#angel!cas vs human!cas debate

[mad-as-a-box-of-frogs]

I can never be normal about the Angel!Cas vs human!cas debate I’m sorry, it’s my toxic trait 🫠🫠

[orionsangel86]

Can we talk about the endgame human-cas vs angel-cas argument? I find it unsettling that a lot of folks think Cas needs to become human; for his good, or Dean's, or narrative. I understand that Cas needs and wants to get away from the other angels, their jobs, their world - but why have to be human? And people who say "I hope he doesn't become an archangel, how awful for him!" Well I think Cas enjoys being an angel - but he's his own sort of angel. He seems to want his powers and identity. Hmph.

It has taken me ages to answer this ask as I’ve been hesitant about it for ages since it will most likely blow up in my face somehow. So look, I’ve answered it here but I also have a disclaimer on my blog that I want you to read because after all the Cas related drama against meta writers last year I need some sort of protection okay:

http://bluestar86.tumblr.com/CasDisclaimer

Please read the link if you expect to be offended by my answer (and if you’re just curious of course).

A lot of other great meta writers have already tackled this, but seeing as you have come for my thoughts specifically I won’t link other posts on the risk of upsetting you. You are clearly already aware of the various discussions that turned into arguments that turned into a huge wank fest so I’m not going to feed into that. 

The problem with the human Cas vs Angel Cas endgame debate,is that it is all just speculation, none of us know what way the writers of the show will choose to take Cas’sstory line. We can only interpret the canon story we have been provided with atthis point. Anything I speculate about future event, could turn out to be totally wrong. But its still fun to speculate anyway. I just want to stress that I am not saying that by disagreeing with me anyone is WRONG. We all have our own opinions after all. 

There are a lot of reasons why people might feel like beinghuman is the best fit and most satisfying endgame for Castiel. There is also alot of evidence in the show that suggests that this is the way Cas’s story isgoing. I don’t particularly think this has anything to do with Dean or destieleither, though there will always be people who do think this.

For starters, the whole concept is a well known TV trope.The immortal character who seeks to be human? Yeah it’s been done before, and whilst this isn’t necessarily a good thing, it is a commonthing that we have been conditioned for years to expect in basic storytelling.The fact that this often comes attached to the love trope that said immortalgives up immortality so they can be with a human is just an added bonus forDestiel shippers.  

So even without exploring the evidence within the show, thevery idea itself is already a favourable one for most people because it fits astandard storytelling trope that resonates with people. It is a comment on thepower of humanity, and also makes us all feel a bit better to think about theidea that an immortal being would prefer to be human than continue to havetheir godlike power and eternal life (because humanity itself is supposedly agreat gift).

(I should clarify here that I don’t believe that Cas’s fallfrom grace should be connected to Destiel and that Dean would love and be withhim regardless of whether he were angel or human.)

There is every possibility that Supernatural may go againstthe grain here, but the evidence in the show suggests otherwise. Castiel’sstory since his origins in season 4 has been that he is the angel that fallsfor humanity. His love for humanity and continued choice of humanity over hisangelic brethren makes the idea that he would eventually join humanity as oneof them poetic. I think that is why this is the most popular endgame theorywithin fandom over everything else: itis poetic.

Humans generally enjoy poetic stories, as well as ironicones. They are far more satisfying. It feels like the natural conclusion for acharacter such as Castiel, whose journey of self-discovery and acceptance hasoften had him questioning his own place in the world and exactly what kind ofcreature he is meant to be. This is his continued theme throughout his entirerun on the show. The idea that the show would end with him remaining in hiscurrent state, or even elevated to something such as an archangel just feelswrong for his development. I can understand why people would consider that “awful”for Castiel. You say that he “seems to want his powers and identity” but youmiss the point the show is trying to explain to us, that his identity is not tied to his powers. In fact, in the later seasons, it can be argued that hispowers have held him back from really understanding who he really is:

I know that there is a big split here in fandom, but I dofeel that those fans who desperately want Cas to stay an angel have anemotional attachment to the idea because it resonates with them on a personal levelthat he is currently “different” so for him to become “normal” feels like aninsult to those fans. It is the same way those fans who view him as asexualfeel I believe. These are delicate issues. When you want a character to be likeyou and you identify with them so greatly, for the show to then fundamentallychange that character in any way feels like a big hit to you personally. But Ithink this is why there needs to be some detachment between what we personallyfeel attached to, and Castiel’s own story that the show itself (via subtext,narrative structure, and text in certain places) is telling us.

(I should also disclaim here that I am in no way against asexual readings of Castiel and don’t want this to come across this way, as there is certainly room for that interpretation in the text - my own personal view on Cas’s sexuality is “undefinable” )

Aside from the narrative poetry of Cas’s eventual fall fromgrace to humanity, I think the reason a lot of us believe it is the naturalconclusion to his story arc is just the sheer amount of evidence and textualunanswered questions that seem to be leading this way.

There are the parallels to Anna early on, and how it isimplied heavily that he also desires those things that she does.

The constant questions that Cas is never able to answer:

“As what Castiel? As anangel? Or a man?” (no answer) -  9x06Heaven Can’t Wait

“I am an angel.” “andyou’re okay with that?” “If we’re going to war, I need to be ready” (hardlya yes) -  9x09 Holy Terror

“Who are you?” (noanswer) “What are you now? A penitent?” “I’mnothing” (not exactly positive) – 9x14 Captives

“No! If I’m gonna die,I want answers. Like, who are you now? Like, you’re obviously not an angel ofthe Lord. And what about all of this walking the earth like Caine from “KungFu” crap? Cleaning up Heaven’s messes. How many more rogue angels are there outthere? And, what are you gonna do once you’re done with all that? Go back toHeaven? Please. The angel formerly known as Hannah has restored order up top.Smoothest it’s run since God cut the ribbon on the pearly gates. So tell me,Castiel, truly, what is your mission now?” (Cas told Metatron to shut up –but Metatron had a point) – 10x18 Book of the Damned

“Brother? Ha! What areyou?” “W-what? I’m an angel of the Lord.” “That so? ‘Cause, near as I can tell,when you have to choose between heaven and the Winchesters …” “You choosethem.” 11x02 Form and Void

Then to go along with these questions, Castiel himself hadsome very interesting conversations. In 9x11 the talk with Sam about peanutbutter and how Castiel used it to describe the things he missed about beinghuman was particularly enlightening for those of us who now believe that this is his endgame. He basically called his angel-hood “disgusting”.

When he spoke to Daniel at the start of season 10, Danieljust wanted to stay on earth and experience humanity. The conversation he hadwith Hannah was most interesting. Remember that Daniel was a Cas mirror here. Aglaringly obvious Cas mirror:

Hannah: “You are anangel, once and forever.”

Daniel: “Droppedunwillingly…Unknowingly…Into a strange land, a land that, as it turns out,celebrates the free, the individual. For the first time in thousands of years,I have choices. And with each choice… I begin to discover who I really am.”

Hannah: “This isnonsense.”

Daniel: “Because theydon’t teach you this in heaven? Perhaps they should. Then you would understandwhy it’s worth fighting for… What I’ll never understand is why angels won’tacknowledge the wisdom to be found down here.”

Hannah: “What wisdomis to be gained from humans?”  

Daniel: “I’m notspeaking to you.”

Hannah (To Castiel): “Doyou understand what he’s…” (Cas never answered, but it was obvious hedid)

This whole conversation imo is foreshadowing Cas choosing tostay on earth with the humans, and when this is then followed up with this:

Castiel: “Well,perhaps I’ve been down here with them for too long. There’s seemingly nothingbut chaos. But not all bad comes from it. Art. Hope. Love. Dreams.”

Hannah: “But t-thoseare human things.”

Castiel: “Yes.”

It implies that Castiel is longing for the humanexperience.

Later on in 10x03 Cas textually states his reasoning forwanting to stay an angel however:

“You know, only humanscan feel real joy, but … also such profound pain. This is easier.”

He said it in relation to Dean’s choosing to stay a demon,but he understood exactly. Cas longs for the human experience, but he can’thandle the pain of it, hence his choice currently to remain an angel (eventhough it isn’t what he really desires).

This sentence by Cas was a direct response to what he saidearlier in 9x23:

“I just want to be an angel”

Because when Cas said that, he was mourning the death ofDean. It was the easy choice for him. It was less painful to remain an angelthan to go back to being human. It’s not good enough evidence imo that Cas shouldremain an angel for his endgame because he said it when he was deeply mourningthe loss of Dean and it was framed extremely negatively by the show and thenwas countered continuously in early season 10 in the subtext of every conversation he had with Hannah.

Most of these examples came out of seasons 9 and 10 however, but as I always say, the endgame arcs for all the three main characters were laid out in seasons 8 - 10 and Dabb is expanding on those concepts. One of the interesting things from the later seasons and Dabb era that I have noticed is just how little Castiel uses his powers now. Most of the time we either see him fighting normally, or trying out his new hunter knowledge to solve a case. What I truly believe Dabb’s goal with Cas’s endgame is to show Cas that he is wanted and needed and loved and useful without his powers. Because it has been tied heavily to his depression arc in seasons 11 and 12 that Cas doesn’t feel useful or powerful enough. The whole point is for Sam and Dean to show Cas that they want him with them regardless of how powerful he may or may not be. For Cas to become empowered, without literal powers. 

The main issue that we have with Cas being powered up, is that for character development purposes, it makes no sense. How is Cas supposed to learn his lessons that way? If he becomes this super powerful being? How is that gonna help him get over his issue with only being ‘useful’ or a ‘hammer’ or to stop him obsessing about his ‘missions’? What meta writers tend to scream about is that Cas doesn’t yet seem to realise that it’s not his powers that make him important to the boys, but just HIM. We have not had this clearly resolved in the show, and it won’t be, until the damage that was done in season 9 is finally healed. Cas has gone through a fundamental change since the end of season 8 and this arc is not yet resolved. Powering him up even further will only hinder this character development arc, not assist it. 

Remember how in 12x19 Cas made so many terrible decisions because he was so desperate “for a win” for both Dean and himself? Remember how in 13x05 we were screaming because Dean just wanted a win and then Cas showed up? Remember how in 13x06 Dean told Sam explicitly that Cas was his win?

Cas doesn’t need to be powerful for him to be needed and wanted by Dean (and Sam), but HE STILL DOESN’T KNOW THIS. NONE OF THIS HAS BEEN MADE CLEAR TO CAS. We still haven’t had a resolution to Cas’s own issues that were made so very clear in 12x09. That he doesn’t feel competent enough on his own.

This is why to power Cas up even further, or to keep him with his grace in tact, doesn’t really seem to fit the story structure. Cas needs to learn that its not his powers that make him special, its fundamentally HIM. It’s what he used to face the empty entity, its what brings a smile to Dean’s face whenever he’s around, it’s what made Jack choose him as his father (though not made explicitly clear, it is heavily implied that it was Castiel’s goodness that made Jack choose him - because Jack hardly needs protecting - more just the right kind of guidance).

It’s my opinion that Cas will choose to become human at endgame (or before who knows) because his grace is holding him back. Its not even about his obligations to heaven or the Winchesters, I personally don’t think he should lose all ties with all the angels, because I think there is still a lesson that the remaining angels need to learn here and that Cas will be the one to teach them (along with Jack). Its about Cas’s inner struggles and his personal growth, rather than the relationships he has with others. Its about Castiel finally asking himself “Who am I?” “What do I want?” “Where do I belong?” and answering those bloody questions. Perhaps he can answer those questions and keep his grace, its possible sure, but then all of that talk about human things in season 10 wouldn’t have made much sense, and Cas will always be missing something fundamental. The human things that he never got to really enjoy last time. The human pleasures that Dean revels in so much. I think it would be damn tragic to reach the end of his story and not have him indulging in the things we KNOW canonically he longs for. 

Because as the Empty Entity said in 13x04

I have tiptoed through all your little tulips, your memories, your little feelings yes, I know what you hate, I know who you love, I know what you fear...

But remember that feelings, that love and fear, along with hope and dreams are human things and Castiel shouldn’t have to be always torn in two. Right now, that’s what he is. Half an angel, half a man, lost and conflicted. As far as I am concerned, Castiel becoming human answers all the questions the story has been asking him, and provides him with a level of happiness and satisfaction that he could never have whilst still an angel. For his own personal growth arc, imo its the only logical outcome.

I’m sorry if this isn’t what you wanted to hear nonny, but I am just trying to interpret this show logically with the information I have been given, and that all points to a human Cas endgame. As I said at the start of this post. I could be wrong. I could be interpreting all the wrong signals here, but the thing is, we meta writers are not a hive mind, and we sure as hell disagree on a LOT of things about this show, as we all have our own ways of interpreting things, but the majority of meta writers I follow also believe that Cas’s endgame is to be human and we all came to that conclusion individually based on information the show presented. Yes we could all still be wrong, and no I am not saying that any other opinions are incorrect because, and I stress this, all interpretations are valid. But please don’t get upset that I don’t agree with you over this. We just see things differently. You did ask for my opinion after all, so I gave it.

[thegeminisage]

one of many reasons castiel spent the first year of knowing dean trying not to strangle him: dean's weird little winchester-only dialect

i’m fucking obsessed with this right now, so buckle in for a meta. a cool fun (horrible) thing about dean's dialogue is that a good 90% of what comes out of his mouth is:

a pop culture reference ("you're just gonna take some divine bong hit, and shazam, you're roma downey?")

references to real life phenomenon ("i don't wanna wake up missing a kidney in a bathtub full of ice" "try new mexico, i hear he’s on a tortilla")

these also often take the form of nicknames, and dean has a tendency to give people nicknames in general or call them something besides their given name, whether it’s affectionate or rude ("easy there, van damme" "so i’m girl interrupted" furthermore castiel = cas, ezekiel = zeke, etc, see also frequent use of "chucklehead" "asshat" and on the nicer/endearments end "buddy" "pal" "sunshine" etc)

an idiom ("a snowball's chance" "if it smells like a duck...")

slang ("drinking the koolaid" "jonesing for some hooch" not to mention the literal endless amount of words dean uses to refer to killing - gank, waste, juice, ice, etc)

a metaphor ("power up your batteries" "fly me back to my page on the calendar")

a euphemism ("cloud seeding" "i'd have given you an hour alone with her first")

sarcasm (his habit of replying "peachy" or "super" when asked how he is)

wordplay (see: the entire "vampirate" and "werepire" debacles)

completely nonsensical (guessing what happened to a magical artifact: "it was dug up by tomb raiders? it was seized by the king of the dead by warlords?")

said at lightning speed - if you pay attention, dean actually talks a LOT, usually a mile a minute (this makes me feel a way when you recall him being nonverbal for a year at age 4 but that’s another post)

slang IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE (casual usage of “guano,” etc)

a lie, a deflection, a joke, etc

or worse, something dean’s NOT saying, deliberately, because he’s one of the most repressed people on earth

the end result of all this being:

dean winchester is utterly infuckingcomprehensible. 

think about this. there's an ENTIRE SECTION on EVERY SINGLE EPISODE PAGE of the spn wiki devoted to JUST explaining dean's pop culture references, because the average viewer won't have seen everything he's talking about either. they have a whole page for this called “hunter’s lingo,” but honestly, it’s not all hunters, just sam and dean’s fucking batshit communication style. even i don't understand dean half the time. SAM gets it, sam speaks it back to dean a lot in the early seasons, but that's because sam and dean are 1. practically two halves of the same person 2. FREAKS. every time we get an episode that involves outsider POV is devoted to them going "what the fuck is WRONG with them?"

enter castiel. technically speaking, the show implies that angels are omnilingual. castiel should understand every language known to man, but knowing the meaning of words doesn't help him understand the following:

pop culture references

references to real life phenomenon

nicknames

idioms

slang

metaphors

euphemisms

sarcasm

wordplay

you get the idea.

listen to me. look me in the eyes. castiel cannot understand a single fucking word that comes out of dean's mouth. my guy laid a hand on dean winchester in hell and immediately fell in love with him and has no fucking idea what he's talking about ever. because not only is dean winchester's way of speaking CLINICALLY insane, and sometimes incomprehensible even to other human beings who are not sam, castiel is an angel, and someone prone to taking things even more literally than other angels do

go back and watch and watch seasons 4-5 especially. the reason cas does so much squinting and head tilting is because every time dean opens his mouth castiel has to open up his mental "dean winchester dictionary" and translate entire paragraphs on the fly, because again, dean never shuts up!

what makes this extra hilarious to me is this gem:

this line is from 5.13. at this point cas has known dean for AN ENTIRE YEAR AND A HALF. what you see here is my guy SNAPPING. cas made an EFFORT in this scene. he asked who glenn close was. he's telling dean that he can't understand him. he is doing his level best to have a normal conversation with this guy he has a crush on and for the life of him he cannot do it (equal but opposite energy to cas blowing up the gas station and motel room in 4.01, tbh)

yes, cas can understand dean's tone. he can use context clues, and he usually gets the general idea. and when cas DOES understand dean's jokes, he laughs at them. the first time we ever see him smile is during their 4.07 heart-to-heart when dean says "it was a witch, not the tet offensive." since cas has knowledge of human history, he knows what the tet offensive is; he got the joke, and he laughed.

but as far as actual dialogue goes, he consistently struggles to keep up. even after metatron gives castiel the pop culture knowledge in season 9, cas struggles to put it to put it to proper use (dean: "you wanna just walk right into the death star?" cas: "what does a fictional battle station have to do with this?"). whenever he asks dean to clarify it's always when he’s most annoyed, like most of the time he knows it would be futile but he's too annoyed to care. (dean: "i don't know who's on first, what's on second!" cas: "what IS second???") i’m pretty sure he spends seasons 4-6 wanting to shake dean by the shoulders and ask him why he is LIKE THIS. 

it takes cas - who, again, is omnilingual - YEARS to begin to acclimate to dean’s speech and start speaking that language back to him. it's season 8 before we start really hearing him use slang, season 9 before he begins to understand wordplay, season 10 before he starts using pop culture references (to other angels, who immediately fail to understand him, which disappoints him immensely), and season 11 before he really gets into metaphors. i don't remember what season he started using "yeah" instead of "yes" but i do know it took a really damn long time. 

and honestly, i don't think cas truly got the hang of it until at least season 11-12. that's something like 7 or 8 YEARS. it’s more than half the time they’ve known each other at the point of the series finale. 

so what's true romance, fellas? it's falling completely and totally in love with the most inexplicable person you will ever meet in your whole 4.5 billion year life, even though you have yet to understand a single thing he's ever said to you. thank you for coming to my ted talk

[spn masterpost]

[one-more-offbeat-anthem]

maybe it was too bold

[asagimeta]

The time has come again to remind everyone that good queer representation does not necessarily equal morally good queer characters

I’ve heard that apparently there’s a renaissance of anti-Hannibal going on lately? And that + the rise in popularity of media like Helluva Boss and Killing Eve, and the addition of more openly queer charectors in existing media- from comic book based media to long-running shows like American Horror Story- I feel like this needs to be said again- not necessarily by me but I posted about it way back when Hannibal originally aired it’s finale so I figure, what the hell

Good representation =/= morally good characters

You can have both, absolutely, but you can also have them separate, and you can have all combinations of the reverse too

Ofcourse, to be clear right in the beginning, what counts as “good” representation vs “bad” reputation is going to vary from person to person, everything from life experiences to media exposure to personal opinions will dictate where you land on the sliding scale of “good” or “bad”, someone who’s consumed quite alot of queer-focused media, for example, is going to have a very different opinion than someone who’s only seen one background gay in a TV show that one time, and someone who’s a really huge fan of horror is going to have a much different opinion than someone who’s only a fan of lighter-hearted fair

With that said, in my personal opinion, the measure of good vs bad representation relies less on the character and more on the presentation of said character- less, not entirely

To get what I mean, here’s the best example I can think of:

Castiel from Supernatural is, objectively, a good charactor- if nothing else he’s morally good by most standards, certainly by the time season 15 rolls around, but his canonically queer presentation is just.... horrible, horrible representation and I’ve only met literally one person myself who disagreed with that

Cas is presented as being a really tragic figure right from the start of his coming out- the one thing in the world that would make him truly happy for even a single moment is confessing that he’s in love with Dean, even if Dean rejects him, just saying it is enough, that is..... sad

If it had been framed differently, it actually could have been very good representation, in a “I don’t need you to validate me, I’m being honest about who I am for the first time in my life and that’s enough, I’m enough” way, but it wasn’t, it was framed as pining, as “Even if you don’t love me, my acknowledging openly that I love you is enough to make me happy”, and again that could have worked if framed differently but.... it’s followed up by the infamous “Gay angels go to Super Mega Turbo Hell” thing and like.... no....

Cas is a good character who is queer, he is not a good queer character, because his existence as a queer character lasted less than five minutes and was immediately followed by literally going to what’s worse than hell for expressing his queerness

There is no way I can express the amount of levels of Bad that is, to say nothing of how Dean treats the entire experience for like.... ever... from there on out

But now let’s look at Hannibal, who is objectively a pretty bad character morally- he’s stupendously written but yeah I mean look the dude eats people there’s just no getting around that

But I would argue that he’s excellent queer representation because of how he was presented

Hannibal’s sexuality is never defined, for starters, there’s never a “very special episode” moment where he has some long-winded coming out speech, in fact we don’t quite know how he identifies but because he’s written so artfully we don’t really need to, his exact sexuality doesn’t feel like it needs to be known because, frankly, not much personal information is known about Hannibal anyway, and sexuality feels like one of those arbitrary things that he wouldn’t really care about defining

And that’s the other thing- he’s far from sexless and yet he places no emphasis on sex, he isn’t hypersexualized but he also isn’t being kept as a Ken doll to preserve the message of gay purity (because I don’t know apparently there’s a Thing some people have about how gay people aren’t allowed to be sexual???) he’s just... a person

And that’s really what it comes down to that makes him great, he’s a person first and queer second... or third.... or fourth or fifth.... it never defines who he is, it’s just part of who he is, and regardless of your opinion on Hannibal specifically, I think that is something most queer people strive for in representation

It’s great to have stories that are focused on queerness but it’s equally exhausting to only be able to have characters who’s lives revolve around their sexualities, it’s nice to go into media and go “Oh that character that I already like for these reasons is also queer, that’s so cool!”

Hannibal also skillfully side-steps stereotypes, despite falling into the category of being “polite, thin, and neat”, despite loving fine wine and fine art and fine culture, he never feels like a flamboyant theater kid with a decoration-diploma, wich is how alot of queer characters in this category can feel

His story is about alot of things and his relationship with Will is at the center of much of it, but that relationship didn’t become explicitly queer until the show was almost over- not because it was sudden or poorly written but because it was a slow build up, wich is also refreshing, as alot of times it feels like queer characters are made as explicitly queer as they’re allowed to be as quickly as they’re able to be on screen so that the show can grab those important Representation Brownie Points from episode one and either introduce a Manwhore or a Uhaul Lesbian right away and just kind of leave them in that trope until “someone comes along and changes that” or whatever, I don’t even know what straight writers do half the time, but Hannibal- as a show and a charactor- doesn’t do that, he’s just allowed to exist and tell his story, and THAT is good representation

With the heavy-handed example over with though, I want to tackle the biggest part of this entire “debate” that makes me interested in it:

Queer people are allowed to be bad people

Queer people are allowed to be lazy and unattractive and non-political and angry and jealous and yes, “bad” and evil too

Wile I DEFINITELY prefer to have morally good characters- especially after literally a century of rarely getting more than The Evil Homosexual stereotype and all it’s kin- I also don’t like the direction some people are taking this where queer people are only “allowed” to be 100% morally flawless and good and righteous at all times because it’s just so unrealistic, and because it does the exact same thing that the opposite stereotype does: Puts queer people in a box, makes us a decoration for the straight cast so that the creators get Representation Brownie Points and can’t get yelled at on Twitter, and treats us like we’re some other species (and not in the cool way like werewolves but more like... well, decorations, as I’ve said before)

And if you’re worried about the way straight-cis people perceive us due to seeing evil queer characters, you should be equally worried about how they perceive us seeing nothing but morally flawless ones

I could get into An Entire Thing about the history of Straights trying to turn queer people into what they want us to be and present an inaccurate depiction of us to their brethren for their own benefit but I’ll make it relatively simple

The old way of keeping The Queers away from their Innocent Straight Children was to turn us into villains so that we would be ashamed of who we really are and hide ourselves and pretend to be The Good Christian Folk nextdoor and not get overly political or loud or different

The new way of keeping The Queers away from their Innocent Straight Children is to turn us into sexless Ken & Barbie stereotypes so we can be ashamed of who we really are and pretend to be The Good Christian Folk nextdoor and not get overly political or loud or different

By sterilizing queerness into something they find more “acceptable”, they’re doing the same thing they used to, but now through a lens of “Aren’t you happy you get what you want? You can get married now! You can hold hands in public! Just make sure not to do any of that other crazy stuff you people get up to and you can stay at the Civil Rights Table :)”, we’re still not “allowed” to be sexual human beings, it’s just framed in a way that makes us feel like the people shunning us are on our side wile those same people are still in the corner going “Just don’t kiss in public ok?”

And I could go On about this for some time but let’s get back to the point-

Queer people are three-dimensional people and we should be allowed to be so, we should be allowed to have characterization outside of The Gay Love Interest and The Gay BFF and The Gay Butler and so on, outside of the stereotypes being imposed on us

That’s one of the main reasons I love Yuri On Ice so much, and love Batwoman so much.... and one of the main reasons I love Hannibal and Harley Quinn and Helluva Boss and Killing Eve so much, all of these things star queer characters and queer relationships to different degrees (Batwoman, for example, makes a MUCH larger point and political stance about queerness than, say, Hannibal) and they’re all about something other than queerness too, the charecters are three-dimensional and they’re not built around their sexualities or side peices for straight people

And none of them are PUNISHED for their sexualities either

Going back to Castiel earlier, stereotypes are hardly the worst of our worries when Burry Your Gays, Gayngst Induced Suicide, and Gay Guy Dies First are still alive and well- among others

From Frank N’ Furter in Rocky Horror Picture Show to Tara in Buffy The Vampire Slayer to, oh look, it’s Supernatural again with not just Cas, but also Charlie, and even arguably Dean (but that’s a much longer story for a much different time) and many many more... sometimes just having any gay charecter live through a franchise is enough on it’s own- setting the bar awfully low there but it’s still hard for a shamefully large amount of franchises to step over

In some cases like Tara, it can be pretty decently argued that the death has little- if anything- to do with queerness, but in examples like Cas and Frank, it’s pretty blatantly obvious, especially when the other queer characters in their respective franchises didn’t exactly fair well either....

Matt Baume put it best when he said that until recently, you had to choose if you wanted your only source of representation to be dead or evil, and most people chose evil

Now-a-days that’s clearly not the case as much but there’s still a heavy enough flavor of it there- and villains are just part of gay culture, dating all the way back to prohibition, queer people identified as outlaws because we literally were, so pirates and cowboys and other anti-heros and villains became a staple of the culture that’s still very much alive to this day, thus leading to another point: Identification

Straight people can identify with pretty much whoever they want- from superheros to princesses to any and every kind of villain

Tony Soprano is a horrible, horrible person but is notorious for being beloved among straight white males because he’s a projection of who they want to be- powerfull (and wealthy)

Stolas from Helluva Boss actually presents a pretty similar power fantasy, he’s part of a family who lives outside the larger part of the law, he can kill (nearly) anyone he pleases, he’s physically and socially powerfull, he’s wealthy, he has a nuclear family, he gets to screw around with whoever he wants with the only one taking issue being his wife, the only real difference is that Stolas is queer (and much more fashionable... and pleasant)

Queer people should be allowed to have those power fantasies as much as straight people are

Speaking as a bisexual female myself, I absolutely ADORE Villanelle from Killing Eve, I really don’t care that she’s a bitch or has killed an uncountable amount of people, it’s fun to project on her, and seeing a very flawed woman fall in love and be vulnerable and open herself up to a relationship and get that relationship with another woman is AMAZING to me, that doesn’t make the relationship it’s self healthy or good, but it’s still fun to watch and plays further into that identification

I love Korra and Asami from Legend Of Korra, they’re a sweet, wholesome relationship between two sweet, wholesome characters and I adore them... but I’m allowed to adore Eve and Villanelle too, even if the relationship is toxic and the characters have baggage and Villanelle is literally a serial killer

Ofcourse enjoying something doesn’t make it “good”, I enjoy alot of trash B rated (and C rated) horror movies too, it doesn’t mean I think they deserve Oscars (if that’s really the measuring stick we’re going to use), but I think when it comes to representation, it’s important to distinguish the difference between good queer character and a moral queer character, they just... aren’t the same

Light Yagami from Death Note, Bill from Kill Bill, and Joker from Batman are all just... horrible, horrible people, there’s no doubting that, they are morally terrible... but my god are they fantastic charecters- they’re interesting, they’re three dimensional (even if only occasionally in the Joker’s case), they’re well written and complex, there’s a reason why they’re iconic and why they’re still talked about decades after their introduction into the world, they are GREAT characters who are morally bad, and characters like Hannibal and Villlanelle are in that boat too, they just so happen to be queer- and there’s what it all boils down to

People being queer, not queer people

Some of the most beloved examples above like Yuri On Ice and Legend Of Korra are praised for being about people who are queer, people who have stories focused on other things and are just allowed to exist without their sexualities defining them, and the same should be said and appreciated for villains who are queer too

In an age where so much queer-focused media is about tragedy (the period lesbian dramas and Gayngst teen media for example), and so much of it is focused on the same exact aspects of queer life (coming out, dating around, getting or being married, but mostly coming out), it’s great to have characters who just so happen to be queer without those things being the center of their storylines- and without them being canon fodder or the Gay BFF, or being a terrible stereotype from the 90s that just won’t die...

And that by no means is to say you have to like these characters- not at all, there are PLENTY of objectively good/well-written queer characters who I don’t like for whatever reason- but to call them bad representation just because they’re bad people is sweeping ALOT under the rug

And I know I’ve harped alot on avoiding queer-centered storylines like coming out stories and relationship dramas, but those are fine, they have their place just like everything else, really, they just don’t need to have the only place- that does a disservice to so many other types of queer stories- for the heroes and the villains, because morality and goodness have nothing to do with one’s sexuality, just like one’s sexuality has nothing to do with morality and goodness

[autisticandroids]

what are ur thots on the possibility of jack being autistic

it seems self-evidently true based on like, the text, unless you wanted to debate the possibilities of there being a distinction between "autistic" and "autistic-acting for non-autism related reasons" in his case.

there are times when this distinction is relevant; for example, data vs. spock. data is inarguably autistic; he was raised among humans and yet behaves the way he does, therefore something is wrong in his brain that causes him to behave in an autistic manner naturally, therefore he is autistic. spock is autistic-acting; while a person who behaves as spock does who was raised by humans would be autistic, spock was not raised by humans, he was raised among vulcans, where much of his behavior is considered normal. if he were raised among humans he would likely behave differently. this isn't to say that spock is definitely nonautistic, just that he is not inarguably textually autistic in the same way as data.

if you wanted to say that jack is autistic-acting due to being a magic toddler, but not actually autistic in the sense of having an innate developmental disability, i would hear you out, but i would disagree. it seems to me that jack is autistic primarily because he is similar to cas, who is inarguably autistic, he's notably weird even for an angel. from a doylist perspective, this has to do with that being how good angels are usually portrayed, and also, cas is already beloved so if it ain't broke don't fix it. but from a watsonian perspective it just seems like jack is...... a lot like cas. cas' ambiguous disorder runs in the family, or maybe jack, who has the capacity to change his body into an adult form moments after birth instinctually because he knew he was in danger, and who was learning how to be a person from cas even before he was born, changed his own mind to be more like cas'. it doesn't matter, really.

anyway that's a long essay discussing a topic which i actually don't care about that much. i am in general, despite my url, not interested in the interpretation "[x character] is autistic" on its own; i think in order to be interesting, you have to bring that interpretation to bear on the text somehow: "[x character] is autistic, and this changes my interpretation of the text in [y way]." like, i'm interested in discussing the angel autism phenomenon, but mostly as it pertains to the fact that in order to be "good" angels MUST under the rules of supernatural be naive, and the angel autism stuff serves this purpose. i'm not that interested in saying "angels seem to regularly be portrayed as autistic on this show" without that having some deeper meaning to explore.

[mittensmorgul]

Plastic fantastic

I've put off doing this long enough, and spent the intervening days reading everyone else's interpretations, so there's gonna be a lot in here, but also a lot that I've probably not focused on too heavily because other folks have already said the things better than I could've. So this is just a recap of the things I personally feel are most significant and thematically cool going forward. It's... a lot... :'D

15.04 was infused with an element of surreality. Which I ended up referring to throughout this post as “plastic.” Hence the title. But this got super long, so here have a cut. :’D

Right from the THEN segment, we're reminded of Cas. Rowena's sacrifice, Cas's own suffering at Chuck's hands, and how this has affected Sam and Dean-- Sam miserable for having done what they had to do (right?) in sacrificing Rowena, and Dean PISSED but feeling like this was the only way to free them from what he sees as Chuck being a "fanboy" of them. It shifts directly into BECKY, who was described previously as a "fangirl" and involved in a supremely unhealthy relationship with both Chuck AND Sam (even if it was completely one-sided and creepy with Sam). And then shifts to Chuck being told-off by Amara in 15.02, in essentially a recap of all the best insults and condemnations she could fling at him... because he deserved it honestly, I mean HE LOCKED HER AWAY FROM THE DAWN OF CREATION TO SUFFER ALONE WHILE HE DID HIS THING TO MAKE HIMSELF FEEL BIG.

Okay, sorry, I just really hate that guy and his hypocrisy sometimes (read: all the time).

Right. Where were we. At the beginning.

Gunfight in the bunker, with the Danger Lights activated. I've been waiting for this scene since we got BTS photos of Jensen all battered and ragged with the beard. This... isn't real. It's not SPN universe real anyway. Since the SPPT promo came out, I have been eager to see this episode just for this scene. I guessed it was a vision Sam was having/receiving because of the Equalizer Wound, the beginning of his glimpses into "Chuck's writing process." Is this an AU that Chuck actively created? Is it just the sort of thing Chuck daydreams about? Or in the style of Supernatural episodes past, is this some sort of window into the ending Chuck wants/intends to write for them, which obviously would be something they absolutely could not let stand?

Like Dean’s nightmare he awoke from in 10.09 where he saw himself slaughtering a room full of people at the beginning of the episode, which became reality by the end of the episode? Is Chuck’s horrific ending that Becky hated what we actually saw play out in Sam’s nightmare? The show has invited us to consider that as at least a possibility. Or, to at least assume Chuck’s horrifying ending was at least that awful.

There's so much in this scene that doesn't match up with what any of us might imagine Sam would even consider a nightmare of his own mind's creation, you know? And yet it's SAM who is plagued by these incongruous nightmares that don't even really connect up with things that are relevant to the things currently on his mind, you know? After recent events, one would think the things that would plague Sam's nightmares would be the loss of Jack, or his role in Rowena's apparent death and his guilt/depression over it, or even the fight against the ghostpocalypse and the people who lost their lives as a result of that. Instead, he's having "nightmares" about having gone full Boy King of Hell demon blood addict, which hasn't been a pressing personal fear of his for more than a decade. He's even talked specifically about how he's made his peace with that entire time in his life, such as his talk with Magda in 12.04. NOT coincidentally also written by Davy Perez.

That's because... this is NOT Sam's "nightmare." Why would Sam "dream" about Dean's regular gun having the power to spark out demons? Why would he "dream" about BENNY being a human (and alive!) ally of Dean's that Sam had sent his own army of demons to destroy? Why would Sam dream that his demonic-self would hunt down and kill his loved ones (Bobby! Jody! and nobody else mentioned! as if this was some weird time-travelling situation combined with Benny's human presence!), and then in the end hunt down and murder Dean in cold blood? This wasn't Sam-As-Lucifer (though I believe we will be seeing that particular nightmare in next week's episode), but SAM. HIMSELF. Turned into the demon he always feared he was "destined" to become before they learned how to tear up the story and make their own choices about their destiny.

The problem now is that they actually believe that Chuck has gone, and they're on their own now. Sam believes that this must be his own nightmare, and therefore he's just stuck with it, as his own mind and memories and fears come back to torment him. He's lost his power to fight against it, like Dean's lost his power to fight against his current experience. It's as if the only power Chuck retains over them is in the fact that they BELIEVE he's gone, you know? Magic's power is in the belief of the caster, Rowena has recently reminded us with her own life. And I think that's exactly what's leaving Sam and Dean so completely vulnerable to manipulation by Chuck, in ways they've never before been vulnerable to it. Because they've both staked their entire futures on the fact that they so firmly believe they're free of Chuck's story.

Sam is just... so confused by this nightmare, he can't even make sense of it at all. And the sleep deprivation isn't probably helping.

I think we've all covered the Meat Man conversation already, as well as all the Dean vs Food stuff, so I'll only add that commentary in here if I think of something I haven't already said on the subject.

Dean calls out Sam's assertion that he's fine, directly telling him "No, you're not," and expressing his understanding of what he's going through.

And here come the cheerleaders. And doesn't this (as I believe many of us have already said over the last two weeks) just smack of Sam's "fake case" Gadreel had him trapped researching inside his own mind in 9,10? Crowley had to convince Sam that what he was trapped inside wasn't real, that he was possessed by an angel who was forcing him to experience these things. And obviously the God Wound isn't direct possession, and I don't doubt that this is a real case, but how much of this case might have been "arranged" by Chuck, or how much of Sam's perception right now may be clouded or colored because of the effects of that Wound?

Not only that, but Dean is also a participant in this entire odd case, and he doesn't even HAVE a wound connecting him directly to Chuck, you know? But his judgment seems to be equally clouded by something, as well... I'm gonna call it Intense Denial. Dean is basing his entire life right now on the presumption that Chuck has stopped interfering in their lives, when I think the exact opposite is true. I think Chuck is now focused on them more directly and more intensely than he ever has been before, and their obliviousness to that fact is only strengthening his hold on them, and amplifying his power over them.

But back to the current point in the episode:

Sam interviews the vice principal of the school, and the girl who was killed was in the drama club, debate team, cheerleading, campus ministry, you name it. That's... an awful lot of potential friends, so Sam asks about BEST friends, and we're directed to Veronica "and the girls." Veronica is singled out, which makes her speech to the empty room later even more interesting...

This episode relies on a lot of the elements of the case they're investigating to seem rather... plastic. And Veronica stood out as one of these elements. She could've just been "one of the girls," but she was identified specifically here, and it's like that designation itself somehow altered reality just a little bit. Heck I think I'm gonna need to put this line of thought on hold until we get to the speech scene. Remind me to come back to this.. >.>

The Whitmans interrupt (oh those crazy parents from 1.08, at it in a completely different role), seemingly uncaring of the dead girl and demanding their son's future not be ruined by postponing the lacrosse game. (OH THE IRONY) Sam rightly calls them out on framing it as "the end of the world" if he doesn't get into his first choice college. These parents have already been established to be Those Kinds of Parents who will do anything for precious little Billy to get whatever he wants in the world. They'd probaly strangle kittens on live TV if it would guarantee their son's future, you know? We haven't even seen the full extent of what they were willing to do for their son, and they already feel like cartoonish villain types.

I need to take another aside here to talk about the boy’s name. BILLY. Which, considering how we left things in 14.20, we’ve all been wondering about what Billie is up to in the Empty, right? This boy that will, by the end of this episode, become a literal stand-in for Jack on a cosmic scale? Is called Billy. Just... consider that.

I can already hear Becky critiquing Chuck's Monster of the Week here... and in turn parts of the fandom cynically saying that this is the complaint on MotW episodes forever-- that they're boring or unimportant or skippable because the monsters are predictable and boring, and just... NO. YOU HAVE OFFICIALLY MISSED THE POINT.

I think the general assumption is that the case we watch Sam and Dean solve is being directly affected by Chuck's simple act of typing it out. In exactly the same way we believed Metatron influenced the events of s9 by the simple act of typing it out. Could he control the thoughts of the people he wrote about? Not exactly. Could he manipulate the situation via the power of the angel tablet-- the direct word of God-- to influence the scenario and events in improbable ways? Yes, I absolutely think he can. And I'll continue discussing this as we go along.

But we return to Dean leaning against the car eating pretzels. I've already written about his constant eating and drinking in this episode, but PRETZELS?! That's a new one for Dean. It's usually jerky, or chips, or candy, or... all sorts of other things. Where did he even get the pretzels from?

He'd apparently been at the morgue examining the body, and found a vampire tooth. So this case that seemed NOTHING like a vampire case based on how the body was found, suddenly there's irrefutable evidence that it's a vampire instead. Almost as if the facts of the case have shifted somehow, rather improbably and inexplicably. Just as inexplicably as Dean finding the beaver mascot riding a scooter "awesome."

The second girl to be abducted calls out Veronica as being "so fake" in her grief over Susie's death. And yet, improbably, after a long cheer practice, she's the only one alone in the school parking lot late at night. Where's the rest of the cheer team? The coach? Anyone? How was she there all alone? Yet she was, because the case needed her to be.

It's plastic.

Like the little square of crime scene tape left unattended in the woods. Weird, right? That after the scene was cleared and the original investigators left, it was still left there around an empty patch of dirt. And Sam and Dean... are just... standing there at the edge of the woods, boxed in by yellow crime scene tape and orange cones while they have their conversation about the fact the police have no idea what could've done this, and Sam laments the fact that it's THEIR job. THEY deal with the truth and carry the weight, while everyone else gets to go back to their blissfully unaware lives.

Dean busts out the flask while the two of them stand there in their own personal crime scene box, like their lives are the crime here. They ARE the victims of a cosmic crime. And the corpse of what their lives could've been, of what Sam had always thought he'd want of his own life, to live in a little town like this and just be NORMAL, is what they'll find on the autopsy here. And Sam is just beginning to realize he can't identify with those sorts of people at all.

And then we jump right from Sam lamenting the lost white picket fence to Becky's house-- where the front railing is white pickets, where she's built a real life for herself. Yet even something about it seems... off... just a little bit. That older kid seems way older than 7, which I assume would be the oldest any of her kids could be based on when we last saw her in canon, before she began to recover from her obsession and begin building a true happy life for herself. Heck maybe I'm talking myself into a problem that doesn't exist, and he's supposed to be just a really big 6-year-old, but okay. Or maybe he's adopted, or the kid of her husband from a previous relationship. GAH This is so not relevant to anything, why can't I let it go... >.>

Regardless, she clearly loves her family, and is invested in her life with them. Her husband is a man who truly appreciates and loves her in return. I'm really happy for her. Her husband at one point says, "Where would I be without you," and she jokingly replies "Covered in puke." And it's the same sort of cute exchange we saw between Sam and Jess in the pilot, where he asked, "What would I do without you?" and she jokingly replied, "Crash and burn." And considering that Sam himself will mention Jessica at the end of the episode, it seems worth pointing out the thematic similarity they're trying to set up here.

I wonder how much Becky has told her husband about the reality of the Supernatural books she's built her business and hobbies around, or her own part in the events of the books? More than Sam ever told Jess about the reality of his life? At this point, I'm gonna be glad her husband didn't end up pinned to the ceiling on fire.

Becky waves goodbye to her family as they leave for a day of fun, and Chuck waves back at her. He's inserted himself into her life again, and it's freaking creepy.

Chuck says he "wanted" to see her, and corrects himself to "needed." And here we have the laying out of the classic “NEED VS WANT” conundrum we’ve been yelling about for literal years. Funny that Chuck has it all wrong himself, you know? Becky makes herself clear that she neither wants nor needs him. He's not welcome there at all, and yet he presses on, past her assertion that his problems aren't her problem. I've already written a little bit about what Chuck apparently wanted from Becky, and what he actually got from her, so I'll try not to repeat myself, but to say that Becky was far kinder to him than he deserved.

So we learn about the second cheerleader's kidnapping, Dean makes an uncharacteristically flippant comment in front of the Vice Principal (somebody has a fetish), and kinda... blinks in shock at himself before professionally affirming they'll look into it and turning and walking away. Like he can't quite believe he actually said that. Which is weird, right? Because this is the sort of thing Dean has made flippant and kinda gross comments on in the past, right? But even when he's made comments about which cheerleaders are legal (4.13), or suggestive comments about even college students, he's rarely done so this blatantly directly TO the school principal, you know? This was... odd... like everything is just slightly out of sync.

I'm fascinated by the tiny models of Supernatural things that Chuck is prodding at in Becky's house. The first thing we see is Lil Levi's gas station. The only time we have EVER seen this gas station was in 10.03, when Hannah and Cas stopped there for gas, and yet Becky has the Impala parked by the pump, and what looks like a yellow classic car of some sort on the other side, hidden by the pumps so it's impossible to really see it there.

(I swear I will replace these Mittens Quality Screencaps™ as soon as HotN properly caps the episode... apologies for the photos of my tv in the meantime)

It was Cas's pimpmobile we've actually seen at this location in canon. And this was the gas station where Cas was losing his grace, desperately trying to get to Dean in time to save him, and Hannah kept getting them lost. He calls her out over her feelings-- dangerous temptations-- clouding her judgment and getting in the way. They're attacked by Adina, and Crowley arrives just in time to save them both from her, stealing her grace and force-feeding it to Cas, enabling him to power up again and save Dean. Aah, callbacks! And I mean, it might just be a visual callback to the fact that Jensen also directed that episode (and that gas station was named after his nephew), but it's still a reference that brings an awful lot of baggage with it, regardless of what prompted its appearance in miniature in Becky's house. Not to mention, this reference happened LONG after Chuck had supposedly stopped writing about the Winchesters' lives. And yet... Becky seems to know this reference, which had nothing to do with Sam and Dean and everything to do with Cas.

The second model we see looks incredibly like (or at least should all be having us THINKING of) the Carver crypt from the first three episodes of s15. And that's... super creepy, right? What is this building? Why did Becky have a model of it at all? This happened DAYS ago in canon.

And the third is Singer Salvage yard, with the Impala parked out front. How long has it been since we've seen it? In an episode that opened on Sam's "nightmare" that involved him strung out on demon blood having just killed Bobby and Jody in Sioux Falls? Interesting that Chuck expressed fascination with that particular model in this episode, isn't it?

He asks if Becky is still obsessed with his work, and she corrects him. She's obsessed with HER work. She'd essentially dismissed Chuck as the creator of Supernatural, and relegated him to the role of Recorder Of Events, as a prophet. It wasn't actually HIS story. But what she's made of it, what she's made her life's work, IS HER OWN CREATION, based on the same reality she believed that Chuck had been nothing more than a conduit for. And OUCH for a guy like Chuck to not even get credit for any of it now, because of the lie he'd told to insert himself into his own creation. It's incredible to me. He wants nothing more than recognition as the creator, as the writer, and Becky's far more interested in her OWN stories about the same characters. She saw herself as more than Chuck’s equal as a writer, she saw herself as his superior. He just recorded, she CREATES. She dismissed everything Chuck was most interested in, and writes the characters all having achieved a measure of peace and happiness, the same as she has. And Chuck... hates it. :'D

Remember, this is the guy who invented monsters before he invented anything else. Leviathans were his first creation, even before the archangels. But they had a nasty habit of eating everything else he tried to create, so he grudgingly locked them in Purgatory, and moved on to the next thing. And he's had a lot of similar failures over the years... like the original hellhound that Lucifer stole away (and that Sam killed in 12.15). Seems like this has always been the story Chuck wanted to tell, because he's always only ever had his original drama with Amara as a source for his creation. He's... obsessed... with his version of events, no matter how many times he's confronted with reality, he weasels out of personal responsibility for everything. Like he does in this scene with Becky, letting her believe he's just a poor dude who wants to keep writing and lost his writing mojo because his prophet powers dried up.

This is probably the first Becky's heard Chuck had a sister, who Chuck only explains rejected him because she "sucks." And... Chuck... you're leaving out the horrific things you've done to her as an explanation of why she refused to help you. He's still hiding behind the “super cute” Chuck Facade. And nothing he says is an out and out lie, but it's entirely a manipulation, a complete reframing of the cosmic scale of what's happened into something he expects Becky to be able to offer him sympathy over. And she's just not having it. And again, good for her.

Chuck admitting that he's lost and hates himself at least engages Becky enough to try something to get him moving forward (again, still thinking he's just a guy who's lost everything). And tells him if writing makes him happy, then he should write.

Meanwhile Dean's incongruously eating a hot dog (WHERE IS HE GETTING ALL THIS FOOD?!) and interviewing a beaver. Sam questions why, and Dean's not only gotten information about the case (mascots have access to cheerleaders), but information about the kid inside the suit (he's a smart kid, got a full ride to IU). Dean's been unusually productive while chewing that hot dog, apparently. But he’s basically a caricature of himself during this case, like he’s trying to wear a suit he hasn’t worn in 15 years, and is finding it really ill-fitting. (it’s probably all the snacks he’s eating, honestly)

Veronica hands Billy a black wristband printed SUSIEFOREVER, which... is probably how Billy's feeling at the moment (hello, she was his girlfriend and he accidentally killed her... this is gonna haunt him forever). Veronica (who we've already been told by the latest girl to disappear is "so fake" in her grief over Susie's death) seems to be coming on to Billy, or at least making her interest in him known. And we DON'T know how all of this will resolve yet, but there's an awful lot going on in this scene. Did Veronica actually kill Susie? Is she the vampire and is that the reason for this OTT "so fake" grief on her part? Did Billy's "anything for my kid" mother who interrupts the scene actually kill her and Billy know something about it? Why is everyone acting so... weird?

Because we're back to the plasticity of this entire case again. What's actually killing cheerleaders? What's really going on here? If this entire case is Chuck's machination, because he wrote it down, and therefore subtly affected the situation, is that why everything seems just slightly off? Slightly malleable, as if Chuck is only working out the details of the case as he's writing it all down?

Billy leaves with his mom, and Veronica is left in a dimly lit gym filled with empty chairs and programs for the memorial service. She's practicing her speech to this huge empty room, speaking into a microphone. And as she talks, she edits her speech.

We've seen Chuck do this. in 4.18, he had Dean push the doorbell with determination, and then went back and edited it to read "with forceful determination." Just before the doorbell rang, and it was a forcefully determined Dean doing the ringing... So Veronica's self-edit here seems almost like a Chuck self-edit.

Remember how I mentioned way back toward the beginning of this mess how Sam asked the VP for a clarification on who Susie's "BEST" friends were, and Veronica was singled out among a group of her close friends? And now Veronica stands alone not only as the sole person in the room here talking to empty chairs, but as the one with apparent motive to kill Susie, who's been accused of expressing a lot of over-the-top melodramatic "so fake" grief. And... she edits her relationship with Susie on the fly:

Veronica: We are here to celebrate the life of my friend Susie. No. *clears throat* *takes a breath* We are here to celebrate the life of my best friend Susie. My best friend Susie who I miss like... *sigh* like she was a part of me. And in many ways she's still a part of me. She'll always be a part of all of us. Susie Martin was as rare as a ghost orchid and as unique as a snowflake. So beautiful inside and out. But as Robert Frost tells us, nothing gold can stay. And that's what Susie was. Pure gold.

And during this entire speech, to the empty room, the music in the background is ominous, looming, tense. The musical cue is telling us to doubt her performance here, with the high strings picking up the tension just as she comes to a close and Dean shows up with his slow clap. I mean, it was a pretty OTT speech, delivered with an intensity that literally does feel rehearsed. Stilted. Plastic. Everything in the case so far has pointed the arrow at her being the monster. The framing of the narrative would support it if it had been true, but the background of the entire case feels exactly as Becky has described it. What if THIS was the original ending to the case that Becky had voiced her complaints about, as if THIS is the story that Chuck would've written.

But that's such weaksauce. MotW episodes are nothing if not thematically consistent. Vampires are about revenge cases, and this case is a very specifically pointed bit of revenge, of Chuck against the Winchesters. They ruined the last story he tried to tell, and the fact this started out looking like something OTHER than a vampire case (possibly a ghoul, based on the parallel to 9.10, and a dismembered body), and then seemingly remolded itself INTO a vampire case halfway through... it feels like that first fang Dean found at the morgue was Chuck sinking his teeth into their lives.

And Veronica, no matter how the case had painted her to this point, was completely innocent. A bit plastic, because she's a victim of this reality bend as much as Sam and Dean are, because the real monster of this case is Chuck-- only Sam and Dean don't have any idea yet.

Dean calls her on her fake emotions, and they directly accuse her of killing her friend. And get the proof that she was innocent because she HAS BRACES, which she's apparently self-conscious about, but it proved she wasn't a vampire. *SIGH*

Plastic.

So Sam and Dean look for video evidence from surveillance cam footage, which the police had apparently already looked at and found nothing, but now they find a car driving past immediately after the second girl's abduction. Did the police not see it? Or is this another bit of plastic?

Meanwhile back at Billy's house, his parents refuse to even hear him say Susie's name, and suspicion immediately shifts to their entire family. Billy's father washes blood off his hands, and nobody seems to find this strange. Are they all monsters? Did one of them slip up? What the heckeroo is actually going on here? Whatever it is, it feels like they're all complicit, and Billy seems to be having reservations. Except they've also got the latest victim tied up and blindfolded in their storage room. So... they're definitely guilty of something. But we're only halfway through the episode at this point, so there's clearly more to the story.

Chuck tells Becky he can't see what Sam and Dean are doing anymore, as he conveniently scratches at his left shoulder where his wound connecting him to Sam is. Which is wild, right? Because what little we know about the Equalizer gun was that it fired INTENT. And that it affects the person shot and the shooter identically. So what was Sam's intent when he shot Chuck? Dean had just told Chuck to "Go to Hell," but Sam didn't say anything out loud when he shot Chuck. Was his intent "stop fucking with our lives" or more vaguely grief-filled "go to hell" or something more? Because whatever intention Sam shot at Chuck seems to have directly caused both Chuck's loss of power AND his inability to see directly into their lives now. And after having watched the Sam and Dean show for their entire lives, Chuck is PISSED about not being able to see what they're up to.

And I wonder, incidentally, if this will be the same factor that's causing problems for the Winchesters, too... that Sam may have inadvertently severed whatever protective force had made their lives as hunters as... implausibly unproblematic as they've always been, you know? I think we'll be seeing that develop more in the next episode, but we saw hints of it happening in this episode too (like with Dean's comment about the killer having a cheerleader fetish). But regardless, I think this is why Sam is suffering these grief-fueled nightmares, his inability to breathe, and his general current mental state. He’s suffering from the same intent he’d fired at Chuck. Only it hit Chuck with a case of writer’s block, while it hit Sam with something he’s been unable to truly define or explain. Yet.

Becky tells Chuck to write about the Winchesters if he loves their story so much, because that's what SHE does. Her stories don't have to be based in reality for her to enjoy them, but Chuck's only metaphorically a writer. He doesn't just want to make up tales, he wants to literally create reality. During Becky's entire pep talk, Chuck's holding a little figurine of Sam pointing a gun, and ain't that just on the nose? She plucks Sam out of Chuck’s hands and puts him back on the mantle (and I admit to at first thinking it was the Cas doll from 5.06, because Dean did the same thing with Cas, putting him up on the mantle like that), but Chuck still expresses doubt in his ability to actually write.

And here's where the most incongruous stuff in the entire episode begins happening-- the family dynamics of a killer family. It's still unclear who the monster is among them, but like Dean, we are leaning toward the father. The thing is, none of it's actually plausible. That's the beauty of this entire case. It's plastic.

How did this single kid out of this entire town get turned by a vampire, and his parents just... completely accepted what happened immediately without question? How did they KNOW what to do for their son in this circumstance? They went out and killed animals for their blood for him. Where did they learn to do this for him? And then how could they so casually just... kidnap a whole human being just to feed their son? Why not go back to feeding him animal blood like he'd done before? They didn't see anything wrong with any of this, either. DID THESE PEOPLE NOT HAVE QUESTIONS?!

And what of the vampire that made him? Did that vampire just... turn him and run? Did he give the kid a pamphlet explaining vampire life to him or something? It's just utterly baffling that this whole family just... incorporated this development into their lives as if it was all an entirely normal thing to accept about their kid. The dad KIDNAPPED A WHOLE ENTIRE HUMAN BEING for him on his own initiative, the mom was ready to shoot Sam and Dean for interfering in their plans. LIKE HOW IS ANY OF THIS NORMAL?!

And perhaps most bizarre of all, Sam and Dean didn't see anything wrong with it in reflection later that night. But I'll get to that when we get there. Heck this note-writing thing is really hard when I already know everything that's gonna happen. I have enough trouble staying on point without the benefit of foresight. :'D

So these parents are insistent that they're doing all of this, sacrificing all of this, just for him. And when he tells them he doesn't want them to, they just beg him to tell them what he wants from them. And he's just so frustrated because they aren't listening to him. Like they don't even care about him despite professing they're doing all of this so he can be happy. And he's just... profoundly not happy.

So the father, when Sam and Dean show up, still thinks they're going to ARREST him. Which is a weird thing for a suspected vampire to believe, and he's horrified when Dean pulls out a machete instead of handcuffs. This is a totally shocking development for him, and yet he STILL holds it together enough to bargain for his wife and son's lives. And the wife is profoundly confused by this, and our suspicions shift to her. But that's still... not quite right. She's prepared to literally shoot what she believes to be two FBI agents to save her son, again, as if all of this was entirely normal. As if this is what normal people are willing to do for their monster children.

I've already written a bunch about Becky's critique of Chuck's writing, and how poorly Chuck takes her notes. Chuck... is really out of touch with fanfic culture. Becky's reading this story as if it was fic, not reality. She kudos'ed and commented, and expected Chuck to just accept that and move on, because that's how fic culture works. But he demanded a beta read level critique, and Becky gave it. And he shouldn't have asked for it if he didn't actually want it.

And here comes the revenge that justifies the Vampire Plot. Chuck... is the vampire. he's the monster that doomed Billy for no reason. Who drove the parents to such extreme lengths to protect their child. Because that's how CHUCK saw what TFW had done to protect Jack. He saw it as just that outrageous and unfounded, even though it was in no way the same. We just witnessed Chuck's critique of TFW's actions in 14.20, and it was scathing, mocking, and vindictive.

Plastic.

But I also suspect that Becky wasn't reading ~this case~ exactly, because she complained that Sam and Dean were tied up (they were never once tied up in this episode), and she complained about the villain monologue being stale (Dean does most of the monologuing here, and it's Sam who figures out what's actually going on). Just one more bit of plastic.

But Chuck somehow managed (even if he couldn't see it) to put Jack's 14.20 realizations about himself into Billy's mouth. As if Chuck's story had already been written, and through some power of its own it was brought into reality via these previously innocent people. The story itself is more powerful than the author.

Like Jack, Billy has been trying to accept responsibility for his actions. He couldn't control himself, he didn't know it would happen, but he's dangerous and needs to be stopped. And Billy's speech isn't a "villain monologue," but a painful confession of everything he'd done. So what story was Becky reading?

Sam angrily judges the parents' actions, and Dean expresses his shock that the father would've just let him cut off his head to save his son. And is taken aback at the comment that he must not have kids, if he doesn't think he wouldn't have done the same for his own child.

And Dean's like... well, no I wouldn't have done the same for my own child. It's a super messed up situation that I'd really been trying not to think too hard about, thanks. It's been less than a week and here you go bringing up the worst day of our lives, so thanks for that... but they carry on. The mother says they just wanted him to have a normal life, and that's something Jack never would've had regardless because of what he was. But he had *a* life, with the Winchesters. If Jack had been a vampire, they wouldn't have gone out hunting and kidnapping teenage girls for him to eat, you know? But they were willing to raid heaven and shout down God for Jack. But context matters. And this hastily assembled vampire family ready to play revenge/victim for Chuck's story lacked all context. They were plastic.

It's Billy who ends up dictating how his parents are to handle everything, calm as can be. And his parents finally listen to him. And he sacrifices himself to the Winchesters. And they just... go along with it, take him out to the woods, and Dean kills the boy kneeling at his feet, accepting his fate as he's clearly crying, while Sam watches on. It's what Chuck had wanted in 14.20, and Dean had refused to give him. And now this entire situation has been Dean, manipulated into providing that demanded sacrifice, one way or another. And the most interesting bit of it? Chuck... couldn't even see it playing out. He missed the whole show that played out in Chuck Puppet Theater despite the fact. Like whatever he actually wrote was irrelevant, because his intent is somehow still connecting through to the Winchesters in pantomime.

And Sam and Dean's reactions to all of this are also just weirdly plastic.

I've already written about Chuck and Becky enough I think, but Chuck's moved on from "Writers lie," to "I can do anything, I'm a writer." With some of the worst villain monologue we've ever gotten, with "There, see, it's making you feel something! That's good, right?" While Becky is outraged and heartbroken over Chuck's ending. The only thing I need to say about whatever Chuck's planned ending is, is that if the series ends the way CHUCK wants it to, it'll go down as the biggest intentional betrayal of a fandom in the history of television. The show has stated to us in this episode that Chuck is the final boss big bad, and that he cannot be allowed to win. He can't have the final word in this story.

In *our* world, the current writers have officially called out a good number of sins of their past and exposed them via Chuck. They wrote the Leviathans being a personal favorite of Chuck's despite being pretty universally hated by fandom... well... they're looking for redemption for themselves in s15. THEY can't allow the story to end horribly. They've staked their current writing cred on it, as well as the entire history of 15 years of building TFW into the heroes. Sure, they've joked that not all fans will be happy with the ending, but in serious comments they've also promised a "real" ending and not some advanced level deus ex machina that wipes everything clean, either. That's a lot to deliver, and Chuck's suggested ending of the Winchesters horrifically dead doesn't deliver any of it.

So... back to the denouement of the episode. To the Impala! The least plastic thing in the entire episode. But it's pretty plastic.

Sam suggests that what Henry did for his son, was something they would've done for Jack, given the chance. And no, he's not talking about kidnapping teenage girls to feed him, he's talking about offering himself as a sacrifice in his son's place. Because Dean literally did do that. He was willing to sacrifice himself to kill Jack before he could kill again. It's what Chuck had presented as the ONLY way to stop Jack from destroying the world, with the examples of Jack having accidentally killed Mary, and then the whole of society crumbling because Jack told everyone to stop lying. But Sam? He wasn't willing to sacrifice both of them. And then he learned the truth from Chuck, about the manipulations that forced them all to this point, how Chuck probably did have the power to make everything right, restore Jack's soul, everything... but he didn't want to because it was more entertaining for him to watch them act out his plots instead. He WANTED that drama, that horrible sacrifice. He ENJOYED it.

But given the choice, I think Sam and Dean both would've traded places with Jack. We actually *saw* Cas literally exchange himself for Jack in 14.08. But Chuck wasn't satisfied with that trade. He wanted more from them, and they decided they were done playing on his stage.

There's a bit of incongruity in the speech Dean gives Sam about his current state, as well. He's usually so much better at reading Sam, yet he's comparing Sam's current mental state to his own back in the crypt, after Chuck. And just... no? This is not it at all? When he told Sam he's felt like cashing in, *we* think of 13.05, where he literally DID think of cashing in, you know? That feels far more similar to how Sam's feeling right now than to Dean's ANGER and "we need a plan!" bossiness from the crypt after Chuck. It's jarring as a comparison, because IT'S THE WRONG THING ENTIRELY.

But it's wrong, because it's the glaring omission of Cas that's already been lampshaded in the episode. That Dean's current blind spot here is shining a violently bright light on what SHOULD be said. Just like the end of 13.05 when we all yelled "HELLO, DEAN" at the television when Cas didn't say the line to him. We've been talking FOR YEARS about how this show uses narrative negative space like this, how it expects us to shout HEY WHAT ABOUT CAS?! at the screen, or to see that even this driving scene in the dark, in the car, is a perfect inverse mirror of that scene in 13.05, where Sam had spent that entire episode feeding his favorite junk food that he criticized Dean for in this episode, Dean and dragging him out on a case in the hopes of making him feel like himself again and... that's what Dean's telling Sam he wanted to work this case for now, to show Sam exactly what Sam had tried (and failed spectacularly) to show Dean in 13.05.

Dean even quotes some of Cas's last words to him before he left, that he should "move on."

But they needed to walk around the giant Cas-shaped hole in the narrative. And they needed to do it this incongruously. And that's exactly why it works.

And it's why Sam CAN'T move on. He doesn't feel free. I've already written a bit about this, and how it's directly tied to Sam's wound, and what it's probably doing to him. And what IS it doing to him? Chuck wobbles his head side to side, and the Sam and Dean bobbleheads on the desk beside him follow suit.

[norahastuff]

Cas and Metatron: 8x23 vs 9x23

The evolution of Cas and Metatron’s relationship is fascinating to me. In season 8, Metatron felt no animosity towards Cas, in fact he was rather taken by him. Much like someone would be by their favourite character, which is something he makes clear when he tells Cas: 

“And when you die and your soul comes to Heaven, find me. Tell me your story.”

But the truth is, he doesn’t know Cas. At all. He was simply trying to make him fit into a cookie cutter narrative that Cas never had any interest in being part of. In fact, Cas’ one attempt to do the typical human thing and go out on a date, winds up becoming more about his inability to live that kind of life. Cas may have found a sense of peace and quiet dignity in being human, but it wasn’t going to be with a wife living a civilian life. His time as Steve was mired in confusion and melancholy, and it wasn’t until 9x09, when he returned to hunt with Sam and Dean, that we saw him truly embrace the small pleasures of humanity. Working on a case, drinking his first beer as a human, spending time with the people he loved, that was when we saw Cas come to life.

The more Cas deviated from the story he was expected to be a part of, the more Metatron began to realise what it was really about for Cas. The “he’s in love…with humanity’’ line has been debated to death and to be honest it’s not really that relevant to the point I’m making here anyway, so I’m going to ignore it for now and look at what came before it. Metatron was confident he had vanquished Cas and gotten his army to turn on him, because “his true weakness is revealed.” And what exactly was it that was Cas’ weakness that made his army leave him? It wasn’t his loyalty to humanity in general, or the suspicion that he was responsible for the angel bombers or even the fact that he had stolen another angel’s grace and would soon burn out. No, what made them leave was that they asked him to choose between them and Dean Winchester, and he chose Dean Winchester. 

Dean being Cas’ weakness isn’t exactly news. In season 4, he was demoted for his attachment to Dean, “I was getting too close to the humans in my charge. You.” After the whole Godstiel mess, Hester blamed Cas’ descent and missteps on Dean. “The very touch of you corrupts. When Castiel first laid a hand on you in Hell, he was lost!” Naomi’s attempts to “fix” Cas? Well those involved repeatedly forcing him to reenact Dean’s murder. Not to mention, Ishim’s assertion that by killing Dean he would “cure you of your human weakness same way I cured my own.”

It took Metatron a little longer to get there, but he eventually understood, that no matter how much Cas cared about humankind or duty or helping save heaven or the angels, none of that was his primary motivation any longer, and hadn’t been for a while. Nor was it about living a typical mundane human life. What was it all about for Cas?

“The Angel tablet – arguably the most powerful instrument in the history of the universe – is in pieces, and for what again? Oh, that’s right – to save Dean Winchester.”

It’s clear from Cas’ face that he can’t even try to argue with that.

[naruhearts]

Quick Post-14x19 Thoughts

(I’m busy packing for my trip to Seattle during Easter Weekend and can’t really review 14x19 yet, but—)

I’m so emotionally exhausted in good ways from the Emotion-centric Plot A this season!!! THE NARRATIVE IS CHARACTER-DRIVEN!!

Plot B is literally linked to character-driven Plot A by interpersonal relationships. Case in point: Plot A as TFW/Destiel splitting apart at the seams over Jack their mirror which dictates the emotional decisions made in 14x20 (i.e. Dean wanting to kill Jack) and subsequently manifests to the external world as Plot B — Chuck returning re: Jack’s finale fate.

Biggest example: Plot A Cas directly influencing Plot B the Empty, who will take him depending on his emotions (happiness) re: his family (and Dean).

The characters and their relationships have always carried the weight of Supernatural’s run, especially in recent Family/Love and..Love-themed years (since S12). It’s about the journey, not the destination.

And I do hope and predict that S15’s Big Bad won’t be solely Eldritch. It’ll be a Character Journey Big Bad: mending relationships and tying up loose threads (after they are destroyed/broken in 14x20, with obvious Big Bad Jack representing EMOTIONS and internal conflict ever since he was conceived; in other words, he’s been the unifying TFW mirror with an emotional character-driven narrative since S13).

What is the long-running familial loose thread, here?

Cas fully accepting (for himself) that he is part of the Winchester family and freely choosing Humanity; Dean and Sam telling/showing him that he’s family as well as being transparent with Cas and one another to further stabilize and nurture TFW into the best versions of themselves that they were always meant to be (and oh my gosh, Dean crying and releasing his pent-up emotions in the rain, not in a bar with some drunk-stupor distraction, over Mary’s death - in the most grief-cathartic way tonight *HUGE KUDOS to Jensen*? That’s blatant growth. It’s heartbreakingly beautiful).

What is the long-running romantic loose thread, here?

Dean and Cas reconciling (aka ending their spousal-coded domestic dispute), getting their shit together, and entering into a canon textual mutually interdependent (HONEST) relationship (recall that, again, Dean still doesn’t know about Cas’ deal with the Empty).

(Intriguingly, 14x20’s titled Moriah, the mountain on which Abraham sacrificed Isaac *points at all the pre-existing meta about this*, and my Catholic-raised brain is spinning here, because Abraham was interrupted by an angel, who coaxed him to change his mind. In terms of what the finale promo already showed us...one obvious possible subtext-text interpretation here is Dean = Abraham or Cas = Abraham, Isaac = Jack, Cas = the angel, Chuck as God himself intervening. Multifaceted Subtext where Everything Means Something.)

And Chuck, the ultimate deadbeat Father/parental abseenteism figure, will return.

I’m scared and excited, friends!! Season Who Am I 14 ending on a character-driven last cliffhanger that acts as the narrative segue to break the Ouroboros spiral of Self-toxicity/Parental Toxicity and recapitulate the great Nature vs Nurture debate.

USE YOUR WORDS.

[elizabethrobertajones]

So 10x03 when Cas bear hugs deanmon what’s the significance of their eyes changing?

Cuz they look so nice together :’)

Actually, when they released the moment before this in SDCC that year, the demon eyes were in a different place: 

https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/93105032733/obsessionisaperfume-4persephone

I think maybe just for effect as without the Cas reveal (for spoiler purposes we had no indications Cas would be in or around the Bunker the whole time until we saw the episode) it was more interesting to have Dean flashing demon eyes when taunting Sam and a lot of pre-season meta freaking out about the promo focused on how he was doing it as he taunted him to emphasise his lack of humanity at that point etc. 

In the real episode he does the whole thing ~as Dean~ before flicking his eyes black and lunging at Sam, who has just seen Cas approaching over his shoulder and stepped back as a gesture of “surrender” so that Cas can grab Dean. This was also really debated before the episode because without knowing why Sam relaxed and started to step back before the clip cut away, a lot of people analysed him as giving up and letting Dean kill him (there was a lot of time between SDCC and the episode airing of course), and despite how obvious the framing was afterwards that it was because Cas was right behind Dean ready to grab him, people who wanted to see this as some huge Sam sacrifice got so worked up about it they even would prefer to speculate that Cas could still teleport and magically went from the gas station to behind Dean, than entertain the idea that Sam was trusting Cas to handle it and had seen his salvation storming down the corridor towards Dean… 

I find it actually kind of hilarious in a meta way because it gives us these two ways to look at what the eyes mean - when they’re shown in the middle of the conversation with Sam, it draws the focus of the Sam n Dean battle of wills, and very much centres it on how Dean is manipulating Sam with his actions, maybe even to the point of giving up rather than kill his brother, and the conclusion is a life or death moment for the two of them. In truth, Dean is utterly immune to that knife and Cas is right behind him, so neither ending could possibly happen as motivations that people speculated, despite at the time it leading to some interesting debate about their motivations. 

Because then when the eyes only flick to black when Sam backs off, Sam has backed off because Cas is here to save them, and Dean’s unwittingly about to be stopped in his tracks from harming Sam. The eyes only briefly function as a “right, I’m done, time to kill you” warning, which can only really for the viewer be a spike in heart rate, before Cas leaps in and saves the day, and the longer struggle and use of the eyes is in contrast to his glowing blue eyes, and all of a sudden this is all about instead how Dean and Cas look paired next to each other, and it becomes a message about Team Free Will: that Sam didn’t have to make that choice because Cas was there to resolve it without anyone getting killed, and so it’s a powerful moment of Cas saving Sam, Sam trusting Cas enough to take the knife away from Dean’s throat, and then finally, our only Dean n Cas interaction while he’s a demon, where Cas grips him tight and saves him from his own personal hell. 

Even though they don’t exchange any real dialogue except Cas telling Dean it’s over, I think it’s so important to show this, if not any other interaction, because the eyes together like this represent the depths they’ve respectively sunk to at this point, with Cas having been on the stolen grace arc for 3 episodes and just topped up by Crowley in an act of mutual desperation, mirroring Dean’s demon issues almost scene for scene in some cases in 10x01 as well. It’s sort of the culmination moment of the journeys they’ve been on, and there’s a lot of good and bad and grey areas in what they’ve learned and experienced in that time because it’s Carver era so there’s a lot of that sort of exploration of themes of the lengths people go to and what is a monster and what is human and how human can a demon or an angel be and so on. And Cas’s angelic nature at that point is NOT a good thing because Crowley just gave him a stay of execution, with stolen grace, for selfish reasons, that won’t stop Cas dying any time soon. 

(Part of the reason I feel like season 10′s plot changed at the end so much is because Cas’s grace issue and all the ethical stuff set up gets changed so much. 10x02 and 10x17 work together because Dabb, mirroring what Hannah would do for Cas to get his real grace vs what Cas would do to save Dean, but 10x18 waves it all away for Cas, and the story abruptly ends with him just being fine again, and no further part to play in the story. The fact his whole season had been kind of about his grace and these ethical implications about it all really makes me feel robbed of some sort of huge Cas thing and I’d love Dabb to get back to whatever it was going to have been when the biggest ideas were on the drawing board back at the start of season 10, especially because I think his fingers were in the pie with that one :P) 

Anyways. It was really neat to see them do the eye thing side by side, and I could probably talk about it literally all day so I think I’m just going to force a stop here :P

[nerdylittleshit]

Thoughts about Spn 13x12

SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

Great Episode. Many things to love. And also very meta-ish? Like, there were several moments where I looked at my screen and just thought “I see what you did there”. Definitely lot of things worth a second look, discussion and speculation. So, without further rambling, let’s get to it.

There is no I in Team

Especially if there is no team to begin with. I bet these are the moments where Cas admitted to himself that Crowley wasn’t that bad after all. I love that Cas didn’t even consider for a single moment to work together with Lucifer, that he only used him to break out (and only after he learned that Mary was in danger) and stabbed him at the first opportunity he got. Also, apparently Cas’s new superpower is to sit and wait and annoy everyone around him long enough until he gets where he wants to (I mean this worked for me as a teenager as well).

What this episode proved is that Lucifer without his power is a useless character. His one defining characteristic is that he is one of the most powerful and therefore dangerous beings, who just looks down on everyone. Take his power away there is not much left besides a man who hates everyone, and that is just pathetic. And to contrast this, we have Cas, who is a fully flashed character, who is above all things kind, and loyal and devoted. What is so special about Cas is not his powers or the fact that he is an angel, but who he is, as a person. Lucifer is not a person. And to further contrast this Cas tells him about Jack, about the things he likes, about the good in him. He never mentions Jack’s powers, the only thing he has in common with his father. Only time will tell how Jack will react to his father however. Still, all Lucifer talked about was the absence of his powers and the only time Cas talked for a longer time it was about Jack, the person, not the Nephilim.

I have seen a few complains about the Casmodeus-plot or rather people feeling like it had no use, now that Cas is free and will be reunited with the brothers. I have to admit I wasn’t invested in the Casmodeus-plot and had no real desire to see him further interacting with Sam and Dean. We already had this storyline with Casifer. If anything it is about time they set up a safe-word to make sure Cas is really Cas in the future. I think the purpose of Casmodeus was to explain Cas’s absence and at the same time to find a reason why Sam and Dean are not worried about him. It is possible though Yockey simply thought it was a stupid idea to begin with. I mean Lucifer says that shapeshifting wasn’t one of the powers he gave to Asmodeus, which might be Yockey’s way of saying it was entirely Bucklemming’s idea. And really, they could have explained Cas’s absence with him actually looking for Jack. The random demon says they have plans for Cas however, so there might be a reason why he had to be Asmodeus’s prisoner. I also thought that it was odd that Sam and Dean hadn’t filled in Cas at this point. Why wouldn’t they tell Cas that Jack is missing, especially when Cas(modeus) called every day and asked about him?

There were also a few shout-outs to the audience: Cas being called a pretty boy, Lucifer bringing up the nurture vs nature debate and Cas saying that Jack looks nothing like Lucifer (because he looks like Cas).

The queen is dead, long live the queen

Y’ALL, ROWENA IS BACK! I know I said that before, but ever since her storyline is no longer tied to Crowley’s she has become such an interesting, layered, complex character. She has been around for such a long time and every time we see her we learn a bit more about her, but there is still so much left to explore.

Speaking of Crowley though, Rowena of course greets the Winchesters the same way her son did (“Hello boys”), which might mean she is gonna replace his role in the narrative. And to be honest she is the only character that I would allow to do that. Also, we finally see someone mourn Crowley. For all the hate between Rowena and her son, I always doubted they actually wanted to see each other dead, even though they tried to kill each other. Crowley was the only link left to Rowena’s past, to the woman she was before she became a witch, to her humanity. She doesn’t care that he died as a hero, because it means he is still dead, still not with her, because the only way she can love is in a selfish way. (I wonder if she tries to bring him back from the dead?)

The biggest emotional depth about this episode was that it acknowledged Rowena’s abuse at the hands off Lucifer and with that Sam’s shared trauma as well. Which was such a huge thing, and honestly the conversation between Sam and Rowena in the car was the best part of the episode for me. 11x10 was the turning point in Rowena’s story, because it was back then when she revealed to Crowley why she hated him, because her son was a constant reminder of his father using her and that love was nothing more than a weakness. And then moments later Lucifer killed her and I remember how angry I was after the episode because just as Rowena’s was revealed as a victim of abuse she died of the hands of yet another abuser. And not only once, but twice, admitting that Lucifer showed her his true face. Rowena is scared and she is scared all the time, which is paralyzing for someone as powerful and powerhungry as her. She believes the only way to end this fear is to kill Lucifer, once and for all.

Sam of course can relate. He has seen Lucifer’s real face as well, which creates a certain kind of intimacy between these two. And just as Rowena Sam can’t outrun his abuser. After his time in hell Lucifer first returned as Hallucifer in season 7 and later from the cage wearing one of his best friends and invading his home in season 11 (and next week he will learn that Lucifer is back once again). And yet Sam knows that nothing they will do to Lucifer will make the fear and the feeling of being helpless ever disappear. And despite Sam caring around this trauma for eight years, I don’t remember it has ever been addressed so directly. In the end Sam gives Rowena the page to unlock her power nevertheless, hoping she (and maybe he as well) will find some peace with it (also glad they didn’t keep that a secret for too long).  

So what does that mean for the future? For one thing I am sure Lucifer has to die. Either through Rowena or Rowena and Sam together or Lucifer sacrifices himself as part of a redemption arc. Honestly though, after this episode and the painful reminder who Lucifer truly is I doubt he will get a redemption arc (another “no, thank you” from Yockey to Bucklemming?). Also, we learned that all this time Rowena wasn’t even operating on full power. With Rowena having all her magic back she could become the real big bad in the end. Though I would rather have it if after she kills Lucifer she realizes that all that power doesn’t bring her happiness and lets her magic go and becomes human again.  Also, that whole scene where she gets her powers back? Kudos to both Ruth and Amanda Tapping. That was such a huge powerful feminist scene. And were her eyes blue in the end or purple? Her magic has always been purple, so that would make sense, and so far we have only seen blue eyes with angels. Hmmm.

Sibling mirrors

Say what you want about Jamie and Jennie but I really liked their clothes/style. Anyway, they were meant as one big dark mirror for the Winchesters, trying to bring back their dead mother, and willing to kill everyone around them for it (at least flower guy died smiling). This is the same as Sam releasing the Darkness in order to save Dean from the MoC or Dean threating Kaia in order to save Mary. None of these things have been portrayed as positive however and in the end the sisters kill each other, which is enough of a statement for the brother’s codepency.

So, let’s talk about the love spell a bit, because Yockey did manage to sneak in a lot of Destiel stuff. First they mention that a true love’s kiss can wake you up, and obviously fandom has been giddy about the idea of Cas saving Dean from the spell through a kiss. Then we have Dean coming back, telling Sam it is time to call Cas, and the very next thing he says is that he is in love. Ahem. Dean wants Jaime to move in, because this is big time, and well who already has a room in the bunker? Cas of course. Dean calls Jaime his soulmate and talks about cosmic fate, both terms that have been used in a million fan fiction. Dean acting under a love spell is basically how most people imagine Dean to act once Destiel finally becomes canon. And isn’t it great that the only time we see Dean kissing a women this season is through a love spell, resulting in literary false love? Like the only way Dean is even remotely interested in anyway is through a spell. Because he is of course already in love. Also bless Rowena for asking about the fifth base (I had to look this up though, poor sheltered girl that I am).

So let’s talk a moment about Sam. I love that they continue to address his depression, that they have finally fully acknowledged his trauma caused by Lucifer and him opening up to Dean. For as much as the first half the season focussed on Dean’s grief I hope we get the same attention for Sam now. Despite being around for 12,5 years Sam at times still feels like a blank page and in some ways to fault is with the writers who seem to focus more on Dean than Sam. So, I’m all in for more of Sam’s struggle. Here he admits that his way of coping was to come up with a plan: helping Jack and through that being able to save Mary. Now both Jack and Mary are gone, there is no plan B and the MoL library is as useless as usual (seriously the only helpful book in there is the Grimoire and seeing that AU!Kevin used a spell to open the rift I wonder of Rowena could help them saving Mary and Jack). Without his plan Sam has nothing left to distract him, to shield him from the pain he is going through. Sam looked at a horrible situation and tried to make the best out of it, looking at the options he still had. Dean mourned different; he was in no state to even begin to hope or to form a plan. Dean drowned in his pain until Cas come back, until he had his win, and only after he was able to function again. Sam however had ignored said pain until Jack was gone as well, and now it is crushing him. Obviously I want Sam to get better as well, but for now I love that the show explores his emotional journey and I hope we see a bit more of it in the upcoming episodes.

Until next week, when my review will look like this: DANNEEL! DANNEEL! DANNEEL!!!!!

[supertransural]

My Bloody Valentine, what the hell

Okay. I know I'm probably not writing a hot take with this one, but I just needed to get all my tangled up thoughts out in the form of coherent strings of words ("coherent" is debatable as you'll probably find out if you read this entire thing).

So here I was, watching a random commentary video, and this scene from 5x14 My Bloody Valentine was included in it:

Now that. That's a bi flag. We know how much care set designers put into the details of the scenes we see. This is an episode centered around love. The cupid here talks about "Love", as in, the broad term. The "all-encompassing" term, if you will. He also says he "loves love", which I personally interpret as "in all its shapes and forms", and I don't believe that interpretation of what the cupid is saying is that far-fetched, after all, he kind of is Love (with a capital L). So what does that scene mean?

Let's find out.

First of all, I just feel like I should mention that I think pansexuality would be a better way to "represent" that sort of sentiment around what Love is, but if I'm not mistaken, the pansexual flag was created after this episode aired, and even if the word "pansexual" has existed for a pretty long time in various studies and areas (usually in psychology, if I understand correctly?), and has been used in LGBTQ+ spaces for a while too, it's still not as "commonly known" in the day-to-day life of cishet people, at least not in the same way that being bi is.

That being said, here's one more little nugget before I do a quick analysis of the scene. The idea of being bi is probably the closest thing that any not-very-informed-but-supportive-ish cishet person could think of if they wanted to relate the concept of "love for the sheer sake of love, having love for anyone, love of the masses" to actual characters and how they're able to love their peers (or more accurately, which peers). It's not so surprising to me that this would be the flag chosen by set designers when trying to pass on the message of "this interaction is about love as a general concept, this cupid is love, this cupid loves everyone, and will bless any couple, and yeah in that scene two out of the three characters (other than the cupid himself) stand in front of that light, no reason haha". It makes sense.

Now, onto the actual substance of this.

First of all, because it's funny, Dean why are you literally staring at this cupid's dick, honestly, what the fuck, Sam is averting his eyes (good call), Cas looks like he's only interested in analyzing the cupid's face (more on that later) and nothing else, why are you staring downwards why why why and why (hello, jacting choices). Second of all, because it's funny too, why do you look slightly flustered, in an oh-god-this-is-not-a-drill-shit-oh-god-fuck-embarrassed way? I mean Sam looks like he's been to hell and back, but not flustered.

It's also specifically interesting to see both Cas and Dean being the ones standing together in front of that light. It happens just a little while before, right here:

They're. Staring at a cupid, whose job it is to bless couples, who's Love incarnate, he hugged these two idiots first before getting to Sam, which means something and I'm not exactly sure what but, if you still have braincells (unlike me) please tell me what you conclude of those facts compiled together.

In this particular scene, I don't think the flag is actually a pointer to specific characters being bi, I think it's more of a broad "yeah these guys love a little different" kind of thing. For example, we see Cas in front of that light a lot.

This is season 5, he's barely starting to understand what emotions are, but he's already faithful to Dean and his cause, he's beginning to get what liking things, what caring means. He doesn't figure it all out until way later (in my personal opinion, that is. And I mean... 15x18 anyone?) no, at that point he's driven by things like want, need, yeah, I'll say it, lust, or simple candid curiosity. But that ties into the idea that right now, in that episode, Cas' understanding of "Love" is very broad. He doesn't understand details yet, the only detail he knows is Dean vs the World, and all he gets about that is "the world matters to Dean, there's probably a reason for that, if I follow him around enough I'll probably discover it, and I trust him enough to lead me there". He's still an angel, fairly through and through. He's curious, though.

Refer back to that previous gif, Cas is watching with acute interest what that cupid is doing. Prior to this scene, he's known the "mission" that cupids uphold for thousands of years, but I doubt he's ever really looked at it with the help of the lens of actual humans (read: Dean). He's interested, this cupid's job is to create love, and that seems to be something inherently tied to what makes his charge... himself. That much he knows. Again, probably not in detail, probably not that precisely, but he's got a sense that this cupid represents something he doesn't know and hasn't felt before, yet something Dean and Sam are accustomed to, and driven by. So yeah, he's curious.

Now here's the thing. We see Dean standing in front of that light, both alone, with the cupid, and with Cas. On several occasions.

(something something something bi flag in the background something something something character centered around love something something something the word "dick" something something something what the fuck CW)

We see the cupid standing in front of the light (scroll back up), and we see Cas in front of the light, with the cupid, alone, and with Dean. What about Sam?

...Yeah, no. I replayed that scene several times and I didn't find one instance where we see Sam even remotely lighted by that flag. And when I say remotely, I mean like this:

The light being somewhat noticeable in the background. Even when we see Sam after he moves a bit, like so:

The light is nowhere to be seen. That's after the cupid's left too, so it makes sense the flag wouldn't be relevant anymore: the entity that it represents isn't there to give it meaning anymore. I mean, during that entire scene Sam's a bit (gross understatement, I know) of a background character, but that's simply because he's not the main focus of what the cupid and the flag mean.

Dean though. Dean's a focus alright. No one can ever convince me otherwise, he's bi. That's just a fact at this point. But that's not all the flag and the cupid mean when relating to him here. He's beginning to form a type of bond with Cas, albeit small. He's starting to open up a door that he's never really noticed before: the one that lets people other than blood relatives (or close runner-ups like Bobby) in. And he's facing that head on, like how he's facing the cupid. Both he and Cas do that actually, in their own way. They're looking straight into the eyes of the unknown (Cas literally looks into the eyes of the cupid): for Cas it's this strange foreign thing called emotion, and for Dean it's letting a known emotion be directed at someone new. They're the ones that talk to the cupid, not Sam, because they have things to be curious or apprehensive about, in the context of love (or different love).

They stand in the highlight of that flag, because they're the ones discovering new things (hello, 10x16 speech, yes I'm relating a random scene with a funny light to a speech 5 seasons later, leave me be, I'm insane) and not Sam, who's for one: human, so he already knows what love is, and two: way more in touch with his feelings than his brother. Basically, the concept of Love being something strange, unknown, new, different, scary, worth punching it in the face for, deserving of focused study, take your pick, doesn't really apply to him.

How could I relate this to destiel you ask? Very easily, I say. This, theydies and gentlethems, is a representation of the first step both Cas and Dean take towards each other. A toe in the waters of a frightening and captivating new thing. And again, they face it in a really direct manner.

That is... Right up until the cupid mentions John and Mary. That's when it goes downhill and we understand that whatever Dean and Cas have going on is about to take years of work and a million steps still need to be taken.

Exhibit a:

Look at Cas' face, when the cupid mentions the Big Plan. He starts by studying the cupid (again, curiosity), then looks at Dean, then Dean briefly looks back (perhaps back at Cas but that's debatable), and that's when Cas looks down, embarrassed. I read that as: "Ah yes, as interesting of a concept this cupid is, as fascinating as these two humans' perspective on his mission is, it's still dictated by Heaven, and they're not going to like that. I'm still dictated by Heaven (as I should (???)) and... He's not going to like that. (???)".

Annnnd then Dean punches the cupid in the face, which... Good point, Cas, he indeed doesn't "like that".

So what are those steps highlighted by the ending of that scene? Well, Cas is an angel. Dean is clueless about so many things. He doesn't have faith. Cas isn't exactly free. It's just always about the plan and the mission, whatever comes up in their tumultuous adventures together, it always brings them right back to the core of why there's still such a long way to go: who they are.

All in all, that scene is just. Imagery there, imagery here, reference after reference, big red arrows (yes, I'm using "arrows" in the context of a cupid episode, I fully intend this sentence to have a double meaning) pointing at Dean and at Cas and at them both together. It's not necessarily a direct reference at either of them being bi, although for obvious reasons that's not exactly off the table either, it's sort of a piece of foreshadowing for what's to come, both in that season itself, and the rest of their relationship (here I use "relationship" as a term meaning something like "friendship-that-evolves-into-something-more-later-on").

In short, I'd like to conclude (you can use that as a TL;DR) by quoting my brain when I first saw that flag and connected a couple dots:

"lol bi".

[cupidsbower]

Making the most of teachable moments

Supernatural 12x12, “Stuck in the Middle (With You).”

Anon, a few days ago, you asked me, “Why drop the 'I love you' bomb right now? What do you think?” and lo, I have remembered, and actually have an answer for you! It’s all about the teachable moments, you see.

This isn’t the first time the show has used the phrase “teachable moment.” Way back in season 9, I believe, Dick Roman had a gross teachable moment that involved auto-cannibalism -- I didn’t watch that season (for which I’m newly grateful, because ewwwww), so I’m relying on transcripts and whatnot (I think elizabethrobertajones mentioned it in her meta too, which I haven’t finished reading yet). But anyway, as Dean tells us, teachable moments are important.

I mean, obviously he was being a little shit at the time, but what Dean says is nearly always Significant, and so it is here.

So, how do we recognise a teachable moment?

Recognize that your children often learn moral lessons unconsciously, in casual moments.

Be aware of situations that represent moral choices.

Talk with your children about the ethical challenges represented in everyday situations, the media and popular culture.

Praise your children for their ethical choices.

Point out ethical behavior in others.

Let your children see your own thought processes regarding ethical decisions. (x)

We have several different teachable moments in the episode, although I think it’s debatable that anyone learned anything from them (apart from Castiel).

All of these moments, Anon, are about love.

The episode opens with Mary and Mr Ketch, although we don’t know it’s Mary he’s talking to at first. Just that he asks for a story, a deliberate incongruous way of asking for a report, invoking bedtime stories which often have a moral to them.

In the background, we have a cliched be-bop song about true love, as “sweet as an angel.”

Lover Boy, by Toodlum Barker & Emil Lomax 

Put it all together, and we have the past raising its head. John is being evoked. Mary is still missing him, missing being a wife and partner, and loved by someone that doesn’t expect her to mother them. With hindsight, it’s obvious this is invoking John because by the end we know the McGuffin of the episode is the Colt. It has all that horrible history associated with it that Mary likely doesn’t know, but which is all about John and his obsession and loss after Mary’s death. In these opening moments of the episode, there’s something bittersweet and nostalgic about this song playing, and “Tell me a story.” John and Mary weren’t always a tragedy, even though it sometimes seems that way. Despite everything, there was love there too.

The next story we get is about cattle mutilations and missing virgins over breakfast, and it is a more of a story than Sam, Dean and Cas realise. We don’t know it yet, but Wally is lying at Mary’s behest. He doesn’t live long enough for a teachable moment.

Sure they all get an awesome power walk - most ironic ever, amirite? But poor Wally doesn’t live long enough to really appreciate the joke.

We learn about Wally’s lie in the flashback between he and Mary. We discover Mary has some kind of secret agenda, although not what it is. But the thing that interested me most was the song playing during this scene -- it’s a call-back to John again, and heartbreaking again.

Not For Me, by Bobby Darin

Mary tells us that technically she’s in her 60s in this conversation. Yeah, she is not okay. When she says to Sam, “Since when is life about getting what you want?” we should be reading it as a big fat red alert for just how not okay things are for Mary.

Do you know what the number one rule of storytelling is? It’s asking every main character, “What do you want?” And then showing us what they’ll do to try to get it.

So if Mary doesn’t think she’ll get what she wants -- and the subtext is telling us she wants love/John -- then what is motivating her? This is a woman who made a demon deal to get John back once before, remember. Do we even know what her limits are? If you’re not creeped out right now, you should be.

Skipping forward, we reach the climax of the episode, and at the tipping point of the season. Here is were we get our most important teachable moment.

Castiel’s love bomb

It is not a coincidence that Castiel looks towards Mary as well as Sam and Dean during this scene. The scene is obviously about many things, and a lot of meta has already been written about it, much of it excellent. It is about him loving Dean/Humanity and finally saying so. It is about the rule against angels loving humans that we learned about in 12x10. It is about taking the last chance to speak while he has it. It’s is about claiming family. It’s all of those things and more. But it’s also a reminder to Mary that families change and grow, that new people come into our lives, that love comes in other shapes than the ones in her memory, that love can change you for the better, that her sons are grown and have their own lives and can be more than a one-way emotional drain -- they can love back and be a support to her too, and so can the people they love.

And it’s also about the (unintended) consequences of Mary’s actions. The angel she always believed was watching over her boys has been mortally wounded as a direct result of her machinations. The family her boys made when she wasn’t there is going to be broken.

This is interesting. Heartbreaking, but super interesting.

It tells us a lot about whatever it is that Mary wants. She may have said to Sam that she doesn’t expect to get what she wants, but whatever this is, she must want it an awful lot to keep playing her hand after this.

Does she take the lesson of Castiel’s confession, though? Does the teachable moment work? I suspect not, or not yet. Later she tells Ketch that Castiel is one of her boys, the implication being that she accepted this love declaration, believed it, and valued it. But... she doesn’t come clean to Sam, Dean and Castiel either. Rather than honesty and sharing her plan, her response is to threaten death and destruction to the BMoL, an eye for an eye, and hello again Lily Sunder. We know how that ends already.

Is Mary doomed to repeat the same mistakes that Castiel, Dean, Sam and John have all made before her? Or will she figure it out and change the script?

Time for another teachable moment, perhaps. Because this is Crowley’s theme for the episode, and if anyone is an example of changing the script, it’s Crowley.

Crop Won’t Ever Come, by Robin Loxley & Jay Hawke 

Another fantastically chosen, but super depressing song. Crowley is still holding that torch for Dean, and it’s never going to end in anything good... well, not in terms of love. But it might in terms of Crowley’s soul. You never know.

What I enjoy about Crowley is that he’s actually all squishy inside, full of feelings, but he also has this genuine cunning streak that is nearly always underestimated. For all his personal investment in the Winchesters, there’s also a practical aspect to it -- the Winchesters win and win and win, so who wants them as an enemy? No-one smart, that’s who.

He’s at the point where he literally tells people the Winchesters always win, no matter what, and not to fuck with them, although he pitches it a bit differently depending on the audience -- calling them weapons to the weapons collector he’s trying to make a deal with, as a case in point. But no-one ever believes him. And then, for example, they get stuck in the middle by Sam wielding the Michael Lance and turn into dust. I do love a spot of black humour, and I’m sure Crowley does too. :)

I think the most delicious part of it is the way other demons roll their eyes and imply Crowley’s just saying that about the Winchesters because he’s their pet.

He really is Cas’ dark mirror in all things.

Anyway, he breaks the Lance, saves Cas, earns brownie points with the Winchesters, and thinks he has the Colt up his sleeve as insurance now that Ramiel is out of the picture. Poor Crowley. It’s so hard being the accidentally promoted King of Hell.

To return to the main theme of the episode: Love and Mary’s lesson, and being stuck. We have one final song to consider:

Stuck In The Middle With You, by Stealers Wheel

It’s surprisingly upbeat, right? And I think it’s because of that “you.” Being stuck is no fun, but with “you” has a different implication altogether, especially in light of Castiel’s love bomb.

The title of this episode is a pun, of course, as we do get two characters literally stuck in the middle. But it is also a metaphor.  It’s the middle of the season, half way between the set up of the themes (love through the lens of nature vs nurture) and their culmination. It’s the Sunrise Special, the moment that bridges day and night, darkness and light. It’s Humanity, stuck between Heaven and Hell. Crowley and Castiel, not quite Human, not quite Other. Mary, stuck half way between the past and the now, between her memories of her sons and the real men they are. It’s about love that’s stuck too, in a place between “chick flick moments” and the fear of never getting what you want -- ”Not for Me” and “Crop Won’t Ever Come.”

We just took a big step forward, though, on that last one. Because Castiel finally spoke, and Dean recognised the teachable moment and rewarded him for it too. He couldn’t say it back (yet), but he said, “Let’s go home,” and this time Castiel actually heard it.

Final things:

The British Men of Letters have terrible information. Where are they getting it? Do they even properly know what the gadgets and weapons they’ve got can do? I’m starting to think their gross incompetence is going to be their downfall.

Richard Speight Jr.’s direction was really slick. Very Tarantino, obviously, but I do love clever non-chron storytelling, and this was used to very good effect.

How does Lucifer fit into the season’s love theme? I’m fascinated - and want to find out.

Previously:

The Ministry of Information vs Wayward Sons Carrying On (12x01)

My, my, how can I resist you? (12x02) and follow-up about Bohemian Raphsody

So what am I so afraid of? (I think I love you) (12x03)

I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy Down in my heart (Where?) (12x04) and a follow-up about the codependency and about Dean’s self-flagellation and issues with space

There can be only one! (12x05), and a follow-up conversation with elizabethrobertajones on Freud vs Schwartz.

They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes (12x06)  

Presenting the Immaculate Heart Reunion Tour (12x07)    

I’m still living the life where you get home and open the fridge and there’s half a pot of yogurt and a half a can of flat Coca-Cola. ~Alan Rickman (12x08, 12x09)

When the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men (12x10)    

in re (12x11)            

[almaasi]

reaction post typed while watching SPN 12x12 “Stuck In The Middle (With You)”

well THIS is some delightfully interesting bullshit right here

06:43

frankly i am not ready and i don’t think i will ever be ready

i saw some shit on instagram and i went from being “scared but interested” to HYPED and now i’m scared again

i just want cas to come out of this okay

like that’s what i’m here for, just cas being alive and loved (by dean. but also sam and mary)

-

06:48

*DEEP BREATHS*

-

06:50

mr ketch is definitely cute, in a murderous stephen fry kind of way

-

06:52

cas: “cheese isn’t a carbohydrate”

i guess cas read up on the ketchup vs vegetables debate

give me a nutritionist!cas au stat

-

06:54

cas: “sunrise special please”

CAS IS SUNSHINE

also flustered under mandy’s attention BECAUSE HE ALREADY HAS A BOYFRIEND

RIGHT

RIGHT???

-

06:55

guess sam’s magic wifi hair doesn’t work any more

-

06:56

what i have learned here is that dean is turned on by the smell of food

give me cas bathing himself in strawberry syrup before bed

-

06:57

obviously there’s something else going on but right now it kind of looks like mary’s uncomfortable with either a) using mandy as part of a plan, or b) dean instructing his boyfriend to go flirt with someone else

edit: probably more like uncomfortable that they’re trying to make cas flirt and not focusing on the issue at hand

-

06:59

CAS SNIFFING PEOPLE

OH GOD CAS YOU’RE SO INAPPROPRIATE AND SO UNAWARE OF IT

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

sidenote, cas was the only one who didn’t get screentime when mary asked if everyone understood the plan

-

07:01

DEAN: “MY SHY BUT DEVASTATINGLY HANDSOME FRIEND”

OKAY THAT’S CANON

GUYS THAT JUST HAPPENED DEAN JUST DESCRIBED CAS AS DEVASTATINGLY HANDSOME

CONTEXT DOESN’T MATTER BECAUSE THOSE WORDS CAME OUT OF DEAN’S MOUTH

-

07:03

dean: “when do you get off?”

mandy: “whenever i can”

woooowwwww go mandy

also i’m so concerned for cas right now DID HE CONSENT TO BEING USED AS A HONEY TRAP I DON’T THINK SO

HE HASN’T SAID A WORD ON THIS

edit: mandy wasn’t even part of the plan ?? i’m ????

-

07:05

DID I JUST SEE A BLACK GUY DIE FIRST

///SQUINTS REALLY HARD

-

07:06

and then a white guy BUT THEN THE (asian? native american?) LADY

AAAND WE’RE BACK TO ZERO REPRESENTATION

WHAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

ARE THEY ACTUALLY KIDDING LIKE

DO THEY EVEN SEE THE ISSUE

DOES ANYONE MAKING THIS SHOW EVEN REALISE WHAT THEY’RE DOING

fuck 

y’know i’m just gonna have to let this go right now because i can’t even comprehend how ferociously problematic this show is

i just wanna enjoy it for my fave characters and i can’t do that unless i bundle the problems into a box and forget about them for now

-

07:09

still thinking about it though

this is trump’s america, where problematic bad things happen so often and with zero time to process that you just get to the point where it’s like “oh great another social apocalypse, must be thursday”

-

07:12

“the wounded angel” // “earlier”

i feel like i’ve watched a movie like this (certainly a lot of tv show episodes clearly all based on the same source material)

pulp fiction or something idk

something bizarre and character-action-driven that doesn’t make a lot of sense until the end

-

07:14

AW MAN THAT SLOW MOTION WALKING SHOT IS GONNA MAKE A REALLY GOOD GIF

THANK YOU GABRIEL RICHARD SPEIGHT JR

-

07:20

IS THAT YELLOW EYES

WHAT

WHAT WHAT WHAT

-

07:21

nOOOOOO CAS 

NOBODY HARPOONS MY BABY AND LIVES

except dean, who stabbed him first, married him later

-

07:21

YYYEEEEEEE MARY SAVING CAS WITH THE CAR

-

07:23

and while mary and sam are talking about yellow-eyes, dean is smothering cas in kisses and magic healing tears, yes? yes

-

07:26

WOW WAS THAT FLIRTY LOOK DEAN GAVE DIRECTED AT CAS

I THINK SO

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE THO

-

07:26

i watched that bit again I THINK DEAN WAS SIGNALLING TO CAS THAT MANDY’S RESPONSE WAS A POSITIVE THING

aaaah the people who subtly and automatically support autistic friends are the best

also why is dean so determined to get cas to like other people?? CAN’T YOU JUST ACCEPT THAT CAS IS ALL YOURS AND WILL FOREVER BE YOURS

-

07:30

is this glowing yellow thing from the safe gonna be a hand of god or whatever

-

07:32

the men of letters are labelled as “hobbits” in mary’s phone

-

07:34

crowley arrives. “you idiots. you’re all going to die.”

@ people who voted for trump

-

07:35

mary: “touch me and i’ll kill you”

things everyone ought to say to crowley (and trump)

-

07:35

CROWLEY CALLED CAS FEATHERS

(quietly laughing bc bobby called cas that in my fic Lucid Nightmare which i posted yesterday cough cough shameless plug go read it if you haven’t already)

-

07:39

“name’s crowley, king of the crossroads”

DJFJGF THE CUCKOO IN THE BACKGROUND

(ba dum tiss)

-

07:43

ramiel (sp?) gives crowley the throne of hell

OH HEY LOOK AT THAT they just filled in a narrative gap that’s been empty for years

-

07:47

crowley: “hey, i was growing fond of the choirboy too”

was that a lowkey “cas is gay” joke??

-

mmmm yes give me dean so concerned about cas his voice goes all breathy

-

07:52

“three humans with one good liver between them, and a busted up angel”

:/

that team free will season 12 aesthetic

-

07:53

WHEN WILL THE WINCHESTERS STOP THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW

-

07:55

okay but cas grunting in pain is kind of sexy in a way god help me

my faves being sick and dying is okay so long as they pull through and someone Cares About Them a lot

-

07:57

“the things we’ve shared together, they’ve changed me”

cas looks at dean when he says “they’ve changed me”

;a;

-

07:58

“i love you”

i cry

i CRY

CAS

and THE FACT THE REACTION SHOT IS ONLY DEAN

WOW

thanks richard speight jr that decision was an a++ decision

-

the slow zoom in on dean

i’m sweating

and shaking

help

-

08:00

............i just realised i’m watching this under the assumption that cas is getting out of this alive

DEAR GOD IF HE DOESN’T MAKE IT

OH NO

OH NO WHAT IF HE DOESN’T

IS THIS GOOD STORYWRITING AND DIRECTING MAKING ME WORRY OR IS THERE ACTUALLY A DANGER THAT HE MIGHT NOT MAKE IT

SHIT I SHOULD’VE CHECKED TUMBLR FIRST

NOW I DON’T WANT TO

HE’D BETTER FUCKING MAKE IT

MY HEART IS POUNDING I’M SO SCARED

-

08:10

THERE’S 10 MINUTES OF THE EPISODE LEFT, THAT’S ENOUGH TIME TO SAVE HIM RIGHT

-

08:03

“LIKE YOU SAID, YOU’RE FAMILY. AND WE DON’T LEAVE FAMILY BEHIND”

that look dean and cas share, cas’ eyes are wet

THAT WAS DEAN SAYING “I LOVE YOU TOO”

OH GOD

-

08:03

THEY ALL LOVE CAS SO MUCH THIS IS SO SATISFYING

SO MANY YEARS WE’VE ALL BEEN SO FRUSTRATED WITH HOW THEY TREAT CAS 

THIS IS GOOD

BUT HE’D BETTER NOT FREAKING DIE

-

08:09

black goop again

SOMEONE’S GONNA HELP CAS RIGHT

LIKE HE’S GONNA BE FINE RIGHT

PLEASE

PLEASE

-

08:10

C

R

O

W

L

E

Y

-

like i never thought i’d say this but

thank you crowley

thank you so, so much

oh 

god

i’m

dying

thank

-

08:11

I DEMAND THAT DEAN SMOTHERS CAS IN KISSES RIGHT THE FUCK NOW

-

08:12

i just

i want dean to go up behind cas and softly press his cheek between cas’ shoulder blades and wrap his arms around cas’ waist and breathe in deeply

oh god i’m so relieved

i can’t imagine what dean’s feeling

soMEONE CUDDLE CAS OH GOD HE NEEDS SO MANY CUDDLES

-

08:14

OKAY BUT

I JUST REALISED

what the fuck was all the stuff with cas flirting with mandy about

dean saying he was looking for “teachable moments”

DEAN YOU CAN’T TEACH CAS TO LIKE GIRLS

HE LIKES YOU, YOU HOPELESS LITTLE SHIT

i guess maybe that was the point of this narrative, cas will always choose team free will, dean pretends cas isn’t in love but GODDAMN HE IS

edit: or maybe dean’s not actually trying to make cas interested, he’s legit just trying to teach cas how flirting works, and what a positive response is?? and mandy just happened to be there and flirty. i mean, sure, i’ll go with that. quick question though, why didn’t dean just flirt with cas himself, like in all the fanfics, that would be better

-

08:16

mr ketch is kinda crosseyed

cute

-

08:17

CAS IS ONE OF MARY’S BOYS

HALLELUJAH

-

08:18

mr ketch is so fluffy-haired and cute i don’t know what to do

i hate him

but he’s smol

idk idk idk

-

08:19

wait wait it’s the colt

where was the colt supposed to be

heck

-

08:19

(real life interrupts)

ooh there’s lightning outside!! eee

the power may go out at any moment though, that’s the downside

IT’S MEANT TO BE SUMMER and all we’ve had is rain

(okay back to the show)

-

08:21

is that pellegrino!lucifer, i recognise the voice

-

08:22

yes it is

WELL THEN

-

08:22

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BOY

where to start

that was.... a lot of stuff

firsTLY CAS MADE IT OUT ALIVE AND EVERYONE LOVES HIM AND HE LOVES HIS FAMILY I’M SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS YOU HAVE NO IDEA (actually no you probably know exactly how happy i am. if you’re reading this, you probably agree)

BUT LIKE

WOW THIS SHOW NEEDS A SELF-REVIEW ON NOT KILLING CHARACTERS OF COLOUR

mandy made it out alive, and she had a name, a speaking part, and a character, so that’s +1 for everything

BUT... look i don’t think i even need to say it again, it’s a Problem

(my thoughts: here, and here)

i’ve never watched any other show with such a huge fucking issue with this

that aside, i think i just need to mostly ignore that specific problem until they fix it, because if i just focus on the bad shit i’m never gonna wanna watch the show again, and the characters are really important to me so i’ll come back anyway

LET’S FOCUS ON HOW INTERESTING THIS EPISODE WAS

and how well-formed and well-paced it was

AND HOW CAS DIDN’T FUCKING DIE HORRIBLY

and how i was actually legit terrified for a couple minutes

physically sweating with heart pounding

that was cool

9/10 probably

still confused about mandy and cas, that wasn’t necessary. same with dean and the lady in the bar last episode. as much as i’d love to see the “i love yous” in this episode as romantic between dean and cas, they clearly were only meant to be 50% romantic, interpreted whichever way the viewer prefers. so the showrunners are maybe adding in sidenote heterosexual elements that objectively mean nothing, but for those who like to see tfw as HetroStraight (TM), the info is just... there. but it’s not possible eradicate the bisexual/demi-asexual loVEFEST THAT’S BEEN BREWING FOR 9 YEARS THAT’S DEFINITELY THERE AND IS DEFINITELY ROMANTIC AND HAS BEEN ALL ALONG AND WILL ALWAYS BE, DESPITE SNEAKY HALF/HALF MAKE-UP-YOUR-OWN-MIND DIRECTING AND SCRIPTING

to be fair though, i’m learning a lot about how creators get the best of both worlds. this is the Bipartisan TV Show. this is the same way donald fucking trump and kellyanne fucking conway and all the other politics snake people manage to fuck everyone over and not answer questions. they present both sides of the argument, each “fact” contradicting the other, and the viewer picks the one they agree with, and explain away the other argument however they like.

which, admittedly, i’m currently doing when it comes to seeing romantic destiel as ever-present, because it’s the only way this show doesn’t make me lose my shit all the time

but I SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING, YOU PRIME BULLSHITTERS, YOU

I SEE YOU

I’M NOT HAPPY BUT I’M GONNA KEEP TORTURING MYSELF REGARDLESS BECAUSE YOU’RE PRETTY GOOD AT THIS ~ENTERTAINMENT~ BULLSHIT

BUT I’M TAKING NOTES

[dovesdanceatdusk]

potential unpopular opinion (it’s long so I’m putting it under a keep reading cut):

I’m sure some people out there caught on with the similarities of Cas and Mick.

Mick was:

Someone who became a part of Sam and Dean’s/American hunting world

Outsider to the norm of the show’s world (Sam and Dean’s world; American hunting community), but later integrated into said world enough to change personal perspective/world view. Mick’s Black and White knowledge taught to him at a young age shifts to the gray world Sam (and eventually) Dean understand exists.

Someone who blindly believed in the code; someone who followed orders from an organization that only believes in cold, righteous, discriminatory justice against the supernatural. Organization sees the supernatural and anyone who opposes the organization’s worldview as bad, dangerous, incompetent, and beneath them. (In Castiel’s case, it was heaven and the Host) (Some angels (s.4) viewed humans as mud-monkeys, Sam as an abomination, and demons as lowly creatures).

Someone who, after Sam and Dean showed him the gray aspects of hunting worldview, stood up to the higher ups and got punished for it (contrast: Mick dies, Castiel gets reprogrammed/fell from heaven-the Host). 

Someone who tried to convince the brothers the organization he works for is doing good in the world; convinces a brother while the other is skeptical (Castiel’s case, Dean is temporarily convinced whereas Sam is the seeing otherwise). This point can be debatable depending on your point of view. 

Moral independence counteracts with long-term programming (teachings from Kendricks; the code). 

There are more examples and parallels I might’ve missed, but I’ll move on to my questions. 

It seems like Mick was a parallel to Castiel, and if he was, why kill off a character with potential character development? And what will happen to Castiel if Mick was a parallel? [This is where it gets foggy for me because I don’t think Cas will be killed off, but I don’t know what’s going to happen with him either.] Why did the show punish (<--might be a strong word here) a character from gaining positive character development? 

This has happened before. Magda. She’s not a Castiel parallel, but there is a correlation between her and Mick. When she overcame her mother and chose not to kill, she was still killed for being who she was by the BMoLs (Ketch). Both characters were convinced they didn’t have to take drastic measures for justice, especially if they didn’t have to (or want to). 

Now, I’m shifting to another problem. One that also bothers me. With both Magda and Mick, Sam convinced them to change their minds. They stood up to a radical authority who believed an extreme of order and justice was good when it wasn’t. Both were killed after standing up for themselves and doing right by them (Magda after she stood up to her mom and took the next step for a better life; Mick after he stood up to Dr. Hess and challenged the BMoLs’ code/authority). 

Now, I’m not unfamiliar with this. If we focus on Sam, he was punished for doing the right thing. For choosing a different path outside the rules the narrative placed (choosing not to kill a supernatural being instead of following the black and white belief and killing the monster off, for instance). He’s been indirectly punished after saving a supernatural being that chose not to kill (in this season: Magda). He’s been yelled at or berated after he tried to sympathize with those in distress (Mary is a good example). He’s the damned if you do, damned if you don’t character to me, because no matter what he does to do right by others, he tends to be framed as the wrong one. Not necessarily all the time, and I know other people may see it differently (some people see this character as Dean, and that’s okay), but that’s what I see in Sam.

Season twelve has framed Sam a little differently from the previous seasons. In this season, it seems the writing wedges Sam into certain parameters that fit in the episode’s narrative (not the overall narrative, though I’m getting to that). And this season seems to frame Sam in a way that helps the narrative. Some would say plot device, but I think it’s more complicated that that. Because the framework is using Sam’s characterization against how he would normally react in the same scenario. 

In previous seasons, Sam stood up for himself and got berated and punished for it. The criticism or punishment led to Sam standing down or accepting the “Right” belief of the narrative. This season, Sam stands up for others, not himself necessarily, and then he’s framed, ever so slightly, to make a decision that aligns with his character, but not with what he would probably do. When you call the show out on it, you can’t deny he’s in character, but you know something’s off. 

Take Sam’s decision to join the BMoLs. His decision is in character. He sees the greater good over his own well being and past trauma. He looks out for and tries to protect family (Mary).* He tries to see the good in something that may be antagonistic (especially after killing the Alpha Vampire). 

He was in character when he found out Mick killed Hayden and told Mick they (Sam and Dean) were out. But then you see the off-ness. Sam and Dean allowing Mick back into the fold, doing drinking competitions . . . the seriousness of what Mick did to Hayden becomes minute, despite the narrative implying it was a bad thing to kill Hayden like that (and it still is, make no mistake). It’s a subtle framing, an off-ness that could be waved away as overthinking or freaking out over nothing. “It’s fine, stop worrying about this, it’s just a show.” Because it is just a show. See the complexity? Show: “Nothing to see here folks, move along.”

Then Mick, like Magda, becomes fridged. Possibly to slight the similar viewpoint (Sam and Dean’s); perhaps it’s plot device to lead you to bigger potentials: Sam (and Dean and the American hunting community) being hunted for his (their) gray perspective**; Sam and Dean (and the American hunting community) VS. BMoLs; Sam being framed as wrong despite his choices. Only difference between previous seasons and this season, is this season molded a reason for Sam (joining up with the BMoLs; being mediator/peacemaker) to be seen as wrong. Here’s to hoping that will not be the case.

*It’s debatable. Some people speculate Mary as a possible reason for Sam to join, while others do not. 

** Season twelve subtly implies the American hunting community sees the world with the gray perspective instead of the black and white when, in previous seasons, it was not always the case. 12x06. The hunters who gathered for Asa Fox’s funeral talked highly of both Sam and Dean as legends. In previous seasons, some hunters didn’t talk kindly (or highly) of or act reasonably around Sam (5x03; 5x16; 9x02)--and by extension Dean (5x16). 

Dean shifted his viewpoint of the supernatural world into a more gray perspective. He hasn’t always been the one to see the supernatural with a gray lens, and he sometimes reacts with knee jerk moments. Like when he sided against Mary twice for her actions; or not trusting the BMoLs after they had a hand in torturing Sam (regardless if it was said to only be by Toni’s (and Ms. Watt’s) hands). Reasonable actions, I might add, for Dean. 

However he worked on his own character development during this season (12x04 with Mary and Beth; 12x14, reasoning with Sam at the end; another example that I can’t think of right now but it’s there, I know it). It’s flat for me (glad he’s getting that development though) because I know it is leading to Sam, Dean, and whoever else is considered enemies of the BMoLs VS. BMoLs--with Mary caught in the middle. She will end up choosing a side; her decision, like Kelly’s, will have weighted reactions/consequences (because another fridged character (Billie) set the course for those potential consequences due to her death). 

Bonus round

Another speculation of mine: season twelve is so wonky for me but I think it’s because Dabb is building up to his real vision of the show to play out (season thirteen and beyond). This season not only sets up the next seasons (and the showrunner’s story), but it also tweaks the canon just enough to fix a few problems from the previous seasons. It’s a thin coat of paint to a dilapidated structure, but despite the off-ness of the details, it gets the job done (new showrunner, new house). I don’t like it, but it’s not enough for me to jump ship. Despite the off-ness, twelve is not too bad. Not the best, but hey. 

All speculation, of course. 

[fineapplespotionsclass-blog]

Ingredients Cheat Sheet A-S

Aconite Also known as Wolfsbane. Used in Wolfsbane potions and Wideye/Awakening potions. Leaves are toxic. Flowers and roots are used most often

Acromantula Venom highly valuable, difficult to obtain, very rare. Usage unknown, but probably used in poisons

Adder's Fork The forked tongue of an adder snake. Usage is unknown, but possibly poisonous

Allihosty Leaves induce hysteria and uncontrollable laughter. Pot must be stirred gently after adding to avoid causing damage to leaves

Angel's Trumpet All parts contain dangerous levels of poison and may be fatal to humans or animals.

Armadillo Bile Used in Wit-sharpening potion

Ashwinder Eggs Extremely hot and flammable. Must be frozen quickly or will light fire to the surrounding area. Especially used in love potions. An antidote to ague (stomach symptoms, most often associated with Malaria)

 Asphodel Powdered root of Ashopdel is used in Draught of Living Death and Wiggenweld potions Balm: Perennial herb that has leaves with a lemon smell. Has healing Properties and is used in wizarding remedies. Ex. Dried balm leaves are used in the treatment of mad dog bites.

Baneberry: the berries are the most poisonous part of the plant, they are presumably used in making baneberry potion Bat Spleen: ingredient in the draught of living death

Bat Wing: Used often in potion making, They are much thinner than the average bird wing, which makes them good for potions.

Bdelium: Gum-like myrrh that has magical properties such as 2 drachms of it were a component of Bench Powder.

Belladonna: Mundane plant with magical uses. Fluids from the poisonous plant are used by students at Hogwarts in potions class. It is a part of the standard potion-making kit.Also known as Atropa, Deadly Nightshade, Deaths Herb, Dwale, and Witch's berry. The seeds of this plant are purple.

Betony: Annual or perennial herbs. Regarded as the most important medicinal herb of the anglo-saxons of early medieval great Britain.

Bezoar:is a stone like mass taken from the stomach of a goat, that acts as an antidote to most poisons. *Basilisk Venom being one of the notable exceptions.

Billywig Sting: Has the ability to make a person float off of the ground.

Billywig sting slime: has curative properties. Is used in wiggenweld potion

Blatta Puvereus: Based on its etymology, it might be, or contain, pulverized cockroaches or other insects.

Blood: a liquid substance in some organisms, like humans, that carries oxygen throughout the body. in some creatures blood is known to possess magical qualities. Some believe that blood retains beauty       -Unicorn blood will keep someone alive, even if they are an inch from death            -Re'em blood gives the drinker immense strength      -Chicken blood mixed with brandy is fed to baby dragons.

Bloodroot: bloodroot and its extracts kill animal cells, and thus, internal use is inadvisable. Blowfly: common name for members of the Calliphoridae, a family of flies. Dead blowflies can be used as a potion ingredient

Bone:  provide protection, and strength. Boomberry: a fruit. its juice has restorative properties.

Boomslang: relatively small, venomous colubrid snakes. HIGHLY POISONOUS, but slow to act.

Boomslang Skin: Green for males, Brown for Females. Is an unusual potion ingredient. is used in polyjuice 

Bubotuber Pus: Liquid found in the swellings of the magical Bubotuber plant. It’s very valuable for its acne-ridding qualities. Despite retaining healing powers, when undiluted it can cause painful, large boils to form immediately on the skin. 

Bundimun Secretion: Also known as Bundimun Ooze, this is a magical substance produced by Bundimun. known to be extremely acidic. It could rot a buildings structure. Known to have magical cleaning properties.

Bursting Mushrooms: Large mushroom with a white stalk with a red and white spotted ca. When approached, a bursting mushroom will swell and shrink rapidly before violently exploding with enough force to damage a human. After being disarmed in some fashion sliced bursting mushrooms can be used as a potion ingredient

Butterscotch: is used in some potions. Mostly to taste

Caterpillar: larval form of a butterfly or moth. Used in Shrinking Solution.

Cheese: a food formed from the curdling proteins in milk. Used in Cheese-Based Potions.

Chinese Chomping Cabbage: magical plant found in China. It has the ability to chomp foods. Used in Skele Gro.

Chizpurfle Carapace: difficult to obtain. To obtain it one must use Lumos Duo to lure the chizpurfle towards venomous tentacula plant and then after the venomous tentacula eats it, collect the spat out carapace.

Cinnamon: spice obtained from the inner bark of trees from the genus cinnamomum that’s used on both sweet and savory foods.

Cockroach: insect kept in the potions classroom (dead of course) for potion making. Used in cockroach clusters.

Croakoa: a magical ingredient found in Chocolate Frogs that may give them the lifelike appearance.

Daisy: A daisy is a common European wildflower with white and yellow flowers. Its roots are an ingredient used in the Shrinking Solution and Essence of Daisy root.

Deadilyus: Deadilyus was a mushroom used as a potion ingredient. Its exact properties are unknown, but given its name, it may have been poisonous.

Death-Cap: Death-Cap is a poisonous mushroom, widely distributed across Europe. It is (most likely) used in the making of the Death-Cap Draught.

Dittany: Dittany is a magical plant used in Potion-Making, and is a powerful healing herb and restorative. Its use makes fresh skin grow over a wound, and after application, the wound seems several days old.

Doxy Egg: The egg of the Doxy is a type of egg that is used as an ingredient in the Girding Potion which is black in colour.

Dragon Blood: Dragon blood is the blood of any of the many species of dragon. It has a number of magical properties, and was fairly expensive to buy bottled. It has at least twelve uses.

Dragon Claw: Dragon claw was the claw of a dragon, and, when powdered down and eaten, gives the consumer a 'brain boost', which leaves the consumer cunning 'for hours'.

 Dragonfly Thorax: The thorax of the dragonfly was used as an ingredient in potion-making. It was a required ingredient of the Girding Potion and Dragon dung Fertiliser. Eagle Owl Feather Used in Dragon Tonic    

Eel Eye Might be ingredient for Bulgeye Potion, which causes eye swelling

Erumpent Horn contains a deadly fluid that causes whatever it is injected into to explode. They are highly prized as potion ingredients, but are listed as a Class-B Tradeable Material.

Fairy Wings used as an ingredient in the Girding Potion and the Beautification Potion. Removing a fairy's wings is non-fatal, but will cause extreme annoyance to the fairy in question due to the creatures' natural vanity. Because the fairies are very hard to approach and to capture, their wings are considered as precious ingredients  

Fire Seed Used in some potions. Gives fire burst of heat, hatching dragon eggs  

Flobberworm Mucus a sticky and green substance that is extracted from the flobberworm. Used to thicken potions and it is one of the vital ingredients to a Wiggenweld Potion. 

Fluxweed a member of the mustard family known for its healing properties.When picked at the full moon, it can be used in the making of the Polyjuice Potion.The word Flux means constant change or flow.

Flying Seahorses are a variant of regular seahorses, known for their ability to fly when provoked. They are found throughout lakes in Scotland, the most notable being the Black Lake. a necessary ingredient in the Girding Potion

Giant Purple Toad Warts It is tricky to extract the warts from the Giant Purple Toads, as having warts removed annoys them and they tend to disappear into boxes or other hideouts. Giant Purple Toad warts are an essential ingredient in Dragon Tonic

Ginger Root Used in Wit Sharpening potion

Griffin Claw The claws of the griffin. It is not specified whether the claws are from the talons of the eagle or the claws of the lion. When powdered, the claw is used in Strengthening Solution.

Gillyweed A magical plant. When eaten by a witch or wizard, they grow gills and webbing between the fingers and toes allowing them to process oxygen from water and navigate underwater more easily. There is some debate about salt water VS freshwater, but effects seem to last about an hour in fresh water.

Honeywater is a solution of honey diluted in water which can be used in potion-making. It has a distinctive yellow colour. Drops of Honeywater are required to brew a Wiggenweld potion while larger quantities are needed in the brewing of a Volubilis Potion and an Antidote to Common Poisons.

Horklump juice is a substance extracted from Horklumps. It can be used in a range of healing potions, including the Wiggenweld Potion

Horned slugs are a type of a slug that, when stewed, are used as an ingredient in the Boil-Cure Potion.

Jobberknoll Quill Used in Truth Serums and memory potions. Not used in quills

Knotgrass was a plant with magical proprieties. An essential ingredient in the making of the Polyjuice Potion as well as in the brewing of the alcoholic beverage Knotgrass Mead.

Lacewing flies small green insects with large, transparent wings. Stewed lacewing flies are an ingredient used in the Polyjuice Potion. Lacewing flies are properly stewed in twenty-one days. Lacewing flies are not on the Restricted Register.

Lady's Mantle a small herbaceous plant with characteristic fan-shaped leaves with small teeth at the tips, covered in soft hairs that makes water bead on them. they are an ingredient in the Beautification Potion.

Leeches are small slug-like creatures that live in water. They feed on human blood and/or that of other small invertebrates. Leech spit contains an anticoagulant (a substance that prevents blood clotting), allowing them to feed for longer than blood would normally flow. used to make the Polyjuice Potion.  a dash of leech juice is a required ingredient in Shrinking Solution. (adding too much, however, causes the potion to turn orange instead of the bright acid green it's supposed to be; this can prove disastrous, as making errors in the potion can cause the mixture to become poisonous)

Lionfish have extremely long and separated spines.Crushed into a powder, these spines can be used in healing potions such as the Wiggenweld Potion. also an ingredient of the Herbicide Potion as well as some more complicated ones.

Lovage a plant similar to celery, whose fruit and seeds are used in cooking. It has been used in herbal medicines for centuries, especially to facilitate digestion. According to one of Harry's school books, lovage is "most efficacious in the inflaming of the brain", and is used as an ingredient in Confusing and Befuddlement Draughts.

Mandrake, also known as Mandragora, is a plant which has a root that looks like a human (like a baby when the plant is young, but maturing as the plant grows). When mature, its cry can be fatal to any person who hears it. When matured, Mandrakes can be cut up to serve as a prime ingredient for the Madrake Restorative Draught, which is used to cure those who have been petrified. Their leaves can be used in potions. additionally, the Mandrake forms an essential part of most antidotes. Mandrake is a powerful and special plant. It is meant to be put at the bottom of a hanged man's feet. Stewed means crushed and put into a stewy paste.

Maw is a potion ingredient of unknown effect. Maw is old English for "mouth",

Mistletoe Berry: The berry of the mistletoe is small, white, and waxy. It is used as an ingredient in potions, including the Antidote to Common Poisons and the Forgetfulness Potion.[ The use of mistletoe berries as an ingredient in the  Antidote of Common Poisons of the mistletoe plant are extremely poisonous, causing intense stomach pain,diarrhea,low pulse,[visual disturbances,and convulsions if eaten. However, the berries are considered "relatively non-toxic" if only a small amount are ingested, but can cause stomach upset when eaten in larger quantities.

Moly is powerful plant with many powerful properties: Moly plants are known to protect against Dark Enchantments, and can be eaten to counteract them. Moly plants are easily recognised by their distinctive black stems and white flowers. This particular herb is used  in the brewing of the Wiggenweld Potion.

Moondew is used in potion-making in liquid form and it is an essential ingredient of the Wiggenweld Potion, Draught of Living Death and Antidote to Common Poisons

Moonseed is a plant, which seeds resemble a crescent moon. All parts of these plants are known to be poisonous. It is presumably used as an ingredient of the Moonseed poison.

Moonstone (also known as the wishing stone) a gemstone of medium value. Moonstones are a milky colour and shine very brightly, almost as though they are a source of their own light. They are a useful potion ingredient; powdered moonstones are used as an ingredient for theDraught of Peace and in several Love Potions.  Powdered Moonstone is also an ingredient in inPotion No. 86 which is likely an experimental potion. 

Morning dew, also simply known as dew, is water that collects on the leaves of plants in the early morning due to condensation. Zygmunt Budge used it in his version of the Beautification Potion.

The nettle, also known as the stinging nettle (Urtica diocia) or burn hazel, is a widespread plant known for the stinging hairs that grows on its leaves.  fresh nettles are used in the Boil-cure potion, whereas dried nettles are used in the Herbicide potion. Nettles are presumably the main ingredients of beverages likenettle wine and nettle tea. Nettles can also be made into a soup and are rumoured to improve the glossiness of one's hair.

A newt is a type of amphibian.  The  eye and spleen of this creature is also commonly used as a potion ingredient

Nightshade (Solanaceae) is a genus of flowering plants that can be used as an ingredient in potion-making.

Nux Myristica is a plant with magical proprieties that is used in .potion-making. It is formed by two latin words: the first "nux" which means "walnut" and the second is the Latin name of the Nutmeg tree (the Genus). Thus, literally, "Nux Myristica" means "Nutmeg". While nutmeg is more familiar as a spice used for cooking purposes, it has a long history regarding therapeutic use also. Numerous cultures across the globe have used nutmeg for medicinal purpose, but only in small dosages.

Octopus Powder is a potion ingredient. It is made from the dried flesh of an octopus It reportedly increases the strength of potions.

Peacock feathers are the feathers of a peacock. They are used in Dragon Tonic.

Peppermint is a mint plant. Snape discovered that adding a sprig of it to the Elixir to induce Euphoria counteracted the potion's side effects of unrestrained singing and nose-tweaking while he was still a student at Hogwarts in the 1970s.  It is also commonly used in both the Wizard and Muggle world to flavour sweets and concoctions. It is a known flavour of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans.

Pomegranate juice is juice made from the pomegranate fruit. Hermione  had to stop Harry from mistakenly adding pomegranate juice to the Strengthening Solution he was making instead of the salamander blood he was supposed to be using.

Pond Slime is a potion ingredient, which, given its name, may have consisted of one or more types of algae

Porcupine quills were the sharp spines that coveredporcupines, defending them from predators. Porcupine quills were plentiful since the animals continually replenished them.

Porcupine quills were an ingredient in several potions, including theCure for Boils. Quills that had caused no harm were considered the best by potion-makers.

Puffer-fish eyes are the eyes of the puffer-fish, a fish that can inflate its body for defense.  They are an ingredient in the Swelling Solution.

Pus is a yellowish fluid that is secreted in the human when they have an infection, such as pimples, as a defense mechanism against the infection. Certain magical plants can also secret such fluid, such as Bubotuber Pus which has high healing powers when diluted, but creates painful boils when undiluted.

Rat spleen is a common ingredient used in the preparation of various potions. It is a required ingredient in the Shrinking Solution and Dragon Dung Fertilizer.

Rat tail is a potion ingredient used in the Jair-raising potion.

Rose thorns are sharp, hard structures found on the stem of a rose.They have magical proprieties and are used as an ingredient for Love Potions though Zygmut Budge felt potions made with rose thorns were of brief effect and unstable, and preferred to use rose petals instead.

Runespoor egg is an egg used in potion making. It has the ability to increase the mental agility of the drinker. 

Sal Ammoniac is a rare mineral composed of ammonium chloride. It is used in the making of the perfect medicine.

Salamander blood was the blood of the magical salamander. It had healing and rejuvenating properties, and could be used to brew strengthening potions including the Strengthening Solution.

Salpeter is a solid substance with magical properties. Fillings and resplings of Salpeter are required in order to brew the complex Polyjuice Potion.

Salt  is used in the making of the perfect medicine. Salt has more medicinal applications: the treatment of scale rot includes rubbing the affected area with a solution of salt water, and other ingredients.Salt is an ingredient used in theShimmering Silver Salt Drops sold in Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.

Scarab beetle is an insect native to Egypt. Ground scarab beetles are used as ingredients in the Wit-Sharpening Potion. Five scarab beetles are used in the Skele-Gro healing potion.

Scurvy grass is a plant used as an ingredient in the Befuddlement Draught

Shrake Spine When added to a potion, the mixture must be stirred gently, as overly vigourous stirring can "overexcite" the spines.Zygmunt Budge used pickled Shrake spine in his version of the Cure for Boils.

Shrivelfig is a magical plant, the best specimens of which are found in Abyssinia. The flowers of the Shrivelfig grow inside the fruit, both of which are purple in colour. It's a deciduous plant, meaning that its leaves start to shed in autumn, and the plant is leafless during winter. However, due to its aggressive roots, the plant can still survive even in snowy conditions. The leaves have medicinal properties. When skinned the fruit, which is actually the plant's flower and contains blossoms inside, produces a purple liquid with potion-making properties.

Sloth Brain The mucus from the brain is a key ingredient in a Dragon Dung Fertilizer.

Snake fangs, when crushed, are an ingredient used in the preparation of some potions, like theStrength Potion, the Boil Cure Potion and the Wideye Potion. This plentiful ingredient must not be harvested from venomous snakes.

Sneezewort is a type of plant that is poisonous to livestock. It is used as an ingredient in the Befuddlement Draught.

Sopophorous bean contains a thick silver juice that will remove the drinker's memory if drunk neat. If used in potion-making, it does not seem to retain this power. The Sopophorous bean is used as an ingredient for the Draught of the Living Death

Staghorn mushroom is used in healing and has shown anti-tumor applications.

Star Grass is a medicinal herb that was once used to treat colic. It is presumably used as an ingredient for the Star Grass Salve.

Sulphur Vive is an alchemy substance, presumably with some sulphur in its constitution. A particular Sulphur Vive is used in the making of the perfect medicine. Syrup of Arnica is a poisonous substance extracted from the Arnica plant. It is used in potion-making, and is an ingredient of Potion No. 113.

Syrup of Hellebore is a blue-coloured substance extracted from the Hellebore. It is used in potion-making, and is a required ingredient of the Draught of Peace and Volubilis Potion. It is also required in Potion No. 86 which is likely an experimental mixture