#and the reverse is true for dean of course

[ardentpoop]

when you get Me, number 1 abusive dad hater to defend an abusive dad character that should tell you something (and that something is that your commentary is corny and disingenuous)

[monstermoviedean]

i so so get your feelings about the michael arc as a whole, just spilling some added thoughts here, feel free to ignore, i just wanted to make it an ask so this mess wouldn't be an rb

the michael arc has a whole other layer of unfairness to me because it follows so much of the same plot threads as sam's issues with lucifer in season 4-5 and then hurts dean in a way they never hurt sam. when sam was panicked over what being lucifer's vessel meant and running around on cases, dean supports him (despite getting no sympathy when michael is also revealed). in s14 however sam not only, obviously, actively brings up dean's very valid fears like they're just him abandoning family (sammy, honey, look at your track record) and works behind his back with others. sam in the cage = dean in the malak box. but dean trusted sam to let him go, no matter how much it killed him. sam frames dean doing the exact same thing as another issue of trust. also also also if i remember right, sam wasn't even possesed by lucifer as long as dean and cas were by the archangels!!! not dismissing his cage trauma ofc, but there is a very clear level of repression that sam is trying to keep concerning everything, which also leads him making some bullheaded statements to dean.

like it's insane how they speedran the archangel vessel trauma from s4-s5 with michael, but proceeded to have no aftermath resolution for any of it. nor did they have sam really support and dare i say, comfort, dean, the way the reverse happened. (and obviously dean made his own mistakes in s4-s5 with sam, but the ratio is completely different). anyways, just found the repeated themes interesting and thought you might too

oh this is soooooo tasty thank you so much!!! i especially love it when people send me stuff like this that helps me connect dots. i hadn't connected the dots on how much of a speedrun this is! but holy crap. it really is!

they spend almost all of season 5 working on the lucifer + michael vessel buildup, and then most of season 6 and part of season 7 deals with the aftermath of sam's decision to say yes. to be clear, i don't have any issue with that! it makes sense in context and a lot of it is well-done. and i certainly don't begrudge the show for highlighting sam's feelings about being lucifer's vessel. but even if we round down, even if we say it's just one season of sam having this vessel arc, that's still way, way more than dean got.

i don't want this to sound like "wah sam got more screen time than dean" because that's absolutely not my issue. my issue is that both in their universe and in our universe, sam and dean can have the same exact problem and their problems can be assigned different levels of weight and attention. is this 100% true 100% of the time? no, of course not. but when it comes to being a vessel, the effects on sam are highlighted. the effects on dean are downplayed.

like you said - even in s5 dean barely gets to react to being michael's vessel. he gets one episode (05x18) to really consider it and we all know how that goes for him. and in s13-14 it's just as minimized. dean gets less than 5 minutes in 13x23 to concoct his plan. this isn't something he's agonized over. this isn't something that is foreshadowed even a little bit. and then dean is possessed for an unknown length of time. in my opinion, it was probably a few months.

that's a huge deal. that is a HUGE deal. even if he's possessed for the minimum amount of time necessitated by the episodes, it's still probably a month. i don't remember how long sam was possessed for in 05x22, but i'm pretty sure it was less than a month.

is length of time the only thing that matters here? nope! definitely not! in no way do i mean to suggest that dean automatically had it worse than sam simply because he was possessed for longer. as you point out, the cage.

but this brings me to one of my biggest issues with the whole arc: sam not showing a single speck of empathy for dean. as you noted - sam is going through it, he is feeling emotions and recalling memories that he has repressed, and i understand why those could come out in ways that are less than healthy. totally get it. but it is still just downright awful to watch sam talk to dean the way he does, especially knowing sam has been exactly where dean was.

dean doesn't do a perfect job handling sam being lucifer's vessel. no doubt. i don't remember it that well at this point; it's been a while since i've seen season 5. but look at what he says to sam when sam has made up his mind to say yes:

SAM: You're gonna let me say yes? DEAN: No. That's the thing. It's not on me to let you do anything. You're a grown – well, overgrown – man. If this is what you want, I'll back your play. SAM: That's the last thing I thought you'd ever say. DEAN: Might be. I'm not gonna lie to you, though. It goes against every fiber I got. I mean, truth is… You know, watching out for you… it's kinda been my job, you know? But more than that, it's… it's kinda who I am. You're not a kid anymore, Sam, and I can't keep treating you like one. Maybe I got to grow up a little, too. I don't know if we got a snowball's chance. But… But I do know that if anybody can do it… it's you. SAM: Thank you.

dean says it's not up to him to decide for sam, and while he doesn't necessarily like his decision, he respects it. and he wants sam to know that. he goes out of his way to comfort sam and to build him up, to support him. and it's a shocking contrast to what sam says when dean tells him about the ma'lak box plan. it's even more shocking when compared to sam trying to talk dean out of it.

does sam need to be 100% supportive and kind all the time? nope! but the way he goes about this is just so incredibly self-centered and so actively harmful to dean. as you mentioned - he frames it as dean abandoning his family. he also suggests dean is "giving up," "quitting," refusing to believe in/trust sam. i yelled about this yesterday but sam is, whether intentionally or not, picking at all of dean's worst fears while dean is facing down another worst fear and feeling shame for feeling fear. sam says and does some pretty awful things and dean does not get to respond to any of it. he just moves on. it's like it's not his story so it doesn't matter what he feels or how he's treated.

and to know that all of this gets heaped on dean - guilt for saying yes, guilt for letting michael out, guilt for "leaving the door open," guilt for what michael did, guilt for not being "strong enough" to keep him contained, guilt for "abandoning" sam, plus the very VERY real trauma of being possessed for a long stretch of time, plus what's about to happen to mary and jack - to know all of this happens back-to-back-to-back? that's hard enough. but to not even let him react to any of it? to force him to keep going as if this is all business as usual and he should just suck it up? so much worse.

and i'm just going to go ahead and assume sam never apologizes for any of it. i may be wrong. please correct me if i'm wrong.

[schizosamwincester]

Good morning. Please consider omega/omega wincest.

Hunting is no job for omegas, obviously. Ghosts are generally fine, but anything worse will smell the slick and the hormones a mile away. John's had them both on heat suppressants and scent blockers since their first heats.

Sam came off them at Stanford. Hiding your secondary gender isn't very normal, after all. He gets right back on when Jess is gone. He tells Dean it's because he's hunting again, but that's not the truth. The truth is that he doesn't want to go through heat without his mate.

Dean never has. It's advised to have a natural heat at least every few years, but well... Who's gonna tell Dean that? It's not like he goes to the doctor. And even if he did, it's not like he'd listen. Dean has responsibilities. He's got hunting to do and family to protect. He can't be laid up for a week soaked in his own slick.

When they finally get together, Sam spends years trying to convince Dean that they should go off the blockers and rent a little cabin and have a heat together. Dean only relents when Sam says that he's going to do it whether Dean does or not, because it's been long enough that he needs to do it for health reasons. Dean can't just leave his Sammy to weather a heat alone, after all.

Of course, Sam's the one who's far, far more experienced at heats at this point, so he ends up being the one to help Dean. It's a lovely role reversal when compared to Sam's first heat, where Dean was sticking close by, making sure he ate and placing wet washcloths on his forehead. Dean had been so surprised, because obviously bold, defiant Sammy was going to be an alpha, but well... when that turned out not to be true, Dean took care of him like always. Now Sam is taking care of him, in more ways than one.

[scoobydoodean]

sam tricking dean into seeing a faith healer (and getting healed) by saying it was a specialist is something i dont see discussed imo because its akin to violating medical consent?

like dean was going to die and hed pretty much accepted it. but sam hadnt.

dean literally asks him "youre not gonna let me die in peace, are you?"

at no point does sam think about what dean wants. dean is the one dying, but its sam who decides that they cant just accept, its sam who goes looking for a supernatural cure, its sam who tricks dean into going to see a faith healer. its all sam sam sam.

when dean is the one dying; he is the one who should get to make these choices. if dean decides he doesnt want to spend his last week's alive chasing down a cure, that should be final. the decision should be deans alone because dean is the one dying, not sam.

sam should have respected deans decision. but sam didnt and yeah its understandable his brother is dying and all, but then he deliberately misleads dean so hell agree to go to nebraska to see the specialist who dean - reasonably - assumes is a doctor.

if nothing else, the deception alone is equal to violating medical consent. its the equivalent of leading a patient into believing theyre going to receive one treatment and then giving them another.

maybe its the angry disabled in me, but it frustrates me to no end when samgirls talk about dean always making decisions for sam when sam uwu baby winchester decides dean doesnt even get to make decisions for himself when hes fucking dying.

So I will say—I don't think Dean wanted to die after his heart got damaged in 1.12. I think he didn't think Sam could do anything and because of that, he was ready to accept the reality of death. He actually expected Sam to be willing to leave him behind, but when Sam wasn't and actually wanted to try and save him, I do think Dean was touched by that and was willing to go along with it. We see that Dean doesn't want to die in 2.01, when Ghost!Dean pleads with Sam and John to save his life, and in 1.22 when Dean begs John "Don't you let it kill me."

Sam most certainly did lie by omission about where he was taking Dean though. He knew Dean wouldn't be amenable to seeing some christian faith healer in a tent, so he omitted certain details to get him in the car. Sam does something very similar in 3.15 "Time Is On My Side".

While Dean was willing to try (thus his willingness to see a specialist), he wasn't really down to see the religious faith healer—that's absolutely true—and if we reversed the situation and Dean had done this to Sam, samgirls would never shut up about it. For me personally, Sam's unhinged ploys to save Dean are one of his more entertaining qualities though. Even if I don't always like how it works out, I enjoy seeing Sam do extremely unhinged things and easily brush it under the rug afterwards.

What's more troublesome to me is that in taking Dean to see this faith healer, ushering him into the tent when Dean is really too sick to put up more than verbal protests, and then insisting Dean sit up front and then go up on stage (with added pressure from the crowd)... the outcome of that is... terrible. Of course, it's something terrible that Sam does not know about or expect. Sam didn't know that when Dean got healed, someone else would die. But the simple fact is that Sam easily dismissed it.

DEAN Wait, wait, wait. So, Marshall Hall died to save me? SAM Dean, the guy probably would've died anyway. And someone else would've been healed.

Dean didn't have such an easy time. Dean had to live with it. Dean had to contend with the knowledge that not only had someone died so he could be healed, but that his life was saved over Layla's life, which made him feel terrible. The entire situation made Dean feel so guilty and horrible and wrong that he stopped running from the reaper at the end of the episode and planned to let it kill him so that Layla could live, and all of this resulted from a situation that started with... Sam tricking Dean. Is it any wonder that Dean immediately says "No" in 3.01 when Sam wants to take him to another faith healer?

[ananke-xiii]

Amelia Richardson didn't stand a chance (but at least she survived).

I'll be honest with you, I genuinely feel sorry for Amelia's character.

I think that, between she and Benny, she was the one who drew the short straw and ended up being written as a sort of bland mixture of the "Magical Girlfriend" and the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" tropes (Benny is written the same way but the resulting mixture is less bland and more savoury). It's like as if she was created in order to not be liked no matter what. Add to this mix the actor who played her wasn't really selling it (and had close to 0 chemistry with Jared Padalecki) and here we have our own very Amelia Richardson Who Never Stood A Chance But At Least Survived.

I've read a theory according to which Amelia is not real, she's just a figment of Sam's imagination (I'll link it when I find it I just remember it but have no idea where I've read it, sorry). I think it's a solid theory and canon has given us a lot of hints about Sam's imaginative ways to deal with reality's hardships (Sully comes to mind, of course, but also Sam was having hallucinations and had been held in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in S7).

But the funny thing about Amelia is that she doesn't need to be literally fictive because she's so unrealistically real that the end result is the same. In other words, Amelia's function as a character is so obvious that she can never be "Just Amelia". Everything about her story is there to serve Sam's story and nothing more. And it shows. A lot. Too much.

The first warning of Amelia's "disposableness" is that she's a human from the non-hunting world. As such she's also the unfortunate signifier of a well-known concept in "Supernatural": the Apple Pie Life. Amelia can never be "Just Amelia" because she must primarily represent the "normal", the "natural" world. And in "Supernatural" the "normal" world is always fictive. There's no real "normal" world in this show, there's only the "normal" world as imagined by Sam and Dean. And for Sam and Dean access to the "normal" world has always been portrayed as access to a woman from the non-hunting world. She's a distorted version of the "Magical Girlfriend" trope in that she doesn't possess magical qualities but she serves the function of being the magical key for the hero to enter the magical, imagined, fictive "normal" world. It's the reversal of S9 "Slumber Party", a whole-ass episode about girls and keys and doors to magical worlds. She's just the perfect girl to enter into Sam's life: she gets him because she's also on the run, she gets him because she's also a mess, she gets him because she's also lost someone. She ticks all the boxes and she's just what Sam needed.

The second warning is that she's a little bit too Manic Pixie Dream Girl to be a "real" character. She blows up the disposal by jamming lime rinds down the drain, she makes "spaghetti and sliced hot-dogs" for dinner as a tradition when she moves into a new house, she's the chubby kid who wabbles up on stage dragging toilet paper behind her, she immediatley clocks Sam as a drifter, a serial killer, a white supremacist, a creep and tells him to his face instead of, I don't know, make a mental note of never talk to that man again. But she's quirky like that. She also has no goal of her own. Her life seems to be completely dependent first on her husband and then on Sam: Sam's found the new house, Sam's in charge of the relocation, Sam's never had a birthday cake so here, have one, Sam's a mess but she's also a mess so they're happy together.

For a character written like this the moment Sam leaves their shared house means the moment we stop caring about her. We're invested in Amelia's life as long as Sam's in there, otherwise aurevoir Amelia. To be honest, I think this is true for all characters in SPN and particularly for all human characters who first must participate in the hunters' world to earn their place in the story and second must somehow connect with Sam and Dean. The proof of this "theory" are AU!Bobby and AU!Charlie: they're the same characters that we used to like but without their connection to Sam and Dean do we really care about them? Are we invested in their stories? Personally no. However, compare and contrast Amelia with Benny and people seem to be more interested in the latter's backstory, even if it's got nothing to do with the brothers. Why? Simple: he's better written than Amelia and doesn't share the same burden of representing the "Apple Pie Life" (which is, as we all know, an elemental theme for the series). Of course, he does represent other things but ultimately Benny's given the possibility to be "Just Benny" as a character who's surely serving the narrative needs (aka the brothers' needs) but who's also a complete character in his own right. Proof of this is that by s15 Benny's still mentioned and showed as part of the narrative while Amelia disappears from it the moment Sam leaves her life for the second time.

So I feel sorry for her character because she's flat, unremarkable and ultimately...boring. Even Daphne from S7, a character who has one scene and one scene only, feels more exciting than Amelia who, on the other hand, got herself a whole narrative arc. I feel like she's understandably not a character fans are fond of but it's not her fault, it's not like she's done something, she's just... drawn that way. The good thing is that at least she survived so I guess every cloud has a silver lining.

[twofrontteethstillcrooked]

Liminal: 1 Oct. Suptober snippetfic

"Perfect sleeping weather." Dean slowly propped himself up on his elbows, all his weight otherwise pinning Cas in place. His smile grew wider. "If you were thinking about going to sleep."

deancas, post-first time au; very slightly spicy

Cas didn't know the blanket had slipped down until a thin, cool draft curled along his spine. He looked over and saw Dean had left the nearest window cracked open. 

"Hmm?" Dean hummed, his breath warm at Cas's throat.

"It's supposed to be in the low 50s tonight." Cas pulled at the blanket until it relented, letting itself be retucked around Dean's shoulders. Cas shivered as the fabric settled against his own skin. He could feel Dean smile. The smoke-scented October air was almost as bracing.

"Perfect sleeping weather." Dean slowly propped himself up on his elbows, all his weight otherwise pinning Cas in place. His smile grew wider. "If you were thinking about going to sleep."

He dipped his head to kiss Cas like it was already the easiest thing, like they'd been kissing one another for months, no hesitations, his mouth hot and soft and sure. When he shifted his body a bit to the side he laid his palm in the center of Cas's chest, as if to claim him, as though Cas might try to squirm away.

What was the saying? Cas thought. Possession was nine-tenths of the law? Angels needed express permission to occupy a human's vessel. The reverse wasn't true, but Dean had long possessed Cas. Hester had it wrong, of course (angels were, it turned out, often wrong). When Cas first laid a hand on Dean, it saved them both. 

Maybe no threshold he crossed would ever be more important than that one. He just hadn't understood before, not really, that what had been undertaken roughly an hour ago might change him just as thoroughly. He knew how Dean kissed now, how he tasted; how he sounded when Cas was inside him. He loved Dean in every way he knew to love someone and somehow, after everything, Dean loved him too.

"Hey, Cas," Dean whispered, smile faded and eyes gentle. "You all right?"

Cas nodded, eyes on Dean's. He leaned into him as Dean traced away a wetness along his jaw with his thumb. Cas sighed with contentment. 

"Wanna get lost again?" Dean asked, low and close like a mind-reader, an ensorceler. 

"Yes," Cas agreed against Dean's mouth, and pushed the blanket to the floor.

[hekate1308]

There Was Winter’s Cold A Destiel Advent Calendar December 14

Masterpost

He knew there was no way in which he could get out of this but one. No matter what, Ellen would show up at his place if he did not explain to her who Cas was and what he was doing here right now; if he got lucky, she would send Bobby, but he couldn’t count on it.

It was his own fault, really. Someone must have seen them, and he was pretty sure that, if one didn’t happen to be Cas, it was pretty obvious that he thought he was really hot, too, so…

No wonder anyone would get a wrong impression.

And it wasn’t as if he had a good track record with relationships. Granted, they had not all ended catastrophically, some had fizzled out, but had never even come close to finding hat Sam had with Jess, so naturally his family was worried about him when he met someone new. Of the situation had ben reversed, Dean would have been a little confused too. After all, here he was, usually not ready to let anyone get too close, and now he had a guy living with him – staying with him, he corrected himself. Cas wouldn’t be staying forever of course, so he was just – staying – no, that didn’t work.

Still, he really, really should have seen this coming, even thought, he suddenly realized – now wait a moment. It was far from the first time that he let someone else stay with him, and even someone who was going through a rough time, someone who had nowhere else to go. Quite frankly, that was how he had met both Benny and Charlie, and in the case of the former, Sam was still wary of him, even though he had left the motorbike gang before he had ever met Dean, not that it mattered at the moment.

“Yeah, his name is Cas.”

“Cas?”

He belatedly realized that that was not a normal name, but there was no way out of it now. “Castiel. An angel name. Very religious family, only recently left them, so he didn’t have a place to stay.”

“Dean, tell me you didn’t get mixed up in a cult.”

Oh no. “No, no, don’t worry Ellen. He’s been hitchhiking since then, he’s pretty far away from home now.” Alright, not technically true since the river was pretty close, but speaking metaphorically…

“And you are sure it’s safe?”

“Yeah, I’m a big boy, I can take care of myself”.

Ellen hummed in that way of hers that indicated she did not entirely agree, and it was really a small wonder – if he had taken in two boys who had shown up at his doorstep one day, half-wild, all but starved and with no idea what a normal family life looked like, he would have been a little bit overprotective too, at least he could easily imagine that.

“Look, Ellen, I promise it’s kosher. Well, he is. I made sure of that.”

It was a half-truth, if so much, but he doubted that Castiel had something like a police record because someone would have noticed his powers, and anyway, magical creatures did not really get arrested.

“I am glad to hear that” she finally said and Dean breathed a sigh of relief that did not last long.

“Bring him over for dinner, alright?”

Over for –

“I – I – “ he knew there was no way out of this. If he said No, she would think he had something to hid after all, especially because, in her view, someone who had probably been living rough would never say no to a hot meal. “Of course. I’ll ask Cas.”

It was not going to be enough to say No because he didn’t want to, and he knew it, but maybe he could come up with something.

“You do that. Love, you, Dean.”

He immaturely softened, as always when she signed off with that. She had said it from the moment they had arrived at her doorstep, and had never stopped. “Love you too, Ellen.”

He hung up. Alright, now he just had to explain it to Cas…

As expected, there were no dinner parties in the river, so he was somewhat confused what Ellen wanted from him, but Dean explained that she just wanted to make sure he was safe.

“But I would never harm you” he immediately said and he sighed.

“Look, Cas, of course you wouldn’t. I get that. You get that. She sort of gets it too, but she has to make sure. That’s what – well – that’s what being a family is all about.”

“Not in my experience.”

Oh man, did he have to look so sad while he said that, too?

“It will be fine” he tried. “You like my cooking, don’t you? Ellen’s is much better – “

“I doubt that is possible.”

He told himself that he wasn’t blushing scarlet, but didn’t think that was true.

[foundationbuilt]

⭐

send ⭐ for me to choose which muses i would like to explore <3

i sincerely apologise for the ramble but this is what it came to sjsjsj. i'll put it under a read more so the whole dash doesn't have to suffer a long ass post.

scott & allison, ugh these babies like that was scott's first love and he was a stupid teenage boy with his heart on his sleeve and he made so many mistakes but allison holds so much of his heart. always. even if they break up, or don't get back together, or are just friends now, or whatever. she's so so important to him.

scott & lydia, the best of buddies. like this girl could have been like him, bitten by the same wolf and would've been part of the same pack ( even if it wasn't a pack ) but she didn't turn. she had something else going on, and scott wants to help so much with that and he feels such a connection to her anyway. and later he'll never understand how he could have ever gotten through life without lydia because she is one of the most important people in his life. i also do like exploring the idea of scott and lydia romantically ?? like, interesting how that would come around, but mostly i like them being platonic bffs.

on a role reverse for us muns, i'd like to explore dean and sam winchester interacting with scott because hunters coming across a true alpha like scott !!! that would be interesting, especially considering what part of the timeline dean and sam are at.

klaus & hayley !!!! one of my otp's, whether that's romantic, platonic, familial or enemies. i love these two's dynamics so so much, like it honestly has so much of my heart no matter what is going on with them. i love getting into the gritty realities between them as well as exploring how much they have changed and grown and evolved together. also so much potential for canon divergence's !!!!

hayley & davina's friendship !!! like these girls know what you have to do to survive in new orleans and they just ... help each other out when they can. it's all they can do. I think there's just something so sweet about this and i love it. i'd love to see hayley and davina also being like, older, and sister-in-laws, and being like, ugh, mikaelson christmas.

clary & simon, parabatai! best friends! awkward boyfriend-girlfriend! give me them all, like these two are the sweetest ever and clary loves him so much, and she needs him. he's literally the other half of her soul and, ughhhhhh! i love this dynamic.

clary & jace, another one of my otp's !! like these two angel kids struggling so much in this world with all these lies and pretences and false identifies they had been made to believe about themselves, finding each other amongst it all and finding themselves as well, and being together while doing that. as well as all the angst of course, because we can never get enough of that. but i'm good with angst and exploring that but also a happily ever after where they get to live the rest of their lives together. also would be interested in an au where the uprising didn't happen or happened later or whatever and clary and jace were both raised by valentine ... *side eye*.

jace & alec, parabatai boys!!!! that is jace's best bro, his soul, the first person who ever loved him and jace will never ever ever forget that. like alec is his soulmate and i will always scream about this dynamic. could also explore romantic jalec as well if you were interested in that.

jace & tessa, because herondale family feels !! i would absolutely adore building up a dynamic between jace and tessa like ....!!!!!!

percy & jason, these golden boys of their camps !! like there is so much potential there that's more than the macho falsity that didn't fit either percy or jason in canon that they were forced into. it is a dynamic i've explored in rp before and would absolutely love to do so again, there is so so so much potential. !!!

percy & annabeth, everything absolutely everything. like there's nothing i wouldn't write for these two.

percy & vienna, as soon as i read her about i thought of vienna helping percy control himself during a meltdown. like when he's creating a hurricane because of something that's went on and unable to control his emotions, vienna helped to control the weather even if only a little and it was enough to snap percy out of it and well, i don't know, but that's just what first came to my mind ... we could build on that.

peeta & katniss, again, everything, all the gritty details from the beginning to the end, i am so precious about these two, they hold my heart in so many ways. like they are so so damaged but aaaaaaaaaa !

RIGHT SO. i don't offically have rhode as a muse yet but i was talking with another mun about making her one tonight and then i saw kaia born in rhode island and it just ... felt like fate. rhode taking an interest in this one demigod ...

regulus & draco, like an au where regulus lives and he sees draco going down the exact same path that he did and he's like, no, stop, and that's his cousin's boy ( and he loves him, he loves narcissa, and he loves draco ) and he desperately doesn't want draco making the same mistakes !! ugh, that actually wretches my heart so much to think of regulus trying so hard to protect draco.

there are more but ... yes, i think i rambled enough jsjsjsjsjsjsj.

[theconsofrom-coms]

Aww, Gaslighting & Manipulation...How Romantic?

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse that takes the form of the abuser telling their victims contradicting statements, and sometimes outright lies about the past, so much so that the victim starts to believe they're going crazy. Oddly enough, this form of abuse has been the main premise and driving force behind many romantic comedies. So much so, that it is actually scary how much it gets overlooked and sometimes easily forgiven by the end of the story. All in the name of true love...of course. And sometimes because the victim ended up learning some sort of lesson about themselves, and think that the gaslighting was actually helpful!

Today, we will be focusing on three rom-coms in which the main couple is driven together pretty much on the basis of gaslighting. The three rom-coms will be, "Overboard (1987)", "Failure to Launch" and "She's All That!". And believe me when I say, these will leave you shocked.

Overboard, lie to a woman about her entire life and hope she never finds out...

Overboard tells the story of a woman named Joanna, who grew up in the lap of luxury and because of that, has become spoiled and snobbish, looking down on those of a low social standing. One night, she falls off of her yacht and wakes up ashore with no recollection of her life up to that point. That is when a man named Dean, a carpenter that Joanna had hired and treated extremely poorly, comes to the hospital where she is being treated claiming that she is actually his wife, Annie. Her, not knowing any better, goes home with him to be bombarded with chores and housework, while also being in charge of all of Dean's children. Throughout the course of this long lie, Dean and "Annie" start to genuinely fall in love, with "Annie" starting to enjoy her new life as a wife and mother. But, as most lies do, it all comes tumbling down when her fiancée, Grant, finally comes looking for her (he had already moved on, but was threatened by Joanna's mother to look for her), at which point Joanna recovers all her memories upon seeing him, and returns to New York with him, leaving Dean and his kids behind. But, surprise, surprise, Joanna doesn't like the life of an heiress anymore and decides that she wants to spend the rest of her life with Dean. They both confess their feelings for each other, get married, and plan to continue their family together.

Now...the whole basis of the story...IS GASLIGHTING! Dean sees his actions as justified due to Joanna's snobby personality and cruel behaviors, but the thing is what he did could be considered even worse. He emotionally manipulated Joanna into putting in physical and emotional energy into him and his family, and so of course, she started to feel close to them, she believes they are her family after all. He straight-up lies to her about her entire life, not knowing a single thing about her, for all he knew she could have had some medical condition that he wasn't aware of, putting her life in grave danger. But, of course that wasn't the thing on his mind at the time, he just cared that he was getting his revenge on this woman. And, at the end, she forgives him with such ease, while she did end up leaving for a period of time, it was nowhere near enough time to fully emotionally recover from a lie of that magnitude. So, the correct thing to do in her mind, is to go back to a life, that really isn't her life, it is fabricated and she seems completely okay with that. And let's keep in mind that this movie was rebooted in 2018, with the roles reversed, of a poor woman and a rich man, and no matter what the genders are, it is still not alright.

Failure to Launch, lie to men to get them to move out of their parents house, but then emotionally traumatize them by leaving them high and dry...classy

Failure to Launch is the story of Tripp, a man-child who refuses to move out of his parents house, and Paula a professional "motivator" that specializes in getting men to leave their parents' houses, by transferring any sort of attachment from them to her, promptly breaking up with the guy by the time he is already independent. Paula conducts her business in the sense of being a professional gaslighter, lying about her past to her "clients" and creating scenarios to get them to fall for her, but the situation is different with Tripp, as he doesn't fit into her common M.O. This leads to them having to spend even more time together than she had originally expected. This also is new for Tripp as he constantly scares away (on purpose) any girlfriend that becomes too serious by exposing the fact that he still lives with his parents. Both Tripp and Paula enter an unknown territory, having to deal with their own personal emotional baggage, as they both start to fall deeper in love with each other. Much like in the previous film, the truth is revealed and while Tripp is able to forgive his parents after some time, he breaks up with Paula and doesn't seem to keen on forgiving her anytime soon (finally!). That is, until Tripp's parents set up for Tripp and Paula to be trapped in a room together. With no other choice but to talk, Tripp and Paula are able to understand why it is that they both do what they do, and confess their true feelings for one another. They soon move in together, oddly enough, Paula accomplishing her goal, of getting him out of the house, but this time she is here to stay.

Some of you may say, "But isn't it okay to lie, if it's for the greater good?" and to that I say, yes, there are some lies that maintain the balance of society, but what Paula is doing isn't one of them. While, yes, it is concerning that a 35-year old man is still living with his parents, with some normal therapy, I am sure that they would have been able to solve this issue as well. And also, Paula's actions weren't entirely done in the name of good, but were also done as a sort of revenge. Apparently, there was an incident in her past that left her heartbroken, an incident involving a past boyfriend who still lived with his parents, and this event most likely is what triggered Paula to go after guys like Tripp, to "help" them, and break up with them as soon as she possibly can once the job is complete. She lies about her entire life in order to get Tripp to fall for her, and it ends up backfiring once it all gets put on the table, and while I am proud of Tripp for resisting against reconciliation attempts, he ends up forgiving Paula. While, I don't think what Paula is doing is noble, at least they were able to solve their problems as a couple through communication. Is that really so hard?

She's All That, if she hotter and retains no qualities of her former self, she's better

And here comes the final contender, She's All That, a movie that is often seen as the pinnacle of the teenage romantic comedy. It puts to good use to many popular tropes, such as, the makeover, bad boy good girl, a bet, and even prom, but another trope that it utilizes much like the other two films in this piece, gaslighting. Zack, being the most popular guy in school, is shocked when his girlfriend dumps him after a fling with a reality star, so much so that he even takes on a bet that he would be capable of turning any girl into the prom queen in a matter of six weeks. The girl chosen for the bet is Laney, an awkward art student, who is not "traditionally" beautiful at first glance. He approaches her multiple times, but she always dodges his attempts at flirting, and even tries to sway him away by volunteering into an improvised theatrical performance. After a while, she becomes closer to him and agrees to hang out with him and his friends, at which point she is given a makeover by Zack's sister, showing her inward beauty, outwardly. And while, it seems that Zack and Laney may truly be getting closer, with them developing feelings for one another, Dean, one of Zack's friends, basically forces a confession out of him, revealing that him approaching Laney was truly just a bet. Her feeling extremely hurt, as she comes to realize that Zack, even if unintentionally had been manipulating her into changing herself completely, when she was perfectly happy with who she was. At the prom, Zack finds out that Dean is planning on seducing Laney, and he rushes out of his coronation as prom king to stop it, only to find out that Laney rejected his advances (much like she did with him at first). After an apology, a dance, and a kiss, Zack shows his remorse by doing the punishment that he had to do if he could not accomplish the bet, walk naked on graduation day, with only a cap and a soccer ball.

She's All That seems to be the only movie of this list in which the manipulative character is truly punished for their actions on a larger scale. As Zack publicly humiliates himself by graduating in his birthday suit, as a form of penance for being such a douchebag at the beginning of the film. I just wish that by the end of the film, Laney had returned to her formal appearance, showing that she truly felt comfortable in her own skin, and that she didn't need to be "traditionally" beautiful, to be beautiful, also showing her separating herself from past manipulation.

And so, that is all I have to say in respect to gaslighting and manipulation in romantic comedies.

I'll be back soon with our next topic, what will it be?

I wonder...

[bustyasianbeautiespod]

Episode 107 Transcript: Supernatural - We Will Find A Way

[intro guitar music]

G: Hello, it's Grey.

C: Hello, it's Crystal.

G: And this is Busty Asian Beauties, a Supernatural commentary podcast where I, someone who has seen this show many, many times...

C: And I, someone who only knows the show through social media, discuss every single episode of Supernatural from start to finish. Also, we are both Asian.

G: Both Asian! For today's episode, we are discussing Season 6, Episode 3: "The Third Man," written by Ben Edlund [C: Boo.] and directed by Robert Singer. This episode is horrible! [laughs] No, this episode is very racist. [C: Yeah.] Yeah. Last episode, Crystal was like, "I think Cas is like, racist next episode." And I was like, "Hmm. I wonder what that means." And then I watched this episode, and as every single piece slowly fell into place like a Tetris game, [C laughs] I was like, "Oh, no!" [laughs] This episode is egregiously racist! Ben Edlund, I'll kill you! [C laughs] Sorry. I probably shouldn't say stuff like that, again, because of everything.

C: In case he dies of suspicious circumstances?

G: Yeah. And they track down this episode.

C: You'll have an alibi. You'll be out of the country.

G: I will have never stepped foot to the United States. But what if he dies during a vacation to the Philippines, Crystal? Let's consider all of our fucking situations.

C: When Ben Edlund goes to the Philippines, I'll buy you a plane ticket to come to the US to visit me. [G laughs]

G: Yeah, we have to plan it very early on because the visa applications is going to be one hell of a thing. Like, they'll interview me, and I'll go, "Oh, it's because Ben Edlund is going to the Philippines, [C laughs] and I'm afraid that people will think I'll kill him if he dies here." And they'd be like, "What the fuck?"

C: Yeah, or they'll be like, "I completely understand. I hate that guy, too. Go to the US."

G: No, but he's always going to have the benefit of the doubt for being a US citizen! [C: Mm. True.] Unfortunate. [C: Unfortunate.] Well, he's extending his repertoire this episode from good old-fashioned misogyny to good old-fashioned racism. [both laugh]

C: What's neo-racism?

G: I think- You know what? I think all of it is good old-fashioned. They haven't invented new ones. They're just repurposing old ones over and over again.

C: Yeah, that seems to be the case.

G: Yeah, so that's kind of our content warning for this episode. There's going to be discussions of police brutality, but also specifically discussions of how Supernatural used this storyline in ways that are completely insensitive and also egregious. [C: Yeah.] And also specifically, it's like, antiblack racism, just to be clear. [C: Yeah.] What did you know about this episode before going in, by the way?

C: I knew about the shot where Cas falls out of a window [G: Of course.] onto Sam's car while fighting an angel because it's in the-

G: While biting?

C: While fighting an angel. [laughs]

G: Ah, okay. Well, he should have bit him. Yeah.

C: Because it's in the Cas "What the Hell" AMV.

G: Of course. [C: Of course.] I do love that shot so much when like, it goes down, like, the camera's above, and then it it pulls back up to be behind Sam and Dean. It's pretty fun!

C: Yeah. They paid a lot of money to make that shot happen, I feel.

G: Yeah. Do you think it's more or less money than the crane shot with Cas in Season 4, "When the Levee Breaks"?

C: Probably more. [G: Probably more.] I don't know how showbiz works. Somebody let us know. [both] Robert Singer- [laughs]

G: No, yeah. That was a Robert Singer episode, yeah.

C: - if you're listening to this, let us know.

G: There was a reverse Robert Singer zoom this episode, and I did find it incredibly amusing. When Cas would transfer places [C: True.], the one specifically where he kidnaps that kid and takes his body to the motel room to torture. Dean is like, "Wait, why are you taking that kid?" And Cas goes, "Portability." And then it's like so close to his face, and then it zooms out, and they're back in the motel. Yeah. [C: Yeah.] So Robert Singer’s playing with his stuff. Good for him.

C: Yeah. Good for him. And then the other thing is that there's a young Black kid who- I thought he got possessed by an angel, but no, he was just spoken to by an angel, and I knew that Cas would leave him somewhere for the cops to find in a way that would not be pleasant for this child.

G: Yeah. Have you- what do you know about Balthazar? I did not expect that he was gonna be here. I knew the moment they mentioned the staff of Moses, but like, here, before watching the episode, I didn't know he was gonna be here already. I didn't know he comes in that early.

C: Well, he's Cas's ex-boyfriend in a lot of human AUs. [laughs]

G: Yeah. That's true.

C: I knew that he was British. I knew that he would be the one who sends them to the show in "The French Mistake" and that, at some point, Cas is gonna say that someone has an oak tree up their ass and "bite me," and that he learned that from his friend, and that friend was Balthazar.

G: Yeah, this is true. I don't like Balthazar. I don't like his British accent. I'm Anglophobic.

C: What about Crowley?

G: Well, I love Crowley, so, you know, he transcends that. [C: Mm-hm.] And he hates Celine Dion? Fuck that guy. Those are all my- I always forget that his name is Balthazar. The actor's name is Sebastian Roche, and I always think that Balthazar's name is Sebastian.

C: He does look like a Sebastian.

G: He does look like a Sebastian. Is he actually British? Did I just insult his real accent? Probably.

C: Oh, probably. Like, why would they make him put on a fake British accent? [both laugh] Wait, he's French-American?

G: He's French American?

C: [laughing] Why did they make him put on a fake British accent? [both laughing]

G: Does he have a fake British accent, or does he have a French-American accent?

C: Does he have a different accent that I don't know? [G: I don't know.] "Balthazar Supernatural..." maybe I just completely forgot! Somebody says he has a Scottish-French accent. Is that true?

G: Does the Scottish-French accent just go directly to British? Is that what the result of those two accents is?

C: IMDb says he's Scottish-French, but Wikipedia says he's American-French. Maybe this is his real accent.

G: Yeah, probably. It is a possibility.

C: Sorry.

G: Sorry, Sebastian. I also have to try very hard to not call your character Sebastian for this entire season, probably.

C: I don't think I was paying enough attention when he spoke to remember what his accent was. I'm sorry to all the people of Scotland for calling that accent British unless it sounded British, in which case I'm not sorry.

G: Yeah. Should we stop making fun of people's accents, just like Supernatural does and then also did with that German guy? [C laughs]

C: Yeah, I guess.

G: There's a possibility that we should, yeah. Unfortunate. I love doing it!

C: Who else have we made fun of the accent of? [both laugh]

G: [laughs] Sorry! I think at some point, we called for racism against Irish people by making fun of their accent.

C: [laughs] Yeah, I did call for hibernophobia. [G: Yeah.] [laughing] I'm gonna renounce my formerly hibernophobic ways.

G: Yeah. Also, it's rich coming from me. So we really should stop doing- [laughs]

C: Well, your accent is beautiful, so.

G: I know! That's the main difference between me and the French-American-Scottish accent. [both laugh] Sorry!

C: Did he roll an r once, though?

G: It was definitely not a Scottish accent. [C laughs] We have heard David Tennant talk enough in YouTube videos, TV shows, and our dreams [C: There are different parts of Scotland.] to know that that's not a Scottish accent!

C: Maybe in your dreams. [laughs]

G: No, yeah, he was in my dream, and it was pretty bad. [C: Yeah, well.] He was a gym teacher, and we made out. [laughing]

C: You're not keeping this in, are you?

G: No, I'm keeping that one in. [C laughing] The people should know. [C: Okay!] And even in the dream, I was like, "Ugh! Yucky!" [both laughing]

-

C: There's a "Road So Far."

G: I enjoyed the "Road So Far" for this episode. The first few seconds is recapping the first ep and the second ep, and then once they have finally established that, we go to Cas, and like, the voice clip they use for Cas is in 4.18, “Monster at the End of This Book,” if I'm correct. When he's telling Dean like, "Monsters are fierce. [C: Archangels.] They're absolute. They're Heaven's most terrifying weapon." What did I say?

C: You said monsters.

G: [laughs] Well, monsters are fierce. But yeah, he's saying, "Archangels are fierce. They're absolute." I think, even in 4.18, I have already said that I absolutely love this delivery. Yeah. And then they show a little bit of Raphael. They show the part where Raphael goes, "Castiel, I'm warning you. Do not leave me here. I will find you," and I am once again reminded of how fucking cool the voicing that the actor did for Raphael is. [C: He's so good.] I think, if I'm not mistaken, this is the last time we will see this specific actor for Raphael.

C: Yeah, 'cause this vessel is fucked.

G: His next vessel is gonna be a woman, I'm pretty sure.

C: No, but we see him in flashbacks in "Man Who Would Be King."

G: Oh, this is true! That's why I was like, "I think we still have Raphael scenes with this guy as the vessel." But yeah, you're right. There's going to be flashback scenes. But like, I think in his current scenes, he's going to be in a female vessel. And then, you know, Cas goes up to Heaven, and then he- like, the last line is about how he wants to go back up because it's going to be total anarchy up there. We start the episode- This scene, okay, just to preface, I'm trying to live my life better. I watched this episode, no knitting. I literally put my knitting physically away so that I can focus on watching the episode. Congratulations to me, and you're welcome to everyone. I was shrieking when this scene was happening. It's very well done in terms of like, the makeup and prop and everything. I think it's excellent.

C: Yes. They did a really good job.

G: I mean, last episode, they also did a very good job with the horror aspect of the episode, and I am enjoying this portion that Supernatural is doing where they're trying to recover themselves as a good old-fashioned monster hunting show. Maybe that's why the racism is back. [both laugh] No, but what is with the racism this season? We're like, 3 episodes in.

C: Well, Sera Gamble has a pretty bad rap.

G: Yeah, this is true. Is it Sera Gamble’s fault? [C: Maybe.] It probably is. Anyway, the scene is, there's this police officer, he's like, in the locker room, and he is washing his face, and he's patting his face dry, and then there's like a little nick on the side of his face, and he's like, "Oh, I nicked myself shaving or whatever." And then as he keeps on going, he notices that even more of his skin is red and bleeding, so he touches it, and then, like the skin just sloughs off. How is that pronounced? [both] Sloffs? Sloughs off. And there's just this giant patch that literally falls on the fucking sink. And he just has a giant red hole on his face. Not hole, like, it's his skin, but like, below it. Like, the muscular part of his face. And then he starts freaking out. He takes a step back, and like, the skin of his foot is like, left on the floor. It's wonderful! It's like, wonderful to look at. It's completely fucking horrifying. And then he starts bleeding through his shirt, just like me for real. There's blood in his mouth, blood in his face, everything. And then he turns around, and he sees- there's a police officer. He's gonna be relevant later. His name's Ed. And he just goes, "Ed, I think I'm bleeding." He tries to take a step forward, and the camera is now just like, on Ed, and then we see a splatter of blood, like, a fine mist of blood go to his face. And then we go to his feet, and it's like, it's bloody, and then it pans slowly towards where the body is, or the quote-unquote "body," because it's just a pile of clothes and disintegrated flesh. It's just all blood. [C: Hell yeah.] Very fun. Wonderful! It really is amazing to look at. They did a really good job with this one. I like that they have consistently been doing good teaser- or, what's that called? The cold open. It's been consistently good. So that's fun.

C: It is.

-

C: So Dean wakes up in Lisa's house, and they're spooning or whatever, and then they start making out, and maybe having sex. But then Dean wakes up. He was, in fact, [G: It wasn't real!] having a sex dream, and he's sleeping in the Impala.

G: Every time there's a sex scene in Supernatural- because this one, it is a sex scene. They make a point of like showing the like, hands and whatever, which is, of course, what makes a sex scene a sex scene. [C: Yeah. #Lesbianism.] Yeah, but like, they do that, [laughs] and I always think about that one IMDb review that was like, "Oh, yeah, your wife says that Sam Winchester is her favorite character. Yeah, I bet, after this sex scene where he fucks this woman so good." [both laughing] And like, I can't help but think like, "Oh, this is like some sort of pandering to someone who wants to fuck Dean Winchester."

C: Yeah. Or who wants to fuck Cindy Sampson.

G: This is true. Why not Lisa, Crystal?

C: You're right. 'Cause you said the character name, and I said the actress name. You're right. I'm so sorry. [G: Boo!] Who wants to fuck Lisa or Cindy Sampson, or Jensen Ackles, or Dean Winchester. A lot of options here. Meanwhile, what else is happening in the world of sex is-

G: [laughs] No, this is hilarious! The cut to Sam working out? I did scream. I was like, "Love it!" Good for him.

C: Yeah, he's sweating a lot, but I think in the world of the making of Supernatural, they probably just dumped a bunch of lube on Jared Padalecki.

G: Is that the case? You can just do oil. [C: True.] I feel like lube, what it is and how it works, it's probably just going to look goopy on the skin. That's why they use it for holy water because it like, beads up. So this is probably baby oil.

C: No, that's true. You're right. I'm so sorry. Look at me, making blunder after blunder today!

G: Maybe it's macadamia nut oil, Crystal. [C laughs]

C: Maybe so. And he's doing push-ups, sit-ups. Later, he's doing chin-ups, which must be hard if his hands are all oiled up.

G: I think there was a time in my life where I was disgusted by Sam Winchester's half-naked body [C laughs] because there is this implication that I should be attracted to it, and I'm like, "Ugh!" [C: Yeah.] But now, I think I'm able to appreciate a muscular male figure for what it is, which is a fun, interesting thing to look at. [C: Huh.] It is very interesting. He has like a vee. You know the vee. You know what I'm talking about.

C: Like, below his neck?

G: No! Like, near his crotch. What is that called? The vee line in his like, hips?

C: [laughing] Why do I only know them as cum gutters? [both laugh] [G: What?] [laughing] I only know them as- Are you talking about the cum gutters?

G: It's called the gutter?

C: [laughing] It's called the cum gutter. [G: No!] I'm sure there's another term for it.

G: I refuse. I steadily refuse to accept this saying.

C: I'm sure there's another. Okay. The iliac furrows.

G: Do you ever think about the fact that that area is called the love handles? What the fuck [laughs] is that about?

C: Well, you grab onto them when you have sex.

G: When you make love, Crystal. [C laughs]

C: You're right. So sorry. Third apology of the night.

G: I think it would be terrifying to see a 6 foot 4 man in the wild. Do you think that's true? You have seen, probably, a 6 foot 4 man. [C: Probably. I don't remember.] I don't think I have. Yeah. Oh, so it didn't leave an impression?

C: Yeah. I mean, currently, Grant O'Brien is now my idea of what a really really tall guy is, so Sam Winchester is whatever.

G: What is Grant? He's 6'7?

C: He's 6'9.

G: Holy shit. [C laughs] [C: Yes.] He's the guy who makes the cocktails, right? [C: Yes.] Oh, god! Well, good for him! [C: Good for him.] I'm sure he's not terrifying in any way whatsoever.

G: Yeah, I mean, people mock him for his height every time he's on a video, so.

G: Yeah. Rhett McLaughlin is 6'7, I think. [C: Who?] The guy from Good Mythical Morning. Keep up, Crystal.

C: Oh. I thought you said "Reth"! I didn't know who that was.

G: Yeah, no, I have trouble pronouncing his name at all times. [laughs] [C: I understand.] No, you see, I was specifically talking about people who are 6'4. So Jared Padalecki, nobody else. He's working out. It's very fun. He's really working those muscles. Apparently, after you work out, your muscles are like, extra like big. Like, they look like, big. So like this is a convenient thing way to do it, I suppose. Like, just have him do chin-ups before he has his scene where he's showing off his body.

C: A hot woman comes out of the bathroom, and she's like, "Oh my god! You're so hot, and you're so good at sex! You're the best at sex I've ever ever ever had!"

G: "Do you want to hang out again later?" And Sam's just completely silent.

C: Yeah. He's making a sicko mode face or something. [both laugh] He's not answering any of her questions. He has like this slight smirk/glare combination, but it's so slight that it has no energy or emotion behind it. Yeah, so she heads out, and then Sam clears his throat [G: Sam ahems.], still not saying anything, and then hands her some cash. And this is how you know Sam is soulless because he paid for a sex worker, and that's evil! [both laugh]

G: Literally!

C: God. Yeah. And then the woman says, like, "Oh, and by the way, hey, here's my phone number. You're so hot and good at sex that the next time, we can just have sex without any money being involved." And Sam goes, "Okay." And then as soon as she leaves, he throws her phone number into the trash. [G: Love that.] What is that?

G: What is Supernatural thinking?

C: Yeah, what are they saying? [laughs]

G: No, yeah. What are they saying?

C: If the point is like, Sam's not interested in romance, you can have one-night stands without romance.

G: She was not offering romance.

C: And she was also not offering romance. She was just like, "That was a good enough time that I wouldn't need you to pay."

G: Maybe it's just he moves around a lot. It's still the same logic in Season 2. "Oh, I move around a lot!" But now, he also is soulless, so he's like, "And I don't give a fuck about you, specifically."

C: Yeah. But I mean, Supernatural has established that it's icky for Sam or Dean to pay for sex because they're so good and hot that they can just get it by themselves. But like, in this one, it's still like, "He's so good at sex and hot."

G: Yeah, so he can get a sex worker's sex for freeeeee! Which is what they're doing, yeah.

C: Yeah. But also, yeah, I don't know. It's just like, I guess he just doesn't want to put the effort in to chat anybody up, whatever whatever.

G: Yeah. Literally no chatting.

C: Yeah. Not a word except for "okay" at the end once.

G: Yeah. He should have said, "Okey-dokey!" and the woman would've been like, "Hell yeah."

C: Yeah, she would have taken her number back. [G laughs] The phone rings. It's Dean, who's like- I think he's swinging by the Campbells, but Sam says that he's in Easter, Pennsylvania, doing a case because all he does is work. He doesn't take breaks in between anymore. And he just seems really impatient with Dean on the phone, too.

G: Yeah. And also, he's hiding the fact that he doesn't sleep.

C: Does he not sleep?

G: Yeah. I'm sorry. You didn't know that? That's like, one of the hallmarks of being soulless.

C: But- wait! What does this mean physiologically?

G: No idea.

C: I don't get it. [laughs]

G: Is it the soul that needs sleep? That is a good question. It's excellent.

C: Yeah, I think it's the body! I guess not in Supernatural.

G: Yeah. It could be the soul. Have you ever tried being soulless, Crystal?

C: I guess not. I'm so sorry. [G: Yeah.] I shouldn't speak on- You have, I presume?

G: Tried being soulless? [C: Yeah.] You know what? It is a possibility that I have tried it, so ask away.

C: Well, did you have to sleep?

G: No. [both laughing]

C: Well, I'm glad we hashed that out.

G: To be fair, you don't have to sleep in general. You can just not sleep, and then you'll die, but like, you know. [C laughs]

C: Yeah. He's very curt with Dean, very just like, "I've delivered you your location. Just go there," etc. And like, it's so weird, because when he's in person with Dean, he's like, normal, right? So like, what- what is this?

G: I don't know. I think they're trying to put a thing where, when he is in front of Dean, he's pretending or whatever. But this is also technically in front of Dean, so like, what's that about?

C: Yeah. I don't know. Is it pretending? Is it like some sort of muscle memory when Dean's here that like, reminds him of the way that they usually interact?

G: That's probably maybe the case, yeah. Do you notice the end of the episode has a "Coming Soon"? [C: Yeah.] And the last scene of that sequence is like, Dean finding out that Sam is soulless-

C: I didn't watch it, but yeah.

G: Oh, okay. Well, towards the end, Dean already knows what's happening, or Dean has evidence that this is not true. But he turns towards Sam and asks, "But Sam, you'll always have my back, right?" And Sam does his Sam smile, and he goes, "[scoffs] Yeah, of course, Dean." [C laughs] And Dean looks at him angry, like, "I'm angy! And mad at you!" [C laughs] So like, I don't know.

C: [laughing] Thank you for the description.

G: Well, it is accurate! If you watch it again, you'll know for a fact that I was correct in my description. Yeah, anyway, so I think there is a sense of having to pretend in front of Dean more so when you're in person than in a call, because in a call, at least you can hide your physicality, you can hide your like body language or whatever. When you're with him in real life, you have to do the Sam Winchester smile. [C: It's true.] And Sam seems to be only capable of doing the Sam Winchester smirk nowadays.

-

G: So we go to one of those backroads- Is this a backroad?

C: Well, it says he's parked on the side of the road.

G: Well, yeah, not on the back of the road. [laughs] But like, what do you call the specific look of a road in the United States? Looks like a road, but like, it's like, weird. [laughs] I don't-

C: It's like, dirt?

G: It's not a dirt road. It's like, "Oh, yesterday, this was a dirt road, but they paved it today." [C laughs] That's what it looks like. [C: I don't know what the term is.] It's that kind of road. This cop is in a police car on the side, slightly obstructed by the leaves. Definitely obstructed if you're in a car and you're driving towards it. And he is doing the speed gun, and there's a car that passes by pretty quickly, and it's 70 miles per hour. How much is that? [C: It's not too fast.] Oh, it's 112. I think that is pretty fast. [C: Really?] Yeah. When my dad gets to 70 kilometers per hour, I'm like, "We're going to die." That's why I don't drive, by the way. Which is 43 miles per hour.

C: That's like, the local roads in my neighborhood are like, 55 miles. [laughs]

G: Yeah. A lot of the roads here are at 60, 60 kilometers per hour or 70, max speed, yeah. That's why, like, what is the point of buying a sports car in the Philippines? The roads are bad, you can't speed anywhere, you're always caught up in traffic, so. [C: Yeah.] Just buy a Dodge Charger just like Sam Winchester. [C laughs] I think a Dodge Charger is also expensive, but that's fine to buy. Anyway, this cop, I don't know. He receives a phone call. Later, we find out that this is the cop that saw the other cop die earlier. And what this cop was saying is like, "Oh, why are you calling me? He's dead. Whatever. It's not about us. We do what we do. We go to work. We go to the funeral!" And then, you know, he's just like, "It's not about us. Don't call me anymore," blah blah blah. And then we start seeing this like, point of view shot from the woods, just towards the side of the car. And later on, we realize that this is a kid sneaking about. I think, in this scene, you're supposed to think it's a monster who's going to attack, and we're finally going to see the monster physically. So it is fun when what happens next is there's this camera that zooms into the cop, and it like, instead of being bitten or whatever, attacked, he starts growing boils on his skin. Later on, we see him with no hair, no eyebrows, no nothing, and I was a bit disappointed. I was like, "You should have put in the hair." [C laughs] But yeah. He dies from that. Apparently, there's so many inside his throat as well, he tries to call emergency, but he couldn't speak, blah blah blah, and then he's dead.

C: Yippee!

G: Yoo-hoo!

-

C: Sam and Dean meet up, and when Dean leaves the Impala, he's in the middle of a phone call to Ben where he tells him like, "I know you're lying. Because I lie professionally, that's how." Which I think is a nice continuation of the "Dean actually does tell Ben most things, it seems." Yeah, he just says that he should tell Lisa that he broke this thing that he's lying about breaking, [laughs] and then he tells him to "take it like a man," which is also a phrase that he employed on Bobby John last episode. [G: This is true.] So I guess this is one of Dean Winchester's main parenting tools, giving people ideas of gender norms that are inaccurate. No, I mean, that's not the right way to phrase it. But who cares? Anyway, Sam's sort of laughing at him about this. They move on to talking about Dean and Lisa, and Dean's like, "Oh, Lisa is really cool about me going." And Sam just says, "Better for everybody." [laughs] It's true! And then Dean makes fun of Sam for his car a bit, [G: Yeah.] and they're being smiley and laugh-y, and just really very normal.

C: What do you think about the car?

C: Sam's car? [G: Yeah.] It's fine. It's a car. It drives. It's got wheels.

G: It is very rounded, which is, I think you notice it very distinctly when it's beside the Impala. [C: Yeah, it's cute.] And it has this little vent in the front. So fun.

C: Just like Sam in his crotch area.

G: ... Crystal. [both laugh]

C: They go to the morgue. They learn about both of these cops. They decide there's definitely a connection between them. The only witness is Officer Ed Colfax, who's the cop we saw in the cold open, so they decide to go and talk to him. He's the partner of the cop who turned into blood. [G: Yeah.] As they're driving there, [G laughs] Sam turns a corner, and then Dean immediately like, swerves, tires screeching, cuts him off to park in front of him. When they get out, Sam goes, "Were you racing me?" and Dean goes, "No, I was kicking your ass"

G: Dean does look incredibly amused by this, so good for him.

C: Yeah. [laughs] I'll allow this. He can be happy sometimes.

G: So they like, knock on the house, and the cop answers. He goes out. His name's Ed, and he is in full uniform, with the cap and everything. And Sam introduces himself as like, the fed. And, you know, "We're just going to ask questions about your guy." And Ed is very visibly in distress, and he basically does a like, "No, fuck off." And he closes the door, and Sam's like, "Mm, okay," and then he kicks the door in, and Dean is like, "Whoa, Sam, I can't believe you've done this." Inside, there's like, family photos and like, photos of him. It's just like usual family on the wall-type photos. Ed is like on the corner, on a table. He is using, I think, a knife to scratch out his face on a picture of him in uniform. And Dean is like, "Okay, weird. Well, we think your partner has been involved in foul play. Do you know any enemies of his?" And Ed says, "Well, yes." And "They both had it coming. I'll be the next to go, and then it will be over, and God will be satisfied." Yeah, he says, "God wants us all dead because of Christopher Birch." There is a thing that they do in this scene where he knocks over, I think, a whiskey bottle, and then he just lets it pour and pour and pour, which I did enjoy the visuals of. Because this scene, if they didn't do that, would be incredibly boring. [both laugh] So they were like, "Let's knock over a bottle of whiskey." And he describes Christopher Birch as having no face and a planted gun. Yeah, "a kid with no face and a planted gun." Yeah. He like, starts bleeding from under his cap, and he's like, "Oh, yeah, I've been itching a lot," and he collapses, and when Dean takes out his cap, there's cicadas inside.

C: Locusts.

G: Locusts? Are those different? I think locust is a general term.

C: They're different.

G: So Sam and Dean figure out that this is like, the fucking Egyptian plagues, but like, in small quantities, which is very fun. And also, they took one of the fucking locusts and put it in a jar. [C laughs] Would you have done that? I would definitely not.

C: No, I was like, "That thing can eat through a skull. It can definitely eat through this glass."

G: Yeah, I don't think that's true. I'm so sorry.

C: I don't think cicadas generally can do that. Most cicadas can't eat through a skull or glass, but these are clearly special cicadas.

G: Yeah. But like, even still, a skull is organic matter. [laughs] Let's not do this. It literally doesn't matter.

C: Is there like a Mohs hardness scale measurement for a skull?

G: Okay, let's look it up. [typing] "Skull in..." 5 on the Mohs hardness scale.

C: Yeah, and then glass. Glass, okay, is a 5.5 to a 6. So it depends on how strong those cicadas are, but yeah, it's not an automatic assumption that it's true, but it could happen. It's not too far off. Unless Mohs is- Is it exponential or logarithmic or however you call it?

G: It's close to being exponential.

C: Okay, then yeah, probably. Yeah, there's no real reason to think they can get through glass, then. You're right, Grey.

G: Yay! And you were able to find this truth via evidence-based reasoning. Good for us.

C: What they find out is that Christopher Birch, who the cop named was talking about earlier, was a child who was shot in the head last month during a vehicle pursuit, and all three of the cops who died were involved. And all of them filed a police report saying that they had to fire because Christopher Birch was brandishing a firearm. So yeah, they planted the gun and lied about it. I mean, Sam and Dean are both like, "Wow, that's bad." [laughs] Correct!

C: The way they do it is Dean just goes, "Oh, well, that's bad." [both laugh] He goes, "Bunch of dicks. Okay."

C: Yeah. And Sam thinks maybe really this is God or Heaven acting against these cops, which I think an interesting follow-through from like, "Houses of the Holy."

G: Yeah. And like, his reasoning is that now that the Apocalypse is done, the angels have better things to do, like kill cops.

C: Yeah. I wish. Unfortunately, our main angel of the show loves cops. Dean says, "Let's call the main angel of the show who loves cops!"

G: "And meee!" [laughs] [C: What?] No, he says, "Who loves cops, and meee!" [C laughs]

C: Yeah, he says all of that, just like that. Sam says, "Uh, he's not gonna come because I already tried."

G: "He hates me!"

C: "He only hates me!" Dean gives it a shot. He's not like, reverent about it or anything, you know. It's "Now, I lay me down to sleep. I pray to Castiel to get his feathery ass down here." And then, "Don't be a dick." But I guess what works is that he tells Cas that there's something happening down here that's like the Egyptian plagues. And Sam says, "Like I said, the son of a bitch doesn't answer." And then, "He's right behind me, isn't he?"

G: Yeah. We hear the whoosh-whoosh sound of the wings, and Sam's face changes from bemusement to anger and confusion.

C: Yeah. So Cas says, "Hello." [G: Hello!] in his Cas words, and Sam's pissed. He goes, "Hello?" and Cas goes, "Yes?" [laughs] And then Sam imitates Cas! [both] "Hello?" [laughing] And then he goes, "Hello?" And Cas goes, "That is still the term." [laughs]

G: Love him. He spent a quote-unquote "year" as a celestial- What does he call himself? A multi-dimensional wavelength of celestial intent, and his people skills are rusty!

C: Yeah. Yeah. He's very charming during this first scene. Sam goes, "So what? You like Dean better or something?" And Cas is like, "Yeah." [both laugh] [G: He's hilarious!] He goes, "Dean and I do share a more profound bond," and then turns to Dean and goes, "What? I wasn't gonna mention it," which sounds like they fucked.

G: Yeah, which sounds like they have talked about this very much so before. [C: Yeah.] It is funny that the way he poses it, it's like, "We all know this is true, but like, I wasn't gonna say it because it's impolite to say it! I was trying to be polite!" [C laughs]

C: Yeah. "You saw me. You saw me trying, Dean." [G: Yeah.] Yeah, this is a bit of a Sastiel loss, but I would say Sam imitating his voice is a Sastiel win, so really, where do we lie here?

G: I think we lie very solidly on the "They have started queerbaiting with Destiel" side.

C: Yeah. [laughs] I think that's what that is. [G: Yeah.] "Started"?

G: I mean, I would argue that Season 5, they haven't done it yet fully, but also, I argued in Season 5 that in Season 4, they haven't done it yet fully, in Season 5, they're actually doing it. And I suppose I will continue arguing that until time immemorial.

C: Yeah, until 15.18, and you're like, "It's so great how Supernatural never queerbaited once [both laugh] 'cause it's real here!"

G: No, but you think they started in Season 5.

C: Yeah.

G: I probably also think that. I'm just in denial.

C: Yeah. You remember "Cas, not for nothing, but the last time someone looked at me like that, I got laid."

G: Oh yeah, you're right! But that isn't queerbaiting. Cas really is just gay and wants to fuck Dean. [C laughs] And Dean is using it to his advantage.

C: That's true. I guess since Cas is canonically queer, anything that's just about Cas wanting to fuck Dean isn't queerbaiting, so then this isn't queerbaiting, either.

G: No, that's not-

G: The "I wasn't gonna mention it" was like, they've both talked about it.

G: No, that's not how we would define queerbaiting. As you said, right, just because Cas turned out to be gay doesn't mean that blah blah blah.

C: I agree, but you just said that [both laugh] it wasn't queerbaiting because Cas is really gay and wants to fuck Dean.

G: No, but like, Dean is trying to get something that is actually true about their dynamic, which is that Cas likes him better, and then he's just exaggerating it in a way that will make Cas feel ashamed for his attachment to Dean and where his dedication lies in the Heaven/Apocalypse situation. [C: Okay.] Like, I don't think he's saying "Cas wants to fuck me." I think he's saying that "I think Cas likes me more than is appropriate, and I'm gonna make fun of him for it and use it to my advantage."

C: Okay. The "personal space" thing in 5.03, and "My Bloody Valentine"?

G: No, yeah, that's queerbaiting. [laughs]

C: Cool. So anyway, Dean, instead of being like, "Cas, that's mean." or "Cas, you're friends with Sam." He goes, "No, but okay, I know you fucking hate Sam, and honestly, so do I, [G laughs] but remember how he went to Hell for us? You gotta answer his questions!"

G: We didn't even acknowledge that he calls it a profound bond, which ends up being the Destiel name of the-

C: The trailer.

G: Well, not just the trailer. It's a prominent thing that people say about Destiel.

C: So Cas says that he doesn't have any answers because he doesn't know who brought Sam back from the Cage. Why is he lying about this? Is it because he knows that he's soulless, so he's like, "When Dean finds out, I do not want him to blame me!" [laughs]

G: I don't think he knows that Sam is soulless. Maybe he knows something is wrong?

C: Yeah. Maybe he didn't even bring him back. He did, though.

G: He did bring him back. I think he's just trying to hide the fact that he brought him back because he's too busy to like, deal with it.

C: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, that's fair. I do enjoy a white lie or two. Sam goes, "So it wasn't God?" Aww. [G: Mm.] And Cas is just like, "I don't know. I don't know. And also, I don't know." And then Dean goes, "Okay. If Sam is asking you a question, you just come down and tell him 'I don't know.' Just because we have a bond doesn't mean that you should only listen to me!"

G: No, this is crazy. [both laugh] Hilarious. [C: Literally.] He literally does say, "Just because we have some sort of a... a bond or something." [laughs] He says, "A bond or whatever." So true!

C: So true. He's almost as emotionally repressed as we are. [both laugh]

G: Perhaps so, yeah. We did learn it from Supernatural, allegedly. [C laughs]

C: And Cas says, "You think I came because you called?" which means that whole thing of telling Sam that he likes Deam better was completely unnecessary, [both laugh] and all he had to do was say, "No, I came down because of like the case situation."

G: "Of this thing." Yeah, he's hilarious. [C: So funny.] He was like, "Even if I didn't necessarily come down because I like Dean better, I need Sam to know that I do like Dean better. Like, that is something we need to confirm, even though that's not the reason why I'm here."

C: Yeah, he doesn't have time to do many things, such as protect a child from potential future police brutality, but he does have time for this. Alright.

So he tells Sam that Heaven didn't directly cause these killings, but the staff of Moses did, and it's gone missing. It's not being used at full capacity. He says, "I think we can rule Moses out as a suspect." Slaycay. And Sam and Dean look like he's so stupid for saying that, but when you meet real, actual, Biblical Adam in Season 15, who's going to be laughing?Nobody, because Jack is having a really bad time and gonna die.

G: Jack has a fun time with Serafina.

C: Yeah, yeah, but it's for the sake of him doing his self-sacrifice thing.

G: Yeah, this is true.

C: Yeah. Dean calls Moses's staff "Chuck Heston's disco stick." Why is Dean like, an opposite translator? He's the opposite of the Wikipedia Simple English. [both laugh]

G: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah.

C: So basically, in the chaos of the war in Heaven, a lot of powerful weapons were stolen. He needs Sam and Dean's help. And Sam's like, "Why should we do that when you won't even answer my caaaalls?" And this is when Cas does the, "Sam. Dean. My quote 'people skills' unquote are quote 'rusty,' unquote." He's doing finger quotes. It's great. "Pardon me, but I've spent the last 'year' as a multi-dimensional wavelength of celestial intent!" He's my fave, except he's not this episode. [G: Yeah.] He tells them that they should just help him to prevent people's deaths. Dean says, "Okay, let's think about motive." And they have a newspaper clipping of Christopher Birch's father calling for an investigation into his son's death.

G: Yeah, speaking of Cas being my favorite but not this episode, it is actually so fascinating, like, the entirety of my life- or not the entirety of my life, [C laughs] but when I think back to Season 6, I think, "Yeah, Cas was like in the right," because in my head, I was like, "When Dean is like in the right, that's just the show talking. That's not true." And now, like, I'm like, "No, yeah, Cas did fuck up this season." [laughs] Just from this one episode, we can fully surmise that he did fuck up this season. And later on, Dean does ask Cas pretty straightforwardly like, "Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't you call us?" which is the same question he asks at the end in "The Man Who Would Be King." Like, "You should have fucking told us." [C: Yeah.] And Cas says, "That's very nice, Dean. Where were you when I needed to hear it?" And Dean goes, "I was there! Where were you?" And then it cuts back and forth to like- Do you know that? [C: Yeah.] When Dean goes, "I was there. Where were you?" And it cuts to Cas watching him rake leaves. [C: Yeah.] Because Supernatural doesn't trust us to connect the dots in any way, shape, or form.

C: They just wanted Cas to have a gay little moment.

G: They wanted him to kiss a hundred boys in bars or something.

C: Exactly. [laughs]

G: What I'm trying to say here is I think I may have had a more benevolent look into Cas in Season 6 just because of the distance from the season. I think I've mentioned this maybe with Episode 1 of the season, but this is probably the season I remember the least about. I don't really remember much about Season 6, and I think I have colored Cas Season 6 in rose paint. That's not how that saying goes. I have put on my rose-colored glasses to look at Cas.

C: All of the red flags just look like flags.

-

G: We go to the Birches, and this one man, Darryl Birch. Also, did we mention that like, this family is Black? They don't mention it, like, Sam and Dean. You get the confirmation here, I guess, because this is a Black family. Daryl Birch is the dad, and he's like, sitting there, and he's looking at newspaper clippings, or just newspaper of like, the deaths, and then he starts cutting up the newspaper, putting it like- I don't know. He's putting it somewhere. He's getting the clippings. And then there's this kid who comes in. The kid is like, "Hey, Dad, how many times are you going to read that clipping? Like, let's just throw it out." But the dad tells him to go away. And so he does, and Sam and Dean and Cas just immediately show up in the living room. Like, literally teleport there. And then, Darryl is like, "What the fuck is this?" [laughs] and Sam goes, "We're FBI agents," which is hilarious. They immediately lead with like, "Yeah, those cops killed your kid. He didn't have a gun." And the dad says, like, "Yeah, they're all getting theirs." And Sam goes, "[aggressive] And who's giving it to them, Darryl?" [laughs] What's wrong with him?

C: [sighs] I don't know.

G: Dean goes, "Did you kill the cops?" And he goes, "No, I didn't. Look at how they died. How could I possibly kill them?" And then the kid shows up.

C: [laughs] No, first Cas says, "You smote them with the staff of Moses!"

G: Oh, yeah. He did do that. And then he goes, "Okay, let's just look for the staff. We don't need to question this guy." Then the kid shows up, and he's holding this staff like it was a gun, and then he goes, "Leave my dad alone." Later on, we'll discuss it, because Cas does leave this kid to the cops. Like, that is something that actually happens in this episode that is so egregiously bad. But like, I don't know, like this whole thing where they're like- They're also cops! Like, feds are also cops, right?

C: Yeah, they're also cops. They teleported into his house and yeah, were generally just very aggressive in their interrogation. And yeah, there's just no real sensitivity given to the fact that his son was murdered by cops, and maybe you should be a bit chiller.

G: Yeah. Internally, in the story, there's no sensitivity. Externally, in the writing of the story, they also seem to not give a fuck? Which is what's so mind-boggling to me. Because you chose to wrote this. Like, you chose to wrote this storyline. You chose to write this storyline. And so I feel like there's no reason to then be like, "I don't know." Like, [laughs] what do mean you don't know? You chose to write it! You're a show that only writes to people of color when you think it will serve your plot, and specifically because they're people of color! And so like, I don't know. There's so many- It would also be probably bad, just because this is Supernatural, if they tried to address the police brutality and specifically the antiblack brutality in in this show because of the way Supernatural is, but like, to bring it up and then do nothing with it other than to go, "We're also the bad guys, by the way. [C laughs] Like, don't worry about it." Like, what the fuck? [C laughs] What the fuck is this? And like, yeah, okay. Let's go on with what the fuck they do with this kid first before we get into the weeds of it. [C: Yeah.] Cas realizes that the staff is- it's sawed off. It's cut into pieces, and only a piece is given to Aaron, which is why, like, earlier, Sam goes like, "Wait. Isn't it supposed to turn the entire sea into blood? Why is it only turning [both] one guy into blood?" And this is why. It's because it's cut up into pieces. The dad screams at Aaron to get the fuck out of there, and Cas boops his head, and then, you know, he collapses. He goes to the kid, takes the fucking staff. Dean starts interrogating the kid. And he goes like, "We're not gonna hurt you. We just need to know where you got this." And the kid is just going, "Please don't kill my dad. It was me." And yeah. What they gather is that the kid got it from an angel. He said, "Those bastards, they killed my brother, and nothing bad even happened to them. So I prayed to God, and God didn't answer, but this angel did, and he said that I could have justice, but I have to take it myself." And then the angel gave him the staff of Moses. And Dean is like, "Well, what did you give in exchange?" And he says, "I bought it with my soul." And Cas is like, "Okay, well, nobody has ever sold a soul to an angel before, but I suppose it can happen." And they realize that the staff is cut into pieces so that the angel can buy even more souls.

C: We never learn what it means to sell your soul to an angel. It sounds fine to me! Guaranteed to get into Heaven?

G: Yeah, what is the logic behind it?

C: What is it?

G: Because later on, in Season 8, I believe, or maybe Season 9, we do get verification that what is running Heaven is the souls. Like, the souls are keeping the lights on. And so it's not like it's a fucking imposition to having to have souls. Like, they also need it. [C: Right.] And so buying a soul is like- It's probably fine. I don't know. What the fuck is going on? I think maybe they will clarify it later.

C: If it's the ten years thing like with the demon deal, then I guess it'd be bad that the kid has to die within ten years. [G: Ah, this is true.] Like, that would be the negative part of it. But yeah, it's not made clear.

G: If that was the case, they should have clarified that, I believe.

C: Yeah, they really really should have clarified.

G: Cas boops this kid asleep and then puts him over his shoulder.

C: And that kid never talks again. That is the end of Aaron being conscious and speaking and having a personality and story.

G: And Dean goes, "Well, what the fuck?" And then they go back to the motel room, and he lies the kid down on the bed. And then he goes like, "Yeah, I need to read the mark that the angel left in the soul." He says that it will be extremely painful for the kid. And Dean is the only one who protests. Like, Sam just stands in the corner like, "Mm, okay." And Dean is like, "No, no, no, wait, wait! Why? You can't do that!" And Sam just goes, "Is there any permanent damage?" And Cas goes, "Well, physically, minimal." Dean protests and protests. And Cas just goes, "There is no other way, and I will have to torture this kid, because I don't have the privilege not to!" [C sighs] No, he says, "I don't have the luxury not to" or something.

C: Yeah, "I can't wake him up and ask if that angel spoke with a stupid Scottish-French accent that sounds British!"

G: I specifically hate that like, in this scene, they like, linger on Cas's sad face [C laughs] when he goes, "I don't have the luxury." And then we go to Dean's face in like, shock but also a bit of understanding, and it's like fuck off! [C: Yeah.] Fuck off! Pissing me off.

C: Yeah. Supernatural has a thing where there's points where they're like, "I'm putting my foot down, something crosses a line regarding what my morals are," and there's other times when they're like, "It's difficult for me, emotionally, and only me, but it has to be done." And it's interesting where this one falls regarding that dichotomy.

G: I think Supernatural has always done this thing, and we have always pointed it out. But to them, it's not about the thing. It's not about doing the thing. It's about how you feel about doing the thing. [C: Yes.] So it's fine if you do a bad thing as long as you feel bad about it. [C: Yeah.] As long as you feel guilty, as long as it's the only choice, then it's completely fine that you do a horrible thing, as long as you have nightmares about it after. Fuck off! [C: Yeah. Yeah.] Pissing me off.

C: So Dean's good, because he went, "Nooo! Okay, though." about it.

G: "Noo!" And he's going to be sad about this for the rest of the day! [C laughs] And Sam, like, both of them allowed it to happen. Just to be completely clear, both Sam and Dean allowed it to happen. But because Dean protested and went, "Nooo! Oh, okay, you're sad? Oh, fine, but I'm still sad about it!" And Sam just went, "No, it's wrong. Oh, okay. Yeah. Go ahead," that makes Sam like, more egregious than Dean because- And I mean, Sam is more egregious than Dean because if both of them protested, maybe they would have had a chance. But like, [C: Yeah.] Dean also allowed it to happen, you know? [C: Yeah.] And the morality of Supernatural really shines through this episode. There's also the whole conversation about like, what does being a hunter mean.

C: Yeah, I mean, regarding like what it means to be a hunter, the reason that they're going after the staff, Cas is like, "Oh, so many more people are going to die." Why? I mean, it seems like, when they thought it was the dad, it seemed like he had three specific people he wanted to die, rightfully so. They're dead!

G: And this kid also had three specific people that they wanted to die. [C: Yeah.] And even the cop said like, "After us, it's probably done."

C: Yeah. So there's no further harm being prevented here. But it's just like, "Noo, they can't have this power, because maybe they'll be bad. Why? I don't know. Just give it to Heaven! We'll be good with the staff of Moses." So like, that doesn't make any sense. And then, what they do later for Aaron is that they force Balthazar to let go of his claim on his soul. And like, that's like, "Okay, this is within the realm of a hunter. This is a supernatural thing that's happening to the kid that's bad, so we're gonna make it stop." But like, they don't think about being sensitive when they're approaching the family for questioning. They don't think about doing anything other than torture to get the answer of which angel sold this to him. Like, they fucking leave him there for the cops because time is of the essence to get to Balthazar, but they don't think about like the emotional toll that, like, the cops getting him-

G: Having to wake up to the institution that killed your brother. Yeah.

C: Yeah, after remembering being tortured and in horrible pain, and then going home to your dad, who an angel knocked out just now.

G: And also, let's play out the situation, right? The cops come to him. They take him home. They go in. The dad has clippings of the dead police officers on the table. [C: Yes.] You think they're going to be benevolent to this guy who has been actively seeking out justice against them? Like, fuck off! I do think it really showcases the fundamental missteps in like, the philosophy of the show. Yeah. We have always said that Supernatural exists within a framework that is inherently racist. And like, I don't know. Supernatural has always played it out in a fantasy racism, always.

C: Yeah. And also, sometimes, real racism.

G: And then when they do the- This is something that we also said about Gordon, right? Like, they would try to attempt to do this thing where it's like, "No, but like, the monsters! The monsters!" You have an actual Black character on screen [C laughs] that you are mistreating to hell and back.

C: Yeah. And you also left him to the cops in Season 2, right?

G: Yeah. Yeah. And like, I don't even think the fucking race allegory that they're doing is good, like, number one. I don't think it's particularly good to go, "No, but the vampires are the equivalent of people of color!" [C laughs]

C: Yeah, you know how people of color, in order to live, they have to suck white people's blood?

G: Yeah, but like, that is what Supernatural is doing, like, in that episode, that was explicitly pretty much what they were doing, like, pretty explicitly. And so to want to do that, and then to turn around and go, "But we don't have to treat any of the actual Black characters that we have on the show with any dignity whatsoever. Don't worry about it," like, okay. Fuck off.

C: I guess another thing I was thinking about is that, you know, Aaron's a kid who's taking revenge on cops who murdered his brother in like, the show that's about brothers [G: Taking revenge, yeah.] who love each other who take revenge on other people because of their brothers and also like, make pretty much every character a mirror to one of the brothers because the way for you to feel compassion for a character in Supernatural is by going, [both] "They're just like Sam and Dean for real!" And obviously, I don't think that doing a direct one-to-one of like, being killed by demons and being killed by racist cops is like, a good move for Supernatural, but I think there's also a way for them to connect with Aaron and like, talk to him more in a way that it's like, "I fully understand what you did, and like, you also love your brother, I also love my brother," etc etc as a way of like, I don't know, just making him a character that the audience connects to more and all of that, and they just skip over it. Like, it seems like they don't even consider doing any kind of parallels, and that's-

G: The thing is is that is Supernatural's language. It sounds like, yeah, they probably shouldn't do this fucking parallel thing, but that is what they do. That is how the show communicates it, to its audience that like, this is a character that we're supposed to care about or this is a storyline we're supposed to connect to. That is how they do it. And so the fact that they don't do it at all, they don't extend that familiarity, or that- they don't extend that like, generosity in terms of thought towards this kid. Also, this kid is like, 14! [laughs] Like, it's a kid for real. They don't extend that to this kid and this family, I do think, as you said, like, speaks to what Supernatural thinks you the audience should feel about this. Like, "No, they're other." [C: Yeah.] Is Season 6 going to be like this? Is Sera Gamble- What's gonna happen? I mean, time is progressing.

C: Ugh. I don't know. Right. Last episode Bobby John, not good.

G: Yeah. Like, time is progressing in Supernatural, the show, and also the writer's room. It's progressing. And so at some point it should be- It should get better. Like, at least? [C laughs] You know?

C: I don't know. Progress isn't linear.

G: But they find new ways. Supernatural: We Will Find a Way. [both laugh] That's their tagline.

C: Yeah, Supernatural is progressing in the ways that it will put racism in its show.

G: Yeah. They do end up torturing this kid. And the way they do it is like, while the kid is screaming, it goes to Dean, making a sad face. And yeah, Cas is done. We never pan to this kid ever again. I don't think we ever see him on camera ever again, except accidentally when Cas is having that fight scene.

C: Some peripheral shots lying on the bed at points.

G: Cas is like, "Oh, yeah, I had a good friend, and it's this good friend who is doing all this. I thought he died." Dean is asking questions. Cas just goes, "Balthazar. I wonder." And then an angel like, appears in the room and goes, "Oh, yeah, Balthazar. You finally said it. Thanks, Cas. Now I have a name." And then the angel starts attacking Cas, and they start having a fight scene, and the angel goes, "Oh, by the way, Raphael says, hello." It's a fight scene. The setting of this room is like, it's in a high-rise building, and they must be in the seventh floor or something. Cas throws him and the angel out of the window. They both end up landing on Sam's car, the other angel on Sam's hood and Cas like, right in the middle, and it is pretty cool because like, Sam and Dean look down, and Cas is like, embedded into he car, and he like, gets himself out of there, and as he does, the metal squishes further. Very fun. And the angel disappears, and then, you know, there's the loud, blaring alarm of Sam's car. It's completely fucking totaled.

C: Sam goes, "My car!" [laughs]

G: And Dean just smirks and goes, "Okay, silver lining." Also, not to be, you know, a Destiel shipper, but I do find it completely amusing when Cas throws himself down, and then Sam and Dean both peek the first time- like, Sam, of course, has a distressed face because of his car, and Dean is doing like a little gasp, like a [gasps], which is very fun. An impressed little face.

C: Yeah. RIP to Sam's car.

G: Yeah. RIP to this Dodge Charger from 2006.

C: Yeah. Does he ever get a new car?

G: Well in Season 7, they change cars always. They have to hide the Impala.

C: Oh, but like, he and Dean aren't like, living and working together anymore. He needs a car to go on his solo hunts. I'd assume he'd get a new one.

G: Maybe he will. Yeah.

C: Okay, I hope he does. You know I'm a big proponent of the Sam Driving League.

-

C: Cas teleports back into the room and tells them that the angel he fought was a soldier of Raphael. Cas starts setting up the ritual to find Balthazar, but Dean's like, "No no no. Answer questions like, right now. Cas, what is up?" And he explains that there's a civil war going on in Heaven where Raphael and his followers want to rule Heaven, but "many other people" don't. And he doesn't say who that other camp wants to take over, but I guess it's him. [laughs] Everyone hates him and wants him to die, though.

G: Yeah, exactly.

C: Yeah, he goes, "I and many others, the last thing we want is to let him take over," and [laughs] many others is like one or two other people.

G: One guy. [C laughs] "Many others" is him and then half of Balthazar’s heart. Like, Balthazar don't even give a fuck! [both laugh]

C: Yeah, yeah, it's just Castiel, Cas, Cass with 2 S's.

G: It is hilarious, later on, he kills that angel, and then he goes, "Why won't any of you listen to me?" [both laughing] "Why won't any of you listen to meee? Now I have to kill you!"

C: Yeah, and I know he's having his emotional, mournful moment or whatever, but I don't care! [both laugh]

G: Yeah, that guy sucks! Go back to being eye candy, Cas. [C laughs]

C: He says that whoever has all these powerful, Heavenly weapons is going to win the war, so that's why he finds the staff of Moses so important. And what Raphael wants to continue and end the- or to continue the Apocalypse to its end because he's a "traditionalist." And Dean goes like, "Cas. Why didn't you tell us?" And Cas says that he was ashamed and expected more from his brothers. Why would he? They were all for the apocalypse!

G: Well, first of all, I just find it hilarious that it's like, "Why didn't you tell me?" "I was ashamed because my brother sucks so bad." If you truly were ashamed, you would have kept that to yourself, Cas. [C laughs] I'm gatekeeping shame.

C: Not even a top 15 Mitski song, I would say. It's not bad, but.

G: To be clear, my complaint is that they deliver it with no subtlety, and I wish it was something that was went through more- Like, they don't just say it in here, we see it in actuality, that's how we figure it out kind of deal. Yeah.

C: Yeah, I did write down, "I think Misha Collins is a bad actor" [laughs] when this line came up.

G: Yeah. I thought he was a bad actor in, "You think I came because you called?" But also, to be fair, that's just a bad line to give to Cas, I feel. [C: Yeah.] Cas would say, "I did not come here because you called me, Dean." Like, that's a Cas line. [C: Yeah.] "You think I came here because you called?" Fuck off. [C laughs] Who the fuck is writing this? Ben Edlund! ... I will not threaten you in any way, shape, or form. [C laughs]

C: Ben Edlund, I hope you live a long life, and that when you die, it's not in my country. [both laugh] [G: Yeah.] But yeah, I think the fact that there's no pause before he says, "I was ashamed." I think that was the acting choice that I thought was quite bad. But it's also not a very well-written line.

G: It's like they forgot how to write Cas or something. I think because they were leaning- I think with the Cas scenes this episode, they were really leaning a lot into the comedy of him, just the absurdity of his character, that I don't think they really did well with the like, more emotional parts or whatever. [C: Yeah.] Not some of the comedy also, but like, there are scenes that are funny with him. Like, I found him amusing in like, "Sam, Dean, I spent the last year-" like, that was funny. The "I wasn't gonna mention it" was funny. When he said, "That is still the saying," [C laughs] like, that is pretty funny. But like, there's just, you know, some lines here and there and the more emotional lines that are like, yeah, I think they're still feeling this character out.

C: Raphael wants the apocalypse because he's quote-unquote "a traditionalist"? The last time Raphael talked about why or just his general thoughts about God and the Apocalypse was 5.03, right? [G: Yeah.] I didn't review that scene before this episode. I should do it now. Do you recall what his deal was?

G: Well, his deal was predominantly "God is not here."

C: So yeah, right, it was "God's not here." "So you think you can do whatever you want?" He's upset that God ran off and disappeared, left no instructions and a world to run. "We're tired. We just want it to be over. We just want Paradise." I don't know. Is that super traditionalist? Like, part of traditionalist stuff is thinking that it's God's will and all of that, right? For the Apocalypse to happen? But like, in 5.03, it seems very clearly like-

G: "We're tired."

C: "I'm upset at being abandoned, and if we just go through with this apocalypse thing, and if Michael wins in some way, then we'll like end up in the good universe where there's paradise on Earth because of all the suffering that I saw on Earth in the last century."

G: I suppose it is his enemy, Castiel, who's characterizing him right now.

C: [laughs] Yes.

G: It is a possibility that his philosophy is different. I'm not holding out my breath for it, because it's Supernatural, but I do think- I don't think Raphael really is the person to have made into a villain of Season 6, which seems to be what they're doing.

C: I guess Michael's in the cage. They already established Gabriel as a little scamp, and Lucifer's Lucifer. But yeah, I don't- I feel like Gabriel had villain potential.

G: Yeah, but you see, Gabriel is lovable, and Raphael is stern, and so we know how it goes.

C: I don't know. Isn't there also this super monster thing going on anyway? That could have just been the conflict.

G: Um, yeah, we'll figure that out as we go. [C: Okay.] I think you would be surprised by how related they are. [both laugh]

C: Thank you for your subtlety, Grey.

G: Again, I don't really remember the intricacies of the plot of Season 6. But like, those are a thing that are together. Forevah, even. Or something.

C: Got it. I mean, yeah, I think Cas is just being flattening in his characterization. But, as you said, [G: Yeah, but also Supernatural.] I don't really think that Raphael will have a chance to really explain himself at any point during the season. [G: Yeah.]

G: And like, I don't know. It does make me sad that they're like really intent on making Raphael like, evil or whatever. [C: Mm.] I don't know. I feel like there is value to- Because like, if you look at the four archangels, you know, you have Lucifer who hates God, and his response is to like, hate God. You have Michael, who still believes in his dad, and then you have Gabriel, who hates his dad and the response- or he doesn't seem to hate his dad. [C: Yeah, he's swad.] He seems to be mad at his brothers. His anger is externalized towards his brothers or something. You have Raphael, who's like, mad at God. His response is to feel defeated. And like, you know, we have talked about how having all these four archangels who are like the brothers of the show- not, you know what I mean. [C laughs] They are portrayed as brothers with brother dynamics, with a dad who is absent and harsh. I don't think it's productive to have yet another brother be the villain. [C: Yeah.] And like, I don't know. I think it does speak to something about Supernatural that they were like, "And Gabriel is going to be the one who we love. We wuv him. Wuv him!" Like, fuck off.

C: Yeah. And he has multiple episodes where all he does is antagonize and torture Sam and Dean, but he still gets his little redemption moment.

G: Yeah. And Raphael gets nothing?

C: So what's that about? And stern characters, Cas started as a stern character, and [G: Yeah.] you know, they kept running with him, and now everybody wuvs him, etc etc. So it's not just that they were like, "Raphael's no fun." They've shown that they can make a stern character fun. Cas is mostly there for comic relief, in fact. But like-

G: And I do think there was a time when the general fandom consensus and also you and I, I feel, we brought this to the podcast as well is the idea that the fans don't react to certain characters well, so the show doesn't develop them. I think more and more, I'm like, "That's just bullshit, man." If the show wants to do it, they can. [C: Yeah.] If they wanted to commit to Cas not being here anymore, they could have done that. [C: Yeah.] Like yeah, people are gonna complain and gonna stop watching and gonna send feathers to your office where you have workers that are allergic, but like, [both laugh] you know, you could have committed to it. And like, that's an extreme case. The Cas thing is an extreme case because it's like, you killed a character that they want to be in the show. But, for example, in situations where it's like, you have a character in the show, and the audience is not reacting to that character well, it's not like it's automatically like, "Ugh, damn it! Now we have to kill them." [C: Yeah.] That's not like your only option. You can do other thing!

C: Yeah, have you considered writing good? [G laughs]

G: Have you considered considering your writing options? [C laughs] Yeah, like, there is a point where it's like, yeah, I think the show just doesn't give a fuck to do it.

C: They came in with Gordon knowing that he was going to be a villain, so they didn't bother. [G: Yeah.] They did the same thing with Uriel, and now the same thing with Raphael.

G: And they can go like, "Oh, but you see, we tried," and it's like, well, maybe if you tried harder, [laughs] you could have done something with it!

C: So Cas takes some of Dean's blood for the ritual because Dean is his favowite. The police are showing up because of like, the whole car alarm, two people crashing on top of a car situation. Cas has tracked down Balthazar's location and says, "Let's go." And Dean goes, "Wait, wait, wait! What about Aaron?" And Cas goes, “Don't you think the police will take him home?” And it just cuts.

G: You can just teleport him like that! Like, you can just literally go [C: Yeah, it's very fast.]- you can just snap, and you're back there.

C: Yeah, and I don't- I was thinking about the purpose of this line. And I think it's for Supernatural to reiterate that not all cops are bad. Because, like, it cuts after that. There's no Dean face reaction shot. It cuts like what Cas says is obvious. Of course they'll take him home, it'll be fine.

G: I thought the intention was to show that Cas is heartless now and doesn't give a fuck.

C: I think that that is possible, but I feel like the way that they've done that is like, Dean face reaction shots.

G: Have Dean react, yeah.

C: And there was no Dean face reaction shot. This was just like, Cas saying a statement and then it cutting, so to me, it read as like a "Well duh, they will." And just as like a "So don't worry! Not all cops are bad. These ones will take him home, and he'll be real happy about it." But it could also be what you said.

G: I think it could also be the whole, like, what is the role of a hunter? "Oh, this is out of our bounds. We don't have to take this kid home. It's not our responsibility."

C: Yeah, "We kidnapped him, but we don't have to take him home."

-

G: Yeah. Now they're in a fucking- in the lawn of a mansion. Sam and Dean basically stay outside, and it's just Cas who comes in, and there's this scene where there's like- you know those fancy stairs in fancy houses? And there's a giant fucking frog sitting on the railing, right in the middle. And Cas looks at it, and the frog looks at him and croaks, and there's like, close-ups of both of them. And then, like, you know, he goes up. He follows where the music is. What is with the gag with the frogs? Balthazar says it later. I still don't understand it. Am I missing something?

C: I don't know. It's a plague, and he was turning some angels into frogs?

G: So that frog was an angel.

C: Or they were jumping out of the throat of the dead body of the angel that attacked Cas earlier.

G: Balthazar is there, and he has a ambiguous accent. I'm pretty sure it's British. I think we can just say it's a British accent.

C: But is it?

G: Listeners, if you think this accent is a British accent, send us an ask saying that Cas should go into heat. Thank you! Nobody, absolutely nobody has done it still.

C: Yeah, I think we're supposed to take that as a message. [G laughs]

G: Anyway, the angel that Cas duked it out with earlier is now dead on the floor, and there's like, a frog coming out of his mouth. And Castiel is like, "Balthazar, this is serious shit. I thought you were dead. I grieved you." And Balthazar’s like, "Yeah, no. I needed to die so that I can live!" Cas asked, like, "You stole the staff of Moses?" And Balthazar says he stole a lot of things and that he needed to do it because nothing's ever going to change in Heaven, and so like, just get a weapon, get out of there, and run and like, live your life! And Balthazar is like, "Whatever you need, Cas. Just ask. I'll give it to you." And Cas goes like, "I need the weapons." And Balthazar's like, "Oh, noo!" And Balthazar actually says that "The reason why I've done all this is because you tore up the script. I'm just following your footsteps. It's a new era of no rules, no destiny, just utter and complete freedom." And Cas is upset that this is what he did with that freedom. And Cas finally mentions that like, it's a civil war up there. "If we can beat Raphael, we can end this. Just give me the weapons!" And Balthazar says, "You know what's so funny about you. You actually believe you can stop the fighting. Just leave, Cas. Just fake your own death and go." Cas says, "Well, Raphael now knows that you're alive, so tough luck!" And Balthazar's like, "Well, whatever. I'm just going to leave, and I really am happy to see you, even if you still have that stick up your ass." He leaves- Well, first, there's like, big thunder, and he's like, "Oh, yeah, Raphael's coming. Well, tell him to bite me!" and then he leaves, and it's just Cas now. Raphael and I think two other angels come in. Sam and Dean are like, downstairs, and then an angel shows up, and Sam goes like, "Hey, I'm here, and I have an angel blade." And then another angel shows up beside Sam, and it's like, "Well, you think you can knife fight an angel?" And we go to Dean, who's like, "Who said anything about knife fights?" and then he does the sigil, and it expels the angels out of there. You know what? I do love when they do this shit. I love when they like bluff things out, and it's like, "Oh, no, Sam's in danger! But only because they planned it! And Dean has an even bigger gun!" [C laughs] Like, love it.

C: It's pretty fun.

G: And Cas is inside, and there's another angel that's coming on to him, and the angel's like walking and walking towards him. [laughs] And Cas is going, "Nooo! Don't do this, pwease!" [C laughs] And then he's like just saying, "No, I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you." And literally, the angel is like five feet away from him, [both laugh] and he throws a fucking angel blade into his chest. And the angel dies, collapses on the ground, [C: Do we even see the wings?] and Cas just goes, "Why won't any of you listen?" What?

C: Did we even get wings on this guy?

G: No, I don't think so. I think they DGAF. [C: Boo!] I don't think we see the body fall to the ground with the angel wings. And then Raphael shows up. They're like fighting, I suppose. And Raphael is about to fucking kill this guy when suddenly, Balthazar shows up, and he has a like, a giant rock of salt, I would assume. And it starts glowing. Raphael turns into a pillar of salt. It is so fucking corny that Balthazar has to go, "Oh, yeah, same thing happened to Lot's wife." [C: Yeah.] Like, fuck off! We all read Slaughterhouse-Five!

C: I know already. We all fucking know about Lot's wife. We've read the poetry and the Bible.

G: Cas goes, "You came back!" Balthazar's like, "Yeah, no. Raphael's gonna need to find a new body, so like, it's fine." And Dean shows up and drops a lighter onto a ring of holy oil. [C: Somehow.] How did they ever plan this shit? How do they ever plan this shit?

C: I don't know. Well, you know, we were only getting like, I think, shots of like, Balthazar and Cas's faces during that conversation. [both laugh] Maybe Dean was crawling around on the floor in a circle around him with holy oil, we just didn't see it in the shot!

G: Yeah, he was actually Naruto running around Balthazar this whole time. It just wasn't relevant to our journey. [C: Exactly.] Balthazar calls Dean a hairless ape. He seems to have some hair.

C: Yeah. And is it blond or brown?

G: Let's not get into it. [both laugh] And Dean is like, "Okay, what you're going to do is you're going to remove the marker off Aaron Birch's soul." And Balthazar is like, "Wow! You're going to let this fucking hairless ape talk to me like this, Castiel?" And Cas goes, "Yes." And Balthazar's like, "Okay, fine." And then he clears the boy's debt. "His soul is his own." We, of course, never see this, never see a follow-up, never see anything. [C: Yeah.] They don't even seem to give a fuck about the like- Again, the soul thing is probably fine. They did just torture this kid, though. Are we not gonna acknowledge that? Did he also remove the torture? Like- [laughs] What's happening?

C: Yeah, we know that Cas can remove memories. I feel like it would be a kindness to remove the memory of the torture, but he doesn't have the luxury!

G: Dean asks, "Why are you buying souls, anyway?" And Balthazar goes, "Well, in this economy, it's probably the only thing worth buying."

C: Okay, sure, Balthazar. I know that Cas has-

G: Is he a crypto bro? [both laugh] Maybe he is a crypto bro. [C: Maybe.] Maybe if we stink of souls as some sort of cryptocurrency, then everything makes sense.

C: Well, Cas swallows all the souls in Purgatory in order to have enough power to defeat Raphael, so is this a similar situation? But okay, why does Balthazar need all that shit if all he wants to do is have twelvesomes and hang out, as he said he was doing on Earth?

G: Have what? Souls? You'll figure that out next time.

C: Okay, cool. [laughs]

G: Balthazar is like, "Okay, well, now, you gotta release me." And Dean's like, "No, we don't!" but Cas does.

C: Wait wait wait, okay. So if an angel has the power to reduce the flames of holy fire [G: But only if they're outside.], why don't the angels in the circle do it and then leave?

G: Because they're like, powered down on the inside.

C: Okay. Is that real?

G: No. [C laughs] But I assume it is. [C: Okay.] How else are you gonna explain this?

C: That they just didn't think about it too hard?

G: Cas tells Balthazar like, "My debt to you is cleared." So they're equal now, because, you know, Balthazar turned Raphael to a pillar of salt and Cas let him go! And Dean, as Balthazar leaves, Dean shouts at Cas, "Are you out of your mind?!" But as he turns around, Cas is also gone. [C: Yay!] And he's like, "Oh, fucking angels!" Well, he says, "Frigging angels. Come on!"

C: "Come on!"

-

C: You know, we're post-case, and Sam and Dean are trying to cram all the stuff in Sam's car trunk into the Impala now.

G: There's a scene where they pick up like- Sam finds a Halloween costume! [C: Yeah.] - just like me with Dean Winchester - in the like far end of the trunk, and he takes it out, and it's a mask of the monster from Season 1, Episode 2. [C: Yeah.] But they don't say it like that. [laughs] They don't say, "Oh, this is the monster from Season 1, Episode 2!" They just say it straight up. And like, yeah, Dean is like, "Oh, yeah, that's for Ben's Halloween costume." with the implication that he made it because it's an accurate representation, apparently. [C: Right.] Which is pretty fun.

C: So they have a convo where Dean's asking Sam like, "Are you okay? You've been kind of sus. Why weren't you against Cas torturing a child?"

G: "Are you a child torturer, Sam?" [C laughs] And Sam basically goes, "Well, you are. But like, I don't have to be. But I am, so who give a fuck?"

C: Dean says, "It just seems like you didn't care," and Sam goes, "You're wrong!" Dean says that something's up with him, and "I feel like something happened to you in Hell. I understand that it really fucks somebody up." He says, "Believe me, I know what that does to a guy," and Sam says, "To you."

G: "To you." To one guy.

C: So funny! So fucking funny!

G: No, this is hilarious.

C: And Dean's like, "What?" And Sam goes, "You know what it does to you. It tortured you, you know. I think it still does. But I'm okay." [both laugh] He's soo funny. [G: He's so funny!] He said, "RIP to you, but I'm different."

G: Literally, and he is.

C: He is! Dean's like, "What, you’re saying you’re stronger than me?" And Sam says, "No, I'm just saying, RIP to you, but we're different."

G: Yeah. "I'm built different, Dean."

C: And they drive off.

G: That's it. What did we think about this episode? [C: Ugh.] I think they're building up to like- In terms of what it contributes to the show, they are building up to something. [C: Yeah.] I wish they didn't use antiblack police brutality as a way to build up that Sam and Cas are slowly turning evil or whatever the fuck.

C: [laughs] Yeah. I agree with that statement.

G: Also, just like that IMDb user once said, what is up with Supernatural and torture? What  the fuck is their deal with torture?

C: Maybe if Sam and Dean learned some people skills. Crowley is supposed to be the negotiator, and like, he doesn't even-

G: His negotiation is just torture. [laughs]

C: Yeah, just torture and then killing some other people and being like, "You'll die if you don't tell me!" [both laugh] Like, what is this? It's like these writers don't even believe in the power of the word!

G: Yeah! Best Line/Worst Line?

C: Uh... "To you." [laughs] is my best line.

G: Is your best line? No, yeah, that's pretty fun.

C: Yeah. The people skills rusty multi-dimensional intent is good, too.

G: I think on the sequence of funny Cas lines, I do find the "That is still the saying, yes?" [C laughs] quite hilarious. And I mean, offshoot of it, "Why would any of you listen to me?" [both laugh] is also really fucking funny if I'm being for real.

C: I don't think it was intended to be.

G: I mean, I know, but it is.

C: And is it the best line?

G: I would say it's pretty hilarious.

C: Yeah, worst line, "Don't you think the police will take him home?"

G: I think Cas saying, "I don't have the privilege." and the way they frame that as like, a reveal to Dean or whatever [C: Yeah.] that allows him to accept the fate of this kid who is not his to accept.

C: Don't like it!

G: Okay. What's our next one? Spread those sheets?

C: Yeah. There is racism.

G: I do think it's a 4 or 5. I think it's fundamental to the episode, [C: Yeah, I agree.] and I think it's really bad.

C: Yeah. Well, which which of the two are we going for?

G: What do you think about it?

C: I don't know.

G: Have we ever done a 5?

C: We did a 5 for "Hammer of the Gods," but I don't think everything needs to be "Hammer of the Gods" to be a 5.

G: So let's go 5.

C: Yeah, I think 5 is reasonable. Misogyny, I think a bit with the sex worker at the beginning.

G: 1?

C: Yeah, 1 makes sense. I don't remember any homophobia. We did say there was queerbaiting but like-

G: I don't think that's a point, yeah. [C: Yeah.] What's our next one. Ratings.

C: IMDb. If I had to guess, I'd say this is the highest of- Oh, wait! Who's- I'm odd. Yeah, okay. I'd say this is the highest of Season 6 so far in terms of what I think people would enjoy.

G: We have two 7.8s.

C: We have a 7.6 and a 7.8. So yeah, I don't know.

G: The trajectory says that this would be higher.

C: Yeah, but I don't know how much higher because I don't know what the new standards of Season 6 are. So I'm just gonna say an 8.0?

G: Oh, me too!

C: Sad!

G: 8.0. Okay, let's see.

C: Are we diversifying our portfolio? No, you're just going to go with it?

G: Okay, I'm gonna go 8.1, then. [C: Okay.] Okay, let's see. Ha! It's an 8.1!

C: Oh! Congratulations!

G: Thank you.

C: What are people saying?

G: "I really enjoyed this episode. Castiel is back." "The way he and the brothers communicate is just great. I really enjoyed their reunion," blah blah blah.

C: [laughs] "This is not our Sam. Sam would never hire a prostitute."

G: Noo, is this something they really said?

C: [laughs] Yeah.

G: This one says, "Something is still off with Sam...and his new shiny car just had to go :), so at least that part will be right now :)" "Balthazar is pretty darn hot and interesting"? [C laughs] Has anyone ever felt that way apart from this person? "Cas is back!"

C: I think it's because people like British accents, which may or may not be his accent. [both laugh]

G: "The gore level moved way up this episode."

C: Yeah, this person thinks that the gore level is up because Sera Gamble likes more gruesome scenes. I believe it. You've mentioned this as a bit of a Season 6 staple.

G: Yeah. Many people love Cas.

C: Yeah, okay, this episode mentions that it "apes Black Lives Matter for social color, and it all feels cheap and ill-planned."

G: Yeah, it does. Okay, this one. I'm gonna read this whole thing. This one is 2/10, "Awful second half." "So here's what's wrong with this episode, and what will eventually kill the series." [C laughs] Written in October 9, 2010, by the way, so they don't know anything. "We start off with a bang as three police officers die incredibly gory deaths. Turns out someone has put a hex on the three, and Sam and Dean are in town to check things out. So far, so good. The hex is caused by misuse of Moses' staff, which has been stolen by an angel, and Sam and Dean must retrieve the staff just as if they were in an episode of Warehouse 13 or Friday the 13th - The TV series." [both laugh] Evocative. "From there, it's all downhill, as we find out is heaven is still at war. The rest of the episode is dull stuff with Castiel (who was OK for a story arc but not as a recurring character) [C laughs] has words with some other angels, and fights breakout. Dull, dull, dull. The thing that killed GHOST WHISPERER"--[C: Your favorite!] A TV show I love, by the way.--"was an increasingly maudlin tone and the overuse of Hewitt's real-life beau in a recurring role as a college prof. The poor guy couldn't act his way out of a paper bag, [laughs] and this plus the maudlin stuff eventually did in GW. The overuse of heavenly wars, and Castiel himself will kill SUPERNATURAL. [both laugh] But then, the show has been on for six seasons. And as much as I'd like to see it go another six, the writers have hit bottom for plots. [C: So true.] We watched THE X-FILEs die a painful death in its last two or three seasons. Now we apparently have to witness the same for SUPERNATURAL. It is a real shame." [C laughs]

C: It is. A real shame.

G: It's literally fine!

C: This person has 700 reviews.

G: I don't know. I'm holding out hope that Season 6 may not be that bad, but given the trajectory of where we are right now as people and as a podcast, probably not. [laughs] And the TV show Supernatural.

G: That’s it for this episode of Busty Asian Beauties. [C laughs] Next week, we will be discussing Season 6, Episode 4: "Weekend at Bobby’s"! [C: Nice.] Nice. Leave us a rating or a review wherever you get your podcasts.

C: Follow us on social media! We are on Tumblr at bustyasianbeautiespod.tumblr.com. Our official tag is #BABPod, B-A-B-POD. Thanks to everyone who's donated to our Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/bustyasianbeautiespod, which is where our outtakes live, and check out our merch at babpod.redbubble.com.

G: You can email us your feedback, comments, or inquiries at bustyasianbeautiespod@gmail.com. See you guys next time! [both] Bye!

[guitar music]

[b1-d1s4st3r-z0n3]

Another Writing Example TvT //SLIGHT NSFW//

Aris recoiled slightly when Gabriel's hand wrapped around his forearm but his attention was mainly focused on the three strange men in the apartment. The archangel's hand on him kept him in place like an anchor, despite his desire to follow Rem and the other angel as they moved down the hallway towards Remiel's bedroom. His attention turned to the two humans in the room, and, given his agreement not to kill them yet, his release was granted, his gaze falling to the taller of the men. A malevolent glee shone in his eyes as he took a step forward and Sam took a step back, they continued like this, each move the nymph made mirrored in reverse by the human until they were playing a true game of cat and mouse. Sam's feet nearly slipped out from under him as he rounded the couch and the nymph jumped over the back of it, he was just barely staying out of the huge creature's reach and quickly running out of steam. The sharp corner around the kitchen island slowed him down even more and the feeling of fingers against his back made his heart pound even faster in his chest. A huge predatory grin spread across Aris' face as his lean muscles propelled his body towards the scrambling man in front of him. His fingers brushed across the back of Sam's coat and a low growl rumbled from within his chest as he lunged forward, tackling Sam to the ground. The loud smack of the human's chest against the floor made Dean cringe as his brother's face was pressed against the grain of the wooden floor. Aris poised above Sam's rigid form, using his calves to hold the backs of his thighs down, rendering his legs immobile. His left hand fell in a tight grasp on the muscled bicep below him, sure to leave bruises later, leaving his right hand twisting into the other's longer hair, wrenching his face backwards off the floor. Sam screwed his eyes shut as hot breath ghosted over his ear and the silky tone of the nymph fell from his lips just above a whisper, "You thought you could run, pontikáki. Thélo na se choríso gia aftó." (Little mouse, I aut to tear you apart for that.) Tears pricked at the corners of Sam's eyes as adrenaline coursed through his veins and blood rushed below his belt. He couldn't tell what was more humiliating, what the man above him was doing or the fact that in some way he was enjoying it. He silently willed the erection and the crimson flush to go away as he finally opened his eyes and was immediately met by the uncomfortable expression of his brother. He mouthed 'help' but only got a shrug and head shake in response, the reappearance of their accompanying angel and his demand that the nymph release him couldn't have come soon enough; though even after Aris' weight was relieved he stayed on the ground, too embarrassed to immediately return to his feet. Aris complied with Castiel's demand, although begrudgingly, as he released his new play thing and moved to stand behind Gabriel, placing his hands on the archangel's shoulders. Dean quickly crossed the room the moment Aris began moving towards him and stood between his brother's limp form on the floor and his angelic companion

[ardentpoop]

sam is (primarily) sexually attracted to men but (primarily) romantically attracted to women manifesto

[foundationbuilt]

NOW THERE WAS MANY THINGS DEAN WOULD TOLERATE FOR A HOT CHICK , driving Baby was not one of them. ❝ Nice try , Miss Sunshine , ❞ he said as he followed her out into the car park. He gave Baby a loving pat on the way around to the driver's side , smoothing over the black polish of her beloved hood. ❝ You're the only one I drool over, ain't that right , Baby ? ❞

Before he got in , he pulled his phone out of his pocket and sent Sam a quick text , smirk sliding onto his face as he hopped into the seat beside her and started the engine. This was what Sam got for backing out of the front line of this hunt , Mr College Boy preferring to stay with his books than the people.

❝ So , what you thinkin' for course of action ? We doin' the seduce and corner ? ❞ He glanced over at Sonny as he reversed , then focused on the side mirror to ensure there was no obstacles. ❝ Needa find out whose more her type. Usually , I'd say me , I'm everybody's type , buuuuut ... ❞ He let the silence speak for itself , tossing her a side grin without actually looking. It wasn't true , of course , and he wasn't nearly arrogant enough to think so, but he was enjoying the banter.

hearing  his  question,  sonny  looked  at  him  with  a  raised  brow.  almost  wanting  to  laugh  again.  this  probably  would  go  a  lot  quicker  if  sam  was  joining  them  to  knock  some  sense  into  his  older  brother.  maybe.  but  alas,  this  is  how  it  was  going  to  go.  "mhm,  nice  try.  we  got  a  job  to  do."

grabbing  her  little  purse,  she  made  sure  all  the  necesities  were  inside.  these  stupid  little  purses  could  rarely  fit  anything,  but  at  least  she  had  the  important  necessities  to  take  down  the  witch.  "yeah,  got  the  ritual."  she  nodded  as  she  pulled  the  little  piece  of  paper  out  of  the  bag  then  back  in.  and  in  case  they  even  lose  it,  sonny  took  the  liberty  to  memorize  it  because  something  always  tends  to  happen.  "alright,  let's  go  kick  some  witch's  ass."  grabbing  their  motel  key,  sonny  was  already  out  the  door  ahead  of  him  heading  towards  baby,  "and  you  better  not  be  standing  there  drooling.  otherwise,  i'm  driving."

[zmediaoutlet]

happy wincest wednesday and happy 2023! reverse uno: what are your favorite ways for john to find out dean and sam are fucking in a universe where dean and john are ALSO fucking?

woooooo wincest wednesday uno games and everyone's a winner --

Except John, lol.

You know, all my wincest fic and all my Dean/John fic and all the Full House of Wincest I've done, and somehow I don't think I've ever written that scenario? How tf did that happen?

Part of it may be that I haaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAATE fics where John's even vaguely a shipper on deck -- even where he's like 'ah, Sam and Dean are too obsessed with each other but That's For The Best bc Thin Hunting-Related Justification' just never vibe quite right with me. I have very narrow parentheses in which I find John believable. (What a surprise, a hard canon stance from ol' z.)

But -- a John who's been fucking Dean doesn't have too much of a leg to stand on, does he. Except: he does, of course he does, he's the god-patriarch and his word goes. It depends, of course, on the type of Dean/John that's been going on, but I'll go with my version because it's mine and I like it best, haha: a largely unspoken helpmeet scenario, where it's just part of the overarching need Dean has for his dad's love and attention and calm and happiness, and where John knows that he's using Dean and knows that even if Dean loves it he's still ruining his son and, this is key, John chooses to keep doing it anyway because that's who John is, as a person. Dean the extension of his arm and the step under his boot and something beloved but also something useful and ignorable until it is time to use it. Not size-72 font obviously awful abusive but -- well. Canon levels of abuse, let's go with that.

SO given that: let's call it a wincest scenario where Sam's in his mid-late teens and wants to take up with Dean. Did he know about D/John, or suspect? My favorite version of weecest + dadcest is actually for Sam to be kind of oblivious about it, as he was oblivious to a lot of key things in his teens (as you gestured to a little in your answer) -- he wants Dean and his attention and his love but he's also a very strong-willed teenager and so he also just wants to get his rocks off and knows that Dean's willing, whenever they crack past that barrier. And Dean, already with that door blown open inside himself, can't help it -- because after all he knows he's good at this, and he knows that it does make people closer, and he loves Sam and wants Sam to be calm and happy too, and isn't it just -- easier? He'll leave John on a hunt well-drained and focused and come home to Sam all bitchy and missing him and saying stuff like he shouldn't make you hunt, you should be in school, and Dean sighs and he could argue but he could also thumb Sam's hip, and Sam'd shut up all big-eyed and hopeful and going, oh, can we -- and Dean can say something like, yeah, and missed you, Sammy, which is only true, after all. And it's good, and when Sam's snoring on the fold out couch Dean can shower and carefully thumb two loads out of himself and then call John and say how's the job, Dad? and not really -- think about it. It's just taking care of things, like he always does.

SO, given that: it's easy to have John walk in on them -- a hunt finished early, they're wrapped up in each other; it's easy to have a demon tell him, and he doesn't believe it but then he's been hearing a lot of stuff about his boys from demons, and they lie but also blah blah. I prefer small and undramatic, though, so what if instead it's that one day John's home and he's actually slept well for once and he's not hungover and he's just going through the paper at the table, and Dean's cleaning the guns like he's supposed to and Sam's doing homework like he's supposed to and John, not being an idiot or a monk, just -- picks up on a vibe. A look Sam gives Dean. A smile from Dean to Sam that John's had aimed at himself, in key moments, and he just -- knows, the way that sometimes you know things, and he's sitting there with the paper and his hands turn to fists.

He's NOT a shipper on deck. He's NOT thinking 'oh, The Things I Have Done To My Family, O Woe But Unforch That's The Way It Is.' I think he's not thinking at all, in the way that we can ignore deep horrors if we have to, and he closes the paper, and he says he's going out, and he takes Sam with him because -- he's the dad, he gets to -- and Sam's sullen in the passenger seat as they head to the gun store or to buy salt or whatever errand John's operational-matters mind invents, and they barely talk but John watches Sam as they go through the chores and gears are turning and he --

stops fucking Dean. Stops talking much to them at all, for a while. Takes jobs and sends Dean on jobs and makes Sam help. Work, and work, and work, and when they're alone once Dean's not being subtle about trying not to look at John, because he doesn't know what he did wrong but he must've done something wrong, and John can't say, and he knows it's hurting Dean but then again when has he ever not done something he thought was necessary because it might have hurt Dean? And Dean heals because that's also what Dean always does, but there's a crooked spot where the bone broke, and later when John's dead and Sam holds Dean on a night after and kisses his cheekbone, careful, not sure what's okay now that everything's even more fucked up, Dean keeps his eyes open on the ceiling and sees ghosts of older days.

[ananke-xiii]

Castiel: vessel, body, woman, (best) friend.

This title comes from a previous post of mine where I talked about Yockey’s episodes in s12 and how they all deal with the theme of interconnection between motherhood/fatherhood and human vessels vs demons, angels and other humans. Ultimately, the post was about Kelly Kline, the final “doll”, the real one, true vessel used to pour angelic grace in, give birth to a Nephilim and be discarded once her “job” is done.

However, since I’ve been thinking about the mothers of gods and monsters and how they all, in some way or another, end up being associated with Castiel, I’ve found an interesting discovery about “Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets” (the linked post about mothers and this one seem to be disconnected now but it will all make sense with later posts, I promise).

I’ll quote myself from my initial post in order to explain my theory:

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”?

I’ve always interpreted this dialogue as an interesting lesson on “Angels and Gender Politics”, and it is, but maybe there’s something less intellectual and more mundane about it. Maybe it's just the same-old SPN parallels technique. But more fun.

“Vessel, body, woman, friend” is how the powerfully devout woman in Madrid is described. But in this episode, “vessel, body, woman, friend” is also Castiel. Castiel is the powerfully devout woman in Madrid and Dean’s… her Benjamin. There’s a complete reversal of roles here where Cas is paralleld to a human and Dean’s his angel which I find very interesting.

The comparison between Dean and Benjamin starts even before the Castiel-woman-in-Madrid one:

CAS: It was, um... Look, Benjamin wouldn't call for help lightly. And he wouldn't put himself in harm's way if he could help it. DEAN: Wow, this Benjamin seems like he's pretty cool, you know. Like he wouldn't make any half-cocked, knee-jerk choices. CAS: Yeah, you know what I like about him? Is that he's sarcastic, but he's thoughtful and appreciative, too. DEAN: Now what is that supposed to mean?

What Dean is saying here is that Benjamin is not Cas because Benjamin sounds like a cool type who wouldn’t make reckless decisions (while Cas is not this type of person). But what Cas is saying is that Benjamin’s like Dean because they’re both sarcastic but Benjamin is better than Dean because he’s also thoughtful and appreciative (while Dean’s not).

Let’s see if I’m right about this.

Vessel.

The moment Cas meets Ishim and Mirabel he just has to open his mouth and say it: “Kept your vessels all this time. I'm impressed”. Ishim and Mirabel say that they were not careless with their vessels like Cas was. Which, of course, means that they’ve known Cas in is “old him”, his old vessel.

Body.

Whether they like it or not (and Ishim doesn’t like it because he thinks humans are apes, monkeys and primates which, to be fair with Ishim, is not technically not true however he does throw shade at us) angels on earth are incarnated beings, meaning that to live on Earth they need to take… a body. Specifically, a human body (no cat angels for us). Human bodies, however, are, from an angel’s pov, weak. Ishim might have been careful with his vessel but this doesn’t mean he can’t get hurt. Lily doesn’t manage to kill him in the alley but she hurts him a great deal because his wound is deep and healing it will be painful. Bodies suck, huh? But maybe also… not so much after all.

Woman.

The big reveal of this episode is that Cas’ old vessel was a woman. We don’t know anything else but the fact that she was a woman. We don’t even know if Sam and Dean know about it because we see the backstory through a flashback while obviously they don’t. They must have wondered because they know for sure that Castiel took Jimmy Novak as his vessel after resurrecting Dean. Whatever the case may be, though, what we know is that that was the first time Castiel possessed a person to visit Earth.

Friend.

Friendship is one of the episode’s themes. It’s not the central one but they do bring up friendship a lot. Benjamin and the devout woman were "friends". Benjamin and Castiel were friends. The angels in Ishim’s garrison were friends. Sam and Dean are friends with Castiel. Dean and Castiel are best friends. Since Benjamin and the devout woman were established as “friends”, meaning that they were a little more than that, then where does it leave us? Well, frankly the usual: Cas and Dean are more than friends. Woah, what a surprise, I absolutely did not see that one coming.

The scene that confirms that my theory is correct is when Ishim dares Dean to finalize the sigil and blast every angel in the room. You see, “Benjamin would never put her in unnecessary danger”. Neither does Dean with Cas.

The scene also pretty much sums up the whole episode as far as the theme of “vessel, body, woman, friend” is concerned. Cas has healed Ishim who’s now fully recovered and brimming health from every pore. Cas, on the other hand? Not so much.

ISHIM: I used to envy you, Castiel. You believe that? ISHIM: You survived Hell. You were chosen by God. But now look at you. You're just sad and pathetically weak. ISHIM: So now... I'm gonna help you. I'm gonna cure you of your human weakness same way I cured my own– ISHIM: – by cutting it out. DEAN: Don't move. ISHIM: Do it. You blast me away, you'll blast away every angel in the room. I'll survive. Castiel, on the other hand, he's hurt. He might live or he might just end up a bloody smear on the wall. Roll the dice.

Castiel’s “bodiness” is exposed in this scene, but there is a… ahem… “positive” side? Unlike the poor guy that Ishim is wearing as his meatsuit (ugh), Cas doesn’t have to worry about his vessel’s safety but his own. He is his own vessel now (well, he kinda still stole the looks from Jimmy Novak, nevertheless his vessel has become his body. An angel with his own body, crazy, I know. Maybe this is really why Ishim is jealous of him). Which, to be honest, is still concerning because Cas is reckless as fuck. Thank God Dean is not.

Dean doesn’t roll the dice, he doesn’t endanger his powerfully devout friend, he doesn’t bet on the odds of having to scoop up Cas’ remains from the wall.

So cool, right? Do you think that Cas has learnt the value of life, the value of his own life and will be less reckless with it? Of course not!

By the end of the episode Cas still says (re Billie’s murder)that he doesn’t regret his actions even if they cost him his life. He also says, after all he’s been through with Lily Sunder, that he doesn’t know if he’s capable of killing an innocent baby or not.

SAM: But, Cas, at the end of the day, it's a mom and her kid. I mean, do you – do you think you'll be able to... CAS: There was a time when I wouldn't have hesitated. But now, I don't know.

I don’t know if the show ever answers this question. He does bring Kelly to the “sandbox” but then Dagon shows up and then Joshua gets killed and then Kelly takes his hand and then Jack shows him “the future”… And then, and then, and then. Stuff happened, life happened, you know? I mean, it’s complicated but this is what makes it more interesting!

[destielshippingnews]

Edvard's Supernatural Guide 2x03 Bloodlust

2x03 Bloodlust is the second episode in what some people have called the ‘Dark Dean Arc’, i.e. the three episodes following John’s death. Dean deals with his bereavement and the burden John placed on him in a self-destructive and sometimes frightening manner. I referred to episodes 2x03 and 2x04 in my previous review, saying that it was not until these two episodes that the severity of Dean’s distress and loss is visible. While I do not think that his behaviour itself is quite as worrisome and bad as some make it out to be, it is definitely indicative of a seriously troubled mind and an ailing spirit.

As for Sam, Sera Gamble shows she really is a Samgirl. She is very keen to present him as the morally upstanding counterpart to Dean’s brutish barbarity, the saint to Dean’s sinner, the Brain to Dean’s Pinky. This heavy bias was less apparent in series 1 when she wrote with Raelle Tucker on 1x12 Faith and 1x21 Salvation, but without her writing partner nothing holds her back. The reverse is true of Raelle Tucker’s solo work, as 2x20 What Is and What Should Never Be shows, but she does not take Sam to such an extreme as Sera Gamble does. She also does not seem to dislike Sam, which cannot be said of Gamble and Dean, but that is a story for another time.

First things first: look at his wee little outfit! (And look at him check that guy out.)

On to the episode, and this one is about vampires, the creatures who were supposedly almost wiped out but have now appeared twice within a space of six episodes. I will have less to say on the subject of vampires in this episode than I did in my review of 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood because I have already said most of it, but one thing worth bearing in mind is that this episode aired about three years before the Twilight films were released. Perhaps Gamble and Tucker had read the books and were intrigued by the idea of ‘vegetarian’ vampires (this would make since given how much Gamble’s writing in e.g. 2x17 Heart resembles soap opera melodrama), but at the time of the episode’s release this was definitely unusual in the vampire genre, Louis in Interview with the Vampire notwithstanding.

Speaking of vampires, the cold open of the episode shows a woman (later revealed to be a vampire) running away from a dark figure in the woods at night, only to end up beheaded on screen just before title card. The viewer is supposed to identify with the woman, because she is a woman running scared and we have seen this same scene in umpteen horror films. We are of course supposed to empathise with her, and her death is supposed to shock us and show us that the monster is monstrous. It is interesting that the ‘monster’ in the show is actually a human, and the victim a monster. This is the first time the show has really introduced this idea that monsters can be victims and the hunters can be the bad guys. It is relevant because Sam is on the road to becoming a ‘monster’ and John has burdened Dean with becoming the one to hunt and kill him. Who, in that situation, would be the real monster and who the hero?

This episode does not provide absolute answers, but instead focuses on grey area and nuance. But more on that later. First, context for those who do not remember the episode:

Reports of what appears to be cattle mutilations and exsanguinations draw Dean and Sam to investigate a case in northern Montana. The sceptical sheriff acts a bit shifty and appears to wilfully misinterpret Dean and Sam’s intentions with the case. They said clearly that the cattle mutilations could possible be a Satanic ritual, but the sheriff misconstrues this as them thinking Satan did it. Having been on the internet as long as I have, I have grown exceedingly accustomed to interacting with people with the reading comprehension capabilities of a cauliflower, but this took the biscuit.

It turns out that the cattle killings actually WERE Dean and Sam’s kind of case, but the cause was vampires who did not drink human blood, subsisting instead by exsanguinating livestock. A hunter named Gordon is killing the vampires on principle of them being vampires, disregarding their rejection of human blood. Dean is drawn over to Gordon’s way of thinking due to several reasons, but is eventually forced to change his stance and fight Gordon when he sees how much lead vampire Lenore fights against her vampiric nature. Gordon loses the fight, the vampires escape, and the episode ends.

Note the name of the newspaper Dean and Sam claim to be reporters for: World Weekly News. This is an actual newspaper which is referred to on various occasions throughout the run of the show, and which has featured at least one faux-article on Dean and Sam. It will be referenced again in episode 2x15 Tall Tales, the episode where a young man is repeatedly raped and we are supposed to laugh at it because a) he is a man and b) he ‘deserved it’. Would we be invited to laugh at The Trickster conjuring an ‘alien’ to ‘probe’ a young woman who ‘deserved it’? I think not.

Note also that Dean is the ‘stupid’ brother in the sheriff’s office and cannot remember the name of the newspaper. Yes, this is most certainly a Sera Gamble episode. Give me strength...

How adorable was it, by the way, when fanzines and faux-articles still existed? I saw a Smallville magazine from 2004 for sale on eBay, and searched my soul for whether I was willing to pay £24 plus p+p for a two-page spread about Jason Teague… As for the question ‘Why did Jason Teague go so bad?’, the answer is ‘because the writers of Smallville make the writing of Supernatural look competent’.

And back to the show…

Returning to the opening of the episode proper, what might be obvious to the viewer is how Dean’s mood is drastically different at the beginning of this episode than it was at the end of 2x02 Everybody Loves a Clown. A few weeks, perhaps a month or two, has clearly passed since Dean played whack-a-mole on the boot of his car. Now it is in perfect working order, and Dean’s mask appears to be very tightly on. He seems normal, chipper even, something which Sam feels it necessary to make a redundant conversation about. Is this what normal humans do? Constantly comment on people’s emotional state? I would feel like I am in a panopticon or something. Just let it go, Sam: not everything needs to be a conversation just because you constantly roll a Nat 0 on perception.

This scene is one of few scenes in the show where I can see both Jared AND Jensen acting, but the fault is not in their work, but rather the fact it is obvious the car is not actually moving at all. Instead, it is in front of giant but very convincing screens playing landscape scenes to look like the view from a speeding car. The car itself does not look like it is moving, however, so Dean’s hands on the wheel look strange and fake. Most people will not have noticed it, though, but I am cursed with knowledge.

Now that those who have forgotten have the necessary context, are up to speed, I can get onto the interesting part of the analysis. The main thematic takeaway from 2x03 Bloodlust is better understood as an informed viewer. Upon my first watch of this episode just after Christmas about 12-13 years ago, it did not stand out. I liked seeing Amber Benson on screen again but the story did nothing to interest me.

Knowing where the show is going makes a vital difference, though. Dean knows he might one day have to kill Sam because of Sam’s psychic powers, and is torn between two sides of himself – here manifested as Lenore and Gordon. Gordon is a weltanschauung of moral absolutes, whereas Lenore is nuance. Gordon is an extreme exaggeration of archetypal masculine traits – control, order and stasis. He is not interested in any shades of grey regarding monsters. They are not human, they are a danger, and so must be killed. In contrast, Lenore is a touch of the archetypal feminine – change and unpredictability. The vampires diverged from their inherent nature, electing to not be controlled by it so they can live in peace. This is analogous to the conflict in Dean; Sam could become a monster, and as a monster he will be a danger and must be killed. But can Sam overcome his nature and live in peace?

To add further layers to this, Gordon the human is the one who behaves like a monster, whereas Lenore and Eli act positively human and sympathetic. As Glory is a representation of the monster Buffy fears she will have to become if she fully embraces her slayer calling, so too is Gordon a representation of the monster Dean will have to become to kill Sam. Contrasted with this is the mirror of Lenore who is a ‘monster’ fighting her hardest to be ‘good’, as Sam might if he becomes a ‘monster’. What this is telling the informed viewer is that, in this situation, Dean might become the true monster.

Dean’s ‘flirtation’ (here not intended with sexual implications) with Gordon is Dean walking the path of deadening himself to his love for Sam, thereby learning to numb himself and dehumanise his brother in order that he may one day be capable of killing him. Gordon is a reflection of a part of Dean, and Gordon clearly says of monsters “They’re not human”, the unspoken denouement thereto being “...they’re monsters, so it’s necessary and good to kill them.” Dean intended wholeheartedly to kill Lenore because she is not human, and therefore a monster.

Lenore is also polysemetic mirror of both Sam’s future and Dean’s hesitation. As Lenore does not want to give in to her monstrous tendencies and become the thing Dean wants to kill, Dean does not want to give into his own monstrous urges and become something he will hate. The struggle is overwhelmingly hard for both, but it is one both are determined to fight at the end.

And as for Evil!Dean… well, not for the last time, but three words come to mind. Such potential, Supernatural.

Having discussed ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ here, I did not intend to conclude anything as banal and trite as ‘the feminine defeated the destructive masculine’ because 1) I do not have time for that nonsense and 2) the exaggerated masculine archetype in Dean was intentionally overblown. It would need to be if a brother were forced to numb himself to future fratricide. The conclusion of the episode sees Dean fight Gordon, the monster he is afraid of becoming. The fight ends in Dean overcoming Gordon and tying him up, with Gordon defeated and silent.

Dean’s apology afterwards accompanied by his acknowledgement of the nuance can be read with more nuance than simplistic gender politics. Rather, there is a hint that equilibrium is being restored within Dean; the archetypal masculine is very much alive and well in him, but it is no longer as overwrought and negatively exaggerated as it was.

That just about does it for abstract, metaphorical analysis for this episode, but plenty remains for me to discuss more generally. One of them is Dean and Gordon’s relationship. Last episode, I mentioned Paula R. Stiles’s comment that Dean befriends people who turn out to be monsters. In 2x02 Everybody Loves a Clown, it was the blind man who was the rakshasa, and in this episode it is Gordon.

Their bond was based on trauma-bonding and a mutual experience of enacting violence on monsters. Gordon shared the story of his sister being bitten by a vampire, with the twist being that he found and killed his sister (or it would be a twist if that were not Gunn’s story in Angel, and similar to the abduction of Mulder’s sister in The X-Files). Dean actually felt comfortable opening up to Gordon about John’s death and how much he was struggling. Dean said he could not talk to Sam about those things I said last episode. In addition to everything I said there, Dean also has to be the parentalised big brother figure who keeps it together for Sam’s benefit.

Dean’s recent bereavement was almost definitely a contributing factor in his alliance with Gordon. Gordon did not doubt himself or his morals, and he provided Dean with an illusion of surety and clarity. Dean needed this after losing his dad, especially considering the burden of killing Sam. For the last few weeks or months, Dean has been scared, angry, lonely, doubtful, and grieving without anybody to support or help him. Then along comes Gordon who deals in absolutes and certainties. This would of course be an attractive chance to feel in control for Dean, so it is completely natural he cleaved to Gordon in spite of Sam’s warnings.

Having said ’bond’, ’attractive’ and ’cleave to’, some readers might be under the impression I saw romantic and/or sexual subtext between Dean and Gordon. I did not. The only male characters I have really seen Dean have romantic and sexual subtext with are Castiel, Lee (15x07), and the guy at the beginning of 6x01 Exile on Main Street who had been buying Dean beers for the last year. I do not see anything more than a ’brotherhood’ between Dean and Benny, nothing sexual at all between Dean and Henriksen in their five minutes of shared screen-time, and nothing between Dean and Ketch. I have been on the internet long enough to have seen all these pairings, but only Dean/Cas and Dean/Lee seem valid to me. I am not the arbiter of whom Dean did or did not pork or get porked by, but I am a man attracted to men and I just do not see it. And Benny calls Dean ’brother’ far too often for their bond to be sexual.

Returning to Gordon providing Dean with a clear direction and course of action, Sam is right to note that perhaps Gordon is an ersatz father for Dean, though Sam is perhaps wrong to claim Gordon is nowhere near as good a hunter as John. As far as I can tell, John and Gordon are quite a bit alike: other hunters eschew them, they think in black and white, and they are dangerous to be around.

Sam really should not have said anything about Dean and John in the car park scene, especially not when Dean was clearly so riled up by Sam’s pestering. The punch should not have happened, but given Sam’s incessant mithering and snapping in the previous episode, and his patronising, gauche attempt to psychoanalyse Dean in a motel car park, it is not surprising that Sam’s continued, whiney nagging ends with his face colliding with Dean’s fist at high velocity. ’You slap on this big fake smile but I can see right through it.” Well done, Mr Big Smart-Smart. At least you did not try the sanctimonious act again and claim Dean was insulting John’s memory to try to shame him about making a friend who is not Sam. Oh wait...

People who read my analysis of the previous episode might remember this quote:

[Sam] is a yapping chihuahua who has not learnt that yapping at a German Shepherd is a sure way to get a giant paw in your face.

And what do you know, the yappy dog finally got a paw in his face.

Whilst on this subject, it bears mentioning that Dean and Sam are adult brothers of roughly equal physical build, height, and strength. Neither has any (inherent) power over the other in their relationship, because being brothers is an equal relationship, at least in theory. I have laid into John due to the likelihood he used physical violence with poco!Dean, and held Dean hostage in a mentally, physically, and possibly sexually abusive father-son relationship. John had inherent power in that relationship, being the one in power over his son. He misused that power in many ways, and Dean’s lack of self-esteem, his self-destructive and suicidal tendencies etc are the natural result of this, as is his erstwhile obedience to John.

Some people critical of Dean like to claim that Dean is an abusive older brother, and I have referred to this line of criticism before. Evidence such criticism cites is the fact that Dean punches Sam on a few occasions in the show, and a tiny number of comments can be construed as implying Dean was a physically-abusive older brother to Sam. One such line appears in this episode shortly before said punch. In the pub after Dean beheads the vampire with the chainsaw, Sam gets all uppity and sanctimonious about decapitations not being his idea of a god time, then decides to leave Dean and Gordon alone while he returns to the hotel. As Sam makes his exit, Dean says “Sammy, remind me to beat that buzzkill out of you later, alright?”

This line has been taken to support interpretations that Dean is to Sam what John was to Dean. In their defence, this is something taken directly from the text, but that is the only defence I can offer them: one would have to think that characters always mean what they say and say what they mean in every single situation to think this supports such an interpretation. Yes, Dean says this, but does Sam act around Dean the way Dean acts around John? Does Sam act like Dean uses violence or the threat thereof to control Sam? Does Sam act like a battered husband around Dean?

Quite simply: no. In fact, as I have written many times, Sam is the narcissistic abuser and Dean is the co-dependent abused. ...Who occasionally punches when provoked. Dean’s punch was not part of a pattern of physically-abusive behaviour to control or terrorise Sam. It was just douchey behaviour from a pissed-off brother who appeared to expect Sam to punch him right back. To Dean’s credit, he looked ashamed of himself afterwards... which he should, see above RE: douchey behaviour. If Sam had punched him back, he would have deserved it.

Editor’s note: Remember Sam shooting Dean twice in 1x10 Asylum and never once apologising properly? I remember. Carry on, Dean. Additional editor's note: Dean did take on a huge part of the role of raising Sam, so their relationship is not simply two brothers. However, the show has shown us time and time again that Dean has no authority over Sam, and Sam does not treat Dean like an authority figure or a parent. It is notable that Sam did not punch Dean back here, even though he could have. I will have a bit more to say on this next episode, but I still think what I said a few lines ago: it was douchey, angry, riled-up brother behaviour.

To be fair to Sam, he WAS also trying to talk sense into Dean, and Dean needed somebody to do that, just not in the way Sam was going about it. ’Friendship’ with Gordon is easy for Dean because he is familiar as well as absolute: he shares many traits with John, but also with Dean. Dean is a ’good guy’, but he has an incredible propensity for violence and death and does not always do what a good guy’ should. He is heroic, but not a HeroTM. He is not a psychopath like Gordon, but he finds it easy to relate to people who are. Sam tried to be a counterbalance to this, but failed.

A quote from Paula Stiles:

Because they’re polar opposites, Sam and Gordon need a tie-breaker and that ostrich feather on Osiris’ scales is, naturally, Dean. Dean is the prize over which Sam and Gordon viciously fight to the death (that demon blood thing later on? Just a distraction). It would be easy to argue that’s because Dean’s so awesome and that’s…sort of…true. That is to say, both Sam and Gordon are loners and outcasts who have both only found one real connection (though Sam did have Jessica and Gordon did have his sister, once), that connection being the one hunter who’s even more of a freak than they are (and therefore, won’t reject them). But Dean, freak or not, can only have one BFF at this point in the series and so, Sam and Gordon have to duke it out.

But perhaps the bigger reason why this conflict, or triangle, or what-have-you is so effective is because Dean is the swing voter in Sam and Gordon’s moral war. Tolerance or intolerance? Relativism or absolutism? Dean waffles between the two, balancing on that knife’s bloody edge, which makes him the perfect target for campaigning from both sides. Who will win the war for his heart and soul (and isn’t it an irony that he ends up going his own way after all that?).

Gordon was absolutely lusting after Dean trying to win Dean over to his side of the force. First he encouraged Dean’s despair, then tried to separate him from Sam (”Doesn’t seem like your brother’s much like us.”) This is a tactic used by abusers who want to isolate their victim, and it is telling that Dean apparently is so vulnerable to such manipulation by people he identifies with or cares for. After all, he has known little else than being controlled by a man not too different than Gordon. This manipulation is so powerful that Sam’s (lamentably poor) attempts at getting through to Dean with the nuance of ’the vamps aren’t killing people’ falls on deaf ears, or perhaps deafened ears.

As for the other star of the episode whom I have barely mentioned, Lenore also played a critical role in getting through to Dean. Other than Dean’s abject disgust at Gordon’s treatment (torture) of her, apparently for his own amusement (or misogynistic vindication, as Paula R. Stiles suggests), her staunch refusal to give in sways Dean away from the dark side of the force to the ...well, not the light side, really. Dean is definitely a Sith, but he is far from evil (Remember: the Star Wars films are Jedi propaganda). To avoid paraphrasing or Heaven forbid plagiarising her work, I will take a snippet from Paula Stiles’s analysis again:

But I should note that, despite the pretty-brutal misogyny that Gordon brings to the table (the murder of his sister is clearly cast as a sort of honour killing) and the way he treats Lenore, it would be missing the point to see her as just a helpless victim or Damsel in Distress. Lenore has a stronger will than perhaps anyone in the episode. She is surrounded by angry men itching for a fight, but even though she could probably clean the floor with Gordon, Sam or Dean, she risks her life under extreme torture to stick to her principles. And it’s really this that saves the day. If she had not shown that kind of fortitude, neither Sam nor Dean would have thought twice about letting Gordon kill off her entire nest. Amber Benson does a good job of playing Lenore as a different kind of Hero who controls her own bloodlust and influences two out of the three hunters she encounters to control theirs. That’s pretty impressive.

Lenore is indeed light-years away from being weak, but the strength she embodies is the opposite of the masculine strength Dean embodies (and Gordon negatively exaggerates). Her greatest strength in this episode is not her physical strength, but her strength of will, endurance, and her determination to change things for the better, and her caring for the wellbeing of others. This is an archetypically feminine kind of strength: it is quiet, subtle, discreet, but no less powerful than archetypical masculine strength.

Another fictional character who embodies this feminine strength is Galadriel. She is an incredibly powerful sorceress and enchantress who shielded and guarded an elven realm with her magic for millennia, but her strength lies also in her ability to nurture life, in providing a sanctuary to rest and heal, her self-control, wisdom, perception, and insight, and her refusal to surrender to her demons. Dean’s masculine strength is a potent force, but so is Galadriel’s steadfast perseverance. In The Lord of the Rings films by Peter Jackson, Cate Blanchette did an incomparable job of portraying this: she exuded an aetheral presence which demanded attention and could silence a room with a single glance.

Even in the disastrous The Hobbit trilogy, she has her moments of weakness but refuses to surrender. Without her presence at Dol Guldur, The White Council might not have managed to oust Sauron.

She almost certainly knew how to defend herself with weapons, but she did all this without once picking up a phallic symbol or punching anybody. Funnily enough, only two elves have been able to best Sauron in a one-on-one duel, and both were elf-women: Galadriel and her mentor Melian's daughter Lúthien, both of them using sorcery in different forms. Lúthien even bested Sauron's master Morgoth with her magic song and stole one of the Silmarils from his crown. Her uncle High King Fingolfin who challenged Morgoth to a duel and wounded him seven times, including a wound in his foot which never healed and caused Morgoth to limp forever, the cost being Fingolfin's own life.

That people think there are no 'strong women' in Tolkien's work is utterly risible to me. Quite apart from Éowyn, females in Tolkien's work are incredibly powerful, just not necessarily in the same sword-and-shield way as men.

Lenore lacks the powers of an enchantress and sorceress, yet she still did not have to lift a single finger to triumph over Gordon and save her nest. Considering this is a Supernatural episode and not Buffy, it is a pleasant surprise to have this amount of metaphor and interplay of different forces: masculine vs feminine, yin vs yang, light vs dark, absolution vs nuance, etc.

Which brings me on to a last few minor points of discussion. Lenore is the name of the dead wife in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven poem, and indeed another poem bearing the name Lenore. The poem is about a man driven to ’madness’ out of grief for the fact he will never see his dead wife again. The raven in question is a metaphor for this despair and hopelessness, perched upon the bust of St Pallas above the narrator’s chamber door where its shadow lay floating on the floor. The looming, heavy presence of despair after the death of a loved one will not go away, but rather wears away at the narrator’s sanity. Other than the alarming comparison of Dean grief with that of a man grieving his wife, the rest is a fitting parallel, especially as the narrator does not even believe he will see his lost Lenore in Heaven.

Less pleasing was the claim at the end of the episode that ’Dad did the best he could’. I often think that the writers of this show are unaware of exactly what picture they painted of John in series one, or indeed over the entirety of the show. Other times I think they are aware of it and want to ret-con or fix their mistakes. Unfortunately, that ship has long since sailed, and no amount of apologism can fix it. I intend to watch The Winchesters when it comes out, but I have already written about Jensen’s apparent attempts to ameliorate the audience’s perception of John (Jensen, WHY?!). I do not intend to forget that just because The Winchesters wants me to like John. Whatever the reason for the ’Dad did the best he could’ line, I wish the writers had stopped trying to make us forget what we had seen with crap like this. John did not do the best he could, but I have gone over this in depth in this essay, so I will leave this for now.

Regarding Gordon for one last time, he said in this episode that Dean ’is a sadistic killer, just like me’, and Dean believes this is true of himself. It is not true, of course, but Dean believes it is because it is what he was groomed to be. The same episode tells us that Dean was killing werewolves with John at age 16 while Sam was safe in the car. 16 would be a very young age to be doing this, but at that age Dean had already been hunting with John for a few years, and had known how to fire a gun for about a decade.

On the subject of Sam, his ability to remember the way to Lenore’s nest based on the time elapsed, the direction the car went etc all while blind-folded was a little hilarious. I understand the show wants us to think Sam is Resourceful and Intelligent, but this stretched my belief a bit too far. The way he ’worked out’ that Gordon already knew the vampires were good was also quite the impressive logical saltation: according to Sam, Gordon killed his sister who had been turned in to a vampire, therefore Gordon knew the vampires were good. How Sam worked this out is anybody’s guess, because the show certainly did not tell me how.

The vampire named Eli is played by Ty Olson, the same actor who portrayed Benny in series 8.

Some people have tried to work out how this can be explained within the show, but Benny’s story before ending up in Purgatory does not match with Eli’s. Spatial-genetic multiplicity is the explanation I go with. As for Ty Olson, this is his second appearance on screen with Jensen, their first being in Dark Angel 2x11 The Berrisford Agenda.

Now I miss Alec again.

Moving on before this turns into a meeting of the Helsinki Chapter of the Jensen Fan-Boys society, one last thing before I finish this. Dean killing the vampire did not seem unduly violent to me. I have just re-watched 2x04 Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, which features Sam claiming Dean is ‘scary while hunting’, but if this is the case, the show has not done a good job of portraying this. The vampire Dean killed was trying his hardest to kill him, and the only thing Dean did which was not necessary to kill the vampire was punching it twice. I am aware I am supposed to be horrified that Dean killed the vampire with the chainsaw, but I am really not. Yes, it was gross, but the vampire had just tried to do the same to Gordon and would have done the same to Dean, so… what is the problem? Yes, he was a vegetarian vampire, but only Gordon knew that at the time. As far as Dean knew, the vampire was the same as the ones in 1x20 Dead Man’s Blood, and he used what tools he had at hand to get the job done. He did look deeply shaken by it, though.

Was the horrific part the fact that he looked at what he was doing while it was happening instead of looking away? I really do not know. Maybe I have watched too much Hannibal and The Walking Dead to be particularly bothered by that death, so I do not understand why Sam was so uppity about it.

Thus concludeth my analysis of 2x03 Bloodlust.