#because it’s *lucifer’s* originally and it doesn’t want to harm Sam. it wants to get inside him

[quietwingsinthesky]

Lilith being jealous of Sam and wanting him gone in s3 is :3 someone wants to get rid of their dad’s boytoy so they get all the attention again!

[soullessjack]

ok so carried on from this post theres a specific tag i wanna elaborate on which says ‘[jack] isn’t a pacifist he actually has a very complicated relationship with violence’ in relation to how he’s usually (mis)characterized by the fandom.

so first, Jack isn’t a pacifist. pacifism is a total opposition to all war and violence, and a belief that it is never justifiable for any reason or circumstance. He might be averse to violence as a first response or reaction, and he’s frequently shown to want to help the person before anything else—especially people he finds sympathetic or similar to himself (ie Mia Vallens, Sylvia)—but he’s not averse to it altogether.

Jack seems to really only be against violence when it’s used against innocent or undeserving people, including himself. Like in S13, he has no problem using his power to force an angel to stab themself with their blade or going to war with Michael and killing thousands of angels in his army for roughly 6-8 months (and we must remember, it was an effective genocide before he decided, completely out of the original plan, to kill Michael and made it a war) but he still has a total meltdown over accidentally killing an innocent security guard and almost strangling someone who did nothing wrong like he’d assumed. In Ouroboros he states that anyone who could hurt/kill an innocent person is a monster, even if they’re human, which is probably the clearest establishment of his moral code the show could offer.

I think Jack’s particular aversion to violence or even general aggression/anger is also caused by the fact that he, at three days old, was told by Sam that he would need to be kept from hurting other people while his powers were still largely uncontrollable (and therefore, still making him a threat and “evil” if he couldn’t do that). He’s also seen for himself what his power/his overreaction inadvertently causes for other people–like throwing Sheriff Barker into the vending machine (which he apologizes for later)—and is blatantly scared of it at first, so I think it makes a lot of sense that he prefers nonviolent behavior as an initial or default response. However, pacifism is still defined by the belief that no circumstance or reason whatsoever can justify an act of violence, which directly goes against how Jack personally feels about and uses it.

Going back to Ouroboros, he personally defines a “monster” as anyone who would willingly harm or enjoy harming someone who doesn’t deserve it, even if they aren’t actually a particular species of monster. And going back to S13, he has no problem murdering Michael’s army or even torturing Michael himself (which he specifically does because Michael “hurt his friends, hurt his family.” Ergo, Jack does believe in using violence, so long as it’s only used as a justified defense, and I think that is also a part of why him torturing Nick so horrifically is meant to land on us as Something Ostensibly Wrong. Did Nick deserve it? Yes. Mary isn’t even upset about him being killed; she just halfheartedly tells Jack “not like that.” Nick deserved it, but he is still barely a threat to someone like Jack (which everybody knew)—and because he isn’t a veritable threat, none of what Jack does to him can actually qualify as a “defense.”

It’s violence for the sake of violence, with a personal grudge for motivation, and while it’s shown a lot throughout SPN, it hits a lot harder coming from Jack specifically because he, again, is generally averse to [ab]using his power like that—even against other enemies. He believes in necessary and defensive violence and acts accordingly, which makes the completely unnecessary violence he uses against Nick more disturbing; it’s not about defending his loved ones or even stopping a nefarious plot anymore (he literally banishes Lucifer within seconds of getting there). It’s just about making someone suffer and enjoying it. In Absence we also get the vague implication about Jack’s particular fears and insecurities: he’s afraid that he isn’t really loved or wanted for himself, but rather that he’s valued for being “the muscle to take out enemies,”—that he’s nothing more to the Winchesters than a pet monster and easily discardable if he’s no longer useful to them.

On the flip side of that, he’s also canonically very happy to be wanted, needed and helpful to his family/friends—which is to say, again, he’s perfectly fine using violence as a justifiable defense that serves his family (which is also why he chooses to burn Nick to death after Sam indirectly wishes it on him, and why he’s happy to murder all of Dumah’s targets under the guise that it would make Sam and Dean happy). Once he realizes the truth and horror of his actions, however, he tells Dean that he is a monster, by his own definition. But how exactly is this complicated, you might ask? Well I’m glad you did, because I’m getting to it. Throughout his entire short-lived life, Jack has had to be painfully aware of the damage he can and does cause, and what it means for how he’s perceived and the ever present debate about his “true” nature.

I can’t find it now and probably won’t bother looking, but i had another post about how Jack inwardly perceives himself and wants to be perceived in return, particularly when he’s perceived as a threat. To summarize: because of his particular moral code, Jack inwardly knows he would never [want to] use his power against his family or friends, and is therefore not a threat to them, and therefore does not want to be perceived as one despite the danger he still poses with the potential alone. The eggshells that people walk around him are solely based on the fact that he has immense potential and capability to hurt them, all prevented by his simple continuous and impermanent choice to not hurt them.

The only thing standing between them and everything he’s ever done to their enemies is the fact that he considers them friends and has no reason to want to hurt them, and that’s exactly what Jack himself personally lives by. It’s the same blind trust that Sam and Dean have built with Cas; they know what he can do, and they know when he would or wouldn’t choose to do it. It’s a mutual understanding that “I know you can hurt me but I care about you enough to trust you not to do that,” and “I know I can hurt you but I care about you enough to not hurt you and Im glad you trust me to not do that.” I also mentioned it in the post that in Last Holiday, Jack doesn’t deny it when Mrs. Butters says that he’s insanely powerful; he does, however, deny her saying that Sam and Dean should be afraid of him, because “[he] would never hurt them.”

Insanely powerful? ✅

Potentially dangerous? ✅

A threat to be feared? ❌

(This is also what makes Mary’s death by Jack and Sam and Dean’s subsequent actions exceptionally tragic on both sides; their mutual trust is inadvertently, yet still effectively, broken. Jack has also effectively gone against his own morality by harming people he loves and people who don’t deserve it, and now in S15 is struggling with the loss of said trust and the need to earn it back).

That, my hypothetical audience member, is the complicated part. Having to find a middle ground between necessary, defensive, justifiable violence that his surrounding community would approve or appreciate, and the completely unnecessary abuse or misuse of power (ie violence) that would register him as an evil monster and/or a threat to be put down for the justifiable greater good. There’s also the additional middle ground between presenting and maintaining the image of himself as docile and non-threatening (the behavior of which is hugely infantilized by the fandom), while also still being able to defend others with the same violence that could easily lead to him being seen as a threat.

in conclusion (1): Jack is not a pacifist but he has an extremely complicated relationship with violence and the fluctuating justifications surrounding it which he must meet in order to continuously be perceived as safe and trustworthy in spite of his capabilities.

In conclusion (2): this is the truest of jack true forms:

thank you for coming to my yap session, don’t let the door hit you where the good lord split you on the way out 🫶

[phynali]

Dean’s Body as a Punching Bag

Ever since I made this post about Sam and (his lack of) bodily autonomy (as well as the follow-up post that carries the theme through the other 10 seasons), I’ve been trying to determine what the corollary for Dean is. Re-watching 5x01 made it jump out at me in a huge way:

The bodies of the people that Dean loves are consistently used in a way that hurts/harms Dean and metes out violence against him. And it is specifically his loved ones’ bodies themselves, not shapeshifters or lookalikes or Leviathan either. It is the people he loves’ hands and fists and weapons.

(I need a snappier way to word that, but bear with me).

Where Sam’s bodily autonomy violations occur before he’s born, and are seen as early as the pilot with Azazel in his room and with the Woman in White, Dean’s analogous theme doesn’t sneak in until the mid-season finale with Asylum.

In this episode, Sam gets infected with a sort of ghost-possession/ghost-sickness (another example of a violation of his bodily autonomy) and his internal anger becomes external, focused on Dean. Sam attacks Dean violently, and Dean goes so far as to hand over a (thankfully unloaded) gun and in this altered state, Sam actually tries to shoot him. 

Ouch. The person Dean loves and most wants to protect had his body violated and used against Dean. This theme is going to carry us through the next, eh, 10 or so seasons, with some tail-end examples even after that. 

In Season 1 we have Asylum mid-season, and we have the finale in which John is possessed by Azazel and hurts Dean most grievously, almost kills him. In Season 2, Sam is possessed by Meg and shoots Dean (in the arm). In Season 3, we had a writers’ strike and a season cut short so I can’t think of any examples there (but lots of other shit to unpack for another day).

The in Season 4, we have Sex and Violence, which is super interesting. While Dean is the one targeted by the siren and therefore the one whose body is used against his brother to hurt him, the actual violence doesn’t start until Sam is also infected. Sam’s body is violated by being held at knifepoint by his brother and his mouth forced open to accept the siren’s venom, but then it’s a fist-fight, a showdown. Both brothers’ bodies being used to hurt the other, but getting to that point required Sam’s body to similarly be ready to be used against Dean.

Season 5 is literally bookended by instances of this happening. First, true to the idea that Dean sees Bobby as family, Bobby becomes possessed by a demon and he violently attacks Dean. And then Swan Song, most famous example by a huge margin, Sam is possessed by Lucifer and is fist-fighting Dean, destroying his face and killing him with his fists, and it is his overwhelming love for Dean that allows him to overcome this possession and save the world.

The theme is carried forward for a few more seasons, pretty much until that narrative turning point in Season 10 that I mentioned in my post about Sam. In Season 6, soulless!Sam allows Dean to be hurt by a monster, harming him by proxy. In season 7, Sam is hallucinating and almost shoots Dean. In season 8, Cass is programmed by Naomi to kill Dean, and in the episode Goodbye Stranger beats him to a pulp before overcoming this programming. In season 9, when Gadreel reveals himself and takes over Sam’s body and kills Kevin, he also attacks Dean. 

Skipping Season 10 for a hot sec (more on that below), Lucifer also later possesses Cass in Season 11 and harms both Sam and Dean. In Season 12, we get brainwashed Mary attacking her sons (and overcoming possession thanks to Dean). And possibly examples from S13-15 that I’m missing (Garth being affected by Michael? Cass being affected by Rowena’s spell? Both Sam and Dean were affected by the Witch from Wizard of Oz, right? I honestly can’t recall the late seasons near so well). But regardless we see the theme play out in the final 5 seasons, just less and a bit different than it had prior. 

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Now, let’s unpack the S10 shift a bit, and why it changes things for this theme of Dean’s.

In S9, Dean takes on the Mark of Cain under the weight of guilt and self-loathing from having violated Sam’s bodily autonomy by tricking him into being possessed by an angel (and forcibly having him possessed by a demon to then fix that angelic possession). In this instance, Dean is willfully taking on something that alters his own body, and the narrative between he and Sam is flipped. Now Dean is the one with something ‘evil’ marring his body and impacting it outside his control, and now Sam is the one who is ignoring Dean’s protests and autonomy in order to save him from this thing, consequences be damned.

That 2.5 season role-reversal arc was huge for how it changed Sam’s storyline for the final 5 seasons, and similarly huge for how it impacts Dean’s.

Dean is now the one whose body is being used as a weapon against those he loves most, and he is the one suffering that loss of autonomy and control over himself. He is sick with bloodlust, is turned into a demon, is drawn to the First Blade, and is not in full control of himself. When the Darkness is unleashed and Dean suffers the emotional consequences of feeling tied to and drawn to this monster (woman? celestial being? godlike person?) against his will. 

The Mark/Darkness narrative shows us that Dean’s body might belong to him, but it too can be corrupted against his will. Dean learns that he won’t always be able to choose, learns what it means not to have control over his own body. That while he puts his family as his duty above all else, while he would sacrifice literally everything (his body, his soul, the entire universe) for his little brother, the opposite might also be true, even if Dean doesn’t want it to be. 

(And I said elsewhere that I fundamentally believe this narrative role-reversal was a consequence of him overstepping his ownership over Sam by tricking him into taking Gadreel. Their positions are swapped because they have to be, because narratively it becomes necessary for Dean to know what this loss of autonomy feels like, and for Sam to override his brother’s choices, or else they may never find a sense of equilibrium again).

By the time this Mark/Darkness narrative wraps up, Dean is fundamentally, irrevocably changed. Where in Season 5 it was completely unthinkable that he would agree to be a vessel for Michael, it is in the finale of Season 13, just two seasons after the Darkness storyline wraps up, that we see him take Michael into himself as a snap, in-the-moment decision. What was previously unthinkable is now canon. 

Because Dean is now different. Because his core of protecting Sam is the same, but his theme of how others' bodies are used against him has now upended itself, and he now has had his body used against others.

In my post about Sam, I said that in the end for the final seasons, the narrative has shifted from Dean owning Sam’s body to Sam also owning his own, and them acknowledging that they are in this together as a result of Season 10. I believe that happens with Dean as well, owing to this reversal. Sam has now taken some ownership over Dean’s body by getting rid of the Mark, and Dean has relinquished some of his tight-fisted control over himself. 

So Sam is sharing ownership over his body with Dean (in the vein of “I can’t pretend you won’t do whatever you can to keep me alive, even if I don’t want it, but we’re in this together” and “if we die we do that together too”), and Dean is also sharing ownership over his body with Sam (in the vein of “I’m no longer convinced you’re going to abandon me, so the things that I will do to keep you by my side will be met equal between us” and “when it comes to keeping you safe, it’s my autonomy I will give up first, not yours”). 

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But what does this particular form of bodily-violence-from-family say about Dean from a thematic standpoint?

In my post about Sam, I talked about how the themes of possession (ghost and demon) and demon blood are inherently about bodily autonomy and free will. 

For Dean, thinking through this theme of his loved ones being used to hurt him, I’m torn trying to find the way to word it, but I feel that it has to do with his themes of self-effacement as love, as protection and duty. It’s about being willing to suffer anything (even to the point of death) to protect his family, the ones he loves most. Family is the end-all-be-all to Dean, and protecting his family (most especially his little brother) is the core and heart of his character. It is a duty and a responsibility and a calling and a purpose. 

To remix a quote from the film Legend, Dean’s devotion to his brother (and to a lesser extent, to everyone else he calls family) is how he measures himself. There’s no single word for it, as it’s a mix of protection as love, as an instinct, but also as a fundamental duty, an identity. His internal compass.

So Dean’s narrative invokes free will in a very different way than Sam’s. Dean always had and has free will. He had the will to sell his soul, the will to refuse Michael. He has autonomy over his body and he has choice, so much so that he makes choices over and over for Sam. Instead, Dean’s struggles with autonomy of self as related to his constant effacement (to the point of complete ego-destruction and physical loss of self) for the people he loves. He will die, sell his soul, let himself be beat to a pulp, and anything more that the situation calls for, so long as it means protecting or not harming his loved ones.

The original Swan Song end is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, in the style of Greek tragedy. Sam’s struggle for autonomy, and the moment he claims that autonomy for himself, he falls into the Pit for eternity. Dean’s original intended Swan Song ending is analogous: a struggle to exist as more than his duty to his family, and right after he accepts that Sam is allowed to choose Lucifer and death for himself while Dean may continue on living, he then chooses to fall into the Pit after his brother so they could be together (in Hell, in the Cage) eternally.

Both of them have these absolute tragic flaws and in the first Kripke-era arc, tragic sacrificial ends. Sam’s relating to will and autonomy, Dean’s relating to love, family and protection/duty. Both of them belonging to themselves and to each other.

-

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A few extra things about this theme worth noting:

1. the people who love Dean are always in an altered state when they harm him, whether it be possession, brain-washing, siren venom, soulless, etc etc, which I think goes to show in some ways how this love as a given to people who will never deliberately harm him.

2. in a huge proportion of these instances, Dean is saved by the person who loves him reclaiming themselves over and above their altered state. John overcomes Azazel’s possession (arguably, I would say, deliberately from Azazel, but let’s not quibble). Bobby stabs himself in the stomach to save Dean. Cass overcomes Naomi’s brainwashing. Sam overcomes the literal Devil possessing him. Mary overcomes some brainwashing (I think?). Etc. So Dean's love as sacrifice is rewarded?

3. Sam’s body is the most frequently used to harm Dean.

[elizabethrobertajones]

SPN deserves flak for handling sensitive topics irresponsibly, especially since it has a teenage audience. Castiel confessed that he's suicidal in season 8 (written by dabb!), the brothers were in a toxic codependency, Sam was sexually harassed by lucifer, a little kid -Jack- was driven to self-harm/suicide. and none of those issues were addressed or solved in 15 years. instead, the message was that people with troubled pasts could only "be forgiven" if they sacrificed their lives (Jack) or died

Yeeeeaaaah that’s something it was always getting criticism for consistently as it went along as a case- by-case basis of the treatment... There were some woke episodes later on with the newer writers which did handle some subject better but honestly usually in a motw way with side characters proving better examples to the Winchesters’ messed up coping. 

I guess one thing that I was leaning on a bit was that if it was all going somewhere that the resolution would be okay because the writing was aware that they did have these issues. For example, Carver era was really heavy on the codependency stuff but it was painting it in such a bad light that it was beyond romanticising it in any sense and the message seemed to be that the writing wanted them to heal. I personally think this was healed a fair amount over Dabb era along the way... But the finale as far as I can tell let Sam move on with his life and break the cycle or whatever, but also was so wildly unsatisfying on every front it probably would have been HEALTHIER for the fucker to go straight to Hell and petition Rowena for giving her an eternity of foot rubs in exchange for Dean back. Just so he could be like “what the hell what that, you nearly married that BLURRY WOMAN? What’s WRONG WITH YOU”

(I don’t know the fine details on this death scene to know or care how the Sam and Dean relationship wrapped up because it was clearly garbage and in my head they’re both still happy and alive and have a normal freaking relationship :P)

In any case, I know so much was carried by these characters that, to be serious for a moment, I don’t know if they ever could have lifted the whole weight of what we needed them to be, even in an ideal end. But I do know that by giving the show such a shaky resolution, especially with bringing Cas back off screen and not giving any real closure and telegraphed final scenes with anyone - i mean even the love confession and empty yeeting feel like Dean’s supposed to have another moment with him later and it doesn’t feel death scene-y enough to me because of the complete lack of closure the confession gives it by opening the new possibility moments before death - vast amounts of character work which could have HELPED bring some of these things to a conclusion just never showed up, it seems. 

Like, Sam’s Blurry Life With The Blurry Wife seems like an even worse state than his season 7-8 hiatus time with Amelia because at least she had a FACE and BACKSTORY and LINES ON SCREEN. At least she and Sam talked through their issues and related to each other and they had a reasonable reason for it not working out and they got to see what they both needed from each other at the time and what they couldn’t get from each other moving forwards. 

Even ignoring that Sam got the perfect endgame with Eileen, a Generic Blurry Wife ending for him is such garbage because so much of his bad coping is bound up in his hiding and running away... Just because Dean once waxed poetic about wanting Sam to grow old and boring and live a normal life doesn’t mean it’s what his character was best suited to or what he would really have been comfortable with long-term, especially when as far as I can tell Dean dies and he just up and abandons his hunting life and goes to be normal. If for garbage reasons you were ditching Eileen a happy ending for Sam would still probably involve a hunting-connected life, even if it was a montage showing him holed up in the Bunker being the new Bobby while nothing else changed and Dean was having bad drinks with the original Bobby in Heaven. Like just that one change would make Sam’s journey make sense that he stopped running away and accepted who he was and that the trauma shaped him but didn’t break him, and that he had moved beyond the harmful relationships with women who he valued for their normality, who he then told nothing about his life, bottled up his trauma and dismissed his past and then lived a sliver of existence right on the edge of sanity and coping. Blurry Wife might have the benefit that theoretically the cosmic nonsense is over and Sam might not be called back to that battlefield but the toll on Sam’s life from his history can’t just... disappear overnight. Literally his entire mental health arc which was based on his trauma and addressing it and overcoming it, and how Sam learns who he is beneath it and how it has made him uniquely Sam and stronger for it is all washed away. 

And that of all the examples you mentioned is like the only one I can talk about with any coherence without devolving into screaming about how better endings were owed all around. If the characters are denied meaningful narrative closure than everything they’ve carried with them, from just the way a plot will feel resolved or not, to all the stuff we reflect onto them about our own issues that we see in theirs, ends up dumped to the side and it leaves painful holes. 

I don’t think a better ending in terms of just wrapping up the show as it seemed to be on track to, until it abruptly wasn’t in the finale, would have ever fixed all of it or meant enough to some of us when it comes to things we’ve carried alongside the characters for a long time. Like I doubt even a full canon Destiel ending by their pen could have addressed ALL the issues we put on Dean and Cas and in our explorations in fic and meta and headcanon and crackposts and whatever else, feel like they’d need to talk out or resolve to be fully content on screen with each other. But there sure were things that could have been done with a few meaningful lines here and there and obviously Cas visually on screen with Dean at the ending that would have made things easier, or provided the paths to seeing these things resolved in our ongoing imaginings.

A lot of the finale pain seems to be the abrupt wall that the story just STOPS like that and so much of this is all left hanging and we’re all feeling the pain of many things that we forgave the story for along the way because there was a trust in the way storytelling works that we’d get that catharsis and closure at the end, and that all the painful stories we were told were being told for that reason. Like, the main reason to write painful stuff and dark themes is to explore it and look right at the horrible stuff, but then to find ways to bring it back down and let some of it go. And most of why I’m refusing to watch the end of the show is simply because it sounds like none of what any of us wanted to get out of it actually happened and there were NO paths to get these things we needed out of it. And at which point many of the terrible things that happened along the way now feel uncomfortable in a way that it’s torture porn without any relief or reason for doing it. The feeling is so universal and the descriptions of that last episode so laughably bad on that front that it’s the main reason I don’t want to watch it. Like, I can get a better sense of satisfaction bitching about how it should have ended than I’d get watching it so why would I do that? :P 

Anyway. Guess you got me ranting but this really is something I think in hindsight that might make rewatches really awful way back into the show just because you’ll be watching something and realise that for all the character is going through, they’re not going to get a resolution that actually would do anything to make any meaningful comment at all on what they’re going through. So now you’re just watching them suffer for the hell of it? Idk, this fear haunts me >.> 

[thegeminisage]

wAit i actually do want ur thoughts on how much u think michael was talking total shit i nthat bar

(here’s the post for context)

well firstly i think it’s an interesting juxtaposition between lucifer, the “bad son” who ostensibly doesn’t lie but merely tells uncomfortable truths*, and michael, the “good son” who not only lies all the fucking time, but knows the exact worst possible thing to say to anyone at any given time. I JUST THINK THAT’S NEAT. 

(*lucifer lies a lot in late seasons too because of antag decay, but like, the original concept of him was one of uncomfortable honesty.)

michael is willing to lie to get his way and does so frequently - starting with going back on the deal he made with dean, to leave him after they killed lucifer. he also does it when he shit-talks every last one of our protagonists in turn in 14.10, the episode the gifs are from. he starts with jack - telling him he’s nothing but a job, and dean wasn’t sad when he died, when we know that isn’t true (jack is visibly upset by this, which is part of why he chooses to use his powers later; michael successfully manipulated his enemy into doing harm to himself). after that michael goes in on cas, telling him that god doesn’t care about his world because it’s nothing but a failed draft (interestingly, cas is also visibly shaken by this).

then, before sam and cas enter dean’s mind, michael says that he WANTS them to do that - because his body might be all chained up, but in there, they don’t stand a chance. this is also untrue, because the whole purpose of him talking shit in that gifset to begin with is to stall so his monsters can rescue him. dean DOUBLES DOG DARES HIM to snap his fingers and nuke them all, and he doesn’t because he can’t. he didn’t want them in dean’s mind at all. he’s in trouble the whole time they’re in there and he KNOWS it.

as for what he said to sam, dean, and cas - yeah, this was also deeply untrue. the first thing he does is take a shot at cas; he claims that dean doesn’t care about cas, only feels obligated to help him out because of cas pulling him out of hell, and that cas, known fuck-up, is almost not worth the trouble. of course, WE know that isn’t true, and DEAN knows that isn’t true, and, being that cas was just looking through dean’s worst memories a few moments ago, and likely saw his own death there, HE probably knows it isn’t true too. (look at his face there compared to sam’s; he’s quite unbothered by the accusations, but shortly after looks away as though remembering something. the sheer magnitude of the lies michael is telling is what leads cas to figuring out in a moment that what michael is actually doing is stalling.) 

michael takes a swing at sam next, and this punch seems to hit the mark a little better - michael claims that dean was happiest when sam wasn’t around so it could be just him and john, alone together, just the two of them. it’s not in this gifset, but he also says “deep down, [dean] knows that you will always abandon him, again and again,” and sam shakes his head furiously. 

of course with what he went through at lucifer’s hands, sam has every reason in the world to be afraid of archangels, but i like to think he’s thinking about running away in flagstaff - i imagine the older sam got, the more he began to understand about the differing ways he & dean were abused by john. michael is striking at sam’s guilt for leaving dean alone to go to school, because he knows EXACTLY what dean’s life with john alone was like (more on that in a sec), but he’s also unknowingly striking at that flagstaff guilt. knowing something in your head and believing it in your heart are two entirely different matters - but i think logically sam is emotionally intelligent enough to know, most of the time, that the person at fault for dean’s abuse is his abuser. at the very least, he can be certain that dean was NOT happy when left alone with his father - dean’s neediness has been brought up in this series almost more times than i can count.

but both michael’s attack on cas and his attack on sam are ALSO attacks on dean, because dean will worry that sam and cas WILL think it’s all true - which is why michael says it. sam and cas are there as dean’s support system because dean isn’t strong enough to fight michael on his own. michael is SMART and the smartest thing to do is to drive a wedge between dean and his rescuers as quickly as possible. 

dean’s face here is absolutely INCREDULOUS. not only is this evidence that everything michael is saying is wildly untrue, but that he knows exactly how untrue it is - after all, he’s in dean’s head. michael’s goal isn’t to expose an ugly truth, it’s to strike at insecurities and weak points with untruths. the very next thing he says to dean is “you don't need them. you don't even like them. they're not your family, they're your responsibilities. they're a weight around your neck, & deep down, you were desperate to get away from them - that's why you said yes.”

dean goes from incredulous to disgusted in a big hurry once michael starts implying that dean believes sam’s going to abandon him again, and he gets out-and-out angry once michael actually does hit on the smallest kernal of truth - that dean sometimes felt burdened by the responsibilities of caring for his family. i think dean only getting truly angry THERE is indicative of how much bullshit the rest of it was. 

...including (told you we’d get back to this) the fact that dean was happy to be left alone with john. as we can see from his face - his “michael-is-lying” face - dean was NOT AT ALL HAPPY that it was just the two of them. consider:

john is a control freak - he expects instant and unquestioning obedience from his sons at all times. dean explains to sam later (and john himself confirms this near the season finale) that john equates control to protection. "dad was never disappointed in you...he was afraid of what could've happened to you if he wasn't around." "when you said that you wanted to go away to school, all i could think about, my only thought was, that you were gonna be alone, vulnerable." john, in his insane quest for vengeance and in his constant paranoia, wanted to control every possible aspect of sam and dean’s lives.

when sam leaves he’s not under john’s control. when sam and dean withhold information from him (that sam has been having visions) they aren’t under his control. when they talk back or disobey orders (when a young dean leaves the motel room to go to the arcade instead of watching sammy, when sam won’t accept his hunt midseason, when sam refuses to shoot him in order to kill yellow eyes) they are not under his control. even when dean doesn’t take care of the car as he was asked to, he’s not under john’s control. he’s slacking. 

and EVERY time this happens john gets angry. he demands to know why didn’t didn’t call about the dreams. he snaps at him about the car. when john came home from flagstaff and found sam missing, he was furious. we don’t know exactly what happened but we can tell it was not good. how much worse would it have been when sam went away for good instead of just two weeks?

i don’t think john’s reaction was as rash as the one in flagstaff - because he knew sam wasn’t dead, and sam’s college dreams weren’t dean’s fault, he didn’t wind up beating dean for it - but i do think it was longer-lasting and in many ways worse to deal with. he basically threw a 4-year temper tantrum that he couldn’t MAKE sam stay. and with one son missing there was just one left to take it out on. again, dean’s abuse is the fault of his abuser, NOT SAM, but no: dean probably did not have a good time while sam was gone.

what’s absolutely twisted about this is that the feeling seems to have been mutual - sometime in those four years, john started letting dean go on hunts by himself. this is explained away in the now-iconic “i’m 26 dude” line but john is such a control freak that it seems unlikely it was a matter of finding dean old enough to have earned his independence. dean could have turned 40 and if john was still alive and hunting yellow eyes he’d still expect dean to go right where he put him. i have a different theory:

dean says in season 14 that john used to send him away from sam when he was angry, so dean associates being split up from them with failure and punishment. it’s very likely that not only was dean NOT happiest when it was just him and john, he was actually SO unhappy that john simply didn’t want to be around him anymore.

hence the incredulous face.

[spn masterpost]

[bre95611]

HI! I’m finally rewatching 15x17 so I’m doing an in-depth(ish?) super stoned commentary! Hooray!

Before I get into it, I just really have to say, god I love this season so so so much. The writing has just been beautiful, and it has me EMOTIONAL af. Anyway. Here we go!

I always like looking at the Then/Now scenes. I feel they can ring some really important storywide context to the show. A great example of this is the Pizza Man montage. This episode it starts with the conversation from a  few episodes back with Dean and Sam discussing Jack killing God.

I’ve found the Dean/Amara relationship very interesting. After how it was played up in the 15x15 Gimme Shelter, always from Dean’s perspective in a joking manner. I believe it was @verobatto-angelxhunter that discussed the Big Married Energy it gave off, Dean teasing Castiel about a woman from his past. Season 11, as the beginning of the Dabb era, has been calling my name for a rewatch lately, especially with Amara being brought back. Its always been established that the connection Dean and Amara have was not something Dean liked. It wasn’t actual attraction. I’ll talk more about this later.

I have made some random posts here and there talking about the symmetry in endings between Season 11 and Season 15, I will also dig into this more later.

Saw a post about the amount of times “world” is said, want to keep track of that. I know there is a heavy Destiel attachment, and the second time it is said is during the Then sequence, Chuck’s dialogue from the episode with the tvs, talking about how its time to clear the board. (Want to look into Chess mentions this season, maybe even Dabb era as a whole? Because obviously there’s been a game going on at the cosmic level for quite some time). It doesn’t show the scene where Dean and Cas in the kitchen comes up on the tv where Chuck calls them “the world”. but it does have that section of dialogue as t screens are being shown, bringing that to mind.

Then we have Meg 2.0 as The Shadow, Cas is confused why he is being harmed since they’re on the same side. The Shadow makes their loyalty known. Keep this in mind. Will touch on this later as well.

Shit this is a lot for the episode not even starting yet. Below the cut for more!

God Amara is a QUEEN and I love her SO MUCH.

Sam tells Cas to “just get home” cause the Bunker is his FUCKING HOME

One thing I’ve seen brought up a lot is how Dean is always very action focused. Solve the problem at hand, “cross that bridge when we get to it” type of mentality. His plans always revolve around that. Cas and Sam are always very focused on there being another way, how there is always another way, especially when one oftheir lives are at stake. Sam calls him out. Sam wouldn’t care if Dean was saying that all the time if it were actually true, wouldn’t wonder if he ever got tired of saying it if they did only ever have one choice. TFW always subverts the problem at hand. Last season, their only shot of beating Michael was the Malak Box. Season 11 was soul bomb Dean, 13 was Dean saying yes to Michael. Ya’ll see a theme yet? Dean loves to sacrifice himself. Sam’s done the same exact thing, closing the Hell gates, letting out Lucifer. Cas’s whole thing in Season 6? They’ve all done the same things. over and over. Hamster wheel. Think of what made all those endings obsolete? What made them find another way, huh?

Fuck that paragraph went somewhere I wasn’t originally taking it, but still a good take IMHO. 

I’m loving the SUITS!

I really hope that Amara is not gone. I know I’ve seen some stuff that talks about why that has to have been her last episode, but whatever. Imma still dream. And I really might have to just write a fix-it fic after the finale about Aunt Amara and Jack hanging out. 

I just noticed world again (Dean to Amara: saving the whole world’s ass)

“You and I will always help each other.” That look on Dean’s face when she said that. Not  the face of someone enjoying being flirted with by and “ex-flame” or whatever the hell

Saw a post about the generational family story that was being told (I believe it was @occamshipper) that basically has Sam is to Jack as Dean was to Sam growing up (Dean is John and Cas is Mary, super awesome read, will try to find and link in a bit). This whole family arc is about breaking the toxic circle, being a better parent than your parents, found family kinda things. So how has Dean reacted to Sam in these situations? Most recently, I think, is season 8, with the Trials. Sam was sacrificing himself, he knew that, he was okay with it. Sam was suicidal by the end of it, and Dean does what he normally does with Sam and keeps him from finishing the trials, and season 9 starts with Dean completely taking away his autonomy again, allowing Gadreel to possess him. Dean was angry, he was disappointed, he acted like Dean, and that is the kind of treatment he gets from his “big brother” father figure. But Sam breaks through his treatment, tells Jack he is brave and validates him, and doesn’t try and take away his FREE WILL.

Sam continues the path he started on when he told Dean to stop as he continuously made excuses/explained why he had kept things from Sam about Jack. He grows!! I love to see it!! He does NOT give up his FREE WILL. Guys I’m loving it. These boys are actively making HARD decisions and we are seeing growth in real time. TFW in every form has...not really lived up to its name? Sure, the world gets free will, but the boys never do. And not just in situations like they’re told they can’t do something. I’m talking constant violations of each other’s bodily autonomy. Dean all the time with Sam, Cas when he takes down the Hell wall from Sam’s mind, honestly....mostly its Sam having it violated. But the other guys have to stop fucking with it. They all need a variation. Dean needs the Free Will to stop being his father’s soldier, to live his true non performative life. Cas needs to be free of his self doubt. Permission to be happy, not happy in and of itself. Jack needs Free Will to be a fucking toddler.....

Sam SEES it dude, he knows something isn’t right, and he’s the one that figured it out like, every other time this season, too. Jesus. Dean is so desparately caught up in wanting to get the hell OUT of the hamster wheel, he’s too blind to see how deep into it he is. The first plan ANYONE gives him, he goes with it. He’s literally followed Billie’s plan because of one of her books before, and what happened? Cas and Sam brought him back from sacrificing himself. 

I’ve really enjoyed how much Sam and Dean are fighting, honestly. Like, my spec for a while now has been that the brothers are going their seperate ways at the end of all this, the only way to satisfyingly bring an impactful end to their toxic codependency that they’ve been chipping away at for the last few seasons.

Guys I’m suuuuuuuper baked,

Dean says “Someone’s gotta be the grownup here” talking to Sam about taking Jack to do the final ritual. Dean is fully his father, talking to the “older brother” Sam protecting the “special child” Jack. Dean is not  breaking the cycle established by his father, going mad with rage over his circumstances

Jesus Christ the LOOK ON SAM’S FACE when Dean says Jack’s not family. I’m dead. He looks so broken.

That line though is.....hm. All through season 14 and 15, its been established that Jack is family, their kid. When Lily Sunder comes back to help get his soul, Dean makes comments about not making them go through what she did with her daughter, and again to Belphegor in 15 when asked who he was (after a fight between Dean and Cas no less, calls him “our kid”). So this is how far Dean has spiralled? This is how he is choosing to try and deal with knowing Jack will die? Denial of his importance?

“He’s not like you. He’s not like Cas.” Dean feels he holds a different relationship with Cas than he does with Sam. Just...sayin....

Jared’s acting is......truly just phnomenal.

Man, i feel like the music is off? and it makes me think its intentional, cause Becky says something about how there’s no classic rock? So foreshadowing? nah.

This really does feel like....the last real Sam and Cas interaction. It is heart breaking really.

Alright, I’m posting this now......cause I literally just got to the first commercial break.... So 

This is pt 1 I guess.

[mittensmorgul]

I've watched season 11 again, and I have a question if you're willing to answer. In season 5, Cas was very disappointed about learning God was basically a "dead beat dad," as Dean called it. But when Cas had an opportunity to talk to Chuck, he didn't seem all that interested in talking to him or even asking a question or two. Why do you think they never had Cas interact with Chuck as a son talking to his father when it was such a huge deal for Cas in season 5?

Hi there! I’m happy to talk about this, because honestly I was personally GLAD that Cas treated Chuck the way he did in s11.

(A/N: I was halfway through writing this when my power went out last night, so now that everything is back on I’m gonna see if I remember wtf I was even talking about... if this goes sideways halfway through, blame Potomac Edison)

Cas had already realized long before exactly who and what Chuck was. I mean, not that Chuck was actually God, but that God and “His Plan” was always a load of BS.

Chuck left the angels a lot of conflicting information, and not a lot in the Free Will and Critical Thinking arena. I was just thinking about season 6, and this sort of feeds into a lot of the same distinction between Cas and the rest of the angels. My personal line of thinking earlier this evening was this line in 6.20:

CASTIEL I'm doing this for you, Dean. I'm doing this because of you. DEAN Because of me. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. CASTIEL You're the one who taught me that freedom and free will -- DEAN You're a freakin' child, you know that? Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want!

Major Tangent Warning, because I gotta write out what I was thinking earlier in order to explain why I am So Pleased with Cas and his reaction to Chuck in s11, which I think of as abject disdain. This is key to everything Cas had learned, to all of his growth as a person up to that point.

What Dean tells Cas here is in direct contradiction to what Raphael’s self-stated motive in restarting the apocalypse was. Also from 6.20:

RAPHAEL You rebelled - against God, heaven, and me. Now you will atone. We'll start by freeing Lucifer and Michael from their cage. And then we'll get our show back on the road. CASTIEL Raphael...No. The Apocalypse doesn't have to be fought! RAPHAEL Of course it does. It's God's will. CASTIEL How can you say that?! RAPHAEL Because it's what I want. CASTIEL Well, the other angels won't let you. RAPHAEL Are you sure? You know better than anyone, Castiel. They're soldiers. They weren't built for freedom. They were built to follow.

Raphael is just doing “whatever he wants,” in the way Dean was trying to convince Cas NOT to. Because if Dean learns anything in s6, it is the cosmic cost of his own actions. Think 6.11, and the lessons he learns having to play Death for a day. As much as Dean tries to work around the Bigger Picture of the Universe, he does understand that there is a right and a wrong, and that some things are worth fighting or even dying for, but the cost might sometimes just be too great. And unleashing all the souls in purgatory on the planet seems like just a different sort of apocalyptic level of bad... like putting out a fire with a flamethrower.

Cas had to make a choice here. He’d chosen his path every step of the way, wrestled with each decision he’d had to make over the previous year leading up to that point, but he’d passed the point of no return, and his direct prayer to Chuck went unanswered, and he never got a sign whether he was doing the right thing or not.

I’ve argued in the past that he absolutely DID get a sign, in the form of Dean telling him to stop in 6.20. But Cas dismissed him, out of pride, out of hubris, out  of desperation to do the one thing he believed could give him the power to stop Apocalypse 2.0, save Heaven, and also save Dean in the process, since Dean would be back on the radar to be Michael’s vessel if Raphael succeeded in breaking him out of the Cage.

And here’s the really tangenty part of the tangent: it just made me think of all the nitwits who won’t wear a mask in public, or follow social distancing rules because MAH FREEDUMB, you’re impinging on MAH LIBERTY. BUT THE CONSTITUTION!

Because yes, we can do what we want, but we can’t do WHATEVER we want when our actions are harmful to others!

The framers of the Constitution could never have foreseen a pandemic like this. But any SOCIETY where people must coexist needs to put some constraints on liberty, and the framers absolutely DID understand this.

They also couldn’t have foreseen air travel, but we have established rules about this. They couldn’t have foreseen cars and traffic lights and interstate highways, and yet we have rules that govern our behavior there, as well. Air traffic controllers, stop signs, speed limits-- we don’t just have the right to drive 90 mph through a school zone and run through red lights. And yet nobody yells BUT MAH FREEDUMB! when they get a speeding ticket.

Polite society ALSO must include *MY* right not to be killed because someone else decided that traffic laws didn’t apply to them, see?

Basically, wear your mask and shut up about it, whiny pissbabies. This is what is required of you to live in a functioning society. You do NOT have the right to infect others with a potentially deadly illness. Full stop.

But back to Cas and the Leviathan infection he’s about to infest the entire planet with...

Dean was effectively giving him the “wear a mask, nitwit” speech, but on a cosmic level.

And Cas had to live with the consequences of his choice, with the GUILT and DEPRESSION that resulted. And he spent the next few seasons desperately trying to make up for what he’d done, to atone and do whatever he could to redeem himself-- to Dean. He’d tried to redeem himself to Heaven, but the more he eventually began to learn about Humanity, the less affinity he felt for his fellow angels, and for Chuck’s construct of Heaven.

Because back to another previous point, Chuck effectively left the angels two opposing sets of instructions: orders to watch over the earth and act as shepherds to humanity, and orders to bring on the apocalypse at any cost. Can’t do both, truly. Even Naomi will eventually say, right before Metatron stabs her in the head, that she (and the other angels) forgot that their true mission was to protect and defend humanity, and she didn’t know when or why that ever changed.

FINALLY back to the point! WHEEE!

Basically, Cas has, in the six years between s5 and s11, experienced “god-ness” from every angle, experienced his own guilt over what he now believes were misguided actions, that sometimes Humanity has a better answer, and there are some things that just aren’t worth it in the long run.

Mostly, he’s realized just HOW deadbeat Chuck has always been. And the revelation that Chuck had actually been God all along? Saw their pain and suffering at trying to STOP the apocalypse all those years before? KNEW FULL WELL that Sam, Dean and Cas were doing everything they could to try and save the world from basically the entirety of Heaven and Hell, who were plotting the destruction of humanity and most of creation with it. I mean... Cas spent s5 begging for God’s help, to save the world, to convince Michael and Lucifer that they did not have to destroy humanity, and Chuck... had done LESS than nothing. He’d sat there and ghoulishly watched the entire mess unfold like a bad tv show... oh wait... :’D

By s11, Lucifer had not reached that point that Cas had. Lucifer had many other issues, having been rejected and locked up for most of existence, and even HE had been the one in 5.22 to try and talk Michael out of enacting Chuck’s battle plan. Lucifer never had the experiences Cas did (and despite being given every opportunity to have them over the next few seasons after s11, he continues to reject those experienced at every turn anyway, only serving to highlight the difference between Cas and, honestly, most of the rest of the angels). Lucifer had a personal need for a direct apology from Chuck for everything he’d been put through-- starting with taking on the original Mark and ending with the cage.

Of course Lucifer didn’t get an honest apology, because in the end, it was all just a theoretical production to Chuck. He had never apologized, in any of his universes, to any of the beings he created. And he never would. And on some level, Cas-- via his experiences, what he himself had already come to understand about God and creation-- already understood this about Chuck.

Cas... didn’t care about him anymore. He cared about HUMANITY, about Chuck’s CREATION. The creator might be a worthless jerk, but what came out of his creation is a thing of ultimate beauty. Humanity, love, free will, and the beauty of the universe is what ends up saving the world in 11.23, so I’ve chosen to accept this read of Cas and his relationship and opinions of Chuck. Because it’s perfectly in line with the “moral” of season 11.

Plus it’s just so personally satisfying to me watching each individual character’s reactions to Chuck, and understanding how that aligns with all of their personal arcs.

Dean: brought the “how could your forsake your creation” of a broken-hearted son who has finally seen the truth. something he worked out YEARS ago between himself and his own father, so it didn’t come with that particular personal baggage and didn’t completely break him in the process (as it may have done with Cas had Chuck revealed himself, say, in 7.01...)

Sam: brought his life-long hope that God was real, his faith in God’s inherent “goodness,” did the Chuck Fanboy for a bit before seeing Chuck a lot more clearly. He was able to relinquish his idol worship of Chuck as the Savior of Humanity.

Cas: had brought his experience of Humanity and Godhood, the entire spectrum of Creation that he had experienced for himself and grown through. Cas, for all his mistakes, had never stopped TRYING to do the right thing, never stopped doing everything in his power to save humanity and creation from every cosmic threat, while Chuck himself had only hidden away and watched from the sidelines, when he’d ALWAYS had the power to make everything good and right and allow the Winchesters their peace. Honestly, what BETTER response than to treat Chuck like a bit of gum stuck to his shoe?

Metatron: who had basically spent s9 trying to turn himself into Chuck Lite, literally plagiarizing his Supernatural novels to create his own origin story as the new God, and failed miserably. What other angel could truly confront Chuck, writer to writer, and call him out for His Story? Even fallen as low as he could go, Metatron understood first-hand the responsibility of The Cosmic Author in ways even Cas couldn’t, because narrative symmetry. Metatron was always about the Word, as God’s Scribe. He was a bad copy of the original with the names scratched out. He basically wrote the worst self-insert fanfic of all time. And that gave him the narrative space to confront Chuck about everything that Cas no longer had. Cas had long since rejected that role, sided with Humanity, and smashed Chuck’s Word. The original tablet-breaker.

Crowley: carried on Crowley-ing. Doing the best he could with what he had, and somehow miraculously BS’ing his way through.

Rowena: recognized the Biggest Power in the room and ingratiated herself to it for comfort and protection, and hopefully for a bit of power and security.

Billie: gosh she just stepped in at the 11th hour to annoy Chuck. :’D

But yeah, I’ve always been incredibly pleased that Cas basically ignored Chuck in s11. Good for him.

[deans-haunted-baby]

Why I don’t think Michael will side with Chuck in the End

I know there’s theories floating around that Michael may have been deceiving the Winchesters in 15x08. Its true we have no idea what his agenda is or if he’s that interested in playing nice with TFW. They did trap him in Hell with their half brother for a long time so he’s not exactly warm & fuzzy about that. However this isn’t the psychotic, sinister version of Michael from the alternate universe nor is he the same steel cold obedient soldier back in 5x22. He’s changed massively. There’s more humanity in him now than he’d like to admit. In spite of what we’ve seen from Michael in the past, I don’t think he’s interested in harming Sam and Dean, at least not currently. And I just can’t see him running to Chuck, not after receiving all that alarming information. So I'm going to present the following reasons for why he probably won’t turn on the boys. Number 1 being the most important. Adam Milligan.

For however it happened the archangel bonded with a human. The formally resurrected 19 yr old illegitimate son of John Winchester. All those years spent in the cage these two managed to forge an understanding between one another; an unusual strong connection. They're friends and allies. Michael listens to and respects Adam’s opinions even if he doesn’t always agree. Allows him freedom to control his own body. And despite being the ruthless warrior that he still is, Michael’s been shown to be much more merciful, patient and compassionate compared to when the boys last faced him. Because of his relationship with Adam, Michael’s developed a newfound appreciation for humanity similar to his aunt Amara aka the Darkness. He truly cares about Adam and protects him. Like at the diner when he smote Lilith for posing a threat. Then instead of killing the witnesses in front of Adam, Michael chooses to spare their lives by erasing their memories. He even defended Adam to the Winchesters further demonstrating that he does consider his feelings. That’s beyond the person he was when he told Dean “Adam isn’t home right now” all those years ago.

So I have no doubt Michael will do what ever means necessary to keep Adam safe from Chuck, who is hell bent on destroying the world which Adam is part of. Even if that means siding with some old enemies to take him down so be it. As the old saying goes “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Of course that doesn’t mean Adam shares any love for Sam and Dean. Hell no. He made that pretty clear at the diner. He has every reason and right to hate them after ten years of failure to save him from Hell. Every reason to make them suffer. Adam deserves to be pissed at the Winchesters and the world for doing him dirty like that. But...for better or worse, Sam and Dean are still his brothers. Its for that reason and that reason alone that I don’t see Michael threatening to go after them later. He knows Adam wouldn’t want that unless (he really is a scheming crazy person deep inside) Michael’s friendship with him is just smoke & mirrors which I don’t believe for one second. 

And Adam’s been presented as being a very forgiving, kind soul despite all the pain he’s been through. Revenge wasn’t even on his mind the moment he got out of that cage. It was human food on top of wanting to go back to school or get a job. Meaning he cared more about getting back to some sense of normalcy. Then when Castiel and the Winchesters pulled him and Michael into their crisis, Adam was willing to hear their side and attempted to convince Michael to help them. Why go through that whole charade if Adam just wanted Sam and Dean hurt or dead? They had every opportunity to double-cross TFW while being held captive but instead Michael & Adam chose to put aside their grievances, at least for the moment, and give the Winchesters something useful. Now whether or not the spell actually works (I doubt it’ll be that simple) is the mystery. However this definitely not the last time we’ll see these two characters which brings me to point number 2. Jack Kline.

This is a big one. Why you ask? Well lets go over that scene in 15x08 where Castiel shares his memories with Michael and Adam. There was so much foreshadowing in this moment (from Michael/Adam’s return down the road, to Michael’s unavoidable confrontation with Chuck and finally his eventual encounter with the young Nephilim himself) based on how that scene was shot and edited. The primary objective was Michael watching Jack die at the snap of Chuck’s fingers and reacting to it along with all the other nasty business his dad’s been doing behind the scenes. Talking didn’t seem to be enough to get through to Michael and neither did antagonizing him. His stubbornness and arrogance wasn’t surprising being he is the Prince of Heaven and has a blind idealized devotion for his father as his loyal son. So in order to open Michael’s eyes and get him to see the truth, Castiel focuses his energy on the most ruthless, evil act Chuck has ever committed. Murdering his grandson and Michael’s nephew. 

Doing this Castiel shatters that righteous image Michael has had of his father forever because Chuck/God (father of all creation) is suppose to be the embodiment of light, love, hope, peace and benevolence. He created Michael to be his champion of humanity; the guardian protector of Heaven and Earth. Its Michael’s sworn destiny to defend good against evil. And Chuck crossed the line, several in fact. He represents everything Michael was born to oppose. Trying to mess with free will, attempting to destroy everything he created all out of spite because the Winchesters refused to play his games anymore. But above every horrible thing he’s ever done there’s no sin greater than taking the life of his own flesh and blood. A child born of a human (God’s greatest creation) and an archangel (Michael’s younger brother Lucifer whom, despite their conflict, he loved immensely). That is unforgivable. No matter how much he may still love him, Michael has absolutely no reason to trust his father; not after all those centuries of deception. And Chuck has shown he has no regard for human life let alone the lives of his own family which Jack’s death all represents. 

Now Michael chose to leave at the end of 15x08 after giving our heroes the spell to trap Chuck and showing them the door to Purgatory. But what’s interesting about that is his reference to the Darkness. It’s unclear if Michael even knows Amara has been released and neither Dean or Castiel ever mention it. I wonder if he can sense her energy. So the question is where is Michael going? Is he planning to seek her out or leaving to confront his father (which I doubt since Chuck is preoccupied with Sam and Eileen at the moment)? What we do know is Michael and Adam can’t avoid the inevitable. They’re as much apart of this fight as TFW whether they like it or not. It all depends on which side Michael ultimately chooses. Will he align himself with the Winchesters or is he going to be on his own side? It’ll be interesting to find out when the show returns in 2020!  And I’ve been thinking a lot about what Michael’s interaction with Jack will look like when they’re finally reunited because if its anything like what we saw with Gabriel (or better) that could be a good sign for Sam, Dean and Castiel. 

 Out of all his paternal family members Jack’s so far met his biological dad (that didn’t go over so well), his grandfather (that didn’t go well either) and one of his archangel uncles. He’s yet to encounter his great aunt Amara the Darkness or his most powerful famous warrior uncle. The original Michael. Those are interactions I’d very much like to see happen before the show ends. But for arguments sake lets say Michael does consider turning on the Winchesters. Not that he would or might but what if he still has doubts. Jack could be TFW’s best chance at gaining Michael’s trust, cooperation and alliance. He could tell his uncle that Castiel and the Winchesters had been raising him as their own; protecting him since he was born. Things I’m sure Michael might appreciate. Or Jack could confide his biggest regret (accidently killing Mary Winchester) as a means to bond with Michael and help him understand the Winchester brothers a little better. Reminding Michael and Adam of redemption and forgiveness. That any pain the Winchesters might’ve caused them has no comparison to what Jack took from Sam and Dean and yet they’re still a family.

It’ll be fascinating to see how they go about the dynamic between these characters considering what happened with AU Michael in S13 and S14. Jack may be a little hesitant of his uncle at first and Michael may be hostile (since he probably knows Nephilim are forbidden) yet curious or a combination of both. Or maybe their first encounter may be a bit softer than expected what with Adam in the middle of things. Michael could become very taken with Jack and protective of him. He was very distraught after seeing those horrifying images of his father killing his nephew. And I could see Adam being their ice breaker (oh the comedic possibilities of this!) he’s a very laidback, likable chill dude not to mention Sam and Dean’s half brother. Yah that little detail is probably going to be the most shocking for Jack since Adam’s never been a blip on the Winchesters’ radar.

Moving onto point number 3. Heaven. It’s dying which is why Jack was manipulated into creating new angels to power it up. After all the damage done by Metatron, Lucifer and the Entity it’s left in ruin and without proper leadership. We know as of right now Michael has no intention of going back there. He’s severely withdrawn since learning his brothers are all deceased and probably feels like a failure and a fool. But none the less he’s got unfinished business back home. By the time Supernatural ends someone’s got to be left in charge of things up there, my moneys on either Amara or Michael since he’s the heir to the throne of Heaven. It would be a fitting ending for either of them. Maybe Michael will somehow restore Heaven’s power (with Amara and Jack) and reopen it for the all the earthbound souls. Or maybe in the aftermath of the final showdown against Chuck, Michael will just hang around with Adam and whoever else is left standing on Earth. And finally we reach my last point number 4. Amara.

What do we know about Michael’s complicated history with his aunt? Not much either than the fact that he and his brothers were ordered by Chuck to seal her away centuries ago; with no intention of ever releasing her. Something tells me Amara wouldn’t harbor any kind of affection for Michael, not after what we saw with Lucifer. And we have no idea if she still shares that same connection with Dean as she did in S11 (though rumor has it they got an upcoming storyline together in the back-half of S15) or if she’s even interested in lending a hand in the Winchesters’ business of saving the world. However Amara has been shown, like Michael, to have developed a love for humanity. She’s having the time of her life vacationing all over and taking advantage of her freedom. I don’t think she’d be too thrilled knowing her brother plans to destroy all he’s accomplished and he’s not exactly her favorite person to be around. She’s completely done with Chuck’s crap. He’s alienated her to the point where she wants to be as far from him as humanly possibly. 

And if she does still view Dean in a favorable light after what he’d done for her, that could be what persuades Amara into helping TFW. Michael would have to be an absolute moron to attempt an attack (if he decided to make them his enemies) if Sam and Dean manage to get the Darkness on their side. Its canon that she’s far more powerful than the archangels which is why it took all of them combined to lock her away. That said I don’t think Michael’s character is being set up as a villain. We already had AU Michael, been there done that. Nor do I see him and Amara at odds specifically because of their deteriorating ties to Chuck. Could their reunion be pretty heated and violent? Possibly. Its hard to say where they’ll stand with each other when they cross paths, there’s some bad blood between them for sure so they’ve got some family issues to sort through. But as of right now, what’s happening is bigger than both of them and their angst. Ironically Michael and Amara got more in common with each other than they realize. 

Both of them were abandoned, lied to and used by Chuck on top of being imprisoned for many years. And they actually care about the world they're currently inhabiting which Chuck wants to end. That’s got to be worth more to them than some old discrepancies in the past. Enough for them to want to put aside their differences and work together to stop Chuck. Imagine how awesome this storyline would be, former enemy family members coming together because of a common threat they’re all facing. Michael and Amara along side TFW, that’s a pretty badass team. I WANT THIS. I want to see Michael get to be a good guy. Become an ally and the honorable hero he was meant to be. Saving humanity whom he now cares about with his human best friend. We deserve to see this version of Michael come into fruition before the show ends. 

Anyway those are my thoughts on the Michael/Adam situation. I hope it comes true or most of it anyway. I know Supernatural is building up for a big finish. It would be nice if they didn’t waste two characters we haven't seen for ten years. I want to believe that they have plans for Michael and Adam that don’t include killing them off for shock value and/or villainizing them at the last second. They deserve better than that. 15x08 was a perfect example of how to utilize and develop these characters into the plot. They have so much potential and story left to tell. Lets hope the writers know what they’re doing.

[unkemptcastiel]

SPN Finale

I try to limit w/ank on this blog so in the midst of reblogging posts that share my discontentment for the series ending, I don't want to end this show on sole negativity, because it means so much to me. So I'm gonna sum up my feelings on the ending, good and bad. Then I’m going to try to focus on having fun, reblogging memes and reliving good memories with the show and the fandom. 

Good:

As far as the show has communicated, everyone is happy. Dean, Sam, Bobby, Rufus, John & Mary, Cas, all apparently happy. Yay!

I like that heaven's walls were taken down. That's something that never felt right to me and seemed indicative of heaven's problems in general- like the fact that everything was so harshly ordered to the point of isolating humans in farces of happiness-bubbles of recreated memories, that all just felt a bit fake and like a symptom of the larger problem of how angels viewed and treated humans. So I'm happy they changed that! :)

I like Betty as new Death.

OH I also liked the brief re-intro of the two archangels. It may have been a little wasted, (but this is the positivity section!) but it was a dynamic I wanted to see for ages. Also lucifer calling michael a cuck: Amazing.

I'm glad Jack didn't die. He's my son and I love him.

Also the thing with the dog & chuck.. pure comedy gold. Amazing.

Confusing:

I'm a little confused what happens to the dimensional "repeat" characters, like.. are there two bobby's chilling next door to each other in heaven, of bobby and apocalypse-world bobby? It's not a huge issue it just wasn't really addressed.

I'm also wondering if angels are basically extinct now? Like Cas is apparently ok but last we heard there were like 7 whole angels left. How's that goin. Hello?

I'm assuming hell is operating per usual? It's been a while since we've seen Rowena but I think she's still running things. A little unsure of where the balance lies between heaven and hell just due to how decimated the angels are.

I'm assuming Jody, and Alex, and Claire and all them are good? Would've liked a check-in of some sort on the recurring characters tbh. There was a lot of me and my friend asking "... So what happened to them?" about side characters who we never really got any goodbye for.

Also same with Amara being kinda written off.

Speaking of, was the woman Sam ended up with Eileen?? It was unclear to me. If not, I wish they would've mentioned her; she's a character I care about a lot.

Bad (Let’s say “Critique”):

The shows writing has dipped each season imo, and this season often felt particularly hollow. I'm not quite sure how to better communicate it beyond... The way it was shot, the dialogue, every behind-the-scenes choice just felt... Off. It was very off-putting, all season for me.

The "Destiel" thing: I’m sorry, it still felt queerbaiting. I'm queer myself but I've never personally really shipped destiel, nor any ship amongst the main trio. So, while not being very invested in a romantic form of Dean+Cas's relationship, I still felt that the confession was used more as a last-minute ploy to attract queer fans who may have since left the show, or in some attempt to make everyone happy, make it ambiguous so both queer and het fans wouldn't feel like their understanding of dean & cas was infringed on. I understand that, from a show-ending perspective, especially from a show that owes so much to its fans, that they'd want to please everybody. Unfortunately, queer representation is still lacking enough that anything outside of clear, unambiguous GAY that no one could argue is anything else, is still sort of regressive and potentially harmful to the LGBTQ+ community. So it ended up feeling like a throw-away, last-minute-gays but still semi-hetero cop-out situation, sadly. (I also think the release of the script was very deliberate in stressing that Dean cannot reciprocate whatever feelings Cas has. It communicated to me "MAYBE a non-human character could be ambiguously-maybe-queer but one of the two leads? Absolutely not.")

On that note --perhaps as a result of the confession scene-- the boys' relationship with Cas felt really weird in the end. For someone they've known and fought with for 12 years, the idea that they wouldn't even look for a way to save him ... It felt OOC, painting Dean and Sam as kind of heartless. I also feel that having Cas saved off-screen and never reappearing on-screen was generally.. a little disrespectful to Misha. His performance of Castiel literally changed the show for the rest of its run (if you're unaware, he was supposed to have a few episodes in s4 and that's it. His performance floored fans so much that he was signed on as a recurring character and eventual series main). So treating him as an afterthought felt callous, both in-show-universe and out here in the real world, show business-wise.

I don't care that Dean was killed by "a nail." I don't care lol. As long as the character didn't die of dysentery or something it doesn't read as stupid or humiliating, imo. I saw it and was like "ye shit happens." And Sam left to live a normal life- Good! My boy’s happy. 

My primary issue with how Dean & Sam's lives and deaths went was this:

They make the entire show seem pointless.

To explain: the way that Sam and Dean's lives were going before the events of the pilot were: Dean is hunting primarily on his own, Sam is lined up to live a normal and happy life and eventually start a family of his own. It is discussed many times early-seasons that Dean expects to die early, due to the dangers of hunting, even though it is revealed that he also deeply wants a safe and happy life, he feels it is unattainable. Sam loves his family, but just wants out, and is getting to have that. 

Usually in fiction, if an arc is set up then change is to occur to resolve the arc in a new and hopefully better place than it was originally. 15x20 however, looked at s1 Dean and Sam and said "Yep you guessed it exactly right." In-universe, their lives were on these paths once Sam left and went to college, which was a pre-pilot event. The "inciting incident" of the show, which acts as the pilot and which causes the rest of the show to happen in the first place, is Sam leaving his path for normality and returning to hunting. By ending this show with Dean dying on a hunt like he always expected, and Sam leaving to live a normal life with a family like he always originally planned: this arc is negated. We’re basically put right back in a pre-pilot spn world.

This ending was all already lined up to happen pre-pilot. This was ALREADY going to be their lives before the show ever started in 2005-- as a result, the show's events were just a bunch of messiness and conflict in the middle; but spn still ended for the boys the way it would have if basically all the events of the show 2005-2020 just never happened.

So it makes the show seem superfluous, and to me as a viewer it felt insulting because it felt like we ended right where we started, or we went backwards, and it implied that it was a waste of time to even watch the show if it was always going to end the same no matter what events transpired in between. THAT'S what upset me by this ending.

tl;dr: The show's writing felt rushed, confused, and emotionally hollow. As such, we didn't get to see much on the many side characters we care about, which was disappointing. The disappearance of Cas made him seem insignificant and the way each brother's life went was exactly as they were going before the events of the pilot, thus their lives were filled with extra needless pain and turmoil before ending the way they always expected, making the entirety of the show's events and its existence seem useless. Because I loved these characters and invested near a decade into them, this feels insulting to me on the characters' behalf, and on my own behalf as a viewer. That's my issue with the 15x20 ending.

However, I still take more positivity out of this show as a whole than negativity. I’m grateful it even existed in the first place, and that is what I want to try to focus on. 15x20 is one episode. Are there more episodes I dislike? Sure. But they are still a minority in a show that will hold my love for.. the forseeable future. So to every fan, those who disliked the ending and those who loved it, you’re valid, I’m glad I got to know some of you, & 

[i-know-like-four-things]

Panic and Confessions

This is a fic I wrote for @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover ‘s and @specialagentrin ‘s @representation-week

Rating: Gen

Word Count: 2338

Summary:

Sam has a nightmare and a resulting panic attack, meaning that he was up in the early hours of the morning. Someone else is up. Confessions and honest conversations ensue.

Or

The faces our boys wear when no one but each other is looking

Warnings: Canon typical violence, minor self harm. My thought process when writing it is that it wasn't really intentional, it was more of just a tic that the character has. It was written to be like a maladaptive coping mechanism, but It could be triggering for some folks. Stay safe lovelies!

Read on AO3

Sam woke feeling like his head was underwater. He looked down and saw unfamiliar sheets, and he simply assumed he must have been in another nameless motel in middle America. He rested his eyes for a moment longer, not wanting to become a part of the real world just yet. Surely, Dean was still asleep so he could afford a few extra minutes of denial and peace.

He finally decided to open his eyes. He looked up at the ceiling above him. And there was Jess, trapped to the ceiling, surrounded by flames. She was screaming for help. Sam tried to get up and help her, to yell back at the very least, but he was parrylized. He could do little more than watch.

Suddenly, the heat intensified and Jess was gone. In her place was his mom, Mary. Mary’s skin was blistering, and her hair was almost all gone. More and more of her flesh disappeared in front of Sam’s eyes, and her screams intensified. All of her skin burned off, and then her muscles and bones started melting, dripping like hot oil onto Sam’s exposed flesh. Again, he tried to scream, but nothing came out.

When Mary had completely melted, the fire went out and the room was suddenly freezing. Sam could feel the cold seeping into his bones and drying Mary’s remains on his skin.

“Hey, Sammy. Long time no see,” said a voice, slickly sweet, from across the room. In the corner, by the door of the room, stood a man. The man was slightly shorter than Sam, with sandy blond hair and stubble.

Sam still could not speak, but he felt like screaming as soon as he realized who it was. Lucifer. Lucifer smiled sickeningly before throwing his hand out to the side. A flash of light came out of his hand and struck a sleeping Dean right in the chest. At the contact, Dean screamed an ear-shattering scream. He screamed for what felt like an eternity, sounding like he was rupturing his own vocal chords, until he collapsed, limp into his bed, smoke rising from his chest.

“Thank Chuck we finally got him out of the way,” Lucifer laughed and walked confidently over to Sam. Sam felt his eyes heat and moisten, and his chest clenched as the fallen angel drew closer, but he could still do nothing except lay there and wait.

Lucifer loomed over Sam, looking down at him. He snapped his fingers and suddenly Sam was naked, his arms chained above his head, with Mary’s remains still stuck to him. He could feel the sharp metal of the cuffs cutting into the skin of his wrists, and the damp floor freezing his soul through his feet. Sam heard dripping water somewhere, and he took a moment to think how chiche that was. Dripping water in a dungeon? How original.

Lucifer walked up to Sam, carrying a knife. Sam pulled on the metal collar around his neck, again feeling it biting into his flesh, but to no avail. “Well, Sam,” Lucifer sneered, “this is going to be fun.”

Sam woke, for real this time, in his bed in the bunker. He was drenched from head to toe in sweat even though he was freezing. He sat up in his bed, tapping at his sternum. He had picked up that habit the first time that he had a panic attack and was trying to tell Dean even though he couldn’t speak. Now, any time his heart started to race and his breathing became unnatural, he would tap at his sternum until it became painful.

Sam hunched over and clutched at his hair, focusing on his breathing. In for seven, hold for four, out for eight. In for seven, hold for four, out for eight. Eventually, he realized that this wasn’t the type of panic attack that he could stop, and that he would just have to wait it out. He hunched over, letting the tears flow freely from his eyes. He let himself hyperventilate, digging his fingers into his skin. Sometimes he wasn’t breathing. He would breathe in, hold it, unable to force himself to exhale, until he was dizzy. Then all the air would come rushing out at one. Then a labored, slow, and painful inhale.

It went on for ten minutes, where Sam was grasping for breath, his vision blacking out and him digging at his skin. Claw marks on his thighs. Crescent moons on his palms. Blood under his nails and on the rough patches on his face. Salt in his mouth.

When it finally subsided, Sam was exhausted, but even so he did not want to go back to sleep. It was more of a physical exhaustion, the one he felt in his bones, but his brain was running like a hyperactive labrador. So Sam decided to go wash his face off with cold water and then make some coffee. He’d have a lazy day if he had to, but he was not risking more of those dreams.

Sam slowly made his way to the bunker’s main bathrooms. They were set up like a college dorm. Some of the rooms had individual bathrooms, but sometimes Sam liked to go to the main ones; they reminded him of Stanford. So Sam slowly made his way to the stalls, running his hands over the walls of the bunker, letting the rough texture ground him.

He rounded the corner to the bathroom, and pushed open the heavy wooden door. He walked into the bathroom and was confronted with a very interesting sight. Cas was standing over the sink, in front of the mirrors. In front of him, he had various multi-colored things in front of him. And Sam had seen this scene before; he had lived with enough women to know what doing makeup looked like.

Cas was applying eyeshadow with the most delicate touches. He was going back and forth now, making sure that his eyes were symmetrical. When Cas decided that the eye shadow was good enough, he picked up his eyeliner to start applying that. Sam realized he was staring.

“Cas?” Sam asked, startling the angel. Cas dropped his eyeliner and it clattered loudly in the sink. He stared at Sam, a deer in headlights, but said nothing. Both men stared at each other in silence, neither one knowing what to say.

“I think we need to have a conversation,” Cas finally said.

“I’m all ears,” Sam held his hands open expectantly.

Cas sighed. “Would it be okay if we wait for Dean to get up? I’ve been meaning to talk to both of you, and I’m not really sure I want to have this conversation twice.” Cas looked down at his feet.

Sam felt for the guy, he really did. “Sure, Cas. Whatever you want,” Cas let out a breath of relief and turned to the sink to wash his makeup off. Sam felt his chest clench a little at the sight, but he brushed it off.

So Sam went to the kitchen and started making coffee. He looked at the clock and saw that it read 4:30. He went about his morning routine, getting ready to make eggs and bacon when he thought Fuck it. Dean doesn’t need to sleep any longer. Let's have a chat with Cas. Sam scampered off to Dean’s room, having decided to put all of his energy into being the most annoying little brother he could be.

Sam slammed open the door to Dean’s room letting it knock into the wall. Dean jumped up and swung his gun at Sam, but Sam didn’t flinch. He just flicked on the light and went over to Dean’s bed and ripped the covers off.

“What the fuck, man?” Dean demanded, putting the gun away and rubbing his eyes, “It's way too goddamn early for you to have this much energy.”

Sam leveled him with a bitch face, “I can’t sleep, Cas doesn’t sleep, and he wants to have a conversation with us. I didn’t want to wait for your lazy ass.”

Dean grumbled and rolled out of bed, “It’s not my fault that I live with a bunch of insomniacs.”

The brothers walked to the kitchen. At this point, the coffee was done brewing, and Sam made a b-line for it, before Dean shoved him out of the way. Dean grabbed the biggest coffee mug they had and filled it to the brim before he let Sam at it. Dean sat at the counter and wallowed in how terrible it was to be awake at such an early hour, and Sam went to find Cas.

Dean only dozed off twice while Sam was gone, and he thought that was pretty good. When Sam and Cas walked in the kitchen, Dean sent the angel a dopey smile as he took the seat across from Dean. Sam sat next to his brother.

Cas fidgeted and looked very uncomfortable with the prospect of telling the boys what had been weighing on him. He clenched and unclenched his hands, looked up at Dean, then down at the table, then up at Sam, then down at the table. Finally, he took a deep breath and sighed.

“When I became human, and when I was not in the bunker, there was a lot that I learned by observing and speaking with the people. The longer I was with them, the more I learned about myself. I began to feel that I did not belong, and not simply because I had been an angel. Part of this feeling of not belonging, I discovered, had to do with my not feeling as though I were a man. As I have explained in the past, angels do not have gender. At least, we do not experience gender in the same way that most humans do. From my understanding, angels experience similar genders to those of humans, but with a lesser intensity.

“One day I met a very interesting person who helped me realize who I was. This person said that they did not feel as though they fit into the ‘default’ categories of gender. They felt that their gender was something else, and was both masculine and feminine. They said the name for this gender was ‘nonbinary.’ I explained how I was feeling to this person in regards to my own gender, and they said that I might be described as nonbinary.

“Soon after that, I met up with the two of you, I met April, and you know how the rest goes. When I was working at the gas n’ sip, I did some of my own research about my gender. I came to the conclusion that I was, in fact, nonbinary. After this realization, it took me some time to come to terms with it myself. The more I read about non cisgender people, the more I realized how hard human life was for them -- for us. I was unsure how the two of you felt about gender, and how you would react to mine.” Cas pressed his lips together and lifted his eyebrows, indicating that he didn’t know quite where to go from there.

Cas ran his fingers over each other, waiting for one of the brothers to respond. To him, Sam looked very taken aback and confused; Cas couldn’t really nail down his reaction. Dean, on the other hand, just looked tired. Not tired like he does when he’s hopeless and beat down, but tired like he had just woken up, which he had, so Cas assumed that he was unfazed by this development. The coil in Cas’ stomach wound itself tighter around his internal organs as he waited for the boys to react.

Sam looked all over the kitchen, sometimes beginning to ask a question and then shutting his mouth. Sam had that deep furrow in his brow that he got when he was trying to solve a particularly hard puzzle. Dean just took another sip of his coffee.

Dean broke the silence first. “So,” Cas finally made eye contact, “what’re your pronouns?”

Cas blinked stupidly for a few moments before he responded. “Uh, they/them.”

“And is Cas still good or do you want to change that?” Cas’ lips turned up in the corners a little at that.

“No, Dean. ‘Cas’ is still good.”

Dean nodded and went back to his coffee acting completely unbothered by everything. Cas’ nerves settled a little, but Sam still looked confused. His eyes flicked between Cas and Dean for a few moments.

“Uh, thanks for sharing, Cas. I appreciate your honesty.” Cas nodded his head, and Sam just looked at Dean, even more confused. “I’m honestly more taken aback by how you’re reacting to this, Dean.”

Dean choked down his sip of coffee before answering angrily, “What the hell’s that supposed to mean, Sammy?”

“Well,” Sam looked away, “you have always been around hunters and hunters are not known to be overly accepting.”

“Well screw you. I’m accepting. I know all about the gay community. So this gender thing isn’t new to me. I’m cool with it.”

“How the hell do you ‘know all about the gay community’?”

“I may or may not have done some research a while back and I learned a lot.”

“And?” Cas finally spoke up, raising their left eyebrow and smiling a bit. The corners of Dean’s mouth turned up a little as he looked at Cas.

Dean held Cas’ gaze as he said, “Turns out I’m bi.” They were both full-on grinning now.

“Well, I’m pan.”

“So, cool!” Sam said, a little loudly and very uncomfortably. “I’m just a straight man and this was a much more open conversation than I was expecting. Thank you both for your honesty.” Sam slapped his legs and got up to get coffee, deciding that he had been up for too long and that this was too much to process without some help. Cas moved their hand to the center of the table, and Dean placed his over it gently, continuing to sip his coffee in peace

[kngofhell]

sam, 28, cst, they/she, self harm ⇢ i swear i just saw TOM ELLIS out on the streets but it turned out to be ELIAS MORGAN. HE was born on JULY 24TH 1984 making them only  THIRTY SIX years old. they’re known to be +ARTICULATE +CHARMING and -HEDONISTIC -VULGAR. they spend most of their time being a CLUB OWNER/MOB BOSS. rumour has it they’re BISEXUAL and can be found in downtown la . you know you’ve found them when you come across BRUISED KNUCKLES, THE SMELL OF TOBACCO AND VANILLA, AND DARK DANGEROUS EYES.

tw abuse, drug use, guns, violence, murder, anxiety/panic attacks and a VERY BRIEF mention of r*pe,  under the cut.

HI EVERYONE! It’s sam, your friendly neighborhood admin. This is elias morgan, my messy bad boy with a good heart. He’s based off of Lucifer from the show Lucifer, Harvey Specter from Suits, and a bunch of other characters that would be too long to list.  for easy info, you can find his stats at THIS link and his wanted connections at THIS link, but here is his basic bio!

Born in Cardiff, but raised in London, Elias was technically an only child until his father had an affair five years after he was born, this resulted in a younger half brother and younger half sister. His father, who claimed to be a godly man, was verbally, and sometimes physically abusive, and while his mother had a habit of showering him with attention, she did not much to stop his father from the abuse, and that led Elias to resent her (though he still harbors love for her, and sometimes misses her.)

When he was 18 years old, he came out as bisexual to his parents. His mother was receptive, but his father was not. He kicked him out and cut him off. Elias, who worked hard in school, decided to chance it across the pond and went to University in the states.

He knew it would be hard, but he couldn’t predict the life he would fall into.New York itself, and New York University were expensive, and after stumbling into the wrong bar one night, getting into a bar fight, and impressing the owner of the place,  Elias somehow fell into the mob, mostly as someone who would fight, defend if they needed to, acting as a body guard mostly to the bosses daughter.  

but he slowly worked his way up in the ranks, becoming a second hand to the head. He was strapped with his own weapon, learned the importance of always looking his best, and always being intimidating. Make them both love you and fear you, and he mastered that.

The money was more than good and the lifestyle was hedonistic, just what he liked. Men and women fell at his feet, unlimited access to alcohol and top scale drugs. He worked out a balance of school, and ‘work’.

Soon, Elias found something else he could do, with the power he held from the mafia, he had a lot of connections, and started doling out favors, sometimes he had a returned favor in mind, and sometimes, he would take an IOU, and he’d call them deals with the devil. A play on the way his father used to tell him he would ‘beat the devil out of him’ when he was younger.

When he was around twenty one years old, he started dating the bosses daughter, the one he was stationed to look after.  They had a whirlwhind, passionate romance, but it ended when she cheated on him and left. She was his first love, and she broke his heart. He vowed to never fall in love again after that and it worked, he slept around with men and women for years.

The first deal Raphael ever made with Elias was offering him a job to run things from Los Angeles. he’d get to open the club he always dreamed of, they had found a large building, which Elias would own outright, and he’d secure himself a penthouse and his dream job and full control of things from the west coast.

The deal entailed that he’d be working with them for the rest of his life, though. He didn’t mind that too much. So he moved across the country and set up his life in Los Angeles.

Elias is pretty well known, being the owner of a popular night club, and a bit of a slut, people tend to notice, and remember the 6'3 brit with a too charming smile. He throws a lot of parties, both just for the fun of it, or for charity.

Despite the lifestyle he lives, and the hard exterior, he’s fiercely loyal and protective of the people he considers his found family, the small circle he does have.

True to form, Elias has had multiple hook ups, but not as many “friends with benefits” as he’s more of a one and done kind of person, but about a year ago he met a girl in a bar and, to his surprise, he didn’t want it to be one and done.

He’s been sleeping with Casey Wells for about a year, and they found out she was pregnant, with twins. They’re his. Elias, who vowed never to fall in love, is currently finding himself having a lot more feelings for Casey than he originally planned, and is a lot more vulnerable around her than he’s ever been before.

Elias has been in Los Angeles for 11 years, has been with Casey for a year and a half, the twins were born on February 2nd 2020.  He;’s softened up when it comes to his family a lot more largely because of his love for Casey and the twins, but make no mistakes his still as hard and intimidating as he needs to be in his job.

small but still important facts:

has had to kill for his job. also has been shot for his job. he is usually always strapped with a gun and has custom bullet proof vests made.  He’s been trained to never leave a trace/evidence.

He doesn’t deal with sex work at all,  except for having strippers in the club unless there is full consent for anything more, and he has a bodyguard with each girl if they do agree to something more.

He tends to kill people who do things like hurting others, (r*pe, abuse etc)

has major anxiety/panic attacks due to the abuse in his past and sure, a lot of the stuff he has to do.

has been in los angeles for 11 years

he’s a dork,  from harry potter to mythology, he reads a lot and watches super hero movies and all of that, he’s not just guns and drugs and blood, he’s a soft boy occasionally, too.

has two cats that he spends FAR too much time cuddling, named Cain and Abel

[lostinaseaoffictionalbliss]

Bark At The Moon part seven

A/N: My taglist for this is open as well as my forever tags. However I warn you guys I’m currently working on an original book so Idk how much writing I’ll get done in the future, but I will do my best to answer requests on this blog and my side blog @im-weak-for-jaskier

Pairing: werewolf!Sam x OC

Warnings: this is for the story over all and not any specific chapter. Language, violence, attempted rape, torture, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it) marking (not ABO even though Sam is an Alpha) but I’ll will tag the chapters appropriately.

Tendrils of fear went down Nola’s spine. It gripped her heart and froze her to the spot. She knew the person behind her wasn’t a friend. Their very voice was laced with cruelty. She knew they meant her harm. Shakily she turned and faced the unknown wolf.

“Ah you seem scared. Do I scare you?” The wolf smirked wickedly.

She swallowed thickly and took a few deep breaths to calm her racing heart. It was pounding loud enough she felt he would hear it, feared it would beat right out of her chest. Of course that death might be preferable to what lay in store once this wolf took her.

She took a step back. “Yes,” she whispered. This was the Alpha of the other pack. Fear was exactly what she should be feeling.

He laughed and took three steps forward. “Oh little red riding hood you’re lost in the woods and the big bad wolf is going to eat you.”

“I’m not lost. I know where I’m going. To my mate.”

“The one who thinks you’re still at the hotel? That mate? Don’t think he’s gonna be home for you to go to.” He took another step forward and she took a few back.

Nola frowned and looked to her phone. She needed to text Sam and tell him she had left. That she was in the woods. She watched the wolf, Lucifer, for a moment and dove toward it.

Lucifer was quicker than she was. He grabbed her and pulled her flush against him. “You’re mine now,” he whispered in her ear.

She squirmed and tried to get free, but it was impossible. His hand was at her throat and she couldn’t breathe. She gasped and clawed at his hand as her vision began to darken.

Sam rushed into the hotel and looked around. When he had gotten the text from Nola nervous energy had seized his heart. When he arrived at her place of work and she wasn’t anywhere to be seen that nervous energy turned frantic. His heart raced, his jaw ticked, and his hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.

Spotting Donny, he grabbed the smaller man. “Where’s Nola?” He asked, eyes wide with panic. His brows were furrowed together and his palms covered in sweat.

“Uh...she left earlier. Some guy creeped her out so she went home.” Donny gazed up at Sam, frowning. He could sense the urgency coming from the much larger man. “Is something wrong? Should I have called the police?”

He shook his head. “No. Calling the police would have made matters worse.” He spun and rushed back out of the hotel in search of his missing mate. He pulled his phone out and called the cabin, dodging people as he ran through the town back toward the woods.

Benny answered the phone. “Hey Sam.”

“Is Nola there?”

“What?”

“Is Nola there?” He asked again, his breath coming in pants.

Benny frowned. “No, she isn’t brotha. What’s going on?”

Sam hung up without answering and pumped his legs faster. “Dammit!”

Something was wrong; Nola knew that. The room she was in was completely dark, her head was throbbing and for some reason she couldn’t move. She blinked a few times and her vision adjusted to the lack of light. She looked down and realized she was tied spread eagle to a bed. That explained why she couldn’t move.

Closing her eyes, she began to think and everything came flooding back. Arthur Ketch had shown up at the hotel, Sam didn’t answer her text, she stupidly went into the woods, and Lucifer had captured her. She was now at the mercy of an Alpha wolf that enjoyed toying with people.

Nola whimpered as the door to her prison opened, a small sliver of light came through the crevice and then it was gone. The door closed with a resounding thud and she jumped. Unlike the wolves she couldn’t see in the dark. All she could make out was the silhouette of someone coming closer to her. It was enough to make her heart jump into her throat.

“L-let me go,” she whispered, voice quivering as she tugged on her bindings.

Lucifer let out a sinister laugh and twirled a blade in his hand as he walked closer. “No, can do. See you’re my little bitch now. I’m going to do with you as I please.” He bit his lip and looked her over.

Tears began to trickle down her cheeks and she tugged on the ropes again, letting out a cry as they chaffed. Her wrists were turning red and raw from her twisting and turning.

Cold steel pressed into the valley between her breasts forcing her to stay still. “Let’s see what’s under here.” The knife was slowly pulled down, cutting the fabric of her clothing. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he cut away most of the fabric, leaving her in a bra and panties. “Aren’t you a pretty little thing.”

Her lip quivered as she sobbed. “Please,” she begged.

He ignored her begging and kissed her hard. She tried squirming to get away, but he held her in place by squeezing her rib cage. His super-human strength would easily allow him to crush them if he wanted. And he wasn’t opposed to it, but he wanted to have his fun with her first. “One should learn not to question their captor,” he whispered in her ear, biting the earlobe hard enough he almost brought blood.

Nola cried in pain. “Please stop,” she whispered weakly.

He placed the tip of the blade to her cheek. “And why should I?”

“B-because...this isn’t right. I don’t...don’t deserve this,” she whispered. The blade bit into her skin, blood welling up. A cry of pain filled the room along with maniacal laughter.

Bending down he licked her cheek and she jerked away; the ropes cutting into her wrists, breaking the skin. “You taste so sweet. Almost as sweet as your fear smells. Your beauty is wasted on that mutt you call a mate. You need a real man to take care of you. A real Alpha werewolf.” He slid his hand into her bra and twisted her nipple.

She thrashed and screamed in pain. “SAM!” She yelled in desperation. If there was even a slight chance that he had come for her, she prayed he would hear her.

Lucifer laughed. “Oh you think he can hear you? He probably doesn’t know where you are. Even if he did there’s no way he’s getting in here. My men will stop him,” he said, cutting her clothes off. He stood up and undressed.

“I’m going to enjoy claiming you, Little Sweet.”

She closed her eyes tight, whimpering. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She was going to be taken by a werewolf and it wasn’t her werewolf. She could feel Lucifer’s weight on top of her, the heat of his breath against her neck, his member against her thigh. It was all too much. She openly sobbed and pressed her knees together to try and stop him. He wrenched them apart, squeezing her knee. She knew then he was going to take what he wanted. She begged for it to be over quickly.

“Get your hands off of her,” Sam snarled. He grabbed Lucifer and pulled him away from Nola.

Her eyes opened and she looked at Sam. The light streaming through the doorway allowed her to take in his blood covered, angry, disheveled appearance. She sniffled and thanked God for allowing him to get there in time.

Heavy fists rained down on Lucifer, over and over. The anger coming off of Sam was palpable. His hazel eyes were almost black with rage as he beat down on the other Alpha.

Tossing the bloodied and beaten wolf to the side Sam moved to Nola. He cut away her bindings, wrapped her in his flannel and carried her out of the building. “It’s okay baby. I’ve got you,” he whispered. His earlier rage had softened and he was as gentle with her as he would be with a baby.

She burrowed into his chest, taking in his scent and letting it soothe her. She didn’t care that he was getting blood on her. She wanted to be as close to him as possible.

“He...he almost…I don’t know what he did before I woke up…” All she knew was that she was in a lot of pain.

“I’ll look you over at the cabin. You’re going to be okay. I’ve got you now.”

And Sam wasn’t going to let her go anytime soon.

****

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[eisforeidolon]

Episode: Raising Hell

So, uh, basically I have no idea why anything in this episode happens or what its point is supposed to be. Having looked up who wrote it somewhere in the middle, I am completely lacking in surprise.

I mean, the first bit pretty much sets the tone.  Chatty Corpsy spouts exposition a mile a minute, then gets killed, and the ghost stands over her and spells disembowel.  Is that actually supposed to be scary?  Funny?  Anything but an absolutely bizarre waste of my time?

A bunch of dudes with basically nothing but FBI jackets and a bullshit story to back themselves up with convince an entire town to camp out in the local high school for two days without anybody figuring out they're full of shit.  You know, what with smartphones existing and all.  Plausible!

Furthermore, I have become convinced that everyone in this writer's room genuinely believes there is nothing scarier than a bunch of random antagonists standing around in a room pontificating at each other.  It's all demons do anymore. It's all angels do anymore.  Oh, fucking look, here's a bunch of goddamn ghosts doing it, too!  A fucking thrill a minute, I tell you.

Also, you know how the episode with H.H. Holmes was actually scary?  Whether or not you think it's in questionable taste for them to use real life serial killers at all, the reason they included him was because the whole murder castle deal and semi-mythical legends about him made for a scary premise they actually used in the episode.  I ignored the thing with it being Gacy before in Lebanon because there was more important stuff going on, but contrast the current writers' choices with him and this Jack the Ripper guy with the use of Holmes.  Here they're just throwing out the names of real life murderers to try and make their villains scary in the cheapest, fastest way possible.  Just like bringing back “Bloody Mary” that just kills whoever, this loudmouthed windbag has nothing to do with the name they're stealing to try and make him scary.

Also, the spell demon guy did is keeping the ghosts in, right?  Sure, it's going to fail, but at the moment, it's supposed to be an impassible barrier, yes?  So why, exactly, is it necessary for Sam to call in his goon squad to join the four of them in wandering into the danger zone to shoot at 'em? Seriously, why?  Shooting them dissipates them for a few seconds, maybe minutes.  They’re not laying out additional salt or iron lines or doing anything that might genuinely help contain the ghosts, they’re just putting themselves in danger because ...?  The mooks could also be better spent guarding the major entrance points to the town and/or the townies and/or doing research back at the bunker into what they're going to try next after the barrier fails.  But those things would actually make sense and prevent the shambling zombie that is the writers’ pathetic attempt at a plot in this episode being pushed into something vaguely resembling action. 

I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that Rowena is now suddenly unable to do something with her powers that she did before.  Hey, remember when she stole that page out of the damned book to make herself more powerful to unseal her full powers (even though they touted her as the most powerful witch ever to begin with) and that was in season 13, well after the ghost-crystal-bomb thing?  But LOL, now she's even weaker?  This is exactly why nothing matters anymore.  Things that worked previously (angel powers, witch powers, the Colt, whatever) suddenly and randomly don't work to do the exact same jobs for … reasons.  The thing that makes it even dumber is they could have said that the ghost containing spell and crystal ghost sucking spell interfered with each other somehow.  Still at a bullshit level of convenience, but it doesn't involve making everyone and everything's powers completely arbitrary just because fuck continuity, that’s why!

Then Ketch shows up to save the Winchesters from their sudden attack of brain damage.  The show has provided an entire. fucking. town. full of angry ghosts straight from hell.  But actually bother to write a scene of Sam and Dean legit getting over their heads in a believable way?  Why fucking bother when you can just make them astoundingly incompetent.  It is literally unbelievable that Sam and Dean would not recognize those people as possessed fucking immediately.  Yet they stand there with rock salt filled shotguns doing sweet fuckall confronted by three fucking ghosts so Ketch can make a big entrance.  Is there a rule on a board somewhere in the writer's room that Sam and Dean have to be made to look incompetent at least once an episode?  Is this some kind of revenge for having to still write the main characters they're so clearly bored with?  Are these idiots just so fucking stupid they don't realize how insulting this is?  Did they run out of money for extras and the stunt coordinator?  

Also, someone explain to me how tiny flakes of metal are going to be less harmful to a human body than rock salt.  I'll wait.  They just really really wanted Ketch as one of the BMoL guys to have some kind of specialized gadget but couldn’t give him something actually potentially useful for the situation at hand.

Again, these writers really want to be writing a bad soap opera with occasional supernatural elements.  So despite that it's the final fucking season, we have time for Rowena and Ketch flirting.  Not to mention that they also give the only major female character even more relationship drama with the Jack the Ripper guy later.  If it's not questionably skeevy, it's not Bucklemming! 

Also, Castiel is not good at inspirational speeches, just like he’s frustratingly almost never good at anything else these days (those healing powers that were working last week? ha! forget it!).  Anyway, why do they keep having him make them?  Are we as the audience supposed to find them convincing though they never work on the target?  Are we supposed to feel bad for all the ~*feelings*~ Castiel supposedly has despite being an angel who isn’t supposed to have emotions the same way humans do?  I guess this particular one is to further show that Dean’s still mad (which I am absolutely 100% behind) but eh, whatever.  Though I guess that still ranks it above most of the episode sitting at a solid WTF, no really, WTF?!

Now we get to the part where they bring Kevin back for no fucking reason beyond that he's a “fan favorite”.  None of it makes a single tiny speck of sense.  Let's skip right past the fundamental absurdity of how Chuck apparently did this for literally no reason just to be a dick when he was actively trying to pretend not to be a dick.  Kevin has a “bad boy” reputation (come the fuck on) because God Himself cast him down - so him being in hell would have to be fairly common knowledge, for it to result in him having a reputation.  Except literally no demon Sam & Dean ran into between 11.21 and now taunted them with it?  Crowley, who was still alive and fucking King of Hell through season 12 never noticed and either told the Winchesters or tried to trade on it?  BULL and SHIT.  This is pretty close to the same scale of insult to continuity and the audience’s intelligence as these two fuckwits suddenly writing Lucifer as the older brother. 

Then in typical fashion, Sam & Dean discuss their plans to totes send Kevin to heaven in front of demon guy just so they can be told OH NOES!  He totally can't go to heaven!  So sad!  The poor widdle woobie!  Fuck off with this shit, show.  Not even to mention that they take the word of a demon as gospel truth when there is no time crunch or clear lack of better options.  It's all those many many hits to the head, I guess.  That I do actually find quite sad.  I mean, I don't actually want Kevin hanging around like a bad smell while they divert from actually important shit to try and get him to heaven where it makes no sense for him not to already be.  But at the end they don't even arrange some way to keep in touch just in case the fucking demon might be (gasp) lying?

Hey, I did actually like the exchange between Dean and Sam over Chuck poking his corresponding wound.  Oh, look, it's Sam's “I'm totally lying” face, followed by Dean's “I totally know you're lying but I'll let it go for now, Sam” face.  It was a great moment that required very little dialogue to work quite well.  It's such a shame nobody's making a show about these two characters!  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The absurdity keeps on coming, too.  In the whole two days they've been wasting time in Sunshine Daylightville they never discussed how long the spell would last?  Oh, right, they were too busy wandering into the ghost zone to shoot at 'em for shits and giggles to care about that, I guess.  Not to mention the whole “just cast it again!” is remarkably blasé about it requiring a 'fresher the better!' human heart.

More ghosts blathering at each other.  Yay.  This supposed Jack the Ripper guy is just always in the right place at the right time to hear all the gossip, knows every random thing he could possibly need to, and already has the power to intimidate and attack other ghosts. He's basically ghost!Asmodeus, who also steals AU!Michael's original idea of how to get through the barrier, because we really needed time spent discussing the world's most obvious plan.  Also, we've seen ghosts able to attack and absorb the power of other ghosts, but it was because they had already been doing it for a while.  This guy is just as fresh out of hell as everybody else, but he's more powerful and knowledgeable and totes threatening!!!  Well, I'm convinced and not on the verge of napping from boredom.

Naturally for reasons, Rowena goes into town entirely by herself without protection with their only real hope of containing the ghosts before the barrier breaks down instead of anybody insisting on her going with backup.  That's what anybody with a brain would do!  

Of course no one asks where Ketch has been the whole time.  Or even thinks of trying to test him after he was last seen literally knocked unconscious in the middle of ghost central where we know there are plenty of ghosts angry enough to be capable of possession.  Nope, why would anyone even think to do that?  Everything in this “plot” that happens requires all of the characters to be completely fucking stupid.

I'm going to assume by “you” Ketch meant “you Winchesters” because Mary wasn't there.  It probably didn't, because Bucklemming, but fuck it.  It's the least egregious stupidity in this episode that's a cornucopia of choices for the worst.

I … actually like the scenes with Chuck and Amara?  So, you know, that's something!  

Then the episode ends with the guys looking at all the ghosties still shooting up from hell and wring their hands about what they're going to do and maybe they should get on that!  Again, if Sam's flunkies aren't all dead, why aren't their worthless asses already researching this shit over the past two days?  It's not like it's new news that there was a big open hole to hell at the center of the problem and there was honestly nothing but wrangling some cranky civilians to interfere with trying to think ahead to that.

In summary, this episode is a constant showcase of the problems that result when you set incompetent morons who don't recognize their own inadequacy to write characters who are actually supposed to be intelligent experts at their work.  It's a joke – except not at all funny.

[dotthings]

This felt a bit like a classic Twilight Zone episode, mixed with TFW 2.0 feelings all around.

I jotted notes and stuff. Feelings and thoughts and milkshakes.

Running with the Twilight Zone structure and style here, Cas would be the character who figures out something’s just not right and things unravel around him and he’s slowly freaking out and has to get others to wake up to it and stop whatever’s happening. The eps this most reminds me of are things like “The Monsters are out on maple street” or “It’s a good life.”

Starting from the top -- so Jack doesn’t seem right. Nope. Sam’s not okay either, and as I figured already from the promo clip, yes it turns out he’s got a raging case of PTSD from the bunker crew he led all being slaughtered. While the characters weren’t designed to stand out to audience individually (except, perhaps, Maggie, and she wasn’t much developed), they meant something to Sam. Not in the sense that he got deeply close to them. As I pointed out earlier in the season, the bunker crew is a bit like the cantina crowd in Star Wars. They’re there for world-building. They'd all have good stories of their own given a chance to tell the tale but that’s not what they are in the main story for. And Sam cares but isn’t really part of them. He’s a leader who hasn’t formed deep personal bonds. 

But they were important to Sam, and Sam’s carrying a lot of guilt and trauma over their loss, which is why he blows past Dean’s protests that he’s tired and needs rest, they all need rests. Okay so everything I thought might be going on with Sam before this ep gets vocalized by the end of it, more on that in a moment.

That scene in the bunker kitchen is so...organic and domestic. I love that SPN is a monster-killing show. I’m a fan of genre shows and watching characters whose lives are strange and dangerous and how they cope with it and watch after each other, but the domestic grace notes are an important part of grounding it and making these characters seem real. This scene in the kitchen between Dean and Cas, with Sam blowing through it, was so good. So with Sam not in a frame of mind to understand Dean’s needs for rest or wait for him, and Dean needing to stay at the bunker to rest, and both Dean and Cas worried for Sam, and all of them worried for Jack, Cas basically steps into the role of family organizer, figuratively scooping them up under his wings because someone has to try to sort out this chaos and keep it together and try to make it better. So he volunteers to go on the hunt with PTSD fixated overly-driven Sam, assigns Dean to talk to possibly-soulless Jack and figure out what’s going on, tells Dean to get the sleep that he wants “’til the cows come home.”

I love that Dean says “they’re both full of crap” about Sam and Jack’s assertions of being fine. And then Cas, once he’s in the weird town with Sam, “yeah I know, everybody’s good,” Cas says grouchily. Cas is so DONE with everyone’s pretending-to-be-okay shit.

“Was it Scanners 1, 2, or 3?” I’m betting this wasn’t a Metatron pop culture upload. Oh guess what, Dean and Cas watch horror movies together. File this with the conversations and things we now Dean and Cas do together we don’t get to actually see. I wonder when their horror movie marathon was. Just after Mint Condition? Which expressly showed how great it is having a friend who’ll watch horror movies with you? Some other time?

The reveal that Cas reads the Saturday Evening Post after everyone else is asleep in the bunker is a small thing but it’s so damn good, it gives us another glimpse into what the heck Cas does while he’s not sleeping because he doesn’t need to sleep.

Sam and Cas weirded out together is adorable, as is their surprise milkshake date. 

“I think the snake is sad.” Is Jack projecting onto the snake? Assigning his own feelings of hollowness and loss from his soul being eaten away onto the snake who just lost its original owner? 

Dean trying to figure out how to talk to Jack is awkward af and endearing and Dean seems so very relieved when Jack picks the angel food cake over the devil’s food. Dean, I’m pretty sure things don’t really work that way and Jack’s choice of snack food isn’t the solution but I am appreciating the reasoning behind Dean’s relief. He knows angels are mostly dicks but hey, Cas is a thing in his life, and Jack picking angel food over devil’s food (Satan), Dean takes as an optimistic sign. Cas over Lucifer. Oh, Dean.

So. Much. Floral. And citris. Imagery. In this strange little town Sam and Cas are in. Sam holding that little rose teacup. Yellow tulips on the woman’s dress. Paintings with oranges and lemons. I think the set designer’s choices were are because citrus and flowers are generally bright, sunshine-y, "happy” things usually.

LOL Cas thinks Sam has beautiful hair. Well, he's not wrong. 

Sam’s brainwashed altered persona is disturbing yet Jared is adorable so it’s weirdly adorable but disturbing and please make it stop this isn’t Sam make it stop.

“You will snap the hell out of it!” “I don’t wear a hat.”

Grumpy Cas incredibly put out and grumpy over one of his best friends in literally the history of the universe being brain-snatched by this stepford town is a delight. 

As I said about structuring--things are unraveling around him and Cas is not a happy camper...so he deals with it. Much like he steps in and organizes Team Free Will 2.0 so everyone is looked after in different ways as needed, Cas takes charge of this case when Sam gets brainwashed. He is a competent hunter, abd he is a badass. What was that some have been saying about not seeing enough BAMF Cas? He can handle himself in a fight just fine. Albeit, his powers don’t seem to be as strong as in some previous season but I am more and more convinced this is purposeful because we know Heaven’s batteries are dying because the angels are and that’s bound to affect Cas’s power levels. So he has angel powers and he’s extra strong and self-healing and doesn’t need to eat or sleep but he’s also not the mega power we’ve sometimes seen. It makes sense.

Jack still doesn’t seem at all right and yet he seems to have a trace of a soul. He doesn’t want Sam and Dean and Cas to worry. Sam and Dean are his human role models (and no, this wasn’t Jack ommitting Cas--Cas isn’t human. We know Jack thinks the world of Cas). Which is sweet but at the same time uneasily reminds me of soulless Sam who observed Dean and then would say what he thought was expected to pass as normal. Jack latching onto Sam and Dean as models for how to act like he has a soul isn’t the same as really having one, and it’s not the same as early Cas, with all his confusing emotions broiling inside of him, adopting the Winchesters as an emotional compass and guides for how to human emotion. Jack’s going with Donatello (who is also soulless) WWTWD--What Would the Winchesters Do--literally just a plan to mimick them instead of Jack learning and feeling it himself.

“Maybe I don’t know what nothing feels like.”

Cas threatening to rip the info from the girl’s mind doesn’t seem like something he was actually going to carry out. That was a bluff, I’d say. Cas we’ve seen in the past is great at bluffing and does a good peacocking routine, a show of power. Not that he couldn’t rip the info from her. Maybe he would, at great need, to save Sam, and she was acting guilty. But I’m not sure. 

“I won’t hurt you, Sam.” Of course you won’t, Cas. We been knew, sweetie.

So first Cas organizes and tucks Team Free Will 2.0 under his wings, so to speak, then he takes over the case when his parter Sam gets sucked into the happy vortex of brainwashing, and then Cas fights off like 4 people at once including Sam, who is very tall, without harming Sam, and then Cas talks Sam down from brainwashing and from killing him with an angel blade. Interesting parallels back to Dean and Cas’s fight in The Prisoner, but with differences. Because hey, ding!, these relationships are different. It’s not about the strength of the bonds, but they are different.

“I know what it’s like to lose your army. I know what it’s like to fail as a leader but you can’t lose yourself. You have to keep fighting. You can’t lose yourself. Because if you lose yourself you fail us. You fail all of those that we’ve lost. You fail Jack. You fail Dean.”

There’s so many things all at once in this scene and Misha is so good here. There’s a bit of a nod back to the “believe in us” concept from Prophet and Loss. I appreciate that SPN didn’t go for a simple, Sam regrets talking Dean out of it. Because much as I am all for Winchesters protecting the world, as I’ve pointed out already, I didn’t feel Sam was the least bit in a heedless frame of mind where he wasn’t thinking of the risks to others, and Dean was so extremely fatalistic, accepting the fate literally written down for him, it just didn’t feel right. I don’t think SPN is saying it’s right to be punished for hope, that Sam should suffer, gee that’s what you get for wanting a little more time just to find a better way, not let the world burn, not screw everything else, just a shot at finding some other way. But in the story they are telling, there is a cost for that hope and that’s heartbreaking. Also I don’t feel Dean’s plan was risk free either. It really was a lose/lose no win situation and that is the point. They have Dean free of Michael, they are free of Michael it seems, but now look, Jack is a mess. And so it goes.

As Cas did in Prophet and Loss, reaching out to Dean in a less overt way than Sam (but not unimportant), Cas is a voice of hope again. Urging Sam not to give up, and echoing what Cas said earlier this season about valuing yourself, the core self “without all the bells and whistles.”  So there’s an important note for Sam here, and for Cas. S14 keeps having Cas vocalize on so many things it’s really important for Cas to say, about himself, but he does it via helping others. Cas has given advice to Jack, to Dean, and to Sam this season that indicates Cas listens to his own advice and has reached some insight about these things. Not only is Cas reassuring Sam, it shows that Cas understands despite his losses and failures, he’s worth not giving up on, and there are others who need him who are affected if he gives up. So Cas, having realized this, offers it to Sam in Sam’s moment of need and Sam drives the angel blade into the floor instead of into Cas (a familiar move), and shakes free of the brainwashing.

And Sam and Cas. Back in S9, Cas commiserated with Sam’s feelings of failure then too, and branded himself an even bigger screw up than Sam. SPN has shown for a while that Sam and Cas care about each other and have quite a few points in common, but it’s been a somewhat underdeveloped bond, and a little inconsistent. They’ve often bonded over their shared love of Dean, but we also have seen them caring for each other in their own right. I like their friendship. I appreciate that SPN shows that the relationships are different, and that Sam’s feelings for Cas aren’t the Sam as Dean’s, but I do think the Sam and Cas bond has been a bit neglected. So to land here, with a really big moment of connection for them over their particular shared traumas and specific senses of failures, is great to see. If we’re told they’re family, we should see it on the screen. Cas specifically was the person Sam needed right then. Just as Dean needs more than just Sam, Sam needs more than just Dean. 

Moment to appreciate the absolute miracle Mishalecki in S14 is because anyone else remember when Misha and Jared could barely get any scenes filmed there was so much messing around and Jared loves to mess with Misha, and a director had to yell at them at one point to get serious scenes filmed between them. People used to say Mishalecki was the enemy of Sam & Cas scenes. Here we are, years later, they not only filmed this immensely dramatic key Sam & Cas scene together, but did it with Jared on top of Misha, pinning him to the floor. I don’t know how they got this filmed. But they did it. Think of the gag reel. And we got a wonderful Sam & Cas scene.

Cas takes a very proactive role in this ep which is also great to see, and it’s a really interesting note on his character development to see Cas in this role of the family member holding everyone else together, knowing the right words, watching after everybody, competently handling the case temporarily solo, saving Sam, watching after Dean and Jack.  

However, notably it’s the young woman who actually saves the whole town by tapping into her own (genetically inherited) powers and taming her toxic, brainwashing father. Seizing back not only her own agency but for an entire town. There’s a Jack parallel on the tip of my brain here. The power is inherited from the parent, but what the offspring does with it is their choice.

“Yeah, I told him about the cardigan.” So Cas called Dean and told him about what happened...another Dean and Cas conversation we know took place we didn’t get to see first-hand. They talk way more than we are shown, more than we know. Unlikely they talk about the...stuff they actually need to but we keep being shown how much a part of each other’s lives they have become. They watch movies together, they talk all the time, they’ve had countless bunker kitchen talks. Cas is there. He’s been there for a while.

“I hate this place right now. Everywhere I look I see them.” That sound you heard was my heart shattering, and I’m not surprised Sam feels that way. He’s living in the place where he saw his whole team slaughtered. That’s...a lot to shoulder. But the bunker is also his home. What does a person do when their own home has been tainted by that kind of trauma (people suffer from home invasions, traumatic events, in their own home...how do people regain their sense of safety?) “this is my home. This is our home...I just need some time.” Again my heart shattering for Sam. Because he means that, yes that is home and I think Sam, as Dean did openly in SPN 300, is good with his life and who he is. But there’s no quick fix for that trauma. Sam’s not only dealing with guilt and grief and trauma, but his sense of home has been violated by what Michael did. We also know unpleasant things have happened in the Impala. Blood and trauma and fear. The Impala, like the bunker, has been home and shelter and safety, but like the bunker, has been the location of traumatic events in their lives (and who knows what kind of scary moments Sam and Dean had in that car when they were children). Yet their sense of home prevailed for the Impala and I think it will for Sam with the bunker too.

Okay. So. It seems like Jack’s soul really was fully gone already after all because he kills the snake to send its soul to Heaven to reunite with its original owner and that isn’t compassionate it’s murder and Jack thought that was a really good idea.

[vios-rockland-corner]

Rockland: Zeitgeist pre-release thoughts PT 14

The date of this post is 8/24/19.  Please note that information revealed at this time via Patreon or any of the creator’s blogs may be subject to change after this date.

Here I am again rambling about Cain because I’ve entered a state of confusion.

(Spoilers below for BTD2 and Zeitgeist demo)

Why is Cain kidnapping the MC?

I know that seems like a dumb question, one that’s technically already been answered:  He’s bored.

Here’s the thing though: This was a question that was so much easier for me to answer with BTD Cain.  BTD Cain was a straight up evil guy.  He was a torturer and seemed to enjoy that work, but he was also a prisoner in hell who eventually became a fugitive.  The guy was portrayed as up to no good essentially, possibly being a threat to humanity.  He was dangerous, but I’m sure also still had to make sure he didn’t get caught while he was on the run.  When you’re a sadistic character cooped up all day in your hideaway, I can definitely see one getting bored.  Possibly even a little lonely.  So picking up humans/creatures every now and then to torture and likely kill in the end doesn’t seem all that surprising to me. Sometimes when you have a character clearly defined as a villain, there’s not too much you have to explain.  There’s not always a super complicated motive.  As horrifying as it is to hear someone say a character is just receiving pleasure from causing harm to someone else, we know people like that exist.  

Rockland Cain is starting to cause me some more confusion though.  First of all, it doesn’t sound like this version of Cain is going to be presented as a fugitive.  Not unless it’s an INCREDIBLY recent development in the story.  Otherwise, it sounds like Cain works with the other angels as a normal part of the fold.  Not necessarily a prisoner who they just bring out when they need him.  Yet, he is still confirmed as a fallen angel, and there are still hints that he will be a threat at least to the MC.  At the same time, some of the other people or angels who know him also seem to think of him fondly.

 So I’m comparing evil fugitive BTD Cain vs. office worker Rockland Cain?  I know that sounds hilarious calling Cain an “office worker.”  Honestly, until I figure out what exactly the fallen angels do, I guess I’ll just keep saying that the angels work together in an “office” of some sort.  Now, we did get confirmation that Sam IS still a reaper in this canon.  Supposedly, their boss should also be Lucifer/Luke Morningstar.  You know...the first fallen angel?  Usually depicted as the ruler of hell?  So I think a safe answer to “What are the fallen angels in charge of,” is judgement and placement of people’s souls when they die.  They collect and decide who’s bad or not, and possibly even determine torture based on one’s crimes.  There may be some other work they do.   For example, Michael Volkov in previous canon was the angel of war/chaos.  Certainly doesn’t sound like a “heavenly” duty, but nevertheless sometimes part of the world order.  So that job I can see being giving to a fallen angel as opposed to...whatever their lighter counterparts could be.

Now to get back on track, I have two problems then with determining Rockland Cain’s thought process.  First, why is he bored?  And second, is he even allowed to kidnap the MC?

BTD Cain I already said was basically by himself on the run, and before that he was just kept a prisoner unless he was needed.  He had plenty of reason to be bored and have a disregard for the lives of others.  Rockland Cain though may not have AS bad a disposition as BTD Cain based on some of his relationships with other character.  Not only that, if he’s got the freedom to walk about as he pleases even after work, then what about the way his time is spent has him bored now?  Maybe the angels work 24/7, so Cain wants a break from the monotony?  I did fancy the idea before that this game could also be an origin to Cain trying to break off from his regular duties and do as he pleases.  If he also has positive relationships with characters though already, is that still appealing to him?  Speaking of which, if he’s in contact with more people, there’s less of a likelihood that he’s lonely here.  LESS, but not completely.  Sometimes you can still get lonely even when constantly surrounded by other people.  I guess “boredom caused by loneliness” is still a possibility, but it’s less likely here at least than it was for BTD Cain is all I’m saying.

Now, the reason I ask “is Cain allowed to kidnap the MC” is because I have no idea if the fallen angels have a strict code to operate under.  At first I might have guessed that they could be forbidden from meddling with any human affairs and just stick to their duties.  There may also be a strict rule about interfering in human lives that may affect their judgement later.  However, you do see angels like Sam and Damien just mingling about in the human world for no special reason.  I guess that answers my question, “Do they work 24/7?”  Looks like they do have some downtime, and they seem to even like to spend it acting like normal people.  Does Cain himself ever try this I wonder?  Does he still have some restrictions because of his original sin I wonder?  Perhaps he’s a little frustrated that while he’s not locked in a cage, he can’t mingle among the humans like some of the others.

Then again, maybe Cain can walk among regular humans like the others.  But then I wonder, if he can mingle, is it alright for him to do as he pleases with them?  I’ve mentioned this before, but maybe the angels act frivolous and don’t really care a lot about humans since they live in different worlds.  Not really having any animosity towards them, but also if they just feel like messing with someone, who’s going to stop them?  There was clarification recently on what was classified as a fallen angel.   Basically if they defied god and lost their graces, they become a fallen angel (though there are some unusual cases).  The angels with darker wings have done worse and probably whatever their doing is not for the benefit of god’s will or their job either if I had to venture a guess.  I’m..assuming Rockland Cain has black wings?  I’m trying to remember if I’ve seen a new official sprite art with him and his wings 0.0  Holy cow, I don’t even know if they’re fully black still.  Hmmm, I’ll guess that yes they still are based on his past sin at the very least.  Being the first murderer (and killing your own blood) is a pretty high felony honestly.  If his wings aren’t completely black, that will certainly raise some questions.

In that same discussion, it was mentioned that not a lot of the angels are really even that bad.  Truth be told, I know very little about most of these angels.  Come to think of it, the only “bad” one I keep thinking to compare Cain to is Michael.  In previous canon, he was portrayed as a character that also would have no qualms doing horrible, horrible things to people.  Now?  I don’t think there’s been an official update on Rockland Michael, so I don’t know if he kept that personality.

With all that in mind, is there still really a rule or not whether any of the angels can torture, maim and/or kill a person as they please?  Again, if there’s no rule against it, then Cain kidnapping the MC might not be a big deal to the other angels.  It’ll be interesting to see how the other characters react to news that Cain has been keeping a person hostage.  There’s the added flavor that the creators dropped hints that Cain taking you already marks you as “dead” or something.  At least that’s how I interpreted it.  I still won’t know what that means until the game comes out.  Is that going to be an issue for the other angels or no?  The only hint that Cain has done SOMETHING troublesome, is Sam doesn’t seem all that thrilled that Cain has marked the MC.  We don’t know what the mark means and why Sam’s concerned, but it leads us to believe that things might be complicated now.

 What I’m interested in seeing is how Cain lives on a regular basis.  Why is he experiencing unrest?  Does he ever walk about the human world like the other angels?  Is this the first time he’s kidnapped a single person?  Does he only have wicked plans for the MC?  Do the other angels care if Cain carts off a human just like that?  Does Cain’s relationship with the other characters have anything to do with what’s happening?

[orionsangel86]

14x02 - Episode Review - Without the Bells and Whistles

Bucklemming colour me impressed. This episode was a rich character driven story that left me full and satisfied and that is something I NEVER say about Bucklemming. I am amazed at how character focused these first two episodes are and truly hope that Dabb keeps up the momentum among writers. It is a change of pace with the show, and a change of focus, but it is WORKING so far.

As always with BL episodes there were some pacing issues and clunky dialogue in parts, but damn Dick Speight Jr is doing a fabulous job making the show look beautiful. As with 14x01 there is a lot to discuss, though I will try to be brief as I have a desperate need to write a separate post about Cas because my angel had me in tears in this episode and he needs an essay written about him in it.

Without further adieu, a long review is under the cut.

Michael and the Bait

Firstly Jensen did spectacularly in this episode. Such a drastic difference from 14x01 and I’m not sure if that’s because of Dick being a more hands on director or Jensen finally making a choice but he has settled into the role and plays Michael as a sinister psychopath on a mission. Michael has far more personality in this episode. He is more interesting to watch and managed to hold my attention unlike in 14x01. This makes me happy.

So what’s the deal guys? Michael spends this episode focusing on his monster experiments, brags about owning Dean, and then just leaves? Obviously that’s not what happened. The clue is in the key moments:

“Why be the hunted, when you can be the Hunter?”

“Rule no.1 you can’t have a trap without bait. Rule no.2 Once the trap has been sprung, you don’t need the bait anymore.”

Michael’s plan has been set in motion. The scene with the vamp girl being foreshadowing for the bigger picture, the bigger goal. Is Michael going after the hunters? If his plan is to make a world where Monsters are in charge, then the hunters need to be eradicated. It makes sense. It also therefore makes sense that you would set your sights on hunter central – the bunker. So Dean was let free so Michael could keep a watch on the bunker and it’s residents through him. As far as the rules go, if Dean is the bait, then releasing Dean is Michael not needing him anymore directly. The trap itself is the mystery, but I suspect we will find out more about exactly what Michael has done in 14x03, and it will most likely all have to do with this mysterious scar. I don’t think Michael is hiding “in” Dean so much as has an “open connection” to him where he could jump back in at any time without Dean’s consent. But we shall find out soon enough I’m sure.

Mary x Bobby

Obviously I support this ship, but I support it even more seeing as they have now paralleled Mobby to Destiel in two episodes in a row.

“My FBI is a little rusty”

This week, Bobby is our Cas mirror and Mary is our Dean. The fond pat on the back was the only hint we got that this was romantic, but like with 14x01, I ask you to try to find a single viewer who doesn’t see “something there” between this generic heterosexual couple? They are continuing to show their relationship through nothing BUT destiel parallels and it continues to delight me that this is now the shows go-to way to portray romance.

On a slight side note, Bobby being from an apocalypse AU world, he is the classic hunter right now who only sees in black and white, and the way he went for the vamp girl even after she tried to explain how she had never harmed a human. Bobby’s take on things this season will be an interesting one as it’s a continuous theme in this show to explore what makes a monster, something that dates back to John Winchester days (the ultimate black and white hunter). Also his understandable suspicions about angels making the dynamic with Cas a potentially interesting one. I wonder if this Bobby will ever utter the phrase “family don’t end with blood”?

Nick – It’s a chicken and egg situation

*sigh* I’m still not won over, and I probably won’t be. I expected this episode to be Nick heavy, and the flashbacks irked me because I simply don’t care. But I get that they would be necessary for a general audience. My lack of care is my own issue. It doesn’t matter how much Mark P acted his arse off trying to give us a decent performance (his first in years), I’m still not gonna be a fan. I’m still gonna skip those scenes in subsequent re-watches but that’s just me. I just don’t find it interesting even if he is being embedded into the story in a way that is paramount to the plot and the characters own struggles and development. I will acknowledge that importance and move on. I suppose the take away from Nick’s role in this episode when not specifically tied to Castiel (which I will yell about later) is whether or not he murdered his wife and child before he was possessed by Lucifer. The set up in the episode, the scripting and the direction implies that yes, he did. Though that could be a misdirection.

At the beginning of the episode, when he was asking Castiel what would possibly make him say yes to Lucifer to begin with, he had seemingly forgotten all about the brutal murder of his family, until Cas reminded him. Perhaps he had just repressed the trauma to the point that he had removed it from his mind to save himself further torment – but then murderers do that as much as grieving widows. Interestingly of all the things we learn about the murder case, we never actually learn Nick’s whereabouts, only from Castiel saying “you weren’t there” which is entirely unreliable because how would he have known other than from reading about the case himself? We know Nick’s neighbour is jumpy around him, so what did the neighbour actually see? We know his wife and child were killed with a hammer – an extremely intimate murder weapon and one that has been meta’d before in relation to Demon!Dean. Strangers don’t murder people with a hammer. It’s the weapon of crimes of passion, of extreme emotional connection to the victims. There is nothing cold and detached about a hammer. People who pick hammer’s to kill seek out the mess and extreme violence that they cause. It’s horrific and so much more gruesome than a knife or a gun. To kill an infant with a hammer? Even worse. To then see Nick murder the neighbour in the same violent attack, it is very easy to assume that he was the original killer as well.

If we assume Nick was the killer what does this mean for the canon of the show? Is this how Lucifer picks his vessels? What does this say about Sam? Who had to consume gallons of demon blood before he could contain Lucifer, Sam who had to be “corrupted” from a young age to prepare him? Was Nick already corrupted enough thanks to his apparent violent streak?

OR was this new kill with the hammer a result of what Cas called Lucifer’s “influence”, the “damage on his psyche”? Did Lucifer create the monster? Or was the monster already a part of Nick? If the season is going to continue the themes of previous seasons in exploring the shades of grey between men and monsters, then Nick is a key component. Is he the innocent victim of the devil? Or is he a tormented killer, who just so happened to get what he deserved? How would this affect the boys? If they are already struggling to find compassion towards a man wearing the face of their abuser, how does this potential new bit of information fit into that story? Perhaps, if Nick really is the killer, once this is found out it gives the writers an easy way to ultimately have him killed off without any guilt of tormenting and villainising an innocent. My money is actually on this theory. Plus it gives me a reason to continue hating him for the hell of it. But hey, that’s just me.

Castiel – The Angel with Too Much Heart

Oh Cas. What DON’T I have to say about you in this episode? I was amazed by Bucklemming’s dedication to Cas as a character and devotion to getting him right for once… I feel like I have slipped into an alternate universe because of this.

In 14x01 Cas was physically beaten, and in 14x02 he is emotionally beaten. I can’t help but wonder if this spells gloomy foreshadowing for Cas in the coming episodes. I want to write about this in depth as this episode is a fascinating insight into Cas’s psyche and his character arc going forward BUT I am leaving that for a separate post so in this review I will just sum it up:

Consider what happens to Cas in several points:

He overhears Bobby saying “angels ain’t known for their veracity” about Jo – that he doubts she was telling the truth. Cas shrugs it off and “tends to agree with him” but the awkwardness is obvious. This isn’t the Bobby who saw Cas as a son after all.

He is told he cannot go along on the mission to save Dean because his “angelic presence would be sensed by Michael” therefore his grace has rendered him useless.

He is made to relive his own possession by Lucifer “you were in a lot of pain, and Lucifer saw a vulnerability and he exploited it” though not talking about himself, the implication is obvious to anyone with a good memory of previous seasons.

He is made to relive another dark chapter of his history when his grace was stolen and he was human. Cas gives Jack a heartfelt positive speech that does show he is in a better place now “I had Sam and Dean, but I had something else that was extremely helpful. I had myself. Just the basic me, as Dean would say without all the bells and whistles” (which btw is so so good for human!cas meta) but the truth is actually far more depressing than Cas lets on, and the pain of what happened at that time, how Dean kicking him out of the bunker only encouraged the view that without his grace he was useless and unwanted by Dean – hence jilted lover.

He is surprised by Nick trying to “snap” him to oblivion which could easily be a trigger for Cas bearing in mind Lucifer has blown him up before via that very gesture.

He had to relive his “greatest regret” and what he did to Jimmy and his family. “You’re just a stone cold body snatcher, you’re no different from Lucifer” and you can SEE how much that pained him. How much Nick twisted the knife at those words.

He was told by Jack that he wanted to meet “The only real family that I have left” which is a slap in the face to poor Cas who sees Jack as part of his own family (and his reaction to that line is heart breaking).

Then the worst thing, he is made to face the possible conclusion that Dean may have to die to save the world. “Dean doesn’t matter” oh boy. No hate to Jack who doesn’t really have any real reason to put Dean ahead of the world, but to Cas, who is in love with him? Yeah that’s the killing blow right there.

Right at the end Jack says “Do you think he’d want it any other way?” and Cas KNOWS Dean wouldn’t, because they have been in that situation before as well, and when that happened Dean asked Cas to take him out. So he had to relive that painful moment as well. One that he refused, and because he refused to fight Dean, got beaten to a pulp after proclaiming that he would “be the one to watch you murder the world”. I have no doubt that Cas would still take that view over the alternative.

So Cas was emotionally beaten all episode. Forced to live through his worst moments and biggest regrets, and then have to face the fact that putting Dean above saving the world just isn’t right and he needs to prepare himself for that eventuality. If this episode and the last have told us anything, it’s that Cas is once again in a pretty low place. That much beating, both physical and emotional, are going to have an impact, and I am now really concerned about where Cas disappears to in episodes 4 to 6.

There is so much more to discuss, specifically in relation to what his view of his grace as “bells and whistles” could mean for human!Cas meta writers, not to mention the basic fact that any argument now about Cas hating being human just isn’t true. He still had himself, and he still believed in himself even when human, and even if he didn’t back then, he does now. He doesn’t see that period of his life as a total negative. That is HUGE.

Summary

A+ episode for Cas development. Amazing as that is being a bucklemming. It has also left us with lots to speculate and theorise which is always a great thing - keeping people tuning in. The Michael!Dean mystery as well as the Nick mystery probably won’t get revealed any time soon, but are enough to have people talking about them for a while. 

Sam was still very much in Leader mode, though didn’t really get to do much this episode, but the way I see it, 14x01 was for Sam, 14x02 was for Cas, and I fully expect 14x03 to be a Dean heavy episode (which is fair since I am sure we are all missing him by now). Jack is also one to watch. His inner turmoil is textually acknowledged several times over and seeing as he is basically a mini Cas, the possibility that Jack could decide to do something drastic is probably very likely. I wonder if we will see Kelly’s parents again any time soon - I kinda hope not as I reckon that would spell certain doom for them. 

It was a strong episode, and I enjoyed watching it (other than the Nick stuff). Probably my second favourite Bucklemming episode if I was to rank them all now which is very impressive (11x18 will always be top imo).

That’s all for now, as I am in the mood to write some Cas stuff. As always if you read this far kudos and please reblog and comment and send me asks as I love all that stuff. :D