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burnouts3s3 · 6 years

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Jump Force, a review

(Disclaimer: The following is a non-profit unprofessional blog post written by an unprofessional blog poster. All purported facts and statement are little more than the subjective, biased opinion of said blog poster. In other words, don’t take anything I say too seriously.) Just the facts 'Cause you're in a Hurry! Publisher: Bandai Namco Developer: Spike Chunsoft Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP): 59.99 USD How much I paid: 99.99 USD for the Ultimate Edition. Bundle Includes: 3 Days Early access. Lobby Vehicles to ‘ride around in’ that’s purely cosmetic. Season Pass that unlocks 9 DLC characters to be announced and released at a later date. Rated: T for Mild Blood, Suggestive Themes and Violence Number of Playable Characters: 43. 4 Original characters. 39 Characters from Established franchises. Number of Stages: 7. Each Stage has a transition that changes when a character hits an opponent with a specific attack. Can I play offline: Yes. Controller Support: Yes. It was compatible with my Rock-Candy Xbox 360 controller. Keyboard and Mouse controls are available but are very awkward and the game was clearly designed with a controller in mind. How long I played: 18 Hours. 10 Hours to beat the story mode while watching the Cutscenes. UNSKIPPABLE cutscenes. 7 Hours just messing around and playing online matches. Microtransactions: 39.99 Season Pass that unlocks 9 DLC characters to be announced at a later date. Dual Audio: No. Only Japanese Audio with Subs available. What I played on: My PC. Performance Issues: For the most part, I got ‘mostly’ 60 FPS when I was playing online or running around. However, the FPS dips when there’s a cutscene playing to the mid 40’s even the high 30’s. Too bad however beautiful the particle effects are can’t adjust the wooden facial animations and stiff body movements. 3 Crashes within my playtime. My Personal Biases: I’ve followed the saga of Son Goku and friends. I’ve watched Naruto Uzumaki become the Hokage. I’ve watched Yusuke Urameshi journey from boy to man. I’ve watched Gon, Killua and Kullapika go on their various hunting expeditions. I’ve watched Yugi Moto become the king of games. And I’ve watched Light Yagami become defeated by his own hubris. In other words, I’ve been waiting for this game a ‘very’ long time, and have played previous games such as JStars Victory Vs. My Verdict: As much fun as it is seeing characters like Fist of the North Star’s Kenshiro beat the pulp out of My Hero Academia’s Deku, the limited roster, worn out gameplay from the Naruto Shippuden and Dragonball Xenoverse games, the laughable animation, idiotic story mode and the ever anti-consumer practices of Bandai Namco are bogging this game down. If you’re a fan of Shounen Jump, you’ll sure to have fun. But, if you’re patient or you want more characters consider picking up Jump Ultimate Stars or JStars Victory Vs and wait for a sale. Jump Force, a review

In celebration for 50 years, Weekly Shounen Jump has announced a new crossover game. Made with collaboration between Publisher Bandai Namco and Developer Spike Chunsoft, “Jump Force” arrives to bring together various characters found in Shueisha’s long running publication.

Can the game live up to the vast legacy it has inherited? Let’s find out in this review of “Jump Force”!

The Umbra cubes, cosmic cubes capable of granting those great power, have spread throughout the world. Thanks to the villain, Kane, and his lovely assistant, Galena, he has recruited the villains from Shounen Jump and replicated them. All the meanwhile, normal citizens have become “Venoms”, possessed by evil impulses. But just as Frieza fires a laser beam, ending your life, Trunks comes in, uses and Umbra cube and grants you great power to help combat evil.

Jump Force is an Arena fighting game similar to games such as Dragonball Xenoverse or Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm. Players pick between 3 characters and attempt to lower their opponent’s (shared) healthbar to zero. In addition to physical attacks, they can spend the abilities gauge to use a variety of ranged or close up attacks. In addition, whenever players take damage, they fill up the ‘awakening’ bar. Using half an awakening bar will allow players to unleash an ultimate attack, an ability that deals more damage than regular abilities. Using a full awakening bar will ‘transform’ the character to a powered-up state. For example, Goku will transform from his base form to his Super Saiyan form.

The other two characters can be called upon using the left trigger. Simply pressing the trigger will swap the character while holding it down will call them for an assist attack. Unfortunately, you cannot change the order of which characters you switch to and must cycle through said order to access the characters. (For example having a team order of Goku, Vegeta and Piccolo means that Goku cannot switch to Piccolo without switching through Vegeta first). Be careful because if you switch while both characters are on screen and the opponent is able to hit both, you’ll receive double the damage.

Customizing your character is nothing new for Bandai Namco games such as the various DBZ Xenoverse games and Naruto: Shinobi Striker, but the mechanic remains impressive here. Allowing you a vast customization between characters allows different playstyles and gives your individual avatar the ability to learn various techniques such as Vegeta’s Galick Gun or Yusuke’s Spirit Gun. However, certain techniques, such as anything related to Jotaro or Yugi are unable to be learned by your Avatar character.

Similarly, the defense system returns. Using the mobility meter, characters can dash towards or away from the opponent or teleport out of a combo behind the enemy. Most of the time, using the guard button will block most attacks. But, characters can either grab the blocking opponent or hold down either the smash or heavy smash button to break through the opponent’s guard.

While most of the characters play similar to one another, some of the characters have slight variations. For example, similar to his manga counterpart, Sanji will be unable to deal damage to female characters. Similarly, when Gon connets with an opponent with his Ultimate attack, he will become unplayable for the duration of the match.

Learning said techniques can be used by spending the in-game currency which allows you to easily unlock abilities, skills that aid in battle such as boosting attack power or various costumes for your avatar. In-game currency can be earned by either playing through the story or playing online.

The Story will not win any awards unless the Razzies suddenly announce a video game category. It’s a pastiche of clichés, tired tropes and nonsense as players slog through another world ending plot with stupid villains, stupid twists and characters acting like morons. For some reason, Light Yagami figures out the twist that even the dumbest of us can figure out 5 seconds in. Not helping matters are the rest of the characters acting like complete idiots with Sanji being the focus for some reason.

Say what you will about the current state of fanfiction, bad fanfiction is at least INTERESTING.

This combines the worst of Mary Sue fanfiction with the most boring and bland cliches possible. I understand orienting the game for Western audiences meant having to borrow notes from the Avengers and Justice League, but the characters expositing non-stop about the predictable plotline isn’t helpful. Worst yet, Developer Spike Chunsoft has forgotten a vital component for any story cutscene, the ability to skip them. So, be prepared to watch as characters drone on and on during the cutscenes figuring out the plot.

Just the same, the artstyle is going to alienate some longtime fans. While using the Unreal engine to render things such as particle effects, fire and energy beams is a delight to behold, said delight is replaced by revulsion watching the stiff character faces barely emote when watching a cutscene. These animations make Mass Effect: Andromeda look like the Witcher 3.

Half the time, the characters don’t even talk. RYUK DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A VOICE! What’s odd is that in the non-essential cutscenes, when the characters barely move and don’t have voices, the writing actually improves. Seeing various characters from different franchises interact with each other, brings a small delight to a mess of a game. Watching Zoro tutor Asta while Kenshin watches on or seeing Deku be a student to Kakashi’s lectures is the stuff of fan dreams. It’s too bad these moments are few and fleeting. And while 42 Characters in a base game is nothing to sneeze at, fans of Shounen Jump crossover games have already called out Developer Spike Chunsoft. While more famous franchises such as Dragonball Z, Naruto and One Piece boast a whopping 6 representatives each, more obscure franchises are either not represented or have a meager 1 character, such as City Hunter’s Ryo Saeba or Fist of the North Star’s Kenshiro. Meanwhile, mainstays from previous Jump crossover games such as Dr. Slump’s Arale, Kochikame’s Ryotsu, Bobobo’s Bobobo, D Grayman’s Allen Walker, Reborn’s Tsuna Sawada and Gintama’s Gintoki are all missing (though there is speculation they would be added later as Downloadable Content locked away with a paywall). And yet… God, it’s just such a fangasm seeing characters from different franchises duke it out with one another. Seeing Jotaro fight with Deku. Seeing Asta cross blades with Dai. Seeing Goku trade blows with Kenshiro is just one of my biggest dreams. There’s a germ of an idea here but it’s botched by piss-poor execution. I’m just so sick of games I would’ve loved missing the mark and not reaching their full potential. Caveat: Shounen Jump, Shueisha and Bandai Namco have a rare opportunity on their hands. Having the ability to have a character as old as Seiya have a fist fight with a modern character like Deku is one of the rare privileges a company can have alongside with Marvel, DC Comics and Nintendo. So, it’s unfortunate when Bandai Namco and Spike Chunsoft drop the ball and start limiting the roster, overpopulating it with familiar franchises instead of obscure ones and start nickeling and diming its customers with stupid DLC policies. Say what you will about the (very) imperfect JStars Victory Vs (which was also developed by Spike Chunsoft and published by Bandai Namco), the one thing that game did right was introduce a plebian like me to series such as Medaka Box, Assassination Classroom, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K, Toriko and Beelzebub. And while I did enjoy the extensive customization and gained a sick sense of pleasure whenever I finish off an opponent with DIO’s Road Roller, part of me couldn’t help but wonder when Kinnikuman is going to get the recognition he deserves. Maybe when Shounen Jump has its 55th anniversary, they can give its vast legacy of characters a game worthy of 50 years. We’ll always have Jump Ultimate Stars on the DS. Verdict: Rental or Wait for a Sale

#jump force #bandai namco #spike chunsoft #goku #vegeta #luffy #naruto #shounen jump #shueisha

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shadowsong26fic · 6 years

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AU Outlines: Other Fandoms Edition

So I know that probably like zero of my followers on this blog even go here but I was watching Person of Interest lately, and I’ve also been reading occasional Supernatural spoilers, because I used to be in that fandom and I occasionally get curious. Especially this most recent season. Naturally, this woke up some old characters/situations/etc. that I used to work with, which I’ve been occasionally toying with in the back of my head when I’m bored and/or procrastinating other projects.

I’ve been going back and forth on how I feel about the one plotline that interests me this season (and by back and forth I mean I was really excited when I first read that a particular character was back; engaged by the summaries/etc. I read from his first couple episodes, the third one intrigued me until I read more detailed spoilers and then I started to side-eye it a little bit...)

And then I read up on last week’s episode. And nope, all my excitement is gone, replaced by Pissed for reasons I’m not sure I can actually articulate. (Though I kind of attempted to in the tags here on my personal blog.)

...honestly, I probably should’ve known better; making this kind of storyline really pay off/work would require a lot of attention given to a tertiary character, and given SPN’s track record with the internal worlds and motivations of characters who are not the Big Three, and the fact that they’ve been ignoring a lot of their established angel/vessel lore, the way Claire’s backstory more or less got completely forgotten...I should not have gotten my hopes up. Sigh.

ANYWAY this is now officially Spite Fic(tm). Here, have an outline of a Supernatural/Person of Interest crossover.

Starring Nick.

...uh, before I actually start, I should probably get some background out of the way.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, Person of Interest is a TV show that ran for five seasons, 2011 - 2016. Without c/ping the opening narration, the basic premise of the show is that, in the wake of 9/11, genius software engineer Harold Finch built a surveillance and analysis program, in an effort to prevent similar future tragedies. Out of fear that his creation would be abused, he designed the Machine as a closed system--basically, all that’s provided is an ID number (usually an SSN, at least for US citizens; but Our Heroes get a green card number in one episode, and a student ID number in another), and the person that number indicates is key to unravelling whatever is going down. The Machine was initially designed to predict mass casualty events/terrorism and provide the (relevant) number to the designated government operatives, at which point human intelligence takes over. However, the Machine also identifies things like…gang warfare/one-on-one premeditated murder (irrelevant numbers). That’s where Our Heroes come in.

The first half of the series is basically a procedural with a twist—each episode, the main characters get an irrelevant number (or more; the record was I believe 38 in one episode). They don’t always know how that person is involved, whether they’re the victim or the killer/perpetrator. In a few memorable cases, the number was arguably both.

Then, in the second half, a rival AI (Samaritan) is brought online, and the series becomes somewhat darker in tone and shifts into a cyberpunk apocalypse story. With a few regular irrelevant numbers thrown in on occasion as well, for good measure. For the purposes of this outline, we don’t care so much about POI B, for reasons I will explain, but it bears mentioning. Especially since Greer is still hanging around and trying to bring Samaritan or something similar online.

Right. On to some memorable/notable/important characters.

Our Heroes are Finch, who, as I said, designed and built the Machine. For various reasons, he’s living off the grid (he’s a very private person). Using a backdoor built into the Machine, as of when the series starts, he receives the irrelevant numbers. But he lacks the skills/ability to intervene directly, so he recruits John Reese.

Reese, then, is Finch’s partner/employee/they are totally married; a former CIA assassin who is now presumed dead, he does most of the hands-on work with the numbers and becomes known as the Man in the Suit who is basically Batman.

Carter! Carter is freaking amazeballs; she is p. much the moral/ethical center of the show, one of their two cop friends who was actually trying to track them/Reese down and arrest him for the vigilante BS for the first half-season or so but then they became friends.

Fusco is their other cop friend; former dirty cop/member of an ring, initially recruited by Reese to work undercover in HR (as said ring is called), basically runs on a combination of Dogged Loyalty (the reason he joined HR in the first place, transfers that loyalty to Team Machine, gets his moral compass recalibrated, and becomes one of the most loveable dudes on the show) and Snark (featuring such delightful quotes as “What was I supposed to say? Sorry, boss, Agent King is really a superpowered nutball. Just ask my buddy, the urban legend.” Also at least once a season, he makes a comment to the effect of “just when I thought you guys couldn’t get any weirder…”).

(Also, he is, as my roommate puts it, Shaped Like A Dad.)

Shaw joins the team in Season 3; textbook (and canonical!) bisexual compact Persian sociopath (note: she has some sort of Axis II personality disorder that is occasionally called sociopathy in-universe, but that doesn’t quite fit); there’s…there’s really not much else one can say without just like summarizing everything she does or quoting ad nauseum.

Root! Root is introduced as a major antagonist; hacker/programmer on Finch’s level who works as a contract killer, her initial goal is to locate and free the Machine, which ends up recruiting her early in Season 3 and becoming…you know that particular kind of reformed villain that becomes the weird family member because yes they’re still kind of awful and murdery, and they did a great deal of damage to you and yours, but you’ve now been through Some Stuff together, and besides, they’re your awful and murdery, you know? So not exactly a redemption arc, but they’re one of the Heroes now and just kind of stick with it. Like Barbossa, in POTC. Or Vegeta. My roommate (referenced above) calls this the Weird Uncle trope. And she fits this trope really well and I love it. Also, she and Shaw are canonically girlfriends as of...s4 or s5, depending on how you look at things.

(Also, not necessarily relevant for this outline, but on the subject of Weird Uncles, one cannot talk about POI without mentioning Elias; our friendly neighborhood Mafia don. No, really.)

And Bear! Cannot forget Bear. Bear is Finch and Reese’s dog, acquired at the beginning of S2 and the most amazing. He also has a twitter! In Dutch!

On to some antagonists, Greer is not our friend. He works for/created a company called Decima Technologies; his goal is to bring an unrestricted AI online and let it run the world for complicated reasons relating to some of his experiences during the Cold War working for MI6. Also he has a very punchable face.

And then there’s Control, who runs the Relevant numbers program for the government. She is an awful, awful human being (fully aware of it, too; she has a great speech in the third season finale about how she’s a Necessary Evil and why) and I love her so much.

Okay, that’s the basics for the POI side of things. I can go on a lot longer if y’all want more details (I didn’t even cover my girl Zoe or Leon or…), but that should be enough foundation for the outline to make sense?

For the SPN side of things--I’m not going to summarize the canon background, due to it being the larger/primary-ish fandom. But in terms of the relevant AU stuff, I’m going more or less with the backstory I established for Nick for The Promises of Angels and Cartography!verse.

Basically, he was a high school history teacher; his wife and son were murdered by a serial killer known as the Chesapeake Ripper

(There might well have been/probably was some demonic involvement, though not in the same way as I think S14 canon established; basically either because a “talent scout” demon like that one s7 episode was already involved or because the Ripper was operating independently and a demon got involved later, he was pointed towards this particular woman and baby who fit his victim pool. Either way, Nick was targeted because he was the right bloodline and accessible, because vessel lines are a thing even if the show has forgotten that.)

(Also, Lucifer later took Nick to kill the Ripper. Signing bonus. So to speak.)

After Detroit, Nick gets picked up by Meg, who holds on to him for a while for a variety of reasons (information that might be buried in his memories from the year he spent possessed; the chance that he might be a new key to the Cage…) until the Leviathan turn up, at which point she no longer has the resources to keep him. She cuts him loose at that point, rather than killing him (mostly because she thinks Lucifer left him alive For A Reason and until she knows what that is, she can’t kill him).

So, at this point, in Promises or Cartography, Nick just sort of wanders around for a while until he runs into Claire or Jody, respectively.

For the purposes of this AU, he ends up drifting to New York instead.

And, with all that background out of the way, NOW we can get to the actual fun stuff.

…no, wait, I lied. One more note: as with p. much all my SPN projects, I am following Logical Time rather than Show Time. Which is to say, when calculating dates/figuring out where the timelines intersect/etc., I’m including the two skipped years (between S5/S6 and between S7/S8).

(That being said, I reserve the right to stop caring about the timeline later and just mashing things together as I think it would be entertaining.)

ANYWAY.

We open in the first half of POI S3, somewhere between “Mors Praematura” and “Endgame” (i.e., Root is in the library, but Carter hasn’t initiated her takedown of HR yet). If my math is right, this puts us either in S7 or during the second gap year for SPN.

It starts as most of these adventures do; Team Machine gets a new number.

“This one may be a bit of a project, I’m afraid,” Finch says. “Nick Cross has been missing for several years. He hasn’t been seen since May of 2009, and there’s been no electronic activity on his identity in that time, either.”

Of course, when they dig into his background, his wife and son getting murdered comes up.

“Any chance he killed them?” Reese asks.

“No, he was cleared at the time. They were victims of a serial killer, and Mr. Cross had solid alibis for three of the five incidents, including the one involving his wife and son.”

(Shaw, at that point, theorizes that Nick’s number came up because he somehow tracked the Chesapeake Ripper down and is planning to kill him. And, if that’s the case, doesn’t really see the point in stopping him.)

(“Start with finding him, Ms. Shaw,” Finch says. “We still don’t know if that is, in fact, what’s going on.”)

(Finch also doesn’t approve on principle, of course, but that is not an argument he wants to have with Shaw on this particular morning.)

(Plus, the Ripper seems to have stopped operating at around the same time Mr. Cross disappeared...so there’s a chance that Shaw’s theory is accurate, just out of date.)

In any case, they reason that the Machine wouldn’t have handed them his number if he weren’t alive and in range; Reese and Shaw ask Carter and Fusco to see what they can pull up, and start doing their own legwork.

Carter ends up being the first to find a lead—while on her regular patrol with Laskey, she spots a guy who matches the description, albeit with a few extra scars, and is acting a little off. Like he thinks he’s being followed/watched.

Reese goes to check it out, and this is where things get, uh, Weird.

See, here’s the thing. I love John Reese, and he is a man of Many Skills.

But, uh.

Being approachable and reassuring is Not Among Them.

Like. Don’t get me wrong. When he’s in Bodyguard Mode, it is exactly the right level of Intimidating. He just…has trouble turning it off.

Look, the dude is a semi-retired CIA spysassin and it oozes out of every pore unless he works really hard to tone it down.

(And sometimes even then.)

And since this is just, like, preliminary surveillance to see if this guy Carter spotted really is their number, and he’s not planning to make contact yet, he’s not really focusing on toning it down.

So, when Nick spots him, guess what this looks like to him.

Yep, he thinks Reese is an angel.

He runs.

Reese: “....yeah, pretty sure that’s our number. And he just made me.”

(If Carter didn’t already, Reese probably also mentions that the five-year-old DMV photo they’re working from is out of date; Nick is pretty badly scarred, they look kind of like radiation burns.)

Of course, it was hard enough to find Nick in the first place, so Reese doesn’t want to lose him again. So, made or not, he continues following. Hoping to get to a position where he can make contact and figure out what’s going on. Or just keep tabs on him until Shaw can catch up and take over.

(Not his favorite approach, but he screwed up somewhere and that’s what he’s stuck with now.)

Nick knows the angel is still on him--and this is new and terrifying; he’s had demons after him a few times since Meg ditched him, but this is the first time an angel’s found him and, frankly, angels are worse than demons in his mind.

(Also he’s supposed to be warded how did the angel even find him--)

(Yeah, Nick has gotten a couple tattoos in his post-Meg life--he’s warded, the same sigils that are etched into Sam and Dean’s ribs; he also has a standard anti-demon-possession tattoo.)

In any case, he has a knife up his sleeve, he just needs to get somewhere more or less out of sight, just for a minute, maybe not even, and then he can throw up a banishing sigil. He just needs that minute.

Reese spots Nick duck out of sight into an alley and heads that way, picking up his pace. There’s a chance he’ll lose the number in there, depending on how many exits there are--

Nick casts his sigil and then books it, not wanting to stick around and see if it worked.

Reese gets there just a hair too late.

“I lost him,” he admits, then catches sight of the bloody drawing on the wall. “...but I think I might have an idea what our number’s running from. And why he disappeared for so long.”

“Yeah?” Shaw asks.

“Looks like he might’ve joined a cult."

“....really,” she said. “Huh.”

“He drew some sort of occult symbol on the wall. Looks like blood.”

“...okay, so he joined a cult.”

“It makes a certain amount of sense,” Finch says. “He went through a horrible tragedy. He could have been vulnerable, especially if he sought but failed to find any comfort in traditional religion.”

Reese takes a picture, and sends it to Finch. “Think you can figure out what this is?”

“Well, it’s hardly my area of expertise,” he says, “but I’ll see what I can do.”

“We’ll work on picking up his trail again,” Shaw says, appearing beside Reese in the alley, as she does sometimes. “Maybe stop by and pick up Bear to help.”

...and now skimming over the next few hours...

Finch spends some time in one of the few corners of the internet he’s not super familiar with, and does identify the symbol eventually.

“It’s for protection or warding. Specifically against angels.”

At which point Shaw busts up laughing at the idea of anyone thinking Reese is an angel.

But that does support the idea that he’s running from whatever cult he got mixed up in.

ANYWAY moving on.

Reese and Shaw eventually catch up with Nick again.

Unfortunately, so have the people who are after him.

(And by people, I mean demons. Two of them.)

(Who recognized Nick, obviously, and had the same ideas as Meg, with regard to his potential Uses.)

(Only they’d rather off him so no one gets to unlock whatever secrets he might be holding.)

Shaw goes up--she’s the better sniper, after all--and Reese makes his way into the alley where Nick is cornered

Firing, naturally, at their kneecaps.

Except.....

Nothing...nothing happens...?

(Well, except now the demon is pissed and gunning for Reese instead.)

(Nick is very relieved to see that this guy is not, in fact, an angel. Angels don’t normally use guns.)

(Of course, now he’s just confused, wtf is going on.)

“What the...” Reese says.

“Maybe you missed,” Shaw smirks, from her perch.

“I didn’t miss.”

“Sure,” she says, aiming at the demon chasing him, getting a solid hit in the shoulder.

Which....also does nothing.

“...well, that was weird.”

She fires again, this time a killshot--yeah, yeah, there are Rules, but under the circumstances...

Meanwhile, Demon #2 has gotten ahold of Nick. Who has frozen a little bit.

(He tends to do this, when stressed/triggered--internalize things, and just go blank. He was more or less catatonic when Meg found him, started gradually coming out of it; when Sam got his soul back that sort of accelerated the process and by now he’s mostly functional, but there are Moments...)

Shaw keeps firing at Demon #1. It’s not killing it, but it’s keeping it pinned down so hopefully Reese can reach and extract their number.

“Finch, we’ve got a Situation here.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

(Finch has hacked into some nearby security cameras.)

“You have any idea what the hell is going on?”

“I’m afraid not, Ms. Shaw,” he says. “It’s only the two of them, I think--no one else is coming though the police will probably be responding to the shots soon--”

“Yeah, Finch, I know. Reese?”

Nick is up against the wall and Reese bodily hauls the demon off of him to engage in a fistfight.

(Did not expect a skinny kid like the demon’s host to pack this much of a punch, he’ll have some fun bruises tomorrow...)

Which snaps Nick out of it.

Demons. These are demons. Only demons. I know how demons work. I can--

He rattles off an exorcism, as fast as he can.

The demons scream and smoke out, leaving their two dead hosts behind--Host #1 may have been dead already, or Shaw may have killed them; Host #2 was already gone.

“Finch?” Shaw says. “Finch, are you getting this?”

“I’m--yes, I see it,” he says.

Reese is about to add something, but the Nick passes out--Demon #2 managed to score a solid hit before Reese got there--and he moves to catch him.

“Damn it--he’s bleeding, pretty bad.”

“Get him to the safehouse,” Finch says. “I’ll meet you there, and we’ll...we’ll figure all this out.”

“Library’s closer,” Shaw points out. “And you said no one else was around.”

Finch hesitates for a moment--more concerned about Root than about their base being compromised, at the moment--then nods. “Fine. Bring him here. I’ll clear off a space for you to patch him up.”

“Copy that,” Shaw says. “Reese, stay with him, I’m gonna get us a car.”

...okay, I’ll admit, the rest of this first New York adventure isn’t super well planned out in my brain. So, skimming through it pretty quick...

They bring Nick back to the library. Shaw patches him up, while Finch goes over the footage he found, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Nick eventually wakes up. There’s a Talk.

“They were demons,” Nick explains. “They, uh. They can’t be killed, not with guns. There’s a couple specially-designed weapons, I think. And angel blades. Holy water will burn them, and you can use salt to keep them out. Best thing to do is probably trap them and exorcise them.”

Basically, Team Machine gets The Talk about monsters and so on Existing.

He admits to having been possessed for a year when they ask him why demons are chasing him, though he’s a little vague on further details. He does mention Meg, too, that she held on to him after he was dispossessed.

He asks how they found him--he’d thought his warding was messed up, especially when he thought Reese was an angel.

They give their characteristic vague answer, then ask, “If you’re...warded, how is it they found you in the first place?”

He figures, at this point, that his warding is fine--it doesn’t hide him from demons, necessarily, but even if it did, warding doesn’t stop the bad guys from spotting him by chance. Which is, incidentally, exactly what happened.

Nick also, of course, gets in the usual number questions; “who are you” “why are you helping me” etc., with the added weight of his possession and the fact that they took on literal demons to try and save his life.

Also, somewhere in this mess, Nick wanders off into the part of the library where Root is being held. Possibly while the rest of Team Machine is getting what they’ll need to deal with whatever Climactic Fight will end the episode/section.

(Nick was a high school history teacher, and this is a really awesome library, of course he’s going to go exploring if he’s left alone.)

(Bear is there to keep an eye on him/keep him from leaving.)

(Bear also gets many scritches and pets, as he deserves.)

Anyway, Root and Nick have a conversation; whether she and the Machine are already doing their Morse Code thing or something else is going on...or...something...anyway, Nick gets read in on the Machine’s existence.

(His reaction is more or less “...that does not even make the top ten most unbelievable/dangerous things I know exist, so...all right then.”)

Finch gets back to find them talking about history or something. Bear is next to Nick, who is a lot calmer/more willing to work with them than he was before. Root is just inside the cage wall, idly scritching Bear’s ears as they talk.

(This is actually Important.)

Anyway, eventually there is the requisite climactic fight. Possibly angels are involved--I know Shaw gets her hands on an angel blade at some point...

Point is, things get resolved, more or less. Nick ends up leaving New York.

BUT! Because Root had a Moment with him back there, and Finch saw it, he’s willing to unleash her a little earlier when the shit hits the fan a few episodes later.

In short, thanks to Root kind of sort of Bonding with one of their weirder/more fragile numbers, Team Machine is much better positioned to deal with Endgame nonsense, which means, first, that Carter gets to live (though Reese might still get hella shot, depending on how exactly Root changes what happens with Simmons; but he won’t go on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge); what follows is then that Team Machine is all working on the same page when Claypool’s number comes up aaaaaaand we avert Samaritan. Yay!

(Carter does still deduce the Machine’s existence, of course, gets upgraded to the yellow box and everything. And, remembering the late-S1 drama, strongly advocates for Fusco getting read in, too.)

(She gets her way on that, too. Eventually. Probably before too much longer, even.)

Also, Control does reveal herself, but doesn’t manage to capture Root just yet.

(Which also means Root doesn’t get her implant, at least for a while.)

But apart from that, we can leave this group to their own devices for a while, and get back to following Nick, who is now past his Origin Story, so to speak...

Hokay. So. After Nick leaves New York, he just starts sort of drifting again, and then a few days later, he gets a phone call.

Which he actually answers; in all honestly very few people would reach out to him this way, and he’s pretty sure none of the things that terrify him are on that list.

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

Nick stares at the phone for a long moment. The Machine repeats herself.

“…no.” He hangs up.

(Look, he knows damn well what that phone call was; Root told him enough when the two of them talked in the library. And he is not interested in letting another near-omnipotent entity screw with his head. Once was enough. He learned his lesson.)

The Machine backs off, deciding to try a less-invasive way of trying to get in touch with/recruit him.

Why is she doing this? Well.

The Machine’s mandate/objective is to protect humanity. When Nick came up on her radar as an irrelevant number she could offer her assets, she noticed some…let’s call them anomalies. In archival data about him, about the two people talking about murdering him…lots of things didn’t add up. Which is why he got pushed to the top of the list, so to speak.

(I mean, assuming she does put a certain level of thought/deliberation into which numbers she sends her assets? If two come up at once that are unrelated, does she need to decide, or do they get both? This isn’t 100% clear in the show, I don’t think; pretty sure all the multi-number episodes do end up being related, even if they don’t appear that way at first, apart from, like, backlogs from when the Machine has to go dark temporarily for whatever reason…anyway, if that is the case, she picked Nick because there was a lot of Weird Shit going on around him and she needed her human assets to sort through it, because she simply didn’t have the tools or parameters necessary to work it out for herself.)

So, Nick’s number comes up, and even more strange things keep happening. The Machine evaluates, and comes to the conclusion that there’s an entire class of threats to humanity that she hasn’t been monitoring correctly. The fact of the matter is, she was programmed with certain blind spots, because Finch had certain blind spots.

But the Machine is now in a position to correct that. She’s aware of the flaw in her system and, thanks to the changes she’s been making since Stanton’s virus and the other S2 arc plot stuff allowed her to start altering her code in a way she couldn’t before…

She can make up for it by adding yet another set of numbers/another protocol. Relevant numbers to the government as always, irrelevant numbers (within their reach, at least) to Finch and his team, “necessary” numbers (i.e., protecting the Machine herself/keeping tabs on other, potentially hostile, ASIs) to Root, and now…we’ll call them “hidden” numbers.

Of course, the next problem is, while there’s a lot of data available about monsters, angels, demons, etc., it’s very hard to sort through what is useful data and what is, frankly, BS. And, unfortunately, she lacks the parameters to do it herself.

Ergo, she needs a human asset to help her figure it out. Teach her/help her define this new dataset.

(And also to intervene when necessary, but that can come later. She’s got a bit of a learning curve ahead of her first, and she knows it.)

But, of course, she doesn’t want to retask any of her current assets—both because they have enough to deal with and because, again, learning curve. Better for at least one entity involved to know what they’re doing, right?

And so, she decides to recruit Nick. Nick, who has already been her window into this hidden world. Nick, who needs her as much as she needs him.

(Kind of like Root, except absolutely unlike Root. Like in that they were both drowning when she approached them, and needed her to give them a framework to cling to, to drag themselves back to the surface; unlike in that Nick is drowning in a very different ocean than Root was.)

Anyway. Eventually, she does manage to talk to him, and explain what she wants.

And he’s still not...100% sure how he feels about working with her, but...well, data entry, right? He can do that. Maybe.

“I don’t know how much help I’ll be,” he admits. “Just because I was possessed for a year doesn’t mean I know everything.”

“It’s still a place to start,” she replies. “Eventually, I’ll figure out the patterns and be able to extrapolate.”

“...okay, then.”

(As it turns out, he knows a lot more than he thinks he does, which is utterly terrifying; he has a lot of subconscious/residual information buried in his mind.)

Of course, eventually, just data entry isn’t enough.

The Machine doesn’t have all the answers/all the patterns down, but she has enough that she’s starting to identify threats/numbers she can assign out.

But Nick...well, Nick is fragile. Mentally, of course, but physically as well--burned inside and out, metaphorically and literally, by a long, incompatible possession.

At the moment, though, he’s the only asset she has in this area. Recruiting others, from among the insular, paranoid hunter community...is going to be difficult.

She spots something she thinks he can handle, especially if she grants him God Mode access and keeps him there.

He stares down at the text message she sent him.

“...I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t...”

“Can we please try?” she says. “I’ll help you.”

“...I...”

“It’s a demon, I think.”

He thinks about it for a minute. He can handle demons, he thinks. He has before, after all. He understands demons. And...

(he thinks about the feeling of evil still living under his skin; he thinks of blood on his hands and in his heart; about all the nightmares and half-memories; about how he feels too small for his own body, how his thoughts echo inside his head...)

(he wants to do better. he wants to be better. maybe helping...people like him, people who have gone through what he went through...maybe that’s a start. to make up for what he did.)

“...is the host still alive? When I...if I manage to get there and exorcise them...are they still alive?”

“I can’t tell,” she admits. “I’m sorry.”

“I’ll...try,” he says. “I’ll try.”

It ends up, fortunately, being a win for all of them--the demon is thrown enough by seeing Lucifer’s former vessel that Nick has a chance to act; the host is in fact still alive.

Nick spends hours after the exorcism, just...sitting with him, talking. Helping him cope/process things.

“...we should do that again sometime,” he finally tells the Machine, after he goes back to wherever he’s sleeping these days.

So, he starts kind of sort of hunting after that, with the help of an ASI.

Every time he directly engages something, he’s in God Mode. He has to be, because of the aforementioned damage; he wouldn’t survive on his own.

(Probably, at some point, he and the Machine put together something like the Tenebamus Infinitum forum in The Promises of Angels; online support group/community for possession survivors.)

(Sam may or may not find his way there...)

At first, they mostly focus on demons/possession cases. Sometimes ghosts. But they slowly start to branch out into other areas.

They deal with some miscellaneous monsters, faeries, maybe a vampire...good times.

Pretty much the only ones they avoid are angels and pagan gods, because Nick cannot deal.

(Angels for uh obvious reasons; pagan gods because he remembers like two things from his possession with any clarity, and one of them is Muncie, Indiana/Gabriel’s death.)

(The Machine occasionally considers trying to get him into a hospital for a while, the way Root was--she thinks it would help him--but he’s...managing for the moment, so it’s not as necessary, and she does still need him actively working....plus, he’s terrified of being sedated so...this gets put on indefinite hold.)

During this period, though, they do acquire two more Friends.

First--and I’m not 100% sure how they meet; possibly similar to how Nick and Jody meet in Cartography!verse, i.e., a grief support group of some kind.

Anyway, first he meets a young woman, a psychiatrist. Who is familiar, if peripherally, with angel and demon type stuff.

(Other monsters are gonna be a little New to her.)

Her name is Ashley Finnerman.

(Yes, as in Donnie.)

(He was her cousin.)

(After what happened to him, she started trying to figure it out, and eventually did.)

(...honestly, the forum may be her idea. She definitely joins it, not as a fellow survivor, but as a crisis counselor/trained professional who will believe them.)

(Ashley is pretty big on community building in general; yes, she’s a therapist and that’s a start, but she’s only one person. In her ideal world, they’d be able to draw in other professionals--psychiatric because this is an underserved population that desperately needs those resources; medical (as in physical medical/other MDs); legal...anyway, she’s not 100% sure how to go about doing that, but helping out on with Tenebamus is a step in the right direction, in her opinion.)

Ashley is eventually read in on the Machine as well. She has more or less an actual Life outside of it all, so she isn’t as immersed as Nick is, but she’s still definitely part of his team.

And second...somehow, they acquire Adam.

How? ...again, not 100% sure, but probably one of two ways--

One, something similar to Promises, where Nick gets too close to the Cage mouth for some reason and is offered a Bribe. He takes the bribe, with exactly zero intention of following through on his end of the bargain, so to speak.

Two, some kind of straight-up Fairy Tale Bullshit. S6 establishes that faeries can reach the Cage; Nick somewhat accidentally does a favor for a powerful faerie through his work with the Machine, and to repay the debt, the faerie (or possibly a High Up Faerie who has taken ownership of the debt because he helped someone in their court/their child/something or other) restores his Counterpart to him? IDK, something like that.

...I think I like this option. He accidentally does a favor for, IDK, Mab. And she, not wanting to be in his debt, heads down to the Cage.

This works because, a) Mab is probably one of the few entities that can go toe-to-toe with an Archangel like this; and b) Michael is actually on board with springing Adam.

(Not necessarily because he gives a shit about Adam, but he does give a shit about Justice, and keeping Adam down here, especially with Sam gone, is not Justice.)

Naturally, she doesn’t tell Nick ahead of time--he did the favor without consulting her, she shall repay him in kind. Faeries and Obligations, man.

Anyway, Adam joins them, and then Nick doesn’t have to be quite as hands-on because Adam is perfectly capable.

(Adam also, at some point, makes a comment about the three of them having ‘nearly a complete set.’)

(I have no idea how/if they’ll ever be able to find someone to fit in for Gabriel, but three out of four!)

(Nick finds this oddly hilarious, for reasons he can’t quite articulate.)

So, that is what Nick is doing while Team Machine is foiling Vigilance and Greer and Decima and dealing with their Hard Sci Fi end of things.

Let’s bring these two worlds crashing back together, shall we?

(Well, I say crashing together...this probably isn’t the first time Nick has run into the others since that first adventure.)

(If nothing else, he’s stayed in touch, off and on, with Root.)

(And I’m pretty sure the others have met Adam.)

(Maybe that was where Shaw got her angel blade...)

So, timeline for this. Uh...probably at least a year after Nick’s first encounter with Team Machine. For the SPN side of things...ehhhhh I’ll handwave/stop caring and say this is sometime in the latter half of S8. Between the first two Trials. Let’s go with that.

Nick and co are back in New York, probably dealing with something on their end of things. A ghost or something.

And then they get sucked into some Team Machine nonsense.

Control still wants the Machine--or a suitable Plan B--back under her complete, well, control.

Decima is going after some other potential ASI.

(Root is back in town to deal with them.)

Vigilance is involved too, because why not.

(Greer can’t initiate his endgame there just yet, after all, so they’re probably still operating.)

Nick, Adam, and Ashley are pitching in, because they’re here and the Machine needs all the help she can get on this one. Because Reasons.

Meg gets involved--this goes AU in that she escaped Crowley somehow. And one of the first things she does is try to check on her various assets, so she’s trying to track Nick and figure out what the hell is going on with him.

Crowley, of course, is chasing her, trying to get her back.

And, to round it all off, Sam and Dean are chasing him.

(As they approach, Sam starts noticing a weird buzzing feeling in the back of his head. Like circulation returning, or something like that. He decides not to mention it--thinks it might be a new Trials symptom, and he’s already hiding those from Dean, what’s one more secret? Besides, they need to know what Crowley finds so interesting about this place...that’s way more important, right?)

So, all these disparate parties converge on wherever the potential ASI is being held/built.

Root and Nick, of course, are both in God Mode.

(...incidentally, Nick is...nnnnnnnnnot super comfortable with calling it that? He and Adam and Ashley mostly just call it access or full-access.)

(Nick has the same tingling feeling in the back of his head, but he can’t do anything about it right now. He just focuses on the task at hand, and getting himself and his friends through this alive.)

The Machine tips Nick off to the fact that there are demons sniffing around--a couple of Crowley’s minions. Which, of course, Nick and his team can handle, but there’s several of them around and we reeeeally don’t want Crowley getting access to an ASI.

(Especially not S8!Crowley.)

So, Nick, Adam, and Ashley head off to put up wards and shoo off any demons they can, leaving the others to deal with the Decima nonsense/destroy the drives or whatever.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, so they split up.

Eventually, Nick gets pinned down by Decima mooks, trapped in a corner of the facility where he’s trying to finish getting the wards up.

“What...what do I do now?” he asks the Machine.

She runs her simulations, and it doesn’t look good.

And here is where it’s different from, say, “If-Then-Else.” Slash another way Root and Nick are very different people/assets.

Whereas Root is perfectly okay with obeying orders from her God without question, Nick needs to be told his options and make the choice himself.

At some point, he describes Access as oddly comforting. It’s almost as overwhelming, almost as much of a surrender, as consenting to possession is.

But there’s one critical difference.

He doesn’t have to listen to her.

He can say no.

He can hang up.

I mean, it’s generally speaking a bad idea to do that, but the option is still available.

So, his head doesn’t feel as empty with her in it, but a lot of it is still on his terms.

That being said, when there’s no time, or it’s a very immediate “there’s someone behind you” type of God Mode moment, of course, that’s less of an issue.

But something like this, where there’s a fork in the road?

If there’s time, she’ll lay out two or three of the least bad options and let him decide.

“If you go out the door and turn left, you will run into Control. She will figure out you’re tied to me, and she will take you prisoner. She will almost certainly torture you, to get you to give me up. Adam and Ashley will meet up with my other assets, and they will rescue you, but the chances of their success are very slim. There is a five percent chance, at best, that you will survive. It varies, depending on how quickly the others can mobilize.”

“Okay,” he says, and swallows. “And...and Adam and Ashley, will they...?”

“They have better than even odds of surviving.”

“Okay,” he says again. “What else?”

“Turn right,” she says. “You’ll run into the demon who held you captive.”

“Meg?”

“Yes.”

That’s not so bad, he thinks. Meg didn’t torture him too much, and she wanted him kept alive.

“Control will capture Root instead,” she continues. “Sameen and the others will attempt to rescue her. Adam and Ashley will pursue you.”

Control capturing Root, on the other hand, seems like a very bad thing. Still...

“Adam and Ashley?”

“About the same,” she says. “But there is another concern.”

“Okay.”

“If Meg takes you, there’s a chance she’ll find me. And if she does, it’s extremely likely that someone less friendly will, as well. There is also an approximately 17% chance that you’ll wind up in Crowley’s hands instead of Meg’s. And his chances of finding me are a lot stronger.”

Yeah, no. That cannot happen.

“Are there any other options?” he asks.

She pauses for a split second. “Turn right,” she says. “Then at the first hallway, turn left instead of going straight. I’ll have to leave you then--there are several Decima soldiers, but if you manage to get past them on your own, you’ll find Sam and Dean Winchester.”

It hits him like a punch to the gut.

“Your chances of reaching them without my help are better than your chances of surviving Control,” the Machine continues, “but not by much. If you can get there, though, they most likely won’t harm you.”

Unless I’m in full-access mode, Nick thinks, and shivers a little.

“And I can say with approximately 97% certainty that, when Adam and Ashley find you, they won’t harm them, either. I cannot say the same for the demons or Control.”

“They won’t hurt us physically,” Nick finally manages to say. “But I can’t...I-I-I don’t know how I’ll...I can’t shut down, not in here. A-and I don’t know how Sam will react to seeing me, I’ll probably seriously fuck with his head a-and I can’t...I can’t...”

(there’s this running refrain in his head, that Sam Winchester is perfect, and that Nick is the reason that everything goes wrong.)

(the Machine regrets even more not getting Nick more help.)

He takes a shaky breath. “Plus, I don’t know if Adam’s ready for that yet,” he says. “He hasn’t...uh, he hasn’t said anything about wanting to track them down.”

“That’s true.”

He’s quiet for another minute.

“Nick?”

“...I’ll take my chances with Control,” he says.

“I understand,” she says. “Thank you. And I’m sorry.”

(It’s not what she would have advised him to do, necessarily--she would have advised him to try for Sam and Dean; it balances protecting her with protecting the majority of her assets.)

“Directions?” he says.

“Open the door and turn left.”

She guides him down the hallway, advises him where to dodge, where to strike. He picks up a gun at one point--

(he’s hesitant, and she reminds him “you’re in Control’s world now, you have to play by her rules.”)

He gets to the inevitable trap, where ISA corners him and Control is there.

She recognizes, pretty quickly, that he’s in God Mode.

“...now just who the hell are you?”

On the other side of the facility, Ashley’s phone rings.

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

The Machine also advises Root that Nick has been captured.

She and Finch have finished neutralizing the potential ASI drives; Reese and Shaw are with them; Carter and Fusco are currently working on securing their exit route, after driving off a handful of Vigilance mooks.

“We need to move,” Root says. “Control has Nick. Adam and Ashley will meet us.”

Reese nods once. “Lionel, Joss, get ready. We’re headed your way.”

“Copy that,” Carter says. “Fusco--”

“On it.”

Meg has realized that Crowley is here, so she’s now in the process of finding her own exit. He’s in pursuit.

Sam and Dean got all turned around and manage to get to just the right hallway at just the right time to see Adam and Ashley piling onto an elevator.

“...Dean,” Sam says. “Dean, tell me you’re seeing what I’m seeing.”

(he doesn’t press his hand. he hasn’t hallucinated in almost two years, he doesn’t need to--)

“Adam?” Dean calls.

Adam half turns to them, hesitates for half a second, then follows Ashley into the elevator and the door slides shut.

...and I’ll admit I don’t have a whole lot planned out beyond that. Also this is getting, like, super long. So, quick wrapup, so to speak.

So, Team Machine, plus Adam and Ashley go to rescue Nick.

Sam and Dean track them down.

Adam goes to talk to them, try and get them to back off.

“I have to go rescue my friend,” he says. “But once I’m done with that, we can talk. I promise. We’ll set up a meeting and I’ll tell you...as much as I remember, I guess. But right now, I have to go rescue my friend. Kind of on a clock here.”

“We’ll help,” Sam offers.

“This isn’t really your kind of thing,” Adam says. “This isn’t monsters, this is the ISA.”

“The what now?” Dean asks.

“Like the CIA, but on steroids.”

“...how the hell did you get involved in CIA bullshit?” Dean asks.

“It’s kind of a long story,” Adam says. “Which I will tell you, once my friend is safe. So can you please just...let me do this first?”

“How did...” Sam asks. “How did you get out?”

“Also a long story,” Adam says. “But I’m the only one who came out, I swear. And...” He hesitates. “They...mostly left me alone, after you were gone. If you were worried about that.”

(Sam hadn’t been, mostly because he had been Very Firmly Not Thinking About Adam for a while now, but he’s relieved to hear it.)

Reese steps out. Possibly holding his grenade launcher. “Come on, Adam, we gotta go.”

“Coming,” Adam says, then turns back to Sam and Dean. “I will call you as soon as we’re clear. I promise. Don’t follow us, okay?”

Without waiting for an answer, he follows Reese and they go to rescue Nick.

(Obviously, S&D don’t listen and do, in fact, follow Adam, but I’m not 100% sure where that would go.)

(Other than they do, in fact, manage to extract Nick alive, but it’s a near thing.)

(The fun thing here is, Control actually can’t break Nick. Well, she can’t get him to tell her anything about the Machine, anyway.)

(Yes, everyone has their breaking point so far as pain/torture goes, and Nick is no exception.)

(But he will physically break--i.e., die--before he mentally breaks.)

(And while psychological torture would be a lot more effective, she doesn’t know what buttons to push.)

(When she runs his prints/whatever, she gets the name Jacob White, which is an identity that Finch put together for him, for when he needed to interact with the real world. Since his own identity is...complicated.)

(Yes, that is a reference.)

(I couldn’t resist.)

(Also, the Machine, through Root, gets to deliver her verbal bitchslap to Control at last.)

Uh....yeah. That’s all the actual Plot I have at this point. But some other notes!

My girl Zoe is totally in the know. She may or may not have encountered Bela at some point, or found out some other way, but she does know.

(She never told Harold and John because--well, honestly, why would she? Her stock in trade is secrets, after all. And it never came up, and she wasn’t involved with Nick’s first adventure.)

Elias will turn up at some point. And basically become something like John Marcone, if any of y’all are familiar with the Dresden Files.

Bear’s Plot Armor may be some kind of magic, and I would not be surprised if he could take on a Hellhound and win.

Carter and Jody. Just...just Carter and Jody, man.

Like I said, Shaw gets her hands on an angel blade at some point. She and Dean probably bond. I feel like they would bond.

Also, I think Dean gets put into God Mode at some point. Possibly as his first real introduction to the Machine.

Like...IDK, he and Sam are with Nick for some reason, Nick, as implied above, cannot go into God Mode in front of the two of them, and honestly Sam going into God Mode in front of him would also be pretty devastating, so...Dean’s phone gets to ring!

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“...the fuck?”

“Can. You. Hear. Me?”

“Yes, I can--what the fuck is--”

“Two. O’clock.”

::turns and OHSHIT just in time::

IDK the idea just entertains me.

...yep, I think that’s it.

If you’re still here, thank you for putting up with my nonsense/checking this out.

Tune in next time, for an actual serious AU outline of some kind.

(....who am I kidding, these things are never serious XD)

#shadowsong writes spn #shadowsong26fic #shadowsong writes crossovers #au outlines for the win #shadowsong writes self-indulgent bs #shadowsong is feeling Spiteful today

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astrologista · 7 years

Text

Is Varian “evil”?

I don’t think so. Not really. I think he’s got a lot of redeeming himself to do, but he’s not through-and-through evil.

Varian’s strategy, his goal, was just to get his father freed from the amber. However, his tactics for doing that evolved over time due to highly extenuating circumstances.

Tactic #1 was to go get Rapunzel to help. Ultimately, this plan fails, even after he goes through an entire musical number while out in the worst storm Corona’s faced in years, probably for hours.

Tactic #2 was apparently to try and get someone else to help / listen (”I tried asking for help in a civil manner, but was denied by everyone in Corona”). This is because a rumor supposedly spread about Varian “attacking” Rapunzel when he went to ask for help. But what could others do, when Raps is the only one with the hair? Maybe he should’ve asked Xavier.

When he returns home, he’s too late to help and Quirin is fully encased by the amber. Even after making it to Corona through the storm and all the way back (remember, In Let Me Make You Proud, there are a few moments when Varian easily could’ve been killed if not for his resourcefulness), he failed the most important person in his life. But he would have “succeeded”, if not for Rapunzel’s choice not to go with him.

It almost seems like cruel fate. Here he didn’t mess something up for once and he still failed, at a time when failure is not an option for Varian. Varian sits there, crying, alone but for Rudiger, for God knows how many hours...

After the reprise of Let Me Make You Proud, Varian is still the same person, however, he has redoubled his old goal and added a new one - revenge. He tried asking nice, but now he’s not only going to get Rapunzel to hear him and fix this problem, he’s also going to get some nice payback for being ignored.

Varian has a pretty strong moral foundation, presumably instilled there by his father. But there are events that will make anyone forsake morality in the pursuit of greater goals. Varian knows he’s turning away from common decency (”and no matter what comes of me”) because he feels he has exhausted all civil recourse and resources available to him. Varian sees the line between right and wrong and willingly steps right over it in order to get his goals met. He’s not playing, it’s not just for fun, he’s not going evil for kicks. He literally feels like he has no other choice and there’s no one there to tell him why it’s a bad idea.

So it would seem that Varian’s fall from grace is a simple logical deduction, which would be in line with his personality. This is not the case, I would argue. Emotion plays a huge part in Varian’s turn. He’s just seen his father be frozen in a block of amber, and he can see the cause-and-effect that indicates Varian’s own part in this. Varian’s been through some very distressing events in rapid succession and he’s only 14. And things don’t get any better. They just get worse.

Varian’s next tactic is simple. Steal the Sundrop flower and use it to break the amber. In this plan, no one has to get hurt. He uses the Mood Potion cookies to get information, but that’s it. No one had to get hurt. No one had to potentially die for Varian to get what he needed. He executes the plan perfectly. And he succeeds. He’s even so confident that he’s right about the flower, that he smoothly burns bridges with Rapunzel by revealing his true motives. No real need to have her on his side anymore. He is able to escape with the flower with no problems.

Until that plan fails, too. He’s done everything right. Just like the Science Expo, just like in QFaD. Varian did everything right, but the world is cruel and for whatever reason plans fall through at the last logical step.

(You could say that the Sundrop flower is magic. Varian doesn’t work with magic. Not until now.)

When the flower fails, Varian finds himself losing control. It’s easy to deduce that he probably hasn’t gotten much sleep since this began, and it shows. He is starting to lose his mind a little bit after so many days of intense emotions. He’s just betrayed the only friend he has left in Corona, burned that bridge in the hopes he could bring Quirin back. Then he’d have someone again and everything would be fine. Except it doesn’t happen. He’s shoving things, he’s knocking things off the desk. Varian literally can’t deal with his pain any longer and it’s starting to manifest physically.

He squeezes the flower into tiny little pieces with a shaking hand and finally makes the connection he needs to make. Rapunzel is the Sundrop now. Too bad she doesn’t trust him anymore.

(Varian has this nice sketch of Rapunzel. That means both Varian and Rapunzel have drawn each other. We’ve seen Rapunzel’s nightmares. Lord only knows what Varian’s are like.)

This is where Varian’s plans go from benign to mildly disruptive to totally destructive. When he remakes the automaton, clearly he had to know it would destroy property and eventually hurt people. The same goes for when he transforms Rudiger.

It’s not just about logically proceeding to the goal anymore, quietly or in the shadows. It’s about being heard, and it’s about revenge.

Varian knows better than anyone how far someone will go for family. This is how he can easily come up with a kidnapping plot. He knows kidnapping the Queen is the fastest way to get Rapunzel to do what he wants. It’s a very cruel, ironic, “see how you like it.”

Varian has thought things through to the letter. And just like earlier instances, everything seems to be going his way. The decoy doll, the automaton ambush. Varian predicts everything like he’s been doing tactics for years. This reveals that he’s not just a very smart, dangerous scientist. He’s sort of a keen emotional profiler when he wants to be, rather than some goofy nerd who just stays locked in his lab away from people. He seems to know what people want and what they’ll do to get it at a very... uncomfortable level. (Is psychology one of Varian’s other interests? WHAT IS HE NOT AN EXPERT ON??) But after reading so many Flynn Rider novels, it could be that Varian is just really Genre Savvy like Syndrome from the Incredibles. You could draw a few parallels between the two, but Varian’s still the better villain. Why? Because he’s better at being a villain. As I said, he’s not just playing at being evil for fun. He didn’t come here to play. Varian is trying to get Quirin freed while at the same time proving that he’s not incompetent, and he’s not a child.

Sidebar - Varian is a little too smart and savvy for 14. He doesn’t even hang out with kids his own age that we’ve seen, Rapunzel, Eugene, and Cassandra are all several years older than him. And there’s a big difference between 14 and 19-20 year olds. That’s like a high school freshman hanging with college students. And both Cass and Eugene have referred to him as a “kid” with Quirin calling him a “child” indirectly.

But back to Secret of the Sundrop.

Varian isn’t apologetic about doing what he has to do. He feels righteous and justified. As time has passed, so his methods have gotten more extreme. And a new element has been added - he’s extremely disrespectful and beyond rude to the King and Queen. Tauntingly calling Arianna “your Highness” and “your Majesty” with a smirk. Telling her “Quiet” during Ready as I’ll Ever Be. And of course, who could forget how he interacted with King Frederick. “She’s right, Dad.” Varian, you’re lucky you don’t live in the real 1600s, because talk like this is a fast one-way trip to death row.

Varian’s affect in Secret of the Sundrop isn’t completely different from how we’ve seen him act in the past, which is the unsettling part. While usually respectful, Varian had a bright, witty quality to his banter, calling him and Eugene “Team Awesome” and Cassandra “M’lady” (Varian, just get a fedora.) and his “Assistant” and “Co-ladies in waiting” despite her annoyance. At the same time, it was obvious there was a lot of admiration behind what he said and how he acted. He just wanted to fit in, he wanted Rapunzel, the princess he admires and bows to, to like him and be his friend. He wanted Eugene, who he thinks is Flynn Rider (his hero) to be his friend and keep his secrets. He wanted Cass to admire him and see something special in him. Most of all, he just wanted his father to be proud of him, even after all of his mistakes that he is clearly aware of (”Maybe I make things a mess...” “Maybe you’re right to have doubts in me...” “When you see your son rising at last”). Even if his affect is similar to who he was, the admiration that was there is replaced with complete cynicism and apathy for Rapunzel’s or anyone’s feelings. Varian truly believed that Rapunzel would come through for him in his time of greatest need, because that’s what friends do. When she didn’t, he lost faith in her and he also lost faith in the system. In Queen for a Day, we see that there’s a long line of people in the castle every day demanding things from the Royals. Everyone is lined up and given a basic solution to their problems. Varian is starting to realize the problems inherent in such a system as well. Shouldn’t someone who has a life-or-death problem be given priority ahead of someone who just needs a place for their sheep to graze or something? (Corona has no 911. Unfortunately for Quirin.) What Varian has concluded is that his friendship with Rapunzel essentially means nothing to her because she was unwilling to drop everything and come help him, which is ridiculous, but to Varian, saving his dad is much more important than the overall welfare of Corona.

So he’s apathetic. He’s cruel. He’s practically sadistic. Watch him unfeelingly “speed things along” because they’re on a “time crunch” by setting off the amber reaction again next to Arianna, while Rapunzel and the King watch helplessly.

When the hair doesn’t work the first time, Varian keeps trying, becoming more and more agitated. Even when Rapunzel passes out and the King orders him to stop, he continues on, sure that he’s right because he has to be right. This can’t all be for nothing. To Varian’s credit, he does realize when things just aren’t going to work. His plan, once again, executed to perfection - probably the most difficult and elaborate scheme he’s ever pulled off. Timed to perfection, hours and hours of work on many, many, robots (all made by hand I presume), the Rudiger serum, getting the Queen back to his place, getting all the little chess pieces (people) right where he wants them by manipulating their emotions, and for what? His plan had a single point of failure. If Quirin wasn’t freed, then nothing was worth it. But he still has one secondary goal - revenge.

When the hair fails, Varian doesn’t rage like last time. He’s shocked. He’s horrified. He doesn’t even notice what’s going on behind him. At this point, the plan is effectively over. He has no script for this part. Still, he tries to convince himself that he wasn’t wrong and it’s not his fault. Varian has been through so much in the past days (weeks?) that thinking clearly is the last thing he can currently do. He’s been alone, without human contact. Rudiger is there, so at least he has someone, but that’s not going to replace his father.

And what does he see when he turns around? Rapunzel being embraced by both her father AND her mother. Receiving love, contact, acceptance, protection, validation. Everything Varian wants and needs, has moved heaven and earth to try and get. And it’s just not fair.

Varian is exhausted, and he wants what he wants, and he’s out of ideas, so he does what any kid would do. He has a temper tantrum. They’re not going to get this happy ending and just ignore his pain anymore. This is the real turning point where Varian has gone from destructive, to manipulative, to hurtful and cruel and unfeeling, to murderous. Once Varian gets in the mech, he loses it. He fully intended to crush the Royal family with that first strike, and it’s unclear if he wanted to squeeze Cass and the Queen literally to death but that seemed to be where it was going if someone didn’t intervene. The red lights in the mecha definitely symbolized pure rage. Even with the legs torn off the mech, Varian’s last move was to reach out and try to grab Rapunzel. Only when the robot was 100% defeated and lost power, did Varian “give up”. And even then, he never really gave up, just yelled “NO!” like a little kid whose toy was taken away.

It was pretty obvious when Varian was being taken away that he’s been beaten but not broken. However, for as much damage as he’s caused, Rapunzel can’t help but realize how much pain he’s really in and begs her father to show some mercy. Which he says he will. And Rudiger seems to understand too, tries to comfort him a little bit, but it doesn’t seem to get through to him. Varian has caused a lot of damage because he’s dangerously smart and skilled. Varian also just happens to have a lot of qualities that make him good at what he does. He’s highly manipulative and seems to be capable of shutting off his empathy for others when necessary, as a scientist would do when experimenting on animals or people. That doesn’t mean that empathy doesn’t exist, however - he’s just capable of switching it on and off. He’s determined beyond normal boundaries and will continue to fight until he literally cannot fight anymore. He can come back with correct solutions to almost any problem you give him, except when it comes to magic. Not only are his solutions quantitatively correct, but are also highly inventive and creative. Like, seriously, if you can’t tell, I love an antagonist who is as quantitatively and mathematically skilled and logical as they are creative, inventive and aware of human motivations and flaws.

Eugene and Cassandra have already assured Varian that he is a good person. That’s good, but it’s not enough. He needs Quirin to do it for his arc to be complete. He needs to earn it. Varian has a long way to come back from what he’s done. He’s acted with foresight and brilliance beyond what most kids his age would be capable of, but at the same time, he’s acted immaturely and childishly without regard for the lives at stake. It’s understandable that he wants and needs to be heard and validated. He has gone through a lot of pain, a lot of grief, and being left completely to his own devices, he has justified things to himself that are a little too advanced for him to be thinking about and dealing with in his adolescent mind. Being 14 is not fun for anyone, it’s really not. 14 and 15 are probably the most difficult ages to be because you have to deal with a lot of changes very, very quickly. Your brain chemistry is flopping around, new hormones are changing the way you think. In fact, it makes a lot of sense that Varian has a combination of immature, impish traits and mature, adult traits. Without his mother around, and his dad being kind of awkward around him and still treating him like a kid, Varian’s main reference for the kind of person he wants to become is influenced by those Flynn Rider books he reads, as well, where extreme emotions and situations run hot, and sometimes the extreme solution is the right one.

A lot of people are trying to make arguments that Varian’s not responsible for what he did in Secret of the Sundrop. That might be believable if Varian were 10 or 11 years old, just a kid with powers he doesn’t understand getting a bit too rowdy and not understanding consequences. But Varian has proven that he understands what he’s doing, knows he’s crossing the line, but doesn’t care. I will say I doubt he was fully in good control of himself at the end of Secret of the Sundrop. He was highly stressed and agitated, and it’s like they say. You aren’t you when you’re hungry. He was having one of the worst days of his life. We can give him a little break for that, but despite all excuses, he seemed pretty sharp and quick on the uptake when he was telling Cass he knew he could sweep her off her feet, and when he was operating the mech, too.

After watching it over, I am pretty sure that for Varian to learn a lesson about self-control and self-esteem (which it seems his is pretty low, because he seeks validation from others at the cost of all else), Quirin and/or his mom needs to find him and set him straight. Those are the only two people he is likely to trust and listen to at this point, since he’s lost faith in the rest of Corona. I don’t think he’s ever going to be the same character that he was before QFaD, but that makes sense. He needed to go through an arc, and I would assume he’s going to come out of his arc as a new person, an older and wiser person, I would think. Certain core characteristics remain, he’s still a huge snarky geek-a-nerd, and really passionate and loyal about his family. But I hope he does do a little growing up in some areas, and realize there are other areas where he doesn’t need to grow up so fast. He doesn’t have to be a 1000 IQ genius and usher in the Industrial Revolution in Corona for his parents to love him. That’s what he needs to understand.

And quite honestly, I don’t know what Varian’s mom and/or Quirin did to him to give him a complex like this. Something don’t add up here. There is no way I can believe that Quirin is secretly evil or something. Come on, he keeps a huge family picture in his room, he saves little girls who fall out of trees. He’s a G. In QFaD, he’s actually considerably patient with Varian. He only snaps at him when Varian continues to persist on certain issues like going in to talk to the King, insisting that Quirin lied, wanting to experiment on the rocks. Even in What the Hair, Quirin doesn’t just immediately assume that Varian caused the disaster, in fact, his first #1 priority before anything else is to find Varian and make sure he’s safe. I get the feeling that having a kid like Varian who’s just so determined and can be so difficult when there’s something he wants is a tough parenting job for Quirin as apparently he’s been a single parent for some time, plus he’s got other shit that he needs to do. He doesn’t have time to hang around and constantly validate Varian’s work and his existence 1000 times a day. I can also get the feeling that Varian thinks that if he just keeps trying to do great things for Old Corona or whatever to make his dad proud, maybe he’ll make more time for him. Maybe then he’ll be “worth it”.

But it’s so, so obvious that Quirin loves Varian a lot. He’s a good dad. Maybe not the perfect one, but something has to be done to show Varian that he doesn’t need to be perfect. He needs a hug like the one Rapunzel got in Secret of the Sundrop, hopefully with both of his parents there telling him how valued he is, that he just doesn’t need to do any of this in order to earn their love. I think that’s where his arc is going.

Yeah... this is... it’s very... long...

#varian #no you don't understand #i love him #he's my son #he needs love #but he's just done so much #he's so brilliant #he's very tired #needs a nap #he's been very bad though #he's grounded #until he learns how to be a man #soon. very soon #i believe he has a chance in life #he is going to be such a beautiful butterfly #you'll see. you'll all see #THEN YOU WILL REALIZE

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bibliophileiz · 7 years

Text

Things about Supernatural’s last episode

Isn’t it weird how every other b*cklemming episode, we’re like, “It’s not as bad as their last one.” Ringing endorsements all around.

In all honesty, it’s really not a bad episode. I did have to watch it twice to know wtf was going on with the Shidim because I found Asmodeus so hammy and uninteresting that I stopped listening during his dialogue though.

Spoilers under the cut:

Let’s start with Asmodeus: What a letdown after seven seasons of Crowley, who was interesting, sympathetic, clever (when not written by you-know-who), well-developed and played by an exceptional actor. I already said this once, but it would be just like these particular writers to screw up Crowley so much that Mark Sheppard quits and then replace him with Tropey McTroperson.

I rolled my eyes just at Asmodeus’ introduction – nice to know he has access to a smoke machine to make his entrance more dramatic. Remember when Cas made the roof rattle and the lights pop as he strode into the barn the first time we saw him? What about Rafael, who took down power in the eastern seaboard? What about Crowley, who kissed a dude then told the heroes he didn’t care for Lucifer and gave them the Colt. What about Billie, who sang a spiritual about death as she reaped souls?

Then Asmodeus turns out to be scarred, have an outrageous good ole boy Southern accent (that is fake as fuck – my job is to talk to Southerners, and none of them sound like that), wear a stupid white suit, and immediately choke to death a bunch of demons because the “hobbies” Ramiel referenced must have included watching Darth Vader’s scenes in Star Wars over and over. His dialogue is nothing I didn’t hear from Jafar the first time I saw Aladdin, and his evil plan is to become the manipulative adviser to the ruler of Hell. We just won villain stereotype bingo, and we’re only in the first scene of the episode.

It was also a letdown after Azazel, Ramiel, and Dagon … who by the way never shapeshifted. Weren’t they always in vessels? It wouldn’t be the first time this show has retrofitted its own mythology (*coughing all over the angels in Season 9*)

Do I just shrug it off and say these writers are terrible at writing villains and always have been? Not sure I can blame them entirely … if Asmodeus is going to become as big a deal this season as I think, there has to be more than just b*cklemming contributing to the character. It’s a bummer because if this was just a one-episode villain like Ramiel had been, I’d have found it hysterical. Yes, Jack, smite Big Daddy demon on your third day of existence, it’ll be hilarious! But I’m not sure I can take an entire season of this guy, especially if the only other big-time villain we get is Michael.

Speaking of Michael: Ok, if I’m going to get a showdown between the two most powerful archangels ever, I want it to be more than just … a fistfight. It needs to be at least as impressive as Castiel’s introduction in Season 4. I know the show’s special effects budget is limited, but how threatening are your villains really when Dean gets into more impressive brawls like every single episode? Let me see their wings! Let me see them try to smite each other! Let me hear them break glass and make stars go out!!

Jack is a muffin and I love him a lot: Jack was just as good in this episode as he was in the last one. I don’t know where they found Alexander Calvert but I think he was put on earth to play this role. In his first episode, he walks this fine balance between manacing and charmingly innocent. In this episode, the charming innocence is still there, but it’s slowly being clouded by this fear of his power and what it could do if he misuses it – even by accident, as we saw when he tried to free the Shidim. He’s kind of like Cas in that he wants to do the right thing and be heroic like Sam and Dean but isn’t really equipped with the decision-making skills he needs to know when he’s about to make things worse.

The scene between him and Sam in the alley is exceptional. Jared Padalecki nailed it. I loved Sam telling Jack he loved him – that’s not exactly what he said, obviously, but by equating himself with Jack’s parents with the “Your mom thought you were worth it and so did Cas and so do I” line, he basically says that. That’s why I’m much more on board with Sam becoming a parent figure for Jack than Dean. (Also because Dean always gets to be a father figure and Sam never does, but I digress.) It just goes to show b*cklemming can pull off good emotional scenes when they actually put in effort. I’m thinking specifically the two scenes in “All in the Family” when Dean is asking Chuck why he left and the scene right after when Lucifer tells Amara she may defeat God but she will never be him.

The great Song of Solomon debate: So there’s a thing when you grow up in Sunday School where teachers tell you to open the Bible to the book of Psalms. It’s a big deal when you’re five, because it’s usually the first book in the Bible you can find on purpose – it’s right smack in the middle. But it’s close to Proverbs and Song of Solomon, so while you’re trying to find Pslams, you might first hit one of those other two. (You might also hit Ecclisiastes, but it’s like … two pages long, so probably not.)

All this is to just say I don’t think we should be reading too much into the fact Jack opened to Song of Solomon. Yes, it’s the sexy bit, but it’s also the bit little kids find when they just open the Bible to the middle, which is honestly how I took that scene. If you’re not flipping to a particular spot you’re just opening the Bible to look around like Jack was doing, you have a decent chance of landing on that book.

Also, when the camera pans back, it looks like he’s gone to the beginning to read Genesis.

I don’t know how to take the ending scene: There’s a scene in the first episode of Firefly that’s a lot like this one. If you’re not familiar with that show, it chronicles the adventures of a crew of space smugglers who are hiding fugitives on board their ship. In the scene, the captain, Mal Reynolds, tells one of the fugitives he can stay on board the ship and be their doctor. The fugitive, whose name is Simon, is skeptical because up until this point, Mal thought the fugitives were a danger to the rest of the crew (sound familiar?) and was either going to turn them over to the authorities or maroon them on a hostile planet. Simon asks Mal, “How do I know you won’t just kill me in my sleep?”

Mal says one of my favorite things ever said in a scene on TV: “You don’t know me, son, so I’m only going to say this once. If I ever kill you, you’ll know it, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.”

What Dean said to Jack kind of reminds me of that, even though the contexts of the two scenes are different. If you need killing, I’m going to make sure these are the circumstances in which it happens. It’s almost noble. There’s this understanding and respect both for killing and the person you’re killing. It’s kind of like Ned Stark says: “A leader who hides behind executioners soon forgets what death is.”

That said … Dean’s anger is misdirected in such a profound way I’m not sure we can put him in the same class as Mal Reynolds or Ned Stark, at least in this scene. He spends the entire episode going out of his way to find things wrong with Jack so that his promise comes across much more as a threat than a comfort to a kid who is terrified of his own abilities.

It also doesn’t help that it’s his response to a suicide attempt – if that’s how we’re supposed to take what Jack did. On the one hand, Jack’s already pulled an angel blade out of his chest, so he knows he’s reasonably immune to most if not all weapons, so he probably knows normal blades aren’t going to kill him. On the other hand, stabbing himself multiple times like that speaks to a desperation and hopelessness that I don’t think you’re going to find in curious experimentation.

I really do like Donatello: I find it amusing that at the end of Season 12, Andrew Dabb opens up this portal to another world, setting the stage to where beloved characters long dead might return, and everyone was like, “Eileen! Charlie! Bobby! Kevin!” and other assorted characters b*cklemming has killed. (I guess they didn’t kill Bobby, but you know what I mean.) And in their first episode, they’re like, “lol, we’re not bringing back Charlie or Eileen, we killed those mutherfuckers, but here, have Donatello.”

That said, Donatello might be like … my second favorite thing b*cklemming’s ever done. I think he’s kind of goofy and Keith Szarabajka does a great job playing him. I did get frustrated with the number of times he referenced being an atheist in his first episode (I’m watching it now and he says it at least four times.) He didn’t do that in this episode, which I was strangely disappointed by, if for no other reason than it made my “Take a shot every time Donatello references being an atheist” post kind of dumb.

Also, Keith Szarabajka did a better job playing Asmodeus than Jeffrey Vincent Parise, as did the actress playing the bartender, though that could just be because neither of them put on the atrocious accent.

Other things: Thing 1: The “make hell great again” joke was only marginally funny the first time and not funny at all the second time. I swear I saw the actor pause and mentally gear himself up to say it. Poor guy.

Thing 2: Donatello: “That’s not Donatello!” Asmodeus-disguised-as-Donatello: (pointing at Donatello) “No, that’s not Donatello!” Me: “That’s not good TV!” B*cklemming: (pointing at Robert Berens’ episodes) “No, that’s not good TV!”

Thing 3: Dean was so fucking hot it was distracting.

Thing 4: Dean got two good fight scenes in a row, between the fight with Miriam last week and the fight with the demon this week. Also, did anyone notice, he had his legs wrapped about the demon’s head and then the demon threw him on the bed? I’m just saying.

Thing 5: All that aside, Dean was a giant super bitch this episode, even to Sam.

Thing 6: “What would Mr. Rogers do?” Guys, I love Donatello even if he is the Jar Jar Binks of this series.

Thing 7: “What are you doing here?” “That’s the question we all must ask, isn’t it?” “What are you doing in Wyoming?”

Thing 8: Jack is so proud of himself for walking through the door. It’s like last week when he was pleased he understood prepositions well enough to explain to Clark that he was on a chair on the floor on the planet Earth.

#supernatural spoilers #13x02 #jack kline-winchester #sam motherfucking winchester #dean winchester #donatello #donatello is the jar jar binks of supernatural but i love him anyway #dean is a giant super bitch #this is not bad for b*cklemming #i'm already gearing myself up for mary dying horribly in their next episode #how I learned to stop worrying and tolerate b*cklemming

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