#Amara as ultimate reality is something that I like a lot.

[ananke-xiii]

Darkness, balance and cages.

At the end of this post I’ve written that there’s a tendency to use vague concepts related to “Eastern mysticism” when tv shows dealing with Christian themes fly a little too close to the sun (pun intended). This happened in “Supernatural” for sure but also in other shows like “Lost” and “The Good Place” (although, especially in the second, they were a bit more subtle about it) and, I’m willing to bet, in many others, too. This doesn’t bother me per se because I think that an informed, planned, researched dose of syncretism can actually help creating thought-provoking art, why not?, however, I’m not a fan of “Eastern mysticism” used as a way to obscure and confuse the actual meaning of the story I’m watching.

Take for instance when Chuck starts blabbering about “yin and yang” and “light and dark” in s11. First of all, I know I’ll sound pedantic now but throwing around these words expecting the audience to understand what they mean is hilarious. I’m not staying awake at night to read about Taoism for sure but I’ve been trying to “figure it out” for quite a few years and I still don’t get what “yin and yang” mean. But fine, notoriously I’m a downer and the death of the party and this is silly Supernatural so let’s be real. And, anyway, they did explain what they mean by that: “There’s a harmony, a balance, in the universe. Light needs dark. Dark needs light”. This is a very “meh”, Supermarket New Age take but okay, fine I guess. However, if you think about this concept and how it relates to the story, it still doesn’t make sense. And I think it doesn’t make sense because Amara was originally conceived to be “stronger” than Chuck but then they backtracked because *implications*.

This is what Death tells Dean in S10:

DEATH: Creatio ex nihilo -- God created the earth out of nothing -- or so your Sunday-school teacher would have you believe. DEAN: What, so Genesis is a lie, eh? Shocker. DEATH: Before there was light, before there was God and the archangels, there wasn't nothing. There was the Darkness, a horribly destructive, amoral force that was beaten back by God and his archangels in a terrible war.

I have things to say about why Death would ever say such things, after all he should’ve understood the Darkness’ deal because he was also an amoral force that could stand up to God. But I digress.

I’ll leave theology aside and focus on one thing: what’s Death really saying here? Would it be so incorrect to think that either the Darkness created God and/or God was inferior to the Darkness? So inferior that he had to create other beings that would help him lock her up? And how did God create these other beings? Also, these words seem to suggest that a. God is not light and b. God didn’t create anything. He appropriated creation. If the Darkness was before light and before God and she was a destructive force it follows that she was a creative force that existed before God (and, to stay in-universe, created God, perhaps? Is the Darkness… God’s MOTHER? Is she the Alpha and the Omega? Did God want to lock his mother up because he didn't want to be destructed/eaten by his parent? Is this about Zeus vs the Titans? Is the cage the Tartarus? Did OG God have mommy issues? I'm rolling and I could go on but I'll stop here because I think you get my point). God as male, paternal deity creating reality because *mind/phallus powers!* is a lie. Shocker! (?)

They just had to change this stuff and here enters “yin and yang”, or the appropriation of “Eastern mysticism” concepts to hide the huge, tiny "mis-take" they wrote.

So throughout S11 we’re repeatedly told that Chuck and Amara are unspecified “brother and sister” (twins? big sis? little bro? doesn't matter?) but Amara does state that they were “equals”(in power, I believe) and that Chuck made the archangels because he wanted to be big (! mommy issues alert !). To which Chuck says that yeah, it’s true but also! Look! Creation is so beautiful! And where did creation come from? The show had already stated the “creation ex nihilo” hypothesis as bullshit so they went the other way: creation was… “just there”. In “We Happy Few” Chuck says: “It didn't come from my hands. It was there waiting to be born. It just is, as you and I just were”. They course-corrected and took the “formless matter” route according to which, very briefly and simplistically, the matter came out from an intermediate state of "nothing and something" but that wasn’t actually created (because God is the active principle) since it was “formless”, aka potentiality.

Now I just want to say that there’s a sort of tendency in Supernatural where “formless matter” is “just there”. These are the same words that Cas uses when Kelly talks to him about her death, resurrection and her feelings towards her baby and how... he was conceived. Both these episodes were written by the same writer, Berens, and I’ll just leave this here for your consideration and the, uhm, not-so-nice implications of this argument re: women, (pro)creation and abuse.

To be honest, though, I don’t exactly blame them for taking this route because what was the other option? The show had put itself into a corner: there are two cosmic beings that they had decided to present as a woman and a man who are also brother and sister and ALSO the two primary entities in all existence? Ahem, the incest trap was just around the corner so, yeah, I can understand why the matter ex machina was necessary in order not to go there.

But things still don’t add up in terms of “yin and yang”! See:

CHUCK: Amara’s been caged for billions of years, but y’know, she was always there. She had to be there. Y’know, yin and yang. Dark and light. DEAN: English, Chuck. CHUCK: There’s a harmony, a balance, in the universe. Light needs dark. Dark needs light. If you blow one of them up, then, I mean—

Does Dark needs Light? Uhm.

I’ve talked a bit about the danger behind the word balance. What I want to focus now is the “she had to be there”, “she was always there”. Again!!! What does this mean? Well, I’m trying to follow the logic they’re presenting me but what I personally gather is this: matter is just there waiting to be born (!!!) and the Darkness is also just there and she has to be and stay there otherwise the universe is in an imbalanced state.

I don’t want to go into the equation of Amara = formless matter because, again, incest trap! awful implications trap! but STILL this means that the "balance" in the universe can and indeed IS achieved when God is free to create and go around being the mess he is while Amara is caged and in pain. She doesn’t have to be free, she just needs to be. She doesn't have to be happy, she just needs to not-die. So that the universe can still exist. Who would want this balance, really? This is atrocious.

I mean, this is both horrendous and it proves my point: Amara is "stronger" than Chuck because the balance that Chuck is claiming to be necessary for the universe is a scam. Does the universe really need for him to be alive and free and for Amara to be alive and caged in order to exist? Or, perhaps, not? She brought destruction alright but the universe didn't end when the Darkness broke free, did it? So the universe can and indeed IS still in balance if Amara is out of her cage! What's different now? Chuck, ONE Sun, OUR Sun, is dying. Poor baby. One star dying is actually not that big of a deal, cosmically speaking and well, one day our Sun will die out, folks, and the universe will go on without us. Let's be fucking real for a second.

This is why Sam had to be “crazy and stupid” because Sam was onto Chuck from day 1. Because what does Sam say when God is dying? Well, Chuck, you keep on dying, but you know what we can do? Let’s also kill Amara and off with both of them and the universe can find its own new balance, EMPTY SCALES, out with the darkness and with "light", on with "formless matter", power to the people who are "just there", amirite? So Chuck comes up with the stupidest idea in the whole show, i.e. to kill Amara by the power of “10,000 suns set to supernova” while being wounded and figuratively associated with one dying Sun. It was never going to be successful. An arbitrary quantity against the essence of reality itself? A cosmic entity who eats souls, grace and feeds on creation/light? Please.

Amara and Chuck were never equals. The “Yin and Yang” was a lie and a smokescreen to make us think that yeah, Light and Dark, balance, yahoo, happy ending, God is love, God is (still) Light, while in the universe of Supernatural Amara/Darkness is the real Alpha and Omega. The fact that by S15 she bought into this balance, yin-yang scheme is quite painful. The caged stays (more or less, we don’t see her and I have problems with that but that doesn’t mean she’s not there) caged while existence lives on. Like previously and always on Supernatural. This, time, however, without Chuck. Because creation, existence, light without Chuck was always possible. Without Amara, though? Mmmm, perhaps not in the way we like to think of "creation". But "creation" kept on living because she agreed to co-exist with Jack even though she didn't have to. Did she choose, in the end, to "be just there"? Well, we don't know because we never saw Amara again, we only know she agreed via Jack. And so we believe in Jack and so we, *sigh*, believe in God. Amen!

[found--family]

Supernatural 15.17 screener secrets

ONE WAY OR ANOTHER — Dean (Jensen Ackles) hits the road with Jack (Alexander Calvert) who needs to complete a final ritual in the quest to beat Chuck (guest star Rob Benedict). A difference of opinion leaves Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Castiel (Misha Collins) behind looking for answers to questions of their own. 

Catriona McKenzie directed the episode written by Meredith Glynn (#1517). Original airdate 10/29/2020.

If you want to know what to expect from this week’s Supernatural, here’s 10 teasers plus 15 single word clues from our advance viewing of Supernatural season 15, episode 17 “Unity.”

1️⃣ This episode is full – like, really, really full, like, don’t blink, no bathroom breaks, no cellphone checking, no laggy livestream, glue your eyes to the screen full. There is pay-off of the season-long setups. There are brand new setups to boggle over. There are big definitive answers. There are big new questions. There will be shocks for some viewers, and satisfying “I knew it” moments for others. There is a very large volume of information and plot in this episode. That is in no way a bad thing – it’s checking- the-clock and saying “Whoa, I can’t believe how much we’ve just gotten and we’ve still got ten minutes?!” exciting-full, not “Oh my god, how do we possibly still have ten minutes..” dragging-full – think “Beat the Devil,” not “Family Feud.” Except for that because it is the real endgame, the impact is really unprecedented.

2️⃣ It also has a bit of unusual structure, which serves that fullness well – it’s topped with various scene-setting elements in the first act, and it then becomes a series of three vignettes, labelled for the core character of each track, and intentionally placed this way so that you get all the information from one track, then all the information from the second track, and then finally the third, rather than putting the pieces together about the episode’s consequences by cutting back and forth between various parties. All the tracks smash back together in the final ten minutes and Consequences Ensue.

3️⃣ The promo pictures show that Jack and Amara meet in this episode, and Emily Swallow gave us a funny little teaser about that meeting. The reality is actually heart-warming – and a little heart-wrenching. It’s only a few beats, Alexander Calvert, Emily Swallow, Meredith Glynn and Catriona McKenzie have spun me into a whole world of Auntie Amara fantasies based on this moment.

4️⃣ Sam and Dean both give Jack some words of gratitude, praise, encouragement and pride about the sacrifice Jack is willing to make. Those are two very different conversations with some very different personal motivations and outcomes, but they’re each really special in their own way.

5️⃣ Amara is a precious and noble soul, and she deserves the entire world. I love her, and I’m only partially saying this because she spends the whole episode dressed like Harry Styles, right down to the multiple pairs of leopard print boots. Since she calmed herself in season 11, her outlook about the world Chuck created has blossomed into something beautiful and we get to really delve on that here. I loved hearing her thoughts and feelings. She doesn’t deserve how her two best guys have been treating her.

6️⃣ The teaser trailer showed us Adam – the Biblical Adam, not the half-brother Adam. He’s played by Alessandro Juliani of Battlestar Galactica fame, and he’s sort of… brilliant. He’s really interesting in a lot of ways, and visiting him is the focus of the Dean and Jack vignette. The woman you’ve seen in pictures and promos isn’t Eve, it’s Adam’s lover Serafina. They have been together for a very, very, very long time. Adam and Serafina are lovely and funny and chill and adorable, horny hippy-dippy weirdos, but there’s an old rage and a steel in Adam that hasn’t gone away, and there’s a moment it lights up in Juliani’s eyes where I was like “Oh, I entirely see how you and Tim Omundson’s Cain are related.” The fact that Serafina has stood by Adam, shared his anger and helped him make his plan also raises some fascinating questions.

7️⃣ Speaking of things in people’s eyes, Jensen Ackles is absolutely mining his own resources to deliver some really incredible moments – faces, expressions, vocal tones that we have never seen from Dean before, and all that helps to signify how fractured he is by this point in the season. There are several great examples – particularly one where you see just it in his eyes, the panic and regret of not choosing differently a millisecond too late – but ultimately, all of Dean’s anger and fear and inability to come to terms with Chuck and trust his own sense of autonomy is going to come to a head, overtaking him and blinding him in a really shocking moment.

8️⃣ We learn the ins and outs of the plan for Jack to die – what will actually happen to him that kills him – and the phrasing used to describe it, when placed next to the phrasing of some other ideas we hear a moment earlier from the same party, raised a few questions and both of my eyebrows about a potentially catastrophic catch. Alex Calvert is great in this episode, by the way – there’s a real change in Jack, a gravity and maturity that’s extremely sad.

9️⃣ Sam’s biggest moments are hard to describe without being truly plot-spoilery, but let’s just say this: When Sam and Castiel are left alone together, the result is often some really truly reckless behaviour in the name of “finding a better way.” Without Dean’s objectonary oar stuck in, tempering them, both of them separately are liable to take massive personal risks and that gets exacerbated when they’re doing something important together without Dean’s knowledge. That is no exception here, and there’s a look they exchange where they both clearly know this is potentially a bad idea, but it is the best they have, so they push on. Sam’s resoluteness shines through at every turn in the episode – in what he believes is best for Jack, in his need for information, the plan he and Cas come up with, in what actually happens and who he faces when he executes that plan, alone and defenseless, and finally, in the moment of greatest need imaginable. Sam is so brave in this episode, and so terrified, and so reckless, and so smart under pressure.

🔟 There’s a comment made by Chuck about Castiel – at a moment when Chuck truly has no reason to fabricate anything – that reveals or confirms the answer to a question about Cas that I personally have had for a very long time, and I think that many other fans have had as well, though some people may already feel firmly one way or the other. No, it’s not about the deal. No, it’s not about Dean – well, not directly. It’s a question that I’ve been asking about the fundamentals of Castiel’s whole being, since season 8, maybe, upon reflection, even since season 4.

Finally, have 15 random yet significant words from this week’s episode without any context whatsoever: skittles, fans, courage, book, broken, spark, alive, crazy, scythe, gun, failure, fractals, tired, smile, Thursday. 

‘Supernatural’ airs Thursday at 8/7c on The CW

[xellandria]

Zmija Yilan was a temporary character I played towards the end of our Tomb of Annihilation campaign after my boy Alexus got petrified by a beholder somewhere deep in the bowels of the tomb itself.  We were able to “salvage” both him and Amara (who had also gotten petrified in the same fight) by shoving them into the Bag of Holding, but short of having the two of us sit on the bench while the remaining two party members waddled back to town, we had to roll some new characters.

I spent most of the week between the petrification and the new characters appearing being mad at myself for not remembering I had Inspiration I could have used to reroll either of my failed dex saves and not being able to do much beyond that, but with less than 72 hours left until she had to debut, I finally pulled an idea out of my butt, ran it by the DM because it involved Shenanigans™, got the OK and started designing her. Thus was born Zmija Yilan, whose appearance was based partly on an old photo that was semi-viral on Tumblr several years prior and partly on Xelloss from Slayers because when I’m in a pinch, that’s always who I fall back on, and have been doing so for like, 20+ years at this point lmao.  Personality-wise, there was a post floating around Tumblr that week about proverbs in various languages that, when translated literally or without context, made very little sense so she got a lot of that (and associated misunderstandings based on language mix-ups) mixed in with—again—Xelloss from Slayers, because I am a hack.  I would probably never play her again because she was so firmly entrenched in that campaign and also there’s some parts of how I designed/played her that I look back on and am like “ehhh I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the optics of this,” but I enjoyed playing her a lot more than I expected, and I look back on the end of our Tomb campaign very fondly because of it.

I haven’t been able to talk about her in public both for a lack of reason to do so and because I didn’t want to “spoil” my group in case they found my various social media posts, but as it’s nearly a year since she was introduced and nine months since the campaign ended, I’m gonna absolutely wall of text the shit outta this bitch, rofl (that said there’s baby’s first nekkid pin-up under here so assuming Tumblr lets me actually post it, fair warning for that under the cut)

Zmija Yilan - level 8-10 Human* Warlock (Great Old Ones/Pact of the Tome) (usually this is where my D&D character posts put stats but I don’t actually have access to her character sheet anymore, so let’s just pretend she had something ridiculous like maxed Charisma because I remember my spell DC being ridiculously high)

Zmija Yilan is a traveler from the far-off land of Zemlya, and a disciple of Matrymriy, one of the "family" of five gods in the pantheon of that region.  Matrymriy came to Zmija in a dream one night and told her to travel across the seas because She had a task for her, and that she would learn more once she reached her destination.  She's been traveling around Faerun for seven or so years—reaching one place, being given hints to go to a specific location, and upon reaching it, being told to travel on without seeming to do much more than just Be There.  Upon reaching Chult sometime within the last few months, her patron's hints indicated that she should travel to a place called Shilku Bay; she hired a guide (named Salida) and a bodyguard (a Fort Belurian mook) with what little locally-acceptable currency she had; they got separated after being attacked by a band of undead, and after failing to reunite with them, she was wandering around lost, trusting that Matrymriy will guide her where She desires her to go.

Part of her wandering had her end up in the Tomb of the Nine Gods itself, where she encountered our adventuring party (down two player characters) desperately trying to find their way out of the tomb in the hopes of returning to Port Nyanzaru to depetrify their friends.  Our barbarian’s player immediately distrusted her because I’d drawn her tabletop token with her back to the camera, which was an awkward feeling almost immediately returned in-game because both the barbarian and paladin aren’t hardcore RPers but they had to carry all the RP weight as they were introduced to this new character and explain that they were there to destroy a lich (both because it was the source of all the bad undead in the area, and because they’d been promised a reward—a motivation Zmija understood, as “a hungry bear will not dance.”)  Beyond the usual RP awkwardness there was an additional layer of awkwardness between the characters IC as at the time, Thokk was barely wearing more than a breastplate and loincloth, while Zmija was covered neck-to-ankle despite the heat and humidity of the region.  She claimed that in the culture of Zemlya, having strangers see your skin was a mark of great shame and that modesty was of paramount importance, so seeing so much of him was very off-putting and threw her off-balance for much of their initial interactions. 

Getting off on the “wrong” foot with the party and pushing as hard as I could into Zmija’s quirks (the weird proverbs, sprinkling in her Zemlyan vocabulary and making a point of her being from Very Far Away with Very Different Customs) meant I went a little too hard on them at the beginning, which is partly what I’d do differently and partly why the whole thing ended up working, so it’s a weird retrospective balance.  If my partymates had ever shoved (almost) any of the names or places Zmija mentioned into google, they probably would have twigged to the scheme pretty dang fast.

In reality, Zmija is not a human traveler from Zemlya, because surprise! she's actually Zsaksatyi, a Chultian Yuan-Ti Pureblood under the command of Fenthaza.  She worked as a bit of a double agent/interrogator within the Fane prior to her current assignment (hence her spell list's focus on information gathering, silent communication, and manipulation); she's been fleshing out her alternate persona for years and would occasionally pretend to be a captive and be thrown in one of those cells the party was in to get relevant information from the other prisoners, or assist others that were interrogating prisoners by more direct means (via Detect Thoughts).  In-universe, the language she pretends to speak is mostly made up, and something she's been working on for years at this point—it's not a fully-fleshed conlang and she only has a couple hundred words and phrases but it's enough to be consistent and believable when she sprinkles it into regular speech.  Since there's no real risk of running into anyone else from Zemlya (because it doesn't actually exist), it mostly didn't matter, and since there's actual meaning behind the words she does have, in theory it would have held up to a spell like Comprehend Languages as well. Out of universe, the language she speaks is an amalgamation of my own conlang stuff (which, like the in-universe version, is very limited and not complete) and various words and phrases pulled mostly from real-world Slavic languages (russian, croatian, hungarian, etc) with a little bit of Turkish thrown in when my English-only ear felt that it fit or when I had already used a word and needed another word for the same thing.  Zsaksatyi (pronounced dzahk sot-YEE) is the only name/word in the whole mess that doesn’t actually mean something somewhere, and was a combination of syllables from an online Yuan-Ti name generator that I kinda liked together. If she had ever been outed, I would probably have come up with something a little less cumbersome for me and my (almost certainly wholly monolingual) D&D group to say... but she didn’t, so Zsaksatyi it stays!

She very much looks up to Fenthaza and almost idolizes and worships her—if she ever had to choose between Fenthaza or Dendar, things might have gotten a little bit rough for her (possibly no matter which way she ultimately jumped, though I imagine Dendar's vengeance would be more immediate, if Dendar's a hands-on sort of patron).  Thankfully (for her), there was very little risk of that given that the party had left Fenthaza on reasonably neutral terms (having already helped her oust Ras Nsi from his position of power in the Fane and the party having essentially marked that dungeon as “cleared”). Fenthaza had sent her to scout the Tomb of the Nine Gods and locate (or steal) an artifact known as the Black Opal Crown, which will allow the Night Mother to emerge into the world.  The group actually came across the crown pretty soon after Zmija (and our other new character, a firbolg druid named Mei Ren who replaced our cleric, Amara) joined them, but the party couldn’t figure out how to get it out of the room it was in and Zsaksatyi was content that it would be safe from both our group and other adventurers there while she found her way back to the Fane (though she Sent the location to Fenthaza in case she wasn’t able to make it back).  That was actually like, halfway through the session right after she’d been introduced so having her sneak off that fast would have been absolutely wild, so I kept playing her as Zmija and while there were myriad opportunities for her to be discovered—including a hallway where any non-magical non-living thing got evaporated, up to and including clothing—she never was.  The fact that the only spells she ever used spell slots on were Hex, Counterspell, and Identify never really got commented upon, because prior to her joining the party we didn’t have a source for any sort of utility magic and we’d been feeling the lack for a while.  She was a lot of fun to play just as Zmija once I got the hang of her, but the hidden agenda that only our DM & I knew about was an extra layer of fun, too. It would have been neat to see how the party reacted to a reveal, but unless Jim wants to take us back to Chult to actually deal with the Night Mother’s return (because without having to keep up appearances and alignments, I’m pretty sure I could have gotten that crown out of there even before the weird teleport-defying magic of the Tomb got turned off), her story is over for us—taking her outside of the setting she was designed for would be weird... plus we already have two warlocks (well, one and a half) in a party of four PCs; adding a third would be a little bit bizarre, I think.

Her more Yuan-ti features include scales down her spine and across her shoulderblades, on the backs of her hands, and on her hips and thighs—mostly in reds, oranges, and browns, but as she increases in power and connection with the Night Mother, more of them are darkening to Her blue-black; it started right at that spot between the shoulderblades where you always picture being stabbed in the back, and has expanded from there; I imagine by level 20 all of her scales would be that blue-black and may have encroached further on the more human-y leather bits, probably encroaching on her face at the last, which would make being a spy a lot more difficult (even moreso than wearing as much clothing as she already does) but I guess at level 20, do you really need to be sneaking around pretending to be human?

In direct sunlight or other very bright light, her pupils constrict to slits, which is the real reason for her heavy eye makeup—between the distraction of it and the (somewhat exaggerated) squinting that such light induces, it often goes unnoticed, as it did with her character portrait (although to be fair to my party, Alexus also has slit eyes because that’s one of the traits of elves and half elves in D&D, and also I’m not sure if they ever saw her portrait any larger than 150x150 or whatever Roll20 shows them at). Both her top and bottom canine teeth are sharper, longer, and narrower than is typical for humans, and she is careful not to grin too widely and will cover her mouth when she laughs or yawns, whether she is in disguise or not.  That part I’ve never drawn though, so I can’t really point to that as something the party overlooked, heh.  In hindsight, I wish I'd given her more/heavier snake features but even the official art for Yuan-Ti player characters are very light on them and getting around the differences between human and yuan-ti racials without tipping off the party was hard enough as it was—I took the 120 feet of magic-ignoring darkvision invocation to disguise the fact that she innately had darkvision, I never used my racial spells and abilities unless I was willing to “use” a spell slot on them and had another plausible way to have obtained them, the one time I got hit with a poison ability (which she was immune to) I spent a lot of time “figuring out the math” on how much HP I had to drop, etc.  I also wish I’d given her darker skin, as she is supposed to be Chultian but she is significantly lighter than all the NPCs we came across.  Then again, I’m as white as a sheet soaked in bleach so there’s something weird about me RPing folks of colour regardless (especially given her fake backstory, agh agh agh) so yeah.  Really enjoyed her, don’t regret her, will not ever play her again rofl

In our very last session of Tomb of Annhiliation, the party—fresh off the victory over the big bad lich whose name I can never spell and his weird world-eating fetus—headed back to Port Nyanzaru via the Aarakocra village of Kir Sabal, which the previous variant of the party (of whom only Thokk remained alive and mobile enough to talk to them) had helped out significantly earlier in the campaign, unlocking a flying ritual that we were like “man we’re not coming back here if we’re gonna use it we gotta do it now” to get us the rest of the way to the port.  En route, Zmija tried to leave the group and rolled a secret 15 Stealth roll... contested by 17 and 18 perception rolls from Mei Ren and Thokk, but as she wasn’t carrying much of the party’s stuff and it was the end of the campaign, they kinda just let her give some line about seeing them again in the future maybe, the Mother’s will is unknowable, etc etc.  I think if Duf and Kattii didn’t know that I wanted Alexus back as badly as I did and that we were like twenty minutes (real time) away from actually getting him back, they might have considered that more suspicious than they did.

Pronunciations (and translations): (mostly C&Ped from her bio, which is the only part of her character sheet I can still access on Roll20)

Zmija Yilan: zMEE-ah yee-LAHN.  Because I'm subtle as hell, that's Croatian/Russian/Ukranian (first name) and Turkish (last name) for "snake/serpent," according to the internet.  What do you mean Remus Lupin is a werewolf?!

Matrymriy: mah-tRRuh mRREE (Rs are rolled).  Matrymriy is Zmija's claimed patron—one of five major Zemlyashan dieties—but she'll state that she doesn't know the name that she goes by in the local dialect.  That's only partly true, of course—мати мрій is Ukranian for "Mother of Dreams" (at least according to google translate), which is close enough to her patron's actual names and titles (Dendar, the Night Mother) that she can get away with it without actually raising suspicions about the true source of her powers.  She'll also do that thing where if someone tries to say the name back to her she'll "correct" them by saying it exactly the same four or five times and then "give up" and accept whatever "butchered" version the speaker comes up with, except she'll do it even if they're actually saying it perfectly correctly.  She may do this with her own name as well (sorry, Jim. And Duf. And Dustin. And Kattii. And Kattii's coworker, if he ever joins us and I'm still playing this character by then, lmao.) (2021 addition: and literally everyone who has a name that isn’t typically pronounced by us English-only plebians, I am so sorry I’m not better at your language)

Zsaksatyi: dzahk sot-YEE.  Zmija's real name, when she isn't pretending to be a human.  That doesn't mean anything as far as I know, it was just a combination of some of the syllables the random Yuan-Ti name generator was coming up with that I liked (which is also where "Itszella" was from), lol.  I may end up changing it to be less cumbersome at some point, unless it comes up before then and ends up written in stone, but I'm on a bit of a time crunch for the moment.

Zemlya: zem-lyah.  If pressed for more detail on where in Zemlya she's from (e.g. by someone pretending to know details about her country), her home town is Fal'shyva (fall-sheh-VAH), southeast of the capital of Hayali (HI-yah-LEE) and just north of the port city of Farazi (fah-ra-DZI), which is where she originally sailed from seven years ago. фальшива земля is Ukranian for "fake land," Hayali is Turkish for "imaginary," and Farazi is Turkish for "hypothetical," lol.

Proverbs & (approximate) Pronounciations: (if I recall correctly, asterisks indicate ones I had used, so I didn’t repeat myself too frequently)

Wziąć się w garść (zvun shih garsch): lit. take the self into the fist (polish), pull yourself together Галопом по Zemlya (gal-OH-pohm poe zem-lyah): lit. galloping across Zemlya (russian), to be hasty/haphazard. * У кого немає собаки, полює з котом (Ooh koe-hoe meh-MIGH-eh soe-BAH-kay, poe-LOO-yay koh-tome): lit. who does not have dog, hunts with cat (ukranian, original proverb is portugese), make do with what you have. Z choinki się urwałaś? (dzi hoink-E she urr-vahl-wash): lit. did you fall from a Candlenights(aka Christmas) tree? (polish), you are obviously not well-informed; are you dumb? * Mi o vuku (MEE oh voo-koo): lit. to talk of the wolf (croatian), speak of the devil. * Thalai muzhuguthal (tha-LIE MOOz-GOO-thal): lit. pour water over someone's head (tamil), cut off a relationship. * Хоть кол на голове теши (coat-coal nah gohl-ehvee teh-SHEE): lit. you can sharpen an axe on this head (russian), a very stubborn person.

Other Languages Are Hard Today, Let’s Just Proverb It In English:

Cat's Forehead (japanese): a tiny space, usually used humbly to refer to owned land. It fell between chairs (swedish): group work that everyone assumed someone else would do, and didn't get done as a result * It gives me a beautiful leg (french): fat lot of good that'll do me Drown the fish (french): avoid a subject by talking about anything and everything else, confuse the issue In a river with piranhas, the alligator swims backstroke (brazil): protect your weaknesses * Accusation always follows the cat (iraqi): it's easy to blame someone who can't defend themselves The honey only sticks to the mustache of he who licked it (arabic): he who smelt it, dealt it * A hungry bear does not dance (greek): the reward must be worth the cost (or at least exist) * The crayfish sides with the crab (korean): people who have a lot in common stay friends * If you can't live longer, live deeper (italian): get the most of your time * A spoon does not know the taste of soup (welsh): intelligence is not wisdom Examine what is said, not who speaks (arab): don't take things at face value * Turn your face to the sun and the shadows will fall behind you (new zealand): have a positive outlook He who does not travel, does not know the value of men (moorish): wide experience is gr8 Do good and throw it in the sea (arab): don't expect anything back from kindness * Shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is halved (swedish): friends make things better If you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together (african): strength in numbers, speed on your own.

[verobatto]

Destiel Chronicles

Vol. LV

It was a love story from the very beginning.

The Monster At Your Door

(10x04/10x09/10x10/10x11)

Hello my dear fandom! This is another meta from my Destiel Chronicles.

I want to say thank you to my friend @agusvedder , she made the gifs for this analysis, thank you girl!

And thanks to @destielle for editing this! 

This season doesn't have a lot of Destiel in it and was mostly Dean-centric.

So you will see me talking about how our hunter perceives himself as a monster.

Brothers and Sisters

In episode 10x04 ‘Paper Moon’ we saw Kate and her sister, two female werewolves, as mirrors of Sam and Dean.

Kate, the one who was trying to save her sister (Sam), and the little one Tasha, becoming a real monster (Dean).

After getting to know about Tasha and Kate's story, and Kate trying desperately to get her sister back, the Winchesters decide to help her. But there was a little piece of dialogue  between Sam and Dean that caught my attention…

SAM: Right, but how can you possibly blame Kate for fighting for her sister? We do it all the time.

DEAN: Well, yeah, and that's worked wonders for us.

The ultimate effort to save Dean Winchester at the end of the season will cause a huge cosmic consequence we all know: Amara. So, this quote here that could be read as very Winchester like is kind of a premonition of what is about to come next season.

And then, this scene… it points us at how Dean is really feeling inside.

KATE: But she can be saved!

DEAN: [blunt, but in despair] No. Tasha's in too deep. You don't ever come back from that, not ever.

How disturbingly painful it must be for Sam knowing his brother is losing faith in winning his battle against the mark.

There’s another interesting dialogue, now between the two sisters, where we can dissect the foreshadowing of Sam trying to get through to Dean in the last episode of this season.

KATE [pleading] T., I can help you get better.

TASHA [sneering evilly] Oh, I am better. And smarter and stronger… and awesome. I'm a freakin' superhero.

KATE Who kills innocent people? No, that's not you. You were a good kid.

So, Sam will try to save the innocent and good side of his brother, with all his power.

Because even if Dean perceives himself as a monster that can't be saved, Sam will always try to convince him otherwise. Just like Castiel…

You are a role model

Episode 10x09 ‘The Things We Left Behind’ is a beautiful episode that talks about GUILT. Not just Dean's guilt (we all know about that one, right?) But also Castiel's GUILT and his REGRETS.

Castiel visits Claire Novak, because he knows he hurt her a lot by possessing her father. So he tries to help her. But, because his PEOPLE TALKING SKILLS are ‘rusty’, he’s not able to communicate it the right way. So he helps her to escape instead.

In the middle of this episode we have this cute scene:

Dean watching TV, reflecting that innocent side I was talking about first, and Sam staring at him with sadness in his eyes, being worried about the mark. This situation points out their priorities.

Back to Castiel and Claire. There’s a very meaningful scene in which Cas talks about his experience as a human and what he has learned in that time…

CLAIRE: You’ve changed. The Castiel I met? He was crappy. Like super stuck-up and a dick and you just wanted to punch him in his stupid angel face.

CASTIEL: I don’t think I was THAT bad.

CLAIRE: You totally were. And now you’re just … I don’t know. Nicer. And kind of a doof. No offense.

CASTIEL: 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.

This is amazing because Castiel is shouting out the important insights he has gained from being a human. This is character development at it’s best. Cas is not the same Castiel that possessed Claire's dad. She says he is nicer. Castiel has changed, for good. But the guilt of taking her family away from this girl is eating him up inside.

And it’s the same thing that eats Dean up inside as well.

Dean sees an opportunity to stay alone with Castiel on kind of a date with him. Both of them sitting in front of their burgers. We know Cas doesn't have to eat. So the scene is very cute and comfy.

The question whether or not ketchup is a vegetable and Dean answering Hell yes is demonstrating that Claire and the hunter are very alike.

This date is also a chance to put back the dot on the I again. Because… remember Cas and his ‘female in the car’? Well… our hunter needed to reinforce his ownership over the angel. 

But mostly… the guilt needs to be put on the table:

DEAN: (...) All right, so spill. What’s with the family reunion?

CASTIEL: I don’t know. I’ve just been … thinking about people.

[Dean glances around, then switches their plates, taking Cas’ burger and setting his empty plate in front of Cas.]

Okay, pause here, sorry but this is extremely cute… and Dean looking around like an innocent kid, it’s such a beautiful scene that I adore.

CASTIEL: No problem. I’ve helped some, but I’ve … I’ve hurt some.

DEAN: So you’re having a midlife crisis.

CASTIEL: Well, I’m extremely old. I think I’m entitled.

It’s so amazing each time Castiel reminds us he is an ancient creature that decided to spend his days with us…

DEAN: Cas, listen to me. There’s some stuff you just got to let go. Okay? The people you let down, the ones you can’t save … You got to forget about them. For your own good.

CASTIEL: Is that what you do?

Okay, here Dean is sensing Cas is feeling guilty, a territory he knows very well, so he tries to help him and give him advice, an advice Dean doesn't follow himself. And Castiel knows that too well. Because he can read Dean Winchester like a book. And we all know he won't let go Charlie's death.

And then… this jewel…

Dean is not used to receiving compliments. But Castiel is always calling him nice things. Because Cas sees the good in him, he knows DEAN IS SPECIAL. So Dean, Cas’ TFW teacher, is a role model for him. Of course he is. 

Look at Dean's flustered face, he has to avoid Castiel's tender gaze because he is feeling awkward. It looks like a don't say things like that to me on our date, bro- face.

One of my fave scenes ever.

Let's go with another one…

As I said, Castiel reads Dean like a book. So he knows when Dean is lying. He just knows Dean is not feeling well. And again, Dean is… enraptured by this. By how well Cas knows him. Look at his face… if I was telepath, which I'm not (yet) I would say, Dean ponders whether kissing him or not in that moment. It’s like… stop flirting with me or I will kiss you, bro. He even checks out Cas and stares at his lips. Gah!

Then, coming back to reality… Dean needs to know if Cas will kill him bc he is terrified of becoming a monster again:

DEAN: If I do go dark side, you got to take me out.

CASTIEL: What do you mean?

DEAN: Knife me. Smite me. Throw me into the freakin’ sun, whatever. And don’t let Sam get in the way, because he’ll try. I can’t go down that road again, man. I can’t be that thing again.

Dean is asking something impossible for Cas to do. As we will find out in one of the last episodes from this season. Castiel would never hurt Dean, even if he goes dark side.

Two Faces

After Dean is losing control, turning into the monster he was so afraid of becoming, killing Randy and those gangsters… nothing will be the same anymore. This bloody scene is a premonition of the end of this season, when Dean will eliminate the whole Stein family.

Episode 10x10 starts with this image:

Cracks in the mirror which are reflecting how Dean is feeling inside: broken.

This is an episode where light and shadow play a big role in the visual narrative, we can see Dean's face divide in one half lit and the other half drowned in shadows. Those halfs represent his two faces, his inner fight between ‘our’ Dean and the monster brought by the mark.

This episode was directed by Misha, so when we see Cas telling Dean he’ll be sending emojis… that wasn't OOC, that was just Misha 🤣🤣🤣🤣.

Now, the important part of this episode is Claire trying to convince Dean to come by saying: ‘Castiel seemed to trust you, a lot’.

That was the signal for Dean. You drop Cas’ name, count Dean in!

But now let's jump to episode 10x11 because the game of the two faces is represented here again in the form of two Charlies, a good and an evil one. They are a metaphor for the way Dean feels inside, in fact the whole episode is a mirror of it.

The parallel between Dark!Charlie and Dean is blatant, because Dark!Charlie is seeking for revenge, just like Dean will after Charlie's death.

Charlie had to release her darkness to win a war, the same thing will happen to Dean. In order to win the war against a whole family (Stein) he will have to release the monster inside of him. At the end of the episode Dean and Dark!Charlie are having a fight, a fight between good friends as a foreshadowing of the Destiel fight in episode 10x22.

To conclude:

The monster inside Dean is on the threshold of being released. The episodes we were talking about showed us a lot of examples, mirrors of and parallels to that.

The symbolisms of two faces and broken mirrors were very interesting.

The synergy of light and darkness is also a foreshadowing for the next season with the appearance of God (light) and Amara (darkness).

The Destiel burger date was too cute, and Dean not knowing how to react to Castiel's compliments was even cuter. To Cas Dean will always be special and a role model, that's why he will be incapable of harming Dean in any way.

Hope you like this chronicle, see you in the next one!

Tagging @metafest @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks @weirddorkylittlediana @michyribeiro @whyjm @legendary-destiel @a-bit-of-influence @thatwitchydestielfan @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @lykanyouko @evvvissticante @savannadarkbaby @dea-stiel @poorreputation @bre95611 @thewolfathedoor @charlottemanchmal @neii3n @deathswaywardson @followyourenergy @dean-is-bi-till-i-die @hekatelilith-blog @avidbkwrm @anarchiana @dickpuncher365 @vampyrosa @foxyroxe-art @authorsararayne @anonymoustitans @mybonsai1976 @love-neve-dies @wildligia @dustythewind @wayward-winchester67 @angelwithashotgunandtrenchcoat @trashblackrainbow @deeutdutdutdoh @destiel-is--endgame @destiel-shipper-11 @larrem88 @charmedbycastiel @ran-savant @little-crazy-misha-minion @samoosetheshipper

@shadows-and-padlocked-hearts @mishtho @dancingtuesdaymorning @nerditoutwithbooks @mikennacac73 @justmeand-myinsight @idontwantpeopletoknowmyname @tenshilover20 @teddybeardoctor @pepevons @helevetica @isthisdestiel @dizzypinwheel @jawnlockwinchester @horsez2 @qanelyytha @imjustkipping

If you want to be added or removed from this list just let me know.

If you want to read the previous metas From season 10, these are the links...

LI, LII, LIII and LIV

Buenos Aires March 31 2020 10:03 PM

[illgiveyoumygavichal]

I don’t know why I wrote this, or why I wrote so much. Gomen.

So I just re-watched The Scene while I’m actually awake and coherent and I blasted the volume with my headset so I could hear every little thing and while it’s pretty clear they were filmed separately(?) from a writers point of view, the dialogue and reactions made sense --- not the ‘all gays go to super-hell’-bit... there’s no excusing that, but it was foreshadowed a long while ago (hence why I’m not 100% surprised that The Scene even happened since it was obvious that the character in questions’ ‘moment of true happiness’ would be a confession the moment the deal was made. I still think they’ll end on a ‘reset the universe back to point A to prevent point B’-type to just be like... well you already know the story so even if it’s ending, it’s not really ending but going on and on and on in a paradox because the whole show is convoluted what with the time-travel and parallel universes and other dimensions and shit. 

Not my point, I started rambling. Uh... Click the ‘read more’ for more? Gods, I can’t believe this is what spurred a real-ass post from me...

If anyone wants to discuss this, please do. But don’t be an ass about it please, I’m just here to have a discussion. 

Anyways, Jensen’s acting was flat. Like he wasn’t into the script at all. Like he totally believed that this went completely against the character he’s supposed to play - and he’s not really wrong, but you can see this a lot in movies and tv shows where the actors disagree with the writing and direction that it’s reflected in their performance. 

While this scene in particular seems like the actors were shot apart and chopped together, I think they were both very much in the know about the script. Misha gave it his all, you could hear him thanking the audience for watching his performance. His in-character confession was just as much his ‘thank you’ and it shows - but while his whole speech was likely one good take (probably after a long day, especially since every one working on this show had to work around covid-19 safety procedures) Jensen’s was probably multiple takes, with the good shots being chosen and patched together to make him seem a least a little like he isn’t completely refusing the script. 

As for the characters and the writing, it worked. Now I’m no expert in homosexual relationships but I’m very queer, as is my s/o, so I’m gonna try to not stick my foot in my mouth for this part. While homophobia is in no way acceptable, it’s understandable why Jensen isn’t into this particular pairing: The fandom shoved it down his throat, down the producers throats, until it was made canon. One thing that sucks the life out of creators is self-entitled fans. Yeah it’s nice to show your support and love of a content, but you shouldn’t be shoving your ideals for the content into the creators faces. It’s just uncouth.

Rambled again, sorry. 

Cas’ speech was wonderful. He clarified his love for Dean by leveling his love for everyone and everything first, and then showing how his love for Dean was stronger than those - but stronger because of them. This way, in describing the care and love he has, Cas can be sure Dean understands that his love for him is a different kind of love without worrying about Dean being confused about his meaning when he’s already gone. Sorry I’m trying to figure out how to word this. 

An example for clarification: A tells B they love them, but then they leave/die/whatever, and without clarification B might assume that it was a familial/platonic love - like saying you love your parent/sibling/friend. However, if A prefaced with a confirmation of familial love to B and then confessed their love for B, there is a better chance for understanding. 

And from the way we see Dean shut down after the Empty takes Cas and Billie, completely ignoring Sam’s calls (which, after what he just learned from Billie as well as knowing Sam is in pain from losing Eileen - and everyone - is abnormal) in addition to not really moving from where he was thrown and burying his face - while SOBBING - I think it’s safe to assume he understood Cas’ confession as something more than family. Like, we’ve seen them ‘lose’ Cas before and Dean wasn’t as broken up about it as he was this time. Sure he was angry, but he’s always angry - but this time he isn’t angry. 

Additionally, Dean didn’t outright reject Cas. He said “Don’t do this, Cas.” Which could easily be interpreted as ‘how fucking dare you confess to me when you’re about to die, thus immediately breaking my heart’ - which, if you’re really reaching for straws, could be a ‘wow, so my feelings would’ve been reciprocated if I actually had the balls to confess - not that it matters because apparently if I did confess you’d literally be so happy you would die.’ Ultimately, it’s a lose-lose-lose situation. 

To add on to Sam’s phone call, when we see him hang up after leaving the silo we could assume he first tried calling Cas and then called Dean meaning that since Cas was taken, Dean sat there disassociating and trying to figure out wtf just happened when Sam snapped him back to reality - thus interrupting his compartmentalizing and forcing him to feel, because Dean hates feelings. 

And yeah, the whole ‘Bury your Gays’ trope is shitty, but this is Supernatural: a horror-drama tv show where People Die and unfortunately, because most of the characters that die are side characters, the queers die mostly because they’re side characters and side characters are expendable. It fucking sucks, especially now that they are using LGBTQIA+ to boost their views at the END OF THE SERIES. Honestly, would be more acceptable to have it be a thing a few seasons ago, but they also have to work with the actors to even produce the show - and if the staring actor isn’t comfortable with certain themes, they can’t really force him without the show crashing and burning - which, in good old capitalism, a little homophobia to conserve their money-maker is normal. I don’t even know where I’m going with this. 

Luckily, this is Supernatural, and Supernatural doesn’t like leaving people dead - even at the end of the series. There are a few possible endings they could go with, but through speculation there could be more without noticing.

A) Chuck taunts the brothers, probably tortures them more just ‘cause, before simply ending everything.

B) Amara somehow takes over Chuck - or they properly combine and suddenly remember why they made everything. 

C) The boys give up and accept their fate.

D) The boys don’t give up and go out fighting. 

E) Somehow they negotiate with Chuck and exchange themselves for everyone else. 

F) Chuck hits the reset button, and this time he’ll make the boys more controllable. 

G) The boys kill Chuck, but in the sudden power imbalance, the universe eliminates all supernatural beings and just create a mundane world - whether the boys are part of the world or not is up in the air. 

H) Everyone is in the Empty now cause there’s no place left to exist but the Empty - since for some reason the Empty is more limbo than purgatory, but it makes sense. 

I) The Empty is piiiiiissssssssed that Chuck suddenly made everything stop existing and then eats Chuck because Chuck will be loud making new things - or because Chuck will be a threat to the Empty... or he just wont let the Empty sleep. God what even is the Empty?  Like, really, shouldn’t they be all-powerful - moreso than Chuck - since, without God there is nothing and without anything existing wouldn’t everything/nothing be Empty?

J) Empty eats Chuck 2020 - and the show ends just like that. 

K) Chuck, to prevent being eaten by the Empty, brings everything back to put some cushion between him and the Empty - or gets the boys to kill the Empty in exchange for their world back sans God. (Their own little playpen that they can do whatever they want with.) 

L) Dean kills Chuck with Death’s Scythe. 

M) Sam and Dean somehow kill Chuck and in the power imbalance, replace him. (I’ve had this theory - unspoken though - before where Dean becomes head honcho in Heaven or Hell and Sam takes the other spot, no luck on this one yet.) 

Either way, two episodes left to find out what the fuck is going on. 

Next episode will be dramatic and sad as Sam, Dean and Jack reconvene - probably with Sam and Jack stopping Dean from giving up. Also, Jack will probably get dusted too - I’m surprised he didn’t go at the end there. 

HONESTLY by the title of the episode, I think option K if more likely... but Chuck will probably be like... yeah here take it idgaf anymore. The road home will be very epilogue-y with flashbacks and shit to tie everything up and be all ‘They lived happily ever after.’ 

I don’t even know anymore... why can I write this much over a stupid show but not for like... a book or something. 

[bre95611]

Super High Me 15x17 rewatch meta/spec/thoughts thing pt 2!

I’m back!!

Okay, so the structure of this one is. All of these individual stories are taking place at one time. Super cool. I love all the non-linear stuff they do with episodes. like the real Tarantino-y one. that Speight directed? I think? The super gay one with the love confession.

Worlds again (Amara to Chuck: You’ve been ending worlds.) Chuck saved the best for last

So what, Chuck is trying to do a Big Bang round 2?

OKAY so interesting thing here that I said I was gonna talk about, okay, so since Dean didn’t have any sort of actual feelings for Amara, its more compulsion than attraction, I assumed this was a Chuck thing. But lo and behold, Chuck says he didn’t write it. I don’t know what to think here. The most prevailing thought I’ve seen is that love is the essence of free will, chuck doesn’t write love, stuff like that. And I love the sentiment, but....writer’s lie. This scene came across to me as Chuck manipulating Amara. Dean argued that Chuck was writing Amara’s story too in Gimme Shelter. it was a factor in her decision to help the Winchesters. This is showing Amara that’s not true. It’s also increasing her emotions towards Dean, because she thinks its a true attraction on Dean’s part, not her brother arranging a marriage. Chuck has potentially written romances before, or at least smut. Dean says he’s full frontal in the books, talks about writing Sam to go fuck Lilith. The whole Sam and Ruby thing. So, I dunno. This reads as not true to me.

Amara again saying someone needs to protect the world.

Failure....Dean’s young ghost said Dean failed.

Who the fuck are these angels? are they the ones Jack made?

God Amara’s shoes are INCREDIBLE.

I wish they had made Chuck evil a long time ago, cause Rob as a villain is the greatest thing ever.

Chuck THRIVES off the drama. That entire thing with Amara right there...it was just the ultimate self-insert.

Jensen;s acting is so detailed, his facial expression, you know he doesn’t really hate Jack! He’s so broken, and he’s still trying so fucking hard.

I kinda hate that Dean asks if she’s Eve. like....you....you literally killed eve while she was in the form of your mother???? how do you forget that? and then I remember that was 9 YEARS AGO

Also this is such a blatant Destiel mirror, I’m losing my mind. Adam the first human ever in a green shirt, Dean Humanity Winchester, “Seraph” -ina the angel with black hair wearing pink and blue.....I’m shook. I just....Its canon. Destiel is so blatantly canon i’m laughing

ALright, so more generational trauma type things. Adam and Eve get kicked out of the garden “eh we deserved it, but then he moved onto our sons”. Chuck has a thing with brothers. Parents hellbent to protect chasing down the divine in an endless circle of rage, a new same story every generation

She gives me such Endverse!Cas vibes, I love her.

Does anyone know anything about crystals/rocks? I wonder if anyof those have any sort of significance.

I don’t feel good about Sera saying its “meant to be” we don’t fuck around with fate here

Interesting. So I just rewatched Last Call cause its probably my favorite episode ever, and Dean killed Lee...just like that with a pool stick. Because of the insinuated past relationship Dean and Lee(similar in look to Cas, but polar opposites in character) had, and now this obvious Destiel mirror, doing the same thing.... And like. Dean stabbing Cas kinda similar to that is a call back to their first meeting....What does it meeeeeeeean?

World again with Jack and Dean convo in Impala. Dean says Jack shouldn’t have had to hear what he said, need to look up quote, can’t remember wording, but he basically doesn’t want to drop his baggage on Jack, and honestly? Not great, but its something, and I appreciate that. I’m sure some people felt this came off as super fake, Dean telling Jack what he needed to hear to have him do it, and to an extent he does, parroting back some stuff Billie had said. But I think that feeling of not wanting Jack to carry the weight of Dean’s expectations, shortcomings, failures, all that, is defying John Winchester. All John ever did was make his problems Dean’s problems, and Dean is trying so hard.

What text did Dean get?

I have a lot of feelings about this. Dean had kinda managed to push past the divine orchestration of his birth. Like, did yall forget that bit of trauma? His parents were paired up by the angels. To recreate Michael and Lucifer (BROTHERS, CHUCK OBSESSION) and their perfect vessels. And Dean has had his bodily autonomy taken away quite a bit too, something I was less coherent about earlier. Most recently the possession of Michael, before that he was a demon, before that there was the influence of the Mark of Cain, and even back to when he was a child with John, Dean had no choice. He was whatever John wanted him to be. A good soldier. He was just breaking through and healing with a lot of the stuff with his dad. He’d pretty well fully dealt with that bit of his trauma. and then all this. Fuck.

Alright, Sam’s turn.

God Sassy Cassie “Maybe Dean was right” “Yeah maybe” *full body eye roll*

God, Sam’s instincts are so good. He’s been calling Chuck’s interference over and over all season.

Such a sweet moment with them and the “Sam you will not be dramatic and kill yourself to summon Death like Dean thinks is just a fun little thing to do now and again” “Cas don’t worry I’m not a chaotic disaster like him, I will look for a book and it will have the answers”

Surely there is so importance to all the items they pulled out of these chests when looking for the key right?

I know everyone’s been talking about this scene and the cup? I don’t get the importance, but I’m intrigued.

So Cas is staying behind for Dean and Sam is going....cough cough

THIS PErFECT SAM AN CAS MOMENT BROTP

Cause of course the door in the bunker leads directly to the W section.......

I really love how this scene was shot

I’m so happy they were able to bring Rachel Miner back!! I really love her

The Shadow says “The empty was supposed to be my domain, not even god had sway, but lies! sweet lies!”........So go does have power in the empty? Explains how lilith came back. And cas all those times. I need to go back and rewatch destiny’s child. I can’t remember a single bit of the scene where cas goes to the empty. I probably should.

Realities, demensions, graves.

How far back has this....alliance? gone between Death and the Shadow? All a chess game.

SAM smoother than a motherfucker

Okay, so the rest of the episode is going in another post. Jesus. I’ve been doing this for like....3 hours. hhahah

[mittensmorgul]

Did Chuck only recently make it so that a soul that's been to hell can't go to heaven, or is that how it's always been and he made an exception for John and Bobby?

We just don’t know. Isn’t that incredible?

The show has been doing this repeatedly since 14.20, pushing us to question what’s real and what’s Chuck’s whim now.

Just like we saw Jack’s “STOP LYING!” and then everyone stopped lying, I think we’re supposed to recognize this as the sort of thing Chuck has done on a lot of levels of the story, for years. And oftentimes, his explanations for things sound really contrived, you know? They literally lampshaded that fact in 15.02:

Dean: Kevin's not even supposed to be in Hell, okay, so when this is all over, we're gonna send him up in Heaven where he belongs.Belphegor: Yeah, yeah, not gonna happen. Souls cast down to Hell? That's the end of it. Heaven can't take 'em.Sam: That's not true. Our dad made it to Heaven after he was in Hell.Dean: And Bobby Singer.Belphegor: So God made an exception. Didn't He used to like you two? Just saying. Without the big guy... them's the rules.

DIDN’T HE USED TO LIKE YOU TWO?

He did this back at the end of s11, a lot... changed the rules to suit his narrative. Basically everything having to do with him and Amara-- “she’s blocking me,” when we actively saw her searching for him and being unable to find him; telling Dean he should’ve killed her when he had the chance, and then admitting she can’t be killed; telling them he’s been “hands off” forever and then proving everything was his doing... I mean... he’s not a reliable narrator. :’D

Creating the Equalizer gun was pretty much the ultimate example of this-- a weapon that shoots plot devices.

So... I think the real question isn’t whether or not he made up that rule on the spot and it became reality, but what these bits of information tell us about Chuck and his motives and his story overall, you know? 

All of this, I believe, is designed to put us into Dean’s headspace here regarding Chuck, and Dean’s own feelings about the entire world basically being a game rigged against him. We-the-audience are supposed to share Dean’s uncertainty, his total emotional unbalancing at the revelation that Chuck has been so specifically meddling in their lives from the very start. And all these little reminders of how... plastic Chuck’s reality is.

heh, this reminds me of long meta I wrote earlier in the season, right after 15.04: https://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/188943278490/plastic-fantastic

The very next episode gave us a plastic, and yet entirely self-aware of the fact, plot device in Lilith, as Sam and Dean began to realize just how much Chuck might still be meddling in their lives. And then we saw a series of what appear to be “wins” with Eileen’s return, but the episode is bookended by questioning whether or not any of it is actually part of Chuck’s story.

Dean’s expressing his doubts out loud, pretty consistently, but Sam... he keeps stating his feelings on the matter while Jared’s acting is showing us that Sam is gradually growing more uncertain. Since 15.08 left us with Sam having been directly lured into Chuck’s presence (a blatant manipulation by Chuck! Was Sue ever real at all in this episode, or was it always Chuck pretending to be her?). On the other side of things, we have Dean and Cas being told they need to return to Purgatory for a “Leviathan Blossom,” which is something we’ve never heard of before, after *we* have seen Chuck repeatedly reference Purgatory over the season so far. Benny was in one of Sam’s visions sent by Chuck, he specifically referenced the Leviathans when trying to get Becky to agree with him that people like the monsters in his stories, and in 14.20, the Leviathans were the FIRST thing he referenced when telling TFW just how “hands off” he’s been by basically saying it was THEIR idea to create all these terrible scenarios, and not HIS idea and actions entirely. 

Chuck: Listen, you guys know me. I'm hands-off. I built the sandbox -- you play in it. You want to fight Leviathans? Cool. You got that. You want to go up against -- what was it? -- the "British Men of Letters"? Okay. Little weak, but okay. But when things get really bad, like the Apocalypse or the Other Apocalypse, that's when I have to step in.

Chuck may have built the sandbox, but he keeps throwing garbage into it while everyone else is just trying to have a bit of a toes in the sand time, you know? And he consistently invents stuff to both throw into the box AND explain it away and deflect culpability from himself.

And the entire point of the season is sifting through the sand to find the truth.

[bluephoenixdruidicprincess]

Supernatural 15x17, Unity -- Review

Holy crapola! What is this!? Am I actually doing a review?! Why yes, yes I am. Because while this episode wasn’t extraordinary by any means, it did grab my attention and I was pretty much enjoying myself all the way through. It had my wheels turning and I don’t think I’ve felt that way probably since the episode with the return of Michael and Adam back in the first half of the season. You know, things were actually happening in this episode and there was some nice meta commentary. 

As always, there will probably be spoilers. Definitely, if you have not seen this episode but plan to and don’t want to be spoiled, skip this. Do not hold me responsible for your bad decisions. 

So this episode is aptly named Unity and I kind of dig the name of it because the theme of “unity” was explored in quite a few different ways. The most obvious way being Chuck and Amara combining into one entity. But there were other ways too. You all know, I’m a sucker for parallels, particularly parallels in opposite directions. In this episode, we have Chuck and Amara at odds with each other, Amara is seeking unity and balance with Chuck but ultimately ends up being duped by Chuck and the Winchesters and while achieving that unity and balance, it’s not really what she wanted. And then the parallel being Team Free Will 2.0 split in half, clearly not on the same page. Dean and Jack are all about Operation Sacrifice and Sam and Cas are all about Operation Find A Better Way. And while Chuck and Amara did achieve their unity although through very toxic means, TFW2.0 didn’t quite manage their unity but I think after the revelations of this episode, they now have some things to come to terms with that will give them true Unity in the end to defeat Chuck. 

Also another parallel that I was just thinking about randomly is we have Dean willing to sacrifice Jack in order to kill Jack simply because Dean feels “Chuck has to die.” Dean needs Chuck to die and he’s completely unwilling to listen to reason or contemplate consequences of that decision in much the same way that Sam did in regards to killing Lillith way back in Season 4. You know, the action that fired up the apocalypse. Sam felt much the same way as Dean did. H NEEDED Lillith to die and he couldn’t let himself think of the consequences so I think there’s a part of Sam that fights so against Dean on this particular issue because he’s been there before on the other side. He committed an action that he deeply regretted. He didn’t know that killing Lillith would break the final seal and start the apocalypse but nonetheless it happened and he still holds himself accountable for that. So to a certain extent, he recognizes this in Dean as well. True, killing Chuck would solve a lot of their problems but ultimately there will be consequences to it and Sam doesn’t want to accept those consequences and he doesn’t want Dean to have that burden either. Because even though Dean says he’s fine with the consequences that will come with Chuck dying and Billie becoming the new God after the fog of his rage has cleared, and he sees how that action has hurt the people around him and maybe even he himself will feel that hurt, he might feel differently about it and regret his actions. 

Also, on the terms of Billie, I remember last season when Billie initiated her little “lock Michael in a box” idea, I was saying we need to be thinking about the concept of Billie being an unreliable nararator and said maybe we should be less trusting of Billie when we don’t have any way of verifying the facts. And I got so much criticism for saying that. “Blue, Billie is a queen, she on the hero’s side”. “Blue, why you hating on Billie?” When the truth was, I have never hated on Billie. I have always liked Billie. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t recognize when you shouldn’t trust a character. Billie has never been nor ever will be on “the hero’s side.” She is on her own side. Sometimes her side in the past has correlated with the Winchesters but that does not make her a friend or an ally that should be trusted. Billie has access to knowledge that no one else can verify so therefore we should take anything she tells our heroes with a grain of salt. And especially with the revelations of this episode. I’m not hating hating on her and begrudging her in any way, Billie is a total badass queen, she saw her opportunity and she took it, I have nothing but respect for her. She is absolutely a queen in every respect. But if we’re going to root for our heroes, we first have to understand which of our heroes’ allies are trustworthy and which ones aren’t. Its not a bad thing that your ally isn’t trustworthy, you just need to understand they’re not trustworthy and always be thinking about that. 

But on the flipside of this whole Billie thing, maybe she is trustworthy. The episode was kind of unclear about how much Chuck was poking and prodding our heroes. Maybe Jack going right up to Amara and Chuck was never going to work and Chuck and Amara becoming one was just another step in the book. Maybe Sam stopping Dean was another step in the book leading to Chuck’s demise. Prophecy mechanics are really difficult to gauge sometimes, we’ll just have to see what pops up in the coming episodes. 

Also, Chuck revealing that our Cas is the only version of Cas to truly rebel is just really interesting to think about. And it kind of makes sense now why Chuck kept on bringing Cas back or why this world was his “favorite tv show”. He thought the Winchesters were what was making it interesting but in reality, the Winchesters didn’t truly start going against the grain, truly rebelling until after Cas came into their lives, after he rebelled that sparked essentially a chain reaction for the Winchesters to constantly rebel. Cas is not responsible for the idea of the Winchesters rebelling and essentially making Chuck work for his writing but Cas essentially was giving them the faith and willpower to rebel. So none of this would really have been possible without Cas so I think that’s really interesting to think about. The character that wasn’t supposed to mean that much is basically what made this tv show Chuck kind of sort of liked into something he loved and was deeply invested in. And honestly, I can relate. Seasons 1-3 of Supernatural, I liked but I didn’t love. I could enjoy it but it wasn’t something I was deeply invested in until season 4 when Cas got introduced and after his arrival, the story just became so much more interesting to me. 

Another thing that I really enjoyed about this episode was Amara taking Chuck out to try and get him to really appreciate his creations more. She kind of reminded me of a beta reader trying to convince their writer that they’re missing the point of their story and trying to show that writer all the beauty in their writing that they’re not just paying attention to. 

Now, was there anything I disliked about the episode? Yes, Chuck. I’ve said this before but I just have not been loving what they’ve been doing with Chuck as a character. He’s just so one note and boring. While SPN has had its share of one note villains, for the most part, they were all still fun to watch. Chuck is one note and boring and he’s no fun to watch. But honestly, that’s really the only complaint I have with this episode. It wasn’t spectacular but I was invested in what was going on and I enjoyed myself. I’d give this episode a solid B. 

[cagirl9270]

I’m posting this now before Supernatural actually ends. It’s just something I thought of. I don’t want it to end at all, but this theory came to me and I went with it.

Chuck is not God as he claims to be, and thank heavens for that because he would make a dreadful one. I have been thinking about the possible outcome of the end of Supernatural for sometime now, and with Covid-19 stunting production and just about everything else on the planet—hey we never wanted Supernatural to end anyway, so here we have it, not ending—I have had time to ponder things.

Chuck is not God, he is, however, a genius. He is a talented writer who has studied the King James Version of the Bible, along with every kind of monster lore there is because it fascinated him. He has loved making up wonderful and terrifying stories since he was young. His father was even, at one time concerned for his well-being and pushed him to play sports. He hated it, but did, as an obedient son. When his father wasn’t around, he continued to write as it was his true passion. He felt it was his gift. He felt in charge. He felt like a god. He could control every circumstance. He could control the weather if he wanted to. He could create a world with only monsters. He did. He decided there was such a place, but he didn’t have a name for it yet, so he called it The Monster World, just so he wouldn’t forget it was there. Soon Chuck created his own earth, with his own people. Of course this earth was just like this one. It was what he knew, what he studied, but then he added some elements into his earth that ours didn’t have.

Chuck brought demons into his world, vampires, wendigos, shape shifters, ghosts, and every other thing that goes bump in the night. Chuck made them real on his earth. Now his earth needed someone who would be willing to fight these things. He didn’t want Super heroes. That had been done to death. He wanted humans. He wanted humans that would fight for their lives for the sake of the human race. He wanted that because maybe his own world lacked that. So Chuck created two young men. He decided they were brothers, but that wasn’t enough. Just being brothers fighting against monsters for the sake of humanity? People would want to understand why! So being a god, Chuck created the Winchester family, a family that on the surface would seem suburban. Husband, Wife, and two children. But it would go so much deeper than that. And all along, Chuck knew how the story was going to play out.

Now we all know how it starts, so I will skip ahead a bit. But instead of the books being kind of underground and a cult classic, they are big like the show, and for the sake of this commentary, the show itself doesn’t exist only the books do, Chuck is increasingly aware of his power to create. He is getting a little in over his head in the season 3 area which would be closing in around book 60 if we assume each episode represents a book. So now he has reached wild fame (think Harry Potter/Game of Thrones) and maybe there are talks of TV or movies. But Chuck doesn’t want that. Remember how elusive he actually was in the show. So he sends Dean to hell believing that would end the series. The producers often left on a note that would close the series, in case they were not picked up in the fall. When the books were not enough the fans demanded more.

Now in season 4, Chuck the Prophet was writing again. He was called a prophet because he didn’t want the boys to know he was God. That can still be viable here as Chuck is becoming so attached to his books and therefore more convinced that he is a god. This is when Sam and Dean become self aware for the first time. It scared Chuck. In fact, it skewed his reality so much that he decided to end it for good because it was too much. He decided that this time Sam would say yes to Lucifer, he would go to hell and Dean would finally get that life he deserved. The End? Do you remember that Chuck ended it with a question mark? He did.

Once again, the writers/producers left it open should the show come back. Chuck wasn’t ready to give up his world either. It was so perfectly created and Sam and Dean were his favorites. He brought them back by popular demand but to keep reality from blending with fantasy he left Sam without a soul, threw in Mother Eve, so that the boys would forget they were real.

Then the leviathan came and a lot of Dick jokes happened because Chuck was having fun screwing with everyone. And I believe he met Becky in real life and that they dated, and that she dumped him because he was crazy, and by this time he was an alcoholic. She also couldn’t help but notice how strangely and oddly connected he was to Sam and Dean. Don’t get her wrong, she loved the boys too, but they were fictional. And having her put a spell on Sam in one of the books just so he would marry her, was a low blow she thought.

By the eight season or mid 100s at this point of writing, we are looking at the trials and throwing the biggest massive shit the boys have ever seen; including a Knight from Hell. When they meet the scribe of god, he's small, old, and more crazy old man than an angel who scribed god’s word. But let’s look a little closer at Metatron for a minute: when we meet him he speaks of writing and storytelling and how it is like being a god. I am not sure if Metatron/Marv is a real person to Chuck, perhaps a past teacher or crazy uncle. Whoever he is, he seems to be someone Chuck trusts. Think of season 11 when Chuck is writing and his book is a suicide note.

This brings me to Amara. I think she may be real too. Marv brings Amara to Chuck (not Dean—though in the series/books it is, of course, otherwise) In this version, Marv brings Amara to Chuck to save him because he tried to kill himself because he was going crazy. He could no longer tell what was real. He was having full blown conversations with Sam and Dean, as well as Lucifer and Castiel. He couldn’t take it anymore. His world was slowly dying. Remember at the climax of 11, when Amara injured Chuck and the world started to die? It was her that ultimately saved Chuck.

Since Marv was encouraging Chuck to write, Amara told him to stay out of Chuck’s life that he was poisoning his mind. Amara (in the series) killed Metatron—painfully—so Chuck might see his banishment as death.

All is right with the world, except it felt unfinished. Chuck had to complete his story. The boys were not together. They needed unity. They needed family. They needed, their mother. But it’s never that easy. Chuck decided to keep writing; despite his sister’s wishes. She left him again. He did what he did best. He wrote and gave the fans more. Of course, The Men of Letters was not his best work, but he had bigger plans. He just needed the boys to be distracted. If they were distracted, it meant they were quiet. They didn’t talk to him. They were busy. They had work to do.

Then, Chuck got careless and decided to make a baby. It had been done so many times before. But this time it would be different. Satan’s baby was not going to be good or evil. It was up to the world, to the child, and well, as luck would have it Chuck! He was god after all.

As Chuck continued on this path, he grew deeper and deeper into his psychosis of him being a god. He began creating alternate universes all containing Sam’s and Dean’s. Sometimes everything was backwards, sometimes it was all yellow, and sometimes they were squirrels, but his first Sam and Dean, our Sam and Dean remained his favorite.

Chuck medicated himself with alcohol, with prescription drugs, anything he could think of to silence his characters. They were so loud and demanded his attention. He couldn’t make them handle their world alone anymore. “Free will” as he called it, much like what he learned in the Bible wasn’t working. His characters demanded answers. Chuck was losing the battle worse than ever before. He reached out to Amara, but she couldn’t handle his mental issues anymore and begged him to check himself into a hospital.

Desperate for reality and maybe even validation, Chuck reaches out to Becky only to find out she is married and has children. This is where it finally unravels and he loses all control. Chuck writes Becky off in the most literal sense. He obliterates her in his story along with her family. They are all gone. The story continues to get scarier and bloodier with him at the helm as a vengeful and wrathful god. Sam and Dean are warriors though and they fight valiantly. They will no longer have their lives played out or dictated by Chuck. It is by their rules.

In the end, the bitter end, Chuck is found alone in his hospital room with words written all over the walls, he is on the floor and writing furiously. Amara is being escorted in by Dr. John Winchester and Dr. Mary Campbell. Perhaps, Cas is a nurse, Sam and Dean are brothers but they are patients, and part of the group therapy sessions. Each of the supporting characters playing some role in his reality, that is now a mental institution with us not knowing how long he has been there or Chuck himself. The last thing he writes, “Carry on…”

[nerdylittleshit]

Thoughts about Spn 14x10

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand we are back with an episode that, as usual, gave me a lot of feelings. I admit that after a strong first half of the season I wasn’t the biggest fan of the midseason-finale, because the twist didn’t work for me. Mostly because we had all saw it coming and because it felt as we just went back to the status quo of this season’s beginning. And I was really curious as to how they would defeat Michael this time, because the spoilers for the upcoming episodes already told us that Dean would be back, and I admit I really liked how Yockey tied the story up momentarily, and the direction the story went, giving us something new to feel anxious about. Yeah.

But, as always, let’s have a closer look.

Rocky’s Bar

Obviously we have to talk about Rocky’s bar, about Dean’s dream (the dream), and what it tells us about Dean. I’m not sure how much of it is actually made up by Dean, and what is made up by Michael. Sam reminded us of the time Gadreel had trapped him inside in his mind, distracting him with a case. Which makes it sound like the angel chooses the fantasy. And in a way this makes sense. We see Dean owning a bar, working together with Pamela, and at the end of the day we still saves the day and kills vampires. Michael gives him something that is his (and it’s a bar of all things, for someone who once described himself as a “functional alcoholic”), there is a beautiful woman, and Dean can still be the hero, even though we don’t see him actually hunting. And yet this fantasy feels wrong. It feels like someone took a very superficial look at Dean’s life, especially say season 4 and 5, and created something out of it. Does Dean really wants to own a bar? Where is his family in this fantasy? Why are Sam and Cas mentioned but never show up? Where is Jack? Or Mary? And if Pamela can return from the dead, where is Bobby or Ellen or Jo or Charlie?

And speaking about Pamela. It is interesting that of all the people he lost it is her who returns. And Dean is completely unaware that she died in reality. This isn’t about her loss. It is what she represents. She is hot, she can defend herself, appreciates the finer things in life (sex, alcohol, probably good music and fast cars). And yet… nothing happens between the two. And this is where we are reminded that even if it is Michael who choose this distraction it is still Dean’s mind and Dean’s rules. It is Dean who chooses to give her a boyfriend, to make her unavailable. And this isn’t about her being hard to get (besides Dean always accepted it when a woman said “no”). Because she even tells him that he doesn’t really want her, that he only wants to flirt. While asking him why he only wants what he can’t have. And “Searchin’ For a Rainbow” plays in the back. Ahem. And on top of that Pamela of course is a psychic, somebody Dean can’t lie to.

So Dean is all alone with a beautiful woman and… nothing happens. And this isn’t about Pamela having a boyfriend. It is about Dean, who doesn’t really want her. He wants something or rather someone, he can’t have. And the episode asks loudly who that could be.

Gnats & Gods

So, let’s talk about Michael. First of all, Jensen played him so so well. I think the longer the character stays around the more comfortable Jensen gets playing him and it really shows. Second, did Michael really use his powers to change his outfit? Is he that extra? Yes, of course he is.

So, as it turns out this Michael has as much daddy issues as the Michael of our world had. But unlike our Michael this Michael was able to play his part, to bring down the apocalypse and kill Lucifer and… nothing happened. God didn’t show up. He didn’t care. Just as he didn’t care in our world when the apocalypse almost happened. And yet it must have hurt Michael to find out through Dean’s memories that Chuck did show up in our world. But it gives Michael at least some satisfaction that he at least saw his old man and that he realized that Chuck is a writer, and all the worlds he creates are just failed drafts he abandons once he realizes they don’t work out. I wonder if there is some truth to it, if Chuck indeed keeps on creating, world after world, draft after draft, never satisfied with his work. It also confirms that there is only one God (and probably only one Amara), but they are multiple versions of the archangels (and everyone else).

Michael plans to burn down every world his father has created, to catch up on him, and to ultimately kill God. I’m not sure if the CW goes as far as to kill God, or if it is even possible. I’m more interested in what that means for Dean, as Michael is his Dark Mirror and we know John will temporarily return. Does Dean have to kill his own father? Or rather the toxic parts of their relationship in order to find closure?

My Body is a Cage (but my mind holds the key)

Michael tries to create a rift between Dean and his family by confronting everyone with their greatest fear. He tells Jack that he is unwanted, just another burden for Dean, nothing more than a responsibility, and that Dean never truly loved or cared about him.

He tells Cas that Dean only tolerates him, because he thinks he owes him for rescuing him from hell. (Dean of course remembers the exact words Cas used – “gripped you tight and raised you from perdition” – though I’m pretty sure that Cas-voice was just Jensen making fun of Misha). But since then Cas has made one mistake after another.

And finally Sam is confronted with the fear that he will always let down Dean, that he will always leave, and that perhaps his brother was happier without him, when he was hunting alone with his father. Which I think will be important again, once John returns.

Even though we know Michael is lying, I think what he said to each member of Dean’s family will have an effect on them. They will question themselves and their relationship to Dean. But I also think it will help each of them on their road to self-discovery, to realize that Michael was wrong and that they have value.

I want to talk about Cas especially, because of reasons. Because there is of course some truth to Michael’s words, otherwise it wouldn’t hurt as much. Cas has made a lot of mistakes in the past, and he still feels guilty because of it. The question is however why he is still a part of Dean’s life, of Dean’s family then? Only because Dean tolerates him, because he thinks he owes Cas? Or could it be because his feelings for Cas run a bit deeper. First the episode tells us that Pamela (and women like her) is not what Dean wants. Now it asks why Cas is still around. And the lines “We need you ” and “I remember. I remember everything” are callbacks to two heavy Destiel episodes, 8x17 and 7x17 respectively.

Like I mentioned before I like how the episode tied up the Michael storyline for now. Dean finds a loophole – in his mind Michael has no powers and he can trap him. Dean’s body literally becomes the cage. He has trapped his own Dark Mirror inside himself. Which of course isn’t healthy and only a temporarily solution, because after all doors are made to be opened. But it is also interesting because even before Michael Dean’s body has been a cage (it’s no wonder I immediately associated this song with Dean). Dean is used to bury down traumatic events, and this episode alone reminded us how much trauma he had to endure. Could it be that if one door is opened others are opened as well? That when (not if) Michael escapes the cage Dean not only has to face his Dark Mirror but all the traumas of his life as well?

Which of course brings us to Death. Or Billie. First of all I wonder why only Sam and Michael were able to see the reaper. Reapers are angels (according to Bucklemming mythology), so Cas should have seen her. I’m not sure about Jack though, because he is half-human. There might be some significance in the fact that not everyone could see the reaper.

Then we learned that will there is only one God, there is more than one Death. Michael mentions that he locked away the Death of his world and enslaved the reapers, which of course made him the Master of Death in his world. It is possible he has the same plan for our world and why Billie intervenes.

Billie of course warned Dean about walking between worlds and we learn that such a huge event like AU!Michael entering our world can result in destinies being rewritten, in this case Dean’s. We are confronted with a case of Supernatural: Infinity War, where only one outcome doesn’t result in the destruction of… well everything. The big question of course is what is written in the notebook Billie gave Dean? What does he has to do to stop Michael? My first thought was that perhaps he has to sacrifice himself, destroy the vessel, while Michael is still locked inside himself. Which is an idea I don’t really like because I prefer my Dean happy and alive.

So now I am worried about Dean, worried about Cas and his deal with the Empty, and worried about Jack, because of course he used his powers and therefore burned off a bit of his soul.

One short mention of the AU hunters: really liked the representation of community, how they without questioning helped the Winchesters. They might not be family, but they can rely on each other.

And that’s it. Until next week <3

[ananke-xiii]

Form and Void... and Hands and Hearts.

Intro.

Part II

Part III

I really like "Form od Void" from S11. It's one of my favorite episodes and it enrages me to no end that it was Andrew Dabb who wrote it. Sometimes a girl just wants to be a hater. But I don't have it in me :(.

Talking about H-A-T-E...

The episodes starts with this word:

H-a-t-e. It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-o-v-e. You see these fingers? They're arched. These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends -- the hand of love. Now watch, and I'll show you the story of life. These fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warrin' and a-tuggin', one against the other. Now watch 'em. Old brother left hand -- left hand hates a-fightin'. And it looks like love's a goner. But wait a minute. Wait a minute. Hot dog! Love's a-winnin'. Yes, siree. It's love that won. And old left-hand hate is down for the count.

This little monologue here is taken from "The Night of the Hunter" by Charles Laughton, his first and only movie. Laughton was bisexual and I'm telling you this because it's relevant to the usual queer stuff happening in SPN and to the point I want to make in this post.

The title of the episode, "Form and Void" , refers to the Genesis but it contains a meaningful omission. The King James version reads:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Earth is without form, and void. This changes everything because the subject of the sentence is the earth but here we're talking about "form and void" as nouns, not attributes. It's a brilliant call-back to the Genesis (therefore to the beginning of time and the beginning of SPN) and to the dichotomy of God and Amara but it's a smokescreen. The episode abounds with biblical references but there's more, at least to me. There is a secret.

If we look a little beyond Christianity the terms "form and void" are used in one of the most important sutras from Mahayana Buddhism. The Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya, "The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom", or simply called "The Heart Sutra".

I think you know where I'm going with this. The heart of the Heart Sutra is the following: "Form is emptiness (śūnyatā), emptiness is form". Sūnyatā is such a vast concept that I cannot possibly even IMAGINE to summarize it here. Just for the sake of my argument I'll say that it's often translated as emptiness, vacuity, void... without form. Very broadly (and I'll go to different kinds of Hell in different religions just talking about this stuff in relation to fucking CW Supernatural LOL) it means that ultimate reality is EMPTINESS because there is no FIXED reality, no STABLE self and EVERYTHING is connected and dependent on something else. Therefore form is emptiness and emptiness is form.

You undestand that in this light "Form and Void" is no dichotomy, thefore the episode is telling us to subvert how we view things. And it starts with that quote from "The Night of the Hunter".

Little useful background: the movie is about a fake preacher who preys on two children to get to their father's hidden treasure. He's the big wolf in disguise, a hunter wearing a preacher persona. So we need to take what he says with a grain of salt and he says a lot.

Right hand vs left hand: the preacher/hunter says that the right hand is the hand of love and the left hand is the hand of hate. This follow a well-know misconception regarding everything associated with the left as "sinister" and satanic. It's a Christian view of the world. He also says that Cain killed his brother using his left hand while the right hand has "veins that run straight to the soul of man". This man is conning people.

Notoriously, the hand that has veins that run to the heart is the left hand. This is the reason why people put their wedding rings on their left hand's...ring finger. It's an incredible old assumption that has been debunked by science but we don't care about science here. We care about symbols. And symbolically-speaking the left hand is the hand of the heart and love, not the right hand.

Now where in the hell does this idea of right and left hand? And am I crazy for seeing hints of Buddhism in a story about the Christian God? No.

The left-hand and right-hand paths are two approaches to magic and Western esotericism in general. They're called this way because people in the '800 got interested in Tantrism and translated the sanskrit terms "vāmācāra" and "dakṣiṇācāra" respectively "left-hand path" and "right-hand path". I'm not gonna go into details but I think you understood by now that the "left-hand path" was the "evil" one, the one with sex and other Very Bad Things, while the "right-hand path" was Good and Sexless and Serious and Real. In other words, the right hand represents White Magic and Controlled Sexuality while the left hand represents Black magic and Uncontrolled Sexuality. Practitioners of black magic were evil AND gay.

LOL.

Let's go back to the serial killer preacher: he says that Love wins and that it's the right hand that triumphs over the left hand. All these fingers connected to the soul that are always tugging and warring and getting entwined and hot dog! it's hot in here! But, remember folks, he's conning people. So what he says it's the opposite of what we should understand.

the preacher shouldn't be talking about this stuff in front of children. but then again, he's a predator.

Wait there's more: do you want to know if you're left-hemisphere dominant or right-hemishpere dominant? All you gotta do is to weave your fingers. If your right thumb goes over your left one then you're LEFT-dominant. If your left thumb goes over your right one you're RIGHT-dominant.

Confused much? As you know left emisphere controls controls speech, comprehension, arithmetic, and writing while right hemisphere controls creativity, spatial ability, artistic, and musical skills. It's the opposite of what we might think (because of the stupid assumption according to which left is Bad and Evil. Well, ACTUALLY left is rationality and control so the joke's on you, stupid assumption).

The dear preacher over here is right-hemisphere dominant. It may possibly mean that he's LEFT-handed and thus this image is a huge foreshadow of his "evilness" and his eventual demise. It also means that what he's saying is bullshit.

So to sum it up: in this episodes there are hunters and preachers that aren't really hunters and preachers, there are innocent children who might be seen not as innocent, left hand and right hand are subverted and they mean the opposite of what they should mean thus actually meaning what they mean, the title refers to something AND to something else and this something is very much related to hands and love and hearts...

In just one fucking scene we are told the whole episode and I H-A-T-E-that Dabb wrote it, have I mentioned it?

[douxreviews]

Supernatural - ‘Moriah’ Review

"Writers lie."

Holy wow. Pun intended.

Did they just make God the ultimate final season bad guy? Did they really? How meta is that?

Before I get into the heavy stuff, let's start with the funny. That explosion of harmful truth at the facial recognition company was classic comic Supernatural from beginning to end – from the stolen yogurt to the stapler queen to the President's deal with Crowley. After all of the recent grimdark, I most certainly did not expect such hilarity to ensue. "I'm Dean Winchester and I'm looking for the Devil's son. This badge is fake." Liar Liar on steroids.

And I totally did not expect Chuck to show up, even after the set-up of Castiel's prayer not that long ago. At first I thought this was a good thing, of course, because Chuck showing up is usually a good thing. Not this time.

Yes, we've been told over and over that Chuck is all about the storytelling. He's the one that writes paperback books in his underwear. It's funny (interesting, not funny ha-ha) how Dean, Sam and Castiel had pretty much had it with Chuck, all at the same time. Note their exasperated expressions as Chuck did everything he could to sell his new magical plot twist gun that could kill anything but would also kill the one who pulled the trigger. Everyone remember the Colt?

But what gave me chills was when they were all in the cemetery ("Swan Song," anyone?), Dean was standing over a kneeling Jack with that gun in his hand, and Chuck had this absorbed little grin on his face. As I said in the opener, holy wow. The Winchesters aren't real people to Chuck, after all. They're just characters in his favorite show. We sort of knew that, without really considering the implications. Archangel Michael told us that Chuck tosses worlds away like failed versions of a book, and he wasn't lying. How about that.

God is their showrunner. He has literally been playing with Dean and Sam their entire lives. They're chess pieces to him, and nothing more. Chuck actually offered to bring back Mary if Dean killed Jack, like, sacrifice your knight and pawn, I'll give you back your queen. When Dean refused to kill Jack and Sam (understandably) lost his temper and shot Chuck with the magic gun, that was it. His squirrels were fighting back. How dare they.

Story's over. Welcome to the End. That final scene as the darkness fell, the monsters rose from hell and the dead from their graves was set to the song, "God Was Never on Your Side." I thought this conflict over Jack would blast Dean and Castiel apart, with Sam in the middle, but instead, this episode ended with the three of them back to back to back, ready to fight off the dead together. So at least there's that.

With the last season approaching, I've been thinking lately that the perfect end for the series would be for Dean and Sam to knock on Mary's white door and join their parents in their special heaven (there'll be peace when you are done). But is Heaven even a thing any more? Will it still exist when the series ends?

If this world of Supernatural isn't what we've been led to believe, what about the Empty? That last shot of Jack was with Billie and the Black Cloud of Lucifer (was that Lucifer?) who made the creepiest smiley face at Jack. Does Billie have the answer to all of this? We've been told that Death can reap God. Can she?

Bits:

— Title musings and various names: "Moriah" is the place where Abraham was supposed to sacrifice Isaac, like Dean was supposed to sacrifice Jack. That cemetery looked a lot like the apocalyptic season five finale. Chuck wanted to name the gun Hammurabi, or The Equalizer. And Amara is in Reno playing Keno.

— Mirror Universe, the name of the facial recognition software company, was just about perfect: a reminder of all of Chuck's discarded universes, as well as all of the alternate universe characters we've been meeting these days.

— Note that Jack was never a threat to Chuck. Jack also didn't kill his grandmother.

— Castiel was thinking that Lucifer's cage might contain Jack. That's actually a pretty good solution.

— Yet another mention of souls. Why is Chuck powerless to change or restore them? Must be important.

— Poor Celine Dion. She's the punchline of a joke, much like Barry Manilow.

— I loved how Chuck critiqued season seven with the Leviathans and season twelve with the British Men of Letters.

— "God Was Never on Your Side" is by Motorhead. Last week, Dean, Sam and Castiel were agents Kilmister, Clarke and Taylor.

— The reference to Crowley and the universe of squirrels reminded me of Moose and Squirrel. Is Crowley in the Empty, too?

— Rob Benedict's credit was at the end. Gold acting stars for Mr. Benedict, by the way. Or possibly "God acting stars." Playing God isn't exactly easy, especially when he's become such a complicated character.

Quotes, the Mostly Chuck edition:

Dean: "Nerds." Sam: "Takes one to know one." Dean: "What?" Sam: "You. Come on, man. You're always calling me a geek, but you know every word to every Led Zeppelin song backwards and forwards, you can discuss in detail every major rock drummer between '67 and '84 and… you watch Jeopardy every night." Dean: "Yeah, okay. But I'm nothing like this gaggle of Zuckerbergs."

Dean: "I'm Dean Winchester and I'm looking for the Devil's son. This badge is fake." That made me laugh like a loon.

Female newscaster: "In what was supposed to be a speech on farming subsidies, the president instead spent more than two hours disclosing his entire tax history, his deep ties to Russia and North Korea, and the, quote, demon deal he made with someone called Crowley. Back to you, Chet. Chet?" Male newscaster: (looks directly at her) "I love you. I have always loved you."

Dean: "When people can't lie, the internet gets real quiet."

Chuck: "I'm a writer. Lying's kind of what we do."

Dean: (to Chuck) "Where the hell have you been?" Dean may be the only person I can think of who can look God in the eye and say something like that.

Chuck: "So! How's things? Okay, look, I get it. I'm the deus from the machina, and you have questions."

Sam: "Where have you been?" Chuck: "It's hard to explain. Everywhere and nowhere. Edge of the universe and beyond. And I saw Springsteen on Broadway. Man's a genius."

Newcaster: "… and it's been confirmed: the Queen of England is, in fact, a lizard." What episode is that from? I can't remember!

Chuck: "Look, the point is, the kid did all that with two words. What's next? He sneezes, and whoops, there goes India?"

Chuck: "Ugh. Billie. I liked the old Death better. He was all about fried pickles and tickle porn. This new Death, she's always sticking her scythe where it doesn't belong." Echoing the fans again.

Sam: "So how many are there? How many other worlds or universes or realities, or whatever?" Chuck: "I don't know. Kinda lost count. Most of them are boring, one's in reverse, in one there's no yellow, one of them's just all squirrels." I'm thinking a world without shrimp.

Sam: "Do you watch us? When you're not here, are you watching us?" Chuck: "Yeah. (Sam gasps) I mean, you're my favorite show."

I could write a few more pages about this episode, but I think I'm done for now. And I am totally impressed. Four out of four squirrels, and what did you guys think?

Billie Doux has been reviewing Supernatural for so long that Dean and Sam Winchester feel like old friends. Courageous, adventurous, gorgeous old friends.

[one-girly-geek]

My ultimate 14x20 thoughts post

Well, it’s finally time for me to type out my mess of feelings regarding the episode- and by extension, Dabb era as a whole.  As a whole, feelings will not be positive. You have been warned...

If anything, this finale made me more certain that it’s time for the show to end (before Dabb runs it into the ground completely).

I realized once and for all how dissatisfying later seasons have been for me just before this episode aired.  I was looking back at previous season finales and thought ‘when was the last time we had a season finale that was actually about our main characters?’ And I realized that there hadn’t really been one since, S11. An argument could be made that it hasn’t been since S10. 90% of the S12-14 finales have been about Jack...

Some small positives-

-The first half was fun.  It is nice to see that truth-spells don’t have the same effect that they used to- early seasons, the boys would have been yelling nasty, ugly things at each other, but now it’s just affectionate teasing+ the revelation that Dean reads mommy lifestyle blogs.  Everyone else was going nuts, but they’re so in sync with each other now, nothing really phased them. One thing the newer seasons have done well is to show that maturity between them.

-I was bracing myself for a big brofight, and was really grateful that that didn’t happen.  I was glad that what really pushed Sam to not be okay with killing Jack was the knowledge that Dean would have to die too.  It hurts, but he can go on without Jack. But not without Dean.

-Chuck was right, I liked the old Death better too.

-The last few seconds were an epic cliffhanger. I would have no qualms with if it wasn’t for what happened in the previous 20 minutes.

The rest- this is gonna be long. And probably incoherent. 

Disclaimer- I personally am religious, but I firmly believe I would have hated the ‘twist’ regardless.  I don’t and never have watched this show for theological accuracy.  Fiction=/reality. Now in no particular order-

-Why is everyone acting like it’s some revelation that Chuck knew what was going on and didn’t do anything?  They’ve known that since they knew Chuck existed. They had a whole conversation in S11 about it, they knew he was aware of everything that went on on Earth and usually didn’t interfere. So why is it some shocking reveal now that he...knew everything that was going on and didn’t do anything?

-Free will.  Are they trying to tell me that Chuck was, in fact, interfering all along and nobody had any free will? If so, way to just kill the biggest overarching theme in the show. We’ve already had the big storyline of the main characters saying screw destiny, and how making their own choices is the most important thing.  It’s arguably the most consistent theme over all these seasons.  And now Dabb &Co is basically spitting on it and saying it never mattered anyway? I know a lot of the current writers don’ care about previous seasons, but how do you screw that up?

-Scream at me all you like about how I’m just ‘buying into Chuck’s manipulation’ and ‘all the foreshadowing was there.’ because this was a retcon, plain and simple. Coincidence is not foreshadowing.  The Chuck originally created by Kripke was not like this, nor was he intended to be.  Carver had his issues, but the Chuck he worked with wasn’t like this either.  This a complete 180. 

The Chuck at the end of Swan Song, who said that free will and choice were the most important things in the world, wasn’t originally written to be a lying manipulator who would start an apocalypse because people...used their free will and choose family. Changing the entire original intent of that scene is a retcon.  The beautiful scene at the end of Don’t Call Me Shurly was not written to be ‘only putting on a cute guitar routine and playing us because manipulation.’ Forcing the viewer to look back at it now and assume that is a retcon. Chuck telling the angels to love and protect humanity (and he himself locking up the leviathans to protect the angels) but now saying he never really cared, is a retcon.

-This whole thing just retroactively taints so much that I loved, particularly S5 and S11. This about sums it up for me.

Not to mention, this definitely ruins the Sam/Dean/John Lucifer/Micheal/God parallels that were you know, kind of important in S4-5.  Now I am definitely not a fan of John by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s clear he was supposed to parallel Chuck/God as a largely absent father who made many mistakes, but ultimately did love and care for his children.  That’s out the window now.  

A good foreshadowing is when you look back and say ‘Oh! That made sense before, but now I have a deeper understanding then I did then’ The example I’m most fond of is the E10 reveal in Yuri!! on Ice. It’s not that everything didn’t make sense before the revelation that Viktor knew Yuri first and had been in love with him all along, but it deepened our understanding of him.  It fixed a few little things we wondered about, like why Viktor acted as forward as he did when first coming to Japan, but it didn’t fundamentally change who any of these characters were as people. You looked back at everything and were like ‘wow, that makes total sense‘ It was a well-planned, well executed bit of writing. It deepened our understanding of the characters, it didn’t change them completely and expect us to believe they were really that way all along.

-The amount of Lucifer/Micheal/Amara were right! posts I’m seeing around are frankly sickening.  Lucifer made his own decisions. Even if Chuck was bad all along- Lucifer loved him. He hated humanity, not Chuck.  He wanted to destroy humanity out of spite and jealousy.  Are we now saying he was right to do that?? That torturing human souls to turn them into demons, killing entire towns of people to raise Death, everything he did to Sam, everything he did to Kelly, how much he admitted he enjoys crushing teenagers skulls (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg)- all of that is okay because Chuck was bad?  Lucifer loved Chuck. He hated humanity. Whether or not he was right about Chuck’s motivations (and honestly, did he really care? so long as Chuck apologized to HIM, nothing else really mattered) doesn’t mean he was right about anything else. Ditto for Micheal.

Amara- she is a bit more complicated.  It could be argued that due to her nature, and how she’s been locked up for eons, she doesn’t have much of a sense of right and wrong the way other beings do. But just because you don’t know something is wrong, doesn’t mean it isn’t wrong. I’ve seriously seen people saying that ‘Amara did nothing wrong and Chuck only locked her up because SEXISM’ *headdesk*  Amara destroyed entire worlds before the current one.She wasn’t a totally innocent being, just locked up for the hell of it.  She herself admits that she did what she did out of jealousy, and that in the end she was wrong, because creation needed to exist. She didn’t actually hate Chuck, and they reconciled. (Now, I suppose they expect us to believe that the whole beautiful end of Alpha and Omega was a lie/manipulation as well? Retcon.

- Basically, this is lazy. And that’s a mark of Dabb era as a whole.  (He’s okay as a writer, but not as a showrunner).  Anything that was weird in previous seasons? We can just handwave it say ‘Chuck did it because manipulation.’  SPN has had a problem with constantly trying to escalate its villains-from demons to Lucifer to Metatron to Amara-and now to God? It’s just the laziest thing to do. Dabb was just like ‘we need the BIGGEST, WORSE villain of all for the last season! Who’s the most powerful being around? GOD!’ It’s utter LAZINESS.

-It didn’t have to be this way.  You could have done a final season as a love letter to the early show that started it all, not started another apocalypse. A lower stakes, character focused final season would have been great.  A tribute to what came before, while showing how far the characters have come since.  But no, Dabb had to be lazy and escalate everything once again, because the subtly and character driven plots seem to be beyond him. 

-I don’t know how they’re going to write themselves out of this one without massive retcons. You can’t kill Chuck or Amara and not have all of creation perish. But Dabb retcons everything whenever he wants to (see: every inconsistency regarding Jack’s soul magic/powers/morality this season), so I’m sure he’ll find some way to do that. (Which reminds me, does everyone going like ‘oh, Sam is such a badass for shooting Chuck!!’ remember the whole ‘Sun will go out and creation will die’ thing? It was tremendously stupid).

-I am so, so, so sick of Jack. I’m tired of everything and everyone revolving around him, anyone who goes against him being wrong, and everything he does being so easily forgiven. I’ve realized that most of my issues with the later seasons go right back to him. I didn’t want him dead (because of how it would affect others I do care about, not really because of him), but I wanted him gone.  Now, he is dead, but not gone at all. He’s hanging out with the Empty and Billie, which means a huge part of the plot of S15 is gonna revolve around him again. I stg if we end with Jack basically becoming God, Dabb is gonna catch these hands. Talk about being the ultimate Sue, who took over the whole show from the main characters...

-All I wanted was a lower-stakes season focused on the actual main characters and no one else...I guess that was too much to ask for.

-There’s some interesting theories going around that might make some sense of all of this, but I don’t know if I trust the currents showrunners to be smart enough to use them.

https://missjackil.tumblr.com/post/184463865432/theory-chuck-isnt-throwing-a-tantrum-at-all-he

-So that’s it. I’ll still be watching S15 because I’ve invested too much time into this show not too, and because I still care about the boys and J2,and of course I’m going to cons for the same reasons. It’s not their fault the writing is shit...

P.S You’ll not convince me that part of J2′s choice to end the show wasn’t due to the writing.  They’ve said before that they would keep going as long as the writing was good- then S13-14 happened and they’ve decided to stop. They’re far too nice/professional to ever come right out and see it, but it makes sense. I also think they realized that they couldn’t get the time off they wanted and still make a show they were happy with. We’ll see what the upcoming con circuit says, since they’ve got less reason than ever to hold back their opinions. 

[dustydreamsanddirtyscars]

(1)Hey :) I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on the Empty. It was already a theory, but this episode pretty much confirmed that that's where Cas is (at least it seems the most plausible to me). I always imagined the Empty as well.. pure non-existence. It's hard to put into words, because the concept itself kind of defies how we perceive reality and existence, so I always wondered how they would show it on screen. A completely black "room" is probably the simplest and most

straight-forward way. They can’t exactly show ‘nothing’. I’m wondering how they’ll play this out. From the little that we’ve heard about the Empty, it always sounded to me like the absolute end. As in, when you end up there you’re done for good, you don’t exist anymore, there’s no coming back. Whereas your soul can go to heaven, hell or purgatory and, for all intents and purposes, continue to exist there, the Empty is just an empty void (hence the name) where nothing exists. But if somethingdoesn’t exist (i.e. Cas and whoever the other mystery person they hinted at is), how can it come back to life? On that note though, angels don’t even have souls, do they? So what part of Cas is in the Empty? His physical body was burned, and if he doesn’t have a soul that would leave his grace? So is angel grace not just their angel power, but also sort of a soul or consciousness equivalent? - Sorry, got a bit carried away there lol And a second question: How do you feel about Sam’s behavior this episode? Dean pretty much called him out in the end, but to me the show (not for the first time) had a huge clash between show and tell. We’re told (by Sam) that Sam cares about Jack and thinks he deserves to be saved and all that, but what I SAW was Sam pushing and pushing almost relentlessly because he needs Jack to bring back Mary. He didn’t act very caring at all, so his whole speech that he gave Jack felt really hollow to me.     

Hey dear!

Sorry it took a while for me to reply. So not to lose more time, right on to your questions. :)

Yes, I think the show has alluded rather heavily throughout hiatus that Cas would end up in the Empty. I do think that simple blackness is indeed the easiest way to portray the Empty - and small headcanon btw, I also think that a) this was where Amara may have been locked up or b) where Death had intended to put Dean in 10x23 “Brother’s Keeper” - unless he meant another reality, like the one Mary and Lucifer are trapped in. When talking about the Empty I weirdly always had to think of “The Nothing” in “The Never-Ending Story” and I can very well imagine that SPN may draw some inspiration from it (especially when taking Jack’s powers ito account and how fantasy is what saved Fanatasia in Michael Ende’s book).

That said, to me the Empty as described on SPN isn’t such much non-existence - that would be nothingness to me - but hollowness. To me the Empty lacks everything that makes life commonly a place worth living, the memories and dreams that built your world and the people in it. I have alway headcanoned that the Empty in that regard for the people trapped there may be a realm that shows life, but for the one trapped there unable to touch and connect with it - Empty, so to speak. If you have watched “Being Human US”, I basically imagine it a bit like limbo/purgatory was portrayed there.It is indeed a very complex realm and we don’t know a whole lot about it. I have rambled and speculated a bit already about how Cas may be able to return in this post, so I will not type it all up again, but point towards the link and will just say that partially my headcanon is that Cas can come back from there because aside from his angelic grace he has grown a soul (in S12 with Lily Sunders we learnt that she could channel angelic abilities by scarificing parts of her soul, with Cas I’d see it kind of as the opposite). :)

Overall however I had the impression that Billie’s description of the Empty (she is btw also the character I think Cas will meet there - since she was the one who introduced the realm in the first place) could definitely imply the end of existence, but somehow I always only thought of it as a realm unable to return from. Meaning souls, etc. would still exist, but would be impossible to return. I guess we’ll find out soon what it’s going to be.

As for Sam in this episode. We always have had a major show vs. tell within the show and regarding the brothers. I do think that Sam cares about Jack in some proximity, because he sees himself in him, but he also didn’t fight Dean on his description of why Sam cares about Jack. So in that regard I’d say there is truth to that. And without wanting to give anyone room to start a fight here. Even if Dean’s treatment of Jack is of course very harsh and unfair, at least he is honest with him. If we take Sam’s reaction at face value then it must be even harder for Jack to hear that Sam told him he cared about him, because he can relate (which I believe 100 %) to his story, but that ultimately much more than that he cares about what Jack can do for them. It’s the dishonesty that must be tough for Jack.

In general to me Sam has shown to be very controlling in this episode and invading Jack’s provacy by surveilling him, etc. He did acknowledge at least though that the way he has been pressuring and pushing Jack was the wrong approach.

[mittensmorgul]

Aah season 9. I’m watching 9.22 right now (*waves at Dabb from s15*) and crylaughing about how much s9 Metatron is just desperate to be Chuck.

METATRON: Yeah, and you met with the enemy... In secret. What is that old line about sins and stones? GADREEL: He spoke. He lied. And I listened. That's it. But I serve heaven. I serve you. METATRON: Good. Don't forget it. I mean, I-I don't get this whole Cas lovefest, either. I'm offering our people a way home, and still -- still, they're choosing him over me. I mean, sure, he's cute. And Castiel has this simple...charm. He's like a mentally deficient puppy. But I'm lovable. And funny. I made God laugh -- twice! GADREEL: You're the one who asked him to lead an army. METATRON: Well, I didn't think he'd be good at it.

Metatron is trying desperately to control the story, but he doesn’t understand the characters, and has completely miscast them for his purposes, you know? He could’ve written Gadreel as his villain, and rightly or wrongly, most of the other angels would’ve bought that story. They’d bought Gadreel’s original story and locked him in prison for millennia. But that’s not the story Metatron wanted to tell. He didn’t just want to elevate himself, he needed to villainize Cas, to cast him down in the eyes of all the angels. Yet all the while, Metatron wanted to BE Cas. He was even trying on trenchcoats. He was fascinated, and obsessed, with Cas.

All the angels Metatron convinced to explode themselves for Cas were CONVINCED they’d actually been approached by Cas himself. So another of Metatron’s “writer’s tricks” was this ability to create reality out of whole cloth. we KNOW Cas wasn’t the one who convinced Tessa to explode herself for the greater good or whatever, and yet:

TESSA: People like you, they never understand. Sacrifices have to be made. DEAN: So you go after one of the bad guys, and if a few humans get microwaved, no big deal, right? TESSA: In the grand scheme, they don't matter. DEAN: Oh, Tessa, you are so wrong. TESSA: When Castiel came to me and told me what I had to do, he said I was chosen because I was strong. Others...they couldn't handle this. They're too weak.

and

DEAN: Good times. Here's the deal. I like you, Tess, okay? For an angel. But tell me, why are you doing this? TESSA: Castiel. DEAN: No, forget Cas. Why are you doing this? What would make a person want to pop their top, huh? I mean, look, I've been in bad shape. I have. But I have never been that damn low. TESSA: I guess I just can't take the screaming. DEAN: Who's screaming? TESSA: All of them. The lost souls. The ones that can't get into heaven now that it's been boarded up. I hear them. They are so confused. They're in so much pain. All I want to do is help them. It's what I do. It's my job. But I can't. So I suffered... Until death, nothingness. Suddenly, it didn't seem so bad. It seemed quiet. DEAN: So, why don't you just jam an angel blade in your throat and call it a day? TESSA: I thought about it. But I was too weak. Till Castiel gave me a reason to die. DEAN: Yeah. See, that just doesn't sound like the Cas I know. TESSA: But doesn't it, though? And the Cas you know, would he raise an army of angels without telling you? 'Cause this Cas did. I'll tell you a secret. There's more out there...Like me. So many more.

And Dean said he was doing what he had to do, so did Tessa, as she killed herself with the first blade. She’d been driven to desperation. Then Metatron goes on about the very same thing. He engineered the experiences of all the angels-- from the bombers convinced Cas himself had recruited them. It’s... eerily similar to what Chuck has engineered in 15.05. It’s like the entire “case” was engineered specifically to lure Sam and Dean, right down to the victim they swore to protect appearing to be Lilith on a mission to destroy the Equalizer gun. I mean, for all Chuck’s machinations, he could’ve written it as Dagon instead of Lilith, you know? But Chuck’s somehow still stuck in the “old days” of the story, and even his cast of side characters is reflecting that now.

GADREEL: Tessa, Constantine -- I recruited them, and you brainwashed them into blowing themselves up. METATRON: So? Well, that's an old writer's trick -- flipping the script. You start by building up a seemingly unbeatable enemy, like the death star, or a rival angel with a bigger army. That way, I look like the underdog. But then, oh, no! The competition gets greedy. He starts pushing things too much. With the help of my combustible double agents. And then, after a rousing speech, his true weakness is revealed. He's in love with humanity. And now...I'm inevitable.

Isn’t this exactly the way Chuck is “writing” for himself in s15? Metatron will eventually tell Chuck (in 11.20) that in his descent into evil villainy, he’d only been following Chuck’s own playbook, writing from Chuck’s own story. Metatron engineered every circumstance in his rise to power. While I’ve been typing, 9.23 has been playing now, and the entire scenario with the woman conveniently hit by a truck and killed right where Metatron happened to be on the scene to resurrect her ON CAMERA, his entire “miracle” broadcast out on Youtube the way he used the Heaven Microphone to broadcast his propaganda to every angel at once... Even with “God power,” Metatron still needed to engineer circumstances, and circumstances still weren’t guaranteed to play out exactly as he expected or intended. Because his plans couldn’t account for free will, just as Chuck’s can’t in s15.

Team free will is horrifically broken. Sure, they’re all on the same side, but the fractures between Sam, Dean, and Cas are severely limiting their ability to truly achieve a “win.” Dean, driven in part by the Mark but also just from his own frustration and anger and guilt (which drove him to take the mark in the first place), hasn’t had an appropriate outlet for his anger (which will be lampshaded by his eventual impotently angry speech to Metatron in 9.23 before his ultimate failure).

In s15, it’s Sam with a “mark of cosmic significance,” with an unwanted connection to Chuck the way the Mark once connected Dean to Amara. And now that we’re about to move into s10 on the tnt loop, I feel like I’ve been waiting for five years for Dabb to finally get his revenge on the 23 episode narrative failure of s10′s mytharc, this time “flipping the script,” as Metatron once called it, in favor of TFW.

At the end of Dean is on the outs with Cas because of Cosmic Nonsense interfering directly between them. Dean’s anger at Cas comes to a head, and it’s revealed that the real target of Dean’s anger is Metatron. As Cas tries to tell Hannah while he’s trapped in Heaven Jail, Metatron is the cause of all of their suffering. They only need to expose that fact and confront him. If only, for once, they could get out ahead of Chuck’s script.

DEAN: You've been working those people outside for, what, a day? They've already spilled blood in your name. You are nothing but Bernie Madoff with wings. METATRON [rising to his feet from the floor]: So I'm a fake. Do you have any idea how much pan-cake makeup and soft lighting it took to get God to work a rope line? He hated it. And, you know, humans sense that. So they prayed harder and longer and fought more wars in his name. And for what?! So they could die of malaria? Leukemia? And all the while, blaming themselves! "Oh, if only I'd been more prayerful, "God would have loved me! God would have saved me!" You know what?! God didn't even know their name! But I do. Because I've walked among them. And I can save them. DEAN: Sure, you can. So long as your mug is in every Bible and "What would Metatron do?" is on every bumper. METATRON: And? What, are you blaming me for giving them what they want, giving them a brand they can believe in? DEAN [starting to unwrap the First Blade in his hand]: I'm blaming you for Kevin! I'm blaming you for taking Cas' Grace. Hell, I'm blaming you for the Cubs not winning The World Series in the last 100 freaking years. Whatever it is... I'm blaming you.

Metatron wanted to be Chuck so bad, right down to insisting everyone call him Marv like he was just folks. Right down to using the same manipulation on Dean that he would eventually use on Cas.

METATRON: And you're powered by the bone of a jackass, and it is just awesome, right? Here's a tip -- next time, try to be powered by the word of God.

LOL. The word of God has lost a lot of its power in s15, and even Amara-- aka the source of power for that jackass bone-- has even pointed it out to him. But once again, Chuck’s favorite plot seemed to be working out anyway, through Metatron’s plagiarized story-- One brother sacrificed, check. But something went sideways. Dean and the Tablet shattered at the same moment. 

METATRON: Ah. So Gadreel bites the dust. And the Angel tablet -- arguably the most powerful instrument in the history of the universe -- is in pieces, and for what again? Oh, that's right -- to save Dean Winchester. That was your goal, right? I mean, you draped yourself in the flag of heaven, but ultimately, it was all about saving one human, right? Well, guess what. He's dead, too.

[...]

METATRON: You know, why you could never quite pull it together, Castiel? While you're sitting here with Your Grace slowly burning away and your reputation long extinguished? No curiosity. You didn't read enough. You never learned how to tell a good story. CASTIEL [looking straight at METATRON]: But you did. [CASTIEL swings his eyes over to the desk where METATRON's all-angel microphone sits with the switch on, broadcasting his entire speech to every angel in Heaven and Earth. The doors fly open and many angels walk in and take METATRON captive. CASTIEL raises an angle blade but then doesn't use it.]

The words were the thing. And whoever truly understands the whole story holds the key.

Sorry this got so rambly (I think everyone expects that of me anyway), but this is exactly what s15 is subverting, FINALLY. And not through the proxy of Metatron the Scribe, Metatron the Editor, and Chuck’s written word, but finally placing his due with Chuck The Author himself.