#s13x04

[imdreamingofhim]

Looks like they switched ties!

Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester | s13x04

[kuistav-koffer16]

My baby Jack's the purest sweetest being in the world I'm crying so hard

[weekendwritingmarathon]

This weekly roundup includes fics written (at least in part) during the 1k1h sprints and/or the Weekend Writing Marathon events.

Fics are ordered first by fandom, then by word count from smallest to largest.

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The Avengers Talent Show by @pherryt

marvel || winterhawk (Clint/Bucky) || Explicit || No major warnings apply || 6,929 words || Complete

Summary: Bucky can't believe the Avengers are putting on a talent show, but if you ask him, Clint is the main attraction...

Other tags: Dancing, Singing, talent show, deaf!Clint, Smut, Light Angst, Bottom!Bucky, top!Clint, implied future switching, Panties, Pining, Hurt/Comfort

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When Once We Thought Ourselves Broken by @pherryt

marvel || winterhawk (Clint Barton/Bucky Barnes), side sam/steve || General || No major warnings apply || 10,084 || Complete

Summary: Clint's soulmate mark had never worked right, blinking on and off since the day he'd been born. Bucky was broken in more ways than most people knew, except maybe Steve, even before he'd headed off to war and HYDRA had gotten their hands on him. Everything finally makes sense when they come together.

Other tags: Soulmates, Ace!Bucky, post winter soldier, Canon Divergent, mute!bucky, partially mute bucky, deaf!Clint, Soulmate marks, Panic Attacks, Low Self Esteem, First Kiss, hurt!Clint, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, Hawk, wolf, alternating pov

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Every Monster That Sleeps Inside You (Chapter 2) by Treefrogie84

Supernatural || destiel, drowley, dean x cas x crowley || Mature || Graphic Descriptions of Violence || 3,391 words || WIP

Summary: Attempting the trials to close Hell lets loose something far worse than the occasional crossroads demon or Dean’s second favorite drinking buddy. Heaven wants all the tablets they can get their hands on, Abaddon wants to destroy everything in favor of utter chaos in Hell as well as on Earth, and somehow, Sam and Dean have to stop all of it. Except stopping Abaddon might take more from Dean than he can afford to give. A Mark of Cain fix-it starting at 8.12 As Time Goes By.

Other tags: canon-typical violence, canon divergent, mark of cain, demon!Dean, season 9 fix-it, season 10 fix-it, Carver era rewrite

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Cleanse the Waters by @li-izumi

Supernatural || Castiel/Dean Winchester (pre-slash) || Teen & up || No major warnings apply || 16,416 words || Complete

Summary: Castiel’s multitude of sins haunt him in ways all too human, but water cannot cleanse him when he is drowning in his own guilt. Over the years, he’s tried to ignore his fear--after all, no one needs a broken angel--but he keeps failing and needing to be saved by those he should be saving. If Castiel is ever to be absolved, he must overcome his fear and walk into the water alone.

Other tags: Coda, Hurt/Comfort, Outsider POV, Aquaphobia, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Because Canon, Temporary Major Character Death, Dean’s man pain, dramatic use of dramatic irony, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Big Bang Challenge, Episode: s07e02 Hello Cruel World, Episode: s07e17 The Born-Again Identity, Episode: s09e03 I’m no Angel, Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can’t Wait, Episode: s09x10 Road Trip, Episode: s10e21 Dark Dynasty, Episode: s11e18 Hell’s Angel, Episode: s13x04 The Big Empty

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[hhxh2020]

SPN S13x04:the conversation b/w Sam&Dean'bout "lost" their mom make me feel sorry for Sam.Sam is persistent&not easily giving up the hope bc he never had it before;Dean was devastated but was trying to hold it for himself.

I like the way they apologized at the end of each fight. However, every time I watched them fight, I felt so sad for them.

[thedogsled]

13x04 as you’ve never heard it before: Trek vs. Wars

Both do it right. Both make some mistakes. Both have good intentions. Both are brought up in 13x04. Both have crazy ass fans who need to inform you how much superior one is than the other. But uh. I just find it amusing that in a season so far that has presented us with such duality, an episode that opens with a Star Wars reference throws in a Star Trek one as well just for consistency.

I’m going to touch on both because it’s fascinating to me, particularly as both references are so clearly bonded to Jack. And I know, I know. They’re obvious pop culture references, but there’s more underneath the surface to them if that’s all you know them as.

Okay, so I’ve seen people talking here and there about Anakin and Ahsoka. I didn’t watch Clone Wars (though it’s sitting on my shelf right here, oops), so I don’t actually know about Ahsoka, but obviously Anakin is a big deal. 

I’ve seen meta comparing Jack’s potential arc to Luke’s and to Vader’s, but that’s because in a lot of ways their arcs are similar, it’s just that they have different outcomes. Luke, of course, has friends and family in his court, while Anakin is under the thumb of a master manipulator in Palpatine who essentially corrupts him because of his great potential power. There’s an easy line to draw there, of course, between Asmodeus and Palpatine. And so if you lean into the Anakin comparison, you have the following:

Anakin was not a child when he was taken in by Qui-Gon for training (I mean he was but by the standards of the Jedi Temple not really)

The Prophecy regarding Anakin said that he would bring balance to the Force (Ultimately he did, there were 2 Sith and 2 Jedi left)

The Jedi Council feared his power/influence and initially forbade his training

And then Anakin consequently lost all the people he cared about or who had faith in him, starting with Qui-Gon.

Which led to him being trained by Obi-Wan who was barely out of Padawan diapers and a bit of a rule breaker himself

And lets face it had a less than stellar upbringing too (But I guess the EU is no longer canon so w/e)

And don’t forget that Obi-Wan is pretty fucking depressed in general (He describes it as his fate to be sad) but he had just lost the person with which he had a profound bond

It’s no wonder Jack aspires to be more like Ahsoka. By Clone Wars Anakin - because of his skill and the lack of leadership experience of Obi-Wan - is a bit of a cocky dick. He endangers others. He’s arrogant, prideful, rageful, prone to outbursts of emotion and ultimately imperfect. The fact that he has such great power raises him above his peers, and those who train him begin to try to impede his process rather than give him - impetuous and unchallenged as he is - a position of wider influence. This leaves opportunity for Palpatine to prey on his feelings of how unfair this situation is. And ultimately? Anakin thinks he’s doing the right thing. He thinks he’s doing good because he’s been told it’s the right thing to do by someone he trusts.

"I see through the lies of the Jedi. I do not fear the dark side as you do. I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire."

Or paradise?

But Jack can be Luke too. The difference for Luke (just as it’s made clear in the scene of Jack in 13x04) is that he doesn’t want to become Anakin. Luke walks into that cave on Dagobah and in a nightmarish sequence this is the fear he’s presented with: that he and Vader have a great deal in common. (ftr he lops Vader’s head off and the mask explodes to reveal Luke’s face underneath) But it is this fear that allows Luke to choose his side.

This imo is a ray of hope for Jack. He knows what he wants to be: he wants to be good. He’s just not sure of what he’s feeling.

Which leads me to Spock.

Spock is also Jack. Now if you don’t know anything about Star Trek, you probably believe the hype: Spock is a green blooded alien freak from the planet Vulcan. He’s not. Spock is a half breed, half human and half Vulcan, and that’s why I’m going to compare him to Jack. That’s where these layers come from.

Vulcans breeding with humans is seen as a taboo, you see. It’s just not done. There’s all sorts of reasons for this (such as mating rituals) but among them is that Vulcans see humans as emotionally volatile (and unenlightened because of it). A half human child, therefore, is equally prone to this volatility. Spock attends Vulcan schools where he has disputes with other children and basically has to try twice as hard to BE Vulcan to prove that his human half doesn’t make him less than. This troubles his father, of course, because Sarek did fall in love with a human woman (two actually) and he loves and admires the humanity in his son. But Sarek - being wholly Vulcan - is never able to actually express this. Spock didn’t find out the true depth of his father’s feelings until he mindmelded with Picard in season 5 of TNG). Anyway, I’m wandering off topic.

The thing about Vulcans that is overlooked by haphazard pop culture references is that they do feel emotions. They feel them with deep intensity, but through societal pressure/meditation they’ve built a resilience to expressing them--a resilience that fractures every time their hormones go crazy. Spock struggles with his emotions because he has two conflicting halves to contend with, human volatile emotionality and Vulcan intensity with deliberate emotional repression. He is unemotional because he’s gone to pains to suppress it in the past, and identifying and empathizing/sympathizing with those emotions isn’t something his upbringing has trained him to do. Spock chooses to focus on his Vulcan side. As a consequence this half-Vulcan raised on Vulcan acts like a Vulcan because he doesn’t understand the emotions of the people around him, and is detached from something that a human upbringing could have taught him. Spock represents, therefore, an interesting example of duality because it is his choice which defines him:

Data: “As you examine your life, do you find you have missed your Humanity?" Spock: "I have no regrets." Data: "'No regrets.' That is a Human expression." Spock: "Yes. Fascinating."

(For those who don’t know Data’s story is more like Castiel’s, it’s a story about aspiring toward inachievable humanity)

(Author’s note: If you want an idea of how Vulcan culture works, it’s like imagine Toxic Masculinity: The Planet but instead of men being subtly forced to hide their vulnerability it’s generations of very long living, stubborn people being subtly forced to hide their emotions entirely. Nope, that still sounds like Earth)

So Jack is dumped in Dean and Sam’s world, fully grown, surrounded by all these emotions. He FEELS DEEPLY. He has strong and volatile emotions, just like Spock, that he has no understanding of how to demonstrate. Take, for example, that Jack went in to Mia and asked her to become his mother, the deep and intense emotion that motivated that arrangement. There is genuine emotion there, but Jack doesn’t know what to call it, how to identify with it, or if the feeling is good or bad (which is the greatest issue of all because he Does Not Want To Be Bad)--he only knows that it hurts. But what is he supposed to do with that hurt? Man up, maybe?

That Jack’s powers, therefore, are linked to his expressions of emotion is particularly interesting. Outbursts of emotion have been linked to power before in the show, and specifically parallels to Max Miller were brought up in this episode too. That’s no surprise. But Jack’s power is angelic in origin, so his being able to express it through emotion, which is arguably unangelic (though I have opinions on that, damn it) is a whole other kettle of cod.

Jack has been dumped in a world of emotion without the ability to empathize or sympathize. He’s trying, but it’s no surprise he’s having difficulty. Unlike Castiel who had years to begin to learn emotion long before he became human, Jack has been thrown in at the deep end, and it’s not helped at all that these tidepools of human grief are his window on that world because the one thing Sam and Dean aren’t being at the moment is emotionally consistent.

Anyway. I’d been staring at this gifset @elizabethrobertajones made and literally couldn’t put my inner trekkie to sleep. I’m sure this was meant to make more sense than it did originally, but it’s just my take on it. Both Anakin and Spock canonically experience strong emotions and both are taught by the institutions meant to train them that those emotions are dangerous. In Anakin’s case emotion helps him harness greater power. Both have to struggle with their duality, and both face prejudgement because of it. Ultimately despite their differences they both have to make a choice. Unfortunately for Jack, he has to deal with both aspects of his duality as a nephilim and whether his powers/emotions or possible lack of each make him good or evil.

Which leaves him struggling with one question: Who am I?