#which mostly has to do with the fact that it's not a very good spn ep but is a decent pilot for a show if you remove everything spn related

[mybrainproblems]

sorry to everyone who already Experienced the finale in Nov 2020 but it took me a year and a half after i finished spn to get up the motivation to watch it since 15x19 makes a mediocre but serviceable finale and i already knew 15x20 sucked... just not the degree and manner of the suckage of it all.

maybe i'd be less insane about it if i hadn't gotten so far down the dabbnatural rabbit hole but i think it also gave me things to focus on besides dean dying. bc my toxic trait is that i actually enjoy the majority of dabb's writing and in every other episode he's written, the quality has been at worst, competent. it has never been the actual bones -- the narrative structure -- of the story that has issues. his missteps are usually the details that lay on top of the structure and while they aren't always forgivable (cursed s7), they are things that are frustrating bc they are details and not structural. 04x06 is fixable with minor edits! hell, even 07x22 is fixable. (the very premise of 07x08 is horrible but the actual structure of the story still makes sense even if the plot itself is awful down to the studs.)

i am smashing furniture, i am chewing drywall. i am going insane.

[chiisana-sukima]

nine people i want to get to know better

Thank you for the tag, @slutsons-blog! Starting a new post because I'm autistic and therefore mostly only care about the "Current Obsession" question, and want to ramble excessively as usual in that one.

Last song: Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team: Pokemon Square because I'm currently playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon with my daughter. Otherwise I honestly couldn't tell you. Whatever was on in my car.

Fave color: Purple

Currently watching: Star Trek Discovery

Last movie: Knives Out

Sweet/spicy/savory: Sweet, tart, salty

Relationship: married x 27 years

Last thing I googled: the word "dependent", for spelling assistance. which is a good thing because I spelled it "dependant".

Current Obsession: it's been spn since 2016. Truly we are the Hotel California of media franchises. I did recently play Disco Elysium twice in a row in quick succession, and I follow the DE tag. I can't recommend the game highly enough.... but I can feel my Special Interest-level obsession with it fading already. Spn has never faded even a tiny bit and I wonder if it ever will.

@slutsons-blog I feel after reading that you're watching spn for the first time, that I did you a bit of a disservice with my Sam takes to you before in that I mostly talked about Sam's evolution as a character as the show goes on and very little about him from the first five seasons.

Gotta be honest and tell you that although I liked both brothers all along, I was a Dean girl until the end of s6/beginning of s7, when the balance of who gets whumped the most started shifting and my subconscious suddenly decided to switch allegiances. It's not that I liked Dean any less; my id just loves a sopping wet pathetic kitten of a man who has been sexually abused, and Sam got suddenly way more kitteny and pathetic after the Cage. So I don't actually have a ton of takes on "what to love about Sam in the early seasons". I do love early seasons Sam too--she is my beautiful baby princess--but my early seasons takes are a lot more inchoate.

I count myself lucky about my id's sudden defection though, because I think we have limited control of who our blorbos are, and having Dean as a blorbo is a tough row to hoe as the later seasons go along. You know how you noticed that in s6, Dean suddenly gets a lot more assholey without apparent reason? Unfortunately he never gets better again, and in fact keeps getting worse and worse as the years go by, until by the last seasons he is openly far more abusive to their joint child(-in-an-adult body) than John was to him and Sam. It's a realistic picture of what can happen when trauma keeps piling up on people, but it's also honestly pretty distressing, especially if he's your blorbo.

If one is in it for the ship, there's some good destiel content in the later seasons, but if you're in it for Dean, you're left either 1) dealing with the fact he's got extremely significant interpersonal problems that he never gets much of anywhere on solving and that negatively impact his chosen family in profound ways, or 2) pretending he's the same character he was in s1 and Sam is the same Sam from s1, only more boring, and Dean is just trying to put up with him because he was brainwashed by John (or ig 3- something in the middle between those two. But that seldom seems to happen in practice for whatever reason). These two versions of the show are poorly compatible, and that's how the Sam girls and the Dean girls end up in isolated silos. A few people manage to live in both, but not many.

Anyway, I feel like without the context of how Sam and Dean change in the mid to late seasons, the two fics I recc'd as Sam character studies are going to seem insanely Dean-critical, so if you haven't read them yet, you might want to wait until s10. In the meantime, the general recs are fun reads and hopefully do a good job of showcasing both characters earlier on.

Tagging (but I would be a huge hypocrite if I didn't specify there's no pressure to respond, since I almost always fail at responding to tag games myself): @adihildilid @aliusfrater @quietwingsinthesky @sammygender @ardentpoop

@peanutbutterandbananasandwichs @schizosamwincester @normalbrothershow @jellybracelet.

[autisticandroids]

someone sent me an ask about soulless sam and in order to successfully answer it i actually have to give my opinions on soulless jack. basically this post is about what being soulless "means" in different episodes and whether it actually matters that jack is soulless.

i'm only going to talk about s14 because i don't have a lot of respect for s15 and also it doesn't super matter that jack is soulless in s15.

so the episodes in which jack is soulless are peace of mind, don't go in the woods, game night, absence, jack in the box, and moriah.

jack's actions in those episodes are

going to see donatello about soullessness, killing the snake to put it out of its misery

playing with the girls from lebanon, trying to show off to win their approval, eventually causing them to get scared but not listening when they tell him to stop, losing control and accidentally injuring one of them, and then healing her

torturing nick to death to keep him from resurrecting lucifer while mary begs him not to, then accidentally killing mary

running away because he's freaking out, trying to resurrect mary, kidnapping and threatening rowena in the process of trying to resurrect mary

trying to be good by doing what the angels tell him without understanding that what they're telling him to do is bad, failing to show sufficient contrition for killing mary, trying to be good by doing what salmondean tell him without understanding that they mean him harm (partly because he's unable to empathize with them well enough to understand that they're angry), busting out of the box because he realizes they lied to him and mean him harm

telling everyone to stop lying, going to see his grandparents in the hope that someone out there still doesn't see him as a monster, telling cas that he can't love him back [because he's soulless], and trying to allow dean to kill him

that's not like every action he took in those episodes but i think it's all the relevant ones and i'm not rewatching that shit again. well, i probably will. but not right now.

the rest under a cut because holy shit 3k words.

so in peace of mind, it definitely matters that jack is soulless, but what that means is kind of an open question. that's the point of the episode. donatello gives this whole speech about being soulless where soullessness is primarily framed as tragic for the soulless, which makes sense, because donatello became soulless in season eleven. in season eleven, soulless characters play a dual role as both victim and problem, and so get to have way more complexity than soulless sam or soulless jack, both of whom exist narratively only as problems. watch 11x05 "thin lizzie" for my favorite example of eleven's distinct handling of soullessness. len the lizzie borden nerd losing his soul and therefore both losing his capacity for fear and his capacity for joy, which is what allows him to be heroic (because he's not afraid and also has nothing to lose), is like a perfect way to take soullessness and turn it both tragic and positive. actually sometimes when i think about spn soullessness i actually think about this hyperbole and a half comic. mostly because thin lizzie and to a lesser extent peace of mind are both playing in kind of a similar space.

so we have this tragic framing of soullessness as primarily about a kind of emptiness. but then also there's this other thing more relevant to the rest of the arc. which is donatello's framing of soullessness as "without moral guidance." this is obviously kind of silly and very spn, but it's also kind of... inherently giving the lie to the premise, isn't it. donatello asking himself "what would mr. rogers do" is in fact a kind of morality. he is able to successfully simulate moral behavior in his mind, which means... he has a sense of morality. just like anyone else's. but it does set up the way in which jack's soullessness causes problems for him later on (not just a lack of an inherent sense of morality, but also because he (maybe?) lacks an internal moral compass, where he gets his guidance becomes very important).

this is also a thing that comes up in 6x09 when dean offers to be soulless sam's jiminy cricket. more on that coming in another post.

also this introduces the concept of "what would the winchesters do" as jack's guiding light. which like. lol. that COULD be thematic. if you wanted it to be.

and then jack kills the snake which is like. totally a thing that's a result of him having a mistaken belief about what's best because he lacks an internal sense of it. which makes sense as an answer to the questions of the episode and the themes of the arc. so him being soulless matters in this one.

so being soulless matters in peace of mind and what it means here is that jack doesn't have enough moral compass to figure out what the Right Thing To Do Is, despite wanting to, so he needs to find an external moral compass to follow. it also means he feels empty and lacks emotion, which is mostly a problem for him.

then there's don't go in the woods. and this one is supposed to be about how him being soulless is Scary. there are several moments in it where we're meant to be scared on the girls' behalf, because Something Is Off With Jack.

but the thing is... jack behaves normally in dgitw. he tries to fit in with and impress some kids who are narratively framed as his own age-peers, normal kids who he would have grown up playing with if he'd lived a normal life. jack trying to fit in with and impress people is normal, he does it all the time. the fact that he does it via tools of violence (throwing knives) is offputting, but that's a result of him being raised in a bunker full of serial killers, not of him being soulless. that's what he knows. jack also loses control of his powers and injures one of the girls. which is in fact totally par for the course with jack. he doesn't have very good control of his powers, and he's very powerful. see tombstone for details. he then panics and tries to fix it. which he succeeds in doing, although the girls don't forgive him.

the only moment in dgitw where him being soulless actually seems to impact his behavior is that there's like a quick moment, just before jack loses control, where the girls from lebanon become nervous and ask him to stop messing around, and jack doesn't pay attention to them. potentially if he had, maybe he wouldn't have lost control. but even this is overstating things - the boy who is their friend remains impressed with jack and encourages him to continue to mess around. jack not immediately stopping because the girls are scared is not exactly outside the range of normal behavior, though it kind of is for jack because he is normally mr. sweetheart goodboy.

so if being soulless matter at all in dgitw, it means that jack can't quickly read, react to, and acquiesce to to emotions of others. he can't, when things are split second, notice and care about the girls' fear, and then react in the most deferent possible manner.

it's also notable that what scares the girls is jack's otherness, his powers, and not his emotional affect. which kind of matters for how all this is framed, and is again, more continuous than discontinuous with things that happen to and around jack when he is ensouled.

alright. now we've come to the big one. game night. man it doesn't matter that jack is soulless in game night at all.

jack tortures nick to death because torturing enemies to death is normal. he JUST did it to michael and everyone clapped and cheered. sam and dean torture people all the time. they love torturing people. they love killing people. they love combining the two things. the only problem here is that it's jack who is doing it. also maybe that nick is human, which means killing him is more bad for some reason.

additionally, jack has tortured a person before, the gas station kid in let the good times roll. (yes what he did was technically torture). (man not really related but you guys should watch that one jacob geller video). torturing is clearly normal and acceptable to jack. i would say this is because he was raised by serial killers who torture people all the time.

also, people freak out when jack tortures that kid too, because the idea that jack isn't capable of correct moral judgement doesn't actually start with him being soulless. jack is frequently framed as the Creepy Threatening Weirdkid Who Can't Be Trusted To Distinguish Right From Wrong throughout season thirteen, except then it's because he's not human. the idea that a soul prevents him from being like that is kind of silly given how often he's framed like that while ensouled.

killing mary is also easily something that could've happened while jack was ensouled. i direct your attention once again to tombstone. jack simply does not have very good control of his powers. he did what teenagers do: he had a moment of "i wish you were dead" type anger toward a parental figure because he was frustrated, but unfortunately, due to his godlike powers, his wish was granted. this has nothing to do with him being soulless (and in fact is kind of. antithetical to soullessness as a concept. since that should mean he shouldn't be able to get that angry).

(man. doesn't really add a lot to my analysis but the two people jack tortures and kills while not soulless are people of color. like come on. this show is so racist.)

the only moment where it MAYBE matters that jack is soulless is that mary freaks out while he's killing nick and begs him to stop and he doesn't listen, just like in dgitw. also like in dgitw, this isn't necessarily like, crazy behavior. salmondean torture people all the time. it's not insane to think that he's just asking himself "what would the winchesters do."

then in absence, jack is framed as menacing but like..... all he does is panic and try to fix what he did to mary. also it's worth it to talk about how all these episodes but ESPECIALLY absence utilize gender in order to make their case that jack is dangerous. like the fact that it's rowena he goes to and not like, cas, is because the show wants you to see him as threatening, wants you to empathize with A Woman Menaced By A Man (even though rowena is certainly in less danger from jack than, say, sam or dean would be), wants you to see threatening a woman as uniquely morally bad. but what he does in absence is just. run away, panic about the fact that he killed mary, be wracked by guilt, kidnap rowena (which, sure, bad, but the winchesters kidnap people and force them to do things for them all the time. jack has SEEN them do this. they have DONE THIS to rowena. more than once!), and try to fix mary being dead. which like. in tombstone when he killed the security guard, he also panicked, tried to get someone to fix it, then ran away. fully consistent with his ensouled actions. it does not matter at all that jack is soulless in absence. the episode frames him as scary and unsettling but his behavior is not at all different from his usual behavior.

then jack in the box. ohhhhhhh jack in the box. stupid episode. genuinely almost everything about it is bad. the buckleming special. honestly season fourteen would genuinely make more sense if you just took jack in the box out because it comes pretty much out of left field, actively contradicts a bunch of shit and is generally inconsistent with the characterization of every single character except maaaaybe cas, and then doesn't end up mattering very much. i guess i could say that i kind of like the sam stuff, in theory, but even that.... like the execution is not great. man i hate jack in the box. like, bottom ten spn episode, easily.

anyway jack being soulless ABSOLUTELY matters in jack in the box and it like...... matters in a way that impacts all of his characterization. we return to the idea of soullessness that peace of mind proposes - lack of emotion, lack of emotionally-guided moral compass, need for guidance. except that what happens in jack in the box is quite explicitly that jack, because he lacks an intrinsic, emotionally guided moral compass, takes guidance from the wrong source and does bad things. that's explicitly the issue.

and then. and then buckleming argue that jack is insufficiently contrite for killing mary. that he does not understand the harm he's caused. which like, okay, that IS consistent with the characterization of soullessness that they've gone with. but it's not consistent with everything that has happened in this arc. like, absence JUST happened. this is just clearly not... accurate. jack clearly does understand the harm he's caused, he's clearly horrified over killing mary, and in general he's been highly emotional while soulless (desperate for approval in dgitw, angry and stressed in game night, panicked and upset in absence). this characterization of soulless jack would make sense if you skipped straight from peace of mind to jack in the box but i didn't, lol.

jack is also genuinely impaired by this emotional emptiness. he is unable to accurately predict the winchesters' actions because he can't comprehend the depth of their hurt, and therefore he can't predict the depth of their anger. he also can't just tell that they're lying, because he can't directly empathize.

which honestly. is actually pretty interesting and cool. for being soulless to be portrayed as having serious personal drawbacks in this way, rather than just making you an Evil Guy. like soulless sam was a "better hunter" for some reason, even though "difficulty empathizing" would obviously cause you problems in a people-facing activity such as hunting. but jack is actually impaired by it. it's not an impairment in morality. it's an impairment in general, and one of the things it affects it the ability to act morally. which is conceptually one of the better ideas of soullessness that's presented in supernatural. joss whedon (the guy who invented soullessness) (this is why soullessness is so stupid in spn. incompetent cribbing of an already bad concept) is rolling in his cancellation-grave. that's what soullessness means in jitb.

but it's still wildly inconsistent with the rest of the arc. and stupid. and jack is throughout the episode framed soooooooooo scary it's dumb. like there's a different soulless jack arc that could exist that centers on a better version of jack in the box. but in the soulless jack arc we have, jack in the box is an incoherent diversion. a narrative cancer.

alright. okay. moriah. time to talk about moriah.

so the first thing jack does in moriah is run away again, and then he does the no lying thing. which is more about him having bad control over his powers than being soulless.

then the next thing. the next thing is the fake out with his grandparents. we once again get this moment where jack is menacing a female civilian (his grandmother) and we are supposed to be afraid for her. except..... it's a fakeout. maybe jack is harmless after all and we were being unfair, the narrative says.

then we get this:

JACK: And then I tried on my own, but every time I try, it- it never goes right. It never... All I ever wanted was to be good. But now I'm just empty. Even this. I know you're here because you love me, and I want to love you back. It's just, I can't.

so we return to soullessness as emotionlessness as personal tragedy. actually, given that andrew dabb is a consummate trekkie, i would bet you real money that this is an intentional concept-quote of lal's death scene in tng 3x16 "the offspring." jack's soullessness is fully portrayed as a personal tragedy here, not a threatening thing. it matters, but it only matters to him, not how he interfaces with the world. jack wants to be able to feel love, but he can't. he can't feel and this is sad.

his soullessness may impact his decision to let dean kill him, but it may not. jack is routinely suicidal while ensouled, very happy to accept that he deserves to die for various things, starting way back in 13x02. this isn't outside the range of normal for him. but on the other hand, he could be like len in thin lizzie - willing to destroy himself because he has no fear and nothing to lose. it could be the soullessness talking. it's not clear.

so. that's an overview of whether soullessness matters and what it means in every episode of the moriah arc. stay tuned for another post about soullessness coming soon (tonight or tomorrow), this time about sam.

[littlethingwithfeathers]

How to Use A03 if you're used to Algorithm Fed Content: A kind primer.

There's a post making the rounds where someone, I'm going to assume earnestly, asks the question, "How do people figure out what's good to read on AO3?" And predictably, while there have been some people trying to answer that question assuming that it's being asked in good faith, there have been some people ridiculing this person. Basically, spewing out the fandom equivalent of "git gud noob." Like I said... I'm assuming this person was asking out of actual ignorance and curiosity, mostly because I see a lot of people also lamenting the fact that algorithm-fed apps and fandom spaces are creating a generation of fans who don't know how to actively search for and curate the content they consume. So when they get on a place like AO3 or even Tumblr to an extent, they don't know how to find the things they want and how to curate their experience. And so I guess that's why I pulled up short when this person's question has been getting so much snark. Here's a teachable moment. Even if they are being a troll in this case (which I doubt) here's the chance to give the facts on how AO3 works so they can use this amazing archive themselves. And not just them but anyone who happens upon the post. So... I'm not an AO3 whiz by any means. I don't spend a lot of time digging around in the tags and tools and bells and whistles of the search engine. If someone else wants to reblog with some tips there, go for it. It's the best thing about AO3 in my opinion... other than the lack of censorship. But here's my tips on how to find something you'll like. This is pretty much what I do.

-Go to your fandom of choice's tag. Filter for the rating you want (Teen, Explicit, etc), and then just start scrolling. Take a peek at things that sound interesting from the tags or summaries. You might have to scroll for a bit, and you might hit some stuff that's not for you, but you'll find something eventually. Especially if it's a bigger fandom like SPN, MCU, Hannibal, or Critical Role. -If you discover/know that there's something that bothers you (unfinished work, ABO dynamics, whatever) you can filter for those tags! This is how you curate your experience. It's an active process and there are no shadow-bans or anything in place to keep sensitive content corralled into a certain area. There's a rating system, and there's tags, but nothing to actually make those mean anything unless the user blocks them. While it takes more thought than mindless scrolling, you get to play a role in actively searching out new things for yourself that an algorithm might gloss over. -Likewise, if there's something you really like or are in the mood for, search for that tag in particular. Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Coffee Shop AU... whatever your jam is. -Be careful using metrics like views, comments, and kudos as benchmarks. They fluctuate wildly by pairing, and from fandom to fandom, and are heavily influenced by date of publishing. And just because the majority of people like something, doesn't mean it's for you. If something sounds interesting... read a few paragraphs and see what's up! -Check out the Collections page under the "Browse" tabs. Often these are curated lists either from individual fans or from fanfic writing events like Big Bangs, Zines, and gift exchanges. Fanfic events like these often attract pretty experienced writers so not only is the quality likely to be very good, it's also likely to have some pretty prolific authors -When you find an author you like, and have read your fill of their offerings, see what they have bookmarked or what collections their works are in. You might find some similarly interesting stuff. It's also worth seeing if they have a blog or other social media listed on their about page. They might post some links there or be part of communities elsewhere on the internet that can open up new search avenues for you. -Don't be afraid to read old stuff. Fandoms change and evolve. There's a golden age of MCU fanfic in the 2010s that's just unlike anything else. And the Hannibal fandom has been and always will be a trip, but man it's been a wild ride through some interesting places and obsessions. -And lastly... for the love of god, comment on old stuff. It's not creepy or weird. In fact, if you like someone's writing who hasn't written in a bit, leave them a nice comment. There's this magical thing that happens when you do. Sometimes... THEY START WRITING AGAIN! (saying this from experience here.) Remember... the A in AO3 stands for Archive. It's not a social media platform. It's a library. There is -supposed- to be old stuff there. And you are absolutely allowed to read it and enjoy it and tell the author that. In fact... please do. As I said, feel free to add on if you want to give tips of your own. But be kind. I see a lot of talk about how algorithms are changing the face of fandom and how people interact with fan made content. Let's reach out and educate instead of ridicule.

[shallowseeker]

srry for the giant wall of rambles I got too thinky bc I was chopping apples and having a suspiciously nice day

do you think cas actually likes bees or if its a fandom trait based on Crazy!Cas who liked bees because of the hivemind resembling heaven?

also i imagine heaven and angels like parasitic creatures while hell is leeches/fungi/deep sea type scavengers

You're apologizing to ME about giant walls? Now, that is a little funny.

BEES & THE QUEST FOR MEANING I've gone back and forth on the bees, but mostly I think it's harmless, and I've made peace with the fact that I'm just not that into it.

Over time I've landed on putting the bees in a more biblical/theological space and leaving them there. I don't even think Cas liked them so much as he was desperately checking out of life and struggling to find meaning in a universe that felt monotonous and horrific -> the wars and sex and the unhappy dogs that can only think in ovals.

Because of his shame and depression, Cas could find no meaning or joy in the rat-race of life. He wants to be a non-participant because, “I destroyed everything and I will destroy everything again.”

Here, I view Cas as Ecclesiastes. He was despairing over meaninglessness and the useless "striving of wind." I do think it was a motif that was 100% on purpose, too, because war, work, and career dealings are accompanied by fans, windmills, and industrial stirrings a lot in SPN!

It's very cool. It even appears in The Winchesters companion series, when Mary is facing her childhood!

//

Other Cas Things Interest Me More

Anyway, Cas and bees. Cas doesn't ever really return to them again after he moves past his struggle with his season 7 nihilism/meaninglessness. He seems more enamored with trash TV than bees. "I missed television," is the very first thing he says after getting out of Purgatory, lol.

He doesn't seem like much of an environmentalist either and seems perfectly willing to hand-slaughter pigs and eat shitty food. (To me, Lucifer seems like more of the environmentalist or even AU Zachariah from season 13's Good Intentions.) Or even Cain!

I think in later seasons, Cas seems vaguely aware of and attempting to be appreciative of the fleetingness of the time he has with his human family.

We see this theme in Naomi's words sometime in season 14 (I think?):

NAOMI: "Everything ends, Castiel."

We see it again in Cas’s words to Jack in season 14’s Ouroboros:

CAS: "The point is that they were here at all and you got to know them, you. When they're gone, it will hurt, but that hurt will remind you of how much you loved them."

He also, unlike characters like Sam, seems to not get too hung up on agonizing over moral relativism -> judging from his words to Claire in season 10's The Things We Left Behind:

CAS: "Yes, well, um… Before, I was very self-assured. I was convinced I was on this righteous path. Now I realize that there is no righteous path. It’s just people trying to do their best in a world where it’s far too easy to do your worst."

And then, there's also his words to Apocalypse-World Cas, "We're the same," & "Yes, we are."

My point is, Cas seems to have made peace with and understands that morality is relative to where your allegiances lie, and he seems good with preferring his allyship to humans.

He also seems to be more focused on the here and now rather than preserving the future indefinitely, which in my mind, goes with bees-as-work and bees-as-future.

You could argue that Jack changes that for him in 12x19 The Future, but I’m not sure… It still seems pretty family- and legacy-focused.

///

HEAVEN AS HIVEMIND This is another area where I really break from the fandom.

I don't view Heaven as a hivemind so much as I view it as a police state/military power, or else I don't think it would be structured the way it is. It's got this rigid party propganada, "We're heartless. Only humans feel emotions and true joy." I view it more as a surveillance state.

On the whole, I think Angelicity deals with the motif of epic, professional repression. On a lower level of existence, I'm reminded of the studies where men say they don't feel emotions but test as having them in equal or more intense measure when you measure psychological arousal and adrenal stress. I view Angelicity as a narrative exaggeration of traditional, brutal, stoic masculinity— a higher, Heavenly masculinity carried to its extreme.

It's got insanely brutal, inhumane emotional expectations. Grace, as my lovely father pointed out, looks a lot like traditional view on virility; it’s powerful and heals all sorts of emotional and physical ailments, but it’s finite and prone to performance issues.

//

In the show, practically every angel we see onscreen rebels, and angels are a huge motif for ongoing Civil War -> "brother against brother."

Despite what Lucifer and Cas and Naomi say, most angels are shown to have their own ideas, and on the whole, are shown to be reckless, angry, wrathful, impulsive, incredibly petty, and emotionally volatile.

I think what tends to happen is people hear the party line about heartlessness and obedience, and that clouds them from what the series actually shows us again and again: angels rebelling left and right and being brutally beaten down and lobotomized for it. (The lobotomies don’t even work all the way!)

Angels have constant, ongoing Civil War because they disagree with each other, even when there's only a handful of them left (Ex: Dumah Vs. Naomi in season 14).

Cas is not unique. That's the tragedy of authoritarianism. He only THINKS he is.

Cas's tendency to think of himself as unique and to think of his dealings with other angels as being "like teaching poetry to fish," is why he reaches for tyrannical god power in the first place. He thinks that, because they don't agree with him, they somehow don't have free will. Which is… kind of a flawed premise.

It's very complicated...but I think the reality is that until recently, Cas was right there with them, beaten down and hammered into shape. Hell, roll back a few years, and he'd have slaughtered himself alongside the others.

//

I think back to Anna's insistence that angels can't feel and are heartless, which is itself contradictory because Anna wouldn't have fallen in the first place if she had been emotionless to start with.

I prefer that she fell to be "allowed" to experience the emotions she probably already had…and had brutally repressed over eons of military dissociation and totalitarian training.

//

Being a soldier wears on you:

We see that, the longer Dean is a soldier, the more he too begins to lose sight of what is right or wrong. Season 15 Dean is so distraught and lost that he vaguely resembles season 4 soldier!Cas.

CAS: "I don't know what's right or wrong, or if you passed or failed here."

//

I LIKE YOUR COOL IDEA!

i imagine heaven and angels like parasitic creatures while hell is leeches/fungi/deep sea type scavengers

Deep sea creatures and fungi are wicked cool. See, you have ideas! You should just write them. I'd read that. Deep sea creatures would make excellent demons too, what with the whole "absence of light" and being down deep and all.

There's something horrific about being alive on all levels, isn't there? We all have to consume something to keep going. One of my fave religious essays is called The Horror of Eating, and it posits that Gods are so scary to us because we naturally put them above us, with us as the food/sacrifice to them. Brrr. This is why the sacrifice motif appears so often.

I guess...as humans, we empathize and humanize our food sources, which is a big part of our incredible neuroses...

[watchingspnagain]

Rewatching Sex and Violence

Welcome to “Mind the Rocks, Boys: A Supernatural Rewatch Blog” with Lor and Mace!

Up today, s4e14: Sex and Violence.

Men are killing their wives for what seems to be no good reason, and so the boys, of course, investigate. Turns out they’re on the hunt for a siren, which takes on the form its victim most desires. In the midst of the hunt, tensions between the brothers are simmering, mostly because Dean hates that Sam is doing whatever he’s doing with Ruby and lying to him about it. It doesn’t help that the Hot Doc they meet while on the case is totally into Sam and not Dean (this isn’t a situation Dean’s familiar or comfy with), and when Dean finds out Sam has boinked her in her office while he’s supposed to be working, Dean accuses HD of being the siren and goes off to solve the case on his own. Jokes on him, though, because the FBI agent he teams up with IS, in fact, the siren (oh, and should we talk about how it’s presenting as a dude for Dean?). Eventually FBI Siren infects both brothers and it honestly doesn’t take much stick-poking to get them right at each other’s throats. In fact, they come very close to killing each other when Bobby shows up just in time to gank the monster and save the day. #bestfosterdadever. The episode ends with Bobby leaving the boys with a slight stinkeye, and the boys shoving their real feelings under the rug, as per yoosh.

Below is a log of our real-time reactions as we watched. Remember that there may be spoilers for any part of SPN’s 15-season run here. Note also that the nature of our conversation is adult and thus it may contain adult language and themes.

 [and we begin:]

Mace:

Cas you’re such a snitch

Lor:

LOL

Lor:

this is why you don't keep a meat tenderizer around

Mace:

or maybe just not marry a douche

Lor:

aw lookit ’im sleepin

Lor:

well sure

Lor:

Sam's wearing Wes's sweater!

Mace:

i think you mean honshooing

Mace:

YES

Lor:

LOL

Lor:

now, Dean

Lor:

let's not judge people by their names

Mace:

yeah

Mace:

so this guy’s a dick in several directions. got it.

Lor:

right?

Lor:

I mean, I know there's wacky shit happening, but still

Mace:

yep

Mace:

demons didn’t make him walk into that strip club

Lor:

NOPE

Lor:

"far as I know" LOL

Mace:

HA

Lor:

look it him all in his lovely suit, all leaning forward all earnest

Mace:

yeah. she needs to back off though

Lor:

LOL

Lor:

she does

Lor:

I LOVE that everyone is either a Sam girl or a Dean girl [gender neutral]

Mace:

i mean, Sam in a suit will produce those levels

Lor:

YEP

Mace:

DEAN. WINCHESTER.

Lor:

lololol

Lor:

"I read"

Mace:

HA

Lor:

or it could be whoever is using a Disney princess name

Mace:

(Sirens didn’t lure the men in with sex - they sang to them songs that told stories of the men being great heroes and THAT’s what the men couldn’t resist)

Mace:

HA

Lor:

(oooo. that is so much more interesting)

Mace:

(yep. that’s usually the case with modern takes vs original tales)

Lor:

this is why you don't keep fire pokers around

Mace:

snork

Lor:

everyone would be fine if they just ridded themselves of these heavy blunt objects

Lor:

you glare at that phone, Dean, you glare at it

Mace:

sure sure

Mace:

Dean. Quit snooping

Lor:

he's so WORRIED. and so boundary hopping

Mace:

mrrrph

Mace:

dude. it sounds pretty straight forward

Lor:

right?

Lor:

the misdirection in this ep is awesome

Mace:

you mean the doc?

Lor:

yeah

Mace:

Ha! I feel like it’s pretty blunt, really

Lor:

oh well FINE, smarty pants

Lor:

I was totally fooled the first time

Lor:

heeee Bobby

Mace:

I mean, she’s clearly pulling all these boys in

Lor:

yeah

Mace:

Dean’s freckles are out of control

Lor:

you're supposed to have a one-night stand with him, Dean

Lor:

YAAAS

Mace:

well he knows stuff about Baby and loves her, so he’s halfway there

Lor:

YEP

Lor:

i don't get strip clubs? aren't you just getting all worked up with no way to do something about it?

Mace:

perfect for men who like to pretend to have big dicks

Lor:

LOL

Lor:

so what's the appeal? is it all performance? lookit me I'm at the strip club I'm such a man?

Lor:

wouldn't watching porn at home be more fun?

Lor:

confused in introvert ace

Mace:

maybe it’s like sex larping? they get to pretend for a bit that the women are actually into them?

Lor:

aaah yeah maybe

Mace:

my GOD Sammy looks good in this ep

Lor:

he DOES

Lor:

the undone collar and rolled up sleeves

Lor:

nice parallelism bt Sam and the doc hanging out and connecting with their work clothes a little after-hours rumpled and Dean and Nick doing the same thing

Mace:

yeah

Mace:

Sam. Come on. She’s gross.

Lor:

right?

Lor:

she's just annoying

Mace:

SUPER annoying

Mace:

because you just boned her, Sam

Lor:

yeah, that's not a hunch, Sam, that's an erection

Mace:

HAHAHAHA

Mace:

“what’s with you and banging monsters"

Mace:

HAHAHAHAHA

Lor:

LOL

Mace:

okay mister I Poked The Stupidest Angel

Lor:

LOLOLOLOLOL

Mace:

mmmm, toast

Lor:

"crazy on toast"

Lor:

LOLOLOLOL

Lor:

with some butter and cinnamon and sugar

Lor:

aw, Dean. he just wants someone to value him

Mace:

yep

Lor:

I VALUE YOU DEAN

Mace:

it’s stupid though that they’re playing it as if the siren is offering dudebro status. Come on.

Lor:

yeah, Dean doesn't want to be brothers with you, Nick

Lor:

RIGHT?!

Lor:

I mean, sure, part of why this works is bc Dean is feeling alienated from Sam, but he absolutely does not want Nick like a brother

Mace:

“and it wasn’t some bitch in a g-string” well, they at least got it half right

Lor:

YEP

Mace:

EW

Lor:

ick

Mace:

oh really, Dean? you’re not hiding stuff?

Lor:

yeeeeah

Lor:

Sam! Stop underestimating Dean's intelligence

Lor:

neither of these two get pie

Mace:

Ha!

Lor:

dude playing Nick is 100% playing this like lovers not brothers

Mace:

and Bobby’s stronger and smarter than both of them

Lor:

YAAAAAS

Lor:

"you boys are drivin, ain't ya?"

Lor:

I LOVE Dad!Bobby

Mace:

YES

Lor:

Bobby. Knock their heads together

Mace:

Aw, Bobby. Good parenting

Lor:

YES

Lor:

"course, me too"

Lor:

you lying little dopes

Mace:

totally unintentional I’m sure, but I love that the siren caused them to tell each other truths they didn’t want to hear instead of lies they did

Lor:

YAAAAAS

[lakemichigans]

hey i'm back to clear things up, i was just so quick to get my thoughts out i didn't think to properly explain them

i wanted joel to seem more dramatic was what i meant. yell leave and then turn his head to the side bc he can't look at her go, or smtn like that. idk maybe i'm too hung op on this i'll rewatch the ep tmrw to see if i still feel the same

i liked the funnier in her head line too, but the fake bite was soo cute

ok fedra time this is gonna be a long one lol. i totally got what why ellie was saying those things, it's more so about the "rules" of the show. yk how every piece of media has it's own rules about the world and how the ppl in it are allowed to function. ex if someone other than the main cast shows altruistic intentions they're hiding something (spn), everyone lies for their own benefit to some degree (house md), the people can't rule themselves (got) etc. the rules of tlou (so far at least) are that there can't be an uprising without one firm hand who has clear and realistic end goals which happen to coincide with the morals of the writers. no one firm hand and no realistic goals means the fireflies are idealistic and ineffective. the morals don't coincide with the writers and no clear end goal means kc is brutal and senseless. it's not so much about these specific groups, but what they stand for. further examples for the fact that the people can't rule themselves. (ps jackson has council representatives which is called council communism and again proves the point that in the world of tlou there need to be people who make decisions for the majority)

i totally got the type of crush you were explaining for riley, i was just lacking the feeling like the actress was actually about to blush and then try to hide it and then lovingly look back etc. idk this one is really personal i think

sorry this was so long and i also hope this doesn't come off as me arguing i'm really happy just to be sharing my thought with you <3 excited for next week!

i think it's just up to personal interpretation! maybe i'm just not looking into it hard enough, but i felt that since this is a TV show, they can only focus on a few characters at a time. even if they wanted to show us a positive society without any sort of leader, it would be difficult to follow the story if we were bouncing around through a whole bunch of people, each with their own lives and ideas about the world they live in. it's a cool idea that i would happily watch, but it wouldn't fit with the (mostly) linear story they're trying to tell here. like, it was much easier for them to give maria this sorta-leader role because then she can be used for plot purposes and exposition about jackson. and there's always going to be some element of politics involved in apocalypse stories, but tbh covid has jaded me because i saw so much selfishness and greed arise from that, to the point where i'm burnt out and uninterested in the government systems and i'm much more concerned with the individual stories within. i probably should care more considering this show is so popular and definitely has an impact, but.... idk. maybe someday i'll rewatch and skip all the emotional scenes so i can focus on the rest of the show's message!

i think where we differ is that i like a more subtle type of acting. overacting is much more egregious to me than underacting. if joel had been sobbing or screaming his head off i would've been like.... 🤨 also it's worth pointing out that riley is a bit older than ellie and she's getting ready to do this very adult thing (essentially being deployed for war), so she's not in the same headspace as ellie is for most of the night. ellie is excited that her best friend just came back into her life, she's doing all these incredible fun things, and she's got butterflies in her tummy ;-; but riley knows what this night is really about. she's just trying to give ellie a good time, she's not focused on her own feelings yet. if everything had gone as planned, riley would've walked ellie back to the dorm, left boston, and then probably would break down and feel all her feelings when she's alone. i don't think she ever expected ellie to kiss her or for their relationship to go past friendship, so she didn't even bother getting hopeful about it. it's possible that i'm projecting a lot onto riley because this is exactly how i act when i'm interested in someone lol. sometimes i over-correct so hard that it seems like i don't like you at all, let alone feel romantic feelings towards you 😭

but either way i love talking about tlou in any capacity so please always feel free to share your thoughts!!!

[castielcommunism]

ludonarrative dissonance is a term used to describe the tension between different elements of a video game text that conflict with one another (ie, the narrative says your protagonist is a compassionate & caring person, but in combat you brutally murder everyone in your line of fire, etc), but it works for other media too! I’m specifically bringing it up because I think it’s a useful way to look at spn, especially re: destiel.

A thing I’ve thought a lot about is that like, “destiel” as depicted in the show is quite harsh and unforgiving, often from dean’s end of the relationship. The general sentiment in the destiel side of spnblr is that this is unsatisfactory at best and at worst is rejected outright, in favour of a much softer, caring, romantic, and domestic dynamic. Those things aren’t absent from the show by any means, but they are very often overshadowed by the Men Are Always Yelling At Each Other style of dialogue and character interactions. And in my experience, depicting in fic the destiel dynamic that you see in canon is generally not a popular thing to do. You’ll get called deancrit, usually, but mostly people will turn their nose up at it (this isn’t a judgement of that either lol, I’m not a fan of it myself).

But I don’t think people are “making up” the popular fanon dynamic of destiel, or at least not whole-cloth. I think what’s happening is that the literal text (as in the script) of the show is being privileged by the fandom over the delivery of that text. An obvious way this happens is that people pass around script drafts and fawn over cut lines (which are often much softer/more intimate than the lines that make it into the actual show), but this privileging happens in much larger ways as well. Because the script itself, the dialogue the characters say, emphasise over and over again what good friends Dean and Cas are, how much they care for each other, how willing they are to sacrifice their health, lives, ambitions, and other things to keep each other safe. Side characters constantly make comments about this, Dean and Cas both tell each other how much they mean to each other, and these words sometimes even translate into grand acts of sacrifice or heroism (Purgatory, the crypt scene, the widower arc, Cas rebelling, etc), as well as other occasional smaller gestures (the mixtape, dean praying, etc). Those are the things people in the fandom dwell on and emphasise in their reading of spn as a love story between these two characters.

BUT. that dialogue, that element of the text of spn, is in tension with the line delivery. Dean is very often grumpy with Cas for no apparent reason (I don’t have a link on hand, but I know Misha said at a con once that he’s asked directors in the past why Dean is upset with Cas in a given scene, because it doesn’t really make sense for him to be angry at Cas when they’re just talking). I think part of this is purely to do with the fact that spn’s “house style” of line delivery is angrily shouting at each other, since all of tfw seem to generally be pissy miserable bastards who argue and complain. Part of that I’m sure is also down to homophobia and combatting the optics of Dean and Cas being emotionally intimate with one another (a strategy that totally definitely worked), since they are after all super duper best friends forever. But at a certain point, the audience tunes out the angry yelling and the grumpiness because it’s the baseline emotional state of the show, which very quickly becomes background noise. And once you tune it out and focus on the words being said, you discover a dynamic that is hidden by that anger, a dynamic that IS much softer and more caring.

And that’s also not to say that dean and/or cas don’t do horrible things or betray each other. Like I’m not saying the “men being awful to each other” dynamic is limited to line delivery. But spn also has a chronic habit of making characters do heinous shit to each other and then dropping that plot thread entirely in like an episode or two, if that. There’s no emotional stamina or purchase to those things, so it’s hard to take them seriously. Because realistically, if people treated each other the way tfw treats each other in spn, they wouldn’t be on speaking terms and would have gone their separate ways a long time ago. So like, when interpreting canon, it’s hard for me to take the really bad shit they do seriously a lot of the time, because the show itself doesn’t take it seriously, and it doesn’t inform the way the characters behave towards one another (or at least, it does, but only for limited periods of time and doesn’t really change much long term). And like idk you could take a more critical approach to the show and focus on those bad things that happen and interpret the characters through that lens, and I’m not dismissing that because it is part of the text as much as the other happier stuff I’ve mentioned, but “men betraying and lying to each other” is not usually the primary motivation people have for engaging with spn, at least in the destiel side of the fandom, so I’m sympathetic to people downplaying that element of the show, especially because it’s often unpleasant or just straight up boring.

Anyway this is getting a little bit off topic. What I’m trying to say (and hopefully getting my point across) is that I think that spn is in conflict with itself a lot of the time, for a lot of different reasons, and because of that you have people muting those tensions or discarding them outright when adapting the show into fic or fanart. Because it IS an adaptation process, where you have to weigh and measure how each component of the text gets translated into writing or into visual art, and that necessarily requires an interpretive lens. So I don’t blame people for tinting that lens a soft shade of pink, because the show itself seems confused by the point of its own anger and violence. You insist to viewers for 12 years that these guys are the bestest friends ever and then make them fight so it doesn’t read as gay, and what ends up happening is people remove the “WARNING: NOT GAY” violence sign and just grab all the parts where dean and cas actually behave like they love each other.

[synesindri]

what do you think lucifer was like pre fall

oh yes what a treat of a topic. the short answer is "popular & pretty & smart & knows it" but i'll say more lol

for me, one of the biggest things about pre-fall lucifer is that he was The Favorite. the most beautiful, the brightest, the one with the most promise, the best.

what does an excellent angel look like? well, most of what makes them great was probably their relationship to god, and to holiness as an abstract concept. godliness = goodness, for them, especially at the time, so how much they loved, revered, acted in accordance with, and even resembled god would matter a lot. so if lucifer was the best, then he would have been the one who loved god the most, who praised him most, who did things god approved most, and was most similar to him. there are a bunch of qualities that could also be tied up in similarity to god in the "god is gone" era of spn which is what i'm working with, but those are pretty vague and speculative so i'll mostly leave that alone. probably there's at least stuff like "powerful" and "righteous" in there. but!

the god-like quality i'm most interested in is the one i think it is the most solidly informative about lucifer's pre-fall character, which is "omniscient." has lucifer ever been omniscient? no. does he probably understand an incomprehensible-to-us amount? almost certainly yes. fate is fact for spn angels when we first meet them. it also seems to be based on cause-and-effect to at least some degree: the angels know more about what is happening and than humans do, so they know what things have to happen to make the "correct" outcomes become reality. fate seems to work kind of like the plot of a story: if it's a well-written story and you're picking up the clues the author is putting down, you can probably predict how things will turn out (and, if you know the ending already, you can see how each element along the way leads satisfyingly to that end).

god set up the pieces and wrote the story and ostensibly knows how it will turn out, so an entity that is like him should be a very good reader of the story — potentially good enough to be an editor who can help the story take place the way the author intended it to (angels, i think, are both characters in the story and editors, since so much of their job is to make sure fate turns out the way it supposed to with an awareness of where the plot is headed, unlike humans who do not have the same-meta knowledge or responsibility to the story).

so, i think lucifer was very smart in this way: very good at "reading" god's story, very curious about it, invested in and skilled at getting a lot out of it, and clever with understanding how to make things turn out the way they were supposed to. the lucifer of spn s5 demonstrates this with his commitment to rigidly following the steps set out for him to make sure fate plays out how it is supposed to, his ability to either predict or create the future by accurately claiming sam will say yes to him in detroit, his meta-awareness of his role in the story (e.g. "god wanted the devil") — that kind of thing.

the fact that lucifer is literally the light bringer is related to this but also is important because light helps others see. part of this makes him a good beta reader for god, so to speak, but it also potentially relates to his role with other angels as well. archangels are leaders of the angelic ranks, powerful in their own right but also tools to help the rest of the angels stayed on track. god spoke directly only to the four archangels, so all of them had access to more direct knowledge about the story's plot/themes/characters/motifs/etc than the rest of the angels did. it was up to them convey their knowledge faithfully and in ways that would be digestible and actionable to the other angels. so i think lucifer was not only very good at understanding god's plan, but also very good at communicating it. this plays into his insistence that he is honest: if a large part of his goodness was about passing information along so that jobs could get done well, being faithful to the source would be a big deal to him

(importantly "passing information along so the end result is faithful to the intention" is not the same as "being 100% concretely accurate to the original instructions"...lucifer tells the truths that he deems important to make sure the outcome is what it needs to be, but that truth is not always the complete truth. this would have been an asset pre-fall when his ideas were still in accordance with god's, as it might have helped him simplify things for broader understanding and action, but it makes him seem manipulative, conniving, self-serving, and creepy sometimes post-fall).

because of his ability to help other angels, heaven's/the pre-fall era angels' metric of impressiveness being identical to goodness, and the lack of possible goals other than "be as good as possible" for angels at that time, there would not necessarily be much reason for other angels to resent lucifer his status and confidence, so i doubt any of them did. they didn't have much awareness that it was possible for them to think for themselves back then or any reason to doubt, so if the general awareness is that lucifer is the best and helps them be better, then, well, great! good angel to admire, respect, and appreciate! so when i say lucifer was cool or popular or whatever, i don't mean that in a mean girls "she's a status symbol but she's a dick and we're all scared of her" way, i mean that i think pre-fall lucifer was legitimately popular in the sense of being both impressive and well-liked.

benevolence isn't the same as humility though lol and i don't think lucifer was ever humble. given how absolute opinions in heaven often are, there wouldn't have been a lot of room for lucifer to doubt his own excellence, pre-fall — which is not to say anything about lucifer being arrogant, necessarily; according to the standards he was being measured with, he probably was genuinely exceptional, so "confident" is a word i'd prefer over "arrogant," at least at first. but yeah, this is an angel who is really good at delivering a clear, rousing, actionable speech, not necessarily somebody you want helping you with your homework or comforting you when you're upset. charismatic, passionate, personable, and potentially sympathetic, but his place is high up and he acts accordingly. which, again, was fine at the time; he behaved appropriately for what he was and the job he was created to do. but still, if you wanted an archangel who would heal your hurts, you'd want raphael; if you wanted an archangel who would be approachable and friendly, you'd want gabriel — not lucifer.

(all of these characteristics lead into the kind of entity that would fall the way lucifer did, imo. he loved and admired god intensely, so he was distressed at the command to put humanity above him. he was impressive and had kind of an ego about it, so he was suspicious when directed to be subservient to them. he was motivated to understand the reasons behind the directions he was given, so he was curious about humanity and may have wanted to test them. he was committed to sharing information, so the test he came up with involved giving humanity knowledge they weren't supposed to have. he was charismatic and likable, so he was effective at making them give into temptation. and he had never had any reason to doubt his own judgment, his own abilities to understand things, so he felt confident in his opinion that the "humans above all" direction of god's plot was a mistake.)

...so yeah. popular, pretty, and smart, and knew it ':D

[waveridden]

hey. what were lenny and chorby like in the expansion era. ily.

PROLONGED SIGHING. OKAY. i'm going to try to do this as quickly as i can because i do want to write some of this one day

also let me just head this off at the pass, because i get this a lot. we are talking about eleanor "lenny" marijuana, youngest sister to dom and randy, and chorby short, a mostly-human magical girl. if you want to talk about dad lenny and chorby soul, have fun, but that's not what this post is about and you shouldn't do it here. ok so

lenny/chorby meet as teens in the garages shadows and become very very close friends with romantic undertones

before they can act on this chorby is pulled out of the shadows, and then lenny makes some mistakes and then is also pulled out of the shadows

towards the end of the discipline era they reconcile and begin a relationship. they're both early 20s at this point but that blaseball slow-aging has started to hit them

if you don't know what i'm talking about i have a convenient 27k fic that you can read that explains it in a liiiiittle more detail

and then the grand siesta, a very long time to be normal 20-somethings in love! they have a good time i think it's good for them. maybe they get married maybe they don't. either way this is like, the golden days, bc they have enough time to spend with each other AND on their own AND with other friends.

also they're on the same coffee cup team which is cute

at the end of s14 chorby gets precog and freaks the fuck out and will Not tell lenny what she saw

lenny is currently dealing with chorby soul being resurrected, and the fact that this dude knew her brother, AND her girlfriend's being weird? it's neither of their finest moments that's for sure like they're not very good at communicating and being in a relationship. this is the first real rough patch they've had in a while

in mid-early s15 chorby gets redacted. this is bad obviously

i'm going to put the readmore here because in case you can't tell this is about to get long

so suddenly lenny is alone, her girlfriend is in the fucking void, her brother's best friend (ex? maybe??) is fucking sharkbait and she gets attacked too, and she's just having a bad time

and i think it's also around this time lenny has an epiphany of like. despite her best efforts, her whole life really has been blaseball. it was either defined by the shadows, by active play, or by people she knew because of this sport. she does not have friends outside of this. she doesn't have a job. she doesn't even really have a hobby

chorby is unstabilized bc of a plunder gone wrong (very stressful for lenny) and then pops up on the mills shadows, which is hard because lenny is still pitching at some garages games and can't visit her

also like this is getting in a little deep but: this is when we have foreshadow wills and fax machines and the apple. so the discipline era style "you forget them if they're in the shadows" is slowly becoming a nonfactor. but i also think that for lenny it is also deeply traumatizing in some ways for chorby to be in another team's shadows without her, in this place that lenny deeply associates with "somewhere i can't go"

also, chorby is an attractor, and doesn't have a soul. my interp of this is very much the spn soulless sam thing of like it's her but something's Wrong. like it's her but she's emptier, doesn't react as much to things, doesn't want to talk to people. her but she's changed and can't say why.

in particular: lenny tries to visit and chorby just. doesn't care. and i think that's hard! lenny has spent a year and a goddamn half in panic mode and chorby comes back and just. doesn't care

if you saw my solo zine/lyric comic about lenny - this is about where in the timeline i'd place the bits about chorby. lenny is trying so hard to reach out and be there and be present and it's just not clicking. for the first time in literal decades there is a substantial and insurmountable separation

and THEN. the icing on the fucking cake. the same time that chorby comes out of the mills shadows, lenny who has spent the last thirty-something years of her life in seattle............ is traded to hades

ABSOLUTELY DESPICABLE

however!! this is a major turning point! (this is also like, if i were going to write a fic about anything in this post it's this year in hades.)

because like. the tigers are pretty serious and lenny gets to hades and is like can you guys lighten up. can we have some parties. can we have some fun. and in that way she's very good for the tigers

BUT ALSO!! the tigers are able to look at this young woman who has lost a lot, who's in the process of losing a lot (in the background of all of this goodwin is slowly accumulating ego) and they're like. hey. aren't you angry? don't you want to be fucking angry?

this is also when the tigers get fire blood and this all manifests as lenny finally being able to acknowledge that everything that happened to her - and that's still happening to her! - is painful, and it hurts, and she's upset and so fucking angry. and she's trapped in this game that doesn't care about her and that hurts her and she doesn't know how to have a life outside of it but now she's in hades, where the shadows have built a community, where there are charities in the name of landry violence, and she can start thinking

so lenny goes back to seattle, and she's faxed into the shadows pretty shortly thereafter. (i think mike also is? not sure.) and this time she's pretty confident like. this is it. this is where she's going to be.

and i think if it weren't for that year in hades, lenny would move to boston and stay with chorby. lenny would want to take care of her, or at the very least be close. but instead she calls chorby and says. do you want me here. and chorby says no

obviously i have a lenny bias but like chorby has also just spent a year, unstable, pitching for the mills, and then she goes to the flowers, and both of these are very very different environments from the magic! it's hard! it's hard and she's still not entirely with it and she's still not entirely herself and that makes it harder

(at this point i'm going to point the general reader towards blink's fic plant matter (cw for plant body horror) - this is something we've discussed a lot with the tldr being that the garden tries to grow into and out of soulless chorby and about the very beginning of chorby's recovery)

so after lenny very angrily giving chorby a lot of distance, and well after chorby pushing her away out of precognition-induced panic, around the middle of s18 lenny reaches out and is like. i'm in the shadows and i'm going to stay in seattle. and chorby agrees it's for the best and it's weird and hard but it's also good for them both, right now

i've written a little about this on lenny's wiki page (which doesn't 100% align with my thoughts but it's a good vibe check): assuming that blaseball pays a decent salary to the people in the shadows, lenny has a lot of free time, and so the way she spends that is volunteering. as much as she can, as many local seattle organizations as she can, because she wants to know and understand the city outside of the context of blaseball

(also because around now is when goodwin gets for real vaulted and, as you can see in the goodwin page i wrote, i think goodwin also did a lot of community and volunteer stuff, and growing up with her lenny has some familiarity and connections with that world but this is the first time she goes off on her own)

lenny eventually gets her first non-blaseball job working for a nonprofit and has her own life and social network (and still friends in blaseball, i think she and sparks became very very close and it was devastating when they died) and like. that was it! she wasn't gonna pitch again and so she might as well have a real life

meanwhile chorby is similarly trying to establish a life - this is around when soul patches become a thing, so chorby gets some soul back, starts reconnecting with herself and her various teams, is still very much prioritizing herself but is also connecting with other people

so around now. like s21 ish? like, a couple years after chorby has her soul back and lenny has a life. chorby reaches out to lenny and is like. i miss you and i want to figure out something. and lenny says. i'm not gonna move to boston or new york or wherever you are today. and chorby says. good! i think this will be good for us

it's like reconnecting with a childhood friend and also reconnecting with an ex and it's weird, because lenny and chorby haven't... not known each other, i guess, in a very long time. but this is a lenny who has a Business Voice when she answers phone calls and this is a chorby with dirt under her fingernails who speaks softly, and it's like two new people

but they reconnect! they do! it's bumpy and it's difficult but they're able to forge a relationship again

this is where i'm of two minds

the first is. it works! it's good! these are two adults (even with slow blaseball aging, they're now right around 30, they're older and more mature and able to understand each other) and they can enter a romantic relationship again.

the second - and i think this is a little more likely - is that it... sort of works. but it works in a "we'll go on dates when we're in the same city" way. it works in a "i'll spend some of my offseasons with you but not all of them" way. it works in a "nobody blinks when they say they're dating and nobody blinks when they say they're not" way. i think they're mostly capable of being friends and sometimes capable of dating. and, frankly, sometimes neither! it comes and it goes.

i've just hit a character limit for that bullet point section, which i didn't even know was possible, so i have to put a paragraph break here. okay moving on i guess

in s23 (or something) chorby goes on her fun little fifth base adventure and super-roams and that is, to me, her version of lenny's year in hades. it's chorby looking at boston and new york and saying i love these places but i can't stay here and i need something new. and that's breckenridge! a place for her to be whatever the fuck she wants.

to me semicentennial/pre-s24 vibes for lenny chorby are that song that plays on the radio sometimes that's like. i know, you know, we know, we weren't meant for forever and that's fine, but if the world was ending you'd come over, right? that's them. (this is the song i know i could've just said the name but. no)

in s24 despite having successfully evaded active play for a long time, lenny is stolen onto the queens' thieves guild. and like. this is hard. because lenny has a life in seattle. because lenny is unstable. because mike is fucking gone. because chorby is in colorado and lenny is leaving. because she doesn't want to go.

this is another thing where i have a lot of thoughts. pointing at a blink fic again, dying to live hews pretty closely to the "lenny and chorby having a bad time" of it all. and i'd like to say there's a version where they can be close and friendly despite everything, that lenny can learn from the mistakes chorby made when she got precog, i don't know how likely that is.

to me the most likely outcome is lenny calls and says i'm scared and chorby says i'm scared too but they don't fly across the country and run into each other's arms. they have other support systems, and that's good, and it's hard.

lenny dies in the gleek.

but she dies feeling like herself, she dies knowing that chorby loves her, she dies knowing that she did everything she could

as sort of an epilogue: the jazz hands go to the hall when it opens, and chorby and lenny get to see each other again. and it's good, and they both know this is a last time, in some way or another. they can say a real, legitimate goodbye.

chorby invites lenny to come along with the jazz hands and she declines. the garages invite lenny to come along with them too, and she declines. the tigers say we're going to the vault, and this one, lenny accepts.

this is the other fic that i would write (and have sort of written part of): lenny's last few months. lenny meeting sparks in the hall, and lenny saying goodbye to chorby. lenny going to the vault. lenny choosing her own life.

and chorby and the jazz hands don't quite make it to the vault, but they're in good company. chorby in particular has friends on the mills to be with even as they fall short of their goal. chorby is surrounded by people who love her.

to try and distill this down: i've called this a breakup arc or a divorce arc and i don't think that's true. i think they love each other and they will always be in love and i think there are parts of them that can never love each other again, and they have to live knowing that. i think they've said their goodbyes and got their closure and it was horrible and it was worth it. is it a happy ending? no. but at least it's a real ending.

this post is 2400 words. if you made it to the end............... i hope you feel good about having read it. because that's a lot of words

[googledocsdyke]

in all these musings about jender, has anyone discussed the fact that dean did watch a clip of jensen in days of our lives in canon and thus confronted Jender Itself in its raw unadulterated form?

god you're so right. now i'm going insane thinking about jender and the french mistake because like....... the entire episode premise has sam and dean comparing themselves to the haunting traces of their alternate self. like they never actually MEET jared and jensen which i do think is both fascinating and key to what makes the episode really work — they just have to detangle, half-horrified half-in awe, what kind of impossibly easy life these strange half-famous men live. using like, context clues. the episode mostly focuses on sam in ways that are very funny and iconic as this post outlines but you're right there is also some SUPER fascinating stuff going on w/ dean's masculinity

dean is much more visibly disgusted than sam at everything that points to jensen and jared's "softness" — their actor-indulgences and their lack of hunting skills and their effeminised "male model" career and dumb little rich boy details like the fish tank in jensen's trailer. i feel sick. he's going to be sick! you already pay these two jokers enough money as it is! and like, of COURSE it's dean who notices that he's wearing makeup (it's always, always dean that has these too-eager jokes land — or not land? — at his expense; marcusantonius: how do we know dean is performing masculinity? because sam isn't) he traces his hand down his face and says, in horror, oh crap, i'm a painted whore. and it's funny! laugh track! the man written as the furious antithesis of femininity accidentally slips into it again (see dean manifesto) and theres a whole HOST of deeply complex and largely misogynistic associations bundled up there about dean’s relationships (both canonical and fanonical) with sex workers, but it's also like...... you are a man. you are a man. you are a straight man and you PRESS that embodiment of yourself into the world every day. and then suddenly you fall through a window and someone else has put makeup on your face. who the hell put makeup on your face? is it even still your face? do you look better with makeup on your face? it doesn't matter. you're a painted whore. this is not your life. wipe this life off your body, wipe the makeup off your face. get back home to kansas.

and then the days of our lives scene in the trailer! again this is so Much because if they wanted to poke fun at the actors' pre-spn careers... jared padalecki is RIGHT there. he was in gilmore girls (haha funny) playing a character named dean (haha funny) who was the love interest (fellas is it gay to be in a woman-centric romcom about mother-daughter affection). but there's no POINT in emasculating sam, there's no punchline. so instead we get days of our lives-era Jender

and he IMMEDIATELY slams the laptop shut. don’t like this universe, sammy. need to get out of this universe. this is the tipping point for both of them, the moment where it all cements. you were a pretty boy on a genre INEXTRICABLY tied up with an audience of women and by god that’s the final straw

IDK MAN like you're dean winchester and you crash into a strange new universe and a man who is not you is wearing your face. or at least you think he’s wearing your face — you never see him, and maybe it’s you who is wearing his face, industrial-strength foundation at all. and people pay you to look... pretty, soap opera lead pretty, male model sons of bitches pretty, network tv good-looking pretty. you’re not just rewarded for this, you’re swaddled in comfort for this. paid in weekly checks, not crumpled twenties. you feel sick. you’re a painted whore. you know you wouldn’t be happy here (you and sam aren’t even BROTHERS) but there’s some strange haunting young version of you living in another world’s computer who looks just past the camera with soulful romantic lead eyes and maybe you don’t know how to hold all that knowledge in you! maybe you just want to get back to where you can kill something clean and simple and not think about catching the right angle while doing it. you will never meet jensen ackles. if you met jensen ackles you would punch his lights out. probably. maybe not! he’s not a hunter, he just plays one on tv. jensen ackles is a man pretending to be a hunter and you hate him for it, but isn’t that all you are, too, at the end of it?

[kittyphoenix12-xx]

The Slightly Incoherent Review Of UA Season 3

SPOLIERS FOR THE ENTIRE SEASON AHEAD

·       The fucking dance-off. Before we saw it, I had joked to my sister that they should do a dance battle, and I was in tears the entire time. It was such a good song choice, and the vibes were immaculate, so it was a shame that the entire thing was a fever dream.

·       Unstoppable Force (Umbrella Academy) meets Immovable Wall (Sparrow Academy). I think this explains how most of the Sparrows were taken out – the Umbrellas had been humbled by 5 disappearing and Ben dying, they knew that they couldn’t stay, whilst the Sparrows hadn’t had this, they were arrogant – like the Illuminati in Multiverse of Madness.

·       also, doesn’t help that the Umbrellas are basically feral by this point.

·       HOTEL OBSIDIAN was such a vibe, honestly. It was such a cool hotel. Although, I did think that the patrons that we kept getting close-ups on would be more important. Especially the guy who played Death in SpN – thought his role would be bigger

·       STANLEY!!!!!!!! He was so cute, and such a good foil for Diego. I know he wasn’t actually his son, but they were so cute together. I wish they had been more upset when he fucking died tho?? Like, they just stood there and then left??? TF??

·       HARLAN! TBH, I hadn’t really been expecting his character, which was stupid of me, but I liked what they had done with him and how they developed him, both as a super-powered person and as an autistic person. I’m not autistic myself, so I cant say much, but he was very interesting especially with how his power was utilised in comparison to Viktor’s.

·       On that note, Viktor’s coming out was handled so well. I know that some people might’ve been annoyed about how brushed over it was, but I’m of the opinion that if we normalise coming out in anyway, it doesn’t have to be a big deal.

·       LUTHER: Luther’s character has come such a long way since season 1. I liked him well enough in season 2, even though he wasn’t my favourite, but this season he was; funny and caring and had major proper himbo energy. He just loved his wife and his siblings so much and I honestly love that vibe for him

·       Luther/Sloane – I know that this relationship isn’t for everyone, but honestly, Luther needed to move on from Allison and this time they’re not actually siblings. Not even adopted technically, the issue with Allsion and Luther was the fact that they had grown up together as siblings, so Luther/Sloane was much healthier. They were cute as well, because Sloane really cared about Luther and the moon, and I know it was annoying in season 1 (even though he was partially correct about it having to do with the moon???) but the fact that he was alone up there for four years and none of his siblings cared?? Like, Sloane did??? And I think them getting married really quickly was in character for both of them, change my mind.

·       DIEGO: Diego wasn’t my favourite in season 2, I felt like they’d ruined his character from season 1 (maybe, it was the hair?? and JFK??) but he was so much better this season. He was a better sibling, father, boyfriend etc and he was trying so hard, the entire time and I really thought that they did his character justice this season

·       Diego/Lila – I knew they’d bring this back for this season, but I had been expecting some drama with Patch for some reason?? I wasn’t the biggest fan in season 2 because I thought that they’d enabled each other, but their relationship was much better this season. I think Lila makes Diego soft in comparison??? I don’t know how to explain it?? But yeah. If there’s a season 4, hope they make good parents, would probably let their kid drink a glass of wine sometimes or something.

·       Allison: Oh, Allison. Look I get it, you lost your child and then your husband, but honestly, it wasn’t surprising that Claire wasn’t there. But her toxic arc was kinda horrifying to witness?? Like I wanted to slap her at some points. Was she valid in the way she was feeling? Mostly. Did that give her the right to do most of the things she did? No. she sexually assaulted Luther (unacceptable, no matter what) and murdered Harlan (the only thing about this was the fact that I think Harlan let her do it willingly). But Harlan was practically Viktor’s child, he’d been living with him, helping Sissy raise him and it had only been a few days for him, so it was understandable why Viktor was unwilling to murder Harlan, so that sat uncomfortably with me. The fact that Allison didn’t think she’d done anything wrong was even more terrifying??? Like, Harlan’s death hadn’t really united the families, the wedding did, and she was awful to Viktor. TELLING YOUR BROTHER THAT YOU SHOULD’VE LEFT HIM IN THE BASEMENT IS TERRIBLE. It was a good thing that Viktor was emotionally stable this season, honestly.

·       Also, how does the Claire/Ray thing work? Did Alison still sleep with Patrick in this timeline? How is Ray alive? Is it because it was her ‘wish’ and the timeline just rewrote itself around them?

·       KLAUS: Babe, I miss season 1 Klaus, he was such a vibe. But he’s matured somehow, and I like him all the same (although season 2 was iffy, no matter how funny the cult was). I’m glad that they put Klaus and 5 together, because their dynamic is hilarious. And I love the power exploration this season, but I wish they did more with ghosts because that was kind of confusing??? I know they did it so that he could summon Luther, but I felt like their was a better way to utilise that??? Also, does his power work with alcohol now? Or was it just drugs that stopped them??

·       Klaus and Reginald: This was a rollercoaster that broke me in the end. I’m not a fan of characters forgiving abusive parental figures without a really good reason, but it was in character for Klaus (and the rest of the Umbrellas), so I understood. But the fact that Reginald killed him over and over and Klaus accepted it made me sad, even if it was necessary but the ULTIMATE BETRAYAL was the act at the end when he left Klaus to the apocalypse. That made me so upset and I wish Reggie died and I hope Klaus fucking wrecks him next season

·       FIVE: love this little guy. Very feral, although he did lose a few braincells, as in it took him way too long to realise something was wrong but I think we can cut him some slack, he just survived three apocalypses in a month. He deserves a break. He was the least changed character, so I don’t actually have much to say

·       BEN: Benny, Bennerino, oh boy. I love this dickhead so much. He’s basically Diego if Diego didn’t have Grace. Inferiority complex a mile wide, coupled with the fact that some douchebags from another timeline bonded with his father more than he did and kept comparing his to a different Ben, I get why he was mad. I did want him to take a chill-pill tho, lmao

·       VIKTOR: Viktor was so self-assured this season, I love it. He had some of the best character development and it really showed. Did he technically start three apocalypses? Yes. Do we blame him for it? No. Emotional trauma for the win, baby.

·       The Sparrows: Cool concept, subpar execution. I didn’t even no what Marcus’s power was, was it super-strength????? They were so hyped up that they definitely fell flat and only served as plot devices (even Sloane) other than Ben and it makes me sad, because they were so cool. They were what Reginald both wanted and feared. Powerful children? Check. Don’t respect or fear him anymore? Double check. That was a power move though, honestly.

·       THE PLOT: Uh, better than season 2 in my opinion. Dallas was boring for me, but this was an interesting apocalypse – because I’m 98% sure that it could’ve been solved with communication from all parties, but it wouldn’t be the Umbrella Academy otherwise. Oblivion definitely confused me, and I think it came in too fast once we got there??? You get me??? Like they fixed it pretty quickly once it happened and I thought that part was the least interesting plot point. IDK

·       Also Pogo as a tattoo artist was hilarious.

Sorry that this was long, what do you think about any of these opinions??

[unalivejournal]

u mentioned only reading kripke era fic do you have a reclist 👀👀👀and if not could you link some of ur faves cuz the stuff that gets circulated the most right now is all like late late seasons fic and kripke era is my favorite too but im having trouble finding that many fics for it or even seasons 6-10 era which im fine with also. its just that like. the last five seasons were so bad that it makes fic generally worse too because people have to jump off of just Thee stupidest plot choices no matter how good their prose skills might be. but anyway yea if u have recs that would be awesome :)

hi anon i was thinking abt making a reclist and u just gave me the perfect excuse thank u

jess adamilligan’s kripke era fic recs

from making this ive learned that i never bookmark ANYTHING. sorry all of these r like….. 10k and under. i DO read longer fic but i don’t have any kripke era longfics bookmarked & tbh i prefer short oneshots

season one gen

disclaimer because it’s unfortunately needed: NONE of these are w*ncest! they’re all completely tagged as gen and i did not read them with the intent of consuming ship content.

Coaster Park by fogsrollingin, 10.4k, G, gen

Coaster Park had been experiencing an unusually high frequency of technical difficulties. Dean wouldn't have pulled a shift treating nauseated, heat-stroked, or dehydrated park-goers for that if he could've helped it, but when 'technical difficulties' were accompanied by rumors of things moving and stopping on their own in front of the operators' eyes, Dean had to throw down.

No historical tragedies or disasters in the area, ectoplasm, or EMF. Dean's only lead was a battered-looking kid that'd been coming to the park every day since it'd all started.

really interesting au fic! slightly ‘it’s a terrible life’. dean winchester is a hunter/EMT and sam wesson is a college kid destined to die on a roller coaster ride.

two basic motivating forces by sahwen, 7.8k, T, gen

He can’t cry, it’s not allowed; even as a child he was hushed into silence, whether his tears were from a long car ride or a late night or a raging fever. It’s never been an option, it’s never been an available outlet, and it’s not about to start being one just because he’s having an emotional breakdown on the bathroom floor.

Sam isn't only afraid of clowns.

BIG emetophobia tw (both for graphic depictions of nausea/vomiting and for the fact that this fic is about sam suffering from emetophobia) for this one but it’s my favorite sickfic. portrays anxiety over getting sick really well and is a fascinating examination of the different ways that sam’s fear of loss of control can manifest itself. also has lovely brothers content <3

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning (Remix of Just as Easy as 123) by nwspaprtaxis, 4k, T, gen

Dean’s functionally illiterate and Sam’s determined to remedy it...

PLEASE READ THIS ONE god it’s so sweet. dean never learned how to read properly due to his nomadic childhood and sam teaches him how.

dean/cas

Broadway Musical by Griftings, 9k, M, m/m

This is the day that marked the Holy and Blessed Union of Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle.

The merging of prominent bloodlines is always a grand occurrence, but breeding pedigree hunter families like Winchester and Harvelle is something to be rejoiced. It is also something to be meticulously planned, which thankfully the Host is very good at.

Or, the romantic comedy where Dean Winchester and Jo Harvelle are destined to get married, Castiel is given the task of playing matchmaker and fails terribly, the entire Heavenly Host becomes a sitcom audience, God warns against male pregnancy, and Jimmy Novak is incredibly unimpressed with angels in general.

somewhat of a fandom classic and the humor holds up wonderfully. a very silly fic completed with commentary from angel radio throughout the entire thing.

Sappiest Season by dollsome, 2.7k, G, m/m

In which Dean and Cas have to stop an evil Christmas tree (like you do), and it requires a little fake couple action.

hilarious little s5ish fic. one of the first i read when getting back into spn. i don’t want to spoil anything but this is my favorite pick me up and i still giggle randomly whenever i think about it

The (Mostly Accidental) Courtship of Dean Winchester by tuesday

Angelic marriage rites were never intended to go quite like this.

another fandom classic. ik this one is recced a lot but how could i NOT include it. dean and cas get married (mostly by accident) and they’re huge cunts about it

the one thing in the galaxy god didn't have his eyes on by prufrock, 2.4k, T, gen + m/m

“Wait,” Dean says. “Let me get this right. You can fly, right—you can teleport—but you can’t drive a car?”

or, after the events of S5E03 "Free to Be You and Me," Dean teaches Cas to drive. Cas finds it stressful

im always a sucker for a good ftbyam fic. also i can’t drive so. resonation

So Says The Sword by komodobits, 85k, E, m/m

The briefing was simple: ‘Stand guard over the Michael Sword until the battle is ready to commence. Await further instructions.’

Castiel doesn’t mind working security duty; he was briefed shortly after the initial salvation of the Sword from the pit, and again before taking up his position. He knows what to do. However, it’s easy to forget that the green room isn’t real. Time moves differently there, the space ever-changing to make a prison of mountains, cathedrals, salt flats, orchards, and whatever Castiel was led to believe about Heaven’s greatest weapon—Dean Winchester is something entirely unexpected.

NO introduction neede. i think everyone on spntumblr has read this already but still. if you haven’t then i am demanding that you read it NOW. tbh i’m just adding this one so that i have at least one long fic here 😭

the weight by @myaimistrue, 3.5k, T, gen + m/m

“Do you…” Bobby sighs. “Listen, Dean, do you have something you wanna tell me?”

It’s the conversational equivalent of being punched in the stomach.

Or, Dean works through some things with Bobby's help.

WHEN I SAW THE USERNAME I GASPED I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS U. anyway i Love coming out fics idk why i just do. the world is ending and dean comes out to bobby

canticles by 2street2car, 10.3k, T, m/m

“But you know something? If I couldn’t get you laid, at least I gave you a good first date.”

feat: footsies at a Ruby Tuesday, stargazing, the recreation of an iconic "Dirty Dancing" scene (no, not that one—the other one), and practicing for When You're With A Girl.

another ftbyam fic that skepticalfrog (i believe?) recommended a while back. made me feel at least 28 new emotions

Epilogue by JayneL, 28k, E, m/m

Bobby is here, swearing somewhere above and behind him; and Dean is here, talking about 2014 like it's a foreign country; and Sam is here, and is not Lucifer. Which means-- Bobby is here, swearing somewhere above and behind him; and Dean is here, talking about 2014 like it's a foreign country; and Sam is here, and is not Lucifer. Which means--

Cas is no longer when he was. Lucifer sent him back.

Coda to 'The End'.

2014 cas gets sent back to 2009, feelings ensue etc. i don’t remember all the details of this one bc it’s been a while but it’s really good

bonus

currently reading

Fragile As We Lie by perilously, 11k, E, f/f

Dragging Bela Talbot out of perdition isn't so much a decision as it is a frantic choice based on gut instinct. Her soul is bright, if fractured, and Anna yearns to do good again after the perversion of free will that immediately preceded her death.

Bela's no ordinary human, though; she's prickly and damaged and beautiful, and Anna doesn't want to leave her side. So maybe they can figure out how to navigate post-resurrection, post-Apocalypse-that-wasn't Earth together.

[cooloddball]

Someone submitted something in my inbox and they wanted to remain anonymous. Since this is an extremely long essay, I will put it under the cut. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

xxx submitted: hey, i was the one who ask what do you think of Misha and Jensen's current relationship First off all thank you for your answear it means much to me cause im easy to be convice and this person who keep telling me that they are no longer friends can be so convicing, so I'm actully trying to forget what she said 😅 so I'm just writing a few. she said that since they no longer work together, they will forget about each other, and do their common things like the gay jokes, face touches ect. With other people, and neglect each other, don't talk to each other, and then meet new people who will replace the other. And and she talked about the gish thing, she said she sure they didn't talk since the end of the series, because Jensen didn't know where Misha was and Misha didn't know about the Radio Company vol 2 (but i saw people say that, they were just pretending, because Misha liked something about Radio Company Vol 2, before the gish live, so in theory he already knew then or something like that) and She said Misha wrote a poem about Darius not Jensen and now I will write down what she sent me : I saw a post about Jensen's current activities on social media, and I've come to the conclusion the only person he doesn't interact with is mish. Sadly this makes my break up theory even stronger. I feel like this is a goodbye to one of the biggest parts of my life. They've moved on from "uk what I haven't told you today? That i love u"+ from "miss my only jensen" from "i love u misha i mean it from the bottom of my heart" from "jensen has no flaws" from "misha is the funniest thing ever happened to me" from all that love and affection from everything they developed together and now they're apart leaving their lives like nothing happened and call me a dramatic but they both have the same energy now as someone has after a big break up. and Jensen comments on almost every of his friend’s post except Misha’s"+ Jenmish is genuinely the best thing that has ever happened in my entire life. I owe them literally everything. They're the reason i hold on. Unfortunately on this essay i have to start using past tense verbs for them, and i have to continue on that. I don't know for how long y'all been in spn fandom. But even if u joined one year before the show ended you'd know how close and intimate jensen and misha were. Everything about them was unmatched.+ The chemistry and how they just fit eachother. They had always been all over eachother. Like they were holding on eachother for dear life. They completed eachother and were like world's most powerful thing. They were the definition of soulmatism. No matter where, they ALWAYS kept interacting with eachother. Each possible tweet or insta post. On cons that the other wasn't there, the other one would bring up the othere's name for no absolute reason. +The looks and repeated love confessions. How invested they were both into eachother. The family they had built together cuz we know how close dee and mish are (look all the charity work they've been doing together recently). There are youtube videos to proof everything I've said so far.When i say break up, my real intention is that they've grown apart. Everything started in the the third or forth month of pandemic. Before than jensen used to interact +(comment mostly) on almost all of misha's posts. But after a while everything just stopped. At first personally didn't care that much. Bcuz I believed too much in them that I thought not even the gods above could separate them. I told myself maybe they spend long hours chatting or video calling and that's why online public interactions are gone. But as it passed it almost diminished to zero. Except some likes from jackles and eventual ones from misha there weren't anything else.+ We got absolutely no content and the show went off too. We were helpless and were sticking to everything we had Dee had a big social media shot down, so as jensen. Misha was busy with the election. We got some interviews for it with all of them. But we didn't get much.except remember both of them pulling a bff

move. and texted eachother during an online con where everyone else were dead-serious about politics? That flickered something in me. That showed me that+ they can't ever possibly let eachother go. And the times everyone else were talking and these too would just talk random things together (the one jackels had a white hat on with stacy abraham).And then Misha posted that for jensen's bday We really overlooked it. That shit was too intimate. To close. Fav march baby? U just don't go around and called ur bestie baby and when u mean it deeply. Especially not when ur friend is jensen ackles the "I suffered form internalized homophobia my whole life+ but fuck my wife's an angel and i have an angel bf too and another angel which is his wife but I'd rather die than come out cuz my asshole dad pulled a John winchester on me". It doesn't work like that. But uk how mish is. Carefree and open. I believe they got into a fight bcuz of this. He didn't even like the post. AND that was when the tiny bit of interactions we had was gone too. For a while jensen didn't even liked his posts. After a month it started again.What made me finally believe in that they had grown too+ far: I still remember the night misha posted that he and jensen were going to have a con for gish together. I remember how hard I cried. Lile the whole world was given to me. But deep down in my heart I knew that something would definitely happen. It didn't sit right with me and unfortunately my senses never lie to me. Jensen showed up at the wrong time bcuz of misunderstanding the time zones (this was HILARIOUS). That's not even my point.+ I've seen that interview 3 times so far. It always reminds me of when i saw my ex at a party and we were both so thrilled to see eachother and we still loved the other dearly, but we just couldn't work it out. Jensen and Misha's expressions were EXACTLY the same. The genuine smiles and longs pauses were they just stared at eachother. I'm so happy that it was online cuz if they actually gave that looks to eachother standing right next to the other one I would've collapsed. Misha didn't know that jensen's album+ was out. And he got so embarrassed when he found it out. He didn't know that jensen was on set and hadn't been home for 8weeks. Jensen had no idea where misha was. And this means that they hadn't talked in a long long time.When you're that close with someone for more than a decade, i mean THAT close, even if u're separated from eachother you'd at least check on the once a week, or at least once in two weeks. But it was vividly clear that they hadn't. I hate how this world works. They would always be in my heart.+ I would be thankful from them for everything. It hurts, and it won't stop and im so sure I'd be carrying this pain for a long time. They mean too much to a lot of us. Sometimes I think to myself that god i love them so much. Remember in 2019 when we used to get SO many jenmishdee interactions? That was LIT. It was THEE year for us. I hope they're doing good. I really do. I hope we don't get more proofs and I won't have to update this thread. Cuz my heart won't be taking it very+ well.Something i gotta add U may say that Jensen's busy and that's why he doesn't comment. But he comments on a lot of jared and his new costar's posts. So that's no excuse. So yeah that's it. I don't know what am I supposed to think. english isn't my native language, so sorry for the mistakes

Here is my response:

I don't know who this person who has been talking to is but I have to say they seem to be project their previous relationship experience on cockles.

I believe Jensen and Misha are okay and are together. Social media likes and comments don't mean anything. I mean it's not like Jensen or Misha used to comment on each other's posts before. Jensen didn't even wish Dee Happy Mother's Day this year, does that mean they are not together anymore? Nope. He has other best friends he has known for over 20 years like Jason Manns, Steve Carlson etc that he doesn't wish happy birthday, does that mean they are not friends anymore.

Please let's not put value on social media likes. I don't even follow my own family on sm and I don't always like or comment on my bf's or bff's posts on sm. So it doesn't mean anything.

As for the Gish Panel, I have talked about it before, the time Jensen was slotted to attend the panel, he was meant to answer fan questions. I honestly believe they decided to not do it at that time because they knew the questions would be about Destiel and not their new projects. If you watched that panel, Misha knew that Jensen's album was out as I pointed out. He was just trying to promote the album and soldier boy. He knew Jensen had also buffed out. It was all to promote Jensen. Anything else you hear is trolls and antis just being loud. Also don't forget Jensen called him "babe".

If Jensen and Misha weren't okay, he wouldn't have attended or participated all those panels Misha organized especially for Gish. Danneel also posts a lot about RA and likes Misha's posts. I am 100% Misha visited the Ackles when he went to Colorado last month.

Stop listening to trolls and/or antis or just people who are projecting and look at facts.

[fucktheroyals]

You know after reading and reading and reading peoples theories and the meta from before the spn finale aired and the meta writers reactions to the finale I think I have a theory of my own. We don't have any answers tho, so this is pure speculation. If you wanna add something to support or discredit any of this that's cool but there's too many things floating around. Know I dont have proof for this conclusion at all. A lot of what I say is just guesses based on previous facts.

This all came together in my head when I realized how much this finale REEKS of the original producers and who the show was originally for. It REEKS of Robert Singer. Like if the execs started saying they didn't want it, Robert Singer was the one pushing that the story was about the brothers. That kinda thing.

Then, I was thinking of the problems in this episode and it struck me these are all of Supernatural biggest issues and to be honest all of it feels completely deliberate.

Take the sexism for example, Supernatural in it's later seasons largely out grew this, we have Jody, Rowena, Donna, Charlie, Mary, Claire (and even a wayward sisters pilot with MORE women/girls) all making regular appearances. They're mainly good characters and mostly aren't there to hurt our boys. Rowena, of course, is the one outlier being very about herself but it's clear she still cares for them, I mean its part of her development. But they're all real, with character flaws just like everyone else. (And we have Death too and she was POC 😭 THANK GOD)

Now look at the earlier half of Spn, we have Ellen and Jo, who's appearances were far in between. There's Bela in season 3, recurring for quite a bit (5 eps), but she is a character that is only there for herself, definitely not found family (unlike Ellen & Jo), and she's got more episodes in season 3 than Ellen and Jo in season 2 who aren't seen again til season 5. The "fans" send in hate mail after hate mail to try to get these characters off, and eventually they are. Then there's Ruby who's character stayed for a whole two seasons and was a largely recurring character. Why does she get to say so long? She's a plot device. She's supposed to be there to betray Sam. She has to stay (plus Jared obviously likes her). But she's not just a character the writers like writing about. Same with Lilith. Obviously not as recurring but still a plot device. Did they get hate mail tho? You can bet on it. Why? because tHeY'rE gOnNa PuSh ThE bOyS (Dean and Sam) aPaRt ThE sHoW iS aBoUt ThE bOyS oNlY. Without even thinking about the hate mail, just notice how large the difference is from how women are seen in the earlier seasons to the later seasons. Misha got tons of hate mail too for being a character that could split up the boys (probably only being allowed to say because he a man, thanks sexist producers and execs).

Only after Castiel was killed off and then Castiel fans successfully (thank you guys) got him back on the show did the hate mail largely simmer, which means female character's were allowed to stay! Which has lead us to a show with a good amount of female characters. But can you imagine having to kill characters off time and time again because people keep complaining that the show is "only about the boys." Fun times really.

So now we get to this final and we see sexism. But it wasn't just the plain old regular sexism you find in the earlier days of spn. Because now, there ARE women to talk about, talk to. But this episode was DESOLATE women wise, unless they were used for plot (which is also sexist!). Small scenes, they're barely there. Women gets her tongue cut out. Random women from s1 gets killed. Sam doesn't SPEAK of Eileen. Nothing. No mention of any female characters from the boys mouths unless they were from/in this episode itself. That's WIERD. I know we've all said it. But that goes beyond forgetting about characters. I mean its SAM'S GIRLFRIEND for Christ's sake. There is NO REASON they couldn't have said Eileen's name. Notice how Sam's wife is just... faceless. This is literally an age old sexist trope. Like... one of the things about bringing Mary back to life for s12+ is that it takes this trope... of basically a generic mother, and gives her life and feelings, whether you like them or not, they're real feelings. They said Mary isn't just a mom she's a person. Mary's existence in the later half of spn is to fix this kind of female tropes that fall upon her character, to not let these her stay a 2 dimensional character. They said we should know she's more than just the mom who tried to save her kid. Do that is the exact opposite of Sam getting a nameless, faceless wife. The sexism of the old spn wasn't just brought back, it was completely amplified. It wasn't just accidental or some exec "fixing" the story it was DELIBRATE. Whoever wrote that, didn't do ALL OF THAT by accident. Because an exec or a producer who doesn't see the flaws in old supernatural isn't going to write it that deliberately.

Let's bring it back to s10 when Charlie was killed (singer was mainly to blame). Dead in the bathtub, age old classic of burying ur gays. If you were here you know people never let Supernatural live that down. THEY KNOW what bury ur gays means. Hell, Robbie Thompson left because of Charlie's death and you think the writers don't know what it means? I mean both Bobo Berens (especially) and Steve Yockey's careers are centered around LGBT+ storytelling and you think they don't know? They know. They know.

And Dean wasn't just apart of the bury your gays trope, it is so far BEYOND that. Dean being killed on a rusty nail/screw, the tongues ripped out, things that seemed to be meant for other people. Jensen's acting in the last two episodes was giving us "DEAN RECIPROCATES" but no one ever actually saying it. I think it's clear that Dean was killed for being Bi. They didn't address it for a reason, they just silenced him. His narrative was supposed to be about letting him be HIM for the first time, to say what his feelings are instead of having them miscommunicated, and instead of doing that, they just silenced him. And the more we look at this scene the more horrific it gets. The more it's a complete slap in the face and it's supposed to be. Some guy who knows nothing about the LGBT can't write a scene this horrific.

Some guy who knows nothing about Dean couldn't write a scene that deconstructs all of Dean's character development and gives Dean his worst nightmare. I MEAN DEAN WANTED TO LIVE HIS LIFE! THEY DIDNT HIDE THAT JOB APPLICATION (or whatever job related thing that was) IN THERE FOR SHITS AND GIGGLES THEY WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS IS THE ABSOLUTE WORST SITUATION. Dean isn't Barney from HIMYM. If you watched HIMYM then you'll know Barney went from being a stereotypical ladies man and treating women terribly to being in love with a women and treating her right and working hard for it. The last episode of HIMYM (why its so bad) Barney's character development is thrown out and he's back to being a stereotypical ladies man. You don't need to know Barney's character very much to do that.

To kill Dean during a hunt his father never finished, to not have anyone at his funeral, to have Dean die young like his life didn't matter. Those are Dean's worst fears and you'd only truly know that if you watched the gin episode in s3, where they are basically laid out for you. You HAVE to know Dean's character to tear him apart like this.

This episode took all the core elements of the show and did a complete 180° the name of the episode itself is "Carry on" and Dean and Sam very much did not carry on. Sam grieving his entire life so that he good get to heaven and see Dean again. Dean being ready to live his life, despite the enormous pitfalls and learning to love himself only to be killed. "Family don't end with blood." Um.... it did in that episode either literally with Dean's death or you know BECAUSE NONE OF THEIR FOUND FAMILY WAS THERE. Not Jack, Not Cas, Not Eileen, Not Donna, Not Charlie, Not Jody, Not Claire... on and on we go. No one was there, nobody was even mentioned. Dean's funeral, no one even called that we know of. It was just Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean. And Bobby. Don't forget Bobby. But yeah Sam and Dean.

That's what the show is about right, the brothers.

Except it's not anymore. It hasn't been for years.

Cas not being there was deafening but it brought us to a major point. Becky. Becky's telling us about the terrible ending.

And many of us are wondering why would they literally tell us this is the worst ending and then... make it the ending.

Now before we move on, it very apparent many of you think Dabb doesn't ship Deancas. And Dabb doesn't care about the characters.

Say what you will about any plot holes in his writing, the point he is VERY GOOD at writing the characters, and giving us good ones.

Why do we know Dabb ships Deancas? (ill say when its cowrote, other wise its not) cowrote ep 8.02 - purgatory "I prayed to you, Cas, every night" "Cas, Buddy, I need you." "I have a price on my head, and I've been trying to stay one step ahead of them, to – to keep them away from you." 8.08 Hunteri Heroici - Cas helps them hunt! 😊❤ Dean & Cas have a serious convo about why Cas doesn't want to see/go to heaven. 8.22 Dean's mad at Cas. Sam's explanation of why Dean should be easy on Cas: "It's Cas." Dean then points out how he'd knife anybody else if they did what Cas did. 9.10 - Cas comforts Dean when Dean can't take seeing Sam (Gadreel) being tortured anymore. Also tons of Cas. 9.20 (bloodlines) - Canonical couple parallel "I was there, where were you" 9.22 The angels make Cas choose between them and killing Dean and he "gave up an entire army for one guy" 10.09 Claire's reintroduction. Cas heavy ep. DeanCas date. 10.22 THE PRISONER - u know the ep where Dean beats the shit out of Cas but loves him enough to not kill him.

We COULD keep going but I think I've made my point. If Robert Singer is the guy that is like "the show is about Sam and Dean only" Andrew Dabb is the DeanCas shipper. And you could even say a Cas stan.

Notice! How in s13 for SEVEN episodes we have a story that revolves around Dean's grief about losing Cas. Notice! How often the stories in all these seasons have a focus on their relationship. THAT is Andrew Dabb. If it weren't for him doing that, we wouldn't be able to easily say after Dean's lack of a response to Cas' confession, that Dean reciprocates.

To me, when I was (binge) watching s12 for the first time, I thought damn this is really got a lot of DeanCas. So I went to look at who was in charge, who was writing. I saw Andrew Dabb, associated him with Deancas episodes, saw all the new writers, Bobo, and then I saw that Yockey is known for same sex stories and it clicked. Dabb assembled a team to give us Destiel. THAT WAS IN SEASON 12!!!!!!!!

The amount of people saying he's homophobic flabbergast me. Open your eyes! That isn't what's going on.

Imagine making a show and trying to right all the wrongs of Supernatural. Imagine trying to write the greatest love story ever told and you have the entire season planned out for it to end off beautifully, it may possibly be your greatest achievement when it's done and then boom. someone comes in and tells you you aren't allowed to make Dean bi or make destiel endgame, after he was most probably already given the go ahead.

Sure. You could imply he's bi or into cas still in a way. Still make nice-ish ending. just give everyone what the kinda want.

Or you could scrap the last season, nothing close to a canonical bisexual Dean Winchester or Deancas endgame in site. People can be done with it be happy with the show, continue to live their lives in ignorance as to how close they were to Canon destiel.

OR you can lead everyone to the very closest you can get them to what you were aiming for and then show everyone the ugly truth and reality. Light it all on fire. Burn the show to the ground in your wake. Try your darnedest to making these people's (the people saying no) pockets suffer. Show us, the audience, what happened. Show us what this show really is.

I've seen people talk about the ending being changed during covid but I dont think that happened. I think what happened was Dabb already had this season planned out before it even started. Obviously the details were wobbly but it was all lead up to this ending. Destiel endgame, Canon Bisexual Dean, whatever it was. They were ready to write the greatest love story ever told and then someone shut it down.

Imagine the pain that must have caused them to be told no when they already said yes. They must have been so excited to give this to us.

I think someone (some producers) told him what this show is "really" about. The brothers. Can you imagine, after being told no, some kinda bullshit like this is said to you: "Why aren't you bringing it back to the brothers, Andrew? that's what the shows about. What with all this homosexual stuff, you know the audience won't like that. Not really." Imagine the original producers pushing this kind of view on you. "You know when we started it was Sam and Dean. It should end with Sam and Dean." That kinda sounds like someone huh? huh.

So why give us a nice acceptable finale, when you can take every problem Supernatural's had either up front or behind the scenes and create a finale so incredibly bad that people don't want to watch it anymore.

Someone made a good point about how Sam was originally supposed to be the main focus (this isn't to put any hate on Sam or Jared). Dean and Sam are the main characters but Sam was supposed to be the focus and for Dean to have become the focus, must have annoyed the producers because... well here we are. They wouldn't listen to Jensen. The producers liked this ending. Jensen's opinion didn't matter to them.

In some ways, if this is really what happened, it can be seen as childish from Dabb. To hurt all of us like that. Yes, he's hurting the producers, the execs, the cw. But to hurt us? Yeah it stings.

But in other ways, if this is really what happened, this is Dabb showing us the muck and gunk under the shiny surface. The hate for Misha. The hidden hate for Jensen. The underlying sexism. The underlying homophobia. The people REALLY in charge don't care about us, they just want our money. He needed to open our eyes and free us, at least free the people that he was writing for. The people he sees that care about this show.

This is the ending the powers that be wanted and its a big fuck you for a reason. I dont think this is Dabb spitting in our faces for loving this show, I think this is him trying to get revenge for us.

But from here, you can see it how u want it. If this is really what happened, I'm not in charge of your emotions, if you wanna be mad be mad if you wanna be grateful be grateful. And you don't have to believe me either I said this is speculation.

Also, as for all of the rumors like there being shots to the confession scene that we didn't see, which Jensen himself implied, I think that might have been a last ditch effort to canonized DeanCas but obviously it was cut. Like the name change was pretty clear. As for Misha possibly having shot some stuff for 20 I dont know what to tell you. If it's true I dont know where the blame would lie.

I do think however, that if all this was the case, the writers were prepared to become villians here. I mean they told us the writers were villians with Chuck right? So. Who knows what went down so they could give us such a vile ending. It could've been the producers or the writers, who truly knows. I do think tho that people we "trust" did some pretty shitty things to push the narrative in certain directions so now one would see this as the actual ending that was coming.

So again do with my SPECULATION what you will. This was in no way meant to put Dabb on a pedestal or anything. Just meant to give a bit of perspective.

(Also Jensen didn't unfollow Dabb recently he was already unfollowed for years)

[astermacguffin]

Okay. I warn y'all that this is very much a Poast™. This is another one of Those Poasts™. You have been warned.

I very much blame (affectionate) @autisticandroids for this, since this is pretty much me trying to combine as many concepts as possible from the #mpregpocalypse tag.

In this au, Cas is pretty much just collecting babies left and right. The following stuff are all simultaneously true in this spn mpreg rewrite:

- Cas absorbs the deanlisa baby and carries the child himself. This is his first pregnancy. This is also the most "monstrous" of his children because of the godstiel stuff and the leviathans.

- For maximum effect, I don't want Cas to give birth just yet. I want Benny to see Cas with the baby bump and put the dots together in his head. I want Cas to give birth alone, after Dean and Benny already went through the rift. I want Naomi to take Cas out of purgatory and leave his child alone there. I want Cas to grieve for the loss of his child when he remembers. (We'll go back to this in the future.)

- Dean fucks Casifer at one point and impregnates Cas' body. (I mean, with Casifer peeling off his layers and thotting up the place while in the bunker? Not surprising tbh.) NOTE. I wanna be clear with something: this baby is Dean and Lucifer's nephil. I mean, biologically it's a Destiel baby, but with Cas' grace growing weaker and him being possessed by Lucifer, in terms of grace this is pretty much Lucifer's nephil. (But also not??? Because what allowed the conception to happen in the first place is Cas wanting it SO BAD.)

- No one else notices the conception of this baby because Cas hides it within himself (the same way he did with the deanlisa baby) and pauses the pregnancy at will.

- When Cas meets Kelly, they are very much BOTH pregnant with Lucifer's kid. Remember that screenshot where they both look pregnant and bonding about their babies? Yeah, this is inspired by that. When Cas touches Kelly's baby bump and they like soulbond or whatever, Kelly looks at him and goes "oh you're pregnant too?"

- Cas tells him that it's Dean's child, but leaves out the Lucifer part. They already have one Lucifer nephil in danger, he doesn't need anyone else knowing this secret (especially since he hid the nature of this child so well for so long). Kelly thinks he's hiding it because of the Dean part.

- They both know Kelly's not gonna survive giving birth, so they already have a plan: Cas will transfer the pregnancy to himself when it's almost time for Jack to come out (the same way he did with the deanlisa baby). Cas is confident that he'll survive what Kelly cannot. (His hubris, of course, always tend to bite him back.) Dean, Mary, and Sam arrive just in time to see Cas pregnant and about to give birth. Kelly catches them up on the plot.

- Cas dies of childbirth due to an unexpected complication: the pregnancy transfer triggers the birth of the other child inside him, which makes him give birth to TWO children. The strength of the explosion unfortunately kills both him and Kelly, rendering Cas' sacrifice as pointless. (As much as I wanna keep Kelly alive, the point of this au is to inflict as much damage as possible)

- Lucifer and Mary still get stuck in Apocalypse world, and now Dean and Sam have to care for TWO children, one of which is Jack (who still grows quickly) and...another baby? They have no idea who the fuck this baby is until they find two videos: one made by Kelly and one by Cas (a backup plan they made just in case one or both of them don't survive).

- In the video, Cas reveals that the child is his and Dean's nephil (again, removing the Lucifer part). Dean just takes it in stride (since they had enough sex in the later seasons for it to be a genuine possibility) and takes Cas's word.

- In any other scenario, Sam would definitely be teasing Dean for impregnating Cas. But since Cas is dead and they're still grieving, he shelves this conversation for a future time. (With so much plot happening, Sam never finds the right chance and eventually just forgets it. He's just happy that he was right all along.)

- They agree to never let anyone else learn about the baby's nature, which the baby seems to understand as well, choosing to not manifest any angelic abilities. In fact, the baby internalized Cas' instructions to keep all their secrets under wraps that the kid goes selectively mute throughout the series. (I wanna see Eileen teaching ASL to the kid.)

- The two babies scenario works great for two reasons: it satisfies my "give Dean a baby" instinct (that pretty much drives my baby jack truthing) while still keeping Jack the way that he is in canon.

- Dean lets the baby rest on Cas' chest for a short while before wrapping Cas up with the curtains. Both Dean and the baby cry over the body.

- I want to give Jack as many Problems Disorders in this au. I want him to be jealous of the way Dean treats his twin (because they're pretty much twins, right? They have the same grace-father, they got birthed by the same body, so yeah).

- Dean treats the baby with as much care and love while still treating Jack like shit. Sam once calls him out on it and says "Dean, they're both Cas' children." Dean throws out an "I can hardly look at the freak" rant. Jack wakes up Cas from the Empty, yada yada.

More fucked up shit below the cut:

- I wanna keep this as close to canon as I can, so Dean would still exhibit suicidality before Tombstone. You would think that the baby would at least hinder this instinct, but he genuinely believes that he's poison and that everyone he touches dies. (And besides, Sam is good with both Jack and the baby so they won't need me anymore, right?)

- Cas comes back, and things mostly stay the same as in canon (except there's now a baby there, who honestly won't influence much of the plot until later). Dean never really apologized that much to Jack in canon (and I still hate it) but in this au, it would work perfectly. I want Jack to believe that Dean still sees him as a freak, even if he's a bit nicer now that Cas is back. (I can and will put my entire pussy into the Dean-as-John, Jack-as-Sam parallels.)

- When Jack kills Mary, Cas hides it from Dean and Sam. We're going full Torturewife on this one, folks.

- Jack's truth spell forces Cas to confess that (1) Cas hid the fact about Jack's soullessness; (2) Cas lied about Jack killing Mary, and; (3) the Destiel baby is technically a Dean/Lucifer nephil. Chaos fucking ensues.

- Dean has to confront the fact that both of the kids (HIS kids) are Lucifer's spawn.

- Chuck doesn't really care about the baby since it never manifested any powers (yet), unlike Jack (who is a genuine threat to him).

- Moriah happens, Jack dies. (And it's even more fucked up now because despite being soulless, Jack remembers all the insecurities he got from Dean. The "It's okay, I understand" line Jack says to Dean while having a gun pointed to him is sooooooo.) Rupture happens, their divorce is finalized and Cas takes custody of the baby.

- Cas having some father-child bonding with the baby as a breather between all this fucked up stuff.

- The Trap happens, they make up, and oh? Who's this person who helped Cas escape and get the flower? It's the deanlisa baby, but now grown! Together with Emma! She was thankfully found by her big sister, Emma, when she was a baby in purgatory. She had to grow up fast and now they survive together.

- After eating Eve in order to save Cas, the deanlisa child is now technically the new Mother of monsters. Dean explains the Chuck problem, so the two choose to come with them to help.

- Cas never really explained the deanlisa baby, huh? When they get back with their now grown child (and Emma, who doesn't really hold a grudge over the entire Sam killing her thing) and Cas explains, Dean is baffled but takes it in stride. I mean, they just made up! He doesn't wanna fight with him anymore and he wants the family together again!

- They make the two stay with the baby so they'll be safe in the bunker while they try to trap Chuck with the Mark of Cain spell. It fails, of course. (But hey, at least there was sibling bonding time in the bunker.)

- Billie brings back Jack and they formulate a plan (Billie doesn't go evil in this one btw.) They strengthen Jack, Jack knows that he'll be a bomb and is totally fine with it. "Maybe if I do this one good thing, Dean won't see me as a freak anymore." Remember, Jack internalized a lot of the shit Dean said.

- Cas attempts to call out the self-sacrificial bullshit and that Dean actually loves him, but Jack insists. "You would do the same! In fact, you have done the same! (In reference to the Empty deal, which still happens here btw.) I'm just learning from all of you." If there's one thing I'm obsessed about in fics, it's when Jack calls them out for learning martyrdom from team free will.

- Dean finds out about the plan and tries to talk Jack out of it. They have a heart-to-heart, Dean finally fucking apologizes for all the complexes that he's given Jack, and Jack (for the first time) finally believes that Dean doesn't see him as a monster anymore. Jack stops the process so he doesn't become a bomb (but at least he's stronger than he was before).

- They call Billie to come up with an alternative plan. She considers the options, and says an alternative plan would be harder and would require more players in the field. "As long as we don't have to sacrifice any of our loved ones anymore, we're good," Dean says. "I don't think that's an easy request, but we'll try," Billie says, giving a pointed look at Cas. (Hmmmm, wonder how this would come to play later?)

- Billie points out that the destiel baby is in fact not powerless, but is instead choosing to supress their own power. If the child can be convinced to unlock their own capabilities, then perhaps they might stand a better chance at winning.

- They spread out to gather more allies: Sam goes to Rowena, Dean goes to Michael, Billie goes to Gabriel (yes, he's alive here), and the kids stay in the bunker with Cas to try and explore each other's abilities. (Since I hated the Michael-Lucifer nonsense of 15x19, none of that happens here. Lucifer doesn't go back and Michael doesn't betray them.)

- Jack finds out that he can push out all the energy he gathered for the bomb into a one-time-use blast. They find out that the baby can apparently enhance the power of whoever they're holding. And the new Eve apparently has traces of Godstiel/Leviathan still in her after being in the womb with them. (She also spends the time catching up with Cas because they've not seen each other for years.) Emma is just vibing there, adoring her powerful younger siblings and interrogating her father's...husband? Boyfriend? Ex? (She's still confused about their status.)

- This goes just like in S11, and they go all out and attack Chuck together until he's weak enough for Death's scythe. There's one shot where the kids are just holding hands to power each other for Jack to deliver a fatal blow. Billie is just around the corner, ready for the final blow, when Cas turns to Dean.

- "Dean, I need to say something." Cue the 15x18 confession scene, except this time Dean knows about the deal now. So the moment Dean realizes what Cas is doing, he tries to stop him.

- "Stop, please stop. Don't say it, you don't have to say it." Because of course, happiness is in just being, it's in just saying it. And Dean knows what true happiness would do.

- But unfortunately, Cas has to do it. (Billie talked to him about it, and her scythe won't exactly do a clean job with something as powerful as a Chuck-Amara hybrid. I don't know when or why they fused together since the bomb plan was cancelled, but it happened here okay? Yeah. So they need something that is guaranteed to be older and greater than God or the Darkness—the Empty. Billie can only go there, but she can't summon it to be on Earth. Enter Cas' deal.)

- Cas says "I love you," Dean reciprocates, they share a final kiss, and then Billie finally reaps God. The Empty arrives to take Chuck, and Cas shares one final moment with his kids before accepting his fate.

- Billie goes to the Empty to make sure the job was done, and she finally gives the Shadow the sleep that she promised. She uses her scythe on the Shadow, because death is the final slumber. (Of course, you can't exactly kill nothingness; she only destroyed an embodiment/personification of the Empty.)

- Post-fight. They're happy because Chuck is finally defeated but also...Cas. Before they even have the chance to process what the fuck just happened, Billie is back and she has Cas with her. "I just put the Shadow into sleep, so it's not like anyone would notice," she says. The problem is that Cas is still very much asleep. (He still has some grace here btw. Maybe he's not at full angel anymore, but he's not fully human either. There wasn't a need to cut out his grace without warning.)

- Dean and the kids crowd Cas' body. The baby's touch on Cas's shoulder (which burns a mark that parallels Dean's) is what wakes him up. Reunion kiss!

- Happy ending! Michael (with Adam) goes back to heaven to fix things, and they are very much implied to be a couple. Midam rights babyyyyyy! Gabriel goes back to roaming the world and occasionally visits the kids.

- Sam and Eileen organizes a hunter's network and organizes a bunch of safety protocols and rehabilitation projects with the help of the new Eve (which most monsters obey, key word most). Oh, and Saileen definitely swings regularly with Rowena (and occasionally with Gabriel when he's around).

- Emma decides that she likes hanging out with the Wayward Sisters better (and you know what? Good for her). The new Eve decides to hang out there often as well (whenever she isn't busy with monster diplomacy or something).

- When Jack finally feels safe and peaceful enough, he reverts back to his child form. The baby, who has been selectively mute this entire time, holds their brother's face in recognition and utters their first word, which is "JACK!" Dean and Cas cry in joy over this entire exchange. (That's his twin! He missed his twin!)

- They move out of the bunker to get their own house by a lake or something. Whenever the topic of pregnancy comes up again ("Dean, when do you want another baby again?"), they can now playfully joke about it and Dean says something like "Don't steal someone else's baby again, okay? The next baby to be inside you needs to be mine." They're both stupidly horny about the subject, I hate them so much.

- Whenever there's an important event, they all celebrate it in the bunker for the extra space (because their family is, indeed, very large). END.

There's something poetic to me about the Empty being the one that beats Chuck in this mpreg rewrite because technically, the Empty is the Original Womb that gave birth to God. It it the nothingness of potential, the dark water of pregnant beginnings.

All this talk about the Empty and stuff also made me stop and think about the metaphysics of spn. The fact that the Darkness and the Empty are two distinct entities says something interesting about the metaphysical reality of spn. It doesn't treat darkness as a mere absence of light, a mere nothingness, but rather a thing/substance of its own. It's a very Manichean kind of metaphysics as opposed to a Platonic/Neoplatonic one. (Oh, St. Augustine would probably have a blast trying to unravel whatever the fuck is happening with spn.)

The fact that it's also Cas' free will that brought upon God's demise? Delicious.

(If you're still reading, congratulations for finishing my very long spn mpreg rewrite. Why did you do this to yourself tho.)

(also apologies if I didn't give a name to Jack's siblings. I haven't thought of a good name for them just yet)