#like the truly MOST essential element of sam and dean

[zmediaoutlet]

trying to articulate something here --

I dig the experience of reading meta that is coming from a well-reasoned place but I nevertheless fundamentally disagree with, and I think that comes down to a willingness to sift down and down and down until you come to an essential Thing about the text-genre-intent-characterization-whathaveyou. Like -- I can see how you got there, but wait, you didn't consider [xyz].

Top of mind example: Dean's masculine because he's trying to act like John. On the surface -- absolutely! He's trying very hard to mimic Dad because his universe centers around god Dad. He's also often operating in a world of trying to do what Dad would want, and making assumptions of his own about what those wants would be, which is a slightly different operating structure.

...But. What's actually driving that? Is it dad qua dad? Or is it -- Dean is essentially loyal-obedient-conformist? Is it that, in the cultural context of growing up in the '80s-'90s with a father who grew up in the '60s-'70s, this is what being a certain kind of man meant and so it is essential to lock into those tropes and characteristics?

We look to how Dean acted like a certain kind of boy when he was an 18 year old and then a 26 year old; we look to how that is updated by the time he's 40, and operating under what is the correct kind of man to be in 2020 vs 2005 (use of language, acceptable levels of nerdiness, fashion sense, etc). From there we can look to how he's not being John, he's being... a normie, more or less. And bless his heart for it. He just wants to Fit. If he were sticking with Acting Like Dad, he wouldn't cheerfully cosplay through a Panthro case, you know? So what's actually driving the behavior, when you look to the heart of it?

So then, if Dean were Deanna--

You can extrapolate. And this stuff is outside the text -- you have to decide What Dad Would Want from a girl-child (given cultural context and norms, given how the young version of John was characterized, given how John and Mary might have operated when they were 'safe' for those first 5 years, given how John might have then shifted his expectations and needs for his kids upon entering the hunting life), and then whether What Dad Would Want fits against a fairly normal conformist presentation (in the way that Dean is intensely normal, if a little wrong-side-of-the-tracks), or if John flips the script and for some reason decides that his kid should not fit in and have what's actually a much harder time, for a traditional gender presentation in the culture they live in, etc.

All of this boiling down to: what matters most in the meta consideration? What's key for characterization and universe structure? Does it actually matter? --no, not at all. But it's very fun to tease apart.

[bradycore]

okay here’s the thing about bloody mary. it’s one of the most essential episodes of one of the best seasons of the show. it’s literally the kickoff for the beloved psychic sam arc, and the way it’s done is BRILLIANT. the rambling is under the cut, but first i’ll say that of course the born-again identity is a fantastic episode. it has sam 1) making a friend and 2) suffering immensely, plus the plot-driven sam elements too, so i’m here for it, i am! but it’s NOT bloody mary.

so you’ve got all the nostalgic classics of this era of the show (which i'm having to cut down on for length oops): familiar lore but a good mystery; the lighting & desaturation, the clothes & hair, the shots that are eerily similar to ones seasons down the line (the ahbl and levee parallels alone, oh my god!!!); salmondean lying out of their asses and failing miserably; the bantering; “it might not be our thing” “when is it ever not our thing”; more lying and snooping; the side character of the week experiencing some genuinely scary shit, like, actual horror-movie horror; lines that are funny when you watch them but horribly ironic in hindsight (“600 years of bad luck”); committing b&e and property damage...you get the gist. and sam comes from all this. you can take s7 era away from sam and still have him, but you can't take away this. the roots of the show are the roots of him.

anyway, throughout it all, sam has nightmares. horrible nightmares that we experience with him, but we think they’re normal, and dean thinks they’re normal, and then sam says he has a secret. and we realize that it’s been building up to something. the pinnacle: sam, eyes bleeding, black veins crawling up his face, trying desperately to kill his own reflection as it tells him he’s inhuman. how many times did we see this happen metaphorically over the next five seasons? how huge is this theme for his character? and right here, right now, late at night in an old antique store in midwestern ohio, this is when it starts, when it’s raw, when he’s face to face not with a random character parallel but with himself and the literal mirrors all around him are the inescapable threat and we the audience have our stomachs drop as we realize for the first time that he’s not the Normal One. he’s the Other. there is something Wrong. you had those nightmares for days before she died.

and his reflection told him it was his fault jess died. and he tells the motw victim’s daughter that it’s okay, you couldn’t have stopped your loved one’s death, you should forgive yourself; but when he gets in the car with dean, he keeps his secret. to be normal, to be safe.

and then that last fucking shot, oh my god, those five incredible seconds of cinema: jess standing on a street corner as they drive away with the classic rock music in the background. continuing to raise the question of his psychicness, and ephemeral as ever in her white nightgown, wind in her hair, staring right at him and then she’s gone. and 15 seasons later he will still be thinking about her, and this moment is the last time he ever truly sees her.

this episode is so fundamental. it captures the essence of old-school-spn sam while having narrative and cinematic elements that set the stage for his character throughout the entire rest of the show. born-again identity is sam with a crisis in a hospital; bloody mary is sam with a crowbar and a secret. born-again identity is one of those episodes that’s about him; bloody mary is one of those episodes that’s the heart of him. and bloody mary deserved to win.

[ckneal]

There are elements that I enjoy about the theory that the Eve character from Supernatural is actually the biblical Eve, as in Adam and Eve--who we do know existed in this universe, since Adam name drops her in season 15--but I’ll admit that that doesn’t really make sense given other details that we learn in the very same season in which Eve, Mother of Monsters, is introduced. 

For one, Castiel tells us that he watched evolution take place, following a divine plan set in place by God. (”Don’t step on that fish, Castiel, big plans for the fish.”) Because of this, we know that angels were most definitely around well before humanity. This is also backed up by Castiel’s season 7 admission that the angels did not know whether homo sapiens sapiens would wind up being the chosen species, but they were the ones who eventually “ate the apple.” 

Eve, however, tells us that she is older than angels and knows how they work--which is the explanation she gives for why she is able to unplug an angel’s powers (Castiel, specifically) in a way that we only really see in one other instance across the entire show, although it’s not a perfect match. The instance I’m referring to being when Castiel’s powers were gradually reduced over the course of season 5, which--if we are to take the glimpse Dean’s given of the future in that season seriously--would have eventually seen Cas reduced to being human without anyone cutting out his grace. 

Which is interesting, and let’s put a pin in that. Because the main takeaway right now, is that the Eve who comes out of Purgatory to defend her children cannot be the same Eve who mothered Cain and Abel. She’s something else.

And what I think she is, is essentially an abandoned Amara-stand-in. A rebound of sorts that Chuck made after he sealed Amara away and was left alone with his children. Who, we all know, he could not actually abide spending time with. Sometime after the archangels but before the Leviathans, I think that Chuck made Eve to fill the role that Amara played, as someone to talk to and bounce ideas off of--but like a child, he tried to invent upon who Amara was. He tried to make himself a new “perfect” sister, who would be interested in what he was doing in a way that Amara never was, but also someone who would be smaller than him--an assistant, not an equal. And she didn’t truly have the power of destruction as Amara had, because that wasn’t something Chuck truly could recreate and bestow on one of his toys, but he tried, and that eventually came out in the beings that Eve made. 

Creatures that considered her mother, even though she did not specifically birth all of them individually, in the same way that Chuck considered himself father to all of his creations, even though he only acted as a father (sort of) to four out of countless trillions (see Chuck greeting Sam, Dean, Lucifer, Rowena, and Crowley with “Hello, my children” in season 11). 

I think that Chuck did enjoy having her around for awhile, until the new ran off. Maybe he even named the human Eve after his little helper. But eventually he cast Eve off and sealed her away in Purgatory with the first beasts (which is what Death called Leviathans, and is very confusing since it sounds so similar to what we call Eve’s first children), because he got sick of her. Because an imitation is always going to be disappointing in the end, and eventually she was just a reminder of what Chuck had done. Before that though, Eve witnessed the creation of the lesser angels. 

And, if you’ll tolerate me going a little deeper into my hairbrained theory, I think that Eve butted heads with Michael. I think that Michael was perturbed by this dwarfed version of his aunt who was created for seemingly no other purpose than to stand at his father’s side. I daresay that he might have even been a little jealous too. So much so, that even though he was also standing by when Chuck was birthing the other angels, Michael was a little distracted. And as such, he sort of remembered how to disconnect an angel’s powers without cutting out their grace in season 5--but it was foggy. He figured it out and managed to bleed Castiel’s powers away eventually, whereas Eve knew how to do it instantly in season 6, without even having to flex. Because back in the day, she had not been threatened by this snotty, territorial little kids scowling at her over daddy’s shoulder. 

Michael was, however, fully paying attention the day that Chuck taught him how to open a portal to Purgatory and shove his evil aunty Eve in with all her nasty monster souls. Which Michael did with pleasure. 

Raphael, of course, wanted nothing to do with any of this drama, which is why Raphael never learned how to open Purgatory portals, nor were they hovering the background while God created the angels with Eve cheering from the sidelines, and as such they didn’t have the faintest idea of how to remotely de-power Castiel during their dispute in season 6, nor did anyone else, which is why we never see any similar instances of angels losing their powers but not their grace ever again over the series. 

[toxicsamruby]

hello! i have to ask: what do you think about supernatural au's where monsters don't exist/monster hunting is not a thing? do you think the characters could even exist out of that realm? i honestly have conflicting views on this because on one hand i do enjoy the character dynamics but i also feel it would be wrong to just take away something that is fundamental to this show, idk though

i LOVE this question. thank you. im going to write a very long post now

obviously there are infinite ways to interpret a story, right? but sam and dean (and castiel too of course) as characters are completely inextricable from their backstories, and their backstories are inextricable from themes of transience, poverty, loneliness, violence, familial duty, masculinity, otherness, american protestantism, horror, humanity, and monstrosity. i dont think that it’s Wrong to take away the monster hunting as an element in the story, but i DO think it would be bad storytelling to do so bc the fact is that these characters w these personalities wouldnt EXIST without a few VERY crucial plot points/themes. and thats a GOOD thing!! say what u will abt the writers (and i do. i do) but the early seasons do an EXCELLENT job of building characters who are inseparable from their stories, characters whose every action is reflective of the Story itself in a bigger sense, characters who are interesting because of the way that they’re used to tell that bigger Story. there’s a sense of cohesiveness between character and theme and narrative, and removing one of these aspects would lessen the other two. that is the mark of good storytelling (that, in my opinion, distinguishes seasons 1 and MAYBE 2 from all the rest; although funnily enough i think castiel’s arc in s4 is the best example of what im talking about outside of s1-2. but anyways).

without these crucial themes and narratives, who ARE sam and dean? why do they even matter? what’s the value of them as characters? aus that strip away all those VERY important themes and plot points strip away the actual artistic value of the characters, and reduces them to objects of the audience’s emotional whims. the only reason u have any affection for these characters in aus is because you know and understand the source material, and you remember why those characters STARTED to matter to u in the first place. this is something that happens in a lot of fanfiction i think: the most essential themes of the original work are ignored for the sake of emotionally expedient scenarios where both writer and reader can clock out of having to do a bigger analysis of the story and just focus on, for example, a certain ship getting together and/or having sex, or a certain character getting a happy ending. and like i wont deny that theyre fun to read! they are essentially transplanting already-developed characters from their already-developed stories into a new fun scenario without the themes and narratives that actually made the characters compelling. and sure, sometimes a truly good author offers us a compelling new set of themes and narratives, ones that are interesting and make us think, but i’d argue that the characters in those rare good fics are 1. not...really the same characters from the show, since the story they’re in has been so completely transformed 2. basically shortcuts for the author to cut their teeth on writing original fiction. in any case, a vast majority of fics that remove the themes and narratives of the original story DONT offer a truly satisfying replacement, so the point is almost moot.

my answer, in short, is that aus without monster hunting destroy the character-theme-narrative cohesion that all good stories require, and by extension doesn’t require either author or reader to think critically about the story as a whole. you know that joke that goes around about supernatural just being a crate full of toys that we’re all sitting around and playing barbie dolls with? that is what the fics ur talking about basically are. it isn’t seriously engaging with a story as a piece of art, it’s grabbing a few barbies from a box and putting them in different clothes. and i think the fact that supernatural does fall apart both thematically and narratively so early in its incredibly long runtime is what allows people to treat it as a box of dolls, because most of the time it seems like the writers themselves treat the show as a box of dolls instead of a story that deserves respect and care and thought. so i actually do understand the urge to play with the barbies, so to speak, and to a certain extent i dont even think it’s a bad thing. but i DO think that sometimes, especially online, ESPECIALLY with a show like this where the lines between genuine engagement with the text and playing barbie dolls gets so blurred, people actually start to lose track of which is which, and THATS what irritates me. people start to view the ENTIRE STORY as just a way to see their personal favorite character do what they want that character to do. the character (and their emotional attachment to said character) becomes the whole reason for the story, instead of the story being the reason for the characters. playing barbie dolls is fine! but it DOES need to be balanced out with actual engagement, with literary analysis, with criticism if the story needs it (and my GOD does supernatural need criticism!), and there needs to be an understanding of the difference between genuine analysis and personal loyalty to a character. 

like, not to be a snob or anything, but it is important to engage truthfully and fairly with a text. things arent good just because you want them to be good, and stories can only offer you genuine satisfaction and critical/artistic growth if you truly engage with them. engaging with supernatural means thinking/writing about monsters and the Other, and to remove monstrosity as a theme and narrative hollows out the story completely.

[themelodicenigma]

I was talking to someone on in light of my recent post about shipping mindsets (non-blood related sibling shippers), and we got into an interesting conversation about sibling relationships. Basically, what does it REALLY mean to be siblings, outside of the literal, genetic definition.

The way I see it, it’s all about “recognition” and “functionality”, which creates the commentary on how this relationship is presented and identifiable in fiction, not to mention between real life people. “Recognition”, in a sense, happens on the individual level, but can either be funneled through what otherwise is already established in society—this being what makes it something to BE identified by the individual—and/or, it can be gained and tailored by personal experience by said individual.

In other words, “What it means to be a sibling” is going to be dependent upon what can be understood through an established concept and/or an individual’s recognition of this concept’s functionality. 

What? Expecting me to say: “Oh, it’s people who do this and this and this and this together...”? Yeah well, whatever I’d list down, it’d more than likely just be a component of what the “true” answer is, which is going to be interchangeable depending on who you ask and what they essentially recognize as a sibling relationship. It makes you wonder then, is there really a definitive answer? I don’t know if I can truly say yes in a way beyond the literal (especially in having a relationship as opposed to only just being siblings by fact), but what can be observed and compared are the commonalities between people’s recognition of this functionality. Somewhere between that is where a general answer can be noted.

You’ll find this common for most things, whether about romance, siblings, family, personality traits, themes, etc.—how many times have you heard: “well I wouldn’t do that” or “this is totally this” or just simply, “I see it this way”. Be a part of any Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, Supernatural, etc.—ANY fandom, really and for more than just shipping. You’ll see this eventually.

Recognition of functionality. If it’s congruent with how someone can recognize it, then that’s what they’ll see it as. “I calls it like I sees it”, and all that.

This can go in a way of even symbolism or subtext that requires “pre-knowledge” outside of the text. These things are used a certain way because people decided it to...well, be understood a certain way. I mean, the color white being a symbol for this or that didn’t just happen out of thin air—this patterned usage and understanding was passed down as a way to be recognized and further utilized a particular way. More simple than that, like for adult jokes—these are purposely written in a way for an adult to understand because they’re expected to have the knowledge available to do so, where a child otherwise normally wouldn’t.

If we’re thinking about how do we get there—recognition—I tend to think about how the world essentially establishes these things as concepts to be understood.

“What it means to be [blank]”

Some societies differ on these things, of course, but even through the knowledge that different parts of the world might have, what you’d say, an “alternate criteria” to define these things—it’s evident to the idea of how our views on things are part of a wider establishment to be understood and recognized in a particular manner.

To break it down, the most basic understanding of what a sibling is comes from the literal—your brother or sister, whether by genetic means or lawful. Beyond that, there lies a function of which this typically happens—you’re reared together as a family, foundationally under platonic connections. Of course these two things don’t always coexist for some people seeing as people can have biological siblings that they weren’t raised with or have an adopted sibling that they’re raised with. But, when these two factors do coexist, then we easily go into what can be experienced within the function of being raised as siblings. The sibling function can even include the mentioned adopted siblings, where they hold the title officially and are reared despite the lack of genetic connection.

That’s where most of if not all the common tropes people think of originate.

But why do you even think of these as “tropes”?

This can either come from personal experience, or that of what you’ve, essentially, been taught through external means, such as media or other people’s experience—this is where establishment happens.

We grow up forming this palette of ideas that we use as a means to recognize the established concept here—which I believe media/fiction is a major influence in how the concept is widely spread to those on a very basic level. In a way, it might even determine the outcome of how people THINK they should act if in accordance to the concept.

“I grew up understanding this is what [blank] means, so therefore not only will it be how I recognize it, but it’ll also be the way in which I believe it should be expressed.”

Most people don’t think about this so intentionally, but if you start to wonder about the reasons as to WHY you think the way you do, this thought will eventually arise in some form or fashion. It’s almost kind of a “chicken or egg” scenario—is the way society thinks about sibling relationships based on the individuals thinking it first, or is it based on what’s represented as a collective and THEN given to the individual to essentially learn?

Ehh, kind of both, really.

For instance, in real life, why would someone get to the point of calling a friend a brother or sister? What would give them the idea to even do this?

One could point to personal experience: what an individual recognizes in association of “family” can be placed on other people, and if that individual has the thought process that has a “criteria” for what it means to be a sibling, they’ll thus place this where they see fit if they can recognize the criteria being met with that friend. It could even be more straight forward through their already existing sibling—if the relationship is similar, then it just naturally falls into place to call this friend of yours a sibling too.

For the second point, media/fiction is well known for painting the picture here:

“Got a friend who you’re really close to and have platonic feelings for [function]? Then they’re like a sibling to you!” 

It isn’t advertised this way of course, but when you see this essentially represented in the information that you consume, an individual will then have that become a part of their palette to be recognized in their own or other people’s relationships. This definitely happens with romance A LOT.

You could have best friend you’re really close to, and maybe they’re like a sibling to you, but that doesn’t seem to stop this annoying kid from pointing out how you “look like a couple” or should “hook up already”. Through either or both of these points, a person can gain the idea to recognize these concepts for themselves, even if by the fact they may be wrong in what exactly is happening.

In fictional material, I believe judging this is typically much easier than it would be in real life. This is mostly due to the fact it’s just so much more...deliberate, whether it’s explicit or subtle, for how a writer does their thing. A writer is just another individual who has their own palette that they’ll express through their work—it either lines up with your own or it doesn’t. What tends to interfere with recognition is context (wooo!), where there lies a flexibility to manipulate the things that otherwise would be identified a different way—symbolism can be a great example, like through the use of motifs that are unique to a story. I never get tired of saying “context is key”, or better yet, “let context be your guiding key”, for my fellow Kingdom Hearts fans.

True love’s kiss? Romantic at it’s core, right? But then Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) comes and uses Maleficent’s true love for Aurora to represent this platonically instead. Frozen does this with with Elsa and Anna for their “Act of True Love”. Hell, I’ve even actually seen the “Jian Bird” representation used to convey the close, existential bond between sisters in a manhwa called “The Gamer”. The key thing is that the concepts here go beyond the connotation it might be widely known for, and thus allows the context to manipulate it for another recognizable meaning. Sometimes this isn’t even really a deviation of meaning—people just sometimes don’t understand how flexible some elements always were in general for how they can be recognized and utilized in fiction or real life.

“Oooh they hugged!! Romance is in the air! OH. MY. GOD. They smiled at each other toooo?!?! It has officially sailed guys.”

....uh, you DO know hugs aren’t limited to that, right? Right?.....Please say right.

Oh boy.

What we know and recognize might not always line up with the context of which the meaning resides, hence why you might have some people shipping characters with a sibling or other platonic relationship—the individuals doing so have found something represented between the characters to be congruent with their personal recognition of romance, even if the actual context is different for the character’s relationship. Sora and Riku, Aqua and Ven, Fang and Vanille, Yuna and Rikku, Noctis and Prompto, Fina and Dark Fina, Tanjirou and Nezuko, Sam and Dean, Ponyboy and Sodapop, Steve and Bucky, Elsa and Anna, Rapunzel and Cassandra—boy, I’ve seen it all and can go on forever. All are examples of relationships that have expressions where a fan might say “hey, I see it this way”, but if what they recognize for themselves is meant to be recognized in a different way via the context....

Conflict breeds catastrophe (Thanks Vision).

Most shipping tension in fandom then comes from whether or not a recognition of something is based on the individual or is based on the material conveying it on its own to be recognized as such. That’s about when terms like “canon” starts being thrown around willy-nilly. What we recognize and what the context is are two things that either line up, or they don’t, and thus we have the pool of interpretations that have a go at each other, some being fierce, meaningless fights and some being pretty great discussions that can often show the flexibility of a context’s meaning. This does line up with something I mentioned before in another post about subtext, and this is certainly related. A big question would be that, if what is in the context is meant to be recognized a certain way, was it REALLY presented in a way to, well, be recognized as what it claims to represent?

That breeds a larger conversation towards the establishment and meaning of all the individual things in question and how either context determines its meaning or if the subject inherently retains a specific meaning. e.g. holding hands or hugging doesn’t mean romance in every context, but confessing you “like like” (lol) someone will “always” have an association with romance or sexual nature...

You know, until someone has the interesting idea to have two people “like like” each other platonically because, you know....recognition? 

There are maybe some things you can count on to mean certain things because, a real life person had to have written it and more than likely has at least some similar recognition patterns shared with their primary audience. Chances are, they wouldn’t be an individual who grew up in a place where their understanding of reduplication is opposite to, well, everyone else. But you never know, I guess. Again, there lies that point about subtext (here is the post, in case anyone is wondering) where you might be able to argue that, pretty much, a writer can make a mistake in their writing and mess up the whole process of recognizing elements within a context unintentionally, where it wouldn’t really BE subtext anymore. 

Other than that, most people’s issues with recognition is interlaced with their ability to identify what these elements are. Between context and what can be understood as “established meaning”, usually the answer can be discerned if the writer is truly creating something to be understood by other people. That’s where authorial intent and THEIR recognition starts to be considered the most by the audience.

Buuuuut I’m gonna stop there.

I’m probably more rambling at this point, but it is an interesting and WIDE subject, so it is to be expected. It’s fun stuff.

[u23art]

A LOOK AT THE STARGATE FRANCHISE

A Look at the Stargate Franchise Stretching over the expanse of nearly 20 years, the Stargate franchise persevered as best it could, entertaining audiences with scifi/ military adventures with various SG teams across many planets. And by golly, over the last month, I took it upon myself to watch all the Stargates. Starting with the Stargate film, the adventure begins with the discovery of an artifact in Giza, covered in glyphs, experts suspected the portal like object to have originated by an intelligence earlier than the Ancient Egyptians. Nearly 80 years later, historian/ archeologist/ anthropologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) is recruited by a military outfit and successfully deciphers the meaning of the glyphs and the artifact. Each glyph coordinates with a constellation, using 6 around a destination along with a point of origin creates a wormhole to travel along between two of these artifacts called Stargates. Joining up with a team lead by Col Jack O’neill, they set off to a distant planet, meet an ancient life form that nurtured Earth’s earliest cultures and liberate a desert people from the alien that named itself their god. This film, though overshadowed by the media that came afterwards, is an earnest adventure story that knew what it wanted and nailed the landing. The world building is solid and doesn’t interfere with the story progression and creates a sympatico relationship with the character Daniel Jackson. The character’s enthusiasm for understanding the culture validates the importance of the world and the world in turn gives Daniel Jackson a muse to let him flex his intelligence, giving audiences some engaging and thorough analysis to connect with. James Spader gives a stand out performance with this character and becomes the backbone of the film, with no disrespect towards Kurt Russell. Combined with effective special effects, the 1994 film cements itself as a science fiction must-see. Following up the movie, running ten years from 1997 to 2007, Stargate SG-1 was a prime contender on Showtime and the scifi channel.

Recasting O’neill and Jackson with Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks, the two form a team with Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) and a former enemy soldier Teal’c (Christopher Judge). Expanding upon ideas set by the film, the galaxy is under the rule of another parasitic race known as the Goa’uld. This show was balanced and well cared for. Some charms of this show carry over from the movie, namely the relationship shared between each new world and Daniel Jackson, and this time this aspect is improved upon by the performance by Michael Shanks. He had fun with his character, his character loved exploring and that validated each new world the team visits. On top of this, the worlds aren’t just one and done, with each new season brings evolving politics, making the story well-constructed and leaving next to no added fluff. Regarding the new actors aside from Michael Shanks, Richard Dean Anderson portrays Jack O’neill with a calm yet playful demeanor, making him a comforting presence in any seemingly stressful situation. Teal’c is portrayed by Christopher Judge, giving a performance offering strength, sensitivity and breathtaking deadpan comedy. Samantha Carter however, played by Amanda Tapping, is a bit of a double edged sword. Sam Carter is stubbornly professional, meaning that she approaches problems with calm inquisition, but she doesn’t actually have a character arc. Despite getting her chops busted constantly by coworkers and villains alike, she responds to nearly every show of pigheadedness with “with all due respect”. I can’t think of many instances where she gives an aggressive or sarcastic response to rude behavior, and further still I don’t think there was a single point where she cracked a joke. But I digress, all in all SG-1 is a well-oiled machine and earns it’s good reputation. Next up is Atlantis. Running from 2004 to 2009, we find ourselves in a new galaxy with a new SG team led by Col John Sheppard. Lasting only 5 seasons, the show left behind a few ingredients that made it’s predecessors as engaging as it was, but still provided fun character interactions. The show is more action based, most stories depicting each new world as a new danger and resolving many conflics with hammers rather than scalpels. And the team this time around lacks a character like Daniel Jackson, removing the element of curiousity towards the worlds and in turn the worlds begin to lack appeal. The writing began to lean more on characters than world building, but regardless, John Sheppard and his crew provide fun, banter and action. And then came Stargate Universe. Thanks, I hate it. This show lasted only 2 seasons and a comic book mini series, and I couldn’t be happier. I can’t remember the last time I watched such an uncharismatic show, with an uncharismatic cast on an uncharismatic set. Lasting even less time than Atlanis, with only 2 seasons from 2009 to 2011, adventure is abandoned entirely and replaced with a survival story. Here we follow a group of civilians and SGC personnel, dragged along by the obsessive curiosity of the total sociopath; Dr. Rush. Deciphering a Stargate address with not 7 but 9 glyphs, Rush drags over 40 survivors of a base attack onto an abandoned, ancient ship called the Destiny. Several galaxies away from earth and unable to control the ship, Rush seeks to uncover the mission of the Destiny while everyone else just wants to get home. The funniest aspect of this show is that it’s structured like a reality tv show, take a bunch of irritated people, isolate them and watch the chaos ensue. There’s even a surprise pregnancy, and I totally watch scifi for that. As for world building, there is next to none. Each world is one and done, managing only to give the characters brief periods to have some shenanigans before moving on. There’s plenty of intrigue regarding the Destiny, from the get go it raises a number of questions; what was the ship’s purpose, why was it abandoned, where is it’s crew. Only one of these questions is truly answered; the purpose of the destiny was to track down and investigate an energy signature supposedly left behind from the birth of the universe, essentially a journey to find God in a sense. Story progression drags it’s feet and without proper focus. The main point of intrigue is the Destiny and it’s mission, then there are the ongoing problems of cabin fever among the civilians and then there’s the emotional turmoil of the SGC soldiers and their emotional instability. None of this is executed in a way that works, the characters certainly perform but none of what they do contributes to learning anything new about the Destiny, leaving me with total apathy towards scenes with most of the characters because they’re irrelevant to the main point of interest towards the show. I found myself just glazing over the characters problems because they don’t contribute substance in tandem to the main story. This is not helped by the fact that the characters wear dull, dark clothes on a dull, dark space ship, leaving no scene looking particularly remarkable. In addition to the problems on the Destiny, there is an issue of cloak and dagger espionage on Earth, this becomes more interesting by default because we join members of the original SG-1 team in well-lit locations with a clear problem and characters willing to solve said problem. The series ends unspectacularly and  was followed up by an unspectacular comic that still doesn’t resolve the ongoing problems. This show bears the name “Stargate” but lacks all the elements that made what came before it so entertaining. The show was cancelled due to issues of poor reviews and financial trouble and at present there’s no chance of a return, and I won’t lose sleep over this. Then after wrapping up my time with Universe, I ended my Stargate marathon with Stargate Infinity. Stargate Universe was a standard 26 episode animated series from 2002 to 2003, airing on the short lived Fox Box and produced by Dic animation. Set years ahead of SG-1, Gus Bonner and a rag tag SG team are framed and accused of treason, finding themselves banished by Stargate command and chased by an alien race called Tlak’kahn. It’s a show for young audiences, and made by an animation studio that pumped out a lot of budget cartoons. Though to this show’s credit, it was more bearable than Alienators: Evolution Continues, another Dic cartoon based off a science fiction property which displayed embarrassing writing like a badge of honor. The show is cheap, has passable animation, toy like character designs and barely taps into the ongoing conflict, making nearly every episode a contained story. Had I watched this before I watched Universe, I probably would have looked on this show with more scrutiny. However, this is not the case, and I can look on this show more favorably now that I’ve seen what Stargate can look like without most of it’s pieces. Despite the show’s faults, it still retains the idea of adventure and exploration, and it has episodes that lightly touch upon issues like living in poverty or dealing with addiction. And Gus Bonner had so many insightful things to say on issues of science and history, I found it rather wholesome. I even appreciate the colorful toy-like designs after several hours of next to no color at all during Stargate Universe. All in all, the show retains the Stargate identity and gives a decent enough show with what resources it has. There were several other pieces of media that came out for the Stargate franchise, such as books and games, but as of this time the Stargate Franchise is on ice for the foreseeable future. It was an underdog that had some bite to it, and that didn’t go unappreciated. It was refreshing getting to watch the shows and get a more complete perspective for the scattered episodes I’d seen when SG-1 was still on the air.

[coinofstone]

Of Snakes and Symbolism

Recently, MadyMischief voiced an observation about the nature of The Great DeanCas Breakup™ that I hadn’t considered before, and it really slotted something into place for me. Not just about the show, the ending overall, but about the DeanCas relationship specifically. I’ve talked about the fight before, because I think about it... a lot... but Mady pointed something out that I need to discuss further: 

“Jack is the first thing that Cas has ever really put above Dean. When Mary died, Cas instead of being supportive of Dean, actively sought to stop him. I think he feels betrayed twice - Cas didn’t tell them about the snake and that Cas didn’t take his side. That on top of all the other emotional trauma just broke Den. I think in hindsight Dean realizes why Cas put Jack first. But at that moment, Dean reverted back to being John’s child, whose main mission from age 4 to age 38 was to kill the thing that killed Mary. It wasn’t until actually faced with killing Jack that Mary’s influence reasserted itself. That’s why I was so stoked when Dean brought her up with Chuck when refusing to kill Jack. John’s hunting came from seeking vengeance; Mary’s hunting was always to save people.”

Thinking again about the snake - which we all kind of understand to be A Big Fuckin Deal in the DeanCas fight, so I won’t rehash that - I think it’s more symbolic than I had originally picked up on.

The obvious symbolism for the snake is the show itself. 'Ouroborus', which was the episode the snake first appeared in, is the symbol of the snake eating its own tail, the unbroken circle. Sam and Dean have been chasing their own tales for nearly fifteen years now, chasing monsters, averting apocalypses, even reliving the most defining trauma of their lives; losing their mom to a yellow eyed supernatural being. Jack killing the snake, as an act of kindness even though it is an act of destruction, can be directly paralleled with TFW finally breaking the cycle (of the show) by killing God (death of the author, literally). I say ‘killing’ but I expect something more akin to God being neutralized or locked out of our universe, but this is irrelevant here. The fact that the snake was killed by Jack himself using his power, is significant, but my own personal spec is that this will be how the series is resolved: Chuck being defeated by TFW using Jack’s powers. Now, after reflecting on Mady’s observation, I think the entire metaphor could be applied to DeanCas too. The romantic subtext that's been slithering through the series for a fuckin decade, but again, just going around in circles, nothing ever changing and now... that changes. I mean the snake’s death was literally the impetus for the change in their relationship, the thing that kicked off their big fight. And this particular fight truly is waaaaay more husband-y (they are literally fighting over their CHILD) than the previous fights they've had. Even though they’ve been at odds, they are still working together, still communicating in an albeit stilted, pseudo professional capacity, as shown in this clip from 15x01, prior to The Rupture:

The fact that Sam is like, nowhere near this one either, is especially telling. While Dean and Cas do share a more profound bond, (heh) usually when there is any kind of conflict it’s Cas vs Winchesters, plural. But this time, it’s entirely just between those two. And at this point (days before 15X09 airs), we kind of know that Dean doesn’t want to fight anymore. He’s expressed this as well as he can given his character, in everyone’s favorite example, the post-Rupture phone call from Golden Time:

Their usual dynamic is reversed here, as well. They are going through the betrayal/forgiveness cycle again here, but this time something is different. Dean is in the wrong, and as apologetic as his emotionally stunted ass is capable of being while he’s still in pain. Cas is keeping his distance, not because he’s working on some other plot line, but because Dean’s hurt him - though he hasn’t exactly fucked off and disappeared for several episodes with a handwave explanation - we are still seeing him and he is, in fact, still a Winchester - saving people, hunting things. He’s still there, he’s just trying to avoid Dean - which is what makes this scene from Last Call so deliciously tense:

Again, Cas is the one walking away from Dean in this scene, just as he walked out on him after Dean said that hurtful thing to him in The Rupture. Dean, not wanting him to go but not willing or able to do anything to stop him. In this was it way sort of vaguely reminiscent of the fight he had with Sam way back in 1x11, Scarecrow. (Thanks to Margaritte for recalling the episode.) Essentially, they argue while in the Impala, Dean yells something hurtful at Sam, Sam decides he’s done taking Dean’s shit, gets out of the car and walks away, leaving Dean - who very clearly doesn’t want him to go but does not, can not tell him that - behind. Sound familiar? There may be more to it that I’m just not teasing out, as Dean and Sam were fighting about whether or not they should do as their father told them, Dean lashing out at Sam about being a ‘good son’ - whereas Dean and Cas where more or less fighting over... well... parenting a nephilim with a soul deficiency. There’s definitely a cyclical element there that fits, the son in S1 becoming the father in S15. The fact that the scene in 1x11 took place at the Impala, which was their ‘home’ at the time, and 15x03 took place in the bunker, which is.... well, you get the idea. I do find it incredibly interesting that many of these key scenes seem to take place with Dean at ‘home’ in the Bunker; the only reason he’s even there to answer the FBI phone in the Golden Time clip above is because he’s sat in the Bunker moping around in his pajamas while Sam and Eileen are out.

In short, if the underlying theme for S15 is ‘break the cycle’, as suggested by the symbolism of Felix the snake’s death, then there’s reason to believe (hope) that before the end of the series, Dean and Cas will progress their relationship beyond what we’ve seen so far.

[mittensmorgul]

i've been seeing speculation that michael was lying to castiel and dean, so if that's true, is it possible he is only pretending to care for adam too?

Hi there! You’re probably hoping for a short, direct answer here, but congratulations! You’ve won today’s “imma turn this into an essay about 9 other things that are all directly related to the thing you thought was a simple question” essay prompt contest!

I will give you a tl;dr right up front, though, in case you’re already rolling your eyes at me (sorry, I can’t help who I am as a person... but I do try to be helpful).

I think they made it pretty clear in the diner scene that Adam and Michael have a really interesting relationship. You spend a decade locked inside your own mind with a guy, and you either start getting along or you kill each other, you know? So no, I don’t think he’s pretending to care about Adam. I think Michael and Adam have-- as Adam told Dean-- come to an agreement. Rather than spiraling into hatred and mutual torture, they chose to understand one another (to the degree that a human is capable of understanding an archangel and vice versa). I can’t imagine sharing that sort of companionship with someone for a decade and NOT at least feeling some sort of care for the other.

I wrote something about this the other day, about what Michael’s choices showed us about his feelings for Adam, here:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/189648100025/why-didnt-michael-go-to-chuck-after-lilith-came

They’re freed from the cage after a decade, and Michael could’ve just... left, you know? Nothing’s tying him to Adam at this point. And he’s indulging Adam’s human needs for food and comfort, and Adam’s assumptions that they will continue to live together in some weird little curtain fic of a domestic scenario despite Michael being a freaking archangel who could pull the whole “chained to a comet” thing we’ve seen so many other angels pull and do whatever he wants... (including AU!Michael and what he did to Dean... the arrangement Adam and Michael have more closely resembles what Dean was trying to negotiate for himself with AU!Michael, which just makes it hurt so much more when Dean sees Adam and Michael’s arrangement).

That said, like so much of s15, do we really know what Michael’s motivations are now? I don’t feel comfortable saying for sure that Adam actually knows, either. The show has just reminded us vividly of the long con that was s4 with the odd return of Lilith as a narrative device to manipulate Sam and Dean (and now Michael). And the struggle against destiny that was s5. Michael was a major agent in BOTH of those seasons (and Adam was the unwitting “clammy scrap of bait” that Heaven used to unsuccessfully trap Dean in 5.18). We don’t know what Michael wants, because his entire purpose for being was foiled in 5.22, and he’s been living with the consequences of that ever since. But more importantly, I don’t think *Michael* knows what he wants anymore, in a world where his entire purpose was rendered moot.

Imagine living for BILLIONS of years knowing that someday you will enact a specific series of events to prove your love and devotion to God, with the belief that will win God’s favor and earn yourself an eternal reward, only to be foiled literally on the brink of success and then return to a world where God had never actually left at all and had just been using you as an actor for his own entertainment. Not only that, you weren’t even unique... just one of countless iterations of the same being across a vast number of universes, and that you hadn’t actually been cast in the starring role at all, but had merely been a bit player in one act of the Grand Performance?

Can he really accept that his entire existence had been a lie? As God’s first and favorite creation, does he even trust what Cas has shown him, or would he doubt and go directly to Chuck to confront him about the truth?

I’ve been meaning to compile a list of all the scenes and references in the montage Cas showed to Michael, but that will take some doing. :’D

I think my main question right now is whether Michael has already confronted Chuck via prayer, or whether he set the whole “Leviathan blossom hunt” up as a means to earn his freedom from Dean and Cas while not tipping his hand about his doubts yet. The minor earthquake he set off... was that due to his frustration at accepting what Cas showed him as the truth, or his frustration at not being able to communicate with Chuck (Enochian handcuffs, you know? block powers like that), or his frustration at having questioned Chuck directly via prayer or some other magical means and his renewed belief that he was being lied to or manipulated by TFW? We truly do not know yet.

That’s the beauty of s15. That’s the main theme of s15, actually-- what is REAL, and what’s Chuck’s story?

I think the thing that’s bothered me the most about this season so far is the assumption that we know anything plot-related is absolute fact and exactly what it appears to be on the surface. Because the entire season is built on the revelation that we literally know nothing about what is real and what is performance and what is manipulation.

Remember Ruby? How many of us at least cautiously believed her back in s3 and s4, before we began to be shown reasons to doubt her? And all along, Ruby had been an agent of Lilith, the only one who’d known the whole plan from the start. Which is ironic when you compare it with Lilith’s role in s15... with the whole “I can’t fail him.” They’re all layers of plot devices like manipulative little nesting dolls, and I’m incredibly wary of trusting anything in a world where Chuck can send innocent souls to Hell on a whim (Eileen, Kevin....) for plot reasons.

Chuck long ago stopped interacting with his creation by his own rules, you know? In contrast to Billie and her Rules, which she’ll bend on occasion but never outright violate. Chuck’s story went so far off the rails after 5.22 that the new “rules” of his plot often directly contradicted the old rules-- especially after 11.23, when he reunited with Amara. I don’t think he ever accounted for that, and it shows in his ongoing narrative after their reunification.

Chuck’s story didn’t change. He still kept trying to write to the same themes, to the same narrative end-- one sibling sacrificing the other for the good of creation, because Sam and Dean had as yet refused to let that ending stick, you know? Over and over, TFW has proven that narrative can’t stand, right up to Dean talking Chuck and Amara through exactly WHY it couldn’t stand. Love.

Chuck refuses to change-- as Becky told him, as Amara told him, as EVERYONE is telling him. He doesn’t love his creation, he wants it to be a reflection of his own issues, as some sort of moral justification of his essential “rightness.” He wants to feel “big.” He’s been unmasked, and knows he can’t carry on the charade of Benevolent and Caring Creator anymore. His characters have confronted him, FINALLY, as the Actual Author, and not the proxy/puppet that “Chuck the Prophet” had been back in 4.18.

But it’s been, so far in s15, impossible to know at a glance what elements of creation are nothing more than Chuck’s sock puppets (though Lilith lampshaded herself as a sock puppet almost immediately, within the span of a single episode). What are Chuck’s plot contrivances? What are his “traps?”

Was the hunter Sue-- Eileen’s friend that she trusted without hesitation in 15.08 and who would lure her and Sam to a hunt, only to unmask herself as Chuck-- the only sock puppet in that scene? Or is this like 4.18, where there are layers upon layers of sock puppets acting out one of Chuck’s tests? Where it appeared that Zachariah had manipulated Chuck’s “visions” to control the narrative, but later revelations would prove it was all Chuck’s bigger game? Even by 4.22 we’d see Zachariah for the puppet he was, even if he wouldn’t be defeated until 5.18.

But the context the show has now given us with Chuck’s manipulation of the entire story opens the possibility that-- even as we’ve seen through the chaotic spiral of his own twisted narrative-- he’s still exerting far more control over the story than we can see yet.

ISN’T IT THRILLING?!

[demonsonthemoon]

Let Me Carve a Place to Crawl Inside You

Fandom: Supernatural Pairings: Sam Winchester/Jessica Moore, Sam Winchester/Amelia Richardson Word Count: 3536 Summary: An exploration of Sam Winchester's relationship to physical contact, throughout his lives and several of his relationships. Note: I started out wanting to write a puppy play story. Then I got side-tracked. Oops. (Some puppy elements are still there but it's SUPER light.) There's a big focus in this fic on season 8 because I had just finished re-watching that when I had the idea for this fic and I am bitter about the treatment Amelia gets both in the show and in some parts of the fandom. Also, Sam's season 8 arc is one I relate to EXTREMELY, especially since suffering from burnout last year.

Read it on ao3.

Sam has always liked physical contact. He didn't think about that too much, because it always brought up memories of his childhood and the fact that physical affection wasn't something he'd really been able to indulge in back then. John Winchester wasn't that kind of father. Dean had tried, though, the best way he knew how. He'd ruffled his hair and bumped his shoulder and taught him how to wrestle, and he always pretended not to notice when Sam huddled up close to him as they watched TV well past their bed-time.

It wasn't something that came naturally to Dean but, for his brother, ha had tried anyway. Sam hadn't been able to indulge, but he'd never been deprived, and he'd learned to live with that well enough.

Then there had been Jess, and that relationship had opened up a whole new world for him. She hadn't been his first girlfriend, but she'd been the first one he'd truly been himself with. She hadn't known everything about his life, hadn't known about hunting or much about his family, but she'd known who Sam was anyway. Who he wanted to be. She'd known a Sam who hadn't alway been about to leave town. That was more than a lot of people could say.

Jess had touched him. She'd hugged him and kissed him and run her fingers through his hair, and she'd laughed about how he was just a big puppy asking to be petted as he nuzzled into her.

And then Sam had left.

And then Jess had died.

And Dean had tried to pick up the pieces of him, but by that point Sam had figured a part of him was rotten to the core and he hadn't been sure he wanted to be made whole again.

A life on the road meant there was little time to enjoy any kind of comfort.

Sam had been back to being always on the verge of elsewhere.

He'd made do. He had Dean, most of the time, and when he didn't he found another body to touch and soothe him, at least for a little while. Hook-ups, mostly. Ruby, when he'd thought his brother was in hell and that he had nothing to prove to anyone anymore.

That had ended well.

And then he hadn't had Dean for a year. He'd thought he'd lost him forever, for good this time, lost him to purgatory and the horrors it contained.

Sam had been so alone back then. Without Dean, without Cas, without Bobby. Still and always without Jess, although that pained had stopped being an open wound and was now just another scar that ached on rainy days.

He'd been so tired, then.

At night, he would lie down in a single bed in a non-descript motel room and curl up on his side. He would wait for the world to stop, withing he didn't have to get up the next day, that there would be no next day to wake up to.

Then he'd hit a dog.

He'd already stopped hunting for a while by then, but the dog finally forced him to stop moving. To stop running. He all but collapsed in the waiting-room chair of the vet clinic, weariness settling deep in his bones and mind.

How do you treat fatigue when you are both afraid to sleep and all too aware that your nightmares can follow you into the daytime ? How do you run from something that is buried in your own mind ?

Sam hadn't found an answer that day. What he'd found was a creature that needed him, a reason to get up in the morning and take care of himself as well as he could. He'd found someone willing to forgive him and offer him physical comfort, even if the latter sometimes came in the form of a lick to the face.

Sam took care of the dog and the dog took care of him. When he culed up in his bed at night, the dog mirrored his position.

And then there had been Amelia.

Amelia, who found him not on the verge of leaving but of settling down.

Amelia, just as adrift as he was, just as desperate to find something to anchor her down. It wasn't a girl that Sam had found that year without Dean. It was a reason to rest. It was a desire to stay alive that, for once, didn't come from the fact that he had to.

Amelia touched him in a way Sam recognized from his own past, a way that suggested she couldn't quite believe she was still capable of such gentleness.

Sam let himself be touched like he still believed he could be worthy of this kind of attention.

Amelia had been the one to insist Sam give his dog a name.

On the days when Sam felt most fragile, when he hid his car keys in one of the kitchen drawers because his whole body was vibrating with the urge to leave, Sam buried his face in the crook of Amelia's neck and let her run her hand through his now long hair. She joked that she'd adopted two dogs. Sam reminded her that Riot was technically his, but didn't deny he was hers. He didn't tell her that he truly believed she had saved both their lives.

And then one day she had come home from work with the first early ray of sunlight, exhausted and on edge and with the feeling of blood on her skin despite the gloves she'd been wearing all night, and she had found Sam on the couch with a romance novel in his hands, and she had demanded some puppy cuddles.

Sam had laughed, and he'd blushed a little, but he had also made space for her on the couch, and he had drawn her in until she could lie against his chest, before she'd huffed and changed their position, sitting up straight and drawing Sam onto her lap.

Sam had felt small and quiet and cared for in the best of ways, and when Amelia had started running her fingers through his hair softly, a little whine had escaped from his mouth.

Neither of them had said anything about it, but Amelia had smiled at him knowingly and kept up her petting, and Sam had let his thoughts drift far, far away, further than they had in a very long time, when all of his energy had been focused on staying alive and saving the world.

Then Don had come back.

Sam was very aware that he and Amelia only fit so well because they were both broken in similar ways, both missing what had become their raison d'être and desperate to latch onto someone new, even if they had to mind their jagged edges.

He hadn't lied to her when he'd said that he thought what they had was right and worth fighting for. He really believed that. He loved Amelia as much as he was capable of in that moment. She had saved his life and brought him back to a part of himself he had thought had been lost forever somewhere in Lucifer's cage.

She shouted at him and she complained and she swore, but she also treated him with kindness. She allowed his silences, his secrets, and she gave him a chance to just be, stolen moments away from responsibility, from pressure, from pain.

He loved her as much as he was capable of in that moment but he knew that, compared to Amelia whole, that kind of love wasn't much.

Or maybe he didn't know. Maybe he was just scared to find out.

Sam had never had a relationship that didn't end with him and his partner getting torn away from one another, usually by death, sometimes by distance, always by his involvement in hunting. He had tried to put a stop to all of that once, with Jess, and she had died. He had thought it was a good idea to try with Amelia, because they had both been two people with nothing to lose and so it hadn't seemed like there was anything that could hurt her. But now there was and Sam was terrified of what would happen if they went on together. He was terrified of the moment when their love for each other would no longer be enough, of the moment when they would stop needing one another like they needed air and everything that held them together would fall apart.

They loved each other as much as they could right then, like one loves to drink water in the middle of the desert.

But that wasn't anything to build a life on.

Sam wasn't anything to build a life on.

So one day he picked up the key hidden in the kitchen drawer, cuddled Riot close one las time, and he left.

Riot had been his dog, but it was to Amelia that he owed his life. She would take good care of him, like she'd taken care of Sam. Like Sam couldn't take care of her.

Closing the door behind himself and climbing into the Impala, Sam had figured that he would be back to picking a direction and driving until his eyes hurt. Picking up a hunt or two on the way when it fell into his lap, but not exactly trying to.

Or maybe he would try again. Maybe he'd rested enough. It wasn't like he really deserved the thoughtless peace he'd found in Amelia's arms. After all he'd done, sacrificing himself to the hunter's life was the least he could do.

And he knew how to do it. He'd done it before. Alone, too. In those months when Dean was dead simply because a god – an archangel, really, but the difference hadn't mattered then – had wanted him to be. He had stripped his life to its barest essentials then, and he had hunted. He had been alone and his body had been aching but he had hunted.

Of course, this time, it hadn't come to that. Because Dean had been there, Dean had found him, and he had splashed himself with holy water and borax just to prove that he was real, and still Sam hadn't been able to look at him as anything other than a miracle.

And then they had hugged each other and all Sam had been able to think about was how much he wanted to just let go, to let Dean take his weight and just rest there for a second, breathing in the stench of sweat mixed with cleaning product.

But he didn't. Because Dean was back and Dean needed him, and there were always more monsters to hunt, more people to save and there was never enough time for Sam to rest and forget himself.

Cas had come back, and that had been good too, because Castiel was his friend, another anchor point in this life that kept throwing him in all directions.

But Sam was so tired. He had thought that the months with Amelia had helped, that maybe it had been enough, but the wound he had inflicted on himself by leaving was still fresh, and Dean's hurt was like salt against it.

So when he cut open a hellhound and let its blood cover his body, he figured might as well.

After the second trial, there wasn't any doubt in his mind that he was going to die. And maybe that was for the best. He was so tired. But he could do this one last thing, this one last truly good thing, shut the gates of hell and finally be able to let go, comforted by the knowledge that he would leave the world a better place than he had found it.

Except Dean had stopped him.

Dean had brought him back from that edge and Sam had let himself fall into his arms once again, because he felt alone and he was scared and how could he resist the promise of someone holding on to him ?

And Dean had held onto him. A little roughly, a little self-consciously, but he'd been there, hovering over him and taking care of him, and it had felt so good, to have a hand on his shoulder telling him to take it easy, fingers running through his hair that he half-heartedly swatted away, a grin as a plate of bacon was slid towards him.

It had felt good, until it had started to feel like too much, until it had begun to feel like Dean wasn't just being nice but trying to assuage his guilt. His guilt for what, Sam had no idea, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. He was losing time, whole chunks of days missing from his memory without explanation. Every time he tried to talk to Dean about it, his brother brushed him off, telling him it was nothing. He was constantly worried about his health but this didn't bother him ?

It wasn't right.

And then he finally figured out what was going on. He was forced to, when Crowley invaded his mind to warn him, and Sam managed to cast Gadreel out, and then he was faced with his brother, hovering over him still.

But for once, the hands on his shoulders didn't feel comforting. They felt like brands, like flames of ice burning off his skin.

Sam couldn't trust his own brother anymore, and every touch felt like an added violation. He couldn't feel like himself in his own body, and this was Dean's fault. (It wasn't. Even as every cell in his body rang out in rage and pain, part of him was trying to justify Dean's actions, to forgive him. Because they were brothers, and that was what they did. They tried and they made mistakes and they forgave each other, no matter what. And it wasn't comforting. It didn't help. Sam wanted to be able to feel angry. He knew he had the right to. The fact that he couldn't just made him even more helpless and he wanted to curl into a ball and forget about everything, but he couldn't.)

And then Dean died.

And then Dean was gone.

What purpose was there to everything that Sam had felt, to the agony of forgiving his betrayal, if Sam had to lose Dean the moment he felt himself able to trust him again ?

But by then, Sam knew how to live through the pain. He knew how to keep on fighting and he knew how to hunt, and so he hunt for Dean. He didn't care what it took. He didn't care what he had to do. He had tried to do the right thing, once upon a time, what already felt like a lifetime ago, and Dean had stopped him. Somebody was going to have to live with the consequences of that.

At least there was Castiel. Castiel, an angel that had become almost too human. Castiel, who had become a friend. Castiel, who tried to be there for Sam in his grief, whose touch lingered on his clothes, shyly, almost too lightly to be felt.

And Sam wasn't good to him. He wasn't. He was rude and snappish and frustrated, and he shrugged the other man's comfort like he hadn't done in a long time. Like he was back to thinking that he didn't deserve it.

But Castiel forgave him, as he always did. Sam had called him a friend, but in all the ways that counted he was family, and that included being familiar with the Winchesters' shitty way of handling any interpersonal conflicts.

So he forgave him.

And then they got Dean back, whole and human again, even if he was still unstable. They could handle unstable. That's all they had ever been.

All that counted anyway was that they were there for each other.

And Sam learned again. To trust and to let himself be touched. To indulge this simple form of wanting, this harmless need.

And their lives didn't get any easier. He almost let his brother kill him. They unleashed the Darkness. Sam had to face Lucifer again. He had to feel the touch he had come to trust get turned against him, watch Castiel's face turn in a smirk he knew all too well, had to feel that invasion again within his soul.

And then he had to keep going. Play nice, with the Devil, when his mere presence made his skin crawl and made him want to scream. But he did keep going.

And then they got their mom back. And that was... That was another can of worms altogether. Because Sam had never had a mom, not really. He only remembered her from pictures and from stories Dean had told him. And so part of him looked at Mary and saw all that he'd missed, and that part of him wanted to fold himself up until he was small enough to fit inside her arms and stay there. Let her chase the monsters hiding inside of his closet.

But there was another part of Sam, the part that had never needed a mom, the part that had had Dean, and Bobby, and Pastor Jim, and his dad on his better days, and the part that had raised himself into a person he was halfway proud of. And that part looked at Mary and saw a woman who was lost, confused, and a lot more broken than she'd been in any of Dean's stories. And yes, she was their mother, but Mary didn't know how to be Sam's mom anymore than he knew how to be her kid, and it hurt.

So he tried. And she tried as well. And they shared a cup of tea and a few lingering touches, on the hand or on the shoulder, but those were never enough to soften the craving inside of Sam. Instead, they just made him realize how easy it could all have been, how much he'd lost by never getting a chance to discover it.

And then they lost her, and they lost Cas, and suddenly there was Jack to care for and he was just a kid. Older than he should be, and smarter too, but still just a kid whose only knowledge of family came from before he was born, and Sam couldn't just leave him alone.

But it was hard. Being there for Jack, for this young man who reminded him so much of himself. He wanted to give him everything he'd never had, but it was all so hard.

There was a hole inside of him where grief festered, a wound that only ever healed halfway. Hope was growing on the edge of it like flowers through cracks in the sidewalk, and that was what he tried to focus on, but sometimes he just couldn't.

And Jack had seen almost nothing of the world, Sam couldn't let him seen how easy it was to be broken by it.

So, one night, he went to Dean's room. He could hear the tinny noise of music coming out of his headphones, and so wasn't surprised when his brother didn't answer his knock. He went inside anyway.

“What?” Dean confusedly asked, pulling his headphones halfway off.

“Nothing. You can put your music back on, I just... I just need...” Sam ran a hand over his face. He was so tired. He didn't know how to explain what he wanted, what he needed. He didn't want to have to explain. He didn't want to talk or do anything, just...

Ignoring Dean's confused stare, Sam sat down at the end of his bed. He took off his shoes, then climbed fully in, curling up as small as possible so he would fit on the narrow mattress alongside Dean's legs.

He let himself breathe.

There were a few seconds of silence, and Sam was sure that Dean was still very much confused, but it wasn't his problem any longer. He could just stay here for a while and stop thinking about everything. He was safe.

He felt a hand rest on his shoulders. “Come on Sammy.”

Sam closed his eyes more tightly. He just needed a bit more time. Just a little. He would be fine afterwards, he would leave Dean alone, he just needed a bit more time to put his edges back together, to find a way to see the flowers through the cracks.

“Come on. I'm not kicking you out, just... move up a little.”

Sam didn't reply, but he did uncurl slightly, dragging himself higher up the mattress so he was resting right besides Dean's hips where the other man was sitting up against the headboard.

“Yeah, that's it, that's... good. Just... okay.”

And yeah, Dean was still totally confused, and babbling a little, but he had also rested a hand against Sam's neck, and was softly running his thumb back and forth over his skin, and Sam could keep his eyes closed and keep quiet and just soak in the warmth of this moment for a while and that was...

That was good.

That was enough.

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

Supernatural 15x20, Carry On -- Review

Alright, we’re at last here. I can’t believe it. And what a waste of time that episode was! It seems “the finale” did indeed keep to task with the rest of the season, in a season of “meh” episodes, the finale continued to be a “meh” episode. Actually, I can’t even really call this a finale. Last week’s episode was the finale, this episode was the epilogue, a very subpar fanfiction-esque epilogue. And I make the fanfiction comment with a very heavy heart. I love fan fiction, I love that we can continue the stories we love through fan fiction and sometimes, a lot of fanfiction can be better than its source material. But also, sometimes, fanfiction has a tendency to be one-note. Fanfictions have a tendency to focus and hone in on one aspect of the story and tell just THAT story and the epilogues in these fanfics usually reflect that. Very one-note, only give regard to the main thing they honed in on the story. And there’s nothing really wrong with that but the weight of the story does feel less and kind of empty, the story doesn’t feel fleshed out and so in the epilogue, you don’t really feel a sense of closure and that’s what this episode felt like...and the series finale for a legacy show like this shouldn’t feel like that. 

But let’s cease with the rambling and get on with this. There will probably be spoilers, So definitely if you haven’t seen the episode yet and you don’t want to be spoiled, skip this post. Although granted, I don’t know how you’re online reading this and also have somehow managed to avoid spoilers. Teach me your ways, please!

As I’m sure most of you are aware, the finale isn’t great. It’s not even really a particularly strong episode. I felt things watching it and even cried a couple of times but that’s because my sensitive ass will cry at anything even slightly tear-jerky. I definitely understand why a lot of the fandom doesn’t like this episode. But also unfortunately, I’m not too surprised that the episode turned out like this. Disappointed but not surprised. When you think about how networks operate, it makes sense. Though our fandom is big and vocal, all that matters to the CW execs is that people come back to the CW. Now granted, some of us may be forever turned off to the CW because of this incident but those numbers aren’t going to mean anything to the CW. Because as large as we are as a fandom, the general audience is much larger and that’s who the CW execs are trying to keep. The general audience, a lot of them aren’t going to be paying attention to the finer story beats, to the subtext, to the meta, to the foreshadowing. No, the general audience just wants something that’s mildly entertaining they can turn the tv onto while they cook dinner or wash the dishes or whatever. It hurts but this finale was not meant for the fandom. It was for the general audience. And if I take my fandom goggles off, I can see how this finale might be satisfying to the general audience who don’t really have too big of an investment. 

But also looking at this episode from a critical standpoint, I can also tell this episode  is empty, its lacking in emotion. And I say this as the girl that cried mid-way through this episode. Because while I was crying and I was sad for Sam but then I was also happy for Sam, even though I was crying through these moments, I also wasn’t feelaing anything beyond the base emotion of happiness for a character or sadness for a character. When a story makes me get emotional I’m crying because of all sorts of conflicting emotions and I’ll forever go back to those tear-jerker moments whenever I feel like I need a good cry -- Tommy’s death on Arrow, Jenna’s death in TVD, Fred’s death in Angel, the Season 2 finale of The 100. All of those things not only made me cry because I felt things for the characters but also because there was a story element that reverberated inside of me, something about it made me feel alive and glad to be alive so I could experience it. So while I was crying for Sam’s loss of Dean, while I was crying tears of happiness when Sam was finally living the life he always wanted, the story felt empty to me and I couldn’t truly be happy with what I was feeling. And when it comes right down to it, while this finale meets all the basic standards it needs to in order to be a finale, that’s all it does. There isn’t anything special about it. It makes callbacks to how it began, it has just enough nostalgia to get by and it creates an ending for the characters. But that’s all it does. It meets the bare minimum to be a finale and I”m disappointed in that. I haven’t been loving this show for a few seasons, really since season 12, but I still kept on hoping the show would pull itself together long enough for at least a memorable season finale. As bad as they were, I will still always remember the finales for Game of Thrones or How I Met Your Mother. Supernatural’s finale was so uninspired, I don’t even really care to remember it. 

But let’s talk about what happened in this finale. First, some good points. I liked that we did see Sam openly mourning Cas and Jack. My Sastiel heart lived for that. And I’m also very happy Sam was able to live the life he wanted. I’m also very happy that Cas is not still stuck in the Empty, however, I do admit that if he was broken out so easily, it really kind of detracts from the initial sacrifice he made for Jack and for Dean and Sam. 

Things that I did not like, that essentially things were just kind of the same as in Season 1. You know, Sam gets his apple pie life but I kind of wish there was a little more of spark to that kind of life. Like this was something we talked about my blog a long time ago about a possible endgame for Sam but let’s say the Winchesters did kind of open like an organization for hunting monsters. Like, Sam could handle the legal aspects of something like that. He could go to law school and he could represent victims that were put in tough situations because their bodies were possessed or their on the line for a crime they didn’t commit because no one believes that a monster killed their loved one. So I just kind of wish we had gotten kind of a catch to Sam living his apple pie life. Living that life, doing what he always wanted to do, but also still helping people the way that Sam feels he needs to help people. So I wish we’d kind of gotten something more along those lines. I also don’t like that it takes Dean actually dying for Sam to feel like he has Dean’s permission to finally live that life. At first, I was going to feel sorry for Dean for dying in such a dumb way, but screw that. Dean put all of his self-hatred and baggage and dragged Sam down with him and made Sam feel like crap for even dreaming about something different. So Dean, you and that rusty nail deserve each other. I don’t even want to ship you with Crowley anymore. The ship you deserve is with Rusty Nail. 

So uh, let’s talk about Dean now and the return of Jenny the Vampire. I  completely forgot she existed. But yeah, she was a thing but she’s so loosely connected to Dean and Dean’s character arc, it’s like, there’s a lot of other monsters that would make more sense for Dean to die at the hands of. Like in Season 7 I believe, when Dean killed Sam’s friend in front of her son and he told the son that when he gets older, feel free to come after Dean. That would make more sense and have a kind of literary weight to it. Dean’s death would’ve been the result of his own actions and decisions years prior when he killed that woman on a whim. Dean and Sam could’ve come back from the vampire nest, after dropping the boys off, maybe they stopped at gas station to get some food and as Dean is walking around the corner to a bathroom, that’s when the now grown kid pops up in front of him and as Dean has a flashback to the kid and what he did to that kid, the kid stabs him in the heart like Dean did to his mother. 

Now the two brothers ending up in heaven together and presumably spending eternity together, while this may be a wincest or bibros wet dream, to me, I don’t know, it kind of feels pathetic. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love my brothers and I absolutely would go to the ends of the earth for them and I will mourn their deaths, but I also don’t want to be defined by them. I don’t want to feel like they’re so intrinsically a part of me that I need them in order to be truly happy or completed. While it might be nice to see them when I go to heaven, I would hope that I had grown to a point that there are also other things to me that are important that I would like to experience in heaver, you know? Plus, this whole ending feels like a slap in the face for what the show is most well-known for: found family and “family don’t end in blood”. The finale basically says, yes, family does end in blood, my blood is my soulmate basically. And I don’t really like that. 

Let’s talk about Cas and I don’t even have to be a Destiel shipper to be angry about how Cas was treated. I understand what they did in 15x18, and it does make a certain amount of literary sense, but considering there was no sense of closure to the act and it really kind of falls flat. And it makes you think, “so if what Cas needed in order to be truly happy was to admit that he loved his family” well, didn’t he already do that back in season 12? So it just kind of makes 15x18 feel kind of pointless. Yes, 15x18 was something that needed to happen for Cas and it made literary sense but that was only the first part of what his ending needed to be. The second part of his ending was hearing it back. Not necessarily a love confession from Dean (you all know Destiel is a thing of the past for me, I don’t ship them anymore) but what Cas needed to hear back was that his family loved him. We know they loved him but his own insecurities stopped him from truly feeling and believing it. And that’s the part the show missed and that’s what makes 15x18 fall flat and it makes Cas’s character arc feel incomplete. 

And also, it’s really sad to think that Sam never got to say goodbye to Cas. That’s something that Sam must feel very unresolved about and why he just lets the guilt eat up at him about it. My Sastiel heart needs one more final SamCas heart to heart. 

But I think that’s all I got for this episode. What grade would I give this episode. A big solid F-...I ‘m just kidding. It wasn’t that bad but nor was it anything great either. As I mentioned, the finale did what it needed to in order tom meet the bare minimum requirements for a finale, so honestly, I’d probably give this episode a D+. It meets the standards but it also doesn’t execute them very well so I don’t feel comfortable giving it a C. 

[norahastuff]

I’ve been asked a few times “Do you think Destiel is going to be canon?”, and though I’ve kind of addressed it on replies to posts and stuff before, I guess it’s time I should answer it directly. Or as directly as I can anyway, which with me involves a lot of rambling and tangents :L 

I’ve loved Dean and Cas’ relationship from the beginning. It was complex, intense and fascinating. They are both rich, well crafted characters and their interactions led not only to a very interesting dynamic developing between them, but also to more nuance in their own individual characterisations. However it wasn’t until 9x06 that I started to see their relationship as romantic, or at the very least, as having strong romantic undertones.

Don’t get me wrong, there were many times before that, when watching scenes between them that I raised an eyebrow and thought hmm alright then...actually I’ll list some of them:

4x21 - the scene in the junkyard with Dean and Cas staring at each other for like a solid 30 secs or so.

5x18 - Dean making sexual comments to Cas and then winking at him? That was a major eyebrow raise.

6x20 - Basically the whole thing. It was very much framed as a break up and even if you weren’t looking at it romantically, the longing and heartbreak were clearly evident from beginning to end.

7x17 - The montage of Cas getting his memories back, which was essentially a Destiel fanvid. Dean keeping Cas’ trenchcoat the whole time Cas was gone and then wordlessly presenting it to him. I now know there was some additional dialogue that was cut, but to me that scene works perfectly. Cas is overwhelmed by the memories of all his mistakes suddenly flooding back. He can’t cope with the pain and guilt, so Dean pulls the coat out of his trunk. Earlier with Emmanuel, Dean admits that he can usually get past loss and betrayal, but there was something different about Cas and he just can’t understand what it was. And yet, he kept the coat. The look that they both share when he pulls it out of the trunk conveys perfectly that they know how significant this one action is.

(Okay this got long so I’ll put the rest under a cut)

8x07 - Dean thinking he’s hallucinating Cas. The conversation Sam and Dean have, after he thinks he’s seen Cas in the middle of the night outside his window. The conversation that Dean and Cas have that keeps getting interrupted.

8x17 - I mean come on. Being forced to kill thousands of copies of Dean. Breaking out of mind control while gripping his wrist and pleading “I need you”...yeah...

8x22 - Dean being mad at Cas. Cas being sad and forlorn about Dean being mad at him. The two of them just gazing into each others eyes, Sam looking between them and then loudly coughing to get their attention. I actually remember having to pause the ep because I was laughing so hard at this scene.

8x23 - Bar convo, cupid, m/m couple at the bar.

Honestly I’m sure there were more, that is just the stuff I definitely remember that struck me on my first watch. And still even with all that, I didn’t really consider their relationship romantic. I think to me it was an intense ambiguous thing with a certain “je ne sais quoi” about it (sorry I can’t think of a better descriptor for how I thought of it.) It wouldn’t have surprised me if someone told me they were romantic, but it also wasn’t something I was actively thinking about, and since I was watching the show in a vacuum - I didn’t know anything about it at all before I started watching, and didn’t look up anything about it to avoid spoilers till I had caught up - I didn’t really consider it very much.

And then came 9x06.

From Dean rushing out the door as soon as he got Cas’ call, to him standing outside the Gas n’ Sip  intensely watching Cas through the window. Dean is so happy and excited to see Cas, but Cas...his face when he’s suddenly confronted with Dean is hurt, surprised and disbelieving all at once. It’s obvious how heartbroken he is by Dean forcing him to leave the bunker. There’s a very clear ‘’here comes my ex who dumped me and i’m mad at him but still not over him” vibe running through this whole scene.

Then there was their pre-date car scene and the much sadder post-date one, where Dean asks Cas “where to?” and Cas just looks at him and gets in the car. Not to mention the final one in the morning when they say goodbye. Everything unsaid is just hanging in the air, it’s very clear that neither of them want the other to leave but that they also both know they have to. And just when you think, alright - it’s over, you see Dean sitting in the car watching Cas walk away into the store.

As a sidenote: I’m not really a shipper, romantic relationships or the desire for them is never really going to hold my interest for too long in any tv show. For some people it’s really important and it’s what they enjoy the most, which - great! That’s exactly the point of fiction, or any art really, to take what’s meaningful and enjoyable to you from it. I’m not against romance or anything, it’s interesting to explore all kinds of different dynamics and if a romantic relationship is serving that purpose, both for these characters and their individual growth while still being engaging - that’s great.

This was a beautiful and layered episode in many ways, and I loved it immediately, not only for the Dean and Cas stuff but for everything else too, particularly what it said about Cas’ own personal arc and his feelings about what it was to be human. It wasn’t that I watched this episode and was suddenly 100% focused on Dean and Cas being in love, and the show tilted on it’s axis for me or anything. It was genuinely just  “oh alright then, I guess the show is actually just writing them as romantic.” It was an interesting but not too surprising revelation for me. In my head Dean and Cas went from a fascinating ambiguous dynamic I enjoyed watching, to a fascinating low(mid) key romantic dynamic that I enjoyed watching. I seriously thought that’s just how they were supposed to be seen and how the show was presenting them. It wasn’t till later when I caught up on the show and looked it up that I even realised there was any kind of debate about this, let alone outright denials.

Ok I’ve rambled for so long now - what does this have to do with canon destiel you may rightly ask? Well I watched this episode, and the fact that Dean and Cas’ relationship was portrayed as romantic was blindingly obvious to me. Misha has revealed in interviews that Jeremy Carver, the showrunner at the time, instructed him to play Cas as a “jilted lover”. 

Now people can read that whole passage I’ve written as to why this I see their dynamic as romantic in 9x06, and still claim, “well I don’t see it that way, they just seem like good bros to me”, to which I say ok cool, you don’t see it, but I do. So if I watched that episode and saw them as romantic and later discover that is how they were playing it - how is my interpretation wrong again? I was watching the canon unfold on screen in front of me, exactly how I was supposed to. 

And that’s still where I’m stuck on all of this.

I have no control over or knowledge of how their relationship is going to play out. I suspect there’s never been some huge grand plan in the works, and that any plans there have been for Sam, Dean or Cas’ arcs, whether individually or otherwise, have been (and still are) constantly subject to change - which is a good thing. You don’t want any writers to doggedly stick to a stale endgame they decided on years earlier, even if it no longer seems to service the characters as they exist in their current state and place in the story *cough HIMYM*

I just know that there has been a wealth of canon that emphasised the romantic elements present in crafting Dean and Cas’ relationship, and I never doubted that I was seeing them as they were meant to be seen. Including, but not limited to:  9x06, Metatron telling us to pay attention to the subtext in Meta fiction (after which Dean and Cas smile softly at the sound of each other’s voices on the phone), colette parallels, 11x18, Ishim/angel in love with a human/dean being Cas’ human weakness, mixtapes, I’m going to say that again - mixtapes, intense grief arcs or climactic reunions set to rousing soundtracks.

I do truly hope they explicitly address the romantic nature of their relationship in some way in text. I don’t know how/when/if they will, but I do hope so. However, am I supposed to dismiss everything that comes across as romantic to me just because it has not been consummated? I have no agenda, I wasn’t reading into anything or trying to see something that wasn’t there, again I was simply just watching the canon unfold. Not to mention the first time I did see something as unquestionably romantic, it turns out I was supposed to be seeing a “jilted lover”.

This all exists. The storylines/tropes/parallels, the reasons that Dean and Cas come across as romantic to so many people are there.

And they exist regardless of TPTB’s intentions of exploring Destiel as an eventual textual development.

And since I have no control over how their relationship is going to play out, I’m just going to continue watching it, and everything else on the show, exactly the same way I was before I started being told that I was wrong or that it isn’t enough.

[hale-of-stiles-heart]

i adoor you

Inspired by this gifset (also on ao3)

Cas had never liked doors.

More often than not, he didn't even deign to open them himself. He simply used a sliver of his grace to bust open doors or gently close them behind him.

A tiny flap of his wings could send the heavy steel door of a bank vault flying off its hinges, the pitiful obstacles nothing to him. It took some restraint to avoid splintering wood doors into bits but it was an art he had quickly perfected.

He always wondered why humans had abandoned more traditional room separators. Hanging cloth and folding screens had worked perfectly for hundreds of years. Besides, they were much simpler to both make and maneuver.

Of course, he understood why humans liked them as much as they did. Doors provided more shelter, protection from the elements and invading enemies. And, perhaps most importantly, they provided privacy.

There were no doors in Heaven. Not originally.

There had been no reason to have doors. Angels did not have any privacy nor did they particularly want it.

They were siblings, brothers and sisters and fellow soldiers living together side by side all the time. What did an angel need privacy for?

They did not sleep. Or eat. Or defecate. Or change clothing. They did not copulate in the same manner as humans.

Simply put, angels did not do anything that they required privacy for. At least, not in the beginning.

Things had changed after Lucifer fell, after humans became their Father's favorite creation. After the angels began killing each other for power and prestige.

When the torture started, angels subjecting their own brethren to unspeakable horrors more suited to the conduct of demons than faithful servants of the Lord, doors made their first appearance in Heaven. More were added when some of the seraphim, namely Naomi, had taken up the practice of wiping angels' minds clean of memories.

The only other doors in Heaven led to the personal heavens of deceased humans. Even in death, humans seemed to be rather fond of their privacy.

Cas had always been envious of them in that respect. As shameful and irreverent as it may have been, Cas had often longed for solitude, for independence, for privacy and freedom. He had wanted to spread his wings and be truly free.

Rebelling against Heaven, against his brothers and sisters, against his own Father who had given him life billions of years ago had given him that chance. But he had ruined it.

In his bid to be free he had essentially clipped his own wings. He believed humans called that ironic. Or was it poetic justice?

He couldn't be sure. There had been no poetry in Heaven, either.

After falling, in every way possible for an angel, he found that he rather enjoyed poetry. But he still disliked doors.

He had never despised a door as much as the one that he was currently staring at. The loud slam still echoed in the hallway like a taunting laugh.

He had gotten into an argument with Dean. Again.

They seemed to be a more and more frequent occurrence since Cas had moved into the Bunker. He had renounced Heaven after the Darkness had made peace with God who decided to make amends with His firstborn children by returning their wings and unsealing the gates to their home.

But Heaven had never been Cas' home. Not really. No matter how many times he sacrificed and slaughtered and died for Heaven, he knew he would never be truly accepted by the flock.

He belonged with Dean and Sam. For however long as they would tolerate him. Which, apparently, was not very long.

Only a few short weeks after he had moved into the Bunker, still adjusting to the mostly sedentary lifestyle of humans, to having his own room and his own possessions few in number though they may have been, he and Dean argued for the first time.

It had been a rather trivial squabble. Cas had failed to put his dirty dishes in the dishwasher after having a midnight snack on one of the nights that sleep evaded him. He had left them in the sink instead.

He had not wanted to wake Dean or Sam by rinsing his dishes and loading the dishwasher at one a.m. He explained that to Dean, effectively ending the argument when he offered to make it right by hand washing his dishes.

His act of contrition had seemed to work. Dean dropped the issue.

Their next argument occurred only a few days later. Cas had messed up again.

He had added too much detergent to the washing machine while doing laundry. Soap suds had overflowed out of the machine and into the floor of the laundry room.

Several of Dean's shirts had been ruined. And the washer had been damaged itself.

Cas had been wracked with guilt about both. He procured the new part for the washing machine but he could replace the damaged shirts without using his grace.

It only took an ounce, metaphorically speaking, of his grace to return the shirts to their former glory but Dean had remained upset. Cas had spent two days scrubbing the laundry room clean in order to make amends.

But as hard as Cas tried to acclimate to life at the Bunker, he always seemed to do something wrong, always seemed to do something that upset Dean. He hated himself for it with a fiery passion he had once reserved for only the most vile and vicious of Heaven's enemies.

He was supposed to be Dean's friend, his protector, and yet all he did was disappoint and upset him. All he did was fail him, over and over and over again.

After the washing machine incident, Cas just seemed to do everything wrong.

He was given cooking duty one night and burned dinner because he didn't realize how fast grilled cheese sandwiches cooked. Another night, he accidentally spilled some ink on one of Dean's copies of Busty Asian Beauties.

A week later, he somehow mucked a spell by adding just a hint too much of belladonna nectar. Dean ended up with bright purple hair for a week, instead of being immune to the thrall of the witch casting love spells in Florida.

On a hunt in Ohio, Cas got distracted while he was supposed to be playing bait for a shapeshifter and almost let the monster get away. He had been rather distracted when the bartender of the establishment he was staking out started flirting with him, complimenting his blue eyes and informing him that he had a pretty smile.

While Sam had been rather frustrated as well, though he was also quite amused by the situation, Dean had been furious. He had given Cas a harshly worded lecture on the ride back to their hotel room where Cas was stuck sleeping on the lumpy futon, the sound of the drug-fueled marathon of sex happening in the next room ringing in his ears all night.

No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried to improve himself, he always managed to screw up somehow.

He watched hours upon hours of various cooking shows, devoured every cookbook that he could find, yet his cooking skills remained 'piss poor' according to Dean. He assisted Sam with his household chores, listening attentively to all of the man's instructions so as not to make any more mistakes — he even took notes — but Dean still found fault in the way he folded clothes and cleaned the bathroom.

But Cas could look past of all that. Because their arguments only accounted for a mere fraction of their interaction.

Most of the time, his life in the Bunker was a dream. More of a heaven than the place where he had lived for billions of years of his life.

When they weren't driving across the country and staying in cheap motels that reeked of stale beer and cigarettes, they basked in their own type of domestic bliss.

Dean cooked dinner almost every night and breakfast every morning, swaying side to side in his comfy bathrobe as he blasted Led Zeppelin and Bob Seger on his pink iPod. After eating just a few of Dean's home cooked meals, suppressing his grace enough so that he could taste the food rather than the molecules in it, Cas understood why humans were such fans of eating.

The first time he tried pie, a decadent slice of chocolate pecan pie in a Boise diner, his eyes had rolled back into his head and he had let out a moan so loud the elderly couple at the next table had gawked at him, scandalized. Sam and Dean had dissolved into hysterical laughter, though Dean had looked more flushed than when he usually laughed.

Most nights, he ended up sandwiched between Sam and Dean on the couch they had moved into one of the empty rooms to create a den. They had found a decent sized television at a local yard sale along with a DVD player and had started building up quite the collection of DVDs.

Dean would make popcorn drenched in melted butter and salt while Sam would roll his eyes and grab a few beers while Cas finished getting comfortable on the couch. It was much nicer than the ones he usually slept on when they were on the road.

Other nights, they found different ways to entertain themselves. From another yard sale, one in Columbus, Sam had purchased a handful of board games. Dean had bought a game himself, something called Cards Against Humanity.

It was a crude game, full of sexual innuendos and crass toilet humor, but Dean seemed to enjoy it, inviting Charlie to play with them a few times. He appeared to enjoy it even more when Cas joined in, always laughing raucously whenever the angel won a round.

Sam preferred more family friendly games, straightforward board games with simple goals and easily understandable premises. Cas had similar feelings on the matter but every once in awhile he would be the one to suggest a round of Cards Against Humanity, if only to see the way Dean's face lit up.

They ventured into town every now and then for more than just groceries and rolls of toilet paper, for weekend farmer's markets and local craft shows. And Dean hadn't been able to say no to a trip to a local music store that had vinyl records in stock.

Cas' favorite outing had been to the quaint, independently owned bookstore that was nestled between a pet store and a local diner. The feeling of being surrounded by books, works of fiction and fantasy far removed from the purely informational tomes in the Bunker, had been humbling.

He had lingered among the stacks for hours, running his fingers over the spines of books, mumbling their titles under his breath. Sam and Dean had just let him browse for as long as he liked, looking on with soft smiles.

It had been one of the most wonderful days of his life.

But the memory of that day was faded and far away, buried under the mountain of guilt and despondency that threatened to crush him completely as he stared at Dean's bedroom door. The door that had been slammed in his face. The door that stood between him and the man he had given up everything for.

He and Dean had been working on reorganizing some of the shelves in the library. They had been separating the books by subject, by the supernatural creatures they primarily dealt with, so they could alphabetize them later.

Cas had mistakenly set down a book detailing the different types of Greek nymphs and the methods most efficient for killing them in the pile of books about Celtic spirits. Dean had immediately snapped at him, launching into a lecture. Their argument had burgeoned from there.

It ended with Dean throwing the book in his hand onto the table and stomping down the hall to his bedroom. Hoping to somehow placate Dean, Cas had followed him, rushing after him in desperation.

But his bid to end their argument early was almost cruelly dashed when Dean finally made it to his bedroom doorway. He whirled around to face Cas, all but screaming, "Y'know what, Cas? Why don't you go fuck off somewhere like you always do?! Go hang out with your little angel pals and leave me the hell alone!"

The door had been rudely slammed shut in Cas' face not a second later, leaving the angel to stare at the numbers designating Dean's bedroom as Room 11. The sound of the door slamming and Dean's words echoed in his head.

Both were loud and jarring, conveying the same message: leave. Get out. Dean doesn't want you here. Cas could feel it reverberating throughout his entire body, coursing through his very grace until he could feel in the tips of his hidden, newly restored wings — the dejection that threatened to swallow him whole.

Breathing suddenly became more difficult as though something had a vice grip on his throat and was squeezing tightly, trying to crush his windpipe. It was almost like drowning, the burning in his lungs and the feeling of sinker lower and lower beneath the waves of his despair.

The dark wood of the door seemed to stare back at him with an angry glare, cruelly reminding him that he was being barred from the man he cared about more than anything. He wanted nothing more than to break down the door, to explode it into a million splinters with a burst of his grace, but he couldn't.

It would be a violation of Dean's privacy. It would only make Dean hate him more. If that was even possible.

He hated the door. He hated the fact that he was so terrible at everything. Hated himself.

He had done it again. He had upset Dean, had driven him away for what seemed like the millionth time.

And he didn't know how to make it right. Ideas pinged through his head, half-baked and full of room for error, but they were all he had. So, he went through with them.

He walked back to the library, feeling oddly numb. The quiet of the Bunker was almost suffocating, both Sam and Dean in their respective bedrooms, as Cas finished sorting the books.

He was meticulous, careful not to make another mistake. After separating the books by subject, he set to work alphabetizing them on the bookshelves.

It was quick work, tedious and routine like the process of cleaning a gun. But he had messed that up too when Dean had shown him. He had used too much solvent.

Shaking his head to clear away the nagging reminder of all the times that he had failed to do the most simple of tasks, Cas had finished restocking the shelves. He decided to dust afterwards.

Then, he cleaned the kitchen. And the bathroom. He rearranged one of the supply closets so the extra towels, cleaning supplies, and various other supplies were easier to find.

Hours later, when the afternoon had turned to night and Cas found himself exhausted despite the fact that he did not require actual rest. But returning to his own room only made him feel more abject.

He only remained in his room long enough to kick off his shoes and grab the blanket from off his bed, the same one that Dean had wrapped around him while he was still suffering from the effects of Rowena's spell.

He returned to Dean's room afterward to find the door still closed, still locking out Cas more effectively than any sigil ever could. For lack of anything better to do, he plopped down beside Dean's door, the floor cold beneath him.

He draped the blanket over himself, breathing in the faint scent of Dean that still clung to it. He tipped his head back, leaning against the wall of the hallway as he stared up at the ceiling.

In the morning, he told himself as he closed his eyes and willed himself to sleep. Things will be better in the morning.

In the morning, Cas woke to the sound of a door opening, the hinges squeaking. He snuffled, keeping his eyes closed as he tugged the blanket higher up his back.

He didn't want to wake up yet, he wanted to stay in that peaceful unconsciousness. He couldn't screw anything up in his dreams.

But the universe seemed determined to rouse him from his slumber. The creak of the door hinges seemed to grow louder as a gruff voice demanded, "What the hell?"

Cas finally opened his eyes, squinting to shield his eyes from the bright lights of the hallway. He scrubbed at his eyes with the heel of his hand, blinking to clear his vision as he peered upward towards where he had heard the sleep-rough voice.

Dean was standing above him, pillow creases on his right cheek and five o'clock shadow darkening the sharp line of his jaw. His hair was messy, flattened against his skull in some places while it stuck up wildly in others.

He was wearing the same shirt as the day before, a dark gray Henley with two of the buttons undone. It was wrinkled, like Dean had slept in it along with his faded jeans.

He looked extremely tired, dark shadows under his eyes that seemed less bright than usual. There was tension in his shoulders, like any sleep he may have gotten was not restful.

"Good morning, Dean," Cas rasped, straightening up as he drew his knees to his chest. "I—"

"You're still here," Dean said incredulously, cutting Cas off before he could apologize. His eyes were wide as he said it, full of disbelief and confusion.

"Of course, I'm still here," Cas replied, his brows furrowing as he returned Dean's look of incredulity. Why would Dean think he would leave? Because he had snapped at Cas? Where else was the angel supposed to go? But more importantly, Cas pointed out, "This is my home."

Dean blinked. And opened his mouth to gape at Cas.

Cas was just about to ask Dean if he was alright when he was cut off again, this time by a pair of lips being pressed against his own.

Warm hands cupped his face, rough thumbs tracing over his cheekbones. The faint scent of whiskey and the fancy name brand soap that Dean preferred filled his nose.

And while he was completely taken aback, he was also overwhelmed with a feeling of rightness as Dean kissed him.

A moment later, before Cas could even attempt to kiss Dean back, the hunter ended the kiss in favor of wrapping his arms around Cas' shoulders and tugging him into a tight hug. He pressed his lips to Cas' temple as he breathed, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Cas. I've been treating you like shit."

Before Cas could open his mouth to dismiss Dean's apology, to ensure him that he wasn't, Dean rushed on, "I was scared. And I know that's not an excuse but I was, man. I was so scared."

"I was just waiting for you to get tired of slumming it with a couple of hunters and run back to Heaven," Dean explained, running his hand up and down Cas' back as he cradled the angel to his chest. "I figured you'd do it eventually so I just gave you a little nudge. I'm so sorry, Cas. I always fuck everything up."

"Shh..." Cas hushed, curling his arms around Dean, slipping a hand into Dean's hair to run his fingers over the hunter's scalp. Voice quiet and calm, he murmured, "It's alright, Dean. You haven't fucked anything up. This is my home, you're my home, I'll never run back to Heaven."

Dean let out a watery laugh, tightening his arms around Cas who buried his face in the crook of Dean's neck. That was how Sam found them half an hour later, smiling to himself as he stepped back into his room, closing the door behind himself.

[heavnofhell]

I think you're the best person to come to with this, so... Do we ever see Lucifer actively smite someone? I mean like laying his hands on someone and burning their eyes out? He always just snaps his fingers and explodes people. First I thought it might be an archangel thing, but Michael smites too. So... does Lucifer just prefer not to touch people? Anyways, I hope you're having a nice day and that you find a moment to breathe and relax. ♡

Hey, my baby. You know, I think a lot about this (it’s Lucifer - of course I do), and to me, it’s another one of those negligent oversights on the part of the writers. If you consider S5 Lucifer (our real angel), he uses quite a bit of discretion when it comes to killing. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it really was a defining characteristic that sort of set him apart from the other angels or “baddies.” 

When you consider the times we did see him getting all badass, he only took lives if it was absolutely essential to securing his end goal. In “Hammer of the Gods,” he killed brutally and without remorse. He killed passionately, because not only were these “gods” threatening his plan, but they were threatening his True Vessel. He was outraged, and likely the only thing going through his mind was “Get to Sam/make these creatures suffer for disrespecting us so deliberately.” 

And yes, he kills Gabriel - but once again, Gabriel was a real threat, not only to his plan, but to his life. It was clear that Gabe wanted to kill Lucifer, and he is one of the only beings in the Universe capable of doing so. The Archangels can hurt and kill one another, and, for me, that’s one of the most heartbreaking facts to acknowledge. They grew up together, created the world together, watched life grow together - they share more history than anything or anyone else in all of Creation. I do not think that Lucifer considered, for even a moment, that one of his brothers would truly, truly try to kill him. Hell, even in “Swan Song,” he seems sure he can convince Michael that their relationship and love is more important than God’s big plan. 

So, when he realizes that Gabriel is, indeed, trying to murder him, I think he breaks a little. His heart breaks, his tired mind is pushed a little closer to the brink, and his hope is worn a little thinner. In the same moment in which he has to admit to himself that he is irredeemable in the eyes of his baby brother, he has to choose between his own life, and Gabriel’s. He has to decide which one of them is worthy to live; but Gabriel turned his back on his big brother, and he chose the very creatures who led to Lucifer’s downfall, and in Lucifer’s mind, he believes he has already lost his little brother. 

We also know he kills the women and children in the town in “Abandon All Hope,” though the method he uses is not made explicit. I’d wager that was quite a bit less messy, maybe more along the “smiting” side of things, as he expressed deep regret for having had to take those lives. 

“I know what you must think of me, Sam. But I have to do this. I have to.”

In that case, he had to have sacrifices to summon Death, which was a necessary part of reaching his ultimate goal. We see a lot of moments when he could have easily gotten rid of other active threats (Dean and Castiel, for example), but chose not to, whether for Sam’s sake, or simply because he didn’t consider their deaths to be necessary. 

Meanwhile, in S11-12, Lucifer is far quicker to pull the trigger, as it were. This, I suppose, could be attributed to the fact that he’s been driven a little mad by his prolonged stay in the cage, being trapped with Michael, and/or the release of the Darkness. Whatever the case, he kills more for convenience sake rather than necessity (though I will point out that we do see him express remorse in a few of these instances). 

Anyway, goddamn, I am a rambler and I apologize. To get to the point, I don’t think he necessarily has an aversion to touching people, considering his rather hands-on approach in “Hammer of the Gods.” I think Michael’s method of smiting is different from Lucifer’s (the whole fire thing sort of being his trademark), and while I wish they’d played up the whole ice element when it comes to his killing style, maybe “poofing” people is just how his smiting looks? (But seriously - imagine if he could just lay a hand on someone and they’d basically just crumble into ice? Yes, please.) 

[elizabethrobertajones]

Am I the only one that doesn't want mopey, grieving Dean drinking his sorrows away? I want Purgatory Dean, hellbent on finding and saving his angel and fuck you if you get in the way. I want him to fight for Cas, determined to finally, at long last, be the one that saves him. I think we compare Dean and Cas' relationship with Dean and Sam's too much without taking in account the different history that shaped them. Also, Cas has been saved via deus ex machina too many times by now.

I would like to see both, tbh. We’ve had Purgatory and we know Dean WOULD fight for Cas. And we had season 7 but it was sort of accidental that Dean’s depression and drinking were linked to Cas and Cas came back, because at least initially he was genuinely mourning a character who wasn’t coming back and it was written in such a way because Dean’s loss was resonant because Cas wasn’t coming back. 

I’m not saying that they don’t write real grief when they know the character is coming back, such as when Sam or Dean mourn each other, but by having Cas gone for like 15 episodes and at least some of them with the writers knowing he was gone, Cas was an obvious factor in Dean’s sadness and it wasn’t caged in anything, really. The only thing is they had 100s of reasons for them to be depressed that season and took away *everything* and gave them a load of other stuff to worry about on the side, so Dean’s sadness wasn’t targeted right on Cas, because he had to worry about everything else too. 7x01 was the only episode where his feelings were mostly targeted on Cas, before he even lost him, when he was the current problem to solve. 

I think it was nice that over season 11 Dean stopped drinking while he was working on saving Cas, because he was seriously focused and motivated to save him. But he had something to swing at there, some reason to “keep grinding” - if he feels Cas is lost in such a way he can’t be brought back, it would be interesting to see season 7 equivalent grief written in this current narrative where Dean’s feelings for Cas are so incredibly front and centre when they interact, and though they have other stuff to worry about, say Jack’s powers mean more useful dimension hopping and plus a sense that Mary wouldn’t just *die* and she’s lost in the way of Sam not looking for Dean in purgatory - another realm but one you may or may not be able to crack… She’s not *dead* gone, she’s just *gone*. Anyway, it would be interesting to see Dean take this grief full on because he doesn’t know how to bargain his way out of it and they KNOW angel blades are such a final way to kill something. It has this air of weight to it that your run of the mill death doesn’t really have. 

And if Cas’s death seems final to him AND they have a ton of other problems, mourning Cas would be very interesting to see him break over it like season 7 but in a way where the narrative is more intentional. I mean like, yeah, how many times can he mourn his friend, but… Eh. I don’t know. If they’re going for angst they might as well go all the way. I’m not precious about Dean getting horrifically hurt or going to bad places in the name of the story because I find that makes the characters significantly more interesting to talk about, and I feel like Dean has completed essentially his entire point as a character per his original set up by confronting Mary, and is now in a gentle retirement to wipe up whatever’s left on the plate, which to me is essentially the subtextual performing!Dean stuff being visually resolved in a way not just meta writers can see like the grenade launcher did, although I kind of consider that resolved too in the sense that 12x22 finished baking Dean and he’s just left to be iced with whatever comes next for him. 

Fresh raw angst on top of New And Improved Dean Winchester Who Is Somewhat At Peace With His Family seems like a great way to test him and his behaviour, and he HASN’T had his alcoholism magically cured and it’s not like he’s learned coping mechanisms, he’s just got an inner peace now about SOME things, so this is all from a totally different direction than the family realignment that needed to happen - this is his romantic subplot resolution, essentially, trope wise >.> 

And it’s like, his last space to be truly messed up if we’ve resolved the core of Dean’s family angst to a significant degree. Making good with your mother’s death and letting your brother grow up is GREAT and that was 2 of the hugest things Dean ever did but it just means the core blood related family have realigned and fixed their dynamic. Cas as the found family element didn’t resolve HIS feelings about the Winchesters - rather self-destructed literally AND metaphorically on the guardian angel thing, which has been a BAD stance for him because as 12x19 showed it’s NOT how to be integrated into the family and causes all their problems. Dean likewise hasn’t come to terms with his bisexuality or being in love with Cas, truly, because they’re not together. So it’s his big unresolved source of anything huge and unspoken in the way that ALL the family stuff got literally spoken at last this season. 

I’m not saying they’ll obviously make it canon or anything, but this is Dean’s remaining drama llama card to play, so… I expect the most drama llama-ing Dean can do about it :P

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

I know Mary loves Dean but do you get the sense that she feels more connected to Sam? Right from the start, I thought Mary's interactions w/Dean felt a little stilted & superficial while she seemed right at ease with Sam. Once Mary knew Dean forgave her, I'd honestly expected her to warm up to him & show the same affection that she'd previously shown Sam .But that didn't happen. While she took ownership of her actions, Mary still didn't reach out physically or emotionally to Dean. Thoughts?

Hello there!

Hmm, I actually don’t feel like Mary felt paricularly close to anyone and any of her sons. And I also wouldn’t quite describe Mary to share more "a connection” with Sam rather than Dean, but the show did certainly made it quite obvious that she seems to care more about her youngest as her only thoughts and grievances and guilt circled entirely around Sam all season and completely ignored her older son’s trauma and suffering (who btw was once more the once suffering most under the decision made by people he loves) who by all means didn’t have a perfect life either. And this is why I am still and will likely always be pretty disappointed borderline enraged by this season.

Because it is one thing to tell a story in which the narrative explores how Dean thinks of himself as the least important element in his family, but gives enough examples on the outside that this is only something Dean struggles with within, but that objectively isn’t true. It is something entirely else when you look at this season that completely failed at that (if they wanted to show that - which I don’t think Dabb wanted) and complete turned that on its head for me, because essentially the opposite was validated and emphasized: that indeed to his mother Dean is not important and of value on his own at all, but only matters in extension to Sam and Sam’s suffering. And well, I find that to be pretty disgusting.

I absolutely get why Mary was distant to her boys - as I have written about more in depth Mary IS the woman in white, who can never go home and face her children as she basically “killed them” - and I also get that Sam will always be the “baby” to her and have a special position also because he was physically marked for Lucifer due to her deal, but it is just absolutely enraging to me how the writers have completely ignored Dean and Dean’s life and his story in all of this (and no, having Dean say “I had to be mother and father” may be a small first step, but that’s not nearly enough - especially not when his mom only really shows any kind of “coming through” when talk shifts to Sam and all he had to endure so that Dean “once more” disappears).

So I am sorry for all the harsh words, they are not directed at you, dear anon, but at the writers and this absolute disaster of a season for anyone who cares about Dean and thinks that it is about damn time that Dean kind find closure and start to heal and be as loved as he loves (but I guess we’ll never get that with the current set of writers SIGH) others. The fact that Mary completely ignored Dean and didn’t even hug him is the most enraging thing to me, because all of that validates to Dean that he doesn’t matter - and the show actually with framing it that way making that statement as well on an objective level - and THAT pisses me off to no end (and yes I know I am not objective here and a very very bitter Dean girl, but wow, everytime I think I may feel better about it at some point I realize again that I don’t LOL). Because Dean is there in her mind and she literally doesn’t seem to see him until he talks about Sam and yeahhhhh, sorry but the show couldn’t possibly make it any clearer how Dean and his emotions is not of import to some of the people closest to him. It’s heartbreaking really, because after all Dean did, after all he fought, his mom regards him with not even a hug - it is Sam who pulls Dean in and yeah, I don’t think I can forgive Mary for any of that for quite a while.

And last but not least, I don’t feel like Mary took true ownership and faced up to her actions - she “faced” Dean yes, but truly accepting on how many occassion she failed as a person and a loving parent, that is something that will take time and couldn’t be wrapped up in one episode. And tbh I don’t think we’ll get any of that next season either as I think if they include an arc of Mary in “Otherworld” with Lucifer it won’t focus on her guilt and her mistakes, I suppose but will likely be more action drawn and focused on Lucifer - which is a character I wished that had died a while ago and which I still will never understand why they still carry him through, sigh.

Sorry for all the negativity, but apparently I still have a lot of emotions on this topic.

[themegalosaurus]

I have a question, but it could be interpreted as anti-Wincest or just a bummer, so please only reply if you enjoy it, ok? You mentioned only having gotten into Wincest on s9, which surprised me. For me, early seasons are just air-crackling-MEANINGFUL-glances-slashy, and later seasons often make me sad, I don't know if they even like each other.... I'd very much want to change this perception. Would you write about what made you fall for them? What made you say - those two are into each other?

OK so I think I must be responsible for this confusion, which is to say, it wasn't that I started shipping Wincest in S9 but that I only started watching the show while S9 was airing. So I guess that technically it's true I started shipping Wincest then, but it wasn't like I was watching all the seasons before like 'lalalala' and then got to S9 and was like 'oh wait NOW i think they're banging' (or, like, 'am suddenly interested in them banging' or however you describe the act of shipping something, which is... hard to do, hahaha). So no I mean chronologically during the period S9 was on TV but in the course of my watching the show... I'm not actually sure, I can't remember now at what point in show I went from 'omfg Wincest is the most hilarious ship name and I kind of love it but it's not my bag' to 'allow me to bestow 9k words of NC-17 viagra-fuelled Wincest crack!fic upon the world'. WHO KNOWS.

That said, most (like, nearly all) of the Wincest I've written has been later seasons so I guess a lot of what you are asking me still applies. 

I definitely agree with you that there's a shift in their canon relationship through the later seasons which complicates things. It's not possible (for me) to write the kind of dreamy, life on the road, wrapped up in one another fic of the early seasons about later-seasons Sam'n'Dean. I guess I deal with this either by headcanoning a slightly fluffier version of their relationship which handwaves some of the more troubling things about their dynamic and readjusts them to how I'd ideally like them to be (this is my solution when I'm writing straight-up smut, or comic stuff), or sometimes by writing fic which tries to deal at least partially with some of the unresolved issues that the later seasons have thrown up between the guys. (One of my favourite tropes is late-seasons first-time-in-a-long-time Wincest, which acknowledges a split between them - like, how can you not after S8 and S9 - but then has them brought back together, with varying levels of success/healthiness/resolution.) I actually... I think I find it almost more interesting to write them like this, so where I can think about the problems that are thrown up in their relationship onscreen through the prism of what it would be like if they had a sexual relationship complicating things even further. One of the earliest fics I wrote, ‘Ashes’, was essentially based on that premise - like, how much more fucked up would the Gadreel situation be if Dean and Sam were having sex at the time Gadreel was occupying Sam's body? When I'm not writing silly crack or PWP, I'm interested in fics which explore difficult or complicated relationships and late-seasons Wincest is actually perfect for that.

I think related to this is the fact that I generally have little interest in tropes like soulmates or, I guess, 'this couple have always been destined to be together, their love is holy and eternal, truly since the day they first set eyes upon each other they have been one another's everything, age shall not wither them' etc etc etc. Like... for whatever personal reasons explain these things, I find the idea almost squicky?? I am very interested in established relationships with areas of commonality and areas of difference and conflicts and affection and a long history of love, but the kind of super-romantic, 'you are my everything', starry-eyed stuff that I know a lot of people love (and more power to you if you do, I'm definitely not seeking to imply any judgement) makes me feel almost claustrophobic. So the fact that late-seasons Wincest is riddled with tensions and conflicts and unspoken issues actually appeals to me quite a lot.

That said. I do think there's an element of doublethink happening for anybody who is a Wincest shipper and (at heart) a bitter Sam girl. Even in my most ~realistic late-seasons Wincest I haven't necessarily gone as dark as I think Sam and Dean's relationship has done in parts of later canon. Partly that's because fic has a fix-it sort of purpose to me - I like to try and think about how things could have been resolved more satisfactorily - and partly because like any fic author I am writing at least partly with an eye to an audience, and I feel like the Venn diagram crossover between 'bitter Sam girls' and 'people who would want to read reasonably dark, reasonably explicit Wincest' is fairly small. I think people generally want this kind of shippy fic (OTP shippy fics) to be happy. But I have like... one episode coda (from S11) half-finished which sort of gets towards this territory, and another fic idea that I've been incubating for like, six months at least based on a kinkmeme prompt that would also do something like this. But I haven't finished either yet, I guess because (and this probably shows a lack of integrity on my part) I think they might upset my readers. Idk.

(I just realised that I never answered the Q about why I ship them in the first place, not properly. I think they’re just... they’re so present in each other’s lives, they are the main person for each other in so many ways, their relationship is so intense, that it’s not a difficult slide sideways into the shippy mode of reading them. Add to which the fact that they’re so pretty and that they’re different - emotionally, sexually, temperamentally - in ways which are fun to explore, and it’s easy to get on that train. Or it was for me!)