#Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox

[mishaesque]

I would have REALLY loved to see more of other hunters being absolutely in awe of the Winchesters, like in 12.06. Imagine Baby rolling up to the house and as soon as the sound of the engine is heard everyone goes quiet. Someone goes up to the window and as they all look on they turn around and say “… The Winchesters are here.”

For these people, in whose lives all things supernatural are real, the most mythological beings in existence are the two brothers who have fought the Devil and won.

[arcanespillo]

[deansrainbow]

can't make you understand how significant this picture alone is to me, because it's a pov from jody, she looks over at dean and this frame shows, him leaning against baby, hands together, she looks over at him and back to mary and says "your son is a good man, best I've ever met" yeah just cried through the entire episode, what's new... & she's so REAL, he is the best boy <3

[spn-rewatch-ventzone]

So fucked up to know how this show ends and watch Dean talk about being “okay with dying on the job” in 12x06

[ananke-xiii]

About Asa, Lily and Tasha (and Kelly).

There’s the experience of watching SPN by chronological order of the released episodes and the experience of watching it by specific writer and, as I once said, the latter is just a much better experience. I still stand by that. Incidentally, I think that this is one of the many reasons why the show went on for so long: since apparently writers rarely reached a consensus on the story and the characters’ internal coherence within a season, there’s a little bit for everyone’s tastes.

For instance, Steve Yockey’s episodes for s12 are a thing of Supernatural beauty. First of all I think Yockey was like “fuck the BMoL storyline AND I’m taking the boys out of that damn bunker” and I thank him for that. Secondly, he must have set his mind on weaving the (“bad”? “unconventional”? “simply flawed human”?) mother/(definitely absent)(surely dead) father central theme of the season with the “old” theme of human body/vessel/possession. And it’s sooooo great!

Asa Fox, Lily Sunder and Tasha Banes are the protagonists of his MoTW episodes and they’re such interesting characters! Two of them die at the very beginning of their respective episodes (the very parents of Alicia and Max, what a year for them, uh? Yockey you cruel, cruel man), while only one of them has her need fulfilled (well, more or less, although one might argue that the irony of Cas having his own son killed by God himself might be considered a sort of “karma’s a bitch” for him and a “win” for Lily).

Asa Fox is the absent father par excellence because well, he’s dead AND because we don’t know if he’s ever got to be a father or not. Jael says that Alicia and Max were too “frightened” to say that they came to say goodbye to their daddy and why would they be? Was it a secret? Lorraine didn’t know so I must assume yes. But… why? We don’t know. Lorraine is the “bad” mother who sabotaged her son’s gear and hid his gear and was generally unhappy about his son’s life choices. But Asa was also taunted by a possessive demon, Jael, who was probably in love with him (“Tell them what you took from me. Asa was mine”). Or maybe, as Lily Sunder would’ve put it, Jael was “obsessed” with him.

Now what I like about this episode is that Yockey was like: “I’ll remind you people that demons can actually be exorcised, you know? It might not always end well but hunters can and should at least fucking try”. By having Jael possess Jody (“this meatsuit you all seem to care so much about”), a beloved character, we’re reminded that possessed people are, you know, still people. Maybe dead people, though, but still, you should check, at least. And so the hunters try and succeed in exorcising the demon and all’s well that ends well (I mean, more or less, people still died but, you know, glass half full, man).

This dialogue between Sam and Mary is particularly delicious:

Mary: What are you doing?! She’s a demon. We kill demons. Sam: No, but she’s Jody.

Mary and demons… well, let’s say that I don’t exactly judge her when she forgets that demons are also possessing (possibly dead) people. But I like how her cold-bloodedness reveals the brothers’ hypocrisy (there’s something similar in this scene in s11 with Sam and Dean arguing about the vesselness (lol) of Cas).

Lily Sunder agrees with mother Mary: she kills angels. To be honest, I don’t judge her too, in her shoes I’d personally set the world on fire, but she does say “she is no threat whatsoever to humans” and she doesn’t want to hurt Sam and Dean, what with them being humans and all. Too bad that she does kill humans who are currently being possessed by angels. Oooopsie! Ishim didn’t teach her how to exorcise them, I guess (S4 was crazy for that, they established the idea that angels could be exorcised and then boom, forever forgotten).

I’m telling all this because it's Yockey’s writing that’s pointing it out. The episode starts off with Lily killing Benjamin and, a few scenes later, Cas tells this:

Cas: Benjamin is always very careful. Long ago, he found a powerfully devout vessel in Madrid, and her faith, it... she gave him everything – her trust and her body. Dean: Wait. So Benjamin's a woman. Cas: Benjamin is an angel. His vessel is a woman. But it – it's – it's more than that. She's not just his vessel. Sam: She's... She's his friend. Cas: Yeah. Benjamin would never put her in unnecessary danger.

So Lily killed Benjamin, the angel AND the “powerfully devout from Madrid” who’s first described as a vessel, a body, then as a woman, then again as “more than that/not just a vessel” and ultimately as a friend (with a romantic undertone to the word). So we GOTTA ask: when is a human being just a body? And when a vessel? Are there “vessels” and “not just [some angel’s]vessel”? And Lily Sunder, who’s a professor of Apocalyptic Literature and has sold her soul for Enochian magic surely knows that angels can be exorcised regardless of Ishim’s lessons in Angel Studies. But no, she wants to kill them, like send-them-to-The-Empty-kill them and, in so doing, I think she’s aware she’s also killing other humans in the process.

(can angels even be killed when they're not in a vessel?)

Paradoxically, this episode shows a Cas that’s very much “careless” about his “vessel-not vessel" and who's in contrast with the care his former brothers-in-arms extend to their vessels/friends. While Benjamin “wouldn't put himself in harm's way if he could help it.” and Mirabel and Ishim were not “careless” with their vessels, Cas is “impressed” that they have “kept [their]vessels all this time”. And isn’t it telling that’s Cas that uses the word “vessel” while Ishim says “but you, Castiel... I liked the old you better”? He doesn't say "your old vessel", he precisely says the "old you". Of course, Ishim's implying that Cas has changed etc, but I like when characters speak about vessels and everybody just sort of means different things.

First of all, just like Asa Fox’s death was foreshadowing Cas’death, Yockey is, again, foreshadowing Cas’ demise by the end of the season: he will be careless and he will put himself in harm’s way and he will die because of it. I used the word “paradoxically” before because Cas’ vessel is both a vessel and kind of Cas’ human (?) body. His “carelessness” cost everything to Jimmy Novak and the angel made a promise to him, twice, and yet he seems to be absolutely disconnected from corporeal reality to the point that he would easily throw himself in harm’s way without thinking. Benjamin wouldn’t do that. Hell, not even Ishim-Who-Hates-Humans would ever do that to his vessel (also, let’s bear in mind that possessed people suffer A.LOT. but also maybe let’s do like the show does and never go there again or we’ll just get ugly sad).

Going back to Lily Sunder, a character defined by her being a scholar and a mother. We don’t know anything about May’s father, but we do know that he’s NOT an angel (this is like the plot-twist of the episode). Akobel is the stand-in father/protector who, guess what? Dies! (just like Cas will die to protect his/not biologically his baby who’s also The Nephilim Of All Time after possibly Jesus himself, that depends if we consider him a Nephilim or not).

Ishim is in love with Lily (or so he thinks) but, just like Jael, he’s actually “obsessed” with her. He’s also convinced that Lily has “thrown him away" for Akobel, Akobel, who’s an angel but, we’re reminded, also a vessel (“Dispose of his vessel” Ishim says).

So what do we learn from absent/dead father/hunter Asa and vengeful/killer mother/scholar Lily's stories? Well, first of all that having a supernatural being as your stan will result in certain death, if not yours, the death of one of your loved ones. Which is a funny juxtaposition to Ishim's words: "You know why we're meant to stay away from them humans? Hmm? It's not because we're a danger to them. They're a danger to us". Second of all, angels and demons get quite possessive (haha I keep making this joke about possession I should stop) but this is not the rule, Benjamin represents the exception and, to a lesser degree, Ishim and Mirabel too. Believe it or not, angels have a vested interest in keeping their vessels alive and well, Cas is the only one who doesn't understand that and just keeps putting himself in harm's way.

What about Tasha Banes? Well, she's the one who's dealt with the "possession by another human being" card and I don't know if I can say that's the worst but yeah, it's the worst.

Tasha is a hunter, a witch and the mother of Alicia and Max. She seems like the cool mom, à la Lorelai Gilmore but we as audience are left to decide whether Alicia's anxiety is justified ("Mom usually checks in with us, but she's sort of disappeared") or if Max's right ("She did not disappear. She's busy.").

She is killed by an unnamed borrower witch who had made a deal with a demon and lost her soul as a consequence (not the same as Lily Sunder, but here we are again with the whole soul-thing). The witch wanted Tasha to take the deal upon herself, Tasha rejects it so she kills her and transforms her in a sort of creepy doll. The witch "possesses" Tasha and makes her a doll, a not-real but resembling body that acts and speaks like one. Soulless, bodyless, this Tasha creature is basically a memory.

Stripped of her sould and her body, Tasha (and later Alicia since Creature Tasha dies together with the borrower witch) is a puppet controlled by her master that will die when her master will.

She basically represents, imo, what all these anonymous meatsuits/vessels/not so much vessels/bodies are in the narrative: they're empty and unimportant unless they're contained by a powerful being or if they are loved and cared about by the hunters hunting these "things". And even the love of these hunters is not enough to spare this horrendous fate to these people: Max, a witch and a hunter, will eventually make the deal and transform Alicia into a "doll".

And I'm sorry but I cannot but think that this is not a coincidence if I think that the "doll" of s12 narrative is yet another mother, Kelly Kline, the point where the themes of motherhood and that of body/vessel/possession converge. She is THE VESSEL of the season, useful because she must give birth to the Nephilim and then easily discarded by the narrative. "Dispose of her vessel", Ishim might say of her.

Steve Yockey really understood the assignment.

Twigs and twine and Kelly Kline.

[shallowseeker]

Jody: Huh. Is that why you spent the entire ride up here telling me in extreme, excruciating detail how you killed Hitler, but, uh, you neglected to mention the fact that your mom is back from the dead? Dean: Yeah, no big deal. Jody: That’s a lie. Dean: Jody… Jody: Look, maybe this isn't my place, and this is epic stuff, but, you know, if I could have my son and my husband back? I mean really back? I would give anything, absolutely anything to have that. And it would scare the hell out of me.

12x06

[hitchell-mope]

I hate Billie. But Mary really needs to pop her clogs sooner rather than later.

[gr8k877]

Something I don't understand about Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox...Are Sam and Dean Winchester the only hunters with anti-possession tattoos? Wouldn't every hunter have one? Wouldn't the boys make Jody get one? They should've at least explained it.

[liopleurodean]

Season 12, Episode 6: Celebrating The Life Of Asa Fox

Oh, Canada

Rip this kid

...Mary?

What was she doing in Canada?

This was like. Three years before she died. Why was she hunting?

There are other hunters

He's still a hot mess, but okay

Nice

And now he's gonna start hunting

Montage!

Yeah, sure

Whoa. That was abrupt

Supernatural!

Yikes

Cute

...I'm pretty sure Omaha is closer to Lebanon than Sioux Falls at that point. Like, almost 100% sure.

Sounds great

HE KILLED HITLER

Absolutely!

Dean, you look invested

Dude. Seriously. Not cool

Poor Dean

Sam. Privacy

She okay?

He's a hunter

Nice. Not sure how he thought he'd get away with that one

Oh, Jody...

Nah, it's their pleasure

Sure.

Canada!

Quite an eclectic mix of rides

Dean and I -> same brainwave

Indeed

Asa's mom?

Yeah, I bet

Everyone is

Sure...

He can handle himself

Thee Dean Winchester.

More like a hundred

Dude, no

Unfortunately no

The standard, I assume

I should've known

Interesting

Awesome

Celebrities

Wow. That's a deep cut

Buddy...

At least they get it

Not when you're living it

Dude.

Please? I like them

Where'd he get an angel blade?

Makes sense

Dean...

Mmmmmmm

I am. Dying inside

Oh boy

Wow.

Oh yeah, remember Crowley?

Spooky

Oh no

Dean, stop talking

Mary!

Oh boy, this'll be good

Yeah...

That's the word for it

I love Jody

Makes sense

Dean.

She just barely missed him

Dean, come on

Not really

Perhaps

It wouldn't be the same

I think Dean needed the perspective

Long story

She's the one who got him into hunting

Oh boy

I don't know

That's not everything

Not really

Mary...

Finally, someone says it

It's in her blood

Poor guy

Oh no

Seems to be a hunter trait

Demons.

How does he know?

Okay...

Asa warded the whole place

Billie?

There's the clue

That's horrifying

How can they not hear him?

That's weird

Dean's not even in the house

The demon planned

She's being annoying

She is possessed

Yikes

That's not good

You can't just leave Lorraine!

Fine

Neat trick

Definitely not

He's used to people not knowing things

Dang it, I should've known

No kidding

It's been awhile since we've heard that

Oh no

Girl, keep it together

Great, now the power is out

Man, that's so weird. By this point, the hunting world at large knows about angel blades, but they've never seen a demon blade. It's all backwards

It'll come

Smart Dean truthing!!!

I feel like I've heard this music before. At least, the chord progression is familiar

That'll be handy

Harder to memorize

It's in Jody. She's being suspicious

Great question

Not without proof. It's definitely Jody

Right

Why would they do that?

Fantastic

It wasn't on purpose

Ooh, yikes

Oh, Jody...

Here we go

Keep it going

Seriously?

That was quick

Yeah, I bet

That's so stupid

Wow.

He'll never have a community again

I suppose so

That's true

I don't think that's what she needed

Seriously, Billie?

Uh, no. That wasn't their fault

Take it up with Amara

That's not what she means

Is she really considering it?

There it is

Yup. Winchesters

Sure.

Absolutely

[arcanespillo]

12.06, Celebrating The Life Of Asa Fox

[deansrainbow]

12.06 is so old school supernatural, hunters trapped in a house, a demon on the loose and all they have is the exorcism by memory. Dean mad at his mom though: "I called you for weeks and nothing but you drove all the way to Canada to see some dead guy" (i hate it here, all i wanna do is hug my pookie ☹️) jody being a MOM for him "im here if you need anything" she is such THE character for dean in this season, she was there for him a lot and I appreciate it this from her 🤍

[ananke-xiii]

i loooove "celebrating the life of asa fox" such a great episode!

dean being totally awkward in group settings is everything, steve yockey really understood the assignment :)

and sam socializing with two witch siblings who are totally anti-social and (we'll know this later on but in in hindsight) have a totally co-dependent thing going on?

mary and jody together? woooooa!

mary feeling like shit and meeting lorraine telling her "you're the reason my son didn't become an astronaut"

mary and sam in a room with a dead hunter and another dead hunter pinned on the ceiling dripping blooooooddddd?

the brothers remember how to exorcise demons!

and the parallels between asa fox and cas?

i mean steve yockey was basically telling us the entire plot of s12 in this single episode, best friend dies! surprise children show up! grieving mothers! demons( A RED EYED CROSSROAD DEMON!!) fall in love with hunters and end up doing stupid shit! people do need some sweet sweet time alone with raggedly hot men! three bodies burning on the hunter pyre!

love love love this episode!!

[monstermoviedean]

i gotta be honest i do not think sam and dean have passports

[caslesbo]

“i mean, guys like us, we're not exactly the type of people they write about in history books, you know? but the people we saved, they're our legacy, and they'll remember us, and we'll eventually fade away, too. that's fine, because we left the world better than we found it.”

supernatural - season 12

[hitchell-mope]

If it makes you feel any better. I hoped that Mary would be the demon too.

[spnwin-reader]

Prime Dean gives Alt John the tools to unlock the truth and decide for himself if he will hunt

Original run context: John's feelings of betrayal

In the original #SPNprime, John was not allowed to fight for or defend himself until it was already too late. This made the wound of Mary's death much, much deeper than it would have otherwise been.

Unlike with Sam keeping the truth from Jess out of shame, Mary's keeping the truth from John may stem from incredible fear, watching Azazel kill him in The Beginning.

(It's perhaps more akin to Dean symbolically blinding Lisa and Ben to the truth to keep them safe than how Sam was with Jess.)

But the in The Song Remains the Same, John (temporarily) learns the truth, and he is (rightfully) frustrated by having been kept in the dark. He feels intense betrayal. He feels like a child.

JOHN: Monsters. Monsters? MARY: Yes. JOHN: Monsters are real. MARY: I'm sorry, I didn't know how— JOHN: And you fight them? All of you? SAM: Yeah. JOHN: How long? MARY: All my life. John, just try to understand— DEAN: She didn't exactly have a choice— JOHN: Shut up, all of you! Look, not another word, or so help me, I will turn this car around! Silence falls.

/// LATER ///

JOHN: What? Y'all might have treated me like a fool, but I am not useless. I can draw a damn— (JOHN picks up the paper from next to a large knife.)—whatever it is—a sigil.

///

Original run context: Mary continued to hunt near/during the beginning of her marriage?

In Celebrating the Life of Asa Fox, we learn that it could've been Mary who created much of the tension in their marriage by potentially stepping out on John to hunt, calling into question if the fight shown between them in Dark Side of the Moon.

MARY: "No, John. We're not having this conversation again. Time to think? About what? You have two boys at home." DEAN: "I remember this. Mom and dad were fighting, and then he moved out for a couple of days." MARY: "Fine. Then don't. There's nothing more to talk about."

Now we wonder: Was this fight even John's fault to begin with? The stereotype of "angry husband" might lull you into thinking so, but it's equally possible that it was Mary that originated the fight--Mary who had a long, canon-supported history of lying. She's even the one shutting down the conversation here!

Mary would probably rather John think she's unfaithful than risk John being dragged into hunting, and she'd probably pivot to supporting their kids as an excuse to smooth things over. (Just as Cas would rather Dean assume anything so long as he's not dragged into the dangerous world of angelic Civil War).

Alternatively, the fight may have even been part of the normal ebb-and-flow of a marriage. It may have been that the fight looked a LOT bigger through the eyes of a sensitive four-year-old.

(A couple of days ain't even that long, but boy it sure does feel big when you're a kid. But just because their marriage wasn't "perfect" doesn't mean it wasn't good, and the Dean-Sam conversation completely misses on that front.)

//

One of the things post-season 12 in #SPNprime does so beautifully is calls into question everything we know about Mary, including the cartoonish idea of John as the root of all evil.

Mary's lies are given rich complexity, as is Dean's memory of her.

Everything in Dark Side of the Moon, from the idea of "Heaven" as the "perfect place you grow up" to being simplistically at peace with your siblings/"littermates" in the ideal childhood home forever is given more complexity by the narrative unfridging of Mary.

(It's why the gate to Heaven is always associated with a playground. "There's no place like home," is literal in SPN. Heaven can even be seen as the idealization of childhood, as sharing the same history.)

///

Dean helps John because Dean was also "locked out" during critical periods in his life, prevented from Danger "for his own good"

Dean feels this pain acutely in season 6, when Samuel Campbell, his brother Sam, and Bobby Singer keep him out of the larger hunting plot in order to "keep him at peace."

Despite their good intentions, this denied him the right to choose for himself if he'd meet The Fight head on.

Cas, too, does this with the angelic Civil War, with Kelly Kline, general "angel business," and The Empty deal, and Dean feels that as unintended rejection.

He feels, like John, coddled. Like a child. Not getting the chance to be an equal comrade or partner in the fight.

///

Here, prime Dean is giving John the key to discover the truth about monsters and Henry's Men of Letters heritage.

Certainly John has a lot of emotional baggage and childhood abandonment trauma to work through, but at least this time he'll have more agency ahead of time, and he'll get to choose which path to prepare for rather than having the world of monsters thrust upon him in the midst of a grief-spiral.

Dean has handed that power of Choice back to John.

Perhaps prime Dean too is wounded from being kept in the dark. Perhaps he longs for a world were he's known about Cas's The Empty deal instead of, like John, being blindsided and struck dumb by grief.