#spn it's a terrible life

[shallowseeker]

Zach I

Zach II

Zach III

Cas can DIE?! Say it ain't so!

Bobby, demoralized

Dean and Cas's mutual, pissy fatalism

Love blooming, personal space

You're not much fun, so why am I laughing so hard?

Dean's anxiety at being a vessel

Sam: Guess what? I'm a vessel, too! Everyone, please panic.

Recruiting Dean

So I don't lose them later...

Stupid amounts of having fun, though...

[theangelblood]

I'm on 4x17 of rewatching Spn along with the podcast, and now that I'm almost caught up with it, I'm kinda sad and need a new show to watch between the podcast episodes.

[purgaytorysupremacy]

“Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway.”

Sade Andria Zabala, Coffee and Cigarettes

Dean edition

[boywifesammy]

i feel like the boys’ representation in “it’s a terrible life” is a really accurate and insightful look into how they work on an Instinctual level.

at first it seems like just a funny bit for dean to be the one dismissing the ghost thing, but dean wesson actually fits perfectly into dean’s personality. i mean, think about it. hunter dean is OBSESSED with the job. he lives breathes and sleeps hunting. he’s proud of who he is and what he does, and he enjoys being a part of something. this episode shows how that’s part of dean’s intrinsic personality. he needs order. structure. discipline.

sam is mischaracterized as ‘the emotional one’, but i think dean’s a lot more of a romantic than him. he likes the idea of a stable life, whether that’s hunting or a cushy corporate job. he wakes up at 6am everyday, has a distinct routine and a circle of friends. he does herbal detoxes and drinks frothy rice milk lattes.

life is a package for him. dean likes fitting in. he doesn’t like breaking status quo. he instinctively looks to blend in, whether that’s in a corporate environment or with his father and other hunters. dean likes the idea of family. connection. he needs people, people who are familiar and trustworthy. he’s very community/family oriented. he’s not a lone wolf.

but sam on the other hand, he’s intrinsically in tune with weird frequencies. he’s strange and he picks up strange things. he cares about people and appreciates connection but he values himself and his gut instinct more. he loves sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. he doesn’t give a fuck about blending in. he didn’t as a hunter so he sure as hell doesn’t in a goddamn tech support cubicle.

sam straight up tells dean that everything about this feels wrong. and you can TELL that dean feels it as well. sam tells him that he thinks he should be doing more, it’s in his blood, he hates everything about this fake life. but dean deflects. no matter how uncomfortable he seems he pushes it down in favour of predictably and routine. even if deep down, he knows its wrong, it takes him a lot more time than sam to admit it.

this shows that sam is more than ‘hunting bad’ and dean is more than ‘hunting good’. it was never about hunting. sam refuses to turn a blind eye. he WANTS to rebel. it’s his nature. he instinctively looks for things that don’t line up and he calls that out. he doesn’t care about the backlash. dean needs stability. he needs people. he needs to feel like he’s a part of something. it’s why he brushes off that feeling of wrongness so quickly at the beginning of the episode, because he’s willing to overlook some of the bad for the benefits.

it’s just like how hunter dean is willing to defend john, defend the grisly violence of hunting, and convince himself into thinking this is his only choice. sam refuses to do that. he instead latches onto that feeling of otherness and rebels even though it costs him family and familiarity.

[coca-colas-truck-driver]

its a terrible life is SO odd because what do you MEAN with their memories completely wiped and replaced with fake ones of a different childhood they still clicked and wanted to be near each other? why is dean so concerned with what this random dude in tech hes never met before is doing? why are you even telling me that with nothing else but some dreams about a guy, sam is willing to run away with him and hunt the supernatural? did dean really need this to know hunting is in his blood or to know that sam had fully abandoned the idealistic version of his life where he was normal with a girlfriend and a regular job?

[future-dregs]

Having Sam be the way he was in It's A Terrible Life was wild. Like, he was right, but you can imagine propositioning your casual coworker to abandon their life and job to sleep out of motel rooms with you, because you've been having dreams about him and now you know that ghosts are real?

A man you have barely ever talked to, by the way. But now you're saying come live hand to mouth with me, in each other's back pockets, "details" like food and money don't mean anything to me because I'm just that drawn to you and I'm ready to upend my whole worldview and identity because of it?

[shadystranger]

sam had a boner here

[flugame-mp3]

[shirtlesssammy]

Dean Winchester every day -- 77/326

Supernatural 4x17//It's a Terrible Life

[cas-poisoning]

The way people write John in fic bothers me so much sometimes. Not to judge other people’s writing specifically, just the general fanon characterization of John Winchester. Yes he’s bad a father. Horrible. So much to unpack there. Yet I find it so disappointing when I go to read a fic and he’s like. Cartoonishly villainous. Excluding the fans that actually like John (which is even more crazy), it feels like everyone treats him as like this big bad one dimensional monster which imo is a disservice to the complex relationship Sam and Dean have with them. It’s also a symptom of a broader pattern in media, or even real world events. It’s so much easier to flatly paint anyone bad as inhuman, one dimensional, and just plain evil. Monstrous. But the reality is, every horrible person is still a person. Humans are capable of the evil we do, not monsters.

So when it comes to John, like yes, he is deeply deeply flawed. He really hurt his kids. But often when people write him, it feels like he makes all of his terrible decisions for the sake of being mean and terrible and abusive, which undermines the dynamic because the reality is people can be abusive or neglectful or toxic without being a complete monster 100% of time. It would almost be easier for Sam and Dean if John had actually been like that. But he was their father, who did what he thought was best, and loved them even if he didn’t show it. They have fond memories with him. He’s their father. Which is what makes it so hard for them to actually unpack the trauma they have, because it is so so difficult to realize a person you love is actually actively hurting you. Harder than realizing a villain in your life is just being a villain.

[shallowseeker]

Jack’s undercover name in Optimism was Smith oh lol forever:

JACK: I'm Jack, by the way. Jack Smith.

HARPER: Harper. I have the perfect book for you.

JACK: That would be great. (staring into each other's eyes)

Dean is waiting in Baby, looking sadly in mirror

DEAN: Old man, my ass. (watches Jack and Harper come out of library along with Miles following them)

(Text Attributions// Supernatural scripts here via @spnscripthunt. Transcripts are located here via SPNWiki. Visit their Tumblr to donate.)

(In another world, somewhere far away: "Your dad is kinda fussy, Jack. Can you make him turn off NPR?")

[friendlyneighbourhoodfreak]

Did they make 'It's a terrible life' just so that they could have an "I don't swing that way moment" between Sam and Dean?

This really is the Insect show.

[emotionallyunstabl]

i hate having offline friends. none of these people know about samgirl voter fraud or dnp tit december lore drop wtf do i talk about

[midnightsilver]

Mr Smith meet Mr Smith - It was my thought that they would hate each other…. at first.😁

My art pitch for @crack-in-the-chassis was chosen by @masoena who wrote a story for it 😄 you can find the summary info here.

[caduceuzs]

My favourite Ken

[opheliasam]

4.16 is literally the craziest most insane episode ever . Dean goes to heaven n sees sam for who he is via his memories (assumes this must bc sam hates him despite sam having done nothing to imply that… like these were his happiest memories.. sorry his happiest moments weren’t about u or john oh my what a transgression???? like what . maybe it’s not about u or john it’s just about sam . It’s not a reflection of what he feels about you just about what makes him happy) and after seeing . Sam for who he is . he resents him bc sam does not feel all warm n cosy about home but the thing is . That’s not his fault and no one is saying that it’s dean’s fault . he just assumes that this means sam hates me and sees me at fault and resents me which makes him in turn resent sam . For being different than the way dean saw him . Which is actually so fucking crazy it makes my stomach churn—peak toxicity … and dean throws the samulet away bc his baby brother isn’t baby brother-ing and he can’t stand that. He does not like who sam is outside of his little brother—sammy. He does not like sam—the person. And so the only way he can reconcile staying with sam is by getting him to BE not sam but sammy. But samny is just baby brother—endlessly enamoured and dependent on dean, all heart eyes and hero worship. But what this means for sam is that he has to cede aspects of his personhood and autonomy away until he becomes what dean wants him to be—because that’s the only way dean can love him without resenting him. He makes himself smaller and smaller to fit into the role that dean sees him as, and it is such a small space—and sam doesn’t want to be sammy. He doesn’t, he wants to be sam but time and again the narrative punishes him for attempting to be sam until he can’t trust himself anymore and turns to dean (stone number one) and dean betrays, and lies and manipulates and changes the rules all the time, but dean can’t be wrong, right? he did it all for a reason (some reason) So . So it must mean that sam is at fault even though he had no way of knowing when the rules change or why they do.. he just knows that he doesn’t know anything, and that he’s a mess and that he needs dean and dean protects him. (this is what he believes he knows but we know that is not objective reality—prolonged abuse leads to him rationalising and even revising history just so it can portray dean in the best possible light, despite it not being the objective truth.) Because that’s the only way sam can make sense of anything.

(I’m using the rhetoric sam employs in order to make sense of the things happening to him, and the deep seated denial of his victimhood.)

Because otherwise it would mean something that it cannot possibly mean—that dean loves him but he’s also tried to kill him multiple times over and he’s violent and he doesn’t like that sam is vegan or likes smoothies or books and he doesn’t like when sam talks back or tries to question a decision and he is so angry all the time and sam is so so scared of him . But it can’t mean that . It cannot. Because that makes dean an ab—so it must be sam. It must—has to be sam’s fault, it has to be because he deserves it and sam just has to try harder at being good so that he can absolve himself. He’s not a victim. He can’t be .. he can’t be , he wants this . He does he does. He. He has to.