#anyway this also reminded me that i've been meaning to watch that version of anna karenina for ages and never got around to it

[incorrect-koh-posts]

I came back from the dead. Remember the fancasting banter last August? YEAH, I AM HERE TO CONTINUE IT‼️so I was able to get my hands on Anna Karenina that starred Keira Knightley and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

YES A BLONDE AARON TAYLOR-JOHNSON. And if I was able to remember what you said, a lil dash of mischief kinda vibe onto the actor. Idk, Aaron seems like it 🤷🏻‍♀️ but he's more of lenient onto the ethereal vibe.

Remove the facial hair, he's good for older version of Baldwin I guess or maybe leave the facial hair on? What do you think?

(P.S. HIS CHARACTER WARDROBE??? - A BUNCH OF WHITE AND BLUE PALLETTE PLEASE.)

Ooooh. Pretty. 👀🥰 This comes very very close to how I'd imagine a healthy Baldwin - thank you!

Actually, I'd even say keep the moustache; I think it's kind of funny to look at and somehow adds to the mischievous gleam in his eyes, haha. Although if we're going with strict historical accuracy, Baldwin as a young 12th-century nobleman would likely have been clean shaven, with shoulder-length hair or thereabouts - facial hair was more commonly worn by older men. I'm normally not into blond men, but this guy is legitimately beautiful (and would be a SIGHT in chainmail, I bet).

[elizabethrobertajones]

Hey so, you've probably been asked this before and if so you can just completely ignore this. But. I know there's been plenty of talk about the differences of Dean and Sam's personalities and families in It's a Terrible Life, but I've yet to seen anyone (as far as I remember anyway) talk about theories of why Sam's fiancé is Madison, and not Jess? Or Sarah? Far as I've come on that theory is, maybe because of the Werewolf thing? And how it relates to Sam's own "demons"? Thoughts?

I like your optimism that I have already been asked all of *the* most obscure questions :D Hehe

The fact Sera wrote both episodes is my first port of call, and Madison would be her own character so faster to mind. I think Heart is also one of her pet favourite episodes although do not ask me how I know that because It’s almost certainly something I read 7 years ago :P 

I would also have to assume on a boring technical level that they were trying to come up with uncanny valley lives, and Dean’s fake life already collected up Bobby and Ellen and Jo, while Sam’s life was deliberately meant to be the less well-developed one because Zach had just thrown together enough to stop him realising the game was up *immediately*, while not bothering to make a complete enough backstory that Sam wouldn’t help motivate Dean because without the much bigger cracks through which their old life came, Sam wouldn’t be able to motivate him in the same way. I don’t think he made many mistakes in the set up except mildly underestimating Dean (while still getting exactly what he wanted out of him by the end of the episode - in the short term, in the long term that’s when Dean gives him the “stab you in the face” warning :P), since he would have been constantly watching them, like an ant farm, and could have fixed Sam if he WASN’T meant to poke at his own backstory. Sam was never really their focus since Ruby had him under lock down doing her side of things and the angels by that point were all aboard on starting the apocalypse.

So I think the last most obvious reason it’s Madison is because Sam was just being mocked as a disposable character, and it really comes across that way when you know the whole story and who set it up:

SAMYeah, ‘cause I only moved here 'cause I just broke up with my fiancée, Madison. But I called her number and I got a damn animal hospital.

And in that sense, Madison is really tragic for us to know was a really awful thing that happened to Sam romantically since Jess, but also has this set up to be mocked and a too-easy joke for Zach. I think if it had been Jess there would have been the danger of him remembering too much, in character, and out of character if the writing process was casting around for a love interest to have a “hilarious” joke from Zach about them, Sam’s girl of the week options are limited and Sarah and Lori from hookman in the first season were both fairly sweet and survived the episode without much interpersonal drama for Sam, while Madison was also very tragic so mocking her and what Sam went through with her, is a very blatant example from the first couple of seasons of Sam being put through the wringer - I think he cried more in that episode than he’s done for the rest of the show since :P There’s much more obvious material to make a joke from than most of his other romantic connections and the only one who he actually cared about (since season 3 had him mostly just being set up for Ruby, while lusting after Bela a little… and honestly at this point trying to think who else Sam has been linked to, the Bad Writer Voice in my brain that comes up with all the junk pile snark suggested that old woman from 3x06 who pawed all over Sam - “But I called her number and I got a damn retirement home.” … So let’s be glad it was Madison :P)

Anyways, if there’s a wider meta purpose you probably got it… Madison is one of the monsters that Sam’s been connected to romantically, and actually Dean seems to think Sam’s got together with a lot more monsters than he actually has because in 4x14 he has some line about what is it with Sam and monster chicks or something, thinking he’s sleeping with the siren (whoops) and he’s reacting to Sam saying he and Ruby are together. Madison is really the only other major example, although Dean also thought Sam had a thing for Ava who he might not have qualified as a monster at the time, but *would* have classified as like finding like if he thought Sam had a crush, since they both had psychic powers and by season 4 that’s all the backstory to Sam’s struggle with humanity. (I mean honestly, Madison seemed to traumatise them both for different reasons so I could get if she stuck out in Dean’s memory even if he seems to tease Sam for it, it would be making light of it as a coping mechanism to the awful stuff they’ve done on the job.)

I’d also get if the show wanted us to think Sam had a bigger history with this than he does - hence the line in 4x14 AND this reminder about Madison - because they like making generalisations of their history to tell the story, focusing on one or two incidents and making it sound like a life-long pattern (despite Jess being Sam’s defining romance and characterised by the normality and that he lied to her about monsters to protect a bubble of normality). We won’t find out about Amy Pond until season 7 aka they don’t write it until then, so it’s retroactively adding to the pattern that was barely a pattern in season 4, but if they want to build up the image of Sam being attracted to monsters as part of the question about his own nature, trying to remind us that Ruby isn’t his first is a good way to go about that. 

Then they end the season with Dean or false representations of him repeatedly telling Sam that he’s a monster or he isn’t human any more and Sam picks Ruby over Dean, and throws his own humanity away blah blah blah we all know the story :P (I say, blah-ing away one of the best season finales on the show.)

… TBH the show trying to set up this narrative that you are what you sleep with just reminds me that in the version of the Winchester Gospels where Sam doesn’t drink demon blood, this is all excellent supporting narrative/examples to build up the ridiculous counterpoint Destiel subtext going on on the other side :P Which is kind of a joke I make but season 4 is told a LOT through their sexual preferences and encounters. If I was going to write a serious academic paper about the show where you don’t need to make the same disclaimers about intent and interpretation as you do on Tumblr it would be excellent to examine season 4′s main arc and plot points as told through the representations of their sexuality, because the Sam/Ruby, and Dean/Cas/Anna major narrative parallel of you are what you sleep with is barely scratching the surface… It’s a huge thing. The siren episode doesn’t just *happen* to be in this season and it’s not a random isolated incident, it’s one of the many ways this undercurrent of the season shows up. And that puts the Sam and monsters subtext directly next to Dean and dudes, which lines up perfectly with playing Sam/Ruby off Dean/Cas for the length of the season. Hey and lo and behold in 4x17 Sam has a history with Madison, and Dean has a hot co-worker he hangs out with, and a deep insecurity about the idea of Sam hitting on him in the elevator (… at work), and some queercoded behaviours, and a complete lack of love life mentioned in the main text, including shoving Jo hard into the sister box in the same exchange we find out about Sam and Madison…