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i know this has been said before but literally this show is insane. cas pulling the brothers out of hell. he left an actual brand (read: claim) on dean's shoulder and like. misplaced sam's entire soul. one of these things is not like the other

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blowing cas in s6 wouldn’t have fixed anything, but i think dean should have tried anyway

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This might be an unpopular opinion among Mary enjoyers idk, but:

To me, it's always infinitely tragic that Dean Winchester, the most parentified character in spn, literally gets his mother back alive and well, and she still can't be a parent to him. She can't relieve him of his burdens even marginally. She can't see him and all his pain. She can't help him. She can't forgive him or herself. She can't help him forgive himself. She can't face or understand the horror of who his father was to him (and sam, ofc). She can't let go of her past (to her, it just happened! And she was running from it even when she was alive the first time). She can't help him grieve his lost childhood either. He was already parentified even when she was alive the first time. She couldn't help him then and she can't now. In fact, she can only add to his burdens. He ends up taking care of her much like everyone else he has ever loved while not receiving anything near the same level of grace from her.

To someone who's been forced into parent roles since they were at least four years old, nothing has healing potential quite like getting your mother and your warmest parent figure (to Dean) back from the dead. But it doesn't happen. At least not in full. They just learn to accept the way things are. Their current, less than fulfilling roles, as is. Which isn't bad, but to me, it's not a good arc. The arc is still supposed yo be evolving rather than plateauing or ending abruptly.

Idk, I've seen people say things like, Dean and Mary are so similar and that's why they have issues. That Dean resents the fact the he was forced to do what Mary was also forced into being. And that's utter bullshit. Mary chose her life with John and her kids. She did that at like 25 (?approx). She chose to be a mother to two kids. She knew she was running from deep, horrible trauma and loneliness and fear. And she chose to have kids anyway. It was something she actively wanted for herself. Dean was never given any such choice. He was four when he lost everything that was warm and reliable in his life. This kinda take is insulting to both Mary's autonomy and Dean's trauma.

And noone else will understand his bond with his mother. Just like with John. Dean loves Mary so fucking much but ultimately he has to accept certain hurtful realities about their relationship (not because he had an idealised version of her in his head, but because the circumstances of bringing her back make it so difficult and tragic). He has to accept that she can leave him but he can never leave her (we as the audience know way more about Mary's internal reasoning, but I wonder how much of it was truly communicated to the boys). He has to accept her choosing the Mission ™ over her kids. Her motivations and methods and impact are vastly different from John, but the experience of that kind of abandonment isn't that different.

I think it's fair and okay that he resented her (he had actually gone back in time and tried to prevent her tragedies twice before!). Fair that he was angry. Fair that he loves her so much. But unfair that he has to forgive her to move on, and so he will. Once again, he will go through his feelings by himself. He'll forgive her without her ever acknowledging his pain or being able to. He'll move past his hurts because he doesn't want to lose her again.

And Mary herself is also robbed of a more complete journey where she meets her sons where they are while also doing what she likes and wants. She doesn't get the chance (or at least in my pov).

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when i think about this scene from 15.15 it makes me want to chew glass and tear up the walls in rage.

AMARA: I wanted two things for you, Dean. I wanted you to see that your mother was just a person, that the myth you'd held onto for so long of a better life, a life where she lived, was just that, a myth. I wanted you to see that the real, complicated Mary was better than your childhood dream because she was real. That now is always better than then. That you could finally start to accept your life.

for the record i want to say i am a known amara-hater. don't like the non-con shit. don't like that she's doing what so many beings in spn do and narrativizing dean's life back at him while judging him because she drew the wrong conclusions. but i think fandom does have a tendency to take those claims at face value because that is easier than combing back through to check if it's correct or not. (see for example, rachel saying dean only calls cas when he needs him in 6.18. narrativizing, incorrectly. but i digress)

so let's talk about mary. because, through the seething rage, i think two main things about this claim. 1. dean does not have this mythos around mary and 2. mary has arguably more of that mythos around dean.

first off, we'll tackle the claim that it's a myth that if mary hadn't died, dean wouldn't have a better life. because that is absolute, utter, dogshit. OF COURSE HE'D HAVE A BETTER LIFE. while i will always maintain that clearly mary and john were far from stable before she died, her death was what speared john forward into hunting, into turning his kids into soldiers, into neglect and parentifying, and every other god forsaken thing he did. "a better life, a life where she lived, was just that, a myth" - girl, i DON'T CARE IF YOU'RE DIVINE, SHUT THE FUCK UP.

like please don't come here acting like dean grieving the future he could have had that didn't include him taking care of his younger brother alone in motel rooms for days while maybe actually being left as bait for the Kid-Eater is a character flaw on his part that he needs to learn better from.

next, amara claims dean needs to see the "real, complicated Mary."

but hasn't he? dean goes back in time and meets his mom in 4.03 and 5.13. and both times he treats her both as a competent hunter and a colleague. like to be clear, before that, i dont think he was wrong to be relying on a four-year-old's memory of what his mom was like because that's literally all he had access to. but dean actually did meet and interact with the whole, complex woman who was his mother long before amara decided to teach him a lesson with her as the homework. in both 4.03 and 5.13, dean tries to give mary advice to save her life but he doesn't belittle her experience hunting or her desire to leave and life a normal life. i don't know what more you want from him in terms of interacting with his mom as a whole, real, complex person?

this also applies wholly and completely to his interactions with her when she returns in s12. he apologizes for being nervous for her safety (AFTER SHE WAS JUST RESSURECTED) at first. mary says she wants to hunt, dean gets on board. mary says she needs space, dean asks clarifying questions to best support her request. he gets mad at her not for being who she is or needing what she needs but for lying to him for months and working with people who tortured him and sam.

in fact, s12 is what i would point to to indicate how well dean articulates and navigates the nuance of being hurt by someone's actions while still understanding and empathizing with why they did it and forgiving them. for example, he says this in 12.04

DEAN: This whole mom thing, it's... I mean, we get her back, and then she leaves. I hate it, but I get it. I do. I guess I'm just...still working through some of that crap. I'll try to be less of a dick about it.

[you're not a dick, dean, ilu]

in fact, dean's much maligned "how 'bout for once, you just try to be a mom?" isn't even about dean wanting anything particularly maternal from mary. it's about him not wanting her to ditch them to hunt alone and/or with the aforementioned torturers.

so circling back to amara's speech about expectations and myths. cause while her words do not apply to dean. amara's speech does remind me of something that happens upon mary's return in s12. these lines from 12.03:

DEAN: Mom, it's okay. All right? You're home now. MARY: No. I'm not. I miss John. I miss my boys. SAM: We're right here, mom. MARY: I know. In my head. But I'm still mourning them as I knew them. My baby Sam. My little boy Dean. Just feels like yesterday, we were together in heaven, and now...I'm her, and John is gone, and they're gone. And every moment I spend with you reminds me every moment I lost with them.

of course she has every right to grieve the time she lost with her kids. but someone in this room is having trouble really looking at the people in front of them because of their idealized memory of who they were compared to are and It Is Not Dean.

and i just think about dean's speech in 12.22. cause it wasn't dean that needed to see the real mary. it was mary, tucked away in her dream world where sam is a baby and dean is a little elementary schooler who likes pie and has never held a gun, who needed to see the real dean.

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Please, watch Kpop Demon Hunters

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Look I'm sorry to anyone who thought the Saja Boys were a real band, but it was obviously fake from the beginning.

Huntr/x has been doing this gimmick for years where they'll put on a performance and some actors dressed up like demons will "interrupt" it or get into some choreo fights on stage and stuff. If you're a fan you know, the demons usually symbolize things like industry corruption, Mira's struggle with her family, Rumi being in the closet, etc, and there's lots of hints and secret messages to the fans in what they're wearing or how they show up. Check out huntresx5evah on blsky they've got an extensive examination of the "demons" over the years and what the messages to the fans are.

In the concert before Golden was released, the demons were dressed like flight attendants. That was the indication that something new was about to take off. @/queenhuntrixdontmiss and I speculated that it was going to be a new single and low and behold, it was.

But then the live performance got cancelled. It's an open secret that Rumi was having vocal issues, so that was probably not planned. They needed to buy time for her to recover, so, enter the Saja Boys -- a fake band of guys really clearly pretending to be demons, they release ONE single, do a bunch of b-tier variety shows for a week, nearly all of their public appearances have Huntr/x right there, keeping the hype and energy up until Rumi can get her throat polyps removed and furthering the routine where Huntr/x are supposed to be secret demon hunters and the Saja Boys are supposed to be secret demons.

Then the whole thing culminates in the Golden live performance at the idol awards, the big act with Huntr/x fake "break up" and the subsequent theatrics to make it up to fans for failing the first Golden performance. Huntr/x takes their obligation to fans very seriously, I've no doubt that they all felt terrible about having to cancel, so a free show was the obvious recourse to try and make it up to people. And they pulled out all the stops!

But the Saja Boys were never real. I mean they got real guys to pretend to be a boy band and do the dancing and lip syncing obviously, but come on, most of them didn't even have names.

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anyways i just love the way kpop demon hunters stayed true to its roots in korean/asian culture, especially around the core theme of community vs individualism

the fact that it's not a single chosen one but a group of three

the fact that the honmoon is not powered by the hunters themselves but by the energy and love of the fans

the fact that gwi-ma turns people into demons by promising that he is the only one who can help them when he is in fact reliant on his army of demons to collect souls for him

the fact that "your idol" is about surrendering yourself to a single higher power while "golden" is about soaring to new heights together

the fact that gwi-ma preys on people's individual insecurities and shame to get inside their heads while rumi, mira, and zoey set them free in the end by encouraging them to embrace their differences and reminding them that they're not alone

the fact that you can see the audience cheering individually and even pushing into each other to get closer to the stage during "your idol"

while they're linking arms and cheering together and hugging during "what it feels like"

i have not seen the live action lilo and stitch but it feels like that movie sits on the opposite end of the spectrum from kpop demon hunters as a case study for how to tell a story in way that is culturally authentic and still resonates with a broader audience

and i think given that the core theme of the movie is all about community over individualism, the ending, particularly as it relates to rumi and jinu's budding romance, is really the perfect culmination of that broader theme

rumi and jinu's connection has all the hallmarks of that all-encompassing, all-consuming, borderline co-dependent first love where you keep your relationship a secret and sneak out of the house to meet up and feel like the other person is the ONLY person who really gets you

i'm the only one who can understand you, i'm the only one who will love you is the kind of thing that sounds romantic when you're 16 until you get older and realize how toxic it actually is and i love that the movie counters that in "what it sounds like" with rumi realizing that she had that love and support all along from her girls, and later, from the fans who continue to cheer them on through their comeback

it's about connection and sisterhood and love and sharing your fears and lifting each other up and becoming stronger and better together

and as compelling as i found rumi/jinu and as much as i would like to see their relationship explored more in a sequel/series, i just really love that this movie, which is clearly targeted at young women, ends on the message that romantic love is not the end all be all, that friendship is just as important if not more so than a romantic partner, that single women can lead successful, fulfilling lives, that true happiness and freedom start from within

it's crazy that this message still seems revolutionary in 2025 but given the current state of the world, it feels more necessary than ever

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KPOP DEMON HUNTERS (2025) + TUMBLR REACTIONS

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"... You're what??"

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Sam finds out Dean and Cas are together and have been for years and he's pissed. How could Dean not trust him with this?!

And Dean's just like "trust you? After the way you acted about Benny?"

And that's how Sam realizes his brother thought for YEARS that he was being a homophobe about Dean's boyfriend and not just hypocritical as all hell about monsterfucking.

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the reason i enjoy characters calling cas slurs so much is that as much as cas hates himself, it's never in an internalized bigotry way. like he's entirely fine with like... What He Is. what he hates about himself is What He's Done. like, the closest he comes to disliking himself for What He Is is being scared that no one likes him? but in general he's pretty fine with everything about himself except his choices.

anyway you guys might think that this post was inspired by cas' relationship to being gay but actually it's inspired by the fic i have in my head where cas is called into jack's school to talk to the counselor on like. an unrelated matter, and the counselor refers to jack's "difficulties" and cas is like "jack's what? jack, are you having difficulties at school?" and jack is like "no i love it here" and the counselor is like "no i meant his... you know..." and cas tilts his head like "his what?" and then the counselor spends ten minutes using increasingly rude euphemisms for intellectual/developmental disabilities before giving up and asking if she can speak to cas' wife, at which point cas is like i don't have a wife, and the counselor is like but your wedding ring... and cas is like i do have a husband. and the counselor is like thank god. my discomfort with this weird man's obvious disabledness overrides even my passive straight person homophobia. and then the husband is, you know. dean.

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Not to Superwholock on main but imagine being a true crime fan who also enjoys urban fantasy pulp fiction in the Supernatural universe.  You pick up a cheap paperback copy of “Skin” by Carver Edlund (book 6 of the “Supernatural” series) and realize, hey, this is clearly a fictionalized account of Dean Winchester’s first known killings.  The book doesn’t have any last names or specific dates but everything from the names of the victims to the fact that Sam went to college for pre-law matches up so it’s not exactly subtle.  Still, this book is pretty worn, and the murders were in 2005.  Did this Edlund guy write a book about how Dean Winchester is a hero, actually, while his killings were still in the news?  That seems a little gauche.  You check the copyright date to see how long he waited before publishing.

The book came out years before the St. Louis killings.  Wtf.

The forums must be insane.

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the reason victor henriksen doesn't know about the broader hunting subculture is that he works for the fbi and not the atf

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I was feeling agitated and artblocked yesterday so I decided to give my brain a rest by watching TV and then the next thing I knew these were in front of me

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Silco's such a fun character. He's a mob boss. He's a girldad. Cannot stress enough that he's a ruthless power-hungry drug lord. He's gay. He's divorced. He threatens people's children in a way that goes over the child's head & we can assume he doesn't even intend to follow through because it directly contradicts how he actually behaves, he's just letting his reputation do the heavy lifting. He made some dubious parenting choices. He's a single father supporting his daughter's interests. Her interests are killing people with bombs. He's the only thing preventing a civil war. He did this through police corruption. He's squeamish about needles

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spn20rewatch: 2.12 nightshifter

i am so utterly, completely undone at dean's overwhelming fondness for ronald! for his enthusiasm and effort in tracking and trying to identify what's been doing the robberies and murders. for his relief and excitement when it's proven he's not crazy. for the fact that even without tools or training, he knows something's wrong and wants to stop it!

and... this episode is when sam loses me. the first time i watched supernatural, i had such a soft spot in my heart for both of them - especially solidified by 1.02 where dean just acts as bait and sam puts his body between the kids and the monster. beautiful, i thought, what they are willing to give to strangers. i was all in.

but this. sam's distain for ronald and his gaslighting of ronald's effort and research just because he wasn't a "real" hunter (whatever that means) or that his theory about what was behind the attack sounded stupid. it took me aback and unsettled me. i don't like the layers underneath it that carry on through the show. i don't like sam's harshness at societies' human outcasts. i don't like sam's pattern of withholding the truth about monsters from the people around him- even when it poses a direct threat to them - justified by a benevolent kind of paternalism. this is hands down the harshest reaction either of them have ever had to a "civilian's" interest in the supernatural. and i just don't understand why. (i know there's this fanon belief that they are always lying to protect people from the knowledge of the supernatural but it's really not true. and in fact i have too many examples of them straight up telling people the truth to list them all.)

it's interesting to note that dean's reaction to the cops at the open of the episode:

DEAN: Friggin' cops. SAM: They're just doing their job, Dean. DEAN: No, they're doing our job, only they don't know it, so they suck at it. 

is mirrored in sam's assessment of ronald:

DEAN: Nah, I just think it's a little creepy how good of a Fed you are. I mean, come on, we could have at least thrown the guy a bone. He did some pretty good legwork here. SAM: Mandroid? DEAN: Except for the Mandroid part. I liked him. He's not that different from you or me. People think we're crazy. SAM: Yeah, except he's not a hunter, Dean. He's just a guy who stumbled onto something real.

except that dean's right. the cops aren't helping; and ronald is!

and i'm not being dramatic when i say that sam is pretty directly responsible for ronald's death. his response to ronald's (correct) pattern identification is to tell him what all the cops have been telling him - that he's crazy and wrong. so what does ronald do, all alone with only the puzzle pieces and no allies? he tries to stop the monster in the only way he knows how. imagine what could have happened if he had allies from jump?

dean's face when ronald dies is gut wrenching...

his little speech....

DEAN: Sorry, Ron. You did a real good job tracking this thing, you really did.

he's known him for maybe like 24 hours and he's already nicknaming...

dean's care for ronald is so genuine and so sweet. it's interesting in an episode where dean has maybe the most "flirtatious" (for lack of a better word) moments with separate women out of the whole show that his most emotional connection is with ronald. though he flirts with franny who is clearly interested in him, and though he hypes up checking out a woman's butt on the security cam for sam, and though sherry is very taken with him at the beginning, none of them get dean making faces full of awed delight like this.

"he's not that different from you and me." i think dean and ronald should get to watch star trek, get high, and make out. i think dean should get to run his hand through ronald's hair!

anyway shoutout to one of the top two telling sam to shut up moments in all of spn...

and shoutout to victor henriksen, don't worry dean's gonna be looking at you like that soon enough!!