#the crossed out stuff are s3 creatures literal plants and stuff that isn’t actually in the show

[foolsfrogg]

Draw your favorite creecher from Hilda but only the ones from early in the show (s1 early s2) pls :3

I also wanna say ur art looks like the texture is wax which may sound like not a compliment but it is bc I love the texture of wax

I don’t think you realize..

they’re ALL my favorite creecher

and I have made up lore FOR THEM ALL MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I was gonna just give a giant post with all of them- before realizing I wouldn’t have enough space to tag them all..

ALSO THANK YOU I LOVE WAX

[mittensmorgul]

Today’s entire TNT loop in one post, because I’m tired and there’s only three episodes:

3.14, Long Distance Call. This is what happens when you mess with the phone company, dillweed!

I've written a bunch in the past about how this episode relates to communication and keeping secrets, which is still relevant:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/159234156395/314-lies-and-secrets-and-its-deans-turn-to

and

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/171381786235/not-meta-just-interesting-im-rewatching-314

But because the voice on the phone when Dean starts getting Calls From The Beyond (which aren't from the beyond but a manipulation by a creature who wants to lure Dean in to eat his soul) is John, providing words of comfort, encouragement, and instruction to Dean at a time where he feels like he's running out of time and options, Dean is led down a completely wrong path. "John" tells him he can get out of his deal and save himself from Hell by trapping a specific demon, but of course it's just the crocatta luring him to his death (but of course Dean figures that out before that can happen).

But Sam, meanwhile, THINKS he's told Dean what the monster actually is, but that information never reached Dean, leaving him confronting the crocatta by himself... RIP Stewie. Sam calls Dean and gets his voicemail (This is Herman Munster, leave a message), but his whole previous call with Dean wasn't even really a call with Dean...

SAM: What are you doing? CLARK: I'm killing your brother. Or maybe I'm killing another guy. We'll just have to see how it goes.

and most terrifying:

CLARK: Well once I made you two as hunters, it was easy. I found Dean's number, then your number, then your father's numbers. Then emails, voicemails, everything. You see, people think that stuff just gets erased, but it doesn't. You'd be surprised how much of yourself is just floating out there, waiting to be plucked. SAM: Dean's not going to fall for this. He's not going to kill that guy. CLARK: Then the guy kills him.

The crocatta was a monster who preyed on human communication, twisting words to his own benefit and manipulating people into believing what he needed to lure them to him. He had Dean convinced killing this innocent man would save him from Hell, but the other man was convinced that Dean was the man who'd killed his own daughter. It was all a distraction to keep Dean from learning what was really going on-- that Sam had effectively figured out what the monster was, and that it was the monster luring Sam to his lair, using Stewie as bait.

At the end of the story, everyone lost. Dean lost hope that they'd find a way to save him from Hell. Which drives Sam to pull a bit of a manipulation of his own...

in 3.15, Time Is On My Side.

This is Sam's last stand, his last hope to save Dean. Not by defeating the demon that holds his contract, but by gaming the system. His logic-- if Dean's can't die, he can't go to Hell. But the way Sam wants to make Dean immortal is... horrific at best. And something tells me the hellhounds wouldn't care if someone scienced their physical body into effective immortality, and would've collected Dean's soul anyway. But Sam needed to believe in something, as is his wont. When he loses hope, he loses it hard. Look at mid s13 for a reminder of that, specifically in an episode with a heavy thematic and tonal comparison to this one-- 13.11 Breakdown.

Meanwhile, Dean goes in a different direction, getting a lead on Bela and hoping to get the Colt back:

DEAN: You're not helping! You forget that if I welch on this deal, you die. Guess what, living forever is welching. SAM: Fine! Then, whatever the magic pill is, I'll take it too! DEAN: Oh, what is this? Sid and Nancy? No. It's just like Bobby's been saying. We kill the demon who owns the contract and this whole damn thing wipes clean. That's our best shot. SAM: Even if you had the Colt, Dean, who are you gonna shoot? We have no idea who holds the ticket. DEAN: Well, I'll shoot the hellhounds then before they slash me up. Now, you coming or not?

Sam decided... not. He stayed to try and figure out Benton's immortality formula. He does find it, but Dean doesn't want to live like that:

SAM: Dean, don't you want to live? DEAN: What he is isn't living. Look, this is simple. SAM: Simple? DEAN: To me it is, okay. Black or white; human, not human. (DEAN walks back to stand in front of DOC BENTON) See, what the Doc is is a freakin' monster. I can't do it. I would rather go to hell.

Well, heck, we know Dean doesn't really see anything as "black and white," and the real issue isn't "human or not human" anymore. But he does have a line he will not cross, and whatever Benton is is way too far across that line for Dean. And thank heck... Preserving life at all costs that way? At the cost of his own essential humanity? Yeah, that's horrific.

We meet Rufus, who eventually does provide Dean the lead to find Bela, but he also echoes Dean's attitude we've seen over and over again:

RUFUS: I know ain't no peashooter gonna save you. DEAN: What makes you so sure? RUFUS: Cause that's the job, kid. Even if you manage to scrape out of this one, there's just gonna be something else down the road. Folks like us...there ain't no happy ending. We all got it coming. DEAN: Well, ain't you a bucket of sunshine? RUFUS: I'm what you've got to look forward to if you survive. (Smirking and raising his glass again) But you won't.

Survive this round, just wait for the next one, because there's always a next one... Thanks, Rufus!

But of course Bela doesn't have the Colt anymore. Dean does learn that she sold her soul and her deal is about to come due. She's in the same boat he's been in all along...

DEAN: Is that why you stole the Colt, huh? Try to wiggle out of your deal, our gun for your soul? BELA: Yes. DEAN: But stealing the Colt wasn't quite enough, I'm guessing. BELA: They changed the deal. They wanted me to kill Sam. DEAN: Really! Wow, demons untrustworthy. Shocker.

Because no matter what, the demons were NEVER going to let Dean out of his deal. No matter how many demons they killed, no matter who they bargained with, no matter what, they needed him to die and go to Hell to fulfil their prophecy and break the first seal on the Apocalypse. And that's what s3 boiled down to in the end...

This was the long con that s4 would do to freaking perfection, but s3, with all it's structural deficiencies for having been 6 episodes shortened because of the writer's strike, manages the same...

So that brings us to 3.16, No Rest for the Wicked.

The one where they think they finally gained the upper hand on catching the Big Bad Demon who holds Dean's contract, and don't yet know the entire setup was a trap laid just for them. The fact the payoff on this information doesn't come until the end of s4, with other little hints along the way-- like Dean learning what Sam's been up to while he was in Hell, like learning about angels and the breaking seals of the apocalypse, like being given the runaround as heaven and hell both use Sam's desire to get revenge on Lilith for perceived wrongs against them and is willing to turn himself into a monster to achieve that end... when all along it was exactly what the angels and demons both wanted them to do...

S4 will become the template for Cosmic Manipulation of the Winchesters as part of the Grand Story of the Universe. But all the seeds for it were already planted in s3.

Well, except for Cas. He's the wild card, and isn't that the wildest thing ever?

I wonder how Chuck accounted for him? Bring on Team Free Will, breaking Chuck's story again and again until they'll finally force him to drop the curtain in 14.20...

ETA, because I always do this... I’ve written some about Ruby’s manipulation before, like in this post from May 2018, after the s13 finale aired:

https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/174230167715/since-your-anons-are-on-the-subject-there-is

SAM: And you decided to tell me this just now? RUBY: Um... demon. Manipulative's kinda in the job description. Fact is, is that you would have never considered it. Not until you were – SAM: Desperate enough?

and when Sam has doubts, and he’s so close to wanting to trust Ruby out of desperation?

DEAN: Don't you see a pattern here? Dad's deal, my deal, now this? I mean every time one of us is – is – is up the creek the other is begging to sell their soul. That's all this is, man. Ruby's just jerking your chain down the road. You know what it's paved with and you know where it's going.

And yep, that’s exactly it. The Winchester Family Sacrifice-Go-Round. All in the name of keeping Chuck entertained.

ETA FOR THE SECOND TIME: Lilith. Pretending to be a seriously twisted little girl, controlling this entire family for her own horrific idea of “fun.” Kinda similar to Chuck’s own MO, always playing a persona-- Chuck the trashy novel author, Chuck the prophet of the lord who doesn’t want to be, Chuck the super cute guy who was delightfully enamored by humanity enough to want to be human himself, at least for a little while... But all of it is part of his own incredibly long game, thinking he’s got the Winchesters exactly where he wants them, being on the scene to watch his plan play out, only for it to all go sideways.

ugh and yet another ETA: Dean, only when he is very close to death, a side effect of that is that he can literally see things he wasn’t able to before:

DEAN: I could see its face. Its real face under that one. SAM: So what, now you're seeing demons? DEAN: I've seen all kinds of things lately but... nothing like this. BOBBY: Actually it's not all that crazy. DEAN: How's it not that crazy? BOBBY: Well you've got, just over five hours to go? You're piercing the veil, Dean. You're glimpsing the B side. DEAN: A little less new age-y please. BOBBY: You're almost hell's bitch. So, you can see hell's other bitches. 

What a strange way to finally see through the illusions to the truth, you know? Dean got all the way through Chuck’s endless parade of misery in s14-- losing hope against Michael only to lose hope for Jack, and himself-- to that final moment where he was able to glimpse the B side, as it were.

ugh again... this is what I get for posting stuff before the episode is over...

How close to killing an innocent little girl did Sam come here? While her own mother begged him to do it, because as far as they knew, the girl was still possessed. But Dean saw the truth, the demon was gone.

Sam’s ready to do whatever “Ruby” wants him to to save Dean, but it’s already too late. Ruby isn’t even Ruby anymore. Dean hadn’t noticed the switch until it was too late, again. Always too late. All part of the long manipulation.