#kripke era jack

[soullessjack]

going 2 bed now but before I do please take my kripke era jack again

[deadlyanddelicate]

yes yes widower arc for sure. yes yes divorce arc. mixtape scene etc etc. but can we admit r/supernatural is making some points here with the whole ‘jack replacing chuck as a stand-in for dabb replacing kripke and the show actually suffering for it’

like. i know this is a relatively unpopular opinion but i DO agree later seasons were taken over by jack and i simply don’t care much for him. yes haha born yesterday trope baby boy so cute. ok. but are you telling me he’s an interesting CHARACTER?

i promise you the solution to ‘god is not answering your prayers and life is filled with unfair suffering’ is not ‘actually you just need a better god!’. like that HAS to be the opposite of a nuanced, interesting take, but that’s what the later seasons were peddling.

we went from ‘god is a selfish, absent, flawed father who doesn’t really know what he’s doing and is not all that invested in his creation’ (compelling! three-dimensional! humanising the divine!) to ‘Old Bad God is a cartoonishly evil villain who wants to destroy the multiverse bc he’s throwing a tantrum but luckily we have New Good God who is rosy-cheeked and innocent and will save us all!’* in fact he is SO Good and Pure and Innocent that everyone else is a big old meanie by comparison, including characters who have been established for a decade as protective of children and innocent people!!!

*and the thing is it doesn’t even really work btw. it still is largely down to the humans around him. and then he becomes god and nonsensical tragedy immediately strikes - to the point that 3 years later we’re all still here theorising that Chuck Must Have Won because there was no way that could have been a good ending.

[sammygender]

kripke era > gamble era > carver era > dabb era. but gamble and carver arent that far apart. for me.

[angelsdean]

i'm so controversial bc i am a blonde dean black haired cas truther ✌️ the characters that live inside my mind are more real than what is on screen. also hair color is a state of being

[maipareshaan]

I lit am too much of a misandrist to care about late seasons Sam and Dean

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

today's thoughts before passing out: the demon blood plot reading as a metaphoric fear of miscegenation, a result of classic Western tropes told through a Horror framework.

demon blood is a boundary crossing substance, invasive and transformative. Sam violated in the crib functions on one level as a rape metaphor, but its done so through demonic blood coming in to dilute his human blood. the violation then, comes in as a literal theft of identity. his body becomes the literal battleground between two forces - the domestic world of his family vs. the invading, monstrous outsider. Azazel snatches and preys on civilised children from the crib as a means of recruiting them to his tribe army, literally corrupting them on a bodily level, claiming them from their blood families as his own. and the more demon blood Sam drinks, the less 'human' he becomes (the less of his family's blood in him). Dean's anger over Ruby also ties into Sam's sexual relationship with her, of which the blood drinking is a component. the blood drinking is especially transgressive because it echoes deep-rooted settler colonial anxieties, expressed through the language of pop culture - fears over losing one's blood, family, and identity to a savage Other.

(4.04)

(4.21)

what got me started on this line of thinking was a recent rewatch of John Ford's The Searchers (1956), a movie so ingrained in the modern American cultural mythos that nearly every first year cinema studies course makes it required viewing lmao. it's a subversive Western, concerned with exploring the porous boundary dividing white settler communities from Native American communities, the defining line between the 'civilised'/'uncivilised', the colonial subject and the savage. it was released during an era when America was grappling with undoing laws around racial segregation, and reflects those anxieties through classic American mythology.

so. Sam is a modern interpretation of Martin and Debbie from that movie, and Dean is a modern variant on its leading anti-hero, Ethan Edwards (rather John is our initial Ethan figure, but we spend most of the show with Dean, who takes on his mantle). just to emphasise the connection between the show and this movie - Star Wars heavily references it, and Kripke's always been explicit about this show's two leads as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. well, i'd argue this show definitely owes more to The Searchers than Star Wars does!

Martin is Ethan's adoptive nephew of partial Cherokee descent, made an outsider to his family, by his uncle, at the film's outset due to his blood. he joins his uncle on his revenge mission after a Comanche tribe destroys their home and steals his adoptive sister - Debbie. this mission becomes his coming-of-age journey into rugged frontier manhood, as much as it is his path towards integration into white, 'civilised' society.

the protagonist of the film is Ethan, a soldier who gets consumed by his seven year long, bloody, vengeance-fuelled quest to recover his niece. when he finds Debbie, however, to his dismay he discovers she's no longer the 'pure' innocent he remembers. upon finding out that she's married to the tribe's chief - he literally disowns her as his blood kin, and at one point, even tries to kill her. Martin becomes the one to save her from his uncle's shot and the one to convince her to return home. he later convinces Ethan to recommit to rescuing her, and he ends up doing so.

(15.17 - Sam over s4 functions as a Debbie figure, but Jack also takes up her role. Dean disowns him as Ethan disowns his niece)

over the movie, we see Ethan descend into ever increasing violence and 'wildness', grown closer to his enemy after years spent on the frontier, hunting them down. Martin gets to go home, his civilising mission completed as he marries into a white family. Ethan though, stands at the threshold in the iconic concluding shot below. he's been transformed by frontier violence to the point he no longer belongs to the domestic, civilised world. he wanders back out into the desert, alone.

(1.14)

anyways. Supernatural owes so much of its dna to the classic Western, and to this movie in particular. what The Searchers was to collective white American anxieties over desegregation in the late 50s, this show was to collective white American anxieties over multiculturalism at the new millenium, in the wake of 9/11. Sam's demon blood is a critical defining line between him and his brother, as Martin's mixed race status is the defining line between him and his uncle. 'monstrosity' on this show metaphorically stands in for savagery; one brother gets thrown out onto the frontier, a journey towards 'taming' his own nature. and another brother drifts further and further away from civilised society the longer he spends fighting at the frontier, protecting civilisation from its monsters. 'blood don't end with family' comes to a screeching halt when it addresses the prospect of monstrosity. what is demon blood standing in for on this show? what does a monster represent, truly? who gets to step over the threshold into civilised society, and what is the price of that acceptance?

[loveinterestcastiel]

tell me your favorite season/ of supernatural. it’s for science

i’d love to hear your thoughts. tag comment reblog reply etc i’m here for you. we’re all locked deep in the pit together babes

[castiellesbian]

some jumbled thoughts about the writers. I actually like Dabb's writing for young Sam at least, it's part of what makes Dark Side of the Moon great, and it makes The Girl Next Door and After School Special salvageable. Sera Gamble is a great writer, one of the best in the show, but unfortunately she wasn't a very good showrunner (though i do think some of it was more because of external forces and/or misogyny...). same with carver: very good standalone episodes, not terribly great at overarching plots. it's a common misconception that kripke had everything planned out and that's what makes 1-5 good, BUT i do think he was good at recognizing story beats over a longer period of time and seeing when something wasn't working and knowing how to scrap it without it feeling too obvious. dabb era... has it's issues. but i did appreciate how he tried to do something different than the seasons before by bringing back mary, introducing jack (cas really did need his own storyline), and leaning more into the ensemble cast (<-that's something that really hurt gamble since she just killed them off lol). buckleming admittedly are not the worst at characterization, they just are bad at writing in almost every other respect so it's hard to enjoy it lol. like yeah dean telling chuck being a killer is "not who i am" is great, but i also had to hear mark pellegrino yell "cuck" three times. so. also i genuinely think fans forget about meredith glynn more than she deserves, she was a solid later seasons writer!! not perfect but when she hits, she hits.

[ananke-xiii]

One of the reasons why Nick's story in s14 doesn't work form me is because of the show's insistence to pigeonhole Lucifer as "the supreme agent of evil". Of course, this is considered true in our real world (lol), specifically Christian world, but in-universe it just... doesn't work? If we want to go full-on dichotomy (and S14 very much goes there) if Lucifer's evil, who's the primary agent of good? No one, exactly. Definitely not Heaven.

Because there are, like, TEN seasons of angels going total batshit crazy, I mean we know that angels=good isn't a view the show supports since Cas appears in "Lazarus Rising". And we know that ALL angels downright lie, manipulate and coerce humans to get their "consent". We also know that the main issue with "the devil's spawn" in s12 was not so much "the devil" but the fact that "a Nephilim came into being".

The problem is NOT that who'll later be Jack is Lucifer's son, the problem is that he's a Nephilim. Lucifer has weight in the discourse merely because he's an archangel, NOT because he's the primary agent of evil. The issue is that "grace+soul"=a fucking lot of power. And a fucking lot of power means a fucking lot of problems.

We also know that humans get severely depressed after a possession, they have to face many struggles and sometimes society alienates them (see: "Repo Man"). So the argument that Nick's psyche is damaged because Lucifer's so evil his influence's still there even after he's departed is just... weak? A random demon can possess a random Jeffrey and the damages on the human psyche are still IMMENSE. From the human perspective random demon or most powerful archangel in the world are the same thing: they can carry out the same violence, abuse and trauma.

I might be wrong but what I get from the season is that the "primary agent of good" is the soul. And this is ALSO not true? Because shit gets real when Jack starts losing it, sort of implying that without the soul, his luciferian grace will make him become evil or will make him do evil things ("the devil made me do it" mentality). But we literally have a character such as Castiel, Angel of the Lord and Maker of Huge Mistakes but also Not in Possess of a Human Soul who actively strives to do good things (and he fails miserably so maybe he's not a good example but HE IS JACK'S CHOSEN FATHER, it MUST mean something ffs).

I think, maybe, I don't find the shift from "Nephilim" to "Lucifer's son" compelling because Jack's real "problem" (if we want to call it so) is that he's half (arch)angel and half human. Like, being an angel is a fucking issue in this show because these creatures are a bit deranged okay? LOL. On the other hand, being human is ALSO a fucking issue because it 100% doesn't warrant inherent goodness. Humans can be deranged creatures, too, okay? :D Both species can definitely just make mistakes, do bad things wanting to do bad things or ending up doing bad things without intention to do so. Ultimately, Jack's dilemma is being Other, just like his chosen father and just like Kripke-era Sam.

I still stand by my idea that all angels are a little bit like Lucifer. And there are episodes such as "Of Gods and Monsters" that sort of confirm it. When Nick calls Cas out and tells him "Castiel, you’re just a stone cold body snatcher. You’re no different than Lucifer" he's exactly pointing out the hypocrisy. Hell, the whole episode seems to question the season's main theme because Michael is literally possessing Dean, he conned him, he tells him that he owns him, he's creating an army of monsters as they speak, he's brutally torturing them but the primary agent of evil is still little ol' Lucifer.

Although, truth be told, I didn't particularly feel the need to learn more about Nick (sorry Nick, I know you're there so that Mark Pellegrimo could stay on payroll, I don't hold it against you), I can't deny that it had great potential as a narrative choice (let's not even go into the Sam/Nick parallels). But, to me, it didn't deliver because the show's murky on where it stands: on paper it wants to show the fallacies of "black and white" thinking but it effectively supports the same "black and white" view of the world that it seeks to question.

[nobodymitskigabriel]

What if Jack had been in Kripke era 💕

[soullessjack]

devious little creature

[aliusfrater]

early season four sam is actually so. he's so cool and fun and hot and thoughtful and he's kind of coping much better than anyone could hope for. if jack met season four sam, it would bring jack's idolisation of sam to new heights. anyway i came here to say that you can always tell when bedlund writes an episode (kripke era) because it has a basic understanding of what the show is trying to achieve with its many themes and sam and dean's relationship but it tries to do this horror-comedy thing that's very sitcom, too sitcom, while taking itself entirely seriously. and while the concept typically lands, it generally just falls flat for what supernatural is

[shirtlesssammy]

Dean Winchester's Multiverse Adventures

"Every notebook on this particular shelf tells a version of how you die. You specifically: heart attack, burned by a red-haired witch, stabbed by a ghoul in a graveyard, and on and on... But which one’s right? That depends on you, on the choices you make." Billie says this in Supernatural season 13, Advanced Thanatology. The books are impersonal portals into Dean's own personal multiverse.

When Mary Campbell talks to John about her experiences in the gateway between worlds, she tells him that she saw "everything - every possible version of myself." In the space between the worlds, she sees herself - her beginnings and endings, her triumphs and failures. First of all, it's pretty impressive that she's not insane after this. Mary's always been stronger than we gave her credit for. But the space between the worlds sounds shockingly personal.

In Supernatural, we got a multiverse which brought us back versions of long-dead characters, and we made our way to those worlds through god-level powers. Angels may have brought us there during the Kripke era (or it may have been Zachariah's illusion skillz?). Jack's impending birth split reality - ostensibly because he was so powerfully strong. However, I propose that there is no time and space when you're talking about god-powers. Jack became God and his heaven is apparently lousy with portals to other worlds. Jack became God and his birth was riddled with portals to other worlds. Is it the godhood, or a future story that will tell us exactly why he's the key to world traveling? When you're dealing with time and space, your ending exists alongside your beginning, after all. This is a rich area to explore! The void could be where the god-powers live - the special view into the multi-verse that let Chuck see it all.

Anyway, I digress. Dean Winchester's driving through Heaven. He's heavily traumatized. The man just died, after all. In doing so, he left Sammy behind to stumble through life on his own (abandoning Sam is its own kind of trauma). He lost his best friend in the most agonizing way. And I think the Dean we saw in the finale was terrified to meddle in those larger patterns of destiny - those cosmic forces that ripped so much of his selfhood from him. He's trying to find himself and who he should be (hello, job application), he's trying to convince himself that "what's dead should stay dead" (Cas sacrificed himself and they need to accept that and live their lives), and it all feels...terrible (beer bottles everywhere). Maybe because he's looking for something new once he gets to Heaven, maybe Chuck's obsession with Dean and his car gave them extra powers, maybe future!Dean gives himself those powers and we don't even know it yet...Dean finds those cracks in Heaven's armor that lets him slip through to other worlds.

It's one thing to think of Dean slipping blithely from world to world, with his view of his other selves a bit myopic. He could take a trip to Squirrel World, and a trip to Dean Smith Verse, and that one world where everyone's a mermaid. After all, he's only seeing a sampling of AUs, just like he did in Supernatural. Right??? But Mary says she saw every version of herself when she was in the space between the worlds. Think of what that must have been like for Dean! Just stepping into that void is enough to see everything. He doesn't even need to put a toe into another doorway to know himself more than anybody should. He knows himself more than he would from reading through Death's books because the void between the worlds also shows his lives. He's dead and therefore more tear-proof in the void. I propose that he saw it all and retained it too. And being Dean Winchester, he probably focused on the worst aspects of himself.

The Dean we see in the Winchesters finale carries a sorrow that I think can provide a rich well to explore in (hopefully) future Supernatural properties. I think it's important to understand that the Dean we see would have also experienced Mary's revelation: he must have seen every version of himself. His family history spiders out from there - Dean's heard his own story out of Chuck's mouth often enough to follow the threads. I think Dean saw all of his lives and wondered if he really was cursed, or broken. I think he mostly saw sorrow. There can be no peace - no pacification in Heaven - with that weighty burden.

Dean Winchester knows all about death. He's died over a hundred times and that was just in his OWN world. What Dean doesn't understand - the frontier he's so rarely pursued - is living. In future multiverse adventures (please, please, please) I think he's going to finally learn about that.

[shallowseeker]

I watched s13 for the first time this past summer and these Lucifer metas are super fascinating to me. As I was watching I was very much the opinion that Lucifer only wanted a "relationship" with Jack because of how powerful Jack was and how Lucifer could use him for his own goals (whatever those may have been), with maybe a bit of spite towards God/Chuck of "I'm better because I won't be a deadbeat dad" if that makes sense? I'll admit that post Kripke era Lucifer has always been hard for me to really understand, so these metas on Lucifer (and Jack!) are super interesting to me!

Ah, yes. For me, I get the most mileage out of how joyful Lucifer seems to be of use in the war against Amara. He was so happy, so in his element, you know? He had Cas, a stable brother who "gray rock" tolerated him, so he wasn't alone. He even had Dean, Sam, Crowley, Rowena as "war companions." Pairing that with Rock Never Dies and Lucifer's resulting nihilism is delicious to me.

LUCIFER: I'm not especially interested in his opinion. Dear old dad, he finally apologized for abandoning me. And what's the very next thing he does? [Voice breaks] He ditches me. [Laughs] And you, too, by the way.

Don't you get it? This is all meaningless. Heaven, Hell, this world. If it ever meant anything, that moment is past. Nothing down here but a bunch of hopeless distraction addicts, so filled with emptiness, so desperate to fill up the void… they don't mind being served another stale rerun of a rerun of a rerun. You know what my plan is? I don't have one.

But post-Jack's conception? He doesn't "need" them anymore. It's like he's looking for Jack to fill his own void.

Lucifer's cognitive empathy is definitely on display in these seasons, but there's also...this childlike need to fix his core wound with such self-centered family-building, you know?

And I mean, so many many people find purpose in family-building (for example, Cas too found purpose in raising Jack), but Lucifer's world is so small and shallow. It's just interesting to me...

There are glimmers in 12x08 of what he wanted from God:

LUCIFER (in a speech): And yet, we need "our Father"...to...be there when we fall.

And after Jack is created, Lucifer focuses all of his energy on getting to Jack, on impressing Jack. He doesn't need them anymore—not the family of his childhood, or the family of his soldierhood. Jack represents a fresh start.

in 13x02, May says, noticing Lucifer's desperation to get to Jack:

LUCIFER: I’m gonna exchange you for my son. MARY: You can’t possibly care about raising a child. LUCIFER: Oh, you have no idea what I care about.

He cares to a degree that he wants Jack to pump himself up, I think. Power is a big part of it, but Jack is also a narcissistic supply, I think. It's when Jack rejects Lucifer that he goes after his power. But Lucifer wants Jack's locus of morality to be angelic. Humans are to angels as the hunted-monsters are to humans, so to speak.

And I can't seem to find the meta today, but even in INHERIT THE EARTH, Lucifer is STILL making a play for Jack to be "on the winning team" with himself and Chuck. Even after taking Jack's grace, he still seems to want to have him.

[antigonewinchester]

@setyourfireonme

retcon of mary's deal? wait can you expand because i don't remember seeing anything about it lol. disappointed but not surprised...

so it’s not a literal retcon, i.e. Mary still makes her deal, but to my view, it’s a framing / thematic retcon.

4x03 is a double gut punch: first, the audience gets the reveal that Mary, contrary to how we’ve seen her as the sweet housewife, was born into a hunting family. we got a hint of this in 2x21 (why did Mary know Azazel?) but fully seeing Mary’s backstory re-contextualizes her as a character; no longer only the fridged wife, she was someone who knew and grew up with the supernatural. second, Azazel was only in Sam’s nursery to dose him with blood because he got ‘permission’ from Mary: he made a deal with her. Dean, and we the audience, have assumed Mary’s death as the starting point for the Winchester family tragedy, but in this ep we learn that isn’t true: it wasn’t Mary’s death, but her deal, that opened the door for Azazel and so many other horrors to later enter not just her, but John, Sam & Dean’s lives. Mary’s deal is tragic & disturbing - she had to kiss her dead possessed dad! - while also horribly understandable. Azazel killed her mom & dad, killed John, Mary just wants a husband & kids & normal life and Azazel says he can give it to her, even if she knows there will be unintended consequences down the line for her family. at the least it’s an ambiguous choice, and at most it’s the wrong one; Mary could have let John go, married another man, and still had a normal life, even if we know (and can sympathize with) why she didn’t.

then, way down the line at the end of S12, we get a glimpse at the Apocalypse World: a world where Sam & Dean were never born and so they never stopped the Apocalypse like they did in S5, leading to Lucifer and Michael fighting and destroying the world. already, I think, this framing is different from how Kripke’s era handled it. you can’t really separate Sam & Dean from the Apocalypse; it’s a family drama played out on a planet-wide scale. so no Sam & Dean = no Apocalypse. if S5 was about how Sam & Dean were fated to bring about the Apocalypse and subverted it because of their love for each other, then Apocalypse World implicitly suggests that it was the reverse: Sam & Dean were fated to stop the Apocalypse, and so their non-existence meant they weren’t there to do so.

later on in 13x14, we get this exchange between Mary & AW-Bobby:

BOBBY Mary Campbell was a… complicated woman. Brave, but sad. Full of regret. MARY Let me guess. She made a bad demon deal? BOBBY Opposite. She didn’t make one. Lost the love of her life. Never moved on. MARY And Dean and Sam were never born. Bobby, I made that deal. And it—I brought my boys a lot of pain. But what happened here, in your world? Sam and Dean stopped that war in mine. BOBBY Then I’d say you made the right choice.

the subtext of this conversation is that while Mary’s deal might have been the spark for the fires that burned through Sam & Dean’s lives, her deal with ultimately a good choice - it led to Sam and Dean being heroes and saving the world. the ambiguity that was there in Kripke’s era is dropped for something emotionally simpler and less tragic.

in Kripke’s era, Sam and Dean were chosen, and being chosen meant being cursed. they won by fighting as hard as they could against their fates, and true to Kripke’s humanism, it was Sam & Dean’s love for each other that saved the world. in Dabb’s era, while being chosen may mean suffering and hardship, it also means being a hero. arguably I’d say being chosen is a gift, even if it’s a painful one, if one looks at how powers / helping the world is talked about with Jack, Patience, etc.

neither of these two framings is “right,” per se, but imo they are two very different framings of Mary’s deal.

[driftwooddestiel]

below the cut is my “sonfs i NEED to amv” list, directly copy pasted from my notes app . this is a culmination of all my ideas its my magnum opus

even when the wayers cold (lisa maybe??)

golden skans (sam faith amv maybe???)

saving grace (the cranberriesnatural real)

spsceman (castiel, anna, amara and other characters ‘falling to earth’ growing to love humanity hear me out)

(coffees for closers) [fallout boy] (faith throughout supernatural)

w.a.m.s (destiel & purgatory and stuff arc alsoo apocapy’…

float on (everyone :) ) happy birthday dean ? what if they were happy…

am i ever gonna see your face again (destiel and their many widowed arcs)

when will you die (fbi/police & their run ins with dean and sam) OR (chuck and his constant attempts to change and regulate the charcaters) maybe both…

the girl of my dreams is giving me nightmares (samruby demon blood arc) this one is TOP PRIORITY!!!!!!!! because its so special to me forever (first ever amv idea ever :O)

things go bump in the night from the scooby doo movie! silly

monkey gone to heaven (pixies) with dean or sam and deaths idk what else to say okay

tame (pixies) with kripke era dean

no 13 baby - s4/s5 destiel… handprint……… hear me out…. EDIT: i dont remember writing this??? i dont really know how this even makes sense but i trust u past me kind of

Mr Hyde (bb brunes) - demon dean and/or mark of cain dean … maybe drowley??

turn the lights off (tally hall) - something about monsters demons etc as a queer allegory okay just . hear me out

call me maybe (carly rae jepsen) destiel early seasons please just hear me out on this one

excuses ou mensonges (orelsan) - nick and lucifer idk i just think maybe..

your body my temple sam and lucifer hear me out ACTUALLY JUSTG SMA AND AUTONOMY 

killing time 2.0 (american psycho tha musical) chuck and wnding the world ^_^

needle in the hay (elliot smith) - dean. throws up and dies

mask of my own face (lemon demon) - gabriel :)

what sarah said (death cab for cutie) - destiel and all cas’ deaths. throws up

(ANIAMTION) oatmeal (jack stauber) - the archangels 

i cant be with you (the cranberries) - destiel

private life (oingo boingo) - the bunker (probably dean focused… maybe even destiel you know how it is)

hymn for a scarecrow (tally hall) - the angels

VIDEO GAMES (LANA DEL RAY) DESTIEL IM GOING TO DIEA

ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM SONG!!!

curious (franz ferdinand) - destiel cas pov EDIT: okay another one i have no memory of writing

ode to my family (the cranberries) - jo harvelle

right action (franz ferdinand) - tfw and their many mistakes etc

johnny delusional (ffs) - chouse…………………………………..

hot to go (chappell roan) - dean being a hot girl summer tm

the bad touch (bloodhound gang) - hannigram… the sillies… do u feel me

judas (lady gaga) - hannigram my goofy guys. hannibal pov

sweet tangerine (the hush sound) - hannigram . more serious. hannibal pov again

nobody likes me everybody hates me guess ill go eat worms (idk artist) - hannibal :3

complicated (avril lavigne) - skyler white, about walter

boom clap (charli xcx) - hilson. no im not insane.

need you tonight (inxs) - hannigram. cmon. you see it

pop culture (youtube, forgot artist) - homestuck ‼️ 

everytime (butterfingers) - dean!!! hear me out okay. it also works so well for adam saw but unfortunately he has so little footage :(

i just had sex (the lonely island feat. akon) - saw characters getting out of traps and stuff this is such a silly idea but i laugh every time i think of it