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tweedlydumbtweedlydoo · 4 years

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Not Perfect (JJ Maybank x reader) pt. 3

Summary: JJ Maybank is the one who makes sure your kook lawn is immaculate. Your family may look perfect just like the lawn from someone looking from the outside in, but it turns out you and JJ have more in common than you thought.

!!warning: This story talks about abuse through out, so if that’s triggering please don’t read. This is strictly fiction. THERE IS A PART OF ABUSE IN THIS SO PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION IT IS MARKED WHERE IT STARTS AND ENDS

Masterlist: Not Perfect

A/N: Sorry i didn’t get this out yesterday. I was able to go home from the hospital yesterday and was exhausted. Also, I think i proof read this after I typed it up but I don’t remember?? I don’t feel like doing it now. So, if there is any mistakes please ignore them. Anyways, hope you guys enjoy! xx

Tag list is at the end. Let me know if you want to be added xx

**MASTERLIST**

Requests: OPEN {CLOSED}

I am currently taking requests for:

The Vampire Diaries/The Originals

Elijah Mikaelson

Damon Salvatore

Criminal Minds:

Spencer Reid

Derek Morgan

Supernatural (I’m only up to season 2, so please don’t request something with spoilers)**

Sam Winchester

Dean Winchester

Outer Banks (Netflix):

John B Routledge

JJ Maybank

Rafe Cameron

********************************************************************************************NOT MY GIF, CREDIT TO OWNERS

When you awake the next morning, your head is pounding. And the smell around you, it was not your usual strawberry smell. It was musky, like some guy’s cologne. You peep out of one of your eyes. You were in an unfamiliar room in a stranger’s bed and it looks like a stranger’s shirt. You grip at the shirt looking down at it, “Oh god, what the hell happened last night?” Wincing you sat up, grabbing your head. Hearing voices outside the door, you froze, eyes wide.

“She’s been passed out all night. Should I wake her?”

“I’m sure she’s just hung over, JJ.”

“JJ?” You face palm your forehead, “Oh shit..” You groan, throwing the covers off you, looking around for your phone.

JJ quietly opens the door, careful not to wake you but he sees you’re already up, looking around the room. “Uh… good morning.”

You jump, facing him, “morning…”

He can tell by your face, you’re frightened, “We didn’t do anything last night.” He holds his hands up in surrender, “You vomited all over your shirt last night and I changed you.”

You glanced down at his shirt and then back at him, “Oh god.” You groan, “What time is it?”

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, checking the time, “It’s almost 2:30.”

“2:30?! Oh god my dad’s going to kill me. I um.. I need to go. Like now.” Looking around, “Where the hell is my stuff?”

“It’s by the door,” He motions behind him, “I can take you home, if you’d like.”

You nod, eyes pleading, “please?”

He nods, stuffing his hands in his shorts, “John B already left for work though.. so you’ll have to ride on the back of my bike.”

You fixated yourself behind JJ on his bike, “You sure this is safe?”

He chuckles, nodding, “Yes, just..” he clears his throat, “wrap your arms around my waist.”

You slip your arms around his waist, tightening your grip, “I’m trusting you, Maybank.”

He glances over his shoulder at you, “I won’t let anything happen to you. Promise.”

You knew he was probably just being reassuring to help calm your nerves of getting on the back of his bike, but the statement felt more sincere than anything.

When you two pulled into the driveway of your home, there were cop cars everywhere. Police standing in your yard and your parents on the front porch talking to a couple.

“What the hell?” You get off the bike as JJ stops and turns it off. He follows you to the pathway that led to your house.

“Y/n! Oh god.” Your mother steps down the front porch, running to you and engulfing you in her arms.

“Sweetie we were so worried about you.” Your dad explains, hugging you and your mother. He can’t help but give a ‘if looks could kill’ look at JJ. You’d rode in on the back of his bike and had been with him.

“Well, I’m fine.” You say, pulling away to look at them. Your mother is holding your cheek, looking you over, making sure you’re not hurt.

JJ clears his throat, “I’m going to get going.”

Your mom and dad look at him, your mother’s eyes darting back to you, “What were you doing with him?” That’s when she sees the t shirt, which is clearly not yours. “y/n y/l/n. Oh my lord! Get yourself inside this instant. I can’t believe you were with the trash last night!”

You step back from her, looking at her like she’s crazy, “What? Mama, he’s not trash. He’s a decent human being.”

“who took advantage of you.” Your dad says, he’s motioning a police officer over.

“What are you doing?” You ask, looking at your dad.

“He’s not going to get away with this honey. You just tell the officer everything he did to you.” Your mother says, running her hand over your hair.

“Oh my god! No.” You shake your head, pushing her hand away, “He didn’t do anything! We didn’t do anything!” You look at JJ then your parents.

“Honey, you don’t have to lie to us.” Your father looks at the officer, “You need to arrest him. He’s the one who had my daughter last night. And it seems he took advantage of her as well.”

JJ holds his hands up in defense as the officer’s reach for him, “Okay, hold up, I didn’t do shit!”

“He didn’t do anything!” You begin to panic as the officer grabs JJ.

“Son, don’t make this any harder for yourself.” The officer explains. JJ’s eyes are wide and looking at you.

“Stop it!” You grab the officer’s arm, “he didn’t do anything to me. You can’t arrest him.”

The officer looks at your father then at you, “Ma’am. It’s okay, you’re safe now.”

Your father grabs your arm, pulling you away from JJ and the officer, “Let the officer do his job.”

“I didn’t do shit man! Come on!” JJ argues, as the officer starts to drag him away.

You rip your arm from your father’s running to JJ, wrapping your arms around his neck, “I’ll get you out of this, I promise.” You pull away to look at him and he nods, the officer pushing him into the cop car, slamming the door.

You turn to face your parents, anger all over your face, “What the hell is wrong with the two of you?! He didn’t do anything wrong!” You push through the two of them and storm inside, slamming the door.

~THIS NEXT PART DEALS WITH PHYSICAL ABUSE, PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND DON’T READ IF TRIGGERING~

“you think you can disrespect me like that?!” You dad screams. After the last cop car pulled out of your driveway, your dad had barged into your room and yanked you out of your bed, throwing you into the nearby wall. You knew this was coming, it was just a matter of time.

“He didn’t do anything!”

He sends a kick to your side, causing you to cry out in pain, the wounds from before not fully healed, “You don’t disrespect me like that!” He yanks you up from the ground by your hair, pushing you against the wall, his hands grip at your throat.

“Please.” You gasp for breath, gripping at his wrists, your eyes pleading.

“You’re an ungrateful bitch.” He spits, back handing you, “you’re to not get involved with trash! You hear me?!”

You sob, nodding.

He leans to your level, gripping your neck once more, making you look at him, “The Cameron’s will be here this evening and you WILL be on your best behavior. You WILL interact with Rafe Cameron so we can close the deal. You understand?!”

You whimper, nodding, “y-yes.”

He sends another punch against your face. He stands, composing himself. “If anyone asks, that boy was the one who did this to you.” He pushes his hair back as you sob on the floor of your bedroom, before stepping over your body and out of your room, slamming the door behind him

~ ENDS HERE ~

Your father and Ward Cameron had been at each other’s throats for years, for power and wealth. However, the last couple of weeks, things had changed, and new business deals were made. You were to woo Rafe Cameron and get close to him, to help your father close the deal with Ward. That’s what you and your father argued over yesterday before you went storming out of the house. You didn’t want to do it. You didn’t want to be a pawn in one of his games.

This wasn’t the first time your father had beat you. It all happened when he lost everything years ago. Your father made a deal with someone and it ended badly, causing him to lose everything. He took his anger out on you and has since then. Even when you guys moved to the OBX to start over and he started making money again, he took his anger and frustration out on you in any way possible.

Your mother knew of the abuse, she’d helplessly watched a few times, but she couldn’t do anything. She was a coward, wanting to live this luxurious lifestyle and in return she allowed her daughter to be beat. You hated your mother for it and you hated your father, but you were the perfect family. You had to be the perfect daughter and play along. Get good grades. Don’t party. Don’t drink or do drunks. Be a good girl. Your family had to keep their reputation up as this perfect family. However, your family was not perfect. There’s no such thing as perfect. It was all just an act.

When you finally had calmed down, you pulled yourself off your bedroom floor and made it to the bathroom. Your lip was busted, a new bruise forming around your eye. You slowly lifted your shirt, whimpering at the motion. The new blue and purple bruises covering the faded bruises. You slowly dropped the shirt before making your way out of the bathroom. You needed to help JJ. He was in this mess because of you.

When you arrived at the police station, everyone turned their heads at your new look. They knew too, but your father contributed enough to the police force that they turned the other way. You stepped up to the front desk, “JJ Maybank, he was brought in an hour ago.”

The lady types into her computer, shaking her head, “He was released as soon as he arrived.” She looks at you.

“Oh.. okay. Thanks,” You walked out of the station, looking around. You knew he hung out with John B Routledge and headed toward John B’s.

“So, wait, he arrested you?” Kie asks.

JJ nods, “Yup! Thought I had taken advantage of her.” He rolls his eyes, plopping down on the couch.

“That’s messed up dude.” Pope says.

“And then they just released you as soon as you arrived?” John B asks, “Why? I mean why go through all the trouble just to let you go?”

JJ shrugs, “I have no clue, man. But some shit is going on with her family. Her dad’s fucking psycho.” He does the crazy motion with his finger, “He’s always giving me this evil look. Anytime I see him.”

“sounds like it.” Kie leans back on the chair.

JJ looks down at his blunt, rolling it in his fingers, “I think he beats her.” JJ looks around at the pogues.

“No. There’s no way.” Pope says, “I’m there every week and never suspected it.”

“Plus, they’re perfect.” Kie adds, “I mean anytime they go out, they’re this perfectly happy little family.”

“Yeah but you guys don’t know the signs. I do.” He sighs, standing, “The way she changes when he’s around or when he touches her in anyway. I do the same thing around my father.” He mumbles, “Plus, what she said last night about what her dad did to her behind closed doors. It’s just sketchy dude.”

“JJ you can’t make that assumption though. She was drunk,” John B says, “I know you’ve been through hell, but she’s living a completely different life than you. Her family’s rich and perfect. She’s a kook. There’s no way her dad’s beating her.”

“I guess things aren’t always as they seem, huh?”

The pogues all turn around at the voice and are shocked when they see you and your appearance. The outline of your father’s fingers over your throat were starting to show. Your lip busted and your eye bruised and swollen. Their eyes are wide as they stare at you.

“Oh shit.” Pope says, slowly standing.

JJ takes in your appearance and all he wants to do is throw a punch through the wall. He slowly steps passed John B to get to you. He can see your eyes filling with tears as he steps closer. He doesn’t say anything but gently wraps you in a hug. He hated when he was right.

Obx taglist: @emmalvei-blog , @tregua-oca , @weirdbiwitch , @losers-club6 , @treestarrrrrrrr , @omgwhattheeven , @normatural , @lreincarnationl , @laurenron , @junkiemuppettxx , @beth-winchester21 , @divcrdown , @timotaychalabae , @moose-squirrel-asstiel , @tangledinsparkles , @prejudic3 , @lanarichards5 @ilikealotofpeople-younotsomuch , @fratboystark , @nas-marie-loves-u , @sunwardsss , @annedub , @jellyfishbeansontoast , @turtlee-says-rawr, @fanficscuziranout , @wellthathappened2 , @write-from-the-heart , @louisolos , @outrbank , @sunset-d-rive , @family-buisnes , @traumaflavouredjuulpod , @http-cherries , @k-k0129 , @mileven-reddie , @eclecticpuppyhollywoodhumanoid , @cinnamon-roll-seth , @teamnick , @rockyyc77 , @ellojustafangirlhere , @sataninsatin , @lordsagittarius , @helplessquotess , @katerosexx , @kiarasgold , @thee-sex , @sunshinemadds , @ceruleanjj , @nikki082489 , @ilovejjmaybank , @laubluered , @lcil123 , @notmcchkn , @ceruleanjj , @fangirlvoice , @maybebanks , @lolitstiana , @danicarosaline , @obx-beach , @katiaw2 , @hardyxlove , @kaelyn-lobrutto24 , @obxmxybxnk , @lasnaro , @thedarkqueenofavalon

All my works tag list: @blossomreed

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holyhellpod · 3 years

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Holy Hell: 3. Metanarrativity: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship? aka the analysis no one asked for.

In this ep, we delve into authorship, narrative, fandom and narrative meaning. And somehow, as always, bring it back to Cas and Misha Collins.

(Note: the reason I didn’t talk about Billie’s authorship and library is because I completely forgot it existed until I watched season 13 “Advanced Thanatology” again, while waiting for this episode to upload. I’ll find a way to work her into later episodes tho!)

I had to upload it as a new podcast to Spotify so if you could just re-subscribe that would be great! Or listen to it at these other links.

Please listen to the bit at the beginning about monetisation and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to message me here.

Apple | Spotify | Google

Transcript under the cut!

Warnings: discussions of incest, date rape, rpf, war, 9/11, the bush administration, abuse, mental health, addiction, homelessness. Most of these are just one off comments, they’re not full discussions.

Meta-Textuality: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship?

In the third episode of Season 6, “The Third Man,” Balthazar says to Cas, “you tore up the whole script and burned the pages.” That is the fundamental idea the writers of the first five seasons were trying to sell us: whatever grand plan the biblical God had cooking up is worth nothing in face of the love these men have—for each other and the world. Sam, Bobby, Cas and Dean will go to any lengths to protect one another and keep people safe. What’s real? What’s worth saving? People are real. Families are worth saving.

This show plugs free will as the most important thing a person, angel, demon or otherwise can have. The fact of the matter is that Dean was always going to fight against the status quo, Sam was always going to go his own way, and Bobby was always going to do his best for his boys. The only uncertainty in the entire narrative is Cas. He was never meant to rebel. He was never meant to fall from Heaven. He was supposed to fall in line, be a good soldier, and help bring on the apocalypse, but Cas was the first agent of free will in the show’s timeline. Sam followed Lucifer, Dean followed Michael, and John gave himself up for the sins of his children, at once both a God and Jesus figure. But Cas wasn’t modelled off anyone else. He is original. There are definitely some parallels to Ruby, but I would argue those are largely unintentional. Cas broke the mold.

That’s to say nothing of the impact he’s had on the fanbase, and the show itself, which would not have reached 15 seasons and be able to end the way they wanted it to without Cas and Misha Collins. His back must be breaking from carrying the entire show.

But what the holy hell are we doing here today? Not just talking about Cas. We’re talking about metanarrativity: as I define it, and for purposes of this episode, the story within a story, and the act of storytelling. We’re going to go through a select few episodes which I think exemplify the best of what this show has to offer in terms of framing the narrative. We’ll talk about characters like Chuck and Becky and the baby dykes in season 10. And most importantly we’ll talk about the audience’s role, our role, in the reciprocal relationship of storytelling. After all, a tv show is nothing without the viewer.

I was in fact introduced to the concept of metanarrativity by Supernatural, so the fact that I’m revisiting it six years after I finished my degree to talk about the show is one of life’s little jokes.

I’m brushing off my degree and bringing out the big guns (aka literary theorists) to examine this concept. This will be yet another piece of analysis that would’ve gone well in my English Lit degree, but I’ll try not to make it dry as dog shit.

First off, I’m going to argue that the relationship between the creators of Supernatural and the fans has always been a dialogue, albeit with a power imbalance. Throughout the series, even before explicitly metanarrative episodes like season 10 “Fan Fiction” and season 4 “the monster at the end of this book,” the creators have always engaged in conversations with the fans through the show. This includes but is not limited to fan conventions, where the creators have actual, live conversations with the fans. Misha Collins admitted at a con that he’d read fanfiction of Cas while he was filming season 4, but it’s pretty clear even from the first season that the creators, at the very least Eric Kripke, were engaging with fans. The show aired around the same time as Twitter and Tumblr were created, both of which opened up new passageways for fans to interact with each other, and for Twitter and Facebook especially, new passageways for fans to interact with creators and celebrities.

But being the creators, they have ultimate control over what is written, filmed and aired, while we can only speculate and make our own transformative interpretations. But at least since s4, they have engaged in meta narrative construction that at once speaks to fans as well as expands the universe in fun and creative ways. My favourite episodes are the ones where we see the Winchesters through the lens of other characters, such as the season 3 episode “Jus In Bello,” in which Sam and Dean are arrested by Victor Henriksen, and the season 7 episode “Slash Fiction” in which Dean and Sam’s dopplegangers rob banks and kill a bunch of people, loathe as I am to admit that season 7 had an effect on any part of me except my upchuck reflex. My second favourite episodes are the meta episodes, and for this episode of Holy Hell, we’ll be discussing a few: The French Mistake, he Monster at the end of this book, the real ghostbusters, Fan Fiction, Metafiction, and Don’t Call Me Shurley. I’ll also discuss Becky more broadly, because, like, of course I’ll be discussing Becky, she died for our sins.

Let’s take it back. The Monster At The End Of This Book — written by Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner and directed by Mike Rohl. Inarguably one of the better episodes in the first five seasons. Not only is Cas in it, looking so beautiful, but Sam gets something to do, thank god, and it introduces the character of Chuck, who becomes a source of comic relief over the next two seasons. The episode starts with Chuck Shurley, pen named Carver Edlund after my besties, having a vision while passed out drunk. He dreams of Sam and Dean larping as Feds and finding a series of books based on their lives that Chuck has written. They eventually track Chuck down, interrogate him, and realise that he’s a prophet of the lord, tasked with writing the Winchester Gospels. The B plot is Sam plotting to kill Lilith while Dean fails to get them out of the town to escape her. The C plot is Dean and Cas having a moment that strengthens their friendship and leads further into Cas’s eventual disobedience for Dean. Like the movie Disobedience. Exactly like the movie Disobedience. Cas definitely spits in Dean’s mouth, it’s kinda gross to be honest. Maybe I’m just not allo enough to appreciate art.

When Eric Kripke was showrunner of the first five seasons of Supernatural, he conceptualised the character of Chuck. Kripke as the author-god introduced the character of the author-prophet who would later become in Jeremy Carver’s showrun seasons the biblical God. Judith May Fathallah writes in “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural” that Kripke writes himself both into and out of the text, ending his era with Chuck winking at the camera, saying, “nothing really ends,” and disappearing. Kripke stayed on as producer, continuing to write episodes through Sera Gamble’s era, and was even inserted in text in the season 6 episode “The French Mistake”. So nothing really does end, not Kripke’s grip on the show he created, not even the show itself, which fans have jokingly referred to as continuing into its 16th season. Except we’re not joking. It will die when all of us are dead, when there is no one left to remember it. According to W R Fisher, humans are homo narrans, natural storytellers. The Supernatural fandom is telling a fidelitous narrative, one which matches our own beliefs, values and experiences instead of that of canon. Instead of, at Fathallah says, “the Greek tradition, that we should struggle to do the right thing simply because it is right, though we will suffer and be punished anyway,” the fans have created an ending for the characters that satisfies each and every one of our desires, because we each create our own endings. It’s better because we get to share them with each other, in the tradition of campfire stories, each telling our own version and building upon the others. If that’s not the epitome of mythmaking then I don’t know. It’s just great. Dean and Cas are married, Eileen and Sam are married, Jack is sometimes a baby who Claire and Kaia are forced to babysit, Jody and Donna are gonna get hitched soon. It’s season 17, time for many weddings, and Kevin Tran is alive. Kripke, you have no control over this anymore, you crusty hag.

Chuck is introduced as someone with power, but not influence over the story, only how the story is told through the medium of the novels. It’s basically a very badly written, non authorised biography, and Charlie reading literally every book and referencing things she should have no knowledge of is so damn creepy and funny. At first Chuck is surprised by his characters coming to life, despite having written it already, and when shown the intimidating array of weapons in Baby’s trunk he gets real scared. Which is the appropriate response for a skinny 5-foot-8 white guy in a bathrobe who writes terrible fantasy novels for a living.

As far as I can remember, this is the first explicitly metanarrative episode in the series, or at least the first one with in world consequences. It builds upon the lore of Christianity, angels, and God, while teasing what’s to come. Chuck and Sam have a conversation about how the rest of the season is going to play out, and Sam comes away with the impression that he’ll go down with the ship. They touch on Sam’s addiction to demon blood, which Chuck admits he didn’t write into the books, because in the world of supernatural, addiction should be demonised ha ha at every opportunity, except for Dean’s alcoholism which is cool and manly and should never be analysed as an unhealthy trauma coping mechanism.

Chuck is mostly impotent in the story of Sam and Dean, but his very presence presents an element of good luck that turns quickly into a force of antagonism in the series four finale, “Lucifer Rising”, when the archangel Raphael who defeats Lilith in this episode also kills Cas in the finale. It’s Cas’s quick thinking and Dean’s quick doing that resolve the episode and save them from Lilith, once again proving that free will is the greatest force in the universe. Cas is already tearing up pages and burning scripts. The fandom does the same, acting as gods of their own making in taking canon and transforming it into fan art. The fans aren’t impotent like Chuck, but neither do we have sway over the story in the way that Cas and Dean do. Sam isn’t interested in changing the story in the same way—he wants to kill Lilith and save the world, but in doing so continues the story in the way it was always supposed to go, the way the angels and the demons and even God wanted him to.

Neither of them are author-gods in the way that God is. We find out later that Chuck is in fact the real biblical god, and he engineers everything. The one thing he doesn’t engineer, however, is Castiel, and I’ll get to that in a minute.

The Real Ghostbusters

Season 5’s “The real ghostbusters,” written by Nancy Weiner and Erik Kripke, and directed by James L Conway, situates the Winchesters at a fan convention for the Supernatural books. While there, they are confronted by a slew of fans cosplaying as Sam, Dean, Bobby, the scarecrow, Azazel, and more. They happen to stumble upon a case, in the midst of the game where the fans pretend to be on a case, and with the help of two fans cosplaying as Sam and Dean, they put to rest a group of homicidal ghost children and save the day. Chuck as the special guest of the con has a hero moment that spurs Becky on to return his affections. And at the end, we learn that the Colt, which they’ve been hunting down to kill the devil, was given to a demon named Crowley. It’s a fun episode, but ultimately skippable. This episode isn’t so much metanarrative as it is metatextual—metatextual meaning more than one layer of text but not necessarily about the storytelling in those texts—but let’s take a look at it anyway.

The metanarrative element of a show about a series of books about the brothers the show is based on is dope and expands upon what we saw in “the monster at the end of this book”. But the episode tells a tale about about the show itself, and the fandom that surrounds it.

Where “The Monster At The End Of This Book” and the season 5 premiere “Sympathy For The Devil” poked at the coiled snake of fans and the concept of fandom, “the real ghostbusters” drags them into the harsh light of an enclosure and antagonises them in front of an audience. The metanarrative element revolves around not only the books themselves, but the stories concocted within the episode: namely Barnes and Demian the cosplayers and the story of the ghosts. The Winchester brothers’s history that we’ve seen throughout the first five seasons of the show is bared in a tongue in cheek way: while we cried with them when Sam and Dean fought with John, now the story is thrown out in such a way as to mock both the story and the fans’ relationship to it. Let me tell you, there is a lot to be made fun of on this show, but the fans’ relationship to the story of Sam, Dean and everyone they encounter along the way isn’t part of it. I don’t mean to be like, wow you can’t make fun of us ever because we’re special little snowflakes and we take everything so seriously, because you are welcome to make fun of us, but when the creators do it, I can’t help but notice a hint of malice. And I think that’s understandable in a way. Like The relationship between creator and fan is both layered and symbiotic. While Kripke and co no doubt owe the show’s popularity to the fans, especially as the fandom has grown and evolved over time, we’re not exactly free of sin. And don’t get me wrong, no fandom is. But the bad apples always seem to outweigh the good ones, and bad experiences can stick with us long past their due.

However, portraying us as losers with no lives who get too obsessed with this show — well, you know, actually, maybe they’re right. I am a loser with no life and I am too obsessed with this show. So maybe they have a point. But they’re so harsh about it. From wincestie Becky who they paint as a desperate shrew to these cosplayers who threaten Dean’s very perception of himself, we’re not painted in a very good light.

Dean says to Demian and Barnes, “It must be nice to get out of your mom’s basement.” He’s judging them for deriving pleasure from dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a night. He doesn’t seem to get the irony that he does that for a living. As the seasons wore on, the creators made sure to include episodes where Dean’s inner geek could run rampant, often in the form of dressing up like a cowboy, such as season six “Frontierland” and season 13 “Tombstone”. I had to take a break from writing this to laugh for five minutes because Dean is so funny. He’s a car gay but he only likes one car. He doesn’t follow sports. His echolalia causes him to blurt out lines from his favourite movies. He’s a posse magnet. And he loves cosplay. But he will continually degrade and insult anyone who expresses interest in role play, fandom, or interests in general. Maybe that’s why Sam is such a boring person, because Dean as his mother didn’t allow him to have any interests outside of hunting. And when Sam does express interests, Dean insults him too. What a dick. He’s my soulmate, but I am not going to stop listening to hair metal for him. That’s where I draw the line.

Where “the monster at the end of this book” is concerned with narrative and authorship, “the real ghostbusters” is concerned with fandom and fan reactions to the show. It’s not really the best example to talk about in an episode about metanarrativity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It veers from talk of narrative by focusing on the people in the periphery of the narrative—the fans and the author. In season 9 “Metafiction,” Metatron asks the question, who gives the story meaning? The text would have you believe it’s the characters. The angels think it’s God. The fandom think it’s us. The creators think it’s them. Perhaps we will never come to a consensus or even a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps that’s the point.

The ultimate takeaway from this episode is that ordinary people, the people Sam and Dean save, the people they save the world for, the people they die for again and again, are what give their story meaning. Chuck defeats a ghost and saves the people in the conference room from being murdered. Demian and Barnes, don’t ask me which is which, burn the bodies of the ghost children and lay their spirits to rest. The text says that ordinary, every day people can rise to the challenge of becoming extraordinary. It’s not a bad note to end on, by any means. And then we find out that Demian and Barnes are a couple, which of course Dean is surprised at, because he lacks object permanence.

This is no doubt influenced by how a good portion of the transformative fandom are queer, and also a nod to the wincesties and RPF writers like Becky who continue to bottom feed off the wrong message of this show. But then, the creators encourage that sort of thing, so who are the real clowns here? Everyone. Everyone involved with this show in any way is a clown, except for the crew, who were able to feed their families for more than a decade.

Okay side note… over the past year or so I’ve been in process of realising that even in fandom queers are in the minority. I know the statistic is that 10% of the world population is queer, but that doesn’t seem right to me? Maybe because 4/5 closest friends are queer and I hang around queers online, but I also think I lack object permanence when it comes to straight people. Like I just do not interact with straight people on a regular basis outside of my best friend and parents and school. So when I hear that someone in fandom is straight I’m like, what the fuck… can you keep that to yourself please? Like if I saw Misha Collins coming out as straight I would be like, I didn’t ask and you didn’t have to tell. Okay I’m mostly joking, but I do forget straight people exist. Mostly I don’t think about whether people are gay or trans or cis or straight unless they’ve explicitly said it and then yes it does colour my perception of them, because of course it would. If they’re part of the queer community, they’re my people. And if they’re straight and cis, then they could very well pose a threat to me and my wellbeing. But I never ask people because it’s not my business to ask. If they feel comfortable enough to tell me, that’s awesome. I think Dean feels the same way. Towards the later seasons at least, he has a good reaction when it’s revealed that someone is queer, even if it is mostly played off as a joke. It’s just that he doesn’t have a frame of reference in his own life to having a gay relationship, either his or someone he’s close to. He says to Cesar and Jesse in season 11 “The Critters” that they fight like brothers, because that’s the only way he knows how to conceptualise it. He doesn’t have a way to categorise his and Cas’s relationship, which is in many ways, long before season 15 “Despair,” harking back even to the parallels between Ruby and Cas in season 3 and 4, a romantic one, aside from that Cas is like a brother to him. Because he’s never had anyone in his life care for him the way Cas does that wasn’t Sam and Bobby, and he doesn’t recognise the romantic element of their relationship until literally Cas says it to him in the third last episode, he just—doesn’t know what his and Cas’s relationship is. He just really doesn’t know. And he grew up with a father who despised him for taking the mom and wife role in their family, the role that John placed him in, for being subservient to John’s wishes where Sam was more rebellious, so of course he wouldn’t understand either his own desires or those of anyone around him who isn’t explicitly shoving their tits in his face. He moulded his entire personality around what he thought John wanted of him, and John says to him explicitly in season 14 “Lebanon”, “I thought you’d have a family,” meaning, like him, wife and two rugrats. And then, dear god, Dean says, thinking of Sam, Cas, Jack, Claire, and Mary, “I have a family.” God that hurts so much. But since for most of his life he hasn’t been himself, he’s been the man he thought his father wanted him to be, he’s never been able to examine his own desires, wants and goals. So even though he’s really good at reading people, he is not good at reading other people’s desires unless they have nefarious intentions. Because he doesn’t recognise what he feels is attraction to men, he doesn’t recognise that in anyone else.

Okay that’s completely off topic, wow. Getting back to metanarrativity in “The Real Ghostbusters,” I’ll just cap it off by saying that the books in this episode are more a frame for the events than the events themselves. However, there are some good outtakes where Chuck answers some questions, and I’m not sure how much of that is scripted and how much is Rob Benedict just going for it, but it lends another element to the idea of Kripke as author-god. The idea of a fan convention is really cool, because at this point Supernatural conventions had been running for about 4 years, since 2006. It’s definitely a tribute to the fans, but also to their own self importance. So it’s a mixed bag, considering there were plenty of elements in there that show the good side of fandom and fans, but ultimately the Winchesters want nothing to do with it, consider it weird, and threaten Chuck when he says he’ll start releasing books again, which as far as they know is his only source of income. But it’s a fun episode and Dean is a grouchy bitch, so who the holy hell cares?

Season 10 episode “fanfiction” written by my close personal friend Robbie Thompson and directed by Phil Sgriccia is one of the funniest episodes this show has ever done. Not only is it full of metatextual and metanarrative jokes, the entire premise revolves around fanservice, but in like a fun and interesting way, not fanservice like killing the band Kansas so that Dean can listen to “Carry On My Wayward Son” in heaven twice. Twice. One version after another. Like I would watch this musical seven times in theatre, I would buy the soundtrack, I would listen to it on repeat and make all my friends listen to it when they attend my online Jitsi birthday party. This musical is my Hamilton. Top ten episodes of this show for sure. The only way it could be better is if Cas was there. And he deserved to be there. He deserved to watch little dyke Castiel make out with her girlfriend with her cute little wings, after which he and Dean share uncomfortable eye contact. Dean himself is forever coming to terms with the fact that gay people exist, but Cas should get every opportunity he can to hear that it’s super cool and great and awesome to be queer. But really he should be in every episode, all of them, all 300 plus episodes including the ones before angels were introduced. I’m going to commission the guy who edits Paddington into every movie to superimpose Cas standing on the highway into every episode at least once.

“Fan Fiction” starts with a tv script and the words “Supernatural pilot created by Eric Kripke”. This Immediately sets up the idea that it’s toying with narrative. Blah blah blah, some people go missing, they stumble into a scene from their worst nightmares: the school is putting on a musical production of a show inspired by the Supernatural books. It’s a comedy of errors. When people continue to go missing, Sam and Dean have to convince the girls that something supernatural is happening, while retaining their dignity and respect. They reveal that they are the real Sam and Dean, and Dean gives the director Marie a summary of their lives over the last five seasons, but they aren’t taken seriously. Because, like, of course they aren’t. Even when the girls realise that something supernatural is happening, they don’t actually believe that the musical they’ve made and the series of books they’re basing it on are real. Despite how Sam and Dean Winchester were literal fugitives for many years at many different times, and this was on the news, and they were wanted by the FBI, despite how they pretend to be FBI, and no one mentions it??? Did any of the staffwriters do the required reading or just do what I used to do for my 40 plus page readings of Baudrillard and just skim the first sentence of every paragraph? Neat hack for you: paragraphs are set up in a logical order of Topic, Example, Elaboration, Linking sentence. Do you have to read 60 pages of some crusty French dude waxing poetic about how his best friend Pierre wants to shag his wife and making that your problem? Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Boom, done. Just cut your work in half.

The musical highlights a lot of the important moments of the show so far. The brothers have, as Charlie Bradbury says, their “broment,” and as Marie says, their “boy melodrama scene,” while she insinuates that there is a sexual element to their relationship. This show never passed up an opportunity to mention incest. It’s like: mentioning incest 5000 km, not being disgusting 1 km, what a hard decision. Actually, they do have to walk on their knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. But there are other moments—such as Mary burning on the ceiling, a classic, Castiel waiting for Dean at the side of the highway, and Azazel poisoning Sam. With the help of the high schoolers, Sam and Dean overcome Calliope, the muse and bad guy of the episode, and save the day. What began as their lives reinterpreted and told back to them turns into a story they have some agency over.

In this episode, as opposed to “The Monster At The End Of This Book,” The storytelling has transferred from an alcoholic in a bathrobe into the hands of an overbearing and overachieving teenage girl, and honestly why not. Transformative fiction is by and large run by women, and queer women, so Marie and her stage manager slash Jody Mills’s understudy Maeve are just following in the footsteps of legends. This kind of really succinctly summarises the difference between curative fandom and transformative fandom, the former of which is populated mostly by men, and the latter mostly by women. As defined by LordByronic in 2015, Curative fandom is more like enjoying the text, collecting the merchandise, organising the knowledge — basically Reddit in terms of fandom curation. Transformative fandom is transforming the source text in some way — making fanart, fanfic, mvs, or a musical — basically Tumblr in general, and Archive of our own specifically. Like what do non fandom people even do on Tumblr? It is a complete mystery to me. Whereas Chuck literally writes himself into the narrative he receives through visions, Marie and co have agency and control over the narrative by writing it themselves.

Chuck does appear in the episode towards the end, his first appearance after five seasons. The theory that he killed those lesbian theatre girls makes me wanna curl up and die, so I don’t subscribe to it. Chuck watched the musical and he liked it and he gave unwarranted notes and then he left, the end.

The Supernatural creative team is explicitly acknowledging the fandom’s efforts by making this episode. They’re writing us in again, with more obsessive fans, but with lethbians this time, which makes it infinitely better. And instead of showing us as potential date rapists, we’re just cool chicks who like to make art. And that’s fucken awesome.

I just have to note that the characters literally say the word Destiel after Dean sees the actors playing Dean and Cas making out. He storms off and tells Sam to shut the fuck up when Sam makes fun of him, because Dean’s sexuality is NOT threatened he just needs to assert his dominance as a straight hetero man who has NEVER looked at another man’s lips and licked his own. He just… forgets that gay people exist until someone reminds him. BUT THEN, after a rousing speech that is stolen from Rent or Wicked or something, he echoes Marie’s words back, saying “put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” What does Dean know about subbing, I wonder. Okay I’m suddenly reminded that he did literally go to a kink bar and get hit on by a leather daddy. Oh Dean, the experiences you have as a broad-shouldered, pixie-faced man with cowboy legs. You were born for this role.

Metatron is my favourite villain. As one tumblr user pointed out, he is an evil English literature major, which is just a normal English literature major. The season nine episode “Meta Fiction” written by my main man robbie thompson and directed by thomas j wright, happens within a curious season. Castiel, once again, becomes the leader of a portion of the heavenly host to take down Metatron, and Dean is affected by the Mark Of Cain. Sam was recently possessed by Gadreel, who killed Kevin in Sam’s body and then decided to run off with Metatron. Metatron himself is recruiting angels to join him, in the hopes that he can become the new God. It’s the first introduction of Hannah, who encourages Cas to recruit angels himself to take on Metatron. Also, we get to see Gabriel again, who is always a delight.

This episode is a lot of fun. Metatron poses questions like, who tells a story and who is the most important person in the telling? Is it the writer? The audience? He starts off staring over his typewriter to address the camera, like a pompous dickhead. No longer content with consuming stories, he’s started to write his own. And they are hubristic ones about becoming God, a better god than Chuck ever was, but to do it he needs to kill a bunch of people and blame it on Cas. So really, he’s actually exactly like Chuck who blamed everything on Lucifer.

But I think the most apt analogy we can use for this in terms of who is the creator is to think of Metatron as a fanfiction writer. He consumes the media—the Winchester Gospels—and starts to write his own version of events—leading an army to become God and kill Cas. Nevermind that no one has been able to kill Cas in a way that matters or a way that sticks. Which is canon, and what Metatron is trying to do is—well not fanon because it actually does impact the Winchesters’ storyline. It would be like if one of the writers of Supernatural began writing Supernatural fanfiction before they got a job on the show. Which as my generation and the generations coming after me get more comfortable with fanfiction and fandom, is going to be the case for a lot of shows. I think it’s already the case for Riverdale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the woman who wrote the bi Dean essay go to work on Riverdale? Or something? I dunno, I have the post saved in my tumblr likes but that is quagmire of epic proportions that I will easily get lost in if I try to find it.

Okay let me flex my literary degree. As Englund and Leach say in “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity,” “The influential “literary turn,” in which the problems of ethnography were seen as largely textual and their solutions as lying in experimental writing seems to have lost its impetus.” This can be taken to mean, in the context of Supernatural, that while Metatron’s writings seek to forge a new path in history, forgoing fate for a new kind of divine intervention, the problem with Metatron is that he’s too caught up in the textual, too caught up in the writing, to be effectual. And this as we see throughout seasons 9, 10 and 11, has no lasting effect. Cas gets his grace back, Dean survives, and Metatron becomes a powerless human. In this case, the impetus is his grace, which he loses when Cas cuts it out of him, a mirror to Metatron cutting out Cas’s grace.

However, I realise that the concept of ethnography in Supernatural is a flawed one, ethnography being the observation of another culture: a lot of the angels observe humanity and seem to fit in. However, Cas has to slowly acclimatise to the Winchesters as they tame him, but he never quite fit in—missing cues, not understanding jokes or Dean’s personal space, the scene where he says, “We have a guinea pig? Where?” Show him the guinea pig Sam!!! He wants to see it!!! At most he passes as a human with autism. Cas doesn’t really observe humanity—he observes nature, as seen in season 7 “reading is fundamental” and “survival of the fittest”. Even the human acts he talks about in season 6 “the man who would be king” are from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He certainly doesn’t observe popular culture, which puts him at odds with Dean, who is made up of 90 per cent pop culture references and 10 per cent flannel. Metatron doesn’t seek to blend in with humanity so much as control it, which actually is the most apt example of ethnography for white people in the last—you know, forever. But of course the writers didn’t seek to make this analogy. It is purely by chance, and maybe I’m the only person insane enough to realise it. But probably not. There are a lot of cookies much smarter than me in the Supernatural fandom and they’ve like me have grown up and gone to university and gotten real jobs in the real world and real haircuts. I’m probably the only person to apply Englund and Leach to it though.

And yes, as I read this paper I did need to have one tab open on Google, with the word “define” in the search bar.

Metatron has a few lines in this that I really like. He says:

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

“You’re going to have to follow my script.”

“I’m an entity of my word.”

It’s really obvious, but they’re pushing the idea that Metatron has become an agent of authorship instead of just a consumer of media. He even throws a Supernatural book into his fire — a symbolic act of burning the script and flipping the writer off, much like Cas did to God and the angels in season 5. He’s not a Kripke figure so much as maybe a Gamble, Carver or Dabb figure, in that he usurps Chuck and becomes the author-god. This would be extremely postmodern of him if he didn’t just do exactly what Chuck was doing, except worse somehow. In fact, it’s postmodern of Cas to reject heaven’s narrative and fall for Dean. As one tumblr user points out, Cas really said “What’s fate compared to Dean Winchester?”

Okay this transcript is almost 8000 words already, and I still have two more episodes to review, and more things to say, so I’ll leave you with this. Metatron says to Cas, “Out of all of God’s wind up toys, you’re the only one with any spunk.” Why Cas has captured his attention comes down more than anything to a process of elimination. Most angels fucking suck. They follow the rules of whoever puts themselves in charge, and they either love Cas or hate him, or just plainly wanna fuck him, and there have been few angels who stood out. Balthazar was awesome, even though I hated him the first time I watched season 6. He UNSUNK the Titanic. Legend status. And Gabriel was of course the OG who loves to fuck shit up. But they’re gone at this stage in the narrative, and Cas survives. Cas always survives. He does have spunk. And everyone wants to fuck him.

Season 11 episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” the last episode written by the Christ like figure of Robbie Thompson — are we sensing a theme here? — and directed by my divine enemy Robert Singer, starts with Metatron dumpster diving for food. I’m not even going to bother commenting on this because like… it’s supernatural and it treats complex issues like homelessness and poverty with zero nuance. Like the Winchesters live in poverty but it’s fun and cool because they always scrape by but Metatron lives in poverty and it’s funny. Cas was homeless and it was hard but he needed to do it to atone for his sins, and Metatron is homeless and it’s funny because he brought it on himself by being a murderous dick. Fucking hell. Robbie, come on. The plot focuses on God, also known as Chuck Shurley, making himself known to Metatron and asking for Metatron’s opinion on his memoir. Meanwhile, the Winchesters battle another bout of infectious serial killer fog sent by Amara. At the end of the episode, Chuck heals everyone affected by the fog and reveals himself to Sam and Dean.

Chuck says that he didn’t foresee Metatron trying to become god, but the idea of Season 15 is that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all their lives. When Metatron tries, he fails miserably, is locked up in prison, tortured by Dean, then rendered useless as a human and thrown into the world without a safety net. His authorship is reduced to nothing, and he is reduced to dumpster diving for food. He does actually attempt to live his life as someone who records tragedies as they happen and sells the footage to news stations, which is honestly hilarious and amazing and completely unsurprising because Metatron is, at the heart of it, an English Literature major. In true bastard style, he insults Chuck’s work and complains about the bar, but slips into his old role of editor when Chuck asks him to.

The theory I’m consulting for this uses the term metanarrative in a different way than I am. They consider it an overarching narrative, a grand narrative like religion. Chuck’s biography is in a sense most loyal to Middleton and Walsh’s view of metanarrative: “the universal story of the world from arche to telos, a grand narrative encompassing world history from beginning to end.” Except instead of world history, it’s God’s history, and since God is construed in Supernatural as just some guy with some powers who is as fallible as the next some guy with some powers, his story has biases and agendas. Okay so in the analysis I’m getting Middleton and Walsh’s quotes from, James K A Smith’s “A little story about metanarratives,” Smith dunks on them pretty bad, but for Supernatural purposes their words ring true. Think of them as the BuckLeming of Lyotard’s postmodern metanarrative analysis: a stopped clock right twice a day. Is anyone except me understanding the sequence of words I’m saying right now. Do I just have the most specific case of brain worms ever found in human history. I’m currently wearing my oversized Keith Haring shirt and dipping pretzels into peanut butter because it’s 3.18 in the morning and the homosexuals got to me. The total claims a comprehensive metanarrative of world history make do indeed, as Middleton and Walsh claim, lead to violence, stay with me here, because Chuck’s legacy is violence, and so is Metatron’s, and in trying to reject the metanarrative, Sam and Dean enact violence. Mostly Dean, because in season 15 he sacrifices his own son twice to defeat Chuck. But that means literally fighting violence with violence. Violence is, after all, all they know. Violence is the lens through which they interact with the world. If the writers wanted to do literally anything else, they could have continued Dean’s natural character progression into someone who eschews the violence that stems from intergeneration trauma — yes I will continue to use the phrase intergenerational trauma whenever I refer to Dean — and becomes a loving father and husband. Sam could eschew violence and start a monster rehabilitation centre with Eileen.

This episode of Holy Hell is me frantically grabbing at straws to make sense of a narrative that actively hates me and wants to kick me to death. But the violence Sam and Dean enact is not at a metanarrative level, because they are not author-gods of their own narrative. In season 15 “Atomic Monsters,” Becky points out that the ending of the Supernatural book series is bad because the brothers die, and then, in a shocking twist of fate, Dean does die, and the narrative is bad. The writers set themselves a goal post to kick through and instead just slammed their heat into the bars. They set up the dartboard and were like, let’s aim the darts at ourselves. Wouldn’t that be fun. Season 15’s writing is so grossly incompetent that I believe every single conspiracy theory that’s come out of the finale since November, because it’s so much more compelling than whatever the fuck happened on the road so far. Carry on? Why yes, I think I will carry on, carry on like a pork chop, screaming at the bars of my enclosure until I crack my voice open like an egg and spill out all my rage and frustration. The world will never know peace again. It’s now 3.29 and I’ve written over 9000 words of this transcript. And I’m not done.

Middleton and Walsh claim that metanarratives are merely social constructions masquerading as universal truths. Which is, exactly, Supernatural. The creators have constructed this elaborate web of narrative that they want to sell us as the be all and end all. They won’t let the actors discuss how they really feel about the finale. They won’t let Misha Collins talk about Destiel. They want us to believe it was good, actually, that Dean, a recovering alcoholic with a 30 year old infant son and a husband who loves him, deserved to die by getting NAILED, while Sam, who spent the last four seasons, the entirety of Andrew Dabb’s run as showrunner, excelling at creating a hunter network and romancing both the queen of hell and his deaf hunter girlfriend, should have lived a normie life with a normie faceless wife. Am I done? Not even close. I started this episode and I’m going to finish it.

When we find out that Chuck is God in the episode of season 11, it turns everything we knew about Chuck on its head. We find out in Season 15 that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all along, that everything that happened to them is his doing. The one thing he couldn’t control was Cas’s choice to rebel. If we take him at his word, Cas is the only true force of free will in the entire universe, and more specifically, the love that Cas had for Dean which caused him to rebel and fall from heaven. — This theory has holes of course. Why would Lucifer torture Lilith into becoming the first demon if he didn’t have free will? Did Chuck make him do that? And why? So that Chuck could be the hero and Lucifer the bad guy, like Lucifer claimed all along? That’s to say nothing of Adam and Eve, both characters the show introduced in different ways, one as an antagonist and the other as the narrative foil to Dean and Cas’s romance. Thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I’m just not gunna.

So Chuck was doing the writing all along. And as Becky claims in “Atomic Monsters,” it’s bad writing. The writers explicitly said, the ending Chuck wrote is bad because there’s no Cas and everyone dies, and then they wrote an ending where there is no Cas and everyone dies. So talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Talk about giant craters in the earth you could see from 800 kilometres away but you still fell into. Meanwhile fan writers have the opportunity to write a million different endings, all of which satisfy at least one person. The fandom is a hydra, prolific and unstoppable, and we’ll keep rewriting the ending a million more times.

And all this is not even talking about the fact that Chuck is a man, Metatron is a man, Sam and Dean and Cas are men, and the writers and directors of the show are, by an overwhelming majority, men. Most of them are white, straight, cis men. Feminist scholarship has done a lot to unpack the damage done by paternalistic approaches to theory, sociology, ethnography, all the -ys, but I propose we go a step further with these men. Kill them. Metanarratively, of course. Amara, the Darkness, God’s sister, had a chance to write her own story without Chuck, after killing everything in the universe, and I think she had the right idea. Knock it all down to build it from the ground up. Billie also had the opportunity to write a narrative, but her folly was, of course, putting any kind of faith in the Winchesters who are also grossly incompetent and often fail up. She is, as all author-gods on this show are, undone by Castiel. The only one with any spunk, the only one who exists outside of his own narrative confines, the only one the author-gods don’t have any control over. The one who died for love, and in dying, gave life.

The French Mistake

Let’s change the channel. Let’s calm ourselves and cleanse our libras. Let’s commune with nature and chug some sage bongs.

“The French Mistake” is a song from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles. In the iconic second last scene of the film, as the cowboys fight amongst themselves, the camera pans back to reveal a studio lot and a door through which a chorus of gay dancersingers perform “the French Mistake”. The lyrics go, “Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push. You’ll be surprised you’re doing the French Mistake.”

I’m not sure what went through the heads of the Supernatural creators when they came up with the season 6 episode, “The French Mistake,” written by the love of my life Ben Edlund and directed by some guy Charles Beeson. Just reading the Wikipedia summary is so batshit incomprehensible. In short: Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean on the tv show Supernatural. I don’t think this had ever been done in television history before. The first seven seasons of this show are certifiable. Like this was ten years ago. Think about the things that have happened in the last 10 slutty, slutty years. We have lived through atrocities and upheaval and the entire world stopping to mourn, but also we had twitter throughout that entire time, which makes it infinitely worse.

In this universe, Sam and Dean wear makeup, Cas is played by attractive crying man Misha Collins, and Genevieve Padalecki nee Cortese makes an appearance. Magic doesn’t exist, Serge has good ideas, and the two leads have to act in order to get through the day. Sorry man I do not know how to pronounce your name.

Sidenote: I don’t know if me being attracted aesthetically to Misha Collins is because he’s attractive, because this show has gaslighted me into thinking he’s attractive, or because Castiel’s iconic entrance in 2008 hit my developing mind like a torpedo full of spaghetti and blew my fucking brains all over the place. It’s one of life’s little mysteries and God’s little gifts.

Let’s talk about therapy. More specifically, “Agency and purpose in narrative therapy: questioning the postmodern rejection of metanarrative” by Cameron Lee. In this paper, Lee outlines four key ideas as proposed by Freedman and Combs:

Realities are socially constructed

Realities are constituted through language

Realities are organised and maintained through narrative

And there are no essential truths.

Let’s break this down in the case of this episode. Realities are socially constructed: the reality of Sam and Dean arose from the Bush era. Do I even need to elaborate? From what I understand with my limited Australian perception, and being a child at the time, 9/11 really was a prominent shifting point in the last twenty years. As Americans describe it, sometimes jokingly, it was the last time they were really truly innocent. That means to me that until they saw the repercussions of their government’s actions in funding turf wars throughout the middle east for a good chunk of the 20th Century, they allowed themselves to be hindered by their own ignorance. The threat of terrorism ran rampant throughout the States, spurred on by right wing nationalists and gun-toting NRA supporters, so it’s really no surprise that the show Supernatural started with the premise of killing everything in sight and driving around with only your closest kin and a trunk full of guns. Kripke constructed that reality from the social-political climate of the time, and it has wrought untold horrors on the minds of lesbians who lived through the noughties, in that we are now attracted to Misha Collins.

Number two: Realities are constituted through language. Before a show can become a show, it needs to be a script. It’s written down, typed up, and given to actors who say the lines out loud. In this respect, they are using the language of speech and words to convey meaning. But tv shows are not all about words, and they’re barely about scripts. From what I understand of being raised by television, they are about action, visuals, imagery, and behaviours. All of the work that goes into them—the scripts, the lighting, the audio, the sound mixing, the cameras, the extras, the ADs, the gaffing, the props, the stunts, everything—is about conveying a story through the medium of images. In that way, images are the language. The reality of the show Supernatural, inside the show Supernatural, is constituted through words: the script, the journalists talking to Sam, the makeup artist taking off Dean’s makeup, the conversations between the creators, the tweets Misha sends. But also through imagery: the fish tank in Jensen’s trailer, the model poses on the front cover of the magazine, the opulence of Jared’s house, Misha’s iconic sweater. Words and images are the language that constitutes both of these realities. Okay for real, I feel like I’ve only seen this episode max three times, including when I watched it for research for this episode, but I remember so much about it.

Number three: realities are organised and maintained through narrative. In this universe of the French Mistake, their lives are structured around two narratives: the internal narrative of the show within the show, in which they are two actors on a tv set; and the episode narrative in which they need to keep the key safe and return to their own universe. This is made difficult by the revelation that magic doesn’t work in this universe, however, they find a way. Before they can get back, though, an avenging angel by the name of Virgil guns down author-god Eric Kripke and tries to kill the Winchesters. However, they are saved by Balthazar and the freeze frame and brought back into their own world, the world of Supernatural the show, not Supernatural the show within the show within the nesting doll. And then that reality is done with, never to be revisited or even mentioned, but with an impact that has lasted longer than the second Bush administration.

And number four: there are no essential truths. This one is a bit tricky because I can’t find what Lee means by essential truths, so I’m just going to interpret that. To me, essential truths means what lies beneath the narratives we tell ourselves. Supernatural was a show that ran for 15 years. Supernatural had actors. Supernatural was showrun by four different writers. In the show within a show, there is nothing, because that ceases to exist for longer than the forty two minute episode “The French Mistake”. And since Supernatural no longer exists except in our computers, it is nothing too. It is only the narratives we tell ourselves to sleep better at night, to wake up in the morning with a smile, to get through the day, to connect with other people, to understand ourselves better. It’s not even the narrative that the showrunners told, because they have no agency over it as soon as it shows up on our screens. The essential truth of the show is lost in the translation from creating to consuming. Who gives the story meaning? The people watching it and the people creating it. We all do.

Lee says that humans are predisposed to construct narratives in order to make sense of the world. We see this in cultures from all over the world: from cave paintings to vases, from The Dreaming to Beowulf, humans have always constructed stories. The way you think about yourself is a story that you’ve constructed. The way you interact with your loved ones and the furries you rightfully cyberbully on Twitter is influenced by the narratives you tell yourself about them. And these narratives are intricate, expansive, personalised, and can colour our perceptions completely, so that we turn into a different person when we interact with one person as opposed to another.

Whatever happened in season 6, most of which I want to forget, doesn’t interest me in the way I’m telling myself the writers intended. For me, the entirety of season 6 was based around the premise of Cas being in love with Dean, and the complete impotence of this love. He turns up when Dean calls, he agonises as he watches Dean rake leaves and live his apple pie life with Lisa, and Dean is the person he feels most horribly about betraying. He says, verbatim, to Sam, “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” And Balthazar says, “You’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you.” He says this in season 6, and we couldn’t do a fucken thing about it.

The song “The French Mistake” shines a light on the hidden scene of gay men performing a gay narrative, in the midst of a scene about the manliest profession you can have: professional horse wrangler, poncho wearer, and rodeo meister, the cowboy. If this isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the lovestory between Dean and Cas, which Ben Edlund has been championing from day fucking one of Misha Collins walking onto that set with his sex hair and chapped lips, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re even doing here. What in the hell else could it possibly mean. The layers to this. The intricacy. The agendas. The subtextual AND blatant queerness. The micro aggressions Crowley aimed at Car in “The Man Who Would Be King,” another Bedlund special. Bed Edlund is a fucking genius. Bed Edlund is cool girl. Ben Edlund is the missing link. Bed Edlund IS wikileaks. Ben Edlund is a cool breeze on a humid summer day. Ben Edlund is the stop loading button on a browser tab. Ben Edlund is the perfect cross between Spotify and Apple Music, in which you can search for good playlists, but without having to be on Spotify. He can take my keys and fuck my wife. You best believe I’m doing an entire episode of Holy Hell on Bedlund’s top five. He is the reason I want to get into staffwriting on a tv show. I saw season 4 episode “On the head of a pin” when my brain was still torpedoed spaghetti mush from the premiere, and it nestled its way deep into my exposed bones, so that when I finally recovered from that, I was a changed person. My god, this transcript is 11,000 words, and I haven’t even finished the Becky section. Which is a good transition.

Oh, Becky. She is an incarnation of how the writers, or at least Kripke, view the fans. Watching season 5 “Sympathy for the Devil” live in 2009 was a whole fucking trip that I as a baby gay was not prepared for. Figuring out my sexuality was a journey that started with the Supernatural fandom and is in some aspects still raging against the dying of the light today. Add to that, this conception of the audience was this, like, personification of the librarian cellist from Juno, but also completely without boundaries, common sense, or shame. It made me wonder about my position in the narrative as a consumer consuming. Is that how Kripke saw me, specifically? Was I like Becky? Did my forays into DeanCasNatural on El Jay dot com make me a fucking loser whose only claim to fame is writing some nasty fanfiction that I’ve since deleted all traces of? Don’t get me wrong, me and my unhinged Casgirl friends loved Becky. I can’t remember if I ever wrote any fanfiction with her in it because I was mostly writing smut, which is extremely Becky coded of me, but I read some and my friends and I would always chat about her when she came up. She was great entertainment value before season 7. But in the eyes of the powers that be, Becky, like the fans themselves, are expendable. First they turned her into a desperate bride wannabe who drugs Sam so that he’ll be with her, then Chuck waves his hand and she disappears. We’re seeing now with regards to Destiel, Cas, and Misha Collins this erasure of them from the narrative. Becky says in season 15 “Atomic Monsters” that the ending Chuck writes is bad because, for one, there’s no Cas, and that’s exactly what’s happening to the text post-finale. It literally makes me insane akin to the throes of mania to think about the layers of this. They literally said, “No Cas = bad” and now Misha isn’t even allowed to talk in his Cassona voice—at least at the time I wrote that—to the detriment of the fans who care about him. It’s the same shit over and over. They introduce something we like, they realise they have no control over how much we like it, and then they pretend they never introduced it in the first place. Season 7, my god. The only reason Gamble brought back Cas was because the ratings were tanking the show. I didn’t even bother watching most of it live, and would just hear from my friends whether Cas was in the episodes or not. And then Sera, dear Sera, had the gall to say it was a Homer’s Odyssey narrative. I’m rusty on Homer aka I’ve never read it but apparently Odysseus goes away, ends up with a wife on an island somewhere, and then comes back to Terabithia like it never happened. How convenient. But since Sera Gamble loves to bury her gays, we can all guess why Cas was written out of the show: Cas being gay is a threat to the toxic heteronormativity spouted by both the show and the characters themselves. In season 15, after Becky gets her life together, has kids, gets married, and starts a business, she is outgrowing the narrative and Chuck kills her. The fans got Destiel Wedding trending on Twitter, and now the creators are acting like he doesn’t exist. New liver, same eagles.

I have to add an adendum: as of this morning, Sunday 11th, don’t ask me what time that is in Americaland, Misha Collins did an online con/Q&A thing and answered a bunch of questions about Cas and Dean, which goes to show that he cannot be silenced. So the narrative wants to be told. It’s continuing well into it’s 16th or 17th season. It’s going to keep happening and they have no recourse to stop it. So fuck you, Supernatural.

I did write the start of a speech about representation but, who the holy hell cares. I also read some disappointing Masters theses that I hope didn’t take them longer to research and write than this episode of a podcast I’m making for funsies took me, considering it’s the same number of pages. Then again I have the last four months and another 8 years of fandom fuelling my obsession, and when I don’t sleep I write, hence the 4,000 words I knocked out in the last 12 hours.

Some final words. Lyotard defines postmodernism, the age we live in, as an incredulity towards metanarratives. Modernism was obsessed with order and meaning, but postmodernism seeks to disrupt that. Modernists lived within the frame of the narrative of their society, but postmodernists seek to destroy the frame and live within our own self-written contexts. Okay I love postmodernist theory so this has been a real treat for me. Yoghurt, Sam? Postmodernist theory? Could I BE more gay?

Middleton and Walsh in their analysis of postmodernism claim that biblical faith is grounded in metanarrative, and explore how this intersects with an era that rejects metanarrative. This is one of the fundamental ideas Supernatural is getting at throughout definitely the last season, but other seasons as well. The narratives of Good vs Evil, Michael vs Lucifer, Dean vs Sam, were encoded into the overarching story of the show from season 1, and since then Sam and Dean have sought to break free of them. Sam broke free of John’s narrative, which was the hunting life, and revenge, and this moralistic machismo that they wrapped themselves up in. If they’re killing the evil, then they’re not the evil. That’s the story they told, and the impetus of the show that Sam was sucked back into. But this thread unravelled in later seasons when Dean became friends with Benny and the idea that all supernatural creatures are inherently evil unravelled as well. While they never completely broke free of John’s hold over them, welcoming Jack into their lives meant confronting a bias that had been ingrained in them since Dean was 4 years old and Sam 6 months. In the face of the question, “are all monsters monstrous?” the narrative loosens its control. Even by questioning it, it throws into doubt the overarching narrative of John’s plan, which is usurped at the end of season 2 when they kill Azazel by Dean’s demon deal and a new narrative unfolds. John as author-god is usurped by the actual God in season 4, who has his own narrative that controls the lives of Sam, Dean and Cas.

Okay like for real, I do actually think the metanarrativity in Supernatural is something that should be studied by someone other than me, unless you wanna pay me for it and then shit yeah. It is extremely cool to introduce a biographical narrative about the fictional narrative it’s in. It’s cool that the characters are constantly calling this narrative into focus by fighting against it, struggling to break free from their textual confines to live a life outside of the external forces that control them. And the thing is? The really real, honest thing? They have. Sam, Dean and Cas have broken free of the narrative that Kripke, Carver, Gamble and Dabb wrote for them. The very fact that the textual confession of love that Cas has for Dean ushered in a resurgence of fans, fandom and activity that has kept the show trending for five months after it ended, is just phenomenal. People have pointed out that fans stopped caring about Game of Thrones as soon as it ended. Despite the hold they had over tv watchers everywhere, their cultural currency has been spent. The opposite is true for Supernatural. Despite how the finale of the show angered and confused people, it gains more momentum every day. More fanworks, more videos, more fics, more art, more ire, more merch is being generated by the fans still. The Supernatural subreddit, which was averaging a few posts a week by season 15, has been incensed by the finale. And yours truly happily traipsed back into the fandom snake pit after 8 years with a smile on my face and a skip in my step ready to pump that dopamine straight into my veins babeeeeeeyyyyy. It’s been WILD. I recently reconnected with one of my mutuals from 2010 and it’s like nothing’s changed. We’re both still unhinged and we both still simp for Supernatural. Even before season 15, I was obsessed with the podcast Ride Or Die, which I started listening to in late 2019, and Supernatural was always in the back of my mind. You just don’t get over your first fandom. Actually, Danny Phantom was my first fandom, and I remember being 12 talking on Danny Phantom forums to people much too old to be the target audience of the show. So I guess that hasn’t left me either. And the fondest memories I have of Supernatural is how the characters have usurped their creators to become mythic, long past the point they were supposed to die a quiet death. The myth weaving that the Supernatural fandom is doing right now is the legacy that will endure.

References

I got all of these for free from Google Scholar!

Judith May Fathallah, “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural.”

James K A Smith, “A Little Story About Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion and Postmodernism Revisited.” 2001.

Cameron Lee, “Agency and Purpose in Narrative Therapy: Questioning the Postmodern Rejection of Metanarrative.” 2004.

Harri Englund and James Leach, “Ethnography and the Meta Narratives of Modernity.” 2000.

https://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/mel-brooks-explains-french-mistake-blazing-saddles-blu-ray/

#transcripts #supernatural #supernatural podcast #<60mins #this is first and foremost a podcast about cas and misha collins

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supertransural · 3 years

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Beyond the Mat, sort of meta?

Ok so for some personal context, I’ve been rewatching all of Supernatural and i have the firm intention to keep the show on repeat on my computer/tv until i’ve fully binged it 15 times (never fear, I am already perfectly aware of how bad a decision this is). I wrote this post with a frantic need to get all the thoughts out, but it happened to be 3am at the time, and I realized I had to make gifs and upload them which was obviously too much work for a sleep deprived brain. I put it off until the next day, but ended up procrastinating and now it's been sitting in my drafts for 3 months and I thought hey this is a good time to finish it up (it could be argued that i'm polishing up this thing at 5am and this doesn't seem to be an issue for my will to get this done this time around, although I am heavily caffeinated so maybe that has something to do with it, go figure).

Anyways that’s besides the point. At the time I had just gotten to 11x15, Beyond the Mat. I’ve seen people write a lot about how parallels between Sam and Dean’s love lives/interests are part of the subtext about Dean’s bisexuality. I’ve also read people's works about how Gunner is pretty obviously one of Dean’s youth celebrity crushes. But (and I might just be a bit blind or haven’t looked hard enough) I haven’t seen a lot about the parallel between Sam/Rio and Dean/Gunner.

So let's get down to business, shall we?

The scene I will be focusing on starts out with Dean utterly star struck, sort of mumbling awkwardly his reasoning for coming up to Gunner (x) (x). Interestingly enough, Sam does the exact same thing with Rio (x) (x), while Dean is in the other corner clasping Gunner's hand for way too long and way too tight, and giving him the “i’ve loved you ever since i met you” look (x) (x).

Now since Sam’s crush is strictly heterosexual and we all know Sam’s interest in women, he outright says it to Rio (this is, after all, the CW) (x) (x). Dean on the other hand doesn’t verbalize it in so many words (the CW), but cmon... That fluster when Gunner winks at him later on?? (x) (let's not forget the little leg pat (x) that is probably still etched in Dean's memory amongst the 20 best things that ever happened to him, behind the previously-mentioned-wink and the Cartwright Twins) Or his reaction to Gunner patting his arm, "ok ok don't panic, it's not like your childhood crush just touched you oh wait". And Literally His Unwavering Smile The Whole Way Through. Jacting choices, people, Jacting choices (x).

Sam saves himself by steering the conversation towards a type of "where are they now?" interview, and Rio follows his not-so-subtle attempt, with a heavily implied tint of nostalgia for the good old days (x). Dean pulls a very similar stunt, mentioning something about his and Gunner's past (x) (x). Rio and Gunner's faces in those clips resemble each other quite a great deal: the emotion is the same, regret.

I really love that parallel because it’s really just “in your face”. You see Dean getting all flustered, at that point you could still say “hey i love [insert celebrity] and i don’t have a crush on them, but i’d probably still react that way around them”. (First of all, if I were you, I'd go on a journey of soul searching because hello, it’s ok to have crushes on celebrities you wish you didn’t, we’ve all been 12 and we’ve all seen Twilight and we’re all ashamed, and second of all, would you really and I mean really react that same way?) But then, enters Sam and his old crush, from the same field, basically the same time period, the same place and roughly the same "community". And it’s an unapologetic crush, not just a “hhhahaha i loved your uh.... your work.... as a uh kid haha.....”. Nonono. He says it, he tells her that he “used” (i’m not sure it’s completely gone, just like Dean) to have a crush on her. And then boom, parallel.

The way the two interact with both “celebrities” isn’t that different, if anything, Sam is less awkward around Rio than Dean is with Gunner. I’m betting the reason why is that since Sam’s crush is a woman, he has 1: talked about it openly before with his family (a poster of your crush on your wall is a good way to do that) and 2: talked to other crushes like her before. Dean, for obvious reasons, has not. Not a man, maybe some girlfriends, but he was never open (specifically not to John) about a potential crush he had on the big wrestler man in the ring, because he’s supposed to be this manly manly ladies man. He’s much more awkward because he hasn’t had much of an opportunity to talk to his crushes that might have been men, so the entire ordeal is wayyy more foreign to him. And he was also just a fan, so the whole “oh my god oh my god” of the crush is added to the already existing “oh my god oh my god” of his inner (and outer let's not kid ourselves) fanboy self.

Dean’s reaction is incidentally very similar to the one he has in the Fat Spa in 9x13, The Purge, with the character called Larry, Maritza’s husband. Dean’s awkward, goes too far, slightly flustered, and he’s pretty clearly not thrown off because of Maritza in that interview room, his gaze is mostly going from Sam to Larry then back to Sam. He lightly brushes over Maritza but barely looks at her (x) (x).

I’d also like to point out that when Gunner enters the stage, there’s a hint at a bi flag created by the light show, blink and you'll miss it (x). But then again that could just be the fact that those lights look pretty together and I'm completely insane. I’m not going to push that one too far, but since Gunner winks at Dean after that, which as I said before, makes Dean look adorably happy and flustered..... Take that as you will.

There's a thousand other scenes relevant to Dean being very blatantly bi-coded in Beyond the Mat (seriously, it's almost as obvious as the siren episode) but I really just wanted to focus on the parallel this time. I might go even more in depth on that episode (or do it bit by bit) if I ever find the will to make more gifs and string intelligible words together to create coherent sentences, and give off the impression of a sane mind. Might even throw in some The Purge meta for fun. Yes my definition of fun is quite warped.

#this took much too long #i'm just so bad at gifs and my wifi doesn't help #uploading takes hours #anyways imma shut up now #i've talked far too much already #spn meta #spn 11x15 #beyond the mat #spn 9x13 #spn analysis #spn #supernatural #bidean #bi dean #dean #dean winchester

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meowmeowmessi · 3 years

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I saw your tags on that post about jo and omg yes! I thought it was always kinda ~interesting~ that she had sams story just in reverse but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody talk about it (esp with them framing her as a love interest when she was SO MUCH like sam I was always like 👀)

omg I'm so glad to see I'm not the only one who saw the Sam/Jo parallels!!! The moment Dean and Sam walked in on Ellen and Jo arguing and Jo was like "I want to hunt like dad!!!" and Ellen was like "NO! Only school for you young lady!" I was like "omfg Ellen and Jo are literally just John and Sam in reverse skjskjskjskj" and then Dean actually started to interact with Jo and I realised how similar Jo and Sam are personality wise? Tbh I've always found Jo to be kind of annoying whenever she interacted with Dean (ONLY THEN. I think Sam and Jo's very little interactions were charming and those were the times I found her likable. And I love her relationship with Ellen. I love how despite her awkward as all hell kiss with Dean, at the end it was Ellen Jo shared her last moments with. I love that spn emphasized familial bond yet again and not a romantic one. And I have mad respect for the way Jo went down fighting, no matter how annoying I found her at times) but then when Dean told her about how dangerous the hunting life really is and how Jo should just listen to her mom I started to notice how much she had in common with Sam??? Both are rebellious and want to forge their own path no matter what their parental figures dictated for them, and the way Jo sneaked away to join Sam and Dean on their hunt was very much like how Sam disregarded John's wish for Sam to stay with them to go to Stanford. I really think Dean saw Jo as Sam's proxy in a way and since he couldn't keep SAM totally out of harms way (no matter how hard he tried, the poor guy), he at least wanted Jo to be safe. And my god YES I was ALSO raising my eyebrow at seeing a Sam-like figure being cast as Dean's "love interest"!!! I was genuinely thinking, "Am I looking too deep into this or is this actually hinting at something???" I'm so happy to know that someone else saw it too :'DDD

#asks #meta #kinda???#I'm no meta person and I'm horrible at arranging my thoughts into words so I hope this makes sense nonnie ;;-;;#parallels #wincest #sam winchester #jo harvelle #dean winchester #sam and dean #dean and jo #jo was kind of like a brattier version of sam lmao #as annoying as I found her at times #I regained respect for her after Abandon All Hope #me: man why does dean even want to bang jo like he literally treats her like a little sister???#sam aka dean's little brother who dean also wants to bang: *exists*#me: ohohOH #I'VE CONNECTED THE DOTS #real talk I don't feel like dean wanted to bang her at ALL #there was just a lot of awkward pining from jo's side imo #I just meta it away by saying that dean saw a lot of sam in jo #and subconsciously gravitated towards her from there lol #their kiss in Abandon All Hope felt like (forgive my wording) a pity kiss #like jo was going to DIE and kissing her was the only way dean could offer her some form of comfort

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tomeandflickcorner · 3 years

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Falcon and Winter Soldier Episode 2- My Thoughts

Yeah, I know this is a little late. The past few days have been really busy

While last episode saw Sam and Bucky doing their own separate things, they do interact throughout the this one. Which means things get a bit more complex.

Bucky is not happy to see that John Walker has been given the mantle of Captain America. And you really feel for him when you see him watching John on TV, talking about how he viewed Steve as a brother, despite the fact that they never met. Because that’s what Steve and Bucky were- best friends close enough to be brothers. So Bucky confronts Sam over the matter, yelling at him for giving up the Shield. But they don’t really have the time to discuss it in full, because Sam is going to Munich to try and deal with the Flag Smashers, who are stealing things like medicine and vaccines from a facility somewhere. Bucky, not willing to let the matter drop, ends up tagging along on the mission. Which leads to them exchanging all sorts of banter. Which is understandable. The issue with the Shield aside, Bucky and Sam are not even remotely friends at this point. The only thing they share is the fact that they were both good friends of Steve.

Anyway, their attempt to stop the Flag Smashers from getting away with the stolen goods doesn’t go well. Mostly because the Flag Smashers all were clearly injected with the Super Serum. Meaning they’re Super Soldiers like Bucky. And that’s when John Walker appears on the scene, completely uninvited. Of course, he doesn’t have much luck fighting against the Flag Smashers, who get away. But that doesn’t stop him from acting like Sam and Bucky should be grateful to him that he showed up when he did. It’s at this point where we start to get a measure of what kind of man John Walker is. While I wouldn’t go so far as to call him a terrible person, he does come across as someone who fails to grasp what it means to be Captain America. For instance, he virtually brags about how he mimicked Steve’s action in throwing himself over a grenade. Except John makes it clear that he covers the grenade with the reinforced Shield. Which shows he misses the whole point. Because when Steve threw himself over that grenade, it was when he was still the skinny pre-serum Steve. And if that grenade had been active like Steve had thought, he would have been killed instantly when it went off. Meaning Steve was instinctively willing to give up his life to protect others. Needless to say, Sam and Bucky both turn down John’s offer of teaming up to stop the Flag Smashers. Which I can’t blame them for, as John really was condescending towards them.

This is when the episode gets really heavy. It’s revealed that, during that period of time when Steve was still frozen in the ice, the US Government had tried to recreate the Super Serum. And they actually managed to successfully mimic the original formula, which resulted in the creation of another Super Soldier that we’re only just now learning about. Meet Isaiah Bradley, a Black man who was pretty much the Captain America after Steve. Except after he’d served his purpose (which was fighting against Bucky during the time of the Korean War, when Bucky was still Hydra’s brainwashed assassin), the government rewarded Isaiah for his service by effectively throwing him away, tossing him in jail and forcibly conducted all manner of experiments on him. Which is really disgusting and horrific. (Though sadly not that shocking.) Understandably, Isaiah is still bitter over how he was treated. So when Sam and Bucky go to him in the hopes that he could help them figure out how the Flag Smashers got access to Super Serum, he practically slams the door in their faces. (Can’t fault him for that, of course.) Yeah, I’m really impressed the MCU is getting into this sort of subject matter. They even have a scene where some cops roll up when an angry Sam is confronting Bucky over the subject of Isaiah, and why nobody ever mentioned him before now (because not even Steve knew about him), and start harassing Sam, demanding to see his ID. Because of course, if a Black man and a White man are seen arguing, the Black man must be the one causing trouble.

And then we get Sam and Bucky being forced to go back to the whole matter of the Shield. Because Bucky ended up missing a therapy session because of all of this, resulting in him getting arrested. And once again, John comes along and forces himself on the pair by bailing Bucky out. He even claims to have arranged for Bucky to no longer be required to attend his therapy sessions. which seems like a huge overreach of authority. While I don’t approve of Bucky’s therapist in the slightest, I do agree that he needs therapy after everything he’s been through. (Also, John refers to Bucky as a valuable asset. Which does make my nose wrinkle a bit. That’s what Hydra referred to him as- an asset. Not that I think John is a Hydra agent, of course. But it does suggest he fails to view Bucky as an individual.)

Of course, I probably should talk about the moment where Bucky and Sam are forced by the therapist to discuss the subject of the Shield. Which leads to Bucky revealing that the reason why he’s upset over the matter is because he feels that, if Sam gave up the Shield despite the fact that Steve entrusted it to him, then perhaps Steve was wrong about Sam. And if Steve was wrong about Sam, then maybe that means he was also wrong to think that Bucky deserved a chance at redemption. And once again, I want to give Bucky a hug. At the same time, I also get where Sam is coming from when he continues to state he felt he was doing the right thing in giving up the Shield. Especially after the reveal of what happened with Isaiah. However, I still firmly believe that Sam is indeed the rightful inheritor of the role of Captain America. Having John Walker walking around with that title isn’t so much as dishonoring Steve Roger’s legacy, but it’s dishonoring the memory of Dr. Abraham Erskine. Yeah, remember him? He was the scientist who originally chose Steve Rogers way back when. Because while everyone else involved in the Super Serum project wanted to simply select the best solider, Dr. Erskine knew that wouldn’t be the right sort of candidate. As he once told Steve, ‘the strong man who has known power all his life, may lose respect for that power, but a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.’ And that is what marks the difference between John and Sam. John, while he clearly means well, he has never had to really struggle to get ahead in life. Sam, on the other hand, knows what it’s like to be an underdog, just like Steve did. The only difference is that with Steve, it was his frail body and multiple illnesses that made him an underdog. And with Sam, it’s the fact that he’s, well, a Black man who frequently deals with things like systematic racism.

Plus, there’s the fact that John is a good soldier. And at the risk of sounding controversial, it’s not possible to be a good solider and a good man. Because a good soldier will follow orders without question. But a good man will stop and listen to both sides. And you can see that in this episode. John seems adamant at stopping the Flag Smashers at all costs. But Sam and Bucky seem to be thinking things through a bit more. And towards the end, you get an indication that Sam and Bucky might have the right idea. Because it’s suggested that maybe the Flag Smashers are actually not the real Big Bads. Think about it- they’re stealing medicine and vaccines. And at the end, it looks like they’re being hunted down by someone called the Power Broker. So I’m wondering if it will be revealed by the end that the Flag Smashers were actually the good guys all along. Similar to how it was revealed the Cloud Riders were the good guys in Solo. (And hey, Enfys Nest and Karli Morgenthau, the leader of the Flag Smashers, are apparently portrayed by the same actress.)

And yes, the episode ends with Bucky and Sam planning to go talk to Zemo, in the hopes that maybe he can help them figure out where the Flag Smashers got Super Serum. I’m really nervous about that, though. Considering what Zemo did in Civil War, particularly in regards to Bucky, this might not be the best idea. But I get that they don’t have any other clear option at the moment.

#falcon and winter soldier #falcon and winter solider series

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drkcnry67 · 4 years

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Sleeping beauty: a twisted supernatural fairytale

A/n: this is for 4 different bingo challenges... hope people like this one! Show it some love if you loved it.

Title: sleeping beauty: a twisted supernatural fairytale

Pairing: dean x reader

Spn Dark sq: free space (shadow/fear demon)

Share the love bingo sq: sleeping beauty

Fluff sq: soulmate AU

H&H sq: Gabriel

Rating: pg-13

summery: not telling

created for @spnfluffbingo @spndarkbingo @heavenandhellbingo @thisismysecrethappyplace

Once upon a time in a kingdom oh so far away lived a king & his fair queen. for many years they had longed for a child & finally their wish was granted.

a daughter born to them whom they called YN. for they named her after the dawn for she filled their hearts with sunshine. a great holiday planned to honor the princess for the entire kingdom rejoiced at her birth.

as more people graced the party, the party got stronger. amongst those to arrive were King John & his son Prince Dean. fondly had these monarchs dreamed that one day their kingdoms unite.

thus that day they announced Dean, John’s son and Heir to Castiel’s daughter be betrothed. so to her his gift he brought as he looked unkowing on his future bride.

Page: their most honored and exalted excellencies, the 3 good fairies. Mistress Claire, Mistress Jo & mistress Alex...

the 3 fairies approached, now addressing Castiel and his queen.

Fairies: your majesties!

in courtly fashion they all curtsied.

Claire: each of us the child may bless with a single gift, no more no less.

claire approached the craddle, with a wave of her wand she spoke these words.

Claire: little princess, my gift shall be the gift of beauty...

~one gift, beauty rare. full of sunshine in her hair. lips that shame the red red rose. she’ll wake with springtime wherever she goes.~

Jo was next to approach the craddle, with a wave of her wand she spoke these words.

Jo: tiny princess, my gift shall be the gift of song.

~one gift, the gift of song. melody her whole life long. the nightingale’s her troubadour. bringing her sweet serenade to her door.~

Alex stepped up to the craddle, she walked and raised her want tostart her speech but something soon would disrupt her wish.

Alex: “sweet princess, my gift shall be...

a gust of wind blows blazing through the castle doors, they swing wide open. with wind and thunder crashing through, in a blaze of fire in the middle of the crowd appeared Rowena.

Claire, jo and Alex all in states of shock at the sight of Rowena who speaks now.

Rowena: well quite the glittering assemblage King Castiel. Royalty, nobility, the gentry and how quaint even the rebel.

alex tries to fly towards Rowena but is held back by Claire.

Rowena: i really felt quite distressed at not recieving an invitation

Alex now more than a little peaved speaks.

Alex: you weren’t wanted.

Rowena: not wa...? oh dear, what an awkward situation. i had hoped it was merely due to some oversight. well in that event i’d best be on my way.

queen: and your not offended your excellency?

Rowena: why no your majesty. and to show i bear no ill will i too shall bestwo a gift on the child.

the fairies back up to protect the craddle.

rowena: listen well all of you! the princess shall indeed grow in grace and beauty, beloved by all who know her. but, before the sun sets on her 16th birthday, she shall prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel & die.

queen: oh no!

queen takes her child in her arms as rowena maniacly laughing...

castiel: seize that creature!

rowena: stand back you fools!

in a flash of fire and lightning as well as laughter rowena disappeared!

Claire: dont despair your majesties, Alex still has her gift to give.

Castiel: then she can undo this fearful curse?

Alex: oh no sire.

Jo: Rowena’s powers are far too great.

Claire: but she can help.

Alex: but...

Jo: just do your best dear!

Claire: yes...

Alex rolls up her sleeves and proceeds to speak her part.

Alex: sweet princess, if through this wicked witches trick a spindle should your finger prick, a ray of hope there still maybe in this, the gift i give to thee. not in death, but just in sleep the fateful prophecy shall keep, and from thy slumber thee shall wake when true loves kiss the spell shall break.

~for true love conquers all~

but castiel still fearful of his daughter’s life, did then and there decre that every spinning wheel on that very day be burnt. so it was done!

~this is the first jump out of fairytale reality and into our own reality where dean is picking up watching this classic fairytale & trying to get some shudeye.~

dean: if i have one more flippin’ dream about this movie im gonna kill someone.

sam: dont worry about it Dean, its not gonna get better with you yelling & screamin’... now try to get some sleep! we have a long drive ahead of us tomorrow!

Dean: yeah your right.

Dean throws his headphones on again trying to coax himself into a relaxing sleep. which Gabriel had set so Dean would not wake from his sleep till the story would finish, then his destined quest would begin.

Gabriel: sweet dreams Dean. you have a really rude awakening ahead of you... everything you know is about to change...

gabriel casts his curse & leaves dean to his tormented slumber that which awaits him.

~jump back into the story, where we find the 3 fairies talking with Castiel and the queen~

Claire: your majesty please consider this a kind of protection detail, this will allow your sweet YN to grow up in peace without the worry of her pricking her finger when her 16th birthday hath fully passed your sweet YN will be returned to you. to ensure the curse does not come true.

queen: you 3 have always been here even when we havent always honored it, we do so appreciate your loyalty and protection. this has surely been a trying day for us and we are honored to have you 3 commited to helping us protect our daughter.

Castiel: and it is on our honor that, you 3 shall go with our blessing. please be careful & guard our child well...

many hours later after dark, the king and his queen watched with heavy hearts as thier most precious possesssion their only child disappeared into the night..

many sad and lonely years passed for King Castiel and his peopple. but as the time for the pincess’ 16th birthday drew near, the entire kingdom began to rejoice. for everyone knew that as long as rowena’s domain, the forbidden mountains, thundered with her wrath and frustration her evil prophecy had not yet been fullfilled.

rowena yells at her incompetant servents, they encur her wrath. rowena sends out her own raven to search for the princess.

and so for 16 long years, dean had been learning how to live life as a prince. while the wereabouts of the princess remained a secret, the faires carried out their long laid planes living like mortals.

the fairies send Yn to collect some berries while they argue about the kind of last birrthday party they wish to give her, the dress color the cake and the cleaning something extra special for their last night as her guardians.

YN decides to stop in the glen... she feels like something is wrong thats when your real self breaks through...

YN: omg what am i doing in here?

as you keep singing you try to remember wht happened to put you in here. sure was your fave movie but it was not how you wanted to live.

Dean was riding Chuck the horse, the scene still happens the singing in the glade, dean hearing your singing following the animals that are stealing his cape, boots and hat.

your still singing by yourself but now kinda talking to the animals. after that kind of normal conversation you notice that some of your animal friends have come back dressed as a prince. you started singing and continued to dance with your animal friends, but thats when Dean had snuck up and hid in the bush, he waited for his oportune moment.

YN: but if i know you, i know what you’ll do, you’ll love me at once... the way you did...

thats when your vocals were interrupted by another voice to complete your song.

Dean: once upon a dream.

though it wasnt exactly ideal, your hands interacting, it felt more real than you had this entire time. waltzing through the glade by the lake, made your real self shine through. Dean could feel his real self shine through as well.

Dean: are you real?

that question made you look at him instantly. another person whose not really the character he is pretending to be.

YN: you’re real... your an actual person, not just a fairytale character?

Dean: yes, i’m real, what’s your name?

YN: YN, outside this ever turning story book fairytale movie thing im a hunter.... this story just keeps repeating itself everytime someone watches this movie. i have no idea what the hell put me into this neverending storybook. im annoyed greatly but strange thing is i can’t feel any connection right now to my actual body...

Dean: im a hunter as well. my name is Dean. i hunt everything that goes bump in the night from ghosts to demons and everything in between. i am also not sure how i got in here.

YN: your a hunter as well... i thought i was the only one.

Dean: whats the last thing you can remember before waking up here in the story?

YN: i was on a strange case, one thing made me think it was a werewolf. one thing made me think it was a ghost. one thing made me think it was a poltergeist. i remember walking out of my hotel room and that is it. nothing else after that. it sends shivers down my spine when i think of what may be going on with my actual body. how did you end up in here?

Dean: last thing i rememebr is turning on the movie to watch/listen too while i try to sleep. thats it... i have no fucking idea how i ended up in here. as to you saying that you can feel no connection to your physical body, something magical must be blocking the connection, but non-the-less i want to help you. i will finish the story so i can get out of here and find you. i will slay whatever i have to in order to free you, in the story and in reality. i will not rest till i rescue you.

you both continued on in the story, as they say it must continue or the end will not come. but it was nice for both of you to know that neither of you were alone.

the 3 fairies gave you your birthday surprise and told you of your true heritage then whisked you away to the castle where they hid you; dean showed up at the cottage where Rowena prince-napped him; you are led away by rowena’s curse to prick your finger in a hidden tower room the 3 fairies find you laying you down in “your” room; then they put the kingdom to sleep till someone can wake their sweet YN.

~meanwhile outside the story Sam is working with other people to figure out what happened to dean. Ellen, Jo and Bobby all were doing everything they could to help Sam figure out what happened to Dean.~

Back in the story: many sleeping people but the fairies were trying to find out who the handsome stranger was that their sweet Yn had been talking about. they figured he might be their key to saving her.

but soon it was claire who had been doing a round to make sure all of her section was asleep but it was John’s voice that caught her ear for he started talking about how he had spoken to Dean who had been raving about some pesent girl and how Dean had said he was gonna marry her and such.

claire managed to suss out that it was Dean that Yn had met in the forest. the words she had heard from John that had firmed her suspicions were Peasent girl & once upon a dream...

claire flies back to Jo and Alex and speaks in raced tones of panic.

Claire: the young man that YN was talking about is Prince Dean. come on girls we have to get back to the cottage.

as fast as their wings could carry them, they rushed back to the cotage but alas were too late for all they found was Dean’s hat no Dean. they conclude that it must have been Rowena who has dean trapped in her forbiiden palace. their minds made up immediately, they had to go there.

Dean, the only one true person who is able to awaken their Sweet YN... they had to find him to save her. off they went no plan in hand just ‘winging’ it as they went, weaving their way through the grounds passed the guards...

Rowena was in her throne room watching her lackys celebrate. to her raven she speaks.

Rowena: what a pitty prince Dean cant be here to enjoy the celebration. come my pet let us go to the dungeon and cheer him up...

the raven she was just talking too cawed at her as she got up and started walking towards the dungeon where she had been keeping dean.

~*reality jump!!! Dean is still unconcious while Sam is runnning around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to figure out what the hell happened to his brother*~

Sam: i don’t want lecutures. i want to know what happened to Dean.

Bobby: dont worry boy, dean is strong, he will pull through whatever is happening to him. do you have any theories?

Sam: im thinking maybe some sort of curse or something but no signs of any hex bags or nothing surrounding dean. there has to be something we are overlooking. some angle that we have missed.

~*back in the story, dean is stuck in the dungeon not even phased when rowena walks in the door.*~

Rowena: oh come now prince dean why so mellon colly. a wondrous future awaits you. you the destined hero of a charming fairytale come true.

the fairies arrive in the window hiding from the raven and rowena but witness what rowena depicts to Dean through her Staff.

Rowena: behold, king castiel’s castle &and in yonder top most tower, dreaming of her true love, the princess YN. but see the gracious whim of fate. why tis the same said peasent maid who won the heart of our noble prince the other day. she is indeed most wondrous fair. gold of sunshine in her hair, lips that shame the red red rose. in ageless sleep she finds repose. the years roll by, but a hundred years to a stead fast hear are ‘bout a day. and now, the gates of the dungeon part and our prince is free to go his way. off he rides on his noble steed. a valiant figure, straight & tall to wake his love with love’s first kiss & prove that true love conquers all...

Dean struggles against his chains, alex starts towards rowena but is held back by Claire as rowena brings her raven back onto her shoulder as they prepare to exit the dungeon she says one final thing in Deans presense.

Rowena: ah my pet let us leave our noble prince with these happy thoughts.

she exits the dungeon leaving Dean struggling against his bonds. the 3 fairies enter the cell using their magic to release dean from the chains and unlock the door. Dean starts towards the door but is stopped by Claire who proceeds to speak.

Claire: wait prince Dean, the road to true love may yet still be barred by much more dangers, which you alone shall have to face. so arm thyself with this enchanted shield of virtue, and this mighty sword of truth. for these weapons of righteousness shall triumph over evil. now come we must hurry.

out of the dungeon they went but rowena’s raven had stayed behind after rowena and the raven exited the dungeon. he started cawing at them, Dean was thinking this would be easy escape. but he was wrong. the raven was bringing an army of lackies downt he stairs to them. dean begins to fight them off.

Claire: quick Dean jump out the window.

Dean jumps out the same window as the fairies, but some rocks start falling towards Dean. Claire notices and speaks quickly.

Claire: Dean watch out!

Claire turns the rocks into bubbles. then a wall of arrows quickly turned into a wall of flying flowers, alex went down to free chuck. dean rides off on chuck towards the gate where hot oil is thrown, claire turns it into a rainbow.

the chase of a lifetime made alex proud as she chased that raven to the top of rowena’s tower & turned it to stone. this made rowena emerge, freshly woken from her sleep she goes to yell at her raven but discovers that her pet has been turned into stone.

she watches from her balcony as the drawbridge is being raised, dean and the fairies are heading straight for it, the fairies help him make the jump. chuck keeps running, carrying Dean as quick possible, dodging rowena’s two spells that she has cast causing them to fail.

in straight eye sight for Dean and the fairies is the castle, but before they can reach it Rowena makes her second last attempt to stop them.

Rowena: a forest of thorns shall be his tomb. born from the skies in a fog of doom. now go with a curse and serve me well. round Castiel’s castle cast my spell.

a black cloud appears over the castle, lightning striking the grounds around, thus causes icky thicky black thorns to grow in large bushes between Dean and the castle.

Dean stops before them, drawing his sword he fights his way through the thorns this let him out just before the bridge to the castle. rowena seeing this appears before Dean in a firey blaze for her final attempt to stop them.

Rowena: now shall ye deal with me oh prince & all the powers of hell!

Dean and the fairies watch as Rowena using every ounce of power she had left to transform herself into a huge fire spying dragon. Dean begins what turns into a short-ish fight but retreats hastly reaching a wall he climbs high.

our prince is now trapped on a cliff, another blaze of fire this causes Dean to loose his shield off the side of the cliff. Claire jo & alex bring their collective magic together near the prince they cast this on the sword.

Claire: now sword of truth fly swift and sure, that evil die & good endure.

dean throws the sword at the dragon piercing its heart. rowena lunges one final time but falls off a cliff to her downfall. dean is then lead down the cliff and to the castle, up to the tower where you lay in slumber waiting for this moment. Dean kneeling by your sleeping form placed a light kiss to your lips.

you wake up just as time freezes. Dean helps you stand up. both of you looking around. yes the entire movie was frozen. puzzled you both stand in front of eachother.

Dean: now whats happening.

you went to open your hand to grab Dean’s but something fell to the floor. Dean reached down to pick it up. he unfolded it and proceeded to read what was upon it.

Dean (reading note): congratulations! Defeating that witch takes care of one of my issues, that was of course the easy part. your next task Dean is to find your destiny, yes your destiny lies within the form of this girl. you must go back to reality and find her body and wake her up once you do everything and i do mean EVERYTHING will become clear. want a clue? here it is: “in a place of myth & legend where the balance of nature is true, this place you know it all too well. what you believe isnt real is, everything you know shall change forever. the ways of old shall guide you by, this far side of _________ in the final resting place of _________...” i look forward to seeing you very very soon. try to hurry i hear there is trouble on your horizons.

now you both were very very very confused. this is what caused you to pop up and say..

YN: what the hell kind of clue was that? any idea what he is talking about? wait does that mean im not in my hotel room anymore. that someone or something moved my body?

Dean: that is exactly what it means and i will do everything in my capable power to find you. hopefully when i get back to reality this paper goes with me...

just as he finished speaking a portal opens, visions of dean’s unconcious body appear along with Sam and others going frantic over what happened to Dean.

Dean: Yn, i give you my solem oath that i will not rest till you are safe by my side, i will fight whoever, go wherever, do whatever i have to in order to save you. dont give up hope and pray that this loop does not repeat for you. pray this time freeze does not disappear when i walk through that portal.

YN: i have faith in you Dean please hurry. i look forward to never leaving your side.

Dean placed a chaste kiss to your forehead before he walked through the portal. you sat on the bed and watched as Time remained frozen but you were once again alone.

Dean arrived back in his own body, he sat straight up and scared the living daylights out of his brother, bobby and several others all of whom embraced Dean.

Dean then went to where Sam’s laptop was and began searching the lore, the myths and legends specifically. when Sam approached him about what he was doing, Dean presented sam with that note. suddenly it made mroe sense to Sam, who left Dean in the charge of Jo while he, bobby and ellen all went to grab food and booze.

Jo: what happened to you?

Dean: one minute i was in that bed trying to fall asleep using a disney movie & the next thing i know im inside the movie. im telling you i would have preferred Hell. but i wasnt the only person from reality stuck in the movie. there was a girl, she said she is a hunter too she was on a strange case when she found herself in the movie. she has no idea of how long she has been in there. she also thinks her body has been moved. this piece of paper proves that someone or something is holding her body somewhere and its up to me to find this girl. at this point nothing else matters. i made her a promise now i have to keep it.

Jo: let me see the paper again...

Dean hands Jo the paper and after a few moments of staring at it she takes a pen and fills in the blanks... thats when the paper glowed... and revealed a magical map...

Dean: how did you do that?

Jo just smiled and laughed...

Jo: im really good at fill in the blanks. its a natural talent i get it from mom... your clue should have finished like this: “in a place of myth & legend where the balance of nature is true, this place you know it all too well. what you believe isnt real is, everything you know shall change forever. the ways of old shall guide you by, this far side of Romania in the final resting place of Dracula...”

Dean hugged her, he knew where he had to go now but how the hell was he gonna get there. it was then that Dean went to load several of his handhelds and load onto his back a machete load up some ammo clips.

he didnt know what to expect but he was certain that being cautious was better than being stupid. he was not gonna walk in there half assed. he needed to be as prepared as could be. however thats when bobby, sam and ellen walked back into the room.

Sam: Dean what are you doing?

Dean: im getting ready before i call cas for transport. this will allow me to not get dinged by airport security and not to become sea sick either. but i hope honestly that this mission im about to embark on is gonna be beneficial.

Bobby: what the hell do you think your doing? never mind that where are you going?

Dean: romania, Jo has the knowledge on why i am going to romania, she will fill you guys in... ill take my burger to go. put my pie in the fridge.

once Dean is ready to go, he stands in the center of the room and smiles back at the others but then Jo pipes up and goes to stand beside Dean with a backpack on her back...

Dean: Jo what...

Jo: im not letting you walk into your destiny alone. do not for one second think im not gonna jump at this opportunity to hunt with you, to help you to find your destiny. you helped me once to know what my destiny was, now its my turn to repay the favor.

Dean takes Jo by the hand as he in a stern voice he speaks the following words.

Dean: Castiel get your oh holy feathery ass down here i need a lift and your my ticket to my next destination.

cas comes to the hotel room and approaches Dean & Jo.

Castiel: where am i taking you and your friend here...

Dean: transylvania and dude once we land you cant be there... it will not be helpful for you to be there. this is a mission i have to do alone. me and my friend here go through the rest of the process alone.

Cas only nods completely understanding on what his friend has asked of him. he takes Dean and Jo to Transylvania. then once they are safe on the ground again cas leaves.

Dean: okay now to look at this magic map and figure out where we are and where the resting place of Dracula is...

Jo: well lets first of all make sure we are prepared before we go into town. i did a bit of research apparently they dont trust strangers here. we need to show them that we mean no harm. or just keep our noses down and pass through without being detected.

Dean: well lets see what the map says.

Jo leads Dean to a rock as she lays out the map...

Jo: these 2 dots over here are us... but what is that red dot over yoner on this map... look there is a multicolored one too....

Dean: the multicolored one is my destiny, the red one has to be what is holding her captive.

jo notices some writing appearing on the map after a few moments.

Jo: whats that say...

Dean: it says, “inside the castle you face your fears, beat them out till you cant no more. fears and demons go hand in hand but if you beat them in order to save your destiny. this is to be your greatest reward.” what the hell does that mean...

Jo: it means no matter what we need to get to that castle.

hand in hand they get their tracks moving towards the path...

Jo: i really hope the story of transylvania is fake...

Dean: you mean the fact that as soon as the sun goes down werewolves and vampires come out to play... you and me both but hey if they do we are fully prepared. this place is on top of a supernatural time bomb. everything that goes bump in the night comes out after sunset.

both dean and jo look up into the sky the last bit of light leaves the tree line.

Dean: have your silver bullets and machete ready just in case... we are not taking any chances. we have to get to that castle.

Jo: dont worry we will...

Dean smiles as both of them continue making their way through the forst, a little quicker than normal pace. the sun had now fully set, the light that had been guiding them was gone.

Jo: just follow the path the map says this will lead us to the castle where your destiny awaits you. Dean are you sure we...

thats when she stopped speaking... her words cut out... Dean pulled out his machete and quickly brought it to face the enemy that now held his best friend back.

Shadow entity: ah so the prodigal has come for his prize.. well i think ill take a constitution to ensure that you follow the rules, to ensure the balance is complete, to ensure that we are all in clarity to our debts. to this i have something to say this to you: you are part of the same card, the girl i have sleeping right now is not going to wake up without her other half. you have not done anything to earn her freedom, so i take your friend as kind of a wake up call to the horrors that which wait you inside. this castle has its own story but to unlock its secrets you must face your fears. face them down Dean, only then will you have earned her freedom. see you real soon.

the shadow figure disappears with Jo... Dean picks up her bag and keeps his machete on hand as he continues walking. following the map as he heard the soft crunching of his boots under the snow. winter sure is warmish in whats supposed to be the coldest part of romania.

Dean (to self): i have no idea what the hell is going on but i now have 2 bright lights to save i am just hoping i can conquer whatever appears before me... Jo for your courage please be my light. guide me to where you are... my dear sister.

meanwhile Jo has been placed in a room, where you lay in wait for your destiny. Jo takes one look at you and she smiles. she knows that you are definately dean’s destiny and then she speaks the following words.

Jo: in all my years i had never thought Dean would find his destiny, never after he helped me find mine i swore i would help him find his, now Dear Brother please follow my light...

Dean stops a quick moment to catch his breath and look at the map... he then sees Jo’s dot on the map glow brighter... it acts as a flashlight lighting up the path he must walk.

after several more steps and following his light he arrives at the castle.

Dean: here i com ladies... dont loose hope.

Dean holding his machete walked inside the castle.. the first thing he saw was the vision of himself as a demon tellig hm that he was gonna die alone and that he would become that... he told that vision that he would always have a family beside him even if they werent around that cared for him that would never abandon him.

that he went on his way still fllowing the light o the ground he comes accross the first blade which tells him that he fears being back in hell torturing souls and how good it made him feel. dean tells it that he will never and shall never go back to hell and never will he torutue those who dont deserve it again.

a few more fears tried to get dean to turn away from this quest, tried to get him to fail but nothing worked. the last area on the map was a long corridor it looked as thought there was a figure about mid way down.

the map let off a warning flash meaning there was danger approaching. Dean speaks once more to whatever is trying to face him down.

Dean: i address the entity in front of me. who are you? why have you brought me to this awful place?

Shadow: i am the demonic shadow of Count Dracula and I have brought you here so you can face me in the ultimate battle. Either I will be finally put to rest or I will be made whole again. do you accept my challenge?

Dean drops the bags and keeps both his guns and his machete as he speaks.

Dean: look dumn ass, i dont know who your the spirit or entitiy of but this is not how things are run in my world. in my world the good guys win and the bad guys loose. now if you stand aside and let me wake my destiny and save my sister then you might just get to be put back to sleep again. or ill succeed and kill you right now. your choice, i’m good either way.

Shadow: you dare to think you stand a chance against me, how cute. very well, if its death you choose then allow me to help you with that.

Dean moved out of the way as the shadow lunged toward him, missed and just landed again.. Dean then shot out 6 rounds of dead mans blood rounds all aimed at shadow-Dracula, he dodged those.

shadow: tell you what, ill make you a deal if you surrender now ill give you ten long years to spend with your so called “destiny” in exchange for you letting me out of here with my life.

Dean: how bout not a prayer. eat bullets instead.

Dean unloads the rest of the bullets in a circular form at the ground around shadow-dracula. completing the devils trap...

Dean: oh wait you dont need to eat the bullets cause your history pal...

Shadow-dracula looked down and around himself, the look that he now sported was one of fear. he was the one that now was terrified.

Shadow: this is impossible no one imprisons the great Dracula.

Dean: oh buddy im gonna do alot more than that, time for you to go back to where you came from.

Dean stands up tall as he then speaks the same words he had spoken previously hundreds upon hundreds of times.

Dean: Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica, ergo draco maledicte, ut ecclesiam tuam secura, tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audios bitch!

that was all Dean had to say the shadow of Dracula was no more. he went back to grab the bags and continued forward... he shot the lock on the doors and kicked them open.

Jo: Dean you found us... i believe you know what to do romeo... put everything down ill prepare to treat any wounds and such that show themselves once you wake her.

Dean: Jo it was dracula, the shadow outside the door was dracula’s shadow. i cant believe his shadow was so hostile. i mean if i hadnt wasted 2 clips of amo drawing out a devils trap i would have lost the fight.

Jo: ya ya ya okay dude, you have an overdue appointment with destiny over on that bed, now drop the bags and go.

Dean knew jo would have kicked his ass if he didnt listen. he did as told, he dropped the bags and walked over to kneel beside you. he brushed some hair from your forehead..

Dean: together now and always i have always been your once upon a dream.

his lips met yours in a gentle kiss. he pulled back after a few seconds and waited to see if it workd. a while later you open your eyes and touch Dean’s cheek.

YN: you found me?

Dean: did you doubt i would? i said i would and i keep my promises. this girl over here is my sister Jo. she is gonna give you the once over and then ill call for our ride out of here once she has you in a clean set of clothes. im gonna make sure we are still safe... i will call cas once we are all ready.

Dean leaves you in the hands of Jo who hands you some clothes and assesses you making sure you are not hurt. Dean comes back a few moments later and calls cas to come bring you all home.

Cas came brought you, dean and Jo back to the hotel. you and dean were gonna take some time to figure out what everything meant. this was when a bright light came upon the entire room.

Dean: whats going on?

thats when Gabriel appeared in the room. everyone had hand guns on him immediately. but he speaks not with hostility but with normality.

Gabriel: ah winchesters and friends. do not be alarmed for YN and Dean have been written in the stars since the beginning of time. Dean and Yn im sorry for trapping you both in that sleeeping curse it was the only way to get you both to listen to reason. to listen to your hearts. i was only trying to get you both to follow the rules that destiny had for you.

Dean: then why show up and tell us about it now...

Gabriel: cause i knew if i didnt it would have been alot worse later on.

Dean: what happens now?

Gabriel: well with your permission i could marry you and Yn right here right now... if you both agree.

you and Dean exchange looks before smiling.

Dean: when do we begin?

Gabriel snapped his fingers and the room transformed into a garden glade type thing. before you and Dean could say anything else you were taken from grungy hotel room to garden glade.

Gabriel: we are gathered here today to join Dean and YN in the ever holy bonds of Matrimony. this holy bond is a sacred gift, that deserves to be protected cherish it now and always. now i am assuming that there are no objections to this holy union.

the room was silent as Gabriel held his hand out and 2 silver bands appeared clearly made for you and Dean.

Gabriel: vows or no vows.

Dean: what more needs to be said, we already said everything we needed to... we know what we are. we have our feelings, we need no words for them.

Gabriel: very well, Dean take the band and tell Yn what you think should go with this ring!

Dean takes the ring and slowly slides it on your finger as he reveals whats in his heart.

Dean: YN after the movie and what i had to do to rescue you. i have to say that im 100% positive about you being the single most best thing that has ever stepped into my path of life. i promise now and always to honor, love cherish and whatever else goes with that... i love you Yn your the best part of me now.

you take the ring and you do the same thing.

YN: Dean, when i met you in the movie i was unsure of your intentions. then it was your beautiful green eyes that made me swoon. now i stand here to say i too now and forever more will honor, love, cherish and everything else that goes with it for the rest of my life. you are an amazing man Dean Winchester i love you so much and i cant wait to be your wife and have your last name.

Gabriel: by the powers and laws bestowed on me by Heaven, i now am honored to pronounce you husband and wife. Dean you may now kiss your beautiful wife.

Dean kisses you with so much passion. there was nothing to do for everyone else except cheer and clap.

everyone lived happily ever after. well at least once upon a dream!

#thisismysecrethappyplacesharethelove #spndarkbingo #spnfluffbingo #heaven and hell bingo

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luci-in-trenchcoats · 5 years

Text

The Girl Next Door (Part 10) - Don’t Break

Summary: The reader takes Dean out on his surprise date and she feels herself growing closer to him. When she and Sam are late getting home one night that week though, Dean gets a bad feeling...

The Girl Next Door Masterlist

Pairing: Neighbor/Mechanic!Dean x baker!reader

Word Count: 5,000ish

Warnings: language, medical emergency

A/N: Parts of this series are told from two different POV’s. Dean’s POV are written from limited third person. Reader’s POV are second person (like a typical reader insert). Enjoy!…

Reader’s POV

“Jack,” you said the next day just after lunch. He was out on the front porch, writing down a few things on a list. “Whatcha doing?”

“I was working on copying over a few of those old recipes for you,” he said.

“Thanks,” you said, ruffling his head as you hopped down the step. “I’m busy with Dean for the day but you want hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner? Winchesters are making ‘em and apparently they come with bacon as if that’s surprising.”

“Sure,” he said. You stopped after a few feet, glancing down at the keys in your hands. “Go enjoy your date, sis.”

“Are you okay hanging by yourself today again?” you asked.

“Yeah. I’m good. I promise,” he said. “Maybe I’ll take another bike ride.”

“Alright. Be safe,” you said. “Make smart choices.”

“Go on your date, dork,” he said. You gave him a quick wave before you slid into your car, parking out front of Sam’s, Dean ducking outside and into the car with a baseball hat on his head.

“Ready?” you asked.

“For my surprise date? Been looking forward to this all weekend.”

“Y/N,” said Dean, laughing as you pulled him out of the passenger seat. “You did not.”

“Yes, I did,” you said, wrapping your arm around his. “I may have heard from a little birdie that Dean Winchester was quite the baseball player in high school and his favorite minor league team of all time is the Springfield Cardinals who just so happen to be playing a special game in Kansas City today which is like super close to Lawrence and guess who got us some tickets.”

“I haven’t been to a game since I was like, eight,” he said, smiling at you. “I...how-”

“Sammy comes over and hangs out when I bake sometimes while you’re at work. Eileen says social interaction and testing his memory is good for him. Apparently you also convinced Sam to jump off the roof of your shed when-”

“Forget that. This is awesome!” he said. “I’ve been wanting to see a game for years but never got around to it.”

“Well today’s your lucky day then, ain’t it Winchester?”

Dean was all smiles when you walked back to your car that evening, Dean tossing a ball up and down in his mitt you’d borrowed from Sam. He spun around and looked back at the stadium, smiling and giving you a hug as you moved to get in the car.

“This was great. I can’t believe I caught that foul ball and...and this was so awesome. Thank you. I never had someone take me out on a date before and you like blew it out of the water, sweetheart,” he said.

“Didn’t I tell you that you deserve nice things too, Dean?” you said. Dean leaned back, eyes flickering around your face.

“I don’t remember the last time I was this happy,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy to be honest.”

“You got a lot more happy days ahead of you. I promise.”

Dean’s POV

“Hm,” hummed Dean, plopping down on his bed that night, closing his eyes as he faced the ceiling with a smile.

“Have a nice date earlier?” asked Sam. Dean didn’t bother to open his eyes but nodded, Sam slipping inside and sitting on the edge of the bed. “You couldn’t keep your eyes off her at dinner tonight.”

“She took me a on a date today and it was so thoughtful and simple and fun,” said Dean, throwing his arm over his face. “I sound like a teenager.”

“I remember you coming home and talking about girls when you were a teenager. Never quite saw this reaction though,” teased Sam. “You know, Jack and I talked tonight and if you two want to ever go out you know, not on the weekend, Jack doesn’t mind sticking around here, keeping an eye on me. Hopefully I get cleared on Friday to start staying home alone, watching TV again.”

“We’re like the misfits,” said Dean, smiling under his arm. “We got brain trauma, relationship issues, workaholic tendencies, mental institution stays...us four are like a soap opera. Not to mention you’re falling for your nurse.”

“I was thinking of going out on my own date soon, depending on what the doctor’s say,” said Sam.

“Good for you, Sammy. Jess would be proud of you,” said Dean, moving his arm away. Sam nodded, fiddling with his hands. “She would be proud of you, Sam. I am.”

“Work’s a long way away for me again but...I’m not going back to the way I was. I’m not burying myself in it again. I want to pick Avy up from school and play with her, cook her dinner every night. It’s not your job to do those things for her. I think...I think I want to get away from the big business stuff, help the little guy. It’s why I signed up in the first place. You know, help people starting their own business and what’s involved, help people like Jack who didn’t know they were…”

“Being abused?” said Dean. Sam nodded, Dean turning his head. “I’m pretty sure he knew Sammy, after a while. But how low do you think he felt to not say anything? He probably thought he deserved it.”

“I talked to Gary at the firm for a little bit this afternoon. Obviously don’t say anything to anyone but there was another person that popped up from Bryerwood. If Jack’s ever ready to talk about it, I think there’s a real case there for him,” said Sam.

“Give him a little time. Maybe bring it up in a few weeks, see if he’s ready to talk about it again,” said Dean.

“He’s more relaxed now than when we first met him,” said Sam. “I think Cas and Y/N are really helping him.”

“You know how mom and dad used to fight about money a lot? We didn’t have the greatest example of a healthy relationship growing up,” said Dean. Sam nodded and lay back against the bed, looking over to Dean. “But I never for a second doubted that mom and dad didn’t love us. They were not perfect parents and dad and I fought more than once, pretty bad too. But they hugged us, told us good job for doing good in school, they never told me it was wrong to want to be a mechanic, they never told you that it was wrong to want to be the first Winchester to go to college.”

“What’s your point?” asked Sam quietly.

“Can you imagine how fucked up the two of us would be if our own dad didn’t hug us? Dad’s not a warm and fuzzy guy but Y/N and Jack don’t even remember getting a hug from theirs. He’s their dad. I’m just saying...maybe we’re luckier than we knew,” said Dean.

“Boys,” they both heard from the door, their father stepping around the corner. “Mom and I are going to head home if that’s alright.”

“Yeah. Thanks for hanging out this weekend,” said Sam. He nodded, John giving them both a smile. “You’re free to stay the night though. It’s getting kind of late.”

“No no, that’s alright,” he said, turning to head out. “Boys.”

“Hm?” hummed Dean, sitting upright, Sam doing the same.

“I know...I wasn’t a perfect father. I wasn’t even a very good one most of the time. Mom and I know we fought too much, took too long to sort all that out. Dean you were already a man by that point. We screwed up that part,” he said, leaning against the doorframe. “But we have always loved you. Both of you.”

“We know that, dad,” said Sam. “We love you too.”

“Alright. Night boys,” he said. Dean waited a moment and followed after him, catching up with him on the front porch. “What is it, Dean?”

“I’m sorry I told you to stay away from him when Sammy was in high school,” said Dean, swallowing hard. John gave a quick smile, tilting his head. He cupped Dean’s cheek, running his thumb under his eye.

“Don’t ever apologize for that. It’s one of my worst memories and one of my proudest,” said John. “Sammy was better off without me for a while there. I’m sorry you had to be his father when I couldn’t.”

“I snapped at the hospital,” said Dean, pursing his lips. “A few weeks ago-”

“Dean. Don’t apologize for that either. Sam gave that authority to you to make decisions for him, not to us. He trusts you. He trusts you far more than he’ll ever trust me and that’s okay, Dean. You made all the right calls that night, all the hard calls. Sammy might not be alive if I were in charge. You knew how strong your brother was. You’ve always known. There’s no hard feelings, Dean,” he said.

“I…” said Dean, turning around, his father’s hand sliding to his shoulder when he heard a laugh in the air. Y/N and Jack were on her front porch, the pair of them cracking up at something.

“Parents mess up, Dean,” said John. “Even your friends parents I’m sure. But kids have a way of doing okay despite all that.”

“For all the times we fought and argued and said I hate you...” said Dean, still looking over. “Even when I thought you wanted me gone forever...I knew you didn’t. Way down but I knew. Those two over there...I’d take your parenting over what they had any day.”

“Call us if you need any help with Sammy, alright?” he said. “Any time.”

“I will,” said Dean, giving him a smile. “Drive safe.”

Five Days Later

“Uncle De?” asked Avy the next evening. Dean lifted his head up from watching the summer storm, Avy taking a seat on the front porch beside him. “Something wrong?”

“No,” said Dean, staring next door, turning his head. “So, you going to binge watch some movies with your daddy tonight? The doctor’s said his head is getting a better even faster than they were expecting.”

“We still can’t play outside,” she said with a frown.

“No but daddy can read you bedtime stories and play other games again the doctor said this morning,” said Dean, running a hand over her head. “And he can be home by himself so that’ll be good.”

“Are you gonna leave?” she asked.

“No, no. Your daddy and I talked and I’m going to stay here with you guys through the summer, maybe longer. He can’t drive a car for a long time so I’ll be around. Plus I like living here,” he said. “But you remember what I said about if Daddy acts funny when I’m not around?”

“I call you and go get Y/N or Jack next door,” she said.

“That’s right. Call me and we’ll make sure he’s okay,” said Dean, watching Y/N’s front door crack open. He frowned, Jack jogging over in his raincoat, dropping his hood when he hopped onto Sam’s porch.

“Hi Jack!” said Avy.

“Hey Avy. Can I talk to your Uncle alone for a minute?” he asked. Dean nodded and urged her inside, Jack smiling until Dean pulled the door shut, his face falling. “Y/N’s not home yet.”

“Yeah. I know. We had a date. She was running Sam to the store with her earlier. They’ve been gone a while,” said Dean. “A few hours now.”

“She’s not answering her phone,” said Jack. “Or Sam.”

“I know,” said Dean as he stood up. Jack glanced to the dark rainy night sky, pursing his lips. “Hey. Don’t freak. There’s a six year old on the other side of that door. She’s been through enough shit the past month. She doesn’t need more.”

“What do we do?” asked Jack. Dean stared at the front door and pulled out his phone.

“Hey Cas...can you do me a favor?...I’m fine, just Avy needs a last minute babysitter...Sam and Y/N went out earlier and they’re not home yet...I’m sure they’re fine...yeah...well I had this same feeling that night and...no, no, we’ll drop her off...it might be all night...it’s probably nothing...I owe you one...yeah, well, I still owe you one,” said Dean, hanging up the phone. “Alright. Go lock up your house and meet me back here. I’m dropping Avy off and we’ll go look, alright?”

Jack’s gaze went down to Dean’s phone when it lit up again with a different name, Dean following it. He’d spoken to them enough lately that he put the number in his phone.

County North Hospital.

Reader’s POV

One Hour Earlier

“So, you taking Eileen someplace fancy tonight?” you asked Sam on the way home from your shopping trip.

“Does Eileen strike you as the fancy place kind of girl?” laughed Sam. “But yes. Well, it’s casual-ish too. I was going to bring her to Winslow’s.”

“Oh, nice. I’ve never been but heard it’s yummy,” you said, pulling onto the highway. “I like that gray dress shirt you got. The one with the little charcoal specks. Wear that with some dark jeans, your black beanie, she’ll be all over you.”

“I just realized today was the first time in a month I went to the store, went anywhere besides our houses or the doctors really,” said Sam.

“Well no one said it’d be easy but you’re doing a lot better, Sam. We can all tell. You’re more alert, happier. Before you know it, you’ll be driving around on your own again,” you said.

“Thanks for taking me today...and helping with the clothes. Been awhile since I’ve been on a date,” said Sam, rubbing the back of his neck. “A work shirt is too formal.”

“I understand,” you said. “You got some casual but nice stuff. I shouldn’t have been surprised to see a Winchester boy pick out three flannel shirts though,” you laughed.

“We like our flannel,” said Sam, staring out the window at the dark edges of the road. “Dean really likes you, you know.”

“I really like him,” you said.

“I’ve never seen my brother this way with a girl. He trusts you. He doesn’t do that with girls. Not after the stuff his exes said,” said Sam.

“I’ve had this conversation with your brother before Sam. I don’t care what other people think of him. I care what I think and I think, he’s a really good guy,” you said, tapping your fingers against the wheel.

“I wish we could have been friends without me needing a whole horrible accident,” he said with a laugh.

“Life’s funny sometimes,” you said. “Jack’s gonna babysit tonight but I…” you trailed off, Sam suddenly jerking in his seat. For a second you thought he was having a seizure but he grabbed the wheel and turned it hard to the right as your brain registered what was going on in front of you. A tractor trailer on the other side of the highway was halfway through the median, jack knifed and heading straight for you.

It ended up hitting the back portion of the car thanks to the turn Sam did, not straight into the driver’s side which you didn’t really have time to be grateful for. One of your hands was out in front of Sam, the both of you jerking against the seatbelts as the car flipped violently. Your hand got hit between something hard and Sam’s head, most likely the dash if you had to guess. You shut your eyes and when you opened them, you were upside down, airbags deflating, glass and metal all over. Your body fucking hurt and you couldn’t see a thing.

“Sam,” you said, unbuckling your seatbelt, some piece of metal or console pushed in so you couldn’t quite see him. “Shit. Sam, say something.”

You groaned when you dropped to the roof of the car, climbing out the drivers window. The truck was stopped and on it’s side. Both sides of the highway were backing up now. You couldn’t see all that great in the rain and the dark but you dragged yourself around to the other side of the car, Sam grumbling as he pulled himself out the passenger window.

“Sammy?” you asked, kneeling down and pulling him over to the front of the car and into the light from the head beams. You ripped off his beanie and looked at his head, Sam shaking it as he gave you a thumbs up.

“I’m alright. Head feels in one piece. At least I feel alr-” he stopped. You moved to lay him down into a recovery position but he just put his hands on his shorts and started fumbling with his belt.

“Calm down, you’re-”

“Your leg,” he said, ripping the leather out of the loops. You stared down, seeing blood. You were expecting it to be honest. Your leg hurt a lot and you knew there must have been a cut.

It was gushing though, the pins and needles feeling hitting you fast. You stared for a second while Sam slipped the belt on under your leg and around you, cinching it tight.

“Probably femoral artery if I had to guess. Could be popliteal too,” you said, squeezing your eyes shut. “Ah. Okay, that hurts now. The adrenaline’s wearing off. Shit. Oh boy. I lost a lot of blood in the car I think.”

“Chicks got more blood right? You’re okay,” said Sam, pressing down on your leg.

“Yeah, chicks got more blood,” you said with a laugh. “Learn that one in school?”

“Biology. Jess took biology. She was going for nursing. I thought she was cute, figured I better try to impress her,” said Sam.

“I’m probably going to pass out but don’t let go of the pressure if you can help it Sammy. I ain’t ready to meet her just yet,” you said. Sam nodded, putting a hand on you when you started to lean back. “Remember to tell them you had brain trauma and what medi...the uh...the…”

“Okay,” he said as you lay back on the ground, struggling to keep your eyes open. “Okay. Just hold on, Y/N. It’ll be okay.”

Dean’s POV

Present

“Sammy,” said Dean, giving Sam a big hug from where he sat in his hospital bed a few hours later. “I thought I told you I never wanted to see you in here again.”

“Since when do I listen to you,” said Sam, pushing Dean back. “I’m okay. Bumps and bruises. They did a head scan and everything. Really. I’m okay thanks to Y/N.”

“Y/N?” asked Dean.

“She had like a super fast reaction, shot her hand out in front of me, stopped my head from hitting the dash. I don’t know if she broke her hand or not but the doctor’s said it probably stopped me from cracking my head open,�� said Sam. “You go and see her yet?”

“No. They won’t talk to me. I’m not family. Jack’s trying to get answers but she was his power of attorney or something and not the other way around so no one’s telling us anything,” said Dean.

“Hey. Go find Doctor Franks. I saw him not long ago. Ask him if he can find out for us,” said Sam.

“I will. Uh, Avy’s with Cas for the night,” said Dean, moving to take a seat.

“Alright. You go find out what’s happening with Y/N. I’m okay until mom and dad get here. Seriously, go get answers,” said Sam.

“Did...do you know anything at all?” asked Dean.

“...She was bleeding a lot. They took us in separate ambulances. I don’t know what happened after, Dean. I’m sorry,” said Sam. Dean smiled though and ran a hand over his head gently.

“It’s okay. You’re okay. I’ll go find out what I can and let you know.”

Two Hours Later

“Here,” said Jack, handing a cup of coffee to Dean. He shook his head, Jack taking a seat on the bench beside him. “At least we know she’s still in surgery.”

“How are you so fucking calm about this?” said Dean, glaring at Jack. “She’s your sister.”

“I know she acts like she’s the older one a lot but she’s not. You’re not the only one that’s younger sibling was in an accident tonight,” said Jack. “And I’m freaking out. I’m just putting on a brave face.”

“Who for?” scoffed Dean.

“Same reason you’re sitting there bouncing your knee with that hard ass look on your own face. I deal with my shit on my own. I don’t cry in hospital hallways. I just don’t,” he said.

“Me either,” said Dean as he stood up. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Text me if the doctor swings by.”

Jack nodded and Dean headed down the hall and for the elevators. He was familiar enough with the place and was quickly out the back door and across the parking lot, stepping into the woods a ways, finding the log on the ground that’d been there a month ago.

It was raining more now but Dean didn’t care. He still sat down and got wet, resting his head in his hands. He felt a shudder run through him as he took a deep breath and gripped one of his legs.

“Please, please let her be okay. Please. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let her be okay. Please.”

Twenty minutes later Dean slipped back inside, wiping off his face as best he could, stopping in the bathroom, eyes a little red but he could pass it off as being tired. He stopped in the cafeteria before he headed upstairs with some hot chocolate for Sam and Jack.

Sam was sleeping in bed, their parents there with him now, Jack still on the bench outside his room, sipping on the coffee Dean had turned down. Dean nearly took a seat when he saw Doctor Franks appear around the corner, Jack up on his feet.

“She’s out of surgery. It went well. It was a clean cut on her leg so they were able to stitch her up. Muscle wasn’t damaged in her leg so she should be up and around fairly quickly,” said the doctor.

“What about her hand?” asked Jack.

“Bruised, swollen and wrist is sprained but not broken. She has a concussion but that was expected. A few bruised ribs too but the car took most of the damage for them both,” he said. “They want to observe her for the night but she can go home in the morning along with Sam. They both need rest and try to keep her off stairs and her feet for the next week or so.”

“She’s okay,” said Dean with a nod. “Okay.”

“Can we see her?” asked Jack.

“Once she’s moved out of post-op but I’ll come find you two when that happens,” he said. “This could have been much worse. Let’s be glad it’s not.”

“Thanks doc,” said Dean, taking a seat on the bench with a sigh.

“How does she not hate me,” said Jack, sitting next to him. Dean turned his head, Jack staring across the hall. “When I was overdosing, she must have been scared to death. And I did that to myself. This...this is terrifying, sitting here, knowing you can’t do anything.”

“Jack,” said Dean. “Let it go. You’re not that guy anymore. I know you’ll never scare her like that again.”

“No, never,” said Jack, staring at him. “I wish I could take it back.”

“You can’t, Jack. But you can move past it. I know you haven’t been home long but she’s going to need you to step up and be her big brother again. She’s going to need all of us to help,” said Dean.

“I can do it,” he said with a nod.

“I know,” said Dean, patting Jack’s shoulder. “We’ll figure it out.”

“You want something to eat?” asked Jack around three in the morning. Dean shook his head, sitting on the other side of the bed where Y/N was sleeping. “I’ll be back in a few.”

Dean gave her a smile when they were alone, running his hand over her head.

“Thanks for saving, Sammy, sweetheart. I owe you one,” he said. She stirred and sighed, nuzzling her head against his hand. “I’ll be quiet now. You sleep, Y/N.”

Reader’s POV

There was a slightly chemical smell in the air as you woke up, disinfectant that made your nose twitch. You blinked a few times, Jack snoring in a chair on one side of you, Dean laying his head on his arm, fast asleep, holding your hand in his. Facing forward you caught Sam with a few cuts on his cheeks, eating what looked like breakfast out of a styrofoam box in the chair at the end of the bed. He smiled and gave you a little wave.

“I’m guessing I didn’t die then,” you said, holding up your hand, seeing the bandages on it but no cast. You flipped up your blanket on the one side, spotting a bandage high up on your leg. “I’m also guessing your brain is still in functioning order?”

“Mhm. I live another day to eat crappy hospital food,” he said, wolfing down some eggs. “Always had good omelettes here though.”

“These two alright?” you asked, nodding to the both of them. Sam hummed around his mouthful of food.

“Yeah. I don’t think they finally crashed until like four or something. Our parents our passed out in my room. You want some water?” he asked. You nodded, Sam setting aside his food and grabbing the pitcher off the table. Dean shifted in his seat, rolling his head once the other way, turning back to you and briefly flashing open his eyes. They shut and flew open in the next second, your hand moving to run through his strands.

“Hey,” you said, giving him a smile. “Oh shoot, Sam. I bet your new clothes are ruined.”

“Told you she was fine,” said Sam, Dean’s eyes darting around your face.

“Hi sweetheart,” he said, gently running a finger over your cheek. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a scratch or two,” you said. “Sorry I missed our date.”

“We’ll go on one tonight. I promise,” he said. You smiled and saw Jack wake up, a sigh of relief escaping him.

“Hey. You weren’t worried or something, were you?” you teased. Jack scowled, pointing a finger in your face.

“Don’t do that again,” you said.

“My driving was impeccable. Ask Sam,” you said.

“We just got shitty luck,” he laughed, popping a piece of hash brown in his mouth.

“So when can I get out of here?” you asked.

“Soon. Let’s maybe talk to a doctor first before you go wandering off.”

“Thank you for our date tonight, Dean,” you said from your bed, a pizza box between the two of you, a movie playing on the TV.

“Eh, near death ain’t cancelling our plans,” he said. You giggled, nibbling on another slice, his head resting on your shoulder. “Thanks for not dying last night.”

“Thank Sam. He’s the one that got his belt on me,” you said.

“You saved each other,” he said. He was quiet for a few minutes as you finished your food, wiping off your hands when you were done eating and turning off the TV. He sat up and moved the box to the floor, you rolling over closer to Dean when he returned, careful of keeping your right leg away.

“You okay?” you said quietly. He shook his head, wrapping his arms around you. “I’m not going anywhere, Dean.”

“You better not,” he mumbled. “Mine.”

“You don’t go anywhere either,” you said snuggling down against him. You shut your eyes, his long fingers moving the hair away from your face, tucking it behind your ear. He traced around a small cut under your right eye, gently kissing your other bruised cheek.

“Don’t you get hurt like that again,” he said quietly. You nodded, Dean tucking your head under his chin with his arm around your back.

“I want you to stay,” you whispered. You didn’t open your eyes but felt another kiss on your forehead.

“You sleep,” he said. “Wake me up if you need something.”

“Sam?” you mumbled.

“Our parents are there and you got hit worse than he did. I was staying no matter what,” he said. “Do you want some medicine?”

“No. I’m fine. Just want to lay down with you,” you mumbled.

“Okay, sweetheart. We can do that.”

A/N: Read Part 11 here!

#spn #supernatural #dean x reader #dean winchester #au #mechanic!dean #spn reader insert #supernatural reader insert #dean fanfiction #dean winchester fanfiction

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samclownchester · 4 years

Text

Supernatural Rewatch 1x11

Scarecrow

(Next Episode | Masterlist | Previous Episode)

(Not spoiler free I’ve seen up to 15x13)

Ok, so in this episode we see that the anger and frustration Sam was feeling in the last episode didn’t simply get swept away. First we have the phone call from John, the first time we actually see the boys interacting with their father. It’s obvious that Sam is emotional about it, but when John tells him that they need to stop looking for him, his anger overpowers everything else. His dad is, once again, expecting him to obey and ask no questions.

Then we see Dean: DEAN’S FRICKING WHOLE DEMEANOR CHANGES! He goes from “concerned son who wants to hear his dad’s voice” to “good little soldier” in 2 seconds flat and it BREAKS MY HEART. Dean may love his dad, but they don’t talk to each other like people. They talk to each other like drill sergeant and soldier.

Later, in the car (Sam is driving, which does not happen often):

DEAN: He’s given us an order.

SAM: I don’t care. We don’t always have to do what he says.

DEAN: Sam, Dad is asking us to work jobs, to save lives, it’s important.

SAM: Alright, I understand, believe me, I understand. But I’m talking one week here, man, to get answers. To get revenge.

DEAN: Alright, look, I know how you feel.

SAM: Do you? How old were you when Mom died? Four? Jess died six months ago. How the hell would you know how I feel?

DEAN: Dad said it wasn’t safe. For any of us. I mean, he obviously knows something that we don’t, so if he says to stay away, we stay away.

SAM: I don’t understand the blind faith you have in the man. I mean, it’s like you don’t even question him.

DEAN: Yeah, it’s called being a good son! (SAM, angry, gets out of the car. DEAN also gets out and watches SAM unloading things from the trunk.) You’re a selfish bastard, you know that? You just do whatever you want. Don’t care what anybody thinks.

SAM: That’s what you really think?

DEAN: Yes, it is.

SAM: Well, then this selfish bastard is going to California.

*Cue that vine of the girl saying “Jokes on you, the Jonas Brothers ( Winchesters) can’t break up they’re brothers” *

There’s a lot of things happening in this conversation. Sam is frustrated because he feels like their agency, their free will, isn’t being respected. Dean argues that what their dad is asking them to do is important, which Sam recognizes. It’s not that Sam doesn’t want to save people and hunt things, it’s that he wants to do it on his own terms, he wants to be treated as an equal. Dean continues to find reasons to trust what their dad says, it’s not safe, he knows something we don’t. He thinks questioning their dad would make him a bad son and he interprets Sam’s desire for free will as being selfish and not caring what anybody thinks.

I honestly feel like we learn more about Dean in this scene than we do about Sam. It also provides an interesting backdrop with which to analyze future relationships Dean makes, epescially when he meets Castiel, another “good little soldier” who needs to overcome his “blind faith” and learn to question orders.

Then we meet MEG! Ok, no offense to the actress who plays Meg later but no one will every replace this pixie cut cutie. It broke my heart when I was first watching and I found out she was a demon, I LOVE her.

SAM: Uh, so where you headed?

MEG: No offense, but no way I’m telling you.

SAM: Why not?

MEG: You could be some kind of freak

(Meg, you totally already know about Sam and his powers and connection to demons, you are doing that on purpose and it’s not nice)

Ok, then we have the scene where Dean tries to talk to the people, get them out of town early and save them from the scarecrow god thing. There’s that moment when Dean offers to fix their car for them and the girl says “I think we’d rather have a mechanic do it” and that hit different remembering that if Dean wasn’t a hunter, mechanic is one of the job possibilities on his list. He looked kinda hurt by that. Then he says:

Dean: You know, my brother could give you this puppy dog look, and you’d just buy right into it.

Which, first of all, weird thing to say Dean, not helping your case at all. But also, I like how they’re pointing out here how Sam and Dean have different strengths. Sam is much better with people, and we’ve seen it subtly over the past few episodes, Dean usually makes people feel kind of uncomfortable and confused, then Sam will step in with his sincere voice and puppy dog eyes and the people usually feel a lot more open to talking. (And then they make fun of this in 15x10, as if this was another one of the perks Chuck gave them. This, along with picking locks, I refuse to credit 100% to Chuck, maybe he helped but Sam is good at making people feel safe. )

Then you’ve got this phone call:

DEAN: Sam. You were right. You gotta do your own thing. You gotta live your own life.

SAM: Are you serious?

DEAN: You’ve always known what you want. And you go after it. You stand up to Dad. And you always have. Hell, I wish I—anyway….I admire that about you. I’m proud of you, Sammy.

Dean can’t even say that he wishes he could stand up to their dad the way Sam does. He can’t even finish that sentence. We also learn that Sam has always been outspoken against their dad, it’s not a recent development. I have a feeling, and I might be wrong, but I have a feeling that John tolerated more outspokenness from Sam than he did from Dean. Dean’s reaction to John giving him orders is … the reaction of someone who is used to being punished for disobeying. Sam, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have many qualms about talking back to their dad and questioning him to his face.

Please, give Dean some therapy. He really friggin needs it.

Later this conversation:

MEG: But I don’t understand. You’re running back to your brother? The guy you ran away from? Why, because he won’t pick up his phone? Sam—come with me to California.

SAM: I can’t. I’m sorry.

MEG: Why not?

SAM: He’s my family.

And the band is back together! (It is a running theme in this show that the only way their problems ever get resolved/addressed is when somebody is suddenly in trouble. Then all hard feelings are forgotten because they have to save each other. Definitely not healthy but it makes for great drama)

Meg says “Yes father”??? What am I forgetting about Meg? Isn’t she calling Azazel? Is Azazel her father?

#supernatural #1x11 #01x11 #supernatural rewatch #season 1 #my posts #sam winchester #dean winchester #meg masters #john winchester #scarecrow

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imaginefan · 4 years

Text

Trying To Get To Me *Part 2*

John Young X Reader

Word Count: 706

Requested: Anon

Request: Please do a part 2 of trying to get to me, with reader, human john and Campbell. I want to make what campbell wanted to ask reader or what his motive is or could be. Interactions with reader and Campbell also John too the 3 of them as well if possible. Thank you!! AND Please part 2 of trying to get to me. Crossover with john and campbell

*Part 1*

Under normal circumstances, it would have been easy for you and John you avoid Campbell but with everything that was happening and your position in the community it was only a matter of time when you came into contact with him again and it came in the form of an investigation after Cassandra was killed and Campbell was blamed for helping plan the attack, he said that he wouldn't talk to anyone but you which led to you standing outside of the room that he was being held in "Be careful." Sam warned and you nodded smiling.

"Don't worry I'm not going in there alone remember, John, is going to be with me." You reminded him and he nodded. "He's been watching you both since we got here," Sam said and you nodded. "Yes, and as usual he thinks that he's smarter than everyone else in the room," John said as he slipped his phone into your back pocket.

You walked into the room and sat on the bed in front of Campbell (who was handcuffed to the radiator), John stayed by the door but he closed it. "I said I'd talk to you, not him," Campbell smirked as he gestured John. "your lap dog can leave." "We're a package deal," John spoke and you looked at him and walked towards John. "Maybe you should wait outside." You suggested. "I don't think so." He smirked and you rolled your eyes. "If anything happens I'll scream as loud as I can, I promise." You smiled "plus he's handcuffed to the radiator there are very few things that could go wrong here." "I'll be just outside." He promised as he leaned down and pressed a kiss to your lips before walking out the door and closing it. "What do you want?" You asked as you turned to Campbell. "You don't believe him do you?" He asked. "That kid is crazy." "Really? Because I believe that you are capable of it." You admitted as you sat back down where you were before. "That doesn't mean that I did it." He argued and you nodded. "So what am I here for?" You asked. "It's the only way that I get to talk to you alone." He answered. "I don't need your help getting out of here. I know that Allie is going to let me out." "How can you be so sure?" You asked. "I just know." He answered. "Okay, so what do you want to talk about?" You asked. "What happens when I get out of here." He answered. "Why would that concern me?" You asked. "I need your help with something." He answered. "What would that be?" You asked. "I want you to help me get control of this place." He answered, "no one would ever want me to lead but you, you could do it." "What if I don't want that?" You asked. "You'll want it when they all find out why John moved here in the first place." He answered. "Maybe they already know that?" You asked. "Then you've got nothing to bargain with." You stood up after that. "Think about it." He called after you as you left the room.

"What's he talking about?" Allie asked the moment that the door closed. "I was moved here because someone was trying to train me to be a killer, he adopted me and started training me when I was younger," John answered as you took his phone out of your back pocket and ended the call. "You didn't think that we should know that?" Allie asked. "You're just as dangerous as he is," Gordie spoke. "No, he could be the only person that could save you from him." You pointed back at the door "He's the only one of us that knows what the real world was." "You've played your little game, you've had your judge and jury so now you need an executioner," John answered. "That’s comforting you volunteering for the executioner," Gordie commented. "Do you want to hold the gun?" John asked. "All you need to know is that he wants what you have, he wants to lead and he'll take it from you if you're not careful." You warned before taking John's hand and leaving.

*Part 3*

Requests and general question!

#the Tomorrow People #the tomorrow people imagine #the tomorrow people one shot #society #the society #society imagine #the society imagine #the society oneshot #john young #john young imagine #john young one shot #campbell eliot #campbell eliot imagine #campbell eilot oneshot #imagine #oneshot #one shot #reader insert

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mittensmorgul · 4 years

Note

I don't think Sam ever actually "gave up hope" in the future timeline. He kept dragging Dean along with him, trying to keep fighting. But losing Eileen is what made Sam have a "death wish," according to Dean (or Chuck, maybe). I'm really not a die-hard Sam/Eileen person necessarily, I could take it or leave it. But your comments about them always seem like you're saying that they don't even really care about each other, and that's just... not true.

Okay this is gonna be a convoluted sentence, but I need everyone to follow along with this one: If anything I’m saying about Sam and Eileen’s relationship is being interpreted in such a way that the reader believes that I am implying that Sam and Eileen do not care about each other, that’s the reader’s inference, and not what I am actually saying.

It is obvious in s15, just as it was obvious in 11.11, 12.17, and 12.21 that Sam does care about Eileen. And that Eileen obviously likes Sam (and Dean, for that matter… her interactions with Dean are just about as cute, for anyone who hasn’t picked up on that… like in 12.17, more than half of her conversation ARE WITH DEAN, and Dean clearly cares about her, too. Even if it’s always been presented in a slightly different way, or possibly in a less… intense? way than her interactions with Sam.

That said… in the future timeline– that is, in CHUCK’S STORY HE WAS SHOWING TO SAM– Chuck’s STORY (which, remember, he planted Eileen in Sam’s life in 15.06 specifically to become Sam’s love interest, for the purposes of Chuck’s story) said that Sam’s had a death wish ever since Eileen died. Because that would line up with CHUCK’S STORY as it had been playing out all season that had made her into Sam’s love interest. That story also suggested that Dean… LOST THE WILL TO FIGHT after he had to lock Cas up in a Ma’lak box. Not that Dean had a death wish.

(I mean, we know this is accurate but this is how Dean personally reacts when he loses Cas. We know how he reacts when he loses anyone else– think about what he did when Charlie died. He went on a murder rampage against the Stynes for killing her. When Mary died he broke some furniture and went full bore toward both resurrecting her and stopping Jack. But without Cas, Dean loses the will to fight. Sam has… always been different. He referenced Jess in 15.04 to remind us of how he was after she died in the pilot episode. Just like John, he picked up the revenge mission and ran with it. But for Dean, Cas is different. Without Cas… Dean gives up.)

But if we are to believe this is a True Seeing of future events that WILL actually happen in reality, we have to disregard the fact that Chuck is a supremely unreliable narrator. And the guy is not a great liar. And it’s been lampshaded repeatedly this season that he’s not a particularly good storyteller either.

To Becky’s horror, all Chuck seems to care about are the monsters, and he gets angry and tries to argue when Becky tells him that NOBODY cares about the monsters. That we all care about the characters. And Chuck’s pretty much been trying to prove how great the monsters are ever since. Have you noticed that pretty much every episode this season so far has involved monsters? Ever since they got the hell rift sealed up, anyway. Ghosts and demons apparently aren’t good enough for Chuck, and from 15.04 on we’ve had vampires, werewolves, witches and djinn, a marid, werewolf, and now (FINALLY! Chuck is probably thinking) Leviathans, leviathan blossoms, a mention of Eve, and whatever that rando corpse was in Purgatory, aka Monster Heaven.

And yet, Chuck’s line is that without him in the universe, it would be Nothing But Monster Apocalypse, as if he was the one holding all that at bay. And just… dude, do you think we’re all “crazy and stupid” like you attempted to convince Dean that Sam was for telling him the truth about how you had manipulated their lives in 14.20? He pulled a similar string of lies with Amara (who saw through his lies), he pulled a similar string of lies with Becky (who still tried to be kind to him anyway, even after he treated her like a jerk). So I’m wondering how anyone trusts anything he says now, you know?

Chuck made the monsters. He LIKES the monsters. And it’s like he’s writing his ending out of spite over Becky’s critique of his “fic” in 15.04. Becky doesn’t like monsters? Doesn’t think the stakes were high enough? Well, he’ll show her! What does she know? She’s not a real writer anyway, right? Just a fanfic writer who wants them all to sit around an talk about their feelings. Ew, right?

>.>

So, yeah, this is how I approach anything that we’re told is part of “Chuck’s process,” or Chuck’s story. With the assumption that he’s lying. Because writers lie.

(This was also a staple of his character in s11. This is exactly how he wrote back then. Metatron called him out on it several times, but even then we know he was still trying to lie his way out of direct responsibility for anything. He blamed Dean for not having killed Amara (!!!????) as if that was something Dean was supposed to be able to do. He blamed Amara for “blocking him” when we’d seen her literally tearing through the world looking for him. Then after all that, he said they CAN’T kill Amara because it would create an imbalance in the universe and the universe would collapse. Pick a story and stick with it, Chuck. We also know when he writes himself into a corner, he invents something on the spot to fix it, such as Chekhov’s Equalizer Gun. Or going WAY back to 5.10 and the apocalypse that failed… The Colt, which was supposed to kill anything, failed to work on Lucifer, because it didn’t fit Chuck’s desired plot, all of a sudden there were five exceptions to the Colt’s powers. Shocker, that… >.>)

Rule of thumb: If Chuck is saying something, there’s a super good chance you should at least inspect it with a measure of doubt, run it through the BS filter for good measure, and then give it 24 hours or at least one (1) more installment of canon before you begin to trust it…

But back to your original question. If Sam and Eileen hadn’t at least LIKED each other, Sam would never have even CONSIDERED any sort of a relationship with Eileen, and Chuck’s plot would’ve been foiled a heck of a lot earlier. Chuck’s a bad writer, but he’s not THAT bad of a writer…

eta, because after posting I realized I never addressed the first part of your question: Sam gave up hope when he refused to cast the spell to lock Chuck up. That’s what Chuck is referring to. And it wasn’t anything to do with Eileen that made him “lose hope.” Which is Chuck’s phrase for what happened... maybe “lost the will to cast that spell in particular because of the risk of a specific set of consequences,” is more accurate. Because Sam remained defiant (or disbelieving of Chuck’s story) up until Chuck told him that their fate as cheesy vampires wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was that Sam and Dean would give up, and the world would be overrun and succumb to the monsters. That not just the Winchesters, but all of humanity, would lose. THAT is what Sam could not put at risk.

Okay, I just needed to get that in there :’D

#spn 15.09 #spn s15 spoilers #Anonymous #chuck's process #spn monsters

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poorreputation · 5 years

Text

SPN 1X01 Pilot Retrospective Meta

Tag list for old episodes meta! (let me know if you wanna be tagged):

@emblue-sparks @metafest @verobatto-angelxhunter @evvvissticante @dea-stiel @sudo-apt-get-destiel @wildligia (tumbler’s not letting me tag you, sorry)

Pre re-watch notes/things to touch on:

Comparing the Woman in White to John, Sam and Mary/hindsight notes.

S1 motivations vs. S14/15 endgame.

Episode Notes:

Written by: Eric Kripke

Directed by: David Nutter

A long post, so I will put it behind the cut.

Lawrence, Kansas

22 years ago

We begin our tale with Mary bringing Dean into Sam's nursery to say goodnight. John enters the room, and in a nice bit of short-hand, he's wearing a USMC (United States Marine Corps) shirt, showing John was a soldier.

There's a shot of Mary and John in a picture. We already know they're married, so why is it here?

Mary thinks it's John in the nursery, only to find him asleep in the living room in front of the TV. (again, a connection to John's past, he's fallen asleep watching a war movie)

Something that'll become a continuity issue, later in the show: Mary's many years of experience being a Hunter, only to not recognize the flickering of lights as a sign of trouble.

Of course, Mary's wearing a white gown, (white is usually seen as a pure color/ of purity, but in this instance a connection to the Woman in White/see Jess later)

Mary's dead, and everyone involved is scarred for life.

The look on John's face, as we finish the Lawrence sequence, is that of a broken man, who's seen something that will eat away at his mind.

Stanford University Present Day (2005)

Okay, the first image we see of Jess is her in a nurse's costume, white with red trimming. Jess also has medium length curly blond hair. Guys, she looks like Mary, especially in Mary's death scene (white gown, covered in blood).

We focus in on the picture of Mary and John for visual shorthand, confirming this is a grown-up Sam.

We establish Sam is "scary" smart, has aspirations of becoming a lawyer, and has a job interview on Monday.

Jess: "Knock 'em dead on Monday." laying it on thick, Kripke.

Sam: "What would I do without you?"

Jess: "Crash and burn."

*smooch*

Damn you, Kripke.

Night scene, and holy shit, why do Sam and Jess have so many plants? Why doesn't future Sam have plants in the bunker, you know, something low maintenance?

Dean, why the fuck can't you use the door? Or a phone?

From the get-go, Dean's cocky, suffers from eldest sibling syndrome, and is a shameless horn-dog.

Sam: "He's on a Miller time shift." See, when I first watched the pilot, years ago, I didn't realize this was Sam implying John was a drunk. These things would just fly over my head.

Sam wants to make a point of including Jess in the conversation, of being honest. And yet, the moment Dean says John is on a hunt and hasn't returned, that honesty goes right out the window. More on that later.

Sam and Dean's exposition dump in the hallway, a part of me feels it's an odd way to catch the audience up to speed, while the other part of me knows this is how families argue when they spend most of their time biting their tongues. Sam especially seems the type to mull over his thoughts, storing away comebacks for the perfect moment when they'll be most effective (like later in the episode). Also, it's been years since the brothers have seen each other (we're told later it's been at least 2 years since Dean bothered Sam), they're so icy towards one another.

Sam: "You think Mom would've wanted this for us?" we'd find this out later in S4, but, no. Funny enough, maybe if Mary shared her knowledge of Hunting, something more could've been done (foreshadowing).

Dean: "What're you gonna do? Just live some normal, apple pie life?" Dean, if you'd only taken your own advice, we could've avoided S6.

Sam, paraphrasing John: "If you're gonna go, stay gone." Well, that's only very emotionally manipulative.It does, however, remind me of the U.S. military’s views on those dishonorably discharged, and since John raised them as "warriors", it's not a stretch to think, in a time of crisis, John treated his sons as soldiers.

Dean: "I can't do this alone."

Sam: "Yes, you can."

Dean: "Yeah, well, I don't want to."

This exchange, this vulnerability from Dean, after his initial introduction of being a cocky asshole who hits on his brother's girlfriend, shows just how much of a facade Dean's attitude is. In the end, he's a kid scared of losing his Dad.

It's this vulnerability that convinces Sam to listen.

Come the fuck on, "I can never go home." after we establish Sam left John and Dean, left Hunting behind, and was told to never come back (home). KRIPKE. YOU'RE *not* SUBTLE.

2 years, Dean says, since they last talked. Either Sam entered college late, (20 rather than 18) or Sam and Dean kept in touch even after Sam and John's blow-out fight.

Again, Jess pries for more info, and Sam changes the subject. Nope, that’s not gonna bite him in the ass, at all.

Jericho, California

(insert biblical/wrestling reference here)

We meet monster fodder, I mean, some random dude, who tells his girlfriend Amy over the phone he can't see her that night. He slows down to a stop and picks up the Woman in White.

Anyway, another example of a young woman with curly, medium length hair in a white gown/dress. I mean, her house even looks a bit like John and Mary's old place.

We get a brief, blurry shot of the Woman in White and her kids. Sorry, but if you're familiar with the legend of her/La Llorona, it's easy to see where this is going.

Oh, and whatshisface is dead.

Chips and soda. Breakfast of champions.

Sam's being a real sassy bitch about how Dean and John get their funds. I get it, world-building for the audience, bit it shows just how passive aggressive Sam is in these early seasons; Dean's clearly playing moderator between Sam and an absent John.

Sam: "Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Metalica? It's the greatest hits of mullet rock." Sam, it's not Dean's fault you have poor taste. Shut your cakehole.

Sam: "Sammy's a chubby 12 year old." or, it's what a big brother says to his infant sibling to calm him down, oh wait.

Monster bait's name is Troy. Yeah, I don't care.

Dean sassing the officer and Sam stomping Dean's foot. Yep, they're brothers. This interaction is where their chemistry really starts to shine through.

Amy and her friend are peak mid-2000's goths/emos, good lord.

Dean's "I told you so" smart-ass look as the friend shares the rumors in town, he's such an older sibling.

They... they never tell Amy what happened to her asshole boyfriend, huh? Well. Sucks for Amy.

Researching on a public library computer, fucking hell. (nothing wrong with that, I’ve worked in a public library, but they’re doing super-secret Hunter’s stuff in such a public place)

Have it paused on a photo of Constance Welch, the Woman in White, and the article mentions her husband's exact line of work; associate manager who works the graveyard shift at Frontier auto salvage. Gives me shades of Bobby, who also lost his wife under tragic circumstances.

A mother leaves her child unattended, comes back to check on them, tragedy strikes. Or, so the story goes.

Dean confronts Sam about living a life of willful ignorance, and even asks if Jess knows the truth. Sam makes it clear she doesn't and he intends it to stay that way, as Dean sarcastically quips, "That's healthy".

Really, the more I think about it, the more S6 feels like the inverse of S1; Dean tries to live a normal life, Sam comes stomping in to rain on his parade. Lisa is kept largely in the dark about Dean's past, and gets hurt because of it.

Dean: "You can pretend all you want, Sammy, but sooner or later, you're gonna have to face up to who you are."

Sam: "And who's that?"

Dean: "One of us."

Sam: "No. I'm not like you. This is not going to be my life."

Sam thinks Dean's just talking about Hunting, but Dean means more than that, he means family. One of us, Dad and me, a Hunter and a Winchester.

Sam: "Mom's not coming back." and so on about how he doesn’t even remember Mary, doesn’t share John’s obsession.

Dean: "No chick flick moments." Dean, dude, bro, you're the one who started this by breaking into Sam's place like a dramatic bitch, and then proceeded to give life/relationship advice. It's already a chick flick.

John's room being covered head-to-toe in case notes, only to come to the obvious conclusion it's the Woman in White. But, Sam said, because of the salt line, John was worried. Now, as far as I can remember, John was never a target of this spirit, so, I think he was paranoid about Yellow Eyes. After all, John had notes on devils/demons up, too, so maybe. I could be wrong.

There's something amusing about Sam and Dean's first duo Hunt, one without John, includes one of them getting arrested. Just, how rare that happens in the rest of the show, compared to how many laws they break daily.

Sam talks to Joseph Welch, who seems to wear the same clothes as Bobby. Also, Sam looks like a giant standing next to him.

Joseph lies to Sam's face about his and Constance's marriage, and it takes Sam a moment to work up the nerve to call him out on it. Or, it's Sam losing his temper. They're dealing with a murderous ghost, after all, and this guy wants to hide the truth.

Sam's done with lying witnesses, and now he's making fake calls to the cops. Gloves are OFF.

So, it's revealed John's purposefully leaving Sam and Dean clues, the journal, and the coordinates, but won't outright tell the truth.

Sam: "I'm not unfaithful. I've never been." See, Sam, that's only in the cheating department. You are, however, keeping Jess in the dark about dangerous stuff. Can any relationship with such big lies every be a faithful one?

Again, the imagery of the flickering lights. A standard in the show later for when a ghost's around, but considering all the visual parallels between the Woman in White and Mary, I think it's intentional.

That CGI of the ghosts vanishing was kinda shit, though. So is the sound of water swirling down a drain, I'm now just thinking of a toilet.

Dean: "I'll take you home." and there, in an episode where the ghost is afraid to go home and face the consequences of their actions, Sam too must go back to Jess.

Sam discovering Jess' body on the ceiling, as the room's engulfed in flames, never fails to give me chills. Hot damn.

Post Episode Notes:

While the pilot is a treasure trove of world building, plotting of character arcs, and chemistry between Jared and Jensen, it still doesn't make up for the fact it's bookended with 2 women getting fridged. Mary and Jess don't get to be characters, only fuel for man-pain, and argue with me all you want, but Mary's send-off in S14 is far superior to what she got in the pilot.

I remember seeing Kripke discuss how many drafts they went through while writing the pilot, and it feels like that at quite a few points. Like maybe the sheriff was to get more time, or Troy's father, who I believe is a cop, would've been more vital to the plot. And Amy, who'll spend who knows how many weeks and months putting up missing person posters for Troy.

I believe Kripke also said they'd considered killing John at the end, rather than Jess. I think, and this is pure speculation, the more they went into the lore for the Woman in White, the more they knew Jess had to die. I don't like it, wish they could've done it different, but it fits the story they wanted to tell.

The Woman in White, John, Mary and Sam, in hindsight

It's a retcon from S4, but if Mary was honest with John about her past as a Hunter, maybe they'd have a better chance with fighting Azazel. It's tragically paralleled to Sam not telling Jess about his own past, which may have prevented her death. And while you could say Heaven and Hell would still have their way, and shape Sam and Dean the way they want to, I'd like to think, given the chance, free will could prevail, And, look at how often keeping secrets is framed as one of the worst things the characters could do to each other?

Additionally, if John had been honest with Sam and Dean about what he wanted them to do, and what kind of danger they were really in, maybe Sam wouldn't have left Jess alone.

Thank you for reading this monstrosity of a meta, I hope you enjoyed/found it interesting!

#SPN #meta #S1 #1X01 #Pilot #Sam #Dean #Back when they were babies #good lord #writers #writing

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queen-of-deans-booty · 4 years

Text

The Curious Case of Dean Winchester: Part Two

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 1,644

Warnings: typical supernatural violence, language, angst, blood, you know the usual

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Supernatural. All credit goes to their respective owners. Any and all comments on these are appreciated. I really want to hear what you guys think about this one!

Feedback is the glue that holds my writing together.

Tags at the bottom

“Find anything?” Dean asked his brother after you two checked what seemed like the hundredth bar in town. “No, not a thing. Well, you come up dry, circle back to the motel in two. Your turn to grab dinner… extra bacon.”

“Sam’s getting dinner?” you chuckled as you two took a seat at the bar.

“Yeah. Can we get a beer, please?” Dean asked the bartender.

“Yep.”

“You wouldn't happen to know of a poker game going on in back, would you?”

“It's a bar, not a casino,” the bartender sighed as he popped the top of two beers before handing them over.

“My friend Ben told me you'd know,” Dean said as he reached into his jacket pocket.

“Don’t know any Ben.”

“Sure, you do. You know, balding, smart-ass, real ladies' man?”

“Listen, pal,” the bartender leaned really close to prove his point, “I told you, I don't know any Ben. I don't know nothing about a game.”

“You sure? Because,” he slid over a hundred-dollar bill with its picture of Ben Franklin in the middle, across the bar counter, “he sure seems to know you.” The bartender glanced at the bill before making the decision to take it.

“Around back. Take the elevator down,” he cleared his throat.

Grinning at the man, you two took off to the back before doing exactly what he told you to do. As soon as you approached the elevator door, it opened and your father came rolling out of it in his wheelchair.

“Dad? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Planting daisies. What's it look like? Came in on the case.”

“And you beat us here?” you asked as your dad wheeled away from you two.

“Well, brains trump legs, apparently.”

“So, you found the game?” Dean asked.

“Yep.”

“Did you stop it?” you asked but received no answer. “Dad?”

“Not exactly,” he sighed as he wheeled around to face you.

“Dad, what did you do?”

“I played, okay?” he sighed.

“And?”

“I lost.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” you yelled. “You played some he-witch?”

“Don't you take that tone with me,” he glared.

“You fucking idiot!”

“They're my years! I can do what I want!” he yelled.

“And you didn’t think about me? What if you lost your life? Do you even care about my feelings?”

“How many did you lose?” Dean asked, changing the topic.

“Twenty-five,” he sighed.

Your father visibly aged twenty-five years right in front of your eyes. His skin sagged, the skin under his eyes darkened, and he looked even more tired than he already was.

“We are not done!” you growled before storming into the elevator.

Dean stared at Bobby before following you to confront the witch. As soon as you stepped foot into the room, your eyes flashed a bright blue in anger. Dean couldn’t stop you as you stormed over to the witch before grabbing his arm harshly.

“Hey, man. Excuse me. Can I borrow you for a sec?” you growled.

Patrick, the witch, looked at you before eyeing Dean who casually showed him the handle of his gun that was stashed inside of his jacket.

“Oh, yeah. Of course. Great. Good to see you two,” he said as he excused himself with the couple he was with. You forced Patrick over to one of the tables with a shove.

“Hey, calm down. Look, I don't know what it is you think I did to your wife or husband or brother or mother or sister, but, uh, I just want you to know, my feelings were real, and maybe they deserved it.”

“That ain't my problem, man-witch. You owe my dad some years,” you growled as your eyes got an even brighter blue.

“My, another witch on my hands. Good to see we’re still circling the world,” he laughed.

“I’m nothing like you. Give them back.”

“I'm sorry. He lost. Them's the breaks.”

“Well, then un-lose him or I will make your death so slow and painful you’re going to wish you’d given them back,” you threatened as blue magic started to swirl in between your fingers of your right hand.

“Give it your best shot if it makes you feel better. Besides, I could use a good… tickle. Darling, what you have doesn’t compare to what I can do. You want years? Great. Play me for them,” he chuckled.

“Fine,” Dean said before he could think about his words.

“Dean!” you gasped just as your father came rolling into the room.

“Dean, no!”

“They're my years. I can do what I want,” he repeated what your father said.

“Does no one care about me?!” you yelled emotionally. “You’re throwing away your lives like it’s nothing but what about me? What if you lose, Dean? What then?”

“I’m not going to lose.”

“I can’t watch this,” you sighed before turning to Patrick with a threatening glare. “My offer is still on the table. I will not hesitate to kill you, and something tells me I will win.”

“Good,” he chuckled as you left the poker game.

There was no way you were going to give yourself a panic attack while watching the game. If Dean didn’t come back, then you were going to rain hell on Patrick. If he came back and all was well, you’d rain hell down on Dean.

The door to the motel room opened, and Sam walked in carrying takeout trays with burgers and sodas. He closed the door and set them on the table before getting a good look at your depressed state on the bed. Your back was hunched, tears stained your cheeks, and your eyes were puffy and red.

“What the hell happened?” Sam asked.

“Ask the idiot,” you sniffled.

Dean walked out of the bathroom wearing a bathrobe, but that wasn’t the most shocking thing. He played Patrick, but he lost. Dean wasn’t Dean anymore. He gained fifty years after winning your father the twenty-five he bet on. Sam reached for his gun and was going to point it at the old man, but since you weren’t freaking out about the stranger, he figured he wasn’t dangerous.

“Dean?” Sam gasped.

“Hi.”

“Okay, what the fuck happened?”

“We, you know... found the game,” he said as he picked up one of the burgers on the table.

“You f—I thought you said you were g-good at poker,” Sam exclaimed.

“He isn’t,” you glared.

“Shut up,” Dean scoffed.

“Man, you look like—”

“The old chick in Titanic. I know. Shut up,” Dean scoffed with his mouth full.

“I was gonna say Emperor Palpatine,” Sam chuckled. The door to the room thudded open, and your dad came wheeling into it before closing it.

“I see you met John McCain there.”

“Yeah. Any of you want to tell me what happened?”

“My dad’s an idiot,” you sighed, “and Dean’s an even bigger one.”

“Hey, nobody asked him to play,” your dad argued.

“Right. I should have just let you die.”

“And for damn sure, nobody asked you to lose!” Bobby yelled. Sam grinned at the interaction, but when he caught your gaze, his smile faltered.

“It's like Grumpy Old Men.”

“Shut up, Sam,” your dad and Dean said as the same time.

“What the hell were you thinking? He's a witch. He's been playing poker since guys wore tights,” you exploded at your dad.

“You just don't get it,” Bobby sighed.

“Yeah, I get it, dad. You saw a chance to turn the hands of the clock back and get out of that damn chair. Pretty tempting.”

“I can imagine,” Dean added.

“No, you can't.”

“You got me. I never been paralyzed. But I tell you something—I've been to hell, and there's an archangel there wanting me to drop the soap. Look at me! My junk's rustier than yours! You hear me bellyaching? Huh?”

“Uh, actually, yeah,” Sam said when Dean’s stomach rumbled loudly. Dean gasped and took a seat while still holding onto his burger.

“I'm having a heart attack,” Dean gasped. Before you could publicly freak out, your dad spoke.

“No, you’re not.”

“What is this?”

“Acid reflux. Guys your age can't digest certain foods. You're gonna need to put down that cheeseburger,” he chuckled. Dean sighed and placed the burger down regretfully.

“So, you want to keep emoting, or you want to talk about solving this little issue of yours? It's got to be about the chips.”

“I slid 'em across, Patrick did his little witchy number, and you prettied up in a hurry.”

“I mean, what are you all thinking? Some kind of magic chips or something?” Sam asked.

“Definitely.”

“You remember what he chanted?” you asked.

“Every word,” your dad nodded.

“Alright, then let's find out where he stashes his chips,” Sam declared.

“And steal me fifty. Benjamin Button me back into burger shape. What do you think?” Dean smiled.

“I think you ought to put some clothes on,” you sighed.

Dean rolled his eyes but made his way to the bathroom where his clothes were. Luckily, they still fit, and he walked out twenty minutes later fully clothed. Someone knocked on the door, and Dean went to answer it. It was housekeeping, and she was a beautiful young woman. Dean’s natural instinct was to flirt, but with his age and looks, you weren’t even worried.

“Ready for housekeeping, sir?”

“Born ready,” Dean grinned.

“You're just like my grandfather,” she laughed and his grin faded. “He hits on anything that moves, too. You’re adorable.”

“And dangerous,” Dean frowned when she walked into the room to gather the dirty sheets.

“Aw,” she giggled. You, your dad, and Sam were all smirking at the scene before you.

“Can we just go? You’re my girlfriend. Shouldn’t you be jealous or something?” Dean pouted.

“No, you deserved that,” you declared as you left the room with the three men.

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drsilverfish · 5 years

Text

Re-Fridging Mary Winchester? The Ouroboros Narrative Swallows its Origin Story (14x18)

This is the last time we see Mary Winchester alive (14x17 Game Night). Her last words are, “Jack, please, listen to me!” and her last shot is this shaky close-up, straight to camera.

(Image credit Wayward Winchester https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIbBibdvsaM )

Doesn’t it look as if she’s directly addressing the audience here, as if to say, “Hey, folks, pay close attention!”?

The “real” Mary is, like the title of the episode (Absence) absent in 14x18.

Rowena says, after doing her locator spell, that Mary, “...is not on this earth.” We see ash that is supposedly hers, as Jack tries desperately to “resurrect” her. We learn Castiel has seen her soul in Heaven, but we do not see her, only the apparent door to her Heaven:

And the “body” Jack raises using Rowena’s necromancy spell? It is not Mary:

(Image credit Wayward Winchester: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny7tLZC3nto )

Sam is very explicit about that. He says, “I talked to Rowena. She said she thinks that what Jack brought back, he just brought back a shell, a body, y’know, that it was empty, just a... replica, incapable of holding life.”

A replica, like... a doppleganger, a mirror-image?

The shot above, of her sons holding this shell, this replica-double, is laid out at a boundary, between grass and ash, between life and death, almost as if between one world and another (separated, perhaps, by a portal?).

You might have seen my posts already about 14x17 Game Night and 14x18 Absence, wherein I am suspicious (for various reasons) as to whether that is really the last we will see of Mary Winchester on the show. Just as I am suspicious about Jack’s “Hallucifer” really just being a part of his own mind, because likewise, I highly doubt we have seen the last of Lucifer on the show:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/183968888069/lucifer-rides-again-games-within-games

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/184140015899/14x18-absence-the-games-continue

So, my consideration of the re-fridging of Mary Winchester in the S14 SPN narrative is caveated by the fact that I have a sense that this re-fridging may be contingent rather than final.

It is also caveated by the fact that Mary’s second (apparent) fridging was handled by Berens in a way which subverts it, because, as outlined above, Mary herself is absent from the mise-en-scène of her re-fridging. She has noped out of it!

But, if my suspicions concerning another twist to this narrative are incorrect (and I hope they’re not) then, deft or not, Mary is still dead again to further our male protagonists’ narratives.

I think we’re probably all familiar with the term, “fridging”....

The term originates with Gail Simone, a comic book writer who created the website Women in Refrigerators in 1999 (twenty years ago now, wow).

This is the link to the website (still live) and this is an excerpt of what she said:

“This is a list I made when it occurred to me that it's not that healthy to be a female character in comics. I'm curious to find out if this list seems somewhat disproportionate, and if so, what it means, really.

These are superheroines who have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator. I know I missed a bunch. Some have been revived, even improved -- although the question remains as to why they were thrown in the wood chipper in the first place.”

http://lby3.com/wir/

The trope, “fridging”, has now taken on an established life of its own in pop-culture criticism.

Here is some more discussion of it in an article by Maria Norris “ Comics and Human Rights: A Change is Gonna Come. Women in the Superhero Genre” (2015).

“The trope Simone describes is now widely acknowledged, and the practice it describes has come to commonly known as ‘fridging’. The superhero genre typically depicts interactions and relationships between male and female characters that lack consequence, emotional resonance, permanence and accountability. Often, these fictional relationships stagnate, or end tragically. Too often, women in superhero comics become pawns in schemes meant to develop male characters or give them motivation to act.”

http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/80285/1/Comics%20and%20Human%20Rights_%20A%20Change%20is%20Gonna%20Come.pdf

So, we can define fridging, from these sources as - the often gruesome or shocking death of a female character, for the primary purpose of driving male character motivation or development.

Whilst the trope may have been defined in the 1990s, it is much older in literature. We could argue that Oedipus’ mother, Jocasta, was fridged, for instance, because who she is (Oedipus’ birth mother) and her suicide, are framed as being all about Oedipus and the impact on Oedipus. We could even argue that Shakespeare fridged Ophelia, whose tragic suicide is driven by Hamlet’s cruelty (and his murder of her father) and whose death, in the play, is primarily designed to impact her menfolk - Hamlet (her beloved) and her brother Laertes.

Essentially, what we mean by the “fridging” of a female character is that in stories (usually by men) where men are the protagonists and the heroes (or tragic heroes or anti-heroes) sometimes (by no means always) women are written as primarily existing in relation to those men, so that their own deaths are not about themselves, but are used principally to explore the emotional landscapes of the hero-protagonists to whom they mattered and who live on after they are gone.

Mary Winchester’s original fridging, her gruesome burning on the ceiling, which we the audience see in 1x01 Pilot, provides the origin story for Supernatural.

Mary is fridged because she is dead the moment we meet her.

We don’t have time to get to know who she is, or what her death means as part of her own journey. She is killed gruesomely and that death provides major character motivation and development for her husband John Winchester and for her sons Sam and Dean. She is, originally, defined primarily by her relationships to them; as a dead wife and a dead mother.

Mary Winchester is fridged by fire and her menfolk are thus “birthed” into narrative. Over her silenced and torched corpse, they become words and action. Their narrative journey begins because hers ends.

That fridging is, in the very same pilot episode, repeated for Sam’s girlfriend Jess:

Supernatural, it is thus swiftly established (by a double fridging at the outset) is, overtly, a story of heterosexual men (John and Sam being so established by their relationships to Mary and Jess) without familial women. Men who have been initiated into a world of violence and grief, powerfully driven by revenge, because their women-folk have been slaughtered.

(Dean, however, has been queer-coded from the beginning, but that’s another story.)

In the established patriarchal order of the SPN universe (in which stories about men are central and stories about women are peripheral) heightened masculine emotion (which lies at the heart of Supernatural) is thus created and legitimised, by the death of women.

When Bobby becomes the Winchesters gruff substitute father-figure (with a gooey, although masked, heart-of-gold centre) his own back-story repeats the pattern. We learn Bobby had to kill his own wife, Karen, whilst she was possessed by a demon (see 3x10 Dream a Little Dream of Me, 5x15 Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, and 7x10 Death’s Door). In Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, Karen is raised as a zombie by Death, and Bobby is forced to kill her all over again, thus, once more, reinforcing the death of familial women as the origin point for the centrality of masculine emotion in the narrative. Karen, in the SPN narrative, does not really exist as her own person, only as Bobby’s tragic wife, framed, rather tellingly, as a home-maker and help-meet in this shot from 5x15:

Familial women, associated with the core male characters in Supernatural are thus, initially, strongly framed as occupying the domestic space, the hearth-fire, whilst hunting and the open road belongs to their (bereaved) menfolk.

For Mary Winchester, however, things become a little more complicated than that. Because, thanks to the time-travel abilities of the angels, she is “resurrected” in 4x03 In the Beginning and 5x13 The Song Remains the Same and her sons get to meet a living, younger, version of her. Mary becomes a person, raised as a hunter in her own right, rebellious, brave, independent, determined, a fighter. We see her having something of her own agency, although to a limited extent, in that she remains “trapped” by the angel breeding programme and the fate the angels have laid out for her - to marry John and to bear angel-vessel sons. She cannot therefore, escape her primary framing as a wife and mother, as in this shot from 5x13:

So, when Dabb inaugurated his era as showrunner, and his Ouroboros narrative structure, by taking us back to the start of Superantural and re-working the story by unnfridging Mary Winchester (11x23 Alpha and Omega):

(Image credit: http://timetraveldean.tumblr.com/post/144939142393 )

it was such a brilliant “un-zipping” of the original SPN narrative architecture. The Ur “woman in white” was back from the dead; Supernatural was going meta-narrative on its own ass in a big way. By having Mary brought back to life from Heaven by the feminine God-principle in the universe, Amara, who had previously been unjustly locked away by her brother, God, SPN was critiquing its own patriarchal origin story.

Yay!

Which is why Mary’s re-fridging in 14x18, IF the writers’ room is playing it straight (and, as above, I have my strong doubts about that) would be so disappointing.

Sure, on one level, from Dabb’s Ouroboros narrative perspective, it makes impactful and symmetrical sense.

Jack was always paralleled to Azazel, as well as to Dean and Sam, at his birth - see this meta of mine on 12x23 All Along the Watchtower:

http://drsilverfish.tumblr.com/post/160876601179/all-along-the-watchtower-12x23-and-12x22-and

A yellow-eyed supernatural being in a nursery, a baby, and a mother who dies. The ingredients are the same (1x01 and 12x23) - the recombination is different, as part of the narrative journey.

Mary’s first death inaugurated Dean as substitute-parent to Sam.

Jack’s mother, Kelly Kline’s death, inaugurated the Winchesters as substitute parents to Jack. And oh boy, did the narrative not treat Kelly Kline well. Kelly Kline was stealth-raped by Lucifer and died giving birth to Jack (her body mystically ripped apart by the birth). Kelly was fridged for Jack’s nascent emotional journey, because, once again, the show’s core depends on the absence of familial women.

Kelly Kline dies giving birth to Jack (12x23)

Jack’s birth and Sam and Dean’s parental responsibility for him also coincided with Castiel’s death, thus (in subtext) the narrative also mirrored Dean’s grief at losing Cas to his father John Winchester’s grief at losing Mary.

In a patriarchal culture where male feeling is repressed, which is definitely the in-show world of Supernatural (mirroring aspects of IRL US culture) the stakes, apparently, “have to” be bloody, they “have to” be high, in order for the narrative to “permit” the levels of traumatic emotion which Dean and Sam (and now Jack) continually cycle through, whilst maintaining their ostensibly “tough” hunter hero status.

The bedrock of that “permission”, i.e. permission to be a show about male sentiment? With Kelly Kline’s death, it continued to be predicated on the violent death of familial women - at the very moment the Winchesters themselves became fathers.

Dabb used the same (tired) trope in 9x20 Bloodlines (Ennis lost his girfriend to a werewolf attack, and was thus deeply emotionally wounded and bent on revenge).

Female familial death is the narrative “excuse” for the homo-social world of SPN, and it also works to contain the homoerotic subtext of SPN. Women are ostensibly, only absent from these men’s lives because they keep traumatically losing them, not because they, in fact, prefer the company of other men.

Two grown brothers and a male-embodied angel who live together, have adopted a son together, and who spend all their time in states of incredible emotional angst?

Hollywood culture (and the mainstream audience it imagines it is speaking to) still (for the most part - although let’s acknowledge Tapert’s Spartacus for Starz, 2010-2013) cannot compute how to experience that kind of set-up as both “queer” AND “manly” (which is why Troy [2004] eviscerates the homo-romantic from Achilles/ Patroclus) so the violent death of familial women in Supernatural is used as an excuse for their absence

Mary’s ostensible death in 14x18 seems, once again, to re-affirm this patriarchal order, even though, in her time back on earth, from 11x23 to now, Mary has been written and portrayed as a flawed, real person; her apple-pie baking, perfect Mom, childhood mirage (Dean’s dream of her idealised memory) thoroughly deconstructed. And I have lived for that.

To have her re-fridged, for her sons’ man-pain (i.e. for the narrative “permission” to cycle through grief and angst and growth again) after all that, just sits wrong with me.

And, despite the beauty of Beren’s structure, despite his respectful treatment of her, make no mistake, Mary is (if we read this as played straight) re-fridged, because her death, is not about her or her own journey, rather, narratively, it now deliberately leaves her sons in the place of their father.

A yellow-eyed “demon” (their adopted Nephilim son Jack, whom they fear has lost his soul) has killed Mary Winchester, again. Will the Winchesters follow in the footsteps of John Winchester’s revenge quest, or will they find another way?

I really hope Mary comes back from the AU world she’s been un-wittingly blasted to by Jack to kick some sense into her sons’ asses and, oh yeah, punch Lucifer in the face all over again:

Mary punching Lucifer in 13x22 Exodus.

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