eileen.

At this point I feel like Terrible Coffee AU has become his djinn dream where he gets to just fuck off from all his responsibilities and scream in the woods for as long as he likes and actually feel everything he's bottled up.

Also I am going to go write in a scene where Sam gets to go scream in the woods.

Also if you've been reading it, feel free to assume that between scenes where we've seen Sam, he has been off screaming in the woods. Or that it's canon Sam's djinn dream and starts some point immediately after this.

-

Hi yes I am now a bitter Sam girl, who knew.

-

So Mittens has helpfully explained the bad car continuity to me while I was blinking at Sam saying "2 hunter deaths" in the motel and "7" in the morgue. Possibly in all that driving time they reached out to others and found out more, but it really doesn't sound like it, it just sounds like he's repeating the exposition but with a higher number.

If they did spend like 50 hours in the car as she worked out, then I guess he would have had time to make a lot of calls.

-

*gif of the guy with the duct tape on the really big crack*

-

Things I like: Jared's acting of Sam at the morgue, anyway.

Thinks I hate: he's acting like that because Eileen is dead and it's the worst thing to happen to Sam in ages and he can't do anything about it, emotions-wise. And there are bigger problems than giving Eileen a hunters' funeral and getting shitfaced for a week.

-

But where *did*they get 7 monster related deaths? Last scene it was all 2 isn't a pattern and that seemed to be the point of the conversaion but now the point of the conversation is omg there's been seven.

I'd ask who proof reads this but the answer is clearly either no one, or Bob Singer.

-

ANYWAY I went out to get snacks for a party tomorrow, nearly passed out on the way home, and also in a separate incident got stung by a bunch of nettles and it was still more fun than watching this :P

-

Mary is one of the ones going around killing hunters, though they kept her away from Eileen. She's also being kept in a room one part Heaven parallel one part panic room parallel, being a sort of Sam in 4x21 and Cas in 8x17 mash up. She's being brainwashed to go kill hunters and Toni comes to mock her for not being able to tell reality from fiction.

Buckleming like little digs at fans so I'm just gonna ignore that because I am ignoring them.

It is also thematic for the problems they've all been having of dealing with their expectations about this that and the other, or in copious denial and so on. It's ALWAYS a relevant theme to this show but this year we don't have a strong meta character or plot, it's just in the characterisation.

We get a giant chunk of exposition that explains eeeverything. I was joking last night about the pie subtext being explained in the text and taking all the fun out of it... Obviously that was a lie and I've been really enjoying it (and also it's not strictly out of the subtext, it was just being heavily utilised to tell the story instead of passing jokes, which made it even more fun than normal) but this really does take the joy out of meta-ing it except that I guess it's the show telling us we were right to pick up on everything going on with Mary under the surface

So Toni takes a thin connection to start talking about all the Mary stuff, covering:

- the "illusion" she has about her perfect life as it stood before she died - well the concept of "perfect" in general which is something being challenged everywhere in the fact vs fiction stuff - her willful denial it was normal despite that fact she was a hunter and still hunting so it wasn't even like she was living totally normally - the fact it wasn't all based on her deal with Azazel, and that that was going to come for her at some point - despite reading his journal a zillion times, just like last week Mary didn't realise Ketch was a psychopath until massive lines were crossed, her willful denial that John went off the rails after her death - that Sam and Dean didn't TELL her this stuff - literally just saying that John abused them - that Sam and Dean are damaged because of what he did (and that he did it because it was her fault for the deal)

*And all pretty much in these words*

Like. Wow. This is obviously, like the same bulletpoints on the secret pinboard we don't see in the writer's room explaining everything about what's going on with each character. Buckleming copied down the bulletpoints and then somehow thought that was just their notes for what Toni was going to say here :P I disapprove of exposition like this, but it has now brought all of this into the main text for Mary to deal with. Whether she agrees or not, she has to consider that what John did was abuse, and that Sam and Dean aren't telling her everything about it. She can't know for sure whether it was or not without their explanation but she'll have to ask them for it and weigh their answers against the possibility of abuse... I don't really know wtf they're doing with all this but it's forced too much character stuff on Mary at once to even deal with.

Toni goes on to say they're restoring her to being Mary Campbell, stripping away all her life after things got messy with cupids and kids and all... She's a born hunter, and to the BMoL they clearly see it in her blood (just like they see being a BMoL legacy in people's blood). Anyway nature vs nurture stuff, and they're going for raw nature as a killer (which Ketch firmly believes in about himself even if it's possible he was just programmed to be this way from such a young age he never got a chance to think he was anything else)... It fits into the wider discussion of the season which also relates to the nephilim.

And by stripping away her life, it's reducing her to a person without choice in what she is - "interesting choice. soon you won't be making any". It's blatantly just cramming in themes of the season, but I guess this is what Buckleming episodes are often for: laying out on paper everything that has been hidden more carefully and subtly in the juicy parts of the season :P This is the bare bones, look at what this story is about, explanation.

-

Oh I guess the cut on Mary's palm also parallels Sam's in 7x02 which was his link to reality. She's having her own reality issues but this reminds her that she's being made to kill hunters, not monsters. And hunters who seem to know her, even to be friendly when they find her in their house (that whole scene seemed weirdly out of character for a dude I'd never met to be chill about that but whatever, he kept his still-bloody machete in the umbrella rack, maybe he was just sloppy)

-

Crowley comes to cross over some storylines at the very last moment of the season, after basically living in a bubble for the entire season since 12x08. He greets Dr Hess by name, and I had some speculation he was somewhat connected to the way the Winchesters got the tip off to kill Ramsay in 12x15... Earlier they were talking about hellhounds and it cut to Crowley to suggest he was involved, so this seems to be confirming a connection, especially for the messing around with Hellhounds between the BMoL and Crowley.

Yep, he loaned out the hellhound to Ketch, anyway. >.>

This conversation finally confirms what I suspected since 12x01 - the BMoL have a deal with Crowley that crossroad deals go uninterrupted as long as there's no other demonic scheming in the country, just the humans idiotic enough to summon demons to sell their souls so it's all their own fault. This shows corruption in the BMoL that they let this happen anyway - a line drawn that they can't keep the demons out so they just pretend to go along with them like they had a choice in the matter. I suspect this deal with the BMoL is more symbolic than anything that they don't harrass a percentage of demons that they come about in the course of things, because there is no way to police humans choosing to do this without like, a Minority Report level awareness of what they're about to do. There's no saving people who made the deals, though the Winchesters have intervened several times on behalf of people they felt didn't deserve the punishment for the deal they made. The BMoL have opinions about that.

-

Crowley is also, predictably, challenged about his relationship to the Winchesters, which is a sort of as per usual thing - and he's saved them an awful lot lately. He pretends not to be conflicted about it to Dr Hess, but the close up on his poker face is still a dramatic close up after challenging him about something or other. There's been some speculation he might come to a decision about them but the Lucifer thing has been really throwing him off for me and any speculation I might speculate, by keeping him out of the way. His interactions with them in 12x12 and 12x15 showed his loyalties pretty clearly but that was a 2 times is a pattern that could be broken sort of thing and here he is finally being put to that test (his earlier interactions helping them find Lucifer, despite some mild self sacrifice gestures in 12x07, were really more about them solving a joint problem with some character stuff on the side... he begins being put to the test in the second half of the season)... It SEEMS pretty clear that his loyalties to being the big bad evil dude are fucked when it comes to the Winchesters despite himself, and he stands with Mary on the screen behind him, almost like a faction, or picked side, in this conversation, but that could just be because it was there on the wall to show they're monitoring Mary so closely they have her blood pressure and everything on display and Crowley's involvement is incidental.

Anyway I'm not sure which way he'd go, because everything suggests he'd pick protecting them but if it happens this episode, any amount of fuckery can intervene and if it happens later, I'm still not sure wtf the point of this Lucifer stuff is for him and what it means for where he's going

it's just... messy and weird and I don't get the point of it yet because it feels more like they need this thing happening on the side because they gave the Marks contracts to be in this season and this is how they've been killing time, because neither character has that much left to offer the Winchesters because Sam's arc with Lucifer ended in season 5 or 7, and Dean's with Crowley in 10 or 11. Sam might not LIKE finding out Lucifer is still alive but they haven't been connected since 11x10, and Dean might be pissed off at Crowley's choice but aside from lol we're exes jokes, nothing has happened between them all season, and even Cas working with Crowley wasn't an arc so much as just showing the current state of politics between them.

-

I type all this ignoring another scene in Crowley's lair, this time the Lucifer and his minion who is almost 10000% not going to survive because he's acting as a shifty demon, a black actor, and talking to Lucifer, in a Buckleming episode, and we cut our losses with caring about this stuff. >.> I'm done since the cold open.

-

Sam phones up Crowley, which is rare enough, but he has a reason to be pissed off at him, and that's because Sam already suspects that Crowley's at least half-responsible.

He's hated him since they met but if Crowley's gonna die, Sam should do it, and this is a good motivation, at least. If Cas gets to vaporise Lucifer with nephilim power (I hope although like anything this season I'm not putting money on it :P) then Sam deserves a big kill of his own >.>

-

Anyway Crowley just called Cas "the Winchesters' love slave"

The old refrain of using them plural to talk about Cas's investment in them, the suggestion there is something sexual about his devotion to them missing the point entirely about why he cares for them, but also hinting at a truth underneath that Crowley knows full well the situation with Dean n Cas, and tbh Lucifer has possessed Cas so he probably knows Cas's side too... A sort of awareness from both parties in the room that Cas is bananas for Dean but using it in a mocking way, and making it a general moral failing.

-

BMoL scene - no one has any nuanced characterisation that makes a great deal of sense in context, e.g. Toni trash talking Ketch in front of their superior, but we get some exposition that Hess thinks Ketch is cruel enough to take control of the BMoL one day and would do well as a test run as head of the American operation. Toni is also up for the job out of the blue because why not.

-

For some reason Dean goes to check their junk mail. They have a letter from Eileen! More expotion in the form of a letter. I hope she explains why she was still in America, but I've paused on Sam's face when Dean says Eileen because I like hurting myself, and look at poor broken little Sammy in there :<

Of course, making it aaaall about Sam and Eileen and making it clear he was the one more emotionally connected to her.

He's wearing a tan coat and blue shirt which makes me nervous casting him as a Cas mirror while dealing with this

-

Nice montage of Sam and Dean checking for bugs.

I am assuming they go to their trap, and Mary comes to kill this dude they made up, and Sam and Dean are like D:

-

oh wow gosh there's a design flaw in Crowley's control on Lucifer and it can be reversed so Lucifer can control Crowley who would have ever thought........

(I mean maybe not this exact scenario but that things were potentially going to flip between them at some point and Lucifer would be in charge...)

I hate that they used the "reverse the polarity" line because it didn't deserve that :P

I would wonder if there's some meta application to this theme though - especially with Mary AND Cas being controlled, Lucifer being controlled has been the least interesting or well-used part of this, barely even serving as a mirror to this, but it's not too late :P

-

Toni asking how Ketch knew the hellhound sat when she told it to and basically says better not to disagree with it even if you can't see what it's doing. Can't work out what level this commentary works at.

They ARE about to be duped by the Winchesters via a transmission they can only hear without seeing what they're doing. I wouldn't *mind* Ketch being mauled by the hellhound although I do think one of the Winchesters should kill him

Sam owes him 2, Mary would get a hell of a lot of satisfaction but I still suspect Dean will do it anyway for meta purposes, dark mirrors, etc.

-

oooh ketch and mary scene. Please be as interesting as these two characters generally are regardless of writer

-

Oh no her face when she sees Ketch. I don't think she can credit her memory of fighting him enough to know if it was real or not, and after spending so much time with him he's a familiar face >.> And he's soft on her, which is a whole other problem, but whatever happened with Ketch, I think Mary finds him weirdly comforting. But his idea of comfort is that he's happy for the transformation she's going through - mostly because she'll be like him and they can have lots of sex while killing things together

Then Mary uses the "world without monsters" line as the lie falls away and she realises how badly this has turned on her and her dream.

It's sort of the realisation I wanted her to have ~12x14 when I wrote my "a world without monsters" fic but oh well better late than never - she is going through the exact mental process I wrote which is always fun to watch on screen :P

And now Mary is feeling betrayed - "we worked together" and she mentions how she knew him. She uses that "closeness" even when he denies it to get near enough to grab his gun and *nearly* repeats how she nearly killed herself in 12x09 before Cas stabbed Billie and shocked her out of it. Ketch grabs the gun to protect her from herself, despite putting her through what makes her want to kill herself >.>

(This scene is brilliant by the way)

Mary now honourary member of Team Free Will - all she ever had when it came down to it was her free will... except she never even had that. What Toni mentioned about her deal was coersion from Heaven and Hell because she doesn't know about the cupids, that the only reason she had her family was because her free will was taken away. But actually FEELING its loss immediately hurts her spirit so badly. (And she didn't ask to be brought back and wouldn't have chosen it)

Anyway that was an incredible performance, and Ketch was okay too, showing his weird half-concern where he kind of likes her and wants her to be what he thinks will help her - to take away the pain not by killing her but by removing her will to feel upset by this.

Mary is left sobbing on her knees and I just love that she was allowed to messy cry and hiccup her lines like... that was brilliant. I love Mary okay.

-

Although Sam and Dean seem to be going to their trap already so I now doubt Mary will come

there's a flickering light by the warehouse which makes it look like ghosts are around.

Just them!

Dean gets kicked in the nuts, which is a reverse mirror of Mary kicking Ketch in the nuts - he the light mirror to the dark kicker, vice versa to Mary etc. Dean makes a quip about how they'll have to start dating if she keeps doing that, which in a Buckleming way solidifies this. I'm just, not gonna poke that.

-

Oh but it's a Crowley and Lucifer scene next.

God, watching the end of season 9 so recently really makes me hate this even more because remember when Crowley won everything?? After he lost Dean all the oomph went out of him - Dean shoving him in 10x02 and Crowley realising he's fucked and hastily manipulating himself to safety - when he makes that bargain with Sam, he loses his threat and cred to them and on a narrative level. There's nothing Crowley can do to the Winchesters now that's as bad as demon!Dean, and he's had no motivation to really get in their business and they don't fear him. It's not just a Buckleming problem although they've written most of Crowley this season it feels like (or these scenes are all individually 1000 years long) - they introduce Rowena immediately to give him another reason to be relevant and in scenes, but she quickly discovers he's whipped by the Winchesters, and he spends season 11 messing around being invested in main plot stuff just because he happens to live in the same world as them, not because he's out to get them or doing anything they urgently need to stop him doing. Even him harbouring Amara was only tangential to giving them a way to discover where she was - Crowley was nothing really to do with that particular confrontation. And then he got mired in the Lucifer stuff...

Now this season he has not only lost his edge but he's genuinely only being portrayed as protecting the Winchesters or being an idiot. And now Lucifer has managed to take control of him, but not even through his own cleverness, just getting a random demon to help, and being told he could do it.

There's really nothing of interest in these scenes because it's all.. blah.

I mean I wouldn't mind Crowley going soft so much because it's been interesting in other episodes (12x12, 12x15, and the season 11 episodes where it was interesting or even 10x14 or 10x17) but that's not really being explored as a character thing - now Buckleming are just exploiting that Crowley's been off his game for seasons by doing this to him.

-

But I suppose the loss of agency thing is sort of relevant with Mary and Cas also in trouble - it's like everyone but Sam and Dean is being controlled or is controlling >.>

-

I assume Crowley did just get some karma from Olivette and he's now possessing that rat, especially since they made such a big deal out of cutting Crowley with an angel blade = loud demon burny sounds, and then like in 11x01 when Cas stabbed Crowley's much shot and stabbed meatsuit, there was no sound effect.

Honestly at this point it sounds much more fun to have him stay as a rat, and also I guess his meatsuit is compromised

i would like someone else to play Crowley for a short period just like in 11x01 but without the orgy murder, and not because I dislike Mark S because he's made Crowley's long endurance since season 10 much more worth it than I guess it could have been with a less charismatic actor. But because it would be interesting and shake things up...

-

Wait I completely forgot to talk about the toni in the car scene... I mean that was all predictable and she was winding them up with the truth/half truths, and of course Mary is the sorest sore spot to push. The reveal she and Ketch had sex has a predictable reaction.

I finally figured out what's bothered me all episode - the Brits don't use ANY euphemisms for sex. IDK if Buckleming are particularly verbally creative anyway but they didn't spend any time giggling at some sort of list online of ridiculous British euphemisms and then go out of their way to use it, so there's now a drinking game for every time someone says "sex" in a pained British accent.

The real crime is they haven't seen Austen Powers because using "shagged" is at least the most obvious one to use if you're scared of being imaginative.

-

shoot out in the Bunker!

-

Dean gets some really improbable headshots but it's cool because I love him

-

"how many more guys you have in here?" "our mom! where is she!?"

lemme guess she's the other guy in here

*mary emerges with a gun*

oh lookie at that then

I suppose the 8x17 and Naomi parallels are about to do something. Mary's already on the crypt scene graph a few times. I'm laughing because 10x03 has another "I know you're in there" that I have totally blanked on since it aired, mostly because the failed ones really just kind of stack up in a little sad pile in the corner, but I did literally just watch it.

Interesting that Toni is ~more~ of the Naomi and Mary is basically here to free her... Ketch gets out sooner because Mary makes a shot just to scare Dean and Ketch gets his gun. Toni is the only one in peril now but she's the one who seems to have been doing the hard work on Mary.

-

elizabethrobertajones oh cripes it didn't work what the hell did Robbie DO he must have blackmail material on Singer and killing off all his faves is payback

mittensmorgul >.> wait, what didn't work?

elizabethrobertajones the crypt scene failure with Mary

mittensmorgul oh, yeah. well, did we expect it to?

elizabethrobertajones I mean I know he played the game hard to establish only romantic love breaks it in his episodes

mittensmorgul The crypt scene was supposed to be founded on mutual love and understanding

elizabethrobertajones but... like... did that get engraved permanently in the show's rulebook?

mittensmorgul the whole "YOU KNOW ME" but Mary really... doesn't//

elizabethrobertajones I know :P But it doesn't work on Sam and Dean??? they have at least 3 failures between them

mittensmorgul sam broke through in blade runners... adn after he killed abaddon

elizabethrobertajones yeah but he wasn't in danger and Dean was only sort of thinking about killing him

mittensmorgul but it took cas intervening in 10.03

elizabethrobertajones not overtly :P it wasn't a staged crypt scene it was just Sam breaking through Dean's murder fugue state caused by murdering someone else

mittensmorgul yeah...

elizabethrobertajones but 10x03 "i know you're in there" has no effect, and Robbie's parting one in 11x16 seemed mostly to be there to prove the rule

mittensmorgul nobody's ever really broken dean free in true crypt scene fashion

elizabethrobertajones I mean you have a point about Mary not knowing them and it being a miscommunication thing but in the wider picture I'm actually stunned that it works every time :P

mittensmorgul yeah

elizabethrobertajones I'm guessing she gets reclaimed some way or other but it seems they need to find another way than just appealing to her like that which means even if they break through it's going to be a subversion of sorts and has a past failure

mittensmorgul yeah

elizabethrobertajones while Dean nailed it first go on Cas :P although! they never told her to kill them and leaving them to die is different from making the shot

mittensmorgul yep if they'd ordered her to fire on them... that might've broken their hold on her It's like Doctor Who and the Big Red Button

elizabethrobertajones but the important thing is that's not what they showed here :P

-

Anyway that's pretty ominous about the Bunker being their tomb - yet more stuff about it being less and less like their home - it's always being threatened but every couple of years it seems really like it's going to permanently happen. I spent this equivalent area of season 10 convinced they were going to torch the Bunker. With it being Dabb era, and the 5th year of the Bunker, bets are off.

-

Mary talking about it being easier to hurt the people she loves, like there aren't only 2 people and she just left them to die and doesn't expect to see them again

-

"How do you feel?" "Fine. I'm fine"

I think she might take the cake for one of the worst "i'm fines" ever on this show.

She's now successfully been transformed into the Mary I wrote in A World Without Monsters and I never wanted to see that on screen despite kinda writing it assuming it would happen.

*shoves my fic far away from me because it's done nothing but cause me pain* :P

-

oh thank god that's over. I'm going to go to bed and spite-write Sam and Eileen's relationship accelerating dramatically faster than I meant it to in Terrible Coffee AU.