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#tfw you're just out here trying to survive-
a2zillustration · 9 months
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This happened the first night Yenna stayed at camp, sorry kid buckle up
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Chapters: 5/?
Fandom: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup, Julia Burnsides/Magnus Burnsides
Characters: Duck Newton Edmund "Ned" Chicane Aubrey Little Dani (The Adventure Zone) Taako (The Adventure Zone) The Director | Lucretia Merle Highchurch Magnus Burnsides Lup (The Adventure Zone) Barry Bluejeans Davenport (The Adventure Zone) Avi (The Adventure Zone) Kravitz (The Adventure Zone) The Raven Queen (The Adventure Zone) Istus (The Adventure Zone) Garfield the Deals Warlock Billy (The Adventure Zone) Barclay (The Adventure Zone) Jake Coolice Mama (The Adventure Zone) Minerva (The Adventure Zone) The Hunger | John
Additional Tags: AU, Camp AU, Summer Camp AU,Shipping, a lot of goofs, cross universe, Amnesty, balance, Everyone is there, Barry pines for lup, Mutual Pining, just super self indulgent, i thought of this in the tfw discord at like three in the morning, Romance, Comedy, goofs,
Summary: Camp Faerun isn't a bad camp, per se, but things do tend to go wild on a regular basis. "Wild" doesn't mean that the campers sneak out of the unit to steal ice cream from the dining hall (they do that, but that's not wild. That's pretty standard). "Wild" means that Brian defects to the snotty brat camp across the lake. "Wild" means that Lup and Aubrey become friends and nearly burn down half the forest. "Wild" also means that there's an oil baron trying to buy out the camp, and he's gauging the best way to do that by trying to shut it down via sabatoge, but also taking the weird plantfucking nature specialist on dates? For some reason?
If you're a new camper here for a relaxing summer, then I can almost guarantee that, despite Duck Newton and Davenport's best efforts, Taako, Lup, Magnus, and Aubrey will get you across the lake in the fastest way possible (they're gonna fire you out of a catapult). So, if you just accept your fate, don't buy the dehydrated water from the camp store, and avoid getting knifed by Duck's weirdo psychopath cousin, then you'll (probably) survive the summer!
Chapter Summary: Gaga is in full swing. Taako is betrayed by those closest to him. Magnus and Aubrey form a temporary alliance. Magnus loves his girlfriend.
Chapters are gonna be getting shorter but more frequent, FYI
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mittensmorgul · 5 years
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I'm sorry, I didn't mean for my ask to upset you.You're a terrific writer & I love your meta! For awhile, I've been having a hard time reconciling the show's original "humanity" theme with what's happening now. Jack's almost invincible & has God-like powers. He singlehandedly took care of Michael, Nick, Lucifer & is teaming up with 2 other supernatural heavy hitters. I like Jack but TFW's my jam. So I hope you're right that they'll still be important, even if they're not special with superpowers
It’s okay, I’m fine, really :D
I guess I’m just confused as to how the humanity themes aren’t still being well represented, considering 14.20. I mean... Dean, a human, literally snatched the guitar out of God’s hands and smashed it. He stood there, thinking there was literally no other choice but to kill both Jack and himself to save the world. After he spent more than half of s13 thinking HE needed to die or be locked in that box to contain Michael and save the world. But in the end, he literally stood up to God and said NO. No he would not destroy himself and Jack for Chuck.
(and then Chuck went ahead and killed Jack anyway)
Dean, a Human, has spent the entire season telling cosmic beings to shove it-- Michael, Billie (re: him getting in the Ma’lak box), Chuck himself. While Jack was human for a while and then finally bonded with Dean and became family to him.
But as I’ve been writing for a really, really long time, the A Plot, the defeating of the seasonal big bads, has long ceased to be the point of the show. I’ve written several things in the last few weeks about how it’s undeniably clear now that Dabb has been writing toward this endgame since he took over back in s11, and has been exploiting the show’s own spiral narrative to do it.
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184788264850/i-will-always-maintain-that-dabbs-finales-titles
here’s a post linked in the one above that I wrote right after 12.23 aired, pointing out the fact that watching this as if it was a plot-driven narrative would lead to frustration and like... missing the whole entire point...:
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/160988290690/12-while-i-do-not-ask-this-to-be-negative-at
I mean, I’m sitting here watching 13.01 right now, which from the perspective of post 14.20 looks like a freaking bookend... in pretty much every way. Dean’s prayer to Chuck which goes unanswered (which feels like the complete opposite sentiment toward Chuck that Michael will express, the opposite of what Lucifer expressed), Sam begins to teach Jack how to Human, but also to help him understand his own powers.
All of this was supposed to stop after 11.23, after Dean found a peaceful reconciliation for the original divide of the universe. Chuck promised the world would be okay without him, but it wasn’t. The hits kept coming, and in 14.20, we learned WHY:
Chuck: Listen, you guys know me. I'm hands-off. I built the sandbox -- you play in it. You want to fight Leviathans? Cool. You got that. You want to go up against -- what was it? -- the "British Men of Letters"? Okay. Little weak, but okay. But when things get really bad, like the Apocalypse or the Other Apocalypse, that's when I have to step in.
This was still Chuck, watching his favorite show, watching his guys reenact his favorite story over and over again. We’ve complained for literal years about Lucifer being a one-note, boring Big Bad, because he was. Intentionally. People were disappointed in the whole Michael storyline, because it was never really made clear what his motivations were, or what his plans were outside of the completely nihilistic desire to break everything Chuck ever built. He sounded just like another tired rehash of Lucifer’s storyline since s12:
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184740345285/im-watching-1207-on-the-tnt-loop-and-yeah
and see this for Dabb As Death, his chosen in-story avatar, the way Kripke was Chuck and Carver was Metatron:
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184557290140/death-is-one-of-my-favorite-characters-in-the
Dabb literally introduced Billie in 11.02, singing O Death. He killed her in 12.09 and then leveled her up to the mantle of Death. That’s Dabb’s function in the writer’s room... started out as just another writer, stuck around paying very close attention to the characters, through every other showrunner’s tenure, and finally leveled up himself to showrunner where he is calling the shots, and will be the one to finally end the show. Well he’s already ended the long spiral of Chuck (Kripke’s) original story. Considering how long the loop has been looping, there was really only one way to stop it: narrative syzygy and the sudden dropping of the curtain in such a way that TFW can finally see the Big Narrative Spiral for what it is. For the complete Cosmic Runaround they’ve been put through over and over again for Chuck’s entertainment.
Big Bads from the Leviathan to the BMoL to Lucifer to Michael to Asmodeus to even Crowley sometimes, to the alternate universe’s apocalypse have all been rendered secondary to what the actual point was-- the gradual character growth for Sam, Dean, and Cas. 
Sam, Dean, and Cas are the characters we care about. They’re the reason we continue watching this show even after 14 years. I wrote a post the other day about this:
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184829064145/why-is-every-piece-of-media-now-about-surprise
and here:
https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/184459635020/you-know-what-i-love-dabbs-vision-for-spn-he
and quoting myself from that second post: “Viewers don’t identify with apocalypses, we identify with the characters who survive them, who save the world from them, you know?”
But see, I think looking at the show as “must defeat the big bad, this is what’s important” is literally missing the entire point of watching. THAT is what Dabb wanted us to take away here.
First off, it was Dean who killed Lucifer, by finally saying yes to a version of Michael, but then Dean lost to Michael internally. He eventually DID defeat Michael inside his own mind in 14.10-- with the help of Sam and Cas. I mean... TFW victory, right? And then he spent several episodes struggling to keep Michael contained.
And all of it, in the end, when the three of them stood there facing God, was pointless. Pointless in the plot-narrative of defeating an endless string of Big Bads. Discovering that no matter how well they succeeded, no matter how many people they saved, Chuck would just throw another wrench into their lives and start the story again. Every time they thought they were finally winning, finally allowed themselves to think about their lives reaching a sort of stasis where they went out on occasional hunts and handled them easily, and even considered the “toes in the sand” sort of break from hunting where the world wasn’t constantly trying to end itself... Chuck would just toss another Cosmic Catastrophe at them.
And Jack... was one of those Cosmic Catastrophes.
(which is why no matter how much he’s become family, no matter how important he is to all of them, no matter how much they’ve all grown by their relationship with Jack, he’s still in a different narrative category than our Three Heroes)
I don’t know what Jack’s fate will be at the end of the road, but what I do know is that for the rest of TFW-- for Sam, Dean, and Cas-- s15 will absolutely be about their very human wants and needs, and their final release from Chuck’s eternal cosmic spiral. 14.20 was about their individual awakenings to this fact of the universe, this fact of their entire lives having been engineered entirely for the original creator’s entertainment. Only now can they truly fight for THEMSELVES, instead of fighting to stop an apocalypse and save the world. For the first time EVER, they are fighting for their OWN humanity.
I really really hope this makes sense. There’s only so much yelling I can do about this. :P
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caranfindel · 5 years
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Recap/review 14.19: “Jack in the Box”
THEN: Eh, you know all this. Oh, wait, here's something interesting - a reminder that Naomi was overcome by the Empty slime. Which reminds me of my theory that Naomi and/or Duma might actually be the Empty Entity. Hmmm. Oh, and also, all the Jack stuff.
NOW: There's a bunch of hunters in the bunker, drining beer and looking at pictures of Mary and her stuff on the map table. Including the picture Sam burned. Well, I'm glad it wasn't the only copy. And whatever these rings and calipers are that are always on the map table, apparently they're permanent, because they weren't removed for this little memorial display. Also, John's journal is part of the display, and I know they gave it to Mary to read, but still, it's John's. This bothers me.
So, are these surviving AU hunters? If not, that means the Winchesters have opened the bunker up to every hunter they know (and revealed its location to everyone they know), which is... not what I would have done. TFW makes an entrance (why were they not in there with their guests) and Dean thanks them for coming and makes a little speech but I'm finding it real hard to concentrate on Dean right now because LOOK AT SAM'S SHIRT. LOOK AT IT. It's CLOSE-FITTING and it's NOT PLAID and whatever awful things this episode does (and my completely unspoiled prediction is that IT WILL DO AWFUL THINGS), we at least got this.
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I strongly suspect this is actually Jared's shirt.
Dean informs the gathered that they missed the pyre, sorry. And he mentions that some of them fought Michael with her in the other world so they ARE AU hunters! Or at least some of them! Well, that's good to know. Sam doesn't have to feel personally responsible for killing everyone who came over, just a handful. Including the only one who had a name, and probably that guy who called him Chief (sob), but some of them remain. Anyway. Dean gives his eulogy (and Sam's not the only worth a second look in this scene, because Dean looks pretty amazing as well) and they drink beer and then an AXE FLIES IN OUT OF NOWHERE, SLOWLY AND AWKWARDLY SPIRALING INTO A HUNTER'S HEAD. People seem surprised, but it's the mild kind of surprise you'd get if he threw his beer at somebody, not if an axe suddenly appeared embedded in his head. The thrower of the axe walks in - it's New Bobby. WELL.
Title card! Bobby informs me that it was a hatchet, not an axe, and he wants it back. (Sidebar: It literally never occurred to me to think about the difference between a hatchet and an axe until earlier this week when I was listening to a murder podcast that specified someone was killed with one, not the other.) He also tell us that the "hunter" was actually a wraith "from a nest your mom and I busted up" and SEE, GUYS? This is why you don't invite people to the bunker. Now a bunch of wraiths probably know where it is. And we know the warding is a joke. Cas thinks Mary would have appreciated a monster at her memorial. I don't think Cas knows Mary very well but whatever.
Bobby asks Sam how he and "the other one" are doing, and we watch Dean pack up Mary's belongings (including John's journal? that's going away?) and Sam says he "seems to be doing okay" which is, of course, how they operate. No one asks how Bobby's doing, even though he had a relationship with Mary too (and over the course of her life probably spent as much time with her as Sam did, when you come right down to it), but Bobby says he's not into public displays of grief anyway, and Dean is probably the same (which is true, except for when it's very very not true).
Sam suggests they drink the scotch Ketch left (and I wonder if this means Ketch came for the memorial, and left some scotch, or if he's referring to a bottle from a previous season that somehow remained through all those events that really would have called for some serious scotch-drinking) and talk about Mom. Dean points out that they have been talking about Mom and stalks out and leaves Sam sad.
Sam and Bobby and Cas settle for beer instead, and Dean walks in just as Bobby asks "what exactly happened to her, cause I'm hearing, the kid." Oh, that's interesting that they wouldn't have given him the whole story. Or maybe it's not. Maybe it makes sense that they'd keep things vague, tell everyone she "died on a hunt." Dean needs a drink, but not in the bunker. Sam tells him they need to talk about Jack, and he says "we will" and quickly makes his escape. Bobby and Cas have this funny exchange.
I liked the kid. We fought together. But there's only way this ends.
Bobby's right. We have to find Jack and help him.
What?
Hee! Cas feels Jack might not realize what he did was wrong, and Bobby astutely points out that if he didn't realize it was wrong, that's kind of a big problem, because if Kelly's influence has been burned away, that means Lucifer is all that's left. Bobby means to hunt him down. "An unstoppable monster who don't know right from wrong gets put down." Um, Bobby, let's consider the unstoppable part of that declaration. (Also, should someone point out to Bobby that Jack accidentally killed someone even back when he did have a soul? Probably not.)
Cut to Jack, who is still? again? at an abandoned warehouse or factory or something. He's remembering what he did, and wishing his mother was there to tell him what to do. Oh, she's not here, but Hallucidad is. He tells Jack that the Winchesters don't care about him, he was just a pet and a weapon, and again, it hurts knowing that this is Jack's subconscious saying these things. Jack thinks he can explain and apologize, and if that's so, Jack, then why didn't you do that when they caught you raising Mary's not-corpse? No, says Hallucifer, they hate you.
Cut to Dean, sitting outside somewhere in the dark, crying.
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This is not okay. I mean, it is, but it's not.
Heaven. (yawn.) Cas again tells Duma that he wants to see Naomi, and again she denies him. It turns out Naomi is in "a very small cell" because Heaven was invaded under her watch. I didn't think they had enough spare angels around to lock one up just because they don't think she's a good leader. She might be a great follower. (Yeah, probably not.) Cas tells her he needs help looking for Jack, who has burned through his soul and is no longer being protected by the Winchesters. Hmmm, she says, this is very useful information to have. Internally. Out loud, she tells Cas she'll see what she can do, which he of course takes as an offer to help. Oh, Cas.
Bunker. Sam's working at his computer when Dean comes back. Sam's wearing a different shirt. I don't know if that means it's the next day, or just that he changed out of his nice funeral shirt. He asks Dean how he's doing, but Dean ignores that and asks what Sam's doing.
Trying to find Jack. We've gotta find him before Bobby and his crew, because if they find him first -
He's gonna kill them all.
... I don't know.
Oh, Sam, you DO know. You are obviously concerned about Bobby et al killing Jack, not the other way around. And it breaks my heart. Sam also wants to talk about Mary and the fact that they don't have to rely on faith to know Mary's in Heaven, because they personally know Heaven and angels are real. Dicks, but real. He says Mary's in a great place, with John, because again we're forgetting or denying what we know about Heaven. Dean, the eternal ray of sunshine, points out that there wasn't enough of Mary left to bring back to life even if they wanted to.
Back to Jack, who has a surprise visitor. It's Duma! Oh, cool, she's helping Cas find him, just like she said she would! Ha ha ha nope. (Sidebar: How did Duma find him, and why doesn't Cas have the same ability? Discuss.) He remembers her from his trip to Heaven that one time he died. She tells him Mary's death wasn't his fault, and he deserves redemption after his mistake, because he has "a glorious destiny." She tells him Heaven has fallen apart since God left, and no one gives them the respect they deserve, but Jack, YOU can save Heaven and make the world better and wouldn't that make Sam and Dean happy? Their first stop on the Make The World Better Tour is to turn a famous God denier into a pillar of salt. Oh, irony. (Also, he's safe from ghosts now, so. Bonus?)
Bunker. Cas is telling the Winchesters that Heaven promised to "make every effort" to find Jack. Which 1) isn't exactly what we saw happening, unless you're naive enough to think "I'll see what I can do" means "I'll make every effort", and b) even if that is what Duma said, as Dean points out, "Oh, Heaven promised? Great, well we should take that to the bank." But Cas thinks Heaven has as much reason to want to find Jack as they do. Which is true. But doesn't mean they're going to turn him over to you, Cassie.
Coincidentally, Sam has just read about Professor Pillar of Salt. "Why does that sound familiar?" Dean asks. You know, I don't know the Bible very well. If a particular event didn't show up in "Jesus Christ Superstar" or "The Ten Commandments," I'm not likely to be familiar with it. And yet I know about Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt. And I've never been to Heaven or met an angel. So.
Cas explains the story and says no ordinary angel could turn a human into salt. Sam reads another story about a dishonest televangelist (yeah, I know, that's redundant) who had a crevice open in the ground under her and swallow her up, and again Dean's not familiar with the story, but this time I'm not either. But Cas knows it's from the book of Numbers. Allegedly, only Jack or Chuck himself could perform these acts.
Heaven. Duma tells Jack he's doing excellent work, and he can help bring Heaven back to its previous glory.
Sam and Dean will like that?
Words can't begin to express how Sam and Dean will feel.
Hee!
So let's talk about what's going on here. I appreciate that they're framing this as Jack trying to get back into Sam and Dean's good graces. In fact, I'm a little hopeful at this point. If Jack-who-is-being-used-by-Heaven is the Big Bad, doesn't that mean stopping the Big Bad could just mean they rescue him from Duma's manipulation? Maybe? (Yeah, I know. But a girl can dream.)
Anyway. Duma's next task for Jack is to create more angels. She tells him he can't make them out of thin air, but if a human is "predisposed" to it, he might be able to forge them into an angel. Oooooh, this opens up some chilling possibilities about who could be turned into an angel. But it turns out he's not going after anybody named Winchester. He's just sitting on the throne "where your grandfather received prayers" (and where your father sat) and listening to prayers. (Sidebar: Why hasn't Sam tried to communicate with Jack by praying to him? Discuss.)
For whatever reason, he hones in on one particular group of worshippers who are about to discuss the book of Samuel (hee!) with Pastor Ames. Jack zaps into the room, asks if they meant it when they said they wanted to go to Heaven, and shows them his wings. Sold! Pastor Ames missing that demonstration, so when he comes in and calls Jack a liar, Jack hits him with another Biblical curse: "he was eaten by worms and breathed his last." Pastor Ames falls to the ground with worms popping out of him everywhere, and Jack and his future angels disappear.
Hospital. Guys, look at the suits! Have they ever worn such narrow pants? What is going on here? Someone new in the wardrobe department?
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Mama like.
Agents Kilmister, Clark, and Taylor (hee) are visiting bandaged-up Pastor Ames, who identifies a photo of Jack. They leave, and Cas recites the relevant verse and Sam says, surprised, "so you think this is another Bible thing?" AS IF THAT WASN'T WHY THEY'RE HERE IN THE FIRST PLACE, and as they leave, we see that Pastor Ames is not over his worm infestation after all.
Back at the bunker, Dean tells Sam that he didn't want it to come to this, but they have no choice. Come to what? What's behind the door in room 5B? It's the thing we all knew was coming - the box! (And if you didn't see it coming, the title of this episode clearly gave it away, which is why I consider titles of unaired episodes to be spoilers.) Sam, who is clearly not behind this plan in any way shape or form, points out that they don't have the ability to force Jack into the box, and he won't go in there of his own free will.
But he might. He might if he only has to stay in there long enough for us to finish the spell to fix his soul.
Spell? What spell? There is no spell.
*We* know that.
Oh, no, this is not good, and Sam already hates it.
... So, you want to lie to him.
No, I mean, I *want* Zeppelin to get back together. But what I *need*, what *we* need, is to stop Jack. Big difference. But here's the deal; we both gotta sign off on it. This might be our only shot, and if he even catches a whiff that this is a scam, he's off into the wind.
Exactly. Now, how do you think he's not gonna know something's up?
Because you're gonna be so damn sincere -
Me? Why me?
Because you've always been in his corner. You're his go-to guy. Sam, if you reach out, he'll come. If I do it, after what happened to Mom, I could lose him. I *will* lose him.
Oh no, no, no, Sam is SO not on board with this plan. Because the worst thing that could happen is that it doesn't work, and the second worst thing is that it does work. Dean is so calmly insistent, and Sam is so unhappy, and his FACE when Dean tells him HE will be sincere is just killing me, and no matter what I think about this episode or or this entire story arc, I love what the guys are doing with this scene.
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Maybe it's just me, but I'm finding a silver lining here.
Sam sits down at the library table and begins praying to Jack, which doesn't answer my question of why they haven't already tried communicating with him that way. In fact, it makes me ask it harder. He tells him that they're family, and bad things happen in families but they want to get through it, they want to be like they were before. Jack hears Sam's prayer as he assembles his future angels. Meanwhile, Cas has barged his way into Heaven to rescue Jack, having figured out that Heaven has no mercy and angels do bad things, and Cas? How is this POSSIBLY news to you? Duma threatens to end Mary and John's happy little afterlife together (Is this confirmation that they really are sharing a Heaven, even though his name isn't on the door? Maybe. Do I accept it? Not necessarily) so Cas stabs her. Well. We're down to, what, ten angels now? He calls for Jack, but Jack's already gone, having just appeared in the bunker.
Jack tells Sam and Dean he's been working with Heaven, and "if it helps, I regret it... the accident."
Again, the guys do a beautiful job with this scene. Even if it's an awful, awful scene, they're acting the hell out of it. Sam is as anxious as he was when he was trapped in a cell with Jack the day he was born, the way his hands twitch when he gets up from the table and circles behind Dean, and then carefully places himself between Dean and Jack, and how he physically reacts when Jack steps closer, and they're both keeping their distance and moving so carefully, and then there's the way Dean is practically unblinking and is very obviously working SO HARD not to spontaneously combust, staying practically motionless and keeping his voice even, although anyone could tell he's absolutely BOILING under the surface from the look on his face and his tone of voice every time he says the accident. All of this is amazing.
But yeah, it is also an awful scene. Because Jack isn't guilty or apologetic at all. He's actually kind of smug about working with Heaven and making angels, and very condescending about regretting "the accident," and I just don't think he would be there. I think he would tell them how sorry he was, and that he tried to fix it, and basically everything he said to Hallucifer. He wouldn't say "I knew you'd understand" when they tell him they forgive him. His blind self-assurance would make sense if it came at the end of a 2- or 3-episode arc, where Duma had spent more than a day telling him how awesome he was. So while I love Sam and Dean in this scene, love them to pieces, Jack is just... ugh. Beyond OOC. Moving on. Dean tells Jack they're working on a way to fix his soul, and they want to keep him safe (from having another ACCIDENT) in the meanwhile. Sam oh-so-tentatively puts a hand on Jack's shoulder and dear GOD he is so afraid and I LOVE IT.
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Again, quite a silver lining to this dark little raincloud.
They take him to the room with the magic box, which Dean claims is "actually pretty comfortable." Dean stays still and Sam fidgets and Jack says "okay" and climbs into the box. "How long before I can come out?" he asks. Sam is more and more fidgety as he says "not too long," and Dean is like stretched rubber band about to snap as he holds himself back from slamming the lid down. "Jack, we got this," Sam lies. "Okay," Jack says again, and he lies down and they didn't even put a pillow in the damn box, why does he think this is okay, why does he think they're working in his best interest if they didn't even give him a damn pillow? Dean shuts the lid and rushes to close the locks and Sam hates this, hates it so much.
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Shhh. Don't even listen. Just turn the sound down and enjoy the pretty, pretty angst.
Alone in the box, Jack calls to the Winchesters, but they're already shutting the door to room 5B. They move to the kitchen to finish off Ketch's scotch and talk about the future.
So what do we do now? Just go on, with Jack locked up in there forever?
We have to.
I don't know if I can do that.
Dean ignores Sam's shaky voice and decides to talk about the scotch and sure, we all recognize this is Dean's way of coping. Pretend it's not happening, pretend it doesn't bother him. Because I have to think that, no matter how much he wants revenge against Jack, he understands that being locked in that box forever is still a horrible fate. (A fate Dean was willing to accept, but still.) Sam, meanwhile, needs to talk, just like he needed to talk about Mary.
You know, I never thought it would end like this, with Jack.
Sammy, we knew from the beginning it was a long shot with him.
Yeah. Yeah. But, long shots are kind of our thing.
So let's talk about Sam's guilt. His beautiful, beautiful guilt. Not only over tricking someone he loves into being locked up in a box forever, but for bringing Jack into their lives in the first place. And yet. Jack has always been unstoppable, hasn't he? So if Sam hadn't opened his humongous heart and taken him in, he would have been out there alone. No one teaching him how to use and control his powers, no one keeping him away from Lucifer. He would have been an unstoppable enemy instead of an unpredictable ally. Sam did the right thing, even though it ended bad. Because it was always going to end bad.
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Have I mentioned that I could watch an entire episode that was just Dean drinking?
Back in room 5B, Jack's starting to panic, and still calling for Sam and Dean. They don't show up, but Hallucifer does (oh god, I want to see Sam find out he basically locked Jack in that box with Lucifer) and informs Jack he's been played.
In the kitchen, Cas arrives with the news that Duma has been manipulating Jack, and they really need to find him. The guys are all, oh, whoops, forgot to call you, he's here, locked in the box.
Jack gets glowy eyes and tries to break out of the box, but nothing happens.
Cas is horrified that the guys still plan to keep Jack in the box, even knowing his latest acts were due to being manipulated. Sam says "That's the problem. If he's that easily manipulated, he's too dangerous to be out of the box." Oh, no he doesn't. Instead, Dean says "He agreed to it." Yes, in much the same way Sam agreed to be Gadreel's vessel. You keep telling yourself that, Dean. In fact, Dean is trying to claim that deep down, Jack knows it's best. Oh, no, no you don't. Cas points out that Dean manipulated Jack as much as Duma did.
(Sidebar: I'm convinced that Sam would be able to forgive Jack. Because of his endless capacity for forgiveness, and because he sees himself as being in Jack's shoes at a different point in his life. Dean, on the other hand, would not. Because Dean is a normal human being when it comes to forgiveness, and because Dean puts loyalty to family above everything else.)
Box. Jack tries harder. Lucifer laughs. The box glows.
Kitchen. The arguing is interrupted by an earth-shattering kaboom. Things fall off shelves. The red emergency lights and klaxon come on. TFW leaps up and runs to room 5B. The room is a smoke-filled wreck and a figure with glowing gold eyes is walking out of the red-tinged smoke. "Jack," Sam gasps.
Duh duh duuuuuhhhh! Next week, Cas makes Dean write I knew a nephilim was more powerful than its angel parent but I assumed the box would be stronger than Jack anyway 100 times on the blackboard.
Okay, the bad happened, as we all figured it would. But let's talk about the good. Jack's not locked in the box forever. That's a relief - it would have been a very unsatisfactory conclusion. And the guys looked extraordinary. And there was so much emotion, both the tightly-controlled type, and the worn-on-his-sleeve type, and I love them both. Honestly, considering what happened in this one, and who wrote it, it was a lot better than I expected. A lot better than it could have been. (Will I go read your reactions now and see that every single one of you disagrees with me? Quite possibly.)
Next week is the next-to-last "Carry On Wayward Son."
Please help me stay unspoiled, thanks!
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