#Maybe the brainworms will come back someday

[lilacstars15]

so I know lenmiku day was yesterday but I still wanted to draw something

This is based off an old doodle I did in my sketchbook

[skyartworkzzz]

Question when You gonna back to drawn frans again ??

To be very honest, Im not sure

I have been feeling the UT drive coming back slowly, but Im not sure When Ill work on smtng since I have other things at the table rn

Ik some of yall miss my Frans era given that I did comment I missed the fandom recently but sadly my hyperfixations are all over the place </3

ILL GIVE A HEADS UP THO: if it does come back, be warned it might look more OC-ey since Ive stuffed so many headcanons into my versions of the characters that theyre now- mine. Theyre mine. IAUSHDNJKASSAD

[silverhalla]

I think it would be rly sick if you went to go build a crow rook and the surname was Arainai

like…. just another little compradi trying to bring glory back to your house - rinnala and taliesin are dead by the house’s hand, zevran failed and deserted, guili murdered in the night, all semblance of power lost once again. the house is trying to claw its way back up, futile as it seems. that’s the way of house arainai, isn’t it? talon to knife to talon to knife to nothing, same as it’s been since the house first lost power in the early dragon age. but you, bright-eyed little crow, you’ll break the cycle, won’t you? for the family?

after all, caterina’s prized heir is right there - the demon of vyrantium, the infamous mage killer, sleeping just down the hall. you can be quiet, can’t you? all those means at your disposal, and all the opportunities you could want. you could find a way in under that armor, get to something soft and bruisable and make it bleed. he’s far from home, isn’t he? without a friend? confidantes are few and far between - even a demon must get lonely.

maybe he’d even trust you. you’re a clever little bird, right? you can find something to exploit. after all, what does a would-be talon do except claw, except maim? what else would you be good for? there is no gentleness to crows - you are here to deliver a message: run, little demon, quick as you like.

house arainai will make carrion of you yet.

[dandelion-wings]

Sometimes you have writing plans for the day pre-made, but then you wake up in the middle of the night from a wretched nightmare, can't fall back asleep, and end up twisting bits of the nightmare together with bits of canon to torment your blorbos with....

This is a very rough version of last night's 'can't get back to sleep' bedtime story, and I know what happens before and after and how it would go if I expanded it out (and @theabysscomeshome and I have spent today kicking around the sequel where Lisa and Kaeya actually reach Mondstadt XD), but I wanted something I could write in the two hours I was hanging out at the hospital this afternoon so I crunched it down into something that almost fit into that window. Maybe someday I will write the longer version (as if I need more WIPs), but hopefully this will exorcise the worst of the brainworms so I can actually work on the stuff I'd planned for the next week!

---

This is the third time Lisa has been left alone with Anatoli's most prized specimen.

She can't say she's developed a routine with him so soon, but he doesn't look surprised when she deactivates the shield around his cell and steps inside. Lisa reaches out, slow and careful, but all her care can't keep him from flinching when she touches the clasp of the shock-collar he's wearing. She keeps the static of her Electro Vision firmly tamped down so that at least she won't set it off as she takes it off him.

The shock-collar isn't supposed to keep him from talking, only from too-sudden movements. But it's tuned to its highest sensitivity, and she's seen it light up, crackling, when he cries out. She would go silent too if any exclamation ran that risk. Besides, no one on Anatoli's research team cares to listen to what he has to say.

He swallows a few times, his throat working, and looks up at her from under the loose fall of uncut bangs with his one remaining eye. His voice is small and hoarse and thick with suspicion as he asks, for the third time, "What do you want?"

"I have a question for you, Kaeya."

It's almost what she'd said the last two times, though she'd had many questions then. She knows his name (Kaeya Alberich; he'd looked at her warily as he gave the surname, as if he expected her to recognize it, and seemed almost disappointed when she didn't), and how long he'd been here (six years, by his best estimate), and how he'd come (he'd snuck onto a ship to Sumeru, looking for his family, and been caught in the desert by bandits who sold him on), and what, exactly, they've done to him (though there was only verifying what Anatoli's records already say). She knows that, whatever Anatoli says, the curse hasn't twisted his mind as it has his body. He's reacting exactly as any rational human would to the conditions he's lived under for the last six years.

Lisa would start biting people too, if they only ever touched her to cause her pain.

"Just one?" For all the suspicion, she can hear a thread of amusement in his voice.

"Just one, tonight." Lisa holds up a finger. "Wait a moment, though, sweetie. I have to do something first."

She steps back out of the cell, leaving the shield down, and takes what would look to any casual eye like a Canned Knowledge capsule out of her robes. It takes only a moment to sync with her Akasha Terminal; she waits for the double-chirp that confirms it's scanned her thoughts and is replicating them for the Terminal, then takes it off and sets it aside. If she's being monitored, the terminal will only pick up that she's still here, asking Kaeya the same set of questions she has the last two times she was trusted to supervise him.

Unless Lord Sangemah Bay has sold them a false bill of goods, or is cooperating with the matra. Lisa doubts the second, and has to simply trust the merchant's reputation on the first. They've certainly paid heavily for all she's sold them.

Once her terminal is, hopefully, disarmed, Lisa takes another of their purchases out and steps back into the cell. She sees Kaeya fix a wary gaze on the little device in her hand--shaped and sized almost like a terminal itself--and smiles at him as warmly as she can muster with her skin prickling with trepidation. She's very aware that she has her back to the door. Anyone who comes through will have a few seconds' advantage on her, and Lisa has no good excuse for what she's doing. None but a moral argument that Anatoli's team doesn't care to hear.

Cyrus had made it directly and passionately, to Anatoli and then to the Sage of Spantamad, and been turned away both times. Cyno had made it bureaucratically, filling out all the paperwork necessary to report a breach of academic ethics, and had seen it dismissed out of hand. By the Akademiya's ruling, Kaeya Alberich is a monster, not a human, and thus a designated test subject to be treated as Anatoli's team sees fit. He has the curse of Khaenri'ah, after all. It's active in him, manifested in his blackened and Cryo-lined right arm; that Anatoli's own records showed that he had triggered it deliberately in Kaeya's second year here didn't have any effect on the Darshan's decision.

Their options had been to take it all the way to the Six Great Sages, or to try another tack. The Six Great Sages, by a ruling of four to two, had determined that Cyno, in his youth, was a similar such test subject, and *he* didn't bear the curse of Khaenri'ah, nor elemental powers from the Abyss. None of them had expected that it would go any better in this particular case.

Lisa had already been slowly becoming disillusioned with the Akademiya. This was just the last nail in the coffin. She doesn't mind burning her whole career down behind her when she goes, and that's why she's here, late at night, holding the key that will deactivate the wards on Kaeya's cell.

"Kaeya, would you like to get out of here?"

"*Yes*," he says, in that low, hoarse voice, strained by desperation and a hope she can see him trying to restrain as his eye meets hers.

"Good. I will ask you not to do anything rash once I get them off of you. We don't want to set off the alarms."

Kaeya holds rigidly still as Lisa undoes the wards, one by one, that hold him physically restrained and his Abyssal powers in check. She can feel the cold rising off the stump of his right arm as she looses that ward, the Cryo veining it eager for release. It's the one she's tensest for, ready for him to lash out, senseless as it would be--he has no reason to trust her, and no reason to think her anything than another of her tormentors. She'd stood by and watched while they took what remained of the lower limb off to the elbow just two weeks go.

(She'd had to build trust. After Cyrus and Cyno's efforts, Anatoli was wise enough to be wary of her. Even after she'd repudiated Cyrus as too soft-hearted and said some truly horrible things about Cyno, it had taken time to convince him that she was truly breaking away from her academic clique. He hadn't let her start taking shifts supervising his specimens until after she'd managed to keep herself largely impassive through the collection of that particular 'tissue sample.'

If he'd known what she'd been fantasizing about at the time, he wouldn't have wanted her within a mile of his lab. Lisa has a perfect test designed for *his* pain tolerances, if the opportunity ever happens to arise.)

But he doesn't attack, as rigidly still when she'd finished as when she'd begun. For a moment Lisa wonders if the key had actually worked. Then he takes a deep breath, shivers all over, and lets it out. On the exhale, he rises smoothly to his feet.

"Robes," Lisa tells him, mostly so that he won't panic when she goes for the bag she'd brought with her tonight. Tossing the notes at the top aside--she won't need them anymore, and may Anatoli have whatever joy he may get from her careful records of Kaeya's answers--she holds out the bundle of fabric to him, then turns away.

The cold at her back puts a chill down her spine, but at least now she's looking at the door. She just has to trust that he'll maintain his restraint even with her back turned.

It seems to take a tortuously long time for him to get dressed, though Lisa has no intention of rushing him through something he hasn't been allowed to do since he was, by his own accounting, eleven. She doesn't look down at her jammed terminal or back over her shoulder at him. She watches the door and counts the seconds passing in her head.

Despite the tension of the wait, Kaeya finishes well within her time window. Lisa turns to see that she's guessed his size well. He still looks swamped in the robes, even though they end at his ankles, but that's an unavoidable consequence of the caloric pittance Anatoli budgets for him. At least it helps hide the missing end of the right arm.

She holds out her arm to him instead of reaching for his. Kaeya hesitates a moment, looking at her warily, then grasps her wrist with his left hand. His grip is far stronger than she'd expected for how few fingers he has left, almost bruisingly tight, but Lisa makes sure to keep smiling at him as she starts for the door.

The corridors of the lab are dark, barely lit. Anatoli's tight-fisted grip on mora will help them here. Lisa leads Kaeya through the turns in utter silence and a tingling aura of static and cold. She can't entirely suppress her Vision, jangling with both her own nerves and the close presence of Abyssal power, and she can't expect Kaeya to suppress his own abilities when control has only ever been imposed upon them from outside. That he's not giving her frostbite at the moment will have to be good enough.

Humid air hits them like a wet sheet across the face as they step out of the climate-controlled laboratory and into a summer night in Sumeru City. The heat damps the chill, the moisture the static, and Lisa sighs in something not quite relief. Kaeya gasps aloud, then flinches, going tense, no doubt anticipating the collar's buzz. Lisa turns to give him another smile.

In the next breath, he lets go of her and jerks away sideways, flinging himself down the path at a run. Lisa hisses under her breath and puts a hand to her Vision. It's her own fault; she should have expected that. But she can't let him get away.

Electro flashes at her throat, and a gleaming elemental barrier rises to his left as he careens down the street. His atrophied muscles are working in her favor, even with desperation driving him. He flinches away from the barrier and turns the other way, towards the rightward path. Lisa scrambles after him.

Just after he rounds the corner, she hears a grunt, and a yelp, and a crack of Electro. She comes around after him to find Cyno clutching him tight. Kaeya is limp in his grasp. It's his instinctive reaction to the shock-collar, which will keep reacting until he stops moving; Cyno's jolt must have felt just the same. The look on his face is one of open betrayal.

"Don't try that again," Cyno tells him, setting him back on his feet as Lisa approaches and holding him there until he takes his own weight. "If you run into any other matra, they would know you weren't a student, and you'd be lucky if they sensed the Abyss on you and killed you outright. It's more likely they would take you for a confused Elezear patient and return you straight to the Akademiya."

"And right back to Anatoli," Lisa adds. "Kaeya, this is Cyno. He's going to help us get out of the city."

"A *matra* is helping you steal a specimen?"

"A friend of mine," Lisa says, firmly, "is helping me get a badly injured young man away from those who injured him."

Kaeya gives her a dubious look, but doesn't argue further.

"Follow me," Cyno tells them, starting off down the side-street towards the darkness at its end. "We don't have much time if we're going to slip out between patrols."

Lisa holds her arm out to Kaeya again. He shakes his head, but starts after Cyno. She follows him, watching his increasingly heavy step. This is more exercise than he's been allowed for years, and their night has only just begun. Forcing contact, though, is only going to make him more nervous. There has to be a point at which he unleashes his Cryo in earnest, and she'd rather not push him to it.

Their path leads them through narrow gaps between buildings, alongside the brightwood stands behind them, and, eventually, out to the farmlands on the city's northern side. By the time they break out onto the slopes down to the river to its north, Kaeya is stumbling outright. This time, when Lisa offers him her arm, he takes it and leans into her a little. Lisa can feel him shaking through the robes.

"You're sure you're not going to get in trouble for this, cutie?" she asks Cyno. "You can't make General Mahamatra and reform the matra from within if you get accused of helping me out."

"There's a Kshahrewar scholar ready to swear that I've been drinking with him all night. If we'd run across a patrol and had to deal with them, there might have been trouble, but no one has any reason to guess that I noticed that hole in the schedule before you took advantage of it."

"Good."

As they reach the shore, a faint firefly-light glows just above the water. A literal fire-fly light; there's a handful in a jar, sitting at the feet of a young man in a canoe. Lisa can't make out much by that dim illumination, but he has long, pointed fox's ears, and she sees the whisking of a fluffy tail behind him.

"These are your passengers?" he asks Cyno, standing to look Lisa and Kaeya over.

Cyno nods, then turns to Lisa. "This is the Forest Ranger I told you about. He'll take you wherever you've chosen to go. Make sure to avoid Port Ormos. The matra there recently got an updated connection to the Akasha, and they'll know exactly what to look for before you can get there. But Caravan Ribat and Gandharva Ville are still on the old system and should be safe."

"Which way do you want to go, sweetie?" she asks, turning to Kaeya. "East or west?"

He jerks his head up and blinks at her as if coming out of a daze. Then he shakes his head. "Not back to the desert."

"East it is, then."

"Good," the ranger says. "I hate the desert. There's a mercenary and her company that I've heard good things about out that way, if you needed a trustworthy guide, but there's no guarantee you'd be able to hire her. It's not a good idea to go straight through Gandharva Ville, since we might be seen by other Forest Rangers, but I can take you past it and over the border to Lumberpick Valley in Liyue by myself."

"Thank you, cutie." Lisa gives him a warm smile, then turns to help Kaeya into the canoe.

He collapses onto the bench more than sits on it, and all the tension thrumming through him can't keep him from keeling over onto Lisa's shoulder once she sits down beside him. She puts an arm around him to steady him, but keeps her touch light so that he won't feel trapped. The ranger exchanges a wordless nod with Cyno, then pushes away from the bank.

They start off down the river, picking up speed as they go. Lisa yawns, giggles a little when Kaeya echoes it, and then giggles more when the ranger yawns, too, and grumbles under his breath about it. Settling more comfortably onto the seat as Kaeya grows heavier and heavier against her, Lisa looks up through the trees and the mist at the first gleam of light off in the east as they make their way towards the dawn.

[skayafair]

The brainworms be brainworming

Note: I want to chat about junoverse! Hit me up if you do too!

It's funny how I expected to ship the hell out of the main pairing just to end up utterly inenterested :D

It's amusing and gives Juno a good character developement, but mostly it's just corroding. Also by all accounts Nureyev should have been the type of character who is usually interesting to me, but mostly I couldn't care less and was slightly annoyed in s5 (made sense tho, so not complaining). And I don't understand why he kept showing up in Juno's life and even offered to run away together just to do his worst to try and disappear for good when things started looking up and settling for them, the whole Dark Matters ordeal notwithstanding. Did he try to shake Juno off because he became scared that his feelings got too real for comfort and he couldn't just "file them away" anymore? Would he have abandoned Juno on some faraway planet if Juno didn't change his mind and actually went with him?

Maybe my attitude was partly why I was so delighted by the ending, except for the fact that it simply made the most sense and the stories rarely go this route in order not to upset the fanbase. Personally I'd have said Nureyev to get lost after the 2nd disappearance but luckily for Peter Juno has a different approach. And their relationship might have not gotten through to me, but I really liked how it was developed: I'm on aroace spectrum and "love from the first sight" sounds ridiculous to me. Attraction, I can believe in, love - nah, this thing's built over time and looots of effort. And that's what they've been doing over the seasons - building it. Juno's resolution - "if you can do this, we'll be together, someday in future, if you can't - I guess we just aren't compatible", his acceptance of the fact made me very glad to hear had to undergo a similar realization in the past. Do I need to say that to me the person behind that door in the last seconds of the episode was NOT Nureyev. Too early.

On a different note, what I wasn't satisfied with was Sasha's plotline. It feels unfinished. I kept expecting it to get its resolution as well, to make me sympathize with her (not justify her actions tho), and I guess Nightmare was supposed to be it, but she just confused me instead. I still don't understand what exactly this whole case meant. Why did she look exactly like young Sasha to Juno but like Juno - to Mick?

I mean... the way Sasha was erasing herself from existance just for Agent W to be the only one left, and with how often neometh was mentioned - and the super-drug they pumped Jet with? - I thought Slip would come into the picture too somehow. It seemed like there was a joint overarching plot for these two lines, but they ended up completely unrelated. And Juno said he needed to reflect on Sasha and understand her even after they shook the DM off of their tail, but I don't think this was developed? Idk. And what with all the hints of "you don't know what I've been through" from Sasha? Did I miss the elaboration? It just feels like her plot line was planned but scrapped at some point.

I've started to listen again since ep 1 and realized I don't enjoy the podcast as much as the 1st time until the Aurinkos come into the picture. All the previous episodes were good, don't get me wrong, - just not as interesting to me personally. So after a few episodes I skipped right to the middle of season 2 and wow. I didn't realize Jet to be THIS hilarious the first time! Now the actual fun begins <3

And since I've already started - Juno was very funny and sooo coherent back in the desert. "Leave me be! I'll die but at least I'll do this by my own will!.. oh shit this guy looks scary and like he'll kill me if I don't shut up right now, ok fine". Aw <3

I think this is the first time when I can actually remember how unreliable and overdramatic our narrator is, take his descriptions of any situations with a grain of salt and not even be annoyed at this :D

[raphaelesbian]

ok, since you asked (and I GET the "I wanted to write, but didn't") ....ummmm..... would Shini try to sneak Raph into a concert?

Also, if it's not too spoiler-y, what are all three boys' currently theories on where Raph got the alcohol?

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Oh I definitely think that would be on-brand for her. One because she definitely is a concert kind of girl and she loves breaking the rules, but also just because, like. Her goal is to stabilize them, basically. She's a little wild, but (mostly) in a "teenage girl" kind of way, while they're very much Losing It. So things like a little makeover montage, or listening to music, or watching silly YouTube videos, and TOTALLY going to a concert, are all things she would think of to try and... "distract them" isn't quite right, but it's close. To break them out of their spiral, kind of.

Anyways fhkdsahglk I think she'd get him all dressed up and probably watch from the rafters or smth a la Bayverse. She'd probably try to convince him to actually go down with the people, because it's dark! no one is paying attention! you'll be fine! but he'd push back on that pretty hard. Poor 12 boys would NOT thrive in a crowd XD Maybe someday in the future she could change his mind though.

Oooh okay that actually is a very helpful question bc I haven't even really thought about it that much 🤔 and I need to!

I think, after Raph stormed off at the end of the last chapter, there was probably some off-screen discussion between them all. For sure they briefly grilled Casey on potentially introducing him to the idea, but he strongly denied the allegations. I think Casey is more of a weed guy anyways lmao. I think, as a group, their mostly likely assumption is just that he's stealing it. He's a ninja, he's never cared much about human society/rules so he wouldn't feel bad about it, and it's the easiest answer. BUT:

Why would he not tell Casey if that was the case? It isn't something Casey would be likely to snitch on; he wouldn't care and would probably join in. So they know there has to be more to it, even if they're correct.

Oof, them turtles are hard to characterize!! This is an excellent question ty for forcing me to contemplate it fhklsdahklg. Donnie is smart, but he's also not the best when it comes to reading people. I think he'd just go down the decision tree of most likely explanations and say "yeah he's stealing it and getting drunk in an alleyway somewhere. god he's annoying (/said with love and frustration)"

mikey is always difficult for me lmao, I love him and I love his relationship with raph, but he's such an erratic character. he's very, like, instinctual (see: monkey brains episode), so I think he disagrees with the consensus, but doesn't have much of an alternative. he doesn't know WHERE raph is getting it, or what he's doing, but he knows that can't be it. which probably makes donnie double down harder on his theory, because mikey has no DATA.

leo has been the one the MOST in the know, even if he's still very much left in the dark. he'd be putting some of those pieces together: that time Raph came back injured and said he was jumped, how tired and withdrawn he's been, the bracelet, perhaps the hint of makeup you can barely see beneath his lopsided mask. he would think that maybe there's someone else, someone he's hanging out with that either is providing alcohol or they're getting it together, but then he hits a wall.

I even think that karai crosses his mind, but between their INCREDIBLY antagonistic relationship during the brainworm incident, and the fact that they just. never liked each other, and raph was always telling LEO to stop trusting her. so he would write that off. but it's there, in the back of his head.

I'm definitely going to continue thinking on this fhdlsdahklg but having to go through that thought process in my head and put it into words was a good exercise I think XD ty so much for asking!!! I hope some of that was interesting lol

[aflamethatneverdies]

tagged by @pilferingapples ! thank you friend!

tag someone you want to know better

favorite color: yellow

last song: it was the S1 ending song from Natsume Yuujinchou.

last movie: A Silent voice (it's an anime movie about bullying and suicide and high schoolers dealing with all that in a very messy way. i liked it)

currently watching: Natsume Yuujinchou Season 5

other stuff i watched this year: A Silent voice, Kemono no Souja Erin, other miscellaneous anime lol

shows i dropped this year/didn’t finish: kingohger (sorry! i know everyone loves it but after Racules died, i kinda lost interest. I have accepted it's just not for me). I also didn't finish Kamen Rider Geats. Maybe i will go back and finish them both, but rn, i have other stuff i wanna watch.

currently reading: Natsume Yuujinchou Manga, some non fiction books and articles- currently on How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Want to be in the right headspace to read Madame Putiphar someday.

currently listening to : i can't do podcasts or audio books so don't really listen to things generally. i am however slowly making my way through Jules Gill Peterson's discussion on trans children. She's great tbh, definitely recommend.

currently working on: i have grand ideas for a, well, idk. i'm calling it a rebuilding fic as a working title. i'm obsessed with looking at people picking up the pieces at the death of an Empire and what happens and what changes. i still need to do more research for it though and am reading books and articles for that.

current obsession: still have pirate polycule brainworms, sorry anyone if you're still following me for les mis, maybe i'll come back to it someday but rn i'm still obsessed with pirate blorbos. In my defense they are very good blorbos. Also if anyone is looking for more pirate media to watch, please watch them and then come yell at me.

[masakia]

Wild that I'm thinking about this plot still 2 years later, I never actually finished it because I start to feel really pressured by the expectations people would have of the plot (and also I started getting deep into another fandom, which is where I spend most of my time) but the supernatural brainworms have been slowly coming back so who knows, maybe someday I will actually work on this again

Everyday I fight the urge of writing a destiel fic where everything is the same but Dean has a baby girl (the mother didn't want to be involved cause they were both young, like 24 maybe.) So Dean is like "well I guess I'm gonna parent this child now" and yeah he raised Sam and he did the best job he could with the circumstances they were given, but something about this little girl makes Dean wanna cry everytime he looks at her and thinks how he doesn't know how to give her a better life.

Anyway she would be two at the first season and Dean would put her hair up in silly hairstyles and Sam just has to reset himself when he enters the impala during the first episode and there is just baby stuff on the back seat.

When Cas shows up the baby gets attached to him really fast and Cas, who has never interacted with a baby before, holds her by the back of her clothes like she is a kitten.

[tidbitsandbats]

Ok so this really did start out as a horny drabble I was toying with in my head. I'd read "what you did was just as dark" by snowinthestars months ago, maybe even a year or more. But sometimes fics just stick with you, you know? You find yourself thinking about them every now and then, little scenes and details that come to mind even when you've forgotten even the title of the story.

It wound its way into my brainworms, with the idea of Ra's using whatever partner Tim chose as a surrogate without care for who that actually was being incredibly dehumanizing and horny.

The main problem came in with the realization that I had no idea how I wanted to characterize Tim LMAO bro is a main character but I didn't do shit with him because I only put my brainpower into the horny and not Dick and Tim's actual relationship. Maybe someday Tim will get to be a real boy instead of a prop character rip

That's probably why I wound up slipping into all of that introspection at the end. It was a lot of me feeling out the world building (that it didn't really need because, again, PWP). Looking back it doesn't really fit cleanly into the fic, and I know that as a reader I'd probably skim that kind of thing, but I didn't have the heart to take it out either.

And it was in that that the idea for a sequel bloomed, so maybe it wasn't wholly unnecessary hehe

[mattzerella-sticks]

Thinking about one of the core themes of Everything, Everywhere, All At Once and - not to do this but since it's kind of 'my thing' lol - my mind wandered with strings to try and connect it to Supernatural and how the finale truly just - just dropped the ball because -

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

Because the message of "there are an infinite amount of realities so nothing matters which is why everything matters" ties exactly to the struggle Dean was facing in the last season (though in the case of Supernatural there was someone to blame instead of the inherent randomness of the universe) and literally how both Dean and Evelyn spent most of the arc of the narrative fighting but in the end it wasn't fighting that saved the universe but love and kindness (and they were reminded by their loves who they just so happened to end up with due to the randomness of the universe - the thing that Chuck probably hates, it's his everything bagel lol). And the fact that Eveyln got to have that happiness in the ordinary and we’re left with the idea (or at least I was) that things are going to be okay and they’ll work out. Whereas in the finale Dean gets to that point of realization only for the ‘randomness’ of death to come and claim him or whatever in a way that kind of undercuts the journey (which we ALL have discussed to death lol). Like, we know Dean will die someday I think having it end like that, with the showing of it, was just meh. Even if they wanted to end it with a hunt and it’s the brothers sitting on the trunk of the Impala sharing a beer like “yeah we’re back to business even with Chuck gone”, it would have been a better button on the show then... that. Like maybe they will die during a hunt but that’s up to speculation.

And then there's the Cas and Wayden parallels, like the speech Wayden gave Evelyn in the alleyway when she was in the parallel universe where she was a famous movie star is a Cas thesis statement for sure. And also the reason why Cas's endgame should have been becoming human.

And like in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, it starts with a divorce and ends with a reunion once Evelyn sees past her own stuff and sees Wayden for who and what he truly is and realizes she's been ignoring what's right in front of her, preoccupied with her own 'unhappiness' and 'unfulfillment' and -

I didn't expect this to be an essay but to any SPN fans go watch Everything, Everywhere, All at Once because it is not only a good movie it makes the DeanCas brainworms v v happy